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.

What are the first things to come to your mind when we say ‘Germany?’ For us it’s throaty languages, short green pants with shoulder straps and white people eating billions of sausages.

Also genocide.

After you read this super awesome article, something else might come to your mind too – UFO’s fighting it out in German skies sometime in the 1500s. Have you heard of that? You haven’t? Then by all means read on!

In keeping with last week’s theme of really old, weird UFO sightings, we’ve got another one for you today. A week ago we told you about a few weird lights that zoomed around the Bostonian sea side with disembodied voices. This week we’re telling you about aerial UFO battles held at least twice in the air space over the ski-friendly parts of Europe.

MysteryHistory.tv gives a pretty good synopsis of the first one:

“The citizens of Nuremberg, Germany behold what appears to be a large scale aerial battle followed by the appearance of a large black triangular object and a large crash (with smoke) outside the city. A news notice (pictured above) was printed 10 days later (April 14, 1561) describing the event.

“At sunrise on the 4th April 1561, the citizens of Nuremberg beheld “A very frightful spectacle.” The sky appeared to fill with cylindrical objects from which red, black, orange and blue white disks and globes emerged. Crosses and tubes resembling cannon barrels also appeared whereupon the objects promptly “began to fight one another.””

Interesting, but we bet you want to know what the news story said ten days later. Of course you do – here it is straight from 1561:

“At dawn of April 4, in the sky of Nuremberg (Germany), a lot of men and women saw a very alarming spectacle where various objects were involved, including balls “approximately 3 in the length, from time to time, four in a square, much remained insulated, and between these balls, one saw a number of crosses with the color of blood. Then one saw two large pipes, in which small and large pipes, were 3 balls, also four or more. All these elements started to fight one against the other.””

As if that’s not strange enough, in 1566 the exact same thing happened over Basel, Switzerland. Here’s an accounting from a UFO website called Signal In The Noise:

“On August 7, 1566, at dawn, many citizens of Basle (Switzerland), frightened, saw during several hours the black spheres involved in a formidable aerial battle, invading the sky of their city: “at the time when the sun rose, one saw many large black balls which moved at high speed in the air towards the sun, then made half-turns, banging one against the others as if they were fighting a battle out a combat, a great number of them became red and igneous, thereafter they were consumed and died out,” wrote Samuel Coccius, the student in “crowned writings and liberal arts” who consigned the strange events in the city’s gazette.”

Pretty weird, right? And real enough to appear in papers of the time. Real enough for people to make wood cuts about both instances, too. Still, we once made a wood cut of our mother-in-law getting eaten by a thousand alligators, and that definitely hasn’t happened yet.We guess wood carvings aren’t necessarily hard evidence.

Carving out all those teeth was the worst part about it. Now our wrists creak.

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.

You may think that UFO’s are a new phenomenon. You may also think that snakes make good pets and vegetables without ranch dressing are delicious. Well you are wrong across the board – especially about the snakes. Anything that may crush you and then swallow you whole doesn’t belong in an aquarium.

But the topic of the day is, of course, North America’s first sighting of an Unidentified Submerged Object. Granted, the object didn’t stay submerged. It broke the water’s surface and flew around in front of lots of people many times over a three week period, but the only explanation given at the time was necromancy.

Just you chew on that for a minute.

It started with a tragedy – and by tragedy we don’t mean the ‘your roommate finished off your milk’ type – we mean it was a full blown people-died type tragedy. In 1644 Boston, a ship blew up. Five men died. 16 days later madness ensued. It started like this (from CelebrateBoston.com):

“Exactly 16 days after the blowing up of Capt. Chaddock’s ill-fated ship and crew, and just at ‘the witching hour of midnight,’ as Shakespeare calls it, ‘when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes forth contagion in the air,’ three men in a boat, coming toward Boston—a strange hour for reputable puritans to be so far from home—saw two bright lights rise out of the water, at the place where the vessel had been blown up, just off the [old] North Ferry slip.

They made the still more inexplicable [observation] that the two lights assumed the form of a man, and sailed leisurely off over the water to the south, keeping but a short distance from the shore, till it reached a point now occupied by Rowe’s Wharf, at the foot of Franklin St., where it vanished as suddenly as it had appeared just 15 minutes before.”

Of course this then became the talk of the town – and then other people began to see the lights. The same website goes on:

“A week after the event just described, the old records say, ‘the twin lights were seen again by many,’ but this time they arose off Castle Island, and after traveling through the air just 12 minutes, vanished at the spot where the remains of the ship were resting. The restless spirits of the deep continued to make things satisfactorily terrifying for those who were ‘out late ‘o night’ along the waterfront.

“On one occasion, the story was, that at 8 o’clock, a light resembling the moon rose from the water at the wreck, sailed through the air till it was over the highest point of ‘Nottle’s Island,’ now East Boston—but then uninhabited, and an ideal place for ghostly gambols—and there it was met by its twin light, the two suddenly merging into one, then parting, and thus continuing uniting and separating, as if in playful mood, many times, all the while ‘shooting out sometimes flames and sometimes sparkles.’ Finally, uniting permanently, the big illuminated disc floated off behind the hill on ‘Nottle’s Island,’ disappearing from sight of the wondering eyes of Bostonians.”

There were disembodied voices too. Weird, right? Well we get this straight from the John Winthrop‘s journal:

“Was about eight of the clock in the evening, and was seen by many. About the same time a voice was heard upon the water between Boston and Dorchester, calling out in a most dreadful manner, ‘boy, boy, come away, come away’: and it suddenly shifted from one place to another a great distance, about twenty times. It was heard by divers godly persons. About 14 days after, the same voice in the same dreadful manner was heard by others on the other side of the town towards Not ties Island.”

Was it a ghost? How was the voice connected to the lights? Who was the boy that was supposed to come away? What were the flames and sparks shooting off the lights? Remembering that the definition of USO is ‘Unidentified Submerged Object’ is pretty much a necessity for this old tale. Nobody knows what it was.

It’s not a straight forward underwater UFO like the one we told you about all those years ago. In fact, just to make things even stranger, this weird 1644 short-lived epidemic was blamed on a dead necromancer back in the day. He was one of the five in the initial ship explosion, as far as we can tell.

We’re just going to blame all the Boston tea. That just feels right to us.

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.

If Hecklerspray ever sees a UFO, we’d like to think it would be in Antarctica right after we rescued Agent Scully from said UFO’s iron belly. If any other opportunity ever arises, we’re really not interested.

That’s not true. Really we’d probably poop our pants and stand their crying while any alien orbs scooted by several hundred feet above our heads. You know, like what recently happened in in Missouri a few weeks ago.

You hadn’t heard about that? Well then you’d better click on over to the next page.

It seems like UFO sightings don’t happen in the daytime very often. Sure, you’ve got the occasional Dennis Kucinich sighting that went down at noon on a balcony or something, but usually – it’s night time.

The unidentified objects often manifest themselves as lights outlining a ship shape (like this), or as amorphous glowing blobs that zip around at a distance (like this). Today’s topic seems to fall into the latter category – but with far more of these orange lights than usual. According to Examiner.com:

“Several Missouri witnesses traveling southbound on I-435 stopped to observe as many as 125 low-flying, orange objects that moved up from the tree line and traveled away at about the speed of a helicopter.”

We know what you’re thinking. If they moved like helicopters they were probably helicopters, right? Well could a helicopter do this? From the same source:

“”As they spread and slowly began to disappear into the clouds above (low ceiling), a larger and brighter orange object at a faster speed, about 1-2 degrees above the horizon, behind the tree line, and then as it started to ascend, split into five smaller orange objects, again radical in flight, without formation, and slowly ascended into the cloud cover,” the reporting witness stated. “This occurred about 20 times over a 25 minute span. They all came from the North (low on horizon) to South and then turning toward the East and then into cloud cover.”

“The event occurred over a 25-minute period and stopped after the largest object was seen – also splitting into five smaller objects.”

The last time we saw a helicopter divide into five pieces, it was an exploding Decepticon in a Michael Bay movie.

These orange orbs doing their thing were so obvious in the Missouri night sky that a lot of people actually pulled their cars over  to watch the action. One witness claimed to have seen 15 of the orbs at once floating around. What’s particularly interesting to us is the last little part of the quote up there, where it says everything stopped after the biggest orange blob flew in and split into five. It’s almost like it was bringing up the rear.

It all went down, according to the Examiner article, on May 13th, 2011. It gets stranger – check this out:

“4 a.m. Sunday, May 15, 2011: A very large Grey metallic saucer-shaped craft with a dome and one large horizontal long light and two smaller lights on the side was sighted in Lee’s Summit, MO, on Sunday morning at 4 a.m. Five witnesses saw this. One was a designated driver (he failed to put that in the report) and was not drinking. The others had been drinking at a bar earlier but he assures me that they were not drunk at the time of the sighting. He and his wife also report seeing Apache helicopters, fully armed, circling Lee’s Summit and Blue Springs for 7 days before this sighting. None were seen at the time of the sighting. Note: my secretary lives in Blue Springs and said she has heard the helicopters as well. Lee’s Summit Regional Airport is a small airport and not normally a place where military helicopters are sighted.”

So what do you think is zipping around the ‘Show Me’ state? Us, we think it’s probably weather balloons and swamp gas. And Chinese lanterns. And Venus. All dividing into five pieces and then ascending into the sky.

Scientific conclusion lead us to that obvious premise.

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.

What’s the best thing about being a child? Is it getting to play with toys? Getting to run around with your mates and hitting them with sticks without fear of costly litigation? Is it children’s books, all simple dialogue and fast-paced, action-packed stories in which the giraffe always finds the ball and they all live happily ever after and no-one is murdered or offered drugs in the process?

The nurturing love and affection of your parents looking out the back window as you sit in the sun trying to blind yourself by staring at it? It doesn’t matter. Whatever you’ve said, you’re wrong.

One of the most incredible things about television is that multiple generations can learn to love the same show for the same reasons as it was great in the first place. To prove this point, one need only look as far as Gerry Anderson’s series’ of Supermarionation, beloved by millions the world over despite being technically clunky, relatively emotionless puppets.

Of course, if you’re still reading this, you’ll already know all the little secrets that made shows like Stingray, Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5 et al. great. Little snippets like the constant need to transport the puppets everywhere without them actually walking in order to maintain a sense of realism and the use of real life hands when those pesky puppet hands just wouldn’t do.

However, what you’ll really remember when you put your mind to it, despite all of the wonderful things that made these programmes great, is the music. Whether you’re willing to admit it or not, there are times where you’ve been minding your own business and suddenly found yourself humming the theme tune to Joe 90 or been sitting on the bus merrily burbling “Stingraaaaaay, Stingray, doo doo doo do doo do” to yourself.

We’ve all been there, don’t be ashamed to admit it. Unless it’s just us- that’s happened before.

Big, quirky, shaky dramatic openings punctuated by some of the finest television composing work we’ve ever heard. Music that’s designed to get the adrenaline coursing through your body in anticipation of some good, old-fashioned excitement and bloody hell, they were exciting weren’t they?

Let’s face it, this could easily descend into posting YouTube links to the theme tunes of all the classic shows that the legendary Barry Gray did the scores for, but that would be to do him a disservice. Gray was also able to turn out a good pop song which were also used in the shows. Everyone remembers the infectious Aqua Marina and the end credit sequence of Captain Scarlet (where the poor bastard is seen “dying” in a variety of horrific ways) but many forget the lovely slice of 60s’ pop that is ‘I Got Something To Shout About’. Even the good ol’ comedy number wasn’t beyond Mr. Gray.

Even much of his incidental music can cut it as pop music. Famed ire-target and hecklerspray editor can often be found with a ’45 of “Hijacked”, an incidental piece from Joe 90 which, we’re led to believe quite often gets people “shaking their groove thang”* on the dancefloor. Even the theme tune is more than passable [Heard regularly in the Northern Soul clubs up and down the country way back when, no less - Ed.]:

Gray’s music was appreciated in its time as well. If you think massive, orchestral pieces punctuating puppets saving the world aren’t really your bag then why not try out a cover of the Thunderbirds theme tune by The Shadows? That’s the brilliant thing about Barry Gray. He created scores that spanned generations and were, most importantly, memorable.

No nostalgia-filled night in the pub would be complete without a hummed rendition of a Gerry Anderson programme’s theme for the benefit of your “cool” mate who never really “got it” when they were a kid.

So, for those who never really got it and more so for those of you who loved it, we assume by now that your appetite for action has been suitably whetted so why not go on to your Spotify thingumybob and listen to the complete Barry Gray collection called, rather aptly, Stand By For Action! If you don’t have Spotify then stand up wherever you may be and salute the best TV themes ever written.

*That’s not a direct quote. We were just too embarrassed to say it without irony.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or join our Facebook group or BUY ONE OF OUR STUPID T-SHIRTS!

Ladies and gentleman, a modern day miracle has occurred, Holly Willoughby has been cured of her fear of ghosts, much to the delight of Phillip Schofield’s long dead career.

Willoughby, also affectionately known as the Willobooby, suffered from Spectrophobia (which it turns out is a genuine phobia and not a bad 70s sci fi series) so badly that she was once reduced to tears on the set of This Morning after a segment about ghostly apparitions.

Wooooooooooooo! *rattles chains*

So when the mighty miracle working Speakeman family rolled into town to show off their phobia curing skills Holly thought it might be best to get her phobia of imaginary apparitions cured on company time, because TV is all about the perks.

According to the site we nicked this story from, Willoughby said:

It’s witchcraft, I swear! The only way I can describe it is you almost can’t believe that you don’t have that fear anymore, because your body is so in the habit of making you look for ghostly things or almost testing you… just in case there’s something out there. So you test yourself and put yourself in these frightening situations.

There is something to be said for Holly choosing to tackle her paranormal fears head on, bravery like this is rarely seen nowadays, previously an admission of belief in the paranormal was left to the simple and the insane, as we saw in the cases of Danny, “I believe in UFOs,” Dyer and David, “the Lizard people are out to get me,” Icke respectively.

But we here at hecklerspray can’t help but wonder what these frightening situations Willoughby talks about are.

Standing next to Schofield, a man who had his hand up a gopher’s rear end for several years must be a bit off putting, but we’d hardly call it frightening. Does she just stand in the dark looking in a mirror and saying Bloody Mary twice before screaming and hiding under her duvet?

Nah, it must just be having to look at Fearne Cotton so often that she thinks is a frightening situation. It must be like looking into the eyes of Skeletor after a particularly banging Kooks gig.

That’s enough to freak anyone out.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or join our Facebook group or BUY ONE OF OUR STUPID T-SHIRTS!

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.

You know that big sand-octopus that ate Boba Fett in the beginning of the third Star Wars movie? Well we were promised an interview with it – and we shouldn’t have gone dressed like a gigantic space-hot dog. It tentacled our legs together and that’s the last we remember for the last three weeks.

Honest to goodness, that’s where we’ve been.

But now we’re back – and we’re ready to tell you about Project Moon Dust – a supposedly secret military operation somehow related all UFO crashes everywhere forever and ever.

That’s a slight exaggeration only.

Government UFO conspiracies abound like fruit flies on a black banana. The only problem is the government never lets us prove any of the conspiracies by sending us clear cut mission statements written in 12-point times new roman font.

Usually – enter Project Moon Dust.

There aren’t really a lot of varied accounts of Project Moon Dust. There’s not even a Wikipedia page on it. There are a few UFO books and magazines that claim to be in the know. In USAFR Captain Kevin D. Randle book entitled simply Project Moon Dust, for example, you find paragraphs like this:

“Moon Dust is defined “As a specialized aspect of [the Air Force's] overall material exploitation program, Headquarters USAF has established Project Moon Dust to locate, recover and deliver descended foreign space vehicles.””

That’s interesting, right? What is perhaps more interesting is that in 1986 a magazine entitled Just Cause (from what we can tell) put out a call for anyone with information on Project Moon Dust. A man named Robert Todd responded – and it appeared as if Mr. Todd had done his homework.

Here are some excerpts detailing what Todd found, according to sacred-texts.com:

“As a result of inquiries by Todd about Moon Dust, and other matters, the
Air Force released a letter on August 20, 1979. It was identified as “AFCIN-1E-
O”, dated 3 November 1961. The letter was partly deleted, but enough was left
to open the door on Moon Dust: (emphasis added where necessary–ed.)

“Extract, page 1: “c. In addition to their staff duty assignments,
intelligence team personnel have peacetime duty functions in support of such
Air Force projects as Moondust, Bluefly, and UFO, and other AFCIN directed
quick reaction projects which require intelligence team operational
capabilities (see Definitions).”

“Extract, page 2: “f. Blue Fly: Operation Blue Fly has been established
to facilitate expeditious delivery to FTD of Moon Dust or other items of great
technical intelligence interest. ACIN SOP for Blue Fly operations, February
1960 provides for 1127th participation.”

“Extract, page 3: “c. Peacetime employment of AFCIN intelligence team
capability is provided for in UFO investigation (AFR 200-2) and in support of
Air Force Systems Command (AFCS) Foreign Technology Division (FTD) Projects
Moon Dust and Blue Fly. These three peacetime projects all involve a poten-
tial for employment of qualified field intelligence personnel on a quick
reaction basis to recover or perform field exploitation of unidentified flying
objects, or known Soviet/Bloc aerospace vehicles, weapons systems, and/or
residual components of such equipment. The intelligence team capability to
gain rapid access, regardless of location, to recover or perform field
exploitation, to communicate and provide intelligence reports is the only
such collection capability available to AFCIN, and it is vitally necessary
in view of current intelligence gaps concerning Soviet/Bloc technological
capabilities.”

If the excerpts are what they say they are, then that’s really something. The only problem is proving a letter allegedly written in 1961 wasn’t written by a ponytail-wearing fat kid from the depths of his mother’s basement. Of course, the letter doesn’t have any references to hyper drives, star command, or intergalactic conspiracies – which really lends this whole thing some legitimacy if you think about it.

Don’t think about 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.

For the most part skeptics claim theories of alien visitation are way off because there’s very little credible scientific evidence that it exists. If several of the ETs were to, say, put on a burlesque chow in downtown Manhattan – then maybe 1 or 2% more of the skeptics may be swayed. Until then though, we’ll just have to settle for mummified alien bodies to prove a point – like the one allegedly stored somewhere in the Andes mountains.

Let us just say that this alien body smells a bit like the Bigfoot corpse owned by a couple of wienies a few years back. You remember that, don’t you – they had the concrete evidence stored in a secret freezer they wouldn’t let anybody see. Remember how that ended? It ended with a gorilla suit.

So maybe this dead alien is a shaved gorilla suit. We haven’t really looked into it, and we probably never will because the state department has denied us a passport over 600 times. You know has looked into it though (more than us anyway) – Phantoms and Monsters. And this is what they say:

“A computer video file appeared anonymously on the internet on 2007, claims that a UFO crashed in the Peruvian Andes in January 1974 in front of many witnesses. The video briefly shows an old wooden trunk in a shack containing what resembles a naked and degraded humanoid corpse which is claimed to have been recovered by the locals on the spot of UFO crash before the military silenced the incident. The video, lacking any other information, promises revelations to come about this. The final text screen says: “Very soon, you will see the complete report with exclusive images. Be ready.”"

Hecklerspray is pretty lazy today. So lazy, in fact, that we’re typing this with one finger while our other nine are groggily swinging in little hammocks. Because we’re so lazy – we’re not going to tell you anything else about the weird alien body. We will post the three videos though, so you know, here you go:

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.

If we said it once we said it a million times – the main problem of most modern religion is none of them are making sex-bots for the masses to enjoy with full biblical immunity. Seriously, we think about that every Christmas.

Enter then Claude Vorilhon, a Frenchman now known as Rael. He founded a religious movement, and although he doesn’t actually manufacture busty lady robots in slit-sided mini skirts and little to no moral programming, he does know where we can find them.

Surprising hint: It’s not Japan.

Rael wasn’t always a religious mastermind on par with Moses, Abraham, Mohammad and Jesus. No – he used to be a simple Frenchman who ran away from boarding school, played guitar in the streets and didn’t shower often. Fast-forward a few years to 1973 and you’ll find Rael (but as he was known then – Claude) standing in a volcano crater watching a spaceship descend right in front of him.

We’ll let this be explained partially in Claude’s own words. This from Rael.org:

“On the 13th of December 1973, French journalist Rael was contacted by a visitor from another planet, and asked to establish an Embassy to welcome these people back to Earth. The extra-terrestrial human being was a little over four feet tall, had long dark hair, almond shaped eyes, olive skin, and exuded harmony and humor. Rael recently described him by saying quite simply, “If he were to walk down a street in Japan, he would not even be noticed.” In other words, they look like us, and we look like them. In fact, we were created “in their image” as explained in the Bible.”

And so the adventure began. Now let’s skip to the more exciting stuff – Rael was eventually taken up on the spaceship and flown to another planet. As Wikipedia puts it:

“[Rael] said that, on October 7, 1975, he was contacted by one of the Elohim, who took him to another planet to meet Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. (Though, Vorilhon, after watching Jesus Myth youtube videos, recently came out publicly and stated that Jesus wasn’t on the planet, and it was actually instead Mithras. And Vorilhon apologized, saying, “It was an honest mistake.”) He stated that his second book, Les extra-terrestres m’ont emmené sur leur planète (“Extraterrestrials Took Me To Their Planet”), relates the teaching he received from these people. In this book, Vorhilhon describes harmonious and peaceable beings, who were free of money, sickness, and war.”

Those harmonious peaceable beings also frequently get to dine with Moses & Buddha and treat sexy robots like like a tenth grade prom date. Confused? Here’s more from Wikipedia:

“He said that in October 7, 1975, an hour before midnight, after having a sudden urge to observe the night sky, he decided to go to Roc Plat, an uninhabited place between two brooks surround by a forest. According to him a spacecraft suddenly landed and shone a bright light behind a bush. He said he then met the same extraterrestrial from his first encounter in December 13, 1973. He said after a few words, he was taken up in that spacecraft with the Eloha and sent to a remote base relatively close to the solar system where he was given a resort-style relaxation treatment.

“He said that on the morning of October 8, received a lecture from Yahweh Elohim about his current achievement towards the foundation of MADECH, the need for geniocracy, Buddhism, and about the ideas of God and Soul, and later traveled to the Planet of the Eternals. He said the planet orbited around a very large star and had a climate similar to the rain forests of Earth. He later claimed to have sat down with the Eloha and had a meal with the major prophets including Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed. He said that a guide showed him installations which houses machines for creating biological robots. He gave a picture of his mother to a machine which he claimed created similarly-appearing biological robot. He said that in the night, he received an introduction to bedroom his future home at the Planet of the Eternals and was presented young, mature female biological robots. He said that before reaching a climax, he wore a helmet which plays music controlled by his thoughts which the females danced to. Then the climax happens.”

And there you have it – Raelians all summed up in a nice contrite article. If you’re interested in joining, all you have to do is make love to a Dustbuster on stage at a convention or something. In all honesty we haven’t studied up on joining, but if we were heading up a weird robot-sex cult that’s probably how we’d have people join.

Serioauly – have you seen the new Dustbuster Pivot Vacs? Just look at it - that’s the kind of sexy apparatus we’d not be ashamed to bring home to the parents on Thanksgiving weekend.

Well, we’d probably be a little ashamed. Still – picture it in a wedding dress. Exciting, right?

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

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

In high school the scariest thing that ever happened when Hecklerspray was parking with our girlfriend was that she popped during a serious necking session. We think we accidentally bit a seam. Little bits of plastic flew everywhere, and we had to buy another prom date lickity-split.

This other couple we’re going to tell you about though – they allegedly had a much different parking experience. According to them – a UFO zoomed down, lifted their car way up into the air and then dropped them almost 200 feet away.

No word as to whether the aliens left them each with several probe marks that looked exactly like hickeys.

Not too long ago we told you about the Allagash Four – the guys who claim they got sucked into a spaceship from out of their canoe. Not long before that we told you about the Battle of Los Angeles – a story from when all kinds of military guns started blasting into the night sky at a weird target that wouldn’t go down, and nobody knew what it was.

No we’re telling you about two young kids – an 18-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy. They were lovers, if you will. Star crossed ever since they first laid eyes on each other as his legs chaffed while he was climbing the rope in a gym class that she was taking for the third time. Or something.

We’ll let Examiner.com explain what happened next:

“We were just sitting there and I looked up at the moon,” the female witness stated. “I saw this weird black-shaped object. And then, I said to my boyfriend, ‘What was that?’” Both accounts describe the same events. They saw an object coming toward them from the sky and began to panic. When they attempted to drive away, the car they were operating was lifted up off the ground. Both describe an odd smell during the incident. When the car hit the pavement 180 feet away, the windshield cracked and the air bags deployed.”

Here, the 16-year-old boy who prefers women with voting ability, tells part of the story in his own words:

“I don’t know how to explain this but it turns into a ball when it wants to slow down and move around quickly and when it wants to go fast, straight, it turns into a flat plate with maze box-shaped lined lights. These were on all the time. The front end got picked up and the car could not move. We steered left and right but the car just kept on going up into the air.”

What’s really got the UFO folks pumped is the physical evidence. The car’s got around $5,000 in damage to the underside – but the outer shell is OK except for the windshield. And the curb has a big chunk out of it where the car is supposed to have landed.

Plus they video taped the whole thing on a high definition movie camera.

That last part’s not true. The first two pieces though – the torn-up undercarriage and the damaged curb are definitely real.

Of course that doesn’t mean aliens had anything to do with it, but still – how do you destroy a car’s belly without scratching the shell? Only time will tell.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

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.

The worst thing hecklerspray’s ever seen on a canoe trip was several used tampons grossly incorporated into a beaver damn. In fact, due to the mathematical ratio, one could actually say sticks seemed to be the thing incorporated in to the tampon damn.  It really was sick – and the tide was soooo low.

That experience, however, pales in comparison the that of the Allagash Four. Their canoe trip included paddling like the dickens to avoid getting sucked up by a UFO.

They should have paddled faster.

Chuck Rak, Charlie Foltz & Jack and Jim Weiner were on a canoe trip together in 1976. They’d had a rough day fishing – so they decided to see what they could get at night. They built a huge bonfire to concretely mark their camp, and they paddled out onto Eagle Lake to catch some dinner.

After they’d been out for a bit they noticed a light hovering over the trees near the shore line. It changed colors – from red to green to a very light yellow. They didn’t know what it was, so out of curiosity Charlie Foltz signaled a SOS with his flashlight.

Maybe he shouldn’t have. The website UFO Casebook tells us what happened next:

“Immediately, the object silently moved toward the canoe. A guarded curiosity now turned into a frantic dash for the bank. As they paddled as fast as they could, a hollow light came from the object, engulfing the men and their canoe. The next thing the men knew, they were standing on the bank again. Charlie pointed his flashlight toward the object again, but this time it rose up and out of their view, as it showed it’s beam once more before disappearing into the Allagash sky.”

Wikipedia has a more interesting account of the ships disappearance. They give it as follows:

“The next thing the men knew, they were back on shore at their campsite. They stood at the edge of the water and stared blankly at the craft, which was hovering no more than a few dozen feet from them. After watching for several minutes, the craft suddenly imploded… and reappeared over the treetops on the other side of the lake. It then shot upwards into the sky.”

And remember that huge fire they set ablaze before heading out in their canoes? It had been reduced to embers by the time they found themselves once again standing on the beach. They didn’t remember anything about the time they were gone – not for several years, anyway.

That’s when they all started having nightmares about the ordeal. Eventually they underwent some hypnosis – and that seems to have brought out some very vivid memories from each of them. Again, from UFO Casebook:

“The men’s description of the aliens was consistent, and being artists, they were able to make detailed sketches of the entities, the craft, and the examining instruments. Chuck Rak added that the aliens’ test area was similar to a vet’s office, with a silvery table. He also related a strange fact: he had much difficulty in focusing on the aliens. When he tried, he could not put an exact image to them. He compared it to trying to tune in a fuzzy radio station.

“After the psychiatric examinations, all four of the men were deemed to be mentally stable, and they all passed lie-detector tests. All of the information gleaned from the detailed hypnotic sessions, and investigative reports provide strong evidence that something “not of this world” was encountered by these four men on the Allagash Waterway in 1976. This case is still considered unexplainable by conventional scientific means.”

And the story doesn’t end there either – at least one of the men, Jack Weiner, says that since the incident he’ll often see strange lights in the sky around his house.

Want more? Then enjoy these fine videos – parts I & II:

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.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

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.

In July of 1952 Washington DC was changed from a town of confusing, argumentative and boring politics to one overrun with UFOs.  The sightings were real enough to scramble fighter jets, confuse radar operators – and perhaps most importantly – to be recorded on film.

Part of the strange episode is still floating around on YouTube – we have some of that footage for you here today.

The UFO concept is not a new one by any stretch of the imagination. Why, we’ve told you about the ‘classic’ alien contactees who claim to be receiving mental-inter stellar transmissions meant to bring peace for all of humanity. And more recently then that we told you about the Wow! signal – a radio transmission of some sort or other that definitely did not emanate from Earth.

One UFO-related case that has remained surprisingly unknown given its chosen location, has come to be known by several different names: The Washington Merry-Go-Round, The 1952 Washington D.C. UFO incident, the Washington flap or the Washington National Airport Sightings.

Whatever you want to call it – here is part of what happened, according to Unexplained-Mysteries.com:

“On 19th July,1952,several UFOs were plotted on multiple radar screens travelling over the White House airspace corridor. They were also witnessed by huge numbers of people and fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the objects but where ‘outran’ by the UFOs. Exactly seven days later on July 26th,the UFOs returned,were again captured on multiple radar, were again witnessed by huge numbers of people and were again able to outrun military fighter jets.”

The great concern at the time was that the cold war was raging – and it appeared that the Soviet Union had possibly developed flying technology that was so fast US fighters couldn’t catch them if they tried. The first time pilots launched they arrived to where the ships were supposed to be – and nothing was there. Almost exactly when the fighters returned to their air base, the ships popped back up on radar. The jets were launched again, this time making visual contact.

According to Wikipedia – here is some more of what happened during the July 19 & 20 sightings:

“At Andrews AFB, meanwhile, the control tower personnel were tracking on radar what some thought to be unknown objects, but others suspected, and in one instance were able to prove, were simply stars and meteors. However, Staff Sgt. Charles Davenport observed an orange-red light to the south; the light “would appear to stand still, then make an abrupt change in direction and altitude . . . this happened several times”. At one point both radar centers at National Airport and the radar at Andrews AFB were tracking an object hovering over a radio beacon.

“The object vanished in all three radar centers at the same time. At 3 a.m., shortly before two jet fighters from Newcastle AFB in Delaware arrived over Washington, all of the objects vanished from the radar at National Airport. However, when the jets ran low on fuel and left, the objects returned, which convinced Barnes that “the UFOs were monitoring radio traffic and behaving accordingly”. The objects were last detected by radar at 5:30 a.m. Around sunrise, E.W. Chambers, a civilian radio engineer in Washington’s suburbs, observed “five huge disks circling in a loose formation. They tilted upward and left on a steep ascent.”"

But these sightings lasted longer than just the July 19 & 20 dates – the ships came back on July 26 & 27. Wikipedia has more on this too:

“At 8:15 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, 1952, a pilot and stewardess on a National Airlines flight into Washington observed some strange objects above their plane. Within minutes, both radar centers at National Airport, and the radar at Andrews AFB, were tracking more unknown objects. The objects were traveling between 90 and 100 miles per hour. A master sergeant at Andrews visually observed the objects; he later said that “these lights did not have the characteristics of shooting stars. There was [sic] no trails . . . they traveled faster than any shooting star I have ever seen.”

“…By this time (9:30 p.m.) the radar center was picking up unknown objects in every sector. At times the objects traveled slowly; at other times they reversed direction and moved across the radarscope at speeds calculated at 7,000 mph. At 11:30 p.m., two jet fighters from Newcastle AFB in Delaware arrived over Washington. Capt. John McHugo, the flight leader, was vectored towards the radar pips but saw nothing, despite repeated attempts. However, his wingman, Lt. William Patterson, did see four white “glows” and chased them. Suddenly, the “glows” turned and surrounded his fighter. Patterson asked the control tower at National Airport what he should do; according to Chop, the tower’s answer was “stunned silence”. The four objects then sped away from Patterson’s jet and disappeared.”

Now that sounds eerily familiar. Luckily this outcome was a tad better.

All of that UFO-surrounding stuff sounds fantastic alright – and dare we say unbelievable. But its on video. We’ve posted two such videos below – the first one is just the sighting alone – a bunch of ships casually floating past the US Capital Building back when CGI’s greatest achievement was a wooden cowboy puppet attached to several strings.

The second video clip is a segment from a History Channel documentary that delves deeper into the sighting – even interviewing actual witnesses. It’s 10 minutes long – and a very worthwhile watch.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

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.

Gloria Lee was a flight attendant turned alien contactee. In 1953 she began receiving mental transmissions from JW, an alien entity who lived on Jupiter. These transmissions, thought Lee, were for the good of humanity, and included things as strange as space station designs.

When the US government wouldn’t listen, though – she began to fast until it killed her.

Here is what Wikipedia has on Gloria Lee:

“Lee claimed to be in telepathic communication with an entity known as JW, who lived on the planet Jupiter, and began to assemble a book of his spiritual teachings as dictated to her. At his direction she founded the Cosmon Research Foundation for the purpose of publication and study of JW’s superhuman wisdom…Membership in Gloria Lee’s organization rose sharply after advertisements were regularly carried in Ray Palmer’s monthly occult magazine Fate. She also hit the contactee lecture circuit and attracted considerable public attention.”

The method in which she would receive her revelations was automatic writing. As far as specific messages the woman claimed to receive from her Jupiter-based master – we couldn’t find anything other than the hugely popular plea for world peace and plans for a space station (or a spaceship, depending on the source). The latter of those seems to have been less than specific blue prints, as we couldn’t find those either.

Granted we only did a quick Google search. We’re sure her two books Why We Are Here! & The Changing Conditions of Your World! are packed full of Jupitarian wisdom.

In 1962 Gloria Lee went to Washington in an attempt to get some government money to put towards her spaceship. Politicians were largely uninterested. To call attention to her ideas she began a fast in her hotel room. She told her followers she would eventually lapse into a coma-like state only to wake up supercharged and ready to roll. Washington was unaware of this. Her food-free protest lasted 66 days and then she died. She was 37.

To make matters even stranger Lee, who claimed telepathic communications in life, communicated to other would-be cult leaders in death. Allegedly. According to Answers.com:

“Immediately after her death, several contactees claimed to have talked to Gloria Lee in her new spiritual existence. Verity of the Heralds of the New Age (New Zealand) and Yolanda of Mark-Age both produced booklets of what they claimed were communications from Lee.”

Don’t feel bad for Lee. In her spiritual state she probably enjoys a nice country estate in the Jupiter country side. We’d take that over picketing DC any day.