UFO Pigeons, Lake Champlain Creature Sighting, Annabelle Doll's New Owners, Squonkapalooza and More Mysterious News Briefly

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

The classic 1982 haunted house movie, ‘Poltergeist, was not based on a true story nor was it filmed in a haunted house, but that hasn’t stopped the current owners from turning the movie’s ‘Freeling’ house in Simi Valley, California, into a ‘haunted’ attraction available for booking on Airbnb, complete with an old TV set broadcasting static and a clown doll; interest in the house is piqued by the alleged curse which may have influenced the untimely deaths of Dominique Dunne (played Dana Freeling, strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend in 1982, just months after the film's release), Heather O'Rourke (played Carol Anne Freeling in all three films, died in 1988 at the age of 12 due to complications from an acute bowel obstruction), Julian Beck (played Kane, an evil spirit, died of stomach cancer), Will Sampson (played Taylor, a good spirit, died after a heart-lung transplant). Which is scarier: a cursed house or a haunted one … or the bill?

‘UFO Pigeons’ sounds like a great name for a band but it’s an actual phenomena reported in villages in India’s state of Uttar Pradesh where residents claim to have seen unusual UFOs with flashing red and green lights flying erratically around their houses; after people started calling it an "invasion”, a police investigation uncovered the source of the UFOs – two men named Shoeb and Sakib who admitted to putting the flashing lights on live pigeons and turning them loose at night in the villages; they were surprised that witnesses thought the pigeons were UFOs and not just drones. Get ready for a UFO pigeons movie called “Close Encounters of the Bird Kind”.

Their clients may not be telling the truth but we hope that their lawyers are, so there’s hope that ‘Not For Disclosure’, a new book by UK barrister Jonathan Caplan KC, whose celebrity clients include tennis star Boris Becker, will live up to the publisher’s hype that it is “the most serious and sourced book ever published on the subject of UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena), previously known as UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects)”; it is said to have info on between former President Harry Truman and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal on UFOs, new photos and “important and previously unpublished documents” from the Majestic 12 group of scientists, military leaders and government officials investigating alien spacecraft, an account of “NHIs (non-human intelligences) who are allegedly visiting or co-existing with us and who have been doing so for some time”; Caplan calls the existence of alien spacecraft “the world’s greatest-ever cover up”. Let’s hope he wrote it while promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

US Representative Eric Burlison of Missouri revealed on a recent podcast more details about his quest for UFO disclosure, which included asking Dr. Eric Davis, a nuclear physicist and UFO whistleblower who testified under oath during a public hearing, about the kinds of alien beings piloting the spacecraft he claimed the government has possession of – Davis said they were “Grays. Nordics. Reptilians. Insectoids.”; in the recent podcast, Burlison revealed for the first time that he had already been briefed about these four alien races in closed-door meetings when he asked the question of Davis; Burlison discussed secret crash recovery programs, reverse engineering, the possibility that UFO sightings are related to angels, and concerns about the political complexity and national security interests involved in deciding what information to release to or withhold from the public. The truth is not out there, it’s in 'there' and ‘there’ is Congress.

A video of what Vicky and Skariwate Darrell Tucker think is Champ, the creature many believe inhabits Lake Champlain on the border of New York and Vermont, was submitted to leading Champ researcher Katy Elizabeth with the explanation that the sighting occurred at the Champ RV Park & Campground Beach on the evening of July 14, 2025; the cellphone video and images show what look like black humps and a possible head surfacing; Katy Elizabeth will use the video as she continues to search for Champ with the high tech equipment on her research vessel, Kelpie II. Katy Elizabeth already has plenty of data on Champ – what Champ needs now is the Loch Ness monster’s public relations team.

This is the year of the Annabelle doll as the allegedly haunted Raggedy Ann doll, once owned by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren and inspiration for the movie series “The Conjuring”, was on tour this summer when one of the people responsible for her, paranormal investigator Dan Rivera, died unexpectedly; now, the Connecticut museum which was started by the Warrens and housed Annabelle and their collection of paranormal artifacts was purchased by Comedian Matt Rife and YouTuber Elton Castee; in an interview, Rife said that “As a fan of the paranormal, film, and the history of the property and the land it sits on, it’d be an honor to help preserve its beauty”; that “beauty” includes the notorious Annabelle doll. Did they first check to see if Annabelle likes observational humor, satire or gross jokes?

From the 'What Would Stephen Hawking Say?’ file comes speculation about what the late genius might think about 3I/ATLAS, the interstellar space object speeding though our solar system past the major planets on its way to a pass of Earth and the Sun late in 2025 – an object which some scientists, Harvard’s Avi Loeb in particular, propose might be an alien spacecraft that could be hostile to Earth; they have proposed moving a spacecraft currently orbiting Jupiter closer to the object to inspect it; Hawking warned about the danger of showing our existence to intelligent aliens superior to us, calling it an "intelligence trap" that could lead to a hostile encounter and the end of humanity. Ironically, Loeb seems to agree with Hawking, saying that what some astronomers see as tail particles of 3I/ATLAS as a comet, he suggests they could be mini-probes being dropped by a mothership with the intent of landing on Earth, concluding with the warning: "It may arrive to either save us or annihilate us. It’s time to ask, “What would 'The Big Bang' genius Dr. Sheldon Cooper do?”

The hunt for hidden Nazi gold and the treasures of the Amber Room of the Russian palace in St. Petersburg has been stalled for a decade in Kashubia, Poland, where researcher Jan Delingowski followed clues from a former prison inmate who heard from Erich Koch, a war criminal who served as the last Reichsstatthalter of East Prussia, that the treasures were transported westward by truck convoys; he also studied war documents which showed the existence of barracks for Latvian soldiers and a network of storage bunkers at what was once the SS-Truppen Übungsplatz Westpreussen Conitz training ground in Kashubia; Delingowski has been stymied by the myriad of permissions needed to scan the grounds with radar and began careful excavations; he has finally obtained all required permissions and digging has begun, but skeptics warn that other sites have looked promising and turned up no Nazi gold or Amber Room treasures. They need to hurry before any new wars break out and start a new round of buried treasures.

Every cryptid wants the fame of the Loch Ness Monster and one of the keys to recognition is a festival, so the lowly Squonk of Pennsylvania may be moving up the chart after the third annual Squonkapalooza was held in Johnstown, Pennsylvania; the Squonk is one of those Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods described by lumberjanks as an ugly, pig-like creature with loose, warty skin, and the ability to disappear in a pool of tears when in danger; Squonkapalooza was created to boost the popularity of this otherwise pitiful cryptid and it appears to be working as attendees came from around the country. A festival may help, but the Squonk still sounds more like a depressed Bigfoot with mange.

The search for the Ark of the Covenant is second only to the quest for the Holy Grail and we may be one step closer to ending it as archeologists led by Dr. Scott Stripling, Director of Excavations at Shiloh, were digging at the ancient site of Tel Shiloh in Israel when they claimed to have found a monumental Iron Age structure that matches the biblical dimensions of the Ark; Stripling said, “It is oriented east-west and has an internal ratio of 2 to 1 — just as described in the book of Exodus”; the team also found 100,000 animal bones from sheep, goats, and oxen — the animals listed in Levitical sacrificial laws and matching the right side requirement from Leviticus 7 whish states that “the right side is reserved for priestly offerings”; other researchers say this latest archaeological evidence combined with historical evidence and biblical references makes it hard to dismiss. No one’s face melted, so the Ark doesn’t appear to be there.

The Holy Grail of alchemy is the ability to turn lesser metals into gold, and that grail may have been discovered by Marathon Fusion, an energy startup which released a paper showing how it can turn an isotope of mercury (Hg) into gold (Au) using the radioactivity from neutron particles in a nuclear fusion reactor to transform the isotope mercury-198 into the radioactive isotope mercury-197, which eventually decays into gold-197, the only stable isotope of gold; the process has only been computer-simulated because it needs a commercial fusion reactor which does not yet exist; Marathon Fusion is pushing for faster nuclear fusion development because this process will also generate an abundance of clean energy while reducing dirty and dangerous gold mines. Don’t go hoarding your old mercury thermometers just yet.

‘The Host’ is a 2006 movie about a monster that emerges from the Han River in Seoul, South Korea, and attacks humans, so a fisherman casting into the Han River recently was pretty brave to stick around long enough to record a video of what looks like “A Real Monster Emerges at the Han River in Seoul” that he estimated to be 6 to 10 meters (20 to 33 feet) in length and thicker than a human body; he couldn’t have been too afraid because he watched the alleged monster for 20 minutes as it moved around but never left the area; after a while, he decided that “It looked like there were two of them” and “I’ve been fishing for decades, but I’ve never seen anything like this before”; comments on the video suggest it could be otters, a python or an alligator. The movie monster was created by American military personnel dumping chemicals into the Han River, so let’s hope it's otters.

The Shroud of Turin is believed by many, including some Catholic leaders, to be the burial cloth of Jesus because of the human body image it contains, but Brazilian 3D digital designer Cicero Moraes, who specializes in historical facial reconstructions, used modeling software to compare how cloth drapes over a human body versus how it drapes over a low-relief sculpture of one and determined that "The image on the Shroud of Turin is more consistent with a low-relief matrix" which could have been made of “wood, stone or metal and pigmented (or even heated) only in the areas of contact, producing the observed pattern"; in response, the International Center of Sindonology, a Turin-based organization that leads studies of the Shroud of Turin and promotes it as a venerated object of Christian devotion, countered that this was actually considered and disputed more than a century ago; Moraes replied that there is a "remote possibility that it is an imprint of a three-dimensional human body" but "it is plausible to consider that artists or sculptors with sufficient knowledge could have created such a piece, either through painting or low relief". The relief brings no relief.

Pareidolia was once limited to toast, the moon and wall stains, but Google Maps has expanded the practice of finding human faces in inanimate objects to a larger area, as evidenced by the ‘excitement’ being generated over an image from a mountain top on a remote island at the southern end of Chile which looks to some squinters as an alien face hiding the location of an alien base; experts in facial recognition looking at the Google Maps coordinates 55°32'35"S, 69°15'56"W say it’s a clear case of pareidolia, but the issue will not be resolved for believers until someone on the ground inspects it and lives to return with the real story. Stick with looking for faces in toast – at least you get a breakfast out of it.

Those who hate New York City may think it’s funny, but residents are concerned about a study published in the journal Geology about a massive “blob” of rock underneath the Appalachian mountains UK researchers say is slowly creeping and oozing towards the Big Apple; the blob is officially called the Northern Appalachian Anomaly (NAA) and is located 125 feet under New England, where it covers 220 miles; Tom Gernon, Professor of Earth Science at the University of Southampton, calls it a “thermal upwelling” and says that his new research suggests “it’s part of a much larger, slow-moving process deep underground that could potentially help explain why mountain ranges like the Appalachians are still standing. Heat at the base of a continent can weaken and remove part of its dense root, making the continent lighter and more buoyant, like a hot air balloon rising after dropping its ballast”. Billy Joel would probably musically call this “A New York State of Slime”.

While some may say it’s a deflection away from the troubles of the US President, UFO believers are hoping Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was telling the truth when she revealed on a podcast that she believed in the possibility of extraterrestrial life, was not “prepared to talk about” it but assured that she would “be transparent with the public when the time comes”; Gabbard alluded to a connection between UFOs and the mysterious drones in New Jersey, saying: “It wasn’t just New Jersey, it was happening in different parts of the country … there’s a lot of classified information about that”; she thinks there is more to UFOs than the official line about personal, commercial, and government aircraft; Vice President J.D. Vance also mentioned in a recent podcast that he is “obsessed “ with UFOs and plans to use the August recess to “try to dive to the bottom of the whole UFO thing from last year”. We don’t care about the ‘why’ of disclosure because it’s obvious there are cover-ups of cover-ups – just do it already!

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence on the Moon is about to bump heads with the quest to electrify the Moon with the announcement by Transportation Secretary and interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy of a “fast-track” plan to build a nuclear reactor on the Moon; the plan is to launch a 100 kilowatt reactor by 2030 that will generate “the same amount of energy a 2,000-square-foot home uses every three and a half days”; proponents of keeping the Moon clean continue to push for solar power instead but nuclear design contracts are already being solicited, with the goal of quickly implementing “a future lunar economy, high power energy generation on Mars, and to strengthen our national security in space”. This lunar nuclear power project sounds more like a plan to boldly glow where no man has glowed before.

West Virginians love their monsters so much, the West Virginia Department of Tourism developed a Paranormal Trail that visitors can follow to see museums dedicated to Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster, plus the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum and a formerly one-armed giant statue of Bigfoot – the wooden statue in Elk River Trail Park was carved by art students in 2024 and stood majestically until early in 2025 when vandals cut off one of the cryptid’s arms; fortunately, CTE (Career and Technical Education) Summer Camp students returned and reconstructed the arm and even improved it by adding a walking stick with a carved bear’s head on top; the arm was reattached and Bigfoot now has a club to scare away future vandals.

Turkey’s Lake Van is known for its legendary serpentine ‘vishap’ or water dragon of Armenia mythology that devours humans, but a different kind of ‘monster’ may soon emerge from its waters to devour one of the most famous biblical stories when researcher Matt LaCroix leads a dive team to the lake’s bottom to inspect and map ruins he and others claim are the remains of an ancient advanced civilization that was completely submerged 12,000 to 14,500 years ago when nearby Mount Nemrut erupted and  blocked the Mirat River, causing massive flooding that wiped out this ancient civilization and inspired the biblical tale of Noah’s ark; the ruins are 85 feet below the surface near the town of Gevaş and just 150 miles from Mount Ararat where many believe Noah’s ark ended up and may still be buried today; the ruins were first discovered in 1997 by Turkish underwater filmmaker Tossen Salin and previous inspections tie them to the Uratu kingdom which flourished there 3,000 years ago; LaCroix says soil samples from Mount Nemrut show an eruption 12,000 years ago that caused Lake Van's waters to rise over 100 feet; LaCroix hopes his September expedition will recover artifacts to support this theory. The flood and the evolutionists couldn’t kill Noah, but this might do the trick.