I've investigated unsolved UFO cases for a few years now. Not just flying saucers, but ghosts, demons, prophets and monsters. I can now (humbly) boast of having resolved some of the most famous cases, including Roswell, Nimitz, Ariel School, foo fighters, Kenneth Arnold and dozens of others. I present here a brief summary of my conclusions.
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Section 1: UFOs 1947-present
Section 2: Pre-1947 cases
Section 3: Ancient miracles and prophecies
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1. UFOs 1947-PRESENT
■ Mount Rainier, 6/24/1947
Nine flying silver objects, flipping like a captured fish on the deck of a boat, skimming "like a saucer" on still water.
Pilot Kenneth Arnold's "flying saucers" (the first ever) were the components of a weather balloon with multiple radar reflectors. I've never heard anyone say so (mirages, meteors, planes and pelicans have been suggested), though author Martin Gardner came close in 1953 (he thought it might have been related to Project Skyhook). Arnold described objects resembling "the tail of a box kite." Had the press dubbed them "flying box kites" instead of "saucers," the mystery might have been solved in a day or two.
Fig. 1: Artist's conception of Arnold's 9 objects.
Fig. 2: Balloon array with radar reflectors (Alamagordo, New Mexico, July 1947).
Fig. 4: Arnold's saucers (Menzel 1963), inverted by Yours Truly to illustrate what Arnold saw.
Fig. 5: Rhodes hoax, Phoenix AZ, 1947
Arnold's recollection, by 1948, had been contaminated by an outside influence: the Rhodes hoax (Fig. 5). Hence, the circle in the middle of the winged disk (Fig. 4).
The original batplane drawing, commissioned and published by Arnold in 1950, was inspired by the 1947 Rhodes hoax. But the descriptions of the angular finless tail (befitting a weather balloon's radar target) predate the hoax.
■ Nels Thor sighting, Chicago, 6/25/1947
Saucer "the size of the moon" hovers over Lake Michigan (8:45 a.m. June 25th), then disappears into a cloud. I believe the saucer was, itself, a lenticular cloud.
■ Dishman, Idaho, 7/1947
"Flying washtubs" the size of houses dissolve on a mountainside and disappear. This was probably a flock of starlings engaged in murmuration, like these:
■ Chicago, 7/1947
"Saucer with legs" makes a close approach to a woman sitting on her porch. Having had a similar experience, I'd say this object was an owl.
■ Morristown photo, 7/1947
A weather balloon with radar reflectors. Four objects are visible in the photo, but the witness says there were a total of six objects, with two not fitting into the frame.
■ The Roswell Incident, 1947
In July, 2025, I finally, definitively - and quite unexpectedly - solved the Roswell case, as I will now demonstrate.
■ Roswell weather balloon confusion
In 1979, Maj. Jesse Marcel (Roswell intelligence officer) was asked if the Roswell debris might have come from either a weather balloon or an experimental balloon. "I couldn't see that it could be. For one thing, if it had been a balloon...the parts that we picked up...would not have been porous. It was porous." (Pratt '79)
He repeated this observation two years later:
"It couldn't have been a balloon. It was porous, it couldn't hold air." (Corley 1981)
In those brief statements, we have conclusive evidence that Marcel honestly thought General Ramey was ordering him to say the radar target and mysterious metal fabric (see below), was the actual balloon.
■ Roswell "memory foil"
"There was quite a lot of debris on the site -- pieces of silver colored fabric, perhaps aluminized cloth." - Jason Kellahin, journalist from Albuquerque who visited the crash site in 1947.
I spent much of the last week perusing 1940s military manuals about the care and feeding of weather balloons and radar reflectors. In both cases, there was a far wider variety than I expected to find.
One type is usually associated with the Roswell case - the star-shaped ML307/B radar target. But that's just one of many reflectors which were in use in 1947. Some are simply triangles, others are 6-pointed chandeliers, one is a trail of foil tentacles, another is similar to the ML307 but much larger - like a sheet of three or four of them strung together. Those, and others, probably account for some of the more bizarre saucer sightings during that summer, and in the ensuing years.
But there's an even stranger, lesser known radar reflector. It's called a "Sucal." It was an aluminized fabric made of nylon mixed with neoprene for added strength and elasticity. The balloon was inflated inside the nylon covering, which expanded to become a shining hemisphere on the surface of the balloon with the reflective aluminum coating providing radar returns. Additionally, the Sucal was used as insulation on the exterior of temperature-sensitive instrument packages.
Excerpt from a US Navy report on radar reflectors:
Expanding Balloon Cover
This type of reflector consists of an electrically-conductive expanding hemispherical cover placed over a 100-g meteorological balloon. The cover consists of 1/4-inch silver-plated nylon mesh called Sucal with an elastic hem around the equator. Total weight of the cover is 2 1/4 oz.
- Sam K. Brown, An Investigation of Four Balloon-Carried Radar Reflectors, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, Nov. 19, 1948
The closest pre-1947 visual approximation to the memory foil I could find is this photo from a 1936 issue of Popular Mechanics:
Why does Sucal solve the Roswell case?
Four reasons:
1) It matches the mysterious "fabric" (commonly referred to as "memory foil" in Roswell lore) described by so many of the first- and second-hand witnesses to the Roswell debris (Marcel, Kellahin, the Brazel family and their neighbors). It's silver on one side, dull dark-gray on the other, and can't be easily cut or burned with pocket knives or cigarette lighters.
2) It might be the blob of gray material visible in the famous Ramey/Dubose/Newton photos.
3) It explains why so many witnesses scoffed at its identification as being part of a weather balloon.
4) This, in turn, explains why so many people erroneously believed there was a cover-up.
According to Jesse Marcel, the debris couldn't have been a balloon because it was porous (Pratt interview, 1979). Now, when I read that, I thought he was talking about the foil-backed paper on the ML307/AB radar reflectors, stretched kite-like across the balsa wood beams; that he believed he was being told that the paper was, literally, a balloon - the inflatable part. However, in an interview he gave to a college student in 1981, Marcel said the porous material was different from the foil material. Again, I would have dismissed this as a reference to the "parchment" (Marcel's description) to which the foil was glued had I not randomly come across "Sucal" in an obscure Navy manual from the 1940s. Marcel thought they were telling him the mass of aluminized nylon was the balloon. Probably none of them - not even Weather Officer Irving Newton - were aware of the function of that fabric. The mystery haunted Jesse Marcel for the rest of his life, growing ever more mysterious during the ensuing decades of UFO reports and science fiction media.
I've searched for references to "Sucal" in connection with the Roswell story and I haven't found any, though I found "aluminized fabric" among the specs for Project Mogul in the appendix of the USAF Roswell Report published in 1994.
The solution was there all along.
Why didn't it burn?
Nylon and aluminum are heat resistent.
Excerpt from a 1950 USAF project report on heat resistance:
The practical utilization of metal reflection for protection against radiating fires depends upon the application of the metal on fabrics or other supporting materials. Experiments with bronze paint or with sprayed or pulverized metal on adhesive bases and the electrolytic aluminum coating of rubber showed rates of reflection which are too low. The reason probably is that these methods do not result in a smooth surface, but in a contiguity of numerous small hollow spaces in which the radiation is absorbed. Hence, the use of metal foil is the only method of affording effective protection. Among metals aluminum has the advantage of a high rate of reflection, good rolling property, flexibility and economy; moreover it is resistent to ignition; its melting point is higher than those of any bases (except asbestos) and adhesive agents used in protective coverings. In 1943 we were successful in gluing an aluminum foil of a thickness of 0.009 mm onto textiles as well as onto paper. The material withstands crumpling without diminution of its heat reflecting power below 93 percent. (Beuttner 1950)
■ Roswell "cover story," 1947
The supposed "switch" of an alien craft for a weather balloon was not part of Jesse Marcel's original story. He believed the radar targets (both kinds) really were something unusual, of a top secret nature, and that he was simply being told to say otherwise. Note that his 1979 descriptions of the material are of sticks which "looked like wood" attached to sheets that "looked like parchment." He said the sticks were "rectangular pieces perhaps three-eighths of an inch wide by half an inch thick and varying in length from four or five inches to three or four feet" (Pratt 1979). The pre-Marcel witnesses all describe the material the same way: they all appear to be describing radar reflectors from a weather balloon while, clearly, none of them knows anything about radar reflectors. Most non-meteorologists wouldn't. Many of these witnesses lived their entire lives not knowing what a rawin was.
■ Roswell cover-up
The supposed cover-up (of ETs or the Mogul atomic spy balloon project) was in the minds of researchers like Stanton Friedman (ET cover-up) & Karl Pflock (Mogul cover-up). These two both had pre-existing beliefs in a military cover-up of UFOs (difference is: Karl's books on Roswell are actually informative). But in 1947, there was no follow-up story being persued because there simply wasn't a newsworthy story, and space aliens weren't (yet) a major part of any serious saucer speculation. Radar targets from standard weather balloons were found in other locations that week (Circleville OH, York PA), and were reported as crashed flying saucers. Is anyone looking into what REALLY crashed at Circleville? Probably not. The 80's/90's Roswell "cover-up" was just standard bureaucratic red tape.
Project Mogul positioned microphones in the sound duct (9.5 miles high) with fixed-altitude weather balloons to detect Soviet nuclear tests. They were launched by civilians (New York University students), not the military, and were expected to crash and possibly be discovered by civilians and military personnel without raising suspicion as they were no different than non-reconnaissance weather and research balloons and, though the project was classified, the balloon array contained no classified materials. The flying saucer myth didn't exist when the project began. The balloon that crashed near Roswell was launched on June 4, three weeks before the term "flying saucer" entered the lexicon.
Had the army wanted to cover something up in July of '47, all they needed to do was declare the Brazel debris a hoax, as hoaxes were all over the news at the time and would have subjected would-be whistleblowers to a storm of ridicule loud enough to drown them out forever. The conspiracy theory that a radar target replaced the "real" saucer at Ft. Worth is absurd. There were no radar targets in use by the weather officers at either the Roswell or Ft. Worth bases at the time. Irving Newton, weather officer at Carswell, told the press that he recognized the radar target from seeing them during the war two years prior, when they were still classified. I found newspaper articles from 1946 and '47 (and a 1946 Weather Bureau appropriations hearing in the congressional record) proving the novelty of radar reflectors in June & July of 1947. 30 years later, Maj. Jesse Marcel still didn't know what they were.
Also, Marcel knew nothing of dead aliens in 1978 or '80 or '85 (he died in '86). That's rather significant: the intelligence officer at Roswell never heard one word about dead aliens, even though later Roswell stories (Pappy Henderson, Glenn Dennis, Frankie Rowe, et al) have those aliens conspicuously present on the grounds of the Roswell base. How could the local (assistant) mortician, or the fire chief's 12-year-old daughter, know about aliens at Roswell when the intelligence officer who worked there was left in the dark? This question should have been posed to the Roswell researchers 35 years ago.
The researchers should also have asked themselves why the Army, instead of putting top secret bodies in readily-available body bags, would breach the base's high security to ask the local mortician to personally deliver "child-sized caskets."
Another question: if there was a switch, and a cover-up, and death threats, why is Mac Brazel casually quoted the next day saying he didn't think the debris was a weather balloon? Wouldn't he, under duress and concern for his family's safety, inform reporters that it WAS a weather balloon? If not, wouldn't the quote have been removed by FBI censors, as the Roswellists claim occurred in the case of Lydia Sleppy's teletype transmission?
One more question: if the post-1989 Roswell witnesses were so terrified of being disappeared by The Government that they never went public or confidentially spoke a word to anyone, or kept a journal or hid clues in a painting or a poem or a letter to Dear Abby, or leaked their secrets to Ray Palmer or Geraldo Rivera or the KGB, for 40 years, why did they allow themselves to be filmed and photographed and televised in the 1990s, using their real names, without hiding their faces or distorting their voices?
Were people expected to shut up about it? Yes. Why? Because it's the Army, that's why.
Pratt: "Were you ever told not to talk about this?"
Marcel: "You don't have to be told - you just know. I couldn't jeopardize my part of the service and be criticized for what I said."
Note: in that 1979 interview, HE'S TALKING ABOUT IT. There's no indication from Marcel or his son that they were prevented from discussing it at any time. The penalty for speaking out? Marcel would have jeapordized his job and faced criticism. You hear that? CRITICISM.
All Roswell TV reenactments should include a scene where a Roswell witness is taken aside by an Army officer who warns them, "If you breathe a word of this to anyone, you'll be taken out into the desert and subjected to potential workplace criticism."
What happened to the debris after July 8, 1947?
It was promptly destroyed.
Here's a section from an Army manual on weather balloons, from April 1944:
This demonstrates the absurdity of the notion that the Carswell Army Air Field base kept severely-mangled weather balloons lying around in case they needed a cover story for crashed venusian pie pans.
■ Marcel's Roswell hieroglyphs
These were decorative floral patterns from the holiday gift-wrapping tape used in the construction of the radar reflectors attached to the Mogul balloons. This tape was used in lieu of less fancy tape due to post-war shortages during their construction in 1945. The tape was how the debris was positively identified (by NYU professor Charles Moore) as belonging to Project Mogul. The non-Marcel 1947 witnesses describe white tape decorated with pink-purple floral patterns with green in between. Jesse Marcel says nothing about any markings in 1978.
In April 1979, Jesse Marcel Jr. claimed the designs were "alien hieroglyphs." This revelation came over a year after Jesse's father had spoken to no fewer than 5 people about the Roswell debris, with no mention of hieroglyphs. Even Jesse Jr. neglected to mention them in his initial interview because he thought interviewer Bill Moore wouldn't believe the recollections of an 11-year-old (according to his letter to Moore in April of 1979). Shouldn't he have assumed his father had already mentioned the hieroglyphs? Since he didn't and his father hadn't, it's not a stretch to conclude that the patterns only became "hieroglyphs" in 1979 after Bill Moore found the 1947 news items mentioning purple floral designs and "writing" on the debris. This was the period when Friedman's exotic version of the tale (with Barnett's dead aliens) was beginning to take shape. The hieroglyphs fit perfectly into the story.
Alien hieroglyphs are found in the films This Island Earth (1955), Twelve To The Moon (1960), the Project UFO TV series (episode 3; March 13, 1978 - a month before Marcel Jr.'s letter to Bill Moore) and martian/saucer hoaxes from 1862, 1877, 1895, 1947, 1954, 1957 and 1965.
■ Indestructible Roswell material, 1947
This is a combination of cryptomnesia from 1950s science fiction movies (virtually every saucer film has an indestructible material scene) mixed with recollections of actual events.
According to Jesse Marcel, the material couldn't be crushed, cut, burned or bent.
Why did rancher Mac Brazel try to crush the material?
He was trying to stash it under some brush to prevent the wind from blowing it around. His top concern was the sheep on the ranch and their unimpeded access to the watering hole not far from the crash site.
Why did Brazel try to cut it or break it?
He brought a small piece (of the balsa wood) to show his neighbors, Loretta Proctor and her husband. Brazel described the foil and said he tried to cut or tear it to show them, but couldn't. Why? Because it wasn't foil: it was tough, cloth-like parchment with foil glued to either side.
Why did the Proctors try to burn it?
To determine whether it was wood, which is what it appeared to be (it didn't burn because it was coated with glue). Thirty years later, Jesse Marcel - wittingly or unwittingly - changed the wood sticks to "strange pieces of metal." If he, or the Proctors, had thought it was metal, they wouldn't have been astonished by its inability to burn.
Incidently, the coat of glue was the reason Loretta Proctor and Jesse Marcel Jr. thought the wood looked like plastic or bakelite.
Why were Army officers trying to bend it?
To confirm that it was a "disk."
Roswell Daily Record, July 9:
"[Sheriff] George Wilcox got in touch with the Roswell Army Air Field and Maj. Jesse A. Marcel and a man in plain clothes [Sheridan Cavitt] accompanied him home, where they picked up the rest of the pieces of the 'disk' and went to his home to try to reconstruct it.
"According to Brazel they simply could not reconstruct it at all. They tried to make a kite out of it, but could not do that and could not find any way to put it back together so that it could fit." (Roswell Daily Record, 1947)
ABC News Bulletin, July 8:
"General Roger Ramey described the object as being of a flimsy construction, almost like a box-kite. He said that it was so battered that he was unable to determine whether it had a disc form." (ABC, 1947)
Marcel: "I still don't know what it was... I brought as much of it back to the base as I could ...some ingenious young G.I. thought he'd try to put a few pieces together and see if he could match something. I don't think he ever matched two pieces." (Pratt 1979)
They tried to fit it into the disk shape which they assumed was its natural state, which meant trying to bend the sections into arcs. However, they couldn't create a disk because the material retained its straight, angular shape - which was anything but disklike.
It wasn't the individual beams or the foil itself you couldn't bend or cut, but the beams with a coat of glue (to strengthen them), wrapped in triangles of parchment with foil glued to it and reinforced with tape connecting the adjoining sections. This is the origin of Marcel's "couldn't bend it, couldn't break it...sledgehammer bounced off of it" recollections, embellished by decades of science fiction cryptomnesia. All of this, in turn, inspired the various "strange material" accounts of the '80s and '90s.
■ Roswell (post 1978) science fiction influences
Behind the Flying Saucers (1950): The Aztec crashed disk story - indestructible material, dead aliens and military acquisition of alien technology. Presented as fact. Exposed as a hoax two years later. Provided inspiration for countless crashed saucer tales.
indestructible material.
War of the Worlds (1953): glowing crater (cf. Frank Kaufmann 1991).
This Island Earth (1955): metallic space paper and symbols "like a foreign language." (cf. Jesse Marcel Jr. 1979)
indestructible material.
Twilight Zone: Death Ship (1963): crashed saucer, interior visible through exterior gash (cf. Gerald Anderson, 1990); image later became popular on the internet as a "Roswell crash" photo.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977):
military cover-up.
Superman (1978): gouge.
UFOs Are Real (1979) Roswell segment: alien eyes are "sunken and a little slanted" (cf. Sappho Henderson 1989, Glenn Dennis 1990)
small bodies, large heads, sunken/slanted eyes... (cf. Glenn Dennis 1989).
•Bottom: Glenn Dennis, 1989.
SCIENCE FICTION QUOTES
●Strange material:
BEHIND THE FLYING SAUCERS (1950): "The saucer...did not appear to come from any part of this Earth...
Under research the materials used in the saucer had disclosed two metals unknown to us. This convinced [Dr. Gee] and his co-scientist that the saucers were not likely made by us or rival powers...
Their outer construction was of a light metal much resembling aluminum but so hard no application of heat could break it down...
It had not yet been determined what the two materials found on the ship were. Heat had not been able to melt one down, not even up to 10,000 degrees. It was strong, it was light. A dozen men could stand on it and not dent it; two men could raise up one end of the ship, it was that light.
More than 150 experiments had been tried to break down the gear structure of the ship, with no success... one ship had defied all effort to get inside of it, despite the use of $35,000 worth of diamond drills."
THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951): "This isn't any metal I know; probably some new alloy."
THE MAN FROM PLANET X (1951): “This metal [is] harder than steel, it has tremendous tensile strength, and it weighs only a fifth as much as steel.” “This [glass] must be tremendously resistant.” “I can't think of anything known to man equally so.” “And this you believe - from out of space?” “What else?”
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951): “We've tried everything from a blow torch to a diamond drill...this is the toughest material I ever saw, General. For hardness & strength it's out of this world.” “I can tell you, officially, that's where it came from.”
PHANTOM FROM SPACE (1953): “It...won't cut...” “This stuff is tougher than nylon...it doesn't burn either.” “[It's] apparently indestructible.” “I've seen a lot of interesting alloys, but never anything like this.” “Repels acid like a raincoat repels water.”
TARGET EARTH (1954): "[The robot's made of] surgical steel...but how they make it pliable in the joints is something else." ... "Practically indestructible..." ... "[The bullet] didn't even ricochet. Just flattened down like a wad of chewing gum." ... "I don't know how that [cathode ray] tube was cracked originally, but we'll never do it with a bullet, even at point blank range."
THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955): “This isn't paper – it's some kind of metal.” “These symbols, they're like a foreign language.”
EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956): “It weighs only a few grams...It resists everything we used on it, including the most extreme temperatures.”
THE BRAIN EATERS (1958): "This thing is indestructible... as you can see, not a mark. I've tried everything... diamond bit drills, metal-eating acids, all with no success."
THE COSMIC MAN (1959): “It's some kind of impervious metal, or whatever it's made of.” “Our cutting equipment...didn't make a mark on it.”
12 TO THE MOON (1960): "Looks like hieroglyphics." "It's not Egyptian, nor African." "Looks like oriental picture writing."
THE CREEPING TERROR (1964): "The super-tough alloys of the spacecraft were not even dented by Martin's hammering."
PROJECT UFO (1978): "There, on the polished side, there's hieroglyphs; they're either an alien language or a map of the universe - either way, unquestionably from another world."
●Government coverup:
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959): "I saw a flying saucer...soon as we landed, big Army brass grabbed us and made us swear to secrecy about the whole thing... I saw a flying object that couldn't possibly be from this planet, but I can't say a word. I'm muzzled by Army brass. I can't even admit I saw the thing." ... "It was covered up by the higher echelon."
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977): "The Army is getting us out of here cause they don't want any witnesses."
For more details about the Roswell incident, I have a post about it here.
■ Salem photo, 1952
Morning sun, just out of frame, reflecting on a window. Same thing appeared on my window about a year ago.
■ New York City, August 1952
Amateur photographer capturing the full moon discovers "objects" in the developed film. It's obviously lens flare, yet, in Project Blue Book, these photos remain "unexplained":
■ Rhodesia photo, 1953
Lenticular cloud.
■ Sicily photo, 1954
Lenticular clouds.
Top: Sicily, 1954
Bottom: California, 2025
■ Holloman photo, 1957
Lenticular cloud.
■ Near Edwards AFB, California, 1957
The supposed saucer seemingly trailing this B-57 test flight is probably Lake Buena Vista in Kern County, California, south of Bakersfield.
■ Trindade Island photos, 1958
Lenticular cloud.
■ Betty & Barney Hill UFO, 1961
The object was a Sikorsky H-5 helicopter making a 2am delivery at a resort. I reckon the helicopter was traveling from south to north, went a mile or so too far north (perhaps to a geographic marker on their map), then course-corrected and followed the highway southward to its destination. The Hills, driving that same highway in that same direction, believed that they were personally being followed. Here's what I think happened next: They stopped, Barney observed the object through binoculars, then they panicked and drove away. But did they continue driving south, toward the object? Maybe not. Maybe they turned around, drove a short distance north and took a right turn at Indian Head, driving the back road (the area was familiar to Barney), taking them slowly east, then south, then west before returning to a southward trajectory on the highway, with smooth pavement and freeway velocity. I believe this detour accounts for their report of missing time. Incidently, the film The Flight That Disappeared was released earlier that week. It features an abduction (by future spirits and/or angels), after which the characters are puzzled by missing time and soon realize that they shared the same abduction dream, concluding that the dream had been real. If Betty hadn't seen the film, there's a good chance her supervisor at work saw it or read about it - that's who convinced Betty that her strange dreams were a repressed memory from her UFO encounter.
Fig. 1: Barney Hill's UFO sketch.
Fig. 2: Sikorsky H-5.
Fig. 3: Sikorsky H-5 with pulley.
Note the visibility of the crew through the windows (Fig. 2 & 3) and the retractable pulley system on the upper-front of the vehicle (Fig. 3). These match characteristics found in Barney Hill's drawing (Fig. 1).
In the dark, through binoculars, lit mostly from inside, the helicopter's visibility would be limited to what the internal and external lights revealed. To Betty & Barney, this was a flying saucer.
■ Hill abduction, 1961
Cryptomnesia from various sources. Multiple depictions of hairless grays predate the "Bellero Shield" Outer Limits episode, which is the commonly accepted inspiration for Betty's captors. Also, while Invaders From Mars (1953) was undoubtedly an influence on the abduction account, I've been able to identify several other potential sources of medical examination cryptomnesia from early science fiction. These include Killers From Space (1954) and some Twilight Zone TV episodes from 1962 ("Hocus Pocus & Frisbee" and "To Serve Man") and quite a few others. Killers From Space includes a star map and extraterrestrials who are basically humans in jumpsuits with large eyes, possibly inspiring some of Betty's recollections.
■ Evolution of the Grays
Betty and Barney Hill are often credited with being the first to encounter the "gray" aliens. This isn't necessarily the case. The Grays were the stuff of dreams and legends for centuries.
THE NIGHTMARE (1781)
THE NIGHTMARE (1791)
"INHABITANT OF THE PLANET MARS" (1864)
BROWNIES AND BOGLES (1888)
MAN OF THE YEAR MILLION (1893)
"...[the Selenite] seemed a trivial being, a mere ant, scarcely five feet high...
...wearing garments of some leathery substance...
...he carried himself upon short legs that...seemed to our terrestrial eyes inordinately flimsy...
...There was no nose, and the thing had dull bulging eyes at the side... There were no ears.... I have tried to draw one of these heads, but I cannot. There was a mouth, downwardly curved, like a human mouth..."
- H.G. Wells, First Men in the Moon, 1901.
ALEISTER CROWLEY'S CONTACT, "LAM" (1917)
FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1919)
NOSFERATU (1922)
AMAZING STORIES (1930)
THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)
THE MAN FROM PLANET X (1951)
GALAXY (1952)
DAN DARE (1952)
INVADERS FROM MARS (1953)
AMAZING STORIES, 1954
EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956)
FANTASTIC UNIVERSE (Apr. 1957)
FANTASTIC UNIVERSE (Jun. 1957)
FANTASTIC UNIVERSE (Aug. 1957)
INVASION OF THE SAUCERMEN (1957)
TWILIGHT ZONE: TO SERVE MAN (1962)
TWILIGHT ZONE: HOCUS POCUS & FRISBY (1962)
OUTER LIMITS: THE BOLERO SHIELD (1964)
Note: all previous examples predate the emergence of the Grays in the Hills' hypnotherapy sessions.
OUTER LIMITS: THE CHAMELEON (1964)
FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964)
LOST IN SPACE: INVADERS FROM THE 5TH DIMENSION (1965)
STAR TREK: THE MENAGERIE (1966)
STAR TREK: THE CORBOMITE MANEUVER (1966)
Note: all of the previous examples predate John Fuller's 1966 book The Interrupted Journey, which introduced the Hill abduction to the world.
STAR WARS (1977)
STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977)
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)
WITHOUT WARNING (1980)
COMMUNION (1989)
THE ABYSS (1989)
ROSWELL (1994)
THE X FILES (1994)
■ Monument Valley film, 1963
This was filmed inside a moving vehicle. The object is a window reflection of a headlight from traffic driving in the opposite direction.
■ Paul Villa's saucer, 8/16/1963
1930s Ford hubcap.
■ Rodeffer film, Silver Springs MD, 1964
A hummingbird.
■ Dexter MI, March 1966
Stars, planets, meteors and probably airplanes as well. The star Arturus was the "red light" hovering over the Michigan swamps. Farmer Frank Manor noticed the object after spotting a red meteor in the northern sky. When the meteor vanished, Mr. Manor saw the red glow of Arturus and believed it was the same object he had just observed streaking downward. He wasn't alone.
J. Allen Hyneck:
The entire region was gripped with near-hysteria. One night at midnight I found myself in a police car racing toward a reported sighting. We had radio contact with other squad cars in the area. "I see it" from one car, "there it is" from another, "it's east of the river near Dexter" from a third. Occasionally even I thought I glimpsed "it."
Finally several squad cars met at an intersection. Men spilled out and pointed excitedly at the sky. "See--there it is! It's moving!"
But it wasn't moving. "It" was the star Arcturus, undeniably identified by its position in relation to the handle of the Big Dipper. A sobering demonstration for me.
- The Hyneck Report, 1977
Arcturus
■ Hillsdale County photo, 1966
Lens flare.
■ Brazil IN, 1966
Lenticular cloud.
■ Las Cruces saucer photo, 1967
A 1940s Chevy hubcap.
■ Salt Lake City photos, 1972
Lenticular cloud.
Bottom: California, 2025
■ Pascagoula abduction, 1973
Cryptomnesia based on the films Invaders From Mars, War of the Worlds and This Island Earth. Charles Hickson was probably genuinely spooked by the flurry of news reports of flying saucers in the wake of Georgia governor Jimmy Carter's public statement (September 1973) about having seen a UFO in 1969.
While fishing with his friend Calvin Parker, Hickson passed out, experienced sleep paralysis and had a bad dream. Parker, who had also passed out, believed Hickson's story and deduced that he, too, must have been abducted. This also happened to Barney Hill (1961) and the Allagash abductees (1976).
•Top: Pascagoula alien
•Center: Invaders From Mars (1953)
•Bottom: War of the Worlds (1953)
Bottom: This Island Earth (1955)
■ John Lennon UFO, 8/23/1974
A helicopter. I found an article from a few weeks prior (early August 1974), addressing concerns about the large volume of helicopter traffic in New York City due to sky commuters, tourism, traffic reports and police activity. Lennon said he thought his object looked like a helicopter, but judged it a UFO due to his inability to hear it.
•Top: Lennon pointing out the site.
•Center: Lennon sketch.
•Bottom: helicopter with New York City in the background. Notice the red and white lights matching Mr. Lennon's drawing.
■ Medford MN, 11/2/1975
Saucer seen landing on a high school football field. The object is a flock of horned larks (they love the short grass found on athletic fields). The "landing marks" are just spots of dead grass.
UFO and landing site.
■ Allagash UFO, 1976
Four men fishing on a lake late at night. A light appears in the sky. One of the men points his flashlight at the sky light, which casts a beam directly onto the boat. The men panic and race to the shore. Two years later, one of them recalls them all being abducted (see below).
What was the light in the sky?
The object was a helicopter, probably checking out the bonfire the witnesses had set on the beach as their personal beacon while they were fishing on the lake. The helicopter shined a light on their boat to see if they were okay.
A similar scene:
■ Allagash abduction, 1976
Like the 1960s Hill case, the Allagash abduction is based on witness Jack Weiner's dreams and revelations following a temporal lobe epileptic seizure. Similar to the cases of Barney Hill (1964) & Calvin Parker (Pascagoula 1973), Weiner's friends recounted, under hypnosis, the story Weiner had told to them. This is another case of cryptomnesia, for which the aliens may have been inspired by the Ovian creatures in the Battlestar Galactica (1978) series premier.
Top: Allagash alien.
Bottom: Battlestar Galactica (1978)
Top: Allagash abduction
Center: Starship Invasions (1977)
Bottom: Battlestar Galactica (1978)
■ Lake Champlain monster photo, 1977
What appears to be the head, neck and hump of a prehistoric lake monster are actually the wings of a blue heron, standing in shallow water, its head submerged to catch a fish. What looks like a patch of sunlight on the monster's neck is really just the lighter plumage on the wing of the heron.
•Top: Susan Mansi's monster photo
•Center and bottom: blue herons
■ Robert Taylor encounter 1979
Scottish farmer suffered a temporal lobe epileptic seizure. I recently noticed that this was solved by another researcher, but I include it in this list to share how I arrived at the same conclusion.
Taylor mentioned a light, a strange smell, loss of his senses, and being pulled against his will. Mysterious tracks were found near the scene and Mr. Taylor's trousers had clearly been torn in the front, as though he had been lifted by his pant legs and carried by a pair of strong individuals.
The light, smell & loss of senses are consistent with a temporal lobe epileptic seizure.
While having this experience, his mind interpreted the event as an extraterrestrial encounter, complete with space monsters.
The tears in his pants - and the feeling of being dragged against his will - were caused by his having stumbled into a barbed wire fence while under the throes of the seizure.
The tracks were old tractor and livestock tracks in dried mud, adjacent to spots with no tracks because they were not muddy when the muddy tracks were made.
■ Rendelsham "landed craft" 1980
Center: Starman (1984)
Bottom: Rendelsham monument, 2014
■ Cash-Landrum UFO, 12/30/1980
Landing lights on airport traffic southwest of Houston International, like these:
■ Cash-Landrum Encounter, 12/30/1980
Cryptomnesia based on the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (re-released 11/1980) and a 1977 episode of the In Search Of... television series. The events (radiation burns, Army helicopters, military secrecy, the fear of someone emerging from a bright light to abduct the boy) are similar to the Spielberg film. The object (in the middle of a country road, diamond shaped, emitting flames) seems to be a composite of three 1975 UFO reports featured on the In Search Of... episode, each illustrated by a sketch artist.
Note: the following quotes are paraphrases culled from multiple Betty Cash & Vicki Landrum interviews.
1. "There was a light above our car."
2. "It caused radiation burns."
3. "I said to Colby, don't be afraid. If someone comes out of the light, it'll be Jesus."
4. "The craft was shaped like an upright diamond with the sharp edges cut off."
5. "The military arrived."
6. "We counted 28 helicopters."
7. "The government is covering it up."
1977 In Search of... episode featuring recent (1975) UFOs:
1. Big Chimney WV (diamond-shaped)
2. Mellon WI (blocking a country road)
3. Medford MI (with flames shooting out)
The episode includes discussion of radiation & burns left by saucers.
■ Vancouver Island photo, 10/8/1981
Might be a model saucer like the ones used in the film Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959).
Top & center: Vancouver Island photo.
Bottom: Plan 9 prop, held by comedian Dana Gould (for scale).
■ Pozzouli film (Hudson Valley), 7/24/1984
It's well-established that some of the Hudson Valley UFOs were hoaxers in ultralight planes, but what about the "rotating" object filmed by Bob Pozzouli on July 24, 1984? That is a flock of Canadian geese reflecting city lights. The flapping of their wings could be detected when I zoomed in on the video and watched in slow motion. Pozzouli, supposing the lights to be attached to one solid object, said he could see that the space between the lights blotted out the stars. This is because there may be more geese in the film than just the visible ones; dozens more could be flying at a slightly higher altitude, further from the light pollution.
■ Whitley Strieber alien, 1985
Cryptomnesia inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
■ Dan Aykroyd UFOs, c. 1986-2005
1. Snow geese
2. Helicopter checking power lines
3. Chinese space rocket
4. Balloon cluster (from an ad, a festival or a protest)
Note: the rocket was solved at the time, but Aykroyd seems to believe "Chinese rocket" refers to some sort of holiday fireworks rather than a national space program.
■ NASA communication, 1989
In the recording, astronaut John Blaha appears to casually mention an "alien spacecraft." What he actually said was "ailing spacecraft," a common reference to a malfunctioning satellite.
■ Brussels (Alfarano video), 1990
When I cropped, slowed and enhanced the video, a blinking light became visible. The object is an airplane.
Fig. 1: Video screenshot
At one moment, midway through the video, the shaky but determined videographer manages to capture a steady, in-focus shot, during which a faint blinking light appears between the three bright lights. This is not visible to the naked eye (Fig. 1), but can be easily detected with photo/video enhancement. (Fig. 2).
This video, and the famous Petit-Rechain hoax photos, are the sole evidence for what is known as the Belgian UFO flap of 1990. The other evidence consists of eyewitness reports of flying triangles. It's safe to conclude they were seeing planes, like the one in Alfarano's video, and combinations of lights from stars and airport traffic, like the New Jersey Drone Scare of 2024.
■ Krasnodar USSR video, 4/3/1990
A spider web attached to a telephone pole.
■ Space Shuttle Atlantis 4/1991
Lens flare.
■ Ariel School UFO, 9/16/1994
Saucers landed, aliens walked around. Sixty-two children witnessed it.
Some say they imagined the whole thing. The children, now in their 40s, have always insisted that they saw something bizarre.
I believe them.
Both the saucers and aliens were the work of strange looking, intelligent beings. They were not human.
They were marabou storks.
Bottom: Marabou stork in a tree
Note how the overlapping plumage (bottom) matches the crude drawing (top).
Judging from the drawings - dominated by indistinct black shapes - most of the children undoubtedly saw the storks from behind. From their vantage point several yards away, the black plumage stood out while the rest of the creature was largly camouflaged as the lighter colors and thin appendages blended in with the grass and trees in the scene. Pareidolia manifested the spooky alien face on the contours of the birds' plumage.
The children's widely-varying eye descriptions can all be explained this way.
Depending on the witness, the eyes were black, white, above the forehead, below the cheeks, with round pupils, slanted pupils, cat pupils and, in at least one description, compound eyes, all of which match the patterns of overlapping feathers on the birds' wings. In some cases, pareidolia was aided by stark contrasts between the black and white plumage.
Here are a few examples:
SLANTED, "EVIL" EYES
BLACK, COMPOUND EYES
WHITE EYES
Returning to the polka-dot alien, comparison with another image might help to explain the creature's dangling limbs as it sits on a saucer with portholes. The limbs are the neck of the bird. The saucer is the bird's body. The portholes are white feathers in the black wings, which other kids perceived as eyes.
■ Salida CO, 8/27/1995
Object is a spiderweb anchored to the roof of a house.
■ Miami (Adri Eine) video, 10/20/1995
Saucer is a window reflection of the purple/white light in the background. Deliberate hoax? Inconclusive.
■ Varginha devil, Brazil, 1/1996
Three girls encounter a small, brown, red-eyed devil and run away.
The creature was a stygian owl. It fits the description, has "horns," and its eyes can turn blood red in daylight. The rest of the story (a Roswellian government cover-up) was invented months later by Brazilian ufologists.
Top: Varginha devil.
Bottom: Stygian owl.
■ Mexican Air Force video, 3/5/2004
Bottom: Flare stack from an oil refinery.
That one was solved years ago. But what about the first two lights in the video? I think it's a pair of squid fishing boats.
Bottom: Squid fishing boats.
■ Guadelajara video, 6/2004
Snow geese.
Top: Lo-res Guadelajara UFO orb flotilla.
Bottom: Hi-res flock of snow geese.
■ USS Nimitz, 11/2004
1: Ice crystals (Princeton radar)
2: Blue whale (submerged object)
3: Albatross ("Flying Tic Tac")
4: More ice crystals (60-mile jump)
5: Drug plane ("Flir1" video)
I figured out the blue whale and the albatross (in 2022). And I might be the first to speculate that Underwood's flir video shows a drug plane, but Alex Dietrich said she suspected drug planes were what she and her fellow pilots were originally being sent to investigate. So maybe someone else has considered that possibility vis-Ã -vis the Underwood video.
Here's my report:
The Nimitz incident of November 2004 refers to a number of alleged UFO encounters off the California/Mexico coast, southwest of San Diego & Tijuana. These were, in fact, several unrelated incidents:
1) Strange radar readings on USS Princeton
2) A large submerged object
3) A small white flying "Tic Tac"
4) A flying object captured on infrared video
The encounters were revealed to the public in the December 2017 New York Times article, "Glowing Auras and Black Money: The Pentagon's Mysterious UFO Program" by Leslie Kean & Sidney Blumenthal, followed by a televised interview with two US Navy pilots (David Fravor and Alex Dietrich) on 60 Minutes in 2021.
Artist's rendering of the Nimitz objects described by Navy pilots David Fravor, Alex Dietrich & Jim Slaight.
1. The submerged object was a blue whale.
2. The "Tic Tac" was an albatross with dark wings and a large white body.
3. The "ping pong" maneuvers of the "Tic Tac" - described by Fravor - are a flying technique called dynamic soaring. The albatross glides on varying wind gradients above the ocean, dipping between wave crests and launching toward a favored trajectory, all without flapping their enormous wings, allowing them to accelerate with no visible means of propulsion.
4. The "FLIR1" object is a distant airplane. The sudden acceleration at the end of the video is an illusion: the camera merely stops tracking the object.
Top: FLIR1 video, 2004. There is no reason to believe FLIR1 shows anything exotic, outside of the high probability that it is one of many "drug planes" common to the skies west of Tijuana and San Diego.
Bottom: Chilean Navy video, 2014. This "UFO" was positively identified as Iberia Airlines flight 6830 (Santiago to Madrid) in 2017.
5. The seemingly hypersonic "objects" which initiated the Nimitz incident were radar anomalies on the USS Princeton, probably caused by ice crystals. The radar was newly installed and needed calibration, after which the hypersonic "objects" disappeared, never to return.
When reflecting sunlight (or any light), ice crystals can create visible light pillars, like these:
NIMITZ WITNESSES
Radar
According to Captain Red Smith of the USS Princeton, the radar anomalies were ice crystals. This was the Navy's official conclusion.
“The [carrier strike] group was going to be deploying in a few months and there was a bunch of new systems, like the Spy-1 Bravo radar. It was really about getting all the kinks out.” - Petty Officer Gary Voorhis, USS Princeton
“People are acting like the AEGIS [radar system] is infallible. There’s a reason procedures exist to correct ghost tracks; the AEGIS makes mistakes.” - Karson Kammerzell, Chief Technology Officer, USS Princeton
“I was convinced it was some sort of glitch in the [radar] system...I thought it was some sort of a system error or something civilian-related like balloons." - initial reaction of Kevin Day, Operations Specialist Senior Chief, USS Princeton
Day, a longtime fan of the Coast to Coast AM radio show, convinced himself that the radar anomalies were something other than ice crystals - something not of this Earth.
Albatross
Object had "a fuzzy or wavy looking border" - Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight
"It was just like a ping pong ball." - Cmdr. David Fravor
“It behaved in a way that we were surprised, unnerved. It almost didn’t accelerate. It jumped from spot to spot and tumbled around in a way that was unpredictable” - Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich
"It goes from a hover to a pretty aggressive climb. You can’t just start a climb...This thing did it like it was no big deal.” - Fravor
Five minutes or a few seconds?
"Four of us [were] watching this thing for roughly five minutes." - Fravor
"I only had visual of Tic Tac for 8-10 sec from high cover" ... "If I had a full 5 min with it I would have been able to give you a make, model and serial number!" - Dietrich
Hypersonic Tic Tac?
Fravor claims his Tic Tac was seen on radar travelling 60 miles in an instant. Dietrich provides a logical explanation: "Either it was supersonic and able to get there super-fast or it dropped off and something else popped up that had the same radar signature."
Aliens?
“I am in no way implying that it was extraterrestrial or alien technology or anything like that.” - Dietrich
"It's very possible [the military] could have been testing something on us, and that's why I lean towards it being something of ours [more] than I do it being extraterrestrial, is because I've seen them testing; I've participated in testing." - Petty Officer Patrick Hughes, USS Nimitz
[Chad] Underwood has mostly wanted to avoid having his name “attached to the ‘little green men’ crazies that are out there.” - The Intelligencer, 12/19/2019
"It was not from this world." - Fravor
Recall
“I would like to think everything is accurate as it was when the event happened; but I know I've gotten some details wrong here and there...There are certain parts of the story that I just didn't remember. The only way I know the details is because I've spoken with other people to kinda fill in the blanks to what I know.” - Patrick Hughes
"I want to be careful because we know the science of the mind, the science of the memory, we shouldn’t rely too much on my technical account at this point." - Dietrich
The alleged cover-up
“There are a lot of rumors out there that it was classified and the ship got locked down. No, it wasn’t. Men in suits did not show up. No one told us not to talk about it" ... "I did not have to be quiet; the superiors knew, everyone on the ship knew...[the story] just kinda went away and I really didn't talk about it for years.” – Fravor
■ Lacatski Skinwalker apparition, 2007
Soon after first arriving at Skinwalker Ranch, James Lacatski was engaged in conversation with financier Robert Bigelow when something caught his eye. Behind Bigelow, in the adjoining kitchen, was an object which suddenly appeared, hovered for several seconds, then vanished. Lacatski quietly observed this without pausing the conversation to investigate or alert Bigelow.
According to Lacatski, the object resembled Michael Oldfield's Tubular Bells album cover.
Having seen this apparition in my own home, I believe Lacatski's object was a spiderweb.
A cobweb, having accumulated mass on the ceiling, is knocked loose, tumbling slowly into the sunlight pouring through the window. It hangs by a solitary thread before giving way and continuing its journey to the floor or out the door. Sometimes, there is an audience.
•Top: kitchen at Skinwalker Ranch.
•Center: Tubular Bells (1973).
•Bottom: a spiderweb - outdoors and stationary, but one floating indoors would look like this.
■ Houston video, 2015
Strange lights in the sky are actually a deflating Mylar balloon in the shape of the letter "c," reflecting street lights and traffic signals.
■ NASA ISS photos, 2016
A giant orb leaves the earth, followed by the beam of a mysterious death ray.
This is a lens flare.The white dot in the first picture & the light beam in the second picture have the same source: a bright sunlight reflection on the space station itself, which can be easily located: it's that flash of light directly beneath the light beam in the second photo. This video ranked #10 on Mojo Magazine's list of Top Ten UFOs Caught On Tape.
■ Quebec video, 2018
Flaming UFO is a partially deflated Mylar balloon reflecting sunlight. Its original shape is that of the Arabic numeral "4."
■ Thorman's angel, 2018
A moth.
Top: Thorman's angel
Center: Moth
Bottom: Moth on security camera
■ Honolulu video 2019
■ Popular internet "Roswell crashed saucer" photo
Still image from "Death Ship," a 1963 Twilight Zone episode.
Fig. 1: Roswell fakes
Fig. 2: The Twilight Zone (1963)
2. PRE-1947 CASES
■ Tarquinia UFO, Italy, 100 BCE
"Flaming shield" seen at sunset, traveling from west to east. This was a lenticular cloud.
■ Redcap Elves
The redpoll finch. Redpolls may appear as small humanoids with a white beard, pointy ears and a red hat, especially during the centuries preceding the invention of eyeglasses and contact lenses.
■ Brownies, elves & hobgoblins (hopping goblins)
Small birds and rodents that hopped around medieval windows and doorways, hunting breadcrumbs and insects.
■ Greenland mermaids
Detailed descriptions of mermaids & mermen are found in The King's Mirror, an anonymous 13th century Norse manuscript.
"It is reported that the waters about Greenland are infested with monsters, though I do not believe that they have been seen very frequently. Still, people have stories to tell about them, so men must have seen or caught sight of them. It is reported that the monster called merman [hafstrambr] is found in the seas of Greenland. This monster is tall and of great size and rises straight out of the water. It appears to have shoulders, neck and head, eyes and mouth, and nose and chin like those of a human being; but above the eyes and the eyebrows it looks more like a man with a peaked helmet on his head. It has shoulders like a man's but no hands. Its body apparently grows narrower from the shoulders down, so that the lower down it has been observed, the more slender it has seemed to be. But no one has ever seen how the lower end is shaped, whether it terminates in a fin like a fish or is pointed like a pole. The form of this prodigy has, therefore, looked much like an icicle. No one has ever observed it closely enough to determine whether its body has scales like a fish or skin like a man...
"Another prodigy called mermaid [margygr] has also been seen there. This appears to have the form of a woman from the waist upward, for it has large nipples on its breast like a woman, long hands and heavy hair, and its neck and head are formed in every respect like those of a human being. The monster is said to have large hands and its fingers are not parted but bound together by a web like that which joins the toes of water fowls. Below the waist line it has the shape of a fish with scales and tail and fins... The monster is described as having a large and terrifying face, a long sloping forehead and wide brows, a large mouth and wrinkled cheeks..."
One famous study concluded that these were descriptions of mirages. I'd like to challenge that conclusion. My proposal: the mermen were beluga whales and the mermaids were sunbathing harp seals and whales engaged in "kelping," an activity which can make them appear to wear wigs and hats made of seaweed.
Mermaids
Harp seals, which, when at rest, can appear to be nursing a small child. Also, "kelping" whales, wearing wigs of seaweed, provide the "heavy hair" described by Viking sailors in The King's Mirror, a 12th century Danish manuscript.
Harp seals at rest - the "breasts & scales" illusion:
The "mermaid holding a child to her breast" illusion:
Whales kelping - the "long-haired mermaid" illusion:
Mermen
These were beluga whales. Concavities in their chins suggest a ghostly humanoid face while their head and mouth suggest a peaked helmet. Their bodies fit the description in The King's Mirror: shoulders with no arms, and a tapered torso, resembling an icicle, rising vertically from the water - beluga's do this (it's called skyhopping).
Illustrations from a 15th-century French manuscripts:
The beluga: tall, rising straight out of the water in an activity known as "skyhopping":
The humanoid face (the beluga's chin) beneath a "peaked helmet" (the beluga's mouth & forehead) is the result of pareidolia not unlike the famous "face on Mars" or the "toast Madonna":
Once you see the ghostly "face," it's hard to unsee it.
In summary:
Mermen are beluga whales
•Peaked helmet: Beluga forehead & beak
•Humanoid face: Beluga chin (pareidolia)
•Tapered torso: Beluga body
•Shaped like an icicle: Beluga body
•Shoulders but no arms: Beluga flippers
•Rising from the water: Beluga skyhopping
Mermaids are harp seals & kelping whales
•Breasts: Seal flippers at rest
•Nipples: Harp seal spots
•Webbed hands: Seal flippers
•Scales: Seal fur patterns
•Long, "heavy" hair: Whales kelping
■ Nuremberg 1561
Sun dogs.
■ Basel, Switzerland, July-August 1566
■ Korea, September 1609
"Halo" in the sky is undoubtedly a sun dog.
■ Stralsund, Germany 1665
Ship was a mirage.
Center and bottom: Fata morgana on the Baltic Sea, as seen from Germany.
■ Hans Egede's water-spouting sea serpent, 1734
Great white shark. As it breaches to catch surface prey, it closes its jaws, forcing water out of its mouth.
Fig. 1: Drawings of sea serpents based on eyewitness accounts.
Fig. 2: Great white sharks breaching to catch small surface prey, bringing a mouthful of water with them. As they bite down, the water shoots out of their mouths.
■ Hopeh UFO photo, 1942
The object is a street light. And the "pointing" person on the street (lower right) is just someone carrying something on their back, like the guy on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV.
Top: Hopeh, China, 1942. Low resolution.
Bottom: Stockholm, Sweden, 1946. High resolution.
■ Foo Fighters, 1940s
WWII pilots reported strange lights in the sky.
Many of these lights came from weather balloons with light bulbs and lanterns attached. The following diagrams are from a U.S. Army manual on weather balloons, dated April 24, 1944.
3. ANCIENT MIRACLES AND PROPHECIES
■ Shiloh in the 49th chapter of Genesis
David, king of Israel, from the tribe of Judah.
■ Temple in the 2nd chapter of Isaiah
Not a third temple, as is popularly believed. It's the second temple. There is no mention of a third temple in the Hebrew Bible.
■ Ezekiel's wheel
Ezekiel describes a vision, not a physical apparition. If the chariot and seraphim of Yahweh appeared in broad daylight over the city of Babylon c. 590 BCE, it would have been witnessed by hundreds of exultant Jews and thousands of terrified pagans.
■ "Satan" in the 3rd chapter of Zechariah
Tattenai, a.k.a. Sissenes, governor of Syria, 520 BCE. He's the accuser (the satan) bringing charges against High Priest Joshua in the court of Darius, king of Persia. Tattanai hopes to prevent the completion of the second temple in Jerusalem. He is unsuccessful. Four years later, the temple is complete.
■ "Angel of the Lord" in Zechariah
The prophet Haggai, essentially Joshua's defense attorney in the aforementioned legal battle.
■ "Elijah" in the 4th chapter of Malachi
Either Ezra the priest or High Priest Eliashib, 445 BCE.
■ "The Refiner" in the 3rd chapter of Malachi
Nehemiah, governor of Judea, 444 BCE.
■ "Weeks of years" in the 9th chapter of Daniel
•49 years from 587 to 538 BCE
From Judea's destruction to the reign of Cyrus.
•434 years from 605 to 171
From the first exile to the death of Onias
•7 years from 171 to 164
The Antiocene covenant w/Hellenic priests
•3.5 years from 167 to 164
Image of Zeus in Jerusalem temple
Note: the years aren't strictly consecutive; there is some overlap between the first two calculations. Why? Because the first refers to the question at hand in Daniel 9 - the duration of the captivity, specifically, in Babylon. The angel then goes on to expand the captivity beyond those 49 years. He does so by saying it started not with Jerusalem's destruction (586 BCE), but with the captives taken during the first year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign (605 BCE). The remainder of his calculations proceed from there, leading to the Maccabean war (171-164 BCE).
■ "Son of man" in the 7th chapter of Daniel:
The army of the Maccabees, 166 BCE. They gathered at Mizpah to pray to God (the Ancient of Days) for assistance before forming battalions. They're also the stone from heaven that destroys the statue in Nebuchadnezzar's dream (chapter two).
Armies are seen in the clouds prior to the Maccabean war.
■ Punishment of God's enemies in Zechariah
A reference to the deaths of King Antiochus IV (who rotted while alive in 163 BCE) and High Priest Alcimus (who suffered a stroke and subsequently died in 159 BCE).
Antiochus falls from his chariot.
■ Apparitions in Judea and Galilee, 30s C.E.
Pareidolia and cryptomnesia. People saw who they wanted to see, even when the person they wanted to see appeared "in another form." An example is given in the synoptic gospels when a certain carpenter's son is widely mistaken for a certain baptist who had been executed by king Herod Antipas, who later hears the popular rumor.
Note: both of these individuals were believed to be the return or resurrection of prophets whose careers terminated many centuries before either of them were born.
■ Apparitions in Syria, 30s CE
Temporal lobe epileptic seizure. The Cilician preacher's blindness resulted from his eyes being unable to close during the seizure, causing them to dry while accumulating a layer of dust, which fell away as "scales" when he was healed by Ananias the Christian.
■ The "man of sin" in 2 Thessalonians (50 CE)
The man of sin is the author's erroneous anticipation of Daniel's "little horn," which was King Antiochus IV - who lived and died 200 years earlier.
■ Lamb-horned beast in the book of Revelation
The beast is Emperor Vespasian. The horns represent his sons and imperial successors, Titus and Domitian.
Vespasian (robed) followed by Titus (armored, with Berenice) on one side and Domitian (armored, unescorted) on the other.
■ Wonders performed by the beast
The beast's wonders were miraculous healings performed by Vespasian in Alexandria in 69 CE, where he healed a blind man and a man with a withered hand, both claiming to have been sent to Vespasian by dreams of the god Serapis.
■ Apollyon in the book of Revelation
Top: Apollyon and his locust army
Bottom: General Titus (as emperor)
■ Apollyon's locusts
Roman legions, 70 CE.
■ The locusts' "hair like women"
German conscripts in the Roman army.
■ The locusts' "teeth like lions"
The animal skins on the helmets of Roman standard-bearers, complete with the upper jaws of lions, bears and wolves.
■ The locusts' "scorpion tails"
Roman siege weapon known as "scorpio."
■ The locusts' charge to "torment men for 5 months"
The duration of the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
■ Eighth beast
Emperor Domitian.
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Copyright 2025
R. A. Henning
Center For IFO Studies
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