Ultraterrestrials - The UFO/Cryptid Connection (Hampton Roads)

 

If this were a discussion on aliens or UFOs, it would last forever. Hampton Roads has a long history of reports of strange crafts buzzing the airspace, with one of the first dating all the way back to 1813, when a Portsmouth tavern owner claimed to have seen a strange ball of fire weave over Norfolk County. The sighting made such an impact, he wrote about the incident in a letter to Thomas Jefferson. More recently, talk of drones populating the night sky over Langley and strange crafts over the waters off the coast have made headlines. 

Why are these sightings important? There is a growing segment of researchers who believe that there is a connection between UFOs and cryptids, and that their sightings could go hand-in-hand. 

The theory of ultraterrestrials really took off in the 60s and 70s with the work of Ivan Sanderson, John Keel, and Stan Gordon, who have documented some of the strange cases where these encounters overlap. For decades, cryptids have long been connected to high strangeness, but as Keel hypothesized, these strange beings could be from parallel realities, alternate dimensions, or the edge of our collective consciousness. 

There is a tremendous amount of overlap between cryptid encounters and UFO sightings. The Mothman incident in Point Pleasant, WV may be one of the most famous encounters of this type, but there have been numerous others, including a large UFO/Bigfoot flap in Pennsylvania during the 1970s. 

While it may seem like a stretch to think that the manifestations of unknown hairy beasts, winged beings, or shimmering lights in the sky stem from a single source, the reality is that it would explain many of the mysterious encounters that have plagued humanity since antiquity. 

In many cases, people who experience low-level close encounters with UFOs often report strange creatures alongside the strange lights in the sky. Cryptids such as Bigfoot, Chupacabra, Mothman, and other unknown species have been reported in the vicinity during these events. 

And with the historical view of aliens/UFOs and their potential interest in military operations or their attraction to large energy sources, the Hampton Roads area and its wide-ranging inventory of military apparatus would make it a prime target for the strange creatures that lurk outside of the mainstream eye. 

Of course, in the case of Hampton Roads, the number of UFO sightings in history dwarfs those of strange cryptids, but it is still a connection that cannot be discounted.