UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

In de kou
Neem Psychromonas. Dit is een bacterie die in arctische gebieden op ijsschotten leeft. Groei van deze bacterie is geobserveerd bij maar liefst -12ºC. Mensen moeten hun lichaamstemperatuur op 37ºC houden, omdat anders hun enzymen te langzaam gaan werken en de stofwisseling tot stilstand komt. Deze bacterie onderhoudt echter een actieve stofwisseling en weet zelfs te groeien in de vrieskou. Hiervoor zijn grote aanpassingen in de moleculaire machinerie van de cel – de eiwitten – nodig. De eiwitten van deze bacteriën bestaan uit flexibele onderdelen, zodat deze op lage temperaturen en dus met weinig energie hun taak nog kunnen uitvoeren. Deze eiwitten zitten zo los in elkaar dat ze op gematigde temperaturen van 20ºC al denatureren (hun ruimtelijke structuur verliezen). -12ºC is de laagste temperatuur waarop nog groei geobserveerd is, maar dit betekent niet dat op nog lagere temperaturen geen leven kan bestaan. Een actieve stofwisseling is gemeten bij temperaturen tot wel -39ºC.

In de hitte
Aan de andere kant van het spectrum staan de thermofielen. Dit zijn organismen die gedijen bij extreem hoge temperaturen. De onderzoeksgroep van persoonlijk hoogleraar dr. Huub op den Camp heeft zo’n thermofiel geïsoleerd uit een modderpoel in een vulkanisch gebied. De modderpoel had niet alleen een hoge temperatuur (55-60ºC), maar was ook nog eens enorm zuur met een pH-waarde van 1! Om in deze omstandigheden te overleven, zijn grote aanpassingen nodig. De mechanistische aanpassingen die nodig zijn om bij die pH te kunnen overleven zijn nog niet helemaal bekend en dit onderzoeken Op den Camp en collega’s dan ook nog. Een lage pH wordt veroorzaakt door een hoge concentratie protonen, ook wel H+. “Normaal wordt een concentratieverschil in protonen gebruikt om ATP (de brandstof van de cel, red.) te genereren, maar in deze bacterie kan dit niet,” aldus professor Op den Camp. Hoe deze bacteriën dan wel ATP genereren is nog niet bekend, maar professor Op en Camp heeft zijn vermoedens. “Waarschijnlijk gebruikt deze bacterie andere ionen, zoals natrium of kalium, om ATP te generen.” Over de aanpassingen aan de hoge temperaturen is meer bekend. Normaal denatureren eiwitten bij deze temperaturen, maar thermofielen maken hun eiwitten extra rigide met behulp van bijvoorbeeld zwavelbruggen. Door deze extra verbindingen is er meer energie en dus een hogere temperatuur nodig om deze eiwitten te ontvouwen.

NIET ALTIJD RAAK

Wetenschappers vinden micro-organismen in de meest extreme omstandigheden, maar soms is hun ontdekking toch minder extreem dan geclaimd. Zo vond NASA in 2010 in een giftig meer de bacterie Halomonadaceae. Dit meer bevatte een hoge concentratie arsenicum en juist een lage concentratie fosfor. Fosfor is een essentieel onderdeel van DNA en NASA claimde dat deze bacterie zijn DNA niet met fosfor, maar met het arsenicum maakte. Deze ontdekking zou een enorme stap zijn geweest in de zoektocht naar buitenaards leven. Helaas bleek de ‘ontdekking’ uiteindelijk veel minder spannend dan gedacht. De bacterie was arsenicum-tolerant, maar gebruikte het zeker niet voor zijn DNA.

Radioactieve straling als energiebron
De temperaturen waarbij leven kan bestaan, varieert dus van arctische vrieskou tot vulkanische modder. Dit is een best breed scala aan temperaturen die op veel hemellichamen in het zonnestelsel gevonden kunnen worden. Er zijn echter nog meer vereisten dan een goede temperatuur. Voor leven zijn ook de juiste grondstoffen en energie nodig. Voor de meeste aardbewoners is zonlicht de primaire energiebron. Deze energie wordt vastgelegd met behulp van fotosynthese. Ook zijn er micro-organismen die anorganische stoffen als primaire energiebron gebruiken. Desulforudis audaxviator bewijst dat het nog extremer kan. Deze bacterie is gevonden op 3 kilometer diepte in een mijn in Zuid-Afrika. Op deze diepte vind je geen zonlicht om als energiebron te dienen, maar wat je er wel vindt, is uranium en andere radioactieve stoffen. Voor D. audaxviator is de energie die vrijkomt bij het radioactief verval van uranium de primaire energiebron. De radioactieve straling zorgt ervoor dat er moleculaire waterstof en ander biologisch relevante stoffen gevormd worden die D. audaxviator kan gebruiken.

Interessante theorie
De vondst van deze bacterie leidde tot een interessante theorie. Het heelal kent kosmische straling. Deze straling is overal aanwezig en bestaat vooral uit protonen van buiten ons zonnestelsel. Wanneer deze straling in aanraking komt met een atmosfeer ontstaan er meerdere subatomaire deeltjes. Deze deeltjes kunnen, mits ze genoeg energie bevatten, tot diep in de bodem penetreren en dezelfde reacties veroorzaken als de straling van uranium. In theorie zou kosmische straling dus de primaire energiebron voor bepaalde levensvormen kunnen zijn.

“WATER IS EEN ABSOLUTE VEREISTE VOOR LEVEN ZOALS WIJ DAT KENNEN”

Vloeibaar water
De temperatuur en de energiebron waarop leven kan bestaan, kunnen dus extreme vormen aannemen, maar zoals gezegd zijn er ook nog de juiste grondstoffen nodig. De belangrijkste grondstof voor leven op aarde is water. Bijna alle belangrijke metabolische omzettingen vereisen water. De reacties voor het maken van eiwitten en suikerketens, fotosynthese en veel andere processen; allemaal vereisen ze water. Daarom wordt er ook zo veel moeite gestoken in de zoektocht naar water op Mars. Hard bewijs dat er vroeger of misschien heden ten dage vloeibaar water op Mars stroomt, is een belangrijke aanwijzing voor de mogelijkheid van buitenaards leven op Mars. In de afgelopen jaren zijn er veel missies naar Mars geweest en dat in het verleden vloeibaar water op Mars heeft bestaan achten de betrokken wetenschappers vrijwel zeker. Meer recent bewijs van onder andere de Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) ondersteunt de hypothese dat er vandaag de dag vloeibaar water op Mars aanwezig is. Met behulp van simulaties hebben onderzoekers van het Planetary Science Institute ook aangetoond dat een waterlichaam van 3 meter diep gedurende een heel Marsjaar gedeeltelijk vloeibaar kan blijven.

Saturnus’ maan Titan.

Afbeelding: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute.

Methaan?
Dat water essentieel is voor leven leidden we af uit de organismen die we kennen. Deze aardbewoners gebruiken allemaal water. Dat is eigenlijk ook niet vreemd voor een planeet waar ongeveer 75% van het oppervlak uit water bestaat. Maar wat als er nou leven kan bestaan dat niet gebaseerd is op water, maar een andere vloeistof? Waar de aarde water heeft, heeft Titan methaan. Titan is een maan van Saturnus en kent meren, zeeën en regen. Alleen bestaan deze uit vloeibaar methaan. Het kookpunt van methaan is -164ºC, dus op Titan is het aardig koud. Wetenschappers aan de Cornell University hebben een heel nieuw theoretisch metabolisme bedacht dat kan plaatsvinden op de koude en methaanrijke planeet. Dit metabolisme is gebaseerd op stikstof in plaats van koolstof. Waar celmembranen bij aardbewoners bestaan uit fosfolipiden bestaan membranen bij deze hypothetische aliens uit organische stikstofverbindingen die kunnen functioneren bij -164ºC. Een groot probleem bij deze lage temperaturen is dat chemische reacties enorm vertragen. “Bij zo’n lage temperaturen (op Titan) vertragen chemische omzettingen enorm en zullen organismen zich dus veel langzamer vermenigvuldigen,” aldus Op den Camp. Dit maakt het bestaan van deze hypothetische organismen echter niet onmogelijk.

Een hydrothermale bron in de Atlantische Oceaan.

Afbeelding: P. Rona / NOAA (via Wikimedia Commons).

Leven op de oceaanbodem
Europa, een maan van Jupiter, is een andere interessante kandidaat voor buitenaards leven. In eerste instantie lijkt dit vreemd, want het gehele oppervlak van deze maan is bedekt met metersdik ijs. Wat deze maan interessant maakt, is dat deze maan geologisch actief is. Dit betekent dat onder al dat ijs veel energie vrijkomt. Ook wordt er vermoed dat zich onder de ijslaag een oceaan van vloeibaar water bevindt.
We weten dat er op de bodem van de aardse oceanen leven is. Dit leven is zeer anders dan aan het oppervlak. Op deze grote diepte dringt geen licht door en dus vindt er ook geen fotosynthese plaats. Er is dus een andere energiebron nodig. Deze energie komt van hydrothermale bronnen. Bij deze bronnen ontsnapt er een heet mengsel van energierijke inorganische stoffen vanuit de aardkern de oceaan in. Rond deze hydrothermale bronnen ontstaan hele ecosystemen. Er bevinden zich garnalen, kokerwormen, krabben en schelpdieren. Deze kunnen de energie van de hydrothermale bron echter niet zelf gebruiken. Waar bij ons planten de energie vastleggen, doen bij de hydrothermale bronnen micro-organismen dit met behulp van chemosynthese. Deze organismen kunnen energierijke zwavelverbindingen gebruiken voor groei. Deze zwavelverbinding kennen wij beter als het stofje dat de geur van rotte eieren veroorzaakt.
Die hydrothermale bronnen op de bodem van de aardse oceanen heeft onderzoekers aan het denken gezet en doen concluderen dat de hierboven genoemde maan Europa dus een interessante kandidaat voor buitenaards leven is. En wel omdat de maan – dankzij zijn geologische activiteit – waarschijnlijk een equivalent van hydrothermale bronnen kent. En de hydrothermale bronnen op de aarde hebben bewezen dat de energie die uit de bronnen komt, leven kan ondersteunen.

Encounters with strange entities and creatures can really run a range between the almost plausible to the flat-out absurd. From time to time there appear out of the blue such bizarre cases that they seem to be without any precedent or reason. Among these must surely be those reports of beings or entities that seem to have some sort of invisibility technology, and which appear to be something very much akin to the cloaked aliens of the popular Predator movie franchise, with which they are often compared. And so here we take a look at the very weird world of strange entities which seem to be able to make themselves invisible, and which skirt around past our ability to comprehend them.

On the October 26, 2014 episode of the popular paranormal radio show Coast to Coast AM there was a breathless caller who called in with quite the amazing tale indeed. According to the caller, who identified himself as Greg from Dobson, North Carolina, he had had a rather remarkable encounter in 1993 or 94 with what can only be described as some sort of entity with an invisibility cloaking device while he was living in Nashville, Tennessee. He claimed that he had been out walking his dog one evening when he felt the distinct sense of eyes boring into him from beyond his perception, although no one else seemed to be there. He says of what happened next:

I started looking at some woods, down in the woods directly in front of me, and I couldn’t see anything but I could hear leaves rustling in the trees. So I started looking up towards the tops of the trees and I had very good eyesight at the time. I didn’t do drugs. I didn’t drink. I saw something crouched down in the tops of the trees. The only way I could describe it and I don’t even know if the movie had come out yet so I didn’t know anything about it but the movie “Predator” where they saw that invisible creature. You could see the outline of everything but you could see right through it. And it was sitting up in the very tops of the trees where it wouldn’t hold the weight of a man by any means.

This thing was as big as a man. I just stood there looking at it and then I let go of the leash and I took off at a dead run and I yelled, ‘Hey!’ And I took off at a dead run towards this thing and it started running across the tops of the trees. It ran the length of a football field in, just in no time. I mean it was really fast. I don’t know how it was running across the tops of the trees but I know what I saw. After I thought about it, I thought, what in the world are you doing chasing this thing? I stopped and it stopped about the length of a football field away from where it started and it turned around and looked at me again and then it took off out through the woods, through the tops of the trees out into the woods and I didn’t see it again. It scared the hell out of me, I know that. And I never ever told anybody about it because I thought people would think I was crazy as a loon.

It is an almost absurd, borderline ridiculous account, dripping with the sort of oddness that gets such strange reports thrown into the bin of loonies, but the caller seemed sincere, and amazingly enough it is by far not the only such report of its kind, as there have been numerous other accounts of what seem to be invisible biological entities of some sort. Another report comes from a witness on Reddit, who says she had her odd experience when she was around 5 years old, meeting something apparently not of this world, or at least the world as we know it, and even odder still it would go on to be a recurring thing in her life. She says of her first brush with this unearthly presence:

I was playing by the edge of the woods behind my grandmother’s house. I played there often and my grandma just kept an eye on me from the kitchen or living room because the house had huge windows that faced the woods. She would come out every once in awhile just to see what I was up too. I was obsessed with digging in the dirt and collecting unusual rocks and arrowheads that littered the land where my grandmother lived. I should mention this is Midwest Illinois, not to far from Cahokia mounds, so finding arrowheads was actually not that uncommon. Anyway, that day, I remember picking out a spot to dig.

I had been out there for quite awhile because I remember I had a pretty decent size hole going, when something caught my eye up in the tree that I was next to. I almost don’t know how to explain it, but it looked like almost a heatwave coming off the branch of the tree. It was fall, I remember this because I had my pink jacket on and remember thinking that my mom was going to be pissed because I had dirt around the bottom of the arms from digging. I also remember there being a lot of leaves on the ground. Anyway, I am staring at this “heatwave” and realize it has a human shape.

So here I am, 5 years old, and wondering why there is a invisible man in the tree. I remember feeling scared but unsure what to do. Then it started moving and making a faint clicking sound. That is about the time that I decided that I was not supposed to be seeing this, and I high tailed it back to the house. My grandmother seen I was pretty shaken, and I remember telling her that I just seen a angel. In my 5 year old mind, I didn’t know what else it could be. I had never heard of aliens or ghosts or monsters, so to me it had to be an angel because that’s all my little mind could think of.

Incredibly, this would not be her last meeting with whatever this outlandish thing was. In 2004, the same witness says that she was visited again by the entity, just after she had separated from her husband and was on hard times. She moved her three children to a new place in the next town over and was settling down to begin her new life when the strange came for her once again. She describes her new place as being on the outskirts of town, on the fringes of woodland, and says of what happened:

One night I was up late doing laundry and stuff after the kids went to bed. I decided to take a smoke break before I myself went to sleep. I am back there on the porch and I started hearing this faint clicking sound. I immediately looked to the ditch because I had seen a ground hog out there a few days before and thought perhaps he was out there again. The yard is faintly lit from the outside light that is by they playground that is to the right of my back porch. I didn’t turn on my porch light, I didn’t normally, if I was just going out for a quick smoke. I didn’t see any ground hog or movement from the ditch, so I go back to smoking my cigarette. The faint clicking sound keeps happening and a slight shift of movement makes me look up into the tree to the left of my porch. It’s there.

The same invisible thing I had seen when I was five. It is like a distortion and in a humanoid shape. It is crouched down on the branch with an arm out holding on to the trunk of the tree. I couldn’t believe it. I was like “is this happening, has it came to kill me from me seeing it all those years ago.” All I could think about was my kids in the apartment sleeping. I ran in and slammed and locked the door. I ran to the kids rooms and made sure all the windows are locked, then I just turn out the lights in the living room and stare out the blinds at the tree to see if I could catch another glimpse of it. I sat there for about a good 10 minutes and couldn’t see anything. I begin to think that I am just tired and my mind was playing tricks on me.

Just as I was finally talking myself down, my neighbors dog comes running across the yard and starts barking at the tree at the same branch that I had seen this “predator” thing. That pretty much freaked me out because this dog was not a barker. I actually have never heard him bark at anything, even at the ground hog that had been hanging out at the ditch. This barking went on for a few minutes until I hear the neighbor lady who owns the dog call him back inside. The dog reluctantly turned to go back home, stopping every few feet to look back at the branch of the tree, until he was out of my sight. I didn’t sleep that night and have never seen anything like it again.

Is this getting weird yet? Also from Reddit is the story of a man in western Washington state, who says he had been out on patrol looking for clandestine drug dealers in the area when he had his meeting with the very unusual. As he was working his way through the trees, his rifle held close considering the inherit dangers to what he was doing, something decidedly out of the ordinary happened to him. He would say:

It began in late July, when I was forced to make semi-regular patrols around the property on which I live (heavily wooded, very hilly and wet with a creek and swamp at the bottom) when I was made aware of local drug addicts attempting incursions upon the property. As most of you likely know drug addicts have a natural tendency towards violence, especially the breed we have in my neck of the woods. I began carrying a rifle as I made my patrols because as the old adage puts it “Better safe than sorry”. Very quickly I found their tracks at the bottom of the hill, and I even managed to claim a gas can as a kind of war trophy. That lead me to believe they may be aiming to perform illegal logging on the property, which intensified my patrols. Soon after I ran into a rather unsettling shape in the forest.

I was on another patrol, standard, routine procedure when I passed an ancient cedar tree. I`d been past it a million and a half times but I suddenly felt as though I should take a seat underneath it, and rest a while. I sat down under the trees boughs, and set my rifle and daypack at my side. I sat in the silence and stillness for a while, taking in all the sounds the woods have to offer, I almost felt as though I had entered the same state of zen I had the year previously, kneeling beside a natural spring after heavy rain. All was well, the world was fine and everything would be okay. I felt wonderful. I opened my eyes and rolled my head to my right to look out into a grove of alder trees. Glancing upwards I saw a humanoid shape.

It was roughly 15 feet up in the air, and had the distinct shape of a human head, neck and shoulders but no discernible bottom, it just seemed to fade away. The only way I can describe it is similar to the Predator films, in which the titular creature uses a cloaking device. It was very, very similar to the device. At its edges it seemed reality itself was embossed in that shape. I sat and stared at it for probably about 3-5 seconds before an overwhelming feeling of dread and anxiety overtook me. I should add that I’m very tough to genuinely scare. I’ve been through a great many nasty situations that don’t bear mentioning and suffice to say that this shook me to my very core. I was almost petrified, scared out of my mind of what would happen if I dare move. I finally mustered the strength to remove my glasses and wipe them on my shirt, and re-donning them I could see the shape was still there. The dread grew in intensity tenfold every few seconds and my naturally calm, rational mind took hold again. I began counting down in my head.

What happened next, you may be asking. Well, although the witness did not stick around long for this particular encounter, he did manage to make his way back to the same area in later days and discovered an anomalous hole in the ground shaped like an “L,” surrounded by large, inexplicable scratches, where it would become incredibly windy whenever he drew near. He says of this strange detail:

The hole is at the bottom of a ravine filled with large, old growth trees. It suddenly got terribly windy when I was there, if stormy days are anything to compare, I would say winds were reaching 30-40 MPH at the bottom of a ravine filled with wind-blocking trees. Temperature felt like it dropped by about 20 degrees as well. I’ve been back since, but not often. Each time I visit I say aloud that whatever is there does NOT have my permission to come with me back to the house, and most assuredly nowhere else I go.

Just what is going on here? The website Phantoms and Monsters also has a report along these same lines, of a woman who was out one day just letting her dogs run about when she saw something that seems to be very similar to these other reports. The report says:

Several years ago, a colleague who is psychically gifted described an incident she experienced in her backyard the evening before. She had let her dogs out and was standing at the back door while waiting for them to finish their business. As she continued to wait for her dogs, she noticed ‘something’ approach her on the walkway from the lower yard. Her description was that of a tall and wide shouldered being but without mass… a pixilated transparent form that continued to move towards her. As this form came near her it abruptly stopped as if it was surprised that she was staring at it. Then this form dissipated completely. This was not the first time something of this nature had materialized near her. A similar incident transpired the previous year while she was standing adjacent to her garden. On that occasion the being was somewhat smaller in form but similarly pixilated and transparent.

Her sense of these beings was that it was not a haunting or manifestation by a human spirit. In fact she had never recognized similar phenomena previously. Her assessment was that these were entities from beyond our dimension and most likely of alien origin. After I listened to the evidence, already having knowledge of her surroundings, I concurred that her experience was more than a manifesting human energy.

From Linda Godfrey’s book Monsters among Us, we also have the story of what appears to have been an “invisible Bigfoot,” which was frequently seen by a farmer who said of it:

The funny thing is that it never left footprints, even in mud, and when it ran through tall weeds you couldn’t hear anything. And sometimes when you looked at it, it looked like you could see through it, like it was a ghost or something.

Just about as completely outlandish and utterly surreal as anything we have looked at here so far is a series of reports given to Cryptozoology News involving humanoid entities described as being able to cloak themselves “like the Predator” from the popular science fiction film franchise mentioned in many of these reports. The first report comes from a woman who says that her and her husband moved to a new home in area in western Pennsylvania in 2000. After getting to know the area, one evening they went out with a spotlight to view deer in the wilderness, taking a series of bumpy isolated dirt roads past farms and rural countryside, the only light that which they cast out from their spotlight. As the light stabbed out into the night, the beam captured something within it, although it was not the deer they were expecting to find. The witness says of what they saw:

As I stared at this shape, I realized that I did not know what I was looking at. I knew it wasn’t a deer. It wasn’t any animal at all! As my brain tried to comprehend what I was looking at it became more clear the longer I stared. What I saw had the shape of a man but it was not a man. It was not see-through as a ghost. The only way I can describe it was that it was like standing water. But it didn’t cast a shadow. It didn’t have any glare to it as the light was on it. It did not reflect the light. It was not gas. As gas does not have a significant shape. Gas will ebb and flow with the breeze or at least have an inconsistent shape. Rather, what I saw had a defined shape. That was the only way I can see it because, it had the shape of a human and I could make that out because of the defined edges and curves. Only because of its outline was I able to make out what I was looking at. When I realized that I was looking at a human shape, I noticed the posture was similar to a person skulking or sneaking. It was hunched over a little and one of its arms were frozen in place in front of it. As though it knew we saw it and it froze its position to try to be undetectable.

For moments that must have seemed like an eternity for the frightened woman, the thing remained motionless, as if it were studying them, before creeping off down a knoll and then it just sort of vanished into thin air. She did not know if the creature had been seen by her husband, and the entire odd encounter had lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough to send the woman into a state of panic. She warily told her husband about what she had seen, thinking he might make fun of her, but was shocked when he breathlessly told her that he had witnessed the exact same thing. The witness says:

He saw that it was the shape of a man. He saw that it was hunched over as if caught red-handed. He saw that it was cloaked like the Predator but it didn’t have a jagged camouflaged look. The thing we saw had a smooth look. It was like standing water without the reflective aspect and its outside shape was smooth, definitive. I do not know what we saw, but I do know it was real! I have been really guarded about this experience and have only told a few people. Because, I know how skeptics are. I am one of them! Yet I cannot refute what we saw. It was real. Nevertheless, whatever it was or is we saw it. There is no doubt in my mind or in my husband’s.

Yes, it was dark. But, the spot light was exceptional with its quality and there was no mistaking what we saw being confused with any shadows, strange light reflections, optical illusions, gas leaks, ghosts or any other possible phenomenon. The cloaking capabilities were of absolute exceptional clarity. It bent the light in such a way that it looked like the surrounding environment without any flaws save for the outline of the man/humanoid being. Aside from the distinctive outline, we would not have been able to detect that anything was there at all. Now, if light affects the cloak in the daylight then more people will have more sightings. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that our spot light defected the cloaking mechanism in such a way that we were able to detect the outline because of it.

Was that what was going on here? Was this entity using some kind of cloaking device? If it were just an isolated incident one could almost think that their minds had been playing tricks on them, but unbelievably there was another report that came in that seems to describe something remarkably similar. In this account, a man in Tulalip, Washington, 47-year-old Gerald Phair, came forward to say that he has on many occasions spotted “invisible humanoids” lurking about on his property, that can only be faintly seen if a spotlight is shone on them or if the angle is just right. He says of one such sighting:

They are in my backyard sometimes. I watch them for hours. I think they know I am watching them and they mess with me later at night. They have a human shape. At first, I thought they were people in camouflage. It is really predator-looking military style. It’s been three months now. One day I counted over 30 of them.

One last report here is that of some sort of seemingly alien entity with the ability to become completely invisible at a moment’s notice. The strange account comes to us from the small city of Luumaki, in the country of Finland, where there lived a family named the Kuningas. One day in 1965 the mother and father were out with their two daughters picking blueberries in the middle of a clear day. At some point they became aware of an odd”bubbling” sound coming from the canopy above them, and the father looked to see a man-like form looming up there. The creature began to approach the group, that is until it just suddenly vanished into thin air right before their eyes, although they could still sense it was physically there.

These are all completely outlandish accounts beyond reason that leave us truly scratching our heads. What are these things that people keep reporting? Are they some sort of alien beings using cloaking devices to try to blend in, perhaps in these instances being accidentally seen despite their best efforts to remain concealed? Or are they perhaps some sort of entities travelling between dimensions, either willingly using some befuddling technology to mask their presence or just caught up in some shimmer artifact from the process of crossing over? If they are real then what do they want and why are thery here? Whether we ever get answers to these questions or not, it is certainly unsettling to entertain the thought that forces beyond our understanding may be peering right out of the woods in front of our very eyes without out knowledge, utilizing some mindboggling technology and their motives just as mysterious as anything else about them. Whatever they are, these invisible humanoids certainly seem to occupy their own corner of the world of strange phenomena.