Just when you thought this year couldn’t get any more strange or have any wilder conspiracy theories … 2020 says, “Hold my beer and watch this!” A new rumor in circulation postulates that the 1947 Roswell UFO crash was actually a craft from the future carrying time-traveling humans and that President Trump has been briefed on it. While this sounds like a brief that this this president would definitely read (and, in fact, he alluded to “interesting things” about “Roswell” in an interview with his son, Don Jr.), did he actually receive it? And the greater question: is it true? And the ultimate question: if it is, will Trump use it to his advantage against … OK, that’s too big to wrap our heads around. Let’s start with the source of this rumor.

“I have mentioned this in the past. It was brought up again recently after Trump commented on Roswell. POTUS ‘Roswell Briefings’ are basically this: Roswell was NOT an Alien event. It was a mishap from US in the future. POTUS is told that the MAJORITY of the lights seen in the sky are from our own craft operating in the future and creating a temporal butterfly effect. They are told that what the ancients saw in the sky was often the exact same phenomeno

POTUS is under the impression that because of tests being run in Roswell during the same time that future craft were operating in that Space at a later time… that it caused the craft to pull into the past and crash thus beginning the new tech boom after WWII.”

That statement was written by Corey Goode to Michael Salla and published in ExoNews. Goode is the controversial Secret Space Program Service guy, self-proclaimed intuitive empath, alleged ET communicator, IT guru and leaker of alleged government documents on space travel and aliens. Salla is the Founder of the Exopolitics Institute and ExoNews and is dedicated to helping Goode and others get this kind of information out to the public. That is where Goode’s latest alleged leak was revealed.

“We are told that some of these people from the future are working directly with elements of current era deep black intel agencies. They have portals in these locations that they do point to point transfers of people and supplies from.

Very interesting stuff… and I can see how POTUS would buy this over little green men. Especially with his history with his uncle who worked on the Tesla papers.”

At this point, the correspondence to Salla from Goode sounds more like a campaign ad – the president frequently brags about his genius uncle John G. Trump who was called in by the FBI to review the papers and equipment of Nikolas Tesla after his death in 1943. Uncle John might also have been interested in Goode’s revelation on how the time travel worked.

“There are Quantum Computers that are used for this communication and it operates in ‘reciprocal dimensions’ where time flows in different directions and at different rates. Data is transmitted in these alternate dimensions.

There is a major time war going on between humans from 2 timelines. One is more of the ‘Wing Maker’ type of future where AI controls a very small population on Earth. There is another group fighting to preserve the timeline by stopping the manipulation of timelines so that they all collapse into the proper one (per ET / Anshar Guidance).”

(Note: the Anshar are believed by some to be a race of humans from the future.)

Goode tells Salla he thinks the future humans intentionally crashed at Roswell so 1947 humans could get their technology through reverse engineering. One wonders if these future humans care so much about us, why didn’t they just give the technology to us – but perhaps that’s what’s being covered up by the “Deep State” which Goode predictably brings up as the force withholding disclosure. He thinks this technology is now being used by the Space Force (what took so long?) and more tech-oriented revelations will be forthcoming. Salla hints that more of Goode’s latest leak will be forthcoming from him as well.

What can we make of this revelation by ExoNews and Michael Salla of these seemingly unbelievable claims by Corey Goode? Salla offers no proof except a record of his conversation with Goode, and Goode offers even less. His various claims have been questioned by scientists and skeptics looking for any kind of proof of his outrageous claims – which are creatively entertaining and intriguing enough to elicit him a legion of followers. As we painfully know from past experiences, followers does not mean facts.

If only President Trump would reveal more about what he claims he’s been briefed on. Perhaps as his poll numbers continue to drop …

Some of the most infamous UFO sightings in history are the ones that have been made by beloved public figures or famous people. These are the ones that truly resonate with us, and stir a sense of awe within us, no matter how believable they may be. Certainly one of the most sensational of these was the time the U.S. president Jimmy Carter saw a UFO, which would turn into a case that has been discussed and debated to this day.

James Earl Carter Jr., better known to the masses as Jimmy Carter, was the 39th president of the United States, serving from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he narrowly beat out incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the Presidential race and was known for several sweeping changes, such as pardoning all Vietnam War draft dodgers, the establishment of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education, as well as his involvement with pushing the Panama Canal Treaties, the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), and advocating the return of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama. His presidency was marked by such turmoil as the Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and he is also known for his philanthropist work, founding the nongovernmental, not-for-profit human rights organization called the Carter Center, which won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Yet for all of this some of the most interesting tales surrounding the former president come from his years when he was a Senator in Georgia, most notably the time he had a UFO sighting that would fundamentally change his whole official stance on the matter.

Jimmy Carter

At the time, Carter was serving in the Georgia State Senate, his aim to be Governor of the state, and on one evening in January of 1969, he was getting ready to deliver a speech at a meeting of the Lion’s Club at Leary, Georgia. At the time he was with a group of around 20 others at a small outdoor restaurant right after sundown when his attention was drawn to something strange in the sky to the West, which appeared as a green light that steadily got brighter as it seemed to approach them. Carter would say of the strange events that would follow:

All of a sudden, one of the men looked up and said, ‘Look, over in the west!’ And there was a bright light in the sky. We all saw it. And then the light, it got closer and closer to us. And then it stopped, I don’t know how far away, but it stopped beyond the pine trees. And all of a sudden it changed color to blue, and then it changed to red, then back to white. And we were trying to figure out what in the world it could be, and then it receded into the distance.

In some retellings of his story he made mention of the fact that he did not take the phenomenon to be a solid object, although he believed it to be self-illuminated. Carter would keep the sighting mostly to himself, but sometimes brought it up in interviews, and considering his high standing he was encouraged to finally log an official report with the International UFO Bureau in 1973, after which it would be officially investigated in 1976. Considering that this was a full seven years after the sighting, most witnesses either did not remember the incident or that that it was just a weird anomaly that they hadn’t given much thought to over the years, but Carter had certainly been affected by it, even going so far as to tell reporters in his 1976 election campaign that one of his goals was to create more transparency in the government with regards to UFOs, and he would say:

One thing’s for sure, I’ll never make fun of people who say they’ve seen unidentified objects in the sky. If I become President, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists.

It is important to note that while Carter did believe he had seen something very strange that night, he did not necessarily think it was an alien spacecraft, and tended to be rather vague about what he thought it might be, but he was definitely open-minded, and was seen by hopeful UFOlogists as perhaps the first American president that would blow the lid on government secrecy with regards to UFOs, and pursue full disclosure. In the end, it would turn out that this was not to be. Interestingly, once he was elected he sort of backpedaled on his promise to pursue the matter, and rather than try enact any sort of disclosure he began strongly denying that what he had seen was an alien spacecraft, even going so far as to assert that extraterrestrials had never visited Earth, and proclaiming that no government that he knew of had secret knowledge of UFOs or had ever been part of a cover-up. Instead of demonstrating an openness to the phenomenon that he had once embraced due to his own sighting, he began to go into full denial and general dismissal of UFOs. Carter was less inclined to take the ambiguous stance of “I don’t know” anymore, and became more closed on the subject while simultaneously starting to voice more strongly the opinion that he had just seen some sort of experimental aircraft. Before long, Carter would get into his presidency full swing, and talk of the UFO he had seen would be swept under the carpet and largely forgotten, relegated to history as a curiosity and nothing more.

Theories on what Carter saw have run the range. There are of course the conspiracy theories that he did in fact see an alien craft, or at least really believed he had, and that he had shied away from that explanation under pressure from those within the government. A big explanations offered by skeptics was that he had merely seen the planet Venus, which is thought to have been particularly bright on the evening in question. However, Carter was an avid amateur astronomer, and firmly dismissed this possibility. Another idea is that he saw some other atmospheric phenomenon or that it was a high altitude glowing barium cloud launched from Eglin AFB for the purpose of studying the upper atmosphere. The cloud theory would fit in with the location, the elevation angle, and the non-solid properties claimed of it, as well as the color, size, and brightness of the object. A professor and member of the Carter family, Carl G. Justus, would originally offer this explanation, later explaining:

In the 1960s and early 70s I worked on an Air Force sponsored project that studied the upper atmosphere using releases of glowing chemical clouds, produced by rockets launched from Eglin AFB rocket range in Florida. Some of these chemical clouds, notably sodium and barium, were visible by the process of resonance scattering of sunlight. Clouds of this type had to be launched not long after sunset or not long before sunrise. This was due to the fact that the cloud had to be in sunlight at high altitude, while it was still dark enough at ground level for the cloud to be visible against the dark sky. 

I can verify from personal experience that under clear skies, a barium cloud such as this would easily have been visible from the distance of Leary, GA. Carter reported the UFO ‘appeared from West’. The direction of Eglin AFB from Leary, GA is approximately WSW. Thus, this barium cloud at Eglin is consistent with Carter’s reported ‘UFO’ as to time, elevation, AND direction. Furthermore, the appearance reported by Carter is totally consistent with a high-altitude barium cloud. His report stated that it was ‘bluish at first, then reddish, luminous not solid’. A neutral barium cloud would initially glow bluish or greenish, with parts of it taking on a reddish glow as some the barium becomes ionized in the high-altitude sunlight. The size and brightness, reported as being about that of the moon, would also be consistent with a barium cloud at Eglin, as viewed from Leary, GA.

Is that what Carter saw? Glowing chemical clouds? Or was it perhaps something more mysterious? The case sticks out because of the high standing of the witness, as well as the odd way he seemed to back away from it in later years. What seemed to have been perhaps a turning point for government disclosure instead became just another obscure UFO report buried in history. Whatever it was that Jimmy Carter saw, it has stirred a bit of debate ever since, and I wouldn’t hold one’s breath for any real answers any time soon.

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

The region known as the Berkshires of western Massachusetts is a charming, rural area dotted with small towns and possessing vast areas of pristine wilderness that make it a popular destination for hiking, fishing, and other myriad outdoor activities. It is for the most part a quaint, quiet area full of relaxing natural splendor and placid little towns in which not much ever really happens. Yet in 1969 there would be a series of otherworldly, inexplicable events that would play out in this secluded place, which would grip the entire region, and capture the imagination of people around the world.

Beginning on the evening of September 1, 1969, various people in the tiny town of Sheffield began reporting seeing a strange disc-like object with an array of bright lights on its underbelly. In some cases, more than one of these bizarre craft was supposedly seen, and in every case they were described as completely silent. Over 40 people would report seeing this strange sight in the skies over the area, and many of the calls were made by frightened residents to the local radio station, WSBS. The manager of the station, David Isy, would say of it:

We had listeners call the radio station that evening. At the time they didn’t know it was a UFO, they just, you know, called the station to say something bizarre has happened.

The Berkshires

While all of this was weird enough, some reports that would emerge from the time are more outlandish than others. One of the strangest cases on that evening was supposedly experienced by a local boy by the name of Thomas Reed, who was 9 years old at the time. On the evening of September 1, he claims that he was driving with his mother, grandmother, and brother when they all saw brilliant lights through the trees out over the road ahead as they were crossing a covered bridge, which got so intense the interior of the car was lit up as if it were daylight outside, and they could get a glimpse of a “a tarnished circular looking vessel.” At the same time, they experienced what they describe as a sort of change in air pressure, and a feeling like an electric charge in the air. Then something altogether even stranger happened.

The family allegedly suddenly and without warning found themselves on the road over a mile away in darkness, with people’s seats switched around, and looking at the clock showed that three hours had passed. The strange craft was gone and they were in pitch black night. None of them could really remember much of what had happened during that missing time, but Thomas had fleeting, confused memories of it in his mind, like a half remembered dream, including some sort of indoor hangar bay, of which he has said:

We encountered something. It was definitely not of this world. We had a black and white television at time and the imagery that we saw on this thing was unbelievable. There were lights that looked like fluorescent tubing inside this hangar. This hallway we had seen was circular with a Y-configuration almost to control the flow of traffic. This one room had a bowed-in wall that was rounded. This was not something that you would have seen in 1969 anywhere else. I have no idea where I was, but I know that what I saw was very different than anything I’ve even seen today 50 years later.

Reed would in later years admit that he had been abducted on several other occasions before that. Reed was not the only person to have such a strange experience at the time. Another odd case revolves around a boy named Tom Warner, who was claimed to have been taken aboard the ship in a beam of light right out of his home in front of his startled babysitter, and would later say that he had had telepathic communications with aliens while aboard. Another girl named Melanie Kirchdorfer also claimed that aliens had taken her aboard their ship, and that while there she had seen other kids from her school in some sort of dazed trance. There were also many reports of people with missing time who could remember nothing of what they saw, and considering these were all disparate people who did not know each other all reporting more or less similar things on the same evening it is rather remarkable.

A very strange account from the evening was also given by a local named Kevin Titus, who was also just a child at the time. He says that he was in the nearby town of Great Barrington on that evening looking for a missing cow along with his friend. He would claim that they had come across the animal lying on the ground in a mangled state as if it had been ripped apart, yet there was no blood anywhere. As the two shocked youths looked upon that macabre scene, they were allegedly suddenly bathed in a bright, white light, after which they saw “a tortoise shell-shaped craft” hovering above for a moment before shooting off into the night.

The Berkshires UFO Incident was all over the news at the time, and generated so much intense interest that a huge granite monument with a plaque was built in 2015 by the covered Sheffield bridge where Reed first saw the craft, and the Great Barrington Historical Society has formally labelled it as an official historical “significant and true event.” Unfortunately, the monument was not liked or embraced by everyone in the area, and was the frequent target of vandals until it was finally removed in 2019 after years of controversy and legal disputes orbiting it. The incident has been oft-discussed in UFO circles, appearing on TV documentaries such as “Paranormal Paparazzi,” “Alien Mysteries,” “Uncovering Aliens,” “Ancient Aliens,” and the new “Unsolved Mysteries,” and even has an exhibit at the International UFO Museum And Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico. However, Thomas Reed himself has long tried to downplay the sensationalism of it all, saying that his experience was ambiguous and that the news and these shows tend to overplay it all. He would say:

The papers and the stories have gotten so ridiculous that the truth has been lost. First of all, they keep using the cornball terminology you might find — the abduction stuff. That’s not what happened. Our family is very credible. We’re not a bunch of lunatics. Now, we do remember being in what looked like an airplane hanger. We didn’t stay in the car. We were removed from the vehicle, that’s true. Where we were, I don’t know.

So what was going on here? It is all very curious that so many disparate people who did not know each other reported pretty much the same thing at around the same time, which has propelled the case into one of the most notable of UFO history. What did these people see and what are we to make of the tales of abductions and missing time? Is this just a creepy anomaly or is there more to it? No one really knows, and the incident continues to hang over the area to this day.

1. Searching for the Chupacabra

I was recently asked what I considered to be the top ten of my investigations, cases, road-trips (the list goes on) of the UFO and paranormal kind. Well, that’s very difficult to say! I have to say it changes from time to time. And, it’s definitely hard to keep it just to ten. I’ll give it a try though. Most people, I’m sure, have heard of the exploits of the Chupacabra of Puerto Rico. For years reports have surfaced of a strange creature: part-monkey, part-giant bat, and part-gargoyle roaming the island’s lowlands and rain-forest, and slaughtering animals on a massive scale. I have now been on many expeditions to Puerto Rico in search of the beasts; and each occasion has been a truly memorable one. Collectively, I have spoken with dozens of people who have been able to shed much-welcome light on the Chupacabra puzzle: farmers whose animals have been killed by the beast; civil-defense employees that have investigated such attacks, police officers, journalists, and members of the public.

Without doubt the most fascinating story was that of an elderly lady named Norka, who told me and Jon Downes, on our 2004 trip to the island, that she had seen a bat-winged, glowing-eyed Chupacabra up close and personal way back in 1975 as she drove to her home high in the hills of the El Yunque rain-forest. Then there was Noel, a chicken-breeder who woke up one morning to find all his animals killed, their bodies drained of blood, and the only calling-card being two ominous puncture marks on the necks of each and every one of the bodies. In addition, there have been numerous sightings of UFO on Puerto Rico (along with a couple of crashed UFO tales – one from the 1950s and one from the 1980s), which has led many to conclude that the blood-sucking monster is itself an extraterrestrial. Others suggest the creature has supernatural origins, while some see it as the result of bizarre, genetic experimentation. But, whatever the Chupacabra ultimately may be, I am in doubt that it exists. And, as long as questions need answering, my investigations will continue.

2. The Roswell Ghosts

Any mention of Roswell, New Mexico inevitably conjures up imagery of high-level conspiracies and X-Files type secrets of a distinctly out-of-this-world nature. Not surprising, given its status as the UFO capital of the world. Numerous books have been written on the still-mysterious events of July 1947, but the answers still elude us. In late 2005, I was offered the opportunity to seek out the answers to Roswell via distinctly alternative means. According to the story, alien bodies found deep in the heart of the New Mexico back in 1947 were secretly transferred to the hospital of what was then the Roswell Army Air Field. By the 1950s, the RAAF had become Walker Field, and the old wooden hospital was replaced by a new brick building. In 1967, however, Walker Field was closed down, and the hospital remained empty until it became the New Mexico Rehabilitation Center.

Interestingly, employees of the NMRC have reported seeing apparition-type figures walking through the corridors and walls of the hospital; figures that some believe are the spirits of the bodies that were allegedly brought to the original hospital all those years ago. So, in October 2005, along with a team of paranormal investigators – and a TV crew – I headed out to Roswell for a week to seek out the truth. And, indeed, staff at the NMRC confirmed the stories and related their own remarkable experiences of the alien-ghost kind. Our investigation culminated in a midnight séance in the old hangar at the former Roswell Army Air Field, as we tried to contact the dead of Roswell. The wind howled, the ceiling creaked, and the psychics were sure that alien messages came through from the other side that night. It was definitely one of the strangest of the many investigations I’ve been on!

3. Gateway to the Goat-Man

In January 2008, I headed off into the unknown with paranormal researcher Lance Oliver. The purpose of our quest: to find the Goat-Man of the town of Denton, Texas – a cloven-hoofed, demonic-like beast said to haunt an 1884-vintage steel and wood structure in town known as the Old Alton Bridge. As we arrived at the site and got out of our respective cars, Lance proceeded to tell me the story behind the legend. Decades ago, occultists in the area had apparently been recklessly dabbling in matters of a distinctly negative nature and had inadvertently opened up a doorway or portal that provided the hell-spawned horned and hoofed nightmarish beast access to our world – which was not a good thing at all, Lance rightly commented. That occult and paranormal activity was afoot at the bridge was not a matter of any doubt at all: Lance had a personal awareness that people had been out there, late at night, with Ouija boards; there were stories of satanic cult activity; and sightings of unusual phenomena – such as eerie, localized mists, and floating balls of light, better known in the ghost-hunting community as ‘orbs’ – were strikingly commonplace. Lance also told me, intriguingly, how on one occasion while he was walking the bridge he announced loudly that he did not believe in the existence of the Goat-Man. Then as if from nowhere, but certainly right on time, came the eerie ringing of an invisible bell. Lance, realizing there was not another earthly soul around, wisely elected to reassess his stance on the matter of the Goat-Man’s reality or otherwise. As for me, I kept a careful watch, just in case something hoofed came looming out of the dark trees.

4. An English Roswell?

In 1991, the now-deceased collector of “Crashed UFO” tales, Leonard Stringfield, revealed that he had been told – by a former U.S. military source – of the crash in 1964 of a UFO on the fringes of one of England’s most notoriously weird areas of woodland: the Cannock Chase. A craft and alien bodies were said to have been recovered, and a high-level cover-up was put into place to hide the out-of-this-world truth. For a couple of years I delved into the tale, but didn’t make any significant headway. That is, until 1996. One year earlier, local UFO investigator, Irene Bott, had established the Staffordshire UFO Group, and promptly began digging into what some soon called a definitive “English Roswell.” And it was after a year or so of digging that Irene hit pay dirt. She had been contacted by a man named Harold South who then lived only a few miles away and who claimed to have witnessed the recovery by elements of the military of a small, triangular-shaped craft from the woods in question – which was promptly loaded aboard a large vehicle and headed for destinations-unknown. Not only that: South said that after photographing the mysterious object, his camera-film was confiscated by the local police.

On a dark and cold December 1996 morning, Irene and I headed to South’s home for an in-person interview. When we arrived, a highly shaken South told us the military had phoned him earlier; and, as a result, he was not sure if he should speak to us at all. We were able to confirm that a call had indeed been made to him that very morning: we traced it back to the U.K. Ministry of Defense’s Guards Service. Was this evidence that South was still under surveillance as late as 1996 because of his close encounter on the Cannock Chase all those years before? Or was it me and Irene who were being secretly watched? We never really got to the bottom of the puzzle, but it was certainly one of the strangest situations in which I have found myself.

5. A Creepy Man in Black

I have a keen interest in the mystery of the Men in Black – who have been an integral part of the UFO mystery for decades – and have been fortunate enough to speak with many people who have encountered these creepy characters. One such case, related to me in 1994, by a British woman named Sarah who lives in central England, went as follows: “The door banged really slowly, and when I opened it there was this horrible little man about five feet [tall]. He was dressed in a black suit and tie, and he had a funny little black hat on. His face was really strange: like someone with anorexia. His eyes were dark and his skin was almost white. All he said was: ‘We would ask you cease your studies.’ I said: ‘What?’  Then he repeated it. I had to ask what he meant. He said:’The sky lights; always the sky lights.’ Then it dawned on me: I’d seen a UFO late at night about a week before when me and my husband had been driving home and we both had a really weird dream after – about some little men standing around our car on the edge of the wood. He gave me a really long stare, like he was going to attack me. But he just walked away. I started to feel dizzy and slammed the door. I just crawled to the bed and fell asleep for about three hours. But when I woke up there was this horrible smell, like burning rubber all through the house. It really shook me up.”

6. Texan Gargoyles

Not longer after I moved to the United States to live, in 2001, I was on the receiving end of a strange story of a distinctly gargoyle-like nature from the west Texas city of Littlefield. According to the account – provided by a couple living in the town – matters kicked-off in the early months of 1946 at an old, large house that until the early 1960s had existed on the edge of town, and where two aged and eccentric sisters lived in absolute seclusion. Supposedly, on one occasion in the dead of night (when else?), a group of local kids playing in the area and scaring themselves stupid by walking around the old, dark building had seen two, eight-foot-tall, humanoid creatures climb stealthily out of the building’s cellar. Not only were the creatures eight-foot-tall, they were also grey of skin, had large, leathery wings, and glowing red eyes. In other words, they weren’t local folk. I think. The monstrous pair apparently turned sharply as they surfaced from their underground lair and stared intently at the kids, then broke into a hopping-style run, opened their immense wings and soared majestically into the starlit sky. One interesting observation was that the limbs of the creatures looked almost hollow against the background of the full moon that loomed overhead.

Perhaps even weirder was the fact that as the kids exited the area at what was an unsurprisingly high speed, two of them caught sight of the elderly sisters, grinning maniacally at them out of a downstairs window of the house. The couple also informed me that a similar creature, if not one of the original two, was seen several months later standing in the middle of the local highway by a terrified motorist in the early hours of the morning while issuing a woeful moan. That, in essence, was the account. I had no idea if it was genuine; and, as the couple told me, the key witnesses in the tale had all gone to their graves at surprisingly young ages – all supposedly killed in a variety of seemingly unlikely accidents. A tall-tale designed to see how gullible I was or something stranger? To this day, I’m still not sure what I think about it all.

7. Big Cats in the Tunnels

England’s London Underground railway system serves Greater London and parts of the counties of Essex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. It’s also the world’s oldest underground network of its type: services began on January 10, 1863 on the Metropolitan Railway; and today, the London Underground has no less than 268 stations and approximately 250 miles of track, making it the longest sub-surface railway in the world. In addition, in 2007, over one billion passengers were recorded as having used the Underground since its creation. According to some, however, the London Underground is home to much more than just tracks, trains and commuters: deep within the maze of dark and old tunnels, distinctly strange and diabolical things are said to lurk.

For the last forty years or so, tales have abounded (and are now at almost epidemic levels) of sightings of so-called big-cats on the loose in the British countryside. Precisely what they are, where they come from, and why no-one is seemingly able to capture a specimen, is a matter of heated and on-going debate – and a debate, it would appear, with no end in sight. Long before the present day controversy reared its head, however, the London Underground may very well have been home to one of these elusive beasts. Several years ago, Maureen Abbott told me of her sighting of what she described as a “big black panther” that was “bounding along the track” as she stood awaiting a train on one of the lines, late one Winter evening in either 1954 or 1955. Describing the animal as ‘running very fast’, she said that as it passed her it quickly looked in her direction, and with a “frown on his face,” before vanishing into the darkness of the tunnels. Although Abbott did not see the creature again, she never forgot her terrifying encounter with the unknown, deep below the city of London – and I have certainly never forgotten the interview!

8. Close Encounters of the 1950s Kind

During the early 1950s, my father, Frank Redfern, served with the Royal Air Force as a radar mechanic. He had been involved in several UFO incidents that occurred during September 1952 at the height of a NATO exercise called Mainbrace, when a number of fast-moving and unidentified targets were tracked over-flying the North Sea by radar operators at RAF Neatishead, Norfolk. When he related this to me in 1978, it was a key turning point in my life and ultimately led me on a still-continuing quest to determine the truth that lies behind the UFO puzzle. I made mention of my father’s experience in my first book: A Covert Agenda. Following the publication of the book, a number of important sources came forward to corroborate the remarkable events of September1952 – including Ken Dayman, a radar operator who was stationed at RAF Langton, Lincolnshire at the time. “We would do shifts,” Ken told me, “and I would read out the plots and the girls would then plot them on a big map. Well, over the course of two days in 1952, something strange happened. On the first day, somebody said: ‘Look, there’s something happening on the screen!’ There were about three or four of us watching as something was speeding across the screen; and this was fast, very fast. “It looked like there were actually two objects and they were approaching from the North Sea and flew across Lincolnshire, Peterborough and then up the country at about 2,000 miles per hour. Well, an officer was called and he made some comment. But then our commanding officer arrived and reminded us not to talk about this as we’d signed the Official Secrets Act. But this happened over a couple of days and the UFOs were tracked by several shifts – not just ours.” When I interviewed Ken, in 1999, he was still as mystified by the incident as he was back in 1952.

9. The Taos Monster

Salvador was a man I interviewed in 2002. Having inherited a considerable sum of money in his youth, he was retired by his forties, and lived in the city of Taos, New Mexico. But it was a strange experience that occurred in 1997 he wanted to discuss when we met. A keen astronomer, he had taken his truck out to a spot north of Taos that was free of light, and where he could set up his telescope and scan the sky. Around 1:00 a.m., Salvador recalled, he heard a sound that “was like a high-pitched whistle,” but that had a human feel to it. Tthe source of the growling, he suspected, was within thirty feet of him; and he got the impression that a hostile entity was circling him. He sat tight in his truck as the growling continued, when suddenly he could hear the sound of a helicopter. The noise got louder; and finally a large spotlight bathed the area, and the dark form of a black helicopter could be seen. Concerned by the unknown life-form circling his truck, Salvador stood up, and waved frantically in the direction of the helicopter. Suddenly, the helicopter rose into the air and its spotlight was focused upon an area no more than fifty feet from Salvador’s truck. He could now see what had been causing all the commotion: a seven-foot-tall-creature that “looked just like what people say Bigfoot is.” The beast, Salvador said, vanished “at a real speed,”with the helicopter in pursuit. Both disappeared as the helicopter’s light grew fainter and darkness returned. A shocked Salvador jumped into his truck and quickly headed home. The encounter was over.

10. Don’t Shoot!

In 1999, I had the opportunity to interview a man who had a curious and somewhat disconcerting UFO encounter in the Staffordshire town of Penkridge, England in the summer of 1985. In this particular case, the witness had previously served in Egypt as a military policeman with the British Army. At approximately 5:00 a.m. on a weekend morning and along with a friend, the man in question had driven to Penkridge to take part in a “duck-shoot” at a river that was situated on nearby farmland. All was normal until around 5:.30 a.m. Suddenly, the man caught sight of a light in the sky that appeared to be moving in his direction and across the fields on the opposite side of the river at a height of what he estimated to be approximately three hundred feet. He watched carefully and with mounting concern as the light came to a complete halt above one particular field and proceeded to fire a beam of light down to the ground. As it did so, the man was able to see illuminated in the beam of the object a herd of cows that were blissfully munching away on their breakfast of grass. Astonished by what he was seeing, the man leapt to his feet; as he did so, however, three smaller lights came out of the larger one – two “swept off” and one, to his horror, headed straight for him. “Don’t point your gun, whatever you do!” the man told me he said to himself. And so what course of action did he take? He made a run for it. Clearing a fence of not inconsiderable height, he ran to his friend and blurted out what he had seen. Both decided to head back to the scene, but the lights had vanished. As for the cows, they were still eating breakfast, seemingly oblivious to the drama that had taken place.

The city of Levelland, in Hockley County, Texas, in the United States, is a mostly quiet place with nothing on the surface all that exceptionable about it. With plenty of cotton fields and a cozy, small-town atmosphere, it seems remarkably rural despite its present population of around 13,542, and it is a place many people could drive right on past without giving much thought to it. Yet, in 1957 this sleepy little corner of Texas became ground zero for a series of intense UFO sightings that captured the imagination of the nation, put Levelland on the map, and has gone on to become held up as one of the most remarkable UFO events in history.

It began on November 2, 1957, when police officer A.J. Fowler was at his desk spacing out on a typical quiet evening at the Levelland police department, but the night was about to get very bizarre indeed. A phone call came in from two scared and panicked sounding men who turned out to be immigrant farm workers by the names of Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz, and who claimed to have just witnessed a UFO. His attention piqued and the sleepiness banished from his head, Fowler asked what had happened and was told that the two had been driving in a pickup truck about 6 miles outside of town when a very bright, cigar-shaped object measuring an estimated 200 feet in length had come speeding towards them as the vehicle suddenly stalled and the headlights cut out to leave them bathed in an otherworldly blue light. As the thing barreled towards them they were so afraid that it was going to hit them that they had apparently leapt from the truck to take refuge in a ditch. The witnesses said the strange craft had passed over them, creating a disturbance that actually caused the vehicle to tremble and shake, as well as a blast of heat like an oven door open, and then continued on into the night, after which their truck had abruptly started up once again.

Fowler didn’t take this report very seriously at first, and just assumed it was a prank or that the men had maybe had a bit too much to drink, but he made a note of it. He probably would have forgotten all about it if there wasn’t another call just about 45 minutes later, this time from a man named Jim Wheeler, who claimed to have seen a “brilliantly lit, egg-shaped object, about 200 feet long” actually sitting on the pavement just 4 miles outside of Levelland. Like in the first call, Wheeler claimed that his vehicle had sputtered out and rolled to a stop as he approached, and he stated that when he got out of his car to investigate the object shot straight up into the sky with great speed and a blast of heat. As soon as the UFO was gone, his car had started back up and worked normally.

This second report was enough to make Fowler take notice, but this was not even the end of it. Over the next 2 hours, between approximately 11:30 PM and 1:30 AM, a total of 15 additional reports would come in all describing the same thing. In every case the witnesses were either buzzed by the object or saw it perched on the road, and in every instance the vehicle had stopped and lost power, only to turn back on when the craft was gone. The object seen was also described in the same way, egg or cigar-shaped, a brilliant blue, and measuring between 100 and 200 feet long. This was enough that the police were already going out to see what was going on, and it was then that even some of them would see something strange in the sky, such as a Sheriff Weir Clem, who saw a bright red object, and Levelland’s Fire Chief, Ray Jones, who claimed that the object had made his vehicle stall and had caused his headlights to flicker as it drew near, and by some accounts even Fowler himself saw the thing.

By now the sightings and UFO wave hitting Levelland had hit the media and it was all over the news, which also drew the attention of the government. The U.S. Air Force sent investigators to the scene from their UFO unit called Project Blue Book, and the whole affair was quickly dismissed as having all been caused by severe electrical storms, possibly combined with the phenomena called ball lightning and St. Elmo’s Fire. As far as the Air Force was concerned, that was that, but this was far from satisfactory for many. Many other researchers, including physicist Dr. James E. McDonald and astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who was even one of project Blue Book’s top investigators, disputed the official findings, immediately pointing out that the Blue Book investigator at the scene had only spent 7 hours casually interviewing witnesses and not really taking any of it seriously. It was also seen as unlikely that ball lightning or an electrical storm could cause vehicles to just stop and turn on again, and even more damning was that it seemed that there had been no such storm in the area at the time in the first place. Hynek would say:

As the person responsible for the tracking of the new Soviet satellite Sputnik, I was on a virtual around-the-clock duty and was unable to give it any attention whatever. I am not proud today that I hastily concurred in [the Air Force’s] evaluation as ‘ball lightning’ on the basis of information that an electrical storm had been in progress in the Levelland area at the time. This was shown not to be the case. Observers reported overcast and mist but no lightning. Had I given it any thought whatsoever, I would soon have recognized the absence of any evidence that ball lightning can stop cars and put out headlights.

The Levelland UFO flap is exceptional in that the town only had a population of 10,000 people at the time, and yet produced an intense wave of over a dozen sightings within a 2-hour period, including police officers and the fire marshal. What was going on here? Was the government trying to cover it up by sweeping it all under the carpet with a curt, easily digestible answer? There had been much debate about this case, and no one can really say what is going on, but it certainly stand out as one of the most spectacular UFO waves in recent memory.

Are you planning your first post-coronavirus-shutdown vacation? Looking for a place where you can get away from it all … except UFOs? Then stop throwing darts at a map (does anyone really do that anymore?) and Google a direct route to Idaho – the new UFO capital of the United States.

Did he say Idaho? Home of hot springs, great skiing and the Idaho Potato Museum?

Yes, Idaho. The Idaho Statesman proudly announced that the Gem State (its slogan is: “Great Potatoes. Tasty Destinations”) whose name is a Shoshoni exclamation which translates roughly to “Behold! The sun coming down the mountain!” had the highest per-capita rate of UFO sightings in the U.S. between January 2019 and June 2020. Over that time period, Idahoans reported 164 UFO sightings. With a 2019 population of 1,787,065, that adds up to 9.18 sightings per 100,000 people, just squeaking by Montana at 9.17 per 100K and well ahead of #3 New Hampshire at 7.87. These numbers were compiled by the Satellite Internet website using data from the National UFO Reporting Center.

Wait a minute! (Not a Shoshoni exclamation but appropriate here.) Idaho’s population density is only 21.6 people per square mile, while my state’s is (fill in the blank with any higher number – unless you live in New Mexico, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska and yes, Montana where there’s even less people watching for UFOs.)

Yes, you’re right. Florida has the highest number of UFO sightings over the same 18-month period (567) and is eighth in population density, which puts it at #36 with 2.64 per 100K people. But Florida has plenty of other strange things going on and plenty of explainable reasons why its population is seeing so many UFOs. On the other hand, Idahoans have clear skies and little light pollution. Is this why more of them are seeing UFOs or do aliens like potatoes too?

Come for the UFOs … stay for the scenery.

“The reality is most UFO sightings are less dramatic, such as a strange aircraft or odd light formations descending slowly into a forest. Planets are also sometimes mistaken for UFOs. You can get to know the stars and planets with apps like Sky Map, NASA, or Star Walk 2 so you don’t file a report on Venus. Another common error is mistaking a Starlink satellite chain for a UFO.”

Satellite Internet admits what the rest of us should already know but so many I-want-to-believe-ers refuse to accept about UFOs — a lot of them are SpaceX’s satellites (curse you, ELon Musk!). However, in the spirit of fairness, it points out that “up to 5% of UFO reports remain unexplained.”

“Idaho wants to believe: Our state has highest per-capita UFO sightings in the country.”

That’s the message for the good citizens of Idaho and the good citizens of the rest of the states who are ready to bust out of coronavirus lockdown and get up close and personal (within a proper social distance, of course) with some UFOs and possible extraterrestrials. Idaho has parks mountains, water, skiing, fresh air, potatoes … and UFOs. So plan your trip to Idaho and get ready to …

“Behold!”