Reading Iavas' threads it is clear that much of his stuff comes off the Internet. To say the least it can be a very unreliable source of facts with people pursuing all sorts of different agendas. I want to tackle things from a different viewpoint.
Over the years many people have told me things that they personally have seen. There has been no intermediary to edit or exaggerate. Of course if I relay their story I then become that intermediary but you will have to accept that. I also think that when explanations for phenomena are attempted (eg Govt conspiracy, psychic event etc) that we get bogged down. It's just that some things are so strange. Perhaps this thread could be reserved for phenomena that we have individually observed or what someone we have spoken to has personally observed. This should go some way to anchor things in a form of reality.
What prompted this thread was a conversation I had last week with my art teacher while we watched a satellite slowly move over the sky. He is in his 60's and from South Africa. When he was young in the 1950's he lived in what is now Zambia and what was then the British colony of Northern Rhodesia.
Somewhere around 1953 he witnessed over several weeks together with many other people up to 50 or so sightings of UFO's. He said they were not dots of light but the size of street lights, that he heard or felt a deep sound that resonated with his body, and that the first Mayor of Lusaka who lived nearby almost spoilt his political career by blurting out he had seen flying saucers. He saw them through binoculars and said what struck him was how alike they were to the cartoon version, circular, domed and with visible signs of artificial construction on them. He saw two descend behind a hill that stood a mile or so away then rise again. One rapidly shot off in a flash and then the other did. He or others found blackened grass and before long the army was camping out in the region. His father had seen the objects too and was frightened. Later as an adult in South Africa he heard the same sort of visceral sound that he remembered from his youth and he went out of his house into the street. He saw nothing in the sky but the telephone wires were circled by a blue electrical looking sparking.
I don't want to offer explanations because they impose limits but these things are worth repeating and recording.
Do others of you have such stories from your own or your friend's personal experiences of what is outwardly inexplicable? Stuff you read can go into the weird newspaper story thread.