Bizarre News Weekly: Week of November 1 to November 7, 2026
Written by Shayn Jones.
This week kept pointing up. A disc in NASA footage near the space station, old Apollo files about lights and objects near the Moon, and a fresh round of questions about what the Pentagon is actually telling us. Down here it was quieter in a different way, with studies about consciousness, memory, and hypnosis, and a run of strange local stories that ranged from funny to grim. I kept coming back to the same thought, that the strange stuff is not going away, it is just getting better documented.
Top Strange Story of the Week: Object passes close to the ISS, and the Apollo files
UFO researcher Scott Waring says a disc shaped object about 23 feet across passed within 82 feet of the International Space Station in NASA footage from October 15, as the uncrewed SpaceX Dragon cargo ship approached to dock. Waring says nobody at NASA or on the mission acknowledged the object, and he claims a second object moved erratically around the Dragon. NASA made no mention of a UFO or a near collision, and the Dragon docked autonomously, delivering more than 6,300 pounds of science and supplies.
Waring himself admits he cannot prove the objects are alien spacecraft. That matters, and it does not close the question either. The measurements are his estimates, not verified facts, and this is a researcher claim about footage, not a NASA confirmation. Still, a disc that close to the station, on camera, with no word from NASA, is the kind of thing that sticks with you.
The older thread makes it harder to shrug off. Newly reported Apollo mission files describe astronauts seeing flashes of light, drifting particles, and distant objects on trips to and from the Moon, including a brief flash near Grimaldi crater reported on Apollo 17. Officials are reported as saying these were observations at the time, not conclusions about what the objects were.
Put the two together and you get a pattern across decades, trained observers in space seeing things they could not place, and the record keeping the sighting while leaving the identity open. That is declassified file material as reported, not proof of alien craft, and the Apollo sightings stay in that same place, documented, not settled.
Creatures, UAP/UFO, and Paranormal
Pill-shaped UFO over Ohio
Two charter pilots flying a private jet with no passengers near Tiffin, Ohio, on August 16, 2026, reported a silver, pill-shaped object passing their jet at about 43,000 feet, slightly above them. The captain described polished metal with no creases or seams, roughly three quarters the length of the 40-foot jet, upright and identical top to bottom.
Radar and the onboard traffic system showed nothing, Cleveland Center had no aircraft on radar, and NUFORC found no matches in planned launch records. A balloon is a possible theory, but the pilots said storm icing and turbulence would likely have destroyed one. The case remains unexplained, and that is a pilot eyewitness report, with no corroborating radar or imagery to back it up or rule it out.
Black triangle, the follow-up
Former AARO chief Sean Kirkpatrick told Fox News Digital that the FBI black-triangle account lacks evidence, saying witness credentials alone do not validate what was seen, and that unresolved means insufficient data, not aliens. He also said Pentagon leadership ordered resolution language stripped from cases before publication so the public could make up its own mind.
The War Department separately confirmed the images released with the FBI report were illustrations, not photographs of the object. His statements are as reported, and the underlying sighting remains a claim, not a confirmed anomaly. I do not buy that credentials settle it either way, but stripping the resolution language out before the public sees a case is worth noting on its own.
Sources:
Source: https://athlitical.com/pentagons-ufo-hunter-trashes-its-own-file-release-strategy/
Fort Polk Bigfoot, 1979
A social media post recounts a boy's 1979 sighting near Fort Polk, Louisiana. Playing outside near a creek, he saw a large creature approaching on two feet, covered in thick dark hair, making no loud noises. He retreated to his house unharmed and stands by what he saw.
This is a historical witness account via social media, not confirmation of a creature, and the quiet part is what stays with me, no roar, no charge, just a big hairy figure walking toward a kid and then letting him go.
Source: http://classicrock1051.com/ixp/29/p/louisiana-kid-sees-bigfoot/?trackback=fbshare_mobile
Winged humanoid in Laveen, Arizona
Credit: Phantoms and Monsters. A family having dinner reported a large dark-brown figure flying past their sliding glass door, with the wife estimating a 6- to 7-foot body and a wingspan at least twice that. Flapping sounds were heard for almost a month afterward.
This is a witness account as archived by Phantoms and Monsters, from May 21, 2014, posted November 1. A bird or mistaken impression remains possible, and no photo or physical evidence is in the account. Read the full story at Phantoms and Monsters, it is their account, not mine.
Loch Ness: the hunter who says Nessie does not exist
Naturalist Adrian Shine, who has studied Loch Ness for 50 years, now says Nessie does not exist, calling the monster a legend built from natural phenomena, in his new book A Naturalist's View of the Loch Ness Enigma. That is his stated conclusion, reported by SWNS, not proof about the loch itself, and it reverses the usual hunter narrative.
Fifty years on the loch and he walks away saying no, that is a turn worth sitting with. It does not settle what people have seen there, it settles what one man who looked the longest now believes.
White House ghost story
Jenna Bush Hager said on Thursday's episode of TODAY that she hired a ghost whisperer to clear spirits from her Connecticut home, and that she and her twin sister Barbara experienced phenomena in the White House during their father George W. Bush's presidency: 1920s music coming out of a fireplace one night, opera two nights later, both heard by both sisters.
This is a first-person account, and the detail that lands is the shared hearing, both sisters, both nights, two different kinds of music from a fireplace.
Source: https://ew.com/jenna-bush-hager-shocks-scarlett-johansson-with-white-house-ghost-story-12238775
Bigfoot trail cam, Missouri Ozarks
A Missouri homesteader says a trail camera deep in the Ozarks woods captured a furry arm reaching for the camera, which was then removed from the tree with nothing, including the memory card, stolen. This is the homesteader's claim as reported, and whether it is Bigfoot is unconfirmed.
A furry arm and a camera pulled down, with nothing taken, is a strange little scene, and it leaves the question open rather than answering it.
Source: https://101theeagle.com/missouri-homesteader-trail-cam-bigfoot/
White predator near the border, Juárez Valley
Jaime Maussan claims a roughly six-foot white predator has been killing and carrying off chickens, roosters, and rabbits. Coming from another dimension is a possible theory he puts forward. Juárez Civil Protection and Texas police say they have no reports of such attacks or animal deaths, and Maussan's past claims include hoaxes.
This is Maussan's claim as reported, with the authorities reporting no such attacks. I am keeping the door open on the idea itself, and keeping the sourcing honest about who said what.
Source: http://dieter24.com/truth-behind-unknown-predator-spotted-near-us-border-as-ufo-expert-says-fs/
Houdini, 100 years on, still does not answer
Daily Star paranormal columnist Brocarde went to the Magic Castle Club and Hotel to try to contact Harry Houdini's ghost. Houdini made a pact with his wife Bess that whoever died first would try to reach the living, but no message arrived. The piece also notes the 2011 fire some attribute to Houdini's ghost, and a piano supposedly played by resident ghost Irma.
This is a reported visit and history, with no evidence of contact. A hundred years, a pact, and silence, that is its own kind of answer, or its own kind of question.
Discoveries and Science
Consciousness during cardiac arrest
In the first large-scale, randomized, double-blind, multicenter trial of its kind, across 13 hospitals in the UK and Spain, researchers tested whether the human mind can access information during clinical death, but only when exposed to auditory stimuli governed by quantum entanglement. The entangled stimulation circuit was synchronized with a 127-qubit IBM Brisbane quantum supercomputer and delivered during in-hospital cardiopulmonary arrest, beginning 120 seconds after arrest onset.
After reanimation, 142 survivors completed a forced-choice recall test and near-death experience scales. Entanglement increased accurate recall while non-entangled controls stayed at chance performance, and false memories and hallucinations were controlled for. Escolà-Gascón and colleagues, The Innovation, published March 25, 2026.
The study is peer reviewed, not independently replicated. The possibility that consciousness persists beyond clinical death stays open, and the replication question is a discussion beat, not a verdict. If the mind can still take something in when the body has stopped, that changes how I think about what death is, and I am not ready to close that door.
Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xinn.2026.101355
Pathé REWIND: forget the film, watch it like new
Dutch cinema chain Pathé will hypnotise 30 volunteers on Monday, November 9 at its Buitenhof cinema in The Hague, in an experiment called Pathé REWIND, trying to make them temporarily forget a favourite film, The Matrix, Se7en, La La Land, or Interstellar, so they can experience it as if for the first time. Hypnotherapist Victor Kraemer leads the sessions.
Organisers call it exploratory and say there is no guarantee it works, and prior studies show hypnosis can only transiently impair recall in highly suggestible people. This is an announced experiment, not a result, and the real test comes after November 9.
Source: https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/forget-favourite-film-9dgrwgnrq
Cannabis in a 2,800-year-old Scythian burial
A 2,800-year-old Scythian burial mound in Tyva, Siberia, has yielded the oldest-known direct evidence of cannabis used for its mind-altering effects: more than 1,400 cannabis seeds among the grave goods, and THC chemical signatures in braids of hair from bodies in the central chamber. The study, led by archaeologist Gino Caspari, is published in Science, and the team also recovered the oldest cannabis DNA known.
These are reported study findings, and they push the ritual use of cannabis back further than the record had it before.
Source: https://duke.fm/2026/11/05/siberian-burial-site-reveals-ancient-use-of-cannabis-as-an-intoxicant/
CERN sees first evidence of an extremely rare decay
Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider report first evidence, at 3.2 sigma, for the extremely rare Bd to mu mu decay, expected about once in every 10 billion beauty particles. That is evidence, not a formal discovery, which requires 5 sigma.
This is reported as first evidence, not a confirmed discovery, and the gap between evidence and discovery is the whole story here.
Three lines of math against time travel
Physicist Hongsheng Zhang of the University of Jinan used the null eikonal equation in a three-line proof arguing that closed time loops cannot exist in a broad class of spacetimes. The proof does not rule out every form of time travel, naming unusual spacetime twisting and unconventional global topology as possible ways around it, and it has not been peer reviewed.
This is a preprint claim, not confirmed physics, and the loopholes it leaves open are as interesting as the proof itself.
A 10-ton stone giant over a 6,500-year-old cemetery
Archaeologists from Inrap uncovered a 6,500-year-old Neolithic cemetery near Paris, at Champigny-sur-Marne, with 11 graves, 30 giant stones, and a human-shaped menhir statue estimated at 9.7 tonnes, plus a mound with no body beneath it. One burial sat upright in a narrow shaft, lower legs and feet encased in calcite.
Why the statue fell, what the empty mound was for, and why the seated burial exists remain open questions. These are reported excavation findings, and the purpose is unanswered.
The Maya poisoned their own water with red paint
Sediment cores from Cobá Lake and Cenote Xcach show extreme mercury contamination from cinnabar, the mercury-sulfide pigment in Maya red paint, with poisoning episodes from about A.D. 40 to 820. The most polluted sediments reached 2.3 parts per million of mercury, far above the US EPA drinking-water limit of 2 parts per billion, with shellfish fossils vanishing and algal blooms in the cores.
Cinnabar does not occur naturally in the Yucatán, so it was likely imported from what is now Honduras. This is a peer-reviewed study, published November 4 in Science Advances, and the degree to which the contamination affected the wider Maya civilization is uncertain.
Gas bursts on Mars point to a volcano
Hydrogen chloride bursts detected by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter have been traced to fissures on the northern flanks of Alba Mons. A volcanic origin is a possible theory here, with the signs pointing that way, possibly vapour from molten rock below. The study itself is reported as not definitive.
This is a study interpretation, not proof of active volcanism or life, and Mars keeps offering hints without giving up the answer.
Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mars-volcano-gas-hydrogen-chloride
What shock therapy took, and what it gave back
In The Atlantic, Ted Scheinman writes a first-person account of electroconvulsive therapy for severe depression: the treatment lifted his depression but left extensive gaps in his memory, forcing him to ask who he might become without the stories of who he had been. The piece is adapted from his book Jolt: My Electric Journey Out of Darkness.
This is a first-person account of memory loss after ECT, as reported, and it sits close to this week's other memory stories, what stays, what goes, and what makes a person themselves.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/11/shock-therapy-memory-loss/689267/
A little red dot that may hold a primordial black hole
Johns Hopkins researchers using James Webb data tested whether a little red dot called QSO1, which existed just 700 million years after the Big Bang and is made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, could contain a primordial black hole, a theoretical object predating stars. Their findings, in Physical Review Letters, say a smaller primordial black hole growing by consuming gas is the most likely scenario, but proof would need a black hole too light or too old to be astrophysical.
This is a tested hypothesis, not proof, and a black hole older than the stars is exactly the kind of idea that keeps me looking up.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2026-11-webb-space-telescope-red-dots.html
Bizarre Local Spotlights
- Ocean Beach, San Diego: Two men were arrested after police searched a home allegedly connected to psilocybin mushroom gummies handed out to trick-or-treating children on Halloween. Officers found a bag of gummies identical to those allegedly distributed, plus more than 2.5 pounds of cannabis, more than 25 grams of suspected crystal methamphetamine, and at least two firearms. At least 15 children, toddlers to 6-year-olds, picked up bags left outside the home. Shawn Michael Foster, 45, pleaded not guilty Friday to transporting controlled substances to a minor and two firearms charges. His daughter Devilyn Foster says neighbours have it out for him because they think the house is a witch house. These are charges and allegations, not convictions, and the witch house claim is the family's defence, not an established motive.
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- Market Harborough to South Africa: Three British women from Market Harborough, Liz Osborne, her niece Kimberlee Langley, and friend Mel Wright, have vanished after missing their flights home from South Africa, due between October 30 and November 1. Their families say they have not been heard from since, and they were reported missing on November 4. It is unclear whether they boarded their flight, which may have been delayed and diverted via France. This is reported as a missing-persons report.
- South Connellsville, Pennsylvania: A live Civil War-era artillery shell was found in the basement of a newly purchased home, prompting the Allegheny County Police Bomb Squad to respond to a home on the 1900 block of Fourth Street, where residents had found an item believed to be a mortar.
- Fort Pierce, Florida: Flooding at the Save the Chimps sanctuary left parts of the 150-acre property unreachable, so drones delivered fruit and blankets to stranded chimpanzees. Footage shows chimp Kaleb eating a banana dropped by drone. The sanctuary is home to 200 rescued chimps, and the Florida storm brought up to 20 inches of rain in 12 hours.
- Hanover County, Virginia: The raccoon that broke into a liquor store, got drunk, and became a local celebrity has now funded law enforcement. The Trashed Panda fundraiser raised more than $257,000, and Hanover County supervisors approved a body-camera policy for Animal Protection officers, about $65,000 over five years, roughly $39,000 of it from campaign donations.
Source: https://seriousbusinessnetwork.io/odd-news/hanover-drunk-raccoon-funds-body-cameras
- Washington, D.C.: President Trump publicly offered the White House press secretary job to UFC president Dana White in a Truth Social post, calling him a violent Fighter and Warrior and saying White should bring several UFC fighters with him as assistants, ending: Dana, please take the job! CNN reported White declined the idea. TMZ reported he will meet with Trump after this weekend's Zuffa boxing event in London. White posted a photo of himself at the White House briefing-room podium captioned on to the next chapter, and told media Saturday he is flying to Washington, D.C. right now and will meet Trump on Monday. The offer is confirmed, and White's interest is unsettled, with conflicting reports.
Source: https://awfulannouncing.com/ufc/cnn-tmz-conflicting-reports-dana-white-press-secretary-trump.html
- Niddrie, Edinburgh: Journalist Davy Shanks was filming a piece to camera about Bonfire Night disorder in Niddrie when a masked man on an electric bike zoomed into shot shouting Extreme violence and disorder, then, spotting police, said Oh shit, and sped off as an officer gave chase on foot. The clip, filmed November 5, went viral today. This is verified footage of a real interruption, with no arrest outcome reported in the piece.
- Marshfield, Massachusetts: Two large black cows escaped near Ferry Street and Main Street and spent more than a day on the loose, evading officers in dense woods. When a cattle dog failed too, Marshfield police called in a cowboy bringing a horse and a lasso from a couple of hours away. One cow briefly returned home Thursday night, then bolted again in the morning.
Source: https://seriousbusinessnetwork.io/odd-news/marshfield-cows-loose-cowboy-called
- Beaufort, South Carolina: Beaufort police chased two runaway piglets across streets and sidewalks, caught on video by a witness. Officers nicknamed the pair the Bacon Bits, detained them on charges of fleeing and squealing, and returned them to their owner. No ham was done.
Source: https://seriousbusinessnetwork.io/odd-news/beaufort-police-bacon-bits-piglets
- Homa Bay County, Kenya: Homa Bay County's government came under fire after its official X account shared AI-generated artistic impressions of a hospital complex under construction in which some of the depicted people appear to have three legs, while others have legs facing opposite directions. Kenyans on social media ridiculed the images and questioned the county's decision to publish them. This is confirmed reporting of the images and the backlash.
- Brisbane, Australia: Italian chef Davide Tamburella was fired from the La Costa restaurant for refusing to put pineapple on pizza, the third time he had refused in four years, saying any direction from management need not be followed when it is offensive to his culture. Australia's Fair Work Commission published the case on November 3 and ruled his unfair dismissal claim was filed too late. He has since found work at a Brisbane restaurant that, per the BBC, does not have pineapple on the menu.
- Denton, Texas: A Halloween crash on October 31 near the Parker House Haunted Attractions remains under investigation. Two vehicles turning into the attraction were rear-ended, pushing one vehicle into oncoming traffic where it was struck by a semi, leaving 10 people hospitalized including two in critical condition, according to FOX 4's update, with alcohol ruled out and the cause still under investigation. Proximity to a haunted house is not established as a cause.
Source: https://fox4news.com/news/police-continue-investigating-multi-car-pileup-near-denton-haunted-house
- Chudleigh Knighton Heath, Devon: Devon Wildlife Trust said a nest of narrow-headed ants, England's rarest ant species, up to 5,000 ants in a nest, was dug up with a spade and stolen from the reserve, the last place in England where the species survives. The theft was discovered in mid-October during routine checks and reported to Devon and Cornwall Police. No motive was given in the report.
- Newcastle, England: Trading Standards officers, firefighters, and police seized 60kg of high risk fireworks from a barber shop on Shields Road in Byker, boxes of explosives piled up only a few metres from people having their hair cut, beneath flats above. A shop two doors down with the same owner was licensed to store up to 75kg. The barber shop was not. That comes from a Newcastle City Council report.
Source: https://new.newcastle.gov.uk/news/2026/illegally-stored-fireworks-seized-city-barber-shop
- Thompson, Connecticut: Thompson Animal Control got word around 10:30 a.m. on November 4 of a loose emu near Thompson Hill Road and Pasay Road. Officers followed it into a backyard and peacefully apprehended it. The bird was unharmed and is being cared for. Its owner could not immediately be found.
Source: https://seriousbusinessnetwork.io/odd-news/thompson-connecticut-loose-emu-captured
- Hoke County, North Carolina: Richard Wood was working on a fence when he spotted what looked like a dropped post. It was a 6-to-7-foot boa constrictor, missing since early October. He and his daughter Peyton put it in a Rubbermaid container until animal control arrived. The snake's owner had moved out of town and left it with his father when it escaped.
Source: https://seriousbusinessnetwork.io/odd-news/hoke-county-boa-mistaken-for-fence-post
Conspiracy Watch
Disclosure after the midterms
The New York Post reported October 31 that House Democrats plan their own UFO caucus and select committee if they win the House, with Rep. Andre Carson pressing for AARO's delayed historical record report, said to be delayed almost two years. Liberation Times reports that attempts to persuade President Donald Trump to deliver a UAP disclosure speech before the midterms failed, and that Democrats have now won control of both the House and Senate, while Republicans keep their majorities until the outgoing Congress ends January 3, 2027, leaving further disclosure decisions with Trump for now.
The caucus plan is as reported, and the committee does not exist yet. The post-midterm position is analysis, not a new disclosure, and the delay on that AARO record is the part I keep coming back to.
Sources:
The Pentagon stripped the resolution language
Former AARO chief Sean Kirkpatrick said Pentagon leadership ordered resolution language stripped from cases before publication so the public could make up its own mind, and that unresolved means insufficient data, not aliens. These are Kirkpatrick's statements as reported.
If the language that says what a case actually resolved to is taken out before we see it, then what we are reading is not the full file, it is the file with the ending removed.
Source: https://athlitical.com/pentagons-ufo-hunter-trashes-its-own-file-release-strategy/
A nation's warning app, hacked
Ukraine's official Air Alert app was hacked, sending out false radiation, chemical, street-fighting, and Oreshnik warnings before officials corrected them, saying there was no radiation threat. The app was temporarily suspended and the false alerts cleared about an hour later.
The hack and the false alerts are confirmed by Ukraine's Air Force and the app's team, but that Russia did it is Ukrainian officials' blame, not a published forensic finding in the reporting.
Top Internet Conspiracies of the Week
- The Learjet was shot down near Mar-a-Lago: After the November 1 Learjet crash in Palm Beach County killed all nine aboard, posts on Facebook groups and X claimed the jet was shot down by the air defenses recently deployed near Mar-a-Lago, or remotely overtaken and used as a missile. The air defenses are real: NORAD deployed Avenger systems around Mar-a-Lago in late October at the Secret Service's request, and Governor DeSantis described the falling jet as looking like a missile going down. No federal agency has said a weapon was fired, and the NTSB found most of the jet's left elevator in three pieces, having separated before impact. The crew reported icing, turbulence, and precipitation before the crash, and the cause is still under investigation. The crash and the deaths are confirmed. The shootdown is unverified speculation, with no evidence offered for it.
Source: https://newsfromthevanroom.substack.com/p/the-learjet-and-the-missile-theory
- GATE: the gifted-kids conspiracy on TikTok: Viral TikTok videos and podcasts are pushing a theory about GATE, the Gifted and Talented Education programs many American schoolchildren went through in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The claim is that the programs were a front for MKUltra-style psychic testing and government intelligence recruitment, tied to the programs' Cold War origins after Sputnik. The videos are being promoted, not flagged. This is a viral theory as described, with no evidence presented that GATE was a recruitment program.
Source: https://heidirachelbrown.substack.com/p/the-business-of-being-chosen
What to Watch Next Week
- Pathé REWIND, Monday, November 9: the experiment itself, and whether any volunteer actually forgets their film.
Source: https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/forget-favourite-film-9dgrwgnrq
- Disclosure next steps: whether the new House moves on a UFO select committee, and whether AARO's delayed historical record report surfaces.
- The three British women missing after South Africa: whether they are found, and what happened to their flights.
Fun Facts
- The Jersey Devil: According to the legend, in 1735 a Pine Barrens woman known as Mother Leeds, pregnant with her thirteenth child, cursed the baby in frustration, and the child was born normal before sprouting wings, claws and a tail and flying up the chimney into the pines. The creature, part goat, part bat, part horse, has been reported in the New Jersey Pine Barrens ever since, with a famous wave of sightings in 1909. Historians trace the legend to a colonial-era feud around the Leeds family, which is the open question here: a family name turned into a monster, or something in the pines that gave the story its legs. This is a legend as told, not a confirmed creature.
- Betty and Barney Hill: On the night of September 19 to 20, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving home through New Hampshire's White Mountains when a bright light followed their car, and they arrived home two hours late with no memory of the missing time. Under hypnosis with Boston psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Simon more than two years later, both described being taken aboard a craft by short beings with large eyes and examined, and Betty drew a star map later linked to Zeta Reticuli. New Hampshire marked the site with a historical marker in 2011 as the first widely reported abduction in the United States. The open question is the hypnosis itself: recovered memory, or a memory the process helped build? This is their account as reported.
Source: https://newparadigminstitute.org/learn/library/case-study-betty-barney-hill-new-hampshire-1961/
- Mothman: On November 15, 1966, two young couples driving near the abandoned TNT munitions plant outside Point Pleasant, West Virginia, reported a figure six to seven feet tall with glowing red eyes and ten-foot wings that chased their car down the road. More than a hundred people reported the same creature over the next thirteen months, and the sightings stopped the week the Silver Bridge collapsed on December 15, 1967, killing 46 people, a link John Keel's 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies made famous. The open question is the one the town still asks: a misidentified bird, or a warning that arrived a year early? These are sightings as reported, with the link to the bridge collapse unproven.
- The O'Hare disc: On November 7, 2006, about a dozen United Airlines employees at Chicago O'Hare watched a dark gray metallic disc hover silently over Gate C17 for several minutes, then shoot straight up through the cloud deck, leaving a hole in the clouds. The FAA called it a weather phenomenon and declined to investigate, while the Chicago Tribune's January 2007 story on it became one of the most-read articles in the paper's online history. The open question is the tower tape: a supervisor's call about the disc survives on the FAA's own recordings, and no radar track of it has ever been released. These are witness accounts as reported.
This Week in Bizarre History
The Travis Walton abduction, November 5, 1975
On the evening of November 5, 1975, a seven-man logging crew was driving out of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona when they saw a glowing disc hovering near the road. Travis Walton, 22, got out of the truck to look closer, and the crew said a blue-green beam struck him and threw him backward. They fled, came back, and he was gone. The sheriff's office searched for five days, treating it at first as a possible homicide, and five of the six remaining crewmen passed polygraphs saying they had seen an object. Walton reappeared on November 10, found slumped in a phone booth in Heber, saying he had woken aboard a craft among small beings with large dark eyes. He sold the story to the National Enquirer, wrote The Walton Experience in 1978, and the case became the 1993 film Fire in the Sky. A hoax is a possible theory, and skeptics, including Philip Klass, have called it one, and in 2021 crew chief Mike Rogers publicly questioned his own account. Fifty years on, the crew's story and the doubt around it are still arguing. This is a witness account as reported, not settled.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Walton_incident
The Levelland UFO sightings, night of November 2 to 3, 1957
On the night of November 2 to 3, 1957, drivers around Levelland, Texas, kept calling the police with the same story: a glowing, egg-shaped object on or above the road, and their car engines and headlights dying as it came near. The first call came from farm workers Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz at about 10:50 p.m. They described a torpedo-shaped object some 200 feet long passing low over their truck. Sheriff Weir Clem went out himself and saw a red streak of light cross the highway. Project Blue Book sent one investigator for one day and blamed ball lightning from an electrical storm. Ball lightning is a possible theory, but the sheriff pointed out there had been no thunderstorm that night, and astronomers J. Allen Hynek and James McDonald later said the explanation did not fit. The same night, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2 with the dog Laika aboard, and America was already looking nervously at the sky. These are witness and police reports as recorded, with the official explanation disputed.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelland_UFO_case
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