US Air Force confirms new secret stealth plane

The USAF's newest stealth aircraft, the RQ-170 Sentinel

The secret is out. The U.S. Air Force has confirmed the existence of the "Beast of Kandahar" UAV that was seen flying out of Afghanistan in late 2007. The jet aircraft – a tailless flying wing with sensor pods faired into the upper surface of each wing – is the RQ-170 Sentinel, developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. An Air Force official revealed to Aviation Week Friday afternoon that the service is “developing a stealthy unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to provide reconnaissance and surveillance support to forward deployed combat forces.”

The USAF statement came after discussion of the UAV emerged here on Ares. “The fielding of the RQ-170 aligns with Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates’ request for increased intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) support to the Combatant Commanders and Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz’s vision for an increased USAF reliance on unmanned aircraft,” according to the statement.

The RQ-170 is flown by the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron at Tonopah Test Range, Nev. – home of the F-117 stealth fighter when the program’s existence was secret – and falls under Air Combat Command's 432d Wing at Creech Air Force Base, Nev. In Kandahar, the Sentinel was seen operating out of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems’ hangar.

The 30th RS was activated as part of the 57th Operations Group on Sept. 1, 2005, and a squadron patch was approved July 17, 2007. The activation – although not the full meaning of the event – was noted among those who watch for signs of activity in the classified world.


The RQ-170 in flight.

The RQ-170 designation is similar to that of the F-117 – a correct prefix, but out of sequence to avoid obvious guesses of a program’s existence. Technically, the RQ designation denotes an unarmed aircraft rather than the MQ prefix applied to the armed Predator and Reaper UAVs. The USAF phrase, “Support to forward deployed combat forces,” when combined with visible details that suggest a moderate degree of stealth (including a blunt leading edge, simple nozzle and overwing sensor pods) suggests that the Sentinel is a tactical, operations-oriented platform and not a strategic intelligence-gathering design.

Many questions remain about the aircraft’s use. If it is a high-altitude aircraft it is painted an unusual color – medium grey overall, like Predator or Reaper, rather then the dark gray or overall black that provides the best concealment at very high altitudes.

The wingspan appears to be about 65-ft., about the same as an MQ-9 Reaper. With only a few images to judge from – all taken from the left side – the impression is of a rather deep, fat centerbody blended into the outer wings. With its low-observable design, the aircraft could be useful for flying the borders of Iran and peering into China, India and Pakistan for useful data about missile tests and telemetry, as well as gathering signals and multi-spectral
intelligence.

Original story can be found here.

Cylinder UFO hovers low near California freeway

From the San Francisco Examiner

A cylinder-shaped UFO about 3 to 5 times larger than a commercial plane hovered low over a California freeway, according to witness testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.

The September 3, 2009, sighting was recently posted to the MUFON UFO reporting area by a witness who was driving to work along a stretch of Highway 80 between Pinole and Hercules about 5:50 a.m. that day.

As the witness came within one-quarter mile of the object, it appeared to be between 50 and 100 feet off of the highway, and between 500 and 1,000 feet off of the ground.

The silent and hovering object was described as three cylinders - "two smaller cylinders on the outside and one large cylinder in the middle that protruded past the smaller cylinders. It appeared all three cylinders were connected. There was also no markings."

Pinole is a city in Contra Costa County, California, population 19,039, and is located 20 miles northeast of San Francisco.

A similar report was made to MUFON on September 5, 2009, regarding a September 4, 2009, incident along the same stretch of I-80 between Pinole and Hercules at 8 p.m. In Mufon Case # 19077, the reporting witness described a pulsating object where the lights indicated it may have been a rectangular shape.

Following is the unedited and uninvestigated report from MUFON. Please keep in mind that most UFO reports can be explained as something natural or man made. If Northern California MUFON investigates and reports back on this case, an update will be released.

CA, September 3, 2009 - Large Hovering Cylinders off I80. MUFON Case # 20830.

At around 5:50 on sept 03, 2009. I was driving on my way to work. Sky was very clear with no clouds & still dark. As I was headed down a small hill between Pinole & Hercules on Hwy 80. I noticed two very bright lights just slightly above the tree line on my left side.

They were pointed in my direction which was roughly a mile away. It caught my attention as those lights were not normal for that area. My 1st thought was roadwork.

However the lights were too high up to be flood lights. Since I was on a hill going down the hwy. I had a clear view of anything in the far distance. I glanced around and noticed nothing other than flowing traffic. Next I thought it was a traffic helicopter or possibly there was an accident & someone was being airlifted. At that time in the morning it’s not uncommon you see accidents as people are rushing to get to work.

I focused my eyes on the light trying to determine what the source of light was. About 3/4 mile away two smaller lights started to strobe back & forth. The large bright lights still remained on. As I got closer the lights were so bright you had to squint a little. When I was roughly 1/4 mile away I noticed there was this very large dark object hovering about 500-1000 feet from the ground.

At first glance the object was dark & cylinder shaped. It didn’t appear to have wings nor windows. It was roughly 50-100ft to the left of the hwy. I slowed down to about 40mph and the car behind me stepped on his brakes & went around me. When the object was directly in front of me I rolled my driver window down & stuck my head out the window. It was 3-5 times bigger than a commercial plane. It made no sound and was just hovering like a kite.

As I drove past the object I could see there were THREE large cylinders. Two smaller cylinders on the outside and one large cylinder in the middle that protruded past the smaller cylinders. It appeared all three cylinders were connected. There was also no markings.

At the moment I had to make a quick decision if I should stop and pull over or keep driving to work. Also the junction to switch hwy’s was around 1000ft so I had to act quick. I was so dazed & confused about what I was seeing my reaction was to head to work. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen so about a ½ mile away I turned around and headed back. It took me less than a minute to get back to the spot where I saw the object but it was nowhere in sight.

I searched the local news papers to see if anyone else had reported seeing the object but I didn’t find anything. I know for a fact someone else had to have seen what I saw as it was right next to a major highway. Luckily I found this site & I'm hoping someone else saw what I saw. One last note. I thought it was strange while I was searching the internet for reports of the object. There was a UFO convention (The bay area UFO EXPO) the following week.

I told my family & friends but they didn’t believe me. Honestly I don’t care what they think. I know what I saw!

Fresno's Adorable Poodle Salon considered one of the oddest ghostly spots on Earth

I had posted a few months ago on The Adorable Poodle Salon, which was a dog grooming salon located somewhere on Blackstone between Gettysburg and Ashlan. It was reported that a very flirtatious ghost would interact with some of the female employees there as well as others reporting cold spots and a sense of being watched.

UK's Asylum (which appears to be a British version of Maxim or something) recently compiled a list of the most unusual haunted places in the world. Locations such as a Pizza Hut in New York and a Blockbuster in Alabama make the list. But as I scrolled down I noticed that Fresno had also made the list, with the above mentioned Adorable Poodle Saloon. Here's what they wrote:

"A series of odd activities have occurred in this dog-washing emporium, including the more usual lights-on-and-off trick, the sensation you're being watched, and cold patches. The most unusual, however, was the ghost constantly kissing one of the staff's neck, with her shooing him away and screaming. The big flirt."

Not that this list is official or anything, but it's nice to see Fresno on an international list and not be for something negative. Now if we can only work on that #55 thing...

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson had ghostly encounter.

Oscar winning director Peter Jackson claims
he saw a ghost years ago in an apartment in
Wellington, New Zealand.

Wellington film-maker Peter Jackson says he saw a real ghost once.

In London for the premiere of The Lovely Bones - a film he has directed from Alice Sebold's story in which a murdered teenage girl gives her viewpoint from heaven - Jackson said he did not know what a real soul was like.

But he told Britain's Channel 4 TV that while he could not swear the spirit in the movie was 100 percent accurate, he had seen a real ghost.

"It was genuine," said Jackson, who made a 1996 ghost movie, The Frighteners - co-written with his wife Fran Walsh - starring Michael J Fox.

His sighting was in an apartment he and his wife had in Wellington's Courtney Place opposite the St James Theatre, when they first met 20 years ago.

"I woke up one morning and there was a figure in the room, she was very scary, she had a screaming face, very accusatory, she was a lady about 50 years old," Jackson said.

"It was terrifying actually, a very scary image and she was at the end of the bed and she glided across the room and disappeared into the wall.

"I sat in bed and thought, have I really seen that?" said Jackson.

"Then Fran came in. I told her about it and the first thing she said was: 'was it the woman with the screaming face?"' he said.

"Fran had seen the same woman in the same room about two years before."

Jackson said that when the St James Theatre was being restored a few years ago, people talked about the legend of the woman who committed suicide after being booed off the stage after a bad show in vaudeville days.

"They say she manifests herself in the theatre with a screaming face. Sometimes she's seen - the same ghost. She needs to learn to smile a little."

Original story can be found here.

Is Merced's Lake Yosemite haunted?

Are these waters haunted by the ghost of a mother looking

for her lost children?

Situated five miles east of Merced, Ca and half a mile north of UC Merced, is Lake Yosemite. Created in 1888 for irrigation purposes, the lake is home to fishing and boating, and even has a sailing club of almost one hundred members.

There is a story that a few decades ago a woman had taken her two children to go swimming at the lake one summer afternoon. The two children decided they wanted to dive off the boat tower, perhaps to impress their mother, and climbed up it. Unknown to any of them, the water was shallow at this spot. As both children dove, they struck their heads on rocks in the shallow water. But for some reason, when authorities were summoned to retrieve the bodies they were not found.

For years the mother would drive out there, delusional, and look for the bodies of her children, hoping to find them. She did this for years until she finally passed away. But even in the afterlife she felt guilty over what happened. People have reported seeing headlights in the distance, never seeing or hearing a car as they approached. Others have claimed to have actually seen her walking along Old Lake Road, calling for her children, hoping that she will finally find them.

I'm not sure if this next story is related or not, but while researching the ghost of the mother I came across a story of someone who was working late one night, when they came across a little boy hiding behind a bbq pit. They asked him if he was lost, but the little boy ran and hid behind another bbq pit. As the worker approached the pit, there was no one there and there weren't any other hiding places. Walking back to where a coworker was, they mentioned what happened and the coworker said they saw the same little boy hide, but didn't see where he went.

Could this little boy be one of the children who died while swimming? The area mentioned isn't near the boat tower. Perhaps the bodies of the two children somehow ended up in this area, and that is why the mother never was able to find the bodies of her children. Or perhaps this is the ghost of another child, whose parents could never find him. Either way I think a trip up north is in order to investigate the place for myself.

55 foot long snake reported killed in China

A photograph purporting to show a 55ft snake found in a forest in China has become an internet sensation.

It was originally posted in a thread on the website of the People's Daily, the official Communist Party newspaper in China.

The thread claimed the snake was one of two enormous reticulated pythons found by workers clearing forest for a new road outside Guping city, Jiangxi province.

They apparently woke up the sleeping snakes during attempts to bulldoze a huge mound of earth.

"On the third dig, the operator found there was blood amongst the soil, and with a further dig, a dying snake appeared," said the post.

"At the same time, another gold coloured giant snake appeared with its mouth wide open. The driver was paralysed with fear, while the other workers ran for their lives.

"By the time the workers came back, the wounded snake had died, while the other one had disappeared. The bulldozer operator was so sick that he couldn't even stand up."

The post claimed that the digger driver was so traumatised that he suffered a heart attack on his way to hospital and later died.

The dead snake was 55ft (16.7m) long, weighed 300kg and was estimated to be 140 years old, according to the post.

However, local government officials in Guiping say the story and photograph are almost certainly a hoax as reticulated pythons are not native to the area.

Original story can be found here.

Universal sued over fake footage in The Fourth Kind

Apparently there is more and more backlash from the movie The Fourth Kind and it's claim of using real footage in it's movie and in it's promotion of the movie. Several on-line news articles were created by Universal mentioning characters from the movie and then claiming the information was from actual Alaskan publications. Obviously this didn't sit well with the publications mentioned, and a suit was issued. Looks like Universal's viral marketing campaign is starting to bite them in the ass as more people learn this movie is completely fictional despite their earlier claims of it being 100% real. Once again I urge people not to see this celluiod piece of shit, but instead watch my sweded version of it. It's only five minutes long, doesn't cost a penny, and honestly I feel I look damn good in a wig.


From the Fairbanks News-Miner

FAIRBANKS — Universal Pictures has reached a settlement with a handful of Alaska newspapers, including the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, for using fabricated “news archives” to promote a recently released movie.

Universal agreed to pay $20,000 to the Alaska Press Club, along with a $2,500 contribution to a scholarship fund for the Bethel-based Calista Corp. Anchorage attorney John McKay, who negotiated the settlement on behalf of the seven media organizations, said an emergency shelter in Nome also will receive an unspecified amount of money, although it wasn’t listed as a recipient in the settlement agreement.

Universal created an elaborate series of online news articles in the promotion for its movie, “The Fourth Kind.” The movie claims to be a true story about a plague of alien abductions in Nome a decade ago.

To bolster that claim, articles were posted that professed to be from real Alaska publications, but were actually created to bolster the movie’s storyline.

The articles included an obituary and news story about the death of a character in the movie, Dr. William Tyler, that supposedly were from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Neither the story nor the obituary ever appeared in the newspaper.

Fake articles were listed from other newspapers in Alaska, including The Nome Nugget, alongside authentic news stories. Part of the settlement also requires Universal to remove the fake “news articles” promoting the movie from the internet.

McKay said that attributing false stories to real publications undermines those newspapers’ credibility.

“If people can’t rely on the fact that when they look at a news article on the Web that it’s from the newspaper it appears to be, or is written by the reporter it appears to be, it erodes confidence in the world of journalism,” McKay said.

McKay said it didn’t appear that the advertising campaign was cleared by attorneys at Universal Pictures, and he praised the company for responding quickly to the complaints.

“I think they were embarrassed by it and acted very promptly,” he said.

The settlement comes as an unexpected boon for the Alaska Press Club, which is an independent journalism organization in the state. Club President Kathleen McCoy said the $20,000 received from Universal roughly doubles the organization’s annual revenues.

“We’ll spread this around and try to put this toward training for journalists around the state,” McCoy said.

The Alaska Press Club wasn’t part of the complaint against Universal, but John McKay suggested they receive settlement money as part of a compromise that would benefit Alaska journalism.

History Channel's Monster Quest recently filmed episode in Fresno

A few months ago I had posted on how Fresno had it's own Bigfoot hunter, Dave Raygoza. He and Jeff Gonzales from the Sanger Paranormal Society had recently done a Bigfoot expedition up in the Sierra Nevada mountains back in May 2009 in hopes of finding something. They had set up a few trail cameras, hoping that something would pass in front of the sensor and then set off the camera and capturing whatever it was. Mostly they caught deer and other wildlife typical to the area. Except for one picture.



What you see is directly from the site and has been both enhanced and outlined to show a human sized figured standing by a tree. Once the group saw this photo they decided to investigate the area and see if they could determine if something natural caused this photo or if it was possibly Bigfoot. They ruled out the chance that it was a bear as the slope of the hill was near 45 degrees and it would have been hard for a bear to stand up like that. They took several photos of the site for comparison, you can go here to see them for yourself.

Apparently word got out of this Bigfoot photo as they were on Coast to Coast AM a few weeks ago. Even better is that the History Channel's Monster Quest show (a show that explores sightings of different cryptids throughout the world) was doing a story on another Bigfoot hunter out of Hanford, a Joseph Walls, and wanted to re-enact his Bigfoot sighting when they heard about Dave and Jeff's photo, they decided to interview them as well.

Jeff sent me a few photos from the interview which I am posting below. Also the episode of Monster Quest is to air some time in January 2010. When I find out the actual date I will post an update.