UFO Phenomenon Articles

Ancient Eastern Writings on UFO's

"In the year 22, of the third month of the winter, sixth hour of the day, the scribes of the House of Life found that there was a circle of fire coming from the sky. It had no head. From its mouth came a breath that stank. One rod long was its body and one rod wide and it was noiseless. And the hearts of the scribes became terrified and confused, and they laid themselves flat on their bellies. They reported to the Pharaoh. Now, after some days had gone by, behold these things became more numerous in the sky than ever. They shone with the brightness of the sun, and extended to the four supports of the heaven. Dominated in the sky was the station of these five circles. The army of the Pharaoh looked on with him in their midst. It was after supper. These five circles ascended higher in the sky towards the south. Fishes and winged animals and birds fell down from the sky. A marvel never before known since the foundation of this land. And Pharaoh caused insence to be burned to make pieceon the earth. And what happened was ordered by the Pharaoh to be written in the annals of the House of Life so that it be remembered forever." Royal Records of Tuthmosis III, 1480 B.C.

Did Alexander the Great really see UFOs ?

Among the famous historical stories one frequently finds in ufological literature and all over the Internet is the supposed UFO sightings of Alexander the Great.
It apparently began in 1959 when American writer and broadcaster Frank Edwards wrote the following in his book Stranger than Science :

"Alexander the Great was not the first to see them nor was he the first to find them troublesome. He tells of two strange craft that dived repeatedly at his army until the war elephants, the men, and the horses all panicked and refused to cross the river where the incident occurred. What did the things look like? His historian describes them as great shining silvery shields, spitting fire around the rims... things that came from the skies and returned to the skies."
(Edwards, Frank. Stranger than Science. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1959).

Possibly inspired by Frank Edwards' claim, Alberto Fenoglio wrote in 1966 in the Italian ufological periodical Clypeus :

"During the siege of Tyre in the year 332 BC, strange flying objects were observed. Johann Gustav Droysen in his History of Alexander the Great [Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (1833)] does not cite it intentionally, believing it to be a fantasy of the Macedonian soldiers.

The fortress would not yield, its walls were fifty feet high and constructed so solidly that no siege-engine was able to damage it. The Tyrians disposed of the greatest technicians and builders of war-machines of the time and they intercepted in the air the incendiary arrows and projectiles hurled by the catapults on the city.

One day suddenly there appeared over the Macedonian camp these "flying shields", as they had been called, which flew in triangular formation led by an exceedingly large one, the others were smaller by almost a half. In all there were five. The unknown chronicler narrates that they circled slowly over Tyre while thousands of warriors on both sides stood and watched them in astonishment. Suddenly from the largest "shield" came a lightning-flash that struck the walls, these crumbled, other flashes followed and walls and towers dissolved, as if they had been built of mud, leaving the way open for the besiegers who poured like an avalanche through the breeches. The "flying shields" hovered over the city.

Source: 'The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus'

Christopher Columbus and Pedro Gutierrez while on the deck of the Santa Maira, observed, "a light glimmering at a great distance." It vanished and reappeared several times during the night, moving up and down, "in sudden and passing gleams." It was sighted 4 hours before land was sighted, and taken by Columbus as a sign they would soon come to land.

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From the WaterUFO.net site:

Even Christopher Columbus, it appears, saw a UFO. While patrolling the deck of the Santa Maria at about 10:00 PM on October 11, 1492, Columbus thought he saw "a light glimmering at a great distance." He hurriedly summoned Pedro Gutierrez, "a gentleman of the king's bedchamber," who also saw the light. After a short time it vanished, only to reappear several times during the night, each time dancing up and down "in sudden and passig gleams." The light, first seen four hours before land was sighted, was never explained."

A manuscript illustration of the 10th-century Japanese narrative, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, depicts a round flying machine similar to a flying saucer.[2]

A record of a saucer-shaped object is from 1290 of a silver disc flying over a village in Yorkshire.[3] Disc-like flying objects were occasionally reported throughout the millennium. For example, in a mass sighting over Nuremberg in 1561, discs and spheres were reported emerging from large cylinders. (woodcut at left) They are also claimed by ufologists to frequently show up in religious artwork.[4] Artwork of the Annunciation of Mary, for instance, frequently shows a narrow beam of light descending from a saucer-like object. (examples at right and lower left) However, it is usually even ambiguous as to whether the artists were trying to depict something that had been seen or whether there was religious symbolism involved, let alone ufos.[5]

Possibly the first well-documented instance to specifically compare the objects to saucers, and the first to be widely reported, was the Kenneth Arnold sighting on June 24, 1947, while Arnold was flying near Mount Rainier.[3] He reported seeing 9 brightly-reflecting vehicles, one shaped like a crescent but the others more disc- or saucer-shaped, flying in an echelon formation, weaving like the tail of a kite, flipping and flashing in the sun, and traveling with a speed of at least 1,200 miles per hour (1,900 km/h).[6] In addition to the saucer or disc shape (Arnold also used the terms "pie plate" and half-moon shaped), he also later said he described the motion of the craft as "like a saucer if you skip it across water", leading to the term "flying saucer" and also "flying disc" (which were synonymous for a number of years).

14th Century woodcut of the Annunciation of Mary. Annunciation artwork often depicts a narrow beam descending from saucer-like objects.

Immediately following the report, hundreds of sightings of usually saucer-like objects were reported across the United States and also in some other countries. The most widely publicized of these was the sighting by a United Airlines crew on July 4 of nine more disc-like objects pacing their plane over Idaho, not far from Arnold's initial sighting. On July 8, the Army Air Force base at Roswell, New Mexico issued a press release saying that they had recovered a "flying disc" from a nearby ranch (the so-called Roswell UFO incident, which was front-page news until the military issued a retraction saying that it was a weather balloon

The most widely cited descriptions of the events reported at Fatima are taken from the writings of John De Marchi, an Italian Catholic priest and researcher. De Marchi spent seven years in Fátima, from 1943 to 1950, conducting original research and interviewing the principals at undisturbed length.[15] In The Immaculate Heart, published in 1952, De Marchi reports that, "[t]heir ranks (those present on 13 October) included believers and non-believers, pious old ladies and scoffing young men. Hundreds, from these mixed categories, have given formal testimony. Reports do vary; impressions are in minor details confused, but none to our knowledge has directly denied the visible prodigy of the sun."[16]

A photostatic copy of a page from Ilustração Portugueza, October 29, 1917, showing the crowd looking at the Miracle of the Sun during the Fátima apparitions.

Some of the witness statements follow below. They are taken from John De Marchi's several books on the matter.

• "Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bare-headed, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws — the sun 'danced' according to the typical expression of the people." ― Avelino de Almeida,[17] writing for O Século
  O Século was Portugal's most widely circulated[18] and influential newspaper. It was pro-government and anti-clerical at the time.[17] Almeida's previous articles had been to satirize the previously reported events at Fátima.[7]

• "The sun, at one moment surrounded with scarlet flame, at another aureoled in yellow and deep purple, seemed to be in an exceedingly swift and whirling movement, at times appearing to be loosened from the sky and to be approaching the earth, strongly radiating heat." ― Dr. Domingos Pinto Coelho, writing for the newspaper Ordem.[19]

• "...The silver sun, enveloped in the same gauzy grey light, was seen to whirl and turn in the circle of broken clouds... The light turned a beautiful blue, as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral, and spread itself over the people who knelt with outstretched hands... people wept and prayed with uncovered heads, in the presence of a miracle they had awaited. The seconds seemed like hours, so vivid were they." ― Reporter for the Lisbon newspaper O Dia.[16]

• "The sun's disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible." — Dr. Almeida Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences at Coimbra University.[20]

• "As if like a bolt from the blue, the clouds were wrenched apart, and the sun at its zenith appeared in all its splendor. It began to revolve vertiginously on its axis, like the most magnificent firewheel that could be imagined, taking on all the colors of the rainbow and sending forth multicolored flashes of light, producing the most astounding effect. This sublime and incomparable spectacle, which was repeated three distinct times, lasted for about ten minutes. The immense multitude, overcome by the evidence of such a tremendous prodigy, threw themselves on their knees." ― Dr. Manuel Formigão, a professor at the seminary at Santarém, and a priest. He had attended the September visitation, and examined and questioned the children in detail several times.[20]

• "I feel incapable of describing what I saw. I looked fixedly at the sun, which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zig-zag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment." — Rev. Joaquim Lourenço, describing his boyhood experience in Alburitel, eighteen kilometers from Fatima.[21]

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  :. Renaissance Art

  The appearance of fiery chariots and hovering discs in Renaissance Era paintings - as well as beings working their controls and/or attired in garb that we commonly recognize today as spacesuits - proves, at least, that UFOs were being sighted in medieval times. While no direct connection can be isolated from this, between space aliens and religious icons, there certainly is a lot of supernatural phenomena associated in and around these depictions. The common images of one or more hovering saucer shaped metallic craft, often with highly intense beams of light emanating from the bottom, intelligently controlled and traveling at outrageous speeds - as if the artists witnessed these things first hand - are not in any sense ordinary events, even in modern times. It is extremely hard to find mention of these events, but they do exist - as scattered fragments, vague remnants, survivors of censorship. One possible explanation is that these paintings were commissioned (by the church or the state) to place these phenomena in a deified context. Officially declared to be the vessels of angels, the peasants would ask fewer annoying questions - that likely, the clergy of the day had scant answers for themselves. It is likely that ancient UFO sightings coincided with important historical and political events - and just as likely that the sightings impressed, or pressured, leaders of the day to take bold, or unusual actions. One set of images depicts a late 8th century battle, in which Saxon Crusaders besieged and surrounded the people of Sigiburg Castle, in France - when suddenly a group of saucers appeared in the sky, apparently hovering over the top of the church. The Saxons fled, believing that the French were being protected by the "flaming shields." It was a very superstitious time - but people, as today, knew what they saw - though they probably had little context to associate with it. While there were certainly no flying machines (designed by humans) in those times, there were sailing ships - people were familiar with portholes. Some depictions illustrate these and other classic UFO details - begging the question: what did the ancients think of flying saucers? Today, we are more comfortable with the idea of beings from outer space. For one thing, we know our world to be a planet, orbiting a star that is one of billions in a rather ordinary galaxy, floating somewhere in the vast reaches of the incalculably infinite universe. People of ancient times were told quite the contrary - that Earth was the center of the universe, the planets were gods, and the stars were fixed points of light on the inside of a celestial sphere. Any close encounter of any kind would most likely have been met with immediate extreme fear and wonder (as is the case today, for the most part), but considered without question to be angels, gods, demons or monsters. Their assertions may have been more on the mark than ours. There were no airplanes, weather balloons, or experimental military jets to explain away the UFOs native to the skies of the pre industrial aeons. Events such as these would not have been as easily dismissed. Would those who witnessed such craft or encountered such beings first hand, be feared as witches, seen as cursed ~ or even blessed? A medieval abductee might descend from the mountain saying, in a reverent but dazed tone, "I have been touched by the angels."