The Lucky Country has had no shortage of strange encounters of the third kind over the decades. Here, we recount some of the strangest. The struth is out there.

Think about it: massive expanse of land, plenty of room to take the saucer for a spin without much scrutiny, decent population of humans lurking about for the odd probing... Australia just might be the perfect spot for vacationing aliens.

Though Oz might not be known as the UFO hub of the world, Australians have reported an impressive number of eerie encounters with unexplained phenomena over the decades.

Here's a rundown of some of the most harrowing home-grown 'X-Files' occurrences.

On December 17, 2017, a newspaper printed a story titled "Real U.F.O.'s? Pentagon Unit Tried to Know." No, the headline wasn't surrounded by text about post-baby bods and B-listers' secret sorrows. Because it was on the front page of The New York Times.

The article describes a federally funded program that investigated reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs, the take-me-seriously acronym that includes UFOs). And within the story, the Times embedded videos of two such UAPs.

Although the article was careful not to say that unidentified meant extraterrestrial, the Department of Defense acknowledged the program, and it was easy enough for readers to draw the conclusion that these videos could show alien aircraft. The Times supplemented one of the clips with a first-hand account of a Navy pilot who was sent to investigate "mysterious aircraft" that appeared - poof! - at 80,000 feet, dropped down to 20,000, and then seemed to hover before either leaving radar range or launching straight up. Weird, right?

Questioning the hidden power of elites - whether big pharma or secret societies - is really quite sane

If the Illuminati is real, it's got to be the least secret secret society in the universe. It's so bad at keeping itself hidden that its existence is proclaimed all over the internet by people whose investigative toolkit consists entirely of Google and a lively imagination.

The most recent would-be whistleblower, however, is far from your usual ex-sports commentator. Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian minister of defence, has blamed the Illuminati for suppressing technology brought to Earth by aliens that could end our reliance on fossil fuels.

Why the possessors of such fantastic kit should prefer to cash in on the extraction of still abundant oil rather than on their incredible, exclusive alternative is mysterious. But since the whole point about secret all-powerful elites is that they are mysterious, maybe that's to be expected. Perhaps the Illuminati is like that other great mystery, quantum theory: if you think you understand it, you don't.

Last November, The War Zone posted an exclusive story detailing a bizarre incident involving an unidentified aircraft that transited the skies of the Pacific Northwest in the early evening of October 25th, 2017. What started as a radar target moving at very high speed over Northern California turned into a series of eyewitness accounts made by nearby airline pilots traveling northward over Oregon. Even F-15 fighters were launched to intercept the mysterious intruder that quickly became invisible to radar.

Now, through the Freedom of Information Act, we present what could be one of the most insightful instances of official documentation surrounding such an encounter that had already been confirmed to have occurred by both the FAA and the USAF. These materials include fascinating audio recordings of radio transmissions and phone calls made as the incident was unfolding, as well as pilot interviews, and conversations between FAA officials made in the aftermath of the highly peculiar incident.

For proper context, make sure to first read our original post linked here detailing the event, how our report came to be in the first place, as well as the rare confirmations as to its authenticity from both the FAA and the USAF. Below is also a short explainer video that will give you a basic overview of the incident.

See video here. (3:01)

Missing wreckage from a miniature 'flying saucer' which was hailed as the 'British Roswell' has been found in a tin box in London's Science Museum.

The lump of metal discovered on Silpho Moor near Scarborough, North Yorkshire, in 1957 was so strange that it was dubbed the 'Silpho UFO'.

The disc, which was 16 inches in diameter and weighed 22 lbs was inscribed with hieroglyphics, similar to the wreckage of the so-called spacecraft found at Roswell, New Mexico in June 1947.

When the object was cut open a book made of 17 thin copper sheets was found inside, with each sheet covered in more hieroglyphs.

Of all the many and varied reports I have received on issues relative to the Men in Black, the Women in Black, the Shadow People and the Hat Man, one of the most sinister and disturbing is that of a woman named Patricia. She told me of a series of trauma-filled experiences with shadowy, nightmarish, fedora-wearing figures. She emailed me as follows:

Dear Mr. Redfern, I just finished reading your book, The Real Men In Black. I was particularly interested in Part II: The Theories. I am 62 years old, from a town near the Mississippi River across from St. Louis. I grew up in the country, next to a lake. This is pertinent because I do believe that water can be a conduit for paranormal phenomena. And, I am also a Pisces. I include my age because what happened to me was before any kind of media frenzy about UFOs, or abduction stories were made popular by books or movies. I am a former art teacher and artist, extremely creative, was the quintessential flower child in the 60s, all of which works against one as far as credibility is concerned.

Patricia continued:

It began when I was quite young. I had night terrors every night. Afraid to sleep alone (my bedroom was the closest to the lake), I ended up in my parents bed up until I was almost 16 years old. I always imagined something was in my room. What happened one night, shook me to the core, for years. I was around 16 (already having periods) when, as I began dozing off, I saw a thin black shadow with a large head peek around my door looking at me. I didn't feel right, couldn't focus or move and was basically paralyzed while the 'shadow' mounted me, and what I guess was, having sex. Remember, 16 year old girls were far more naive then, than today. I fell into a very deep sleep.

A skier missing from Whiteface Mountain has been found in California.

New York State Police said Constantinos "Danny" Filippidis, 49, of Toronto, was found 2,900 miles away Tuesday in Sacramento.

Filippidis was reported missing last Wednesday by friends who said he could not be found as the resort was closing.

His belongings were found at the lodge and his car was still in the parking lot.

Since then, hundreds of volunteers have spent about 7,000 hours combing the mountain.

There are many facets of the UFO phenomenon, and many types of witnesses who have come forward with their own extraordinary tales. These often get lost in the deluge of such reports and indeed rantings, but sometimes there is a well-know and beloved celebrity who will come forward with their own accounts, theories, and experiences. These particular witnesses and spokespeople have a way of making people listen, somewhat reinvigorating the UFO debate in the process, and certainly one of the most vocal and well-known of these is none other than the popular Canadian-American actor, comedian, producer, screenwriter, musician and businessman Dan Aykroyd. Getting his start on the hit sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live and going on to star in such beloved classics as Ghostbusters, Aykroyd is a well-known name to many people. He also just happens to be a major proponent and researcher of UFOs with some truly bizarre tales to tell.

Dan Aykroyd has never been shy about his intense interest in UFOs, and this seems to be a fascination that reaches all the way back into his childhood. The actor was fist enamored with the phenomenon when he saw a photo of mysterious lights over Capitol Hill from all the way back in 1952, an incident in which fighter planes had apparently been scrambled to chase the fast-moving objects off. This interest was only strengthened when he saw the classic sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still, which he saw as a perfectly plausible scenario. Aykroyd would have the first of his own many close encounters with UFOs in the mid-1980s in upstate New York, when he claims that he woke up in the middle of the night in a panic and told his wife, "They are calling me, I want to go outside."

In spring 1127, in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire strange things happened. At night locals heard repeated horn blasts and some, who were foolish enough to be out in the dark, saw ghastly sights: men appeared on black horses and on black goats riding through the woods following black hounds. It goes without saying that this was not some local form of carnival: the locals repeatedly came into contact with what folklorists call the 'Wild Hunt'.

What is the Wild Hunt? Essentially a charismatic and awfully powerful spirit, usually with unpleasant leanings, takes evil followers on a hunt through the dark, continually blasting his horn. Hunt leaders have included the Devil, Odin, local bogeymen and notorious spirits of the dead. What does the hunt do? Well, that is trickier to answer. In some stories they chase down evil men; in others they just keep everyone indoors, hiding under their beds.

There are literally scores of medieval and early modern references to the wild hunt from western Europe. What makes the events of 1127 unusual is the quality of the evidence and its early date. We have two separate sources recording the extraordinary events of that spring: one contemporary and one written by an author who, though writing as much as a generation later, had lived through the terror.

The two sources were both written at the Monastery of Peterborough, a Benedictine house and one of England's most important medieval foundations. Both are included below in translation and with the original languages, a very late Old English and a very medieval Latin. The first was a chronicle of the year events and was clearly based on interviews (too portentous a word?) with those who had seen or heard the hunt. The hunt had passed through the monastery's deer park and had arrived as far as fifteen miles away in the woods near Stamford.

This disturbing video gives a fascinating insight into the secret world of Islamic exorcisms in the UK for the first time. A British imam allowed cameras in to film him performing a "ruqyah" ritual on an unmarried woman at a mosque in Sheffield, Yorkshire, to dispel myths about the practice.

The ceremony was one of thousands carried out every year in the UK where imams rid men and women of evil spirits or "jinn" which they believe live inside them.

In the video a young Muslim woman dressed in a burqa is seeking help to rid her of spirits which she believes are caused by black magic.