In a move that surely must have frustrated the hundreds, if not thousands, of people pouring over databases full of old Martian satellite images and rover photographs for signs of life, NASA posted an unusual shot on its “Astronomy Picture of the Day” blog of a really strange-looking hole on the side of a Red Planet volcano with a caption that readily admits it could contain life forms. (Image above. Credit: NASA.) All we need is someone or some rover to creep up to the edge and peek in. Any volunteers? Anyone? Bueller?

“Holes such as this are of particular interest because their interior caves are relatively protected from the harsh surface of Mars, making them relatively good candidates to contain Martian life. These pits are therefore prime targets for possible future spacecraft, robots, and even human interplanetary explorers.”

On March 1, 2020, NASA’s pic of the day was a hole photographed in 2011 by the HiRISE instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Located on a slope of the Pavonis Mons volcano, the opening measures 35 meters (115 feet) across and the hole, based on the angle of its shadow, measures at least 20 meters (65.5 feet) deep. If Pavonis Mons sounds familiar, the volcano is the subject of the Flaming Lips instrumental song “Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)” on the album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which later was made into a Broadway musical by The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin. Is NASA hinting that there might be pink robots in this hole? Or perhaps it’s a space elevator to Deimos, the smaller moon of Mars, as depicted in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Or is NASA hiding something else … in plain sight?

Pavonis Mons is a giant shield volcano made from stacks of overlapping lava flows that measures 8.7 miles high — taller than Mt. Everest. A digital model shows a pile of debris inside the hole, indicating it was once as deep as 295 feet. That makes the hole deeper than most caves on Earth. If early humans lived in caves, why not Early Martians? Or current Martian life forms?

“These results have important implications for habitability and human exploration of the moon but also for the search for extra-terrestrial life on Mars. Lava tubes are environments shielded from cosmic radiation and protected from micrometeorites, potentially providing safe habitats for future human missions. They are also, potentially, large enough for quite significant human settlements.”

Riccardo Pozzobon from the University of Padova, Italy, agrees. In a study conducted in 2017, he and other scientists compared volcanic lava tubes on Earth in Hawaii, Iceland, and the Galapagos Islands to those seen on the Moon and Mars. On the Moon, some are 1 km (0.6 miles) across and hundreds of kilometers in length. Both these and the smaller ones on Mars are big enough for future human settlements and possibly past or current extraterrestrial life.

Another view of pavonis mons

(NASA)

We may soon find out. The Mars 2020 rover is scheduled to launch on July 17 and land on February 18, 2021, with the mission to search for signs of life. Unlike other rovers, this one will carry a helicopter – perfect for flying over and perhaps even flying into the hole on Pavonis Mons.

Maybe The Flaming Lips should head back to the studio and begin working on some lyrics to “Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)” about approaching it by helicopter or on wheels.

Sometimes, when you’re focusing on a very strange story – eerie, even – the best thing you can do is to sit back and let the witness tell the tale, and without interruption. And, that’s exactly what I’m going to do today. The account below comes from a well-respected UFO researcher and writer, Denise Stoner, who very generously shared this with me for publication. Denise is – with Kathleen Marden – the co-author of The Alien Abduction Files. With that said, onto the story in Denise’s own words: “At least three times here in Florida at a particular combination health/grocery/restaurant called Whole Foods I have been observed by a strange character. This is a good place to blend as many folks who shop here are ‘odd characters’ to begin with or ‘hippie like,’ gone back to nature types. So, the person who has observed me is wearing a gauzy outfit, thin hair, woven straw Panama type hat and sun glasses fits right in. His skin, hair, and clothing are all almost the same beige color.

“The difference is he has a drink in front of him, a notebook, stares at me the whole time as we eat at a table on the sidewalk. He never has food of his own nor does he touch the drink. It seems he knows when we are almost finished eating, he gets up, walks slowly past our table, rounds the corner that is clearly visible but must pass a pillar on the corner of the shopping plaza by our table. Once he goes behind that pillar, he never comes out the other side. There is literally nowhere for him to go but out the other side, then down the sidewalk or out to the parking lot – but no, he is gone. I cannot get up to follow thinking I am going to bump in to him on the other side of the pillar. He lets me know in no uncertain terms that he is watching me or letting me know he is there.

“Yes, I have pondered many times what prevents me from picking up my cell phone and taking a picture of this individual. I have no answer for that. It absolutely crosses my mind the whole time the episode is taking place. Afterwards I feel foolish, know I will be made fun of in the telling of the story, and promise myself I will have the camera ready the next time.  It never happens. Are we somehow prevented from having photographic evidence needed as proof? I do have several speaking engagements a year and have decided to add one of these odd stories each time as I feel people need to know this type of thing exists. Let them decide for themselves what they think. This is going on and that is a fact – the fact appears to be that we have some type of ‘human’ with unusual abilities living among the earthly beings and our only choice for now is to be observant, to watch and wait. What other options do we have?”

“The situation to you as it has remained clear as crystal in my mind.  As for my Mom, she knows something happened but it has gotten foggy and she doesn’t know why, yet she recalls something happened that made her feel very uncomfortable. My Mom and I had gone to the mall on Christmas Eve for a couple of last minute stocking stuffer type gifts.  We actually knew what we wanted so parked outside J.C. Penney’s on the side where those goods were. We went in and immediately noticed that in late afternoon, there were only a few shoppers. We picked out our gifts and got in line at the cashier in back of two other people. We could easily see the exit door and the sun in the parking lot, we were facing that way. The glass doors opened and two very tall, thin women entered. They had long almost waist length blond hair parted in the middle on top and it was thin in texture. Their skin was also pale and I did not notice any make up but each had huge piercing blue eyes. Their gait was odd like they were too tall (approximately 6’1) to walk smoothly. I was already an investigator for MUFON so was aware of oddities in people and had done background searches for the Federal Government, so was trained to be observant.

“They were pushing one of those umbrella style strollers with no fancy attachments – just the hammock type bed, wheels, and handles. I noticed they had no purses or accessories such as a diaper bag to carry diapers or bottles, etc. The women moved slowly it seemed and drew my attention to the stroller. There was a baby blanket in the bottom portion and on top the head of a baby no bigger than a small grapefruit, pasty colored skin, no noticeable nose, a line for a mouth and huge dark eyes taking up most of the rest of this head. I wondered if the baby was deformed but knew this was not the case somehow. The baby appeared alert and was staring up at me. My Mom bumped me with her arm to get my attention and said ‘what is wrong with that baby?’ I felt I needed to tell the person in front of me because we had been talking with her about being slow in finishing up our shopping. When I tapped her on the shoulder I then was shocked to see not only her but the lady in front of her and the cashier were kind of frozen in place. Everything seemed to be moving in extremely slow motion around us.

“The blond women seemed to pass the thought to me that I needed to take another good look at the baby and study it. Then as if a film was put back in to normal speed they walked past me and the cash register began to work, people – the only three in the area were moving again as if nothing happened. I told my Mom to hold our places and I ran after the women.  Just next to us was the infants’ clothing department. The women had turned in to that aisle. I followed and when I turned in to the aisle – they disappeared. Just gone like they had never been there. I ran back the short distance to my Mom and told her they were gone. We checked out and my Mom kept saying, ‘what was going on with that baby?’ I told her no one goes shopping with a baby that tiny without taking needed supplies, bottles, diapers, clothes, etc.

“I remember asking her if she thought we had seen something alien such as a hybrid and she just shook her head as if there was no answer. We stepped out the door and that’s when the experience with the men took place. When we exited the mall my Mom had already stepped off the curb to locate my car, I was stopped by three men who were leaning on the brick wall by the door. Wearing black suits, black hats, white shirts, sun glasses. Short in stature. The only difference from your reports was the fact that one had a briefcase – black also. I don’t recall their mouths moving but it could be I was just nervous.

“One of them said, ‘you will not discuss what happened inside that store, do not talk about it to anyone; do you understand?’ I did not answer, stepped off the curb as I felt I was in danger and called after my Mom. Just after I stepped off the curb I turned back to discover these men were gone and there was nowhere for them to go other than in to the parking lot or further down the sidewalk as there was a brick wall where they had been and continued down the length of the building to the only door we had come out. We had been shown something in the store we both feel wasn’t normal and were talking about it as we left to see if we were imagining things when I met these men.  Does this sound typical of these types? I am too old to be abducted and used for breeding and have had a hysterectomy so that could not have been the purpose – to show me a child of mine and I felt nothing like that was going on.”

It sometimes seems that the UFO phenomena is drawn to military activity. For whatever reasons something seems to draw these forces in, and there are countless reports of UFO activity around military installations or events. It has actually become quite the point of discussion among UFO aficionados, and one very prominent example of this is the time a wave of strange UFO phenomena washed over one of the largest military exercises the world has ever seen.

In the fall of 1952, one of the largest peacetime military exercises in history was underway in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic in the vicinity of Denmark and Norway. Called “Operation Mainbrace,” or also “Exercise Mainbrace,” the massive naval operation was carried out by the Allied Command Atlantic, which is one of the commands of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and was meant to simulate a response to an attack or invasion by the Soviet Union on Europe. The operation was truly epic in scope, involving the navies of nine countries, the USA, UK, Canada, France, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium, and composed of over 200 ships, 1,000 aircraft, and 80,000 personnel. It was the most powerful fleet seen in the North Sea since World War. It was a truly impressive series of military war games, and it would also turn out to be an absolute magnet for UFOs, and indeed one of the most amazing military UFO incidents ever.

It all kicked off on September 13, 1952, when crew aboard the Danish destroyer Willemoes saw a glowing blue triangular unidentified object shoot through the night sky at an estimated speed of 900 mph. This would be far from the only strange sight witnessed in the skies above the operation, and reports from other navy personnel would come in over the coming days. On September 19, a British Meteor jet involved with the operation coming in to land at the airfield at Topcliffe, Yorkshire, England, was observed by crew on the ground to be followed by an anomalous silvery circular object that swayed “like a pendulum” and reportedly stopped when the jet circled around to engage it. The UFO then made a sudden acceleration into the distance, only to do a sharp turn and continue on in a different direction. One of the witnesses, a Lieutenant John W. Kilburn, would say of the incredible incident:

I was standing with four personnel of No. 269 Squadron watching a Meteor fighter gradually descending. The Meteor was at approx. 5000 feet and approaching from the east. Flight Officer Paris suddenly noticed a white object in the sky at a height between ten and twenty thousand feet some five miles astern of the Meteor.  The object was silver in color and circular in shape. It appeared to be travelling at a much slower speed than the Meteor, but on a similar course. It maintained the slow forward speed for a few seconds before commencing to descend, swinging in a pendular motion during descent. Like a falling sycamore leaf. After a few seconds, the object stopped its pendulous motion and its descent and began to rotate about its own axis. Suddenly it accelerated at an incredible speed towards the west turning onto a south-easterly heading before disappearing. All this occurred in a matter of fifteen to twenty seconds. The movements were not identifiable with anything I have seen in the air and the rate of acceleration was unbelievable.

On the following day another high profile sighting was made, this time by the crew of the U.S. aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Franklin D. Roosevelt. The ship was thrown into a state of confusion and alarm when a large silvery sphere was observed, seeming to follow the fleet. On board that day was a journalist by the name of Wallace Litwin, who managed to snap a series of four color photographs of the object. At the time he thought it must surely be a weather balloon, but he was soon informed that it was moving way to fast to be a balloon and also that none of the ships had launched any. The photos were examined by Navy Intelligence officers, who deemed the object to not be a balloon, although there was no other explanation offered. All witnesses also confirmed that it was not a balloon, and it was seen as very disconcerting, as this was well monitored airspace that had just been violated. Litwin would say:

In other words, the skies above this NATO fleet were very carefully observed and nothing flew around overhead unobserved. But I knew that I had taken a picture of what looked like a ping-pong ball 10 feet over my head.

On that very same day the oddness would continue when three Danish Air Force officers at Karup Air Field, Denmark, saw a shiny metal disc-like object move rapidly out towards the fleet at sea. On September 21 another silver sphere seeming to be speeding away from the fleet’s position was tracked by a formation of RAF jets. The jets moved to intercept the mysterious object, but found that it was easily able to evade them with a physics defying display of maneuvers and speed, after which is shot off into the distance. It would apparently appear once again to follow the planes, but then disappear for good when one of the pilots circled around towards it.

In many of these cases there turned out to be radar confirmation, and considering the experience of these witnesses there seemed to be little reason to think that these could be mere weather balloons or some atmospheric phenomena or Venus. There were numerous other reports from personnel aboard ships and aircraft with the fleet, from witnesses of all nationalities, and even none other than Dwight D. Eisenhower supposedly saw one as he was aboard one of the vessels. One witness reported on this incident thusly:

We were North and East of England with the NATO fleet in the North Atlantic. It was about 1:30 a.m. Through the stormy rain and lightning, this big blue-white light appeared right off starboard bow. It came down to 100 feet off the water and just hung there as we cruised by it. The UFO was easy to see when the lightning flashed. It then rose straight and left. Four of us saw it. Here’s the kicker! General Ike, who’d flown over by chopper with the Admiral had just come out on the signal bridge wearing P.J.s and a robe looking for coffee.   We were sitting and making small talk when the bright light came on. We all watched it ten minutes, then just stood there staring at each other. After a while, General Eisenhower said, he better go ‘check this out’ and left. He also told us to ‘forget about it for now’. Next day and ever after, nothing was ever said about it. I don’t know what it was or why it was hushed, but I saw it.

Interestingly, even after Operation Mainbrace ended on September 25 UFO sightings reports would come pouring in from the region, almost as if they had been agitated by the activities the fleet had been carrying out, before suddenly disappearing as mysteriously as they had arrived. What brought these phenomena here? Are these forces drawn to our military activities for some reason, or is this just misidentifications, weather balloons, and Venus? Considering the caliber of witnesses on offer here, perhaps it is best to keep an open mind, and the Operation Mainbrace UFO encounters remain a well-documented fixture of UFO lore.

Among the many witnesses of UFO phenomena, some of them really stand out, and some of the most remarkable of these are when the men or women of law enforcement report their encounters with these otherworldly forces. These are people out doing their job to serve and protect, yet sometimes it seems that they come across things that nothing in their experience or training has prepared them for. Here we will look at a few of some of the most terrifying UFO encounters that police officers have reported, in which the outcome was truly bizarre and frightening.

For our first case we go back to the 1960s. On September 3, 1965 a Deputy Sheriff Bob Goode was out on patrol along Highway 35, just outside of Damon, Texas, joined by another officer, Chief McCoy. At around 11PM they allegedly noticed a purple light off in the distance. As they stared at it wondering just what they were looking at, another smaller light reportedly detached from the main body, after which both seemed to hover. The curious officers began taking a series of dark backroads that would take them closer to the strange phenomena, which they estimated was around 5 or 6 miles away. They got about as close as the roads would take them and stopped the patrol car to marvel once again at those eerie hovering lights, and as they did they were startled when the two objects came rushing right towards them with breathtaking speed, covering several miles within seconds. The objects then seemed to position themselves directly overhead, bathing the entire landscape in bright purple light, like day time on some alien world, and they could feel heat emanating from them. McCoy would say the larger object was “as big as a football field,” and later say of the frightening experience:

The bulk of the object was plainly visible at this time and appeared to be triangular shaped with a bright purple light on the left end and the smaller, less bright, blue light on the right end. The bulk of the object appeared to be dark gray in color with no other distinguishing features. It appeared to be about 200 feet wide and 40-50 feet thick in the middle, tapering off toward both ends. There was no noise or any trail. The bright purple light illuminated the ground directly underneath it and the area in front of it, including the highway and the interior of our patrol car. The tall grass under the object did not appear to be disturbed. There was a bright moon out and it cast a shadow of the object on the ground immediately below it in the grass.

Image by Steve Baxter

The two men tore out of there, and after a few moments of hovering the lights shot off back to their original position. The two officers stopped once more to observe them, but the chances of a repeat of what had happened scared them into leaving. They would later be interviewed by a Major Laurence Leach, Jr., of Ellington Air Force Base, who deemed them to be very sincere and of sound judgement, stating, “There is no doubt in my mind that they definitely saw some unusual object or phenomenon.”

A couple of years later, in 1967 we have the account of patrolman Herb Schirmer, who was a police officer in Ashland, Nebraska. On the evening of December 3 of that year he was on his usual patrol and things were pretty routine until he noticed two red lights over Highway 63, which he at first took to be the lights of a big rig truck at first. Still, something felt off about it, and so he drove off towards the lights to investigate, soon realizing that this was no truck. According to Schirmer, the red lights were in fact emanating from what looked to be the portholes of a metallic, semi-spherical object hovering just over the highway in front of him. As he got closer he could see that it had a sort of walkway around it and some kind of landing gear dangling from the bottom. The object would then float upwards and speed off into the distance, and this is where things would get bizarre.

Although nothing else seemed to have happened at the time, a look at the clock showed that it was nearly 3 AM, which was odd because he had only just started approaching the object around 10 minutes before. As he drove back to the station that bewildering sense of lost time intruded upon his thoughts, and he also began to feel physically ill. Something was itchy on his neck, and he reached around to feel a large welt there that he could not explain. Schirmer would report the whole crazy encounter, and this caught the attention of a UFO research organization called the Condon Commission, who believed that he had possibly been abducted.

Image by Steve Baxter

A hypnosis session was organized, during which Schirmer described being rendered paralyzed and unable to remove his sidearm shortly after stopping his vehicle. He was then apparently beamed aboard the craft and telepathically communicated with by humanoid beings in uniforms bearing winged serpent insignias, who claimed to draw power from electrical lines and to be from the planet Venus. Schirmer would go on to quit the force several months later due to post traumatic stress from his experience and recurring physical problems. In the meantime, he was apparently the object of ridicule within the community and his wife eventually left him because he could not stop talking about the UFO he had seen.

From the 1970s we have the frightening encounter relayed by an officer Manuel Amparano, of Kerman, California. It was a little after 3:30 AM on May 13, 1978 when Amparano was on a routine patrol and noticed a “a circular-type thing, similar to a round fireball or a setting sun, about 100 to 150 feet off the ground.” Thinking that this was maybe a fire, he got closer to investigate and what he took to be a tree on fire suddenly lifted off of the ground. The amazed officer quickly trained his searchlight on the object, and was met with a bright blue flash, after which whatever it was sped off. That flash soon turned out to have been perhaps some sort of weapon, as officer Amparano claims he was left with burns on his face and chest, of which he would say:

It was like a sunburn when you fall asleep at the pool. There were white blisters on the parts of my body facing that light. I also had trouble with sunlight. It was like right after you have your eyes checked and they are sensitive to light. That lasted about a week.

Image by Steve Baxter

When doctors examined him, they came to the conclusion that these particular burns seemed to have been caused by microwaves, although no one could figure out how it had happened. An investigation of the area of the purported encounter would turn up a circle of dead vegetation, where it is claimed nothing would grow for years after, although now it is apparently an almond orchard. What happened here? Who knows?

The following year we have a somewhat similar type of encounter, reported by a Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson, of Marshall County, Minnesota. On August 27, 1979, Johnson was on patrol near the North Dakota border when he saw a strange light apparently off in the wilderness. As he took a side road to get closer, the light apparently began to approach his car at an amazing rate of speed. It seemed to almost be on a collision course, and Johnson lost consciousness after being blinded by a bright flash to the sound of breaking glass. When he came to he was still sitting in his stalled car, happy to be alive but alarmed that he could not see anything. Oddly, his car had travelled some distance from where the object had engaged him, and he would say of his bizarre experience:

I noticed a very bright, brilliant light, 8 to 12 inches in diameter, 3 to 4 feet off the ground. The edges were very defined. I thought perhaps at first that it could be an aircraft in trouble, as it appeared to be a landing light from an aircraft. I proceeded south on #220. I proceeded about a mile and three tenths or a mile and four tenths when the light intercepted my vehicle causing damage to a headlight, putting a dent in the hood, breaking the windshield and bending antennas on top of the vehicle.

At this point, at the interception of the light, I was rendered either unconscious, neutralized or unknowing for a period of approximately 39 minutes. From the point of intersection, my Police vehicle proceeded south in a straight line 854 feet, at which point the brakes were engaged by forces unknown to myself, as I do not remember doing this, and I left about approximately 99 feet of black marks on the highway before coming to rest sideways in the road with the grille of my hood facing in an easterly direction. At 2:19 a.m., I radioed a 10-88 (Officer Needs Assistance) to my dispatcher in Warren.

Image by Steve Baxter

The officer called on his radio for help, and he was rushed to the hospital with what looked like burns on his face and irritation of the eyes. Meanwhile, the patrol car he had been in was found to have a smashed in right side headlight, a crack in the windshield on the driver’s side, an unusual circular dent on the hood, also on the driver’s side, and a roof antenna that was bent over at a 60-degree angle. The windshield was particularly weird, as it seemed to have sustained “inward and outward forces acting almost simultaneously.” All of the damage was on the driver’s side of the vehicle. The interior clock was also found to be 14 minutes slow, and oddly Johnson’s wristwatch had the same anomaly. Experts who examined the vehicle would be unable to explain the peculiar damage it had incurred, and it did not seem to be any normal collision, with the official explanation being “mechanical forces of unknown origin.” Luckily his eyes would heal and he would regain his eyesight.

These have just been a few of the more remarkable and harrowing encounters that officers of the law have faced, although there are more where this came from. It is interesting to note that these are seasoned professionals out on patrol not looking for the mysterious and certainly more or less considered to be more reliable witnesses than most. We are left to wonder just what would cause them to risk their reputations and standing to come forward to report these things, and if they were simply tall tales why they would do such a thing. Considering the police pedigree of these cases, it certainly lends them a bit of added weight, and truly plunges them into the bizarre.

• A special thanks to Steve Baxter for all of the amazing artwork he provided for this article.