Just a few days ago I was asked an interesting question. It basically went something like this: are there any really good “cold cases” (so to speak) that might advance our knowledge of the UFO phenomenon? Well, there’s one case in particular that I have addressed occasionally – as have various other researchers of the UFO subject, too. It’s a case that goes back to 1978. The location: Bolivia. It’s an eye-opening case for one particular reason: there is a substantial body of official, U.S. government documentation on the mysterious affair. Yes, 1978 is a long time ago; but, the Roswell event was quickly forgotten when it occurred, and wasn’t resurrected by Bill Moore, Stan Friedman and Charles Berlitz until the mid-1970s. And, although I don’t think that aliens crashed outside of Roswell, you’ll get my point: old cases can often result in the discovery of fascinating data and startling testimony. To a major degree, the 1978 incident has largely been forgotten. But, it doesn’t have to be. So, with that said, perhaps someone will decide to tackle this case and see if anything new surfaces.

It was on May 15, 1978 that the story began to take off. We know this thanks to documentation that has surfaced through the terms of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. In a U.S. State Department titled “Report of Fallen Space Object,” the following was stated: “The Bolivian newspapers carried this morning an article concerning an unidentified object that apparently recently fell from the sky.  The object was discovered near the Bolivian city of Bermejo and was described as egg-shaped, metal and about four meters in diameter. The Bolivian Air Force plans to investigate to determine what the object might be and from where it came. I have expressed our interest and willingness to help. They will advise. Request the department check with appropriate agencies to see if they can shed some light on what this object might be. The general region has had more than its share of reports of UFOs the past week. Request a reply ASAP.”

Whether the object was a UFO, the remains of a satellite, or something else entirely, someone at least was looking at things from a UFO perspective. The story was far from over. On May 15, 1978, the CIA prepared a document on what its staff had learned about the incident. Again, the documentation surfaced via the FOIA: “Many people in this part of the country claim they saw an object which resembled a soccer ball falling behind the mountains on the Argentine-Bolivian border, causing an explosion that shook the earth. This took place on May 6. Around that time some people in San Luis and Mendoza provinces reported seeing a flying saucer squadron flying in formation. The news from Salta confirms that the artificial satellite fell on Taire Mountain in Bolivia, where it has already been located by authorities. The same sources said that the area where the artificial satellite fell has been declared an emergency zone by the Bolivian Government.”

The CIA had much more to say. On May 16, the agency prepared a second document. Its title: “Reports Conflict on Details of Fallen Object.” It reads as follows: “We have received another phone call from our audience requesting confirmation of reports that an unidentified object fell on Bolivian territory near the Argentine border. We can only say that the Argentine and Uruguayan radio stations are reporting on this even more frequently, saying that Bolivian authorities have urgently requested assistance from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration in order to determine the nature of that which crashed on a hill in Bolivian territory.”

Even more was to come from the CIA: “Just a few minutes ago Radio El Espectador of Montevideo announced that there was uncertainty as to the truth of these reports. Argentine sources indicated that the border with Bolivia had been closed but that it might soon be reopened. They also reported that an unidentified object had fallen on Bolivian soil near the Argentine border and that local Bolivian authorities had requested aid from the central government, which, in turn, had sought assistance from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration to investigate the case. A La Paz newspaper said today that there is great interest in learning about the nature of the fallen object, adding that local authorities for security reasons had cordoned off 200 km around the spot where the object fell. The object is said to be a mechanical device with a diameter of almost 4 meters which has already been brought to Tarija. There is interest in determining the accuracy of these reports which have spread quickly throughout the continent, particularly in Bolivia and its neighboring countries. Is it a satellite, a meteorite, or a false alarm?”

May 18 was the day on which the U.S. Embassy in La Paz got involved in the very strange story. The recipient of the findings of the Embassy’s staff was the U.S. Secretary of State: “Preliminary information provided has been checked with appropriate government agencies. No direct correlation with known space objects that may have re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere near May 6 can be made; however, we are continuing to examine any possibilities. Your attention is invited to State Airgram A-6343, July 26, 1973 which provides background information and guidance for dealing with space objects that have been found. In particular any information pertaining to the pre-impact observations, direction of trajectory, number of objects observed, time of impact and a detailed description including any markings would be helpful.”

The U.S. Defense Attaché Office in La Paz reported: “This office has tried to verify the stories put forth in the local press. The Chief of Staff of the Bolivian Air Force told DATT/AIRA this date that planes from the BAF have flown over the area where the object was supposed to have landed and in their search they drew a blank. Additionally, DATT/AIRA talked this date with the Commander of the Bolivian army and he informed DATT that the army’s search party directed to go into the area to find the object had found nothing. The army has concluded that there may or not be an object, but to date nothing has been found.”

It wasn’t just elements of the U.S. Government who were following this story. So were UFO researchers. Leonard Stringfield was someone who collected numerous stories of crashed UFOs from the mid-to-late 1970s  to the early 1990s, said. In the summer of 1979, Stringfield corresponded with an Argentinian UFO researcher named Nicholas Ojeda. He told Stringfield:  “There is a report of a group of investigators who vanished mysteriously in the area. I really think something big happened in Salta. NASA investigated, but there was no news of it. I have to tell you that in La Paz, Bolivia, a huge Hercules C-130 carried ‘something’ from the area where the UFO crashed.”

Yes, this is – as I said at the beginning – very much a case that could still go far. There are more than a few leads to follow up. There may well be more documents on the case that have still not surfaced via FOIA, but which just might appear if someone is prepared to do the research. And opening some doors may result in even more doors opening. How about digging into the words of Nicholas Ojeda? What about the NASA connection? It’s clear that this story is rich in data and government records. Who is up for the challenge?

Among all of the alleged UFO encounters out there, some of the most spectacular are those that have been reported by pilots and aviators. After all, these are people who have a firm grasp as to what to expect to see up in the sky, and know when something is wrong with this picture. There are numerous such accounts to be found, but one of the weirder is the time a Spanish airliner was actually forced to land due to a stubborn and very aggressive UFO.

One of the weirdest UFO incidents in Spanish history began on the evening of November 11, 1979, when Transportes Aéreos Españoles Flight JK-297 took off from Salzburg, Austria on a commercial flight to Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands. Aboard the TAE Super Caravelle airliner were 109 passengers, an experienced crew, and it was meant to be a totally routine flight. The plane made it to its refueling stop at the island of Majorca without incident, but as they headed out towards their final destination things would begin to get odd indeed. It started with a sudden request from ground control to pilot Francisco Javier Lerdo de Tejada to switch to his emergency channel because an emergency beacon had been detected in their general area. The pilot obeyed, and that’s when he and his crew noticed something very unusual to the left of their aircraft. Out in the night sky they could see two red lights, which seemed to be moving at great speed, and unsettlingly looked to be headed right towards them. It was alarming enough that Tejada immediately contacted the flight control center in Barcelona to get more information on the approaching lights, but they could see nothing on their radar to explain it. An original transcript of this initial conversation between the flight (TAE-297) and ground control reads:

– Barcelona, this is TAE 297
-TAE-297 tell me?
– Can you confirm me that we have a traffic next to us, to our left, more or less four five miles?
– TAE-297 negative. No traffic reported..
– We see two signals, red lights now. About three miles to ten in our position.. Approximately the same height..
-at ten of your position, three miles left now?
-yes
-TAE-297 received, thank you.
-(voice starting to panic) when you can, inform me about that traffic.
– 297 we Are not aware of any traffic on that route, you are the only one from Ibiza to Alicante.
-thank you very much (it is possible that traffic, yes)
-TAE-297 confirm me, those lights are on the sea or in the air?
-I repeat, is a traffic and it is in our high!
-TAE-297, received, thanks.
-Barcelona, this TAE 297, confirm me the type of aircraft that it could be that traffic!
-TAE-297 confirm me if it’s in the same direction?
-yes! We got closer and closer! … I can only see two red lights, no flashes
-TAE-297 we have no reported traffic around, we have also called Palma(Mallorca) to see if it’s a “lower level 240” and they told us they had no reported traffic either.

The military radar of Torrejón de Ardoz in Madrid could also not detect anything on radar except the airliner,there were no other flights scheduled to be in the area, and in the meantime, those lights were closing the distance fast. Tejada decided to take evasive maneuvers to avoid what he believed to be an incoming collision, rapidly lowering his altitude, but the lights mirrored this movement to stay on the same level as them, and at this time they were reported as no longer closing in, but rather maintaining an uncomfortably close distance of approximately half a kilometer from the airliner. If  this was another plane it was shamelessly ignoring safety precautions, and at this distance further evasive maneuvers were considered too dangerous, so Tejada requested to make an emergency landing at the airport in Manises, Valencia, which was granted.

As the plane approached its new destination, those eerie red lights continued to follow them with inscrutable purpose, still not showing up on radar anywhere, but very visible to the crew and passengers. These lights would follow them until they were nearly at Manises, after which they broke off to fly away just as mysteriously as they had arrived. At this point the lights were close enough to the airport that personnel on the ground were able to make visual confirmation of the anomalies, and then there were sudden radar signatures picked up of three more large flying objects estimated as measuring around 200 meters in diameter circling about. It was thought that there was perhaps an unregistered flight coming in for an emergency landing, but all efforts to hail what they believed to be an aircraft were met with silence.

This was all enough to put the Spanish Air Force on high alert, and they began scrambling a Mirage F-1 fighter jet at the Los Llanos airbase in order to get a closer look and see what was going on. The fighter pilot, Spanish Air Force captain Fernando Cámara, reported that the object was moving very rapidly, forcing him to speed up to mach 1.4 just to keep up. He then made visual contact with the mysterious object, which he described as a “truncated cone” with multi-colored flashing lights on it. This was about all he was able to make out, as the strange craft then sped away out of sight faster than he could possibly keep up. At that moment things got even more intense, when there was a report of another object that had appeared near Valencia, which the pilot dutifully went to intercept, yet as he drew closer he was forced to break off when his electronic flight systems were inexplicably jammed and his system additionally gave him an ominous warning that he was being locked onto by missile radar. Alarmed, he aborted his chase as the object allegedly sped off in the direction of Africa, after which his systems returned to normal.

After the harrowing incident, the crew of Flight JK-297 was allegedly strictly forbidden to speak about it to the press and public, but the story got out into the wild nevertheless, and it was indeed curious enough that a full government investigation was launched into what has come to be known as the “Manises UFO Incident.” For his part, pilot Tejada would adamantly deny that what had been seen was another conventional aircraft, although he stopped short of claiming that it was an alien spacecraft. As the media was picking up on the case there were some conspiracies popping up among passengers, many of whom had not actually seen the UFOs and believed it was all a story to get the airline out of having to give them a refund for the delayed and aborted flight. Of course, the airline denied this, saying that an unusual aerial situation had definitely played out on that evening. However, what exactly that was is open to debate.

The government would do its best to explain it through the usual suspects of mundane phenomena, such as the planet Venus, stars, even the lights from a distant chemical plant, but it seems highly unlikely that an experienced crew would all make that misidentification. As for the experience of the fighter pilot Cámara, it was suggested that his electronic systems had been disrupted by “powerful electronic warfare equipment” being used in military exercises being carried out in the area at the time by the United States Sixth Fleet. The pilot completely rejects this possibility, as the fleet was too far away and the disruption had only occurred as he tried to engage the unidentified flying object. Regardless of these arguments by the witnesses, the official explanations still stand, and the Spanish military, government, and the airline involved had constantly tried to downplay the whole affair.

Yet, the pilots and those involved, experienced airmen who know what they are doing, insist that this is wrong. So what are we to think of all of this? Was this misidentified planets and stars, a UFO, or perhaps even some sort of secret military experiment being carried out by the U.S. fleet? How can the government stick so strongly to the mundane explanations when none really seem to fit? What is going on here? As we search for answers, the Manises UFO Incident has attracted much discussion, and remains the earliest and perhaps only account of a commercial airliner being forced to land because of a UFO.

Never underestimate the French. Just when you think your country is about to open its secret X-Files and reveal the truth about UFOs and extraterrestrials, France beats you to le punch. A former director of the country’s foreign intelligence agency (DGSE) opens up in a new UFO documentary and reveals his experiences and observations have convinced him that some of these unidentified crafts are from parallel worlds. Why in France? Is the cheese famous in ALL universes?

“In the particular field of UFOs, not to mention the people who see a flying saucer landing in a field, there are fighter pilots, astronauts, people who are anything but funny and report very precise observations. We must not say that they are nonsense but just recognize that there are things that escape us.”

Alain Juillet held high level positions in the French government (DGSE director, Senior Economic Intelligence Officer to the Prime Minister) in between a storied career as a business leader, educator and now a media consultant. He recently spoke to David Ramasseul of Paris Match about his participation in “UFOs: a matter of States” – a documentary by director Dominique Filhol, who talks to scientists, politicians and experts on the subject of UFOs.

Juillet begins the interview by revealing why he believes sophisticated UFOs like the ones spotted by US Navy pilots are not created by humans – humans would have leaked this kind of information that is too big for scientists, military personnel or officials to keep secret for long. That’s a common belief held by many about various conspiracy theories – it would have taken a large number of people to pull off a moon landing hoax, yet no one has leaked any explosive and conclusive data. Hard to believe, but not a surprise. Anything else, Mr. Juillet?

“We know that the Americans have launched a very serious study with a big budget to try to understand. And it seems that other great powers, in particular Russia and China, have done the same thing, undoubtedly for the same reasons: to discover if there is not behind the UFO phenomenon something which, technically speaking, can be interesting.”

By “interesting” Juillet means that something is worthy of governments spending money on … money that may exceed the secret budgets and thus be exposed to public scrutiny. He believes that the U.S. and China are “interested” because Russia has developed weapon systems which appear to be unstoppable by conventional defenses – the S-400 surface-to-air missile and the Avangard hypersonic missile are two examples. If traditional physics can’t develop a defense (or a better offense), it’s time to turn to the thing used to explain the performance of unexplainable flying objects like the Tic-Tac UFOs — quantum physics.

“To return to quantum physics, she postulates that two separate points can be the same. It seems inconceivable to us but from there, we can go very far, until the possible existence of parallel worlds. For comparison, a fly with its faceted eyes can see dimensions other than ours even though it lives in our world. Perhaps there are therefore things that are in our universe but that we cannot see in normal times because they are not in our field of vision. But perhaps, from time to time, something happens, that a phenomenon passes through our field of perception before disappearing. I’m not talking about “little green men” there. I rather have the impression that I am following the same approach as certain scientists and astronomers who simply say to themselves “something escapes us”.”

Something escapes “us” … but not GEIPAN, the investigative arm of the French Space Agency CNES whose purpose is to investigate unidentified aerospace phenomena (UAP) and make its findings available to the public. It’s no surprise this former intelligence official is interested in intelligence and proud of his own government’s UAP intelligence collection agency. Unfortunately, he believes GEIPAN is being underutilized by his country, which has a hard time “thinking outside of the box.” When will that happen … if ever?

“I believe it will be done in France the day when people are no longer afraid of being ridiculous. If we learn that the United States or China are not only devoting important studies to this subject, but that in addition to high-level scientists have drawn worthwhile reflections, then our researchers will no longer fear ‘be taken for wacky’.”

So, if you want some full disclosure from an agency that has convinced a former intelligence official that UFOs come from parallel universes, stop it with the French jokes already!

On the evening of November 21, 1957, businessman Frank Dickenson and two of his friends, Frank Hutton and Fred Taylor, were driving through dark moorland just outside of the tiny town of Silpho, in the Scarborough district of the county of North Yorkshire, England. It was a routine drive, and there wasn’t much to see over those moors, but the monotony was broken by a bright slash of light across the sky, which seemed to come down nearby. The men at first thought is was a meteor that had come down, and went to investigate, but this would be far more bizarre than that. This would begin a weird odyssey of the little UFO that fell to earth, only to disappear and show up in a museum years later

When they got to the place where the glowing object had come down, they could see that this was no meteor, but rather what they described as a “copper-bottomed flying saucer,” looking to be out of commission but in relatively one piece considering it had just plummeted from the heavens. The disc measured just 17 inches across and weighed 33 pounds, and although here were no noticeable seams or opening, the whole of it was covered with cryptic symbols that were etched across its side, similar in appearance to Egyptian hieroglyphics. The men knew they had found something strange, and they went about handing it over to some UFO researchers by the names of Frank Dickenson, Anthony Parker and Philip Longbottom.

They went about trying to pry it open to see what was inside. They finally succeeded, and allegedly found within the saucer 17 thin copper sheets engraved with more of the same glyphs that were on the outside. Of any occupant there was no sign, leading them to believe it was some sort of unmanned craft for purposes unknown. After this the object was apparently cut into several pieces and sent off to be studied by different institutions, with the findings differing depending on who looked at it. Scientists at the Natural History Museum noted that it did not seem to have ever been in space, as it showed no signs of the extreme temperature changes it would have been subjected to in that environment, leading them to believe that it was terrestrial in origin and likely a hoax. However, Manchester University found that the metal of the object was of an unusually high purity and that its shell had been “radiation-proofed,” and when an Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding of the Royal Air Force examined it he came away convinced that it definitely had to be of extraterrestrial origins. That seems to be about as far as anyone got at the time, and the various pieces of what is now called the “Silpho UFO” sort of disappeared, being filed away in backrooms to gather dust or just vanishing altogether. After this, the whole incident and this diminutive UFO were just sort of forgotten about.

It would not be until 2018 that an old cigarette tin was found sitting hidden and forgotten in a store room by archivists at London’s Science Museum, containing 5 envelopes with some odd metal fragments and pieces of foil within it, all of it labelled “Victoria and Albert Museum- alleged UFO bits.” The box had been sitting there in the dark collecting dust since 1963, and they realized that this discovery in their collection might have cultural significance. It was turned over to a journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University by the name of Dr. David Clarke, who was at the time giving a lecture on UFOs. Clarke would say of it all:

One of the museum staff tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was aware that ‘bits of a flying saucer’ had been kept in a cigarette tin for decades. I thought it must be a joke, or the pieces of metal would be worthless. They were stored off-site, so I arranged for the files to be sent to London for examination early in the New Year. I was absolutely amazed when later we opened the tin box and saw the wreckage. It was obvious these were the remains of the missing Silpho Saucer that some have claimed as Britain’s answer to the famous Roswell incident. It’s incredible to hear that pieces of this mystery object have been sitting in a museum archive for more than half a century.

Some contents of the box

Pieces said to be from the wreckage of the Silpho UFO found in 1957.

( Dr. David Clarke/Sheffield Hallam University ) 

Clarke was able to track the fragments back to an expert on meteorites and explosives by the name of Gordon Claringbull, Keeper of Mineralogy at the Natural History Museum, who had forwarded them the Science Museum in 1963, after which they had just been sort of thrown into storage and swept away. Interestingly, not long after this rediscovery of the lost wreckage, Longbottom one of the ones who allegedly originally pried the UFO open, claimed that he had become obsessed with the meaning of those glyphs, and after intensively studying them for years he claimed to have translated a portion, which he said was written by an alien calling itself “Ullo,” and gave the rather ominous message of “You will improve or disappear,” as well as various passages warning mankind not to tinker with nuclear weapons. This seems as if it surely must be a hoax based off of the reemergence of the Silpho UFO into the news, but it certainly puts a bizarre spin on things.

The Science Museum said it was likely the items in their collections were from Silpho Moor.

( David Clarke )

The object itself is widely believed to have been merely an elaborate hoax enacted by the men who found it, but there are plenty of people who have discussed it in forums and in other articles as being the real deal. Of course, there are also conspiracies that abound, such as that the wreckage found in the museum wasn’t the real UFO or that the findings were covered up. Was it real, and if so what was it? Was this some unmanned probe sent here with a message that only one guy has ever figured out? Or is this perhaps a piece of hoaxing history? This is in the end probably a hoax, but it is still an interesting little piece of UFO lore that seems to have been mostly forgotten. It is pretty amazing that it managed to fade away into the shadows and be buried in a museum’s archives for so long, and even if it is not real, it raises the question of if this has ever happened to a real piece of a UFO. Is there maybe some fragment of an alien craft relegated to some dank basement forgotten, just waiting for the right person to stumble on to it? Perhaps time will tell.

The remaining parts of the Silpho UFO, found in 1957, were rumoured by the UFO community to have ended up on a scrap heap or even on display in a local fish and chip shop. 

( Dr. David Clarke/Sheffield Hallam )

Strange encounters with UFOs and their often enigmatic occupants have happened all over the world, from every corner of the globe. While those that happen in the United States and the U.K. seem to be the most well-known of oft-covered, this is certainly not the extent of this phenomenon. Perhaps it is the language barrier, but there are many cases that seem to have fallen through the cracks in other countries, and some remarkable ones that don’t seem to get much coverage are a series of very bizarre encounters with what seem to be alien entities in the far eastern country of Japan.

One very weird alien encounter that also happens to have so-called photographic proof supposedly occurred in April of 1975, in the city of Kawanoe, on Japan’s Shikoku Island. On the night of March 24th, 1975, a local resident by the name of Giichi Shiota was at a city landfill when he says he saw something very bizarre indeed. There amongst the rubble he spied a luminous figure in some sort of metallic suit hovering around 7 feet off of the ground, which he would describe as an “alien cosmonaut.” The being itself was said to be about 6 feet tall, and it then smoothly descended to about a foot off of the ground before floating towards the startled witness, who says he then began to develop a sharp headache that increased with intensity the closer it came. This headache apparently became absolutely agonizing, sending him on his way.

Shiota then became determined to go back to the scene of his strange encounter, this time taking with him three cameras for the purpose of possibly capturing something strange on film. He would visit that landfill night after night for a whole week hoping to catch another glimpse of the otherworldly, and then on March 31 his patience apparently paid off. He would claim that that familiar head splitting headache had descended upon him once again, at which point he knew that he was no longer alone their huddling in the darkness. Looking about him, he could then make out what appeared to be a bluish, cloud-like light hovering around 300 feet away, which he described as an “electrical disturbance,” and as he peered through the gloom at it the humanoid emerged from its center. One again it glided towards him, and this time Shiota claimed that he had taken a series of photographs of the strange entity. As if realizing that it was being photographed, the creature then veered off at great speed and vanished into thin air.

Alleged photograph of the “alien cosmonaut”

What did he catch on film? The photos are inconclusive to say the least. Is this a hoax or is there anything more to it? Interestingly, on February 23, 1975, of that same year two 7-year-old boys named Masato Kawano and Katsuhiro Yamahata, were out roller skating in the early evening hours in Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, when they claim that they saw in the sky a pair of luminous orange lights that flickered and made a strange “ticking sound.” As they looked on in amazement, one of the lights apparently moved off towards the distant mountains, while the other started to descend towards the ground nearby. The boys claimed that they went off to investigate, and saw the strange craft come down to rest in a small vineyard behind an old, abandoned estate. The craft was described as being a domed disc around 15 feet in diameter and 7 feet high, which rested upon three ball-shaped legs. The surface of the strange object was silver-colored, and appeared to have characters or letters of some sort etched upon it. The loud ticking sound of the craft was very pronounced as they drew closer, sounding somewhat reminiscent of a Geiger counter. As the two boys pondered what they were seeing, a hatch purportedly opened on the side out of nowhere and a ladder extended towards the ground, after which a strange looking being climbed out.

The creature stood around 4 feet tall, and was wearing a reflective silver suit of some sort. The being’s skin was allegedly a dark brown in color, and it was covered with thick wrinkles that were so pronounced as to make most of its facial features indiscernible, save for two pointed ears and prominent and intimidating 2-inch long silver fangs that jutted out from the folds of where its mouth might be. In its hands it held some sort of device whose purpose could not be fathomed, but which looked somewhat like “a rifle.” Another of the creatures could be seen sitting within the craft huddled over some sort of flickering control panel. Whatever it was seemed to have completely ignored the two young boys standing there gawking at it as it proceeded to carefully examine the surrounding terrain. After a few moments of this it suddenly seemed to become aware of the boys, after which it approached them and patted one of them, Yamahata, twice on the shoulder while issuing a sound that sounded like “a tape recorder running backwards.”

Upon being tapped, Yamahata allegedly slumped to the ground and was unable to move, paralyzed by some inscrutable force. This pushed Kawano into action, and he quickly scooped his friend up onto his shoulders and ran from the area as fast as his legs could carry him. When he got home, Yamahata came to, and they supposedly told their parents what had happened, who would grudgingly follow the boys out to the estate outside to see the strange orange light climbing up into the sky for themselves. The light would then emit a burst of blinding light and vanish. Later, school officials would descend upon the area in daylight to examine the site, and would allegedly find two sturdy concrete posts that had been pushed over by some powerful force, as well as a ring pattern etched into the ground nearby. Authorities of the Civil Aviation Bureau of Transportation Ministry would later get wind of the story and dismiss the lights as merely from normal aircraft in the area. No word on what they thought the fanged humanoid could have been, or if it had anything to do with what Shiota would witness a month later.

A few years later, in 1978 we have another very outlandish encounter, this time in the area of Sayama City. In October of that year, the city had been going through a spate of intense UFO activity, and on the evening of October 3 things would take a turn for the truly bizarre. On this night, 29-year-old Hideichi Amano was out testing out some HAM radio equipment on a hill overlooking the city. It was a hobby of his, and on this occasion he was using the radio to talk with other HAM enthusiasts throughout the area. He didn’t stay long, as his young daughter was waiting for him in the car, but as he got ready to leave something remarkable would purportedly happen.

As he prepared to start the vehicle, the entire interior was bathed in a bright light, its source a complete mystery as they had been out there completely alone. Amano looked outside but could see nothing that could account for the light, and when he looked back to his 2-year-old daughter she was in some sort of daze and foaming at the mouth. As he panicked and wondered what to do, an orange beam of light pierced in from out of the night to land upon his stomach, and he felt himself feeling woozy and faint. There was then the sensation of something pressing into the side of his head, and when he turned to look there was allegedly a humanoid entity with a round head, no neck, and glowing blue eyes standing there outside the car with a “pipe-like” instrument pushed up to his head, which was producing “voiceless high-pitched noises” that seemed to penetrate directly into his mind.

The panicked witness desperately tried to start his car, but nothing worked, and he seemed to be without any power at all. Indeed, moving his limbs felt like moving through a thick liquid, giving him the sense that he was partially paralyzed. He started to get the impression that that rapidly fluctuating droning in his head was giving him a message, although he had no idea what it could be. This apparently went on for about 5 minutes, after which that bizarre entity pulled away his instrument and vanished into the night. There was a beat of utter silence, and then the car roared to life, scaring Amano nearly as badly as that creature had. To his great relief, his young daughter now seemed to be OK, acting as if nothing had happened at all.

Amano would frantically contact police to tell them of what had happened, but they didn’t take it seriously at all. Through all of this his head was becoming increasingly painful, overcome with a relentless headache. After several nights of terrible nightmares, he would seek out hypnotic regression, which would turn up some curiosities. Amano related how the creature had given him a future date, time, and location to meet again, and how the entity had given him a bracelet of some sort, claimed to be some sort of communications device. Even more eerily still was his insistence that something had been placed within his head and was influencing his mind, and the whole story was so sensational that it made the rounds on Japanese television for a while before fading into obscurity. What was going on here? Who knows?

These cases for the most part seem to be pretty obscure and forgotten, relegated to the back catalog of alien encounters, despite their spectacular natures. There seems to have been very little follow-up done on them and little further information on them, leaving us to wonder what could be going on here. Were these aliens, interdimensional interlopers of some sort, the ravings of the imagination, or something more? Whatever the case may be, they remain some of the strangest that Japan has to offer.