UFO-Fighter Jet Collision, New Dyatlov Pass Theory, Ghost on a Plane, Annabelle Doll on Tour and More Mysterious News Briefly

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

It is crop circle season and the immediate vicinity around Stonehenge is always a hotspot so it should come as no surprise that the first three of 2025 were found in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, in the Wiltshire village of Sutton Veny and in a field near Dorchester, Dorset; on April 11, a small central circle inside a much larger ring appeared in a rapeseed field; on May 15, a perfect geometric design resembling a Celtic knot or four-pointed star inside a circle appeared in a malting barley field in Sutton Veny whose farmer left in undisturbed so visitors could see it and make a donation to their Go-Fund-Me campaign; on May 19, a crop circle with geometric figures inside two overlapping circles appeared in Came Down near Dorchester. Is it time to start putting photos of crop circles on planetary space missions?

Attorney, political activist, UFO disclosure advocate and former advisor to the Vatican Daniel Sheehan says in a recent interview that Pope Leo XIV could be the pope who finally opens the Vatican’s UFO files, pointing out that the previous Leo, Pope Leo XII, founded the Vatican Observatory which has caused many to wonder what the Catholic church knows about extraterrestrial life ever since; Sheehan talked to Vatican officials about UFOs in the 1970s on behalf of then-President Jimmy Carter, who himself had a well-publicized UFO encounter; Sheehan said he believes Pope Leo XIV wants "to bring together science and theology to be able to bring the Catholic Church into the 21st century so we can begin to adjust the institutions of our planet to cope with the reality that there's an extraterrestrial nonhuman civilization". Pope Leo XIV could help open the U.S. UFO files too, especially if the current president wants to be first in ET disclosure.

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) reports that Edward Henry and his son were bow fishing on May 18 in Monroe County, Michigan, near the Ohio border when the dad “heard rustling in a tree to the left and a huge thud hitting the ground from the tree. A big heavy animal hit the ground and crouched and start moving towards me through brush. My dog fired off from the right of me toward the creature. The dog almost got to it but the creature shot off extremely fast through trees and brush. The dog chased the creature up the slope and over the train tracks. I then called for my dog to come back. My son said "holy shit what was that?? It was as big as a bear but it looked like a gorilla!";  they thought about looking for it “but we heard something crunching on the ground behind us. We left!”; BFRO  investigator Matthew Moneymaker said the area has “two things bigfoots consume, especially in winter: cattails and deer” plus hunting is banned in the area, which is close to a town – all factors that would support Sasquatch living in the area. Being that close to the state line, this Bigfoot may have trouble deciding to root for The Ohio State Buckeyes or the Michigan Wolverines.

New information has been uncovered about a UFO collision with a U.S. fighter jet over Arizona on January 19, 2023, cracking the pilot’s canopy and forcing the F-16 Viper to land; the following day, three more UFOs were reported over the Barry Goldwater Range military training area near the Arizona-Mexico border; the FAA's newly-released report states the fighter was flying in restricted airspace near Gila Bend, Arizona, and the latest report from the Department of Defense's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) shows Arizona is a UFO hotspot with hundreds of UFO reports there in recent years; no injuries were reported and this incident was one of 22 incidents between October 2022 and June 2023 where Air Force fighter pilots reported seeing or colliding with drones in mid-flight; in Arizona, there is fear that many of these UFOs are drones launched by drug cartels to spy on U.S. Border Patrol. Until proven otherwise, humans are more dangerous than aliens.

The theory that many UFOs on the US-Mexico border are drones from the drug cartels is disputed by Army veteran and former US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent Bob Thompson, who revealed on a recent podcast never-before-seen footage of a high-speed silent UFO recorded near Arizona by a CBP reconnaissance plane in early 2020; the UFO was dubbed ‘The Cigar’ for its short, cylindrical body with no visible wings or propellers and no visible heat trail; Thompson said he has spoken to more than 100 CBP agents who have witnessed UFOs strange and unidentified objects flying along the US border, and he himself has seen “orbs that were off in the distance. I've seen crafts that were cigar-shaped, I've seen triangles”; Thompson admits that the cigar UFO could have been a missile being tested and warrants further investigation; he also calls for more information on what CBP agents are calling terrifying “portals” opening into the sky that are not smoke rings but something else. When are aliens going to upgrade their technology from cigars to vape pens?

Flying is terrifying enough these days, but psychic Chloe Smith says she saw a ghost on a Ryanair flight and he saluted to let her know he could see her; Smith says she is visited by ghosts almost every day at such diverse places as airports, hotels and pools, and the spirits often acknowledge in some way that they know she can see them.; the ghost on the Ryanair flight was “sitting next to a gentleman just five rows in front. He looked back at me, knowing I could make that connection” and Smith suspects “he was there for a nervous family member, or he could have been an old pilot who flew that exact plane”; she admits she’s never really on vacation from ghostly visits because they can get your attention no matter where you are. You’re never really alone”. If you see a ghost getting on your plane, make sure the wave is a hello and not a goodbye.

It often seems that every lake and river has a monster but only a few have a plaque; joining the ranks of the recognized is the Bear Lake Monster which was honored with a new roadside marker on Bear Lake Boulevard in Garden City, Utah, on the shore of Bear Lake where it has reportedly appeared to residents and tourists since the 19th century and before that in the folklore of Indigenous people; Utah State University Folklore master’s student Melissa Anderson Asay led the project and researched the monster’s history from Shoshone oral legends to 1868, when Joseph C. Rich, a local leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wrote about some sightings in a letter to the Deseret News; many, including other church leaders, took interest in the monster, and Rich kept the myth alive for 26 years before admitting it was a hoax; nonetheless, sightings continued, tour boats and souvenir sales flourished, and now the Bear Lake Monster has a roadside marker. All it needs now is more blurry photos and videos.

Another lake monster with honors is the Ogopogo which is said to inhabit Okanagan Lake in British Columbia, Canada, and was recently recorded by Lisa von Pander, who claims she was hiking recently in Kalamoir Regional Park in West Kelowna when she and her partner “saw these waves/ripples that were very different. They look(ed) like fins” that she believed were “not just boat waves and they’re all black”; she says another couple also witnessed the unusual phenomena on the lake which has had sightings by the indigenous Secwepemc and Syilx people of a monster that has inspired a song and is feted locally with statues, tours and souvenirs. Nothing says you’re a famous monster like people singing a song about you as they hunt you down.

An accepted-by-all reason for the mysterious deaths in 1859 of experienced hikers going through Dyatlov Pass in  Russia’s (then the USSR) Ural Mountains has never been established, so the list of probable causes, from UFOs to flash storms to rocket crashes, continues to grow and increased by one recently at the annual All-Russian conference held in Yekaterinburg where Doctor of Technical Sciences and Professor Petr Bartolomey, who personally knew the hikers, revealed his theory that they were killed in a man-made phenomenon associated with nitric acid; he explained: "Since the feet left imprints, there are traces, which means there could have been some kind of thermal effect. But this thermal effect is unlikely over the long distance they ran. Science says that most often this is due to the nitric-acid effect on the surface. For example, when salt is sprinkled on snow, it becomes wet, imprints appear and freeze in the cold. This is the only correct scientific explanation of what happened"; while he did not identify the “technogenic” trigger, he believed it interacted with the environment to produce nitric acid that burned their skin, heated their tracks and explained why there were no signs of a struggle. Close, but still no smoking cigar, gun or other acceptable cause.

Armchair Loch Ness monster hunter via webcam Eoin O'Faodhagain reports he spotted a “distinct” shape surfacing less than 100 feet from the Clansman Hotel pier which he believes is a “spectacular” video of a baby Loch Ness monster’s neck and body surfacing as it devours its meal; while he claims “it has no resemblance to an otter or a seal, and I never saw a fish with a neck and a bumpy back”, he thinks its size indicates this is a juvenile Nessie; the sighting coincidentally occurred just weeks before the big ‘The Quest’ annual mass Loch Ness monster hunt. Is Nessie working with the promotions department for a cut of souvenir sales or some fresh fish?

It’s not a Chupacabra or an alien ‘big’ cat sighting, but there have been a number of sightings recently in Central Texas of what is believed to be a jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi), a medium-sized wild cat whose range extends from central Argentina to northern Mexico and is considered extinct in the United States; photos showed up on social media of an unusual sighting in Seguin in southern Central Texas of an animal resembling a jaguarundi; the post has brought out other reports of sightings of the 10-to-30-pound cat in Uvalde, Del Rio, Chappell Hill, and Lake Jackson; it was last verifiably seen in Texas in 1986 near Brownsville. Maybe it will keep the Chupacabra population in check – a goat-sucker-sucker.

If you are paranormal enthusiast planning your summer vacation, you may want to check out the new Savannah Paranormal Museum in Georgia “where history, legend, and the supernatural collide”; the museum’s website touts its “haunted artifacts collection” with scary displays of everything from “cursed dolls with disturbing histories to objects linked to unexplained phenomena” and notes that “some visitors claim to feel a strange presence near these artifacts”; there are also exhibits on cryptozoology and the ghosts of Savannah, one of the oldest and most haunted cities in the U.S.; co-founder Chris Soucy says he wants the museum to give people "a broader vision of the world, whether it be understanding how other people are influenced by objects or whether it is connecting your own spirituality with the idea that there is something more or something grander or beyond"; more information and photos are available on the Savannah Paranormal Museum website.

It may not be evidence of a soul or an aura or human consciousness, but scientists at the University of Calgary released a new study detailing how they have recorded a glow that is not visible to the naked eye but is emitted by mice, plants and possibly humans up until the moment they die; the phenomenon is called ultraweak photon emission (UPE) and is created by living cells; in a study led by Dr Daniel Oblak, mice were placed in dark chambers and imaged using high-sensitivity cameras which showed this glow; when the mice were euthanized and kept warm to rule out temperature changes as a cause, their bodies stopped glowing – according to the study, “the dead mice’s UPE emission is nearly extinguished”; the phenomenon was also witnessed in thale cress flowers and umbrella trees, where the researchers noticed another strange event - injured leaves glowed brighter than healthy ones, indicating that stress may be a factor in photon production. There’s no stress like death.

Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, is more famous these days for being the ex-wife of the randy Prince Andrew and mother of Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, but she claims to have been chosen by the late Queen Elizabeth II to receive messages from the other side through a pair of the queen’s beloved corgis; Fergie inherited her Sandy and Muick after the queen died in 2022 and the Duchess revealed at a recent Creative Women Platform Forum that she believes Queen Elizabeth II is speaking to her whenever the dogs bark. She doesn’t reveal any messages from the queen, but one might think from watching the corgis that she still has to go to the bathroom frequently and doesn’t have to prepare her own food.

The Warren's Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut, set up by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren to house their collection of unusual items, including Annabelle, the haunted Raggedy Anne doll whose alleged actions made them famous and inspired many movies, is promoting its Devils on the Run Tour which takes some of those items, including Annabelle, on the road around the country, and the doll’s presence has social media in a tizzy because the Warrens always said that Annabelle should never be moved from the museum; paranormal investigator Ryan Daniel Buell is posting videos of the doll's tour and says the doll is “secure” with members of the New England Society of Psychic Research (NESPR) and a Catholic priest to keep tabs on her. It’s not the trip they should be worried about – it’s what Annabelle might do when she has to go back into her locked box in the museum.

In another sign that the U.S. government is getting more serious about UFOs, the Pentagon is openly soliciting contractors to bid on creating and maintaining a secure software-based platform to track data, interactions and other records associated with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) investigated by the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) that will reside on the Defense Department’s top secret and sensitive Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS); this is believed to be the first “solicitation” published on behalf of AARO since its inception in 2022; contractors with top-secret clearance can submit proposals until June 9. Will the program shut itself off if it finds aliens?

From the ‘Zoology Can Be Stranger Than Cryptozoology’ file comes the first-ever photographs of New Guinea’s legendary subalpine woolly rat (Mallomys istapantap) which were first described in 1989 using historical museum material but never seen; now, researcher and Czech Academy of Sciences doctoral candidate František Vejmělka reveals the results of six months of hunting in New Guinea’s jungles – phots of her holding a woolly rat, which can reach about 2.78 feet in length (including their tail), weigh up to around 4.4 pounds, and has 3-inch paws; in size, they are second only to the giant cloud rats of the Philippines as the world’s largest rats, and are three times the size of the common brown rat; Vejmělka had help from local guides in tracking down the woolly monsters which climb trees at night and hide in underground burrows or tree canopies during the day; Vejmělka admits “It’s astonishing that such a large and striking animal has remained so poorly studied. How much more is there to discover about the biodiversity of tropical mountains?” Bigfoot?