Encounters with UFOs or alien entities can be a life-changing experience and elicit a wide range of reactions from the people who experience them. For some it is fear of the unknown, an overwhelming terror induced by seeing something they feel they were not meant to. For others it might be awe and wonder, and still others still might doubt what they have seen at all, trying to stuff the experience into a neat little hole of the logical and rational explanations, regardless of that creeping feeling clawing at the back of their mind that it is anything but. However, humans being humans there is also another reaction, to just open fire and kill them all, and there are actually quite a few accounts of this happening.

There are supposed attacks by humans on UFOs dating back all the way to at least the 1940s, and by far the most famous of these is perhaps the one that occurred on February 25, 1942. On this evening air raid sirens all over the city of Los Angeles, California began blaring, followed by a fierce barrage of anti-aircraft fire lighting up the night sky. Considering that the United States had just entered World War II just months before, this was thought by the terrified populace to be an enemy attack launched by the Japanese. Although officials would later claim that “The Battle of Los Angeles” had been the result of a false alarm and jumpy nerves, of course conspiracy theorists have said that not only is this a cover-up, but that it was not the Japanese at all, but rather UFOs that were being fired upon in a panic. A very famous image used as evidence of this is one circulated in the news at the time which purportedly shows spotlights converging on a UFO in the sky over Los Angeles as tracer fire erupts everywhere. The image has been debated and discussed for years, and although accused of being touched up and hoaxed, still often gets placed on lists of iconic UFO images. Just what is it we are looking at here?

Iconic photo of the Battle of Los Angeles

War time seems to have a lot of these kinds of accounts, and it seems to make sense, what with everyone trigger happy and the tendency for UFOs to seem to be drawn to human military conflict for whatever reasons. Troops in the Vietnam War certainly seem to have experienced this first hand from time to time. One particularly bizarre incident occurred in 1970, at Lone-Jon Island, where a 5-man team of soldiers claimed that they were being hunted by bright lights measuring a mere 4 inches by 4 inches in size. These lights were described as disc-shaped and having what were called “black eyes,” and they were said to be capable of great feats of maneuverability, darting, zig-zagging, and hovering all over the place. The team claimed that when they fired upon the objects they would shift color to an angry glowing red, with the black eye part morphing into a bright green. These intimidating, menacing lights apparently stalked and attacked the team during both daylight and nighttime hours over a period of 5 days, often coming shockingly close, to within 5 feet of the team’s position. One of the men supposedly took several photos of the bizarre incident.

When the men got back from their harrowing ordeal and were debriefed they told of what had happened to them and were reportedly told to forget about it. Their equipment was also searched and some of it confiscated, including the pictures that had been taken. People were brought in to interview them extensively on what they had seen, and although it was unclear who they were, at least one of the men was convinced that they were CIA. Even odder still is that a few months later some American personnel allegedly showed up at the homes of the soldiers’ parents asking about any photographic materials that may have been sent to them. The whole thing adds the layer of a sinister cover-up to the already rather scary events depicted by the report.

American forces don’t seem to have been the only ones dealing with hostilities with UFOs. In a really weird report, in the summer of 1968, a Ranger recon unit was operating along the DMZ in an area that what was referred to as the “North Country” in the early morning hours. The team was wary and on edge, completely attuned to their surroundings, as it had already been established that an enemy Viet Cong unit was positioned on the other side of the hill, so the enemy could have been anywhere creeping about in the jungle around them. At approximately 2AM, the team claimed that a bright, fluorescent blue light could be seen closing in on their position, and that the strange, unidentified object stopped to hover momentarily around a quarter of a mile away before moving towards the baffled unit once again. The entire time the flying object was said to be completely silent.

As the recon unit struggled to comprehend this bizarre sight that they were seeing, the NVA on the other side of the hill, after presumably gawking at the sight as well, did what humans do and reportedly began firing on the light in full force. The night lit up with tracer rounds blazing skyward towards the strange object floating there and it must have been quite a haunting, mesmerizing sight. For a few moments the object did not react, merely absorbing the assault without showing any sign of distress or damage. Indeed, it seemed to be completely unfazed by the barrage of bullets raging at it. Then, it was claimed that a blindingly bright beam of light lashed forth from the object and the NVA machine gun fire abruptly stopped to send the jungle into a sudden silence so profound that it was jarring, the instant quiet almost deafening in the wake of the cacophony that had exploded through the air just moments before. The light in the sky then reportedly cruised off in complete silence to leave nothing but the droning sounds of the nighttime jungle behind.

The next morning, the recon team decided to make their way to the NVA camp to see what had happened, sensing that they were going to find something weird at the very least and they would not be disappointed. They found the enemy camp to be seemingly abandoned, and strewn about were 12.7MM machine guns and other assorted firearms that looked as if they had been partially melted by a relentless, scorching heat. A closer inspection of the camp turned up what appeared to be piles of ashes and bits of what could have been charred bones scattered about. The leader of the team apparently took pictures of the scene, which he would later include in his report of the spooky incident. Shortly after, he went to rejoin his unit but was told that he had been reassigned to another team. When he asked about what had become of his report and the photos he was allegedly told that no such report existed, and that if he were to continue pressing the matter he could face prison time. Other members of the team were purportedly similarly intimidated with such threats.

Another incident involving the NVA was reported in the State Journal in Lansing, Michigan on Sept. 29, 1972, in a piece entitled What Was UFO Over Hanoi? The report claimed that a huge, luminous orange spherical UFO had appeared at a high altitude above Hanoi on a clear day, and then hovered in a stationary position. North Vietnamese air defenses had then almost immediately fired upon it with three consecutive surface-to-air missiles, but these were either unable to reach it or unable to harm it, although after the missiles were fired it was reported that the UFO diminished somewhat in intensity, becoming “less bright” than it had been before. Nevertheless it reportedly continued to hover over the city for a full one hour and 20 minutes before leaving. In a similar incident reported by the Russian publication Aura-Z, another UFO was supposedly seen over Hanoi and was also fired upon by missiles, which apparently did hit it but had no effect. In this case, the UFO is claimed to have fired a “fine, needle-like, light blue ray” at the defense batteries, completely destroying them and allegedly killing around 200 personnel in the process. This particular, no doubt spectacular report has been suspected of being a hoax, but it is intriguing nonetheless.

Moving on into 1978 we have a truly spectacular case in which an actual alien was not only supposedly shot at, but allegedly killed. The setting for this bizarre tale is Fort Dix and McGuire, located about 18 miles southeast of Trenton, New Jersey, in the United States. It started with personnel at the base spotting UFOs nearby for several weeks, and in the early morning hours of January 18, 1978 an on-duty airman who has only ever been identified by the pseudonym “Sgt, Jeffery Morse,” was purportedly approached by a NJ State Trooper who had quite the story to tell. The trooper explained that an MP on the base had been pursuing one of the UFOs that had been seen on base, and had ended up not only encountering an alien, but shooting and evidently killing it.

According to the this state trooper, the MP had spotted a low-flying unidentified craft and proceeded to chase it for around an hour before his vehicle was suddenly bathed in the bright blue-green light of an oval-shaped UFO hovering directly above him, which caused his engine to stall and cut off all radio communications. As the MP sat there staring in shock and awe, a humanoid creature apparently then crept out from the gloom of night to step directly into the beams of his headlights, which showed that it was about 4 feet tall, with and oversized bald head, large black eyes, slender torso, thin arms and legs, and wet looking grayish skin. The already spooked MP had apparently then completely panicked and lost it, hoisting his .45 automatic sidearm and wildly blasting away at both the creature and the UFO hovering over him until it was empty, hitting the humanoid several times to send it running off into the night as the mysterious craft above shot up into the sky. The bizarre creature had then apparently succumbed to its wounds and fallen to die right there on the grounds of the Air Force Base, and the trooper was on his way to check the report out.

More personnel joined them and when they approached the area where the alien had died they did indeed see it lying there motionless, and without getting too close began roping off the area. It was as they were doing this that a group of what Morse called “blue berets” swooped in and took charge, telling them to leave and not speak of what they had seen. After that it would seemingly be all bushed under the carpet and the body whisked away to who knows where. Morse would apparently tell all of this to UFO researcher Leonard H. Springfield, and explain of the incident:

We found the body of the thing near the runway. It had apparently climbed the fence and died while running. It was all of a sudden hush-hush and no one was allowed near the area. We roped off the area and AFOSI came out and took over. That was the last I saw of it. There was a bad stench coming from it too. Like ammonia smelling but wasn’t constant [in] the air. That day, a team from Wright-Patterson AFB came in a C141 and went to the area. They crated it in a wooden box, sprayed something over it, and then put it into a bigger metal container. They loaded it in the plane and took off. That was it, nothing more said, no report made and we were all told not to have anything to say about it or we would be court-martialed.

Morse and other witnesses were then purportedly repeatedly interrogated and warned to not talk of the matter, forced to sign forms that bound them to secrecy, after which each and every one of them was transferred far away, with Morse sent all the way over to Okinawa, Japan. He would say that after that they had continued their harassment, once detaining him at the airport for no reason when he came to the States to visit his family, and he even passed to Springfield an official looking report that he claimed verified his story. Interestingly, far from this being just the ramblings of this one guy Morse, there was some amount of corroboration, when a retired Air Force Major George Filer III would in later years step forward to claim that the whole story was indeed true, and that he had been there that night as well. Although Flier hadn’t actually seen the corpse himself, it was apparently a big deal on base at the time, with everyone talking about the “alien body” and a whole lot of intense activity and unfamiliar vehicles and aircraft about that was not usual. Unfortunately, there is no way to know if either Morse or Flier were telling the truth or not, and of course the Air Force has flat out denied that anything of the sort ever happened, labelling it all a hoax. We will probably never know how much truth any of it holds, if any, but it is a pretty wild ride at any rate.

Adding to all of this are those air engagements, dogfights in which pilots have allegedly actually shot at UFOs in dogfights, Independence Day style. According to the account, early on the morning of April 11, 1980, 23-year-old Peruvian air force lieutenant Oscar Santa Maria Huerta was conducting exercises in his fighter jet over La Joya Air Force Base, when he was ordered to investigate a strange, silvery object that had appeared in restricted airspace. He soon made visual confirmation with the strange object, which he at first thought was a balloon or spy device that was not supposed to be there, and seemingly did not hesitate to engage with extreme prejudice. He allegedly completely blazed up and opened fire on the object, saying:

I reached the necessary distance and shot a burst of sixty-four 30mm shells, which created a cone-shaped ‘wall of fire’ that would normally obliterate anything in its path. Just one of those shells would wipe out a car, but they had no effect on the object. I thought that the balloon would then be torn open and gases would start pouring out of it. But nothing happened. It seemed as if the huge bullets were absorbed by the balloon, and it wasn’t damaged at all.

The object responded by shooting off at a rapid pace, with Huerta in hot pursuit, headed in the direction of the city of Camana, approximately 84km from the base. At some point the object abruptly stopped in mid flight, to send the fighter pilot in evasive maneuvers to avoid and shoot past it, but he kept at it, positioning himself for another attack run. As he came in once again, the object made a fast climb, evading the fighter. The strange object or craft then proceeded to evade similar efforts to launch an attack, and then Huerta had the idea to attack it instead from above, yet it managed to stay well above him even as they climbed to a dangerous 19,200 meters. He was definitely getting the impression that this was no normal weather balloon or spy drone, and getting closer he could see that it certainly was not, of which he would say:

I was startled to see that the ‘balloon’ was not a balloon at all. It was an object that measured about 10 meters in diameter with a shiny dome on top that was cream-colored, similar to a light bulb cut in half. The bottom was a wider circular base, a silver color, and looked like some kind of metal. It lacked all the typical components of aircraft. It had no wings, propulsion jets, exhausts, windows, antennae, and so forth. It had no visible propulsion system. At that moment, I realized this was not a spying device but a UFO, something totally unknown. I was almost out of fuel, so I couldn’t attack or maneuver my plane, or make a high-speed escape. Suddenly, I was afraid. I thought I might be finished. I was zigzagging to make my plane harder to hit, always with my eyes on the rearview mirrors, hoping it wouldn’t chase me.

Dangerously low on fuel, Huerta managed to land his fighter, and many of the base personnel could witness the object still buzzing about like an angry bee before leaving the area. Huerta would later say, “I find myself in the unique position, at least for the moment, and as far as I know, of being the only military pilot in the world who has actually fired a weapon and struck a UFO. It still gives me chills to think about it.”

Our most recent, and very quite possible the most completely bonkers one of the bunch, is the time a guy apparently attacked and maybe killed an alien being with a samurai sword. In 2009, a resident of a ranch near Phoenix, Arizona by the name of John Edmonds claims that he was under siege by mysterious alien entities that would prowl about his property at night to peek into windows and actually come to him and his wife in the night to assault and perform medical experiments on them, leaving behind needle like holes in their skin, bruises, and causing them to come down with mysterious illnesses. These creatures were described as being basically “Grey Aliens,” the classic description of large bald heads holding those almond shaped eyes and with skinny frames, and he says they relentlessly prowled about his remote property. Edmonds believes they are inter-dimensional in nature, and would say of these strange entities in an interview with Coast to Coast AM:

I have heard and seen critters moving around on our enclosed sun room. The west wall contains four large windows. The speed generated by their movement (3 critters) at once made the glass in the double pane windows actually buzz and misalign in the frames to the point the windows are now very difficult to close and lock properly with out using a screw driver to realign them in the frame first. I believe the high frequency buzz is a side effect of their partial in phase or out of phase inter-dimensional travel. In a safe situation critters transcend cleanly from one dimension to another. In what they perceive as risky circumstances, they only physically materialize to a point of just crossing the dimensional physical threshold. The buzzing occurs at a quantum level as they are partially in both dimensions at the same time. If they are suddenly startled they pull back out of phase into their regular dimension. If they feel safe, then they come completely into this dimension and the buzzing stops. This is the perfect opportunity to physically grab one and then hold on as hard as possible because they will try to “bug out” again immediately.

And grab them he would. These creatures would also kill the man’s dogs and some of his horses, but it appears they had chosen the wrong house to mess with, because according to Edmonds one evening he had had enough, grabbing a Japanese katana-style sword he owned and confronting it to hack away. During the melee, he would allegedly viciously, mortally wound it,

I killed in self defense after repeated home invasions by similar creatures over a period of many years. The assaults by these creatures were responded to in the most violent behavior I could respond with because of weekly and some times daily confrontations during which our home, ranch, horses and dogs were killed. Pierced by the sword with six inches of cold steel perforating the body cavity and seemingly lifeless, the Gray alien still managed to disappear before I could withdraw the weapon and chop off the head. My intention in removing the head was to see if this would prevent it from disappearing. It is my hypothesis the head controls the ability to control the dimensional transference between one place and another. I had hoped to interrupt the process by diminishing the body integrity. I wiped up the blood/Fluid and tissue of the Gray I nearly split in two parts with an exceptionally well sharpened Samurai sword. After hand to hand combat with these little parasites.

The alleged sword and aftermath

He would then collect tissue and blood samples and purportedly send them to a researcer called “W.C. Levengood” for analysis, who would allegedly inform him that they were most certainly not only not human, but unlike anything seen before, even going as far as to say they were the smoking gun for the existence of aliens. Unfortunately for any of us waiting for concrete answers, this Lenengood apparently then just sort of disappeared and took the samples with him. Convenient. That, plus the fact that the alien managed to vanish after being damn near cut in half by a sword, leaves us with no physical evidence outside of photographs and the samples that Edmonds insists totally, for real exist, and this ends up just another wild report with no corroboration. Unsurprisingly, it remains unproven, and we are left to wonder just how much of this completely absurd report is true. It is certainly novel, though, attacking an alien entity with a samurai sword. Whether his insane story is true or not, he deserves points for creativity at the very least.

So what are we dealing with here? Are these genuine stories of humanity doing what we do best and trying to blow stuff up real good, or is this just hoaxes and fabrications? I have no doubt that many people would have such negative, violent reactions to encountering the unknown, but did any of these really happen? There seems to be no way to really know for sure, the physical evidence always flirting with us and staying out of grasp, and while they are certainly spectacular reports, it is probably better to take them with a grain of salt and maybe even hope they are not real, because we would likely not stand a chance in a fair fight with these forces. Make of this all what you will.

True or hoax?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When most people are asked to imagine what an alien looks like the first image that may pop into one’s head is the classic “grey alien.” You know the one one, small, thin, grey skin, a big head with almond shaped black eyes. For whatever reasons this is by far the most common conception of an alien being by the mainstream. Yet, there are so many alien encounter reports that describe something wholly different and altogether outlandish. Here I have compiled a few reports of some of the weirder alien reports out there, and there are no greys to be seen.

Our first weird case comes from 1973, in the U.S. state of Alabama near the small town of Falkville. On October 17, 1973, a panicked woman called into police to report that she had seen a UFO land in a field right outside of town, and an incredulous police officer named Jeff Greenhaw went off to investigate, no doubt thinking that he was dealing with some nutcase. He arrived at the scene at around 10 PM, not really expecting to find much, and at first he didn’t. The field held no spaceship, nor any sign of one, but the lady who had called was frantically insisting that not only had a UFO really landed, but that there was an alien running around out there in the woods.

Greenhaw thought that at the very least there might be in intruder prowling about, so he did a sweep of the area. Little did he know that this intruder would be far stranger than anything he had imagined. As he peered into the darkness and shone his flashlight about, he noticed someone standing off the side of the road, but when he looked in its direction he saw that this was no normal man. The figure seemed to be completely covered with some shiny substance that looked somewhat like tin foil, with an antenna on its head, and Greenhaw would even take a photo of it. He would say of the creature:

It looked like his head and neck were kind of made together… he was real bright, something like rubbing mercury on nickel, but just as smooth as glass; different angles give different lighting. I don’t believe it was aluminum foil.

Alleged photo of the “Tinfoil Man”

This figure seemed to move in a rather disjointed, mechanical way, giving the impression that it was almost robotic in nature, and wanting to see it in better light, Greenhaw trained his vehicle’s headlights on it. This apparently set the entity into a panic, and it ran off at great speed, after which Greehaw started up his car and pursued it right through a field. The officer went as fast as the terrain could allow, but the creature he had seen and was chasing was reportedly amazingly fast, far faster than any human, and he eventually lost it when it bolted off into some trees. In the days after his encounter, Greenhaw would come forward with his account, which would make him a laughing stock, the object of ridicule, and cost him his job.

Was this some sort of alien robot, perhaps used as a probe by its inscrutable handlers? It reminds me of a similar case of seemingly robotic aliens that is made all the odder in that it predates it by over 50 years. The bizarro case supposedly occurred in 1924, in Pasco County, in the state of Florida, and which was related in 1974 by an elderly witness named Evelyn Wendt, who claimed that this had happened to her when she was a girl. She said that she had been playing outside on the grounds of St. Joseph school when she had noticed an egg shaped object nearby that glowed so intensely and brightly that she had to cover her eyes at first, but it then supposedly suddenly dimmed to reveal some sort of saucer shaped metal craft. As she stood there staring wide-eyed at the strange sight, a small door suddenly opened to disgorge a procession of rather bizarre creatures, and Wendt would say of them thus:

Little people emerged. I think they were robots. I tried to count them, but they changed about so. They were smaller than I was and resembled animated flowers with faces where the bud would be.

These truly bizarre “robotic sunflowers” were apparently hoisting a sinister looking machine of some sort, which Wendt instinctively sensed was a weapon of some kind, and which they also seemed to be setting up to aim towards the school’s science building. It was at about this time that the witness claimed the entities communicated with her telepathically, telling her that they intended to destroy the science building because there were dangerous experiments going on in there behind closed doors. Bizarrely, they then suddenly changed their minds, and began to file back into the craft as they invited their human companion to come along. She refused, but they supposedly promised to come back for her in later years. Wendt would say of what happened:

They promised to come back for me in 35 years, but that was a long time ago and nothing happened that I know of. All I can remember now is that the saucer was leaden-looking and very pockmarked. Then, when it started up, its molecules expanded and it turned silvery bright. The UFO then went straight up, hovered a minute, and disappeared from sight.

UFO researchers in later years sought to bring out any other details through hypnosis, but Wendt proved impossible to hypnotize. Bizarrely, the science building of the school at one point was destroyed by unspecified means, leading one to think that maybe the robo-flowers had come back to finish the job. What in the world was going on here? Is this just a made-up delusion or is it at all real in any sense? If it really did happen, then what were these robotic flowers and why on earth did they want to blow up a junior high school’s science building? Who knows?

From the same year as Greenhaw’s account and also quite unusual is the encounter reported by two men named Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, who on October 11, 1973, were fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. As they cast their lines out they suddenly began to hear a series of strange hissing, whirring noises coming from behind them. When they turned around to look, they apparently came face to face with an egg-shaped spacecraft hovering over the river not far away, and a door then opened to regurgitate forth baffling creatures that really defy any easy classification. There standing in the doorway of the craft were three 6-foot tall beings with grey leathery, wrinkled skin and thin, carrot-like protrusions jutting out of their heads. The hands and feet were said to be fused into pinchers, and the eyes and mouths were just slits.

Just as they were reeling from the shock of seeing such a thing, the men realized that they had been somehow paralyzed by an unseen force, which kept them glued to where they were. Stuck as they were, the two witnesses made easy pickings for the bizarre aliens, who plucked them up and dragged them aboard their unearthly vessel. Hickson would later claim that he was brought aboard the ship and brought to a room with a blinding light, in which he was subjected to an examination by an oval shaped robotic probe of some sort. After around 20 minutes, the two were deposited back onto the bank of the river and the mysterious craft floated off. Hickson then claimed that he had found Parker on the riverbank as well in a rather disheveled state, crying and praying to God.

The two went back to their car and sat there in shock for an undetermined amount of time, before heading home. They would later contact the Kessler Air Force Base and the local sheriff with their bizarre tale, which went about as well as you would expect. No one really took the eyebrow-raising story seriously, but the whole case inevitably became splashed about local newspapers soon after. Hickson in particular went on to entertain questions on the matter and even help publish a book about the whole incident called UFO Contact at Pascagoula, while Parker ducked out of the limelight, and eventually moved out of state to avoid the constant media attention. For is part, Parker claimed that he had passed out at the beginning of the ordeal and only come to after it was over, only recalling bits and pieces under hypnosis.

The case was picked apart by some of the most eminent UFO researchers at the time, who for the most part agreed that the men at least really believed that what they had seen was real. The case of the Pascagoula aliens has since been met with a good amount of skepticism. It has been called everything from a shared hallucination to a flat-out lie, which has only been made more complicated by the fact that Hickson’s account only seemed to get more and more bizarre and complex as time went on. It has been suggested that they had a shared imaginary experience, that they were drinking, or even that they were just tripping balls on LSD at the time, but no one really knows what happened except the two witnesses themselves.

Our next very strange case comes from December 6, 1978, when a night security guard by the name of Pier Zanfretta was doing his normal rounds in the small town of Torriglia, Italy, when he claims that his car suddenly died and would not start again. It was then that he noticed some strange lights piercing through the darkness around a nearby house, and his first thought was that these were trespassers. He grabbed his flashlight and sidearm and exited the vehicle to go investigate, creeping along a path towards the property, and as he made his way along he suddenly felt something fall upon his shoulder. The startled patrolman whipped around and this is where it would get very weird very fast.

There looking over him in the beam of his flashlight was a hideous, hulking humanoid creature standing at least 10 feet tall, with “undulating skin, as though he were very fat or dressed in a loose, grey tunic,” with two more of the beings standing out in the gloom behind it. They were described as having green skin, horns protruding from the sides of their faces, visible throbbing red veins in their foreheads, and yellow eyes, with each of the creatures wearing some sort of faintly glowing breathing apparatus over the mouth. Zanfretta did what most people would do in this situation, and ran as fast as he could the other way, back towards his car, where he then saw an enormous triangular UFO that blinded him with a very bright light and nearly knocked him over with a blast of hot air as it passed overhead. When others came to answer his panicked calls for back up there were found some odd horseshoe shapes embedded into the earth nearby that suggested something very heavy had rested there, and there would be numerous UFO reports from the village over the next few weeks.

Moving along, in 1989, a strange series of events unfolded in the wilds near Voronezh, Russia, beginning with numerous sightings by frightened locals who described a massive, red sphere floating over a park. When witnesses went to see what was going on, the object apparently dropped down to hover right over the ground, after which a hatch opened to disgorge several very bizarre entities. These creatures were purportedly 9 feet tall, dressed in silver outfits and most notable with neckless, domed heads holding three glowing eyes and a bright red device that spun around “like a radar.” These aliens reportedly swiveled their heads about to look around, and along with the aliens was a “box-like robot” that walked around with jerky movements and upon which the aliens occasionally adjusted instruments on its chest. These creatures were bizarrely described as walking around the park collecting soil samples and occasionally projecting multi-colored beams from disc like structures in their chests, and strangest of all they reportedly zapped a teenager who got to close with a tube-like weapon of some sort, which “dematerialized” the poor boy. Luckily the boy reappeared when the beings boarded their craft and left. What was going on here?

Even more recent, and perhaps even wilder and more spectacular than any of these we have looked at so far apparently happened in a rural area of the country of Brazil in 1996. On January 20, 1996, the fire department at the town of Varginha received several calls from distraught residents claiming that a “strange creature” was lurking about frightening people. Authorities thought it might just be some pranksters messing around, and went to check it out. When they arrived, they amazingly were able to quickly find the creature in question, which was described as being in some sort of a dazed state. The creature itself purportedly had short, stumpy legs, very long arms, oversized feet, and three stalks upon its head, and it also had set within its misshappen  head set of glowing red eyes. The bizarre entity was apparently easily captured with a net, which elicited a buzzing sound from it, and it whisked off to who knows where.

Later that same day there was apparently another of the creatures seen, this time by three girls named Lilliane Fatima, Valquira Fatima, and Andrade Xavier as they were waking through a wooded area. It apparently looked exactly like the one that had been captured and left footprints and an obnoxious ammonia like stench in its wake. The creature or creatures were apparently sighted numerous times over the coming week, and another was supposedly captured. This specimen was apparently taken to the University of Campinas, and amazingly two more were also captured and brought to the University of Sao Paulo, where at least one of them died. There were allegedly many photographs taken of the autopsy, yet none have ever been made publicly available, if they even exist at all. Oddly, several of the people involved with capturing the creatures mysterious fell ill, exhibiting symptoms that could not be explained, with at least one of these people dying from their sickness.

The story created quite a stir at the time, with the Brazilian media reporting on it heavily, yet both the authorities and the universities that supposedly had harbored the “aliens” denied any knowledge of such creatures. The only hint that something might really be going on was a doctor allegedly involved with the autopsy of the dead creature, who simultaneously denied having any thing to do with it while also hinting that there was more to say on the matter that he was unable to release just yet. Considering that this all happened during a major UFO sightings flap in the region the public supposed that these might have been the occupants of these mysterious craft, but considering that no real evidence has come forward this will probably remain just another unverified enigmatic report that seems destined to be buried.

What is happening with cases like these? How are such numerous completely strange entities seen by so many? Are these aliens, interdimensional interlopers, the imagination, or something else altogether? Reports such as these and many more like them only serve to muddy the waters of UFO and alien encounters, because they are so completely surreal and typically describe entities that were only seen a single time or on very few occasions and never again, slipping off into whatever unknown weird realm they sprang from. It is not sure what these cases could represent, unclear as to their origins, but what is most certainly clear is that they represent some of the bizarre of the bizarre.

There are people who have supposedly had odd encounters with UFOs and aliens from all over the world, from all walks of life. Among these have often been those who have high social standing or are well-known by the general public, and these usually attract the most attention. After all, some random sighting from an unknown guy in Bumpsville is likely to be quickly forgotten, but what of when it is an icon who is a household name? Just as with tabloid reports these are the kinds of stories we can’t get enough of and are inexorably drawn to, and one in the UFO community that has shown staying power is the time the great American entertainer Jackie Gleason was purportedly shown alien bodies by former president Richard Nixon.

A lot of younger readers might not recognize the name, but in his day the comedian, actor, and writer Jackie Gleason (1916- 1987) was a legendary icon. Probably best known for his character Ralph Kramden in the hit television series The Honeymooners and his role as Sheriff Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit series of films, Gleason had a long and storied career, appearing in countless movies and TV shows in the 1950s and 60s, including his own The Jackie Gleason Show, also launching successful music career, and he was a very famous and well-known stalwart of the entertainment industry and a household name. Behind the scenes, though, he had an array of unconventional hobbies that many people did not really know about and which he tried as much as possible to keep out of the public eye.

Jackie Gleason

You see, Jackie Gleason was a complete paranormal and UFO geek. He spent hours reading about all areas of parapsychology, Forteana, aliens, and the unexplained, and obsessively collected books on such things, in particular UFOs. Indeed, he is widely known as having had one of the largest private collections of books on UFOs in the country, which would be donated to the University of Miami after his death. In the biography The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason, author William A. Henry III explains of this intense interest and fascination thusly:

Jackie Gleason had a lifelong fascination with the supernatural. He would spend small fortunes on everything from financing psychic research to buying a sealed box said to contain actual ectoplasm, the spirit of life itself. He would contact everyone from back-alley charlatans to serious researchers like J.B. Rhine of Duke University and, disdaining the elitism of the scholarly apparatus, would treat them all much the same way. Gleason was a frequent insomniac. He would stay up high the night reading (or rereading) some of the hundreds of (UFO and paranormal phenomena) volumes in his library.

He was hardcore, in other words, even once saying himself, “I’m kind of a nut on the subject.” It was partly this interest that led to his friendship with former president Richard Nixon, who was also interested in UFOs. Gleason had also long supported Nixon’s campaigns and was a staunch Republican, and as Nixon had a vacation compound not far away from Gleason’s Florida home the two would strike up a friendship to become frequent golfing buddies, chattering about UFOs and other weird stuff the whole time. It was after one of these golfing outings on February 19, 1973 that Nixon apparently showed up alone at Gleason’s door in the middle of the night and allegedly excitedly told Gleason to get dressed because he wanted to show him something, after which the comedian was taken to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida and guided by armed guards to a top-secret, highly secured remote installation. Things would purportedly get very strange from here.

Gleason was reportedly led into an underground area through sterile corridors and past several ominous laboratories, at one point passing a weird twisted metal mass encased in glass that Nixon told Gleason was the remains of a UFO. Gleason supposedly wasn’t sure what to think of this, and at first thought the president was just joking around, but he would soon find that this was no joke as he was led into a large chamber area where there were “six or eight of what looked like glass-topped Coke freezers.” Within each of these freezers was allegedly the mangled remains of tiny humanoid bodies, according to Gleason “only about two feet tall, with bald heads and disproportionately large ears.” These, he was told, were the remains of the occupants of a UFO that had crashed “nearby,” and to say it was shocking to the great comedian would be an understatement.

Jackie Gleason and Richard Nixon

Upon returning to his home he was apparently very unsettled, noticeably disturbed and panicked, and looking haggard. This was enough to alarm his wife at the time, his second wife Beverly McKittrick, and after at first denying that anything was wrong after several sleepless weeks, during which he could barely even eat, the shaken Gleason apparently came clean and told her everything, swearing her to secrecy in the process. Unfortunately for him, Gleason and Beverly’s marriage was on the rocks at the time, and she promptly broke her promise to keep it all secret, first writing of it in a book that she planned to publish on their marriage but never did, and then according to her recounting the tale in a high profile interview with Esquire magazine in 1974, something which purportedly greatly perturbed Gleason, to the point that according to her it directly led to their prompt divorce, as well as again in The National Enquirer in 1983.

The comedian himself would stay silent on the matter, neither confirming nor denying his wife’s tale, and only apparently coming clean in 1986, when UFO researcher Larry Warren claims Gleason himself confided in him to tell him it was all true, however, it is not clear if this meeting ever took place and Warren has been criticized for embellishing accounts in the past. How do we explain that nothing was heard from the comedian himself? Larry Bryant, the editor of a UFO newsletter called Just Cause, to which Gleason subscribed, and who also unsuccessfully tried to get records on the event from the military through Freedom of Information Act requests, says he tried to get an affidavit from Gleason on the matter, and says of his silence:

Though I never did hear from Gleason, I did learn that he had been contacted by a third party in the film industry. At this confrontation, Gleason chose to neither confirm nor deny the story, saying that he would prefer not to discuss it all. The way I see it Gleason easily could have set the record straight in reply to my proposal or in an explanation to the inquisitive film-industry representative. If the story was a fabrication or misinterpretation on the part of his wife, he now had every opportunity to say so. That he chose not to merely deepens the mystery.

This is one of the problems we face with this outlandish tale, that it is only officially known from the account given by Gleason’s ex-wife, who was not only writing a book at the time, but also was not too happy with the late comedian in general at that point, their relationship having gone very sour. It is very probable she made it all up out of spite or to sell books, but this hasn’t stopped a lot of researchers from trying to track down if there is any truth to the tale, and any truth there may be seems to be pretty thin on the ground.

It has been confirmed through Gleason’s personal diaries that he did in fact play a game of golf with Nixon on the day in question, and that they had spent about 10 minutes talking about UFOs, but that is about it. Gleason himself makes no mention of covert midnight meetings or of being whisked off to a secret base to be shown crashed spaceships and dead aliens, and he never publicly spoke about it, although the more conspiratorial minded among us will likely say that these entries were either redacted or were never written at all in order for Gleason to keep his secrecy on the matter. There is also absolutely no corroboration or records from the Air Force base that Gleason had ever been there at all, much less on the night of February 19, 1973, and even if he was, is it normal operating procedure to allow a civilian entertainer with no security clearance at all to just waltz into a top secret installation and show them whatever you want, including freaking dead aliens? Also, just how did Nixon get away from the constant presence of his Secret Service security detail, which usually shadowed his every move, to go traipsing off to a comedian’s house to tell him the truth about UFOs and aliens? It all makes the whole affair not a little suspicious, although then again the military might have covered it up, perhaps. Yet this is not the end of the strikes against this amazing tale.

Perhaps the most damning thing about it all is that the Esquire article that Beverly adamantly claims to have appeared in doesn’t actually seem to exist, narrowing down the only real known coverage of it to an article in The National Enquirer, not exactly known as the last bastion of journalistic integrity. Beverly for her part insisted that the Esquire article does exist in an interview with researcher Kenny Young in 2003, and sure maybe the Esquire article was “erased,” but the fact of the matter is that every article on the case can be essentially traced back to that National Enquirer article, which incidentally also happens to have painted Gleason in a very negative light, perfectly keeping in line with what one would think a vengeful ex-wife would write.

So was this the work of a conniving, spurned woman getting revenge? Maybe. Was she trying to drum up interest for her planned book that never came to fruition? Likely. Was a lot of this exaggerated and played up over the years? I wouldn’t doubt it. Did Richard Nixon shake off his security detail to randomly gather up a comedian in order to take him to a top secret military facility and show him dead alien bodies and the wreckage of a spaceship? Who knows? Does it make for an entertaining little historical oddity that has managed to worm its way into the UFO lore? Definitely.

A lot of people seem to like to poke fun at UFO witnesses and believers. The field has unfortunately drawn to it some amount of skepticism from those who think it is all a bunch of quacks and weirdos out in the boondocks. Yet, this could not be further from the truth. Many of the staunchest supporters of not only UFOs being taken seriously by the public, but also full government disclosure on what might be kept secret from the public at large, are top, eminent members of the fields that matter most.

This particular tale revolves around the legendary astronaut Leroy Gordon “Gordo” Cooper Jr., an American aerospace engineer, test pilot, United States Air Force pilot, an astronaut pioneer, who was also involved in the first human spaceflight program of the United States, Project Mercury, running from 1958 through 1963, piloting the longest and last Mercury spaceflight, Mercury-Atlas 9, and would have numerous accolades and notable achievements throughout his career. He would later go on to join several corporate boards and as technical consultant for more than a dozen companies, and he is widely considered a legend in his field. As respected as he was, he also had his share of stories to tell of strange UFO encounters in space.

Gordon Cooper

Cooper seems to have had a long history of UFO sightings, which he has spoken of in interviews and in his autobiography Leap of Faith. His earliest well-known UFO encounter apparently occurred in 1951, when he saw a circular formation of “metallic, saucer-shaped vehicles” while flying over East Germany. These objects would apparently frequently appear, and he would say, “We never could get close enough to pin them down, but they were round in shape and very metallic looking.” Shortly after this, he was transferred to the Edwards Air Force Base Flight Test Center in the California desert, where the weirdness would continue. In May of 1957, Cooper was a Project Manager at Edwards Air Force Base. He says that he and some of the other crew would sometimes see a strange object come down to hover over the nearby lake bed, of which he would say, “It was a typical circular-shaped UFO. Not too many people saw it, because it took off at quite a sharp angle and just climbed straight on out of sight!” This object would apparently come to rest on the lake bed upon an array of three “legs” that extended from the bottom.

They apparently took a lot of footage of this particular event, and it was allegedly very unnerving for all those present, all of them experienced airmen who were used to seeing experimental aircraft and whatnot. Cooper went about alerting the Pentagon as to what was going on, and he was purportedly subsequently told to send all of the negatives of what they had captured on film in a locked courier pouch. That was the last he would hear about it, with the photos just vanishing and no apparent action taken, no explanation given, despite the fact that this had been an obvious foreign craft in U.S. military airspace. Even though the government had apparently swept it all under the carpet, Cooper would have none of it. He appeared on several high profile programs such as the Merv Griffin Show, where he insisted that the incident was real and said:

I think it was definitely a UFO. However, where it (the object) came from and who was in it is hard to determine, because it didn’t stay around long enough to discuss the matter – there wasn’t even time to send out a welcoming committee! I think it’s fairly credible. I would like to see the time when all qualified people could really work together to properly investigate these stories and either refute or prove them.

Cooper’s UFO experiences would continue, when on May 15, 1963, he would allegedly witness one during his solo space mission above the Earth’s surface, saying that it was an anomalous “greenish object.” This would only add to his suspicions that something weird was going on, and in 1978 he penned a letter to the United Nations begging them to release any information they had. In the letter he expressed the importance of making contact with these entities and finding a way to “resolve our problems by peaceful means, rather than warfare.” Cooper would go on to become a major proponent of full government disclosure on the UFO phenomenon, and believed there was a massive government conspiracy covering it all up. He would claim that he knew of hundreds of cases from fellow pilots and astronauts of seeing something beyond understanding, which were subsequently kept hush hush. He would claim that there had been all sorts of evidence that had been buried as well, and he said in one interview in the late-1990s:

For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public. Why?

Why, indeed. The public reaction to such allegations by such a well-respected icon of the military and space travel was to merely shrug its shoulders, after all what are you going to do when the guy is an aeronautic legend? In the meantime, Cooper continuously and tirelessly pressed for more information on what was being kept from the public, right up to his death in 2004 from complications of Parkinson’s disease, appearing in the documentary “Out of the Blue” about it and even writing at length about it all in his autobiography Leap of Faith. His whole message later in life was that the mass UFO cover-up that conspiracy theorists drone on about was all completely real, and he was a major champion of full disclosure in this area. It is hard to know how much of an effect he had, and he gained many critics, such as space historian Robert Pearlman, who wrote:

While no one can argue with someone’s experiences, in the case of Cooper’s own sightings, I found some difficulty understanding how someone so connected with ground breaking technology and science could easily embrace ideas such as extraterrestrial visits with little more than anecdotal evidence.

Cooper joins the ranks of very qualified, respectable UFO witnesses and ambassadors of disclosure who have mostly been either met with shrugged shoulders, raised eyebrows, or flat out disdain. Yet what are we to make of the claims and statements of such a well-respected member of the NASA community? Can his accounts an assertions really be written off as the ramblings of someone off their rocker, or do they perhaps deserve a little more consideration? Whether you believe him or hate him, Cooper has earned a place where he represents a certain type of witness and champion of UFOlogy that is hard to ignore.

Looking at sightings reports, it seems people have encounters with UFOs all of the time, and sometimes they even see occupants of these mysterious craft. Yet rising above even this weirdness are those cases in which individuals have claimed to have actually communicated wit and even literally sat down and had a chat with these enigmatic entities. What did they have to say? Well, here we will look at a few of the more bizarre cases of people claiming to have talked with alien beings, and they are really quite outlandish to say te least.

A few surreally bizarre cases come to us from the 1950s, and one of the more colorful and memorably absurd accounts comes from someone who is actually probably what one would consider to be the most traditionally reliable witness on this whole list. In 1954, we have the very curious encounter of an Air Marshal Sir Peter Horsley, who had quite a long, illustrious military career and who would eventually be the deputy commander-in-chief of RAF Strike Command, of the United Kingdom. Horsely would write in his autobiography Sounds From Another Room, which actually talks a lot about UFOs and also tells of a bizarre chance encounter he had one day in a London waiting room while waiting to meet with a Mrs. Markham. As he sat there, Horsley says that he met the acquaintance of a man calling himself “Mr. Janus,” and who was partially obscured by shadows at another end of the room. This Mr. Janus seemed to be very interested in Horsely’s knowledge of UFOs, and he would write:

Mr. Janus dived straight into the deep end by asking me to tell him all I knew about UFOs. He listened patiently… At the end I thought I might be equally as direct and asked Janus what his interest was? He answered me a quite simply, ‘I would like to meet the Duke of Edinburgh.’

Sir Peter Horsley

OK, then. Weird for sure, but it would get weirder when he began talking about humankind’s desire to reach the stars and ow their technology was bringing them closer to this goal. He said since humans were moving along so rapidly, we were bound to discover the true mysteries of the universe awaiting us, saying:

Just as tribes found other tribes and Christopher Columbus discovered on his travels unknown centers of ancient civilizations so Man in his journeys through the universe may find innumerable centers of culture far more ancient than his own…He will discover a wealth of experiences infinitely more startling and beautiful than can be imagined: and infinite variety of agencies and forces as yet unknown: great fields of gravity and anti-gravity where objects are accelerated across space like giant sling shots, even other universes with different space and time formula. Why does Man reach for the stars? His energies have never been solely directed towards material benefits alone. From the beginning of Man’s history he has striven… towards a spirituality and grace of which he was aware but could not fully comprehend.

However, he also warned that humanity was in a sort of “Dark Age,” and that if we continued in our ways we would never live to see that achievement fulfilled. Mr. Janus would apparently say, “In his greedy quest for more complex machines Man is prepared to sacrifice almost anything – his natural environment, animals and even his fellow humans. The dreadful specter of blowing up his world hardly makes him falter in this headlong rush,” and it all seemed quite dire. Mr. Janus also complained about mankind’s nuclear weapons, and through it all he apparently displayed an incredibly deep knowledge of the military. Horsely seemed to think that he had actually met a real alien in that waiting room, and would credit his rise through the ranks to this chance encounter.

Another off-the-wall case is the story of Italian mechanic Luciano Galli. On July 7, 1957, Galli was allegedly on his way back to his small, humble workshop on his lunch break when he was approached by an enigmatic stranger in the streets, who had “piercing eyes” and asked if the business man remembered him. Galli realized that he did indeed recognize the man, recalling seeing him several times around town staring at him only to melt away. The man, who was described as “a rather tall gentleman of the dark type, with regular features and very dark eyes,” spoke perfect Italian, and invited Galli to take a ride with him in his fancy black Fiat 1100. Someone apparently never gave Galli the memo to not just go off getting into the cars of strangers they’ve just met on the street, and he accepted.

Fiat 1100

They then rode in silence in the car, where Galli claims he felt remarkably calm, until they came to an isolated place called the Croara ridge, where Galli claimed a large saucer-shaped UFO was hovering. Galli was invited aboard, and presumably figuring why not, he accepted and walked up into the craft via a metallic cylinder that descended down from it. He was then taken to a “pilot’s cabin,” which was described as “spacious” and filled with flashing lights and myriad instrument panels, and told to sit on a seat that was firmly bolted to the floor. He then noticed that a good portion of the floor was actually a window looking down, and he could see that they were rising rapidly through the atmosphere, until he could actually see the earth shrinking into the distance. Galli himself would say of this all in an interview with Italian journalist Renato Albanese:

The pilot’s cabin was spacious and round with a lot of instruments around, panels with many lights. There were also hatches, and the seats were fixed somehow to the floor. In the middle of the floor was a kind of circular window, about one meter wide. Through it we could see the earth fall away from us. First the earth looked like from one of our own planes, then – when we were already in the dark zone – it looked like the moon and later like Venus or Mars.

It only gets weirder from there. Galli would claim that they approached an immense, cigar-shaped “mothership,” reminiscent of a blimp, which dwarfed the craft they were on, and as they approached he could see hundreds of people walking about in the hangars dressed in some sort of shiny one-piece outfits. They would actually board this mothership, where Galli learned that they had come from the planet Venus, and he was shown through a massive hall to the commander’s area. After this tour was finished, he was once again asked to board the smaller craft and was taken back to where they had started, where he saw that the whole thing had lasted approximately 3 hours and 10 minutes. Galli would swear an oath that all of this was true, insisting that he was not making it up, and whether it is true of not it is still a more interesting lunch break than most people have.

We seem to have had a lot of visitors from Venus in the 1950s, because that very same year there was another rather far-out account, this time from a journalist named Hubert Lewis. He claims that he was out cycling in the countryside of Church Stretton, in Shropshire, England when he came across a metallic disc floating not far away and a very tall, human looking being approaching him. The stranger told Lewis not to be afraid, and the two began to chat for around a half an hour while that mysterious craft hovered in the background. The being told him during this conversation that he was from Venus, and that there were many of his kind living on Earth among humans, and after their talk this stranger got into the disc to shoot off into the sky. In the days after, Lewis claimed that he had been approached by mysterious military personnel who told him to forget about what had happened and to not tell anyone. It is an interesting account, given that Church Stretton is considered to be a UFO hotspot.

Coming along into the 60s, we have the insane story of German businessman Ludwig Pallman. His weird tale begins in 1966, when he was in the jungles of Peru looking for medicinal plants, operating in a very remote area south of the Colombian River port of Leticia on the Amazon River. It was here in this mosquito choked untamed wilderness that he claims to have been brought to an area that was unexplored even by the native peoples, who told him that there were savages that lived in that jungle, as well as a mysterious group of white men. This was very intriguing to Pallman, and although his native guides refused to travel further up the river, he continued on alone, thus entering a new chapter of oddness.

He soon came across the “savages” he had been told about, but rather than attack him as he had been led to believe, they instead took him to their village. Here he found some very strange dwellings, reminiscent of upside down cones and made of an unusual smooth plastic-like material. Pallman then saw that among the Natives were others who were very white looking and wearing clothing that resembled togas. Thinking they might be Americans Pallman tried speaking English to them but they showed no comprehension of what he was saying, and he got the same response when he tried Spanish and German. One of the light-skinned strangers then produced a small device and handed it to Pallman. It turned out to be some sort of translator device, and with it he could understand what they had to say, and what they had to say was bonkers.

They allegedly explained that they were from the planet Itibi, and were here to cultivate and experiment with earth plants in order to cross breed with those of their home world to create hardier species. According to them, this site was sort of like a plantation, and they hoped to take some samples for mass production on their own planet. Pallman explains that he lived with these aliens for a whole month, during which time he learned that these aliens had been living on earth since 1946, moving there when they had heard of the planet from another alien race, and that they had other such plantations as well. He also apparently saw them using disc-shaped shuttle craft to come and go. He claims that they also gifted him a ring that would glow when their kind was present. Eventually he left to head back to civilization, sadly with no evidence whatsoever other than his wild tale.

We have the weird tale of Walter Rizzi, of Bolzano, Italy just a few years later. In 1968 he says that he stopped his car after a long drive to take a nap, but would wake to the startling sight of a UFO hovering nearby and some humanoid beings approaching his car, described as being smaller than a human being, with grey skin, round hairless heads and slanted eyes. These entities communicated with him telepathically, and told him that they were there to collect samples of various species of Earth plant life, as well as tracking the evolutionary progress of the planet. They also explained that they could not stay on Earth for too long, because our planet made them somehow age faster, and oh yeah, that we were going to all die in the near future because of a cataclysmic polar shift that would cause extinction level climatic catastrophes. Was any of this real? Who knows?

There are certainly other cases of people claiming to have had communications with actual alien beings, and this is by no means a comprehensive listing of them, just some of the more curious that I have found. Were any of these beings real, and if so what did they want? Why did they choose to reveal themselves in such strange ways? Are these aliens, interdimensional travelers, or just the ravings of the imagination? Whatever the case may be, they are certainly entertaining at the very least.

In the farthest, most frigid region of our planet’s southern hemisphere, sprawls the highest, coldest, driest, and most isolated place on earth. Antarctica is a vast land of mountains, ice, tundra, and extreme, inhospitable cold that has kept it relatively unexplored and uninhabited even nearly 200 years after its initial discovery. Yet as technology improves and humankind’s ever growing desire to push at the boundaries of our understanding of our planet propels us forward, we are just starting to scratch at the surface of Antarctica’s myriad mysteries. What we are finding is that Earth’s most remote and extreme continent is even stranger than we had ever thought. All manner of weirdness, everything from Nazi bases, to crashed UFOs, to hauntings, to ghost ships that seem to have appeared from nowhere have been claimed in this remote place, and here we will look at the time alien skulls were apparently found here as well.

Before getting into it, it is perhaps important to first understand just how much of a vast, forbidden, inhospitable realm this is. Antarctica covers an area of 14.0 million km2 (5.4 million sq. mi), which is roughly twice the size of Australia or one and a half times the size of the United States, making it the fifth largest continent in the world. Although it is 98% covered with ice, which is well over a mile thick in most places, Antarctica is considered to be one of the driest places on earth, with only 200 mm (8 inches) of annual precipitation along its coast and even less inland. The cold in this wind-blasted land is staggering, with recorded temperatures reaching a deadly −89 °C (−129 °F). For this reason, human habitation of the continent is limited, and there are no permanent settlements. For the most part, the extent of human habitation consists of research stations representing many countries found peppered throughout the continent and engaged in various scientific pursuits.

For such a large landmass Antarctica long remained a mere myth, a lost land that was once known as Terra Australis Incognita, or the “Unknown Southern Land,” the existence of which for a long time remained almost a legendary quest and the doom of many failed expeditions to locate it. Although speculation and legends of its existence go far back, and there were discoveries of some of its satellite icebergs and islands, the Antarctic mainland was not really properly discovered until 1820, when a continental ice shelf was spotted by a Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev aboard the Vostok and Mirny. Even upon this discovery, the icy continent remained mostly neglected and forgotten at the bottom of the world since no one was willing to brave the extremely hostile conditions of this uncharted, extreme wilderness. It wasn’t until 1911 that the first human beings successfully penetrated the interior of Antarctica, when Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and four other expedition members became the first to reach the South Pole after a perilous overland journey.

In the ensuing century, Antarctica largely remained an unexplored, poorly understood realm of cold and ice, and it has only been recently that improving technology and satellite imagery have helped us to really start scratching the surface of its frigid mysteries. Even so, Antarctica’s mysteries run deep, and what we are uncovering here at the very bottom of the world is mostly posing more questions than answers. As we look deeper into the ice and probe more thoroughly at the edges of what we know about this hostile and perilous place, Antarctica is proving to be much more than the enormous chunk of ice it was once thought to be. Yet among all of the genuine discoveries being made all of the time are the more fringe accounts, and here is where we come to the alien skulls.

In 2014 a seemingly amazing and shocking story began making the rounds when it was announced that out in this bleak frozen wasteland, supposedly in the area of what was called La Paille, Antarctica, there had been discovered three unusual skulls, described as having elongated craniums and enlarged eye sockets and as being possibly up to a thousand years old. Giving the story weight was that not only were these bizarre skulls dug up in the first place, but they had been discovered by respected Smithsonian archaeologist Damian Waters and his intrepid team. Waters was quoted in initial articles on the matter as excitedly proclaiming:

We just can’t believe it. We didn’t just find human remains on Antarctica, we found elongated skulls. I have to pinch myself every time I wake up, I just can’t believe it. This will redefine our view of mankind’s history as a whole.

As soon as the story got out into the open, there was immediate speculation as to what it could all mean. One idea was that these were the remains of ancient people who practiced skull deformation, a tradition present in some cultures in which the skull is bound or otherwise impeded in its growth to cause it to become misshapen for various religious or cultural reasons. If this were true, it was seen as a mind blowing discovery as the age of the mystery skulls would suggest that humans had visited Antarctica far before the earliest known human discovery of the frozen continent. Of course there was also the idea that these weren’t human skulls at all, but rather the remains of alien beings or even human-alien hybrids of some sort. This is a notion thrown around for a variety of anomalous elongated skulls that are discovered from time to time all over the world, in such far flung places as Peru, Egypt, Malta, the United Kingdom, and others, and the archeologist Waters himself supposedly believed this possibility, saying of the Antarctica skulls:

These elongated skulls are much, much larger than normal human skulls would be. Purposeful cranial deformation can change the shape of a skull, but it cannot increase the volume of the skull. In addition, these skulls have quite a few other important physical characteristics that greatly set them apart from normal human skulls.

Anomalous skulls on display in Peru

The bizarre story soon became viral and was being discussed all over the place, but if you are skeptical of the possibility of ancient alien skulls being found buried in Antarctica then you are not alone. While many on the Internet were buying the fantastical tale hook, line, and sinker, only helped along by the purported scientific pedigree of the one who discovered them and his seemingly authoritative statements on the matter, others were not satisfied and began to see cracks in the whole thing. One of the things that was noticed is that it is unclear whether the place where the skulls were claimed to have been found, La Paille, is even a real place at all. Jason McClellan of openminds.tv has said of this “Approximately ninety eight percent of the continent of Antarctica is covered by ice. Antarctica has research stations, but not cities, so it is unclear where La Paille, Antarctica is supposed to be.” Blunter still is an article on the site Skeptophilia, which dismisses it as a real place outright, saying,

There seems to be no region called La Paille in Antarctica. Paille is French for straw, something I haven’t seen much of in photographs I’ve seen of Antarctica, so it’s a little hard to see why someone would name a place down there La Paille.

If this is not a real place, then it already sends up a red flag on the veracity of the report. Perhaps more glaring still is that the story originates with an article titled “3 Elongated Skulls Found in Antarctica,” posted on April 2, 2014 on an entertainment news site called American Live Wire, which has been criticized for publishing fake news in the past, and this piece was followed by an almost identical article on World News Daily, which is also not considered to be the most reliable source. Both articles show the same pictures of the skulls and make the same claims, and neither one of them gives any concrete source for their information, which is made even more interesting in that it has been found that the Smithsonian itself has never published an account of the discovery. If it is such a groundbreaking discovery, then why would it only be published on these two questionable news sites and not in the Smithsonian’s Newsdesk? Instead every story on the Antarctic skulls can be traced back to these two original articles, the first of which was posted on April 2, right around April Fool’s Day.

There is more. When Skeptophilia did its own investigation into the story they did not have to do much digging to find out that not only were the pictures of the skulls in the two original articles actually pictures of completely different elongated skulls kept at the Regional Museum of Ica in Peru, but nowhere could they find any evidence of a Damien Waters with the Smithsonian. Taken with everything else that is off about the whole thing and it becomes easy to imagine that this was probably a completely fabricated account that managed to worm its way into people’s minds with the promise of alien mysteries in this far away frigid domain and then took on a life of its own. Skeptophilia would rather amusingly say of Waters and his Antarctica alien skulls:

I suspect that he (Waters) was made up, along with the skulls and La Paille and everything else about the story. It’s a shame, really. Given the cachet that Antarctica has, it would be cool if there was some kind of weird mystery down there, or at least something other than penguins and leopard seals and high winds and a crapload of ice.

Yes, it would certainly be cool, and Antarctica is one of those places that sparks the imagination on such things. Despite all of the skepticism, there are still plenty of people who entertain the idea that these skulls are the real deal, and one does not have to look far to find chatrooms and threads devoted to such talk, with accusations of cover-ups thrown around liberally. In the end, all of the evidence shows it is most likely that this was an elaborate hoax of some sort, yet it is curious to see how much the public is willing to latch on to such fake stories and hold them up as real without really checking the facts. Were there ever any alien skulls in Antarctica? Maybe, maybe not, but regardless of what the truth may be, this vast expanse of barren land far from civilization will no doubt continue to drawn to itself such tales for some time to come.

One of Russia’s top astronomers and the head of the SETI scientific and cultural center recently gave an extensive interview with RIA Novosti in which he shared some interesting observations, including that he believes one reason why we have not yet encountered extraterrestrials (in his opinion) is because they may be keeping us in a “reserve” where contact cannot interfere with our development – a kind of Russian version of the Star Trek “prime directive.” He also believes focusing on repeating fast radio bursts may be a mistake that could cause SETI researchers to miss other signals – signals that we may not yet recognize. Is he right?

“Of course we are not alone. The question is not whether they exist, but where they exist.”

Alexander Panov, a leading researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of Moscow State University, head of the SETI scientific and cultural center under the Council on Astronomy of the RAS and chairman of the Life and Mind in the Universe section of the Council on Astronomy of the RAS (i.e. – someone who’s in the know) makes no bones about his believe in aliens. In fact, he says they’ve probably visited Earth before, although he doesn’t equate current UFO sightings to close encounters. Instead, he speculates that other intelligent civilizations, perhaps working together, keep Earth and its inhabitants in a “reserve.”

“It lies in the fact that highly humanized civilizations do not interfere in our development and have created a quarantine zone around us, a radio silence zone so as not to interfere with our independent development.”

However, Panov believes that this “radio silence zone” should not preclude us from searching for signals from other civilizations. One problem he has with current searches is their narrow focus. He is helping design the Russian space observatory Spektr-M, scheduled for launch in 2027, that will have a broad focus and mission – including looking for large artificial structures like Dyson spheres, black holes, cosmic rays, dark matter and laser signals rather than just fast radio bursts. He is also pushing for new technology which will allow telescopes to monitor the skies 24/7 and record and analyze what would then be ten-to-a-hundred times more data.

“Another method of searching for extraterrestrial civilizations is archaeoastronomy.”

Not content to look only in far corners of the universe for evidence of life, Panov supports searching closer – like on the Moon – for archeological evidence of advanced alien civilization that may have visited millions of years ago. He doesn’t believe that information of this kind has already been discovered and is being hidden from the public. If all of this sounds like pie-in-the sky, Panav agrees. He admits some of these projects could have been done before, but the driving force is budgets – not fear of alien contact.

“When you go outside, a brick may fall on your head, but this does not mean that you need to constantly stay at home. The potential benefits we can get from contacts are so great that they outweigh the risks. However, this does not mean that there is no need to think about possible risks. Scientists have defined a set of safety rules that must be followed if you received and decrypted the interstellar message. For example, if the algorithm for creating some device or computer program that we are offered to build and run is indicated there, then in no case should you do it without understanding. You never know, maybe this is something malicious. Safety rules must be observed, but not paranoid.”

Not paranoid?

“Observed but not paranoid.” Sounds like a good philosophy for a lot of things, not just SETI. And Alexander Panov sounds like an interesting person to invite over for dinner and conversation …. If he can pull himself away from searching for other life in the universe.

As we wait in anticipation for future life-seeking missions to Mars, asteroids and other space bodies in our solar system, speculation that these probes will find life forms is increasing, but most scientists agree that it will be bacteria or other microorganisms. One who doesn’t is leading British space scientist Professor Monica Grady.

“If there is something on Mars, it’s likely to be very small—bacteria. But I think we’ve got a better chance of having slightly higher forms of life on Europa, perhaps similar to the intelligence of an octopus.”

In a recent speech at Liverpool Hope University (covered by Phys.org), her first as the school’s new Chancellor, Grady explained that she’s confident Europa is home to higher-level life forms, but they’re in lower-level realms than on the surface. It’s slightly smaller than Earth’s moon but covered with a 15-mile thick layer of ice. That ice would protect creatures living underneath it from deadly solar radiation and asteroids – Europa’s atmosphere is too thin to protect it or support life. On the other hand, it’s likely that underneath all of the ice is liquid water of the salty kind, and hydrothermal vents that could spark the creation of life and then provide an environment to support it. If this sounds like Earth, Grady agrees.

“”But I think it’s highly likely there will be life elsewhere—and I think it’s highly likely they’ll be made of the same elements. Humans evolved from little furry mammals that got the opportunity to evolve because the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact. That is probably not going to happen on every planet—but it’s at least possible based purely on a statistical argument.”

But octopuses?

“I’m fairly specified we’re all there is at our amount of intelligence in this planetary method. And even if there are octopuses on Europa, that does not give us a cause to damage our planet.”

Europa

Describing the chances for finding intelligent life at our level (we can debate the notion that we’re not so intelligent at another time) in the Milky Way as highly unlikely, Grady sees us as galactic environmentalists – protecting both our planet and any space body we set foot or probe on. Her choice of “octopus” to describe the highest level of life we might encounter may just be a backhanded reference to the movie ‘Europa Report’ in which the first mission to Europa discovers a tentacled, bioluminescent creature described as a cross between an octopus and a squid. On the other hand, many people believe that the mammal-like intelligence of octopuses is because they’re aliens on Earth. Could they be from Europa?

We’ll have to wait for the anticipated Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, Europa Clipper or Europa Lander missions to find out.

Or, we could figure out a way to talk to an octopus.