But Something Happened

Most of the time, when someone mentions something paranormal or exterrestrial, we all roll our eyes and have a decent chuckle. We often dismiss the situation completely at that moment and put it out of our minds. However, while these explanations seem ridiculous, we often forget that something did have to happen.

Take for example the 1908 Tunguska event. In 1908, a UFO (by the strictest definition, not necessarily aliens) exploded over a remote region of Siberia. We know of the explosion because it flattened trees and drove wildlife off. The most likely explanation is a meteor. Sometimes, after entering Earth’s atmosphere meteorites do indeed explode.

It’s Siberia so there weren’t a lot of witnesses. However, something obviously happened, trees were uprooted and laid down. Plus, for most of the last 100+ years, wildlife has avoided the area and nothing has really grown there.

So, while it is unlikely that an alien spacecraft exploded, there can be no doubt that something extraordinary happened. And that the something did involve radiation, probably from space. I point this out because we know that extreme radiation poisoning of soil does drive away wildlife. We’ve seen it at both Chernobyl and Two Mile Island.

It is easy to snicker and laugh when someone says “it might have been aliens”… But the possibility is less farfetched than we might think. Since the 1950s, humans have been littering outer space with junk in the form of defunct satellites, expelled rocket jets, and even tools lost during space walks and repairs to the ISS and shuttles.

It is illogical to believe we are the only intelligent life in the universe. And it is within reason to believe that other life is just as advanced, if not more so, than us. Is it not possible then that they also have space junk floating around just outside their atmosphere? And if their space junk was caught in the tail of a passing comet, it is possible it could travel millions of miles away from their own planet. Making it possible that some meteors could indeed be space junk from other advanced civilizations on distant planets.

And while I realize a lost wrench from Sirius B is not exactly a little green alien. It is still extraterrestrial. Essentially, the point is, we dismiss this stuff immediately and politely smile. But we humans only truly know so much about our planet and the universe. There are hundreds of things that could be beyond our current explanation, that eventually we’ll understand. This includes ghosts, aliens, and strange happenings like the Tunguska Event. If you had said 300 years ago, that invisible living things caused illness, you would have been snickered at. But today, we know that is the exact cause of most illnesses. Just something to consider the next time you hear Malachi talk about cattle mutilations.

Booming Earth Phenomenon

On the morning of March 4th, while I was playing discussing Pablo Picasso via text message with my bestie, there was a loud boom. It was a little after 10 am. I was in the garage and the garage doors shook as did the walls of the house. Now, I live only a couple miles from the trash dump for my city as the crow flies and this wasn’t the first massive unexplained boom I’d heard nearby.

However, my first thought was less about the boom and more about Lola. Lola was outside and she, like most dogs does not handle loud booms very well. I raced upstairs and outside and sure enough, Lola was shaking and ready to come inside. I gave her a trazadone for her fear (she refuses to even try a Thunder Shirt, wearing clothing stresses her out). Then I sat with her, just petting her and letting her know it was okay.

About noon, my local news station popped up a report on the loud boom. It was being investigated because there was no definite cause and it hadn’t been heard just near my house, but in the towns to the north of where I live. My sister on the other side of the city had also experienced it.

I’ve read about booming Earth phenomenon before. This is just what it sounds like, loud booms with no definite source that seem to come from within the Earth. But I’ve never experienced it personally. I live close enough to Whiteman Air Force Base that I grew up with flyovers by Stealth bombers (the B2) and I’ve experienced plenty of sonic booms. It oddly didn’t feel or sound like a sonic boom. It sounded and felt like an explosion. In an ironic twist, the day before at 3:30 am, a natural gas line approximately 30 miles from me did suffer a catastrophic failure and there was an explosion followed by a fire. But I didn’t hear or feel that explosion.

I’ve read books about booming Earth phenomenon and it does appear in history records going as far back as Ancient Egypt. And with no other explanation handy, it was most likely an Earth boom that we all heard. They are becoming more common, but we don’t understand why they happen and we can’t predict them.

There are tons of theories about what causes an Earth boom, but so far, we’ve been unable to prove any of them. And their cause remains a mystery.

The Dopplegänger

Germanic mythology states that every person on the planet has a dopplegänger. However, the purpose of it, depends on which myths you look at. A doppleganger is a double. And there may be some truth to it.

I have some personal experience with a doppleganger. As does my mother. I have not met my doppleganger nor my mom’s, which is probably good because it’s considered bad luck to meet your double. My story:

I was in a restaurant for lunch one day with some coworkers. I was 17 at the time and I was enjoying fajitas. When a woman suddenly came up to our table and said my first name and asked what I was doing there. I had never met this woman in my life, so it was odd that she knew my name. I explained I was having lunch with a coworker and she asked why we had come all the way to Columbia for lunch. Um, we work in the Columbia office of the Missouri Department of Health, it’s really only a couple miles from here to our office. After a few more confused sentences we realized I must not be the woman she thought I was as the woman she thought I was worked for a doctor’s office in a town called Montgomery City.

The woman was insistent that we could pass for twins and it was stranger that we had the same first name. After the woman left my coworker commented that the woman must not spend much time with the girl she mistook me for. I agreed and we continued on with lunch.

Some years later while shopping with a friend, a man came up to me and started talking to me like he had known me my entire life and yet, I had never met him. He asked how Holly was… I asked who was Holly and he got a strange look and said “your mom.” Um, no, my mom’s name is Mollie, not Holly. We realized he was looking for the girl that worked at the doctor’s office in Montgomery City and we went our separate ways.

Total I’ve had five or six of these encounters with people from Montgomery City being surprised by my presence in Columbia. The two places are only 51 miles from each other, really not that far.

Perhaps the oddest part of these encounters though is that my mom apparently has a doppleganger named Holly from Montgomery City and over the years, she’s had a dozen or so encounters with people who have mistaken her for Holly from Montgomery City. Is it possible that my mom’s doppelganger Holly is the mother of my doppelganger that shares my name?

My mom’s maternal side of the family hails from Montgomery City. Meaning it is possible that Holly is a distant cousin of my mother’s. How on earth that lead to my mom’s doppelganger giving birth to a daughter that would share my name and have her genes express in such a way that we can pass as twins, is beyond me. Especially since I have been told all my life how much I look like my father who does not have any distant relations in Montgomery City.

My story is less unique than one might think. If you spend some time on Reddit searching for stories of doppelgangers, you’ll find plenty. And while my doppelganger is apparently a nurse in a much smaller town, some consider doppelgangers to be sinister apparitions. Some stories of doppelgangers make them demonic beings who are trying to steal the lives of their doubles. Others say they’re an omen of death and that meeting your doppelganger foretells that one of you will die soon.

UFOs in Vietnam

I did a blog post about UFOs during WWII and WWI. However, UFOs seem attracted to conflict (how very Predator of them). And the first two world wars, weren’t the only times that UFOs plagued troops during a war. It’s happened during most major conflicts. Now, one can say that it’s because there are a lot of aircraft during times of war, they fly lower, and they are more noticeable, but that doesn’t quite cover it. Because in Vietnam, we weren’t dealing the spectral lights known as Foo Fighters, we were dealing with something that occasional shot first and asked questions later.

I know of three reported attacks on troops by UFOs during Vietnam. The first was an attack on a patrol boat in 1968 that killed several US troops and was witnessed by multiple platoons. During the Vietnam war, these UFOs were referred to simply as Enemy Helicopters or as Viet Cong helicopters. Now, the north Vietnamese did have access to some helicopters. The Soviet Union and communist China had backed the communist north Vietnamese army, however, these helicopters came with either Soviet pilots or Chinese pilots, because neither government was willing to turn over their expensive flying machines to untrained pilots. Especially, since Vietnam was the first time helicopters were used in large numbers.

Back to the reports. In 1968, a US patrol boat running the Mekong radioed that it needed assistance. A ground platoon from the US army and another patrol boat responded to the call. Shortly after the second patrol boat arrived, the ground troops and men in the second patrol boat reported that an enemy helicopter had destroyed the first patrol boat with an explosive weapon. The second patrol boat tried to rescue anyone they found in the water and reported the bodies had been badly burned and the wreckage had sank very quickly.

In 1970, a US platoon on ground patrol reported seeing a large glowing object hovering over the jungle approximately three clicks (kilometers) from their location. There was a loud buzzing noise, a flash in the jungle and then the light flew away. The following morning, the same platoon went to investigate the area that had been hit by the flash and found a dozen or so guerrilla troops dead. The bodies were badly burned as was much of the jungle foliage.

In 1971 both US troops and north Vietnamese soldiers all reported that during the night (the groups were roughly two clicks apart) they were all made sick by an enemy helicopter that made a strange warbling noise. It hovered between the two groups for nearly half an hour. Soldiers from both sides suffered nausea, vomiting, fevers, weakened muscles, trembling, and headaches. Both sides were too sick to “fight” or even “go find” the enemy and had to call for reinforcements that evacuated them from the area. All the US troops involved in this encounter were hospitalized.

A similar encounter happened in 1951 during the Korean War and was experienced by US troops as well as Soviet troops.

For whatever reason, UFO reports increase exponentially during times of conflict. Some of these are no doubt misidentified aircraft, missiles, and other benign objects. But it doesn’t explain all of them, especially considering many of those doing the reporting are trained to identify aircraft on sight.

The Truth About UFOs

Everyone says they want the truth when it comes to UFOs. And everyone suspects world governments are covering it up. It’s a great theory, but the truth may not be the best idea when it comes to aliens.

If intelligent aliens are visiting the Earth, I’m not sure people can handle it. Since 6,000 BCE when the Sumerians rose to build the city of Uruk, humans have been having issues with ethnicity. The Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Vikings, Vandals, Mongols, Assyrians, Russians, Germans, Americans, Indians, English, French, we have all had periods of intense racism.

Humans can’t get past genetic differences that cause skin tone differences, do we really think we are civilized enough to handle a totally different and new race? I don’t think we are.

And I’ve heard the arguments that it would bring mankind closer together, as they united against something decidedly not human. But again, I think it would highlight our differences and create more divisions. You’d have those that were pro-alien and those that were anti-alien and that division would probably continue to start wars.

Think about how Americans dealt with abolition. Decades before the Emancipation Proclamation, we human beings were fighting over whether we should or should not support slavery of other humans. Those that were pro-slavery were known to burn down the homes of abolitionists. Free blacks would be captured and taken to the plantations, even if they had never set foot in a southern state. During WWII, Americans who spoke out against the internment of Japanese-Americans were risking their necks.

Why would humans react better to aliens? And humans who wanted to extend rights to extraterrestrials?

The only way aliens unite humanity is if they are hostile, like in Independence Day. As of yet, if aliens are visiting Earth, they are doing it in the same way that Douglas Adams discussed in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, buzzing lesser developed planets and beings.

Unfortunately, this means that if I’m in a position of power and know aliens are visiting, I keep that shit as quiet as possible. And I ensure other world leaders are also keeping that shit to themselves… because the last thing I want is for journalists at the Washington Post or New York Times reporting to Americans or Brits or anyone else that reads their papers, that Kim Jong-Un just brought out a UFO, some alien bodies, and proof of extraterrestrials. That is something I would take quite seriously, like nuclear attack imminent serious. However, since aliens would create mass panic that resulted in toppled governments, if I’m Kim Jong-Un, I’m also not sharing that information for my own protection, which is a fairly good motivator to not break the agreement that says aliens do not exist.

Next week, I have a post about UFOs in the Soviet Union.

Not Getting Easier

The evolution of technology should make it easier to solve crimes, but the reality is a bit different. Even when fingerprints, DNA, and a witness or victim gets a photo or video of the criminal, there has to be something to compare and match it to, which can be difficult even when the criminal is a repeat offender.

I know that sounds nearly impossible, but with fingerprints, it’s quite easy. Some years ago, I accidentally cut off the pad of my ring finger with scissors. When the skin grew back, it was missing part of the finger print. The main part with the biggest grouping of loops and whirls. It doesn’t look like a scar exactly, it isn’t raised or anything, it’s just a section of my finger where when you look at it it’s completely smooth. However, a doctor told me even if it hadn’t grown back smooth, there’s no guarantee it would have grown back with the exact same pattern on it had before I accidentally cut it off.

Even security videos aren’t without faults. In Boston some years ago, a man in his 20s went missing from a bar. He was seen on video surveillance in the bar, but at the end of the night, he was gone and never heard from again, yet the cameras didn’t see him leave. CCTV in London followed a man for several blocks, he stepped out of view of the cameras in one area and just never reappeared. A decade later and no one has ever heard from him again either. Then there’s the bizarre Elisa Lam surveillance video footage of her in the elevator, right before she disappeared only to be found several weeks later in the water tanks on the roof of the hotel she had disappeared from, but without any evidence or ideas on how she got there.

In 2016, between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro Brazil there were 2 different days when it rained blood and what appeared to be meat. There are lots of pictures and videos of the event taken by people with cell phones, but no adequate explanation has been found for the events.

The disappearing men were eventually chalked up to being murdered, but their bodies haven’t been found and I’m not convinced murder covers it, healthy male 20-somethings are not the preferred victim pool of killers. Did they have a break from reality and disappear of their own accord then? It sounds fantastic, but it does happen.

Or does something happen to them to cause amnesia like the guy in California who appeared on several episodes of Unsolved Mysteries in the 1980s and 1990s whose identity was eventually discovered and he was returned to his family in Canada still without memory of who he was or what had happened to him?

And technology didn’t help solve the mystery of the possessed family in Indiana a few years ago that made national news. As a matter of fact, it deepened it. Someone once commented to me that they wished the Dyatlov Pass victims had been in possession of video cameras so we would know what made them flee their tent to their deaths. Except, I’m not sure it would have solved the mystery. Even if they had captured video of a yeti stalking them or a mysterious alien craft landing near their tent, would we believe it?

WWII UFO Moments

As some of you may remember, my history degree is actually in the cultural and political history of WWII Europe. This means I can tell you what the average German thought of WWII as well as what the British and French were doing to combat Nazism and add a dash of what the Soviets thought of Hitler and Germans as a whole, and on a good day, I can remember details about the Battle of Stalingrad and other important battles. Which is why I didn’t get a career related to my degree… I didn’t want to teach and I couldn’t figure out what else to do with said history degree.

Writing novels is more in line with my passions anyway and it allows me to disseminate a little history to the masses who read my books and blog posts. WWII is generally thought of only in terms of Nazis. Don’t get me wrong, Nazis and the Holocaust were the most important parts of it, but it was also filled with head scratching moments for various reasons. This post will touch on some of those head scratching moments.

We’ll start with pre-War moments. In 1937, a UFO reportedly crashed in northern Germany and the wreckage was recovered by the Nazi government. This would lead to two things during the war, A) the funnelling of money into a top secret project called Die Glocke and B) Nazis developing the jet engine.

Hitler got the plans for Die Glocke from a medium involved in the Vril Society, a secret society that concentrated on spiritualism. Hitler himself was very interested in the paranormal and his right hand man, Himmler married a woman who proclaimed to be a medium. Despite massive funding and having the top scientists of Nazi Germany working on Die Glocke, the project would ultimately fail and the weapon to end the war would never take shape. Some think the weapon was a flying saucer, others think it had something to do with radioactivity.

However, it was while working on Die Glocke that Nazi Germany perfected the jet engine and by the final years of the war, Nazi Germany had the most advanced air force on the planet. Despite these advancements in aeronautics, ultimately, even the jet planes of Nazi Germany were no match for the tenacity of certain members of the US and Royal Air Force and experienced daredevil pilots would ultimately decide air combat battles in the favor of the Allied Forces in the European theater. So, the jet engine was created thanks to a theoretical UFO crash, Hitler and Himmler’s interest in the paranormal, and accident.

However, this would not be the only UFO encounter during WWII that would gain some notoriety. Foo Fighters would quickly join the lexicon of WWII. Seen by hundreds of air servicemen during WWII from every country to put up an airplane during it, they were either described as metal balls or glowing balls of light that often shadowed aircraft. There are dozens of photos taken from planes of Foo Fighters. Although, that hasn’t helped us figure out what they are and we haven’t had sightings of them since the end of WWII. One reportedly shadowed the Enola Gay for a short time on it’s fated flight to Japan.

The final one happened in the US. After the massacre at Pearl Harbor, many cities on the Pacific Coast had huge military installations put near them. The goal was to not be hit by another Pearl Harbor. Several of these installations even noticed the horrible balloon bombs Japan tried to send to the US (only one actually arrived on the mainland and while it did kill 2, it wasn’t very effective). A few things collided to make the perfect storm that would become known as the Battle of Los Angeles.

The first attack of the mainland US took place the day before the Battle of Los Angeles. February 22, 1942 (two and a half months after Pearl Harbor) a Japanese submarine surfaced off the coast of Santa Barbara, California and proceeded to launch artillery shells at the US. Unfortunately for the Japanese, they didn’t have their location correct and they ended up firing hundreds of shells on an oil field and refinery. There were no casualties and only minimal damage done.

Los Angeles was on the brink of panic, because it was obvious a Japanese submarine was just off the coast and it had disappeared from radar and it had attempted to bomb LA and failed. Records show the submarine did think it was bombing LA when it bombed the oil field in Santa Barbara. So in that respect, the panic of the Angelenos was justified. On the night of February 23, 1942 a contact did appear on radar that appeared to be a plane nearing Los Angeles. Battle stations were put on alert. People began reporting to emergency services they could see strange lights over the ocean heading towards the city. It didn’t take long for the radar contact to disappear, as it flew over Los Angeles air space. More people began to call emergency services about the lights that they reported had now disappeared.

The order was given to fire at the unknown craft. And all Hell broke loose. Military installations around Los Angeles fired hundreds of thousands of rounds. There is a famous photo of search lights scanning the black sky as heavy artillery rounds can be seen exploding in the area search lights are aimed at. Angelenos were told to head inside, pull down their curtains, and snuggle with loved ones. It is the only time a blackout order has been issued in the US.

The following morning, Angelenos could pick up the spent casings from the artillery rounds from their yards and streets. In the days and weeks that followed, the army stated several times that the alert was real and not a drill or the invention of an overactive imagination. If there was a craft, it either wasn’t hit by any of the rounds or it wasn’t reported as downed. And it holds the record for the only air battle to happen over mainland US. More shells were fired in the Battle of Los Angeles than by US forces in Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Los Angeles would actually lead the US to invest significant resources into research of radar technology to improve it. Germany and the US weren’t the only places where UFOs played a role in WWII, there was one report that surfaced in 1995 (after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991) that claimed several members of the Soviet army’s upper echelon took note of a UFO a few days before they recaptured the city of Stalingrad and that they found the weakness in the German defenses of the city, as a result of their encounter with the UFO.

As a side note, these all predate Roswell (1947) and the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting (also 1947) both of which “started the UFOlogy movement.”