Strange Cases of Bizarre Unexplained Aerial Phenomena From Way, Way Back

For many, the UFO phenomenon, or UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) as it's often known today, may seem relatively modern. Indeed, it was only from the 1940s that the idea of UFOs really swept the world and the public consciousness. Yet, this is a phenomenon that goes way back through the centuries, and here we will look at various very early encounters with strange things in the sky. 

UFO reports of some kind have occurred back to Biblical times. The Book of Ezekiel is the third of the Latter Prophets in the Tanakh and is considered to be one of the major prophetic books of the Bible. It follows the words of the Judean prophet Ezekiel ben-Buzi, a priest living in exile in the city of Babylon between 593 and 571 BC, who is written to have encountered God there and received six visions structured around three themes: Judgment on Israel, Judgment on the nations, and Future blessings for Israel. One of these bizarre visions came to Ezekiel in the form of a vision of four burning wheels, which “sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel,” with God atop a chariot attended by angels. Called “Ezekiel’s Wheel,” interpretations have varied as to what exactly it is all supposed to mean, but one common idea is given by the site Bible Study Tools, which says of it:

“The Bible story of Ezekiel's wheel features a vision of four wheels that illustrates the spiritual, divine essence of God and His omnipresence in our reality. This story is predominantly found in the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel, as part of his inaugural vision. God approaches Ezekiel as the divine warrior, riding in his battle chariot. The chariot is drawn by four living creatures, each having four faces (those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle) and four wings. Beside each "living creature" is a "wheel within a wheel", with "tall and awesome" rims full of eyes all around. God appoints Ezekiel as a prophet and as a "watchman" in Israel: "Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites.” Ezekiel’s vision of the four wheels dramatically illustrates the omnipresence and omniscience of God. These wheels were associated with the “four living creatures” (Ezekiel 1:4), who were later described (Ezekiel 10:5-20) as cherubim, angelic beings appointed as guardians of the holiness of God. The Spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. As a result, the creatures were able to move any direction the wheels moved. Most biblical scholars hold to the idea that the Spirit of God gave direction to the wheels through direct knowledge of and access to the will of God. The mobility of the wheels suggests the omnipresence of God; the eyes, His omniscience; and the elevated position, His omnipotence.”

Here is a version of the story from the Bible:

"I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north–an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was that of a man, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had the hands of a man. All four of them had faces and wings and their wings touched one another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved. Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. 

Their wings were spread out upward; each had two wings, one touching the wing of another creature on either side, and two wings covering its body. Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning. As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces.

This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not turn about as the creatures went. Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around. When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.

Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked like an expanse, sparkling like ice, and awesome. Under the expanse their wings were stretched out one toward the other, and each had two wings covering its body. When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the tumult of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings. Then there came a voice from above the expanse over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking."

Now, traditionally, this would have been interpreted as a visitation from God and an entourage of angels, but there has been speculation over the years that this is actually an early account of extraterrestrial UFOs that has merely been seen through the lens of religious fervor and within a context understandable to the people back then, therefore being mistaken for some sort of heavenly phenomenon. Whatever the case may be, it certainly is a strange story. 

Moving along to 213 BC, we have an odd account that supposedly happened during the Second Punic War, which was the second of three wars fought between Carthage and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. According to this account by the Roman historian Livy, a “spectacle of ships gleamed in the sky.” Interestingly, Livy reports another appearance of ships in the sky in 173 BC, when a “great fleet” allegedly appeared in the air, and that “round shields were seen in the sky” over central Italy.

Also from the same general era is the bizarre experience reported by Alexander the Great. There are few figures from history as well-known as Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, who became the king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon in 336 BC at the age of 20. Throughout the course of his rule, he would forge one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India, in addition to carving out a reputation as an undefeated military might and one of history's greatest and most successful military commanders, as well as gaining the status of being one of the most influential figures on Western civilization. There have been many tales of Alexander the Great’s numerous exploits and conquests, to the point that he has become an almost legendary, larger than life figure, and one of the strangest of these is the time his army was supposedly harrassed by UFOs. 

A very early report of a bizarre battlefield encounter with something very unusual in the sky supposedly happened in 329 BC, during one of Alexander the Great’s many military campaigns. At the time, the army was advancing on an enemy city, and there was an enormous procession of elephants, horses, and men ready for war. According to the account, as they attempted a nighttime river crossing at the Jaxartes River in Central Asia, now known as the Syr Darya, the army was dive-bombed and menaced by “two great silver shields, spitting fire around the rims,” that so frightened them and panicked the animals that they postponed the crossing until the next day. The account originally came from Macedonian historian Aleksander Donski, who passed it along to the famed UFO researcher and author Frank Edwards, who wrote of it in his book Stranger than Science, but there has been some skepticism as to its veracity because there is no other known source for the story. Edwards would write of the account:

“Alexander the Great tells of two strange craft that dived repeatedly at his army until the war elephants, the men, and the horses all panicked and refused to cross the river where the incident occurred. What did things look like? His historian describes them as great shining silvery shields, spitting fire around the rims… things that came from the skies and returned to the skies.”

Another similar account from around the same time period was given by Italian UFO researcher Alberto Fenoglio, who gives an account that supposedly happened in 332 BC, in the midst of Alexander the Great’s Siege of Tyre, during his campaigns against the Persians. The account reads:

“The fortress would not yield, its walls were fifty feet high and constructed so solidly that no siege-engine was able to damage it. The Tyrians disposed of the greatest technicians and builders of war-machines of the time and they intercepted in the air the incendiary arrows and projectiles hurled by the catapults on the city. One day suddenly there appeared over the Macedonian camp these ‘flying shields’, as they had been called, which flew in triangular formation led by an exceedingly large one, the others were smaller by almost a half. In all there were five. The unknown chronicler narrates that they circled slowly over Tyre while thousands of warriors on both sides stood and watched them in astonishment. Suddenly from the largest ‘shield’ came a lightning-flash that struck the walls, these crumbled, other flashes followed and walls and towers dissolved, as if they had been built of mud, leaving the way open for the besiegers who poured like an avalanche through the breeches. The ‘flying shields’ hovered over the city until it was completely stormed then they very swiftly disappeared aloft, soon melting into the blue sky.”

Once again, there are no known ancient sources for this account, leaving us to wonder just how much veracity it has. Neither of these accounts seems to have much in the way of concrete historical data to back them up, and they are mostly known from the book by Edwards. Despite the complete lack of any identifiable sources, the story of Alexander the Great and his UFOs has managed to work its way into the lore and will pop up from time to time in discussions on ancient UFO sightings. It is a shame that there is so little to corroborate any of it, and is likely a fabrication or very loose and twisted interpretation of historical events, but it is all a damn strange story all the same.  

In the first century AD, Roman-Jewish historian Josephus, writing about a war between Roman and Jewish forces, recorded a supposed “aerial battle” between UFOs in AD 65. He would describe “chariots” in the sky, and “armed battalions hurtling through the clouds.” It was thought at the time that this might be an omen of Roman victory. 

Another curious classical UFO is recorded by the Greek writer Plutarch in his work Life of Lucullus, a Roman general. Lucullus’ forces were getting ready to go to battle with King Mithridates VI of Pontus when a strange object appeared between the two armies, of which is written:

“Suddenly, the sky burst asunder, and a huge, flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies. In shape, it was most like a wine-jar (pithos), and in colour, like molten silver. Both sides were astonished at the sight, and separated.”

What was this thing? A meteor or something else? Jumping ahead to 779 AD, we have an account from Liber de Grandine et Tonitruis, Chapter XI, by Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, where it is written:

“We have, however, seen and heard many men plunged in such great stupidity, sunk in such depths of folly, as to believe that there is a certain region, which they call Magonia, whence ships sail in the clouds, in order to carry back to that region those fruits of the earth which are destroyed by hail and tempests; the sailors paying rewards to the storm wizards and themselves receiving corn and other produce. Out of the number of those whose blind folly was deep enough to allow them to believe these things possible, I saw several exhibiting in a certain concourse of people, four persons in bonds—three men and a woman who they said had fallen from these same ships; after keeping them for some days in captivity they had brought them before the assembled multitude, as we have said, in our presence to be stoned. But truth prevailed."

It is unclear what happened to these mysterious strangers after this, or if this story is anything more than mere myth and legend. From 1211 AD, there is an account from Gervase of Tilbury, an English chronicler of historical events and curiosities, who wrote:

“There happened in the borough of Cloera, one Sunday, while the people were at Mass, a marvel. In this town is a church dedicated to St. Kinarus. It befell that an anchor was dropped from the sky, with a rope attached to it, and one of the flukes caught in the arch above the church door. The people rushed out of the church and saw in the sky a ship with men on board, floating before the anchor cable, and they saw a man leap overboard and jump down to the anchor, as if to release it. He looked as if he were swimming in water. The folk rushed up and tried to seize him; but the Bishop forbade the people to hold the man, for it might kill him, he said. The man was freed, and hurried up to the ship, where the crew cut the rope and the ship sailed out of sight. But the anchor is in the church, and has been there ever since, as a testimony.”

What in the world was this? Next, we come to the year 1492, with Christopher Columbus and his crew in uncharted waters, reaching out over unexplored horizons to penetrate a new era, on their way to the eventual discovery of the New World. There were many strange and exciting discoveries to come, but before that, a bizarre series of events would supposedly play out, beginning with a strange sighting made on the evening of September 15, 1492. The Diario of Christopher Columbus's First Voyage to America, written by the Spanish historian Bartolomé de las Casas, describes how the crew witnessed a strange phenomenon in the sky, which is described as follows:

“They sailed that day and night 27 leagues and a few more on their route west. And on this night, at the beginning of it, they saw a marvelous branch of fire fall from the sky into the sea, distant from them four or five leagues.”

While this very well could have been a meteor, it seems curious that it was spectacular enough for them to make mention of it and emphasize it as a “branch of fire,” especially when they were likely to have witnessed many meteors in the sky during the voyage. Oddly, many interpretations of this sighting claim it as having been the opposite, and that the light was actually coming out of the ocean to shoot up into the sky. It is intriguing at the very least, but this was only one of several weird incidents they witnessed, according to Casas’ account. The following month, on October 11, 1492, the expedition was only hours away from their historic discovery of the Americas, and on this evening, the Admiral spotted something very unusual on the horizon. It seemed to be a light bobbing up and down in the air, and it was odd enough that the Admiral called others to come look at it. Cases writes:

“After sunset he [Columbus] steered on his former course to the west. They made about 12 miles each hour and, until two hours after midnight, made about 90 miles, which is twenty-two leagues and a half. And because the caravel Pinta was a better sailor and went ahead of the Admiral [Columbus] it found land and made the signals that the Admiral had ordered. A sailor named Rodrigo de Triana saw this land first, although the Admiral, at the tenth hour of the night, while he was on the sterncastle, saw a light, although it was something so faint that he did not wish to affirm that it was land. But he called Pero Gutierrez, the steward of the king's dais, and told him that there seemed to be a light, and for him to look: and thus he did and saw it.

He also told Rodrigo Sanchez de Segovia, whom the king and queen were sending as veedor [inspector] of the fleet, who saw nothing because he was not in a place where he could see it. After the Admiral said it, it was seen once or twice; and it was like a small wax candle that rose and lifted up, which to few seemed to be an indication of land. But the Admiral was certain that they were near land, because of which when they recited the Salve, which sailors in their own way are accustomed to recite and sing, all being present, the Admiral entreated and admonished them to keep a good lookout on the forecastle and to watch carefully for land; and that to the man who first told him that he saw land he would later give a silk jacket in addition to the other rewards that the sovereigns had promised, which were ten thousand maravedis [silver coins] as an annuity to whoever should see it first.”

It was apparently seen by many witnesses on several of the ships, leaving us to ask what this light was? This was all surrounded by various compass oddities they had experienced during the voyage. In short, the compass reportedly was constantly going haywire without any discernible reason, to the point that it had become quite unsettling for the crew. In a 1792 manuscript called The American Geography, by Jedidiah Morse, it is written of this anomaly:

“On the 14th of September he [Columbus] was astonished to find that the magnetic needle in their compass, did not point exactly to the polar star, but varied toward the west; and as they proceeded, this variation increased. This new phenomenon filled the companions of Columbus with terror. Nature itself seemed to have sustained a change; and the only guide they had left, to point them to a safe retreat from an unbounded and trackless ocean, was about to fail them. Columbus, with no less quickness than ingenuity, assigned a reason for this appearance, which, though it did not satisfy himself, seemed so plausible to them, that it dispelled their fears, or silenced their murmurs.”

All of this has been taken in modern times as a sign that Columbus and his men saw UFOs, and that either these or their proximity to the Bermuda Triangle at the time caused the compasses to malfunction. The case was famously shown on The History Channel and has generated quite a bit of discussion, but what are we really looking at here? One of the main problems with the reports is that, although they are often claimed as being from Christopher Columbus’ diary, the fact is that there is no known actual copy of that diary remaining. It all comes from the work of Bartolomé de las Casas, which was a supposed copy of the original log and diary, and it is important to note that Casas was never actually on the voyage and wrote this 50 years after the fact. Since it is not the actual original, there is no way to know how much of it was really from Columbus’ pen and how much was perhaps extrapolated or even exaggerated by Casas.

However, Casas was a well-respected historian not given to changing things around, and for the most part, it seems that Columbus and his men saw something, but what? There have been many interpretations and ideas thrown around, including that he saw bioluminescent sea life, a meteor, some sort of atmospheric phenomenon, or even Natives with torches on a canoe, but the most popular theory is that they simply saw lights from land. The October sighting was made just hours before land was sighted, so it seems reasonable to suggest that it might have been lights from the Natives on shore. Even Casas thought this, writing:

“I feel about this is that the Indians at night throughout these islands, as they are temperate without any cold, go out or used to go out from their straw houses that they call bohíos at night to comply with their natural necessities and take in hand a firebrand, or small torch, or a chink of pine or of another very dry and resinous wood which burns like a torch, when it is dark night, and with which they guide themselves back again, and in the manner could be seen the light which Christopher Columbus and the others saw the light three or four times.”

In the end, there is no way to really know for sure what happened here. We are left with a second-hand copy of the original journal and no way of really verifying any of it. Was this UFOs, Natives with torches, or what? It is all a curious little footnote in the history of Christopher Columbus, and likely will remain a mostly forgotten curiosity and historical oddity that will never be fully solved.

Another early case that stands out as flat-out spectacular and bonkers is an odd phenomenon that purportedly played out in the skies over Nuremberg, Germany, in 1561. On April 14th of that year, normal life ground to a halt as citizens looked upwards with a mixture of awe and fear as something very strange happened up there. There whizzing about in the heavens were reportedly hundreds of mysterious objects of all shapes and sizes, including spheres, cylinders, tubes, saucer-like objects, crosses, ovals, lunar crescents, a black spear, and myriad others, which seemed to be engaged in some sort of free-for-all aerial battle, scorching the sky with their hostilities, after which one of them was said to crash somewhere out in the wilderness. The objects moved erratically and with great speed, and an article that appeared in the local paper at the time said of this bizarre scene:

“At first there appeared in the middle of the sun two blood-red semi-circular arcs, just like the moon in its last quarter. And in the sun, above and below and on both sides, the color was blood, there stood a round ball of partly dull, partly black ferrous color. Likewise there stood on both sides and as a torus about the sun such blood-red ones and other balls in large number, about three in a line and four in a square, also some alone. In between these globes there were visible a few blood-red crosses, between which there were blood-red strips, becoming thicker to the rear and in the front malleable like the rods of reed-grass, which were intermingled, among them two big rods, one on the right, the other to the left, and within the small and big rods there were three, also four and more globes.

These all started to fight among themselves, so that the globes, which were first in the sun, flew out to the ones standing on both sides, thereafter, the globes standing outside the sun, in the small and large rods, flew into the sun. Besides the globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour. And when the conflict in and again out of the sun was most intense, they became fatigued to such an extent that they all, as said above, fell from the sun down upon the earth 'as if they all burned' and they then wasted away on the earth with immense smoke. After all this there was something like a black spear, very long and thick, sighted; the shaft pointed to the east, the point pointed west. Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows."

The whole thing apparently lasted for a full hour, after which all of these various objects flew off towards the sun. The article was accompanied by a woodblock print depicting the battle, which was also brought into modern discourse when it was published in Carl Jung's 1958 book Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, and it has left people scratching their heads ever since. At the time of the article it was largely seen as some sort of celestial battle and a sign from God, but of course in that era flying spaceships would not have really been a thing since it was an age when we didn’t even understand the cosmos in the first place, let alone flying machines that could traverse the stars. It only makes sense that they would try to explain it in a religious context, with something they could understand. In later centuries, it has come to be seen as perhaps some sort of atmospheric phenomenon such as a sundog, flying swarms of insects, clouds, birds, a sensationalized tall tale, or even an actual mass battle between UFOs. It is likely we will never know, considering how lost to time the report is, but it is definitely curious.

Also from the 16th century is an event that allegedly took place outside of Tübingen, Germany on December 7, 1577, and which was written of in the 1594 posthumous edition of Pierre Boaistuau’s Histoires Prodigieuses. The report reads:

“About the sun many dark clouds appeared… Out of these clouds have come forth reverberations resembling large, tall and wide hats, and the earth showed itself yellow and bloody, and seemed to be covered with hats, tall and wide, which appeared in various colors such as red, blue, green, and most of them black… It is easy for everyone to think of the meaning of this miracle, which is that God wants to induce men to amend their lives and make penance. May Almighty God inspire all men to recognize Him. Amen.”

Again, is this an extraterrestrial phenomenon posing as a religious vision? In 1628, the English Puritan settlers of the New World established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was the second major settlement in New England following the Plymouth Colony. A very important figure at the time was a lawyer named John Winthrop, who was in charge of a huge wave of settlers coming to America, and he would serve as the governor of the colony for 12 years starting from 1629. Winthrop would also be the founder of various other communities along Massachusetts Bay and the Charles River, and was also known as an authoritarian and religiously conservative leader, known to be against pure democracy, once calling it “the meanest and worst of all forms of government.” Despite this, he was still a well-respected leader and politician who has made his mark upon the early history of the United States, with some of his writings serving to influence politicians to this day, but a lesser-known aspect of the man is that he also wrote some pretty weird stuff in his journals, including what is thought to be among the very first UFO accounts in the New World.

Tucked away between the pages of various mundane accounts of colonial life is a very curious entry dated March 1, 1639, in which Winthrop writes of a very bizarre and outlandish  incident involving a man named James Everell, whom he describes as a “discreet, sober man.” According to Winthrop, Everell had been rowing with two other men up a section of the Muddy River, about two miles from the village of Charlestown, when they saw a “great light in the sky,” which seemed to dart about back and forth. He would describe the account as follows:

“When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square; when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine: it ran as swift as an arrow towards Charlton [Charlestown], and so up and down about two or three hours ran as swift as an arrow, darting back and forth between them and the village of Charlestown, about two miles away. They were come down in their lighter about a mile, and, when it was over, they found themselves carried quite back against the tide to the place they came from. Diverse other credible persons saw the same light, after, about the same place.”

The men claimed that after the sighting, they had inexplicably found themselves transported about one mile upstream, with no idea or memory of how they had gotten there, nor any sense of the time that had passed. This is an odd detail, as it would mark this incident as not only one of the first reports of a UFO in America, but also the first account of missing time and possibly even the first of alien abduction. One of the explanations at the time was that the men had merely seen illumination from a light phenomenon springing from swamp gas, called ignis fatuus, caused by the combustion of gas from decomposed organic matter. Others thought it was just a misidentified meteorite, and one skeptic was a man named James Savage, who added his footnote to the sighting in a published version of Winthrop’s journal in 1839, saying:

“This account of an ignis fatuus [pale light over marshy ground] may easily be believed on testimony less respectable than that which was adduced. Some operation of the devil, or other power beyond the customary agents of nature, was probably imagined by the relaters and hearers of that age, and the wonder of being carried a mile against the tide became important corroboration of the imagination. Perhaps they were wafted [carry lightly], during the two- or three-hours’ astonishment, for so moderate a distance, by the wind; but, if this suggestion be rejected, we might suppose, that the eddy, flowing always, in our rivers, contrary to the tide in the channel, rather than the meteor, carried their lighter back.”

In the end, neither swamp gas nor meteorites seems to adequately explain what the men reported as written in Winthrop’s journal, and considering that it is only mentioned in one entry and happened so long ago, we will probably never know for sure. Interestingly, this isn’t even the only weird such account to be found within Winthrop’s journals. Five years later there is another entry dated January 18, 1644, which makes mention of a light rising from the water that was witnessed by several boatmen near Boston. This light was apparently “in form like a man,” and “went at a small distance to the town, and so to the south point, and there vanished away.” A few weeks after this yet another journal entry mentions another strange report from Boston Harbor, in which Winthrop writes:

“A light like the moon arose about the N.E. point in Boston, and met the former at Nottles Island, and there they closed in one, and then parted, and closed and parted diverse times, and so went over the hill in the island and vanished. Sometimes they shot out flames and sometimes sparkles. This was about eight of the clock in the evening, and was seen by many. About the same time, a voice was heard upon the water between Boston and Dorchester, calling out in a most dreadful manner, ‘Boy! Boy! Come away! Come away!’; and it suddenly shifted from one place to another a great distance, about 20 times. It was heard by diverse godly persons. About 14 days after, the same voice in the same dreadful manner was heard by others on the other side of the town towards Nottles Island.”

Winthrop would muse that the voice he heard was perhaps from the ghost of a sailor who had died several months before the UFO sighting when his ship had exploded when gunpowder had accidentally been ignited. Whatever the case may be, it is a pretty bizarre report, and it is hard to know what might be going on here. Once again, it only appears in one entry and is never brought up again, leaving it firmly and forever in the realm of speculation. It is all quite a strange case and series of events, and we are left to try and make sense of it all. Was any of this real, and if so, what was it? Or was this just a gag thrown into an important historical figure's journal, and if so, why? It is certainly a bizarre historical oddity, which has definite repercussions on the UFO discussion and which many are not aware even exists at all.

An otherworldly series of events allegedly occurred in April of 1665 in the skies over Barhöfft, which was then in Sweden, but is now in Germany. On this occasion, there were supposedly seen several disc-shaped objects that were battling amongst themselves, after which they scattered, and one remained hovering there, which apparently made all those who looked upon it sick. One Erasmus Francisci would write of this in a 1689 article entitled Der wunder-reiche Ueberzug unserer Nider-Welt/Oder Erd-umgebende, in which he says of the battle and its aftermath:

“After a while out of the sky came a flat round form, like a plate, looking like the big hat of a man… Its color was that of the darkening moon, and it hovered right over the Church of St. Nicolai. There it remained stationary until the evening. The fishermen, worried to death, didn’t want to look further at the spectacle and buried their faces in their hands. On the following days, they fell sick with trembling all over and pain in head and limbs. Many scholarly people thought a lot about that.”

As with the Nuremburg case, this has been speculated as being mirages, birds, or some other mundane phenomena, but the detail of the fishermen falling sick is intriguing, and makes one wonder if this could have been an effect of radiation sickness in an era when we didn’t even know what radiation was. What do we make of this account?

Looking at such cases as we have examined here, it is plain to see that the UFO phenomenon is far from a modern-day construct. It is also interesting that, although some of the very earliest biblical accounts seem to look at it through a cultural lens, many of the accounts are spookily similar to any report you might read today, suggesting that these aerial phenomena spotted in modern times might be the very same entities sighted centuries ago. Could this be, and if these are alien forces, might they have been on Earth for far longer than presumed? Or is this all just misidentification and tall tales? In any case, it all deepens the landscape of the UFO phenomenon and adds another layer of strangeness.