Could Foo Fighters Be Cryptids?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 1st, 2009
How about something entirely different and a challenge to your conventional cryptozoological thinking?
Maybe people have been going about investigating the historical accounts noted here in all the wrong ways?
Could “foo fighters” be unknown animals of the atmosphere, actually cryptids, instead of “flying saucers”?
Time Magazine wrote about them in 1945.
Though “foo fighter” initially described a type of UFO reported and named by the U.S. 415th Night Fighter Squadron, the term became commonly used to mean any UFO sighting from that period.
The term “foo fighter” was used by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II to describe various UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over both the European and Pacific Theater of Operations.
Formally reported from November 1944 onwards, witnesses often assumed that the foo fighters were secret weapons employed by the enemy, but they remained unidentified post-war and were reported by both Allied and Axis forces.
Of course, today, most people associate the word with music, not phenomena. In 1995, when singer Dave Grohl’s previous band Nirvana disbanded, he named his next group Foo Fighters.
Sure, those before us have mentioned UFOs, optical illusions, balls of plasma, ball lightning, and electrical discharges.
But what if we think aerial zoology or astrobiology for a moment, a la’ Ivan Sanderson?
What if foo fighters are unknown animals that should be studied by cryptozoologists, not ufologists?
And, no, this is not an opening to talk about “rods” that seem clearly to be tiny light flares, lens artifacts, and insects that have been made into “monsters.”
If you are intrigued by this topic, there’s one book you will want to read on the subject of foo fighters – Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in World War II by Keith Chester, with an introduction by Jerome Clark (NY: Anomalist Books, 2007).
Take the book, read the accounts with a fresh point of view, and don’t get bogged down in the extraterrestrial and flying saucer hypotheses. Perhaps looking at the raw data, from a new angle, might be quite interesting and revealing.
Just a Monday morning thought.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Nowadays I’m more skeptical of the ETH (Extraterrestrial Hypothesis) as the panacea that was used to explain all sorts of unexplained aerial phenomena.
And, with recent scientific studies pointing out to how adequate plasma is as a medium to store information the same way our biological DNA does it, the idea of ‘living’ plasma entities doesn’t strike as impossible.
I am definitely willing to consider the possibility of such an exotic life form. People have reported all kinds of interactions with light phenomenon over the ages, and often explained them in some sort of paranormal or religious context… but interpretations like these are not necessarily objective, to be sure.
For another interesting look at aerial lights that defy explanation, and are intriguing to ponder, check out Project Hessdalen.
A type of air jelly (jellyfish)?
That’s crazy!!! I had the same idea yesterday. I mean about if UFO’s could be cryptids… Awesome!!
Seriously if it were another time, me and Loren would have been burned by some clergy…
Trevor Constable not withstanding, this sounds more wishful thinking than cryptozoology to me.
Still, as anyone who has seen one of the really big Chinese dragon kites move through the sky knows, there _ought_ to be such critters (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvCIeWlJdms). In the words of Winston Churchill, “It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides.”
-oz
There is a US researcher who believes in Wilhelm Reich’s orgone energy, uses cloud busters to attract biological UFOs, has used infra-red photography to classify the “denizens of the upper atmosphere” and wrote a book with a title similar to Biological Propulsion Of UFOs. Unfortunately, I don’t remember his name.
Richard888, that would be Trevor James Constable who wrote The Cosmic Pulse of Life: The Revolutionary Biological Power Behind UFOs. Published about 30 years ago, with lots of fuzzy images taken in the desert using quartz lenses.