UFO Disclosure Odds, Square Human Skulls, Conjuring House Lawsuit, the Squonk Returns and More Mysterious News Briefly

A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange news stories from the past week.

Sports fans often turn to the betting lines from Las Vegas to look for signs that early bettors may know some inside information about their favorite team, and that trend has now moved to UFO disclosure proponents as the online prediction platform Polymarket is reporting that the betting on the chances of a US president releasing the government UFO files has increased from 6% to 98% since December 6, and UFO researcher and documentary filmmaker Mark Christopher Lee is attributing this sudden increase to “someone on the inside close to Trump” who has inside information and “has been buying, hence the rise”; whistleblower and retired US Air Force major David Grusch recently claimed publicly that Trump could soon reveal the US government files, and former Pentagon insider and whistleblower Luis Elizondo says he has recently urged Trump to appoint a UAP adviser to keep him informed of unidentified anomalous phenomena and any related incidents that could threaten national security. If this keeps up, the government may also need to appoint a UFO gambling czar.

While it’s not full UFO disclosure, the Pentagon’s Office for Resolution of Anomalies in All Domains (AARO) recently published three new videos of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs/UFOs) which were recorded in Europe in 2024; video  PR-018 (you can see all three on the AARO website along with others it has released previously) comes from an infrared sensor aboard a US military platform and AARO says: “The object’s morphological features, performance characteristics, and behaviors are unremarkable and do not warrant further analysis”; video PR-017 was recorded with a cell phone and AARO says the image is insufficient for any analysis; the video PR-016 is the good news/bad news video – it’s the best one of the three which allows AARO to say “with high confidence, that the objects depicted in the video are almost certainly (>95% likelihood) birds”. How does this affect the betting lines?

The so-called ‘Conjuring House’ – the farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island, where Carolyn and Roger Perron and their five daughters were allegedly tormented by evil spirits, bringing in paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren who inspired the movie series ‘The Conjuring’ – has lately been haunted by evil real estate spirits; the problems began with an auction of the house on Halloween that was mysteriously cancelled when YouTuber Elton Castee thought he bought the mortgage on the home; however, that sale is now the subject of a lawsuit filed by Elizabeth Greenhalgh, the sister of owner Jacqueline Nuñez who turned the rights to sell it over to Jason Hawes of Ghost Hunters fame and his attorney (confused yet?); Greenhalgh contends her sister was not mentally competent when she handed over the rights and would never have sold the house to Hawes; as of today, Castee’s company owns the debt, and Demay “has entered, or will soon enter” into an agreement to sell the property to Hawes, who says he is buying it at the request of Andrea Perron (one of the daughters) to “save” it. If they can work the Annabelle doll into the suit, they’ve got the plot for another Conjuring movie.

In a recent episode of 'Reality Check with Ross Coulthart: Underwater UFOs', Ross Coulthart interviewed US Congressman Tim Burchett, who is a known proponent of UFO file disclosure by the US government, and Burchett revealed he has asked President Donald Trump for a private 15-minute meeting to discuss the topic, saying: “there's two or three things I'd like to bring up to him that I think would go a long way, and one of those is this issue”; Burchett further states that he believes there are underwater UFO bases being used for “surveillance” and “something is observing us or we’re observing some, and we’re observing some” and he wants our government to admit this and potentially identify the parties; he admits his belief is based on a private conversation with a US Navy official who told him “Tim, they’re real”. Tim, we’re waiting.

Here’s yet another sign the paranormal is becoming the normal: BIGFOOT!, the new musical comedy by Amber Ruffin, David A. Schmoll, and Kevin Sciretta, will premiere Off-Broadway this spring at New York City Center Stage, and the cast will include Crystal Lucas-Perry (Ain’t No Mo’, 1776) as Francine, Grey Henson (Mean Girls, Elf) as Bigfoot, Katerina McCrimmon (Funny Girl national tour) as Joanne, and Alex Moffat (The Cottage, Saturday Night Live) as Mayor; a preliminary Playbill describes BIGFOOT! as a "larger-than-life musical tale of corrupt politicians, small town paranoia, and misunderstood youth" – with the youth being Sasquatch. They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway - but are they bright enough that cameras can see Bigfoot at the stage door after the show? 

As the end of 2025 approaches, the predictions by Nostradamus for 2026 are trickling out, with the most disturbing one being yet another war between East and West; he referred to the war god Mars when he wrote: “When Mars rules his path among the stars, human blood will sprinkle the sanctuary. Three fires rise from the eastern sides, while the West loses its light in silence"; he also wrote that “The great swarm of bees will arise… by night the ambush…" but it is not clear if he’s referring to real bees or murder hornets or if they are a representation of world leaders such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Vlodimir Zelenskyy buzzing together to bring peace to Ukraine; however, he also writes that "Because of the favor that the city will show… the Ticino will overflow with blood…" - Ticino is the southernmost area of Switzerland. So this could portend an unexpected expansion of that war across Europe; before you start changing your travel plans, Nostradamus incorrectly predicted that 2025 would see a major natural disaster in Brazil, and England would become embroiled in a major conflict. Remember, Nostradamus made predictions up to and including the year 3797, so he sees us being around for quite a while.

Yet another astronomer is claiming to have discovered the real ‘Star of David’ mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew as the star that leads the wise men to the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem before “standing over” the place and not moving; Mark Matney, a planetary scientist for NASA, writes in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association of a bright space object, probably a comet, mentioned in ancient Chinese court records as being visible in the spring of 5 BCE for more than 70 days; Matney modeled how this comet might have moved in the sky when viewed from the ground and identified a set of trajectories that would have brought it close enough to Earth that, for a few hours, its eastward motion would nearly cancel out the effect of Earth’s rotation and make the comet appear stationary from the ground; when viewed from Judea, the model showed the position aligned with the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, thus appearing to the “wise men” as leading them towards Bethlehem before stopping over it as they arrived; Matney’s model showed the comet’s approach was so close to Earth that it could “easily have been visible in the daytime — it would have been extraordinarily bright”. If they were so wise, why didn’t THEY figure this out?

in an update to his shocking claims earlier this year that there are human-made, tube-like structures or columns descending more than a kilometer (.62 miles) beneath the Khafre Pyramid into 80-meter (262 foot) wide cubic chambers, radar engineer Filippo Biondi revealed in an interview four independent satellite operators have confirmed his findings; furthermore, he now says there is more underneath them, calling the pyramids “the tip of the iceberg. They're simply a cap, complementing what lies beneath"; when asked about their purpose, Biondi speculated that "I can say that this structure, these pipes running underneath the pyramid, seem to be connected to information. Energy generation is a kind of information. Information is everything”; he’s hoping to use existing vertical shafts on the Giza plateau as a "service entrance" that he believes will lead to this mysterious tunnel network. It’s now easier to get past the mummies than to get past government regulations protecting the pyramids.

A fire broke out recently at Hangar 84, which UFO fans will recognize as the hangar at the Roswell Air Center in New Mexico where debris from the alleged 1947 UFO crash was stored; firefighters also had to deal with a large explosion at the site, but no injuries were reported; however, the status of any real or rumored objects connected with the 1947 incident is not known at this time; conspiracy theorists linked the fire to the release of the UFO documentary ‘Age of Disclosure’, alleging it was set by people terrified by this and all UFO disclosure; there was another fire at Roswell Air Field in April 2024 but no connection has been proven – so far. Disclose or distract – those seem to be the only two options for government officials on UFO disclosure.

Ikal Cuauhtli Iktan tells local media he was in Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico, when he looked up and saw a strange object which he managed to record on his phone so his friends and the media would believe that it was a triangular UFO displaying five small lights around its edges and one bright red one in the middle; the object seemed to pass over Orizaba before disappearing as if it flew away; comments on social media ranged from aliens to a drone to AI with little agreement and no information from military of government officials. Is it time for a Department of Drones to keep track of and regulate all of this drone confusion?

Wernher von Braun may be better known as one of the people who helped Nazi Germany develop rocketry before doing the same for the United States, but his fellow engineer Willy Ley is about to soar to greater heights with the announcement by Celestis Memorial Spaceflights that a small portion of Willy Ley’s cremated remains will fly aboard Serenity Flight, their next Earth-orbit memorial mission; Ley was a founding member of the influential Verein für Raumschiffahrt amateur rocketry society and wrote hundreds of articles about rockets for German and foreign newspapers, but his disdain for the Nazi Party forced him to flee Germany in 1935 and eventually become a U.S. citizen; Ley’s illustrated 1949 book, ‘The Conquest of Space’, was an inspiration to many of NASA’s early space engineers, and he has a crater on the far side of the Moon named after him; Ley also wrote a number of books and articles about cryptozoology, including the 1949 article "Do Prehistoric Monsters Still Exist?" about the possibility of living dinosaurs; Ley died in 1969, just weeks before the Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the Moon, but some of his ashes were unexpectedly discovered recently in the basement of a Manhattan apartment building. Godspeed, Willy Ley!

The latest conspiracy theory surrounding the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, which many followers of Harvard physicist Avi Loeb believe is an alien spaceship, comes from (of all places) NASA after the space agency announced that it has lost contact with Maven (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution), a spacecraft that has orbited Mars since 2014; the problem and the conspiracy theory began on December 6 when the formerly operational spacecraft went behind Mars – the conspiracy theory comes from the fact that Maven had spent ten days, September 27, using its Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph camera to take images of 3I/ATLAS which allowed scientists to use the wavelengths of light emerging from the 'coma' of gases around the comet to help analyze its chemical composition; many social media comments on the communications failure sounded like this one: “There could be a number of reasons for that, including intercession by an Extraterrestrial Alien Spacecraft to prevent NASA gaining any further information”; as of this writing, NASA has not been able to restart communications with Maven. Is 3I/ATLAS really just a ship of joyriding alien teens playing phone pranks on human adults?

Ghost hunters and paranormal investigators in Argentina are mulling over a video taken by a doctor in Mendoza who was working the hospital night shift when he noticed something strange in a parked car – it appears to be a human face staring motionless at the hospital; as the doctor continued to record, the apparition suddenly moved; despite his fright, the doctor says he approached the car, only to find it empty – even opening the doors for an inside view; after driving around the parking lot looking for signs of the mysterious car occupant, the doctor returned to the car – to find it moving inside it again; social media commenters run the gamut from ghost to reflection and no conclusion or follow-up is provided. Whatever it was, this sounds like the perfect way to protect your vehicle from car thieves.

Cryptozoology fans will be excited to learn that the Squonk – a Pennsylvania cryptid known more for its odd behaviors than any dangerous tendencies – will star in an upcoming edition of ‘Grimm Tales of Terror’, a graphic novel series reimagining traditional creepy stories, modern urban legends and famous and not-so-famous cryptids; the squonk (lachrimacorpus dissolvens) is said to live in the hemlock forests of northern Pennsylvania and is locally famous enough to warrant a festival – the Squonkapalooza held every August in Johnstown, Pennsylvania; squonks are known for their baggy wart-covered skin and their tendency to cry incessantly and for no reason, often dissolving away completely in a puddle of tears; the band Genesis recorded the song "Squonk" for its 1976 ‘A Trick of the Tail’ album, but the graphic novel will surely introduce a new generation to the weepy cryptid. Steely Dan also mentions “squonk’s tears” in ‘Any Major Dude Will Tell You', so a movie based on this graphic novel already has the start of an excellent soundtrack.

Some mysteries are impossible to solve, some are easy and a few are just plain embarrassing, which is what happened recently in the area surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the site of the 1986 meltdown considered to be the worst nuclear disaster in history; while humans were eventually evacuated and only cleanup crews and visitors have been allowed into the exclusion zone, many pets and wild animals stayed and seemingly thrived without harm – except for some blue dogs that were discovered in October 2025;  photographs showed them to look normal except for their color and experts were at a loss to explain it, forcing many to assume it was some sort of nuclear  contamination; fortunately, an organization called the Dogs of Chernobyl Program, which has cared for the estimated 700 dogs living in the 18-square-mile exclusion zone, found the cause: a porta-potty which had tipped over; spokesperson Timothy A Mousseau explained on social media: “The blue coloration was simply a sign of the dog's unsanitary behavior! As any dog owner knows, most dogs will eat just about anything, including feces”; fortunately, the coloring will either wash off or disappear as the fur grows out. Unfortunately, the dogs will never live down the embarrassment.

The famous elongated skulls, found primarily in the Paracas area of Peru and attributed to the practice of binding the heads to babies to cause artificial cranial deformation, get all of the attention, but a new shape may be moving up in status – cubic human skulls; archaeologists digging near the site of Balcón de Montezuma (Balcony of Montezuma) in the east-central Mexican state of Tamaulipas recently found the skull of a middle-aged man which was flattened on the top, giving his head a cube shape that is referred to as parallelepiped; the shape has been found in other areas (Veracruz, for instance) but this was the first cubic skull found at this site and an analysis of the man's bones and teeth showed he was born in the area and lived and died there; the purpose of square head deformation is not known. Could it have been hat makers looking to charge more for odd-shaped sizes?

The cause of the Black Death, the bubonic plague which killed 50 million people – roughly 60% of Europe's population - in the Middle Ages from 1346 to 1353, has been debated for centuries, but new research by researchers at the University of Cambridge on the rings of trees from that period are leading experts to believe it was triggered by 14th century volcanic activity, possibly a cluster of eruptions, around 1345 that blackened the skies with volcanic ashes and gases and caused annual temperatures to drop for many consecutive years; this caused crop failures across the Mediterranean region, so leaders in Italian city states traded with grain producers around the Black Sea; those ships carried the rats whose fleas carried Yersinia pestis – the deadly bacterium causing bubonic plague; the researchers now agree that the Black Death was the result of a “perfect storm” of climate, agricultural, societal and economic factors after 1345, making it one of the first deadly consequences of globalization. Will we ever learn? 

UFO sightings are often over mountains or cornfields, but cameras set up by Surfline, a company that provides weather and surf conditions to surfers, recently picked up two UFOs resembling flying saucers at about 4:45 am over California’s Ventura coast, a prime surfing location; after posting it on social media, commenters thought it was aliens “Probably searching for our swells; we already have crowded breaks”; skeptics said it was probably a SpaceX satellite launch from nearby Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County; while there was no official word from the government or aliens, the sighting didn’t affect surfing the next day. Hang ten – or however many toes you have – dudes!