Sanskrit stories depict references to flying craft called Vimanas that bear great similarities to accounts by people who report seeing UFOs.

Ancient alien researchers suggest that beings from other worlds have visited Indian during earlier times. A Vimanas is an ancient flying machine of Indian lore that can be compared to our atmospheric craft and that also have the ability to higher. This lore is common within the ancient Indian writings.

The stories refer to them as being able to fly in space, the atmosphere and to travel within the ocean. Indian references often refer to them being used in war as well. Descriptions in the Vedic Sanskrit and in later writings describe the Vimanas in differing shapes and in different sizes.In the Vedas, several Vedic Gods are transported by such flying chariots but being pulled by animals.

Sanskrit texts are rich with stories of their Gods fighting battles in the sky using Vimanas as deadly as those we have in modern times. A passage in the Ramayana reads that the Pushpaka chariot resembling the sun was brought by Ravana the demon king of India. The King Rama entered the vehicle and rose into the air.

These stories are not without reference and companion accounts from other civilizations as well and are not isolated.

They can be compared to similar reports in other civilizations.
In Mesopotamian, the Hakatha, which contains Babylonian law, states that the ability to have the privilege to operate a flying machine is one that only few possess. Flight is the most ancient of their heritage and is a gift from those on high. Flight was received as a means of saving many lives.

The ancient Chaldean work, Sifrala, contains greater than 100 pages of technical details on building a machine that flies. It contains translations of advanced building materials and methods used to build space craft.

Did ancient ancestors possess the capability to fly? If so, where did they get the technology? The answers seem to point to beings from on high or from other races giving ancient civilizations the freedom of flight. Flying vessels from ancient times are found in archaeology as well.

Many UFO researchers of UFO lore do not acknowledge an important fact. Most flying saucers are thought to be alien or perhaps military craft from the government. The bulk of our knowledge of ancient Indian flying craft comes from India written in texts that have been passed down through the ages.

There is no doubt that most of these texts are real; most ancient Indian Epics are well known and there are hundreds of writings that have not even been translated into English.

Indian Emperor Ashoka began a secret society of nine unknown men. All of them were great and powerful scientists that were to capture the many sciences. Ashoka maintained secrecy for fear that the advanced science would be used for war. These sciences were ancient knowledge and each one of the scientists wrote one book on the secrets of gravitation.

This book is known but has not been and is reported to be held in secret in India.

It is kept in a secret library in India somewhere to maintain secrecy. Secrecy would be important in the event that the actual knowledge of levitation was contained within the book. Ashoka concerned with wars using advanced vehicles and other weapons that laid waste to the ancient Indian "Rama Empire".

Recently the Chinese found documents in Tibet and sent them to a leading University for translation. Dr. Ruth Reyna of the university claimed that the documents were filled with instructions for building flying spacecraft.

One can never really know what happened in a given situation, without being there.  Sometimes, perhaps, the event will remain so difficult to understand, that one will never know what happened, even when they took a material role in the situation.

UFO sightings and Alien contact is such a scenario that makes it difficult to understand.  No matter the dearth of proof available.  The audio or video recordings, the character of the witnesses and investigators, and the coordinated accounts of such events by many unrelated parties, cannot ever fully explain a situation which cannot be explained.  One could argue, the human mind is incapable of understanding the capabilities of alien technology, with the current levels of experience and understanding. But to those who have experienced firsthand contact, with multiple parties involved, it would be difficult to convince them, that such a statement is true.

A classic account of contact is laid out in Colonel Halt’s famous ‘Rendlesham Forest Tape’, an audio recording made on December 27 and 28 of 1980 in England.  A much discussed and much dismissed incident has its proponents on both sides of the argument.  In recent years, new information has come to light to show that perhaps the Government agencies of England and the United States did make inquiry and did find evidence that such an event occurred exactly as it was recorded by Colonel Halt.  IN fact, in recently released documents, the energy levels in the area taken within hours of the original by government scientists showed definitively that an occurrence of ‘special’ significance had occurred.

Here 30+ years later, as the tape and the memo to the powers that be, has become widely available, and more and more of the enthusiast community start analyzing the data: truth begins to emerge.

In a day in age, where fear and terror grip the citizens of every major country due to domestic and foreign threats, and at a time when the Government organizations are not afraid to scare the citizens, there is still a tepidness in releasing information surrounding stories like Colonel Halt’s.  It’s important to note that Project blue book, the U.S. Military’s UFO investigation project which started in 1952, ended in 1970.  It was in 1970, that the Government (and all involved agencies) purportedly no longer had the interest or means to investigate UFO occurrences, and would “NEVER investigate” again.

Colonel Halt is a well recognized veteran, with an incredible military record and an almost untouchable character.  He served in the Airforce in multiple campaigns in Vietnam, Japan and Korea, and was, at the time of his experience with UFO’s, a Deputy Base Commander at RAF Bentwaters near Suffolk U.K.  This was not a man who made a living off of hysterics, false information, or irrationality.  He was a battle proven, Government chosen official, responsible for the lives of thousands of Airmen in a country outside of the U.S.: a man of impeccable character and who enjoyed the trust of the U.S. Government at the highest level.

The incident has spawned involvement by major U.K. organizations, and has at the least confirmed something happened which would be of interest to those operating on base, or in the area.

When faced with the ‘Special Task Force’ commentary as follows: "Special Branch officers may have been aware of the incident but would not have shown any interest unless there was evidence of a potential threat to national security. No such interest appears to have been shown."

Former Defense Ministry Chief Lord Hill-Norton quipped: "Either large numbers of people were hallucinating, and for an American Air Force nuclear base this is extremely dangerous, or what they say happened did happen, and in either of those circumstances there can only be one answer, and that is that it was of extreme defence interest."

The story unfolds like this:

After being alerted to a possible landing of a craft in the forest surrounding the base, Halt instructed Jim Penniston and John Burroughs to investigate. Between accounts of the events, it seemed enough was present to make an inquiry.  As such plaster casts of oddly shaped depressions in the ground had been made, readings of the energy levels in the area, and notarized statements have been made in the aftermath.

Halt said of the event: "While in Rendlesham Forest, our security team observed a light that looked like a large eye, red in color, moving through the trees. After a few minutes this object began dripping something that looked like molten metal. A short while later it broke into several smaller, white-colored objects which flew away in all directions. Claims by skeptics that this was merely a sweeping beam from a distant lighthouse are unfounded; we could see the unknown light and the lighthouse simultaneously. The latter was 35 to 40-degrees off where all of this was happening."

In a later notarized statement, Colonel Halt explained:

“I believe the objects that I saw at close quarter were extraterrestrial in origin and that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted – both then and now – to subvert the significance of what occurred at Rendlesham forest and RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practiced methods of disinformation.”

Of course there is a large amount of ‘information’ attempting to discredit the occurrence, and this story seems to have gained a life of its own.  Regardless of the ‘proof’ from either side:  Colonel Halt is convinced of an occurrence, and Colonel Halt is a man who deserves to be listened to by virtue of his character and commitment to the security of the two countries who patently deny his claims.

Revisiting one of the U.S. Government’s statements in the closing of its ‘Project Blue Book’, the Government stated: “No UFO reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security.”

Assuming this statement has some truth, and there is no threat by these UFO’s, it would be interesting to know what these investigators knew.  To know what this technology is, and to be able to determine that it has no threat value, must mean it has some other value.  To know what these Men and Women know about UFO’s, could open up an incredible new chapter in the search for understanding.

Note: an additional, more comprehensive article on the Rendlesham Incident-1980 is available elsewhere in the www.alieneight.com website.

We all know the Military stand on UFO's is that, if they exist, they are no threat to "National Security." This has been the official conclusion since the Condon Report in the 1950's. There have been incidents that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the very misinterpretation of a UFO can be so serious as to threaten not only National Security but the very existence of life on Earth as we know it.

The primary report of this potentially deadly incident comes from Kenneth Storch, a policeman in Aurora, Colorado and Field Investigator for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). The incident he reports happened in 1974 when Mr. Storch was an Air Force Sergeant at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. At the time he worked in the Communications Department for the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and held both a Top Secret and Restricted Clearance as his job required handling any document that came in to SAC. For whatever reason at the time, the Air Force only required silence for 30 years. Being an honest and honorable man, Mr. Storch waited the full 30 years before filing the report with MUFON.

At approximately 2:00 in the morning (Mr. Storch did not recall the exact date) NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) picked up 5 radar targets emerging from the Pacific Ocean. The unidentified objects leveled off at about 180,000 feet and headed toward the United States at speeds between 4,000 to 6,000 miles per hour; just the speed for a submarine launched Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. The contact was immediately forwarded to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a DefCon 4 situation was initiated. This meant that the nation's military was put on instant alert to repel a preemptive nuclear attack. SAC bombers were ordered to their Fail-Safe points, launch codes were given to and input into our own nuclear missiles. The world was less than 30 seconds away from the beginning of a nuclear holocaust that could well have wiped all life from the planet.

At what could only be called the proverbial "nick of time" the five contacts did something that an early 1970's era ICBM could not do, they changed course. This was in the time before cruise missile technology. Once fired they could not deviate from their course, but these five radar contacts did just that. Messages continued to fly from the Pentagon through SAC and other military branches and the order was given to hold for just a moment before launching the collected nuclear arsenal of a Superpower nation. The objects, still unidentified, passed over the Pacific Northwest of the United States and crossed over Canada, headed at speed toward Russian air space. President Nixon quickly got on the Hotline to Moscow to convince the Russians that the radar contacts they would soon be receiving were NOT U.S. missiles.

Ultimately the five contacts passed out of Earth's atmosphere to wherever their otherworldly destination lay, leaving behind the shaken military might of two nuclear-powered nations to contemplate how close to mutual destruction they had come. Sergeant Storch, back in Nebraska was debriefed for three hours after the incident while OSI officers collected all the hard-copy data that had accumulated about the incident. In what he describes as a "deprogramming" process, he was asked what he had seen and read and told that such things were, in fact, NOT what he had seen of read. Finally convincing the officers of his silence on the matter (at least for the 30 year time limit of his non-disclosure agreement) he was released to go home.

It is speculated that the possibility of such alien misunderstandings was one of the many reasons President John Kennedy pushed so hard for the "hotline" phone. It proved that in times of hyper suspicion and mistrust, the two great nuclear powers of the world needed to be able to inject a small amount of common sense into potentially deadly situations. That we were driven as close to nuclear war by five UFO's as we were by the incidents of the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrates how huge a lie the statement of UFO's being "No Threat" really is. A potential hostile alien culture could have so easily destroyed life on this planet without lifting a single death ray themselves!

Considered to be one of the most important encounters of its kind, the crash of a UFO and the subsequent capture of its crew in Varghinia, Brazil in 1996, is still shrouded in government and military secrecy. Not only did a UFO crash and its crew apprehended but the reports give a strong indication that one of the military personnel exposed to the aliens died shortly thereafter due to his contact with the extraterrestrial life form.

The encounter began just after midnight in the wee hours of January 20, 1996. The North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) contacted the Brazilian I Centro Integrado de Defesa Aerea e Controle de Trafego Aereo (Integrated Center on Air Defense and Air Traffic Control) to warn them that American satellite radar had picked up an unidentified craft coming down in the southern part of their country.

It was not long before reports of the event began to come in to authorities. Farmers Augusta and Eurico Rodrigues called to say they saw a silent, unlit UFO passing over their farm, frightening the animals. Within two hours the Fire Department, in Brazil a part of the military, in Varghinia began receiving reports of a "strange creature" in their town. At first the report was not taken seriously, the firemen assuming a prank was in the works. Yet, every report had to be investigated and they were quite surprised when they encountered the creature.

The alien was described as being about 5 foot tall with long arms, short legs, and large, triangular feet. It has soft, brown skin and bulging, large red eyes. There were three rounded horn-like protrusions on its head. A strong ammonia-like odor was also reported to exude from the entity. The alien was easy to capture, as it appeared to be in a dazed or confused state of mind. Later in the day three young women spotted another of the beings. Taking a shortcut home through a wooded area, Lilliane Fatima, Valquira Fatima, and Andrade Xavier came upon the second creature the military managed to capture. Ultimately it was reported that up to seven of the ET's were captured that day.

While reports vary, it is a common theme of the reports that at least one of the beings died and was taken to a hospital for autopsy. At least two others were sent to the University of Sao Paulo to be studied further. It was during the capture of the second alien that tragedy loomed over the horizon for one of the military personnel involved. At one point 23 year old Corporal Marco Eli Chereze, a part of the Military Police unit that responded to the three girls' report tried to support the seemingly disoriented alien by grabbing onto its arm with his bare hand.

A few days later, he discovered a small, but growing, tumor under his arm. While removing the tumor should have been done immediately, it was not ablated. Corporal Chereze became increasingly ill. He suffered strong backaches, paralysis, and fevers which quickly required hospitalization. The Corporal's family became enraged as he was kept in isolation. On February 15th, less than a month after the encounter, Corporal Chereze was dead of what was officially listed as a "generalized infection." No autopsy report was released and his family was refused permission to exhume his body for further, independent, examination.

The official government position on the Vaghinia incident is that it never happened. Noted Brazilian ufologist Vitorio Pacaccini was the one responsible for making the majority of the investigations for the public. He listed over 25 sources, civilians, doctors, and military personnel who shared their stories with him. The consistency of the reports and descriptions of the aliens over a wide range of unrelated people convinces him that the event is as real as the government's cover-up of the facts of the aliens and the death of Corporal Chereze.

Even though reports of strange flying objects have been made throughout history, no one really tried to make a concerted study of them until the second half of the 20th Century. It was around the advent of World War II that the number of UFO sightings really began to multiply around the world. Beginning with the "ghost" flyers in the1930's through the foo fighters of the 1940's sightings of unidentifiable aerial objects were becoming codified through the 1950's.

With the post-war "Cold War" heating up between the United States and the Soviet Union, this increase in sightings of unknown and technologically superior aircraft presented a unique problem for those responsible for national defense. It became necessary for them to make a special effort to analyze these reports and try to figure out whether they were advanced enemy craft or something else. Regrettably, whatever was discovered, the military efforts at ufology did not pass on their findings to the general population. They hid their findings under the guise of national security and officially stated there was no problem, this despite an increasing number of events and continued invasion of the airspace around military bases and nuclear facilities.

Ufology for the public was left to the civilians to figure out. With the urging of the military, the media and scientific community was encouraged to ridicule the entire field of UFO studies. With a lack of backing from the mainstream establishment, ufology quickly ran into trouble as a real science. Academia mostly abandoned the subject to amateurs. There was no scientific consensus or peer review systems set in place. Anyone could call themselves a ufologist without any organizational body to take them to task to prove their credentials. Even accepted and mainstream scientists like Jacques Vallee and J. Allen Hynek encountered ridicule of their work even though Hynek originally became involved in ufology through the military studies.

At best, ufology has been relegated to the status of a "pseudoscience." While ufologist protest this labeling, they still rarely maintain or sometimes even adhere to the simplest of scientific methodology in their research. They often make bold statements with no real supporting evidence. Many theories are not only implausible but impossible to quantify or qualify by any known scientific process. There is no single moderating and overseeing community to establish control guidelines or methodology to satisfy the necessary demands of scientific standards of research or peer review.

There are a few major difficulties with the UFO phenomena, which make a scientific approach more difficult. The observed events are neither predictable, convenient, nor replicable. This makes scientific experimentation very near impossible to formulate. Skeptics argue that, with no physical evidence, ufology cannot equate itself with science at all.

Until ufology can find ways to codify and compartmentalize these problems, it will never be taken as true science. Until a form of standardization and peer review is adapted, the skeptics, unbelievers, and hoaxers will continue to flood any discussion of the UFO phenomena with scurrilous, derogatory, and deceptive information without any great fear of being discovered or disavowed.

There is a sinister element to the still unexplainable phenomena of cattle mutilation. While first popularized by the media in 1967 when the Condon Committee out of Colorado investigated a mutilated horse, the phenomena had already been growing in the United States for twenty years. First referred to as the "slashing of cattle," it seems to have begun in New Mexico in 1947, the same year as the alleged Roswell UFO crash. Since that time over 10,000 cases have been reported, encompassing all 50 states and more reports coming from England.

Even though there is sometimes a minor difference in the remains of the dead animals, there is a great deal of similarity throughout each event. The cuts made on the cattle are surgically precise and clear, precluding the cause being predatory animals whose teeth and claws would leave jagged rips and tears. The eyes, udders, genitalia, and less often the anus are removed. Often the lips and tongue are cut away from the throat and sometimes one ear is missing. There are sometimes major organs, especially the heart and liver, missing from the body and yet no entry or exit wounds are present and sometimes the pericardium is still present and intact.

The bodies are also predominately drained of blood and there is no blood anywhere near the body or the wounds. This indicates that the animals were killed elsewhere and then disposed of in the places their bodies are found. Mutilated cattle are avoided not only by other cattle but also by scavengers who will shy away from these otherwise available meals. What little blood as tends to be left in the body is abnormal. It is a pinkish color and will not coagulate for days. Laboratory tests, including those done by the Los Alamos laboratory, have been inconclusive as to the cause.

As well as these abnormalities in the bodies of the slain beasts, there are other anomalies. There are no tracks around the bodies. No human, animal, or vehicle marks are found anywhere near where the cattle are found. Sometimes a few strange and unaccountable holes are found in the ground next to the carcasses. Often the bones are fractured by what appears to be impact with the ground from a high fall and the ground beneath them has been depressed where the body seems to have landed. Some animals have been found draped over fences or caught up in treetops.

While the majority of cattle mutilations seem to happen at night, there have been daytime reports, sometimes when potential witnesses have been in the area and still seen nothing. One case reported to the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) from 2002 discusses a 1997 incident in Utah. A couple of ranchers were tagging their new calves. One of them had been done early and they continued with the rest of their calves, never being more than 300 yards from any of them. Before the herd was completed, less than an hour later, the calf was found to have been "completely eviscerated -- most muscle and all internal organs were missing. There was no blood, entrails, or apparent disturbance at the scene."

Law enforcement officers throughout the country are perpetually stumped about these mutilations. According to Lander County, Nevada, Deputy Sgt. Keith Altemueller. "There's no evidence I have of what happened, how it happened or who did it. There are no tracks, no sign of disturbance and generally no blood. The cuts are very sharp -- very unusual! I've lived in the desert all my life; I've seen what predators do. This is not what predators do." After a half-century of mutilated animals, there are also a few horses, sheep, and dogs found mutilated in the same manner, there are no suspects, no arrests, and no convictions. No one has been able to discover who is perpetrating this horrible act.

There are several theories. Government and mainstream science institutions try to pass the mutilations off as either natural predators or criminally insane cultists even though the evidence shows neither is possible. Some people believe it is the government or military itself running covert tests. Most people tend to put the blame on extraterrestrial aliens in UFO's.

There are several possible reasons the cattle are being targeted for these mutilations. Since bovine blood has particular characteristics that are similar to human blood, it is thought they could be using cattle in genetic experiments. One would think though that as many people as vanish every year the aliens would have no need of a surrogate experimental animal. There has yet to be any photographic or video evidence of such abductions so how much harder would it be to abduct humans for experimentation?

Despite many hard-hit ranch areas forming watch groups to try and catch the culprits, they have been unsuccessful as yet. With no peripheral evidence at the scene other than a dumped body, investigators have little or no hope of tracking down the cause of this ongoing phenomenon.

Contrary to the American model of UFO investigation, which is to leave it to the civilian agencies, the European governments do not always ignore unknown aircraft in their skies. One example of this interest in finding out what is actually going on is the French Government. In 1977 they created GEPAN, the Groupe d'Étude des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés (unidentified aerospace phenomenon research group). This was begun as a unit of France's Space Agency CNES, the Centre National d'Études Spatiales. At first the unit, whose mission statement was to investigate unidentified aerospace phenomena and make its findings available to the public, was not taken very seriously.

GEPAN was reorganized and renamed SEPRA, the Service d'Expertise des Phénomènes Rares Aérospatiaux (rare aerospace phenomena expertise department) and given expanded resources and responsibilities. It was now put out to all French law enforcement that they should direct any such reports to SEPRA. It was hoped that with their expanded database, more could be learned from the investigations. Now whenever there seemed to be even trace physical evidence of UFO activity, SEPRA could access the technical resources of the French Space Agency, CNES, to make more exhaustive scientific investigations.

SEPRA operated until 2004 when it was once more reorganized and reopened and renamed GEIPAN, the Groupe d'Études et d'Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés (unidentified aerospace phenomenon research and information group) in 2005. More emphasis was now placed on making their investigations more transparent to the public and in 2007 the unit's archives were made available online to all interested persons.

The French Space Agency, CNES, was founded in 1962 to conduct space activities and observations for both national reasons and as a part of the greater European Space Agency (ESA) and international cooperation. The establishment of GEPAN in 1977 was undertaken under the direction of Dr. Claude Poher, already with the CNES and experienced in the statistical analysis of thousands of observations around the world. As well as the small number of full-time staff CNES appointed them a scientific advisory board made up of physicists, astronomers, and legal experts.

A specific criteria for investigation and analysis was developed. These included not only physical trace evidence investigation but also psychological analysis of witnesses. Arrangements were made with law enforcement, the separate military branches, and meteorologist to funnel relevant reports to them. SEPRA replaced them in 1988, headed up by M. J-J. Velasco, an original member of GEPAN. Its mission was to investigate all re-entry phenomena including totally known objects like satellites and missile launch hardware. Regrettably, with this addition to their duties, the study of UFO's was drastically diminished. By the time the unit was once more reorganized into GIEPAN, there were over 3,000 investigated incident reports. While most were ultimately explained as mundane objects, there are still over a hundred listed as requiring further investigation and a handful rated as totally unknown.

While maintaining the past integrity of the project, GEIPAN has added an important element to their overall mission. They are specifically mandated to make all the information they uncover accessible and available to the public. To this end, their archives are maintained online in both French and in English. GEIPAN is currently overseen by an independent steering committee chaired by the former Director General of the CNES, Yves Sillard and 15 members made up of civil and military authorities and research scientists from the national science research center and the national weather service.

It is rare to find this much government openness about UFO's anywhere in the world. One can only imagine if the government of the United States or Russia was to suddenly come clean with the information they have sat on for decades.

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Essential Links:

Official Site of GEIPAN (in French)

CNES website for GEIPAN (in English)
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One of the most likely places to spot a UFO is in Colorado. With its wide-open skies and the high altitude clarity of the air, Colorado is ideally suited for watching out for unusual aircraft activity. With the Rocky Mountains being a major part of the landscape, UFO's also seem to have plenty of room to hide in. It is no wonder Colorado ranks as the state with the highest number of UFO sightings and the most prolific spot of all is the San Luis Valley area in Southern Colorado.

Just North of the town of Hooper on Highway 17, Judy Messoline used to try running a cattle ranch. It did not take long to find that cattle didn't grow well on rocks so she sold them off. With so many people in the area talking about the strange sights and UFO's they had seen, Ms. Messoline decided to indulge the UFO hunters and provide a place with wide open spaces and a huge panoramic view to set up their cameras and binoculars and observe the sky. So in 2000 she constructed a ten-foot high metal platform, called "The UFO Watchtower" as a central observation post. The Watchtower doesn't need to be very high because, as she says, "When you're already at 7,600 feet, you don't need to be much higher."

As the Watchtower became more popular she added a campground area and a souvenir shop to cater to the crowds that flocked to the viewing platform. The most ironic aspect of the establishment is that Ms. Messoline was originally a skeptic about UFO's when she first built the Watchtower. It was not until after she had personally witnessed over two dozen UFO sightings that she became a true believer.

While The Watchtower is primarily for the purpose of observing the vast expanse of space from the Great Sand Dune in the East to the Range of the Rocky Mountains in the West, it has become much more. To the casual adventurer the UFO Watchtower is a truly American roadside attraction, complete with souvenir gift shop. For those who need a sympathetic and understanding ear about strange things seen, Judy provides a sort of unofficial UFO counseling service to her patrons.

As one can imagine, most of the UFO observation goes on at night. For the brightly-lit daytime in between UFO spotting, a visitor to the Watchtower can also wander into the "Healing Garden," a twin circle of rocks and lovingly placed offerings from previous visitors. Ms. Messoline was surprised when psychics visiting the Watchtower informed her that the Garden had created a twin vortex of cosmic energy due to its proximity to a UFO hotspot.

One can only assume the aliens or whomever it is that pilot the strange unidentified craft so frequently spotted from the observation point of the Watchtower did not mean to provide such a fascinating boost to the local economy. Still, if you want to increase your chances of spotting an unusual light in the sky or possibly a close encounter, Colorado's San Luis Valley provides an excellent chance. About one in every four people living there have seen a UFO at one time or another. Hanging out at the Watchtower gives you not only a fine place to observe, but also plenty of company to share stories with and confirm your sighting when it comes.

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Important Links:
Official Site of the UFO Watchtower
Photographer: Plazak
Photographer: yunalesca
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While many UFO sightings take place high in the sky or at a distance, occasionally one will be seen close up to the witnesses. There have even been the occasional reports of UFO's being too close at times. One such report comes from the Appalachian Mountains of Southeastern Kentucky.

It was a cold night on January 14th, 2002 as a CSX train with two engines was pulling a 16,000-ton line of coal and freight cars from Russell to Shelbiana, Kentucky. Near milepost 42 the double track was running beside the Big Sandy River and a cliff face carved out of the mountainside to provide room for the tracks. The terrain is rugged and concealing along the river valley. At 2:47 a.m., as the train was approaching a bend, the conductor saw lights ahead. Figuring it was just another train coming toward them on the other track he doused his own headlights as a courtesy.

Then the encounter went haywire for the train. As it came around the bend the electrical system began to cut in and out and the diesel engines of both locomotives died. The proximity alarm began to scream a warning at the driver. Looking out the window the train crew saw a very strange sight. Hovering over the river and the tracks were a group of unidentifiable objects. They were described as being of a metallic silver color with multiple colored lights on both the bottom and middle section of the craft. At least three of the objects were directing what looked like search lights onto the surface of the river.

The train crew could see no windows on the craft which they estimated as being maybe 20 feet long and about half that much tall. What was of the most imminent concern was one of the objects hovering about 10 feet above the tracks they were on. Despite the emergency braking system activating as soon as the power died, one does not stop 16,000 tons instantly. Inevitably the UFO was struck by the train’s locomotive. It clipped the front engine and then bounced around to cut a piece from the second engine and damage the first two coal cars. The unidentified objects immediately took off from the area and vanished into the sky.

It took nearly two miles for the train to finally come to a halt. After it stopped the power returned and the crew contacted their dispatcher in Jacksonville, Florida to appraise him of the situation. After a quick inspection of the damage they were ordered to try and make it to the Paintsville rail yard where, even though it was barely operational anymore, they would be able to drop off the damaged equipment. Their new destination was about 20 miles further down the tracks and they made it to Paintsville by around 5:15 a.m.

The crew was immediately taken off the train and questioned by a group of men they did not know. The only thing they were sure of was that they were not railroad personnel. After two hours of this, the men were taken out and placed on a smaller railroad carrier headed for Martin, Kentucky. They noticed as they left that the two engines and two damaged rail cars had been removed from the train but they didn't see where they had been taken to.

After arriving at Martin, the train crew spent more time being interviewed by railroad inspectors. They were finally sent to Shelbiana for an eight-hour layover before their next shift began, working another train back towards Russell, Kentucky. As they passed through Paintsville they saw absolutely no evidence of the train they had been in when they ran into the UFO or of the huge number of people that had mysteriously appeared to work on the damaged train.

Official records of the repair of the engine state the crumpled roof and smashed window were caused by a rock slide in one of the train way tunnels that dot the tracks through this mountainous region. Still, no report of the rockslide or its cleaning up has been found. The CXS Railroad has routinely kept their business to themselves and rarely are incidents along the line made public unless a train has hit someone. That nothing of this incident, or even a rockslide, made it into any of the local newspapers is not unusual.

UFO's have often been spotted hovering over water. What they are looking for as well as what these particular objects were after is unknown. Whether the UFO the train hit managed to continue flying or crashed into the Big Sandy River is also unknown.

For reasons as yet understood, Mexico has cataloged more UFO video and UFO sightings that any other country in the world. The people of this Southern North American country have experienced and been exposed to the widest possible types of UFO's of anyone else. They have videotaped spheres, disks, triangles, cylinders, and gaseous plasma UFO's. They have seen UFO's that have split apart and others that have come together to form even larger craft. They have been spotted individually and in huge clusters. These mysterious events are quite frequent in brad daylight over populous areas where documentation of the event is easy. But there is one type of UFO that seems to be almost exclusively peculiar to Mexico, the floating humanoid shaped UFO's.

Salvador Guerrero filmed the first reported occurrence of this new UFO type in March of 2000. Mr. Guerrero is a well-respected UFO investigator in Mexico and has filmed many UFO sightings around Mexico. On this day he was filming from on top of his home in Colonia Agricola Oriental when he spotted a dark object in the sky. It was when he zoomed in on the object he got a shock. What he was filming appeared to be a human form with visible arms and legs slowly spinning on its axis. It appeared to be free-floating and not really moving forward or backward.

The sighting lasted for several minutes as Mr. Guerrero filmed the strange object before it slowly moved off and disappeared behind a building. In December of 2000 he again sighted and filmed one of these humanoid-shaped objects. This time he was not alone but was in the company of a friend, Juan Flores who was helping him search the sky. While his March encounter was the first made public, it was not the first sighting of the object.

A month before Mr. Guerrero saw this unusual object in the sky. Another noted and respected UFO videographer, Amado Marquez had spotted the humanoid-shaped UFO in February of 2000 at his home in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. His sighting was of the "little man" flying horizontally across the sky in an upright position. Marquez stated that he saw no evidence of wings, parachute, or any other indication of a propulsion device. He did not make the film public until he became aware of Mr. Guerrero's filming of the same thing.

The figure was spotted by a third UFO videographer in July of that year. Also living in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Gerardo Valenzuela spotted the humanoid-shaped UFO as it was descending from the sky. He filmed the object until it passed behind a hill. There were other credible reports of the "little flying man" during this time.

On October 1, 2000 the newspaper, La Prensa, of Mexico City contained a story given them by a commercial airline pilot of his sighting of the strange humanoid-shaped UFO. As translated, the article said, "A commercial airline pilot from AeroCalifornia who wanted to omit his name to avoid problems in his work reported the sighting of a "little flying man" who was flying at the same altitude of the plane before landing. According to the pilot this "flying man" had a kind of backpack in his back and was flying freely. The pilot added he saw perfectly well arms and legs."

Since 2000 the humanoid-shaped UFO has been seen intermittently around Mexico. It is unknown if this object is truly an extraterrestrial or if it is a human in some type of advanced secret military flying harness. What is known is that whenever it has been spotted it leaves amazement in its wake.