After examining the case of the ‘Cadmium Calamity’, I thought it a good idea to snoop around to find out if the area had any other history of UFOs and alien visitations. Turns out, it did.
The Incident[]
On September 28th of 1987, a 27-year-old mechanic called Ami Achrai was driving just south of Haifa when he saw something hovering above the sands of Shikmona Beach on the Mediterranean Sea. He first thought that it was a helicopter in distress, and so stopped his car before being astounded when he saw a disc-shaped craft that emitted a bright flash of red light before vanishing. The police referred the young witness to a ufologist named Hadassah Arbel, and the pair returned to the site of the experience two days later. It was here that they found that the flash emitted by the UFO had burnt its image into Shikmona Beach. The sand was blackened with the 15 meter image of an ellipsoid disc. However, the more interesting find was what wasn’t burnt – the image of a pilot facing a control panel had appeared in the vegetation nearby.
A group of ufologists (and excited children) examine the Shikmona Beach image.
The Aftermath[]
Seven years after this event, a researcher named Barry Chamish sent samples of the burnt sand to the television show ‘Sightings’, and they analysed it under a microscope to find that it seemed to melt in the heat of the camera light. The reason for this was later discovered – the sand particles were covered by a ‘low melting hydrocarbon material’. The laboratory had no explanation for this aberration. Ami Achrai’s sighting was followed by a repeat performance on June 6th, 1988 when a similarly shaped craft was once again burned into the sands of Shikmona Beach, about 100 yards north of the first event. This wasn’t even the most spectacular event of the wave – this came on April 27th, 1989, when two teenagers witnessed a UFO explode into hundreds of shards over Shikmona Beach. The beach was strewn with white metal which was cool to the touch and glowed in water. The shards turned to white ash when they were picked up, and scientists from the Technion Institute of Technology tested the site and found that magnetism was 6000 times higher than the surrounding area. The shards were found to be very pure magnesium. Although this story seems far too spectacular to be believable (or to have been unknown to me until I started researching for this blog post), I have checked to see if the locations mentioned in the story exist (they do), if the burnt image has been photographed (it has), and if the Technion Institute of Technology exists (it does).
A photograph depicting the burnt saucer shape on Shikmona Beach.
Biblical Context[]
Obviously, this wouldn’t be one of my articles without some mythological context for the UFO in question – so here goes nothing.
There is a Biblical shrine 200 yards above the beach named Elijah’s Cave, and it is supposedly here that Elijah preached – and is said to have challenged the Canaanites to a duel of gods. Two bulls were tethered, and the gods (Yahweh for Elijah and Baal for the Canaanites) were beseeched to roast them alive. Y’know, like civilised gods? Baal failed the Canaanites, but Yahweh seemingly decided to take up the challenge. The deity sent a beam of light down from the heavens and cooked the bulls on the spot. This ray could have been a similar phenomenon to that which burnt the sands of Shikmona Beach into a saucer shape. In the cave, there is an ancient carving of this incident that displays a spitting image of the saucer shape burnt into Shikmona. The team from ‘Sightings’ made a hilariously inept attempt to debunk this bizarre coincidence by suggesting that the object in the carving was a bat.
This is a photograph of Elijah’s Cave – but I can’t find a picture of the carving in question to either verify or allow us to laugh harder at the suggestion made by the ‘Sightings’ team.
Conclusion[]
Seeing as the events at Shikmona Beach appear to have really happened, and there is pseudo-historical precedent for bizarre visitations at the site, I am stumped to provide a skeptical explanation that doesn’t hinge on a hoax for this. If you discount the hoax angle, I cannot see a reasonable explanation for the events.
Source[]
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/gigantes/esp_gigantes_04.htm