Speaker 1: By Charles Lear read by AI written before audio blogs.
Speaker 1: The history of UFO sightings and alien encounters as portrayed
Speaker 1: in the popular media is mostly separated into distinct periods,
Speaker 1: modern from the late eighteen nineties airship flap followed by
Speaker 1: World War II FOO fighters, into post one nine hundred
Speaker 1: forty seven after the Kenneth Arnold Report, and ancient interaction
Speaker 1: pieced together using evidence from the time of cave dwelling
Speaker 1: humans up to the time of the builders of cities
Speaker 1: and megalithic structures. UFOs depicted in Byzantine paintings misinterpreting conventional symbols.
Speaker 1: The fifteen sixty one report from Nuremberg, Germany and the
Speaker 1: fifteen sixty six report from Basel, Switzerland are often thrown
Speaker 1: in during reviews of UFO history. But what about the
Speaker 1: time in between then in the eighteen nineties, It turns
Speaker 1: out that there are quite a few reports from the
Speaker 1: period in question, and they read like modern reports, although
Speaker 1: they were written before the modern context of alien visitation.
Speaker 1: Nuremberg fifteen sixty one, a sixteen thirty nine journal entry
Speaker 1: by Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop, considered to be America's first
Speaker 1: UFO report, was mentioned in last week's blog, which describes
Speaker 1: a sighting by one James Everell and two companions while
Speaker 1: in a boat on the Muddy River. They claim to
Speaker 1: have seen a luminous mass that changed size and darted
Speaker 1: back and forth over the water for three hours before
Speaker 1: flying away. After the spectacle was over, they realized they
Speaker 1: were a mile upstream, with no idea how they'd got there.
Speaker 1: There are two more strange events in Winthrop's Journal, Volume two.
Speaker 1: In the entry dated January eighteenth, sixteen forty four, Winthrop
Speaker 1: described three men in a boat coming into Boston seeing
Speaker 1: two lights in form like a man, rise up out
Speaker 1: of the water, float towards the town, and then vanish.
Speaker 1: The sighting lasted for a quarter of an hour. He
Speaker 1: added that the light was seen by many a week later,
Speaker 1: a rising about Castle Island. He later added details to
Speaker 1: the last part, describing a light like the moon rise
Speaker 1: up in the northeast of Boston and then meet the former,
Speaker 1: which presumably refers to the two lights seen on the eighteenth.
Speaker 1: The lights reportedly came together and separated several times while
Speaker 1: periodically shooting out flames and sparkles. Then a voice was
Speaker 1: heard calling out in a most dreadful manner. Boy, Boy,
Speaker 1: come away, Come away. The voice was described as being
Speaker 1: over the water and shifting location over a great distance.
Speaker 1: More citizens reported hearing the same voice two weeks later
Speaker 1: on the other side of town, and Winthrop speculated that
Speaker 1: a man who confessed himself to have skill in necromancy
Speaker 1: may have been the cause that Winthrop, a devout Puritan,
Speaker 1: didn't go any further than that is remarkable. A siding
Speaker 1: on August fifteenth, sixteen sixty three in robozierro Russia, comes
Speaker 1: from a report from Saint Surreal Monastery by one Ivashko Ryevskoy.
Speaker 1: It relates the account of a farmer, Lyevko Firdorov, of
Speaker 1: a large ball of fire that flew south over a
Speaker 1: lake and then disappeared. It reappeared an hour later, this
Speaker 1: time flying from south to west, and then a third time.
Speaker 1: It was increased in size and hovered over the lake
Speaker 1: for an hour and a half, emitting intense heat and
Speaker 1: illuminating the water to a depth of thirty feet before dissipating.
Speaker 1: Rievskoy sent a letter to priests in the area, and
Speaker 1: they confirmed that they'd had such a sign in that day.
Speaker 1: In a letter to the President of the Royal Society,
Speaker 1: astronomer Thomas Short describes seeing strange red streamers emanating from
Speaker 1: blood red clouds in the west at five pm on
Speaker 1: December fifth, seventeen thirty seven, over Sheffield, England. He wrote
Speaker 1: that the streamers were unlike the Aurora borealis, as they
Speaker 1: were waving as opposed to dancing with sudden occursions. The
Speaker 1: same phenomenon then appeared in the north, and the streamers
Speaker 1: from both the west and the North went towards and
Speaker 1: passed each other. The streamers in the west stopped, while
Speaker 1: the north weakened and activity shifted east between seven and
Speaker 1: eight pm. Finally things moved to the southeast, where the
Speaker 1: remainder of the activity occurred until ten thirty pm. In
Speaker 1: a listing of the chief remarkables of this meteor, Short
Speaker 1: wrote that the streamers came from deep red clouds which
Speaker 1: hit a luminous body so bright he could have read
Speaker 1: by it. A letter from a clergyman at the University
Speaker 1: of Zamora in Spain printed in the July tenth, seventeen
Speaker 1: eighty eight London Times, source cited by Jacques Valet in
Speaker 1: Wonders of the Sky case three hundred and sixty three
Speaker 1: recounts a June twelfth, seventeen eighty eight sighting there. According
Speaker 1: to the letter, two globes of fire moved horizontally, came
Speaker 1: together violently, and then separated, with both having changed course.
Speaker 1: One moved southeast and blew up with a loud report,
Speaker 1: while the other, traveling northwest, continued until it was out
Speaker 1: of sight. A description of a sighting in eighteen o
Speaker 1: eight by a school teacher in Maine was found in
Speaker 1: a diary by a woman in the course of Haari's
Speaker 1: search into women's history. As reported in the March twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight edition of the Potsdam, New York paper
Speaker 1: Courier Freeman historian doctor Judith Becker Ranlett was in the
Speaker 1: process of transcribing the six hundred page diary of her
Speaker 1: husband's great great grandmother, Cynthia Everett, who was a schoolteacher
Speaker 1: in Maine, when she came across an entry that read
Speaker 1: like a ufort. On July twenty second, eighteen o eight,
Speaker 1: Everett wrote, about ten o'clock, I saw a very strange appearance.
Speaker 1: It was a light which proceeded from the east. At
Speaker 1: the first sight I thought it was a metier meteor,
Speaker 1: but from its motion I soon perceived it was not.
Speaker 1: It seemed to dart at first as quickly as light,
Speaker 1: and appeared to be in the atmosphere, but lowered toward
Speaker 1: the ground and kept on at an equal distance, sometimes
Speaker 1: ascending and sometimes descending. In the July second, eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: three edition of Scientific American an article titled Singular phenomenon begins.
Speaker 1: We have received a letter from Professor A. C. Carnes
Speaker 1: of Burrett College, Tenney, with the following account of a
Speaker 1: singular phenomenon that was seen by a number of the
Speaker 1: students on June first, at four and a half a
Speaker 1: m just as the sun was rising. The letter tells
Speaker 1: of two lights that were seen to dramatically change shape.
Speaker 1: One got smaller and vanished, while the other appeared globular
Speaker 1: and then elongated parallel with the horizon. Then the vanished
Speaker 1: light reappeared and grew larger, while the other light diminished
Speaker 1: and vanished. This continued for half an hour, with the
Speaker 1: lights staying in their locations in the midst of considerable wind.
Speaker 1: An article in the July third, eighteen ninety three Tacoma
Speaker 1: Daily Ledger tells of a particularly strange and violent experience
Speaker 1: had by five locals and two visitors from the East Coast.
Speaker 1: The story is told by one of the Eastern gentlemen,
Speaker 1: who declined to give his name, though the locals are
Speaker 1: named in the article. According to the man's story, they
Speaker 1: set sail at four thirty pm on July first, on
Speaker 1: a fishing and hunting expedition aboard the sloop Marion into
Speaker 1: the Sound. They dropped anchor and had some success with
Speaker 1: the fishing, but the wind picked up and they weighed
Speaker 1: anchor at eight o'clock and headed for Henderson Island, which
Speaker 1: they reached at nine point thirty. They set up camp
Speaker 1: on the island, next to the camp of a party
Speaker 1: of surveyors who had already retired. The group turned in
Speaker 1: at around eleven o'clock, but sometime after midnight, they and
Speaker 1: their neighbors were awaked by a horrible noise. The air
Speaker 1: was filled with a strong current of electricity that caused
Speaker 1: every nerve in the body to sting with pain. There
Speaker 1: was a blindingly bright light that flashed, and they saw
Speaker 1: it was coming from the head of a monster fish
Speaker 1: one hundred fifty feet long and thirty feet in diameter,
Speaker 1: with copper bands all along its body, with a propeller
Speaker 1: for a caudal fin. A man from the surveyor's group
Speaker 1: approached and was blasted unconscious by a stream of water
Speaker 1: from the fish, as was one from the Marian party,
Speaker 1: who attempted to rescue him. As the others ran for
Speaker 1: the safety of the woods, they turned and saw the
Speaker 1: monster disappear beneath the water. They returned to revive the
Speaker 1: fallen men, and later all noted that their watches had stopped.
Speaker 1: There are many other cases. Valley's book is a good source,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them could ease be misidentified natural
Speaker 1: atmospheric or astronomical phenomena, or invented. Looking through the reports
Speaker 1: is very much like reading through Project Blue Book or
Speaker 1: the case files of Muffon. The absence of the idea
Speaker 1: of alien visitation removes that sort of speculation, and the
Speaker 1: reports tend to stick to presenting the observations in a
Speaker 1: just the facts manner. The mystery has deep roots, and
Speaker 1: the mystery endures