The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
In reflecting on the past year, we often think of those individuals we have lost. In the field of UFOlogy, it is no different. Indeed, in recent years, we have lost many pioneers in this field of inquiry. One such pioneer was a man named Larry Hatch who passed away on August 3rd, 2018. Unfortunately, many were not familiar with his passing or the legacy he has left this field of study.
Larry was a computer programmer by trade. His high level of intelligence was rivaled only by his creative talent for developing innovative ideas using the latest technologies. This went way back to Larry’s childhood. At the age of fourteen, he created his own private telephone system for his neighborhood friends to communicate with. We are not talking about the old cup and string concept. Rather, he developed his own actual stand-alone telephone system as this old news clipping from the San Mateo Times reported in the 1960s.
Later in life, Larry’s intellectual prowess persisted. It was no surprise that he eventually became part of the burgeoning computer industry in California where he was born and raised. Larry held many positions starting as a Senior Electronics Technician followed by a long career working for National Semiconductor as an Engineer.
Later, in 1993, Larry branched out on his own as an independent computer contractor. It was during this time that he focused his computer skills on a subject that was always near and dear to his heart – UFOs. Since early childhood, Larry was fascinated with the subject and had some personal experiences that he preferred to keep private.
Larry created from the ground level one of the most robust UFO databases up until that time – the *U* UFO Database. This was a database that the public could use on their home PCs. The *U* Database itself could do queries based on word search, geography, or UFO characteristics. There was also an impressive UFO mapping tool that visually displayed any relevant UFO cases based on your search criteria. This was amazing considering the database was written in a DOS-based environment.
UFO Map from the *U* UFO Database by Larry Hatch
Despite various computer UFO catalogs that had existed, there were only a few computer UFO databases before the *U* Database’s creation. There were the IBM punch data cards employed by the Battelle Memorial Institute in the 1950s used to examine Project Blue Book cases. Then, based on this concept, there was another computer database, compiled at Northwestern University in the 1960s. This included all unidentified cases from Project Blue Book through the efforts of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Jacques Vallee, et al. This work was eventually turned over to the Condon study at the University of Colorado in 1968 and eventually formed the basis for David Saunders’ UFOCAT database. Other UFOCAT versions were to follow in subsequent years.
The *U* Database also had several updates in later years after its release in 1994 when I first heard of Larry’s creation. Obviously, I had to have a copy for my own UFO research and purchased one of the first versions. After my initial contact with Larry, I had a number of emails interspersed with a few phone calls in the early to mid-nineties. In maintaining ties with him, I was always on the list for any later software updates but also was in a position to eventually provide case material for his latest 2002 update.
Larry had spent thousands of hours combing every possible UFO book and periodical he could get his hands on. In doing so, he took each case documented therein and then converted it into code for database entry. The last tally I saw was over 17,000 UFO cases that Larry personally entered into the database! Most of us cannot imagine the time, dedication, and personal sacrifice he made doing all of this work.
Although he was the sole individual that did all the data entry, he was not alone in gathering the relevant UFO case files and information. Despite avoiding the social scene, Larry was well connected with leading UFO researchers and historians worldwide. Some of these included: Jan Aldrich, Barry Greenwood, Jacques Vallee, Dominique Weinstein, etc.
Jan Aldrich recently informed me that his role was two-fold in collaborating with Larry. First, to properly vet the UFO data for removal of IFO reports or spurious cases. Second, to add interesting cases not formerly in the system. Jan emphasized Larry’s continual work in this area to ensure not only the quantity of information but quality information.
Additional reflections on Larry’s work were conveyed to me by Vallee in the writing of this article. Vallee stated,
“From my point of view, the most memorable lesson from his life is the observation of how much good research can be done by a single person with talent and the willingness to pursue a well-focused goal. Larry single-handedly accomplished what the leading UFO organizations of the time were unable to do with their resources, membership fees and access to media: an effective, well-functioning, cleverly interfaced graphic database of important UFO events! He also managed to build it in a way that made it economically accessible and legible to hundreds of people, on personal computers.”
He further added,
“I was part of Larry’s extensive correspondence network and brought him items that might be of interest in his work. I enjoyed visiting his house “down the Peninsula” and discussing the sightings, as well as gossiping about technology trends: He was indeed a very gifted software designer and implementer, and a kind man with no interest in the quarrels that plagued ufology. He remains an inspiration to me.”
The saddest part regarding the life of the *U* Database was that it was written in a DOS environment. As technology began to improve with numerous versions of Microsoft Windows and Macintosh or Mac computers, the DOS platform went the way of the dinosaur. Consumers then, like today, wanted the latest and greatest. As a result, DOS-based software programs and their followers diminished. So too did the *U* Database audience – for the most part.
Larry Hatch
Over time, I eventually lost touch with Larry in the early 2000s. I always meant to re-connect at some point. But I had heard rumors years later through the UFO grapevine that he was in ill-health. I had also heard that he retired to a nursing home. However, in speaking with older researchers who knew Larry more than myself, they too weren’t 100% sure what his status was at the time. It was a mystery.
Recently in November of 2018, after many years of losing touch with Larry, I saw items for sale on eBay that stated they were from the Larry Hatch collection. Eager to have these for my UFO research library, I purchased the items. I noticed the return address had the name of the seller, Yvonne Hatch. I thought to myself this must be a relative of Larry’s. My suspicions were proven correct.
I was able to email and then eventually call Yvonne Hatch who turned out to be Larry’s niece. She regrettably informed me that her late-uncle had passed away due to medical complications on August 3rd, 2018. She and other family members were dealing with the aftermath of his passing. This is what resulted in some of his UFO items surfacing on eBay.
Yvonne was gracious with her time, and she told me things about Larry I did not know from his personal life. She provided the photos included with this article. Yvonne stated her late-uncle was a man of high-intellect who had a passion for the subject of UFOs as evidenced by his tenacious data gathering and data entry that ultimately created the *U* Database. From the conversations we had, I could also feel the bond she had with her uncle and the subsequent loss with his passing.
I am not ashamed to admit that I have in my UFO research room to this day a fully-functioning DOS-based computer that is still running my version of the *U* Database. It was and continues to be extremely instrumental in my UFO studies. When fellow-researchers come to visit, I always try to make it a point to introduce them to the database as it proves useful in many research endeavors.
But more importantly, I tell them about the creator of the *U* Database, Larry Hatch. He was a man who was never to be seen at a UFO conference or UFO meeting. He never wanted to be the focus of attention. Instead, he wanted to be a facilitator in providing UFO data in a manageable form for serious researchers. To that end, he succeeded – admirably.
I wanted to pay tribute to Larry and let the UFO community know about his demise. But, as in these types of situations, not to just mourn his passing. It is a time to also celebrate the man’s contributions to the UFO research field. I hope memories of him and his *U* Database will live on. As Vallee stated, “He remains an inspiration.”
LAS VEGAS - 2018 was a big year for UFO news. It was a year ago this month when the Pentagon admitted it has been secretly studying unidentified flying objects and also released a few videos recorded by military pilots.
The sudden re-emergence of official interest in these unknown aircraft has also resulted in a closer look at older UFO cases and testimony, including one story that started in Las Vegas.
A new documentary film about UFO whistleblower Bob Lazar is out and there's no way I-Team Reporter George Knapp would miss the world premiere.
It was 29 years ago that Lazar came forward, claimed he worked on technology out in the Nevada desert, and suddenly the Area 51 base became known all over the world.
The I-Team has done occasional updates with Lazar over the decades but it is never easy to get him to open up. The premiere of the new film has fired up many of the same arguments about his credibility, but the first audience to see the movie didn't need much convincing.
The line of eager fans stretched around a city block in downtown Los Angeles. A sellout crowd of 1,600 people filed into the historic United Artists theater to see a film narrated by movie star Mickey Rourke and to hobnob with like-minded enthusiasts, some brought their Area 51 saucer model kits. At least one wore an ET mask.
A few famous faces were in the audience when director Jeremy Corbell took the stage and explained why he was inspired to tackle this particular slice of UFO history.
"The reason I made this film is because I wanted to know the truth," said Jeremy Corbell, documentary filmmaker. "People that are haters, debunkers talk smack. Some of you are in this audience. You don't know the story. You didn't get it right."
As the lights dimmed and the projector fired up, the subject of the movie Bob Lazar took a seat alongside other interested parties.
"There are nine flying saucers, flying discs out there..."
That 1989 interview on KLAS TV changed things forever for Bob Lazar, whose identity was made public months later. His story about alleged alien technology being stored and analyzed at S-4, a camouflaged facility built into a mountain south of Groom Lake, the heart of the now infamous Area 51 military base, set off a stampede.
UFO researchers by the busload made the pilgrimage to the Nevada desert, along with major news organizations. The story put Area 51 on the map worldwide, inspired movies, TV shows, and books, led to the creation of the E.T. highway and a namesake professional baseball team.
In our periodic interviews with Lazar over the last 29 years, he expressed regret about ever coming forward. In Corbell's film, Lazar opens up even more.
"I worked at a secret base called S-4 near Area 51. It changed my life, mostly for the negative. At this point in my life, I would probably lean toward not saying anything," Lazar said.
In the film, Lazar goes into specific detail about the technology he says he saw, technology that is remarkably similar to the objects seen in videos released one year ago by the Pentagon and first obtained by the To The Stars Academy.
These craft can generate gravity and bend space-time, Lazar said nearly three decades ago, and now, the topic is once again generating waves of media coverage.
Audience response to the film's premiere was overwhelmingly positive enough to coax a visibly uncomfortable Lazar onto the stage with the director to answer a few questions, including the attacks on his credibility that are a staple on social media. Lazar says he doesn't blame people for their skepticism.
"I understand it is an incredible story and I myself would have a hard time believing it. As I said in the film, the events portrayed occurred just like they were shown. Frankly, I'd prefer that people didn't believe it so I don't get bothered and asked questions at all."
Open Minds UFO Radio: The holidays are upon us and Karen Brard, the owner of the International UFO Congress, has filled the official International UFO Congress store full of super cool UFO and Alien merchandise that is perfect for holiday gift giving — even if you are giving the gift to yourself. Karen and Open Minds UFO radio host have been traveling around the country promoting the International UFO Congress and selling merchandise and Karen has been learning what people want and offering it at a great price.
In this episode, Karen shares some info and advise about the cool merchandise she is offering. Karen and Alejandro also share some observations and stories regarding some of the events they have attended.
For more information about the International UFO Congress visit:UFOCongress.com
Open Minds UFO Radio: Jeremy Corbell is an investigative filmmaker and runs the websiteExtraordinaryBeleifs.com. Many of his projects, including his most recent, focus on the paranormal and UFOs. In September, Corbell released his film Hunt for the Skinwalker based off of the 2005 book of the same the same name. Much of this film included archival footage and reports from Las Vegas reporter George Knapp, who along with scientist Colm Kelleher, author the Skinwalker book. However, the subject of this episode is Corbell’s latest project based on Bob Lazar, the alleged whistleblower whose claims made Area 51 famous. The film is titled Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers, and is set to premiere on December 3, 2018.
Lazar claims that he worked at a secret underground lab called S-4 near Papoose Lake, just south of Area 51. Everyday he would fly into Area 51 and be bused to S-4. At this base, he says he worked back-engineering advanced propulsions systems on a craft he says could only have been made by alien technology. In this episode, Corbell discusses how the film came about and his approach to tackling the controversial subject.
At the UFO DATA conference in October 2007, I met up with veteran UFO investigator David Beezer. I’ve known David for many years and he has regularly attended many of our public events. David wanted me to read a report he had received from a RAF officer, but on the day I simply did not have the time. David made me a copy of the report in question and I read it a day or two after the conference had finished.
The report came from a Mr. Alan Turner, Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE), and concerned a UFO observed on radar at Royal Air Force (RAF) base Sopley in the summer of l971. I subsequently contact Mr. Turner and have his permission to document the following. His report is published in full.
Alan Turner was aged twenty-five when he joined the Royal Air Force in l966 and was commissioned that year as an Air Traffic Control Officer. RAF Sopley was a wartime bunker, which had been converted into a joint military/civilian Air Traffic Control Radar Unit (ATCRU): it closed in l974 when both the civil and military ATC functions were transferred to West Drayton.
Alan Turner remained in the RAF eventually to command the Central ATC School from 1990 to 1992. In July 1995, he was discharged from the RAF in the rank of Wing Commander.
1982: This was taken in l982 when Alan Turner was the Senior Air Traffic Control Officer at RAF Lossiemouth. He is pictured on the right.
This is Wing Commanders Turner’s account of what he personally observed at RAF Sopley in the summer of l971 in full:
In the summer of 1971, I was the Duty Military Supervisor at RAF Sopley, which was a joint military/civil Air Traffic Control Radar Unit (ATCRU). It was a Tuesday afternoon but I cannot remember the exact date. The Duty Civil Supervisor drew my attention to a situation on radar the likes of which neither of us had ever encountered.
Emanating from a point some twenty nautical miles east of the eastern extremity of the Salisbury Plain Danger Area were a series of six or seven blips moving on a south-easterly track each being separated from the other by about six miles. At about forty miles from the point they appeared on radar they disappeared to be followed almost immediately by a replacement at the point of origin.
I put the FPS 6 Height Finder onto some returns to discover that they were about 3000 feet when they came into radar cover and climbing extremely rapidly so that, by the time they disappeared from radar, they were in excess of 60,000 feet. To climb to such a height in only forty miles was beyond the ability of any fighter aircraft at the time.
The phenomenon was witnessed by four civil and six military controllers on duty at the time. I called Heathrow Radar to discover that they, also, were seeing a similar picture. The same situation prevailed in the Fighter Control Operations Rooms at RAF Neatishead. The three units involved operated different radars from each other thus different frequencies were in use. The weather forecast from the south of England was calm and sunny. I called the Met Office to confirm the strength of the upper winds to find that they were also relatively calm and were about fifty degrees off the southeasterly track of the blips; they also confirmed that there were not Met balloons/probes airborne at the time.
The winds were not strong enough, nor in the right direction, to cause the blips to travel on their observed track, especially at the speed they were travelling. It was estimated that they were doing around 250 knots, but it must be borne in mind that this was a lateral speed as seen on radar – they must have been travelling very much faster to climb over 50,000 feet in less than forty miles. Equally the weather was such that there were no ‘angels’ to affect the radar picture. “Angels” was a euphemism for, what were believed to be, ionozed pockets of air which, under very specific atmospheric conditions, were often seen on radar screens in those days: when seen, these ‘angels’ traveled extremely slowly simply drifting along haphazard tracks. In those days all radars were ‘raw’. That is to say that, whatever was within the coverage of the radar envelope and capable of bouncing (returning) the radar pulse back to the receiver, would be seen on the radar tube. Today’s radars are computerised thus such interference is processed out so as not to affect the picture.
Looking around for some other method of checking what was going on, I discovered that a controller had two Canberras on frequency returning from Germany. One of the pilots agreed to investigate so I assumed control of his aircraft and, having confirmed he was in good visual met conditions, I vectored him on to the blips keeping him regularly updated on their position relative to the Canberra. The aircraft was flying at around nineteen thousand feel and when it got within a mile or so of one particular blip, the pilot reported, in a very agitated voice, that his radar had picked something up heading down his port side by about a quarter of a mile and ‘climbing like the clappers’, it was on a reciprocal heading to the Canberra. The pilot admitted that neither he nor his navigator made any visual contact and confirmed that the weather conditions were such that they would have had no difficultly seeing something that close.
The whole episode lasted for twenty minutes or more before the blips stopped appearing. I impounded the R/T tapes and the Radar Video film and made appropriate entries in the log. Each person in the Ops Room who witnessed the incident was required to write a report. The Squadron Leader in charge of Operations collated the reports and informed higher authority. Within a couple of days I was interviewed in the Squadron Leader’s office by two men who were not identified to me. I, along with all the others in the Ops Room on the day in question, were told in no uncertain terms not to relate what we had seen until cleared to do so. About four years later I was serving at RAF Wattisham when the Station Commander asked to see me. I was told that he had a communication from the MoD about the incident at Sopley and that as ‘nothing could be confirmed’ the situation was such that doubt would be cast on anything I said about it. I took this to mean that I was no longer to remain silent.
I am at a loss to explain what I, and many other people, saw. In those days aircraft could not climb at such a rate. To be seen on displays by three different ground radars, plus the airborne radar in the Canberra, is also a mystery. The weather conditions were very definitely VMC or Visual Met Conditions; the aircraft was clear of cloud by at least a thousand feet vertically and with a forward visibility of at least five nautical miles.
Alan Turner MBE 10th November 2007.
Map: Map of the area showing the track on the unidentified radar target. Map supplied by Alan Turner.
In Mr. Turner’s letter to be dated 10th November 2007 he apologised for not remembering the exact date of the incident and believes that there are those out there that will use this to discredit his account. I’ll leave you with his final comments on the incident; “Please use the information in any way you see fit; I stand by what I saw because I know what I saw.”
1984: This is Wing Commander Alan Turner and his wife Diane at Buckingham Palace where he received his MBE from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in l984.
1994: Alan Turner at a social function during his last appointment with the RAF in l994.
Thanks must go to David Beezer for supplying the information and contact details and special thanks to Alan Turner MBE for allowing me to publish his account.
All photographs copyright Alan Turner MBE and reproduced with his kind permission.
Open Minds UFO Radio: Nick Redfern is a journalist, author, and UFO researcher. He is originally from England, but now lives in Texas. The topics in his books range from Men in Black, UFOs, Cryptozoology and other paranormal topics. His latest book, just released this month, is titled Top Secret Alien Abductions.
In this episode, we discuss his latest book. However, the majority of the show is regarding the topic of his 2010 book, FINAL EVENTS and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife. In a recent interview on Open Minds UFO Radio, investigative journalist George Knapp discussed the influence religious government insiders had in squashing funding of UFO and paranormal investigations. He referenced Nick’s work investigating religious cabals in the government. Just this week, Luis Elizondo, former head of the recently revealed UFO program, wrote an article for To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences in which he claimed these same insiders ruined his predecessor’s career.
Open Minds UFO Radio: Chris is one of the hosts of the Mad Scientist Podcast. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering focusing on the study of nanomaterials for use as catalysts and adsorbents from Northeastern University. He has a bachelors degree in chemical engineering and philosophy from the University of New Hampshire. The Mad Scientist podcast covers the history and philosophy of science and fringe science claims and examines how societies accept technologies and sciences.
In this episode, we discuss the science necessary to prove whether an extraterrestrial civilization made a particular object. We also discuss scenarios related to the discoverers might handle such a discovery, and how mainstream science may react.
Open Minds UFO Radio: Nick Pope – Renewed Government Interest in UFOs
Open Minds UFO Radio: Nick Pope – Renewed Government Interest in UFOs
Open Minds UFO Radio: Nick Pope investigated UFOs for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) for several years in the early 1990s. He was skeptical about the phenomenon when he began looking into the matter. However, after having reviewed several credible cases Nick concluded that there was UFOs pose a real mystery, and unidentified vehicles in our airspace could pose a threat to national security. Since he has left the MoD, Nick has authored a book on the UK’s most credible and famous UFO case, Encounter in Rendlesham Forest: The Inside Story of the World’s Best-Documented UFO Incident. He is also a journalist and media commentator.
In this episode, we discuss the renewed interest the U.S. government appears to be showing in the UFO topic since the revelation that the Pentagon has its own UFO research program, that allegedly continues to this day. We discuss the fact that several individuals have addressed congressional subcommittees recently, and what that means to the future of government involvement in UFO research. Nick gives his unique perspective a being one of the few who has worked on a government-sponsored UFO research program. For more about Nick visit: http://nickpope.net/
Watch Nick’s new documentary Aliens at the Pentagon on iTunes:
In the recent world of fringe science, there has been an explosion of interest in so-called meta-materials allegedly “recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena.” Although this announcement has created a great deal of excitement, there has been very little context to these claims. The public, therefore, has no real baseline by which to critique or even understand the claims or methods being employed to confirm the potentially anomalous nature of the material. For example, how can a member of the public understand whether or not the testing methods suggested by a variety of individuals are sufficient? And how will the evidence such testing provides be understood and analyzed by the scientific community, and how best can that be expressed to the general public? In this report our group will give this context, helping the public to construct informed opinions on these testing methods, results, and the very nature of the tests performed.
As a first pass on this analysis, we must understand what questions are being asked. In other words, let’s suppose we were given a piece of material that was believed to have come from another, potentially alien civilization. The challenge presented to our scientific team is to prove whether or not this material really did, or at least most likely must have, come from some non-Earth intelligence. How would we begin to develop a plan to test if the evidence supported this hypothesis? This question can be broken down into a number of significant portions. Firstly, we would want to identify if the material has come from outer space by comparing it to similar materials or samples we find on Earth. Does it show significant enough differences to cause us to believe it did not come from our planet? Second, is there evidence that the material has been engineered or designed in some way? Does it show properties or applications that we wouldn’t expect to occur naturally, or is it engineered or composed in a way to give it specific properties? And third, does it show advanced techniques or knowledge with which we are unfamiliar. Are there super-heavy elements which we have yet to discover here on Earth, does it show crystal structures or solid phases that have not yet been documented by the materials science community, does it show composition and engineering which is beyond the scope of science today?
This artist’s concept depicts Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone — a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet’s surface.
(Image Credit: NASA)
If these three questions are answered in the affirmative and supported by evidence this would be enough to support the hypothesis. This would show that this material is not only from outer space but from a civilization that had engineered it for a specific purpose. Each question answered in the affirmative would be a tremendous milestone for the person who found the material, but not enough to support the extraordinary claim of alien engineering on its own. For instance, if the material were found to be from outer space with evidence of unknown properties it may be a meteorite or other piece of space debris, but not necessarily from another civilization. At the same time, if the material showed evidence of engineering and was also found to have unknown properties it could be from an experimental aircraft or another device that is currently unknown to the public and scientific community. One possibility we cannot ignore here is that our current science may not be able to understand or determine the properties or applications for which a given material has been engineered. This may give a false negative to our question 3 above and lead us to unfairly characterize some samples as not passing the high threshold we have set. Ultimately if a material has been engineered, it is almost implied that there would be a reasoning behind this engineering, some application for which it would be used. Therefore, I would anticipate that although we may not currently understand its application that does not imply that an application was not in mind when the material was initially designed. This suggests that for cases where engineering is suspected as well as a non-Earth point of origin careful consideration must be given to potential applications we do not expect, as well as a variety of tests that may not be obvious to the engineer or scientist.
Materials science is a broad field with applications across the breadth of scientific, engineering, and medical studies. It deals primarily with the analysis and study of solid materials, both in their bulk form (for example the properties of a gallon of sand) and at the level of individual particles (a single grain of sand). This science deals with both crystalline materials, those with repeating patterns of atomic arrangement into what are known as crystalline phases (one of the most well-known examples of a crystalline solid is diamond, although crystals do not need to be gem-like, for example, salt), and amorphous solids, those without repeating atomic arrangements (one of which is aluminosilicate glass materials such as those used for dishware or windows in homes). Other materials which are well known to the reader are metallic solids such as Iron (a bulk collection of iron atoms held together by shared electrons) and steel (an alloy of iron with other metals, creating a solid mixture of components into a roughly homogeneous material). These materials are all, more or less, simplistic in their composition and manufacturing processes. For the majority of our time as a civilization, we have either mined them from the Earth for our direct use, or performed slight modifications such as melting, remixing, and re-casting to make them more useful. It is potentially true that other civilizations, having obtained the ability to make their way to our distant corner of the universe, will have also had their bronze or iron ages far in the past, and come to roughly the same conclusions as our metallurgists, scientists, and engineers when it comes to how to shape and utilize these materials at the bulk scale (assuming of course that these beings are physical things at all, something that is out of the scope of this discussion).
In recent years, materials engineering has focused on the creation of novel materials for directed applications. In particular, this has focused on the creation of materials with nanoscale properties, those which become apparent at the bulk scale but are due to properties of the material at the scale of 1 x 10-9 meters long. Of particular interest to the study of potentially engineered materials, the behavior of nanoengineered solids is such that they would not, in general, be possible in nature as far as we understand it. These may include the creation of composite materials (e.g. solid particles covered in polymer molecules, layers of unlike oxides and metallic compounds with polymer or soft matter layers, designed or engineering crystal or polymer phases, and others), the creation of non-standard geometries (asymmetrical crystal growth or properties, designed crystal defects at regular positions, pillaring or other mixed porosity structuring), or the creation of materials that are post-synthetically functional (in other words materials that can be reversibly altered through the application of heat, chemical impulse, electromagnetic field, or some other energy/force). Probing structures of this sort is a complicated process, but one which has a tremendous amount of literature background available for the interested scientist or engineer. The pathway is apparent to those with the wherewithal to follow it; however, the jargon and specifics may be confusing and difficult to the interested public. In general, however, there are a number of properties that would be of immediate interest to a material scientist faced with the three hypotheses we have posited above.
2. Atomic and Isotopic Make-Up
The first piece of useful information is what the material is composed of. This question in the first place helps to narrow down our later searches significantly, provides information to hint at the origin point of the material, and may even help us answer if the material has been engineered or not; as has been gone over consistently in the popular articles on this subject one of these tests would include something like EDS (Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy) or XRF (X-ray Fluorescence). In both of these tests, a material sample is bombarded with X-Rays in a test chamber, causing the atoms within the sample to become excited. These excited atoms eventually relax back to their initial ground state, by releasing photons which are then collected by a detector within the test chamber. The released photons are dependent on the atomic number of the elements within the sample, and in some testing methods, the oxidation state of the atoms within the material can be determined as well. These tests provide information on the elements within the sample, as well as a rough estimate of the chemical makeup of the bulk solid. In the unlikely case that the material contains an unknown element, it is these sorts of tests that would show the scientist that further testing should likely be performed. These tests may also suggest the presence of elements we don’t expect to find normally on the surface of the Earth, or even percentages of elements that are uncommonly found. For example, there are elements which are not naturally occurring but instead result from our nuclear weapons testing. Elements of this sort such as Strontium and Cesium would not be anticipated in high percentages in a normal sample of material, although again this would only suggest that the material is not from a standard source and not that it is extraterrestrial in origin.
Another type of information which has been held up as the holy grail of material testing in pop science is isotopic testing and ratio analysis. Isotopes of a given element are defined by their atomic number (the number of protons in their nucleus, which gives the element it’s identity and placement on the periodic table) and their mass (the number of protons and neutrons, each defined as one atomic mass unit, within the nucleus). The relative abundance of an isotope of an element on the surface of the Earth is, very roughly, averaged to give the atomic mass listed on the periodic table for that element. Isotopes vary due to their stability (with radioactive isotopes decaying and therefore becoming less abundant with time), and therefore the relative ratio of isotopes within a given sample would normally be expected to fit within the range of other samples found on the Earth. However, the variation of isotopes across the Earth’s surface can vary significantly, with radioactive testing and other geological or historical factors potentially playing a part. Therefore, it is important to be nuanced and careful in the analysis of these tests, a fact that has not been fully appreciated to date by those claiming to have extraordinary samples. At best isotopic testing would tell us that material is outside of the range of terrestrial samples we usually find, warranting further study by other means. It may also tell us if the sample is from before or after the Earth or even our solar system formed, or what local chemical or geological make up may have looked like over the lifetime of the sample. However, isotopic testing alone is not sufficient to answer the question of whether or not a sample has been engineered or left behind by some advanced civilization.
Isotopic testing is generally performed utilizing magnetic mass spectrometry techniques such as Isotope-Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS) or Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICPMS). In these tests, the material sample is first atomized, either by grinding or very fast heating and dispersion in a carrier solution, which also causes them to take on a net positive or negative charge and thereby become ions. These ions are then carried with the carrier gas or plasma through a magnetic field towards an ion detector. The magnetic field is set up in such a way that ions will be separated from one another based on their mass to charge ratio, a value which is specific to ions of isotopes of a given element. Essentially, isotopes which are heavier will flow more slowly with the carrier gas, and those with higher charges will be more attracted to the magnetic field. This allows us to obtain a readout of the mass to charge ratio of the atoms within a sample, which when compared to a standard set of samples can then be used to determine the isotopes within the sample as well as their relative abundance based on the number of hits the detector reads. The results of these tests can be extremely accurate, down to parts per million of a sample if given the correct calibrations and analysis methods being employed.
Mass Spectrometry Machine at the University of Toronto
(Image Credit: Flickr/Nayuki)
3. Crystallography and Surface Characterization
If an advanced civilization has engineered a material for a specific purpose, one of the avenues to discover the trademarks of this engineering may be in the specifics of the solid components that make up the material. This includes the surface characteristics of the individual solid components (for example are they patterned or etched, do they show evidence of atomic deposition or other surface treatments for growth or sealing, are the surfaces polished or show a lack of imperfections), the porous structure of the support (is the surface area very high, are their complex porous channels that appear to have some separation or adsorption potential, are the pores engineered to include secondary chemical sites for chemisorption or catalysis of some sort), the crystal structure or phase of the components (is it a crystal structure that currently exists on Earth, is it a single crystal compound, does it show multiple materials combined together in a way which is unexpected), and the bulk properties of the solid (how does it respond to temperature, pressure, shear stresses, radiation, etc). The range of possible properties that can be probed in this case is vast; however, there are a few tests which I would consider to be absolutely necessary for a true analysis of any potentially engineered solid. These include X-Ray Diffraction, Pore/Surface analysis via adsorption isotherm, Raman or FTIR Spectroscopy, Electron Microscopy, and Thermogravimetric Analysis/Differential Scanning Calorimetry. These cover the broad gamut of materials characterization, giving a view of the materials properties as they currently exist, and would hint at potential other applications or methods of engineering should they exist.
X-Ray Diffraction consists of the analysis of how an X-Ray beam is diffracted off of a materials crystal lattice. You can imagine a crystal structure like a regularly repeating pattern of atoms, each placed in a fixed position to one another in 3-dimensional space. During X-Ray diffraction, the crystal lattice is bombarded with photons, which are being shot as a beam at a given angle. Photons will interact and collide with atoms within the crystal lattice if they come into contact and be diffracted off of the solids lattice. In X-Ray Diffraction the photons that are diffracted are collected at each given angle and analyzed to determine information about the geometry of the crystal structure, how well defined the crystal is, and even in some cases how much stress or strain the material is under. For our analysis, the first important characterization is if the material is a crystal structure or not. If it is a crystal, is it a sort of crystal structure that we would find in the scientific literature, or is it something novel to materials science? From the hints that we have received so far by those in possession of these materials, we may expect that the solid is layered, or lamellar. These layered solids possess diffraction patterns at the lowest X-Ray angles, between 0.1 and 5 degrees 2 theta (2 thetas being the measured angle of the X-Ray beam). This corresponds to very large spaces between repeating planes, with most layered materials in the open literature showing d spacings of between 10 and 40 Angstroms. This would be a quick and easy test to run and would immediately tell us if the structure is layered in any way which would make it outside of the scope of naturally occurring lamellar structures such as clays or layered hydroxides.
X Ray diffraction patterns at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.
(Image Credit: Flickr/Duncan Hull
Spectroscopy occurs similarly, probing the structure with photons of a given energy and observing the excitation of the material surface to tell us something about the chemical bonds likely present on the material. Raman spectroscopy is generally utilized in this field for metallic structures, although the information obtained in this way is generally limited. The true use of these spectroscopic techniques from a materials science perspective is in the ability to see if there are secondary chemical functionalities present on the material’s surface. For example, we may expect that catalysis or separation applications on some other planet would require the same careful control of chemical binding sites as we use on Earth for our catalysis and separations applications. This would be clear by the presence of secondary chemical species not often found on the surface of solid materials. Sensors on a material surface, coatings for different applications, and other potential surface species adsorbed onto the material being studied (such as debris from entry into the upper atmosphere, chemical species from the atmosphere of where ever this material has been, and other surface alterations) would also potentially be observable from such an analysis. This in tandem with isotherm analysis for porosity and surface area information would also be extremely useful. Materials with very high surface areas may show potential as catalysts or adsorbents and would show at least that the material was likely created and not naturally occurring (surface areas as high as 3000 m2/g have been achieved on Earth, although only for synthetic materials).
Electron Microscopy via Scanning Electron Microscopy and Transmission Electron Microscopy would give information as to the solids bulk surface properties, although outside of that the information gleaned from such analysis is likely to be limited. Of particular interest would be whether the surface is patterned or altered in some way. For example, on Earth we are currently studying the effect of rough surface patterning on anti-bacterial or microbial properties of surfaces, as well as what effect surface etching or patterning can have on the ability to repel or absorb water. We may expect that other intelligences would also find these properties useful to tune and would utilize them to provide beneficial properties to their materials. There may also be other surface patterning alterations which provide additional benefits, for example, radar cloaking or resistance to heat or radiation. On top of that if the material has been fabricated at the micron or bulk scales, then these microscopic techniques would tell that story, providing direct evidence of engineering. Thermal analysis may also provide some benefit, although this would again be limited. TGA and DSC work by heating the material slowly over time and observing what changes are made to the temperature of the material or the weight of the material. This may provide information on organic content, the ability of the material to withstand increased temperatures or heat fluxes, and how the solid behaves under the extreme heat of entry into the atmosphere from space.
4. Current State of Materials Study and Conclusion
As far as can be gleaned from the information available to the general public, it appears that efforts to date concerning the analysis of solids potentially occurring from some unknown civilization have focused on the first class of studies, those concerning the elements making up the material and their isotopes. However, as has been suggested by this work that is only a small portion of the entire picture needed before any definitive conclusions can be made. There are other, more specific tests that would need to be run to determine the potential applications of any material, how it was potentially fabricated, and where it may have come from. However, as any first-year materials science student can tell you, these are the basic analytical techniques which would be utilized for a serious investigation. Of particular concern to the interested public should be any study that purports to give evidence without reporting clearly and in detail their methods, potential sources of error, the accuracy of their measurements, and other information required to replicate their results. Without these pieces of information, it is impossible to verify any claims regarding a material’s properties, let alone more extraordinary claims regarding potential engineering by a non-Earth civilization. It is the authors hope that this report has been informative to the general public, and it is our sincere hope that this work may be of some use to those interested in these subjects who are not sure what to make of extraordinary claims of materials with special properties or exotic origin points.
Prepared by Christopher F. Cogswell, Ph.D. in association with the Scientific Association for the Investigation of Unexplained Phenomena.
UFO researchers and UFO and Close Encounters of the Third Kind enthusiasts gathered in Hulett, Wyoming for the Devils Tower UFO Rendezvous recently. Held near the iconic natural phenomenon made famous from the Steven Spielberg movie, lectures discussed UFO research and the latest UFO news.
OpenMinds.tv interviewed several of the speakers on their thoughts regarding the recent revelation that the Pentagon had a secret UFO program that began in 2007. According to insiders, the program still exists.
Open Minds UFO Radio: Micah Hanks is a writer, podcaster, and researcher whose interests cover a variety of subjects. His areas of focus include history, science, philosophy, current events, cultural studies, technology, unexplained phenomena, and ways the future of humankind may be influenced by science and innovation in the coming decades.
In 2012, his book The UFO Singularity explored themes that incorporated futurism and technology–both speculatively, and at times skeptically–into an analysis of UFO phenomena. Micah hosts The Gralien Report podcast which has seriously covered the UFO phenomenon for many years. In this interview, we discuss the cultural significance of the UFO phenomenon and how it has changed the culture and how it may influence the future.
Award-winning investigative journalist George Knapp was a recent guest on Open Minds UFO Radio. His interview was so full of important unreleased information that we are providing a transcript of the interview here. Visit this page to listen to the interview.
Alejandro Rojas: I am here with George Knapp. Thank you so much for joining us.
George Knapp: Always good to talk to you, Alejandro Rojas and it was great to see you in our little secret soiree in Las Vegas last weekend; you’re a traveling guy.
Rojas: I am. I am all over the place, but when Jeremy let me know that you all were going to be screening the film, there was no way I was going to miss that, and especially to see you all who were there which was a lot of fun.
Knapp: Well, it was an interesting crowd. You’ll have to admit there was some interesting faces in the mix.
Rojas: Yeah, definitely. Some of the names we can’t share, but that makes it even more fun and intriguing for the audience, I think.
Knapp: That’s okay, you can say it. Oh, there is one you can’t say, but we’ll get at that, we’ll get at that.
Rojas: Yeah, yeah, we’ll talk about that. I guess to begin with is the fact that really this documentary was the format you wanted to share information about the ranch with in the first place.
Knapp: That’s true. I mean, I started shooting video at the ranch late ’90’s, of course, I’de learned about the ranch around the time the rest of the world did in 1996. There were a couple of newspaper articles that came out about the weird happenings of the property; mostly focused on UFO activity and of course the Uintah Basin already had a reputation well-earned of, has been a UFO hotspot for as long as people have lived there. So, when Bob Bigelow and his team went to the ranch, bought the place, set up shop, installed detection equipment and cameras and the team of scientists this on the property, I got to learn little bits and pieces about what was going on under the condition that I not talk about it until they gave the okay to go forward. In 1999, I finally got my first visit to the property, and then, started going back periodically with photographers. Matt Adams has been my most frequent collaborator on the property, and we were shooting video for what I hope would one day be a documentary project, maybe more than one. After a couple of years of making this business though, Bob Bigelow was concerned, he sort of changed his mind about the direction I was taking. He was concerned that if we came out with the film, the place might be overrun by UFO enthusiasts and other kinds of paranormal researchers. And in fact, it turned out he was right.
So, I put the documentary on hold, at least plans of any kind of distribution, but I continued to visit the property over the years, a couple of times a year, at least once a year, and would always bring a photographer and record what I could. And when we couldn’t go on the ranch itself which in particular during the vast of period which we’ll talk about, I would interview other people in the basin, talk to the witnesses, I got to know some of the Utes and some of the long-time residents, and continued to collect information. And I didn’t know if it would ever come out. I really didn’t if it would ever bear fruit because once Bob Bigelow gave me the okay, Colm and I to come up with a book, there was no turning back. I mean, we did our best, we used different names for the rancher family because NIDS had made that promise to him. We didn’t identify the location, we didn’t use any photos, but of course, people figured it out and started blocking to the property anyway; and it caused a lot of problems.
I think, Mr. Bigelow regretted ever allowing the book to go forward. In fact, I know he did. And again, I still made the promise to him that I wouldn’t go forward with the footage, and so, I didn’t. There were tiny, little bits of it that I used in public presentations a couple of times, but that was it; little tiny slivers. And then, when the property was sold in 2016, it occurred to me, maybe I don’t want to cause problems for the owner, but maybe there’s a chance that I could go forward with this and the new owner said yes, and Jeremy Corbell had been bugging me about it, I see you Skinwalker stuff. And so, that’s how it came together.
Rojas: When it came to the book, the book was a pretty big hit. I mean, it sold well, it got the word about Skinwalker out there. Were you all, including Bigelow, maybe not expecting the book to be as popular as it was?
Knapp: No. I thought it would be pretty popular because it carved a new niche in the field. There was no place quite like it and certainly has never been a study quite like that. I mean, it is the most intensively studied paranormal hotspot ever. You never had seen a scientist on the ground, boots on the ground doing that kind of research. Now, I know there are a lot of criticisms of the study and justifiably so, but there is no template for it; there is no sort of a guide book to follow for something like this because there just aren’t any places like it. Hessdalen is a long-standing study, but it’s mostly looking at lights in the sky, not the kinds of things that the NIDS team had to deal with.
So, I think that Mr. Bigelow probably regrets ever allowing it to go forward, but I knew it would be a hit. And a hit is a relative term because that book, although it’s sold well compared to other paranormal books, it never really pierced the veil into the larger public. And that’s we’re hoping to do with the film, is to attract a larger audience beyond the UFO paranormal field to even if it seems sort of rudimentary to bring people along step by step on how the story unfolded. We want to try to appeal to a much broader audience.
Rojas: I wonder, it sounds like you really sympathize with Bob Bigelow’s concerns with people coming to their ranch. However, you’re a journalist and I’m sure that you’re also, you have this compulsion to share information. So, how did you feel about it? You probably understood his concern that between the time of course you wanted to share information.
Knapp: Well, first and foremost, I made a promise to him. I know there are other journalists who operate differently, but look, this was a long-term study; there was no hurry, there was no reason to sprint. Of course, I wanted to tell the story and I would bug him and bug Colm about it periodically since I started learning what was going on there, and saying, “Look, we need to tell the world about this.” Eventually, Bob came to the conclusion himself and I think at the urging of Colm that after a period where this activity went underground, the Skinwalker, whatever you want to call it, this intelligence that’s there, it didn’t want to be hunted, and it made its intentions very clear in very dramatic ways. And it took his ball and wanted to go home, and when that happened, my arguments that maybe the world should know about it became more persuasive.
And Bob Bigelow figured, “Look, if I let you tell some of the story, maybe people will come forward with other hotspots that we could go study.” So, I wrote a series of newspaper articles in 2003 which means I kept my word for those seven years, didn’t say anything to anyone about Skinwalker. And I did a couple of newspaper articles and bam! they went all over the world. And after that, it became a little easier the cat was out of the bag. It became easier to convince Bob to let us do the book; again, without any photos and specific information about the location and without really identifying the Ranch family either.
And so, the book came out. And of course, he was right. I mean, as soon as the book came out, the place was overrun. I mean, not just the locals who would go out there in Friday night and take their girlfriend and have a little scare fest, or the UFO hunters who would really get obnoxious and go up to the property in the middle of the night, flash bulbs into the windows of the house, or the vandals who would rip off the fence post and steal things, or others who would go out there and have beer parties or whatever really caused some problems.
I remember being with Bob and having a conversation about that and I said, “Look, I’ll volunteer. I’ll go there, I’ll camp out, I’ll chase people away, I’ll be a security.” And he said, “No. We’ll do something else.” So, we flew on his jet, we took his chief of security and went out there on a particular weekend. And he had a bunch of equipment on me and I was in this camo gear and had like a million candle-powered spotlight and I was stationed at the front gate, and his security guy was positioned at the back gate, and we were chasing people off. And I wasn’t there 10 minutes at the front gate when the first truck full of people came up, and I thought they saw me sitting in the bushes in this lawn chair, but they have noticed me, so I jumped up and they were coasting down the road, they turned off their lights, and turned off the engine, just coasted right up to the gate. I jumped out with this million candle-powered spotlight and turned it on and man you could hear them shriek, they fire up this truck and peel it backwards down the road. And I figured by the time that story gets told online, it will be a nine foot tall bigfoot with a laser beam attacking me off the back.
Rojas: Right. It will be Gort, like the big alien.
Knapp: Yeah.
Rojas: That’s really funny.
Knapp: But after that, Bob could see he had a problem, so that was when he started to have round-the-clock security and he had teams from Bigelow Aerospace who would rotate in and out for 10-day shifts. And a lot of those guys, if not most of those guys had their own dramatic experiences, and some of them, as tough as they are, ex-cops, ex-commando, ex-military police, those kind of people, they wouldn’t go back.
Rojas: And one of the reason I’m curious about this is because I kind of put myself into his shoes. If I was in that situation, would I feel guilty. I wonder if you did at all? Now, personally, I feel like getting the information out is so important that it would justify it in my mind. Did you have a tinge of guilt?
Knapp: A little bit, but I’ll have to admit that something even worse is that I got a little quite curious thrill out of being able to know stuff that nobody else knew.
Rojas: Oh, yeah.
Knapp: And of course, you’ve had, I’m sure you’ve had this mental conversation with yourself Alejandro, what if somebody came to you and said, “We’ll let you in, but you can’t tell anybody.” That’s a tough decision to make. Now, I didn’t have that kind of agreement. My agreement was I couldn’t tell anybody until they gave the green light. These were people that I have known for a long time that I trusted and I wanted them to trust me, and I wanted to get around with other people who can trust people. I’m in an information business. I want people in that particular field and others who work on those topics and in sensitive positions to feel they can trust me; and it’s worked out pretty well. I mean, it worked out pretty well.
Rojas: Yeah. I mean, I am the same, and I think that is why I get in a lot of things, because I’m, of course, very careful about sharing information when they ask me not to, but I think you’ll find this interesting, is that the only time I’ve been in this situation was with MUFON with the Bigelow Project because they asked us to sign non-disclosures and at that time I was representing MUFON on PR, so I said no, I said it’s better, I feel for myself, if I don’t know because then if you don’t tell me what I’m not supposed to share, I won’t accidentally share it, if somebody’s asking questions, and little did I know, this was during the time that Bigelow was working with the government doing investigations.
Knapp: Yeah. I know how you feel. I mean, as journalists, we have to sort of figure out whether we’re crossing a line. I never felt I crossed the line because the promise I had made, I kept and I never revealed information. I knew someday I’d be able to record it and I wasn’t in a hurry because this was a long-term study, a long term project. And because they didn’t have any conclusions, there was no impending timeline, a critical point at which we needed to go forward with something. And Bigelow kept his word. When he finally gave me the green light, I was allowed to report it all. There was no restriction that I couldn’t report anything about NIDS. Now, there were–it becomes more complicated a little bit later, but I’m sure we’re going to get into that.
Rojas: Yes, we will. Before we get into that though, another fun story that you told us the other day was how you were used as bait; that you didn’t have your own experiences, but you were in the situation where you possibly could have, so I was wondering if you could share that story.
Knapp: That would have been 1991, I think. So, it was the first time I went to the ranch with a photographer to start shooting on the documentary. And so, I’ve been hearing about the property for over six years at that point, about the kinds of experiences that it happened both to the rancher family and to the NIDS personnel who’ve been on the ranch for a long time by that point, and there were some spooky stuff. The UFOs, wow, I’de love to see a UFO, orbs that they were talkingabout, yup, would love to see those, I’m not really crazy about seeing a cattle mutilated in front of me. There was a story about a giant cloud, a dark cloud that sort of step over the mind of businesses, but we can get into that a little bit later; that was kind of spooky. The 8-ft tall, 9-ft tall creature that crawls out of the worm-hole looking tunnel; that was kind of spooky. And then, in the middle homestead, which is where most of the really weirdest and most disturbing stuff happen, there had been a visitors to the property when the rancher family, the Gormans I’ll call them, had still been there before NIDS was there.
And he was, said he was drawn to the property, big Grizzly Adams type dude, drawn to the property, didn’t know what it was, he wanted to meditate and the rancher let him out into the pasture. He and his son said, “Alright, fine. You can spend a couple of minutes, we’ll take out in the middle homestead.” And they went off to the side and kind of kept an eye on the guy chuckling to themselves. And he was there in the field for a couple of minutes, his head to the sky, his eyes closed, his arms lifted up, and his palms on the skies as well. And they hear that cowbell off in the distance and the rancher realizes, “Hey, you know what, I don’t have any cowbells on my cows.”
And then, they see this thing moving through the trees, it’s like a predator, like in the movie Predator; a camouflage opaque sort of a critter, large, moving through the trees, it comes out of the trees, it goes right at this Grizzly Adams dude, the rancher was just about to warn him that something was happening and this creature gets right up to the guy and roars, and it’s a roar like a lion roar, you can hear it a mile away. This guy just about crapped his pants, he jumps backwards, falls on the ground, this thing, whatever it was in camo mode goes back into the trees and disappears. And the rancher comes rushing over and the guy was petrified, the rancher had to pry himself off this guy. They let him off at the front gate and he left screaming, yelling, “This is Satan, it’s the devil, it’s evil.” And they kind of laughed about it because they didn’t know what that creature was. Well, that is the spot where they stopped me to be used as bait.
So, we’re out there the first night that I spent on the property and we tried to do all the things that had historically attracted the attention of whatever it is. The arrival of strangers would be one thing that would do it. We made ourselves, our presence known in multiple ways. We built a fire out in the middle homestead, and did interviews, and made a bunch of noise, made our presence obvious. And then, we dug in the ground. We got an earthmover and dug in the ground just to move things around because that had been the most effective way to get the attention of whatever is there, at least, during the time that NIDS was there.
So, we did all that stuff, and then, Colm says, “I got an idea. Let’s put you on a chair in the middle homestead and we’ll leave you there and see what happens.” So, they hooked up like a couple of microphone, and a Geiger counter, and a couple of other things, put me on this little white plastic chair in the middle homestead where the predator thing had come out where the black cloud had come out, and they left me there and went a couple of 100 yards away with the cameras and the telephoto lenses to watch to see if something came to get me. And I told that story in the film. I was trying to be brave and everything, but I couldn’t quite get it out of my head. There were some bad stuff that had happened out there and I don’t mind seeing UFOs and couple of other things, but I really didn’t want to run into predator and have it roar like that. But nothing came to get me other than mosquitoes.
A lot of people haven’t been so lucky, I think it is an interactive quality, we can get into this later if you want, but whatever it is that’s there, it kind of sizes you up. The people who’ve had the worst experiences are those who’ve had a cavalier attitude or defiant attitude or confrontational. The people who bring guns, for example, and are going to take this on, I’m not afraid of anything, like commando, a gung-ho kind of attitude; those are the ones who’ve had really, really had some bad experiences that extend beyond the ranch. So, yeah, I was bait, I didn’t like it, and I don’t really want to do it again.
Rojas: That’s interesting what you said just there, about how the attitude has–it may have an effect. What was your attitude, I guess, what was your mindset as you went through this? Do you think you’ve, maybe, had more of a respect for what happens at this place?
Knapp: Absolutely. I mean, Colm had prepared me. He had told me that he always makes mental preparations when he’s going to the ranch. He would always do it even though when he was going there all the time, is that he sort of girds his loins in a mental sense, but it is a respectful attitude; we’re hear to learn kind of a thing, you show us what you’ve got if you want to show it to us, but I’m not going to push the idea. Now, the result for me has been I’ve never seen anything. I mean, I never see anything dramatic anyway. I’ve seen some lights on one of the trips that Jeremy and Matt Adams, and I made in the middle homestead that we couldn’t really explain. They weren’t natural source that we know of and not electronic in any way, it’s not gear that was there. And there’s some other tiny, little things that have happened during my business, but nothing anywhere close to the kinds of things that we described in the book.
So, I don’t know why that is. It frustrated me greatly because I don’t know of anyone else, who’s gone as many times as I have who has not seen something for, who has not have experience, but I hope that I have conveyed to whatever it is that I am respectful and maybe it’ll show me, at some point, when I’m worthy. but I’m kind of glad that some of the things that have happened to other people have not happened to me. And yeah, the people who have gone in with a bad attitude are the ones who’ve had the worst experiences.
Rojas: Yeah. I do want to get into it, because like you said, we’re all interested in this field, and want to experience something or see that what we’re looking into is a real phenomena. So, like you said, some of this is kind of scary and I was wondering if you could share the story of the black cloud that affected the researcher.
Knapp: I don’t have the exact dates in front of me, I think it was ’97 when Colm Kelleher and another of the NIDS staffers, a PhD guy, a brilliant guy are walking, again the middle homestead. They had two dogs with them; they would use dogs as sort of biosensors. The dogs would often give them advance warning when something weird was going on, that they either smelled, or sensed, or can see in the dark. And they’re walking in the middle homestead and suddenly both of the dogs go behind the legs of the two researchers who are walking through the field. And they’re huddling, they were kind of shaking, they’re scared of something. And these two scientists look up in the trees and one of them notices what looks like a black cloud moving; at the tree’s not level. And it starts getting bigger and bigger, and it gets into the middle of the trees right in front of them. And suddenly, the one scientist, the second scientist is frozen. And out of him, comes a voice and it’s not his voice, and it’s speaking–I’m trying to remember the exact words because there were a couple of experiences similar to this that happened to other people, but it’s something to the effect of “We are watching you.”
Rojas: Wow.
Knapp: “We’re watching you and you’re not really welcome here.” And this guy is speaking this stuff, and within a couple of minutes, he sort of bounces out of it; he was in the trance. It had taken over his brain, and he bounces out of it, he was disoriented for a while. When they went back to the trailer to spend the night, he had terrible nightmares and dreams, and it stuck with him, I guess for a couple of days. But that really happened and if you can make guesses about who it happened to, I’m not going to say it either way, but I mean, that’s a guy who’s worked for major think tanks, and labs, and the U.S. Military, and he’s a brilliant guy and he didn’t make it up. That was one disturbing experience, but some of the other ones that happened later were worse. I mentioned about these commando types; it happened during the BAASS period. I don’t know if it is too soon to get into that or you want to wait?
Rojas: Yeah, we’ve got a couple of minutes before the break, so I think we have time to introduce that in that there were several stages of the investigation. So, if I’m wrong and you can correct me, but it began with Bigelow and his National Institute of Discovery Sciences, correct?
Knapp: Yes. Bob Bigelow funded that study, created NIDS, he paid for the scientists, he hired them, he hired vets and trackers, and physicist, and biologist, and a lot of other folks. And then, he had people like Dr. John Alexander who were part of the team, visited the property, and then, a science advisory board as well. They would fly up, they’d stay for days other times, fly back, and they had hired local people as well, former cops, they had connections with the Ute tribe; that was all funded by Bob Bigelow and that continued through about 2003 when I was allowed to write the first article. So, the activity had gone underground, there wasn’t enough for the team to do, there weren’t enough paranormal incidents, so basically, they gave up. I mean, the phenomena had made it clear that it was not going to cooperate; it destroyed some cameras, it was just not playing ball.
So, that’s when they stopped, basically, with the study. And then, after that, after the book came out in ’05, then, they had personnel on the property, security personal, but not scientists anymore. There just wasn’t enough to do and NIDS went away. So for a couple of years, it was basically fallow. And then, in 2007, a guy from the DIA reached out to Bob Bigelow and said, “I just read this book about The Skinwalker Ranch, I’m really interested in it, can I go?” And Bob Bigelow said, “Yeah. Fly to Las Vegas, I’ll take you out there.” They did. The guy sort of got the idea that what is associated with UFOs might actually be a much broader perspective of paranormal phenomena, that UFOs are not an end to themselves, that it represents the tip of the iceberg, and he wanted to take a look. And he wasn’t there for five minutes, then he had an experience.
Rojas: Wow.
Knapp: And it was meant to be tailored just for him. It was in an angle inside a building, inside the home there that this thing appeared to him. And he was trying to play it cool and not let everybody else know it was there–
Rojas: Well, let’s hold this for a second. We’ve got to go to break, so we’ll be right back. For those of you listening on KGRA with your commercial break, for the rest of you we’ll share a short musical interlude, and then, we’ll be right back into this incredible story from George Knapp.
Rojas: Welcome back. You’re listening to Open Minds UFO Radio, I’m your host Alejandro Rojas and we are here with George Knapp. And I mean, what you shared just now I was not aware of and this is really fascinating, is that this guys from the DIA in 2007 came to visit the ranch, and you were explaining he had his own kind of customized paranormal experience.
Knapp: Yeah. This guy had–he’s a very serious, rock solid, brilliant guy who had read the book and thought that there might be something there of interest to the DIA, and The Pentagon and national security, so he arranged, he called up Bigelow, said, “Can we go?” Bigelow had him fly up to Las Vegas, they flew to the ranch, and this guy had his experience within 5 minutes of getting on the property, in the main ranch house hearing some stories from the caretakers who live there. And this thing appeared inside the house, in broad daylight, and I’m not going to get into details about what it was, but it was pretty distinct and remarkable and it made a very big impression on this guy.
So, he leaves, he tells Bigelow about it later, and he goes back to Washington, and he looks up Harry Reid, who at the time was the senate majority leader. They had some interactions on national security issues already, told him about that experience, and said, “We need to study this. That place is unique.” And Reid went to some of his colleagues, the story that I’ve told on air a couple of times, some of his colleagues in the senate. He made the argument that UFOs deserve to be studied and there could be direct national security implications, that by ignoring them it didn’t go make them go away, it just made them more enigmatic and they agreed.
So, they set up a program that, initially, was AWSAP. It was separate from AATIP, the program that Lue Elizondo was involved with. He wasn’t involved with actually for another year, but AATIP was the study, the occasional encounters that military personnel had with UFOs; that was an informal organization that existed within The Pentagon, different departments and different divisions of the military. And they would exchange information, videos would come in, they do analysis, and create files, and try to figure the stuff out. AWSAP was created to be something else entirely. It was to look at a broader range of paranormal activity. The DIA guy, and Bob Bigelow, and Colm Kelleher, and everyone associated with NIDS knew that UFOs do in fact occur in connection with other strange stuff; that as much as ufologists don’t like to admit it, there is a Bigfoot connection, and there is a crop circle connection, and there is a connection to animal mutilations. It’s not clear what the connections were other than proximity in the same time in place of all those different phenomena. And here, you had a ranch where all of this stuff was going on, and in that ranch, whatever is there, had in essence, given that guy from the DIA an engraved invitation to come back and he did.
And so, the study was launched. Harry Reid secured the funding. They put out bids on the military websites where other contractors to submit bids. I only know of one other entity that tried to compete for the contract. Bigelow created BAASS, that’s Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Systems; and that was a separate organization within Bigelow Aerospace that got the contract and launched the study, and it’s an amazing study. A big part of the focus was the ranch; that’s not the only part of the focus, I mean, they cast a very wide net and teams collecting information from all over the world; from foreign government. They had teams that were zipping around, as you mentioned earlier in the program, they arranged to have an arrangement with MUFON, and I’m sure they’ve had arrangements with other UFO organizations and researchers as well.
Bob Bigelow, a week after he signed the contract for BAASS to deal with AWSAP, he came on coast to coast with me. And he drop some really big hands to anyone who was paying attention. He basically said it, he drew great, big, glowing breadcrumbs about what he was up to, he said, “I launched this new organization, it’s going to cast a very wide net, study UFOs and related phenomena, and I have an unnamed partner, I have a partner in this. I can’t tell you who it is, but they’re providing financial support” and everybody just kind of ignored that, but there it was.
Rojas: That’s really funny. And that’s what’s really weird about this is reflecting upon that time and you’ve had me on coast when we talked about this before, but now that you mentioned it, I remember that interview and I knew, because I didn’t sign the NDA, but I knew there was some sort of partnership that I was not going to be able to disclose, and that’s why I didn’t want to know. But I was like “I don’t want to know,” so that was my attitude at the time, but you’re right. Nobody caught on–and that’s an interesting thing about all this is that all of us are looking for the government program that’s looking into UFOs out there, and none of us knew. I mean, at least in the UFO community, even some of the people who work with Bigelow, nobody knew about this relationship.
Knapp: Well, I did. And again, it’s the same thing, the same deal, is that I’m allowed to know about it, I just can’t talk about it. And I supposed if AWSAP still existed, if somebody hadn’t sabotaged it and taken the money away, it would still be ongoing, I wish it were because they did some amazing things. And the world isn’t going to know about it for a while and I don’t know when or if that information will come out, but it did some really amazing things and it was definitely making progress. And it’s a terrible shame that it went away, but if they were continuing to do the work that they were doing during that time period, I wouldn’t be here talking about it, I would still be keeping my word. And I kept my word for almost 10 years until the story came out. And as I have mentioned before, when the New York Times, when I’m told late last year. the New York Times is on this, if they’re going to break the story, I will sort of miffed about it, so why don’t I get the break of the story? I’m the guy who’s kept this secret for nine or 10 years. I’m not a paid employee of Bigelow, I have no financial relationship with Bigelow, I know people snipe at that all the time, but that is not the case. I didn’t work for him and I didn’t sign an NDA. But my word was my bond, and so, I kept it and I wanted to do the story, I don’t want The New York Times to break it, I want to break it. And they had this sort of, kind of gently let me know in a non-offensive way that I am not The New York Times, well, of course I know that. I knew that The New York Times was a much better idea. There was some risk, they had told people, if anybody else leaks the story, it breaks somewhere else. We’re not going to go with it, we’ll bury it; and that would have been a bad thing because The New York Times covering it, the front page story changes the whole media environment. It meant that the Washington Post then covered it and Fox News has been doing ongoing coverage and many other news outlets who, otherwise, wouldn’t come near it. Suddenly, took it seriously and suddenly it’s not as crazy to be considering that UFOs deserve to be studied.
And so, I’m glad I made the decision, that I figured well, New York Times will have some of it, but they’re not going to have all of it because I’m not saying I know more about UFOs than any journalist, and I certainly do not believe that, but I knew more than any journalist about this particular program, and I knew that I’d be able to have plenty of stories that I break on my own, and I did.
Rojas: Right. You have been and I’m sure you will continue to. One of the stories that you broke was along the lines of what you had just explained, but I just wanted to kind of get back to for a second is you broke the story that Harry Reid had heard from this third party about all of these things and that what inspired him to fund and champion this AWSAP program. But there’s been a lot of assumption that Reid and Bigelow were friends and that Bigelow had relayed what he was up to. Did Bigelow tell him as far as you know anything about the ranch before Reid heard from this other person in the DIA?
Knapp: Yes. Yes, but it wasn’t lobbying. Bigelow was not lobbying Harry Reid for a program. And Harry Reid actually represented Robert Bigelow when they were both young men in a legal matter involving the death of Bob’s grandparents. But they lost contact, they didn’t stay in contact until NIDS was created. And I had remained in contact with Harry Reid, I always had a good relationship with him even though I did stories that whacked him around now and then because I’m a journalist and he was Nevada’s senior senator. So, I knew he had an interest in UFOs because in 1989, after I first met with Bob Lazar and starting digging into Area 51, Harry Reid was the first person I went to tell about it outside of our newsroom.
Rojas: Wow.
Knapp: I thought somebody’s got to know about this, I want to see if he’s aware of this because he had been a supporter of Nellis Air Force Base, I knew we had an interest in Area 51, not UFOs so much, but national security programs out there. And I told him about it, we were in a limo on the way to the airport as he was flying back to Washington. He says, “That’s really interesting.” He didn’t kick me out of the car, so after that, we maintained a dialogue, a sort of secret back channel dialogue about UFOs. I would send him things from time to time that I thought would interest him and he would send me stuff. The Congressional Research Service had prepared a report for Members of Congress on the UFO issue, I’d never seen it and it never been made public, it has since been made public, but he shared that with me. And then, I would fly back to Washington or he would come out to Las Vegas, and whenever I would see him, whatever the topic was, the official topic and the reason for it, we would go off to the side and have a separate conversation about UFO matters, and it drove his staff crazy because he wouldn’t tell them what we’re talking about and it alarmed them, and I wouldn’t tell them what we’re talking about, and they used to ask too. And then, in ’95, after Bigelow had set up NIDS, I told Harry Reid about it. I said, “This Science Advisory Board is pretty amazing. I had been allowed to sit in on a couple of meetings, I interacted with the staff, I even made a presentation to them one time about the Russian UFO files that I brought back. It’s an amazing group of people; PhDs all around, brilliant people, many of which whom did not want their names used. There were two astronauts, I mean, you can guess who one of them was, Edgar Mitchell, Hal Putthoff, and Kit Green, and John Alexander, the people like that who were willing to put their reputations and their careers on the line to investigate this stuff.
So, I told Reid about it. He said, “You think I could get in to sit in on some of those?” I said, “Sure, you could.” So, he did. I don’t know how many of those meetings he sat in on, but there were a couple. And then, it sort of went away. I mean, NIDS went on its way, Harry Reid’s back to Washington, and there was no real ongoing contact between them. Occasionally, Bob Bigelow would donate to Harry Reid’s reelection campaigns which now, people looking to nit pick and to somehow destroy the credibility of the story, I can tell you they’re full of baloney.
Bob Bigelow was a businessman operating in Las Vegas. Harry Reid was the senior senator and the most powerful Nevadan ever elected and sent to Washington. Yes, Bob Bigelow did donate money to Harry Reid’s campaigns; small, tiny amounts compared to the size of the modern election campaigns, but still is enough that somebody that wants to denigrate the whole relationship, they can point to it and say aha, it’s a quid pro quo. Well that’s baloney, it wasn’t. That was in 2007. So, there had been period of contacts and Bigelow and Reid both respected each other and both understood their mutual interest, but Reid had read the Skinwalker book, he was intrigued by it, I think he had some conversations with Bob about it. So, he was aware of the ranch, but until that DIA guy came to him, there had been no proposal from anyone for any kind of federally-funded, Pentagon-funded research program involving Bigelow Aerospace.
Rojas: Now, when it comes to AWSAP another thing that you’ve broke, a story you’ve broke, and I always tell people, “You know if you want the latest breaking breaking on all of this, you got to go KLAS and the I-Team.” But how and why it ended because I think that’s a really interesting story as well.
Knapp: Well, it is. And the full thing has not been told, and I’m not sure–I can tell part of it because I already have shared with you some of the details, but it’s a multilevel bit of intrigue, and how the Pentagon works and how contracts work. In essence though, opposition grew to the AWSAP program. It was interacting with Elizondo and AATIP, there was exchange of information back and forth, and those two programs were separate for awhile, but they were cooperative. And it alarmed some people in the Pentagon who, in particular, there’s a cabal in there.
Nick Redfern had written about them, I figured out what his name for him was, I don’t think that’s the real name, but they’re basically high-level people in different intelligence agencies who are fundamentalist Christians; who think that anything involving UFOs and the paranormal is satanic, that by studying it we invite Satan into this world, and they wanted it killed for those reasons. I know how that sounds, I’m not belittling anybody’s religious beliefs, but man, that kind of a decision-making, deciding to kill a program that’s doing good work because Satan might be involved, I don’t feel better about the Pentagon when I hear that, but it’s true. Now, there were other factors involved, there was political intrigue there at the Pentagon, somebody sees a pile of money that they consider vulnerable, they will go after it just for other reasons. And so, the money was pulled out from under it. I’ll say this, Bob Bigelow continued to fund it for a year on his own, out of his own pocket. He had, I think it was 50, it might have been as many as 90 employees at one time, but at least 50 of these were curious staff member, investigator types who were boots on the ground collecting files, investigating reports, really doing solid research. In addition to that, you had Hal Putthoff sort of overseeing the creation writing of scientific papers, and several of those have now gone public, I made the list public early this year at the full list and their authors, and it was some solid work; it was well-received in aerospace circles, in industry circles, and at the Pentagon. People with all those papers thought wow this is great it’s looking down the road 50 years to what science and engineering and aerospace could be, and space travel. Exciting stuff, but it got yanked. Bigelow continued to fund it for a year, fought his damndest to keep it alive, but in the end it got sunk, and it’s a shame, it’s a shame. And then, whatever was left of AWSAP, sort of merged back into AATIP.
So, when The New York Times breaks the story in December, they are true. There was a program called AATIP. It did study UFOs, but the $22 million didn’t go to AATIP, it went to AWSAP, it went to Bigelow Aerospace.
Rojas: And some other intrigue which I think I find interesting, there’s so much–because it is complicated about this story that people don’t seem to get, but I have confirmed this with Lrslie Kean and she did, I mean, it was okay to say, but The New York Times had other sources than Elizondo, or To The Stars, or some of the other BAASS people. And I don’t think people–I think everybody assumes that it was Bigelow and his group that gave her that information for the New York Times story, but there’s more political intrigue in that there’s other sources we’re not aware of.
Knapp: That’s true. I mean, the primary instigator of that whole thing, the New York Times story is Tom DeLonge. I know that drives some people crazy, but the fact is he deserves credit for what he did. He put together this group of people and they developed the plan and he sold it, and one way to get it off the ground–I mean, by creating the organization To The Stars, he gave Lue Elizondo a place to go. If Lue Elizondo didn’t have a place to go, he might have stayed in the Pentagon and wallow there, we would never have seen this stuff. Now, Lue did start the process forward on a number of videos being released and he went by the book. There’s a paper trail and I’ve seen it, at least, for the first three.
I remember the first time I met Luis, two days after he stepped on stage with Tom in Seattle, and then, after that, he came to Las Vegas. And I had dinner with him and Tom and Mr. B and he had those videos.
Are there more? Oh, yeah, there’s more; it’s in the process. So, I think after he left, whoever was left over, it was ticked off and he had made this stuff public, and he had a lot of people who were really mad at him, who were surprised when he made that announcement, I think they may have turned off the spigot. So, I don’t know if we’ll ever see more videos, but he, at least, started the process. But the fact is TTSA, DeLonge and his crew are the ones who got the attention, then New York Times showed them enough information to verify what they had heard from other sources. And I think they probably would have shared those videos except the New York Times got them on their own, they got them from somewhere else.
Rojas: Right.
Knapp: And that is why to the consternation, I think, of Tom and his crew, New York Times breaks the story and they don’t even give Tom DeLonge or TTSA a mention, they don’t give them any credit at all. But at the time they were launching their organization, they wanted to raise money, they wanted a higher profile and they kind of got burned by it. I think it created some bad feelings. Leslie Kean did amazing work. I mean, she was the rock on that story in shepherding it because she’s not a staff member at New York Times, but she knew more about UFOs than anyone who was there. And I think if she had had her way, they would have written more stories, but after they made the big splash, they didn’t, they stopped.
Rojas: Yeah, yeah. And I still agree with Tom DeLonge getting, needing to be recognized and I have certainly spun that angle with everything that I’ve done, including my talk out here. But we’re running of time, so I guess I have to pull back and to get intrigue into this documentary which is–I mean, I feel that this documentary is very important and I’m sure you do too because finally the information is getting out in a format which you had hoped it would out at the beginning, and it seems to be doing well.
Knapp: Yeah, it was doing really well. I didn’t check today, but I know when the first day that it went public, it was, for a time, the number one documentary on iTunes, number one in the world. And I think the last word I heard Jeremy Corbell, the director, it was on iTunes number 18, not the documentaries, all films on iTunes.
Rojas: Wow.
Knapp: The top 200 films in the world, it was number 18 which is a pretty amazing thing, and it’s just getting started, it’s only been out for two days. So, it’s a bigger audience than the UFO people and the paranormal people who have been waiting to see it for a long time, so they are the ones who jumped on it, but there’s a whole big audience out there that is wondering what the heck is this Skinwalker thing that’s popped up on this list. And I think there’s a chance we could finally reach the broader audience that needs to be aware of this.
It may be too rudimentary and too basic for some UFO poobahs, but the fact is, this is not meant for them, it’s meant for a much bigger audience that wanted to engage and to realize these issues involve all of us. I’m not talking about some alien invasion or something, but the nature of reality and understanding our place in the universe and our spot in the food chain, we need to think about this stuff. And I think we made a breakthrough.
I am frustrated because after 18 years or so of trips out there, there’s a lot of stuff to report, and we had to leave so much out. The original material as well as new things that we’ve shot that Jeremy and Matt and I have collected and witnesses we’ve interviewed fairly recent phenomena including the new owner and his team; there’s a lot to tell. So, I’m hoping that it is successful enough that we can tell it more and I’d like to include the stories of some of the individual researchers who have been drawn to that place on their own and have had their own adventures. And I know we’re taking a lot of shots from ufologists who, for one reason or another, are ticked off to be on the outside looking in, but too bad that’s the way it goes.
Rojas: Right. I feel that way too. You can be excited about information coming out, or you can be upset because you’re not involved, which, I don’t know. It is frustrating to hear these people have these issues. My last question will be, to that larger population that seems to be out there – larger than I think many of us suspect. What I mean is the religious faction, the people who have concerns that we’re dealing with demons, what would you say to people who say “Maybe they should have shut that down. I kind of agree with those people.” How would you argue your point with them?
Knapp: Here are the facts. People can dispute lights in the sky or mistaken identification of different phenomena. We know that 95% of UFO cases, for example, are probably explainable. But the fact is our government has now confirmed there is no question about it. These are real. They are for somewhere else. They are not ours. And if we don’t figure it out, somebody else can figure it out. So even if you are not interested in the cosmic questions of who are they and how do they relate to us, what’s their interest, why are they here, how do we fit into this. Even if you don’t relate to that, and I can’t imagine any human being who would not, there is national security issues to consider. There is sometimes direct personal safety issues to consider. These things are physical. They have demonstrated a physical reality. They take different forms, different shapes at different times,It is real and we need to figure it out. If the Russians or the Chinese figure it out, they will exploit it. And I think that maybe they have made progress. Harry Reid thinks they’ve made progress, and Lue Elizondo believes that there are programs. I believe and have been told that during the BAASS study there were foreign governments in the Uintah Basin that were sniffing around and wanted to know what was going on out there. Now that’s seriously. When somebody uses mumbo jumbo and spooky stories and religious beliefs to put the kibosh on a scientific study or a legitimate inquiry, that is troublesome. You know what, maybe it is Satan. Maybe it’s demons. I don’t know what it is. Inter-dimensional travel, dimensional people, time travelers, all of the above, or crypto-terrestrials, or ultra-terrestrials, I don’t know. But we need to figure it out. If not for national security or personal safety, just for the sheer joy of discovery. It is very bad national security policy to say we don’t want to know about something. That makes no sense at all.
Open Minds UFO Radio: In March 1942 the military opened fire on an object that flew over Los Angeles. The incident is referred to as the Battle of Los Angels and is best-known by the icon image of searchlights converging on an object while explosions from anti-aircraft fire erupt nearby. Researcher David Marler has researched this case, and when he puts together all of the facts, media stories from the time and government documents on the incident, it is more mysterious than ever. In this episode of David shares with us what he found and why this case remains unsolved.
David is a UFO researcher and author. He’s had a lifelong interest in the subject of UFOs and joined the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) as a field investigator trainee in 1990. Since then he held several positions within MUFON before becoming an independent researcher. Since then he has written a highly regarded book on triangle shaped UFOs, Triangular UFOs: An Estimate of the Situation, and has been featured on several television programs. David has one of the most extensive personal libraries of UFO books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and case files from around the world that covers the last 65 years.
UFO sightings: MUFON’s most bizarre eyewitness alien encounters and testimonies
UFO sightings: MUFON’s most bizarre eyewitness alien encounters and testimonies
UFO sightings are a daily occurrence for MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, and the organisation is always on alert for more alien encounters. Here are some of the most bizarre eye-witness accounts of UFOs.
The Mutual UFO Network was established in 1969 and has since grown to become one of the world’s largest bodies of dedicated UFO hunters.
MUFON’s goal is to study, track and gather data on daily UFO encounters from around the world.
The UFO hunters said: “As the world's oldest and largest UFO phenomenon investigative body we aim to be the inquisitive minds' refuge seeking answers to that most ancient question, ‘Are we alone in the universe?’”
The bulk of MUFON’s work relies on user submitted reports which the organisation claims to meticulously review before publishing.
One of the more recently published UFO sightings, submitted by a witness in Singapore, concerns a “fast moving, boomerang-shaped” object in the sky.
The UFO was seen dashing across the sky under cloud cover on October 6, 2017.
The eyewitness recounted in Case 87184: “It was a very clear and cloudless night when I looked up and saw this boomerang-like, ‘cloud’ flying by.
“The ‘cloud’ had a very faint body and it maintained its shape while speeding past.”
The witness estimated the object was roughly 2km away from their position but managed to cover the entire distance along the horizon in “just a mere couple seconds”.
The witness stressed the UFO was moving to the east – against a northeastern wind.
They said: “There was no light nor sound coming from the object.”
MUFON researcher Robert Spearing has since closed the case as an Unknown UAV, or unmanned aerial vehicle.
MUFON
UFO sightings: MUFO collects eye-witness reports of alleged alien spacecraft
MUFON
UFO sighting photo: This alleged alien ship was pictured flying over Nevada, United States
Teardrop UFO in Nevada – Case 83759
Thousands of miles away in North Las Vegas, US, a witness submitted a report of what appeared to be a teardrop-shaped object flying some 500 feet above the ground.
The MUFON testimony claims the witness was outdoors shooting photographs of airplanes landing at Nellis Air Force Base in southern Nevada.
The testimony reads: “The UFO is too far away, about two miles, to say what it was. It was like a bright light, but when I blew it up, it looked like a smoky goldfish cracker.
“I blew it up to about 200 percent and it looked like a cloud of circular smoke. I probably don't have the best equipment to say what it was.
“And with so few pixels, well, we don't have enough solid evidence other than its descending path, which can be calculated by time to say, yes this was a UFO. But the object started up at 1,000 feet and pulled a 45-degree descent.
“And then, just disappeared.”
Nevada MUFON State Director Sue Countiss closed the case as an Unknown UAV.
Square UFO over the Philippines - Case 83456
The next case presents another oddly shaped object floating over a city but this time over Angeles City, northeast of Manila.
This UFO was spotted by a “trained US Marine observer” who was sipping a cup of coffee at 5.45am local time on May 1, 2017, during the encounter.
The witness said in their report: “I heard my dogs carrying on outside and went to investigate.
“At first, I thought they had barked at nothing, when I suddenly caught sight of the object.
“I watched it only for 30 seconds or so before realising that it wasn't a plane, helicopter, or hot air balloon and ran into the house and grabbed my cell phone as it was the closest camera available.”
The case was investigated by Chase Kloetzke who closed it as an Unknown UAV.
MUFON
UFO sighting: An eye-witness spotted this strange object over the Philippines
Low-flying triangle over California - Case 83410
A California witness claims to have seen a triangle-shaped object with seven, blinking lights pass over Fresno, US.
After the event, I realized I may have viewed a possible UFO
UFO witness, MUFON Case 83410
The UFO encounter took place on April 26, 207 around 9pm local time.
The eye-witness recollected: “I looked up in the sky and saw a triangle-shaped craft with seven white lights blinking all at the same time heading west.
“It was very clear and seemed too large to be an aircraft.
“I thought it might be a drone at first glance. But it was too large and too high in altitude to be a drone.
“The object made no noise. It seemed to be well above 500 feet at about 80-degrees above the horizon when we first spotted it.”
Adding: “After the event, I realized I may have viewed a possible UFO.”
The case was closed for MUFON by field investigator Hady Felfly as an Unknown UAV.
Open Minds UFO Radio: Hosts Alejandro Rojas and Martin Willis discuss the latest UFO news including the scientific analysis of materials allegedly from a UFO. The materials are in the hands of the To the Stars Academy, who has created a program called the ADAM Project to scientifically analyze materials believed to have come from anomalous sources, especially UFOs. Recently, they released an article regarding material that they say has been debated for decades. Although they do not say for sure, it appears this material was sent anonymously to Art Bell in the 90s and is referred to as “Art’s Parts.” Alejandro and Martin also discuss their interviews with witnesses to a very credible alleged alien encounter in South Africa, and the latest UFO news.
UFO researchers and UFO and Close Encounters of the Third Kind enthusiasts gathered in Hulett, Wyoming for the Devils Tower UFO Rendezvous last weekend. Held near the iconic natural phenomenon made famous from the Steven Spielberg movie, lectures discussed UFO research and the latest UFO news. OpenMinds.tv interviewed several of the speakers on their thoughts on the Close Encounters movie.
Based on the best-selling book by George Knapp & Dr. Colm Kelleher, Hunt for The Skinwalker investigates the confidential, most extensive scientific study of a paranormal hotspot in human history. This is an exclusive OpenMinds.tv interview with filmmaker Jeremy Corbell at the friends and family pre-premeire screening in Las Vegas.
Get the book: Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utahhttps://amzn.to/2vYs6Tf
—Transcript of Interview—
Alejandro: Okay. So we’ve got an exclusive interview with Jeremy Corbell, we’re at a premiere of the movie. Of course, Open Minds listeners know who Jeremy is, and they know I’m a huge fan of your films-
Jeremy: Thanks, man.
Alejandro: … so this is really exciting, this has gotta be exciting for you.
Jeremy: This is, man. This is the premiere of Hunt for the Skinwalker, that film goes live on iTunes on September 11th for everybody to watch, but you and everybody gets to see today, really, the pre-premiere before it’s launched to the public. And man, this is an exciting movie, two hours and seven minutes, plus an hour and a half of bonus features. You have never seen footage from inside Skinwalker Ranch. This film shows you hours of it. During active investigations by the NIDS team. It’s incredible. So thanks to George Knapp and all the work that he’s done for over two decades, this movie is gonna show it to you. It’s gonna show all the goods.
Alejandro: So cool. So a couple of parts, cattle mutilations have happened on that ranch, there’s been UFO sightings, a lot of people feel that those are a type of phenomena related to aliens. Were there aliens at the ranch, you think?
Jeremy: Well, whatever is there certainly is alien to us. We don’t know for sure the nature of this reality. There seems to be something that’s been here longer than us, and recorded since the beginning of recorded human history. We see a pantheon of that at the ranch, it really, truly is like a paranormal Disneyland. And you might not believe it, or someone else might not believe it. They might dub it aliens or portholes or dimensional beings, I don’t know. Nobody knows. But the fact of the matter is yes, craft are visible there. Huge craft. Beings that we would call aliens, that are certainly alien to us, occur and interact, close encounters, with people not only on the ranch, but in the Uintah Basin. So look man, I don’t know what’s going on there. If I try to give you a theory it would be a guess. What I do now is that it’s worth and worthy of investigation, and that’s what this film is going to do, it’s going to light a fuse, man.
Alejandro: And it’s gonna show that the government felt it was worthy of investigation and spent millions of dollars doing that.
Jeremy: It’s gonna break the news, it’s gonna tell you in-depth the connection between the 22 million dollars from Harry Reid, that all began with Skinwalker Ranch, it was targeted and focused on Skinwalker Ranch. The majority of that funding went to Skinwalker Ranch. AATIP, what we were told through the New York Times, is a very small part of the bigger truth. And this film, with the bonus materials, will clarify that.
Alejandro: Last question is, with this film, what is your intent, what is your main goal, with getting this information out?
Jeremy: Alejandro, you know my main goal. That is to weaponize your curiosity, take you from being a passive observer and consumer to a participant. That’s it.
For 70-plus years, the so-called field of "scientific ufology" has been a misnomer for truly viable UAP/AAO/UFO research and investigation. The effort to ascertain the nature and capabilities of these mysterious objects has been stymied by the mercurial aspect of their tricksterish manifestation, and the prohibitive cost of viable, diagnostic technology. What we've been left with, for decades, is a bewildering, growing pile of anecdotal reports that are impossible to analyze effectively—garbage in/garbage out. It's like we've been driving the car of UFO science forward by using the rear-view mirror to see where we're headed. Something has to change, and perhaps this perplexing conundrum may have finally been solved.
UFO Data Acquisition Project (UFODAP) in the The San Luis Valley, CO involves the deployment of pan/tilt/zoom video cameras and multi-sensor data acquisition sensors to properly record real-time UAP/AAO/UFO events. These instruments will document anomalous aerial objects at our first location, America's most active UFO "hot spot," the San Luis Valley, CO. The system will grow from two initial cameras to a three camera system with data sensors to be added as time and funding permit. Multiple cameras and sensors allows for all-important "triangulation." The triangulation feature will permit an evaluation and determination of object size, distance, altitude, speed and acceleration.
The system's cameras will be controlled by customized, motion tracking software and our triangulation software. When anomalous movement is detected by the automatic motion detection software, the system will go into record mode as the cameras coordinate their function and follow the moving objects, zooming in for better identification. With multiple cameras, the triangulated position of the object will also be located on Google maps for precise GPS location and tracking. This position will be recorded along with coordinated video and data from the cameras and the other sensors.
This amount of scientific information has never before been publicily accomplished in UFO event detection, and this is the first time a project of this size and scope has been initiated in the private sector.
UFODAP is also slated to include recording sensors to determine changes in the Earth's magnetic and gravitational fields. Electro-magnetic detectors and other measuring equipment will be encased in environmental enclosures—all operated over the Internet under automatic control of our unique customized software. These enclosures protect the gear from minus -40F degrees to 120F degree environmental conditions.
The gofundme funds will be used to procure and build more of these sensing equipment packages, pay for installing and maintaining the initial field equipment, and will also help offset Internet service costs and pay other costs incidental to advancing the project.
It is our goal to expand a growing network of these triangulated sensor systems to other hot spots around North America and then the world. Some possible additional locations include: San Pedro, CA; Mt. Adams, WA: Dulce, NM; Pine Bush, NY; White Sands, NM; Black Hills, SD: Bridgewater Triangle, New England, etc.
We are scheduled to begin installation in the San Luis Valley—our first location—in mid-September 2018
Our engineer, Ron Olch, has spent over 5,000 hours and written 10K +lines of code and done a masterful job developing these sophisticated software programs and the hardware interface. All of this work over with an intensive four-year effort. The UFODAP team is excited and eager to finally become operational so thank you for your interest and for YOUR kind support!
Below is an example of the UFODAP motion tracking software identifying motion and then tracking the acquired object, in this case, an airliner going into Burbank Airport (w/ the bounding box targeting feature enabled). Events will be recorded both w/ and without bounding boxes.
Open Minds UFO Radio - David Marler: Investigating Historical UFO Cases
Open Minds UFO Radio - David Marler: Investigating Historical UFO Cases
Open Minds UFO Radio: David is a UFO researcher and author. He’s had a lifelong interest in the subject of UFOs and joined the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) as a field investigator trainee in 1990. Since then he held several positions within MUFON before becoming an independent researcher. Since then he has written a highly regarded book on triangle shaped UFOs, Triangular UFOs: An Estimate of the Situation, and has been featured on several television programs. David has one of the most extensive personal libraries of UFO books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and case files from around the world that covers the last 65 years.
David continues to research the UFO phenomenon and has made substantial progress on unveiling new information on historical cases such as the “Battle of Los Angeles” UFO incident in 1942 and the Farmington, New Mexico mass UFO sighting in 1950. In this episode, we discuss why old cases remain significant in UFO research and why credibility is so important to the integrity of UFO investigations.
Is the President afraid of aliens? I’m not sure, but there is a legit reason some lawmakers want to create a sixth branch of the military the President is calling the Space Force.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
