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Mattattattatt

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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Sep 17, 2001
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There are accounts of various substances appearing during
hauntings, sometimes very nasty. ...
One of the weirder reported phenomena have been indoor falls of powders or snows, some of them prolonged. The substance never seems to build up and soon disappears. :eek:

Hmmmm... the last account there reminds me of "angel Hair". It'll be familiar to most as the long, thin hair-like strings that have been noted to fall from the sky during UFO activity. I remember once reading that one hypothesis for that as substances in the atmosphere forming crystal structures due to freak electrical phenomenon. I also seem to remember that the strings were almost impossible to pick-up, as they dissolved completely with the lightest touch.
 
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This may not be the same thing, but I guess it's similar enough to post here - Mysterious webs drop from the skies

Mysterious webs drop from the skies

By Michael A. Smith
The Daily News

Published December 21, 2002

Was it part of nature’s enigmatic web, or part of a sinister web of conspiracy in the black-helicopter, secret-mass-experiment vein?

Hard to say, but one thing seems clear: The skies over Galveston County on Friday were literally filled with floating, shimmering strands and fuzzy, luminescent wads that looked a lot like spider webs.

Lorenzo DeLacerta saw them about noon when he delivered building material to a site a mile east of the San Louis Pass Bridge.

“It blew my mind,” DeLacerta said. “I have never seen anything like it before.” Others on the site saw them, too, he said, but their minds were not blown. They were like ‘Yeah?’ They didn’t seem to think much about it.”

Lorenzo called his sister, Gloria, who saw the same thing in the sky over La Marque. She called The Daily News where a half dozen skeptical news people were forced to admit that there was, indeed, under way a slow, steady parade of slender web-like strands, some near the ground, some way up where the airliners ply.

The webs were visible in the air for five hours, and poles were left wrapped with the sticky strands and fuzzy wads. So what were they? Official sky-web sources seem scarce. A spokesman at the National Weather Service Office in League City said the service had received no reports of flying webs, and that flying webs weren’t really their thing.

The phenomenon has occurred in at least two other places. The Associated Press reported Oct. 8 that “long, floating spider webs” were “bobbing through the skies of Santa Cruz, Calif., … confusing some community members concerned about biological weapons, UFOs and other phenomena.”
(and more.)
 
Thanks for posting that, rynner. Nice to see this old thread about
threads again. I think this new case sounds like what has been
called "Angel Hair". There used to be some pictures online. It's
traditional to blame spiders but the quantities described are often
amazing. :confused:
 
Where was that meadow where someone recently found millions(?) of spiders and a massive web?
 
Back in the 70s the USAF experimented with a thread like substance nicknamed 'angel dust' which was a thread like stuff used to baffle radar.
 
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huh, any old threads/ links about this "angel hair"? I googled it but all i got was pasta.
 
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huh, any old threads/ links about this "angel hair"? I googled it but all i got was pasta.

Try angel hair+ufo for search
Some "angel hair" links...

www.project1947.com/forum/bcangel.htm

magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/60/hair.html
Link is dead. See later post for access and the text of the MIA webpage.


Many more on the web, though it's a rare phenom.
 
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another, related report collected in reports of angel hair from Globe in Transit

Summer 1969: West Caldwell, New Jersey, USA.

'Another footnote to the mystery of silver string leads one to assume that it had been in existence for a long, long time; Mrs.A.Caggiano of Kramer Avenue, West Caldwell, called the paper to say that she had found a similar silver thread in her yard back in the summer of 1969. As she remembered it, the thread looked like a taut wire strung high between trees, disappearing into the sky.'
(see also August 1970)

[Hervey, 1976]
 
Sat on a wall having a brew today and suddenly thought what the hell is that, long thin filaments hundreds of them floating across the car park, hanging off cars and bikes some just drifting away on the breeze, Angel Hair thinks I, but a good look shows a small lump at one end of each of them, yes a spider, heard of it and seen them hanging on bushes but that's the first time I have actually seen spiders flying using their webs.
 
There are contradictions here; the 'angel hair' collected from Florence in 1954 did not 'sublimate', it was destroyed during testing, and yielded some (frankly absurd) results, probably as a result of the shortcomings of 1950's analysis. Other angel hair has been tested and found to be spiderweb. A few samples seem to have disappeared somehow, once again, probably due to errors in the collection or storage process. An interesting Fortean phenomenon, but nothing to do with the Pentagon or aliens.
 
There are contradictions here; the 'angel hair' collected from Florence in 1954 did not 'sublimate', it was destroyed during testing, and yielded some (frankly absurd) results, probably as a result of the shortcomings of 1950's analysis. Other angel hair has been tested and found to be spiderweb. A few samples seem to have disappeared somehow, once again, probably due to errors in the collection or storage process. An interesting Fortean phenomenon, but nothing to do with the Pentagon or aliens.
It's possible that some of the Florence material did sublimate and that was the remainder. I think the vast majority of falls of "angel hair" are spiderwebs. It just happens that UFOs also sometimes shed, excrete, or vent material too. Even the Sternenschiff ejected some scintillating material or gas. I think it's rarely seen in UFO cases, but sometimes it happens, and it's rarer still to collect it. There was a 19th century case of "Meteoritic Floss" I ran across; metallic sheets up to 20 feet across and apparently even tube <edit> (rope) shapes, all metallic or appearing to be. The pieces were draped over trees and fences, and fell after clusters of lights were seen high in the sky. Hard to say about that one.
 
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magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/60/hair.html
Link is dead. See later post for access and the text of the MIA webpage.

Here is the text of the MIA webpage article ...

This article, part two in a series The Search for Physical Evidence, appeared in Merseyside UFO Bulletin, Volume 2, Number 2, March-April 1969

ANGEL HAIR
John Harney
One of the most tantalising types of alleged physical evidence for the reality of UFOs is the phenomenon which has come to be known as angel hair . This material is generally described as a white, fibrous substance, resembling spiders' webs, wool, or nylon. The filaments float down to earth and sometimes cover quite large areas of ground. Unfortunately the substance is unstable and appears to slowly sublime and disappear. It is said to burn like cellophane when ignited. Falls of angel hair generally coincide with UFO reports.
Among the earliest reports of this phenomenon were two sightings which occurred in France, in 1952. (1) At Oloron, on 17 October, at about 12.50 p.m., the headmaster of the lyc‚e there, together with his wife and children, witnessed a strange event. To the north they saw a fleecy cloud, of curious shape, floating along. Above it was a long, narrow cylinder, tilted at an angle of 45 degrees and slowly heading south-west, at an estimated altitude of 2,000 to 3,000 metres. The object was whitish in colour and its shape was quite distinct. Puffs of white smoke were coming from its top side. Some way ahead of the cylinder about 30 other objects were travelling on the same course. When viewed with field glasses, each of these objects was seen to have a red ball at the centre, surrounded by a yellowish ring. These objects travelled in pairs in short, swift zigzags. When two of them moved apart they seemed to be connected by a whitish trail. All of these objects left long trails which disintegrated and drifted slowly to the ground. For many hours afterwards trees, telephone wires and roofs were festooned with streamers of the mysterious substance.

Attempts to preserve the substance for analysis were unsuccessful, because when handled it became gelatinous, then vaporised. Apart from the schoolmaster and his family already mentioned, there were said to have been numerous other witnesses in the area.

On 27 October, at 5 p.m., an almost exact repetition of the incident occurred at Gaillac. Again there were many witnesses.

There was some scepticism among ufologists concerning these early reports, But others were to follow, to confirm this phenomenon as a genuine one, requiring explanation. Reports from the USA included two incidents which occurred in the same area, the San Fernando Valley, California, on 16 November 1953 and 1 February 1954. (2)

The explainers-away were almost unanimous in attributing such reports to the activities of spiders, borne aloft by the wind and thermals on their gossamer threads and deposited many miles away. Although this theory convincingly explained some of the reports, it was obviously not possible to fit it to reports such as those from Oloron and Gaillac, even allowing for possible embellishment and exaggeration in the published accounts. Nevertheless, the pundits could think of no better rationalisation, so spiders' webs it had to be.

The Condon Report is not very enlightening on this topic. After mentioning the spider explanation it simply says: In other cases, the composition or origin of the angel's hair" is uncertain. (3)

However, at the BUFORA Northern Conference at Liverpool, in November 1967, Anthony Durham gave a lecture in which he discussed two possible explanations. He later published the text of this lecture in a privately circulated UFO bulletin. The angel hair could be a metastable chemical polymer, produced in a tornado funnel. the supply of dust particles and organic materials sucked up by the tornado, and the high electron current, high gas velocity and other conditions would be suitable for the formation of such a substance, which would be spun into threads by the centrifugal force of the spinning column of air. The other hypothesis supposes dust particles exposed to a high electrical field. These charged particles would tend to aggregate in clumps, but shear forces would tend to make them form long chains of filaments. On falling to the ground, the filaments would lose their electrical charge and gradually disintegrate into fine dust again.

This explanation has been suggested before, but apparently has not been taken seriously by ufologists. Michel mentions that after falls of angel hair in eastern New Mexico on 23 and 24 October 1957 . . . one pundit in Albuquerque asserted that the threads were composed of atmospheric dust" clumped together by a static electrical charge . (4)

The disadvantages of angel hair as physical evidence for UFOs are its instability and the likelihood that such material could in certain circumstances be produced by natural atmospheric disturbances, or disturbances caused by the passage of conventional aircraft.

On the other hand, when falls of this substance coincide with reasonably well-witnessed reports of UFOs in the same area, this will help to establish that the cause of the UFO reports is physical rather than psychological.

References

1. Michel, Aim‚. The Truth About Flying Saucers, Corgi Books, London, 1958

2. Keyhoe, Donald E. The Flying Saucer Conspiracy, Hutchinson, London, 1957

3. Gillmor, Daniel S. (ed.) Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, Bantam Books, New York, 1968

4. Michel, Aim‚. Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery, Criterion Books, New York, 1958

SALVAGED FROM THE WAYBACK MACHINE:
https://web.archive.org/web/20051018054242/http://www.magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/60/hair.html
 
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