Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

“Is it a bird? Is it a plane? An unidentified flying object is spotted by a BBC Look North webcam.” – BBC, Daily Mail, Sun

Though Nick Pope has already termed it “a genuine mystery”, as in previous cases the explanation here may be very mundane. Not a bird, not a plane but…

Let’s take a look first at another “mysterious” footage captured in Brazil in 2001. Notorious spiritualist leader Chico Xavier was hospitalized, and a cameraman captured a quick pair of lights that seemed to come from the sky directly to the window of Xavier’s room!

Shortly after this phenomenon was captured, Xavier’s health got “miraculously” better. He identified the light as the spirit of his own mother. Obviously, for a spiritualist leader, the light was a spirit.

Around a year later Xavier passed away, and local TV show Fantástico had the footage analyzed by the occasion. They quoted Ricardo Bárthem, physicist at the Rio de Janeiro Federal University:

“The most probable hypothesis is that it was a lens effect, as it’s not a light coming from the sky that was cast in the building, it’s not something bright wandering around that space. It seems to me it’s due to a moving object off camera, something that went around, reflecting the sunlight. The Sun is behind the building, so it’s shining over a car, something that passed behind the camera.”

That is, the moving specks of light are internal reflections of intense sources of light in movement off-camera, which were not recorded in the videos but were captured by the most external lenses of the camera. Probably not a bird, not a plane, just reflections.

Or perhaps it’s a coincidence that both Xavier’s “spiritual” light and BBC’s “alien” light were captured in the morning, with the Sun still low in the sky.

Considering these two cases are indeed simply reflections from the sun into windshields or some other surface, it’s interesting that the exact same original phenomenon is interpreted in completely different terms according to the social context.

At the hospital where a religious leader is being treated, the lights are understood and promoted by the general media as a possible spiritual manifestation. At a morning live TV show, they are classified as UFOs even by BBC.

Why a UFO couldn’t visit a religious leader in the hospital or the spirit or that leader’s mother couldn’t appear at a morning British TV show are questions only an inconvenient skeptic would ask.

Either way, both are very similar and could be explained as reflections of the Sun, making those considerations unnecessary.

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Tim Printy’s Skeptical UFO Newsletter Lite reaches its second number featuring great articles. The main feature is “Memory Metal Madness” addressing the recent revelations of Anthony Bragalia, according to some “the most important Roswell news since Frank Kaufmann spoke to Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt”. The title of the article may give you an idea if that is indeed so.

The newsletter is packed with fresh content, including articles by Matthew Graeber and Peter Brookesmith. You can read it above or download it here.

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The Weekly World News is not in print anymore, but almost all of its issues are available on Google Books! For it’s sheer entertainment, it’s great fun, but it’s also valuable to the ordinary investigator of extraordinary claims because not so few of those claims originated directly from those pages.

Yes, Virginia, many people took those stories very seriously. From the sounds from hell to some images of Nessie, to their Internet hit of Andrew Carlssin, at some point the tabloid source was forgotten and the story lived on.

As an interesting example, browsing the archive, I was surprised to find this front cover:

It was a surprise because I recognized the image, having seen it before, quite degraded, in this version:

Which is allegedly a photo from a soviet crashed saucer in the 1930s-40s (page in Japanese, but the story circulates in many languages).

Of course, as it must be clear now, the photo is actually an original WWN hoax. Check the story below:

In this particular case, the photo survived while the original story vanished. But it’s WWN infiltrating the extraordinary claims world, being taken very seriously by some, due to not so serious “researchers”.

Obviously, true believers will say the WWN was a disinformation vehicle and that the original 1940s photo was discredited in that 1992 story. Believe it… or not.

Can you find other interesting stories in the WWN online archive? I couldn’t find the sounds from hell story… do share your finds in the comments!

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“This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. It was a circular formation in the sky that stayed over King’s Dominion [Amusement Park in Eastern Virginia] today for about 10 minutes. We looked away for a minute or two and then looked back and it was no longer there.”

The poster himself explains that

“There really was a smoke ring in the sky, and if you look through the comments or watch the attached news video, you will see that many other people saw the same thing in the sky (and even had religious experiences due to it). I am convinced now that this smoke ring did come from the volcano ride. There was not much wind that day, so the smoke ring somehow stayed intact . . . I’m not sure how, but it did. I have spoken with others from my work who were there and they have said they witnessed the same smoke ring actually come from the Volcano ride. I hope this clears up some of the questions out there.”

This is the same phenomenon more widely known in the Viborg “Jellyfish” UFO, and which happens all around the world, including Brazil, of which an image follows below.

Smoke rings can be that surprising. In Portuguese, see “Os OVNIs de Vórtice” for more photos and cases.

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The 1996 Tim Burton movie was based off the original, violent and utterly cool 1962 trading cards, which you can now appreciate in high resolution glory. [via Nerdcore]

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