This Paranormal Life - #349 One UFO, Ten Thousand Witnesses - The Florence Football UFO

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Imagine the Super Bowl was interrupted by a UFO hovering over the stadium and Tom freaking Brady was the key witness to the FBI - it would be Christmas Day in the paranormal research community! Yet that's exactly what happened, or at least the equivalent, in Florence in Italy in 1954 when a stadium filled with 10,000 spectators saw a UFO pass overhead and drop what witnesses would describe as 'angel hair' on the pitch and stands. Was it really close contact with extraterrestrials or was it some kind of mass hysteria or natural event? It's time for Rory and Kit to find out!Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunitySupport us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeIntro music by www.purple-planet.comEdited by Philip ShackladyResearch by Ewen Friers Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We have ghost ships and ghost trains. Are there ghost Ubers yet? If 666 is the number of the beast, can you call him? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Hello! Hey! And welcome back to This Paranormal Life, the weekly comedy podcast where every Tuesday we get to the bottom of a different paranormal tale, case, or claim, or beast, and decide by the end whether it's really paranormal or not. As always, you're joined by me, Kit Greer-Mulvena, and this guy sitting across from me, Mr. Rory Magic Powers.

Ayo! Loving the idea of a ghost Uber, right off the top of the bat. Ghosts probably need jobs too, and normally when you open up the Uber application, it'll offer you UberX,, Uber XL, Uber Black. What about Uber RIP? Right. How about that? Because, you know, Uber Pool, everyone loves the prices, but we don't love sharing our ride with serial killers and weirdos and the kind of people you might run into just in the city. So I think why not share your ride with the undead?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they might haunt you for the rest of your life, for all eternity. Or you'd have to at least... Actually, I'm changing my mind. I'm changing my mind. It sounds like a terrible idea.

Because if I'm like drunk, trying to get home after a night out, the last thing I want is like a little Victorian prince being like, A long time ago, I was the fairest boy in all the land. don't give a f**k man i'm i'm so sorry but i don't want to know how you died i don't want you to come back to my house and then you know we probably pull up outside my apartment he's like i mean what are we doing tomorrow to be

like shade numbers or something i know some cool spots around here it's like no it's no i i want to go home imagine the ghosts just really quickly become like normal cabbies you get in the car and they're just like so what are we going to do about all these immigrants huh in this country ruining the country you're like dude can we not talk can we not i know it fits you to have some of these very outdated beliefs but i'm gonna hit no speaking on the app right is that a thing i heard someone mention that recently uh i think you can book an uber with preferences so if you're like hey i want like no talking and air conditioning i don't know what the options are but you can book like yeah i

don't want to talk basically if you take i don't want to talk you're a nerd well this is the thing everyone wants i don't want to talk exactly you're a nerd. Well, this is the thing. Everyone wants, I don't want to talk. Exactly. Everyone wants it, but you can't tick it. You can't tick it. You can't. You just have to hope you get it. It's like when you go get your hair cut.

No one wants a talker. You know, everyone wants the person that's just 40 minutes of pure silence. It's just so... But you can't say... It's just so rude. You can't say, don't talk to me while I get my haircut. You can't say it. Yeah, you're right.

That's a good analogy because that's not how it works. It's like, no, I'm not some... As the hairdresser, I'd be like, I'm not some kind of medieval serf who like, you know, you can just tell me your whims. It's like, I need no speaking and i need a hot cup of hot chocolate waiting at the desk waiting for me it's like you're not a rock star if you sit down in a hairdress salon and the person says so do you have any holidays coming up and you reply don't talk to me you're saying that you better be bruce springsteen they have a blade very close to your neck

at all times so uh I'd be careful. Yeah, I'm not pleased with that development. I'd be if you're an Uber driver and you've been hit with the don't talk to me button. Please let us know what you think. We're, of course, not here to talk about absolutely any of that. Rory, today's episode takes us somewhere we don't end up quite often enough. Italy. Oh, OK. Ever been? No, actually. What? episode takes us somewhere we don't end up quite often enough italy ah okay ever been no actually

what yeah i was just trying to think about it i think there's a few probably just sound the alarm we found an american who's never been to italy this is up i thought you guys love it over there that's the poshest you've ever been before in your life have you you ever been to Italy? I don't think so. Excuse me? You've never had Italiano? Rory, brother, I have to write you an itinerary. I found the loveliest trattoria, pizzeria in Roma, I must tell you about. When I was young, all right,

I got about one holiday a year, and it was to Legoland. Okay, well well this isn't so no i've never run with the bulls i've never seen the northern lights in antarctica all right don't play the i panned for lego gold in a lego river i got my lego driving license from a lego man all right i haven't seen the world unless it's made of little bricks I saw Lego World I told you about going to Legoland and panning for gold and now you're revealing you've also

panned for gold in the Lego River We all did it Don't pull that one on me because you've actually travelled a lot You go to America a couple times a year You've been to Japan, Korea and many other interesting countries. Italy's very close.

I listen to a little K-pop in Hongdae. Sure. And the flights are not that expensive, so it's not that crazy. It's not that crazy, you know. To be fair, I've not spent much time in Italy. It is right there. Nor are Italians known for their passion for food,

for wine, for art. But a passion that burns like no other in Italy is football. Ah, I see. The beautiful game. It's played, supported, and worshipped from top to toe of the boot-shaped nation. And to stop a game dead in its tracks in Italy would be quite a feat, particularly in a game with high stakes rivalry at play. Well, in Florence in Italy in 1954, that's exactly what happened.

Our investigation today concerns why one of the biggest football matches of the year ground to a halt and how a stadium of 10,000 people fell silent one afternoon. Wow. Rory, are you ready? Let's do it. It's a mystery we're going to dive right into after a couple of words from today's sponsors. With a reminder, every episode of This Paranormal Life is available ad-free over on patreon.com forward slash This Paranormal Life. Links in the description.

Okay, it's October 27th, 1954. It's a crisp and clear autumnal day in Tuscany at the Stadio Artemio Franchi in Florence. The local team, Fiorentina, and nearby rivals, Pistolles, have just returned to the pitch after halftime. Now, I don't want to interrupt too early in the story. I do know so little about football that the teams that you just mentioned i don't

know are are these big teams or is this kind of a local rivalry that's right rory and uh you know it is i didn't realize that about you but you know because i don't know anything about football but i think i do know more than you whenever we were in manchester on our tour you did make some off-color remarks about football i didn't make off-color remarks about football. I didn't make off-color remarks about football. All I said was... Is what you're about to say going to get us cancelled?

All I said was I don't know the rules to football, but I've heard that it's a lot like strip clubs. It's mostly all guys and you're not allowed to use your hands. Okay. that was it that's all I said I didn't make

off-color remarks I simply made a remark in which the color was slightly off I think the only thing that I think makes that joke okay is probably the one thing

that I know less about than football is strip clubs right I know very little about either of them. Well, the good thing is, Rory, you need to know jack shit about football in order to understand what's about to happen. The huge concrete bowl-type stadium is packed with 10,000 cheering spectators.

The atmosphere is electric, not least because national star Ardico Magnini is on the pitch. Ardico's there? Magnini had played for Italy in the World Cup just a few months earlier and was a bona fide celebrity. Magnini! Magnini! Please, Magnini! As the teams run back out of the changing rooms onto the pitch for the second half, the crowds scream and roar back to life the match resumes and all seems normal then out of the blue the spectators begin to hush and turn their attention away from the game not even the allure of mangini can keep their

heads from turning skyward even the players stop what they're doing and look up, and then unthinkably, the ball rolls to a stop. We actually have proof that this moment took place, because the referee report from this day 70 years ago said, quote, Play was suspended because spectators saw something in the sky. But what did they see? What was in the sky above the stadium? Our first witness to what happened is Ardico Magnini himself, the national soccer star who everyone was there to see.

I remember everything, said Magnini. It was something that looked like an egg that was moving slowly, slowly, slowly. Everyone was looking up. We were astonished. We had never seen anything like it before. We were absolutely shocked. Hmm. Gigi Boni was in the audience that day, and his memory of the events is startling.

Quote, It all lasted a couple of minutes. I would like to describe them as being like Cuban cigars. They just reminded me of Cuban cigars in the way they looked. Either one of these dudes has never seen an egg, or one of these dudes has never seen a cigar. Well, that doesn't match up already. Well, you know Ardico Magnini is smoking cigars on the regular.

Right. Whereas Joe Schmuck here in the audience, he probably has never seen a cigar in his life yeah it's like what i would have imagined the cigar to look like whereas again the luxurious eggs that ardico could probably afford maybe that's what they look like imagine a ufo encounter in britain where the key witness is david beckham in a Premier League final. It's like, this is a guy who is, his head really should be in the game. Like, it would have to be literally Independence Day occurring above him to take him out of winning that match.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's also a pretty good place for a paranormal event to appear because you have 100, thousand people in one area that are literally called spectators right well ten thousand yes it's like it's like having a crowd of people and they're officially designated witnesses right right it's like bigfoot turning up to the national photographer's convention of the year it's like, it really couldn't be better. Sasquatch himself turning up to the NRA annual meeting.

Like, you're going to get got, Bigfoot, this time. Like you say, Rory, a bit of debate already about exactly the shape of these things, but other testimonies confirm the general headlines of the story. A fast-moving object or group of objects flew overhead, then paused over the stadium

and witnessed by the astonished crowd of 10,000 people. Damn. For Romulo Tucci, another player that day, the explanation was simple. Quote, In those years, everyone was talking about aliens. Everyone was talking about UFOs.

And we had the experience, we saw them directly for real. Rory, today we're investigating what I think is one of the most remarkable UFO encounters in modern history. So often on this show or in any UFO case investigation we're scrambling for testimony from more than one person, desperate for cases in which multiple people see the same thing. Well, on October 27th, 1954, there may have been the Holy Grail, a UFO seen by 10,000 people at once.

Right, that might be our most amount of witnesses in one spot, just accidentally. Right? I mean, it makes sense. If you're an alien coming down to Earth, just buzzing around, this is a pretty weird thing to see. All they know, this is some sort of gladiatorial arena. It could be some kind of welcoming party.

Where Earth's champions are battling it out in front of thousands, you know? They might have thought it was a landing bay for the UFO. You know, it's like, hey, I didn't think they were expecting this, but there's a big circular bit of grass with basically nothing in it and a lot of people looking at it. This is what I don't understand. Anytime we hear stories about aliens coming to earth it's always about them sucking cows out of a field or finding a farmer in the middle of nowhere and abducting him into the night sky if aliens are really coming to earth they're going to coachella right they're going

to las vegas even burning man honestly because that's the craziest shit you can see from the They're going to Coachella. Right. They're going to Las Vegas. Even Burning Man, honestly. Because that's the craziest shit you can see from the sky. That's where you're going to end up going. Maybe not Burning Man. I mean, they could go to Burning Man if they want to go somewhere where no one will believe the witnesses, then go to Burning Man. That's a really good point, yeah.

Imagine going to Burning Man and people being like, bro, how was it it's like dude i saw aliens like i'm sure you i'm sure you did craig hey man good to see you glad you had a good time no no i saw an alien hey uh this is i've talked about it many times my personal bugbear of the paranormal world or um movies in particular is the aliens at the white house theory yeah if aliens landed down on earth today if they had to pick somewhere to go would they really go to new york city i don't know man lagos is way bigger than that why would we assume that they would just go to america that they would somehow look at a graph of all the

biggest economies in the world and then go, okay, well, it seems like New York City is a pretty culturally important city. No, if they're going to go to a big city, they're going to Tokyo, they're going to Mexico City, they're going to Lagos, they're going somewhere like that. And as you say, that's not even to get into the idea that they would go visit some lonely hick on a farm somewhere. Exactly. Unless they're trying to be discreet yes uh which in this case today seems like they don't give a f**k either that or they love football italian football they're like we got the best goddamn seats in the house

they're like yo ardico hey manini manini up here you can here let's abduct him abduct him real quick that's a funny book a gray sticking his head out of a crowd yo like being a fan but also being an alien so he's like fist bumping being like hey i love you man you were great bend over though bend over right yeah because this is going up yeah yeah i'm still here on work unfortunately gotta get on with my shift so imagine you're at that match and you're like you're like you know a little bit restless in your seat you're like do you think i have time to go to the bar right it's like uh manini's not on the ball so i guess you might be all right all right i'm gonna run run you call me though call me though if like a penalty happens he's like yeah bro

I'll call you he comes back everyone's crying what did I miss? dude this is the thing if you've ever been to a sports game you know the worst thing

that can possibly happen is you go to the bathroom and then you hear oh and then you come running out because you missed it. You missed the big play. It's just the law of the universe.

You jumped when you heard it. You just pissed all over yourself. You're like, ah, god damn it. Usually it's a home run or a touchdown or the big goal that ties the game. It's going to be really bad if you come back from the bathroom after hearing the big roar. And you're like, what happened? What happened? It's like, oh, you just missed it, man.

It was a craft from another universe came down. It's what it's like yeah they gave everyone a ps9 gta9 they blessed us all we pissed gold now we all pissed gold it was really cool they gave us all immortal life did you did you get eternal life no oh dude watch this we can stab each other it doesn't hurt. Here, let me stab you real quick. You're like, no, I was in the bathroom. I was in the bathroom, man. They blessed us all.

That's not what you want to hear when you were just at the toilet. It was so quick. Man, that's not even fear of missing out. That's not a fear anymore. You just missed out. So the actual encounter from that day lasted several minutes and wasn't just a sighting the football match was suspended for a long time as the crowd stared up at the strange silvery shapes but you ain't seen nothing yet rory suddenly the ufos began to move again startling the audience this is where it gets mad as they began to move they, startling the audience. This is where it gets mad.

As they began to move, they emitted streams of a mysterious substance. Uh-oh. A white, cottony, fibrous material, some described as angel hair, floated down into the stadium and across the surrounding areas. Don't like that. The filament-like matter covered buildings and vegetation all around. People reached to touch it, but for the most part,

this angel hair disintegrated immediately when touched. But crucially, some small samples were later obtained. Local journalist Giorgio Battini instinctively knew this was important evidence and carefully collected samples by rolling the fibers onto a matchstick and then sealing the matchsticks in test tubes. Patini sent these delicate specimens off for chemical analysis at the University of Florence, the results of which we'll look at later. Rory, what are you doing in this situation? Well, here's my problem is, you know, if you've been to a big sports game In a stadium or an arena

You do End up seeing a lot of strange stuff Uh huh There are mascots at these games Some of them are literally aliens Running around the field They're not literally aliens They are literally in costumes of aliens

I went to a sports game once Where they shot t-shirts out of a gun right you know you see some strange technology stuff that exists nowhere else right yeah was that a military test who knows i was at an ice hockey game once where they used a cannon to fire subway sandwiches into the crowd that's disgusting and it's kind of like that's technology from another universe right so if a craft comes out of the sky i don't know maybe i think i would probably think it's kind of like that's technology from another universe right so if a craft comes out of the sky i don't know maybe i think i would probably think it's part of the act i saw a beer that was twice the size of a normal beer if you can believe it and it disappeared in front of me

if you catch my drift and i don't remember anything from the second half of my memory was wiped i was found in a bush the next morning. Now, I am saying that's a lot of my experiences in today's world. I see what you're saying, though, because fantastical things happen, like blimps. There might be a blimp flying overhead. I mean, nowadays in sports game, you have those cameras that move along wires, and that's how they get the drone shots and all this crazy stuff. Granted, I don't think a lot of that technology existed back in what is this the 1950s you know i think that's back when if someone scored there was just a guy who raised a number with his hands

yes you know that was it um so yeah this this might have scared me a little bit yes and you make a good point you know if we were talking about there's a way i could have twisted this story if it were a match where five drunk best friends saw an alien but no one else did but no we have the star of the match the captain the striker stopping play the ball literally rolling to a halt in the middle of this match because all the players were looking up. So this is not something that just could have been part of the furniture of a soccer match. Right.

And now once the events were over and time had passed, it emerged that other people in the area, thankfully, and across the region more generally, had seen these strange shapes in the sky that day too. That's what we like to hear. La Nazione, the local newspaper, published extensive reports and ran with the headline, Glass Fibers Fall on Tuscan Cities After Globes and Flying Saucers Pass.

Even as far away as Paris, France's leading newspaper, Le Monde, covered the event. The Le Monde article reported that there had indeed been UFO sightings across much of Italy. And in what feels rare, the reporter defended the witnesses. Quote, It was people in good faith who saw them.

Sailors who did not daydream. Professors who doubt the plurality of the inhabited world. Middle class and proletarian with solid nerves. They wrote different back then. They did. I don't know i think translation probably did something but sailors who never daydream that's such a weird thing to put in there it's very poetic i mean mice who dream of cheese they all saw it i like the cats that dream of milk i like the idea that if you went to a journalist and you told him about something that happened,

you know, that like, he's like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I'll report it in the news this evening. And as soon as you walk off, he's like, he's a daydreamer if you ask me, I won't be writing any of that up. Oh, I know a daydreamer when I see one. You're like, I was robbed. A man stole my purse.

He's saying, you know, some of these people have solid nerves but we say this kind of thing on the show don't we that if it was a guy who was clearly on fentanyl telling you the story you might not take it seriously but he's making the point that this was uh professors hard-working people who saw it who shouldn't come up with this kind of thing. Reputable members of society. That's right. Football lads. That's right.

Look, so far, this is exactly what we want to hear. Tons of witnesses, national news coverage. It was taken seriously. Which is great because I feel like at this time, there was a lot of still skepticism around UFOs. But maybe this one was just too big to ignore. Yes. I mean, it'll probably come up later.

But it probably should be said that, you know, this is an amazing case already. One thing to be cautious about is this is in the golden age of UFOs. Right. As I like to think of it. This is post-Roswell, right? When was Roswell? Roswell. Yeah, it is post-Roswell, right? When was Roswell? Roswell, yeah, it is post-Roswell. So we are really in the hot seat

of paranormal news or UFO news. That's true. It's hitting media, it's hitting movies and stuff kind of for the first time. One of the players said it earlier. He said, you know, everyone was thinking

and talking about UFOs generally in life at that time. And as he put it, well, that's amazing because we actually saw one. But it's just something to keep in the back of our minds as we go forward. So clearly, Florence and the surrounding areas of Tuscany, Italy, and as far away as Paris, people have been rocked by what they saw that day. One of the most insane UFO sightingsings of the age we have to figure out what's going on rory and there are i will say a number of different theories about what happened

that day we're gonna get into all of them right after a couple of words from today's sponsors okay we're back talking about the 1954 florence As you can imagine, with the scale of what happened that day, over the next few years, this became highly studied, highly talked about, highly investigated. Try and figure out what was going on. They jizzed all over the Tuscan countryside. Don't say that. They didn't.

They did. Alien jizzm. I'm calling it. That's my theory. You can't start by calling it angel hair and then quickly shift to jizz. Because those are two very different things. Alright. Well, there's angel hair pasta, isn't there? I mean, that's what Americans call it. Vermicelli

noodles. You ever eat that? No. Is that what they're talking about? Try and put the jizz thing out of your mind while I talk about food for a second. Actually, I'm getting a f*** up actually. Angel hair pasta is different, of course, to vermicelli. But I'll show you vermicelli because it is. It's noodles made out of rice and it looks like glass oh yeah i know those ones yeah yeah that's why i'm kind of imagining these glass like strands i mean gross i don't want that coming down

from the sky right who knows what intergalactic penis it came out of. As I say, lots of researchers working on this one. Can you guess what the skeptics and MIBs and losers said about this one? Oh, rattling off all the typical excuses, I'm sure. Some kind of military craft, some kind of weather balloon, mass hysteria, some kind of public stunt that was being undertaken or a prank sort of banksy-esque mischief stunt that's usually all the cliches yeah i don't know if we honestly need to read the next bit kind of after the list you just dropped uh you got it of course one explanation was military testing now allegedly the the Italian Air Force was conducting exercises around

this time. And apparently, there's such a thing as chaff, where glass fiber is dropped into the atmosphere to block radio communications. On the one hand, this... I've never heard of that before, right? Glass fiber?

Apparently, it is generally the idea of when they just dispense fragments of metal into the atmosphere in order to block communications i mean it's tough here's one image of i guess what it could be and that does seem to be fiber like on the other hand here is just a warship absolutely decimating oh it's like flares. The sky. Shooting flares. Flares. Yeah. Okay, so that is something that militaries do, allegedly. So, I mean, that definitely sounds interesting,

but I think the more you think about it, the rougher of an explanation this gets. Because if they're testing military craft, are they really doing it above a football stadium? Right. Are they really dropping metal fragments like this in peacetime on 10 above a football stadium? Right. Are they really dropping metal fragments like this in peacetime on 10,000 football fans?

Not even getting into the fact these crafts don't resemble any aircraft seen then or since, especially back then when nothing was even capable of hovering like this. What are we talking about noise-wise with these bad boys? You know, noise hasn't come up.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, interestingly. Maybe if I dug a bit deeper, there might be someone might have mentioned it, but people seem to focus on the look of the thing. Right. These people have seen a helicopter before.

I think back then, helicopter is the only thing that would have been capable of hovering. We didn't have hovering planes at that point. So I don't know if you agree, but I just think that sounds very interesting, that of a military craft dropping chaff, but it's just the more you think about it, the more unlikely it seems. Yeah, move on. That's a dud. That's a dud excuse right there. Bro, you think that's a dud? There have been some explanations so terrible. I'm not shitting you here.

One of the leading explanations is that there might have been a nearby geothermal vent that created steam, which blah, blah, blah, created some kind of chemical reaction in the sky, and then the stuff dropped down. But the confidence of some geologist nerd to suggest that as if that explains the in crafts flying overhead is like it wasn't steam bro it's like i understand you spent a lot of time in your career working on like understanding the earth not everything's steam though they must think we're a bunch of daydreamers let me tell you if they think we're by buying that crock of shit i think your blood pressure is about to hit the roof when you hear this next one what is what is the most commonly accepted most popular theory for what happened that day i'm getting ready to just throw a punch and i don't know where it's

gonna land the most popular explanation for what happened in Florence is the migrating spider theory. Oh, come on! Jesus Christ. So apparently spiders can, quote, balloon. This is where they shoot webs. To what size?

To what size? F***ing queelag? The spider Woman? How could this have been a bug? I'm not a scientist, but how could it have been a bug? Only one bug. You're going to let me finish. The only bug that size almost ate Frodo and the ring whole.

There's no way this was a bug. F***ing Shelob. Shelob's lair. This is insane. A guy at a military press conference was like, listen, what's more believable? That Shelob from Mordor

came to Florence or aliens are real, guys? I mean, let's be honest. That would tip me over the edge if I saw a UFO and a member of the US military looked me dead in the eyes

and said it was a ladybug I'd be like I'm a joke to you aren't I you know there's nothing I can do why even open your mouth at that point why even say something

it was a caterpillar they're all like sniggering and laughing. It's like, and who's going to believe you over us? Huh? You know what that is? That is, remember in Star Wars when Obi-Wan Kenobi would use the Jedi mind tricks? Right.

I'm doing it on the video podcast. I'm doing this motion. You wave your hand. These are not the droids you are looking for. Right. And then they're like, these aren't the droids we're looking for let them go the idea being that as a jedi you have this power to kind of just hypnotize someone and make them believe anything really i think they have to be weak-minded yes i think that's the well even more apt because that's what this is when when an mib looks you in the eyes and says, it was a ladybug,

their dream is that you nod like in Star Wars and say, it was a ladybug. They want you to buy the official explanation. Yeah, you don't think it was a UFO. I don't think it was a UFO. You know, they kind of, yeah, use little tricks on you. You know, that's why we need to stand up.

We need to say, no, a spider cannot be the size of a plane that's just science the point is the spider isn't the size of a plane what these spiders do is they shoot webs into the air sure and then the wind catches the web and the spiders cannot fly impressively these have been spotted thousands of feet in the air because they just have to go where the wind takes them. So the idea being that if you have a mass migration, as happens, of insects, of tens of thousands or millions of insects, and they're all, well, they're not insects, are they? They're arachnids, shooting webs into the sky, that you could have a situation where just a sky full of spider webs falls down on people

and they're all wondering what this angel hair is. But the spiders all join together? They all join together and create like a rat king? Just become a ball of spider? This is the problem. I don't know why between these geologist nerds and these spider nerds why no one is addressing the Elephant in the room which is the UFOs Maybe what the reason why they're focusing on this is they're saying hey look

We don't have any evidence that the craft was there yeah ten thousand people told us there was a craft what we have evidence of is Angel hair so we're trying to explain the angel hair right you know and so because maybe you know what these guys are like maybe they're like you know if we could explain the angel hair then maybe maybe the craft was just a trick of the mind maybe everyone just hallucinated it yeah yeah i don't know if this is going to help our case or make it worse but this actually happened to me all right i saw this are you about to blow up my story right now? No, I could be about to make your story even more credible. Okay. Well, keep talking.

And then based on whether it helps me or not, I will potentially include it. Bizarrely enough, what I'm about to say took place in the very same baseball park in Dublin where I saw the gorilla man. This was years later. One summer, down there. I can't believe you went back, by the way. This is like Ireland's Bridgewater Triangle. This is apparently just where every paranormal entity hangs out. I was there playing baseball, and whatever season it was,

whatever part of the year it was, mid-game, it started raining spiders. What the f*** are you talking about? How are you going to bring this up now? We've never talked about it before. The fact of spider rain has never come up on the podcast before. I'm talking like,

I'm talking so many spiders that you would be in the batter's box, waiting for the pitch, wearing your helmet, and they are dangling from the hood. It's like a f***ing scene in Indiana Jones. You know what he's like, had to reach through the hole. It's just thousands of bugs. I'm not even joking.

It was whatever happened. Now, this was in a super foresty area, you know, a massive park in Dublin. I thought it was a baseball field. Well, the baseball field's in the park. What is this strange thing? Well, the only thing strange about it is like around the field is just nothing. It's just open air. You'd have to walk for like five, ten minutes to hit the tree line.

And then out of nowhere, hundreds of thousands of spiders out of the sky. Tiny little ones, tiny, tiny little ones. Yeah, I know the type. But there were spiders out of the sky. Tiny little ones, tiny, tiny little ones. Yeah, I know the type. But there were spiders and there were webs. So I'm saying this could help your case because I kind of experienced the phenomenon that they're claiming was the UFO. Let me tell you, brother,

it didn't look anything like a UFO. Right. So I don't know if I believe this explanation. That is interesting. Spider rain. This is why I gave up my career in baseball. You know, anytime people talk about it, they're like, you didn't want to keep playing?

I was like, well, I just couldn't deal with the spiders and the cryptids walking onto the field. They're like, you weren't playing baseball. I don't know what you were doing. We need a Ted Lasso series of Rory just trying to be a Little League baseballer in a paranormal hellscape. Apparently our baseball field was located

in the upside down from Stranger Things. It's a good point though. I'm glad you're picking this apart, not succumbing to the Jedi mind tricks because that's another thing. They mentioned earlier that the that the angel hair

disintegrated when touched you know what doesn't disintegrate when you touch it spider webs if anything you know anytime if I'm like washing my car

I'm trying to get spider webs off it or something because you know you hit it with the power washer yeah doesn't come off nothing then you have to grab it

with your hand and like rip it off with your hand it's so hard to get off your hands it's like insanely sticky so it doesn't add up whatsoever but to put a nail in this you sound like a goon in new york city you try and wash the webs off and it's all over your gun it's all over your bag of money it's hard to get this shit off. It's sticky.

I hit him with the power washer. It's spider. It does nothing to this spider. Is it you talking to the penguin? Listen, boss, this shit is sticky. I can't get it off. This is the biggest, meanest spider you've ever seen. Just to put a nail in the coffin of this theory,

let's watch what ballooning spiders looks like. Okay. You're going to have to put your fear of spiders on hold for just a second. Spiders are falling out of the sky. You heard that right. Like at the end of Charlotte's Web, if you recall, little spiders are taking to the air on a strand of silk, setting out to start their lives. Well, I spoke with a Modesto man who witnessed this firsthand

and a UC Davis professor who explains what is going on. Tom Organ of Modesto sent ABC 10 video and photos of spider webs, some clumps together, some glinting in the sunlight as they float through the air. It's the first time in my life I've ever seen such a thing. We caught up with him by phone while he and his wife were on a road trip. The two of them watched as thousands of these strands floated past and descended upon their Modesto neighborhood. It's just perfect for Halloween. Lynn Kimsey is an established professor of entomology at UC Davis.

We asked her what's going on with these little spiders. We call it ballooning. When they've hatched and gotten to a certain size, they'll get up on something and reel out a long, long, fluffy thread and go flying. It's totally awesome, and it's a way of getting your babies away from where they're born and dispersing in the new habitats. Sometimes, she says, the threads clump together. I've heard reports from pilots, for example, seeing balls of silk at 30 or 40,000

feet. Well, let me tell you right now, the webs that I saw when the spiders rained down from the sky very thin almost Imperceivable. Yeah, the webs that we're being shown in this video These spiders were doing no nut November This is a lot No web fab. That's what they're doing. Hey-o! God damn it. They're posting on Reddit like, bro, anyone struggling right now?

I'm only two weeks in. No web fab. Jesus. This is why we pod, ladies and Seb. Jesus. This is why we pod, ladies and gentlemen. I think we can agree the spider theory sucks ass. But unbelievably, this explanation is favoured by US Air Force pilot and astronomer James McGaha from the Grasslands Observatory in Arizona. Speaking to the BBC in 2014 about this UFO case, McGaha said, When I looked at this case originally,

I thought perhaps it was a fireball or a very bright meteor breaking up in the atmosphere. They can be cigar-shaped. But it became fairly apparent this was actually caused by young spiders spinning webs. Very, very thin webs. The spiders use these webs as sails to move between locations. These things have been recorded at 14,000 feet above the ground, so when the sunlight glistens off it, you get all kinds of visual effects. Yeah, and it's web, so it really has no weight to it. That's a point they were making, is like, it does eventually hit the ground,

but it kind of just looks like it's floating there. It is very strange. So, James, how big's your yacht? How many feet? I'd love to know how many feet your yacht So, James, we got... How big's your yacht? How many feet? I'd love to know how many feet your yacht is, James, that you managed to buy off the CIA shill money you were paid to say that. Oh, I'd love to see the check they cut you for saying that in a BBC documentary. I mean, is he...

Wait, he was talking about the football game? Yes. Oh, okay. I thought this was the guy in the news report. No, he told the BBC this story about the UFO incident. Right. He said, I first thought it was a meteor, then I realized after researching it was actually spiders.

Look, I'm going to cut to the chase here. Rory, you're probably wondering, where are the photos? Unfortunately, I will say, there are few photographs from the day. Insane. That said, it's the 50s, you know, you're double fisting pints, you're watching the match. That said, the BBC report from 2014 does contain a scan from the La Nazione newspaper. And in that scanned article, there's a very small, extremely hard to make out photo. So the news report at the time, they ran with the photo.

But since then, we've only got the scan of that newspaper. And frustratingly, even the BBC points out, the original photo has been lost. We don't have an archive of that newspaper. That's insane. Lost or misplaced by the authorities. But as well as this one

grainy image, there was an artist who used witness testimonies to make his own artist interpretation and you'll see that it's on the same newspaper okay i'll show you that newspaper right now here is the scan of the newspaper and it has multiple images on it i think these may be the two photos that they have of the craft, this appears to be the test tube with a sample taken on the day. And I appreciate these are small, these are grainy, these are not high resolution images. But underneath we have the artist's interpretation,

which was put together based on those witness testimonies. I can't say I'm not a little disappointed. You know, we've done such a big job of making sure everyone knows how many people were at this game. The fact that it is a probably locally televised sports event. There will be cameras everywhere in this place. And the picture that we have for the newspaper is a black dot. It's a black dot. It's not a black dot.

I don't want anyone to say it's a dot. One of the photos is a dot. It's a white dot. But one of the photos is, and hey, I'll give it to them. If an egg f***ed a cigar, that's what the baby would look like. That is in between an egg and a cigar. I don't know, man. You must be smoking a stumpy little cigar if you think that's what they look like. Well, it egg and a cigar. I don't know, man. You must be smoking a stumpy little cigar if you think that's what they look like.

Well, it's not a cigar, but it's longer than an egg. True. It looks like an American football, which maybe in 1950s... These Italians had never seen an American football before. But it's an oval shape.

It's a black oval shape in the sky. Yeah. Not getting a lot from it other than that because it looks like the picture was taken right up at the sky. So it's a black oval shape in the sky uh yeah not getting a lot from it other than that because it looks like the picture was taken right up at the sky so it's just complete nothingness and this black shape yes we don't have a sense of scale but what we do know is ah well we don't know but i would guess that uh rory you're a filmmaker photographer type guy i would guess that we are not using any kind of telephoto lens here i would imagine this is a bit like pointing your iphone up at the sky that is why we're dealing with

something quite small this is in the sky it's definitely not independence day style hovering just above the stadium it is in the sky and that's why it's small because we don't we probably just have a regular kind of wide lens on this camera. Yeah. As I said, not exactly the convincing evidence I was hoping for. Sure, it could be a craft in the sky. It could be a photograph of a peanut on a wooden table. Well, yes, as we teed up. It's literally. Sadly, the original photo has been lost or was misplaced.

But Rory, many ufo cases have we done where we've been scratching around the dirt for the sign that even a craft had landed at all somewhere and here we've got a photo of the thing 10 000 people witnessing it and right there the guy's holding a test tube with the substance in it. I just want to know how widespread and available cameras were at this time. Do people have cameras in the, what do we say, 1950s? Yeah, mid-50s. I mean, I think at that point probably was still pretty rare. No, I'm also kind of wrong.

I mean, in the 1950s, Canon cameras were already on the market available to the public probably expensive i i i think we got out of this event what you would expect which is that the average punter watching the match didn't have a point and shoot camera in their pocket but the couple of journalists who were there reporting on the match or whatever probably did have a camera yeah but i'm just i'm i'm disappointed that it doesn't look better than this you know unbelievable you hand someone a you piss gold in someone's lap and they don't even know what they're dealing with yeah that's right i was blessed by the craft you hand someone a picture of a peanut taken on a game boy camera and they're not convinced it's a real ufo yeah do you know what? You're right.

Rory, maybe I've gotten a little... I need a little refresher on kind of the quality of evidence in UFO cases. Can you just pull up the photos for the Shag Harbor investigation? All right, watch it. You're on thin ice, motherfucker. Because for such a big case,

there must have been some photos, right? Because you're right, this is pretty paltry. So, yeah, let's just pull up the Shag Harbor photo. Oh wait, I'm, I'm Googling it and nothing's coming up. The craft in our Shag Harbor case, as you know, Kit, sunk to the bottom of the harbor. Oh. It hit the waters and sunk. Oh, that's cool.

So the diver could go down and just photograph it. The divers did go down and they found nothing. Remember? Nothing. Yeah. That's pretty. No barnacles, no rocks, no seaweed. go down and just photograph it the divers did go down and they found nothing remember nothing yeah that's pretty no barnacles no rocks no seaweed it had been swept clean you know they find just an empty bottle of fairy liquid they'd scrubbed that ocean floor look um all I'm going to say is if a UFO comes down and abducts a farmer named Trundle and you don't have any pictures of it, I understand. Yeah. If a UFO comes down skeeting the audience of 10,000 individuals and that's the only picture you have. I'm going to be a little disappointed.

That's it. I think that's fair to say. I think it's fair to say. Now, this story captured imaginations around the world. David Bowie went on to name his backing band the Spiders from Mars in the 70s. That's cool. He was fascinated by the story and he, of course, famously had lots of space references

in his songs. You know know lyrics describing a star man in the sky moonage daydream calling himself ziggy stardust and saying i'm a space invader but interestingly in 1987 he did play that stadium that this happened in and that tour was called the glass spider tour that is very cool i mean makes a good point. Who's to say if it was spiders, they weren't aliens? Maybe the spiders were aliens. I like that because it gives me a better chance of a double yes. Look, we're not going to beat around the bush.

There is really, you've heard the shitty explanations. There's kind of only two here. Spiders or aliens. Right. Before we decide, there is just one more important piece of the puzzle we need to consider. Don't think I forgot, everyone. This is about the samples collected by journalist Giorgio Bettini and the findings from the Florence University. These samples had been rolled onto matchsticks, if you remember, put in test tubes and sent off. Testing was conducted by

respected scientist Professor Giovanni Caneri, and the samples were subjected to spectrographic analysis. Caneri found that they contained the elements boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium. I don't know what makes spider webs. That could just be every ingredient to make spider webs. I'm like, fascinating, fascinating. You're like, I don't know what the f**k any of that

is magnesium you say interesting the elemental makeup of the samples is vital to telling us what is in the angel hair whilst the testing couldn't tell us exactly what the substance was it does tell us what it's not even in the the BBC investigation in 2014, they said, spider silk is a protein, an organic compound containing nitrogen, calcium, hydrogen, and oxygen, not the elements reportedly found in the samples of angel hair brought to the university. In fact, boron and silicon are elements rarely seen in animal life here on earth, and certainly don't match the spider silk theory, which i think is pretty good stuff we've seen it in sci-fi movies over the ages you know as beings here on earth we are carbon

based life forms and it's a popular trope of science fiction and uh and writing is that aliens from other planets could be you know-based life forms based on other forms of elements. And certainly we're seeing here, this seems to be, what's the opposite of a smoking gun? We're seeing just a nail in the coffin of the spider theory. Right.

You know, just to play devil's advocate here, I don't know if this was the most protected sample that's being examined here. I think you actually did say it was. Oh, this is just perfect. It was rolled up on a matchstick. Oh, this is just beautiful. Probably after being on the ground.

Rolled up on a piece of wood. Rolled up on a matchstick, probably just put in his pocket, then sent on to a scientist who's like, there's traces of bubble gum and popcorn here and you're like okay yeah because the thing's on a football stadium floor he didn't get the sample off the ground of a movie house cinema he got it off the ground where you know matchsticks famously containing boron and silicon you're're like, I think these creatures, whatever they are,

they have a genetic makeup that consists of Stella Artois. I think some of the football field got wrapped up in that one. Again, this is why this case is at the next level. The next level. The what? The next level of evidence.

It's because we have spectrographic analysis of as i say we are so often trying to get just a little littlest piece of physical evidence not only do we have evidence but it was taken to a university and studied to find out its chemical compounds and then we find out that the compounds are those rarely seen on life here on earth like i said earlier the people that day were not torn as to what had happened as witness gg boney said i think they were extraterrestrial that's what i believe and there's no other explanation i can give myself rory we have gone through every possible angle and detail of the 1954 florence ufo are you thinking today? I don't know, man.

I don't know. This is a weird one. This is a very strange one. We've got him on the ropes, ladies and gentlemen. If we just keep pushing, if we can beat Rory down across the ropes, because it's... We've almost got him knocked out.

Because it's... You think about the webs and stuff, and you're like, okay, so the spider webs that came down, they're saying it wasn't spider it couldn't have been spiders because it's the genetic makeup is different from what goes into a spider web so you couldn't have been spiders but then all the people that are saying it are also like well it definitely wasn't spiders because it was an egg floating in the sky it

was an orb and you're like okay so yeah i yeah, I forgot there's another level to this. It's that it wasn't spiders. Apparently it was a f***ing hovering cigar made of concrete in the sky. It's almost like two different levels to believe here, you know? You would almost say it's a next level. You've got to stop going that high. I can see the audio peaking every time you do it. It is true. I'm not just blowing

wind up this case because i am hosting it and of course part of the fun of this paranormal life is i'm trying to convince you of something i do genuinely think that this is quite a unique one because normally in a ufo case we would see one segment of this we would see either the sighting or the spider web or just the multiple witnesses or whatever component that went into this to make it interesting or the fact that you know the person one of the key witnesses was so famous or an entire football team of famous footballers yeah but here we weirdly have all of it we have not just a compelling sighting that isn't ridiculous. It's not a flying saucer. It's kind of a believable sighting seen by an unbelievable amount of people.

And then for physical evidence to actually be taken and a photo, even if it's a bit shit. Yeah. We kind of have a royal flush. All right. I think we know where kids come into this episode. We kind of had an unbeatable hand of cards and anyone who says otherwise doesn't believe in the rules of the game uh it's just a photo that's that's bumming me out i'll tell you i'll tell you what unnerves me actually was i got a bit thrown by the military testing and this concept of them dropping chaff

dropping this stuff because that that threw me a little bit i was like oh so you're saying this the military do a thing where they drop fibers that's a bit that's a bit unusual uh but then again you know apparently apparently it's not the same kinds of materials and look the point stands that this kind of craft is not uh should not have been available at the time i think as i said it it's the it's just the picture it's the fact that you can't it's a bit of a double-edged sword having a situation where there's this many people in one area you can't tell me that because that you roy would have been happy if i had if there had been no picture if i told him oh everyone was busy that day

if it was in the if it was in like the 19 I don't know 30s or 20s and there was no picture then I'd like I'd kind of get it at least because it's like

oh well there are a ton of witnesses but this was the super olden days so there wasn't even a camera available to take pictures there were cameras in the 50s there was cameras

odds are not many in a crowd of a hundred thousand people what do you want we got the photo it's There were cameras in the 50s. There was cameras. Odds are, in a crowd of 100,000 people. What if we got the photo? Come on now. What kind of cameras do you think were available then? You've got to see this picture, ladies and gentlemen.

What kind of photo did you expect from one of the earliest consumer cameras available in Italy? I don't know. one of the earliest consumer cameras available in Italy. I don't know. There's like pretty clear videos from World War II where you can see very accurate things. Yo, because they were right in front of their f***ing face. The photos... So was the orb!

So was the cigar! The photos of planes weren't that clear in the sky. Ah, I don't know. We're beating around the bush. We've got to come down on a yes or no every episode of This Paranormal Life I can clearly

man this is this is a hot one we're coming in hot Rory what are you saying today is it a yes or a no I've got my hands up guarding my face I'm too scared

Kit's going to throw a punch it's going to be a no from me this week oh my god oh my god ladies and gentlemen I think we God. Ladies and gentlemen. I think we have just, ladies and gentlemen, I think we have just witnessed something very interesting.

Move away from the microphone. How big's your yacht? How big's your yacht, bud? Huh? You got a pension plan I don't know about? This is a little CIA pension plan. It's way too early in the year to start the second ever this paranormal life

civil war oh it's back on we just got over the first one there had just been a peace treaty I'm ripping it up I'm ripping it up

to a million pieces this is this is my shag harbour at least wait until no web feb for the civil war because we're gonna there's gonna be some

pent up aggression during that month anyway so hey I'm not gonna get bogged down web feb for the civil war because we're gonna there's gonna be some pent-up aggression during that month anyway so hey i'm not gonna get bogged down i'm just gonna say that this is a line in the sand this is disgusting this is i totally line in the sand hashtag stop the count uh and yeah obviously it's a yes from me because it's one of the most compelling, fantastical UFO cases in this paranormal life history. This one has to go out to the audience. We're going to throw up the Twitter poll. We're going to throw it out anywhere we can, throw it on the Instagram stories.

Polls. So you guys are thinking, I think Spotify these days asks our listeners on Spotify what they think of the episode. So if you get thrown the Q&A poll, let them know what you think. Yeah. That is Rory. This is interesting because we may have some, because we flipped we've passed yeah we've changed sides in this situation so maybe there'll be some people who was on my side for shag harbor who are now like i'm sorry rory i'm with kit right there could be a believers and skeptics thing

in general if anything what we've done is just show you how impartial we are you know right right which i think is a good thing you know one thing i forgot to bring up earlier but i do want to just tag on uh and not not expand upon but i just thought it was kind of cool i just wanted to mention the fact that this is a very rare sighting of a cigar shaped craft i knew that this tickled something in my brain about uh had we heard of cigar shaped ufos before um but you know we looked and looked and couldn't really come up with anything and then we remembered where it was from which was in 2018 i think or thereabouts quite a few years ago now first discovered in 2017 and written about in 2017 2018, there was an object

discovered in the sky, first thought to be a meteor or an asteroid that came to be known as Oumuamua, Hawaiian for messenger that reaches from out in the distant past. Whoa! But this was the original cigar

shaped object. That headline was everywhere. Cigar shaped object spotted in the sky. It was studied a lot because researchers, really serious researchers, didn't know if it was a UFO or not. Yeah, I believe the argument was things in space don't look like this. Yes.

You know, I know very little about the universe, but how it works, how science works, how physics work, is that objects this shape aren't crafted naturally. Right. You know, something like this could only exist through collision or some freak accident where things are smashed together because this is not organic looking. Exactly. is not organic looking. Exactly.

And so kind of speculation became wild about whether it was a UFO, a craft, whether it was some kind of, you know, new shape that we hadn't seen before for a meteor or asteroid, or whether it was, as is purported here,

you know, allegedly here, CNN News, they're pointing out that a paper that came out of Harvard University argued that it may have been an alien probe, some kind of drone being sent to investigate another galaxy. Right. Which, of course, we do over here, which is pretty compelling stuff. I mean, I know that Florence, the thing got a little more up close and personal than this, but I just thought it was a cool little tidbit about cigar shaped ufos it is it is guys if you enjoyed this one and maybe you can't get enough maybe you're you're you've you've got a

little bit of an hors d'oeuvre you've got a taste you've your appetite has been wetted for ufos head on over to patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life to access a treasure trove of investigations we've done over the years. We're talking 60, 70 full-length bonus episodes, 80 plus after parties, which are behind the scenes weekly looks at the world of TPL, as well as a bunch of other cool rewards. Oh yeah.

And you're going to want to head over to the merch store because the No Web Feb shirts are going to be there. We're going to make sure of it that is too good of a phrase to throw away uh so check it out get them in time for no web feb and celebrate with your buddies we so appreciate all the support that is given to us and has been given over the years on patreon and everywhere. It makes the show possible. But, you know, hey,

we've been podcast fans for the longest time. Hasn't always suited us to support shows financially. So a great way to support the show, if you don't feel like heading over to Patreon, is to just give us a review on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts. It goes a massive, massive way to letting other people hear about the show.

So if you've enjoyed it, hit that five stars. Let us know what you think. We do actually get sent those comments that people make about our show and they warm our little hearts when we read them. Or stab us like a dagger. Yeah, well, yeah, if they're bad. We get one a week and it basically makes or breaks how I feel about for the next seven days. We get the report to see how we're doing.

Sometimes I'm so fragile I can't even open the email. I'm like, not this week. Not this week. I can't do it. I'll click on it and it'll be like four stars

and I'm like, I'm going to have a breakdown. I can't handle this. 4.9. Oh, that stings. Guys, we hope you're having

a fantastic 2024 so far. We know we are. Excited to have wrapped a bumper year in the world of TPL and to be entering another one. We have so many great investigations planned for you. Any words for the listeners, Rory?

Only a couple, Kit, and that's to live fast, investigate, and die young, baby!