1561 hemels verschijnsel boven Neurenberg, afgebeeld in een geïllustreerd nieuwsbericht (door UFO-liefhebbers beschreven als een luchtgevecht van buitenaardse oorsprong en door sceptici beschouwd als een zonnespectakel)

Bron: Publiek Domein

Wagens van de Goden, Schepen aan de Hemel: Ongeïdentificeerde Luchtverschijnselen uit het Verleden

Inleiding

Al eeuwenlang beschrijven mensen glinsterende voorwerpen aan de hemel die niet eenvoudig te plaatsen zijn binnen de gangbare verklaringen. Sommige hemelverschijnselen zoals kometen, meteorenzwermen, boliden, aurora’s of zelfs aardbevingachtige bliksem — allemaal aspecten die vandaag de dag vaak begrijpelijk zijn — werden in het oude rijkdommen van verhalen en waarnemingen uitgebreid gerapporteerd. Tegenwoordig noemen we zo’n fenomeen Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). Sommigen denken aan buitenaardse oorsprong, anderen zien het als mysterieuze verschijnselen of als symbolen van maatschappelijke onrust. Het onderwerp trekt nog altijd aandacht, zowel in politieke kringen als in de wetenschappelijke wereld. De komende tekst probeert dit onderwerp vanuit een historisch perspectief te plaatsen: wat zinspeelden oude volkeren in hun stille uurtjes op tegen de lucht, en hoe raken die oude verhalen verweven met hedendaagse debatten over UAPs?

Oud historisch beeld - Tekenen van beroering

In de literatuur en in inscripties uit verschillende culturen verschijnen steeds weer scènes waarin onbekende of onverklaarbare verschijningen in de lucht als teken van maatschappelijke onrust en naderend onheil dienen. Een bekend voorbeeld uit de Bijbel is het boek Ezechiël, waarin de profeet spreekt over een goddelijke strijdwagen die heet gloeit en waarin vier levende wezens te zien zijn. Deze beelden lijken zowel menselijk als vreemd, met hun vier gezichten en vier vleugels. In vele culturen duiken soortgelijke motieven op: het beeld van voertuigen die door de hemel heen scheuren of die op een andere manier bovennatuurlijk licht uitstralen.

Giovanni Battista Fontana, De Visioen van Ezechiël, 1579.

(Publiek Domein)

Een andere rijke traditie komt uit de oude Indiase epische werken, de Mahābhārata en de Rāmāyana. In de hindoeïstische mythologie worden de vimāna’s genoemd: vliegende strijdwagens die de goden meevoeren naar de verste uithoeken van het universum. In vele mythen hollen goden in deze voertuigen door de ruimte en vervullen ze zowel dagelijkse als kosmische taken. In afbeeldingen en verhalen uit Azië zijn deze vimāna’s vaak afgebeeld als schitterende, indrukwekkende machines die snelheid en macht uitstralen. Ook hier wordt het beeld van de hemel als route en arena voor goddelijke daden afgebeeld.

Krishna en Rukmini als bruidegom en bruid in een hemelse wagen getrokken door Ganesha, India, Rajasthan, Bundi, 1675-1700.

(Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

In het Middellandse Zeegebied dragen historische keren een soortgelijke thematiek. In de Romeinse en Griekse literatuur duiken meldingen op van verschijnselen in de lucht die op de een of andere manier het klimaat van oorlog en macht weerspiegelen. Een voorbeeld uit de geschiedschrijving is de Romeinse historicus Livius, die beschreef hoe tijdens de Tweede Punische Oorlog “schepen schitterden aan de lucht” of als “grote vloot” in de hemel verschenen. Of het nu echte schepen waren, vreemde wolkenformaties of iets anders, de formulering beklemtoont een moment waarin de visue­le wereld in de geschiedenis verweven raakt met ook de plek waar oorlog en macht plaatsvinden. Zulke beschrijvingen suggereren dat mensen altijd de lucht hebben geïnterpreteerd als een spiegel van wat in de aardse omgang plaatsvindt.

Een ander klassiek voorbeeld komt bij Plutarchus voor, in de Life of Lucullus. Wanneer de Romeinse legers tegenover koning Mithridates VI van Pontus stonden, werd een vreemd fenomeen aan de hemel waargenomen: het leek op een grote, vlamachtige bol die tussen de legers neerdaalde. Volgens Plutarchus had het object een vorm die leek op een wijnvat (pithos) en een kleur die leek op gesmolten zilver. De waarnemers schrokken en trok zich terug. Of dit nu een meteoriet betrof of iets anders, de beschrijving geeft aan dat het fenomeen zo’n impact had dat beide partijen het als een kwaadaardige voorteken zagen.

Een derde opmerkelijke getuigenis komt uit de Joods-Romijnse geschiedschrijving van Flavius Josephus. Gebeurtenissen rondom oorlogen tussen Romeinen en Joden roepen soms de indruk op van bovennatuurlijke verschijningen: “karren” of strijdkrachten schoten door de wolken terwijl er een reeks scherp beschreven gebeurtenissen in de lucht plaatsvond. Voor veel getuigen lijkt het alsof dergelijke verschijnselen de uitkomst van gevechten vooruitbellen of –zo niet – een teken vormden dat het lot troef had.

Een koning en zijn gevolg confronteren dames onder een hemelse strijd, Frans, circa 1600.

(Publiek domein)

Van middeleeuwen tot millenniumwisseling:

Het christelijke doembeeld en de evolutie van het begrip UAP Naar de overgang van oud naar middelbaar en daarna naar modern denken, verschuift de betekenis van dergelijke waarnemingen vaak van pure interpretatie naar een bredere zoölogie van angst en hoop. In de christelijke traditie kreeg de “shield of faith” van de apostel Paulus een symbolische plaats, terwijl “schepen die door de hemel varen” werden geïnterpreteerd als een metafoor voor de bescherming van de Kerk en zijn gelovigen. In de context van de middeleeuwse Ierse literatuur verschijnt het idee dat occultverschijnselen in de lucht een soort teken van de hemel zouden kunnen zijn, en zo wordt het een symbool van de veiligheid die de Kerk biedt.

Rond de millenniumwisseling groeit de belangstelling voor iets wat we vandaag UAPs noemen. De mensen in die tijd worstelen met de betekenis van het eind der tijden, en het teken van de hemel wordt opnieuw belicht in een modern jasje. In deze periode verschijnt ook een nieuwe vorm van beschouding: waarin men zoekt naar een rationele uitleg, maar waarin religie en mysterie nog steeds een belangrijke rol spelen. Het verhaal van talloze getuigen die met UAP’s te maken hebben, of die beweren religieuze formulering te vinden in wat ze waarnemen, blijft actueel. Voor velen biedt ufologie een manier om geloof en wetenschap samen te brengen: een plek waar zowel zingeving als objectieve verklaring mogelijk lijkt te zijn.

Een onverklaard object in een videobeeld geleverd door het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie, gelabeld als Gimbal, uit 2015.

(Ministerie van Defensie via AP)

Moderne duiding

Wat betekenen UAPs nu? Vandaag de dag lopen de interpretaties uiteen. De Amerikaanse belangstelling voor UAPs is onder andere ingegeven door verwerkte en eerder geheime beelden die uitlekken, maar ook door een beleg van een voormalige inlichtingenambtenaar die beweert dat de regering “off-world” technologie bezit. Tegelijkertijd concludeert een recente NASA-rapportage dat er geen bewijs is dat UAPs buitenaards van oorsprong zijn. De discussie draait om de vraag of dit soort waarnemingen wél een interessant venster openen op onze technologische vooruitgang, of dat ze vooral angst en onzekerheid teweegbrengen.

Toch is er een duidelijke continuïteit: mensen projecteren de onzekerheid van de eigen tijd op wat zich in de lucht afspeelt. Oude samenlevingen zagen krijgsdaden en goddelijke machten in de hemel, toen als voorteken van onheil, nu als indicatie van onbekende technologieën of onbekende motivaties. De spanning tussen interpretatie en verificatie blijft bestaan. Zelfs als we naheldere verklaringen vinden voor sommige verschijnselen — zoals meteorieten of atmosferische verschijnselen — blijft er ruimte voor interpretatie en verbeelding.

De menselijke neiging tot projectie op het onbekende Een belangrijke les uit de geschiedenis is dat UAP-achtige waarnemingen nooit uitsluitend een kwestie van “waar” of “niet waar” zijn. Ze reflecteren ook de staat van de maatschappij waarin ze voorkomen. Wanneer er onrust heerst, wanneer de machtsdynamiek verscherpt of wanneer grote toevloed van informatie plaatsvindt, worden verschijnselen in de lucht vaak geherinterpreteerd als tekenen van bredere sociale processen: onzekerheid over toekomst, angst voor verlies van controle, of hoop op een oplossing vanuit iets wat groter en machtiger lijkt.

Daarom kunnen we concluderen dat UAPs, zowel in het oude als in het moderne tijdperk, een venster bieden op menselijke zorgen. Ze tonen hoe mensen zoeken naar houvast en zingeving wanneer de wereld intensiever verandert dan ooit tevoren. Of uiteindelijk de objecten in de lucht nu al dan niet buitenaards zijn, de symboliek en de impact ervan spreken een universeel verhaal: de behoefte om onze crisis naar een hoger niveau te tillen, naar de hemel, naar het onbekende.

An unclassified sketch of a UAP from the CIA.

(Public Domain)

Qua uitleg: wat kunnen we vandaag als leerpunt meenemen?

• Historische continuïteit: verschijnselen in de hemel zijn altijd gebruikt als symbolen van verandering en onzekerheid. Ze dienen als culturele spiegels waarin samenlevingen hun angsten en hoop projecteren.
• Interpretatie voorop: de wijze waarop men een hemelverschijnsel beschrijft, zegt vaak iets over de tijd waarin het onderzoek plaatsvindt, meer dan over de oorsprong van het fenomeen zelf.
• Wetenschap en geloof: ufologie kan functioneren als brug tussen geloof en wetenschap, een plek waar mensen zoeken naar een gecombineerde betekenis die beide dimensies erkent.
• De rol van bewijs: in hedendaagse debatten blijven verificatie en transparantie cruciaal. Het uitlekken van beelden en de beschikbaarheid van data beïnvloeden publieke perceptie en beleidsbeslissingen.

Slotsom

Wij zien in de geschiedenis een duidelijke lijn: van Bijbelse en Indiase mythes tot moderne rapportages over UAPs, groeiende maatschappelijke belangstelling voor wat zich in de hoogte voltrekt. Of die verschijnselen uiteindelijk buitenaards zijn of niet, raakt ons vooral in ons menselijk vermogen om de wereld te interpreteren en onze toekomst te vormen. De oude waarnemers zochten naar tekenen, naar een taal die iets vertelde over hun tijd, en misschien ook een richting bood voor wat komen zou. Vandaag blijven we die drang voelen: een zoektocht naar verklaringen, maar ook naar betekenis. Soms lijken de objecten in de lucht ons te helpen begrijpen hoe dicht we bij het onbekende staan — en hoe hardnekkig onze behoefte is om orde te brengen in wat we zien.

Eindigen we met een gedachte die eeuwenlang overeind blijft: de mens blijft de hemel lezen als een kaart van zijn eigen zorgen en hoop. Of er nu kaartjes, strijdwagens of glanzende schepen aan de hemel verschijnen, onze reactie zal altijd gekleurd zijn door de tijd waarin we leven. De geschiedenis leert ons dat de lucht meer zegt over mensen dan over objecten daarboven. Het is een spiegel waarin we onszelf zien worstelen met onduidelijkheid, met onzekerheid, maar ook met de eeuwige behoefte aan begrip en richting. Zo blijft de fascinerende relatie tussen UAPs en menselijke ervaring ons wat te zeggen heeft over hoe wij ons plaatsen in het grote verhaal van de kosmos.

{ PETER2011 }

The Phoenix Lights Phenomenon: An Unsolved UFO Mystery

On the evening of March 13, 1997, an extraordinary event unfolded in the skies over Arizona that would become one of the most documented and hotly debated UFO sightings in history. The Phoenix Lights remains a compelling mystery, but is the truth out there? Read on to find out.

In 1997 over Phoenix, AZ, a group of lights appeared.... The event was one of the first mass UAP sightings, and is still a subject of debate.

In March 1997 over the city of Phoenix, Arizona, lights appeared in the sky, covering a distance of around 350 miles from the Nevada state line in the northwest down to southern city of Tucson. Over several hours, thousands of residents reported witnessing a series of strange, luminous objects and formations in the sky. Descriptions varied from a V-shaped light formation, to orbs that glowed intensely and seemed to move with purpose across the night sky.

Some are convinced the lights over Phoenix in 1997 were UFOs, or UAPs – unidentified aerial phenomenon. The official line is that they were military planes being tested in the desert and flares from aircraft on night manoeuvres.

What exactly did the residents of Phoenix see that night? Did they come within touching distance – literally, according to some – of beings from another world, or is the explanation for the bizarre lights in Phoenix, Arizona, rather more benign?

The strange case of the Phoenix Lights has left the world befuddled for over a quarter of a century. Let’s take a trip to the sixth-largest of the United States in an attempt to shed light on this baffling luminous enigma.

Close Encounters of the First Kind

V-shaped lights of a UFO

(Credit: Devrimb via Getty Images)

Like the bizarre Max Headroom Broadcast Signal Intrusion a decade earlier, the Phoenix Lights, also known as the Lights Over Phoenix, came in two distinct waves.

The first occurrence – between approximately 7.30pm and 8.45pm on March 13, 1997 – was observed as a massive, V-shaped object with five or six reddish-orange lights that silently moved north to south in the sky, spanning at least a mile in width according to eyewitness reports.

One of the first witnesses was in Henderson, Nevada, just a few miles south of Las Vegas and a short distance from the Arizona state line. About fifteen minutes later, what are believed to be the same lights were spotted by a former policeman in the town of Paulden, Arizona, about 200 miles southeast of Henderson. Next, about 25 miles south of Paulden, there were further sightings of the lights of Phoenix over Prescott Valley. It seemed they – whatever ‘they’ happened to be – were moving south towards Tucson.

These witnesses, and many others, said that the lights lingered before disappearing and reappearing in the same formation, captivating onlookers for several minutes at a time.

The Strange Tale of Kurt Russell & His Son

Single prop plane taking off

(Credit: Ascent Xmedia via Getty Images)

In a bizarre twist to an already incredulous mystery, one of the first people to report the sighting of what has become known as the Phoenix Lights, was none other than Hollywood actor Kurt Russell.

In an interview with the BBC’s The One Show, Russell, a private pilot, explained that he was flying his son Oliver from Los Angeles to Phoenix to see his [Oliver’s] girlfriend, when on their final approach, they noticed a series of strange lights in the sky.

Oliver asked if his father knew what the lights were, to which he responded that he didn’t. He called it in to air traffic control who said that their radar screens showed nothing at all. Russell declared that it was a UFO in the literal sense, in that it appeared to be a flying object that was unidentified, and proceeded to land perfectly safely.

Meanwhile, the Phoenix, Arizona lights were moving closer to the state capital. Witnesses in Glendale, Scottsdale, and downtown Phoenix saw the lights but by around 9pm they were gone.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind

Did a UFO crash land in Roswell?

(Credit: David Zaitz via Getty Images)

About an hour later, the lights over Phoenix were back. Around 10pm, a series of intensely bright lights appeared over the Phoenix area, distinct from the V-shaped formation observed earlier in the evening. These peculiar lights in Phoenix, Arizona, were described as stationary, hovering orbs that remained visible for a considerable period before they started to dim and then vanished, only to reappear and maintain the same formation.

Witnesses reported these lights did not seem to be attached to any solid object, or if they were, the object was not visible against the night sky. This aspect of the phenomenon led to widespread speculation and debate, as the lights behaved unlike conventional aircraft or known atmospheric phenomena.

UFO sceptic Robert Sheaffer described this second occurrence as ‘perhaps the most widely witnessed UFO event in history.’

The Immediate Aftermath

The instant reaction to the Phoenix Lights was a mixture of awe, confusion, and concern. Witnesses flooded police lines and local news stations with reports, seeking explanations for what they had seen.

The story quickly garnered national attention, sparking a frenzy of speculation, investigation, and debate. Sceptics proposed conventional explanations such as flares or military aircraft, while believers in extraterrestrial activity felt validated in their convictions.

The event left a lasting impression on the public consciousness, becoming a pivotal moment for the UFO community and a perennial topic of interest for both sceptics and believers alike.

But what actually happened that night? Was it military aircraft that instigated the illuminations, or were the lights over Phoenix 1997’s answer to Roswell?

The Official Explanation

A10 Thunderbolt II jets on a training mission

(Credit: Stocktrek Images via Getty Images)

According to the US military, both incidents were as a result of a pilot training programme called Operation Snowbird from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.

The first incident – the V-shaped object – was explained as nothing more than five A-10 Thunderbolt II jets flying under visual flight rules, so instead of displaying flashing collision lights, they were allowed to display steady formation lights. The planes landed at Davis-Monthan AFB at around 8.45pm.

Later that night, the stationary, hovering orbs were slow-burning, long-falling LUU-2B/B illumination flares dropped from the A10s while on a training exercise from the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range. A later study of their luminosity suggested they could indeed be seen over the distances described on the night of March 13, 1997.

A decade on from thousands of people seeing the lights in Phoenix, Arizona, Maryland Air National Guard pilot Lt. Col. Ed Jones admitted to being one of the airmen who dropped the flares.

While plenty accept the official explanation of events that night, others aren’t so sure.

Is the Truth Out There?

Atmospheric Northern Lights over a city

(Credit: edb3_16 via Getty Images)

Beyond the official Air Force explanation attributing the Phoenix Lights phenomenon to flares and military aircraft, several prevailing theories have been proposed by researchers, UFO enthusiasts, and sceptics alike to explain the events of March 13, 1997. These theories range from the plausible to the speculative, reflecting the enduring mystery and intrigue of the incident.

1. Military or Experimental Aircraft

Some theories suggest that the V-shaped formation responsible for the Phoenix, Arizona lights could have been an experimental or military aircraft, possibly a stealth plane or other advanced, secretive aviation technology. Proponents of this theory point to the size and silent operation of the object as indicative of experimental military projects unknown to the public at the time.

2. Atmospheric Conditions

Another explanation posits that certain atmospheric conditions on that night might have caused or contributed to the visibility of distant or conventional lights in unusual ways. This could involve temperature inversions or reflections from man-made or natural sources, leading to illusions, misidentified celestial objects, or misinterpretations of natural phenomena as something more mysterious.

3. Extraterrestrial Craft 

The most popular and controversial theory is that the lights of Phoenix were from one or more alien spacecraft. This theory revolves around the size, formation, and flight characteristics of the lights. The lack of sound, combined with the apparent coordinated movement of the lights, fuels speculation about technology beyond human capabilities, outside of our current understanding of the laws of physics.

4. Psychological or Social Phenomenon 

Some researchers propose that the Phoenix Lights can be partly explained by psychological phenomena, such as mass hysteria or the power of suggestion. This falls squarely in the ‘they saw what they wanted to see’ category. According to this theory, the initial reports of lights could have influenced subsequent observers to perceive mundane phenomena as extraordinary, especially in the context of a highly publicised event.

5. An Elaborate Hoax

A more sceptical approach suggests that the entire event could have been an elaborate hoax or a series of optical illusions. This could involve the strategic use of flares, balloons, or other devices to create the illusion of a UFO, although the coordinated execution over such a wide area would have been challenging.

Each of these theories attempts to explain the lights over Phoenix phenomenon, but none have definitively ended the speculation. The Phoenix Lights remain a topic of fascination and debate within the UFO community and among the general public.

Unsolved in the Sky: The Enigma of the Phoenix Lights

What were the Phoenix Lights?

(Credit: David Wallvia Getty Images)

The mysterious lights in Phoenix, Arizona remain one of the most captivating and enduring mysteries in the annals of UFO sightings. Despite the official explanation, the nature of the lights that danced over Arizona’s night sky in March 1997 continues to spark speculation and – for some – fuels the imagination about what might be possible in the vast, unexplored reaches of the universe.

Related

{ https://www.discoveryuk.com/feature/mysteries/articles/ }

Massa Ufo-waarnemingen: spectaculaire gevallen, twijfel en mogelijke verklaringen

Inleiding

Het fenomeen van UFO’s heeft altijd een bijzondere aantrekkingskracht gehad: het idee dat overheden, massa’s mensen en zelfs gerenommeerde professionals plotseling oog in oog kunnen staan met iets wat buiten de gangbare ervaring ligt. De meeste rapporten beschrijven helder zichtbare gebeurtenissen die door weinig personen tegelijk worden waargenomen. In tegenstelling tot die kleinschalige ontmoetingen komen er zo nu en dan gevallen voor waarbij honderden, vaak hoog aangeschreven getuigen dezelfde ervaring melden. Deze massale waarnemingen zijn zeldzaam maar bijzonder intrigerend omdat ze een rijke variatie aan getuigen biedt: politiemensen, militair personeel, journalisten, bestuurders en gewone burgers die allen hetzelfde fenomeen lijken te hebben gezien. In dit artikel nemen we een aantal beroemde massale UFO-flaps onder de loep: van Wanaque in New Jersey (1966) tot de Phoenix Lights (1997) en verder.

We plaatsen deze getuigenissen in een bredere context van mogelijke verklaringen, variërend van misidentificaties van alledaagse fenomenen en ruimteafval tot het spectrale gebied van satellietinval en nog verder. Daarnaast plaatsen we dit onderwerp in een bredere historische voorstelling van phenomena die in de publieke verbeelding een rol spelen: het Zonnewonder van Fatima en wat er in België—in legendarische “frihoekjes” of fringe-gebieden—gewaarschuwd is gebeurd. Zo kan men zien hoe massale waarnemingen niet alleen een wetenschappelijke maar ook een maatschappelijke en culturele referentiekader raken.

1. Een klassieke massale flap: Wanaque Reservoir, New Jersey (1966)

Het verhaal van Wanaque, een buitenwijk van New Jersey, begon als een ogenschijnlijk rustige avond in januari 1966. Omstreeks 18:30 begonnen talrijke meldingen binnen te komen van een extreem helder licht boven het nabijgelegen Wanaque-reservoir. De beschrijvingen waren consistent: een zeer fel wit licht, groter en helderder dan een ster, dat af en toe van kleur veranderde (rood, blauw, groen). Het object hing boven het bevroren meer, bewoog in wat leek op een doelbewust patroon en bereikte hoogte tussen 250 en 1000 voet. Bovendien werden rapporten genoemd van een straal of beam die naar het ijsprojectie maakte, waardoor het ijs smolt en gaten achterliet.

Getuigen aanzienlijk in aantal en diversiteit droegen bij aan de geloofwaardigheid van het verschijnsel. Politiemannen, brandweerlieden en hooggeplaatste functionarissen, waaronder burgemeester Harry T. Wolfe en andere wethouders, getuigen van een object dat stil was, zonder geluid, maar verrichtte een reeks onverklaarbare bewegingen: dalen en stijgen, drijvend boven het water en scherpe bochten makend. De indruk van soliditeit en intelligent bestuurde beweging werd versterkt door de rapportage van het object dat schijnbaar water deed opwellen en het wateroppervlak verplaatste.

Wat dit incident zo intrigerend maakte, was de combinatie van massale waarneming en de overtuiging van onverklaarbaar te zijn: het fenomeen leek geen gewoon vliegtuig of bekend weerfenomeen te zijn. Zichtbaar werd het nogmaals op latere data, ook boven Lakeland Regional High School en op andere locaties in de omgeving. Het leek zich vervolgens uit te breiden tot de omliggende gebieden voordat het weer verdween. Een belangrijke component in de discussie was de mysterieuze afwezigheid van fotomateriaal: hoewel talrijke getuigen het fenomeen beschrijven, ontbreekt er een consistente berg fotodemonstraties. Er worden wel foto’s genoemd die anoniem naar voren zijn gebracht, maar zonder duidelijke herkomst en zonder negatieven, waardoor de echtheid moeilijk te verifiëren is.

Mogelijke verklaringen en controverse

• Ruimteafval of object in de lucht. Een populaire theorie was dat het ging om een vallend satellietdebris of eenSpace Shuttle-achtige vorm. Dergelijke concepten konden mogelijk de observaties van een gloeiende, witte bol uitleggen, maar niet de specifieke, verfijnde manoeuvres, het behoud van een vaste positie en het neerzetten van een beam.
• Luchtvaart- of natuurverschijnselen zoals helikopters met krachtige lichtbundels, weersfenomenen of misidentificaties. De getuigen kwamen uit verschillende hoeken en hadden verschillende beschrijvingen die soms op een soort geordende structuur wezen; sommige onderzoekers wezen erop dat hulpschepen, verschillende vliegtuigen of andere normale objecten verkeerd konden worden geïnterpreteerd, vooral in omstandigheden waarin weinig licht was of waar de perceptie vertekend kon raken.
• Een gebrek aan volledige follow-up: de nasleep van de zaak bracht varianten van het verhaal waar onbekende militaire figuren zich bemoeiden met getuigen en mogelijk fotografisch materiaal in beslag namen. De afwezigheid van een gestructureerde, onafhankelijke follow-up maakte het moeilijk om definitieve conclusies te trekken.

De publieke en wetenschappelijke dialoog

De Wanaque-zaak blijft een van de meest geciteerd massale UFO-waarnemingen uit de Verenigde Staten, deels vanwege het grote aantal duidelijke getuigen en de prominente figuren die het zagen. Toch blijft de controverse bestaan: kon men de waarneming verklaren als een misidentificatie, een zeldzame atmosferische gebeurtenis of—zoals door sommige onderzoekers wordt voorgesteld—een object met onbekende oorsprong? De stilte rondom een volledige, rigoureuze opvolgonderzoek laat twijfels bestaan over de integriteit van de officiële documenten en de bereidwilligheid van overheden om al dan niet expliciet informatie te delen.

2. Een internationaal fenomeen: de zonverduistering en het Mexico City-incident (11 juli 1991)

Tijdens een totale zonsverduistering, die de Pacific-oevers van Mexico bereiste tot in Brazilië en uitwaaiend via Hawaï en Midden-Amerika, ontstond in Mexico-Stad een schokgolf toen getuigen een helder, schijvenvormig metalen object registreerden dat boven de eclips leek te zweven. Guillermo Arragin en Jaime Maussan, respectievelijk een televisiemanager en een journalist, filmden het fenomeen terwijl ze de verduistering volgden en stuurden de beelden naar Sesenta Minutos (de Mexicaanse versie van Sixty Minutes). Acht dagen later verscheen het nieuws op televisie en begon een forse stroom van meldingen: duizenden mensen die hetzelfde object zagen of video’s daarvan maakten, met beschrijvingen variërend van stilstaand tot bewegend en een waarneembaar dampspoor dat het object leek te volgen.

Een opvallende twist was de latere opduiking van soortgelijke waarnemingen bij een militair luchtvertoon in Mexico-Stad, waar een ingenieur meldde een “glanzende stip” te zien die kon unduleren en bewegen zonder te volgen wat een normaal vliegtuig zou doen. Nog een jaar later werd het object opnieuw gezien op hetzelfde luchtshow evenement, en in latere jaren bleef het beeld hangen door analysen en discussies: Venus werd onder meer voorgesteld als een verklarende factor, gezien de positie en beweging van het hemelobject in sommige videobeelden. Critici, onder wie de astronomen Tim Printy, wezen erop dat camera-artificatie en het ontbreken van onbegeleide videomateriaal het verhaal mysterieus maakten, terwijl sommige amateuristen en volgelingen van de theorieën rondom “Mayaanse profetieën” probeerden het incident te verbinden met oude mythologie en het idee van buitenaardse bezoekers aan de hoofdstad van Mexico.

De polemiek rondom de video’s

• Venus als verklarende factor. Tim Printy en andere wetenschappers wezen erop dat de meeste beelden consistent met eenvoudige, maar misleidende videocollages of artefacten konden zijn en dat de astronomische context (zoals de positie van Venus) het beeld kon vervormen. Bovendien zag men geen melden van officiële Mexicaanse astronomers die een UFO-breedte in die periode bevestigden, wat het sceptische standpunt versterkte.
• De magische retoriek van sommige commentatoren. Een groepje volgers en mediafiguren, waaronder de Elders (Lee en Brit Elders), stelde dat de gebeurtenis een prooi was voor een narratief van “Mayaanse profetieën” en buitenaardse bezoekers, een verhaal dat Printy scherp afbrandt als “pure bunk voor verkoop.” Hij bekritiseerde de verstrengeling van oude mythen met moderne videomateriaal en betwijfelde de betrouwbaarheid van de zogenaamd “bron-documenten” die zo’n spectaculaire claim zouden ondersteunen.
• Conspiracy-theorieën en geopolitieke roddels. Er deden zich Geruchtencollecties voor over vermeende Amerikaanse of Russische lekkages en “war on UFO’s” die zouden gepleegd zijn naar aanleiding van deze gebeurtenissen. Hoewel zulke claims fascinerend zijn, ontbreken concrete bewijzen en blijven ze in de sfeer van complottheorieën hangen.

Impact en les:

wat hebben we geleerd? Hoewel de Mexico City-verhalen een mix van documentaire bewijs, interpretatie en mythologie bieden, is het belangrijkste wat ze illustreren dat een grote massa waarnemers, inclusief gewone burgers en professionals, identieke of vergelijkbaar lijkende getuigenissen kan leveren. Ze benadrukken ook dat menselijke interpretatie, camera-techniek en culturele narratieven een grote rol spelen bij wat men ziet en hoe men het verklaart. Of Venus nu de ware boosdoener was of niet, blijft de discussie bestaan—maar het grote publiek blijft geïntrigeerd door de mogelijkheid van buitenaardse bezoekers en de redenen waarom zulke fenomenen zich juist op spectaculaire momenten tonen.

3. Cosford Incident en de Engelse controverse (31 maart 1993)

In het zuiden van Engeland brak een forse golf van meldingen uit in maart 1993, met vooraanstaande rapporten bij politie en defensie die in Devon, Cornwall en Wales werden gemeld. Een anonieme waarneming beschreef een enorm object “als twee Concordes die naast elkaar vliegen en verbonden zijn,” met schattingen die het object op meer dan 200 meter lengte plaatsten. Verdere getuigen meldde dat het object laag overvliegt of zelfs in een veld landde. De volgende dag bleef de situatie zich herhalen: RAF Cosford, RAF Shawbury en zelfs een Ierse militaire helikopter kwamen in beeld met rapporten van rode lichten en schaars geluidloze activiteiten. Een meteoroloog bij Shawbury meldde dat een driehoekig vaartuig van 200 voet over de basis naderde, waarna het een krachtige straal op de grond wierp en in een oogwenk verdween, achterlatend een glimmende damp.

Het MoD-onderzoeksproject, geleid door Nick Pope, registreerde honderden getuigenrapporten, en de zaak trok de aandacht tot in de Amerikaanse Defensie. Pope beschreef Cosford als een van de meest opvallende gevallen in zijn tijd bij het UFO-project in de vroege jaren negentig. Desondanks bleven er vandaag de dag verschillende standpunten bestaan over wat er precies gezien is: ruimteafval van een Russische Cosmos-satelliet, geheime militaire testvluchten, bovennatuurlijke fenomenen of een verkeerd geïnterpreteerde luchtvaart. Sommigen betwijfelden zelfs de radarregistraties en stelden dat het hier mogelijk ging om misidentificaties bij nacht kunnen zijn, of dat de waarnemers verstrikt raakten in perceptie-fouten.

Ethische en methodologische kanttekeningen

• De betrouwbaarheid van “getrainde getuigen.” Hoewel de getuigen vaak uit professionele kringen komen, waarschuwt skeptici dat zelfs getrainde waarnemers fouten kunnen maken, zeker bij nachtelijke waarnemingen en uiterst modale vormen van objecten. Chris Fowler benadrukte de noodzaak om voorzichtig te zijn met het vertrouwen in professionals als garantie voor objectiviteit, en wees op de inherente valkuilen van perceptie en interpretatie.
• De rol van “echte data.” Het gebrek aan volledige, verifieerbare data—zoals gebrek aan radar correlatie, en de onzekerheid rondom de kernsignatuur van de objecten—maakt de Cosford-landing een voorbeeld van hoe complex het kan zijn om een zuivere conclusie te trekken op basis van getuigenverklaringen alleen.
• De kritiek op Pope’s benadering. Nick Pope kreeg kritiek op de wijze waarop hij in sommige stukken en documentaires de feiten presenteerde, en hoe hij mogelijk te selectief was in het koppelen van getuigenissen aan specifieke theorieën. Vadert men dat een dergelijk deel van het onderzoek eenzijdig is, dan kan dit de geloofwaardigheid van het hele veld ondermijnen.

Resultaat en interpretatie

De Cosford-zaak staat bekend als een van de meest geïnterpreteerde ‘massieve’ UAP-gevallen in het Verenigd Koninkrijk, maar het blijft onduidelijk wat er precies gebeurde. Een belangrijke les is dat, zelfs wanneer getuigen betrouwbaar lijken, de complexe combinatie van perceptie, technologische beperkingen en bedreigde context het extreem lastig maakt om tot definitieve conclusies te komen. Het incident heeft wel bijgedragen aan de discussie over de aanwezigheid van ongeïdentificeerde fenomenen en de noodzaak van betere en ongekleurde gegevensverzameling.

4. Phoenix Lights: massale waarneming boven Arizona en de Verenigde Staten (13 maart 1997)

Misschien wel de best bekende massale UFO-waarneming uit recente geschiedenis vonden plaats in Arizona op 13 maart 1997, bekend als de Phoenix Lights. Het begon vroeg in de avond toen een enorme V-vormige formatie van fel gereduceerde lichten werd gezien die een aanzienlijke strook van de hemel bedekte en de sterren grotendeels verhulde. De maneuvre werd beschreven als stilstaand of traag beweging, met een zwevend patroon dat door duizenden personen werd waargenomen: politiemensen, piloten, militair personeel, en zelfs de toenmalige gouverneur van Arizona, Fife Symington III.

Later die avond werd een tweede, meer gefocuste groep lichten gezien in een formele vorm die stil over de horizon bewoog. Er ontstond veel debat over de aard van deze fenomenen: waren het militaire luchtdoelen, verkeerslichten, ballonnen, of niet? Verschillen in getuigenis op een aantal punten maakten al snel duidelijk dat het niet eenvoudig was om één gemeenschappelijke verklaring te vinden.

De theorieën en het publieke debat

• Flares en ballonnen. Een overheersende sceptische verklaring suggereerde dat de tweede groep lichten afkomstig was van zware nachtelijke fakkels of “flares” die door het Amerikaanse leger werden gebruikt tijdens oefeningen. Dit leek te worden bevestigd door latere incidenten waarin vergelijkbare lichteffecten werden verklaard als fakkels tijdens trainingscampagnes.
• Een massief object. De eerste vorming, zo werd betoogd door sommige getuigen, was een enorme drie-dimensionale structuur die de sterren blokkeerde. Sommigen suggereerden dat het een gevormd, geheim vliegtuig was—een mogelijke “black op”-operatie. Anderen bleven vasthouden aan de verhalen over een buitenaards vaartuig.
• De gouverneur en publieke verklaring. Symington, die ooit beweerde dat hij niet zeker wist wat hij had gezien, vertelde later dat, als hij een piloot is, hij zeker geen menselijke vliegtuig kon verklaren die zo’n symmetrisch patroon vertoonde en zo’n grote omvang had. Dit gesprek veroorzaakte publieke ophef en maakte het debat nog vuriger.

Herwaardering door latere gebeurtenissen In 2007 en 2008 werden soortgelijke waarnemingen gemeld, die uiteindelijk werden verklaard als flares en ballonnen. Toch blijft de Phoenix Lights-zaak in de publieke verbeelding staan als een van de meest documenteerbare en meest uitgebreide massale waarnemingen uit Noord-Amerika. Een belangrijk aspect van de zaak was de rol van media en officiële verklaringen: de initiële belachelijking van de fenomenen, gevolgd door latere openingen van officiële instituten die erkenden dat bepaalde waarnemingen niet eenvoudig te verklaren vielen.

5. Wat leren we van massale UFO-waarnemingen?

• Getuigenverslagen zijn een krachtig maar ambigu bewijsmateriaal. Een groot aantal getuigen, vaak met uiteenlopende achtergronden, kan de algehele geloofwaardigheid vergroten, maar het kan ook leiden tot conflicting interpretaties. Het is essentieel om ze te structureren en te toetsen aan objectieve data zoals radarregistraties, fototype en videomateriaal en, waar mogelijk, meetbare fysische indicatoren (zoals straling, ijs- en waterbeschadiging, atmosferische metingen).
• De rol van perceptie en cognitieve bias. Zelfs ervaren getuigen kunnen misinterpretaties hebben. Wetenschappers en onderzoekers benadrukken dat het menselijke cognitieve systeem geneigd is om patronen te herkennen, zelfs waar die er niet zijn. Het is cruciaal om deze biases te erkennen en te corrigeren door strikte methodologie en onafhankelijke verificatie.
• De politieke en maatschappelijke dimensie. Massale waarnemingen raken aan thema’s zoals nationale veiligheid, publiek vertrouwen en de rol van media. Ze kunnen leiden tot publieke hysterie of, juist, tot een rustige en rigoureuze analyse wanneer data en transparantie worden toegepast.
• De afwezigheid van bewijsmateriaal. In verschillende gevallen blijft er, ondanks de uitgebreide getuigenverslagen, een gebrek aan harde, onafhankelijke bewijzen die definitieve conclusies mogelijk maken. Dit benadrukt de noodzaak van brede, systematische data-collectie en open wetenschappelijke discussie.

Zonnewonder van Fatima en Belgische DRIEHOEKEN: een historische en cultureel-contextuele vergelijking In de geschiedenis van massale fenomenen in de publieke verbeelding bestaan er “bovennatuurlijke” gebeurtenissen die geen direct wetenschappelijk bewijs dragen maar wel een diepgaande maatschappelijke impact hebben gehad. Een van de bekendste voorbeelden is het Zonnewonder van Fatima in 1917, wanneer drie kinderen in Portugal beweerden een verschijning van de Heilige Maagd Maria te hebben gezien en daarna een reeks bovennatuurlijke tekenen en wonderbaarlijke gebeurtenissen gerapporteerd werden, waaronder de “dans van de zon” die voor duizenden toeschouwers werd waargenomen. De Fatima-ervaring heeft de menselijke behoefte aan wonder en verklaring op een unieke manier onderstreept: mensen die zweren bij de realiteit van bovennatuurlijke tekenen, en wetenschappers die proberen dit kritisch te benaderen met historische context, natuurwetten en psychosociale factoren. Het Zonnewonder van Fatima is een verhaal dat de scheidslijn tussen geloof en empirische kennis illustreert, en laat zien hoe massale waarnemingen, ondersteund door collectieve narratieven en culturele context, een blijvende impact kunnen hebben – onafhankelijk van of er een wetenschappelijke verklaring voor kan worden gevonden.

In België, waar de “driehoeken” een culturele uitdrukking zijn voor fringe- of marginale denkbeelden of illusies , ontstaan ook randverhalen die de kloof tussen feit en fabel dramatiseren. De waarnemingen van de Belgische driehoeken en de publieke cultuur rondom het onbekende dragen bij aan hoe waarnemingen worden gezien en geïnterpreteerd. In hoeverre massale waarnemingen culturele scripts volgen die in grotere maatschappelijke structuren bestaan, is een belangrijke onderzoeksvraag: ze vindbaar in hoe mensen getuigenissen vertellen, welke beelden en symbolen zij inzetten, en hoe publieke instellingen reageren. Het erkennen van deze culturele dimensies helpt ons te begrijpen waarom sommige waarnemingen zo’n cultuurrelevantie ontwikkelen, en waarom het gesprek soms verder gaat dan de puur wetenschappelijke analyse.

6. Conclusie: keerpunten en open vragen Massale UFO-waarnemingen blijven fascinerende gebeurtenissen die de grens tussen het bekende en het onbekende raken. Ze laten zien hoe groepen mensen hetzelfde fenomeen kunnen waarnemen, maar hoe interpretatie, context en bewijs elkaar kunnen tegenspreken. De cases zoals Wanaque (1966), Mexico City (1991), Cosford (1993) en Phoenix (1997) illustreren zowel de kracht van collectieve waarneming als de grenzen van bewijs. Ze laten ons ook nadenken over bredere kwesties: hoe luisteren we naar getuigenissen zonder ze te vergevelen? Hoe krijgen we betrouwbare data die de getuigenissen kan ondersteunen of weerleggen? En hoe verbinden historische, culturele en maatschappelijke kaders—zoals het Fatima-zonnewonder en Belgische fringe-caten—met het hedendaagse fenomeen van UAP’s?

In een tijd waarin technologie ons in staat stelt om beelden en data op ongekende schaal te verzamelen, zouden massale waarnemingen een kans moeten zijn om transparant en methodisch te onderzoeken. Dit vereist open data, transparante protocollen voor evaluatie, en samenwerking tussen wetenschappers, sceptici en getuigen. Het doel is niet het bevestigen of ontkennen van buitenaards contact als zodanig, maar het begrijpen van de aard van wat mensen waarnemen, wat ze denken dat ze gezien hebben, en hoe we als verdenking en wonderen, feiten en interpretaties netjes scheiden. Uiteindelijk draait dit om het belang van een rationele, maar open houding ten opzichte van het onbekende: een houding die de menselijke nieuwsgierigheid koestert en tegelijkertijd de discipline van de wetenschap respecteert.

Noten voor verder onderzoek en leesduur

• Voor een vollediger beeld van Wanaque en de bijbehorende getuigenverklaringen, verwijzen naar archieven van lokale kranten en overheidscorrespondentie uit 1966.
• De Mexico City-verhalen hebben een breed spectrum van videomateriaal en sceptische analyses van videotechnieken; voor een kritische evaluatie is het zinvol om werken van Tim Printy en andere astronomen te raadplegen.
• De Cosford Incident heeft een lange geschiedenis in UK-UFO-literatuur, met de MoD-archieven en Pope’s eigen discussies als belangrijkste bronnen. Moderne herzieningen in muppetassen en sceptische artikelen zijn aanbevolen om een gebalanceerd beeld te krijgen.
• Phoenix Lights hebben een rijkdom aan getuigenverslagen en beeldmateriaal, met latere verifieerbare verklaringen zoals het flare-scenario. Het blijft een compacte demonstratie van hoe publiek en autoriteiten elkaar kunnen kruisen in de interpretatie van een onopgelost fenomeen.
• Voor het Zonnewonder van Fatima en de Belgische driehoeken is het nuttig om zowel historische bronnen als sociologische en fenomenologische literatuur te bestuderen die de rol van geloof, media en cultuur in massale waarnemingen verkennen.

Eindnoot

Massa UFO-waarnemingen blijven een spannend venster op menselijke perceptie, maatschappelijke dynamiek en de voortdurende zoektocht naar begrip van wat er boven ons gebeurt. Of je nu gelooft in buitenaardse intelligentie, of het fenomeen ziet als een complex samenspel van onbekende betrouwbare getuigen, natuurverschijnselen en menselijke perceptie, één ding blijft zeker: dit onderwerp voedt een diepzinnige dialoog over wat we weten, wat we niet weten en hoe we het beste bewijs verzamelen om tot betrouwbare conclusies te komen. En terwijl we de geschiedenis van dergelijke waarnemingen blijven bestuderen, kan het ons helpen om de brug te slaan tussen wonder en wetenschap, tussen cultuur en feit.

{ PETER2011 }

One of the most intriguing mass UFO sighting flaps in U.S. history started as a normal day like any other in the small suburban town of Wanaque, New Jersey, but as the day came to a close, a bizarre series of events would begin to play out. On the crisp and clear evening of January 11, 1966, at around 6:30 PM, calls began to come in from all over the area describing what seemed to be an extremely bright glowing light out over the nearby Wanaque Reservoir. Dozens of calls were coming in from panicked residents and workers at the reservoir describing more or less the same thing, with most reports saying it was a very bright light, larger and brighter than a star, mostly white but sometimes changing to colors such as red, blue and green. The mystery object was described as hovering over the frozen lake surface and roving about in what seemed to be a deliberate pattern at an altitude of between 250 and 1,000 feet, sometimes performing seemingly physics-defying maneuvers and sudden vertical drops and rises. Even weirder were the reports of the object projecting some sort of beam downwards to the reservoir, which was powerful enough to melt holes in the ice.

Before long, the police who were getting these calls were seeing the strange object for themselves, and one of these was police patrolman Joseph Cisco, who just happened to be near the reservoir when the reports began flooding in. He would then drive out there to investigate and look out over the water to see something very strange for himself, of which he said:

“There was a light that looked bigger than any of the stars, about the size of a softball or volleyball. It was a pulsating, white, stationary light changing to red. It stayed in the air; there was no noise. I was trying to figure out what it was.”

The object would then swoop in low and begin shooting a beam to the lake surface, and Cisco soon got a call from another officer on the radio, saying in a panic, “Something landed in front of the dam. Something's burning a hole in the ice! Something with a bright light on it, going up and down!" Another policeman who saw the thing was Sgt. Ben Thompson, who said it actually caused the water to rise below it and sucked together treetops, and yet another Officer George Dyckman would say, "I've never seen anything like it in my life." Several other police officers being called to the area also saw the otherworldly object, including Patrolmen Edward Nestor and Jack Wardlaw, a Sgt. Bobby Gordon, Reservoir Police and Personnel, George Destito, Charles Theodora, Fred Steines, and even Chief of Police Floyd Elson. Chief John Casazza of the Wanaque Reservoir Police would say of his own sighting:

“It was a bright white light. As I said: just like on a locomotive. It was funnel-shaped. It seemed to come out of some object, like a funnel. In other words, it spread out as if it were focused through a telescope. It was narrow at one end in the sky and spread out into a very wide beam as it approached our upper gatehouse at the dam. The strangest part of it was that there was no noise attached to this object. None whatsoever. It was absolutely silent. A silent light.”

News crews who started to trickle in also reported seeing the strange sight, with one reporter, Howard Ball, with the Paterson News, saying:

“I was near the junction of Colfax Road and Hamburg Turnpike… I saw a very extremely bright light... The thing that really brought my attention was, as I traveled along, a white starlight seems to come at me… then it stopped and it made a transverse movement to the west. No color, but if I'd give it a color I'd say brilliant blue-white, similar to the ignition of a magnesium and pure oxygen... really bright light.”

One of the more prominent witnesses to the outlandish event was the town Mayor, Harry T. Wolfe, who had made his way out to the reservoir along with Councilmen Warren Hagstrom and Arthur Barton and the Mayor’s 14-year-old son, Billy, out of sheer curiosity when the reports kept coming in a deluge. They would witness a light that was “a brilliance, a little brighter than a star” that seemed to emit a reddish or pale green light or yellowish light and which was moving “oddly” over the lake. Closer inspection showed that it was some sort of oval-shaped object around 9 feet in diameter, coming in low over the water to shoot down a beam that put a hole in the ice as they looked on in astonishment. Councilman Hagstrom would say of what they saw that night:

“There was something up there that was awful bright. We don’t know what it was. We thought it was a helicopter, but we didn’t hear a motor. It looked like a helicopter with big landing lights on. We got goose bumps all over when we saw where the hole was.”

Before long, there were throngs of people gathered at the reservoir watching this thing go about its inscrutable business, and the mysterious object would do its strange act over the water for over an hour before finally speeding off into the night at great speed and without warning. Moments later, it would be reported as hovering over Lakeland Regional High School and stopping at several other locations in the area before vanishing to leave residents in a state of shock. So many people had seen it, including many policemen and even city officials, and all of them agreed it was not a normal aircraft or celestial phenomenon, but rather something truly unexplainable and baffling. To make it all even weirder still is that it would seem as if the strangeness wasn't quite over yet. The object would make another brief appearance over the reservoir the following evening as well, before seeming to go away for good, but it would make yet another appearance later that year.

In October of 1966, just as people were starting to try and put the whole bizarre incident at Wanaque reservoir out of their minds, a new spate of sightings emanated from the lake. At 9 PM on October 10, the object was seen by several witnesses, including an off-duty police officer by the name of Robert Gordon, who saw it with his wife, Betty, who described it as a bright white light that moved with “a definite pattern” towards the reservoir. This sighting was soon joined by that of a policeman, Sgt. Ben Thompson, who had seen the object during its first appearance, and had quite a harrowing experience when the UFO allegedly flew right at him and he saw it at fairly close quarters. He would say of this:

“I saw the object coming at me. There was an extremely bright light. It was a bright white light, bright like when a light bulb is about to blow. It was very low. It appeared to be about 75 feet over the mountain. That would be Windbeam Mountain. It was traveling very quickly and in a definite pattern; first right, then up and down, then repeating the pattern. Distances are deceiving, but it might have covered an area of a half a mile. It went straight over my head, stopped in mid-air and backed right up. It then started zig-zagging from left to right. It was doing tricks. Making acute angular turns instead of gradual curved ones. It looked as big as a parachute. I got out of my car and continued to watch it for almost five minutes. It was about 200 to 250 yards away. It was the shape of a basketball with the center scooped out and a football thrust through it. Sometimes the football appeared to be perpendicular to the basketball and sometimes standing up on end. There were two different gadgets. It didn’t make much noise, but as it was moving, it raised the water beneath it. I watched it maneuver, stirring up brush and water in the reservoir, it was about 150 feet up…I had difficulty seeing because the light was so bright it blinded me.”

Once again, the police were flooded with dozens of calls from terrified residents seeing the object in the vicinity of the reservoir, and it would be seen again on October 15 before finally disappearing again, this time apparently for good. In the wake of the UFO flap over Wanaque reservoir, there would be some strange and sometimes ominous stories coming out of the area. It was reported that unknown men posing as military officials from the Air Force were doing the rounds in the area, intimidating residents and discouraging people from talking about what they had seen, and some people even claimed that these mysterious men had confiscated photographs taken of the phenomena. The military would deny that these people were with them, or that they had had anyone in the area to investigate at all, and one Air Force Colonel Freeman would state, “We have checked a number of these cases and these men are not connected with the Air Force in any way.” Other witnesses would also insist that they had seen military helicopters and even jets in the area shortly after the initial sightings and in the months after, but the Air Force denied this as well, while at the same time making efforts to explain away the UFO sightings as misidentified aircraft or a weather balloon. What happened here, and did the military have any connection to these events or not? Were they trying to hide something or cover it up? No one knows.

The claims of mysterious officials confiscating photographic evidence are cited as one of the reasons there is so little such documentation of the incident. Indeed, although the UFO was witnessed by so many people, including police and high-ranking officials, there is oddly only a handful of photographs of the alleged craft known to exist, most of which were later sent in anonymously to make it hard to ascertain who took them in the first place or whether they are real or hoaxes. One photo in particular, showing the object shooting a beam of light downwards, has become intensely debated and analyzed in the years since, with no real conclusion. Since we don’t know who took these photos and have no negatives, it is hard to say. What we do know is that the incident did happen, and so this odd lack of photographic evidence from such a well-documented mass sighting has been seen as proof that someone has tried to suppress the event.

Today, there have been many proposed explanations, including helicopters with spotlights, atmospheric phenomena, Venus, weather balloons, or even ball lightning, but there are problems with these explanations in that so many reliable witnesses saw them and insist that what they witnessed was none of these things. One unidentified witness has said of this to researcher Anthony Bragalia, of UFO Explorations, as follows:

“I remember the thing very well. I still do not know what it was. I think about it from time to time, but it's no use because it doesn't bring me any closer to knowing what it was. Maybe things that aren't from here aren't meant to be understood by us here. Ask anyone who will tell you, it was not a helicopter or something astronomical. It was...not...from our military or something we misidentified. It was a UFO, from somewhere else. The beams or ray thing that came out from the bottom of the globe was the thing that got to me. It made the light cut the ice out. It frightened us kids. And I'm sure the adults. Because we don't have anything like that even today. The adults didn't really speak much about it after the initial thing that I could tell. I'd talk about it with my friends some time later and one of them told me that people came around to not say anything.”

Amazingly, there has apparently been very little follow-up investigation done into the case. It seems that no one ever went back to examine those holes in the ice, nor were there any water or radiation measurements taken, and the proper authorities don’t seem to have ever made any real efforts to interview witnesses. Most of what we know is from independent UFO researchers who pieced together what happened from newspaper articles of the time. We are left to wonder just what happened out over that expanse of frigid ice all of those decades ago and what it all means. Was this all the result of mundane phenomena and misidentification, or something else? Has there been some sort of cover-up put into effect that has managed to keep such a spectacular incident largely buried in history? If this was really an alien craft, then what was it doing at that reservoir, and what did it want? These are questions that linger, and which may never be satisfactorily answered, and the UFO wave of New Jersey's Wanaque reservoir remains a very compelling case of a mass UFO sighting that has been largely forgotten.

Moving on to our next case, on July 11, 1991, a total solar eclipse occurred from the Pacific Ocean to Brazil, passing over Hawaii, Mexico, Central America, and South America. In Mexico City, Mexico, thousands of people were out to get a look at the rare celestial event that day. Two of these observers were Guillermo Arragin, a television executive, and Jaime Maussan, a journalist, who were shocked to notice a bright, disk-like metallic object hovering in the sky and were able to videotape it easily, as they had already been taping the eclipse. They sent the tape to Jaime Maussan, who produced, directed and hosted Sesenta Minutos, Mexico’s edition of Sixty Minutes. When this footage was shown on TV eight days later, it started a deluge of others calling in to report that they had seen or videotaped the same thing during the eclipse, of which Maussan would say:

“The telephone lines blew up. I mean 40,000 calls at the same time. Then the system was completely shut out. We received more than 15 videos and we now know for sure that in at least 7 of them, we can see the same ship that was recorded by Guillermo Arragin.”

It would turn out that many thousands of people had seen the mysterious object, and all of them described the same metallic shining object, with some reports stating it merely hovered in a stationary position, while others said it moved around while leaving a vaporous trail in its wake, and there were also mentions of the thing having three blinking lights on it. After this, it seems that whatever it was disappeared as the sun emerged once again to bring broad daylight. Among the many people sending in videos of the thing was 19-year-old student Erick Aguilar, who saw it while videotaping the eclipse from a rooftop with his friends and girlfriend. He would describe it as looking like a white point of light that got bigger and brighter as they watched it. At the same time, about 60 miles from Mexico City, a businessman named Luis Lara videotaped an object that was identical to the one on Aguilar’s footage, and he was convinced it was not a star, explaining that there was some sort of dark shadow under the object. The Breton family also filmed a similar object in Puebla, eighty miles from Mexico City, and they described the object as pulsating and having a strange wave-like disturbance behind it. It is unclear if this was the same object or a different one. In total, there were over a dozen videos of what seemed to be the same object from different angles and distances, making it one of the most videotaped UFOs ever. 

After this appearance on Sesenta Minutos, the UFO sightings were all over the news, becoming a sensation in Mexico and sparking a mass hysteria, and this was only further fueled when a similar object was spotted just two months later at a military air show at Mexico City. On this occasion, an engineer named Vincente Sanchez was filming the air show when he noticed something very bizarre up in the air with those planes. He would say of it:

“I was following one of the planes and I saw a shiny dot in the camera. It didn’t fly like a plane; it was undulating. I didn’t know what it was so I let the planes go off and I focused more on this shiny dot in the sky. What I saw was a bright, round object, about 10 meters in diameter. It was made of silver, was shining very brightly and reflected the sunlight a lot. The object appeared, undulated, and moved around quickly.”

The object would be seen again at the same air show a year later, this time with the disc descending rapidly to seemingly vanish into thin air. At the same air show in 1993, it was seen yet again, this time apparently flying in close proximity to a squadron of helicopters. It is not clear if these sightings have any connection to the mass sighting on July 11, 1991, but at the time, many were linking them and even claiming they were the very same object. Over the years, the various footage taken on July 11, 1991, has been debated and analyzed, and one astronomer by the name of Tim Printy has given a pretty good argument that it was all down to the planet Venus. As evidence, he states that the object can’t be conclusively shown to be moving in any of the videos, the alignment of the object in the footage in relation to other celestial objects shown in some of the videos, such as Mars and Regulus, correlates to the position of where Venus should be, and the object disappears when the sun comes back out. Most damningly, he points out that not a single Mexican astronomer, of which there would have been many recording the eclipse, reported any UFO or anything out of the ordinary at all. According to Printy, the videos only appear to show something truly strange because of camera artifacts and the fact that there are no uncropped videos of the object, which makes it all appear even more mysterious. 

Nevertheless, despite such criticism of the videos, many still believe them to be good UFO evidence, and some have gone and to take it all to new levels of weirdness. One of these is a couple by the name of Lee and Brit Elders, who believe that the UFO appearance during the eclipse was not only aliens, but that the whole incident was prophesied by the Mayans more than 1200 years ago. The Elders claim that through various ancient documents, they have deduced that the Mayans predicted that the aliens would arrive in the area of Mexico City on July 11, 1991, as harbingers of world change and “cosmic awareness through encounters with masters of the stars,” to usher in “a new era that will rise on the ashes of the one before.” The couple even made a whole series of videos talking about this, titled Messengers of Destiny, Masters of the Stars, and Voyagers of the Sixth Sun, and it all revolves around this supposed ancient prophecy and the July 11, 1991, UFO over Mexico City. Printy has a lot to say about the Elders, and does not mince words at all when he says of what he calls their “pure bunk for sale”:

“Not only do the Elder's state that Venus was a UFO, but they also make a profound statement that the Mayans predicted the arrival of the UFOs! Exactly when did the Maya predict such an event? The Elders state there are several ancient documents that state this. However, is there any basis for such a claim? The Elders rarely, if ever, give details. They seem to expound on new age mysticism trying to link statements from various documents in order to create some strange prediction to meet their needs. Are their statements correct? Are these source documents accurate? The credibility of the Elders is important to understand how accurately they represented the UFOs shown in the videos.

Despite a wealth of evidence that Venus was the likely culprit in many of these videos, the Elders went out of their way to create a story that describes alien visitation. The mixing and matching of Mayan and Aztec myths and then trying to make some form of prediction made by the Maya is another case of the Elders trying to deceive the viewers of real facts. The Mexico City eclipse UFO story is nothing but a new age myth generated by a couple of con-artists, who rely on the viewer to be uninformed and willing to believe the most ridiculous claims. The Messengers of Destiny/Masters of the Stars/Voyagers of the sixth sun prediction is nothing but a new age myth designed to make money!”

The Mexican UFO has also been the source of conspiracies, such as one that states the U.S. government knew about the event in Mexico, but tried to suppress it so that the public would not panic, which is supposedly why the story failed to produce even a blip in the American news. According to a report from the site Cool Interesting Stuff, there was a Kremlin report that supposedly not only mentions this, but also that the incident of July 11, 1991, in Mexico City put the Americans on alert for a "war” against UFOs based on or near the Continent of Antarctica.” The site says:

“A report circulating in the Kremlin prepared for President Medvedev by Russian Space Forces (VKS) 45th Division of Space Control says that an upcoming WikiLeaks release of secret US cables details that the Americans have been “engaged” since 2004 in a “war” against UFO’s based on or near the Continent of Antarctica, particularly the Southern Ocean. According to this report, the United States went to its highest alert level on June 10, 2004 after a massive fleet of UFO’s “suddenly emerged” from the Southern Ocean and approached Guadalajara, Mexico barely 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the American border. Prior to reaching the US border, however, this massive UFO fleet is said in this report to have “dimensionally returned” to their Southern Ocean “home base.”

The fears of the Americans regarding these Southern Ocean UFO’s began, this report says, during the unprecedented events of July 11, 1991 (referred to as 7/11) when during the Solar Eclipse these mysterious aircraft appeared by the hundreds over nearly all of Mexico, even their Capital city. Most notable about the events of 7/11 were that as millions of Mexicans were watching on their televisions the National broadcasts of these UFO’s over Mexico City, the American media refused to allow their people to view it.”

Is there anything to this? What was going on here with this incident? Was this an otherworldly presence, celestial gods on some mission to fulfill a Mayan prophecy, or merely the planet Venus and mass hysteria? How can we account for so many sightings? Were they all misidentifying a mundane phenomenon? Whatever the case may be, the July 11, 1991, UFO flap over Mexico City has gone on to become one of the most widely witnessed and most videotaped UFO encounters there is, and it remains a curious case in the annals of ufology. 

Moving along, the beginning of what has gone on to be one of the most talked about mass UFO sighting incidents in recent memory was on March 30, 1993, in England. On this evening, there suddenly began a deluge of reports coming in from across a swath of southwest England, particularly in the vicinity of Shropshire, of something decidedly weird in the sky, from witnesses of all walks of life and many of them traditionally reliable witnesses. One of the first reports came from a policeman who claimed to have seen a massive object resembling “two Concordes flying side by side and joined together,” and there were other reports that put the object’s size at a massive 200 meters long. Other reports claimed that the object had been observed sometimes flying very low to the ground, and there was even a panicked resident who claimed that it had landed in a field. Dozens of reports like this came in, and curiously, people were giving different descriptions, including a cylindrical object, a triangular-shaped craft with three lights, and a pair of lights seeming to emit a tail-like plume, suggesting there was more than one aerial disturbance at work. Yet this was only the beginning.

Continuing into March 31st, 1993, the reports kept coming in, and it seemed as if the phenomena had gotten even more active. The evening of the 31st would also mark a series of high-level sightings from police and military personnel, who had been on alert due to the sheer number of anomalous reports the night before. There would be several sightings made from RAF bases in the region, including sightings of a fast-moving red light by personnel at RAF Cosford and another incident at RAF Shawbury. One meteorologist at RAF Shawbury by the name of Wayne Elliot would claim that a triangular-shaped craft measuring around 200 feet across had slowly approached his base while emitting a low humming noise, and then shot a bright beam of light towards the ground before shooting off at amazing speed while leaving a luminous vapor trail in its wake. At no point were any of these objects picked up on radar at the bases. Some of the reports were scattered over a wide area, as another military encounter with one of the objects allegedly happened to an Irish military helicopter en route to Ireland over the coast of southwest Wales. The crew would report seeing “two white lights at a fixed distance apart in the horizontal plane” with trails visible through night vision equipment, which appeared to close the distance and pace them for a time.

The sightings were investigated by Nick Pope, who ran the UFO project run by the British Ministry of Defense (MoD), and he collected a steady stream of the reports, which he described as “coming in thick and fast,” in particular from the areas of Devon, Cornwall and Wales. Pope would claim to gather several hundred eyewitness reports of the bizarre unidentified aerial phenomena from March 30 and 31, and he also asserted that it was such a major and anomalous incident that it had even captured the attention of military officials at the Pentagon, who he believed included it in their 490-page secret report under the part of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. Pope  has said of this:

“The Cosford Incident was the most high-profile and compelling UFO incident that took place during my time on the MoD’s UFO project in the early Nineties. It is probably among the best cases in our entire archive, which goes back decades and includes around 12,000 sightings. It is inconceivable to me that this wouldn’t be one of the incidents mentioned in the secret US report. I’m sure the Americans knew all about the Cosford Incident, and maybe conducted some discreet enquiries of their own.”

Despite how amazing this may all seem, we are still left to wonder about just what exactly was seen by all of these witnesses, and there has been much debate on the matter. One very prevalent theory is that the aerial phenomena were caused by some kind of falling space debris, notably the re-entry of a Russian satellite called the Cosmos 2238, which it turns out was scheduled to re-enter the atmosphere on the evening of March 31. This would not be out of the question, as falling space debris has caused UFO flaps before, and incidentally, a similar Cosmos satellite that had gone down in the winter of 1978 also coincided with a wave of UFO sightings. 

A reentering satellite might explain some of the sightings, but it would not really explain the fact that many of the reports describe distinctly triangular objects that were allegedly seen flying in a seemingly intelligently controlled manner, including changing speed, hovering, or flying low to the ground, even in one case landing and taking off, which doesn’t really fit in with the space debris theory. The Russian satellite angle also would not explain the sightings going on during the evening of March 30, nor the insistence of some very trained witnesses that these were not space debris. So what are some of the other possibilities? Other ideas are that this was some sort of top-secret experimental aircraft being tested, a military black op, or some strange atmospheric phenomenon. There is also the possibility that this was just a misidentified normal aircraft, such as an airplane or helicopter. One local police investigator has said of this likelihood:

“If there’s no full moon you would not necessarily see the shape of the aircraft just the three lights and perhaps the searchlight. On a number of occasions in the last nine years we have had people ringing the police to report UFOs and when we have checked our operation logs it has turned out to be our helicopter. On other occasions we have had people reporting UFOs who have actually seen airliners descending into Manchester who have switched their landing lights on or off. Most people have no idea of spatial awareness at night and cannot accurately judge the height or distance. We have had people saying they have seen things at treetop height and when we have checked it has been an aircraft descending into Manchester at 10,000 feet or more.”

One argument against this is that many of the observers were reliable, trained witnesses such as RAF personnel, police officers, and the meteorologist, so how could they all misidentify a helicopter or plane? UFO investigator Chris Fowler has addressed this by explaining the problems with leaning too heavily on supposed expert witnesses, pointing out that even trained and seasoned individuals can be fooled by innate problems with our senses of perception. Fowler says of this:

“The human visual perceptual system and cognizance are very discerning but easily fooled by events like those described here. It is part of common UFO reportage that lights and aircraft flying at night can lead to false reports of distance, altitude, time estimates, size and other fundamental attributes. We should take note all observers are fallible to misperception and illusory effects and to false interpretation and apply adequate reasoning here. These 1993 events may be exemplary in providing more evidence of the inability of those often described as ‘trained observers’ to discern altitude in lights than is supposed. It is fallacious to assume that certain subsets of people, by occupation, may be more or less accurate in their observations of lights, shapes, distance and altitude without providing evidence. Observational accuracy by any subset of witnesses depends upon circumstance and a willingness to apply useful pragmatic means to recording observations at the time and on some understanding of limitations.”

One of the problems with trying to get to the bottom of the Cosford Incident is that Nick Pope has been accused by skeptics and even others within the UFO field of being a bit overzealous in his approach and too willing to try and fit everything into his own preconceived theories. He has been accused of cherry-picking, twisting and misrepresenting data to fit his needs, leading witnesses in interviews into the outcomes he wants, and generally exaggerating certain elements of the cases, giving misleading statements, or leaving out certain information to misrepresent the facts. For instance, although Pope has admitted that some of the sightings could have been space debris, he rarely mentions this, instead focusing on the more bizarre and mysterious sightings and elements. UFO researcher Gary Anthony has criticized Pope’s approach in relation to his participation in a documentary of the incident called The British UFO Mystery – Stranger Than Fiction, saying of it:

“After watching the documentary myself, I wondered if Nick Pope had lost the real plot or not because in places there were exaggerative comments and the reports were misrepresented both by Nick and in the visual continuity and the narrating voice. The presentation was more geared towards Pope’s own personal and theatrical interpretation of the sightings and was laid out fallaciously for an unsuspecting public.  Relevant information was not included, witness participation was minimal and some of the facts presented were grossly out of context. He clearly has fallen into the trap of not recognizing salient features and errors of multiple witness reports, making links that do not exist and falling back on the questionable prowess of ‘trained observers,’ endowed with super-human abilities of discerning distance, altitudes and size in lights seen at night. A real house of cards. The programme featured only one witness, a lady who saw a row of lights whilst driving home. For the 45-minute plus feature exclusively on these sightings none of the official witnesses used to bolster the theme appeared.”

In the end, the whole incident has sort of quietly been brushed away, and is rarely talked about outside of UFO circles, despite how many witnesses there apparently were. What was going on here? Was this merely space debris? Was it experimental aircraft, aliens, atmospheric phenomena, or all of the above? How reliable is Pope's documentation of the supposed events, and is there anything we are missing? There is no way to really know the answers to such questions and others like them, and we are left to wonder just what went on over the English countryside in March of 1993.

Finally, what has gone on to become one of the most well-known and oft-discussed, and debated mass UFO sightings in history is widely accepted as having started on March 13, 1997, in the skies over Henderson, Nevada, in the United States. Here, a witness claimed that at approximately 6:55 PM, he saw a large, V-shaped object about the same size as a passenger airliner with a formation of six lights along its front edge, which flew across the sky at a good clip with a sort of whooshing noise to disappear to the southeast. This same object would soon after be witnessed by a police officer from Paulden, Arizona, at around 8:15 PM, who said that he saw a triangular formation of four mysterious lights trailed by a fifth, and claimed to have watched the strange sight through his binoculars as they travelled south.

This would be the beginning of one of the most famous UFO cases there is. Before long, there were sightings of something strange in the sky coming in from the area of Prescott, Arizona, and the Prescott Valley. Many of the witnesses at the time described it as being definitely solid, blocking out the stars and the sky as it passed over, and it was mostly explained as being rather enormous. One witness who saw the boomerang-shaped object said it was massive, at least a mile wide, stating:

“We don’t have anything that big. It was totally silent. I’ve never seen anything even close to the colors from the exhaust that propelled that thing. It was as big as downtown Prescott and completely blocked out the stars.”

The object or objects were usually described as being a V-shaped or wedge-shaped formation of red or orange lights, with the leading light being a bright white, usually said to be embedded within a solid object, but descriptions varied, and they were sometimes claimed to be separate lights moving independently. At the time, there were dozens of witnesses from all ages and walks of life observing it as it made its way inexorably towards Phoenix to the southeast. The lights were also seen from the nearby town of Dewey, around 10 miles away, and as they drew closer to the greater Phoenix area, there would be a deluge of people seeing whatever it was that had come in from out of the unknown.

The phenomenon reached Phoenix at around 8:30 PM, after which it hovered over the area for around two hours, being seen by thousands of people in the process. During this time, it seems that there were actually two separate events going on over the region at the same time, with one being the massive V-shaped group of lights moving through the air, and a second formation of lights south of Phoenix that seemed to be stationary or moving very slowly. These lights, which would go on to collectively be known as the “Phoenix Lights,” were seen by people from all walks of life, including police officers, pilots, military personnel, and even the governor, none of whom could come up with any explanation for what was going on. While most of the reports described some massive solid object, an interesting aspect of it all is that witness descriptions of the phenomena tended to vary to quite a wide degree, of which UFOlogist Peter B. Davenport has said:

“Witnesses were reporting such markedly different objects and events that night that it was difficult for investigators to understand what was taking place. Some witnesses reported five lights, others seven, or even more. Some reported that the lights were distinctly orange or red, whereas others reported distinctly white or yellow lights. Many reported the lights were moving across the sky at seemingly high speed, whereas others reported they moved at a slow (angular) velocity, or they even hovered for several minutes.”

The objects were being seen all over the place at the time, seen in places as far away as Las Vegas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico, always inspiring awe and dread. In the meantime, the media didn’t really seem to show much interest in it, and officials seemed to treat it as a big joke, with Arizona Governor Fife Symington III holding a press conference on the situation flanked by an aide wearing an alien costume. However, when the story hit USA Today, it blew up into national news, appearing all over newspapers and TV shows. The USA Today piece was quite sensational, including the line, “The incident over Arizona was the most dramatic I’ve seen. . . . What we have here is the real thing. They are here,” and people ate it up. Before long, the Phoenix lights were being talked about and widely discussed all over the nation, with theories being thrown about as to what the phenomenon could have been, which is made somewhat complicated by the fact that it seems that there were two separate phenomena going on at the same time, the large moving object and the hovering lights.

One of the main ideas put forward was that at least the second event concerning the stationary lights was simply flares dropped by the military during a nighttime training exercise, but this has been challenged by many. Curiously, one of the main opponents of the flare theory was the governor himself, who would end up later changing his tune entirely, claiming to have seen the lights himself, and he would say of this:

“As a pilot and a former Air Force Officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man made object I'd ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don't fly in formation. It was enormous and inexplicable. Who knows where it came from? A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too. It was dramatic. And it couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetrical. It had a geometric outline, a constant shape. I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. It remains a great mystery.”

Symington also found it odd that his attempts to get more information from the government on what was going on out there were shot down with basically “no comment,” and that no government agency had made any effort to seriously investigate. Another opponent of the flare theory was UFO enthusiast Jim Dilettoso, who claimed that he had done a full spectral analysis of the lights in one of the videos and determined that they could not have possibly come from a manmade source. However, considering that such an analysis on video footage images would be inaccurate, this has been criticized as an incomplete analysis at best. It has also been pointed out that the wind direction and speed at the time were consistent with flares as to the movement seen with the pattern of lights, which also supports the flare theory, as does the fact that the lights seemed to dip over the horizon and disappear, very much as flares would do. With regards to at least this aspect of the event, even UFOlogists have conceded that it could have been flares in this case.

A photo of the Phoenix Lights

The first event, which covers that huge, light-studded craft moving over the state and blocking out the stars, has been more difficult to explain. Skeptics say that it was just a formation of high altitude aircraft flying in formation on a classified mission, the blackened sky just an illusion. This has been corroborated by amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley, who claims that on the night of the incident, he had observed the large V-shaped craft through a telescope to find that it was unambiguously an aircraft, specifically a formation of five planes that were either A-10s or possibly T-37 fighter-trainers. However, many of the thousands of witnesses have denied that this could have been the case; the planes were apparently not picked up on radar, and the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson did not assert that they had any aircraft in the air at the time. In the end, it all remains a curious oddity, of which one investigator with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) has said:

“Do we have evidence that it was an extraterrestrial event? No. We have evidence that it was an extremely bizarre event. We can't put a label on it other than it was an anomaly.”

Interestingly, there have been reemergences of the lights in later years that have been explained as flares. On February 6, 2007, almost the same thing was seen over Phoenix, and military officials were quick to admit that it was flares they had dropped, and on April 21, 2008, there was another wave of sightings of the lights, this time found to be flares attached to balloons. Yet, the sightings that remain the most well-known are the original 1997 incident and whatever was behind it all, the Phoenix Lights have continued to have a place among the greatest, most extensively seen and documented UFO sightings ever, and remain mostly a mystery.

There can be no doubt that mass sightings such as what we’ve looked at here are the most spectacular type of UFO sightings there is. What were these people seeing, and how can we explain it rationally when so many people are seeing the same thing, often very traditionally reliable witnesses? Are these cases of misidentifying Venus or other aerial or atmospheric phenomena? Is it flares or balloons, or whatever official report it is, they want you to believe? How can you tell hundreds of people that they did not see what they think they did? If these are extraterrestrial in nature, then why would they want to be so widely seen in these cases? Whatever the answers may be, mass UFO sightings are among the most exciting and well-documented in the field. 

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Pilots and crews from more than 15 commercial aircraft say they have encountered unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) in American airspace in recent weeks, according to eyewitness testimony and videos that detail the unusual events.

According to witnesses, the rash of incidents occurred over a seven-week period and involved sightings of bright luminous aerial objects in airspace from the American Midwest to as far west as the Pacific. The Debrief has learned that several of the objects were reportedly observed performing unconventional tight-circling maneuvers, which pilots and others involved said defied simple explanation.

The objects, which have since garnered the nickname “Racetrack UAPs” for the descriptions of their odd circular flight paths, were first reported by researcher and television personality Ben Hansen on social media and his YouTube channel, where he has featured several videos detailing the pilot encounters.

While several of the incidents were reported to air traffic controllers, no official investigations are known to have taken place, although The Debrief has learned that the events were reported to at least one Federal Aviation Administration unit tasked with responding to potential threats to American airspace.

Mark Hulsey, a former F-18 pilot, was one of the principal witnesses during the August 18, 2022, incident

(Credit: Ben Hansen).

One of the earliest known incidents in the recent spate of sightings occurred on August 18, 2022, involving a Gulfstream 650 private jet flow by former Navy F-18 pilot Mark Hulsey, along with a second pilot identifying himself only by his first name, “Keith,” while traveling between Florida and Hawaii. Passing over Los Angeles, the pilots observed between 4 and 7 luminous objects at an estimated 5000 to 10,000 feet above them performing odd, circular maneuvers.

Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) was contacted to determine whether the objects represented potentially conflicting traffic, although radar controllers at the facility had been unable to detect any primary targets operating near their aircraft at that time. The two pilots watched as ATC personnel attempted to paint the objects on their scopes as the UAPs maintained their peculiar, revolving flight paths above them.

Nearby, an American Airlines flight passing through the area also reported seeing the objects over the radio. Later, the Gulfstream pilots learned that calls were made to the Los Angeles ARTCC by at least two more airlines that saw the objects. Neither of the principal witnesses believed that the objects they observed were any kind of conventional aircraft, based on their odd maneuvering and the speed they exhibited.

Los Angeles Air Traffic Control Center

(Credit: John Murphy, Wikimedia Commons CC 2.0).

The Debrief independently obtained transcripts of radio communications recorded on the night of the August incident with the help of researcher Dave Beaty, who filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the incident. A portion of the transcript Beaty provided to The Debrief, which identifies the Gulfstream as “Twighlight (sic) 670”, reads as follows:

Twighlight 670 (04:58): LA Center Twighlight 670 Uh, Go Ahead, We’ve got a few aircraft here, Going around in circles. higher altitude than us. Any idea what they are?

LA Center (05:06): No, I do not. OK Strange. Gulf 41. Stand by and Twighlight 670. Say the last part again.

Twighlight 670 (05:23): Yeah, they look to be, you know, much higher than we are, They’re going around in circles so, maybe three aircraft.

LA Center (05:32): Roger. Um, yeah, I don’t know. You’re not entering any military or space or anything? I’m not sure.

Speaker 3 (05:38): Roger that

LA Center (05:39): Delta 41 go.

Twighlight 670 (05:42): Uh, Delta 41. Uh, yeah, we’re just wondering if uh, we needed a frequency. Change.

The day after the August 18th incident, the Gulfstream pilots told Hansen that a closed-door meeting occurred at Los Angeles Center, where data about the incident was reviewed and forwarded to the Joint Air Traffic Operations Command (JATOC), the FAA’s response unit for events that either represents a potential threat or are otherwise capable of impacting the National Airspace System (NAS) or national security.

According to Hansen, the meeting was in response to a phone call placed to JATOC by Hulsey, who had been provided contact details by one of the air traffic controllers he had spoken to the previous night.

“He didn’t tell him what the number was,” Hansen told The Debrief in a phone call. “He was kinda cloak and dagger with it.”

“This is the number that doesn’t exist,” the pilot was reportedly told. Hansen says the pilot was not certain which agency he had contacted at that point.

“They told him they were a government agency that was set up after 9/11,” Hansen says, who asked for the number from the pilot and performed a reverse search online.

“It came back to JATOC,” Hansen was able to confirm. During his call with an official from the agency, Hulsey told Hansen he was informed that information about the incident would be forwarded for review as a part of the Department of Defense’s UAP investigations.

“They told him they had already received the tapes and data from the previous night, and that they would be forwarding that on,” the pilot told Hansen, adding that “They were working with some efforts [related to] the new UFO hearings and task forces.”

Following the August 19 meeting, Hulsey initiated contact with Hansen and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) about his experience. Upon receiving the pilot’s report and conducting follow-up interviews, Hansen posted a video on his YouTube channel (see below) on October 6, 2022, providing details about the incident.

Where Was the Data Sent?

Despite Hansen’s confirmation that JATOC had been in communication with the pilot who contacted him, additional inquiries about the August 18 incident have only resulted in more questions.

“My FOIA request for all information and communications between L.A. Center and JATOC, or any other agency—I asked for email communications and any other data to show that they were forwarded to another agency—and it said that there were no such records,” Hansen told The Debrief.

It came back that they didn’t have any communication,” Hansen added. “So they’re denying that they talked to JATOC, and we know that JATOC did from our pilot; we already have that information. So there’s a lack of transparency.”

Hansen told The Debrief that he did not know whether the information was sent to any other agencies, but that recordings he obtained of communication between the pilots and air traffic controllers seemed at times to imply that this occurred.

“I don’t know if it went to any other agencies,” Hansen said. “At least in this case [they] had kicked it up to the higher-ups, and you can hear it in the audio. In fact, the radar controller said that the higher-ups were asking if there were any more reports of this as she’s reaching out to other airlines. And that’s when American Airlines reported.”

“The fact that LA operations reported the sighting to the Domestic Events Network suggests they also took the report seriously,” Beaty told The Debrief in an email. 

Additional UAP Witnesses Come Forward  

After the story appeared on social media, Hansen says that other pilots began reaching out to him with similar encounters.

“These events took place both before and after the Los Angeles event,” Hansen told The Debrief. One of the incidents, which occurred on August 10, 2022, involved observations by a dozen crew members from six different airlines en route between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland. A pair of Hawaiian Airlines pilots who spoke with Hansen reported the objects they witnessed “were visible for hours” and appeared to pace their aircraft while remaining at relative positions in the sky. However, unlike celestial objects, the purported UAPs were seen intermittently changing their luminosity and moving in circuitous patterns resembling those reported during the August 18 incident over California.

“Onboard TCAS radar assisted the pilots in determining the position of other known aircraft around them and the distance between each observing airline,” Hansen says. Based on the radar information, all of the pilots determined that the objects they observed were inconsistent with conventional aircraft, celestial phenomena, flares, or other known objects.

Another incident Hansen learned of reportedly occurred within 24 hours of the events of August 18, involving a UAP observation near Springfield, Missouri. Shortly after midnight on August 19, a report was received by Memphis ARTCC from a UPS flight, whose pilots observed a series of unusual lights to the north of their aircraft. The UPS pilots similarly queried Memphis ARTCC about whether they had flown into military airspace; however, no military activity notifications had been issued, and air traffic controllers could detect no aircraft on their radars.

Within minutes of the initial observation, pilots with a United Airlines and a Southwest Airlines flight also contacted Memphis ARTCC to report observations of these objects. One of the pilots, the captain of Southwest Airlines flight 549, had served for two decades as a Navy helicopter pilot prior to entering commercial aviation. According to an account of his observations provided to Hansen, the pilot described seeing two or three objects moving “in an orbital pattern” as their luminosity became “intensely bright” before dimming. The pilot also dismissed the possibility that the objects he observed were satellites, and that their intensity was like nothing he had seen before, including observations with the aid of night vision equipment during Navy missions. The pilot and first officer said the objects were observed for close to half an hour. (Update 10/20/22: A plausible explanation for the August 19, 2022, observations near Springfield, Missouri, described above has been presented by user Flarkey on the Metabunk forum, and can be read here. H/T to Mick West.)

In the weeks that followed, several similar UAP reports from commercial pilots began to come to the attention of civilian researchers through social media channels.

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International Space Week: waarnemingen van Ufo's in de geschiedenis - PART I

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De hype rond ufo's is terug van (nooit) weggeweest
Sinds het Pentagon afgelopen mei toegaf dat het sinds 2004 minstens 400 waarnemingen van 'ongeïdentificeerde vliegende objecten' heeft geregistreerd in de Verenigde Staten, is de publieke belangstelling voor dit fenomeen toegenomen.

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Een "frequent” fenomeen
Het was 50 jaar geleden dat de ufo-kwestie voor het laatst in het Congres werd besproken. Maar dit jaar was de verrassing nog groter, omdat de adjunct-directeur van de inlichtingendienst van de marine in de VS, Scott Bray, verzekerde dat ufo-waarnemingen "frequent en aanhoudend" zijn.

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Foto: Albert Antony/Unsplash

Ufo-waarnemingen in andere landen
Andere landen zoals Frankrijk (in 2007), of het Verenigd Koninkrijk (in 2011) hebben nationale dossiers over ufo's gedeclassificeerd. Japan kondigde in 2020 zelfs een nieuw actieprotocol aan voor zijn leger in het geval van waarnemingen.

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Historische waarnemingen
Als we teruggaan in de tijd, zijn er veel momenten rond het ufo-fenomeen die de geschiedenis zijn ingegaan. Laten we eens kijken naar de beroemdste gevallen ...

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Kenneth Arnold: de eerste waarneming?
De eerste geregistreerde waarneming van een ufo dateert van 24 juni 1947. De Amerikaanse piloot Kenneth Arnold (in het midden op de foto) aanschouwde wat als de eerste ufo-waarneming kan worden beschouwd. Hoewel er eerdere soortgelijke gevallen werden gemeld, kreeg deze waarneming veel publiciteit en aandacht.

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Onregelmatig, helder en snel
Arnold verklaarde dat, terwijl hij op zoek was naar een vermist vliegtuig, hij boven Mount Rainier (Washington) niet minder dan negen objecten met abnormale bewegingen zag die samen in een lijn vlogen. Hij beschreef ze als "extreem heldere objecten", met een "onregelmatige vliegwijze" die zich met "enorme snelheid" verplaatsten.

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Vliegende schotels
Het is door deze waarneming dat de mythe van de ovaalvormige ufo is ontstaan en de term 'vliegende schotel' begon te worden gebruikt, aangezien, in zijn eigen woorden, "ze onregelmatig 

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Een vonk in de wolken
Anderen gaan echter veel verder terug in de tijd. In het Zuid-Amerikaanse Chili werden in de 19e eeuw verschillende vreemde dingen gezien. Zo meldde Maria Graham in haar boek 'Journal of a Residence in Chile' (1822) dat ze een reeks vreemde lichten boven de zee had gezien. Ook zag commandant Buenaventura Martínez Díaz in 1853 dat hij en voorwerp had gezien dat "de wolken doorkruiste in de vorm van een vonk."

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Foto: Stephen Leopardi/Unsplash

Een alien in Talca
En op 15 mei 1861 berichtte de Chileense krant La Esperanza over de dagen van verschrikking die de inwoners van de stad Talca beleefden. Niet vanwege een ufo, maar vanwege de aanwezigheid van een wezen dat van een andere planeet leek te komen.

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De ufo's van Copiacó
In die Chileense precedenten springen "drie onverklaarbare luchtverschijnselen" het meest in het oog. De krant El Constituente had het over drie waarnemingen in maart, juli en november 1868. Ze waren allemaal in Copiacó, een stad waar vele jaren later, in 2013, nog eens een waarneming werd gemeld.

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Duizenden ufo-waarnemingen
Sindsdien zijn er duizenden ufo-waarnemingen gemeld, door strijdkrachten van verschillende landen, vliegtuigpiloten of gewone mensen. Waarnemingen die in veel gevallen een wetenschappelijke verklaring hebben, maar die in andere gevallen verontrustend mysterieus blijven.

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Project Blue Book
Van 1948 tot 1969 werd in de Verenigde Staten Project Blue Book gelanceerd, een overheidsinitiatief om ufo's te onderzoeken als een mogelijke bedreiging voor de nationale veiligheid. Dit alles in een tijd waarin de luchtmacht 12.618 waarnemingen rapporteerde, waarvan er vandaag de dag nog 701 ongeïdentificeerd blijven.

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Geen bewijs dat ufo's buitenaards waren
Project Blue Book werd in 1969 afgesloten vanwege de hoge kosten. De conclusie van het onderzoek luidde dat de ufo's geen bedreiging vormden voor de nationale veiligheid en dat er geen bewijs was dat het om buitenaardse vaartuigen ging, noch om technologische ontwikkelingen die de moderne wetenschap te boven gaan.

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Het Roswell-incident
In 1947, hetzelfde jaar van de waarneming van Kenneth Arnold, vond ook een van de meest legendarische ufo-gebeurtenissen plaats: het Roswell-incident. Een ongeïdentificeerd vliegend object stortte neer in een veld in deze stad in New Mexico, en onmiddellijk daarna volgde een ontmoeting met buitenaardse wezens.

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Velen geloven nog steeds dat het een ufo was
De Amerikaanse regering probeerde de commotie rond het Roswell-incident te sussen door te beweren dat het om een weerballon ging en niet om een vliegende schotel, zoals velen aanvankelijk beweerden. Volgens een opiniepeiling van CNN uit 1997 denkt echter bijna twee derde van de Amerikanen nog steeds dat het een ufo was die er was neergestort.

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Betrouwbare getuigen?
Er waren vermeende getuigen die toen verklaarden dat ze hadden gezien hoe militairen het ongeïdentificeerde object en de lichamen van de buitenaardse wezens uit het gebied van het incident hadden weggehaald. Toch was er geen echt bewijs.

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Ufo-toerisme
Momenteel leeft Roswell van het toerisme van ufo- en alien-liefhebbers uit de hele wereld die blijven zoeken naar antwoorden. De stad heeft zelfs een drukbezocht 'UFO Museum'.

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Area 51
En als Roswell een mythische plek is binnen het ufo-fenomeen, dan wat gezegd van Area 51, een gebied midden in de Nevadawoestijn? Velen geloven dat de Amerikaanse regering er zowel ufo's als lichamen van aliens verbergt.

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Programma's tegen de Sovjets
In 2013 declasseerde de CIA documenten waarin officieel werd erkend dat Area 51 een geheime militaire basis was waar niets buitenaards werd verborgen, maar dat het werd gebruikt om de luchtbewakingsprogramma's U-2 en OXCART te testen tegen de Sovjets tijdens de Koude Oorlog.

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Ufo's en kernwapens
Zeven voormalige leden van de luchtmacht van de Verenigde Staten beweerden in 2010 dat ze tussen de jaren zestig en tachtig ufo's hadden waargenomen in de buurt van kernwapeninstallaties.

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Gedeactiveerde raketten
Over een van de waargenomen ufo's zei Robert Salas, een voormalige kapitein van de luchtmacht: "Onze raketten begonnen in wat men een niet-actieve toestand noemt te komen; ze konden niet worden gelanceerd. Ze werden gewoon gedeactiveerd, terwijl dit object om ons heen was."

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Buitenaardse interesse in kernwapens
Ufoloog Robert Hastings, die de persconferentie organiseerde waarop deze waarnemingen werden gemeld, zei: "Deze heren geloven dat de planeet wordt bezocht door wezens uit een andere wereld, die geïnteresseerd zijn in de geschiedenis van nucleaire wapens die begon aan het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog."

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Bevolen om een ufo neer te halen
Op 20 mei 1957 kregen volgens de krant The Times twee Amerikaanse piloten het bevel een ufo neer te halen die boven het Engelse platteland zweefde. Enkele veteranen van het leger, zoals die op de afbeelding, hebben het verhaal publiekelijk verteld.

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De ufo die de piloten achtervolgden
Volgens Milton Torres (een van de betrokken piloten) bewoog het object "onregelmatig". Bovendien was het zo groot als "een vliegend vliegdekschip" en "hing het enkele ogenblikken in de lucht voordat het verdween met een geschatte snelheid van 12.000 kilometer per uur."

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Het ufo-incident in Shag Harbour
Shag Harbour is een klein dorpje op het schiereiland Nova Scotia in Canada, waar een groep vissers op 4 oktober 1967 een lichtgevend object zagen dat uiteindelijk neerstortte in de Atlantische Oceaan. Aanvankelijk dacht men dat het een vliegtuig was, maar er werden nooit stoffelijke resten gevonden.

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International Space Week: waarnemingen van Ufo's in de geschiedenis - PART II

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Een ontvoering in Chili
Door de zaak van korporaal Armando Valdés kwam de Chileense ufologie wereldwijd onder de aandacht. Armando zag in 1977 samen met zeven andere soldaten een ufo. Ze zagen vreemde lichten in de lucht en daarna verdween Armando gedurende 15 minuten.

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Hij herinnert zich de ontvoering niet
In een interview met Agence France Presse in november 1978 zei Armando dat hij zes of zeven stappen zette weg van de groep, richting het licht, en dat hij geen idee had wat er daarna gebeurde. Hij zei: "Iets trok me aan. Het was als een interne communicatie met het licht."

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Het onverklaarbare verstrijken van de tijd
Korporaal Armando, die zich de vorige dag had geschoren, had een baard van vijf tot zes dagen. Bovendien duidde zijn polshorloge de datum 30 april aan in plaats van 26, en liep de klok 15 minuten achter.

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Het ufo-incident in Voronezh
Op 27 september 1989 meldde het persbureau TASS dat voetballende jongens in een stadspark in Voronezh (Rusland) een roze gloed in de lucht zagen, een dieprode bal die zweefde, en een alien met drie ogen. De kinderen waren de enige getuigen, maar een politieagent meldde dat hij "een object in de lucht zag vliegen".

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De Phoenix Lights
De Phoenix Lights (soms ook wel de 'Lichten boven Phoenix' genoemd) waren een reeks op grote schaal waargenomen ufo's boven Arizona, Nevada en de Mexicaanse staat Sonora, op 13 maart 1997. Er werden verschillende soorten lichten gezien door duizenden mensen.

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Een deltavorming schip
Fife Symington, de voormalige gouverneur van Arizona en een voormalig luchtmachtofficier, verklaarde op CNN: "Ik zag een enorm deltavormig schip stilletjes over Squaw Peak vliegen, een bergketen in Phoenix. Het was echt indrukwekkend. Ik was stomverbaasd, omdat ik me naar het westen keerde op zoek naar de Phoenix Lights in de verte."

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Waarnemingen van Chileense piloten
In 2007 onthulde het Chileense leger tijdens een bijeenkomst van ufologen in Viña del Mar dat enkele van zijn piloten ufo's hadden waargenomen. Kapitein Rodrigo Bravo omschreef het volgens het persbureau EFE als "spectaculaire ervaringen op verschillende plaatsen".

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Winston Churchill hield ufo-waarnemingen geheim
In 2010 werd via de BBC en na enkele door het Ministerie van Defensie openbaar gemaakte rapporten onthuld dat de voormalige Britse premier Winston Churchill de opdracht gaf om vermeende ufo-waarnemingen door de luchtmacht vijftig jaar lang verborgen zodat er geen paniek zou ontstaan onder de bevolking.

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Vernietigd ufo-bewijsmateriaal

Wetenschapper Nick Pope verklaarde aan de BBC dat "Churchill en Eisenhower besloten om de buitengewone waarnemingen van ufo's geheim te houden". Hij merkte ook op dat "het meeste archiefmateriaal uit de jaren vijftig werd vernietigd".

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Oumuamua: een asteroïde of een buitenaards ruimteschip?
Oumuamua was een mysterieus object dat in 2017 door het zonnestelsel trok en werd ontdekt en drie dagen lang gevolgd door verschillende telescopen tot het verdween. Het incident veroorzaakte een groot debat in de wereld van de wetenschap. De meesten verzekerden dat het om een zeldzame asteroïde of komeet ging, maar anderen beweerden dat het misschien een enorm buitenaards ruimteschip was.

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Kenmerken van het meest controversiële object
Volgens de gemaakte berekeningen was Oumuamua ongeveer 400 meter lang en 40 meter breed, en had het een roodachtig oppervlak. Het meest verrassende kenmerk was dat de baan ervan niet lineair was, maar eerder chaotisch, zeer snel draaiend en met zeer uitgesproken richtingsveranderingen.

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Doelbewust gestuurd door aliens?
Volgens astronomen Shmuel Bialy en Abraham Loeb (foto) is Oumuamua mogelijk een volledig operationele sonde die opzettelijk door een buitenaardse beschaving naar de buurt van de aarde is gestuurd.

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Een nooit eerder gezien opject
Loeb is een groot verdediger van het feit dat Oumuamua het eerste ontdekte object in het zonnestelsel is dat daarbuiten is ontstaan. Hij herinnerde ons in een interview met de BBC eraan dat het ongewone kenmerken heeft die het tot een nooit eerder gezien zeldzaam object maken.

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Buitenaardse bezoeken tijdens de pandemie
De laatste vermeende waarnemingen deden zich voor en namen exponentieel toe tijdens de maandenlange lockdown van de COVID-19-pandemie. Plots was − volgens de getuigenissen op sociale media met foto's en video's − het luchtruim gevuld met ufo's.

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Andere gemelde waarnemingen
Om enkele historische waarnemingen te noemen in de wereld: de waarneming op Antarctica (1965); het ufo-incident in Teheran (1976); die van Manises (1979), de Canarische Eilanden (1976-1979) en Ochate (1981), alle drie in Spanje; het Colares-incident in 1977 (Brazilië) ...

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Beroemdheden en ufo's
De Republikeinse kandidaat voor het Congres in Miami, Bettina Rodríguez, heeft gezegd dat ze in 2009 werd ontvoerd door aliens. Ook de Argentijnse artiest Andrés Calamaro heeft bevestigd dat hij een ufo zag in de jaren tachtig, toen hij op tournee was met zijn groep Los Plateros.

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Foto: Unintended Concept / Unsplash

Zijn we echt alleen in het heelal?
Het ufo-fenomeen is nog steeds zeer interessant en bevat, zoals alle regeringen toegeven, mysteries. Voor veel van deze incidenten is er geen wetenschappelijke verklaring, al kan dat zijn omdat we niet over alle gegevens beschikken. Hoe dan ook: vliegende schotels zijn iconische, literaire en cinematografische elementen.

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Former US Army Colonel: ‘Aliens Destroyed Couple Of Nuclear Weapons That Were Sent To Space’

During the Cold War, the United States conducted the largest nuclear test in outer space, 400 km above the Northern Pacific Ocean. The results were devastating. More such testing would have destroyed Earth’s magnetic field, that is why outer-space nuclear testing was banned. Moreover, some accounts of the US military personnel including NASA astronauts convey that the extraterrestrials were behind the nuclear missile testing in outer space, and they even put surveillance on the nuclear facilities on Earth.

In the “Sirius Documentary,” hosted by UFOlogist Steven Greer, US Air Force retired Colonel Ross Dedrickson testified that he observed UFOs over the nuclear facilities in which he was assigned. Besides, he said the extraterrestrials were not allowing nuclear weapons in space. They stopped the nuclear missile that was sent to detonate on the Lunar surface. The US was urged to demonstrate its power to the Soviets.

Col. Ross Dedrickson was assigned to the US Atomic Energy Commission. A long service with the Energy Commission between 1950-1958 included contract administration duties at Nevada test sites, Pacific Nuclear Test Area west of Hawaii, nuclear weapon manufacturing and quality assurance in Albuquerque, and inspection of nuclear and non-nuclear facilities throughout the country. He served with the 5th Air Force in Japan and later as a ranking Colonel, Officer in Charge of the Pacific Unified Command (TM)s alternate “command and control center” in Hawaii. In 1962, he was transferred and served as Deputy for Material for the 832 Air Division at Canon Air Force Base, Clovis, New Mexico. He retired from the USAF in 1964.

“A couple of nuclear weapons that were sent to space were destroyed by the extraterrestrials. Our government sent nuclear weapons for the explosion on the moon’s surface. It was intended to, as I understand it, assess some scientific data and reactions and so forth. The idea of an explosion in space by any Earth government was not acceptable to the extraterrestrials, and that has been demonstrated over and over,” Colonel said.

He is one of hundreds of military whistleblowers with verified backgrounds to have been brought forth by Dr. Steven Greer’s Disclosure Project. His testimony about UFOs — specifically about UFOs and nuclear weapons — can be corroborated by a wealth of information and evidence that’s now available within the public domain.

UFO Shot Down Missile In 1964

For 18 years, Robert Jacobs had been participating in the official United States Government-ordered UFO coverup. He claimed that he had been ridiculed by his colleagues for writing about this cover-up that appeared in The National Enquirer. The cover-up was about the UFO shooting down one of the ballistic missiles back in 1964 in Big Sur, California. (Click here to read the full article)

Retired USAF Lieutenant Robert Jacobs had been an officer in charge of optical instrumentation at the 1369th Photo Squadron at Vandenberg from 1963 to 1966. His job was to establish a long-range tracking site at Big Sur, California. Those days, ballistic missiles used to blow upon launch, and Dr. Jacobs’ duty was to determine the reason behind every missile failure at the Western Test Range. As the missiles had to carry a nuclear weapon to a specific target, they were monitoring the dummy warhead to find the reason behind their blow.

Dr. Jacobs recalled that the UFO incident had most probably been associated with the launch of an Atlas missile happened either September 2nd, 3rd, or 15th, 1964.

Dr. Jacobs explained: “Because of the length of the telescope as the Atlas missile entered the frame, we could see the whole third stage which has two rocket nozzles like this and one in the center or gimballed one in the center fill in our frame from one hundred and about 160 miles it was pretty exciting optics we watched that stage burnout we watched the second stage burnout we watch a third stage burnout and into the frame came something else it flew into the frame.”

According to him, the warhead was approached by a UFO, fired a beam of light at it from different directions. Subsequently, the warhead malfunctioned and tumbled out of sub orbit hundreds of miles short of its target. “This… unidentified flying… thing had apparently shot down an American dummy atomic warhead,” Dr. Jacobs said.

Read also:

• Four US Intelligence Directors Hint That UFOs Are Alien Spaceships & Believe There Are Ot her Dimensions
• Russian Scientists Stated In 1970 That Moon Is Artificial Space Object
• Ex-Pentagon UFO Official Luis Elizondo Embraces ‘Zoo Hypothesis,’ Earth As Alien Prison
• Does This FBI Document Suggest That Nikola Tesla Was An Alien From Venus?

Nuclear-adjacent sightings go back decades, said Robert Hastings, a UFO researcher and author of the book “UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites.” Hastings said he interviewed more than 160 veterans who witnessed strange things in the skies around nuclear sites.

UFO deactivated Malmstrom AFB Nuke System

Former US Air Force Captain Robert Salas mentioned an incident that took place on March 16, 1967. He was at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in an underground capsule when he was told by the security forces that a red glowing object had been seen at the front gate of the base. (Click here to read the full article)

One of the airmen was enjoying the clear morning sky when suddenly a star appeared, moving in a zig-zag manner. Then another light came. He called the Flight Security Controller (FSC), and they both watched the movement of those strange lights. They reported to Salas and he asked them to keep an eye on those lights.

Firstly, it did not concern Salas because he thought that his colleagues were possibly joking. In some time, he was called by the controller again, and he (FSC) was frightened and shouting. They were watching a UFO, hovering outside the front gate.

“I can’t really describe it. It’s glowing red. What are we supposed to do? Make sure the site is secure and I’ll phone the Command Post. Sir, I have to go now, one of the guys just got injured.”

After that, Salas lost communication with the airman and security guard. He immediately contacted his commander Lt. Fred Meiwald, who was sleeping at that time. While he was on the call with Lt. Meiwald, a security alarm rang, indicating a problem within the missile system. He checked the matter and found there was a “No-Go” light on, and two red security lights were lit. He was just trying to understand what went wrong, consecutively several alarms went off and they lost “entire flight of ten ICBMs to a ‘No-Go’ (inoperable) condition.”

Astronaut Leaked Email

In 2016, Wikileaks revealed thousands of emails that were allegedly linked to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. The emails unfolded secret information shared with Podesta about UFOs and ETs. (Click here to read the full article)

In 2015, Podesta received emails from Mitchell that expressed his concern about the weaponization of space and its impact on the ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence). Despite the fact that aliens might be violent as shown in various sci-fi, the notable astronaut called them nonviolent in an email.

In January 2015, he sent an email to Podesta, asking him to have an urgent meeting to discuss Disclosure and Zero Point Energy (ZPE). He was concerned about the peace in space.

Mitchell wrote: “My Catholic colleague Terri Mansfield will be there too, to bring us up to date on the Vatican’s awareness of ETI. Another colleague is working on a new Space Treaty, citing involvement with Russia and China. However with Russia’s extreme interference in Ukraine, I believe we must pursue another route for peace in space and ZPE on Earth.”

Mitchell emailed Podesta again on September 18, 2015. He wrote: “Because the War in Space race is heating up, I felt you should be aware of several factors as you and I schedule our Skype talk. Remember, our nonviolent ETI from the contiguous universe are helping us bring zero point energy to Earth. They will not tolerate any forms of military violence on Earth or in space.”

It was confirmed by one of Mitchell’s collaborators that the meeting between Podesta and him never took place. During the 2016 election campaign, Podesta declared he would convince Clinton to declassify as many UFO files as possible. In 2014, he tweeted that his biggest failure during the Obama administration was not to ask them for the release of UFO files.

Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell died in 2016 but for his entire life, he was a pacifist and a promoter of ETI reality. According to him, ZPE is the ultimate energy source from which all matter derives.

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A history of human attempts to build flying saucers

©Getty Images

UFO Flying Low Over Trees
A flying saucer might sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but for decades humans have tried to build them. The technology that allows for flying saucer-shaped aircraft to work effectively has been a challenge for scientists and engineers. Still, there have been a few occasions where such aircraft were (vaguely) successful. One attempt in particular, which took place in 2019, might just be a game changer.

In this gallery, we look back at the times when humans tried to build flying saucers. Click on.

©Public Domain

A history of human attempts to build flying saucers
A flying saucer might sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but for decades humans have tried to build them. The technology that allows for flying saucer-shaped aircraft to work effectively has been a challenge for scientists and engineers. Still, there have been a few occasions where such aircraft were (vaguely) successful. One attempt in particular, which took place in 2019, might just be a game changer.

In this gallery, we look back at the times when humans tried to build flying saucers. Click on.

©Getty Images

The flying saucer
Unlike a fighter jet or a bomber, the flying saucer is an aircraft design that is yet to be mastered. This, however, never stopped engineers from trying to make them.

©Getty Images

Aerodynamics
But first, it’s important to understand why a circular wing might not be a great idea. As far as aerodynamics is concerned, the lift-induced drag makes circular wings inefficient.

©Getty Images

Stability and control
The flying saucer poses problems when it comes to stability and control. The arm available is pretty small, making it harder to control.

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Stability and control
For designs like the flying saucer, keeping stable at low speeds could be an issue, unless the entire structure spins, like a frisbee.

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How about spinning discs?
Sure, this could potentially work, but it would have to be unmanned, as a pilot is unlikely to be able to endure it.

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Experiments
But despite all the challenges, some inventors have tried to make their own versions of flying saucers. Let’s take a look at some of them.

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Lee-Richards annular monoplane
The first experiments with a disc-shaped aircraft date back to 1913 with the Lee-Richards annular monoplane.

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Lee-Richards annular monoplane
An annual or flat ring-shaped wing aircraft was built by Cedric Lee and G. Tilghman Richards, and manufactured by James Radley (here pictured in a monoplane).

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Lee-Richards annular monoplane
The Lee-Richards annular monoplane was taken to Famine Point at Heysham, UK, for trials, but its performance was deemed “not particularly satisfactory.”

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Arup S-2
While not a flying saucer just yet, the Arup S-2 was a low aspect ratio wing aircraft that deserves a mention. It was developed in the US and first flew in 1933.

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Vought V-173
Following the events at Pearl Harbor, the US Navy started working on the Vought V-173 "Flying Pancake."

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Vought V-173
The aircraft had a flat body shaped like a pancake and an "all-wing" design.

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Vought V-173
The Vought V-173 was developed by aeronautical engineer Charles H. Zimmerman under World War II’s Vought XF5U program. It had its first flight in 1942 and was retired five years later.

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Vought XF5U
This US Navy fighter aircraft shared some characteristics with the Vought V-173, but it was considerably larger and heavier.

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Vought XF5U
The Vought XF5U "Flying Flapjack" was developed by Charles H. Zimmerman (pictured).

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Vought XF5U
The XF5U-1 wasn’t ready until June 1945, so its use to serve in World War II was redundant.

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Nazi UFOs
There were rumors that German aeronautical engineers were developing a flying saucer of their own. Could these have been the foo fighters witnessed by both Allied and Axis pilots during the war?

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Aerodyne RC-360
French aeronautical engineer Rene Couzinet designed the Aerodyne RC-360 in 1955.

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Aerodyne RC-360
A 60% concept scale model of Couzinet’s radially symmetric aircraft was built, but the world never witnessed a full-scale one. How it would have worked, we will never know.

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Projects Y and Y-2
Projects Y and Y-2 were the first steps in the development of flying saucers, first by Canada, and then by the US. Pictured is the Project Y mock-up in the Experimental Flight Hangar in 1954.

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Avro VZ-9-A Avrocar
The Avro VZ-9-A Avrocar was developed as a secret US military project during the Cold War. Developed by Avro Canada, the aircraft was first tested in 1959.

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Avro VZ-9-A Avrocar
The Avro VZ-9-A used a single "turborotor" to provide lift and thrust. It was designed to reach high speeds and altitudes, but that didn’t quite happen.

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Avro VZ-9-A Avrocar
The Avro VZ-9-A was initially intended to work as a fighter aircraft by the US Air Force, but it ended up being taken up by the US Army as a tactical combat aircraft (similar to a helicopter).

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Avro VZ-9-A Avrocar
Pictured are US Army Avrocars portrayed as "flying jeeps" in company literature.

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Avro VZ-9-A Avrocar
The concept was developed by British aircraft designer "Jack" Frost. Frost went on to register a number of patents on aircraft propulsion and control, such as the air cushion effect used in flying saucer-type aircraft.

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Avro VZ-9-A Avrocar
Pictured is an image taken from the Avro VZ-9-A manual.

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Flying saucers of the 21st century
In 2019, Romanian inventor Razvan Sabie and scientist Iosif Taposu unveiled a new All-Directional Flying Object. "The aerodynamics behind this aircraft is the result of more than two decades of work," Sabie said.

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All-Directional Flying Object
"And is very well reasoned in hundreds of pages and confirmed by computer simulations and wind tunnel tests," he added.

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Is it alien technology?
Flying saucers are inherently linked to UFO sightings. The technology is not easy to master, and so far it hasn’t been developed on a commercial scale. This has led many ufologists to believe that such advanced technology can only come from outer space.

Sources:

• (24/7 Wall St.)
• (Popular Mechanics)
• (Science Alert)
• (Hush-Kit)

See also:The most famous UFO sightings in the world

{ Stars Insider }