The case of the captured mini-UFO (1972)
Japan has had its fair share of UFO sightings over the years, but few encounters have been as peculiar as the one involving the mini-UFO captured in Kochi prefecture in 1972.
Photograph of mini-UFO captured in Japan, 1972
The strange encounter took place in the Kera area of Kochi City. On the afternoon of August 25, 1972, a 13-year-old junior high student named Michio Seo sighted a strange object flying above a rice field while walking home from school. From a distance he watched the small, mysterious object zigzag quickly around the field like a bat chasing insects.
Later that day, Michio told his friends about the curious flying object. “UFO” had yet to become a household word in Japan in 1972, but the boys were intrigued nonetheless. At around 7:00 PM, four of them set out for the rice field in search of the object.
About an hour later, they spotted the object flying over the rice field, lighting up the night with a pulsating silver light. When one of the boys tried to approach to object, it suddenly made a loud “pop” sound and started to glow blue. Frightened, they turned and fled without looking back.
Over a week later, at 9:30 PM on September 4, several of the boys once again saw the bright object in the rice field. And two days after that, on September 6, the boys and a few of their friends found the object on the ground in the field. It appeared to have crash-landed.
One of boys — a 14-year-old named Hiroshi Mori (14) — picked the object up with his hands and carried it home.
The silver, hat-shaped object weighed 1.3 kilograms (3 lbs) and measured roughly 7 centimeters (3 in) tall and 15 centimeters (6 in) in diameter. The bottom surface was perforated with an array of tiny holes and imprinted with designs depicting what appeared to be a bird, some waves, and another flying object. Something rattled around inside the object when shaken.
That night, Hiroshi wrapped the curious object in a plastic bag and placed it inside his backpack. Later, however, the object mysteriously vanished without a trace.
Before long, the boys encountered the object again. They once again captured it, but it soon vanished. This happened about five or six times over the next two weeks.
On one occasion, the boys decided to pour water into the holes on the bottom. The object emitted a loud cicada-like buzzing sound and glowed brightly inside. Later, when they ran some wire through the holes and dangled the object upside-down, the top and bottom sections of the object became slightly separated. Through the opening, they could see what appeared to be electronic components.
On the night of September 22, Hiroshi was riding his bicycle with the object in the basket when it suddenly disappeared. They never saw it again.
In 2007, 35 years after the incident, the Japan Space Phenomena Society (JSPS) conducted a new investigation into the case. According to Kazuo Hayashi, head of the JSPS Osaka chapter, all of the witnesses still stand by their original story.
The mini-UFO of 1972 was not the last that would be encountered in Kochi prefecture. Nearly four years later, on the night of June 6, 1976, a 9-year-old girl named Sachiko Oyama in the village of Agawa (now called Niyodogawa-cho) stepped outside to look for her family cat. She noticed a bright yellow luminous object in the eastern sky.
When she went to the street for a better view, the object suddenly descended into the surrounding woods, struck a nearby tree, and landed at her feet. It made no sound when it hit the pavement.
The silver, hat-shaped object appeared to be about 15 centimeters (7 in) in diameter. Curious, Sachiko touched it with her index finger. The object was constructed of solid material, but it was covered in a slimy substance that stuck to her finger.
She suddenly felt afraid started to run home. Over her shoulder, she saw the object start to glow yellow, spin counter-clockwise three times, and shoot quickly back into the sky.
What could explain these mysterious mini-UFO sightings? Perhaps there is a rational explanation — or maybe they were hoaxes. It’s also possible the encounters were the products of overactive imaginations. Or perhaps, as suggested by JSPS head Kazuo Hayashi, these flying objects temporarily lost their way after slipping into our realm from another dimension.
[Source: Namiki, Shin-ichiro. Nippon No Kaiki Hyaku. Magazineland, 2007.]
Interesting story, mainly because of the described size of the UFOs. Normally they aren’t so small, at least from the stories in the west they are usually described as being quite a bit bigger than that. These ones sound almost like toys!
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Possibly spying US drone vehicles (UMVs) sent to those locations to just check it out and report back.
Or some person’s attempt to fool a few children.
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“Yup, we found rice patties”
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dude… what makes you think any of this is true?
I can see the story of HARRY FUCKING POTTER as being more credible than this.
Christ… i hate mooneys.
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What makes you think any of this is not true, evrything you see today was thought imposible 50 years ago.. if you can’t see the truth in story’s like you have to scrape the shit out of your eyes and wake up
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I totally agree with you, klebb.
It’s like reading the bible and afterwards denying that they actually saw flying saucers back then.
People’s perception changed a lot through time, and The Man has made up bullshit and hidden the truth for EVER.
If anyone on earth believes that we are alone in the universe, like klebb said, they need to scrape the shit out of their eyes (and souls).
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Makes sense. If I was an advanced civilization sending drones to inspect a planet I wouldn’t send 40 foot diameter craft with a bunch of personnel inside. I’d send 10,000 units of something the size and shape of a bug to scout and record everything it sees. Even this thing seems too big. Maybe they were worried about bird attacks!
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Looks like a speaker to me
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Well, it looks like an incense burner to me. The biggest reason I say this is that I have one just like it! This was the lamest scam atempt ever.
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Didn’t find one like mine but this one is quite similar. Own your own mini UFO today!
http://www.simplyincense.co.uk/product_details.asp?pid=12536
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Yours floats in rice patties with a glowing light too? :D
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People actually buy this crap, lol?
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looks like an aluminum floor drain.
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Has Moby been notified? We may have space kittens yet!
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I call bullshit.
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Look closely at the top pic. Says “Made In China” right on the fucker.
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Isn’t it fascinating that the object’s construction is consistent with what would be possible with standard machining tools of the early 70’s?
I also find it interesting that the artistic style of the bird, water and house all have a strikingly classical Japanese aesthetic.
Perhaps the aliens were big fans of Shinto culture, and were so advanced they could build an interstellar probe with a lathe and a drill press.
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Oh Jeez,
Guys, come on – this is a fake.
We all want to believe in extra-terrestrial intelligence,
but they’re not here yet.
Give it a few centuries, til we can properly make our prescence felt in the galaxy.
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What makes you think THEY can’t feel us? We’re obviously way less intelligent than them.
There’s proof everywhere in the world stating that they have been here for longer than we have, and that they have come multiple times to watch us.
It’s in the bible, it’s in the pyramids, it’s in the sky every time someone seems a “UFO”.
Believe it or not, there IS life out there. No one can know for sure, but c’mon.. you have to feel it! There’s no way in “hell” we’re alone in the universe.. God only know how huge it is..
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I think the pictures are not from the object found at the time but of a replica or artist rendering.
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copy paste the text of the article to notepad. replace all instances of the word object with penis. The article will suddenly make a lot more sense.
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Awesome showerhead!
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Obviously some kind of advanced alien bird-like civilization with a thing for waves, hats and another flying object.
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looks like a fancy “differential pressure port”. often used in “clean room” type manufacturing. it simply attaches to a tube routed to a guage that tells you wether that room is under higher or lower pressure than an adjacent room. a clean room needs to be at a higher pressure so that say, dust wont get sucked into a room thru door cracks and so forth, but get blown away
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They are Bug invaders
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…where the ettire invading force was eaten by a small dog…
Earth wins by default. Earth Flag:
http://ultimateflags.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=8&products_id=26
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I want to believe :-)
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Great retro feel with the dinky UFO. Right up there with the iphone-headed robot.
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Very strange, and it’s odd to think of UFO activity outside of the US…. seems like it’s one of those flukes you just read about in the states…
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That is the size of the flying sphere I saw back in 1980! My incident: 5:00 am Los Angeles CA. I accompanied my oldest sister to the bus depot. She did not want to go alone, it was still dark. As we quietly walked along the sidewalk, a bright light flew fast noiseless at a very stable speed, not accelerating neither decelerating. Quick ! The thing was so small that the only possibility was that it was some kind of a light bulb. WHAT, what, what… was that a light bulb !? “I thought”. “Did you see that Sylvia ?”, I said to my sister. “Huh, yes”, she mumbled. She was still sleepy and all she had in her mind was ‘GUYS’, so I ignore her because I knew her mind was only into dating. Useless to talk to her. The sphere was too small to be a ufo, too bright and big to be a city light or house bulb. It was about the size of a basketball. It was certainly not a meteor because we all know what they look like, we humans can recognize meteors. No, this one left no tail behind it, and it was obviously traveling. The incident lasted just a few seconds, may be a minute, but I saw it clearly. Too bad you cannot see the replay like on TV. The point is I’ve kept that into my memory for such long time. It would be stupid to tell it. People would regard me a liar ! I am not lying.
IT’S BEEN THE SMALL SIZE OF THE OBJECT THAT HAS KEPT ME RELUCTANT TO TALK ABOUT IT ! !
I am now 44 and am barely beginning to take it out of me. I have no use of this memory.
:)
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i agree with jaime, i think you are not a liar, the sphere ia actually real, but i don’t think it was an UFO, in Indonesia there’s a pleace that you can see the sphere that u told. In Indonesia the called as Gennie, they sometimes came out in the forrest as a light ball who wandering around and gone suddenly… in Java, was my birth place, when harvest came, they sometimes come out, like fireflis ( hotaru ) flying around, as javanese we believe there a goddess named as Dewi Sri, a goddess of rice, always came out when harvest came.
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Those balls of light could be natural occurrences, In my country you can see this kind of objects on the middle of the forest. This kind of occurrences are called “guacas” The explanation is nothing out of this world:
During the Conquest of South America by the Spaniels the “Indians” American natives tried to hide their treasures form the Conquistadores that were looking for gold and the Lost City. The chosen method to hide their treasures was to dig a hole on the ground and bury their gold, pottery and their people. after several years (hundreds of years) gas pockets build up inside of the graves and for any natural external event the gas is set free, burning and thus creating this UFO like objects. Don’t ask me about the chemistry process and the exact conditions involved to create this balls of light, This is the explanation I got form a guide that took our 8th grade class to look for Indian graves. He said to us:” If you see a ball of light play attention where it came from because there could be a treasure right there.”
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Dude. It’s a freaken hat, you morons.
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Just rotate the first picture 180 degrees and you will see the original image. Suddenly it doesn’t look that much like a UFO, does it?
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What DOES a UFO look like?
Just a reminder, UFO = Unadentified Flying Object.
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I say that this story is quite possible and may very well be true.
Small UFOs have been reported numerous times going back many many years and are sometimes still reported.
The use of remote probes by some ETs makes sense.
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