As usual, we will not have the time to explore every case; in fact, we only have time and space to scratch the surface of such encounters here, which could fill up entire volumes in their own right, and those are just the sightings from the modern UFO age. We will, though, explore some of the most interesting and detailed UFO encounters that have involved naval vessels in various stretches of water around the planet.

Without a doubt, one of the strangest and thought-provoking of these marine encounters was relayed in the book Military Encounters with Extraterrestrials: The Real War of the Worlds by Frank Joseph, and occurred in the late 1980s when the Cold War, albeit reduced in tensions, was still very much unfolding. According to the report, which came through an anonymous crew member of the US Navy submarine, the USS Memphis, the incident occurred ahead of a NASA space shuttle launch, with the submarine patrolling the waters around the launch site ahead of the mission.

On this particular night – October 24th going into October 25th, 1989 – the USS Memphis was around 150 miles off the coast of Florida, cruising at a depth of around 500 feet. While the mission had been completely textbook so far, on this particular evening, they were experiencing all manner of problems with their electronics. As the witness recalled, the crew quickly realized the “ship was malfunctioning…the tanks were blowing” and the “navigations ability and communication (were) totally lost!” Eventually, an order was given to bring the submarine to a stop so the crew could assess what was happening. However, moments later, the controls in the reactor began to malfunction, and orders were issued to shut it down, switch to diesel engines, and surface immediately.

As soon as the vessel broke the surface of the water, the witness made his way to his watch station. He looked out and could see that the night sky was now glowing “red like a neon sign” as heavy rain came down from above. Then, only moments after first looking out, he noticed a “large, inverted V-shaped” object moving on the port (left-hand) side of the submarine. The witness turned to the executive officer who was with him, who told him to remain at his post while he informed the captain. Several moments later, the captain arrived at the watch station.

By this point, using a laser range finder, they had determined that their vessel was around 600 feet from the nearest point of the strange craft, which was approximately 650 feet from their location. Moreover, they estimated that the furthest point of the object was around 3500 feet from them, suggesting that it was, in total, around half a mile wide.

From their vantage point on the watch tower, they could see that the object was circling them. As it did so, all of the electronics on the submarine suddenly began to “go crazy!” As the huge craft circled them, it cast a deep, red, neon glow on the water below, which itself seemed to “rise almost a foot” toward the object as it moved overhead. Then, without warning, the object came to a sudden stop. As it remained completely motionless and silent a short distance away, the sky around it shone a bright red color. Then, with equal suddenness, it “moved off at tremendous speed” and disappeared into the distance. As soon as it had done so, the submarine’s electronics returned to normal working order, except for their communications equipment, which appeared to be damaged beyond repair.

The captain ordered a complete systems check, following which, the vessel was switched back to reactor power and set back out on its scheduled patrol mission. A short time later, the main witness, as well as the executive officer and two petty officers who had also been present at the watch station, were asked to report to the captain in the wardroom. Once there, they were informed that they were the only witnesses onboard who had seen the object and that they were forbidden from speaking about it until he (the captain) had a chance to report it directly to the Commander of the Submarine Fleet. All accepted the orders, but several hours later, the events turned stranger, and potentially more ominous.

As soon as the USS Memphis reached port, all of the witnesses were escorted from the vessel and taken into “protective custody”. Around three hours later, an officer from the United States Air Force arrived and spoke to the main witness and the two petty officers. The officer informed them that what they had seen was, in fact, an “exploding weather satellite” and that the matter was closed. Needless to say, all three of them, at least inwardly, rejected such a notion. There were, though, further signs of an unseen hand at work behind the scenes in the weeks that followed. According to the witness, despite having served for four years, the entire crew of the USS Memphis was suddenly disbanded and all transferred to various assignments. Moreover, no explanation was ever given to the crew members for this sudden change, something that the witness offered, “almost never happens!”

The witness kept the incident to himself for several years after the encounter until a television documentary he watched prompted him to discreetly report what he had seen to UFO researchers. In a further twist, when researcher and writer Frank Joseph investigated the incident, he found that the official records of the USS Memphis for October 1989 stated only that the vessel was “underway for a Dependent’s Cruise!” Joseph wrote that “all other references to that cruise, including the events of the 24th and the 25th, have been deleted!” We should, perhaps, make of that what we will.

There are, though, several interesting points for us to consider, perhaps not least whether the nuclear capabilities of the submarine were of interest to the UFO, or at least its occupants, or whatever intelligence was behind it. We might also consider whether there was any kind of connection to the upcoming NASA space shuttle launch that the vessel was patrolling. One thing would appear to be certain: if the military went out of its way to wipe all details of the incident from the record, as well as the splitting up of the entire crew, there must be something quite momentous to cover up.

The USS Memphis incident is far from the only UFO encounter involving military vessels. Only three years earlier, at around 11 pm one evening in the summer of 1986 off the coast of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, a lookout on the USS Edenton witnessed an equally bizarre aerial anomaly. The witness was in his lookout position above the bridge, looking out on a clear night sky, when he suddenly noticed four red, glowing lights “appear out of nowhere” ahead of the ship. The lights were approximately 100 feet apart and formed a square formation in the night sky. At first, the witness thought he was seeing helicopters approaching, but then realized that the lights were much too large to belong to helicopters, with the witness elaborating that each of the lights was around the size of a small plane.

By now, the witness realized the events unfolding in front of him were completely out of the ordinary and, as such, called down to the bridge, stating there was a “possible UFO sighting!” To begin with, his claims were dismissed. However, when he repeated them with a deadly serious tone, those on the bridge realized something strange was indeed taking place. The next thing the witness realized, the two lower lights rushed toward the horizon “in a flash”, with the remaining two lights following a moment later, all remaining completely silent. Then, all four of the lights suddenly “shot up into outer space” and disappeared “within a split second!”

At this point, the witness rushed from his lookout station to the bridge. Upon arriving there, he could see several members of the crew looking out into the distance, a look of shock on each of their faces (the encounter, incidentally, was recorded in the ship’s log). The encounter, however, was far from over.

Around half an hour after the lights had disappeared into the night sky, the radiation detection system onboard USS Edenton began to “click”. Shortly after, the alarm system sounded, indicating increased levels of radiation. This continued for several minutes before the alarms ceased. When the data was analyzed, it was determined that the ship had “taken a hit of 385 roentgens” over a period of only 60 seconds, approximately the same time that the lights were within their immediate vicinity. At this point, the crew decided to wake and inform the captain. When he arrived at the bridge, though, not only was he dismissive of the account, but he was also critical of the crew for recording the events in the ship’s log. Moreover, he asserted that the dramatic increase in radiation was likely due to nothing more than faulty equipment. This suggestion was dismissed by the crew as the ship’s equipment was only serviced the previous day, and other equipment on the ship also detected an increase in radiation. Despite this, the captain insisted that the increase in radiation not be recorded. He then returned to his quarters.   

Without a doubt, one of the most thought-provoking UFO encounters involving a military vessel occurred at the start of the previous decade, within the waters of the Bermuda Triangle, no less. According to the account, the main witness, Jim Kopf, was serving in the communications department onboard the USS John F. Kennedy at around 8:30 pm one evening in 1971, which was on its way back to Norfolk, Virginia, from the Caribbean. He was printing out the fleet broadcasts on the night in question when he realized that they were “typing garbage!” He immediately suspected the machines were faulty and so placed a call to the Facilities Control department, who responded that “all communications were out!”

In the same room where Kopf was working was the Naval Communications Operations Network. When he glanced over at them, he could see that they, too, were having issues with their equipment. It was clear that something strange was unfolding – and when a voice stated there was “something hovering over the ship” that assertion was seemingly confirmed. As soon as the statement came over the radio, everyone in the room stopped what they were doing in unison. Then, the voice came over the radio once more. This time, much calmer than before, it stated, “It is God! It’s the end of the world!” The crew members looked at each other before deciding they should go to the flight deck to see what was taking place.

As soon as they stepped onto the deck of the ship, they could see a “large glowing sphere” hovering directly overhead, appearing to “pulsate” a strange yellow-orange color. Because there was nothing else in the night sky to compare it to, the crew was unable to accurately determine the size of the object or how far away it was. They all agreed, though, that it was completely silent, something which in itself was very strange. The main witness offered in his report that the object could have been 100 feet above the ship, which would have made it around 300 feet wide. It was as the crew was staring up at the glowing sphere when the alarm for “battle stations” sounded.

The witnesses immediately returned to the communications center, where they attempted to restart the equipment, which suddenly burst back into life 20 minutes later. None of the crew, however, were briefed or told any other information about the bizarre incident and were simply told to carry on as normal following the encounter.

Kopf later spoke to another crew member several hours later, a close friend who was a radar operator in the Combat Information Center. He stated to Kopf that during the incident, “all the radar screens were just glowing!” This suggested that whatever the object was, it was gigantic. Kopf also managed to speak to another close friend who worked on the bridge. They informed him that for the entire 20-minute episode, all of the compasses and navigational equipment stopped working. Kopf also learned from this friend that one of those on the bridge had to be sedated, as he was in such shock at the events taking place. Kopf, now intrigued and beyond curious about just what had happened that evening, spoke to as many people as he could on the crew over the days that followed, and he made some remarkable discoveries.

He learned, for example, that as well as the navigational and communications equipment malfunctions, it appeared that all of the ship’s electronics suddenly went out. Stranger still, orders had been given to scramble two of the on-board F-4 Phantom jets, but they would simply not start, meaning the planned intercept mission had to be abandoned.

Stranger and perhaps more ominous still, Kopf learned that several “men in trench coats” had discreetly visited the ship in the days following the encounter. They had, he learned, interviewed all of those who had witnessed the bizarre events. Kopf and the six people in the communications room, on the other hand, were not spoken to, suggesting to Kopf that their superiors were unaware that they had witnessed anything out of the ordinary. In a bizarre twist, despite there being around 5000 crew onboard the ship, as they had just completed a training exercise, the vast majority were below deck, meaning only a small handful realized the true strangeness of the events that evening. Several days later, when the USS John F Kennedy returned to port in Norfolk, the incident took a further interesting turn.  

It was standard procedure for the crew to be addressed by their superiors through the closed-circuit TV system, and this was very much the case after this tour. However, Kopf recalled that this address was quite different. Ultimately, for all of the praise the crew received, they were warned in no uncertain terms that any events that had taken place onboard the ship were “classified” and that they should “not be discussed with anyone without a need to know!” Kopf, like the other crew members, was clear about what the captain was referring to. Interestingly, this was, according to Kopf, the only official reference the captain made to the bizarre events.

Following their being dismissed, the crew went their separate ways while on leave, and Kopf, as strange as it might sound, quickly put the encounter out of his mind. Then, out of the blue, several years later and by pure chance, he watched the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and some kind of switch happened in his mind. He had seen the movie with a friend, the radar operator on the ship on the night of the encounter. It was as they were walking back to their respective cars that Kopf asked his friend what he recalled of the night of the sighting. To his surprise, his friend suddenly went pale and stated simply that he “never wanted to talk about it again!”

Once more, Kopf put the encounter out of his mind. By the early 2000s, with the rapid rollout of the Internet, however, he began reading more and more posts and articles about UFO sightings and, ultimately, he decided to report the encounter that had taken place in North Carolina in 1971. Just what was present over the USS John F Kennedy remains a complete mystery. We can only wait to see if any official documents or witness testimony brings further information.

As we might imagine, encounters with UFOs and naval vessels also take place during times of war, and that is very much the case in an incident between an apparent otherworldly vehicle and the USS Wisconsin during the first Gulf War. According to the account, on the evening of January 24th, 1991, not only did a strange object appear close to the destroyer, but it began attacking it. The report, which came courtesy of a leaked document detailing the encounter, stated that the object seemingly appeared out of nowhere and began descending toward the ship. As it did so, it emitted a “high-pitched” buzzing sound which increased in volume and caused significant discomfort for the crew. Moreover, this sudden “attack” was witnessed by crew members from the USS England and the USS O’Brien, as well as two British Royal Navy ships, the HMS Battleaxe and the HMS Jupiter.

This diving and buzzing of the ship continued for around 30 seconds before an order was issued to respond. At this point, all ships present turned their weapons towards this suddenly appearing futuristic craft. It was, though, a missile launched from the USS Wisconsin that struck and destroyed. Further, according to the report, the American military recovered the wreckage, and it was transferred to an unspecified location in the United States.

Decades before the conflicts in the Gulf region, there were many other similar encounters that unfolded during the Second World War. According to a September 1976 report from the International UFO Bureau, for example, in late January 1945, Louis Graci, along with four other crew members onboard the USS McCracken, reported observing a “round object” that was completely silent and had a “dull finish” to its exterior appear in front of the ship before disappearing under the water.

Only days later, in early February 1945, another encounter occurred off the coast of the Caroline Islands where the USS Wasp was sailing. On the day in question, the ship’s commander, Norman Stark, received a report of an “incoming radar contact” approaching the ship from an altitude of 30,000 feet and around 10 miles away. Stark, believing the object to be an enemy fighter, immediately ordered the scrambling of five Grumman F6F Hellcats to intercept the craft. However, despite closing in on it several times, the object proved to be much faster and eventually disappeared.

The following month, at around 1 pm one afternoon in mid-March 1945, the USS New York battleship found itself in the middle of bizarre events in the South Pacific. According to a report in the March 1985 edition of the MUFON Journal, on the day in question, several crew members suddenly noticed a strange “silvery and very shiny” object hovering ahead of them at an altitude of around 20,000 feet. The object remained motionless as if observing the naval vessel. After half an hour, the captain gave the order to open fire. Despite the gunners being on target, however, the shells simply failed to make contact, as if some kind of bizarre shield was around their target. Several moments later, the craft climbed up toward the sky and disappeared within seconds.

Although the exact date isn’t certain, in the final weeks of the Second World War, in the summer of 1945, a US Army transport ship, the USS Delarof, found itself in the middle of a bizarre encounter near the island of Atak while returning to Seattle. The waters were particularly rough on the night in question, yet several members of the crew spotted something large moving below their ship. Then, without warning, this bizarre craft shot out of the water and sped off directly upward into the sky.

One of those onboard was radio operator Robert Crawford, who heard the sudden commotion coming from his crewmates and turned his attention to where they were looking and pointing. When he did, he could clearly see the huge object quickly ascending above them, an object he described as being “dark and round” and easily visible in the setting sun. By this time, all of the gunners had taken their positions, awaiting the order to open fire should the object return. Although it did circle them twice at an altitude of 500 feet, the commander resisted giving the order to attack. After this second pass, the object headed off into the distance. Several moments later, several crew members reported seeing “three flashes of light” coming from the direction the object vanished. After docking in Seattle, no less than 14 of the crew members signed a written statement regarding what was seen.

Several weeks later, in the days following the bombing of Hiroshima, another bizarre incident was witnessed by several crew members onboard the USS Bradford. At 2 am on the night in question, with the vessel around 600 miles off the coast of Kyushu, Japan, several of the crew witnessed a “star-like object” move across the sky overhead. However, despite the visual confirmation, the object didn’t show on the ship’s radar. Those on deck continued to watch, noticing that the object seemed to change from a solid white color to a pale red. The object then appeared to slow and remain steady for several moments before it shot off into the distance with lightning speed. As it did so, it changed color yet again, this time to a blue color (this detail is interesting as several researchers have suggested that the color of these strange objects could very well be linked to their speed).

Although they didn’t occur during the war, the UFO sightings that were reported during Operation Mainbrace in the years immediately following the Second World War are certainly worth exploring here, especially as they occurred as the Cold War was beginning to take a grip on world events. As such, Operation Mainbrace was a NATO training exercise that had the involvement of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, Norway, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and the New Zealand military, that took place in the North Sea and North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Denmark and Norway in September 1952. As the exercise progressed, several unidentified objects were witnessed.

Official records state that Operation Mainbrace ran from September 14th to September 25th, 1952. However, UFO researcher and investigator, Richard Hall, suggests that the mission actually began the day previously, on September 13th, on which day, several crew members from the Danish destroyer, Willemoes, witnessed a bizarre aerial anomaly. On the evening in question, the Danish destroyer was near Bornholm Island, participating in maneuvers as part of the operation. It was during these maneuvers that Lieutenant Commander Schmidt Jensen, along with several other crew members, witnessed a glowing, blue, triangular-shaped object that “moved at high speed” overhead. Jenson later estimated that the curious craft was traveling around 1000 miles per hour, at the very least. Later that day, several other crew members had a similar sighting, reporting three objects that seemed to be traveling in a triangular formation, with each craft giving off a “white light exhaust!” These incidents would prove to be the first of several during the international military exercise.

Of all of the strange incidents that took place during Operation Mainbrace, the events on the afternoon of September 20th, 1952, are some of the most intriguing. That afternoon, multiple crewmembers of the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt witnessed a silver sphere-shaped object appear in the skies overhead, where it remained for a significant amount of time. To begin with, the crew thought they were looking up at nothing more than a weather balloon. Slowly, however, the realization that there were no planned weather balloon launches that day made them reassess just what they were seeing. Among the witnesses was a photographer, Wallace Litwin. He managed to snap several pictures of the object, although they remained out of the public domain for several decades.

Captain Ed Ruppelt, the project chief, stated in his report that the strange object was “plenty large enough to show up on a photo”, stating further that Litwin had captured the “superstructure of the carrier in each one and, judging from the size of the object”, it was determined that it was “moving rapidly!” Ruppelt elaborated that “although (the object) resembled a balloon in some ways, it was far from being identical!”

It was, though, the claims made in a letter written by Litwin and sent to researcher Ole Henningsen that perhaps contained the most explosive revelations, and perhaps provided a reason for the appearance of the strange objects. In the letter, Litwin stated that he and several other journalists assigned to cover the mission discovered that the USS Roosevelt was “carrying an atom bomb in a small room far below the decks!” Litwin continued that although the (US) Navy denied the claims, he had managed to ply “some of the navy people with charm, money, and booze” and eventually they all but confirmed the charge. They also expressed concern that the presence of this atomic bomb “might relate to the white sphere!”

Whether or not an atomic bomb was present on the USS Roosevelt or not is perhaps open to debate, although it is certainly not at all beyond the realms of possibility. What is known is that there have been a number of UFO reports around nuclear facilities and weapons plants, as well as vessels at sea carrying such weapons, and even (as we explored in our first account) submarines that are nuclear-powered. Whatever the reason, it was clear to Captain Ruppelt that strange incidents were beginning to plague the operation, one of which had unfolded the present just off the coast of the United Kingdom.

According to a relaying of the account in the book A Covert Agenda: The British Government’s UFO Top Secrets Exposed by Nick Redfern, at around 11 am on the morning of September 19th, a British Meteor jet was making its way to base at RAF Topcliffe in Yorkshire, England. As the jet was coming into land, however, Lieutenant John Kilburn, along with several other ground personnel, saw a large “silvery object” close to the aircraft that appeared to “sway – like a pendulum!” In his report, Kilburn stated that the object was at an approximate altitude of anywhere between 10,000 to 20,000 feet, and he also noted that it was “silver in color, and circular in shape!”

At this point, the jet abandoned its landing approach and circled back around. When it did this, the object stopped also and hovered in place, rotating on its axis. After several moments, it suddenly “accelerated at tremendous speed” and disappeared into the distance. Kilburn finished his report by stating that “the movements of the object were not identifiable with anything I have seen in the air, and the rate of acceleration was unbelievable!”

As Redfern writes in A Covert Agenda, the “Air Ministry was sufficiently concerned by the Topcliffe incident to forward a one-page report to the Commander-in-Chief Air/East Atlantic”, who were a subdivision of NATO. The sightings around Operation Mainbrace, though, continued. At around 7:30 pm on September 20th – later on the same day as the USS Roosevelt sighting – three officers from the Danish Air Force reported seeing a metallic, silver disc move across the sky over Karup Field in Denmark. Less than 24 hours later, on September 21st, three British fighter jets pursued a “shiny sphere” over the North Sea until it finally outpaced them for good and disappeared. A week later, on the evening of September 27th going into September 28th, multiple reports of strange glowing objects were reported over Denmark, Sweden, and Western Germany, with at least one report stating that smaller objects were seen exiting a much larger one.

Whatever was taking place in and around Operation Mainbrace, it would appear to be something very significant. Once more, if we turn our attention to the research of Nick Redfern, he writes of the testimony of one-time RAF serviceman, William Maguire. He recalled that “everything was a complete flap” during the operation, elaborating that such operations are normally “ordered, regular, and set out”, but this time, it was clear to all involved that the situation was “plainly out of control” and that there were “mechanics flying all over the place!”

Further, according to Maguire, those at the top of the operation were tracking a “huge UFO” that was moving across the English Channel at an extremely high altitude, and it was during this tracking operation that “panic” began to set in among the crew, with some high-ranking officers even placing the blame on mechanics who they stated had “not calibrated the instruments properly” and had not “interpreted the readings correctly!”

Just what was taking place during Operation Mainbrace very much remains largely a mystery. Redfern wrote that “it would appear there are many more papers concerning the Mainbrace sightings which the (UK) government has deemed unreleasable!” Redfern also highlighted a newspaper article in the Sunday Dispatch in December 1952 that stated all six pilots who had encountered the UFO over the North Sea had been interviewed extensively by the intelligence services. No records of those interviews have ever been released, in spite of the fact that they should have been subject to the 30-year rule, where all documents are released into the public domain after this time.

It is also worth examining the claims of a serviceman on the USS Roosevelt during Operation Mainbrace, Chet Grusinksy, who claimed that he had seen a huge, glowing, cigar-shaped object during the operation. Moreover, he insisted that he could see a row of windows along the side of the object, through which he could see “figures” inside the craft, figures that he stated were “not human beings!” He continued that the object remained alongside the ship for several moments – so close, he stated, that he could “feel the heat” of it on his skin. Then, without warning, it took off into the distance and vanished within seconds.

Of even further interest, Grusinsky stated that this extraterrestrial interest in the USS Roosevelt seemingly continued once it was stationed in Mayport, Florida, with an apparent increase in UFO sightings in the area during this time. Moreover, and of further interest, he shared concerns that the vessel regularly carried atomic weapons.

It is further interesting to note, at least according to the research of Nick Redfern, that the events surrounding Operation Mainbrace, if only privately, resulted in the UK government and militaries keeping much closer tabs on UFO encounters over the coming years and decades. It is probably safe to assume that there is much more information surrounding the events in the North Atlantic and North Sea during September 1952 still to enter the public arena.

While almost all of the encounters we have examined so far have been incidents involving the United States Navy, there are many others from around the planet that are equally as intriguing and baffling. One of those comes from the research files of Bill Chalker and featured a Chilean Navy vessel off the coast of Chile. According to the account, the vessel had left Talcahuano Port a little after midnight on October 24th, 1969. Around 45 minutes later, the radar officer alerted the crew to a ”long-range flying object” that had suddenly appeared on his screen.  The object was moving with blistering speed, and within seconds, it was only 400 miles from their location. In only a minute, it was within 200 miles of the ship, leading the radar officer to calculate that, if the readings were correct, the object was moving at around 12,700 miles per hour.

The Commander was notified of the quickly approaching object and ordered him to keep monitoring this aerial anomaly. By 12:47 am, the object was only 12 miles from their position. Then, the radar officer looked on in shock as the object broke up into six smaller objects, each seemingly under its own power and control. Moments later, the individual objects were visible to the naked eye to those on deck. Moments later, the Commander arrived on the bridge. From the vantage point, they could see one large object, and five smaller objects trailing behind it, all heading in their direction, and all traveling at fantastic speed.

The main witness later recalled that the larger object appeared “like a big box with semicircles in the side” that had the appearance of having been “scooped out!”. He also estimated that the object was likely twice the size of their ship, with a metallic exterior that glowed brightly. By comparison, the five smaller objects, which were egg-shaped, were only around six feet wide and eight feet tall and had some kind of blue-colored exterior.

As those present continued to watch, the larger object continued on its approach. The smaller objects, though, split up, with three going to the port side and two going to the starboard side. By the time the object was only several hundred yards away from them, the crew could hear a low humming sound. Then, without warning, the ship’s power suddenly went dead. At that moment, the witness recalled the commander asking out loud, “What the hell is that?”

As the object passed over them, the lights lit up the destroyer, as well as the water around it. As it passed overhead, the witnesses could see that there were several red lights on the underside that appeared to be moving back and forth. They could also see several “corn-cob-looking structures” on the side of the object that had some kind of “green pulsating light” in them that the witness recalled, “went right through your head!”

Several moments after the object had passed completely over the destroyer, the power came back on, and the equipment surged back to life. As the object headed off into the distance, the five smaller objects came back together and began trailing the larger object once more. By the time they disappeared out of sight, the witness estimated they were approximately two miles from their position. One particularly bizarre, if intriguing, detail is that the witness recalled strange pieces of “floating metallic paper” falling from the sky around the ship moments after the object had disappeared.

In total, the encounter had lasted no longer than eight minutes, and eight people had witnessed the event – five visually, and three on the radar screens. However, in an all too familiar detail, the commander instructed his men to “remain silent” about what they had seen, and not to talk to anyone else about it. Despite this order, the main witness recalled that a second-class officer on the ship had already made several entries of the incident into the logbook. In a suspicious twist, though, the following morning, when the witness went to look at the logbook, the entries were no longer there – as if the pages had been physically removed. Interestingly, when he looked closely at the open page, because the officer in question had injured his writing hand, he had to use his non-writing hand, and, as such, had to press down much harder on the page, so much so that he had left an indentation of his words on the page the witness was now looking at. Even more ominous, both his own and the second-class officer’s handwriting had been forged to make false entries into the log.

By 6:45 am that morning, the ship arrived at Valparaiso Port, where the witness and the other seven witnesses were asked to report to the commander. However, rather than just speaking with the commander and perhaps his superiors, the group was informed that a mysterious group of individuals wished to speak with them. This curious group was made up of two Chilean Navy officers, and four American men in civilian clothes (all of whom, incidentally, were fluent in Spanish). According to what little the eight witnesses were told of these American men, they were “naval attaches with the United States Embassy!”

Ultimately, the witnesses were transported to a nearby storage facility where they were separated and interviewed about what they had seen the previous evening. Despite what each of them said, all of them would later find out that they were told in no uncertain terms, “No, you didn’t see that! You didn’t see anything! You know nothing!”

The main witness eventually managed to speak to the apparent head of the unit sent to interrogate them and ask them if they were under arrest. In response to this, he was told no, but that they were “under orders” and that “these people just want to talk to you (and) put you on the right track!”

The witness later stated that he had the impression before he even spoke to the unit that they knew exactly what had taken place the previous evening. Moreover, it was equally evident that their only objective was to suppress the encounter and make sure that they and the other witnesses didn’t speak about it.  The question went on – on and off – for around 48 hours before they were finally released. During this time, the witness stated to one of the men that he would be complaining about their treatment following his release, to which he was told bluntly and seriously that to do so would “be the end of him!”

Ultimately, after being forcibly kept awake for the duration of their interrogations, the witnesses relented and signed official orders to maintain secrecy over the incident. Following this, the witnesses were taken to a military medical facility before being transferred to an entirely different unit and duty. The main witness didn’t see any of the other witnesses again.

Whatever did happen that night in October 1969 off the Chilean coasts remains a complete mystery. However, the measures taken by the authorities – with the oversight of the mystery American Embassy members – would suggest that the event was of some kind of importance or another. Perhaps it was the location of the sighting more than the sighting itself. We know, for example, that South America as a whole has more than its fair share of UFO sightings, and the same goes for the waters that surround the continent, with many researchers even suggesting that underwater bases exist in various locations off the South American coastlines. Moreover, the south of the continent is close to Antarctica, a location that is a mysterious and curious place in its own right.

The fact is, this incident, like the other ones we have explored here, is just a handful of UFO encounters involving military naval vessels – and these come from a handful (relatively speaking) of reports that are known about. Given the often secretive nature of the world’s navies, we can perhaps safely assume that there will be many more incidents and encounters that are not known about by the vast majority of the public, including almost all in the UFO community. Why these encounters happen – and continue to happen – is as much a mystery as what UFOs are and what intelligence lies behind them. Perhaps as our space-based technology increases and we peer into the depths of the oceans from a satellite somewhere in the orbit of the planet, we might discover these long-rumored underwater bases, and so move closer to at least part of the truth of the UFO mystery.  

RELATED VIDEOS

One of the earlier and most bizarre deaths supposedly related to UFOs is the 1956 case of Air Force Sergeant Jonathan Lovette. In March of that year, Lovette and Major William Cunningham, both of the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, ventured out into the desolate desert scrub to collect fallen debris from a recent missile test at the White Sands Missile Test Range, and at one point Lovette went off behind a dune. A few moments later, Cunningham reportedly heard Lovette scream out in terror, and he ran to investigate. What he saw next would cause him to scream as well.

According to Cunningham, after going over a ridge he was met with the sight of a large, silvery disk-shaped object hovering around 15 or 20 feet in the air, which had a long, snake-like object trailing from it. To his horror, he saw that this appendage was wrapped around the leg of Lovette and in the process of pulling him towards the strange craft. At this point, Cunningham would report that he had been somehow inexplicably paralyzed, wanting to take action but unable to move as he watched his friend get pulled and reeled into the object, after which it sped off at breathtakingly great speed. As soon as it was out of sight, Cunningham found himself released from whatever had kept him frozen there.

After radioing Missile Control and telling them what had happened, he was told that they were indeed picking up a radar signature moving rapidly, but that they were not able to tell what it was. Security forces and soldiers immediately descended upon the area, and a massive search began, which would go on for 3 days without finding a single trace of the missing man. In the meantime, it was suspected that Lovette had been the victim of foul play and that Cunningham was responsible, his wild story simply a cover, and he was detained. On the third day of the search, after meticulously scouring 100 square miles of the landscape, Lovette’s body was found around 10 miles from where he had gone missing, and his corpse was in a horrifying state.

Besides being completely drained of every drop of blood, there was no sign of vascular collapse, meaning he had not died of bleeding to death, which was very unusual for someone who had been drained of so much blood. An incision had been made in Lovette’s lower jaw, through which his tongue had been removed, a cut which extended from the tip of the chin down to his larynx. His anus and genitalia had been expertly removed “as if from a plug,” and his eyes had been taken out smoothly. The body showed no signs of decomposition, despite being estimated to have been lying out there in the desert heat for one or two days, and most oddly of all there were found to be dead scavengers nearby that had apparently died after trying to feed on the body. None of it made any sense at all and still doesn't.

This particular incident has its origins in an alleged report called Grudge/Blue Book Report 13, which is mysterious in many ways in and of itself. The manual in question was supposedly analyzed by an information analyst for the U.S. Air Force and former Green Beret named Bill English and is allegedly dated 1953-1963. Upon the cover is written the code AFSN 2246-3 and the words “Top Secret Need Yo Know Only, Crypto Clearance 14, or above, Required” stamped on it in red ink. Since it is unknown if this document ever really existed or not, and the information given by Bille English is only preserved in his notes and his memory of what he read, it is unknown if the report is real or whether the Lovette case ever really happened in any sense at all, and so it remains shrouded in mystery.

In June of 1972, railway employees at a station near Tarrasa, Barcelona found in the early morning hours the decapitated bodies of two men. This was shocking enough as it was but would become even stranger when they found cotton balls grasped in their dead grips and a note on one of the bodies that read “The extraterrestrials are calling us. We belong to infinity.” This short writing was signed; “W.K.T.S.88.” The investigations performed by the police department found that the bodies had been decapitated as they placed their heads over the railroad tracks, and they belonged to a Jose Felix Rodriguez Montero and Joan Turu Valles. It was all macabre, sensationalized news at the time, but it got even more deeply disturbing as the investigation continued. There would be found reams of letters and notes in the men’s possession that were written to Ufologist Marius Lleget, the U.N., and two friends living in Zaragoza who were UFO nuts. The letter to Lleget read:

“Dear Sir, for a long time now we have been in direct contact with ‘those beings,’ which in one way or the other, you and other earthlings have been ‘studying;’ “the extraterrestrials.” They have been ‘mutating us slowly, however not on the same dates; please understand, like us, we are all ‘strangers on this planet.’ From ‘there’ they are calling us, and we have a long time ago identified them as your friends, we are ‘leaving’ filled with an immense joy which we had never known. We are headed towards the “Galactic Center.” At our homes you will find some writings, some data and notes which will serve to teach the unbelieving earthling (you are not one of them) that sentient life expands throughout the infinite Universe from an indefinable God. We know that you will believe the moment you read them, since you know that if our passion would have been popularity we would have obtained it a long time ago.

A Cosmic Salute, W.K.T.S.88”

A letter to the U.N. read:

“Dear Sirs, We have been studying your planet since times remote, and given our advanced cerebral state which is incomparable to that of humans, which cannot conceive the state of ‘stagnation’ in which humanity finds itself; the comedy that we have been continuously observing on your planet, when some humans have already reached other planets (moon) is inconceivable. Our intervention in the affairs of humanity will not occur until said humanity has already self-destructed, which will occur in no more than 300 years; then we will intervene in your planet’s affairs, and we will solve all your grave problems. Inevitably humanity is marching towards selfdestruction; so continue on with your ‘comedy,’ your hypocrisy, with your tyranny.  Signed W.K.D.K. through W.K.T.S. 88.”

The letter to the friends read:

“Friend; you well know that the theme of Ufology is one that is very passionate for you. And it has been since a while back. What you don’t know is we have had ‘direct contact’ with “them” since the year 1970. Upon receiving this letter we are sure that by some form of media you have learned that we are now with “them,” since they have called to us, since our ‘mutation’ is now total and we are now strangers on this Earth. We realize that you would have wanted to know all about this, but we would not have enjoyed the “popularity.” If ‘they’ would think like humans wouldn’t you think they would have been the most popular in our Solar System? We needed to proceed the same way as they. We are headed to the ‘Galactic Center.’ In our private library there are a series of books on ‘cosmic literature’ which we gladly offer you with great pleasure so you will study and investigate as much as possible and, who knows? Maybe one day you will also be called upon.”

A Cosmic Salute, W. K. T. S. 88”

What are we to make of this case? Were these two men in contact with aliens or were they two UFO nutjobs who killed themselves in pursuit of some delusional fantasy? Another bizarre case occurred in 1979 when two hunters in the Bliss and Jerome area of Idaho were out hunting when they stumbled across the mostly nude body of a man sprawled out there in the middle of nowhere. When the hunters drew closer, they could see that the dead man was only wearing underpants, but what really caught their attention was that the man had been horribly mutilated, with his sexual organs removed, his lips cut off with surgical precision, and several organs removed with similar expert cuts. 

What made it particularly odd was that although the country was rugged, with many sharp rocks and thorns, the man’s bare feet were not scuffed, scraped or scratched in any way - they were in pristine condition, even though the nearest road was miles away. There were also no footprints around the corpse and no tire tracks. How had he gotten there through the rough landscape miles from the road in his bare feet without a single cut or scratch? Had someone dumped him there? How or why would they have carried him out there without leaving a trace and why had they mutilated the corpse? Authorities were notified and scoured the area, but could find no clues, and it was over a week later that they found the man’s possessions, many miles away from the body and similarly in the middle of the woods. It certainly sounds very much like a classic cattle mutilation scenario, and all the more so in that the region where the body was found had experienced several UFO reports and reports of cattle mutilations at around the same time. 

Some mysterious UFO deaths have managed to become almost legendary beyond their own circumstances. These are the strange unsolved deaths that are orbited by various weird clues that have never been solved and which serve to propel them on into a whole other realm of bizarreness as the speculation and discussion go on. One of the most talked about strange deaths that has managed to become firmly entrenched within UFO lore is that of a humble coal miner in England, who would turn up dead under some very strange circumstances and whose passing has managed to take on a life of its own to become one of the great unsolved mysteries out there.

Zigmund Jan Adamski was a Polish immigrant who in 1960 had moved to the quaint, small town of Tingley, near Wakefield in Yorkshire, England. A coal miner by trade, he had a rather simple life, and there was not that much that was particularly remarkable about him. He and his wife, Leokadia, were well-liked enough by their neighbors but other than the wife’s multiple sclerosis they were for the most part unassuming, that is until June 6, 1980, when Adamski would carve out a place for himself in the annals of strange unexplained disappearances and deaths. That day was the eve of his goddaughter’s wedding, and the family was full of good cheer, looking forward to the festivities the following day. It was in good spirits that at around 3:30 PM, Adamski went off to do some shopping for the next day’s lunch. As he made his way towards the market he passed some neighbors who would say that he seemed to be in a good mood, with nothing seeming to be odd. Yet this would be the last time anyone would see him alive.

When Adamski did not return that evening his wife saw it as strange, as the market was just a short walk away down the road, it had been a perfectly pleasant day, and her husband had not mentioned making any other stops or errands. As the minutes turned to hours, she finally contacted police to report him missing. It was soon found that he had indeed made it to the market in Wakefield and had bought his groceries, with the clerk saying he had seemed to be in a cheerful mood, but after that, no seems to have seen him. A sweep of the area turned up no sign of him, no one had talked to him, and it looked as if he had just evaporated into thin air. He had been happily married and looking forward to his goddaughter's wedding, so it didn’t seem as if he would just run off without warning, and although his health had deteriorated in recent years due to his heavy smoking he was still mostly able to get around, so it didn’t seem likely that he had just gone off somewhere to die. With no clues and no leads as to where he had gone, it was just assumed that he had wandered off and would come back. He never did, and it would not be until 5 days later that his fate would be revealed.

On June 11, 1980, a coal worker by the name of Trevor Parker was doing his rounds at Tomlin’s Coal Yard in the town of Todmorden, around 30 miles away from Tingley, when he saw something quite grim at the top of a 12-foot-high heap of coal. There, splayed out face up above, was the body of a dead man, and when police were notified it was soon ascertained that this was the missing Adamski. There were numerous strange clues immediately apparent when authorities arrived on the scene. Although he was well-dressed in a suit, his shirt was missing, as were his wallet and his watch, and his trousers and shoes seemed to have been put on very crudely, as if they had been taken off and then put back on by a child who didn’t know what they were doing, and the suit jacket was also oddly mis-buttoned. All of it was curiously lacking smears of coal dust as if he had been carefully placed there. The wallet and watch might have been taken after death, but why would anyone take his shirt, or remove his trousers and shoes to put them back on again and how had he gotten up there?

There was also the positioning and condition of the body. It was lying face up on that formidable pile of coal as if he had just tried to take a nap, yet there was no sign that anyone had climbed up or down it, the coal undisturbed. There was also no sign of physical injury, struggle, or foul play. Indeed, he was described by officers on the scene as looking peaceful, like “he’d just got into bed and was fast asleep.” The only marks that could be found on the body were a series of tiny burn marks on the back of his head, neck, and shoulders, as well as some minor scuffs on his palms, but it could not be determined what had caused these. Making those burns even stranger was that some sort of yellowish gel-like ointment had been slathered on them, but the coroner could not determine just what the ointment was. Adamski himself was found to have been well-fed when he had died, despite being missing for 5 days, and a call to hospitals of the area showed that he had not checked in anywhere. Nor was there any sign that he had been living like a tramp on the streets, as his clothes were impeccably pressed and as clean as the day he had left his home, and also he had only one day’s worth of beard growth. So where had he been? At the time, Police Constable Alan Godfrey pronounced that Adamski had died of a heart attack, but this did very little to answer the myriad questions surrounding the body. Where were his belongings, how did his body get to the top of that pile, what were the burns, and where had he been for the past 5 days?

A coroner examination could not conclusively find an exact cause of death and was forced to go with the heart attack theory for lack of any evidence otherwise. All that could be determined for sure was that Adamski had likely died a day before his body had been found and that the burn marks seemed to have been inflicted 2 days previously. Theories flew. It was surmised that he may have suffered some sort of shock after sustaining the mysterious burns, after which he had become disoriented and had climbed to the top of that coal pile to look around, finally dropping dead. Yet, there was no sign of anyone having climbed the pile, nothing to see there anyway, and the man who had found the body would swear that it had not been there just hours earlier. There was also no evidence at all that Adamski knew anyone in Todmorden and no clear reason why he should have been there in the first place. Another theory was that he had been kidnapped and then finally killed and put up on that coal heap, but why dispose of the body there and how did they do it? Was it lowered with a crane? If that were the case wouldn’t someone notice that?

It did not take long for speculation to veer off into the bizarre, as a lot of people were noticing that the area of Todmorden was a hotspot for UFO activity, and indeed there had been a flap of sightings right around the time Adamski had disappeared. Rather bizarrely, the very same police officer who had first come to examine the scene of Adamski’s death, Godfrey, would have his own very weird encounter with the otherworldly, when he claims he had seen a UFO and experienced 30 minutes of missing time. His subsequent hypnosis session would be pretty creepy, to say the least, and he would say while under:

“They’re horrible…..small…three to four feet, like five year old lads! There are eight of them. He’s touching me…..He’s feeling at my clothes. They have hands and heads like a lamp. They keep touching me…they are making noises.. Joseph, I know him as Joseph. He has told me not to be frightened. They are robots! They’re not human! They’re robots! They’re his! They are Joseph’s robots! There’s a bloody dog…..it’s horrible! The size of an Alsatian!”

Whether this has anything to do with Adamski’s death or not is unclear, but the idea here is that a UFO abducted him, performed experiments that left the burn marks behind, and then killed him, perhaps even accidentally by giving him a heart attack, after which they had redressed him and lowered the body onto that coal pile where it would be found. The media would take the UFO angle and run with it, splashing out headlines that suggested Adamski was killed by aliens, and this went a long way towards sensationalizing it all and muddying the waters. Indeed, because of this the strange case of Zigmund Adamski would in later years become more well known as a UFO case than as that of a mere mysterious death, and with so many strange clues and a lack of any further evidence it has remained a favorite theory among many.

In more recent years there have been some little bits of new information that have come in. For instance, there has been evidence by John Hanson and David Sankey of BUFORA, the British UFO Research Association, that Adamski might have been involved in a bit of a family feud with his cousin and her husband, leaving open a motive for foul play. It is possible that someone in the offending family could have abducted Adamski and tortured him, explaining the burns, after which he unexpectedly died of a heart attack after making a bid to escape, or had died while being detained and was dumped in a panic, but not before they pilfered the wallet and watch. There is still not much concrete evidence of this and it does not tie all of the disparate strange clues together, leaving us in the end just as much in the dark as ever. In the end, what are we to make of all of the weird clues and pieces of evidence on offer here? What happened to Zigmund Adamski? Whether it be from foul play, suicide, or UFOs, the fact is that the case has never been satisfactorily solved, and it is sure to invite much debate and speculation in the years to come.

Perhaps one of the most famous cases of an apparent case of mysterious, inexplicable human alien mutilation occurred in Brazil in 1988. At the the Guarapiranga Reservoir was found the body of a man who was in a very strange state indeed. Although it was determined that the person had been dead for several days, there was no smell when it should have been redolent with the stench of decay, no noticeable decomposition, and there was no sign that the body had been fed upon by scavengers or even insects. Upon his body were found to be numerous smooth round holes, and the man’s lips, eyes, tongue, and ears had been cut away with expert precision, not torn or ragged in any way. Other tissue and organs had been removed as well for reasons unknown, and there were other anomalies in addition to all of this. The coroner tasked with examining the body would later say of it:

“Although the victim had been dead for 48 to 72 hours there was no sign of being eaten by animals or starting to rot, as would be expected. There was no smell. Bleeding from the wounds had been minimal. The lips and flesh from the face had been cut away. The eyes, ears, and tongue had been removed. Neat round holes, one to one and a half inches in diameter, had been made on the shoulders, arms, head, stomach, and anus and tissue and muscle had been extracted. The holes had not been made through which extensive digestive organs had been extracted. The scrotum, but not the penis had been removed, and all pubic hair had disappeared. The rectum had been cored out. Despite these devastating mutilations, there was no sign that the victim had been bound or had struggled in any way.”

The mysterious body was photographed and the pictures shown to Dr. Goes Rubens, who concurred that it was all very odd indeed, and seemed inexplicable by normal definitions. It was also pointed out by an associate of Rubens that the mutilations on display with the mysterious body had many of the same hallmarks of the more well-known cattle mutilations, such as a lack of decomposition, organs seemingly selectively removed, precision, almost surgical cuts, and anomalous holes bored into the corpse. It appears that the dead man was never identified and his strange death has from then on had many questions surrounding it. Who or what did this to him? Why was there no decomposition? Why were some organs missing and not others and why had they been removed so cleanly and precisely? Why had those holes been made in the body? Why hadn’t the victim struggled or shown signs of being detained? What happened to him and who was he? We will probably never know.

Another case uncovered by UFO investigator Don Ecker supposedly occurred in 1989, when Ecker was contacted by ufologist and cattle mutilation expert Wm. “Bill” Knell, of the Long Island Skywatch organization, who came with a very strange story, indeed. Knell claimed that he had been contacted by an Asst. Medical Examiner from Westchester County, New York, who was familiar with Knell’s work and needed some advice on a mysterious set of corpses that had arrived at two morgues in New York and one in Connecticut at around the same time and in the same grim condition. Knell would claim that the three mysterious corpses had been mutilated by removal of the face, genitals, eyes, parts from the stomach, the rectum, and thyroids, all in exactly in the same way and apparently on the same night. According to Ecker, these corpses coincided with a number of animal mutilations that were occurring in New York and Connecticut at the time, and the medical Examiner who had contacted knell had allegedly claimed that the incidents had been immediately concealed from the media and public. The main theory was that these mutilations had been carried out by some sort of Satanic cult, which is also often put forward as an explanation for cattle mutilations, but Ecker would disagree, saying:

“The Satanic explanation was examined, and according to the reporting witness, did not hold water. After having been personally involved in an investigation of cattle mutilations as a police officer back in 1982, I was very familiar with the “cult” theory of perpetrators. The Idaho Department of Law Enforcement drags it out every time there is a new rash of mutilations. The problem is, and everyone is aware of it, that no one has yet been brought to trial, or arrested yet for these crimes. Out here in the west, people know that you are flirting with a rancher’s bullet if you are caught fooling around with the ranchers’ cattle. They are his livelihood, and he will defend it. Yet, the mutilations keep occurring, and no one is any the wiser, or are they?"

The 1990s brought in an era of shady deaths laced with whispers of dark government conspiracies in connection to UFOs, with 1993 seeing astronaut Deke Slayton die of an aggressive cancer conveniently right before he was expected to come forward with his inside knowledge and experiences on UFOs. In 1994, an investigator for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), Ann Livingston, died of an extremely aggressive and ferocious form of ovarian cancer. Rather spookily, this happened just a mere 2 years after she had claimed to have been harassed by ghoulish faceless, pale, and sinister Men in Black. Also in 1994 was the death of another MUFON investigator, Ron Johnson, who was actually the deputy director of investigations for the organization. He would die under very strange circumstances when after a slide presentation at a conference in Austin Texas, the lights came on and he was found unresponsive in his seat, with blood coming out of his nose and a weird purple coloration to his face. A few years later, 1996 saw the death of UFO author Karla Turner, who died of breast cancer. Turner was known for constantly attributing her cancer to actions taken by aliens due to some of the things she had written of in her UFO-themed books Masquerade of Angels, Taken, and Into the Fringe. In 1999, author of numerous UFO and conspiracy books, Jim Keith, also died when a blood clot stopped his heart as he was receiving routine surgery for a broken leg.

Perhaps one of the most bizarre individuals to have died a suspicious death for their whistleblowing of alleged information on aliens and UFOs is the American engineer Phil Schneider. An engineer-geologist, demolition specialist, and civil engineer, Schneider worked for the military and aerospace industries, and was allegedly heavily involved with the construction of underground military bases, eventually being assigned to work at the Dulce base in New Mexico. It is here where he would allege that he had come into contact with all manner of information and experiences dealing with aliens, UFOs, and government cover-ups, and he would have quite the bizarre tale to tell, indeed.   

In the 1990s, Schneider began coming forth with what he claimed to be information that he had gleaned from his alleged top secret security clearance at Dulce. He claimed that aliens had already had a base beneath Dulce, and that his team had accidentally stumbled across it as they drilled in order to expand the base. It apparently wasn’t a warm welcome, devolving into what he calls a “massacre” and of which he would say:   

“I was involved in the expansion of the deep underground military base at Dulce, which is possibly the deepest base. It descends seven levels and is over 2.5 miles deep. At this time we were drilling four different wells in the desert, intending to tie them together, but this required blasting. My job was to go deep into the wells, research the characteristics of the black rocks, and recommend the explosives that would be suitable in each case. However, as we made our way down, we found ourselves in a large cavern that was full of extraterrestrial aliens known as the "big Greys". I killed two of them. At that time there were about 30 people there, and 40 more came there later, when it all started - they were all killed. We were surprised by the existence of an entire underground base filled with aliens. Later we learned that they have been living on our planet for a long time. In my opinion, this can explain a lot of what is behind the theory of ancient astronauts.”  

The incident would allegedly leave Schneider with severe burns from the aliens’ alleged energy weapons, as well as later giving him cancer from the radiation emitted by them. After this rough start and “unfortunate misunderstanding,” the U.S. government supposedly reached a truce with what Schneider calls the “Zeta Reticuli,” also known as the “Greys,” signing a treaty he called the “Greada Agreement.” After this, Dulce served the secret function of serving as a place to house aliens and their technology, as well as to conduct both genetic and mind control experiments using alien technology. He was very specific in detailing the specifics of the base, explaining that it was divided into seven levels, each one housing things such as living quarters, storage facilities for alien craft, alien bodies, and “alien embryos,” laboratories, housing for such varieties of aliens as "Greys" and "Reptoids,” and meeting halls for conferences with representatives of the alien civilization. Schneider would claim that many of the technologies we take for granted every day, as well as military technologies such as stealth technology, were developed with the help of these aliens, and in exchange, the U.S. government had established numerous secret underground bases for them to carry out experiments on humans, indeed there were supposedly 1477 underground bases built around the world, all as part of their agreement. This isn’t even the weirdest part yet.   

Schneider would claim that the aliens had broken this treaty and that this would boil over into a disagreement that often ended in violence. According to Schneider, the Greys were secretly plotting to overthrow the government and install a New World Order, all controlled by the UN, which they had infiltrated and secretly controlled. He also claimed that there are seven benevolent alien species and four evil species on Earth. As a result, a resistance movement against some of them has developed and there are some incidents Schneider says are tied to this. For instance, he would claim that the Bikini Atoll was the site of a nuclear explosion not to test the bomb, but to wipe out an underground alien base that had gone rogue, that the World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombings were carried out using miniature nuclear devices. and that the Strategic Defense Initiative ("SDI" or Star Wars”) was actually intended as a defense against alien invasions. In addition to all of this, Schneider would make all sorts of off-the-wall claims about what the government was developing with alien tech, including that the U.S. had an earthquake machine and that AIDS was created in a lab. He would explain of some of this in one of his lectures:   

“The federal government currently has an earthquake-causing device. I'm a geologist and I know what I'm talking about. During the earthquake in Kobe (Japan) there was no pulse wave, as is usually the case in normal earthquakes. She wasn't there. In 1989 there was an earthquake in San Francisco, and there was no pulse wave or anything like that either. This is a Tesla device that is being used for evil purposes. Shadow budget programs distort the essence of science as we know it. Look at AIDS - it was created by government order in a laboratory in Chicago, Illinois, in 1972. It was a biological weapon that was used against the people of the United States. I know this because I have seen the documentation of the Office of Strategic Services, which, by the way, is still working to this day through the CDC in Atlanta. They used the glandular secretions of animals, humans and humanoids to create a virus. These humanoids have friendly relations with the government. There is absolutely no defense against what they create. It is a biological weapon with potentially dire consequences. Every alien on our planet must be isolated.”

Schneider became very outspoken about these “facts” and the government’s attempts to blind the public to the truth, publicly speaking at lectures and seminars in the USA, Canada, England, and Japan, often showing samples of some materials allegedly obtained using extraterrestrial technologies. Listening to how outlandish his claims are, it would be easy to write him off as a kook, but things took a sinister turn when he turned up dead under mysterious circumstances.

On January 17, 1996, Phil Schneider was found dead at his home in Wilsonville, Oregon, with his neck wrapped with piano wire and his own catheter tube, and there were signs of what looked like torture. At the time, there was the persistent idea among Schneider’s believers that he had been killed for divulging too much top-secret information, assassinated for knowing too much, or at least by someone who truly believed he did. The official stance was that it was a suicide. Forgetting for a moment that torturing oneself and then strangling oneself with piano wire isn’t a very traditional method of suicide, there are several other details that make it all the more ominous. Schneider had claimed that his life had been threatened on numerous occasions by the government and that 11 people he knew with similar information had been fatally silenced, often explained away as suicides. One of these was Ron Rummel, a former Air Force intelligence officer and publisher of the publication “Alien Digest,” who was found dead on August 6, 1993, of a gunshot wound to the head. Although it was also deemed a suicide, there had been no blood on the gun, no fingerprints on the barrel and handle of the weapon, and there had been a suicide not written by a left-handed person when Rummel was right-handed. Interestingly, no autopsy had been performed and Rummel’s body was cremated less than 24 hours later. Does this have any connection to Schneider’s strange death? Was he killed for something he divulged? Or was this just a delusional individual who killed himself in such a way as to make it look like that? Unfortunately, we may never know for sure.

Moving into the 2000s we have several more strange cases along these lines. In April of 2001, prolific author of unexplained phenomena, Ron Bonds, mysteriously died of a common food poisoning bacterium that rarely leads to death, but for some reason turned deadly for him. More sinister still was the death of prominent UFO researcher Paul Vigay in 2009. In February of that year, the 44-year-old was found bobbing about in the churning sea off the coast of Portsmouth, Hants, leaving a series of strange cryptic passwords behind on his phone that no one could figure out. Although authorities were quick to label it as a suicide, Vigay’s friends and family are adamant that he was not suicidal, and the coroner was also not able to verify whether it was suicide or not, saying, “I cannot say beyond reasonable doubt that yes Paul has taken his own life. The only person who could tell us what was going on in his mind and what happened that night is sadly not here to tell us."

Perhaps one of the weirdest cases of all is also the most recent. Conspiracy theorist and UFO expert Max Spiers was well-known for delving into government cover-ups, and in July of 2016, he was in Warsaw, Poland, visiting a friend and also planning on attending a conference on conspiracy theories and UFOs. On July 16, Spiers' friend found him on the sofa, unresponsive and having vomited up a viscous “black liquid.” It would turn out that there were some pretty suspicious details surrounding the death, one being a text message he had written to his mother just before his death, which reads, “Your boy's in trouble. If anything happens to me, investigate." Also odd is that there was never any actual official autopsy done on the body, and adding to this was that Spiers was a healthy young man with no history of physical issues, making it odd that he should just drop dead on that sofa. There would be very little word on the state of the investigation until 2019 when authorities would rule the death as being caused by drug use and pneumonia. Max’s mother would say of it all:

“Max was a very fit man who was in good health and yet he apparently just died suddenly on a sofa. All I have is a death certificate from the Polish authorities that it was from natural causes, but no post-mortem was done so how can they tell that? They are also refusing to release any paperwork about it to me because, absurdly, I don’t have his written permission. Apparently, he had not suffered any obvious physical injuries but he could have been slowly poisoned, which is why the results of toxicology tests from his post-mortem are so important. Again, we are left to wonder, if this really was an accident, or did some nefarious agency deem him to be a threat and have him erased? It really is quite the conundrum, and the case seems to be in a limbo of strangeness and pure speculation.”

The main conspiracy idea behind all of these deaths is that these people were removed from the equation by nefarious parties, with government agencies and even the Men in Black coming into play. Skeptics would point out that people die, it is a fact of life, and that of course UFO researchers are going to fall victim to this as well. Yet, with the strange circumstances and details surrounding some of these cases it makes one wonder what is really going on. Is this all just coincidence and reading things into it all, or is there something more sinister going on? The question remains, and if you are one of those who delves into UFOs it might be best to keep a set of eyes on the back of your head. You just never know.

Here we have looked at a range of strange deaths linked to UFOs covering human mutilations, bizarre suicide pacts, dark nefarious conspiracies, and beyond. Although we may never know the answers to the many questions they conjure up, they are an odd addition to the already odd landscape of the UFO phenomenon. 

RELATED VIDEOS