Indeed, while these questions could (and almost certainly will do so in the near future) form the basis for an article in their own right, what we will concentrate on here is just some of the many reported encounters with reptilian entities from across the decades and around the world.

Before we explore just some of the many encounters on record with apparent reptilian entities, it is worth our time to examine the 1982 thought experiments of paleontologist Dale Russell from the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. Russell theorized what might happen if one or more of the dinosaurs had managed to survive the extinction event and then developed in a similar way that mammals had, eventually evolving into an upright-walking humanoid being – essentially, a reptilian humanoid.

Russell and his team looked at dinosaurs that would have had the best chance of surviving the event and then evolving in such a way. They named their speculative evolved being a Troodon, and speculated just how it would have developed. They suggested, for example, that it would have semi-manipulative fingers that would have evolved over time into hands – with fully-working thumbs – similar to human beings that would allow them to grasp and manipulate. The creature would have a larger than usual head to contain its increased-sized brain, and would, ultimately, be highly intelligent. It wouldn’t, however, have mammary glands, and, as such, would likely have nourished its offspring through the regurgitation of food, similar to how birds feed their young. Perhaps the most interesting detail of all, though, was Russell’s theories as to just how these creatures would sound, suggesting that they would have voices or speech with a bird-like quality to it, similar to a bird’s song. It is interesting to note that many people who have claimed to have encountered these strange entities state that their speech – even though they couldn’t understand the language – sounded bird-like.    

Arguably one of the earliest accounts that hints at what we would recognize as a reptilian being dates back to 1770 in Staffordshire, England, and can be found in the book The Rosicrucians: Their Rites and Mysteries by Hargrave Jennings. According to the account, while digging in a field, a laborer uncovered a bizarre, stone staircase heading deep into the ground. Immediately curious, the man began down the steps, venturing several hundred feet below the ground until he found himself inside a “large underground chamber!” He looked around him, noting that the room was full of “strange objects and large machines!” Even stranger, the room was lit up by a “strange, ever-luminous sphere!” (we might imagine this ever-luminous sphere is some kind of electric light!).

It was at this point that the man suddenly became aware of a figure wearing a hooded robe and sitting in a throne-like chair at the other side of the chamber, watching him. As trivial as this detail might sound, there are many accounts from the modern era of people finding themselves in underground locations with reptilian entities wearing hooded robes. Was this the case here?

Suddenly, without warning, this robed figure stood from the chair and swung a bat-like object that was in one of his hands at the glowing sphere, smashing it to pieces and casting the entire chamber into thick, black darkness. The laborer immediately turned and ran the way he had come, clambering up the stone steps as quickly as he could. After what felt like an eternity, he emerged from the secret tunnel and out into the field. Incidentally, it didn’t take long for word to get around the village of the man’s discovery, and rumors began to swirl that what had been found was a hideout of high-ranking Rosicrucians who “hoarded their scientific secrets” and other advanced technology in such underground lairs. Of course, whether this was the case or whether the figure the laborer happened upon was a reptilian entity remains open to debate.

There are also many accounts of reptilian entities from the modern era. At just after midnight on March 3rd, 1972, in Loveland, Ohio, for example, police officer Ray Shockey was on patrol when he noticed what he thought was a stray dog at the side of the road. He pulled his car to the roadside and went to get out. However, before he could do so, the creature in front of his vehicle jumped to its feet and leaped over a barrier at the side of the road. When the ground where the creature had been seen was investigated a short time later, there were clear signs of “scrape marks” on the embankment. Officer Mark Matthews reported seeing what is presumed to be the same creature – referred to as the Loveman Frogman – two weeks later on the evening of March 17th in almost identical circumstances.

According to an account in the book Unknown Creatures by Robert Benjamin, a decade and a half later, in 1988 in Bishopville, South Carolina, Christopher Davis was driving along a road alongside the Scape Ore Swamp when he realized he had a flat tire and so pulled his vehicle to the side of the road to change it. As he was doing so, he noticed a monstrous reptile-like creature suddenly emerge out of the nearby woodland. He later described this creature as being around seven feet in height with green, scaly skin and hands that were like sharp claws. Davis immediately forgot about changing the tire, got back in the car, and sped away as quickly as he could.

One of the most (relatively speaking) recent encounters surfaced in January 2015 in the San Doong Cave in Vietnam. The cave system in question was first discovered in 1995 and has taken decades to explore, with some regions still largely unexplored by the time it was opened to the public in 2013. These unexplored regions remain off-limits to all but those with specific permission, but a little under two years after the opening, these unexplored regions were thrust into the spotlight. A video appeared on YouTube that appeared to show a reptilian-looking creature lurking in the darkness of the cave. The person who took the video footage claimed that the bizarre-looking entity appeared like a “devil creature” and had a human stance but the face of a “dragon or lizard!”

Even more interesting, around a month after the video appeared, another report appeared online, this time from a former United States soldier who had served in the same region of the country during the Vietnam War. He claimed that at some time in 1970, near the same cave system as shown in the recently released video showing the reptilian entity, he and several members of his unit witnessed an almost identical creature. He described the figure as an “upright lizard humanoid” that stood at least seven feet high. They all opened fire on the menacing creature, but it seemed to disappear into thin air. They made an immediate report to their superiors, but it was, essentially, swept under the carpet, and none of them heard anything more of the incident.  

A particularly intriguing encounter unfolded sometime in late 1999 in Connecticut in the United States. According to an article in the November 7th, 1999 edition of The Hartford Courant-Connecticut News by Christine Dempsey, on the night in question, five young men - 19-year-old Jeremy Sander, 18-year-old Shaun Cyr, 18-year-old Paul Poniatowski, 18-year-old Joseph Robinson, and 23-year-old Todd Silber – were practicing martial arts at Devil’s Hopyard State Park after having just finished a martial arts class in nearby Tolland. The location presented them with clear “open spaces” that allowed them to practice complicated moves away from other people. The evening progressed without incident, to begin with. Then, Poniatowski claimed to have suddenly heard someone “whispering” his name. Of more concern, this strange voice also stated that they should “leave now or join us forever!”

Several moments later, another of the group heard the whispered warnings, and a short time after that, the group decided to leave. As they did so, much to their concern, they heard an ominous, disturbing laughter. The strangest recollection of all, though, was that of Robinson, who claimed that he witnessed a “beast-like demon” sitting on a fence close to where they had been practicing only moments earlier. Poniatowski seemingly backed this up somewhat, claiming that saw a “shadow with a jagged edge!” Then, things turned even stranger. Silber suddenly rose into the air as if he was picked up by a pair of powerful arms before he was thrown through the air as if he were nothing but a rag doll. Only a tree broke his momentum, causing him to crash to the ground. A moment later, he got to his feet, four claw marks clearly visible through his (now) slashed jeans.

The group ran as fast as they could to their car. Once they were on the road, Cyr urged Sander, who was driving, to head to the nearby town of Manchester so that they could visit Reverend David Bowser in light of what they had just seen. He did so, and they arrived at Bowser’s home a little after 2 am. Cyr and Silber immediately got out of the vehicle and raced to the front door of the property. Unfortunately, the evening was about to take an even stranger turn.

Unaware of who was knocking at his door, and why, at such a late hour, Bowser called the police. Officer Scott Ventura arrived a short time later and, understandably, questioned the group as to what they were doing at the reverend’s house so late at night. Unfortunately for them, when the police searched their vehicle, they discovered several of the items they used for their training – items such as a samurai sword, baseball bats, and several knives, all of which could also be viewed as weapons. Ultimately, in part due to the obvious discomfort of Bowser, not to mention the late hour, as well as their unlikely story and Cyr’s increasingly agitated state, Ventura arrested all five of the men. During the exchange, Cyr had even lost consciousness, which his friends attributed to diabetic shock. However, he would later state that Ventura, albeit briefly, appeared identical to the shadowy figure he had seen earlier. They were eventually charged with carrying weapons and disturbing the peace. Just what they had witnessed in the park that night remains a complete mystery.

More recently, in an ancient cave system in northern Austria in 2011, a witness referred to only as “Gregor” was investigating a salt mine when he suddenly found himself in the middle of a surreal situation. He was at a depth of around 150 feet below the ground and was removing chippings from one of the walls for later study when he heard the sound of strange voices close by. He stopped the chipping for a moment and listened in an attempt to locate where the voices were coming from. After several moments, the voices seemed to stop, and Gregor decided to move on to a small chamber in the mine a short distance from where he was standing.

As soon as he stepped inside the chamber, a pungent smell of “something rotting” confronted him. A moment later, the voices began once more. This time, though, they appeared much closer. He instinctively turned to leave the chamber. Before he did, though, he took one last glance toward the other entrance, noticing a light coming from it, as if someone was approaching the room. He quickly made sure he was out of sight but was able to peer around the corner undetected. He was more than shocked to see several “lizard-like creatures” standing upright, exactly as a human would. Even stranger, each of these figures wore the same uniform, from which a large lizard-like tail protruded and trailed behind them. He further recalled that although the language these creatures spoke was “human-like,” it was a language unknown to him. Ultimately, he backed out of the chamber as quickly and quietly as he could, and then left the salt mine.

Another fascinating encounter with underground reptilian entities comes to us from the personal research files of author Cherry Hinkle, whose son, Marc Brooks, 13 years old at the time, found himself in a bizarre and surreal situation in the cave systems around Black Mountain just outside of Henderson in Nevada in 1977. On the day in question, Marc and a friend – “Harry” – were hiking near the cave systems around Black Mountain – and we should remember that this was when the land in the region had no highways or businesses, and was nothing but desert land. As they ventured into one of these caves, though, they suddenly found themselves in a strange, circular chamber. As they examined this chamber, they stumbled upon another opening, one that led somewhere that was so dark the lights from their flashlights could barely penetrate the blackness. Moreover, upon closer examination, although there was a branch ladder on the side of this entrance, it was essentially a shaft that led to an almost vertical drop. Despite all of this, curiosity got the better of the two boys, and they decided to explore further.  

They descended the shaft and began down a deep tunnel. It wasn’t long before they could hear the sound of voices, as well as what sounded like the “distant humming of machines!” Each believing they had stumbled onto some kind of secret mining operation, they continued on, eventually coming to a large, rusty, metal door. Of more immediate concern to the boys was a strange, metallic rod that they found next to the door. It was around a foot in length and had a cap on one end with a strange symbol carved into it. Marc picked up the rod. He expected it to be heavy, but much to his surprise, he found it was very lightweight. He turned the rod over in his hands, intrigued with it, and then placed it through his belt buckle.

At this point, Marc and Harry turned their attention back to the large door. Marc reached for the doorknob, twisting and rattling it several times in an attempt to open it, but it remained steadfastly in place. Moments later, the two boys heard the sound of approaching footsteps as well as bizarre animalistic voices coming from the other side of the door, causing a surge of fear to rise up in each of them. They turned and ran as fast as they could, the sound of the metal door opening coming from behind them. They clambered up the shaft and back into the circular chamber. At this point, both of the boys ran toward the entrance as fast as they could, eventually breaking out of the darkness and into the light of the afternoon. They weren’t sure how far they ran before they stopped to rest and look back. When they did, though, they realized that Marc still had the strange rod they had found near the metal door. It was as they were examining it in awe that a sudden growl-like roar reached their ears.

They quickly spun round to face the way they had just run from. There in the cave entrance was a “large greenish humanoid” – and what’s more, it was heading in their direction. The two boys turned and ran as fast as they could once more. Eventually, Marc’s backyard came into view, and they slowed slightly. However, when they turned around, the humanoid creature was still in pursuit – and was getting closer.  The two boys sped up once more and didn’t slow down until they burst through the door of Marc’s house. As soon as they were inside, Marc turned and locked the door, calling out as he did so, “He’s going to get us – don’t open the door!”

At this point, Marc’s mother, Cherry, ran into the room, gasping when she saw the state of terror both boys were clearly in. As she was taking in the scene before her, Harry suddenly blurted out that the creature outside was “big and looked mean,” also imploring Marc’s mother not to open the door. Still thinking the boys had been spooked by something – or someone – perfectly rational, Cherry told the two boys to get a drink of water while she went to “speak with the man” outside. Each of them insisted that “he’s not a man” and that he would kill them all if she opened the door. Cherry was about to protest once more before Marc stated that the figure outside “looks like a man but his face looks like a snake – like a lizardman!” He also stated that this creature was “naked except for a wide belt with stuff on it!” This last detail of a strange belt is worth highlighting. Not only does it come up a lot in apparent encounters with reptilians, but there are legends of a similar belt (often referred to as a wolfstrap) that can be found in accounts of alleged werewolves. Might we consider if these two creatures – if indeed they do exist in reality – are the same if different manifestations of the same supernatural source? It is certainly something worth keeping on the mental backburner.

Although Cherry now halted her advance to the door, she continued to insist that the creature the two boys had seen was likely someone – perhaps an older boy – wearing a costume as part of a joke or prank. It was only when the two boys admitted they had been in the cave systems of Black Mountain – a location, incidentally, that Cherry had forbidden the boys from visiting – that Cherry ceased her protests, and instead went to the window and peered out. As she did so, Marc continued that the creature had emerged from one of the caves and was so large that it could barely squeeze out of the entrance. Cherry could see no one outside and turned around to speak to the boys once more. When she did, she immediately caught sight of the strange rod the boys had found earlier. She asked the boys what it was, which seemingly reminded Marc that it was attached to his belt. He immediately reached for it and threw it down in fear.

Cherry moved forward to pick up the rod, causing Harry to warn her that it might be dangerous. She reasoned with the boys that they had carried it from the cave to the house and come to no harm, so it was unlikely to be dangerous, before reaching for it and picking it up. She examined it closely, particularly the strange symbols engraved in it. They were seemingly random combinations of circles, triangles, and spirals, although their meaning was beyond any of their comprehension. The metal cap on the top of the rod was rigid and didn’t move, and there was no other obvious “on” switch. Cherry later wrote that she “knew it was not a toy, but (it was) nothing I recognized!”

By this time, it was beginning to get dark outside, and Cherry decided that she and Marc would walk Harry home to ensure he arrived there safely. They did so, and by the time they returned, it was almost midnight. Marc, Cherry noted, was still clearly anxious, repeatedly returning to the window and peering outside. Eventually, the pair retired to bed for the night. The bizarre events, however, were far from over.

At just after 2 am, Marc entered his mother’s bedroom and woke her up, claiming that there was someone – or something – trying to get into his room through his window. At this point, Cherry suddenly felt scared and vulnerable, and the realization that she was alone with Marc and three other children in the house suddenly grew clearer. As quietly and calmly as she could, she reached for a flashlight and made her way to Marc’s bedroom. She crept to the window and reached for the curtain. When she drew it back, she was confronted with a sight she was not prepared for.

There, on the other side of the glass, was a monstrous figure with “a large head with ridges on the top” and “other ridges on his cheekbones!” Moreover, the creature’s eyes were glowing a sickly golden-yellow color. She realized Marc was standing beside her, and each of them stared at the beastly figure as it stared directly back at them. They noticed that one of its large hands was on the glass, noting that it appeared “large, with webbed, rough, gnarly-looking fingers with powerful claws!”

Cherry realized that she was shining the beam of the flashlight directly at the creature’s face. She began to feel even more fright run through her and began looking around the room in an attempt to locate something she could use as a weapon. Although she didn’t know how she knew, she got the impression that the creature realized what her intentions were. It suddenly “turned its head a little as if asking a question!” As it did so, Cherry could clearly see “four pointed teeth” protruding from its mouth. Just as she thought the creature would attempt to crash through the window and launch an attack, it turned and ran from the house, disappearing into the night.

After gathering their thoughts, Cherry and Marc made their way from room to room, checking every window and door as they did so. Cherry noted that the windows in Marc’s bedroom (where they had seen the creature) were particularly high from the ground, telling her that the creature must have been at least seven feet in height.  

They agreed that the creature had likely returned to the house in an attempt to retrieve the metal rod Marc and Harry had brought from the cave. As soon as it was light outside, they drove to the cave in question, and Marc left the rod near the entrance, fearing that if they didn’t return the device, the creature would likely return. Although it isn’t known if the creature retrieved the rod from the entrance, neither Marc nor Cherry had any further encounters with this particular lizard-like humanoid again. Unfortunately, Marc passed away in 1999, but Cherry still lives close to Black Mountain. Although she hasn’t had any further encounters with the apparent reptilian entity, there have been persistent claims from local residents of a strange and bizarre rumbling noise coming from under the ground in the area around Black Mountain.    

Without a doubt, one of the most thought-provoking accounts of apparent reptilian entities can be found in the book A Look Through The Secret Doors by John Macklin. In it, an account is relayed that unfolded in Manila in the Philippines in May 1951 and was a series of incidents that were witnessed by multiple people. On the evening in question, as there had been for several weeks, there was an increased police presence in the city of Manila due to the expectation of “trouble” and general public disturbances. Because of this increased police presence, when Clarita Villanueva experienced one of the most terrifying events of her life, several on-duty police officers were there to witness it after receiving a call to their respective patrol cars about some kind of disturbance in the city.

Several officers made their way to the location and quickly noticed a crowd had gathered on the street. The officers exited their vehicles and made their way to the crowd, fully expecting to find a street brawl underway. However, upon arrival, they could see the events were altogether stranger. As they pushed their way through the crowd, they could see that they were gathered around a young girl who was writhing around in pain on the ground, and making motions as if she were being attacked by an invisible entity. As the officers looked on, they all heard the terrified girl exclaim, “Keep it away from me,” quickly followed by, “Someone help me!” The officers looked on at the bizarre scene in front of them in complete shock as the girl then screamed that her attacker was “biting me to death!”

Then, as if to underscore just how bizarre the events they were witnessing were, claw and bite marks began appearing on the young woman’s arms and neck right before their eyes. After several moments, two of the officers came to their senses, stepped toward the young woman, and reached out to her. They swiftly pulled her from the ground and, uncertain of what to do, they handcuffed her and placed her in their police car. They set off immediately for their police station. Only moments later, the woman once more began to move in a way that suggested, at least to her, an invisible attacker was unleashing another assault. Once they reached the station, they requested that the police doctor examine the young lady, convinced that she must be under the influence of some kind of mind-altering, hallucination-inducing drug.

Dr. Marianna Lara carried out this medical assessment, with her initial conclusion being that Clarita had likely suffered an “epileptic fit!” She advised that they hold the young woman in custody overnight for her own protection, and so she could continue to assess her. The officers took Clarita to a cell and locked the door, leaving her alone inside. To begin with, she sobbed miserably, almost in an attempt to comfort herself. After several moments, however, she suddenly began to scream out loud: “The thing is coming at me. It’s coming through the cell door as if it weren’t there!” She continued that this “thing” looked like a man but had “big, bulging eyes” and appeared to “float in midair!”

Officers rushed to the cell. However, when they opened the cell door, all they found was Clarita alone. They attempted to calm her and then watched in shock as the claw and bite marks appeared on the young woman’s skin as if being made by some kind of invisible beast. Realizing that these already strange events were getting even stranger, the officers requested that Dr. Lara return to the cell, which she duly did. Perhaps as a testament to how strange the officers found the events they were confronted with, they also requested the chief of police, as well as the city’s mayor, Arsenio Lascon, attend the police station. After examining these newly appeared claw and bite marks, Dr. Lara noted that many of them were in places on Clarita’s body that she simply couldn’t have inflicted on herself. All those in attendance agreed that they were witnessing something completely out of the ordinary.  

By this time, Clarita had calmed somewhat, even falling asleep for a short time. Despite the truly surreal nature of the events, and perhaps bizarrely, the police decided to take Clarita to the courthouse the following morning, where she would be charged with vagrancy (a charge of being homeless or of traveling without means of financially supporting oneself – essentially, hitchhiking and sleeping rough). It was during the journey to the courthouse that the bizarre events began once more.

Suddenly, from the back of the police car, Clarita screamed that “the thing” was back. From the front of the vehicle, the officers could see new bite and claw marks appearing on the young woman’s arms and neck; in fact, on any part of her body that was exposed. These unsettling events continued once Clarita was in the courthouse, with several newspaper reporters witnessing them. As this apparent attack reached a climax, Clarita lost consciousness and collapsed to the courthouse floor. She was immediately examined by a doctor, who concluded without doubt that the wounds were authentic and genuine and were not self-inflicted.

It was at this point, with several newspaper reporters already preparing to run a story on these bizarre events in their next respective editions, that the police decided to take Clarita to the hospital so she could be examined more extensively. Dr. Lara and Mayor Lascon, who had been at the courthouse and had seen the events in their entirety, insisted on riding in the same ambulance as Clarita – and during the journey, the disturbing events continued. Now, however, instead of claiming there was one attacker, Clarita stated that a second identical attacker was in the ambulance with the first one. And as if to back up what she was saying, the now familiar claw and bite marks continued to appear on the young girl’s body in front of all those present. Incidentally, both Dr. Lara and Mayor Lascon publicly swore on oath as to what they had seen, with Dr. Lara stating that the events were a “complete mystery” and “something which defies explanation!” She further stated that she was “scared stiff” while witnessing the unnerving events.

Bizarrely, at the very moment Clarita entered the hospital, the attacks suddenly stopped. Despite this, the police remained on guard outside her hospital room in case the strange activity began again. It never did. Clarita remained in the hospital for around six weeks while her wounds were treated and she made a full recovery. Her experience, though, remains largely unexplained.

That said, there is still a lot to contemplate regarding these bizarre and disturbing events. Perhaps the most obvious would be whether Clarita could have somehow caused the wounds to appear on her body herself, perhaps through the power of her subconscious mind, like a bizarre and extreme form of stigmata. Might we consider, for example, that Clarita did indeed hallucinate a monstrous creature attacking her in the street, but her mind believed the hallucination to such a degree that it resulted in genuine wounds? Might this have been why the attacks suddenly ceased once she reached the hospital, simply because she believed she was safe? While that is possible, it is perhaps unlikely.

If not some form of hallucination and consequential stigmata, then, might we consider that Clarita was genuinely attacked by some kind of bizarre, unseen entity, perhaps one that was invisible or even one that attacked from another realm or dimension and, as such, remained unseen by all but its victim. We might also consider that the fear Clarita undoubtedly felt during the episodes helped to feed and strengthen this mysterious entity’s presence, perhaps even resulting in the second creature's appearance.

Perhaps above all else, just what might this brutal and unseen creature have been? The claw and bite marks suggest something beast-like, with many descriptions of reptilians suggesting clawed hands and sharp teeth. It is also interesting to note that many researchers suggest that reptilian creatures – whether through some kind of ability (altering their vibratory rate or frequency) or advanced technology – have the ability to render themselves invisible. Was that the case here? Was Clarita attacked by an invisible reptilian entity in full view of police officers, medical staff, and reporters? It is certainly something we have to consider.

Undoubtedly, one of the most controversial and interesting claims of encounters with reptilian entities is those of Jim Sparks, whose encounters were seemingly connected to an alien abduction he had suffered several years previously. During the early hours one morning in 1988, at around 3:30 am, Sparks suddenly found himself wide awake even though he had no idea what had awoken him. He suddenly became aware of a strange, low-pitched sound – a sound that seemed to be coming from inside his head. It was then that he realized that he couldn’t move and was completely paralyzed. Before he could contemplate this inability to move his arms or legs, he felt a sudden sensation of being pulled downward. Then, he lost consciousness.

He did his best to put the encounter out of his mind – that was, until several years later, in May 1995, when he found himself in the middle of the same kind of encounter. Once more, he blacked out. This time, however, when he awoke, he found himself seemingly floating around 1000 feet above the ground, looking down on what looked to be an abandoned amusement park. He realized he was slowly descending, and when he finally touched down on the ground, he could see several reptilian humanoids standing around him. Each was at least seven feet in height with red, shining diamond-shaped eyes and heads that were between a lizard and a snake.  The creature closest to him, though, sported a grotesque hologram-like human face that had clearly been superimposed.

The next thing Sparks knew, voices began appearing in his head, seemingly from the creature with the hologram-like face. He later recalled that this voice told him that they were a reptilian civilization and that they had been on Earth for a very long time. Moreover, certain government leaders from around the world were aware of their presence and remained in constant contact with their leaders, even reaching agreements regarding their presence on the planet and the decision to keep this presence secret. This communication continued, telling Sparks that part of this agreement was that the reptilian race would hand over advanced technology to world leaders so that they could use it to improve the environment, something they had failed to do on several occasions. There were, though, further revelations.

Sparks claimed that he was informed that much of the planet’s water was contaminated to such a level that plants and wildlife had already been significantly affected. Of more concern, several “significant breaks” had appeared in the human food chain because of “nuclear and biological contamination!” These events, combined with an eventual overpopulation of Earth, would lead to the “end of humanity!” Despite these grim predictions and warnings, this reptilian entity went on to offer details that could lead humanity down a different, more beneficial path. They further stated that certain government leaders were aware of this technology and how it could be used for the betterment of humanity. They also said, however, that most of these government leaders believed that “abundant food” and “clean energy” would be a “security threat” to humanity – make of that what you will.     

Perhaps a last encounter to explore is one that was investigated by David Hodrien of the Birmingham UFO Group in England, which featured a young girl named “Julie” who encountered something truly chilling and strange in 2000. According to the report, at around 9 pm on the night in question, Julie – then only 12 years old – was at home in her bedroom reading a book. As she was doing so, she noticed a sudden movement out of the corner of her eye at the bottom of the bed. She instinctively looked up from her book and was shocked to find herself looking at a black, scaly arm with claws with white talons where the hand should have been. Although she couldn’t see the creature the arm belonged to, she knew that something was at the bottom of the bed, and she knew she wasn’t imagining it. The monstrous arm continued to move across the bed. Then, to her absolute shock, it disappeared into thin air as she was looking at it.

She remained where she was for several moments, not daring to move. Then, when she was certain she was indeed alone, she let out a long breath of air in relief. Despite the truly bizarre nature of the events that had just unfolded, she didn’t feel any fear and simply went back to reading her book. In the days that followed, however, Julie began to increasingly feel a strange presence seemingly waiting outside her room, so much so, that she repositioned her bed so that it faced the door.

Hodrien immediately noticed several interesting details. As soon as he spoke to her, for example, he immediately got the impression that she had definitely seen “something” as opposed to having imagined the encounter – after all, she had stared at the arm for several seconds. Perhaps of more interest was the bizarre positioning of the creature, something which resonates nicely with many other reptilian encounters. The creature was seemingly kneeling at the bottom of Julie’s bed, reaching up with its arm. There are many reports of these strange creatures crouching or lying in an “unusual way” and reaching up towards the respective witness.

We might also consider the notion that there could have been more to the encounter than Julie can remember. Was this a case of alien abduction, for example, one that she could only recall the last several seconds of (when the strange arm was visible at the bottom of the bed)? Might this explain why she was so unnaturally calm despite the surreal nature of the events? Whatever the truth of the strange events that evening, it would be only the first of several that Julie would experience over the coming years.

In 2001, for example, Julie began experiencing many strange, paranormal-like encounters. She began hearing strange footsteps around the house, even though there was no one there. She also regularly heard strange clattering noises that came from nowhere, and doors would often open of their own accord. More unsettling, she often saw strange shadowy figures out of the corner of her eye – figures that always disappeared by the time she turned in their direction. She noticed that these dark figures appeared to be extremely tall, a characteristic often attributed to reptilian entities.

What is further interesting is that Julie was far from the only witness to these bizarre events. Moreover, rather than being confined to the family home, these events could seemingly happen anywhere Julie or her family happened to be. One particular evening, for example, with her mother unable to find replacement childcare, Julie and her brother, Steve, were at the nursing home where she worked. As this was a night shift, Julie’s mother made a bed for the pair on the settee in one of the back rooms and then left them to go about her duties. During the night, Julie woke up to hear her mother comforting Steve, who was crying profusely. When Julie asked what had happened, her mother told her that she had heard Steve screaming in fright, stating that the hoover was moving by itself. When she entered the room, she too had seen the appliance moving even though it wasn’t plugged in. When she nudged it with her foot, it simply stopped. This wasn’t the only strange event connected to the nursing home that Julie experienced.

Several weeks later, a resident of the nursing home that both Julie and Steve were friendly with – Dorothy – passed away. One afternoon in the days that followed, Steve was making his way to the bathroom when he claimed to have seen Dorothy sitting clear as day at their dining room table in the kitchen. Although Julie didn’t see Dorothy, in the days that followed Steve’s sighting of her, she began seeing disturbing shadowy figures in the room, figures that caused her to feel such fear that she didn’t enter the room unless she absolutely had to. As it turned out, as part of Hodrien’s investigation, Julie passed a long recent (2022) text exchange between herself and Steve, during which it became clear that paranormal incidents were rife and they were not limited to just Julie.

He recalled, for example, that he often saw their grandfather in the house, even though he had been dead for many years, as well as, like Julie, hearing strange footsteps coming from rooms in the house that he knew were empty. Of more concern to him, though, and of particular interest to us here, he recalled often seeing a “large, shadowy creature” that wore some kind of “hat or hood!” On one occasion, he even claimed to have seen an unsettling, black, clawed arm, almost identical to the arm that Julie witnessed that evening in 2000.

Another particularly ominous encounter came to light during this text exchange, one that Julie had previously been unaware of. Steve recalled that he had woken early one morning, and could immediately hear their father speaking to someone downstairs. He continued to listen for around 10 minutes when the conversation came to a sudden stop. At this point, Steve got out of bed and made his way downstairs. When he walked into the room where his father was sitting, he could see the look of confusion on his face. He asked Steve why he was back in the room, claiming he had just been speaking to him for the last 20 minutes. Was this “other Steve” the reptilian entity, and had it assumed his form? There are many accounts that state reptilians can do exactly that. Taking this further, could this explain the sightings of Dorothy, as well as Steve and Julie’s grandfather?

On another occasion, Steve was at home watching television while their father was sitting at the family computer. Suddenly, random items started landing near where he was sitting on the settee, and he began hearing his name being whispered. He thought it was his father playing a prank on him and told him to stop. It was immediately clear to him, though, that his father didn’t know what he was talking about, and had not thrown items at him, or whispered his name. Then, the sound of his name being called came again, and this time, his father heard it also, causing him to “turn white” with fear.  

Although several strange events occurred in other locations, as the years went on, Julie began to question if the family home was somehow crucial in understanding the strange events, not least when she learned that other people had had strange encounters on the property before she or her family had lived there. Several years after the incidents began, with Julie now a young woman and working as a barmaid in a local pub, she learned of such a person. Moreover, this person told Julie that all the while they lived there, they witnessed “strange goings-on!”

She also had another friend named Timothy, and by chance, discovered that his mother had also lived in the house years previously. Timothy recalled that she also experienced many strange events and happenings while living there, including seeing a strange, shadowy figure standing in her bedroom one evening. All she could recall of the incident was feeling sheer terror and that the figure watched her for a significant amount of time.

A mutual friend of Julie and Steve’s – Rob, who had recently passed away at the time the report was made – also became intertwined in the strange activity at the house, seemingly from beyond the grave. In the weeks following their friend’s passing, Julie began to experience strange, intense dreams. They were always the same and featured Rob walking into her bedroom and sitting on the bed. Julie had these dreams so often that she began to consider if they were not dreams at all but some kind of visitation. Once more, we might consider if this apparent reptilian entity had assumed the form of Rob following his death. One evening, she asked Steve to stay awake and sit in her room while she slept to see if a ghostly apparition did indeed walk in. In another bizarre twist, during the night, Steve was amazed when Rob did indeed walk into the bedroom and sit on the bed before disappearing. In a similar way to Julie’s first encounter, rather than being scared, Steve simply turned his attention back to the computer following the sighting.

In the summer of 2002, however, things took a much more ominous turn. She began to have a different recurring dream, even more intense than those involving Rob. This time, she could see two young girls who appeared to be in a warehouse, tied to a radiator. On some occasions, she even dreamt that the girls were on fire. She eventually spoke to her mother about the disturbing dreams. Between them, and it is important to note that this is pure speculation on Julie and her mother’s part, they contemplated whether the dreams were connected to the (then) missing Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman (who were eventually discovered murdered). It is claimed that following their murders, their bodies were partially burned in an effort to destroy evidence. Whether this connection is accurate or not (both Julie and her mother were fully aware of the missing girls at the time) remains open to debate.

By 2016, with Julie now in her 20s and working at a local hospital, the bizarre events would follow her there. One particular evening, Julie was on shift when one of the patients in her ward passed away. It was around 2 am by the time family members who had been at the recently deceased patient’s bedside had left. Julie and another member of staff began wrapping the body, ready for collection, so it could be taken to the morgue. As they were doing so, Julie happened to glance at the mirror on the wall. She almost physically recoiled in horror when she saw her reflection with a tall, shadowy figure behind her, moving from one side to the other. Moreover, she could hear a “shuffling sound” coming from the floor behind her, suggesting that something was physically moving.  

Julie instinctively moved back away from the movement. As she did, she caught the look on the other nurse’s face – a look that told her she could also see the shadowy figure. A moment later, both of them stopped what they were doing and ran out of the room. They stood in the corridor for around 15 minutes, not daring to go back into the room. When they eventually plucked up the courage to do so, the figure, whatever it was, was no longer there. They quickly finished preparing the patient’s body as quickly as they could, and then rushed out of the room to fill out the necessary paperwork. However, they soon discovered that one of the forms they required had been left in the room with the deceased. Julie returned to the room to retrieve it and was more than shocked to find that the wrapping had been torn away from the dead patient’s body, leaving his head fully exposed. Although no further incidents occurred that evening, both Julie and her fellow nurse were left unsettled by the events.

Several years later, in 2021, yet another bizarre encounter occurred, once more at the hospital where Julie worked. It was around 1 am on the night in question, and Julie was transferring a patient from one ward to another when she suddenly noticed a strange, shadowy form of a young woman with startling blond hair moving towards the sink in the room. At first, Julie believed it was one of the patients currently on the ward who had a similar appearance. When she turned around to face the figure fully, however, it was no longer there. She turned to face the other nurses in the room – each of them had seen the mysterious apparition also. What’s more, all agreed that the figure looked like the patient on their ward. Was this another case of this reptilian entity assuming the form of a person Julie would recognize? And if so, for what purpose? Perhaps one thing to consider is whether this reptilian entity – if that is what it was – was somehow using the fear it caused in Julie to nourish or feed itself. While that might sound bizarre to some, many researchers have suggested that reptilians, like poltergeists and other spirits, require fear and other negative emotions to build strength and manifest. Whatever the truth, the events have continued for over two decades.

As we can see, then, while the subject of reptilian entities is problematic for many people – even those inside conspiracy and UFO circles – the fact is there are so many documented encounters from people around the world and across the decades that it would be bordering on irresponsible to dismiss such claims without further research and investigation. While it might be a leap too far to imagine V-like beings walking among us, considerations of a subterranean indigenous reptilian species sharing the planet discreetly are perhaps more realistic, if, ultimately, unlikely. As long as reports of these reptilian creatures continue to surface – whether contemporary reports or ones made public retrospectively – we should continue to document, research, and investigate them in the hope that one day we will gain a collective understanding of just what lies at the heart of such fascinating, if bizarre, incidents and reports

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In May of 1950, Architect Enrico Carotenuto Bossa, 46, was driving home from a business trip in the region of Epu Pel La Pampa when his attention was captured by a silvery metallic object on the ground ahead. As he approached it, he noticed strange details, such as portholes and a translucent cupola, and when he got nearer he decided to stop his car and examine the thing. He got out of the car and as he approached on foot he could see that the object was saucer-shaped and that it had an open portal on its side. Now most people would have backed out of there at this point, but not Bossa. He instead made the brash decision to climb in through the doorway, and it was a decision he would probably live to regret. 

Within the saucer-like craft, he was immediately hit with a strong odor like ozone and garlic pervading the gloom. As he inched his way into the dim interior he realized that he was in a circular room lined with a row of portholes, very thick, glazed with some transparent material resembling Plexiglas. At the center of the cabin, which was about 3.5m in diameter, was a strange kind of chair occupied by a man around 1.2 to 1.4 m tall, dressed in a lead-gray coverall; his round head, with sparse light-colored hair resting on his chest. Bossa warily approached and could now see that the being’s well-formed hands were “a light tobacco-brown color,” and were tightly gripping two handles that emerged from a black box in front of it. The body looked human, but the eyes were very large and glassy-looking, with dilated pupils that took up almost the whole eye. 

Further proving that he just didn’t know when to get out of there, Bossa reached out and poked the thing’s arm, finding it to be cold and rigid, and he also ran his hand along the being’s suit, which seemed to be made of a material akin to leather. It was only after examining the consoles in front of this dead creature that Bossa noticed there were two others slumped against the walls, both dead as well. He also noticed that there were four chairs in the room, so he began to wonder where the fourth alien was, assuming that it had probably survived and left via the open portal doorway. It was at this point that he was seized by an ill-defined sense of dread, and he backed back out of the craft to the ground below.

Once on the ground, Bossa felt dizzy from breathing normal air again, realizing how difficult to breathe and how heavy the air had been inside the object. Back at his car, he found that the motor wouldn’t start and that the car’s battery had inexplicably been drained dry. With much effort, he was able to finally get it started and went back to tell his friends what he had seen. Interestingly, rather than telling him to lay off the grappa, they went back to the site with him but the craft was no longer there, in its place a pile of smoking silver-red ashes. At that moment the men looked up to see a saucer identical to the one Bossa had encountered, flying over them at an estimated height of 600 meters, with a second identical object hovering above it. Both of these UFOs then headed towards a larger cigar-shaped ship not far away, which they entered and which then made its way out of sight. Bossa claimed to have taken a photo of this, although it is not clear what happened to this picture. Was there any truth to any of this?

In that same year, we have the case of a respected doctor by the name of Enrique Caretenuto Botta. As a seemingly reliable witness, Dr. Enrique Caretenuto Botta has impeccable credentials. A decorated ex-war pilot with a sterling educational history and research record in aeronautical engineering, he was highly sought after by many firms in his native land of Venezuela. In 1950, the then 40-year-old Botta was working at an architectural engineering firm based in Caracas, which had sent him on a business trip to Argentina to work on an ambitious construction project out in the countryside of Buenos Aires. To get to and from the project, he commuted through the sparse rural landscape outside of what at the time was the fairly small city of Bahía Blanca, and it was during one of these drives that he would have a bizarre experience that would change his life forever.

The drive was typically mundane, the area only sparsely inhabited and not much to see out past the windshield and the hypnotizing repetitive landscape flashing by, making it easy to get lost in one’s thoughts. Yet on this evening, his thoughts would be intruded upon by something very anomalous out on a field along the empty road ahead. It appeared to be some sort of metallic, disc-shaped object sitting right on the grass of the field, and it was such an unexpected enough site that Botta slowed down and then stopped his vehicle to get a closer look. His first thought was that it was somehow an aircraft that had come down to land out in that remote expanse, but as he drew closer he could see that it was no ordinary helicopter or plane. When curiosity compelled him to get out of the car and walk closer, he could see that the object was made of a very strange material that appeared metallic but was somewhat spongey and “rubbery” to the touch. After circling the bizarre thing for a few minutes and gliding his hand along this weird surface, Botta claims that he then came to an opening. At this point, he was more curious than scared and decided to go inside.

Once within the mysterious craft, he allegedly saw just a plain metal corridor with a lone blinking red light at the top of the domed top above. As he continued, that flickering red light illuminated a room that had control panels adorned with various blinking lights, knobs, meters, buttons, and switches, the whole of it hovering over a transparent sphere, but this dancing light also outlined what appeared to be a curved divan with four seats. Botta warily approached until the blinking lights revealed to him the outlines of what appeared to be three small, almost child-sized figures only about four feet tall sitting there in the seats motionless. At this point Botta could not see them clearly because of the wavering lighting and the fact that he was behind them, so he crept closer to the figures, wondering who they could possibly be, and as he did he could see that whoever they were they were dressed in some sort of tight-fitting grey coveralls. Botta called out to them but got no response, so he gave into the overwhelming urge to reach out and touch the shoulder of one of them. When he did, he claims that he could feel that the body was rigid and that their skin had a “charred texture.” It seemed that these individuals, whoever or whatever they were, were dead. This was enough to strike Botta with a jolt of fear that sent him scurrying back outside to get into his car and speed off.

When Botta got back to the hotel that he had been staying at, he excitedly told two of his associates about what had happened, and they decided to head back out there the next morning to check it out. When they arrived, the strange craft was gone, and in its place was a large pile of what appeared to be ash. When one of Botta’s companions touched this ash, his hand supposedly turned promptly purple much to the man’s alarm, and that’s when they saw a strange display in the sky above. According to Botta, there were three unidentified objects up there, two discs and a larger cigar-shaped object. These strange objects hovered above them for a few minutes, before suddenly seeming to merge into one, after which this single object emanated a red light and sped off at breathtaking speed to leave them standing there dumbfounded. Botta would claim that for several days after this bizarre incident, his friend’s hand would remain purple where he had touched the pile of ash, and that he himself was plagued by fever and unexplainable blisters and what was like a sunburn on his skin. Doctors were allegedly unable to find any rational cause for these physical symptoms. Dr. Botta would keep the bizarre incident to himself for years before telling it to a man named Horacio Gonzales G., who in turn passed it along to UFO researcher Leon Stringfield, and the report would feature in Stringfield’s book Situation Red.

It is frustrating that this is where the case stands. Only one witness, no matter how seemingly reliable, just doesn't seem to cut it in this day and age. We are left to ask, just what happened to him out there? What were those creatures he saw, and were they really dead? Did their friends perhaps come to retrieve them, and perhaps that is what Botta and his friends saw? How did they end up dead to begin with? What was the pile of ash left behind? Did any of this happen in any sense at all? It is a rather eerie and spooky account, and as with many others like it, there are no real answers.

In 1962 there were several odd reports of alien encounters in quick succession. On May 26, 1962, a woman in the sparsely populated rural province of la Pampa, claimed to have seen a strange bright disc land, out of which lumbered a hulking “robot-like apparition.” The robot seemed to be collecting samples of soil, and when it realized it was being watched it stared at the woman with an inscrutable gaze for some time before entering its craft and shooting off into the sky. The woman’s husband witnessed the disc depart as well, and the woman was supposedly so traumatized by the incident that she was taken to a mental institution for treatment. 

In July of that same year, a 17-year-old youth by the name of Ricardo Limeres was riding his motorcycle along a lonely rural dirt road at night in the vicinity of Parana, Argentina, when out of the gloom a strange-looking figure appeared in the glow of his headlight. Ricardo was startled and tried to swerve and ride away, but apparently, his motorcycle would not obey him, instead being drawn towards the mysterious stranger. The vehicle stopped right in front of the enigmatic being, which the witness could now see stood over six feet tall and had a head “in the shape of a melon” with three eyes. This bizarre entity reportedly tried to grab Ricardo, before ambling off in a robotic manner that was “scarcely human” towards a bright white light in the distance, leaving deep tracks in its wake. The following month there was another strange encounter from the same area, when on August 21 a medical doctor saw a disc with a halo in the sky as he was driving towards the city of Parana with his wife. Right after he saw this UFO he noticed two beings over six feet tall, with light hair and huge eyes, which were carrying “luminous objects” on their foreheads, with which they made signals for the car to halt. The doctor did not halt, instead tearing off into the night in a panic, as most people in their right minds probably would. What exactly was going on here? In October of that year, there was yet another weird alien encounter reported from Argentina, this time from an area between a place called Isla Verde and Monte Maiz. The report was given to police by truck driver Ernesto Donles, who would say of what happened:

“I was driving my truck to Isla Verde when a luminous object – apparently a spaceship – surrounded by light of blinding brilliance, came down near me. Three very tall beings, dressed in strange clothes and carrying unknown kinds of weapons, came down out of it towards me. I lost control of my vehicle and drove into a ditch, but I finally got back onto the road and kept on driving at high speed. The three creatures kept coming after me. A blinding red light came out of their craft. The creatures followed me for about a mile and a half. When I finally arrived in the outskirts of the town of Monte Maiz, they suddenly stopped the persecution. They then got back into their craft, which disappeared into the distance.”

The report was corroborated by several residents of the area, who also claimed to have seen a flying object that had let off a blinding bright light that had dazzled them. Argentina certainly isn’t the only place where such encounters were going on in the 1960s. On December 12, 1962, a peace officer in Milan, Italy by the name of Francesco Piania was doing his rounds of inspection when he suddenly heard a whistling sound behind him. He would say of what happened next:

“At first I thought it was my ears, but the noise grew louder. As I was going to leave the courtyard I saw a silver-aluminum disc, shining under the moon’s rays, landing. I turned abruptly and stood paralyzed with emotion. I saw a strange being about one meter (3’3″) tall coming out of the disc. His space suit looked silver- fluorescent and emitted a bluish light. He was wearing a black helmet and made a gesture toward the dome or turret rising above the disc. Another person appeared at a porthole. The first man looked at me and then signaled for me to come toward him. At that moment the other being signaled him, and he reboarded the disc and the engine flew off.”

Strange, indeed. We also have the tale of Orlando Jorge Ferraudi, who a few years later in 1965 was out fishing on the northern coast of Argentina when he had an experience he would never forget. He claims that he suddenly felt as if he were being watched, and when he turned around he saw a very tall humanoid entity, standing 7 feet tall, with pale skin, light-colored eyes, and wearing some sort of shiny, yellowish one-piece outfit. The being seemed to know that Farraudi was scared, and tried to ease him through telepathic messages. Farraudi would say:

“It was a very dark night. This being was telling me mentally ‘Take it easy. Don’t be afraid. You mustn’t be scared.’ Then he turned around, taking my arm, and placed some kind of powder box on top of the wall. When opened, this box gave off a phosphorescent luminosity which enabled me to see more details. The entity’s garb was of a yellow-mustard color, had no wrinkles, zippers, or buttons, and it had a hood at the back of the head. He was repeating ‘Don’t be afraid, you will come with me, we will take a long trip..”

The being then fiddled with his box for a moment and a large craft like “an inverted saucer” approached from the water, coming closer until it was hovering right in front of them. A door then opened and a ramp distended to them, upon which the tall entity gestured towards the opening. He found himself almost in a trance as he obediently entered the craft to find a young human woman about 18 years of age within, who also told him not to be afraid and that the alien was their friend. She told him that her name was Elena and that she too had been whisked away aboard this ship not long before. The being then had them change clothes into a type of jumpsuit, and they were told that they would be going underwater to travel across the ocean to Africa.

Farraudi claims that along the way they stopped off at an immense underwater dome, which housed some sort of base, which he was told was for “reconditioning the ships,” and he was also told that there were various experiments carried out here. According to the alien, Earth was a sort of zoo, and most life on Earth had come from them doing genetic experiments. They were fed some sort of tasteless red, yellow, brown and green eggs, after which they were placed on some kind of stretchers and both fell into a profoundly deep sleep. When they woke up, they were told that the “results of the test” were good. They were informed that their pineal glands had been “reactivated,” and that this would enable them to receive mental messages from the aliens. They were then given loads of information on the alien home planet and how the ship worked, as well as various philosophical musings, and then Farraudi woke up back on the beach where he had started, at first without any memory of what had happened.

On October 28, 1973, a truck driver by the name of Dionisio Llanca was driving in the vicinity of  Bahia Blanca along with a load of construction equipment to be delivered to Rio Gallegos, a two-day trip. At some point on his drive, one of his tires ran out of air along a cold, windswept road in remote territory and Llanca grudgingly climbed out into the frigid night to change it. This is where things would get weird, and he would later explain what happened next as follows:

“I braked the truck on the shoulder, got down, took out the jack and the tools, and began to change the tire. The road was completely deserted. All at once, the road was illuminated with an intense yellow light that seemed to be about 2,000 meters distant. Because of the color, I thought that they might be the headlights of a Peugeot and continued with my work. A few seconds passed and I had my shoulder to the light but it became so bright that it lighted the whole area.

Now the light had changed to a bluish color similar to an electric arc welder. I tried to get up but could not rise; I had no strength, and a strange thing – – my legs would not respond. I was on my knees. I wanted to get up and look towards the woods that grew along one side of the road. Then I saw a great thing in the form of a plate suspended in the air at some seven meters altitude, and three persons at my shoulders looking at me. I tried once more to get up but could not. The paralysis became total and I could not even talk. The three beings stood looking at me for a long time, perhaps five minutes. They were two men and a woman. The woman was between the two men. I believed it was a woman because of the form of the breast and the long hair, blonde, reaching to the middle of her shoulders.

The men were also blond with shorter hair in the back. The three were about the same height, one meter and 70 or 75 centimeters, and dressed in the same manner: single piece smoky gray coverall suits well fitted to the figure, % yellow boots and long gloves reaching to the middle of the arm of the same color. They had no belts, nor weapons, nor helmets nor anything else. Their faces were like ours except for high foreheads and elongated eyes, like the Japanese and a little tilted.

They talked among themselves in a language impossible for me to understand. They had no vocal inflections but sounded like a…… like a radio badly tuned with chirps and buzzes. One of them grabbed me by the neck of my sweater and lifted me firmly but without violence. I tried to talk but my voice would not come out. While the one held me up another put an apparatus in the base of my index finger on the left hand. They looked closely at the apparatus. It was like a razor but had a small tube. They applied it to me for several seconds. It did not hurt. When they left I had two drops of blood on my finger. I believe I then passed out because I can remember anything else.”

When he snapped awake he was unsure of how long he had been unconscious. When he looked around was was surprised to see that he was now among the rail cars in the yard of the Sociedad Rural de Bahia Blanca, exactly 9 kilometers 600 meters from the point where the bizarre encounter had taken place. He could remember nothing, not even his name, nor the episode, nor the truck, nor his home. He stumbled along towards the road and a Doctor Ricardo Smirnoff would recall:

“I am a forensic surgeon. I had rotating duty on Sunday the 28th. About 9:30 Dr. Altaperro at the Spanish Hospital called me and said that he had a curious case. I arrived at the hospital about 10:15 and saw a young man of about 25 or 26 years of age in a state of total amnesia. He could remember nothing of his past. He did not know who he was, where he was born, who his parents were or anything about his past. He cried continually and asked what town he was in. The doctor told me that a man had left him at the hospital after encountering him wandering in the center of the city, like a robot, and asking everyone he met where a police box was. At first, he thought that he had had an automobile accident on the road. He changed this as he had no injuries. When I touched his head or came near his hand he drew back instinctively as though it would produce pain. He had a bad headache in the right parietal temporal area. I notified the police and had him admitted to the Municipal Hospital.”

There he would wake the next morning with a full memory of his identity and what had happened to him. He quickly realized that some odd items were missing from his pockets, such as his watch, cigarette lighter, and cigarettes, which the medical staff denied taking. When he asked about his truck he was told that the police had found it parked on a shoulder in Villa Bordeu, some 18 kilometers from Bahia Blanca, with the jack still in place and one tire ready to change as if nothing had happened. It is still unknown what happened to Llanca during his bout of missing time, and after this, he was mostly reticent to give interviews about his experience, so it will likely always remain a mystery.

On January 4, 1975, a man by the name of Carlos Alberto Diaz was walking home from work in Bahia Blanca on a route that took him through a large and desolate railroad yard. As he walked he was suddenly blinded by a brilliant light shooting down from the overcast sky, which was enough to disorient him and render him unable to see anything. Scared, he stumbled towards his nearby home but found his movements getting slower and slower, as if he were moving through water until he was completely paralyzed and unable to move at all. At that point, Mr. Diaz heard a humming sound which he compared to the sound of rushing air or wind, and his strange experience continued.

He would claim that he had been lifted off the ground by an unseen force, and as he rose higher he lost consciousness. When he came to, he was inside a smooth, bright sphere that appeared to be semi-transparent plastic. There was no furniture or devices and the illumination seemed to come from the walls. As he sat there trying to process what was happening, a procession of three completely outlandish creatures entered the room. They appeared to be 1.75-1.80 meters in height (approximately 5 feet, 10 inches), their heads half the size of a human head and completely devoid of features – no ears, nose, mouth, or eyes. The head was mossy green in color and the body which was rather thin, was covered with something Diaz defined as rubber – light cream colored and very soft, and the creatures were completely hairless. The arms were almost straight and very flexible and ended in “stumps” with suckers attached rather than hands and fingers.

These entities gathered around him and began pulling clumps of hair from his head, which seemed to make them so happy that they were practically jumping up and down in joy. Oddly, the hair-pulling seemed to cause no pain. Diaz continually tried to fight back against these outlandish creatures but was completely helpless and unable to move at all. When the beings were done pulling his hair, Diaz began to feel dizzy and once again lost consciousness. 

When he woke, he was lying on the grass near a highway with his bag and his belongings lying beside him. Diaz looked at his watch which had stopped at 3:50, the time he last noted before his experience began. A concerned driver soon pulled over to ask him if he needed any help, and after hearing Diaz’s surreal story, he was taken to the Ferroviaro Hospital in Buenos Aires. For the next four days, Diaz was questioned and purportedly examined again and again by 46 different doctors, which turned up no evidence of physiological or psychological problems in Diaz, except the illness described as dizziness, upset stomach, lack of appetite, and the missing hair. Considering that he would talk very little about his strange experience, it is hard to know just what is going on here, although it has been suggested that this was likely a hoax. Whatever the case may be, it is damn strange all the same.

Moving along to 1978, we have the case of Mrs. Leonor Beatriz, of La Dulce, Argentina. On August 31 of that year, Leonor was taking a shower when there was a sudden blackout. After getting dressed the blackness was then intruded upon by a bright light coming from outside, which was so intense that she would explain it as “going right through my body.” The phenomenon was like a compact beam of light, iridescent white that poured through the window blinding her. She would even describe the light as actually phasing through the walls of the house. When she was able to regain some of her vision she looked outside to see a large dark object suspended, oscillating, over a group of 6 silos located some 30 meters away from the house. 

Leonor decided to wake up her husband, who also saw the spectacle and the two noticed that the object was moving away from the silos to pause over a grove of trees. They could see that the object was around 8 meters in diameter, with a row of 10 luminous rectangular windows that surrounded the object’s central section, each of them emitting brilliant light. As they looked on, two objects resembling lightbulbs broke away from the larger ship and moved towards the two astonished witnesses. They could see that these were some sort of amorphous entities that came down to hover just over the ground. Their movements were continuous but rigid. When they reached the barbed wire fence, the beings avoided it by rising in the air and descending on the other side, continuing their march. The entities came close to a shed that contained machinery and vehicles. They made a 90-degree turn and entered a space between the shed and wire fencing. They disappeared for a few moments and then reappeared, dodging other obstacles such as the eucalyptus tree stand and a timber chute with a brick floor, measuring 2 meters wide and 13 meters long.

The creatures proceeded to circle the same route several times, seemingly focusing mostly on the shed. The entities then ascended into the air to rejoin the craft before speeding away into the night. An examination of the area turned up no footprints or physical traces of the strange intruders. Interestingly, this encounter would coincide with several other UFO sightings in the same area on the same day. What was going on here?

Also from 1978 is a case that started in a rural ranching area of Venado, Tuerto, where on the morning of September 6th, 1978, 12-year-old Juan Pérez went out to gather up some of their grazing horses that were wandering out in the fields. The boy dutifully rode his horse out into the nearby field where the horses were, passing some uncommonly thick fog along the way, and as he rode he would claim that he saw several silver, disc-shaped craft suddenly fly overhead. Not only this, by the strange objects then began illuminating the fog with beams of multicolored light and an eerie glow, which caused Juan’s horse to panic and buck, threatening to throw him off. This was all weird enough that the frightened boy returned home, but his father was angry with him for not fulfilling his duty and so sent him out again into that mist, and here is where things would get even weirder still.

Juan managed to get out to the field again without incident, but it was here that he would come across quite a strange sight, in the form of a large flying saucer sitting right there in the field as if it had every business in the world being there. The large disc was described as being domed, with round portholes lining its side, and although Juan was scared, he could not take his eyes off the otherworldly sight before him. As he stood there dumbfounded and gawking at the alien object, a door slid open to extend a ladder and then disgorge a huge, 7-foot-tall entity from within. This entity was wearing a metallic suit, oversized gloves, and a cylindrical helmet, with a tube extending from it to the craft behind it, possibly some sort of breathing apparatus, and it raised an arm to gesture for Juan to approach.

Amazingly, Juan did not run away, but rather got off his horse and approached the strange humanoid figure, with which he ascended into the bowels of the craft itself. The first thing the boy noticed was that everywhere he looked was covered with blinking and flashing instrument panels, and while this didn’t scare him at first that would change as he went deeper into the ship. He came across a room in which there seemed to be a dead animal lying sprawled out upon a table, either a cow or a horse, Juan couldn’t be sure which, half gutted, and hunched over this macabre carcass there was some sort of mechanized being, seemingly hard at work dissecting it. This was shocking enough that Juan ran back outside, where he was once again confronted with that tall humanoid figure. The being then offered one of his gloves as proof of the encounter, taking it off to reveal a clawed, reptilian hand, and as Juan took the glove it pricked his arm to draw blood.

This seemingly aggressive action by the creature and the revelation that its hand was so freakishly inhuman caused Juan to freak out, hopping on his horse and riding back home as fast as he could. As he did so, the ship reportedly detached some sort of metallic orb, which chased the boy, hovered over him, and sucked the glove up into itself, after which it flew off. When Juan returned home, he did so without that physical evidence, but he nevertheless told his family all about what had happened. The mention of the dead animal was very odd, as the father had found a dead and mutilated cow on the property not even a week before, and making it even more mysterious was that the horse Juan had been riding would inexplicably fall ill and die just a few days later.

No one ever would really believe Juan’s story, and he would become the object of ridicule, ending up a recluse living out on his farm alone and with only some dogs to keep him company. However, it made the rounds in the news enough that it caught the attention of famed UFO researcher Jacques Vallee, who would investigate it all, interview the witness, and write of the case in his 1990 book Confrontations – A Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact. It would also become the main subject for a documentary by Argentinian filmmaker Alan Stivelman, entitled Witness of Another World (Testigo de Otro Mundo ), which has been widely touted as one of the best UFO documentaries out there. Stivelman would say of his film:

“In the beginning, I proposed to make this film in order to decode the mystery behind the UFO phenomenon. This mission was overshadowed by the acute sadness that Juan brought with him and the desire to understand why he had to have lived through that supernatural experience that marked him for the rest of his life. It was there, as a filmmaker, that I had to make a crucial decision for the rest of the shooting. To continue with the investigation of the UFO phenomenon, to stay only in the phenomenological aspect, or to attend to Juan, to his suffering, and to look for a way to help him.”

The case of Juan Pérez is especially interesting not only in its bizarre elements but also in who it happened to. This was a simple rancher out in Argentina, who was mostly illiterate and who just wanted to work hard in his own little world away from the big cities of civilization. He was far removed from the world of UFOs and all of that strangeness had no reason to make up such an absurd tale, and indeed it caused him a great amount of trouble and ridicule, which made him pretty much a hermit for life. Why would he do this? It must be noted that despite the hardships it caused him, Juan has never deviated from his story and insists it is all true, and Vallee notably proclaimed that he found Juan to be a very sincere and reliable witness who at least truly believed what he was saying of his otherworldly experience. What happened to Juan Pérez on that strange evening? We may never know for sure, but it remains a remarkable case in the realm of alien abduction cases.

In later years we come to the year 2007, with a report from the town of Irene, in the Coronel Dorrego district of Argentina. On November 7, 2007, two police officers, Luis Bracamonte, a first lieutenant, and Osvaldo Orellano, a sub-lieutenant from the same police station were on patrol in a rural area outside of town at one and a half hours past midnight. At some point, they stopped and Orellano got out of the police pickup truck to take a look around when an odd series of events unfolded. Bracamonte would say of what happened:

“At that time I was loading a telephone calling card into my cellphone, and for that reason, I remained in the vehicle. While I stared at the phone in my hand, I saw a small light, like that of a pickup truck approaching, but when I saw that it was closing in quickly, the light became larger as though from a large gray pickup truck. I wasn’t disturbed by the scene, but at a distance of 10 meters I saw a shape moving and my first thought was that it was a dog. Then I saw that it was a silhouette, like that of a little man, standing approximately 80 centimeters tall, with a large head, large prominent gray eyes, and a greenish cast. I then tried to dial my fellow officer’s cell phone, but when I pressed the 1 and the 5, my hand remained sort of static. I could see that three more creatures came out of that vehicle or craft, two similar to the first and a fourth with a slightly more robust appearance. At that time, my partner was seeing the same thing I was seeing and shouted, “what’s going on?!” In a flash, the four little men boarded that craft again and it took off swiftly toward the north, scattering a white light that extinguished itself, leaving behind a green halo and a strong odor of sulfur or gunpowder, making a sound like a thunderclap.”

Several residents would confirm the police officers' testimony, claiming having seen a strange glow that surrounded the towns of Irene and Aparicio at the time in question. Considering this account was given by police officers, considered to be traditionally reliable witnesses, could there be anything to this?

In 2009, there was a report from an unnamed young woman, 23, who lives in a house in Florencio Varela along with her husband and child. The woman claims that one evening they went to bed as usual only for her to wake up to the sight of 14 aliens surrounding their bed staring at them silently. These aliens were described by the witness:

“They were practically alike. The only difference was the height of one of their number. They were skinny, with long necks and small heads. Their eyes were black, like almonds, slanted, and their mouths were also small. They had little wrinkles on their face and the head was oval. They had shoulders; their fingers were long and had no nails. The tall one was looking at my husband all the time. His head was slightly smaller than the others because the small ones had rather larger heads. It felt like touching a baby’s skin – they had little wrinkles, but I couldn’t feel them when I touched one of them. The skin was cold and the color was odd, neither white nor gray. They had a skin tone that doesn’t exist here.”

The woman would describe what happened next as follows:

“I never had an experience of this sort. It happened two and a half months ago. We were in bed – my husband, my baby and me. They were asleep and I was trying to fall asleep. Suddenly I felt lights, and when I opened my eyes there was nothing there. I closed my eyes again, and the same thing happened. Like a flash of light. I opened my eyes, but all I could see was the [pilot light] on the stove. The fourth time that this happened, I felt it closer. I opened my eyes and saw the beings standing beside me. I was lying between my husband and my daughter. I uncovered myself and sat up. They were around the bed, fourteen of them, all of them short except for one: this last one was beside my husband, staring at him fixedly. The small ones were all around and measured 1.30 meters or so. They were slightly taller than my bed’s sommier, which is rather tall.

I tried to wake my husband up. I even dug my nails into him, but nothing. The baby was on the other side, on her stomach, but neither of them reacted. At that time, one of the beings told me not to wake up my husband, because he was not ready. I  realize that they spoke to me telepathically, and I could answer them in the same way.”

These aliens then proceeded to telepathically tell her, among other revelations, that the aliens visit our planet on six-month rotations, and are replaced by a new group, that the circles and shapes that appear on the fields are signals they employ among themselves, and finally they explained that there are dozens of civilizations from other planets that come down and interact on Earth to study it. The witness continues:

“Five of them were on the left, four facing me and five on the right side of the bed. I was the only one who wasn’t paralyzed. We communicated for some 40 minutes, mouths closed. That is to say, I spoke by my mouth didn’t move. I managed to touch one of the little ones, and he touched my face. I just felt the need to touch him, and in fact, I felt peaceful in their company. I never had the impression that they could harm my daughter or anyone of us. Suddenly he made a movement. He touched me with two fingers, and finally brushed a finger along my forehead. They told me they had come to give me answers about a black book (the Bible) and that what I was thinking was in fact true. When I asked them a question, they told me everything, with details.”

What are we to make of reports like this? Are these cases really alien encounters? Are they perhaps interdimensional interlopers? Or are they merely figments of the imagination? We will probably never know for sure, but they certainly add to the strange files of one of the world's big UFO hotspots. 

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Russia is, in many ways, still a mysterious land that many in the West consider to be rather murky and misunderstood. Buried within the files of the strange and paranormal, there are numerous cases from Russia and the former Soviet Union that, for whatever reasons, have managed to slip through the cracks and remain forgotten conundrums that few people have ever even heard of, and some of these revolve around UFO crashes. With the famed secrecy of this nation further compounding our understanding, these are cases that are not only bizarre but perhaps doomed to stay behind locked doors forever, the answers eluding us until the end of time. 

An earlier account of an apparent UFO crash into a body of water comes to us from November of 1928, at remote Lake Vedlozero, near Shuknavolok, in Russia’s Yaroslavl province. One evening, an incandescent object spewing flames was seen to crash into the lake, and while this may sound like it surely must have been a meteor, there would be a series of very strange sightings that suggested otherwise. Shortly after this object came down, people would begin to report seeing what they called “water goblins” in the lake or wandering along the shore, described as dwarfish beings with hairless, rounded heads and long, thin arms and legs. In some reports, they were described as wearing metallic shiny one-piece suits of some sort. It is possible that these were misidentifications of the seals that occasionally appear in the lake, but with very little other information on this case, it is hard to say.

One very intriguing and spectacular account supposedly occurred in 1959 in what was then Soviet-controlled Poland. In February of that year, several witnesses in the area of a place called Gdynia observed a glowing light fall from the sky to plunge into the frigid waters of the harbor, which was choked up with ice floes at the time. It apparently created quite a commotion at the time, and thinking that perhaps an aircraft had gone down, there was a search and rescue effort launched with a team of divers. It was there, down through the icy waters in the muck at the bottom, that the divers would allegedly uncover a piece of shiny metal that had not rusted and was assumed to be part of whatever it was that had come down out of the heavens.

According to the account, this metal piece was turned over to the Polish Navy, who made a preliminary examination of it before sending it off to the Polytechnic University of Gdynia, where it vanished into the mists of time. In the meantime, the Navy closed the whole area down and restricted access, but the weirdness was only just beginning. A few days after the object had come down into the harbor, it was reported that several military personnel came across what was described as a “strange silhouette humanoid” that appeared to be wearing a uniform of some sort and was injured, with burns on its face and crawling along the beach in exhaustion, wet and seeming to have crept out of the water. The soldiers tried to communicate with the strange humanoid, which appeared to be male, but they were not familiar with the language he spoke. As he was obviously seriously injured, it was arranged to bring this being to the hospital, where it would get even stranger still.

Once at the hospital, it was immediately clear that this humanoid was weirder than anyone had thought. His uniform was made of some sort of strange metallic material that no one recognized, and no matter what the medical staff did, they seemed to be unable to remove it. The uniform had no discernible buttons, zippers, or any way to put it on or take it off, and the material it was constructed of apparently could not be cut or torn. In overall appearance, he appeared to be almost identical to a human being, although there were anomalies, such as extra digits on his fingers and toes, and other minor differences that marked him as not human. Doctors tended as well as they could to the burns on the being’s face, but when they removed an armband on the uniform, he apparently went into some sort of cardiac arrest and died.

The body was sent in for an autopsy, and they purportedly needed specialized equipment to remove that odd uniform. When the body was examined, the humanoid was purportedly found to have a completely different circulatory system than human beings, as well as different organs. Unbelievably, there was another of these creatures found on the same beach in the meantime, and this one apparently fell into a coma-like state and was placed in some sort of frozen stasis, the body whisked away and hidden somewhere. What happened to these two bodies and that piece of what is assumed to be their crashed ship? No one seems to know. The case has been picked up by UFOlogists over the years and has been written of at length by UFO researcher Arthur Shuttlewood and others, but there seems to be very little to verify the story, no witnesses that have been interviewed, and it has the feel of being almost urban legend rather than anything else. However, one does wonder just what happened here, if anything.

In the summer of 1966, a Russian geologist by the name of Oleg Ivanovich was on an expedition to a thickly forested region northwest of Topolovka. The remote area made progress slow, and they faced their fair share of difficulties. At one point, their horse got badly stuck in the mosquito-infested muck of a swamp, and they decided to camp out for the night, having no idea of the weirdness that was to follow. 

During the night, the entire camp was awoken by a deafening roar that sent them jumping out of their tents into the night to see what was going on. According to the report, all around them, the forest was illuminated and ablaze with fire, producing a wave of heat so intense that the expedition members retreated to a small nearby river to get away from it. The forest continued to smolder and burn all night, with some trees still in flames even when the morning arrived. It seemed like only one area was charred and burning, so they assumed that some sort of explosion had occurred, and they hiked off to see what it might be.

As they walked along, sometimes choking on the thick smoke, they noticed that their compasses and radio were going haywire, and that they all had a sort of brain fog and “sense of powerlessness.” They also noticed that the trees seemed to be bent, leaning towards one direction, and that the tops were missing, as if they had been chopped off with a cleaver. It was all pretty eerie, but they nevertheless continued slogging through the swampy mud until they reached a large, smoldering object that looked like “two washbasins set face to face,” the whole of it colored with flashing lights. They could also make out an opening on the side of the object that was belching out smoke from within, and upon closer inspection, they saw what they claimed to be “a tentacle” protruding out from the gloom beyond the barrier. 

The team tried to get even closer, but the swampy terrain was too unforgiving and dangerous for them to get any nearer, and they also realized that the more they approached the object, the more they were filled with nausea and dread. They would also report that their vision seemed to be getting blurry, so thinking it was perhaps from radiation, they withdrew to a safer distance. It was around this time that the sounds of the night were punctuated by the thumping of what sounded like helicopter blades. This proved to be true when, moments later, they could see five unmarked helicopters come into view over the treetops, seemingly converging on the site where that strange object had been seen. The next morning, they would go back to find no trace of the object, nor any sign of debris at all.

It would later turn out that there were other witnesses to the previous night’s mysterious events. One witness, Anna Egoronovna, had been awakened in the middle of the night by a loud roar and found the walls of the house shaking, and when she had looked outside, it had seemed to be as bright as day. She also had seen “a great glowing light as bright as the sun” hurtling down towards the forest, followed by a boom and a blast of wind. Also a man named Michael Kuzmich, a 79-year old hunter, had been fishing in the area late at night when suddenly he heard a tremendous noise, a sort of “howling,” followed by the trees bursting into flame and a thunderous clap and shockwave that was powerful enough to send him sprawling to the ground. 

It is a curious case, in that it is totally unknown what happened after this, or where that mysterious object had come from, or where it had gone. Another case comes from 1969, from the state of Sverdlovsk, which was formerly Yekatrinburg of the USSR. In March of that year, a fiery object came down to smash into the earth, and allegedly, the site was secured by the Russian military, and one dead alien was found in the wreckage. The remains of the craft and the alien were purportedly brought to a secure location, and the alien's body autopsied. Interestingly, there were supposedly reams of photographs and film taken, not only of the crash site, but also of the alien autopsy. 

The whole case comes from the so-called “Secret KGB Files,” which were reportedly smuggled out of the former Soviet Union for a sum of $10,000, and the photos were aired on a TV program called The Secret UFO Files of the KGB. The special aired on the TNT network and features Roger Moore, veteran actor and former James Bond, who discusses other UFO events as well, along with interviews with UFO experts, CIA agents, and other important people in the field. As far as the footage goes, an analysis on UFOCasebook says of it:

“The footage at the crash site does seem to be authentic at least on several points. The truck in the film is a circa 1950 model ZIS151, which has not been used by the military for quite some time, and the truck would have been difficult to find to stage a hoax with. Other elements of the film do not exhibit any obvious signs of a hoax, as to the movement of the soldiers, the timing of the film as to shadows, and the UFO itself.

There are also several documents shown to verify the event itself, and an eyewitness to the event who swears that the recovery mission did occur. The footage of the autopsy film shows personnel without caps and gowns, which seemed odd to me at first, but after some research I found that this was commonplace for that era in Russia.

The furnishings in the room are acceptable, and in Russia have probably not changed much today. Three men in their 20’s and 30’s are performing the procedure, and one woman is taking notes. The note taker is identified as KGB stenographer O. A. Pshonikina. The alien’s torso and arm are lying together on the table as the autopsy is performed, and there are documents shown to support the autopsy.

Although the USA-Russia relationship is much improved over a few years ago, it still lacks. Any information received is subject to translation, and oftentimes there are problems with interpretation. It is sad there is not more cooperation between the two countries. The case of the 1969 retrieval and autopsy are difficult to assess. Until more information is uncovered, it will remain unsubstantiated.”

From 1986, there is a strange case from the cold wilds. The small mining town of Dalnegorsk, Russia, is a rather bleak, stark, and frigid place. Indeed, the name Dalnegorsk literally means “far in the mountains,” and the unforgiving landscape here is fitting for such a name. It is a remote, rugged place of near-perpetual cold, just a speck on the map and unknown to most of the outside world. Yet this forgotten place has one claim to fame, as it was once supposedly the site of a UFO that crashed to earth, which would then spawn stories of conspiracies and cover-ups, as well as usher in a whole series of UFO phenomena and strangeness.

In the cold, dark morning hours of January 29, 1986, hundreds of locals had their attention drawn skyward by an unusual sight. Streaking across the sky was seen a glowing reddish ball, travelling in a parallel, controlled manner at a speed of around 120 mph, described as being about the size of “half of the moon’s disc” and with a metallic surface like “hot stainless steel.” The object was obviously no meteor, as it appeared to slow down to a speed of only around 50 mph as it approached Izvestkovaya Mountain, also called “Height 611.” It was thought at first that this was perhaps something from the military base nearby, but whatever it was did not make the slightest sound as it flew over at a height of around 700 feet. As the villagers looked on in astonishment, the object suddenly jerked and dipped sharply, before plummeting to earth behind the trees and hitting the mountain beyond in a ball of flame, producing a blindingly bright flash, yet there was oddly no expected boom of an explosion. For several hours, the glow of what looked from a distance like a forest fire could be seen emanating from where the mysterious object had gone down, yet no one dared approach.

It would not be until a few days later that anyone would arrive at the remote site to check it out, when a team from the Academy of Sciences came to investigate the odd reports. They discovered a circular spot in the forest that had been charred, and to their amazement, there were numerous shards of metal, mesh fragments, beads, and an anomalous black film over everything. There were some odd magnetic readings at the site, an unidentifiable chemical odor lingering everywhere, and a certain charge to the air like static electricity, yet no abnormal radiation was detected. Some reports say that those who examined the area experienced various health issues such as nose bleeds, headaches, nausea, and blood pressure fluctuations, and inexplicably, all photos taken of it would later come out completely blank. Samples of the materials were gathered, and things would get stranger still.

Scientists allegedly found that the beads were composed of lead, silicon, gold, nickel, and iron, but when melted down, their composition anomalously changed into such elements as titanium and molybdenum. The mesh-like material was found to also have many oddities. For one, its structure was bizarre to say the least, made of microscopic twisted fibers of carbonic and metal threads only 17 microns wide, beyond anyone's capabilities to make at the time. Some of the fragments featured an incredibly high density of gold, inconsistent with the surrounding area. The mesh also proved to be well-nigh indestructible, unable to be damaged by soaking in strong acids or solvents, and only able to be cut with the hardest diamond cutting tools. Scientists were apparently dumbfounded by all of this, but rather than explain it as aliens, it was thought to perhaps be from an American satellite or aircraft displaying some unknown advanced technology, although the United States would later deny having anything to do with it. In later years, some of these fragments made their way to the United States, and some would even be displayed. One such exhibit of some of these alleged fragments was shown at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, and the description at the exhibition reads:

Three Soviet academic centers and 11 research institutes analyzed the objects from this UFO crash. The distance between atoms is different from ordinary iron. Radar cannot be reflected from the material. Elements in the material may disappear and new ones appear after heating. One piece disappeared completely in front of four witnesses. The core of the material is composed of a substance with anti-gravitational properties.

In the days after the Dalnegorsk incident, the area, and in particular Height 611, would allegedly become ground zero for intense waves of UFO sightings, with dozens of subsequent instances of mysterious objects in the sky. On some occasions the objects were reported as hovering over the mountain and illuminating the forest below with beams, as if looking for something, and such reports would carry on into the following year and beyond, given by people from all walks of life, including traditionally reliable witnesses such as doctors, policemen, officials, and military personnel. In some instances, people even claimed to have found more of the mysterious fragments in the area, as well as patches of a strange oil-like substance.

Although it is all a rather spectacular tale, the Dalnegorsk incident managed to be sort of brushed under the carpet, hidden away by what was then the Soviet Union, and it was not until years later that outside ufologists would begin uncovering the tale and making its existence known through articles and TV shows such as a notable segment on a 1995 episode of Sightings. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much remaining in the way of corroborating evidence, and the vast majority of the supposed material from the crash has gone missing over the decades. While it is all very intriguing and seems promising on some levels, with plenty of eyewitnesses and potential physical evidence, we are forced to relegate it to the files of other cases that have been lost to history, with no way of proving them true or not, one way or the other. What happened at that cold, lonely mountain? We may never know.

In the spring of 1989, Soviet Navy personnel purportedly observed a glowing object enter the sea off the coast of the Dalniy Vostok area, outside of Vladivostok, in Far East Russia. According to the account, a recovery operation was immediately initiated and a device described as egg-shaped and 6 meters long, with a matte grey exterior and 6 oval structures like dark portholes encircled the lower part of the object, which was retrieved from the seabed by divers and brought ashore. There, they tried to open the object with blowtorches and other cutting instruments, but they could not even put a scratch on the surface. 

The object was later transported to Vladivostok and then to Moscow, where they were equally unsuccessful at accessing the interior of the weird object. It was only after they found a minuscule crack in the hull that they were able to use a laser to slowly widen the opening to the point that they were able to penetrate the object. The first of three levels of the object was a disaster area, with exploded consoles and a reactor that had apparently self-destructed or had been destroyed by an explosion. On the second level, they would supposedly find three dead alien bodies, with two of them sitting in chairs and another sprawled out on the floor. 

The aliens were about 1.3 – 1.5m in height, with one being slightly taller, about 1.6-1.7 m. They had large hairless heads encased in helmets, 6 fingered extremities, and gray-brown colored skin, large round eyes, which were covered with black eye lenses, and small ears. They were dressed in tight-fitting metallic silver colored suits with a violet tint, with belts and what appeared to be circles on their chest area. They also wore elbow-length gloves. The suits were removed with extreme difficulty, and also the silver-greenish boots and gloves. One body was grievously damaged, apparently by the hard impact of the crash. An autopsy would later reveal that they had a thick, viscous black liquid for blood. The object was later transported inside a mountain beyond the Polar Circle on Novaya Zemlya Island, and after that, no one really knows what happened to it or its unfortunate crew. Is there any truth to this story at all? Who knows?

Moving into 1989, there is a rather spectacular series of events that played out in the skies of Zastrahovka, which seems to involve a group of UFOs shooting another one down. In September of that year, six circular, silver, flying saucers ganged up and fought a seventh, golden saucer, with all of them pulling incredible aerial maneuvers and exchanging blasts with what appeared to be light beams. This was all seen by hundreds of witnesses in the area, and it would later be claimed that the intense UFO dogfight caused a blackout in the city. The outnumbered golden UFO eventually was overwhelmed by repeated strikes from the energy beams, and apparently lost altitude to come down into a crash as it’s antagonists sped off into the clouds. 

According to the report, the outgunned loser came down right into a bog on a military test range. A military team had then descended on the boggy area to conduct a full search and rescue operation, although it is unclear what they actually found. Eventually, all activities at the military range were shut down and the base put under heavy guard, so it seems unlikely that we will ever know what happened here. 

Also from 1989 is a report from Prohladnyi, Russia, where at approximately 11:00 AM on August 10, 1989, military radar units detected an unidentified flying object. All attempts to communicate with the unidentified object were met with silence, and so the decision was made to label it as hostile. Defense systems were put on the highest alert, with the utilization of surface-to-air missiles, and the deployment of MiG-25s that were ordered to intercept and engage the intruder. A ground-to-air missile reportedly hit the UFO, causing it to veer off over the Caucasian Mountains and come down somewhere in the wilderness. 

When a retrieval team was sent, they supposedly found a disc-like object measuring 6.9 meters long and 3.0 meters high, and “shaped like a cockleshell.” The craft had left a huge rut in the dirt and was very badly damaged, with debris everywhere. More extraordinarily, three aliens were found inside, with two dead and one heavily injured but still alive. A medical team attempted to keep the alien alive, but their efforts failed. All of these beings were described as standing about 1.0-1.2 meters tall, with a whitish gray outer cover that revealed blue-green reptilian skin beneath. The other worldly beings also had hairless heads, large black eyes, almost round, which were covered by a protective lid, and three webbed fingers at the end of their inhumanly long, slender arms. These aliens would be moved into glass cylinders and put away in a top-secret facility east of Solnechnogorsk. Once again, there is no further news on what happened after that. 

These are bizarre cases to be sure, but perhaps not quite as much so as what happened to a Russian submariner and diver named Nikolay M., as he was diving one day in 1997 in the Bay of Finland, in the Saint Petersburg region of Russia. Nikolay allegedly was diving in shallow water when he saw an elongated object on the bottom, which was reminiscent of a cucumber. He at first took it to be a part of some sort of wreckage and tried to get it to the surface by tying some old rope around it, but he was ultimately unable to budge the odd object. Undeterred, he decided to haul it out with his car, which was on shore and not that far away. He retrieved a pneumatic drill to drill holes in the thing to attach a sling to it, but when he started drilling into the object, it began to issue forth streamers of a thick, dark liquid like oil, which crept out into the water. Despite this startling development, he kept pressure on the drill to go deeper, after which it stopped upon hitting something within. At this point, the object reportedly split open to regurgitate a bubble containing a humanoid creature with porcelain white skin and a bleeding wound where the drill had hit it.

The creature did not seem pleased and fixed the diver with a malevolent gaze, after which it lashed out with taloned hands to grab his arm and cut into his flesh. Nikolay then supposedly used the drill to bore into his attacker, after which it let go and he lost consciousness. The next thing he knew, he was being dragged from the water by rescuers. It was found that he had sustained deep cuts on his arm and lost a piece of his hand, but there was no sign of the strange cucumber object or its bizarre, unearthly occupant. What did this man see? Was it some sort of cocoon? If so, for what? Nobody knows.

Secrecy is, of course, the eternal obstacle to getting to the bottom of cases that we have looked at here, and it is not something wholly unique to Russia in that the United States and other countries have also long been said to keep their own UFO crashes under wraps. Yet at times it seems that Russia is an even more impenetrable fortress of secrecy that we will never gain access to on these matters, and we can only wonder about what these cases really entailed.

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“Comets are like cats: they have tails, and they do precisely what they want,” wrote David H. Levy, an amateur astronomer who discovered 22 comets, nine of them using his own backyard telescopes. 

David Levy’s bio on the Vatican Observatory website states that he is “one of the most successful comet discoverers in history.” With Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker at the Palomar Observatory in California, he discovered Shoemaker-Levy 9, the comet that broke up and spectacularly collided with Jupiter in 1994.

Evidently, David Levy knew a thing or two about identifying and tracking these enigmatic celestial visitors who come into the inner solar system from time to time. The reason why he thought comets are like cats is not because he heard them purr or saw them perform crazy antics in the sky, but because of their unpredictable nature. 

Comets are difficult to track, for they are often not found at their expected position in their orbit. Sometimes they change their orbital path. Some of them arrive at their perihelion positions (closest to the Sun) either too soon or too late.[1] The 1st century CE historian, Josephus, was certainly referring to a comet when he described a star, resembling a sword, which stood over the city of Jerusalem for an entire year, in 66 CE.[2]

Astronomers don't know when exactly a comet will start to brighten up and emit a lot of gases, how bright it will become, or when it will stop doing so and become almost invisible. For instance, in 2012, comet ISON became very active far, far, away from the Sun, but when it came into the inner solar system, it started losing brightness. 

Comets are quite moody and capricious that way. It’s almost as if they might be conscious space entities who have their own mysterious agendas and ways of working, about which we are quite clueless.  

While researching for my book Yuga Shift, I noticed something about comets that captivated me. The structure and variety of their tails are very similar to the flagella, which are used by a number of microorganisms for locomotion! And the way comets move through space while rotating on their axis and waving their tails is exactly the manner in which microbes move as well.

Comet Tails and Flagella

How do comets move through space? The current thinking is that a comet is nothing but a ball of ice and frozen gases with a covering of dirt. The term “dirty snowballs” is often used to describe them. When a comet approaches the Sun, the nucleus gets heated by solar radiation. As a result, the sub-surface ices begin to sublimate (i.e. they turn directly from solid to gas) and comes out through the cracks on the crust. As the gases come out, they blow off bits of dust particles. The rocket-like outgassing of materials gives a comet the ability to move and accelerate on its own. 

The gas and dust released by the nucleus of a comet forms the brilliant coma around the nucleus and, typically, two long tails - a yellowish-white, curvy, dust tail and a straight, bluish, ion tail -  both of which point away from the Sun due to the effects of solar radiation and solar wind.

I never really had any reason to doubt these oft-repeated explanations, or to even think of comets as conscious entities, until I saw a couple of images of comet tails, which sparked off a different line of thinking.

In some comets, the dust tail has distinct striations. These were first observed in Comet McNaught in 2007, which was one of the brightest comets visible from the Earth in the past 50 years. NASA reported that, “Setting McNaught apart further still from its peers, however, was its highly structured tail, composed of many distinct dust bands called striae, or striations, that stretched more than 100 million miles behind the comet, longer than the distance between Earth and the Sun.”[3]

Similar striations were observed in the dust tail of Comet NEOWISE in 2020. NASA Science reported that, “Comet NEOWISE's impressive dust-tail striations are not fully understood, as yet, but likely related to rotating streams of sun-reflecting grit liberated by ice melting on its 5-kilometer wide nucleus.”[4]

What is really intriguing about these dust-tail striations is that, even though we have been able to detect these striations only in recent decades, using highly sophisticated telescopes, they were clearly depicted in an ancient Chinese comet atlas, which was found in a Han-era tomb that was sealed in 168 BCE. 

The 2000-year-old Chinese text known as the Mawangdui Silk Text records hundreds of comet sightings over three centuries, with two dozen renderings of specific cometary forms. Each sighting noted the time of appearance, flight path, and disappearance, accompanied by a caption describing an event that corresponded to the comet's appearance, such as “the death of the prince,” “the coming of the plague,” “the 3 year drought” etc.

The images in the Mawangdui comet atlas make it quite obvious that the ancient Chinese astronomers, who lived more than two thousand years ago, were able to clearly see the dust tail striations of comets! What kind of advanced optical instruments could they have been using? Surely, they were not peering through a bamboo shoot, as many mainstream scientists would want us to believe! 

While looking at the comet atlas of the Mawangdui Silk Texts, another thought began to play on my mind. The comets with their striated tails seemed vaguely familiar, as if I had seen them before. “Is this how unicellular organisms with flagella look like? “ I thought to myself. I decided to refresh my memory of high school biology by doing some online research.

This is what I found. Many unicellular organisms, such as bacteria, algae, and protozoa, use cilia and flagella for locomotion. The flagella are long, whip-like projections from the cell body, while the cilia are small, hair-like projections on the cell surface. While a cell may have hundreds of cilia, the number of flagella is generally less than ten. 

A unicellular organism uses both the cilia and flagella for locomotion. While the cilia execute a back-and-front beating, the flagella moves in a propeller-like manner to drive the organism forward, such that it forms waves on the flagella.

Here’s the part that made my eyes light up. There are essentially four types of flagella in algal cells, and a single cell may have one or more of these types.

1. Acronematic flagella or whiplash flagella is smooth and elongated without any hairs. 
2. Pantonematic flagella has a central filament with two rows of lateral hairs (called mastigonemes) attached to it like feathers. 
3. Pantocronematic flagella also has a central filament with two rows of hairs, but with a single terminal hair.
4. Stichonematic flagella has a central filament with a single row of hair.

Now, if we look back at the depictions of the comets in the Mawangdui comet atlas, we will find something astonishing: each and every comet tail depicted in the comet atlas corresponds to one of the flagella types of algal cells! In the diagram below, I have mapped the comet tails to the flagella types of algae.

I was amazed by this exact correlation, to say the least! It’s almost as if the ancient Chinese astronomers, instead of designing a powerful telescope to scan the sky for comets, had mistakenly invented a powerful microscope and were peering at the ground and describing unicellular organisms with flagella.

But obviously that wasn’t the case. What this strange association implies is that comets might actually have faint tail-like structures for locomotion, which become visible when a comet emits gases, but otherwise remain invisible to us at such long distances. The gas and dust released by a comet may be coalescing around the cilia to form the brilliant coma, and around the flagella to form the comet tails.

It seems to me that the acronematic or whiplash flagella is what we know as the “ion tail” of a comet, which is straight and bluish in color, and does not have striations, while the stichonematic, pantonematic and pantocronematic flagella - which are collectively known as tinsel flagella – are the curvy “dust tail” of a comet, where the striations appear. 

Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), a long-period comet which came from the Oort cloud and spun around the Sun in 2015, displayed multiple ion tails, indicative of multiple acronematic or whiplash flagella. As we have noted, there are a number of comets in the Chinese comet atlas with multiple whiplash flagella. 

Regarding Comet C/2014 Q2 (termed Comet Lovejoy, since it was discovered by amateur Australian astronomer, Terry Lovejoy), NASA reported that, 

“Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), which is currently at naked-eye brightness and near its brightest, has been showing an exquisitely detailed ion tail...The effect of the variable solar wind combined with different gas jets venting from the comet's nucleus accounts for the tail's complex structure. Following the wind, structure in Comet Lovejoy's tail can be seen to move outward from the Sun even alter its wavy appearance over time.”[5]

I found it interesting that the ion tails of Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) changed their wavy appearance over time. This is exactly what you would expect if the tails were being used for locomotion. In unicellular organisms, the flagella rotate like a propeller, which gives it a wavy appearance. 

Comet C/2011 W3 (also called Comet Lovejoy, since it was also discovered by amateur Australian astronomer Terry Lovejoy) passed deep within the solar corona in December 2011. A team of researchers published a paper in Science journal, where they said that the tail of Comet Lovejoy “wiggled”! This article from Phys.org states,

“What the researchers found most interesting about Lovejoy's close call (with the Sun) was the movement of its tail as it passed through parts of the corona—it wiggled, displaying major changes in intensity, direction, persistence and magnitude.”[6]

Now, isn’t that startling? Not only do the tails of comets exactly resemble the flagella of algae, comets also wiggle their tails as they move, which gives their tails a wavy appearance.

And there’s more. It has been known for a long time that the nucleus of a comet rotates as it moves. Small comets rotate rapidly, while larger ones rotate slowly.[7] Scientists studying the motion of the single-celled green alga called Chlamydomonas found that the body of the alga rotates in a corkscrew motion as it moves. This is what the press release by the University of Exeter (2021) tells us:

“A team of researchers from the University of Exeter’s flagship Living Systems Institute has discovered how the model alga Chlamydomonas is seemingly able to scan the environment by constantly spinning around its own body axis in a corkscrewing movement. This helps it respond to light, which it needs for photosynthesis...In the new study, the researchers first performed experiments which revealed that the two flagella in fact beat in planes that are slightly skewed away from each other.”[8]

Needless to say, I became more and more intrigued as the similarities between comets and terrestrial microbes kept on piling up. Almost every aspect of the movement of unicellular organisms can be seen in comets. The study from the University of Exeter that I cited above also found that Chlamydomonas cells swim towards the light using their flagella. But how do they sense the light? As per the scientists,

“Chlamydomonas cells are able to sense light through a red eye spot and can react to it, known as phototaxis. The cell rotates steadily as it propels itself forwards using a sort of breaststroke, at a rate of about once or twice a second, so that its single eye can scan the local environment.”  

So, let’s get this straight. A comet moves towards the Sun by wiggling its tail, and the comet's nucleus rotates as it moves. Chlamydomonas cells move towards the light by beating their flagella, and the cell rotates to allow the “red eye spot” to scan the environment. The correspondences are absolutely spot on! Incidentally, phototaxis is exhibited by many unicellular phototrophs (i.e. organisms which can make their own food using sunlight) such as green algae, dinoflagellates, cyanobacteria etc.

Could it be, I wondered, that comets are also capable of sensing light using an eye spot and move towards the Sun by means of phototaxis? Perhaps, comets are giant, conscious, space organisms who move around in outer space pretty much on their own, and are not gravitationally bound to the Sun?

But there is an issue with that line of reasoning. If comets move using phototaxis, then how do short-period comets, which have an orbital period of less than 200 years and have their aphelion near Jupiter or Neptune, have such stable orbits over time? Surely, phototaxis by itself cannot guarantee such stable orbits?

My surmise is that, in addition to having a “red eye spot” for sensing the light, comets may also possess “magnetoreceptors” inside their nucleus, using which they orient their orbits along the (solar) interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). We know that there are many types of terrestrial animals, such as migratory birds and sea turtles, which use magnetoreceptors for sensing the Earth’s magnetic field to orient themselves and navigate over long distances. 

Since the (solar) interplanetary magnetic field lines may have occasional bends and twists (just like the Earth’s magnetic field), a comet may not be found at the expected point in its orbit. Moreover, comets, being conscious organisms, might jump from one magnetic field line to another, thereby changing their orbit. They might increase or decrease their speed consciously, in response to internal or external stimuli, and arrive at their perihelion (closest to the Sun) positions either too soon or too late. Sometimes they might stop altogether, and appear at the same place for a long time, as observed by the 1st century CE historian, Josephus.

In other words, comets may not be like “cats”, as David H. Levy had suggested, but could very well be like unicellular organisms such as algae and bacteria. It is quite possible that they are not gravitationally bound to the Sun, but are moving around the Sun consciously, using a combination of phototaxis and magnetoreception, using their flagella-like tails as locomotory organs. Comets may also have an ability called gravitaxis, which makes marine algae and other types of organisms move towards or away from gravity. This could be why most short-period comets have their aphelion (farthest from the Sun) near the gas giants Jupiter and Neptune.

This brings up another intriguing question. The reason why the alga chlamydomonas - and phototrophic organisms in general - move towards the light is because they need the light for photosynthesis. Could it be that comets also make their own food utilizing photosynthesis? 

We know that unicellular organisms move their flagella using energy derived from ATP (adenosine triphosphate) molecules that are produced by the breakdown of glucose during cellular respiration. Could this be the case for comets as well? Are there metabolic reactions going on in the interior of comets that produce the energy needed for their movement and the gases they emit? 

Metabolic Activity inside Comets

Astronomers currently believe that the nucleus of a comet contains the frozen ices of many gases. When a comet approaches the Sun, the sub-surface ices sublimate due to solar radiation and come out of the cracks on the outer crust in the form of gases. 

Our information about the gases released by comets comes from studying the spectra of different comets. The dominant gases in the coma are water vapor and carbon dioxide, followed by carbon monoxide, which is ionized by UV radiation and swept into the ion tail. 

In 2014, the Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) released 21 different organic molecules, including ethyl alcohol and glycolaldehyde, a simple sugar. “We found that comet Lovejoy was releasing as much alcohol as in at least 500 bottles of wine every second during its peak activity,” said Nicolas Biver of the Paris Observatory, France. Lovejoy passed closest to the sun on January 30, 2015, when it was releasing water at the rate of 20 tons per second. The atmosphere of the comet around this time was brightest and most active.[9]

Comets also release small amounts of other gases such as methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulphide, cyanogen, formaldehyde, etc. ESA’s Rosetta mission discovered the amino acid glycine, which is commonly found in proteins, and phosphorus, a key component of DNA and cell membranes, in the coma of Comet 67P - Churyumov-Gerasimenko.[10] The current thought process is that comets may be reservoirs of primitive material in the Solar System, which are released when they get warmed up.

But there is a problem with this hypothesis. Firstly, scientists find it very difficult to explain how these substances and organic molecules were created and ended up inside a comet in the first place. Secondly, many of these gases are released by a comet before the temperature reaches the sublimation point (i.e., the temperature at when a solid directly turns into a gas). 

Most comets develop a coma and tails when they are somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. Scientists believe that this happens because frozen water begins to sublimate at ~3 AU from the Sun (Mars is at 1.5 AU, Jupiter at 5.2 AU; 1 AU = distance between the Sun and Earth). 

However, nearly one-third of comets become active beyond the water ice sublimation boundary at 3 AU.[11] The Long-period Comet Hale-Bopp had a giant coma upon discovery at a distance of 7 AU (near Saturn's orbit) and continued to be active at much farther distances post-perihelion. 

The first volatile gases observed in distantly active comets (beyond 3 AU) were carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, cyanogen, and hydroxide (which comes from water molecules).[12] The question is, how are distantly active comets releasing carbon dioxide and other gases into their coma, over such large distances from the Sun?

Is it possible that the gases released by a comet are a byproduct of metabolic activities taking place within the core of a comet’s nucleus, and not due to the sublimation of frozen ices?

Imagine an old man with a flatulence problem goes to see a doctor, and the doctor tells him that a surgical operation is required to take out the “solidified gas deposits” present inside the man’s stomach, which were presumably formed when he was born. Would that person ever see that doctor again after enduring such a harrowing experience?   

I don’t think so, since everyone knows that the gases released by humans and all living organisms are a product of respiration and metabolic activity. Carbon dioxide is released by us during breathing, while many types of gases are generated during digestion – carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, methane, etc., some of which can cause flatulence. 

It is possible, therefore, that the gases released by a comet are a product of metabolic activity taking place within the comet’s nucleus. Since comets resemble algae and other unicellular organisms, let us try to figure out what might be going on inside a cometary nucleus from that perspective.

Since unicellular phototrophs such as algae, euglena and cyanobacteria contain chloroplasts, they are able to produce their own food through photosynthesis. It is for this reason that they move towards the light by means of phototaxis. Perhaps, comets also contain chloroplasts, which allow them to produce glucose using carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight? 

In addition to chloroplasts, a comet nucleus is likely to contain reservoirs of water with dissolved carbon dioxide, since a recent study found pockets of carbon dioxide-rich liquid water inside salt crystals in a carbonaceous chondrite (which come from spent comets).[13]

When a comet approaches the Sun, at a certain point in its orbit when the light intensity is strong enough, the photosynthetic process may get triggered. 

• 6CO2 + 6H2O + Sunlight = C6H12O6 (glucose) + 6O2 

The oxygen produced during photosynthesis may not be released outside, but is used for aerobic cellular respiration, in which the glucose is broken down into water, carbon dioxide, and ATP molecules.

• C6H12O6 (glucose) + 6O2 = 6CO2 + 6H2O + ATP

This would explain why comets emit such large quantities of water vapor and carbon dioxide, even when they are beyond the water ice sublimation boundary (3 AU). They are released as byproducts of aerobic cellular respiration. 

The ATP molecules provide the necessary energy to comets to power their journey through space by moving their cilia and flagella. This could be why comets not only emit more gas but also move faster as they draw closer to the Sun. The photosynthesis process will be at its peak when a comet reaches perihelion, i.e., the closest point to the Sun in its orbit. 

When comets move far away from the Sun and are not able to photosynthesize, they can use the stored ATP molecules to continue their journey. This could be why many comets can accelerate even when they are at vast distances from the Sun, and the coma and tails are not visible. 

In other words, outgassing is not necessary for cometary acceleration, as was particularly evident in case of the Interstellar Comet Oumuamua, which accelerated away from the Sun at a tremendous pace, and yet showed no signs of a coma or tails.

Comets may also have the ability to switch to anaerobic cellular respiration, which can be carried out in the absence of oxygen, in order to generate ATP molecules from the glucose stored within the nucleus. In anaerobic respiration, the stored glucose is broken down into ethanol, carbon dioxide and ATP. 

• C6H12O6 (glucose) + Enzymes = 2C2H5OH (ethanol) + 2CO2 + ATP

Anaerobic respiration releases much less energy than aerobic respiration, since glucose is partially broken down. This method may be used by a comet when it has run out of its internal storage of oxygen. This can explain why Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) was releasing large amounts of ethanol: it had switched to anaerobic cellular respiration. 

Some of the other gases seen in the spectra of comets are carbon monoxide, cyanogen, formaldehyde, ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulphide, etc. Each of these gases is produced by different species of algae and bacteria as byproducts of metabolic activities. 

• Carbon Monoxide: Studies show that “the chemical processes associated with the biosynthesis and degradation of the photosynthetic pigments in algae produce large amounts of carbon monoxide (CO)”.[14]
• Formaldehyde: It has been isolated from nearly every marine algal species, which indicates that formaldehyde formation takes place within algae.[15]
• Cyanogen:  Cyanogen gas (commonly called cyanide) has been observed in the coma of many comets, including Comet Hartley 2 and the Interstellar Comet Borisov. It is thought to be produced when a gas called hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is broken apart by sunlight.[16] As per a recent study (2020), HCN is produced by cyanobacteria.

“The  production  of  HCN  was  examined  in  78  cyanobacteria  strains  from  all  five principal sections of cyanobacteria…Twenty-eight  (28) strains  were  found  positive for  HCN  production...HCN production could be linked with nitrogen fixation, as all of HCN producing strains are considered capable of fixing nitrogen.”[17]

• Ammonia: Cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, can convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia through a process called nitrogen fixation. Since nitrogen is present in interstellar clouds[18], certain types of comets may be able to convert it into ammonia, in order to make amino acids. Amino acids such as glycine have been detected in the atmosphere of Comet 67P.[19]
• Methane: A class of bacteria called methanogens produces methane and water as a byproduct of anaerobic respiration. They are found in regions low in oxygen (anoxic) such as wetlands, landfills, etc.
• Hydrogen Sulphide: Sulfate-reducing bacteria, which live in the coastal waters, produce hydrogen sulphide as a byproduct of anaerobic respiration. 

Thus, all of the gases commonly seen in the spectra of comets are generated as a result of aerobic or anaerobic cellular respiration or other metabolic activities by different types of unicellular organisms, such as algae, bacteria, protozoa, etc. 

This provides a strong basis to argue that comets are conscious space organisms carrying out cellular respiration and a variety of internal metabolic activities. The gases generated as a byproduct of these metabolic activities are released by a comet, which coalesces around the cilia and flagella to create the brilliant coma and the tails of the comet. The ATP molecules provide the necessary energy for a comet to move through space by moving its cilia and flagella, which is why comets have been seen to accelerate even when they don’t display signs of outgassing.

This is a far better explanation of the observational data than the current hypothesis, which posits that comets are lifeless, “dirty snowballs”. This doesn’t tell us how all of these gases and organic molecules ended up within comets, why comets move around the Sun, why these gases and complex organic molecules are released, how is it that comets can brighten up even when they are very far from the Sun (beyond the water-ice sublimation boundary), or how they accelerate when they don’t release any gases. 

If you still harbor doubts, there is yet another thing which a comet does that is a sure-shot indication that it is conscious: comets can reproduce! That’s right, comets produce more of their own via binary fission (or budding) and multiple fission.

Binary and Multiple Fission

Comets have an uncanny ability to fragment into multiple smaller comets. There have been at least 25 instances over the past couple of centuries when a comet has been seen to fragment into smaller comets. In some cases, two or more comets have been discovered in nearly the same orbit, and calculations have indicated that they were once a single comet. 

If a comet nucleus were composed of the solidified ices of various gases and complex organic molecules, and if the nucleus were to break apart in space due to tidal forces when a comet gets close to the Sun, then its interiors would have been instantly vaporized and dissipated.

But that’s not what happens in reality. Comets routinely fragment into multiple smaller comets during their perihelion passage, or when they cross the orbit of Jupiter and start to brighten up. The smaller comets continue to move around the Sun in the same orbit as the parent comet. 

What this means is that comets don’t “fragment” into smaller comets. They replicate! They have the ability to spawn more of their own, which is an intrinsic characteristic of living organisms. 

Let us look at a couple of instances of fragmenting comets, which have been recorded in recent years. 

In September 2016, the Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami, which orbits the Sun once every six years, fragmented into building-sized cometary nuclei when it was just outside the orbit of Mars. The Hubble Space Telescope captured sharp images showing a large, bright speck of light - the solid core of Comet 332P, estimated to be about 490 meters long - trailed by a parade of smaller bluish-white dots. 

Interestingly, observations made earlier in 2015 by the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii showed that there might be another chunk of rock (i.e. cometary nucleus), very close to the nucleus of Comet 332P and of almost the same size, suggesting that the parent of 332P may have split nearly in half at some point in the past. [20]

In April 2020, the Hubble Space Telescope captured the fragmentation of the solid nucleus of Comet Atlas into as many as 30 separate pieces. Each of these fragments was roughly the size of a house. Astronomers saw the individual comets flashing on and off like twinkling lights on a Christmas tree. “Most comets that fragment are too dim to see. Events at such a scale only happen once or twice a decade,” said the leader of a second Hubble observing team, Quanzhi Ye, of the University of Maryland, College Park.[21]

A well-known group of comets formed through fragmentation is the Kreutz family of sungrazing comets. Sungrazing comets come very close to the Sun at their perihelion. The Kreutz sungrazers are believed to be the fragments of the giant comet observed in 371 BCE, which may have fractured into two pieces on the 326 CE perihelion passage, and then underwent further fragmentation into hundreds of pieces on the 1106 CE perihelion passage. Other sungrazing comet groups are the Meyer group, Kracht group, and the Marsden group.

The manner in which a comet nucleus fragments into two or multiple nuclei corresponds exactly to the processes of binary fission/budding and multiple fission in unicellular organisms! 

In binary fission, the chromosomes inside the nucleus replicate and segregate, followed by the development of a new cell wall in the middle of the cell, which splits the original cell into two equal-sized daughter cells. The process of budding in yeast is similar to binary fission, except that the daughter cell in the case of budding is much smaller than the parent cell. 

In multiple fission, the cell encloses itself in a protective covering called a cyst. The nucleus then divides rapidly within the cyst to form a large number of daughter nuclei. Cytoplasm surrounds each daughter nucleus to form daughter cells. When the cyst ruptures, the daughter cells are released. While binary fission takes place in favorable conditions, multiple fission takes place when conditions are not favorable.

The observational data suggest that comets can undergo both binary fission/budding and multiple fission. In the case of Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami, which I discussed earlier, the parent comet underwent a binary fission sometime in 2015, which created two roughly equal-sized daughter comets. This was followed by the multiple fissions of one of the daughter comets in 2016, which created the trail of comet fragments behind the core of Comet 332P. 

What this shows very clearly is that comets are conscious space organisms capable of reproducing just like terrestrial unicellular organisms!

The tendency of comets to reproduce by means of binary fission or budding solves yet another mystery about comets: Why are so many cometary nuclei bi-lobed?

The Rosetta mission had found that the nucleus of Comet 67P has a bi-lobed structure, i.e., it has two large lobes –a head and a body – connected by a narrow neck.[22] In fact, of the seven comets astronomers have seen at high resolution, five (including 67P) are bi-lobed. It has been a paradox to astronomers as to why the bi-lobed structure is so common, since such a shape would be inherently unstable against the tidal forces that act on the comet’s nucleus as it moves through space. 

The answer is very simple. A bi-lobed nucleus implies that the comet is in the process of undergoing binary fission or budding! Sometime down the line, the bi-lobed nucleus will split up into two daughter cometary nuclei of equal size (binary fission) or unequal size (budding).

I think anyone who looks at this data with an unbiased mind will realize that there is a huge amount of evidence in favor of the contention that comets are space organisms, moving in the vast “cosmic ocean” of outer space, within the meteor streams, Oort cloud and the Kuiper Belt of our Solar System, in somewhat the same manner that marine planktons – which include algae, bacteria and other microorganisms - drift with the ocean currents.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

“Comets are like cats: they have tails, and they do precisely what they want,” wrote David H. Levy, an amateur astronomer who discovered 22 comets, nine of them using his own backyard telescopes. 

David Levy’s bio on the Vatican Observatory website states that he is “one of the most successful comet discoverers in history.” With Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker at the Palomar Observatory in California, he discovered Shoemaker-Levy 9, the comet that broke up and spectacularly collided with Jupiter in 1994.

 

Concluding Thoughts

Many of the unsolved mysteries about comets can be easily explained once we start thinking of them as conscious space organisms that resemble the different types of microbes on our planet. I have looked at several connections in this article, and let me summarize the key points here:

1. The tail structures of comets are remarkably similar to the flagella of terrestrial microorganisms. The "ion tail" of a comet corresponds to the acronematic or whiplash flagella, while the "dust tail" of a comet, where the striations appear, corresponds to the stichonematic, pantonematic and pantocronematic flagella, collectively known as tinsel flagella. 

2. Comets may also possess cilia-like structures on the nucleus. The gas and dust released by a comet may be coalescing around the cilia to form the brilliant coma, and around the flagella to form the comet tails. 

3. Comets appear to use their cilia and flagella to move through space. They have been seen wiggling their tails as they move, which gives their tails a wavy appearance that changes over time. 

4. The nucleus of a comet rotates as it moves, in the same manner that the body of the alga, chlamydomonas, rotates as it moves.

5. Comets appear to be moving in their orbits around the Sun using a combination of phototaxis (light), magnetoreception (magnetic field) and gravitaxis (gravity), using their flagella-like tails as locomotory organs.

6. When a comet moves towards the Sun, it kicks off the processes of photosynthesis and cellular respiration, as in unicellular phototrophs. Comets are likely to contain chloroplasts within their nucleus, along with reservoirs of water with dissolved carbon dioxide.

7. The large quantities of water vapor and carbon dioxide released by comets could be the byproducts of aerobic cellular respiration. The ethanol released by some comets could be a byproduct of anaerobic cellular respiration. 

8. The ATP generated from cellular respiration provides the energy to comets to power their journey through space by moving their cilia and flagella. This is why comets can accelerate even when they don’t display signs of outgassing.

9. Most of the gases emitted by comets in small amounts such as carbon monoxide, cyanogen, formaldehyde, ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulphide etc. could be byproducts of cellular respiration or other metabolic activities, since all these gases are produced by different types of unicellular organisms.

10. The fragmentation of a comet nucleus into two or more comets corresponds exactly to the processes of binary fission (or budding) and multiple fission in unicellular organisms.

11. The reason why many comets have a bi-lobed nucleus is probably because these comets are in the process of undergoing binary fission or budding.

This is a long list of correlations, which, taken together, strongly suggest that comets are not “dirty snowballs” as suggested by astronomers, but conscious space organisms, whose physical make-up and behavior is very similar to terrestrial microbes, particularly marine planktons. 

Since marine planktons serve a very important role in maintaining the oxygen and carbon dioxide balance of the ecosphere, and support the entire food chain, it is likely that comets perform an important role in maintaining the chemical balance of our Solar System, and support the growth and evolution of life in planetary systems such as ours.

Of course, such an idea leads to a fundamental overhaul in the way we think about our universe, since the dominant paradigm today is to view the cosmos as an inert, lifeless zone characterized by random occurrences and energetic reactions, without any underlying rhyme or reason. Not everyone subscribes to these ideas, though. 

Astrobiologists, Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, have been arguing for decades that comets brought the first life forms to the earth in the form of dormant bacteria and desiccated DNA and RNA molecules.  In a paper titled, “The astrobiological case for our cosmic ancestry” (2010), Chandra Wickramasinghe wrote: 

“Astronomy continues to reveal the presence of organic molecules and organic dust on a huge cosmic scale, amounting to a third of interstellar carbon tied up in this form. Just as the overwhelming bulk of organics on Earth stored over geological timescales are derived from the degradation of living cells, so it seems likely that interstellar organics in large measure also derive from biology. As we enter a new decade – the year 2010 – a clear pronouncement of our likely alien ancestry and of the existence of extraterrestrial life on a cosmic scale would seem to be overdue.”[23]

The radical idea that “interstellar organics derive from biology” should have evoked a lot of interest in scientific circles, but, unfortunately, such thoughts are anathema to many modern astronomers, who seem to abhor the words “consciousness” and “life” like nature abhors a vacuum.  

On the other hand, since biologists should be more open to the idea of life in outer space and more equipped to detect its signatures, my belief is that, if the study of comets (and other cosmic phenomenon) is carried out by cross- functional teams of astronomers and biologists, we would learn more about comets in the next five years than we have in the past fifty. 

References

[1] “Comet”, Enclyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/science/comet-astronomy/The-modern-era
[2] Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 6.5.3, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2850/2850-h/2850-h.htm
[3] “New insights on comet tails are blowing in the solar wind”, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, News Release Nov 2, 2018,  https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/new-insights-on-comet-tails-are-blowing-in-the-solar-wind/
[4] "The Structured Tails of Comet NEOWISE", NASA Science, Jul 22, 2020, https://science.nasa.gov/structured-tails-comet-neowise
[5] NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2015 January 21, https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150121.html
[6] Bob Yirka , "Comet Lovejoy's wiggle offers glimpse of Sun's variable coronal magnetism", Phys.org June 7, 2013, https://phys.org/news/2013-06-comet-lovejoy-wiggle-glimpse-sun.html
[7] ROTATION PERIODS OF HALLEY'S AND OTHER COMETS, Lunar and Planetary Institute, NASA Astrophysics Data System, https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc1987/pdf/1560.pdf
[8] "Research shows how single celled algae rotate as they swim towards the light", University of Exeter, https://news-archive.exeter.ac.uk/homepage/title_844738_en.html
[9] William Steigerwald, "Researchers Catch Comet Lovejoy Giving Away Alcohol", NASA Oct 23, 2015, https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/researchers-catch-comet-lovejoy-giving-away-alcohol/
[10] Rosetta’s comet contains ingredients for life, ESA 27 May, 2016, https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_s_comet_contains_ingredients_for_life
[11] M. Womack, G. Sarid, and K. Wierzchos, "CO and Other Volatiles in Distantly Active Comets", Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2017 February 9, Volume 129, Number 973.
[12] Ibid
[13] Ritsumeikan University. "Carbon dioxide-rich liquid water in ancient meteorite." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 April 2021, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210421151254.htm.
[14] H.L. Crespi, J.J.Katz, "Carbon Monoxide in the Biosphere: CO Emission by Fresh-Water Algae", National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP), US EPA, 1972.
[15] Yang, M.H,, Blunden, G., Tyihak, E., Formaldehyde from marine algae  [1998],  Biochemical systematics and ecology, ISSN:0305-1978, https://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=US201302886278
[16] Sergio Prostak, "Astronomers Detect Cyanide Gas in Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov", Sci News Sep 28, 2019, http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/cyanide-gas-interstellar-comet-2i-borisov-07637.html
[17] Manthos Panou and Spyros Gkelis, "Cyano-assassins: Widespread cyanogenic 2 production from cyanobacteria", biorxiv.org January 6, 2020, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.04.894782v1.full.pdf
[18] Lisa De Nike "Astronomers Detect Molecular Nitrogen Outside Our Solar System", The JHU Gazette June 21, 2004, https://pages.jh.edu/gazette/2004/21jun04/21detect.html
[19] "Rosetta’s comet contains ingredients for life", ESA 27 May, 2016, https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_s_comet_contains_ingredients_for_life
[20] Calla Cofield, "Hubble Telescope Snaps Best-Ever Views of a Comet's Disintegration", Space.com  September 16, 2016, https://www.space.com/34092-comet-disintegration-hubble-telescope-photos.html
[21] "Hubble Watches Comet ATLAS Disintegrate Into More Than Two Dozen Pieces", NASA Apr 28, 2020, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/hubble-watches-comet-atlas-disintegrate-into-more-than-two-dozen-pieces
[22] Ana V. Aceves, "Comets Break Up and Make Up", Sky&Telescope June 13, 2016, https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/comets-break-up-and-make-up/
[23] Chandra Wickramasinghe, “The astrobiological case for our cosmic ancestry”, International Journal of Astrobiology, 2010, Vol.9, No.2, pp. 119-129.