The number of Egyptian coffins unearthed in Saqqara keeps rising. The first article I wrote on the discovery was back in September when I reported that at least 13 coffins dating back about 2,500 years ago had been discovered. What was so fascinating about these coffins was that they remained completely sealed and untouched since their burials. (The article can be read here.)

Then in October, I provided an update that more than 80 coffins had been unearthed in addition to 28 statuettes, several ushabti figurines and numerous amulets. Other breaking news was that on October 3^rd, archaeologists opened one of the coffins that revealed a mummy that was wrapped up in ornate burial linen with colorful designs and inscriptions. (That article can be read here.)

And now there is more news as the number of coffins found has jumped up to 160. And that’s not all as some of the tombs have curses written on the walls. In an email to Business Insider, Salima Ikram, who is an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo, explained that the curses were to scare off possible trespassers and grave robbers. “They generally state that if the tomb is entered by an impure person (probably in body and/or intention), then may the council of the gods punish the trespasser, and wring his or her neck like that of a goose,” she stated.

(Not the mummies mentioned in this article.)

One example was in the tomb of the vizier Ankhmahor who was a pharaoh’s official from more than 4,000 years ago during Egypt’s 6th dynasty. In a rough translation, the curse was written so that if a trespasser “might do against this, my tomb, the same shall be done to your property”. Additionally, there is a warning that the vizier knew magic and secret spells that could cause “impure” trespassers to be filled with a “fear of seeing ghosts”.

In a new Netflix documentary “Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb”, Ikram said that the tombs were like afterlife houses for the deceased and if anyone were to disrupt those places they would be punished in a horrible way – perhaps even death if anyone was to disrupt a royal tomb.

While the punishments for disrupting a noble’s tomb normally included beatings and perhaps their nose being removed, the curse written on Ankhmahor’s tomb was much less violent. In fact, the writings indicated that he would protect the trespasser in the court of Osiris who was believed to have judged the deceased individuals prior to passing over into the afterlife.

(Not the mummies mentioned in this article.)

Ikram went on to say that similar curses were found in other tombs across Egypt “with the majority being recorded from the Old Kingdom (between 2575 and 2150 BC)”. And for those who are scared of the curses, she stated that “If people wear gloves and masks, it should be fine”. After everything the world has gone through in 2020, I think I would definitely take a curse very seriously.

Pictures of some of the coffins and from inside the burial chambers can be seen here.

A total of 43 ancient mythological mask carvings have been found by archaeologists in Turkey’s ancient city of Stratonikeia that’s located in the Yatağan district of the southwestern province of Muğla. These 2,200-year-old carvings have been unearthed over the past two years with 33 of them already repaired and cleaned in preparation for the public to eventually view them.

In fact, many items from several different time periods have been unearthed at the 3,000-year-old ancient city that is now a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List. The excavation team, which is led by professor Bilal Söğüt of Pamukkale University, have already uncovered artifacts from the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Anatolian beyliks, Ottoman, and Republican periods.

(Not any of the mask carvings mentioned in this article.)

The excavation team has been working on several different structures in the city that includes a 2,200-year-old ancient theater where the mask carvings have been discovered. “We have been working at the ancient theater for two years. We found 33 face molds during our excavations here. Today, we unearthed 10 more. Hopefully, we will be able to find all the masks at the theater in their own places and arrange them in their original order. That will be very pleasant for us,” Söğüt stated.

He went on to describe how in ancient times, the masks would have been all around the theater’s stage. “When people came here in ancient times, they were impressed by the splendor and magnificence of the theater even before entering it. We have been slowly uncovering its richness and splendor. This [is] also the value ancient people gave to culture, art and architecture,” he explained.

He added that in addition to the characters depicted in the plays, the masks also represented ancient gods/goddesses and even animals. Pictures of the mask carvings can be seen here.

An aerial view from the 2,200-year-old theater in the ancient city of Stratonikeia, Muğla, southwestern Turkey, Nov. 24, 2020.

(AA PHOTO)

(Not any of the mask carvings mentioned in this article.)

While these masks were carved in stones, it wasn’t the only interesting mask discovery in western Turkey this year. A couple of months ago I wrote an article on a 2,400-year-old Terracotta mask depicting the Greek god Dionysus that was unearthed in the ancient city of Daskyleion that’s located in the Bandirma district of the Balikesir province. According to the archaeologist who led the excavation team, it was “possibly a votive mask” which means that it could have been used to express a wish or vow. (The article can be read in full here.)

There have certainly been some interesting discoveries unearthed in Turkey this year with possibly more to come.

Google “World’s oldest temple” (go ahead, we’ll wait) and the #1 answer is the famous Göbekli Tepe (Göbeklitepe) in southern Turkey, believed to have been built 11,000–12,000 years ago as a place to worship the dog star, Sirius. Loaded with T-shaped carved stone pillars, it predates Stonehenge by 6,000 years and puts Utah’s sole monolith to shame. Unfortunately for fans of the Göbekli Tepe, it may soon be knocked down to #2 with the announcement that the Karahan Tepe or Karahantepe in Turkey’s southeastern Şanlıurfa province contains hundreds of statues and artifacts that initially appear to predate Göbekli Tepe. Can Göbekli Tepe fans demand a recount?

“Life in Göbeklitepe is not only limited to a period of ‘T’-shaped stones. It reflects a much longer process, there is a settlement of 700 to 800 years. It is certain that Karahantepe is somewhere in this period. It may cover a longer period of time or it may begin before. The excavations here will reveal all these, but at least we can say that this process coincides with a significant time period, a contemporary period. This means 11,500 years before today.”

Professor Necmi Karul of the Prehistory Department at the İstanbul University is the leader of the “Göbeklitepe Culture and Karahantepe Excavations” project and explains in Hurriyet Daily News that while the site was initially discovered in 1997, surveys did not start until 2018 and excavations didn’t begin until September 2019. The surveys found at least 250 T-shaped Neolithic-era obelisks were found. The obelisks appeared to be similar to those at Göbekli Tepe and the excavations are proving it. (Photos here.)

“The excavation program continues in Karahantepe in an intensive and rapid manner. There are more years of work, but we will have reached an older excavation center. This is 12 thousand years old, the other will be much older. It will probably become a priority place than Göbeklitepe. It will be our new focus of attention.”

Speaking at the 10th International Resort Tourism Congress this week, Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy excitedly delivered the news, saying the discovery “will make a sound in the world!”. That would certainly be the case in both of the minister’s departments. Göbekli Tepe has been regarded as the world’s oldest temple since its discovery and its monoliths and artifacts continue to be intensely studied — as will those at Karahantepe. The fame and publicity has resulted in Göbekli Tepe becoming a major tourist attraction for Turkey, and, while Karahantepe might take some of that away, together the should increase the total number of visitors and tourist dollars for the country.

“This year we have found very important finds highlighting the human symbolism. We discovered sculptures and new buildings. The statue head is quite interesting. The statue head, 50 cm in diameter, is carved into the bedrock. Again, we found structures carved into the bedrock around it. “

One of the pillars at Göbekli Tepe.

(Wikipedia Creative Commons (also feature image))

Karul points out that, while both Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe are loaded with T-shaped columns, the statues are different, with Göbekli Tepe having more animal representations while Karahan Tepe has more humans. That could mean the two sites, while similar, were separated by more than their 35 km (21.7 mile) distance. So far, the tools found at Karahan Tepe indicate it was a hunter and gatherer community.

Get your algorithm read, Google. There’s a new oldest temple in town.

During World War II the skies over Europe were not stranger to battle. Here there were frequent engagements between fighter lanes, and the sounds of machine gun fire and explosions were as common a background noise as the singing of birds or the chirping of crickets. The violence became a fact of life in many places, a common occurrence, yet in the summer of 1941 a very strange series of events would play out in the skies over Le Mans, France that was far from the ordinary. At the time a French soldier by the name of Daniel Ledger was at Le Mans when his attention, as well as that of the villagers, was drawn to an unusual sight in the sky in an area above what was then a German occupied airfield in nearby town of Raineries. And so would begin a weird odyssey involving UFOs, crashed spaceships, and a mysterious alien woman.

On that summer day they could see what looked like a dense, aluminum-colored cloud that was shaped somewhat “like the handle of a frying pan” and the whole of it ringed with a mist that orbited the more solid looking darkened interior. This odd cloud seemed to be more than just a cloud, as it had a certain weight and solidity to it, and it was also moving across the sky faster than the other clouds. It was indeed a strange sight, but what made it even stranger still was that there seemed to be German fighter planes circling the mass, looking like flies at that distance but the droning of their engines still audible and unmistakable. From what they could see, the German planes seemed to be attacking the cloud, but as they did another, larger cloud descended to hover over the scene, this one described as luminous and matching the speed of the one below it. Upon the arrival of this cloud, the German planes that came close to it were seen to “fall down like leaves” for several seconds before taking to the air again.

To Ledger it seemed like their engines were cutting out to send them into a temporary free fall, and he suspected this was being done as a defense by the clouds. This would go on for nearly a full hour before the planes veered away and the clouds disappeared into the distance. Ledger would claim that he looked through newspaper reports in the following days and found not a single mention of anything that could have explained what he had seen. Puzzled, he tried to put the bizarre experience out of his head, but little did he know that this was to pale in comparison to another experience he would have a few years later.

In July of 1943, Ledger had been conscripted by the Germans to work at a labor camp in the coastal town of Gdynia, Poland, and one day he requested permission to visit the town of Exelgroud, which was granted. The only way for him to go at the time was on foot, but it wasn’t far, and so he headed out but soon found that the walk was taking longer than he expected. Ledger apparently decided to take a shortcut that took him over an area of sand dunes along the Baltic beach. As he made his way across the sand, he noticed something up ahead that was quite unusual. Half buried in the sand was what appeared to be some large grey metallic object, seemingly lodged deep into a dune as if it had fallen from the sky to crash there. Curious, Ledger approached the object and that was when things became even stranger than they already were.

As he drew closer, Ledger was met with the sight of a woman with long blonde hair and dressed in some sort of tight-fitting black or dark-brown jumpsuit with a belt, who appeared to be trying to manually dig the weird object out of the sand. At this point, Ledger was convinced that this must be a German pilot who had gone down in some sort of experimental aircraft and was in trouble, and this made him slightly hesitant to go any closer. He contemplated turning back, but as he did so the strange woman turned to face him, as if somehow aware of his presence. Her features were completely human, even pretty, slightly Asian looking despite her flowing blonde hair, and a look of relief spread across her face. She gestured for him to come over and help her, which he warily did, still not sure of who this person was.

When he reached the object, she gestured that she wanted him to dig with her, and he soon found that the craft was not as firmly embedded in the sand as he had thought. They were able to dig it mostly free in short order, and Ledger noticed that it was composed of a completely smooth metal that had no noticeable joints or seams. As they dug she talked to him, and when she finally spoke it was not in German or Polish, but rather a language he was unfamiliar with, but which sounded vaguely Russian. Although he could not understand what she was saying she seemed to understand him, although he was not sure why he had this impression. When they finished removing the last of the sand she repeated some unintelligible words which he took to be thanks, and then touched a button in her belt. When she did, a door on the metal object slid open, even though there were no seams to show a door was there, and she gestured to the sky and tapped her chest, then motioned for Ledger to back away from the craft. He could understand that she meant to take off, and so he did as he was told, still a bit confused as to who this person was and what was going on.

The woman then entered the object and the door slid closed behind her, blending seamlessly into the exterior like it had never even been there at all. Ledger claimed that before the door closed he could briefly see that the interior was devoid of any instrumentation panels, and that the woman was assuming a position on all fours, as if she were about to enter a “motorbike competition.” The craft then began to rise into the air in a shower of loose sand, glowing slightly as it did. Ledger took a few more steps away, and was astonished that the aircraft made no noise at all. The craft silently hovered there for a moment before suddenly shooting straight up into the sky at phenomenal speed and vanishing to leave him standing there dumfounded at what he had just seen.

It is important to note that even after all of this, Ledger was convinced that this had been some form of experimental aircraft and that he had met its very human pilot, but in later years he was not so sure. When UFO reports started to emerge more frequently and the United States and Soviet Union began their space programs, Ledger remembered the German fighters circling that strange cloud and his weird encounter with the woman and her ship on the dunes and he wondered if perhaps these had been brushes with something beyond this world and even if they were connected somehow. Being as this is a rather obscure case with little in the way of corroborating evidence, it is hard to know what to make of it. Who was this mysterious woman and where was she from? Was she ever even real at all? What connection, if any, does it all have to Ledger’s previous claimed experience? We will probably never know, and it remains another historical oddity confined to the forgotten mists of history.

The two biggest planets in our Solar System will provide us with a beautiful sky treat this Christmas season. While the conjunction will happen from December 16^th to the 25^th, Jupiter and Saturn will be the closest they’ve been to each other in almost 800 years on December 21^st.

Jupiter and Saturn to form 'double planet' for first time ...

This event will be visible worldwide with the best views from the equator. The two planets will appear in the western sky close to the horizon around the time that the sun sets. Those who live in the north, however, will have a much shorter time frame to see the conjunction before the planets disappear below the horizon. Patrick Hartigan, who is an astronomer from Rice University of Houston, Texas, noted, “Viewing that would be manageable if the weather cooperates and you have an unobstructed view to the southwest.”

Since this summer, Jupiter and Saturn have been moving closer to each other, and on the winter solstice (December 21^st) they will appear less than a full moon’s width apart from one another.

Hartigan explained what will happen during this upcoming sky show, “On the evening of closest approach on Dec 21 they will look like a double planet, separated by only 1/5th the diameter of the full moon,” adding, “For most telescope viewers, each planet and several of their largest moons will be visible in the same field of view that evening.”

The two planets won’t appear next to each other at this close of a range until 60 years from now on March 15, 2080 when they will be visible higher up in the sky and for a longer length of time. Then it won’t happen again until after the year 2400.

Hartigan went on to explain just how unique this sky show will be, “Alignments between these two planets are rather rare, occurring once every 20 years or so.” “But this conjunction is exceptionally rare because of how close the planets will appear to one another.” “You’d have to go all the way back to just before dawn on March 4, 1226, to see a closer alignment between these objects visible in the night sky.”

Since this event will not happen again for another 60 years, you may want to head outside on December 21^st to see this pretty holiday show.

In the summer of 1944, a 13-year old girl by the name of Madeleine Arnoux was out on a hot afternoon on her way to pick up some food near her farm in rural France, likely black market food since it was rationed at the time. She rode along on her bicycle towards a hamlet known as Le Verger, and she decided to stop along the way to pick some berries in a nearby meadow that bordered the woods. As she sought out berries, she began making her way down a trail that led off into the trees, and this trail veered off to disappear around a bend. As she reached the curve in the trail it was then that she allegedly noticed something very strange on the path ahead. She would claim that sitting a few hundred meters away was a grey metallic craft of some sort, described as being about the size of a standard car. The outer surface seemed to be perfectly smooth, with no visible openings or windows, but the strangest thing about the surreal scene as that there were several diminutive beings standing around it. These tiny humanoid creatures were only around 1 meter tall and dressed in odd brown one-piece suits, and they seemed to be just standing there staring at her.

She would say of what happened next:

They did not make any gesture in my direction, and as to me, I was frozen on the spot. How much time did this mutual observation last? I cannot say, but I remember the oppressive atmosphere, still worsened by the thundery weather and of my impression to be unable to move… Suddenly I managed to react and wanted to pick up my bicycle again; which lay within a few meters. The time to bend down and, by looking up at the strange appearance again, there was nothing any more. Only, at this place, the trees were agitated by a violent wind. I did not think of looking up in the air, where I would have undoubtedly still have seen the machine which flew away.

At this point she was rather terrified, and rode her bicycle home as fast as she could. At the time she did not think anyone would believe her, and so she did not tell her parents, nor anyone else for that matter. And so she would keep the incident to herself for many years, pushing it away to the back of her mind in an effort to move on and forget. At the time she did not associate this with aliens or UFOs, and being a simple farm girl she did not even know what a UFO was. Being an uneducated rural girl, talk of extraterrestrials and spaceships were far from her mind, and so she was left to puzzle about what that thing in the woods had been. Over the years she would learn of the wider UFO phenomena and of other people who had encountered them, and she began to think that what she had seen could not be explained with any rational explanation. She would say:

A long time, I thought of the strange encounter and then I forgot it… It was necessary that one starts to speak about the “Flying Saucers” for me to make a link and that I think that I had undoubtedly seen one of these mysterious UFOs. After so many years the image is still very clear in my memory and I know that I had not dreamed and that what I saw in wood that day was not nothing “known.” It could not have been a vehicle of that time, moreover they were rather rare, so that I undoubtedly identify it. The place of the encounter was deserted, the way leads into the wood, the closest farms are at 1 km. We were in 1944, the men of the resistance were numerous in the area, but it could not have been any of them. Neither German soldiers, and undoubtedly one or the others would have called me. It is thus necessary to thing that I witnessed one of the first visits of UFOs.

In 1972, Arnoux approached ufologist Fernand Lagarde, writing a letter to him that was then published in the French ufology magazine Lumières Dans la Nuit, and considering when the incident supposedly occurred it was indeed one of the earlier UFO encounters. Rather curiously, although Arnoux would claim that she had received a lot of mail in response to her letter, no one had ever actually followed up on it or came to her house to investigate. She would say of this:

Whereas I received quite a lot of mail after the publication of the article in question (all the magazine treating the matter, at the time (1972) wrote to me to interrogate me and to ask me the report of the facts. I was even told that that a young man of Toulon on Arroux, studying with the UCLA (University of Los Angeles), a few years later, had read my article in an American magazine, in the very library of this prestigious university). But it seems that my modest person did not interest the investigators, for never nobody came to my home. Whether some journalists came on the spot, that is quite possible, but they never met me. I went back to the place myself, ten years ago. everything was changed, and if I did not have in memory this true “photographic impression” of the scene of June July 44, I could not have recognized anything.

In 1996, Arnoux came forward with some curious new information to ufologist Michel Figuet, regarding another possible UFO that the witness saw in 1942 in her village of Toulon on Arroux. She would say of this in a letter to Figuet:

I might add something all the same, to bring back facts that came back to my memory after the publication of the article, which perhaps does not have any relationship with the occurrence, but which are rather odd. A few years before, i.e. in the 1st years of the war, perhaps in 1942 (the Germans occupied Toulon on Arroux, rather peacefully, it should be acknowledged), almost each evening, during the summer I think (for the evenings were beautiful and tepid), and during several days in a row, the district when I lived with my parents, the “Suburb” (all next the small station of departmental railroad Etang-Digoin) was in agitation. Indeed, we managed to observe a whitish gleam, slightly shnining (a “dull” moon) in the sky, roughly at a point located in the north-west. This gleam was motionless, sometimes seemed to die out a little, then was revived.

Needless to tell you that each evening, there was a gathering of all the district and everyone went on with their comments and guesses… admittedly comprising only: “tethered balloons”, “a zeppelin” (memory of another war…), allied or enemy observation “sausages” [blimps]… I know that courageous young men went, in the day, to check the surroundings and never saw anything… Now, I am about sure that in straight line, the place where we could see this luminous and fixed object was located at the vertical of the place where I saw, a few years later, my “UFO”. Was there a connection between these occurrences? Did they observe us already, from above, before trying the landing?

Although Arnoux’s account is quite bizarre and intriguing, there has been some skepticism aimed at the tale. For one is that she waited 28 years to tell a story from when she was 13 years old, during which time her memory could have become foggy or twisted. Indeed, she admits that she cannot remember the exact date or time of day of the sighing, nor can she recall the duration, and her memory of the appearance of the craft and its occupants are also vague. For instance, she explained in her letter that “I don’t seem to remember any openings on the craft.” There is also the fact that all of the information on the case is based on letters sent to Lagarde and Figuet, and there doesn’t seem to have been any real effort by anyone to follow up on the case or do a full investigation. On top of all of this is the fact that the sighting was made from a distance of several hundred meters, and ufologist Patrick Gross has said of this detail:

Mrs Arnoux said that the object and the beings were at several hundred meters from her! This is a very long observation distance, and I challenge anyone looking at some vehicle and people at several hundred meters to explain to me how to measure that people there are 1 meter or 2 meters tall, or how to be sure that the feature of some vehicle are “nothing known”. If the observant is only 13 years old, at a time when the vehicle could be some not-so-ordinary vehicle such as a military half-track or armored car, what amazing is there in the notion that there is no good case for aliens and their spaceship here?

What happened to this young woman? Did she see something from beyond our world or is this just a misunderstanding or even a tall tale? The case of Madeleine Arnoux is significant in that it happened before the UFO phenomena and all of the talk of alien encounters and alien abductions really took off, making it unique in how early on it occurred. Whether you believe she really saw aliens out there or not, her case is one of the earliest modern examples of a close encounter with UFOs, and it serves to stir the imagination at the very least.

On January 19, 1966, a banana farmer by the name of George Pedley was out at a place called Horseshoe Lagoon, in north Queensland, Australia, not far from the town of Tully. The lagoon itself is a murky morass of swampy, muddy water and dense reeds, bent into the horseshoe shape from which it gets its name. On his rounds Pedley often drove through the property, which was owned by a sugar cane farmer by the name of Albert Pennisi. As he drove the tractor along a narrow dirt track on that day, he reportedly heard a hissing sound that was loud enough to be heard over the sound of his droning engine. Pedley’s immediate thought was that one of his tires was punctured, but an inspection showed them to be fine. It was as he was getting back onto his tractor to continue his journey that he would see something remarkable rise up from the swampland of the lagoon, of which he would say:

Suddenly, an object rose out of the swamp. When I glanced at it, it was already 30 feet above the ground, and at about tree-top level. It was a large, grey, saucer-shaped object, convex on the top and bottom and measured some 25 feet across and 9 feet high. While I watched, it rose another 30 feet, spinning very fast, then it made a shallow dive and took off with tremendous speed. Climbing at an angle of 45 degrees it disappeared within seconds in a south-westerly direction. I saw no portholes or antennas, and there was no sign of life either in or about the ship.

Horseshoe Lagoon

Even more bizarre than this was what he found when he approached the area from where the object had taken off. There in the lagoon was a circular area of flattened reeds that had been cleared of water, measuring around 32 feet long by 25 feet wide, around which the water slowly rotated in clockwise curves. Much of the grass had seemingly been completely uprooted, and the depression was strange enough that Pedley was sure it had not been there when he had passed earlier in the day. A look at the surrounding area showed it to be untouched, and there was no sign that any trees had been scorched or damaged in any way. Pedley left at the time, but it was odd enough that he went back to the spot several hours later to find that now the depression was full of water and held a large circular mass of green reeds that floated on the surface and revolved in a languid clockwise radial pattern, with an overall shape almost like that of an overturned saucer. He went as far as to actually wade out into the water of the lagoon to find that it was almost like a floating island that he could swim under, and making it even odder still was that the bottom of the lagoon beneath it seemed to be completely smooth and devoid of the usual tangle of roots and detritus. He was also surprised to see that the surrounding grass had turned brown, although it had been green when he had left earlier.

Pedley went to the farmer Pennisi, who went out there to see the spectacle for himself, and Pedley would explain the whole bizarre tale to him. It would be found that oddly Pennisi’s dog had been acting very strangely at just around the exact time that Pedley had had his encounter, and he also explained that he had been having vivid dreams for a week about a flying saucer landing on his property. Considering that it was his property and that he knew the lagoon very well, Pennisi was astonished, as he had never seen anything quite like it before. After telling Pennisi, Pedley would take photos of the anomaly and go to the police with his story, and before long the story had hit the press and it was splashed all over the papers, where the circular mass was being called a “UFO nest” and there was much talk of aliens and spaceships.

Pedley’s UFO nest

A subsequent investigation would turn up at least five other such anomalous “UFO nests” scattered around in the vicinity, all smaller than the first, with some rotating clockwise, others counterclockwise, and still other with evidence of charred grass in the center. Samples of these “nests” were taken and sent off to be analyzed, but this turned up nothing unusual. Police would end up dismissing the nests were caused not by aliens, but rather nothing more than whirlwinds, waterspouts, or even a helicopter. The government was equally eager to explain the phenomenon away, citing the same sort of explanation, and Mr. G.J. Odgers, Director of Public Relations for the Department of Defence, would make a statement saying:

Although a conclusive determination could not be made, the most probable explanation was that the sighting was of a ‘willy willy’ or circular wind phenomenon which flattened the reeds and sucked up debris to a height of about 30 feet, thus forming what appeared to be a ‘flying saucer’, before moving off and dissipating. Hissing noises are known to be associated with ‘willy willies’ and the theory is also substantiated by the clockwise configuration of the depression. All too often unusual occurrences are reported in sensational terms with little or no attempt made at rational assessment. The general subject is ‘newsworthy’ and lends itself to sensationalism and guesswork, but in most cases logical explanations follow from careful investigation. You will appreciate that there is nothing to be gained from reopening old cases.

In addition to this official take there were various other explanations proposed, ranging from helicopters, nesting birds, alligators, and reed eating grubs, to of course the ideas that this was caused by some secret military craft or even that it was caused by some sort of “plasma vortex.” However, none of these explanations offered so far really matches all of the evidence found, nor do they explain the visual confirmation made of some sort of UFO by Pedley, and so a favorite explanation still remains that he actually saw an alien craft and that it is what left this evidence behind.

No matter what the real explanation is, one thing that is for certain is that after the Pedley case hit the news the whole region around Tully, and particularly the vicinity around Horseshoe Lagoon, became ground zero for UFO reports, and in later years there would be frequent discoveries of more of the UFO nests. In fact, between the years of 1966 and 1990 Albert Pennisi would claim that there had been found 22 of these “nests” on his property alone. The area to this day has frequent UFO activity, leading to the idea that perhaps the Pedley case has some connection to it all, and leading away from the more mundane explanations for the nests. We are left to wonder just what was going on here. What were these so-called nests and what do they mean? Were they some sort of sign, a tools used by aliens, or simply the result of natural processes? Whatever the case may be, the “Tully UFO nests” have managed to worm their way into UFO lore, are much discussed, and remain unexplained.

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How can a regular creature become a monster? I’ll tell you: when it grows to become a literal giant. I’ll begin with the world of the spider. In 2001, English cryptozoologist Dr. Karl Shuker heard a fascinating story from explorer Bill Gibbons, who spent a great deal of time investigating reports of the Congo’s most famous monster, the long-necked Mokele M’Bembe. The story dates back to 1938 and the experiences of a pair of explorers, Reginald and Margurite Lloyd. While negotiating a jungle pathway in the heart of the Belgian Congo, they saw something very strange step out in front of them. Their first thoughts were: was it a small crouching person, or a similarly crouched monkey? To their eternal horror, it quickly became clear it was neither. What it actually was, was a gigantic spider, one that had legs which spanned four feet! Reginald Lloyd, realizing the enormity of the situation – never mind the enormity of the creature – quickly reached for his camera. Unfortunately, the beast raced across the track and vanished into the undergrowth before he could capture what would, most assuredly, have been a priceless picture. The pair was in doubt about what they had encountered, however: a truly giant.

How about a massive frog? The state of Minnesota is known as “The land of 10,000 lakes.” And with very good reason, too: it’s positively teeming with lakes. The actual figure is a highly impressive 11,842. Which brings us to a certain event that occurred in 2013 at Lake Itasca, which is located in north-central Minnesota. As you may guess, we are talking about a lake monster. But, we’re not talking about something akin to Ogopogo or Nessie. And we’re not talking about a huge, expansive body of water, either. Lake Itasca is actually less than 2-square miles in area and has a depth of 35-feet. But, for such a small lake, it is home to a big mystery. And to a big monster, too. Unlike the aforementioned Nessie and Ogopogo, however, to the best of my knowledge, the creature of Lake Itasca has only been seen and reported once.

Don is a keen outdoorsman who lives in Minnesota’s Clearwater County (which is also the home of Lake Itasca) and someone who had an extraordinary encounter at the lake in March 2013. Yes, it was with a leviathan of the deep. But, no, it was not of the famous, long-necked, humpbacked variety so often reported at Loch Ness. Don’s experience involved nothing less than a huge, monstrous frog. We’re talking about a frog of around four-feet in length. According to Don, it was as he strolled along the lake shore with his German Shepherd, Ben, that he saw a sudden disturbance in the water, at a distance of around fifty feet. Puzzled, he continued walking, and kept his dog on a tight leash. Just in case. It was probably a very wise move. As Don closed in, he was both shocked and horrified to see a huge frog crawl out of the water and, for a couple of seconds, peer intently and eerily in his direction. Don, somewhat concerned for his and Ben’s safety, stood frozen to the spot for a few moments. As did Ben. Don quickly thought about taking a picture with his iPhone, at which point the monstrous mutant flopped back into the water, with a powerful splash, and was gone. Such was Don’s amazement, he raced home, got a bunch of provisions, food and bottled water and spent the entire day and night staking out that specific area of the lake. The creature did not return.

Danielle B. is a woman who, for a number of years, lived in the New Mexican town of Aztec – which, just like the far more famous New Mexican town of Roswell, has a crashed UFO legend attached to it. It’s a legend which dates back to March 1948, when, reportedly, a near-intact flying saucer and its crew of diminutive dead pilots were found. But, according to Danielle, she encountered something far stranger at Aztec than deceased extraterrestrial dwarfs and a wrecked flying saucer. It was on one particular day in May 2004 that Danielle decided to spend a few hours hanging out in Aztec’s Hart Canyon – which, curiously enough, is exactly where the alleged UFO is said to have fallen to earth, back in the late 1940s. It was also where Danielle had an encounter with something far worse than aliens. It was a large insect of around four meters in length and racing across the skies. Such was its size, it reminded her of a typical two-seat helicopter. Giant insects in the wilds of New Mexico? That’s precisely what Danielle suggested to me when we met. Now, let’s move onto something completely different.

John Warms, who has extensively studied reports of monstrous beasts in Manitoba, Canada, has uncovered tales of giant, marauding beavers in not just Manitoba but also in areas stretching from Alaska to Florida. The term “giant” is not an exaggeration, as we’re talking about beavers the size of people and even larger! As incredible as it may sound, such beasts really did once exist. Warms says: “Today we know from recovered bones that the giant beaver is in a separate classification from the one we know so well as Castor canadensis. It has been named Castoroides ohioensis after the state where its remains were first documented.” Warms also notes that he has a number of reports on-file of “bear-sized beavers,” as well as sightings of huge beaver lodges that come close to the size of an average house.

Finally, deep in the heart of North Wales there exists a large expanse of water called Lake Bala. You may say, well, there’s nothing particularly strange about that. You would be correct. Lake Bala is not out of the ordinary, in the slightest. But what is rumored to dwell in its dark depths most assuredly is out of the ordinary. It’s the domain of a violent lake monster called Teggie. The monster, however, is a giant-sized pike. Or, more likely, a significant number of Teggies. Some locals, who claim to have seen the Teggies at close quarters, say the creatures specifically resemble huge, violent, northern pike.

They are ferocious fish that can easily grow to four feet in length; occasionally five; and, rumor has it, even six. If, however, the Teggies are northern pike, then they would have to be true giants, since witnesses claim that the creatures they encountered in Lake Bala were in the order of ten to fifteen feet. No-one, surely, needs telling that a too close encounter with such a creature would result in a swift and bloody death – but not for a Teggie, though.

There is a group of people living in the Yaohnanen village on the island of Tanna in the Republic of Vanuatu who believe that Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II, is a god. This comes from a local tale about the son of a mountain spirit who left the island to marry a powerful woman and return some day bearing gifts. That messianic story was linked in 1974 to Prince Philip when he flew in for a visit, and the belief became the Prince Philip Movement, a so-called cargo cult religion. While he’s not a god, to these indigenous people the prince was more like an alien in a spaceship – which brings us to a recent revelation that Philip has had a lifelong interest in UFOs and has amassed an extensive library of books on UFOs and aliens.

“Why shouldn’t any sensible person have an interest in a phenomena that has baffled mankind for millennia?”

The 99-year-old Duke of Edinburgh’s private secretary, Brigadier Archie Miller-Bakewell, made that comment to The Sun after revealing that Philip was thrilled to have recently received a copy of “The Halt Perspective,” a new book on the 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident, from the book’s co-author, John Hanson. It seems the prince has been researching ufology ever since his beloved uncle, Lord Louis Mountatten, relayed the story of a UFO encounter on the grounds of his Broadlands estate in Romsey, Hampshire, in 1955. While Mountbatten reported the incident, it was witnessed by his bricklayer, Fred Briggs.

“The object was shaped like a child’s huge humming-top and half way between 20ft or 30ft in diameter. Its colour was like dull aluminium, rather like a kitchen saucepan. It was shaped like the sketch which I have endeavoured to make, and had portholes all around the middle, rather like a steamer has. While I was watching, a column, about the thickness of a man, descended from the centre of the saucer and I suddenly noticed on it, what appeared to be a man, presumably standing on a small platform on the end. He did not appear to be holding on to anything. He seemed to be dressed in a dark suit of overalls and was wearing a close fitting hat or helmet.”

Briggs said the UFO disappeared as quickly as it appeared. When he told his boss, Mountbatten investigated the site himself and was convinced enough by Brigg’s sincerity to submit a report to the government, complete with drawings, that he asked to be kept secret until his death – which occurred in 1979 with his assassination. In an earlier interview, British UFO researcher Alejandro Rojas credits Mountbatten with helping develop the field of UFO investigations behind the scenes by encouraging the media at the time to investigate sightings. Philip was inspired to follow in his footsteps.

“Prince Philip also took an interest in ufology. He was very close to his uncle and always said he was more of a father to him. He definitely picked up the interest in UFOs – but we are not sure if Charles and the rest of the family did – although we can tell from their reading lists that they do request different paranormal books.”

Would Prince Philip have preferred that the Yaohnanens think of him as the captain of an extraterrestrial starship rather than a gift-bearing god? Probably, as long as it didn’t involve too much work. Regardless, it’s interesting to see how open the British royals are about UFOs and aliens in comparison to leaders in the U.S. Perhaps it’s because the royals are ridiculed in so many other areas, any criticism they get about this is minor.

Or maybe it’s because they really do believe.

When it comes to mysterious creatures and water, it’s all but inevitable that we think of the likes of sea serpents and lake-monsters. There are, however, other strange beasts that spend significant amounts of time in water. As you will now see. Within Scottish lore and legend there are tales of what we can term as wolf-men, but which for the Scots the creatures are known as Wulvers – and which spend much of their time in deep waters. Krystin Scott says of these very often water-based wolf-men that: “Wulvers are fond of fishing and are sometimes called the Fishing Werewolf. They can create fishing supplies out of resources that surround them, either stealing or making them by hand. They are frequently spotted fishing for their daily meal of Sillaks and Piltaks while perched upon a small rock known as a Wulver’s Stane which is located in a deep water loch. Wulvers are patient creatures and can spend hours upon hours catching fish. Wulvers are also powerful swimmers and use their speed to catch fast moving fish in the rivers and small lochs nearby.” Now, what about Bigfoot? You may not think about the legendary, hairy creatures having an affinity to water. You should, though: more than a few witnesses will testify they are skilled swimmers.

The North American Wood Ape Conservancy say: “Swimming must be examined alongside the terrestrial gait of the wood ape since it appears to be an important means of locomotion throughout the range of this species in North America, especially on the west coast. Circumstantial evidence, such as reports of the presence of wood apes on small islands off the coast of British Columbia, has suggested they swim. Observations of wood apes actually swimming have confirmed this.”

Lisa Shiel, who has had personal interactions with the Bigfoot creatures, has uncovered an example of Bigfoot in the water from the 19^th century. She outlines the story: “In the 1830s, reports emerged from the area around Fish Lake, Indiana, of a four-foot-tall ‘wild child’ loitering in the vicinity – and swimming in the lake.” Shiel continues: “In another incident that took place in September 1967, a fisherman casting his net on the delta of the Nooksack River in Washington State felt something tug on his net. A moment later something began dragging his net upstream. When he shined his flashlight at the thief, he saw a hairy hominid in the river hauling in the net.””

A third case comes from the people who run the website, Today in Bigfoot History! They state: “William Drexler’s campsite overlooked Phantom Ship Island. He had just finished his sausage and egg breakfast and was smoking his morning pipe, just looking out over Crater Lake. That is when he noticed something moving on Phantom Ship Island.”

Phantom Ship Island

For those who may be wondering, Phantom Ship Island is a small, craggy island on Crater Lake that takes its name from its “ghost-ship”-like appearance, which is particularly noticeable when the mist hovers low and thick. The story continues: “Drexler got out his binoculars. It took him a minute or two before he was able to get a good bead on the moving figure. What Drexler saw was a brownish grey Bigfoot, obviously soaking wet, stretching out on some rocks near the water’s edge. The creature was luxuriated. Drexler watched the creature for awhile lounge in the sun. Then after a bit the Bigfoot climbed to the other side of the island and Drexler lost sight of it.” Canada is next on the list. It is the home of a small, hair-covered, ape-like creature. Its name is the Memegwesi. Legend says they are primitive creatures that are a major part of the lore of the Ojibwe, Cree, Innu, Metis, Algonquin, and Menominee Indians. They are hairy things, around four feet tall at adulthood, and, according to legend, have had a good relationship with the Indians for many centuries. They are significantly developed too, having a language and also the ability to construct sturdy canoes, in which they hunt for fish.

Now, we come to the case of a strange creature seen not entering the water, but leaving it. The story goes back to the latter part of the 1960s. And it revolves around a woman named Mabel Walsh. She encountered – in Narrabeen, a beachside suburb of Sydney – something extremely weird.  While driving home late one April 1968 evening with her nephew, John, Mabel was shocked to fleetingly see an approximately four-foot-tall animal emerge from the watery depths and shuffle its way into the heart of nearby scrub-land. It was a creature that Mabel would never forget, even though it was in view for only mere seconds. Gray in color, with what looked like a tough, leathery skin, it had a snout resembling that of an anteater, a slim trunk, long back legs, and a pair of short forelimbs that dangled as it waddled along – sideways, no less – by the edge of the road, before vanishing into the scrub.[/caption]

What all of this demonstrates is that it’s not just the likes of long-necked lake-monsters that can be found in the depths of lakes, seas, and lagoons: there are other, weirder things in the depths, too!

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Born in 1966, from an early age Scottish born Gary McKinnon had been interested in computers, getting his first computer and learning to use it on his own at the age of 14. Later inspired by movies such as WarGames and the book The Hacker’s Handbook by Hugo Cornwall, McKinnon began to become more and more enthralled with the world of hacking, to the point that he became absolutely obsessed with it. He found himself spending more and more time shirking his duties as a systems administrator for a small business in order to pursue his passion for hacking, and this obsession led to him losing his job. It did not bother him much at the time, as this just allowed him to devote more time to what he really wanted to do, all while he crashed at the house of his girlfriend’s aunt in London and delved deeper into what he was capable of. Calling himself by the hacker name “Solo,” for a while it was all sort of a hobby and addictive game for him, but then it would careen into what has been called “biggest military computer hack of all time,” leading McKinnon down a dark rabbit hole of secret military projects, aliens, and UFOs.

Gary McKinnon

By the late 1990s, McKinnon had been drawn more and more towards looking for evidence of government cover-ups of all kinds, and decided to use his hacking skills to look for it, once saying “I hate conspiracy theories, so I thought I’d find out for myself.” He became utterly devoted and further obsessed with this mission, spending all of his time snooping through government and military files and systems, to the point that it absolutely consumed him. Additionally, this was all far from legal. He said of this crusade to throw the veil off of secrecy:

I am not blind to criminality, but I was on a moral crusade. I was convinced, and there was good evidence to show, that certain secretive parts of the American government intelligence agencies did have access to crashed extra-terrestrial technology which could, in these days, save us in the form of a free, clean, pollution-free energy. I thought if someone is holding onto that, that is unconstitutional under American law. I didn’t think about jail sentences at the time. I’d stopped washing at one point. I wasn’t looking after myself. I wasn’t eating properly. I was sitting around the house in my dressing gown, doing this all night.

According to him, he was digging up all manner of weirdness in the process, and one of the weirdest of these was evidence of what he describes as some sort of secret space force. He stumbled across this while looking into NASA and U.S. Space Command files after hearing of a conspiracy that they were holding UFOs at the Johnson Space Center. Not content to just discuss conspiracies about it, he began hacking into NASA to see for himself, and it would turn out to be shocking and very weird. McKinnon would say of this in an interview with Wired:

A NASA photographic expert said that there was a Building 8 at Johnson Space Center where they regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs from the high-resolution satellite imaging. I logged on to NASA and was able to access this department. They had huge, high-resolution images stored in their picture files. They had filtered and unfiltered, or processed and unprocessed, files. My dialup 56K connection was very slow trying to download one of these picture files. As this was happening, I had remote control of their desktop, and by adjusting it to 4-bit color and low screen resolution, I was able to briefly see one of these pictures. It was a silvery, cigar-shaped object with geodesic spheres on either side. There were no visible seams or riveting. There was no reference to the size of the object and the picture was taken presumably by a satellite looking down on it. The object didn’t look manmade or anything like what we have created. Because I was using a Java application, I could only get a screenshot of the picture — it did not go into my temporary internet files. At my crowning moment, someone at NASA discovered what I was doing and I was disconnected. I also got access to Excel spreadsheets. One was titled “Non-Terrestrial Officers.” Yeah, I looked it up and it’s nowhere. It doesn’t mean little green men. What I think it means is not earth-based. I found a list of ‘fleet-to-fleet transfers’, and a list of ship names. I looked them up. They weren’t US navy ships. What I saw made me believe they have some kind of spaceship, off-planet. It contained names and ranks of U.S. Air Force personnel who are not registered anywhere else. It also contained information about ship-to-ship transfers, but I’ve never seen the names of these ships noted anywhere else.

McKinnon claims that this space program is called “Solar Warden,” in operation since 1980 and every bit as bizarre as you might imagine. He says that it acts as a sort of interplanetary border control to protect against aliens that would do us harm, and that it is under control of the US Naval Network and Space Operations Command (NNSOC),  and through his snooping around he was able to glean a surprising amount of detail on the program. He claims that Solar Warden has at its disposal eight massive cigar-shaped motherships longer than several football fields, 43 small “scout ships” and various other flying objects, as well as advanced beam weaponry, all of it derived from reverse engineered alien technology tested at secret bases including the infamous Area 51 in Nevada. It sounds absurd, but McKinnon swears it is true and has never backed down from his story. In addition to Solar Warden he also uncovered images of UFOs in the atmosphere and various other information on aliens and UFOs, as well as documents called “The Disclosure Project,” which supposedly contain reams of testimony from high level sources on the existence of such things, and of which he has said:

There is The Disclosure Project. This is a book with 400 testimonials from everyone from air traffic controllers to those responsible for launching nuclear missiles. Very credible witnesses. They talk about reverse-engineered technology taken from captured or destroyed alien craft. There are some very credible, relied-upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there’s anti-gravity, there’s free energy, and it’s extraterrestrial in origin and they’ve captured spacecraft and reverse engineered it.

Unfortunately, he was never able to get too far into it, as all of this was highly illegal and it eventually caught up with him. In 2002, McKinnon was arrested at his flat in Wood Green, north London, and accused of hacking into 97 United States military and NASA computers over a 13-month period between February 2001 and March 2002, much of it allegedly causing a lot of damage in the process. For instance, he is accused of altering or deleting critical files from operating systems, rendering important systems inoperable, copying data, account files and passwords, interfering with military operations, compromising sensitive and classified data, and leaving threatening messages, all of which was according to officials “intentional and calculated to influence and affect the US government by intimidation and coercion.” Considering that this all happened directly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government took this very seriously and made aggressive moves to have him extradited to face trial there, something which could mean up to 70 years in prison for McKinnon. So far there have been endless appeals and judicial reviews, meaning that he has yet to face these charges on American soil, and likely never will, although extradition efforts have been ongoing.

We are left to wonder just what he really found while breaking all sorts of laws. Did he really see top-secret government files pertaining to aliens and UFOs, and more importantly did he really uncover evidence of some space force using alien technology? There have been plenty of people and so-called “whistleblowers” making similar claims, so what are we to make of this? He has not provided one shred of concrete evidence, and his detractors have pointed out that he was high on weed most of the time he was hacking, so is this all just tall tales? McKinnon is definitely in deep doo doo with the American government, but whether any of that has anything to do with aliens and UFO space programs remains to be seen.

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For the first time ever, a radio telescope has detected an elusive, cold, faint “super-planet”. It was the Low-Frequency Array (or LOFAR) radio telescope in the Netherlands that first discovered the brown dwarf that has been named BDR J1750+3809 (nicknamed Elegast). The International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and Chile in addition to the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility that is operated by the University of Hawai’i then confirmed its existence.

An artist's impression of the new brown dwarf BDR J1750+3809, or "Elegast." This faint, cold celestial body was detected using radio telescope observations for the first time.

(Image: © ASTRON/Danielle Futselaar)

Brown dwarfs can either be failed stars (because they’re too tiny to be considered an actual star) or super-planets (because they’re too big to be considered a planet). In fact, since brown dwarfs are much too small to form into stars, they don’t have the same amount of nuclear fusion reactions that bright stars have, although they can release some light at radio wavelengths. That is the reason why they are colder and dimmer than actual stars (like our sun).

(Not Elegast)

With that being said, it is also much more difficult to spot them in space. That’s why the discovery of Elegast was so exciting as it is the first brown dwarf that has ever been discovered by a radio telescope as they are usually detected by infrared sky surveys.

In a statement provided by the University of Hawai’i, Michael Liu, who is a researcher from the University of Hawai’i Institute for Astronomy and a co-author of the study, noted, “This work opens a whole new method to finding the coldest objects floating in the sun’s vicinity, which would otherwise be too faint to discover with the methods used for the past 25 years.”

Harish Vedantham, who is an astronomer from the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) and the lead author of the study, stated, “We asked ourselves, ‘Why point our radio telescope at catalogued brown dwarfs?’” “Let’s just make a large image of the sky and discover these objects directly in the radio.” I bet they’re glad they did or else they might not have made the first ever discovery of a brown dwarf with their radio telescope. (An artist’s impression of Elegast can be seen here.)

(Not Elegast)

By having the LOFAR instrument detect the brown dwarf, this may help with the detection of other space objects in the future like gas giant exoplanets that wouldn’t be found with infrared surveys because they’re too faint or cold.

Their study was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters where it can be read in full.

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