UFOs in wartime

More activity on the battlefield
If any organization is in a position to notice UFO activity, it's the military. Always active, always watching the skies, the military has been taking note of unusual activity ever since the Greeks and Romans controlled the battlefield.
 
Recently, a former Air Force intelligence officer began speaking out about UFO encounters with the military which seem to increase during wartime. In some of those encounters, the UFOs actually interact with the battlefield, seemingly taking sides in the encounters.
 
During the Vietnam War, there were countless incidents of unusual lights in the skies and saucer-shaped flying craft which seemed to be observing the battlefield. One patrol boat in a river along the DMZ between North and South Vietnam reported seeing two flying saucers which floated overhead for a while, then fired a burst of light which destroyed an enemy patrol boat.
 
Are UFOs attracted to military activity? Or is it simply that war zones have more observers, and more people filing reports about what they observe? 

What happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?

A round-up of some of the stranger theories
As I write this, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and the 239 people aboard have been missing for almost two weeks. Maybe by the time you read this article, the flight has already been found. At this point, we have nothing: a big fat zero.
 
Nature hates a vacuum, and the absence of information has caused oddball and conspiracy theories to flourish, each stranger than the last. 
 
1. Shadow plane
One man has theorized that the airplane turned off its communications system, then snuck away by hiding inside the radar signature of a nearby Singapore Airlines 777. Modern airplane collision detection systems work off an airplane's transponder, so if Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 turned off its transponder, it could have (so he believes) flown right on the Singapore Airlines airplane's tail, thus showing up on radar systems as a single blip.
 
Once Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 shadowed its way through the airspace of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, it would have split off and flown to its final destination. Which destination and why, he does not elaborate on this point.
 
This theory may be possible in theory. But it would call for some crack flying, that's for sure.
 
2. Courtney Love found it
Courtney Love claims to have spotted the plane in the ocean, along with a nearby oil slick. Love apparently downloaded a lot of pictures off a satellite imagery site and started looking until she found what she thinks is the plane's wreckage. "I'm a little obsessive," Love explained.
 
3. Shot down by the military
It's happened before. In 1988 the US Navy accidentally shot down a civilian airliner. In 1983, a Russian jet shot down a Korean Air Lines flight. Both of these accidents were big enough at the time that they could not have been covered up. But what if Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was accidentally shot down where no one could see it?
 
We don't know the jet's flight path, but a rogue jet could easily be seen as a threat. The people on the ground may have thought it had been hijacked and was about to be flown into a sensitive target, 9/11-style. 
 
Thailand's military reluctantly, belatedly released information about having spotted Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on their radar. It took almost two days before they spoke up, saying basically that "No one asked us." But to a lot of people, this foot-dragging points to a possible cover-up.
 
Sad as it is, we may never know.

The "black knight" in orbit

Real or hoax? A little of both.
Lately, stories about the "black knight satellite" have been circulating again. I have to admit that, while I usually find this kind of thing frustrating and annoying, I find the myth of the black knight to be somehow charming.
 
As the legend goes, a large black object has been in orbit around the Earth for thousands of years. From the side, it resembles a knight sitting on a throne. This 13,000 year old satellite is a complete mystery, one which manages to get wrapped up with Nikola Tesla, NASA, astronaut Gordon Cooper, and aliens.
 
The legend of the black knight is actually a pastiche of misunderstandings, misinformation, and wishful thinking. The famous picture of the black knight is real, unaltered, and actually belongs to NASA. However, the photo actually depicts the remains of some thermal blanket debris as photographed from the space shuttle Endeavor. Your typical chunk of space junk, in other words, although it does look suggestively humanoid.
 
The legend of the black knight holds that Nikola Tesla picked up a repeating radio signal in 1899 which somehow became ascribed to the black knight itself. Tesla did indeed pick up anomalous radio signals, and he was correct in his belief that they came from outer space. We now know that these signals came from distant pulsars: rotating neutron stars which throw out pulses of electromagnetic radiation.
 
The other aspects of the black knight's tale are a hodgepodge of anecdotes about random chunks of debris floating above the planet. There is a lot of junk in Earth's upper atmosphere, and more every day. 
 
However, as nice (or as sinister) as it might be to think that a mysterious satellite could orbit the Earth for 13,000 years keeping watch over us, it defies the laws of physics. Without a system of propulsion, any object's orbit will eventually decay, and the object will fall into the Earth's atmosphere to either burn up on entry or fall to the ground as a meteorite. (Barring something like the large-scale system of tension between gravity and speed which keeps the moon in Earth's orbit, of course.)
 
As for the claims that Gordon Cooper spotted a mysterious glowing green light in the vicinity of the black knight during his flight in Mercury 9, Gordon Cooper vehemently disputed this claim himself. Although Cooper did claim to have seen UFOs in the past, he was always willing to provide transcripts of the Mercury 9 flight which demonstrated that he did not see any glowing green lights in space.
 

Was Stonehenge designed as a giant xylophone?

Possibly the wackiest theory yet
Stonehenge has been a mystery for thousands of years. Built by Neolithic Britons at some time between 3000 BC and 2000 BC, this cryptic collection of giant standing stones represents a huge undertaking. Clearly it meant a lot to the people who designed and built it… but what, exactly?
 
A new group of researchers has a theory, based on a unique property of the bluestones which were quarried and carried all the way to Stonehenge. Unlike other types of stone (notably, the kinds of stone which are found local to the site), the bluestone used at Stonehenge rings when struck with a small hammer. Most rocks produce a thunk or thud noise, but apparently the bluestones "sing" with a "much more melodic tone."
 
The research team from London's Royal College of Art was allowed to test their theory recently, when English Heritage gave them leave to bang on the Stonehenge stones to see what noises they make. The team found that "it was a noteworthy soundscape," and speculate that ancient people may have thought the stones had magical properties because of the amazing musical tones they made when struck.
 
It still raises the question of why drag the stones all the way to Salisbury from their quarries in Wales. Why not just set up your giant xylophone near the source of the rock? Clearly more was going on with Stonehenge than its potential use as a giant outdoor musical instrument. 
 
There have been dozens of theories about Stonehenge floated over the years. The current reigning theory is generally calendar-related, to help local people mark the passage of time and the seasons. This theory works nicely as an umbrella theory, in that you can fit a lot of other uses in there, too. Maybe they wanted to perform ritual sacrifices on the right days, or believed that the sick could be healed when the constellations were in a certain alignment. 
 
There is also a solid theory that Stonehenge was part of the ancient people's rituals for their dead. It would have marked the end of a funerary procession which began to the east, at sunrise at Woodhenge, and ended at Stonehenge at sunset. This theory is bolstered by the traces of ancient cremated human remains found in the soil at Stonehenge. Although again, this doesn't preclude Stonehenge's use as a giant calendar.
 
Did they strike the stones to make impressive noises as part of their rituals? Perhaps so - perhaps not - we will likely never know for sure.
 

Where is your doppelganger?

Could they be standing behind you right now?
I have been fascinated by stories of doppelgangers ever since I was a little kid. A doppelganger is your exact double. From there, it all varies.
 
Many doppelgangers are glimpsed in the peripheral vision, only briefly, but under circumstances where it could not possibly be a reflection. You catch a glimpse of yourself out of the corner of your eye, but there is no mirror there.
 
Others are full fledged people you encounter out in the world. People have chased their doppelgangers, confronted them, been confronted by them, and run away from them. Sometimes your doppelganger is encountered by someone else. Let's say someone meets "you" in Paris, while you yourself are on vacation in Melbourne. Classic doppelganger story. The "you" in Paris looks, talks, and acts exactly like you - but it couldn't possibly be you, because you are not there.
 
Doppelgangers are typically thought to be ill omens and harbingers of bad luck. No surprise there. A doctor recently worried that she might die soon because someone saw her doppelganger (warning: bad autoplay video) and believes it foretold her death. The doctor was in Germany at the same time that a friend encountered "her" in Singapore. 
 
Interestingly, the doctor was meditating at the time that her doppelganger was spotted in Singapore. This feeds into the theory of bilocation: that doppelgangers are simply a manifestation of your spirit's ability to unhook itself from your body and travel freely. A sort of high fidelity astral projection, if you will.
 
Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth I, Percy Shelley, and Guy de Maupassant all had doppelganger experiences not long before they died. Lincoln saw his double in a mirror with a death mask. Queen Elizabeth died shortly after seeing her double laid out on her own bed. Shelley's friend saw him pass by a window twice when he was elsewhere. John Donne saw his wife's doppelganger the same night that his daughter was stillborn. De Maupassant reported being plagued by his doppelganger in the days before his death, and claimed that at one point his double came into his room, sat down on a chair, and started dictating what de Maupassant was writing at the time. 
 
On the other hand, not all doppelgangers spell doom. Goethe saw his own doppelganger coming towards him on a road, wearing unfamiliar clothing. Eight years later he happened to be riding down that road, and realized he was wearing the outfit he had seen himself in before. 
 

Sonoran desert mountain bikers encounter reptilian humanoid

"Startled" wouldn't even begin to describe it!
Last week a group of three mountain bikers reported being "startled" to encounter a reptilian humanoid in the middle of Arizona's Sonoran Desert. The bikers were riding a 17 mile trail through the desert called the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo Course, and had stopped to take a break and rehydrate when they had their encounter.
 
The three men from Tucson had been riding for about nine hours when they stopped at the side of the trail. To their amazement, they saw a "long figure" walk across the trail in front of them.
 
The men described the reptilian as being about six feet tall, very skinny, and with an awkward gait like "a monkey or a man with a disease, almost robotic, kind of." Two of the men approached the creature slowly, not realizing that they were moving, but apparently drawn towards it out of sheer curiosity. 
 
Then the third person in their party turned around, spotted the reptilian, and swore out loud. The noise alerted the creature to their presence. It turned to stare at them, swiveling its head in an "eerie 280 degree turn." (Eek.)
 
This gave the men ample time to examine the creature's face, which was distinctly human, but had sandy reddish colored scales which blended in well with the color of the desert, almost like camouflage. They described the creature's eyes as being similar to the eyes of a snake, but "black with a yellow stripe in the middle of the eye."
 
I'm not sure what to make about that part. Were they saying that the eye had two colors? Or was the eye black with a bright yellow iris? (Which would be pretty weird indeed…. Maybe even biologically impossible.)
 
The creature had no nose (just two nose holes) and no ears or hair. When it spotted them, it raised an arm with lots of claws, waved at them while making a chattering noise, and then ran away.
 
In fact, it sounds almost exactly like the classic description of a Reptilian alien, although this one seems to have been uniquely adapted for life here on Earth, blending in with the Sonoran desert, and clearly trying to go out of its way to avoid human contact.
 
Maybe it was just on a desert vacation. After all, the Sonoran desert would be a great vacation destination if you were a six foot tall lizard person, wouldn't it? 

The mystery of the tiny coffins of Edinburgh

Where did they come? What were they for?
In the summer of 1836, a group of boys hunting rabbit burrows around a rocky outcropping called Arthur's Seat near Edinburgh came across an interesting treasure trove. Beneath some thin sheets of slate, the boys uncovered a mysterious collection of seventeen tiny coffins, inside which were tiny wooden figures.
 
The coffins were about three or four inches long, and the wooden figures inside were dressed in a range of different tiny outfits. The coffins were in three rows: two rows of eight, and a single coffin on the top row.
 
The coffins on the bottom row were considerably more aged than the middle or the top row. The clothes on the bottom row had almost completely rotted off. Those on the middle row showed definite signs of decay. However, the lone coffin on the top row looked practically fresh.
 
No one has ever solved the mystery of the tiny coffins found at Arthur's Seat. Very few of them survive. At the time, the boys treated them like random junk, throwing them at each other and generally discarding most of them. A few ended up in the collection of an Edinburgh jeweler, who put them in his private collection.
 
The eight surviving tiny coffins exchanged hands a few times and finally ended up in the National Museum of Scotland, where they can be seen today.
 
According to recent analysis, two different people likely carved the coffins. The coffins have been dated (thanks to paper samples from the lining) to after 1730. In fact, they were most likely interred about five years before the boys found them.
 
The figures themselves seem to have been part of a set of carved wooden toy soldiers. There are indications that they wore hats, and that they had to be weighted to stand upright - perhaps with a tiny tin musket. Many of the soldiers have had one arm knocked off, in order to get it to fit into the coffin. 
 
This answers the "what," but we still have no clue as to the "why." Dubbed the "Fairy Coffins of Edinburg," many theories have been proposed, including that they were a memorial to sailors lost at sea, or that they represented a mock burial for the victims of notorious local serial killers Burke and Hare whose victims (having been sold to medical schools for dissection) never received a decent burial.
 

Is the government dumping fake snow on America?

The latest in conspiracy theories
This winter's Polar Vortex has swirled together with the long-standing accusations about chemtrails and climate conspiracies in general and blended up into a really weird final result: a lot of people believe that the government is dropping fake snow on American cities. 
 
The fake snow is said to be a chemical blend which is remarkably life-like, good enough to fool the uninitiated. But those who know what to look for can (according to various YouTube videos and articles) easily spot the fake snow. Your first hint that it's fake snow is that it's Atlanta, and it never snows in Atlanta, right? (Um, wrong. Very wrong.)
 
This supposed snow-like substance is as cold as real snow, and it falls from the sky. But that is where the similarities end. Chemtrail enthusiasts have long believed that airplane contrails are actually chemicals being spewed out into the sky by the American government for unknown (yet assuredly nefarious) reasons. Well now here it is: all those years they have been laying the groundwork for dumping fake snow on us.
 
How can you tell the difference between fake snow and real snow? Simple, all you need is a lighter. You will notice that the fake snow turns black when you hit it with a lighter, and it does not melt into water - it just vaporizes. Now, some of you may argue that real snow does the same thing. The black is just the soot from the lighter fuel, and the snow doesn't melt into water, it evaporates into steam. Put a chunk of this so-called fake snow at room temperature and it will no doubt melt into a puddle of water.
 
Southerners can be forgiven for not knowing very much about snow, but these videos are getting big on YouTube. 
 
Why would the government do this? According to the conspiracy theorists, it's probably to facilitate the "false narrative" of climate change. The government has so much invested in the climate change "hoax" (so this line of reasoning goes) that it makes financial sense for the government to drop tons of fake snow to convince us.
 
As with so many conspiracy theories, this one says more about the theorist than anything else. Some people are clinging so tight to their belief that climate change isn't real that they have to concoct elaborate theories to explain away the evidence which is right before our eyes, and mounting daily.
 

The Ammons possession case

Officially documented demon possession
There are more stories of demon possession that you can shake a stick at, but the Ammons family's 2012 case stands out in one very important way: all the details have been officially verified and confirmed by several credible witnesses, including a police captain, psychologists, medical professionals, and several people not connected to the family. 
 
The Ammons family incident occurred in Gary, Indiana in 2012. Latoya Ammons claimed that she saw her three children walk up walls, speak in voices, and levitate. It seems that most of the activity centered on her nine year old son (whose name, like all three of the children, has been stricken from the record due to privacy considerations).
 
It all began when an unnamed witness reported Latoya Ammons to the authorities, out of concern that she had mental health issues, and that the children might be at risk. The children were removed from the home by the authorities and taken for observation.
 
During that time, psychologists attested that they saw the boy speak in "different deep voices" and "walk up the wall backwards." He periodically made "growling noises" and they witnessed his eyes roll into the back of his head. 
 
A team of medical staff reported that, as they observed the boy, they saw him be "lifted and thrown into the wall with nobody touching him."
 
Gary, Indiana Police Captain Charles Austin, with over 35 years on the force, said that he visited the Ammons family several times, under the assumption that Latoya Ammons was trying to scam people out of money. But what he saw convinced him that the demonic possession was real.
 
In addition to noting these events on the official report, the hospital staff also called in a local priest to perform an exorcism on the family. 
 
Ammons also saw her 12 year-old daughter levitate out of bed, and the girl reported "being thrown across the room and grabbed by dark shadows." 
 
Apparently, despite all this official stamp of approval, it took six months before the children were released back to Ammons after "the problems subsided." I have so many questions about this story, like where were the kids being kept for those six months? Why did it take so long for the family to be reunited? And how have things been in the months since the incident apparently ended? 
 
The Ammons family has moved from the home where the incident happened, and the landlord reports that the current (new) tenants have not experienced any problems.  
 

First responders and the paranormal

When cops get called out to hunt ghosts
This Reddit thread is completely amazing. Someone asked "police officers of Reddit" (although other first responders, including firefighters, dispatch officers, and medical personnel like nurses have contributed as well) to share their stories of encounters with the paranormal. 
 
One of the biggest problems with paranormal stories is that you're talking to an average everyday person. And average everyday people have a very narrow experience of the world (i.e. their own). They also tend to be really terrible eyewitnesses, frequently messing up what you would think would be pretty significant details, being confused about whether they are awake or asleep at the time, and occasionally suffering from delusions associated with mental illness.
 
By comparison, cops, firefighters, EMTs, and nurses all spend their entire careers seeing all the crazy stuff that happens to people. They have a broader perspective than the rest of us.
 
For example, something I hadn't appreciated until this thread was that cops will always respond in force when they get a call about ghosts in someone's attic or basement. Why? Because a lot of the time, the "ghost" turns out to be an actual flesh-and-blood intruder. Like this story of a ghost that turned out to be a homeless man who snuck into a woman's attic on cold nights.
 
Angry suicide ghosts are another running theme. Like this uber-scary story of cops called out to investigate an abandoned hospital, this story of a suicide in a cabin in the remote woods, and this story about a suicide ghost who protested when the cops who arrived at his scene later sat around talking about how messed up it was. 
 
I think my favorite story from the thread is this one, from a cop who was called out on a complaint that a woman's neighbors were yelling rude and racist things at her through the wall. This one is great because it's one of the few stories where the caller wasn't complaining about paranormal activity. It just kinda turned out that, as the officer investigated, "angry ghost" turned out to be the most reasonable explanation for what was happening. (I also love the small details, like the mysteriously smashed Coke cans. Storytellers, take note!)
 
Nurses have a slightly different perspective on the paranormal. Like cops, they often work the night shift. But unlike cops, nurses - particularly those in the ICU and in nursing homes - are frequently there at the time of someone's death. And a lot of people have died in their workplace, which can make for some interesting encounters. 
 

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