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Looking back in history, I have found that there are many happenings that we don’t seem to have anymore. If we do, we must be so used to them that they aren’t newsworthy. One of these strange happenings is something that I found out, really happens all the time and not just in the past. It is a fact that there is estimated to be around a thousand tons of matter falling down on our earth, from the sky, each and every day! Fortunately, most of these are small particles that are only picked up on radar.

Of course, going through old newspapers has become an addiction of mine, mainly because of the interesting and unusual stories I find. Telling you about happenings from more than a century ago, only adds to our collection of unnatural phenomenon. Now, if you are ready for a walk down the deep, dark path that is best known to those who dabble in the supernatural, we can have a lot of fun today! I’m ready for a peach cobbler and a coffee. I’ll bring you some, too.

I thought we could start in Savannah, which has the reputation for being the most haunted city in Georgia, mainly because it was in existence for so long. Battles have taken place there since the Indian days and it is built on top of a cemetery, that was believed to have had over 3000 graves and no one moved any of them, because they were enemy soldiers from the Revolutionary War.

Let’s talk about this story that took place in February, 1957. It happened on a small farm near Savannah after a hard rain. The farmer noticed seeds all over the ground. He picked up about thirty of them and put them in a jar. They were gray in color, had ridges, and were in the shape of an oat but much larger and were very hard. He also had planted several seeds in pots and after a few weeks, they started to sprout. After that, no one ever seen or heard from him again, nor did they find out what had happened to the rest of the seeds. Neighbors said that when they sprouted, they ate him!

Curious, I began looking in more old newspapers and sure enough, in one from 1888, I found that in this year, there was a fall of strange, bizarre seeds also in the city of Savannah. It was described as, “a shower of odd shaped pods that sprinkled down”. As with the other report, no one knew what these were, either.

However, looking into some more of the happening back in the past. These were more things that fell that were of a measurable size and were in large quantities, plus, they were really strange. Some of these projectiles were items like green globs, frogs, fish, golf balls and of course an alligator, which by the way, did fall out of the sky on May 11, 1911. However, while checking, I found that it had landed in somebody’s backyard but not in Georgia – but in Evansville, Indiana! No one knew how it got there and the poor animal was in no shape to tell anyone about his flight.

One of the yuckiest stories in Georgia, took place in Columbus. One day in 1876, two men were standing in their backyards talking, when flesh began raining down all around them. According to the “Columbus Enquirer”: “They looked overhead and spotted several circling buzzards at a height of about 100 feet. The men figured that these big scavengers were the source of the shower of meat, as they accidentally dropped their dinner.”

Then there were the falling rocks that occurred on September 26, 1889, in Mitchell County. These were clusters of about fifteen rocks, seemingly stuck together, each one a different color. The next time this happened was on May 5, 1895. Both times, they would disappear into smoke after a short time on the ground. Then, in the fall, there was also a heavy down pour of large, dried oak leaves from trees that do not grow in Georgia. It would be interesting to find out how these leaves fell on our pines.

Another unusual occurrence was in August, 1914, in a rural part of Coffee County. A farmer was looking up at the sky, when the heavens seemed to light up as though a cloud had passed over the sun, then passed on, but the sun was shining the whole time. In seconds, hundreds of acres of cotton plants instantly wilted.

Planes fly daily at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, but in October 1954, fifty thousand birds of fifty-three different species plopped down, dead, as they fell from the sky and onto the runway. No explanation was ever found.

Some strange things fell from the skies above Georgia on October 27, 1959. In Savannah, silver strands that looked like Spanish moss, drifted down onto the historic city, covering trees and rooftops. Specimens were gathered and examined by toxicologists at the State Crime Laboratory in Savannah, but no one had an explanation.

Not only this angel hair like material fall in Savannah but also in Atlanta and Rome. People found that when you touched it, it just disappeared but it left your hands sticky.

At the University of Georgia, chemists and entomologists secured strands and said that it was from the webs of ballooning spiders, which fly through the air at heights up to ten thousand feet and for distances of over a hundred miles. Military scientists disagreed and said it was silver halide, a chemical used to seed clouds to make it rain. A sheriff’s deputy in Bullock County, noticed that it stuck on to the trees and the ends pointed upwards. Then, in the morning sun, it would be gone.

Augusta, famous for its golf tournaments and the stone pillar that caused chaos there, reported that on September 3, 1963, golf balls rained down from the sky. Once counted, there were over one hundred of them. There were two possibilities put forth by experts. One was that a tornado picked up the balls from another golf course and then dropped them or else there were some heavy hitting golfers nearby!

In August, 1970, at an Atlantic Ocean beach that is down near the Georgia – Florida line, sunbathers were pelted with thousands of starfish. This was blamed on a waterspout that had sucked up the starfish and dropped them down on the beach. Good thought but, no one saw a waterspout that day.

Then, there was the strange, transparent globe which fell into someone’s back yard in Baker County and seemed to pulsate as it sat there, like it was alive and breathing. A policeman poked his finger into the globe and when he pulled it out, it left behind a hole. Now, the object began to spread out and fall apart. The policeman picked up some pieces of it and placed them in a jar for analysis. However, after a short time, they had dried up into dust. It wasn’t too much later, that the same thing happened to the globe. No one could explain any of it.

Up in the northeast Georgia Mountains, on May 19, 1959, a frozen chicken egg, which fell out of a clear blue sky, just missed hitting a man on the head. This was explained by saying that since it was frozen, it came down from an extremely high altitude, over 10,000 feet and probably fell from an airplane.

Our next bombardment took place on October 27, 1959. In Toccoa, a forty-pound iceberg landed in a flower garden leaving a hole as large as a car wheel. No planes were nearby and the water was pure. Thankfully, it wasn’t sewage.

Then on October 29, of that same year, a “skyberg” fell down in nearby Franklin County. This was a fifty pounder and was also pure. One year later, on October 3, 1960, a similar icefall hit nearby, in Martin. Three witnesses saw it land.

On most Saturday mornings, the upstairs bedroom of a home in Lawrenceville would have been occupied by a six-year-old little girl. Thankfully, on a windy night in January, 2003, she had been afraid of monsters and spent the night in her parent’s room. Even more fortunate was the family dog, Honey, who sleeps in a wicker basket at the foot of the little girl’s bed.

It seems that at ten o’clock on that particular morning, when Honey was up, a basketball size chunk of ice plummeted from the sky, ripped through the roof of the house and smashed right onto Honey’s bed! Upon impact, the intruder shattered into several three-to-four-pound pieces.

Another child, who was fourteen, was downstairs watching television and said that it sounded like a door was being slammed but twenty times as loud. He looked around, wondering if a car had hit the house. Their insurance agent told them that he did not need to come to the house to see the damage because he had seen it on television. The family received $3,000 for repairs. The FAA investigated to see if a passing plane was responsible, but its findings were never disclosed.

Icefalls are traditionally attributed to airplanes or giant hailstones but in recent year’s scientist have reported that “sky-bergs” continually enter the earth’s atmosphere and are presumably debris from comets.

Atlanta experienced not a fall, but a crawl, in the form of an infestation by snakes. Over a ten-day period, starting in April, 1972, a lady’s yard became overrun by at least 127 snakes, some of whom had crawled into her house. She refused to step out her door without a “snake whacking hoe” in her hand and each morning she wisely shook out her shoes before putting them on.

A wildlife officer was called and within twenty minutes he had corralled seventeen snakes, including king, garter, hog nosed and gopher snakes. He could not say why this happened but he did say that luckily, there were no poisonous ones.

Residents of the rural area of Plains, woke up on May 25, 1882, to find that millions of toads had invaded their neighborhood overnight. It was reported in the local newspaper that apparently tons of toads came from nowhere. It was written that no one would ever believe it and it was something you had to see.

Although the toad invasion was confined to only a few neighborhoods, going down the streets was a nightmare. One could not help but squash the poor creatures. They were everywhere. Some people started swinging brooms as they walked but the toads just kept coming. Sometimes, these small amphibians would find their way into houses. Some said that it was like a huge wave, when the animals were jumping into the local ponds.

The mysterious invasion lasted for four days. The smell became horrendous and the roads became a nasty mess, being covered with thousands of smashed toads. Some people brought out shovels to get them out of the way.

Then, all of a sudden overnight, the toads vanished as quickly as they had appeared. Residents were mystified but happy. Some thought the critters had crawled out of the earth and simply went back into the ground. Others said that they had dropped out of the sky. Some residents blamed it on the unusually wet weather that they had been having, thus giving the toads more water to breed in. This phenomenon has occurred on and off for millions of years and it could happen again. However, residents were surprised by the large numbers.

Well, we have had rocks, “sky-bergs”, alligators, snakes and toads. Now, it is time for some fish stories. Our first one takes place in 1853, along the Ocmulgee River, where there was reported a sky fall of catfish. It was said that these fish, each one was a foot or more, fell through different sections along the river during a hailstorm. Hundreds of fish bodies were picked up that morning. The fish fall was attested to by hundreds of residents.

Our Bainbridge had its own fish fall, too. Residents who woke up on a Tuesday morning in 1911, were greeted by the site of 12,000 fish scattered all over in a local lot not far from the Flint River. As the word spread, everyone began to gather to see for themselves, this smelly bounty. Residents were shocked at the site. So much so, that several arguments started as to where and how these fish got where they were. Most said that it was a mass migration, which came up from the Flint River. However, it didn’t take long for the men to come to their senses and begin to scoop up the fish and take them back down to the river from which everyone thought that they had come.

Our last one happened in September, 1971. This is when thousands of small fish fell over a wide area in eastern Georgia in Mc Intosh County and made quite a mess. Experts surmised that fish eggs had been pulled up into the atmosphere and had been suspended in clouds until they hatched. Residents did not agree saying that the sky fish were too big to have been newly hatched.

What do you think about all of these falls?