Somewhere in the Skies - Holiday Visitors: The Strange History of Christmas UFOs

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

In this special holiday edition of Somewhere in the Skies, Ryan invites listeners to gather around the glow of Christmas lights and explore a surprising tradition of the season: UFO encounters that un...fold on the quiet, magical nights of Christmas Eve. From a shimmering disc drifting over festive Genoa in Italy, to mysterious orbs pacing New Zealand aircraft. From a gentle sphere of light visiting a nursery in South Shields to an enormous craft seen in snowy Ohio. These sightings help for the Christmas UFO wave, a reminder that even during the warmth, wonder, and stillness of the holidays, something extraordinary can slip into our world. Please take a moment to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple. Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: sprague51@hotmail.com All Socials and Books: https://linktr.ee/somewhereskiespod Email: ryan.Sprague51@gmail.com SpectreVision Radio: https://www.spectrevision.com/podcasts Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #ChristmasUFOs #ChristmasUAP #HolidayUFOs #AliensAtChristmas #FestiveUAP #SantaUFO #WinterUFOs #ExtraterrestrialLife #UnidentifiedAerialPhenomena #AlienEncounters #SpaceMysteries #CosmicPhenomena #GovernmentDisclosure #UAPInvestigation #ParanormalHolidays Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:41 Must provide recent consumer mobile bill on the name of the person redeeming the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. Spectrevision Radio. The chill of Christmas Eve has a unique, quiet to it. Streets fall still. Houses glow with warm light. Families gather inside to share food and traditions.
Starting point is 00:01:13 And of course, the children to stay awake long enough to hear reindeer hooves on rooftops. It's a night defined by comfort and ritual. Yet, throughout history, it has also been a night when something entirely different intrudes the rooftops, trees, and skies above. While most of the world looks inward toward family and celebration, others have looked upward towards the skies and have found something waiting for them when they did. In this episode, we're going to journey across decades and continents to explore several compelling UFO events that occurred on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Starting point is 00:01:57 These accounts include glowing disks over Italian cities, intelligent orbs pacing aircraft over New Zealand, black triangles hovering above winter fields in Ohio, strange luminous spheres drifting through quiet British neighborhoods. in silent red light formations moving over Texas, and many, many more. This is the Christmas UFO wave, a collection of holiday encounters that remind us that the phenomenon does not follow human calendars. It arrives whenever it chooses, whether we're ready or not. So today, let's celebrate the strange history of Christmas UFOs. position is not to speculate on this subject, we can choose to let our minds explore other possibilities, to use our imaginations. For if we consider the astro-scientists agree on one
Starting point is 00:02:59 point that the possibility of life elsewhere is not only quite probable, some field is there without a doubt. Let us suppose them that these objects are real space vehicles, extraterrestrial origin, and not an illusion of the mind. I'm Ryan Spray. and you are now somewhere in the skies. Our first case takes us to the city of Genoa in Italy on the night of Christmas Eve in 1971. It begins like something from a postcard. The narrow streets of Genoa glow with holiday lights.
Starting point is 00:03:53 Vendors pack up their stalls from the final round of Christmas markets. Church bells echo through the historic alleys and crowds spill out from midnight mass. The Mediterranean itself reflects all of this festivity with shimmering color. But at about a quarter to midnight, something unusual appeared in the skies above the harbor. Witnesses described a bright yellow and white light that hover silently. At first, many assumed it was a helicopter or perhaps part of a holiday display. But as it rotated slowly in the sky, they saw the unmistakable outline of a struck structured metallic disc. It reflected light like polished steel and seemed to glow from beneath.
Starting point is 00:04:41 A school teacher named Maria Lantere recalled watching the object turn as if suspended on an invisible axis. She later told reporters that it hung in the sky like a lantern, but far too bright and far too precise to be anything ordinary. She said she could sense a vibration in her chest. Some think she felt more than heard. Another witness, a taxi driver named Giorgio Spano, recalled that the craft suddenly moved upward in a manner that reminded him of a weightless object lifted by an unseen hand. He'd never seen anything accelerate in such a fluid way. The local police received so many calls that two patrol cars were dispatched to check the source. Officers reported a metallic disc performing deliberate.
Starting point is 00:05:33 maneuver above the harbor. They said the underside displayed segments like shapes that resembled panels or concentric rings. The airspace was otherwise quiet that night because of the holiday, and the airport confirmed that no flights or training operations were scheduled. Nothing on radar matched what people were seeing with their bare eyes. Witnesses described the motion of the object as both graceful and unnerving. It slayed sideways across the sky before banking or tilting. Then it made abrupt right angle turns. It rose straight up, paused, and then drifted down again in controlled movements. People in the plazas below watched breathlessly as it tilted at an angle as though observing the city itself. After nearly 20 minutes of hovering,
Starting point is 00:06:31 sliding and rotating. The disc suddenly shot upward. Some said it left a faint line or streak as it vanished. Others said it simply blinked into nothing. No weather balloons or anything of that matter matched the behavior. There was no astronomical explanation accounted for the structured metallic form either. The Genoa Christmas disc remains one of the strongest holiday UFO sightings in European. history. It combined high visibility, a large number of witnesses, law enforcement observations, and distinctive movements. And it happened at the start of a night that would later prove to be part of a larger global pattern. Our next holiday encounter brings us to New Zealand. Again on Christmas Eve in in 1978. On this night, the world would see the extraordinary Kakura lights filmed by a professional
Starting point is 00:07:35 television crew aboard a safe air Argosy aircraft. Safe Air operated routine cargo flights at night. These flights carried newspapers, packages, and supplies between Wellington, Christchurch, Blenheim, and other cities. The crews were experienced and because the flights occurred after dark, they were accustomed to the isolation and calm of the night sky operations. At about two in the morning, the crew of one of the Argosy aircraft noticed a series of bright lights pacing their plane. Captain Vern Powell described three luminous orbs that appeared to drift alongside the aircraft. The light shifted position, moved ahead of the plane, fell back, and then repositioned themselves again with deliberate precision. Powell said that these lights acted with intention. Co-pilot Jim Lindski
Starting point is 00:08:32 initially suspected another aircraft might be sharing their airspace, but air traffic control confirmed that nothing was nearby. The radar at Wellington began to show unusual returns. Objects appeared briefly, vanished, and then reappeared in other positions far too quickly to be conventional aircraft. One air traffic controller later recalled that the object seemed to jump across the radar screen in a way that startled the entire team. A second Argosy aircraft had departed shortly after the first. Its crew also saw the strange lights. Captain Ian Peary described them as dancing in the skies. At times they seemed to merge into a bright mass, then split into individual lights again.
Starting point is 00:09:23 They moved in synchronization with the aircraft as though pacing it. The crews described structured shapes behind some of the light clusters. At one point, several lights briefly formed something that resembled a triangular arrangement. The movement of the objects showed rapid ascents and descents and changes in velocity that defied explanation for any conventional technology. These Christmas Eve sightings triggered enough concern and curiosity that when the next flight took place on December 26th, a television crew boarded to document the skies.
Starting point is 00:10:03 The footage they captured became one of the most important pieces of UFO evidence in modern history. In a very real sense, the Christmas Eve encounter made the Christmas Eve encounter made the Kikora film possible. Attempts to explain the lights as reflections from squid boats, stars, or Venus did not match the radar correlations, or the intelligence behind the movements, and the sightings remain a critical part of the Kikora timeline in one of the most powerful examples of UAP, interacting with aviation crews on a holiday morning. John Cordy was the radar operator on the night of the first sightings.
Starting point is 00:10:47 We saw some little targets on our radar. We checked it out, just down off Blenham, Cape Campbell Way. And we joked actually, we said, oh, it's Father Christmas test driving in a sleigh with Rudolph in the front just before Christmas, you know. Then the UFOs followed an Argosy freight plane. This target then moved towards the Argosy, turned with it, and parallel tracked it for a good 20 to 30 miles. The target and the aircraft were at 90 degrees to each other the whole time,
Starting point is 00:11:18 and the aircraft, Vern Powell's airplane, so they could see a big red light that was definitely airborne. We got all sorts of people ringing us up, telling we were basically idiots, and we were fooling the public, we were putting a hoax out, you know, this was all a big hoax for Christmas. They've said the visual sighting was squid boats, it was Venus, it was Jupiter, it was the harbourites, you name it, they can come. come up with all sorts of reasons what it was, but they haven't explained why I can suddenly see
Starting point is 00:11:49 Jupiter and Venus and the harbour lights and squid boats doing 140 knots on my radar. The following encounter took place in the coastal town of South Shields in northern England during the Christmas week of 1988. The town was quiet beneath a cold blanket of winter. The streets were still. Inside most homes, the air was. was warm and filled with the soft glow of holiday lights. But for one family, this season had been peaceful until the night something entered their home. The family consisted of a young couple and their infant daughter who had recently turned one-year-old. Their house sat on a narrow residential street not far from Ocean Road.
Starting point is 00:12:39 It was a small place with thin walls, aging windows, and a modest second floor. The crib where the daughter slept was in a room with wallpaper decorated in pastel colors. On the night of the encounter, the parents had put their daughter to bed after an evening of wrapping gifts and preparing for the holiday visit with relatives. Sometime after midnight, the mother awoke with an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. She didn't hear a sound, but she felt a quiet pressure in the air. something subtle and impossible to define. She nudged her partner awake and whispered that she thought she heard movement in the hallway.
Starting point is 00:13:22 At first, he dismissed the concern as the house settling in the cold, but when he listened slowly, he heard a faint click from the direction of their daughter's room. It sounded like the soft metallic noise of the crib's mobile shifting. They both crept into the hallway. They moved toward the nursery with slow and cautious steps. The door to the room, which they remembered closing earlier, was now open several inches. The father pushed the door gently and both parents froze in place. Inside the room, suspended above the crib, was a sphere of light.
Starting point is 00:14:06 It hung about four feet above their sleeping daughter. The sphere was roughly the size of a size. soccer ball and glowed with a pale, milky white color that seemed to almost breathe. The light was soft and diffuse, not harsh or blinding, and it didn't reflect sharply off of any surfaces. Instead, it illuminated the room with a calm radiance that cast gentle shadows along the walls. The sphere appeared completely solid, and yet it had no seams or markings. The parents described the surface as slightly translucent, as if layers of light folded over one another inside the sphere. The edges shimmered faintly, and the entire form pulsed in a slow rhythm that reminded the mother of a living heartbeat.
Starting point is 00:14:59 All the while, the daughter remained asleep. Her breathing was steady. She didn't stir or react to the presence above her. The room was silent except for the soft hum. that seemed to come from everywhere all at once. The father reached instinctively for the light switch, but before he could move his hand, the sphere drifted upward. It did so without jerking or accelerating.
Starting point is 00:15:26 Instead, it rose with deliberate grace, as if following some invisible path. It moved toward the window. The parents watched in stunned silence as the object approached the glass, There was no sound, no impact, no vibrations, and the sphere simply passed through the window pane. No breaking of glass, nothing. The sphere moved through the solid material as though the window were made of light rather than glass itself. Once outside, the sphere drifted upward into the night sky.
Starting point is 00:16:05 The parents ran to the window and looked out over the neighborhood. For a brief moment, they saw it. the sphere rise above the rooftops, glowing softly. Then it accelerated. One moment it was visible floating above the houses. The next moment, it streaked upward and vanished into the sky without leaving a trail whatsoever. Inside the nursery, the temperature slowly returned to normal. Their daughter remained asleep, unaware that anything had occurred. The parents stayed awake for hours, replaying the moment in whispered tones, trying to decide whether they should call someone or simply keep the experience to themselves. In the following days, they found no signs of entry,
Starting point is 00:16:54 no footprints, no tampering with windows, no malfunctioning electronics, nothing disturbed in the room except for the mobile above the crib, which hung at a slightly different angle than it did before. The parents were left with only their memory of the silent sphere, and the unsettling realization that something had entered their room, watched their child, and departed again without leaving a trace. The South Shields' Christmas visitor became a quiet legend in local UFO circles. The family eventually moved away, but the story endured among those who studied these sort of aerial encounters. It remains one of the most unsettling holiday-related cases ever on record, because it blended the warmth and innocence of Christmas with the unnerving possibility
Starting point is 00:17:49 that something unknown can enter a home without force and leave without explanation. Hey guys, Ryan Sprague here from Somewhere in the Skies. The podcast has always been and always will be completely free for you to listen to. But, Creating it every week takes a lot of time, research, and resources. And to be honest, it's just never been free for me to create. That's why we've built a few simple ways for you to help support the show and keep it going strong. You can join us over on Patreon or through Apple Premium. Both offer the same awesome perks.
Starting point is 00:18:32 Add free episodes, early access to new content, exclusive bonus shows, and even priority to ask our guests your listener question. It's a quick and easy way to support what we do for just a few bucks a month. And right now, you can even try Patreon for free for a week to see if it's right for you. To learn more and to join, head over to patreon.com slash somewhere skies. That's patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Or hit that subscribe button right at the top of your Apple podcast feed. Thank you so much for listening.
Starting point is 00:19:08 For supporting. And as always, keep. Looking up. Our next holiday story unfolds in Jefferson County in the state of Ohio in the U.S. This one happened on Christmas night in 1996. The Henderson family consisting of parents, Mark and Denise, and their two children were driving home from a long holiday gathering. The car was filled with leftover food, open presents, and the soft hum of holiday music.
Starting point is 00:19:50 The roads were quiet and lined with snow. The sky was perfectly clear. As the car rounded a bend on County Road, their daughter saw something outside her window and shouted for everyone to look up. There, hovering in a field near the road, was an enormous, triangular craft. It was dark, silent,
Starting point is 00:20:14 and it appeared to be the size of a small building. It hung in the air with a still, that felt unnatural. The corners of the triangle held large, bright, white lights. A faint, circular red light glowed at the center. The craft produced a low vibration that the family felt in their bodies. The surface of the triangle appeared to be a dull charcoal-like material. Mark, the father, pulled the car over. The children pressed their faces against the windows. Denise later recalled that the craft seemed to tilt slightly as of angling itself to observe the car. She said it felt aware of them, and it was in that moment that she felt pure fear.
Starting point is 00:21:02 The craft rotated slowly and continued to hover. It then pivoted so that one of the points faced the family directly. For several seconds, it held that position. The family watched in awe at whatever would have. happened next. The craft then rose vertically in a perfect straight line. It paused above the treetops, and then it shot off horizontally so quickly that it vanished instantly without a sound. And that was the end of the encounter. But the next day, the family reported the sighting to a local investigator from the Mutual UFO network. The investigator examined the field and found three circular impressions in the
Starting point is 00:21:47 the snow that might have indicated where the craft had landed at some point, or at least hovered over. His electromagnetic equipment displayed irregular readings. The Mufon investigator would later state that the Hentersons were among the most credible witnesses he'd ever interviewed. The Ohio Christmas Triangle remains a striking case within the state's long history of triangular UFO sightings. The combination of close proximity, Detailed visual descriptions, the family's emotional reactions, and the physical impressions in the snow make it one of these strongest holiday encounters ever in the region. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet.
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Starting point is 00:22:54 When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. On Christmas Eve in the year 2000, at approximately 9.30 in the evening, residents of Kingsburg, a small agricultural town in California's Central Valley, reported seeing an enormous disc-shaped object moving silently across the sky. The night was perfectly clear. Holmes glowed.
Starting point is 00:23:28 Family settled in. Yet one by one, people stepped outside to get some air, let the dogs out, or retrieve last-minute items from their cars. And that's when they found themselves staring at something extraordinary. The first report came from a married couple, Jim and Teresa. Bowen, who were unloading gifts from their car when they noticed a large circular object drifting above the almond orchards behind their home. They described it at least a hundred feet in diameter, with the metallic surface that caught the moonlight in a dull reflection.
Starting point is 00:24:05 A ring of soft light ran around its perimeter, not blinking or shifting, but glowing steadily like a halo. Teresa said the object moved slowly, and deliberately, almost as though it was scanning the ground beneath it. Moments later, their neighbor, a farm equipment mechanic named Luis Ramos, stepped outside after hearing his dogs barking. He saw the same object hovering so low that he estimated it to be only several hundreds of feet above the orchard. Ramos described small square-shaped recesses on the underside of the craft that emitted faint
Starting point is 00:24:45 bluish light. He stood motionless as the object passed over his property without a sound. Then something even more unusual happened. His truck's security alarm activated by itself. Then it shut off. Then it activated again. His porch lights flickered. His handheld radio inside the workshop turned on, even though no one had touched it. Within minutes, more calls were coming in to the Kingsburg Police Department from other families reporting the same slow-moving circular craft. One woman said that the object moved directly over her backyard where her children had been playing earlier. She said she felt a sensation of pressure in her ears as it passed overhead. Another family, driving home from a late Christmas dinner, said the object crossed the road in front
Starting point is 00:25:43 of them and blocked the stars behind it, confirming its massive size. Two local police officers responding to the growing number of calls drove south toward the orchards on East Mountain View Avenue. As they approached the rural stretch of road, they saw the object for themselves. They described a completely silent craft, large enough to cover a portion of the fields below, gliding without any visible propulsion. The officer's radio dispatch, but the radios cut out when the object drew near. Dash cam footage from their cruiser showed the sky glowing faintly as the disc moved above the vehicle. However, the craft itself did not appear clearly due to the darkness. One officer stepped out of the vehicle and watched as the object changed direction, pivoted into a
Starting point is 00:26:40 smooth arc without banking, and then he said the movement reminded him of a hovercraft gliding on water rather than flying through the air. Both officers later said the craft accelerated away in a straight line at a speed that made it appear to shrink instantly into the horizon. The entire sighting lasted approximately 15 minutes. Multiple households independently described the craft as circular, metallic, and silent, with a ring of white light. and blue lights on the underside. Investigators who later reviewed the reports noted the consistency across all of the witness descriptions.
Starting point is 00:27:20 Several families who had never met described identical features and identical movements. Despite the number of witnesses, no official explanation was provided. The Kingsburg Christmas Eve encounter remains one of the most compelling holiday cases to date in California. And it only adds to the mysterious holiday festivities that will continue to ponder here.
Starting point is 00:27:53 Our last case brings us to Texas. On Christmas Eve in the year 2003, in the town of Andrews, Texas, residents experienced an unusual aerial event. At around 10 o'clock in the evening, the police dispatch began receiving multiple calls from residents, who reported a line of red lights moving silently across the sky. Witnesses described them as evenly spaced and drifting with a smooth and steady motion. Two deputies responded to the reports. They activated their cruiser's dash camera and recorded an 18-second clip that showed five red lights moving in formation. The lights produced no sound.
Starting point is 00:28:37 They did not blink or display any navigation signals. One deputy can be heard on the recording expressing disbelief. Several families who watched the lights pass overhead said they could see a large, dark, triangular shape behind them. They described it as enormous, silent, and completely steady. One witness claimed that the craft stretched across a large portion of the sky. Investigators marked that no military aircraft were scheduled to fly through the area that night. The witnesses compared the event to the later sightings in Stephenville, Texas. in the years 2008 and 2009,
Starting point is 00:29:18 and many investigators now view this Christmas Eve case as a precursor to the Stephenville wave because of its similarities in size, silence, lighting, and movement patterns. And just like the Stephenville cases, it remains unexplained. These Christmas encounters from Italy, New Zealand, Ohio, England, Texas, and all across the world, share very little in terms of shape or behavior. Some describe disks.
Starting point is 00:29:55 Others report intelligent lights or massive black triangles. Or we have the mysterious case of the sphere over the crib. Yet they all happened on nights that represent togetherness, reflection, and stillness. Perhaps it is coincidence that Christmas Eve and Christmas Day appear in all of these accounts. or perhaps these quiet nights reveal the extraordinary more easily because the noise of daily life has paused. Maybe we are simply more attentive to the skies during moments of emotional intensity,
Starting point is 00:30:37 or maybe there's something else at play. Whatever the explanation, these holiday encounters, remind us that the skies do not adhere to our rituals or traditions. UFO phenomena does not wait for a more convenient time. It simply appears, and it challenges what we think we know about the world we live in, and about the skies above. So next time you're looking up for Santa and his reindeer, just remember, something even more extraordinary might be following him. Thank you so much for joining me for this special holiday episode,
Starting point is 00:31:25 And I'm going to ask you guys for one Christmas wish. And that is for you to rate and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple or wherever you get the show. If you'd like to help out in other ways and leave us a special gift in our cosmic stocking, you can check out our Patreon campaign where you get bonus episodes, early access to the show, and priority to ask our guests your listener questions. All of the same perks are also available on Apple Premium. Hit that subscribe button at the top of your Apple Feed or visit us at patreon.com slash somewhere skies.
Starting point is 00:32:08 Once again, I am wishing you warmth, safety, and a mysterious holiday season. And as always, remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies. Somewhere in the skies is part of the Somewhere Podcast universe. Please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. To learn more about all of our shows, visit thespu.com. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle.
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