Remains

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Story 1: The Lost Girls of Panama.

On the morning of the 1st of April 2014,

two young women decided to hike up to a popular tourist spot on the famous Pionista Trail.

They were never seen alive again.

Were their deaths the result of a tragic accident?

Or is there more to this mystery than meets the eye?

What happened to the Lost Girls of Panama?

It is said that every year in the month of April, in those first few weeks when the rains begin to fall over the rolling hills of the Green Mountain Highlands, that if you listen very closely, you will hear the echoed cries of Las Chicas Holandesas.

It is nothing more than a local superstition, but for the people of a small town, nestled in a valley on the southern flank of the continental divide, those cries are both clear and ominous.

The name of this small town is Boquete, and it belongs to a region of Panama which has often been described as Little Switzerland.

Its stunning pine forests, crystal clear lakes and steep pastures are highly reminiscent of those Swiss landscapes, presenting an idyllic beauty which seems to reinforce Panama's very distinction of being Central America's safest nation.

For how could anything bad happen in amongst all that splendor?

At least that is the impression two young women had when they decided to visit this part of the world.

Lizana Fraun and Chris Kramage had saved up for months to take the holiday of a lifetime, a six-week long tour of the tropical paradise that is the isthmus of Panama.

Their stay was to be more than a simple vacation, as they planned to learn fluent Spanish and partake in volunteer work whilst they were there.

As they boarded their flight on the 15th of March 2014, they no doubt did so with a feeling of excitement and anticipation, oblivious to the tragedy that awaited them.

Two weeks after landing at Tokuman International Airport, they would hike up into the heavenly cloud forests of the Green Mountain Highlands and never return.

It would be months before any trace of them was found, and those traces would leave behind a truly haunting mystery, which divides opinion to this day.

Found in amongst their recovered belongings was a camera, which would provide a tiny window into their final days and leave us wondering, was it just a tragic accident, or did something far more sinister occur?

It is not a question we can answer, but one we can at least elaborate upon.

So let us go back to where it all started, with two young ladies who would later become known as Las Chicas Hollandesas, the Dutch girls, Lizana and Chris.

Lizana Fraun was born on the 24th of September 1991.

Standing at 6 feet tall, she was described as athletic and adventurous.

She was a keen member of her college volleyball team.

and had also dabbled in more extreme endeavours such as mountaineering and skydiving.

Lizana was also highly intelligent, having graduated from Saxion University with a degree in applied psychology.

During her studies, she had developed a passion for amateur photography and had purchased a camera so that she could further indulge in her newfound hobby.

As she had spent her whole life in Amishfoort, a municipality in Utrecht province of the Netherlands, she longed to travel the world, and it was through this desire that she befriended a young lady named Chris Kramers.

Chris was born on the 9th of August 1992 and where Lizana was a bit of an introvert, Chris was the exact opposite.

Her outgoing nature was reflected in her love of the arts.

She was an amateur actress and was on the verge of graduating in art history at the University of Utrecht.

Friends and relatives spoke highly of her open friendly nature and her great sense of humour.

She was the kind of person that would do anything for anyone if they were in need.

Chris met Lizana Lizana whilst working part-time at a cafe in Amishfoort and the pair bonded quickly due to their mutual interest in travelling.

As friends, they soon became inseparable and they planned to take a trip to Central America as soon as they had saved up enough money.

But as they were penniless students, they had to cut their respective living costs and so moved into an apartment together to help raise those funds.

Within six months, they had booked their flight to Panama and kissed their families goodbye with an unspoken promise to return.

Of course, they couldn't have known that they would break that promise, just as completely as they would break the hearts of those they loved.

They spent the first two weeks of their holiday sightseeing and taking part in leisure activities before moving on to the real purpose of their trip.

As mentioned previously, They wanted to learn fluent Spanish and had applied for jobs in order to accomplish this quickly.

It just so happened that a school in the small town of Boquete in West Panama had been looking for volunteer social workers to help out with the children's studies.

This had all been arranged when they first booked the holiday and they were under the impression that they were due to start their jobs at the school on the 31st of March 2014.

However, when they arrived on this date, they were told rather bluntly that they were seven days early.

Now at a loose end and with a whole week to kill, they decided to explore the Green Mountain Highlands and Volcan Baru National Park, which were just a stone's throw away from Baquete.

They had it in mind to hike up to the Continental Divide, a point which separates the watersheds that flow into the Pacific Ocean to the south and Caribbean Sea to the north.

At 1,850 meters above sea level, the Mirador or Lookout sits right on the cusp of the continental divide and offers stunning 360 degree panoramas which stretch all the way to the horizon.

The main route leading up to the mirador is known as the Pionista Trail, which is highly popular with tourists, not only for its population of tropical birds and its breathtaking vistas, but also because the trail cuts through the region's famous cloud forests.

These are dense woodlands, most of which are quite literally situated inside the cloud layer due to their altitude, which gives them an almost ethereal appearance.

It is no wonder that this turned out to be Chris and Lizana's first port of call.

Unfortunately for them, it would also be their last.

On the morning of the 1st of April, they were seen having brunch at around 10am with two other men, also Dutch nationals whom they had befriended shortly after arriving in Baquete.

This was the last time anyone decisively recalled seeing them.

A few people told police that they thought they had seen them on the Pianista Trail later that day, but these reports were unconfirmed.

In any case, they made a final post on Facebook stating their intention to walk around Bakete, and then set off for the Mirador as soon as they had finished their meal.

Along the way, they were accompanied by a dog named Blue, a household pet of the family they were lodging with.

Timestamps on recovered photos, when matched by location, suggested that they made excellent time and that they had arrived at the Continental Divide by 1pm that afternoon.

The pictures also indicated that the weather was bright and sunny, and views from the mirror door were clear and far-reaching.

What was obvious was that the two women had dressed and packed relatively light, definitely not intending to take an extended hike.

The first signs that something was up emerged later that evening when Blue returned home by himself.

Chris and Lizana were nowhere to be seen.

The next day, they failed to show up for a pre-booked appointment with a local tour guide, which raised further alarm within the community.

Meanwhile back in the Netherlands, the girls' families had stopped receiving text messages, which had been a daily occurrence up until that point.

On the 3rd of April, residents from the town began a ground search for the two young women, whilst local authorities made aerial sweeps.

The participation of local authorities is actually a point of contention amongst investigators.

Whilst official search and rescue teams are adamant that their involvement began on the 3rd, many stakeholders, including townsfolk, flatly reject this claim and instead state that they did not get involved until many days later on the 6th.

Coincidentally, this is also the date on which police detectives, dog teams and the girls' families arrived from the Netherlands to assist in the search.

Despite the concerted effort by hundreds of people, as well as the offer of a $30,000 reward by family members, nobody found a single trace of the two young women.

After 10 days, the official search came to an end, but many townspeople still took it upon themselves to continue looking.

It was all to no avail.

Chris and Lizana had seemingly vanished into thin air.

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10 weeks passed by, and long after all of the searches had ceased, a member of the indigenous Ngobi tribe walked into Boquete carrying Lizana's blue backpack and some of the girls' other belongings.

She handed it in to the local police department, saying that she had found it on the bank of a river near her village of Altoromero.

It was close to a rice paddy where she had been working, and she indicated that it had not been there the day before.

This suggested it had washed up on the riverbank sometime during the previous evening.

When authorities checked the contents of the backpack, they found two pairs of sunglasses, a water bottle, $83 in cash, Lizana's passport, her camera, two pairs of bras and both women's mobile phones.

Everything was dry, and the camera and phones were still in working order, somewhat contradicting the possibility that the backpack had been washed downstream.

Authorities immediately began an extensive search of the area and located Chris's jean shorts about a mile upstream from where the backpack was discovered.

Some people say that they were found zipped and neatly folded on top of a rock, whilst others contend that they were found floating in the river itself.

One of Chris's empty boots was also located in the same area.

If the discovery of clothing and apparel had been a reason to panic, nothing would prepare the families for what came next.

Over the next two months, up to 33 bone fragments were found scattered over over a small area, including a piece of Lizana's pelvis as well as one of her boots with her foot bones still inside.

Fragments of Chris's bones were also found relatively close by, along with those of three other unidentified individuals.

This came as something of a shock to those close to the case, and suspicions of foul play began to weigh heavily on everyone's minds.

In the meantime, police had been checking the contents of both the phones and the camera.

It was discovered that between the dates of the 1st and 3rd of April, the girls had made a total of 7 failed attempts to call emergency services, the first call being placed only a few hours after they had reached the mirror door on the day of their hike at 16.39 in the afternoon.

After the 3rd of April, the phones were only ever powered on to carry out signal checks.

No further attempts to call emergency services were made.

It is believed that Lizana's phone ran out of battery on the 5th, 5th, as it was not turned on again after this date.

On the 6th, Chris's phone was powered on, but the access pin was entered incorrectly for the first time.

In fact, a total of 77 attempts to access the phone were made between the 7th and 10th of April, but all were unsuccessful.

This phone was switched on again on the 11th for a signal check and was left active for just over an hour.

before being switched off for the final time.

The phones were not accessed again after this date.

The most chilling aspect of the entire case however would be the hundred or so photographs that were found on Lisana's camera.

The first 11 images were ordinary enough.

Taken on the 1st of April they show the girls walking along the trail, taking selfies and generally enjoying the hike.

But as the afternoon wore on, the last few of these images begin to exhibit a different mood.

Pictures taken from behind Chris show her looking back at Lizana with an uncertain expression.

The camera was not used again from the 2nd to the 7th of April, but in the early hours of the 8th, between 1am and 4am in the morning, more than 90 photos were taken in complete darkness.

Neither of the women are featured in these images, apart from a close-up of Chris's strawberry blonde hair with what looks like dried blood on her skin.

What they do show are snapshots of the dark jungle interior, most of which are aimed at nothing in particular, although a few of them do seem to have a purpose in mind.

Some show twigs and reflective materials laid out in deliberate patterns, others with plastic bags hooked onto branches.

One is even believed to have been taken from the top of a ravine, looking down upon a body lying at the bottom, but it is far too dark to be conclusive, even after enhancement.

All in all, the images add a somewhat bizarre element to the case, but unfortunately, they present far more questions than they do answers.

So what happened to these two young women during the days after they went missing?

The most prominent theory is that they took a wrong turn whilst on the continental divide, and instead of heading back down towards Bokete on the south side, they moved into the much deeper wilderness to the north.

Once they realised they had become lost, they tried calling emergency services but were unsuccessful.

They probably continued moving downhill in this direction, hoping they would find their way out or stumble upon a settlement.

But unknown to Chris and Lizana, the only thing that awaited them was even more notoriously difficult terrain, with a lot of almost impassable ravines.

It is believed that on the 5th of April, Chris suffered a terrible, perhaps even fatal, accident.

The fact that the person who tried to access her phone on the 6th did not know the pin, suggests that this was probably Lizana.

Chris must have been either unconscious or dead at this point, otherwise she would have been able to just tell her friend what the pin number was.

There is a possibility that Lizana stayed with the dead or dying Chris for some time, not wanting to leave her alone.

When she at last decided to move on, she placed markers indicating where Chris's body was located in case she made it out alive and had to guide rescuers back in to retrieve her body.

and this was believed to be the purpose of the nighttime photos.

Either that or she was using the flash as a light source as she walked through the forest in darkness, which would have been highly dangerous.

In any case, Lizana probably survived a few more days.

This was supported by the fact that Chris's phone was powered on again on the 11th.

However, she must have eventually succumbed to starvation or dehydration soon afterwards, or suffered an accident of her own.

The bones found inside her boot indicated that she had broken her foot at some point, suggesting she had suffered a trip or fall.

The bodies of the two women were then at the mercy of scavengers, and their remains were more than likely washed downstream towards El Toromero.

Despite being a relatively plausible explanation, there are a number of issues with this theory.

First of all, how could the girls have taken a wrong turn whilst on the continental divide?

The north-facing slopes are much steeper than the south, and it would have been obvious that this was not the way they had come.

Secondly, from the Mirador, the Pianista Trail is easily recognisable, and you can even see the town of Boquete lying in the valley below from this altitude.

So why did they travel in the opposite direction?

Could they have been forced into going this way?

Foul play has never been ruled out of this case, and although evidence regarding their phone usage seems to contradict the involvement of a third party, there are other possibilities.

A kidnapper would never have allowed the two women to keep hold of their phones, so it is unlikely that they were ever abducted.

But what if they had been followed?

According to an article published in 2016 by the Daily Beast, there is apparently a tour guide in Boquete who many locals suspect as having something to do with the deaths of the two women.

He was not named, but it is known that he had met with Lizana and Chris less than 24 hours before they disappeared.

He had offered them a full tour package, including a guided hike up to the Continental Divide, plus an overnight stay at his ranch on the other side of the mountains.

For reasons known only to themselves, the girls declined his offer and decided to walk the Pianista Trail alone.

This particular tour guide has a reputation in the town for being overly friendly towards female tourists.

In fact, even some hikers who have visited the region mentioned on Reddit when discussing this case, that this same tour guide had behaved inappropriately towards their own girlfriends, petting them and touching them.

Could this man have taken Chris and Lizana's rejection as a slight?

Could he have followed them up the Pionista Trail and have scared them into seeking another route down?

After all, he was the one who first discovered their remains, and what's more, they were located less than half a mile from his ranch.

And suspicions regarding a third party do not end there.

When forensics examined Lizana's backpack, they discovered more than 30 sets of fingerprints on it.

Whilst it is possible that the lady who found the bag may have passed it around her village before handing it in to police, this was never confirmed.

Another unusual aspect is the lack of grease on the backpack and items of recovered clothing.

As a body decomposes, grease evacuates the soft tissues and soaks into whatever the cadaver is wearing.

and one would expect this to have been found on the girl's apparel if they had died as the result of an accident.

There were also questions raised over the condition of some of the remains.

Chris's bones looked as if they had been bleached, which was not in accordance with the rate of decay and seemed unlikely given the covering of the forest canopy.

However, this depends entirely on where her bones were located.

If they had been washed up on the bank of a river for instance, which received more sunlight, it is not incomprehensible for them to have been bleached in the intense rays over a period of months.

On the other hand, there were no markings on the bones whatsoever.

If the bodies had fallen victim to scavengers after death, teeth marks and other minuscule abrasions would have been detected under a microscope, but there were none.

The lack of any big bones is also troubling for many investigators.

Why didn't they find any significant remains?

As one of the most prominent guides in Bakete was quoted as saying, There are no animals up there that would eat a skull, so where are the rest of Chris and Lizana's bodies?

Other pertinent questions regarding the deletion of a picture on the camera also point to the possibility of something more sinister.

Image 509, which dubiously sits in between the final daytime photo taken on the 1st and the first nighttime photo taken on the 8th, seemed to be missing, but it's unclear whether this was deleted by one of the girls or another party later on, perhaps to hide something.

It should come as no surprise that many people in the town suspect a cover-up.

As tourism accounts for almost $4 billion a year, 18% of Panama's GDP, residents insist that the accident scenario has been overly pushed by local authorities rather than one involving foul play, in order to protect that income.

Especially since the deaths of Chris and Lizana, it is now believed that there may be a serial killer at large in the area.

There have been up to 25 deaths and disappearances in the region which remain unsolved, two-thirds of which have occurred over the last three years.

This makes one wonder who the other three individuals were whose remains were found along with the girls, but authorities simply explain this by saying that the terrain on that side of the divide is very dangerous.

Even the indigenous peoples are wary of traversing that part of the region, and many have died crossing the monkey bridges which crisscross the ravines.

There are many more theories out there, of course.

Some believe the girls were eaten by pygmy pygmy cannibals, or killed for their organs by traffickers.

Some even favour a supernatural explanation and have noted similarities with missing 411 cases.

But as it stands, the deaths of Chris Kramage and Lizana Frown were more than likely a tragic accident.

Although it seems that there are far too many questions hanging over this case to conclude this with any certainty.

Too many bizarre elements such as why Lizana took those photos at night and not in the daytime.

What was she trying to tell us?

Was she simply trying to find her way in the dark or possibly even scare off wild animals?

Was she so sleep deprived and dehydrated by this time that she was possibly hallucinating?

And was it even her who took the photographs at all?

Unfortunately, we'll probably never know why Chris and Lizana decided to pass over to the other side of the divide.

Maybe they took a wrong turn.

Maybe they were forced.

Or maybe they just felt overconfident and wanted to explore further.

Simply put, what we have here is a case of two young women getting lost in the jungle, desperately needing assistance and never receiving any.

One can only imagine the fear and inner turmoil they must have felt, wandering through the untamed lands of a foreign country in the dead of night, starving and dehydrated, and panicking at every sound.

And that is terrifying enough.

The world has lost two more bright and beautiful human beings in Chris Kramerge and Lizana Fraun.

We can only wonder what they might be doing now, what they might have achieved in their lives, if only they had turned back towards Boquete on that fateful afternoon.

Our hearts go out to their families.

May they forever rest in peace.

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Story 2.

The strange death of Jonathan Lovett

When seeking to refute reported UFO encounters, skeptics will often highlight a lack lack of physical evidence as a means of undermining the witness testimony.

But how do you debunk such a tale when it resulted in the death and mutilation of one of the people who were involved?

This week, we examine the strange death of Jonathan Lovett.

The White Sands Missile Range is the largest military testing site in the United States.

Situated in southern New Mexico, it was established in the early 1940s and has steadily expanded over time to cover an area of over 3,200 square miles, sprawling across the borders of five separate counties.

During the Second World War, it played an integral role in the development of America's early nuclear weapons program, and in July 1945, it was the site of the world's first live nuclear bomb test.

In addition to its association with atomic weapons testing, the site was also the main location for America's post-war rocket technology experiments.

As the fighting in mainland Europe came to its bloody and inevitable conclusion, captured German scientists and V-2 missile components were shipped directly back to White Sands as part of the secretive Project Paperclip.

It has long been speculated on by conspiracy theorists what kinds of German wonder weapons and technologies were quietly relocated to the US and how they were were picked apart and improved upon in order to develop the everyday technology we now take for granted.

These suppositions about the work which has taken place at the White Sands facility are further strengthened by the unusually high number of UFO sightings in the region.

New Mexico boasts one of the highest concentrations of reported UFO cases in the United States, including the notorious Roswell incident of 1947, as well as the Socorro encounter in 1964.

United States Air Force bases in the area have also been no stranger to these sightings, with a number of UFO incidents having been reported in and around the Kirkland Air Force Base in Albuquerque and White Sands itself.

During the 1950s, observers of the missile tests conducted at the facility would regularly report strange objects in the skies nearby, apparently tracking the progress of the weapons as they had been launched.

This in turn led to further speculation that the technology being applied to the testing was not solely the result of including German scientists in the missile programme, but that they had also incorporated science and technology that had been recovered from the Roswell crash site.

The high levels of security and the apparent clandestine involvement of the CIA has only served to further fuel these conspiracy theories.

And one case in particular, which was leaked to the public in the early 1960s, has done nothing to assuage the somewhat supernatural undertones associated with the region.

One chilly morning in March of 1956, a search party consisting of two airmen was dispatched to the field situated south of the main White Sands testing area in order to locate any debris that might have fallen from a missile test carried out the previous evening.

The men in question were Major William Cunningham and Sergeant Jonathan Lovett, both of whom were attached to the Air Force Missile Command, stationed at Holloman Air Force Base in nearby Alamogordo.

The two men arrived at the location at approximately 0300 hours.

Dismounting from their jeep and with flashlights in hand, they trudged wearily into their designated search zone.

It was a task they had both performed many times before, resulting in varying degrees of success and tedium.

After a couple of minutes of pacing alongside each other, the two men then separated, with Cunningham continuing to walk in a straight line, whilst Lovett disappeared over the crest of a nearby sand dune.

The sergeant had not indicated to Cunningham where he was going, and his superior assumed it was most likely a call of nature.

But when Lovett had still not returned several minutes later, Cunningham stopped what he was doing and started to retrace his steps back to where the two men had separated.

It was at this point that he heard something that would chill him to the bone.

as the high-pitched scream of his subordinate suddenly pierced the night air.

It was a cry of pure anguish, which reverberated out into the dark and empty fields which surrounded him.

Fully aware that Lovett must have been in trouble, and assuming it was the result of a snake bite or some other form of animal attack, Cunningham sprinted over the top of the sand dune, only to be met with an unbelievable sight.

About 30 feet from where he stood, reflected in the dim beam of the flashlight gripped tightly in his right hand, Cunningham could see a mysterious metallic disc hovering approximately 15 to 20 feet above the ground.

It was completely silent and resembled no vehicle or piece of military hardware that the major had ever seen before.

Something was moving around at the base of the object, writhing and flexing back and forth like a snake, and when Cunningham shone his torch beam onto it, he could see it was a thick metallic cable of some kind.

Another horrific scream snapped the dazed and confused officer back into reality, and when he then directed his torch towards the end of the cable, he was horrified to see that it was wrapped around one of Lovett's legs.

The Air Force Sergeant was fighting with all of his strength, kicking out and clawing with his hands in a desperate attempt to free himself from the thick metal flex that had been wound around his leg.

But his efforts seemed futile, and as Cunningham looked on in growing horror, the cable retracted at some speed, dragging the hapless airman along the rocky ground and then up towards the base of the disc.

Frozen to the spot in terror, Cunningham watched helplessly as Lovett was inexorably pulled up into the base of the hovering craft.

The sergeant's eyes met his for a second, wild and desperately pleading for help, before he disappeared from sight.

There was a dull click and then the disc, silent, shot up into the darkened skies above.

Struggling to make sense of what he had just witnessed, Cunningham tripped and stumbled his way back to the waiting Jeep and yelled into the radio that Lovett had been taken and that an aircraft was leaving the scene.

Within minutes, every available Air Force unit and resource was swarming towards the area, but all they found was the Major, crumpled to the floor, rocking back and forth in shock.

Of Jonathan Lovett, there was no sign.

The following days saw airmen combing every inch of ground in the vicinity of the apparent abduction site, but it was all to no avail.

It was confirmed by staff on duty at the site control tower on the evening of the incident that an unidentified radar contact had shown up on their instruments, but had been moving too quickly for any possible action to be taken against it.

Cunningham was interrogated at length for three days, until news came in that a search party operating approximately 10 miles downrange from where Lovett had disappeared, had discovered the sergeant's body.

Or at least, what was left of it.

Lovett's remains had been horrifically mutilated, in a manner that nobody involved in the subsequent investigation had ever encountered before.

A neat and tidy incision had been made from the tip of Lovett's jaw, right around to the back of his larynx, with the airman's tongue and eyes, as well as a significant portion of jawbone, now missing.

The penis had been removed, and the anus had been completely cored out, seemingly with exemplary surgical skill.

The coroner's report also noted that there was no trace of vascular collapse or organ failure anywhere in the body, which was problematic, as there was not a single trace of blood left anywhere inside the cadaver.

Other oddities were to be found in the reports submitted by the officers charged with investigating the matter.

At the location where the remains had been found, A number of predatory birds were also found dead, having apparently expired when they had attempted to feast on the corpse.

The body was also in surprisingly good condition, despite having been found out in the open, in one of the hottest and harshest environments in the United States.

With Lovett's body now recovered, Cunningham was arrested and charged with his murder.

The case was presented to a tribunal, with military prosecutors alleging that the Major had murdered his subordinate, faked the abduction story and mutilated the body in an effort to make the lies more convincing.

Unsurprisingly, it took little time for the court to reject this argument.

Cunningham was released without charge and allowed to leave the Air Force a short time later.

To this day, Jonathan Lovett's death remains completely unexplained.

As we have learned from previous stories, The United States government has maintained a firm and long-standing policy of not publicly commenting on alleged encounters between members of their armed forces and UFOs.

From the mysterious Foo Fighters experienced by panic bomber crews over mainland Europe during World War II, to the terrifying sightings at Rendlesham Forest in the 1980s, time and again the Pentagon refuses to be drawn into speculation about the existence of extraterrestrial life.

In the case of the New Mexico sightings, The government may have had even more reason to remain stubbornly silent on the story, wanting to preserve the secrecy and security around what was taking place at some of their most valuable military facilities.

But given the lack of any other feasible or realistic explanation for what happened to Sergeant Lovett, and the similarity of this case to other alleged close encounters, their refusal to officially comment does little more than fuel further speculation about the case.

Incidents involving animal and livestock mutilations have been reported from around the world for decades, with the phenomenon seemingly having reached its peak during the mid-1970s.

As transport and communication links have steadily improved over time, the cases have dropped sharply, but still take place with an intriguing and frustrating regularity.

In the 1990s, several farms in Vancouver reported that their livestock had been attacked and disfigured by unknown assailants.

Witnesses reported hearing an odd humming noise in the sky around the time of the incidents.

and one farmer even alleged to have seen a small humanoid figure fleeing the scene, holding a strange device in its hand.

During the late 1970s, the US state of Idaho experienced a rash of unexplained cattle mutilations.

Similar cases have been reported in Wales and the English county of Shropshire as recently as 2012.

Thankfully, alleged attacks on human victims are few and far between, but are, of course, much more disturbing in their nature.

In 1979, two deer hunters in the Bliss and Jerome area of the state of Idaho stumbled across the naked body of a mutilated male victim.

His lips and sexual organs were missing, and his personal effects were eventually discovered several miles away, discarded in the middle of a field.

The official police investigation into the matter concluded that the victim was a vagrant, who had died from drunken misadventure and whose remains had been interfered with by animals after his death.

But this explanation proved unsatisfactory for many people, including the two hunters who discovered his remains.

For unknown reasons, Brazil has always been a focal point for reported UFO incidents.

In 1981, the Panorama region of the country was plagued by sightings of strange objects in the skies, named locally as Shupas.

One of these unidentified craft was encountered by two young boys named Ebel Boro and Hevermar Faheira.

It proceeded to direct a beam of superheated light at the two boys, which Fehera managed to break break free from and escape, but which Boro became trapped in.

His body was recovered after his friend returned to the scene with the authorities, and it was found to be completely drained of blood, again with no signs of organ failure.

Seven years later, in 1988, the remains of an unknown victim were found by a young boy at the Billings Reservoir, often incorrectly cited as Guarapiranga, in São Paulo.

This was covered in a previous bedtime stories episode entitled, The Body on the Reservoir.

As with the case of Lovett, the body had been horrifically mutilated, and yet local carrion and vermin had refused to feed off of the corpse.

A number of incisions had been made using advanced techniques and tools, which baffled investigators.

The anus, jawbone, eyes and tongue had all been removed, but yet more procedures had also been carried out.

The left ear and lips were also missing, and symmetrical holes of a two-inch inch diameter had been made either side of the victim's torso.

Internal organs, muscles, and other tissues had all been removed via these holes, to the extent that the victim's chest cavity had actually collapsed, as so much of the interior was now missing.

Unlike the American government, the Brazilian authorities were desperate for any assistance with their case, publishing all of their findings and photographs of the cadaver.

In the coroner's report, they highlighted that there were no marks or injuries anywhere on the body to suggest there had been a struggle or any kind of restraint.

The edges of the wounds were found to be quarterised, as if made by a hot metal of some kind, and the symmetry and care taken to remove the organs indicated a high level of surgical skill.

There were no apparent motives for these mutilations, or even benefits for anyone who might have carried them out.

In the White Sands case, Major Cunningham was a highly trained and respected officer attached to one of the country's most sensitive military projects.

What reason would there have been for him to throw his career away by making up a story about alien contact?

And if he was involved in Lovett's death, what could possibly have motivated him to carry out such an attack on his colleague?

And where did he acquire the skills to perform such surgical feats?

Why has he not re-offended since?

It is quite clear that Cunningham had no part in the death of his colleague, and if not him, then who else?

The White Sands Missile Range is a highly secure area, controlled by the most powerful military in the world.

Which individual, or rather group of individuals, would have the means to sneak into a highly restricted area and attack and kill a US airman, and then manage to evade capture without leaving a single shred of evidence of them having been there?

Whether Jonathan Lovett's attackers were extraterrestrial or indeed more human in their origins, the manner of his abduction and subsequent murder is truly shocking.

And yet all the evidence would suggest that he is only one victim in a much larger and sinister scheme, one that has been visited upon mankind for at least the last half century.

Someone or something has an unhealthy interest in the organic life of this planet.

They also have the technology and equipment to target and incapacitate test subjects whenever and wherever they choose, seeming to lack the basic compassion compassion or humanity to preserve the lives of their victims.

We share Jonathan Lovett's story in the hope that it will continue to provoke questions and debate about incidents and occurrences that our governments are well aware of, but seemingly do little to address.

Bedtime's glorious.