“What do you think is the strangest-looking cryptid creature?” That was pretty much the question put to me a few weeks ago while doing radio. It’s a good question! After all, there are multiple creatures in the field of Cryptozoology. I have to admit, though that some are much stranger than others. Let’s have a look at some of them. Their weirdness just might surprise you!  Sometimes a monster is described as being so incredibly strange that we can do very little beyond than relate the facts – chiefly because the available facts are so strange and near-unfathomable, in terms of what they might represent. A perfect example of just such a uniquely weird case dates back to the 1950s. In terms of the location, all we know for sure is that it was somewhere in the vicinity of Falls City, Richardson County, Nebraska. As for the witness, we know him only as “John Hanks,” an admitted pseudonym that the man in question chose to use to protect his real identity. When you read the details of his experience, you will undoubtedly realize why the man was determined to protect his real name from prying, inquiring eyes. It’s a case that was carefully investigated by one of the world’s foremost experts on bizarre, flying beasts, Ken Gerhard.

It was late one night, at some point in the latter part of 1956, said Hanks, when he came face to face with a true giant; a creature in excess of nine feet in height, one that was humanoid in shape, but which most certainly could never be termed a member of the human race. That much, at least, we can ascertain from Hanks’ description. Ken Gerhard says, with a great deal of justification, that “[Hanks’] description of the creature sounds reminiscent of something out of an H.P. Lovecraft story.” Ken is not wrong in suggesting that Hanks’ monster would have found itself right at home in the pages of one of the legendary horror maestro’s novels. In fact, Gerhard is right on target. Hanks’ nightmarish thing had a pair of fifteen-foot-wide wings that, rather oddly, appeared to be made of bright, shining, aluminum! It was soon gone, high into the sky, and gone. That case has to be near the top of the weird list!

Dragons on the Loose!

Now, onto another strange one: a fascinating story of nothing less than a real-life dragon can be found in the pages of Charles Igglesden’s 1906 book, A Saunter Through Kent With Pen & Pencil. Kent being a county in southern England. Of a dragon reportedly seen in Cranbrook, Kent, centuries earlier, Igglesden wrote: “The magnificently wooded park of a hundred and fifty acres is richly watered by a huge lake made in 1812 and a smaller one within the grounds, while further west is an old mill pond that rejoices in a curious legend. It is an old one and the subject of it is very ancient indeed and as rare as it is horrible.” He continued that nothing less than a flying dragon was said to haunt the pond but that “on certain – or uncertain – nights of the year it wings its flight over the park and pays a visit to the big lake yonder. But he always returns to the Mill Pond and it is said to pay special attention of a vicious kind to young men and women who have jilted their lovers. A legend with a moral is this. But a winged dragon! A dragon of the ordinary kind is bad enough. But a flying dragon! Augh!”

An undeniably odd beast with paranormal abilities is the Bunyip. It’s a “thing” that hides in the swamps of Australia. Back in the mid-1800s, the staff of the Geelong Advertiser gave its readers a description of the weird-whatsit: “The Bunyip, then, is represented as uniting the characteristics of a bird and of an alligator. It has a head resembling an emu, with a long bill, at the extremity of which is a transverse projection on each side, with serrated edges like the bone of the stingray. Its body and legs partake of the nature of the alligator. The hind legs are remarkably thick and strong, and the fore legs are much longer, but still of great strength. The extremities are furnished with long claws, but the blacks say its usual method of killing its prey is by hugging it to death. When in the water it swims like a frog, and when on shore it walks on its hind legs with its head erect, in which position it measures twelve or thirteen feet in height.”

Beware of the Bunyip

And, finally: make mention of UFOs and it will likely conjure up imagery of flying saucers and diminutive, black-eyed, large headed ETs, and alien abductions. At least some UFOs, however, may have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with visitors from far away solar-systems and galaxies. Welcome to the world of a man named Trevor James Constable. Having investigated the UFO phenomenon extensively, Constable penned two books on the subject. They Live in the Sky was published in 1958 and Sky Creatures followed two decades later. In deeply studying the UFO phenomenon, Constable came to a fascinating conclusion concerning what he believed to be the truth of the mystery surrounding flying saucers. Constable’s conclusion was that UFOs are not nuts-and-bolts craft from distant worlds, but living creatures that inhabit the highest levels of the Earth’s atmosphere. While many UFO investigators scoffed at Constable’s undeniably unique ideas, none could deny that his theory was well thought out. To be sure, the field of Cryptozoology is filled with bizarre and mysterious beasts!

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There have been plenty of UFO cases and reports from the skies above our heads, but this seems to be far from the end of such unearthly phenomena. One are of supposed alien phenomena that doesn’t seem to get as much attention is that of strange things beneath the waters of out world. Known as USOs, meaning “Unidentified Submerged Objects,” or also “Unidentified Submersible Objects,” these are those fleetingly glimpsed “underwater UFOs” which are seen roaming about and entering and exiting oceans or lakes to create just as much awe and wonder as their airborne brethren. Here we will look at a selection or truly strange cases of unidentified submarine craft zipping about and inspiring wonder and debate.

Some earlier reports of USOs were mentioned in the book Unexplained!, by Jerome Clark, the earliest coming from all the way back in 1924, before the idea of UFOs was even really a thing. On July 1 of that year, pilot D.P. Lott and a photographer by the name of R.A. Smith were flying a small aircraft over the Hudson River, New York, when they saw below them two enormous mysterious objects in the water, each one estimated as being around 250 feet in length and travelling parallel to each other through the waves. The objects were described as being cylindrical in shape and with pointed ends, both leaving an “arrow-shaped wake” in their paths as they lumbered through. After some period of observation, the two massive objects submerged out of sight. It would later turn out that the Navy had no submarines scheduled to be in the area, and even if they did, these things were much larger than any known submarine of the era. The sighting remains unexplained.

In 1945 we have the case of the U.S. Army transport Delanof, which was off the coast of Alaska when an immense round object about 200 feet in diameter allegedly ominously emerged from the sea to loom over the water. It then purportedly turned to face the ship, then circled silently around them a few times as if examining them, before flying off out of sight. In 1947, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl was on his vessel in the South Pacific, capturing dolphins somewhere between South America and the Polynesian islands, and he and his crew saw “the shine of phosphorescent eyes drifting on the surface” several nights in a row. No one could figure it out, then one night, things would get stranger, of which he would say:

On one single occasion, we saw the sea boil and bubble while something like a big wheel came up and rotated in the air, while of our dolphins tried to escape by hurling themselves desperately through space.

The object then hovered a while before disappearing into the murky sea once again. In 1954 there is a report from the crew of the Dutch ship the Groote Beer, who observed a “flat, moon-shaped object” rise from beneath the grey waves near Long Island, New York. Captain Jan P. Boshoff would describe it as being gray, metallic, and having a ring of lights along its edge. It then flew off out of sight. Curiously, at around the same time, a strange sight was allegedly seen by the Honduran freighter Aliki P., which reported it as a “ball of fire moving in and out of the water without being extinguished, trailing white smoke and moving in erratic course. It is unknown if this could have been the same object witnessed by the Groote Beer.

The following year, in 1955, a couple by the name of the Bordes were out rowing at the Titicus Reservoir in Westchester County, New York, at around 1:30 a.m. when a rose-colored, luminous sphere rose from the water just a few feet from their boat and floated off towards shore, after which it rose sharply and then disappeared down into the water with a loud splash. It was eerie enough that the couple decided to call it a night and head back to shore. As they rowed along, eyes glued to the placid surface of the lake, they saw around 200 yards away two “parallel lights, wavy in shape but rigid, thirty feet in length” moving under the surface. Above these shapes was a “round light of lesser brilliance,” which was over the water but not hovering, rather seemingly attached to a larger body beneath, which could be seen as a “dim grey shape against the blackness.” When the couple reached the shore, they saw that the things was still out there, but when they returned some time later it was gone. They would insist it was not another boat out there with them.

From the 1960s we have a strange case that was mentioned in the book Invisible Residents, by Ivan Sanderson. The incident allegedly happened in 1963 off the coast of Puerto Rico, where the U.S. Navy was at the time conducting an anti-submarine warfare exercise. The command ship at the time was the anti-submarine warfare carrier USS Wasp, along with a fleet of five smaller vessels, mostly destroyers, and an unknown number of submarines below. It began when one of the sonar stations on one of the destroyers noticed that one of the submarines had broken formation and appeared to be pursuing a smaller, fast-moving unidentified object. This smaller object was reported as moving in excess of 150 knots, and would apparently lurk about the area for several days, zipping about underwater and tracked by both Naval ships and anti-submarine warfare patrol aircraft. The mysterious object was reported as doing maneuvers and travelling at speeds far beyond any submarine technology, as well as doing sudden, rapid dives to depths of up to 27,000 feet. Apparently visual confirmation was never made, so it is difficult to tell what this thing could have been.

In August of 1965 we have the case of the Soviet steamship Raduga, which was doing maneuver in the Red Sea when they had a rather bizarre encounter. It was reported that the crew observed a “fiery sphere” estimated as 60 meters in diameter spectacularly shoot out from underwater to hover over the waves for a time. It was noted that its exit from the water had caused a huge pillar of water to erupt forth with it. After a few minutes of hovering there motionlessly, the craft then smashed down into the water, leaving turbulence and roiling waves. Also in the 1960s was a report from a Marine at Guantanamo Bay, who would claim that personnel at the base would routinely see strange lights both in the sky and underwater, sometimes measuring up to 100 feet in length, but that they were always told not to discuss it. Years later, he would say of his experiences:

When I stood guard duty on the south side of the base, I witnessed on many, many nights UFOs landing and taking off out of the ocean. There were large blue lights moving around after their landing in the ocean and then slowly dimming down as they obviously descended deeper.

Yet another case from the files of the National UFO Recording Center (NUFORC) supposedly happened in 1964 at Laguna Beach, California. The witness claims to have gone to take a walk on the beach when he had a very weird experience. He explains what happened:

A long wooden stair case led down the cliffs to the beach and the waves appeared to be in the cliffs’ shadow from Highway 1 headlights. I saw a series of lights glowing from behind the waves about 5 feet apart and 8  inches in diameter. It/they gave the appearance of portholes on the side of a submersible. I have no explanation. When they interviewed a CA lighthouse keeper on the radio (his station was becoming automated – and you had to walk through a tunnel to reach it) and asked him if in all of his years of watching the surf he had seen anything strange – he reported seeing the same thing — with no idea what it could be.

From the 1970s there was an account given by an Admiral V.A. Domislovsky, chief of the Pacific Fleet’s Intelligence Department of the Soviet Navy. He would report that he had witnessed a gigantic cylindrical object around 800-900 meters long, which hovered over the water and emitted swarms of smaller flying objects “like bees from a beehive.” These smaller objects were then claimed to have shot down into the eater to disappear for a time, before flying back out and back into the larger “mothership.” This happened several times, after which the colossal ship loaded up all of the smaller craft and flew off at terrific speed.

In more recent decades there have been various other reports of USOs as well. From the files of NUFORC is one from February of 2007, reported by a witness who says that at the time she had been aboard a cruise ship “Damn Princess,” heading back to San Francisco from a cruise of the Mexican Riviera. As they passed Half Moon Bay, she claims to have had a very otherworldly experience, of which she says:

I was coughing up a storm at ~2 A.M., and my husband went to find a hot lemonade. I was awake anyway, so I pulled back the curtains and stood in the window to watch the ship’s churning water – mesmerizing! After about 5 minutes, three softly glowing objects came into view – three uniform, nearly spherical objects, evenly spaced in a line parallel to the ship’s hull and hovering just above the water surface. Based on the appearance of dolphins from the window, and of people seen standing on piers, I’d say that these spheres were somewhat larger – maybe 12-15’ high. Perfectly smooth, and with a pale bluish-white glow. They appeared to stay in one place while the ship moved past them. They were hovering, but didn’t disturb the water below them. Just as they went out of my sight, the left one (toward the bow) splashed down into the water and disappeared.

Of course, I hadn’t thought to tear myself away from the window to get the cell phone or camera (both in the safe, and of doubtful use through a window at night…). And, of course, three more glowing spheres, hovering in a straight line along the edge of the wake, came past the window 2 minutes later! 4-5 minutes after that, two more spheres were seen, but farther away from the ship. The first and second groups had been located just where the ship’s wake or foam line ends. The last group was about twice as far away. The “bow-ward” of these last two also dropped down into the water and disappeared. I was still standing at the window, in amazement, when my husband came back with lemon tea. I told him about the spheres, and we watched for a while, but no more sightings.

Another report from NUFORC happened as recently as 2017. In March of that year, a group of unnamed witnesses aboard an oil rig offshore supply ship (OSV) in the Gulf of Mexico, about 80 miles southeast of New Orleans, when they saw something very bizarre indeed. They claim that an immense, oval-shaped object estimated as being more than five times bigger than the 240-foot ship they were on rose up out of the ocean, yet oddly appeared to not be wet. The massive object was completely silent, and rose to hover around 30 feet over the waves before rapidly ascending out of sight at a 30-degree angle.

That very same year we have a report from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) which comes from Green Bay, a sub-basin of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of the Fox River near Little Suamico in Wisconsin. The unnamed witness claims that on November 18, 2017, he was at the lake when he observed a triangular-shaped UFO measuring around 100 to 150 feet in diameter emerge from the water. Susan Birttnen, of Wisconsin MUFON, would say of the report:

He reports they witnessed a triangular-shaped object fly out of the water of Green Bay, traveling at approximately 35 knots. It was so close that they could hear a muffled jet sound. As it came out of the water it turned on its side as it traveled west and gained elevation. The color was dark and it had blue flashing lights. The elevation was at 500 feet and the distance was less than 1,000 feet. The side of the triangle was between 100 to 150 feet. Based on the evidence and the data provided by the witness, I conclude that this case is in the unknown category.

What was this thing? Who knows? Lastly, we have our most recent report yet, logged in 2021 from the skies over Leeward, Oahu, in Hawaii. In January of that year, numerous witnesses began calling 911 reporting seeing a glowing blue oblong mass and a smaller white light darting about the sky, before the blue one went crashing into the water below. One witness only known as Moriah would tell Hawaii News Now of her own sighting of the spectacle playing out in the sky:

I look up and then I was like oh s***! I started calling my husband and them because they were all in the garage. I was like hey. Come look up there. See if you see what I see. They all said yea! I don’t know what it was. This one was going so fast.  It went land in the water. Whatever it is. We called 911. For have like one cop or somebody for come out and come check em out. My husband went look up and he seen the white one coming. The white one was smaller. Was coming in the same direction as the blue one.

After the blue one had gone into the sea, the smaller white one then apparently shot off over the mountain to disappear. Numerous people in the area reported the same thing to police, with several people even taking video footage of it all. In the meantime, officials from the Federal Aviation Administration insisted that there had been no aircraft incident or accident in the area of the sightings, and no reports of a missing airplane. All of these reports leave us with some rather perplexing mysteries. What is there, if anything, roaming about under the waves of out seas and lakes? What do they want and why are they hiding beneath the waves? There is no way to know the answers, but reports of USOs keep coming in, and it is a curious subspecies of UFO report that perhaps deserves more attention than it has received.

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The question of whether or not there is or ever was life on Mars remains unanswered and we may not know for a while longer as NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s first attempt at collecting samples to return to Earth came up empty – literally! On August 6^th, the rover drilled into the Martian ground but was unable to collect any rock or dirt from the Red Planet.

But there may be another way to find out if Mars ever had life. In a new paper by scientists Ryuki Hyodo and Tomohiro Usui from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), they claimed that Mars’ moon Phobos may provide the answer regarding the possibility of ancient life on the Red Planet and that the upcoming 2024 launch of the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission should help with getting that information as the spacecraft will collect samples from the moon’s regolith to return to Earth.

Phobos photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2008.

So, why Phobos? Since Mars had sustained numerous meteor impacts over billions of years that would have flung pieces of the planet into space, some of that debris may have landed on its moon. And in that debris, there may be evidence of organic molecules, chemical biosignatures, fossilized microorganisms, and even DNA.

This is actually quite possible as we have found fragments of Mars right here on Earth with the meteorite named Allan Hills 84001 (or ALH 84001). The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica back in 1984 by geologists, was believed to have formed 4 billion years ago on the Red Planet and crashed into Earth around 13,000 years ago.

The debris that possibly flew into Phobos from meteor impacts may provide scientists with all of the important factors in searching for past life on the Red Planet as Hyodo and Usui explained, “The random nature of the crater-forming impacts on Mars statistically delivers all possible Martian materials, from sedimentary to igneous rocks that cover all of its geological eras.”

Close-up of Phobos in 1998.

If there was life on Mars and if it was thrown into space by an impact, it is probably dead by now, so that’s why the MMX craft will be looking to collect Sterilized and Harshly Irradiated Genes, and Ancient Imprints (or SHIGAI which means “dead remains” in Japanese).

Based on how close the moon is to its planet, debris from Mars could have certainly made its way there. Discovered by astronomer Asaph Hall in 1877, Phobos is the larger of Mars’ two moons (the other is named Deimos), measuring 17 by 14 by 11 miles (27 by 22 by 18 kilometers). It is so close to the planet that it completes three orbits each Earth day and it is constantly moving closer to Mars at a rate of 6 feet (1.8 meters) every hundred years.