Are we alone in the universe? This is a question that has been asked for quite a long time. Many believe that there is other intelligent life in the universe and that these aliens have visited us, but this claim has proven to be one of the most controversial to present and defend.

Many individuals who have reported encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrial beings have claimed to have physical proof that otherworldly life is, in fact, real. Experts, however, claim that this evidence had been either doctored, falsified, or is nothing but a flat out lie. Here are ten UFO encounters that have occurred but were then quickly “swept under the rug.”

10 US Navy Pilots Encounter UFO Mid-Flight

In 2004, two United States Navy pilots, Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Jim Slaight, were both conducting a military training exercise off the coast of San Diego. During their training, the pilots received a message from an operator located on the nearby base informing them of the presence of a strange aircraft within their airspace. According to the operator, the military had been tracking this unidentified aircraft for weeks, and the UFO sometimes performed strategic movements, such as a sudden dive or even a hovering motion. Both pilots were then asked to investigate and attempt to obtain a visual of the unidentified aircraft.

After searching for quite a while, Slaight and Fravor spotted the aircraft. According to their reports, it was 12 meters (40 ft) long. Fravor stated that the UFO hovered about 15 meters (50 ft) above the ocean and appeared to disturb the water beneath it. Fravor attempted to move closer to the UFO, but while he was making his descent, the object rose from its hover to meet Fravor and then took off at an unimaginable speed! In his statement, Fravor told reporters, “I can tell you, I think it was not from this world!”^[1]

9 Two Commercial Airline Pilots Encounter A UFO Over Arizona

On February 24, 2018, a UFO was spotted above Arizona by two pilots who were in the middle of their flights when they encountered the aircraft. The pilot of a Learjet 36 spotted an aircraft flying over and above his plane. He then asked the controller on duty if any other plane had passed by him, and the controller said no, even going on to joke that the aircraft might have been a UFO. Little did they both know that the joke was about to become very real.

Shortly after speaking to the Learjet pilot, the controller contacted another pilot flying an American Airlines plane and asked the pilot to inform him if an aircraft passes over the airplane. A while later, the American Airlines pilot radioed in and reported that an unknown aircraft had just flown past his plane at a great speed. He also reported that the UFO had lights that illuminated the entire object. Although both pilots had seen balloons at that altitude, the Learjet pilot stated, “The only thing different about this was that it was too bright.”

There’s an old saying that states that you should be careful what you wish for. In the case of these pilots and the controller, you should also be careful what you joke about, because your joke just might come flying over you at high speed!^[2]

8 UFO Hovers Above East Mountain

In case you were wondering, this UFO sighting was not reported by pilots.

During the Cold War, the US Air Force had a radar base on the foot of Vermont’s East Mountain. Over 175 men were stationed at this base and lived about 1.6 kilometers (1 mi) down from the mountain. In 1961, a strange object suddenly appeared in the sky above East Mountain. According to the military reports, the UFO held its position in the sky for 18 minutes.^[3]

7 The Hill Family Abduction

This encounter occurred in 1961, the same year as the UFO sighting above East Mountain in Vermont. It was also one of the earliest publicized reports of abduction by beings from another planet. Betty and Barney Hill claim to have been abducted by extraterrestrial beings on the night of September 19 during their journey home to New Hampshire. While on the road, they saw a light flash in the sky. They initially thought that it was a shooting star but quickly changed their minds when they saw the light begin to change direction. They then decided to pull over in hopes of getting a better view of this unusual light. Using binoculars, they discovered that the light was actually an unusual ship flashing lights of all colors.

After seeing this, the couple drove off and continued to head home. As they traveled, the couple noticed that the aircraft was descending closer to their vehicle. They estimated that the aircraft was about 12 meters (40 ft) long. The UFO dropped so close to their car that they stopped. This time, Barney was able to see humanlike or humanoid figures in black uniforms through the windows of the ship. Startled, the couple took off again, this time at much faster pace! They then began to hear noises emanating from the UFO while experiencing a tingling sensation throughout their bodies. The couple then blacked out and awoke nearly 56 kilometers (35 mi) away from where they originally were.^[4]

After enduring this frightening experience, both Barney and Betty Hill later gave statements (under hypnosis) that they were taken onto the UFO and were examined by the extraterrestrial beings that occupied it. Today, there is sign near the area where the Hills were abducted, describing the event that reportedly took place that night in 1961.

6 Multiple Sightings In Exeter, New Hampshire

Another monumental New England UFO encounter happened on September 3, 1965, in Exeter, New Hampshire. According to author John G. Fuller, a policeman on patrol just after midnight approached a woman who was parked beside the road. The woman was attempting to catch her breath as she told the officer that a UFO had been chasing her down the road.

After a few hours had passed, a young man came to the police station and claimed that he saw a line of five bright lights over a house while he was hitchhiking on a nearby highway. He also stated that the lights continued to appear and reappear behind a line of trees while moving over a field. The young man then led several police officers to the exact location where he saw the lights. Sure enough, the officers witnessed everything that the young man had told them at the station earlier.

As weeks passed, officers continued to get reports of UFO sightings in the city of Exeter, receiving a total of 60 in all!^[5]

5 The Flying Saucer In Rhode Island

On June 10, 1967, Harold Trudel was able to capture some of the most groundbreaking photos of a UFO during that time. Trudel claimed to have seen UFOs many times before but decided that June 10 would be the day that he would obtain documentation of what he had seen. Around midday, Trudel waited patiently on West Wrentham Road near the city of East Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

According to Trudel, after he’d sat for a few minutes, a UFO descended from the clouds above and hovered over a nearby power line. It was then that Trudel was able to capture his photos of the craft. His images show an unusual object floating in the sky. The UFO remained in its hovering state, allowing Trudel to capture seven separate pictures of it.^[6] (They had slow cameras back then.)

4 Strange Lights In Newtown, Connecticut

On May 26, 1987, a man named Randy Etting was taking an evening stroll in his hometown of Newtown, Connecticut. After walking for a while, he noticed that there were orange and red lights present in the sky which were moving in a western direction! Being a commercial airline pilot (aliens must really love pilots), Etting often observed the sky and knew that these lights were unlike anything that he had ever seen. He then took out his binoculars and ushered his neighbors to come outside and see what he was looking at. In a later statement, Etting said that even cars on the highway pulled over to watch as the lights passed over Interstate 84. Police reports confirm Etting’s statement, showing that between 9:30 and 10:15 PM, over 200 people reported seeing a UFO in the area.^[7]

Etting was also able to capture a picture of the lights as they continued to move. His image depicts a multicolored semicircle composed of various colors. Witnesses also claimed that their vehicles completely lost power while the UFO was above them! Minutes later, calls came in from the nearby town of New Milford, detailing reports similar to those that came in from Newtown. After a while, the lights simply vanished, and it was never confirmed whether or not they came from a man-made aircraft or if they were truly not of this world. What do you think?

3 Square Aircraft Spotted In North Carolina

This particular sighting occurred on August 18, 2018. Javion Hill was driving on US 74 just southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina. While on the phone with his wife, Hill spotted unusual lights in the nearby clouds; they were shaped in the form of a square. Hill took several pictures of the lights while driving and even took the next exit in hopes of capturing a video.

When he attempted to do so, the lights suddenly vanished, and Hill recalls that a huge storm followed immediately afterward. Hill, who, before seeing the lights, did not believe in UFOs, said that he could barely sleep that night. “I was worried for my safety,” he said. “I did not believe in UFOs until that moment.”^[8]

2 UFO In Jerusalem?

In 2011, two videos surfaced of a strange object descending and hovering over the Dome of the Rock in the city of Jerusalem. The videos sparked a huge Internet debate over their credibility. (Note that many now consider the videos to be fake.) In one of the videos, a round object can be seen floating above the Islamic shrine. The object remains for a while. Then a bright light suddenly emanates from the ship, and it ascends into the sky rapidly.^[9]

The second video was taken at a distance from a nearby mountain, but the distance did not take away from what many people saw that morning. The video again showed the object hover, flash a bright light, and then rise at a rapid pace. Although the individuals who filmed the encounter spoke a different language, the sound of awe and mystery was easy to interpret as they stood and observed the object.

1 Chicago Airline Employees Spot a UFO Above the Tarmac

In November 2006, a commercial airliner was preparing to take flight from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to North Carolina. While working on the tarmac, a United Airlines employee noticed that there was a gray craft hovering over gate C17. A few other United employees along with a couple of witnesses outside the airport spotted the exact same aircraft.

According to reports, witnesses say that the unidentified aircraft hovered over the gate for a few minutes before shooting upward into the sky. The witnesses also reported that the aircraft left a hole in the clouds big enough for them to see the blue of the sky above. After receiving the reports, the FAA called the encounter a “weather phenomenon” and declined to investigate.^[10] The unidentified craft was not seen on radar.

All claims of UFOs and alien encounters are, by their very nature, a little bizarre and outlandish. Some of them, however, are just a little too outrageous for even the most enthusiastic and dedicated UFO researcher to believe, at least not in their entirety.

And while the following ten stories are most likely not genuine, there remains a tiny sliver of doubt; they might not be complete fabrications, either. So, with a huge pinch of salt with extra helpings, here are ten UFO and alien encounter claims that are just a little too unbelievable.

10 George Adamski—An Authentic Initial Sighting That Descended Into Lies?

The first person on our list is also one of the most well-known. And at one point, George Adamski was very much considered the “real deal” in terms of contact with an extraterrestrial race.^[1] Even today, there is disagreement among UFO circles as to whether his initial purported encounters were actually genuine, though plenty of believers in those are still sure that Adamski went on to fabricate and outright manufacture more stories, whether for money, attention, or both.

True or not, beginning in November 1952, after several months of “channeled directions,” he would reportedly witness and capture a picture of a “flying saucer” (shown above) from his California home. By the time Adamski was making claims of trips to the Moon, Venus, and various other locations in outer space, even his most ardent supporters were beginning to distance themselves. If there was any truth in the initial claims of George Adamski, it is a real shame that what appears to be obvious fabrication and outright manufacturing of events will overshadow it.

9 Elizabeth Klarer Conceives An Alien Child On Another Planet

At around the same time that Adamski was making his claims in the late 1950s, in South Africa, Elizabeth Klarer would state not only that she made contact with an alien life-form but that she had gone to his home world and conceived a child with him.^[2] In fact, many skeptics would point out how many details of her claims were almost identical to those of Adamski.

According to Klarer, she successfully “called down” the alien she called “Akon,” who would arrive in his scout ship. From there, they would transfer to the main mother ship and then travel to Meton, Akon’s home planet, which, according to Klarer, was in the Alpha Centauri system.

However, the son they conceived would remain with Akon on Meton. As you might imagine, this did little for Klarer’s credibility. She would nevertheless stick to her story, despite the fact that she was almost universally not believed.

8 Ludwig Pallmann Develops Friendship With Race Of Aliens

In the mid-1960s, German businessman Ludwig Pallman would claim to have discovered an alien base in Brazil and, furthermore, to have established contact with its occupants.^[3]

He had first made contact with one of these mysterious visitors on a Bombay (now called Mumbai) train around 1964. He began speaking with him and noticed how strange his voice was and how perfectly white his hair glowed. He would meet the same figure again later, learning that his name was, according to Pallmann, Satu Ra. When he was on business in South America several years later, he would meet up with the apparent alien being once more, as well as members of his family.

Among the many claims made by Pallmann is that the alien visitors were running various programs and experiments with the “terrestrial fruit,” which they were hybridizing at their secret bases on the planet. Furthermore, he was given a crystal ring that would glow and heat up slightly when the aliens were nearby.

Perhaps one of the most outlandish of Pallman’s stories, if only because of its humanlike quality, is of hearing of a disaster that had befallen an alien ship on another planet. One of the aliens he had been introduced to previously (named Xiti) was apparently killed. Shortly after this event, coincidentally or not, came several sightings of a large silver disc where Pallmann claimed the aliens had their base.

Needless to say, while many in the UFO community are aware of Pallman’s alleged encounter, most distance themselves from such claims.

7 Walter Rizzi Develops Telepathic Abilities After Chance Meeting With Aliens

Although the details of the encounter are not particularly outlandish, there is still a persistent feeling among many in UFO circles that a pinch of salt should perhaps be at the ready when it comes to the claims of Walter Rizzi from Bolzano, Italy, which he would make ten years after a supposed incident in 1978.^[4]

After pulling his car to the side of the road near an underpass to get some sleep, Rizzi would awaken to see a disc-shaped craft hovering near his vehicle. Even more concerning was the humanoid entity making his way toward him. The being would communicate with Rizzi using telepathy. It is perhaps interesting to note that, similar to Pallmann’s story, the alien Rizzi met described how they were looking for vegetation, fruit, and minerals that are rich on planet Earth and of great value to them.

In a similar manner to many sightings of the time (although we should remember that Rizzi waited a decade before speaking of the encounter), the witness would state that he was warned of an impending disaster that would affect around 80 percent of the planet.

6 Carroll Watts Learns That Aliens Are Watching Humans As They Near The Cosmos

Perhaps, by comparison to many others on this list, the claims of Carroll Watts are relatively pedestrian. However, there are many who remain suspicious, with some noting Watts’s desire for financial return regarding the sightings, all of which took place over a period of six months during 1967 in Wellington, Texas.^[5]

He would claim to first witness a cigar-shaped craft while driving between fields and buildings on the family farm. He approached the object, which hovered low to the ground, and was asked by a voice that was “neither masculine or feminine” if he was “willing to submit to a rigorous physical examination.” If he passed, he would be allowed to travel with the occupants into space.

Although he would initially decline this invitation, in subsequent meetings, he agreed and ultimately went into space with the aliens. According to the “conversation” that took place during this cosmic journey, he was informed that these alien visitors would regularly “come and go as they pleased” from the Earth. Perhaps more worryingly, he was informed that many alien races in space were concerned with humanity’s apparent impending arrival in the cosmos and of humans becoming a spacefaring race.

5 Howard Menger Meets His Former Lover From A Past Life On Venus

According to alleged contactee Howard Menger, he was invited aboard a UFO in the summer of 1956.^[6] He not only was taken into outer space and to the Moon, but he claimed to have witnessed alien civilizations and huge structures on its surface.

An already bizarre set of encounters would turn even weirder, though, when a strange woman would attend a lecture Menger was giving on the subject of contact with “space brothers and sisters.” The woman’s name was Connie Weber. It was Menger’s belief that he and Weber had once been a couple during a past life they had shared on Venus. Rather than leaving such a notion at that, Menger promptly divorced his wife and began a relationship with Weber.

Perhaps even stranger was a television interview he would give in 1960, in which he stated that he the entire story was false. However, rather than admit that he had simply made the account up for notoriety or even money, he stated that he was part of a top secret military experiment to test public reaction to alien contact, a claim which, like his original one, would divide opinion.

4 Luciano Galli Takes A Trip Into Space During His Lunch Hour

In July 1957, Italian businessman Luciano Galli was returning back to work in Rome following his lunch break when a black car suddenly pulled up alongside him.^[7] The window wound down, and a gentleman with “piercing black eyes” leaned out. He asked Galli if he remembered him.

Galli was about to respond that he didn’t when a sudden wave of memories washed through his mind, making him realize that he did, indeed, remember the strange man. He had seen him previously on the streets of Rome. The man asked Galli if he would like to go with them, and he ultimately got into the back of the vehicle. They would drive to the outskirts of the city, where a “saucer-shaped UFO” was waiting for them. After they boarded it, the craft shot off into the sky.

The spaceship would take them to a huge mother ship, which Galli was then given a tour of. He was ultimately returned to the spot from where he was taken. While many would struggle to believe his account (he would claim that he “didn’t care what people thought”), there were several similar reports around the world in 1957 that perhaps lend him a bit of credibility.

3 Hubert Lewis Meets Aliens From Venus Living Among Us

According to newsagent Hubert Lewis, in 1957, he witnessed a disc-shaped object and its occupants while cycling through the town of Church Stretton in Shropshire in order to pick up newspapers.^[8] When a tall figure appeared in the road in front of him, Lewis demanded to know who this stranger was, almost without thinking. The occupant replied that the newsagent need not fear him.

The two would speak for around half an hour, the metallic disc hovering in the background all the while. As their conversation progressed, the wind, which had previously been relatively brisk, seemed to drop (although, strangely, Lewis could still hear it).

Following the meeting, Lewis claimed to have developed certain psychic abilities. Furthermore, he claimed to receive visits from “high-ranking police officers” who would advise him to “forget certain matters,” advice to which he initially agreed. However, several months later, he would encounter the alien beings and their craft again, this time in a field. He was informed, he would claim, that the aliens were from the planet Venus and were living in disguise among the population on Earth.

2 Sir Peter Horsley Talks With An Alien In A London Sitting Room

Sir Peter Horsley had a remarkable career in the Royal Air Force (RAF). Indeed, at his height, he was the deputy commander-in-chief of RAF Strike Command.^[9] However, in 1997, after he’d retired, he released the book Sounds From Another Room, in which he recounted speaking with an extraterrestrial being in a dark room in a London house. As a result, he was almost universally cut adrift by his military colleagues.

Horsley stated how he was invited in 1954 to meet a “Mr. Janus,” who would speak to the military man from a shadowy corner of the room. Horsley wrote about how he had the distinct feeling that Janus was able to read his mind. Furthermore, he would keep firm control of the conversation at all times. The conversation revolved around Britain’s future nuclear capabilities, and Janus demonstrated an intricate knowledge of the British military, as if to convince Horsley of his authenticity.

It was following this meeting that Horsley began to rise rapidly up the ranks of the RAF. Whether that rise is connected to the meeting with Janus is open to debate. However, despite the bizarre nature of Horsley’s claims, it would be strange for such a decorated individual to choose to draw attention to himself for no good reason.

1 Gosta Carlsson Develops Pharmaceutical Companies Following Meeting With Aliens

Whatever the authenticity of the claims of Swedish ice hockey player Gosta Carlsson, a location in the town of Angelholm now boasts a concrete memorial to the affair.^[10]

Carlsson claimed that while he was walking in the country in May 1946, he witnessed a strange saucer-shaped craft landing in a nearby field. Furthermore, the occupants of the craft ventured outside and communicated with him, even passing on natural remedy recipes.

So valuable was this meeting that Carlsson would go on to found two pharmaceutical companies. He was ultimately very successful and went on to become the owner of the first professional ice hockey team in Sweden. All of this success, according to Carlsson, was down to the chance meeting with extraterrestrials that afternoon in Angelholm.

Needless to say, many people, even in the UFO community, struggle to believe his story, at least in full. Whether his account is true or not, the monument is one of only two pertaining to UFO incidents in all of Europe, the other one being in Poland to mark the Emilicin encounter.

There is a striking disconnect between what aliens from outer space are popularly believed to look like, and what is actually reported.

SEE ALSO: 10 Signs That Aliens Are Contributing To Our World

The popular idea, known as “The Grays,” are often short and always skinny, with gray skin, big heads, huge bug-like black eyes, and just a slit of a mouth. Creatures like these appear in movies and on book and magazine covers worldwide as the generally accepted appearance of “real” aliens from outer space.

More generally speaking though, actual reports of alien encounters have displayed a real variety of weird creatures; some are amazing; some are scary; and some are just plain odd!

10 Frog Aliens

Harrison Bailey loved to walk so much that he found a way to profit from it; he had a huge green tire with advertising space on the side of it, and he’d take long walks rolling it with sponsored ads. He was on such a walk from Chicago, Illinois, to Joliet, on September 24, 1951, when he rolled his big tire into a small wooded area along the route near the town of Orland Park.

As he approached the woods, he became aware of a strange prickling in his neck, and saw a sort of silver whirlwind in the sky behind him… but he was on a tight schedule with a long walk ahead, so he ignored it and continued forward into the woods. In front of him was what he took to be a large frog on a log; as he approached it, he became aware of other animals about the same size hidden in the foliage on both sides of the road. Small round… insects? …were all over the road. Bailey walked on, figuring his boots would protect him.

Then the frog on the log stood up and started walking towards him.

Soon Bailey was surrounded by these bipedal frogs, and they were jumping up to touch him on the shoulders, back, hips, and legs; and when they touched him, it felt unpleasant. He started to run, still rolling his wheel ahead of him and over the strange insects that covered the ground, eventually escaping the hoard of frogs.

Further along the road, Bailey ran across a large, rounded object that opened to reveal two five-foot-tall human-like beings wearing helmets that obscured their faces. The next thing Bailey was aware of was lying on a bed of some sort, presumably inside the object, with the two beings examining him and — somehow — communicating to instruct him to tell the world about them; they never actually spoke. After this strange exam, Bailey was allowed to leave with his wheel… but, despite the beings asking him to tell the world about them, he immediately forgot about nearly everything that happened that day. It was only around twenty-five years later, when hypnotic regression was used to try and recover what happened in the hours of that September day, that the strange series of events was first told to the world.^[1]

9 Space Cone

On Sunday, November 1, 1954, Rosa Dainelli was walking along a footpath through fields and thickets on her way from her house to the nearby town of Cennina, Italy, where she planned to place a handful of carnations at the altar of the Madonna Pellegrina [the ‘Pilgrim Madonna’]. It was a path she used almost daily, and an area very familiar to her… until she entered a small clearing and found some sort of vehicle in the middle of it.

The object was only about seven feet tall, and looked like two tall cones connected together at their large ends, like a round diamond shape… it stood on three small legs, and had an opening in the side that revealed two small chairs. As Rosa was just starting to wonder about this object, two tiny men — only three feet tall or so each — walked around from the opposite side of it to approach her in a friendly fashion.

The two looked mostly human; but their size and an odd curve in the center of their lips showed they were not. Both wore one-piece gray overalls that covered them from their necks to their feet, and each wore a short cape. They also had odd helmets that covered their ears. The two short men tried to talk to Dainelli, but she didn’t understand the language they were using. They snatched some carnations from her and dropped them inside the craft. Then one of them reached inside and brought out two white spheres… and Dainelli took the opportunity to run from the scene. When she looked back over her shoulder at them, they had vanished.^[2]

8 Silver Monster

It was a long night on the farm in Kelly, Kentucky. It all started when Billy Ray Taylor saw a strange object fly across the sky with a rainbow trail, and then drop into a deep gully nearby. Taylor headed to the farmhouse of the Sutten family — they were friends — to tell everyone there what he had seen; but the family thought he’d probably seen a ‘falling star’ and was just exaggerating the details.

Half an hour later, something glowing approached the house from the fields. Taylor and Lucky Sutten watched the strange glow from the back door of the house until it became clear it was some sort of bipedal creature, three-and-a-half feet tall, with a huge round head and very long arms ending in talons, that was walking towards them. The odd creature appeared to be made of silver, and it held its arms high above its head as it approached, as if in surrender… and there didn’t seem to be any obvious reason it was glowing.

Taylor and Sutten both grabbed guns; and when the creature came within twenty feet of the house they opened fire, with the odd result that the creature flipped backwards and then ran away. Soon, another such creature was found staring into the house at one of the windows; they shot at it from inside the house and the weird thing flipped backwards and out of sight. Assuming the body would be just outside, Taylor and Sutten headed for the front door. As Taylor walked out, however, one of the creatures was seen to reach down from above and touched his hair with its talons; the family yanked Taylor back inside before he could go further, and Sutten ran out and shot the creature, knocking it off the roof.

Another creature was spotted in a tree nearby, and Taylor joined Sutten as both shot at the creature. It fell from the tree… and floated lightly down to the ground before running off. Then another ran from around the house at the two men. Sutten fired point blank into the creature, and they heard the bullets hit it, but the strange creature was unharmed even though it turned and ran after being shot. It was now obvious to both Taylor and Sutten that their guns were useless, and they retreated back into the house.

Though the strange visitors continued to pester the family until around 5:00 AM, the creatures never did anything aggressive. Instead, they appeared to simply be curious about the family, always looking in at the windows but never entering the house.^[3]

7 Four Legs and Arms

It was a Sunday around 2:00 PM in Casa Blanca, California, and a large group of boys were playing in a yard in front of one of their houses, when they noticed the first strange object in the sky above them. Soon others appear, and disappeared with a musical ‘ping,’ putting on a show the boys thought was fun… but anytime they tried to get one of the adults in the house to look, everything vanished. So it was just for them to see, and they soon accepted this.

One of the objects, multi-colored and bright, landed about half a block away in a field. Then two of the older boys saw a strange thing in front of the house next door; it was about three and a half feet tall, floating above the ground, and transparent enough that they could see the brickwork of the house through the thing’s body. It wore a belt with a round disk that glimmered like a mirror. The creature appeared to have eyes and a mouth, but across the area a nose would be there were four round objects that shined like diamonds. Another boy saw just an arm hanging alone in midair, beckoning him to come closer.

Then another full being emerged from the landed craft, also floating above the ground but much more solid looking than the previous. This one appeared to be wearing a satin-like material… and it had four legs and four hands, each of its arms splitting in two at the elbow. This being somehow ‘talked’ to one of the boys, telling him to climb a nearby tree so he could be picked up in fifteen minutes. Using a hose, the older kids kept the younger ones out of the tree… and fifteen minutes later one of the strange objects flew around the top of the tree before all of the objects disappeared for the last time.^[4]

6 Ginger Aliens

Jose Antonio Da Silva (from Bebedouro, Brazil) just wanted to fish. He got up early that morning to do just that, after having hiked to the lake and set up camp the day before; but around 3:00 PM his plans were changed against his will when a group of 4 foot tall humanoids, completely covered head to toe in strange suits, paralyzed his legs and then dragged him aboard a weird craft.

For hours Da Silva sat with his captors as the strange vehicle moved; there were no windows, so he could only feel the motion of the craft, with no idea where it was going. They had placed a helmet over his head, just like the ones they were wearing themselves. When they reached their destination, he was brought into a large room and placed sitting on a stool. Here he saw these beings without their helmets on (he continued to wear his); among them was one being who was slightly taller, and appeared to be in charge.

They all looked about the same: roughly human with red hair that hung to their waists, and beards that stretched to their stomachs. Their eyebrows were very thick — about two finger widths — and they had no eyelashes on their slightly-larger-than-human green eyes. The biggest difference was their mouths, which were a little wider than a human’s… and had no teeth in them, looking more like a fish’s mouth on the inside.

They communicated to Da Silva by means of gestures and illustrations; he soon understood that they wanted him to go back to Earth to gather information for them, then eventually return to live with them for several years, finally to return to Earth with them as their ambassador and guide. Da Silva refused the offer. With that, he was taken back to the strange craft and, after some time, was dropped off in the middle of the night by a stream. Once he found his way to a road, he was able to learn that he was about 30 KM/18.6 miles away from where he had been fishing… and four and a half days had passed! ^[5]

5 Big Foot

It was 10:30 PM and a foggy night out in Frederic, Wisconsin, and farmer William Bosak was driving home from a Co-Op meeting he had attended in the nearby town of Frederic, when his headlights reflected off something on the left side of the road. Bosak had already been driving at a slower pace, due to the fog, and he slowed down more as he approached the object… and I do mean ‘object,’ for it was no car on the side of the road!

The object was about eight to ten feet tall, and was sitting still. On the side facing Bosak as he drove up there was a curved glass panel that he could see through; and inside there was a human-like being. The being appeared to wearing a tan shirt of some type, but Bosak could also see that it had short hair or fur on its upper body and arms; the arms were raised above the being’s head. There was more short hair sticking out from the sides of the being’s head, though it’s face and chin were hairless. High up on its head, two calf-like ears stuck out about three inches to each side. It also had large protruding eyes. Bosak couldn’t see more of the craft or figure because of the fog; but he’d seen enough. He stepped on the gas pedal and rocketed home.

It was nearly a month before Bosak plucked up the courage to tell anyone else what happened. On further thought, it occurred to Bosak that the strange being looked just as frightened of him as he had been of it… and he kinda wished he could go back and be friendlier.^[6]

4 Block Creatures

19-year-old Lee Parrish had just driven home from his girlfriend’s house in Prospect, Kentucky; along the way, he had seen a bright rectangular object in the sky. When he got home, his eyes hurt terribly… and he discovered the seven minute drive had taken nearly forty-five minutes to complete for some reason. Worried, his mother convinced him to have hypnotic regression in an attempt to remember what happened during the missing time; and the answers he gave were just strange.

Parish’s car had been lifted off the ground by the bright object, and then Parrish himself had somehow been instantly brought to a room that looked too large to be inside the craft. In this room were three strange objects; on his left was a large black slab shaped like a tombstone with an additional bump on top that nearly reached the ceiling, on his right was a red block that was just a little shorter than Parrish, and in front of him was a more complicated looking white block. The white block was Parrish’s height, about six feet, and had a surface that curved away from Parrish on the front, with a distinct rectangular “head.” Parrish didn’t know how he knew, but he sensed these objects were sentient beings; and that the white one was in charge.

The black slab had a single limb that stuck out from one side of its front. It started to use this to slowly touch Parrish on his side and back, a feeling that was unpleasant: cold and burning at the same time, it made Parrish feel like he was vibrating. Next the red block touched him; it too had a single limb coming from its body, and Parrish sensed it was a bit frightened of him. It slowly touched his shoulder, and then the side of his head, above the ear in the hairline. These touches came with the sensation of being pricked with a needle, but didn’t hurt very long.

After touching him, the red block moved to the white one, and either disappeared behind it, or merged with it. The black slab backed away slowly as the white object made a sound like sandpaper being used; then the white one moved to the black slab and, again, either disappeared behind it or merged with it. A moment later, the black slab disappeared, leaving Parrish in the room alone.

Then Parrish was in his car again, looking at a little pond near the roadway he had been driving on. His eyes were completely bloodshot, and he had trouble sleeping for days afterwards simply because of how badly they hurt.^[7]

3 Triangle Eyes

Private security guard Piero Fortunato Zanfretta was driving his rounds in Torriglia, Italy that icy cold night when, just a bit after midnight, his car’s engine, lights, and radio all failed at once, bringing the car to a stop in front of one of his clients’ houses. While this bothered him, Zanfretta quickly noticed four strange lights moving around the client’s house; assuming these were burglars, he grabbed his gun and flashlight, walked through the open gate, and snuck quietly along the wall to surprise them. Then someone touched his back.

Spinning around with his gun and light in front of him, Zanfretta found himself facing a 10 foot tall being with undulating, hairy, green skin. He pointed his flashlight up to see the face, and dropped it in shock. The creature had triangular yellow eyes, and red veins on its forehead. Zanfretta quickly grabbed up the flashlight and ran for his car, but he was soon aware that something very bright was behind him. He turned to look and discovered a huge triangular craft, glowing brightly enough that he had to shield his eyes, was rising from the back yard of the house with a hissing noise. He ran to his car and made a desperate call out on his radio, which cut off before he could give his location.

An hour later, two other patrol cars came through the area and discovered Zanfretta lying on the ground out in front of the now-closed gate to the house. As they approached he jumped up, pointing his gun at them; his eyes were bulging, and he didn’t seem to recognize them. They managed to overpower him, but noticed as they did so that Zanfretta and his clothes were very warm despite the icy temperatures he had presumably been lying in till just a moment before.

Further investigation after daybreak showed two huge horseshoe shaped impressions in the ground behind the house, as if something massive had been sitting there… and fifty-two witnesses from around the city had all seen the bright light in the area at the same time that Zanfretta claimed to have been attacked! ^[8]

2 Tent Creatures

Federico Ibáñez, 54, was driving to his vineyards just outside of Turis, Spain around 11:30 AM that morning, when he came across a strange object in the road ahead of him. It was shaped like half an egg, a large dome on four short legs, and appeared to be made from a shining white metal; it was about 8 feet/2.5 meters tall.

As Ibáñez puzzled over this object, two small figures emerged from near a carob tree about 36 feet/11 meters away, and headed for the craft. He saw the strange beings from the side, one behind the other. They were only about 3 feet/1 meter tall each, and appeared to be wearing white outfits that covered them from head to toe and looked as if they were inflated; the little beings almost appeared to be wearing tiny tents! The feet and hands were small and dark in color. All that Ibáñez could make of their faces was that the had tubes of some sort that projected out from the face by about 3 inches/8 centimeters, like built-in binoculars.

The two figures rushed to the vehicle and entered it, after which the half-egg rose quickly and silently, creating a whirlwind as it took off. Later researchers found four small impressions on the ground where Ibáñez said the vehicle had been, and estimated a weight of about four tons from the depths of the impressions.^[9]

1 In Soviet Russia . . .

It was around 6:30 PM at Levoberezhniy’s park in Voronezh, Russia. Children were playing; a group of adults were waiting at a nearby bus stop; and a large red oval, about 45 feet long by 18 feet high, was flying in circles about forty feet above the ground… which kind of caught everyone’s attention. The oval craft landed lightly in the park, near several of the playing children, and three large beings came out, accompanied by a box-like robot.

The beings were humanoid, but around nine feet tall, with very long arms and a sort of dome instead of head and neck. These domes had three eyes; two whitish ones side by side, and then a red one above them, that was described as swiveling around like a radar. They appeared to be wearing silver jumpsuits with bronze boots, and set about collecting dirt samples; one of the three seemed to be in charge, and sometimes made sounds that were believed to be orders to the other two.

Everyone witnessing the event had been too stunned to really react at first; but it soon proved to be too much for one young man, who started to scream… and the being in charge clearly focused it’s attention on this young man, who was suddenly frozen in place. Everyone else then started to panic, as the strange beings now appeared to be a threat; but before a full panic set in, the beings and the craft simply vanished from view.

Five minutes later the beings and the strange craft suddenly reappeared, in the same place they had been before; but one of the beings now held a short tube which it pointed at a teenager… who disappeared. Now a real panic broke out, as the three large beings returned to their craft, and the oval vehicle lifted up into the air. As it vanished from sight, the teenager suddenly reappeared from nowhere.

Researchers were baffled by the strange events; but all witnesses stuck to their stories, and drawings by both the children and adults presented a consistent — though strange — portrait of the alien beings.^[10]

About The Author: Garth Haslam has been digging into strange topics for over thirty years, and posts his research on varying anomalies, curiosities, mysteries, and legends at his website Anomalies—the Strange & Unexplained and Facebook page.

Everyone has a funny wildlife story or two to tell, and the Internet and social media are always full of “cute” animal posts. After all, animals have always played an important role in our daily lives. There are the domesticated animals which provide us with food, clothing, and companionship; then there’s the wildlife most of us will only encounter in zoos, sanctuaries, or on safaris.

It’s not uncommon to read usually unfortunate stories of man’s encounters with wildlife. Sometimes our paths cross quite unintentionally, often with hilarious results. However, some stories are so bizarre that they prompt not only a good laugh but many social media shares. From rampaging seagulls to bears from above, sushi-stealing penguins, and a snakebite victim’s ultimate revenge, here are some of the funniest wildlife stories which have recently made the news.

10 Man Bites Snake

Being bitten by a snake is not particularly unusual. However, one Indian man didn’t quite follow typical first aid procedures and exacted a bizarre revenge on the rat snake which bit him one Sunday afternoon in July 2019. When his quiet drink was interrupted by an unexpected snakebite, the victim bit back. He literally grabbed the snake and chewed it to pieces.^[1]

Hospital staff were astounded when the man’s family brought not only the snakebite victim but also the remains of the chewed-up snake. Fortunately, the snake involved was not considered venomous.

9 Disorderly Seabirds

Seagulls are often the scourge of any seaside town as they flock in droves to scavenge food, leaving droppings everywhere. A picnic of fish and chips can quickly turn into a feeding frenzy as flocks of seabirds descend upon unsuspecting holidaymakers. It’s also not uncommon to have an “unwelcome deposit” dropped on you from above.

However, seaside towns in Southern England have been battling drunken behavior, not from their human pub patrons but the native seagulls, who seem to be developing a taste for alcohol. Seagulls in Bournemouth and Devon have been enjoying a tipple from leftover drinks from pubs, breweries, and even from drink containers left at the beach, basically anywhere they can scavenge alcohol.

The inebriated birds have been seen staggering along the beach as well as vomiting on passersby. Wildlife officers called in to treat the ill gulls have reported that they “stink of alcohol” after partying on the booze dregs. The drunken birds are collected and taken to a nearby sanctuary for treatment.^[2]

8 Chihuahua Snatched By Seagull

When they aren’t scavenging food from seaside picnickers, seagulls are generally predators, dining on crabs and small fish within close proximity of their rookeries. The seemingly fearless birds have even been known to attack passing whales, diving for a bite of live whale meat.

In July 2019, a family from Devon was distraught when a swooping seagull carried off their pet. Gizmo the Chihauhua was watching his owner hang out the laundry in the backyard when a seagull suddenly descended and carried off the small dog.^[3] Despite hopes that their pet may have been dropped when the gull realized it had snatched a dog, Gizmo has not been located.

Wildlife officers confirmed that this was bizarre behavior, even for seagulls.

7 Sushi-Stealing Penguins

Little Penguins, native to New Zealand and parts of Southeast Australia, tend to be shy creatures. Tourists and locals enjoy the sunset “penguin parades,” when the little birds waddle back into their beachside rookeries after a day’s fishing. Very rarely do they welcome human interaction.

However, in July 2019, a couple of little penguins in Wellington, New Zealand, apparently decided to save themselves the trouble of fishing. The pair set up nest under the fridge in a harborside sushi bar, where they were helping themselves to the fish. Wildlife officers apprehended the pair, returning them to Wellington Harbour and its abundant fish.

Obviously not happy to be back in the wild, the pair once again swam back to shore, waddling back up the street to resume their free feeding. Officers then relocated the birds a little farther offshore in the hope that they would resume more traditional fishing methods.^[4]

6 Australian Steer Reporting For ‘Bale’

In June 2019, a police station on Australia’s east coast was forced into lockdown, not over a violent criminal but a rampaging steer.

The Belted Galloway was one of two steers being transported on a livestock trailer through the coastal town of Batemans Bay. When the vehicle stopped at a traffic light, one of the steers managed to escape from the trailer, causing havoc as it ran up and down the busy street.

Local police were astounded when the steer eventually barged through the door of the police station, rampaging through the front area. Unlike some parts of Australia, Batemans Bay is not a place where you would expect to find cattle in the middle of town.

Humorous reports of the incident told of the offender being given a “Moooooooove-on direction” and stated that it was looking for “bale.” Livestock officers were eventually able to impound the runaway before reuniting him with his owner.^[5]

5 Alligator In Florida Pool

When you live near waterways that are home to potentially dangerous reptiles such as alligators and crocodiles, you are well-aware of the safety precautions to avoid unwelcome encounters. But you would expect your backyard swimming pool would be a relatively safe place to cool off. Not so for one family in Fernandina Beach, Florida, who found that an alligator had made itself quite at home in their pool in August 2019.

When Wendy Langley heard splashing in the pool during the middle of the night, an alligator was the last thing she expected to find swimming around when she turned on the floodlights.

Wendy didn’t want to risk her small children or pet dog coming into contact with the alligator in the morning, so a late-night rescue mission began to remove the unwelcome swimmer. Local authorities took several hours to trap the reptile, transporting it to a more suitable swimming spot.^[6]

4 ‘Drop Bear’

Wandering wildlife are a known road hazard. Around the world, deer, elk, kangaroos, livestock, and more are frequent causes of accidents when they wander onto busy highways. But bears? In August 2019, a California police car was reduced to burned-out wreckage after being hit by a surprise falling bear.^[7]

A sheriff’s deputy was driving along State Route 96 when a bear suddenly landed on the vehicle’s hood, smashing the windshield. The impact caused the vehicle to roll onto an embankment, bursting into flames.

The driver miraculously escaped injury in the bizarre encounter, and the bear decamped from the scene before emergency crews arrived. It isn’t known whether the bear simply fell on the car from the nearby steep embankment or jumped onto it.

3 A Silent Travel Companion

Many of us enjoy traveling with our dogs. Be it a short trip to the shops or a long road trip, our canine friends make excellent travel companions. It is always sad when we inevitably have to say goodbye. Not so for one Oregon dog owner, however.

When his loyal Jack Russell Terrier, Phoebe, died in 2013, Mitch Byer had her stuffed so that she could continue to be an everyday part of his life. He even continues to take her on road trips. However, he has run into issues involving people concerned about the dog left in his car. This has happened frequently enough that Mitch now places a sign in his window that reads, “Don’t worry, the dog is already dead. She’s taxidermied. Please don’t break my window.”

Phoebe even has her own social media accounts, which have attracted a following.^[8]

2 Raccoon Stuck In Vending Machine

The raccoon’s masked facial features tend to mark it as a bit of a bandit. However, one furry thief in Florida was caught red-pawed in August 2019. Not content with foraging for fruit, or even scavenging from a garbage bin, this unfortunate raccoon managed to break into a high school vending machine, where he proceeded to feast on fruit snacks.

Unfortunately, he became trapped in the machine, from which he was later apprehended. Local wildlife authorities attended the scene, wheeling the vending machine outside before dismantling it and letting the four-legged thief make his escape.^[9]

1 Fox Cubs Bouncing On Trampoline

All kids love a bit of fun in the backyard, and even baby animals enjoy a frolic in the wild. Childhood stories abound with tales of woodland creatures coming out at night to play. However, these midnight frolics actually do happen, as a homeowner in Cardiff, Wales, discovered in August 2019.

His motion-sensor cameras alerted him to movement in the yard very early one morning. He was astonished to find the culprits were a family of fox cubs happily playing on the trampoline. The man filmed the wildlife antics for some time, as the baby foxes happily bounced and played.

It isn’t unusual to see the odd fox passing through the backyard early in the evening, but taking over the play equipment in the middle of the night was certainly something out of the ordinary.^[10]

Lesley Connor is a retired Australian newspaper editor who enjoys researching bizarre, unusual, and entertaining news stories from around the world.

With UFOs now part of the mainstream news cycle, it’s time to get acquainted with the pilots — according to the ten silliest encounters we could find.

10. Reptoids

Reptoids, or Reptilians, are a race of bipedal humanoid reptiles. Depending on who you ask, they’re from a world orbiting Alpha Draconis in the Draco system or from right here on Earth, having evolved from dinosaurs and survived underground. Either way, they’re considered malevolent. 

In fact, most encounters involve abduction and rape. One woman in Mexico, for example, a virgin, discovered she was pregnant after a “missing time” episode. According to her report, she noticed a UFO while driving past Teotihuacan at 11 a.m. then suddenly, with no memory of how, found herself 185 miles away at 2 p.m. that afternoon. In the weeks that followed, she suffered weakness and nausea and upon examination was told she was pregnant. After seven months, she gave birth to a monstrous Reptilian hybrid with “double-membraned eyes, thick frog-like lips, joined fingers” and a shell like that of a tortoise. Although afraid of the creature, doctors tended to its needs, which included “a diet of herbs” and incubation under infrared light. After three weeks it was raised by its mother “in seclusion”. According to UFO theorists, Reptoid hybrids (or “crossbreeds”) such as this are part of a long-term plan to infiltrate human civilization in the lead-up to a full-scale invasion.

Not all Reptoid encounters are unwanted, though. LA jazz singer Pamela Stonebrooke spoke openly about her “great respect” for the reptilians she had sex with. Like others, though less grudgingly, she said the orgasms were “incredible”. She disagreed that Reptoids were repulsive. 

9. Venusians

Like Earthlings, Venusians (or “Space Brothers,” as ufologist George Adamski called them) come in various colors. Their activities on Earth, out of their underground bases, include monitoring our species and working with our rulers. 

Adamski claimed to have met his first Venusian, named Orthon, in 1952. They met in the Colorado Desert, Adamski said, recalling the sigil-like imprint left by Orthon’s shoe in the sand.

Another notable contactee is Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of former Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama. In her book Very Strange Things I’ve Encountered, she claims to have been abducted and flown to Venus — “a very beautiful place,” she said, “very green”. Her husband, who was nicknamed “the Alien” by colleagues for his “otherworldly manner”, is apparently supportive of her claims.

8. Insectoids

Mantis-like beings up to 7 feet tall are common in abduction reports, usually accompanied by Greys. Often they’re dressed in robes with high collars, indicating their seniority. But their interactions with abductees tend to be fairly hands-off, usually limited to telepathic probing and stimulation of various emotions.

One notable exception is the painter David Huggins, who lost his virginity to an alien hybrid called Crescent. During the course of his encounters, he’s met Greys, “Hairy Guy” (like a short Sasquatch), and others besides Insectoids.

After a viewing of hybrid babies he’d fathered with Crescent, Huggins was guided by one of the Insectoids to a doorway pulsating with light. “It was like it was pushing it’s way out of the doorway,” he said, “[the light] had form.” Huggins followed the Insectoid’s instruction to step inside, at which point he felt the light passing through him. When he woke the next morning, he had an “incredible energy” that lasted weeks.

7. Andromedans

According to some, the blue-skinned Andromedans share our genetics and have been guiding humanity for millennia; they even appeared in Egyptian hieroglyphics. 

In modern times, they chose a former US Army helicopter pilot to be their spokesman on Earth — or at least that’s what Alex Collier claims. Since the 1990s, he’s been relaying their messages to fellow Earthlings. He’s informed us, for example, that humanity comprises 22 extraterrestrial species, and that the “Andromedan Council” is, effectively, our galaxy’s United Nations. To be fair, it sounds just as fractious. Some on the council want to save our species, while others think we’re too cruel and arrogant — especially since, according to Collier, helping would violate their time-honored commitment to non-intervention (Star Trek style). 

But what makes this such a dilemma for the Council is all the ET interference to date. If they’d left us alone, Collier said, we wouldn’t be where we are now; all the ETs that have visited (and often stayed) through the ages have stunted our spiritual evolution with stupid ideologies, ultimately culminating in the nuclear bomb. Further complicating matters is the alleged treaty signed by President Eisenhower granting the Greys free reign over Earth in exchange for alien technology. According to Collier, the Greys are unlikely to let Andromedans come here (much like when nations shut out the UN). Even human governments wouldn’t trust them enough to dismantle their nuclear arsenals.

6. Humans

Most ET species are humanoid in form, but some are more human than others. Lemurian hybrids, for instance, with their dark hair and olive skin, apparently look a lot like Middle Easterns. And Vegans, from a world orbiting Vega, look just like Indians according to a Brazilian contactee. 

So it could have been either of these species that chicken farmer (or plumber) Joe Simonton encountered in 1961. At 11 a.m. on April 18, he heard a sound he likened to “knobby tires on wet pavement”, alerting him to a flying saucer hovering outside his house, just above the ground. It didn’t land, but when he approached the craft a “gate” opened on the side revealing three Italian-looking aliens in turtlenecks and helmets. They apparently looked so human that Simonton could estimate their age — 25-30 years old.

One of the three gave him a metallic, possibly aluminum, container and, gesturing, asked him to fill it with water. When he did as they asked, another of the three — who’d been cooking on a hob in red-striped pants, and who Simonton referred to as the “chef” — gave him four 7.5-centimeter pancakes with holes in. Later analyzed by the Air Force, NICAP, and the FDA, these pancakes were found to be made from flour, sugar, grease, and (according to rumor) possibly an unknown wheat. The Air Force labeled the encounter “unexplained” and Simonton went on tour with his story.

5. Nordics

The most famous human-looking ETs are the fair-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed Nordics — so-called for their resemblance to Swedes. They’re also known as Plejarens or Pleiadians — although some who claim to be in contact with the species insist Plejarens and Pleiadians are distinct, since Plejarens are not from the Pleiades.

Either way, Nordics, Pleiadians, and Plejarens are all described as benevolent. Allegedly, they once tried to convince President Eisenhower to get rid of America’s nukes in exchange for alien technology. Unfortunately, however, Eisenhower (being a US president) signed a treaty with the Greys instead — allowing them to abduct whoever they liked in exchange for alien technology without having to give up his nukes.

Eisenhower isn’t the only politician to have encountered the Nordics up close. Another is the former vice mayor and congressional candidate for Florida Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera, who made headlines during her 2017 campaign for claiming she’d been on a spaceship. She’d been welcomed aboard in her youth, she said, by blond, telepathic, robed ETs resembling, as she put it, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio. There they told her that the “center of the world’s energy is Africa,” that Florida’s Coral Castle is an ancient pyramid, that every religion is in touch with the same energy mistakenly personified as “God”, and that 30,000 non-human skulls were discovered in a cave on Malta. 

4. Orions

Like Nordics, Vegans, and others, the Orions resemble human beings. In fact, with their darker features, they’re more like humanity than the others. 

Sometimes they’re described as a malevolent race. Contactee George Hunt Williamson, for example (relaying a 1952 message from Uranus), listed “evil humans and menacing aliens from the Orion Solar Systems” among the threats to Earth from outer space. There are six “Orion Solar Systems” in total, he said — “the Unholy Six” — each populated by “negative space intelligences” that seek to plunder Earth’s resources to replenish their own dying worlds. And apparently they’re already here.

A more recent report from 2019, however, presents Orions as peaceful and caring — so maybe they changed their mind. Printed in Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper, the report came from the small rural village Guasimal, where locals claim to have been visited by tall dark humanoids since December 2012. These encounters have mostly been frightening, they say; the beings only appear at night, always dressed in black — and their voices are strange and robotic. But in 2018 the visitors delivered their message: “people need to love each other, otherwise the human race will soon be destroyed.” The beings also claimed to have been living there in an underground base for 60 years since arriving on Earth from Orion. A police officer called by one of the locals corroborated some of the account; he saw the silhouettes of the tall dark beings, as did ufologist Cristian Ramos.

3. Alpha Centaurians

The aquatic, luminous blue-skinned Alpha Centaurians, from our Sun’s closest neighbor, are said to live deep in our oceans — launching UFOs from their submarine bases and, depending on who you talk to, either mutilating cattle or enlightening humans.

According to a woman who in 2022 had afternoon tea with one, they’re also powerfully telepathic. They are, she claimed, able to stop us asking questions by giving us “brain fog”. This helps steer conversations to the most important matters, like (in this case) what internet provider we’re with. Apparently, Alpha Centaurians insistently recommend Starlink and speak highly of its founder Elon Musk — who, they say, spends a lot of time doing business off world. “Elon Musk is meant to accomplish great things for humanity,” said the alien, whose species allegedly belongs to the “Galactic Federation of Worlds.”

2. Greys

Although humanoid, Greys — with their pale grey skin, large black eyes, and hairless heads larger than their bodies — are basically the opposite of humans. Ufological lore explains this as an adaptation to life underground following the destruction of their planet’s surface by nukes. Originally Greys looked more or less like we do, only with larger eyes. Their interest in human experimentation, it’s said, is in recovering their capacity for emotion.

As the most commonly reported alien species, there are plenty of strange encounters. But few come close to that of explosive engineer Philip Schneider. In the 1970s, while helping to construct an underground military base in Dulce, New Mexico, he came face to face with the 7-foot extraterrestrials. For some reason, he had a pistol and opened fire, killing two, while a third shot back with a plasma ball — blowing off some of his fingers. Although Schneider was saved by a Green Beret soldier, 60 human beings lost their lives — including that same Green Beret. And, said Schneider, the war is still raging today.

Dulce is just one of almost 1,500 such bases worldwide, each financed by secret “black budgets” and many now arenas of war. Another famous example from the US’s alleged portfolio of 129 subterranean alien bases is the one at Groom Lake, Nevada: Area 51. According to former employee Bob Lazar, there was a shootout with Greys down there too — sparked off when a human security guard told a Grey not to enter a Grey-controlled area with a loaded weapon in hand. Another firefight at Dulce started a similar way, when humans refused to take the bullets from their guns when ordered to do so by Greys.

1. Martians

Although historically a catch-all term, “Martian” now means something specific: two-feet-tall humanoids from Mars. According to ufological lore, they were our neighboring planet’s dominant species three billion years ago, perhaps because of their bulbous brains. They’re also known as “Dwarfs” or “Gnomes” and communicate via music or telepathy.

Perhaps the weirdest report comes from an English housewife. One morning in early January 1979, after her husband left for work, she noticed a light outside. To her surprise, it was coming from a giant orange sphere above the garage. As she and her dog watched from inside (until the dog toppled sideways unconscious), three winged dwarves flew past her to the living room. 

She felt cold and weak herself, but followed them through and saw two of them shaking the Christmas tree, toppling the fairy to the floor. Each wore a helmet with a light on top. None of them had fingers or toes. Their limbs just tapered to points, but somehow they were able to pick up objects in the room. When the housewife finally succumbed to paralysis, the Martians spoke in unison in gruff, masculine voices: “Nice?” Then she was able to move. They didn’t answer her questions at first, they just repeated them back to her and flapped around the room, jumping on the couch. If they didn’t like what she said, they shot a beam from their helmets at her forehead, causing temporary blindness and paralysis. However, they softened when she told them it hurt. They also began answering questions, like where they were from (“the sky”). They even asked questions of their own, for example about the picture of Jesus she had on the wall, about the Queen, housewives, and children. They also asked for water, which she duly supplied on a tray with several mince pies. When they each had a glass she lifted hers and they lifted theirs, but when they saw she was watching them they blinded her again. Once her sight had returned she thought of offering them cigarettes, since they’d taken an interest in the box; but when she lit one they shrank back in fear.

Eventually, a loud noise outside signaled the return of the orange sphere and the Martians “put their hands to their sides … lifted themselves up,” pressing buttons on their chests, and “glided themselves out” — each with a mince pie in hand (or on the points at the end of their arms). The housewife collapsed in pain on the couch and lay unconscious for the rest of the day. When she woke up, neither her clock, radio, or TV were working — nor the cassette tapes the Martians had touched.

Most people are familiar with claims of UFO sightings made from planes. And many of us will have heard or read about UFOs witnessed from the deck of a ship or tracked on the radar of a submarine. However, what perhaps does not come to mind quite so quickly are UFO encounters with locomotive trains, often as they are speeding down the tracks in an otherwise lonely part of their respective countries.

There are many such sightings on record. And what’s more, they span decades, from the start of the modern UFO era to our contemporary times. Here are ten of the most intriguing and bizarre railroad UFO encounters.

Related: 10 UFO And Alien Encounters From America’s Early Years

10 The 1702 Incident: UFO Drags Train Along Tracks in the Soviet Union

Without a doubt, one of the most fascinating encounters involving a moving train occurred on the evening of February 17, 1985, on the Petrozavodsk to Suoyarvi section of the Oktyabrskaya Railway in Soviet Karelia (now the Republic of Karelia). A short time after setting off, the crew noticed a strange, ball-like object moving over the trees alongside the track. What’s more, the object appeared to be following them.

Suddenly, the glowing orb rushed toward the train, coming to within around 100 feet of it. It then moved to a position in front of it, again at about 100 feet. The driver, Sergy Orlov, slammed on the brakes and turned off the engine. However, the train failed to slow down. In fact, it appeared to Orlov and the other driver on board that it was being dragged along the track.

They continued down the tracks, eventually coming up on Novye Peski Station. It seemed as if the object would smash right into the station house ahead. However, it moved from in front of the train at the very last second and circled around the building before moving back in front once more.

It continued to drag the train before disappearing several minutes later. As soon as it vanished, the train began to slow down, eventually coming to a stop at the next station. When Orlov exited the cabin to see if there was any damage, though, a beam of light struck him from above. In fact, he would later claim the light pressed him against the train itself. He eventually struggled back into the cabin and remained there until the light vanished.

The object would return a third time once the train had set out on its final part of the journey. It once more dragged the train for some time before finally disappearing for good.^[1]

9 UFO Crashes Into a Train in Kentucky

Although there is debate as to the authenticity of the account, an incident that unfolded near Paintsville, Kentucky, in the early hours of January 14, 2002, wasn’t merely a sighting of a strange, unknown object, it would result in substantial damage to the freight train in question.

As the train made its way along the tracks, the driver noticed a strange light in the distance. This was followed by the malfunctioning of the train’s electrics and the train slowing down. At this point, the driver noticed that the lights were, in fact, silver disc-shaped objects. What’s more, they appeared to be scanning the river below.

The next thing he knew, as the train made its way around a bend on the track, one of these silver objects was heading straight for him. It would ultimately crash into the front carriage before rising into the air and ascending out of sight as if nothing had happened. The damage to the train, though, was substantial.

What made the alleged incident even stranger was when they finally arrived in Paintsville, a mysterious team of engineers and workers were waiting for them. As was a gentleman named Ferguson, who interviewed the men for several hours. He would eventually tell them that the incident was a “national security matter” and requested they keep the encounter to themselves. The damaged train cars were taken into the strange unit’s custody. ^[2]

8 The Monon Railroad Incident

One of the earliest recorded encounters involving a UFO and a speeding train unfolded at around 3 am on October 3, 1958, on the Monon Railroad in Indiana. On its way to Indianapolis, the crew of Freight Train 91 would witness several strange objects flying over them. The train itself was carrying almost half a mile of cars, with two of the five-man crew being positioned at the back of the train.

While the drivers at the front noticed the lights first, it was the two men at the back—Ed Robinson and Paul Sosbey—who “got the best look at things” when the UFOs circled around the train and then approached them from behind.

Robinson would reach for his flashlight and flash the light toward the objects in an attempt to communicate. This received no response. However, when he aimed the beam of the torch at the object, it moved purposely out of the way. This happened several times and seemingly caused the glowing objects to “zip off” and disappear into the distance. In total, the objects pursued the locomotive for over an hour.^[3]

7 The 1977 Fostoria C&O Railroad Sighting

On the evening of October 21, 1977, Howard Albert was seated in the cabin of his train on the private line of the C&O distribution warehouse in Fostoria, Ohio. He was waiting for the train to be guided into the warehouse when he noticed what he thought was a “shooting star” fly overhead. However, when the star began to “curve downward,” he realized he saw something truly strange.

The object descended to the ground and began to slowly approach the train. At a distance of around 200 feet, it suddenly stopped, hovering about 15 feet from the ground. He looked on in awe before reaching for the walkie-talkie he used to stay in contact with his conductor, Donald. He informed him to “come up to the engine…we got a UFO here!”

Howard described the object as disc-shaped but similar to a “birthday cake.” It also had “glowing banks of vertical tubes” all around it and was “rotating counter-clockwise.” He would estimate that it was around 50 feet high and at least 90 feet wide and was completely silent.

After several moments he decided to let the train’s headlight glow brightly for several seconds to see if the object responded. To his amazement, it did, suddenly glowing brightly for the same amount of time. At this point, Donald had arrived from the back of the train and also saw the object. Both men would later state that while they believed the craft was friendly, both had a bizarre feeling of “knowing” not to approach it. After around 20 minutes, the object began to spin faster, eventually rising into the air and disappearing until it became nothing but a “yellowish star.”^[4]

6 Black Triangular Object Photographed in Plymouth, New Hampshire

According to “Joy P’s” claims on the radio show Coast to Coast, she photographed a bizarre triangular craft while on a moving train near Plymouth in New Hampshire. What’s more, the sighting occurred in broad daylight on the afternoon of October 25, 2003.

Joy would claim that she was attempting to capture pictures of red deer she could see in the forests that lined the train tracks. However, when she studied the photos later that day, she noticed the black triangular craft over the treetops.

Since the object only appeared in one of the photographs, it was deemed unlikely to have been a reflection from the window. And what’s more, the camera had been checked and cleaned only hours earlier in preparation for the journey. It would appear whatever the object was, none of the other passengers reported seeing anything unusual. And the fact that Joy herself didn’t see the object at the time has led some researchers to suggest it was simply not visible to the human eye.^[5]

5 The 1957 Whitley Strieber Account: Abducted by Aliens on a Train Journey

Author Whitley Strieber is no stranger to UFO and alien encounters, having released the book Communion in the mid-1980s, telling of his own abduction experiences. However, if we believe Strieber’s claims, it would appear that his encounters with otherworldly entities have been happening since he was a child. One specific incident that is of interest to us here occurred “at some point in 1957” during a train journey from Wisconsin to Texas with his sister and his father.

In a truly bizarre case, without realizing what had happened, all three of them went from being on the speeding train to being on some kind of strange vehicle. Both Strieber and his sister could hear their father screaming in terror somewhere nearby.

In later years, using hypnotic regression, it was revealed that the incident was indeed a case of alien abduction. It also suggested that not only had Strieber seemingly been abducted repeatedly since he was young, but other members of his family had been as well. Perhaps also of interest, Strieber had vague memories of soldiers in uniform being present during the encounter.^[6]

4 UFO Photographed from a Train in Germany

As Harry Hauxler passed through the German town of Oberwesel on a train on the afternoon of March 8, 1964, he suddenly noticed a disc ascending into the sunlit sky. Realizing he had his camera with him, he pointed it toward the strange object and took a picture.

The object appeared to be a dark grey or black color and was a similar shape to a spinning top with a “dark vortex” underneath it.

Many skeptics who have viewed the picture have claimed the object is nothing more than a road sign or lamppost that has been produced by brief exposure because of the speed of the moving train. However, those who believe that Hauxler managed to capture something truly strange argue that, unlike other cases where the object was not seen until later, Hauxler claims to have seen the apparent craft rise with his own eyes at the time.

The picture (above) was soon released to the public and is still regarding as one of the most intriguing of such photographs.^[7]

3 UFO Witnessed from on Board an L&N Train near Mount Vernon

At just before 7 am on October 20, 1973, a conductor and another crew member on an L&N train witnessed a very bright light heading toward them from the north as they passed near Mount Vernon, Indiana—a period of active UFO sightings in the state. They noticed that the light appeared to be some kind of craft, but unlike any either had seen before. As they continued to watch it, they noted how it seemed to pulsate, going from blindingly bright to much dimmer. After several moments, the glowing object changed direction and headed away from the locomotive.

The conductor reported the sighting to the crew at the back of the train. Several moments later, they responded that there was now an unknown object at the back of the train, and it appeared to be following them. The unknown vehicle would follow the train for a considerable distance before eventually moving off as quickly as it had arrived.

According to the research and investigative work of Francis Ridge, the U.S. Air Force eventually confiscated the train in order to “study it.” Their findings, however, are unknown.^[8]

2 Senator Richard Russell Sees Disc-Shaped Object While Traveling Through the Soviet Union

While on a train journey in the Transcaucasia region of the Soviet Union on October 4, 1955, Georgia Senator, Richard Russell, witnessed a disc-shaped object while looking out of the window. He would claim that as the object rose into the air, he could see “a flame shot” from its underside.

He watched in amazement as the disc sped across the tracks in front of the train. At this point, Russell stood and approached his companions to tell them what he had just seen. As the group stared out of the window, they noticed another disc-shaped object approaching the moving train from the same direction as the first.

As the three men watched the bizarre incident unfold, a Soviet conductor approached them and pulled shut the curtains. He ordered them not to look out the window, which they duly obeyed.

They would report the sighting to the United States embassy as soon as they arrived in Prague, and news of the incident soon reached reporters in the United States. However, adding another layer of intrigue to the encounter, when Russell was asked about the sighting by a Los Angeles Examiner journalist, he responded that the agencies he had reported it to “are of the opinion that it is not wise to publicize this matter at this time.” The incident was eventually declassified in 1985.^[9]

1 Train Passenger Sees Six Disc-Shaped Objects over the Arizona Desert

More recently, in the summer of 2017, a train passenger traveling through Apache County in Arizona claimed to have seen “six hovering, two-story objects beaming light to the ground” below. According to the report submitted to MUFON, the witness was unable to sleep and so was looking out of the window at the time. It was then she noticed a “bright light that became brighter as the train approached.”

She soon realized there were multiple objects and that they were disc-shaped. She estimated they were approximately 100 feet from the moving train. The witness managed to capture several pictures of the moving objects, three of which were submitted to MUFON in the report.

The mother’s son—who filed the report—stated that his mother was “not one to exaggerate or seek attention” and that her claims should be treated as genuine. As we might imagine, there were many differing opinions on what the woman might have witnessed. And these ranged from a vehicle from another world to them being nothing more than a Chinese lantern. The sighting remains unexplained.^[10]

There are three types of people in this world. Some invite spirits and go out of their way searching for them. Some believe the stories of others. And then some want nothing to do with it and find themselves starring in their very own nightmarish episode. Here are 10 of the craziest tales of paranormal encounters.

Related: 10 Demons You Should Probably Try To Avoid

10 Talking Toys

A young boy received a Furby as a present but soon outgrew the electronic toy, setting it on a shelf in the basement closet to collect dust. Sometime later, the boy’s older brother and his friend were hanging out one evening and ended up falling asleep in that same basement.

But they were woken up by a kid’s voice saying, “Come play with me!” After not finding anything odd about the toy—not knowing it doesn’t speak English—he and his friend thought nothing of it and went back to sleep. The next morning, the boys learned that Furbies only speak when moved and Furbies only talk in gibberish. Plus, the toy didn’t have any batteries in it.

9 Energy Conduits

When a paranormal investigator’s father told him about a spirit haunting his childhood home, he had to check it out. He and a few friends identified the spirit as a threatening witch draining them of energy. Besides capturing audio, he also saw an apparition loom behind his friend. As he explained this to him, they heard the spirit’s voice again and caught an orb leaving the scene simultaneously on film. Meanwhile, their other friend sat on the stairs, completely drained of energy despite being well-rested.

It takes a lot for a spirit to manifest itself across the veil. Most paranormal investigation equipment is designed to withstand a spirit’s attacks and even help filter through frequencies to boost their signal.

8 The Edinburgh Vaults

All the way across the pond in rainy Scotland, the Edinburgh Vaults are a series of rooms in the South Bridge used as taverns, workshops, and storage spaces. Over time, businesses left, and the homeless took residence, followed by illegal gambling dens and body dumping grounds for killers. It’s unclear when the vaults were sealed in the 1800s, but they were rediscovered in the 1980s. Since then, various witnesses have experienced attacks and scratches from a demonic spirit who they claim to be Mr. Boots, the murderer of a young woman. When the Vaults were reopened, archaeologists found her body in one of the chambers.

Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures crew was locked down in the Vaults overnight and challenged the spirit by shining flashlights and antagonizing Mr. Boots to react. When the main investigator antagonized the spirit too far, their electrical meter sparks a surge over 25 ohms of energy, equivalent to a small magnet.

7 The Apartment from Hell

A college student was home for winter break, and her friend said her house was haunted. Being an avid ghost expert, the girl and her friend conducted an EVP session in the master bedroom. An EVP is an electronic voice phenomenon, and during the session, the group began to experience headaches and stomach pains. The friend revealed that her grandparents died in that bedroom, but then they heard noises from the kitchen. They moved their EVP session to the kitchen, which became drastically hot, like the oven had been turned on, except it hadn’t.

Grasping hands, a friend started praying and condemning the spirit, but their hands started separating by themselves. And something was coming upstairs from the basement. A horned shadow stretched along the wall, and the friend yelled at the spirit to leave. She woke up on the floor a full five minutes later. Her friends left the house, and once she did too, they told her she smelled like fire and ash and had a red handprint on her ankle.

6 The Mansfield House

A woman’s son got laid off from work, so he and his fiancee came to stay with her, and the mother was happy not to be alone in the house anymore. The fiancee put their baby down for a nap with the baby monitor next to the crib. She goes downstairs to start making lunch and hears “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” playing from the monitor. They didn’t have toys that made music in the crib. Then the son’s name is said over the monitor, and within seconds, the baby is screaming.

Later, the mother had nightmares of a little girl abused by nuns. The nuns threw the girl against the wall, and the mom woke from the dream, knowing the girl was dead. She researched the house and discovered a concrete chamber added to the foundation. She and her son cracked it open and found cremated human remains of the young girl.

5 The Woman in White

At the Honolulu Police Department’s Training Facility, a security guard was working one night when the outdoor wooden shutters of the facility started wildly opening and closing. When the guard approached, they suddenly stopped. He went on about his shift and saw a woman in a white dress crossing the parking lot toward him. He assumed she needed help but never heard the gate open and wondered how she got inside the perimeter.

The guard asked if she needed help, to which she said nothing, and she continued toward the house while staring blankly ahead. When the guard turned around and saw nothing out of the ordinary, he turned back to face the woman only to discover that she had vanished. He continued his shift and eventually sat down to take a break, but the woman was sitting across from him when he looked up. He ran and never worked another shift at the facility again. Women in white are often victims, and we can assume some act was committed against her to cause her spirit to linger.

4 Third Time’s the Charm

Located in famed San Jose, California, the builders of Winchester Mystery House constructed it using sacred geometry meant to connect it with the astral plane. Whether this was to help or confuse the spirits is unknown.

A paranormal investigator had visited the house before with friends, and when he returned, they were standing in the hallway when they saw a light flicker at the other end like someone had walked past it. They hurried across the labyrinth and asked the spirit if it had walked past. They received a vocal answer and the feeling that they were not welcome to return to the house a third time.

3 Galveston Graveyard

A famous YouTube vlogger known for her dark, gothic style revealed that she was really sick when she was about three years old, and living in a state between life and death opened a channel between her and spirits. In her teenage years, she regularly visited the oldest cemetery in Galveston and found comfort in the presence of spirits as one would when relaxing with friends. She even felt an attraction to certain tombstones.

Midway through the video explaining this, she has to switch her battery because it keeps draining. She continues that she bought a brand new car, but the electrical, radio, and AC have been acting up. She also explains that there are carbon monoxide detectors in every room of her house, but only the one in her bedroom is triggered.

Due to her experiences in the graveyard, she passed a girl at a store and sensed an intense sadness. She stopped and talked to her and learned that the girl’s grandparents had passed away. The vlogger went back and researched names from the Galveston Graveyard. The girl is a great-granddaughter of the tombstones she was visiting.

2 Mount Vernon

A history enthusiast visited George Washington’s estate on the 4th of July. Given that it was the middle of summer in Virginia, the house was very warm since houses back then were not built with any cooling systems. But when this visitor stuck their head into Washington’s room, the room where he died, it was freezing cold.

She peeked around the door frame due to a delineator preventing a guest from stepping inside the room, and as she paused at the washbasin and mirror, she felt someone staring at her. She immediately tried to move but could not even open her mouth and call her help. She then felt the unseen figure walk up to her and stare her down until she was finally released and fell back on her rear. She immediately wanted to leave the house despite being the one who had suggested the trip. Her family still doesn’t believe her to this day.

1 Brothers and Basements

An older brother and his family moved to the suburbs. His little brother refused to go downstairs, and the family chalked it up to typical little kid stuff since he was five or six at the time. A couple of months later, the younger brother has a meltdown at the dinner table, sobbing and pointing at the door to the basement, crying, “It’s staring at me!” The house seemed to calm down once the family got him to calm down, too, until the older brother’s birthday rolled around.

He heard someone singing and, assuming it to be his parents, he went downstairs, but no one was there. So he went back to his room and heard the song again. The voice was coming from the vents. To the basement. A couple of weeks later, his little brother went missing, and the family tore apart the house looking for him, but they couldn’t find him. But they heard him crying in the vents. The family’s mother prevented the older son from going downstairs, where she saw a shadow in the shape of a man. She yelled for it to get out of her house and leave her sons alone, to which the spirit left, and shortly after, she found the younger son in the basement

Rationalizations of the “real” nature of paranormal encounters have become more prominent in the public consciousness than straight-up belief. Past trauma, suspected meteorological phenomenon, or visual hallucinations brought on by ingesting two fistfuls of weird mushrooms found growing on the side of the interstate are far easier statements for us moderns to take in than “well…I guess demons are real then.” But every once in a wonderful while, we get an example of the absolutely wild, hilarious, and even (dare we say it) plausible examples of encounters with unexplainable beings. Strap in, folks. This one’s a blast.

Related: 10 Mythological Creatures That Really Existed (Sort Of)

10 The Malawi Terror Beast

Panic is not just a natural human emotion; it is an event that can ruin a community. Many cases of mass hysteria have innocuous or even unidentifiable origins. A brief bout of brain fog due to a cold can send a classroom of impressionable youths into a full-blown fit of sympathetic (and escalating) symptoms, often accompanied by a spurious conspiratorial/supernatural explanation. This isn’t one of those cases. Well, sort of.

The main difference in the case of the “Malawi Terror Beast Attacks” is that the cause of the panic was quite real. Throughout 2003, 4,000 villagers from Malawi’s central Dowa district fled their homes after a spate of animal attacks that maimed and disfigured many and killed at least three. The monster tore our eyes and removed facial features and even limbs. Many locals claimed the beast had an array of magical powers that allowed it into people’s homes to prey upon them. It was probably a rabid hyena.^[1]

Probably.

9 The Escaped Prisoner of War and the Abominable Snowman

Slawomir Rawicz was a Polish soldier and a prisoner of war in Russia in 1941. Not a good place to be, those Soviet gulags. So, he decided to flee. Alongside six other prisoners, Rawicz trudged his way across Siberia, the Gobi Desert, and over the Himalayas in Tibet into British India. This year-long march was punctuated by moments of great hardship and peril. Most notably, a period in the mountains where he and his comrades took a moment to view a pair of Yeti as they also journeyed across the frozen wastes.

The beasts stood 2.5 meters (8 feet) tall and, according to the author: “Their faces I could not see in detail, but the heads were squarish, and the ears must lie close to the skull because there was no projection from the silhouette against the snow. The shoulders sloped sharply down to a powerful chest. The arms were long, and the wrists reached the level of the knees. Seen in profile, the back of the head was a straight line from the crown into the shoulders.” They had shaggy, “brownish-red, grey, and a rust-like” hair all over their massive frames.

That’s quite the account, especially given all the other amazing details of this mammoth journey from bondage to freedom.^[2]

Yeah, probably didn’t happen. A BBC investigation in 2006 revealed that Rawicz had been transferred to a refugee camp in Iran in 1942, not the subject of a film-worthy escape across the harsh wilds of the East. Still, cool story.

8 The “Real” Location of the “Well to Hell”

In 2020, YouTuber TechRax traveled to a thermal hot spring called “Diana’s Punchbowl,” found in the desert of Nye County, Nevada. There, he lowered an iPhone 11 into the boiling waters in the pit with the aid of a drone and a fishing line. He wanted to test whether it’d keep recording while submerged in the steaming waters. The first test was successful—the phone was undamaged, letting the viewer get a good look at the rocky landscape beneath the boiling water.

The second test (which is what every good scientist will do—replicate their experiment) revealed something horrific. The rocky landscape was accompanied by the sounds of pained screams and mournful yelling. From inside a hot spring… Did this humble tech YouTuber just encounter a host of damned souls? Or do iPhones really suck at audio capture?^[3]

BTW, “Diana’s Punchbowl” is also known as “The Devil’s Cauldron.” Just sayin’…

7 The (Not So) Missing Link to a Tiny Past

Claims of ape-like people living a solitary existence in the more extreme and remote environments are a human universal. There isn’t anywhere in the world where some group or another won’t claim that there’s a tribe of monstrous hominids hiding away. In the islands of Southeast Asia, the hidden tribes of ape-men are called the Orang Pendeck. These critters are unlike the giants that supposedly stalk the Siberian Taiga, the Pacific Northwest, or the foothills of the Himalayas: they’re teensy.

Versus the slew of Bigfoot videos to be found online, it seems that the few Orang Pendeck videos are of a more convincing nature. It’s apparently harder to get a convincing shot of a tiny person (a child, maybe?) to move around like a human-like being in a small costume than renting a King Kong costume for a pal and film them wandering through thick brush (with added whispered exclamations and shaky camera work, of course). The rich folklore surrounding the Orang Pendeck, coupled with the existence of the hominid sub-species Homo floresiensis many millennia ago, will leave even the most ardent cynic/skeptic with a long, drawn-out “maaaayyyyyyybe” on their lips.^[4]

6 Witches in Our Airspace

Now, both the videos found in this entry are weird. They seem to show flying/levitating humans. The immediate thought from those who wish the preternatural to be real is, “Aaaargh, witches are real. Hide the kids!” But, even if these were humans with the ability to fly, why would they be evil? Isn’t it kind of cool?

In the video from Monterrey, Mexico shot back in 2006, a humanoid figure gently floats alongside a mountain range, seemingly in a seated position, like an old lady riding an invisible stairlift. The second video, shot in a forested area in (probably) Russia, seems to show the discovery of a mother training her daughter (or child she has kidnapped) to remain static in mid-air. When they hear the video taker’s dog (named “Tarzan,” which is cute) barking at them, the girl descends quickly and runs off into the brush.

Given that both these videos may as well have been shot using a potato (thus making wires and such aids invisible amid the graininess), there is no proof that the footage shows humans with supernatural abilities. What motivates those who wish it were so, however, is equally mysterious—a will for the fantastical…or fear of the unknown?^[5]

5 The South African Sea Monster

Back to Africa now, but not to regard a “real” monster. It seems to be quite the opposite—just a dead animal. “Globsters,” as they are wonderfully/grossly termed, are the putrid, festering carcasses of large marine animals that have washed ashore. The ocean is a weird, alien place to us land-dwellers; even the corpses of deep-sea denizens look strange to us. How would you react to a large, woolly white mass if you saw it on the beach? You’d probably assume that this was the body of some titanic polar Bear-God who lost a fight with the Whale-God if you didn’t know better.

What if it seemingly had a trunk?

Well, check out the monstrous pile of goop that washed ashore at Margate in 1924. Locals claimed to have witnessed the creature fighting with two killer whales off the coast a few hours before washing ashore. And, on looking at the mess of furry, stinking flesh on the beach, it seemed to be plausible—a long, unidentifiable creature with a protuberance that resembled a trunk could easily inspire tales of an aquatic mammoth-like beast wrestling whales. Or, as stated before, it was a globster.^[6]

4 The Monster with an Untranslatable Name

“Almasty,” what does this mean?

We don’t really know. A scientist at the Soviet Academy of Sciences suggested back in 1964 that the “Almas” (Russian Bigfoot) may be a population of Neanderthals surviving in the Taiga. Maybe it’s a word from their language?

Yeah, probably not.

Supposed interactions with humans are rarely recounted. One prominent story is the “case” (fabricated story, perhaps) of Major General Mikhail Topolski of the Red Army from 1925. On leading his men through the densely forested Russian interior, hunting for rebel fighters, Topolski’s scouts attacked some of the rebels as they made their base in an ice cave. They threw grenades at the entrenched rebels, sealing the entrance to the cave with dislodged rock and ice. One of the men emerged to sue for peace. While they made ready to tentatively engage with their captives, the Red Army soldiers became shocked at hearing gunfire and howls emanate from the partially sealed cave. Rebels began to rush out of the collapsing cave, easy pickings for Red Army marksmen. One survived.

The rebel prisoner claimed that they had been attacked by a tribe of Almasty inside the cave. The monsters began clubbing the rebels with long sticks, prompting the rebels to flee. Only he had made it out unscathed. Topolski’s men claimed then to have identified the body of an Alamsty amid the rubble. They buried the body near the cave, leaving the bodies of the rebels and remaining monsters inside the collapsed cave. Another swashbuckling tale, but probably just that. Russia is a big place, though…^[7]

3 Gnomes? Seriously?

There are plenty of people who will watch a “first-hand account” of a paranormal experience and believe it hook, line, and sinker. To most people, however, they tend to see them as either obviously the work of opportunistic liars or the ramblings of a broken mind trying to concoct a fantasy that either deflects from some real-life trauma or a plea for attention.

But gnomes?

Well, there are quite a few videos that show encounters with tiny beings, usually sporting the same sort of garb as the gnomes from European folklore. The idea of there being a “hidden folk,” mischievous creatures that hide away from our perception, has long been a feature of folk traditions ranging from South America to Asia.

But gnomes? C’mon. Even leprechauns are scarier than these pot plant-guarding, bearded little old men.^[8]

2 Loneliness Is the Real Monster…or Weed?

Like all good love stories, the story of Nancy Hoggert and her lover John begins with some stolen cannabis buds getting consumed and a shotgun aimed at someone’s head.

Stick with it, folks. This is going to get weirder.

Despite the quirky nature of this story on the surface, it isn’t exactly newsworthy. Then the details emerge. “John,” the weed-stealing paramour that Nancy fell in love with, is a sasquatch. Given the obvious outcome of revealing his exact location (government tests and turning poor John into a super-soldier), Nancy keeps most of the details about her supernatural sweetheart under wraps. The sex is pretty good, though, she claims.^[9]

1 The Territorial Ghost

Every “psychic” will inform their punters that the spirits that remain, restless beyond the veil of our temporal existence and the hereafter, are just bursting to tell us all about the way they died. Sometimes, if the ghost is known to the asker, they want to tell you nice things and truisms. But, you never hear tell of a spectral incarnation that wants to explain to you how they pee in the in-between realm. Or where some lost treasure is to be found.

One recent story from England seems a good deal more plausible by dint of the fact that the legendary spirit which haunts a creepy part of Somerset’s Quantock Hills, known as “Dead Woman’s Ditch,” has a very simple message to passers-by:

“F*ck off!”

How charming! Given that this lady is said to have been dragged to the ditch by her husband and had her throat cut open, one should be a tad more forgiving when hearing the foul-mouthed epithets thrown about by this gobbly ghoul.

Also, if any reader here has any experience of rural Somerset, this sort of angry response to carless ramblers wandering goofily onto someone else’s land is the exact sort of thing a long-dead local would say. They should count themselves lucky that they aren’t getting peppered by some ectoplasmic birdshot fired from an otherworldly over-and-under.

That, or some local miscreants are swearing at gullible ghost-hunters using Bluetooth speakers.^[10]

What are ghosts? Are they creepy figments of an overactive or jittery imagination? Or are they manifestations of souls that cannot pass on to the next phase?

If they do, in fact, exist, why do only certain people see or sense them? Why do some ghosts haunt places for decades only to disappear abruptly, while others appear only on the anniversary of a tragedy?

These questions are likely to remain unanswered as the debate around ghosts, and other paranormal entities continue. However, many people have had eerie real-life experiences that have shaken up and even convinced some skeptics that certain specters may be real. So here are 10 real-life eerie paranormal encounters that are sure to creep you out.

Related: Top 10 Creepiest Episodes Of Paranormal Television

10 Saying Goodbye

Nina De Santo was busy closing up her New Jersey hair salon one cold Saturday evening in 2001 when she spotted one of her customers standing outside the shop’s window. Michael had become a good friend of hers over the years, and she knew that he’d been going through a tough time after his wife left him for his stepbrother and he lost custody of his children to boot.

Nina had tried her best to cheer Michael up whenever he came to the hair salon and had even taken him for drinks a couple of times to give him a chance to talk. So when she opened the door to him that night, Michael seemed transformed and even happy. He smiled at her and said that he couldn’t stay long but just wanted to stop by and thank Nina for everything she’d done for him. They chatted a bit, and then each went their own way for the evening.

Early the next morning, Nina received a distressing call from a salon employee. The woman told her that Michael’s body had been found the previous morning, around nine hours before Nina had spoken to him at the salon. He had committed suicide.

In today’s terms, Nina had an experience with a crisis apparition which many are convinced is the spirit of a recently deceased person who appears to close friends and family to say goodbye. There is very little scientific research to fall back on when it comes to these apparitions, but some believe that it’s merely a trick of the brain.^[1]

9 No Time

Nature can be extremely cruel. When the 2011 Japan earthquake triggered a massive tsunami, people had mere minutes to flee their homes and try to stay alive. But hundreds of those who made it to evacuation sites were swept away anyway, as the waves overwhelmed them. As a result, nearly 20,000 people died, either from drowning or by blunt force after being hit by dislodged trees and other large pieces of debris.

Weeks after the disaster, as those who survived were trying to figure out how to go on with their lives without their loved ones, some people started reporting seeing ghostly queues outside what used to be a supermarket. Others were kept awake at night by disembodied voices crying out in the dark.

Shinichi Yamada and his two children somehow managed to escape the waves. Shinichi later salvaged two Buddhist statues he found in the wide-spread rubble and brought them back to his temporary home. Almost immediately, both his children became ill. An unexplained chill invaded the house and would follow anyone who came inside. Shinichi knew it was time to call in the help of an exorcist after he felt someone walking over him as he lay in bed one night.

The exorcist, Kansho Aizawa, also had her own frightening tales to tell. She had been seeing headless and mutilated ghosts ever since the disaster. She advised Shinichi to build a shrine for the statues, which he did. The ghostly activity in his home subsided a bit, but even though incidents still occur now and then, Shinichi believes the spirits that haunted his family are now at peace.^[2]

8 Ghosts or Demons?

Many people believe that there is no such thing as ghosts and that whenever lights flicker on and off or taps open and close by themselves, there’s a crooked demon finger doing the work instead.

Between 2011 and 2012, Latoya Ammons and her three children moved into a house on Caroline Street in Gary, Indiana. Almost immediately, Latoya sensed something was off. She and her mother Rosa would hear footsteps coming from the basement and doors creaking open when the children were fast asleep, and no one else was in the house. If they thought the house was haunted by ghosts, they soon changed their minds when swarms of flies invaded the house’s porch in the dead of winter, and the children suddenly started behaving strangely.

Rosa once awoke to loud screams only to find her 12-year-old granddaughter levitating over her own bed. Latoya found her youngest son in the closet talking to an unseen presence. Her son was also thrown across the room by an invisible entity.

The Department of Child Services was called by neighbors who thought the children were being abused. Case manager Valerie Washington interviewed the family at a local hospital. During the interview, she witnessed Latoya’s nine-year-old son crawl backward up the wall and ceiling, flip over his grandmother, and land on his feet.

It was then that an exorcist was called. Rev. Michael Maginot performed multiple exorcisms at the house and is quoted as saying that the property was a “portal to demons.” The Ammons family moved out soon after, and the house was demolished in 2016.^[3]

7 Creepy Phone Call

In the late 1960s, Simma Lieberman was in love and happy. Her hippie boyfriend Johnny had proposed to her, and they were to be married soon after getting an apartment together.

Late one night, Simma was at her mother’s house when the phone rang. Simma answered and heard Johnny on the line. He sounded rushed, like he was far away. She struggled to hear what he was saying through the loud static. She made out the words “I love you” and “I’ll never be mean to anybody again” before the line went dead.

Simma tried to call Johnny back, but without any luck. She finally fell asleep and awoke with an ominous feeling inside her chest. A few hours later, she received the news from Johnny’s mother that he’d been murdered the night before, shortly before the call came through to Simma. Throughout her life, Simma continued to believe that Johnny had contacted her after his death to say goodbye.^[4]

6 Mischievous Spirits

Not all supernatural presences are out to possess people. Sometimes, it seems, they just want to have a little fun. In 1937, W.S.J. wrote a letter to Country Life in which he recounted a ghostly experience he’d had in 1885. W.S.J. described being a schoolboy on summer vacation with his family at a holiday home on the Isle of Wight. He recalled the garden at St. Boniface House being one of the most charming he’d ever seen.

However, things soon turned paranormal when ghosts started pacing the floor in his sisters’ bedroom, causing them to flee. W.S.J. also noted that a figure would walk up and down past the housemaids and ring bells in the dark of night.

Eventually, the village priest was called in to help, and after blessing the house, the spirit activity subsided. W.S.J. claimed that the house had been torn down, but he hoped the garden would still shelter those who visited it by night.^[5]

5 Quarantine Ghosts

When lockdowns were put into place around the world in 2020, most people were simply wondering how they would get through the specified number of days without going insane staring at their walls. And spending so much time confined at home, some believed that they weren’t as alone as they thought.

Lockdown for Kurt Schleicher happened in the Tampa, Florida, house where Victor Licata killed his parents, siblings, and dog in 1933. Kurt witnessed his dog sitting and barking at the wall in the bedroom where the mother was murdered and claimed to have felt the temperature drop abruptly in the bathroom.

Adrian Gomez, who lives in Los Angeles, heard and saw a doorknob and window rattling so violently that he thought an earthquake was happening. After realizing that there was no earthquake to speak of, he started believing that something paranormal may be happening. This belief was fortified when a window shade in his bedroom began shaking against the closed window while the adjacent one remained perfectly still.

Those in Indonesia who were lucky enough to live in non-haunted houses but decided to break lockdown rules were locked inside homes believed to be haunted as punishment.^[6]
https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/21/indonesia-locks-virus-violators-in-haunted-house.html

4 Lola

The story of the wailing woman is well known around the world. However, in a tale that still makes the skin of professional skier Drew Tabke crawl, the wailing woman takes on the form of Lola at La Parva. La Parva is a popular ski spot in the Chilean Andes and the place where many people say they knew Lola before she died.

It is said that Lola and her son were spending the day on the slopes when a thick fog rolled in. Mother and son made their way down the mountain but lost contact with one another. Scared that he would fall, Lola began screaming his name. Then she stumbled and fell down a steep slope. A lift operator found her as he returned to his cabin before the inevitable storm hit. He found that Lola was still alive, and he managed to get her to his cabin. He went for the doctor, but when the men returned to the cabin, Lola was gone. The only thing that remained behind was bloody sheets.

It is believed that Lola went back into the fog and ensuing storm to find her son. Neither she nor her son was ever found again. But whenever skiers, including Tabke, go near that cabin, they hear Lola wailing for her lost child.^[7]

3 Then Who Was in the Closet?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes a Reddit thread produces some of the scariest paranormal encounters ever. And whether the accounts are told as they happened or embellished for dramatic effect, they do send shivers up spines worldwide.

Redditor tooabstract788 was home alone one night, playing games, when his dog started barking at the closet. When he got up to see what was agitating the dog, he heard scratching sounds coming from inside the closet. As he got closer, the scratching got quieter until it abruptly stopped when he stood right in front of the closet. About to go back to his game, tooabstract788 was shocked when he suddenly heard a loud crash followed by several softer ones as items started hitting the inside of the closet door.

He ran outside at once and only went back inside when his friend came over to check on him. They checked the inside of the closet and found clothes and hangers scattered over the floor of the closet. But they never found any secret openings in the walls or ceiling.^[8]

2 Someone’s Watching

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

When Hilary Prue began her job as an usher at the du Maurier Theatre Centre, now known as the Harbourfront Centre Theatre, in Toronto, the first story she heard from employees was about the two ghosts haunting the venue. The spirits, a man and a woman dressed in period clothing, caused at least one security guard to quit after he saw them while locking up. The building that now holds the theater is said to have originally been an ice warehouse and also a temporary morgue after a boat sank in the harbor.

Hilary initially didn’t experience anything out of the ordinary as she went about her daily tasks. Then one day, while alone in the office, she heard a terrifying scream. She walked around the building, and there was no one else inside. But one of her colleagues later confirmed that they’d had a similar experience.

After this incident, Hilary continuously felt like she was being watched. Once, she thought that a co-worker had brought their children to work and that one of the kids was messing with her, but that turned out not to be the case.

When a ghost hunting group visited the theater, they not only spotted the woman in a Victorian dress and the man wearing a bowler hat, but they also claimed to have seen a little boy who hid in the rafters. Suddenly, Hilary knew who had been watching her all that time.^[9]

1 Danny

Donna Stewart had several best friends when she was six years old. One of them was Danny, who often came over to her house to play. On one particular morning, Donna and Danny had a play date, but it was to be cut short so that Danny could go to the hospital for scheduled surgery to have his tonsils removed.

The following day, Donna was in her bedroom when Danny appeared in the doorway. He asked if they could go outside and play.

Donna went to her mother to ask if she and Danny could spend some time playing outside and was confused at her mother’s reaction. The woman instantly turned pale. Then she broke the news that Danny had died the day before after suffering an allergic reaction during the surgery.

Donna ran back to her room, but Danny was gone.

Years later, Donna joined a paranormal investigative team in Oregon. She believes that the encounter changed how she saw the concept of death. She also believes that those who die are never far away from their loved ones and appear to them during times of trouble and grief.^[10]

A recent opinion poll suggested that as many as 45% of Americans believe in ghosts or spirits of some kind. Certainly, people have been telling each other ghost stories since the dawn of time. We seem to have a natural inclination to believe that there is a shadow world in which departed loved ones, repentant sinners, or those who have a message for us dwell.

Perhaps this belief simply shows that we need an explanation for everything. When we lived in small groups of vulnerable hunter-gatherers, a sound in the trees at night might mean danger. Something caused it. But what? The noise might be nothing important, or it might be a predator. For survival, it’s better to assume that it could be something dangerous. Add a dash of imagination, and it becomes easy to assume something paranormal exists.

Here are ten explanations for the “creepiest” ghost-hunting encounters we found on YouTube.

Related: Top 10 Ghost Towns Inside Or Near Famous Cities

10 Weird Worley

The hospital in Worley opened in 1928 and closed in the ’70s when it ran out of funds. In 2002, a woman named Carol Peet bought it intending to turn the building into a ministry center. She aimed to create a place where vulnerable individuals could learn life skills. For some reason, the project never came to fruition, but Peet spent a lot of time at the building and said she never saw anything strange.

In our video, the new owner, Chelsea, has a different opinion. Her contractor says that there are demons behind the walls. Notice that the investigator sees a shape on his thermal image camera. He calls the shape “a figure,” this is a little misleading as it’s not a figure—it’s simply a shape. Dust in the air, moved by a draft, has high emissivity and can show up on a thermal imager as the shape we see.

The rest of the video does beg some questions. Is anybody there?

9 Meowwww

In our next video, a ghost hunting expert visited the Ancient Ram Inn in Wotton, Gloucestershire, England. The house is spooky enough—in fact, it looks like a movie set for a film about a haunted house.

The investigators swap observations that have no objective value. One of them says that he hears a cat. Probably the best explanation for hearing a cat is that there is a cat. After all, if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.

A serious investigation into the paranormal should have to meet higher standards than what is shown in the video. Unfortunately, many similar videos play on our imagination at the expense of rigorous research.

8 Mom, Are You Here?

Our next haunting has the house owner comforted that his deceased mother is still around and fulfilling her last promise to “always look over him.” After the investigation, the owner is no longer scared and deals with the fact of his mother’s presence calmly and with humor.

Naturally, we should want to believe that our departed loved ones are still with us in some way. But does this sentiment lead us to believe that they certainly are? The sound on the tape is not clear and is very brief. Could it be that the son is hearing what he wants to hear?

7 A Shocking Encounter

Land of mists and long winter nights, Scotland has a long history of paranormal phenomena. With typical good humor, our investigators here are using sophisticated equipment to track down Archie, the ghost.

One of the investigators reports that something (Archie?) touched him on the arm, a touch that he describes as being like an electric shock. Could this be simply a nervous reaction to the spooky surroundings? Or maybe wishful thinking?

Certainly, the building looks like an ideal candidate for a ghost haunting.

6 Hauntings x 3

One of the investigators here makes an interesting observation. He says that a place might be haunted, as we would expect, but also a person might be haunted or an object. You might have, he says, “a creepy teddy bear,” or I instantly think of dolls. Yikes.

The three possibilities have different qualities:

1. The Location: A ghost has a special attachment to a place. Once you leave the place, you leave the ghost behind.
2. The Person: A ghost uses a real person as a vehicle. Interestingly, a location can be haunted by good or bad spirits, but a person is usually haunted only by the bad.
3. The Item: An object must have had special significance for the departed. Though, it’s difficult to imagine how a ghost could haunt an inanimate object.

And how can we really know? Sometimes, people, places, and things are simply… people, places, and things.

5 Flicking Streetlights

In this piece, our guide takes us to a haunted town. One of the first events the guide films is a streetlight that flickers before it returns to normal. To be fair, the narrator immediately says that he doesn’t know whether this was paranormal. Probably not. It was simply a flickering streetlight.

This shows that people can be predisposed to interpret evidence as they wish to. It is a sort of confirmation bias where you give more credence to evidence that supports your view than to evidence that might contradict it. In other words, someone who believes in ghosts will readily believe that a flickering light is evidence of paranormal activity. The city maintenance department would be more likely to consider a faulty connection first.

4 Prisoner Ghosts

Well, if they’re looking for ghosts, any evidence is hidden by the fact that the investigators in this video spend a lot of time spoofing each other. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with this, but it can obscure any serious purpose behind their investigation.

The Ohio State Penitentiary defiantly looks the part of hosting ghost hauntings. The word “creepy” often pops up in these videos, and here we find a building that deserves the term. One wonders why this penitentiary hasn’t been converted or demolished.

3 The Willow Weep House

“If it wasn’t evil, it wouldn’t be hurting people,” says the owner of Willows Weep, a house that some say is the most haunted place in America. Whoever built this unassuming house in 1890 constructed it in the shape of an inverted cross. Our narrator, William Shatner, signs off by asking, “Was Willows Weep really built to attract evil spirits?” and asks himself why anyone would want to do this. The answer he offers is that perhaps the idea was to entrap the visiting demons.

The house owner is convinced that there is something inside the place. She points to four suicides and three poisonings that have happened during its history and adds that she and her son had accidents while they were doing some renovation work. Hmm, accidents while renovating. I’ve never heard of that happening. *eye roll*

Without more evidence, we might be tempted to believe that this is a case of having expectations fulfilled. The owner’s comment, “If it wasn’t evil..” presupposes that there is an “it” there.

2 School Is in Session

For this investigation, why the investigative team included four ballerinas is a mystery to me. Their role seemed to be to look decorative and squeal whenever necessary. The rest of the team seems to prep the girls and lead them to expect that this old reformatory school must be haunted.

We’ll leave the ballerinas who don’t seem to add much ghost-hunting expertise alone. But everything else is here. A dark, abandoned place, the word “creepy,” and the essential EMF meter. Why an electro-magnetic field necessarily means that there are ghosts around is a mystery. But these meters seem sufficient for many to believe that paranormal activity exists. (On Amazon, you can buy a meter specifically advertised as a ghost-hunting device.)

The whole atmosphere the narrator creates leads the team to presuppose that there are phantoms in the school. His repetition that nothing is faked is no doubt truthful but irrelevant.

1 Hollywood Hotel Hauntings

I find this one a little difficult to explain away. We will have to assume that the hotel guests are acting in good faith and are not trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

To start, there are scientific explanations of how an ouija board works that rule out the occult (it’s called the ideomotor effect if you want to find out more). But I can’t find an easy explanation for the voice heard in the video. I suppose that even a cynic like myself will have to accept that some things are not easily explained away.

In most of the videos on our list, the viewer can explain most of the phenomena—you just have to watch them with a skeptical frame of mind. Most of these videos lead you to jump to a conclusion and believe what you are expected to believe.

This last video seems a little different; the setting is not “creepy”—it’s a well-lit, modern hotel room in Los Angeles, California. Yet, the history of the Roosevelt Hotel is sinister and full of haunting ghost stories. I’ll just wait for more definitive evidence, I guess.