There’s more than one type of skyscraper above Manhattan.
The mysterious orb caught on video zooming over the Hudson River is just the latest “UFO” incident in the Big Apple, even though the densely populated borough filled with high-rise buildings seems like an unusual setting for brushes with the unknown.
A controversial alleged Stuytown alien abduction case has been the subject of a recent documentary on Netflix while there have been dozens of reports in the last year, including a dramatic close-call recently detailed by the Pentagon.
Manhattan Alien Abduction: 35 years later
One of the most famous — or infamous — alleged close encounters in the city is now the subject of “The Manhattan Alien Abduction” on Netflix, with Linda Napolitano’s claims the subject of as much attention as they were doubt.
Napolitano, then 41, lived with her husband and two sons in an apartment near the Brooklyn Bridge at the time of the alleged abduction 35 years ago.
The native New Yorker said that on the night of Nov. 30, 1989 she was lifted out through her apartment wall in a beam of light, soared above the East River into the sky over Manhattan, and into a clam-like alien spaceship that appeared to contain volcanic fire.
Napolitano shared her story with Budd Hopkins, a ufologist who was in the midst of documenting a case study centered around what he believed to be a credible individual.
The alleged abductee’s hypnotic regression in the days after the event is shown in the docuseries.
“Oh I feel like electricity just went through me,” Napolitano says in one exchange with her eyes closed and Hopkins leaning over her, head in his hand.
“There’s someone in the room,” the allegedly hypnotized Napolitano says in the footage.
She then describes being lifted through her solid door, floated in the air in her nightgown, and drawn into a fiery clam.
Interview footage, both contemporary and from the early 90s, show witness accounts of varying credibility and veracity. Many critics later poked holes in her claims.
The Mysterious ‘Near Miss’
A commercial plane had a “near miss” with a cylindrical object off the coast of New York that has yet to be identified or explained, according to Congressional testimony from Pentagon representatives from the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
An airline crew reported to the Federal Aviation Administration that their commercial plane — from an unnamed airline — had a “near miss with a ‘cylindrical object’ while over the Atlantic Ocean.”
This undated encounter was just one of more than 20 reports made over the past year that have stumped AARO investigators, with agency director Jon Kosloski describing them as “true anomalies.”
Kosloski revealed to a congressional oversight committee that the agency received 757 reports of sightings from May 1, 2023 and June 1 of this year.
The “close call” off the coast of New York is considered one of 21 anomalous cases that require further investigation, according to the agency.
John Lennon’s close encounter
“Imagine” that: John Lennon reported seeing a UFO in New York on Aug. 23, 1974.
The famed singer-songwriter said in an interview after the event that he had seen an unique aircraft zooming around the East River from his apartment.
“Up there, I saw a UFO,” Lennon said to an interviewer, pointing to his penthouse apartment that overlooks the water.
“And it went down the river, turned right at the United Nations, turned left, and turned down the river.
“It wasn’t a helicopter, and it wasn’t a balloon, and it was so near,” Lennon said, animatedly to the interviewer.
Lennon described the craft as being “silent” and “dark.” He said it was round, black or gray in the middle, with blinking lights that looked like “light bulbs” circumscribed on the sides, and was completed with a red light on its top.
Lennon tried to take photos of the craft — none of which came out legibly — and even called the cops, who said they had received other calls about an object flying through the sky, according to The New Daily.
Lennon also commemorated the occurrence in the liner notes of his album “Walls and Bridges,” writing, “On the 23rd Aug. 1974 at 9 o’clock I saw a U.F.O.”
Latest mystery
Earlier this week, a local news station aired video that incidentally showed a mysterious orb appearing to zoom down the Hudson River.
A local report on congestion pricing aired a random four-second clip of the lower Manhattan skyline, the Hudson River and parts of New Jersey.
In that clip, a mysterious blue orb can be seen apparently zooming down the Hudson River and past the camera.
Avi Loeb, a theoretical physicist, cosmologist and Harvard professor, believes the apparent orb is a trick of the lights.
“This is most likely an optical artifact from the helicopter glass in front of the camera, namely a bright spot from the reflection of sunlight as the camera gradually changes its orientation relative to the sun and the ground,” Loeb tells The Post.
Others believe that it was a physical object merely affected by the speed of the helicopter and the angle of the camera.
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