USOs

An extremely fascinating and often overlooked aspect of the UFO phenomena are USOs. USO, Unidentified Submerged Objects, are exactly what they sound like; namely underwater UFOs. Considering that over 70% of our planet is covered by water, it should come as no surprise that a large proportion of UFO sightings deal with bodies of water. Whether the craft is seen entering, exiting, or both, there are a large number of sightings that deal with this aspect of the phenomena. With this phenomenon in mind, a moderator over at AboveTopSecret made a thread that called for people to help him sift through the reports of USOs in order to pull out the really intriguing gems.

I realize that the thread, found here, is fairly old but it got me to thinking about this unusual phenomenon again. One of the sites that the thread mentions is a great repository of some of the USO reports that have been compiled together in chronological order. The website, that you can see here, is truly a one-stop shop for all things USO. The site is run by Carl Feindt, a retired aircraft engineer and ex-military man, and it has a wide variety of topics within the category of USOs for one to get lost in. The chronology of sightings is just one of the available resources that can be found there. I can't recommend the site highly enough.

For that matter, getting back to the ATS thread, I would recommend that you read through the posts there as many members picked some of the more interesting and intriguing cases of USO sightings. But if you're really interested in learning about this phenomenon I can't recommend Ivan T Sanderson's Invisible Residents: The Reality of UnderwaterUFOs highly enough. In Invisible Residents, Sanderson lays out his non-ETH theory of what might be behind the UFO/USO phenomena. Sanderson speculates on the existence of what he terms to be OINTS or Other Intelligences which represent a secretive parallel civilization that shares the planet with us, albeit in underwater bases. For Sanderson, UFOs represent this civilizations ability to reach the stars. He picks out more than one occurrence where people have sighted craft entering the ocean from what seems to be high up in the atmosphere and the reverse where the craft descends from high in the atmosphere only to “crash” into the water at high rates of speed.

Among these reported occurrences, Sanderson relates what may be one of the more widely known examples of a USO; The Shag Harbor incident. This case was even included in Paul Kimball's 2007 documentary BestEvidence: The Top Ten UFO cases coming in at a respectable #6. You can watch that clip below.

For those that can't view the clip allow me to sum up Shag Harbor for you. It began on the evening of October 4, 1967 on the tip of Nova Scotia, Canada in a small village called Shag Harbor. Five local teenagers were watching four flashing orange lights that were dancing in the sky suddenly dive at a 45 degree angle towards the water below. Initially believing that they were witnessing a plane that was about to crash, witness phoned the local authorities. Much to their surprise however, instead of crashing into the water the craft began to hover right above the surface for a distance of about a mile and a half. While the witness were phoning in to the police, RMCP Constable Ron Pound was making his way down Hwy #3 and was also watching the same amazing spectacle. He was under the impression that the four lights were in fact attached to the surface of one immense craft which he estimated to be some 60 ft in length.

Eventually NORAD and dive teams would be sent to the scene in order to investigate the occurrence only to leave empty handed concluding only that an object of “unknown origin” had crashed in the Harbor that night. It wasn't until the early 90's that the full story of what happened came out. MUFON investigators Chris Styles and Doug Ledger discovered by interviewing the original witnesses that there was a whole other part of the story that had yet to be revealed. From the UFOCasebook site:

The divers, along with other witnesses related these events: The object that dove into the waters of the harbor had soon left the Shag area, traveling underwater for about 25 miles to a place called Government Point, which was near a submarine detection base. The object was spotted on sonar there, and Naval vessels were positioned over it. After a couple of days, the military was planning a salvage operation, when a second UFO joined the first. Common belief at the time was that the second craft had arrived to render aid to the first.

At this time, the Navy decided to wait and watch. After about a week of monitoring the two UFOs, some of the vessels were called to investigate a Russian submarine which had entered Canadian waters. At this point, the two underwater craft made their move. They made their way to the Gulf of Maine, and putting distance between themselves and the chasing Navy boats, they broke the surface, and shot away into the skies.

Whatever USOs ultimately turn out to be, they are certainly a fascinating part of the entire UFO phenomena. They are an unappreciated part of the UFO picture that are not given the attention that they rightfully deserve. As is often said, we know more about the surface of the moon then our planet's oceans and seas. So if there does exist a parallel civilization that is terrestrial in origin, or even extraterrestrial origin, there would be no better place for them to set up shop for whatever purpose they are here to accomplish. To learn more, visit the Water UFOs site and definitely be sure to pick up Sanderson's book. Well until next time this is your friendly neighborhood Fortean reminding you to not only keep your eyes to the sky, but also on the oceans. You just never know which direction the next UFO sighting maybe coming from.