Tag: unexplained phenomena

Story Time: My Trip to the Skinwalker Ranch

From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!

– Traditional Scottish Prayer 

After I posted my Weekend Parting Shot Friday night, enough people responded that they would like to hear the stories of my visit to Skinwalker Ranch and my UFO sighting, that I decided to go ahead and pen another column, rather than relegating it to a comment response. 

 Two disclaimers:

  1. If you are here for hard news, political commentary, or want to own the libs, that’s fine, I get it, and we have no shortage of talented writers here who are doing that as I write this. At my heart, I am more of a storyteller and less of a journalist than I used to be. If you feel compelled to hit the “Back” button, I completely understand.
  2. There is no “big reveal” at the end of these stories. I did not slip into a parallel dimension, I did not receive any esoteric knowledge, and I was not abducted and *ahem* “probed. The only thing that sets these stories apart from much of the rest of the stuff on the internet is that they are true.

So, if that tracks for you, poke up your fire if you have one, open the beverage of your choice, and I’ll tell you the tales.

Story 1

It was back in 2003, and I was the fire warden for Uintah and Daggett counties in Utah. I was not working for the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, or the NPS. A fire warden is an employee of the Utah Department of Natural Resources and the Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands.

If we were not assigned to a fire, we were either issuing permits or doing fuels mitigation. Fuels mitigation is a technical term for removing combustible material from an area to reduce fire danger. And, since it was still early in the season, we were usually working on a fuels project.

If you look at a map of Utah in the northeast corner, you will see Flaming Gorge Reservoir and National Recreation Area. On the Utah side, there is a cluster of vacation homes known as Flaming Gorge Acres. That is where I was working the day the call came in. Flaming Gorge is a wonderful place to work during the summer. You are up high in the mountains, the sky is usually clear and blue, the air is clean, and about the time you are starting to feel the heat, a summer thunderstorm rolls through around lunch time to cool things off. Honestly, there isn’t a corner office in the world that has it beat.   

We had spent the day cutting down trees and limbing and bucking them for later disposal, and running what we could through a Vermeer chipper approximately the size of New Jersey. It was quitting time, and I was covered in needles, sap, dirt, bits of wood, and sweat, accented with a few dabs of saw fuel and oil. I was so tired that I was hoping we didn’t pop a smoke somewhere, since all I wanted to do was find a hot shower and a cold beer. Not necessarily in that order, and possibly at the same time. As I was packing up the engine, I got a call on my cell. A very nice lady wanted to know if I could swing by and give her a burn permit. She was out near Randlett. 

Randlett was founded in the 1800s and is largely populated by members of the Ute Indian Tribe, although at one time, there were a number of ranches and farms owned by non-Indians in the area. I haven’t been back in a while, so I don’t know if anything has changed. One of the problems complicating boundary disputes involving the Uintah & Ouray Reservation is that much of the land is checkerboarded, meaning that one parcel might be privately owned, another by the state, the next by the Ute Tribe, and the one after that by some other federal entity. I lived in Randlett back when I did a mission for the Episcopal Church. Where it has not been cultivated, much of it is high desert and covered in sagebrush. It is also about a two-hour drive from Flaming Gorge Acres, and I was beat. I asked the lady if I could swing by the next day. She said that would be fine and that she was at “The UFO Ranch.” 

I said I’d be there first thing in the morning. 

Since this was in the days before cell phone maps and GPS apps, I got very careful directions from her. Then I went off to find my beer and shower.

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Manhattan-sized space object 3I/ATLAS has grown a tail — a possible sign of alien ‘maneuver’: Harvard scientist

New images reveal the Manhattan-sized interstellar object 3I/ATLAS has started to sport a tail, indicating that it could possibly be a “maneuvering” alien craft, one Harvard scientist suggested.

After exhibiting signs of an incredibly strange “anti-tail” since first cropping up in the solar system in July, 3I/ATLAS is now showing evidence of a true cometary tail, images taken by Spain’s Nordic Optical Telescope in the Canary Island in September revealed.

These new images shows materials being peeled off behind the 33-billion ton object as it travels toward the sun and is hit with up to 33 gigawatts of solar radiation, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb wrote in a recent paper.

However, the succession of an anti-tail and then the presence of a tail could be indicative of “controlled maneuvering” and a high-impact Black Swan event.

3I/ATLAS’s anti-tail was a plume composed of mostly carbon dioxide and water with trace amounts of cyanide and a never-seen-in-nature nickel alloy that has only been used in human manufacturing.

“[I]f the object is an alien spacecraft slowing down,” Loeb wrote, then the anti-tail would be evidence of a “braking thrust” maneuver which would naturally change to a tail as the slowing procedure completed.

The International Asteroid Warning Network added 3I/ATLAS to its list of targets earlier this week, and began monitoring the object for scientific purposes.

The group wrote on its website: “While it poses no threat, comet 3I/ATLAS present a great opportunity for the IAWN community to perform an observing exercise due to its prolonged observability from Earth and its high interest to the scientific community.”

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File on Bizarre Argentine UFO Event Deemed Classified for National Security Reasons

In an eyebrow-raising story out of Argentina, a police report concerning a recent UFO incident involving mesmerized cattle has been deemed classified for national security reasons by government officials. According to a local media outlet, the bizarre event occurred on August 14th in the village of Candioti when police received word that multiple residents had observed a “white light with violet flashes” floating over the community. An officer dispatched to investigate the UFO sighting was soon alerted to a strange commotion unfolding among the animals at a ranch along the way. Arriving at the location, he likely could not believe his eyes at the wondrous scene before him.

To the astonishment of the officer and other witnesses, the ranch’s cows were eerily walking in a circle beneath the mysterious ball of light hovering overhead. Meanwhile, the property’s horses were thrashing around in a manner suggesting that they were deeply disturbed by what was unfolding around them. After a few minutes, the UFO suddenly vanished. Its disappearance seemingly broke the spell cast over the animals as the horses immediately calmed down, and the cows stopped their ritualistic circling. Silence fell over the field, with the witnesses understandably wondering what they had just seen.

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“We Don’t Know Why It Happens”: Scientists Discover Bats That Glow an Eerie Green Under UV Light

University of Georgia (UGA) scientists studying North American bats have discovered six different species that glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light.

Although several animals and plant species possess the ability to generate their own light, called bioluminescence, and some mammals, like pocket gophers, also emit a glow under ultraviolet light, called photoluminescence, the team says this is the first known evidence of bats in this part of the world emitting light in any spectrum.

The research team that discovered the glowing bats says they are not sure if this trait, which has been passed down to several generations from one original species, offers a current survival advantage or is simply a genetic relic that once offered enough survival benefits to propagate over time since it first evolved, but is no longer needed.

“It’s cool, but we don’t know why it happens,” said Steven Castleberry, corresponding author of the study and a UGA professor in wildlife ecology and management. “What is the evolutionary or adaptive function? Does it actually serve a function for the bats?”

In a statement detailing the team’s work, the researchers note that the illuminating discovery was made when examining 60 bat specimens stored at the Georgia Museum of Natural History. Specifically, the team found that when they exposed the specimens to UV light, several of the bat’s wings and hind limbs produced an eerie but clearly visible glow.

To determine the nature of the emitted light, the team measured the unexplained photoluminescence with a light-measuring sensor and found that the unexpected glow was a shade of green. Although they couldn’t immediately determine its function, the team said its location and color are likely to rule out an environmental cause. Instead, they suggest the ability to glow in the dark is likely a genetic trait.

“It’s ultimately some sort of mutation, and then that mutation somehow gets perpetuated, usually because it’s beneficial,” Castleberry explained. “Individuals that have that trait tend to survive and reproduce better, so it gets more common in the population.”

“There is evidence that glowing is a common trait,” the researcher added.

The study, co-authored by UGA alumnus Santiago Perea and Warnell graduate student Daniel DeRose-Broecker, details six bat species that glow in the dark. The photoluminescent species highlighted in the study included big brown bats, eastern red bats, Seminole bats, southeastern myotis, gray bats, and Brazilian free-tailed bats.

Briana Roberson, lead author of the study and a UGA alumna, noted that it’s possible that the function of glowing in animals may be “more diverse” than researchers previously thought.

“Bats have very unique social ecology and sensory systems, and the characteristics we found in these species differ from many other observations in nocturnal mammals,” Roberson explained.

When discussing possible reasons for the genetic mutation that causes bats that glow in the dark, the team noted that the color emitted under UV light was similar between the sexes. This similarity makes it less likely that the glowing ability is for reproduction or species recognition.

Further analysis seemed to rule out the glow being used as camouflage. Instead, the research team suspects the photoluminescence may represent an inherited trait once used for communication. Whatever the reason for these bats’ unusual ability to glow in the dark, the team says it probably comes from a single mutation that was likely passed along for a currently unknown survival advantage.

“The data suggests that all these species of bats got it from a common ancestor. Castleberry said. “They didn’t come about this independently.”

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Eerie Animal Mutilations Mystify Argentine Ranchers

The owners of a ranch in Argentina are searching for answers after they lost both a cow and a horse to what appears to be the infamous cattle mutilation phenomenon. According to a local media report, the eerie case began last month in Villa de la Quebrada when a downed heifer was found with a cut jaw and its tongue, eye, and udder removed with what appeared to be remarkable precision. “What we found strange,” one of the ranch owners recalled, “is that it had a burn inside the mouth like it was made with a laser.” The situation became even more concerning last week when he noticed that one of their horses had gone missing, which led to another gruesome discovery.

To his astonishment, he soon stumbled upon the unfortunate mare, which had suffered a similar grisly fate, bearing “the same characteristics of the cow,” including precise cuts to its jaw and carefully removed body parts. The rancher noted that in both instances, the remains of the slain animals were of no interest to scavengers that would normally feast on such a free meal. Understandably baffled by the two incidents, he was skeptical that the killings were the work of human hands. “It does not make sense for one or more people to do all this and leave the animal lying,” he mused, arguing that a sinister miscreant would have at least taken the heifer’s remains.

With that scenario having been dismissed by the rancher, he offered an otherworldly explanation for what might be behind the two unsettling events. Citing “news and documentaries we have seen,” he pointed to two possible culprits: the chupacabras or aliens. That said, he conceded that the cases will likely remain a mystery as “the reality is that no one knows how to tell you exactly what may have happened to them or what would be the cause.” What do you think downed the rancher’s animals? Are the incidents a case of the cattle mutilation mystery going international, or did they perish under more prosaic circumstances?

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Interstellar Object Is Spraying Something Weird, Scientists Find

A new analysis of our solar system’s interstellar interloper, 3I/ATLAS, reveals that it’s spewing huge amounts of water — and astronomers can’t immediately explain why.

The object, which is widely believed to be comet, showed strong ultraviolet emissions that are unmistakable telltales of hydroxyl gas (OH), a byproduct of water, when astronomers imaged it with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift space telescope before it disappeared behind the Sun. The emissions could only be spotted from space because the ultraviolet light would get absorbed in the atmosphere.

Their findings, detailed in a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, argue that the presence of all this OH indicates the comet is ejecting water vapor at a torrential rate of about 88 pounds per second — around the same rate as a fire hose running at full blast, according to a press release about the findings.

The most extraordinary thing is that this was spotted happening pretty far from the Sun, at a heliocentric distance of about three astronomical units (AU) away, or three times the distance between the Earth and our star. Typically, comets stray much closer to the Sun before the water ice in their core, called a nucleus, begins to sublimate, or instantly transform from a solid to a gas. Something else must be driving all the water dumping from 3I/ATLAS — which also implies, tantalizingly, that the comet must harbor considerable stores of water for this process to keep going.

“When we detect water — or even its faint ultraviolet echo, OH, — from an interstellar comet, we’re reading a note from another planetary system,” coauthor Dennis Bodewits, a professor of physics at Auburn University, said in the release. “It tells us that the ingredients for life’s chemistry are not unique to our own.”

It’s another example of the fascinating strangeness of interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS. Think of it as a sample of somewhere very far away, perhaps tens of millions of light years, careening straight past our doorstep. That it’s in many ways bizarre compared to local comets hints at just how unique these unimaginable alien realms must be, and how we have so much more to understand of how star systems form and how their structures may evolve.

Typically, a comet’s coma, a huge halo of gas and dust that give comets their glowing appearance, begin to form as the object nears the Sun — or another star, presumably — and heats up. The heat either sublimates or vaporizes the material in its nucleus, which is many times smaller than the tail that catches our eyes from the ground, stretching behind the comet.

3I/ATLAS’s coma has already surprised us in many ways. Its chemistry is strange compared to our own comets, and it appears to have an astonishingly high ratio of carbon dioxide to water.

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Galactic alert: NASA confirms mysterious object entering solar system is ‘interstellar’ visitor

A mysterious object hurtling through space has been identified as a rare “interstellar object,” only the third of its kind ever seen.

In July, NASA reported its ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Chile identified a comet that originated from interstellar space. Arriving in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, the comet was dubbed 3I/Atlas.

The comet poses no threat to Earth – it will remain at a distance of about 150 million miles away – but is unique. According to Livescience, the object is traveling towards the sun extremely fast, around 152,000 mph and is on an flat and straight trajectory that’s unlike anything else in the solar system.

NASA has confirmed 3I/Atlas is an interstellar object, meaning it originated outside our solar system and is briefly traveling through it. It’s only the third such object to have ever been spotted after Comet 2I/Borisov passed through in 2019 and ‘Oumuamua, a cigar-shaped object that appeared in 2017 and sparked a social media fury after it was suggested it was an alien probe.

Scientists are studying the size and makeup of 3I/Atlas but NASA said it should be visible to ground-based telescopes through September, though after that it will pass too close to the sun to be seen. It will reappear on the other side of the sun by Sunday and remain visible through early December.

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Alien secrets: 11 mysterious UFO encounters that refuse to fade from history 

nexplained aerial phenomena, commonly branded as UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) and more recently as UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), remain one of history’s most enduring enigmas.

While most sightings are dismissed as misidentifications or atmospheric oddities, a select few stand apart – defying scientific and governmental scrutiny and leaving behind more questions than answers. These are cases with solid physical evidence, radar confirmation, or witnessed by military and aviation professionals.

Let’s delve into the 11 most compelling UFO sightings across the globe – incidents with documentation, official investigation, and mysteries that have persisted for decades despite analysis.

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The “Wow!” Signal Was Likely From An Extraterrestrial Source, And More Powerful Than We Thought

Anew study has re-examined the famous “Wow!” signal, finding that it likely has an extraterrestrial origin after all, and may have been even more intense than previously believed.

On August 15, 1977, at the Big Ear radio telescope observatory at Ohio State University, a narrowband radio signal was received. A few days later, astronomer Jerry Ehman reviewed the data and noticed the signal sequence, which lasted for a full 72 seconds. In the margin next to the printout, he simply wrote “Wow!”, and thus the puzzling signal had a name that would stick for the next 43 years at least.

The signal has, so far, defied explanation, and that’s not for a lack of trying. Researchers argued the case for it being a comet passing through the area Big Ear was listening to, only for that to be completely refuted about two days later by the team that detected the Wow! signal in the first place, as a comet would have produced a diffuse signal given the large area they cover, rather than the abruptly cut-off signal that was received.

The signal has been a source of speculation in the “aliens are out there” community, and not without reason. No other signal like it has been detected before or since. It was in a range of frequencies close to the hydrogen line, which is relatively free from background noise, making it a good range to pick were we to try and communicate with other civilizations ourselves. On top of that, the team themselves believed it to be a good candidate for extraterrestrial life.

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NASA Satellite Images Reveal Mysterious Blast Site of 1908 Tunguska Event that Scorched Remote Siberia

A fiery explosion tore through the skies over Eastern Siberia on the morning of June 30, 1908, decimating more than 830 square miles of frozen taiga in what remains the largest asteroid-related blast in recorded history. Known as the Tunguska event, today it serves as a stark reminder of potential dangers presented by space objects that cross paths with our planet.

In commemoration of the 1908 incident, June 30 is recognized worldwide as International Asteroid Day, as part of an effort to raise awareness about asteroid hazards and to promote international cooperation in addressing their statistically rare, but still ever-present and potentially deadly reality.

Now, revealed in satellite imagery obtained last summer by NASA’s Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, the blast site as it appears today can be seen to show no direct signs of an impact, or even any damage from the blast which more than a century ago that had been large enough to level a modern city.

Eyewitness descriptions preserved from the time of the Tunguska event are still haunting today, with many reporting observations of the blazing fireball streaking across the sky at an estimated 60,000 miles per hour.

In Kirensk, observers saw a ball of fire descend toward the horizon, followed by deafening crashes and thunderous bangs. One witnessed described seeing the blazing object descending, and after several minutes, hearing “separate deafening crash[es] like peals of thunder” followed by “eight loud bangs like gunshots.”

“As it approached the ground, it took on a flattened shape,” one eyewitness reported, while another described the object as resembling “a flying star with a fiery tail” that “disappeared into the air.”

“I saw the sky in the north open to the ground and fire poured out,” another witness description reads. “The fire was brighter than the sun. We were terrified, but the sky closed again and immediately afterward, bangs like gunshots were heard. We thought stones were falling… I ran with my head down and covered, because I was afraid stones my fall on it.”

Another striking eyewitness report detailed how heat from the blast wave struck him, carrying him off the porch of the local trading station.

“Suddenly in the north … the sky was split in two, and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire,” the witness report reads. “I felt a great heat, as if my shirt had caught fire… At that moment there was a bang in the sky, and a mighty crash… I was thrown twenty feet from the porch and lost consciousness for a moment…. The crash was followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky, or guns firing. The earth trembled…. At the moment when the sky opened, a hot wind, as if from a cannon, blew past the huts from the north.”

Damaging vegetation in the community, the witness also said that “many panes in the windows had been blown out and the iron hasp in the barn door had been broken” following the incident.

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