It is amazing just how many strange discoveries have been stumbled upon by complete accident. Some of the most baffling mysteries have been found by pure chance, hidden away in the shadows before suddenly being thrust into the light to baffle and perplex. On an isolated hill in Scotland just such a discovery was made, when there were found a collection of mysterious, anomalous coffins that have never been explained.

In June of 1836 a group of young boys set out to go hunting for rabbits of the slopes of a place called Arthur’s Seat, in Edinburgh, Scotland. The location itself is an ancient volcanic hill already steeped in history and legend, giving it a mystical air, and it is here where the boys stumbled across a small cave on the north-east slope. The cave was not easy to see, more a gap in the rocks than anything else, concealed there behind some stone slabs for who knows how long, and boys being boys of course they just had to investigate. The curious boys peeked inside the dank murkiness of this long forgotten cave and there lined up within the gloom were 17 tiny coffins, each one of them only 3 or 4 inches long and containing within a meticulously carved wooden doll with wide, gaping eyes and dressed in clothing that had been expertly fashioned of cotton. The coffins were arranged in two tiers of eight coffins each, and a third one with only one coffin on it, with the dolls less decayed and rotted away the higher the tier was, that solitary coffin and doll at the top looking to be the newest. The Scotsman newspaper would describe the finding:

Each coffin contained a miniature figure of the human form cut out in wood, the faces in particular being pretty well executed. They were dressed from head to foot in cotton clothes, and decently laid out with a mimic representation of all the funereal trappings which usually form the last habiliments of the dead. The coffins are about three or four inches in length, regularly shaped, and cut out from a single piece of wood, with the exception of the lids, which are nailed down with wire sprigs or common brass pins. The lid and sides of each are profusely studded with ornaments, formed with small pieces of tin, and inserted in the wood with great care and regularity.

Arthur’s Seat

Of course, boys being boys, they had no idea of the value of their discovery, and according to the article in The Scotsman newspaper they destroyed half of them on the way home by “pelting them at each other as unmeaning and contemptible trifles.” People who saw the coffins and dolls at the time immediately thought that they were the result of witchcraft and black magic, and indeed The Scotsman would fan the fires of such speculation, writing:

Our own opinion would be – had we not some years ago abjured witchcraft and demonology – that there are still some of the weird sisters hovering about Mushat’s Cairn [sic] or the Windy Gowl, who retain their ancient power to work the spells of death by entombing the likenesses of those they wish to destroy.

Another theory at the time was that the dolls might have represented dead sailors who had died at sea, effigies created to give them a proper burial, while others still thought that the boys were just playing a prank. Whatever the case may be, after the initial news coverage the coffins were just sort of forgotten and quietly found their way to a private collector, fading into the mists of time for decades before a set of eight was eventually donated to the National Museum of Scotland in 1901. It was only then that they were really noticed and discussed for the first time, and they baffled pretty much everyone who saw them. Questions abounded. Who had put them there in that remote cave and why? Why craft these tiny little coffins and their dolls? What was their significance? No one knew, indeed, we still don’t, but there have been ideas.

The main idea at first was that these had been effigies of people crafted in order to give them “honorific burials,” but other speculation would come up over the years. One idea was that the coffins were lucky charms made be a local craftsman in order to be sold to passing sailors for a safe voyage. However, there is no evidence to point to any one of these theories in particular, and so the dolls and their little ornate coffins remained a mystery, and they were seen as mostly mere anomalous curiosities.

The mysterious coffins

It would not be until 1990 that anyone would really launch any sort of in-depth study of the coffins and their occupants, when a Professor Samuel Menefee, of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia, and Dr Allen Simpson, of the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, began taking a closer look at them. They made many observations about the enigmatic objects, such as that they had likely all been made by the same person, that the way they were made seemed to suggest they were created by a shoemaker, and that they seemed to have been built in the style of toys rather than funerary effigies. It was also noted that some of them had had their arms removed, and maybe even hats that had once sat upon their heads taken off, possibly to fit them into the coffins and suggesting that the dolls were not necessarily specifically made for their final resting places. The style and fabric of their clothing also suggested that they had been buried in the 1830s, probably not very long before they were found, although the paper that lines some of the coffins was dated back to the 1780s.

The theory that the researchers came up with is that the figures and their coffins represent the victims of two Irish immigrant serial killers William Burke and William Hare, who were infamous for a brutal murder spree in the 1820s that left 17 people dead. They targeted mostly transients, and killed in order to feed the trade in cadavers for Edinburgh’s medical school. It is the opinion of Simpson and Menefee that these wooden figures were made in order to give a proper burial to the 17 dead in the wake of what are typically referred to as the West Port murders. The researchers would write of this:

The problem with the various theories is their concentration on motivation, rather than on the event or events that caused the interments. The former will always be open to argument, but if the burials were event-driven—by, say the loss of a ship with seventeen fatalities during the period in question—the speculation would at least be built on demonstrable fact. Stated another way, what we seek is an Edinburgh-related event or events, involving seventeen deaths, which occurred close to 1830 and certainly before 1836. One obvious answer springs to mind—the West Port Murders by William Burke and William Hare in 1827 and 1828.

Considering beliefs such as the alleged mimic burial given to Scottish sailors lost at sea, it would not be unreasonable for some person or person, in the absence of the seventeen dissected bodies, to wish to propitiate these dead, the majority of whom were murdered in atrocious circumstances, by a form of burial to set their spirits at rest. While it is always possible that other disasters could have resulted in an identical casualty list, the West Port murders would appear to be a logical motivating force.

The problem with this idea is that all of the figures in the miniature coffins are male, where almost all of the victims of the West Port murders were female, yet it is an interesting line of speculation. What is the deal with these mysterious coffins and their dolls? In the end there has been no concrete, definitive answer, and these coffins and their creepy, eerie dolls remain on display in museums, fascinating people as much as they always have, and probably always will.

The name Yaphet Kotto is not one that many may be familiar with, but if you are a fan of movies from the 1970s and 80s you will most certainly know his face. Most fout that his father was in fact the Crown Prince of Cameroon, before studying acting at the Actors Mobile Theater Studio and then landing stage roles and after that his first film role in uncredited bit roles to work his way up from there to eventually become a show business legend. Yet while Kotto’s life is colorful and intriguing, what really makes it even more interesting are his many alleged experiences with UFOs and supposedly very real aliens.amous for his supporting role in the sci-fi horror Alien he has appeared in a wide range of movies and television shows, including playing the devious villain Kanaga in the James Bond film Live and Let Die, starring in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Running Man, Robert DeNiro’s Midnight run, and many others. Kotto already has an interesting enough life as it is, growing up as a black Jew on the streets of New York and in later life finding 

Kotto’s personal accounts were not really known by any one except his immediate family, rabbi, and psychologist for years, and it was not until journalist Noel Ransome, with Vice, tracked him down for an interview that it would all come out into the open. Ransome had been merely interested in talking to the actor about his experiences making the 1979 film Alien, and although the actor typically did not give interviews he agreed, and Kotto’s talent agent Ryan Goldhar made the cryptic statement that he might like to ask him about UFOs as well. Ransome did, and Kotto would prove to be very candid talking about it all, expressing his desire to finally talk about it after all of those years, and weaving some bizarre tales indeed. According to Kotto, he has had encounters with UFOs and aliens most of his life, starting from when he was just a kid. He says:

It started when I was about nine or ten years old. I’m being grounded in the house for coming home late from school. I remember being told I couldn’t go outside, so I would look out at the streets of my neighborhood in the Bronx, watching the kids play stickball. I get tired of watching and turn to leave and standing right at the edge of the doorway to my room was a figure of what we now call The Grays. When I turned around, a figure was behind me, it was at least five or six feet tall with an elongated head. It appeared, then jumped to the back of me and disappeared.He leaped out of the way like he didn’t want me to catch him. I looked down the hall and there was nobody there. I asked my grandmother if there was anybody in the house and she said, ‘No, just you and me.’ But I never forgot that. And as I got to be a teenager and an adult, I realized that, holy s***, that was an alien.

Yaphet Kotto

He was not sure how to classify these experiences at first, but they seemed to follow him wherever he went. When he was younger it was all very confusing for him, because he wasn’t sure how to process it all or who to turn to talk about it. On some occasions he saw UFOs, on others the aliens themselves, and he also believes that he may have been even abducted. He has explained of this and the effect it all had on him:

At one point, I remember being at my home at 6 PM. I went into my office in the garage to meditate, and I saw something. I Looked at it for about five minutes, and it was light. I was wondering why the neighbors were shining a light through the top of my garage window. So I went to talk to them. Now keep in mind, I had been sitting in that car garage for some 12 hours and I believed that I contributed to those things that were flying above my garage… I shouldn’t call them things, they were aircrafts. As I got older, I understood what they were. I went through my youth, however, not knowing what I was experiencing, therefore, I didn’t talk about it. I would just experience something and file it away until something larger happened. This is the thing other UFO witnesses don’t talk about. Every time I moved into a house, above it at some point, there would be a circle of what looked like smoke. I’d wonder where it came from because it sure as hell didn’t look like clouds. Those sightings continued for a good ten to 15 years. I’ve also had time loss. I have a big loss of time between some of these moments, and I’d often wonder if I was taken.

It didn’t mean anything to me back then, but looking back I thought, wait a minute brother, these guys are real. I didn’t accept it fully until I was 35-40 years old. A lot of the time I never talk about it. I was having extraterrestrial experiences from the time I was 10 years old. Weird experiences. First they took me to a psychiatrist, priest, rabbi, and no one could dispute it. Why would I be making things up at 10? I saw the damn things.

Some of his most disturbing experiences he claims happened when he was in the Philippines for work. While there he says that he had several strange incidents with UFOs, of which he says:

It was one evening in my office in the Philippines. I heard my wife and the waiters calling me to come outside in very anxious voices. So I went out and when I got there, I saw the same huge circle of smoke over the house. When I asked them what they saw, they said they saw a UFO as big as the Yankee Stadium turned upside down. They were freaking out. Two or three nights later, I saw it. The thing blotted out the entire sky. The moon and everything, it was huge. I just remember saying, “Jesus Christ.” I mean I got so nervous man because you don’t see something like that without being vulnerable to becoming psychologically blown away. You get scared to put it quite frankly. That messed me up for a good three or four days.

I mean we’ve had them follow us around. Showing up in places where I am. At one point, I was getting ready to run with my assistant in the morning around Manila in the Philippines. Got up, went outside and we hadn’t gone very far when one of those aircrafts showed up. My assistant freaked out and said, “look at that!” and I said yeah and kept it moving. It followed us around and she ended up telling all her friends. The next morning, when we got ready to go out, I mentally sat down and began to disbelieve it and thought, if two show up, I’ll believe. So we went out and sure enough, two of them showed up and the next day, it was three that showed up as if by request.

Kotto says he even had odd experiences while filming the movie that he is perhaps most famous for amongst mainstream audiences, Ridley Scott’s Alien. Filming occurred during the heyday of his UFO experiences, and at that point he was already very deep into UFOlogy and had had many encounters. As he made his way around the set he says he made some curious observations, of which he explains:

Now, I’ll admit, there were things that I alone found on the set of Alien—the spaceship. That mechanism that Sigourney Weaver throws to put the Sulaco (fictional spacecraft) on automatic destruct. There were symbols there. Symbols that had nothing to do with the ship in the film and I kept finding these symbols. They were like Egyptian symbols and I started trying to decipher them, which I was able to do.

What in the world? This one is a headscratcher, to be sure. It is difficult to know what he means by this, he doesn’t elaborate any further in the interview, and it is at this point that some people might start to think he might be delusional, but Kotto claims that he is completely serious and has no family history of mental illness. He is also very clear about having nothing to gain from coming forward with these experiences. When Ransome suggests that some of his stories and some readers might think he is making it all up, Kotto goes on the defensive, saying:

There’s no reason for me to make these claims. I never promoted any book or anything like that. I never read anyone talking about the experiences I’ve had. I’ve made 75 movies and I’ve done television shows. I’m known all over the world. This confession wouldn’t advance me, I advance myself through my acting. Other people may do this to try to advance themselves, make it public, and then become famous. I’m already famous so what possible purpose would I have to tell these stories except how it relates to the movie Alien? This is the reason why I never talked about it after that movie because of course, they’d say, “oooh, he’s trying to promote his movie.” Well, I’m not promoting anything now. I’ve written no books and I have no movie that’s about to be released. This is the time to reveal this because no one can connect it to anything that’s a financial gain or form of media exposure. Now, if someone asks me if I ever experienced anything that’s remotely close to an alien, I’ll say “damn right I did.” It’s happened since I was nine years old and has continued since then. So I really don’t care whether anyone thinks I’m delusional. My delusion is over. I’ve taken a position on that.

Kotto does not seem to really understand why he should be chosen to be so closely followed by these entities, or why they have done so for decades. However, he does think he knows the reason that they are here to begin with, and believes that they have a larger purpose to play in the future of humankind. In the end, his closing thoughts on the matter are explained thusly:

We’re not alone, we’re not alone in the universe. If you totally westernize the idea look at it from a supremacy viewpoint, then you’ll say, everyone’s imagining them when it comes to these things. We can say that, but much of the world would reject that premise. We’re not alone. They aren’t going to go away and I honestly believe these species are close to making themselves known in this century, to this generation,” he explained. “I believe their purpose is to make sure we don’t kill ourselves. We’re losing our rivers, lakes, mountains and our caps are melting. We need to take a serious look at what we’re doing and they’re going to help us do that.

So what are we dealing with here? Is this notable actor telling the truth, or is this all delusions and tall tales? It is hard to see why the notoriously reclusive Kotto would suddenly come out of hiding to lay this all out for everyone to see, and it is hard to argue that he would have no promotional or monetary motivations to do so. Is he just delusional or is he maybe telling the truth about these odd encounters? The fact that he is well known makes his stories more widely played, but in the end what are we to make of them? Whatever the case may be, the irony cannot be possibly lost that the actor of “Alien” has had some rather weird alien encounters of his own, and it remains a compelling oddity.

The most spectacular UFO accounts seems to revolve around those in which some sort of physical evidence has been left behind, and the more sinister of these is when this evidence takes the form of physical injury upon a person that seems indicative of some sort of aggressive action. Are UFOs benevolent or not? It is not a question that has really been adequately answered, but it at least some accounts it seems to decidedly be the latter. There are in fact quite a few cases of UFOs allegedly attacking human beings, and one of the most harrowing of these is one that supposedly occurred in Brazil in the 1970s. It is a spooky glimpse into the possible darker agenda of this phenomenon, and remains one of the few cases of a human being said to have died directly due to a UFO encounter.

Luis just a few days before his death

Credit: Philip Mantle

Luis Barroso Fernandez was a simple farmer living on a rural property near the town of Quixada, in the state of Ceará, in Brazil. He led a humble, simple life, but things would get very bizarre on April 3, 1976, when Fernandez was out doing a routine check of his cattle. It was just after 2 AM, his usual time for doing this weekly chore, but this time would be far from usual. As he made his way along the property in a horse drawn wagon, he allegedly saw a metal craft that looked sort of like a disc descend to hover over the ground not far away, emanating a sound like “like a swarm of bees.” The baffled farmer had never seen anything like this, and was both terrified and filled with curiosity at the same time, and his horse was getting very upset about it all. He would later tell his son that as he stared at the strange sight, the craft had suddenly fired a blindingly bright beam of light at him, and two beings holding what looked like flashlights came out to aim their devices at him, after which they reentered the craft and it simply sped off into the sky. Fernandez would say:

We received a light and were totally stopped, unable to move, the animal and I, of course. It opened up a kind of door and appeared two short stature beings. They were normal people, albeit with weird clothes and a kind of flashlight in hand. Pointed one beam of light at us and I lost consciousness.

However, for the farmer it would turn out to be far from the end of this incident. Fernandez would describe how he had lost consciousness, only to wake with a splitting headache and had difficulty breathing and moving his limbs. Even more alarming was that one side of his body seemed to be deeply burned, as if a severe sunburn, even though it had been in the hours of darkness. He managed to make his way home, but was in such pain that his family arranged for him to be examined by a doctor in town. The doctor did not really buy the farmer’s story of the UFO, but was also unable to explain the anomalous injuries to his body, and ended up just sending him home with some medication to rest in bed. It was still not over, though, and things would only get weirder from there.

The claims are being made in new book UFO Contacts in Brazil

Credit: Philip Mantle

Over the next few weeks, Fernandez was described by his family as slowly losing his mental facilities. He began to mentally devolve in a sense, becoming more and more childlike as the days and weeks went on, seeming to revert to a child state. Making it even more anomalous was that his skin also seemed to be getting younger, healing from the burns and taking on a youthful glow far younger than his years, leading his son, Francisco Leonardo Barroso, to comment that “it was as though it had grown over again.” During this time, he was examined by many medical and psychiatric specialists who could not figure out what was wrong with him. In the meantime, despite his more youthful appearance, his health rapidly deteriorated, as did his mental state. Indeed, whatever was ailing him eventually killed him, with Fernandez passing away from his condition in 1993. According to those around him, by the time he died he had so completely lost his mind that he was purportedly only able to say “Mom”, “give” and “fear.” UFO researcher Philip Mantle, author of the book UFO Contacts in Brazil, has said of the bizarre incident:

Many people claim to have come into direct contact with a UFO and some even claim that it has hurt them as a result. A bruise here, a small cut there, but Luis Barroso Fernandes may be the first person ever killed after his encounter with a UFO. Contact with a UFO is not common at all but when the UFO in question shoots a beam of light at you, a light that hits you full in the face is extremely rare. This is what happened to Luis Barroso Fernandes. The illnesses that followed his immediately after this encounter is bizarre to say the least and went undiagnosed by a number of different doctors. Did the beam of light that hit him cause these illnesses and eventually his death? We will probably never know but this is one of the most bizarre and rarest such close encounters on record, of that there is no doubt.

Luis Barroso Fernandez after the attack

Interestingly, this was not the end of the strange phenomena that would revolve around the family and indeed the whole town. There would be many other reports of UFO sightings in the area, and Fernandez’ own son would have his own odd experiences in the coming days, seeing UFOs on multiple occasions. More frightening still was that there is at least one other report of a UFO in the area of Quixada seemingly attacking human beings. Here we have the account of Francisca Rosete da Silva, 23, and her brother Antonio Leudo da Silva, 12, who were walking along a wooded area in the vicinity when they saw a blazing light through the trees. According to the witnesses, the light then shot a beam at Francisca, which burned her skin and left her disoriented and dizzy. Doctors would find her eyes to be swollen and bruises and burns on her body, although no cause could be determined. The brother, Antonio, was not injured in the incident, and would say of what they saw, “What I saw, I did not want to see ever again. It was not a plane, helicopter or another known thing. It was strange and threatening.”

What happened in this remote town, and what is it that plagued Luis Barroso Fernandez? Was this a malicious attack by a UFO, and if so why would these entities do so? Was is a defensive measure, or perhaps even accidental? It is unclear just what happened here, but Fernandez’s case has never been adequately explained and he is often touted as being one of the only human being to ever be killed by a UFO. Whether it was real or not, it does leave us to ask ourselves whether UFOs are friendly or not, and poses the question of whether there are perhaps times when they have more sinister goals than we may realize.

On the evening of November 21, 1957, businessman Frank Dickenson and two of his friends, Frank Hutton and Fred Taylor, were driving through dark moorland just outside of the tiny town of Silpho, in the Scarborough district of the county of North Yorkshire, England. It was a routine drive, and there wasn’t much to see over those moors, but the monotony was broken by a bright slash of light across the sky, which seemed to come down nearby. The men at first thought is was a meteor that had come down, and went to investigate, but this would be far more bizarre than that. This would begin a weird odyssey of the little UFO that fell to earth, only to disappear and show up in a museum years later

When they got to the place where the glowing object had come down, they could see that this was no meteor, but rather what they described as a “copper-bottomed flying saucer,” looking to be out of commission but in relatively one piece considering it had just plummeted from the heavens. The disc measured just 17 inches across and weighed 33 pounds, and although here were no noticeable seams or opening, the whole of it was covered with cryptic symbols that were etched across its side, similar in appearance to Egyptian hieroglyphics. The men knew they had found something strange, and they went about handing it over to some UFO researchers by the names of Frank Dickenson, Anthony Parker and Philip Longbottom.

They went about trying to pry it open to see what was inside. They finally succeeded, and allegedly found within the saucer 17 thin copper sheets engraved with more of the same glyphs that were on the outside. Of any occupant there was no sign, leading them to believe it was some sort of unmanned craft for purposes unknown. After this the object was apparently cut into several pieces and sent off to be studied by different institutions, with the findings differing depending on who looked at it. Scientists at the Natural History Museum noted that it did not seem to have ever been in space, as it showed no signs of the extreme temperature changes it would have been subjected to in that environment, leading them to believe that it was terrestrial in origin and likely a hoax. However, Manchester University found that the metal of the object was of an unusually high purity and that its shell had been “radiation-proofed,” and when an Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding of the Royal Air Force examined it he came away convinced that it definitely had to be of extraterrestrial origins. That seems to be about as far as anyone got at the time, and the various pieces of what is now called the “Silpho UFO” sort of disappeared, being filed away in backrooms to gather dust or just vanishing altogether. After this, the whole incident and this diminutive UFO were just sort of forgotten about.

It would not be until 2018 that an old cigarette tin was found sitting hidden and forgotten in a store room by archivists at London’s Science Museum, containing 5 envelopes with some odd metal fragments and pieces of foil within it, all of it labelled “Victoria and Albert Museum- alleged UFO bits.” The box had been sitting there in the dark collecting dust since 1963, and they realized that this discovery in their collection might have cultural significance. It was turned over to a journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University by the name of Dr. David Clarke, who was at the time giving a lecture on UFOs. Clarke would say of it all:

One of the museum staff tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was aware that ‘bits of a flying saucer’ had been kept in a cigarette tin for decades. I thought it must be a joke, or the pieces of metal would be worthless. They were stored off-site, so I arranged for the files to be sent to London for examination early in the New Year. I was absolutely amazed when later we opened the tin box and saw the wreckage. It was obvious these were the remains of the missing Silpho Saucer that some have claimed as Britain’s answer to the famous Roswell incident. It’s incredible to hear that pieces of this mystery object have been sitting in a museum archive for more than half a century.

Some contents of the box

Pieces said to be from the wreckage of the Silpho UFO found in 1957.

( Dr. David Clarke/Sheffield Hallam University ) 

Clarke was able to track the fragments back to an expert on meteorites and explosives by the name of Gordon Claringbull, Keeper of Mineralogy at the Natural History Museum, who had forwarded them the Science Museum in 1963, after which they had just been sort of thrown into storage and swept away. Interestingly, not long after this rediscovery of the lost wreckage, Longbottom one of the ones who allegedly originally pried the UFO open, claimed that he had become obsessed with the meaning of those glyphs, and after intensively studying them for years he claimed to have translated a portion, which he said was written by an alien calling itself “Ullo,” and gave the rather ominous message of “You will improve or disappear,” as well as various passages warning mankind not to tinker with nuclear weapons. This seems as if it surely must be a hoax based off of the reemergence of the Silpho UFO into the news, but it certainly puts a bizarre spin on things.

The Science Museum said it was likely the items in their collections were from Silpho Moor.

( David Clarke )

The object itself is widely believed to have been merely an elaborate hoax enacted by the men who found it, but there are plenty of people who have discussed it in forums and in other articles as being the real deal. Of course, there are also conspiracies that abound, such as that the wreckage found in the museum wasn’t the real UFO or that the findings were covered up. Was it real, and if so what was it? Was this some unmanned probe sent here with a message that only one guy has ever figured out? Or is this perhaps a piece of hoaxing history? This is in the end probably a hoax, but it is still an interesting little piece of UFO lore that seems to have been mostly forgotten. It is pretty amazing that it managed to fade away into the shadows and be buried in a museum’s archives for so long, and even if it is not real, it raises the question of if this has ever happened to a real piece of a UFO. Is there maybe some fragment of an alien craft relegated to some dank basement forgotten, just waiting for the right person to stumble on to it? Perhaps time will tell.

The remaining parts of the Silpho UFO, found in 1957, were rumoured by the UFO community to have ended up on a scrap heap or even on display in a local fish and chip shop. 

( Dr. David Clarke/Sheffield Hallam )

Aliens and encounters with strange humanoids are one thing, but quite another is when these creatures are found dead or dying, leaving behind riddles that we may never solve. Such cases are rare, but they seem to happen all over the world, and never cease to amaze with the potential for what they mean and what could have been. A very bizarre and obscure report of a dead humanoid alien comes to us from the country of Sweden, and it is truly one of the weirdest.

The whole strange affair revolves around an intriguing report dug up by UFO researcher Ed Komarek, and originally made by a man named John Fontaine, supposedly published in the publication UFO Universe Magazine under the title Humanoid Dies In Sweden. Fontaine would claim to have met the witness at a UFO conference in Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Sweden, in a lecture hall full of UFO and alien enthusiasts, and that the two had struck up a friendly conversation that made its way to the topic of alien humanoids. The man would then choose to launch into a very curious encounter and brush with the unexplained that he himself had had back in 1955, which would leave Fontaine awestruck and baffled.

The man said that at the time he had been working as a lumberjack in the town of Vestra Norrland, at the Gulf of Bothnia, along with his two brothers, where they toiled away shipping out lumber. On a calm morning in July, their attention was captured by a noise in the remote wilderness that sounded like “a big animal thrashing its way through the forest,” which was so insistent that the men were immediately on alert. As they gazed off into the murky trees, they caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a cigar-shaped object that was flying through the treetops to rain down branches and debris all over the place. At first, they thought that this was merely a small aircraft that had flown too low and had perhaps lost its wings, now in danger of crashing, and indeed they were sure that at any second it would come down in a fiery collision with the earth. However, things were about to get much more bizarre than that.

Gulf of Bothnia, Sweden

The craft seemed to come down at a nearby river that meandered through the area, after which there was no sound, but rather a sudden bright flash of light “like a vast flashbulb,” that was absolutely blinding in its sheer intensity. The witness would even claim that such was the incredible brightness of it all that they could actually see through the trees, as if through an X-ray machine, and all of this was followed by a kind of vacuum that seemed to pull them towards it. As they were sucked towards the source of the light they could see that leaves, branches, and everything else not nailed down was also flying towards whatever it was, and such was this inexorable pull that the men found themselves holding on to whatever they could to keep from being drawn towards that mysterious light, during which time the forest was bathed in complete, surreal silence.

Although the whole incident at the time seemed to last far longer, it was estimated that it was all over within a split second, after which the forest returned to normal as if nothing had happened. The men looked about them and crept forward through the brush towards that forbiding unknown, but they did not notice anything unusual, nor anything at all that would even suggest that anything odd had happened at all. Just as the puzzled crew were about to head back, one of them then noticed what he described as a “dwarf dressed in uniform” sprawled out on the ground in some bushes. As the three of them warily stepped closer they could see that there was indeed some sort of humanoid being lying there, and their first thoughts were that whatever had come down had crashed into the water and that this was an occupant who had been hurled out to safety.

The “dwarf” was described as being only around 4 feet in height, surrounded by “white light that vibrated like a halo,” and totally unmoving. They assumed it to be dead, but when they got closer still it snapped awake and recoiled from their touch, saying in perfect Swedish, “Do not touch me! It will only bring you difficulties! Now you know who I am!” The group were not sure what to make of this, and during the whole surreal incident they felt as if an unnatural calm had washed over them and they could now make out various details about this mysterious stranger. Fontaine would quote the witness as saying:

Suddenly I became quite calm and studied him closely. He was no dwarf. He was very well-built with broad shoulders and normal features. His skin was yellowish like that of an Asian. The eyes were deep socketed and black, without any white around. His face was badly bruised with a couple of big wounds on the chin and on the forehead. It did not bleed but the skin watered around the wounds. The top of his head was slightly downy and the hair almost white. The earlobes were one with the neck and resembled a shark’s fin. The lips were wrinkled, narrow and colorless. When he smiled reassuringly, which he did a lot, he revealed a row of small teeth in the upper as well as the lower part of his mouth. I especially noticed that his canine teeth were flat and as broad as two of our front teeth.

His hands were small with five slender fingers without nails and when he moved his hand it looked as if the ring finger had grown together to the little finger, if not they moved synchronized. His uniform was of a reddish metal and appeared glued to his body closely. Head and hands were free, but at the feet the clothing continued into a couple of closed shoes, size 35-37. The foot-soles were ribbed and vibrated, and for a moment I thought of caterpillars on a tank. The stranger looked at me and nodded slightly. There was no doubt that he knew what I was thinking. With those shoes he could roll forwards and backwards without moving his feet. Around the waist he had a broad silvery metal belt with an unusually large buckle, which shone slightly in a light-blue shade, which later when he was dead, turned dark blue. In the middle of the buckle was a sign in yellow — UV — it looked like a V which was incorporated in a U.

It was all a lot to take in, but as amazing as this all was there was a tragic air to it all, as the humanoid then let them know that he was gravely wounded and dying. He then produced a rectangular device with a pencil slate attached to it from his pocket, upon which he wrote something and tossed it out into the wilderness, telling the men that they should not touch it, and that it was meant to be a beacon to draw other of his kind to his location. The witness then claimed that he had talked with the creature for a full 2 hours as he lie there dying, although he seemed loathe to reveal what they had actually talked about. All he would reveal were certain details, such as that the entity claimed to have been from the constellation we call “The Eagle,” that several alien races had routinely visited humans over the centuries, and that many of them had been keenly observing us. He then jumped to the part where the mysterious stranger seemed to be dying, and before so instructed them to place his corpse inside a bag he gave them, saying that it would expedite the destruction of his remains to keep his existence secret. The witness says of the creature’s death:

Just before the stranger died, he gave me folded bag from the invisible pocket and said: “When I am dead, the light will disappear from my body and with the help of the other two men you shall put me in this bag and carry me out into the river where I shall disappear. Then you shall rinse yourself thoroughly in the water, so that you don’t get ill.” He was now breathing heavily, and I could see the end was near. The halo around him became weaker and gradually disappeared. His light blue buckle gradually got darker. He looked at me for a moment and smiled. The he said something in a language I have never heard before or since. Suddenly he switched into Swedish, and I got the last couple of sentences… “You have come without any wish to and depart against your own wish. Our life is like vapor.” He said a few more worlds, but his voice was so weak that I did not catch them. I am convinced he prayed to some deity before dying. I was very moved.

The witness and his brothers then gathered up the being’s corpse, stuffed it into the bag as instructed, and carried him off towards the roaring river, noticing how the body smelled intensely of Sulfur, the skin irritating their flesh. He would claim that the water began bubbling as they lowered the body into it, and that after 5 minutes the corpse had completely dissolved away into nothing. They would apparently go years without discussing the incident, and the witness claimed to Fontaine that that was the first time he had discussed it in decades. He then left in a rather mysterious fashion, showing him the pencil slate from that rectangular device, which he had kept as evidence of the encounter. Fontaine would say of this:

The witness produced a piece of metal and held it to my nose. “Look” he said. I looked bewildered. It resembled a bit crochet hook. “What is it?” He laughed knowingly. “A couple of days after the incident I wandered around where he had been lying. The rectangular object was gone, but the pencil slate was lying in the grass shining. I have kept it as a proof that I was not dreaming.” He left. And while I gazed astonished after him, he disappeared in the crowd. An anonymous, who with his story and pencil slate could hit the front page on the world’s newspapers.

What are we to make of all of this? This is a relatively obscure case, translated into English from Swedish and given by a stranger to a UFO researcher and told third hand, without anything in the way of evidence. Of course, there could be something to it all, but whatever truth there is to it all seems to have left with that enigmatic stranger at that UFO conference long ago, and we are left to merely speculate. Did this entity crash in his ship? If so, why was he here? Is there any truth to this story at all? There is sadly very little information on this obscure case out there, and whether it was true in any way or not we will probably never know for sure, and the secret to this all is confined to that wood in Sweden.

Strange encounters with UFOs and their often enigmatic occupants have happened all over the world, from every corner of the globe. While those that happen in the United States and the U.K. seem to be the most well-known of oft-covered, this is certainly not the extent of this phenomenon. Perhaps it is the language barrier, but there are many cases that seem to have fallen through the cracks in other countries, and some remarkable ones that don’t seem to get much coverage are a series of very bizarre encounters with what seem to be alien entities in the far eastern country of Japan.

One very weird alien encounter that also happens to have so-called photographic proof supposedly occurred in April of 1975, in the city of Kawanoe, on Japan’s Shikoku Island. On the night of March 24th, 1975, a local resident by the name of Giichi Shiota was at a city landfill when he says he saw something very bizarre indeed. There amongst the rubble he spied a luminous figure in some sort of metallic suit hovering around 7 feet off of the ground, which he would describe as an “alien cosmonaut.” The being itself was said to be about 6 feet tall, and it then smoothly descended to about a foot off of the ground before floating towards the startled witness, who says he then began to develop a sharp headache that increased with intensity the closer it came. This headache apparently became absolutely agonizing, sending him on his way.

Shiota then became determined to go back to the scene of his strange encounter, this time taking with him three cameras for the purpose of possibly capturing something strange on film. He would visit that landfill night after night for a whole week hoping to catch another glimpse of the otherworldly, and then on March 31 his patience apparently paid off. He would claim that that familiar head splitting headache had descended upon him once again, at which point he knew that he was no longer alone their huddling in the darkness. Looking about him, he could then make out what appeared to be a bluish, cloud-like light hovering around 300 feet away, which he described as an “electrical disturbance,” and as he peered through the gloom at it the humanoid emerged from its center. One again it glided towards him, and this time Shiota claimed that he had taken a series of photographs of the strange entity. As if realizing that it was being photographed, the creature then veered off at great speed and vanished into thin air.

Alleged photograph of the “alien cosmonaut”

What did he catch on film? The photos are inconclusive to say the least. Is this a hoax or is there anything more to it? Interestingly, on February 23, 1975, of that same year two 7-year-old boys named Masato Kawano and Katsuhiro Yamahata, were out roller skating in the early evening hours in Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, when they claim that they saw in the sky a pair of luminous orange lights that flickered and made a strange “ticking sound.” As they looked on in amazement, one of the lights apparently moved off towards the distant mountains, while the other started to descend towards the ground nearby. The boys claimed that they went off to investigate, and saw the strange craft come down to rest in a small vineyard behind an old, abandoned estate. The craft was described as being a domed disc around 15 feet in diameter and 7 feet high, which rested upon three ball-shaped legs. The surface of the strange object was silver-colored, and appeared to have characters or letters of some sort etched upon it. The loud ticking sound of the craft was very pronounced as they drew closer, sounding somewhat reminiscent of a Geiger counter. As the two boys pondered what they were seeing, a hatch purportedly opened on the side out of nowhere and a ladder extended towards the ground, after which a strange looking being climbed out.

The creature stood around 4 feet tall, and was wearing a reflective silver suit of some sort. The being’s skin was allegedly a dark brown in color, and it was covered with thick wrinkles that were so pronounced as to make most of its facial features indiscernible, save for two pointed ears and prominent and intimidating 2-inch long silver fangs that jutted out from the folds of where its mouth might be. In its hands it held some sort of device whose purpose could not be fathomed, but which looked somewhat like “a rifle.” Another of the creatures could be seen sitting within the craft huddled over some sort of flickering control panel. Whatever it was seemed to have completely ignored the two young boys standing there gawking at it as it proceeded to carefully examine the surrounding terrain. After a few moments of this it suddenly seemed to become aware of the boys, after which it approached them and patted one of them, Yamahata, twice on the shoulder while issuing a sound that sounded like “a tape recorder running backwards.”

Upon being tapped, Yamahata allegedly slumped to the ground and was unable to move, paralyzed by some inscrutable force. This pushed Kawano into action, and he quickly scooped his friend up onto his shoulders and ran from the area as fast as his legs could carry him. When he got home, Yamahata came to, and they supposedly told their parents what had happened, who would grudgingly follow the boys out to the estate outside to see the strange orange light climbing up into the sky for themselves. The light would then emit a burst of blinding light and vanish. Later, school officials would descend upon the area in daylight to examine the site, and would allegedly find two sturdy concrete posts that had been pushed over by some powerful force, as well as a ring pattern etched into the ground nearby. Authorities of the Civil Aviation Bureau of Transportation Ministry would later get wind of the story and dismiss the lights as merely from normal aircraft in the area. No word on what they thought the fanged humanoid could have been, or if it had anything to do with what Shiota would witness a month later.

A few years later, in 1978 we have another very outlandish encounter, this time in the area of Sayama City. In October of that year, the city had been going through a spate of intense UFO activity, and on the evening of October 3 things would take a turn for the truly bizarre. On this night, 29-year-old Hideichi Amano was out testing out some HAM radio equipment on a hill overlooking the city. It was a hobby of his, and on this occasion he was using the radio to talk with other HAM enthusiasts throughout the area. He didn’t stay long, as his young daughter was waiting for him in the car, but as he got ready to leave something remarkable would purportedly happen.

As he prepared to start the vehicle, the entire interior was bathed in a bright light, its source a complete mystery as they had been out there completely alone. Amano looked outside but could see nothing that could account for the light, and when he looked back to his 2-year-old daughter she was in some sort of daze and foaming at the mouth. As he panicked and wondered what to do, an orange beam of light pierced in from out of the night to land upon his stomach, and he felt himself feeling woozy and faint. There was then the sensation of something pressing into the side of his head, and when he turned to look there was allegedly a humanoid entity with a round head, no neck, and glowing blue eyes standing there outside the car with a “pipe-like” instrument pushed up to his head, which was producing “voiceless high-pitched noises” that seemed to penetrate directly into his mind.

The panicked witness desperately tried to start his car, but nothing worked, and he seemed to be without any power at all. Indeed, moving his limbs felt like moving through a thick liquid, giving him the sense that he was partially paralyzed. He started to get the impression that that rapidly fluctuating droning in his head was giving him a message, although he had no idea what it could be. This apparently went on for about 5 minutes, after which that bizarre entity pulled away his instrument and vanished into the night. There was a beat of utter silence, and then the car roared to life, scaring Amano nearly as badly as that creature had. To his great relief, his young daughter now seemed to be OK, acting as if nothing had happened at all.

Amano would frantically contact police to tell them of what had happened, but they didn’t take it seriously at all. Through all of this his head was becoming increasingly painful, overcome with a relentless headache. After several nights of terrible nightmares, he would seek out hypnotic regression, which would turn up some curiosities. Amano related how the creature had given him a future date, time, and location to meet again, and how the entity had given him a bracelet of some sort, claimed to be some sort of communications device. Even more eerily still was his insistence that something had been placed within his head and was influencing his mind, and the whole story was so sensational that it made the rounds on Japanese television for a while before fading into obscurity. What was going on here? Who knows?

These cases for the most part seem to be pretty obscure and forgotten, relegated to the back catalog of alien encounters, despite their spectacular natures. There seems to have been very little follow-up done on them and little further information on them, leaving us to wonder what could be going on here. Were these aliens, interdimensional interlopers of some sort, the ravings of the imagination, or something more? Whatever the case may be, they remain some of the strangest that Japan has to offer.