Astronaut Details Strange Knocking On His Space Capsule

A Chinese astronaut has shared a totally creepy story about his first ever flight into space.

Yang Liwei was China's first-ever astronaut when he was sent into space in 2003. While on his historic 21-hour flight, Yang Liwei recalled hearing noises that sounded like a "hammer hitting an iron bucket" that understandably made him feel quite uneasy.

The 51-year-old explained that the strange noises sounded like someone, or something, knocking on the body of the spacecraft.

"A non-causal situation I have met in space is a knock that appeared from time to time," he said. "It neither came from outside nor inside the spaceship, but sounded like someone is knocking the body of the spaceship just as knocking an iron bucket with a wooden hammer," Yang Liwei said.

After hearing the loud banging, Liwei went to the spaceship's porthole to investigate the odd sound. Strangely, he did not identify anything or anyone that was causing the noise.

Upon returning from the space mission, Liwei attempted to recreate the sound he heard to the space program's officials. Experts haven't been able to identify the causation of the banging noise.

"If it is knocking, there could be something physical 'hitting' the spacecraft carrying the astronaut," Professor Goh Cher Hiang from the National University of Singapore said.

Professor Goh's colleague Wee-Seng Soh offered a different explanation. "A result of expansion or contraction of the spaceship, especially since the temperature of the spaceship's exterior could change considerably within the orbit," he said, according to BBC.

Yang is now a major general in China's air force, and said that he has not heard since returning to earth. However, other Chinese astronauts have reportedly experienced the same bizarre phenomenon.

"Before entering space, I have told them that the sound is a normal phenomenon, so there is no need to worry," Liwei said.

While Liwei may believe that the sound is a "normal phenomenon, there are others that are convinced that aliens were trying to enter his ship.

For all of those conspiracy theorists out there, other inexplicable stories that have surfaced online recently include: an alleged Russian Yeti sighting his the internet, an astronaut yelling "Earth must be warning" before attempting suicide, a UFO expert spewing black liquid only moments before his death, a video of bikers getting stopped on back road of Area 51, and a group in people in Michigan convinced that they saw Bigfoot.

Do you think this Chinese astronaut could have had an encounter with an extraterrestrial species?

[H/T New York Post, BBC]