Amazing Encounters with Humanoids and Aliens in Jetpacks and Flying Suits

One area of the paranormal that has always remained rather pervasive is that of winged humanoids. There are countless reports of such beings in the mysterious skies above our heads, yet on most occasions these seem to entail some sort of flying beast, demon, or cryptid. However, the world of flying humanoid reports, it turns out, is much more bizarre than that. It also happened to include those beings and figures that seem to have been utilizing some mysterious, unknown and very sophisticated technology that allows them to access flight through advanced personal propulsion systems, making them in essence humanoid UFOs that have never been explained.

Flying humanoids with jetpacks or some sort of advanced winged suit go way back. In as early as 1880 there are a couple of reports along these lines. The first comes from John Keel’s book The Mothman Prophecies and describes a bizarre scene that played out on July 28 of that year in the area of Louisville Kentucky, in the United States. On this day, two witnesses named C. A. Youngman and Ben Flexner were out taking a leisurely stroll on a clear, calm afternoon when they saw something quite odd in the sky above. They at first took it to be a toy balloon, but as it approached they could see that it was in fact what appeared to be “a man surrounded by machinery which he seemed to be working with his hands,” with some kind of wings and fans perched upon his back. This enigmatic flying man worked his machinery to have him dip and rise several times until he passed out of view. This sighting would be followed by a UFO sighting the same evening, in which a bright object was seen “hopping” over Madisonville, Kentucky before disappearing, its connection to the flying man unknown.

In September of that same year, there is another report mentioned in a 1972 article in Fate Magazine by authors Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark, which seems to fit into the theme of flying suits. On September 11, 1880, a strange flying humanoid was seen over Coney Island, New York, which seems to have been perhaps using a flying contraption of some sort. The original news article in the New York Times says of it:

“One day last week a marvelous apparition was seen near Coney Island. At the height of at least 1000 feet in the air a strange object was in the act of flying toward the New Jersey coast. It was apparently a man in bat’s wings and improved frog’s legs. The face of the man could be distinctly seen, and he wore a cruel and determined expression. The movements made by the object closely resembled those of a frog in the act of swimming with his hind legs and flying with his front legs….When we add that this monster waved his wings in answer to the whistle of a locomotive and was of a deep black color, the alarming nature of the apparition can be imagined. The object was seen by many reputable persons and they all agree that it was a man engaged in flying toward New Jersey.”

In 1936 a 15-year-old girl named E.E. Loznaya was on her way to school in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan on a cold winter morning. As she wound along the rural path lost in her thoughts, her attention was drawn to something in the sky, and when she looked carefully she would claim that she had seen it was a a medium-sized man in black clothes and a matching helmet that hid his face, and who was wearing an oval-shaped backpack. She also noticed that there was a deep, mechanical rumbling noise coming from this bizarre man. She was snapped out of her astonishment when the flying man suddenly made a quick course change to come hovering directly towards her, sending her into a mad dash to find a place to hide. As she tried to bury herself in a nearby snowbank, she looked up to find that the mysterious flying figure had vanished. 

Moving on in years we come to 1948, which has a few such reports. In the years after World War II, there were some strange encounters with what seems to have been a person or people in some sort of flying mechanized suit. In early January of 1948, a 61-year-old witness named Bernice Zaikowski claimed that she had been out in the yard of her home in Chehalis, Washington at around 3:00 PM when some neighborhood children began looking up at the sky and chattering away about a “flying man” up in the sky. It was at this point that Zaikowski allegedly heard an odd noise from above that sounded like “a sizzling and whizzing,” and when she looked up she could see something very odd indeed hovering up over a nearby barn around 20 feet in the air.

The witness insisted that what she saw looked like a man wearing a pair of long silver wings fastened to his shoulders with some sort of strap rig, which he seemed to control with some sort of high-tech panel attached to his chest. The mysterious man with his bizarre flying suit apparently then performed some aerial acrobatics, ascended into the air, and flew off into the distance in an upright posture. At no point could the witness discern any obvious source of propulsion such as a jet pack or propeller, and the contraption the man wore seemed to be mostly silent except for that odd whizzing sound. The whole sight was seen by Zaikowski and several other witnesses, all of whom were dumbfounded. Was this some sort of flying gadget crafted by a mad genius or something more otherworldly? Later that same year, in April of 1948 the mysterious figure was purportedly seen again in the same general vicinity, and this time he was apparently with friends. The two witnesses, laundry workers Viola Johnson and James Pittman, claimed that they saw “three men in flying suits” making circles over the city at a height of around 250 feet. Johnson would say of the spectacle:

“They looked like three men in flying suits flying through the air. They wore dark drab flying suits and as far as I can judge – I’m not very good at judging distance – they were 250 feet high, circling the city. They were going at about the same speed as a freight train and had some kind of apparatus on their sides which looked like guns but I know it couldn’t have been guns. I couldn’t see any propellers or any motors tied on them but I could hear motors which sounded like airplane motors, only not so loud. When they first came into sight I thought they looked like gulls but as they got closed I could see plainly that they were men. I couldn’t make out their arms but I could see their feet dangling down and they kept moving their heads, like they were looking around. I couldn’t tell if they had goggles on but their heads look like they had helmets on. I couldn’t see their faces.”

The two frightened witnesses’ story was somewhat corroborated when several local people later recalled hearing strange sounds in the sky at around the time of the sighting. Who were these flying men and where did they get those amazing suits? Were these some eccentric inventors who had come up with a new way of flight? If so, whatever happened to this incredible invention? Or was it something else, perhaps time travelers or visitors from another parallel dimension? Could it have all just been a hoax or a tall tale? It’s hard to say.

Moving on to the 1950s, in the winter of 1956 a witness by the name of John Hanks was walking home from work when there appeared a “demonic entity” from the darkness above him. The creature was described as humanoid in basic form but measuring about 9 feet tall, with brown leathery skin and clad in some kind of a mechanical winged harness that allowed it to fly through the air. The wings on the otherworldly apparatus looked metallic and allegedly were covered with scintillating multicolored lights along the bottom. On the center of the entity’s chest was what looked like some sort of square control panel that it seemed to manipulate in order to control its flight, and the whole of it emanated a ghastly hissing noise. Before Hanks could really process what he was seeing, the creature gazed at him with “large, watery eyes” and sped off into the night. 

Perhaps even more bizarre than this is a report from 1968, in the Bolivian village of Potosí. In the spring of that year, a shepherdess named Valentina Flores was herd herding her sheep and llamas back into the stables when she had a most incredibly surreal encounter, indeed. As she approached one of the sheep pens, she caught fleeting movement that she knew was not one of her animals but rather seemed like a human intruder. As she turned the corner of the stable, she saw not a person, but rather a diminutive humanoid creature in a dark jumpsuit with a net floating over it, a metallic pack on its back, and a sharp instrument in its hand with which it was in the process of using to disembowel a sheep. 

Now most people would have probably run away screaming at this point, but not Valentina. Rather than try and get out of there as fast as possible, she began throwing stones at the odd entity, which caused it to stand up and face her, blood and viscera dripping down off the hooked blade it held in its hand. It was described as standing just about 4 feet in height and wearing a helmet that covered its face. After a couple more stones bounced off of it, the entity then wielded the curved blade like a boomerang, throwing it at Valentina to cut her, after which the blade flew back to its hand. It did this several times, causing minor lacerations to the stunned witness. It then went to a box-like apparatus, and after pushing some buttons the floating net retreated into it and the creature secured the box to its backpack. It then picked up a bag of sheep entrails and rose into the air as a buzzing sound exuded from its backpack, which now seemed more like a jetpack. The unknown assailant then disappeared over the horizon, and it was later found that dozens of sheep had been left dead and dismembered by the humanoid intruder. What was going on here?

In 1978 there was a series of bizarre sightings in the USSR, the first supposedly happening in February of that year. Late one evening a militia captain by the name of Avtandil Bukhrashvili woke at his home in Tbilisi, Georgia to see a bright light, followed by the strange sight of two objects that looked like giant black birds, but which upon closer inspection did not seem to have any actual wings, but rather jetpacks of some sort. The two objects descended lower until they were close enough to see that they were indeed two humanoid beings in tight-fitting suits and helmets, through which it could be seen that they had frog-like faces. The entities then produced a tablet and forced him to swallow it, after which they took off and flew off into the distance while emitting a whirring sound. The witness then lost all memory and the next thing he knew he was in bed with a case of lost time.

In April of that same year, 14-year-old Valentine Valentinovich Gubsky was on vacation with his family and some friends in the Ryazan region of Russia. One foggy evening he was out walking with his friend when the two boys allegedly saw a series of bright, multi-colored flashes, after which they heard a mechanical drone that seemed to be approaching their position from a nearby hill. Through the mist, they could then see a shadowy figure coming towards them about 20 meters up in the air, and it continued until it had passed overhead, visible enough for them to make out that it looked like a flying man with his arms outstretched. The witnesses would describe the figure as wearing some sort of metallic silvery suit with metal rings along its limbs and torso, as well as a belt-like contraption with what looked to be a control panel embedded within it.

Whatever it was also seemed to be wearing a backpack of some sort, with what looked like oxygen tanks, upon which could be seen some sort of jet tubes or air inlets. There were no straps visible on what looked to be a jetpack of some sort, and the being also seemed to have some sort of membrane attached from its fingers to the belt, which the boys guessed served as wings. Upon the strange creature’s head was purportedly a helmet with what looked like a respirator. Whatever it was seemed to be heading towards the light seen previous to its arrival, leading the witnesses to believe there had been some connection.

In more recent years we come to 1989, when in October of that year shop owner Yannis Clonaris and his wife were driving home one evening in Lardos, Rhodes Island Greece. The wife looked out the window to notice a low-flying form that looked like a man dressed all in white and covered with hair, possessing wings where its arms should be. This would have been startling enough as it was, but mounted upon its back was some sort of device that seemed to be enabling it to fly, as it was not moving its wings at all. The bizarre apparition apparently looked directly at the witnesses before accelerating in the direction of Tsambika Mountain.

In 1998 we have another report from near Athens, Greece, this time on September 14 of that year, when two women were sitting out on a balcony at around sunset. They would spy an object in the sky headed towards them, which they at first took to be a helicopter but which was odd in that it emanated no sound. As it got closer, they could see that it was a humanoid being in an upright position, wearing what was described as an “astronaut suit.” This odd humanoid figure then descended to land at a nearby park and then sort of did a massive hop toward the forest on Ardittos Hill not far away. The creature then seemed to hover about and then transform into a bright spot and vanish.

A few years later, in July of 2000, there was a strange report in which the witness, Gerardo Valenzuela, filmed a tall dark humanoid object descending from the sky to disappear behind a hill in a valley near the active volcano in a place called Tepoztlan, in the Mexican state of Morelos, located between the Nevado de Toluca and Popocatépetl volcanoes. The strange flying man was filmed and again the video has been picked apart and debated as to its veracity. Then in October, there was a sighting made by an airline pilot and co-pilot while preparing to land in Mexico City. The figure was described as a “little flying man” wearing what appeared to be a backpack and who matched the altitude and speed of the aircraft for some time before flying off. This is a notable sighting in that these were trained pilots who would have been familiar with aerial phenomena and not prone to making up wild tales.

A particularly bizarre report from Mexico occurred on February 14, 2004, when Ana Luisa Cid and two others witnessed a decidedly unearthly sight above Mexico City. They saw in the sky a rather strange object that at first looked to be some sort of mechanical, vibrating machine on top, under which dangled what looked like a large black humanoid shape, the whole of which seemed to be hovering in the same position. To make matters more bizarre, a smaller object was allegedly seen to drift up from below to merge with the larger figure, after which it detached from the upper structure and revealed itself to be what appeared to be some sort of humanoid wearing a cloak or cape of some sort, while the thing above it now, in fact, looked like a living winged beast of some kind. It is then reported that the smaller object broke off from the cloaked creature to fly off, after which the cloaked one reattached to the winged monster and the whole surreal thing took off out of sight. What in the world was this thing? Whatever it is, what has come to be known as “The Entity Reunion in the Sky” remains one of the strangest sightings ever to take place in Mexican skies.

In 2004 yet another video of these things emerged from near Cerro de la Silla, also in Mexico, which showed a dark object with a humanoid form floating through the air at great speed while hunched over. The video of course has generated a whole bunch of debate as to what it could be, with many saying that it is merely a cluster of balloons or some garbage blowing through the air. The next year, on June 17, 2005, witness Horacio Roquett would also film a flying humanoid in a seated position atop some type of device over Mexico City. Roquet was out with his sister at Unidad Habitacional Lomas de Platero in the middle of the afternoon on a clear day when they both saw a tall humanoid figure cruising through the air and leering at them menacingly. In this case, the figure seemed to be perched atop some sort of gravity-defying vehicle that emitted a strange red glow, with its legs dangling underneath. The video they took has become one of the most famous pieces of footage ever taken of one of Mexico’s flying humanoids.

Even more recently headlines were made when a mysterious figure in a jetpack was reportedly seen on numerous occasions over Los Angeles, California between the years of 2020 and 2022. It all began on August 30, 2020, when two different airline pilots reported seeing a "guy in a jetpack" hovering near Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) at 3,000 feet (910 m), and dangerously close to the flightpath of incoming and outgoing planes. Over coming months, other pilots also reported a man in a jetpack zipping around LAX airspace, at altitudes of up to 5,000 feet (1,500 m), to the point that some flights were even diverted or canceled due to the intruder’s antics. Before long the figure was being called the “Jetpack Man” and “Iron Man” in the media, and authorities were scrambling to figure out who or what it was, with theories including humanoid balloons, drones, or even yes, unauthorized advanced jetpack tech. Despite a massive investigation, no definitive answers have ever been found and the Jetpack Man remains a perplexing mystery. 

Even more recently still is a series of encounters in rural Peru in 2023, with what were described as “7-foot-tall aliens” wearing jet propulsion boots and jetpacks. Witnesses reported that these flying humanoids had tried on numerous occasions to kidnap people, leaving some of them with injuries. Some villagers also claimed that the mystery figures were impervious to arrows and bullets. As to their appearance, one village official from the local Indigenous Ikuta group would say:

“These gentlemen are aliens. They are using state of the art technology, like thrusters that allow people to fly. They seem armored like the green goblin from Spider Man. I have shot one twice and it didn’t fall. Instead, it elevated and disappeared. We’re frightened by what is happening in the community. Their color is silver, their shoes are round in shape and with those, they rise up. They float one meter high and have a red light on their heel. Their heads are long, their mask is long, and their eyes are sort of yellowish.”

Peruvian law enforcement officials launched an investigation and concluded that they were, umm, illegal gold miners and drug cartel members, wearing, er, high-tech jetpacks. This was the serious official consensus, with the rationale being that these miners were using this advanced technology and scary suits to terrorize the locals into staying away from the lucrative gold mines and drug stashes. This sophisticated jetpack technology could also be used to make drug runs, it was surmised. Using Tony Stark-level high-tech suits to scare humble villagers and deal drugs. Right, then. As of yet, there have been no arrests made and no suspects questioned in the jetpack aliens phenomenon. 

What are we looking at in these cases? From jetpack sightings well before such technology existed to mysterious humanoids using such technology far beyond what it known to be available now, how do we explain such encounters? Surely jetpacks do exist in modern times, but they are mostly seen as a novelty item too impractical for serious pursuit and lacking the technology to reach the lengths of being airborne, the maneuverability, and the altitudes described in some cases. Is there perhaps someone who has perfected such technology, perhaps even decades ago? Could these be aliens or even interdimensional intruders? Just what is going on here? It remains to be seen.