Is Spontaneous Human Combustion Real?

For several centuries, people have debated whether human beings can spontaneously combust, or burst into flames without being ignited by an external source.

Though the first known accounts of spontaneous human combustion (SHC) date all the way back to 1641, the phenomenon gained wider exposure in the 19th century after popular author Charles Dickens used it to kill off one of the characters in his novel “Bleak House.” When critics accused Dickens of legitimizing something that didn’t exist, he pointed to research showing 30 historical cases.

More recently, cases of SHC have been suspected when police and fire department officials have found burned corpses with unscathed furniture around them. For instance, an Irish coroner ruled that spontaneous combustion caused the 2010 death of 76-year-old Michael Faherty, whose badly burned body was discovered near a fireplace in a room with virtually no fire damage.

Because the human body is composed mostly of water and its only highly flammable properties are fat tissue and methane gas, the possibility of SHC being an actual phenomenon seems remote.

Many scientists dismiss the theory, arguing that an undetected flame source such as a match or cigarette is the real culprit in suspected cases. Typically, deceased victims are found close to a fire source, and evidence suggests that many of them accidentally set themselves on fire while smoking or trying to light a flame.

On the other hand, believers point to the fact that the human body has to reach a temperature of roughly 3,000 degrees in order to be reduced to ashes. Unless SHC were a genuine factor, it seems impossible that furniture would not burn as well.

Proposed causes of the supposed phenomenon include bacteria, static electricity, obesity, stress and. most consistently, excessive consumption of alcohol, but none have been substantiated by science so far.

One hypothesis comes from British biologist Brian J. Ford, who in August 2012 described his experiments with combustion in the magazine New Scientist. According to Ford, a buildup of acetone in the body (which can result from alcoholism, diabetes or a specific kind of diet) can lead to spontaneous combustion.

The Pascagoula UFO/Abduction Incident

It was Oct. 11, 1973, when Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson went fishing on the banks of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi.

At first, when Parker saw blue lights reflected on the water, he thought police had come to tell the two to leave.

“A big light came out of the clouds,” Parker recalled. “It was a blinding light. It was hard to tell with the lights so bright, but it looked like it was shaped like a football. I would say, just estimating, it was about 80-feet. It made very little sound. It was just a hissing noise.”

Parker then claimed three legless creatures floated out of the vessel toward him. He described all three as having mitten-shaped claws, neckless and gray, and one appearing to be more feminine.

When one of the creatures reached out as though to put it's claws around Parker’s neck, his natural response of fear oddly disappeared. “I think they injected us with something to calm us. I was kind of numb and went along with the program.”

Parker alleged that he and Hickson were taken aboard the alien vessel and experimented on, then the two terrified fishermen found themselves back on the riverbank as though nothing had happened.

They drove to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office and told Captain Glenn Ryder and Sheriff Fred Diamond what had happened.

“When I got in there they had me,” Hickson told the police. “There were no seats, no chain, they just moved me around. I couldn’t resist them. I just floated, felt no sensation, no pain. They kept me in that position a little while, then they’d raise me back up.”

Hickson claimed that a machine resembling a giant eye looked over his entire body. He said he was surrounded by inhuman, five-foot tall monopedal beings.

Capt. Ryder didn’t believe the two men. He stepped out of the interrogation room but left a secret recording device running in hopes of obtaining proof that their alien stories were fabricated.

But what Ryder later heard on the recording made him think twice: “Jesus Christ, God have mercy, I thought I’d been through enough of Hell on this earth and now I’ve got to go through something like this,” Hickson could be heard saying to Parker. “But they could have, you know, I guess they, well, they could have harmed us, son. They had use. They could have done anything to us.” Parker added, “I just want to cry right now. What’s so damn bad about it is nobody’s going to believe us.”

But with no physical evidence, the Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson UFO and alien abduction story still remains a mystery.

Calvin Parker stayed quiet about the incident for decades, but after Hickson’s death in 2011, he wrote a book which was published in 2018 entitled Pascagoula - The Closest Encounter: My Story.

The book prompted others to come forward claiming they, too, had seen a UFO that night.

Calvin Parker would later say, “It makes me feel pretty good knowing I’m not the only one who saw something.”

The UFO Abduction Of Whitley Strieber

Whitley Strieber has written fiction for more than 40 years, with notable titles including the horror novels The Wolfen and The Hunger. Strieber contends that his writing streak was interrupted one night in the late ’80s by an alien abduction in upstate New York.

Strieber recounted this experience in his non-fiction title Communion in 1987. The alleged incident occurred on the night of Dec. 26, 1985, as Strieber slept alone in his cabin in the woods.

Woken by a strange noise, he purportedly saw a small non-human entity approaching his bed. Suddenly, it was morning. Not only had he awoken disoriented, he felt oddly aggressive.

It was during a session of regressive hypnosis a few months later that some of the memories returned. According to Strieber, beings that he has since referred to as “visitors” entered his home and abducted him.

While seen as a work of fiction added to his catalogue of alien stories by many, Strieber never wavered from his position. In fact, his later work only doubled down on the notion that aliens were visiting him.

In his book The Key: A True Encounter, Strieber detailed another alien encounter that he claims took place in Toronto.

Asleep in his Delta Chelsea Hotel room in the middle of the night on June 6, 1998, Strieber claimed to have been visited by another mysterious stranger.

“I got up to open the door, thinking it was the room service waiter,” Strieber recalled. “It was not. It was a man I described as about five and a half feet tall, older-looking, like someone in his 70s. He wore dark-colored clothing, a turtleneck and charcoal slacks.”

Strieber claimed the visitor stood motionless by the window for nearly an hour, expounding on the dangers of creating an intelligence more evolved than its creator. Strieber said it was “the most extraordinary conversation I have ever had in my life.”

Many are skeptical of Strieber’s alien abduction claims, but one former Green Beret Commander and developer of weapons at Los Alamos, New Mexico, John B. Alexander, believes him: “For more than two decades, I have been interacting with Whitley Strieber and found him to be one of the most intelligent and thoughtful researchers in the field,” said Alexander. “There is no doubt he has had some very strange experiences, ones that even he does not claim to fully understand.”

El Muerto – The Headless Horseman of Texas

In the 1800s Texas was a wild and lawless place attracting all manner of thieves, murderers, and other ruthless outlaws. To combat these many desperadoes and fight the Indians, who were prone to attacking the white settlers, in rode the Texas Rangers, who set about in taming the wild Texas frontier.

The Rio Grande to the south had been declared the border between the United States and Mexico; however, the Mexican government refused to recognize the boundary, insisting instead, that the Nueces River was the border. This left a giant chunk of land between the two rivers which became known as “No Man’s Land” and a prime target for outlaws.

The dispute between the two countries finally forced the United States to go to war with Mexico in 1846 to make the Rio Grande the official border. However, it would take another thirty years before the Texas Rangers could rid the territory of the Mexican cattle rustlers and thieves.

The Texas Rangers, a roving posse of expert gunmen, were not men to be messed with. Following their adversaries everywhere, they lived out of the saddle and often dispensed justice brutally. Two of these men were Creed Taylor and Willian Alexander Anderson "Big Foot" Wallace, who was himself a folk hero. It was Big Foot, with Creed’s blessing, who unwittingly created El Muerto.

In 1850, a man known simply as Vidal was busy rustling cattle all over South Texas, and soon he had a high price on his head “dead or alive.” During that summer, Vidal took advantage of a Comanche raid which pulled most of the men northward to fight off the attack. In the meantime, the sparse settlements were temporarily left unguarded. Vidal, along with three of his henchmen, wasted no time in taking advantage of the situation and gathered up a considerable number of horses on the San Antonio River, heading southwest toward Mexico.

What Vidal didn’t know was that, among the stolen herd, were several prized mustangs belonging to Texas Ranger Creed Taylor, usually one of the first to defend the settlements against Indian attacks, had not, on this occasion, gone after the Comanche. Creed’s ranch lay west of San Antonio, in the thickest of bandit territory, not far from the headwaters of the Nueces River. Due to the location of the ranch, Taylor’s livestock and horses were often the targets of the many bandits.

Taylor had enough and quickly gathered fellow ranger, Big Foot Wallace, and a nearby rancher by the name of Flores. Both Wallace and Taylor were as skilled as any Comanche when tracking and the three men shortly found the trail of Vidal and his henchmen.

When the three men found the outlaw camp, they waited until night when the bandits were sleeping to attack. Catching them unaware the thieves were killed. But just killing them was not enough. Taylor and Wallace wanted to set an example that would deter future bandits.

In those days, stealing cattle and horses was a crime more serious than murder. The Rangers had tried all types of brutal justice including stringing them up in trees and left hanging, shooting them, and chopping them to pieces, leaving their bodies for animal bait. But nothing had worked to stop the outlaws.

In a dramatic example of frontier justice, Wallace beheaded Vidal then lashed him firmly into a saddle on the back of a wild mustang. Tying the outlaw's hands to the pommel and securing the torso to hold him upright. Big Foot then attached Vidal’s head and sombrero to the saddle with a long strip of rawhide. He then turned the bucking horse loose to wander the Texas hills with its terrible burden on his back.

Soon, stories began to abound about the headless rider seen usually in remote country, with its sombreroed head swinging back and forth to the rhythm of the horse’s gallop.

As time went on, more and more cowboys spotted the dark horse with its fearsome cargo, and not knowing what it was they riddled it with bullets. But the horse and its rider rode on and the legend of El Muerto, the headless one, began. Soon, the South Texas brush country became a place to avoid as El Muerto was credited with all kinds of evil and misfortune.

Finally, a posse of local ranchers captured the wild pony at a watering hole near the tiny community of Ben Bolt just south of Alice, Texas. Still strapped firmly on its back was the dried-up corpse of Vidal, now riddled by scores of bullet holes and Indian arrows. The body was buried in an unmarked grave near Ben Bolt, and the horse was free of its burden at last.

That should have been the end of El Muerto, but the legend would live on to this day. Soon after Vidal’s body was laid to rest, soldiers at Fort Inge (present-day Uvalde) began to see the headless rider. Travelers and ranchers in “No Man’s Land” also reported continuing to see the apparition.

In 1917, a couple traveling by covered wagon to San Diego, Texas camped for the night outside of town. They would report the next day that as they sat by the campfire a large gray stallion sped by with a headless man shouting “It is mine. It is all mine.”

Another sighting of the headless wonder was reported near Freer, Texas in 1969.

The legend lives on and still today, many people report seeing the headless rider galloping through the mesquite on clear and moonlit nights in South Texas.

Summaries of Some Alien-Human Encounters from Around The World

Seeing lights in the sky is perhaps one thing, however, seeing such craft with humanoid beings on board is completely another. The same can be said of closer, direct encounters with humanoid creatures presumably from another world. There are more recorded accounts of such encounters than many people might think.

The Imjarvi Incident

While skiing near the village of Imjarvi, Finland, in the late afternoon of January 7, 1970, experienced skiers Aarno Heinonen and Esko Viljo each came to a stop on a glade they would regularly use to rest. As they did so, each could hear a strange buzzing sound nearby. As they scanned the darkening sky, they focused in on a strange light moving quickly toward them. The buzzing sound became louder and louder as the light came closer.

When the object came within roughly 10 feet of the pair, it emitted a strange red-gray mist which cloaked the craft and its immediate surroundings entirely. As the two men looked on, a sudden, intensely bright beam of light shot out from underneath the craft.

As the two men recovered from the temporary blindness caused by the sudden light, Heinonen suddenly felt as if “someone pulled him backwards” and almost fell back to the ground. As his feet became steady once more, both men noticed “the creature” standing in the glow of the lit tube. In its grip was a strange black box, itself appearing to be illuminated from inside by a yellow glow.

After a few moments, the creature, which the men would describe as humanoid adult but with the frame of a child, pointed the box toward Heinonen, sending red-gray mist and a flurry of sparks in his direction. As the mists thickness grew, so did the light, until suddenly, the craft and the humanoid were gone. Heinonen, however, found that his right leg was numb and needed assistance from his friend in returning home. He would later pass black urine.

The incident is believed by many researchers to be genuine, although some of the claims made by Heinonen of interactions with “blond alien women” following the encounter were not received quite so well and ultimately damaged his credibility.

The Kinnula Encounters

Again, in Finland, on February 2, 1971, just after 8:00 PM, two women driving toward Oulu through Kinnula noticed that they were being followed by a strange light above them. The light eventually caught up to their car, which caused the driver to bring it to a halt. As she did so, the light suddenly vanished. However, where it was now stood a 3-foot tall humanoid in a brown-green suit and a tight-fitting helmet. It looked at the two women before disappearing into the woods at the side of the road. Rather than pursue it, the ladies sped toward their destination.

Three days later, in the same region, two lumberjacks would witness a similar humanoid creature. Petter Aliranta and Esko Sneck decided to pack up for the day just after 3:00 PM as the snow continued to fall and looked to get heavier. As they did so, Aliranta noticed a silver disc hovering silently over a clearing in the trees.

The object would land shortly after, and a moment later, a roughly meter-tall humanoid creature emerged from the clearing. Dressed in a one-piece suit of green and wearing a helmet with a face mask similar to that of a scuba diver, the strange being started toward the two men. Sneck turned his industrial chainsaw toward it, which forced the being to retreat back toward its craft.

According to the report, both men then gave chase, with Aliranta even managing to grab the creature’s heel, which resulted in a shot of pain entering his entire body. Seconds later, the silver disc, with the short humanoid back on board, lifted into the air, shot upward, and vanished.

The Luumaki Encounter

A third distinct humanoid sighting occurred in Finland half a decade prior to the first two entries in the summer of 1965 in the small town of Luumaki. One particular afternoon, the Kuningas family were picking blueberries in the thick woodland. Parents Matti and Maria and their two children Tapani and Teuvo were the only ones in the area. It was a little after 12:00 PM, and with the entire area to themselves, they decided to spread out so that they could pick as much fruit as possible before heading home.

As the family were doing so, Matti began to hear a strange bubbling sound coming from above. Although it took him several moments, a scan of his surroundings revealed a man-like figure positioned on a rocky slope above and to the front of him. The figure looked at Matti intently for several moments before it started out in his direction. It was slightly over three feet tall and of a particularly strong and robust build, with thick, orange skin. Matti watched the creature getting closer and closer, rooted to the spot, his legs refusing to respond to his desire to flee.

Once the strange beast-man was only yards away from him, however, it simply vanished into thin air. Matti spun around, surveying the woodland around him. The creature, though, was nowhere to be seen. The youngest Kuningas child, Teuvo, would later state to his parents when Matti was telling them of the incident that he had seen the creature approaching his father from the other side of the field. He also saw it simply disappear into nothing.

The Salzburg Abduction

According to a report in the December 1957 edition of British Columbia’s Prince George Citizen newspaper, an American soldier, while stationed in Salzburg, Austria, in the summer of 1951, was alleged to have been abducted by aliens, largely before such a phenomenon was widespread and part of human culture.

The anonymous soldier worked as a driver and had just finished for the evening. He was making his way home at a little after 11:00 PM and decided to take a shortcut through some abandoned brush. As he did so, he saw a dark humanoid shape head toward him out of nowhere. The figure pointed an unseen device at the soldier, which paralyzed him immediately. The entity then fixed a strange black patch to his torso and, with the device, managed to control the soldier’s movements. It dragged him to a waiting craft as if with an invisible rope.

The soldier would claim to have been taken to a transparent room inside the ship, which then took off into space. He described the creature as about five feet tall, pale-skinned, and completely bald.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect, though, were the eyes, which the witness likened to “that of a fly” and said were “eyes within eyes.” The soldier claimed the ship landed on a “paradise-like” planet, which he said might have been Mars. He was then flown back to Earth and taken to the spot of his abduction. 

According to the newspaper article, the investigator who took the soldier’s account tried several times to lead the soldier into revealing his story to be false, but all attempts to trip him up failed.

The Encounter Of Filiberto Cardenas

Filiberto Cardenas was not only abducted by aliens, according to his claims and revelations through hypnotic regression only months after his 1979 encounter, but he has given several eerily accurate predictions of upcoming events.

During the early evening of January 3, Filiberto was riding with his friend, Fernando, around the outskirts of Miami, Florida, in search of a pig for a barbecue. Suddenly, their vehicle lost power and came to a halt. Both men exited the vehicle and headed to the hood to see what the problem was. As they did, each could hear a humming sound coming from above them. Then they noticed the strange lights and illumination in the bodywork of the car, while at the same time realizing they were completely paralyzed.

Suddenly, Filiberto began to rise from the ground and into a bright light emanating from the craft. Then, he was gone. Fernando’s paralysis wore off just in time for him to see the craft disappear into the sky. Filiberto would turn up in the middle of a busy road two hours later, around 10 miles from where his car had come to a halt. Miami police picked him up, and after contacting his family and Fernando (who had reported Filiberto missing), he was released from their custody.

Incidentally, this case is purported as the first time an official police report acknowledged that a person had disappeared as a consequence of witnessing a UFO.

Filiberto would seek hypnotic regression around six months later. His revelations were extremely similar to many other alleged alien abduction victims. He told of being stuck in a strange seat in a large room, held in place by a suction device on his back. He was subjected to several experiments and remembered several small needles piercing his skull. The aliens began to attempt communication with him. They would speak in several languages, adjusting a device in their hands after each one. After going through German and English, they finally settled on Spanish, which Filiberto understood.

Filiberto recalled being given information telepathically while viewing events on strange screens all around him. He would then tell of upcoming events, including a warning of a city that is going to be destroyed, the capital of Mexico. Six years later in 1985, Mexico City was struck by an earthquake that did indeed completely level part of city. He also stated that almost all the great population centers of California will all go into the sea. In Newsweek in March 1983, an article would tell of several coastal areas that had been lost to coastal erosion, the properties having fallen into the sea. Filiberto is also purported to have predicted the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the AIDS epidemic, among other things.

The Boianai Visitants Over Papua New Guinea

Throughout the summer of 1959 in Papua New Guinea, missionary Father William Gill and many other witnesses would see strange lights in the skies. For two evenings in particular, beginning on June 26, Gill, along with 37 other people, would witness the UFOs close-up. What’s more, on board these strange, otherworldly ships were four humanoid beings who acknowledged the onlookers by waving at them several times. Among the witnesses were many professionals, such as doctors and teachers, a fact which, along with Gill’s good standing and general believability, makes the case one of the most intriguing and credible.

Although the sightings had been happening for several months, this was the first time the craft had come so close so that the witnesses could make out occupants. The visitors would respond to the welcoming calls of the onlookers by waving back at them. When Gill used Morse Code with his torch, the humanoids used their lights on their craft to respond in kind.

Although many witnesses and, in turn, investigators would conclude the occupants to be of extraterrestrial origin, not least because of the ultra-futuristic craft, Gill himself would state his belief that they were human. Furthermore, he believed the craft was a secret military venture.

The Emilcin Encounter

Although as many people cast doubt on the incident as find it genuine, the encounter of Jan Wolski in 1978 now has a stone monument in the place of the apparent meeting between him and humanoid alien beings. In fact, many in the UFO community place this encounter as the first recorded incident of an alien abduction in Poland.

On May 10, 1978, 71-year-old Jan Wolski was driving his horse and cart through the forest area near Emilcin in Poland. It was a little after 8:00 AM, and only he and his horse were on the pathway. That was until he noticed two strange humanoid figures ahead of him. If that wasn’t bizarre enough, as he went to pass these mystery entities, they hopped onto his wagon, positioning themselves behind Wolski, who continued forward for want of a better idea of what to do.

Each of the figures was dressed almost entirely in black and was around 5 feet tall. He noticed their faces and hands to be a light shade of green. He would later recall that they spoke to each other in “thin voices” in a language Wolski could not understand.

As Wolski came to an opening, he noticed a huge, silver-white, oblong craft hovering the air. He likened it to the shape of a bus and noted how it glowed in the morning sun, with no seams or joints anywhere on its exterior. He would enter the craft via a waiting lift. Once inside, one of the beings placed two strange gray discs over his body. They would turn him around so that all of his body was exposed temporarily to these discs. It is possible that these were some kind of scanning or X-ray devices.

After that, without incident, the beings motioned for him to leave, which he did after wishing them goodbye with a bow, a gesture they returned to him.

While some believe the account to be false, Wolski attained no apparent financial gain or lasting notoriety following the encounter. Ultimately, opinion remains divided regarding the Emilcin incident.

The 1996 Fife Incident

On the evening of September 23, 1996, in Fife, Scotland, two women and a child would witness out-of-this-world events following a last-minute trip to the shops for coffee. Mary Morrison, her visiting friend Jane, and Mary’s son Peter set off at a little after 8:00 PM. As they drove along the road, they witnessed a strange, bright light which seemed to split in two. As they watched from the car, a huge, triangular craft with red lights on its underside passed overhead. It soon disappeared from sight. Perplexed and shocked, they continued on to the shop.

On the return journey, however, they saw the strange craft again. This time, it came extremely close to their car, hovering overhead for several seconds.

After returning home, Mary reported the incident, and then the three of them, along with Mary’s daughter Susan headed back out at the UFO investigator’s request to see if they could spot anything more of interest.

As they approached the place where they had seen the strange craft, each could see an illuminated area at the edge of a field ahead. They stopped the car and positioned themselves behind a wall in order to watch events a little more closely. They could clearly see several thin figures moving back and forth to a huge object on the ground. Each of the figures seemed to be carrying a cube or a box.

They would return to the scene a fourth time, this time with binoculars. As they watched the entities that were clearly not human, a cocoon-shaped capsule raced toward their location. Although it is not entirely clear what happened following this, initial hypnotic regression would suggest an abduction incident took place before the four people were returned to their car, which is their next clear memory following the capsule’s arrival. The incident remains unexplained.

The Sighting Of Edith Boatright

Although the sighting of Edith Boatright was intriguing, it came off the back of the Piedmont High School basketball team sighting, seen at the time to be the main case by UFO investigators.

On the cold winter evening of February 21, 1973, following a heartbreaking loss in a high school playoff game, the team coach, two staff members, and three players witnessed an intensely bright craft as they made their way home to Piedmont, Missouri, along Highway 60. They would ultimately watch the craft for several minutes from the roadside as it hovered over a field.

At the same time as their sighting, Edith Boatright was lying in bed when she noticed a strange, bright, flashing light from outside her bedroom window. Her farmhouse was around 12 miles from the Piedmont High School bus and the members of the basketball team.

She peered out of the window, and to her amazement, she could see a huge craft hovering over a field. Flashing lights of red, green, and white lit up its surroundings, including the window of Edith’s bedroom. Most intriguing of all, however, was her determined claim that she could see people moving about inside the craft. She watched it, and the beings, for several minutes before the ship vanished at great speed.

It is almost certain that the craft Edith witnessed was the same one the Piedmont High School basketball team members and coaches saw.

Close Encounters of the Sixth Kind

The late astronomer and ufologist J. Allen Hynek devised a generalized scale for defining and classifying reports of close encounters in ufology. You’ve probably heard if it. The scale ranges from a Close Encounter of the First Kind, to a Close Encounter of the Seventh Kind. As the title of this article states, our concern here is Close Encounters of the Sixth Kind, which is the classification that involves death or physical injury to either a human being or animal.

A B-25 Bomber Carrying UFO Debris Crashes

On August 1, 1947, a B-25 Mitchell bomber crashed in Washington state while allegedly carrying UFO debris, which is suspected of having caused the fire that brought the warbird down, killing both pilots. This was the first aircraft lost by the newly formed United States Air Force, so it was widely reported and thoroughly investigated. The story actually started 10 days earlier on July 21 with a UFO sighting on Maury Island, also in Washington, in which a man was injured and his dog killed by smoking debris falling from an apparently broken doughnut-shaped UFO—one of a flight of six. This debris was what the downed B-25 was supposedly carrying.

The deceased pilots of the B-25 were intelligence officers and part of the Air Force investigation into the Maury Island incident prior to the crash. This was a very strange time for the newly formed Air Force, since the Roswell incident was less than a month old, and the Kenneth Arnold sighting and report happened just three days after Maury Island. It was truly a busy and perplexing time for the boys in blue.

The Valentich UFO Encounter And Disappearance

What has to be one of the most disturbing and mysterious disappearances of pilot and plane happened on October 21, 1978, when a young Australian pilot reported an encounter with an aggressive UFO. No trace was ever found of Frederick Valentich, the 20-year-old pilot who vanished into thin air after radioing in that he was in danger and being harassed by a UFO.

Valentich was on a 200-kilometer (125 mi) flight in his single-engine Cessna 182 and was off the coast of Bass Strait when he contacted Melbourne Tower and reported that he was being harried by an unknown aircraft 300 meters (1,000 ft) above. He described the UFO as having four brilliant lights. Melbourne Controllers said that his last taped words were: "It's not an aircraft... " follow by ominous metallic scraping and crunching sounds and then nothing.

The Australian Air Force said that they received 11 different UFO reports from people along the Bass Strait coast that Saturday night, but officials from the Australian Transport Department were skeptical. Some theorized that Valentich became disoriented when he saw his own lights reflecting off the surface of the water while flying upside down. Frederick’s father, Guio Valentich, said, “The fact that they have found no trace of him really verifies the fact that UFOs could have been there.”

The Mantell UFO Incident

On January 7, 1948, at around 1:30 PM, Captain Thomas F. Mantell of the Kentucky Air National Guard was in his F-51 heading for Standiford Air Force Base in Kentucky along with three other Guard planes. At the same time, the Kentucky State Police were getting complaints from the public about a huge, round craft that they couldn’t identify flying over the town of Mansville. It didn’t take long before the reports included both the towns of Irvington and Owensboro, and the air traffic control tower at Godman Air Force Base had a clear visual on the craft. He described it as being “large, round, with a whitish color, a red light on the bottom, and moving slowly to the south.”

Just over an hour later, Mantell’s flight group was asked if they had enough fuel to investigate the unidentified craft. After communicating with the tower that they did, one of the pilots got permission to continue on his assigned course while Mantell and the other two got the heading from Godman Tower and took off in the direction of the unknown aircraft. The following is taken from the actual transcripts: "The object is directly ahead of and above me now, moving at about half my speed. It appears to be a metallic object or possibly reflection of Sun from a metallic object, and it is of tremendous size. I’m still climbing. I’m trying to close in for a better look." These words were Captain Mantell’s last.

The Falcon Lake Incident

At noon on May 20, 1967, Stephen Michalak, an industrial mechanic from Winnipeg, Canada, was prospecting in the Falcon Lake area of Manitoba when he spotted two strange aircraft. One was hovering in the air but bolted off at a terrific speed. The other UFO had landed and was only 50 meters (160 ft) away, so he started toward it, calling out and asking if they needed help fixing their “crazy machine” as he went. He went through all six languages that he was fluent in but never got a response.

As he got closer, Michalak noticed a panel open on the side of the craft but was unable to see into it due to the bright yellowish-blue light it was emitting. He tried to contact the pilots again as he was coming up on the craft, but right then, the panel snapped shut, and he heard high-pitched whining as the craft started to spin counter-clockwise. Then it began to lift off the ground, and for some unknown reason, Michalak reached out with his gloved left hand and grabbed it, and to his horror, his glove immediately caught fire. At that moment, the panel snapped back open, and a blast of intense heat knocked him backward onto the ground, where he had to roll around while tearing off his burning shirt.

Half-naked, injured, and scared, Michalak gathered up all his things and luckily caught a bus home, where he went straight to the hospital. The Falcon Lake case was extensively investigated by Canadian authorities, the Condon Commission, several civilian UFO groups from the United States and Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canadian Department of National Defense, but it remains unsolved.

Lady - The First Animal Mutilation

On September 7, 1967, “Snippy” the horse (whose real name was Lady), a three-year-old Appaloosa mare, failed to come back to her pasture for her usual morning drink on the Harry King ranch, 32 kilometers (20 mi) northeast of Alamosa, Colorado. Two days later, her mangled body was found in the pasture. Parts of the animal had been cleanly cut in a surgical manner, and no tracks of any kind were found near the body. However, there were some strange markings discovered at the crime scene.

Six indentations formed a circle 1 meter (3 ft) in diameter, which many people felt were the marks of the landing gear of some kind of craft. On examination of Lady, her heart and brain were found to be missing, and a strange, formaldehyde-like odor came from her carcass. Her owner, Nellie Lewis, and the ranch owner, Harry King, went to the site where the horse was found and noted both a peculiar odor like incense and a bush that looked as though an intense heat source had knocked it down from above. Nellie later discovered that the boots she wore to the site tested as radioactive, which explained why the piece of mane she picked up at the site had burned her hand.

Nellie Lewis contacted the United States Forest Service, and Ranger Duane Martin reported detecting higher-than-normal radioactivity up to a two–city block radius around the body of Lady. This event is still unexplained and kicked off the animal mutilation phenomenon in the United States.

The Judy Doraty Abduction

Four women, Judy Doraty, her daughter Cindy, her mother, and her sister-in-law would have the most horrific experience in their lives together in May 1973. One night that month, they had finished playing bingo in Houston and were returning to Judy’s hometown of Texas City by way of Alto Loma, so they could drop off her brother-in-law and sister. After doing so and getting back on the road, they looked up and noticed a strange light hovering in the dark sky.

What they were seeing was so interesting that they pulled over, stopped, and got out of the car to get a better look. They were so mesmerized by the light that they watched it in complete awe and disbelief until it disappeared. Then they got back in their car to finish the trip home. Not long afterward, Judy began to experience bad headaches and anxiety attacks, and after seeing several doctors, who all said she was fine, she was finally referred to the now famous hypnotist and ufologist Dr. Leo Sprinkle. Sprinkle and his previous experience with the UFO phenomenon led him to believe that hypnosis was the most effective manner in relieving people like Judy of their emotional trauma. Looking back, there can be no doubt that Leo Sprinkle suspected an abduction scenario right off the bat.

Under hypnosis, Judy revealed that she had been abducted and taken aboard an alien spacecraft. Going on in detail, Judy described how she had witnessed a cow being taken up into the craft and systematically mutilated by two small beings while she watched in horror. During hypnotic regression, she also spoke of the disconcerting feeling of existing in two places at once. But, she said, she was still standing beside her car after the strange light in the sky left, so she could not understand why she should recall that. Linda Moulton-Howe included film footage of this regression in her award-winning documentary on the animal mutilation phenomenon titled A Strange Harvest.

NTSB Says UFO Causes Fatal Cessna Crash

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that a single-engine Cessna that crashed into Big Bateau Bay, Alabama, on October 23, 2002, flew into something, or something flew into it. The aircraft was on radar at 900 meters (3,000 ft) above the Mobile-Tensaw Delta right after taking off, and then something really bad happened; they just don’t know what that really bad something was. The very unusual NTSB report strongly suggests that the unidentifiable red substance they found on the severely damaged nose and front underbelly of the Cessna came from another object that it collided with in midair.

The incident killed 54-year-old pilot Thomas J. Preziose of Mobile, Alabama, just a few minutes after he took off from the Downtown Airport in Mobile. According to the report, the Cessna had passed an FAA inspection only days before the crash, so why the aircraft disappeared from Mobile Control Tower’s radar shortly after taking off is a mystery. Preziose was flying under contract for DHL Worldwide Express and was bound for Montgomery, Alabama, with a 190-kilogram (420 lb) payload of business documents.

The Maury Island Incident

In 1947, there were many hazards in the waters off Maury Island in Washington state. There were so many, in fact, that they needed boats to patrol the waters in search of logs that had gotten loose and then tow them back to the mills. At the time, Harold Dahl worked one of these boats, and his shore supervisor was Fred Crisman. On June 21, 1947, Dahl radioed in to Crisman to inform him that he was out on patrol with three aboard—him, his son, and their dog. At around 2:00 PM, the boat was nearing the eastern shore of Maury Island when Dahl looked up to see six doughnut-shaped craft hovering some 600 meters (2,000 ft) above his ship.

The craft appeared to be made from a highly reflective metal and were 30 meters (100 ft) in diameter, while the “doughnut holes” were about 8 meters (25 ft) across. Dahl also reported seeing portholes around the craft and what looked like an observation window. Five of the six craft held station around one in particular, which was seemingly impairs and slowly losing altitude. It stopped and hovered in place about 150 meters (500 ft) from the water. Afraid that the aircraft was going to crash into his boat, Dahl smartly put the till toward shore to get out of the way. Once they were on shore, Dahl grabbed his camera and took several pictures of the scene. What happens next can only be called an “in-flight repair operation.”

The damaged craft stayed in position for several minutes, with the other five circling above. Then, one of the ships came down out of the formation to come in contact with the damaged one. The two craft then stayed connected until Dahl heard a thud, and then suddenly, thousands of pieces of debris fell from the center of the middle ship. Though most of the debris landed in the water, some did fall onto the beach, where it was later collected by the Air Force. Dahl picked up a few pieces and saw that it was a light, whitish metal. In addition to this, the craft dumped another, much larger quantity of a black-colored, metallic substance that looked like lava and acted like hot slag, steaming when it hit the water. The men were forced to take cover when the black metal started raining on them, hitting Dahl’s son, burning him and breaking his arm, and killing their dog.

This case has never been solved, and Harold Dahl became the first person ever claiming to have been harassed by the infamous ‘men in black’.

The Cash-Landrum Incident

In the Piney Woods of Texas on a cold December evening in 1980, two women and a small boy would soon encounter one of the strangest unknown aircraft ever not reported. All three would suffer not only severe physical injury, but long-term emotional trauma as well. In the end, the incident would even take a life.

Betty Cash, age 51, was behind the wheel heading for Market Road 1485 in Texas, on December 29, 1980. With her was a friend, 57-year-old Vickie Landrum, and Colby Landrum, her seven-year-old grandson. They were trying to find a bingo game but were having no luck, since most were closed down for the holidays. They stopped for a bite to eat and then went about their business. They soon came up on a distant light. In a few minutes, the distant light got closer and was revealed to be a fiery flying object. It appeared to be in trouble, barely being able to stay above the tops of the tall pines.

The trio first thought that it was an airplane or helicopter from one of the nearby military bases, but the next thing they knew, a huge, diamond-shaped object was hovering above the road right in their path! At regular intervals, the object would send down a column of Hellish-orange flames, scorching the road surface (which would be mysteriously and completely repaved not long after). Later Vickie would describe the craft as “a diamond of fire.” She also stated publicly that she thought “it was the end of time.”

The boy was scared, so his grandmother got him back into the car while Betty stayed outside. Betty became spellbound by the fantastical sight in front of her. As she stood there watching, the sky suddenly filled with helicopters. She said, “They seemed to rush in from all directions like they were trying to encircle the thing.” The terrifying craft now started to lift into the air and then head southwest, with the helicopters in close tow.

When Betty got to the car to open the door, the handle was so hot that she could barely touch it. She burned her hand getting in and immediately turned on the air conditioner to cool off the car, since it was now sticky hot. After the craft had left, Betty restarted the car and started to drive home, hoping to never see anything like that thing again, but a few miles later, there it was. This time, it was surrounded by the Earthly craft, which were bathing it with their search lights. They counted 23 helicopters. They identified the military craft as double-rotor Chinooks and several smaller Bell Huey helicopters.

After getting home alive, all three became very sick. Betty had blisters on her neck and head, and before long, her eyes were swollen shut. Everyone was also nauseated. By the next morning, Betty was almost comatose. Colby and Vickie suffered from similar symptoms, but not as severely. Betty would soon check into a hospital, where she stayed for 15 days being treated as a radiation victim. Her eyes swelled up so bad that she could not see for a week, and her hair started to fall out—both classic signs of radiation sickness.

Betty Cash died on December 29, 1998, ironically 18 years to the day after the event. Vickie Landrum died September 12, 2007, outliving her friend by nine years, even though she was six years older than Betty. Colby Landrum is alive and well, living in Texas. In the end, they filed suit, but they failed since they could not prove that the government was involved.

The Dyatlov Pass Incident

The Dyatlov Pass Incident occurred sometime around February 2 or 3, 1959, when nine hikers trekked off into Russia’s Ural Mountains heading for a mountain called Otorten, which in the local language means, “Do not go there.” The party’s specific destination was known locally as “The Mountain of the Dead,” so from the start, the entire trip seemed dreadful at best and even worse at the end. The hikers would all soon be found fatally injured in a variety of horrific ways.

Four days later, when the Russian military found their campsite, they were more than a little shocked at what they discovered. For instance, when they inspected the hikers’ tent, they found that they’d not only fled in a huge hurry without taking anything with them such as shoes or coats, but they had actually cut their way out of the tent, as if something had gotten inside and was after them.

When the bodies were autopsied, the doctors were even more shocked than the military by the wounds these nine people presented to them. Some of the hikers looked as though they had aged to the point of being mummified. Others had injuries normally only found in violent aircraft or automobile accidents, where extreme trauma to the human body occurs from violent forces. Needless to say, the Russians kept this quiet for a long time.

On top of all this, unidentified orange orbs were reported in the same area the night before the hiking party met their terrible fate. Also, a local tribe with ancient roots in the Urals called the Mansi have an ancient legend in which nine people go off on the same route and never return alive.