I’m not saying that the bacteria you just killed after cleaning your counter for the umpteenth time today with antibacterial wipes is aliens … but a new study suggests it could be. Not only that, researchers have figured out how entire colonies of tiny alien beings could survive and even thrive on a three-year trip from Mars and beyond. In fact, these alien bacteria may have been our ancestors due to a strange new method of panspermia called massapanspermia. I’m not saying WE’RE aliens, but …

“The origin of life on Earth is the biggest mystery of human beings. Scientists can have totally different points of view on the matter. Some think that life is very rare and happened only once in the Universe, while others think that life can happen on every suitable planet. If panspermia is possible, life must exist much more often than we previously thought.”

A space rock or a spaceship?

Dr. Akihiko Yamagishi, a Professor at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, not only believes panspermia is possible, he’s spent years trying to prove how it works. He has been the lead investigator for the Tanpopo space mission which put microorganisms on the outside of the International Space Station to test whether they could survive. Three Deinococcus species known for their ability to live in extreme conditions on Earth — D. radiodurans, D. aerius and D. aetherius – were sent into space for varying lengths of time, then brought back for study. The results of this research have recently been published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology and summarized in a press release.

“After three years, the researchers found that all aggregates superior to 0.5 mm partially survived to space conditions. Observations suggest that while the bacteria at the surface of the aggregate died, it created a protective layer for the bacteria beneath ensuring the survival of the colony. Using the survival data at one, two, and three years of exposure, the researchers estimated that a pellet thicker than 0.5 mm would have survived between 15 and 45 years on the ISS. The design of the experiment allowed the researcher to extrapolate and predict that a colony of 1 mm of diameter could potentially survive up to 8 years in outer space conditions.”

In other words, the researchers found that D. radiodurans (listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the World’s Toughest Bacterium) needed a colony only 1 mm in diameter (.03 inches) and .5 mm thick (.015 inches) tucked in a crack on a space rock to survive up to 45 years in space. The D. radiodurans that may have made it to Earth on one such panspermic ride would have been protected by a shell of dead comrades. This aggregate mode of survival and transportation is known as the Borg Collective – just kidding, it’s known as massapanspermia, although even the study found some similarities.

“Comparison of the survival of different DNA repair-deficient mutants suggested that cell aggregates exposed in space for 3 years suffered DNA damage, which is most efficiently repaired by the uvrA gene and uvdE gene products, which are responsible for nucleotide excision repair and UV-damage excision repair. Collectively, these results support the possibility of microbial cell aggregates (pellets) as an ark for interplanetary transfer of microbes within several years.”

Mom?

Similarly to the Borg, the microorganisms repaired their own DNA damage, the arks were more like pellets (two Borg ships were spheres), the aggregate resembles the Collective and the conclusion even used the word “Collectively”!

Does all of this “collectively” prove panspermia and the theory that micro-ancestors came to Earth from another planet? Not yet … but it moves the needle slightly closer to it. Next step is to see if D. radiodurans could survive a crash landing on a meteor.

I’m not saying we’re aliens … yet.

The UFO phenomenon has a habit of appearing all over the place, affecting the lives of countless people from all walks of life. Although the common image is that these things only happen to bumpkins living out in the sticks, this can’t be further from the truth. All manner of people have claimed to have seen UFOs, including those in high up positions. It is these stories from people from upstanding circumstances that really make people sit up and take notice, and one of these must surely be the time a doctor, former assistant attorney general, and member of the Board of Medical Practice of the U.S. state of Vermont came forward with a series of very strange UFO encounters that are hard to really write off.

As far as credentials go, those of Terry Lovelace are impeccable. He was assistant attorney general of the US Territory of American Samoa, general counsel for the LBJ Tropical Medical Center there, president of the American Samoa Bar Association, a member of the Board of Medical Practice of the U.S. state of Vermont, and Assistant Attorney General for Vermont up to his retirement. As far as reliable witnesses go, you can’t really ask for much better, and Lovelace has quite the bizarre tale to tell. The story begins back in 1973, when Lovelace joined the U.S. Air Force right after graduating high school and trained as a medic/EMT. His post was at Whiteman Air Force Base, in the state of Missouri, previously known as Sedalia Air Force Base, and serving variously as a B-2 bomber base and a missile base, home of the 351st Strategic Missile Wing and holding numerous Minuteman II nuclear-armed ICBM silos spread out all over the rural area. Here he was assigned as a base medic driving an ambulance, and at the time of his experience he worked the graveyard shift from 11 PM to 8 AM, along with a partner he calls “Toby.” In January of 1975 they were out on their usual shift, and it started like any other night, with the two of them sitting outside the ambulance looking at the stars and waiting for a call while Toby, an amateur astronomer, excitedly explained the constellations and planets. Their shifts were typically uneventful, with whole evenings going by without anything happening, but this night would turn out to be very eventful indeed, and would change their lives forever.

Terry Lovelace

At 2 AM they were roused out of their wistful daydreaming by a call that a missile technician had fallen into one of the missile silos, about 18 miles away across rows of endless soybean fields. They tore off in response to the call, and were surprised to arrive to find the place crawling with armed security police, who told them to go no further. As Lovelace looked over the scene wondering what all of the commotion was about he said that his attention was drawn to a “matt-black diamond shaped object” about the size of a van hovering over the missile silo. The strange object hung there for an estimated 15 minutes before it “just shot off to the east from a dead stop to the speed of a bullet without accelerating.” He claims that after that both he and Toby were debriefed and told in no uncertain terms that they were not to talk about or disclose anything of what they had just witnessed, and the explanation they were given was that it was a type of experimental helicopter. And that was that. Both of them knew that what they had seen was no helicopter, but there was no further information and they tried to put it out of their minds.

Fast forward 2 years and Lovelace and Toby were still working the same shift at Whiteman AFB, and one day they decided to use some of their vacation leave to go camping, something neither one of them had ever actually done before and wanted to try. Since Lovelace was an amateur photographer, Toby suggested that they take their trip to a place called “Devil’s Den,” which had a high plateau perfect for stargazing, as well as plentiful nature and wildlife to photograph. They drove out there and decided to go deep into an off limits nature preserve area away from the main camping area, where they would have more peace and quiet and better scenery. Lovelace was upset that he had forgotten his camera, but it was such a nice area that he soon didn’t mind too much, and they set up their tent planning to stay for two nights. That night, they would have the first of a series of odd encounters. Lovelace would say:

On our first night we were exhausted from a hike we took when we first arrived, a long drive and setting-up a campsite. About 9:00 PM Toby noticed three stars on the horizon. They made a perfect triangle. They were small at first and moved in perfect unison. It became obvious this was one solid object and not three independent lights orchestrated to move in perfect formation. We watched it ascend and grow closer and much larger until it was directly over top of our campsite. We noticed that as it passed through a star field, it blotted them until it had moved past. Then they would blink back on. So, it was one solid object. It was odd that at first this thing in the sky made us anxious but that soon dissipated. We noticed the whole forest was now dead silent when an hour earlier it had been alive with crickets and tree frogs. While this thing was over our heads we became abruptly disinterested. We were also suddenly drowsy. Not tired but almost sedated. At midnight we just decided to get in the tent and go to sleep. The apathy puzzles me to this day.

The weirdness would continue at 3 AM that same evening, when Lovelace claims to have woken to brilliant multicolor lights that lit up the entire tent and made night seem like day. Since they were out in the middle of nowhere, well away from other campers, the only source of the light they could think of was the strange object they had seen earlier. As the brilliant lights flickered and danced around them, the only thing protecting them the tent’s thin sheet of fabric, Lovelace says that he overcame his building sense of unease in order to take a peek outside. He says of what he saw:

I pushed Toby aside, so we could both look outside toward the meadow. There was an enormous UFO as large as a five-story office building. It was a triangle with each leg being about a city block in length. It was fifty feet tall and sat stationary, thirty feet over the meadow floor. There was a noise too. It was a low bass hum or drone.  Not so much loud as it was powerful. It was like standing nest to a running diesel train engine or a large industrial machine.

We saw what I first took to be children walking around the meadow underneath the triangle. There was a column of white light, about thirty feet in diameter shining down from the center of the triangle. We watched as these little people walked into the light and just dissolved, one by one until they were gone. The hum stopped and the corner lights all returned to brilliant white. The white cylinder from the middle stopped and the thing rose about like a hot air balloon. It made a one-third (clockwise?) rotation and continued its ascent, picking up speed until it was high in the sky and then gone. While we were apathetic earlier, now were scared out of our wits.  We abandoned our campsite and ran to the car and drove back to base.

Lovelace claims that the incident had left red, raw skin like a bad sunburn all over their bodies, including even the soles of their feet, and that they were hospitalized at the base for two days with severe dehydration. During their time there, Lovelace claims that they were separately interrogated on several occasions by men identifying themselves as being from the “Office of Special Investigations,” and that his home and car were searched for the camera they were certain he had been carrying, despite his insistence that he had forgotten it. He was also ordered to have no further contact with his partner Toby, who was reassigned to another base, and the whole incident would give him intense nightmares and have profound psychological effects on him for years. He explains of some of this:

Ever since 1977, I am uncomfortable being outside in open spaces especially after dark. I sleep with a light or the television on. I keep a loaded .380 by my bedside table and a high intensity flashlight. I am uncomfortable around elderly Asian women for some odd reason. I feel anxious at the mall when we walk past a window display with naked mannequins in the window. Something bad happened to us at Devils Den.

He also claims that he had physical effects as well, such as a spot on his leg that would often go numb and was found to have a metal object embedded within it, despite no scarring present. He has written a whole terrifying account of it in his book Incident at Devils Den, a true story by Terry Lovelace, and one is left to wonder what to think of all of this. Looking at his credentials and standing it is hard to argue with what he claims he saw, but was there perhaps some misunderstanding or even an effort at creating a mystery? If so, why would he do such a thing? Whatever the case may be, he has continued to maintain that it is all true, and considering his standing as a highly reliable witness it leaves us to wonder.

When we think of aliens, we tend to think of biological creatures. But, what about extraterrestrial robots? There are a number of such cases on record. Gareth Medway says: “The Christiansen family of Wildwood, New Jersey, who had seen a UFO on 22 November 1966, were interviewed by ‘the strangest looking man I’ve ever seen,’ wearing a thin black coat, who introduced himself as ‘Tiny’ from the ‘Missing Heirs Bureau.’ He spoke in a high, ‘‘tinny’ voice, in clipped words and phrases like a computer, ‘as if he were reciting everything from memory.’ His black trousers were too short, and ‘they could see a long thick green wire attached to the inside of his leg, it came up out of his socks and disappeared under his trousers’ John Keel commented that he had not heard of this feature in other MIB cases: ‘Was Tiny wearing electric socks? Or was he a wired android operated by remote control?’ [italics mine]. He departed in a black 1963 Cadillac.”

In the summer of 1997, one of the most controversial UFO-themed books ever written was published. Its title: The Day After Roswell. Ghosted by William Birnes, the editor of the now-defunct UFO Magazine and of History Channel’s also defunct UFO Hunters, the book tells the story of one Philip Corso. Specifically, Lieutenant Colonel. Philip J. Corso. U.S. Army. Corso’s story was both amazing and groundbreaking. But, was it true? While some in the field of Ufology embraced the story, many certainly did not, preferring instead to view the book as either government disinformation – intended to confuse the truth of what really happened at Roswell, New Mexico back in the summer of 1947 – or nothing more than an elaborate and ingenious hoax.

Contrary to what the UFO community said or assumed, Corso never explicitly stated that the Roswell corpses were extraterrestrial. In fact, what he really said was quite the opposite. In Corso’s story the so-called “Grey aliens” are actually created, built, or grown to perform specific tasks. As for the creators of the Greys, it was they, Corso maintained, who were the real aliens. Corso also said that, as far as he was aware, no-one has ever seen the real aliens, only ever their black-eyed, large-headed worker-drones. William Birnes said that Corso described the Greys as “…an android or biological robot [italics mine]. “The entities ” had no digestive system whatsoever” and were “connected electronically to the navigation controls of the spacecraft.”

One of the most intriguing, but also baffling, UFO encounters occurred in Scotland on November 9, 1979, at around 1o:39 a.m. The Telegraph newspaper stated: “…Robert Taylor, a Scottish forestry worker employed by the Livingston Development Corporation, parked his truck at the bottom of Dechmont Law and took his red setter for a walk up the hill. By his account, as he emerged into a clearing he came across a strange metal sphere about 20 ft across ‘like a spaceship, a huge flying dome.’ It appeared to be made from a dark metallic material with a rough texture like sandpaper.” The BBC stated: “[Taylor] told how two-spiked spheres then rolled out towards him and, as he passed out, he was aware of being grabbed on either side of his legs. Mr Taylor woke up in a disheveled state 20 minutes later…After the spiked objects rushed out and tried to grab hold of him, all he could remember was a strong smell of burning. When he came to, the clearing was empty, apart from a pattern of deep regular marks on the ground. He went to his van but was so shaken he drove it into a ditch and had to stagger home in ‘a dazed condition.” Were those spiked spheres actually robots, dispatched to perform a specific task? Maybe so. Finally…

It was late one night, at some point in the latter part of 1956, said “John Hanks,” when he came face to face with a strange creature in Falls City, Richardson County, Nebraska. He was confronted by 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 fact, he 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! Not only that, the wings appeared to be strapped to the creature; almost grafted onto its body in definitive cyborg-style [italics mine].

Out in the rural desert town of Jafr, in eastern Jordan, about 190 miles east of Amman, nothing much ever really happens. This is a simple, forgotten place in the unforgiving desert terrain well away from the rest of the world, a place that not even people in Jordan have ever really heard of, but this would change in 2010, when this rugged town of 13,000 suddenly got major national news coverage when Jafr was supposedly invaded by menacing, malevolent aliens from another world. And so would begin a panic unlike the region had ever seen before, which in the people’s minds at least involved towering aliens and their death machines out to kill them all.

On April 1, 2010, a major story ran on the front page of the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad. According to the report, UFOs had descended from the sky to land out in the desert boondocks surrounding the dusty town, piloted by massive, marauding aliens that were described as being a full 10 feet tall which spoke in a squawking language. During the night, the UFOs, which could supposedly shoot beams of intense heat, had reportedly flown about over town, lighting up buildings and city streets as if it were daylight, leaving scorch marks in the ground, and it was also said that some force they were generating had knocked out communications in the area. Panicked residents had reportedly run out into the streets in fear of their lives, and by the time the article made the rounds the populace was in a frenzied panic thinking the world was ending.

Jafr, Jordan

Through all of this, parents refused to send their children to school, many stores closed, and the mayor of the city, Mohammed Mleihan, was making preparations to evacuate the entire populace. He would say of this, “Students didn’t go to school, their parents were frightened and I almost evacuated the town’s 13,000 residents. People were scared that aliens would attack them.” When other news outlets picked up the story it seemed to take on a life of its own, with some saying that military personnel were being mobilized and that an alien invasion force was preparing to launch an attack from the desert. In the meantime, the mayor did have security forces patrol the outskirts of town, but they were unable to locate any UFOs or giant aliens.

As soon as the newspaper Al-Ghad realized what was happening, and became aware of the gravity of the uproar their article had caused, Moussa Barhoumeh, Al Ghad’s managing editor, came forward to say that the whole thing had been nothing but an April Fool’s joke, something many astute readers here might have already surmised by reading the date of the publication. According to the editor, it had just been a silly, good-natured prank “meant to entertain, not scare people.” The newspaper issued a formal apology for the inconvenience it had caused, but many of the people of Jafr, who had had their whole life momentarily upended, were furious, not the least of all Mayor Mleihan. He was so livid, in fact, that he threatened to sue the newspaper for their tasteless “big lie,” especially since he had allocated valuable resources to prepare for an alien invasion that had never come.

It does seem odd that Al-Ghad would decide to try and pull such a stunt. After all, whereas someone from the West might be accustomed to seeing fake April Fool’s Day news stories printed on April 1^st and cast a skeptical eye at such spectacular headlines on this day, In Jordan it is different. They have no such custom, especially not in a rural, superstitious backwater like Jafr, where most people would not even know what an April Fool’s day prank was. Considering this, it does seem pretty odd that the Jordian newspaper would not only pull a front-page prank article, but also base it in Jafr. In America or Britain it probably would not have been a big deal, but in Jordan it had led to a mass panic and minor regional emergency amongst a populace not versed in such things.

It is in some aspects quite reminiscent of the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast of October 30, 1938, in which future filmmaker Orson Welles adapted the HG Wells classic of the same name as a Halloween radio show over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network, made up to sound like it was taking place as the alien invasion of the novel happened. It was clearly announced as a dramatization, but presented in a very realistic style of another program being interrupted by news of the invaders from Mars, so some people who caught the show midway through were said to have bought it all as real and flown into a panic due to this realistic “breaking news” style of storytelling used. The extent of this panic has been disputed in recent years, as it turns out that the show wasn’t listened to by all that many people and most of them met it with curiosity rather than fear, but there were no doubt a few who took it to be real and were not too happy about having been fooled. Even though the panic caused by the broadcast was nowhere near as bad as it has traditionally been portrayed, it still did gain quite a bit of backlash from people who did not appreciate its use of its deceptive news bulletin format, leading to stricter regulation of such programs by the Federal Communications Commission.

The Jafr alien invasion scare is the worst case scenario for fake news and questionable journalistic ethics, mixed with pranksters who perhaps went a little too far. This one story threw this little town into an absolute whirlwind of fear and apprehension, and it is a cautionary tale as to how skittish and gullible people can be, especially in an out of the way, undeveloped area where the populace is especially susceptible. It is certainly an intriguing little tale, and shows that the mainstream news is probably not the best place to play out practical jokes.

Stories of alien encounters really run the range. Some are mysterious, others fleetingly vague, still others yet profoundly weird. Then there are others that propel past merely weird to lodge into the realm of the utterly bonkers. These are the cases that are so bizarre and absurd that they boggle the mind, hovering out on the fringes of the fringe. One of these deeply strange cases must surely be the time a hunter out in the wilderness came across a being that defies understanding, and which has remained one of the odder abduction cases on record.

In October of 1974, a 41-year-old oil worker Carl Higdon made his way out into the wilds of Wyoming, in order to some elk hunting. On October 25, he was stalking towards a place called McCarthy Canyon, in Carbon County, but decided to go into a more remote area of Medicine Bow National Forest on the advice of some other hunters that he met by chance. The region they suggested was an area he had never really hunted in before, unfamiliar and isolated, but it would not be long before it would pay off. After just a few minutes of hiking along, he came over a hill and became aware of a herd of five elk up ahead in a clearing, one of them being a large, formidable male. It was almost too good to be true, and so he prepared to take a shot at the buck, which is where things would quickly derail into the world of the weird. Higdon would later say:

I walked maybe five minutes until I came to a rise in the ground. Down below in a clearing were five elk, huddled closely together. From my vantage point, several hundred yards away, I could see that one of them was a really outstanding animal. I lined him up in my telescopic sight and fired my gun, a Magnum rifle. It can give your shoulder a mean whack if you’re not careful. I raised my rifle and fired, but the bullet only went about 50 feet and dropped.

Higdon would say that the blast from the rifle had also made no noise, produced no kickback as expected, and that he had watched in utter astonishment as the bullet sort of travelled in slow motion before its trajectory was abruptly stopped by the unseen barrier. He would also later recall that the air all around him had at the time felt charged, as if suffused with static electricity. He walked over to where his bullet had mysteriously just sort of dropped, and could see that it was squashed, as if it had hit a solid wall, but nothing was there. The elk had by now scattered, but he was not alone there in that clearing, and he would explain, “I heard a noise like a twig snapping, and looked over to my right and there, in the shadow of the trees, was this sort of man standing there.” The hunter tucked the bullet away into his canteen pouch and looked to this stranger to quickly find that it seemed to be no “man” at all.

According to Higdon, the strange figure stood a little over 6 feet high, bow-legged and wearing a skintight, black, one-piece outfit that he would liken to a scuba diving wetsuit. The suit has a pair of harnesses that crossed in front and a metallic belt emblazoned with what appeared to be a yellow star, but even stranger than this outfit was the physical features of the entity. Its head was without discernible ears, with small, deep set eyes, a slit-like mouth holding three oversized teeth, two appendages like antennae jutting from the forehead, and very course hair like straw that stood straight up on top. The creature seemed to have no neck, with that creepy head just sitting directly on its shoulders, blending right into the body. At the end of its unusually long arms in place of a right hand, it, or “he,” as Higdon would insist, was what looked like a drill bit, although it was not spinning, and the other arm had no hand at all. This bizarre entity appraised the terrified Higdon for a moment and then took a few steps forwards before casually asking him in perfect English, “How you doin’?”

Higdon was stunned for a moment, unable to find his voice, before weakly stammering out, “Pretty good.” The entity nodded slightly, and came even closer, apparently not threatening but still very unsettling, and asked Higdon if he was hungry, before producing a plastic packet of some sort and having it levitate through the air to the hunter. Higdon plucked the pack out of the air and clumsily opened it to find four pills enveloped within, which he was told by the entity would each give him enough sustenance for one day. Higdon swallowed one of them and pocketed the rest. The creature then finally introduced himself, almost seemingly embarrassed that he had not done sooner, calling himself “Ausso One” and gesturing behind him, where Higdon could now see something glimmering in the light, of which he would say:

There, not far from us, was a transparent, cube-shaped object resting on the ground. To me it looked like a huge Christmas package. You know — flat on all sides, like a box. I couldn’t see any landing gear or entrance… It was much smaller than any of our commercial or military planes. In fact, you’re going to think I’m crazy, but this thing couldn’t have been more than five feet high, seven feet long, and four and a half feet wide. Tiny is the only word I can think of to accurately describe its size!

Ausso One

Ausso One then asked Higdon if he wanted to go for a ride, and before he even had time to respond, he claims that he was instantaneously aboard, as if he had been teleported. He was disoriented and could not process how exactly it was possible for him to have appeared there or how he had managed to even fit within the tiny craft, but there he was, and he was now beginning to feel a sense of dread and panic overcoming him, made even worse when he realized that his hands and feet were actually strapped down with bands. As he looked around wildly, Higdon peered through what he took to be some sort of shimmering force field, behind which were five elk that seemed to be in a sort of trance, frozen as if insects in amber, and which he had the overwhelming certainty were the exact same five elk he had originally tried to shoot at. He also then became aware that there was another otherworldly being of Ausso One’s same race aboard with them, who came forward to strap some sort of helmet to the hunter’s head. The craft then took off and positioned itself over Higdon’s truck, which seemed to vanish into thin air as Ausso pointed at it with his conical drill-bit arm as the hunter looked on with a mixture of awe and horror. The ship then rapidly seemed to ascend above the earth and into space, the planet visibly fading into the distance through the transparent floor of the craft, and soon this was replaced by another, alien world approaching, which Ausso One rather oddly described as “163,000 light miles” away from Earth. What exactly is a light “mile” anyway? Who knows? On this new planet they approached an enormous tower with a brilliant rotating lights and which emanated a buzzing sound “like an electric razor,” and Higdon would say of it:

All around this tower were revolving patterns of multi-colored lights, not unlike powerful spotlights. They were so intense that it was actually painful to keep my eyes open. These lights were so brilliant that I held my hands to my face as a protective shield. I vaguely remember shouting, ‘Shut them off… they’re burning me!’ I just couldn’t tolerate them.

Higdon also claimed to have witnessed a group of what looked like other human beings outside, although he had no idea of who they were or why they were there. Throughout all of this, Ausso One casually explained that his people often hunted and fished on Earth, then set the craft down and took Higdon into the tower, where they made their way to a room in which he was asked to stand on a platform and was scanned by some sort of shiny panel device, which appeared out of the wall and disappeared back into it when the examination was complete. Ausso One then told Higdon that he was not a suitable candidate for their purposes, and that they were going to bring him back home.

They arrived back on Earth just as quickly as they had left it, and before setting Higdon loose, Ausso One wistfully studied the hunter’s rifle, saying that he wanted to keep it but was not allowed to before handing it back. After that, Higdon instantaneously found himself in the forest, disoriented and confused as to where he was. He wandered about until he found an abandoned truck and crawled into it to get out of the cold, so completely zonked out that he did not even realize that the truck was in fact his own. He used the CB radio to send out a distress calls and then sat in the darkness, shivering and waiting. A search part would then find him, and oddly the truck was discovered to be buried in the muck of a thickly forested ravine, 5-miles from where he had last been, and far from the nearest road and with no tire tracks leading in or out. One of the search party members was Higdon’s own wife, who he at first did not even recognize through the haze of confusion pervading his mind. Oddly, it would turn out later that many of those in the search party, as well as several residents of the area, had seen strange lights in the sky prior to finding Hidgon.

When he was first found, Higdon could remember nothing past the point when his bullet had been stopped in midair, and most of this was dug up from his mind through hypnosis. There were also several odd details found in the aftermath of the hunter’s apparent abduction. It was found that several health issues he had been suffering from, such as lung scarring from a bout with tuberculosis and some kidney stones, were completely gone, and that he was once again in perfect health. The mysterious bullet that he had kept was also found and analyzed, showing damage that was consistent with hitting a surface even harder than a rock or tree, and furthermore it has been turned completely inside out and was missing its lead slug, but what this actually means is anyone’s guess.

We are left to wonder just what happened to Carl Higdon. Was any of this real at all? There have been plenty of ideas thrown around on the matter, and of course even the assertion that this must surely have been a hoax, but what of the details of the car found in that ravine and the mysterious health effects? Is there perhaps something more to this than the ramblings of a hoaxer and perhaps someone slightly unhinged? For his part, Higdon always maintained that it was all true, and never deviated from his story through countless retellings and hypnosis sessions, as well as myriad passed lie detector tests. It seems that he at least really believed what had happened was real, but what that all entails might forever remain a mystery, and it has gone on to be one of the more outlandish reports out there.

The theories that benevolent extraterrestrials are hovering just outside of our vision or consciousness to protect we mere humans from total destruction until we can serve their purpose (at this point, the benevolent theory often switches to the idea we’re being groomed for slavery or dinner) generally focuses on active volcanoes or nuclear power plants. One city on the Gulf coast of Mexico feels it’s being protected from hurricane destruction be aliens and reserves a day once a month to offer thanks. Recently, the leader of a local UFO group claimed he’s visited the underwater base of the aliens and returned with an explanation for how to continue the protection. Let’s hope it doesn’t involve soaking in marinade!

“The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is already making history, just over a month after it officially began. When Tropical Storm Edouard formed Sunday night over the open waters of the northwest Atlantic, it became the earliest fifth named storm on record.”

Weather forecasters are warning that this hurricane season is off to a bad start and will likely get worse. That’s bad news for Mexican towns up and down the Gulf coast – but not the cities of Ciudad Madero and Tampico in the state of Tamaulipas. Well, not anymore. Ciudad Madero had been hit hard in the 20th century by multiple hurricanes (Hurricane Hilda in 1955 was one), culminating with Hurricane Inez in 1966 which, after causing massive destruction in Haiti and Cuba, made final landfall in Tamaulipas, leaving 84,000 people homeless and causing at least 84 deaths. And then … something else arrived.

“On the cover of our newspaper on Monday, August 7, 1967, 50 years ago, an unprecedented event occurred on the night of Sunday 6. Several people from Tampico and Ciudad Madero had seen a UFO fleet that crossed the sky of the region from southwest to northeast, to get lost offshore, just in the direction where they say their base is.

They were the first sightings, even documented by the control tower of the local airport, which in the controller José Castillo’s log of novelties recorded: “Nine unidentified flying objects were seen. They were luminous and left a bright trail. Sometimes a pale green and phosphorescent color was visible behind the objects. They were found to be no flying apparatus of terrestrial creation. “”

El Sol de Tampico retold story of the arrival of the UFOs on the 50th anniversary of the event. Other witnesses included a pilot and a refinery worker, who continued to see the UFOs for three months. Tamaulipas was never again hit by a hurricane and the locals began to link the UFOs to this. The belief was reinforced by some who claimed they received messages from aliens living in a base off the coast to bury metal alloy bars offshore that would generate a protective force. As the hurricane-less years added up and the legends grew, the locals instituted a monthly Martian Day and erected a statue to honor the aliens. Many note that the area sits in a protective vortex formed by local pyramids.

With the prediction of a bad hurricane season, The Guardian recently posted an interview with Juan Carlos Ramón López Díaz, president of the Association of Scientific UFO Research of Tamaulipas (AICOT), who revealed that he’s way ahead of them – he visited the base, which he calls Amupac, via astral projection and everything is going be OK. In fact, the aliens assured him that they’re not needed anymore – the power in now in the hands of the humans.

“The collective mind is charged with this concept, so it generates a large force field of repulsion.”

The “collective mind” is the believers in the aliens in AICOT, Tampico and beyond, whose minds can now repulse hurricanes themselves. That seemed to satisfy López Díaz.

With a Category 5 hurricane blowing 150 mph winds bearing down on you, would you rather be protected by the mindpower of your goofy neighbors or aliens who have been protecting you for over 50 years and have the technology to travel through space and live underwater?

That’s what I thought.

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.

NOTE: 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?