A photograph of what’s been identified by the United States’ Department of Defense (DoD) as “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” has made its rounds through the Intelligence Community.

While The Debrief did contact Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough through an email inquiry for more clarification regarding the leaked photo, she responded with, “To maintain operations security and to avoid disclosing information that may be useful to potential adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of reports, observations or examinations of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP.” I suppose that’s not surprising…

The image in question was taken off the East Coast of the United States back in 2018 by a backseat weapons systems operator with his cell phone while on board what is believed to be an F/A-18 fighter jet. The photo shows an “unidentified silver ‘cube-shaped’ object” that was just hovering without any motion over the ocean.

While the object does look similar to a GPS dropsonde, it is clearly missing the GPS receiver that hangs underneath the square cone-shaped parachute which pretty much debunks that theory. Even an expert from the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Earth Observing Laboratory, In-situ Sensing Facility (ISF) Manager Terry Hock, doesn’t think that the object is a dropsonde. “In regards to the photo, while the image of the object is not clear, it certainly does not look like a dropsonde,” he said, adding, “because there are no signs of a dropsonde below the object where the object could potentially be a parachute, and it does not have the right shape.” He went on to say that if it was a dropsonde, there would have been an aircraft above it that would have dropped it.

He added that it looks most similar to a mylar balloon. He told The Debrief, “There are scientific research groups that do launch balloons which they refer to as drifters,” so that could be a possibility. Another theory is that it could have been a research balloon or a military radar-reflector although those seem unlikely as the object was totally motionless.

The three government sources also agreed that it was not a balloon but they wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was compelling evidence. You can decide for yourself whether or not the photograph is compelling evidence of a UFO as the image can be seen here.

A dropsonde is a small weather reconnaissance instrument developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

Source: NCAR /UCAR

During World War II the skies over Europe were not stranger to battle. Here there were frequent engagements between fighter lanes, and the sounds of machine gun fire and explosions were as common a background noise as the singing of birds or the chirping of crickets. The violence became a fact of life in many places, a common occurrence, yet in the summer of 1941 a very strange series of events would play out in the skies over Le Mans, France that was far from the ordinary. At the time a French soldier by the name of Daniel Ledger was at Le Mans when his attention, as well as that of the villagers, was drawn to an unusual sight in the sky in an area above what was then a German occupied airfield in nearby town of Raineries. And so would begin a weird odyssey involving UFOs, crashed spaceships, and a mysterious alien woman.

On that summer day they could see what looked like a dense, aluminum-colored cloud that was shaped somewhat “like the handle of a frying pan” and the whole of it ringed with a mist that orbited the more solid looking darkened interior. This odd cloud seemed to be more than just a cloud, as it had a certain weight and solidity to it, and it was also moving across the sky faster than the other clouds. It was indeed a strange sight, but what made it even stranger still was that there seemed to be German fighter planes circling the mass, looking like flies at that distance but the droning of their engines still audible and unmistakable. From what they could see, the German planes seemed to be attacking the cloud, but as they did another, larger cloud descended to hover over the scene, this one described as luminous and matching the speed of the one below it. Upon the arrival of this cloud, the German planes that came close to it were seen to “fall down like leaves” for several seconds before taking to the air again.

To Ledger it seemed like their engines were cutting out to send them into a temporary free fall, and he suspected this was being done as a defense by the clouds. This would go on for nearly a full hour before the planes veered away and the clouds disappeared into the distance. Ledger would claim that he looked through newspaper reports in the following days and found not a single mention of anything that could have explained what he had seen. Puzzled, he tried to put the bizarre experience out of his head, but little did he know that this was to pale in comparison to another experience he would have a few years later.

In July of 1943, Ledger had been conscripted by the Germans to work at a labor camp in the coastal town of Gdynia, Poland, and one day he requested permission to visit the town of Exelgroud, which was granted. The only way for him to go at the time was on foot, but it wasn’t far, and so he headed out but soon found that the walk was taking longer than he expected. Ledger apparently decided to take a shortcut that took him over an area of sand dunes along the Baltic beach. As he made his way across the sand, he noticed something up ahead that was quite unusual. Half buried in the sand was what appeared to be some large grey metallic object, seemingly lodged deep into a dune as if it had fallen from the sky to crash there. Curious, Ledger approached the object and that was when things became even stranger than they already were.

As he drew closer, Ledger was met with the sight of a woman with long blonde hair and dressed in some sort of tight-fitting black or dark-brown jumpsuit with a belt, who appeared to be trying to manually dig the weird object out of the sand. At this point, Ledger was convinced that this must be a German pilot who had gone down in some sort of experimental aircraft and was in trouble, and this made him slightly hesitant to go any closer. He contemplated turning back, but as he did so the strange woman turned to face him, as if somehow aware of his presence. Her features were completely human, even pretty, slightly Asian looking despite her flowing blonde hair, and a look of relief spread across her face. She gestured for him to come over and help her, which he warily did, still not sure of who this person was.

When he reached the object, she gestured that she wanted him to dig with her, and he soon found that the craft was not as firmly embedded in the sand as he had thought. They were able to dig it mostly free in short order, and Ledger noticed that it was composed of a completely smooth metal that had no noticeable joints or seams. As they dug she talked to him, and when she finally spoke it was not in German or Polish, but rather a language he was unfamiliar with, but which sounded vaguely Russian. Although he could not understand what she was saying she seemed to understand him, although he was not sure why he had this impression. When they finished removing the last of the sand she repeated some unintelligible words which he took to be thanks, and then touched a button in her belt. When she did, a door on the metal object slid open, even though there were no seams to show a door was there, and she gestured to the sky and tapped her chest, then motioned for Ledger to back away from the craft. He could understand that she meant to take off, and so he did as he was told, still a bit confused as to who this person was and what was going on.

The woman then entered the object and the door slid closed behind her, blending seamlessly into the exterior like it had never even been there at all. Ledger claimed that before the door closed he could briefly see that the interior was devoid of any instrumentation panels, and that the woman was assuming a position on all fours, as if she were about to enter a “motorbike competition.” The craft then began to rise into the air in a shower of loose sand, glowing slightly as it did. Ledger took a few more steps away, and was astonished that the aircraft made no noise at all. The craft silently hovered there for a moment before suddenly shooting straight up into the sky at phenomenal speed and vanishing to leave him standing there dumfounded at what he had just seen.

It is important to note that even after all of this, Ledger was convinced that this had been some form of experimental aircraft and that he had met its very human pilot, but in later years he was not so sure. When UFO reports started to emerge more frequently and the United States and Soviet Union began their space programs, Ledger remembered the German fighters circling that strange cloud and his weird encounter with the woman and her ship on the dunes and he wondered if perhaps these had been brushes with something beyond this world and even if they were connected somehow. Being as this is a rather obscure case with little in the way of corroborating evidence, it is hard to know what to make of it. Who was this mysterious woman and where was she from? Was she ever even real at all? What connection, if any, does it all have to Ledger’s previous claimed experience? We will probably never know, and it remains another historical oddity confined to the forgotten mists of history.

In the summer of 1944, a 13-year old girl by the name of Madeleine Arnoux was out on a hot afternoon on her way to pick up some food near her farm in rural France, likely black market food since it was rationed at the time. She rode along on her bicycle towards a hamlet known as Le Verger, and she decided to stop along the way to pick some berries in a nearby meadow that bordered the woods. As she sought out berries, she began making her way down a trail that led off into the trees, and this trail veered off to disappear around a bend. As she reached the curve in the trail it was then that she allegedly noticed something very strange on the path ahead. She would claim that sitting a few hundred meters away was a grey metallic craft of some sort, described as being about the size of a standard car. The outer surface seemed to be perfectly smooth, with no visible openings or windows, but the strangest thing about the surreal scene as that there were several diminutive beings standing around it. These tiny humanoid creatures were only around 1 meter tall and dressed in odd brown one-piece suits, and they seemed to be just standing there staring at her.

She would say of what happened next:

They did not make any gesture in my direction, and as to me, I was frozen on the spot. How much time did this mutual observation last? I cannot say, but I remember the oppressive atmosphere, still worsened by the thundery weather and of my impression to be unable to move… Suddenly I managed to react and wanted to pick up my bicycle again; which lay within a few meters. The time to bend down and, by looking up at the strange appearance again, there was nothing any more. Only, at this place, the trees were agitated by a violent wind. I did not think of looking up in the air, where I would have undoubtedly still have seen the machine which flew away.

At this point she was rather terrified, and rode her bicycle home as fast as she could. At the time she did not think anyone would believe her, and so she did not tell her parents, nor anyone else for that matter. And so she would keep the incident to herself for many years, pushing it away to the back of her mind in an effort to move on and forget. At the time she did not associate this with aliens or UFOs, and being a simple farm girl she did not even know what a UFO was. Being an uneducated rural girl, talk of extraterrestrials and spaceships were far from her mind, and so she was left to puzzle about what that thing in the woods had been. Over the years she would learn of the wider UFO phenomena and of other people who had encountered them, and she began to think that what she had seen could not be explained with any rational explanation. She would say:

A long time, I thought of the strange encounter and then I forgot it… It was necessary that one starts to speak about the “Flying Saucers” for me to make a link and that I think that I had undoubtedly seen one of these mysterious UFOs. After so many years the image is still very clear in my memory and I know that I had not dreamed and that what I saw in wood that day was not nothing “known.” It could not have been a vehicle of that time, moreover they were rather rare, so that I undoubtedly identify it. The place of the encounter was deserted, the way leads into the wood, the closest farms are at 1 km. We were in 1944, the men of the resistance were numerous in the area, but it could not have been any of them. Neither German soldiers, and undoubtedly one or the others would have called me. It is thus necessary to thing that I witnessed one of the first visits of UFOs.

In 1972, Arnoux approached ufologist Fernand Lagarde, writing a letter to him that was then published in the French ufology magazine Lumières Dans la Nuit, and considering when the incident supposedly occurred it was indeed one of the earlier UFO encounters. Rather curiously, although Arnoux would claim that she had received a lot of mail in response to her letter, no one had ever actually followed up on it or came to her house to investigate. She would say of this:

Whereas I received quite a lot of mail after the publication of the article in question (all the magazine treating the matter, at the time (1972) wrote to me to interrogate me and to ask me the report of the facts. I was even told that that a young man of Toulon on Arroux, studying with the UCLA (University of Los Angeles), a few years later, had read my article in an American magazine, in the very library of this prestigious university). But it seems that my modest person did not interest the investigators, for never nobody came to my home. Whether some journalists came on the spot, that is quite possible, but they never met me. I went back to the place myself, ten years ago. everything was changed, and if I did not have in memory this true “photographic impression” of the scene of June July 44, I could not have recognized anything.

In 1996, Arnoux came forward with some curious new information to ufologist Michel Figuet, regarding another possible UFO that the witness saw in 1942 in her village of Toulon on Arroux. She would say of this in a letter to Figuet:

I might add something all the same, to bring back facts that came back to my memory after the publication of the article, which perhaps does not have any relationship with the occurrence, but which are rather odd. A few years before, i.e. in the 1st years of the war, perhaps in 1942 (the Germans occupied Toulon on Arroux, rather peacefully, it should be acknowledged), almost each evening, during the summer I think (for the evenings were beautiful and tepid), and during several days in a row, the district when I lived with my parents, the “Suburb” (all next the small station of departmental railroad Etang-Digoin) was in agitation. Indeed, we managed to observe a whitish gleam, slightly shnining (a “dull” moon) in the sky, roughly at a point located in the north-west. This gleam was motionless, sometimes seemed to die out a little, then was revived.

Needless to tell you that each evening, there was a gathering of all the district and everyone went on with their comments and guesses… admittedly comprising only: “tethered balloons”, “a zeppelin” (memory of another war…), allied or enemy observation “sausages” [blimps]… I know that courageous young men went, in the day, to check the surroundings and never saw anything… Now, I am about sure that in straight line, the place where we could see this luminous and fixed object was located at the vertical of the place where I saw, a few years later, my “UFO”. Was there a connection between these occurrences? Did they observe us already, from above, before trying the landing?

Although Arnoux’s account is quite bizarre and intriguing, there has been some skepticism aimed at the tale. For one is that she waited 28 years to tell a story from when she was 13 years old, during which time her memory could have become foggy or twisted. Indeed, she admits that she cannot remember the exact date or time of day of the sighing, nor can she recall the duration, and her memory of the appearance of the craft and its occupants are also vague. For instance, she explained in her letter that “I don’t seem to remember any openings on the craft.” There is also the fact that all of the information on the case is based on letters sent to Lagarde and Figuet, and there doesn’t seem to have been any real effort by anyone to follow up on the case or do a full investigation. On top of all of this is the fact that the sighting was made from a distance of several hundred meters, and ufologist Patrick Gross has said of this detail:

Mrs Arnoux said that the object and the beings were at several hundred meters from her! This is a very long observation distance, and I challenge anyone looking at some vehicle and people at several hundred meters to explain to me how to measure that people there are 1 meter or 2 meters tall, or how to be sure that the feature of some vehicle are “nothing known”. If the observant is only 13 years old, at a time when the vehicle could be some not-so-ordinary vehicle such as a military half-track or armored car, what amazing is there in the notion that there is no good case for aliens and their spaceship here?

What happened to this young woman? Did she see something from beyond our world or is this just a misunderstanding or even a tall tale? The case of Madeleine Arnoux is significant in that it happened before the UFO phenomena and all of the talk of alien encounters and alien abductions really took off, making it unique in how early on it occurred. Whether you believe she really saw aliens out there or not, her case is one of the earliest modern examples of a close encounter with UFOs, and it serves to stir the imagination at the very least.

On January 19, 1966, a banana farmer by the name of George Pedley was out at a place called Horseshoe Lagoon, in north Queensland, Australia, not far from the town of Tully. The lagoon itself is a murky morass of swampy, muddy water and dense reeds, bent into the horseshoe shape from which it gets its name. On his rounds Pedley often drove through the property, which was owned by a sugar cane farmer by the name of Albert Pennisi. As he drove the tractor along a narrow dirt track on that day, he reportedly heard a hissing sound that was loud enough to be heard over the sound of his droning engine. Pedley’s immediate thought was that one of his tires was punctured, but an inspection showed them to be fine. It was as he was getting back onto his tractor to continue his journey that he would see something remarkable rise up from the swampland of the lagoon, of which he would say:

Suddenly, an object rose out of the swamp. When I glanced at it, it was already 30 feet above the ground, and at about tree-top level. It was a large, grey, saucer-shaped object, convex on the top and bottom and measured some 25 feet across and 9 feet high. While I watched, it rose another 30 feet, spinning very fast, then it made a shallow dive and took off with tremendous speed. Climbing at an angle of 45 degrees it disappeared within seconds in a south-westerly direction. I saw no portholes or antennas, and there was no sign of life either in or about the ship.

Horseshoe Lagoon

Even more bizarre than this was what he found when he approached the area from where the object had taken off. There in the lagoon was a circular area of flattened reeds that had been cleared of water, measuring around 32 feet long by 25 feet wide, around which the water slowly rotated in clockwise curves. Much of the grass had seemingly been completely uprooted, and the depression was strange enough that Pedley was sure it had not been there when he had passed earlier in the day. A look at the surrounding area showed it to be untouched, and there was no sign that any trees had been scorched or damaged in any way. Pedley left at the time, but it was odd enough that he went back to the spot several hours later to find that now the depression was full of water and held a large circular mass of green reeds that floated on the surface and revolved in a languid clockwise radial pattern, with an overall shape almost like that of an overturned saucer. He went as far as to actually wade out into the water of the lagoon to find that it was almost like a floating island that he could swim under, and making it even odder still was that the bottom of the lagoon beneath it seemed to be completely smooth and devoid of the usual tangle of roots and detritus. He was also surprised to see that the surrounding grass had turned brown, although it had been green when he had left earlier.

Pedley went to the farmer Pennisi, who went out there to see the spectacle for himself, and Pedley would explain the whole bizarre tale to him. It would be found that oddly Pennisi’s dog had been acting very strangely at just around the exact time that Pedley had had his encounter, and he also explained that he had been having vivid dreams for a week about a flying saucer landing on his property. Considering that it was his property and that he knew the lagoon very well, Pennisi was astonished, as he had never seen anything quite like it before. After telling Pennisi, Pedley would take photos of the anomaly and go to the police with his story, and before long the story had hit the press and it was splashed all over the papers, where the circular mass was being called a “UFO nest” and there was much talk of aliens and spaceships.

Pedley’s UFO nest

A subsequent investigation would turn up at least five other such anomalous “UFO nests” scattered around in the vicinity, all smaller than the first, with some rotating clockwise, others counterclockwise, and still other with evidence of charred grass in the center. Samples of these “nests” were taken and sent off to be analyzed, but this turned up nothing unusual. Police would end up dismissing the nests were caused not by aliens, but rather nothing more than whirlwinds, waterspouts, or even a helicopter. The government was equally eager to explain the phenomenon away, citing the same sort of explanation, and Mr. G.J. Odgers, Director of Public Relations for the Department of Defence, would make a statement saying:

Although a conclusive determination could not be made, the most probable explanation was that the sighting was of a ‘willy willy’ or circular wind phenomenon which flattened the reeds and sucked up debris to a height of about 30 feet, thus forming what appeared to be a ‘flying saucer’, before moving off and dissipating. Hissing noises are known to be associated with ‘willy willies’ and the theory is also substantiated by the clockwise configuration of the depression. All too often unusual occurrences are reported in sensational terms with little or no attempt made at rational assessment. The general subject is ‘newsworthy’ and lends itself to sensationalism and guesswork, but in most cases logical explanations follow from careful investigation. You will appreciate that there is nothing to be gained from reopening old cases.

In addition to this official take there were various other explanations proposed, ranging from helicopters, nesting birds, alligators, and reed eating grubs, to of course the ideas that this was caused by some secret military craft or even that it was caused by some sort of “plasma vortex.” However, none of these explanations offered so far really matches all of the evidence found, nor do they explain the visual confirmation made of some sort of UFO by Pedley, and so a favorite explanation still remains that he actually saw an alien craft and that it is what left this evidence behind.

No matter what the real explanation is, one thing that is for certain is that after the Pedley case hit the news the whole region around Tully, and particularly the vicinity around Horseshoe Lagoon, became ground zero for UFO reports, and in later years there would be frequent discoveries of more of the UFO nests. In fact, between the years of 1966 and 1990 Albert Pennisi would claim that there had been found 22 of these “nests” on his property alone. The area to this day has frequent UFO activity, leading to the idea that perhaps the Pedley case has some connection to it all, and leading away from the more mundane explanations for the nests. We are left to wonder just what was going on here. What were these so-called nests and what do they mean? Were they some sort of sign, a tools used by aliens, or simply the result of natural processes? Whatever the case may be, the “Tully UFO nests” have managed to worm their way into UFO lore, are much discussed, and remain unexplained.

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There is a group of people living in the Yaohnanen village on the island of Tanna in the Republic of Vanuatu who believe that Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II, is a god. This comes from a local tale about the son of a mountain spirit who left the island to marry a powerful woman and return some day bearing gifts. That messianic story was linked in 1974 to Prince Philip when he flew in for a visit, and the belief became the Prince Philip Movement, a so-called cargo cult religion. While he’s not a god, to these indigenous people the prince was more like an alien in a spaceship – which brings us to a recent revelation that Philip has had a lifelong interest in UFOs and has amassed an extensive library of books on UFOs and aliens.

“Why shouldn’t any sensible person have an interest in a phenomena that has baffled mankind for millennia?”

The 99-year-old Duke of Edinburgh’s private secretary, Brigadier Archie Miller-Bakewell, made that comment to The Sun after revealing that Philip was thrilled to have recently received a copy of “The Halt Perspective,” a new book on the 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident, from the book’s co-author, John Hanson. It seems the prince has been researching ufology ever since his beloved uncle, Lord Louis Mountatten, relayed the story of a UFO encounter on the grounds of his Broadlands estate in Romsey, Hampshire, in 1955. While Mountbatten reported the incident, it was witnessed by his bricklayer, Fred Briggs.

“The object was shaped like a child’s huge humming-top and half way between 20ft or 30ft in diameter. Its colour was like dull aluminium, rather like a kitchen saucepan. It was shaped like the sketch which I have endeavoured to make, and had portholes all around the middle, rather like a steamer has. While I was watching, a column, about the thickness of a man, descended from the centre of the saucer and I suddenly noticed on it, what appeared to be a man, presumably standing on a small platform on the end. He did not appear to be holding on to anything. He seemed to be dressed in a dark suit of overalls and was wearing a close fitting hat or helmet.”

Briggs said the UFO disappeared as quickly as it appeared. When he told his boss, Mountbatten investigated the site himself and was convinced enough by Brigg’s sincerity to submit a report to the government, complete with drawings, that he asked to be kept secret until his death – which occurred in 1979 with his assassination. In an earlier interview, British UFO researcher Alejandro Rojas credits Mountbatten with helping develop the field of UFO investigations behind the scenes by encouraging the media at the time to investigate sightings. Philip was inspired to follow in his footsteps.

“Prince Philip also took an interest in ufology. He was very close to his uncle and always said he was more of a father to him. He definitely picked up the interest in UFOs – but we are not sure if Charles and the rest of the family did – although we can tell from their reading lists that they do request different paranormal books.”

Would Prince Philip have preferred that the Yaohnanens think of him as the captain of an extraterrestrial starship rather than a gift-bearing god? Probably, as long as it didn’t involve too much work. Regardless, it’s interesting to see how open the British royals are about UFOs and aliens in comparison to leaders in the U.S. Perhaps it’s because the royals are ridiculed in so many other areas, any criticism they get about this is minor.

Or maybe it’s because they really do believe.

Of all the myriad reports of UFOs and alien encounters out there, perhaps the most spectacular are those that involve these mysterious entities reaching out in an aggressive manner to attack human beings. Such cases go beyond the image of benevolent alien entities, and serve to act as something more along the lines of a horror movie, yet there are more accounts like this than many might think. One of these played out in the swamps of Florida, and here we have a strange case of a witness who apparently found himself on the wrong end of otherworldly forces.

The setting for this outlandish tale is the Everglades, a vast expanse of swamps and tropical wetlands covering a massive 7,800 square miles of the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida. It was to this wild realm of gloomy tangled, mosquito infested wilderness that on March 12, 1965, a rancher and former constable by the name of James Flynn came to do a bit of hunting. He loaded up his truck with a swamp buggy and his four trusty hunting dogs, before making his way through winding dirt roads as far as they would take him, until he was right up against the swampy wilds. He then unloaded the swamp buggy, let his dogs loose, and penetrated deeper into the muck covered back country in search of deer. The terrain was very daunting and unpredictable, but by all accounts Flynn knew these swamps like the back of his hand and was a seasoned outdoorsman, so this was all pretty routine for him. However, the trip was about to take a turn into the weird.

The Everglades

Flynn camped out there for several days, which were fairly uneventful until the early hours of March 14, when at around 1 AM his dogs picked up the scent of something out in the dark and went darting off into the murky night barking, snarling and yipping excitedly. Flynn watched them run off, but was startled when several minutes later he heard a booming sound reverberate through the trees and mangroves, sounding very much like a gunshot. This was followed by one of the hunting dogs bolting back to the camp whining and with its tail between his legs, and the concerned Flynn decided to get into his buggy and investigate. His first thought was that his dogs had come across another hunter out there, and that they had possibly been shot, so he sped off towards where the sound had come from. The vegetation was dark and thick, making it very slow going, but he finally saw something up ahead through the brush, which would turn out to be far more bizarre than anything he could have imagined.

Something ahead was shining very brightly, but at first he could not make out what it was through the canopy of the trees. The light moved off some distance, then returned to its to its original spot and descended down into a clearing among some cypress trees. At this point, Flynn still did not really register this as an alien craft, and when he got off of his buggy to approach on foot he was under the impression that it was possibly a helicopter or even an experimental craft from the nearby Cape Kennedy base that was in trouble. His plan was to go offer help, but as he approached he got a good look at it through his binoculars and could see that it was no normal aircraft. There, hovering just a few feet off of the ground, was a massive, brightly lit object that looked like an inverted cone, measuring around 100 feet in diameter at its base and around 30 feet high. It looked to be made of some sort of smooth, shiny metallic material, and around its body were four tiers of windows that seemed to be lit from within with an eerie yellow glow.

Despite his awed shock, Flynn continued approaching through the brush, mesmerized by the bizarre sight of this strange machine in the middle of the swamp. He was aware of a whirring noise like a “diesel generator” but it was not nearly as noisy as such a huge flying craft would be expected to be. Nevertheless, the dog that he had in its cage back at the buggy was going nuts, barking and snarling like mad. Flynn got within around 200 feet of the otherworldly craft, upon which there was a sudden whine like a jet engine, followed by a gust of wind that practically knocked him off his feet. Several moments later, he saw the craft emit a bright beam like a “welder’s torch,” which hit him in the center of his forehead “like a sledgehammer.” After this there was nothing but blackness.

The next thing Flynn remembers is waking up in the rays of the morning light, but his vision was blurry and his surroundings indistinct. He got up and stumbled about, finally recognizing his location as where he had been when he lost consciousness, and he could see through his cracked vision that where the UFO had been there was now a black patch of scorched brush. He then managed to make his way back to his camp, where his other dogs had been waiting for him, and then went to the home of a Seminole friend of his, who got him to a hospital at Fort Myers. The doctors found the man had eyes that were bloodshot and red, as if they had burst blood vessels, and there was an ugly bruise in the center of his forehead. An examination showed that there was also numbness and partial hearing loss, as well as some muscular reflex impairment, but there was no serious injury, and he was then discharged and expected to fully recover. During his stay at the hospital, he excitedly told of what had happened to him, and although his ophthalmologist was skeptical, he would nevertheless vouch for the man’s reputation as an honest, down to earth person not prone to wild imaginings. A Dr. Paul R. Brown would say of his impressions of Flynn’s story:

I first examined Mr. Flynn on March 17, 1965. He stated that while he was out hunting in the woods in this area two days before I saw him he noticed an unnatural light in the woods off in the distance. He stated that he went closer to the light to observe it and suddenly he was struck by “something from a space ship”. He said that he was knocked out and blinded. He said he recovered some sight in the left eye but he could not see out of his right eye. Mrs. Flynn accompanied him into my office, and Mr. Flynn seemed to be in quite an agitated state of mind at that particular time. He kept repeating over and over “I know you wont believe me, but this is what happened” and then he would begin to relate the same story.

As best as I can tell, Mr. Flynn appears to be a rather stable individual. He is not considered to be a person who likes to make up wild tales. Although his story could be a cover-up story for some other type of incident, I feel that this is quite unlikely since a more plausible story could have been thought up to cover up for him should he have felt the need for such cover-up. Since the incident Mr. Flynn quoted to me that he actually was sorry he even related the incident because it had caused him quite a bit of trouble and apparently not many people believed him anymore. At the time of the incident I was somewhat skeptical myself, but quite frankly at this stage of the game I am not quite as certain as I was before. I keep asking myself why should he have to make up a story like this. However, we must face the fact that this could have happened by tree branch or some other object striking him over the forehead. The only thing we can be sure of is that he did suffer some physical blow to the right eye.

The incident would be investigated by NICAP and the Air Force, who examined the site of the alleged encounter to find a burned circle of earth measuring 74 feet across, as well as some scorched trees. Despite this intriguing physical evidence, the Air Force was quick to dismiss the case, and it was suggested that Flynn had merely hit his head on an overhanging limb and then fabricated the whole thing. However, investigators from NICAP and local law enforcement weren’t so sure about this. Interviewing the people closest to Flynn showed that he was an honest, well-like citizen who had never been known to play pranks or tell tall tales. It was surmised that whatever had happened to him out in that swamp, he at least really seemed to believe his story. A rather ominous footnote to the whole thing is that when Gordon Lore, the NICAP Assistant Director, contacted the Homestead Air Force Base looking for more information, he was told that they had absolutely no record of the case in any of their files, and that “Nothing concerning this specific case was found in the files of the base commander, intelligence division, civil engineering, nor this office,” despite the fact that they most certainly had investigated it. Curious.

We are left to wonder just what happened out in that swamp on that day. What happened to Flynn? What were these entities and what did they want? Is it even real at all or just a hoax? Was there a cover-up involved? We will likely never know the answers, and it remains another weird one for the files.

From a young age William Tompkins was a bit different. Beginning from age 9 he started crafting an impressive fleet of handmade models of Navy ships at a tiny 1:600 scale and meticulously detailed down to every last antenna, turret, lifeboat and airplane. By 1941, at the age of 17, Tompkins had a fleet of around 50 such ships, which were impressive enough that they would be displayed in the window of the Broadway department store on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, CA, and this was where they would capture the attention of the Navy. When officers got a look at the model ships, they were surprised to notice that the level of detail included was considered to be perfect, including many details that were deemed sensitive or even classified secrets, and which made it all seem suspicious that such a young man should have access to these designs. After all, this was in the days leading up to World War II, not long before the attacks on Pearl Harbor, and so the Navy was very interested in how this civilian boy could have gotten such details for his ships. This is how Tompkins would begin his journey along the road into the bizarre, and be initiated into the world of secret insiders spilling their guts on classified information concerning aliens, UFOs, and all sorts of strange stuff.

Navy officials approached Tompkins’ father to interrogate him on how his son had gotten such details, and questioned the boy as well, and the answer to how he had done it was perhaps even more surprising than if he had been getting top secret information. You see, it seemed that Tompkins had pretty much a photographic memory and sense for size and dimensions, so he had simply seen the ships anchored in Long Beach harbor that were open to the public at the time and which his father often brought him to see, committing them to memory in order to be reproduced in his painstakingly crafted models. It was such an astonishing ability that Naval Intelligence was greatly impressed, and in 1942 went about having Tompkins pulled from his second year of high school in order to be inducted into the Navy.

William Tompkins

He would complete his training and make his way quickly up the ranks of Naval Intelligence, eventually replacing a Commander at North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego and getting involved in “advanced technology projects,” after the war going on to work for the Douglas Aircraft Company and then becoming the corporate director of North American Advanced Space Research and a member of the Red Team at General Dynamics Corporation, along the way also serving on the Apollo Space Program. It seems that this is chapter in his life where things would begin heading into the bizarre. Tompkins became a key player in the aerospace field, instrumental in numerous projects involving naval intelligence, aerospace engineering, special projects, research for above-top-secret space programs, and various highly top secret projects, and he was an integral part of think tanks across several aerospace firms working on other such highly classified projects. In later years, Tompkins would come forward with his insider information of these projects, and some of them are rather outlandish, to say the least.

Among projects Tompkins claims to have been involved with were those that were directly related to aliens and UFOs, as well as “extraterrestrial life and technology.” Among the projects he would claim to have been involved in were reverse engineering alien technology, as well as analyzing UFO technology recovered from the Nazis, and using it to create advanced antigravity spacecraft and extraterrestrial communications systems, all of it funded with black budgets. Indeed, he claimed to have been involved with numerous spacecraft designs utilizing alien technologies for various aerospace contractors, many of which he would say were beamed directly into his brain by aliens, and he also claimed that these spacecrafts were being put into battle groups by the Navy in order to launch a sort of secret space force. This all got even more bizarre when he additionally claimed that there were several species of aliens involved in human affairs on this planet, something he had first become aware of during his time working with a think tank called Project RAND. He would say of this:

Project RAND, a way-above-top-secret scientific think tank… was created in December 1945 as a special contract to Douglas Aircraft Company, at the Santa Monica Municipal Airport. Inside a highly classified, walled-off area in the Douglas Engineering Department, Project RAND studied the implications of threatening alien agendas… Some unbelievable space studies came out of the Douglas Think Tank. They revealed that not only were certain U.S. governmental heads aware of the alien involvement in human affairs, but that the Soviet Union was aware of the situation, too. With possible alien “assistance,” the Soviets were bent on getting to the Moon first, in order to establish missile bases there and control the entire planet.

This is where things begin to get even weirder than they already are, as Tompkins would repeatedly come forward with new information to add to this bonkers mythology of alien races on Earth. He particularly spoke heatedly about a race of reptilians he called the “Draconian Reptilians,” which according to him were in league with the Nazis during World War II. These reptilian aliens allegedly supplied the Germans with all sorts of advanced technology that they used to make working UFOs and beam weapons, as well as genetic and biotech research, human cloning, and life extension technology. The Reptilians also allegedly helped the Nazis to reach the moon and other planets, and also helped them build subterranean bases in Antarctica. Luckily for the U.S., Tompkins claims that America and the Allies were aided by another race of aliens called the Nordics, tall humanoid beings who helped them out with technology of their own, as well as being instrumental in developing the space force, which supposedly includes a “2.5km Naval Spacecraft Carrier and a 1.4km Naval Spacecraft Battle Cruiser.” Tompkins claimed to be in frequent telepathic contact with these Nordic aliens, and UFO researcher Makia Freeman has said of this:

Tompkins believes the Nordics have been helping him all along by clearing the way for him to do certain things… He thinks he has been protected because of his association with Nordic ETs, specifically two women and a man who used to be his secretaries. As an aside, he did not know for a long time that he even had ETs working for him. He only found out when one day, one of them fell down the stairs and was taken to the hospital in a grave condition. He overheard her admitting she was not who she said she was and answering to another boss or captain.

Further down the rabbit hole we go. Tompkins paints a picture of two distinct aliens races basically using humans as pawns their own millennia long battle here on Earth, and he has compiled the entire outlandish story into an in-depth and highly technical, very weird book called Selected by Extraterrestrials, which covered two volumes and goes into painstaking, impressive detail on his claims. He even said that the book was secretly condoned by his superiors in the U.S. Navy, so that people could be woken up to the truth. Tompkins has said of this:

Early in 2001, I called on Admiral Hugh Webster, Navy League Corporate Director… We had a five-hour meeting on my ongoing book–writing concerning the extraterrestrial threats to our planet. After Admiral Webster read portions of my document and backup technical documentation, I asked him, “How much of this can I include in a published book?” He said. “Bill, tell it all. This is most important to our country. Don’t leave anything out.”

After coming out with his book and his version of “the truth,” Tompkins gave a number of radio and TV interviews, and his wild, far-out story was heavily discussed and debated. Many questions swirled at the time, and still do, concerning his bonkers tale. We do know that his credentials are sound, and that he was a highly respected member of the aeronautics field, but what of his other claims? Is there any truth to any of this, and if not, why would he risk his reputation to make up such a completely ludicrous tale? His claims have been criticized for being really well beyond the fringe, something more at home in a bad science fiction novel than the real world, but there have been those who also defend his claims. Unfortunately, Tompkins passed away in 2017 at the age of 94, and so whatever truth there are in his whistleblower claims he took to the grave with him. Is there anything to his stories? What did he see behind the veil of secrecy? Were these real revelations or just an eccentric man spitting sci-fi nonsense? Is he a champion of disclosure of a fruit loop? For such an apparently valued aerospace figure it seems odd that he would spin such yarns, and it all leaves us with yet another enigmatic insider making bold claims it is hard to know what to do with

Today, I come to the final article of my trio concerning the controversy of so-called “UFO Disclosure.” Part-1 was focused on the fact that when it comes to disclosure (or, rather, stalled disclosure) we’ve seen it all before. And nothing ever happened. So, why should it happen now? The second part of this series was on how and why a suspicious UFO research community might actually not accept disclosure (if it comes, of course) as the real deal. Now, to the last segment. This one is on the scenario of a manipulative, dangerous disclosure in our midst. In other words, I’m talking about something along the lines of disclosure secretly driven by a faked “alien invasion.” A situation designed to keep all of us under the grips of powerful manipulators. Even to have us watched to crazy degrees, and maybe even placed under never-ending curfews and 24/7 surveillance. Could such a thing happen in the real world? I honestly don’t know. I should stress, however, there’s no doubt at all that UFO-themed fabrications could very easily be put into place – and could cause huge numbers of people to believe we’re under attack and that we need to be “protected.” How do I know that such UFO fabrications could carefully and smoothly be put into place and make us think that deadly aliens are among us? Easy: the technology has already been used.

Earlier this year my book, The Rendlesham Forest UFO Conspiracy, was published. As the publisher (Lisa Hagan Books) noted: “In the final days of December 1980, strange encounters and bizarre incidents occurred in the heart of Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England. Based upon their personal encounters, many of the military personnel who were present at the time believed that something extraterrestrial came down in those dark woods. What if, however, there was another explanation for what happened four decades ago? What if that explanation, if revealed, proved to be even more controversial than the theory that aliens arrived from a faraway world? The ramifications for the field of Ufology would be immense. In his new, sensational book, Nick Redfern reveals that one of the most famous UFO cases of all time was really a series of top secret experiments using holograms, mind-control programs, deception, disinformation, conspiracies and cover-ups. The shocking truth of a forty-year-old mystery is now revealed.”

If the incidents in Rendlesham Forest in December 1980 really were the secret, manipulative work of government and military agencies, then all of us should strive to find the answers and expose the shocking affairs for what they were – which is what I’m doing. Like it or not, there is good evidence that Rendlesham – as a highly-classified experiment – was not alone. Indeed, it’s clear that some of the prime UFO events of the last sixty or so years were carefully staged. I’m talking about the Antonio Villas Boas event of 1957, the 1961 Betty and Barney Hill case, the Hickson-Parker incident of 1973, and the Bennewitz story of the late 1970s/early 1980s. Ufology has been duped – and on a massive scale. Check out all of the links in this particular paragraph and it becomes obvious that someone has been faking UFO incidents for a long time. And to see how easy it is for their ruses to work on us, the public. Clearly, this isn’t being done by certain agencies just for the fun of it. Such a thing would be totally ridiculous. In light of all the above, it’s entirely feasible that a well-guarded organization is carefully and constantly finding ways to, one day, fake an alien invasion – as a way to keep us in shackles for our “own good.” There has to be an agenda behind all of this. And, whatever that agenda might be, I don’t see anything positive about it. At least, not for us.

Throughout the UFO field there have long been certain figures who have served to flutter around to be much discussed and debated. These individuals have managed, for whatever reasons, to draw to them all manner of speculation and discussion, while remaining firmly past our ability to get to any true answers. One of these is certainly a humble man who would have a series of outlandish encounters that has managed to put both him and his city on the UFO map.

It all started in November of 1987, in the sleepy town of Gulf Breeze, Florida. On the evening of November 11, a local building contractor by the name of Ed Walters was at home when he allegedly was surprised by a bright light that seemed to be coming from right out in his front yard. Curious as to what this could be, he ventured outside and claims that he could see that whatever was creating the mysterious illumination seemed to be behind a stand of trees not too far away. He crept closer to the source of the light, and as he did, he could see that it was an enormous, top-shaped craft of some sort, with portholes and rectangular windows along its sides. On its bottom was a blue ring, and it was from this ring that the light was emanating like a giant neon light.

Ed Walters

Amazingly, Walters had the presence of mind to go get a camera from his house, after which he began snapping pictures of it. Whatever the strange craft was it did not seem to like having its picture taken, as it purportedly then approached the startled Walters and shot a blue beam at him, even as a voice boomed in his head that he would not be harmed. This telepathic presence then began beaming myriad images into his head, including those of dogs, a woman holding a baby, naked women, and all manner of other surreal scenes like something out of a twisted dream. Walters would then lose consciousness and wake up some time later with the UFO now gone. He had the impression that the blue beam had knocked him out, and luckily when he checked his camera he found that he had managed to capture some photos of it. He would take these photos to the local newspaper, The Gulf Breeze Sentinel, and when they hit the news the whole bizarre story was the talk of the town, all fueled by the paper’s sensationalist retelling of the tale. Walters then tried to put it behind him, but it seems the aliens were done with him by a long shot.

Walters began to have frequent sightings of UFOs, claiming that there were more than one of them, sometimes managing to take pictures of them, and he would also say that the blue beams would often hit him to send more baffling images into his mind and typically knock him down to leave him unconscious. On December 2, he claims that he finally saw the occupants of the craft, when in the early morning hours he spied a small, 4-foot high humanoid creature standing outside his house, dressed in what seemed to be metal plates and a helmet with a slit to look through, the whole of it akin to some sort of blocky, bulky armor, giving the entity a somewhat robotic look. Upon realizing it had been spotted, the strange being ran away with Walters in hot pursuit, but he would be stopped dead in his tracks by a blue beam that paralyzed him and sent him sprawling to the ground. When he regained control of his body, he saw another blue beam off in the distance and then one of the alien craft ascend over the trees to shoot off into the night. While he was able to get a picture of the UFO as it left, he unfortunately he was unable to get a picture of the being, although he would later make a sketch of it.

One of the Gulf Breeze photos

Over the course of the coming months, Walters claimed to be constantly followed around by the UFOs and those odd little robotic entities, which seemed to be harassing him and his family. Indeed, among the many photos he took of his ordeal, one of them shows his wife running away from one of the blue beams in terror. On another occasion he claimed that he had been nearly run off the road by one of the UFOs appearing and shooting its blue beam at his car. According to Walters, they would have at least 20 separate incidents involving either the UFOs or those aliens, and they apparently once even once landed on the lawn to leave a cone shaped impression and on another occasion one dropped some sort of liquid on the house for reasons unknown. In the meantime, there were reports from other locals who also claimed to have seen the UFOs, and it was becoming a bit of a minor hysteria at the time, propelled by numerous sensational headlines. In fact, during a six-month period, 135 people reported 80 different sightings in the area, quite a few of them reliable witnesses, such as pathologist Fenner McConnell and  city councilwoman Brenda Pollak. This would all go on until July of 1988, after which whatever these things were seem to have either finished their mission or gotten bored of terrorizing this little town, and they left.

Walters had taken quite a few photographs of the objects, a total of thirty seven clear, high-quality photographs, and he also was extensively interviewed by those who considered him to be a reliable witness, he passed two separate lie detector tests, and also passed a mental evaluation with flying colors, which only served to further boost the apparent credibility of the weird case. Before long it was being touted by many ufologists as one of the most amazing and important UFO cases in history, but Walters and his photographs were also the focus of much scrutiny and skepticism. One of the main blows to his believability came after Walters moved away and the new owner of the house found in the attic a model of a UFO made of Styrofoam, cardboard, paper and tinted plastic gel, measuring 9 inches long across the top and 5 inches deep. It also looked suspiciously like the UFO in Walters’ photographs. In fact, it looked so much like the alleged alien craft in Walters’ photos, that a reporter with Pensacola News Journal by the name of Craig Myers was able to nearly perfectly replicate the photos by using the model and double exposures. For his part, Walters would insist that the model UFO had been planted there to discredit him, and that he would have never left something like that behind at the house.

Another Gulf Breeze photo by Ed Walters

None of this was helped by the rumors from a local teenager who claimed that Walters had approached him to be the one to come forward with the photos and that it had all been staged and a practical joke that got out of hand. He even produced a photograph that looked nearly identical to the ones Walters had taken to back his story up. Walters of course denied it, and none of this stopped him from writing a book on his experiences at Gulf Breeze. The skeptics say that he did it all of this for money and fame and his book, that it is all an elaborate hoax, with the photographs created using models and photographic trickery such as double exposures and photographing the images as a reflection in glass. Others have said that it might have been experimental aircraft from the nearby military base. Yet, the fact remains that hundreds of people also claimed to have seen strange things during the same time period, and there are those who still believe that the photos are the real deal. UFO researcher and physicist Bruce Maccabee has said of this:

I think they’re real. I think the model is a hoax. Hoax squared. You had politicians reporting seeing objects. We still get reports of interesting stuff in the area. And in 1987, you had hundreds of people besides Walters reporting sightings. It’s always been an interesting area. There were so many sightings that you have to account for, unless you believe there was massive collusion on the part of the residents of Gulf Breeze and Pensacola.

Gulf Breeze has continued to be a hotbed of UFO activity, and we are left to wonder just what happened to Ed Walters. Was this something truly otherworldly? Or was it just a charlatan who sparked a huge urban legend that persists to this day? No matter what one may think, the Gulf Breeze incident has managed to be discussed and debated to this day, and has still not been conclusively resolved.

My previous article was on how and why I’m pretty confident that “UFO Disclosure” is not coming at anytime, anywhere soon. In that same article, I wrote: “The subject [of disclosure] is something I’m frequently asked about. But, people don’t often get the response from me they may be anticipating. I can understand why some ufologists might think that disclosure is on the horizon. After all, in the last few years we have had the AATIP revelations, the Nimitz/Tic Tac affair and more. Could it – collectively – be a plan to get us more and more acclimatized to the issues of extraterrestrials and UFOs? I guess so. That doesn’t mean, however, that it’s a certainty. I’ll tell you why. Over the years (in fact, decades) there have been more than a few claims that disclosure is/was coming. So far, though, it has never, ever happened.” That’s where the extract from the article ends. Now, onto the controversial theme of my new feature. I have to say that I would be both amazed and very pleased if disclosure does arrive one day. Right now, at least, however, I’m hardly holding my breath. There is, though, another aspect to all of this, an aspect that most people probably haven’t given much though to. If any.

I know from speaking to far more than a few ufologists on the matter of disclosure that – should the incredible secrets finally be revealed to one and all – those same ufologists are eagerly anticipating seeing a number of certain, key things in front of them, so to speak. They are waiting for the revealing of crashed UFOs, of dead aliens, of E.T. technology and science, of the Roswell bodies and the accompanying wreckage, and of the truth concerning what’s really going on out at Area 51 and much more. And, also, finally learning the real agendas surrounding (a) cattle-mutilations; (b) alien abductions; and (c) the Space Brothers. But, what if disclosure turns out to be something different to what so many UFO investigators are excitedly expecting? Extremely different, maybe. I’ll explain what I mean by that.

Let’s say that one day disclosure does arrive and the entire world learns that, yes, there is a real UFO phenomenon and aliens have visited our world – and people have been abducted against their wills by little, black-eyed creatures from another world. Ufologists would be totally overjoyed by the admittedly incredible news. But, what if the team in government – that is tasked with running the disclosure project – tells the people of Earth that, although aliens are real, they never did crash at Roswell? The Roswell legend, the U.S. government explains to everybody, was simply that: a legend. Not only that: how would it go down with ufologists if those in government said that “Yes, we’re absolutely certain that ETs have been watching us, but the only sensitive things held at Area 51 are secret aircraft that we built and flew”?

In light of all the above, I can very easily see how – and why, too – a significant number of ufologists would quickly say (or shout) that the disclosure they all anticipated for so long wasn’t really full disclosure, after all. Instead, it was a form of carefully sanitized disclosure, they’ll all inevitably scream. In other words, the field of Ufology – as a combined, largely like-minded community – will only accept disclosure as real and complete if it meets their preconceived expectations; I guarantee it. But, what if those same expectations of Ufology are actually way off course – and have always been off course? I can very easily see a situation in which angry ufologists will keep pushing  and demanding for more and more, simply because they just cannot bear to think that aliens didn’t crash at Roswell. Or, that there are no alien corpses secretly guarded 200-feet underground the Area 51 installation. It would be truly ironic if – after years and years of pushing for disclosure and on the famous day that all of the amazing secrets finally come tumbling out – entire swathes of ufologists flatly refuse to accept that it’s real disclosure.