Update: Adamstown UFOs (1869)

I've since found that, though it's not mentioned in the original article, on the day of the sighting there was also a solar eclipse. The solar eclipse did produce luminous phenomena (seen by astronomers in Kentucky, Iowa and Ohio) which were seen crossing the eclipsed disk. Being those lights were in the air, I'm not sure how they're relevant to ground-based phenomena, but they could be.

Unidentified flying objects in Adamstown?

From the Reading Eagle, August 14, 1869:

SINGULAR PHENOMENON. - A most singular phenomenon occurred at mid-day on Saturday last, near the village of Adamstown, Lancaster county. About two hundred yards north of the village is an open lot, and at 12 o'clock, while the villagers were taking to dinner, a luminous body was seen to settle near the centre of this lot. It is represented by four or five different parties, who witnessed it from several points, to have assumed a square shape and shooting up into a column about three or four feet in height and about two feet in thickness.

The sun was shining brightly at the time, and under its rays the object glistened like a column of burnished silver. The presence, after reaching its full effulgence gradually faded away, and in ten minutes time it had entirely disappeared. Those who saw it were unable to tell what it was. It seemed to inspire terror rather than admiration. After it had disappeared a number of persons visited the spot, but not a trace of anything unusual could be found.

Similar objects have been seen in the neighborhood on several occasions during the night time, but none before in the day time, or so bright as this. The land in the immediate vicinity is dry, there being no swamp about, otherwise the phenomenon might be accounted for. We do not know whether the Jack o' Lantern assumes such huge proportions or whether it appears in midday under a bright sun. Perhaps some of our friends versed in the sciences can solve the mystery.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a newspaper article using the word effulgence today. And even in 1869 they were bandying the swamp gas theory about!

Really Mysterious Pennsylvania by Stan Gordon

Pennsylvania-based UFO, cryptozoology and general Fortean researcher Stan Gordon is releasing a book, Really Mysterious Pennsylvania, today. Stan has done some extensive work on the possible UFO crash at Kecksburg and was one of the main chroniclers of the horribly strange Bigfoot encounters in the state back in the summer and autumn of 1973.

The incident at Liesenring and other Bigfoot/UFO reports

Over on Blogsquatcher, today's post is on the connected sightings of Bigfoot and UFOs. The Bigfoot/UFO connection has been present for years, and if all accounts are to be believed, before they were even called UFOs. Pennsylvania and Maryland are home to several reports of this connection.

The Sykesville, Maryland monster flap began in the early summer of 1973. Tony Dorsey was the first witness to the monster on the evening of May 29 at his home on Norris Avenue. According to The Bigfoot Casebook by Janet and Colin Bord, Dorsey's sighting came after he witnessed a UFO dropping an object of some type into a reservoir. Mark Opsasnick notes that Dorsey saw two luminous red eyes about the size of half-dollars, but did not see any sort of body ("Monsters of Maryland: Bigfoot", Strange Magazine 3).

The Chestnut Ridge area, which is Pennsylvania's Bigfoot hotspot, has seen the bulk of the UFO-related sightings. One of these was in 1975 in Jeanette. On May 19, a motorist saw a Bigfoot running quadrupedally, later rising onto two legs and running off into the forest. A UFO had been sighted in Jeanette on May 18. Other reports of synchronous Bigfoot and UFO sightings were reported from Midland and Uniontown. In the 1974 Uniontown sighting, several individual Bigfoot creatures were seen, as was a UFO. When one Bigfoot was shot at, it disappeared into thin air. In 1975, a report from Jumonville surfaced of a Bigfoot creature which, oddly, floated rather than walked and was later enveloped by a mist. When the mist receded, the Bigfoot was gone. Could the mist have been a sort of UFO? Many of these sightings were collected and investigated by Stan Gordon.

The most famous and bizarre humanoid report in Gordon's files, though, took place on October 25, 1973 in the small town of Liesenring near Connelsville. I'll post the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society's description of the incident:

A man and two boys saw a UFO land in a field. Upon investigating, they observed 2 tall, hairy bipedal creatures walking along a fence line. The creatures had matted, dirty brown hair, glowing green eyes, broad shoulders, and small necks. They walked stiff-legged giving them an overall robot-like appearance. The man shot at the creatures, which caused the spherical UFO that had landed in the field, to leave the area immediately. Although the witness felt he didn't miss, the shots had little effect on the strange creatures. They simply turned around and traversed their way back along the fence line. A luminescent ring on the ground remained where the UFO had once been. The witness left the area and returned later with a Pennsylvania State Trooper. Although the glowing ring near the ground was still visible, its intensity had diminished. Several hours later the luminescent ring completely dissipated.

Of nightmares, ghosts, UFOs, and pythons

Over on the CFZ blog, Neil Arnold has an interesting post on some sort of ophidian nightmare. The story's pretty neat, and not altogether unlike the experiences that take place in a hypnagogic or hypnapompic state with the crushing sensations. Sure, there are differences (for instance, Neil reports the ability to move) and I find it very interesting that while Neil's girlfriend didn't see the apparition, she experienced the same phenomenon.

In the past, I've done a lot of thinking on these hallucinatory states and how they may account for a lot of the stranger creature sightings out there. For those who aren't familiar with the terms, they refer to a type of hallucination that is sometimes experienced either when falling asleep (hypnagogic) or immediately upon waking (hypnapompic). These nearly always occur in conjunction with sleep paralysis, where a person's mind and body don't "sync up" in their states of wakefulness which results in an inability of the muscles to move although the surroundings can be perceived normally. This state of neither sleep nor wakefulness results in imagery from dreams being seen in normal surroundings. Through means not necessarily explained, the hallucinations can occur in conjunction with sensory phenomena, such as a feeling of being pricked by needles. Obviously, some researchers have connected this phenomena with many of the ghost sightings and UFO abduction stories out there.

I myself have had experiences at least twice with similar states. Once, in about 1995, I awoke quite late at night to find myself unable to move, with a black silhouette of a man, his arms held rigidly at his sides, standing in a corner of my bedroom. After a few moments, he vanished. On another occasion, as I lay waking up, I distinctly felt someone sit on my bed and place their arms on my shoulders.

This phenomena, I can vouch, is indeed very disturbing and frightening.

These states aren't fully understood. Personally, I would not at all doubt there could be variants of the phenomena where the individual is fully mobile. Likewise, given the physical sensations sometimes associated with the hallucinations, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that through some psychosomatic mechanism the marks associated could manifest on the body.

Perhaps these hallucinatory states don't even necessarily occur with sleep, perhaps it's possible to have them during waking hours, as well. To bring this to a more Fortean context, perhaps through some unknown mechanism the hallucinations can manifest physically and lead others to have experiences with an image ripped from someone else's dream.

Who knows?

A tale of UFOs, tripods, giant mantises, and thunderbirds

A strange report was submitted to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) page. It begins with a typical UFO report, but soon recounts a number of anomalous experiences which "followed" the witness, from War of the Worlds-style metallic tripods to giant insects and birds. Very interesting, provided the witness wasn't on some sort of hallucinogenic (a fact I am far from convinced of). Here's the complete report:

On 8-15-2009 at 2:45am I was buzzed for about 5 seconds by a 4 foot round luminescent orb on the roof of the building that I work in, in Philadelphia . It materialized about a foot away from me, blocking my way and making a buzzing sound, it then took off and dematerialized in approximately a 6 feet distance. At this time I decided to turn around and leave the roof.

I found a photo of the object here. http://www.ufoarea.com/aas_ufophiladelphia.html

About an hour later at 3:45am I was walking through a machine room on the roof, near the same location of the orb, when I encountered a 3 foot tall triped creature. It was standing by an electrical transformer looking up at the conduits. I observed it for about 30 seconds from a distance of four feet before it turned around and noticed me. I was looking down at it! It had a beautiful baby blue eye which was moving rapidly, just one, a long eye lid and rubbery looking legs with bulbous feet. I could see it was starting to panic because it started stomping his feet like a mad skunk or jumping up and down and making a high pitch squeaking sound almost like a cats toy. I was blocking it’s way to the open roll up door leading to the roof behind me. I put up an open hand in a gesture to let it know that I wouldn’t hurt it and backed up towards a different part of the machine room, away from it’s path to the door, but kept my eye on the creature. I watched it walking down the isle slowly when it started to move. It stopped where I had turned to get out of its way, it then turned and looked me over for a couple of seconds. I couldn’t help myself and started to laugh at it. I felt like a child who saw a monkey for the first time or something! I got the impression that it was thanking me but I think I also offended it because it started to leer at me and it's eye changed to a lighter color. I could be wrong, it may have took a bow! The triped then took off running in the direction of the door disappearing behind machinery in the area. I didn't feel threatened in any way by this creature but I was quite sure that cornering it was a bad idea! In hindsight of this encounter I'm left with a feeling a of wonder. The buildings electrical generator was permanently shut down about a year ago.

On this same morning I'm doing my paper work in the control booth, and a larger than man sized Praying Mantis comes up to the window and just stairs at me for about a minute. I did not feel comfortable with this encounter considering the nature of this kind of insect. I sat there and didn’t move a muscle until it left. I have also heard screeching sounds in the roof machine room, in the direction of the roll up door which made my hair stand up on the back of my neck around the same time for 2 nights.

The next night 8-16-09 I'm mopping the floor in the machine room, on the roof and I come back to the sink to fill my bucket and there was a little springs and clip neatly arranged next to each other on the floor in front of the sink. I think the triped came back. There was no one else in the machine room. Was it trying to tell me something, were they gifts or was it trying to help me? I don’t know. Its a mystery! The triped may have been back the next night too, but I didn’t see it! It had moved stuff around like a toddler would have. It was into everything exploring I guess.

On 8-18-09 at around 3:00am I was witness to a giant bird above Eakins Oval with a 40 foot wing span or better, it had rectangle shaped wings and no tail feathers, I didn't see any feet or head either. All I could make out was the huge wings with all of the feathers moving in the breeze and there were hundreds of them, there were no primary feathers that I could see. It looked like a enormous kite. I'm a bird watcher and never seen a bird like this before. I was really quite fed up with all the paranormal stuff happening to me at this time so I watched it for about 4 minuets and decided to just ignored it and go on about my business before it did something really weird and unexplainable. "Wow " A Sumerian god come to earth! An angle maybe? I can take see an alien off my bucket list! Nothing else has happened since.