2019 was a year full of UFOlogical developments, especially in the way the phenomenon is being treated by mainstream media. With great fanfare Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSA) released their six-part TV series Unidentified on the History Channel during the summer; which not only showcased the testimony of Commander David Fravor, and other Navy pilots who have encountered unknown aerial objects during exercise missions on both coasts of the United States, but also explored other military encounters with UFOs –like the famous Rendlesham forest incident.

The narrative TTSA is trying to construct seems pretty clear: Whatever they are and wherever they come from, UFOs (or UAPs, as it is the new PC way to address the subject) constitute a threat. Not only because their aerodynamic capabilities far surpass those of the most advanced jet fighters in the world –which give them carte blanche to intrude into the restricted airspace of the most sensitive installations with total impunity– but also due to the deleterious effect which can be suffered by being directly exposed to these objects. To illustrate this the producers of Unidentified interviewed John Borrows, one of the main witnesses in the Rendlesham incident, who has suffered from a series of serious medical problems which seem directly related to his close encounter in December of 1980.

Yes, the literature is full of numerous cases in which witnesses suffered temporary or permanent health problems caused by exposure to the UFO phenomenon, and those problems range from the very mild ones –skin burns, nausea and irritated eyes– to the life-threatening ones on very rare occasions –like the Cash-Landrum incident, in which one of the witnesses developed cancer (Betty Cash) and eventually died as a result of it. But is that always the case?

As it turns out, UFO researchers also have in their files plenty of cases in which a close encounter proved beneficial to the witness; not only  for having the chance of experiencing something which only a rare minority of individuals have encountered firsthand within their lifetimes –and due to the mind-expanding potential of such experiences– but also because in those cases the witness found him- or herself cured of some illness or health condition, by a process which can only be described as miraculous for lack of a better term.

Let us now examine three cases of UFO-induced healings:

Jaume (Jacques) Bordas

The fascinating story of Jaume Bordas Blas was first publicized by Spanish researcher Antonio Ribera in 1971, and was subsequently picked up by Jacques Vallee who included it in Messengers of Deception. Bordas was born on July 20, 1911, and for most of his childhood he was a weakling sick boy; a hormonal deficiency (possibly thyroid related) caused him to suffer from serious weight problems, and his pituitary condition also resulted in slow mental development and impaired attention at school. 

One night, when he was 12 years old, Bordas felt the sudden and inexplicable urge to climb to the terrace, where he saw a wondrous vision: A group of small, triangular objects that looked to him like little planes were flying all around, across the sky. Three of the craft –which measured less than nine feet in length– landed near him; one of them opened up like a fan and from it emerged a being no bigger than the young boy, wearing a white suit and a bright white mantle. The entity said this to Bordas:

We have come to see you, because we have taken you under our protection. We know how much you suffer, and we know your dream of becoming a strong man, an athlete. You will realize it, with our help; you will be strong, not only physically but mentally, too. Now that we have adopted you, we will never forsake you. In the future we will come back to you again. In the meantime, as a token of friendship, take this.

The little being showed Bordas what looked like a square piece of dark candy, and told the boy to eat it completely for this would be the beginning of a new life for him. Bordas had obviously never heard of the warnings included in my pal Joshua Cutchin’s book A Trojan Feast (“never accept any food from fairies!”) because he did as he was told; the being went back to his ‘airplane’ and the three objects flew away. The next morning Bordas woke up with a strange taste of tar in his mouth, which showed the amazing encounter had not been a dream.

Jaume Bordas

And if the boy needed further confirmation, the proof came during the next four years as he went through a seemingly impossible physical transformation: he lost all the extra weight and grew to be incredibly strong. His mind had also been equally fortified and he developed a curiosity for scientific topics and mountains; eventually Bordas became an expert mountain climber and accomplished many feats, including being the first Spaniard to climb to the top of the Aiguille Verte in the French Alps, in 1934. In 1937 he crossed the Grand Jura and ascended Grand Chervoz.

Just like the little man had forewarned Bordaz, he had other enigmatic encounters with non-human entities during his lifetime, which we will cover in a future article. Suffice it to say the man lived to be 100 years old –maybe not all fairy food is bad, after all!

“Doctor X” (Pierre Gueymard)

Here’s another remarkable case that was known to English-speaking UFOlogists thanks to the work of Jacques Vallee, who learned of it from his mentor Aimé Michel (Michel used the pseudonym “Doctor X” to protect the witness’s identity, but this year Vallee published Forbidden Science Vol. 4 in which his real name was disclosed). Gueymard was born in 1930 and had a successful medical career which allowed him a comfortable life in a large French villa located on a hillside, where he lived with his wife and fourteen-month-old-son. 

It was the baby’s crying which actually woke Gueymard up during the night of November 2, 1968. The man went over to check on the child, walking with some difficulty since three days prior he had suffered a nasty injury in one of his legs, while cutting wood with an ax. His son’s room was dark, except from some bright flashes coming from the window despite the close shutters; the baby was fully awake and pointing toward the window from his crib, yet Gueymard paid no immediate attention to whatever could be transpiring outside his home, and gave the restless toddler a bottle of milk. Later the doctor stepped into a balcony, to witness the most fantastic spectacle he’d seen in his entire life.

From his privileged vantage point Gueymard observed two large, identical disks with a silver-white top, while their bottom sections were glowing with the color of the setting sun. The saucers were perfectly horizontal, and were casting a bright white beam directly beneath them onto the ground; a tall vertical antenna was on top of each object, and on the side they both had a shorter, horizontal antenna from which small sparks started to appear once the disks started to slowly move close to one another.

If that wasn’t incredible enough, what happened next could test the credulity of even the most open-minded UFO believer: the two objects merged into one and the remaining saucer changed course and flew toward the witness, who remained transfixed standing on the balcony. Suddenly, the disk tilted its horizontal axis in such a way that the white beam emanating from its lower half struck Gueymard directly on the chest; there was a loud bang and the object completely vanished, leaving behind only a whitish form like cotton candy (angel hair, perhaps?). The doctor felt a nervous shock and he quickly came back inside, but the surprises were far from over…

Gueymard woke up his wife to tell her what he had just witnessed. To both of their astonishment his leg injury was completely healed and he could now walk without any pain; not only that, but a much older and serious wound he had suffered in Algeria (where he was serving in the Army) had also mysteriously disappeared. 

The strange red triangular marking on Dr. X’s abdomen

Over the next few days Gueymard started to suffer some abnormal physical symptoms: he lost weight and suffered from abdominal pain; he also developed a curious red triangle around his navel, which was seconded by a similar shape which appeared in the abdomen of his son. There are many other strange aspects comprising the case of “Doctor X” including encounters with strange visitors, claims of levitation and teleportation, and even the spontaneous appearance of psychic faculties; but for the purposes of this article we’ll leave the matter by noting how, in 1985, an independent medical report corroborated the complete disappearance of the injuries Gueymard had suffered in Algeria in 1958.

Rey Hernandez

The two cases mentioned above are part of the ‘classic’ annals of XXth century UFOlogy, whereas the next one is among the most interesting cases reported in the new millennium, and has been covered in Diana Pasulka’s book American Cosmic as part of her exploration on how UFO experiences can affect religious perspectives (and vice versa). 

Rey Hernandez was, according to his own account, a die-hard rationalist and atheist –as well as a very successful lawyer– living happily with his wife Dulce, despite the fact that she remained a very devout Catholic due to her Mexican origin. In March of 2012 Dulce was heartbroken because her beloved pet Niña –an old Jack Russell terrier– was gravely ill and they had finally decided to put her out of her misery. Rey’s wife sought refuge in her faith and prayed to God to save her ‘little girl’, for that’s what ‘Niña’ means in Spanish.

Rey Hernandez

According to Rey’s testimony, her wife woke up very early in the morning to check on the poor dog, which was so sick she could only move from the neck up. Dulce took Niña downstairs and that’s when she saw a glowing object floating four feet off the ground, metallic in appearance and with the domed shape of an inverted ‘U’. Startled by this apparition, Dulce did what probably any good Mexican Catholic with a devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe would do: she went on her knees and pleaded to the luminous object to go away if it was a “bad spirit;” but if it was “an angel of the Virgin Mary” she begged it to stay and not let her dog suffer anymore.

As if it was an answer to her prayers, Dulce then saw green flashes blinking in front of her, which caused her to freak out and yell to her husband for help. Thinking his wife had probably seen a mouse or a cockroach in the kitchen, Rey ignored her at first –there’s a Latino marriage for you!– until Dulce rushed upstairs and practically dragged him out of their bedroom. One of the most interesting aspects of this case is that, when Rey finally came downstairs, what he observed was markedly different to what his wife saw: instead of a metallic object, what was in front of him was a compact, multicolored formation of plasma-like energy which looked like a horizontal cylinder with fuzzy edges. But even more astounding was the reaction of the ‘stalwart rationalist’, because instead of calling 911 or getting a camera he just stared at it for a few moments, thought it was no big deal and went back to bed!

This nonsensical ‘trance-like’ state of his lasted only 15 minutes or so, because the next thing Rey Hernandez remembers, is coming back to his senses and rushing back downstairs to see her wife jumping up and down in joy followed by her happily-barking Niña.  The miracle she had asked for had been fulfilled, and the dog was completely cured.

This was the start of a series of incredible experiences which have completely transformed Hernandez’s philosophy of life and his goals. He ended up co-founding the Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial Encounters (FREE) along with the late Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Rudy Schild, and Australian researcher Mary Rodwell. FREE’s goals include the scientific study of the close encounter experience and the role that human consciousness plays in the UFO mystery.

Conclusions

So what can we make about these three cases, aside from the fact that there are reports of inexplicable cures in the UFO literature? Many researchers in UFOlogy (and even government scientists) have studied the malignant effects suffered by close encounter witnesses, and suspect it is the result of non-ionizing microwave radiation generated by the objects –which has been of great interest to some countries for its potential to create new weapon systems. But could microwave radiation be used for the opposite goal of healing patients? Among dozens of links addressing the fear about the harmful effects of microwaves, a cursory search on Google shows there have been a few promising experiments in which low-dose microwave radiation can help in the healing of bone fractures, and the use of UV radiation in wound care; yet that could hardly explain the instantaneous recovery experienced by both Pierre Gueymard and Rey Hernandez’s dog.

Perhaps the “candy” offered to young Jaume Bordas managed to alter and rewrite his DNA in ways modern science can only dream of, or maybe it was all just the result of the placebo effect triggered by a vivid dream. But the placebo effect could not be accounted for in the case of “Doctor X,” who wasn’t expecting to be cured of his illnesses as a result of his UFO sighting, and it certainly could not be behind the healing of a dog!

Maybe we still don’t have the necessary scientific framework to understand the mechanisms behind these healing processes. We can only hint at the possibility that perhaps the UFOs’ apparent ability to manipulate both Space AND Time may be behind it. When explaining the concepts of higher dimensions, Carl Sagan once said that a hyperdimensional entity would be capable of putting the whole universe within inside the body of a hapless three-dimensional being; if that is the case, why not use that same power in order to bring back the body to a state in which the illness had yet to be developed?

Alas, I don’t have any scientific training so I’ll leave the figuring out to people smarter than me. What I really want to conclude with is this: Be wary of the people seeking to push just ONE side of the UFO narrative. Whether it is TTSA playing the “UFOs are a threat” card in order to lure the attention of the military industrial complex; the neo-Inquisitors using shoddy techniques to retrieve terrifying accounts of unnatural conjugal union with ‘demonic beings’, who seek to replace us with their hellish hybrid offspring; or the New Age gurus who assure us our “Space Brothers” seek only to guide us into a bright future away from our Earthly sorrows, and that all the cases in which UFOs have shown any type of hostility are the result of ‘military psyops’; the fact of the matter is that the UFO phenomenon is a vast, multifaceted, and terribly complex mystery with many layers, which defies simplistic explanations. 

It is only by studying all those layers, not just the ones that suit a particular agenda, that we may have any hope to come closer to the truth.

There are many strange reports in the world of UFO phenomena, and some of the oddest and most frustrating of all are those times when strange craft have allegedly come down to present possible evidence, only to be swept away into the mists of time to be condemned to a limbo of speculation and debate. One of these was dubbed the “Welsh Roswell,” and the weird saga begins in the Berwyn Mountains of Llandrillo, Merionethshire, Wales. Here is a remote and largely uninhabited land of moors, rugged peaks, and grassy fields, the mountains composed of six separate summits, and in 1974 this expanse of wilderness would be ground zero for one of the most intriguing and debated UFO incidents on record.

At approximately 8:30 PM on the evening of January 23, 1974, people in the quaint villages of Llandderfel and Llandrillo, were startled to hear an enormous boom and to feel the earth shake beneath them, and when looking outside the night sky was filled with a brilliant light that seemed to travel over the mountain peaks. It was terrifying for all who saw and felt it, seeming like the end of the world itself was upon them, and there were soon reports of a large fire burning on the mountainside, which was verified by police officers arriving in the area amid floods of panicked emergency calls. In the aftermath of the terrifying event, many of the witnesses, which included constables, would claim that they had actually seen the object that was responsible, described as a bright light moving towards the west with a tail trailing behind it, and there were even those who claimed that they had seen this light explode to rain burning, smoking debris down from the sky. One witness even called in to say that he had seen where the object had crashed, with a police report released by The Daily Post reading:

Saw bright red light, like coal fire red. Large perfect circle. Like a big bonfire. Could see lights above and to the right and white lights moving to bottom. Light changed colour to yellowish white and back again.

Berwyn Mountains

It was thought at the time that this might perhaps be a plane crash, and the Royal Air Force (RAF) scrambled to get a rescue operation out to the area. Authorities and military personnel would scour the whole area, in the end claiming to have found no evidence whatsoever of any plane wreckage or that anything had crashed at all, but witnesses knew what they had seen. Those who saw the actual incident and the aftermath of it have stood by their stories, and for the most part agree that it was not a normal plane. One local nurse named Ms. Evans would say that she had at first thought that it must have been a plane crash, but changed her mind when she saw something very bizarre on the side of the mountain that night, a light that glowed orange, red and yellow, and she says of what she witnessed:

It couldn’t have got there any other way apart from being flown there, so it had to be a UFO of some sort. I’m talking about something that could only have got there by flying and landing. We just saw this huge ball glowing and pulsating on the mountain. Some lights seemed to be scattered around it and I just wish we’d stayed to see what the end result was – whether it would just disappear or fly away. It was moon-like, but without windows or doors. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. I have no idea what it was.

While it was not disputed that there had been a loud noise, tremors, and something seen in the sky, debate has raged ever since on what it could have been and how much the government really knows. Considering there was no wreckage found according to authorities it can’t have been a plane crash, so what was it? That largely depends on who you ask. There have been plenty of witnesses who have claimed that the military came in under cover of night to load the wreckage of a strange craft into military vehicles and drive it off, and there are even claims of seeing the military removing dead humanoid bodies from the crashed ship. The official version of events blames it all on the unlikely explanation that an earthquake that just happened to hit the region right as a comet was flying overhead, or that it had even been a rare phenomenon known as earthquake lights. However, it does not explain what many of the witnesses saw, such as in Ms. Evans’ report. So what happened here?

The one who has perhaps spent the most time looking into the Berwyn Mountain incident is UFO researcher Russ Kellett, who has been investigating the mysterious events for decades. According to him, it was definitely a UFO, saying, “I am convinced there was more than one UFO involved that night. All the evidence that we have uncovered over the years has consistently pointed that way.” He also says that there is an alien underwater base in the area in the waters between North Wales and Liverpool, and evidence to prove the military was up to something on that day. He points to a military operation alleged to have taken place on the very evening of the incident, which was called “Operation Photoflash.” It supposedly involved aircraft dropping at least 80 bright flashes around the North Wales coastline, and Kellet thinks there was something nefarious afoot. He explained in a statement to The Daily Post:

North Wales is deemed a hotspot for UFOs since the Berwyn Mountains incident. I have been looking very closely over this area, and something is definitely going on. There is no doubt there is an alien base under the sea on the North Wales coastline where they build all their crafts. Why would the military want or need to light up the sea with 80 photoflash bombs if they weren’t looking for submersible objects? I think they knew there was a base under the sea and they did it to light up the area so they knew where to attack so they could pull the saucers out. It just seems like too much of a coincidence that this took place on exactly the same day as the Berwyn Mountains incident. I think by doing that, they kicked off one hell of a UFO incident.

Indeed, a document from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency showing that the Coast Guard was warned by the military warning that the flashes that would be going off seems to prove that there was such an operation, but what it had to do with the Berwyn Incident and whether they were doing it to look for underwater alien bases is completely unknown. Nevertheless, Kellet believes that it had everything to do with the incident, as he says there were numerous battleships and planes involved in the exercise, and that they had actually managed to flush three UFOs out of their lair to shoot one down with fighter aircraft after an intense chase over the mountains. It was this UFO that crashed into the Berwyn Mountains, he says, after which it was whisked away by the military and covered up. He even claims to have a map of where the UFO plummeted into the earth, as well as the flight path of the fighters chasing the mysterious craft. According to Fellet, he acquired the map from some witnesses to the otherworldly event, and he explains of it and how it came to be in his possession thusly:

The five saw a strange object and got out to have a look, but the military were there and told them to leave. They moved to a better position and started to take photos. They were all friends and four were in the military during World War Two. Afterwards they started doing their own research and the map is a result of what they found out and shows the flight paths. When I was giving a talk in Bala to a packed audience around the late 1990s, early 2000s, I was given a package by them after and there were these maps in them which they had drawn up based on what they had found out from their research. It was very strange and I was a little bit spooked. I’ve carried the map around for a long time as part of my research.

We are left to wonder if there is anything to this all, and the mystery of what those witnesses really saw in the skies over Wales on that day has raged on. Was this an airplane, a spaceship from another world, an earthquake and comet, or something else? Do the answers lie out in those remote wilds or were they spirited away by the nefarious government or merely never existed at all? It seems that something happened on that fateful night, but just what that was will probably be debated for some time to come, and the case of the “Welsh Roswell” remains a perplexing unsolved mystery.

Some of the most spectacular UFO accounts come from pilots and aircraft. These are the witnesses that seem to know what they are talking about, who are familiar with the skies and the various phenomena associated with them, and reports of strange unidentified objects from such witnesses always capture attention. One of the most well-documented such accounts on record comes from a crew aboard a Japanese airliner flying over Alaska, and it has gone on to become a much discussed entry into the realm of airborne UFO sightings.

It was November 17, 1986, and Japan Air Lines flight 1628, a Japanese Boeing 747-200F cargo aircraft, was on its way from Paris to Narita International Airport, in Japan, with a cargo of Beaujolais wine. The flight was overseen by Japan Airlines Captain Kenju Terauchi, an ex-fighter pilot and senior airline pilot with more than 10,000 hours flight experience, and everything was smooth at the start. The plane took off on schedule and made its way towards its destination, a route which would take it over a portion stretching from Reykjavík to Anchorage, Alaska. It was here in these skies that the routine flight would take a turn for the decidedly unusual.

The distance from the lights was far enough from us and we felt no immediate danger. I thought perhaps it is a UFO. The lights were still moving strangely. Most unexpectedly two spaceships appeared [directly in front of the plane], shooting off lights. The inside cockpit shined brightly and I felt [the warmth of the UFO’s thrusters’] on my face. Then, three to seven seconds later, the fire — like from jet engines — stopped and became a small circle of lights as they began to fly in level flight at the same speed as we were. The middle of the body of the ship sparked an occasional stream of lights, like a charcoal fire. Its shape was a square, flying 500 feet to 1,000 feet in front of us, very slightly higher in altitude than us. Its size was about the same size as the body of a DC-8 [similar in size to a Boeing 707].

It is impossible for any manmade machine to make a sudden appearance in front of a jumbo jet that is flying 910 kilometers per hour and to move along in a formation paralleling our aircraft. But we did not feel threatened or in danger. Honestly, we were simply astounded. I have no idea why they came so close to us. There was a pale white flat light in the direction where the ships flew away, [pacing us]. The Anchorage Center replied that they saw nothing on their radar. I set our digital weather radar distance to 20 miles, radar angle to horizon. There it was, on the screen: a large, green, round object had appeared seven or eight miles away, in the direction of the object. We arrived at the sky above the Eielson Air Force Base and Fairbanks. It was a clear night. We were just above the bright city lights and we checked the pale white light behind us. There was a silhouette of a gigantic spaceship! We must get away quickly!

The larger craft was described by Terauchi as “a mothership,” and reported as being twice the size of an aircraft carrier, looming out there on the horizon and pacing the airplane. Throughout the whole ordeal, the original lights were displaying feats of maneuverability that were well beyond any known aircraft, seeming to defy gravity, and Terauchi would say of this:

The thing was flying as if there was no such thing as gravity. It sped up, then stopped, then flew at our speed, in our direction, so that to us it [appeared to be] standing still. The next instant it changed course. In other words, the flying object had overcome gravity.

In the meantime, Air Traffic Control was unable to register anything on their radar to confirm any of this, although Elmendorf’s NORAD Regional Operations Control Center (ROCC) did manage to pick up a “surge primary return” in the area. Terauchi carried out evasive maneuvers, changing altitudes and moving about in circles, but the strange craft easily managed to match them and continue to follow, and when offers were made to scramble military jets the Captain refused, not sensing that there was any imminent threat. The objects would continue their inscrutable activities until a United Airlines passenger jet entered the airspace around 150 miles from Anchorage and purportedly sent the UFOs scattering off into the unknown. Flight 1628 would land safely, and Terauchi and his crew, co-pilot Takanori Tamefuji and flight engineer Yoshio Tsukuba, would file a report with the Federal Aviation Administration on what they had witnessed.

The bizarre account would get out into the press, and interestingly Captain Terauchi would be grounded in response, relegated to a desk job, which only stoked the fires of conspiracy talk. John Callahan, the FAA Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations branch, launched an investigation and would turn up some interesting findings, such as evidence that showed that the objects at some points had been clocked at moving thousands of miles per hour. Callahan would apparently have a meeting attended by representatives of the FBI, CIA and President Reagan’s Scientific Study Team, during which the data was met with excitement according to him. He would say:

When they asked me what I thought, I told them that it looked like we had a UFO that was up there. As far as I was concerned, Reagan’s science team were the ones that verified my own thoughts about it. They were very, very excited about the data. They had said at that time that this was the was the only time — and they had used the words ‘a UFO’ — was ever recorded on radar for any length of time.

Regardless of this, it was allegedly decided to basically bury the data on the incident and all present were told to act as if the meeting had never taken place at all. Not only this, Callahan would claim that the officials had confiscated all of the data and whisked it away, although he managed to squirrel away the initial pilot’s report. The FAA would conduct a 3-month investigation into the incident, and after it wrapped up there would be a fair amount of backtracking, such as claiming that the military radar signatures had been caused by technical difficulties and a “split radar image,” and that there was no evidence at all that anything had been there.

The case has ever since been picked up and hotly discussed in UFO circles, where various hypotheses have been thrown about. The skeptical argument is that the crew had been disoriented and had misidentified Venus or Mars, both of which had been unusually bright at the time in question, or that they had been reflections on cloud cover or the result of optical illusions caused by ice crystals. However, we must remember that these were experienced pilots and that there was mention of actual heat from the UFOs permeating the air around them. Another skeptical argument is that Captain Terauchi had already established himself as being a UFO believer, having logged several other sightings during his tenure with the airline, and so it is suggested that perhaps he was not a totally unbiased observer, but here the phenomenon was witnessed by other crew as well, who corroborated the story, although it is only Terauchi who apparently saw “the mothership.” The exact details of the meeting allegedly attended by Callahan have never been officially released or corroborated either, further muddying the waters.

What did Japan Airlines Flight 1628 see, if anything? The theories have orbited the case of course, including that this was some sort of top secret stealth technology or experimental aircraft being tested, that it was actual aliens, or that it was nothing more than Venus or ice crystals. The intriguing thing here is the meeting that supposedly took place afterwards and the unceremonious grounding of the pilot who logged it all. Is this evidence of a cover up, or something else? Regardless of what is really going on here, the case has become one of the most oft-discussed and pervasive in UFO literature, and stands tall among the numerous accounts of pilots having brushes with the unknown.

One of the UFO-related issues that isn’t touched on as much as it could be is that of what I call “UFO warnings.” I’m talking specifically about those in the UFO field who have made statements designed to deter other researchers from digging too deep into the subject – for the sake of their physical health and sanity. In many cases, they are former researchers; people who had stumbled across something that led them not just to quit Ufology, but to encourage others in the field to quit, too. Frederick “Ted” Holiday – the author of The Goblin Universe, The Dragon and the Disc, and The Great Orm of Loch Ness – claimed to have seen a Man in Black-type character near the shores of Loch Ness, Scotland, in 1973. Roland Watson, an authority on the Nessie phenomenon, says: “Events took an even stranger turn when [Holiday’s] co-author, Randall Jones Pugh, did a radical thing when in 1980 he destroyed his UFO work and walked away from the subject. This happened after a series of personal experiences which he said ‘were too frightening to talk about‘. Why did he do that? What were these experiences that put fear into him and did the death of his fellow investigator, Ted Holiday, months before add to some intimidation he felt he was under? There is now no way to tell since Randall died in 2003.” Pugh warned people to stay away from the UFO subject, such was the fear he developed of the phenomenon.

In an interview I did with Ray Boeche – both a priest and a long-time UFO investigator – he told me: “I have always thought that one of the most important things that John Keel ever said was that if you have kids or teenagers, this is not something to encourage them to get involved with. Keel was a pretty dyed-in-the-wool atheist. But he understood that, at some level, there’s something, in some sense transcendent over us, that can, if nothing else, ‘mess’ with us. And it can cause a lot of damage. Sometimes, I think I’m singing a one-note song with this, from a Christian perspective. I would not consider myself theologically liberal or a theological fundamentalist. My beliefs are solidly orthodox, and rooted in my view of the Bible as God’s inerrant Word. But there are things that we just aren’t equipped to deal with from a mechanistic, naturalistic worldview. There are malevolent forces out there that will be happy to take advantage of just about any opening we give them. And, so, we need to be very cautious. I tend to think that may be what happened to Albert Bender, but he might not have been so cautious.”

And talking of Albert Bender…he was the poor soul who, in almost single-handed fashion, unleashed the Men in Black phenomenon on Ufology, in the early 1950s. He was also a direct witness to the chilling things in black. Not only that, Bender largely quit Ufology after writing his 1962 book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men. Eventually, he quit the subject completely. Even today, the full story of Bender’s exit from Ufology remains shrouded in mystery. Notably, Bender himself – back in the fifties – warned his colleagues of the dangers of looking into the UFO phenomenon.

Now, let’s take a look at the work of John Keel, most noted for his books The Mothman Prophecies and Operation Trojan Horse. In a 2017 review of the latter book, Andrew Griffin wrote: “Keel says that ‘black magic’ is often linked to the phenomenon, and some people have such frightening experiences dabbling in the topic, that they abandon it for good. In fact, Keel tells his adult readers who are parents to warn their children away from Ufology altogether.‘I have in my files hundreds of cases, some of which have now been investigated by qualified psychiatrists, in which young men and women obsessed with the UFO phenomenon have suffered frightening visits from these apparitions, been followed by mysterious black Cadillacs which appeared and disappeared suddenly, and have been terrified into giving up their pursuit of UFOs. Many contactees report similar experiences‘ [italics Griffin’s].”

Gareth Medway addressed the experiences of a a UFO researcher named Brian Leathley-Andrews, of Coventry, England. Medway said that Leathley-Andrews had a series of strange experiences in the 1960s, and one particularly weird affair in October 1968.  On the day in question, Medway wrote, he “returned home to notice a man standing by the next-door garage.”

Leathley-Andrews said of the man: “His face was glowing orange and as I watched, the face changed to that of an old man before my eyes.”

Medway stated that: “After this [Leathley-Andrews] started experiencing problems with his telephone, and getting threatening calls. He soon abandoned UFO investigation.”

In 2018, Leathley-Andrews finally came out of the shadows, years after he quit Ufology, and said: ““I want to publicly warn all teenage hobbyists that this is nothing to dabble in lightly.”

The UFO Contactees of the 1950s were a varied bunch. They all claimed amazing encounters with human-looking aliens. Those same aliens demanded we lay down our nuclear weapons and live in peace with one another. Some chance of that happening – then or now! They included George Adamski, Truman Bethurum, Dana Howard, Arthur Bryant, Daniel Fry, and George Hunt Williamson. While many of their claims differed in varying ways, there’s one thing that links just about all of them. Namely, that nearly all of the Contactees had files opened on them by the FBI. Not only that, some of those files were lengthy. Very lengthy. To give you an idea, the number of pages that the FBI has now declassified on Adamski is in excess of 400 pages. Then, there is George Van Tasssel, who is mostly remembered for his annual flying saucer events held out at Giant Rock, California from the 1950s to the 1970s. At their height (the fifties) the outdoor gigs attracted audiences in their thousands. Van Tassel gained more attention when he created the near-legendary Integratron – supposedly designed to extent the human lifespan. The FBI’s file on Van Tassel makes it very clear that the Bureau took a great deal of interest in the man. Much of it revolved around concerns that Van Tassel was using the UFO subject as a means to spread communism. There is, however, another aspect to all of this.

In the most recent and relevant batch of material that the FBI has declassified there is an interesting Q&A between the FBI and Mrs. Van Tassel. Much has been said and written about George Van Tassel, but far less about his wife, Eva. Until now. The three-pages-long document provides us with some interesting data on Eva and her husband. Dated November 13, 1954 the FBI document begins as follows: “Mrs. Eva Van Tassel, wife of captioned subject [George, of course] was interviewed by SA [Special Agent, name deleted]and the reporting agent in the absence of her husband. Mrs. Van Tassel advised that her husband was in Los Angeles contacting a printer who prints a magazine named ‘Proceeding’ of the College of Universal Wisdom. She declared while in Los Angeles Mr. Van Tassel sleeps in a truck. Mrs. Van Tassel could not furnish the name or location of the printer.”

Giant Rock

The FBI documentation continues: “Relative to her husband and herself, Mrs. Van Tassel claims that she and her husband practice a metaphysical religion. She declared this religion is based on an occult principle in that she and her husband sit in a room in dead silence and receive thought transfers from one another and from other individuals who are not psychically present in the room. She declared that it was through this type of practice that her husband has learned or prophesied the coming of World War III and a gigantic explosion on the East Coast. She mentioned that at the present time she and her husband have undertaken a special project. This project is the founding and organizing of the College of Universal Wisdom.”

The FBI agents made notes concerning what Eva told them: “The purpose of the college is to promote and carry out interplanetary communication and the dissemination of Universal Wisdom gained through the median of space beings. She advised that her husband has contacted many individuals concerning his plans for the college. She mentioned that he has contacted professors and students and various colleges throughout the United States. Mrs. Van Tassel could not furnish the identities of any of these individuals that her husband has corresponded with. She also advised that this college would operate under the state laws of California as a place of learning pertaining to religion. She advised that her husband through his periodical mentioned above has solicited donations for the advancement of this college. She further advised that the college is to be located adjacent to the Giant Rock Airport at Yucca Valley.”

The FBI had much more to say: “Mrs. Van Tassel declared that on August 24, 1953, at approximately 2:00 A.M. while she and her husband were sleeping out of doors adjacent to the Giant Rock air strip, her husband was awakened by a person from outer space in a flying saucer which had landed on the air strip. Mrs. Van Tassel was quick to point out she was not awakened and did not see the spacemen or his means of transportation. Mrs. Van Tassel declared that her husband related that the spaceman took her husband aboard the flying saucer which was occupied by three additional spacemen. Mrs. Van Tassel declared that her husband failed to mention the color or the size of this space craft. She stated that the spacemen were similar in every description to earth men. She advised that the spacemen did not carry weapons nor was there any armament noticed on the flying saucer. She declared that according to her husband, the saucer and spacemen spent approximately twenty minutes on earth after which time they departed into outer space. The spaceman who woke up her husband was the leader or spokesman for the group. He spoke in English and informed her husband that earth men should give up using metal as they are ruining radio frequencies with the over-use of metal.”

There was this, too, regarding Eva and George: “Relative to her husband, she stated he was born in Ohio, city unknown, March 12, 1910. She mentioned that it is possible her husband was born in Ashtabula. He failed to receive a high school diploma as he lacked three months schooling. He left Ohio in 1929 for California. Mrs. Van Tassel declared she married her husband on January 31, 1932, in Yuma, Arizona; her maiden name being Eva Meek. She declared that her husband, prior to 1947, worked as a Flight Test Engineer at Lockheed Aircraft, Burbank, California, and lived on [illegible] Street in Los Angeles. She declared that in 1947 she, her husband, and her daughter, Darlene, moved to Yucca Valley. She stated her daughter is Secretary-Treasurer of the College of Universal Wisdom. She also pointed out that her husband presently operates the Giant Rock Airport under CAA regulations. She advised her husband is not a pilot, but does hold a mechanics certificate with CAA.”

It all got a bit surreal and amusing as the FBI concluded: “It was noted by the reporting agent that the air strip known as Giant Rock is a flat, dry, lake bed. The area surrounding being noted. The writer and [Special Agent deleted] interviewed Mrs. Van Tassel in an underground cave like room which was excavated from the base of the Giant Rock. Mrs. Van Tassel advised that this room is presently the headquarters of the College of Universal Wisdom. The area surrounding the air strip was in every respect very primitive.”

Throughout the history of war there have been many strange cases of the bizarre that have managed to slip through the cracks of time and be lost among the countless tales of valor and fighting. These are the accounts that have sort of been brushed aside and forgotten, yet remain lodged there in the records for anyone who cares to dig for them. There are plenty of these reports that involve UFOs, and among these are the striking accounts that involve these mysterious craft actually becoming active combat participants and engaging the men on the ground. It is a topic I have covered in relation to the Vietnam War, and it is all puzzling, indeed. Here we will go back to the Korean War, to a case that has largely remained confined to the shadows of history, and which involved a whole regiment of men who seem to have come under attack by forces from beyond this world.

A very bizarre account from the Korean War emerged in January of 1987, when John Timmerman, of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), sat down for an interview with a former U.S. Army private first class (PFC) by the name of Mr. Francis P. Wall, who had a most unusual tale to tell. Wall had been deployed with the Army infantry, 25th Division, 27th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, ‘Easy’ Company, and in May of 1951 they were operating outside of Chorwon, in an area known by the military as the Iron Triangle, on a mission to reach a small village in the mountains. The village in question was in an area marked to be bombarded with artillery fire, wiped off the face of the earth, and Wall and his men were there to make sure that any innocent civilians were properly warned of the impending rain of fire. Indeed, the air was already reverberating with the thumps and booms of shells hitting, the dark of night occasionally lit up with flashes in the distance. Wall and company had made their way to a steep slope overlooking the village and the fiery flowers of artillery airbursts painting the scene with fire, and that was when they saw something they could not explain up there in the air in the middle of this war ravaged scene. Wall would say of this:

We suddenly noticed on our right-hand side what appeared to be a jack-o-lantern come wafting down across the mountain. And at first no one thought anything about it. So we noticed that this thing continued on down to the village to where, indeed, the artillery air bursts were exploding. It had an orange glow in the beginning. We further noticed that this object was [so] quick that it could get into the center of an airburst of artillery and yet remain unharmed. But then this object approached us. And it turned a blue-green brilliant light. It’s hard to distinguish the size of it; there’s no way to compare it. The light was pulsating. This object approached us.

The men were understandably very unsettled by this point, as the object was obviously not one of theirs, nor any known aircraft any of them had ever seen before, and they radioed the situation in to their superiors, requesting permission to open fire on it. Why they would think that their rifles would do any good when they had just witnessed it casually make its way through artillery explosions is anyone’s guess, but the permission was granted and Wall claims that he would then open fire on it with his M-1 rifle loaded with armor piercing bullets. He claims that he hit the object several times, hearing the pings of the bullets against what sounded like metal, and the bullets seemed to have an effect on it where the artillery had not, apparently damaging it and causing it to exhibit some strange behavior. Wall would say:

Now why would that bullet damage this craft if the artillery rounds didn’t? I don’t know, unless they had dropped their protective field around them, or whatever. But the object went wild, and the light was going on and off. It went off completely once, briefly. And it was moving erratically from side to side as though it might crash to the ground. Then, a sound — we had heard no sound previous to this — the sound of, like, diesel locomotives revving up. That’s the way this thing sounded.

This was where things would get pretty harrowing, as according to Wall the craft unleashed some sort of a retaliatory attack on them. The craft allegedly emitted a kind of ray or beam that came in pulses, and which they could see aiming at them “like a searchlight.” When the ray swept over them the men found themselves overcome with a tingling, burning sensation, and while it didn’t seem to be causing any visible damage they could feel it penetrating through their skin and the pain was enough to make them scramble for cover, scurrying in a panic into their bunkers, where the attack seemed to continue. Wall describes the terrifying and otherworldly scene thusly:

So the company commander, Lt. Evans, hauled us into our bunkers. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We were scared. These are underground dugouts where you have peep holes to look out to fire at the enemy. So, I’m in my bunker with another man. We’re peeping out at this thing. It hovered over us for a while, lit up the whole area with its light, and then I saw it shoot off at a 45-degree angle, that quick, just there and gone. That quick. And it was as though that was the end of it.

Unfortunately for Wall and the others, this seemed to be far from the end of it, as over the next few days they would begin to develop an array of debilitating physical symptoms, including disorientation, memory loss, headaches, stomachaches, nausea, and extreme weakness that was potent enough that some of them had trouble even walking. Doctors who examined them could find no reason or cause for these symptoms, the only evidence that anything was wrong being an unusually high white blood cell count that could not be explained. Despite nothing really officially wrong with them, the men were nevertheless all physically ill and suffering from something, and it was widely assumed by them that this was the doing of the beam that UFO had fired at them. According to Wall, many of them continued to suffer from ill health for years after the encounter, with him saying that even to that day he had frequent bouts of disorientation, memory loss, weakness, and difficulty putting on weight.

In later years it has been speculated that the men were probably suffering from radiation sickness, but there have been plenty of other ideas by those who have heard of this rather obscure case. One idea is that the Soviets or even the Chinese had been carrying out covert military experiments in the remote region testing anti-gravity technology and sonic weaponry, and indeed this has been used as an explanation for many of the dozens of other UFO sightings made during the Korean War. Of course there is also the notion that this encounter was exactly what it looks like, being an attack by an actual UFO, perhaps having been present in the region observing the combat for inscrutable reasons, and it has even been suggested that the craft did not mean to launch a fatal attack, but to merely disorient and immobilize them, hence the fact that that they did not suffer any severe injury or death.

Then again, maybe this is all hallucinations and the result of trauma, tiredness, and stress in the war-torn environment. It could even just be a tall tale conjured up by Wall himself, as he is the only official witness, and although he claims that 25 other men witnessed this event none of these others seem to have ever been tracked down and independently interviewed. Just about the only thing known for sure is tht he was indeed a soldier in the Korean War in the area specified on the date specified, but after that no one knows. Although he swore an oath that his story is true, in the end we are really left to take the word of one witness. So was this just war time hallucinations, Soviet or Chinese experiments, or an actual attack by an otherworldly UFO? It is quite likely we will never have a concrete answer, and that this will just remain another curious account lost int the fog and history of warfare.