Somewhere in the Skies - The Bents Basin Bizarrerie: An Australian UFO Encounter

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

In this eerie episode of Just Another Tin Foil Hat, host, Zelia Edgar brings us to New South Wales, Australia, to explore the chilling UFO case known as the Bents Basin Bizarrerie. Six young friends ventured to the basin one evening to investigate the area’s mysterious reputation for paranormal activity. After a picnic by the lake, their car suddenly refused to start — and that’s when one of them spotted something extraordinary: a strange, otherworldly object resting on a nearby hill. What followed became one of Australia’s most intriguing UFO encounters, blending elements of high strangeness, missing time, and unexplained phenomena. Join us as we unpack the witness testimony, the cultural impact, and why Bents Basin remains a hotspot for the unexplained. Subscribe to Just Another Tin Foil Hat on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JustAnotherTinFoilHat #UFOs #AustralianUFO #BentsBasin #Paranormal #TinFoilHatPodcast #UAP #UFOEncounter #AustraliaMysteries #JustAnotherTinFoilHat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Co-Pilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M365Copilot.com slash work. Six young people arrived at Bent's Basin, New South Wales, in an old sedan, parked the car, and ate a small picnic which they had brought. They had come to investigate the unusual reputation of the area, which was well known for paranormal phenomena. They decided to move closer to a nearby lake as dusk fell and got in the vehicle, went to start the car, and it wouldn't start. It was then that one member of the party noticed a strange object resting on a nearby hill. Welcome to just another tinfoil hat with your host, Zilia Edgar. Join Zilia as she walks us through some of the most bizarre UFO cases and incidents of high strangeness.

Today, we are going to be discussing the fascinating case of the Bent's Basin Bizarerary. Now, this case occurred on June 4, 1972, but it wasn't reported until much later, July of 1975, because the reporting witness, known across all reports, simply as Mr. S, had a more recent citing of some anomalous lights over Sydney that he was reporting, and he happened to mention this previous citing, which is quite a bit more dramatic than just kind of a simple flyby of nocturnal lights. No offense to flyby nocturnal light sightings, those are really cool, too. This case definitely encompasses a little bit more high strangeness just than that, as we'll see in a minute here. Now, in June of 1972, Mr. S was one of a group of six young people, four

men and two women, who decided to go to Ben's Basin, which is just south of Wals, Australia. This place had a history of paranormal phenomena, and they wanted to see it for themselves. So they arrived in the basin, parked, ate a small picnic, and decided to set off for a spot closer to the lake, you know, kind of the nucleus of the basin, apparently. By this time, it was about six in the evening. So they decided to go closer to the lake. The driver got in the vehicle to start the car, and surprise, surprise, it didn't start. One of the other boys got out of the car and went to look under the hood. And after being startled by a too early attempt to restart the vehicle, he turned around and saw a bizarre object resting on the top of a nearby hill. He told the others to come look at it,

and a few of them got out. Some just turned and looked out the car windows, except for one girl who refused to even look at the object and apparently hid under the dashboard. She may have had the right idea, as we'll see in a minute. They described this object as looking like two saucers stuck together, appearing about 20 feet in diameter and only about four to five feet high, resting on three or four triangular-shaped legs. They claimed that the top half was a pink color and the bottom half a blood red, which pulsed from one to the other, kind of alternating,

again, this pink and this blood-red color. They claimed that the object, while appearing luminous, did not give off light. Now, they said that this pulsing kind of switch of the colors kind of synchronized with a strong hum, which also synchronized with sudden and severe headaches in all of the witnesses, excluding the girl who hid, which, again, all of these different phenomena, the headaches, the lights, and the hum, pulsated in the same rhythm. Finally, they got the car going and fled downhill toward the... the lake area. They didn't get very far, however, when they heard a thump on the roof of the

vehicle, and the engine started on fire. They all jumped out of the vehicle, which rolled unceremoniously towards a bunch of trees, figuring they had to get out of there somehow. Two of the boys began walking up the road to find someone that they could hitch a ride with. No sooner did they walk off, did they come running back. The two boys claimed that they had heard a strange whining noise, along with a soft whirling windy noise, at which point they had seen a huge manlike shadow. By the time they finished describing this bizarre entity to their friends, Mr. S saw the same silhouette approach from the same vicinity of the bizarre object.

Only three of the party claimed to see this thing. They said that the creature stood about eight to ten feet tall and looked glossy but not shiny. It had a round, helmeted head, broad shoulders, and pointed hands. The legs were not visible through the scrub, but they claimed that the movement of the being looked like it was on rollers or floating rather than walking. By this point, absolutely terrified by this double whammy of the bizarre UFO-like object and this creepy, you know, floating silhouette shadow being, the kids hid in some long grass by the roadside, fearful of what this thing was going to do when it simply vanished. Although the sighting of the weird shadow lasts only about 30 seconds,

the gang waited 30 minutes in the brush hiding before they decided to Vamuts. They got a ride out of the basin from a guy who said that he too had heard some weird noise. Now, they actually returned later with one of their fathers to try and salvage the car. However, in the short time that they were back in the area, they claimed that a large pair of eyes appeared in the nearby trees. One of the group threw a stick in that direction and the eyes immediately vanished. And I know the thing you're all really in suspense about, no, the car was completely unsalvageable.

Now, this is truly a funky little case, and in my opinion, it sounds kind of like a, I don't know, a Scooby-Doo episode gone haywire. I mean, you have this bunch of kids, and they go and enjoy a picnic in an old sedan at a paranormal location, only to get embroiled in a paranormal occurrence of their very own. Now, all jokes or pop culture references aside, there are some really classic high-strangest aspects to this case, starting with, you know, the car not starting. Reports of the time, once Mr. S. did finally report this, specifically from the Unidentified Flying Objects Investigation Center of Australia, detailed their belief that the car stopping and then, you know, lighting on fire probably had nothing to do with UFO.

Now, I think a little bit differently from that. Much like the infamous Marlinton encounter detailed a while ago on my channel, this case started when the car stopped. In both of these encounters, a car stoppage, in this case, you know, the car not starting, led the witness to see the anomaly. Now, in this case, the anomaly was this bizarre disc-shaped object in Marlinton, a Bigfoot-like creature. However, in both cases, the car did finally start up again, only to stop a little bit later with the return of the anomaly. Again, Kraft versus Bigfoot-like creature. In each case, too, the car was totally fried, or in this case, on fire.

Now, on a side note, I want to compile a list of cases in which people went looking for paranormal stuff and actually experience something. I'll just say they are way luckier in this venture than I've been. I mean, of course, I've had bizarre experiences throughout my life, but they've been at total random. Anytime I've set out to go to some paranormal location, whether it's a bigfoot hotspot, a haunted location, a place where UFOs are supposed to be seen very regularly,

I have gotten nothing. So, lucky, lucky people. Speaking of lucky people, it's also of note that Mr. S only reported this siting after another citing years later of strange lights in the sky. I would love a little bit more info on this one, because many researchers have claimed that witnesses of kind of close contact anomalous encounters often become repeaters.

And one of the most common things that they repeatedly see are these anomalous, kind of sourceless lights. Now, in addition to the strong physical reaction of the car literally lighting on fire, this case has some kind of interesting physiological reactions as well, namely this headache. Apparently, everyone who saw the object heard the noise, and everyone who experienced both of these things got a terrible headache, which throbbed in sync with the noise of the object and the pulsing of this light, except, of course, for the girl who refused to look at the object. So she did not experience the object at all. She refused to look at it, and somehow

she was spared from this throbbing headache. Now, it seems as though witness reaction, whether emotional or physical, can be seen as almost a fundamental condition of the citing. In this case, although the witnesses were terrified of the citing, they didn't cite the extreme terror or extreme calmness as someone impressed by the anomaly itself. However, what they instead had was this very strong and physiological reaction of a headache that literally kind of moved in sync with the anomaly itself. So it does seem that still close contact with anomalies, it has some sort of impression on the witness. Again, whether that's, you know, something physical like this headache or something emotional like the extreme terror or the extreme calmness or something that may be a

blend of both. Again, the paralysis that's cited in so many of these cases, I think that this is more a condition of the citing itself rather than kind of, you know, an nearly unrelated side effect just to something out of the ordinary. Now finally, there is kind of the, you know, Piestroissance, the very dramatic aspect of this encounter, which is this bizarre shadow type thing. that was observed by several members of the party, including the reporting witness. Now, the sketch produced of the thing, it's odd because apparently one of the most prevalent stories of Ben's Basin is that it seems to have lots of sightings of the Yowie, or as I'm sure a lot of my American audience knows it, the Australian Bigfoot.

When you look at this sketch, in my mind, it's very similar kind of to a silhouette of the yowie, you know, this kind of broad-shouldered, extremely tall, man-like shape. And it's, again, this kind of weird triple point anomaly then, as it's connected to this UFO sighting and moving in this apparitional kind of rolling or floating motion. You know, not to mention like so many anomalies, this thing literally just vanished. It was their one moment gone the next. So again, in my mind, it looks very similar. You know, I think very often in terms of silhouettes with different types of paranormal phenomena, where it's, you know, you see these kind of similar aspects throughout every different field of research, whether cryptosological, electrological or euphological. And so here there's this effectively kind of like shadow apparition

or shadow man, which is clothed in the trappings of a UFO encounter due to its proximity to a UFO, also in a place. And again, the silhouette kind of mimics this where multiple, there's like a longer running history of Yowie sightings. Now to cap it off, you also have this fantastic sighting of eyes when some of the group went back to try and salvage the car. This is a classic trope of cryptic sightings and often defining feature of the encounter. You'll have all of these reports where people will only notice the eyes or the eyes seem to be the most prevalent part. And again, this is just another one of those cross-genre type features popping up also in UFO encounters and, of course, haunted houses. Now, it seems to me at least that this focus of the eyes encounters is kind of

symbolic of being observed by the very thing that we are observing. All in all, this encounter seems like a very good example of what keel dubbed the window areas. You know, these places where it just seems like no matter what the anomaly is, they seem to attract or simply have or propagate more unexplained phenomena. Now, this place, Ben's Basin, is known as location rife with more historically inclined sightings, such as hauntings or Yaui sightings. And it just so happens then that this is also the place where this group of kids has a dramatic and in all likelihood traumatic,

UFO encounter. This concept that, you know, whatever the anomaly, it just seems like there are places where they're more likely to happen. It points, in my mind, at least, to the concept that the perceived differences between each type of anomaly may be of really little importance and that the truth is that they're simply different expressions of some same core mystery.

And for today, I am Zelia Edgar, signing on. This has been just another tinfoil hat with Zelia Edgar. Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For full video versions of these episodes, be sure to subscribe to just another tinfoil hat on YouTube. Thank you for listening. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week.

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