UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Many UFO encounters leave the witnesses in profound states of wonder and amazement. Others provoke terror and paranoia. Just occasionally, however, the UFO phenomenon becomes downright deadly. Take, for example, the encounter of a Brazilian man named Joao Prestes Filho, a farmer from the village of Aracariguama. On the night in question, and quite out of the blue, Filho found himself bathed in a powerful glowing light, which emanated from something unknown in the skies directly above. Whatever it was, it ensured a horrific death for Filho. The heat coming from the object was so hot that Filho fell to his knees. Worse was to come: his skin suddenly began to heat up. Then, it began to bubble. In mere minutes, he was exhibiting the physical effects of someone suffering from severe burns. Filho’s family, utterly terrified, raced him to a nearby hospital. It was all to no avail. During the journey, Folho grew progressively, and quickly, worse. His skin began to fall off his bones. One of the medics at the hospital – Aracy Gomide – confirmed poor Filho literally melted before the horrified eyes of the medical staff. Proof that not all close encounters are positive ones.

The so-called “Kinross Case” focuses upon the strange – and still-unresolved – disappearance of a US Air Force F-89C jet fighter that was scrambled late on the night of November 23, 1953, on an “active air defense mission” to intercept an “unknown aircraft” over Lake Superior. Kinross Air Force Base, which was closest to the scene where the “unknown” was initially tracked, quickly alerted the 433^rd Fighter Interception Squadron at Truax Field, Madison, Wisconsin, and the F-89C gave immediate chase. Available USAF records demonstrate that the F-89 was vectored west-northwest, then west, climbing to 30,000 feet. While on its westerly course, the crew received permission to descend to 7,000 feet, turning east-northeast and coming steeply down on the target from above. Alarmingly, as the aircraft closed-in on the “unknown” it subsequently vanished into oblivion, along with its two crew-members. The last radar contact placed the interceptor at 8,000 feet, 70 miles from Keeweenaw Point, and about 150 miles northwest of Kinross AFB, which, today, is called Kincheloe AFB.

An extract from the official USAF Aircraft Accident Report outlines further details of the story: “Aircraft took off at 2322 Zebra 23 Nov 53 on an active Air Defense Mission to intercept an unknown aircraft approximately 160 miles Northwest of Kinross Air Force Base. The aircraft was under radar control throughout the interception. At approximately 2352 Zebra the last radio contact was made by the radar station controlling the interception. At approximately 2355 Zebra the unknown aircraft and the F-89 merged together on the radar scope. Shortly thereafter the IFF signal disappeared from the radar scope. No further contact was established with the F-89. An extensive aerial search has revealed no trace of the aircraft. The aircraft and its crew are still missing.” For both ufologists and the Air Force the matter of the Kinross affair remains wide open.

All was normal – on November 28, 1954 – for Jose Ponce and Gustavo Gonzalez, as they traveled along a small road on the fringes of Caracas, Venezuela. Or, to be absolutely correct, all was normal for a while. The dark road was suddenly lit up by what the astonished pair could only describe as a bright ball of light, with a circumference of around three feet. It swayed slightly in the air, not unlike a small boat bobbing along on the water.

The two slowed down their vehicle as they approached it, eventually coming to a complete halt. It was then, suddenly, that astonishment was replaced by outright terror. While Ponce stayed inside the van, Gonzalez cautiously exited the vehicle; he began to slowly and tentatively walk towards the hovering globe. Suddenly, Gonzalez found himself thrown to the ground by an unseen force. The reason why the attacker was unseen – for a few seconds, at least – was because of its size. Or, rather, its profound lack of size. Gonzalez, to his shock and fear, was finally able to see what had assaulted him: a small, hair-covered creature that was built like a man, but which was only around three feet in height. Acting on impulse and adrenaline, Gonzalez attempted to plunge his knife into the body of the creature, only for the knife to bounce off it.

In mere seconds, another hairy dwarf was on the scene, and temporarily blinded Gonzalez with a bright light that emitted from a powerful, flashlight-type device. Shocked to the core, Ponce gathered his wits together and jumped out of the van to help his friend, who was stumbling around, his eyesight still affected by the powerful beam that hit him with full force. To Ponce’s growing concern, two more of the hairy creatures surfaced out of the shadows, and both making their way towards the men – and armed, no less, with large rocks. Although the presence of the rocks suggested to the men that the hairy things were ready to kill them, with hindsight it seems they were only a defensive measure, in the event a last resort-style situation developed. Fortunately, it did not. The small things raced to the ball of light and, somehow, launched themselves inside it, despite its equally small size and vanished in the blink of an eye!

As the cases above demonstrate, it may be wise to be very careful if you have an encounter of the close type.

With UFOs whizzing about, doing physics-defying aerial acrobatics, and hovering close to the ground, one might get the impression that it is all rather dangerous and an accident waiting to happen. Indeed, this seems to be the case, as there have been numerous reports of near-misses with UFOs and various aircraft over the decades. Yet sometimes these UFOs truly learned the hard way, and actually collide with other objects. From trains, to planes, to automobiles, to even other UFOs, here are some of the strangest cases of UFOs crashing into other vehicles.

One of the last things one might expect to crash into a UFO is a train, yet on January 14, 2002, that is exactly what allegedly happened in the area of Paintsville, Kentucky, in the United States. At approximately 2:50 AM in the early morning hours, a coal train was lumbering along its course when the electronic systems on the train starting going haywire. As the crew tried to figure out just what was going on, they turned a bend at a stretch called “milepost 42” and that was when they noticed lights headed in their direction. It was assumed that this was an oncoming train, and so they killed their own lights so as not to blind the incoming conductor. However, this was no train. The witness describes what happens next in his official report with the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) as follows:

As we rounded the corner our onboard computer began to flash in and out, speed recorder went nuts, and both locomotives died. Alarm bells began to ring and thats when we saw the objects. Apparently scanning the river for something, the objects, (at least 3) had several “search” lights trained there, the first object hovered about 10 to 12 feet above the track. Metallic silver in color with multiple colored lights near the bottom and in the middle, no windows or openings of any kind that we could see. Approximately 18 to 20 feet in length and probably ten feet high. With both engines dead as we rounded the corner we made little noise and the first object did not respond in time, I estimate that we hit the object at 30 mph with 16,000 trailing tons behind us. It clipped the top of our lead unit then skipped back slicing a chunk out of our trailing unit and first two coal cars. The other objects vanished into thin air.

After this, the train came to a stop around 2 miles after the impact, screeching slowly to a grinding halt after the emergency brakes had kicked in, and the power to their systems jumped back to life. They notified their dispatcher and then surveyed the damage, finding the cab of the rear locomotive to be “demolished and smoking” and the second two cars looking as if they “had been hit with a giant hammer.” Despite the extensive damage, the train was deemed track worthy, and was able to limp along the rail back to the yard, and this is where things would get perhaps even stranger than they already were. The witness explains:

We pulled into Paintsville yard at approximately 5:15 am. The huge overhead lights lining the yard were noticeably dark and the only lights came from what we assumed were railroad officials’ vehicles parked near the end of the track. We pulled to a stop and began unloading our grips off the wounded train. We could hear what sounded like an army of workers immediately tending to our train. Vehicle doors slamming, guys running by in weird outfits and lights glaring from all directions, the one thing missing was railroad officials. A guy named Ferguson shook my hand and asked me to follow him into the old yard office. We did, once inside they, and by they I mean I have no idea who these people were, began to ask us hundreds of questions, they then told us for our own protection we’d be medically tested before we could leave.

I asked repeatedly to talk to my road foreman or trainmaster and not only were these requests denied but they confiscated my conductors’ cellular phone. Hours later we were led outside the old yard office and the strange things continued to happen, the 2 locomotives and two cars were removed from the rest of the train we had brought in and my only guess was parked 4 tracks over under a huge tent like structure buzzing with activity. We were led off property and told due to national security our silence on this matter would be appreciated. We were then put in a Railroad vehicle and taken to Martin Kentucky were we went through questioning again with railroad officials and were then drug tested.

What exactly happened here? Was this an actual collision with a UFO and how did a slow-moving coal train manage to hit it? Who were those officials they were interrogated by? or is this all some sort of hoax? It is hard to say, but a train crashing into a UFO is not something you see every day. Our next tale is almost as unlikely, and was reported by a Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson, of Marshall County, Minnesota. On August 27, 1979, Johnson was on patrol near the North Dakota border when he saw a strange light apparently off in the wilderness. As he took a side road to get closer, the light apparently began to approach his car at an amazing rate of speed. It seemed to almost be on a collision course, and Johnson lost consciousness after being blinded by a bright flash to the sound of breaking glass. When he came to he was still sitting in his stalled car, happy to be alive but alarmed that he could not see anything. Oddly, his car had travelled some distance from where the object had engaged him, and he would say of his bizarre experience:

I noticed a very bright, brilliant light, 8 to 12 inches in diameter, 3 to 4 feet off the ground. The edges were very defined. I thought perhaps at first that it could be an aircraft in trouble, as it appeared to be a landing light from an aircraft. I proceeded south on #220. I proceeded about a mile and three tenths or a mile and four tenths when the light intercepted my vehicle causing damage to a headlight, putting a dent in the hood, breaking the windshield and bending antennas on top of the vehicle.

At this point, at the interception of the light, I was rendered either unconscious, neutralized or unknowing for a period of approximately 39 minutes. From the point of intersection, my Police vehicle proceeded south in a straight line 854 feet, at which point the brakes were engaged by forces unknown to myself, as I do not remember doing this, and I left about approximately 99 feet of black marks on the highway before coming to rest sideways in the road with the grille of my hood facing in an easterly direction. At 2:19 a.m., I radioed a 10-88 (Officer Needs Assistance) to my dispatcher in Warren.

The officer called on his radio for help, and he was rushed to the hospital with what looked like burns on his face and irritation of the eyes. Meanwhile, the patrol car he had been in was found to have a smashed in right side headlight, a crack in the windshield on the driver’s side, an unusual circular dent on the hood, also on the driver’s side, and a roof antenna that was bent over at a 60-degree angle. The windshield was particularly weird, as it seemed to have sustained “inward and outward forces acting almost simultaneously.” All of the damage was on the driver’s side of the vehicle. The interior clock was also found to be 14 minutes slow, and oddly Johnson’s wristwatch had the same anomaly. Experts who examined the vehicle would be unable to explain the peculiar damage it had incurred, and it did not seem to be any normal collision, with the official explanation being “mechanical forces of unknown origin.” Luckily his eyes would heal and he would regain his eyesight.

A place where one would perhaps more expect to see some sort of UFO collision is with aircraft in the sky, and while there have been many reports of near-misses with UFOs over the years, there was in 2013 an account of a plane possibly actually crashing into one. The Air China Boeing 757 passenger plane was allegedly flying at around 26,000 feet on a course from Chengdu to Guangzhou, when about 20 minutes into the flight things got bizarre. The crew would report that out of nowhere the plane was rocked by a very strong impact and a loud thud reverberated through the aircraft, frightening the passengers and causing the pilot to enact evasive maneuvers. The plane was given permission to make an emergency landing, and although amazingly no one had been hurt, it was found that the front of the plane had an enormous dent in it. At no point was there any radar signature of anything else in the vicinity of the plane that could have hit it, and this has led to speculation that the plane actually hit everything from a flock of birds to an unmanned drone, to of course a UFO. Unfortunately, Air China would refuse to give any further details, and Chinese authorities have allegedly just sort of swept it all under the carpet. The former U.S. government UFO investigator Nick Pope would say of the outlandish incident:

Whatever struck the aircraft will have left evidence. Analysis of the damaged nose cone should reveal microscopic traces of whatever struck the aircraft, or possibly even larger pieces of debris. So this is a solvable mystery. The only question is, will the notoriously secretive Chinese authorities reveal the truth about what happened? Cases like this show that whatever people believe about UFOs, there are serious air safety issues here. MoD and CAA files contain dozens of reports of near misses between UFOs and commercial aircraft. It’s only a matter of time before there’s a catastrophe. From the look of the photos, this disturbing incident came very close to blowing this aircraft out of the sky.

The damaged Chinese plane

There does not appear to have been any further information released by the Chinese government or the airline, leaving this purely in the realm of speculation, but it is intriguing nevertheless. What is probably more spectacular than a plane colliding with a UFO is a UFO smashing into another UFO, and that is what reportedly happened in a report given to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). It began with a sighting made in Rosh Haayin, in Israel, on September 28, 1995, by a man called Spasso Maximovitch. He purportedly saw in the sky a silvery glowing object that apparently separated into several other smaller objects as he watched in amazement, even managing to capture the event on videotape. He then went about watching the skies constantly after that, becoming obsessed with witnessing the objects again, and on June 24, 1996 it seems his patience paid off.

On this occasion he saw what looked to be the same object he had observed before, or at least one very similar to it, and he began to film it. At the same time, he noticed another object just like it streaking through the sky from the west, and headed straight towards the first object. According to Spasso, the second object approached at a very fast speed and collided with the first one, causing an explosion, all of which was captured on film. Spasso then turned the video evidence over to a journalist named David Ronen, with the local UFO magazine called “Maariv,” and a copy of it managed to find its way to UFO researcher Barry Chamish. The tapes were sent by Chamish to London for examination, even as other analysts pored over the footage trying to figure out what it shows. According to MUFON, one of these was a professional photo and video analyst by the name of Jeff Sainio, who said of the footage:

When the 2 objects apparently collide and explode, the apparent size of the light expands by a factor of roughly 2.5; this does not appear to be due to overexposure, but is the real size of the object. The last 2 frames of the video are NOT overexposed, but diffuse; since overexposure is not involved, this indicates he actual size of the explosion is shown. The real increase in size of the bright area is certainly much larger than 2.5.

In the video the explosion moves downward; this is probably due to camera motion of the startled videographer; the reference tower is too smeared to verify this conclusion. The explosion is not due to any conventional method I am familiar with; conventional, large explosions require much more than 1/4 second to disappear, and usually generate flaming debris that falls from the explosion. Neither characteristic is seen here. The acceleration, light size, and explosion are not explainable in any convention way that I know of, and this case remains unidentified.

A still from the Israeli footage

Strangely, shortly after the footage was made public, Spasso Maximovitch seems to have dropped off the grid and vanished. According to Chamish no one has been able to locate him, and besides being rather ominous, it also leaves us with not much more to go on. We are left with a compelling piece of footage of an alleged UFO collision, but little else, and so far it has remained inconclusive. You can read Sainio’s full analysis and see the video here. Is this hoaxed footage, and if not, what are we looking at here? If it was really UFOs, then how in the world did this collision happen? Was it pilot error, a malfunction, or maybe even intentional? There is no way to know.

It certainly seems that UFOs are not totally above making mistakes, and that sometimes their antics can lead to accidents. With aircraft this seems to be a particular area of worry, and there have been those who have seriously considered the threat that this may cause to airspace. But is any of this real at all, or is it just sensationalized stories, perhaps born from mundane reasons? Is there truly anything to worry about at all? Who really knows, but it all makes for some fascinating cases.