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

A great number of UFO reports that have been logged over the years have resulted in attempts at providing rational explanations which, perhaps more often than not, have drawn from weather-related phenomena as possible sources.

Naturally occurring atmospheric phenomena actually do often spark claims of UFO sightings, with sources as varied as “sundogs” or parhelion, to saucer-shaped lenticular clouds, and even more curious natural phenomena like ball lightning which, though confirmed and widely recognized, remains somewhat mysterious.

However, there are other instances where peculiar natural occurrences may point to weather-related phenomena which might account for unusual UFO-like observations. Some of these, as is the case with ball lighting, may leave us with more questions than they do answers.

Such an account was described in 1992 in an entry published in the U.K. Journal of Meteorology. The author, a Mr. Brian Hayes, wrote to the journal with additional details about a bizarre sighting that occurred in September of the previous year.

“I follow up my telephone call to you with further details of Mr. Barrie Brumpton’s unusual sighting which he related to me in October 1991,” wrote Hayes, who stated that his interview with the witness had occurred just days after the observation took place.

“Having read The Circles Effect and its Mysteries and The Goddess of the Stones I was able to pounce upon a chance remark made by Mr. Brumpton, and this led to my interviewing him closely. I hope that this will help with your investigations.”

Hayes stated that Brumpton’s sighing occurred near Colden Common, Winchester in Hampshire. The time had been approximately 2230 BST, having taken place on Saturday evening. The date was September 29, 1991.

“The weather was generally very wet and stormy,” Hayes said the witness had described to him, “but a lull had occurred during which the rain stopped and the wind dropped.” What Brumpton described as a light breeze had been blowing from the east, in the direction of New Road. The witness had been approximately 30 yards from the western end of the road, when he first noticed an “object” that was roughly 150 yard away, prompting him to think he had been “seeing things.”

Hayes then provides the following account:

“The object ‘filled the highway’, so this suggests a width of eight metres or so. It was ‘on the ground’ and ’round-topped’, suggesting to me a [hemisphere]. The ‘object’ was a ‘mass of mist’ and ‘looked very wet’. It seemed to ‘roll’ toward the subject at a speed that he estimated at 30 m.p.h. However, his estimate of half-a-minute for travelling 150 yards gives a speed of 20 m.p.h.”

“Let us not forget,” Hayes added in his report, “that time is difficult to estimate after an event.”

According to Brumpton’s description, the mysterious “mass of mist” appeared to be producing a noise that sounded almost identical to heavy rain pounding against asphalt. The observer noted, however, that there had been no precipitation at the time of the sighting, although he had considered whether a hard rain was about to fall, and that he might run the risk of “getting soaked” where he stood.

Another peculiar aspect of the incident had been that Brumpton was able to see the object very clearl at all times, despite the time of night that the observation occurred. “This suggests the possibility that the ‘object’ was luminous,” Hayes speculated.

“The observer moved into a driveway on the south side of the road, but when a few yards away ‘the object moved over’ to the north side and ‘just vanished’.”

What had the unusual object been that Brumpton observed in September 1991? Although certain aspects of the incident do appear reminiscent of UFO-type observations from over the years, the seemingly weather-related aspects of the events described appear to point to the possibility of a natural explanation.

Cases such as these cause us to wonder about the varieties of natural occurrences that might have led to at least a few UFO sightings over the years. Regardless, they are occurrences that may represent genuine mysteries in their own right, despite their apparent natural origin.

After writing articles in the last few days on UFO researchers being the subjects of government files, getting knocks on the door from “The Man,” and strange phone calls, there’s one more aspect to this particularly sinister part of Ufology: namely, those mysterious black cars that the mysterious M.I.B. drive. The number of reports that fall in this category are huge, and I don’t exaggerate. Indeed, I could write an entire series of articles on the “Cars in Black” phenomenon. One of the people whose M.I.B. experiences feature in my 2015 Men in Black book is a friend of mine, Steve Ray. After reading the book, and just a few days after it was published, Steve experienced something unusual. In his very own words to me: “I read the whole Kindle version of the book Sunday and Monday. Monday night I came home and found two black cars parked – headlights out – in non-assigned spaces directly facing my assigned parking space. When I came upstairs, I found my living-room lamp had been switched from its normal setting to the spookier black-light setting – which I have no memory of doing, and I was the last one here.” I told Steve I was not surprised. He was not comforted by my words; not at all. He wasn’t meant to be. I tell it as it is: good, bad, or worse still. Now, let’s take a look at some more cases.

Nick Redfern and one of those black cars

Dr. Josef Allen Hynek, a well-renowned UFO authority who died in 1986, was provided with the details of a fantastically-strange MIB encounter that occurred in a small Minnesota town in late 1975, and that falls firmly into just such a category. Ironically, no UFO was seen on this particular occasion, but the chief witness was harassed by the driver of a large, black Cadillac on a particular stretch of highway, and who nearly forced the man into an adjacent ditch. The irate man quickly righted his vehicle and headed off in hot-pursuit, only to see the black Cadillac lift into the air and, quite literally, disappear in the blink of any eye. Moving on: Gareth Medway has put together an excellent document on M.I.B. cases, some of which involve those black cars. As Gareth notes: “George Smyth of Elizabeth, New Jersey, went to visit two teenagers who had seen a mysterious green entity [in 1966]. The boys were surrounded by a crowd. He noticed two men emerging from a large black car, leaving a third behind the wheel. They had a slight slant to their eyes. Later, when Saucer News investigators went to visit one of the lads, Smyth noticed the same black car parked nearby, and the same two men get out and watch the house while the interview was going on. Two weeks later he received a phone call telling him to give up UFO investigation.”

Now, onto a story given to me in September 2016 at the annual Mothman Festival: one of the people who came to chat with me, as I sat at my vending table, was Irene, a woman who related a very bizarre story; one with clear M.I.B. / Women in Black overtones attached to it. As Irene revealed, she is now-retired and had a very strange experience while living in Pasadena, California in the late 1970s – in either 1978 or 1979. In the early hours of the particular morning in question she inexplicably woke up and felt compelled to go to the bedroom window. On doing so, she was shocked to see a car-sized, oval-shaped UFO – of a bright blue color – that hung in the air for a few seconds, before vanishing into the dark sky above. She raced back to the bed, terrified by what she had just seen. On the following evening, however, something even stranger occurred.

There was a knock at the door. It was a very pale-faced woman in black who claimed to work for a company that offered aerial photographs of peoples’ homes – taken by an expert photographer, then framed, and that would look very nice on the living-room wall. There was, however, something that made Irene think things were just not quite right, not at all. Her instinct proved to be right on the money. When the woman, somewhat oddly, offered to show Irene one of the cameras that the company used, she agreed to see it – although why she would need to see it at all makes very little sense. If any sense at all. The woman proceeded down the drive and got in the backseat of the black car she had arrived in. In a few seconds, however, she was back out of the car. Irene could see the camera, but was very surprised by what happened next: the woman quickly took a photograph of the front of Irene’s house, jumped back into the car, and in seconds was out of sight.

Now, onto another Irene. This one being Irene Bott, who, in the 1990s, ran the U.K.-base Staffordshire UFO Group. Shortly after establishing her group in 1995, Irene found herself plunged into a situation involving a witness to a UFO encounter – a witness who believed they had a period of so-called “missing time.” Expressing a desire to learn more about what occurred, the witness contacted Irene and related the details that surrounded his viewing in the early hours of a 1995 morning, a brightly lit aerial object. The witness was certain that there was far more to the case than he could consciously recollect, and expressed a keen desire for help in unraveling what had taken place. As a result, Irene referred the witness to a colleague in her group and the two discussed the details over the telephone. Crucial to the issues under discussion, however: shortly after returning home from work on one particular day, the witness found that a note had been pushed through his letterbox warning him not to proceed any further with his investigation.

Naturally concerned, the man asked his neighbors if they had seen anyone lurking in the vicinity of his house that might have conceivably been responsible for the strange and somewhat unsettling note. Fortunately, one such neighbor had seen something unusual on that very day. Shortly after the witness had set off for work, a black car had pulled up outside his house. A man dressed entirely in black and carrying a briefcase exited the vehicle, marched up the driveway, shoved a piece of paper through the letterbox, returned to the car and drove off at speed. One of our mysterious characters had struck again. And, no doubt, those mysterious drivers will be with us as long as the UFO phenomenon is around.