On January 11, 1892, the U.S. steamship Thetis sailed from San Diego for the west coast of Baja California on Mexico's west coast. On April 10 the Atlanta Constitution printed a long account, written for it by expedition member George W. Crusselle. The following is an excerpt: There was an incident that has been a perfect puzzle to everyone that has heard of it. Perhaps someone is able to elucidate the phenomenon satisfactorily. There are several salt water lagoons running in from the beach which swarm with the finest kinds of birds. One day Mr. S. L. Cutbereil and myself went over into the largest lagoon hunting and had tramped around quite a long time getting only single shots, but keeping a lookout for a larger flock to shoot into. Suddenly we saw what looked at first to be a large body of birds, but almost as quickly as we saw it, it had changed its appearance from a dark to a brilliant color, about the same dazzling appearance that reflected sunlight from a mirror or polished surface has. It was approaching us from the sea and traveling inland. At first it was in the shape of a balloon and about fifty feet high by thirty broad and traveled very rapidly. Again it changed its form into the shape of an hourglass and made a most terrific swoop down on to the surface of the water in the lagoon and spread out all over the surface, covering it with a most brilliant halo of light. It only remained there a moment when it rose again and formed itself in several fantastic shapes in quick succession, and traveling with the rapidity of lightning almost, first in one direction and then another, changing its course by abrupt angles. These peculiar antics kept up for fifteen minutes at least, and it finally disappeared away inland. It struck me as being a sack of phosphorescent gas, for it never showed a ragged edge, but smooth edges, just as a rubber sack full of air would be mashed in different shapes. We thought it was sunlight reflected from some clouds, but on looking, there was not a piece of cloud visible as large as a handkerchief, nor was there a helostadt [sic, heliostat] within a thousand miles of us, most probably, which could throw such a powerful reflection and that size, too. After we lost sight of it, we were almost blinded and not able to discern objects clearly for a half hour afterwards. If someone can explain it, I would be very glad to hear from them.
MISSING HEAVENLY BODY STRIKING SEA NEAR VESSEL, DEMAGNETIZES INSTRUMENTS AND SETS CREW A-TREMBLING -- CARDIFF. Feb 26. -- Weird in the extreme was the story told by Capt. Davies of the steamer Trafalgar, now in port with his ship disabled by an unaccountable magnetic visitation that rendered the compass useless. "We have been struck by a comet or a thunderbolt, and our ship is disabled," he said. "We were bound from Port Talbot to Bastia with coals, leaving port on Wednesday, and this morning we were about ten miles southwest of the Wolf Rock when the vessel trembled violently, and there was a loud, sharp report like the explosion of a cannon. The foremast seemed a mass of flames, and the whole ship became aglow. "At that moment we saw a large, fiery body, with a tail about 30 feet to 40 feet long, strike the sea about 20 feet from us. Its appearance was accompanied by a loud, hissing noise, and as it disappeared, a column of water rose in the air.
Neillsville (Wis.) Jan. 15. - While homeward bound in a sleigh from a wolf-hunting expedition west of here, Leo Williamson, editor, and Will Dangers, merchant, witnessed a strange phenomenon when the snow in the road ahead of them for several hundred feet was melted by a nebulous green fire, leaving the highway covered with several inches of mud. Williamson said he and his companion first noticed a faint, green light in the sky before them. In less than a minute it had approached to within a few hundred feet and seemed to 2be [sic] whirling rapidly and giving out a high-pitched hum. Its height was estimated at 300 feet and its breadth at fifty feet. The light hovered a moment and suddenly descended to the road. A hissing noise followed and a huge cloud of steam swept about them. Before they were able to get the team turned around, the greenish haze was within thirty feet of them, then veered off, fused the fence wires, and scorched a path through a field for nearly ten rods. Then, almost as suddenly as it had appeared, the light flickered a moment and vanished. Williamson said he and Dangers examined the road and found it was too hot to touch and that the mud was six inches deep in some places. Their only theory is that some condition of the atmosphere had generated a huge charge of electricity which dissapated [sic] itself in heat when it touched the earth and was grounded.
Deep Sea Monster With Headlights Seen On Record Descent In Ocean HAMILTON, Bermuda, Aug. 16 (AP). -- A huge deep sea fish, possibly unknown to man, was one of the curious sights which greeted Dr. William Beebe, American scientist, in a daring record- breaking descent toward the bottom of the ocean. The underseas explorer and his associate, Otis Barton, were unable to identify the monster they sighted from their "bathysphere" yesterday. Sealed in the two-ton iron ball, Beebe and Barton were lowered to a depth of 3028 feet, more than a half mile under the surface. The descent exceeded their record of last Saturday [August 11] by 518 feet and surpassed the earlier mark of half a mile by 388 feet. A large gray "shadow" at 2750 feet was the first appearance of the unknown fish. The object seemed to be illuminated by scores of tiny lights, glittering like a diamond necklace, Dr. Beebe said. He estimated its length at 20 feet. Phosphorescent parasites are believed to have given off the lights. Beebe described the monster as the largest he had ever seen in a deep sea dive. Barton attempted to photograph it, but his results were uncertain as underwater creatures flee when a searchlight is turned on from the bathysphere.
In the early morning of June 30, 1908, a massive explosion flattened entire forests in a remote region of Eastern Siberia along the Tunguska River. Curiously, the explosion left no crater, creating a mystery that has puzzled scientists ever since — what could have caused such a huge blast without leaving any remnants of itself? Now Daniil Khrennikov at the Siberian Federal University in Russia and colleagues have published a new model of the incident that may finally resolve the mystery. Khrennikov and co say the explosion was caused by an asteroid that grazed the Earth, entering the atmosphere at a shallow angle and then passing out again into space. “We argue that the Tunguska event was caused by an iron asteroid body, which passed through the Earth’s atmosphere and continued to the near-solar orbit,” they say. If they are correct, the theory suggests Earth escaped an even larger disaster by a hair’s breadth. First some background. Scientists have long speculated on the cause of the Tunguska impact. Perhaps the most widely discussed idea is that the explosion was the result of an icy body, such as a comet, entering the atmosphere. The ice then rapidly heated up and evaporated explosively in mid-air but without ever hitting the ground.
A column of water about 20 feet wide and 100 feet high arose from the ocean (and ascended into heaven?) Oct 31, 1945 old style, in the afternoon, between Cape Henry and Cape Charles, off Norfolk, Va., according to J. Arthur Addenbrook and a party of fishing friends. They thought it was caused by an explosion but no sound was heard and the Navy could not explain it even after investigation.
And still they fly! Latest “flying saucer” report in this vicinity came today from Mac Evans, who said a friend of his named Henry Sharpe had seen one of the discs while fishing at Bluffton. The "saucer” was described to Mr. Evans as a round, tub-like object shooting at fast speed below the stratosphere. Fish leaped from the water as the disc passed overhead. Mr. Evans said he was informed, but the fishing was still bad after the object had passed.
Tracking down one of the Ariel School experiencers took some doing, but eventually I connected with Sarah* in what she referred to as “a most stubborn old Rhodie [white Rhodesian] bar” in downtown Harare. Of the more than 110 children and staff who had been at the school, which sits just outside the small agricultural centre of Ruwa, when the aliens landed in 1994, she thought she was probably the only one still in the country. “Everyone’s fucked off to Canada or the UK,” she said. “Or died.” When it became clear to her drinking buddies that we were going to talk UFOs, eyes began to roll. “Christ, Sê, not ET again,” someone muttered. She ignored him. “Whaddya wanna know? Actually, it’ll be simpler if I just shoot. It happened, OK. Sixty-two kids between the ages of about six and 12 saw the aliens land and get out of their little ships. When the kids returned to class they were completely freaked and couldn’t stop nattering about little men who looked a bit like Michael Jackson. The teachers told them to shut up, as teachers are wont to do, and classes proceeded. “But the next day the school received a bunch of calls from parents wanting to know why their kids were spooked. It got so that the teachers started to freak out, too, and a local UFO expert called Cynthia Hind was invited to speak to everyone. It was via her, I think, that we heard about a famous shrink who was coming from the US to assess the children. What was his name now … Mack, Dr John Mack, who I heard was killed by a drunk driver a few years back.” Hind, who died in 2000, had publicly acknowledged her own experiences with otherwordly beings in the past, and had dedicated the past decade and a half of her life to investigating UFO sightings on the African continent on behalf of the Mutual UFO Network, and then publishing her findings in the very collectable newsletter, UFO Afrinews. I had brought along a printout of Issue 11, which I opened on the bar counter before Sarah on Hind’s article “UFO flap in Zimbabwe: Case No 95”. It begins: “Wednesday, 14th September, 1994, was an exciting night for Southern Africa. Round about 20:50 to 21:05 hours, a pyrotechnic display of some magnificence appeared in the almost clear night skies of this part of the continent.” An Ariel schoolchild telling her story of the alien who arrived. Astronomers across the region soon reported that the “pyrotechnic display”, seen as far afield as Zambia and Botswana, had been a meteor shower. Hind, though, recorded receiving dozens of reports of a capsule-like fireball, trailing fire and flanked by two smaller capsules. She also received several reports of alien sightings around the same time: a young boy and his mother reported a daylight sighting; a trucker who had seen strange beings on the road at night. And then, on September 16, Hind received the report from Ariel School, which she records as Case 96, and describes as “one of the most exciting UFO stories of this or any year”. Hind’s narrative closely mirrors Sarah’s recollection. At 10am, Hind writes, on a hot day, the children were let out for their mid-morning break. They were drawn to an area beyond their playing field of “long grass with thorn and other indigenous bushes, trees growing higgledy-piggledy fashion, and undergrowth thick and heavy enough to hide a child should he venture there”. The teachers had all entered the staff room for a meeting and the only adult outdoors was the tuckshop mistress, who was soon swamped by children claiming they had seen “three or four objects coming into the rough bush area … disc-like objects coming in along the power lines and finally landing in the rough, among the trees. The children were a little bit afraid, although they were also curious.” The UFO investigator goes on to record the testimonies of several of the children, who she says represented “a cross-section of Zimbabweans: black African children from several tribes, coloured children (a cross-breeding of black and white), Asian children (whose grandparents were from India) and white children, mostly Zimbabwean-born, but whose parents were either from South Africa or Britain”. Although they all came from wealthy families (tuition at Ariel School was expensive), Hind believed their cultural differences gave rise to differing interpretations of the event, and that the differences in interpretation made the details that were common to all accounts very compelling indeed. One of the white students, for example, “thought at first that the little man in black might have been Mrs Stevens’ gardener, but then he saw that the figure had long, straight black hair, ‘not really like [a] black [person’s] hair’, so he realised he had made a mistake!” Some of the black children thought the short little beings were zvikwambo, or tokoloshes – the evil goblins of Shona and Ndebele folklore – and burst into tears, fearing they would be eaten. Guy G said: “[I] could see the little man (about a metre tall) was dressed in a black, shiny suit; that he had long black hair and his eyes, which seemed lower on the cheek than our eyes, were large and elongated. The mouth was just a slit and the ears were hardly discernible.” Hind’s account ends with her outrage at the disbelief of the children’s’ parents. “What a frightening indictment of our society that when we are confronted by something we don’t understand, we don’t even attempt to open our minds to the event.” After reading the article, Sarah ordered another Castle and said: “To be perfectly honest, I don’t think you would be here talking to me now if it wasn’t for that woman [Hind]. “What happened at Ariel was certainly weird, so many kids coming back from break with such similar stories, but I doubt many people would have heard about it if Hind hadn’t made such a fuss. She was the first person to interview the kids, and got the news out to all sorts of important people, Mack included, as if, you know, finally here was some vindication.” Hind’s descriptions of Mack from this time do indeed suggest she regarded him as something of a redeemer figure, a man who was “not only open-minded and prepared to listen, but an academic of some standing. And one who has risked his credibility with his colleagues to come out and say he believes the experiences of abductees are very real indeed.” Who was this man, Mack, whose interest transformed a local curiosity into a study that continues to animate UFO chat rooms to this day? I’d been told a little of his biography by a relative of mine called Nicky Carter, who after hearing of the incident from a brother at Ariel School had been the first media respondent, covering it as a producer for an SABC current affairs program called Agenda. Dr John E Mack, she said, had been a Pulitzer prize-winning author (awarded for his 1977 study of Lawrence of Arabia, A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of TE Lawrence) and a professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. Highly regarded, Mack had nevertheless been having a tough year professionally when Carter met him. His problems stemmed from his interest in the alien abduction phenomenon, which he had begun researching in the early 1990s and about which he had written the bestselling book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. Carter sent me Mack’s own account of the fallout. “In the spring of 1994,” he writes in his second book on the alien abduction phenomenon, Passport to the Cosmos, “one of the deans at the Harvard Medical School handed me a letter that called for the establishment of a small committee to investigate my work [on the alien abduction phenomenon]. Dr John Mack was a Pulitzer prize-winner who came under fire for his UFO research. “After explaining vaguely that ‘concerns’ had been expressed to the university about what I was doing (although he told of no specific complaint, nor was any offered in the letter), he added pleasantly – for he had been a friend and colleague – that I would not have gotten into trouble if I had not suggested in the book [Abduction] that my findings might require a change in our view of reality, rather than saying that I had found a new psychiatric syndrome whose cause had not yet been established.” Another peer, Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins Medical School, was less delicate, describing Mack in the Los Angeles Times as “a brilliant fellow who occasionally loses it, and this time he’s lost it big time”. Mack’s standard rejoinder was to point out that, although alien encounters were “not possible according to the science of the times”, they might nevertheless “turn out to be real in some way that we do not yet understand … as the bizarre reports of rocks we now call meteorites falling from the sky seemed [impossible] in the 18th century.” By mid-1994 Mack had overcome attempts at an ouster by some of his Harvard colleagues, and was planning to expand the scope of his research to include African alien encounters and abductions. A flight was booked to South Africa, where Mack had organised to meet with experiencers such as the well-known traditional healer and author Credo Mutwa (who was to tell Mack, according to Carter, who covered the interview for the SABC, about his rape by a golden-haired, blue-eyed alien female.) As he was preparing to depart for Africa, news of the Ariel School encounter broke, and Mack adjusted his travel plans accordingly. These were the extraordinary coincidences by which the world’s most newsworthy psychiatrist happened to land, meteorlike, in Zimbabwe. Hind recorded how he appeared on “two radio shows and one TV programme” before driving the 35km from Harare to Ruwa. “These days were filled with exciting revelations for him,” wrote Hind. “John was able to get through to parents and teachers and convince them that, even if they did not believe the children, it was counterproductive to accuse them of lying.” What interested Mack was how the children’s accounts connected to things he’d been told by other of his “experiencer participants”, namely that the aliens had communicated an urgent environmental message. In Passport to the Cosmos, Mack records that after some years of research he was “astonished to discover … in case after case, powerful messages about the human threat to the Earth’s ecology were being conveyed to the experiencers in vivid, unmistakable words and images”. He personally deemed it “quite possible that the protection of the Earth’s life is at the heart of the abduction phenomenon”. Snippets of Mack’s interviews with the children can still be found on YouTube today. A fifth-grader called Francis tells the gentle-eyed psychiatrist he was warned “about something that’s going to happen,” and that “pollution mustn’t be”. Eleven-year-old Emma says; “I think they want people to know that we’re actually making harm on this world and we mustn’t get too technologed [sic].” I cued up one of the clips on my phone for Sarah, but she waved it away. “I can’t, I can’t … no, I’ve had too much of my own experience to want to relive somebody else’s.” After a long draw on her beer she said: “They weren’t wrong, though, about the environmental shit, were they? If you go out there now you’ll see the Miombo forests have disappeared for firewood.” But during my first visit to the district, what had struck me was not the state of the forests but the fact that Ariel School had continued to grow in pupil numbers, and looked to be prospering. The khaki uniforms, the red floppy hats, the break-time chirring – it all matched the YouTube clips, only there were no longer any white students, the white farming families having all moved elsewhere as a result of the government’s radical land reform policies. The “rough area” beyond the playground had been stumped and mown into a second sports field, dusty for want of rain. I asked a few teachers I bumped into about the events of 1994, but it seemed that aspect of the school’s history had left with the farmers. “There was his documentary being made about it at one point,” said Sarah, getting a little shaky on her stool. “An American chap. What was his name now … Randall, Randy. Ha! Anyway, that was about seven or eight years ago now, and I haven’t heard anything since.” I knew a little more than she did, again courtesy of my relative, who had provided local assistance to the documentary-maker. After Mack was killed in a car accident in London in 2004, some of his supporters and family members had founded the John E Mack Institute, with a mission to “explore the frontiers of human experience, to serve the transformation of individual consciousness, and to further the evolution of the paradigms by which we understand human identity”. In 2007, to further these rather grandiose aims, a young filmmaker called Randall Nickerson had signed on to do something with the Ariel School footage. “Geez, he was sooo handsome,” said Sarah, slapping her palms against her jeans. “I could hardly concentrate when he was interviewing me. Not only that, he understood the thing on a different level, because he was an experiencer himself, who had been quite open about his encounter. I think he even appeared on Oprah!” I had contacted Nickerson in 2008, and because he happened to be in Cape Town running former Ariel students to ground, we arranged to meet and talk about his project. He cancelled at the last minute, though, saying he didn’t feel quite ready. From time to time I checked the Mack Institute webpage for updates, but after a few years it seemed the project had run into financial difficulties. Then, in late 2013, two hours of footage tagged with Nickerson’s name surfaced on YouTube. I can recognise the carcass of a creative albatross when I see one, and the amorphous video dump showed every sign of being just that. As an accidental historical record, though, it is fascinating: a trove of rural school scenes from the eve of irreversible societal change; the last generation of khaki uniforms, freckled noses and colonial English accents; and Cynthia Hind, already an anachronism in a series of pre-independence floral print dresses, and wearing what was described to me as a “Bulawayo perm”. Tacked on at the end of the video are some snippets of interviews Nickerson conducted with former students. “It really does stick with me that something happened, something was out there,” says a young man. “I think something definitely happened,” says a young woman. ‘Amazing experience’ A former teacher says “We met up on many occasions after that and hugged and shook our heads and said that was the most amazing experience of our lives”, whereas another former student says he hasn’t talked about the event to anyone, “because they’d probably think I’m nuts”. When I told Sarah about the video she became very agitated. “Can I see it? Oh God no, I don’t want to. What do they all say? Am I on it?” she cried. “Ok, just show me.” We watched the relevant part of the video, Sarah with a hand over her mouth. "God, their accents,” she said at one point, of the now American, Australian and English tones that contrasted so sharply with the voices she had known. It crossed my mind that the truly galvanic event in all of their lives was not the UFO landing but the policy from upon high that had turned them into aliens in New York, London, or wherever. Then again, what did I know? When the clip ended Sarah stubbed out an Everest Menthol and shook her head. "You want to know the real message here? The real message is that this stuff can brand you for life. It undermined Mack’s credibility, became this huge unending thing for others, and it certainly fucked me up. I mean, try telling people that you live in permanent fear of these things returning one day. Try telling them that you can actually sense when they’re back in our atmosphere. They’ll think you’re a kook. All this lot do,” she said, casting mock-angry eyes down the bar at a fellow boozer, who raised his glass and said: “True, but we love you anyway, Sê.” Despite her patently thick skin, a look of extreme sadness entered Sarah’s eyes for a moment, as she pretended to watch her fingers pulling the label from a beer bottle. “Christ, and to think I told the family I was just popping out to Bon Marche.
MIAMI, Feb. 16 (AP) -- The Coast Guard sighted an unidentified submarine only 30 miles from the Air Force's huge guided missile center at Cocoa, Fla., today. The Navy threw an anti-submarine squadron into a search for the mystery vessel. The Coast Guard said one of its cutters sighted the submarine about 10 miles off Fort Pierce on the Florida east coast. The submarine submerged when a 30-foot Coast Guard boat approached within a mile of it, the officer said. The submarine was first seen around 5 a. m., the Coast Guard said. Officers noted a "red glow" in its conning tower and a light in the superstructure. An officer at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station said the Navy had sent an anti-submarine squadron into a search for the sub. But he would not reveal the number of planes engaged. The Navy spokesman also said he did not believe it was known if the submarine had been identified as friendly or hostile."We have three squadrons available to carry out such missions," the spokesman said. "But I don't feel free to release information concerning the numeber of planes we're using nor the extent of the area being covered."
I am not sure of the exact date, but it seems around the fall of 1976. While returning home from grocery shopping around 8:30-9:00 PM with my mother, I was traveling south on RT. 130 and crossing the bridge over the Rancocas Creek near Bridgeboro Road when my mother, who was sitting in the passenger seat, noticed and brought to my attention something sitting above the water in close proximity next to the bridge on her side of the car. I slowed up, after checking that there was no traffic behind me, and there was none on the bridge at all. I almost brought the car to a slow stop as I approached the top of the bridge and noticed, through the front windshield and to my right, a craft of some kind within 200 [ft.] of the right side of the bridge, just hovering in a stationary position about 70 [ft.] above the water's surface. It stood there motionless with no apparent sound emanating from the object. The windows of the car were closed, but if it were a helicopter that close, I'm sure we would of [sic-have] heard the sound and probably would of [sic-have] felt the buffeting effect from the rotors. As I observed the object through the front windshield, I could clearly see that the object was round in shape and typical of what would be described as a "flying saucer" in description. Even though it was dark out, it was round in shape with a gray color metallic surface. The exterior of the craft I could discern, because there was a series of lights that were yellowish in color around the circumference of the craft that sort of glowed around the craft's surface, so I was able to make out the features of the craft. There was a round lower bottom section of the craft, then another smaller diameter round section on top of that bottom section that had a series of lights in a row around it with what appeared to be a dome shape above that section which appeared to be transparent with some kind of windows that went around the dome. It appeared that I could see a figure or a form of something in the dome section of the transparent dome bubble top. The craft appeared to be about the size of a trailer which a tractor trailer would pull. The object then started to slowly ascend and as it did, the lights seemed to rotate around the craft, and the faster the craft ascended the lights seemed to rotate faster. The object ascended and crossed slowly over the bridge in front of us and headed east and appeared to follow the creek. At this time, as it crossed over the bridge, I was still moving slowly forward in the car. As it moved from my right to my left over the bridge, I got my last look of it behind and to my right as it appeared to follow the Rancocas Creek. This was a very frightening experience for the both of us and something that is just as vivid today as it was that night. I was told, later that week, that there was a newspaper article, which I did not see, that was published the following day about an unexplained object that was seen near Lumberton that same night. When my brother-in law approached me about writing this report, I told my boss about it and he said he had a relative who lives near the Rancocas Creek in Lumberton and saw an object that same night near his home. I have his name as well.
We could soon start getting answers to some vexing UFO questions. Over the past few years, we've learned that U.S. Navy pilots commonly see unidentified flying objects, some of which appear to be far faster and more maneuverable than their own aircraft. You've probably seen footage of a few such encounters, thanks to Christopher Mellon, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence under President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush. In 2017, after he had left his position with the U.S. government, Mellon gave three recently declassified Navy UFO videos to the New York Times, the CBS news program "60 Minutes" reported on Sunday (May 17). The Times then published a blockbuster story about the videos and the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a Pentagon project tasked with investigating such sightings. Mellon told "60 Minutes" that he took this step because he was concerned that not enough was being done to investigate UFOs, or UAPs ("unidentified aerial phenomena"), as they've been rebranded in U.S. military parlance. "It's bizarre and unfortunate that someone like myself has to do something like that to get a national security issue like this on the agenda," Mellon told "60 Minutes" reporter Bill Whitaker. And it is indeed a national security issue, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told Whitaker. "Anything that enters an airspace that's not supposed to be there is a threat," Rubio said. After all, the reported UAPs might be some kind of advanced aircraft developed by an adversary nation such as Russia or China. (Mellon told Whitaker that the vehicles were definitely not developed by the Pentagon.) That's not the only possible explanation, of course. For example, experts have also suggested that the sightings might arise from issues with the Navy jets' instruments (although pilots report seeing the UAPs with the naked eye as well). And then there's the idea that the UAPs could represent some sort of alien technology. Occam's Razor may relegate this idea toward the bottom of the list of possibilities, but it remains there nonetheless. People like Mellon, Rubio and former AATIP official Luis Elizondo, who declassified the three videos that Mellon passed to the Times, are eager to get to the bottom of the mystery. At the very least, they hope that finding an explanation will help determine if the UAPs could pose any threat to national security. And Rubio has taken some action on this front. In December, Rubio asked the Pentagon and the U.S. director of national intelligence to investigate the UAP issue and deliver an unclassified report to Congress within six months. (Rubio led the Senate's intelligence committee at the time. Democrats took control of the Senate after the last election, so the committee is now chaired by Virginia Democrat Mark Warner; Rubio serves as vice chair.) mThat six-month stretch is almost up. The report is due next month, and Rubio seems eager to see it. "I want us to take it seriously and have a process to take it seriously," he told Whitaker, who had asked what Rubio wanted done about UAPs. "I want us to have a process to analyze the data every time it comes in — that there be a place where this is cataloged and constantly analyzed until we get some answers. Maybe it has a very simple answer. Maybe it doesn't."
The following report was given by a young Brazilian airline pilot to Commander Auriphebo Simoes, who is himself a pilot, one of the senior officials of a Brazilian airline and one of the best known of the UFO investigators in Brazil. During a very hot night in the summer of 1952, the young pilot, exhausted after a tiring day, walked out from the little town of Itanhaam (on the coast of Brazil, due south of Sao Paulo) to a wooden summer cottage which he had near the beach. Living at the cottage with him was his grandmother, a Russian emigrant lady named Chaskova.Finding the cottage oppressive and airless, the pilot opened the door before turning in. The cottage had bunk-type beds, and Senhora Chaskova was already asleep in the lower bunk. After being asleep for what seems to have been only half an hour or so, the young pilot was suddenly jolted into consciousness by a tremendous explosion, "like a great thunderclap." Jumping down from the bunk, not properly awake, he perceived an intense, "fluorescent," bluish-white light shining in through the open door, but concluded that it was merely the dawn coming and that the noise had been a brief thunderstorm in the nearby hills. He went back to sleep.Next day he was astonished to learn from his Russian grandmother, speaking in her very imperfect Portuguese, that at about 3 a.m. she had heard a great explosion in the sky overhead and that this was followed by an intensely bright light outside which lasted for some seconds. She soon realized that the extraordinary light could not be lightning, so, her curiosity aroused, she got up and went into the garden to investigate. By the time she got out there the light had gone. There was now just the dark sky, filled with stars. She turned to glance out to sea (the South Atlantic) and was astonished to perceive a large number of what appeared to be disc-shaped "machines," vividly lit up by an orange glow. The craft resembled "inverted soup plates" and were stationary at what she estimated to be some 200 metres from the cottage and, as she felt, at a height of only a metre or so above the surface of the sea. She stood there looking at the objects for half an hour. During this time, she saw two figures, apparently human, emerge on to the top of one of the discs. They remained standing there for a while, apparently looking up at the sky and out over the sea, as though waiting for something. They then descended into the interior of the machine, and shortly after this all the machines took off, one after the other, vanishing into the sky at a tremendous speed "like luminous projectiles." When young Chaskov had heard this extraordinary description of the night's events, his curiosity was such that he deluged his grandmother with questions, to the point that after a while she became irritated over the whole affair and disliked talking of it. It was too much for her, her Portuguese was poor, and the grandson knew no Russian. Some time went by, but he continued to raise the matter at intervals, until one day the Adamski story appeared in a translation in the Brazilian magazine O Cruzeiro. He took the article to her and showed her the reproductions of Adamski's alleged photos of his "Venusian scout ship." The grandmother agreed that it was very similar to what she had seen, except that the craft hovering over the sea were a good deal flatter on top than Adamski's.Commander Auriphebo Simoes was impressed by the account, felt that it was unquestionably genuine, wondered whether the great noise heard by the two people in the cottage might not have been the explosion of one of the craft, and whether the other discs might not have been waiting there over the sea for signs of survivors. It will be pertinent in this connection to mention the many South American rumours and stories of underwater UFO4 bases along the South Atlantic coast of Brazil and Argentina. Moreover, Itanhaam is very near to Sao Sebastiao, where the Brazilian jurist Professor Joao de Freitas Guimaraes of the Faculty of Law at Santos says he encountered a luminous, domed craft which came up out of the sea one evening in July 1957, landed on the beach, and contained a number of tall, fair-skinned, long-haired men who took him for a flight with them.And we have, finally, a case which sounds identical. La Prensa, Argentina's leading newspaper, reported on November 16, 1963,6 that on the previous evening hundreds of persons in the central streets of the great coastal city of Mar del Plata had seen a number of extremely luminous objects out at sea and very close to the surface of the water. A cigar[-shaped object] and various discs had been seen over the city the day before.
SEOUL Aug. 2, (UP) Those “Flying Saucers” have popped up in Korea. A Canadian destroyer recently reported sighting two such objects and recorded them on its radar, it was learned here today. A Navy report said 40 officers and crew members of the destroyer Crusader saw the “saucers” the night of July 10. All had the familiar qualities of the puzzling flying discs. The report, addressed to the commanders of the Far East naval forces and the Fifth Air Force, said the ship’s radar registered “fixes” on the objects. It placed them two miles high and seven miles away. The report said the objects disappeared before dawn.
Curious incidents have been reported, both in the United States and in the North Pacific, between 1950 and 1953. These may import that some flying saucers which have no human or humanoid or any kind of entity aboard may have been engaged in some kind of exploration or reconnaissance. For example: Was a satellite disc a flying saucer with no entities on board, and possibly controlled from some unseen space-ship rammed and sunk by a specially equipped American plane in late April or May 1953? It looks like it, and the affair occurred in the waters of the North Pacific off Tinian, one of the Marianas Islands formerly mandated to Japan. On this island, it may be noted, are mysterious ruins of colossal, columned tombs which may be the monuments of one of the colonies of the lost and very ancient Pacific continent of Mu. "In the last weeks (late April 1953), our ships and aircraft have sighted numerous flying objects of unknown origin. Their flight courses were plotted and permit conclusions about their take-off and landing bases. Near the island of Tinian, one of these projectiles was rammed by a specially equipped airplane and sunk in the sea." (Report of the Chief of the U.S. Defense HQ., D., Tokyo, May 9, 1953.) Tinian has an up-to-date military airfield from which flew the atomic bomb-carrier planes sent against Japan in 1945. Although a passage in the above report might seem to imply that these objects were terrestrial in origin, it seems pretty clear that the American authorities were forced to conclude that they were, in fact, a type of flying saucer.
I want to keep this relatively short, but I had quite the experience tonight, one that I will remember forever. I was driving by North Park with friends and a strange light was shining directly on the lake. We looked up but couldn't see the source, which seemed very strange at the time. We got out and moved towards the lake, while trying to keep our eyes on the light in the water. The water was strangely illuminated. Visibility was about 4 feet deep I'd estimate. This was very clear visibility, from about 100 yards away, probably a little more. But the sight was vivid; I actually thought I saw fish beneath the surface. This was not long ago in pure darkness, from far away. I shouldn't have been able to see what I saw. Moving on though, the light that had been causing this, we noticed either moved from the lake to above the trees (and was the source the whole time) or was silently waiting several hundred feet above and was never noticed. Either way I don't know. I do know that the last time I saw the light/object it was slightly above the trees, then below them and disappearing, then back above and a dark amber color, then below again, then back up, then completely gone and not to be seen again. It didn't noticeably fly into the distance or leave in a spark of glory. That was it. We just lost sight and it was gone. The strange thing to me was the size of the object. It couldn't have been large enough for even the smallest human to fit inside. This thing was literally a floating street light with intelligence. I've heard of these sized objects possibly being involved in crop circles. I didn't see anything remotely similar in this case. Please reply if you have relevant information.
The record of the destruction of Mu, the Motherland of Man, is a strange one indeed. From it we learn how the mystery of the white races in the South Sea Islands may be solved and how a great civilization flourished in mid-Pacific and then was completely obliterated in almost a single night. A few decades ago scientists would have been very doubtful about the possibility of the former existence in the Pacific Ocean of a huge continent such as Mu. But since then, records have come to light and comparisons have been made which prove that such a land did at one time exist. The proofs are of several types. First, as I have already explained in the opening chapter, there are the sacred tablets found in an Indian temple and deciphered with the aid of a learned priest. These tablets gave me the first hint about Mu and sent me on a world-wide search. They had been written by the Naacals, either in Burma or in the motherland. They told how the Naacals had originally come from the motherland, the land in the center of the Pacific. They also told the story of the creation of man and his advent in this land. Records of later date written in Mayax, Egypt and India tell and describe the destruction of this land of Mu, when the earth’s crust was broken up by earthquakes and sank into a fiery abyss. Then the waters of the Pacific rolled in over her, leaving only water where once was a mighty civilization. Second, there is confirmation of Mu in other ancient manuscripts, including such a classic as the Hindu epic Ramayana, written by the sage and historian, Valmiki, from the dictation of Narana, high priest of the Rishi temple at Ayhodia, who read the ancient temple records to him. In one place Valmiki mentions the Naacals as “coming to Burma from the land of their birth in the East,” that is, in the direction of the Pacific Ocean. Another document confirming the story of the sacred tablets and Valmiki is the Troano Manuscript, now in the British Museum. This is an ancient Maya book written in Yucatan. It speaks of the “Land of Mu” using for Mu the same symbols we find in India, Burma and Egypt. Another reference is the Codex Cortesianus, a Maya book of about the same age as the Troano Manuscript. Then there is the Lhasa Record, with hundreds of others from Egypt, Greece, Central America, Mexico, and the cliff writings in our western states. Third, there are existing ruins which, by their location and the symbols that decorate them, tell of the lost continent of Mu, Motherland of Man. On some of the South Sea Islands, notably Easter, Mangaia, Tonga-tabu, Panape, and the Ladrone or Mariana Islands, there stand today vestiges of old stone temples and other lithic remains that take us back to the time of Mu. At Uxmal, in Yucatan, a ruined temple bears inscriptions commemorative of the “Lands of the West, whence we came”; and the striking Mexican pyramid southwest of Mexico City, according to its inscriptions, was raised as a monument to the destruction of these same “Lands of the West.” Fourth, there is the universality of certain old symbols and customs discovered in Egypt, Burma, India, Japan, China, South Sea Islands, Central America, South America and some of the North American Indian tribes and other seats of ancient civilizations. These symbols and customs are so identical it is certain they came from one source only–Mu. With this background, then, we can follow the tale of Mu’s destruction. Lemuria mapThis continent, we find, was a vast stretch of rolling country, extending from north of Hawaii down towards the south. A line between Easter Island and the Fijis formed its southern boundary. It was over 5000 miles from east to west, and over 3000 miles from north to south. The continent consisted of three areas of land, divided from each other by narrow channels or seas. Basing my description on the records shown, I shall try to picture her as she was. Back, far back, into very remote times–many, many thousands of years ago, yet on the very edge of what we call historical times–there was a great continent in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where now “we find only water and the sky,” and groups of small islands, which today are called the South Sea Islands. Lemuria-hillside-4-postIt was a “beautiful” tropical country with “vast plains.” The valleys and plains were covered with rich grazing grasses and tilled fields, while the “low rolling hill lands” were shaded by luxuriant growths of tropical vegetation. No mountains or mountain ranges stretched themselves through this earthly paradise, for mountains had not yet been forced up from the bowels of the earth. The great rich land was intersected and watered by many broad, slow-running streams and rivers, which wound their sinuous ways in fantastic curves and bends around the wooded hills and through the fertile plains. Luxuriant vegetation covered the whole land with a soft, pleasing, restful mantle of green. Bright and fragrant flowers on tree and shrub added coloring and finish to the landscape. Tall fronded palms fringed the ocean’s shores and lined the banks of the rivers for many a mile inland. Great feathery ferns spread their long arms out from the river banks. In valley places where the land was low, the rivers broadened out into shallow lakes, around whose shores myriads of sacred “lotus flowers” dotted the glistening surface of the water, like varicolored jewels in settings of emerald green. Lemurian-hillside-two-4-postOver the cool rivers, gaudy-winged butterflies hovered in the shade of the trees, rising and falling in fairy-like movements, as if better to view their painted beauty in nature’s mirror. Darting hither and thither from flower to flower, hummingbirds made their short flights, glistening like living jewels in the rays of the sun. Feathered songsters in bush and tree vied with each other in their sweet lays. The chirpings of lively crickets filled the air, while above all other sounds came those of the locust as he industriously “ground his scissors,” telling the whole world all was well with him. Roaming through the primeval forests were herds of “mighty mastodons and elephants” flapping their big ears to drive off annoying insects. The great continent was teeming with gay and happy life over which “64,000,000 human beings” reigned supreme. All this life was rejoicing in its luxuriant home. Broad “smooth roads” ran in all directions “like a spider’s web,” the stones with which they were made being so perfectly matched that grasses could not grow between them.” At the time narrated, the 64,000,000 people were made up of “ten tribes” or “peoples,” each distinct from the other, but all under one government. Many generations before, the people had selected a king and added the prefix Ra to his name. He then became the hieratical head and emperor under the name “Ra Mu.” The empire received the name “Empire of the Sun.” All followed the same religion, a worship of the Deity through symbols. All believed in the immortality of the soul, which soul eventually returned to the “great source” whence it came. So great was their reverence for the Deity they never spoke His name, and in prayer and supplication addressed Him always through a symbol. “Ra the Sun” was used as the collective symbol for all His attributes. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAs high priest, Ra Mu was the representative of the Deity in religious teachings. It was thoroughly taught and understood that Ra Mu was not to be worshiped, as he was only representative. At this time the people of Mu were highly civilized and enlightened. There was no savagery on the face of the earth, nor had there ever been, since all the people on earth were children of Mu and under the suzerainty of the motherland. The dominant race in the land of Mu was a white race, exceedingly handsome people, with clear white or olive skins, large, soft, dark eyes and straight black hair. Besides this white race, there were other races, people with yellow, brown or black skins. They, however, did not dominate. These ancient inhabitants of Mu were great navigators and sailors who took their ships over the world “from the eastern to the western oceans and from the northern to the southern seas. . . . They were also learned architects, building great temples and palaces of stone.” They carved and set up great monoliths as monuments. In the land of Mu there flourished seven great or principal cities, the seats of religion, science and learning. There were many other large cities, towns and villages scattered throughout the three lands. Lemuria-city-4-postMany cities were built at or near the mouths of the great rivers, these being the seats of trade and commerce, whence ships passed to and from all parts of the world. The land of Mu was the mother and the center of the earth’s civilization, learning, trade and commerce; all other countries throughout the world were her colonies or colonial empires. According to records, inscriptions and traditions, man’s advent on earth was in the land of Mu and on this account the name “land of Kui” was added to that of Mu. Great carved stone temples without roofs, sometimes called “transparent” temples, adorned the cities; the rooflessness being to permit the rays of Ra to fall on the heads of those in supplication and prayer, a symbol of acknowledgment by the Deity. “The wealthy classes adorned themselves in fine raiment with many jewels and precious stones. They lived in imposing palaces attended by many servants.” Colonies had been started in all parts of the earth. Being great navigators, their ships were constantly carrying passengers and merchandise to and from the various colonies. On cool evenings might be seen pleasure ships, filled with gorgeously dressed, jewel-bedecked men lemuria destruction 4 postand women. The long sweeps with which these ships were supplied gave a musical rhythm to the song and laughter of the happy passengers. While this great land was thus at its zenith, center of the earth’s civilization, learning, trade and commerce, with great stone temples being erected, and huge statues and monoliths set up, she received a rude shock; a fearful visitation overtook her. Rumblings from the bowels of the earth, followed by earthquakes and volcanic outbursts, shook up her southern parts. Along the southerly shores great cataclysmic waves from the ocean rolled in over the land, and many fair cities went down to destruction. The volcanoes belched out their fire, smoke and lava. The country being flat, the lava did not run, but piled up, forming cones which subsequently became igneous rocks, and are to be seen today on some of the southern islands. Eventually the volcanic workings ceased. The volcanoes died out, and have since remained silent. After the cessation of these volcanic workings, the people of the land, of Mu gradually overcame their fright.The ruined cities were rebuilt and trade and commerce were resumed. Destruction-of-Lemuria-TroanoMany generations after this visitation, and when the phenomenon had become past history, Mu again became the victim of earthquakes. “The whole continent heaved and rolled like the ocean’s waves. The land trembled and shook like the leaves of a tree in a storm. Temples and palaces came crashing to the ground and monuments and statues were overturned. The cities were heaps of ruins.” As the land rose and fell, quivered and shook, the fires of the underneath burst forth, piercing the clouds in roaring flames three miles in diameter. There they were met by lightning shafts which filled the heavens. A thick black pall of smoke overshadowed the land. “Huge cataclysmic waves rolled in over the shores and extended themselves over the plains.” Cities and all things living went down to destruction before them. “Agonizing cries of the multitude filled the air. The people sought refuge in their temples and citadels only to be driven out by fire and smoke, and the women and the men in their shining garments and precious stones cried: ‘Mu save us!’ ” As the setting sun showed itself on the horizon beneath the pall of smoke that overhung the whole land, it was like a ball of fire, red and angry looking. When it had sunk below the horizon, intense darkness prevailed, relieved only by lightning flashes. “During the night” Mu was torn asunder and rent to pieces. With thunderous roarings the doomed land sank. Down, down, down, she went, into the mouth of hell–“a tank of fire.” As the broken land fell into that great abyss of fire, “flames shot up around and enveloped her.” The fires claimed their victim. “Mu and her 64,000,000 people were sacrificed.” As Mu sank into the fiery gulf, another force claimed her–fifty million square miles of water. From all sides the huge waves came rolling in. They met where once was the center of the land. Here they seethed and boiled. Mu, the Motherland of Man, with all her proud cities, her temples and palaces, her arts, sciences and learning, was now a dream of the past. The blanket of water was her burial shroud. The continent’s catastrophe was the first step in the destruction of the earth’s first great civilization. For nearly 13,000 years Mu’s destruction cast a heavy pall over the greater part of the earth. The pall is being lifted, but many spots still lie covered. When the continent was rent asunder and went down, for geological reasons, that will later be explained, ridges and points of land here and there remained above water. They made islands and groups of islands, but were jagged and broken up by the volcanic workings which had occurred beneath them. All these ridges and points were covered to their capacity with humanity escaped from the sinking land–their land, the Motherland of Man–which now formed the bed of seething, steaming, muddy waters surrounding them. Having swallowed up the land with all thereon, the waters rested as if satisfied with their grim work and these waters are the Pacific Ocean. Was ever a name more ironically applied? On these islands, in the midst of a boiling sea, the remnants of Mu’s population huddled, waiting for the terrific quakesdestruction of lemuria to abate. They had seen their temples and palaces, their ships and their roads go crashing down, to be swallowed by the ocean. Nearly the entire population had been engulfed by the catastrophe. The few alive, all that were left of the Motherland of Man, discovered they were destitute. They had nothing–no tools, no clothing, no shelter; little land, no food. Around them hissed and seethed the boiling waters that had rushed into the center of the fiery pit; above them dense clouds of steam, smoke and ashes cut off the friendly light, making an impenetrable darkness. The despairing shrieks of their comrades who had perished in chaos still rang in their ears. It was a scene of horror for the survivors, who found themselves facing death by starvation and exposure. Few were able to survive the dreadful ordeal and most of them perished miserably. A portion of these unsubmerged fragments of the lost continent we know today as the South Sea Islands, and some of their inhabitants can claim, as remote ancestors, the people of Mu. After a period of days the atmosphere was somewhat cleared of the smoke and sulphurous fumes. The sun, breaking through the veil of clouds, looked down on the scene. The newly formed islands were seen thronged with appalled men and women–those who were lucky or unlucky enough still to be alive. Pitiful looking beings they must have mu-city-underwater-4-postbeen, these survivors of the world’s greatest catastrophe since the flood of Biblical fame. One can picture some despairingly wringing their hands, others clinging together, dumb and motionless, reason gone, staring with unseeing eyes at where had once been a continent. What had become of that fair land? It lay deep beneath the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Where man had reigned supreme was now the abode of fishes, the haunt of uncanny, creeping things. Seaweeds would grow where flowers had raised their faces to the sun: coral polyps would build their reefs on the spots where man’s busy hands had reared palaces. Out of the tens of millions that had once swarmed the streets of the vanished cities, only a pitiful handful of human beings remained on the newly formed islands that were otherwise barren of all life. All was lost. What remained for them? Nothing except slow starvation. They were crowded together on tiny specks of land, thousands of miles from the mainland, without boats, ships or food. Under such circumstances it may easily be imagined what happened. Many, of course, were hopelessly insane, driven mad by sheer horror; others prayed for death to relieve them from a strain that was intolerable. To exist, one thing alone was left them: to go down into the lowest depths of savagery, and, for a time at least, live upon one another. Skins of animals, if any remained, and the leaves of coarse foliage must, in future, be their dress. descendants of LemuriaStones, spears and arrows must be their weapons of defense and offense. Their cutting tools must be fashioned from flints and shells. But the primary thing was where to get food? No doubt many died from exposure, fright and hunger, and as these died, their bodies became the food of survivors. In this manner, began the first cannibalism and savagery. Thus the survivors of the highest civilization descended to the lowest savagery which has continued on through the ages. One may imagine the loathing and repugnance that these cultured beings must have had for such food, and we may believe that many died before they could force themselves to partake of it. Gradually, however, as generation followed generation through the long procession of years, the poor islanders sank lower and lower until even traditions of their past, which at first were religiously kept and handed down to posterity, became dim and at last forgotten. Their former greatness was erased from their minds as completely as the treacherous waters of the Pacific had wiped away Mu, but, forgotten though this past is by the islanders, marks have remained among them for future identification, thus carrying out an unvarying law. I have mentioned that a veil of darkness was cast over mankind by the destruction of Mu; this I mean in a comparative sense only. The colonial empires, for a time, carried on the civilization of the motherland, but without her aid they gradually declined, then flickered out. It is from those ashes the new and present civilization has arisen.
MIAMI (AP) The Coast Guard Search and Rescue Center said yesterday it had closed out a search for a small airplane reported to have fallen in the Gulf of Mexico near Indian Key Light in the Ten Thousand Islands area. Maj. Albin Gerish of the Civil Air Patrol at Everglades reported CAP planes also searched, but the Coast Guard said a check failed to show any missing aircraft in the area and no trace of any plane was found. Coast Guard planes from Miami and St. Petersburg bases made the search. The fishing boat Alice O., in the Gulf and a group of Ohio tourists crossing the Tamiami Trail reported seeing a falling plane in the area.
1991 has been an unprecedented year for sightings and encounters in the Antelope Valley of California embracing the cities of Palmdale, Lancaster, and Rosamond. I was investigating the reports of sightings associated with a Northrop Skunkworks facility in the Tehachapi Mountains on the north side of the valley when I heard about two witnesses who had experiences of missing time. These two women, Pam and Jackie, lived within eyeball range of the facility and had experienced a number of strange events. In addition, Jackie, who could see the facility clearly from her property in the high desert, reported two daylight sightings. In each case she contends that she witnessed a large disk ascend from the facility and move eastward along the base of the Tehachapis. Construction workers have informed me that the facility itself has several underground levels. On the evening of May 14, 1991, Pam had her strangest encounter ever. Shortly after 11:00 p.m. she reports that three "grays" appeared by her bedside and started to lift her off the bed. She lives in a large, custom-built pentagonal desert home that has one large room without partitions. The kitchen, bedroom and living room are open to one another. She started to struggle with the grays — the four-and-a-half-foot category — when she spotted a human in the living room area. A man, dressed all in black, was holding a device that resembled a small TV and dangling a cord. Pam heard the man say, "You have no electricity." At this point she somehow freed herself from the entities and went to grab a light cord that would switch on a light from her twelve-volt system. The light would not come on. She then yelled for her husband to awaken. Events then took a bizarre turn. property. Hearing her 100-pound Labrador barking in the yard, she and her husband went to the north-facing kitchen window. Her attention was drawn to a man who lay prone on a projecting part of the roof near a ladder. The man was dressed in full-dress Air Force blues. The three grays were now on the ground below the man as well as a K-9 sentry dog that was poised to attack Pam's dog, Casey. In the sky over the yard there were a number of red lights. The man yelled to the grays, "Get her out of the house," while Pam yelled back, "Don't kill my dog." In the wake of this panic, Pam next remembers standing alone outside and behind their generator shack. The man, the dog, the grays, and her husband were no longer in sight. Red lights were revolving above her and a thick fog was emanating from ports set around the large craft hovering above. Her next memory was that of awakening, seated on her bed at 3:50 a.m. I had arrived at Pam's place the next morning and spent all day with her. That evening we had a local certified hypnotherapist, Miranda Cunha, regress Pam through the incident. We discovered a mental block in the missing time period. A few tidbits emerged from this session. It seems Pam believes that she may have been taken to a base inside the Tehachapis (the second case that reported this) and that she was cautioned not to reveal what she knows. She felt very threatened by this incident. This is just a brief recounting of only one of Pam's encounters, but significant for its mention of human involvement and its disturbing implications. Pam is a good observer and very precise about her experiences. Jackie reports seeing Pam's yard enveloped in a fog that same night, but does not remember seeing the lights which may have been directed downward and obscured by the fog screen put out by the object. Since that night Pam has also been buzzed by low-flying helicopters. One military helicopter hovered less than a hundred feet over her yard. Her yard comprises two-and-a-half acres of desert
Stan Gordon is director of PASU, the Pennsylvania Association for the Study of the Unexplained, and a frequent Journal contributor. It was 10:54 P.M., on the night of January 7, 1986, when residents near Butler, PA, 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, reported something strange in the sky emitting 6 long beams of light toward the ground in the vicinity of a trailer park. At 11:20 P.M. the same night, a detailed sighting of an unidentified flying object was reported in downtown Pittsburgh. As a bus approached the vicinity of the Birmingham Bridge, a passenger who makes a daily trip on this route noticed something unusual. distance. A large solid-appearing, silver-gray, disc-shaped object was hovering directly above the top of the bridge. While the object was being observed, a mist began to form around it. A number of lights were observed around the perimeter of the object. These lights when first seen were of a pinkish color, then changed to blue then to red. The object tilted at times giving a view of the bottom and top sections. At the top, a small knob-like structure could be seen. The object went down over the bridge, moving slowly in a floating manner, and descended until it reached the surface of the river. It slowly moved out of sight in the
VARGINHA, Brazil -- The incident that made this town a hot spot in the intergalactic search for intelligent life started quite innocently. On a Saturday afternoon stroll in January, a trio of young women decided to take a shortcut home through a vacant lot. In a clump of weeds, the three said, they encountered a creature like nothing they had seen before. "It wasn't a man or an animal -- it was something different," said one of the women, Katia Andrade. The being had oily, brown skin and rubbery limbs, she said. Three rounded protrusions sprouted from its oversized head. Standing out in a different way was the creature's odor: One ghastly whiff weakened the knees. As for the stranger's demeanor, the women unanimously, if tactlessly, agreed: It was "muddle-headed." When the creature wagged its big noggin dizzily in their direction, the three women ran off. Word of this encounter, spreading rapidly through the coffee bars where Varginha's 120,000 inhabitants trade gossip, would soon meld in the public imagination with other unusual occurrences: sightings of a strange cigar-shaped flying object, a mustering of troops and vehicles at a nearby infantry base and a peculiar bustle at the municipal hospital. Goaded by self-styled UFO savants and a ravenous national media, residents rather matter-of-factly embraced a stupefying conclusion: Several aliens from a wayward space ship had been captured and brutalized by troops from the Brazilian army. Bristling denials from the military, which once compiled a lengthy record of abuses against the terrestrial population, have only served to inflame public suspicion. The upshot: The army and the now-famous space aliens find themselves locked in a pitched battle for the hearts and minds of this provincial community. Doltish and malodorous though these space celebrities might be, mere men in uniform are proving no match for the first creatures of any kind from Varginha to land on a national magazine cover. "For extraterrestrials they may not be much, but they are the biggest thing we've ever had in Varginha," says a young woman named Nilda, scanning the nighttime sky from a downtown park bench. Had the armed forces not interfered, she says, locals might have scrubbed the visitors, taught them the language ... in sum ... made something of them. "But they never had a chance," Nilda says with a sigh. Her anger at the military's alleged inhospitality sparked a tiff with her boyfriend, a private in the infantry. The army finds itself besieged on several fronts. A local mystic predicts that Varginha will suffer some kind of cataclysm this September as retribution for its blitzkrieg on the interplanetary visitors. An armed-forces news conference marking "Victory Day" in World War II degenerated into a shouting match between a general and a television reporter pressing him about the extraterrestrials. An official briefing to debunk UFO conspiracies was overshadowed by an auto mechanic's claim to have seen yet another weird cylindrical aircraft, a cosmic encounter he re-enacted with the aid of an aluminum coffee thermos. To some extent the army is paying for past sins. During an oppressive 20-year dictatorship ending in 1985, the Brazilian military eliminated any number of earthbound political enemies by "disappearing" them. If the army was capable of liquidating human beings without a trace, locals ask, why couldn't it carry such a "dirty war" to outer space? In truth, the current, cash-strapped incarnation of Brazil's army poses little threat to anyone, least of all an enemy that might have ray guns. In some training exercises Brazilian troops have been reduced to pointing their rifles and shouting "bang" in order to save ammo. At the army base near Varginha, an inquiry concerning the extraterrestrials is received warily by a private, who turns it over to a sergeant, who then passes it along to a major. From there the matter is sent back down to another sergeant, who hands the question over to Capt. Eduardo Calza, the outfit's sad-sack spokesman. "You know, I used to get calls about the base talent show," he says. Capt. Calza says he can't vouch for what the three women saw in January. But the activity on the base that fateful weekend, he insists, was anything but otherworldly: New inductees to a sergeants' training school went on parade and a truck convoy was driven to the repair shop. Concurrently, at the town hospital, trucks delivered new cardiovascular equipment and an ambulance dropped off an exhumed corpse -- a human body, officials insist. "Sure, tell us another story," says Vitorio Pacaccini, the bearded, effusive UFO investigator at the eye of the Varginha storm. Based upon interviews with supposed eyewitnesses, Mr. Pacaccini has pieced together what he considers to be a more plausible reconstruction of January's events: A small alien craft on an unknown mission over Varginha crashed near the city limits, sending its crew of smelly, spaced-out extraterrestrials ambling about the town. Subsequently, Mr. Pacaccini maintains, military death squads in camouflage fatigues hunted down the visitors, poked and prodded the corpses at the municipal hospital, and then shipped them off to parts unknown. "It's very straightforward," he says. Mr. Pacaccini's brand of hucksterism is characteristic of the frontier atmosphere in a town where the architecture is of the Quonset-hut school and the newspaper is staffed by a lone reporter. Since the initial sighting, Mr. Pacaccini, a longtime UFO buff, has essentially abandoned his job as a business consultant to provide one-stop shopping for visiting journalists. To date, Brazil's leading television magazine has done three programs here. A two-hour nationally televised documentary on Varginha pulled in so many viewers on a recent Saturday night that it was repeated in its entirety the following weekend. Two of the women who made the initial sighting now demand $200 for each interview.
"A veteran pilot whose UFO sighting was confirmed on radar screens says that the thing was so enormous that his Japan Airlines cargo plane was tiny compared to the mysterious object. Capt. Kenju Terauchi also said there were two other small unidentified objects--smaller than his cargo carrier--that did not appear on radar. Terauchi, his co-pilot and flight engineer all told Federal Aviation Administration investigators that they saw UFO lights. \"They were flying parallel and then suddenly approached very close,\" said Terauchi, 47, who requested and received FAA permission to take whatever evasive action was necessary to avoid the UFO that appeared for a time on FAA and Air Force radar and on the radar screen in the cockpit of JAL Flight 1628. Terauchi this week described the UFO incident of Nov. 17, which was revealed by the FAA. Glimpses in Silhouette Terauchi, a pilot for 29 years, said he briefly glimpsed the large unknown object in silhouette, and he said: \"It was a very big one--two times bigger than an aircraft carrier.\" Terauchi made a drawing of the large UFO, looking something like a giant walnut-shaped object, with big bulges above and below a wide flattened brim. The captain, who is stationed in Anchorage with his family, was flying the jumbo jet from Iceland to Anchorage on a Europe-to-Japan flight when the crew had its unexplained encounter in clear weather over Alaska. \"It was unbelievable,\" he said, acknowledging that some of his colleagues have doubts about what the crew saw. 'Professional' Crew FAA investigators who questioned the crew in Anchorage concluded they were \"normal, professional, rational, (and had) no drug or alcohol involvement,\" the report by FAA Security Manager Jim Derry said. Terauchi said the crew was not frightened but wanted to avoid whatever was lit up in their flight path. That's why they went along with FAA directives to drop 4,000 feet and make turns--including a complete 360-degree turn, he said. Asked why he thought UFOs would tail his chartered plane, Terauchi laughed and replied: \"We were carrying Beaujolais, a very famous wine made in France. Maybe they want to drink it