Supermarket Aliens, Mothman Photo, NASA Hunts Nessie, Hallucinating Petroglyphs and More Mysterious News Briefly

News surfaced this week of a UFO encounter in Spain in 2023 when a Eurofighter jet of the Spanish Air Force scrambled to intercept an unidentified spherical object near the Morón de la Frontera air base in Seville which ground radar showed flying at high speed and altitude – the Eurofighter pilot reported visually tracking for several minutes but was unable to catch or identify it; the unidentified pilot later sent the information to UFO researcher José Manuel García Bautista, explaining that the data was analyzed but they came up with nothing as to the "nature or origin of that UFO" and to this day there has been no official response from the Spanish government to requests for more information. Are the world’s militaries in collusion on UFOs or do they all have the same defects in their ground radar systems?

On April 4, Dr. James Caruso, Chief medical examiner and Coroner of Denver, Colorado. Dr. William Rodriguez, Forensic Anthropologist, Maryland State Medical Examiner, and Dr. John McDowell, a retired professor at the University of Colorado and a Forensic Odontologist, revealed they have been investigating the Peruvian Nazca mummies supposedly discovered in 2017 and thought to possibly be aliens due to their elongated skulls and three-fingered hands and have concluded that the bodies need further investigation because they don’t believe they are fakes. These are real scientists and medical examiners – is it time for the Peruvian government to allow a full autopsy with cameras recording it?

Freebets.com asked 2,000 UK adults if they had a UFO encounter and where it occurred, and they were surprised to find that one in ten sightings happened in supermarket parking lots – one theory for this high incidence is that the lights may make the lots look like a good landing spot, but those same lights on tall poles on dark and foggy nights could themselves be mistaken for orbs or UFOs with a ring of lights. Did anyone consider that they might be looking to replenish their kitchens?

Volcanoes have been described as portals to alien bases after UFOs have been reported entering and exiting them, while giant smoke rings are considered by many to be UFOs, so there was much paranormal interest recently when dozens of smoke rings began emerging from the top of Sicily’s Mount Etna - the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Italy was quick to announce that these were volcanic vortex rings, natural but rare phenomena caused when gas or steam emissions erupt through a perfectly circular volcano vent. Are they sure it’s not alien pilots smoking really big cigars?

Harvard professor and expert on interstellar asteroids shaped like cigars (’Oumuamua) offered yet another theory on alien space travel this week as he proposed that extraterrestrials are already here via the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which allows them to travel through the very hidden dimensions which scientists at the LHC are hoping to discover using the particle accelerator to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang at the start of the universe – Loeb discusses this in the new documentary, ‘The Paranormal UFO Connection', where he predicts the first humans to see these hidden dimensions will be “like a cave dweller coming to a city like London or Europe, and seeing all the technological gadgets there” and have “a sense of religious awe”; he also points out that traveling through extra-spatial dimensions reduces the chances of collisions in space. Sadly, aliens arriving via the Large Hadron Collider would put Loeb out of business.

Speaking of CERN, Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Higgs, the British theoretical physicist renowned for his prediction of the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson, passed away this week at the age of 94 – Higgs proposed the Higgs boson in 1964, but it was not until July 4, 2012, that scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN finally observed the particle, leading to Higgs being awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Belgian theoretical physicist Francois Englert. Let’s hope the first thing he said upon arriving in the afterlife is, “Oh, so THAT’S how it works.”

The total eclipse news didn’t end when the light returned as Brazilian psychic and self-proclaimed ‘Living Nostradamus’ Athos Salomé's pronouncement that scientists investigating phenomena occurring during the eclipse may cause a “sudden advancement of scientific research” and find things to “open the gate to, including a cure for cancer”; Scottish science fiction writer Iain Banks was watching for wealthy extraterrestrials who traveled here as space tourists to view one of Earth's solar eclipses; and many Americas suffered from ‘eclipse sicknesses’ before, during and after the total blackout, including headaches, fatigue, changes in menstrual cycles and insomnia. Not to mention the anxiety caused by wondering what to do with that huge stockpile of toilet paper.

In news that fits right for those people who were expecting an eclipse-generated apocalypse, Professor Boris Gaensicke of the University of Warwick said in a new study on white dwarf stars that “The sad news is that the Earth will probably just be swallowed up by an expanding Sun, before it becomes a white dwarf” while the outer planets in the solar system will be “crushed and ground to dust” because the period of transition from being a star like our Sun to a white dwarf is highly chaotic and irregular. We saw Chaotic and Irregular open for Hall and Oates.

For those who enjoyed sitting in their gardens during the faint light of the eclipse, Dr. Keith Wood and his company, Light Bio, developed an ordinary-looking garden petunia that glows in the dark – it was created using four genes from one type of bioluminescent mushroom and a fifth from another fungi to make the first decorative plant with self-contained bioluminescence that gives the petunias a color close to moonlight but with greenish hue. We saw Bioluminescent Petunias open for Guns n’ Roses.

Many solar eclipse watchers in Arlington, Texas, also reported seeing and recording a cigar-shaped UFO darting through the clouds – believers believed it was extraterrestrial while skeptics said it was just an airplane. How did they see it with their eclipse glasses on?

The Loch Ness Centre in Inverness has asked NASA to provide equipment and expertise in a massive coordinated search for the Loch Ness Monster scheduled to take place from May 30 to June 2 when thousands of volunteers are expected to search for Nessie in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the organized search for the monster led by Sir Edward Mountain and a team of twenty ‘Watchers of the Monster’ – it is hoped that the space agency will avail its advanced imaging technologies to scan the loch. One small step for man, one giant leap for cryptozoology!

Higgypop.com presents an interesting theory on why so many ghost sightings occur in the month of April: extreme weather conditions, particularly constant heavy thunderstorms and rain, may influence the frequency or intensity of paranormal phenomena – the energy discharged during thunderstorms may provide spirits with the energy needed to manifest, falling raindrops create tiny amounts of kinetic energy which together can influence paranormal activities, heavy rain can create ultra-low-frequency vibrations or infrasounds which are known to cause feelings of unease, disorientation, panic, an increased heart rate and blood pressure, feelings of depression, a general feeling of unease, and visions of apparitions. Does this mean there are no ghosts in a desert? (Asking for a wet and scared friend.)

Exorcists generally specialize in demon encounters, but Reverend Bill Bean, an exorcist and ‘Spiritual Deliverance Minister’ in Maryland who claims to have performed thousands of exorcisms, revealed for the first time recently that in 1996 he had an encounter with "a very tall, non-human looking being” with “very long and skinny arms, with very long fingers” that was “glowing a pale shade of green" – he claims the being touched him, causing paralysis and a blackout which resulted in an abduction where he met a man in a vehicle who "looked at me in a very sinister way and said, 'Don't tell anyone about this’" before he was mysteriously returned to his bedroom. Is this evidence of a link between aliens and demons or an indication that the alien investigations are becoming more popular (and perhaps more financially lucrative) than exorcisms?

From the ‘Fortean phenomena’ file comes a report from Israel where a rare six-legged mountain gazelle was photographed with an extra pair of legs growing from its back that wildlife experts say are not interfering with the animal having a normal gazelle life - the photo was sent to the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) where conservationist Amir Balaban explained in a press release that the six-legged gazelle had "survived a complex litter and survived as a young individual, dealt with many predators that endanger young fawns, matured single and as an adult managed to lead an impressive life in the Nahal HaBasor reserve." Why don’t we ever see six legs on creatures where they could do some good – like chickens?

Another Fortean-style event occurred in the Philippines where a woman blames the birth of her very hairy ‘werewolf’ son on the fact that she ate a black cat while she was pregnant with him – doctors blame this ‘werewolf syndrome’ on hypertrichosis, which can be congenital or the result of adverse reactions to some medications; there is no cure for hypertrichosis and the boy is in for a lifetime of shaving, plucking and depilation. Not to mention a life in therapy for hating his mother for grilling a black cat.

Some people never throw anything away, including their Mothman photos, as evidenced by a story out of Castaños, Mexico, where a recent Facebook post showed what was called a human-sized ‘Birdman’ reportedly seen at dusk by a family on a rural road and that photo generated numerous reports of similar sightings in the state of Coahuila – unfortunately, ‘eagle-eyed’ viewers of social media recognized the photo which had been used as ‘evidence’ for similar Mothman/flying humanoid sightings in San Luis Potosí in 2022 and near Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 2016 where most people thought it was a bird carrying a snake or a hoax photo. New cryptozoology rule: current photos or it didn’t ‘allegedly’ happen.

While ChatGPT used artificial intelligence to put the most likely home of Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest areas of Washington state, Oregon, and Northern California, the Daily Star checked with Thomas Marcum, founder of research group The Crypto Crew, and he says the Appalachian Mountains in the northeastern states may have more reports of Sasquatch, along with UFOs, hellhounds, and other cryptids, because “there are many magnetic anomalies at various points along the range” and high quantities of quartz which “gives off an energy that perhaps draws in some of these creatures” where they have “plenty of food, water, natural caves, and more” to live comfortably yet hidden. Forget AI – get out in the woods and look for bigfoot yourself!

‘Glory lights’ are colorful concentric rings of light that have only been seen on the planet Venus until astronomers from the University of Warwick, using data from the European Space Agency’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite (CHEOPS), detected them on the ultra-hot gas giant planet WASP-76b located 637 light-years away – to create them, the planet needs to have atmospheric particles that are close-to-perfectly spheres, completely uniform and stable enough to be observed over a long time, and the planet’s star needs to shine directly at it and at the right orientation, making WASP-76b a prime candidate for observations using the NIRSPEC instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope. In the meantime, feel free to consider conspiracy theories about alien Christmas tree lights.

Conspiracy theorist and ‘reptilians in the royal family’ proponent is back in the news with a new show called ‘Hellfire Caves’ where he claims to be "driving out demons from a satanic cave" where there is a "distorted inverted consciousness that is running our world" – no reptilians appear but Icke mentions some of his other personal demons. The royal family could do us all a favor by dressing up as reptiles and appearing on the palace balcony so Icke can ride off into the sunset in peace.

In a new study titled ‘Is Artificial Intelligence the Great Filter that makes advanced technical civilizations rare in the universe?’, Michael Garrett from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester warns that the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) may be the "Great Filter" that has stunted the growth of advanced technological civilizations and explains why we haven’t detected them – the Great Filter theory proposes that a technological advancement like AI can go rogue and extinct a civilization before it can use that technology for space travel. Are we willing to give up our AI-generated memes to prevent the end of our own civilization? Nah!

Just in time for a Weird Britain episode, the ghost of Jack, a sailor who was murdered in Cornwall over 100 years ago, made an appearance at his favorite haunt, the Jamaica Inn, where he did the usual poltergeist trick of knocking over glasses for the closed-circuit security cameras – paranormal researcher Paul Cowmeadow certified the historic hotel as a haunted location and said, “With such a stunningly preserved old inn, in such a beautiful part of the world, with all the promise of meeting Jack, I can see why the Jamaica Inn is such a popular and loved place, and would thoroughly recommend a visit.” In Great Britain, ghosts are the original tourism bureaus.

An urban legend was proven true recently when David Taggart, a wildlife biologist specializing in marsupial ecology and reproduction, said he has seen wombats running at 25 miles-per-hour (40 kph), matching the speed of a vehicle filming them and verifying the commonly held belief about the marsupial’s speed, but clarified that only southern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus latifrons) can run at that rate, not the northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii) nor the common ‘bare-nosed’ wombat (Vombatus ursinus), and they only run that fast during mating season when “These big male wombats – they can get up to 38kgs – they’re just solid muscle and they’ll just take off.” Maybe the smaller wombats don’t need the speed because they have better pickup lines.

Archaeologists from Poland’s Adam Mickiewicz University and the University of Warsaw, both in Poland, have found evidence they claim proves that some rock carvings and ancient petroglyphs found at the Toro Muerto (Spanish for ‘dead bull) in Peru in a desert gorge near the Majes River Valley were inspired by people singing while consuming hallucinogenic plants because they are similar to carvings in Colombia made by the ancient Tukano people while consuming hallucinogenic ayahuasca plants – the exact hallucinogen used by petroglyph artists in Peru is not known but the drawings of dancing figures show how the music was making the stoned people feel. Could they have been dancing to early versions of ‘White Rabbit’?

Webjørn Svendsen Espeland, a journalist for the NRK public news agency in Norway, somehow obtained an entire document folder from the country’s High Command of the Armed Forces which contained 156 pages of documents from the period 1954-1970 pertaining to UFO sightings and investigations, including a case from Bjøringvatnet in 1967 where four females saw an unknown "plane" crash into the water- many UFO investigators think there should be a lot more pages in this file titled "Foreign flying objects over Norwegian territory". Maybe the aliens are turned off by Norwegian Lutefisk.