San Diego Man Seeks to Spread the UFO 'Gospel'

Add another one to our "to be played in the movie by Jeff Bridges" list.

Over twenty years after snapping a photo that appears to show a small fleet of unidentified objects, Mike Orrell continues to believe that this is the work of extraterrestrial life forms. At first I thought this was going to be a standard "I'm not sure what I saw, but I saw something and I believe we aren't alone in the universe" sort of UFO believer, but it turns out he has much more specific ideas about the life forms in question, their nature, and their intentions toward the human race:

He’s explored connections between the objects in his photo and relics from ancient cultures and believes there are higher levels of civilization out there. He thinks something cataclysmic will happen to our planet next year. And that UFOs will transport the worthy to safety.

“I’ve been given a great gift that I have been trying to share,” he said. “I believe I was chosen to spread the UFO gospel and to my dying day that’s what I’m going to do.”

I know what you're thinking: "This guy must have one very understanding girlfriend." Yes he does:

Spielvogel, his girlfriend, said Orrell has “a big heart” and is passionate about trying to help mankind. A lab assistant in a cancer-research facility, she thinks the stuff about the world ending next year “is pretty far out there,” but she also doesn’t think we’re alone.

“I believe the universe is so big there’s got to be other things besides us,” she said.

At the end of the article, it's time for the skeptic to chime in with the standard skeptic viewpoint, which I think in this case carries a lot of weight:

“It’s the manifestation of deliberate ignorance,” he said. “Our culture has developed to the point where we choose to believe what we want to believe.”

Given the strange image we are confronted with, I think it's very reasonable and understandable to speculate the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. After all, these dots could be just about anything, and alien spacecraft fall under the "just about anything" category. However, given the flimsiness of the evidence, it seems that drawing any sort of conclusions is a matter of wishful thinking. Ideas aren't correct just because they're attractive or reassuring.

UFO Mothership Over London

Life's Little Mysteries and Fox News, among others, point us to this video on YouTube of an alleged UFO mothership and several smaller craft circling around and ducking behind the clouds above the city of London. Life's Little Mysteries points how that this sort of video - which includes featureless, white shapes - would be easy for an amateur to fake.

Argentina UFO images captured with cell phone cam

Via Inexplicata - A man in Argentina claims to have snapped these photos with a cell phone camera at the beach.

Saucer craft transported down Dallas highway on flatbeds

From UFO Examiner (link courtesey Coast to Coast AM) - This video shows a series of objects resembling saucer UFOs being transported down a Dallas highway with police escort. You know, the most dangerous part of an interstellar journey is the highway trip from the landing site.

Spaceship-like objects on Google Sky

This video on YouTube shows objects that might look to a person with a fertile imagination like spaceships. A quick look at other video uploads from user "SpaceTomorrow" brings up this darling bit of interstellar rapture bible fan-fic, describing God's plan to wormhole the chosen ones off to heaven (represented as a spiral galaxy) or to another place (also a spiral galaxy, but I suppose a less heavenly one) while the Earth gets bashed by a comet.

Video of British UFO

The Sun reports on a UFO spotted by holidaymakers on the British coastline. The full article, including video, is available on their website.

Wichita UFO report with photo

From the Kansas City Star: This image was capture by an amateur photographer who observed a craft flying over Wichita, Kansas, which he described as producing a hum like that of a jet but, "It didn't sound like one of these jets that I hear all the time.... It was much quieter, much quieter."

DaVinci and UFOs

UFO Examiner posts a highly speculative piece about the possible influence of UFOs upon the work of Leonardo daVinci and other Renaissance thinking fellows. It is already known that a mysterious, alien figure commissioned da Vinci to paint not one but seven Mona Lisas.

Possible UFO hit-and-run at British wind farm

The above is an artist's rendering of the incident as it may have occurred.

From the Daily Telegraph (UK):

One of the turbine's 65-foot blades came off and another was damaged at the site, on the same night that local residents reported seeing orange-yellow spheres in the sky, which some described as trailing octopus-like "tentacles".

Ecotricity, the company that owns the wind farm near Louth, has yet to find an explanation for the damage.

But managers are believed to be concerned UFO enthusiasts will scour the site for debris, so have decided to restrict access.

(Link)

Incredible, flying Christmas tree caught on video over Sacramento, CA

ABC affiliate News10 in Sacramento had their chopper in the air to cover high school football and ended up capturing something far more interesting. (Yes, I suppose if high school football is your basis for comparison, accidentally leaving on the lens cap would yield hair-raising footage.) If you click to watch the video to the right of the story, you'll see a dazzling object that looks like something from Clark Griswald's front yard holiday display whizzing through the air as the news chopper pursues.

Diamond-shaped objects over Austin, TX

The Austin Planetarium is looking into frequent, recent UFO sightings captured on video by local man Carl Lancaster. The Fox 7 news story is available on YouTube, made available by UFO Blog with the uncut UFO footage added to the end of the video.

In other UFO news, British paper The Sunday Mercury reports that a police helicopter had a rather harrowing encounter with a UFO over Birmingham.

Best Pics from UK UFO Archive

Britain's Telegraph.co.uk culled the archive of close encounters released by the Ministry of Defense for the most compelling illustrations and eyewitness testimonies.

Backyard UFO

I had gotten bored with this blog and hadn't posted for a while. UFOs just didn't seem all that interesting to me anymore... until I started seeing objects like the one pictured above in my backyard.

PEI UFO

CBC News/Canada - The Ufology Research Centre in Winnipeg has been unable to identify this smoky spiral seen over Prince Edward Island on Boxing Day. (The story includes video.)

Other Headlines:

Gold Coast News/Australia - Experts baffled by orange UFO (No pictures. Damn.)

American Chronicle/America - Did you know that some people believe that the United Nations had a secret meeting regarding UFOs in February of this year?

Jim Sparks: Alleged abductee

Jim Sparks has a very detailed story of being abducted by aliens frequently throughout this adult life. I was listening to Mysterious Universe while cleaning my bathroom a couple of months ago, when I heard him relate some of his experiences and promote his book.

Sparks was also on Coast to Coast AM in 2006, and the C2C website has illustrations of his experience, such as the image above, wherein the greys attempt to extract semen from the prone abductee.

Venusian spacecraft hoax, 1952

The Museum of Hoaxes has a fun slideshow that takes readers through the history of photographic hoaxes. Above is an image of a Venusian spacecraft, which George Adamski purported to have taken in 1952, having made contact travellers from our sister planet:

Adamski worked as a soft-drinks salesman, and skeptics have noted a suggestive
similarity between the scoutcraft and the top of a particular brand of soft-drinks cooler.

Also featured in the slideshow: Ghosts, fairies, giant produce, and baby Hitler.

UFO over Portsmouth

Weblog Cosmic Paradigm notes this UFO spotted over Portsmouth in Britain. Interestingly, the Ministry of Defense quote in this article is the same as in The Sun, pertaining to a different set of UFO snapshots from London:

"The MoD examines reports solely to establish whether UK airspace may have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised military activity.

"Unless there is evidence of a potential threat, there is no attempt to identify the nature of each sighting reported."

I would venture to guess there is a document somewhere in the Ministry of Defense where you can cut and paste this quote to respond to journalists' emails.

Thanks to Mysterious Universe, both for calling attention to these sightings on their website and for consistently bringing the weird in their weekly podcast.

Aliens have telepathic powers; you should construct a special hat

According to stopabductions.com, one need fear no alien abduction when wearing a special, home-made helmet:

The very large brain of this alien gives it enormous telepathic/mind control powers. It comes to earth with no protection or weapons, relying solely on its telepathic ability to control and abduct humans. When humans wear a thought screen helmet the alien's telepathic ability is neutralized and it withdraws.

O'Hare 2006: A mass sighting awaits compelling video/photos

On November 7th, 2006, numerous witnesses claim to have seen a UFO over O'Hare airport in Chicago. According to eyewitness accounts, the dark grey object hovered over the airport before flying away, punching a hole in the low clouds. The above image comes from ufosightings.ca, though reliable pictures of the object itself prove elusive.

Dan Aykroyd, SNL alum and UFO enthusiast, claims to have come into possession of compelling video of the incident, but we'll have to wait until he releases his documentary to see the exclusive footage.

Cars and UFOs

Driving.ca, a Canadian website dedicated to all things automotive, has a relatively informative and even-handed article about drivers' UFO experiences. The piece quotes generously from Bufo Calvin, education director for the Organization for Paranormal Understanding and Support (OPUS).