Killer Whales with Knives, Nessie Attacks Canoes, German Vampire, Ring Ghost Contest and More Mysterious News Briefly

A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week. 

In the world of UFO research, February 2023 is remembered for the infamous UFOs which were actually Chinese spy balloons chased and shot down over Northern Canada by US Air Force jets, but a second lesser-known encounter from that month is back in the news with the first release of a photo of a UFO shot down by American fighter jets near Alaska last year – the glowing horseshoe-shaped object Is described by Canadian Brigadier-General Eric Laforest as a “cylindrical object” whose “top quarter is metallic, remainder white. 20-foot wire hanging below with a package of some sort suspended”: Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado, blames the delay in releasing the photo on embarrassment caused by “illustrating a potential vulnerability in the U.S./Canada defensive system". Do we need to equip fighter jets with better weapons or better cameras?

Biblical archeology gets all of the media coverage but biblical biology got some attention with the announcement that scientists who have been working for 14 years on reviving a thousand-year-old seed found in a cave in the Judean Desert have succeeded in growing a 10-foot-tall tree, and DNA, chemical and radiocarbon analyses shows the seed came from an extinct population of trees of the genus Commiphora, which are believed to be the source of a resinous extract known as  "tsori" and associated with healing in the books of Genesis, Jeremiah and Ezekiel; the resin is rich in pentacyclic triterpenoids, which have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties, and squalene, which has antioxidant and skin-smoothing properties. It’s not a miracle – just good science.

“A killer whale holding a knife” sounds like a bad guess in a game of Pictionary, but it is actually the description of one of more than 300 newly-discovered Nazca Lines in Peru which were found by researchers using artificial intelligence – the collection includes alien-like humanoids, decapitated heads, domesticated animals, a 72-foot whale with a knife, birds, cats and ancient human ceremonies; the AI model was trained to spot the faint outlines of the geoglyphs in satellite images of the Nazca Desert, especially in locations where lines had never been seen before. If a killer whale is 72 feet long, why does it need a knife?

If you are looking for something else to keep you awake at night, a new study suggests that primordial black holes that were formed shortly after the Big Bang may still exist today in such large numbers that they pass through the inner part of our solar system near Earth at least once every ten years; fortunately, they are probably the size of atoms but might still be detected using models searching for tiny gravitational distortions; unfortunately, the research is focusing on finding these microscopic black holes – not predicting what happens when one hits Earth, the Moon or a human. We saw Tiny Primordial Black Holes open for Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

In the ‘Defect or destroy’ debate over how best to deal with potentially dangerous near Earth objects, the physicists at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, whose job is to ensure the safety and security of the United States’ nuclear arsenal, conducted a ‘deflect’ experiment using X-rays from a nuclear device and tiny mock-up asteroids to simulate aiming a mega pulse of radiation from a nuclear blast at a space object and the pulses successfully heated up the surface of the asteroids until they created a vapor plume that changed their directions – the researchers believe this same strategy would work on real asteroids with a diameter of up to 2.5 miles. If and when that asteroid appears, we already have millions of video game players ready to operate the pulse guns.

The Fermi Paradox asks why so many habitable planets have produced no other advanced civilizations except ours, and a new study conducted by Amedeo Balbi, an Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universita di Roma Tor Vergata, and Manasvi Lingam, an Assistant Professor with the Department of Aerospace, Physics and Space Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology proposes that the answer is climate change – specifically, the study proposes that the waste heat created by the technology of advanced civilizations grows exponentially and reaches a level that makes a planet uninhabitable in just 1,000 years, which is bad news for aliens and worse for humans; they conclude that “If the waste heat generation maintains its exponential growth over centuries, we show that it can eventually lead to a complete loss of habitability and the demise of all life on Earth”. More evidence it may be time to worry less about the paradox of Fermi and worry more about the future of terra firma.

After a swimmer crossing Loch Ness claimed to feel ‘something’ bump against him in the middle of the loch, two canoeists say they felt boat-shaking "thumps" on the bottoms of their canoes with a force that nearly knocked the paddle out of the hands of one canoeist; the father of this father-and-son team of guides said he had hit logs before but “this was not like hitting wood at all”; unfortunately, he didn’t get any photos or videos because “the water is so dark you can only see down a foot or so”. Nessie is bumping canoes and swimmers while killer whales are sinking boats off the coast of Spain – we can’t blame this on aquatic creatures playing violent video games.  

Researchers from Johns Hopkins Medical Center delivered bad news to space travelers with a new study that analyzed human heart tissue sent to the International Space Station (ISS) to determine the effects of low gravity on heart performance and found that just 30 days in space causes significantly diminished ability to contract, irregular heartbeat patterns and molecular and genetic changes associated with aging; the researchers are now looking into drugs that will protect astronauts’ hearts from deterioration in space. This should convince the band Heart not to take a ride on Blue Origin.

As part of Ring’s Great Ghost Search, the ubiquitous door camera and security company is offering $100,000 for the best video of a ghost or other paranormal activity captured on a Ring doorbell or camera – the contest ends on November 1, 2024 or when 5,000 entries are received, and will be judged by Ghostbusters star Finn Wolfhard and paranormal investigator Katrina Weidman, who will decide a winner based on ”Visibility/Clarity of the Ghost, Uniqueness of Entry, Entertainment Value, and Engagement”. So, if you get a clear video of a ghost who sings and dances before asking to marry you, you could be a winner.

Employees at the Bombal cemetery near Rosario, Argentina, are getting ready for the third annual appearance of a mysterious phenomenon that occurs very close to the Day of the Dead on November 2nd – the workers have videos of puddles of foam that move in swirls on a mosaic floor without any human, wind or mop intervention; the two workers also say bad weather brings out a man in black who appears, says hello and leaves. They should be glad the swirling soapy water doesn’t happen all year round or their mopping jobs would be over.

This is the kind of thing that gives time travel a bad rap – a number of media sources claim that a 1941 photo of a group of young people waiting in line to enter a theater in Chicago shows one boy holding what looks like a modern iPad tablet that wasn’t released until 2010, making this ‘clear’ evidence of time travel; of course, it could also be clear evidence that the boy was reading a book or doing his homework in a notebook while waiting in line. A good title for a book about this kind of reporting on this kind of story would be “Gullible’s Time Travels”.

A video taken in August 2024 but just making the rounds now shows what the uploader describes as a “silent boomerang-shaped UFO, filmed in infrared, slowly flying over Amarillo, Texas, USA”; the video is attributed to a man named L. Miller who claimed he only saw a light in the sky but his infrared night vision equipment captured the body of the object which commenters compared to the famous Phoenix Lights, a boomerang-type UFO, or the secret TR3-B military plane. The triangle or wing has become such a common shape of conventional aircraft that it’s hard to get excited about them, even the silent ones.

The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the US government arm investigating unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), asked the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the largest science and energy national laboratory in the Department of Energy, to analyze a sample of material allegedly from a UFO crash in the late 1940s – the results have been published and researchers at ORNL determined “this specimen to be terrestrial in origin and that it does not meet the theoretical requirements to function as a terahertz (THz) waveguide” which could possibly levitate an object like a spaceship; they also determined that  “[T]he specimen’s physical properties are consistent with a material of terrestrial origin”, so it originated on Earth. Only a few million more pieces of alleged spaceships to go.

Amateur astronomer Felix Schöfbänker of Austria captured what are believed to be the first images of a classified fleet of five spy satellites called FIA-Raiders (FIA stands for Future Imagery Architecture) or Topaz which carry an advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) for capturing images of international terrorists, drug dealers and crime lords for a secretive US government program. ‘Secretive’ because if they can spy on criminals, they can spy on you too.

Vietnamese inventor Tran Long Ho of the Mr. Ho Thanh Che YouTube channel has turned a regular jet ski into a water-skimming version of a flying saucer that could fool unsuspecting humans and aliens alike;  he used scrap metal and equipped the water-tight water saucer with windows and solar panels for alien looks and human efficiency, but the low ceiling forces him to lie in an uncomfortable position for steering; even so, it is definitely cool and fast; With its shape, speed and water capabilities, a good name for this would be the Clam-borghini.

In Fortean news, goat farmer Kheri Rajak of Sirsaud, Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh, India, called his neighbors to see a baby goat born with conjoined eyes that made many believe it was an alien kid of the livestock kind; the goat's eyeballs were joined together in the center of its face directly above its mouth and had no eyelids, so the animal was unable to blink; the owner said he’d never seen a goat like this before and experts call the condition Cyclopia, which can be caused by genetic mutations, exposure to teratogenic substances, chromosomal abnormalities, maternal illness, or poor nutrition; most embryos with the defect are miscarried and most born alive die in a few hours, which was the case with this poor creature. Do stories like this make Tom Brady feel bad about being called a GOAT?

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk bragged on social media that the space company plans to launch five uncrewed Starships to Mars in two years, barring growing government red tape, and he may want to keep sending them uncrewed after Rice University biologist Scott Solomon issued a report that humans living on Mars would experience changes in skin color and a loss of eyesight due to the harsh and stressful conditions on the Red Planet; their children would also develop brittle bones and weaker muscles, and their skin color would take on a ‘little green men’ hue. Elon just might like turning green like his money.

Oceanographers who heard it likened it to an alien song and the more scientific-minded called it “biotwangs” but none could explain the mysterious 2.5 to 3.5 seconds sounds coming from the Mariana Trench 37,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean; that has changed as scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reanalyzed the eerie moans with frequencies between 38 and 8,000 hertz and determined that they are the calls of Bryde’s whales which can be found across the globe in warm ocean locations, including near the Mariana Trench. Are they mating calls or warnings to other underwater creatures that the humans are snooping on their conversations again?

Retired NASA astronaut and current Arizona senator Mark Kelly said in a recent interview the US government should be doing much more to investigate credible sightings of UFOs and as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee he should be able to see testimonies from navy fighter pilots who witnessed them; although he didn’t see them himself on any of his space missions, Kelly may finally get his wish as he joins Senator  Kristen Gillibrand and the subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities at a UFO hearing to be held in November. Why do these politicians feel the need to follow proper protocols when asking for UFO data when aliens don’t follow proper protocol when they show up?  

The weekly recap wouldn’t be complete without a word from self-proclaimed ‘Living Nostradamus’ Athos Salomé, who steps away from predictions and talks about reincarnation, which is convinced exists but not as a linear process where we die and come back as someone else - Athos claims we "inhabit different time frames" simultaneously in a process he describes like this: “Your current life is depicted by a little blue ball with an infinity of little red balls circling it, these represent other lives. These other lives are not limited to the past only and they are very much alive at present or future. They inhabit different time frames, space continuum and world. People in the future, even in the different ones, exist and those ones can be parallel to each other or even coexist in the same time. This, it seems, is what I refer to as the ‘cloud of experimentation’. This cloud would be a multidimensional database, that is bigger than time and space, of all your experiences"; in simpler terms, our current life is not a single timeline but "a link in a chain" he calls "a web of existence". I’d like to go to a time where I can understand what the Living Nostradamus is saying.

Prisons and places where executions took place have long been feared as locations of ghosts and the undead, so it should come as no surprise that excavation at the site of a 17th-century gallows near the town of Quedlinburg in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, where criminals were hanged from the 1660s until the early 19th century, uncovered the grave of a man weighed down by stones to prevent him from rising from the dead as a vampire or an animated corpse known as a "revenant"; archeologist Marita Genesis, says the man doesn’t look like he died by hanging but people who had possibly died an early or sudden death without confession or absolution were feared to be candidates for coming back undead, so they were buried with rocks, sprayed with incense, placed on wooden crosses, had their limbs bound, covered with brushwood, or buried with other contractions to keep them from rising again. Cremation should solve this problem – unless you are allergic to dust.

Proving that a sense of humor helps when dealing with UFOs and aliens, a mysterious balloonish UFO was seen over the town of Springville in central Wyoming recently and the local police department received so many calls that it issued this report on social media: “We have received approximately 6 million calls today about a mysterious balloon in the sky. I am here to confirm every single rumor…. This was in fact an alien spaceship sent from China to steal all the livestock in Springville. Okay, okay… Actually, reports are that there is a naughty pair of children here in town (we won’t name names) who scared off their third nanny, and a new one blew in to teach them through music theory. But for reals its a “stratospheric exploration balloon” and measures “solar radiation”, which I really don’t know what that means because I am just a cop with a high school diploma. I google image searched it though, and everyone is safe.  If you have any other rumors about the balloon, please post them here and not with dispatch 😉” The two-balloon system, also known as a stratollite, belonged to Space Environment Technologies, in collaboration with NASA, as part of the Automated Radiation Measurements for Aerospace Safety (ARMAS) project. Just to be on the safe side, count your cows anyway.