Prince Harry's meeting with a psychic, the debunking of a Nazi diary said to lead to hidden treasure, and the latest developments in the Pentagon's investigation into UFOs were among the weird and wondrous stories to cross our desk this week.
Tales of hidden Nazi loot wound up making headlines by way of two separate stories this past week, beginning with the disappointing news that a much-heralded diary said to lead to several caches of riches buried by German soldiers during World War II is almost certainly a hoax. Historians examining the journal, which inspired a year-long search in the Polish village of Minkowskie, determined that the 'contemporaneous' accounts featured in the text were actually taken word-for-word from a book published around four decades ago. Meanwhile, the National Archives of the Netherlands release of a decades-old Nazi treasure map led to a Dutch village being swarmed by starry-eyed dreamers armed with metal detectors and shovels.
Government interest in UFOs was back in this news this week as the Pentagon released a long-awaited update on their investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). The 12-page report indicated that the DoD's UAP office had collected an additional 366 cases of anomalous objects spotted by military pilots. Of those accounts, they were able to determine that "more than half" of the UFOs were likely drones, balloons, or other assorted clutter. That said, they also conceded that there remain 171 reports that have yet to be explained and, within those cases, are some incidents wherein the anomalies "demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities."
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This past week featured a pair of odd stories centered around psychics, beginning with a surprising account from Prince Harry's controversial memoir Spare, wherein he recalls meeting with a woman who claimed to be able to speak to Princess Diana. In his remarkably revelatory retelling, he admits to being skeptical of the medium's assertion, but says that he sat down with her at the urging of trusted friends who assured him of her gift. Harry went on to write that he felt a palpable energy surrounding the psychic and that she conveyed to him that his late mother was watching over him. Later in the week, Bolivia's state-run airline came under fire when it was learned that they had enlisted an 'animal communicator' to help psychically locate a cat that they had lost.
For more strange and unusual stories from the past week, check out the Coast to Coast AM website.