There’s no doubt at all that one of the most disturbing mysteries in the field of the “unexplained” is that of what have become known as cattle mutilations. Reports of poor farm animals attacked, killed, and dissected date back to the 1960s. Who or what is the culprit very much depends on whose theories you adhere to. For some, the mutes are the work of occultists. Others say it’s all down to government agencies secretly looking for dangerous and deadly viruses in the food-chain. And, there’s the scenario of the culprits being nothing less than extraterrestrial in nature. The mystery still remains. With that said, today I’m going to share with you two of the strangest cases of all time. In 1976, there was a wave of both cattle and horse mutilations in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. They were carefully investigated and documented by Police Officer Gabe Valdez of Espanola. Officer Valdez soon found himself at the heart of the sickening puzzle.

One of the most bizarre events occurred in June 1976, as Valdez’s files demonstrate. Valdez said in his papers: “Investigations around the area revealed that a suspected aircraft of some type had landed twice, leaving three pod marks positioned in a triangular shape. The diameter of each pod was 14 inches. Emanating from the two landings were smaller triangular shaped tripods 28 inches and 4 inches in diameter. Investigation at the scene showed that these small tripods had followed the cow for approximately 600 feet. Tracks of the cow showed where she had struggled and fallen. The small tripod tracks were all around the cow. Other evidence showed that grass around the tripods, as they followed the cow, had been scorched. Also a yellow oily substance was located in two places under the small tripods. This substance was submitted to the State Police Lab. The Lab was unable to detect the content of the substance. A sample of the substance was submitted to a private lab and they were unable to analyze the substance due to the fact that it disappeared or disintegrated. Skin samples were analyzed by the State Police Lab and the Medical Examiner’s Office. It was reported that the skin had been cut with a sharp instrument.”

Three days later, Valdez had a face-to-face discussion about all of this with Dr. Howard Burgess, of the New Mexico-based Sandia Laboratories. The plan was to have the immediate vicinity checked for radiation. Valdez’s plan was a good one. It turned out that the radiation level in the location was no less than twice above normal. Valdez’s thoughts on the matter: “It is the opinion of this writer that radiation findings are deliberately being left at the scene to confuse investigators.” Matters were nowhere near finished. Valdez’s files make that abundantly obvious: “There was also evidence that the tripod marks had returned and removed the left ear. Tripod marks were found over Mr. Gomez’s tire tracks of his original visit. The left ear was intact when Mr. Gomez first found the cow. The cow had a 3-month-old calf which has not been located since the incident. This appears strange since a small calf normally stays around the mother even though the cow is dead.” Without a doubt, a grisly and disturbing situation.

As to the matters of Satanic groups and the likes of coyotes being responsible, Valdez recorded: “Both have been ruled out due to expertise and preciseness and the cost involved to conduct such a sophisticated and secretive operation. It should also be noted that during the spring of 1974 when a tremendous amount of cattle were lost due to heavy snowfalls, the carcasses had been eaten by predators. These carcasses did not resemble the carcasses of the mutilated cows. Investigation has narrowed down to these theories which involve (1) Experimental use of Vitamin B12 and (2) The testing of the lymph node system. During this investigation an intensive study has been made of (3) What is involved in germ warfare testing, and the possible correlation of these 3 factors (germ warfare testing, use of Vitamin B12, testing of the lymph node system).”

Another, equally unsettling, case surfaced in the same area in 1978. Officer Valdez recorded it all: “This four year old cross Hereford and Black Angus native cow was found lying on left side with rectum, sex organs, tongue, and ears removed. Pinkish blood from [illegible] was visible, and after two days the blood still had not coagulated. Left front and left rear leg were pulled out of their sockets apparently from the weight of the cow which indicates that it was lifted and dropped back to the ground. The ground around and under the cow was soft and showed indentations where the cow had been dropped. 600 yards away from the cow were the 4-inch circular indentations similar to the ones found at the Manuel Gomez ranch on 4-24-78. This cow had been dead approximately [illegible] hours and was too decomposed to extract samples. This is the first in a series of mutilations in which the cows’ legs are broken. Previously the animals had been lifted from the brisket with a strap. These mutilated animals all dehydrate rapidly (in one or two days).”

The mystery surrounding those 1970s-era cases was never solved. Today – thankfully – cattle mutilations are nowhere as prevalent as they were in the 1970s. This is one of those mysteries that all of us should hope goes away for good.

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A “potentially hazardous” asteroid will pass between the Earth and the Moon on September 1, 2020. This same asteroid is scheduled to come back in 2055 with a much higher probability of impact. Why aren’t we using this well-defined, close proximity space rock to practice our asteroid-deflecting strategies on? Are those strategies all bluff and bluster by the powers that be to hide the real purpose of these programs?

“In highly alarming news from NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), asteroid hunters have identified a ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid due to pass Earth in September at a paltry distance of 71,805km – just one-fifth of the distance between us and the Moon (384,399km). Asteroid 2011 ES4, which measures 160ft (49 meters), is expected to buzz the Earth at 29,375kph on September 1 at 10:49am EDT (3:49pm BST).”

Let’s see. This is mid-July 2020 (very close to the 51st anniversary of the first humans landing on the Moon – more on that connection in a minute) and asteroid 2011 ES4 is scheduled to fly by in about six weeks. It took the Apollo 11 astronauts three days to get to the Moon. At one-fifth that distance, it would take a rocket or a missile traveling at 1969 speed about 14 hours to reach that distance. NASA and CNEOS has been tracking this asteroid since 2011, so it’s not one of these surprise space rocks that appear suddenly as they a) graze the atmosphere in a spectacular light show; b) plunge harmlessly into an ocean; or c) come close to killing thousands in Siberia. While media sites like RT.com are exposing this low potential hazard, Space Force and NASA’s asteroid deflection department are not. Sure, it’s not an impact danger this time around and it’s not huge (ironicially, about the size of the U.S. Capitol building), it seems like it would be a great target for deflection practice.

“2011 ES4 can be reached with a journey of 370 days. This trajectory would require a delta-v of 8.283 km/s. To put this into perspective, the delta-v to launch a rocket to Low-Earth Orbit is 9.7 km/s. There are 16,915 potential trajectories and launch windows to this asteroid.”

Sigh. SpaceReference.org compiles data from the NASA/JPL Small Body Database, the IAU Minor Planet Center, and the NASA/JPL Center for Near Earth Object Studies. Obviously, that 370-day journey is a planned trip like the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission scheduled to impact a 180-meter (590 ft) asteroidal moon of Asteroid 65803 Didymos in 2022. With 2011 ES4, we’re talking about testing our emergency asteroid deflection capability – and this isn’t even an emergency situation because we’ve been tracking its paths since 2011. However, the current responses to the pandemic highlight the importance of practicing for emergencies. Why not use 2011 to practice impacting and deflecting or destroying an asteroid with a non-nuclear missile? Wouldn’t Elon Musk like to draw attention away from his other problems and volunteer a rocket for such an important mission?

We would have appreciated a deflection.

“We have the capability — physically, technically — to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts. We are now able to very slightly and subtly reshape the solar system in order to enhance human survival.”

Former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, co-founder and Chair Emeritus of the B612 Foundation, a private nonprofit foundation of scientists, engineers and former astronauts dedicated to planetary science and planetary defense against asteroids and other near-Earth object impacts, said that in 2011 – the year 2011 ES4 was discovered. We’ve had the expertise at least since 2011 to do a dry run on 2011 ES4 as it passes less than one-fifth the distance of the Moon.

Why aren’t we trying it?

Some of the most infamous UFO sightings in history are the ones that have been made by beloved public figures or famous people. These are the ones that truly resonate with us, and stir a sense of awe within us, no matter how believable they may be. Certainly one of the most sensational of these was the time the U.S. president Jimmy Carter saw a UFO, which would turn into a case that has been discussed and debated to this day.

James Earl Carter Jr., better known to the masses as Jimmy Carter, was the 39th president of the United States, serving from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he narrowly beat out incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the Presidential race and was known for several sweeping changes, such as pardoning all Vietnam War draft dodgers, the establishment of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education, as well as his involvement with pushing the Panama Canal Treaties, the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), and advocating the return of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama. His presidency was marked by such turmoil as the Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and he is also known for his philanthropist work, founding the nongovernmental, not-for-profit human rights organization called the Carter Center, which won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Yet for all of this some of the most interesting tales surrounding the former president come from his years when he was a Senator in Georgia, most notably the time he had a UFO sighting that would fundamentally change his whole official stance on the matter.

Jimmy Carter

At the time, Carter was serving in the Georgia State Senate, his aim to be Governor of the state, and on one evening in January of 1969, he was getting ready to deliver a speech at a meeting of the Lion’s Club at Leary, Georgia. At the time he was with a group of around 20 others at a small outdoor restaurant right after sundown when his attention was drawn to something strange in the sky to the West, which appeared as a green light that steadily got brighter as it seemed to approach them. Carter would say of the strange events that would follow:

All of a sudden, one of the men looked up and said, ‘Look, over in the west!’ And there was a bright light in the sky. We all saw it. And then the light, it got closer and closer to us. And then it stopped, I don’t know how far away, but it stopped beyond the pine trees. And all of a sudden it changed color to blue, and then it changed to red, then back to white. And we were trying to figure out what in the world it could be, and then it receded into the distance.

In some retellings of his story he made mention of the fact that he did not take the phenomenon to be a solid object, although he believed it to be self-illuminated. Carter would keep the sighting mostly to himself, but sometimes brought it up in interviews, and considering his high standing he was encouraged to finally log an official report with the International UFO Bureau in 1973, after which it would be officially investigated in 1976. Considering that this was a full seven years after the sighting, most witnesses either did not remember the incident or that that it was just a weird anomaly that they hadn’t given much thought to over the years, but Carter had certainly been affected by it, even going so far as to tell reporters in his 1976 election campaign that one of his goals was to create more transparency in the government with regards to UFOs, and he would say:

One thing’s for sure, I’ll never make fun of people who say they’ve seen unidentified objects in the sky. If I become President, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists.

It is important to note that while Carter did believe he had seen something very strange that night, he did not necessarily think it was an alien spacecraft, and tended to be rather vague about what he thought it might be, but he was definitely open-minded, and was seen by hopeful UFOlogists as perhaps the first American president that would blow the lid on government secrecy with regards to UFOs, and pursue full disclosure. In the end, it would turn out that this was not to be. Interestingly, once he was elected he sort of backpedaled on his promise to pursue the matter, and rather than try enact any sort of disclosure he began strongly denying that what he had seen was an alien spacecraft, even going so far as to assert that extraterrestrials had never visited Earth, and proclaiming that no government that he knew of had secret knowledge of UFOs or had ever been part of a cover-up. Instead of demonstrating an openness to the phenomenon that he had once embraced due to his own sighting, he began to go into full denial and general dismissal of UFOs. Carter was less inclined to take the ambiguous stance of “I don’t know” anymore, and became more closed on the subject while simultaneously starting to voice more strongly the opinion that he had just seen some sort of experimental aircraft. Before long, Carter would get into his presidency full swing, and talk of the UFO he had seen would be swept under the carpet and largely forgotten, relegated to history as a curiosity and nothing more.

Theories on what Carter saw have run the range. There are of course the conspiracy theories that he did in fact see an alien craft, or at least really believed he had, and that he had shied away from that explanation under pressure from those within the government. A big explanations offered by skeptics was that he had merely seen the planet Venus, which is thought to have been particularly bright on the evening in question. However, Carter was an avid amateur astronomer, and firmly dismissed this possibility. Another idea is that he saw some other atmospheric phenomenon or that it was a high altitude glowing barium cloud launched from Eglin AFB for the purpose of studying the upper atmosphere. The cloud theory would fit in with the location, the elevation angle, and the non-solid properties claimed of it, as well as the color, size, and brightness of the object. A professor and member of the Carter family, Carl G. Justus, would originally offer this explanation, later explaining:

In the 1960s and early 70s I worked on an Air Force sponsored project that studied the upper atmosphere using releases of glowing chemical clouds, produced by rockets launched from Eglin AFB rocket range in Florida. Some of these chemical clouds, notably sodium and barium, were visible by the process of resonance scattering of sunlight. Clouds of this type had to be launched not long after sunset or not long before sunrise. This was due to the fact that the cloud had to be in sunlight at high altitude, while it was still dark enough at ground level for the cloud to be visible against the dark sky. 

I can verify from personal experience that under clear skies, a barium cloud such as this would easily have been visible from the distance of Leary, GA. Carter reported the UFO ‘appeared from West’. The direction of Eglin AFB from Leary, GA is approximately WSW. Thus, this barium cloud at Eglin is consistent with Carter’s reported ‘UFO’ as to time, elevation, AND direction. Furthermore, the appearance reported by Carter is totally consistent with a high-altitude barium cloud. His report stated that it was ‘bluish at first, then reddish, luminous not solid’. A neutral barium cloud would initially glow bluish or greenish, with parts of it taking on a reddish glow as some the barium becomes ionized in the high-altitude sunlight. The size and brightness, reported as being about that of the moon, would also be consistent with a barium cloud at Eglin, as viewed from Leary, GA.

Is that what Carter saw? Glowing chemical clouds? Or was it perhaps something more mysterious? The case sticks out because of the high standing of the witness, as well as the odd way he seemed to back away from it in later years. What seemed to have been perhaps a turning point for government disclosure instead became just another obscure UFO report buried in history. Whatever it was that Jimmy Carter saw, it has stirred a bit of debate ever since, and I wouldn’t hold one’s breath for any real answers any time soon.

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

“I put them in a room with a voice-activated recorder and that convinced me. When that boy was talking about them coming back to get us — you had an 18-year-old boy that had never seen anything. He was genuinely scared. He was telling Charlie, ‘Don’t talk to the deputies. They’ll come back and get us.’ They didn’t make it up. I can guarantee that.”

Few accounts of UFO sightings or alien abductions have survived the years, the investigations and the skepticism as the so-called Pascagoula incident has. There are many excellent books and articles about it, some written by the two men involved, but few things revealed in the 47 years since that infamous night of October 10, 1973, can match a police recording from that night which surfaced recently and was made public by witness Calvin Parker, who, with Charles (Charlie) Hickson, was unknowingly recorded by Sheriff Fred Diamond and Capt. Glenn Ryder of the Jackson County (Mississippi) Sheriff’s Office. While it’s Ryder who revealed his belief in the story, the tape was delivered to Parker by an unnamed member of the Pascagoula Police Department who was on duty that night and claimed to have fielded “roughly 50 phone calls that night from people claiming to have seen something unusual in the sky,” according to the Clarion (MS) Ledger.

“I’d never heard it — not the full recording — just the piece where Charlie and I were locked in the room and they walked out. I was surprised they had the whole thing on tape. I had no idea. Apparently, Charlie didn’t, either. They was all hid.”

“They” were the voice-activated microphones hidden in the room where they were interviewed. Parker admits that he and co-worker Hickson (now deceased) had no idea they were being recorded – he learned about it later when a snippet of the recording surfaced. Hearing the whole thing today, Parker says he regrets staying silent during the interview. Fortunately, Hickson did a lot of talking. However, that didn’t impress Diamond and Ryder. Ryder, who was interviewed for the story but was not the person who gave Parker the tape, says that what Hickson told Parker after the officers left the room turned him around. Hickson said:

“Jesus Christ, God have mercy, I thought I’d been through enough of Hell on this earth and now I’ve got to go through something like this, see. But they could have, you know, I guess they, well, they could have harmed us, son. They had us. They could have done anything to us, but they didn’t hurt me.”

The fear in Hickson’s voice is what Ryder says convinced him the men truly believed and were terribly frightened by whatever it was had happened to them. Parker told the Clarion that hearing the story again in their own words “kind of choked me up a little bit.” He says he had been communication over the Internet with the officer who had the original recording but was not expecting to get it until he “just showed up at my house” with two copies. You can listen to the entire recording here.

What can we make of this new revelation about this well-documented incident? Does it prove Parker and Hickson were abducted and taken aboard an alien spaceship? Not really. Does it confirm all of the other accounts of witnesses calling to report a UFO, with some eventually revealing contacts of their own? No. Does it at least confirm something happened to these two men that caused them to continue to tell this story 47 years later (in Parker’s case) with the same conviction heard on the recording of that night? It’s tough to fake that kind of conviction.

Does it convince you?

The region known as the Berkshires of western Massachusetts is a charming, rural area dotted with small towns and possessing vast areas of pristine wilderness that make it a popular destination for hiking, fishing, and other myriad outdoor activities. It is for the most part a quaint, quiet area full of relaxing natural splendor and placid little towns in which not much ever really happens. Yet in 1969 there would be a series of otherworldly, inexplicable events that would play out in this secluded place, which would grip the entire region, and capture the imagination of people around the world.

Beginning on the evening of September 1, 1969, various people in the tiny town of Sheffield began reporting seeing a strange disc-like object with an array of bright lights on its underbelly. In some cases, more than one of these bizarre craft was supposedly seen, and in every case they were described as completely silent. Over 40 people would report seeing this strange sight in the skies over the area, and many of the calls were made by frightened residents to the local radio station, WSBS. The manager of the station, David Isy, would say of it:

We had listeners call the radio station that evening. At the time they didn’t know it was a UFO, they just, you know, called the station to say something bizarre has happened.

The Berkshires

While all of this was weird enough, some reports that would emerge from the time are more outlandish than others. One of the strangest cases on that evening was supposedly experienced by a local boy by the name of Thomas Reed, who was 9 years old at the time. On the evening of September 1, he claims that he was driving with his mother, grandmother, and brother when they all saw brilliant lights through the trees out over the road ahead as they were crossing a covered bridge, which got so intense the interior of the car was lit up as if it were daylight outside, and they could get a glimpse of a “a tarnished circular looking vessel.” At the same time, they experienced what they describe as a sort of change in air pressure, and a feeling like an electric charge in the air. Then something altogether even stranger happened.

The family allegedly suddenly and without warning found themselves on the road over a mile away in darkness, with people’s seats switched around, and looking at the clock showed that three hours had passed. The strange craft was gone and they were in pitch black night. None of them could really remember much of what had happened during that missing time, but Thomas had fleeting, confused memories of it in his mind, like a half remembered dream, including some sort of indoor hangar bay, of which he has said:

We encountered something. It was definitely not of this world. We had a black and white television at time and the imagery that we saw on this thing was unbelievable. There were lights that looked like fluorescent tubing inside this hangar. This hallway we had seen was circular with a Y-configuration almost to control the flow of traffic. This one room had a bowed-in wall that was rounded. This was not something that you would have seen in 1969 anywhere else. I have no idea where I was, but I know that what I saw was very different than anything I’ve even seen today 50 years later.

Reed would in later years admit that he had been abducted on several other occasions before that. Reed was not the only person to have such a strange experience at the time. Another odd case revolves around a boy named Tom Warner, who was claimed to have been taken aboard the ship in a beam of light right out of his home in front of his startled babysitter, and would later say that he had had telepathic communications with aliens while aboard. Another girl named Melanie Kirchdorfer also claimed that aliens had taken her aboard their ship, and that while there she had seen other kids from her school in some sort of dazed trance. There were also many reports of people with missing time who could remember nothing of what they saw, and considering these were all disparate people who did not know each other all reporting more or less similar things on the same evening it is rather remarkable.

A very strange account from the evening was also given by a local named Kevin Titus, who was also just a child at the time. He says that he was in the nearby town of Great Barrington on that evening looking for a missing cow along with his friend. He would claim that they had come across the animal lying on the ground in a mangled state as if it had been ripped apart, yet there was no blood anywhere. As the two shocked youths looked upon that macabre scene, they were allegedly suddenly bathed in a bright, white light, after which they saw “a tortoise shell-shaped craft” hovering above for a moment before shooting off into the night.

The Berkshires UFO Incident was all over the news at the time, and generated so much intense interest that a huge granite monument with a plaque was built in 2015 by the covered Sheffield bridge where Reed first saw the craft, and the Great Barrington Historical Society has formally labelled it as an official historical “significant and true event.” Unfortunately, the monument was not liked or embraced by everyone in the area, and was the frequent target of vandals until it was finally removed in 2019 after years of controversy and legal disputes orbiting it. The incident has been oft-discussed in UFO circles, appearing on TV documentaries such as “Paranormal Paparazzi,” “Alien Mysteries,” “Uncovering Aliens,” “Ancient Aliens,” and the new “Unsolved Mysteries,” and even has an exhibit at the International UFO Museum And Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico. However, Thomas Reed himself has long tried to downplay the sensationalism of it all, saying that his experience was ambiguous and that the news and these shows tend to overplay it all. He would say:

The papers and the stories have gotten so ridiculous that the truth has been lost. First of all, they keep using the cornball terminology you might find — the abduction stuff. That’s not what happened. Our family is very credible. We’re not a bunch of lunatics. Now, we do remember being in what looked like an airplane hanger. We didn’t stay in the car. We were removed from the vehicle, that’s true. Where we were, I don’t know.

So what was going on here? It is all very curious that so many disparate people who did not know each other reported pretty much the same thing at around the same time, which has propelled the case into one of the most notable of UFO history. What did these people see and what are we to make of the tales of abductions and missing time? Is this just a creepy anomaly or is there more to it? No one really knows, and the incident continues to hang over the area to this day.