We've all heard the accounts of strange things falling from the skies. Everything from squid, fish, frogs, cows, and blood have been reported. Recently a woman saw worms falling in Louisiana, and in India, blood red rain was seen. 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.

Plagues of Frogs, Blood and Cows...and Jelly.

Even the bible gets in on the game, relating plagues of frogs and brimstone falling from the heavens to punish Pharoah. Brimstone, thought to be sulfur, raining down as part of God's wrath has been lacking since biblical times. But something akin to it may have fallen in New Jersey in 1833. But it wasn't sulfur, it was Jelly. In the town of Rahway people saw what they described as firey rain falling, and on the ground were lumps of a gelatinous substance. By afternoon the jelly had dissappeared, leaving in its place white particles.

Another case from 1696 tells us of a substance described as butter falling over large parts of southern Ireland. It was yellow, stank and was consumed by grazing cattle who apparently suffered no ill effects. The locals promptly collected the material and used it as a medicine.

In 1846 in Vilna, Lithuania a grey jelly fell during a rainstorm. When burned the material gave off a sweet smell, and was soluble in water.

Angel Hair and a UFO Link.

Even stranger is a material known as 'Angel Hair'. 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.
The true story of this substance called angel hair remains a mystery.

A cobweb-like and jellylike substance which is also slightly radioactive often falls to the ground shortly after UFO sightings. The substance dubbed “angel’s hair” evaporates without a trace several hours after the sighting. The “hair” was reported to either disintegrate or turn into cottony tufts with an offensive smell when held in the hand. American ufologists refer to the material as “angel’s hair”; Italians call it “siliceous cotton”; and the French use the term “the Madonna’s present” to describe semitransparent threads that fall from heavens. Ufologists first began discussing the phenomenon in 1954. Two men, namely Gennaro Lucetti and Pietro Lastrucci stood on the balcony of a hotel located in St. Mark’s Square of Venice, on October 27, 1954. The men suddenly saw two “shining spindles” flying across the sky. The objects left a fiery white trail as they zipped along. Both objects flew at high speed, one of them at some distance away from the other. Then the objects took a U-turn and flew away in the direction of Florence.

There were reports on an unexpected break in a soccer game played in one of the Florence stadiums on that afternoon. The players, referees and about 10 thousand spectators just stood there gazing at two objects which flew over the stadium. A couple of unidentified objects flew over the city thrice from 14.20 to 1429. 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 materialized.” 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 popularize 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 in this country.

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. The 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.

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