The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
Some of the most outstanding and spectacular UFO encounters are those that leave behind some physical evidence or trace. This can take many forms, but typically it is very intriguing in that we have something left behind to remind us of their presence. This can sometimes be taken to extremes, and while UFOs mostly don’t cause a lot of damage there are those cases in which they cause chaos and collateral damage. Here we will look at some rare cases of when UFOs have, either intentionally or not, left behind devastation in the form of fire.
One of the stranger cases of a UFO connected to a fire comes to us from the country of South Africa. In September of 1965, two police constables by the names of John Lockem and Koos de Klerek were on patrol along the Pretoria-Bronkhorstspruit highway, and that evening started out as just a normal, mundane shift for them. As the lane lines flickered by in the night and the evening danced by, they were ready for this to be just another uneventful shift, but that would soon change. At around midnight, their quiet daydreaming was interrupted by something very odd blooming into the headlights from the murky gloom ahead. The startled two constables caught sight of some sort of metallic object that they at first took to be some vehicle stopped on the road, but it very quickly became apparent that this was no normal car or truck.
The thing in the road appeared to be a copper-colored, domed, disc-shaped object about 30 feet in diameter, and as they approached it at first just sat there silently. After a few seconds, before the two men could even really process what they were seeing or what was going on, the disc suddenly launched up at great velocity into the air, while copious jets of flame erupted from beneath it to light up the night. It looked as if the fire was spouting from two tubes underneath the craft, with the flames actually bouncing about three feet up in the air from the asphalt, and the heat was so intense that the highway purportedly actually caught fire and the officers were unable to get closer. This fire apparently went on for some time before it subsided enough for the two policemen to approach, and they found that the asphalt had actually melted, and that there was a caved in portion where something very heavy had been. The scorched area was reportedly around 6 feet in diameter, and the heat had been so formidable that the gravel had actually separated from the tar.
According to UFO researcher John Hall, the two constables reported the incident, but it was sort of brushed under the carpet by the government, with a Lt. Col. J.B. Brits, District Commandant of Pretoria North, saying the event was “of a highly secret nature and an inquiry is being conducted in top circles,” and that was that. There has been no other word on it since, and it was only briefly covered in an article for the Associated Press, Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1965 and later in English by NICAP in 1969. Adding to the mystery of it all is that there were supposedly samples taken from the site that were sent off to be analyzed, but results have never been forthcoming and nothing more has been released to the public.
At least in this case the fire left behind by the object was contained, but this doesn’t seem to always be the case. One Reddit user called “Echatoner” claims to be a firefighter working in Utah, and one call he got would be something he would never forget. He claims that he was called to a wildfire just south of Dugway Proving Grounds and as he and his crew sped off towards the emergency with a convoy of four trucks, they saw a formation of eight black military helicopters that fell in with them as if they were escorting them. This went on for about 10 miles before the helicopters veered away to fly off, and things would only get stranger from there. The witness says:
A little while later we are parked and about to start hiking to the fire line when suddenly a thin column of smoke shoots probably about two hundred feet into the sky, it was a good mile away but the concussion was pretty significant when it hit us and the noise was still ridiculously loud. We thought it was probably no big deal, we knew we were near a strike zone. A good five minutes later an aircraft like nothing I have ever seen flew by us at maybe five hundred feet. It was flat black and sort of rectangular but with fins and wells on the underside. It was moving pretty slow and was dead silent so I have to assume it was some sort of stealth glider. It sounds ridiculous but it immediately reminded me of a huge, flying bat mobile, Time Burton era.
After that some military personnel got on our radio frequency and instructed us to leave the area immediately, when our crew chief asked who it was and why they signed off and the Incident Commander (the guy in charge of managing the entire situation) came on the radios and said we were evacuating the area. They sent us to a completely different fire about a hundred miles to the south and never told us why except that it was higher priority which was bullshit, it was already out when we got there and we just assisted crews in the mop up operation. The thing that confuses me about this is that if the army didn’t want us to see that shit or if it was dangerous why didn’t they keep us clear of the area in the first place? Either a communications breakdown or they had a now shit situation going down and had to get us out of there without warning.
The witness came away with the impression that the strange craft he had seen had caused the fire and riled up the military, but beyond that it is all a mystery. Was this a UFO, some experimental aircraft, or what? What connection did it have to the fire? We will probably never know. In 2019 there was a massive wildfire at Katon-Karagay national park, in East Kazakhstan, which quickly enveloped an estimated 82.2 hectares of wilderness, and before long there were rumors that the blaze had been caused by a UFO. One Vladimir Sanarov, inspector of flying-industrial service KazAviaForestGuard, would say of this:
According to the witnesses who saw this falling unidentified flying object and filmed in on the phone cam, an object fell from the sky and caused fire. Firefighters didn’t manage to put it out immediately as the locality is difficult to approach, it took three days to extinguish the fire. Liquidation works are underway. The main task is to prevent repeated fire.
One of the main theories is that this was all due to a rocket stage falling to earth, but considering that there doesn’t seem to be much further information on this we are left to speculate. A similar incident that also went down in 2019 comes to us from the Chilean port city of Dalcahue on the island of Chiloé. On September 25, 2019, reports began to come in from frightened residents who claimed to have witnessed strange a red ball glowing in the sky, and many of these local witnesses insisted that the object was causing fires. Some even claimed that they had seen the object faltering and crashing into the wilderness. At least six wildfires broke out in the region during this flurry of UFO reports, and firefighters on the scene described how the areas were permeated by a strange smell and smoke that was “not smoke from material but rather from stone, like Sulphur.” Alejandro Verges, Director of Chile’s National Office of Emergencies of the Interior Ministry (ONEMI), made a statement, saying:
The fires are attributable to an object that, so far, has not been identified. There cannot be six sources of fire in a radius of 200 meters and all of them isolated. It’s like if small balls of fire have fallen. Some burnt the roots and others burned a little more. It is very strange.
The main idea at the time was that the fires and sightings had been caused by a meteorite or space debris, but no sign of either of these were turned up. In fact, a follow up investigation carried out by Chile’s National Service of Geology and Mining led them to rule out the possibility that this had been caused by a disintegrating meteorite after not a shred of space rock was turned up at any of the fire sites. Searches also didn’t turn up any signs of metal that could have been from a fallen satellite or other space junk, and the Chilean fires and the UFO reports surrounding them have remained mysterious.
Perhaps one of the most well-known incidents involving mysterious fires and talk of UFOs occurred between 2003 and 2005, in the area of Canneto di Caronia, Siciliy, in Italy. It started in December of 2003, when a local resident reported that his television had inexplicably sparked and exploded, followed by various unexplained fires spontaneously erupting throughout the home at all hours. Before long, other residents of the area were reporting the same thing, with cars, mattresses, beds, furniture, fuse boxes, air conditioners, kitchen appliances, computers, and even wedding presents bursting into flame for no discernible reason, all confined to one delineated area. Some of these fires would start in the same place over and over again, and at least one witness said that his TV had caught fire on five separate occasions. In more serious cases, entire homes were burned to the ground by the mystery blazes, and these fires continued even after the utilities company cut power to the neighborhood. From January to March of 2004 a total of 92 fires were reported, and in none of the cases were officials able to find a rational cause. It was causing a panic, and 39 residents would be evacuated from the area during the scare, all fueled by strange reports of the flames acting oddly, appearing to move almost with purpose or jump place to place.
In the meantime, an interdisciplinary research group coordinated by Francesco Venerando Mantegna from the Sicilian Protezione Civile, reportedly found evidence of unusual electromagnetic activity in places where the fires had broken out, as well as strange reports of unexplained lights in the sky and a helicopter that experienced allegedly anomalous rotor damage. This soon had frightened locals whispering rumors of the fires being caused by ghosts, witches, demons, secret U.S. military tests of radiation weapons or “Tesla technology,” and of course UFOs, only further fueled by sightings of strange lights in the sky at the same time the fires were going on. The mayor of the town explained it as the result of “unknown electromagnetic radiation,” and one government report supposedly read that the blazes were “caused by a high power electromagnetic emissions which were not man-made and reached a power of between 12 and 15 gigawatts,” but no one knew for sure. One ufologist by the name of Nigel Watson would say of the fires and their connection to possible alien forces:
Spontaneous combustion of electrical appliances or interference with them is often associated with UFO sightings. There are literally hundreds of cases of cars stalling and their electrical systems being messed up in the presence of UFOs.’ In the town of Caronia, northern Sicily, there was a spate of appliances, machines, mattresses and electrical wiring suddenly bursting into flame. Geophysicists and electrical experts were puzzled by this phenomenon, but the villagers noted that this was an area that was suffering from a high concentration of UFO sightings.
What was going on here? It was eventually thought to be the work of arsonists, but no one was ever arrested and fire authorities never were able to explain how the fires had started. Curiously, the phenomenon would return to the area in 2014, and this time an arsonist named Giuseppe Pezzino was arrested, but it is unknown what connection this has to the 2003-2005 mystery fires. What happened at Canneto di Caronia? It is uncertain just how true any of these cases are, or if UFOs really were involved or not, but they serve to make us think, and show us that not all supposed alien encounters are of the benevolent variety. What was going on here? Who knows? They will likely never be solved for sure, and they serve to add more to the lore of this very strange phenomenon.
It’s one thing to see a UFO. It’s quite another to see a 100-foot UFO in a daytime confrontation with military jets and get decent photographs of the encounter. It’s not surprising that a government in possession of said photos would be unwilling to release them it’s frustrating that said government would ignore a commitment to release them to the public after 30 years, and then not only renege on said commitment but vow to keep them hidden for another 50 years. That’s not the plot of a paranormal thriller but a real-life drama going on the UK right now as the infamous photos of a diamond-shaped UFO hovering over Calvine, Scotland, in 1990 were scheduled to be released in January 2021 but have beenlocked up again for 50 more years. Is it because this the smoking gun? The holy grail of UFO photos? The proof that we’re not alone? The thing that would change I-want-to-believers into believers?
“I soon got the story out of my predecessor and read the file myself. It was an extraordinary tale: two men had been out hiking near Calvine in Scotland.
Suddenly, they’d seen a massive UFO hanging in the sky above their heads, silent, motionless and menacing. Awestruck, they shot off six photographs before the object accelerated away at immense speed – vertically!
The shell-shocked witnesses sent the photos to a Scottish newspaper and a journalist contacted the MoD press office, looking for a comment.
Somehow – perhaps using a D-Notice or perhaps using some real-life Men-in-Black trickery – someone at the MoD managed to extract all the photos and the negatives from the newspaper, who never got them back.”
Nick Pope, the former Ministry of Defence official who ran its UFO project, told the story of the Calvine UFO to The Sun – a story he had intimate on-the-job knowledge of and could still not disclose everything due to its classified status.
“The analysis was nothing short of sensational. The photos hadn’t been faked.
They showed a structured craft of unknown origin, unlike any conventional aircraft. There was no fuselage, no wings, no tail, no engines and no markings of any sort.”
The incident was downplayed by the Defence Ministry and the photos were never returned to the witnesses, who said they also saw RAF jets flying at a lower altitude as the UFO sped off. Pope says he helped colorize the photos (and had one made into a poster, which was later confiscated) but the department was never able to explain them. That probably still holds true, but is that a sufficient reason to lock them up for 50 more years? The authorities in this case are the National Archives. A Freedom of Information Act complaint about this new action has been filed and is under investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office — the UK information watchdog. As always no comments by the National Archives nor the Ministry of Defence.
Will anything happen? It’s pretty doubtful. Nick Pope sticks to his policy of refusing to reveal classified information, and that’s probably a good plan considering the UK government is playing hardball. Does Tom DeLonge have any pull across the pond? He doesn’t have that much in his own pond.
We ALL want to believe.
Nick Pope had his “I want to believe” Calvine poster forcibly removed. Fox Mulder has never been able to update his. Are those signs of our chances for disclosure on the Calvine UFO files? On ANY X-Files? Perhaps Dana Scully can provide some hope.
“We do our work. The truth still lies in the X-Files, Mulder.”
Over the last week I’ve written several articles here that are focused on the Majestic 12 documents, Stan Friedman’s FBI file, espionage, counterintelligence, and disinformation. Most of it revolves around secret documents, leaked papers, spies and UFOs. And with the Russians poking their collective nose in too – but for reasons that, to this very day, still remain unclear. All of that brings us to another part of the story; a part that many of you may not be aware of. When, in the late 1980s, the story of the Majestic 12 documents got more and more complicated and multi-layered, Bill Moore – the co-author with Charles Berlitz of The Roswell Incident – quite reasonably tried to get his hands on his FBI file – if such a thing existed. It turns out that such a file did exist. It has to be said that it would have been a huge surprise if there wasn’t such a file on Moore, given all that had gone down with regard to crashed UFOs, bodies of aliens on ice, the FBI connection, and allegedly leaked top secret papers on extraterrestrial life. On November 16, 1988 – when the FBI’s investigation of the Majestic 12 papers was at its height – UFO investigator Larry Bryant approached the Center for National Security Studies.
Bryant explained that Moore was looking to try and obtain his FBI file and determine what it contained. There was a good reason for this: Moore had already been able to determine that a file existed on him, which at the time, ran close to sixty pages; but he was having trouble getting the papers declassified. Moore’s file got lengthier when the FBI’s Majestic 12 probe got ever more complicated, something that is hardly a surprise. Notably, some of the documents on Moore, the man himself learned, fell under the “B1” category of the Freedom of Information Act. Rather notably, B1 covers U.S. national security issues. That was quite a revelation. For Moore, though, not necessarily a good revelation. In a proactive fashion, and with regard to Moore’s file, Bryant put together an ad for publication in various military-themed publications. The ad was titled “UFO Secrecy/Congress-Watch.” It revealed that Moore’s FBI file was officially classified at a “Secret” level, and that it demonstrated another agency, beyond the FBI, was also watching Moore. The ad was published on November 23, 1988 in The Pentagram, an official U.S. Army publication. Bryant, in the ad, suggested those reading it should demand a congressional hearing in relation to the UFO phenomenon. Despite Bryan’s gung-ho approach, and help and advice from the Center for National Security Studies, Moore only managed to secure a small portion of his file.
One year later, 1989, Bryant tried to get a hold of any and all files that the FBI might have had on yet another figure in the Majestic 12 story: Stanton Friedman. The FBI got back to Bryant on August 2: “Mr. Friedman is the subject of one Headquarters main file. This file is classified in its entirety and I am affirming the denial of access to it.” Attempts to determine the length and the scope of the file fell flat. So, on August 28, Bryant filed a suit in the District Court for the Eastern District of Columbia. He said: “My complaint seeks full disclosure of the UFO-related content of the FBI dossier on Stan Friedman. Neither Stan nor I have been able to convince the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to loosen its grasp on that dossier, which Bureau officials assert bears a security classification.” Today, we know that the Friedman file is not too exciting at all. As this article demonstrates – combined with those I’ve written over the past few days – in the latter part of the 1980s, a great deal was going on behind the scenes in relation to Russians, FBI files, ufologists, and disinformation programs (such as the one that brought Paul Bennewitz down). Guess what? The story still isn’t over.
Banned Disney UFO Documentary: Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland
Banned Disney UFO Documentary: Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland
“Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland” BANNED DISNEY UFO DOCUMENTARY In March of 1995, without warning, Disney aired a family special. the documentary was so controversial that it was pulled from the airwaves and banned from ever being shown again. Robert Urich, the legendary Jim Street in S.W.A.T. (1975), is the host of this voyage around the UFO’s and its mystery.
From New Tomorrowland, in Disneyland, Urich talks about UFO, contacts, evidence of it arrives, abductions, military documents, and other things that surround this controversial thematic. From the 30′s years ahead, the UFOs always have been there very close to us, every day, every time. Exist the aliens?,in truth, they come to planet Earth? Could it be a fiction created by the military?
And the last and most important question: if they exist, would they will be our friends…or our enemies? Written by Chockys
Following an investigation report published in the New York Times, the Pentagon, in 2017, admitted that they conducted a secret project named AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program) to unravel the mysteries behind UFO sighting that happened in the US Naval bases.
Earlier this year, Pentagon officially released some UFO videos, and it made many people believe that alien existence on planet Earth is real. Even though President Donald Trump has never admitted the existence of aliens, his recent comments on America's military might have made many believe that he was actually threatening aliens.
Donald Trump's Comments on UFOs
In an interview on Sunday, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked Trump why the Department of Defense had set up a UFO task force. She also asked him whether he believes in the existence of UFOs.
Flickr/Gage Skidmore
"Well, I'm going to have to check on that. I mean, I've heard that. I heard that two days ago. So I'll check on that. I'll take a good, strong look at that," replied Trump.
Soon, he started talking about America's military might, which many social media users consider an indirect threat to aliens who are planning to invade planet Earth.
"I will tell you this, we now have created a military the likes of which we've never had before, in terms of equipment. The equipment that we have, the weapons that we have, and hopefully — hope to god we never have to use them. Russia, China, they're all envious of what we've had. All built in the USA, we've rebuilt it, $2.5trn. As far as the other question, I'll have to check on it. I heard about it two days ago actually," added Trump.
Trump and Roswell UFO Crash
This is not the first time that Trump is making crazy remarks about aliens. Recently, in a Father's Day-themed interview with his son Don Trump Junior on his YouTube channel, the president claimed that he knows several interesting things about the Roswell UFO crash.
The Roswell UFO crash happened in 1947, and initially, it was reported that an alien spacecraft crashlanded on Earth. But later, the US military revealed that it was a weather balloon, and eventually, the authorities admitted that the wreckage was the part of a top-secret atomic project.
The Glowing Vision of a UFO Observed Over Clarenville, Newfoundland and Labrador Comes to Life on New Royal Canadian Mint Collector Coin
The Glowing Vision of a UFO Observed Over Clarenville, Newfoundland and Labrador Comes to Life on New Royal Canadian Mint Collector Coin
OTTAWA, Ontario, Oct. 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Mint has added to its extra-popular Canada's Unexplained Phenomena series by telling the strange story of the 1978 UFO sighting in the skies of Clarenville, Newfoundland and Labrador. The Clarenville Event is vividly illustrated on a new glow-in-the-dark collector coin that captures the moment an RCMP Constable and multiple witnesses observed the mysterious lights and oval shape of an unidentified flying object hovering near the city of Clarenville. The Mint is now accepting orders for this mesmerizing coin.
2020 $20 Fine Silver Coin - The Clarenville Event reverse.jpg
Working with a canvas-like rectangular coin, East coast artistAdam Younghas recreated the events ofOctober 26, 1978, whenClarenvillemade UFO history. On that night, RCMP ConstableJames Blackwoodresponded to a call from astonished onlookers. When he arrived at the scene, witnesses directed his attention to a brightly lit object in the sky. Using binoculars and a high-powered scope, they observed the fin-tailed, oval-shaped craft as it hovered above the water near Random Island. It emitted no sound; and when the officer flashed the lightbar on his police cruiser, the mysterious craft instantly mimicked the lights. It remained in the area for nearly an hour before rising up suddenly and vanishing into the night, leaving no traces of its passage – except a credible eyewitness account.
"I wanted this piece to include all the elements of the 1978 experience while also incorporating the rugged yet whimsical coastline so often found in the Newfoundland landscape," explains Adam Young. "Light and line direction were also important aspects of the design, creating a circular visual flow throughout the composition. This has been an exciting artistic endeavour, which, throughout my research for the design, has caused me to tumble down the rabbit hole of other Canadian UFO sightings."
True to the scene described by witnesses that night, luminescent elements on the coins shine through when exposed to a black light. The rectangular $20 Fine Silver Coin - Canada's Unexplained Phenomena: The Clarenville Event has a limited mintage of 5,000 and retails for $129.95.
This new collectible may be ordered as of today by contacting the Mint at 1-800-267–1871 in Canada, 1-800-268–6468 in the US, or at www.mint.ca.
The Royal Canadian Mint is the Crown corporation responsible for the minting and distribution of Canada's circulation coins. The Mint is one of the largest and most versatile mints in the world, offering a wide range of specialized, high quality coinage products and related services on an international scale. For more information on the Mint, its products and services, visit www.mint.ca. Follow the Mint on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
For more information, media are asked to contact: Pascale Poulin, Coordinator, Public Affairs, Telephone: 613-724-8083, poulinp@mint.ca
"Mr. President, as we wrap up here, are there UFOs?" Bartiromo said.
"Well I'm gonna have to check on that," Trump replied. "I mean, I've heard that. I heard that two days ago, so I'll check on that. I'll take a good, strong look at that."
The president went on to discuss the military and later reiterated his promise to "check on" UFOs.
"I will tell you this," he said when asked about the UAPTF by Bartiromo. "We now have created a military, the likes of which we've never had before in terms of equipment. The equipment that we have, the weapons that we have — and hopefully, hope to God we never have to use them."
"Russia, China, they're all envious of what we've had," Trump added. "All built in the USA. We've rebuilt it, $2.5 trillion. As far as the other question, I'll check on it. I heard about it two days ago actually."
"In April, the Pentagon declassified three videos of 'unidentified aerial phenomena,'" Orecchio-Egresitz wrote. "The next month, the Navy released several incident reports from encounters with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) — a generic term for any aerospace asset that is unidentifiable, rather than confirmation as an actual aerial object piloted by extraterrestrials."
Trump has expressed skepticism when asked about UFOs in the past
"I think it's probably — I want them to think whatever they think," Trump told George Stephanopoulos. "They do say, and I've seen, and I've read, and I've heard, and I did have one very brief meeting on it. But people are saying they're seeing UFOs."
UFO experts hit out when it emerged a dossier into Britain’s most significant sighting is to be kept secret for another 50 years.
The file is said to contain astonishing colour photographs of a 100ft craft hovering over the village of Calvine in the Scottish Highlands in 1990.
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A colourised image of the alleged UFO sighting in 1990
A 30-year rule meant it was due to be declassified on January 1 — but the Ministry of Defence has now blocked release until 2072 without explanation.
Photographs were taken by two Perthshire hikers who watched the “diamond-shaped metallic craft” for ten minutes before it shot up vertically out of sight.
They also claimed to see military jets fly a series of low-level passes.
Where the UFO was spotted in the Highlands in 1990
Evidence collected and held on to by officials included the hikers’ six colour snaps.
A redacted version of the file has been released, including just a blurred photocopied image.
UFO investigator Nick Pope helped colourise the image, seen above.
Last night, Mr Pope said: “Despite an extensive investigation, we never found a definitive explanation for what was seen at Calvine.”
A UFO hunter added: “This is all so frustrating. The Calvine Incident is one of the most intriguing of all the UFO mysteries from that period.
“Under the 30-year rule, the file should have been released on January 1 2021, but if the ministry get their way it won’t be released until January 1 2072 — an 82-year closure.
“By the time the world gets to see the file, the two witnesses will be dead. It is crazy. What are the authorities trying to hide?”
The redacted file also omitted the names and contact details of the hikers.
Those who believe the “truth is out there” slogan of TV show The X Files are furious that, without access to those who reported the sightings, it remains impossible to get the full story.
A complaint lodged under the Freedom of Information Act about the National Archives withholding the documents is now under investigation by the UK information watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office.
The National Archives refused to comment further. The MOD refused to comment at all.
Expert's view
By Nick Pope, ex-MOD UFO investigator
TESTS showed the photos hadn’t been faked. They showed a structured craft of unknown origin, unlike any conventional aircraft.
There was no fuselage, no wings, no tail, no engines and no markings of any sort.
Because the photos had been taken in daylight with the surrounding countryside visible, Ministry of Defence boffins could make some calculations about the mystery object’s size.
It turned out to be nearly 100 feet in diameter.
An enlargement of the photos revealed two military jets.
It wasn’t clear if they were escorting the UFO, trying to intercept it, or just there by coincidence.
UFOs are suspected to be carrying alien life on board
Some of the most sensational UFO accounts are those that revolve around these strange craft coming down to earth. The Dreamy Draw Recreation Area, in the U.S. state of Arizona, is a rugged desert park next to Piestewa Peak, formerly called Squaw Peak Mountain. The area is known for its quaint beauty, hiking and horseback riding trails, and opportunities for all manner of outdoor activities. Looking out over these vistas tales of UFOs and aliens might be the furthest thing from one’s mind, but if the local lore is to be believed this was the site of a very unusual case in which a UFO came crashing down to earth, complete with alien bodies and which according to some is still there somewhere.
The story begins in 1947, in fact not all that long after the more famous alleged UFO crash at Roswell. While the story has changed into slightly different variations over the years, the main lore has it that in October of that year, two men by the names of Silas Newton and “Dr. Gee” witnessed a strange object come thundering down to earth to crash near the mountain, and the curious pair went to investigate. They supposedly arrived to find strange wreckage and the area strewn with several bodies of four-and-a-half-foot tall humanoid creatures with oversized heads, all of them dead. The men purportedly then collected these bodies and stowed them in a meat freezer until they could figure out what to do with them and who to tell. Apparently, they wouldn’t have the chance to tell anyone, as the men were soon after visited by mysterious men in black suits, who whisked the bodies away and told the witnesses in no uncertain terms that they were not to say a word to anyone about what they had seen and found.
Dreamy Draw Recreational Area
After this, the story goes that the government moved into the area with U.S. Army personnel, and not only that, but the Army Corps of Engineers had then went about building the Dreamy Draw dam right over the remains of the fallen spacecraft. It is said that the place didn’t need a dam at all, and the only reason it was built at all was to cover up the evidence of the crash, at least according to the tale. The case is most well-known from the 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers, by Frank Scully, but there have been numerous people since then who have stepped forward with further information on the otherworldly events. One letter sent into Legends Magazine is from an anonymous sender who has a lot to say about the site, and the letter reads:
I have more to add on the crash at dreamy draw. I’ve been hiking there for years and have noticed the bizarre features at the water retention site – built by the U.S. Army corps, – the dam area – which is off limits to all, has an “excessive” amount of posted signs – threatening 5yrs/$10,000 fine every 50 ft, there is also electronic monitoring of the “vault” – which is more like a concrete “bunker”- from WWII, this pillbox is located at the low point inside the “fake” retention area. Firstly, I’ve never seen any water there, for its location is not where watershed from squaw-peak mtn could be trapped. Why is it there? Behind a huge iron door inside the bunker, [I believe] grants entry to inside the vault to monitor / keep secure what is entombed within the dam structure itself. There is a spillway on the outside of dam – you can’t get near it – but its fake, made to look functional. Most of all, I know how un-thorough the government has been with crash site clean-up, maybe they couldn’t get everything – just west of secure area, there’s a hill with a rocky out-cropping and underneath in the shady areas, mold is growing – abnormally diverse and thick, shouldn’t even be there, I’ve counted 5 types/colors, its bizarre – nowhere on that mountain/trails, have I seen moss/fungus so pronounced.
Closer looking around the outcrop, I noticed the rocks in places, looked more like metal than rocks, silverish – some kind of liquid had made contact and dripped down inside the crevices, I pulled some of the rocks from the fissures and found it more abundant as it had clotted up in places. It looked organic, but nothing you could identify it with, this stuff now dried up was obviously a liquid at one time, must have been like soup, thicker than water – in the way it pooled down in the cracks of rock. The dried-goo was opaque/pearl green and I noticed it had reacted different to various rock types, the soft sandstone shale it bonded with/ dried on top, the harder quartz looked like a corrosive had made contact and pitted/dissolved areas like acid, this didn’t make much sense
I selected some of the more “choice” examples and decided to hike back to the truck with them – cradled in my right forearm. I placed them on a floor matte in the truck-bed & drove home. Driving down the freeway I started rubbed my arm-not thinking about it like a tickle/itch, after doing this for some time I said to myself – “what is it” like a insect bite or something, realizing those rocks had rested there for approx 10 min hiking back, it was like cleaning your battery posts and making contact with the acid on your elbow or something- there was a welt there and so I washed it in the kitchen sink, but then decided to shower, it vanished quickly. A few days later, “the rocks”- disappeared from the side of my house, I later found my girlfriend had put them out in the yard as landscaping decor – adding they looked cool there, and liked the “weird colors”. I only go hiking on the weekends, but haven’t been in a few weeks – its been hot! I been to the out cropping 4 times and every time I return, I’ve noticed something more to add to the story.
What is going on here and is this person for real? There have also been reports of people in the area of the dam reporting strange phenomena such as sudden spells of dizziness or inexplicable panic attacks, as well as those who claim to hear an inexplicable humming in the area. One witness calling himself Trevor Freeman has said of his own experience with this to Weird Arizona:
So I went to check this place out after school. It’s Monday afternoon, hardly anybody is around. I’m pedaling around on my bike and I find the dam. It’s fenced off pretty well and there are LOTS of No Trespassing signs everywhere. Pretty high security for an earthen dam with no water behind it! I take some pictures, look around, and I see the outfall of the dam buried in the bushes. I ride around to the other side and hike down into the low area. There’s a large concrete box with a fence on 3 sides. As I am getting down towards the bottom, I hear this steady, low-pitched humming noise. I can’t figure out what it is! Is there really a UFO buried beneath this thing? As I glance around to see if anyone’s watching, a plane crosses the sky. The place is not TOO far from the airport, but it’s still close enough to hear jets taking off. That’s probably what I heard. The lesson is that you’ll never realize how much weird stuff is out there until you start looking!
It is all very intriguing, and the idea that a UFO crashed here and was covered up by a dam really stirs the imagination, but there are definitely cracks in the tale. One is that the supposed UFO crash doesn’t seem to have ever been covered by any actual news agency at the time. Everything we know about it comes from unverifiable accounts, secondhand reports, and rumors, as well as brief mentions in Scully’s book Beyond Flying Saucers, as well as Timothy Good’s 1987 book Above Top Secret, and little else. Also a rather glaring hole in the story is that it seems that the dam was actually not built until 1973, which seems to put to rest the allegations that it was made to cover up a 1947 UFO crash. UFO researcher and journalist Alejandro Rojas has dug into the case by visiting the area and poking around, and he has come away frustrated, saying:
What I sought to do is figure out what happened at Dreamy Draw… all I could find is there were rumors, there was a witness who claimed to have seen something happen either in Cave Creek or Paradise Valley or Dreamy Draw. Unfortunately, before I could speak to this witness directly he passed away.
Yet the conspiracy theories and reports remain, and there are even those who insist that the dam was not built in 1973, but rather much earlier, with the date of construction itself said to have been altered in order to aid the cover-up. The same goes for newspaper reports, with it being suggested that the same mysterious men in black who visited the original witnesses also went about silencing any news stories that might appear. It has also been pointed out that the whole Dreamy Draw Dam area is very locked up and plastered with no trespassing signs beyond what one would expect for a dam. Is there anything to this story, or is it merely a piece of UFO urban legend? We may never know for sure, and although this is most likely a tall tale, it has still managed to enter the lore of UFO crashes.
UFO encounters happen all over the world, to all types of people, and some of these are stranger than others. Our tale here revolves around a humble factory worker by the name of Bruno Facchini, in the town of Varese, of northern Italy, about 55 km north of Milan. He was known locally as a good, honest, hardworking man who never made trouble and was not prone to tall tales, yet on April 24, 1950 he would gain quite the tale to tell. On this evening there was a serious thunderstorm, and so when it passed he stepped outside during his shift at work to check for any damage that might have been caused by the storm. When he got outside the storm had mostly moved off to become flickers on the dark horizon and some low grumblings from the thunder, but while the storm was gone something altogether odder was in its place. And so would begin one of the strangest UFO cases in Italian history.
Bruno Facchini
He says that he saw there not too far away a strange flickering glow or sparkle, which he at first took to be a damaged power transformer, but as he drew closer to investigate it turned out to be altogether weirder. He approached to see a somewhat circular, glowing object with a flattened top that sparkled and looked like a “crushed ball,” and as he approached even nearer, he could see that the object was “squared by vertical and horizontal stripes, placed at regular intervals.” On the top of the outlandish object was a greenish glow, and even more bizarre was that there was a rectangular open on the bottom of the craft, and a ladder that seemed to have dropped down from it. Bathed in the eerie glow of the object were several small figures, as well as another at the top of the ladder, all of them wearing what looked like grey diving suits of some kind, complete with helmets, masks, and tubes. He says that the two beings outside seemed to have been engaged with welding something on the bottom of their ship.
Facchini Incident Artist’s Impression
At first, he had the impression that these were human pilots who had crashed and were in trouble, and he says of what happened:
Next to a power line pole I saw a huge, round shape. From the illuminated disc, a ladder came down. A door opened. I could see inside the UFO, because a light diffused inside, there was another ladder leading to a higher level of the craft; on the walls, there were bottles connected together in rows and between them I could notice that there were gauges and tubes. In the middle [of the shape] there was a small ladder, lightened by a green light. Almost immediately, I understood that the light came from some sort of lamp handled by a standing man who seemed to be engaged in welding. He wore something like a diving suit and a mask. Driven by curiosity, I went closer, and I saw two other people, with the same clothing, moving slowly around the craft – I guessed that their diving suit was heavy and slowed down their movements. The craft, lighted by the welding tool, cast metallic reflections back.
I offered to help, but the only answer I received were some guttural sounds that were not understandable. I wondered what their intentions were. I had the feeling they were inviting me aboard. Suddenly I heard an uproar, like the amplified buzz of a bee, or a huge power generator. I saw another ladder in the interior of the craft, and all around, tubes, cylinders, and gauges. I understood that this was not a plane, and I was seized by panic, I started to run away. I was not so close anymore when I turned my head back. I saw one of the men raise some sort of apparatus he carried at his side and beam a ray of light in my direction. I started to run again, but immediately, I felt as if I was cut in two parts by some cutting tool or by a jet of compressed air and I fell flat. I kept running, but at the same time I had the impression of being reached by a blunt force or to be more precise, by a powerful jet of compressed air, and I fell to the ground, more than right on the edge of one of the border stones that bounded the fields.
They seemed not to be interested in my anymore. I am convinced they only wanted to scare me and had no intention to do anything wrong to me. They were busy in removing the scaffold and withdrawing the ladder. Then the door closed. All the lights went out. And the buzzing sound continued. Suddenly the sound became louder. The craft took off, gained speed and disappeared.
He now knew that these were no human pilots, and he was filled with horror and panic, and when he looked back, he could see the strange beings board their ship, which then shot up into the sky with tremendous speed and that buzzing sound that sounded like an angry beehive. The whole ordeal left him shaken and confused, and the following morning he went to the police to tell his far-out story. The skeptical officers who went to the scene were surprised to find large patches of burnt ground, as well as strange indentations and what seemed to be circular footprints of some type. There were additionally found shards of a strange, green metallic substance, which would later be analyzed to find that they were a sort of heat-resistant, “anti-friction” material composed of 74% copper, 19% tin, traces of Silver, Aluminum and Magnesium, and other trace elements, as well as some sort of unidentified lubricant.
Making this all even odder than it already is, around a week after his bizarre encounter, Facchini says that he began to have certain unusual physical symptoms, which he connected with the incident. He claimed that his back had become bruised and turned a sickly yellow, precisely where the beam had hit him, and he also complained of mysterious headaches and bouts of dizziness and nausea. A visit to the doctor would also supposedly turn up a strange black mark where the beam had hit. When he had an interview about his experiences in 1981, he claimed that he was still suffering from lingering physical effects such as headaches and inexplicable hot flashes and fevers, as well as profound psychological trauma. He has never backed down from his story, but we are left to wonder what happened to him. Was any of this real at all, or is it a delusion? With no hard evidence and those metal shards having since disappeared we are left to speculate, and it remains a very strange case with no concrete answers.
Secret UFO dossier about famous UK sighting restricted from public for another 50 years
The secret file is said to contain incredible colour photographs of the infamous sighting in 1990, where two hitchhikers claim they saw a 100ft craft hovering over Calvine in Scotland
By Jamie Hawkins
Two hitchhikers captured this photo of an alleged UFO in Calvine in 1990
(Image: Cynon Valley Leader)
A secret dossier that details one of Britain's most famous UFO sightings is to be kept secret for another 50 years.
It apparently contains incredible colour photos taken in 1990 that allegedly show a 100ft craft hovering over Calvine in the Scottish Highlands.
Two hikers were walking in the area when suddenly they say they saw a diamond shaped aircraft over the landscape before speeding off into the distance.
The two hikers took pictures of the craft and immediately contacted journalists from the Scottish Daily Record Newspaper.
After viewing their photos, the journalists chose to share both pictures and negatives with the Ministry of Defence.
A 30-year rule meant the file was meant to be declassified in January next year, but the Ministry of Defence has now blocked its release for another 50 years, until 2072.
The UFO dossier cannot be released until 2072(Image: Getty Images)
UFO investigator Nick Pope helped colourise the famous image, and hit out at the MOD's decision to delay the dossier even further.
Another UFO hunter told The Sun : “This is all so frustrating. The Calvine Incident is one of the most intriguing of all the UFO mysteries from that period.
“Under the 30-year rule, the file should have been released on January 1 2021, but if the ministry get their way it won’t be released until January 1 2072 — an 82-year closure.
“By the time the world gets to see the file, the two witnesses will be dead. It is crazy. What are the authorities trying to hide?”
The sighting was one of Britain's most famous(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Gwrych Castle in Abergele, Wales is miles up the coast from Puffin Island, where well-known UFO hunter Russ Kellett believes a spaceship was found in the 1970s.
Mr Kellett believes the spaceship and alien visitors were covered up to avoid panic.
A source told the Daily Star: "The celebs will be braced for horrible trials and wet weather.
Gwrych Castle is supposedly haunted and parts of the building had fallen into disrepair(Image: Daily Post Wales)
"But they could get something far more terrifying – an alien invasion."
Locals of the area have previously claimed that the castle itself is haunted by the potential for an alien sighting will add a whole other dimension to procedings.
"If there are any extra-terrestrial visitors, it will certainly make for good telly," noted the source.
In 1988, a trio of joggers believe they sighted a flying saucer above the village of Dwygyfylchi in North Wales.
This was followed by three separate sightings of what appeared to be an alien spacecraft above Abergele, according to a retired police officer in 1998.
UFO encounters sometimes seem to happen all of the time, to people all over the place and from all walks of life. Yet the ones that really seem to capture our attention and imaginations are the ones that happen to well-known figures and celebrities. Indeed, in this culture of celebrity these cases tend to absolutely fascinate, and show us that it is not always some nobody out in the sticks who meets up with otherworldly forces. Here we will look at a selection of some very high profile actors and musicians who have allegedly had encounters with UFOs and aliens just as bizarre as anyone else’s.
A very famous actor who has actually garnered quite the reputation for being a complete UFO nut is Canadian actor Dan Aykroyd, of Ghostbusters fame. He’s apparently pretty hardcore into it, and Ackroyd is also known for being rather an expert on the subject. Not only is he intensely interested in the UFO phenomenon, but he has become a sort of champion of pressuring for full disclosure from the government on the truth of the phenomenon, and has just so happened to have had his own sightings on more than one occasion. In a 2015 episode of The HuffPost Show with host Marc Lamont Hill, the topic turned to the strange and he talked candidly about the U.S. Air Force’s UFO alleged cover-up and some details about his own personal UFO sightings. When asked if he truly believed in UFOs, Aykroyd answered:
I do, absolutely, and I’m not alone. I have seen four, and I can’t say that they are alien craft and neither can the Air Force. The Air Force has been very interested in this. They don’t deny the existence of these hyperdynamic, super aerodynamic craft. They don’t deny. Their anguish comes in that they can’t tell you. They want to tell you anything but that they are extraterrestrial. Any excuse at all, even if they are unknown or unsolved. The Air Force cannot just come out and admit that there are extraterrestrial beings far in advanced of our culture that have built these machines. They are very interested in what is going on, but like us, they don’t know. I believe that there are probably many species coming and going and that the Air Force is very interested, but they can’t come out and say. Because then you’re going to go, ‘well wait a minute, the parish priest, the cop on the street, the President — you don’t got the power. They’ve got the power!’ You’d have complete breakdown of society.
On the show, Aykroyd went on to give some further details into his own strange UFO sightings, saying:
Two specifically were definitely aerial constructs of some kind. One of them with a light, and one of them dull gray, and they were structures – one of them going very slow, one of them hovering over me. Then there were the two that my wife and friends and I saw – a high altitude sighting many years ago in Martha’s vineyard. Two flying side by side. They were at about 100,000 feet up, and they were going fast.
Dan Aykroyd
Aykroyd has also gone on and on about UFOs on his Facebook page, often referencing research and books and talking about his conspiratorial ideas about government cover-ups. He actively plugged the 2014 book The FBI-CIA-UFO Connection: The Hidden UFO Activities of USA Intelligence Agencies on his page, which goes over the vast research done on declassified documents by a physicist named Dr. Bruce Maccabee, who spent thirty-six years at the Naval Surface Warfare Center. Aykroyd would say in a Facebook post of the book:
Ex-Naval Surface Warfare employee and physicist Dr. Bruce Maccabee has assembled the most extensively and meticulously researched body of documentary evidence ever compiled on the U.S. government’s genuine interest in the UFO phenomena. The USAF has NEVER denied the existence of these super-performance aerodynamic vehicles. The Air Force’s continued anguish over PUBLIC disclosure is not due to the military’s genuinely admitted reality of these machines’ existence but due to the government’s struggle to categorize the phenomena as being ANYTHING but extra planetary in origin.
Another big name actor who has had his own experience is Russel Crowe, who while hanging out with a friend in the suburb of Woolloomooloo, in Sydney, not only saw a UFO, but claims to have actually filmed it. Apparently he and his friend were out watching and photographing fruit bats when they saw two mysterious crimson flashes or streaks floating across the sky. Never mind the mystery of why an A-list Hollywood star was out randomly taking pictures of fruit bats, what was this unidentified object he says he saw? Crowe captured images with his camera and put together a time lapse sequence that seems to show them flying across the sky, and he would later excitedly post the images to his Twitter account with the words “UFO? Time Lapse Photos Outside RC’s Woolloomooloo Office (THESE ARE REAL!)” He would insist that the photos were not due to camera flash or any sort of artifact on the lens or lens flare. A lot of people have been quick to point out that the images are inconclusive and it could all just be a publicity stunt, but Crowe has always alleged that the photos are of actual UFOs.
Russel Crowe
Actor Kurt Russel also had a bizarre encounter while piloting a small plane towards an airport in Phoenix, Arizona. As he approached, he claimed to see a triangular formation of lights not far from his plane. At the time he was with his son Oliver, and they both saw the strange phenomenon and at the time they did not realize what they were seeing. It would not be until years later that Russel was watching a program about UFOs and realized that his sighting had happened during the famous Phoenix Lights mass UFO sighting in 1997. In fact, it is even believed that Kurt Russel was one of the first pilots to call their sighting in. Russel has explained of that night:
We were on approach. I saw six lights over the airport in absolute uniform in a V shape. Oliver said to me – I was just looking at him, I was coming in, we’re maybe a half a mile out – and Oliver said, ‘Pa, what are those lights?’ Then I kind of came out of my reverie and I said, ‘I don’t know what they are,’” Russell recalled, “‘Are we okay here?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna call in,’ and I reported it.
A more obscure actor, at least in this day and age is the great Jackie Gleason, who outdoes these other reports in that he is rumored to have actually seen alien bodies. A lot of younger readers might not recognize the name, but in his day the comedian, actor, and writer Jackie Gleason (1916- 1987) was a legendary icon. Probably best known for his character Ralph Kramden in the hit television series The Honeymooners and his role as Sheriff Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit series of films, Gleason had a long and storied career, appearing in countless movies and TV shows in the 1950s and 60s, including his own The Jackie Gleason Show, also launching a successful music career, and he was a very famous and well-known stalwart of the entertainment industry and a household name. Behind the scenes, though, he had an array of unconventional hobbies that many people did not really know about and which he tried as much as possible to keep out of the public eye.
Jackie Gleason
You see, Jackie Gleason was a complete an unrepentant paranormal and UFO geek. He spent hours reading about all areas of parapsychology, Forteana, aliens, and the unexplained, and obsessively collected books on such things, in particular UFOs. Indeed, he is widely known as having had one of the largest private collections of books on UFOs in the country, which would be donated to the University of Miami after his death. In the biography The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason, author William A. Henry III explains of this intense interest and fascination thusly:
Jackie Gleason had a lifelong fascination with the supernatural. He would spend small fortunes on everything from financing psychic research to buying a sealed box said to contain actual ectoplasm, the spirit of life itself. He would contact everyone from back-alley charlatans to serious researchers like J.B. Rhine of Duke University and, disdaining the elitism of the scholarly apparatus, would treat them all much the same way. Gleason was a frequent insomniac. He would stay up high the night reading (or rereading) some of the hundreds of (UFO and paranormal phenomena) volumes in his library.
It was partly this interest that led to his friendship with former president Richard Nixon, who was also interested in UFOs. Gleason had also long supported Nixon’s campaigns and was a staunch Republican, and as Nixon had a vacation compound not far away from Gleason’s Florida home the two would strike up a friendship to become frequent golfing buddies, chattering about UFOs and other weird stuff the whole time. It was after one of these golf outings on February 19, 1973 that Nixon apparently showed up alone at Gleason’s door in the middle of the night and allegedly excitedly told Gleason to get dressed because he wanted to show him something, after which the comedian was taken to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida and guided by armed guards to a top-secret, highly secured remote installation. Things would purportedly get very strange from here.
Gleason was reportedly led into an underground area through sterile corridors and past several ominous laboratories, at one point passing a weird twisted metal mass encased in glass that Nixon told Gleason was the remains of a UFO. Gleason supposedly wasn’t sure what to think of this, and at first thought the president was just joking around, but he would soon find that this was no joke as he was led into a large chamber area where there were “six or eight of what looked like glass-topped Coke freezers.” Within each of these freezers was allegedly the mangled remains of tiny humanoid bodies, according to Gleason “only about two feet tall, with bald heads and disproportionately large ears.” These, he was told, were the remains of the occupants of a UFO that had crashed “nearby,” and to say it was shocking to the great comedian would be an understatement. It is unclear how much truth any of this holds, a it is mostly known from the memoirs of his jilted, vindictive ex-wife, but it is very odd and entertaining all the same.
The list of celebrity encounters with aliens and UFOs doesn’t stop at actors, and the music world is full of such stories. One of the famous and indeed most bonkers accounts comes from the former lead singer for Van Halen and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Sammy Hagar. According to him, back in the 1970s long before he was famous he had a very vivid dream in which he was apparently visited by two extraterrestrials who plugged him into a machine and tapped into his mind, reading his thoughts and at the same time downloading information into him. He apparently then began to wake up, which prompted the aliens to unplug the machine and shout some sort of cryptic numerical equations at him, after which he woke to hear a “POW” as the room turned white for a few moments. Although this all happened in a dream, Hagar was very quick to insist that it in fact was real, and that actual aliens had infiltrated his mind to go about their business within his dream. In an interview with MTV he would describe of the incident:
I was lying in bed one night dreaming. I saw a ship and two creatures inside of this ship. I couldn’t see their faces. I just knew that there were two intelligent creatures, sitting up in a craft in the Lytle Creek forest area about twelve miles away in the foothills above Fontana. And they were connected to me, tapped into my mind through some kind of mysterious wireless connection. It friggin’ happened. It was real. They were plugged into me. It was a download situation ..Aliens were plugged into me … Either a download or an upload. At the time, I didn’t know how to fucking explain it. But they were downloading or uploading – that’s the simplest way to put it. They were tapped into my brain and the knowledge was transferred back and forth. I could see them and everything while it was happening … Like an experiment: ‘Let’s see what this guy knows’.
Oh, I could see them – two guys on this little hillside. They were playing with a numerical code but it wasn’t from our numerical system. And then, suddenly, this telepathic connection broke. And I could actually see them go back to their ship in a beam of light – zap, like lightning. For a second there was an infinity of white. I couldn’t move. And then it was over. It scared me nearly to death. It was an experience I couldn’t understand. My ego was telling me: They’re programmed you to be a rock star! So I used it as a tool to write songs about outer space and the future, songs like Crack In The World and Silver Lights, which is about the second coming of Christ – Jesus coming back in a spaceship.
Sammy Hagar
Pretty wild to say the least. Just as well-known and also with his own completely bizarre story is the legendary John Lennon, who once told his friend, magician Uri Gellar, a rather astounding tale. Lennon told him that as he was lying in his bed one day he had noticed a bright light seeping through the cracks of the door to the room, and when he got up to see what was going on it had gotten very weird very quickly. He told Gellar that the door opened and into the room stepped four “bug-like” aliens that then used some sort of telepathic power to push him back and then left behind a strange egg-like device. According to Gellar, Lennon would purportedly excitedly tell him:
About six months ago, I was asleep in my bed, with Yoko, at home, in the Dakota Building. And suddenly, I wasn’t asleep. Because there was this blazing light round the door. It was shining through the cracks and the keyhole, like someone was out there with searchlights, or the apartment was on fire. That was what I thought — intruders, or fire. I leapt out of bed, and Yoko wasn’t awake at all, she was lying there like a stone, and I pulled open the door. There were these four people out there. Well they didn’t want my f—in’ autograph. They were, like, little. Bug-like. Big bug eyes and little bug mouths and they were scuttling at me like roaches.”
I’ve told this to two other people, right? One was Yoko, and she believes me. She says she doesn’t understand it, but she knows I wouldn’t lie to her. I told one other person, and she didn’t believe me. She laughed it off, and then she said I must have been high. Well, I’ve been high, I mean right out of it, a lot of times, and I never saw anything on acid that was as weird as those f—in’ bugs, man. I was straight that night. I wasn’t dreaming and I wasn’t tripping. There were these creatures, like people but not like people, in my apartment.
They did something. But I don’t know what it was. I tried to throw them out, but, when I took a step towards them, they kind of pushed me back. I mean, they didn’t touch me. It was like they just willed me. Pushed me with willpower and telepathy. I don’t know. Something happened. Don’t ask me what. Either I’ve forgotten, blocked it out, or they won’t let me remember. But after a while they weren’t there and I was just lying on the bed, next to Yoko, only I was on the covers. And she woke up and looked at me and asked what was wrong. I couldn’t tell her at first. But I had this thing in my hands. They gave it to me. I’ve been carrying it round ever since, wanting to ask somebody the same question. You have it. Maybe you’ll know. I’ve never seen anything like it. Keep it. It’s too weird for me. If it’s my ticket to another planet, I don’t want to go there.
At this point, Lennon allegedly produced from his pocket a small, metallic egg-like object and gave it to Gellar. It was supposedly completely smooth and with no markings or any sort of seams. Gellar supposedly still has it, and he has never quite figured out just what in the world it is. Joining the ranks of famous musicians who have seen aliens or UFOs is the legend David Bowie, who between having his demon-infested swimming pool exorcized and carrying talismans around to prevent witches from stealing his semen also saw his fair share of alien spacecraft. Apparently Bowie went through a phase in which he was dating a girl who would regularly bring him to meditation and UFO watching sessions, and during this time he apparently saw UFOs on many occasions. He reportedly once said of this
We did see UFOs – absolutely. I made sightings six, seven times a night for about a year when I was in the observatory. We had regular cruises that came over . . . they would be stationary for about half an hour, and then after verifying what they’d been doing that day, they’d shoot off.
David Bowie
Not as famous in the U.S., but practically a household name in England is the singer songwriter Robbie Williams, who has allegedly had scores of weird UFO experiences. He has sighted them on many occasions, and he has said of some of the weirder of these cases:
I was at the Beverly Hills Hotel and I was lying on my sun lounger outside at night, looking up. Then, about 300 foot above me, there was this square thing which just passed over my head silently and then shot off. The next one was the weirdest one yet. I’d just written a song called Arizona, and it’s all about alien contact and I was playing that. I stood on the balcony and there was this big ball of gold light that turned up – we thought it was Venus or Mars or something. Then the song stops playing and it disappears. But then we put Arizona on again and the ball turned back up. It happened four times. After that a massive electrical storm started and these two big massive balls of light started dancing in the sky. It was like a whole light show for about an hour. It’s absolutely bonkers. Seriously, I want to go out and investigate these things. I’m stopping being a pop star and being a full-time ufologist.
These are all certainly spectacular accounts, made even more so by the fact that they have been given by some of the most famous and beloved stars of song and film. Whether any of it is true or the result of drugs and delusion is anyone’s guess, but it is all certainly odd and alluring to hear these mega-stars coming forth with their tales. At the very least it adds another layer to the already eccentric world of fame, and such stories serve to draw in curiosity and wonder.
“If they had been called upon by the president to launch [the nukes] they couldn’t have done it.”
Former U.S. Senator Harry Reid – known for instituting the secret Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) in the Defense Department to study UFOs and unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP) – appears in a newly-released documentary on UFO cover-ups by governments worldwide. In this case, Reid is referring to numerous accounts by military personnel working at nuclear missile sites of UFO sightings over them and some actual interference by the UFOs, including full shutdowns of the launch systems, resulting in the security crisis Reid describes in a trailer for the documentary.
“Including shocking never-before-seen testimony from high-ranking government and military officials, NASA Astronauts, and riveting footage, the timely film includes bombshell reveals about UAP incursions at nuclear weapon facilities and the monumental events behind the NY Times’ recent disclosure of UFO videos and The Pentagon’s classified UFO Program. Providing eye-opening evidence that mankind is not alone in the universe, Senator Harry Reid says “The Phenomenon makes the incredible credible.”
Harry Reid
Director James Fox is known for “UFOs: 50 Years of Denial?” and “I Know What I Saw,” and the newly-released “The Phenomenon” is expected to build on that base of UFO research and exposure – in particular, UFOs allegedly disrupting operations at nuclear weapons facilities. One such incident was reported by Captain David D Schindele, a Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missile launch crew commander at the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. In 1966, after UFOs were seen around the base, 10 ICBMs suddenly switched to ‘off-alert’ and could not be launched until they were reset. Schindele says he reported it up the chain of command, but he and the others who either saw the UFOs or the unexplained shutdown or both were told to never speak about to anyone for the rest of their lives. Schindele didn’t – until he mentioned the incident in an interview in 2010 and then in great detail in his tell-all book in 2017.
“Nobody has to agree why it’s there, but shouldn’t we at least be spending some money to study this phenomenon? Shouldn’t we study the stuff? The answer’s yes. And that’s all this was about. And why the federal government all these years has covered up, put brake pads on everything, stopped it. I think it’s very, very bad for our country.”
Harry Reid has long been a proponent – both publicly and privately – of UFO and alien disclosure by the U.S. government, and hinted there is real physical evidence being hidden after the recent videos of UFO encounters with military pilots were released and eventually confirmed. When asked what “stuff” or other confirmed UFO sightings he’s referring to, Reid says “most” of it “hasn’t seen the light of day.”
Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO
There have been encounters between military pilots and UFOs since there were military pilots, and many can eventually be explained by mistaken aircraft (there’s and ours), equipment anomalies, poor visibility and other causes. That doesn’t cover all of them, but what Reid is referring to are special cases concerning nuclear missiles and weapons – a main reason for the Cold War with the Soviet Union. And Captain Schindele’s encounter is not the only one – American Military News reveals that Robert Hastings, who Schindele first told of his encounter in 2010, claims he’s heard of at least 120 former U.S. service members who witnessed UFOs flying around nuclear weapons facilities and/or deactivating equipment. Whether this is aliens, a foreign country, homegrown saboteurs or something else, this is a security risk that should be dragged kicking and screaming into the daylight already.
Will Harry Reid do the dragging? It’s worth remembering that he backtracked on his comments about the government having already recovered alien materials.
Just a couple of days ago, the FBI placed their file on the late UFO researcher/author/nuclear physicistStanton Friedman onto their website, The Vault . The file runs to 61 pages. Don’t get too excited, however: there isn’t much at all in the material that will have ufologists foaming at the mouth. There is one interesting part of the file, though. It states that Friedman “…on February 27, 1984, contacted the Chief of Freedom of Information Privacy Acts (FOIPA) Section, Records Management Division of the FBI and requested information regarding weekly intelligence conferences with a proposed study of flying saucers. At the time Friedman made this request, he provided specific file numbers of FBI HQ files in which this information was contained. It is not known how Friedman obtained these file numbers [italics mine].” That’s really the only part of the file that is of any particular interest. The rest is all of a bureaucratic nature. I did wonder – before I dug into the file – if there might have been something related to the bogus Majestic 12 documents that got so many ufologists foaming at the mouth in the late 198os. After all, Friedman’s colleague Bill Moore (co-author with Charles Berlitz of the 1980 book, The Roswell Incident) had a file opened on himself by the FBI. And the FBI also opened a file on the MJ12 papers. Clearly, however, the FBI wasn’t interested in Friedman’s research into the MJ12 documents. So, does that mean the FBI had zero interest in those controversial, alleged 1947-period papers? No.
We do know something of deep interest though, thanks to the staff of the Bureau Co-Director within the Office of Information and Privacy. In correspondence (back in the 1990s), I was informed by office staff of the existence of an FBI “Main File” on Majestic 12,. It’s now in what is termed “closed status.” The title of the file is not something along the lines of “Potentially leaked document” or “Questionable document,” as one might imagine, given the strange story. Rather, the file title is nothing less than – wait for it – “Espionage.”Almost certainly, the reason why the FBI titled their MJ12 file “Espionage” was for the following reason: at one point in 1988, the FBI pursued the admittedly intriguing theory that the MJ12 documents might have been created by Russian disinformation experts and counterintelligence agents. Now, we come to the next stage. It helps to explain what was going on behind the scenes and expands on the above.
In 1999, Gerald K. Haines – in his position as the historian of the National Reconnaissance Office – wrote a now-declassified paper titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” Haines said that in the 1970s and 1980s there were “…concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using U.S. citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive U.S. weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft),the vulnerability of the U.S. air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings[italics mine].”
Directly connected to the Soviet theory is the fact that, as U.S. Intelligence learned to its consternation during both the 1970s and the 1980s, an unclear number of unnamed UFO researchers – with important links to the U.S. defense industry – had been compromised by Soviet agents. It went like this: those saucer-seekers who just happened to work in the field of defense, and who had been caught tightly in a Kremlin web, would secretly provide the Russians with top secret data on the likes of the F-117 Nighthawk “stealth fighter” and the B-2 Spirit “stealth bomber” – which, at the time, were still highly classified and in test-stage out at the likes of none other than Area 51. In return, the KGB would provide those same American researchers with sensational documents on crashed UFOs and dead aliens. The plan that Moscow had in mind was for the Russians to get their eager hands on real, top secret, non-UFO-themed U.S. military/intelligence documents that could be used to advance Russian military aviation programs. But, those UFO investigators who worked in the defense world would receive nothing but faked garbage from their Soviet handlers, such as – you’ve got it – the Majestic 12 documents. That was the theory U.S. intelligence was concerned by. You can learn the the whole story in my 2019 book, Flying Saucers from the Kremlin.
There’s no doubt there is a fascinating back-story concerning the MJ12 documents (that still has yet to be fully resolved). As the FBI’s file on Stan Friedman shows, though, the Bureau seemingly had no interest in Stan and his MJ12 research, even at the height of the FBI’s investigations into those inflammatory papers in late 1988.
Ever since we have ventured off of our world and into space we have uncovered various mysteries and shed light on how the universe works. It has been a great time of scientific discovery, and we have made great strides in pushing out into the vast solar system that once was just flickers within our imagination. Yet for all that we have uncovered and all of the questions we have answered there have been perhaps even more questions and mysteries posed. Some of the stranger of these are the myriad stories of alien forces beyond our understanding lurking in the background of these space travels of ours, with all manner of unusual claims made by astronauts and amateur space watchers. One odd incident concerning this is claimed to have happened during a fateful space shuttle mission, during which, according to some, aliens crashed the party and ruined everything.
On February 25, 1996, Space Shuttle Columbia was engaged with mission STS-75, the 75th Space Transportation System mission flown by NASA’s four space shuttles. The 15-day mission had the primary objective of deploying the Tethered Satellite System Reflight (TSS-1R) experiment, which entailed using a joint NASA/Italian Tethered Satellite System in order to harness a new source of spacecraft power by utilizing a special electrodynamic tether system to collect power within the electrically charged ionosphere. The idea was that the cables would conduct electricity from the ionosphere and convert it into power, thus paving the way to a cheap energy source for satellites, space stations, and spacecraft. In order to achieve this, the plan was to deploy the satellite and 20.7 kilometers (12.9 mi) of tether and then measure how much current could be gathered, as well as monitor the physics of the tether’s movement and various other factors. It was meant to be a fairly groundbreaking mission, but something would go wrong.
Space Shuttle Columbia
Over a period of 5 hours the astronauts carefully unreeled the satellite on its thin tether to a length of 19 kilometers, after which they had only one kilometer to go before they planned to stop it and begin their experiments. However, as the shocked 7-man crew of the Columbia looked on, the tether began to ripple, before finally snapping to send a long portion of it, as well as the satellite attached to it, drifting off into space. Although a lot of data had still been gained from the mission, the loss of the satellite and tether was a crushing blow and launched an extensive investigation into the incident. According to NASA, the reason would be found to have been a weakening of the cable due to pinholes in the insulated cover of the tether, which had allowed air trapped beneath to seep out into space, and these air bubbles were then transformed into plasma from the roughly 3,500 to 5,000 volts of power coursing along it. This in turn caused a local explosive electrical discharge from the copper wire in the tether to a nearby electrical ground, causing the cable to snap. However, this official view would be challenged.
During the unfortunate incident, astronauts had filmed the whole thing, and as soon as the video became available to the public people started noticing something very odd about it. The video footage shows what appear to be a series of bright spots or lights whizzing about the area, in particular seeming to swarm around and hover about the tether. Those who saw this quickly came to the conclusion that these were UFOs, and stated that obviously these UFOs had been attracted to the tether for some reason and had caused it to break. The objects became even more pronounced when enhanced videos began circulating not long after the original footage was released. Still other more far out theories emerged as well, such as the claim that these were not UFOs, but rather some sort of lifeform living in space, a sort of “space amoeba” of sorts. These creatures are theorized as living in the void and feeding on space debris or electrical energy, and it is just about as weird as it sounds. The site Secrets of the Universe explained of these hypothetical organisms and their relation to the tether incident:
They exist in a spectrum not visible to the naked eye under normal conditions. They appear to be totally harmless, feeding off electrical or other energy. If you look closely at the footage you will observe them increasing in brightness near electrical storms. With this in mind it is not in the least surprising to find them swarming around the electrodynamics tether which is NASA’s attempt to harness the very energy that they feed on.
One of the mystery objects filmed near the broken tether
It is all very entertaining, but as soon as these conspiracy theories began making the rounds NASA and the astronauts who had actually been on the mission were quick to dismiss the possibility that these were aliens of any kind. It was all explained by astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz as “a little bit of debris that kind of flies with us,” meaning ice crystals and other miscellaneous tiny objects that sort of fly along with the shuttle in the weightlessness of space. In addition to this, a water dump from the shuttle, which is a completely normal and routine procedure, had been carried out not long before the experiment began, meaning there was more of this debris surrounding the shuttle than usual. It is perfectly harmless and the particles are miniscule, but when illuminated by the sun, compounded by the effect of the camera’s image intensifier circuit, which is known to distort bright objects, the objects seem much larger, more robust, and brighter in the video footage than they really are. The telephoto lens of the camera is also used with a circular mirror that has a hole in the middle, which can leave an artifact on the images. One of the astronauts, Tom Jones, made a lengthy statement about the incident trying to clear up the confusion and also dispel the idea that NASA was hiding evidence of aliens in any way. He told Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine:
Astronauts have not seen any evidence of alien life. Reports of unidentified flying objects in images returned from the shuttle or space station have turned out to be ice crystals, drifting orbital debris, lightning flashes, or meteors streaking through the dark atmosphere below. So far, our search for extraterrestrial life — and other civilizations in space — has turned up no proof of alien civilizations. I was on the shuttle Columbia — STS-80 — and even made a blog entry, ‘Did UFOs Visit The Shuttle Columbia?’ Because when we came back from that mission in 1996, NASA got several queries from people who were watching the video — NASA TV back then — and said, ‘Hey, we saw spaceships on the shuttle video. What’s NASA got to say about that?’ I looked at the video and I said, ‘Oh, I know what this is — this is just ice crystals floating along beside the ship for the first couple of days of the flight.’ What looked to some people like a spaceship streaking across the star field, was — to us, looking out the windows — a complete non-event. And yet, it was very significant to people who were watching. Certainly, nothing in the way of spaceships.
Now, I’m aware that there have been a couple of astronauts in the past who’ve spoken out and said they know from other people that there’s evidence of UFOs and spaceships that have visited the Earth and that the government might be withholding it. They all seem to be secondhand, or they seem to be sightings of things that they’ve seen in orbit that, perhaps, they couldn’t explain at the time. And that’s where the story seems to peter out.
Also curious is that NASA made no mention at all of any such objects surrounding the shuttle or the tether in any of their mission reports, and it seems as though perhaps this really was a mundane occurrence. Yet conspiracy theories are not quick to die, and there are certainly those who do not buy the official statements. For them this is all a cover-up and an effort for NASA to spread disinformation and bury the truth. Such theories point to the constant perceived opaqueness of NASA and the numerous times the agency has cut feed to cameras at the slightest whiff of something odd. Is NASA up to something? Are there really strange forces at work up there in space? What really happened during the STS-75 incident? Was this just misidentified ice crystals or something else? Amazingly enough it is still being debated, and if anything it shows that there are plenty of mysteries that are being generated by our being in space, whether real or imagined.
'It’s not a question of belief': the film examining government UFO records
'It’s not a question of belief': the film examining government UFO records
The Phenomenon studies the history of UFO claims from the 1940s to this summer’s revelation of a Department of Defense investigation into military sightings
The question of unexplained phenomena and Unidentified Flying Objects have long fascinated the public, as the subject of feverish American news coverage in the years post-second world war and too many films and investigative documentaries to count, all landing on speculation without certainty. But the frenetic, oxygen-sucking rollercoaster of headlines in the Trump administration has overshadowed a cascade of strange evidence released by the government in recent years: in 2017, the New York Times revealed the existence of a shadowy, partly classified government program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which investigated UFO reports from deep within the Pentagon.
This is the grounding fact presented in The Phenomenon, a documentary from longtime UFO enthusiast James Fox which updates longstanding extraterrestrial theories with recent government regulations. Though the government said at the time that the program, which started in 2007 largely at the request of then Senate majority leader Harry Reid, was shuttered due to lack of funding in 2012, the New York Times later confirmed its continued existence as a renamed Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, within the Office of Naval Intelligence.
The barrage of bureaucratic titles couched a startling revelation: for more than a decade, the Pentagon had conducted classified briefings for congressional committees, aerospace company executives and other government officials, based on sightings, video footage, and radar logs by military pilots of “unexplained aerial phenomena” which seemed to transcend existing flight technology – no visible engine at 30,000ft, hypersonic speed.
Numerous experts and astrophysicists have cautioned that just because an object is unidentified or unexplained doesn’t mean it’s extraterrestrial; some of the unexplained incidents could be attributed to bugs in display systems’ code, atmospheric effects, and neurological overload during high-speed flight as much if not more than extraterrestrial contact. But The Phenomenon, leaps from the confirmed existence of the government program to an earnest, at times breathless consideration of the existence of extraterrestrial encounters. “There’s clearly a preponderance of evidence from around the world that there are structured craft, physical craft, that are displaying flight characteristics that are so far beyond anything conventional,” Fox, who does not shy away from his belief in the otherworldly, told the Guardian of the military reports. “I’m absolutely convinced that these objects are real.”
The Phenomenon, narrated by actor and voiceover staple Peter Coyote (a veteran of numerous Ken Burns’ projects) speaks to such high-ranking government officials as Reid, who left the Senate in 2017, and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, as well as longtime UFO researcher Jacques Vallee, who inspired the character of Lacombe in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The film traces the relatively recent history of UFO fixation – the US military repeatedly investigated UFOs beginning in the late 1940s, as sightings of unidentified discs other incidents lit up mainstream news reports (Oregon farmers who photographed a supposed UFO in 1950 were featured in a Life magazine, for example). From 1947 until 1969, the air force investigated more than 12,000 UFO claims; though a 1952 study code-named Project Blue Book concluded that most of the sightings could be explained by stars, clouds, conventional aircraft or spy planes, 701 sightings remained unexplained.
The Phenomenon plumbs that unexplained terrain with years of first-person accounts, from an old interview with the late astronaut Gordon Cooper, who recalled his own brush with an unexplained object while flying fighters in Germany in 1951, to audio footage of former president Gerald Ford who, as a congressman from Michigan, desired greater transparency on UFO research. Fox combines vintage news interviews with children who reported sightings – in Zimbabwe in 1994, at an Australian school in the 1960s – with recent interviews of the subjects, who revisit their memories with a combination of bafflement, emotional clarity and confusion.
The renderings of these accounts can sometimes overshadow the trove of records unveiled in recent years by the Pentagon, including video footage released this year of military pilots wondering aloud, “Wow, what is that?” to “unidentified aerial phenomena” spotted by a plane’s camera in early 2015. (The Times spoke to five navy pilots about incidents with said phenomena off the coast of Virginia from 2014-2015, including a near-crash that triggered the filing of a safety incident report, though none of the pilots speculated on the objects’ provenance).
If some first-person accounts are to be believed – the Navy reports witnessing craft which required no wings for lift, exhibited flight beyond combustion technology, and the capability of hyper-change in speed with hairpin turns – the observations “make it very challenging to come up with any kind of prosaic explanation”, Christopher Mellon, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence under the Clinton and Bush administrations, told the Guardian.
Photograph: YouTube
Most UFO sightings “ultimately do have prosaic explanations”, Mellon said. “And there are other cases in which we may yet develop explanations having to do with the Russians or Chinese or atmospheric phenomenon or something. But after all that winnowing, there is still a significant number of cases that are very difficult to explain.”
The government program and its known records have rendered the question “do you believe in UFOs?” obsolete, according to the Times’ investigators – “their existence, or nonexistence, is not a matter of belief”. UFO means, simply, that we don’t know what these incidents are – not necessarily alien, but a matter of government record, as fact. “It’s not a question of belief, it’s not a question of whether this is happening,” said Mellon. “Our government and our defense department have publicly acknowledged that this is real and that this is happening.” The observations released by the military seem to suggest advanced military technology, enough to have concerned the Department of Defense – which announced a new taskforce into the matter this August – as well as the Office of Naval Intelligence and members of two Senate committees. “The challenge now is to figure out where they’re coming from, how they’re made, and what the intent is,” said Mellon.
Both Fox and Mellon acknowledged the difficulty in entertaining the idea of confirmed UFOs, and some of The Phenomenon’s more fantastical claims, without skepticism. Indeed, the idea suggested by the film that governments from the US to Russia to Australia have systematically suppressed coverage, research or speculation of UFO sightings seems dubious, if not outright dangerous, given the very real threats rampant conspiracy theories, which often invoke the military and/or space, pose to American democracy in the Trump era. Mellon agreed that “there is a problem with disinformation in this area, and unfortunately there’s a lot of junk and hoaxes as well as just information from people seeing something they’re not understanding, that has an explanation based in science or a classified program”.
But he noted that “all of the serious people involved in this issue want to take a hard-nosed scientific approach to this topic – we need more and better data” based on “trustworthy” and “authentic” reports released by government departments — “it’s information that the government is surfacing from our own military”.
The Phenomenon, like the many extraterrestrial documentaries before it, ultimately can’t stake a claim on certainty; instead, it concludes with a call for consideration. “I’m not screaming from the hilltops ‘ET is here!’” said Fox. “I’m just saying, ‘Hey, look, there’s a serious situation going on, and this demands not only government transparency, but further investigation.’”
The Phenomenon is available to rent digitally in the US now with a UK date yet to be announced
An interesting question was put to me just a few days ago. It revolved around my book published earlier this year: The Rendlesham Forest UFO Conspiracy. It’s a book that suggests the famous events of December 1980 in Suffolk, England woods had nothing to do with aliens, but everything to do with secret experiments. The question went approximately like this: How do you think the UFO community might respond if it’s proven there was no extraterrestrial presence in the forest? Well, that’s a good question. Right now, we don’t have hard evidence that the whole thing was a test of advanced technologies to see how military personnel might respond in extremely strange and alternative situations. What we do have, however, as I note in my book, is a large amount of data and information that points in that very direction. To a degree, I can answer the question by looking at the responses that surfaced when the book was published. It was clear to me that more than a few people who had spent a lot of time onthe Rendlesham case simply didn’t want to even look at the information I had found. “Nick’s a wanker,” was one of the more concise responses LOL! Another, which was put forward by four people (it’s entirely possible there may have been others, too) was that I had sold my soul and I was now secretly working for “the government.” You know: the dreaded “Them” (also know as “they” in conversation). Others were just confused by the fact that I had made a full-turn on the incidents of December 1980. One even said he was “hurt” by my change of mind. Jeez. That was one of the craziest things said.
All of the above is pretty much what I expected. There is, however, a serious, important issue here. In fact, there are several issues. They all revolve around the emotional response to the book. One: several people who took me to task on Facebook, openly admitted they had never read the book. That also happened with my 2017 anti-UFO book on Roswell. It’s hardly the rational approach to take, though. Two: when my Rendlesham book was published there was a real sense of denial on the part of more than a few. That’s unfortunate, because focusing on one theory just because it’s cool and exciting (the E.T. angle, of course) , is very stupid. Three: If you saw some of the debates on Facebook, you’ll know there was an interesting revelation. Almost immediately after the book was published, a few researchers of Rendlesham quietly emailed back and forth on one specific subject: would my book affect potential, upcoming events (conferences, lectures, etc.) when the 40th anniversary comes along at the end of this year? Of course, the idea that a book could have an adverse affect on conference tickets at a gig – or several gigs – is ridiculous. But, that’s how some paranoid types in the community responded. Now, we come to the most important angle of all this.
If the incidents in Rendlesham Forest in December 1980 really were the manipulative work of government and military agencies, then we should strive to find the answers and expose the affairs for what they were – which is what I’m doing and have been doing for a long time. 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 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.
Finally: why haven’t we, the UFO community, solved these cases and exposed them for what they really were (and still are)? After all, it’s not as if there’s not enough people in the UFO field to find the truth. There’s plenty of us. I’ll tell you why: secret experiments are not as exciting – or as enticing – as aliens. So, they are largely ignored. And the manipulators behind all of this know that only too well. So, they quietly and successfully continue with their mind-meddling behind a UFO camouflage. It really is that simple.
Nick Pope worked for the Ministry of Defence investigating UFO reports in the 90s. Now he is a UFO pundit, often speaking to media outlets around the world on the UFO topic. In this interview, we will discuss recent news and Nick’s thought on what will come of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request for UAP reports from the US military.
Muhammad Ali Talks About Seeing UFOs On Johnny Carson Show, Gets Laughed At, Sept 7, 1973, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Muhammad Ali Talks About Seeing UFOs On Johnny Carson Show, Gets Laughed At, Sept 7, 1973, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of interview: Sept 7, 1973
Location of interview: Hollywood, California, USA
Guys, Muhammad Ali...the heavy weight boxing champion of the world, otherwise known as the Peoples Champion...has been my idol since I was in 1st grade, but I was only 5 years old at the time of this interview, so I missed it and its totally new to me...blowing me away. He was a poet, a man of character, an example to all striving to improve and rise to the top. But I found an old interview of him and Johnny Carson and out of nowhere with a straight face of concern...Ali brings up the subject of UFOs.
Ali opens up, changing the subject with the words, "I've been studying UFOs." At this point you hear laugh tracks as if he were joking, but his face is expressionless and dead serious. At a time when Muhammad Ali could have opened the publics minds to the possibilities of alien life, Johnny Carson makes jokes and the audience laughs it off.
Ali talks about having seen UFOs while out running in the early mornings on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 3am and 5 am. But the audience laughs at him about it. He has had over 16 sightings of UFOs and probably more over his lifetime. He even said on the show that a person in Washington DC working for a UFO bureau named Harold Sulken who gave Ali some documents, photos and films of actual UFO. Who was Harold Sulken, and did he work for the US government? We may never know. But I would say he did, probably worked on Project Blue Book.
Ali took time away from doing an interview about a national fight that would have earned him more money and publicity, just to talk about a serious matter that he thought the world needed to hear. Again, Ali has impressed me...like the champion he always was and will be.
NASA UFO sighting: Mysterious object above Earth on ISS live feed baffles viewers
NASA UFO sighting: Mysterious object above Earth on ISS live feed baffles viewers
A MYSTERIOUS UFO spotted on the NASA International Space Station live feed has sparked an online frenzy, with the baffling footage recording more than 50,000 views.
Mysterious footage of a UFO spotted on the International Space Station (ISS) live feed has sent the Internet into a meltdown. Footage posted online from the ISS live stream sees an object floating towards the Earth before disappearing out of sight. The mysterious UFO then reappears 30 minutes later and looks as if it is drifting towards the space station itself.
The nature of the strange object baffled viewers online who offered a range of theories concerning its origins.
The footage of the object, posted on the YouTube channel MrMBB333, has recorded more than 50,000 views at the time of writing.
The host of conspiracy channel, which is dedicated to mysterious sightings, suggested it could be a mysterious "man-made" object.
He said he first thought the bizarre object was the moon, but then claimed that the moon was bigger than the object seen in the ISS live feed.
Footage posted online from the ISS live stream sees an object floating towards the Earth
(Image: IG)
The nature of the strange object baffled viewers online who speculated about its origins
(Image: IG)
The host said: "It looks too small to be the moon.
"It looks like the same colour of the space station.
"We know the space station is man-made, it's metal alloy.
"That looks like the same colour.”
Social media users were left divided about the floating unknown object
(Image: IG)
Social media users were left divided about the floating unknown object.
One viewer disputed claims it was the moon, saying: "I could be mistaken but I don't think the moon would have crossed from one side to the other in 30 minutes."
Other users believed the object is some kind of extraterrestrial creature, saying: "The 'thing' from ISS camera looked like it was 'crawling' when it moved."
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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