The recent news stories surrounding the "Hopping Phantom of Calchín" led us to remember other similar experiences involving improbable transient creatures that appear in our midst out of nowhere. These apparitions are sometimes bestial, sometimes quite normal, and at others completely otherworldly.

Raul Núñez of the Instituto de Investigacion y Estudios Exobiologicos (IIEE) in Chile has drawn our attention to a case featured on his website (www.iiee.cl). The lengthy report bears the title "¿Qué Pasó en Cutún en 1976?" (What Happened in Cutún in 1976?) and is written by Sergio Alcaya, a systems engineer who has taken it upon himself to re-open the case, which is one of the strangest I've heard of, and straddles the "high-strangeness" no-man's land of UFO, paranormal and parapsychological investigation.

Cutún is a community in northern Chile's Valle de Elqui, a tourist destination favored by the country's contactee groups as they endeavor to make contact with the ever-present "kindly space brothers", a South American Sedona, if you will. But it appears that a particularly virulent poltergeist event also occurred here, one that draws our attention due to the presence of a Man-in-Black with a singular characteristic not reported in other cases.

In February 1976, a man named Nicasio Torres, the protagonist of the story, barged into the home of his neighbors, Angel and Gabriel Orrego to ask for help. The brothers did their best to calm him down and asked him to tell them what was going on. Gasping for breath, Torres told them that absolutely impossible events were taking place inside his modest home: stones were raining on his roof, but out of thin air. Assuring him that a childish prank was probably involved, the Orregos send Torres on his way, only to have him return the next day asking for assistance - the stones were now falling into his house, through the roof. Another person interviewed for the story recalled that whenever Nicasio Torres came looking for help, "all the dogs in the area would start to howl."

A curious news item made its way to the Reuters World Service in October 1996: Elements of the Egyptian police had allegedly shot and captured two strange savage animals of a pack that had terrorized the small Egyptian town of Armant, a community in the Nile Valley some three hundred miles south of Cairo, killing three villagers and wounding dozens in a series of nocturnal raids against the population.

The news item went on to say that the bloodthirsty creatures resembled "large hyenas or wild dogs." Known to the locals as salaawwa, the beasts allegedly belong to no known species of canids. Egypt's Ministry of the Interior offered the theory that the animals had been driven northward from the Sudan in search of new hunting grounds. Armed villagers joined the gendarmes in efforts to ensnare the bizarre animals, ultimately managing to wound a specimen as it emerged from the farmland bent on attacking individual homes. Another such creature had been shot dead, and no further information was available on the beasts.

In a world in which new species are added to the roster every year, the news of hyena offshoots attacking humans in the Nile should simply be chalked up to animal reactions resulting from changes in the environment. But the Egyptian news story has a curious ring of familiarity to it.

Mr. Juan Coronel, 35, is a married man with children, an expert in farm duties, with primary studies, average height and robust build. He works as a "puestero" (farm overseer) caring for cattle, horses and sheep in a field belonging to the Favaro Brothers. He lives in a comfortable home on the premises with his family. The property, covering some 2000 hectares, is located 60 km NE of the city of Santa Fe along provincial road No. 1. Access from the east is 4.4 km. along a long dirt road that extends from a westward cattle gate on the road, called "Entre Campos", as it serves as the access route to other neighboring fields. As from the first 3.7 kilometers, and along a 670 km stretch, it crosses a pond, flooded by recent rains, that has a sort of sewer to drain water away. It is necessary to go two kilometers along the dirt road - flooded in parts-- beyond the Favaro's cattle gate, to finally reach the home of Juan Coronel, the farm overseer. We went there with Antonio Pino, a friend and colleague, aside from being an expert photographer, in the company of Mr. Francisco Favaro, one of the field's proprietors.

At that time, Mr. Coronel was engaged in looking after a flock of sheep in a nearby pen. Seeing us arrived, he approached to greet us courteously. We were introduced by Mr. Favaro, who advised him of the motive and interest of our visit, to which he was more than receptive.

A woman from York captured an unexplained object in her holiday snaps this month, and wants your help identifying it.

Abbey, 22, was on a European holiday with her boyfriend when she took a photo of this street in Nuremberg.

When she looked at the photo later, she saw something she couldn't explain, high above the buildings.

"I was taking lots of photos to show people where we'd been, but when I got back into the car I noticed there was something on this one," said Abbey, who is currently studying at Newcastle University "I just though, 'What it that? That looks weird', and couldn't work out what it was."

An alien survivor from a prehistoric saucer crash? An unfortunate time traveler from the future? A tradesman from a parallel universe? A hitherto undiscovered species? Or a mere freak deformity of a human being? Nobody knows for sure, but no matter the explanation, the Sealand Skull has potential to change the view of the world we live in.

The July 2007 discovery of the skull in Olstykke on the Danish island Sealand did however not make headlines and remained largely ignored by science until 2010. The researchers who in 2008 examined the skull at the Veterinarian High School in Copenhagen merely concluded that "Although resembling a mammal, certain features make it impossible to fit the animal into Linnaean taxonomy".

Published: 9/14/10

Date: 9/10/10

I was taking my grand daughter for a walk in broad daylight near my home. There were scattered clouds in the sky, but it was mostly clear.

I looked up and noticed an odd-shaped object moving slowly from a westerly direction moving easterly. It was high in the sky, and was quite a long distance from my vantage point, but I could tell immediately that it was not an aircraft.

There were no wings or helicopter blades and there was no sound.

My first thought was that it was some sort of balloon, but it didn't resemble balloon shapes that I'm familiar with. After moving slowly eastward for a time, it stopped and hovered above my head for perhaps a minute or so.

I always carry a small camera with me so I pulled it out and snapped a couple of photos zooming to the maximum that this camera is capable of (about 5 x). I wasn't sure that the pictures would turn out since it was difficult to zero in on the image with the camera's viewfinder.

Published: 8/31/10

Date: 8/38/10

We live on the east side of a lake in northern Columbia County in New York State. From where we are located, we have an unobstructed view of the western sky. On the night of Saturday August 28, 2010, the skies were clear with temps in the low 70's.

At about 9:25 that evening, I went outside to get something out of my truck. We had been cooking and canning vegetables from our garden all day, and the house was quite warm inside. Noticing how pleasantly cool it was outside, I asked my girlfriend if she might like to come outside for a while to cool off.

As we stood down by the water, chatting and looking at the house lights from across the lake, something caught my eye in the west northwestern night sky.

At an elevation of about fifty degrees, a bright white star-like object had suddenly appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

Published: 9/2/10

Date: 8/31/10

We saw some type of UFO tonight that had bright red lights on it-- Date: Aug.31,2010, over Clovis, CA, at 11:10 PM.

It seemed to be more than two aircraft flying in tight formation. It appeared in the western sky and traveled silently and swiftly going South. We could not see the shape of the aircraft as it was too far away.

It seemed to descend slightly, while going southward, and disappeared behind trees and rooftops until we could no longer see it.

The red lights on this were vivid, like the red of a stop light.

Published: 9/3/10

Date: 9/2/10

These photos were all taken within a few seconds of each other, at 16:26, on the 2nd September, 2010. I have attached 5 or 6 pics, of which you can use to your best judgement.

I was enjoying a BBQ at our local restaurant the Samson & Lion. I always take a few seconds when I'm outdoors to check the sky, it's just a habit, something I feel compelled to do.

At one point I looked up and out the corner of my eye I saw the Sun reflecting off something far away, maybe half of a mile from us. I'd guess it to be maybe 15 to 20 feet long (only surmising).

Published: 9/11/10

Date: 9/11/10

Between 12:00 and 12:15 PM, Sept. 11, 2010, I was out walking my dog in the yard when I saw this bright, blue-white light as high up in the sky as I could see.

It was falling at an incredible speed over Kahului, and seemingly landed towards Lao Needle north of the airport. It seemed like it crashed into the earth, but there was no noise.

The second it hit there was a rolling blackout for about 15 seconds. We live at the top of Haleakala and have strange sightings pretty much everyday. 3 nights ago on Sept 8th at 1:00 AM exactly, there were 3 discs floating above the gulch directly across from our house. We are the only ones with a view of this area.

They had a band of streaming orange lights left to right scanning movement - over the cattle fields. We watched them there for about half an hour. It looked like a jellyfish - a disc with lights hanging from below.