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

Some people seem to have strange UFO phenomena gravitate towards them for whatever reasons. Our case here begins in September of 1961, when an unassuming housewife named Stella Lansing was driving along near her home in Northampton, Massachusetts. As she drove along, she was pulled from her thoughts by something in the sky, which appeared to be a brightly lit orb that was eerily hovering over the trees some distance away. As she stared on trying to figure out what it was, it then sped towards her car and hovered nearby for a moment before daring off out of sight into the night sky. It was all baffling to Stella, and at the time she would keep the bizarre experience to herself. However, this was to prove to be just the beginning of what would go on to become a lifetime of strange events, covering tales of UFOs, aliens, and the sinister Men in Black.

Several years later, in 1964, Stella would see the same object again, this time following her car as she drove along. As it did so, she would claim that she then noticed a large, black sedan also following her, and that the orb seemed to be moving in unison with it. The black car then pulled up alongside her, but she could not peer past the inscrutable dark windows. This was all very unsettling, and she was relieved when the black car suddenly pulled over to the side of the road and the orb shot off over some fields. In the meantime, the black sedan rolled off the side of the road and Stella got the impression that whoever was behind the wheel was watching the orb disappear into the distance. Over the next couple of years, she would see this orb of light more frequently, and she had the distinct feeling that it was keeping an eye on her. So far, so creepy, but it would get even weirder still.

On Halloween night, 1966, Stella had her car parked at a lakeside not far from her home, just out there enjoying a moment of peace and quiet. As she looked out over the lake, she then saw something emerge from beneath the water, which to her looked like ahead wearing a “black skullcap.” Whatever it was appeared to be peeking just above the water’s surface, and she felt that it was staring intently at her. Such a strange sight out there on this otherwise quiet evening hit her with a jolt of terror, and she started to back her car away even as the thing below the waves began to emerge from the water. She turned on her brights to see that it was a humanoid creature of some sort, and the sudden brightness seemed to startle it, causing it to run off towards some trees. She then saw an orb of light about the size of a basketball shoot up from behind the trees, which was then followed by a larger orb that flew out low across the water at high speed. Apparently, a few of her neighbors would also see this spectacle of strange lights, as her home was only about 60 yards away from the lake.

Seeing as how these phenomena seemed to be following her around, Stella invested in an 8mm camera in order to try to catch photographic evidence of these strange incidents, and she would not have to wit long to get her chance. On February 18, 1967, she saw the strange lights again, a smaller orb and larger one, one yellow and the other red, and this time she stopped her car and got out for a better look. There was another motorist who had done the same, and they both watched as yet two other large orbs joined the first two, after which they began doing an aerial display of acrobatics. This time she had her camera with her, and allegedly managed to get plenty of footage of them. As all of this was going on, even more motorists had gathered to watch the spectacle, including a friend of Stella’s on her way home from work. The lights then flew off, to be replaced by a huge, bluish-white light that approached them as Stell continued to film. It would hover nearby before flying off into the night as well to leave all present gasping in astonishment. Unfortunately, it would later turn out that much of the film she had taken had not been correctly spliced, but most of it remained intact, and under analysis there could be seen four humanoid figures sitting in the large, blueish white object, which she had not noticed while actually filming.

Stella would then come into contact with a psychiatrist and paranormal researcher by the name of Berthold Eric Schwarz. He was no crackpot, having been certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and he was also a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, as well as having authored numerous scholarly or scientific articles, many focusing on psychiatric, psychoanalytic and electrophysiological subjects. He was also quite into studying UFOs, psychic powers, and the paranormal, and became interested in Stella’s case and the footage she claimed to have taken of the UFOs and their occupants after meeting her at a UFO conference.

Stella Lansing

Schwarz would subject Stella to a battery of physical and neurological examinations, after which he arranged psychiatric sessions for her. During these sessions, she would make all sorts of claims that she had not made to anyone before, such as that she was in telepathic contact with aliens and demons, that she had exhibited physical symptoms such as paralysis and lesions on her skin. It would turn out that she had voluntarily checked herself into a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed as being a possible Paranoid Schizophrenic. She would be kept for observation for 10 days before being released on her own cognizance. The thing was, Schwarz did not believe that this psychosis had been causing her experiences, but rather the other ways around, that the strange incidents had taken a mental toll on her. He would then turn his attention to the reams of footage she had taken of the phenomena, which he deemed to be very credible. Schwartz decided to go out to an area where she claimed that most of her sightings had taken place, along with a friend of hers, and there he would see a UFO for himself, this one taking the form of a “flaming disc.” Even weirder was that they would observe a black car suddenly appear to shine headlights at them. Schwarz would say of what happened:

While Mrs. Lansing and I were filming these strange lights, an automobile suddenly seemed to appear out of nowhere. It stopped approximately one to two hundred feet ahead of our car. We were shocked to see its headlights illuminate our dark area and flicker alternatively left and right and vice versa, in a manner reminiscent of semaphore signals, and then dim out to a pink, and then come on again. At the height of the excitement, the lady friend panicked, and screamed for us to get back into the car, which we did. Fortunately, I photographed most of this bizarre incident, and for several film frames the flaming disc can be seen gliding ion the background, above and then just over the glaring headlights. The latter part of the event was filmed from the interior of Mrs. Lansing’s car, and showed reflections from the windshield. The mystery car then suddenly turned up its lights, started its engine, and barreled past us at great speed. Because of the blinding headlights, we couldn’t make out the license plate, but the auto seemed to be a rather large, General Motors model of several years ago. The mystery car was noisy, and sounded as if its muffler was defective. It was impossible to see if there were any occupants in the car. Mrs. Lansing, her friend, and I were completely surprised by this weird incident.

What was going on here? Whatever it was, it proved to Schwarz that Stella was not hallucinating and that something very bizarre and unexplainable was going on, and he would write a whole paper on the case. Stella’s various photographs and films taken over the years, all taken on different types of cameras with different types of films, were picked apart and debated, with many suggesting that it was all merely camera glitches or a hoax, but Schwarz insisted that there was no trickery involved, and that he had seen the objects for himself. The case picked up a lot of momentum years later, when in 1991 it featured on the TV show Sightings, which showed portions of the footage and managed to even turn up evidence of voices coming from the occupants within the craft, generating renewed interest in the case. Sadly, Stella Lansing would pass away in 2012, taking any secrets she had to the grave with her. What was going on and what was this phenomenon all about? Why were these forces tormenting her and what was the meaning of the Men in Black angle? It remains an odd and unsolved case of a very strange individual surrounded by mysteries we may never full unfurl, and has gone on to be one of the weirder cases of supposed alien contactees.

In October of 1986, the Soviet Navaga-class ballistic missile submarine K-219 was prowling through the waters of the North Atlantic, about 1,090 kilometers (680 mi) northeast of Bermuda, on a routine nuclear deterrence patrol. At the time the Cold War was in full swing, and this was pretty normal procedure at the time, basically lurking about to let the enemy know you were there, and since the K-219 was equipped with between 32 to 48 nuclear warheads and 16 R-27U liquid-fuel missiles, you can be sure that the Americans heard the message loud and clear. At around 0530 Moscow time, seawater began inexplicably leaking into missile silo six, and not long after this chaos would erupt aboard the K-219 and turn into a great mystery that has become part of the lore of the Bermuda Triangle.

As the leak continued, efforts were made to fix the situation, the alarm was sounded, and measures were made, which included hermetically sealing all compartments. However, it was too late. At 0538, an explosion occurred in missile tube No. 6, killing two men outright and a third when toxic fumes suffocated him, and it also ejected the missile and its warheads into the sea. Another man died while trying to shut off the submarine’s engine reactor, which had oddly not turned off automatically, and the disaster would in the end claim five lives. K-219 was able to limp to the surface, where it was found that the side of the vessel had a deep groove, as if it had struck something underwater, and K-219’s Captain Second Rank Igor Britanov believed that it could have been the reason for the leak that had led to the explosion. The only problem was, they were in the middle of nowhere, and had not received any collision alarm, so what was going on here? The K-219’s problems only continued from there.

K-219

Considering that the sub was basically dead in the water, it was towed by a Soviet freighter back towards their home port of Gadzhiyevo, a full 7,000 kilometers (4,300 mi) away, but the tow line broke, and the order was given to abandon ship. The surviving crew were rescued and the metal behemoth sank down to the bottom of the Hatteras Abyssal Plain, coming to rest at a depth of about 6,000 m (18,000 ft) in dark, freezing waters and taking its full payload of nuclear warheads with it. Oddly, when an operation was later launched to investigate the wreck, it was found that all of the warheads were nowhere to be found and the silo hatches were dangling open. Considering the loss of life, the sub, and the warheads, it was a pretty big deal, and there were immediately accusations flying as to what had caused the leak and explosion.

The Soviets were very quick to lay the blame on the Americans. Their official stance was that the K-219 had collided with the American submarine USS Augusta, which was operating in the same general region at the time. However, both the captain of the USS Augusta and the captain of the K-219 denied this, and it was also found that the American sub was nowhere near them at the time of the incident. In fact, no U.S. sub had been anywhere near them, and no American vessel had come in for repairs for any such underwater collision. So what had caused that gash on the sub? How had there been a leak in the silo, where such a thing should have been impossible? The Soviets would continue to hang onto the theory that it had to have been a collision with an American submarine, and they fully charged Britanov with negligence, sabotage, and treason, although these charges were eventually dismissed. For years the incident aboard the K-219 was a mystery often debated and discussed, and considering its proximity to the infamous Bermuda Triangle at the time, you can be sure that of course some began turning to speculation taking us into the world of the weird.

The main idea here is that it was, well, aliens. There would be numerous uncorroborated and unverified claims that subs and vessels in the area had seen mysterious lights zipping about underwater, often called Unidentified Submerged Objects, or USOs, as well as a strange low frequency sound picked up on equipment that sounded like a quacking duck or a low croaking. Appropriately called “Quakers,” these sounds have been speculated as being anything from misidentified whale song, to some sort of top-secret sonar system, to alien transmissions, and apparently the K-219 picked up these sounds as well shortly before its accident. In 2010, a former Russian naval officer, a Captain Nikolai Tushin, came forward with a new piece of testimony in the incident. According to him, at the time of the incident, Tushin was part of a group of specialists of the Soviet Navy tasked with admission of nuclear submarines built in Severodvinsk at Sevmash to the fleet, and so he had his finger on the pulse of pretty much everything that happened with the submarines, including every accident and incident. According to him, the K-219 had picked up not only one of the unidentified Quaker noises, but had also tracked a mysterious moving underwater object on its radar. He had allegedly kept this information classified for decades, but came forward with it when he figured that there would be no repercussions. He would speak to Russian researcher Dmitry Sudakov would say of all of this on the site Pravda:

Nikolai had no doubts that the underwater object that collided with the strategic submarine “K-219” carrying two nuclear reactors and 16 ballistic nuclear missiles was not man made. Incidentally, he was the one to tell me about the troubles endured by Soviet (as well as American, British, and French) atomic submarines from the so-called “Quakers.” He said that experienced sailors were quite serious about the talks of underwater unidentified objects. According to Tushin, he, like many other submarine commanders, saw glowing balls and cylinders in the ocean. Almost every diver has a “cherished” story. It was not customary to talk about it, and no instruments recorded sightings of such objects. Even now little is known about these croaking invisible objects. They were first heard a few decades ago, when more or less sensitive sonar equipment that could hear the ocean in many sectors of sonar range appeared on submarines, especially nuclear ones.

The range of “Quakers” action expanded from the Barents Sea to the Mid-Atlantic, including the Bermuda Triangle, where Russian atomic submarine “K-219” has perished. The theory of the man-made origin of the mysterious underwater object sounds rather weak because even the wealthy United States could not afford such costs. These mysterious objects persistently pursued Russian (and not only Russian) submarines, and the chase was accompanied by characteristic acoustic signals resembling croaking of frogs. According to Tushin, sometimes submarines thought that the mysterious objects were displaying friendliness.

The famous atomic experienced diver, admitted to the controls of nearly all projects of the Soviet nuclear submarines, admitted that we might be dealing with some unknown underwater civilization. Indeed, the underwater world is explored much less than space. Those who thought of the unidentified objects as the reason of the accident were afraid to speak up not to be considered insane. Tushin was convinced that “К-219” was sunk by a mysterious force, but at the time could not admit it out loud. The unidentified floating objects remain a mystery of the ocean.

What was going on here? Is there any truth to this at all? As of now, the whole incident has been sort of brushed over and forgotten, with many ideas put forward. Was this just a technical malfunction, a collision with an American sub, or something else, perhaps something more otherworldly? By the way, where did the nukes go? Do you have them? I know I don’t, but I sure wish I knew who did. It is a rather obscure account from the Cold War era to be sure, and the answers have not been coming in. Perhaps time will tell.