Lee Speigel

Scientologists Get Sarcastic Apology After Pilots Spot UFOs Over United Kingdom Church Headquarters

2013-06-18T11:05:46-04:00

This story has it all: UFOs spotted by pilots of three commercial jets, radar confirmation of the UFOs from air traffic controllers, reports that the UFOs were close to the U.K. headquarters of the Church of Scientology, and a sarcastic apology to the church from a tabloid.

These events, which only recently came to light, actually unfolded nearly six months ago.

On Dec. 30, around 9 a.m., as three passenger planes were on final approach to London's Gatwick Airport (image below), the pilots reported "two flat silver discs ahead," as stated in the subsequently released official report issued by United Kingdom Airprox Board.

According to the official site, an Airprox "is a situation in which, in the opinion of a pilot or a controller, the distance between aircraft as well as their relative positions and speed have been such that the safety of the aircraft involved was or may have been compromised."

"All three pilots on the flight deck [of a B777 aircraft] saw the objects, which passed 100-200 feet below; the crews in two subsequent aircraft also saw the objects. They informed Air Traffic Control of the incident and he assessed the risk as low," the report stated.

The identity of the objects was not determined, despite the fact that the B777 crew suggested the UFOs may have possibly been toys, and "details of the incident were passed to the local police authority and London Terminal Control."

At one point, Gatwick radar picked up returns of six UFOs before they disappeared from their screens. Those radar blips included one "on the outskirts of East Grinstead," which just happens to be the location of the U.K. national headquarters of the Church of Scientology.

The official Airprox Board conclusion stated that "the nature of the objects has not been resolved. There was no doubt that the B777 crew and two subsequent flights had seen a couple of objects, reported by the B777 crew as man-made and toy-like....the risk was deemed unassessable."

The U.K. tabloid The Sun took the story in an off-beat direction by playing up the allegation that Scientologists "believe aliens inhabit human bodies."

The Sun followed that up on June 13 with a short story, "Aliens: An Apology":

"In an article on Saturday headlined 'Flying Saucers Over British Scientology HQ,' we stated 'two flat silver discs' were seen 'above the Church of Scientology HQ.'

"Following a letter from lawyers for the Church, we apologize to any alien lifeforms for linking them to Scientologists."

The Church of Scientology did not return The Huffington Post's calls for a statement about the Sun's apology.

Scientology, which boasts numerous celebrity members, was founded by writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1952 and promotes the idea that humans are immortal beings with reincarnated souls.

When the Airprox Board report was finally released (which included numerous other unrelated reports over a five-month period), The Sun referenced the fact that right after the UFOs happened to be in the vicinity of the Scientology location at the end of December, Scientologists in New Mexico created a huge crop circle-type formation that could easily be seen from high in the sky (see image below).

But was there any real connection to the objects seen in the sky over the U.K. and the "carved message" to ETs in New Mexico?

"It's one of these ironies that the attention-grabbing part of this story is probably the least significant, i.e. the supposed proximity to the Church of Scientology headquarters," said former U.K. Ministry of Defense officer Nick Pope.

"The fact of the matter is that, when I was doing the UFO job, we had several hundred sightings each year. There was, literally, no area of the U.K. that didn't see sightings."

Between 1991 and 1994, Pope was in charge of the Ministry of Defense office that investigated UFO reports in that country. He told HuffPost why this recent UFO encounter over the U.K. was significant.

"Essentially, it is almost like a Ufological perfect storm: Pilot witnesses coupled with radar evidence resulting in an official document, the veracity of which cannot be challenged. Very seldom do we get all those things together, even in pilot cases, where it's often anecdotal."

Pope's biggest concern with this case has nothing to do with the flimsy Scientology connection to the objects seen by the pilots and radar. He says it's more about the possibility that the UFOs came "100 feet from disaster."

"It actually doesn't matter what you think these things were. Neither does it matter what you believe or don't believe about the UFO mystery. This is a bigger issue and is something that demands to be taken much more seriously than it is.

"All this focusing on the Scientology angle has almost obscured [the attention paid to] something passing maybe 100 feet from a commercial aircraft," Pope said. "What would've happened if one or more of these objects had collided with the plane and brought it down? Clearly, we'd be talking about massive casualties.

"Safety should always be the highest priority."

Cigar-Shaped UFO Over Wisconsin And Bright Orbs Above Colombia -- What's In Our Skies? (VIDEO)

2013-06-12T08:22:09-04:00

What's up in our skies?

UFOs were seen and videotaped recently over Wisconsin and Colombia. These objects -- different and diverse from each other -- are worth looking at just to consider whether they are truly unknown or just misidentified aircraft or computer-made nonsense.

First, a rarely seen, large cigar-shaped device, reportedly videotaped over Wisconsin, on May 31 and posted by UFObook, calling itself "a new kind of UFO agency on YouTube. Our goal is to upload real UFO sightings because with today's modern computer technology, you can fake many things."

The name of the videographer in this case isn't given, along with any information about the camera used to record the UFO, which, at one point, actually looks like a giant tapered, fine-pointed pencil in the sky. The YouTube site only offers the following description:

"This video of a cigar-shaped aircraft in the rain was recorded north of Appleton, WI. It hovers on one spot and turns slowly. The author of this video discovered it when he was looking out of his window. He got his camera with video function to capture it."

That's it. No other information is provided about the person who took the video, and who doesn't seem phased or excited in any way while the nearly two-and-a-half-minute-long video unfolds.

According to Open Minds.tv, reactions to the UFO have run the gamut from a "blimp," "terrible fake," and "open sky with the UFO added in with CGI," to a "pencil hanging from a string."

After examining the recent photos of a possible UFO over the Muiderslot Castle in the Netherlands -- which he determined to be an insect -- former FBI Special Agent Ben Hansen stepped in to help The Huffington Post with these latest UFO videos.

"I'm saying the cigar-shaped one is computer-generated imagery," Hansen told HuffPost in an email. "There's no indication that the thing is turning, despite the description. I think they did a good job with the tracking as far as their zooming is concerned, but it looks like all they did was make the size increase and then decrease to a point.

"The movement was way too smooth -- I'd say definitely computer software. It couldn't stay in one place so steadily without some drifting by the wind. You can see that the clouds move slightly to the right, and a craft would be fighting that current and it had no dimensionality to it when it supposedly turned."

A couple of days after the alleged Wisconsin aerial event, multiple witnesses in different towns of Colombia watched and videotaped something in the sky they couldn't identify.

According to Colombia's Caracol News, citizens of several towns in the Valle del Cauca section of Colombia reported a red light, hovering in the sky around 9 p.m. on June 9.

Open Minds.tv reports that even though Adolfo Escobar, the mayor of Pradera, explained the UFOs as flares that had been launched by the local army, eyewitnesses preferred to believe the lights had a more supernatural source.

Watch this unusual light in the sky over Pradera, Colombia:

"The Colombian videos looked legit, but I'd agree with the mayor that they're probably flares," said Hansen.

"From the video, the pulsating light reflecting off the clouds is consistent with flare illumination. It also had a downward motion and sometimes more lateral, but never up. It either disappeared behind the cloud or extinguished, but there was no indication of unconventional movement. More probably it was a military flare rather than a Chinese lantern because they typically extinguish before they descend," Hansen concluded.

Probably the biggest obstacle these days in determining the true identity of any UFO videos is the abundance of inexpensive computer software that makes it so easy to create a UFO, upload it to YouTube and claim it as the real thing.

The entire UFO subject has become so convoluted that nobody knows who or what to believe anymore.

UFOs aren't always what they seem...check some of these out:

UFO With S-Shaped Fin Photographed Over Netherlands Castle

2013-06-08T09:43:56-04:00

Literally faster than the eye could follow, an unusual object was accidentally photographed above the landmark Muiderslot Castle in the Netherlands.

On May 25, Corinne Federer and her mother visited the medieval castle, built in 1285 near Amsterdam. Federer, a supply chain manager for adidas in Amsterdam, and an avid photographer, was shooting High Dynamic Range, or HDR, photos of the castle.

"In order to create HDR images, you take three or more exposures -- this one happened to be five -- and you shoot them all at the same time, because you then overlap the images and it gives you the full spectrum of light, which your camera can't capture but your eyes can," Federer, 43, told The Huffington Post in an exclusive interview.

Check out these detailed images of the Muiderslot Castle UFO:

When Federer reviewed some of the images she had taken, she was startled to see that in one five-image progression, something unusual appeared.

"It was a tubular-shaped object that had an S-shaped fin on it. If it had been any type of missile, it would've had multiple fins, but facing the same direction. We heard nothing, it was completely quiet out. The more I flipped through the frames, it was kind of creepy," Federer recalled. "I've been shooting for quite some time and I've seen other stuff in the news, but I've never seen anything [like this] with my own eye.

"I couldn't wait to get home where I could blow it up and see what was really there. I looked at the image information -- at the shutter speed -- and (the object) was blurred at 1/250th of a second, so it had to be going superfast. The object is not in the frame before or after, so it had to be going really, really fast. I was kind of blown away."

Federer made some adjustments in the gray scale settings of the raw images and boosted the blacks and shadows to produce secondary images that further clarified the mystery object. She then realized that, within the five-image sequence -- keeping in mind that these five pictures were taken within a one-second time frame -- in the image following the appearance of the UFO on the right side, suddenly she saw a portion of another object (or the same one), but on the left side of the exposure.

"The most interesting part of that, for me, is those fins are on the opposite side. At first, I thought the fin side must be a tail, but after looking at it from the second image, it almost looked like the fins were (at) the front and it was turning around and coming back into the frame."

Further intrigued, HuffPost reached out to Ben Hansen, a former FBI special agent, who has used his investigative skills to analyze thousands of videos and photographs of alleged paranormal events.

We asked Hansen, the lead host of Syfy Channel's "Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files," to give us his opinion of the Muiderslot Castle UFO images.

"Having reviewed the raw files, there's no overt indication that the photos have been manipulated with post editing software," he told HuffPost in an email.

"The object's appearance is internally consistent with the rest of the photo. For instance, look at the darker area of the underside of the object compared with the clouds. The shadowing is similar on the underside as well as the lighting on the top of the object and the clouds where the sun is brightest. Having the sun in the frame is helpful because it indicates where shadows should appear. This further supports that the object was photographed 'in-camera' and not added later."

Hansen doesn't agree with Federer's suggestion that the object traveled from left to right and then back again.

"If we were to assume that the protrusions are stabilizing airfoils -- such as might be found on a rocket or jet -- then it would make sense that the larger fins would be placed on the rear of the object and, consequently, we would know its direction," Hansen wrote. "However, the available pixels which blur and separate the protrusions from the main body equally suggest maybe they are NOT airfoils, but some other part of the object that is in rapid motion."

So, what exactly does Hansen think Federer captured in the blink of an eye?

"If I had to place my money on it, I would say that we're looking at insects. We typically see many wing protrusions on insect rod cases, but they do come in the single pair variety, too. It all depends on the shutter speeds and motion of the insects."

Another thing makes this case a little more interesting. While Hansen was closely studying the images captured by Federer, he noticed something else (see above).

"I found another object. To the right of the sun, we see a slender, almost disk-shaped object that appears to have no protrusions. Hmmm."

Federer isn't sure what she photographed over the Muiderslot Castle that day, but offers a personal cosmic view of things.

"When I look at the amazing photography which captures the night sky in long exposures, and you can see how many stars are out there, I think there's absolutely no way that we're alone. So I don't find it unreasonable to believe that there's another habitable planet somewhere that has started exploring space.

"Maybe they're more advanced than we are and they've come by to see what's going on here."

Watch these videos of reported UFOs from around the world:

'Jellyfish UFO' Over Peru Captured By News Cameraman (VIDEO)

2013-06-04T10:34:29-04:00

A news video has revealed an unexplained aerial object in the sky above Lima, Peru. The UFO was seen on May 30 and described by eyewitnesses as similar to a jellyfish, but changed its shape several times, according to the International Business Times.

The UFO was videotaped for 10 minutes by Christian Ubillus, a cameraman for Peru's television network Frecuencia Latina Channel 2. The video was subsequently aired on the news program "90 Segundos," reports Open Minds.tv.

Watch this Peru news report about the jellyfish-type UFO:

Nuestro Pasado Extraterrestre, a Peruvian blog, suggested the UFO resembled a "balloon chain and turns out to be very similar to the numerous cases of sightings of EBANIs" (Entidad Biological Anomalous No Identificada, or translated to Unidentified Aerial Biological Entities), "because its flight would appear to be intelligent."

Whether this UFO turns out to be a bunch of balloons or some kind of biological creature is still anyone's guess in a country that has a huge share of unexplained aerial phenomena. According to "90 Segundos," Peru has "the third largest UFO sightings in the world after the U.S. and Mexico."

And speaking of UFOs south of the border, the sighting and videotaping of the Peru object coincided on the same day -- May 30 -- with another reported UFO that was filmed flying over and then entering Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano.

Check out these changing images of the Peruvian UFO:

'Jellyfish UFO' Over Peru Captured By News Cameraman (VIDEO)

2013-06-04T10:34:29-04:00

UFO Appears To Deliberately Enter Mexico's Popocatepetl Volcano (VIDEO)

2013-06-02T13:33:03-04:00

In a new video, a UFO seems to approach Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano, then slows down, turns and deliberately enters the smoldering volcano crater.

The video, recorded on May 30 at around 8:30 p.m., is the latest in a series of alleged UFO events that have taken place near the central Mexico active volcano since late 2012.

Watch the video broadcast over Mexico's FOROtv:

Mexico's media company, Televisa, monitors any daily activity around the volcano, which is about 40 miles south of Mexico City. Last November, video images showed what appeared to be a brightly lit, cigar-shaped object plunging into the top of Popocatepetl.

At the time, Marc Dantonio -- chief photo and video analyst of the Mutual UFO Network -- suggested the object was "a meteor captured on successive video frames."

HuffPost asked Dantonio, who creates special effects and is contracted by the U.S. Navy, Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, to weigh in on this latest video.

"What I think is that this is not a likely fake. I think, for the moment, this is a genuine image capture," he told HuffPost in an email.

"This is a low light camera (which) allows the vulcanologists studying the footage to see any incandescence on the flank of the volcano in night shots. As such, any brighter lights that are captured will appear very bright, as the one planet/star indicates."

Dantonio points out that the camera created a time lapse video of still shots put together.

"When played back at normal video speeds, the object is made to appear to be moving very fast, but, in fact, it is moving at aircraft speeds if you play it at the proper frame rate for the capture."

While he admits the time lapse effect prevents confirmation that the object had wingtip strobes, which would help prove the terrestrial aircraft argument, Dantonio asserts that the flying object "is turning at a rate consistent with aircraft, but the case that it is descending is not at all made. In this case, the object is moving from right to left and appears to be descending, but it is exactly this behavior you see if an aircraft at altitude is heading away from you -- this is the consequence of perspective and round Earth."

While the jury is still out on this most recent video, Dantonio isn't buying that we're seeing an alien craft headed for a hot volcanic bath.

"I am leaning toward the object being a captured commercial jet passing through the field of view. Several elements of this video are initially startling, firstly that the object appears to be moving fast, and secondly, that it appears to be descending into the volcano.

"Because this is a time lapse video, however, the speed is an illusion, and the flight path of the object and the descending appearance are likely an illusion of perspective, as well."

Check out these other UFO videos from around the world:

UFO Appears To Deliberately Enter Mexico's Popocatepetl Volcano (VIDEO)

2013-06-02T13:33:03-04:00

UFO Sightings In Canada Doubled In 2012, Breaking Previous Record

2013-06-01T12:13:14-04:00

Canadians saw more UFOs than ever before. In 2012, 1,981 sightings (compared to 986 in 2011) were reported. That's almost double the previous annual record of 1,004 reports in 2008, according to CBC News.

"It's something across the board," said Canadian science writer Chris Rutkowski, director of Ufology Research, who has compiled the Canada UFO report since 1989. "People in Canada were actually looking up into the sky more [in 2012] than in previous years."

CBC News acquired documents under the Canadian Access to Information Act, indicating that government no longer has an interest in investigating UFOs.

Watch this CBC News report on the Canada UFO surge:

Last year's UFO sightings were collected by civilian groups, who forward the information to Rutkowski.

"It is very easy to report online, anonymously, without any worry about judgment or retribution, so I think it is very likely people will be reporting things more often to civilian organizations," Rutkowski told CBC News.

The types of UFOs reported throughout Canada include typically seen disc-shaped objects, large squares, triangular black craft, balls of fire and even objects shaped like guitar picks.

Most UFO reports, whether in Canada, the U.S. or anywhere else in the world, can be easily explained after any serious investigation. Rutkowski estimates that 7.5 percent of last year's Canadian UFOs remain -- even temporarily -- unexplained.

"While there is no real difference between an average person seeing an unidentified thing in the sky and a pilot or police officer, there is every reason to think there are actually more things in the sky these days to be concerned about," according to Doubtful News.

"We have remote-controlled toys, balloons, Chinese lanterns, even deliberate hoaxes that people are making. Add to this the regular things in the sky that people mistake for weird, like normal aircraft, Venus, satellites or the moon.

"Just because there are a lot of unidentified things in the sky does not mean we are being invaded by aliens."

UFOs? Maybe they're just...

Dead Bigfoot Rumors Or Just Bigbear Footprints?

2013-05-29T18:10:41-04:00

Did someone shoot and kill a Bigfoot in Pennsylvania and then call 911 to say he had proof of the yet-to-be-proven creature?

After confusing reports over the past couple of weeks, it appears this was a case of a story that became mired in rumor and fiction.

Back on May 14, John Winesickle, a resident of Paint Township in Pennsylvania's Somerset County, called 911, claiming to have proof of Bigfoot, according to WTAJ News.

Excerpt from the 911 call:

DISPATCHER: "He wants a police officer to come to his residence. He apparently has proof there of Bigfoot."

OFFICER: "Bigfoot, right?"

DISPATCHER: "That's affirmative. He has evidence proving Bigfoot."

Winesickle showed some footprints to an investigating officer, who concluded the tracks had been made by a bear (see print image below).

When WTAJ suggested they were bear prints to Winesickle, he adamantly refused to believe it.

"No, no, no. A bear can't go down a steep bank on all twos. That's proven this is a Bigfoot," said Winesickle, who has a collection of footprint pictures that he claims is proof of the existence of the elusive, tall, hairy creature of legend.

Winesickle's 911 call resulted in online rumors that twisted the story around to sound like someone had called in to report they had killed Bigfoot, according to the Daily American.

"There are the conspiracy theorists who say it's a cover-up," said Eric Altman, president of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society. "But it was blown completely out of proportion."

Check out the original police report posted by the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society:

On her Doubtful News site, Sharon Hill notes there was "no Bigfoot, no body, no corroboration of the story. It all falls apart upon examination. But as usual, the Bigfoot blogging community ran ahead with the hyped rumor [of a dead Bigfoot], which turned out to be a bust. That's how these things usually go."

Check out these alleged Bigfoot images:

San Diego UFO Photographed Over Historical Edgemoor Barn

2013-05-23T18:57:46-04:00

What exactly did Ellen Henry photograph in the sky above Santee, Calif., on May 7?

"It was clear and certainly not a bug," Henry told local ABC TV affiliate News 10.

Henry is a member of the Santee Historical Society (SHS) located in San Diego County and, according to the SanteePatch, was taking pictures of a historical building, the Edgemoor Barn.

"I was at the Edgemoor property, in the middle of the day, to take pics of the barn to update the SHS barn logo. I was constantly looking up and around the area, including the sky's background, so I can get it just right, and not at anytime did I see anything in the sky or heard a sound of an aircraft," she said.

It wasn't until after she took the picture that Henry realized her camera had captured something else that she hadn't previously seen.

"I noticed a 'speck' on my LCD screen after I took the shot to check for clarity, and only realized it wasn't a speck when I downloaded it on my computer."

The Edgemoor Barn -- now a museum -- just celebrated its 100th birthday. It was once part of a hospital facility and has developed a reputation for paranormal activity, including alleged ghost sightings.

Check out this ABC 10 News report about the Santee UFO:

"The barn sits under several flight paths," said Janet Kwak in her on-air 10News report. "We called Gillespie Field and MCAS Miramar (Marine Corps Air Station), but neither could offer an explanation."

"There is no way this was a commercial aircraft," Henry said. "I would have heard it, especially as low as it seemed to be. Someone did mention perhaps it was a drone. However, I have not seen any drones that were round or oval, and lacking wings, rudders or propellers -- even the drone that looks like a fly has wings."

Another unusual thing happened: Henry reports that right after she snapped the UFO, her camera mysteriously stopped working.

Check out this collection of UFO videos from around the world:

Ata -- The So-Called '6-Inch Alien' -- May Have An Earthling Cousin, And Ripley's Wants To Find Him

2013-05-22T14:16:05-04:00

When a new documentary promised to unveil DNA tests on a 6-inch-tall humanoid found 10 years ago in Chile, everyone weighed in with an opinion.

UFO researchers hoped this might finally be proof of alien visitations. Skeptics were sure it was nothing more than shameless movie promotion.

The latest ripple in this controversy might be the most bizarre turn yet.

And by "ripple," I mean Ripley -- as in "Believe It or Not!"

The tiny mummified figure -- better known as Ata (pictured at right in the above image) -- was found in Chile's Atacama Desert in 2003. It is featured in the recent documentary "Sirius." Even after detailed X-rays, CAT scans and DNA analysis, questions are still being asked about Ata's origin.

Genetic testing -- while not totally conclusive yet -- strongly suggests Ata is 91 percent human. But it's the other 9 percent of unknown properties that still have experts scratching their heads. Further DNA analysis might help unravel the mystery.

Part of the controversy involves some scientists claiming Ata was a human who lived six to eight years, while others insist Ata was a mummified aborted human fetus. You can't have it both ways.

And now, meet Atta Boy (pictured at left in above image). Yes, Atta Boy, also around 6-inches tall, also from the Atacama Desert area as Ata, but reportedly from Bolivia or Peru.

Check out these rarely seen images of Atta Boy shared with HuffPost by Ripley's Believe It or Not!

A new book, "A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert 'Believe It or Not!' Ripley," has emerged about the life of the globehopping millionaire of the 1930s. His passion for weird and strange things resulted in an international empire of books, cartoons, radio shows and museums dedicated to the strangest oddities of the world.

The book includes a little image from 1933 showing a 6-and-a-half-inch-tall figure standing on Ripley's outstretched hand (see below). The caption refers to the diminutive human as Atta Boy, with a reference to the Peruvian Jivaro Indians (also known as the Shuar), known for their expertise in creating shrunken heads.

"I came across Atta Boy a few times in my research, Neal Thompson, author of "A Curious Man," told The Huffington Post. "One thing Ripley was fascinated by was the miniaturization of the human form, for example, in the cultures where they practiced the shrinking of heads.

"As far as I know, regarding Atta Boy, Ripley didn't leave behind any specific notes about where he obtained it or the background of the body of the boy -- it's a bit of a mystery. I know that Ripley portrayed Atta Boy as a real human as opposed to an alien. He believed that it was an actual miniature mummified human."

Part of the mystery of Atta Boy is whether or not he was a shrunken human or a mummified fetus. The origins of this artifact are not known and after the 1930s, he vanished into obscurity -- or into someone's private collection.

"It appears to me to be a mummified fetus as opposed to a shrunken body," said Edward Meyer, Ripley's vice president of exhibits and archives. "Having seen actual shrunken bodies, it looks very, very different."

But what about the coincidences piling up between Ata and Atta Boy? Both are about 6 inches tall, both from reportedly neighboring South American countries, both from the Atacama Desert area, and both with their own mysteries as to their origins. Are there other coincidences that have yet to emerge?

"I wouldn't even call it coincidence. I just think it's the same story 70 or 80 years later," Meyer told HuffPost. "I don't think that there's just one. I personally believe [Atta Boy] is more likely a Bolivian mummy than a Jivaro shrunken body."

Meyer adds that there were only three known cases where an entire body was shrunk.

"The key thing with the three full bodies is that they're all believed to have been done by a German doctor in Peru. Someone showed him how to do a shrunken head, and he may have wanted to go one step further by trying the whole body.

"To shrink the body, you've got to get all of the bones out. Your skin is like leather, it'll boil, but your bones will not shrink. That's one of the things with shrunken heads that people don't understand," Meyer explained.

"The Jivaro Indians were keeping the head because that is where the soul is supposed to be -- the whole purpose of the shrunken head is to capture your enemy's soul."

Could Ata and Atta Boy be somehow related? It would certainly help if we knew where Atta Boy currently resides -- if anywhere.

Atta Boy is Meyer's personal Holy Grail and he doesn't think HuffPost is crazy for suggesting there might be both a geographical and personal relationship between Ata and Atta Boy.

"If anybody knows where the original Atta Boy is, write to me at meyer@ripleys.com. I have to think that there's a story that's better than the modern Ata if we could find where this thing is or where it's been."

And Ripley's wants to sweeten the deal a little bit. The first person who supplies Ripley's with information that leads to the whereabouts of Atta Boy will receive a lifetime pass to any of the 32 worldwide Ripley's Odditoriums as well as a single-visit pass to each of the Ripley's Aquariums.

If Atta Boy can be found and DNA samples from him could be compared with little Ata, who knows how this could all evolve.

Watch the following video images of Chile's Ata humanoid:

Life After Death Project: Forrest J Ackerman's Friends Claim He's Speaking To Them From The Dead

2013-05-17T01:38:16-04:00

When Forrest J Ackerman was alive, he'd scoff at anyone who would claim they could speak to the dead.

Now that he's dead, some people say he's speaking from the Great Beyond.

Ackerman, who passed away in 2008, is a legend in the sci-fi community, for, among other things, coining the phrase "sci-fi." Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Peter Jackson were among the avid readers of his influential Famous Monsters Of Filmland magazine. He was also co-creator of the popular comic book superheroine Vampirella.

PHOTOS: (Story Continues Below)

Ackerman was a skeptic in the supernatural. But now, some of his followers believe this dead man is trying to make contact with them.

It all started shortly after his death, when an odd ink blot mysteriously appeared on a sheet of paper at the home of his friend, filmmaker Paul Davids.

Davids had printed out the paper that included a list of business meetings. The ink on the paper was completely dry as he left the room. When he returned, he discovered a black ink blot had somehow covered a group of words, "Spoke to Joe Amodei."

"I had no idea why these particular words were blacked out," Davids told The Huffington Post. "It made no sense to me until later, when I was researching Forry's editorial style and I found lots of examples of where he blacked out words so completely. I have found 15 examples of where Forry found a name within a name or a word within a word as being a hidden word to make a pun or a point out of it."

Davids believes this was the first in a series of unexplained instances where Ackerman was trying to communicate with him. He eventually involved several university scientists to try to explain these phenomena explored in "The Life After Death Project," a documentary that premiered this week on the Syfy channel.

Some might claim Davids' work is more akin to the Syfy channel's fantasy-based programming, perhaps during hour 72 of a "Twilight Zone" marathon. But Davids is dead serious.

"I first met Forry in 1964 and we were friends for more than 40 years," said Davids, producer-director of "The Life After Death Project."

"Forry professed total skepticism and atheism. He had zero belief in the paranormal, didn't believe there was an afterlife, certainly didn't believe in God and didn't subscribe to any religion."

Watch a trailer for 'The Life After Death Project'

When Davids experienced the ink blot episode in 2009, it led him on a quest to determine if Ackerman's spirit was somehow responsible.

"I felt what had happened was impossible. There was no one in the house but me, I hadn't done it, how could it have happened?"

Davids had the ink stain examined by Jay Siegel, chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Indiana.

"I've been practicing chemistry over 30 years, and when you learn science, you learn to be skeptical of things. You learn to require data and evidence in order to make statements and conclusions that you can rely on," Siegel discusses in the documentary.

"Sometimes there are circumstances which simply can't be explained by your five senses or by all of the tools of science, and I think there are some aspects of that in this situation that give one pause. I would say disturbing, a bit, only because I'm a scientist."

The strange ink blot was also examined by John Allison, a chemistry professor and expert on inks, paints and solvents at The College of New Jersey.

"How it was created in such a uniform way, we haven't been able to reproduce that," Allison said of his analysis. "I don't know how to recreate this. I couldn't do it. In forensics, you try to find explanations, and we usually don't resort to interactions or intervention from someone from beyond the grave, but I can't rule that out."

Was it the spirit of Ackerman that somehow added the unexplained ink to the document, as a way of making his presence known?

Watch this 1986 video of Forrest J Ackerman giving a short tour of his multimillion-dollar science fiction and horror collection:

The whole idea of life after death and the question of whether humans survive physical death is one of those ageless and controversial topics that's difficult to know for certain. We've all heard stories of ghostly encounters with entities that are claimed to be restless spirits. But is it proof that our consciousness or spirit continues to live after the body gives out?

At the University of Arizona, Gary Schwartz directs the Laboratory For Advances In Consciousness And Health. After 15 years investigating the possibility of life after death, he's working on ways of developing actual scientific tools that could herald a breakthrough in communications between the living and the dead.

That's a big leap, and one that skeptics and debunkers of the subject will undoubtedly sink their teeth into.

"First of all, anyone who will discount physical evidence that has been independently evaluated by forensic experts, or who will dismiss research mediums, conducted under conditions that rule out fraud and cold reading -- anyone who discounts evidence using state of the art technology under controlled conditions is essentially anti-science. That is just biased dismissal of real data," Schwartz -- formerly on the faculties of Harvard and Yale, and currently a professor of psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry and surgery -- told HuffPost.

Schwartz has experimented with something called the Silicon Photomultiplier System, technology that detects single photons of light in pitch black. "It's used in biomedical imaging and in biochemistry devices. The system is placed within a box, within a box, within a box, so it's truly light-tight.

"Then what you do is invite specific spirits -- I affectionately refer to them as departed hypothesized co-investigators -- and you look to see whether the number of photons counted, per unit period of time, is greater when a spirit is invited into the chamber versus controls, and that's what we found."

Schwartz explained that they increased the control part of the experiments by setting up a sophisticated automated program that ran the system at night when no one was in the laboratory.

"At four o'clock in the afternoon, the experimenter would read a standard script which would speak to [invited spirits], letting them know that the experiment would be running in the lab and asking them to follow instructions on the large computer screen: 'Please show up at the laboratory at 11 o'clock at night. Thank you very much. I'll pick up the data in the morning.'"

The researchers did this many times over many nights. "Much to my amazement, sure enough, the data clearly indicated that there was increased structure -- patterns of light -- in the spirit-present trials compared to the pre-baselines or the post-baselines."

In 2011, Schwartz submitted a paper to the scientific journal Explore, where "it was peer-reviewed and critically analyzed and it passed muster. And so the question is how do you explain those data?"

Schwartz is featured in Davids' "The Life After Death Project," and believes the evidence presented in it strongly suggests that Ackerman's spirit is still "alive and well."

"This isn't just honoring the life of Ackerman, but it's the first-ever collection of evidence from a single, formerly physical person ever chronicled with the totality of the evidence as convincing as any single case I've ever heard of in the history of this work."

Richard French, Ex-Air Force Lt. Colonel, 'It Was A UFO And . . . There Were Aliens Aboard It'

2013-05-13T12:21:57-04:00

When Air Force Lt. Col. Richard French was an alleged lead investigator of Project Blue Book in the 1950s, his job was to shoot down false reports of UFOs.

Given his job, French never dreamed he'd end up in Newfoundland one day watching what appeared to him to be two extraterrestrials performing repairs on a submerged, unknown circular craft.

In Washington, D.C., recently, the 83-year-old retired officer testified at the Citizen Hearing On Disclosure panel of six former members of Congress about his work as a UFO debunker in 1952.

French recounted how the Newfoundland incident unfolded decades ago, in the early 1950s, after two UFOs were seen by many people off the coast of St. John's. French's superiors ordered him to look into the situation.

"They said, 'We have a UFO report and we want you to investigate it,' and that was standard for what I was doing," French told The Huffington Post. "They told me there were two of them involved and that they were deep under the water, after entering the water doing roughly 100 miles an hour.

"There were a lot of people assembled on the wharf, at least 100 standing around just looking in amazement at the water, including several local policemen."

Watch Ret. Air Force Lt. Col. Richard French at the Citizen Hearing On Disclosure:

French recalls the water was very clear and he could see two circular craft, each one about 18 feet in diameter and approximately 3 feet thick. He said the two objects were floating below the surface of the water, a couple of feet apart, not more than 20 feet from the shore. And he saw two beings in the water near the ships.

"The first thing I saw was the UFOs, and it was apparent to me that they were doing something to the craft, and I couldn't really tell what because they were on the bottom side of it and not visible to me except when they would occasionally get over to the side where I could see them. The water was fairly clear and I could see without any trouble. They weren't down at the bottom of the [seabed] -- they were about half way down."

French told HuffPost that the two beings he saw "were about 2 or 3 feet tall, light grey in color, very thin, long arms with either two or three fingers. The top of their heads was much wider than their jaw line, their eyes were very slanted and you couldn't see pupils in them. They looked the way [aliens] have been depicted in motion pictures."

As the Air Force UFO debunker watched, he claims one of the ships began to rise out of the water.

"When it hit the [surface], it was going about 100 miles an hour. It then accelerated to somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500 to 3,000 miles an hour and disappeared. It returned about 20 minutes later, slowed down to nearly a stop before it entered the water, then went down, and the two [beings] worked together.

"It took them about 20 minutes and then the two ships departed together, again slow when they exited the water, and immediately they sped up to a very high speed. I believe they were repairing [the ship] and tested that the repairs had been adequate, and then away they went."

Watch French talk about his job as an Air Force UFO debunker:

Ironically, French's job at the time -- as a Project Blue Book investigator -- was to debunk UFOs. So, what kind of report did he file with Blue Book about this case he had personally witnessed?

"Needless to say, it was a fictitious report, as all of them were. I didn't really say that they were UFOs -- I said that there was something we didn't know -- some type of foreign or unrecognizable vehicle there. In other words, I weasel-worded it.

"Oh, I think without a doubt it was a UFO and I think there were aliens aboard it. There's no question in my mind that was exactly what it was, and my duty was to debunk the story, so I did my best to do so."

The events of the Newfoundland UFO and alleged aliens took place some 60 years ago, in the days before everyone had a digital camera or image-capture cell phone in their pocket. Despite the fact that there are no photographs to substantiate the report, it's still an amazing story.

So what are we to make of this? Because it's not the first time French has stirred up the UFO-ET pot.

Last year, he told HuffPost exclusively that there wasn't just one UFO crash near Roswell, N.M., in 1947 -- he said there were two.

Citizen Hearing On Disclosure: Pilots Testify To UFO Encounters (Live Updates Day 5)

2013-05-03T11:11:44-04:00

A former FAA official as well as private, commercial and military pilots are on tap to testify on UFO encounters as the Citizen Hearing On Disclosure (CHD) at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., draws to a close.

Also scheduled for discussions between panel witnesses and a committee of former members of Congress are the topics of an alleged UFO truth embargo, possible alien technology and the hope of ultimate UFO disclosure.

Click Here For Live Updates

In the following hearing highlight, former U.K. police officer Gary Heseltine testifies on behalf of law enforcement personnel who've had UFO encounters:

Watch this highlight of nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, original civilian investigator of the 1947 Roswell UFO incident:

Citizen Hearing On Disclosure Day 4: Global UFO Encounters Take The Stage (Live Updates)

2013-05-02T11:09:03-04:00

It's international day at the Citizen Hearing On Disclosure (CHD), in Washington, D.C., in which several individuals, including military personnel, will present testimony of UFO encounters in other countries.

At the National Press Club this week, 40 international researchers and military/agency witnesses are presenting testimony in front of a committee made up of six former members of Congress.

In the following highlight from yesterday's testimony, researcher Grant Cameron reads from a Top Secret Canadian government memo which declares UFOs to be "the most highly classified subject in the United States":

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In this second highlight from yesterday, former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace executive Robert Wood talks about his efforts to authenticate important UFO documents: