UFOs and polar locales

Here in the Chicago area, we are just coming out of a "Snowpocalypse" of sorts.  We have a bit over one foot of snow on the ground and the winds yesterday gusted between fifty and sixty mph.  This has prompted the inevitable bad jokes from me, comparing the situation to that of the Rebels on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.  "Are the snowspeeders ready?" "We're having some difficulty adapting them to the cold."  "But your tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!" "Then I'll see you in HELL!"

Ahem.  So you can see how I get carried away with it.

Then I started thinking about a blog post that could be tied in to the Snowpocalypse.  I've been on a kick lately of warning against impending ecological disasters, but feeling that Whitley Streiber and Roland Emerich pretty much covered that wintry disaster scenario in The Day After Tomorrow, I decided to go in a different direction.  I wondered what kinds of UFO phenomenon have been witnessed in our world's polar regions?

Not much, it turns out.  Should have known, I guess.  Said areas are sparsely populated or in the case of Antarctica, populated by a mere handful of researchers. So if UFOs were flying over the poles, there would be few there to witness them.  That not withstanding, I googled "UFO" and "polar" and here are a few results that came back:

-Open Minds Forum had a thread posted in 2008 about a possible UFO in the Arctic Ocean.  A forum user posted a story about "US satellites" catching "alien signals from the Arctic Ocean."  The signal's point of origin must have been in Russian territorial waters, because he/she stated that investigation was turned over to the Russians.  An oval-shaped UFO was found at the bottom of the sea.  Testing revealed that it had been there "at least 10,000 years."  The user included a link with the thread, but it's dead now.  Little wonder since it's already about three years old.  While I can't say for certain, I'm willing to bet the story is just a lot of tosh.

-In 2006, a herd of friends were snowmobiling in Norway, just above the Arctic Circle, photographing the landscape as they went.  Upon inspecting the photos later on, they noticed something odd in a shot of a tree-lined, iced-over river.  Magnifying that sector of the pic, they found what looks like an alien.  Though the overall shape and form of the image does look like an alien, I'd be willing to wager it's a trick of shadow and light.

-The Nazis were said to operate saucer-shaped aircraft out of a secret base in Antarctica well after the war ended.  Click here for my blog entry on it.

-Major Wendell Stevens was an acclaimed researcher in Ufology.  An excerpt from his obit of last September reads: "he was assigned by the U.S. Army/Air Force to Anchorage, Alaska. He was part of a classified project involving data collection of UFO sightings in the Arctic Circle. He was involved in debriefing pilots who witnessed UFOs landing on Arctic ice fields, and passing along radar, film and photographic evidence to more senior Air Force authorities."  And get this: "Along the way, he amassed the world’s largest private collection of photos, testimonies and files concerning alleged claims of human extraterrestrial contact."  Geez, I never knew him and I'm sad to see him go.  

-"Canadian X-Files" have several reports from the Arctic Circle and Northwest Territories. 

-The alien abduction movie, The Fourth Kind (Awful.  Don't bother if you haven't already) takes place in Nome, Alaska.  To generate a buzz for the movie's release, Universal Pictures released a number of fake news stories, obituaries, and UFO photos.  They also ended up paying $20,000 to the Alaska Press Club as a result of the viral marketing be perceived as truth.  Here's a video of UFO sightings in Alaska.  Make of it what you will, just keep in mind the hoaxes that were dispersed prior to The Fourth Kind's release.

-Apparently, Arctic Cat enthusiasts have been working extensively with UFO...Ultimate Fuel Organizer.  Guess you have to be into snowmobiling to understand what that means.  I myself am not.

-A critical lesson to be learned from 1950s sci-fi: if you find a UFO frozen in Arctic ice, do not defrost it.


Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets