When humans thought the land was endless, they threw their garbage in a hole and moved on. When they found there was nowhere left to move, they invented recycling and self-decomposing plastics. When humans thought the waters were endless, they threw their garbage in a river and watched it move on. When it came back, they invented more recycling and water cleanup programs. When humans thought space was endless, they left their junk in orbit forever. When they found it was falling back on them or blocking their paths for exploration, they invented … what? In the case of one British satellite company, it invented a satellite that can initiate its own self-destruct sequence by deploying a sail that will drag it slowly into the upper atmosphere where it will burn up safely. Not exactly elegant or completely mess-free, but it’s better than letting a Dyson sphere of space junk build up around Earth.

“We are delighted to see our Icarus de-orbit technology demonstrated successfully in orbit—again. With the Icarus sails now deployed on both TechDemoSat-1 and Carbonite-1, SSTL and Cranfield have demonstrated clear leadership in this technology. We hope to see many more satellites following TechDemoSat-1’s example to keep space clear of debris. It’s been great to work with SSTL on this mission.”

Stephen Hobbs, Head of Cranfield University’s Space Group, announced the deployment of the aptly named “Icarus” sailswhich will enable satellites developed by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) to end their missions in a ball of fire about 100 km (60 miles) above the Earth’s surface – away from the Space Station, other satellites and commercial and military aircraft. The tiny (6.7 square meters or 8 square yards) four-panel sails made of Kepton (a thin film made by Dupont) were sprung open with a simple cord-cutting maneuver and will remove them from their orbits within an internationally agreed-upon time-frame of 25 years from their initial deployments. (See the picture here.)

Carbonite-1 was launched in 2017 and contains a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) telescope and an imaging system. TechDemoSat-1 was launched in 2014 with eight separate payloads, including MuREM, a flexible miniature radiation and effects monitor from Surrey Space Centre; ChaPS, a prototype compact instrument to detect electrons and ions from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory; HMRM, a lightweight, ultra-compact radiation monitor designed to measure total radiation dose, particle flux rate and identify electrons, protons and ions from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Imperial College; and LUCID, a device to measure characterization of the energy, type, intensity and directionality of high energy particles from the Langton Star Centre. It also has an onboard inspection camera to allow the morbidly-curious space engineers like Sarah Parker, Managing Director of SSTL, to watch its self-cremation.

“It is fantastic to see an image of TechDemoSat’s deployed drag sail captured by the onboard inspection camera. This in-orbit image of a deployed drag sail on one of our satellites is a first for us and is a fitting culmination of mission operations for this highly innovative small satellite.”

Sure it’s morbid and sad, but it’s also simple yet elegant and inexpensive. While the blow-it-out-of-space proponents (we’re looking at you, Space Force) get all of the money and attention, the smart and efficient are already living up to their end of the space junk removal bargain.

Kudos to SSTL and Cranfield U for finally giving Icarus a story he could be proud of.

A couple of days ago, I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe titled “The Men in Black in Today’s World.” You can find it at this link. I thought that today I would share with you another case that reached me in recent times – and which continues to demonstrate that there’s no shortage of such MIB cases surfacing. This one surfaced on October 28, 2016. I was spending the weekend at Kent Senter’s Night Siege conference in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was a fun gig and one that was well-attended. My agent Lisa Hagan was there too, as was her mom, Sandra Martin, who is the brains behind Paraview Books. I hadn’t seen either of them for a few years, so it was great to catch up again. It was during a quiet few moments in the event, and before I was due to do a presentation on the MIB/Women in Black issue, that a man came up to me and gave me a manila envelope. He introduced himself: Wayne LaPorte.

Wayne was a significant figure in 1970s-1990s era U.S.-based Ufology, having written for a number of UFO-themed magazines and journals back then. I opened the envelope to find a couple of MIB-based cases that Wayne investigated in the 1970s. He very generously let me keep the reports; he also gave me permission to reproduce them. One of them was written to Wayne by a now-retired employee of the Gaston Gazette newspaper, which covers the town of Gaston, North Carolina. Dated July 23, 1977, it read as follows:

“As a part of my work as a reporter for the Gaston Gazette, I wrote a number of stories during the last three months of 1976 which dealt with UFO sightings in Gaston County. I think it is important for anyone who reads this recollection to know that I was interested in these stories mainly for their sensational news appeal. I have never attempted to make a study of UFOs or occupants and know virtually nothing about the subject. During the Oct.-Dec. 1976 period in which I was writing stories about hundreds of UFO sightings in Gaston County, I received a telephone call from an unidentified woman. I believe the call was made sometime in November. I do remember it was on a Saturday afternoon between 4-6 p.m. The woman would not reveal her identity because, she said, too many people would think that she was ‘crazy.’

“I pushed for a story during the call which lasted about 45 minutes, but the woman – she sounded middle age – would not consent. In fact, it was her really strong desire to remain unidentified, even to me, that made me believe she was serious about what she was saying. My recollections are vague, but I do remember her beginning her story by telling me about UFO visitations to her home. She would not tell me where she was located, other than in Gaston County. She said something about strange noises outside her bedroom window, rocks being thrown on the window panes. The noises caused her dog to bark continuously.

“During the several times that she believed UFOs to be outside her home, she and her mother and child would close themselves in a bedroom, the same bedroom I referred to earlier. I remember her telling me that she read the Bible when she heard the noises and that the reading seemed to drive the noises away. At some time after she experienced the visitations, a stranger came to her home. She told me the name he used but I do not recall it. He told her he was from Chapel Hill and she said that he had some knowledge of the Chapel Hill area. I believe she told me that the man had blond hair and wore a black turtle-neck sweater or knit shirt. The turtle-neck part I am sure of. She also described him as having a larger than normal head.

“She and her husband talked to him in their home for a while then took the man to Shoney’s for a meal. She told me that he held the menu upside down and did not know what to order. She ordered fried chicken for him. He told her, she said, that he did not know what fried chicken was. He ate it anyway, she said. That’s about all I can remember her telling me about the visit. But she said that later she tried to call him in Chapel Hill. There was no listing for the name he gave.

“I remember that she told me the reasons she believed he was an extra-terrestrial being, but I do not remember what those reasons were. I can’t be sure, but it seems that she said he left an address and that she wrote to him at the address and the letter was returned. I begged her to tell me if she ever had another similar experience. She promised to call me. She has not and I do not think she ever will because she knows that I want her story and she is 100 per cent against even a no-name type story. I have been a newspaper reporter since 1969 and I have never talked to an unidentified caller who, I sensed, was so careful to give no hints about her identity or her residence. And at the same time, I felt she was completely convinced about her experiences. In any event, I am convinced that she was not playing a prank to see if we would bite for a story.”

It’s important to note there are several issues that place this case in the MIB category. First, of course, there’s the fact that the mysterious man was dressed in black. Second, like so many of the Men in Black, the curious character didn’t seem to fully understand what food was. And, third, he didn’t look entirely human – there was a difference in the head. Another case of a weird Man in Black encounter to add to an already huge number.

Police in rural England have issued warnings after several instances of crop circles have appeared throughout the British countryside. In late May, a crop circle appeared in a field near Norridge Wood, Warminster. The crop circle appears as a series of concentric circles ringed by two spheres on the end of each hemisphere. No access to the field was arranged ahead of time, and it’s unknown who – or what – might have made the circle.

A few weeks later, a pair of crop circles appeared in Gloucestershire just 70 miles (110 km) to the north. One of the crop circles appears as a crescent-shaped line dotted with small solid circles, while the other one looks a little like the adorable Star Wars droid BB8. Both crop circles abut a pair of walking paths which offer easy access to the middle of the field. Photos of these latest crop circles were shared to Twitterby the Gloucestershire Constabulary Rural Crime Team who asked if these crop circles are “art, criminal damage, or some stranger goings on?”

Wiltshire, England is a hub of crop circle activity.

It turns out it’s likely a combination of the first two. While there are some historical anecdotes of unknown geometric formations in fields prior to the 20th century, the modern phenomenon of crop circles took off in the 1960s and ‘70s. During those years, dozens of intricate, massive crop circles began appearing throughout the English countryside, attracting attention from the international media and all manners of paranormal and UFO investigators.

“Muh wheat!”

While many initially believed these crop circles were the work of unknown forces or entities, today it’s widely accepted that these are merely the work of clever humans creating a unique form of art. Not everyone is enthused about this form of expression, though. Like graffiti or other forms of ‘street’ art, crop circles are often decried a form of vandalism that destroys valuable crops.

In the wake of these most recent cases, rural police throughout England are issuing warnings for would-be “vandals” to stay away from crops they have no business flattening. Gloucestershire Chief Inspector Pegler told reporters that crop circles are nothing but a crime that “affects communities, and the livelihoods of people within those communities.” The Gloucestershire Rural Police operates a fleet of drones to catch would-be crop circle makers and catalog instances of crop damage.

Just because crop circles are in most cases the work of quite human ‘vandals’ doesn’t mean that curious occurrences and paranormal phenomena don’t also allegedly accompany the creation of these forms of art; all sorts of claims have been made of crop circles over the years, ranging from claims that they can open portals to other dimensions or planes of existence, or that they may be able to signal and attract extraterrestrial visitors. Is that why Gloucestershire Rural Police are using drones to keep would-be crop circle-makers away, or is this truly all about trespassing and vandalism of crops?

As someone who regularly investigates and writes about the Men in Black phenomenon, one of the questions I’m often asked goes like this: “Do you still get reports of the Men in Black? “ The short answer is “Yes.” And: “A lot.” There’s no doubt at all that within the world of Ufology, the MIB phenomenon was at its height from the 1950s to the 1970s. That does not mean, however, that reports of the Men in Black are no more, or are on a decline. Indeed, I regularly receive reports of the MIB, the vast majority of them from very recent times. That’s probably due to the fact that I have written four books on the Men in Black and one on the Women in Black. In other words, when people have had an encounter with the MIB, they seek out someone who can hopefully help them understand what happened and what they encountered: someone like me. I’m sure that it’s very much the same with people who have come across a Crop Circle: they look for a Circle researcher for the answers and not an MIB investigator. And, it’s the same with the Black-Eyed Children: if you’ve seen one, you’re likely to contact an expert on the topic, like David Weatherly. Which brings us back to those recent cases of the Men in Black. Here’s one of hundreds from the last decade that have come my way.

In February 2016, an Englishman named Liam contacted me and said “…I bought your book The Real Men in Black off of Amazon a while ago and would like to share an event that happened to me in 2011, this was before I had read the book or heard about the more sinister alien type MIB you describe but had heard of the government G-Men gathering UFO reports from witnesses. Here’s my experience, it might not be anything relevant but I found it quite interesting.”

Liam continued: “It was either late July or early August and I was on holiday in Weymouth. This was days before the London riots of that year, staying with my parents in a rented accommodation at Whitehead Drive. The room I was in had a lovely view of the bay and Chesil Beach, you could see Portland in the distance. As the view was nice and the weather was hot I would always leave the window open for air and to admire the view. I had a laptop set up on the desk near the window so could look out easily. One evening I kept getting the eerie feeling of being watched, I would look out the window and not see anything of note, the sun was beginning to fade out at this point, I would guess it was about 5-7 pm sort of time, but you could still see the road and the beach easily.

“Every time I went back to using the laptop I would again get this horrible feeling of unease and would look back out of the window, eventually I spotted what appeared to be a man almost comically hidden behind a road sign. He was stood so half of his face was visible from the side of the sign but the other half obscured, his legs were visible underneath the sign, however.

“The man was I guess about 200 yards from my window but I could make out he was wearing a full dark suit, which was very odd considering it was a warm summer and everyone else nearby was wearing shorts and t-shirts. He also had a black hat on, I guess either a fedora or a bowler-hat but it was hard to make out the exact shape at the distance. He didn’t appear to be staring at me but rather straight down the carriageway, his back was to Portland so he was facing towards Weymouth. I watched him for a good few minutes and he stood completely motionless, staring forward, the weird thing was none of the cars driving past seemed to slow at all as they passed him.

At this point I quickly ran into another room to grab some binoculars and went back into the bedroom and he had vanished! I could only have been gone for 30-60 seconds max and his position would be hard to get away from unless he jumped into the harbor or got into a car, however the flow of traffic meant that it would be very difficult to get a car to stop, pick him up and start again without causing horns to blare from other drivers. As I said it could be nothing of note at all, but after reading your book and listening to several radio shows where the Men in Black were discussed it seems very similar to one of those events. Thanks for reading, Liam.”

No doubt, reports of modern day MIB encounters will continue to reach me.

Here’s some good news on the UFO front. Despite their alleged technical superiority and potential military might, the Chinese are worse than the US when it comes to identifying unidentified flying objects. In fact, their UFOs seem to be less advanced that ours too. U-S-A! U-F-O! U-A-P! U-S-A!

“It is reported that the UFO occurrence time is about 4:28 in the morning on the 2nd, and the areas where the UFO can be visually observed include Shandong Province, Shanxi Province, Henan Province, Hebei Province and other provinces.”

According to multiple Chinese news sources, UFOs were seen in various locations over a large swath of China on the morning of June 2, 2019. Many of them repeated the observation that “Some netizens said that this is not the first time to witness similar UFOs,” and the Global Times in a late report observed that “the objects remain a mystery” and “No official explanation has been given as of press time.” However, it and other sites speculated that the UFOs might be related to naval operations in the Bohai Sea and Bohai Straits on the coast of Northeastern China.

“Some military experts combined with the navigation warning issued by the Liaoning Maritime Safety Administration on June 1st that this may be a new type of submarine-launched missile launched by the submarine-launched ballistic missile range in the Bohai Bay.”

Ha! Those Chinese ‘netizens’ can’t even tell the difference between a missile and an alien spaceship or top-secret military test vehicle. The photos accompanying the articles (see them here and here and here) would have caused laughter and derision if they’d been released in the U.S. as UFO sightings – remember those nighttime secret rocket launches off the California coast last year? In order to defy identity, a UFO has to look strange (like a Tic-Tac) and make maneuvers that no known aircraft can make (like those UFOs dogging our own navy ships that even The New York Times can’t identify). Now THOSE are UFOs.

A glowing UFO spotted in the sky on Sunday morning across multiple provinces of China. Photo: screenshot of Sina Weibo

On the other hand, those with knowledge of the Chinese military suggest these “UFOs” might be Julang 3 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. If that’s the case, there’s some non-UFO cause for alarm.

“According to the current widely said, Julang 3 has a range of more than 12,000 kilometers. It is a land-based Dongfeng-41 transformation, which can be deployed on the coast of China and can cover the whole world. The analysis pointed out that Julang 3 will be carried on the 096 strategic nuclear submarine and become an important part of China’s Trinity’s second strike nuclear force.”

The identifiable Julang 3 (Giant Wave 3) is China’s best ICBM and this test may prove it’s now being launched by submarines.

These are not the Tic Tacs you are looking for.

On the other other hand, there’s speculation that those Tic-Tac UFOs seen over US naval operations are actually top top secret US next-next-generation aircraft, which means our maybe-not-UFOs are still better than their probably-not-UFOs.

Perhaps the announcement of the “Space Force” really is just a farcical diversion to trick others into the delusion than we’re really lagging in technology. Perhaps those Tic-Tacs and triangles are going to be our response to those missile-shaped UFOs.

Do you want to believe in UFOs or in U.S. dominance in space.

Encounters with strange entities and creatures can really run a range between the almost plausible to the flat-out absurd. From time to time there appear out of the blue such bizarre cases that they seem to be without any precedent or reason. Among these must surely be those reports of beings or entities that seem to have some sort of invisibility technology, and which appear to be something very much akin to the cloaked aliens of the popular Predator movie franchise, with which they are often compared. And so here we take a look at the very weird world of strange entities which seem to be able to make themselves invisible, and which skirt around past our ability to comprehend them.

On the October 26, 2014 episode of the popular paranormal radio show Coast to Coast AM there was a breathless caller who called in with quite the amazing tale indeed. According to the caller, who identified himself as Greg from Dobson, North Carolina, he had had a rather remarkable encounter in 1993 or 94 with what can only be described as some sort of entity with an invisibility cloaking device while he was living in Nashville, Tennessee. He claimed that he had been out walking his dog one evening when he felt the distinct sense of eyes boring into him from beyond his perception, although no one else seemed to be there. He says of what happened next:

I started looking at some woods, down in the woods directly in front of me, and I couldn’t see anything but I could hear leaves rustling in the trees. So I started looking up towards the tops of the trees and I had very good eyesight at the time. I didn’t do drugs. I didn’t drink. I saw something crouched down in the tops of the trees. The only way I could describe it and I don’t even know if the movie had come out yet so I didn’t know anything about it but the movie “Predator” where they saw that invisible creature. You could see the outline of everything but you could see right through it. And it was sitting up in the very tops of the trees where it wouldn’t hold the weight of a man by any means.

This thing was as big as a man. I just stood there looking at it and then I let go of the leash and I took off at a dead run and I yelled, ‘Hey!’ And I took off at a dead run towards this thing and it started running across the tops of the trees. It ran the length of a football field in, just in no time. I mean it was really fast. I don’t know how it was running across the tops of the trees but I know what I saw. After I thought about it, I thought, what in the world are you doing chasing this thing? I stopped and it stopped about the length of a football field away from where it started and it turned around and looked at me again and then it took off out through the woods, through the tops of the trees out into the woods and I didn’t see it again. It scared the hell out of me, I know that. And I never ever told anybody about it because I thought people would think I was crazy as a loon.

It is an almost absurd, borderline ridiculous account, dripping with the sort of oddness that gets such strange reports thrown into the bin of loonies, but the caller seemed sincere, and amazingly enough it is by far not the only such report of its kind, as there have been numerous other accounts of what seem to be invisible biological entities of some sort. Another report comes from a witness on Reddit, who says she had her odd experience when she was around 5 years old, meeting something apparently not of this world, or at least the world as we know it, and even odder still it would go on to be a recurring thing in her life. She says of her first brush with this unearthly presence:

I was playing by the edge of the woods behind my grandmother’s house. I played there often and my grandma just kept an eye on me from the kitchen or living room because the house had huge windows that faced the woods. She would come out every once in awhile just to see what I was up too. I was obsessed with digging in the dirt and collecting unusual rocks and arrowheads that littered the land where my grandmother lived. I should mention this is Midwest Illinois, not to far from Cahokia mounds, so finding arrowheads was actually not that uncommon. Anyway, that day, I remember picking out a spot to dig.

I had been out there for quite awhile because I remember I had a pretty decent size hole going, when something caught my eye up in the tree that I was next to. I almost don’t know how to explain it, but it looked like almost a heatwave coming off the branch of the tree. It was fall, I remember this because I had my pink jacket on and remember thinking that my mom was going to be pissed because I had dirt around the bottom of the arms from digging. I also remember there being a lot of leaves on the ground. Anyway, I am staring at this “heatwave” and realize it has a human shape.

So here I am, 5 years old, and wondering why there is a invisible man in the tree. I remember feeling scared but unsure what to do. Then it started moving and making a faint clicking sound. That is about the time that I decided that I was not supposed to be seeing this, and I high tailed it back to the house. My grandmother seen I was pretty shaken, and I remember telling her that I just seen a angel. In my 5 year old mind, I didn’t know what else it could be. I had never heard of aliens or ghosts or monsters, so to me it had to be an angel because that’s all my little mind could think of.

Incredibly, this would not be her last meeting with whatever this outlandish thing was. In 2004, the same witness says that she was visited again by the entity, just after she had separated from her husband and was on hard times. She moved her three children to a new place in the next town over and was settling down to begin her new life when the strange came for her once again. She describes her new place as being on the outskirts of town, on the fringes of woodland, and says of what happened:

One night I was up late doing laundry and stuff after the kids went to bed. I decided to take a smoke break before I myself went to sleep. I am back there on the porch and I started hearing this faint clicking sound. I immediately looked to the ditch because I had seen a ground hog out there a few days before and thought perhaps he was out there again. The yard is faintly lit from the outside light that is by they playground that is to the right of my back porch. I didn’t turn on my porch light, I didn’t normally, if I was just going out for a quick smoke. I didn’t see any ground hog or movement from the ditch, so I go back to smoking my cigarette. The faint clicking sound keeps happening and a slight shift of movement makes me look up into the tree to the left of my porch. It’s there.

The same invisible thing I had seen when I was five. It is like a distortion and in a humanoid shape. It is crouched down on the branch with an arm out holding on to the trunk of the tree. I couldn’t believe it. I was like “is this happening, has it came to kill me from me seeing it all those years ago.” All I could think about was my kids in the apartment sleeping. I ran in and slammed and locked the door. I ran to the kids rooms and made sure all the windows are locked, then I just turn out the lights in the living room and stare out the blinds at the tree to see if I could catch another glimpse of it. I sat there for about a good 10 minutes and couldn’t see anything. I begin to think that I am just tired and my mind was playing tricks on me.

Just as I was finally talking myself down, my neighbors dog comes running across the yard and starts barking at the tree at the same branch that I had seen this “predator” thing. That pretty much freaked me out because this dog was not a barker. I actually have never heard him bark at anything, even at the ground hog that had been hanging out at the ditch. This barking went on for a few minutes until I hear the neighbor lady who owns the dog call him back inside. The dog reluctantly turned to go back home, stopping every few feet to look back at the branch of the tree, until he was out of my sight. I didn’t sleep that night and have never seen anything like it again.

Is this getting weird yet? Also from Reddit is the story of a man in western Washington state, who says he had been out on patrol looking for clandestine drug dealers in the area when he had his meeting with the very unusual. As he was working his way through the trees, his rifle held close considering the inherit dangers to what he was doing, something decidedly out of the ordinary happened to him. He would say:

It began in late July, when I was forced to make semi-regular patrols around the property on which I live (heavily wooded, very hilly and wet with a creek and swamp at the bottom) when I was made aware of local drug addicts attempting incursions upon the property. As most of you likely know drug addicts have a natural tendency towards violence, especially the breed we have in my neck of the woods. I began carrying a rifle as I made my patrols because as the old adage puts it “Better safe than sorry”. Very quickly I found their tracks at the bottom of the hill, and I even managed to claim a gas can as a kind of war trophy. That lead me to believe they may be aiming to perform illegal logging on the property, which intensified my patrols. Soon after I ran into a rather unsettling shape in the forest.

I was on another patrol, standard, routine procedure when I passed an ancient cedar tree. I`d been past it a million and a half times but I suddenly felt as though I should take a seat underneath it, and rest a while. I sat down under the trees boughs, and set my rifle and daypack at my side. I sat in the silence and stillness for a while, taking in all the sounds the woods have to offer, I almost felt as though I had entered the same state of zen I had the year previously, kneeling beside a natural spring after heavy rain. All was well, the world was fine and everything would be okay. I felt wonderful. I opened my eyes and rolled my head to my right to look out into a grove of alder trees. Glancing upwards I saw a humanoid shape.

It was roughly 15 feet up in the air, and had the distinct shape of a human head, neck and shoulders but no discernible bottom, it just seemed to fade away. The only way I can describe it is similar to the Predator films, in which the titular creature uses a cloaking device. It was very, very similar to the device. At its edges it seemed reality itself was embossed in that shape. I sat and stared at it for probably about 3-5 seconds before an overwhelming feeling of dread and anxiety overtook me. I should add that I’m very tough to genuinely scare. I’ve been through a great many nasty situations that don’t bear mentioning and suffice to say that this shook me to my very core. I was almost petrified, scared out of my mind of what would happen if I dare move. I finally mustered the strength to remove my glasses and wipe them on my shirt, and re-donning them I could see the shape was still there. The dread grew in intensity tenfold every few seconds and my naturally calm, rational mind took hold again. I began counting down in my head.

What happened next, you may be asking. Well, although the witness did not stick around long for this particular encounter, he did manage to make his way back to the same area in later days and discovered an anomalous hole in the ground shaped like an “L,” surrounded by large, inexplicable scratches, where it would become incredibly windy whenever he drew near. He says of this strange detail:

The hole is at the bottom of a ravine filled with large, old growth trees. It suddenly got terribly windy when I was there, if stormy days are anything to compare, I would say winds were reaching 30-40 MPH at the bottom of a ravine filled with wind-blocking trees. Temperature felt like it dropped by about 20 degrees as well. I’ve been back since, but not often. Each time I visit I say aloud that whatever is there does NOT have my permission to come with me back to the house, and most assuredly nowhere else I go.

Just what is going on here? The website Phantoms and Monsters also has a report along these same lines, of a woman who was out one day just letting her dogs run about when she saw something that seems to be very similar to these other reports. The report says:

Several years ago, a colleague who is psychically gifted described an incident she experienced in her backyard the evening before. She had let her dogs out and was standing at the back door while waiting for them to finish their business. As she continued to wait for her dogs, she noticed ‘something’ approach her on the walkway from the lower yard. Her description was that of a tall and wide shouldered being but without mass… a pixilated transparent form that continued to move towards her. As this form came near her it abruptly stopped as if it was surprised that she was staring at it. Then this form dissipated completely. This was not the first time something of this nature had materialized near her. A similar incident transpired the previous year while she was standing adjacent to her garden. On that occasion the being was somewhat smaller in form but similarly pixilated and transparent.

Her sense of these beings was that it was not a haunting or manifestation by a human spirit. In fact she had never recognized similar phenomena previously. Her assessment was that these were entities from beyond our dimension and most likely of alien origin. After I listened to the evidence, already having knowledge of her surroundings, I concurred that her experience was more than a manifesting human energy.

From Linda Godfrey’s book Monsters among Us, we also have the story of what appears to have been an “invisible Bigfoot,” which was frequently seen by a farmer who said of it:

The funny thing is that it never left footprints, even in mud, and when it ran through tall weeds you couldn’t hear anything. And sometimes when you looked at it, it looked like you could see through it, like it was a ghost or something.

Just about as completely outlandish and utterly surreal as anything we have looked at here so far is a series of reports given to Cryptozoology News involving humanoid entities described as being able to cloak themselves “like the Predator” from the popular science fiction film franchise mentioned in many of these reports. The first report comes from a woman who says that her and her husband moved to a new home in area in western Pennsylvania in 2000. After getting to know the area, one evening they went out with a spotlight to view deer in the wilderness, taking a series of bumpy isolated dirt roads past farms and rural countryside, the only light that which they cast out from their spotlight. As the light stabbed out into the night, the beam captured something within it, although it was not the deer they were expecting to find. The witness says of what they saw:

As I stared at this shape, I realized that I did not know what I was looking at. I knew it wasn’t a deer. It wasn’t any animal at all! As my brain tried to comprehend what I was looking at it became more clear the longer I stared. What I saw had the shape of a man but it was not a man. It was not see-through as a ghost. The only way I can describe it was that it was like standing water. But it didn’t cast a shadow. It didn’t have any glare to it as the light was on it. It did not reflect the light. It was not gas. As gas does not have a significant shape. Gas will ebb and flow with the breeze or at least have an inconsistent shape. Rather, what I saw had a defined shape. That was the only way I can see it because, it had the shape of a human and I could make that out because of the defined edges and curves. Only because of its outline was I able to make out what I was looking at. When I realized that I was looking at a human shape, I noticed the posture was similar to a person skulking or sneaking. It was hunched over a little and one of its arms were frozen in place in front of it. As though it knew we saw it and it froze its position to try to be undetectable.

For moments that must have seemed like an eternity for the frightened woman, the thing remained motionless, as if it were studying them, before creeping off down a knoll and then it just sort of vanished into thin air. She did not know if the creature had been seen by her husband, and the entire odd encounter had lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough to send the woman into a state of panic. She warily told her husband about what she had seen, thinking he might make fun of her, but was shocked when he breathlessly told her that he had witnessed the exact same thing. The witness says:

He saw that it was the shape of a man. He saw that it was hunched over as if caught red-handed. He saw that it was cloaked like the Predator but it didn’t have a jagged camouflaged look. The thing we saw had a smooth look. It was like standing water without the reflective aspect and its outside shape was smooth, definitive. I do not know what we saw, but I do know it was real! I have been really guarded about this experience and have only told a few people. Because, I know how skeptics are. I am one of them! Yet I cannot refute what we saw. It was real. Nevertheless, whatever it was or is we saw it. There is no doubt in my mind or in my husband’s.

Yes, it was dark. But, the spot light was exceptional with its quality and there was no mistaking what we saw being confused with any shadows, strange light reflections, optical illusions, gas leaks, ghosts or any other possible phenomenon. The cloaking capabilities were of absolute exceptional clarity. It bent the light in such a way that it looked like the surrounding environment without any flaws save for the outline of the man/humanoid being. Aside from the distinctive outline, we would not have been able to detect that anything was there at all. Now, if light affects the cloak in the daylight then more people will have more sightings. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that our spot light defected the cloaking mechanism in such a way that we were able to detect the outline because of it.

Was that what was going on here? Was this entity using some kind of cloaking device? If it were just an isolated incident one could almost think that their minds had been playing tricks on them, but unbelievably there was another report that came in that seems to describe something remarkably similar. In this account, a man in Tulalip, Washington, 47-year-old Gerald Phair, came forward to say that he has on many occasions spotted “invisible humanoids” lurking about on his property, that can only be faintly seen if a spotlight is shone on them or if the angle is just right. He says of one such sighting:

They are in my backyard sometimes. I watch them for hours. I think they know I am watching them and they mess with me later at night. They have a human shape. At first, I thought they were people in camouflage. It is really predator-looking military style. It’s been three months now. One day I counted over 30 of them.

One last report here is that of some sort of seemingly alien entity with the ability to become completely invisible at a moment’s notice. The strange account comes to us from the small city of Luumaki, in the country of Finland, where there lived a family named the Kuningas. One day in 1965 the mother and father were out with their two daughters picking blueberries in the middle of a clear day. At some point they became aware of an odd”bubbling” sound coming from the canopy above them, and the father looked to see a man-like form looming up there. The creature began to approach the group, that is until it just suddenly vanished into thin air right before their eyes, although they could still sense it was physically there.

These are all completely outlandish accounts beyond reason that leave us truly scratching our heads. What are these things that people keep reporting? Are they some sort of alien beings using cloaking devices to try to blend in, perhaps in these instances being accidentally seen despite their best efforts to remain concealed? Or are they perhaps some sort of entities travelling between dimensions, either willingly using some befuddling technology to mask their presence or just caught up in some shimmer artifact from the process of crossing over? If they are real then what do they want and why are thery here? Whether we ever get answers to these questions or not, it is certainly unsettling to entertain the thought that forces beyond our understanding may be peering right out of the woods in front of our very eyes without out knowledge, utilizing some mindboggling technology and their motives just as mysterious as anything else about them. Whatever they are, these invisible humanoids certainly seem to occupy their own corner of the world of strange phenomena.