Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov has been the President of the Republic of Kalmykia of the Russian Federation from 1993 until present day. He’s a multi-millionaire of his own making, a super-duper chess wiz, and possibly has more business savvy than all of Donald Trump‘s apprentices smooshed together into one. Also, once he was thought linked to a  horrific, politically motivated stabbing murder (as insinuated by Wikipedia), but that’s neither here nor there.

The news of the day is this – he claimed in a TV interview that one night in 1997 a semi-transparent tube showed up on his balcony. It was the device aliens used to get him on their ship – and he claims to have proof of it!

Politicians claiming UFO experience/knowledge seems to be a trend lately. Remember retiring State Representative to New Hampshire Henry W. McElroy, Jr? He went on abut how Eisenhower knew all about the ETs being here. Or that whole former US Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich – remember that one? He was hanging out with the Patridge Family mom when he suddenly saw a freaky UFO floating outside the balcony.

Well add another one to the list. Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov claims he had a balcony encounter too. In an (unprofessionally-translated) excerpt from a TV interview:

“Okay, well, it was a Saturday, I wanted to drive to Kalmüchien and was in my apartment in the Leontief quarter.” [The interviewer asks] “Here in Moskau?” Response: “Exactly. In the evening, I was reading, watched TV and then went to bed. I probably fell asleep and felt that the balcony door being opened and someone called me. I saw a half transparent tube, in which he came. I went through this tube and saw people in yellow spacesuits. I was asked often in which language we speak. Maybe telepathically, because not enough oxygen was there(?) They made me understand: “Just a small touch and everything will be fine.” And then they showed me around the spacecraft and they said, “We need samples from every planet.” Then I asked, “Why don´t you go on TV and say that you are here? Talk to us!” Then they said, that we were not ready for that.”

That sounds pretty far fetched, right? If you don’t think it sounds far fetched you are a weirdo.  Still – Ilyumzhinov claims proof of his temporary vanishing. In his own words from the same interview:

“I wouldn´t have believe this happened myself if I didn’t have 3 witnesses. My driver, the Minister and my assistant. They came in the morning and couldn’t find me. They found the balcony door open in the floor above. They saw that(?) and called (my)friends, but they knew nothing. Then they sat in the kitchen and discussed from where they should call, because the telephone and everything else was locked up in the apartment and they didn’t have there own key. Then they saw me coming into the kitchen from the bedroom. They looked at me and I said, “Make me an Omelet, we need to go to the Airport.” They asked, “Where were you?” And I said very normally, “I was in a flying saucer” They looked annoyed and asked, “No, seriously…” So I sat down and began to think about it logically. This experience/time – was about an hour long-they were in my apartment and I wasn’t there. One of them was in the hallway and it was not possible that I walked past him. I came out of the bedroom where the balcony door was open. They all were pretty shocked by all of this for a few months. It is so clear(to them) that I wasn’t there (in the apartment) and then suddenly was there.”

If we found ourselves in the exact same situation, we’d probably have asked for a bagel with cream cheese instead of an omelet. That’s the only difference. It’s kind of proof that we’d make excellent Russian politicians.

If you’d like to see our source material for this – it’s straight from Youtube. It’s spoken in Russian and the subtitles are German. Very inconvenient, we know. Somebody posted an English translation below it. You’ve got to click on something to make the translation appear, but you know, have at it.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

90% of the time people sight UFOs it ends up being a comet, a misidentified airplane, or a child who’d sucked too much helium and floated way up into the sky. That last one is personal experience.

But the point being the encounters can usually be easily explained. But what about when it can’t be? The Chiles-Whitted sighting, for instance, will probably leave little brown clumps all over your underpants-innards.

Wikipedia lists a very interesting intro to this story. It takes place at the Hague in the Netherlands, and was apparently investigated by the US Airforce. Edward J. Ruppelt, the head of Project Blue Book at the time, sums it up in a report:

“On July 21 [1948] a curious report was received from the Netherlands. The day before, several persons reported seeing a UFO through high broken clouds over The Hague. The object was rocket shaped, with two rows of windows along the side. It was a poor report, very sketchy and incomplete, and it probably would have been forgotten except that four nights later a similar UFO almost collided with an Eastern Airlines DC-3.”

Does that grab your attention? Well lets fast forward those four days then. Pilot Clarence Chiles and co-pilot John Whitted were chugging along the Alabama skies. They were probably having the standard peanut fight up in the cockpit, which we’ve been told repeatedly was industry standard in the forties. That’s when the cigar shaped flying object almost smashed right into them.

UFOs.About.com has the details:

“The object appeared to be directly in their path of flight. The two pilots had no cause to think anything other than there was another airliner in their vicinity, albeit unreported. Almost before they could react, they saw the object coming right at them. The object streaked by, just barely edging to their starboard side. The unknown object could not have been more 1,000 feet away. When reflecting on the near-miss later, both pilots agreed that the UFO had no wings, and no tail.

“They also had seen two rows of windows, which appeared to be extremely reflective… The two pilots also recalled that the object’s front section was pointed, and along its belly was a blue glow. This glow ran the full length of the UFO. Exhaust of a red color could be seen at the end of the object. The UFO’s size compared favorably to a B-29, except with a thicker body.”

And then it disappeared. It could probably be ruled out as a hoax, right? Just a story two bored pilots came up with as the peanuts flew accompanied by riotous giggles – except that one of the passengers saw it too.

Wikipedia, if you would please:

“Given the early hour of the flight, most of the passengers were asleep. One of them, Clarence L. McKelvie, would later offer corroborative eyewitness testimony. He asserted that he saw an extraordinarily bright light from his window seat in the aircraft, describing it as unlike lightning. He later told Project Sign investigators that the light seemed to have moved parallel to the plane, but at a higher altitude.”

Still not convinced? What about ground witnesses. UFOs.About.com says:

“One saving grace for many of the passengers was that, because of the hour, they were asleep at the time of the incident. But there were also witnesses on the ground who saw the UFO. Several individuals from Robbins Air Base, located near Macon, Georgia, also saw the unknown object. Their description was consistent with that of the two pilots. Their observation was about 1/2 hour before the DC-3 encounter. After tracing 225 flights of the same morning, a passenger plane was ruled out, according to a government official.”

The government, apparently, was at a loss for words. An Air Force spokesman went as far as saying:

“…this country has no plane resembling a double-decked, jet-propelled, wingless transport shooting a 40-foot flame out of its back end.”

The explanation they eventually went with was first offered by Dr. J. Allen Hynek. It was an extraordinary meteor. One that apparently wasn’t confined by gravity’s typical demands.

That’s a lot of sightings by a lot of people describing the same thing. In a court of law that spaceship could have been found guilty on testimony alone. And assuming that causing the spill of peanuts was as serious a crime then as it really should be now (what with the economy and all) – it’d probably be sentenced to quite a stint in the pen.

And you know, really, if a spaceship was behind bars hammering out license plates and taking conjugal visits from the Deathstar – well what could the skeptics really say then? Unless the spaceship joined the prison crips, that is. Everyone knows it’s best not to report on a prison crip.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Rocket Ghosts, as is common knowledge, are the spirits left behind by long since exploded aerodynamic artillery. The most commonly sighted ghost rockets haunt the streets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where they’ve been seen playing Dance Dance Revolution in empty shops at midnight.

Ghost Rockets, on the other hand, are a strange aerial phenomenon seen thousands of times in 1946 Sweden. They were caught on radar, reported hundreds of times – and even allegedly left a crater in the bottom of a lake. And perhaps the strangest part – according to an alleged government top secret memo, is this:

“These phenomena are obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth.”

Governments have had a long, weird, alleged history with UFOs. Remember a few weeks ago when we dropped ol’ Henry McElroy on you? He’s the retiring politician that said every single UFO/Alien story you’ve ever heard is absolutely true, or something like that. Well that’s the kind of upfront no-nonsense attitude we’ve all come to expect from all of our world governments – especially Sweden.

We know, we know – normally when you think of Sweden you just think ‘Well, they screwed Norway again,’ but this time we want you to think about the strange, extremely large UFO flap they had in 1946. Wikipedia really sums things up:

“Ghost Rockets (also called Scandinavian ghost rockets) were mysterious rocket- or missile-shaped unidentified flying objects sighted in 1946, mostly in Sweden and nearby countries. About 2,000 ghost rockets sightings were logged between May and December 1946, with peaks on the 9 and 11 August 1946. 200 sightings were verified with radar returns, and authorities recovered physical fragments which were attributed to ghost rockets.

“Investigations concluded that many ghost rocket sightings were probably caused by meteors. For example, the peaks of the sightings, on the 9 and 11 August, also fall within the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower. However, most ghost rocket sightings did not occur during meteor shower activity, and furthermore displayed characteristics inconsistent with meteors, such as reported maneuverability and being trackable on radar.”

There was another strange characteristic attributed to some of the ghost rockets as well – they made no sound. There it was, a giant piece of machinery chugging across the sky and not a peep was made – even when they’d explode. According to the August 13, 1946 New York Times:

“One of the best of the puzzling reports came from a meteorologist who observed an unknown object closely while he was outdoors watching cloud formations with a telescope. At first the meteorologist thought he was seeing an airplane on the horizon, brightly reflecting sunlight. The object’s very high speed soon disproved this idea. In a few seconds, the observer got a clear view of the ghost rocket: It was, he judged, ninety feet long, torpedo-shaped, and had a shiny metal surface. He estimated the object was but 2,000 meters distant, but made no noticeable noise. Abruptly the ghost rocket exploded — again without a sound.”

Certainly that sighting from an unnamed yet trusted Swedish meteorologist is enough to convince anyone of the credible oddity that are Scandinavian Ghost Rockets. But if you’re the type that prefers to read it in top secret government documents, well then – here you go:

“One of these  objects  was observed  by a Swedish  technical  expert near his home on the edge of a lake.   The object crashed or landed in the lake and he carefully noted its azimuth from his point of observation.   Swedish intelligence was sufficiently confident in his observation that a naval salvage team was sent to the lake.   Operations were underway during the visit of USAFE officers. Divers had discovered a previously uncharted crater on the floor of the lake. No further information is available, but we have been promised knowledge of the results.   In their opinion, the observation was reliable, and they believe that the depression on the floor of the lake, which did not appear on current hydrographic charts, was in fact caused by a flying saucer.”

And there you have it. These things were flying around like mosquitoes in a swamp in ’46 Sweden. They were sighted by the educated, recorded on radar and some say one of them smashed a crater into the bottom of a lake. Were they UFOs? Certainly – because nobody knows what they were. But were they space ships?

Well…

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Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

When a tin foil spaceship crashed all over Roswell, New Mexico, the residents there must have been overcome with anticipation of the tourist dollars that would soon stuff their wallets. As Roswell sat back and watched the green fly in (pun intended), Aurora, Texas must have felt slighted.

After all, they had a spaceship crash like 50 years previously – and theirs included a now-buried little green body.

Aurora, Texas was a quiet little town that once had something they termed ‘an airship’ smash into a windmill then explode all to pieces. The sight of an airship was by no means new – after all, a rash of the things had been reported all over the country. Texasescapes.com finds the words to describe things:

“The Aurora crash was, in fact, the culminating event in a rash of “airship” sightings in East and Northeast Texas, Oklahoma, North and Central Louisiana in the period between 1895 and 1898. Robert Atkinson, of Center, Texas, a veteran of the Spanish American War, often told of seeing, as a teenager, strange, “flashing lights” in the sky, as did Polk Burns of the same city. Similar incidents were recountered by Bud Knight, a prominent resident of San Augustine, Texas, who died in 1981 at the age of 108. Lee Choron, who died in 1976 at the age of 94 recalled seeing “moving lights flashing in the sky” while living in Swift, Texas… while in his “teens”.”

Keep in mind these sightings were happening in 1897 or before. The Wright brothers first flew on December 17th 1903 – not that airplanes were the first human-made vehicles to cross the sky. Hot air balloons and dirigibles had been around for who-knows how long. Let’s not forget though, that the above witness account claimed flashing lights – not flickering candles. Electricity, is of course, implied here. Although Ben Franklin‘s key had been first lit up by it several decades earlier, surely a balloon from that time couldn’t be suited up with light bulb wiring.

Now on to more interesting fare, the Aurora crash was reported in newspapers, diaries and letters to friends. One such newspaper article still exists. It’s from the Dallas Morning News:

“About 6 o’clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around the country. It was traveling due north and much nearer the earth than before.

“Evidently some of the machinery was out of order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour, and gradually settling toward the earth. It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor’s windmill and went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge’s flower garden.

“The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.”

Did you read that? The newspaper article said there was a body. What’s more – they buried it in the local cemetery. No really – we wouldn’t lie to you. Here’s a splurb from the historical marker screwed to the cemetery’s gate, or whatever:

“…This site is also well-known because of the legend that a spaceship crashed nearby in 1897 and the pilot, killed in the crash, was buried here…”

With a known location for an alien body one would suppose that concrete proof of alien visitation was just a couple shovelfuls away. We would that it was that simple. There was a tombstone at one point, allegedly – acting like the X on a pirate’s map. According to CBS11tv.com:

“There was a tombstone, with a marking that appeared to be half of a saucer, or the cigar-shaped object. Researchers ran metal detectors over the site where the ship was said to crash. Some say the grass hasn’t grown there since. In a nearby shed, there’s a well where wreckage, small bits of metal, was reportedly thrown. But in 1973, the tombstone and the metal in the ground disappeared.”

Still, it shouldn’t be that tough to find, right? A couple strong backs could probably have the whole place dug up within a few weeks.

If the locals would let them. You see, they’re conveniently tired of all the attention, and refuse to let anyone dig. And as for the owners of the well with all the debris down in it – well they cemented it over. Things really aren’t looking good here, are they?

So unfortunately, the mystery of the Aurora spaceship crash will remain just that – a mystery.

PS. Check out this detailed original newspaper article regarding the crash. We think you’ll quite enjoy it if you’ve got good vision.

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Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Its been a while since we last mentioned the Tunguska Blast – the 1908 mid-air explosion that happened over Russia and pretty much leveled every single tree that ever existed. Now a scientist has found something at the site – something he says proves that the blast occurred because benevolent aliens threw their spaceship in front of an enormous space-rock to save the earth from total destruction.

The Tunguska Blast happened in 1908 and leveled hundreds of square miles of trees. Some say it was caused by a mini black hole that briefly developed over a forest. Others say the massive devastation was caused by Nikola Tesla doing a practice run of his all-powerful death-ray.

It’s considered one of the great mysteries of the modern era because until now nobody has been 100% sure what happened.  Now somebody is sure though. They’re not necessarily right, mind you, but in their mind they’ve got all the confusion sorted out. He says it was a spaceship throwing itself in front of a meteor to spare human civilisation. His proof is quartz crystals he found at the site that have little etchings on them.

Fox News may clarify things for you:

“Dr. Yuri Labvin, president of the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation, insists that an alien spacecraft sacrificed itself to prevent a gigantic meteor from slamming into the planet above Siberia on June 30, 1908. The result was was the Tunguska event, a massive blast estimated at 15 megatons that downed 80 million trees over nearly 100 square miles. Eyewitnesses reported a bright light and a huge shock wave, but the area was so sparsely populated no one was killed…Labvin thinks quartz slabs with strange markings found at the site are remnants of an alien control panel, which fell to the ground after the UFO slammed into the giant rock.”

And here’s what Labvin told Macedonia Online, – the news source that originally ran the story:

“Aliens downed Tunguska meteorite to protect our planet from devastation, stated Russian scientist Yuriy Lavbin about the 100 year old mystery surrounding the massive Siberian explosion. He showed 10 quartz crystals that he found at the place of the meteorite’s crash. Several of the crystals have holes in between, so they can be united in a chain. What could this chain serve for? Besides, some crystals have strange drawings on them. We don’t have any technologies that can print such kind of drawings on crystals. We also found ferrum silicate that can not be produced anywhere, except in space.”

Off the bat let us just say that the ‘ferrum silicate only found in space’ argument is weak. After all – we’re talking about a meteor here – and where do they come from? If you answered Thailand there you’re wrong. The presence of something like that would certainly not indicate a spaceship. Also – ‘Ferrum Silicate’ doesn’t seem to exist. Go ahead – Google it.

Next – the website that originally ran the story, although it’s clearly from Macedonia, is written in English, and is apparently on a strict budget that doesn’t include editors of any sort. It doesn’t seem to us that a low brow and largely unknown website without any kind of financial backing whatsoever would be the first place a scientist of one sort or the other would run with earth-shattering news.

Also – what’s the deal with all those control board crystals having holes drilled in them so they can be united in a chain? Are the aliens plummeting through interstellar space using a caveman calculator as their chief navigational tool? Really?

Lastly, does the great scientist Dr. Yuri Labvin exist anywhere outside of this story? Yeah – Google him too. We couldn’t find anything else. Granted we didn’t look farther than page two of the search results, but still.

Still – the thought of a bunch of aliens on a spaceship yelling something like ‘For the Queen!’ just before throwing themselves in front of sure-death is amusing.

We bet it probably happened. We honestly do.

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