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Author: Mike Perry
Angel Hair is said to be often seen following UFO sightings, so has it an extra-terrestrial source? Probably not. And, besides, the good old scientists have a simple explanation: it's all down to spiders. Okay, perhaps, but I don't always believe the scientists' conclusions.
Angel hair is usually described as being similar to gossamer, cotton wool or silk. It's all soft, white and shiny. It's difficult to analyse as it melts away and disappears into nothing. It is also known by other names. In France it is called the Madonna’s present; in Italy it's siliceous cotton and the Ufologists refer to it as angel’s hair.
Angel hair, or whatever term you prefer, first came to the attention of the UFO bods in 1954 when two men, Gennaro Lucetti and Pietro Lastrucci, were on the balcony of a hotel in St.Mark's Square in Venice. They saw what they described as two shining spindles flying across the sky. These objects left behind a white trail as they sped on their way. The UFOs then changed direction and headed towards Florence.
On the same afternoon at a soccer match in Florence the players and the 10,000+ spectators watched two objects/UFOs fly over the stadium. Cobweb like threads started to rain down on the pitch as the UFOs disappeared.
Professor Danilo Cozzi of Florence University was able to examine the threads and gave his conclusions:
"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."
But that doesn't really tell us what it is and there are many other suggestions:
American ufologist Charles Maney put is down to, "The UFO excess energy which materialized, the threads return to their dimension or some other space-time continuum while fading away."
A British unnamed ufologist reckons it's a sort of ectoplasm similar to than emanated at a spiritualists seance.
In 1967 a study was done in New Zealand and the conclusion from I.V.Petryanov-Sokolov was that, "The sample is of considerable interest as a material with extremely fine fibers. It is unlikely that the material was formed by nature."
All of this doesn't really make things much clearer. Angel hair, however, keeps on being seen. In 1998 in North wales, for example, following a UFO sighting a 60 year woman, Mrs.Stanfield, saw cobweb-like material descend to the ground.
In Montreal, in 1962, the captain of the Roxburgh Castle vessel noticed, "... fine filaments of an unknown kind," draped around the railings and stanchions. The Marine Observer reported Captain Pape's experience in October 1963:
"Calling the attention of the Chief Officer, I pulled one of these strands from a stanchion and found it to be quite tough and resilient. I stretched it but it would not break easily and after keeping it in my hand for three or four minutes it disappeared completely; in other words it just vanished into nothing.
Looking up we could see small cocoons of the material floating down from the sky but as far as we could ascertain there was nothing above or at street level to account for the extraordinary occurrence."
Captain Pape was informed by D.J. Clark of Natural History Museum in London what he considered to be the source of the angel hair:
"Spiders are, I think, responsible for the phenomenon you describe. The majority of these spiders belong to the family Linyphiidae, and mature in the autumn ... on warm sunny days, the spiders begin to disperse and migrate ... the silk is drawn out in a thread by the air currents and hardens. The spiders sometimes are carried many miles ... they free this 'parachute' ... this becomes entangled with other threads."
So you take your pick as the source of angel hair: from UFOs or spiders or something else.
Ah but, one problem about the spider solution is that that spider silk cannot melt because heat does not affect it - but angel hair vanishes without trace. Plus spiders have never been reported within or near to angel hair.
And one problem with the UFO solution is that angel hair is often spotted without any signs or indications of UFOs being seen.
It seems as if the mystery of angel hair hasn't as yet been solved.
Mike Perry
First published on 67 Not Out and reproduced here by kind permission of Mike Perry
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