The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files.
This week: The Japan Airlines Incident
WTF?
The skies over Alaska, November 1986: Captain Kenju Terauchi, an ex-fighter pilot with 29 years of experience, flies Japan Airlines flight 1628 heading for Tokyo. A journey like the hundreds he’s flown before, but it’s about to take a turn for the weird. What was supposed to be a routine journey becomes a flight he’ll never forget. He’s heading for a refuelling stop in Anchorage, Alaska when he spots three fast moving objects below them. The largest of the three objects vaguely resembles a shelled walnut, but the striking thing about the object isn’t its shape: it’s the size. That’s because, according to Terauchi, it’s roughly the size of two American aircraft carriers. When he realises the objects are matching their speed, the terrified pilot radios down to air traffic control and requests to change course, because fuck flying alongside a giant space walnut. Terauchi’s request is granted. Shortly after, the ATC in anchorage grows concerned when connections are severed. You’re Kidding, Right? It’s a cargo flight, so no passengers are at risk, but the safety of the three-man crew has Anchorage worried. Imagine being told that a UFO is following a plane before you lose contact with said plane. Now imagine looking at the radar and seeing the UFO. Because that’s exactly what happened. After a terrifying few minutes the plane safely landed for refuelling and all three crew members were thankfully unharmed. But the pilot had one hell of a story to tell. "The thing was flying as if there was no such thing as gravity. It sped up, then stopped, then flew at our speed, in our direction, so that to us it [appeared to be] standing still. The next instant it changed course. ... In other words, the flying object had overcome gravity." He’s a mental, surely. Well, if he’s the only one on board who’s seeing this (which would be bad, seeing as he’s the one flying), then fair enough… but of course he’s not the only one seeing it, or you wouldn’t reading this. That’s right, all three crew members aboard the cargo flight saw something. The co-pilot also reported that the object he saw wasn’t a light, but a solid object, as real as looking at another plane. Hold Your Horses! So everyone saw it? Not quite. When they contacted Anchorage ATC to request a change in flight path, ATC asked a nearby plane to get a visual and see what the hell was going on. They only reported seeing JAL 1628. Also, in turning to change direction and avoid collision with the smaller objects, the giant walnut craft was not visible to first officer Tamefuji. So had Terauchi been at the cargo of Beaujolais? You’d be forgiven for thinking so. Until you realised that during the incident Anchorage received a frantic message from Elmendorf Air Force Base because they had spotted the objects on radar too. An FAA investigation followed. FAA Division Chief John Callahan played back the radar data and synched it with the audio from ATC. A day later, at FAA headquarters, Callahan briefed Donald Engen. Engen told him to keep schtum and set up a briefing for the following day. In attendance at the meeting were members of the FBI, CIA and President Reagan’s Scientific Study Team. After thoroughly reviewing all of the evidence, the FBI and CIA dismissed the whole presentation as horseshit and that is where our story ends. Just kidding. After the video had finished, everyone in the room was sworn to secrecy. The CIA then took all of the data, files and videos that Callahan had assembled. Well, almost all of it, but more about that later… Make Your Mind Up Time. Just because he’s someone who flies a lot doesn’t mean he can’t misidentify something, he is only human after all. And false radar hits happen all the time, for all manner of reasons, from flocks of birds to weather phenomena. Having said that… Here we’ve got a seasoned pilot with over 29 years of experience, his crew, and not one, but two ground based radar readings all saying that they saw something in the skies over Alaska. Let’s not forget how much shit this guy is letting himself in for by even reporting this. Pilots are actively dissuaded from reporting any airborne anomalies they encounter. Terauchi himself was given a desk job straight after the incident and wasn’t allowed to fly for years after. Perhaps this is the reason the other plane in the vicinity reported nothing? By reporting it, Terauchi wasn’t just putting his reputation on the line. He was risking his career. Would someone really do that for fifteen minutes of fame that could possibly lead to a lifetime of ridicule? After Callahan’s meeting in Washington and the suits nicked his data, they slipped up. They thought he had brought everything with him to that meeting. He had not. He had some of the evidence back at his office. They just asked for everything he had with him, so he gave it. Sensing the monumental scale of what he was witnessing, Callahan recorded his own video of the radar from Elmendorf. That video is still available online. Did the pilot and crew of Japan Airlines 1628 witness an Unidentified Flying Object over Alaska in 1977? You bet your ass they did. RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling What do you think? Was it aliens? Secret governmental craft? Rogue walnut? If you enjoyed this, maybe your friends will too, so it would be great to share it and as always, use the buttons at the bottom of the page to follow me on Facebook, Twitter for more! Want to read a random UFO story? Sure you do! Lucky dip... Click here! My UNEXPLAINED FILES are all available in a handy little ebook, just 99p from Amazon!
The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files.
This week: Operation Gladio
WTF?
2nd August 1980. Bologna, Italy. The waiting room at Bologna station is packed. It’s a hot day and the waiting room is one of the few areas with air conditioning, but the hundreds of passengers amassed there are about to have their thoughts of travel plans, dinner arrangements and daily worries scattered to the four winds, because in a moment, a huge explosion will rip through the station. It seems no one has noticed the unattended suitcase. Housed within it is death. Death in the form of a time bomb made with 23kg of explosives. It will leave 200 injured and eighty-five dead. The explosion will destroy the majority of the main station building, hit the awaiting Ancona–Chiasso train at the first platform and collapse the roof of the waiting room on top of the awaiting passengers, greatly increasing the total number of fatalities. The blast will be heard for miles. In the years previous, Italy has been no stranger to such atrocities. 8 years earlier, 163 miles to the north east in Peteano, a car bomb attack had killed three Carabinieri (Italian military police), and this was on the back of a series of blasts in 1969 that killed 17 and left dozens injured in Milan. It is another attack that will work in favour of the right-wing leadership, drawing the left-leaning public into the arms and protection of their government. A smart-but-cynical government who are using a disaster for political gain? Not quite. Because they planned it. You’re Kidding, Right? You heard me. Welcome to the terrifying world of False Flag terror. But more about that in a moment. During the Cold War, the intelligence arms of NATO countries wanted to prepare for resistance in reaction to the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact with Eastern Bloc nations, so they left agents in territories as “Stay-Behind armies”. It was these so-called armies in charge of scaring the shit out of the citizenry, because a scared citizenry is a compliant citizenry. The name “Gladio” refers to the Italian branch of the operation, but is now used as an informal name for all of them, because it wasn’t just Italy involved. There were branches of Gladio in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Turkey. Parallel stay-behind operations also took place in non-NATO countries like Austria, Finland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. So what’s all this ‘False Flag’ business? The term stems from naval roots where ships would fly the flag of a friendly nation before attacking their enemies, thus maintaining the element of surprise, as well as earning the reputation of being devious shits. Hold Your Horses! Surely this can’t be real… Can it? First of all, there’s absolutely no way that a government would kill their own citizens for political gain, let alone outright admit to it. Apparently one of Winston Churchill’s favourite sayings was “Never let a good disaster go to waste”. It’s much more likely that the terrorists were busy doing their thing and the powers that be simply took advantage of the circumstances, after all, this isn’t House of Cards. Even today, we see terror attacks and other atrocities such as mass shootings used to gain some sort of leverage, whether it’s stealthily nabbing the rights of the people, or swaying election results. It’s much more likely that those in charge are just taking old Winston’s advice. The other option is unthinkable. Isn’t it? ISN’T IT?! Make Your Mind Up Time. Factions of government blowing their own people up is all well and good as the plotline for a Frederick Forsyth novel, but this is real life. Only problem with that is there’s a documentary on YouTube saying that it’s all true. Oh well, if it’s on YouTube! But wait! I’m not on about some foil-hat wearing conspiracy nut fan fiction. It’s a documentary with all of the main players, actually admitting their part in the dastardly scheme, made by a little organisation from the UK going by the name of the BBC for their Timewatch series. Catch it while you can, it’s powerful stuff. Naturally, the CIA are trying to distance themselves as much as possible from what went down, but the Italians are laying it all out, and it’s as shocking as it is captivating. A quick read through Wikipedia and they seem to doing their best to be playing the incident down too. The only problem they‘ve got is in 1990, after Judge Felice Casson discovered Gladio while investigating right-wing terror, the Italian government admitted it to be true. Which makes Wikipedia’s stance a little unnerving. Sorry Wikipedia, this happened. RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling Further Reading/Viewing: Those sources mentioned above would be a good start. The BBC doc is in three parts, and the false flag part is in the second 45-minute slot. But maybe check Wikipedia last. What do you think? Do false flags still happen today? Comment below! If you enjoyed this, maybe your friends will too, so it would be great to share it and as always, hit the links to follow me on Facebook and Twitter for more!
The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files.
This week: The Phoenix Lights
WTF?
Phoenix, Arizona. 13th March 1997. Across the city, hundreds of baffled residents gaze skyward as string of glowing orbs hover above the shimmering lights of Phoenix. It looks for all the world as though the orbs are attached to one huge craft. The lights appear one by one and hang over the city (fooling anyone watching that they’ve tuned in to War of the Worlds) before eerily blinking out. It’s one of the most famous UFO videos of all time. Even if you have a passing interest in the field of ufology, you’ve seen it. By the time the event was over, hundreds of witnesses had become thousands, and copious Phoenixonians(?!) who witnessed the event flooded the police with calls, because who the Christ are you supposed to call? In the days following, calls were made to nearby air bases, only for the air force to typically reply “Nope. Wasn’t us”. So if not the air force, what the hell was over Phoenix that night? You’re Kidding, Right? A few months later the lights were back in the news, and the natives were restless. Arizona Governor Fife Symington held a press conference saying authorities were pleased to announce they’d caught the culprit. It would bring relief to large numbers, people genuinely shaken by what they'd seen. The town awaited with bated breath, only to see a dude appear dressed as an alien. Symington said the prank was designed to lighten the mood, but the nervy residents of Phoenix were far from impressed. Then the Air Force changed their tune. They decided that actually, it was them. The official explanation was that the lights were military flares; similar to the ones you see cops using to light the roads after an accident in a movie, but these bad boys come with a cute little parachute. The military drops them to light areas at night for training exercises. Flares? Weather balloons! Swamp gas! Yeah, right! How very convenient. Well, actually, this idea was backed-up by a video analysis. Some clever shit took a film of the lights and superimposed it against a daylight video of the same backdrop. As the lights mysteriously blinked out one by one, it just so happened that the spot where they vanished was the same spot where the Estrella mountains stood in the daytime video. The flares were simply floating down behind the mountain. Pretty fucking conclusive, don’t you think? Hold Your Horses! For years after watching this video analysis, I was convinced that that was all there was to this story. The problem with that was I, like so many interested others, had only heard half of the story. The famous video may have been debunked, but what wasn’t so easily explained, was that dozens of witnesses actually reported a real live craft. A HUGE one. And not just on the horizon. This one drifted silently overhead. This was hours before the famous footage was shot. Reports were that this thing was so huge that as it passed overhead, both corners at the rear of the boomerang shape couldn’t be seen at the same time. It moved “too slowly” to stay airborne, and featured lights that shimmered in a colour witnesses found difficult to describe. Those that didn’t see the body of the craft were convinced that the triangular formation of lights was one object because as the lights passed overhead, it blocked out the stars. Make Your Mind Up Time. So what exactly were the Phoenix Lights? I’m going to stick my neck out here and say this: NOT flares. The first sighting actually came two years before the famous video was shot and was caught on tape by a local doctor. As for the famous video, something was in the sky that night. It was seen over Paulden in the north, moved over Phoenix, and was spotted as far away as and Tucson in the south, a distance of over 230 miles. I'm pretty sure that the flares didn't float down from Paulden to Tucson, then float all the way back up to Phoenix just to duck behind a fucking mountain. And if they did, those flares are way weirder than any giant aircraft I can imagine. Maybe they'll get their own blog post one day*. *They won't. When Governor Symington retired, he actually came out and said that on the night in question, he’d witnessed something with his own eyes. A former pilot himself, he and a crowd of other witnesses saw a huge object the size of an aircraft carrier. A flying, silent aircraft carrier. He claimed that he kept the sighting to himself at the time because he didn’t want to cause a panic - which makes sense when you look at the great Coronavirus/toilet paper crisis of 2020. Phoenix itself is split since the incident, apparently if you ask a Pheonixite (?) it’s 50/50 whether they’ll say UFO or not. Maybe it was the military wanting to keep a shiny new top secret thing top secret; just testing the waters to see how the public would react upon seeing such an outlandish craft. Who knows how far advanced the toys they have are ahead of what we know about? But I'll put money on this: it definitely wasn’t flares. RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling What do you think? Flares? UFO? Government experiment? If you liked this, you'll love the story of the Shag Harbour UFO! The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files. This week: The Wow! Signal WTF?
Ohio State University. 15 August 1977. In 1959, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence was established with the aim of detecting radio signals that were drifting through space from distant planets that were home to intelligent civilisations. SETI’s radio telescopes had been scouring the skies in search of a sign, a signal, to answer the burning question: Are we alone in the universe? The painstaking search of the heavens had been ongoing for years without a hint of success, when shocked astronomer Jerry R. Ehman saw something incredible. Since the project’s inception, the radio telescopes had been printing out a smattering of ones and twos, but today, where ones and twos usually reign, he’s left staring at something different altogether. "6EQUJ5", to be precise. You’re Kidding, Right? A section of the page looks like the computer had been at the drinks cabinet. A number 6, a 5, and a letter Q, which is nuts, but at least it had the decency to follow with a U. A typo, or were the aliens providing us with the key to their Wi-Fi? Whatever was going on, the researcher grabbed hold of a red biro and scrawled the now famous Wow! which gives the signal its name. Actually, the telescopes were set to a frequency which detects hydrogen, and the printout gives a rating for how strong the return signal from said hydrogen is. For no return, the printout left a blank space, for stronger returns the numbers 1-9 were shown, with 9 being strongest. But it didn’t stop there. The very strongest signals would return a rating from A (stronger than nine) to Z (the strongest). For the first time ever, the signal had returned a letter U. Wow, indeed. But aliens? Hold Your Horses! Some clever shit, namely Professor Antonio Paris of St Petersburg College, Florida, went about researching the Wow! signal like a detective looking at a cold case. And where others had failed, he found something. The area of the sky that SETI were eyeballing (or should that be earwigging?) at that time was actually a relatively busy bit of sky. In the interim between the signal’s detection and his own research, two comets had been discovered. Think of the maths here: a miniscule bit of sky, and a bit of rock moving at Christ knows what speed. What are the odds? Slim. However, comets move in orbits, which means that they come back. So Professor Paris checked where the comets were at the time the Wow! signal was found and guess what… Make Your Mind Up Time. He was right. See, comets are surrounded by clouds of hydrogen. Big clouds of hydrogen millions of kilometres across. When Ehman detected “Wow!” the frequency on the radio telescopes was at 1420MHz; a radio frequency that hydrogen emits naturally. Before we declare the Wow! signal as bollocks, Paris has to put his hypothesis to the test. There are some that think the hydrogen clouds from a couple of comets wouldn’t be able to emit such a strong signal as to reach a letter U. As somebody who wants to believe, I can only hope that the sceptics are right and Paris is wrong… But at this point, I have to say his theory looks as if it could be a sound one. The bastard. RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling What do you think? Comment below! Interested in UFOs? Click here to read about the Phoenix Lights incident! This, and my other Unexplained Files are in a handy eBook, available from Amazon! The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files. This week: Black Eyed Children WTF?
Los Angeles, California. 1995. A young singer known to her friends as ‘Fergie’ meets a rapper by the name of Will. I. Am… Wait... That can’t be right... *checks notes* Ffs. Let me start again. OK this is it... Abilene, Texas. 1996. Brian Bethel, an internet blogger and journalist, sits in his car, writing the cheque he’s about to drop into the night-slot of his internet service provider, when suddenly there’s a sharp rap at his window. He’s writing a cheque by the light of a nearby cinema, so, preparing himself for the worst, he looks up and is relieved to see two boys aged between 9-12. He winds his window down, readying himself for a sob-story requiring him to hand over pocket change, when he was overcome with incomprehensible fear. The kids seemed normal enough, but something about them was off. The boy who knocked is olive-skinned, while his fair-skinned, redhead friend loiters in the background. The olive-skinned boy asks to be taken to his house. They want to see the Mortal Kombat movie, but as well as shitty taste in films, the boys are apparently forgetful, as they’ve left their money at home. It all seemed plausible enough at the time, though the longer the conversation went on, the more Bethel was gripped by his seemingly irrational fear. Looking for excuses not to let these kids into his car, he glanced up at the cinema and realised that the last showing of the film had already started, and there was no time to drive the boys back home then return to the cinema. While Bethel was calculating distances and times, the olive-skinned boy was continuously trying to convince him to let them into his car. It won’t take long… we’re just kids… it’s not like we have a gun… That’s when Bethel looked back at the kid. And wishes he hadn’t... You’re Kidding, Right? His irrational fear was now all too rational. Both boys stared at him with eyes of soulless, inky blackness. The ground seemed to fall away beneath him and fear clutched at his stomach. It was around this point he made every excuse he could think of to get the fuck out of there, all the while apologising to the Satan spawn peering at him. With a staggering ability to make things worse, the kid banged on the window, screaming “Let us in! We can’t come in unless you tell us it’s okay!” According to Bethel, as he screeched from the parking lot, he glanced in his rear-view mirror. The boys had gone. There was no time for them to run anywhere. And so began the tale of the Black Eyed Kids. Subsequent stories include similar details. Two kids, remote locations, deep, overwhelming fear, the kids insisting on being let in. There are slight variations. Sometimes there’s a Black Eyed Adult. Sometimes they’re wearing old fashioned clothes or gowns. But since Bethel’s story in the 1990s, there has been an internet explosion of stories. Hold Your Horses! So what exactly is going on here? Theories abound. From demons to vampires to kids fucking around with spooky-looking contact lenses. Rather than my waffling, I’ll leave you in the hands of someone posting online with the handle “Adele”. “I was sitting in my bedroom reading a book, when at about 11:00 p.m. I heard a knocking… a slow, constant one. I got up out of bed to see what it was. I looked out of the window and to my surprise saw two children. I opened the window and asked them what they wanted at this time of night. They replied by saying simply, ‘Let us in’. I said no and asked what for. ‘We want to use your bathroom’. “I was quite shocked that children of about 10 years-old wanted to use a stranger’s bathroom at this time of night. I told them no, closed the window, but looked at them through the glass. I glanced at their eyes… and I have never ever seen eyes like them. They were black, completely black. I got the feeling of evil and unhappiness. It surrounded me. It was horrible.” Make Your Mind Up Time. I think the most unsettling thing about Adele’s story is its simplicity. Stories online tend to have embellishments and a flair for the dramatic. This one seemed quite understated. So do I think it’s vampires? Demons? Human-alien hybrids? Sadly, none of the above. With one source story and many springing up after, this one bears all the hallmarks of an urban legend. I may be wrong, of course. All stories have to start somewhere. But I remained unconvinced. Having said that… If two kids show up on a rainy night asking to be let in out of the cold, I’ll gladly tell them to fuck themselves. RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling What do you think? Have you had a run in with Black Eyed Kids? Comment below! If you enjoyed this, feel free to share it with your friends! Use the buttons at the bottom of the page to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ for more! |
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In this blog I'll be bringing to you short tales of things that go bump in the night, true stories of weird and unexplained events, and the real-life news of all things odd and macabre, and entertain you along the way. Categories
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