UFOs seem to have a habit of popping up just about anywhere. They have been seen by people from all walks of life and reported from all over the world from a variety of environments. In some cases, these accounts can be spookier than most, covering situations in which people’s lives might be at risk or there might be a threat to national security, and in recent times this has been at the heart of some amount of debate and discussion. Surely one place where one would not want to really see UFOs or possibly alien presences loitering about is at sites that hold nuclear material or weapons, but for years this has been a pervasive, stubborn, and frightening trend.

Although UFOs have been reported in a wide range of situations and environments, some of the more unsettling are those that have appeared near or even directly over nuclear facilities. It sounds like something straight out of a science fiction story, but pretty much since the 1940s and the dawn of nuclear power and weapons there has been an unsettling number of UFO sightings in these places, ranging from nuclear power plants, to test areas for nuclear bombs, to following nuclear powered Navy craft, with the journalist and researcher George Knapp once saying of this phenomenon:

All of the nuclear facilities—Los Alamos, Livermore, Sandia, Savannah River—all had dramatic incidents where these unknown craft appeared over the facilities and nobody knew where they were from or what they were doing there.

The list of incidents of UFOs over nuclear related sites is long. In the 1940s atomic laboratories in Los Alamos and Sandia, New Mexico, were constantly buzzed by what were called “green fireballs,” many of which were seen by top ranking officials and personnel at the sites. Los Alamos in particular was allegedly haunted by these objects and other strange aerial phenomena right up into the 50s, and atomic test sites of the era were also regularly visited by strange objects and lights in the sky, to the point that special teams were apparently set up just to monitor them. One place where they appeared regularly was the White Sands Missile range in New Mexico, where the Trinity, the world’s first atomic bomb, was tested on July 16, 1945, just a month before the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. According to former Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the weapons and other systems of the base were constantly shut down and made to go haywire by UFOs, and that even conventional missiles would be disrupted or even shot down by the mysterious craft. In Mitchell’s opinion, the UFOs were trying to force us to be peaceful, and has said:

White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons – and that’s what the extraterrestrials were interested in. They wanted to know about our military capabilities. My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth.

It certainly wouldn’t be the last time this sort of thing happened. UFOs were sighted over several different nuclear weapons storage facilities in the 60s and 70s, including Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, where a very strange series of events unfolded. According to a former Air Force Capt. Robert Salas, in 1967 Malstrom was visited by a UFO that appeared as a bright red light measuring 30 feet in diameter, which approached to take up a position hovering right outside of the base’s front gate. As they went about trying to get a handle on what was going on, according to Salas 10 of the nuclear ICBM missiles kept on the base were simultaneously and inexplicably deactivated, only turning back on when the UFO went back off into the night. Salas would later say of this frightening development:

And just as I called my commander, our missiles began going into what’s called a no-go condition, or unlaunchable. Essentially, they were disabled while this object was still hovering over out site. They could have a lot more damage, permanent damage, to our weapons systems, and they didn’t. If they wanted to destroy them, with all the powers they seem to have, I think they could have done that job, so I personally don’t think this was a hostile intent.

Malmstrom Air Force Base

The account was verified by another member of the personnel on the base at the time, a Minuteman missile targeting officer on Malmstrom Air Force Base by the name of Robert Jamison, who says he on several occasions had to “restart” these missiles, and it leads one to wonder just what was going on here. In December of 1980 we have another incident which played out near Royal Air Force base Bentwaters in England, which was said to house underground bunkers holding around 25 nuclear weapons at the time. According to former U.S. Col. Charles Halt, who was the deputy commander of the base at the time, on this evening strange lights began to be reported by excited personnel near the base, and he says that as he peered through the trees of the surrounding forest, he could see it too. He has described what he saw thusly:

All through the forest was a bright glowing object. The best way I can describe it, it looked like an eye – with bright red, with a dark center. It appeared to be winking. It was shedding something like molten metal, was dripping off it. It silently moved through the trees, avoiding any contact, it bobbed up and down, and at one point it actually approached us. We tried to get closer. It receded out into the field, beyond the forest, and silently exploded into five white objects – gone. So we went out into the field looking for any evidence, because something had been apparently falling off it – and we find nothing.

This was apparently far from the end, though. According to Halt, other objects appeared in the sky all around the base as well, including one that even seems to have shot an intense beam of light at the ground. This matched other reports of these concentrated beams being projected by other UFOs in the area, and rather unsettlingly many of these beams purportedly seemed to be directed at the underground nuclear bunkers. In the end, the American personnel decided not to do anything about it, because according to Halt, “it happened off base, so it’s a British affair.” It was still very harrowing, and Halt has said:

A laser-like beam landed 10-15 feet away from us. I was literally in shock. We could hear chatter on the radios that the beams went down into the weapons storage area.

UFOs have been spotted around nuclear facilities around the world right up into the present, such as the now infamous USS Nimitz “tic-tac” UFOs that seemed to follow around a fleet including nuclear powered warships, and there are numerous other reports of UFOs lurking around myriad nuclear sites all over the place, from Russia to India and Pakistan. We are left with the question of why? Why are they so attracted to these places and keep coming back? Is it that they are aliens who are concerned about this technology, foreign powers using secret technology, or something else entirely? One UFO author and researcher by the name of Robert Hastings has written whole books on the phenomenon, such as UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites, and Accidental UFO Apocalypse, has interviewed hundreds of people employed at these facilities who have seen the phenomenon and experienced it for themselves, and he says:

I believe – these gentlemen believe – that this planet is being visited by beings from another world, who for whatever reason have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race which began at the end of World War II. Regarding the missile shutdown incidents, my opinion is that whoever are aboard these craft are sending a signal to both Washington and Moscow, among others, that we are playing with fire – that the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons potentially threatens the human race and the integrity of the planetary environment. I don’t think humankind is in jeopardy from whoever they are or whatever they are, except that we will have our minds expanded. There will be a paradigm shift. Traditional institutions such as religions, governments, other social institutions may be threatened by what is coming. That is just the logical consequence of what is about to occur.

It is all interesting to think about, but there are certain things that don’t seem to immediately line up. If these are aliens that want to control our nuclear development and brinksmanship, then where were they when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in the first and only aggressive use of nuclear weapons in our history? Why would they not intervene if this was their purpose, instead just hovering around freaking out the personnel of these bases? Was it just tough love to let us get a taste of what was in store if we ever pursued this at a larger scale? Indeed, why should they really care about us anyway? Or are they something more sinister, perhaps even a threat to national security? If so, why haven’t they made any move? Or is all of this just wild imaginings and misidentifications? George Knapp has said of this possibility:

At the facilities where we were first designing and building nuclear weapons, at the places where we were processing the fuel, at the facilities where we were testing the weapons, at the bases where we deployed those weapons, on the ships, the nuclear submarines. All those places, all the people working there have seen these things. Are they all crazy? Because if they are, they shouldn’t have their hands on nuclear weapons.

In the end, what are we looking at here and why should these forces be drawn to our nuclear activities? Is it aliens, or something else? They certainly don’t seem to be going away, so perhaps only time will tell, but it is all not a little disconcerting. Whatever they may be, let’s hope they don’t mean us any harm.

VIDEOS, selected by peter2011

With UFOs whizzing about, doing physics-defying aerial acrobatics, and hovering close to the ground, one might get the impression that it is all rather dangerous and an accident waiting to happen. Indeed, this seems to be the case, as there have been numerous reports of near-misses with UFOs and various aircraft over the decades. Yet sometimes these UFOs truly learned the hard way, and actually collide with other objects. From trains, to planes, to automobiles, to even other UFOs, here are some of the strangest cases of UFOs crashing into other vehicles.

One of the last things one might expect to crash into a UFO is a train, yet on January 14, 2002, that is exactly what allegedly happened in the area of Paintsville, Kentucky, in the United States. At approximately 2:50 AM in the early morning hours, a coal train was lumbering along its course when the electronic systems on the train starting going haywire. As the crew tried to figure out just what was going on, they turned a bend at a stretch called “milepost 42” and that was when they noticed lights headed in their direction. It was assumed that this was an oncoming train, and so they killed their own lights so as not to blind the incoming conductor. However, this was no train. The witness describes what happens next in his official report with the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) as follows:

As we rounded the corner our onboard computer began to flash in and out, speed recorder went nuts, and both locomotives died. Alarm bells began to ring and thats when we saw the objects. Apparently scanning the river for something, the objects, (at least 3) had several “search” lights trained there, the first object hovered about 10 to 12 feet above the track. Metallic silver in color with multiple colored lights near the bottom and in the middle, no windows or openings of any kind that we could see. Approximately 18 to 20 feet in length and probably ten feet high. With both engines dead as we rounded the corner we made little noise and the first object did not respond in time, I estimate that we hit the object at 30 mph with 16,000 trailing tons behind us. It clipped the top of our lead unit then skipped back slicing a chunk out of our trailing unit and first two coal cars. The other objects vanished into thin air.

After this, the train came to a stop around 2 miles after the impact, screeching slowly to a grinding halt after the emergency brakes had kicked in, and the power to their systems jumped back to life. They notified their dispatcher and then surveyed the damage, finding the cab of the rear locomotive to be “demolished and smoking” and the second two cars looking as if they “had been hit with a giant hammer.” Despite the extensive damage, the train was deemed track worthy, and was able to limp along the rail back to the yard, and this is where things would get perhaps even stranger than they already were. The witness explains:

We pulled into Paintsville yard at approximately 5:15 am. The huge overhead lights lining the yard were noticeably dark and the only lights came from what we assumed were railroad officials’ vehicles parked near the end of the track. We pulled to a stop and began unloading our grips off the wounded train. We could hear what sounded like an army of workers immediately tending to our train. Vehicle doors slamming, guys running by in weird outfits and lights glaring from all directions, the one thing missing was railroad officials. A guy named Ferguson shook my hand and asked me to follow him into the old yard office. We did, once inside they, and by they I mean I have no idea who these people were, began to ask us hundreds of questions, they then told us for our own protection we’d be medically tested before we could leave.

I asked repeatedly to talk to my road foreman or trainmaster and not only were these requests denied but they confiscated my conductors’ cellular phone. Hours later we were led outside the old yard office and the strange things continued to happen, the 2 locomotives and two cars were removed from the rest of the train we had brought in and my only guess was parked 4 tracks over under a huge tent like structure buzzing with activity. We were led off property and told due to national security our silence on this matter would be appreciated. We were then put in a Railroad vehicle and taken to Martin Kentucky were we went through questioning again with railroad officials and were then drug tested.

What exactly happened here? Was this an actual collision with a UFO and how did a slow-moving coal train manage to hit it? Who were those officials they were interrogated by? or is this all some sort of hoax? It is hard to say, but a train crashing into a UFO is not something you see every day. Our next tale is almost as unlikely, and was reported by a Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson, of Marshall County, Minnesota. On August 27, 1979, Johnson was on patrol near the North Dakota border when he saw a strange light apparently off in the wilderness. As he took a side road to get closer, the light apparently began to approach his car at an amazing rate of speed. It seemed to almost be on a collision course, and Johnson lost consciousness after being blinded by a bright flash to the sound of breaking glass. When he came to he was still sitting in his stalled car, happy to be alive but alarmed that he could not see anything. Oddly, his car had travelled some distance from where the object had engaged him, and he would say of his bizarre experience:

I noticed a very bright, brilliant light, 8 to 12 inches in diameter, 3 to 4 feet off the ground. The edges were very defined. I thought perhaps at first that it could be an aircraft in trouble, as it appeared to be a landing light from an aircraft. I proceeded south on #220. I proceeded about a mile and three tenths or a mile and four tenths when the light intercepted my vehicle causing damage to a headlight, putting a dent in the hood, breaking the windshield and bending antennas on top of the vehicle.

At this point, at the interception of the light, I was rendered either unconscious, neutralized or unknowing for a period of approximately 39 minutes. From the point of intersection, my Police vehicle proceeded south in a straight line 854 feet, at which point the brakes were engaged by forces unknown to myself, as I do not remember doing this, and I left about approximately 99 feet of black marks on the highway before coming to rest sideways in the road with the grille of my hood facing in an easterly direction. At 2:19 a.m., I radioed a 10-88 (Officer Needs Assistance) to my dispatcher in Warren.

The officer called on his radio for help, and he was rushed to the hospital with what looked like burns on his face and irritation of the eyes. Meanwhile, the patrol car he had been in was found to have a smashed in right side headlight, a crack in the windshield on the driver’s side, an unusual circular dent on the hood, also on the driver’s side, and a roof antenna that was bent over at a 60-degree angle. The windshield was particularly weird, as it seemed to have sustained “inward and outward forces acting almost simultaneously.” All of the damage was on the driver’s side of the vehicle. The interior clock was also found to be 14 minutes slow, and oddly Johnson’s wristwatch had the same anomaly. Experts who examined the vehicle would be unable to explain the peculiar damage it had incurred, and it did not seem to be any normal collision, with the official explanation being “mechanical forces of unknown origin.” Luckily his eyes would heal and he would regain his eyesight.

A place where one would perhaps more expect to see some sort of UFO collision is with aircraft in the sky, and while there have been many reports of near-misses with UFOs over the years, there was in 2013 an account of a plane possibly actually crashing into one. The Air China Boeing 757 passenger plane was allegedly flying at around 26,000 feet on a course from Chengdu to Guangzhou, when about 20 minutes into the flight things got bizarre. The crew would report that out of nowhere the plane was rocked by a very strong impact and a loud thud reverberated through the aircraft, frightening the passengers and causing the pilot to enact evasive maneuvers. The plane was given permission to make an emergency landing, and although amazingly no one had been hurt, it was found that the front of the plane had an enormous dent in it. At no point was there any radar signature of anything else in the vicinity of the plane that could have hit it, and this has led to speculation that the plane actually hit everything from a flock of birds to an unmanned drone, to of course a UFO. Unfortunately, Air China would refuse to give any further details, and Chinese authorities have allegedly just sort of swept it all under the carpet. The former U.S. government UFO investigator Nick Pope would say of the outlandish incident:

Whatever struck the aircraft will have left evidence. Analysis of the damaged nose cone should reveal microscopic traces of whatever struck the aircraft, or possibly even larger pieces of debris. So this is a solvable mystery. The only question is, will the notoriously secretive Chinese authorities reveal the truth about what happened? Cases like this show that whatever people believe about UFOs, there are serious air safety issues here. MoD and CAA files contain dozens of reports of near misses between UFOs and commercial aircraft. It’s only a matter of time before there’s a catastrophe. From the look of the photos, this disturbing incident came very close to blowing this aircraft out of the sky.

The damaged Chinese plane

There does not appear to have been any further information released by the Chinese government or the airline, leaving this purely in the realm of speculation, but it is intriguing nevertheless. What is probably more spectacular than a plane colliding with a UFO is a UFO smashing into another UFO, and that is what reportedly happened in a report given to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). It began with a sighting made in Rosh Haayin, in Israel, on September 28, 1995, by a man called Spasso Maximovitch. He purportedly saw in the sky a silvery glowing object that apparently separated into several other smaller objects as he watched in amazement, even managing to capture the event on videotape. He then went about watching the skies constantly after that, becoming obsessed with witnessing the objects again, and on June 24, 1996 it seems his patience paid off.

On this occasion he saw what looked to be the same object he had observed before, or at least one very similar to it, and he began to film it. At the same time, he noticed another object just like it streaking through the sky from the west, and headed straight towards the first object. According to Spasso, the second object approached at a very fast speed and collided with the first one, causing an explosion, all of which was captured on film. Spasso then turned the video evidence over to a journalist named David Ronen, with the local UFO magazine called “Maariv,” and a copy of it managed to find its way to UFO researcher Barry Chamish. The tapes were sent by Chamish to London for examination, even as other analysts pored over the footage trying to figure out what it shows. According to MUFON, one of these was a professional photo and video analyst by the name of Jeff Sainio, who said of the footage:

When the 2 objects apparently collide and explode, the apparent size of the light expands by a factor of roughly 2.5; this does not appear to be due to overexposure, but is the real size of the object. The last 2 frames of the video are NOT overexposed, but diffuse; since overexposure is not involved, this indicates he actual size of the explosion is shown. The real increase in size of the bright area is certainly much larger than 2.5.

In the video the explosion moves downward; this is probably due to camera motion of the startled videographer; the reference tower is too smeared to verify this conclusion. The explosion is not due to any conventional method I am familiar with; conventional, large explosions require much more than 1/4 second to disappear, and usually generate flaming debris that falls from the explosion. Neither characteristic is seen here. The acceleration, light size, and explosion are not explainable in any convention way that I know of, and this case remains unidentified.

A still from the Israeli footage

Strangely, shortly after the footage was made public, Spasso Maximovitch seems to have dropped off the grid and vanished. According to Chamish no one has been able to locate him, and besides being rather ominous, it also leaves us with not much more to go on. We are left with a compelling piece of footage of an alleged UFO collision, but little else, and so far it has remained inconclusive. You can read Sainio’s full analysis and see the video here. Is this hoaxed footage, and if not, what are we looking at here? If it was really UFOs, then how in the world did this collision happen? Was it pilot error, a malfunction, or maybe even intentional? There is no way to know.

It certainly seems that UFOs are not totally above making mistakes, and that sometimes their antics can lead to accidents. With aircraft this seems to be a particular area of worry, and there have been those who have seriously considered the threat that this may cause to airspace. But is any of this real at all, or is it just sensationalized stories, perhaps born from mundane reasons? Is there truly anything to worry about at all? Who really knows, but it all makes for some fascinating cases.

Moving on from my earlier article – on the strange alien abduction affair of 1980 involving policeman Alan Godfrey – I thought I would share with you several more cases that involve UFOs and the strange things seen inside them. From 2003 to 2009 I lectured at Ryan Wood’s annual UFO Crash-Retrieval Conference, which was held in Las Vegas, Nevada. As is so often the case at such conferences, an attendee came up to me at the 2008 event with a very strange story to tell. Aged around thirty he said that his now-retired father had worked out at Area 51 in the early 1980s, specifically in the development of Stealth technology for military aircraft. The guy said that on several occasions, in the 1990s, he had asked his father about the rumors of crashed UFOs and dead aliens held at the secret vase. His father said that the only thing he knew about aliens at Area 51 came from watching TV shows. Indeed, he told his son that he had never seen any evidence at all of alien-related activity at Area 51. But, there was one strange event that the man was willing to share with his son – and which was then shared with me.

The story told to me was that on one occasion in January 1981, a pedal bike was found deep in a remote part of the vast amount of land that is collectively known as Area 51. Yes, a bicycle. The highly-sophisticated sensors that are carefully placed all around the facility had picked up the sudden presence of something not far from one such sensor. So, a security team was quickly sent out to investigate. It was that team, I was told, which found the bike. There was, though, something very strange about the bicycle: it was extensively damaged – as if it had plummeted to the ground from a great height. The source of the story came to believe (or, more likely, to suspect) that someone had been abducted onto a UFO while riding their bike – and the bike was taken onto an alien craft, too. After which, the bike was thrown out from a great height and down onto Area 51! I guess such a thing is possible.

Moving on, and getting into really controversial areas, I have three cases on file that deal with sightings – by alien abductees – of so-called “Alien Big Cats” on-board UFOs. Yes, I can already see certain mainstream cryptozoologists clenching their fists and letting their blood-pressure soar out of control. Too bad. The UK, in particular, has a long history of sightings of Alien Big Cats, or ABCs. They are erroneously and often referred to as “black panthers.” Most cryptozoologists suggest they are escapees from private zoos and enclosures. Or, perhaps, they may have been secretly released into the wild, when their owners could no longer handle them. None of the above, however, explains why or how I have no less than three cases in my files – all from the English county of Devon, oddly – of alien abductees seeing large and menacing ABCs on-board UFOs. And at the exact time the person is at the mercy of the black-eyed, dwarfish Grays of UFO lore.

The creepiest story of all came from a Houston, Texas-based woman. She told me, back in 2002 or 2003, of her experience with the Grays in the winter of 1977. Her abduction story was very much like so many others that have become staple parts of Ufology. What set it apart, however, was when one of the Grays took out of a box and placed onto her stomach something that looked like a large spider, but with way more legs. Like something out of a horror movie it crawled up her body, onto her face, and inserted one its spindly legs into her right nostril. For a moment there was a flash of pain. Then, nothing. Except that the woman suddenly found herself back in her car that she had been abducted from, hours earlier. Should you ever be taken onto a UFO, be careful: the Grays might not be the worst thing you get to encounter!

The saga of the Navy UFO videos, which began in 2017, has been a long, strange, and sort of boring. Which is weird, considering this is a tale of the United States military acknowledging the existence of unidentified flying objects—sorry, aerial phenomena. Since the three UFO videos were leaked in 2017, it has been a slow grind of half-hearted attempts of obfuscation on the part of the military followed, inevitably, by the acknowledgment that these videos are real and do show something unidentified. In other words, it’s been three years of confirming what everyone already knew. Maybe that’s being a bit jaded. Another way to say it is that it’s been a long stretch with the military repeatedly saying that UFOs are real after the dude from Blink-182 leaked their videos. Right, sorry, that’s not boring, it’s absurd. In September of last year, the Navy acknowledged that the videos were real and did show UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena, the military’s preferred terminology because they just have to be different). Now the Pentagon is formally releasing the videos after determining that they do not show any secret military tech.

The three videos show grainy footage of two separate incidents of something flying at high speeds which the cameras struggle to track. The first, filmed in 2004, is the famous “tic-tac” UFO seen by Commander David Fraver of the USS Nimitz. The second incident was captured by two pilots in 2015 and shows another UAP rotating in mid-air. According to Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough, the Pentagon has released the videos to “clear up any misconceptions” about whether they are real and whether there is anything more to them. That’s beautiful bureaucratic language, isn’t it? We’ve got things flying around at impossible speeds, spinning, all sorts of weird stuff, and this is how you clear up “any misconceptions.”  In a statement, the Department of Defense writes:

“After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.

The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as “unidentified.”

Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO.

Unfortunately, it seems this might have done the opposite of clearing things up. For one, if these videos don’t show any sensitive capabilities or systems, then that seems to imply that these things aren’t secret military tech that these pilots just weren’t privy to. And nothing in the release of these videos seems to give any indication of what these UAP might be or what anyone thinks they might be.

Former Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who was instrumental in securing the funding for the Pentagon’s not-so-secret UFO programs AATIP and AAWSAP tweeted his response to the videos’ release. Reid wrote:

I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications. The American people deserve to be informed.

So at the end of the day have we learned anything new? Not really. But it is a direct confirmation that the videos are real, do not show any classified military tech, and that the objects remain “unidentified.” There’s nothing about aliens, fae-folk, or sky-captain Bigfoot in the release of the videos, and if the military does know whether or not Bigfoot is tooling around our skies posing a threat to the national security of the United States, they ain’t telling. For now, the only conclusion is that the videos are real and we still have no idea what UFOs are.

Ever since their unauthorized leaks, the so-called Tic Tac UFO videos have been the darlings of the mainstream media which pretty much ignores almost all other UFO sightings and reports. If they’re covered at all, it’s usually on back pages (for those who still read newspapers) or deep withing their websites. That was the case once again this week as every mainstream media site announced that the Pentagon had “officially” released the three Tic Tac and similar videos of still “unidentified” aerial phenomena. While the mainstream salivates over this old news, let’s attempt to give the same kind of attention to another story this week of an alleged on-the-ground flying saucer-like object spotted in Antarctica using Google Earth. (Photo here.)

“In the images provided by Google Earth we can see a silver circular object that has nothing to do with the rest of the surface.”

The Tic Tac UFO

The Tic Tacs have their Luis Elizondo and Tom DeLonge – this Antarctic UFO has Marcelo Irazusta, a well-known Argentine UFO researcher. It appears he found this one in December 2019 and uploaded it then (watch it here) to the YouTube site Planeta Snakedos, where it languished until this week when a clip from the video was posted by UFOMania. The location is given as “Coordinates: 64 ° 7’2.78 “S 61 ° 40’48.23” W,” which is on Graham Land, a northern piece of portion of the Antarctic Peninsula belonging to Argentina.

“From the International space station, several unknown objects (UFOs) were captured in a video near its limits, NASA estimates to cover them up and continues with its recurring role of censoring the evidence that can support that something happens in space.”

The Tic Tacs were spotted by U.S. military personnel and equipment, so Irazusta points out that Google Earth belongs to NASA. And, like the Tic Tacs, many anomalies that appear on Google Earth or on video feeds from the International Space Station are removed, hidden, filed away and otherwise kept from the public view until they’re leaked or discovered.

“It is clearly an artificial object and very similar to classic flying saucers.”

Here’s where the Antarctic object and the Tic Tacs deviate. The Antarctic object appears to be round and reflective and some commenters estimate its size as about 15 meters in diameter. While it certainly could be a case of pareidolia – after all, Irazuta is a UFO investigator – it definitely looks like something that could be a craft. On the other hand, the Tic Tacs aren’t referred to as Tic Tacs for nothing – they look like little white oval mint candies. That’s true from the videos, the radar images, the descriptions, everything. They don’t look like any conventional or any secret-son-of-conventional aircraft developed by humans and the coverage of them doesn’t give sizes or any further descriptions that help imagine them as alien spacecraft. Yet the Tic Tacs are in The New York Times and the Graham Land object is on Planeta Snakedos.

Ice can fool the eye

“Hello community, referring to the first section of the video about the UFO in Antarctica, to say that it can be very deceptive with a block of ice, I do not discuss it, but from my point of view, totally metallic, not ice.”

Should Marcelo Irazusta send his videos (yes, he has many others) to Tom DeLonge? Or should he find some other celebrity UFO fan to sponsor him? (How about Dan Aykroyd?) Should he narrow his Google Earth searches to the U.S. in order to get a politician like former Senator Harry Reid to champion him? Should he start a GoFundMe page to raise money for his own expedition?

The point of this discussion is not to suggest the media give attention to every UFO or strange anomaly report. Rather, it’s to request that some of the attention given to the Tic Tac UFOs be directed at some other reports. Let’s use some of the energy spent demanding the truth from governments on searching for more anomalies, sightings and possible evidence of our own. Sure, it may turn out to be drones (whatever happened to those strange drones in Colorado anyway?) or shadows or reflections or something else. Don’t wait for the powers that be to give you their data – start giving it to THEM!

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.