The Searchlight

1924: US Army and Navy Listen for Signals from Mars

2009-11-10T14:41:00.000-05:00

Amherst College professor David Todd persuaded both the US Army and Navy to listen for messages from Mars. In the telegram above, Edward W. Eberle, the Chief of US Naval Operations, informs Naval stations of the possibility of Martian communications, and instructs them to report any unusual phenomena. For three days, the stations listened for unusual transmissions, but came up empty handed. [via io9]

Breaking: UFOs over East Side of Cincinnati Tonight

2009-11-07T21:09:00.008-05:00

Cincinnati, OH - Three witnesses and two separate reports of a vertically shaped UFO over the east side of Cincinnati tonight between 7:50 and 8pm. The first caller to the Cincinnati UFO Hotline (513-876-5UFO) described five "huge" orange, oval-shaped lights stacked-up vertically over the east side of Downtown Cincinnati visible from his Ft. Wright, KY neighborhood. The lights eventually faded out, and then a sixth single light became visible.

The second caller was driving with his girlfriend on OH St. Rt. 32 when she pointed out what appeared to be an "explosion in the sky" over the Batavia / Eastgate Mall area. A string of four lights came down from it, fading in and out. The objects became solid and started zig-zagging across the sky.

Additional unverified witnesses on the KY side of the river in Newport, east of the Levee, claimed to have saw 3 lights over Cincinnati around the same time. Did you witness this UFO event? Send us your report.

Update 9:35pm: Additional witnesses have contacted us regarding their own sightings across the area tonight. One possible explanation offered by e-mailer #3 was "parachutists over Nippert Stadium for the UC football game."

E-mail Report #1: "We saw the same UFO tonight in Northern Kentucky. We were on 471 North by the Southgate/Fort Thomas exit and we saw four lights in the west part of the sky. They were semi-circular on the bottom with a lid type appearance on top. It looked as though there were four lights and then went off and came back on in random patterns. They were distinctly clear with no diffusion of light. We reported it to 700 WLW and Fox 19. Both news sources stated they had received multiple calls and WLW informed us that they had called the police and made a report. The police stated that they believed they were parachuters for the UC vs Uconn game tonight. We don’t think so! WLW radio sounded skeptical of this explanation as well and was anxiously awaiting video of the event or more detail."

E-mail Report #2: "My boyfriend and I saw them too. We were just leaving Kenwood driving down 71 south and to my right, out the passenger side window, looking over the Ridge Ave/Madisonville area were 4 glowing lights in formation. One faded in and out. The trees obscured my vision but as the 71 curved back they were visible through the windshield again, then there were only 3 lights. Then as we got off the Red Bank Rd exit the trees obscured them again. I called my mom immediately after they disappeared behind the trees the first time, my phone says I made that call at 7:51 pm.

"It was the strangest thing I've ever seen. I don't believe in stuff like this but I saw it with my own eyes. It was completely unexplainable. They weren't planes, they weren't objects WITH lights ATTACHED to them. The whole thing glowed, a warm color too, like a yellowy gold color light, whatever they were. I tried to take a picture with my cellphone but it's so grainy you can't even make it out."

Update: 10:30pm: Several more e-mail reports, one with iPhone video. Another comment about a possible skydiving team's responsibility.

"My brother in law pulled up to our house, he ran in, said he saw a comet break up in the sky. We (my wife, brother in law, and mother in law, and I) ran outside to see it. What we saw was crazy! There was four comet looking objects in the sky (head and firey tails). We still thought they were comets but then they never fell they just hovered and swirled around. One would fade out and then come back. Eventually they just descended down towards the earth and we couldn't see them anymore. I recorded it on my iphone..."

"i have a picture. my friend said it's a shooting star, then when it broke into four pieces we knew it was more than a shooting star. we continued to watch four balls of fire floating in mid air. we chased it down the block and we saw it until it faded completely..." [Ed. Note: Waiting to receive the picture.]

"My wife and I saw the lights and pulled over and tried taking a video with her digital camera in the Kenwood area. We lost them behind a building though before getting a good shot. They were clearly falling objects. It was a skydiving team, and they INTENDED for people to report a bunch of UFO sightings, especially with creating the illusion of a rapidly expanding and contracting plus disappearing and reappearing object."

Update 11:00pm: Three new callers to the hotline, one with skydiving experience who says there's "no way" what he saw could have been skydivers. One with a photo.

The first caller saw 6 bright objects in the sky, far east of Christ Hospital on the east side of Cincinnati. He and his wife witnessed the objects from their home in Price Hill. He waited to see if Fox 19 said anything about it on their 10pm news broadcast but they didn't. He has been skydiving before and says that from where he saw the object, if they were skydivers, they could not have glided far enough to hit Nippert Stadium with the object's rate of descent. They were "maintaining too well, like they were stopped. There's no way skydivers could hold that perfect." His wife chimed in, "I've never seen skydivers like that!" He tried to get a picture but the object was no longer visible by the time he had the camera ready. A small plane was seen in the area at the time of the sighting, as was a passenger jet much higher in the sky.The couple reported that police in District 2 (far eastern side of Cincinnati) were flooded with calls about strange objects in the sky.

The witness called his brother in Adams County, OH to relate the details of his sighting and his brother confirmed that it sounds highly similar to something he had seen in his secluded neck of the woods twice in the past several days. The Adams County sightings were followed by two jet fighters flying side by side, as if they had been called to investigate. When the lights there dimmed out, you'd "see a tail on them like a meteor."

The next caller saw the lights from the Crestview Hills Mall in Northern Kentucky. He saw four lights turning on and off, moving towards each other. They did not look to belong to an aircraft or some type of natural phenomenon. He noted that wcpo.com mentioned the skydivers to Nippert Stadium, and he accepted this explanation.

WCPO reports that "It was the Warren County Team Fastrax exhibition sky diving club. The four skydivers wearing bright lights jumped out of the plane together, split into two pairs, and then descended individually. Viewers as far away as Burlington, Kentucky called to report seeing the strange lights."

The latest caller also saw four lights, but they had what looked like "fire" coming off of them. She snapped a photo. "We saw these objects hovering in the sky as we were driving on Rt. 71 S (4 miles from Paul Brown stadium). "officially" called skydivers with pyro-technics?!?!"

Update 12:00am: A new caller to the hotline saw the lights from the Sharonville area on his way to work. Several new email reports.

Facing southwesterly at 7:54pm, the caller saw four lights doing the same pattern as seen in the earlier iPhone video. The lights didn't go up or down, they appeared to be stationary. Several people were standing in the Kroger parking lot watching the lights, some trying to snap cell phone photos. Eventually all of the lights blinked out. Afterwards 3-4 airplanes came to the area and could be heard from the ground, as if they were searching for the lights.

E-mail report: "Driving through Northside (Central Cincinnati) headed east on Dane, looking directly ahead (East) above the treeline of Mt. Storm, at around 7:55 PM EST, I saw four large (1/2 thumbnail at arm's length) yellow-gold lights, hovering in a loose grouping, shimmering, alternately fading and growing brighter. Stopped and got out of my car and watched for a few minutes in amazement as the lights remained suspended in their loose pattern. The shape of these lights was of an elongated tear-drop on its side, with the smaller pointed end to the left and larger round end to the right. They did not seem to move from left to right in a linear path, but more up and down, left and right, expanding and contracting the overall area of their cluster.

"While I watched, two of these lights peeled back into a sort of inverted comma-shape and with a downward twisting motion, disappeared, only to re-appear in a few seconds back to the original shape and size. After a little bit more of this (under a minute?) they all faded into dark, and then after maybe 10-15 seconds, one of the lights (at the bottom of the "cluster") re-appeared. There also appeared to be at least two conventional aircraft in the vicinity of these lights, visible by much smaller regularly blinking lights (red, green, white) that moved in the steady linear fashion typical of airplanes. The phenomena I saw looked more like four wings of flame, aqueous and glowing, related but not linked, more organic than mechanical"

E-mail report: "I was driving south on I-71 and saw lights appear out of nowhere like an explosion. At first, I thought it may have been a meteor but it was too close. Then I thought they were falling stars, but they stopped (and even shouted to my son, "Look at all those falling stars!"). For a second, I thought they were fireworks but realized very quickly that the lights, which appeared to be falling slowly a short distance, stopped falling. They hovered there in the sky and appeared to "take shape" The shape I saw was round on one end (presumably the back end because they appeared to be pointed slightly downward) and pointed on the other end. They moved into a perfect formation and faded in and out. The most I ever saw at once was 5, but most of the time when I could see them, there were only 4. I thought it must have had something to do with a game at the stadium, but as I watched, I couldn't think of anything that would have just hovered there like that. Then I thought it could have been flares but I don't think such a planned formation is possible with flares.

"As the road curved, I could no longer see them. I passed the place where I saw them and suddenly saw them reappear again in the sky. This time, because I was looking to the sky to find them, I saw that "ball" of light fall and break up again. The "ball" wasn't visible to me for a long period of time (maybe a split second) before it broke up into separate parts. This time, though, the most I saw was 4. They hovered there for quite a while, fading in and out like the last time, and were pointed slightly downward again. I think I remember a small plane flying by them, too, but I can't be positive about that. It seems like I may have seen several small planes later, or the same one multiple times.

"I'm not sure that I fully believe in this stuff, but what I saw was real. These lights were NOT skydivers. The light fully and equally emanated from each object until it faded, then was fully lit again. The light looked like a glowing yellow to me and the none of the lights appeared to turn in any direction the way you would expect skydivers to turn. These things were completely controlled. I was in shock! I tried to take a picture with my phone but with the movement of the car and the size of the lights, nothing showed on the screen, so I didn't take a picture.

Update 12:50am: E-mail report as follows.

"My daughter and I were returning from Columbus when she pointed out the lights. We were just north of exit 25 (King's Island) on I-71 headed south. When I saw the lights there were 4 of them in a large triangular pattern. One appeared to fall out the sky in pieces. We talked about it when we got home and she said that at first she thought it was fire works at Kings island (which was closed). When we reached the exit the lights were gone."

Total number of reports: 23
Total number of known witnesses: 35

UFO Frontier Now Available in Paperback

2009-10-30T16:35:00.000-04:00

Just in time for Halloween, Kenny Young's UFO Frontier has been released to paperback. The anthology chronicles his 7+ years of professional ufology across the Cincinnati region and tristate area. Pick it up today on Amazon or CreateSpace. Kindle version also available.

In UFO Frontier, Cincinnati-based Ufologist Kenny Young's body of work is revealed including his investigations into Jackie Gleason and "The Pickled Men", pre-Roswell UFO crashes, the 1997 "Phoenix Lights", phantom blasts, mystery planes, weird creatures, stealth aerospace technology, crop circles, police and government UFO incidents, and private industry involvement. No crackpot flying saucer personality or organization is safe from his level-headed criticism. Editor and fellow paranormal researcher S. Patrick Feeney merges several of Young's unpublished works into this single anthology.

Weird Ways to Search for ET

2009-09-27T23:18:00.000-04:00

It's a constant battle, as SETI scientists (and string theorists, for that matter) are often accused of falling down the wrong rabbit hole. "Why waste time looking for old-style radio signals," many people have written me, "when the aliens will be shooting neutrinos our way?" "The aliens will use entangled particles to signal us," many tell me. Luc Arnold, a French astronomer, has suggested that aliens might signal us with giant shadow puppets. Read More

The Search

2009-09-25T13:30:00.000-04:00

One step closer to Star Trek's holograms

2009-09-18T18:16:00.004-04:00

TOKYO - By using ultrasonic waves, the scientists have developed software that creates pressure when a user's hand "touches" a hologram that is projected.

In order to track a user's hand, the researchers use control sticks from Nintendo's popular Wii gaming system that are mounted above the hologram display area.

The technology has so far been tested with relatively simple objects, although the researchers have more practical plans, including virtual switches at hospitals, for example, and other places where contamination by touch is an issue.

New 'Drake equation' for alien habitats

2009-09-17T17:31:00.006-04:00

SYDNEY -- A mathematical equation that counts habitats suitable for alien life could complement the Drake equation, which estimates the probability of finding intelligent alien beings elsewhere in the galaxy. The new equation, under developed by planetary scientists at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England, aims to develop a single index for habitability based on the presence of energy, solvents such as water, raw materials like carbon and whether or no there are benign environmental conditions. Read More

"Paranormal Activity" Hits Theaters September 25th

2009-09-16T20:48:00.000-04:00

Are we in for another Blair Witch or has someone finally managed to turn Ghost Hunters into a fictional movie? Post your thoughts.

WiTricity Is Here

2009-09-12T22:19:00.000-04:00

Tesla's dream lives on.

Variable Gravity Simulator by NASA

2009-09-12T19:46:00.000-04:00

LiveScience -- Scientists working on behalf of NASA built a device to simulate variable levels of gravity. It consists of a superconducting magnet that generates a field powerful enough to levitate the water inside living animals, with a space inside warm enough at room temperature and large enough at 2.6 inches wide (6.6 cm) for tiny creatures to float comfortably in during experiments. Read More

Ohio Paranormal Convention Wrap-up

2009-08-16T22:47:00.003-04:00

Like spooky stuff? Hara has paranormal confab

Tiny UFOs?

2009-08-15T13:02:00.000-04:00

A couple witnessed a "tiny UFO" the size of a half dollar coin hovering in their yard near Dayton, OH. It only appeared to be some eight feet above the ground. At first the wife thought it was something in a spider web with light reflecting off of it only to discover that it had its own illumination. The couple was able to examine the object in detail, noting little red light rotating on its exterior. The husband got underneath it to see if he could determine its means of propulsion, only to find that when looking directly up at it, it seemed to be 30-feet above him! His wife yelled at him, "It's only two feet above you!" So he grabbed a stick and started batting at it to see if it responded. It buzzed away immediately, off into the distance. The couple wonders if it was some sort of drone from nearby Wright Patterson AFB.

Live from the Ohio Paranormal Conference 2009

2009-08-15T12:21:00.000-04:00

We are blogging live on the scene all day from the Ohio Paranormal Conference at Hara Arena in Dayton Ohio. Our own Sean Feeney will be speaking at 1:45pm! Admission for the day is $35 and we have discount copies of UFO Dispute available!

Speakers this weekend include:

Andrew Beckham and the SPI Girls
Keith Age
Sean Feeney
Rie Sadler
Bob Hunnicut
James Willis
Joedy Cook
Beth Brown
Earle Benezet
Chris Dedman
Brian Parsons
John Sabol

Inside Alaska’s Answer to Area 51

2009-08-04T15:14:00.000-04:00

Wired goes inside the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (Haarp) facility in Alaska.

Space Shuttle Plumes and the Tunguska Blast

2009-08-01T01:15:00.000-04:00

July 31, 2009 -- Tracking plumes from space shuttle launches provided researchers with one of the strongest pieces of evidence that a comet crash was responsible for flattening a Siberian forest in 1908.

The crash, which leveled trees for hundreds of miles in Siberia, was followed by the appearance of extremely bright clouds, visible by night. More

Scientist Turn Aluminum Into Strange, Completely New Matter State

2009-07-29T22:30:00.000-04:00

Scientists at a free-electron, high intensity laser facility in Hamburg, Germany have created a completely new state of matter, transforming aluminum into something "that nobody has seen before," an exotic material which is transparent to ultraviolet radiation. More

Noctilucent clouds spreading southward

2009-07-20T13:00:00.000-04:00

Noctilucent clouds, one of many natural occurrences which can be confused for UFOs, have appeared in the skies over the United States and Europe over the past several days. Wired has more.

Marshall County, Kentucky UFO Video

2009-07-20T12:21:00.001-04:00

A Marshall County, Kentucky man says he shot the video from his front yard last weekend (July 11-12, 2009) of "unidentified flying objects."

He says he realizes any claims of UFOs will be met with skepticism. That's why he asked his local television station to mask his identity. "Because of my job and neighbors, friends, I don't want to be made a spectacle of."

Nonetheless, he has his own suspicions. "It's just something that appears to be, what do you call it, extra-terrestrial," he said, "that's what it appears to be to me."

"There's something in the videotape that I do not understand," the Marshall County man said. "I don't know what it is, but to just let it not be told would be a waste, to me. Maybe somebody can look at it and say, this is this, or this is that, and then I'll be satisfied, you know, accomplish my goal... is to find out what it is."

UFO Reacts to Witness' Anxiety in Kentucky

2009-07-20T12:14:00.000-04:00

A report from last year:

This incident took place in August, 2008. I was in my studio, which is a room I built in my unattached garage so that I do not bother my family sleeping in the house at late hours.

At about 1:30 AM, my dog began barking non-stop. I went outside to see what might be going on. She was at the end of the drive way, looking towards the soy bean field across the road. I wandered down the driveway to look. I figured it could be a rabbit or a possum.

She was looking a bit skyward. I looked up and saw a moving light. She stopped barking once I saw it. The light was not much bigger than Venus, however it was moving in an erratic motion. Sort of keeping with in an area of a quarter if you held it about 3 inches from your eye.

The light pulsed about every 2 seconds. It would be a reddish light, it would grow brighter and fade. Then it would turn white and grow brighter. Back and forth between the two colors.

It was a clear night, no moon and I could see many other stars and lights from jets. I wondered if it was just my eye jumping, so I concentrated on stars. None of them jerked about or pulsed. Then I held myself very still and watched the sky in general and the stars remained motionless, but the light continued to move about.

I can't tell how big the light source was. I am not sure, it being quite dark across the field where a tree line is, if the light was in front of the tree line or a bit above it. However, it was quite low in the sky.

The light began to enlarge, or move closer to me and I became uneasy. It approached for a few seconds, maybe 10 or so, then as my anxiety increased it seemed to retreat from me back to what I guess was it's original position. I watched for a few more minutes and then decided to tell my daughter about it who had been watching TV a bit earlier. I went inside but she had gone to bed.

I went back outside and the light was gone. I looked around the sky and found it had moved, seemingly farther away and no longer southeast of me, but now more in the direction of southwest.

I watched it for a few minutes more, lost interest and continued my art project.

A few days later I contacted MUFON via email. I received an email later than night from the regional director of MUFON based in Bowling Green, KY. He asked follow up questions and I sent him my phone number. A few more days later he called me in the early evening and I repeated all I had posted in the initial email and answered in his follow up email.

He informed me that MUFON had been receiving the same type of reports from eastern and southern central Kentucky for the last few weeks. He had no answers for what it could be, but just that it was a common sight from those of us who happened to wander outside in the very early morning hours.

I have never experienced this before and I am really interested in how this "thing" reacted to my anxiety level.

Walter Cronkite Did Not Have a UFO Encounter

2009-07-20T11:49:00.001-04:00

An internet swindler by the name of Bill Knell (google his name + fraud) is distributing a story that Cronkite and other journalists witnessed a UFO capture and destroy a new Air Force missile with a "blue beam of light" in the 1950s. The missile, a guard, and a guard dog was frozen "mid-step" by the beam. The word on the street is that it never happened. Cronkite did do a UFO special back in the day though:

Kazakhstan to build alien embassy

2009-07-08T00:10:00.000-04:00

The Republic of Kazakhstan is in the process of building the world's first alien embassy according to some local media reports. If these reports are to be believed, the authorities have already allocated a large plot of land in the city of Almaty for this ambitious project. Facilities to be built within the complex will include a guesthouse, theatre and translation service. A purpose built UFO landing pad and checkpoint will be attached to the embassy.

Kazakhstan's government believes open contact with aliens is imminent and by being the first nation to specifically create such facilities they are convinced they will reap enormous financial and economic rewards. The Kazakhstan Government also see this as a chance to demonstrate their nations forward thinking policies.

Currently it is generally accepted that aliens are making use of an underwater UFO base in the Caspian Sea which Kazakhstan borders. Fuad Gasimov, the head of neighbouring Azerbaijan's national Aerospace Agency has confirmed this to be the case and has gone on record stating the old USSR constantly monitored alien spaceships regularly entering the water but kept this a military secret. Gasimov himself was involved in this secret monitoring of UFOs when a department heat at the USSR's science academy.

In addition to this, numerous UFO sightings occur in Kazakhstan where it is believed aliens take an interest in their massive natural resources. As recently as last year a UFO was reported as having crashed into a river in Kazakhstan.

The head of Kazakhstan's space agency, Talgat Musabayev, is said to be heavily involved in the embassy project. Musabayev is an ex-cosmonaut who has spent many hours in space and is an ex-colleague of Gasimov. It is believed that he possesses a large amount of information on the aliens currently visiting earth.

Michael Jackson Ghost?

2009-07-07T19:45:00.000-04:00

In the news today:

"Leprechaun" in Mobile, Alabama

2009-07-07T19:43:00.000-04:00

Circa 2006

Newark, OH haunt includes 'ghost car'

2009-07-07T19:19:00.000-04:00

NEWARK, OHIO - Homeowners here called the Ghost Hunters Ohio Search Team for some answers after experiencing a continued haunting in their 1898 structure that included sound and visual anomalies and a "ghost truck" that seems to come home once in a while. Read More

Late June/Early July Indiana UFO Sightings

2009-07-07T19:13:00.001-04:00

From MUFON:
Indiana, June 28, 2009 - Unusual lights and objects.
I was awakened by my dog who wanted to go out at approximately 4:25 am. I let the dog out and went and got some water. After a few minutes when the dog hadn't returned I stepped to the front door and called his name. I turned and put on my shoes and stepped out onto my front porch to call for the dog. As I did, I noticed small, round white lights in the woods surrounding my home. *I live in a fairly heavily wooded area of five acres* These were multiple, white lights that numbered probably 20 or more. I initially thought they were flashlights but I realized some of the lights were high and others lower to the ground. At this time I became aware that the lights were moving towards me and I felt a little frightened. The dog came around the house and I told him to hurry. The lights were still moving towards me and becoming closer. My dog saw the lights and stopped and looked towards them. I urged him to come and I hurried us into the house, closing the storm door behind me. I turned back to the door and some of the lights were quite close to me and the door. One went right over where I would have been standing and I realized a breeze had come up and that some drops of fluid appeared on the glass of the door. I couldn't figure out what I was seeing and even though it was odd and scary I couldn't move away from the door and continued to watch these round, white lights. There seemed to be a pattern to them, almost an ebb and flow. I changed my position slightly and saw deeper into the woods a fairly large red light. I thought it was a police car at first and then realized the red light was not blinking like the lights of a police car. I then heard brakes and towards the highway I saw a car come to a quick stop and I think whoever was in the car was seeing the same thing I was. *Which was a big relief!* After several minutes the car on the highway pulled away. I wanted to see the red light closer and so I grabbed my car keys and ran to my car and drove down the end of my driveway. Once I was at the end of the drive I realized that I couldn't see the red light any longer. I looked up towards the sky and saw a large, brilliant white light. At this point, I drove back to my house and was able to see a few of the smaller white lights that seemed to still float around the woods. The smaller white lights seemed to be approximately the size of a baseball an smaller. They were not identical in size.

This experience lasted approximately 20 to 25 minutes. I'm fairly sure of the duration as I was texting my sons who were gone for the week-end, telling them what I was seeing. I wish I had thought to take a picture but I was so freaked out by what I was seeing that all I could manage to do was watch.

From the UFO Examiner:
"My family and I were coming home around 10:15-10:30 PM on July 4th. We live in Kokomo, Indiana -western end. There were at least 12 orange lights..almost in a big dipper formation in the sky. It wasn't fireworks..too high up, wasn't helicopters..no noise coming from them. And, wasn't planes..they wouldn't have been flying that close together. They were flying closer to Russiaville, Indiana. There were other people out looking up at them. One guy was trying to get some photo's. Don't know whether he did or not. The last time something happened here they tried to explain it as "sonic boom"..it wasn't a sonic boom. I lived here back in the 60's and heard sonic booms all the time from the planes from Grissom AFB. I didn't know who to report this to or if anyone else had reported it. Oh, they all disappeared..one or two at a time."