In an article titled Predictive Programming by Dahria Beaver of Ohio State University, it is written that:

“Predictive Programming is the theory that the government or other higher-ups are using fictional movies or books as a mass mind control tool to make the population more accepting of planned future events.”

Researcher Alan Watt, arguably the first person to highlight Predictive Programming, described it as:

“…a subtle form of psychological conditioning provided by the media to acquaint the public with planned societal changes to be implemented by our leaders. If and when these changes are put through, the public will already be familiarized with them and will accept them as natural progressions, thus lessening possible public resistance and commotion”.  

Movies and television shows have long been recognized as powerful tools for shaping public opinion and influencing cultural norms. With their wide reach and ability to evoke emotional responses, they provide an ideal platform for disseminating messages – whether overt or covert.

In the context of predictive programming, filmmakers and showrunners may incorporate elements that reflect emerging societal trends, technological advancements, or geopolitical developments. By presenting these ideas in a fictional context, they can gauge audience reactions, plant seeds of thought, or even acclimatize viewers to certain scenarios.

Of course, as we might imagine, the notion of Predictive Programming is very much a subject of debate, with as much opposition to it as there are believers. It is, though, fascinating and concerning in equal measure—the idea that our perception of the world around us could be being shaped without us even realizing it.

A great place to start would be with the 1999 movie Eyes Wide Shut, which is awash with Masonic symbolism and appears to lay bare the workings of the so-called Illuminati. And when we consider that the film’s director, the great Stanley Kubrick, passed away just after the first screening of the film in what, to some, were slightly suspicious circumstances, then the film’s symbolism and subject matter should perhaps be examined a little more closely.

Perhaps the best place to start would be with the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, or more specifically, his sudden death only days after the first viewing of the film. Officially, Kubrick died from a sudden heart attack, but many people believed his death was more than coincidental, especially when rumors began to circulate of scenes being cut from the film in the weeks that followed his demise.

It was said by some that many of the people in attendance at that viewing belonged to “the elite” and that after viewing the offering from Kubrick, they immediately went on a “damage limitation” mission.  It was further put forward that they knew Kubrick would not be cooperative in terms of cutting scenes away from the film, and so, ultimately, he was murdered, with his death made to look like a heart attack.

It is worth noting here, as bizarre as it sounds, that the idea of murdering a person and having it appear to be a heart attack is not that much of a stretch of the imagination. During the 1975 court hearings brought against the CIA following an investigation by the New York Times, one of the secrets of the agency, among many that were laid bare, was a weapon labeled the “heart attack” gun. This weapon fired a pin-sized shard of ice with a highly poisonous substance encased inside. When fired, the pin-sized shard of ice entered a person’s body and then immediately melted, releasing the poison and so causing a heart attack. Not only would it be highly unlikely that a mark would even be found on the body, even if it was, but there would also be no trace of the poison left to detect.

Whether it is correct to be suspicious of Kubrick’s death or not remains a matter of debate, at least to some, although it should be said, even though it wouldn’t be impossible, it is unlikely. And officially, while some changes were made in the months following his death, they were said to be more editing and cosmetic changes as opposed to the removal of scenes. As we might imagine, not everyone was convinced. We should also note that Kubrick was known to work on his films right up until the very last minute, even after public screenings, so it is not that much of a surprise that some cosmetic changes were still required.

That said, however, there are many other reasons that such ominous conspiracies surround the film, and that its purpose was to expose the underbelly of society’s elite. Indeed, the Illuminati and the conspiracies that have surrounded them, whether purely for entertainment or to shine a light on their chilling activities, run throughout the film right from the start.

The movie revolves around the main protagonist, Dr. Bill, played by Tom Cruise, who, through his job, mixes with several “high-ranking” members of society. We immediately see references to Freemasonry and suggestions of conspiracies connected to the Illuminati. For example, in the opening scenes of the film, we see Dr. Bill’s wife, Alice (played by Nicole Kidman), getting dressed, something she does while standing between two large stone pillars, which are said to represent the Masonic pillars, Boaz and Jachin. The Star of Ishtar is also seen at various times during the film.

As the film progresses, through a chance encounter with an old friend, Dr. Bill learns of a secret party for members of the elite, and manages to bluff his way inside to what is quickly revealed to be some kind of Illuminati-style sex party. He is quickly discovered during some kind of ritual, threatened, and thrown out. During this scene, where Dr. Bill is eventually uncovered as being an uninvited guest, there are multiple Masonic symbols on view. The leader of the ritual, for example, sits upon a throne that contains a double-headed eagle with a crown resting between their heads. While it could be a coincidence, the 33-degree Scottish Rite Freemasons use an almost identical double-headed eagle in their emblem.

Following this, his life begins to unravel somewhat. Furthermore, he begins to notice strange behavior and symbols all around him that he had previously been blind to. By the end of the movie, it is all but confirmed to him that elite secret societies exist and that they control the police, politicians, and even the media.

For example, one of the “sex slaves” in the film is seemingly murdered, but her death is reported in the newspaper as a “drug overdose”. This is exactly what many conspiracy writers have claimed happens to “mind-controlled sex slaves” after they have fallen out of favor with their elite masters. Even the constant references to rainbows (which we will return to shortly) are said to be a symbol of the MK-Ultra mind control techniques that some say continue secretly today.

It is further intriguing that the building where this bizarre party takes place appears to be a depiction of an infamous ball held by the Rothschild family, specifically, a ball held by Baron Guy and Baroness Marie-Helene de Rothschild at their mansion, the Chateau de Ferriers, just outside of Paris in France in 1972. We know about the surreal affair due to photographs that have since been leaked online with the arrival of the Internet. And these pictures are a combination of bizarre and morose imagery. Attendees, for example, are wearing bizarre masks ranging from chilling animal heads to pretend cages. There are also many broken children’s toys – including dismembered dolls – scattered around the many long tables, with some of these tables featuring naked mannequins upon which food is presented. The mansion was also bathed in an artificial red glow in the real-life gathering in 1972 in order to depict it being in flames. What’s more, the secretive nature of the party in the film was very real in real life, with the invites for the Rothschild party not only written in code, but written backwards so they could only be read and understood by viewing them in a mirror.

If we return to when Bill first tricks his way inside the party, we can see more references to mind control and the use of “sex slaves”. For example, he is almost immediately greeted by two “Monarch Presidential” models, which, according to some, are references to mind-control subjects who have been “trained” through mind-control techniques to be subconscious “high-level sex slaves” who also act as carriers of information between the world’s elite. It is during this scene that one of many references to rainbows is used (another apparent indicator of mind-control programming), where Bill asks one of the girls where they are going, she replies, “where the rainbow ends”, before the second girl asks, “Don’t you want to see where the rainbow ends?” There is also, incidentally, an apparent overuse of mirrors throughout the movie, said by some researchers to be yet another suggestion of mind-control.

If we stay with the notion of sex slaves a moment longer, there are a number of “scarlet women” who are involved with Dr. Bill throughout the movie. As well as the “sex slave” who is eventually murdered (or overdosed) and has noticeable scarlet hair, Dr. Bill’s wife, Alice, and their daughter both do. Another particularly eye-opening scene occurs towards the end of the film, following the discovery of one of the women at the secret party – a prostitute whom Dr. Bill had become friendly with beforehand – is discovered dead, an apparent drug overdose. Although it isn’t outright said, it is heavily implied that the woman was murdered and her death was simply made to look like an overdose, and her death was reported as such in the media. A friend of Dr. Bill’s – himself a member of the elite in question and in attendance at the party – claims that the high-ranking members of these secret societies control the police, politicians, the media – essentially, all aspects of modern life. In short, if the powers that be – the elite – wanted to have someone murdered and have their death look like an overdose, a suicide, or even a tragic accident, they could do so easily. While this might sound a little outlandish, we should perhaps not underestimate the notion that a person’s murder – if such control was extended over almost every facet of society at one level or another – could be made to appear accidental or even from natural causes, which is not at all that much of a stretch of the imagination.

Was Eyes Wide Shut a warning to society as a whole of an “elite” force all but ruling over us? One that remains almost untouchable through their discreet control of all aspects of modern life? Or was it purely entertainment from the wild and productive mind of Stanley Kubrick? Incidentally, Eyes Wide Shut is far from the only Stanley Kubrick film to have featured heavy Masonic symbolism. In fact, most of his movies feature some kind of symbolism buried in certain scenes, from The Shining to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It certainly might make us think that we are not always watching what we think we are watching.

There are many other thought-provoking claims regarding hidden messages buried within blockbuster movies. Although there were no apparent predictions made, it is worth our time briefly exploring the 1982 blockbuster movie ET: The Extraterrestrial, or more specifically, a remark made by (then) President Ronald Reagan following a private screening of the film in the White House, a remark that was corroborated by the film’s director, Steven Spielberg, who the comment was made to. Reagan was said to lean over to Spielberg and offer “how surprised” people would be if they realized “how true all of this is”, nodding to the screen.

Years later, during promotional work for his film Super 8, Spielberg was asked about the comment. Not only did he confirm that it was true, but that what the president had said to him was, “there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true”. Spielberg caveated his response by saying that he took President Reagan to be “having a joke” with him. However, we might imagine, especially given some of Reagan’s other remarks about UFOs, including his own encounters, that he was entirely serious.

It has been claimed that ET is based loosely on the Roswell crash. If this is the case, what is interesting is that rumors have swirled for years in UFO circles that not only were several alien entities recovered from the crash at Roswell in the summer of 1947, but that at least one of these entities was alive and survived for several years before being returned home as part of some kind of cosmic exchange.

In light of his alleged comments to Spielberg, it is worth staying with the legendary filmmaker a little while longer, and specifically, his 1977 blockbuster, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. According to some, the movie hints at the truths of an alleged secret meeting between (then) President Eisenhower at an air base in California in 1954 (at a time when he was officially undergoing emergency dental surgery) – a meeting that resulted in a human/alien exchange program, said to have existed in real-life under the name Project Serpo. Indeed, we might ask, as speculative as it might be, if there is any truth to the reality of the events depicted in ET, could this be the same for Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

It is also worth mentioning 1994’s Stargate, which leans heavily on the ancient astronaut theory, specifically, in this case, that there was some kind of extraterrestrial intervention with the ancient Egyptian civilization. While this is a purely fictional account, the idea of such alien intervention in the distant past is one that has gained widespread traction among the world’s population since the 1970s. Again, while it is pure speculation, is Stargate hinting at the accuracy of such theories? We should also note that very similar themes of alien intervention in the distant past are explored at length in the film Prometheus, the Alien franchise prequel movie released in 2012.

While the Disney franchise is harmless enough to many, conspiracies about hidden messages in its films and television shows have swirled for years. Everything from hidden sexual imagery to messages hidden in plain sight has been discussed in conspiracy circles. And while we should treat such claims with caution, it is easy to see why they would gain traction.

If we take the logo of the Disney corporation, for example, we can see, according to some people, the number “666” with the curves of the logo’s writing - one in the “W”, one in the “I-dot”, and one at the top of the “Y”.

Perhaps one of the most well-known conspiracies of symbolism and hidden messages in Disney films and shows can be found in an episode of Duck Tales. The scene takes place in a doctor’s room, where an eye-chart can be clearly seen in the background – so clearly, in fact, that in a triangular formation, the letters spell out the phrase, “ASK ABOUT ILLUMINATI”. As well as the direct message itself, the fact that the letters are in a triangle (or pyramid) shape, as well as that they are on an eye-chart (a reference to the all-seeing eye), is a great example of how such messages and symbolic meanings can be hidden in plain sight.

There are also other discreetly hidden words, pictures, and even audible phrases. Many adults have always picked up on the innuendos and double-entendres to be found in the scripts, and many others have spotted suspiciously shaped items in the background of many otherwise innocent scenes. There are some, though, that stand out.

For example, in the 1994 film The Lion King, during one scene, the main character, Simba, collapses on the ledge of a mountain. As he does so, dust flies into the air. As it disperses into the night sky, the word “SEX” is clearly spelled out. It is there with no context, and it is arguably astronomically low that the word would have been spelled out by chance. We have to ask, other than for the creator’s own amusement, why this was included.

A similar, although altogether more graphic image can be seen in The Rescuers from 1977. In one scene, in the background, a topless woman can be seen in one of the windows of the overlooking buildings. While this was likely missed by almost everyone, even the children, subliminally, the image would have registered. Incidentally, following the image becoming widespread knowledge, the Disney company attempted to recall around four million copies of it, eventually releasing the movie again in 1992, this time without the topless lady present.

While those examples might make us scratch our heads a little, the third example is a little more concerning. In the 1992 film Aladdin, during a scene where Aladdin is fending off an attack from Jasmine’s tiger, Raja, he goads the beast by saying, “Come on, good kitty….take off and go”. However, some viewers began to hear something else, and when the scene was analyzed, another, muffled voice was heard to say, “Good teenagers, take off your clothes”. As we might imagine, many people were more than worried about this allegedly hidden message, with some beginning to question just why these hidden images, references to sex, and even subliminal sexual instructions were being placed in such movies, much less movies aimed predominantly at children.

The rumors of Masonic, Illuminati, and even Satanic connections to Disney only increased when, in 2019, the former Vice President, Michael Laney, was sentenced to six years in prison for sexual offenses against a 7-year-old girl. Following the conviction, another potential victim came forward with similar accusations, but there wasn’t enough evidence to proceed with charges.

Only the previous year, in 2018, Disney actor Stormy Westmoreland was arrested on suspicion of similar crimes involving a minor. Not only did he send inappropriate photographs to what he thought was a 13-year-old boy (who was, in fact, police detectives posing as such), but he also attempted to lure the youngster to his hotel room. He was eventually sentenced to two years in prison after he entered into a plea deal. In March 2022, four Disney employees were arrested on human trafficking charges as part of an undercover sting operation in Florida, at least one of whom was involved in sending inappropriate photographs to a teenage girl.

While these crimes have been carried out by individuals and not by the corporation itself, it certainly doesn’t help when considered alongside the conspiracies of such things surrounding their name, especially when many of those images, symbols, and apparent innuendos are of their own making.  

As we know, there are a plethora of conspiracies surrounding the 9/11 attacks in September 2001, so it should perhaps not surprise us that there is also an abundance of claims of predictions of the atrocities within blockbuster movies and even television shows. What makes these fascinating conspiracies even more nuanced are alleged Masonic references and symbols often also found, sometimes in the artwork associated with the respective film or sometimes within the films themselves. One thing is clear, coincidence or not, there are apparent references to the 9/11 attacks in multiple films and have been for decades.

In the 1988 20th Century Fox film Die Hard, for example, the film’s opening lines appear to reference 9/11 when Bruce Willis’ character, John McClane – traveling by airplane at the time, incidentally - speaks with another passenger about his fear of flying, with each then discussing how they cope with such fears. The passenger states he has used his particular method for nine years, while McClane (Willis) states he has been using his for 11 years. While it might be tentative, to some, this reference to 9 and 11 in association with flying on an airplane is a clear reference to the upcoming attacks.

These claims are seemingly taken up a notch when it is pointed out that McClane fights with terrorists in a tower in the first film (the fictional Nakatomi Plaza) before battling terrorists at an airport in the second movie. And if that wasn’t enough, some people have pointed out alleged Masonic symbolism on the promotional artwork and cover for the original Die Hard video release, which shows one of McClane’s eyes covered over, leaving the other to represent the all-seeing eye.

Two years later, the sequel to the blockbuster Gremlins was released, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, by Warner Bros. During a scene in the movie, following the shutting down of a tower, no less, due to the “new batch” of gremlins escaping and causing havoc, two reporters speak to a police spokesperson outside the building. The numbers on their microphones are none other than 9 and 11.

Another intriguing connection to the 9/11 attacks, with a particularly harrowing backstory, can be found in the 1990 comedy released by Universal, Problem Child.  The film follows the antics of the Healy family, who live at number 911. As a backstory to this – and one we should treat with extreme caution – one of the main actors in Problem Child was John Ritter. Ritter died suddenly in 2003 on September 11th, which is most likely nothing but a coincidence, but is certainly a little eyebrow-raising.

The following year, in 1991, one of the biggest movies of the year, Terminator 2, was released. During one of the scenes featuring the young John Connor and his protector from the future (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) being chased through Los Angeles, the pair approach a bridge. As they pass under it, a sign reads: “CAUTION 9’-11”. Of course, this is the maximum height of the vehicles able to pass beneath the bridge. The fact that this just happened to be 9/11, though, was too much of a coincidence to some.

Two years later, in 1993, the Super Mario Bros movie was released, and a scene at the end of the film appears, at least to some, to be a direct warning of the events to come. This scene comes towards the movie's end and shows the merging of two dimensions. At the start of this merging, the Twin Towers are clearly visible in the background. However, as the dimensions merge, the towers fall to the ground. Furthermore, as this happens, a plane is seen flying past where the towers would have been.

Another blockbuster movie—Independence Day, released in 1996—also discreetly references 9/11. During a countdown sequence, the screen shows the clock, which just happens to be at 09:11:01. To some, this is not only another reference to 9/11 but even shows the year 2001 in the seconds column. The following year, in 1997, the film The Peacemaker, starring George Clooney, was released. In one scene, Clooney can be seen standing in the middle of two platform signs—one being 9 and the other 11. The same year, an episode of The Simpsons sees the family travel to New York, with one scene showing Lisa Simpson holding up a magazine that reads, “NEW YORK, $9” – part of the background of the magazine features the silhouette of the Twin Towers, which when factored into the cover, makes it read, according to some: “NEW YORK ($)9-11”. It is interesting to note that The Simpsons have also had several other scenes in various episodes that appear to have accurately predicted future events, an entire article of which could be dedicated to.

The disaster movie Armageddon was undoubtedly one of the biggest blockbuster films of 1998, and it too had an apparent reference to 9/11. Towards the end of the film, there is a countdown scene (similar to Independence Day). At the exact moment, we see the clock on the screen, it is displaying 9 minutes and 11 seconds (9:11). In the film Enemy of the State – also released in 1998 – we see the details of one of the characters on the screen, Thomas Brian Reynolds, whose date of birth is clearly displayed as 9-11-40. In 1998’s Godzilla, there is a scene featuring a character looking at his watch. Although the time is 8:55, the little hand of the watch is on the 9 while the big hand rests on the 11.

A similar display of 9/11 can be found in The Thirteenth Floor, released the following year in 1999. During one scene, a clock on the wall can be seen set at 11:45. This time, the big hand is on the 9 while the little hand is on the 11. Yet another reference can be found in The Bone Collector, released in the same year, where the protagonist, played by Denzel Washington, is seen looking at a piece of paper that is from page 119. What’s more, the date is shown as 11/9. While these alleged references are seemingly backward (119 instead of 911), some researchers offer that many Masonic and Illuminati symbols are to be read backward, and so assert their connection to 9/11, in this instance, is perfectly valid. Also released in 1999 was the blockbuster movie The Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves. During a scene in the film, the main protagonist, Neo’s (played by Reeves) passport is shown. The date it expires is clearly seen to be September 11th, 2001. Like many of these apparent references to 9/11, this could be purely a coincidence, but it is certainly interesting that this, of all dates, was decided upon.

There are several films from 2000 that also appear to make reference to the September 11th attacks. In the movie Traffic, for example, a scene shows a delivery of boxes – all of which have the number 911 stamped upon them. There is also a scene in The 6th Day starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, during one particular scene, checks his schedule – the only times visible on the screen to the viewer are 9:00 and 11:00. Yet another 2000 film with apparent references to 9/11 is The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson. The opening scenes of the film feature Gibson’s character weighing a chair, during which he says: “Nine pounds, 11 ounces. That’s perfect. Perfect!” Perhaps most intriguing of all, however, is an episode of The Lone Gunmen that aired on FOX in March 2001 – only six months before the terrorist attacks. The plot of the episode follows the events of September 11th, 2001, almost entirely, featuring the hijacking of an airplane by terrorists who then crashed it into the World Trade Center.

It is also worth mentioning several intriguing points about the first two Back To The Future movies, released in 1985 and 1989, respectively, both of which appear to have suggestions of the eventual harrowing events of September 11th, 2001, as well as what appears to be several outright warnings.

In the first movie, for example, towards the climax of the film, where the main protagonist, Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox), is preparing to time-travel back to 1985 from 1955, he calls out to his friend, Doc Brown (played by Christopher Lloyd), that he has to “warn him about the future”. As he utters this line, the hands of the town clock are locked on the 9 and 11 positions. Furthermore, when lightning strikes the clock tower – the power of which the pair are going to use to kickstart their DeLorean, or time machine – the time is 9:59. Although it is a little bit of a reach for some, others point out that the first World Trade Center tower collapsed at 9:59 (although it did so in the morning not at night, as per the time in the film).

There are also other apparent warnings, ones that rely on the “reverse symbolism” of many secret societies. Perhaps the best example would be earlier in the movie, right before Marty McFly travels back in time for the first time. He and Doc Brown are at Twin Pines Mall, a location referred to repeatedly throughout the film, and which, to some, is a reference to the Twin Towers. During this scene, Doc Brown is gunned down by “terrorists” due to his “ripping them off” for the plutonium he required to power the DeLorean. The exact time Doc. Brown was shot – which again is referenced several times throughout the movie – was 1:16 am, which, to some people, when using reverse symbolism, is a reference to 9/11 (when viewed upside down or back to front).

Even stranger, if we subscribe to these theories for a moment, is that when Marty returns to the mall at the end of the movie following his arrival back from 1955, the area is now mysteriously called the Lone Pine Mall. Although this is due to one of the two pines referenced at the start of the film having been destroyed by Marty’s actions when he traveled back in time, to some people, it was a reference to the destruction of the Twin Towers and their replacement with the One World Trade Center in their place.  

The second movie also features another apparent warning of the Twin Tower attacks. This time, Marty and Doc Brown travel forward 30 years to 2015, with Marty eventually finding himself in the home of his future self. During this part of the film, we can see that the blinds on the McFlys’ windows show the world scenery instead of simply being blank. One of these scenes shows a bright, sunny day in New York, with the typical New York skyline – including the Twin Towers – being clearly in view. As part of the story, the blinds are faulty and constantly flicker out of view. According to some people, though, this represents the Twin Towers falling to the ground, particularly when viewed upside down (reverse symbolism once more). What’s more, they claim we, the audience, are alerted to this by the fact that the future version of Marty McFly views these blinds while upside down in some kind of futuristic medical device (due to having hurt his back).

Whether or not these references and symbolism are nothing more than coincidence remains open to debate, at least to some. The many tentative references to the Twin Towers, though, are certainly worth pondering.

Arguably, one of the earliest films to allegedly reference the September 11th attacks on the Twin Towers was released just short of 20 years earlier, the Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd comedy, Trading Places. And these references appear right from the opening credits of the film. During the movie's opening minutes, we see a shot of a homeless man who has newspapers blowing around him on the cold Philadelphia streets. We see enough of these newspapers to see the numbers 9 and 11 in one of the headlines.

Without a doubt, however, it is as the film reaches its climax that the two protagonists – Billy Ray Valentine (played by Eddie Murphy) and Louis Winthorpe III (played by Dan Ackroyd) – approach the stock exchange in the Twin Towers to wreak their revenge on the Duke Brothers. As they step out of the taxi outside the building, the apparent phone number of the firm has a combination of 0s, 9s, and 1s. Given that 0s are generally not recognized in such symbolism, the only numbers left are 9s and 1s – or 9, 11.

Even more thought-provoking is a line spoken by Winthorpe moments later as the two men set out towards the building, when he states to Valentine:

“Nothing you have ever experienced can prepare you for the unbridled carnage you are about to witness…In this building, it’s either kill, or be killed!”

In the context of the film, Winthorpe is referring to the cut-throat nature of the stock exchange and the trading of commodities. However, some researchers question whether this line might have a secretive, double meaning. Only moments later in the film, as the stockbrokers wait for trading to begin, we can see a clock on the wall with its hands firmly set towards the 9 and the 11.

What makes these apparent references to 9/11 even more intriguing, and indeed unsettling, is an interview given by the film’s director, Aaron Russo, 24 years after the release of Trading Places in 2007 (and only several months before his death from bladder cancer on August 24th, 2007).

We should note that the interview in question was given to Alex Jones – an undoubtedly divisive character and one whom many people, even in conspiracy circles, simply don’t trust (largely as a result of recent court battles and seemingly baseless statements). We might also note, though, that it could be argued that during the earlier part of his career in conspiracies, Alex Jones is seen as being considerably more credible than he might be viewed in more recent years.

In the interview, Russo claimed that he had prior knowledge of the September 11th attacks following a conversation with Nick Rockefeller 11 months before the atrocities took place. Essentially, Russo claimed that the 9/11 attacks were planned, and the reason for doing so was to create such fear and anger in the American public that they would eagerly back war in oil-rich lands in the Middle East and Asia. Perhaps most chilling of all, this would be an “endless war” that would see the military “looking in caves for people” who simply weren’t there and against “no real enemy”.

Although Russo was specifically told the Twin Towers were the target, he was told that “an event” would happen in less than a year that would result in the American military invading Afghanistan and then turning their attention to Iraq in order to “take over the oil fields and establish a base in the Middle East” – a base, incidentally, that sits next to another long-term foe of the United States, Iran.

It is also interesting to note here one of the first official projects following the American occupation of Afghanistan, following the 9/11 attacks, the Afghan Oil Pipeline.

In truth, the pipeline had been proposed by the company Unocal since at least 1997. The plans would see a pipeline stretch from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea. Training forces were even dispatched to the region to train workers for the project. However, the deal was forcibly called off due to intense pressure from women’s rights activists who opposed any deals involving the Taliban regime. Once the US military machine turned its attention to Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, the deal quietly went ahead as part of the “rebuilding” projects.

What is perhaps of most interest about Unocal is the connections the company has to Dick Cheney. Coincidentally or not, Cheney would serve on the administration of Bush Jr when work on the pipeline finally began. Who benefits? The same rich businessmen are connected to an organization named The Carlyle Group. And to understand the significance of this and why Russo’s claims are so interesting, we need to go back to the late 1970s.

During this time, George Bush Sr was in charge of the CIA. His son, meanwhile, George Bush Jr., was venturing into the oil business. He would set up Arbusto Energy. This would attract several wealthy Saudi businessmen through a mutual associate, Jim Bath, whom we will look at shortly. One of these Saudi businessmen was Salem bin Laden, brother of the now infamous Osama bin Laden.

Jim Bath had been an associate of Bush Jr. since their time at the Texas Air National Guard. This placement may be questionable in itself to some, but it would keep both men safe from the draft and out of the Vietnam War. Bath would go on to develop connections in many areas, including the CIA, which would see him as an “asset”. He would also act on behalf of wealthy Middle Eastern families and be their representative as far as business interests in the United States. One of these was the bin Ladens.

Arbusto would eventually become bankrupt and would be taken over by Harken Energy in the late 1980s. This takeover would eventually lead to one of the biggest financial scandals in American history. It also came at a time when Bush Sr. was about to become President of the United States. The underwriting of the takeover of Arbusto by Harken Energy (of $25 million) was performed by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). The move raised an eyebrow or two, as many people connected to BCCI were the exact same people connected to Arbusto Energy. Many of these same investors, according to details in the book The Terror Conspiracy by Jim Marrs, including George Bush and other members of the Bush family, as well as the bin Laden family, were also members of a private equity company, The Carlyle Group.

By 1991, the BCCI was under investigation for money laundering activities and was ultimately shut down and prevented from trading. The connections to the (then) President of the United States, George Bush, albeit indirectly via The Carlyle Group, to a business that was called by investigators, “the most corrupt financial institution in history,” was hardly a ringing endorsement. Whether it was connected or not, a little over eighteen months later, Bush would lose the presidency to Bill Clinton.

And Bill Clinton is another person of interest here, not least because of an interview he gave to James Kilpatrick in August 1994, in which he stated his awareness of a “permanent shadow government” comprised of “bankers and government officials” that shape the political agenda. He also went on to say he realized he would have to “gain access to this inner circle” if he was going to help “shape the world!” Further still, in 1991, he received an invitation to the secretive Bilderberg meeting. The invite would come courtesy of David Rockefeller. Coincidentally or not, Bill Clinton won the 1992 US election the following year. Despite being on the other side of the left/right paradigm, there are some intriguing connections between the Clintons, specifically Bill, and the Bush family, perhaps most notably during Clinton’s time as Governor of Arkansas.

The person who would donate the most funds to Bill Clinton was Jackson Stevens. What is perhaps interesting here is that Stevens was one of the main financial investors in the aforementioned BCCI, as well as being a close friend of the Bush family. It would appear, however, that financial backing was just a front. Aside from claims of drug smuggling, which we will look at shortly, there were claims of money laundering. This would, it is claimed, take place through the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA) at a time when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas.

One of the loudest voices regarding the matter was that of Larry Nichols. In the 1994 documentary, The Clinton Chronicles, Nichols appeared to lay bare these illegal activities while serving as the Marketing Director of ADFA. He would claim to be “sitting in the middle of Bill Clinton’s political machine”, witnessing “payoffs” and “repaid favors!” Any monies applied for also had to go through the Rose Law Firm and Hilary Clinton, for a fee of $50,000. It was when he discovered that no repayments were coming back in for the loans that he claimed he discovered money laundering activities.

Much of the money, according to Nichols, was from cocaine sales, which would be siphoned off to BCCI, which was connected to The Carlyle Group, and in turn, George Bush. Perhaps the biggest connection between the Bush family and the Clintons, however, can be found in the story of Barry Seals.

The recent movie, American Made, was based loosely on Seal’s experience. It would appear, however, that Seals’ real-life exploits are more fascinating. Seal’s most profitable and busy times in drug smuggling were in the 1980s, when he moved his operation to Mena airstrip in Arkansas – at the same time, remember, when Bill Clinton was governor of the state. There, he had specially made planes at his disposal, featuring very specifically designed nose cones that were used to smuggle drugs (cocaine).

Coincidentally, Seals, according to several court testimonies, was also used by George Bush Sr. (when he was Vice-President) as a pilot during the Iran-Contra operations that saw (then) President Reagan at the center of one of several scandals during his presidency. Many of those flights left from Mena airstrip with Bill Clinton, if you believe the claims, being fully aware and even (privately) supportive of them. Perhaps the best piece of writing (at the time) covering these exploits was an article set to be titled The Crimes of Mena. After having cleared all legal barriers for publication, the article was pulled without explanation, and is dubbed “The Greatest Story Never Told!” Arguably, the lines referring to Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton sum it up: “What did they know about Mena? When did they know it? Why didn’t they do anything to stop it?”

Why indeed?

Incidentally, Barry Seals was murdered in February 1987, coincidentally or not, shortly after he began speaking publicly of the Mena airstrip activities.

So where does Osama Bin Laden fit into all of this? The first time most of the world knew the name Osama bin Laden was following the September 11th attacks. However, he had been known to the CIA since the early 1980s. Given George Bush Sr.’s CIA connections, and the connections both he and his son have to the bin Laden family, and what we have just discussed, perhaps that is not too much of a surprise. During the Soviet-Afghan conflict in the 1980s, bin Laden was on the payroll of the CIA, leading the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. The money that arrived with him traveled through such institutes as the BCCI and came from profits from weapons and drug sales. The same weapons and drugs that went through Mena airstrip.

By the time Bill Clinton was in the White House, Osama bin Laden had “officially” gone rogue. According to intelligence reports, he had grown tired of the United States and its influence in the Middle East. Many US embassy bombings were blamed on bin Laden during this time. Some conspiracy theorists are suspicious at best about this, with claims existing that bin Laden very much remained on the CIA’s payroll.

Whatever the truth of the situation, by the morning of September 11th, 2001, with George Bush Jr. eighteen months into his first term in the White House, the bin Laden name was about to become infamous.  

While the conspiracies and questions regarding September 11th have been explored in depth, some of the basics of them are worth looking at here, if only to highlight the “coincidences” on offer again. For example, on the morning of September 11th, literally as the attacks were happening, George Bush Sr. sat in a meeting of The Carlyle Group, also attended by one of Osama bin Laden’s brothers. Considering the number of business ties already existing between the two families, some found this strange. The fact that members of the bin Laden family were not only allowed to leave the United States following the 9/11 attacks but were positively given safe passage by the US military is perhaps also of interest. This order would have presumably come from high up the ranks of the US government, given that every aircraft was grounded following the tragic events. Even though so many construction contracts were given to the bin Laden family businesses for US military bases in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, the bin Laden family’s home country was questioned.

Perhaps this last point is even more interesting, considering bin Laden and, according to the official report, fifteen of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi Arabian, that the United States would not turn its military might to Saudi Arabia (where they have interests) instead of Afghanistan (where the Afghans have oil and heroin). Make of that what you will.

Of the many different angles and claims regarding the September 11th attacks, the one thing that all who question the official story largely agree on is that they were, even if opportunistically and after the fact, used to justify the military action that would unfold in the years that followed.

It wasn’t just apparent veiled warnings of the September 11th attacks and the war that followed it, however, that Rockefeller spoke to Russo about during his conversation in late 2000. According to Russo, as well as sharing many “thoughts and ideas”, the entrepreneur presented several “business opportunities” to the filmmaker.

One of these, at least according to Russo, was a position with the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) – an invitation, incidentally, that he declined. It was during this conversation that Russo claimed the subject of population control was brought up, and the apparent desire of the CFR to reduce the planet’s population by 50 percent. Russo also claimed he was told that many people who work for the CFR (and similar organizations) are often oblivious to the real agenda of those at the very top.

Of even further intrigue, Russo offered that Rockefeller informed him that the end goal of this elite group – one whose members are wealthy beyond imagination – was to have the entire population of the world “chipped”, which would, essentially, allow them to control every aspect of society.

As to why Rockefeller should entrust such information to Russo in the first place, the filmmaker offered that they believed he was a “mover and a shaker” who they wished would “stop his political activities and join them”.

As we know, eight months after this interview, Russo was dead. And as we might imagine, there were some who weren’t fully convinced of the official cause of death, or at least, the cause of the cause of death.

Once more, while we should treat the claims with a sizeable pinch of salt, Alex Jones claimed on his show several months after his death, that Russo had confided in him off-air. He claimed that Russo had told him that his life had been “threatened” and that he believed the cancer he was suffering from (which eventually killed him) was caused by some kind of “Direct Energy Weapon” being used against him.

We should also note that Russo’s girlfriend, Heidi Gregg, stated only days after Russo’s death on August 29th, 2007 – once more on the Alex Jones show – that such claims of weapons causing Russo’s cancer were “nonsense” and that illness was caused by nothing more than “his lifestyle”.

While it is certainly reasonable to believe that Rockefeller did indeed tell Russo of planned “endless war” and false flag attacks, this information was passed to him less than a year before the September 11th attacks in late 2000, 17 years after Trading Places was released, we might ask, if the references to 9/11 in the film are accurate, then where did Russo get his information from? Did he have access to such information decades before it happened, or was he perhaps putting these references in the movie unwittingly?

At this point, it is worth noting a possible connection to the intelligence services. While we should stress that much of this is pure speculation on our part, the fact is, the intelligence agencies – including military intelligence – have more of an active role in how films and television shows are put across, particularly so with military, historical, and, interestingly or not, science-fiction. Indeed, this involvement could be the subject of discussion in its own right.

For example, if a blockbuster movie about a historical conflict was being filmed – whether it be the Second World War, Vietnam, or the Gulf conflicts – then military intelligence, as well as the intelligence agencies themselves, perhaps particularly so with the CIA, would be involved with the filmmakers in a “consultancy” capacity. This is to, officially, at least, ensure accuracy, although it almost also certainly ensures that the story is not “anti-American” or doesn’t damage the reputation of the United States. In return, filmmakers often find themselves able to shoot on location and have access to accurate replicas – ultimately, the making of their respective films is a lot smoother.

While consultancy on military films might be understandable, we might ask why science fiction films come under the same intelligence scrutiny? And we might also ask, what other “advice” these military intelligence departments might offer?    

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

For the purposes of our contemplation here, we might also ask ourselves whether, directly from the intelligence agencies, or from other, unknown (to the public) individuals who just might be a part of some of the elite organizations we have discussed here, could apply such influence. Could it be that the respective directors of some of the films we mentioned that have featured references to 9/11, for example, whether fleeting references or more substantial ones, such as those by Aaron Russo in Trading Places or the examples offered in the Back to the Future films, were somehow influenced into inserting such imagery and use of the numbers 9, and 11?

Indeed, many could have done so without their knowledge as to what the reference might mean or without giving little thought as to why they were asked to include such references in the first place. We might imagine, for the sake of argument and to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, that a potential producer (essentially, a person with money to finance the project) who makes such a seemingly random and innocent request to have a close up of a clock with the hands set at 9 and 11 – done in such a way that it would not interfere with the story or the director’s vision – would have met little if any resistance.  

While the idea of hidden messages and predictions of future events in blockbuster movies is perhaps unlikely, it is not that much of a stretch of the imagination that there is more to such a notion than many people might think.

It is no secret that the world of Hollywood and the big guns that inhabit it is a world quite different from the one that most of us reside in. It is a world where some people have more influence than most could imagine, and with that influence, or perhaps even as a result of it, is access to information reserved for only a very select few.

Perhaps there is a good reason that many people over many years have stated that such groups as the Illuminati treat Hollywood as their playground, where they use the medium of the silver screen to not just tell stories and entertain, but to sway the will of the public themselves. They essentially have their audience under a self-imposed, subconscious form of mind control.

Jim Morrison’s famous quote of “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind” should perhaps be taken a little more seriously than a flippant, throw-away line.

Morrison, himself studying to be a filmmaker leading up to the success of The Doors, was certainly a perceptive person. Given that the 1960s also witnessed the beginnings of television becoming a “must-have” item in most homes in the Western world, Morrison was perhaps well placed to make his claim, and no doubt saw first-hand the effects of such a device, and indeed his own fame as a result of it, on the general public.

Indeed, the next time you settle down to watch the latest blockbuster or episode of your favorite television show, ask yourself what are you really being shown? And just might subconscious messages be taken in by the brain?

In an age where information and entertainment intersect in unprecedented ways, decoding the hidden messages within movies and television shows invites us to question, analyze, and interpret the narratives that shape our understanding of the world. As we navigate the complexities of an increasingly interconnected society, the line between fiction and reality continues to blur, leaving us to ponder the mysteries of predictive programming and its implications for the future.

One very strange such place lies in Mexico. What has become known as the “Zone of Silence,” or La Zona Del Silencio, is located in a barren patch of desert in the Bolsón de Mapimí region in Durango, Mexico, around 400 miles south of El Paso, Texas. It is a remote area, with the nearest human settlement of any size being the quiet town of Ceballos, some 25 miles away, which ekes out a living in the harsh, parched landscape. The area was once under a vast ocean in prehistoric times, and marine fossils and shells can be found among the scrub, which has given the area its other nickname, the Mar de Tetys, or The Sea of Thetys. This is a desolate, lonely place seemingly as barren and alien as the surface of some other planet, and over the centuries has become synonymous with a wide range of strange, inexplicable phenomena.

Locals have known something was weird about the area since at least the mid-nineteenth century, when farmers would occasionally complain of searing hot pebbles that mysteriously rained down from the sky from time to time, even on clear days. It was also said that some of the plants and animals living here displayed mutations and deformities. There have also long been reports that the area has the effect of instilling a certain sense of deep unease, and can distort perceptions or cause visual and auditory hallucinations.

The region has been known as an intense UFO hotspot for many years. Over the years, many reports accrued of travelers and ranchers in the area seeing orbs of light or fireballs cavorting about in the sky or streaking across the horizon. On occasion, these lights were said to descend and set the scrub brush ablaze. Nevertheless, despite the weird stories, this bizarre swath of desert remained mostly unknown to the outside world.

The area first came into the public consciousness in the 1930s, when a Mexican pilot by the name of Francisco Sarabia reported that his plane’s instrumentation had gone haywire and his radio had ceased to function while on a routine flight over the region. In the 1970s, an Athena missile carrying containers of the radioactive element cobalt 57 launched from White Sands Missile Base in New Mexico and suddenly and inexplicably malfunctioned over the area and crashed. It was reported that the missile had suddenly veered wildly off course, almost as if it had been drawn by some mysterious force. Considering the rocket’s radioactive payload, a recovery mission was immediately launched. The missile was eventually found in a remote area and removed along with tons of irradiated soil. When the military went to investigate, it was also found that radio signals and all communications equipment failed to work there for some unknown reason. A few years later, it was reported that booster rockets used for the Apollo project broke up and crashed into the area as well.

An organic chemist by the name of Harry de la Pena had already documented the zone’s unique characteristic of creating a "dark zone" of radio communications in 1966 while on a photographic survey. While out exploring with some companions, it was noticed that walkie-talkies ceased to operate in the area, and portable radios showed a dramatically diminished capacity, only barely audible even at full volume. It would be later found that television signals also failed to penetrate the zone, and to this day, it is said that TVs will not work here. For whatever reason, the Zone of Silence seems to have the ability to severely dampen all television, radio, short wave, microwave, or satellite signals, rendering all devices utilizing these all but useless.

This phenomenon has since been studied by scientists from all over the world, yet no definite cause has been found. It is thought that perhaps the effect is created by magnetic anomalies caused by a large amount of the iron ore magnetite in the area, as well as a high level of meteorite activity, which has imbued the soil with various minerals and ores that could create magnetic disturbances that have an effect on radio waves. There have also been discovered in recent years large reserves of uranium in the mountains facing the zone, although it is unclear what effect this would have on transmissions. One of the strangest things about the Zone of Silence is that it tends to move around, with its exact location shifting and unpredictable.

Magnetic anomalies and the inability of all manner of radio waves to work here are far from the only bizarreness of the Zone of Silence. For years, there have been various strange accounts from people passing through the region of all manner of high strangeness. One recurring story is that of a trio of blonde-haired strangers who are occasionally seen wandering the landscape here. Allegedly, the trio is made up of two males and one female who are dressed in clothes that are inappropriate for the desert environment. Those who have met them say they are very physically attractive, extremely polite, and speak perfect Spanish with a slightly musical lilt. The strangers are said to sometimes ask ranchers for water, but never for food or anything else. When asked where they are from, their typical response is to say “from above.”

These beings, whoever they are, are said to be non-threatening and, in fact, are rather benevolent in nature. One scientist working at the desert “Biosphere” research station in the area reported how he had wandered away from the facility and became lost. It was then that he was approached by a trio of tall, blonde humanoids who guided him back to the research station before vanishing. Interestingly, the Biosphere itself has garnered a reputation for mystery. Although its official purpose is to study desert life, it has often been rumored to be doing secret experiments with animals, researching UFO phenomena, and conducting psychic research.

One bizarre account connected to the Biosphere and this strange trio comes from journalist Luis Ramirez Reyes, who visited the zone in November of 1978 as part of a news team covering the mysteries of the area. At the time, their destination was the mysterious Biosphere research station, but Reyes and his photographer got lost in the desert on their way. Since they had not brought food or water with them, the gravity of their situation was abundantly clear. As they drove along, Reyes saw a trio of figures walking ahead and told the photographer, who was driving, to stop so they could ask for directions, but the photographer didn’t see anyone and so continued on without stopping.

A short while later, much further down the road, the truck again bizarrely passed by the same trio, and once again, the startled Reyes told the driver to stop, but his companion still did not see anyone. Nevertheless, at the imploring of Reyes, he stopped the truck. Reyes claimed to have asked the trio if they had seen a truck like theirs pass earlier, but they said they had not. It was at this point that Reyes noticed that the people were not dressed or equipped at all for the harsh desert environment, despite the fact that they were on foot out in the middle of nowhere, far from any settlement. When asked where the Biosphere was, the odd strangers were only too happy to help and pointed the journalists in the right direction. When they arrived at the Biosphere, they told the staff there of their encounter, but were met with the insistence that the research faculty were the only people out there for hundreds of miles. Who were those strangers? No one knows.

There are other reports of strange beings here as well. Perhaps one of the most well-known accounts comes from a couple by the name of Ernesto and Josefina Diaz, who ventured into the area to collect fossils on October 13, 1975. As they sifted through rocks, they noticed that a storm was brewing on the horizon. Aware of the danger of flash floods and sudden storms in the area, the couple hastily packed up and drove off, but were soon caught up in a deluge of rain. Their new pickup truck became swiftly mired in mud, the tires quickly sinking into the muck. As the couple struggled to free their vehicle, they noticed two unusually tall men wearing yellow raincoats and caps approaching them. The two strangers instructed the couple to get in their car while they pushed. When they complied, the truck was soon freed from the mud, but when Ernesto got out to thank the men, they were nowhere to be seen even though the terrain was totally flat and devoid of places to hide. There were also allegedly no footprints of any kind in the mud to show that anyone had been there at all.

Yet another odd tale was related by a Ruben Lopez, who was on his way to visit a relative in Ceballos when his engine began to experience difficulties and stalled. He then noticed 5 small figures several feet tall by the side of the road, whom he at first mistook to be children. Upon closer inspection, he could see that the figures were wearing silver outfits and wearing helmets that opened in front, revealing clearly adult faces rather than the children he had been expecting. The figures began approaching the truck of the increasingly unnerved Lopez, who gunned the engine until it sputtered back to life enough for him to leave the weird beings in the dust. As soon as they were out of sight, the truck allegedly began working normally.

The region in which the Zone of Silence lies also remains a hotbed of UFO sightings, with many high-profile accounts made here. One impressive sighting in particular happened in September 1976, at around 8:59 p.m. Residents of the town of Ceballos reported a truly immense flying object hovering at the outskirts of town, which was estimated to be a staggering 300 meters in length. The craft was described as being rectangular and ringed with pulsing lights that changed colors from green to white to blue. From deep within it, some inscrutable machinery produced a deep thrumming and humming noise from its bowels. Allegedly, all of the dogs in the area went berserk, howling and barking incessantly until the immense object finally floated over the landscape to disappear from view in the direction of the Zone of Silence.

The heavy UFO activity reported in the zone has caused speculation running the gamut from plausible to fringe. Scientists tend to attribute the many UFO sightings here to the large number of meteorites that pass through the area. The Zone of Silence region boasts one of the highest concentrations of meteor strikes in the world, with small meteorites falling here practically daily. In fact, one of the largest known meteors to have ever struck the Earth crashed into the ground here at a place called Pueblito de Allende in February 1969. What is now known as the Allende Meteorite came down at an estimated speed of 10 miles per second, creating a massive shockwave and a cracking boom heard over vast distances that was one of the loudest sounds ever recorded. Witnesses said the flash produced by the meteor impact was like looking into a flashbulb. Another odd meteorite containing unusual crystalline structures estimated as being around 13 billion years old, far older than our solar system, crashed here in the 1950s, and there are constant falls of small, metallic orbs in the area that locals call guíjolas.

Incidentally, the presence of such spectacular meteorite activity may lie behind an archeological mystery to be found in the zone. Mystery ruins that show no known link to known peoples of the area have been found that are estimated to be thousands of years old and are thought to have served as some sort of astronomical observatory, perhaps somehow linked with the intense meteorite activity. As of yet, no one knows the true purpose of this ancient observatory. It is also possible that the area's magnetic aberrations can cause potent hallucinations, a phenomenon that has long been reported from here by locals and travelers alike.

Other theories point to aliens, with some theorizing that the zone represents a stopping zone for aliens or even a portal through which extraterrestrials or inter-dimensional beings travel. Magnetic anomalies such as those found in the Zone of Silence have long been associated with UFO activity and the ancient astronaut theory, with such travelers being said to be drawn to these potent magnetic zones for unknown purposes. Those who subscribe to this theory point out that Mexico’s Zone of Silence is near the Tropic of Cancer and lies along the same latitude south of the 30th parallel shared by other mystical sites such as the Egyptian Pyramids and the Bermuda Triangle. Could the Zone of Silence be demonstrating phenomena similar phenomena that is seen with the Bermuda Triangle or other mystery zones?

Although the presence of alien spacecraft and beings from another world cannot be supported by any evidence, it certainly seems that something strange is going on in the Zone of Silence. The area with its magnetic aberrations seems to have the ability to draw things into it, perhaps the reason why so many meteorites and rockets have come down here, and is quite feasibly somehow connected to the various other phenomena reported from here. To this day, no one is quite sure just what is going on here, and TVs and communications equipment still fail to work properly when caught up in the roving, ever-shifting zone.

What so imbues this patch of Mexican desert with its bizarre oddities? Does this have anything to do at all with ancient aliens, inter-dimensional portals, and travelers from other worlds? Or is this all merely an unexplained curiosity of the natural world, perhaps mixed in with a healthy dose of folklore and overactive imaginations? It seems this remote, searing land of brutal heat, scrub brush, and parched earth seems to be a place that holds mysteries that continue to elude us, and perhaps always will.

Moving along, sprawled out across a vast expanse of remote wilderness in Russia, just about 600 miles east of Moscow, are the Perm region and the Sverdlovsk regions, and here buried within this sea of trees is a 45 square kilometer area of densely forested land near where the Sylva and Molyobka rivers and merge and not far from the village of Molyobka, that has long been a place full of strangeness and wonder, and which has come to be called the Triangle Molebsky, the Perm Anomalous Zone, or simply the M-zone, and has become a hotspot for all manner of high strangeness.

The native Mansi people once considered this a very sacred place, and long regarded it as a realm of spirits and gods, and locals and visitors alike have over the centuries reported a wide variety of strange phenomena from here such as mysterious lights in the sky, luminous translucent beings that stalk through the woods, dark figures, strange colored lightning, weather anomalies, and the sounds of disembodied voices or singing. Compasses won’t work here, and electrical equipment is prone to stop working as well; cell phones go dead, and witnesses have even talked of how watches will sometimes begin to spin backwards in the zone.

There are also numerous physical effects experienced by those who come here, both positive and negative. It is not uncommon at all for people in the zone to be beset with fierce headaches, nosebleeds, nausea, dizziness, and muscle pain. They are also prone to visual and aural hallucinations and powerful, inexplicable mood swings. There are also conversely more favorable effects. For instance, it is thought that the area has healing abilities, and there are countless tales of people claiming to have been cured of all manner of ailments here, and even healthy people report feeling enhanced and improved somehow, gaining youthful vigor and emerging with increased intelligence. They also supposedly feel spiritually cleansed, with Russian UFOlogist Valery Yakimov saying of this:

“Healthy people feel the general improvement in all spheres: physical, mental, spiritual, moral, etc. It is necessary to mention the " moral effects " of M-zone: the drawbacks of one's character seem to disappear here, the good intentions and high feelings come to life. One's soul becomes cleaner, higher and calmer. You can almost feel yourself becoming a better man. Also the "creative effect" of M-zone is quite noticeable: the abilities of people are sharpening there and sometimes new talents and capacities, unknown before, begin to realize themselves.”

There are supposedly some spectacular cases of this in effect, such as the alleged case of the journalist and cosmonaut Pavel Mukhortov, who had apparently once been a military dropout who had been forced to turn to journalism because of physical disabilities. He then decided to make a trip to the M-Zone to investigate its many odd tales for a possible story, making his way to the remote area with a group of others on an expedition. While in the region, Mukhortov would claim that although he and his crew had fallen mysteriously ill at first, they were then overcome with an intense sense of well-being, and found their heads filled with visions, emotions, and knowledge forced into them that they could not explain. In Mukhortov’s case, he claimed that the knowledge he gleaned from that mystical place allowed him to recover shortly after from his disabilities and pass the tests to enter the Soviet Space Program as a cosmonaut, and he would go on to largely credit his success with the mysterious effects and powers the Perm Anomalous Zone had bestowed upon him.

By far one of the most well-known of the many phenomena of the Perm Anomalous Zone is the unusually high concentration of UFO sightings here, and indeed, it is considered by many to be one of the biggest UFO hotspots in the country. One of the most famous UFO-related incidents in the region supposedly happened in 1983, when Russian UFOlogist Emil Bachurin claimed to have seen a purple ball of light rise out of the thick forest to leave behind a patch of melted snow and ice measuring 206 feet across. Bachurin would also claim that he and his expedition had been chased by orbs of light through the trees that had burnt them with some sort of rays, with one of the team even completely knocked unconscious by one of the lights.

Even more intriguing still is a case from 2005, when an expedition of UFOlogists from Yekaterinburg was in the zone and purportedly spotted a giant glowing ball above the trees. One of the expedition members would mysteriously go missing the following morning, and rather chillingly, a picture purportedly snapped of the UFO allegedly shows a beam of light extending from the object to the missing man. What is going on here? The strange phenomena from the M-Zone are such that it has even managed to capture quite a lot of interest from outside of Russia. The American TV show Sightings did an investigation of the area, and apparently, things got off to an odd start when the Russian government warned them that to stay any longer than 24 hours in the zone was very dangerous. So far, so strange, but when they began their investigation, it would all get even weirder still when their camp was apparently surrounded by encircling orbs of light. The locals of the area were also interviewed by the crew, and they confirmed that UFO sightings were a regular, almost mundane fact of life for them.

With such a remote, strange part of the world hidden out away in this wild and rugged exotic land, it is interesting to think about what could be behind all of these stories. How can we explain all of these disparate phenomena coming from this one patch of wilderness? Of course, other than the obvious theories that UFOs are drawn here for some reason, there are also other attempts to try and rationalize it. Considering that electromagnetic readings within the zone are amazingly high in some places, it is thought that this could be having some kind of physical effects, including hallucinations of perceived UFOs. Connected to this is the idea that it could be the result of infrasound, which is subaudible sounds that have been shown to have a wide range of physical and psychological effects on human beings. So are we dealing with UFOs and powers beyond our comprehension or mundane phenomena that can be explained? It doesn't seem settled yet, and it would seem the only way to find out for yourself is to get out there and check it out.

Finally, we come to the United States, to the state of Florida. There was a time when Florida was nothing more than untamed wilderness ruled by the proud Native peoples of the area, yet by the 1860s and 70s, the region was steadily built up and settled by Europeans en masse. The Natives of the area would go on to be displaced, sent to reservations, or killed in fighting such as the Seminole Wars, and the pristine area witnessed a surge of settlers looking to make a life out of this new, uncharted land, along with numerous railroads and roads that penetrated and crisscrossed the wilds. People poured into the region at the time, and cities and towns began to pop up all over the place, transforming the landscape in the process.

One of the first of these settlers was a businessman named Henry Sanford, who in 1877 bought up land just north of present-day Orlando along the St. Johns River, for the purpose of creating a Catholic farming community called St. Joseph’s. It was more of a get-rich-quick scheme than anything religious as far as Hawkins was concerned, and he sat back waiting for suckers to come rolling in. Things would not go according to plan, and instead of the vast profits Sanford had imagined making on the land, he only ended up selling a few plots, and not long after, the settlement experienced a devastating fire and an epidemic of Yellow Fever that swept out from the mosquito-choked swamps. The disease was catastrophic for St. Joseph’s, with quite a few who died simply being buried out in the woods or on their property, and by 1887, the settlement was all but a ghost town.

Sanford would go on to found the bustling nearby town of Sanford, Florida, and the area would later make a comeback at the turn of the century, while the site of St. Joseph's would become absorbed by a township called Lake Monroe, but this dark history remained there to haunt it, perhaps literally. In 1905, a settler named Albert Hawkins bought up some land on which a family of Dutch immigrants had once lived before becoming victims of the Yellow Fever epidemic that had helped to wipe out the original St. Joseph’s colony. He figured out the grim secret buried on his rural land quite by accident, stumbling upon the weed infested unnamed graves as he explored the area one day, but he was respectful and decided not to have the bodies moved, rather maintaining the plot and their decrepit unmarked wooden crosses like a miniature cemetery, complete with a fence around it, and telling people to stay away from it. However, it would soon appear as though these mysterious graves held some sort of dark power that infused them.

Neighbors sometimes complained to Hawkins that they could see mysterious lights roaming about at night in the vicinity of the graves, and that all manner of ghostly phenomena, such as moving objects and strange noises, had been plaguing their homes. On top of this were some ominous claims that the graves were actually cursed, seeking grim revenge on those who would try and defile them. In one instance, a neighbor allegedly got tired of the graves being there and tore down the fence surrounding them, yet later that same day, this man’s house would supposedly be struck by lightning and razed to the ground. In another incident from the 1950s, a grandson of Hawkins himself was fooling around at the gravesite and kicked over one of the wooden crosses marking one of the graves. The very next day, he would be killed in an auto accident involving a hit and run, with the perpetrator never caught. Even Hawkins himself purportedly had his own house catch fire after he tried replacing the time-worn, rotted old wooden grave markers with new ones, prompting him to take it as a warning to leave them as they were.

All of these strange phenomena and deaths earned the area of that little cemetery the name “The Field of Death,” and locals became too terrified to go anywhere near it. Despite this, Florida’s popularity at the time, and the surging population and droves of tourists coming through, meant that more and more highways were being built in order to meet the demands of the rampant development going on. One of these was the proposed Interstate-4 (I-4), which was meant to connect Tampa and Daytona Beach, and which would cut right through the property on which those haunted graves rested. Hawkins had died in 1939, but he was survived by his widow, and there was not much that she could do at the time because she had sold the land, and it had become eminent domain. However, she did inform the state of the secluded little cemetery and suggested that they move the graves before construction began.

The officials supposedly promised that they would have the bodies moved and interred at a proper cemetery, but this apparently never happened, and when construction commenced in 1960, the highway just ended up going up right over the graves and their forgotten remains. This would seem to have been a bad idea, because almost immediately, there was tragedy that befell the project in the form of the catastrophic Hurricane Donna, which tore across Florida at that exact time and even eerily changed directions to follow the path of the proposed I-4. Also odd was that meteorologists had predicted that Donna was going to just pass by relatively harmlessly off the coast, yet it suddenly made a sharp turn right towards the state for no apparent reason, and even more eerily still, passed right over the construction site. Whether this was all merely a coincidence or not, it was one of the worst hurricanes the state has ever seen, and it stalled construction on the highway for months.

When the highway was eventually finished, it began to accrue a sinister reputation almost immediately, when a truck went wildly out of control and crashed right in the vicinity of the graves, claiming several lives on the very day I-4 opened to traffic in 1963. This would be merely the beginning of an ongoing phenomenon that has plagued the stretch of highway where the graves are said to be, which is right at the banks of the St. John’s River at the interstate bridge overpass, and has earned the ominous name “The Dead Zone.”

By far the most notorious of the many strange and quite frightening phenomena linked to this patch of road is the inordinately high concentration of traffic accidents that occur here. Depending on the source, there have been anywhere from 1,500 to over 2,000 traffic accidents in this one spot along a mere quarter mile stretch since the opening of the highway, with the Florida State Highway Department saying that there were 44 accidents over the course of 1995 and 1996 alone in this one place, and from 1999 to 2006 there were 440 accidents, many of them fatal. The rate of accidents at the Dead Zone of I-4 is so intense that many locals still absolutely refuse to drive over that area, instead going through great lengths to take roundabout routes around it. Officially, this is explained away as the unfortunate result of so much traffic through the area, but even considering this, the rate is quite high, and there are even reports of people claiming that it often seems as if something has actually taken control of their vehicle. is there something more supernatural going on here, and if there is, does it have anything to do with those graves? It is hard to say.

In addition to the uncommonly high rate of traffic accidents along the road are the frequent tornadoes that tear through, often seeming to follow the path of the I-4 as if attracted by it, as well as yet another strange hurricane, hurricane Charley, which eerily passed right over the cursed site in 2004 as if aiming for it. Researcher and author of the book Strange Florida, Charlie Carlson, has said of this particular hurricane:

“Charley followed almost the same route as Donna. They referred to Charley as the ‘I-4 Hurricane.’ Strangely enough, there was construction going on around the graves. The land where the graves are was being disturbed again. It was almost like a repeat of Donna.”

Besides harrowing car crashes and deadly tornadoes and hurricanes, the I-4 Dead Zone has gathered about itself all manner of other assorted paranormal phenomena and high strangeness. One very frequently reported oddity is that radios, cell phones, and CBs go dead and refuse to work over the site, or that there will be picked up ghostly disembodied voices or anomalous static on the devices. Commonly reported are the sounds of children’s laughter, or of voices that desperately ask “Who’s there?” or “Why?”, yet never responding if one is to try and talk with the entities. Some people have even reported hearing not voices, but rather an ominous growling or snarling echoing out from their radios as they drive through. Considering that the immediate area has no radio or cell phone antennas, nor any microwave emitters, it is hard to tell what could be causing these disturbances. Is there a rational explanation, or something far odder at work here? Who knows?

There are numerous other strange phenomena reported from the I-4 Dead Zone as well, including ghost lights, shadow people, roving cold spots, sudden thick fogs from nowhere, phantom hitchhikers, and ghostly vehicles. Add all of this to the death and tragedy that also seem to cling to it like flies to a corpse, and I-4 has gone on to be considered one of the strangest, most haunted places in the state. Is this just urban legend mixed with spooky history and superstition? Is it all overactive imaginations? Or could it be that this length of highway holds to it the specters of the dead, damned to remain tethered here and compelled to lash out at those who have desecrated their graves?

What is it about these places that makes them such magnets for all of these disparate, strange phenomena? What is it about these places that makes them so different and bizarre? Is there some quality permeating these places that makes them so special? Do they represent some thin spot between what we know and other, parallel realities? We may never know the answers, and these places remain out there, with many more like them, eluding our understanding and occupying some minimal zone between what we know and what we don’t. 

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There seem to be certain places in this world that, for whatever reasons, just have strangeness gravitate towards them. Perhaps it is due to lying on some sort of Earth energy line. Maybe it’s because of portals for aliens. Or possibly it is some innate quality of the land itself that draws in these bizarre forces. Whatever the case may be, these places in a way lie outside of normal reality, steeped in mystery and surrounded by strange phenomena. Here we will take a journey through some of these places, where reality and the paranormal collide. 

One very strange such place lies in Mexico. What has become known as the “Zone of Silence,” or La Zona Del Silencio, is located in a barren patch of desert in the Bolsón de Mapimí region in Durango, Mexico, around 400 miles south of El Paso, Texas. It is a remote area, with the nearest human settlement of any size being the quiet town of Ceballos, some 25 miles away, which ekes out a living in the harsh, parched landscape. The area was once under a vast ocean in prehistoric times, and marine fossils and shells can be found among the scrub, which has given the area its other nickname, the Mar de Tetys, or The Sea of Thetys. This is a desolate, lonely place seemingly as barren and alien as the surface of some other planet, and over the centuries has become synonymous with a wide range of strange, inexplicable phenomena.

Locals have known something was weird about the area since at least the mid-nineteenth century, when farmers would occasionally complain of searing hot pebbles that mysteriously rained down from the sky from time to time, even on clear days. It was also said that some of the plants and animals living here displayed mutations and deformities. There have also long been reports that the area has the effect of instilling a certain sense of deep unease, and can distort perceptions or cause visual and auditory hallucinations.

The region has been known as an intense UFO hotspot for many years. Over the years, many reports accrued of travelers and ranchers in the area seeing orbs of light or fireballs cavorting about in the sky or streaking across the horizon. On occasion, these lights were said to descend and set the scrub brush ablaze. Nevertheless, despite the weird stories, this bizarre swath of desert remained mostly unknown to the outside world.

The area first came into the public consciousness in the 1930s, when a Mexican pilot by the name of Francisco Sarabia reported that his plane’s instrumentation had gone haywire and his radio had ceased to function while on a routine flight over the region. In the 1970s, an Athena missile carrying containers of the radioactive element cobalt 57 launched from White Sands Missile Base in New Mexico and suddenly and inexplicably malfunctioned over the area and crashed. It was reported that the missile had suddenly veered wildly off course, almost as if it had been drawn by some mysterious force. Considering the rocket’s radioactive payload, a recovery mission was immediately launched. The missile was eventually found in a remote area and removed along with tons of irradiated soil. When the military went to investigate, it was also found that radio signals and all communications equipment failed to work there for some unknown reason. A few years later, it was reported that booster rockets used for the Apollo project broke up and crashed into the area as well.

An organic chemist by the name of Harry de la Pena had already documented the zone’s unique characteristic of creating a "dark zone" of radio communications in 1966 while on a photographic survey. While out exploring with some companions, it was noticed that walkie-talkies ceased to operate in the area, and portable radios showed a dramatically diminished capacity, only barely audible even at full volume. It would be later found that television signals also failed to penetrate the zone, and to this day, it is said that TVs will not work here. For whatever reason, the Zone of Silence seems to have the ability to severely dampen all television, radio, short wave, microwave, or satellite signals, rendering all devices utilizing these all but useless.

This phenomenon has since been studied by scientists from all over the world, yet no definite cause has been found. It is thought that perhaps the effect is created by magnetic anomalies caused by a large amount of the iron ore magnetite in the area, as well as a high level of meteorite activity, which has imbued the soil with various minerals and ores that could create magnetic disturbances that have an effect on radio waves. There have also been discovered in recent years large reserves of uranium in the mountains facing the zone, although it is unclear what effect this would have on transmissions. One of the strangest things about the Zone of Silence is that it tends to move around, with its exact location shifting and unpredictable.

Magnetic anomalies and the inability of all manner of radio waves to work here are far from the only bizarreness of the Zone of Silence. For years, there have been various strange accounts from people passing through the region of all manner of high strangeness. One recurring story is that of a trio of blonde-haired strangers who are occasionally seen wandering the landscape here. Allegedly, the trio is made up of two males and one female who are dressed in clothes that are inappropriate for the desert environment. Those who have met them say they are very physically attractive, extremely polite, and speak perfect Spanish with a slightly musical lilt. The strangers are said to sometimes ask ranchers for water, but never for food or anything else. When asked where they are from, their typical response is to say “from above.”

These beings, whoever they are, are said to be non-threatening and, in fact, are rather benevolent in nature. One scientist working at the desert “Biosphere” research station in the area reported how he had wandered away from the facility and became lost. It was then that he was approached by a trio of tall, blonde humanoids who guided him back to the research station before vanishing. Interestingly, the Biosphere itself has garnered a reputation for mystery. Although its official purpose is to study desert life, it has often been rumored to be doing secret experiments with animals, researching UFO phenomena, and conducting psychic research.

One bizarre account connected to the Biosphere and this strange trio comes from journalist Luis Ramirez Reyes, who visited the zone in November of 1978 as part of a news team covering the mysteries of the area. At the time, their destination was the mysterious Biosphere research station, but Reyes and his photographer got lost in the desert on their way. Since they had not brought food or water with them, the gravity of their situation was abundantly clear. As they drove along, Reyes saw a trio of figures walking ahead and told the photographer, who was driving, to stop so they could ask for directions, but the photographer didn’t see anyone and so continued on without stopping.

A short while later, much further down the road, the truck again bizarrely passed by the same trio, and once again, the startled Reyes told the driver to stop, but his companion still did not see anyone. Nevertheless, at the imploring of Reyes, he stopped the truck. Reyes claimed to have asked the trio if they had seen a truck like theirs pass earlier, but they said they had not. It was at this point that Reyes noticed that the people were not dressed or equipped at all for the harsh desert environment, despite the fact that they were on foot out in the middle of nowhere, far from any settlement. When asked where the Biosphere was, the odd strangers were only too happy to help and pointed the journalists in the right direction. When they arrived at the Biosphere, they told the staff there of their encounter, but were met with the insistence that the research faculty were the only people out there for hundreds of miles. Who were those strangers? No one knows.

There are other reports of strange beings here as well. Perhaps one of the most well-known accounts comes from a couple by the name of Ernesto and Josefina Diaz, who ventured into the area to collect fossils on October 13, 1975. As they sifted through rocks, they noticed that a storm was brewing on the horizon. Aware of the danger of flash floods and sudden storms in the area, the couple hastily packed up and drove off, but were soon caught up in a deluge of rain. Their new pickup truck became swiftly mired in mud, the tires quickly sinking into the muck. As the couple struggled to free their vehicle, they noticed two unusually tall men wearing yellow raincoats and caps approaching them. The two strangers instructed the couple to get in their car while they pushed. When they complied, the truck was soon freed from the mud, but when Ernesto got out to thank the men, they were nowhere to be seen even though the terrain was totally flat and devoid of places to hide. There were also allegedly no footprints of any kind in the mud to show that anyone had been there at all.

Yet another odd tale was related by a Ruben Lopez, who was on his way to visit a relative in Ceballos when his engine began to experience difficulties and stalled. He then noticed 5 small figures several feet tall by the side of the road, whom he at first mistook to be children. Upon closer inspection, he could see that the figures were wearing silver outfits and wearing helmets that opened in front, revealing clearly adult faces rather than the children he had been expecting. The figures began approaching the truck of the increasingly unnerved Lopez, who gunned the engine until it sputtered back to life enough for him to leave the weird beings in the dust. As soon as they were out of sight, the truck allegedly began working normally.

The region in which the Zone of Silence lies also remains a hotbed of UFO sightings, with many high-profile accounts made here. One impressive sighting in particular happened in September 1976, at around 8:59 p.m. Residents of the town of Ceballos reported a truly immense flying object hovering at the outskirts of town, which was estimated to be a staggering 300 meters in length. The craft was described as being rectangular and ringed with pulsing lights that changed colors from green to white to blue. From deep within it, some inscrutable machinery produced a deep thrumming and humming noise from its bowels. Allegedly, all of the dogs in the area went berserk, howling and barking incessantly until the immense object finally floated over the landscape to disappear from view in the direction of the Zone of Silence.

The heavy UFO activity reported in the zone has caused speculation running the gamut from plausible to fringe. Scientists tend to attribute the many UFO sightings here to the large number of meteorites that pass through the area. The Zone of Silence region boasts one of the highest concentrations of meteor strikes in the world, with small meteorites falling here practically daily. In fact, one of the largest known meteors to have ever struck the Earth crashed into the ground here at a place called Pueblito de Allende in February 1969. What is now known as the Allende Meteorite came down at an estimated speed of 10 miles per second, creating a massive shockwave and a cracking boom heard over vast distances that was one of the loudest sounds ever recorded. Witnesses said the flash produced by the meteor impact was like looking into a flashbulb. Another odd meteorite containing unusual crystalline structures estimated as being around 13 billion years old, far older than our solar system, crashed here in the 1950s, and there are constant falls of small, metallic orbs in the area that locals call guíjolas.

Incidentally, the presence of such spectacular meteorite activity may lie behind an archeological mystery to be found in the zone. Mystery ruins that show no known link to known peoples of the area have been found that are estimated to be thousands of years old and are thought to have served as some sort of astronomical observatory, perhaps somehow linked with the intense meteorite activity. As of yet, no one knows the true purpose of this ancient observatory. It is also possible that the area's magnetic aberrations can cause potent hallucinations, a phenomenon that has long been reported from here by locals and travelers alike.

Other theories point to aliens, with some theorizing that the zone represents a stopping zone for aliens or even a portal through which extraterrestrials or inter-dimensional beings travel. Magnetic anomalies such as those found in the Zone of Silence have long been associated with UFO activity and the ancient astronaut theory, with such travelers being said to be drawn to these potent magnetic zones for unknown purposes. Those who subscribe to this theory point out that Mexico’s Zone of Silence is near the Tropic of Cancer and lies along the same latitude south of the 30th parallel shared by other mystical sites such as the Egyptian Pyramids and the Bermuda Triangle. Could the Zone of Silence be demonstrating phenomena similar phenomena that is seen with the Bermuda Triangle or other mystery zones?

Although the presence of alien spacecraft and beings from another world cannot be supported by any evidence, it certainly seems that something strange is going on in the Zone of Silence. The area with its magnetic aberrations seems to have the ability to draw things into it, perhaps the reason why so many meteorites and rockets have come down here, and is quite feasibly somehow connected to the various other phenomena reported from here. To this day, no one is quite sure just what is going on here, and TVs and communications equipment still fail to work properly when caught up in the roving, ever-shifting zone.

What so imbues this patch of Mexican desert with its bizarre oddities? Does this have anything to do at all with ancient aliens, inter-dimensional portals, and travelers from other worlds? Or is this all merely an unexplained curiosity of the natural world, perhaps mixed in with a healthy dose of folklore and overactive imaginations? It seems this remote, searing land of brutal heat, scrub brush, and parched earth seems to be a place that holds mysteries that continue to elude us, and perhaps always will.

Moving along, sprawled out across a vast expanse of remote wilderness in Russia, just about 600 miles east of Moscow, are the Perm region and the Sverdlovsk regions, and here buried within this sea of trees is a 45 square kilometer area of densely forested land near where the Sylva and Molyobka rivers and merge and not far from the village of Molyobka, that has long been a place full of strangeness and wonder, and which has come to be called the Triangle Molebsky, the Perm Anomalous Zone, or simply the M-zone, and has become a hotspot for all manner of high strangeness.

The native Mansi people once considered this a very sacred place, and long regarded it as a realm of spirits and gods, and locals and visitors alike have over the centuries reported a wide variety of strange phenomena from here such as mysterious lights in the sky, luminous translucent beings that stalk through the woods, dark figures, strange colored lightning, weather anomalies, and the sounds of disembodied voices or singing. Compasses won’t work here, and electrical equipment is prone to stop working as well; cell phones go dead, and witnesses have even talked of how watches will sometimes begin to spin backwards in the zone.

There are also numerous physical effects experienced by those who come here, both positive and negative. It is not uncommon at all for people in the zone to be beset with fierce headaches, nosebleeds, nausea, dizziness, and muscle pain. They are also prone to visual and aural hallucinations and powerful, inexplicable mood swings. There are also conversely more favorable effects. For instance, it is thought that the area has healing abilities, and there are countless tales of people claiming to have been cured of all manner of ailments here, and even healthy people report feeling enhanced and improved somehow, gaining youthful vigor and emerging with increased intelligence. They also supposedly feel spiritually cleansed, with Russian UFOlogist Valery Yakimov saying of this:

“Healthy people feel the general improvement in all spheres: physical, mental, spiritual, moral, etc. It is necessary to mention the " moral effects " of M-zone: the drawbacks of one's character seem to disappear here, the good intentions and high feelings come to life. One's soul becomes cleaner, higher and calmer. You can almost feel yourself becoming a better man. Also the "creative effect" of M-zone is quite noticeable: the abilities of people are sharpening there and sometimes new talents and capacities, unknown before, begin to realize themselves.”

There are supposedly some spectacular cases of this in effect, such as the alleged case of the journalist and cosmonaut Pavel Mukhortov, who had apparently once been a military dropout who had been forced to turn to journalism because of physical disabilities. He then decided to make a trip to the M-Zone to investigate its many odd tales for a possible story, making his way to the remote area with a group of others on an expedition. While in the region, Mukhortov would claim that although he and his crew had fallen mysteriously ill at first, they were then overcome with an intense sense of well-being, and found their heads filled with visions, emotions, and knowledge forced into them that they could not explain. In Mukhortov’s case, he claimed that the knowledge he gleaned from that mystical place allowed him to recover shortly after from his disabilities and pass the tests to enter the Soviet Space Program as a cosmonaut, and he would go on to largely credit his success with the mysterious effects and powers the Perm Anomalous Zone had bestowed upon him.

By far one of the most well-known of the many phenomena of the Perm Anomalous Zone is the unusually high concentration of UFO sightings here, and indeed, it is considered by many to be one of the biggest UFO hotspots in the country. One of the most famous UFO-related incidents in the region supposedly happened in 1983, when Russian UFOlogist Emil Bachurin claimed to have seen a purple ball of light rise out of the thick forest to leave behind a patch of melted snow and ice measuring 206 feet across. Bachurin would also claim that he and his expedition had been chased by orbs of light through the trees that had burnt them with some sort of rays, with one of the team even completely knocked unconscious by one of the lights.

Even more intriguing still is a case from 2005, when an expedition of UFOlogists from Yekaterinburg was in the zone and purportedly spotted a giant glowing ball above the trees. One of the expedition members would mysteriously go missing the following morning, and rather chillingly, a picture purportedly snapped of the UFO allegedly shows a beam of light extending from the object to the missing man. What is going on here? The strange phenomena from the M-Zone are such that it has even managed to capture quite a lot of interest from outside of Russia. The American TV show Sightings did an investigation of the area, and apparently, things got off to an odd start when the Russian government warned them that to stay any longer than 24 hours in the zone was very dangerous. So far, so strange, but when they began their investigation, it would all get even weirder still when their camp was apparently surrounded by encircling orbs of light. The locals of the area were also interviewed by the crew, and they confirmed that UFO sightings were a regular, almost mundane fact of life for them.

With such a remote, strange part of the world hidden out away in this wild and rugged exotic land, it is interesting to think about what could be behind all of these stories. How can we explain all of these disparate phenomena coming from this one patch of wilderness? Of course, other than the obvious theories that UFOs are drawn here for some reason, there are also other attempts to try and rationalize it. Considering that electromagnetic readings within the zone are amazingly high in some places, it is thought that this could be having some kind of physical effects, including hallucinations of perceived UFOs. Connected to this is the idea that it could be the result of infrasound, which is subaudible sounds that have been shown to have a wide range of physical and psychological effects on human beings. So are we dealing with UFOs and powers beyond our comprehension or mundane phenomena that can be explained? It doesn't seem settled yet, and it would seem the only way to find out for yourself is to get out there and check it out.

Finally, we come to the United States, to the state of Florida. There was a time when Florida was nothing more than untamed wilderness ruled by the proud Native peoples of the area, yet by the 1860s and 70s, the region was steadily built up and settled by Europeans en masse. The Natives of the area would go on to be displaced, sent to reservations, or killed in fighting such as the Seminole Wars, and the pristine area witnessed a surge of settlers looking to make a life out of this new, uncharted land, along with numerous railroads and roads that penetrated and crisscrossed the wilds. People poured into the region at the time, and cities and towns began to pop up all over the place, transforming the landscape in the process.

One of the first of these settlers was a businessman named Henry Sanford, who in 1877 bought up land just north of present-day Orlando along the St. Johns River, for the purpose of creating a Catholic farming community called St. Joseph’s. It was more of a get-rich-quick scheme than anything religious as far as Hawkins was concerned, and he sat back waiting for suckers to come rolling in. Things would not go according to plan, and instead of the vast profits Sanford had imagined making on the land, he only ended up selling a few plots, and not long after, the settlement experienced a devastating fire and an epidemic of Yellow Fever that swept out from the mosquito-choked swamps. The disease was catastrophic for St. Joseph’s, with quite a few who died simply being buried out in the woods or on their property, and by 1887, the settlement was all but a ghost town.

Sanford would go on to found the bustling nearby town of Sanford, Florida, and the area would later make a comeback at the turn of the century, while the site of St. Joseph's would become absorbed by a township called Lake Monroe, but this dark history remained there to haunt it, perhaps literally. In 1905, a settler named Albert Hawkins bought up some land on which a family of Dutch immigrants had once lived before becoming victims of the Yellow Fever epidemic that had helped to wipe out the original St. Joseph’s colony. He figured out the grim secret buried on his rural land quite by accident, stumbling upon the weed infested unnamed graves as he explored the area one day, but he was respectful and decided not to have the bodies moved, rather maintaining the plot and their decrepit unmarked wooden crosses like a miniature cemetery, complete with a fence around it, and telling people to stay away from it. However, it would soon appear as though these mysterious graves held some sort of dark power that infused them.

Neighbors sometimes complained to Hawkins that they could see mysterious lights roaming about at night in the vicinity of the graves, and that all manner of ghostly phenomena, such as moving objects and strange noises, had been plaguing their homes. On top of this were some ominous claims that the graves were actually cursed, seeking grim revenge on those who would try and defile them. In one instance, a neighbor allegedly got tired of the graves being there and tore down the fence surrounding them, yet later that same day, this man’s house would supposedly be struck by lightning and razed to the ground. In another incident from the 1950s, a grandson of Hawkins himself was fooling around at the gravesite and kicked over one of the wooden crosses marking one of the graves. The very next day, he would be killed in an auto accident involving a hit and run, with the perpetrator never caught. Even Hawkins himself purportedly had his own house catch fire after he tried replacing the time-worn, rotted old wooden grave markers with new ones, prompting him to take it as a warning to leave them as they were.

All of these strange phenomena and deaths earned the area of that little cemetery the name “The Field of Death,” and locals became too terrified to go anywhere near it. Despite this, Florida’s popularity at the time, and the surging population and droves of tourists coming through, meant that more and more highways were being built in order to meet the demands of the rampant development going on. One of these was the proposed Interstate-4 (I-4), which was meant to connect Tampa and Daytona Beach, and which would cut right through the property on which those haunted graves rested. Hawkins had died in 1939, but he was survived by his widow, and there was not much that she could do at the time because she had sold the land, and it had become eminent domain. However, she did inform the state of the secluded little cemetery and suggested that they move the graves before construction began.

The officials supposedly promised that they would have the bodies moved and interred at a proper cemetery, but this apparently never happened, and when construction commenced in 1960, the highway just ended up going up right over the graves and their forgotten remains. This would seem to have been a bad idea, because almost immediately, there was tragedy that befell the project in the form of the catastrophic Hurricane Donna, which tore across Florida at that exact time and even eerily changed directions to follow the path of the proposed I-4. Also odd was that meteorologists had predicted that Donna was going to just pass by relatively harmlessly off the coast, yet it suddenly made a sharp turn right towards the state for no apparent reason, and even more eerily still, passed right over the construction site. Whether this was all merely a coincidence or not, it was one of the worst hurricanes the state has ever seen, and it stalled construction on the highway for months.

When the highway was eventually finished, it began to accrue a sinister reputation almost immediately, when a truck went wildly out of control and crashed right in the vicinity of the graves, claiming several lives on the very day I-4 opened to traffic in 1963. This would be merely the beginning of an ongoing phenomenon that has plagued the stretch of highway where the graves are said to be, which is right at the banks of the St. John’s River at the interstate bridge overpass, and has earned the ominous name “The Dead Zone.”

By far the most notorious of the many strange and quite frightening phenomena linked to this patch of road is the inordinately high concentration of traffic accidents that occur here. Depending on the source, there have been anywhere from 1,500 to over 2,000 traffic accidents in this one spot along a mere quarter mile stretch since the opening of the highway, with the Florida State Highway Department saying that there were 44 accidents over the course of 1995 and 1996 alone in this one place, and from 1999 to 2006 there were 440 accidents, many of them fatal. The rate of accidents at the Dead Zone of I-4 is so intense that many locals still absolutely refuse to drive over that area, instead going through great lengths to take roundabout routes around it. Officially, this is explained away as the unfortunate result of so much traffic through the area, but even considering this, the rate is quite high, and there are even reports of people claiming that it often seems as if something has actually taken control of their vehicle. is there something more supernatural going on here, and if there is, does it have anything to do with those graves? It is hard to say.

In addition to the uncommonly high rate of traffic accidents along the road are the frequent tornadoes that tear through, often seeming to follow the path of the I-4 as if attracted by it, as well as yet another strange hurricane, hurricane Charley, which eerily passed right over the cursed site in 2004 as if aiming for it. Researcher and author of the book Strange Florida, Charlie Carlson, has said of this particular hurricane:

“Charley followed almost the same route as Donna. They referred to Charley as the ‘I-4 Hurricane.’ Strangely enough, there was construction going on around the graves. The land where the graves are was being disturbed again. It was almost like a repeat of Donna.”

Besides harrowing car crashes and deadly tornadoes and hurricanes, the I-4 Dead Zone has gathered about itself all manner of other assorted paranormal phenomena and high strangeness. One very frequently reported oddity is that radios, cell phones, and CBs go dead and refuse to work over the site, or that there will be picked up ghostly disembodied voices or anomalous static on the devices. Commonly reported are the sounds of children’s laughter, or of voices that desperately ask “Who’s there?” or “Why?”, yet never responding if one is to try and talk with the entities. Some people have even reported hearing not voices, but rather an ominous growling or snarling echoing out from their radios as they drive through. Considering that the immediate area has no radio or cell phone antennas, nor any microwave emitters, it is hard to tell what could be causing these disturbances. Is there a rational explanation, or something far odder at work here? Who knows?

There are numerous other strange phenomena reported from the I-4 Dead Zone as well, including ghost lights, shadow people, roving cold spots, sudden thick fogs from nowhere, phantom hitchhikers, and ghostly vehicles. Add all of this to the death and tragedy that also seem to cling to it like flies to a corpse, and I-4 has gone on to be considered one of the strangest, most haunted places in the state. Is this just urban legend mixed with spooky history and superstition? Is it all overactive imaginations? Or could it be that this length of highway holds to it the specters of the dead, damned to remain tethered here and compelled to lash out at those who have desecrated their graves?

What is it about these places that makes them such magnets for all of these disparate, strange phenomena? What is it about these places that makes them so different and bizarre? Is there some quality permeating these places that makes them so special? Do they represent some thin spot between what we know and other, parallel realities? We may never know the answers, and these places remain out there, with many more like them, eluding our understanding and occupying some minimal zone between what we know and what we don’t. 

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All of us are familiar with Halloween, even if we don’t celebrate it. For most people, it is a fun night of the year where people get dressed up in all manner of spooky costumes and attend parties, or gather a group of friends to watch scary movies, and, for the younger ones, venture outside Trick-or-Treating, collecting vast amounts of sweets and candy. There are, though, many accounts on record that are far from fun, and that have made Halloweens past, at least for those involved, a truly scary occasion.

While we will look at some of the more paranormal encounters shortly, it is perhaps best to start with some of the darker accounts on record, many of which were thought to be Halloween pranks but were found to be anything but. On October 15th, 2015, for example, the body of Rebecca Cade was found hanging from a fence in Ohio. For hours, people walked by assuming it was a Halloween display, until it was discovered to be real. Her injuries made it clear she had been murdered.

A similar incident occurred the previous year, on October 29th, 2014, in Long Island, New York. Witnesses saw a man drag a decapitated body into the street and kick the head to the opposite curb. Many mistook it for a Halloween stunt and continued on with their day until someone tried to move the body out of traffic and realized it was genuine. Police later identified the victim as 66-year-old professor Patricia Ward. She had been killed by her 35-year-old son, Derek, who reportedly had a history of mental illness and lived with her. After the killing, he died by suicide by stepping in front of a train.

There are many more similar Halloween encounters. For example, a 42-year-old woman in Delaware died by suicide on Halloween, hanging herself from a tree in her front yard. Her body remained there for five days because neighbors assumed it was part of the holiday decorations. In a similar case in Los Angeles, residents of an apartment building passed what they believed was a disturbingly realistic prop with severe facial damage; after several days, they discovered it was a man who had died by suicide from a gunshot. In 2012, in Pennsylvania, a 9-year-old girl was shot in the shoulder and arm by a relative who, in the dark, mistook her black-and-white Halloween costume for a skunk. In 1992, 16-year-old exchange student Yoshihiro Hattori was fatally shot while trying to attend a Halloween party. He and a friend went around to the back of the house upon arrival, leading the homeowner, Rodney Peairs, to mistake them for intruders and shoot Hattori.

As well as these accidental deaths and bodies mistaken for props, there have also been some dark, brutal murders committed on Halloween. On Halloween night in 2012, for example, Rebekah Gay answered the door to her mother’s fiancé, John White, a church minister in Michigan. He killed her, hid her body in nearby woods, then returned to dress her three-year-old son in his costume and drive him to his father’s home. White even asked his congregation to pray for Rebekah’s safe return. Her body was found about 20 hours later. He was convicted of her murder and later died by suicide in prison. White had a long history of violence against women. In 1981, he invited 17-year-old Theresa Etherton to see a racetrack he had built in his basement and then attacked her; she escaped, and he served two years in prison. In 1994, he killed a woman with whom he was having an affair and left her body in a wooded area. Because prosecutors could not prove intent, he was convicted of manslaughter.

Another chilling case occurred in 2011 in British Columbia. Eighteen-year-old college student Taylor Van Deist left home dressed as a zombie to meet a friend for trick-or-treating. She texted that she thought someone was following her and was later found near railroad tracks with serious injuries; she died in the hospital shortly afterward. Matthew Foerster was arrested, confessed during questioning, and was sentenced to life in prison for her murder.

Arguably, one of the most horrific Halloween crimes occurred on Halloween night in 1974, in Pasadena, Texas, when Ronald Clark O’Bryan laced candy with cyanide after he had taken out a huge life insurance policy on his own children. He dished out the poisonous sweets to his son, Timothy, his daughter, and several other children in the area. Timothy was the only one who ate the candy, tragically dying a short time later. O’Bryan was arrested and charged with his murder and was executed for his crimes a decade later.

While these accounts are indeed tragic and horrifying, there are others on record that are seemingly paranormal in nature.

Without a doubt, one of the strangest accounts to have unfolded around Halloween occurred in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1939, when multiple residents of the town reported having unsettling encounters with a “tall figure” wearing black clothes, and, according to some witness statements, had “glowing eyes”.

With Halloween approaching, Provincetown was beginning to quieten down as many of the “summer tourists” had left for the usual abodes in various places across America. On this particular evening, a local woman, Mary Costa, was walking past the town hall when something suddenly leaped out of the nearby bushes. According to the report she made later, this figure was at least eight feet tall, and had “pointed silver ears and glowing blue eyes”. This strange entity stared at Mary for several seconds before suddenly jumping, almost directly upwards, eventually disappearing. As soon as it had done so, Mary turned and saw the dim lights of a local coffee shop window, and she immediately ran towards it. She burst inside and blurted out what had happened to her. Several of the men inside the coffee shop immediately ran outside to see if there was any sign of the attacker, but their efforts were in vain.

Mary reported the incident to the local police, who recorded the incident but did little to follow it up in any serious way. However, during the days that followed, more and more reports of an almost identical nature were made to the police, forcing them to take this strange prankster more seriously. All of the details in each of the reports resonated with each other; the figure dressed in black from head to toe; it wore some kind of cape that covered its head and back, it had glowing eyes, which some witnessed reported as red, while others claimed they were a silver-blue color; it had pointed ears, and perhaps strangest of all, a “weird buzzing” sound often accompanied this menacing figure, a sound that some witnessed likened to a fly or a bee. Of even greater intrigue, this figure seemingly had the ability to leap at least ten feet into the air.

In fact, the police had their own encounter with this bizarre figure around the same time the reports began to increase. On the night in question, they received a call that the figure had been spotted in the playground of a local school. The school premises were surrounded by a tall fence, and the police saw an opportunity to trap and apprehend the culprit. Four police officers arrived at the school a short time after receiving the report, each with a flashlight in one hand and their gun in the other. Not long after they entered the school grounds, they saw the bizarre figure in front of them caught in their flashlight beams, with one officer stating that instead of a face, the figure had a “silver painted mask”. The officers ordered the figure to freeze or they would shoot. Rather than doing so, however, the curious entity leaped into the air, clearing the tall fence with ease.

As the reports increased, so did the media coverage of the encounters, and in turn, many different monickers were bandied around. Some referred to the attacker as The Provincetown Phantom, while others called him the Devil of the Dunes. Others still named him The Phantom Fiend, or The Black Phantom. However, it was The Black Flash that stuck, and quickly, all references to the bizarre encounters used this name.

Perhaps one of the strangest aspects of the reports made to the police was that on several occasions, they received reports of encounters with the Black Flash from two different locations at the same time. This suggested to police that there very well could be more than one menace to deal with, and, over the years, some researchers have even pondered if some kind of portal or teleportation device was utilized, making The Black Flash either an eccentric scientist-type figure, or something more supernatural in nature. Indeed, one particular report from a local teenager perhaps suggests just this. He claimed that he was making his way home from the library when the Black Flash appeared out of nowhere right in front of him. Most terrifying of all, though, the witness insisted that the figure had “spat blue flames” towards him from its mouth.

Despite this last report, although unsettling, none of the encounters were violent. More often than not, this figure simply leaped out of somewhere (although witnesses could rarely establish just where the figure had leaped from) in an effort to scare the witness. It would then simply leap into the air and disappear, with most encounters with the Black Flash lasting no longer than a few seconds. One witness, Charles Farley, even fired his gun at the figure, certain that he had hit it. However, rather than drop to the ground, the figure simply “laughed” back before leaping over a tall fence and disappearing into the night. Does this suggest some kind of bulletproof body armor, or is it another sign that the Black Flash has more of an otherworldly quality to it than many might wish to believe?

It is hard to ignore the similar details of the Black Flash encounters to those of Spring-Heeled Jack, who terrorized Victorian England a century earlier. This strange figure would often leap out of nowhere in an effort to startle people, with many of the witnesses stating it had glowing red eyes and blue flames coming from its mouth. Moreover, Spring-Heeled Jack had remarkable leaping ability, able to clear high fences and even two-story buildings in one jump. Although most of the sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack had slowed as the nineteenth century neared its close, there were tentative sightings in the early 1900s and 1940s, and even speculative reports from as recently as the 1970s. Might we consider that there is some kind of connection between Spring-Heeled Jack and the Black Flash of Provincetown, and if so, just what might that connection be?

Whatever the truth, sightings and reports of the Black Flash slowed dramatically as November unfolded, with at least one researcher, Theo Paijmans, claiming they ceased entirely. However, there are odd reports of this strange menace in the years that followed, with the last (known) reported sighting taking place one cold evening in December 1945. The account is detailed in the book Passing Strange by Joe Citro (it can also be found in Robert Cahill’s New England’s Mad and Mysterious Men), and states that on the night in question, four children from the Janard family were outside in the front yard when they suddenly noticed a strange figure heading in their direction coming out of the fog. Although their parents were not at home, they immediately ran inside the house to take cover from the menacing creature.

Suddenly, the sound of the doorknob of the front door being turned reached their ears as the Black Flash tried to gain entry to the property. For several minutes, each of the doors and windows rattled temporarily as the creature tried all potential points of entry. While three of the children hid behind furniture, the oldest boy, Allen, proceeded to fill a bucket with hot water. He then ventured up to the second floor of the property, opened the window, and peered outside. There, directly below him, was the Black Flash. He tipped the water out, watching as it drenched its target. The figure let out a “startled gasp” before it ran off back into the fog.

If we return to the previously mentioned Robert Cahill for a moment, when he traveled to the region decades later to speak with witnesses, he learned of the account of a local pool shark named Eight Ball Eddie. According to what Cahill learned, Eddie was dismissive of the sightings, convinced that the Black Flash was nothing but a man in costume. However, one evening as Eddie was returning home, he encountered the Black Flash for himself. Eddie, still insistent that the figure was merely a “tall man”, stood there looking at the figure, which wore a black hood and had glowing, silver eyes. After several moments, Eddie ordered the figure to get out of his way. The figure, though, lunged toward Eddie and struck him across the face, forcing Eddie to fall to the ground. At this point, Eddie was beyond unsettled by the incident, and after dragging himself to his feet, he turned and ran as fast as he could. The next morning, Eddie still had a “red handprint” where the figure had struck him.

There were, as we might imagine, many explanations put forward in the months and years that followed. Before we look at some of those, though, it is worth our time exploring the year 1939, in general, and how the entire New England area experienced a series of bizarre events. In January, for example, a bizarre “sea monster” washed up on the shore near Wood End. Although it was officially ruled to be a “decomposing basking shark”, many people claimed it bore a remarkable resemblance to an aquatic creature witnessed in 1886 by George Reedy. Whatever the truth, this was just the first of the bizarre events in the region that year. For example, it would eventually come to light through an annual police report that cases of “dog bites and stray cats” had reached an “all-time high” in 1939. Then, in September 1939, several arson attacks occurred, for which a local 40-year-old man was later arrested. In short, the mindset of the people of Provincetown was geared toward something out of the ordinary. Of course, whether this played a part in the sightings of the Black Flash that unfolded in October and November of that year remains very much open to debate.

One suggestion put forward was that the Black Flash was nothing more than four teenagers who were playing a Halloween prank on the town that carried on too long, by the Chief of Police, Anthony Tarvers. He even claimed that he knew the identity of one of the teenagers, although none of these statements were part of an official police press release. He claimed that the boys split into two groups of two, and then one stood on top of the other’s shoulders, using a black cape to cover themselves and using a flour sifter as a makeshift mask. It is interesting to note that he promised to speak with the teenager’s parents, and shortly after he made that statement, the sightings came to an abrupt stop.

The explanation, though, has several holes that can’t be ignored. Perhaps one of the most glaring of these is how the boys – if that is what they were – managed to scale such heights on one leap? Moreover, how did they manage to overpower their potential captors (on several occasions) without being uncovered? Even more glaring, how did the “boys” manage to withstand being shot from close range, and even stranger, how did they manage to pull off the illusion of glowing red or silver eyes and blue flames from the mouth?

With all of these questions in mind, we might consider whether Tarver was simply wide of the mark in his assessment, or whether that statement, an unofficial one, remember, was one he made to simply calm the townsfolk, as well as create the determination that the local police force had succeeded in stopping the infamous Black Flash.

It isn’t just strange creatures lurking in the shadows that have taken place on or around Halloween. On Halloween night 1963, for example, in the small town of Trancas in Argentina, three sisters witnessed a strange, otherworldly object up close. On the night in question, the three sisters were settling down at the Moreno family home, with Argentina and Jolie having traveled from the town of Rosario to see their sister, Yolanda, as well as their parents. They each had their young children with them, and each of their husbands was away on military service. On this evening, following the sudden failure of the electric generator, the family had eaten their evening meal earlier than usual, before settling down in their bedrooms not long after.

At around 9 pm, however, the live-in domestic worker, 15-year-old Dora Guzman, suddenly ran to the main part of the house, claiming there were “strange lights” moving along the railroad outside of the house. The sisters’ parents remained asleep, while Jolie was in the middle of feeding her baby. Argentina and Yolanda ventured to where Dora was, immediately noticing the look of concern on her face, something which was unusual in itself. When they asked her to explain to them what she had seen, she stated that there were some kind of “machines” near the tracks. There was frequent guerrilla activity in the area, and the two sisters contemplated whether that was what Dora had seen. Quietly and cautiously, the two sisters opened the front door of the property and, along with Dora, ventured outside to investigate.

With one sister holding a flashlight and the other a small handgun, the three young women made their way toward the railroad tracks, keeping themselves hidden within the crops. They could see the strange lights moving in the distance; now and then, a strange “beam” would shoot upwards into the night sky. They began to question if there had been a train crash or if a guerrilla group had targeted a passing train. Then, they saw what seemed to be “human silhouettes” moving close to the lights, causing them to stop their approach immediately. They remained where they were for several moments before deciding to carefully continue towards the tracks. The closer they got, they could eventually see that the lights were connected to a solid object – the underside of a disc-shaped craft. The craft appeared like one disc on top of the other, with a green beam of light running in between them, creating a “tunnel” effect. After several moments' pause, they decided to move closer.

Moments after they did so, however, a pair of “dim greenish” lights appeared directly in front of them. Moreover, they were heading in their direction. To begin with, despite the surreal nature of the events they had witnessed, they contemplated if the lights belonged to one of the farm workers’ (Rodriguez’s) pick-up trucks, but before they could contemplate anything more, the three young women were completely enveloped within the green glow. It was at this point that the trio looked upwards, immediately noticing a huge disc hovering directly over them. Everything around them, including their clothes and faces, glowed green. The craft turned slowly in the air as it continued to hover overhead. From this angle, the three witnesses could see several windows or portholes on the underside of the craft.

Then, a beam of “solid light” emerged from the middle of the craft’s underside and stretched to the ground, a light that the witnesses later described as somehow “solid”. Several moments later, Yolanda stepped forward and placed her hand into the strange light. The other two looked on as the light simply went straight through her hand, as opposed to stopping on it as a “normal” light would. Yolanda also stated that although she didn’t feel any pain when her hand was in the light, she could feel distinct heat coming from it. Then, without warning, the beam began upwards, back towards the craft. As it did so, the three young women became aware of a strange mist that had appeared directly underneath the object, each particle glowing green and seemingly visible in the glow of the light. This strange fog-like mist began to grow thicker as the three witnesses continued to stare at it in awe. It was several moments before the two sisters noticed that Dora appeared to be in some strange trance.

The two sisters did their best to free Dora of the apparent spell she was under, but she continued to stare blankly at the mist above her. Then, the green glow was replaced by a bright orange, while above them, several yellow lights were now spinning on the underside of the aerial vehicle. Also at this point, the craft began to rock from side to side before a sudden burst of flames appeared, the force of which forced all three of the young women to the ground.

By now, they feared they were under attack, and so quickly staggered to their feet and ran back to the house. Although they ran as fast as they could, they occasionally looked back to see if the object was following them. Although it wasn’t, it did appear to be moving over the farmland, as if carrying out some kind of visual survey of it. They were fast approaching the main house. However, just as they were about to go through the front door, the glow from the object suddenly vanished. They stopped and turned around, a little shocked that the object was nowhere to be seen, even though only a second earlier, it had clearly been moving across the land.

The three young women went inside the house, by which time, Dora had seemingly come out of her trance, and appeared to be suffering from delayed shock, screaming that she was burned. The sisters’ parents and their other sister all came running to the scene to see what had happened. Dora hadn’t been burned, but it took a considerable amount of time to calm her down. The sisters looked at the clock, realizing it was just after 10 pm, meaning the incident had lasted just short of an hour.

News of the incident soon spread, and with it came corroborating witnesses. One neighbor, for example, Francisco Tropiano, claimed that he witnessed strange lights over their home at around 10 pm on the night in question. He claimed they lit up the entire area before suddenly disappearing. Another witness, a local doctor, claimed he was driving his car when he witnessed “almost 50 strange lights” traversing the sky. Moreover, when investigators examined the area of the actual sighting, they discovered a “dusty white residue” that, when analyzed, showed it was not indigenous to the surrounding soil. This substance was only found at the alleged landing site and nowhere else.

Just what happened that Halloween night in Trancas in 1963 remains unexplained. Despite the three young women being asked repeatedly to speak of their encounter by various investigators and members of the press, they didn’t once waver from their version of events and, by and large, were considered reliable witnesses. And as bizarre as the encounter might have sounded, especially at the time, in the years that have followed, there have been many other witnesses to other UFO encounters that have described very similar details; the green glowing light, for example, or the solid, slow-releasing beam of light that came from the craft itself, not to mention the shape and dynamics of the craft.

Ultimately, while Halloween is a time for mischievous fun, watching horror movies with friends, attending parties, or even venturing to a scary location to “spook” themselves, on occasion, the pretend horror and frights are very real. Of course, while this is almost certainly just coincidence, after all, murders, accidental deaths, and even UFO sightings happen all year round, we should perhaps contemplate, if only in the back of our minds, if something about this time of year really does “thin the veil”, and perhaps influence humanity to act out such horrors, or simply unleash strange figures such as the Black Flash or strange vehicles from other worlds. It is certainly spooky food for thought, and perhaps something for us to keep in mind as we celebrate Halloween, both this year and in the future. Is it all fun and games? Not always.