If you’re someone who watches for UFOs (and who isn’t these days), you may want to avoid doing it in the state of New York. The Empire State isn’t prone to abductions (at least, not of the alien kind) but it is prone to requiring permits for everything (ask any New York street vendor) and now it’s requiring permits for spotting UFOs. Before you ask … we are NOT making this up!

STARGAZING PERMIT
Requirements:
Fee of $35.00, $60-Out of State – Vehicle Registration and Driver’s License Required
Permit allows after sunset parking for stargazing only, valid January 1 – December 31 at:
Hither Hills – Except July & August
Jones Beach – West End 2 and Field 6
Montauk Point – Upper Parking Lot
Robert Moses – Field 2
Gov. Alfred E. Smith/Sunken Meadow – Field 1 & Field 3
Wildwood – Main Parking Lot
Sold at: Babylon Headquarters-Permit Office (beginning January 2nd), Jones Beach, Montauk Downs,
Robert Moses, Governor Alfred E. Smith/Sunken Meadow and Wildwood
Stargazing Permits are only sold January 1 – March 31 and the Tuesday after Labor Day –
December 31.

Obviously, you don’t want to tell the park ranger you don’t need a permit because you’re UFO spotting, not stargazing. Both involve looking up at the night sky, which seems to be the logical issue here. The permit from the Park, Recreation and Historic Preservation Department is obviously designed to cut down on night traffic in some popular parks on Long Island, although it’s not for ‘driving’ but for ‘stargazing’, so it affects those who walk, Uber or take public transportation too. It also doesn’t say of the permit is for one vehicle or one person. Oh, and before you ask … yes, these are public parks paid for with your (if you’re a New Yorker) tax dollars.

You have the right to remain silent …

There are so many questions, it’s hard to pick a place to start. Why charge out-of-staters extra? Do stargazers and UFO spotters from New Jersey litter more than New Yorkers? Why does it require a driver’s license? That seems to be discriminatory against those without licenses for whatever reason. What do those license go towards? Will the park use them to remove curbs, logs, boulders and other obstructions so stargazers and UFO watchers don’t trip while not looking where they’re walking? Some cities are doing this for walking cellphone users … why not make THEM get a permit first? They definitely outnumber stargazers and UFO watchers. How soon before this gets applied to other New York parks? Public streets? Rooftops of government housing?

There’s more. How will a park ranger decide if a person who face is turned towards the night sky is looking at stars or bats or UFOs or something else? Isn’t this unfair to the person on the bottom of a couple having traditional missionary sex on the grass? Will displaying the permit allow them to have traditional missionary sex without being bothered if one (or if they’re kinky, both) are facing skyward?

Crowd surfer or illegal UFO spotter?

Is this fair? Is this American? Is this extortion? Is this New York gouging its citizens and tourists again?

Neil deGrasse Tyson
@neiltyson
No. Back in the day, you didn’t need permission to look up at the sky

This is not a left or right issue – the permit fees will be collected no matter who is in office. If you live in New York, contact Governor Cuomo’s office and voice your concerns. If you plan to visit New York, be careful where you look up. If you get stopped, tell the ranger you have a stiff neck. If he asks for a doctor’s note … welcome to New York. You’re screwed.

The skies are free. Looking for stars, UFOs or whatever you seek in the heavens is a right. Keep your heads up!

My previous article was focused on the latest episode of History Channel’s Project Blue Book. That same episode was on the subject of Roswell. It mentioned a story – near the end of the show – told in Annie Jacobsen’s 2011 book, Area 51. In her book, Jacobsen tells of how she was able to speak with an elderly man who would have been in the right place and at the right time to know what really happened at Roswell in July 1947. According to Jacobsen’s source/whistle-blower (who was outed by UFO researcher Tony Bragalia as an elderly man named Alfred O’Donnell) what came down outside of Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947 was not a UFO from another world. Nor was it a weather-balloon or a Mogul balloon. And, apparently, there was not even a single crash-test dummy anywhere in sight. O’Donnell made the controversial claim that the craft and its crew originated in the Soviet Union.

O’Donnell said that Joseph Stalin – the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and Premier from 1941 to 1953 – was the driving force behind what was, supposedly, a diabolical, manipulative plot designed to make the U.S. government and the people of the United States think that an alien invasion was underway. The purpose: to plunge America into a state of overwhelming terror. And how did the Soviets supposedly try and achieve this? By (A) having Josef Mengele (one of the most vile, evil, deranged figures who ever lived) surgically alter a number of children, to make them appear alien-like; and (B) using the aircraft designs of a pair of brothers in the world of aviation (Reimar and Walter Horten), and have them create a strange-looking aircraft. The plot, then, was to try and make the U.S. government believe that aliens had come to Earth – and, in the process, causing terror and hysteria in the United States. The story continues that the whole thing collapsed when the “alien spacecraft” fell to earth outside of Roswell, and was promptly and secretly retrieved by the U.S. military. The outcome: the Russians’ plot collapsed and what happened at Roswell was quickly hidden.

There are significant reasons to believe that the story O’Donnell told was not true. Without doubt, one of the most important official documents in the saga of the story told to Annie Jacobsen by Alfred O’Donnell is a certain December 1947 document. It addresses U.S. Intelligence’s deep interest in the Horten brothers – as well as the U.S. Government’s determination to confirm or deny that the brothers had created a flying saucer-style craft. The document is so important (and lengthy!) that I have presented it below, in full. The author of the document was Lieutenant Colonel Harry H. Pretty, and the title of the document was Horten Brothers (Flying Saucers). Prepared by the HQ Berlin Command, Office of Military Government for Germany (US), it was sent to the Deputy Director of Intelligence, European Command, Frankfurt, U.S. Army. And it reads as follows:

‘The Horten brothers, Reimar and Walter, are residing in Goettingen at present. However, both of them are traveling a great deal throughout the Bi-Zone. Walter at present is travelling in Bavaria in search of a suitable place of employment. It is believed that he may have contacted USAFE Headquarters in Wiesbaden for possible evacuation to the United States under ‘Paper Clip.’ Reimar is presently studying advanced mathematics at the university of Bonn, and is about to obtain his doctor’s degree. It is believed that when his studies are completed he intends to accept a teaching position at the Institute for Technology (Technische Hochschule) in Braunshweig sometime in February or March 1948.

“Both brothers are exceedingly peculiar and can be easily classified as eccentric and individualistic. Especially is this so of Reimar. He is the one who developed the theory of the flying wing and subsequently of all the models and aircrafts built by the brothers. Walter, on the other hand is the engineer who tried to put into practice the several somewhat fantastic ideas of his brother. The clash of personalities resulted in a continuous quarrel and friction between the two brothers. Reimar was always developing new ideas which would increase the speed of the aircraft or improve its maneuverability; Walter on the other hand was tearing down the fantastic ideas of his brother by practical calculations and considerations.

Horten IX engineering drawing

“The two men worked together up to and including the ‘Horten VIII’ a flying wing intended to be a fighter plane powered with two Hirt engines (HM-60-R) with a performance of approximately 650 horsepower each. After the ‘Horten VIII’ was finished, one of the usual and frequent quarrels separated the two brothers temporarily. Walter went to work alone on the ‘Horten IX,’ which is a fighter plane of the flying wing design, with practically no changes from the model VIII except for the engines. Walter substituted the Hirt engines with BMW Jets of the type TL-004. The plane was made completely of plywood and was furnished with a Messerschmitt ME-109 landing gear.

“The model of this aircraft (Horten IX) was tested extensively in the supersonic wind tunnel (Mach No. 1.0) of the aero-dynamic testing institute (Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt), located in Goettingen. The tests were conducted in the late summer of 1944 under the personal supervision of Professor Betz, chief of the institute. Betz at that time was approximately sixty years old and next to Prandtel (then seventy-eight years old), was considered to be the best man on aerodynamics in Germany. Betz’s attitude toward the flying wing is very conservative to say the least. Basically he is against the design of any flying wing. According to the official reports about the tests, air disturbances were created on the wing tips, resulting in air vacuums, which in turn would prevent the steering mechanism from functioning properly. This seems logical as, of course, neither the ailerons nor the rudders could properly accomplish their function in a partial vacuum created by air disturbances and whirls.

“In spite of that, two Horten IX’s were built and tried out by a test pilot, Eugen (now living in Goettingen) at Rechlin in the fall of 1944. One of the two planes, piloted by another test pilot, developed trouble with one of the jet engines while the pilot was trying to ascertain the maximum rate of climb. The right jet stopped suddenly, causing the aircraft to go into an immediate spin and subsequent crash in which the pilot was killed. Eugen, however, was more fortunate in putting the other ship through all the necessary paces without the least trouble. He maintains that the maximum speed attained was around 950 km per hour, and that there were no steering difficulties whatsoever, and that the danger of both head and tail spins was no greater that any other conventional aircraft.

“After extensive tests, the Horten IX was accepted by the German Air Force as represented by Goering, who ordered immediate mass production. The first order went to Gothaer Waggon Fabrik, located in Gotha (Thuringia) in January 1945. Goering requested that ten planes be built immediately and that the entire factory was to concentrate and be converted to the production of the Horten IX. The firm in question received all the plans and designs of the ship. In spite of this explicit order, production of the Horten IX was never started. The technical manager of the firm, Berthold, immediately upon receipt of the plans, submitted a number of suggestions to improve the aircraft. It is believed that his intention was to eliminate the Horten brothers as inventors and to modify the ship to such an extent that it would be more his brain child than anybody else’s. Numerous letters were exchanged from High Command of the German Air Force and Dr. Berthold, which finally were interrupted by the armistice in May 1945. When US troops occupied the town of Gotha, the designs of the Horten IX were kept in hiding and not handed over to American Military authorities. The original designs in possession of the Horten brothers were hidden in a salt mine in Salzdettfurt, but the model tested by Eugen was destroyed in April 1945. The original designs were recovered from Salzdettfurt by British authorities in the summer of 1945.

The Horten IX

(Wikipedia)

“The Horten brothers, together with Dr. Betz, Eugen and Dr. Stueper (the test pilot of the aerodynamic institute in Goettingen), were invited to go to England in the late summer of 1945 where they remained for approximately ninety days. They were interrogated and questioned about their ideas and were given several problems to work on. However Reimar was very unwilling to cooperate to any extent whatsoever, unless an immediate contract was offered to him and his brother. Walter, on the other hand, not being a theoretician, was unable to comply and Reimar was sufficiently stubborn not to move a finger. Upon their return to Goettingen Walter remained in contact with British authorities and was actually paid a salary by the British between October 1945 and April 1946, as the British contemplated but never did offer him employment. Walter subsequently had a final argument with his brother and the two decided to part. Reimar then went to the university of Bonn to obtain his degree, and Walter organized an engineering office in Goettingen which served as a cover firm to keep him out of trouble with the labor authorities. Walter married Fraulein von der Groeben, an extremely intelligent woman, former chief secretary to Air Force General Udet.

“In the spring of 1947 Walter Horten heard about the flying wing design in the United states by Northrop and decided to write Northrop for employment. He was answered in the summer of 1947 by a letter in which Northrop pointed out that he, himself, could not do anything to get him over to the States, but that he would welcome it very much if he could come to the United States and take up employment with the firm. He recommended that Walter should get in touch with USAFE Headquarters in Wiesbaden in order to obtain necessary clearance.

“As can be seen from the above, most of the Hortens’ work took place in Western Germany. According to our source, neither of the brothers ever had any contact with any representative of the Soviet Air Force or any other foreign power. In spite of the fact that Reimar is rather disgusted with the British for not offering him a contract, it is believed very unlikely that he has approached the Soviet authorities in order to sell out to them. The only possible link between the Horten brothers and the Soviet authorities is the fact that a complete set of plans and designs were hidden at the Gothaer Waggon Fabrik and the knowledge of this is known by Dr. Berthold and a number of other engineers. It is possible and likely that either Berthold or any of the others having knowledge of the Horten IX would have sold out to the Soviet authorities for one of a number of reasons. However, this will be checked upon in the future, and it is hoped that contact with the Gothaer Waggon Fabrik can be established.

“As far as the ‘flying saucer’ is concerned, a number of people were contacted in order to verify whether or not any such design at any time was contemplated or existed in the files of any German air research institute. The people contacted included the following: Walter Horten.
Fraulein von der Groeben, former Secretary to Air Force General Udet Guenter. Heinrich, former office for research of the High Command of the Air Force in Berlin. Professor Betz, former chief of Aerodynamic Institute in Goettingen. Eugen, former test pilot.

“All the above mentioned people contacted independently and at different times are very insistent on the fact that to their knowledge and belief no such design ever existed nor was projected by any of the German air research institutions. While they agree that such a design would be highly practical and desirable, they do not know anything about its possible realization now or in the past.”

Unloading a captured Horten IX

( Wikipedia)

That’s where we end with the text of the document. It is valuable on two counts: it’s clear that certain elements of U.S. Intelligence and the military were interested in, and concerned by, the possibility that the Horten brothers had developed some kind of radical, flying saucer-type aircraft. But, as the document also shows, no such evidence was ever found. Of course, those who buy into the Stalin-Mengele angle would likely say that the truth of the Roswell affair was buried so deeply that not even the team that went searching for the answers, and which appear in Lieutenant Pretty’s report, had access to such highly-classified data. The fact is, though, that none of the available data or documentation at all confirmed the Horten brothers succeeded in creating and flying a craft that most people would describe as a UFO. It was all rumor.

When it comes to the story as told to Annie Jacobsen by Alfred O’Donnell, there are two, main possibilities: the story of the Russian/Nazi saucers, the terribly-altered children, and the plan to destabilize the United States by creating a faked alien intrusion, is either (A) true or (B) disinformation. Personally, I find the scenario of surgically-altered children remotely flown to the United States, and all the way from Russia, to be far more unlikely than the idea that aliens crashed. And, also with regard to my skepticism, there are the two most important questions of all. The first goes like this: if the Russians had indeed got their hands on a Horten-built – or a Horten-inspired – aircraft that could perform all kinds of aerial feats, and out-perform anything that the United States was flying at the time, then why on earth would they allow such a technologically-advanced craft to fall into the hands of the U.S. military? That angle makes no sense at all. It would be akin to the United States, in the Second World War, handing over the secrets of the atomic bomb to Adolf Hitler. When those poor children exited the craft and stood before shocked government officials – which was surely a major part of the Soviet plan – U.S. authorities would have grabbed the craft immediately. And the Russians must have known that the American military would do exactly that.

That latter point leads into the second and final question: if the Soviets were so intent on having the U.S. Government believe that the object which came down at Roswell was extraterrestrial, what the hell would have prompted them to have on display, inside the craft, what Jacobsen described as “Russian writing,” and as “letters from the Cyrillic alphabet?” Such an instant giveaway would have completely and quickly ruined Stalin’s plans to deceive America. Unless, of course, you believe that aliens speak and write in Russian, which is an even more bullshit scenario. Over the years, Ufology has been infiltrated by Nazi-loving scum. It would not surprise me at all if O’Donnell may have been deceived by just such a figure;, someone in Ufology looking to fly the flag of those pathetic, scum-fucks known as the “master race.”

Sometimes UFOs show up in the most seemingly unlikely of places. The area of New York’s Hudson River Valley is known for its quaint, historical beauty, agriculture, and as a prominent winemaking region. Here many educated professionals have their homes in upscale neighborhoods, and it is one of the last places one would expect to be ground zero for some of the most intense UFO activity there is, yet for a few years starting from 1981, the peaceful Hudson River Valley began to gain a reputation as a hotspot for otherworldly phenomena that has generated much discussion to this day.

The beginning of it all is widely thought to have been on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1981, when an unnamed off-duty police officer was out in the yard of his home in Kent, New York, with his family just a few minutes before the start of the new year, but this was to prove to be a bit more exciting than usual. Off in the distance they spied a group of red, green, and white lights that were approaching from the south, and which they at fist just took to be a plane. However, as the object approached it could be seen that rather than a plane, the multicolored lights were embedded within a boomerang-shaped craft of some sort, which slowly passed right over their heads at a height of around 500 feet while issuing only an eerie, faint humming sound. On several occasions the lights were reported as shifting from multicolored to an all-white coloration in different patterns, and this was quite obviously no normal aircraft.

It would turn out that there were many other witnesses to this incident at the time, as on nearby Interstate 84 several motorists also observed the object and were so awed by it that they stopped their vehicles along the road to watch it make its inscrutable journey across the sky. One of these motorists was 55-year-old Edwin Hansen, who would explain that the massive boomerang or V-shaped object was big enough to block out the stars, and could be seen to project some sort of light beam to the ground. Oddly, Hansen would also claim that he had made what he believed to be some sort of telepathic contact with the craft, his mind filled with strange images and thoughts that were not his own and the sensation that something was reading his mind and telling him to not be afraid.

This was to prove to be far from a one-off sighting of an unidentified flying object, and the strangeness would resume in February of the following year. On February 26, 1982, a witness by the name of Monique O’Driscoll was driving with her daughter when they saw a strange light in the sky that seemed to take up position over a frozen lake. When they stopped the car they could see that it was a large V-shaped object with numerous red, blue, and amber lights dotting it, as well as an underside crisscrossed by some sort of metal beams. At one point the object seemed to approach them, giving them a bit of a scare, before making its way off into the night. This object would be seen by quite a few other witnesses as well, and the police office would get a deluge of panicked calls at the time. Whatever it was did not seem to be finished frightening the area’s residents, as on March 17, 1983 it was seen again by a few witnesses in Brewster, New York, including by the Deputy Clerk for Putnam County Dennis Sant, who saw it from his home. Sant was left utterly baffled by the bizarre incident, as well as not a little frightened, and he describes what he saw thusly:

It was a very large object. The structure of it was very dark gray, metallic, almost girder-type looking. The object seemed to be very silent. The lights were iridescent, bright, they stood out in the sky and three-dimension. It looked like a city of lights. It just hung in the sky, all brilliant colors… We followed the object around to the backyard. And at that point, a feeling of fright came upon me. Thoughts started to flood my mind, thoughts of the craft touching ground, thoughts of an encounter with an alien being.  Thoughts of being abducted. All types of fearful thoughts started to enter into my mind.

As with the other sightings, it was described as being a large boomerang-shaped craft, around 131 feet long, and more than 330 feet wide, with a multitude of bright red, green, amber and white lights along its fuselage, and it was largely silent. This incident would lead into another just a week later, when the object appeared on March 24, 1983 in the areas of Yorktown and New Castle to set off a whole new wave of sightings. Police began getting a flood of calls from people seeing weird things in the sky, all describing the same V-shaped lighted craft mostly described as being as large as a football field, although there were also reports of smaller objects dating through the sky or even two in different locations at the same time, suggesting there was more than one of them. Among the witnesses were several police officers, and one Officer Andi Sadoff of the New Castle Police explains what he saw as follows:

I was working a 4 PM to midnight tour and assigned to set up some radar to look for speeding cars and I looked up into the sky and saw a series of lights. And at first I thought it was a plane, it was quite a distance, quite far away, but it was, it was really quite large.  As I recall, there were mostly white lights, but there were green lights also. It was alternating green and white lights. It approached my vehicle and it stopped and it seemed to hover. And I’m looking at this thing, thinking what is it? I wasn’t afraid. I was just amazed. I was in awe of it. I didn’t know what it was. The only thing that I recall the most is I was amazed that there was no noise. There was no humming. There was no engine, there was no sound. It was absolutely silent.

This particular report was supported by another that occurred at exactly the same time, this time the witness being a senior manager for IBM by the name of Ed Burns. He was only about 10 miles away from Officer Sadoff, and says that he was first clued in to something strange going on when his radio started acting oddly. Burns says:

Out of nowhere, I got a lot of static on the radio. I thought maybe I was on the wrong number, and then I went over to turn the dial again and that’s when I looked up and saw this craft. It was a triangular ship. And the back had to be as large as a football field at least. And there was no noise. I’m not into astronomy… but what I had witnessed that night was not from this planet.

The ship seemed to generate sightings all up and down the valley on this evening, startling motorists and spotted numerous times by police officers, and the following evening the object was seen by various people yet again. The apperance was always nearly identical; large, descriptions like “as big as a football field” or as large as an aircraft carrier” were thrown around, V-shaped or triangular, the lights studding the exterior. However, interestingly, the reports showed varied behavior for the object or objects, such as that they would shoot beams of light, spin around like a top, shoot away at fantastic speeds, display patterns of colors with their lights, detach what appeared to be smaller craft from the main body, or wink in and out of existence. One witness named Jim Booke, a biomedical engineer, allegedly saw it silently circle over the Croton Falls Reservoir dropping what seemed to be lighted probes into the water and shooting a red beam of light into the reservoir, and indeed the object seemed to often stop over bodies of water. It all left people absolutely baffled, and this time the incident hit the news in a major way, finally catching the attention of UFO researchers Philip J. Imbrogno and J. Allen Hynek, who had been a senior consultant on the Air Force’s Project Blue Book.

The Hudson River Valley

Imbrogno and Hynek arrived in the area and began interviewing as many witnesses to the UFOs that kept appearing as they could. They also set up a phone hotline for people who had seen the objects and very quickly received hundreds of calls, which along with the floods of calls police had received caused them to estimate that there were perhaps thousands of people out there who had observed the phenomenon on March 24 alone, the majority of these being from along the Taconic Parkway. Many of the witnesses were found to be reliable and upstanding citizens, and all of them described the same enormous boomerang shaped craft. The two researchers became convinced that something very off was going on, but the police had other ideas.

According to law enforcement authorities, the whole thing was a prank being pulled by normal ultralight planes or helicopters flying in formation in such a way as to seem more mysterious. The Federal Aviation Administration agreed with this theory, as did officials from nearby Stewart Air Force Base. Supporting the plane theory even futher was a report from an air traffic control specialist named Anthony Capaldi, who also had seen the phenomenon but had come to the conclusion that it was planes in formation. He would say:

The first time I observed the formation, it looked a little peculiar. And from our vantage point in the tower, they just appeared to be just one big light because they were flying in tight formation. I don’t think if this formation flew over an individual’s head at a thousand feet that there’s any way you could mistake it for anything but the formation flying, due to the sound of the aircraft engines. And I imagine that at a thousand feet, you could really determine that it’s aircraft.

There was also a certified hoax when some prankish night pilots buzzed over the region in April of 1983, but interestingly most people who saw this formation immediately recognized them as planes, the same of which could not be said of the other waves of sightings. In fact, many of the witnesses insisted that they knew the difference between planes and what they had seen, and refused to believe that the objects were normal aircraft. This, plus the fact that besides the April hoax no one had ever been caught in the act and there were no suspects, as well as the fact that ultralight planes would unlikely be able to remain so silent and pull off the aerial activities witnessed or hold formation so well, and that so many people had reported these UFOs, Imbrogno and Hynek came to the conclusion that planes in formation were not an acceptable explanation.

In the meantime, the waves of sightings continued, with another on March 31, yet again that summer on July 12, 19, and 24, and yet another the following year on March 25, 1984, each one of these waves generating hundreds of sightings. Some of these reports were rather unsettling, such as a crew at the Indian Point Nuclear Plant, who claimed that the massive craft had hovered over one of the nuclear reactors and caused the facility’s security systems to shut down, which had caused the supervisor to almost have his men open fire upon it, before it suddenly shot off into the night. Even more such sightings flaps would pop up in the coming years until it seemed to stop in 1986. Imbrogno and Hynek would estimate that more than 5,000 people had seen these objects, and they would write an entire book on it titled Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings. They also were able to find some certain idiosyncrasies among all of the data they managed to collect, such as that the sightings were clustered very tightly and seemed to fall on Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights to a disproportionate degree. what this means is anyone’s guess.

Considering the sheer number of independent sightings in the Hudson River Valley between 1981 to 1986, the consistency of the reports, and the number of trained observers, as well as the intensity of it all over the course of years, it certainly seems as though, although some people may have tried to imitate it and hoax it, the phenomenon itself remains mired in mystery. Indeed, the UFO flaps of the Hudson River Valley have never really been satisfactorily explained, and are some of the most widely witnessed UFO phenomena ever seen. What was going on here? Was this just misidentified aircraft and hoaxers as the authorities would like us to believe, or is there something more to it all? If these really were visitors from another world, then what did they want and what brought them to this specific place at these specific times? It is likely we will never know, and the mystery remains a classic case within UFOlogy.

“It had been assessed that it would be better to publish these records, rather than continue sending documents to the National Archives, and so they are looking to put them onto a dedicated gov.uk web page.”

While U.S. presidential candidates make vague promises that they will release the government’s secret UFO files if elected and the U.S. Navy debates the security ramifications of releasing any more information on the infamous “Tic-Tac” UFOs, the British government isn’t waiting for an election to let it’s public see anything and everything that’s in its X-files. Numerous British publications and online media sites have been reporting the comments of an anonymous RAF spokesperson who responded to a Freedom of Information request submitted by PA Media, a multimedia news agency. The release will take place “some time within the first quarter of 2020.”

“When I worked on the MoD’s ‘UFO desk’ we didn’t find definitive proof of extraterrestrial visitation, but there were so many bizarre and unexplained sightings that we didn’t entirely rule it out.”

That statement could be made by no one but Nick Pope, journalist and former Ministry of Defence employee who had his hand in investigating many of those files. Unfortunately, the RAF spokesperson squelched hopes that there would be some dirt on aliens in the release.

“The MoD has no viewpoint on the existence or otherwise of excess terrestrial existence and does not look into UFO reports.”

Don’t look to the U.S. government – now or after the election – to fill in the blanks with their own release of American X-files. UFO researcher Christian Lambright sent a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request to the Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) for records ON THE Nimitz Tic-Tac UFOs incident shortly after it came out. He recently got an answer.

“Specifically, under Section 1.4, the materials would trigger protections under subcategory c), the Intelligence Activities of the United States, as well as the Sources and Methods that are being used to gather information in support of the National Security of the United States. In addition, the materials would trigger protections under subcategory e), Scientific and Technological Matters related to the National Security of the United States. For this reason, the materials are exempt from release under the (b) (1) Exemption for Classified Matters of National Defense. As a result these records may not be released and are being withheld.”

It’s highly likely that the British and U.S. X-files have similar, and probably some identical, information. Why is the British government dragging its files out from under a rock into the broad public daylight, while the U.S. government continues to hide theirs in an Indiana Jones secret warehouse? Could the U.S. be waiting to see what the British have (does anyone really believe we don’t already know?) and how their public reacts to it? Is our government really so afraid of riots in the streets if it releases a bombshell like the existence of extraterrestrials? Why won’t the same thing happen if some other country releases that info first?

We’ve seen lately what happens to whistleblowers. We’ve also seen what happens when the government tries to cover things up. We all want to believe in the existence of other life forms and their ability to visit us in sophisticated flying machines. Unfortunately, we’re at the mercy of an unsophisticated power system bent on keeping knowledge away from us.

Who will win? Let’s hope the British X-files answer our questions and we don’t have to wait for the U.S. government anymore.

“Up, left, down, forward… any way it wanted to go, at any speed it wanted to go. Which was hard for your brain to kinda wrap around at first.”

This was how Gary Voorhis, former Petty Officer 3rd Class Fire Controlman aboard the USS Princeton, described the behavior of an unidentified flying object that was tracked and observed across multiple systems during a 2004 Naval incident off the coast of California. The events described here, commonly known today as the USS Nimitz UFO incident, have become one of the most widely-discussed instances involving unexplained aerial phenomena of the modern era.

A number of key factors have contributed to the attention this incident has gained, which include the involvement of multiple witnesses, and more fundamentally, that it had been a military encounter with obvious national defense implications. Also contributing to the interest it has received had been footage obtained with the help of the Raytheon ATFLIR targeting pod systems employed by the Navy, as well as observations by radar operators and other technicians in the Navy’s Strike Carrier Group-11. All of these sources provided information about the operational capabilities of the craft, which has since been popularly likened to a bus-sized, flying “tic-tac”.

Gary Voorhis and Ryan Weigelt, both of whom served with the Carrier Group-11 at the time of the incident, related a number of unique details to me during a recent interview I conducted with them about the incident. Voorhis, as described earlier, had been a Petty Officer 3rd Class Fire Controlman aboard the USS Princeton, and was one of the system technicians for the Cooperative Engagement Capability and AEGIS Combat systems, which included the AN/SPY-1 Bravo radar. Weigelt, a former Leading Petty Officer, had been the power plant specialist of the SH-60B Seahawk helicopter at the same time.

One of the key elements that both men shared with me in our interview had been their recollection of seeing the now-famous intercept attempt led by Commander David Fravor, a former commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (and, notably, the officer to first compare the object or aircraft’s shape to a “tic-tac”). Fravor was accompanied at the time of the intercept by his weapon systems officer and two other pilots.

“When I started watching this film to begin with,” Voorhis recalled, “they had already started the intercept. The object was moving around, and it was moving in conjunction with the pilot. It would move out of the frame, but then the pilot would adjust, and it would come back into the frame.

“And then it would move sharp to the right, sharp to the left, up, down, any particular direction it wanted to go. It had no rudders, no props, no jet plume. You couldn’t tell which side was the front and which side was the back, except that you’d just assume that which way is going forward is front. But you can’t even assume that, because it would just move sideways.

“You’re waiting for it to move,” Voorhis said. “Then it just moves.”

Voorhis also said that the objects were tracked more than once on radar over the course of several weeks and that, on a few occasions when such radar detections occurred, he attempted to observe the objects with binoculars from the top deck of the U.S.S. Princeton. Voorhis described seeing what appeared to be movement of phosphorescent, albeit ambiguous objects along the horizon in the direction indicated by radar.

And yet, perhaps the Nimitz object’s otherworldly maneuverability isn’t the only impressive thing about its capabilities. Shortly after the initial phase of the intercept, Fravor and the others were alerted via radio that the object reappeared, this time at a designated “cap point”, as indicated in interviews about the incident.

Video footage obtained by pilot Chad Underwood shortly after the initial intercept during the 2004 incident.

“We were at least 40 miles away, and in less than a minute this thing was already at our cap point,” Fravor told the New York Times in 2017. Although the unidentified object at no time displayed any offensive capabilities or other indications of hostile intent, the fact that it (or rather, its operators) had obvious knowledge of the Combat Air Patrol coordinates seems to indicate one of two possibilities:

1. 1) That in addition to highly advanced maneuverability, the “tic-tac” also had the ability to decode the highly encrypted communications systems employed by the Strike Group at that time, or
2. 2) The operators of the UAP technology may have somehow had foreknowledge or other means of access to this information.

The implications of either scenario are significant, and may even be fundamental to understanding the nature of the technology in question.

The various accounts of this object and its capabilities, observed at close-range by Fravor and his company during the intercept, as well as on radar by Voorhis, Day, and others, indicates something that is well beyond the capabilities of any known technologies possessed today by the United States; the same can be said of any other world superpower. This should not necessarily be alarming, as there was no indication of overt offensive capabilities displayed by the object. However, any object or aircraft with such highly advanced performance should not be ruled out as a concern.

It could be decades (at least) before any further information is released that will give the public a clear idea as to what the 2004 Nimitz incident really entailed. That, however, relies heavily on whether the U.S. government–or that of any nation–actually possesses any significant further information in the first place.

The outskirts of Socorro, New Mexico blend right into desert badlands that stretch off into the horizon, a seemingly unforgiving, hostile place of parched earth and spiny plants. On April 24, 1964, at about 5:50 p.m., a plume of dust kicked up over this moonscape, originating from the patrol car of police officer Lonnie Zamora. He had been in a high speed chase moments before, when a strange roaring sound had filled his ears and he had witnessed a bluish, orange flame soaring through the sky some distance away. It was all odd enough that he had broken off from the chase and was now barreling down a rural road towards where he estimated the flame had originated from to investigate. At this point he was not thinking of UFOs or the world of the weird. His best guess was that a car had overturned or a dynamite shack in the vicinity had blown up, but as he navigated the winding, rough and remote road he saw something sitting out in that desert that he at first assumed to be a white car overturned on the road with what looked like two people standing nearby. At this point he thought that his instincts were correct, and that there had been an accident, but as he rushed forward to offer assistance he would soon realize that this was no car. And thus would begin one of the most well-documented and discussed UFO encounters there is.

As Zamora approached, he could see that rather than an overturned vehicle, the object seemed to be a whitish, “O” or egg shaped vehicle with no discernible windows or doors and a shiny sheen like aluminum, as well as what looked like a set of four thin legs underneath it propping it up, and the figures standing nearby were about the size of small adults, with somewhat large heads and wearing what looked like coveralls and possibly some sort of headgear. Even at this point he wasn’t struck by anything particularly outlandish, although it was starting to give him the odd feeling that something was “off.” The object had some sort of red insignia on it, although he could not tell what exactly it depicted or what it meant, and he says that one of the figures seemed to jump in surprise when it realized he was approaching, after which both of them seemed to disappear within the object. In the meantime Zamora had radioed in the incident and it was then that he would be truly shocked when the object in question began to lift up straight into the air. He explains of what happened next:

Hardly turned around from car, when heard roar (was not exactly a blast), very loud roar — at that close was real loud. Not like a jet — know what jets sound like. Started low frequency quickly, then roar rose in frequency (higher tone) and in loudness — from loud to very loud. At same time as roar saw flame. Flame was under the object. Object was starting to go straight up — slowly up. Object slowly rose straight up. Flame was light blue and at bottom was sort of orange color. From this angle, saw the side of object (not end, as first noted). Difficult to describe flame. Thought, from roar, it might blow up. Flame might have come from underside of object, at middle, possibly a four feet area — very rough guess. Cannot describe flame further except blue and orange. No smoke, except dust in immediate area.

After fell by car and glasses fell off, kept running to north, with car between me and object. Glanced back couple of times. Noted object to rise to about level of car, about 20 to 25 feet guess — took I guess about six seconds when object started to rise and I glanced back. I ran I guess about halfway to where I ducked down — about fifty feet from the car is where I ducked down, just over edge of hill. I guess I had run about 25 feet when I glanced back and saw the object level with the car and it appeared about directly over the place where it rose from.

I was still running and I jumped just over the hill — I stopped because I did not hear the roar. I was scared of the roar, and I had planned to continue running down the hill. I turned around toward the object and at same time put my head toward ground, covering my face with my arms. Being that there was no roar, I looked up, and I saw the object going away from me. It did not come any closer to me. It appeared to go in straight line and at same height — possibly 10 to 15 feet from ground, and it cleared the dynamite shack by about three feet. Shack about eight feet high. Object was travelling very fast. It seemed to rise up, and take off immediately across country.

He would claim that after this spectacular takeoff the craft ceased to make any noise or flame, and proceeded to silently shoot off into the distance over a mountain. As he stood there in shock and we at what he had just witnessed backup arrived, in the form of a Sergeant Chavez. Zamora excitedly told Chavez about what had happened, and the two searched the area to allegedly find strange indentations and scorch marks upon the earth. Other officers who would arrive claimed that some of the vegetation and the ground were still hot to the touch, with some of it even described as still smoldering, as if just hit by a massive heat. Not long after this, word got out about this outlandish incident and reporters were coming in droves, with headlines splashed all over the news talking of aliens and UFOs in the desert.

This quickly got the attention of the government, including the FBI and the U.S. Air Force, in particular the study it had initiated into UFO sightings, called Project Blue Book. Investigators would intensively question Zamora about the incident and deem him to be a reliable witness, a respected police officer who seemed to be telling the truth and had no reason to lie. The FBI would say Zamora was “well regarded as a sober, industrious, and conscientious officer and not given to fantasy.” When Zamora then brought them out to the alleged landing sight, they found wrecked, charred brush and the indentations he spoke of, as well as what looked like some sort of metal scrapings on a rock, and it was all rather baffling indeed.

Investigators were also able to track down other people who had possibly witnessed the same exact event. It turned out that several independent witnesses had also reported seeing an egg-shaped unidentified object trailing a blueish flame at approximately the same time as Zamora’s encounter. One witness in particular gave a dramatic report of some sort of silvery craft emerging from a bank of black smoke, of which he said, “a round, saucer or egg-shaped object ascended vertically from the black smoke… After climbing vertically out of the smoke, the object leveled off and moved in a southwest direction.” There were other witnesses as well, including those who had seen the object visually and those who had heard a strange roar echo out across the desolate landscape, as ell as those who had seen merely a bright flash from the region, but it is all intriguing as many of these reports came in before Zamora’s tale even hit the news. In the end, the case had experts and investigators stumped, and Major Hector Quintanilla, the Air Force Chief of Project Blue Book at the time, would call it a genuinely puzzling case, and he would write in his report on the matter:

There is no doubt that Lonnie Zamora saw an object which left quite an impression on him. There is also no question about Zamora’s reliability. He is a serious police officer, a pillar of his church, and a man well versed in recognizing airborne vehicles in his area. He is puzzled by what he saw, and frankly, so are we. This is the best-documented case on record, and still we have been unable, in spite of thorough investigation, to find the vehicle or other stimulus that scared Zamora to the point of panic.

This is particularly odd, as it was in an era in which Project Blue Book was on a crusade to debunk sightings as much as possible, the days of weather balloons, misidentified aircraft, and of course Venus, and rarely admitted to or covered up those that were genuinely unexplained. Adding to the weirdness of it all was a discovery allegedly made in 1968, when a a University of New Mexico doctoral student in radiation biology by the name of Mary G. Mayes claimed to have gone out to the site of the landing to do a study on the “plant material” of the area, and had found that not only were the plants around the site unusually dried out, but that there seemed to be an area of fused sand in the middle of all of this, which looked as if “a hot jet had hit it.” She would claim that after these discoveries the Air Force had moved in to acquire all of her research, data, and samples and that was the last she heard of it.

In later years, the Zamora incident would gain a lot of traction in the UFO community, as it was extremely well-documented and considered a truly unclassifiable event made by a reliable witness, and Zamora would continue to stand by his story. Of course, the main problem is that there is only one person who ever saw the landed craft and around which all of this revolves, and that is Zamora himself. As such, there has been much debate as to how much any of it holds up, and so there have been a lot of theories proposed on what might have gone on out there along that remote road. It has often been suggested that this was all a hoax, not necessarily implemented by Zamora, but perhaps a prank played on him by some enterprising individuals, but if that is the case then they did a good job of fooling everyone involved, including the FBI and Air Force. There is also of course the notion that Zamora set this all himself, as part of a scheme in order to raise tourism to the area.

Other ideas have really run the range, including ball lightning, dust devils, mirages, and top secret military aircraft, even an experimental lunar surveyor being tested out of the nearby White Sands Missile Range. Then of course there is the idea that this was an actual encounter with otherworldly forces, and that this was a genuine alien encounter. It is hard to say, as Zamora is no longer with us, having taken what he saw to the grave with him, and the case has mostly been dropped officially, merely an unexplained little hiccup listed simply as “unknown” and not worthy of follow-up. Whatever it is Zamora encountered out there, it has remained one of the most well-documented and oft discussed UFO encounters out there, and without any definitive answers we will probaby never know exactly what transpired.

Anyone who has been on a European river cruise or an organized bus tour through cities with ruins dating back thousands of years has no doubt felt that they were traveling back in time and probably wished it were possible to go back in time and see these cities when they were alive with our ancestors. If we feel that way, it’s not hard to imagine that our future descendants will have the same yearnings. What they may also have is the technology to pull off such a time-traveling tour package. A professor of biological anthropology believes UFOs are actually identified tour ‘buses’ from the future and lays out a case on how to prove it.

“Undoubtedly in the future, there are those that will pay a lot of money to have the opportunity to go back and observe their favorite period in history. Some of the most popular tourist sites are the pyramids of Giza and Machu Picchu in Peru … old and prehistoric sites.”

Michael Masters is a professor of biological anthropology at Montana Technological University in Butte and the author of “Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon.” In a presentation at the 2019 International UFO Congress and a more recent interview with Space.com, Masters lays out his reasons to believe that aliens are future human tourists. The ‘human’ part is certainly plausible – he points out that most “extratempestrials” are described as bipedal beings with human features who can communicate in our languages and travel in ships that seem to be based on current technology … like a Ferrari resembles a Model T.

“We know we’re here. We know humans exist. We know that we’ve had a long evolutionary history on this planet. And we know our technology is going to be more advanced in the future. I think the simplest explanation, innately, is that it is us. I’m just trying to offer what is likely the most parsimonious explanation.”

Masters sees the stories of alien abductees as indicators that many of the UFO time machines contain anthropologists doing what he wishes he could do if he had the technology – meeting ancient civilizations and perhaps picking up a few samples. Space.com adds credence to the connection to abductee stories by bringing in Larry Lemke, a retired NASA aerospace engineer and ufologist who points out that some abductee experiences coincide with what might happen if they were taken onboard a ship that was able to defy the usual laws of aerodynamics and Newtonian mechanics.

“There’s a group of thinkers in the field of UFOs that point out that phenomena reported around some UFOs do, in fact, look exactly like general relativity effects. Missing time is a very common one.”

Just like today, once the explorers and scientists are done analyzing (and looting) ancient sites, people with a lot of money start visiting them. Eventually, the costs go down and these tours become available to the masses. Have our future selves reached that point yet? Were those recent Tic Tac UFOs merely time-traveling tour buses filled with extratempestrials – noses pressed to the windows, future cell phones taking selfies as they try to see ten cities in ten … minutes?

“Our job as scientists is to be asking big questions and try to find answers to unknown questions. There’s something going on here, and we should be having a conversation about this. We should be at the forefront of trying to find out what it is.”

Not to mention selling souvenirs to these time-traveling tourists.

UFO encounters run the range between those of a benevolent type, and others that are more sinister in nature. Throughout accounts of such encounters one kind find a wide range of experiences lying along this scale, to the point that it is often difficult to know what to make of it all. One very odd and frightening case supposedly played out over an expanse of the Australian Outback, and which has not been solved to this day. It is the tale of a mundane trip across the desert that would turn into a nightmare from possibly another world.

On January 20, 1988, Faye Knowles, her adult sons Patrick (24), Sean (21) and Wayne (18), and their two dogs were making their way towards Melbourne, Australia across a vast expanse of limestone bedrock called the Nullarbor Plain. The area is a remote desert moonscape of a place, with no one around for miles and other cars a rarity, so it was considered odd when in the very early morning hours a light was spotted some distance ahead, just outside of the tiny town of Mundrabilla. The light seemed to get steadily brighter as they watched it, and as they got closer they could see that it was semi-spherical or egg shaped and was most certainly not another vehicle as it was just a single bright light and seemed to be hovering in the air over that desolate expanse.

Nullarbor Plain

As the family struggled to comprehend what they were seeing, the strange object allegedly emitted a beam of light that swept towards their vehicle and caused the driver, Sean, to take evasive maneuvers. The beam missed the car, but this is when Sean would claim the object had begun to follow them down that lonely roadway, easily keeping pace with them no matter how fast they went. They apparently passed another car going the other direction, after which the mysterious object stopped pursuing them and followed the other vehicle. Sean the reportedly turned the car around to follow the other car and its UFO pursuer to figure out what was going on, but thought better of it and turned around yet again. The object then must have decided to go after them again, because it was soon ominously closing in on them once again.

It purportedly got brighter and closer, passing them a few times to circle around to approach again before positioning itself right above their car as the terrified family within screamed out in fright. There was then a thump on the roof, and the car slowed down as if something very heavy were sitting atop it, leading them to the horrible realization that it had actually lowered itself to make contact with the vehicle. According to the witnesses, it then issued a shrill, ear piercing sound, and Faye would say that they were overcome with the sense of something invading their minds, later saying, “It felt like something was going into our heads,” and Patrick would say “I felt like my brain was being sucked out.” They also claimed that their voices became distorted and that they moved sluggishly, as if underwater or experiencing a slowing of time itself. Things would intensify when they then felt the car physically lift off of the road, after which they were shaken violently from side to side as a grey mist filled the car and dropped back down with such force that it blew one of their tires and disabled the vehicle to leave to leave it lying in that unforgiving place like a wounded beast. Fay Knowles would say of the otherworldly encounter:

I wound down the window and I felt this thing on the roof… all of this smoke stuff started coming into the car, the car was covered in black stuff. It was a small light and all of a sudden it became big like this, like a big ball. We thought we were dying, then we got out the car and we hid behind a little tree and the bushes and it couldn’t find us.

When the cowering family were sure the object was gone, they warily went back to their car, changed the tire, and got out of there as fast as they could, eventually making their way to Mundrabilla, where they excitedly told of what had happened to them. Interestingly, a trucker at the gas station there would tell them that he had also seen the strange, eerie light out over the desert as well. When their car was examined, it was found to be banged up, and both the exterior and interior covered with a fine film of black material like soot or ash that had an unusual odor like “a blown fuse.” The Knowles were able to get some truckers to go with them out to where the incident had supposedly occurred, where they allegedly found odd skid marks on the road that seemed to show that the vehicle has been dragged sideways by some powerful force, making it all even stranger.

South Australian Police in Ceduna were notified, and analyses of the soot on the car would be carried out that later prove to be divisive, with some saying it was merely sand and dust particles from the desert, while others claimed that there were also traces of an explosive compound called Potassium Chlorate, as well as a radioactive chemical called Astatine. Yet another analysis found that the dust on the outside of the car and that of the interior were different. The surprising differences of these results seem like they would deserve more follow-up, but oddly the South Australia police were apparently very eager to distance themselves from it all, finish the investigation, and sweep it under the carpet, and the whole case was just sort of filed away even as it was hitting the news in a big way. This would cause Faye Knowles to lament:

We are all angry. Everybody knows that this happened to us but the people who should be concerned have just ignored it. There has been a cover-up. The government owes us and the public an explanation.

Theories on what might have happened to the Knowles family out on that lonely and forbidding stretch of road have swirled ever since, ranging from the mundane to the far-out. One idea is that they had been tired from a 13-hour car ride all night along an isolated road in the middle of nowhere, and had then perhaps misidentified some natural phenomenon in their fatigued state. This has been speculated as perhaps being a truck’s headlights in the distance or the planet Venus, that were distorted by a temperature inversion, which is basically a layer of warm air over cooler air that can cause mirages and tricks of light. However, this in no way explains their car being picked up off of the ground and dropped.

It has also been suggested that they might have experienced a meteor that just happened to disintegrate and cause a shockwave near their car, or even a rocket fired from a military base at nearby Woomera. Other theories include that they were caught in a dust storm or some sort of electromagnetic storm, but none of these really fits all of the details of the encounter. Of course there is the idea that this was an actual UFO abduction, and a possibly even weirder idea is that it was an attack by a secret government organization using a helicopter and a powerful, technologically advanced electromagnet to lift the vehicle up. Researcher William Buckley has said of this strange idea:

The attack on the Knowles family was orchestrated and carried out by a well-resourced paramilitary organization operating in Australia, using a sophisticated helicopter with specialized lifting equipment. The Knowles’ involvement was purely accidental. They were not the intended target and were attacked only because they resembled the real target group who were also travelling on the same road that night. The nature of this covert action by this paramilitary group and the importance of the assassination attempt on the real target group are now shrouded in secrecy and cover-up and nobody wants the truth to be revealed.

This is obviously a case of attempted murder of four people who were all extremely traumatised by this hour-long attack. There was plenty of forensic evidence and witnesses to prove that the family was attacked and a major police investigation should have been triggered to uncover the truth.

Not quite as interesting as any of these is the idea that the family was trying to pull an insurance scam or even that it was just a flat-out hoax. For their part, the Knowles family has always insisted that what they experienced was very real, and very frightening, and they have never sought to gain fame or large amounts of money from any of it, mostly lying low about the whole thing. What happened to this family out on that bleak stretch of road? What forces came calling for them to follow them around and terrorize them? Was this aliens, a weather phenomenon, or something else? No one really knows, and the case remains controversial and debated to this day.