Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

OK, kids, it’s time for more Weird Stuff in the Sky.  The “Waynesburg Republican,” January 8, 1884:

NEWCOMERSTOWN, Dec. 28.- A very singular phenomenon was observed in the heavens here last night and people are much puzzled to account for the strange occurrence. A short time after dark a large bright light appeared suddenly in the Eastern sky, a few degrees above the horizon, and started in a direct northern path. The object had the appearance of an almost square volume of white light, and in its flight across the heavens left a bright trail which lighted up the woods just east of town over which it passed so brilliantly that small trees and bushes could be observed distinctly by some of our citizens.

A very singular circumstance about the phenomenon was the remarkable slowness with which the object traversed the heavens, it being seen for a long time by several of our citizens. There have been several hypotheses as to the probable cause of this peculiar astronomical phenomenon; and some think it was an ex-inhabitant of interplanetary space, or, in other words, an aerolite; but the slowness of its passage through the atmosphere leaves abundant room to doubt the accuracy of this theory. The superstitious are troubled.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Western entrance to Cadotte's Pass, 1855

Here’s a bit of random weirdness from the “St. Louis Globe Democrat,” October 19, 1865 (via Newspapers.com):

Mr. James Lumley, an old Rocky Mountain trapper, who has been stopping at the Everett House for several days, makes a most remarkable statement to us, and one which, if authenticated, will produce the greatest excitement in the scientific world. 

Mr. Lumley states that about the middle of last September he was engaged in trapping in the mountains, about seventy-five or one hundred miles above the Great Falls of the Upper Missouri, and in the neighborhood of what is known as Cadotte Pass. Just after sunset one evening he beheld a bright luminous body in the heavens, which was moving with great rapidity in an easterly direction. It was plainly visible for at least five seconds, when it suddenly separated into particles, resembling, as Mr. Lumley describes it, the bursting of a sky-rocket in the air. A few minutes later he heard a heavy explosion, which jarred the earth very perceptibly, and this was shortly after followed by a rushing sound, like a tornado sweeping through the forest. A strong wind sprang up about the same time, but as suddenly subsided. The air was also filled with a peculiar odor of a sulphurous character. 

These incidents would have made but slight impression on the mind of Mr. Lumley, but for the fact that on the ensuing day he discovered, at a distance of about two miles from his camping place, that, as far as he could see in either direction, a path had been cut through the forest, several rods wide giant trees uprooted or broken off near the ground--the tops of hills shaved off, and the earth plowed up in many places. Great and wide-spread havoc was everywhere visible. Following up this track of desolation, he soon ascertained the cause of it in the shape of an immense stone that had been driven into the side of a mountain. But now comes the most remarkable part of the story. An examination of this stone, or so much of it as was visible, showed that it had been divided into compartments and that in various places it was carved with curious hieroglyphics.

More than this, Mr. Lumley also discovered fragments of a substance resembling glass, and here and there dark stains, as though caused by liquid. He is confident that the hieroglyphics were the work of human hands, and that the stone itself, although but fragment of an immense body, must have been used for some purpose by animated beings. Strange as this story appears, Mr. Lumley relates it with so much sincerity that we are forced to accept it as true.

It is evident that the stone which he discovered was a fragment of the meteor which was visible in this section in September last. It will be remembered that it was seen in Leavenworth, in Galena, and in this city by Col. Bonneville. At Leavenworth it was seen to separate in particles or explode. 

Astronomers have long held that it is probable that the heavenly bodies are inhabited--even the comets--and it may be that the meteors are also.  Possibly meteors are used as means of conveyance by the inhabitants of other planets, in exploring space, and it may be that hereafter some future Columbus, from Mercury or Uranus, may land on this planet, by means of meteoric conveyance, and take full possession thereof--as did the Spanish navigators of the New World in 1492, and eventually drive what is known as the “human race” into a condition of the most abject servitude. It has always been a favorite theory with many that there must be a race superior to ours, and this may at some future time be demonstrated in the manner we have indicated.

That last paragraph reminds me of Charles Fort’s famous comment: “I think we’re property.”

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

“You’ll never go in the water again,” 2.0.  The Greensboro “News and Record,” August 24, 1955:

EVANSVILLE, Ind., Aug 23 (UP) —An Evansville mother has decided that a creature which grabbed her leg while she was swimming was “one of those little green men from a spaceship.” 

Mrs. Darwin Johnson read a newspaper story that a Hopkinsville, Ky., family was visited by the odd-colored creatures.  That to her satisfaction cleared up the mysterious underwater incident in the Ohio River last week. 

Mrs. Johnson had told police a “hairy paw” grabbed her leg while she was swimming near Dogtown. 

"I know it must have been one of those little green men” she said.  “I knew as soon as I read the description from Hopkinsville.” 

The Kentuckians described the green men as three feet tall “with eyes like saucers, hands like claws, and glowing all over.” They said these fellows roamed around their house Sunday night. 

Mrs. Johnson said, “We saw something in the sky coming over from the Kentucky bank just a few minutes before I was grabbed.”

So.

Jeff and the Metal Man

Accounts of UFO encounters, like poltergeist reports, tend to all sound alike after a while, so I was pleased to come across one such story which has that little something special.

On the night of October 17, 1973, Jeff Greenhaw, the Police Chief of Falkville, Alabama, received an anonymous--and slightly hysterical--call informing him that a “spaceship” had just landed in a field outside of town.

Police officers tend to be skeptical about anything that smacks of The Weird, so Jeff’s instant assumption was that he was hearing from “an idiot.”  However, he dutifully drove over to the field to investigate, and hopefully have himself a good laugh.

When he arrived, he found nothing to be humorous about.  He was confronted by a tall--over six foot--figure wearing some reflective material, like aluminum foil.  He later recalled, “It looked like his head and neck were kind of made together.  He was real bright, something like rubbing mercury on nickel, but just as smooth as glass.  Different angles give different lighting.  I don’t believe it was aluminum foil”  It moved in an odd, robotic manner that reminded Jeff of something out of “Lost in Space.”

He gave the stranger a polite greeting, but received no response.  The bemused cop took out his Polaroid camera and snapped a few photos of the figure.  As he did so, Metal Man began moving away from him.  “It wasn’t moving like you or I would move.  It’s like it had springs on its feet or something.”  It was traveling faster than he believed any human could move.  Jeff decided to “chase it down, and, if I have to, run over it.”  However, his patrol car was unable to catch up to the being.  Metal Man soon faded into the darkness.

Jeff kept the photos he had taken of the figure--one likes to keep mementos of interesting events--but almost exactly ten years later, someone (something?) broke into his house and stole them.  The service revolver and shotgun he had had in his police car on that memorable night also disappeared.  

Jeff told people about his encounter, only to find that he had turned himself into a public laughingstock.  Within weeks of his meeting with the strange creature, the town council fired him, and he subsequently kept out of sight as much as possible.  Years later, he mused, “I turned out to be a person I never dreamed I would be because of what happened…I came close to losing my sanity, but my wife and God kept me from losing my sanity…I am still a believer in life after death and at one point, I didn’t believe there was any other life source in the universe, but that really changed.”

The moral to our little tale is that if you should ever encounter tall, foil-covered robot aliens, it would probably be wisest to just ignore them.  And, yes, I do think that “Jeff and the Metal Man” would be an excellent name for a rock band.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This Australian tale of a strange--and possibly deadly--light appeared in the "Kingston Whig-Standard," April 12, 1966:

MELBOURNE (Reuters) Police are studying a motorist's claim that a mysterious "magnetic" column of light in the sky may have led a driver to his death. 

Ronald Sullivan, 38, a steel constructor, claimed he was driving one night when his headlights suddenly swerved right, as though drawn by a magnet. 

"I braked as hard as I could and glanced over to the right," he said. 

"There in the middle of the field was a column of colored light about 25 feet high and shaped like an ice cream cone." 

The column rose from the ground without a sound but at tremendous speed and the car's headlights returned to normal, focusing back on the road, he said. 

Three days later, last Thursday, Gary Taylor, 19, died when his car swerved sharply at the same spot and crashed into a tree.

As far as I can tell, this was the last word about the story.  I assume the police's "studying" of the mystery amounted to them shrugging and saying "We dunno."

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This little oddity appeared in the “Millville Daily Republican,” December 28, 1953:

Mrs. Joseph Davison's canaries, which she raises as a hobby, did not get their usual attention last night. And little wonder! Mrs. Davison, who lives on Quaker St. in Port Elizabeth, was frightened away from the outbuilding in which she raises the birds by an eery-looking "thing" that gave off a ghoulish light and hovered closely overhead.

It all happened at about 11 o'clock last night. Mr. Davison had retired and Mrs. Davison went into the back yard for a last look at her canaries. She usually checks the heater in the building and does a few other chores just before retiring.

As she neared the outbuilding, Mrs. Davison reports, she was startled by a brilliant, greenish light, which shone down on her from above. Looking up, she told a Daily Republican reporter this morning, she saw a flat, oval-shaped object, somewhat larger than a shoebox, hovering around a willow tree. She said the object came to a point In the back.

Frightened, Mrs. Davison ran into the house, and flipped off the lights. Peering through a window, she says the object flew from one willow tree to another and then disappeared. The Port Elizabeth resident said today that this is the second time in two years she has seen the same object. The mystery is still unsolved.

Close Encounters of the Floyd Kind

"Akron Beacon Journal," February 27, 1977, via Newspapers.com

It is, of course, common for police officers to chase down suspicious vehicles.  It’s just not every day that the vehicle is a UFO named Floyd.

Our little road trip through The Weird began around 5 a.m. on April 17, 1966, on Route 224 in Portage County, Ohio.  Deputy Sheriff Dale Spaur and mounted deputy Wilbur “Barney” Neff were approaching an abandoned car they had noticed on the side of the road.  It was full of radios and walkie-talkies.  More ominously, on the side of the car was a triangle surrounding a lightning bolt and the words, “Seven Steps to Hell.”

It seemed like the sort of thing that warranted a cautious investigation.

However, the car was soon forgotten when the officers were confronted with something even stranger: a large, brightly illuminated silver flying object emerged from the woods behind them, rising to a level of about one hundred feet.  It was about forty feet wide and eighteen feet tall, and gave off a loud hum.  As the UFO began moving east, Spaur told his dispatcher what they were seeing, and was instructed to start a pursuit.

At first, the men had no trouble following the object, although they had to get up to 100 miles an hour to keep it in close range.  As they drove, they kept the dispatcher informed of their progress.  As they approached East Palestine, Ohio, another officer named H. Wayne Huston happened to listen in on their commentary, and decided to join the fun.  He stopped at an intersection he knew the men would have to pass.  Soon afterward, he saw the UFO glide past him, followed by Spaur and Neff.  Huston started up his car and joined the High Strangeness parade.

The chase finally ended in Conway, Pennsylvania, when Spaur began running out of gas.  He pulled over to ask a local policeman for help.  As the officer was on his radio seeking advice on how to handle a high-speed UFO chase, Huston pulled up with them.  All this while, the flying object hovered nearby, as if it was waiting for its new friends to resume the game.  After a few minutes, the officers heard on their radios that Air Force jets were being sent over to investigate the craft.  Whoever or whatever was piloting the object was evidently listening in, as the news caused it to immediately shoot straight up and disappear.

There was an official investigation of the incident, with the authorities concluding that the men had simply misidentified Venus as the “UFO.”  Or perhaps it was a satellite.  In any case, it was all a bit fat nothingburger.  Case closed.  Move on and shut up.

A word of advice from Aunt Undine:  If you should ever encounter a UFO, it might be wisest to keep that interesting fact to yourself.  The publicity--and public ridicule--that followed news reports of this early-morning chase played hell on the lives of all the men involved.  The Pennsylvania cop Spaur had talked to had to remove his phone line.  Huston changed his name to “Harold W. Huston,” left the police force, and fled to Seattle to become a bus driver.  Neff simply clammed up.  His wife Jackelyne told a reporter, “He never talks about it anymore.  Once he told me, ‘If that thing landed in my back yard, I wouldn’t tell a soul.’  He’s been through a wringer.”  Spaur, who had spoken the most to the press, fared worst of all.  The nonstop harassment from reporters, UFO researchers, and cranks drove him to something approaching a nervous breakdown.  Everywhere he went--even church--he was identified as the local flying saucer-chaser.  Each night, he would have nightmares about chasing the craft.  By the time six months had passed, he had quit his job, his wife divorced him, and for a time he was a homeless drifter, existing on odd jobs.  He once said, “After I saw the damn thing, my entire life came crashing down around my shoulders.”  (Thankfully, Spaur eventually remarried, found new work, and got his life back on track.)

There was a sequel to this ill-starred Close Encounter.  It took place one day in June 1966, shortly before Spaur left the police force.  His department--fearing any more press attention--agreed that if any of them should see the UFO again, they would use the code word “Floyd.”  (Spaur’s middle name.)  As Spaur was driving down I-80 just outside of Cleveland, he saw the silver flying saucer hovering over him.  Spaur muttered into his radio, “Floyd’s here with me.”  He then pulled off the road, lit a cigarette, and brooded for about fifteen minutes.  When he nervously looked out his window again, the craft was gone.

At this point, you’re probably also wondering about the strange “Seven Steps to Hell” car that kicked off this whole Fortean mess.  So is everyone else.  When police went back to where the car had been abandoned, it too had vanished, never to be seen again.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This account of a UFO (or, if you prefer, “something weird that came down from the sky”) appeared in the Fort Myers “News-Press,” July 28, 1984:

BELLINGHAM, Wash. (AP) A spark-tailed fireball splashed down Friday off Lummi Island, sending a plume of water 100 feet high before it sank and bubbled, a fishing boat crew reported. The Coast Guard investigated but found no debris. Checks with other authorities revealed no missing planes or space junk crashing in the area and the object remained an "unknown flying object," said Petty Officer Gene Hoff in Seattle.

"It depends on what you care to believe. I have personally never seen a UFO, but anything is possible, I guess," he said. 

The Coast Guard has no plans to investigate further. The object apparently sank in water 270 feet deep in an area of intense currents in Rosario Strait and it would be "difficult to do a survey down there," said Rich Rogala, the officer in charge of the Coast Guard station at Bellingham, which sent a boat to the scene. "A white and orange fireball trailing sparks was observed by the fishing vessel 'Steeva Ten.' It was traveling west to east and dived into the water," he said.

"The observation was very brief. The impact sent a plume of water about 100 feet in height." The incident was reported at 3:45 a.m. Friday about 1,000 yards south of Lummi Island, about eight miles south of Bellingham In the inland waters of north west Washington. The splashdown was reported to the Coast Guard by the "Steeva Ten," a 42-foot fishing vessel tender. A flash in the sky was noticed at the same time by a tugboat at Anacortes about five miles to the south, Rogala said.

He speculated it could have been a meteorite. But there are a couple of other mysteries in the Coast Guard report. "The crew of the fishing vessel said the object dropped straight down and just before it hit the water it did a 'U' and came back up, then went down," Hoff said. 

And a crewman aboard the Coast Guard vessel that found no debris noticed an "object, white in color, in the sky at the south end of Lummi Island," Rogala said. The crewman saw the object while his vessel was searching for debris from the earlier "flash." 

The Coast Guard vessel searched the area for more than an hour with the master of the fishing vessel, Richard Dale Hartman of Port Orchard, and found no debris, Rogala said. The Coast Guard checked with the nearby Whidbey Island Naval Air Station and nothing unusual had been sighted on radar there, Hoff said.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This account of a curious…meteorological phenomenon? appeared in the “Public Advertiser,” September 14, 1767:

Extract of a Letter from Edinburgh, Sept, 7. "From the North we have an Account of a very uncommon Phenomenon, which made its Appearance, a few Days ago in Perthshire, to the inconceivable Surprize of all who beheld it. It first was observed on the Water of Ifla, near Cupar Angus, where it was preceded by a thick dark Smoke, which soon dispelled, and discovered a large luminous Body, which at first Sight appeared like a House on fire, but which presently after took a Form something pyramidal, and rolled forwards with Impetuosity till it came to the Water of Erick, which empties itself into lfla, up which River it took its Direction, likewise with great Rapidity, and disappeared a little above Blairgowrie. The Effects  were as extraordinary as the Appearance. In its Passage, it carried a large Cart many Yards over a Field of Grass, a Man riding along the high Road was carried from his Horse, and so stunned with the Fall, as to remain senseless a considerable Time.

It destroyed one half of a House, or rather carried it off, and left the other behind, as the Part carried off was a good many Yards from the other. It undermined and destroyed an Arch of the new Bridge Building at Blairgowrie, immediately after which it disappeared. As few Appearances of this kind ever were attended with like Consequences, various Conjectures have been formed concerning it.

The Country People call it foul Air but it is expected the Public will be yet favoured with a more particular Account, as several Gentlemen of Learning and Inquiry were Witnesses both to its Appearance and Effects."

A Very Unidentified Flying Object

During my blog-related browsing through the odder side of life, I occasionally come across a story that I think is worth sharing with you, Dear Readers, but I’m damned if I know what to say.  I just bung it down, hit the “Publish” button, and say, “Here.  You deal with it.”

This is going to be one of those times.

In the July/August 1970 issue of “Flying Saucer Review,” Gordon Creighton shared a story which he titled, with admirable restraint, “A Weird Case From the Past.”  He heard of the “very strange experience” from one John P. Sutcliffe, who in turn had learned of it from one of the people directly involved, a “lady who is well known to him.”

Creighton got in touch with the lady, Mrs. I.J. Goodwin, who lived in Stranden, Bournemouth, and she agreed to share what she remembered about the episode, which had taken place some forty years previously.

Mrs. Goodwin wrote, “I will tell you the facts of my personal experience exactly as I remember them.

“I was  born in 1924 at 57 North Road, Hertford, Hertz.  One day in 1929, at about the age of five, I was playing in the garden.  With me was my eight-year-old brother (Mr. Priest, now living at Moordown, Bournemouth.)  He was suffering from an infected knee, due to a fall, and was consequently confined at that time to a chair.

“At that date the road was a lane, with just two pairs of houses, one of which was ours, and behind the houses there was an orchard.

“So far as I can truthfully recall, what happened was that we heard the sound of an engine--what I would today liken to a quietened version of a trainer plane.  My brother and I looked up and saw, coming over the garden fence from the orchard, this small aeroplane (of biplane type) which swooped down and landed briefly, almost striking the dustbin.  It remained there for possibly just a few seconds and then took off and was gone, but in that short time I had a perfect view not only of the tiny biplane but also of a perfectly proportioned tiny pilot wearing a leather flying helmet, who waved to us as he took off.

“Neither my brother nor I ever spoke of the strange sight, so far as I recall, until about ten years ago when, in the presence of our mother and of other members of the family, I asked him whether he recalled the episode.  He replied that he too had wondered many times, over the years, about that tiny plane and its tiny occupant.

“May I be permitted to add here that my brother is so honest that he would certainly not claim anything beyond what he could truthfully recall of an experience.

“I am very sorry that I cannot swear to the exact measurements, but I would estimate the wing-span of the tiny aircraft at no more than 12-15 inches, with the tiny pilot in perfect proportion thereto.

“Although I do not recall his having said it, my brother apparently went into the house and told mother: ‘That aeroplane nearly hit the dustbin.’

“This is a true and honest account as I remember it.  The house and garden still exist, but the orchard has long ceased to be there.

“I have no explanation to offer, but I do know that this was not a figment of my imagination and, although I have not mentioned this correspondence to my brother, I give you herewith his address so that you may question him too should you wish to do so.

“I trust that you will glean something of interest from my experience, and I shall be most interested to hear of any explanation that you can give.  You have my permission to print this account.”

Creighton believed that we should take stories like the above very seriously, no matter how bizarre they might be.  He noted that “Tiny, shape-changing, size-changing, tenuous creatures of some sort of highly plastic matter have been reported throughout all history and from every land.  We can no longer afford to sit back smugly and laugh them off.  The reports about them must be collected and studied.  We are going to be very surprised by what we find.”

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This item from the "Abilene Weekly Reflector" of May 12, 1898, is brief, but you have to admit it packs something of a punch:

Dickinson county is seldom without some queer happenings to keep the people from getting sleepy. At Manchester last week A. W. McKillip, as he was going to the creamery about 8 a.m., was startled by a noise which sounded like the blowing of a horn. He looked in the direction whence the sound came and saw high up in the air what appeared to be the headlight of a locomotive. He says the light was very large and bright, with rays extending from it in all directions. He could hear a peculiar noise and an occasional blast as from a horn. The "thing" came from the southeast and went in a northwesterly direction.

He has not been able to get his hair to lie down on his head yet.

As an aside, I'd like to know more about what other "queer happenings" were going on in that county.

The Falcon Lake UFO

The following narrative is one of Canada’s best-documented alleged UFO encounters.  It took place at Manitoba’s Falcon Lake Provincial Park in 1967.  The witness, amateur geologist Stephen Michalak, was a 51-year old native of Poland who moved to Canada in 1949.  Later that year, Michalak described his experience in a privately-published booklet, “My Encounter With the UFO.”  He wrote:

It was 5:30 A.M. when I left the motel and started out on my geological trek. I took with me a hammer, a map, a compass, paper and pencil and a little food to see me through the day, wearing a light jacket against the morning chill. 

The day was bright, sunny--not a cloud in the sky. It seemed like just another ordinary day, but events which were to take place within the next six hours were to change my entire life more than anyone could ever imagine. I will never forget May 20, 1967.

Crossing the Trans-Canada Highway from the motel on the south side, I made my way into the bush and the pine forest on the north side. After travelling some distance I got out my map and compass and orientated myself. 

By 9 o’clock I had found an area that particularly fascinated me because of the rock formation near a bog along a stream flowing in the southward direction. I was searching for some special specimens that I had found on my earlier expedition. 

My approach had startled a flock of geese, but before long they became accustomed to my presence, quieted down and went about their business. 

At 11 o’clock I began to feel the effects of the breakfast I did not eat that morning. I sat down and took out the lunch I had brought with me. Following a simple meal of smoked sausage, cheese and bread, an apple and two oranges washed down with a couple of cups of coffee, and after a short rest, I returned to the quartz vein I was examining. It was 12:15, the sun was high in the sky and a few clouds were gathering in the west. 

While chopping at the quartz I was startled by the most uncanny cackle of the geese that were still in the area. Something had obviously frightened them far more than my presence earlier in the morning when they gave out with a mild protest. 

Then I saw it. Two cigar-shaped objects with humps on them about half-way down from the sky. They appeared to be descending and glowing with an intense scarlet glare. As these “objects” came closer to the earth they became more oval-shaped. 

They came down at the same speed keeping a constant distance between them, appearing to be as one inseparable unit, yet each one completely separate from the other. Suddenly the farthest of the two objects--farthest from my point of vision--stopped dead in the air while its companion slipped down closer and closer to the ground and landed squarely on the flat top of a rock about 159 feet away from me. 

The “object” that had remained in the air hovered approximately fifteen feet above me for about three minutes, then lifted up skyward again. As it ascended its colour began to change from bright red to an orange shade, then to a grey tone. Finally, when it was just about to disappear behind the gathering clouds, it again turned bright orange. 

The “craft,” if I may be allowed to call it a craft, had appeared and disappeared in such a short time that it was impossible to estimate the length of the time it remained visible. My astonishment at and fear of the unusual sight that I had just witnessed dulled my senses and made me lose all realization of time. 

I cannot describe or estimate the speed of the ascent because I have seen nothing in the world that moved so swiftly, noiselessly, without a sound. Then my attention was drawn back to the craft that had landed on the rock. It too was changing in colour, turning from red to grey-red to light grey and then to the colour of hot stainless steel, with a golden glow around it. 

I realized that I was still kneeling on the rock with my small pick hammer in my hand. I was still wearing goggles which I used to protect my eyes from the rock chips. After recovering my composure and regaining my senses to some degree I began watching the craft intently, ready to record in my mind everything that happened. 

I noticed an opening near the top of the craft and a brilliant purple light pouring out of the aperture. The light was so intense that it hurt my eyes when I looked at it directly. Gripped with fear and excitement, I was unable to move from the rock. I decided to wait and watch.

Soon I became aware of wafts of warm air that seemed to come out in waves from the craft, accompanied by the pungent smell of sulphur. I heard a soft murmur, like the whirl of a tiny electric motor running very fast. I also heard a hissing sound as if the air had been sucked into the interior of the craft. 

It was now that I wanted a camera more than anything else, but, of course, there is no need for one on a geological expedition. Then I remembered the paper and pencil that I had brought with me. I made a sketch of what I saw. 

By now some of the initial fear had left me and I managed to gather enough courage to get closer to the craft and to investigate. I fully expected someone to get out at any moment and survey the landing site. 

Because I had never seen anything like this before, I thought it may have been an American space project of some sort. I checked for the markings of the United States Air Force on the hull of the craft, but found nothing. 

I was most interested in the flood of lights that poured out of the upper reaches of the craft. The light, distinctly purple, also cast out various other shades. In spite of the bright midday sun in the sky, the light cast a purple hue on the ground and eclipsed the sunlight in the immediate area. 

I was forced to continually turn my eyes away from the light which made red dots to appear before my eyes every time I looked away. 

I approached the object closer, coming to within 60 feet of the glowing mass of metal. Then I heard voices. They sounded like humans, although somewhat muffled by the sounds of the motor and the rush of air that was continuously coming out from somewhere inside. I was able to make out two distinct voices, one with a higher pitch than the other. 

This latest discovery added to my excitement and I was sure that the craft was of an earthly origin. I came even closer and beckoned to those inside: 

“Okey, Yankee boys, having trouble? Come on out and we’ll see what we can do about it.”

There was no answer and no sign from within. I had prepared myself for some response and was taken aback when none came. I was at a loss, perplexed. I didn’t know what to do next. 

But then, more to encourage myself than anything else, I addressed the voices in Russian, asking them if they spoke Russian. No answer. I tried again in German, Italian, French and Ukrainian. Still no answer. Then I spoke again in English and walked closer to the craft. 

By now I found myself directly in front of it and decided to take a look inside. However, standing within the beam of light was too much for my eyes to bear. I was forced to turn away. Then, placing green lenses over my goggles, I stuck my head inside the opening. 

The inside was a maze of lights. Direct beams running in horizontal and diagonal paths and a series of flashing lights, it seemed to me, were working in a random fashion, with no particular order or sequence. 

Again I stepped back and awaited some reaction from the craft. As I did this I took note of the thickness of the walls of the craft. They were about 20 inches thick at the cross-section. 

Then came the first sign of motion since the craft touched down. Two panels slid over the opening and a third piece dropped over them from above. This completely closed off the opening in the side of the craft. 

Then I noticed a small screen pattern on the side of the craft. It seemed to be some sort of ventilation system. The screen openings appeared to be about 3/16 of an inch in diameter. 

I approached the craft once again and touched its side. It was hot to the touch. It appeared to be made of a stainless steel-like substance. There were no signs of welding or joints to be seen anywhere. The outer surface was highly polished and looked like coloured glass with light reflecting off it. It formed a spectrum with a silver background as the sunlight hit the sides.

I noticed that I had burned my glove I was wearing at the time, when I touched the side of the craft. 

These most recent events occurred in less time than it takes to describe them.

All of a sudden the craft tilted slightly leftward. I turned and felt a scorching pain around my chest; my shirt and my undershirt were afire. A sharp beam of heat had shot from the craft. 

I tore off my shirt and undershirt and threw them to the ground. My chest was severely burned.

When I looked back at the ship I felt a sudden rush of air around me. The craft was rising above the treetops. It began to change colour and shape, following much the same pattern as its sister ship when it had returned to the sky. Soon the craft had disappeared, gone without a trace.

As wild as Michalak’s story might be, it seems undeniable that he had encountered something very unusual.  He was admitted to the hospital with first-degree burns on his chest, and he also had to be treated for recurring vision problems.  However, he was able to lead investigators to the site where he claimed to have seen the strange crafts.  “Landing traces” were found there, along with some radiation in the ground.  

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the National Research Council, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization were all brought in to look into the matter.   A report was made to the Department of National Defense, but for whatever reason, the Canadian government thought it best to not make these findings public.  

Michalak himself theorized that government leaders feared that releasing this report would cause “a national panic.”

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Newspapers.com

This week, let's look at the time O'Hare Airport had to deal with an unexpected flight.  The "Chicago Tribune," January 1, 2007:

It sounds like a tired joke—but a group of airline employees insist they are in earnest, and they are upset that neither their bosses nor the government will take them seriously. 

A flying saucerlike object hovered low over O’Hare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some United Airlines employees who observed the phenomenon. 

Was it an alien spaceship? A weather balloon lost in the airspace over the world’s second-busiest airport? A top-secret military craft? Or simply a reflection from lights that played a trick on the eyes? 

Officials at United professed no knowledge of the Nov. 7 event—which was reported to the airline by as many as a dozen of its own workers—when the Tribune started asking questions recently. But the Federal Aviation Administration said its air traffic control tower at O’Hare did receive a call from a United supervisor asking if controllers had spotted a mysterious elliptical-shaped craft sitting motionless over Concourse C of the United terminal. No controllers saw the object, and a preliminary check of radar found nothing out of the ordinary, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said. The FAA is not conducting a further investigation, Cory said. 

The theory is the sighting was caused by a “weather phenomenon,” she said. The UFO report has sparked some chuckles among controllers in O’Hare tower. “To fly 7 million light years to O’Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable,” said O’Hare controller and union official Craig Burzych. 

Some of the witnesses, interviewed by the Tribune, said they are upset that neither the government nor the airline is probing the incident. Whatever the object was, it could have interfered with O’Hare’s radar and other equipment, and even created a collision risk, they said. 

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (the term that extraterrestrial-watchers nowadays prefer over Unidentified Flying Object) was first seen by a United ramp worker who was directing back a United plane at Gate C17, according to an account the worker provided to the National UFO Reporting Center. The sighting occurred during daylight, about 4:30 p.m., just before sunset. All the witnesses said the object was dark gray and well defined in the overcast skies. They said the craft, estimated by different accounts to be 6 feet to 24 feet in diameter, did not display any lights. Some said it looked like a rotating Frisbee, while others said it did not appear to be spinning. All agreed the object made no noise and it was at a fixed position in the sky, just below the 1,900-foot cloud deck, until shooting off into the clouds.

“I tend to be scientific by nature, and I don’t understand why aliens would hover over a busy airport,” said a United mechanic who was in the cockpit of a Boeing 777 that he was taxiing to a maintenance hangar when he observed the metallic-looking object above Gate C17. “But I know that what I saw and what a lot of other people saw stood out very clearly, and it definitely was not an [Earth] aircraft,” the mechanic said. 

One United employee appeared emotionally shaken by the sighting and “experienced some religious issues” over it, one co-worker said. A United manager said he ran outside his office in Concourse B after hearing the report about the sighting on an internal airline radio frequency. “I stood outside in the gate area not knowing what to think, just trying to figure out what it was,” he said. “I knew no one would make a false call like that. But if somebody was bouncing a weather balloon or something else over O’Hare, we had to stop it because it was in very close proximity to our flight operations.”

The databases of various UFO-watching groups are full of accounts filed by pilots about sightings of unknown aircraft and anomalies that affected navigational equipment onboard planes. Whether any of the UFO incidents are real or merely the result of individual perceptions, some experts say the events pose a potential safety risk to pilots and their passengers. 

“There have been documented cases where safety appears to have been implicated, and more and more we are coming to the point of view that we are dealing with an intelligent phenomenon,” said Richard Haines, science director at the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, a private agency. “We must be proactive before an aircraft goes down,” said Haines, a former chief of the Space Human Factors Office at NASA’s Ames Research Center. 

Haines is investigating the O’Hare incident. He said he has determined that no weather balloons were launched in the vicinity of O’Hare on Nov. 7. “It’s absurd that the military would be conducting aerial test flights’’ near the airport, Haines said. 

All the witnesses to the O’Hare event, who included at least several pilots, said they are certain based on the disc’s appearance and flight characteristics that it was not an airplane, helicopter, weather balloon or any other craft known to man. They’re not sure what was hanging out for several minutes in the restricted airspace, but they are upset that no one in power has taken the matter seriously. 

A United spokeswoman said there is no record of the UFO report. She said United officials do not recall discussion of any such incident. “There’s nothing in the duty manager log, which is used to report unusual incidents,” said United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy. “I checked around. There’s no record of anything.” 

The pilots of the United plane being directed back from Gate C17 also were notified by United personnel of the sighting, and one of the pilots reportedly opened a windscreen in the cockpit to get a better view of the object estimated to be hovering 1,500 feet above the ground. The object was seen to suddenly accelerate straight up through the solid overcast skies, which the FAA reported had 1,900-foot cloud ceilings at the time. “It was like somebody punched a hole in the sky,” said one United employee. 

Witnesses said they had a hard time visually tracking the object as it streaked through the dense clouds. It left behind an open hole of clear air in the cloud layer, the witnesses said, adding that the hole disappeared within a few minutes. 

The United employees interviewed by the Tribune spoke on condition of anonymity. Some said they were interviewed by United officials and instructed to write reports and draw pictures of what they observed, and that they were advised by United officials to refrain from speaking about what they saw.

Like United, the FAA originally told the Tribune that it had no information on the alleged UFO sighting. But the federal agency quickly reversed its position after the newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request. 

An internal FAA review of air-traffic communications tapes, a step toward complying with the Tribune request, turned up the call by the United supervisor to an FAA manager in the airport tower, Cory said. Cory said the weather might have factored into what the witnesses thought they saw. “Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon,” she said. “That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low [cloud] ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things. That’s our take on it.”  

A Visit With Sandown Sam

All accounts of alleged encounters with extraterrestrial beings are, by their very nature, bizarre.  However, your average planet-hopping space aliens will really have to up their game if they ever want to outweird the creature now known in UFO lore as “Sandown Sam.”

The January/February 1978 issue of the Journal of the British UFO Research Association carried a story written by one Norman Oliver.  He stated that a man who wished to remain anonymous (Oliver dubbed him “Mr. Y.”) wrote him one very weird story.  On October 20, 1970, “Mr. Y” was driving from Shanklin to Ryde, with a stop at Seaview in order to visit a friend.  As he was passing through the village of Brading, he noticed a “large multi-lit ‘aircraft’” to his right, flying low over the swampy terrain.  He stopped the car, and observed the “aircraft” hovering, seemingly aimlessly, over the banks of the river Yar.  It made no sound.  “Y” resumed driving, with the “aircraft” flying parallel.  After a few minutes, the object cut across some 300 yards behind him, and continued its meanderings.  Y again stopped the car and spent ten minutes shining a flashlight at the craft, which was now weaving backwards and forwards.  Y drove on.  When he reached his destination, he saw the craft had followed him, and was playing “hide and seek” among the tree-tops.  When his friend came out of the house to greet him, he also noticed the craft.  When Y continued to Ryde, the mysterious object, evidently getting bored with him, went on its way.  He did not see it again, although on several later occasions, he saw a single ball of red light in the sky, which appeared to be following him.

Y had an even more unsettling experience on the night of March 1, 1972.  He was on the cliffside of Compton Bay, where he had retreated following a mysterious tidal surge that appeared to have been caused by some sort of underwater craft.  He saw in the water below two points of yellow light “peering up at me like the eyes of some horrible sea monster.”  After a few minutes, the “eyes” disappeared and the tide subsided, enabling Y to return to his car and drive home.

Y had a small daughter, whom Oliver called “Fay.”  Although Y never told the child anything about his eerie experiences, in early May 1973, the seven-year-old youngster found herself joining in the Fortean fun.  One Tuesday afternoon, Fay and a boy about her age were near Lake Common, Sandown, when they heard “a weird wailing noise not unlike an ambulance siren.”  They followed the noise to a swampy meadow adjacent to the small Sandown Airport.  The sounds stopped.

As the children were crossing a footbridge spanning a small brook, a blue-gloved hand suddenly appeared from under the bridge and an odd-looking figure emerged.  It took out a book, which it accidentally dropped in the water.  The creature retrieved it and entered a windowless metal hut.  It walked with an awkward hopping motion.

The children continued on their way.  After they had walked about 50 yards, the figure reappeared, carrying a black-knobbed microphone.  The creepy wailing started up again, so loudly that the boy took fright and began to run.  The wailing stopped, and the figure spoke into the microphone, asking, “Hello, are you still there?”  The voice sounded so friendly that the kids were moved to ignore the splendid lunacy of it all, and went over to speak to him/her/it.

The figure was nearly seven feet tall and had no neck--the head was resting directly on the shoulders.  It wore a yellow pointed hat which was attached to the red collar of its green tunic.  The hat was topped by a round black knob with what seemed to be wooden antennae attached to it.  The creature’s face had triangular eyes, a brown square for a nose, and yellow lips which never moved.  Its white cheeks were decorated with round markings, and a fringe of bright red hair festooned the forehead.  Wooden slats stuck out of its sleeves and from below white trousers.  It had only three fingers on each gloved hand, and three toes on its bare, white feet.

The creature wrote in a notebook, “Hello and I am all colours, Sam.”  “Sam” could talk, but its speech was unclear--probably because its lips did not move.  The three had an amiable chat.  The children asked why its clothes were ripped.  “Sam” replied that this was the only set of clothes it had, so they couldn’t be changed.

Are you a man, they asked.  “No,” “Sam” chuckled.

A ghost, perhaps?  “Well, not really, but I am in an odd sort of way.”

“What are you, then?” 

Sam replied with the enigmatic words, “You know.”

Sam went on to say that it had no real name.  It added that there were other beings like itself.  He normally avoided people, because he was frightened of them.

Sam invited the children to visit its two-level hut.  The lower floor had blue-green walls and was covered with a pattern of dials.  It also boasted an electric heater and crude wooden furniture.  The upper level was smaller, with a metallic floor.  Sam said it lived on berries and river water.  The creature ate in an unusual manner: Sam would place a berry in its ear, thrust its head forward, which caused the berry to disappear and reappear through one of its eyes.  After repeating the process, the berry would go into its mouth.

After visiting with Sam for half an hour, the children said a polite “Goodbye” and went on their way.  Some three weeks later, Fay told her father about Sam.  At first, he refused to believe her story--and who can really blame him?--but the wealth of details the girl provided, along with her vehement insistence that she was telling the truth, caused Mr. Y to reluctantly accept her account.  Y questioned the boy who had been with Fay.  The child didn’t want to talk very much about what had happened, but he corroborated Fay’s story.

Y wrote Oliver that as wild as Fay’s account was, there were parts of the story that seemed plausible to him, particularly since he thought there might be a connection to his own odd experiences.  He added, “I get the impression that Fay was somehow taken into a bubble of alien reality created by this strange personage…he told them he had just made the hut.  Also, Fay told me that while they were talking to this ‘ghost,’ two workmen nearby were repairing a post.  They paid no attention to the weird charade--as though they could not see it.”

So.  Did “Fay,” showing a talent for science-fiction well beyond her years, invent the story?  Did the two children have some sort of joint hallucination?  Did some adult stage a remarkably elaborate practical joke?  Or did they really have an encounter with one very, very peculiar “ghost?”  Whatever your opinion about this tale may be, it is indisputable that “Sandown Sam” occupies a proud place in the world of High Strangeness.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This account of an unusual plane crash appeared in the "Wichita Eagle," June 12, 2004:

WASHINGTON — On a foggy October evening in 2002 pilot Thomas Preziose took off in a small Cessna airplane from the Mobile, Ala., airport on a routine flight carrying Express Mail. Preziose, an experienced pilot, had made the flight to Montgomery dozens of times for a small freight company. He knew the aircraft so well that he was certified to give flight instruction in it. 

Six minutes into the flight Preziose urgently told air traffic controllers: "I needed to deviate, I needed to deviate, I needed to deviate, I needed..." 

The plane was later found in pieces in a swamp. Preziose was killed. 

Small-plane crashes usually don’t get much attention But as investigators pulled the pieces of the Cessna out of the swamp they found unusual evidence that led them to report that the aircraft had “collided in-flight with an unknown object at 3000 feet." Twenty months after the crash, however, the agency still has not found an object.

In an unusual action, the National Transportation Safety Board's Washington headquarters has taken over the investigation, which had been conducted by the agency’s Atlanta regional office.  The NTSB released an interim report Thursday that makes no mention of a possible in-flight collision. 

The NTSB now says that the initial report should not have suggested an in-flight collision.  "That sentence should not have been in the factual report” spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz said. 

NTSB investigators have begun to focus on whether the pilot somehow lost control of the aircraft, sending it plummeting into the water.  The shift in view is causing some involved in the investigation to raise concerns that the agency is not placing enough emphasis on leads pointing to impact from an object, possibly a military drone. 

What has stumped investigators are 34 red marks found on the aircraft’s wreckage when it was pulled out of a shallow marsh at Big Bateau Bay, several miles from the Mobile airport. The red smudges and streaks were on pieces of the plane from the nose to the tail, both inside and outside the aircraft. Many were on the left side of the plane near the pilot’s door. The direction of streaks did not show a consistent pattern. 

Proponents of the in-flight collision theory say the red marks support their contention. But the NTSB now says those streaks could have come from inside the aircraft. “We have to look for the more obvious sources" first, Lopatkiewicz said. If no match is found, the agency will pursue other possible sources of the red marks, he said. 

Investigators say they plan to review a piece of the wreckage recovered last week. The plane’s third propeller blade was found buried in the mud near the crash site. It was folded in half with gouges and red marks on its face. 

Initial speculation centered on the possibility that the Cessna could have been hit by another aircraft, such as a plane that was not equipped with a transponder. Another early idea explored by the NTSB was that the red marks could have come from an unmanned aerial drone. Many such drones are painted bright red or orange. 

Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, more than 170 miles from Mobile, flies unmanned aerial drones and has had three drone accidents since 2001, according to military accident records and local media reports. No one was hurt in those incidents. 

An Air Force spokesman said that no drones were operating on the evening of Oct 23 and that the drones fly only in military airspace. 

The NTSB tested drone material supplied by the military and compared it with the red marks on the plane. It also tested other red items found at the wreckage site, such as red cargo bags. The tests did not yield a match.

"No way we could let that go...that we possibly had an unknown midair,” said John Clark, director of aviation safety at the NTSB "We can’t let it go at that unless we just know we had exhausted every avenue." 

Clark said the agency does not plan to test any more aerial drones for comparison with the red marks. First he wants to examine the possible sources on the plane.

The NTSB's final report blamed the crash on "the pilot's spatial disorientation," and that was that, as far as officialdom was concerned.  Others, particularly Preziose's family, were not convinced.  The mysterious crash has attracted a fair amount of attention online, with the most popular theory, naturally, being "slammed into a UFO."  While that is, to say the least, unlikely, the cause of the fatal accident seems destined to remain unknown.

One Night in Maracaibo

The sober pages of "Scientific American" are among the last places where you expect to find a slice of The Weird, but on at least one occasion, that's exactly what happened, courtesy of the following letter which appeared in the December 18, 1886 issue:

The following brief account of a recent strange meteorological occurrence may be of interest to your readers as an addition to the list of electrical eccentricities:

During the night of the 24th of October last, which was rainy and tempestuous, a family of nine persons, sleeping in a hut a few leagues from Maracaibo, were awakened by a loud humming noise and a vivid, dazzling light, which brilliantly illuminated the interior of the house.

The occupants, completely terror stricken, and believing, as they relate, that the end of the world had come, threw themselves on their knees and commenced to pray, but their devotions were almost immediately interrupted by violent vomitings, and extensive swellings commenced to appear in the upper part of their bodies, this being particularly noticeable about the face and lips.

It is to be noted that the brilliant light was not accompanied by a sensation of heat, although there was a smoky appearance and a peculiar smell. The next morning the swellings had subsided, leaving upon the face and body large black blotches. No special pain was felt until the ninth day, when the skin peeled off, and these blotches were transformed into virulent raw sores.

The hair of the head fell off upon the side which happened to be underneath when the phenomenon occurred, the same side of the body being, in all nine cases, the more seriously injured.

The remarkable part of the occurrence is that the house was uninjured, all the doors and windows being closed at the time.

No trace of lightning could afterward be observed in any part of the building, and all the sufferers unite in saying that there was no detonation, but only the loud humming already mentioned.

Another curious attendant circumstance is that the trees around the house showed no signs of injury until the ninth day, when they suddenly withered, almost simultaneously with the development of the sores upon the bodies of the occupants of the house.

This is perhaps a mere coincidence, but it is remarkable that the same susceptibility to electrical effects, with the same lapse of time, should be observed in both animal and vegetable organisms.

I have visited the sufferers, who are now in one of the hospitals of this city; and although their appearance is truly horrible, yet it is hoped that in no case will the injuries prove fatal.

Warner Cowgill, 

U.S. Consulate, Maracaibo, Venezuela, 

November 17, 1886.

Modern students of Forteana have noted the obvious similarity to radiation sickness, with some broad hints that UFOs may have been responsible, but what caused this unsettling incident is still a matter for debate.

The Ngatea Crop Circle

Diagram of the "crop circle" which was published in the "Waikato Times"

“Crop circles” are, of course, among the most famous categories of alleged Fortean phenomena.  For years, the debate has raged about whether they are human-engineered hoaxes, the work of extraterrestrials, or the result of some bizarre natural forces we aren’t even close to understanding.  One of the strangest “crop circle” accounts is also, oddly enough, among the most credible.

On September 4, 1969, one Bert O’Neill was walking around his farm near Ngatea, New Zealand.  He noticed that some of his manuka trees were sporting an odd silvery color on the tips.  As he walked further, his surprise only increased: he saw a whole group of the trees quite dead, and completely bleached to that same silver color.  They formed a perfectly round patch, nearly five feet in circumference.  In the center of the circle were three distinct, evenly spaced V-shaped depressions in the soil.  The depressions had been made so forcefully, they cut down to the roots of the trees.

The baffled farmer didn’t know what to think.  Several days later, he shared the peculiar occurrence while having dinner with a bunch of friends.  Someone brought up the fact that later on the same day that O’Neill discovered his decimated trees, two Straits Air Freight Express pilots reported seeing a UFO over Wellington.  Perhaps, he said only half-jokingly, the two events were related?  Had a craft from another planet landed on O’Neill’s manuka trees?

The following day, someone from the dinner party told Harvey Cooke, president of the Tauranga Science Space Research Group, about what had happened on O’Neill’s farm.  Cooke immediately went to investigate.

After examining the site, he became convinced that whoever or whatever had caused the damage, it had not been human beings.  The three depressions which formed an equilateral triangle had been caused by about 20 tonnes of pressure.  In 1997, Cooke told “New Zealand Geographic” that “the toes had been moved out from the pad after the object had landed.  The ground had been pushed away and the flat end cut through the roots of the manuka.”  He added that the trees had been cooked by “Some kind of short-wave high-frequency radiation…I know of no earthly source of energy which could have produced these effects.”

News of the strange goings-on at O’Neill’s farm soon spread throughout the country, and his property was soon swarming with reporters, Ufologists, and simple lookey-loos.  Poor O’Neill, unable to do any farm work because of all the commotion, soon wished he had just kept his mouth shut.  Cooke collected samples of soil and the manuka trees and shared them with the University of Auckland’s UFO research group, the New Zealand Scientific Space Research Group, as well as a prominent horticulturist, John Stuart-Menzies.  Stuart-Menzies initially assumed the damage had been caused by weed killer or some other poison, but after examining the samples, he reluctantly had to rule that out.  When he ran a Geiger counter over the dead trees, it showed an increase in shortwave radiation.  He contacted the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research about his findings, but, for whatever reason, the DSIR declined to get involved.

On October 6, Stuart-Menzies released a report about his tests.  He concluded, “Some kind of short-wave high-frequency radiation has cooked the material from the inside outwards.  The effects appear to have been instantaneous.  The energy received has reduced the pith to black carbon without the outsides showing any signs of burning.

“I know of no earthly source of energy which could have produced these effects.  A meteorite or lightning couldn’t do this, and it has been too sudden for combustion.  Some outside object appears to have landed on the spot, and in taking off emitted the energy which cooked the plants.”

Well.  This not-so-subtle hint by a well-respected scientist that a UFO had used O’Neill’s farm as a rest stop created a nationwide sensation.  The furor went all the way up to New Zealand’s parliament, urging the government to compel the DSIR to investigate the matter.

More reports came in suggesting there was a high level of extraterrestrial weirdness going on.  Cattle on a farm in Puketutu suddenly fled a pond from which they had been drinking.  It was found that reeds on a small island in the middle of the pond had somehow been flattened into a circular shape about 27 yards across.  The reeds seemed to have been burned and pressed down in a spiral pattern.  Tripod marks very like the ones found on O’Neill’s farm were in the middle of the circle.  Soon after this, a family near Dargaville saw what they assumed was a low-flying airplane with flames shooting from the back.  The next day, four circles measuring about 5 yards in diameter were found on a nearby hill.

New Zealand’s minister of agriculture and science, Brian Talboys, finally instructed the DSIR to send a delegation of scientists to O’Neill’s farm.  Unfortunately, the site had been so ravaged by souvenir hunters that there was virtually nothing left for them to investigate.  All they had to work with were the samples collected by Cooke.

A few days later, Talboys announced the DSIR’s solution to the mystery:  the trees had been killed by a fungus.  Period.  He did not mention the triangular-shaped depressions or the radiation Stuart-Menzies had reported.  He also refused to address the inconvenient fact that while fungus attacks dead trees, it does not kill living ones.  As far as the New Zealand government was concerned, the subject was now closed.

Not very many people were convinced by this too-tidy official explanation, but bureaucracy, as usual, managed to have the last word.

Close Encounters of the Tourist Kind

"Hood County News," August 16, 2005, via Newspapers.com. This is a bed which was built specifically for space aliens.  These people obviously had the right idea.

I’ll be the first to say that the following story is pretty “out there” even for this blog.  It sounds so much like one of the old “Coneheads” skits from “Saturday Night Live,” that, to be honest, I hesitated about devoting a blog post to it.  However, it’s such a delightfully nutty tale, I decided to share it, and all of you can simply make of it what you will.

On the morning of May 15, 1970, Dorothy Simpson was at her job at a motel just outside St. Louis, Missouri.  Everything seemed normal.  As she sat at her desk, going over billing documents, she heard a “whistling sigh.”

That did not seem normal.  And when she looked up from her paperwork, she was confronted by four people, who looked so alike they were presumably family: a man, a woman, and two youngsters, a boy and girl.  This would have been normal if not for the family’s appearance, which was, to say the least, unusual.  They were all so tiny, they could barely look over the top of the desk.  Simpson’s visitors wore elegant and obviously expensive clothes: tailored suits for the males, delicate peach-colored dresses for the females.  Their hair looked so unnatural, Simpson believed they were all wearing wigs.

The man asked her, in a strange, high-pitched voice, “Do you have a room to stay?  Do you have a room to stay?”  Simpson answered in the affirmative, and told him the price of the room.  However, the man seemed oddly befuddled by her answer.  He turned to the woman as if asking for an interpretation of Simpson’s words.  After a moment of awkward silence all around, the man took a stack of bills from his pocket and handed them to Simpson.  She noticed that some of the banknotes were of large denominations and very crisp, as if just off the printing press.  This caused her to suspect they were counterfeit, but a quick test indicated they were genuine.

Simpson took two twenty-dollar bills and handed the rest of the bills back to the man.  He was too small to reach the room reservation form, so Simpson signed for him.  He gave his name as “A. Bell.”  When he stepped forward, Simpson was struck by how odd their faces were.  They had very pointy chins, large dark eyes, virtually bridgeless noses, and lipless mouths that were no wider than the noses.  Their skin was unnaturally pale.  It was as if some alien beings dressed up as humans for Halloween, and did not do an entirely convincing job of it.

“Where are you from?” Simpson asked.

His arm shot upwards, and he replied, “We come from up there.  Up there.”

The woman, obviously irritated by her companion’s candor, pulled his arm down.  She told Simpson that they were from Hammond, Indiana.  (The motel’s manager later told Simpson that the Hammond address they gave did not exist.)  The man then signed the register, but in a very uncomfortable fashion, as if he had never held a pen before.  The family (“family?”) asked where the motel’s restaurant was, and left to get their meal.

The other employees soon noted that their humble little motel was being graced by some mighty strange guests.  Their waitress at the restaurant got a bit unnerved serving them.  Aside from their peculiar appearance, they kept studying the menu, asking questions about where perfectly ordinary foods such as milk or bread came from.  It was as if they knew nothing about human cuisine.  The woman finally ordered peas and milk for herself and the children, and peas, a steak, and water for the man.  They ate one pea at a time, using a knife to bring it to their tiny mouths, and using an odd sucking motion to swallow it.  The man’s mouth was such a small slit, he was unable to eat even tiny slices of the steak.  They all stopped eating simultaneously, after which the man handed the waitress a twenty-dollar bill.  She left to get change, but when she returned, they were gone.

The bellhop got their luggage and began leading them to their room.  When the family saw the elevator, they were obviously confused and terrified by it.  The bellhop did not have an easy time convincing them it was safe.  When he let them into their room, he turned on the lights.  The man immediately began shouting at him that the light would hurt the children’s eyes.  By this point, the poor bellhop was so unnerved that he fled without even waiting for a tip.

The next morning, the motel workers found that their, shall we say, otherworldly guests had vanished from their room.  No one had seen them leave, even though the front door was the only way they could exit without setting off security alarms.

The incident somehow reached the ears of John Schroeder, a member of the UFO Study Group of Greater St. Louis.  After he spoke to Simpson and the other four employees who had dealt with the foursome, he could only conclude that, bizarre as their story was, they all seemed perfectly sincere--and they were also obviously still a little frightened by the experience.

I suppose there’s nothing more to say.

In Which Mr. Buchmann Takes An Unexpected Journey

"Fairy Folk," Arthur Rackham

If you do any investigation of Fortean phenomena, you soon learn that ancient chronicles are a gold mine for High Strangeness.  If town historians are to be believed, they saw some of the damndest things, and, happily for those of us with a taste for The Weird, they bunged it all down on paper.  The following story is an outstanding example.  It was preserved by one Renward Cysat, the town chronicler of Römerswil, Switzerland, in a document which bears the catchy title, “Collectanea Chronica und Denkwürdige Sachen pro Chronica Lucernensi et Helvetiae.”

On November 15, 1572, 50-year-old Römerswil farmer Hans Buchmann went to the Römerswil inn.  He carried with him sixteen florins, the amount of a debt he wished to repay to the inn’s owner, Hans Schurmann.  When he found that Schurmann was not there, he set out for the nearby village of Sempach in order to deal with other business matters.  When Buchmann did not return home the next day, his wife sent their two sons to find him.  The boys failed to locate their father, but on the path to Sempach, they did find Buchmann’s hat, coat, gloves, and saber.  The boys immediately came to the conclusion that a cousin named Klaus Buchmann, who had been at feud with the family for years, had murdered their father.  Klaus was interrogated by the authorities and his property searched, but found no evidence that he had been involved with the disappearance.

For four weeks, Hans’ family waited in vain for some sign of their missing relative.  Finally, news came of his whereabouts, and it was probably the last thing they were expecting: Hans was in Milan.  On February 2, 1573, Buchmann was finally returned to his family, very much the worse for wear.  His loved ones were shocked to see that he had lost all his hair, and his head was so swollen he was virtually unrecognizable.

The town authorities, evidently suspecting that Hans had been part of some sort of scheme to frame cousin Klaus for his murder, brought Hans in for questioning.  (Renward Cysat was one of the witnesses to the interrogation.)

Buchmann’s story was both extremely simple and jarringly weird.  On the day before he disappeared, he went to Sempach.  He said he had very little to drink while there.  When dawn arrived, he set off for home.  As he was walking through the forest, he began hearing an odd noise.  At first, he thought it was a swarm of bees buzzing, but then it began sounding more like strange music.  He began to feel frightened and disoriented, losing the sense of where he was or what he was doing.  In his panic, he unsheathed his sword, blindly swinging it around him.  While he was lunging around, he lost his hat, coat, and gloves.  As he fell into a faint, he sensed that he was being lifted off the ground.

When he finally regained consciousness, he found himself in Milan.  Two weeks had passed.  His head was swollen and painful, and he was weak from lack of food.  As he was unfamiliar with Milan and did not speak the language, Buchmann would have been in dire straits indeed if he had not found a German-speaking guard who was willing to help him get back home.

And that seems to have been that.  The town officials were no doubt tempted to reply, “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it,” but it was clear that something very unusual had happened to Bachmann on the road between Sempach and Römerswil.  Everyone, evidently, was forced to leave it at that.

Cysat gave his opinion that his friend Buchmann had been kidnapped by fairies.  I suppose that’s as good an explanation as any.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This curious little mystery was reported in the “Curtis Enterprise,” November 21, 1963:

The odd metal spheres found in New South Wales and Australia, in April and mid July, still have not been identified, according to the Australian Minister of Supply, Mr. Allen Fairhall.  Minister Fairhall stated that his inquiries to the U.S. and U.S.S.R space agencies have drawn a blank.

The first mystery ball, a 13-pound hollow sphere 14 inches in diameter was discovered on April 8, 1963 in a desolate part of Bouilla Station, New South Wales. Mr. J. McLure, who found it, said no one else had been In the area for 50 years. Scientists failed in their effort to open the sphere with files and hacksaws. 

On April 30, Minister Fairhall told the House of Representatives that the sphere had been definitely identified as part of a space vehicle. He said it had not yet been opened as it might contain "something of scientific Interest.” He added, "It's a million-to-one chance that a piece of orbiting hardware should survive the temperature of reentry and be recovered in one place.” Australian scientists said later It might have been protected by a heat shield. 

On June 29, the second spaceball fell, in New South Wales, 6 miles from the first location. This one weighed 18 pounds and was 16 inches in diameter. It was made of the same puzzling metal. 

The third sphere fell on July 13, near Muloorina, in South Australia. It was six inches in diameter and had an opening in it.

The highly technical work and cost required to build such spheres seems to rule out any hoax answer. Both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. have denied any connection. Even if the spheres were earthmade, all three would hardly fall by accident in this one area.  To drop them there deliberately would require precise re-entry by remote-control, also retro-firing jets, which the spheres did not have. 

If they were extraterrestrial, some more advanced control mechanism might be used.  In this case, the Australian Government may have found the answer--and possibly the clue to their purpose--on opening the spheres. To the best of our knowledge, Australian officials have been silent as to what was discovered.

Although these spheres--which were not the only ones found in Australia over the years--seem to be fairly well-known among UFO enthusiasts, I do not know if it was ever definitively proven what in the world--or, possibly, what out of this world--they were.