Encounters with UFOs or alien entities can be a life-changing experience and elicit a wide range of reactions from the people who experience them. For some it is fear of the unknown, an overwhelming terror induced by seeing something they feel they were not meant to. For others it might be awe and wonder, and still others still might doubt what they have seen at all, trying to stuff the experience into a neat little hole of the logical and rational explanations, regardless of that creeping feeling clawing at the back of their mind that it is anything but. However, humans being humans there is also another reaction, to just open fire and kill them all, and there are actually quite a few accounts of this happening.

There are supposed attacks by humans on UFOs dating back all the way to at least the 1940s, and by far the most famous of these is perhaps the one that occurred on February 25, 1942. On this evening air raid sirens all over the city of Los Angeles, California began blaring, followed by a fierce barrage of anti-aircraft fire lighting up the night sky. Considering that the United States had just entered World War II just months before, this was thought by the terrified populace to be an enemy attack launched by the Japanese. Although officials would later claim that “The Battle of Los Angeles” had been the result of a false alarm and jumpy nerves, of course conspiracy theorists have said that not only is this a cover-up, but that it was not the Japanese at all, but rather UFOs that were being fired upon in a panic. A very famous image used as evidence of this is one circulated in the news at the time which purportedly shows spotlights converging on a UFO in the sky over Los Angeles as tracer fire erupts everywhere. The image has been debated and discussed for years, and although accused of being touched up and hoaxed, still often gets placed on lists of iconic UFO images. Just what is it we are looking at here?

War time seems to have a lot of these kinds of accounts, and it seems to make sense, what with everyone trigger happy and the tendency for UFOs to seem to be drawn to human military conflict for whatever reasons. Troops in the Vietnam War certainly seem to have experienced this first hand from time to time. One particularly bizarre incident occurred in 1970, at Lone-Jon Island, where a 5-man team of soldiers claimed that they were being hunted by bright lights measuring a mere 4 inches by 4 inches in size. These lights were described as disc-shaped and having what were called “black eyes,” and they were said to be capable of great feats of maneuverability, darting, zig-zagging, and hovering all over the place. The team claimed that when they fired upon the objects they would shift color to an angry glowing red, with the black eye part morphing into a bright green. These intimidating, menacing lights apparently stalked and attacked the team during both daylight and nighttime hours over a period of 5 days, often coming shockingly close, to within 5 feet of the team’s position. One of the men supposedly took several photos of the bizarre incident.

When the men got back from their harrowing ordeal and were debriefed they told of what had happened to them and were reportedly told to forget about it. Their equipment was also searched and some of it confiscated, including the pictures that had been taken. People were brought in to interview them extensively on what they had seen, and although it was unclear who they were, at least one of the men was convinced that they were CIA. Even odder still is that a few months later some American personnel allegedly showed up at the homes of the soldiers’ parents asking about any photographic materials that may have been sent to them. The whole thing adds the layer of a sinister cover-up to the already rather scary events depicted by the report.

American forces don’t seem to have been the only ones dealing with hostilities with UFOs. In a really weird report, in the summer of 1968, a Ranger recon unit was operating along the DMZ in an area that what was referred to as the “North Country” in the early morning hours. The team was wary and on edge, completely attuned to their surroundings, as it had already been established that an enemy Viet Cong unit was positioned on the other side of the hill, so the enemy could have been anywhere creeping about in the jungle around them. At approximately 2AM, the team claimed that a bright, fluorescent blue light could be seen closing in on their position, and that the strange, unidentified object stopped to hover momentarily around a quarter of a mile away before moving towards the baffled unit once again. The entire time the flying object was said to be completely silent.

As the recon unit struggled to comprehend this bizarre sight that they were seeing, the NVA on the other side of the hill, after presumably gawking at the sight as well, did what humans do and reportedly began firing on the light in full force. The night lit up with tracer rounds blazing skyward towards the strange object floating there and it must have been quite a haunting, mesmerizing sight. For a few moments the object did not react, merely absorbing the assault without showing any sign of distress or damage. Indeed, it seemed to be completely unfazed by the barrage of bullets raging at it. Then, it was claimed that a blindingly bright beam of light lashed forth from the object and the NVA machine gun fire abruptly stopped to send the jungle into a sudden silence so profound that it was jarring, the instant quiet almost deafening in the wake of the cacophony that had exploded through the air just moments before. The light in the sky then reportedly cruised off in complete silence to leave nothing but the droning sounds of the nighttime jungle behind.

The next morning, the recon team decided to make their way to the NVA camp to see what had happened, sensing that they were going to find something weird at the very least and they would not be disappointed. They found the enemy camp to be seemingly abandoned, and strewn about were 12.7MM machine guns and other assorted firearms that looked as if they had been partially melted by a relentless, scorching heat. A closer inspection of the camp turned up what appeared to be piles of ashes and bits of what could have been charred bones scattered about. The leader of the team apparently took pictures of the scene, which he would later include in his report of the spooky incident. Shortly after, he went to rejoin his unit but was told that he had been reassigned to another team. When he asked about what had become of his report and the photos he was allegedly told that no such report existed, and that if he were to continue pressing the matter he could face prison time. Other members of the team were purportedly similarly intimidated with such threats.

Another incident involving the NVA was reported in the State Journal in Lansing, Michigan on Sept. 29, 1972, in a piece entitled What Was UFO Over Hanoi? The report claimed that a huge, luminous orange spherical UFO had appeared at a high altitude above Hanoi on a clear day, and then hovered in a stationary position. North Vietnamese air defenses had then almost immediately fired upon it with three consecutive surface-to-air missiles, but these were either unable to reach it or unable to harm it, although after the missiles were fired it was reported that the UFO diminished somewhat in intensity, becoming “less bright” than it had been before. Nevertheless it reportedly continued to hover over the city for a full one hour and 20 minutes before leaving. In a similar incident reported by the Russian publication Aura-Z, another UFO was supposedly seen over Hanoi and was also fired upon by missiles, which apparently did hit it but had no effect. In this case, the UFO is claimed to have fired a “fine, needle-like, light blue ray” at the defense batteries, completely destroying them and allegedly killing around 200 personnel in the process. This particular, no doubt spectacular report has been suspected of being a hoax, but it is intriguing nonetheless.

Moving on into 1978 we have a truly spectacular case in which an actual alien was not only supposedly shot at, but allegedly killed. The setting for this bizarre tale is Fort Dix and McGuire, located about 18 miles southeast of Trenton, New Jersey, in the United States. It started with personnel at the base spotting UFOs nearby for several weeks, and in the early morning hours of January 18, 1978 an on-duty airman who has only ever been identified by the pseudonym “Sgt, Jeffery Morse,” was purportedly approached by a NJ State Trooper who had quite the story to tell. The trooper explained that an MP on the base had been pursuing one of the UFOs that had been seen on base, and had ended up not only encountering an alien, but shooting and evidently killing it.

According to the this state trooper, the MP had spotted a low-flying unidentified craft and proceeded to chase it for around an hour before his vehicle was suddenly bathed in the bright blue-green light of an oval-shaped UFO hovering directly above him, which caused his engine to stall and cut off all radio communications. As the MP sat there staring in shock and awe, a humanoid creature apparently then crept out from the gloom of night to step directly into the beams of his headlights, which showed that it was about 4 feet tall, with and oversized bald head, large black eyes, slender torso, thin arms and legs, and wet looking grayish skin. The already spooked MP had apparently then completely panicked and lost it, hoisting his .45 automatic sidearm and wildly blasting away at both the creature and the UFO hovering over him until it was empty, hitting the humanoid several times to send it running off into the night as the mysterious craft above shot up into the sky. The bizarre creature had then apparently succumbed to its wounds and fallen to die right there on the grounds of the Air Force Base, and the trooper was on his way to check the report out.

More personnel joined them and when they approached the area where the alien had died they did indeed see it lying there motionless, and without getting too close began roping off the area. It was as they were doing this that a group of what Morse called “blue berets” swooped in and took charge, telling them to leave and not speak of what they had seen. After that it would seemingly be all bushed under the carpet and the body whisked away to who knows where. Morse would apparently tell all of this to UFO researcher Leonard H. Springfield, and explain of the incident:

We found the body of the thing near the runway. It had apparently climbed the fence and died while running. It was all of a sudden hush-hush and no one was allowed near the area. We roped off the area and AFOSI came out and took over. That was the last I saw of it. There was a bad stench coming from it too. Like ammonia smelling but wasn’t constant [in] the air. That day, a team from Wright-Patterson AFB came in a C141 and went to the area. They crated it in a wooden box, sprayed something over it, and then put it into a bigger metal container. They loaded it in the plane and took off. That was it, nothing more said, no report made and we were all told not to have anything to say about it or we would be court-martialed.

Morse and other witnesses were then purportedly repeatedly interrogated and warned to not talk of the matter, forced to sign forms that bound them to secrecy, after which each and every one of them was transferred far away, with Morse sent all the way over to Okinawa, Japan. He would say that after that they had continued their harassment, once detaining him at the airport for no reason when he came to the States to visit his family, and he even passed to Springfield an official looking report that he claimed verified his story. Interestingly, far from this being just the ramblings of this one guy Morse, there was some amount of corroboration, when a retired Air Force Major George Filer III would in later years step forward to claim that the whole story was indeed true, and that he had been there that night as well. Although Flier hadn’t actually seen the corpse himself, it was apparently a big deal on base at the time, with everyone talking about the “alien body” and a whole lot of intense activity and unfamiliar vehicles and aircraft about that was not usual. Unfortunately, there is no way to know if either Morse or Flier were telling the truth or not, and of course the Air Force has flat out denied that anything of the sort ever happened, labelling it all a hoax. We will probably never know how much truth any of it holds, if any, but it is a pretty wild ride at any rate.

Adding to all of this are those air engagements, dogfights in which pilots have allegedly actually shot at UFOs in dogfights, Independence Day style. According to the account, early on the morning of April 11, 1980, 23-year-old Peruvian air force lieutenant Oscar Santa Maria Huerta was conducting exercises in his fighter jet over La Joya Air Force Base, when he was ordered to investigate a strange, silvery object that had appeared in restricted airspace. He soon made visual confirmation with the strange object, which he at first thought was a balloon or spy device that was not supposed to be there, and seemingly did not hesitate to engage with extreme prejudice. He allegedly completely blazed up and opened fire on the object, saying:

I reached the necessary distance and shot a burst of sixty-four 30mm shells, which created a cone-shaped ‘wall of fire’ that would normally obliterate anything in its path. Just one of those shells would wipe out a car, but they had no effect on the object. I thought that the balloon would then be torn open and gases would start pouring out of it. But nothing happened. It seemed as if the huge bullets were absorbed by the balloon, and it wasn’t damaged at all.

The object responded by shooting off at a rapid pace, with Huerta in hot pursuit, headed in the direction of the city of Camana, approximately 84km from the base. At some point the object abruptly stopped in mid flight, to send the fighter pilot in evasive maneuvers to avoid and shoot past it, but he kept at it, positioning himself for another attack run. As he came in once again, the object made a fast climb, evading the fighter. The strange object or craft then proceeded to evade similar efforts to launch an attack, and then Huerta had the idea to attack it instead from above, yet it managed to stay well above him even as they climbed to a dangerous 19,200 meters. He was definitely getting the impression that this was no normal weather balloon or spy drone, and getting closer he could see that it certainly was not, of which he would say:

I was startled to see that the ‘balloon’ was not a balloon at all. It was an object that measured about 10 meters in diameter with a shiny dome on top that was cream-colored, similar to a light bulb cut in half. The bottom was a wider circular base, a silver color, and looked like some kind of metal. It lacked all the typical components of aircraft. It had no wings, propulsion jets, exhausts, windows, antennae, and so forth. It had no visible propulsion system. At that moment, I realized this was not a spying device but a UFO, something totally unknown. I was almost out of fuel, so I couldn’t attack or maneuver my plane, or make a high-speed escape. Suddenly, I was afraid. I thought I might be finished. I was zigzagging to make my plane harder to hit, always with my eyes on the rearview mirrors, hoping it wouldn’t chase me.

Dangerously low on fuel, Huerta managed to land his fighter, and many of the base personnel could witness the object still buzzing about like an angry bee before leaving the area. Huerta would later say, “I find myself in the unique position, at least for the moment, and as far as I know, of being the only military pilot in the world who has actually fired a weapon and struck a UFO. It still gives me chills to think about it.”

Our most recent, and very quite possible the most completely bonkers one of the bunch, is the time a guy apparently attacked and maybe killed an alien being with a samurai sword. In 2009, a resident of a ranch near Phoenix, Arizona by the name of John Edmonds claims that he was under siege by mysterious alien entities that would prowl about his property at night to peek into windows and actually come to him and his wife in the night to assault and perform medical experiments on them, leaving behind needle like holes in their skin, bruises, and causing them to come down with mysterious illnesses. These creatures were described as being basically “Grey Aliens,” the classic description of large bald heads holding those almond shaped eyes and with skinny frames, and he says they relentlessly prowled about his remote property. Edmonds believes they are inter-dimensional in nature, and would say of these strange entities in an interview with Coast to Coast AM:

I have heard and seen critters moving around on our enclosed sun room. The west wall contains four large windows. The speed generated by their movement (3 critters) at once made the glass in the double pane windows actually buzz and misalign in the frames to the point the windows are now very difficult to close and lock properly with out using a screw driver to realign them in the frame first. I believe the high frequency buzz is a side effect of their partial in phase or out of phase inter-dimensional travel. In a safe situation critters transcend cleanly from one dimension to another. In what they perceive as risky circumstances, they only physically materialize to a point of just crossing the dimensional physical threshold. The buzzing occurs at a quantum level as they are partially in both dimensions at the same time. If they are suddenly startled they pull back out of phase into their regular dimension. If they feel safe, then they come completely into this dimension and the buzzing stops. This is the perfect opportunity to physically grab one and then hold on as hard as possible because they will try to “bug out” again immediately.

And grab them he would. These creatures would also kill the man’s dogs and some of his horses, but it appears they had chosen the wrong house to mess with, because according to Edmonds one evening he had had enough, grabbing a Japanese katana-style sword he owned and confronting it to hack away. During the melee, he would allegedly viciously, mortally wound it,

I killed in self defense after repeated home invasions by similar creatures over a period of many years. The assaults by these creatures were responded to in the most violent behavior I could respond with because of weekly and some times daily confrontations during which our home, ranch, horses and dogs were killed. Pierced by the sword with six inches of cold steel perforating the body cavity and seemingly lifeless, the Gray alien still managed to disappear before I could withdraw the weapon and chop off the head. My intention in removing the head was to see if this would prevent it from disappearing. It is my hypothesis the head controls the ability to control the dimensional transference between one place and another. I had hoped to interrupt the process by diminishing the body integrity. I wiped up the blood/Fluid and tissue of the Gray I nearly split in two parts with an exceptionally well sharpened Samurai sword. After hand to hand combat with these little parasites.

He would then collect tissue and blood samples and purportedly send them to a researcer called “W.C. Levengood” for analysis, who would allegedly inform him that they were most certainly not only not human, but unlike anything seen before, even going as far as to say they were the smoking gun for the existence of aliens. Unfortunately for any of us waiting for concrete answers, this Lenengood apparently then just sort of disappeared and took the samples with him. Convenient. That, plus the fact that the alien managed to vanish after being damn near cut in half by a sword, leaves us with no physical evidence outside of photographs and the samples that Edmonds insists totally, for real exist, and this ends up just another wild report with no corroboration. Unsurprisingly, it remains unproven, and we are left to wonder just how much of this completely absurd report is true. It is certainly novel, though, attacking an alien entity with a samurai sword. Whether his insane story is true or not, he deserves points for creativity at the very least.

So what are we dealing with here? Are these genuine stories of humanity doing what we do best and trying to blow stuff up real good, or is this just hoaxes and fabrications? I have no doubt that many people would have such negative, violent reactions to encountering the unknown, but did any of these really happen? There seems to be no way to really know for sure, the physical evidence always flirting with us and staying out of grasp, and while they are certainly spectacular reports, it is probably better to take them with a grain of salt and maybe even hope they are not real, because we would likely not stand a chance in a fair fight with these forces. Make of this all what you will.