I’ve got some bad juju, folks. I just know it. I’m always on edge before the draft. I dunno what it is about the draft, but I’m certain that the league’s conspiring against me. The coffee always tastes weird. The bedsheets in the hotel always have a corner flipped up. It’s signals, I’m sure of it. Speaking of signals, I took a little bit of time earlier this week to study up on some very intriguing material from the South Pacific, almost forty years ago…

THE KAIKOURA LIGHTS

Location: Kaikoura Mountains, South Island, New Zealand

Date: December 1978

The Story: In late December of 1978, some inexplicable bright, blinking lights appeared at a number of locations in the night sky over the Kaikoura Mountains, on the northeast portion of the South Island of New Zealand. The first of these sightings, dated December 21st, was noticed by a crew flying a Safe Air cargo plane; the lights tracked alongside their plane for several minutes before disappearing and reappearing elsewhere. Based on the observations made by the crew, and by other eyewitness accounts, the lights were very large; the UFO was estimated to be likely about the size of a house, with five lights blinking on the top of the object. Some eyewitnesses have also claimed that the UFO dropped small disc-like things on the ground, but none of these have ever been found. The lights would appear a few more times in the sky, and an Australian TV crew was able to film a short documentary of the lights in the sky on December 30th.

What’s Weird: Due to the unusual behavior of the lights, the Royal New Zealand Air Force put a plane on patrol to monitor any further activity, and launched an official investigation alongside the police and the Carter Observatory in Wellington. Ultimately, they found no conclusive proof that the lights were actually that of a UFO, claiming a variety of possibilities instead. All the same, there are a few strange inexplicable things that can’t be explained in the official police report, which was de-classified and released in 2010:

• Radar detectors from both the Safe Air plane and the ground control tower in Wellington picked up the object on their radar screens, meaning that there almost certainly had to be some tangible object out there to cause this appearance.
• Unlike many other UFO sightings, which typically have scant eyewitness accounts, the fac that there’s so much supporting visual evidence makes for strange circumstances indeed. The following YouTube clip is the footage in question shot by the Australian news team from December 30th, 1978.

What might have happened?

While the official explanation released in 2010 stated that the incident was not, in fact, a UFO sighting, many people still have their doubts. Of notable interest to the Kaikoura incident is the presence of bright lights before bad weather and other such large-scale natural phenomena such as earthquakes; in fact, earthquake lighning is hotly contested among scientists still about whether or not it’s an actual thing or not, but it’s interesting to note that in the magnitude-7.5 quake that hit New Zealand in 2015, similar erratic, unusual lights were also observed in the sky above the Kaikoura mountains.

Also of interest to this is the fact that some of the explanations offered by the de-classified report include the following:

• Lights from boats reflecting off the clouds
• Lights from trains or cars
• Venus
• Unburnt meteors
• Drug runners’ signal lights
• City lights reflected off the breasts of flocks of mutton birds

A very strange assortment of theories, indeed.

Coach Carroll’s Hypothesis: A CLASSIC BAIT AND SWITCH. The official investigation is long since declassified, huh? I DOUBT IT. Those alien lizard people were scared the Kiwis were onto ’em, and forced them to publish those documents full of lies and hypocrisy. Do you honestly expect anyone to believe any of that crap listed above?? JUST LIKE THE MKULTRA DOCUMENTS, I’M TELLING YOU.

Information for this article taken from here, here, here and here.

Banner image courtesy of Low Commander of the Super Soldiers.