SPECIAL FEATURES:
Email
Man looks for missing cat, finds 'UFO' instead
The farmer and neighbors immediately jumped to UFO as it has become the default explanation for mysterious and oversized metal objects.
Fri, Mar 16 2012 at 3:23 PM
Related Topics:
HOW'D IT GET THERE THEN?: A deep hole in an Austrian field was discovered by a farmer looking his cat. A UFO was believed to be burried 25 feet beneath the ground there. (Photo: Life's Little Mysteries)
According to news reports, an Austrian farmer discovered a mysterious, deep, perfectly round hole that apparently had appeared in his field overnight. And, of course, extraterrestrial activity was assumed.
Farmer Franz Knoglinger discovered the hole while looking for a lost pet. In an interview with the Austrian Times newspaper, Knoglinger said: "I was looking for our family cat, Murlimann, when I noticed the hole. I didn't know how deep it was, so I dropped the stone down there and heard a metallic clunk. From the time it took for the stone to reach the bottom, I realized it was very deep."
Intrigued, Knoglinger used a rope to lower a magnet into the hole, and he concluded that whatever was at the bottom was metallic. This only deepened the puzzle, and soon the mystery drew local, national and, finally, international attention. Curiosity-seekers, geologists and UFO buffs flocked to the farm to see the hole for themselves. A buried UFO became a favorite explanation.
A few clues shed some light on the mystery. If the hole was indeed perfectly round, then the obvious source was a drill. In fact, the hole's perfect roundness would make it less mysterious, if anything, because drills leave round holes. A perfectly square, rectangular, or even oval shape would be more extraordinary.
Perhaps a more interesting question was why, of all the possible explanations — an abandoned well, a long-forgotten underground storage tank — the idea of an underground extraterrestrial spacecraft was the one Knoglinger and others focused on. [7 Things that Create Convincing UFO Sightings]
Part of the answer is that an extraterrestrial craft has become a default explanation in recent years for any large unknown (and presumably round and/or metallic) object. For example, a large round object was recorded on sonar on the ocean floor by a Swedish archaeology team last year. The image has not been confirmed as real (and many experts suspect it's actually a false reading), but by far the most popular explanation is that the round object is a spacecraft. Human imagination almost always creates far more exotic and interesting possibilities than reality can provide, and anything just out of reach, be it deep underwater or underground, can conjure visions of alien spaceships.
The case in Austria stumped many until a local historian decided to do a bit of digging — not in the dusty field but in the local land-use archives. It turns out the hole had not appeared overnight as Knoglinger assumed, but had been there for decades. In fact, a half-century ago an oil company had drilled there looking for oil. A large metal drill bit became stuck and broke before workers could find anything, so they left the drill bit at the bottom of the hole and never bothered to fill it in. That's what attracted the magnet dropped down to the bottom: not a spaceship but a large metal bit stuck in rock.
Over the years the area became farmland and people stopped noticing the hole, either because it had been covered by grass or a piece of wood or simply because, with the advent of modern farming machinery, there were fewer people working in the field.
As for the missing cat, it was eventually found hiding in a cupboard.
Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries. His Web site is www.BenjaminRadford.com.
Related on Life's Little Mysteries:
Copyright 2012 Lifes Little Mysteries, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved.
You might also like:
Sign in with one of these accounts to add your comment.
EDITORS' PICKS
Advertisement
TODAY'S MOST POPULAR ON
NEWSLETTER
Advertisement
while i don't buy the ufo theory, how does a hole such as that stay as-is for decades. no crumbled or eroded edges from rain? not even a little fill covering the drill bit? so machines kept real people from noticing it. the act of tilling year after year for "decades" would definitely have done some of this. i don't buy the explanation.
So technically it's a UGO, Unidentified Grounded Object
No,we are not sure......I partially agree with Lesa because it may be broken pipe or drill or something..If it would be an UFO then many International space organisations would prove the existence of ETs in the universe...no such news has been flashed. So this may be or may not be an UFO
Why do so many people make comments without reading the entire article??
With all the hypr on reality TV these days about UFO's and ghosts it seems people are starting to jump to conclusions about normal every day things being from out of this world. Here is a beautiful image that looks like a UFO light, but it is just beautiful morning light over a field in London http://www.photobotos.com/ufo-deer-in-a-field-of-blue/
It's clearly a well. The thing at the bottom is either a broken drill bit or an old well pump. Mine looks very similar.
My Wife made a joke once...
Where did the farmer plant his gun?
...
...
In the garden!
all those people, all jumping to conclusions, and nobody thought to put a camera down there? *faceplam*
Probably a sceptic tank
Probably a Drill Bit that broke off in a rock
I'm beginning to understand Murlimann's decision to hide in a cupboard.
As an ethnologist, I can only confirm people should tell less tales and go more to archives. There is a lot to discover in old papers.
Probably a septic tank.
Why don't you read the whole article before commenting? They explain what is really is in the article.
Murlimann is a great name for a cat!
Will the cat fit down the hole? Try it!
well its the mans property. If it was mine i would dig it up and check it out. The author of this story obviously has an agenda becasuse every couple of sentences (he or she) mocks the man for what he believes and mocks ufos aliens in general. Also thank you for telling me what I should think and basing your own unresearched conclusions. Better articles on yahoo for gods sake.
Really? Of course the author is going to mock the farmer, and deservedly so. When you hear hoof beats behind you, think horse, not zebra. To jump to the absurd conclusion that aliens are responsible for the hole is ridiculous. There is no agenda needed to point out credulity.
Definitely a UFO .."Unidentified Flying Ole"
hahahaha love the ending sentences
Funny. First thing I'd have thought of would be an abandoned and unfinished well. Dangerous to leave open, but hardly alien.
so what is the point of this story if nothing even happened? haha this is like one of those anti-jokes.
how does no farm machinery ever have a tire not get stuck in the hole if the land has been farmed for so many years?
The tile sounds like something from the SimCity news ticker lol!
Well, folks . . . Farmer Fudd don't have the brains to put a BELL around the cat's neck???
Gary in Arizona
Pages