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

Throughout the history of the UFO phenomenon there have always been those cases of these mysterious objects leaving material evidence behind that has served to baffle and confuse, and one of these is something that has come to be known as “angel hair.” The phenomenon known as “angel hair” normally involves a fall of a sticky, fibrous substance reminiscent of wispy strands or threads of silk or cotton, or like fine hair, usually in conjunction with some sort of aerial anomaly. These strands, which can vary in length from a few inches to over a hundred feet, then fall to earth, and are reported as disintegrating upon any attempt to touch them or collect them, but will also evaporate on their own in short order. Perhaps some of the earlier known reports of the angel hair phenomenon reportedly occurred during a mass sighting of unidentified celestial phenomena over Nuremberg in 1571, and there was a fall of “flakes or rags about one inch broad and five or six inches long” on the towns of Bradly, Selborne, and Alresford in England in 1741, but it goes back even further than that, with incidents across history. UFO researcher Brian Boldman has found hundreds of cases of angel hair spread across the world and going back as far as 629 AD. However, while this has been a strange occurrence for some time, it wasn’t until the 1950s that angel hair would become connected to the UFO phenomenon, when a series of sightings of UFOs dropping the stuff would hit the headlines, after which it would become intrinsically linked to unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrials.

Perhaps the first sighting that would entrench angel hair into UFO lore happened in October of 1952, in Oloron, France. On this day, numerous witnesses had their early evening interrupted by what was described as “a narrow cylinder, apparently inclined at a 45-degree angle… slowly moving in a straight line toward the southwest,” as well as up to 30 spheres emitting bright red light. These objects were reportedly dropping a feathery, white substance like strands of hair, which fell to cover trees, houses, telephone poles, and the ground. Depending on the witness, this material would either slowly dissolve when touched, or turn into a gelatinous substance before vanishing without a trace. One witness claimed that the material was actually sticky enough to trap him, and after a brief struggle he would claim that it had risen back up into the air to float off. The same phenomenon would allegedly happen in the nearby town of Gaillac just ten days later.

Other strange cases of UFOs and angel hair would soon follow. On October 27, 1954, two witnesses named Gennaro Lucetti and Pietro Lastrucci reportedly saw from their balcony at St. Mark’s Square in Venice, Italy two “shining spindles” that were leaving a trail of a wispy white substance that floated off in the wind. Also in 1954 is the weird case of a soccer match that was stopped because of UFOs dropping angel hair in Florence, Italy. On October 27, 1954, the Stadio Artemi Franchi was packed with nearly 10,000 fans watching a game between the Fiorentina club and its local rival Pistoiese, when they stopped watching to stare at several egg-shaped objects slowly moving across the sky dropping a “silver glitter,” later described as threads of “glass fibers.”

Then on November 2, 1959, two disc-shaped objects appeared over the city of Évora, Portugal and began spewing angel hair. On this occasion some of the strands were allegedly actually successfully collected, and researchers from the University of Lisbon rather bizarrely described it as “a small organism featuring 10 ‘arms’ stretching from a central core.” It is unknown what became of these samples after that or what they actually were. With reports such as these and others like them, UFO researchers in the 1950s began routinely linking angel hair with UFOs, and this trend would continue on into later years. On August 9, 1998, a swarm of twenty UFOs described as “shiny silver spheres” were spotted flying over several rural farms near Quirindi, New South Wales, Australia. These mysterious objects were doing impressive aerial acrobatics and dropping cobweb-like filaments that covered the area beneath them, and a report on the incident in USA Today would read:

Residents of a small Australian community swear that they saw cobwebs fall from the sky after UFOs passed overhead. Dozens of residents of Quirindi called Australia’s National UFO Hotline after the incident. Mrs. E. Stansfield, 61 years old, said that she saw cobwebs falling from the sky. She saw twenty silver balls which passed overhead. When she went out to her daughter, she too was covered in fine strands of cobweb. When she tried to pick it up, it disintegrated in her hand. The family car had cobwebs all over it.

Image by Steve Baxter

The strange show lasted around an hour and a half before the UFOs flew off and the angel hair dissolved away not long after. More recently, in 2003, Giorgio Batini, a journalist at the Florentine newspaper La Nazione, saw shining silver spheres flying through the sky from his office and these were seen by numerous colleagues as well, with them going to the roof to observe them fly over a nearby wooded area. He went to investigate and find that a patch of trees beneath where the spheres had been was covered in a white, fluffy material. He was able to collect a sample, very rare in these cases, and had it examined at the Institute of Chemical Analysis at the University of Florence. They would determine that the material contained the elements boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium, and that it was not radioactive, but were unable to examine it further as the analysis had destroyed the sample. What was this stuff? It was suggested that it might simply be spider webs, but the chemical analysis was totally different than what one would expect to find with webs, and so it remains a mystery.

There have been even more recent cases in which samples of the angel hair have been collected and analyzed as well. One is a case from Portugal in 2014, in which a sample was also allegedly procured, and in this case the material supposedly reacted and came alive under ultraviolet light. It is not known what became of these rather odd samples. In 2016, a metallic silver Barbell shaped object was sighted in Illinois, in the United States. The object was observed to fly out over a small lake, where it hovered and then began to rise while “exuding a white filament like material” that reportedly “stretched all the way to the ground.” The object was then joined by 12 other similar UFOs, which orbited the original object as it rose into the air, all of them shooting out the fibrous white material before shooting off out of sight. The two witnesses of the event were then able to collect some samples to send to UFO researcher Bill Schroeder, who would say of the incident and samples:

On November 4th, 2016 the Investigator was contacted by witness 1. He advised that he and witness 2 had observed a number of Barbell shaped objects in flight over his dwelling. The object first observed was silver metallic in color and 20 to 30 inches in length. When first observed the object was at rooftop level or about 35 feet over his head. The object was moving silently and laterally towards a small lake just south of the dwelling. At the time of the sighting witness 1 was in the company of witness 2. Witness 1 noted that there was no visible means of propulsion observed and no sound detected. As the object arrived to the center of the lake it stopped moving laterally and began to rise. As it started to rise it began exuding a white filament like material. The material was very fine and stretched all the way to the ground. After it had risen to several hundred feet is was joined by more than 12 other like objects that seemed to be circling it as it continued to rise. At this point in time the white material was spewing from the devices in such quantity it looked like rain. The objects rose together into a clear sky until they were no longer visible. The white material that had fallen remained visible in trees for about 24 hours before dissipating. When witness 1 contacted the Investigator, he was requested to get samples if possible. The witnesses were able to obtain some samples of the material.

The material was collected using a clean shish-kabob skewer. At the Investigators request the samples were placed in paper and plastic bags. The samples were sent to the Investigator via USPS Priority mail with tracking. The samples arrived intact on November 9th, 2016. Upon arrival the envelope was opened by the Investigator who was in the company of a second Investigator. The package and enclosed samples were photographed by the Primary Investigator. The samples were then placed in evidence bags and bottles by the Investigator. The bags and bottles were then sealed and initialed by the Investigator. The arrival, repackaging, and sealing of the evidence was recorded on video tape for later review. Witness 2 painted a picture that re-created the scene at the time of the sighting. A scan of the painting was forwarded to the Investigator. A partial jpeg image is included with this report. The evidence was placed in a safe at the Investigators residence. Part of the evidence was later sent to Robert Powell and Phyllis Budinger for examination and lab testing.

The angel hair was analyzed, but proved to be mostly biological in nature and similar to spider webs, although there were some anomalies, such as “small amounts of celluloidal material, i.e. plant derived substance, possibly inorganic nitrate and an unidentified rust/red material.” In the end, the analysis seems to be inconclusive, and although the sample seems to most resemble spider silk, the inconsistencies and the fact that the two witnesses were deemed to be very reliable by the investigator makes it all pretty weird.

One of the most common explanations for the angel hair phenomenon is that it is nothing more than spider webs. Some species of small spider will migrate or disperse from where they hatched from the cocoon by casting webs to the wind and drifting along, sometimes in great numbers for miles on end and at high altitude, and can leave an area covered with webs. However, this doesn’t seem to exactly explain why the material should vanish into thin air or disintegrate when touched. Another explanation is that it is atmospheric electricity causing floating dust particles to become polarized and form long filaments. Of course, considering the many cases of UFOs and angel hair being seen together, it has been theorized that it could be some sort of byproduct from an alien craft’s propulsion system or electromagnetic field surrounding it. To this day it has been debated and discussed, with no agreed upon answers. What is angel hair and why does it seem to appear in conjunction with UFOs? Is this merely a mundane phenomenon or is there something more to it? It remains to be seen.

Having read the heading above, you may very well be wondering what I’m talking about. Well, I’ll tell you: Porton Down, a highly secure facility in Wiltshire, England, and that is steeped in secrecy. And, there are several UFO connections to the place. With that said, here’s some background on the place. The BBC say: “Porton Down was set up in 1916. It was a center designed to test chemical and biological weapons. Nerve gases such as Sarin and CS gas were tested on volunteer servicemen. Servicemen were offered around £2 and three days leave as an incentive to take part in tests. Very few servicemen knew what they were volunteering for and some were even told it was research into the cure for the common cold. In 1953 it is alleged that serviceman Ronald Maddison died after taking part in a Sarin gas experiment. In 1962, one of Porton Down’s own scientists, Geoffrey Bacon died of the plague. Since the end of WWII, 20,000 people have taken part in experiments at Porton Down.” LSD was tested at Porton Down, too. On military personnel, no less. And as the Guardian newspaper stated in 2005: “Fifty years ago, Eric Gow had a baffling and unexplained experience. As a 19-year-old sailor, he remembers going to a clandestine military establishment, where he was given something to drink in a sherry glass and experienced vivid hallucinations. Other servicemen also remember tripping: one thought he was seeing tigers jumping out of a wall, while another recalls faces ‘with eyes running down their cheeks, Salvador Dalí-style.’ Mr. Gow and another serviceman had volunteered to take part in what they thought was research to find a cure for the common cold. Mr. Gow felt that the government had never explained what happened to him. But now he has received an official admission for the first time, confirmed last night, that the intelligence agency MI6 tested LSD on servicemen.”

(Nick Redfern)

Dead aliens on ice at Porton Down?

Now, onto the UFO angle. In January 1974, on the Berwyn Mountains in Wales, U.K., something strange happened. Some say it was the crash of a UFO. Others suggest a secret experiment involving the controlling of ball lightning and utilizing at as a weapon. What about that UFO angle and the Porton Down connection? Back in 1996, the late Tony Dodd (a police officer and UFO researcher) met with a man who used the name of James Prescott. “I cannot named my unit or barracks, as they are still operational,” Prescott told Dodd. Prescott did, though, admit that his base at the time was situated in the south-west of England, which – as the crow flies – may have placed his installation not too far from Porton Down. In a very baffling way – and although the incident on the Berwyn Mountains occurred on January 23, 1974 – Prescott and his colleagues were ordered to be on “stand-by at short notice” on January 18. That was five days before the Berwyns were briefly highlighted in the nation’s newspapers. Prescott got right into the heart of the story: “We then received orders to proceed with speed towards North Wales. We were halted in Chester in readiness for a military exercise we believed was about to take place. On 20 January, the communication to us was ‘hot.’ At approximately 20:13 hours we received orders to proceed to Llangollen in North Wales and to wait at that point.”

According to Prescott there was a huge amount of “”ground and aircraft activity” over and around those huge mountains – three days before the ground shook those little old villages at the foot of the mountains. Prescott said that on that same night he and his colleagues were given further orders: “We, that is myself and four others, were ordered to go to Llandderfel and were under strict orders not to stop for any civilians” claimed Prescott. On arriving at Llandderfel – a small, Welsh village – they could see soldiers racing around. Senior officers were barking orders here, there and everywhere. Aircraft were zooming across the star-filled sky. And all of this was against a background of overwhelming darkness. Prescott and his colleagues were ordered to haul a pair of large, wooden boxes onto the back of their truck, which they did in rapid-fire time. According to Prescott: “We set off with our cargo and during the journey we stopped to get a drink. We were immediately approached by a man in civilian clothes, who produced an I.D. card and ordered us to keep moving, and not to stop until we reached our destination.”

(Nick Redfern)

The U.K.’s Ministry of Defense

Matters got really weird, as Prescott explained to Dodd: “We were at this time warned not to open the boxes, but to proceed to Porton Down and deliver the boxes. Once inside, the boxes were opened by staff at the facility in our presence. We were shocked to see two creatures which had been placed inside decontamination suits. When the suits were fully opened it was obvious the creatures were clearly not of this world and, when examined, were found to be dead. What I saw in the boxes that day made me change my whole concept of life. The bodies were about five to six feet tall, humanoid in shape, but so thin they looked almost skeletal with a covering skin. Although I did not see a craft at the scene of the recovery, I was informed that a large craft had crashed and was recovered by other military units. Sometime later we joined up with the other elements of our unit, who informed us that they had also transported bodies of ‘alien beings’ to Porton Down, but said that their cargo was still alive.”

Moving on, but still on the same story, there was a man named Bob Bolton, who I met in the English city of Norwich. He told me of his recollections concerning the Porton Down/James Prescott affair: “I spent thirty years in the Royal Air Force as an aircraft engineer. I had various postings, including at Akrotiri in Cyprus, RAF Honnington, and at RAF Valley in North Wales from 1971 to 1974. My wife and her family came from Corwen. At the time that the thing on the Berwyns happened, they lived up on the side of the mountain and her mom still lives there to this day. Corwen is part of the Berwyn range. From where their house is, if you walk up the path that goes behind the houses up and onto the top of the mountains, you’re talking perhaps a mile and a quarter away from where it all occurred; so it’s not very far away at all.

“She still remembers what happened on the night of 23 January. She said to me when I spoke to her about it just recently: ‘I saw aircraft and heard aircraft shot down during the Blitz and it was like an aircraft coming down, but the sound was louder, bigger, heavier that anything you could imagine to do with an aircraft.’ They didn’t know what it was. They heard the noise first of all and ran out into the road. They weren’t the only ones: all their neighbors ran out as well. It got louder and louder and louder and they couldn’t see anything in the sky but then they felt the impact where the houses shook and she had things fall off the mantle-piece in the house. “It was my wife’s dad, who told me the story about bodies being found on the mountain. His name was Harold Smith. But everyone called him Mick. He had a full-time job with Vauxhall at Elsmere Port; he was a local councilor and was also a part-time Sub-Fire Officer at Corwen. One day we got talking and got on to the subject of UFOs and he said to me: ‘Oh, well, you obviously don’t know about the incident up on the Berwyn Mountains.’

“I first heard the story from him around 1976. At that time he only told me that bodies had been brought down from the mountain and didn’t say anything more. Nothing about who brought them down or where they were taken. But from 1979 to 1982 I was posted to Germany and Mick and my wife’s mother came out to stay for a month and it was here that he told us a lot more. I remember that the information that he told us had apparently come from another person in the North Wales Fire Service whose son was in the Army. But it’s not surprising that he would have been told: Mick was a well-respected man and knew people throughout the North Wales Fire Service including at Bala and Wrexham. Mick told me that while the police weren’t involved, the Army was – heavily. I can’t give you an exact date when they visited and he told us this, but it was definitely between 1979 and 1982. He said that there were definitely [trucks] from Porton Down at the scene; that there was a lozenge-shaped object on the mountainside; and that bodies were taken off the mountain and driven to Porton. And to this day, his wife can also confirm that Mick told her the story about Porton Down and bodies too – either in the late 1970s or the early 1980s. I do remember Mick saying that when he had first told me this story in 1976, he didn’t know that it was the Army who had taken the bodies off the mountain and he didn’t know at the time that they’d been taken to Porton Down. So he must have learned that between 1976 and when he came to see us in Germany.”

(Nick Redfern)

Now, onto the Porton Down connection to the famous Rendlesham Forest “UFO landing” incident of December 1980 and the late Georgina Bruni, who wrote a book on the Rendlesham case titled You Can’t Tell the People. I first met Georgina in 1997. At the time, Georgina was already working on her Rendlesham book, You Can’t Tell the People. It was published in November 2000. Back in the late 1990s, Georgina and I were two of a very small group of people in the U.K.-based UFO community who were actively and regularly investigating the UFO-Porton Down links. As a result of this, we agreed to quietly and carefully share our data – including any and all new data as it came along – with each other. And that’s how I came to become a recipient of Georgina’s information on the Rendlesham story. As the research for her book advanced, Georgina discovered that in late December 1980 a team from Porton Down was dispatched into the heart of Rendlesham Forest. Dressed in full-body protection (hazmat) outfits, they entered into the woods on a classified operation. It was assumed among those in the UFO research community who Georgina had confided in, that the Porton Down team was there to try and determine what happened over the course of those three nights and to see if there were any chemical or biological hazards still present. So far, the Rendlesham-Porton Down issue has not developed much further. But, maybe one day…