Giichi Shiota had previously seen a UFO and was not reluctant about telling others about it, but on March 24, 1975, Shiota had a close encounter of the third type. Shiota was to a nearby dump in Kawanoe, Japan, after dark for unknown reasons when the tragedy occurred. Shiota stated he observed something blazing from a distance of around one hundred yards while at the landfill, as he enthusiastically relayed the story. The object, which was about seven feet above the ground, disappeared without a trace.

Shiota claimed that when he first saw the hovering item, he had a severe headache. He, on the other hand, was unafraid of a headache and was desperate to observe the unusual item once again. Shiota became obsessed with the idea of catching this seemingly extraterrestrial being on video in order to establish that his unusual meeting was real and not a product of an overactive imagination or worse, as some no likely assumed. Shiota went to the place of his encounter night after night, armed with no fewer than three cameras, with a grim determination.

A week after the first sighting on March 31st, his efforts may have been rewarded. Shiota noticed a peculiar cloud in the sky above the waste that looked to be lighted by what he described as unusual seeming electrical activity. Then the excruciating headache he’d been having reappeared, along with the glowing object. When he glanced up, there was a Shiota bluish-white electrical disturbance hovering about 300 feet in front of him, according to him. The Alien Cosmonaut was roughly a hundred yards away this time and about seven feet above the earth.

Shiota stood there watching as the cosmonaut descended to one foot above the surface and began heading right for him. When it was around fifty yards distant, Shiota reported the six-foot-tall cosmonaut came to a halt and then moved thirty yards to the right in less than a second. Then it was gone, right in front of his eyes.

The entire meeting, according to Giichi, lasted little more than one minute. Shiota took several pictures that night, including the one above. It’s worth noting that two teenage kids in Kofu City, Japan, claimed to have had face-to-face contact with an unknown, suit-clad alien creature barely a month before Shiota’s terrifying incident. It remains to be seen whether there is any direct link between these two unique events, other than time and proximity. Giichi Shiota never saw this strange creature again, but the images show that whatever it was — extraterrestrial invasion, inter-dimensional entity, time traveler, or space ghost — it was genuine and not a fabrication of one man’s mind.