Script

In the quiet corners of our world, where the veil between the known and the unknown grows thin, there are photos of UFOs that have largely eluded public attention.  Yet, these photos, fleeting moments caught on film, increase speculation that non-human intelligences have visited our planet.  They challenge our understanding of reality. Since the invention of photography, humanity has been entranced by these unearthly images—blurry apparitions hovering in the skies, defying gravity and reason, sparking endless debates. 

Consider the earliest of them all: the 1870 photograph from Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, a stereoscopic shot of the summit's rugged peaks, pierced by a cigar-shaped enigma drifting amid the clouds. Discovered long after in dusty archives, it stands as a remarkable image from a pre-aviation era, where no man-made craft could soar so high. Explanations abound—lens flares, artifacts of developing chemicals, or perhaps a genuine anomaly that slipped through the cracks of time. These photos don't just document; they haunt us, compelling us to ponder the impossible: Could alien eyes be gazing back from within those metallic hulls? What secrets do they seek on our blue marble of a planet? Are they explorers, conquerors, or silent observers of our existence?

Rare UFO images ignite a fire in the soul, a yearning to understand something that remains out of our grasp.  Yet, they inspire stories that blur the line between fact and fiction, like the famous McMinnville photos from Oregon in 1950—two crisp shots of a saucer-shaped object, analyzed to exhaustion by experts, yet they still divide opinions: are the photos a hoax, misidentified aircraft, or a true visitor from the stars? They embody the eternal tug-of-war between skepticism and wonder. And so, in this episode, I venture off the beaten path to share three lesser-known UFO photographs—from a snow-covered resort of Poland, the war-torn skies of China, and the sun-drenched horizons of Italy. These are not the glossy icons of pop culture; they are obscure gems, shrouded in mystery.  They continue resisting easy debunking, and still whisper secrets that could rewrite our place in the cosmos.

I'm MF Thomas, and this is My Dark Path.

If we're to plunge into the depths of these enigmatic images, it's only right to first pay homage to one of the most notorious UFO photographs in history—the very one that became the blueprint for the "I Want to Believe" poster adorning Fox Mulder's office in The X-Files. I even have one framed in my office.  This iconic shot didn't emerge from some shadowy government file or a clandestine military operation; it sprang from the extraordinary claims of a single man: Billy Meier. Born on February 3, 1937, in the quaint Swiss town of Bülach, Meier was no ordinary individual. From a young age, he wove tales of cosmic encounters that would captivate—and divide—the world of ufology for decades.

Meier's saga began innocently enough, or so he claimed, in 1942 when he was just five years old. Allegedly, an elderly alien, a Plejaren named Sfath made contact.  Plejarens were an alien race hailing from the distant Pleiades star cluster. To Billy, Sfath wasn't some ethereal spirit; he was a mentor, imparting knowledge through telepathy and even taking young Billy on journeys through the stars. These weren't mere daydreams—they were vivid, life-altering experiences that shaped Meier's worldview. When Sfath passed away in 1953, the torch was handed to Asket, a female being from a different and parallel universe, who continued the guidance until 1964. Then, a decade of silence, broken in 1975 by renewed interactions with a host of extraterrestrials.

Meier painted these beings as enlightened humanoids, far advanced in technology and wisdom, who had selected him as their emissary on Earth. To propagate his message, he founded a nonprofit organization dedicated to his teachings of peace, spirituality, and extraterrestrial harmony. But words alone weren't enough; Meier produced a trove of purported evidence: metal fragments from alien craft, eerie sound recordings of beamships – his word for UFOs - in flight.  Film of beamships showed their graceful maneuvers over the Swiss countryside.  He also shared photographs of dinosaurs, prophetic future events, and even the aliens themselves.

Among this collection, one image stands supreme: captured in 1975 near the village of Hinwil – just east of Zurich.  The photo shows a silver, disc-shaped beamship poised elegantly above a solitary tree in a pastoral landscape. The craft gleams under the daylight sun, its metallic surface reflecting a domed upper section and a flanged base, set against a backdrop of scattered clouds. This photograph didn't just capture a moment; it captured imaginations, becoming the visual cornerstone for The X-Files' exploration of the paranormal.

Yet, for all its allure, Meier's empire of evidence crumbled under scrutiny. Skeptics, scientists, and even fellow ufologists branded it an elaborate hoax. Investigations peeled back the layers: many photos were fabricated using makeshift models—trash can lids for hulls, carpet tacks for details, pie pans for accents—all suspended by strings or poles against scenic backdrops. In a damning revelation, Meier's ex-wife, Kalliope, went public in 1997, affirming some deceptions that she had witnessed firsthand. Meier himself, in candid interviews, conceded to crafting models after Kalliope unearthed incomplete ones he believed incinerated.

Photo experts like Joe Nickell and the Independent Investigations Group dissected Billy’s images with forensic precision, employing string analysis and model recreations to expose the fraud. By 2017, an art exhibit acknowledged the photos' authenticity—not as proof of aliens, but as genuine captures of cleverly constructed miniatures. Meier's legacy, once a beacon for believers, now serves as a cautionary tale: a reminder that the quest for extraterrestrial truth is fraught with human ingenuity and deception.

Though Billy Meier's astounding photos have been thoroughly debunked, they pave the way for our dive into three others that aren't so easily dismissed.

Part 1 – Dr. K’s Amazing UFO Photo

Our journey begins in the depths of Eastern Europe, amid the chill of a 1959 winter, long before the Soviet Union's fall. What started as a simple holiday veered into the unknown. Dr. Stanislaw Kowalczewski (ko-VAHL-cheff-skee) a prominent Warsaw physician, sought a break from the city's hustle with a two-week Christmas getaway in Muszyna (moo-SHI-nah), a tranquil resort near today's Slovak border. The festive season promised a time of peaceful reflection, but nature had its own agenda. For the first three days of his trip, heavy skies dumped endless snow, cloaking everything in a beautiful white veil.

Then, on the fourth day—December 22—the clouds finally broke. The sun burst forth, flooding the valley with warm light that banished the gloom. Around 3 p.m., Dr. Kowalczewski paused at his window, gazing at the scenic river snaking through the valley toward distant peaks.

Something odd in the sky drew his eye: a strange yellow-orange cloud lingering across the valley from him, its color eerily vivid and out of place. Intrigued, he quickly grabbed his camera and snapped a photo of the sky, irritated that a telephone pole interrupted the view. Moments after his first photo, an orb emerged from behind the cloud, blazing brightly. He took another picture hoping to capture the event, but wondering if the film would capture the bizarre sight.

And then, his wife called out, urging him to join her outside for a stroll in the elusive sunshine. He reluctantly stepped away from the window just as the object vanished behind the haze.

Out in the hotel yard, he stopped cold. He wondered - what had he just seen and photographed? The orb and the orange cloud had both disappeared as if they had never existed. His thoughts immediately went to a recent Polish magazine piece on flying saucers, recounting a country woman's sighting of a huge, flattened sphere. His own encounter eerily matched the shape of the object she had seen.

To unravel the riddle, he needed the developed photo. Four days later, back in Warsaw, he picked up the photos from the developer, holding his breath and hoping.

And, there, hovering over the horizon, was a dark, flattened oval with a subtle bulge atop—exactly where the luminous sun had appeared. Excited, he showed his wife, proclaiming it a flying saucer. She scoffed, calling it a mere stain on the film. But Dr. Kowalczewski knew better; the memory was etched too deeply.  He knew that it wasn’t an artifact from developing the film, but an object he had seen independently of his camera.

He described his experience into letters sent to two Warsaw newspapers, detailing the strange event. One publication, Warsaw Life, soon published Dr. Kowalczewski's report alongside analyses from two photo experts who examined the original film. Fakery was ruled out, but the luminous sphere turning black saucer remained unexplained.

Then the editors at Stolica magazine replied to Dr. Kowalczewski’s letter and photo.  They had sought expert opinion about the photo. Soon, the magazine’s verdict appeared: "With 90 percent certainty, I can say that the photo depicts a flying saucer, very similar to photos from abroad. It is clear that the object was emitting its own light; otherwise, it could not appear on the photo as a uniformly dark stain with rounded edges."

This encounter didn't stand alone in Poland's UFO lore. It followed a flood of reports after the Wolski case, including the Gdynia UFO crash—often dubbed Poland's Roswell—and the Emilcin abduction, where farmer Jan Wolski claimed a harrowing meeting with otherworldly beings. These stories revealed Poland as a hotspot for the unexplained – a rarity for these events to be publicly discussed while the country was still under the heal of Soviet communism.  Be sure to watch my episodes about them! 

What do you think of this photo and what Dr. Kowalczewski (ko-VAHL-cheff-skee) saw?

Part 2 – the Hopeh UFO

When we think of UFO sightings during World War II, the shadowy specters known as Foo Fighters often flicker into our minds—those elusive lights that danced in the skies over Europe, taunting pilots and defying explanation. But these enigmatic visitors weren't confined to the war-torn fields of the Continent. No, they prowled the vast expanses of the Pacific theater as well, weaving their mysteries into the brutal campaigns that raged across islands and oceans.

For example, it's August 12, 1942, on Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands, during the grueling Guadalcanal campaign. The air hangs heavy with the scent of gunpowder and salt, the jungle alive with the distant echoes of combat. Amid a rare, uneasy lull in the fighting, hundreds of U.S. Marines lift their weary eyes to the heavens. What they witness is no ordinary aerial assault.

Marine Sergeant Stephen J. Brickner, hunkered down in the humid trenches, would later recount the moment with a mix of awe and unease. Air raid sirens wailed at first, then a few seconds later, he spotted a formation of silvery objects directly overhead.

At that moment, he was in a highly emotional state – it was his fifth consecutive day in combat. It was all too easy to misidentify anything in the sky as Japanese planes, which is exactly what he assumed these were. They soared far above the clouds, much too high for any bombing raid on their small island. A voice from a nearby foxhole yelled that they were enemy aircraft hunting for the fleet. He went along with that idea, though not without some doubts.

For one thing, the number of flying objects was enormous—easily more than 150 objects in total. Rather than the typical tight V-shape of about 25 planes, this one stretched out in straight rows of 10 or 12, stacked one behind the next. Their pace was a bit quicker than Japanese aircraft, and they vanished from view before long. Several details left Sargeant Brickner perplexed: he couldn't discern any wings or tails on them. They appeared to wobble faintly, and with each tilt, they gleamed intensely under the sunlight. Their hue resembled brilliantly polished silver. Overall, it stood as the most breathtaking yet terrifying sight he had ever witnessed.

As the war dragged on, UFO sightings in the Pacific escalated—from scattered whispers in late 1942 to a steady drumbeat by August 1944, persisting until the final surrender. Somewhat different from the swift lights that haunted European skies, these Pacific Foo Fighters often manifested as colossal, lingering "balls of fire"—glowing in hues of orange, red, or green. They hovered motionless or drifted lazily, sometimes trailing Allied aircraft like curious shadows. Pilots and crews from B-29 Superfortresses and B-25 Mitchells reported them most frequently, high over Japanese territory, the Solomon Islands, and the sprawling South Pacific. Ground observers caught glimpses too, their stories echoing the bewilderment of their airborne comrades.

Even Japanese pilots observed the anomalies, logging similar encounters, dashing any notion that these were secret Japanese weapons.  Some analysts pointed to Japanese Fugo balloons—incendiary devices drifting on the winds that targeted the US homeland—but these sightings outpaced such sluggish contraptions, unbound by currents or altitude.  If that’s interesting to you – I have a full episode about them here on my channel. In the postwar haze, theories leaned toward the natural: ball lightning, plasma discharges born of stormy skies. Yet no single answer satisfies, leaving these Pacific enigmas suspended in the annals of the unexplained.

And so, it wasn't just soldiers and pilots who brushed against these mysteries. Civilians too, found themselves ensnared in the web of UFO sightings.

One such war-time tale emergedss from the heart of occupied China, captured in a photograph that's as haunting as its origin is elusive. There remains a lot of confusion about the source of this photo – the specific timing and location.  So, let’s start with the image and work backwards into the competing accounts of its origin. 

There’s a UFO photo captures the moment that captures street life in China in the early decades of the 20thcentury even while it defies the ordinary: a bright, silvery disc streaking through the overcast heavens. Taken from street level, amid commercial buildings and tangled power lines, the black-and-white frame shows the object mid-flight—a classic "flying saucer" with a domed crown, wingless and tailless, gliding at an altitude of 1,000 to 2,000 feet.

In the street below, there are people working, walking and some riding in rikshaws.  At least one observer, caught on the right side of the image, seems to be pointing at the object in the sky. 

The source of the photo is uncertain, leading to debates over its exact origin:

Some accounts claims that the photo was taking in 1911 in Tianjin, China: In this origin story, it’s reported that a Japanese man was going through his father's photo album from the China Campaign just before WWII when he found a photograph of a flying object.  Reportedly, his father, now deceased, had bought the picture from a street photographer, apparently right after it was taken.

The second, and more likely origin story states that the photo was taken in 1942 in the same city, which is located in the Hopeh Province, China and that has become the name of the photo – the Hopeh UFO.

In this origin story, in 1942 the city strangled under Japanese occupation since its brutal seizure in 1937. Yet amid the propaganda, shortages, and shadowed logistics, the city endured—no major battles scarred its streets that year, preserving its eclectic architecture like ghosts from a bygone era.  It was here, against this backdrop of quiet tension, that an unidentified American—perhaps a journalist or missionary—aimed a 35mm camera skyward.

This second account is reportedly backed up by Chinese ufologist Shi Bo.  As quoted from the Ufoevidence.org website, Shi Bo noted "In 1942, an American man on duty was walking in the street of a town in the north of China. He suddenly saw a black hat silently flying above the street. He immediately grabbed his camera and took this first picture of a UFO in China.”

Whatever the true source of the Hopeh UFO photo, multiple analyses have evaluated its accuracy and while some skeptics murmur that it was an airplane or artillery shell, the disc's symmetry and structure defy such hypotheses. And so, in a land where UFO sightings spiked amid war's confusion, the image endures, a cornerstone of Asian UFOlogy.

What do you think of the Hopeh UFO photo?

Part 3 – the Italian Cigar Shaped UFO

In the annals of UFO lore, the photographs snapped by Italian Air Force Pilot Giancarlo Cecconi (chek-KOH-nee) in June 1979 stand as a beacon of clarity amid the fog of doubt. Largely overlooked beyond dedicated UFO circles, these images are a shamefully underappreciated gem: sharp, undeniable, and bolstered by radar traces and multiple eyewitnesses. They evoke images of other cigar shaped craft that have been seen overhead – even back in the late 1800s before the advent of the airship.

Cecconi’s photos, captured during a routine military reconnaissance flight, whisper of something extraordinary—perhaps the most compelling visual evidence of extraterrestrial visitors ever committed to film.

It was a crisp morning on June 18, 1979, around 11:30 a.m., when Cecconi guided his G-91R fighter jet back toward Treviso San Angelo Airport in northern Italy. Fresh from a photographic reconnaissance mission over the rugged Ligurian Apennines, the flight had been unremarkable—until a crackle over the radio shattered the calm. Ground control at Istrana Airfield urged him to divert, their radar scopes flickering with an anomaly: an unidentified object lurking at low altitude, its behavior erratic, appearing and vanishing.  The Treviso Control Tower personnel called Cecconi to warn him that the object was discharging a strange “blue trail.”

Cecconi veered toward the coordinates, his eyes scanning the blue expanse as he flew at 7,000 feet.

There, stark against the brilliant sky, hung a massive black cigar-shaped craft—dull and matte, evoking the grim silhouette of a fuel tank, yet flattened slightly on top with what appeared to be a translucent dome, glistening like a dewdrop in the sun. He later remarked that the dome had the appearance of a glass dome on a racecar. 

The cylinder measured roughly 25 feet long and 10 feet wide, it reflected no sunlight, absorbing the glare as if cloaked in shadow. No wings, no engines, no markings—just an impossible presence, flying in defiance of gravity.   When the Cecconi closed on the object, it changed altitude – up and down by about 1,000 feet at a time, before climbing to 13,000 feet

His aircraft bristled with four cameras—two flanking the cockpit, one forward-facing, and another beneath the fuselage. Without hesitation, Cecconi activated them, snapping frame after frame as he circled the UFO. From the control tower, voices buzzed in his headset: ground personnel, peering through binoculars, confirmed the sighting. They further described the bluish trail lingering in its wake, like ethereal exhaust from some unearthly engine.

For five tense minutes, Cecconi pursued the object, yet the craft remained serene, unperturbed, accelerating to 300 miles per hour without a ripple. It maneuvered with uncanny precision, always presenting the same oblique angle, as if its unseen pilot deliberately adjusted its position to evade a full profile view.  

As Cecconi looped around to make another pass at the object, the radar controller called out “we lost it.  It’s no longer on the screen.”  It was gone—dematerialized, as Cecconi later described, vanishing from his sight as well, leaving only silence in the vast blue void.

Touching down at base, specialists swarmed his plane, extracting the film rolls for immediate development in the Printing Department. Over 80 images emerged, crisp and detailed, capturing the anomaly in stark relief against the sky and ground. Cecconi, very wisely, discreetly pocketed a copy of one print before the originals were whisked away by Italian Air Force brass. Rumors rippled through the ranks: this was no balloon, no mirage. Multiple witnesses on the ground corroborated the event, their binoculars etching the scene into memory, while radar logs etched it into record.

Yet, years slipped by in official silence. Cecconi retired, whispers of the encounter circulating in hushed tones among UFO enthusiasts. Requests from researchers to the Italian Ministry of Defense yielded only stonewalling: the object, they claimed, was merely a "cylindrical balloon" fashioned from black plastic bags. Absurd, retorted investigators—Cecconi, a seasoned pilot, would know a flimsy contraption from a solid, metallic behemoth that mocked the laws of physics.  Plus, why would a balloon of that size using such materials be produced?

Enter Antonio Chiumiento (chee-yoo-mee-EN-toh), a dogged Italian UFO researcher whose accidental discovery of the case in late 1979 ignited a firestorm. Once he learned of the case, he tracked down Cecconi and secured a reluctant interview and a glimpse of that pilfered photo. The pilot, bound by duty, shared the essentials under vows of secrecy, but upon retirement in 1983, the floodgates cracked open. Chiumiento pressed on, his probes revealing a web of intrigue: formal requests for data in 1984, leaked to the press, exposing Cecconi's identity and sparking national headlines.

Graphic reconstructions splashed across papers, but the Ministry's response? A dismissive summary that clashed with Cecconi's account. He had insisted the craft's maneuvers were "inconceivable" for human tech, defying aerodynamics and physics alike. Chiumiento, flabbergasted, sensed a cover-up—a deliberate dilution of facts to bury the extraordinary.

Then, in April 1985, the magazine Epoca unleashed a bombshell: "Secret UFO Report," complete with three authenticated photos from the Ministry itself. Chiumiento's vindication? Partial, at best. His analysis revealed discrepancies—the official images subtly altered from the one he'd seen years prior, the object's elusive positioning now contradicted by shifts in horizon and ground. Tampering? Suppression? The questions mounted.

A decade later, in 1994, Chiumiento's own organization, the Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici (CISU), revisited the case. Cecconi confirmed the Epoca photos as genuine, though his personal copy had vanished—lost or stolen, he couldn't say. Then, miraculously, it resurfaced in August 1995, splashed across Il Giornale and igniting fresh media frenzy. Yet, the coverage veered into sensationalism, mocking the profound with tabloid flair. Was this an orchestrated disinformation campaign, designed to make Cecconi into a joke? Investigators whispered of external pressures—media manipulation to discredit, to suppress.

As I ponder the enigma of Giancarlo Cecconi's 1979 encounter—a sleek, matte-black cigar-shaped craft - it's impossible not to draw connections to other cigar-shaped apparitions that have haunted our skies. I’ve covered several of these elongated anomalies, sometimes dubbed "mother ships" or "cylinders," span decades and continents. Where Cecconi's UFO was relatively small, other UFO cylinders observed have been much larger.

Take the 1948 Chiles-Whitted incident over Alabama: pilots Clarence Chiles and John Whitted described a rocket-like cylinder, wingless and 100 feet long, streaking past their DC-3 with blue flames and porthole windows aglow. Four times Cecconi's length, it screamed speed and menace, vanishing in a burst that rattled their aircraft. Skeptics cried "meteor," but the precision of its form mirrors Cecconi's structured silhouette, minus the dome.  You should certainly watch my video on the Chiles-Whitted incident.

Flash forward to 1957's RB-47 case in which a U.S. Air Force electronic intelligence plane, a Boeing RB-47 Stratojet, pursued by a massive luminous object over the Gulf Coast. Estimated at 100-110 feet or more, this elliptical giant pulsed with light, tracked on radar for hours, outpacing jets and vanishing abruptly. Like Cecconi's radar-blip phantom, it toyed with military tech, but its size evoked a carrier vessel, not a scout—implying hierarchies in these aerial intruders, where Cecconi's modest craft might be a drone to the RB-47's mothership.

Even in space, NASA's Gemini 4 mission in 1965 brought astronaut James McDivitt face-to-face with a white cylinder, arm-like protrusion extended, perhaps 10-50 feet long. Compact like Cecconi's, it drifted serenely in orbit, dismissed as space debris but captured on film.  Later McDivitt joked that the event made him a UFO expert but he believed the object he captured on film had a more mundane explanation.

What binds these cylindrical UFO observations? A persistent morphology—elongated, seamless, often metallic—that predates modern aviation, harking back to 1890s airship sightings with 100-200 foot vessels. Yet Cecconi's stands out for its clarity: 80+ photos, radar, and witnesses.

As we draw the curtain on these three enigmatic snapshots—from the snow-draped enigma of Dr. Kowalczewski's Polish winter, the wartime whisper over China's shadowed streets, to the radar-defying cigar in Italy's sunlit skies—we're left with more shadows than light, more questions than certainties. These images, plucked from obscurity, remind us that the universe's secrets don't always yield to scrutiny; they linger like ghosts in the frame, challenging our grasp on the possible and the profound. Whether harbingers of otherworldly visitors or quirks of fate and film, they fuel the eternal fire of curiosity, urging us to look upward and wonder.

Thank you, my friends, for exploring these unique photos with me. I'm MF Thomas, and this is My Dark Path. Until next time, good night.