Reports of UFO sightings regularly appear in the media around the world, often in the form of actual unidentified flying objects. But UFO sightings are nothing new. People throughout history have reported seeing strange objects in the sky, but more specific reports of flying saucers and aliens date back to the 1940s and 1950s.

One of the strangest reports of a UFO-related incident occurred in 1957. According to the 2001 book “Stranger at the Pentagon” by Dr. Frank E. Stranges, on March 16, 1957, a person calling himself “Valiant Thor” came forward claiming to be a visitor from the planet Venus. According to Dr. Stranges’ book, Valiant Thor had several meetings with high-ranking U.S. officials, including President Dwight Eisenhower. In “Stranger at the Pentagon,” Stranges reveals the reason Valiant Thor turned to the U.S. President.

This incident is just one example of a UFO sighting investigated by Dr. Stranges, a UFO expert and conspiracy theorist who founded the National Investigations Committee on UFOs in 1964. Here are some of the strange details from the very strange story of Valiant Thor, the man who claimed to be from Venus.

In the opening pages of “Stranger at the Pentagon,” Dr. Stranges shares an account from Harley Andrew Byrd, a man who claimed to have worked in a “high security position” at the Pentagon, involved in Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force’s program to investigate UFOs.

According to Dr. Stranges, one night in “mid-March,” Byrd’s department received a police report about an “alien visitor” picked up in Virginia. Dr. Stranges doesn’t give a firsthand account of what this moment might have been like, but the alien was reportedly brought directly to the Pentagon without incident. The alien went by the name “Valiant Thor” and was described as a “space envoy.”