The Fourth Kind

I watched the Fourth Kind last night. It's a movie which purports to based on real life events in Nome, Alaska. Those events involve repressed memories, alien abductions and levitation.

Interspersed with, supposed, real life video and audio recordings of the events and an interview with the "real life" person upon whom Milla Jovovich's character is based.

I didn't think this movie was quite as awful as the critics have made out, and found it genuinely chilling in parts. But it quickly becomes obvious (thanks both to logical deduction and VERY poor acting) that the "real life" parts are totally fake. Which takes a great deal away from the film.

It's a wellshot, diverting movie let down by some poor acting and silly attempts to make it seem true when it so obviously isn't.

Further Watching

The Fourth Kind (US Amazon) The Fourth Kind (UK Amazon)

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Nazi Survival: Roswell

Nazi survival stories are a common item on this blog. It's a somewhat macabre thing to be fascinated with, and I'm quick to distance myself from any "longing" for a scenario where the Nazi empire continued to survive past the battles of Berlin and Prague. But... it is something that presents a rather interesting thought experiment; how would the world react to the re-emergence of a Nazi regime? Just think about that for a moment!!

Whilst aliens are usually the favourite explanation for UFOs, the Nazi's appear to run a close second. We've covered this before, but it goes much deeper than I thought. Even Roswell, sacred to ufologists everywhere, comes under scrutiny as possible evidence for Nazi survival.

There's two favourite Nazi explanations: 1) as part of  Operation Paperclip the US Government was part of the experiments which led up to the crash at Roswell or 2) the Nazi's set up a still undiscovered (or at least unannounced) redoubt somewhere and were kept an eye on their old foes with UFOs when the crash happened.

For a look at that, rather unlikely, second scenario check out this timeline which basically says that if the Nazi's had survived and the governments had let their citizens know there would have been mass panic. Hmm...

Personally I think the whole Nazi survival/UFO thing is a lot more believable than the possibility that aliens are observing us (I believe in aliens existing as a general principle but I find it highly likely they would use the sort of technology it'd take to travel the distances required just to "observe" us, after all that travelling you'd think they would be a bit more chatty) . But that's not saying much.

Further Reading

Roswell and the Reich: The Nazi Connection - Joseph P. Farrell

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The 2009 Kentish UFO Flap

As some readers may know, I hail from Kent and grew up in the south east of the county in Folkestone. You may also realise I like Fortean things! So I thought, let's find something interesting and Fortean from Kent to write about today. I was thinking maybe some historical event, when my research found me looking at literally dozens of reports of orange lights over Kent, specifically in the last few months. There are quite few a comments regarding them on this BBC report about similar sightings in 2008. Now I don't mean to say these sightings are limited to Kent, but I'm limiting my focus there. The MoD, however, does suggest something strange is going on over Kent.

Below are a "few" more sightings, with links to the original witness report and more detail.

8th April 2009 - Sighting of three lights flying in a triangular formation over Kingsnorth, Ashford, Kent in a south westerly direction.

24th April 2009 - Kent, UK



4th May 2009 - 9 orange lights moving in formation of 3 rows of 3 spotted moving in south easterly direction. Reported from Benfleet, Essex and Brands Hatch, Kent

16th May 2009 - 3 orange lights in a row followed by a fourth over Margate, Kent heading east out over the sea. Described as looking a little like jellyfish.

30th May 2009 - A real clutch of sightings here: one fast moving orange object observed over various parts of south eastern UK, especially northern Kent. Other objects seen by some witnesses. One witness describes as being a little like a jellyfish.

30th May 2009 - Another report of two fast moving fireballs in Herne Bay, Kent


30th May 2009 - Two more orange balls in the sky, seen from Dover, Kent

9th - 12th June 2009 - Blinking orange lights seen rising over Romney Marsh three nights in a row.

13th June 2009 - Two bright orange objects seen rising into air near Maidstone, Kent. Looked like a jellyfish without the tendrils.

13th June 2009 - Two orange lights seen heading in south westerly direction over Maidstone, Kent

14th June 2009 - Three oranges light seen following each other over Paddock Wood, Kent

19th June 2009 - Yellow lights in the sky over Tonbridge, Kent

20th June 2009 - Three lights, at least one orange, reported rising into clouds over Ripple, Kent

21th June 2009 - Three bright orange lights seen rising into clouds over Welling, Kent

22nd June 2009 - Two orange lights seen in Snodland, Kent (famous for being the town of my birth, of course!) rising eventually extinguishing but visible dark object still seen.

26th June 2009 - Birchington, Kent



27th June 2009 - Rising orange light in Beckenham, Kent

30th June 2009 - More flashing orange lights over Romney Marsh, Kent

4th July 2009 - 7 bright orange lights seen over Stanford North, Kent

4th July 2008 - 3 orange lights seen over Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Described as very fast.

etc. etc. The two sites linked to multiple times during these sightings will provide many more similar things.

So what could they be?

Meteors: given the distances some were seen over within one hour (such as the 30th May sightings in northern Kent, down through to Dover) it is unlikely these can be explained by anything other than a meteor(s). Not only can meteors look like stable fireballs, some can also "flash" on and off.

Chinese Lanterns and "hoax" fire lit bags: I think the below video from Southampton shows the stunning effect that Chinese lanterns can have. The effect is amazingly similar to the reports described above. Also many descriptions indicate it looked like the top half of a jellyfish, which is again consistent with some sort of illuminated "bag". Do people really let off that many Chinese lanterns around the south east?? Erm... yes they do. This news story from Thanet last month indicates that not only are the emergency services being called about them more often "especially this summer" but also has comments from people stating they themselves have used them a number of times so far this year... just in Thanet! Also see this news story regarding video below.



Here's more videos from Kent this year which I think are very similar, if at a great a distance and filmed very badly, to the video above. The concept of them "rising" and also the Snodland report stating an object could still be seen rising even after the light extinguished again back up this theory.

Hot air balloons: You may think me mad, but Kent is well known for having hot air balloons up in the sky. Leeds Castle, near the centre of the county, has regular air balloon flights which travel for miles in all directions. As a kid in Snodland, we'd take great delight when we'd see one of these in trouble over the town as we knew they'd land over in the rec which meant we'd get to have a good look! At night it is difficult to see the outline of the balloons but easy to spot the flashing light caused by the fire inside the basket. I have, more than once, had to take a second look at the night sky before realising that "UFO" was in fact a hot air balloon.

Aliens/interdimensional beings/otherwise fortean explanation. This becomes difficult here... Of almost all the reports of the lights I can see no reason to believe they are intelligently controlled. Few make any abrupt turns, few seem to move at inexplicably fast speeds (check out the video above again, those lights are moving plenty fast and it doesn't seem that windy of a day!). Others say the lights "move at different speeds". Well yes aerodynamics and different wind speeds in different layers of air can explain that.

I think what we have here are many reports of Chinese lanterns, a few meteors, a couple of hot air balloons and a few sightings that remain "unexplained" but probably not "Fortean". If you really don't believe people can't tell the difference between Chinese Lanterns and "a craft" just check out this report from my hometown of Folkestone, Kent to see how easy a misidentification can be.

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The Flatwoods Monster

Flatwoods, Braxton County in West Virginia, is a small village which advertises itself as "The Home Of The Green Monster". Who was the Green Monster?


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September 12th 1952, 7:15pm. Three boys Edward (13) and Fred May (12), and their friend Tommy Hyer (10) were playing football on a school playground when they spotted something in the sky.

It was a bright object streaking through the sky until it appeared to land/crash on a hilltop of the nearby Bailey Fisher farm. The boys ran back to Edward and Fred's house and related the story to their mother Kathleen May. She agreed to accompany them to the hill with torchlights and brought with her Neil Nunley (14) Ronnie Shaver (10), and 17 year old West Virginia National Guardsman Eugene Lemon. Lemon also brought his dog.

As the 8 of them drew close to the site of the crash, Lemon's dog ran ahead. Just out of sight they heard it barking at something unknown before it came running back with it's tail between it's legs.

As the first two boys, including Neil Nunley, crested the hill the object seemed to crash into, they saw a pulsating red light some way in the distance. Before they could react to that (and before they could wonder what that pungent smelling mist that was burning their eyes was), Lemon spotted two shining eyes under an oak tree and turned the flashlight towards them.



There standing before them was a 10 foot tall creature, with a round red face with a "Ace of Spades" shaped frill around it. The body seemed dark, although it later was described as "green" hence the town's name for the beast. When the creature began to "glide" towards them, Lemon dropped the flashlight and the group fled.

The authorities were called. First the police. Then the local newspaper. I'm pleased to see Mrs May had her priorities straight. If I'd just seen a 10 foot monster my first few phone calls would not have included the local rag, but probably the fire brigade, the Army, perhaps even the RNLI. But really, the local rag??

Strangely on separate checks that evening the Sheriff and his deputy found nothing unusual whilst Mr. A. Lee Stewert, co-owner of the Braxton Democrat, found "a sickening, burnt, metallic odor still prevailing". Funny that.

Further reports came in:

At 6:30 the next morning, the director of the Board of Education saw a flying saucer take off, not far from his house, and immediately reported it to the Sutton newspaper. Only then was he informed of the happening of the night before. Mr. Stewart, the owner of the paper, immediately went to the hill and could still smell the odor on the ground. He discovered two tracks where the reported object had landed. No wagon had been in this part for many years and the weeds were several feet high. The grass was freshly depressed, and closer search disclosed a piece of black plastic material which did not burn when tested by Stewart. The piece has been analyzed and we hope to get a report soon through Mr. Smith. Samples of ground and vegetation were also collected by airforce [sic] officers.

Further inquiries at the Lemon house revealed that Mrs. Lemon and a friend were having coffee at the time of the landing, and their house shook so violently that coffee spilled over the table and they thought the house had fallen off its foundation. The radio went off for 45 minutes and came back on by itself.

In his systematic questioning of everyone in the valley, Smith found that a girl, 21, of Weston, 11 miles from the Lemon farm, was confined in the Clarksburg Hospital for three weeks, after having seen a figure of the same description, and emitting the same odor reported by witnesses of the Sutton occurrence. Her mother confirmed the girl's story that they had seen the monster when they were on their way to church more than a week before Mrs. May's experience. Source: CSI Bulletin #2

What I find so fascinating about all this is that an entire mythology has grown up on this monster based on a fleeting glance of it, and that these folks were willing to go on record claiming it to be a monster based on nothing more that a few moments of contact.

Honestly, one adult amid a group of excitable young boys and an exuberant pet dog does not a convincing witness make and I quite honestly believe that this particular monster can be explained away by a meteor, some flashing aerial lights and an owl as suggested here. What depresses me most is that people seem desperate to explain these sorts of things away by the weird rather than erring on the side of caution. Bless 'em.

Further Reading

The Braxton County Monster: The Cover-Up of the Flatwoods Monster Revealed - Frank C. Feschino (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

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Black Triangle UFO off the coast of Kent?

Yes you heard me correctly, according to This Is Kent, a strange triangular object has been sighted on Google Maps about a mile east of (Planet) Thanet.


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Yoinked from Monsters of Kent

Dear Constant Reader, haven't you missed Kentish references? ;)

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UFOs In Space!

Now astronauts aren't any more reliable a group of people than your average group of scientists/military specialists (evidence here) but their unique experiences and talents do lend them a little more credence than most of us earth bound folk.

Given the strangeness of their surroundings and the vastness of space, it's hardly surprising that astronauts see and report things which are difficult to identify. But even so it's quite amazing the amount of UFO sightings reported by our intrepid explorers.



Some say UFOs in space have been observed since the very early days of space flight, including a supposed sighting captured by John Glenn on Mercury 1



Major Gordon Cooper, the last American to ever launch into space on a solo mission and a Mercury astronaut, is often cited as the first person in space to spot a UFO. However he always denied this was the case, and given that he was actually a very vocal believer in UFOs and claimed to have seen them when in the US Air Force I tend to think we can trust him on that. Why would he lie?

So that leads me on to a later mission instead as our first really significant sighting. Gemini 4 was launched in June 1965 crewed by James McDivitt and Edward White. They videoed and photographed a moving object which some claim is a UFO.



Others however have been somewhat less enthusiastic about it with McDivitt and White being particular uninspired regarding the events (sadly White passed away not long afterwards during the Apollo 1 disaster).

Not long after this mission, Gemini 7 was launched. It has spawned several stories of UFO encounters in space. Here's a transcript from just after the launch.

"Spacecraft: Gemini-7 here. Houston, how do you read?

Capcom: Loud and clear, Seven, go ahead.

Spacecraft: Bogey at 10 o'clock high.

Capcom: This is Houston. Say again, seven.

Spacecraft: Said we have a bogey at 10 o'clock high.

Capcom: Roger, Gemini 7, is that the booster or is that an actual sighting? Spacecraft: We have several, looks like debris up here. Actual sighting.

Capcom: You have any more information? Estimate distance and speed? Spacecraft: We also have the booster in sight.

Capcom: Understand you also have the booster in sight. Roger.

Spacecraft: Yeah, have a very, very many -- look like hundreds of little particles banked on the left out about 3 to 4 miles.

Capcom: Understand you have many small particles going by on the left. At what distance?

Spacecraft: Oh, about -- it looks like a path to the vehicle at 90 degrees.

Capcom: Roger, understand they are about 3 or 4 miles away.

Spacecraft: They are passed now -- they were in polar orbit.

Capcom: Roger, understand they are about 3 or 4 miles away.

Spacecraft: That's what it appeared like. That's roger.

Capcom: Were these particles in addition to the booster and the bogey at 10 o'clock?

Spacecraft: Roger

Spacecraft (Lovell): I have the booster on MY side, it's a brilliant body in the sun, against a black background with trillions of particles on it.

Capcom: Roger. What direction is it from you?

Spacecraft (Lovell): It's about at my 2 o'clock position.

Capcom: Does that mean it's ahead of you?"

Spacecraft:. It's ahead of us at 2 o'clock, slowly tumbling."

Sounds interesting? Sadly it's not quite as interesting as it first appears. Gemini 7 was a very early mission and space flight was still a relative unknown. This phenomena is now widely accepted as being related to booster separation. See here for more interesting facts on Gemini 7 and an explanation of why this was not first contact.

Gemini 11 was the next to "make contact".

The Not So Alien Gemini 11 UFO

FROM THE TRANSCRIPT OF GEMINI-11, TAPE 133., PAGE 1 (SEPTEMBER 13, 1966):

"WE HAD A WINGMAN FLYING WING ON US GOING INTO SUNSET HERE OFF TO MY LEFT. A
LARGE OBJECT THAT WAS TUMBLING AT ABOUT 1 REV. PER SECOND, AND WE FLEW . . .
WE HAD HIM IN SIGHT, I SAY FAIRLY CLOSE TO US. I DON'T KNOW. IT COULD DEPEND
ON HOW BIG HE IS AND I GUESS HE COULD HAVE BEEN ANYTHING FROM OUR ELSS* TO
SOMETHING ELSE. WE TOOK PICTURES OF IT."

*ELSS - EXTRAVEHICULAR LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM Source

Alas, yet again this seems to be nothing more than a misidentification.

NORAD IDENTIFICATION OF THE SIGHTING FROM TRANSCRIPT, TAPE 209, PAGE 2
(SEPTEMBER 14, 1966):

"WE HAVE A REPORT ON THE OBJECT SIGHTED BY PETE CONRAD OVER TANANARIVE
YESTERDAY ON THE 18TH REVOLUTION.** IT HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED BY NORAD AS THE
PROTON 3 SATELLITE. SINCE PROTON 3 WAS MORE THAN 450 KM FROM GEMINI 11 IT IS
UNLIKELY THAT ANY PHOTOGRAPHS WOULD SHOW MORE THAN A POINT OF LIGHT."

**THE OFFICIAL 70 mm PHOTOGRAPHY IDENTIFICATION SHEET LISTS THIS AS
OCCURRING ON THE 16TH REVOLUTION.

There are rumours that during the Apollo 11 moon landing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spotted either ships or "installations" on the surface but as no actual evidence has ever come to light on this one we'll move quickly on.

UFOs weren't merely seen by American astronauts but by their Russian cosmonaut colleagues as well:

In April 1979, Russian cosmonaut Victor Afanasyev sighted an alien craft whilst in space, he states:" I think we are not alone, something of extraterrestrial origin has visited Earth. The alien craft turned towards ours, followed us and flew formation 25 to 29 metres away. We photographed the metallic engineering structure that was 40 metres long. The film was later confiscated." Victor did in fact make a drawing of the object

Gennadij Strekhalov, another cosmonaut - MIR Space Station, relates:

"On the last two flights I saw something. During the flight of 1990, I called Gennadij Manakov, our commander to come to the porthole - but we did not manage to put a film in the camera quickly enough. We looked on Newfoundland and the atmosphere was absolutely clear - suddenly a kind of sphere appeared. Beautiful, shiny and glittering - I saw it for 10 seconds - it disappeared. What was it, what size it had? I don't know, there was nothing I could compare with - it was a perfect sphere. I reported to the Mission Control Center, but I did not say I have seen a UFO - I said I saw a kind of unusual phenomenon. I had to be careful with the choice of my words - I don't want someone to speculate too much or quote me wrong".

During docking with the Russian Mir space station astronaut Musa Manarov filmed an anomalous object, he stated: "At some point during the filming I caught sight of something I thought had separated from the ship… however, it was not very close, I know this because the camera was focused on infinity. Nothing could have broken away. There were no alarms were going off. Later there were arguments over what possibly it could have been". Source

Of course there are multiple sightings coming from the NASA Space Shuttle program

From STS 48



From STS 63



From STS 114



From STS 115



There's plenty more like this on Youtube. Personally, as a lay person, I think these sightings could easily be put down to debris (moving that fast I hear some scream, yes things really do move that fast in space) and other phenomena. But then again, what do I know? Either way I feel like watching more Shuttle videos as they are fantastic. The STS 48 one, showing the thunderstorms is particularly wonderful!!

Check out the following documentary (part one of 12, see more on Youtube) for many, many more examples of this very interesting part of ufological study. Plus this webpage is pretty informative.



Further Reading

Ufo's and Outer Space Mysteries: A Sympathetic Skeptic's Report - James Oberg (UK Amazon, US Amazon)


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Black Triangle UFOs

As seen over Belgium

The word UFO is almost synonymous with "flying saucer" in the public consciousness. But as I'm sure you know they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes from the phantom airships, through cigar shapes, flying balls of light and spheres. But the cool one, the X-Files generation UFO, is the black triangle.

Triangular UFOs are not a recent development in ufology (check out a full history here). In fact they are almost as old as our favourite phantom airships, dating back to the 19th Century. One of the first sightings occurred on the 3rd of July 1882 when two luminous triangles, and then later two dark triangles appeared in front of the moon.

On the 12th of July 1946 3 very small silvery triangles were observed in Sweden.

The closer to the modern day we get the more detailed the reports become:

1953: Cleveland, Ohio; Don P. Hollister, a technical writer for the Goodyear Aircraft Corporation, saw a UFO pass overhead 6:30pm, September 7. While waxing his car in the backyard, Hollister happened to glance up and noticed a grayish-blue object directly overhead, headed north. The sky was completely overcast, and the UFO appeared to be at less than 3000 feet altitude. It was shaped roughly like an equilateral triangle, but rounded somewhat on the sides and angles, and was rotating around a central axis. The UFO continued on over the visible horizon at constant velocity, disappearing from view after about 5 seconds.

It's interesting because this report from Ohio resembles (except for time of day!) this video report below from Florida. It seems to rotate around a central axis too (the only thing that really makes this video somewhat remarkable).



In 1954 a triangle over Gemeaux, France got a mention in a CIA report. In 1962 two triangular UFOs got reported in the USAF's Project Blue Book.

But it was in the late eighties/early nineties that the triangles stopped being just random reports among various other UFO reports and started their very own "UFO flap". In Belgium of all places...



After that? Well... ever heard of the Phoenix Lights? And as sightings of the craft increase, some people have even claimed to see on on Google Maps, although I think that's just wishful thinking. Look at it. It's not a flying object. It's not a solid object. It's a triangle shaped piece of cleared ground. Anyway...

So. We have reports of triangles in the sky. But what are they? Of course some say aliens, but these are often more likely to be considered military hardware than most other UFOs.

Could it be that these are in fact spy planes called TR-3Bs? Sort of a step up from the black helicopters I suppose. Perhaps they are furthering the cause of the New World Order, or something cooked up during the Cold War to help spy on the Soviets.

Or perhaps they are just normal planes. At night. Which people think are triangular because it's dark.

As always, Dear Constant Reader, that's for you to think about.

Further Reading

Are We Being Watched?: True Mysteries of Triangles and Hidden Lights - Margaret A. Harvey (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

The Black Triangle Abduction - Bill Foster, Peggy Foster and Nadine Wheeler (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

UFO Sightings: The Evidence - Robert Sheaffer (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

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Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part Three

Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part One

Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part Two

Throughout the early 20th century reports came in of mysterious airships from places as far afield as California, London and New Zealand. What could they have been?

Charles Dellschau and the Sonora Aero Club

Behind every great unexplained event is a conspiracy theory waiting to see the light of day and the phantom airships are no different.

Dellschau was born in Prussia in 1830 but emigrated to America in his early adulthood. At that time (and for many years after) Germany was at the forefront of aeronautical innovation and perhaps that is what influenced Dellschau's later works.

He wasn't famous during his lifetime, in fact he was considered a recluse and his grouchy nature made him few friends. But after his death several personal journals and artworks were discovered which perhaps might shed some light on the phantom airships.

Dellschau began this work in 1899 and his works tell a story. If his work (written in badly spelt English, German and his very own code language) is to be believed some 50 years previously he had been a member of a secretive organisation named the Sonora Aero Club which was established by eccentric men dedicated to furthering the cause of powered flight in California.It was supposedly part of a larger secret society called NYMZA. Some see these claims as a possible explanation for at least some of the reports of mystery airships over the USA. Many encounters with the airship crews record the crews stating various ambitions to fly on to another destination as part of some great adventure. 

But it must be remembered that Dellschau was an artist, his artistic airships not in anyway resembling those reported (or those that could ever fly!) and his ramblings could either simply be part of his art or part of some sort of mental health issue. There's a bit more on this here.

Contemporary Zany Inventors?

The rather interesting thing about the sightings is that they occurred at a time when it is very possible there were people inventing such ships such as:



Henri Giffard flew a steamed powered airship 27km in 1852 near Paris.

Solomon Andrews flew Aereon in 1863 over New Jersey which consisted of three 80-foot cigar-shaped balloons, with a rudder and gondola.

Henri Dupuy de Lôme flew an airship in the last days of the Franco-Prussian War

By the late 1890s rigid, metal hulled airships were beginning to be flown thanks to inventors such as David Schwarz.

And there were rumours of other inventors at work, some stories are on this site including this one, which I particularly like:

In 1848 gold fever seized America. On January 24 a workman discovered the precious metal in Sutter's millrace in California's Sacramento Valley. Within weeks the entire Pacific coast knew about it and a few months later "gold" was on the tongue of every easterner who ever dreamed of easy fortune.
Getting to those goldfields, however, was a problem, for the inland parts of the young nation were largely unsettled. A unique solution -- air travel -- came from "R. Porter & Company," a firm which listed its address as Room 40 of the Sun Building in New York City. In the latter part of 1848 the company distributed an advertising flyer in the eastern United States which promised more than it ever delivered.
Touting "THE BEST ROUTE TO THE CALIFORNIA GOLD!" the flyer read in part that the company was "making active progress in the construction of an 'Aerial Transport' for the express purpose of carrying passengers between New York and California.
"It is expected to put this machine in operation about the first of April, 1849, and the transport is expected to make a trip to the gold region and back in seven days..."
On the flyer the "aerial locomotive" is illustrated -- a huge cigar-shaped device, identified as a "gasbag," with a tail. Under it, attached with "sturdy material arrows can't puncture," is a similarly-shaped car with windows in its midsection.
"Snug gondola with benches for 50 or more passengers," the caption reads. From the top of the gondola stretches a long pipe which is identified as "a steam engine for controlled propulsion through sunny skies at 60 miles the hour."
Except for this pipe, entrepreneur Porter's vessel is almost a dead ringer for the type of "UFO" widely reported in the late 1800's and early 1900's which came to be called "the airship," although obviously there had to be more than one of them and they did not all look alike. But in the advertisement of an obscure company lie the first hints of a bizarre mystery which is staggering in its implications.

So yes those ships described by the witnesses would be futuristic and advanced but not completely impossible. For all we know they were simply the product of over enthusiastic inventors. But why would they not have reported such marvels? Well my other half is always making and creating new things, a jukebox from scratch was my favourite, and he does it simply for the joy of doing so. Soon after he's made them he tears them down to move on to his next project. Could these guys have not been like that? Sure it's far fetched but anything is possible!

Aliens?

 On April 19 the Dallas Morning News reported that the airship had crashed into a windmill in Aurora and exploded. The body of the pilot was recovered, and was identified as a native of the planet Mars. Despite this, the remains were buried in the local Masonic cemetery. The Amazing Airships of 1896

Of course with these reports of crafts in the sky so greatly resemble later UFO and extraterrestrial encounters it is not difficult to go one step further and claim these sightings are also extraterrestrial in origin. Sure some of the lights in the sky type sightings might well be alien space craft but more likely are simply natural phenomenon. 

The more detailed encounters suggest that these airships could not be alien in origin. The technology described was not that advanced (certainly not advanced enough for intergalactic travel) and most reported humans in the vehicles, or at least heard human voices and laughter from them. I find it highly unreasonable to connect the airship flaps with aliens, as the evidence is very much against that idea and more in favour of a more earthly origin. 

A Hoax?

History shows us that hoaxes are more likely an explanation for the sightings than any other possible cause. If you think news reporting is unreliable and biased now, then you have obviously not seen anything about news reporting in Victorian times. Given to exaggeration, and sometimes downright lying, just to sell papers many reporters would happily seize upon a light in the sky story and turn it into several pieces on strange craft generating more reports by people who think they've seen something which ends up generating more stories and so on. 

If you look at the flaps, starting off slowly and become more feverish and outlandish as time passes before petering out, the chronology bears out this sort of scenario perfectly. I'm not suggesting anyone person intentionally set out to hoax others, but I am suggesting a combination of factors may have exaggerated the stories from mere misunderstandings into crazy airship stories. 

One article even goes on to cite the possibility, that newspapers at the time suggested, that some of these hoaxes may even have been an elaborate advertising scam!

Foreign Powers?

The scareships show us that paranoia about the abilities of an adversary can lead to exaggerated reports. There is no way airships could have reached parts of the country they were reported in from anywhere else in Europe. The very idea is absurd. Perhaps the Sheerness sighting reported last time was a German airship but in Wales? Or in the north? Absolutely not. 

Perhaps there were airships in the sky during some of those encounters, but sadly the general media situation at the time of the sightings and people's enthusiasm for the subject leave me unable to believe the majority of reports which can be put down to hoaxes, exaggeration and mistaken identity. 

Further Reading

Mystery Airships In The Sky - Steven A. Arts (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery - Michael Busby (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

The Great Airship Mystery - Daniel Cohen (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part Two

The Steampunk UFOs Part One

The Airship Wave Of 1909

Less well known than the 1896-97 spat of sightings, the 1909 wave is still worthy of mention. This wave occurred at the true dawn of air travel and appropriately enough had a much more international flavour.

The "scareships" appeared across Britain that year causing panic and fear. We must remember that the early years of the 20th Century spelt the end of Britain's splendid isolation thanks to the invention of controlled, powered flight. The British truly were scared of what that could mean, and sadly we all know we Brits were quite right to fear what lay ahead. So "scareships" was the phrase the papers coined for that year's mystery airships.

The first ascent of the Zeppelin LZ1 in 1900

The Airship Wave Of 1909 - Dr David Clarke is a rather brilliant article about the scareships and their immediate historical setting. I'll give you a few examples of the sights Dr Clarke mentions:

In May 1909, the skipper of the Suffolk-based fishing smack Superb, J.H. Stockman, reported how in October the previous year, when fishing in the North Sea 35 miles out of Lowestoft he had seen what at first appeared to be "a large star rising out of the water" and approaching his ship. After calling one of his crew, Stockman decided to signal to the "airship" with a red flare, and to his surprise he was immediately answered by a red flare from above his ship. He then showed a white flare, and received a blue flare in response! The "airship" appeared to be sausage shaped, and carried a single light; it eventually disappeared out to sea in the direction of the Continent

No German Zeppelin would have been able to make such a crossing and the report is remarkably similar to many latter day UFO sightings.

From the point of view of the London newspapers, however, the scare can safely be said to have begun with the sighting made by Police Constable Kettle in the Cathedral city of Peterborough, early on the morning of 23 March 1909. It was this sighting which was the first to appear in a London evening newspaper, the Daily Mail, and was subsequently noted by Charles Fort in his account of the airship scare.

In his original statement, published in the Peterborough Citizen and Advertiser, Kettle said: "I was on duty in Cromwell-road at 5.15 am when I heard what I took to be a motorcar some 400 yards distant. It was quite dark at the time, and I looked along Cromwell-road expecting to see the lights of an approaching car. Nothing appeared, but I could still hear the steady buzz of a high-powered engine. Suddenly it struck me that the sound was coming from above, and I looked up. My eye was at once attracted by a powerful light, which I should judge to have been some 1,200 feet above the ground. I also saw a dark body, oblong and narrow in shape, outlined against the stars. When I first sighted the machine it was not straight overhead but appeared to be over the railway in the direction of Taverners-road. It was travelling at a tremendous pace, and as I watched, the rattle of the engines gradually grew fainter and fainter, until it disappeared in the northwest."

The Daily Mail's account mentions that a second policeman in another part of Peterborough had corroborated Kettle's account, but no further reference has been located referring to this fact in the local Press. Newspaper reporters, however, were quick to locate other witnesses in the town who claimed to have seen a similar object in the sky over Peterborough at around the same time. One of these was a Miss Gill, daughter of the city electrical engineer, who upon returning from the theatre with friends that same night saw "a brilliant flashing light in the sky...apparently attached to some dark object moving slowly in the direction of Cromwell Road.

This was to be the first in a series of sightings in East Anglia and soon enough fevered reporters and onlookers descended on the counties thereabouts in search of the lights in the sky. Soon the craze moved further afield...

"a report was made by a police constable Day, of the Lincolnshire force, to the effect that he had seen an airship hovering over Immingham Dock at night. PC Day claimed he was patrolling on the banks of the Humber at 2am when his attention was attracted to a bright light hanging over the river nearby.

"Having been in the navy for several years, the officer states emphatically that it was not a searchlight," maintained the Sheffield Telegraph. "He also states that he distinctly saw the outline of a car, which was swaying gently in mid-air. For an hour the mysterious body and light remained visible until, in fact, the officer went off duty."

As usual there may well have been a less sensational explanation for this sighting, for the account went on to say: "It so happens that there was a remarkable display of the Northern Lights early [on the morning of 22 May] and it is quite possible that this may afford an explanation."

I just imagine him staring at this strange sight, amazed and bewildered than seeing his watch and thinking "Wooooo... what am I doing standing around here, it's time for a beer!" Typical Brit... ;)

At Herne Bay in Kent, five independent witnesses in different parts of the town observed the passage of an airship shaped like "a big cigar" or a sausage, carrying a brilliant light, which travelled inland from the sea between 9 and 9.30 pm on 13 May.

On the same night hundreds of miles to the north in Hull, on the East Coast of Yorkshire, Mr A. Walker was walking home when he observed a flash of light in the sky above the Humber at 11pm. "It was working to the west and seemed to be tracking a little as if going against the wind which was forcing it back," he told the Hull Daily Mail. "It was a luminous body seen through a cloud, and appeared arc-shaped, and I also heard a peculiar whirring noise. The light was high up, about a mile up, I should think. It was dark and cloudy at the time and I had the light under observation for about two minutes. I immediately called my father and mother who were in the house, and they also both saw the light as it travelled westwards."

Several other Hull residents also came forward and claimed they had seen an airship hovering over the Humber the following night, and that "for a brief space, a piercing searchlight was directed on the river."

Did you think Kent would escape a mention? Never!

That is just a few of many sightings in Britain that spring and I've left out some actual encounters with "Germans" and even a few Men In Black stories too mentioned in the article which I really urge you to read. Given the huge amount of publicity and the sheer quantity of witness statements it's quite astonishing that so few people have even heard of the scareship wave, whether it was aliens, pre-WWI delusions or German recon flights it's still a fascinating phenomenon. The reports continued right up until the outbreak of the First World War and the first waves of real "scareships" which brought misery to our isles. In fact one incident in 1912 when the sounds of an airship were heard flying over Sheerness in Kent (trust me, if you are of right mind you'd want to ensure you flew above Sheerness and not ever touch down there...) lead to questions being asked in Parliament.

Another place that was home to a wave of sightings of strange craft was quite a long way away from any possible threatening Zeppelins; New Zealand.

This site has quite a few sightings listed:

New Zealand, Dunedin: On July 28, an airship apparently came down over the city of Dunedin. A resident in the North Eastern Valley reported that he was awakened by a horrible noise at about two o'clock this morning,' he told a reporter. “The noise was like a ship dragging her anchor up or a windlass of a steamer with dry-gear wheels working. I got up and went round to the front and I saw something floating up past Knox College. It was a great black thing with a searchlight attached.'"
• New Zealand, Fairfax: The afternoon of July 31, 1909, a resident reported seeing an airship while he was at Akatore. At 4:55 p.m., he saw a dark object shoot over the brow of the hills in the east and rapidly climb towards the west. He got a side view of the object which he described as cigar-shaped but bulkier, with a box-like structure underneath in the centre.
• New Zealand, Gore: Early the morning of August 1, a resident of Grosvenor Street in Dunedin reported seeing an airship. At one stage, he saw a bright yellow light shoot up what looked like a mast and stay at the top.
• New Zealand, Greenvale: On July 31, there was a UFO incident during the early morning hours at Greenvale, near Gore, South Island. While feeding the horses, a Greenvale farmhand heard a strange whirring sound, which frightened the animals. On looking out, he saw an airship overhead about 150 feet long. It had head and taillights and was moving so fast that, when he woke up his mates, the lights were faint in the distance.
• New Zealand, Kaka Point: New Zealand was repeatedly visited by UFOs, then known as "airships". On July 24, 1909, some half dozen boys were playing on the beach at Kaka Point saw a huge illuminated object moving about in the air. It appeared as if it was going to alight at Kaka Point. The light from it was distinctly reflected on the roof of Mr. Fitzgerald's cottage. The boys thought it was being attracted by their lantern and left it on the beach. The airship then glided around the rocks at the old pilot station and nearly came in contact with them. It shortly afterwards disappeared. The boys said it was as big as a house.
• New Zealand, Kaitangata: On Sunday night July 25, the mysterious object again made its appearance at the beach and was seen by Mr. George Smith and Mr. Poulter about 8:30. Mr. Smith viewed it through a very powerful night glass. It was apparently over Mr. Aitkenhead's house when he first saw it, but it glided high in the air and sailed north in the direction of Kaitangata, swooping west and east and finally disappearing over the horizon. About 10:30 Mr. Smith was called out by Mr. Poulter to see the airship, which again had made its appearance. This time it headed out to sea and eventually disappeared. As seen through the glass, Mr. Smith said it appeared to be a fair size, dark superstructure with a powerful headlight and two smaller lights at the side.
• New Zealand, Kelso: On July 23, a small group of schoolchildren and some residents reported that an airship came down and bobbed around in the sky over the school for a few minutes.
• New Zealand, Lambourne: On July 27, about 10 a.m., Mr. Allan Mitchell and Mr. Alex Riach, while working at Lambourne near the mouth of the Pomehaka River, saw high in the air a large boat-shaped structure floating in the air.
• New Zealand, Oamaru: On July 19, three residents of Oamaru, reported "a flickering light" moving about in the sky.

And just to prove it wasn't just the British Empire losing it's marbles, New England too was host to a fresh wave of American airships.

With sightings also reported in the Middle East and Vietnam the final few years before the First World War truly were the last great mystery airship wave. So what could be behind these reports? Are they lies, or misidentification of other phenomena? Are they steampunk aliens? The work of crazy inventors? A Government conspiracy? Or war machines sent by foreign powers? Next time we'll look at the evidence... Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part Three.

Further Reading

Mystery Airships In The Sky - Steven A. Arts (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery - Michael Busby (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

The Great Airship Mystery - Daniel Cohen (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part One

On November the 21st 1783, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes ascended to the skies in the worlds first known manned flight using a hot air balloon. Seeing that anniversary the other day sort of reminded me about those anomalous flying machines of the late 19th Century; the "Mystery Airships"

New Hampshire in 1870

Things began to go bump in the sky in the 1870s. Paris was occupied by the Prussians and Alexander Graham Bell was tinkering with a prototype which would one day drive us all insane and in America strange reports were appearing of "airships" in the sky. Over the next few decades the sightings continued, mostly in sporadic bursts, right up until the foo fighters took their place as the UFOs of the 1940s.

Although the major "flap" didn't occur until 1896 there were significant unidentified flying object sightings before that, with the below being the best known, and best documented, one.

On March the 26th 1880, in a small dot on the map named Galisteo Junction, New Mexico, a worker on the railroad and couple of friends were walking after a hard days work when they heard voices in the sky. The voices were in an unknown language, punctuated with laughter, and when they raised their eyes to the sky they were greeted with the sight of a gigantic craft floating above them occupied by a dozen or so men. They would later describe the craft as "fish shaped" because of it's cigar body shape with a tail, all driven by some sort of propeller.

The occupants threw out some objects and pieces of paper which were carefully examined by the men. The writing on the paper made them think of Oriental script and a cup was later described as being unlike any they'd seen before.

Later a strange visitor to town bought the objects and they were never seen again but, according to this site and the April 5th 1880 Santa Fe Weekly New Mexican, there is a postscript:

A party of tourists which included a wealthy young Chinaman stopped in the vicinity and found the stranger engaged in archaeological work. The young man grew excited on seeing the articles dropped from the airship, because among among them was a note in his fiancee's hand, and he explained that CHINESE EXPERIMENTS IN FLYING HAD AT LAST SUCCEEDED, meaning, the airship which crossed the skies of Galisteo Junction was THE FIRST FLIGHT OF a CHINA-TO-AMERICA airline.

China. To America. By Airship. In 1880. Hell, it's one heck of an idea!

But the real excitement started in 1896. Sightings began in California and over the next few months moved gradually eastwards.

In Sacramento in November 1896 some men "Not Addicted to Prevarication", as one newspaper put it, reported seeing a light moving across the sky and heard voices (in a remarkably similar manner to the New Mexico sighting that happened nearly two decades before).

"The most detailed report of the evening came from one R.L. Lowery, a former street railway employee who said he heard a voice from above call, "Throw her up higher; she'll hit the steeple." When he looked up he saw two men seated on a bicycle-like frame, peddling. Above them was a "cigar-shaped body of some length." Lowery said that the thing also had "wheels at the side like the side wheels on Fulton's old steam boat." The Mystery Airship Of 1896

A few days later even greater numbers of people observed the phenomenon in Sacramento and also in San Francisco. After that the sightings, and the claims about them, became increasingly weird and worryingly common. Sightings were reported all along the west coast from Canada down to California and people claimed the airships to be the works of crazy inventors or military machines destined for war against the Spanish (read any right wing blog and insert the word Spanish for Muslim and you'll understand America's feelings towards our European cousins in the late 19th Century). The feverpitch gradually dissipated and all was calm until... 

In February 1897 the airship(s) made another appearance, this time over Hastings, Nebraska and few days later 40 miles away in Invale. Soon they were again coming from all over with one farmer reporting:

"It is cigar shaped, about 200 feet long and 50 feet across at the widest point, gradually narrowing to a point at both ends,"

The Nebraska sightings grew so numerous many people began spending their evenings watching the skies, nearly one hundred years before Mulder and Scully! The sightings moved into other states near and far and that's when things got a little weird... 

The airship was first spotted in Kansas on March 26, and reports came in through April and early May. The most amazing account out of Kansas came from a farmer named Alexander Hamilton, in the little town of Le Roy. According to Hamilton, the airship had dropped down on his farm on the night of April 20. The pilots lassoed a heifer from Hamilton’s herd and carried it off into the air. Mr. Hamilton even produced a notarized statement from twelve prominent men of Le Roy, attesting to his honesty and truthfulness.

The small town of Aurora, Texas, had an even more dramatic incident. On April 19 the Dallas Morning News reported that the airship had crashed into a windmill in Aurora and exploded. The body of the pilot was recovered, and was identified as a native of the planet Mars. Despite this, the remains were buried in the local Masonic cemetery.

Chicago awaited the airship with great anticipation, and was not disappointed. The mysterious lights reached Illinois at the beginning of April, and lasted through the first half of the month. After a handful of reports during the first week of April, a spectacular series of airship sightings swept Illinois and Indiana during the week of April 9-16, with 110 reports over the course of seven nights. It was spotted all over Illinois, frequently in different parts of the state on the same night.

In nearby Wisconsin, a farmer found a letter, apparently from the pilots of the airship, describing its construction in Tennessee. Other letters turned up in Michigan and Texas, obviously practical jokes. The most celebrated “airship message” was found in Astoria, Illinois. It was addressed to Thomas Edison, and was seemingly a coded report to him from the pilot of the mystery airship. The great inventor called it a “pure fake.”

After Illinois and Indiana, the sightings began to taper off. They did not end at once; reports were still being published in June of 1897. But they were scattered and few in number. The great wave of airship mania had broken and receded. The Amazing Airship of 1896

I believe the below picture to be one taken in Chicago at the time of the ships appearance there, although even then it was widely assumed to be a fake.



Things didn't end there.... Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part Two

Further Reading

Mystery Airships In The Sky - Steven A. Arts (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery - Michael Busby (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

The Great Airship Mystery - Daniel Cohen (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

UFO News

Once upon a time there was a boy, let us call him Moonlight, who loved nothing more than a good UFO story. In fact, it wouldn't be going too far if I was to say UFOs were the centre of his interest in the unusual and the paranormal. Then one day he changed and, whilst his interest in zoology allowed his cryptozoological interests to flourish, his declining interest in the X-Files lead his interest in UFOs to reach rock bottom. Eventually he became cynical and rather uncharitable towards those who continued to believe in UFOs. In fact he thought most of them were a little bit bonkers (Louis Theroux's show was the nail in the coffin when he found himself hunting aliens in the desert in the USA with a mind powered gun...)

To be honest I still recoil at stories of UFOs, alien encounters or any other related phenomena as my brain simply refuses to put up with of the craziness. I was listening to a podcast about star children today and found myself wanting to scream out "YOU ARE ALL INSANE" but thought that as I was on a rather crowded train this might not be the best idea...

But I am being somewhat unfair, I'd much rather share a pint with a ufologist than with a fundamentalist Christian (not to say that if a fundamentalist Christian were to offer me a pint I'd say no, I wouldn't... I'd say yes, hint hint hint...)

Anyway... yesterday brought us more news of UFO sightings over the United Kingdom! Woo, I hear you cry! Don't get too excited, this is just old reports finally being released to the public. But they are quite interesting in themselves. Yahoo has a good report on the story, including this about an encounter involving an Italian jet flying over... Lydd, Kent (did you think I'd go four posts in a row without mentioning Kent! As if!)

Documents show the McDonnell Douglas MD80 aircraft was en route from Milan to Heathrow at 22,000ft with 57 people on board when pilot Achille Zaghetti saw the strange object 1,000ft above him.

He recounted: "At once I said, 'look out, look out,' to my co-pilot, who looked out and saw what I had seen.

"As soon as the object crossed us I asked to the ACC (area control centre) operator if he saw something on his screen and he answered 'I see an unknown target 10nm (nautical miles) behind you'."

It goes on:

The files show that Southern TV broadcast a story about a 14-year-old boy who reported seeing a missile flying at low level before climbing through the cloud and disappearing on the same evening.

An unnamed Whitehall official wrote: "It is our intention to treat this sighting like that of any other Unidentified Flying Object and therefore we will not be undertaking any further investigation."

There were a number of other similar incidents recorded in the same year.

On June 17, 1991 four passengers onboard a Dan Air Boeing 737 saw a "wingless projectile" pass beneath the aircraft as it climbed from Gatwick Airport headed for Hamburg.

And on July 15 the pilot of a Britannia Airways 737 reported seeing a "small black lozenge-shaped object" travelling at speed as they approached Gatwick.

Included in the released files are some pictures detailing peoples sightings. One finally explains what is happening with a picture subtly labeled "solar-power geostationary satellite"...



That's no satellite!! That's a Tie-Fighter! No doubt the Emperor's advanced guard. Oh all those fools who labeled themselves Jedi's in all those censuses are going to feel mighty stupid when the purges begin... Ok this is unfair, let's see what the man who submitted this picture in 1986 says...

"I am subjected to mysterious happenings which can only occur with the use of an electromagnetic device," he wrote, enclosing this drawing. "By using high technological equipment I have been deliberately introduced to form of radio communication by which I am able to receive messages.”

Far more sane....

Anyway it is some quite interesting stuff, what are your thoughts on aliens, ufos and the like?