From mysterious encounters at military bases to unexplained phenomena at remote locations, join us as we explore some of the most unsettling aerial phenomena ever documented. These cases have left witnesses shaken, investigators puzzled, and continue to challenge our understanding of reality.
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00:00There's a whole fleet of them, look on the ASA.
00:03My gosh!
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our 10 picks for alleged UFO encounters that make us feel just a bit uncomfortable.
00:15What is that?
00:16I don't know what that is!
00:24Number 10. The Westall UFO Incident, Melbourne, Australia.
00:28Something very strange appeared in the sky above the suburb of Westall. It hasn't been explained to this day.
00:35In the spring of 1966, around 200 people witnessed what remains Australia's most notable UFO encounter.
00:42Staff and students of Westall High School were on recess when they saw a silverish-gray cigar or disc-shaped object silently performing strange maneuvers overhead.
00:51The craft, followed by about five light aircraft, eventually descended into a nearby field known as the Grange Reserve.
00:58Some students raced to the site, and according to several witnesses, one got extremely close to the object and fainted.
01:05And then the craft suddenly shot off, leaving a circular imprint on the grass.
01:09About how long after the object had vanished in the trees?
01:13Oh, I think it was only 20 minutes, which is not a long time.
01:17Within an hour, a military team arrived and cleared the area.
01:21Andrew Greenwood, a science teacher present during the sighting, backed the students' accounts.
01:26Days later, he was visited at home by a man in a Royal Australian Air Force uniform and another in civilian clothes.
01:33Greenwood claimed they spoke to him in a threatening manner, warning him not to talk, citing national security, and even threatening his career.
01:40Afterward, Greenwood became noticeably more reserved about the incident.
01:57To this day, the Australian government has neither confirmed nor denied the event, leaving the Westall UFO case one of the most enduring and mysterious sightings in the nation's history.
02:07Number 9. Skinwalker Ranch, Uinta Basin, Utah, USA
02:12For two years, the Sherman family lived their dream on a beautiful cattle ranch in Utah's Uinta Basin, until it became a nightmare.
02:30At first, everything seemed normal. Healthy cattle, a peaceful life.
02:33But soon, they were plunged into a series of terrifying, unexplainable events.
02:38Cattle began turning up mutilated, organs missing with no blood at the scene, no signs of struggle, and wounds made with laser-like precision, suggesting something far beyond natural predators.
02:49All kinds of events and activities happened, in broad daylight or at night time, at all kinds of places throughout that whole area.
02:56And the police were very aware of these things, and they had terrific encounters of their own.
03:03As time passed, the phenomena escalated.
03:06Terry Sherman claimed to witness a fiery orange portal open in the sky above the ranch.
03:11From it emerged a silent, dark, triangular object that hovered, then shot off like a streak of light as the portal vanished.
03:18Other sightings include glowing orbs, flying saucers, and even poltergeist-like activity.
03:24Shaken and desperate, the Shermans eventually sold the ranch to Robert Bigelow, who commissioned investigations through his organization NIDS, National Institute for Discovery Science.
03:34Later, the Pentagon's OSAP, Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Application Program, also investigated.
03:40On regard to Skinwalker Ranch, you've seen nothing yet.
03:45Nothing.
03:46I mean, you'd be flabbergasted at some of the occurrences there.
03:51And yes, there is documentation for these.
03:54While no definitive evidence of non-human intelligence was found, multiple credible witnesses,
04:00including scientists and government officials, reported unexplained phenomena.
04:04The mystery of what happened at the ranch remains unsolved to this day.
04:08We've just started investigating again, and already there's a spot over the ranch that may be a key to finding the answers we're looking for.
04:16The question is, how far do we have to go to find out?
04:21Number 8.
04:22The Tic Tac Incident.
04:23Undisclosed location off the southern coast of California, USA.
04:27My gosh!
04:30They're all going against the wind.
04:32The wind's 120 knots from the west.
04:34Don't go all things, dude.
04:36While conducting a training exercise off the coast of southern California, the USS Nimitz and the USS Princeton encountered one of the most credible UAP incidents in U.S. military history.
04:47The Princeton was testing its then-new SPY-1 radar system, when it began picking up strange anomalies.
04:53Objects descending from 80,000 feet to 20,000 feet, hovering for hours, then shooting back up at impossible speeds.
05:01What I want to be really careful of here is that we don't jump to conclusions, right?
05:07That we don't sensationalize this or...
05:09Little green men?
05:10Yeah, little green men or extraterrestrial.
05:14You're seeing something that defies explanation.
05:18Right.
05:18Very much.
05:18After troubleshooting the system, the radar returns became even clearer.
05:23About a week later, Top Gun graduate Commander David Fravor and wingman Alex Dietrich were redirected mid-exercise to investigate one of the signatures.
05:32Flying F-A-18s, they reached the coordinates but initially saw nothing, until they spotted a disturbance on the ocean's surface.
05:39A patch of white water about the size of a Boeing 737.
05:43Above it, hovered a smooth, white, tic-tac-shaped object, moving erratically, like a ping-pong ball in a cup, according to Fravor.
05:51As Fravor descended to 3,000 feet, the object suddenly mirrored its movements, then shot off at an extraordinary speed, vanishing from sight.
06:00So you're sort of spiraling down?
06:01Yep.
06:02The tic-tac's still pointing north-south, it goes, and just turns abruptly and starts mirroring me.
06:08So as I'm coming down, it starts coming up.
06:10So it's mimicking your moves?
06:12Yeah, it was aware we were there.
06:13All four aviators saw it.
06:15In 2023, Fravor testified under oath before Congress, stating the technology displayed was far beyond anything known to humanity,
06:23and that the military has no way to defend against it.
06:27Hey! Got it!
06:30Woohoo!
06:31Roger.
06:32Oh, shit!
06:33Number seven.
06:34The Kinross incident.
06:35Above Lake Superior, USA-Canada border.
06:39Most people exploring UFO phenomenon have heard of alien abductions, but entire planes vanishing?
06:45That's rarer.
06:46In November 1953, radar operators at the Ground Control Interception Station in Sault Ste.
06:52Marie detected an unidentified craft flying at 500 miles per hour through a restricted US airspace over Lake Superior.
06:59First Lieutenant Felix Moncla Jr. and Second Lieutenant Robert L. Wilson, stationed at Kinross AFB, were scrambled in an F-89C Scorpion to investigate.
07:09Due to stormy weather, Wilson struggled to lock radar onto the erratic object.
07:13Guided by Calumet Air Force Station, Moncla descended to 7,000 feet.
07:18Soon, radar showed the two blips, Moncla's jet and the UFO, merging.
07:23Seconds later, both vanished.
07:26Despite an extensive 29,000 square mile search by US and Canadian forces, no trace of the aircraft or object was ever found.
07:35Initially, the Air Force suggested a crash or mid-air explosion, later claiming the UFO was a Canadian C-47.
07:41The Royal Canadian Air Force denied having any aircraft in the area.
07:45In his book, The Flying Saucer Conspiracy, Major Donald Kehoe proposed the object either collided with or absorbed the jet.
07:54Moncla's gravestone reads, disappeared November 23rd, 1953, intercepting a UFO over Canadian border.
08:02The mystery remains unsolved.
08:05Number 6.
08:05The Pascagoula Abduction, Pascagoula River, Mississippi, USA.
08:09Last October, in the quiet Mississippi town of Pascagoula, two local men confronted authorities with a rather bizarre story.
08:17Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker told of a strange craft landing near their fishing site and of being taken aboard by three unearthly creatures.
08:26On a crisp October night in 1973, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were preparing to leave their fishing spot on the Pascagoula River when they heard a sudden humming noise behind them.
08:36Turning around, they saw a blue light growing larger in the sky.
08:40Paralyzed and unable to move, they watched as an oval-shaped flying disc approached and hovered in front of them.
08:47Three five-foot-tall beings with neckless, wrinkled skin, slit-like eyes, clawed hands, and strange protrusions for ears and noses floated out of the craft.
08:58The creatures levitated the men and guided them aboard.
09:01I was having a hard time breathing.
09:03Well, she took out her fingers and just kind of stood there and kind of looked at me.
09:09Now, she didn't say nothing, but mentally I felt like she said, we're not going to harm you.
09:15Inside, Charles was held in place by two beings while a mechanical eye emerged from the wall and scanned his body.
09:22The creatures seemed robotic, going about their task with no interest in the men.
09:27Calvin remembered little about the event except for being punctured in the arm, which left a wound.
09:32But Charles experienced the entire examination they underwent.
09:36The creatures returned the men to the riverbank, where they regained control of their bodies.
09:41Afterward, the men reported the encounter to the sheriff's office.
09:44Sheriff Fred Diamond and Captain Glenn Ryder interviewed them separately to detect any inconsistencies in their stories.
09:50They had in their mind that it was just a big joke.
09:54And if I understand it correctly, they ran one test on Mr. Hickson.
10:00The machine showed that he was telling the truth.
10:04Then they run another one.
10:06And then the examiner, he began to wonder himself.
10:10So he ran the third test and he believed just what Mr. Hickson had told him.
10:15Despite their initial skepticism, the men's accounts matched perfectly.
10:19However, to further test their credibility, the sheriff secretly left a recorder in the room where the two men were alone.
10:26When the tape was played back, it revealed the men's raw fear and continued discussion of the traumatic event,
10:32showing that they truly believed what had happened.
10:34The mystery remains unsolved.
10:35I don't know.
10:37I think that they know more of what's going on down here on this earth than we think.
10:42And I don't know.
10:44They might have been, you might say, looking for somebody that could, you might say, hold up under this train
10:53and convince people that, you know, that there is another world.
11:00Number five, the Cash-Landrum incident, Huffman, Texas, USA.
11:04So I didn't know whether to stop, to back up, keep going or what.
11:09So we just kept driving.
11:10We thought, well, maybe it's an air balloon or something, you know, weather balloon or something.
11:19In December 1980, Betty Cash, Vicki Landrum, and her grandson, Colby, were driving on a Texas road
11:25when they noticed a bright light above the treetops.
11:28As the light approached, they saw a diamond-shaped craft, about the size of a water tower, hovering just above the treeline.
11:35Flames intermittently erupted from the base, radiating intense heat.
11:39Betty, driven by curiosity, stepped outside to observe, but the heat became unbearable, forcing her back into the car,
11:46which had become so hot she needed to use the sleeve of her leather jacket to open the door.
11:51Despite the inconclusive medical reports, Schussler believes that all three victims received some kind of radiation exposure caused by the UFO.
11:59The craft rose slowly into the sky, and a rhythmic thumping noise grew louder, like an approaching tornado.
12:06The witnesses then saw 23 twin-rotor Chinook helicopters closing in on the craft.
12:10As the helicopters surrounded it, the heat dissipated, and Betty was finally able to start the car.
12:16It seemed that they were trying to escort the craft somewhere.
12:19It looked like they were about to collide.
12:22The roar sounded like a tornado.
12:24When we got home, I washed Colby off and put him to bed.
12:28When the water touched his skin, he cried out like he had been burned, as if he had been in the sun too long.
12:36The witnesses watched the craft disappear toward the moon, followed by the helicopters.
12:40Later, all three began to feel ill, with flu-like symptoms and severe skin redness.
12:45Betty's condition worsened, including swollen eyes and hair loss, resembling radiation exposure.
12:51Doctors confirmed this diagnosis.
12:53The witnesses linked their injuries to the military, having seen U.S. Air Force markings on the helicopters pursuing the strange craft.
13:01They sought accountability, but the military denied involvement.
13:04The case was left unsolved.
13:05When they had the helicopters up there, we in a terrible shape.
13:12Because if it can happen to us, it could happen to a whole city.
13:16This encounter stands out as a potential government operation, with no mention of aliens.
13:21Number four, the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, New Hampshire, USA.
13:26It was just an ordinary day in America.
13:31Betty, a social worker, and Barney, a U.S. postal employee, were driving home after their honeymoon in Niagara Falls.
13:39On the night of September 19th, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, after a vacation in Canada, when they noticed a bright light moving erratically across the night sky.
13:52Curious, they kept watching as it grew closer.
13:54Through binoculars, Betty saw a cigar-shaped craft with glowing lights.
13:58When the UFO descended rapidly, Barney pulled over to get a better look.
14:02He claimed to see a disc-shaped object hovering in the air, with windows, and movement inside.
14:08Figures appeared to be watching him.
14:10Overcome with fear, Barney ran back to the car, shouting,
14:13They're going to capture us.
14:15As they drove off, the couple reported hearing beeping and buzzing sounds that vibrated the entire car.
14:20She then passed the binoculars to me and said,
14:23Well, you must really look at this satellite, because it's not behaving as we would expect a satellite to behave like.
14:32It's clear at this point, this was not a satellite. It does a circle.
14:37Then, everything went blank.
14:40When they regained awareness, they were 35 miles farther south, with no memory of the last two hours.
14:45Betty reported the encounter to a nearby Air Force base.
14:48Soon after, she began having vivid dreams of being taken aboard a craft by small, gray beings with large, wraparound eyes.
14:57Barney eventually began having nightmares, too.
14:59Distressed, they sought help from psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Simon, who used hypnosis to recover their repressed memories.
15:06Um, there was a leader of...
15:09Well, for...
15:10We...
15:10We gave them different names to identify him.
15:16Now, I don't know if he was a leader or the interpreter.
15:19But we called him the leader.
15:21And then there was the one who did the testing.
15:23We called him the examiner.
15:25There were nine others who stayed out in the corridor.
15:28And we called them the crew members.
15:30Separately, they described similar events.
15:33Their car stalling, being paralyzed, and approached by four-foot-tall beings.
15:38Barney said their eyes spoke to him telepathically, calming his fear.
15:43Betty recalled the beings telling her they meant no harm.
15:46Both described being taken aboard the craft and subjected to invasive physical and reproductive exams.
15:52Afterward, they were returned to their car, waking up with the ship gone.
15:56The Hill's story became the first widely publicized alien abduction case.
16:01And remains one of the most influential in UFO lore to this day.
16:05Number 3.
16:06The Abduction of Travis Walton.
16:08Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, Arizona, USA.
16:11Travis!
16:22Travis!
16:23Get the hell out of here!
16:24Get back in there!
16:25Travis!
16:25Get the hell out of here!
16:35On a clear November evening in Arizona's Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, Mike Rogers and his logging crew were finishing up for the day.
16:43Around 6 p.m., while driving home along Turkey Springs Road, Travis Walton, sitting shotgun, noticed a hazy golden light through the trees.
16:52Assuming it was campers or hunters, the crew continued until reaching a clearing, where the true source was revealed.
16:58A glowing, metallic, disc-shaped craft hovering above the treetops, pulsing with golden light.
17:04It was, uh, the parts weren't glowing.
17:07It wasn't so hard, uh, bright, uh, that you couldn't look at it, uh, but it, uh, had a metallic look to it.
17:17Travis jumped out of the truck and ran toward it, expecting it, expecting it to flee.
17:21Instead, it emitted a deep hum that intensified, vibrating through the air and his body.
17:27As the others shouted for him to return, the disc suddenly discharged a bluish-green beam, striking Travis and flinging him violently to the ground.
17:36Believing he was dead, the crew panicked and fled, only to return minutes later.
17:41Travis and the craft were gone.
17:44Walton awoke aboard the ship in pain and surrounded by short, pale beings with large, almond-shaped eyes.
17:50Panicked, he knocked one over and escaped the exam table, stumbling into a control room.
17:55There, he encountered a taller, human-like figure in a clear helmet, who silently guided him to another room, where similar beings sedated him with a gas mask.
18:04Five days later, Walton reappeared at a gas station 30 miles from the abduction site, disoriented, dehydrated, and 10 pounds lighter, with a needle mark on his body.
18:16During his disappearance, locals suspected his co-workers of foul play, believing the alien story was a cover for murder.
18:23Five days ago, about sundown on Rim Road, north of Turkey Creek, did you see an unidentified light just above the tree line?
18:32Yes.
18:32Did you see an object covering above the clearing?
18:36Yes.
18:38Each crew member was questioned and given a polygraph.
18:41Five passed, and one test was inconclusive, not failed.
18:45Travis's sudden return cleared their names.
18:48His case became one of the most famous abduction stories ever, inspiring the film Fire in the Sky.
18:54Alien abduction is terrifying, but so is being wrongly accused of murder, with no proof to clear your name.
19:00I've done a lot of thinking about what happened.
19:08Hell, it was all my fault, Mike.
19:09I never should have got out of the truck.
19:14Number two.
19:15The Roswell of Brazil.
19:17Varginha, Brazil.
19:18I'd like to start off by saying, this is like, you know, the holy grail of witnesses for me, so I am like so happy to be here right now.
19:27Can you describe to us what happened in January of 1996?
19:31Anyone familiar with UFO lore has likely heard of the Roswell crash, but Brazil has its own version, the Varginha incident.
19:38A swirl of unconfirmed but widely shared claims paints a picture of a crashed UFO, an alien on the loose, and military involvement in a small Brazilian city.
19:49On a January morning in 1996, Iorico Rarigas de Freitas and his wife, Orelina Augusta, were outside doing farm work when they saw a strange, submarine-shaped craft silently floating over a cow pasture just outside of Varginha.
20:04The object appeared damaged and losing altitude as it drifted toward the city, disappearing over the horizon.
20:10They kept quiet about it, until a much more dramatic encounter occurred hours later.
20:15There was like a little person, but with no hair whatsoever, red eyes and three horns.
20:22She pointed to the other girls and started running the other way.
20:26Around 3pm, three young women, Liliane and Valkyria Silva, and their friend Katia Andrade Xavier were walking home when they spotted a crouching creature.
20:39It stood four to five feet tall, with oily brown skin, a large head bearing three horn-like protrusions, and glowing red eyes.
20:47The stench of sulfur filled the air.
20:50One of the girls screamed, staring at the creature, which turned and locked eyes with them.
20:54According to filmmaker James Fox's documentary, Moments of Contact, Liliane and Valkyria fled, but Katia froze, claiming to feel the creature's fear as it seemingly begged her for help telepathically.
21:08They said it wasn't a good experience at all. If they could choose, they wouldn't go through it again.
21:14And only people who have been through what they have been through can tell how they felt and how it all affected their lives.
21:23This emotional exchange became the film's titular moment of contact.
21:27When the sisters returned with their mother, the being was gone, but a footprint and the lingering sulfur odor remained.
21:34Word of the encounter quickly spread.
21:37That evening, locals reported seeing military and police vehicles, along with fire trucks, surrounding a vacant lot, rumored to be where the alien had been captured.
21:46Some claimed it was taken to a local hospital under military guard, though no official records support this.
21:52Rumors grew that the creature was transferred to a military base and that a man who had allegedly transported it died from a bacterial infection contracted during contact.
22:03And even the mother said when she went to where the creature was, she said that the stench, even there after the creature was gone, got in her nasal cavities and she tried to flush it out with water and saline or whatever, and she couldn't get it out of her nasal cavities.
22:20Really crazy.
22:21But they all did.
22:22I mean, everybody talked about that stench.
22:23The Brazilian military later dismissed the entire event, stating the creature was a confused man with a mental disability and the military activity was part of a scheduled drill.
22:33A misidentification?
22:35A coincidence?
22:35Or did something truly unearthly happen in Varginha that day?
22:39The mystery remains one of the most intriguing in UFO history.
22:43I'm so grateful to have had this opportunity to meet you guys.
22:48This is why I do what I do.
22:49And I want to thank you from, you know, the bottom of my heart.
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23:09Number 1. UFOs and nukes.
23:12The Maelstrom AFB incident.
23:14It happens in 1967 at Maelstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
23:18Since the end of World War II, fears of nuclear war have loomed large, especially during the Cold War, when thousands of warheads stood ready for launch.
23:27While many of those weapons have since been dismantled, over 12,000 still exist today.
23:32The terrifying reality?
23:33It often takes just a few individuals to authorize a launch that could end life as we know it.
23:38But what if that control wasn't entirely in human hands?
23:43Suddenly, the unthinkable happens.
23:46On March 16, 1967, at Montana's Maelstrom Air Force Base, former U.S. Air Force Missile Launch Officer Robert Salas experienced something that still haunts him.
24:12Stationed 20 meters underground at the Oscar flight missile silos, Salas received a routine call from a guard topside, reporting strange lights in the sky.
24:21Thinking it was a prank or local aircraft, Salas brushed it off, until 10 minutes later, when the guard called again, this time terrified and shouting.
24:30According to Salas, the guard described a glowing, reddish-orange disc hovering silently just outside the front gate, pulsating eerily.
24:38Moments later, alarms blared inside the launch facility.
24:42Salas and his partner raced to the missile control board, only to watch in shock as, one by one, all 10 of their Minutemen nuclear missiles went offline.
24:51All 10 of their missiles went down, while a UFO was overhead.
24:56All 10 of our missiles went down, the UFO was immediately over our facility.
25:01What did you think when you found out that this had happened not once, but twice?
25:05These were the most sophisticated weapons we had, and so it was worrying that something very unknown, very unusual, very strange, could disable them.
25:15Completely disabled, with no clear cause.
25:18They were unable to launch or defend, even if ordered to.
25:22The Air Force later blamed the shutdowns on technical glitches, and officially denied any connection to unidentified flying objects.
25:28But Salas and others involved have maintained their story ever since.
25:33Whether it was extraterrestrial or not, the thought that an unknown force, intentional or accidental, can interfere with a nation's nuclear arsenal is chilling.
25:42This was extraterrestrial in nature. I honestly believe that.
25:47If something can shut them off, what's stopping it from turning them on?
25:51What are some creepy UFO stories you think we should talk about in the future?
25:56Let us know in the comments below.
25:58Why the government don't release what they know, or if they know anything, I don't know.
26:06But they not.