Ghost Hunters Extraordinaire

Raymond · Avatar Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 5599

We've all heard the accounts of strange things falling from the skies. Everything from squid, fish, frogs, cows, and blood have been reported, even Cats and Dogs. Most of these incidents can be explained, usually by a waterspout or tornado. In the case of the cows, a Russian aircraft was blamed, and the 'blood' turned out to be water colored by a micro-organism.

However, a strange material known as 'Angel Hair' seems to fall from the sky more often than anything else. There are a number of accounts of this fiberous substance observed to have fallen from the sky, and any attempt at collecting it results in it completely subliming away.
It can appear similar to spider webs drifting in the wind, or even has been described as being like cotton.
The origin of angel hair has yet to be determined other than an unsatisfying blanket explanation of it being airborne spider webs.

Angel hair has also been associated with the UFO phenomenon. As early as 1948, in Ontario, a report exists describing angel hair falling during a UFO sighting.
A 1952 account from France relates that the material fell in two different towns in conjunction with the sighting of a cigar shaped object. The accounts of this material are very similar to that of angel hair that is not associated with a UFO sighting in that it also usually sublimes away when handled.
One exception occured on a ship moored in Canada in 1962, where the strands were described as very strong and resilient.

As late as 1998, reported by USA Today and the AP, twenty UFOs were seen over Quirindi, New South Wales, Australia.
As they passed, they littered the ground with angel hair. The material has also been associated with sightings of angels, and stands as yet another example of how seperate paranormal phenomena sometimes appear to be inexplicably linked.

There were reports on an unexpected break in a soccer game played in one of the Florence stadiums in the summer of 1999. The players, referees and about 10 thousand spectators stood gazing at two objects which flew over the stadium.
A couple of unidentified objects flew over the city thrice from 14.20 to 14:29. A number of strange cobweb-like threads started to drop to the arena once the objects disappeared.

The substance was quick to disintegrate if held in the hand. Alfrede Jacopozzi, a student, was the only one who managed to pick up a few threads of it and sealed them in a hermetic test tube.
Jacopozzi then handed the tube to Professor Giovanni Canneri, a director of the Chemical Analysis Institute under the University of Florence. Professor Danilo Cozzi, a colleague of Prof. Canneri’s, carried out a series of tests of the mysteries find.
“It’s a fibrous material, which is highly resistant to tension and torsion. Once subjected to heat action, the material grows dark and evaporates, leaving transparent sediment that melts away. The sediment was found to contain boron, silicon, and magnesium. Hypothetically speaking, the substance may be some kind of boron-silicon glass,” said Prof. Cozzi.

American ufologist Charles Maney suggested that the material was “the UFO excess energy which materialised.” According to him, “the treads return to their dimension or some other space-time continuum while fading away.” A British ufologist suggested that “angel’s hair” was a variety of ectoplasm emanated during a spiritualistic session.

B. V. Lyapunov, a Soviet-era researcher who did a lot to popularise science, received a sample of “angel’s hair” from New Zealand in 1967. A tightly sealed tube contained some unknown stuff measuring less than one-tenth of a cubic centimeter.
A comprehensive analysis of the substance was conducted by a team of scientists. Physicist L. V. Kirichenko, a specialist in radiometry, concluded that the substance “is a fine-fibered material; some of its fibers are less than 0.1 micron in diameter.
Most fibers are tangled in the bundles or separate “threads” measuring 20 microns in diameter.
The threads look somewhat whitish and semitransparent. There aren’t any known analogues to the analyzed substance.” Summing up the study of the material, Academician I. V. Petryanov-Sokolov said that “the sample is of considerable interest as a material with extremely fine fibers. It is unlikely that the material was formed by nature.”

Unfortunately, the entire amount of the substance was used up during the research. No new samples of “angel’s hair” have ever been obtained though the phenomenon was repeatedly reported.

According to reports spread by the British Society for UFO Studies in August 1998, mysterious cobwebs fell to the ground shortly after an UFO sighting in North Wales.
60-year-old Mrs. Stanfield and her daughter-in-law saw “about 20 silver balls in the sky” prior to taking note of cobweb-like material which descended to the ground.

There are times when “angel’s hair” falls out from a clear blue sky. Residents of the city of Montgomery in the United States reported the fall of “flying web type substance” in 1898.
According to the description provided by eyewitnesses, the threads of the material resembled somewhat fluorescent asbestos fibers. On February 10, 1978, a large number of sticky fibers were falling from the sky for two hours in the vicinity of the coastal city of Samaru, New Zealand.
The fibers appeared to be “considerably finer than cobwebs” yet clearly visible against a clear blue sky.

Some of the fibers looked like knots the size of a tennis ball; they were slowly unwinding across the air. Others were floating in a cluster which resembled a jet plane’s heat wake. “I’ve never heard about anything like that,” said a spokesman for the Department of Science and Industry Research of New Zealand.