To say that there has been an incredible amount of diversity in the forms of life on our planet during the course of its existence would be more than an understatement. Scientists estimate that the species extant on our planet today represent less than 1% of the incredible range of organisms that once thrived here, and which have now faded into extinction.

Because of this, the evolution of life here on Earth is arguably among the most remarkable phenomena known to exist in all of nature, and one which continues to surprise us and our understanding of biology. Within the complex maze of constant changes and adaptations that Earth species have undergone, a number of mysteries have endured over the years which still evade conclusive understanding. Among these are questions about the earliest fossil insects, and the peculiar origins of their wings.

From within Devonian cherts unearthed in Scotland, some of the earliest known fossil insects represent a wingless variety of collembolans, which are essentially ancient predecessors to modern springtails. These primitive insects are named for their springlike tail which allows them to leap out of the way of potential harm when they are disturbed, and varieties of them have been recovered from such chert deposits dated to around 402 million years ago.

Sample of Rhynie chert from Scotland, the likes of which contains some of the oldest ancestors of living insects

(Public Domain).

These ancient springtails stand as both a testament to this simple, yet obviously successful evolutionary form, as varieties of springtails still exist today. However, biologists stop short of calling these creatures insects, since they lack both wings and the proper mouthparts for such designation, instead classifying them as hexapods. Nonetheless, it appears that modern varieties of springtails and their insect cousins share common ancestry with the hundreds of million-year-old bugs that turn up fossilized in chert deposits today.

Herein lies the true mystery, since there remains a surprising gap in the fossil record between these early springtails, and the first winged insects that only begin to appear in the Upper Carboniferous period some 100 million years later. At some point during this lengthy period, insects began to evolve the ability to fly, but why is there so little evidence of it in the fossil record?

Some scientists have theorized that the earliest forms insect wings might have taken hadn’t actually been designed for flight, but instead growths that aided in cooling the bodies of ancient bugs. From here, random mutations over time would have led to the musculature required to move these portions of early insect bodies, after which they eventually became adapted for flight as is commonly observed with insects today, a feature useful not only in locomotion, but allowing the similar protection mechanism of the springtail’s unique leaping activities.

Modern springtail (collembolans) as seen under a microscope

(Wikimedia Commons 3.0).

While the controversy over the origins of insects remains, a step toward discovering one of the long-sought representatives from the “missing” 100-million-year period did finally turn up in 2012, as detailed in a paper that appeared in the journal Nature.

“Although it can hardly be described as well preserved, the fossil shows a six-legged thorax, long single-branched antennae, triangular jaws and a 10-segmented abdomen,” wrote William Shear of the fossil discovery. Insects are, as Shear noted, the only known arthropods to have ever existed with this combination of traits, and therefore it would seem that the specimen in question had been just that. While the creature differed enough from insects known to us since around 250-million-years ago that there had been a few questions, the authors of the Nature paper nonetheless concluded that they were probably looking at one of the earliest ancestors of modern insects.

Dubbed Strudiella devonica, this specimen was recovered from samples extracted from a quarry in Belgium, and dated to approximately 370 million years ago. While perhaps one of the most significant discoveries of its kind, it only further emphasizes how strange the absence of anything definitively attributable to insects remains during their “missing” period in Earth’s ancient history.

There have been some promising discoveries found in Scottish chert deposits that resemble jaws of a possible insect, as well as in fossils recovered from New York that appear to represent portions of creatures that resemble modern insect eyes. As Shear noted in 2012, “these fragments more or less complete the picture of all that is known of insects at this crucial time in Earth’s history.”

To be recognized as one of the oldest and most successful forms life has ever taken on Earth, it is indeed mysterious that so little is known of the origins of insects. This, along with their early absence in the fossil record, endures as one of the most perplexing mysteries that nature and evolution presently keep from us.

The UFO phenomena and its alien abduction cases go way back. In the late 1800s, a strange series of events would begin to play out across the skies of the United States, in such far-flung places as of Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri, California and Arizona. People were seeing bizarre airships of some sort, usually described as massive, anywhere between 30 to 200 feet long and moving at speeds of roughly 135 to 150 mph, far beyond the dimensions and capabilities of anything at the time. One of the first sightings of these mysterious ships had been a mass sighting in November of 1896 at Sacramento, California, with hundreds of witnesses describing a giant cigar-shaped body with wheels at the sides, some calling it an “electric arc lamp propelled by some mysterious force,” with two human-looking figures seated upon an apparatus. Sightings would pour in after this, moving steadily eastward as far as Chicago, and it would reach peak weirdness with an alleged attempted alien abduction by the pilots of these mysterious vessels.

From between November 1896 and April 1897 there were thousands of reports from across a vast area of 18 states of these strange, cigar-shaped airships that resembled a flying dirigible of some sort, in some cases described as having revolving wheels, rudders, motors, sails, and a powerful beam they could project in front of them or towards the ground. In some cases, the pilots of the vessels were seen and even heard talking, although it could never be made out what they were actually saying. Some were described as having wings, others with propellers, some with no noticeable form of propulsion at all. Strange intricate machinery and contraptions were often mentioned, and all of them were completely bizarre things that no one had ever seen before, which served to sow fear in the regions where they appeared. People were truly baffled because this was an era when airships and blimps were still very rudimentary and primitive, and the Wright Brothers were years away from their flight of the Kitty Hawk. One report printed in the Quincy Morning Whig of April 1897 described a sighting at Quincy Illinois as follows:

At times it did not appear to be more than 400 or 500 feet above the ground. Men who saw the thing describe it as a long, slender body shaped like a cigar, and made of some bright metal. On either side of the hull extending outwards and upwards were what appeared to be wings. At the front end of the thing was a headlight similar to the searchlights used on steamboats.

As all of this was going on there was plenty of speculation on what was going on, ranging from the rational to the outlandish. Meteorites, Venus or other planets, stars, kites, floating Chinese lanterns, birds, and atmospheric phenomena were all mentioned, as was as pranksters and the idea that there may have been some mad inventor at work designing advanced flying machines. It got to the point that even the famous inventor Thomas Edison was questioned on his possible involvement, to which he laughed and said “I prefer to devote my time to objects which have some commercial value. At best, airships would only be toys.” Another idea was that they were aliens, “Martians” as people liked to call them at the time, and there would be at least one bizarre report that would suggest this was the case.

The very strange account was given in 1896, when a Colonel H.G. Shaw was travelling with a companion by the name of Camille Spooner in a horse and carriage in Lodi, California when the horse stopped in abject terror and refused to continue on. In a report on the incident in the Stockton Evening Mail of November 25th, 1896, Shaw would say of what happened next:

Looking up we beheld three strange beings. They resembled humans in many respects, but still they were not like anything I had ever seen. They were nearly or quite seven feet high and very slender. We were both somewhat startled, as you may readily imagine, and the first impulse was to drive on. The horse, however, refused to budge, and when we saw that we were being regarded more with an air of curiosity than anything else, we concluded to get out and investigate. I walked up to where the strange looking persons were and addressed them. I asked where they were from. They seemed not to understand me, but began – well, “warbling” expresses it better than talking. Their remarks, if such you would call them, were addressed to each other, and sounded like a monotonous chant, inclined to be guttural. I saw it was no use to attempt a conversation, so I satisfied myself with watching and examining them. They seemed to take great interest in ourselves, the horse and buggy, and scrutinized everything very carefully.

While they were thus engaged, I was enabled to inspect them as well. As I have already stated, they were seven feet in height and very slender. I noticed, further, that their hands were quite small and delicate, and that their fingers were without nails. Their feet, however, were nearly twice as long as those of an ordinary man, though they were narrow, and the toes were also long and slender. I noticed, too, that they were able to use their feet and toes much the same as a monkey; in fact, they appeared to have much better use of their feet than their hands. I presently discovered that this was probably a provision of nature. As one of then came close to me I reached out to touch him, and placing my hand under his elbow pressed gently upward, and lo and behold I lifted him from the ground with scarcely an effort. I should judge that the specific gravity of the creature was less than an ounce. It was then that I observed him try to grasp the earth with his toes to prevent my lifting him. You can readily understand that their slight weight made such a provision necessary, or they might be blown away.

They were without any sort of clothing, but were covered with a natural growth hard to describe; it was not hair, neither was it like feathers, but it was as soft as silk to the touch, and their skin was like velvet. Their faces and heads were without hair, the ears were very small, and the nose had the appearance of polished ivory, while the eyes were large and lustrous. The mouth, however, was small, and it seemed to me that they were without teeth. That and other things led me to believe that they neither ate nor drank, and that life was sustained by some sort of gas. Each of them had swung under the left arm a bag to which was attached a nozzle, and every little while one or the other would place the nozzle on his mouth, at which time I heard a sound of escaping gas. It was much the same sound as is produced by a person blowing up a football. From the description I give I do not want you to get the idea that these creatures were hideous. In appearance they were markedly the contrary. They were possessed of a strange and indescribable beauty. I can express myself in no other way. They were graceful to a degree, and more divinely beautiful than anything I ever beheld.

Shaw also made mention of very strange tools the creatures held, the size of a “hen’s egg,” and which could project “the most remarkable, intense and penetrating light one can imagine.” The mysterious beings apparently examined the horse and buggy with great interest, but this was apparently only the beginning of the weirdness, and it would soon escalate into what sems to have been a very early account of alien abduction. Shaw would say in the newspaper account of this:

Finally, they became tired of examining us and our horse and buggy, and then one of them, at a signal from one who appeared to be the leader, attempted to lift me, probably with the intention of carrying me away. Although I made not the slightest resistance, he could not move me, and finally the three of them tried it without the slightest success. They appeared to have no muscular power outside of being able to move their own limbs. Well, after trying in vain to move either of us they turned in the direction of the Woodbridge canal, near which we were, and as they flashed their lights towards the bridge we beheld a startling sight.

There, resting in the air about twenty feet above the water, was an immense airship. It was 150 feet in length at least, though probably not over twenty feet in diameter at the widest part. It was pointed at both ends, and outside of a large rudder there was no visible machinery. The three walked rapidly toward the ship, not as you or I walk, but with a swaying motion, their feet only touching the ground at intervals of about fifteen feet. We followed them as rapidly as possible, and reached the bridge as they were about to embark. With a little spring they rose to the machine, opened a door in the side, and disappeared within. I do not know of what the affair was built, but just before it started, I struck it with a rock and it gave no sound. It went through the air very rapidly and expanded and contracted with a muscular motion, and was soon out of sight. I have a theory, which, of course, is only a theory, that those we beheld were inhabitants of Mars, who have been sent to the earth for the purpose of securing one of its inhabitants.

What had gone on to be called the “Great Airship Mystery of 1896-97” would continue on after this, generating thousands of sightings of these aircraft but no further attempted abduction accounts, not even any detailed descriptions of the shadowy figures often reportedly standing atop them. It has all been written off as the product of some sort of collective delusion or mass hysteria, but does this really explain the myriad sightings made across many states? What are we to think of Shaw’s bizarre account, and how does it fit in to the larger mystery that was going on at the time? There is no way to know, and it remains a curious and very odd historical oddity.

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Over the course of several months between the final weeks of 1896 and the early summer of 1897, newspapers throughout the United States had been reporting on odd stories of airships that were purportedly being seen across the nation. Beginning in California, the sightings continued in the months ahead as the area of sightings slowly expanded eastward into states like Arkansas, Missouri and Texas.

One of the most interesting accounts from the era appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the date of April 16, 1897, which announced that the mysterious airship had been viewed through a telescope by one Dr. Leo Caplan while it passed over Missouri.

“The airship visited St. Louis again Thursday night,” the Post-Dispatch report read. “This time the bright searchlight was not only seen by thousands but the object was observed through a telescope and the outlines of the craft were seen.”

Artist’s rendering of the airship purportedly seen during late 1896 and into the summer of 1897.

Dr. Caplan, who was described in the article as a medical doctor and “a dabbler in astronomy” and frequent stargazer, had been convinced that what he observed was no star.

“I was walking to my home on Washington avenue last night about 7:45,” Caplan explained, “when I saw a bright light almost overhead.” The light appeared to the northwest of where Caplan stood observing.

“But the moment I saw this light,” Caplan explained, “I realized it was something unusual and I hastened home, ran to the roof and brought my telescope to bear on the object. Before taking a sight I noticed the light was swaying from side to side.” Caplan likened this peculiar motion to that of “a searchlight that was being manipulated.”

Most intriguingly, Caplan also said that he was able to observe through his telescope “a long black body behind the light,” which he described as being similar to other reports of a large, cigar-shaped object reported by other observers around the time who had seen the mysterious craft during its mostly nighttime visits. One day after Caplan’s observation, another purported sighting of the strange aerial visitor was logged by an Arkansas constable named John J. Sumpter, who saw the airship with his Deputy Sherriff John McLemore.

Amidst newspaper reports like these that had been occurring in the spring and early summer of 1897, there had been other unusual sightings taking place even further east. Around the same time, Joseph Loven, a resident of the Cold Springs community along Jonas Ridge, North Carolina, first said he observed peculiar lights that appeared at night and could be seen from his home off in the direction of a location now famous for the strange lights said to manifest there: a long, flat ridgeline called Brown Mountain.

Brown Mountain as seen today in Western North Carolina.

The Brown Mountain Lights, as the phenomena reputed to occur near Linville in Western North Carolina has since come to be known, would seem to be quite different from the reports of airships that were afoot during the 1890s. However, is it possible that there might nonetheless be a connection between them?

In 1906, nine years after the American airship affair had died down (and some of the earliest alleged sightings of the Brown Mountain Lights were said to have occurred), author Jules Verne still had airships on his mind. His novel Master of the World, a sequel to his earlier book Robur the Conquerer, was now hitting the shelves, which continued the adventures of the fearful Robur and his penchant for building magnificent flying ships. In Master of the World, Verne described a rather unique location as the base of operations for Robur’s latest operations, as featured in the opening pages of the story.

“The strange occurrences began in the western part of our great American State of North Carolina,” Verne explains. “There, deep amid the Blueridge Mountains rises the crest called the Great Eyrie. Its huge rounded form is distinctly seen from the little town of Morganton on the Catawba River, and still more clearly as one approaches the mountains by way of the village of Pleasant Garden.”

“The Great Eyrie,” as depicted in the original illustrations for Jules Verne’s novel “Master of the World”

(public domain).

Verne goes on to paint the Great Eyrie as a strange prominence rising above the surrounding landscape, describing it as “rocky and grim and inaccessible,” noting that “under certain atmospheric conditions [it] has a peculiarly blue and distant effect.” Verne elaborates further, speculating that the summit of the Great Eyrie, which remained impenetrable to even the most experienced climbers, might have been an ancient volcano, “one which had slept through ages, but whose inner fires might yet reawake,” which he likens to Krakatoa, Mont Pelee, and potentially being host to an “eruption such as that of 1902 in Martinique.”

This much might have been evident by the many sightings of smoke, or the “unexplained rumblings” cited by locals which appeared to emanate from the Great Eyrie. This, and the fact that, as Verne recounts, “A glow in the sky had crowned the height at night.”

“And finally,” Verne tells us, “one stormy night pale flames, reflected from the clouds above the summit, cast upon the district below a sinister, warning light.”

Flames above the Great Eyrie, from Verne’s “Master of the World”

(Public Domain).

Soon, newspapers throughout the region would begin to report on the mysterious light show occurring in the skies above The Great Eyrie, and as Verne tells us, “curiosity among those who being in no danger themselves were interested in the disturbance merely as a strange phenomenon of nature,” while others nearer to the mysterious mountain lived in fear of possible forthcoming danger.

“Those more immediately threatened were the citizens of Morganton,” Verne tells us, “and even more the good folk of Pleasant Garden and the hamlets and farms yet closer to the mountain.”

English translations of Vern’s novel wouldn’t make their way onto the shelves of American bookstores until 1911, but by the time they did, people around real-life Morganton, North Carolina, were already familiar with similar strange happenings said to occur in their region.

An example appeared in The Charlotte Daily Observer on the date of September 23, 1913, which provided the following account:

“The mysterious light that is seen just above the horizon almost every night from Rattlesnake Knob, near Cold Spring, on the Morganton road is still baffling all investigators. With punctual regularity the light rises in a southeasterly direction from the point of observation just over the lower slope of Brown Mountain, first about 7:30 p.m. and again at 10 o’clock. It looks much like a toy fire balloon, a distinct ball, with no atmosphere about it. It is much smaller than the full moon, much larger than any star and very red. It rises in the far distance from beyond Brown Mountain, which is about 6 miles from Rattlesnake Knob, and after going up a short distance, wavers and goes out in less than 1 minute. It does not always appear in exactly the same place, but varies what must amount in the distance to several miles. The light is visible at all seasons, so Mr. Anderson Loven, an old and reliable resident testifies There seems to be no doubt that the light rises from some point in the wide, level country between Brown Mountain and the South Mountains, a distance of about 12 miles, though it is possible that it rises at a still greater distance.”

Historical photo depicting lights purported to represent the mysterious lights seen near the vicinity of Brown Mountain, North Carolina.

According to most sources, no written records of mysterious lights appear in the region prior to around 1912, although most newspaper accounts begin appearing in 1913. These state that locals had been troubled by the appearances of the lights for the last “two or three years,” which as Geologist Ed Speer, a researcher who has studied the lights for several years has pointed out, would roughly coincide with the appearance of English translations of Jules Verne’s Master of the World in 1911.

However, some sources such as Joseph Loven, who claimed to have seen the lights as early as 1897 (when mysterious “airships” were frequent appearing, at least in American newspapers) also said he wouldn’t begin to pay attention to the lights until 1910, when others began to bring attention to them like Rev. C. E. Gregory, his neighbor at the time.

Is it indeed possible that there could be any connection between beliefs about the Brown Mountain Lights—appearances of which have been said to persist now for decades—and the mysterious airships of the 1890s? Admittedly, the appearance of “The Great Eyrie” as depicted in art from Verne’s novel bears a striking similarity to Table Rock, a prominent mountain in the Linville Gorge wilderness a short distance from Brown Mountain where reports of the mysterious lights have also been logged over the years.

An enhanced photo that may depict an anomalous light rising over Table Rock in the Linville Gorge Wilderness, taken in 2009 by researcher Bill Fox

(Credit: Bill Fox).

It would be difficult to imagine Jules Verne (who despite his gifted imagination, never strayed far from his home in France) had somehow heard about quaint local traditions in the southern Appalachians regarding ghost lights at the time he wrote of the “strange occurrences… in the western part of our great American State of North Carolina” in Master of the World. This is especially unlikely since newspaper accounts detailing the lights appeared no earlier than 1912, one year after the publication of his novel.

Conversely, the skeptically inclined would argue that stories about the lights, rather than inspiring Verne’s story, had actually been influenced by its publication instead. Then again, if this were true, what can be said of the endurance of reports of the lights now for more than a century? A final possibility would simply be that there are no connections, apart from the coincidental appearances of the lights shortly after the publication of Verne’s book, which borrowed from the lingering interest in prospective airships seen in America in the 1890s (although it should be noted that a similar rash of sightings occurred in Britain in 1909, Verne’s novel was published in France three years before this, and thus couldn’t have been inspired by the sightings of “Scareships” over Europe).

Some of the similarities between these late-19th and early-20th century oddities are certainly difficult to ignore. Ultimately, they could be suggestive of the cultural influence one of the most renowned early science fiction novelists had on the development of a famous folk tradition of “ghost lights” in the American southeast.

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A corner of the UFO phenomenon that has remained rather spectacular and alluring is that of the UFO crash. By far the most famous of these is the July 1947 crash of some sort of flying object at Roswell, New Mexico, which has gone on to spawn countless conspiracy theories and tales of alien bodies and secret bases in the desert testing out alien technology. Roswell can also arguably be said to lay claim to being the incident that really launched the UFO craze into the public consciousness and put the idea of sinister government UFO research on the map, the name Roswell being nearly synonymous with any purported UFO crash thereafter and a name known by people who don’t even follow the field. The Roswell incident has become by far the most famous UFO crash, becoming a pop cultural icon in the process, and is largely thought to mark the beginning of serious mainstream consideration of mysterious craft coming down from the sky to smash into the earth. Yet, Roswell is not, as many may believe, the first, and there have been supposed mysterious crashes of UFOs and even alien bodies found that predate it by some margin.

One of the earliest UFO crash stories in America happened even before there was even a Roswell at all. In 1884 there was a very bizarre incident that allegedly happened at the tiny town of Max, Nebraska. The town was just a dusty, nondescript speck on the map, with only 914 living there at the time, a place where not much ever happened at all, but on June 6, 1884 all of that would change. On this day a rancher named John W. Ellis and a group of other cowboys were rounding up a herd of cattle when they heard a “terrific whirring noise over their heads” and turned to see “a blazing body falling like a shot to Earth.” Whatever it was hit nearby beyond an embankment, and when they went to investigate they found a strange metallic object embedded in the earth, which had left in its wake a deep gash in the ground. One of the frightened herdsmen, a man named Alf Williamson, was purportedly burned when he drew to close to the object. There was apparently a lot of debris from the mysterious craft lying about as well, and one report in the Nebraska State Journal would say of this:

One piece that looked like the blade of a propeller screw, of a metal of an appearance like brass, about 16 inches wide, three inches thick and three-and-a-half feet long, was picked up by a spade. It would not weigh more than five pounds, but appeared as strong and compact as any known metal. A fragment of a wheel with a milled rim, apparently having had a diameter of seven or eight feet, was also picked up. It seemed to be of the same material and had the same remarkable lightness.

It is a very compelling report, but it happened so long ago and was so little covered in the news at the time that it is impossible to ascertain how real any of the report is or what could have happened to the supposed fragments of the craft. What happened to this craft after that? Are there still pieces of this thing out there somewhere? Who knows? Another very early account of a supposed UFO crash that happened just a few years later even allegedly featured a dead alien pilot. In April of 1897, the small town of Aurora, Texas, was rocked by a rather spectacular event. It was reported that a large, slow-moving aircraft like nothing anyone had ever seen came down from the sky to go smashing into a windmill to send debris scattering everywhere, as well as a dead humanoid creature the townsfolk called the “Martian pilot.” An article in the Dallas Morning News would say of the incident:

Aurora Cemetery “About 6 o’clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around the country. It was traveling due north and much nearer the earth than before. Evidently some of the machinery was out of order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour, and gradually settling toward the earth. It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor’s windmill and went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge’s flower garden. The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.

The body of the alien was then supposedly given a proper burial at the local cemetery, and it has all become a fixture of local lore, as well as almost legendary in the UFO field. Various people have tried to dig up more information on this, even talking to supposed living relatives of the original witnesses and scouring the cemetery with metal detectors, but the body supposed body has never been found. In 1973, a group called the International UFO Bureau claimed to have located the site of the alien’s grave, but they were denied the proper permits to have it exhumed, leaving it a mystery as to just who or what is buried there. A North Texas State University professor also allegedly unearthed some fragments at the site of where the windmill once stood, which “consisted primarily of iron which did not seem to exhibit magnetic properties,” but it is unknown what happened to these or what they actually were.

One account in later years from 1920 is an account related by a man named Clark Linch, of Mount Pleasant, Iowa. On June 3, 1920, Linch took a break from working on his father’s farm in order to do some fishing at the nearby river. It was 10 AM on a pleasant day, and he planned to go out fishing for just a few hours and then come back to work. As he sat out at the riverside waiting for a fish to bite, he allegedly saw “an egg-shaped object the size of a cream can” come down to smash into the ground about 15 feet away on the bank, where it sat for around 15 minutes before taking off again. He would say of his rather odd encounter:

I wasn’t in any hurry to jump up and run over to it, and I’m glad I didn’t. It might have killed me. Just when I thought about going over to take a closer look at it, it took off without any sound and without turning around.  The grass where it hit was pressed down. I didn’t know what to believe about it at the time, and I still don’t. I’ve concluded that it wasn’t anything from Earth. It was so small; it couldn’t have been occupied by intelligent life as we know it.

He would claim that the object flew off at very slow speeds, with a strange wobbling motion, making him think the thing had crashed and been damaged somehow. When Linch examined where the object had been, he found merely an area of pressed down grass, but no scorch marks or other damage. At the time he kept his strange experience to himself, and it would not be until 1955 that he would tell anyone about what had happened, explaining “You didn’t talk about flying saucers in 1920.” Despite decades having passed, he still vividly remembered the incident, and knew the date because it was his birthday and the year he got married. What did he see out there at that riverside?

Even more spectacular is another report of a UFO crash complete with alien bodies and a government cover-up that predates Roswell by 6 years. The account comes from the book UFO Crash / Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum, by UFO researcher Leo Stringfield. He claimed that he had received a letter from a woman named Charlette Mann, who had a very strange story to tell. She claimed that in 1984 her grandmother on her deathbed had told her about an incident experienced by her grandfather, a Reverend William Huffman, who had told her of having been involved with being called to bless alien bodies in the wake of a UFO crash outside of Cape Girardeau, Missouri in the spring of 1941. Huffman told her that he had been brought to the crash site thinking he was going to an airplane crash and that he would be saying last rights to human victims, but as soon as he arrived, it was immediately clear that this was no normal aircraft and these were not human victims, but rather a spaceship and several small, hairless beings. Charlette would explain of what had happened to her grandfather:

Upon arrival it was a very different situation. It was not a conventional aircraft, as we know it. He described it as a saucer that was metallic in color, no seams, did not look like anything he had seen. It had been broken open in one portion, and so he could walk up and see that. In looking in he saw a small metal chair, gauges and dials and things he had never seen. However, what impressed him most was around the inside there were inscriptions and writings, which he said he did not recognize, but were similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics. There were 3 entities, or non-human people, lying on the ground. Two were just outside the saucer, and a third one was further out. His understanding was that perhaps that third one was not dead on impact.

It was hard for him to tell if they had on suits or if it was their skin, but they were covered head to foot in what looked like wrinkled aluminum foil. He could see no hair on their bodies and they had no ears. They were small framed like a child, about 4 feet tall, but had larger heads and longer arms. Their faces had large, oval-shaped eyes, no noses, just holes and no lips, just small slits for mouths. There had been mention of a ball of fire, yet there was fire around the crash site, but none of the entities had been burned and so father did pray over them, giving them last rites. There were many people there, fire people, photographers, and so they lifted up one, and two men on either side stood him up and they stretched his arms out, they had him up under the armpits and out here.

When Huffman had finished his blessings and his duty, he was then told in no uncertain terms to say nothing of what he had seen there, but he had eventually told his wife. Charlette also claimed that her grandfather had secretly kept a picture from the scene of the crash, which allegedly showed one of the dead alien bodies being held up by two military men. She had been shown this picture by her father, who had gotten it from her grandfather, and indeed she claimed that this was the reason she had pushed her grandmother to tell her the truth of what had happened that day. Charlette would say of the creature in the mysterious photograph:

As I recall from the picture I saw, he was about 4 feet tall, appeared to have no bone structure, soft looking. He had a suit on, or we assume it was a suit, it could have been his skin, and what looked like crinkled, soft aluminum foil. I recall it had very long hands, very long fingers, and I think there were three but I cannot swear to that.

It is unclear what happened to this picture, or whether it ever even existed or not, and indeed the whole account is a bit murky and difficult to get to the facts. Several people related to Charlette, as well as the living brother of the Cape Girardeau County sheriff in 1941, Clarance R. Schade have corroborated these events, and Charlette Mann has been called a very sincere and trustworthy person by those who have interviewed her since, but UFO researchers who have visited the area and dug for more information have failed to uncover much more information on the case. It is largely known from Stringfield’s book and some interviews with Charlette herself, and without further evidence it is hard to say just what exactly happened out there in the spring of 1941.

What can we say about such reports? With no real evidence there is not way to know how real they were, or whether they were merely hoaxes and urban legends and lore. One thing we can say is that they show that the notion of alien spacecraft coming down to crash into the earth did not begin with Roswell, and that this sort of report has been going on for some time. Whether it is aliens, tall tales, or some explainable phenomena, such reports certainly capture the attention, and serve as strange historical oddities that have remained elusive to our understanding.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

My previous article was on the matter of me, UFO researchers Robin Cole and Matthew Williams, and a certain whistleblower who I termed “The Sandman.” And, on how, in the 1990s, we were all carefully and quietly watched by personnel in the U.K. intelligence community: Government Communications Headquarters, the Provost and Security Services, and Special Branch. And all (and only) because of our interests in UFOs and aliens. There were, however, others, too, who were watched by U.K. Intelligence at that same time. One of them was someone who you might think would not have had any kind of involvement in this saga. And, yet, there was involvement. Quite a lot, too. His name: Jonathan Downes. Although primarily known as a cryptozoologist and the Director of the U.K.-based monster-hunting Center for Fortean Zoology, in the mid-to-late 1990s Jon wrote regularly – and extensively – for a whole range of newsstand UFO-related publications that existed at the time. The scenario of Special Branch monitoring the activities of full-time monster hunters such as Jonathan Downes, purely because of the fact that they happen to have friends in Ireland sounds wholly outrageous; however, it is something that Jon himself can corroborate:

“It was a Friday lunchtime in early May 1996. My ex-wife, Alison, and I were beginning to suspect that we had strayed into a particularly far-fetched and badly scripted episode of The X-Files. We were sitting in the departure lounge of Plymouth Airport, waiting to put Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels, [a renowned Irish monster-hunter and magician] on his plane back to Ireland, after one of his occasional visits. Suddenly, the airport lounge seemed to be full of security guards. There were only about half a dozen men in uniform; but there were a number of rather sinister-looking me in black suits, wearing sunglasses, and looking quite menacing. A man in plainclothes, who introduced himself to Tony as a senior police officer, came over to us. I was engaged, at the time, in assembling my tape-recorder so I could tape an interview with Tony.

“But, at the sound of the words: ‘Mr. Shiels, can I see your boarding-pass?’ which was accompanied by the practiced flash of a warrant card in a leather wallet, [I was] prompted to put my tape-recorder away very quickly. They conversed in low voices. I didn’t try to overhear their conversation; but I gathered that Tony had shown the policeman all the relevant travel documents, and that all was in order. I decided that this was the right time to go to the lavatory. Sitting in the thin-walled, Formica-lined cubicle, I was effectively invisible, and so could overhear snatches of a conversation between one of the Men in Black and someone else over a walkie-talkie. I only heard some of what they said, but the words ‘Special Branch‘ were mentioned on several occasions. I was also shocked to hear my own name.”

Jon concluded to me: “Slinking out as soon as the coast was clear, I rejoined Alison and Tony. They told me that, with no notice whatsoever, Tony’s plane had been canceled. I began to feel somewhat scared. The policeman came over to talk to Tony again, and the public address system asked Alison, as the owner of our van, to report to the Information Desk. She was asked to move our van on the grounds that it was causing an obstruction. It wasn’t. And Tony was told that his flight would now be departing three hours late. The Men in Black were still milling around. I just sat there feeling very paranoiac. I still don’t know to this day what it was all about. The harassment, such as it was, continued all afternoon; but we were, by this time at least, in such a state of advanced paranoia, that even innocent occurrences were open to vicious misinterpretation. Was the target of this activity me or Tony? Were the motives magical; ufological; or, as seems more likely, political? Or was Tony guilty of being Irish in the wrong place and at the wrong time? [It was] a week when security at all airports and military bases had been stepped up – because of a rumored IRA blitz to coincide with the 80^th anniversary of the Easter uprising.” The mystery was never resolved.

At first glance, the 2006 court case carried out by the Santa Barbara County district attorney’s office in Santa Barbara, California, looks pretty mundane, for some boring even. It involved an action against the Greka Energy Corp., which is the county’s largest land-based oil and gas producer, for alleged health-and-safety violations at its refinery operations, as well as numerous environmental violations. While most of the counts in the lawsuit were eventually settled for $600,000, some stubbornly remained, and one of the key witnesses brought in was a former public safety officer with the company by the name of Gary Lowrey, who alleged that he had on numerous occasions pointed out safety violations that were ignored by his bosses. So far it just sounds like a dull, legal slog involving a big oil company and environmental concerns and safety protocols, more yawn inducing than anything else, but the eyebrows do pop up a bit when it gets to the part where Lowrey starts talking about horned aliens in his closet and visitations by alien forces terrorizing his family.

During the trial, Lowrey began to come out with some rather outlandish claims, to say the least. The claims were not made directly to the DA’s office, but were rather uncovered online, where it seems Lowrey was claiming that aliens had been regularly trespassing into his home and holding his family, his wife and kids, under siege. Lowrey claimed that bizarre horned, alien-like, vaguely insectoid entities were emerging from his closet at night to poke him and his family with needles as they slept, after which they would awaken with needle holes on their bodies,  often forming diamond-shaped patterns.  He himself stops short of labeling them as “aliens,” but is quick to point out that they are definitely not human. He would say of this to a Greka attorney, who was rather strangely none other than Bela G. Lugosi, son of the actor best known for playing Count Dracula:

They were bothering me. I don’t think I said they terrorized me. But I said they were bothering me. You can see his little eyes looking at you, and the horns and the eyebrow. I’m not sure that they’re — you know, that you’d call them aliens. I know they’re not human-looking. I don’t remember a lot of it because, you know, you’re asleep when it’s happening to you.

But don’t just take his word for it, as Lowrey would claim to have plenty of evidence to back his story up. In addition to recording footprints of the beasts with a sheet of aluminum foil that he had laid out, he also claimed to have found a claw from one of the creatures hanging from a towel in his closet, and even claimed to have captured video footage of them. This footage was seen by Deputy District Attorney Jerry Lulejian, who found it to be very compelling. After seeing the tapes, Lulejian would make a statement saying:

I’m going to argue in court that there is something going on in these videos that substantiates what Gary Lowrey is talking about. But I can’t tell you what that is. I can’t give away the juicy part. There are things that look really, really strange. It sort of put the hair on the back of my neck up when I saw them. He’s shown me he’s rational, he’s shown me that there are things going on outside of him, and he’s shown me proof that they’re there. Everything he’s said in his deposition so far checked to be true based on what he’s said in his – or what I’ve seen on the videos and what’s in the reports.

Images from the videos would eventually be released, but they are rather underwhelming, showing what may, kind of sort of look like a misshapen head if you squint your eyes. As to why the picture quality is so bad, one UFO researcher had this to add:

If these beings move between frames, detected on pause, on the camera as he says, they may have a sort of cloaking device, to fool our sense of vision, or their slightly out of phase with our 3-dimensions, as the camera can capture what the un-enhanced eye can’t, but not being seen as continuing motion on the videocam, that is strange. A high-speed infra-red cam plus a night vision cam, and a taser to disable the being, triggered by the cameras would sent about 50,000 volts into whatever, and maybe able to capture it, as it has mass, as exhibited by the indentation of the aluminum foil where fast-walker appeared, in the closet I think he said.

Lowrey also enlisted the help of notable UFO researcher, podiatrist, and expert on alien implants, Dr. Roger Leir, who also believed his story. Amazingly, none of this seemed to disqualify Lowrey as a credible witness in the case against Greka, despite the company seeking to use his stories of aliens as a reason to discredit him and have him booted as a reliable witness in the case. Greka attorney Lugosi would lament the court’s decision to allow Lowery to continue his involvement in the case, saying:

Don’t you find a witness who claims that he’s being visited by aliens at night and getting punctured at night rather a whacky thing to be claiming? Obviously, credibility is important. It’s not every day you have a code enforcement matter which involves aliens in the closet, mysterious claws and a podiatrist who removes alien implants. Here’s their most important witness, and the D.A. is buying into it, saying that none of this affects his credibility. We’re very surprised. Yes, there are people who believe in aliens, but we’re talking about the Santa Barbara district attorney’s office here!

As all of this was going on, Lowrey was becoming a sort of minor celebrity in the UFO field, appearing on the paranormal radio program Coast to Coast AM with host Mike Seigel, but then he began to go silent on his story, according to some because he was being told not to speak of these things, sparking tales of conspiracies going beyond even the court case. Peter A. Gersten, Executive Director of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, would say of it all:

Several weeks before the Bay Area Expo in August, Gary Lowrey, a Bakersfield Fire Safety Officer, contacted me after numerous failed attempts to get the attention of other well-known organizations and persons in the UFO field. After listening to his story about his ongoing encounters with strange insectoid-type creatures in his home, and based upon his possession of certain physical evidence, I agreed to represent him both as an attorney and also in a joint venture to get the truth out. Though Lowrey was forthcoming in stating that he wants to help his family financially with the information and evidence he possesses, he assured me that his primary motivation is to share his ongoing encounters with the world and hopefully learn some answers as to what he and his family are experiencing. My part of our agreement included my successful efforts to get him national attention through my organization CAUS, my workshop at the Bay Area UFO Expo, and my frequent appearances on Mike Siegel’s Coast to Coast Radio show as well as other projects and forums that were being planned.

After speaking with Lowrey over the course of several weeks, I came to believe that the Bakersfield California family represents one of the best cases of contact because of the confirmatory physical evidence, the believability of the witnesses and the continuous nature of the experiences. Unfortunately because of the greed and selfishness of several people, Lowrey is temporarily silenced and his credibility forever compromised. Last Saturday, give or take a day, Gary Lowrey, after being told by a self-styled “Hollywood producer” that there was no need for him to consult me or any other attorney, signed a contract for the exclusive print and movie rights to his story. According to Lowrey, the contract prohibits him from talking to anyone about his past and present experiences. The producer even deceptively composed an e-mail for Lowrey to send to me in which he states that he can no longer appear on Mike Siegel’s Coast to Coast radio show and if I have any questions I should consult his attorney, Mark Commerford, who I later determine is actually the producer’s attorney and not Lowrey’s. Sadly, though Lowrey appeared with me on the radio show this past Monday night, he refused to talk about his experiences, which he had originally agreed to share before the producer’s gag order. 

What makes the Lowrey debacle even more unpalatable is the fact that the perpetrators of this travesty are members of the UFO community. In fact the producer is none other than Christopher Wyatt, founder, President and CEO of UFO Community.com, a company, which, as evidenced by Wyatt’s callous disregard for both the public’s right to know and the significance of Lowrey’s interaction with other life forms, is quite inappropriately named. Why Wyatt, after signing Lowrey to an exclusive contract, would want to silence him on the eve of his national coming-out-party thereby avoiding a Coast to Coast listening audience of millions and the free promotion inherent in such exposure, is very strange and suspicious. Christopher Wyatt has used the tools of deception, misrepresentation, and coercion to silence an individual who is presently interacting with a non-human form of intelligence. On Siegel’s show, Lowrey stated he was “coerced” by Wyatt into signing the contract. Wyatt has now convinced Lowrey that he has no choice but to honor their contract and that Wyatt will sue him if he shows the contract to me. I am not surprised that there are those within the UFO community who are more interested in money than in our right to know the truth. But to compromise something we all have been waiting years for, the opportunity to record and verify evidence of ongoing contact, is unconscionable and requires exposing the true nature of the beast.

Indeed, during the coming court appearances, Lowrey would freeze up and refuse to mention the aliens again, allowing the whole thing to resolve in mundane fashion. Was he silenced, and if so, by who exactly? What in the world was going on here? What are we to make of all of this? A big court case, a lawyer who is the son of the actor who played Dracula, and aliens? I seems as if it could not possibly get more absurd, and yet this all did happen and is there on the record. It is all a very bizarre case, and certainly adds some spice to the otherwise dry and humdrum business of a court case.

Among the most fascinating kinds of phenomena in the tool kit of various organisms is the unique quality of bioluminescence. From fireflies to deep ocean fish at sea, a wide range of different manifestations of natural luminescence in nature exist, which species use for everything from attracting mates, to luring in prey.

One of the most fascinating places where bioluminescent phenomena occur is in ocean environments, where a variety of different organisms deploy luminous capabilities in unique ways. At times, significant portions of ocean water may take on a glowing appearance, due to the presence of tiny luminescent organisms which produce luciferin, a compound that produces light once it becomes oxidized.

However, there are also a few instances involving peculiar phenomena that have accompanied the presence of bioluminescent phenomena at sea. Specifically, this involves the curious echoes on ship’s radars in the presence of light produced by these organisms.

A pair of notable incidents that appear to convey this phenomenon occurred beginning in March 1977. The sailing ship m.v. Ebani had been traversing the North Atlantic on this date when it began to encounter a number of false radar echoes which reoccurred throughout the day. These radar returns appeared to the crew like groups of fishing boats approximately five miles distance, which would have seemed to be a plausible explanation if not for the fact that the returns would disappear once the Ebani attempted to close its distance on the spurious targets.

At approximately 8 PM on the date in question, the crew observed the targets on radar at a distance of approximately 5.5 miles when, rather than vanishing, they appeared to move around the perimeter of the ship at this distance, encircling the Ebani within a large, 10-mile circle. Coinciding with the movement of the targets observed on radar, the crew had been able to observe a change in the appearance of the ocean water, which began to look milky and had been accompanied by a fishy odor.

At this point, the crew directed their Aldis lamp toward a region of the ocean ahead of them, which revealed the presence of luminescent organisms in the sea. The strange circle of bioluminescent organisms remained for close to 45 minutes, during which time the curious radar echoes also continued.

The following year on June 20, another sailing vessel, the Gambada, was en route between Santos and Buenos Aires when it also began to detect unusual radar echoes. Initially, the crew in this instance believed they were detecting a storm moving toward the vessel, although it appeared to be approaching against the prevailing wind. The crew noticed that the radar echo looked unlike a typical weather formation, and soon it became evident that once the ship was passing through the region producing the radar echo, there was no rain to be seen. What was plainly evident, however, was an illuminated region of the ocean surrounding the Gambada, illuminating the seawater in the same area that appeared to coincide with the peculiar false radar return.

Although there is little mystery behind the oceanic bioluminescence itself, the occurrence of odd radar returns associated with the presence of these organisms is something that is far less often reported. Explanations for it seem to be equally elusive, and it remains a curiosity as far as the many appearances of luminous phenomena at sea are concerned.

When it comes to proposing “what if” questions about UFOs and aliens, there is perhaps no bigger player on the scientific side than Harvard University astronomer Abrahma ‘Avi’ Loeb. Loeb was made famous to the general public with his proposals early on that the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua was actually some for of extraterrestrial spacecraft that could have been crewed by living or robotic pilots. He’s back in the news this week with a new “what if” about ‘Oumuamua that fits right in with the upcoming Pentagon report on UAPs and the public’s wondering if any of them will be revealed as alien crafts. Loeb, as usual, has a different angle.

“A predecessor to ‘Oumuamua could have been a craft that deposited small probes into the Earth’s atmosphere without being noticed, because it visited before Pan-STARRS started its operations. Along this imaginative line of reasoning, ‘Oumuamua could have arranged to appear as coming from the neutral local standard of rest, which serves as the local “galactic parking lot,” so that its origin would remain unknown.”

In an op-ed in Scientific American, Loeb drops the idea that ‘Oumuamua may have been a spacecraft retrieving data from a previous visitor that dropped probes to Earth – one that stopped by before we had technology like Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) telescope used to discover it. before you scoff, he justifies this theory with a proposal in the style of the Fermi paradox (If there a billions of stars in the galaxy and a high percentage that could support life, where are all the aliens?) observation about interstellar objects:

“In fact, there should be a quadrillion ‘Oumuamua-like objects within the solar system at any given time, if they are distributed on random trajectories with equal probability of moving in all directions.”

If there are that many interstellar objects, where are they? Loeb says the answer might be that “‘Oumuamua was an artificial object on a targeted mission towards the sun, aimed to collect data from the habitable region near Earth.” If that was the case, then “tumbling motion of ‘Oumuamua could potentially have been meant to scan signals from all viewing directions.” Furthermore, “‘Oumuamua could have arranged to appear as coming from the neutral local standard of rest, which serves as the local “galactic parking lot,” so that its origin would remain unknown.”

While “Galactic Parking Lot” would make a great name for a prog rock album, Loeb’s theory sounds plausible. However, he states that he’s not trying to prove ‘Oumuamua is an alien ship retrieving probes – he just wants the scientific community to devote more time, and be more openminded, to collecting and analyzing data on UAPs. To wit, he issued a second Scientific American op-ed this week addressing this.

“A fresh scientific study that offers reproducible evidence for UFO sightings and resolves their nature would demonstrate the power of science in answering a question that is clearly of great interest to the public. Finding a conclusive answer on the basis of open data will enhance the public’s confidence in evidence-based knowledge.”

Not only should we “learn something new and exciting from studying them scientifically,” we could also determine “the meaning behind its existence—the intent of those who manufactured it.” And, if even one is extraterrestrial, we’ll finally know if they’re malevolent or benevolent.

Who can argue with that? Thanks, Avi! (And thanks for the cool album name.)

While many people believe crop circles are made by aliens hovering over fields in UFOs, a major complaint of crop circle skeptics is the lack of photos showing aliens, UFOs or any unusual activity during the construction of the mysterious circles. Is it because they’re all made by talented humans with ropes, boards and sometimes the clandestine permission of the farmers themselves? A man in Buckinghamshire, England, doesn’t think so after seeing a huge white dome of light over a neighbor’s field at 1 am – a field which had an unusual crop circle in it the next day. He’s not saying it’s aliens, but …

“It’s the sight of a very strange happening this morning at 1-00 am I was woken up by a very bright light shining on my ceiling? We have had a few shed break ins so I got out of bed and looked out the window to see if anyone or thing had set off a security light ! But there was no noise or anything obvious on my or my neighbours to the back or left hand side , but on the right in the field next to my other neighbours was a giant white dome, 25-30 feet high pure bright white no other marking looked like a giant tube light?”

On his Facebook page, Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, resident Martin Hoult described what he saw recently over a farmer’s field behind his house – a bright dome of light that defied any conventional explanation. He says the farm “is quite away off” so he didn’t think he was seeing security lights. After getting “a drink of water and a pee,” he returned to his bedroom, turned off the light and noticed “the light from outside had gone.” The next morning he happened to meet the farmer and described what he had seen.

no it’s a farmer’s field behind my place ? It’s the sight of a very strange happening this morning at 1-00 am I was woken up by a very bright light shining on my ceiling? W have had a few shed break ins so I got out of bed and looked out the window to see if anyone or thing had set off a security light ! But there was no noise or anything obvious on my or my neighbours to the back or left hand side , but on the right in the field next to my other neighbours was a giant white dome , 25-30 feet high pure bright white no other marking looked like a giant tube light? Thought it might be a tractor with a giant halo light but it was raining and no noise at all ? Thought the farm which is quite away off may have had new security lights ? Looked around for a few minutes went for a drink of water and a pee shut my windows went to bed turned of my light the light from outside had gone ? Next day went to the polls came back bumped into my neighbour mentioned the above went to the field about twenty yards saw these crops pressed down with all the bigger plants still standing up massive crop circle where giant light had been ?? About 60 feet across and maybe 100-150 feet long giant rugby ball ish shape ??

 That’s when the neighbor gave Hoult a shock:

“(We) went to the field about twenty yards saw these crops pressed down with all the bigger plants still standing up massive crop circle where giant light had been ?? About 60 feet across and maybe 100-150 feet long giant rugby ball ish shape ??”

In the field where the dome of light had been was a crop circle – more of a crop oval actually. That’s pretty unusual for crop circles – they’re always round like their name. Add that to the bright dome of light and Martin Hoult may have seen the making of a non-human, ET-in-a-UFO crop circle creation. That’s obviously what he was thinking when interviewed by the Bucks Free Press.

“It’s very strange. I can’t say it was a UFO because it wasn’t flying but it was definitely an unidentified object or light.”

But wait … there’s more.

“All the grass is flat but the weeds are standing upright. And the tops of all the trees further down on Mumford’s Lane are burnt.”

A crop circle that’s oval. A crop circle whose crop is smashed down but the weeds are still standing. A crop circle underneath a bright dome of light. A crop circle whose maker may have burned the tops of nearby trees during its creation.

You never see weeds in a crop circle

Does this sound like a UFO-made crop circle?

Unfortunately, while Hoult took photos of the crop circle (see them here), they’re from the ground, not the air, and he didn’t snap any of the bright domed light. Taken in their entirety, these events are challenging to explain by conventional circumstances. We’re forced to wait for it to happen again.

Remember, when you get up to pee, take your phone!

A video which appeared on YouTube appears to show a flashing green light in a field in Salinas Valley, California, where crop circles where later discovered.

It’s no secret that I don’t believe aliens crashed outside of Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. I’ve written two books on why, in my mind, we should be looking for answers that take us beyond tales of aliens and dead extraterrestrials. They are 2005’s Body Snatchers in the Desert and 2017’s The Roswell UFO Conspiracy. For many of those who believe aliens did come down on the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, they hang onto certain aspects of the Roswell story – aspects that seem to vindicate the tales of aliens. Today, though, I’m going to explain how and why some of the cornerstones of Roswell are actually nothing of the sort. I’ll begin with the yarn of Glenn Dennis and those “little coffins” in which the alien bodies were supposedly stored. At the time when everything went weird at Roswell in ’47, Dennis was an embalmer (not a mortician, as so many have incorrectly described him – including Dennis himself, no less) at the local Ballard Funeral Home. He signed a sworn affidavit confirming something sensational – namely, that a nursing friend at the base had quietly admitted to him that a preliminary autopsy of a number of strange bodies had been conducted at the base hospital at the Roswell Army Air Field. One of the most memorable parts of Dennis’ tale is the claim that in the immediate aftermath of the crash, he was contacted by someone at the base. It was someone who wanted to know to if he – Dennis – had any small coffins. And, that’s what I want to address today.

I have always thought that Dennis’ story of the small coffins was planted – by the man himself – as a piece of dramatic story-telling and the pinnacle of his claims. If bodies were taken to the base – and I believe they were, but they weren’t alien – having a military man bringing up the need for tiny coffins, and sharing the story with Dennis, makes no sense at all – and particularly so from the perspective of security. Maybe even of national security proportions. It only inflates the controversy even more. And, certainly, no-one on the base wanted that. The military would not have wanted to seed the story of small bodies in the mind of a local embalmer: who was a member of the public. Why would the military specifically ask Dennis for small coffins, when normal-sized would have done the job just as well? The answer is simple: they wouldn’t have done that. They would have operated in a very low-key fashion.Clearly, the tale of the “tiny coffins” is garbage and, for those who still hang onto the story, it’s time to walk away from it. Forever.

Now, there’s the saga of “the victims of the wreck.” One of the most intriguing pieces of Roswell-based documentation is that which has become known as the “Ramey Memo.” It is a single piece of paper and can be seen in a black-and-white photograph taken of Brigadier General Roger Ramey. In 1947, he was the head of the 8^th Army Air Force, which operated out of Fort Worth, Texas. Ramey is a key part of the story, as he is holding the memo in question in his left hand; a memo which says something about Roswell. But, what? That’s the issue UFO researchers are unable to agree upon. A number of attempts have been made to decipher the memo. The first real attempt of any major significance was undertaken on behalf of the U.S. Air Force. In their massive 1994 report on the Roswell affair, the USAF stated that it sent the photo-collection to what was only referred to as a “national-level organization for digitizing and subsequent photo interpretation and analysis.” The results, however, were disappointing, as that same unnamed organization informed the Air Force, on July 20, 1994, that even after careful digitizing, “the photos were of insufficient quality to visualize either of the details sought for analysis.”

The crash site

(Nick Redfern)

There is very little doubt that the memo includes the words “in the ‘disc’ they will ship.” Far more controversially, David Rudiak concludes from his analysis that the words “operation at the ranch” and “the victims of the wreck” can also be seen. Roswell investigator Kevin Randle noted in 2015: “While ‘Victims of the wreck’ might not take us immediately to the extraterrestrial, it would certainly start us on the path.” I’m particularly intrigued by that word, “victims.” Let’s take a look at the definitions for “victim” that Merriam-Webster provides. They include: “one that is acted on and usually adversely affected by a force or agent;” “one that is injured, destroyed, or sacrificed under any of various conditions;” “one that is subjected to oppression, hardship, or mistreatment;” and “one that is tricked or duped” If the “human experiment” angle for Roswell is the correct one – as I believe it to be – then the terminology used by Merriam-Webster to define a “victim” is most apt. After all, there is no doubt that those used in the 1940s-era experiments were “adversely affected by a force or agent.” Few would deny they were “injured, destroyed, or sacrificed.”” And they were certainly ““subjected to oppression, hardship, or mistreatment.” Still on the matter of that controversial sentence in the Ramey Memo, there is the issue of the word “wreck.” It seems very strange that such a word would have been used to describe what the military was assuring the media was just a flimsy weather-balloon.

Now, we come to another aspect of Roswell that many ufologists claim proves that aliens crashed, but that, as you’ll see, doesn’t stand up at all. When, in the 1990s, the Government Accountability Office (previously known as the General Accounting Office) was investigating Roswell, they found that a huge amount of documentation from the base was missing. Proof that aliens did crash? Nope. You have to look at the story carefully. If UFO/Roswell researchers wish to maintain that the missing files from 1947 point to a specific cover-up of the Roswell event – and Roswell occurred out of the blue in July of that year – then they have to provide a viable reason as to why documentation dating back as far as March 1945 was pulled too, and why additional documentation remains missing from as late as 1950. Saying that “the outgoing Roswell messages from July 1947 are missing” is absolutely true, and it opens eyes and it catches the attention of ufologists and Roswell disciples everywhere. Noting that, in reality, the files actually cover 1945 to 1950, and also cover general administrative issues at the base, is far less attention-grabbing.

Ironically, the fact that the files which have vanished (files which still cannot be found) span 1945 to 1950, actually adds weight to the idea that Roswell was a military experiment. Just about everyone I spoke with while writing Body Snatchers in the Desert told me that the human experimentation began in 1945 and ended in the late 1940s – with a few additional tests having occurred in the early fifties. Pulling 1945-era files for a one-off event that didn’t occur until the summer of 1947 makes zero sense. Pulling certain 1945-era files that might have compromised the handful of pre-Roswell experiments – had they reached the public domain, of course – makes perfect sense. The same goes for the decision to make the 1948-1950 files vanish, too. The fact is that six years of files are missing, not just files from the time of the Roswell crash. This is indicative of a fairly lengthy series of ongoing tests that had to be hidden – not the out-of-the-blue crash of one solitary alien spacecraft midway through 1947.

It should also be recalled that President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments revealed that “…a number of potentially important collections could not be located and were evidently lost or destroyed [italics mine]. Similarly, the Committee reveals, a number of those same document collections related to experiments undertaken in the fields of biomedicine, defense and space exploration; and in the great majority of these cases only fragmentary data remained. Where programs were legitimately kept secret for national security reasons, states the Committee, the government often did not create or maintain adequate records [italics mine], thereby preventing the public, and those most at risk, from learning the facts in a timely and complete fashion.”  All of this is highly suggestive of an agenda to make Roswell go away – permanently. And to bury the extremely controversial “human experiment” angle of the incident.

The go-to explanation for giant iceballs from space that are too large to be hail and too non-blue and non-stinky to be waste dumped from airplane toilets is ‘megacryometeor’ – a rare frozen space ball whose cause researchers can’t seem to agree on and whose dangerous propensity to crash into homes the government doesn’t seem to be worried about protecting us from. Do we need a Pentagon investigation or should we hold a telethon? Either one might help a family in Elk Mound, Wisconsin, who is the latest victim of this insidious space invader.

“It grazed me. I would’ve probably been out, kicked the bucket [if it landed on me]. As soon as that came through, everything else was like dust of insulation. I couldn’t see.”

What next?

Ken Millermon of Elk Mound, a small village in western Wisconsin near Eau Claire, sounds happy to be alive after his bedroom was the target of a 12-pound ice ball on May 25, 2021. Millermon called his insurance agent since it looked like a lot of damage (see photos here) and they’re generally more responsive than the government. Then he called the local news media, which spread the photos around and tried to find an answer.

“While some people suggest megacryometeors really just come from airplanes. Some people say well it’s the head or the bathroom of the airplane, or maybe it’s coming out of the wheel well. That explanation doesn’t hold up if we have samples back in the 1700s.”

Well, that eliminates a plane poopsicle, according to Dr. James Boulter, a chemistry and biochemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claie (UWEC). Boulter also agrees with meteorologists who say it’s far too big to be a hailstone, along with the fact that the storm in the area that night wasn’t powerful enough to create hail. For the “I’m not saying it’s aliens, but …” crowd, Boulter has tests he runs on giant ice balls (a potential band name?) and eliminated the possibility of this one coming from outer space. However, it could still be a type of meteor.

“We think, it’s likely to be a megacryometeor. These have been observed around the world to a tune of maybe a dozen or so a year.”

Being a good professor, Boulter turned this mysterious ice ball into a learning experience for his students. While they know about the troposphere, the part of the atmosphere hugging the ground where we humans live, and the stratosphere, the next layer which is extremely stable and has no turbulence, few are aware of the thin layer in-between them known as the tropopause. Hovering somewhere between 5.6 and 11 miles up (it’s thicker over the equator), it’s the point where air no longer cools with height, instead becoming completely dry. While generally stable, Boulter says that certain unknown activities in the jet stream can create a fold in the tropopause, causing the stratosphere to mix with the troposphere, creating weird conditions that could cause ice crystals to form fast enough to accumulate into giant ice ball ‘megacryometeors’ before falling to the earth and into bedrooms.

Megacryometeor wannabes?

“The conditions to create something of this magnitude up there have to be pretty interesting, with a dozen or so of these things a year of just the ones that have been reported. Imagine all the ones that fall over oceans or forests; there’s probably a lot more of these than we actually know about.”

As Ken Millerman might say – ‘Who cares … what about our roofs?’ A study of megacryometeors sounds like the perfect subject for a PhD dissertation or a grant … or a project for certain billionaires to research as they send their private crafts to the edge of space and back.

That whooshing sound you hear is lawyers for airlines breathing a sigh of relief.

(Special thanks to BT!)

Located out in a small valley in the central part of Norway, in the municipality of Holtålen in Trøndelag county, is the scenic valley of Hessdalen. Surrounded by scenic mountains, it is an isolated, sparsely populated area, the largest settlement being the tiny village of the same name, which has a population of just 150 people. Not much typically goes on here, and the people live a quiet, peaceful life among the picturesque scenery away from the bustle of city life, but beginning in 1981 their serene lives would be interrupted by a spate of sightings of mysterious lights in the sky that have remained unexplained.

Hessdalen Valley

Although strange lights had been sporadically seen in the valley since the 1940s, the activity of the phenomenon now known as the Hessdalen lights really picked up and became known in 1981, when villagers in the valley were startled by a myriad of mysterious orbs of light in the sky that would regularly appear at various places throughout the valley both night and day. These lights could be anywhere from the size of a basketball to the size of a car, sometimes even much larger, and had a wide variety of characteristics and behaviors. They would usually be bright white, yellow or red, and depending on the report usually appearing below the horizon but sometimes above the mountains. They would alternately zip away at high speeds to vanish, slowly float about, hover in midair, speed up or slow down, away from side to side, or do aerial acrobatics. They would sometimes merely appear and disappear in a flash, while others were observed floating and zipping about for up to 2 hours, with larger orbs frequently seen to spew out smaller orbs. On occasion, the orbs were said to hover over water or approach or shy away from observers when approached, demonstrating what seemed to be intelligent control, and in some daytime sightings the objects were described as looking metallic. Whatever they were, they were sighted very frequently, in their peak being seen 15 to 20 times a week, frightening locals in the process. One article in the online science journal Frontiers in Earth Science has described the lights in detail:

In spite of their irregular occurrence—i.e., 15 to 20 times per week from 1981 to 1984 and 10 to 20 times per year nowadays— the Hessdalen lights (HL) have been consistently observed and possess a series of recurring features: (1) they have the appearance of a free-floating light ball with dimensions ranging from decimeters up to 30 m. (2) they are characterized by geometric structures that are often accompanied by small, short-duration pulsating “spikes” in the high frequency and very low frequency radio ranges, (3) they show an absolute luminosity that has been estimated to be 19 kW, and (4) they have a time duration ranging from seconds to hours. HL are also characterized by the formation of light ball clusters and the ejection of mini light balls. They may also show very high velocities. Furthermore, HL are thunderstorm-independent events, as opposed to other rare and poorly understood transient luminous phenomena occurring in the atmosphere (i.e., ball lightings, blue jets, red sprites and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes).

The Hessdalen lights quickly became big news, drawing in droves of all manner of curiosity seekers and UFO researchers, as well as mainstream scientists eager to get to the bottom of the mystery. In the summer of 1983, an ongoing scientific field investigation was launched to study the lights, and by the conclusion of their 1-year investigation there were 53 light observations made. More scientific investigations have been carried out as well, including one in 1985, and another from 1997–1998 which managed to capture footage of the lights in a bizarre pyramid shape that bounced up and down. In 1998, an automated station was installed in the valley, called the Hessdalen Automatic Measurement Station (Hessdalen AMS) to monitor the lights year round, collecting reams of photos of the lights, as well as various readings on scientific equipment, and there have been various peer reviewed papers on the lights published in scientific journals. Indeed, the Hessdalen lights constitute one of the most well researched mysterious phenomenon there is. However, despite all of this study, no one can quite figure out what they actually are.

The number of theories as to what the lights might be is vast. One idea is that some sort of combustion is occurring involving hydrogen, oxygen and sodium, helped along by large deposits of scandium in the area. Another is that they are caused by piezoelectricity, which is an electrical charge that accumulates in certain materials including certain kinds of rock such as quartz, crystals, certain ceramics, and even some biological materials like bone. Considering that the valley has large deposits of crystal rocks, it is speculated that these may build up a charge that is released to form these balls of light. Other theories include plasma balls, ball lightning, meteorites, mirages, igniting gases, and even the idea that the valley itself acts as a sort of battery that generates a current, as well as many other numerous hypotheses and speculations. However, no single explanation can really account for all of the different characteristics reported with the lights. Of course, the lights have been claimed to be ghosts and alien UFOs as well, and UFO researchers have long held keen interest in this place. Yet, as much as this lonely valley has been studied, the secrets of its strange lights have remained evasive, and we still have no idea what they are, keeping them in the realm of mystery and speculation.

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