Take care with your research, Solokov. Though I guess you might land another job! It's fascinating how universal some of those experiences are: have seen the odd orb zipping by, mostly out in the desert very late at night. Damfino what they are! Never bothered me, though.
Did see what I guess you'd call a UFO, out in East Gippsland, more than fifty years ago. I was hermiting up near the headwaters of one of the little creeks that feeds into the Heart Morass. Black dark winter night, just on new moon. Freezing. I was up on a hill above a reed marsh, and was sitting by my fire thinking about sleeping, when something big, like really big, went by above me and crashed into the swamp below me, with enough of an impact to shake the ground, but less noise than I would have expected. My first thought was that it was a plane crashing, since the airbase near Sale wasn't too far off, nor was I far from a couple of the flight routes going into Melbourne, so I grabbed my first-aid kit and raced down the hill.
The reeds were pretty tall, way over my head, and it was really dark, so I couldn't see much. I thought whatever it was had hit in about the middle of the swamp, so started pushing my way in. Then between one step and the next the fear hit. Absolutely paralysing fear. Couldn't see, hear or smell anything to account for it, but I'd felt something like it before, when I was about to step on, or into, something dangerous in the dark. So my first thought, being in a swamp, was that there was a snake under my feet, since even in winter I had reason to know the odd copperhead or red-bellied black snake could be active, so I carefully pulled my foot back, circled around a bit and tried again. Twice. Same thing happened. At which point I decided that my body probably knew what it was better than I did, and whatever it was it wasn't a crashed plane, and I beat a hasty retreat back to my camp. Where I sat up and watched for the rest of the night.
Didn't see anything, never heard a sound. Went back down at first light and found a small-house-sized, perfectly round dry patch in the middle of the swamp, and reeds that looked crushed and burned. Water was slowly seeping back into the area, and it just felt - weird. I haven't the words. No idea what it was.
Blackfrost: yeah, ghost trains like that in Gippsland too. Seen a few, generally around the old Thompson River rail bridge, and around Denison and Walhalla. Including one that appeared to go across said bridge when I was standing in the river under it, and actually shook down debris from the ruined bridge onto me. I knew damned well that it couldn't have been fully material, since I was at the time helping out with restoring the old Walhalla and Thompson River steam train line, and I *knew* that bridge was too ruinous to bear weight.
* Edit: should have mentioned that I've also met those flocks of little air sparkle things, as have both my sons. They had an experience similar to yours, car that had trouble starting, general feel of terror, urge to get away. I suspect that may be how the thingies, whatever they are, protect themselves.
I've encountered them twice, both times very late at night, once over a grass field in Ireland, a rough grazing paddock among low hills, once in an East Gippsland fern forest. Both times I felt the fear, but I was on foot, and I don't care to run from things, so in one case I just kept walking until I was past, humming a tune so they knew exactly where I was, and trying to be as calm and unscary as I could. They didn't come any closer, and I was fine. With the ones in the forest I didn't want to move, because I had concealed myself so as to be able to watch a lyrebird at dawn and I doubted I would have such a chance again, so again I concentrated on being as calm and still as I could, and making a small calm musical noise so they knew where I was and that I wasn't sneaking up on them. After an hour or so they seemed to forget about me, or decided I was harmless, because they went back to drifting through the forest (mostly treeferns, Antarctic beech and sassafras just there). They spent most time around the trunks that had filmy-ferns, moss and small fungi growing on them, I've no idea why. Sometimes they dipped down into the deep leaf litter, then drifted up again. Strange and very beautiful.
