Mysterious orbs of light reported all over the world. Enormous cylindrical objects hovering high above Earth. And massive triangular craft that appear out of thin air. Throughout history, people have witnessed objects of all shapes and sizes up in the sky. Now, we are going to take a look back at the top 10 examples of what ancient astronaut theorists suggest are, in fact, alien craft. Craft that just may hold the proof that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials. There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right before our eyes. We are not alone. We have never been alone. Here is ancient astronaut theorist Giorgio Tsoukalos. People love to tell me about their favorite UFO sightings, and some of them are pretty astonishing. But you may be surprised to hear that many of the flying craft that we're seeing today may have also been seen thousands of years ago. This countdown takes a look at the various types of objects that have been witnessed in the sky again and again. At number 10 on our list of the top 10 alien craft, the flying V. Kent, New York, New Year's Eve 1982 A group of partygoers spots a gigantic V-shaped craft overhead with red, white, and green lights. The colors suddenly vanish, and then the object illuminates the ground with a blinding white light. Over the next few months, Hudson Valley authorities are bombarded with similar reports. Philip Imbrogno is the co-author of Night Siege, the Hudson Valley UFO Sighting. Usually, UFOs just appear to a small number of people and they disappear. In this case, people were stopped on the highways. People were running out of their houses watching this enormous object pass over the size of a football field. This is David Childress, author of Technology of the Gods. It's estimated that as many as 5,000 people called in and made reports of this giant V. And the witnesses said that this flying triangle was completely silent and that it was flying very slowly, if at all, and was often just hovering right in place and then would slowly turn and then ultimately fly off in another direction. So that these were not some hoaxers with their airplanes flying in formation, but something completely different. The sightings of large V-shaped craft in upstate New York made headlines in the New York Times. Then, in 1997, an identical craft was spotted in Phoenix, Arizona. Richard Dolan is a historian and author of UFOs and the National Security State. It was a triangular-ish shaped object, seen very reliably by quite a large number of witnesses, including the governor of the state at the time, Fife Symington. It was a qualified pilot, and in the Air Force Reserve as well. As a pilot and a former Air Force officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man-made object that I had ever seen. While the V-shaped craft flying over the Hudson Valley and Phoenix are the most well-documented mass UFO sightings in history, they are far from the first. More than 400 years ago, in 1561, the citizens of the Bavarian city of Nuremberg reported a commotion in the sky that was unlike anything they had ever experienced before. William Henry is an author and investigative mythologist. People went outside and they saw what they described as a celestial battle. The witnesses observed seeing hundreds of these strange-shaped objects. What were these strange shapes that they were describing? The aerial scene, illustrated in a woodcut, is described in the accompanying text as a very frightful spectacle. A large black V-shaped object appeared in the sky and seemed to launch projectiles as onlookers below watched in amazement. This was actually witnessed by thousands of people. had it been a meteor shower or something like this, then the reports would have been, okay, this happened before because we've seen this before. But that was new. The witnesses wouldn't have had a conception of some kind of a mechanical spacecraft, but that seems to be exactly what they were describing. And this has to be one of the greatest mass sightings of a UFO phenomena in all of recorded history. To me, there is no doubt that the people of Nuremberg witnessed an alien craft. They just didn't have the language to accurately describe what they saw. But that should come as no surprise, because even today, strange objects are seen in our skies that defy explanation. Like the number nine entry on our countdown, Orbs of Light. Western Germany, November 1944 U.S. Navy pilots with the 415th Night Fighter Squadron report seeing 8 to 10 bright orange lights off the left wing, flying through the air at high speed. Neither the radar operator in the air nor ground control could identify anything in the area that fit their description. The strange orbs of light are observed by hundreds of both Axis and Allied pilots all over Europe and Asia throughout the war, and become known as Foo Fighters. Amy Shearer Teitel is the author of Fighting for Space. Foo Fighters were first seen in the Second World War by pilots flying not actually that high off the ground, between 800 or 10,000 feet. Usually pilots were flying at night, and they reported seeing lights in formation on the horizon. They would be moving together or flashing, kind of tracking them for a bit, and then it would disappear as soon as it came. Bill Burns, Ph.D., is the co-author of The Day After Roswell. They were called Foo Fighters after French fear, meaning fire, because they were flaming balls. In 1945, a B-29 bomber over the South Pacific saw a Foo Fighter off its wing. B-29s were very heavily armed. It trained its machine guns on the device, fired on it, and the Foo Fighter blew up into a million pieces. That story was covered in Time magazine. Whatever they were, they disappeared and have now gone into legend. While reports of encounters with Foo Fighters ended after World War II, mysterious orbs of light have been reported hovering around military testing sites, nuclear plants, and even crop circles. But what they are remains a mystery. This is Martin K.A. Morgan, author of The Americans on D-Day. Foo Fighters exhibited performance characteristics beyond any other aircraft in the skies at the time. There were pilots that reported Foo Fighters traveling at unimaginable speeds that were capable of maneuvering in the air in ways that no other aircraft could do. Here is theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, PhD. These are hypersonic devices. They can also zigzag. And the amount of zigzagging is so great that the gravitational forces inside these objects, as they jerk through space and time, would crush any living individual. In my opinion, whatever these objects are, they're guided either by remote control or by an autonomous cybernetic system. Are the mysterious orbs of light encountered around the world a type of extraterrestrial spacecraft? aircraft. Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest further evidence that alien craft are visiting our planet can be found hidden in the jungles of Mexico. On January 5th, 2000, dozens of people in Illinois witnessed a mysterious craft that didn't show up on radar and appeared to be cloaked in some type of camouflage. Sneaking in at number eight on our list of alien craft, stealth UFOs. St. Clair County, Illinois, January 5, 2000. Just after 4 a.m., three large triangular objects flying silently in the night sky are seen by multiple witnesses, including police officers. Here is Officer David Martin. I looked up in the sky and observed this huge arrow-shaped, triangular-shaped object. The flying triangles are observed for at least two hours as they travel over multiple towns Mike Schrapp is an aerospace historian This is known as the famous Southern Illinois Flying Triangle We have about four different police officers. What they describe seeing are three distinct arrowhead-shaped craft. Officer Craig Stevens was directly below one of these triangles, and he said that it was trying to cloak or camouflage itself against the night sky and was projecting the star field above it on the bottom surface, allowing it to effectively blend in with its background." The ability of triangular-shaped objects to hide in plain sight reminds many observers of modern stealth technology. Developed by the U.S. military in the 1970s and 80s, stealth technology can make aircraft nearly invisible to radar, sonar, and other detection methods. Michael Denon, Ph.D., is a professor of physics at UC Irvine. To make something invisible to radar, all you have to do is make sure that the radar doesn't reflect back to the receiver. This all comes down to mostly the shape of the planes. You want it shaped in a way so that the radar either scatters in random directions or literally just bounces off in a completely opposite way. Could the cloaking effect that witnesses observed in the Illinois Flying Triangle be a type of stealth technology more advanced than our own? Curiously, the U.S. stealth technology was developed at Area 51, the same secret military base believed to contain the remains of a UFO that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. Nick Pope is a former member of the UK Ministry of Defence. The official Area 51 now admitted by the government is this facility where aircraft were developed and test flown. The U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, and of course, more recently, stealth technology. A lot of people say this is actually something we've back-engineered from extraterrestrial technology. Here is radio host George Norrie of Coast to Coast AM. I think there's no question that we have reversed engineered or have looked at the shapes of these craft and have tried to create it for ourselves. Look at some of the new stealth jets that are coming out right now. They're amazingly close to what we saw 20 years ago from UFO reports. One of my favorite places to explore is Egypt. On ancient aliens, we've investigated pyramids, tombs, and even evidence of advanced technology. But the most important symbol in ancient Egypt is a pyramid-shaped object that was said to represent a craft that descended from the sky. At number 7 on our list, the Benben Stone. Luxor, Egypt. The Karnak Temple complex is home to the tallest standing obelisk in Egypt. The 97-foot-tall monolith is carved from a single piece of granite, and crowning this remarkable obelisk is a pyramid-shaped object called a Benben stone. Here is Egyptologist Rami Romani, Ph.D. The Benben stone or the pyramid-shaped structure that is on the top of an obelisk or a pyramid It is there to receive the messages from the sun god and deliver it to its people. According to Egyptian mythology, the Benben was a vehicle which Atum, the god of all creation, used to travel back and forth between the heavens and the earth. One of the origin stories says that a Benben stone descended from the sky, out of which the first creator gods emerged and started Egyptian civilization. It was a flying craft. The Benben stone was not just symbolizing a connection to the heavens. It was actually memorializing an extraterrestrial visitation. the first Egyptians have witnessed an alien craft in the shape of a pyramid? As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned, the argument for this notion became stronger in July 2019, when, just off the coast of San Diego, Navy personnel aboard the USS Russell recorded an incredible event. The ship's photographic interpretation and examination team captured an 18-second night vision video of several pyramid-shaped objects hovering in the sky. This is Ryan Sprague, author of Somewhere in the Skies. The video showed a pyramid-shaped object, a literal 3D pyramid-shaped object, floating above the USS Russell off the West Coast. And it wasn't just one pyramid. There were apparently swarms of these things about 700 feet above this Navy destroyer, completely silent, making no noise, and darting off at immeasurable speeds. It's a fascinating idea that perhaps extraterrestrials first arrived in Egypt in these small pyramid-shaped craft, like we're seeing in this video. Clearly what we see in this footage of today is a three-dimensional pyramid floating in the sky. Providing the footage is real, providing it is extraterrestrial. Then one could argue that the same visitors that we've had back then are showing themselves again. What's fascinating to me is that in many parts of the world, we can find ancient illustrations of objects that people allegedly saw in the sky that look identical to modern spacecraft. Coming in at number six on our countdown of the top 10 alien craft, rocket ships. Palenque, Mexico, 1952. Alberto Ruz Lulie discovers the pyramid tomb of King Pakal, who ruled the ancient Mayan city from 615 to 683 AD. Inside he discovers one of the most remarkable Mayan artifacts ever found, a highly decorated sarcophagus. Pakal's sarcophagus lid is very rich in detail. It shows what appears to be a world tree and a vision serpent, as the Mayans referred to it, that snakes its way up this tree. The glyphs that are attached to it say that this tree is shimmering or shining, it's reflective. Mainstream scholars believe the sarcophagus lid portrays King Pakal on a journey to Shibalba, the land of the dead. But ancient astronaut theorists like Erich von Daniken suggest the carving depicts something very different. The idea of King Pakal sitting at the controls of a rocket ship might sound like science fiction. But ancient astronaut theorists suggest that nearly identical carvings can be found in India. This is Praveen Mohan, founder of Phenomenal Place. In Ajanta Caves, there are many carvings of Buddha inside stupas. From the front, it appears as though Buddha is standing inside an elaborately carved arch. But the fact is, what we are seeing from the front is a cross-section of a stupa inside of which Buddha is standing. And what is a stupa? It is nothing but some kind of a vehicle. A stupa by definition is a vehicle with which to reach the realm of the gods. That is the definition of a stupa. Well, just change the wording, a vehicle with which to reach space. These stupas can be seen, for example, at the Ajanta cave with smoke and fire at the bottom if we had one or ten or even twenty examples like that. You could be like, all right, interesting. What if I told you there are millions of the same motif in India about celestial beings depicted in something that could be interpreted as some type of a rocket vehicle? There are countless examples of ancient artwork depicting what many think could be aerial vehicles. And in some cases, you can even find figures wearing what looks like flying gear right on their bodies. At number five on our countdown, jetpacks. La Venta, Mexico, 1939 American archaeologists Matthew Sterling and Philip Drucker begin an excavation of an ancient pyramid mound. Over the next two decades, they unearth extraordinary statues, carvings, and mosaics from a previously unknown culture, the Olmecs. a civilization that emerged around 1400 BC The discovery is a major archaeological find and produced a sensational piece of evidence for the ancient astronaut theory At the Museum of Natural History in New York City there is an Olmec figurine and in my opinion it is a smoking gun of our ancestors having access to aviation technology because if you look at this figurine you can tell that this guy is wearing some sort of a suit. He has some type of controls with tubes on his chest. And on the side, you have six wings coming out of him. So you have to wonder what is depicted here. Now, if you look at a modern jetpack, humans are ascending and descending in a vertical position. Now imagine if that was shown to our ancestors. How would they react? The technological frame of reference of our ancestors was not the same as our technological frame of reference today. So, of course they would have carved something like this when they had never seen a vehicle with which to go to space. Could it be that a figurine made more than 2,400 years ago is a depiction of someone wearing the equivalent of a modern-day jetpack? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest other figures have been found that appear to be wearing some type of flying apparatus, like the 13-foot-tall statues at the Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Tula de Allende, Mexico. There are figures on the main pyramid, and they're some of the most magnificent statues that we can find on planet Earth, because it's as if these guys are standing inside some pressurized suits. they have helmets on and they have these jet packs on their chest. On the opposite side of the globe at the Allura Caves in India is a 1200 year old carving of a demon king named Ravana depicted in a scene from the ancient Hindu text called the Ramayana. In the scene Ravana is being attacked by a bird while ascending into the sky and according to the story, the curious object on his back is a flying contraption called the Pushpaka Vimana. Deepak Shimkata, PhD, is an adjunct professor at Claremont School of Technology. Ravana does appear in many Hindu texts like epics, Mahavarata, Ramayana and many other which is in the Hindu text, we are told that, you know, he constructed a Puspaka Vimana, this flying machine. This Puspaka Vimana is made of gold. It is like a jet pack that you could put it on and you could start flying. And we have jet packs now. But interestingly, almost all these machines were mentioned 5,000 years ago in Mahabharata. Is it possible that the mysterious figures depicted wearing what appear to be jet packs are evidence our ancestors saw extraterrestrial spacecraft in the distant past. Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest further evidence can be found in ancient descriptions of flying chariots. Some of the best descriptions of ancient UFOs can be found in the Sanskrit texts of India. The sensational stories are filled with accounts of celestial beings and flying chariots. But the craft described in these texts look remarkably similar to some modern UFO reports. At number four on our list, acorn-shaped craft. Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, December 9th, 1965. Thousands of people watch as a massive fireball streaks across the night sky and crashes into a nearby forest. This is Andrew Collins, author of Origins of the Gods. A large object was seen to come down in a wooded area. And witnesses actually claimed that this strange object was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. looked like what appeared to be a giant acorn. Here is Earthfiles investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe. The phones went off in all of the volunteer fire departments all around. We have a plane crash in the woods at Kecksburg. Well, there was a man named Jim Romanski, and I had a real privilege to talk with him directly in March of 1998 because he was one of only about 10 people who stood around this object in that forest officially as a volunteer fireman, walking around and trying to understand what are we looking at. And he said, it was like an acorn, and at the top it was copper-colored, and then in the bottom it was a darker color, and there was a band about four inches wide, and raised up, not carved in, were symbols that went around a portion of this craft. Suddenly, the military entered the area, cordoned it off, and the whole thing was essentially hushed up. The official report from NASA stated that the object was debris from a Russian satellite, even though witnesses claimed it changed direction several times. Today, a monument to the acorn-shaped craft stands in the town of Kecksburg. For ancient astronaut theorists, this UFO event is particularly intriguing because the object's unusual shape bears a striking resemblance to flying objects described in ancient Indian texts. The craft itself is an acorn-shaped craft. Immediately, that's reminiscent of what the ancient Indian text described as the Vimana, which were acorn-shaped craft. In the Mahabharata and many of the ancient Vedic texts, they speak about the so-called Vimanas. The Vimanas were flying vehicles with which to reach the celestial realm. In the ancient Sanskrit epics of India, there are highly detailed descriptions of the Vimana, which carried the gods and other important figures through the sky. The acorn-shaped craft were even incorporated at the very top of many Hindu temples. In Hindu texts such as the Ramayana or the Mahavarata, the Vimana is primarily a flying ship that God used to travel back and forth between spaces in heaven, from one planet to another planet, from one universe to another universe, and also come to Earth. When we match up eyewitness accounts of the acorn-shaped craft with the ancient Vimanas, we have to be open to seriously question if these are, in fact, ancient craft that are now appearing in our modern world. Some Vimanas are portrayed as small objects that could travel at incredible speeds. But these weren't the only flying machines in Hindu mythology. The ancient Sanskrit texts also described ships in the sky that were simply massive. Number three on our list, floating cities. To the more than one billion Hindu faithful, India's oldest Sanskrit texts, known as the Vedas, are accounts given directly to humans by the gods. These sensational stories describe divine beings arriving from palaces up in the sky. All these Vedic texts speak of a time when three cities were orbiting Earth. and from these cities smaller vehicles were used in order to reach the realm of the earth. Even extraterrestrials with their advanced technology would have to arrive with a larger mothership and this is why we have these stories of palaces up in the sky. Could it be that the people of ancient India witnessed enormous motherships that they interpreted as floating cities or palaces. Curiously, in modern times, there have been reports, and even recordings, of what look like actual cities appearing high up in the sky. One such event occurred in Foshan, China, on October 7, 2015, with the apparition of a cityscape remained in the sky for several minutes, long enough to be captured on video. The video footage was broadcast on Chinese television and subsequently disseminated on social media across the globe. This is Nick Redfern, author of 365 Days of UFOs. Numerous people reported seeing what looked like skyscraper-type buildings in the clouds, high in the sky. It was an amazing spectacle. There's just no other way to describe it. Jason Martell is the author of Knowledge Apocalypse. Now, just a few days later, over 800 miles away, we had another sighting of this exact same phenomenon. So, it stands to reason that there could in fact have been some type of a large mothership or some craft in the sky. Is it possible that the floating city, reported in two locations in China, was a massive alien mothership And if so could it be the same craft described in ancient Hindu texts Ancient astronaut theorists say yes and suggest further evidence that our planet is being visited by alien craft can be found by examining striking images captured not on Earth, but in outer space. One of the most important factors to consider when evaluating a UFO sighting is the credibility of the witness. And perhaps there are no better experts on objects in the sky than the men and women of the space program. Which is why our next example is so exciting. Because they have been seen not only on Earth, but deep in our solar system. at number two on our list of the top 10 alien craft, cigar-shaped objects. Mount Washington, New Hampshire, 1870. During a meteorological expedition in the area, photographers capture a strange black object on film that appears to be floating among the clouds. The very first photo that we have of a UFO is of a huge cylindrical craft over Mount Washington in New Hampshire, taken in 1870, right at the very beginning of photography. You see this cloud formation up at Mount Washington and you see this very obvious cigar-shaped object. Is the photograph authentic? And turns out it is. Since the Mount Washington photograph, Cigar-shaped craft have reportedly been seen all over the world. Like in December of 1978, when two Chilean pilots on a training mission at an elevation of 35,000 feet detected a massive cigar-shaped object on their radar. They encountered visually and on their airborne radar an absolutely enormous object in the sky. In fact, two separate ground-based radars tracked this object. As the pilots approached this object, one of them described it as an elongated object swathed in smoke. As it got to a certain distance, this thing, according to their report, instantly accelerated to the west in the direction of the ocean and was just gone. Over 40 years later, another cigar-shaped craft was reported almost 7,000 miles away in Hawaii. On December 29, 2020, people could see a huge cigar-shaped craft hovering off the coast and took photos of it. And eventually, this craft then plunged into the ocean. And the Navy went out there to also look for possible wreckage of some craft crashing into the ocean and found nothing. Could these strange cigar-shaped objects belong to visitors from another world? Ancient astronaut theorists believe the answer can be found by examining a curious radar image taken more than 130 million miles from Earth. On March 25th, 1989, a Soviet probe was approaching the Martian moon Phobos when it beamed back an astonishing image to Earth. As they got closer with Phobos, we see one last frame that seems to have showed up. A very large cigar-elongated shape, as if it's possibly a large craft of some kind hovering above the surface. Is it possible that the strange cigar-shaped object photographed by the Soviet probe was an extraterrestrial spacecraft? Incredibly, another massive cigar-shaped object was spotted traveling through our solar system in 2017. Astronomers discovered that it came from a distant star and gave it the Hawaiian name Oumuamua, which means messenger from the distant past. This is astrophysicist and aerospace engineer Dr. Travis Taylor. Oumuamua doesn't look like a typical asteroid. It's more the big cigar shape that's seen often. And there were a lot of astronomers and scientists who studied Oumuamua, and it looks like it could possibly have been a probe from some other civilization outside our solar system. As we've seen throughout history, there have been reports of unidentified aerial vehicles of all shapes and sizes. But for most people, when they hear the word UFO, the first thing they think of is the number one entry on our top 10 list of alien craft, the flying saucer. Washington State, June 24, 1947. Private pilot Kenneth Arnold is on a solo flight near Mount Rainier. As he approaches the mountain, he suddenly spots a group of nine silver disc-shaped objects. As he was flying around the mountain, he suddenly caught sight of a squadron of strange-looking objects. He could not figure out what they were. They were flying at incredible speeds and performing maneuvers that essentially would kill any regular pilot in a normal aircraft. He described them as skipping through the air like a saucer, he said. And this is really where the term a flying saucer arrives in English language, which is from Kenneth Arnold's description. Arnold's account became an international sensation, and his experience emboldened others to come forward with their own unexplainable encounters. In a few short months, hundreds of flying saucers were reported across the country. When you look at the year 1947, the statistics are that there were at least 800 reports to police and airports of people saying that they were seeing something in the sky. They didn't know what it was. Ufologists may say that the modern UFO era began in 1947, but flying saucers have been around ever since the dawn of time. For example, in the 9th century, there are UFOs flying over England. The Romans saw UFOs. What's our actual first major UFO description? The first one. It's in the Bible. According to the Hebrew Bible, a priest named Ezekiel received a mysterious visitor from the heavens. Patrick Cook is the author of The Greatest Deception, The Bible UFO Connection. Ezekiel was by the river Chabar, and he said a great whirlwind came toward him. He described it as a fire enfolding itself, and out of the fire was the color of amber, which is the Hebrew word, which means polished spectrum metal, which implies that it's metallic and that it's spinning, and it lands in front of him. And suddenly, out of this whirlwind come four creatures. Ezekiel describes that the outside of the wheel doesn't spin. The inside of the wheel spins. So he's telling us that's the engines. None of this necessarily has to be magic. This could all be technology. By far the most famous report of a flying saucer occurred on July 8, 1947, when the U.S. Army itself announced that one crashed outside Roswell, New Mexico. July 8th and 9th, the newspaper headlines, Army Captures Flying Disc Outside of Roswell. How did the newspaper get that story? Walter Howt. He was the official public information officer at the Roswell 509th, who gave the story to the newspaper. Within days, the military walked back the story and suggested the flying saucer had an earthly origin. The initial story was that the army recovered one of these flying discs. Now, by the next day, a lot of other major newspapers came out with the story that, nope, all a mistake, just a weather balloon people. Did a flying saucer really crash outside of Roswell, New Mexico? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and as evidence, they point to a sensational file released by the FBI in 2011. The document contains a 1950 briefing given to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover about three flying saucers that were recovered in New Mexico. So what's really happening at Roswell? Was it an extraterrestrial craft? It's a fantastic thought, but it's possible. Well, that's the end of our top 10 alien craft countdown. and while it literally flew by, we're left with a burning question. Why has mankind witnessed so many mysterious craft in the sky for thousands of years? Perhaps as we continue to study these encounters, the truth will finally be revealed. We are not alone. We have never been alone. Thank you.
