Rocker Tom DeLonge has finally released information about a big UFO project he has been teasing for months, and is planning a live event tomorrow morning to provide more information.

In February 2016, rocker Tom DeLonge made headlines when he announced at the International UFO Congress that he had big UFO news to reveal and it would be coming in a few weeks time. HIs address to the conference was recorded and in response to being awarded the UFO Researcher of the Year. However, the news never came. Some gave up on anything being revealed. I had faith, but I also had messages from DeLonge letting me know he had been delayed, but that the information was still on the way.

Finally, the wait is over, and we now know his new project will be tiled To the Stars Academy, and its mission is to “strive to be a powerful vehicle for change by creating a consortium among science, aerospace and entertainment that will work collectively to allow gifted researchers the freedom to explore exotic science and technologies with the infrastructure and resources to rapidly transition them to products that can change the world”

The To the Stars Academy logo. The three areas represent: “Three synergistic divisions of Science (research), Aerospace (application) and Entertainment (storytelling).”

(Credit: To the Stars Academy)

You may ask, why take a rockstar seriously? That goes back to why he won the researcher of the year award. Tom had been announcing plans to reveal secret information about UFOs and aliens for some time. Many thought he was full of hot air, but that changed late last year with the release of John Podesta’s emails via WikiLeaks.

Among his emails were conversations with DeLonge about his UFO project. In the emails it was revealed that Tom had attended a meeting arranged by Podesta that included a former assistant to the commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command, an executive at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works (the managers and creators of Area 51) and a general who had been in charge of labs at Wright-Paterson Air Force base, which, as DeLonge pointed out in an email to Podesta, is where it is rumored alien bodies were stored.

This demonstrated that Tom was really getting somewhere and that he really was talking to insiders. To me, this justified paying very close attention, and this latest revelation demonstrates he is still working with some very serious people who shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Leslie Kean

The first glimpse we got today on what DeLonge is up to came via a HuffPost article posted by Leslie Kean. Kean is the author of the New York Times best-seller UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record. Several of her UFO articles since have created a stir, and this one follows suit.

Kean writes: “Something extraordinary is about to be revealed. Former high-level officials and scientists with deep black experience who have always remained in the shadows are now stepping into the light.”

“The team includes a 25-year veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations; a Lockheed Martin Program Director for Advanced Systems at ‘Skunk Works’; a former deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; a DoD Senior Intelligence officer who, among other sensitive responsibilities, ran a Pentagon aerospace ‘threat identification’ program focusing on unidentified aerial technologies,” Kean continues.

A team like this getting together to pursue answers to the UFO question is unprecedented, and their comments show they are serious.

Hal Puthoff, who has spent many years advising the government on technology, and is known to dabble in UFOs, told Kean, “We scientists are beginning to take seriously such ideas as warp-drive spaceflight right out of Star Trek, the high probability of extraterrestrial intelligence, and the realization that most of what will constitute the science of the future is well beyond our present comprehension. Given that the observation of anomalous aerospace phenomena in our skies might, in principle, incorporate elements from all three, it’s an irresistible challenge beckoning to be addressed.”

Luis Elizondo

(Credit: To the Stars Academy)

Luis Elizondo ran a Department of Defense program to study “anomalous aerial threats.” He says, “Unlike the other efforts that many people in the Pentagon knew I was associated with, the topic of aerial threats was a much more limited audience that few had any idea I was part of, with the exception of a select few individuals.”

When asked, he told Kean that the unidentified object he studied were considered to be threats, however, “something unexplained is always assumed to be a potential threat until we are certain it isn’t.”

“From our observations, my opinion and that of others is that the phenomenon is very real. On the bright side, I believe we are closer than ever before in our understanding of how it operates,” he continued.

Elizondo had just left his job the day prior to speaking with Kean in order to join DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy.

Stephen Justice, retired Program Director for Advanced Systems and Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works says the flight characteristics of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), another term for UFO, are what interest him. He concludes the UFO phenomenon is real due to a number of credible cases he has reviewed. And if they are real, Justice tells Kean, “That means it can be done – these unusual flight characteristics can be done. So how do you do it? I want to dig into how you do it. It can be done!”

Chris melon, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence for two administrations, says figuring out the UFO phenomenon is going to take an effort outside of the government.

Chris Melon

(Credit: To the Stars Academy)

“This is another case in which the system will not repair itself and people outside of government need to take action for breakthroughs to occur,” Melon told Kean. “This team has the skill set to process information others avert their eyes to and turn it to the advantage of the nation and the world.” 

I got the opportunity to talk to To the Stars Academy Vice President of Operations Jim Semivan. He served for 25 years in the CIA, and was a part of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. He has received the CIA’s Career Intelligence Medal.

One question I had was, simply, why?

“A lot of people in our group are former government employees who know this stuff is going on. When it comes to UAPs, we feel there is something to it,” Semivan explained. “People in the government are like people anywhere, some have had unexplainable experiences, and others are curious.”

OK, so why now, I asked.

“At the age of 65, I feel it is time I do what I can to find out what is behind this mystery. This is the big question. What does it all mean, and what is real? What is behind the veil? I have maybe 15 years of life left, and this is what I want to do, and when I got connect with Tom I found out he feels the same.”

“Nature is incredibly big and this sort of exploration allows us to reach out and touch the divine. I want to get close to it and understand it. It is a quest.”

Jim Semivan

(Credit: To the Stars Academy)

There are already negative rumblings in the UFO community. Some feel that DeLonge and the group are just in this for the money. To this, Semivan says, “None of us want to do this for money. We are retired.”

To the Stars Academy will be a public company, in particular a public-benefit corporation, and the proceeds will go towards research. Semivan points out that this sort of research, done right, takes funding.

He says, “We felt this project was the best way to bring people in and help do this thing.”

There will be a live streamed event tomorrow morning, October 11, 2017, at 9 pm PT to announce the creation of the organization. We will find out more then, but what we know so far is pretty exciting.

There are those who were hoping some sort of government disclosure was on the way, but according to DeLonge, there is still much to be shared.

To watch the live stream event, visit: TotheStarsAcademy.com.

Exclusive:

“To The Stars… concept for an Advanced ElectroMagnetic Vehicle that can manipulate space-time as observed in the UFO Phenomenon. To The Stars Head of Aerospace and Technology Steve Justice, and Fmr. Director of Advanced Programs at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, aims to lead a group of elite aerospace engineers to bring this technology to the world.” Click to enlarge. (Credit: To the Stars Academy)

More information about the To the Stars Academy and investment information: https://dpo.tothestarsacademy.com/#offering-circular

Open Minds UFO Radio: Jeremy Corbell, is an American contemporary artist and investigative filmmaker based in Los Angeles California. He documents ExtraOrdinary individuals and their belief systems. This research has taken him into the worlds of nanotechnology, aerospace exploration, exotic propulsion systems, as well as, an in-depth examination into the life and discoveries of the enigmatic “Godfather of Conspiracy” John Lear. Corbell has documented the surgical removal of alleged Off-World Alien Implants, and with access to NASA, he has filmed the analysis of anomalous materials alleged to be physical evidence of extraterrestrial nano-technology from UFO landing sites.  Corbell has obtained death-bed confessions from former CIA and government intelligence officials, who claim to expose the truth about the UFO reality and the worldwide coverup of the ultimate truth. Corbell’s film work reveals how ideas, held by credible individuals, can alter the way we experience reality and force us to reconsider the fabric of our own beliefs.

In this episode, Jeremy and I discuss Patient Seventeen, his latest film which is launching on iTunes, today. It covers some of the most credible alien implant research ever documented, some of which is brand new to this project. We also discuss some exciting projects Jeremy is working on that he has not shared publicly. Exciting stuff!

For more about Jeremy, visit: ExtraordinaryBeliefs.com

This article highlights three previously unknown military aircraft programs that originated in the early 1970s. Two of these programs utilized elements of stealth technology, which have been incorporated into modern low-observable aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles. The third program brings to light a single-seat high-performance attack aircraft that used swing wings and angled sides to reduce its radar cross section (RCS). The drawings included in this article are based on original sketches provided by the senior project design engineers who worked on the programs. Although these historically significant aircraft programs were never built, they were officially funded by the U.S. government and are presented here to the general public for the very first time.

Model of the “Silent Night” stealth concept.

(Credit: Michael Schratt/Open Minds Magazine)

Silent Night

During the early years of the Vietnam War, American forces, flying F-4, F-100, and F-105 fighter/bomber aircraft, were experiencing heavy losses due to Soviet surface-to-air-missile sites and anti-aircraft artillery. In an effort to reverse this deadly trend, the Office of Naval Research proposed a feasibility research study to explore a low-RCS “stealth” attack aircraft that could neutralize these threats. The aircraft was specifically designed to address four important areas of stealth, which included, radar, infrared, acoustic, and visual. The government-funded program ran from 1971 to 1973. In February 1972, North American Aviation submitted a proposal for a naval attack aircraft referred to as “Silent Night.” The craft featured a tailless flying-wing configuration and a crew of two. The pilots sat side-by-side, although later variants included tandem seating. An asymmetrical canopy widow helped the weapons officer to identify targets.. Provisions for carrier operations included folding wings and a standard tail-hook with a pop up dorsal fin for directional stability.

To reduce the RCS, the Silent Night’s four-foot diameter twin-pack turbo-shaft-driven ducted fan engine was buried deep inside the body of the craft, with a single air-intake overhead. The craft featured tricycle landing gear, with provisions for either two AGM-65 Maverick surface-to-air missiles, or two AGM-78 standard anti-radiation missiles. A single Ka band mapping radar was located in its nose, which fed data to a 5” by 7” CRT screen. Silent Night had a wingspan of 70.71 feet and an overall length of 45.46 feet. Enthusiasts who follow the development of stealth aircraft will recall that Lockheed’s “Have Blue” prototype made its first flight on December 1, 1977 at Area-51. Although Silent Night was never built, North American Aviation’s concept predates Lockheed’s prototype by approximately three years, making it one of the very first government-funded stealth aircraft programs.

Click to enlarge. (Credit: Michael Schratt/Open Minds Magazine)

Flying Banana

The so-called “Flying Banana” was one of the first stealth aircraft programs to utilize smooth contouring along with twin-canted vertical stabilizers. The craft featured tricycle landing gear and a twin-pack turbo-shaft-driven four-foot diameter ducted fan for propulsion. Wing control surfaces were designed to be smoothly deflecting and seamless by the use of piezo-electric actuators. Use of off-the-shelf components to keeps costs down included a canopy from a Fury jet aircraft. The Flying Banana featured a wing span of 40 feet, and a length of 38 feet. The mission for the Flying Banana was defined as “low observable light attack” with an internal weapons bay.

Click to enlarge. (Credit: Michael Schratt/Open Minds Magazine)

Surprise Fighter

The “Surprise Fighter” was designed so that the wings could fold completely under the fuselage, like a stealth missile. In this configuration, lift for high speed flight (subsonic .95 Mach number) was provided by the shape of the fuselage. The craft featured a single overhead air-intake that fed a modified turbofan engine by way of an S-shaped duct. The flat-plate fuselage sides were angled in at 10 degrees to reduce the RCS. To reduce the infrared signature of the craft, an infrared suppression system was used, along with the mixing of outside cold air with the exhaust. A specially configured diffuser was used inside the exhaust port to prevent enemy radar from seeing the turbine blades from behind. The specific mission for the Surprise Fighter is still classified to this day, as are the RCS pole testing results per comments made by the senior project design engineer.

Click to enlarge. (Credit: Michael Schratt/Open Minds Magazine)

(Due to the classification level of stealth technology during the early 1970s, very little additional technical information regarding payload and range was available for the Flying Banana and Surprise Fighter programs. A detailed Freedom of Information Act request dated October 13, 2010 to the Office of Naval Research has gone unanswered as of this magazine’s publication date.)

This article originally appeared in Issue 6 of Open Minds Magazine. This issue is out of print.

In 1969, the U.S. Air Force closed down their “Project Blue Book” investigation of “Unidentified Flying Objects” by claiming their evaluations of more than 12,000 sightings had not yielded a single instance where a UFO had ever posed a threat to national security, nor demonstrated technology “beyond the range of present day scientific knowledge”, nor been categorized as extraterrestrial. Headquartered at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio where legend long suggests recovered salvage from the 1947 Roswell incident was taken for further research and development, all of the project’s declassified records were allegedly transferred to the National Archives and Records Service.

Photograph of the The National Archives, taken by Nick Cooper 3 February, 2007.

(Credit: Nick Cooper/Wikimedia Commons)

But did the Air Force really shut down the project, or just move it into a private sphere where the public could be kept at arm’s length? A handful of government documents have slipped out over the years pointing to the latter scenario. A look back at Project Blue Book is insightful here, for knowledge of how the project evolved remains relevant to modern assessments as well as the effort to gauge what current high-level insiders might know. Historical information indicates that the Army Air Force took serious attention to UFOs when reports of “foo fighters” started coming in from pilots during World War II. Further sightings at military installations in 1947 led to classified orders that UFO reports be sent to division offices at Wright-Patterson Air Field where General Nathan Twining was selected to oversee any type of evaluation.

Twining authored the now legendary September 23, 1947 classified memo to Air Force General George Schulgen in which he responded to a request for information about “flying saucer sightings” by reporting his team’s opinion that, “The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” This apparently catalyzed the Air Force’s decision to open an official investigation into the UFO phenomenon, as Project Sign was then established near the end of 1947.  Major General L. C. Craigie sent a directive to Twining to collect and evaluate information “concerning sightings and phenomena in the atmosphere which can be construed to be of concern to the national security.”

General Nathan Twining, author of the September 23, 1947 memo. He later earned a fourth star and became USAF Chief of Staff — and then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A precursor to Project Blue Book, Project Sign was where Ohio State University astronomy professor Dr. J. Allen Hynek first became involved with the government study of UFOs. Hynek was contracted by the project to analyze UFO reports and determine if objects observed were misidentified astronomical phenomena. Generally skeptical, Hynek still found that roughly 20 percent of the reports could not be explained in such a manner.

In History of the United States Air Force Programs by Thomas Tulien, we learn that Project Sign’s studies led to an intelligence “estimate of the situation” in the fall of 1948 which suggested that flying objects ranging from pilot Kenneth Arnold’s famous Washington sighting to those witnessed by personnel at Muroc AFB, Rapid City AFB (now Ellsworth AFB), and Los Alamos Laboratory were interplanetary spacecraft (a conclusion largely based around the spectacular maneuvers reported, beyond the scope of modern quantum physics).  Upper brass such as Director of Intelligence Maj. General Charles Cabell and Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg didn’t care for that assessment however, leading to a political battle for control of the project between the Pentagon and the Air Force. This tussle was won by the Pentagon, with Project Sign ordered to send all case files to the Pentagon and USAF Scientific Advisory Board for further assessment.

General Hoyt Vandenberg

Project Sign staff were soon transferred or reassigned and Project Grudge was launched in the early part of 1949, with a new staff and a directive that UFO reports could be explained with conventional reasoning. Project Grudge wasn’t nearly as active in conducting studies as Project Sign, yet those pesky UFOs still refused to disappear. New project director Lt. Edward J. Ruppelt sought out Hynek again for help interpreting UFO reports, however over time Hynek’s position began to evolve as he realized that the unexplained 20 percent presented a genuine scientific challenge.

Yet, General Cabell ultimately became discontent with Project Grudge’s lack of substantive analysis and re-organized the project again in the spring of 1952, forming Project Blue Book. This was soon followed by one the most notable UFO incidents in American history, when a wave of sightings hit Washington D.C. in late July. Air Force Director of Intelligence Maj. General John Samford held the Pentagon’s largest press conference since World War II to dismiss the sightings as a result of “temperature inversion”, but President Truman meanwhile directed the CIA to start looking into the matter. This led to the formation of the Robertson Panel, which quickly came to conclusions in 1953 which were similar to that of Project Grudge in claiming there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security and that the the Air Force should work to demystify UFOs. The Panel also concluded that “the continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does, in these parlous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic.” This issue of government sovereignty being threatened by the existence of extraterrestrial visitors has haunted Ufology ever since (and was the subject of an academic paper “Sovereignty and the UFO” by Alexander Wendt and Bud Duvall that was first presented at The Ohio State University’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies in 2006.)

Edward Ruppelt (standing center) at July 29, 1952 Pentagon UFO press conference. Also pictured, Major Generals Roger Ramey (seated left), USAF operations chief, and John A. Samford (seated right), USAF director of intelligence.

(image credit: Wikipedia)

While there were many extraordinary UFO incidents that occurred during the Blue Book era that were not included in the study, some of the most compelling UFO encounters in history are among the 12,000 cases. The actual number of “unknowns” (regarded as unexplained) has changed over the years, with the Air Force originally noting 701 as the “official number”, though only listing at first 564 in declassified documents, and later with FOIA releases revealing an actual number of over 1,500. The majority of these unknowns involve highly credible professional witnesses, many with the military. They include; 1952 San Marcos Air Force Base involving at least 6 Air Force personell; 1959 Bunker Hill Air Force Base encounter involving mutiple Airmen and an attempted intercept by a jet; 1964, Socorro, New Mexico case involving police officer Lonnie Zamora; and the 1968 airborne encounter with a pilot near Ocala, Florida with radar confirmation.

While publicly the Air Force was actively trying to get ot the bottom of UFO’s, privately they were utilizing Blue Book to now turn away from attempting to investigate the nature of the phenomenon and focus on the public relations issues of trying to downplay them. Hynek however was still embedded with Blue Book and did not concur with the Robertson Panel. He was determined to take on a role as an open-minded investigator, telling a gathering of physicists that “Ridicule is not part of the scientific method.” And while Hynek was now trying to investigate the true nature behind these phenomena, it soon became apparent to him that the investigative methods used by others at Project Blue Book were grossly inadequate to properly investigate and analyze these phenomena. Career opportunities in the astronomy field would keep Hynek busy, yet high profile UFO incidents would continue to bring him back to Project Blue Book. Potential cases would go through an unscientific screening process before reaching Blue Book’s attention and then individually selected for analysis. The majority of each investigation was then performed remotely, with Hynek as one of the only members of the project that would insist on conducting personal interviews and field investigations.

Dr. Howard P. Robertson, the California astrophysicist who chaired the 1953 CIA Panel and recommended Thornton Page.

A 1966 mass UFO sighting in Michigan became a turning point for Project Blue Book when Hynek was dispatched to investigate. Under intense pressure from the Air Force and the media, Hynek suggested a swamp gas explanation at a press conference that was quickly ridiculed and which he later cited as a career low point. The subsequent publicity however put him in the public eye as a UFO expert and he successfully lobbied Congress for an unbiased scientific study of the phenomenon. But the University of Colorado study led by skeptical physicist Edward Condon was far from unbiased, with Condon reported to have been biased all along. “The Condon Committee” came to a conclusion similar to that of the CIA’s Robertson Panel, declaring that UFOs were not worthy of serious study, sealing the fate of Project Blue Book and closing the government’s public investigation of UFO’s in 1969.

Hynek however kept moving forward, and while he was the face of the now controversial Project Blue Book, he became a strong public advocate for the continuing study of the UFO phenomenon. He published several books on the topic and introduced his “Close Encounters” classification system, which became solidified in the public consciousness when director Steven Spielberg utilized it for the title of his 1977 blockbuster film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which featured a cameo by Hynek in the climactic ending.) Hynek also founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and kept studying the phenomenon up until his passing in 1986.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek

A variety of notable experts have strongly suggested that there were other agendas to Project Blue Book and that its termination did not mark the end of government investigations and research into UFO phenomena. Prominent author and Ufologist Kevin Randle, once a special investigator with CUFOS organization, was one of the first to review Project Blue Book’s declassified files in 1976 and found evidence to indicate that Blue Book was not being sent the reports on sightings that were deemed potential threats to national security. Modern Ufologist Grant Cameron, a widely recognized expert on presidential knowledge of UFOs, has suggested that the shutdown of Project Blue Book merely moved the project into the “black budget” era of deeper secrecy. Ufologist Christopher Chacon, best known as one of the world’s top Anomalists, knew Hynek personally and has been continuously investigating close encounter incidents worldwide for nearly thirty years. Chacon’s stint with a scientific think-tank allowed him an unprecedented access to all of Project Blue Book’s files, including those that are still classified, Chacon noting the presense of multiple agendas behind Blue Book’s existence and supposed termination. Historian Richard Dolan a pre-eminent expert on the topic of government secrecy surrounding UFOs, not only rebutted Edward Condon’s conclusions in the Condon Committee’s report, but also found sources that state many of the Project Blue Book cases were fictitious and part of a misinformation campaign. Researcher John Greenewald, best known as the creator of The Black Vault website, has become one of the top experts on Blue Book because of his intimate familiarity with the files, having acquired an incomparable collection of documents after filing more than 7,000 FOIA requests.

In the 1984 book Clear Intent by Lawrence Fawcett and Barry J. Greenwood (later re-published as The UFO Cover-Up), Hynek authored a foreword that helped shine a light on the truth of the government continuing to take UFOs quite seriously. This is proven in the book through documents obtained concerning UFO incidents up through the 1970s. Hynek took the opportunity to summarize the inherent contradiction of the government’s position following the closure of Blue Book. He noted that “the authors have made revealing use of documents released through the mechanism of the Freedom of Information Act and other data which have been made available to them… which show that the CIA and NSA protestations of innocence and lack of interest in UFOs are nothing short of prevarication.” Hynek goes on to reference NSA documents that were denied investigators by the courts on the grounds that they could jeopardize national security. “If this is so, then this very fact loudly proclaims that UFOs are not figments of the imagination but are, instead, quite real and of vital interest. For the government to continue to maintain that UFOs are nonexistent in the face of the documents already released… is puerile and in a sense an insult to the American people…”

It has been 48 years since Project Blue Book was officially terminated, but it’s place in history, whether as a superficial-scientific study or a public relations campaign, forever transformed the UFO landscape and our culture as a whole. For good or bad, Blue Book and the fascinating possibility of UFO’s captivated the country, divided the scientific and political communities and transformed the cultural landscape, producing an ongoing tsunami of questions and moreover fueling the need for answers. With such a provocative topic of scientific study that crosses-over into philosophical, psychological and sociological arenas, how could we ever not expect that we would be forever changed, no matter what results Project Blue Book produced.

J. Allen Hynek’s can be seen in a scene towards the end of the Close Encounters movie.

The legacy of Project Blue Book lives on thanks to Hynek’s post-Blue Book contributions, the FOIA, all subsequent UFO research and of course the pop culture world, which includes Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and such recent movies as Arrival. While Project Blue Book was steeped in controversy, it undoubtedly led to an increased cultural awareness about the UFO phenomenon. Perhaps the story and legacy of Project Blue Book and that of Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s rise to celebrity as a renowned astronomer who joined the project as a skeptic and left it with the belief that UFOs demand serious scientific inquiry mirrors our own place, in a world now immersed in modern technology, reminding us the need to occasionally step-back with humility and realize we don’t have all the answers and be open-minded to the possibilities.

Learn more about how UFOs have been tracked after Blue Book…

By Irena Scott PhD & Philip Mantle

Philip Mantle and I released the testimony of a new Roswell witness, the late Deputy Sheriff Charles Forgus, in the new book, UFOs TODAY, 70 Years of Lies, Misinformation and Government Cover-Up, in June 2017. Deputy Forgus thought that he had witnessed the UFO crash at Roswell in 1947. He had been the Deputy Sheriff in Big Springs, Texas, after serving in the military during WWII.

He was en-route to Roswell with the Sheriff to pick up a prisoner. When they approached the Roswell area, they heard about the crash on the police radio and were able to find the roads to this area. When they arrived, they observed the recovery of a 100-foot diameter round craft and four strange-looking dead bodies before being told to leave the area by the military. This testimony was given to a US private investigator by the name of Deanna Short in 1999. Unfortunately, she has also passed away. There is a video interview of Deputy Forgus where he details these events which runs for approximately 16 minutes.

Charles Forgus with his wife.

(Credit: Irena Scott/Philip Mantle)

Thus, the crash might have happened in 1947, which was the time that Deputy Forgus recalled that it was.

Glen said that Charles was very straight arrow and not impressed by false knowledge. He was a no-nonsense type of person, having been in law enforcement. He had been a police officer and in the military. Glen looked up to his father as a John Wayne kind of hero. During the war, Charles was in the army but on loan to the Navy and was a deep-sea diver. Charles and his crew would dive down and weld patches on the sunken ships so they could refloat them and get them out of the harbour. When MacArthur made his reappearance to the Philippians, there had been a lot of fighting and there were a lot of ships sunk in the harbour. One of the ships settled on a reef, and the wave action would rock it. The ship slipped off the reef, squashed him in the mud, and it took three days to get him out.

Forgus’ Army discharge papers.

One main thing Glen emphasized was that his father was very honest and ethical. He was definitely not the kind of person who would make up a lie. Glen gave the same impression–he was very knowledgeable about current news and events and very civic minded. He had an electric car and powered it using a wind turbine power generator.

Thus the possibility exists that Deputy Charles Forgus did see the crash in the time frame that he reported. Charles had said that neither he nor the person he was with talked about it much, and this was likely because no one had heard of UFOs or Roswell at that time, which might help to further date the event. In addition, he did not recognize the uniforms of the attendant soldiers as Air Force, which did not did not become a separate military service until September 1947.

Artist’s impression of the Roswell UFO crash.

(Credit: Flying Disk Press)

When we released the original information regarding the late Deputy Charles Forgus we were criticised far and wide despite the fact that we also pointed out the number of discrepancies in the testimony on tape. One well-known Roswell researcher simply labelled the testimony from Deputy Forgus as a lie. Now, we have information from a nephew and the son of this witness the latter of whom supports his late fathers story. Do doubt we will still be criticized but I think it is fair to say that we have now been vindicated in releasing this information and to continue to look for more.

About the authors:

Dr. Irena Scott received her PhD from the University of Missouri in physiology, did post-doctoral research at Cornell University, has been an Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure University, and has done research and teaching at The Ohio State University, the University of Missouri, the University of Nevada, and at Battelle Memorial Institute. She worked for the Defence Intelligence Agency and the Aerospace Center in satellite photography, was a volunteer astronomer at the Ohio State University Radio Observatory, and has taken flying lessons. Her publications include books, and works in scientific journals, magazines, newspapers, and she was a correspondent for Popular Mechanics magazine. She served on the MUFON Board of Directors (1993 to 2000), is a MUFON consultant in physiology and astronomy and a field investigator. She co-edited eight symposium proceedings, has been a State Section Director for Ohio MUFON, was a founding member of the Mid-Ohio Research Associates (MORA) and its journal editor, and has published UFO material in books and journals (including scientific journals).

Philip Mantle is the former Director of Investigations for the British UFO Research Association and is the founder of FLYING DISK PRESS. He can be contacted at FLYING DISK PRESS: FlyingDiskPress.blogspot.co.uk.

UFOs TODAY – 70 Years of Lies, Misinformation and Government Cover-Ups by Irena Scott PhD is out now on Amazon.

Open Minds UFO Radio: Richard has been with MUFON for more than ten years and presently serves as the State Director for Wyoming and on the Board of Directors. He has been a practicing attorney for more than 22 years and possesses a Juris Doctorate from the University of Wyoming College of Law, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Molecular Biology from the University of Wyoming. He wrote for the Land and Water Law Review and published his first novel in 2016. He presently serves as the Assistant City Attorney for the City of Rock Springs, Wyoming.

In this interview, we talk to Richard about how he got involved with UFOs and MUFON, and how his colleagues have reacted to his UFO interests. We also cover some interesting Wyoming UFO cases.

For more about Richard, visit: RichardBeckwith.com

It was 1993 when I was first contacted by London businessman Ray Santilli. It was l995 when Santilli’s controversial ‘Alien Autopsy Film’ was released around the world. I have covered events surrounding this film in many publications around the world and in my new book ‘ROSWELL ALIEN AUTOPSY – The Truth Behind the Film That Shocked the World’ so forgive me if I don’t cover old ground here. All the relevant details of my previous research can be located on my website at: www.beyondroswell.com.

On June 22^nd 2007, I travelled by train to London to meet up with Ray Santilli and his business partner Gary Shoefield. We had a pleasant lunch together and Ray Santilli showed me some frames of film encased in a type of perspex material. Santilli claimed these were original vintage 1947 frames of film from the alien autopsy. As they came with no official seal of approval or had been authenticated by anyone they were useless.

From left: Shoefield, Philip Mantle (Author), Ray Santilli

Within a couple of days of this meeting my friend and colleague Russel Callaghan, editor of UFO DATA magazine, had a phone call from a man by the name of Spyros Melaris. This man claimed he had lead the team that faked the whole alien autopsy film. He was a magician and filmmaker and he was now ready to spill the beans. He gave Russel a run down of the who, what, why and where of the whole affair. Because of my involvement in this affair Russel was soon on the phone to me with the details. It wasn’t long before I spoke to Spyros Melaris myself and he was telling me things in great detail. During the next few weeks I had several telephone conversations with Spyros Melaris and also put him in contact with US TV producer Robert (Bob) Kiviat at his request. Spyros was considering the best way to go public with his story, he had a book planned and thought that a TV documentary might also be a good idea.

Along with my colleagues Russel Callaghan, Michael Buckley and Steve Johnston, I was one of the co-organisers of the UFO DATA annual conference. It just so happened, that the 2007 conference had a loose Roswell theme to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the Roswell Incident. My colleagues and I discussed the possibility of asking Spyros Melaris to make his first public statement on this whole thing at our conference and eventually he agreed. The conference itself was held over the weekend of October 20^th& 21^st 2007 in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. A packed audience saw Spyros take the stage on Sunday October 21^st. I had met him in person for the first time the night before at the hotel and I made loose arrangements to formally interview him at his home later in the year. As promised, Spyros took to the stage and told of his involvement in the making of the alien autopsy film. A small few members of the audience were rather upset to hear this but the vast majority were fascinated by what he had to say.

Spyros Melaris speaking at the UFO DATA conference in 2007. (Credit: Philip Mantle)

I made arrangements to visit the home of Spyros Melaris on November 16^th 2007 and I drove to his house in Hertfordshire with my partner Christine. Before the formal audio-taped interview began we had lunch with Spyros and his lovely wife Anne. Over lunch Spyros showed us some of the documentary evidence he has to support his claims. This included his diary from l995, hand drawn sketches of the alien, a full list of hand painted story board images of the whole alien autopsy film, original fax messages from Kodak in the USA providing copies of l947 fill canister labels, and a large portfolio of research material. This was mainly of vintage (l940’s) US military vehicles and some vintage US military medical photographs. The interview itself lasted around two hours and we only touched the tip of the iceberg. The full interview can be located online at: http://www.outtahear.com/beyond_updates/index.html (Alien Autopsy Information section). I would like to thank my colleague Steve Johnston for transcribing this interview in full. The following is based on that interview.

Spyros Melaris (right) with Philip Mantle in 2007. (Credit: Philip Mantle)

Who is Spyros Melaris?  

As the name might give it away Spyros was originally born in Cyprus. As a boy he was taught a magic trick by his grandfather and his love of magic was born. The other passion as a boy growing up in the UK was film making. At school he told his careers officer that he wanted to be an actor but this was discouraged. A proper job was what he should have. So a proper job he took and after leaving school became an apprentice trained motor mechanic. However, his love of magic and film making eventually won over and he eventually became a magician and a filmmaker. He now owns his own TV studio in London and makes TV shows for all the major networks in the UK and independent production companies alike. In short, in his owns words, we make programmes for “anyone who books us.”

How He Met Ray Santilli

In January 1995 he was to attend the MIDEM music industry event in Cannes, France. He was taking a film crew there and had some spare time on his hands so he sent fax messages to 4 production companies picked at random from a media directory. He basically asked them if they wanted to hire him and his crew while in Cannes. One of these happened to be the Merlin Group owned by Ray Santilli. Spyros and Ray Santilli had a few telephone conversations but did not meet and arranged to meet in Cannes. By pure chance they bumped into each other at a restaurant in Cannes and it was here that Ray Santilli fist told Spyros Melaris that he had obtained film footage of an alien. Holding back a smirk Spyros asked Santilli if he was serious and he replied he was, not only that, he wanted Spyros to make a documentary from this footage. They eventually agreed to meet at Ray Santilli’s office back in London. A few days later Spyros kept his appointment with Santilli at his office in London. Here he met an almost distraught Ray Santilli who told him he’d bought this film but it had turned out to be very poor quality. Spyros was shown what has become known as the ‘tent footage’ and he immediately recognised it as been shot on video. The tape he was shown was on VHS format. Santilli seemed surprised that he had recognised it as being shot on video so quickly and he realised the game was up. Again in Spyros’s own words “If I can’t get it past this guy, I’m not going to get it past anyone else. He realised it was game up. That’s when the meeting ended. I thought the guy’s mad. He’s trying a fast one. I thought it was over at that point.”

So How Did The Idea of a Fake Film Come About?

 Melaris met up with his friend and colleague John Humphreys. Humphreys is a Royal Academy trained sculptor whose work had sometimes overlapped into film and TV special effects. Melaris and Humphreys had known each other for a long time and had worked on a number of things together in the past. Melaris simply put the idea to Humphreys, “John, do you fancy sculpting an alien?” Melaris told Humphreys of his meeting with Santilli and basically came up with the idea of making it. They talked things over from a legal point of view and how it might help them break into other projects, even Hollywood. The idea was to make it, release it to the world, and then make a second programme shortly after showing how they did it. Humphreys agreed and Melaris pitched the idea to Santilli. Santilli looked like a man reborn and agreed. The budget put forward by Melaris was about £30,000 and it was Santilli’s business partner and friend Volker Spielberg who put up the money. The funding was in place, contracts and a confidentiality agreement were signed and the ball was rolling.

The Team Behind The Making of The Film 

First off there was Spyros Melaris. He designed and directed the film, instructed and paid the rest of the team, made the autopsy table along with many of the other props, he also made the ‘contamination suits’ as well as obtain the props and cameras. The main researcher behind it all was Spyros’s then girlfriend Geraldine. She was the one who checked the medical books, spoke with surgeons and pathologists and she even played the part of the nurse in the film. Geraldine is not her real name as she wishes to remain anonymous. John Humphreys of course made the alien’s bodies. The mould was actually made from John’s ten year-old son who was quite tall. As a trained sculptor Humphreys had also studied anatomy so he was the man who played the surgeon in the film. Another friend of Spyros’s was Greg Simmons. He was seen occasionally in the film in one of the contamination suits and he also played the part of the soldier in the Debris Footage. Gareth Watson, a colleague of Santilli’s and Shoefield’s was the man in the surgical mask behind the glass, and finally Spyros’s brother Peter helped behind the scenes. The set was built in Geraldine’s house in Camden in London. The property was in the process of being converted into three flats (apartments) at the time and was therefore empty. The props were obtained from someone Spyros knew in the USA. She was not told what they were for and were all ordered separately and delivered to different addresses so as not to arouse suspicion. The camera’s were obtained by Spyros; one bought and one borrowed from a friend.

Original pencil sketch of a design for the alien creature by Spyros Melaris. (Credit: Spyros Melaris)

Original pencil sketch of a design for the alien creature by Spyros Melaris. (Credit:Spyros Melaris)

Why There Are Two Separate Autopsy Films 

According to Spyros the first ‘Alien Autopsy’ film went pretty much as planned. However, upon completion Geraldine noticed that a few of the medical procedures were not correct. They therefore had to make another creature and film another one. Apparently Santilli was ready for packing it all in at this point as there was no more money in the budget to film it again. They persevered and made another one at Spyros’s cost the very next day. This too was not without problems. The foam latex used to fill the dummy had not worked right and an air bubble had left a hollow space in the creature’s leg. Humphreys was despatched to the local butchers by Spyros to get a leg joint of a sheep. This was inserted into the hollow part in the alien’s right leg, a few other things were added, the outside of the leg was gently burnt with a blowtorch and hey presto, the leg wound. Some of the inner organs were manufactured by Melaris, and animal organs were also used for the alien’s innards, although altered with a scalpel and coated with latex. The alien’s brain was actually made from three sheep’s brains and part of a pig’s brain cast in gelatine. This is how there came to be two separate autopsy films one of which was shown in its entirety, while the second one made, has only ever been released in part.

The Wreckage and I-beams

These were all designed by Spyros himself. At the October 2007 UFO DATA conference Spyros showed me how he had designed the ‘writing’ on them and what it said. The wreckage was then manufactured by John Humphreys, Spyros and his brother Peter. He told me that he based it on Greek lettering, a bit of ancient Egyptian stylising and some artistic license. On the main large beams, if translated correctly, reads ‘FREEDOM’. Spyros thought this a fitting name for an alien spacecraft. While designing the letters which spell the word ‘FREEDOM’, Spyros noticed that if the word is turned upside down, the word ‘VIDEO’ could be seen. He adjusted some of the letters to better facilitate this, so the piece would throw a little red herring into the mix. The translation of the smaller beam is being held back for Spyros’s book.

Spyros Melaris shows two of the many paintings he did for the original ‘story board’ for the alien autopsy film. (Credit: Philip Mantle)

The Cameraman’s Home Video Interview 

According to Melaris, Ray Santilli was put under a lot of pressure by various parties to arrange an interview with the fictitious cameraman he allegedly bought the film from. Of course, according to Melaris, there was no such person, so he came up with the idea of creating this aspect of the whole affair as well. The basic scenario is that Melaris flew to Los Angeles and met up with Santilli’s partner Gary Shoefield. Melaris wanted to find an eighty year old tramp on the streets of L.A., pay him a few hundred dollars, put him in front of a camera and ask him to read from a script. Santilli and Shoefield were nervous, and not sure this would work but Spyros was confident he could pull this off, and went ahead. He found an old guy living rough on the street, offered him $500 and a night in the hotel and he duly agreed. Again, by pure chance the chap had been an actor many years ago. Melaris took his name and the name of a movie he had appeared in. These details will be released in his book. He cleaned him up, gave him a shave, and added a bit of make up and a false prosthetic nose and chin and the job was done. The man himself did not know what he was reading or where it was going to be used. There was little chance that he would see the broadcast either. No one would recognise him in a thousand years. And they never did. This film was delivered in person in New York to US TV producer Bob Kiviat by Gary Shoefield and a man claiming to be the cameraman’s son. Eventually the film in question was broadcast on TV in Japan only and from there it was copied and distributed to UFO researchers around the world. The trick worked, no one has identified the man in question, and Melaris claims he is the only one who can do this.

The Crash Site 

There are a number of people who believe the alien autopsy film is authentic, not because of the film itself but because of the crash site. Ray Santilli released details, supposedly from his cameraman, as to where the incident took place in the desert. How did this come about? Well, according to Spyros this was quite simple. In l995, he flew to Roswell. Here he interviewed many local people including Loretta Proctor. Mrs. Proctor was the neighbour of rancher Mac Brazel and it was she who suggested that Mac take some of the UFO debris into town after he found it. Spyros also met and hired private pilot Rodney Corn. He asked corn to fly him over the UFO crash site, to which he replied “which one.” There are in fact at least three such sites. So, Spyros flew over all three of them, filming as he went. Rodney Corn was able to show Spyros a great deal from the air, far better than would have been possible on foot. This included small dirt roads and long forgotten landmarks. Before the interview took place Spyros also informed me that he obtained both old and new maps of the area. All of this information was handed to Ray Santilli and it was Santilli, not Spyros, who then put it all together to make a location for a nonexistent crash site.

Field where the “real” Roswell debris is said to have been found. (Credit: OpenMinds.tv)

The Grand Plan 

I asked Spyros what was the grand plan. The research was done, the film was made, so what next. Apparently it was a rather simple plan. To release the film to a broadcaster, ask them to investigate and see what happens. They were confident that it would not be exposed as a fake. Then, after a few months the plan was to hold their hands up and tell all. The reason this didn’t happen was money. Spyros had signed a confidentiality agreement with Ray Santilli and Santilli was still adamant that he needed to recoup his initial investment allegedly paid for the tent footage. Santilli told Melaris that he had invested a lot of money on this film and he must recoup that before they were to go public. Santilli reminded Spyros that he was bound by the confidentiality agreement and he was not to say or do anything until Santilli said so. Apart from a cheque for about £10,000, which Spyros split with his team, no royalties were ever paid. Santilli told him that due to the fact that he had stated publicly that it was a military film, that it had simply been copied by third parties without permission and used without payment as the people who were using the film believed that the copyright was vested with the US Military and not with Santilli. Eventually time went on and Spyros just got on with life. He was constantly working on other projects with Santilli and earning a living and the alien autopsy film was all but forgotten.

Going Public

Alien Autopsy movie poster. (Credit: Warner Bros.)

The one thing that I first asked Spyros was why was it that he had decided to go public with this information now. It was twelve years since the alien autopsy film hit the headlines. Melaris stuck to his confidentiality agreement. From a legal point of view if he broke it he could have been sued. However, in 2005 he was approached by Santilli and Shoefield to be involved in the movie version of this whole affair. He asked both if they would now tell the true story and reveal that it was all a fake but they said no, they were going to maintain that they really did have original film. Again, Santilli and Shoefield stated that there was no money in it and that they were doing it for “a bit of fun” when pressed they admitted that both Santilli and Shoefield would get paid a percentage of the profits, there was no such offer for Melaris. Melaris declined their offer. He left that meeting under the impression that the movie was not going to be made. However, the movie was made and distributed by Warner Bros and so Melaris felt that he was now able to speak as the story was now in the public domain.

The Doubters

To round off the interview I asked Spyros Melaris what he had to say to the doubters out there, those that believe the alien autopsy film is the genuine article. I’m not going to paraphrase this; instead I will use his words in full:

PM: Time’s against us, Spyros. I’ll ask one last question. There are those out there who believe in this film and Santilli 100% and they think that you’re some kind of pathological liar, playing devil’s advocate here, so please don’t be offended.

SM: No. Go ahead.

PM: What would you say if you could say one thing to the doubters out there? Is there any one thing that you can say that would say to them Spyros Melaris is who he says he is and has made this film?

SM: I don’t think that there’s any doubt that somebody made it today. That’s fair to say that somebody made the film and even Santilli said it’s a fake, but it was made from original film. I think that’s really the question. The question isn’t whether I made it because I can prove I made it. John Humphries will tell you I made it. Ray would probably tell you I made it! He couldn’t deny it. There’s too much evidence. The question is did I make it from original film? And the simple answer to that is no. There was never any original film other than the tent footage. I’ve never seen any other film. Ray maintains that he’s got original film. My question to Ray is how would that film marry with what I made? It can’t. I haven’t actually seen the film. Now you may say, “Maybe you’re lying and you did see the film and you made it.”

The story’s a bigger story if there was a real film. There would be more money in it. There wouldn’t be a reason for me and Ray to be parted. Why would we fall out? The common sense has got to come into the argument. I’m part of something as big as real film of a real alien. Why would I jeopardise being part of that and go off on my own? There’s no reason to. That’s the first thing.

The second thing. I promise you, something happened in Roswell. I’m not an easy person… I’m a sceptic. I’m not an easy person to convince. Thirty people that I talked to out there, clever people, doctors, lecturers, all sorts of people tell me they saw something. And I believe them. Something happened. A lot of ordinary people. Something happened. So, I don’t think there’s dispute about whether or not something happened in Roswell or other sightings or whether or not everything’s fake. No, I don’t think everything’s fake. I do know this is. I also know that if Ray had original film, he’d be jumping through hoops to let you test it. I’m sorry, but that’s what you would do. You would say, “Give me billions of pounds for this.” That’s what you would say. You would say, “I’ve got nothing to worry about. The cameraman doesn’t want to speak, but look at the film.” That’s what you’d do! That’s what you would do.

PM: Say no more.

Once again I would like to reiterate that this is only part of what Spyros Melaris had to tell me. The full-unedited interview can be found in the alien autopsy section of our web site at: http://www.outtahear.com/beyond_updates/index.html.

Checking The Facts

So how do we check that what Spyros Melaris is telling us is correct? It is no easy task I can assure you. The documentary material shown to me by Spyros is intriguing but not proof positive. My colleague Mark Center in the USA checked the private pilot Rodney Corn for me and he does exist. Mark spoke to him on the phone but he has no recollection of being hired by Spyros Melaris. This could be because he was hired by Geraldine, and we are talking about an event which happened over 12 years ago.

At the UFO DATA conference in October 2007 was German researcher Michael Hesemann. Michael was also one of the speakers that weekend. Michael investigated the alien autopsy film from l995 through to l997 and believes it to be authentic. After the conference when Michael was back home in Germany he sent me an email that quite frankly left me stunned. He admitted for the first time that in l996 someone sent Michael an email telling him that Spyros Melaris was the hoaxer. Hesemann had never shared this information with anyone. I asked him what he did with it and he simply told me that he phoned Ray Santilli and asked him if he knew this man to which Santilli replied he did not. Michael told me he left it at that.

However, Spyros Melaris independently informed me that in l996 he had received a phone call from someone with a German accent asking him if he was the hoaxer and he of course denied it. He did not know who the caller was until he met Hesemann at our conference. I pressed Michael about this and eventually he admitted he did phone Spyros back in l996. Why Michael Hesemann never shared this information with anyone else is beyond me. In his defence, Michael has stated that there were others mentioned at the time and he did not want to spread false rumours, but these others names were circulated and eliminated. I have to be honest and say here and now that I cannot understand why Hesemann sat on this information and never told anyone. I leave it to you to make up your own mind.

A colleague of mine who is a veteran TV and movie special effects artist also took a look at the interview with Spyros. In his considered opinion the techniques and materials used by Melaris and his team to make the fake alien creature are 100% correct. There is no question in his mind that the dummies were made in the way described. He does have a few questions he’d like to ask, but these are purely little points of clarification and there is nothing wrong with what Melaris has had to say.

The other main person involved in all of this is of course US TV producer Bob Kiviat. Several years back my colleague Tim Mathews and I were tipped off about John Humphreys, Humphreys was part of the team and he made the dummies. Bob tried for years to get Humphreys on camera and make a TV documentary but all to no avail. Eventually, Bob did make a TV show for Channel 5 but without Humphreys in it. This was never broadcast. Both Humphreys and Melaris have spoken at length to Bob Kiviat about their involvement in this whole affair so I took the opportunity to ask Bob a few questions on December 4^th 2007. This mini question and answer session is reproduced here in full:

Q: How many times did you speak with UK sculptor John Humphreys?

A: Once before the Ant & Dec movie came out. In approximately 2003. Once after that.

Q: Did Humphreys tell you on what he based the design for his alien creatures?

A: Yes, just on his own research, books and such. No other help.

Q: Did Humphreys ever see any original film, stills or otherwise?

A: No, never. He claimed it all came from his creative efforts and book research.

Q: During your conversations with Humphreys did he ever mention the name Spyros Melaris?

A: Yes. He said Spyros was the one who hired him for Santilli, who he met perhaps twice and came to the set once. All the money came through Spyros. Also, Spyros was the cameraman.

Q: Did Humphreys provide the names of anyone else involved. If yes what are those names?

A: No other names.

Q: Why was Humphreys looking to work with you on a documentary?

A: Yes, Humphreys wanted me to get him a network TV show based on his revelations that he made the autopsy footage, with Spyros acting as money man and cameraman, who he believed was working for Santilli.

Q: Was Humphreys going to tell all and sink the stories put out by Ray Santilli?

A: Yes, but until I got a commitment from a TV network and guaranteed money for his exclusive he kept much close to his chest.

Q: Did you speak to Humphreys agent/advisor?

A: Yes, his business manager was my main contact for all of 2003 and 2004, and it was he who informed me John was going to do the Ant & Dec movie, without giving me the details. There would also be a companion documentary “that would be my worst nightmare,” he said.

Q: If you did, what did he tell you about Humphreys involvement and reasons for wanting to spill the beans?

A: Instead of Humphreys spilling the beans to me, his manager clearly implied John had lost patience and saw a payday elsewhere – the movie, etc.

Q: You made a TV documentary for Channel 5 in 2006 in which I appeared, could you tell us why it was never broadcast?

Channel 5 was rushing instructions to my productions offices in L.A. from England telling me how the show needed to be styled, and they also wanted to move the airdate up to an almost impossible deadline. We were working around the clock already to appease the Channel 5 executive in charge when one of the top people at 5 actually listed the show in a TV guide of some sort. That’s when Gary Shoefield contacted 5 and falsely claimed Ray Santilli was involved in the ownership of my original Fox show, which the new 5 show was jumping off from. It was an outright fabrication, for my company has the only US copyright to the show AND THE ALIEN AUTOPSY FOOTAGE ITSELF!

While we were sorting through this false claim, we interviewed you. When the 5 executives saw you naming Humphreys as the guy who made the dummy and who was the key pro behind the footage, they wanted confirmation so they ILLEGALLY contacted Humphreys through a consulting producer. Humphreys freaked out, told them he wanted nothing to do with the 5 show and said he had to contact Warner Bros. Ultimately 5 reneged on their agreement with my distributor, my distributor did not fight for the airing, and this is how things were left. I’m still debating what course of action I can take to recover my substantial losses and damage!

Q: You have spoken on the telephone at length with Spyros Melaris. Are you convinced he is telling the truth?

A: For the most part, I can’t find any outlandish things that make his story unbelievable. But I do wonder how he could have been so naïve about the amount of money Santilli was making around the world. This part seems odd, as if he was playing dumb. On the contrary, he seems very bright. And if Ray gave him just enough work to keep him quiet afterward, I still wonder why he let all the other money go into Ray’s pocket without him demanding his share. This doesn’t add up, literally, pound for pound.

Q: You have been involved with the Alien Autopsy film since 1995, you have interviewed or spoken to most if not all the main players in it all, so what now is your conclusion?

A: I’m going to need more time to answer that question. Spryros’ actions or non actions in court will have a lot to do with this, and I’m looking into another intriguing angle that could impact my conclusions.

Robert Kiviat. End of interview.

It is clear from this brief interview with Bob Kiviat that there are slight differences between what John Humphreys says about his role in the faking of the film and what Melaris says. However, Humphreys does state quite clearly that it was Spyros Melaris who was the money man, it was Melaris who hired him on behalf of Santilli. Humphreys also confirms without any doubt that there never was any original film. It was a complete and utter fabrication.

I could go on but I think I’ve made my point. In l996, Spyros Melaris was outlined as the hoaxer to German researcher Michael Hesemann. In 2003, US TV producer Bob Kiviat spoke with UK sculptor John Humphreys who confirmed that Spyros was the man in charge and that there was no original film. In 2007, Spyros Melaris goes on the record for the first time and tells how it was all made. Well, perhaps not all. Spyros is holding back certain things for his book, which was supposed to be available in early 2008. And as for Ray Santilli, well he’s pretty quiet at the moment but I doubt if he will ever own up as he is quite simply in it too deep.

The long awaited book by Spyros Melaris ‘ALIEN AUTOPSY: The Myth Exposed’ comes with an accompanying DVD. It was originally scheduled to be released in 2008, but for a variety of reason it has been delayed with no firm date yet for its release.

ROSWELL ALIEN AUTOPSY – The Truth Behind the Film That Shocked the World is published by RoswellBooks.com where it can be purchased, and is avail via Amazon.com.

You can find information about recent developments regarding Melaris and Santilli’s Alien Autopsy shenanigans here.

An OpenMinds.tv reader in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana spotted something odd in the night sky and was fortunately able to photograph it. The photos show a strange red blob in the sky he and his wife were able to see with the naked eye.

One of the four images provided by Malone.

(Credit: Patrick Malone)

Closeup of the object in the above image.

(Credit: Patrick Malone)

Patrick Malone says he and his wife were leaving the house when they noticed “a faint red blob” in the night sky above them. He decided to go inside and grab a camera. He then took several photographs with two different lenses using his Canon T2i DSLR camera. They watched the object for about 45 minutes. Malone says he was not looking at it, but his wife was, she was trying to get another picture, when it left. Via Facebook Messenger, Malone wrote that she said, “it did not fade it just disappeared.”

Via email, Malone gave me this account:

On the night of Wednesday September 13th, at about 10:00pm, my wife and I were about to leave our house in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Before getting in the truck I looked up in the sky and noticed a faint red blob directly above. I said to my wife, what in the heck is that? She looked up and saw it as well. We stared at it for about 10 minutes before I thought about attempting to take a picture of it with the dslr. The entire time it was in the sky it did not move or shift, it stayed directly above at about 90 degrees. It was at such a sharp angle all of the photos had to be taken free hand. I have included the best photos I have of this weirdism. All photos are directly off of the memory card and not edited, they were all taken with a cannon t2i. The pictures where the blob is zoomed out were taken with a Takumar 55mm lens and the blurry zoomed in photo is with a Vivatar 75-205mm. Both lenses are manual non-electric. All photos have about a ¾ second shutter speed so the blob is brighter in the photo than it was by the naked eye.

The pictures are fascinating. The object does look like some sort of celestial object, but it is awfully bright. Malone says a friend told him that a missile or spacecraft launch could look like this, but he was not able to find a records of such a launch on that evening.

Second of the four images provided by Malone.

(Credit: Patrick Malone)

Third of the four images provided by Malone.

(Credit: Patrick Malone)

Fourth of the four images provided by Malone.

(Credit: Patrick Malone)

Malone says he does not know what it is, but would like help figuring it out.

I checked the website Heavens-Above.com to find out if anything was in the sky at the time, and there was a part of a Russian rocket — space junk — that circled overhead at about 9:24 pm, but that would look like a point of light crossing the sky, not a red blob. So, for now, at least for the Malones and I, the mystery continues.

If you think you know what it is, let us know in the comments below.

If you would like to analyze the original photos, they can be downloaded here.

The man responsible for making what has become one of the most famous alleged alien films in the world recently spoke the the UK’s Metro News, admitting that he had created the video. He says he made it as a joke, but he regrets that it has fooled so many people. One of the men who paid for the creation of the film told the Daily Express that although the film is fake, it was based off of real footage. However, there are many reasons to doubt this account.

What has come to be known as the “Alien Autopsy” in UFO circles was first made famous in a TV documentary in 1995.  The show was called Alien Autopsy – Fact or Fiction, produced by Robert Kiviat in 1995 and hosted by Star Trek’s Jonathan Frakes.

The film was purportedly of an alien that was recovered at the famous alleged crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft outside of Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. However, it was quickly picked apart and was found to be fake. Still, the filmmakers purportedly made millions.

The movie was owned by Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield. To defend their participation in the hoax, Santilli claimed that they really were given a piece of film of the alien autopsy by a mysterious cameraman who they say they confirmed was a US Air Force cameraman in 1947. They claim the film had deteriorated, so they hired people to make a recreation.

Spyros Melaris told Metro News he was the guy hired to make the film, but he says the whole thing came from his imagination, not any mysterious footage.

A recent article in Metro News reads, “Spyros Melaris reveals in a new one-man West End show that the film claiming to show an alien body being examined in 1947 was actually shot in a north London flat.”

From left: Gary Shoefield, Philip Mantle, Ray Santilli.

(Credit: Philip Mantle)

Melaris says he hired sculptor John Humphreys, a special effects expert, who among other shows, has worked on Dr. Who. Humphreys created the aliens, and for the innards, they obtained cow and lamb organs from a local butcher.

To further fool people, Melaris says they spliced their footage into real 1947 newsreel to look more authentic.

As for Humphreys, he has also come forward regarding his involvement. UK UFO researcher, and frequent contributor to OpenMinds.tv, Philip Mantle has been investigating the Alien Autopsy for years, and has corresponded with Humphreys.

Humphreys also, ironically, worked on a movie about Sheffield and Santilli’s creation of the hoaxed film. It generally followed Santilli’s claim that they had seen real footage and tried to create it. The movie started comedy team Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, known as Ant and Dec. At the end of the movie, after the two had been exposed as hoaxers, they receive the “real” footage, but it was too late.

John Humphreys creating the alien prop for the movie.

(Credit: Philip Mantle)

This “real” footage was grainy black and white film, and sure enough, rumors started that the footage used in the movie was the real footage Santilli had seen. This rumor was supposedly given credence by Santilli himself. When confronted, he told Mantle that he could not talk about it, adding to the mystery.

Alien Autopsy movie poster.

(Credit: Warner Bros.)

Humphreys was not so shy. He told Mantle that he had created the props for the entire movie, including the new black and white film at the end.

“For me this ends the debate,” writes Mantle. “Humphreys has no reason to take credit for something he did not do. The evasiveness of Santilli and [director Johnny] Campbell also speaks volumes. As far as I’m concerned the short black & white sequence at the end of the ‘Alien Autopsy’ feature movie is not the real deal and is simply a cinematic special effect made by the movie company and John Humphreys.”

But the story does not end there. As recently as today, the Daily Express released an exclusive interview with Santilli who stands by his claim that the real footage exists. In fact, he provided an image that allegedly shows a piece of the real film. However, he still will not reveal the name of the man who provided him the film.

“I refute Spyros Melaris’s version of his involvement in Alien Autopsy,” Santilli told the Daily Express. “If anything Spyros was part of a team. He felt there should been more acknowledgement for his work or the artistic side.”

Gareth Watson, an actor who played a doctor in the fake video, says he was also lead to believe there was real film footage and he saw it.

However, he says, “The original footage was of very poor quality to the point I could have been looking at the yeti.”

Alien Autopsy image recently provide to the Daily Express. This is supposedly part of the real footage provided to Santilli.

(Credit: Ray Santilli)

If Watson is right, and the footage is of such poor quality, how could they have recreated it?

At one point, years ago, our organization was offered the opportunity to examine a piece of the “real” film, but we were told we could not be proved a piece that had an image of the alien or anything else from the autopsy footage. But it was allegedly a piece from the reel. Without being able to prove that, it was not worth our time.

But let’s take a closer look at the image Santilli provided the Daily Express. Scott Brando runs ufoofinterest.org. He is also active on social media and carefully examines UFO and alien claims. He tweeted me something he noticed, which is that the image Santilli provided the Daily Express looks like a negative of a still from the hoaxed alien autopsy video. Of course it is also scuffed up to look old. He provided the image below, and it does look spot on.

Comparison made by Scott Brando/UFOofinterest.org

So this once again seems to be Santilli up to his old tricks. Why doesn’t he give up? Maybe he loves the attention and is still making money. He claims he may release the entire film at some point in the future, but I would guess it would need to involve a lot of money and that it will be inconclusive in the end.

“I would like to say now that there is a big part of me that feels remorse. I underestimated the response,” Maleris told Metro News. “The reality is that everybody in the UFO community took this film as the smoking gun, proof of UFOs and aliens.”

Well, not everyone. Most UFO researchers didn’t buy it, but many UFO enthusiasts have. Either way, many interested in the UFO phenomenon will find it hard to forgive Melaris as the search for the smoking gun continues. I’de be willing to wager that if a smoking gun is found, it is not Santilli who has it.

The UFO book that seems to be gathering interest and momentum at the moment is ‘UFOs TODAY – 70 Years of Lies, Misinformation and Government Cover-Up’ so I have taken this opportunity to interview the book’s author, Irena Scott PhD.  2017 will see the 70th anniversary of flying saucers and debate has raged on ever since and there seems no sign of it stopping anytime soon.

PM: Please tell us something about your background. Who is Irena Scott PhD?

I have a PhD, have had a professorship and have worked in scientific research for most of my life. My life began on an Ohio farm. We lived under quite primitive conditions, such as farming with horses. This background enables me to consider things from both a heartland farmer and a scientific viewpoint. Despite our lack of books and media, I became interested in astronomy at a very young age. I worked my way through college with an astronomy major, but found that I couldn’t be employed in that field because it was male-only in those days (which also enabled me to see scientists as less logical than normally presented). So, I went into one of the closest fields that females were allowed in, satellite photography. I worked at the Aerospace Center in St. Louis, Missouri, where they sent me to six months of cartography school, which was equal to a master’s degree. I later transferred to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington D.C. in the field of photointerpretation and photogrammetry. Here I received some of the highest clearances in the government and learned not only about this field, but also government secrecy and cover-up, and now think the government has much more ability to cover-up than people expect.

Later I married and moved to Nevada, because my husband had a position there after a previous position that included working in Area 51. I began working for the University of Nevada, earned free tuition, and later transferred and received a PhD from the University of Missouri School of Veterinary Medicine in physiology (a combination of chemistry and biology). After doing post-doctoral research at Cornell University, I became an Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure University. Other positions included research and teaching at The Ohio State University, the University of Missouri, and at Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle). I have also been a volunteer astronomer at the former Ohio State University Radio Observatory, been stationed at Wright Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB), and have taken flying lessons.

I have a variety of publications including books, research published in scientific journals, and in newspapers and magazines–such as having been a correspondent for Popular Mechanics magazine with byline articles and photographs in the science and technology sections. My listings as a scientist include: Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in the Midwest, and Who’s Who in Frontier Science and Technology. One of my recent books, Uncle: My Journey with John Purdue published by the Purdue University Press, is on a historical subject.

In the 1990s, I joined several UFO groups. I served on the MUFON Board of Directors (1993 to 2000), was a MUFON consultant in physiology and astronomy and a field investigator for both MUFON and the Center for UFO Studies. I co-edited eight MUFON symposium proceedings, have been a State Section Director for Ohio MUFON, was a founding member of the Mid-Ohio Research Associates (MORA) and its journal editor, and have published UFO material in books and magazines–including scientific journals. As an investigator, I conducted many studies and in these I met numerous fascinating people with amazing accounts.

PM: How and when did you first become interested in the UFO phenomenon?

I have always slightly paid attention to the subject because of a number of events that happened in my family from an early time. For one example, an aunt in West Virginia would write letters to my mother describing UFO events. Some events happened even before we had heard of UFOs–in one case, an aunt in West Virginia talked about small glowing objects that sometimes flew through their house. However my parents were conservative, Middle–American, farmers and did not allow us to even speak about the subject, thus, any interest was repressed. This made me a little sensitive to the idea of government cover-up, also.

I was also quite fortunate in the places I lived – such as Ohio, Nevada, and Washington DC – have been heavily involved in the UFO scene. For example, in Ohio are WPAFB and Battelle where the best-known studies took place. The DIA has been important in UFO study and some think that is the agency that began to investigate UFOs after Project Blue Book was closed.

PM: Have you ever had a personal UFO sighting at all?

Several events have drawn my attention. For one, I sometimes visited people who lived in the Davis Mountains in Texas that overlooked Marfa, which is known for the Marfa Lights. One night I saw and videotaped for about half an hour a large bright light over the town of Marfa that would turn on and off. Later I called the airport and they had nothing to report, but they would have been closed that late at night.

In another instance, while living in Missouri, my Mother in Ohio called to ask if I had just heard a strange sound. I thought this was quite odd and asked if my parents had just developed dementia. Later when I moved back to Ohio, I found information about this October 11, 1973 event. Not only had there been a strange noise, but a sudden wave of UFO reports happening at the same time. With the help of the State of Ohio seismologist Mike Hansen, I studied the noise. It was extremely widespread and much larger than a sonic boom or similar event. I was able to publish information about this sound in a peer-reviewed scientific journal (“Investigation of a Sound Heard over a Wide Area,” Ohio Journal Science 87(2), 1987: 11). I still don’t know what caused the sound. I also wondered why my parents had the strange mental reaction to it and wondered if others did.

PM: Has being an academic helped you in your research of the UFO phenomenon?

Yes, for example a Battelle co-worker and I were the first to show smoking gun evidence that UFO materials research may have taken place there. I also make some smoking gun discoveries while working in other places, for example at the DIA and at WPAFB. Being in the scientific field has made this possible. I worked in several of the institutions that were the most involved in UFO research, the DIA, Battelle, and WPAFB.

Being an academic has helped me in other ways. For example, I have been able to publish pieces about UFOs in scientific journals, and think this helps to establish the credibility of UFO study. I’ve spent much time interviewing not only witnesses, but people at random. In one case, after a sighting had been reported in the newspapers, I began to interview other people in that general location and published the results, “Survey of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Reports in Delaware County, Ohio.” Ohio Journal of Science 87.1 (1987): 24-26. One impressive result was that there appeared to be many more possible sightings than reports. Unfortunately, because of the difficulty of reporting these events, UFOlogy has been slow to advance and is still the subject of ridicule.

In addition, having training in statistics and experimental methods, I am able to evaluate the scientific experiments that have been done. It has helped me in interviewing witnesses, because I can ask questions that might be useful in scientific understanding. It makes me more aware of what might be called hard evidence and how to collect it, also.

PM: Could you explain how your new book UFOs TODAY first came about.

I joined several UFO groups in the 1990s and began to investigate sightings. I also became an editor of such publications as the MUFON symposium proceedings, and a local publication, the Ohio UFO Notebook. My field investigations gave me more of a perspective on UFOlogy than I would have from simply reading books. I discovered that the sightings that contained the most detail, often did not necessarily match the general idea of flying saucers as disc shaped craft. There were all kinds of unusual sightings, which along with my childhood exposure to the subject, made me think that the phenomena is much more complex than generally presented. I reported on many of these odd instances, thus, I already had them written up. Later the idea of writing a book struck me.

PM: Whilst compiling your research for your new book is there any one piece of evidence that for you really stands out?

Some of the most amazing to me have been ones that included interaction and ones such as lengthy events where authorities were notified, came, and even took part in the sightings. The authorities were often as mystified as the observers. For example, one sighting near Logan, Ohio, was of objects above a cornfield. These would blink on and off and move around. They were interactive with people. One followed a car. Authorities were notified, the event was reported on newscasts and TV, and police and other people came out to watch. Airplanes began to fly over in a grid pattern, although no one knew where they came from–the agency didn’t contact anyone. The objects remained interactive and one flew up to an airplane. A second sighting occurred the very night after another investigator and I had interviewed the witnesses.

Others have been abduction events, such as several that were linked with the October 11, 1973, sound that I investigated.

Dr. Irena Scott

(Credit: Irena Scott/Philip Mantle)

PM: What do you say to those that remain skeptical with regards to the UFO subject?

The term UFO carries considerable baggage. People generally link it with little green or gray men in space ships, or even the Loch Ness Monster. People ask each other whether they believe in it. This is because in general the idea is associated with alien visitation; people are asking whether they believe UFOs come from space. However the phenomena actually consists of many credible empirical observations such as of balls of light that can change to different forms; objects that appear and disappear, go through walls, merge and separate; and groups of lights that come together to form humanoid appearing entities. Others include objects of incredible size and speed, poltergeist-like activity, large and small UFOs, magnetic and radiation effects, abduction phenomena, thought control, and telepathy, for a few. Because of this, the phenomenon often doesn’t fit the profile of pilots and space ships, but of something vastly different from us. Such observations suggest that this data also might be investigated using different paradigms than our nuts and bolts ideas of space ships, such as by using quantum mechanical theories, or the idea that the phenomena might not be molecular as we are, or other ideas. I think new ways and different paradigms of science are needed to study it.

Another reason for the skepticism is that government has deliberately created it. Not only does it cover up, but it appears to use brainwashing techniques that produce skepticism rather than scientific examination. For example, there is some evidence that in even the very earliest reports some form of cover-up may have been active. The government has manipulated the results scientific studies, such as the one done by Battelle, to show that they found noting when in fact they did. In other cases it has set up panels that purported to scientifically examine the subject, but instead used them to debunk the phenomena, such as those of Robertson and Condon. It has actively set up debunking campaigns to plant outlandish UFO claims in the media to make UFO reports sound ridiculous. The Condon Report summary cautioned teachers to discourage any interest of pupils in UFOs, because such study would be harmful to their development. So if UFOs do not exist, how would an interest in them harm pupils and why should pupils be brainwashed? Why expend large amounts of money to lie and cover-up the phenomena, if it doesn’t exist. Such activities would certainly help the UFO phenomena by causing people to not take it seriously, thus helping it to hide its activities. In addition, UFO phenomena may be quite complex, thus one even wonders exactly what governments are covering up.

PM: In your opinion, how do we keep moving forward with UFO research?

I think numerous observations indicate this important phenomenon is much more complex that just space ships. I think it would be well to have statisticians go over the best UFO event data with the best developments in statistics to see what treads, or even significant results, can be found. I also think that as knowledge of people’s family trees and genetic studies are improving that one might search to see if there are any genetic similarities in people having sightings. Also people may not really understand what the phenomena is and that it might be much more complex that space ships from other worlds. Thus, I think that examining it for proof that we have visitors from space, or studying the propulsion systems and that sort of thing may not be as valuable as thought. For example, in both scientific experiments and in many reports there are mental aspects that are very difficult to understand. I think people need ways to study this element. I also think that people are interpreting the phenomena using Newtonian physics ideas, but need to study the possibility that the quantum theory elements may be involved in the phenomena. Other methods might be those of Dr. Harley Rutledge, who set up a study area with observing stations in an area of many sightings. His design may have resulted in the best scientific study ever done. He was even able to examine interactive behavior. Moreover, numerous reports have shown that the phenomenon is interactive, or even seems to put on a show, but witnesses in general are not directly contacted. This should also be studied.

END.

One of the most controversial aspects of this book has of course been the testimony of former US Deputy Sheriff Charles Forgus (deceased).  He claims that he was a witness to the UFO crash at Roswell in 1947. There is no way this can be verified of course and his testimony is simply being put into the public domain for further scrutiny. In my opinion the author is to be congratulated on treating such possibly controversial testimony in an open and honest way. Obviously efforts are continuing to try and obtain more information about Charles Forgus and his testimony with a variety of researchers involved and organizations on both sides of the Atlantic. It will be interesting to see what they uncover.

Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and husband to the queen of England, is a UFO aficionado. His UFO interests are not only included in a biography, author Philip Eade writes in his foreword that the idea for the biography came about when he was considering writing a book about prominent ufologists in the period after World War II. The biography is titled, Prince Philip: The Turbulent Early Life of the Man Who Married Queen Elizabeth II, and proves to be a great read.

In a story in The Daily Beast, they highlighted 12 of the most “juicy bits” of the biography. Regarding the UFO “bits,” they wrote:

During the course of that research, Eade discovered not only that Prince Philip was a subscriber to the magazine Flying Saucer Review, but that he once sent his equerry, Sir Peter Horsley, “to meet an extraterrestrial humanoid at a house in Ealing.” Eade writes, “A number of witnesses were invited to Buckingham Palace to discuss their experiences, as Horsley later explained, to ‘put them on the spot’ and to test their honesty in the presence of royalty, a method as effective as any truth serum.” Horsley was on the prince’s staff from 1952 to 1955 before climbing to great heights in the Royal Air Force. When Horsley published his memoirs in 1997, a senior official at the Ministry of Defence commented, “How unfortunate that the public will learn that the man who had his finger on the button of Strike Command was seeing little green men.”

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, June 2012.

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Although it may seem surprising that a member of the royal family would have an interest in UFOs, Prince Philip is not the first. In fact his uncle, Lord Mountbatten, had similar interests. In a biography by Philip Ziegler in 1985, he wrote that Mountbatten had admittedly “far-fetched” ideas about the origins of the mysterious phenomenon. Ziegler explained this idea in his book:

[We were] both convinced that they come from another planet but we mutually and independently came to the conclusion that they were not ‘aeroplanes’ with silly little almost human pilots but are themselves the actual inhabitants: Martians, Venusians, Jupiterians or what have you. Why should life in another planet with entirely different conditions in any way resemble life on our planet? Their inhabitants might be ‘gaseous’ or circular or very large. They certainly don’t breathe, they may not have to eat and I doubt if they have babies—bits of their great discs may break away and grow into a new creature. The fact that they can hover and accelerate away from the earth’s gravity again and even revolve round a V2 in America (as reported by their head scientist) shows that they are far ahead of us. If they really come over in a big way that may settle the capitalist-communist war. If the human race wishes to survive they may have to band together.

Lord Mountbatten (Credit: Allan Warren)

In 1955 Lord Mountbatten investigated a UFO incident in his own back yard, literally, that put his theory to the test. In Timothy Good’s book, Above Top Secret, there is a report written by Mountbatten on his investigation of a sighting on the grounds of his Broadlands Estates in Romsey, Hampshire. Frederick Briggs, a retired British Army Sergeant, was working as a bricklayer on the grounds, when he says he saw a large craft that looked like a child’s top hovering over a field. He says a column came down from the center of the craft, and there appeared to be a humanoid figure descending with the pillar.

Mountbatten states in his report that he personally interviewed Mr. Briggs. He reported that Briggs “did not give the impression of being the sort of man who would be subject to hallucinations, or would in any way invent such a story.”

In an interview with Nick Pope, a man who led official investigations into UFOs for Britain’s Ministry of Defence, I asked about the royal family’s interest in UFOs. Pope was reticent to speak on the subject, stating:

Um… yeah this is a kind of difficult area for me to enter. Of course, even though I have left the Ministry of Defence, I am still bound by the official secrets act, and it binds me for life. Yes, I know that some members of the royal family have an interest in UFOs, Crop Circles, and the unexplained generally, because of my security oath this isn’t an area that I can really discuss in any great detail I am afraid.

I told him that his answer was sort of fun, and he laughed and said, yes you can infer from that what you will. It begs the question, is the queen herself also a UFO buff, or does she shrug off her husband’s interests as spouses are prone to do?

A version of this story was first posted in the Huffington Post, but I discovered that I had neglected to post it here at OpenMinds.tv. I discovered that when I was looking for this story in relation to a recent talk I did that was featured in The Sun, a UK newspaper.

In this interview, Chuck shares his discoveries and lets us in on how all of this attention on his work came about.

The Mutual UFO Network’s chief photo expert, Marc D’Antonio, says he was on a US Navy submarine when they tracked a very fast moving object in the ocean. Subsequent responses from Navy personnel lead D’Antonio to believe the Navy has a secret program regarding Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs).

USOs are the underwater equivalent to UFOs. Although much less popular, there are famous USO cases Ufologists often reference.

One of the most interesting USO stories, for me, is that of my friend D’Antonio’s. I have heard it several times in his company, and I believe we talked about it on one of his many appearances on the Open Minds UFO Radio podcast.

Marc D’Antonio in Hulett, Wyoming.

(Credit: John Chapple/The Sun)

D’Antonio, beside being an astronomer and photo expert — among other professional exploits — is also a model maker. He has had several government contracts to build models, many requiring a Top Secret clearance. Among these contracts have been projects with the Navy.

D’Antonio says he was once invited to take a ride in a nuclear submarine and at one point things got weird. Although D’Antonio has told the story before, it has not been featured in the mainstream media until recently. D’Antonio and I both gave presentations at the recent Devils Tower UFO Rendezvous in Hulett, Wyoming, and Emma Parry from the UK’s The Sun was there to write about it.

Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Shawn Halliwell checks his sonar system during a battle drill aboard the strategic missile submarine USS Maryland, Feb. 16, 2009.

(Credit: US Department of Defense/Gerry J. Gilmore)

She has written several stories stemming from the event, one of them on D’Antonio’s USO encounter. Here is what she wrote on D’Antonio’s recollection of the USO during his Devils Tower lecture:

“I was sitting there zoning out a little because I was sea sick and all of a sudden the sonar kid shouts ‘fast mover, fast mover’ and I’m jolted awake – thinking ‘What’s happening? Is it a torpedo?’

“The executive officer comes out and the operator shows him the path of the object and the officer says ‘How fast is that going?’

“And the kid said ‘several hundred knots’. I start to lean forward to listen in – and the officer said ‘Can you confirm it?’

“So he goes to another sonar machine and confirmed it wasn’t a machine anomaly – it was real. I thought ‘Wow that is incredible’.

“When the sonar guy said ‘What do I do with this?’ the officer said ‘log it and dog it’ – in other words log it and bury it.”

Four years later Marc said he was doing some more contract work for the Navy when he spoke to a senior naval figure about what he saw.

“I asked him ‘Can you tell me about the Fast Mover Programme?'” Marc explained.

“He looked at me and said ‘Sorry Marc I can’t talk about that programme’.

“So he basically confirmed to me that the programme exists – he said everything without seeing anything.

“What that told me was that USOs are common – we even have a programme in place to classify and log and determine the speed of them and it goes into a vault.”

Pretty odd encounter, I believe. I have known D’Antonio for a long time, and he is very careful about what he says. He is known for his skeptical perspective, as any good scientist should have. So, for me, his claims go a long way.

Some readers may respond with “Duh! Of course the Navy tracks USOs!” Others may feel like D’Antonio’s claims are too sensational to be believed. All I can say is that I trust D’Antonio, for whatever that is worth.

Watch Marc D’Antonio and his friend and colleague, special effects guru Doug Trumbell, talk about their UFO project at the International UFO Congress here.

Hanging on the wall near the British government’s UFO Desk was what one of the men who occupied that desk called “the most spectacular UFO photo ever sent to the Ministry of Defence (MoD).” The photo has since disappeared, but the story of how the picture was obtained, and what it showed, has not.

Nick Pope ran the MoD’s UFO project from 1991 to 1994. When he was first assigned to the position, he was not excited about it. He felt the issue was ridiculous and he was not looking forward to having to deal with a bunch of UFO nuts. However, over the years, Pope found there were credible cases of incredible things, and began to see there was something truly mysterious about the phenomenon. One of the cases that lead him to this conclusion had to do with a photo that was made into a poster that he found hung in the office near his desk when he began working the UFO desk.

A recreation of the Calvine UFO photo poster.

(Credit: Channel 5)

“I first came across this story in 1991, when I joined the UFO project,” writes Pope on his website. “A poster-sized enlargement of the best  photo was prominently displayed on the office wall.”

“The X-Files first aired in the UK in 1994 and I acquired the same nickname (Spooky) as Fox Mulder, for obvious reasons,” Nick continues. “Mulder famously had his ‘I want to believe’ UFO poster on his office wall and though uncaptioned, I suppose this was my equivalent.”

The photo showed a picture of a large diamond shaped craft with a jet in the background. When he asked about the photo, Pope was told that they had officially determined the image was real. They estimated the craft to have been 25 meters (over 80 feet) in diameter.

However, if asked, they were instructed to answer, “no definite conclusion had been reached regarding the large diamond-shaped object.”

Pope learned that the object had been photographed on August 4, 1990. Two people had been walking near the town of Calvine in Scotland when they spotted the large diamond-shaped object. They described the object as looking metallic. It sat in one position, hovering silently for several minutes before taking off vertically at, as Pope writes, “a massive speed.”

During the sighting, the witnesses also saw a military aircraft that they thought might be a harrier jet, but they were unsure whether the jet was escorting the craft, chasing it, or whether the jet pilot was even aware of the diamond-shaped UFO.

The witnesses had taken several photographs and sent them to the Scottish Daily Record newspaper. The paper contacted the MoD, and the MoD was somehow able to convince the paper to hand over the photographs along with the negatives.

” The photos were then sent to the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) who then sent them on to imagery analysts at JARIC (Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre). Yet at the time, MoD hadn’t even publicly acknowledged that there was any intelligence interest in UFOs at all,” Pope explains.

“We implied and sometimes stated that we didn’t ‘investigate’ UFOs, but merely ‘examined sightings to see if anything reported was of any defence interest’ – as if the two were somehow different!”

Pope say the MoD was actually very interested in these cases, but often less interested in where the craft came from than what they could learn from it. They had hoped to identify some sort of technology they would be able to appropriate.

Nick Pope, former MOD UFO investigator, at the International UFO Congress.

(Credit: Peter Beste/Open Minds)

Either way, the Calvine UFO photos impressed the UFO desk investigators enough that they hung the poster in the office.

“At one particularly surreal briefing on the UFO phenomenon my DIS opposite number indicated the photo and pointed his finger to the right: ‘It’s not the Americans’, he said, before pointing to the left and saying ‘and it’s not the Russians.’ There was a pause, before he concluded ‘and that only leaves …’ – his voice trailed off and he didn’t complete the sentence, but his finger was pointing directly upwards,” recalls Pope.

The office where the UFO desk was located also housed other non-UFO related projects.

Pope says the reaction of some colleagues who came to visit unaware of the UFO program had amusing reactions to the poster.

Pope writes, “You’d have this surreal moment when they’d stop mid-sentence, stare at it, point and say ‘what the hell’s that?’ – this wasn’t the archetypal distant, blurred UFO photo. This was up close and personal, reach out and you can touch it stuff. ‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s not one of ours’ was our stock answer to the inevitable question.”

Eventually, around 1994, Pope says his superior determined the craft was a secret American aircraft or drone. Pope says they had already asked the U.S. if the craft or something similar of theirs was being tested over the UK, and were told they were not. Pope believes his boss had decided to support a potential cover-up by the Americans and the MoD and removed the poster. It was never to be seen again.

Although Pope has discussed these photographs in the media and has posted an article on his website, no one has come forward to claim they took the photos. Nor has anyone at the Scottish Daily Record come forth to discuss any involvement. The case remains a mystery.

You can read more about this sighting and Pope’s work at www.NickPope.net. He can also be heard on several episode of Open Minds UFO Radio.

A new UFO video submitted to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) shows bright objects flying around the night sky. In a similar video recently taken in Arizona, it was speculated the objects were drones. However, this witness does not believe drones to be responsible for this sighting.

Screenshot of UFO video from Great Britain of lights in the sky.

(Credit: MUFON)

According to the report, the video was taken on September 18, 2017. The report was submitted the same day. The witness was walking the dogs when the lights were spotted. At first the witness thought the lights may be drones or a helicopter. However, the witness felt differently after watching the objects “manoeuvre effortlessly through the sky.”

Screenshot of UFO video from Great Britain of lights in the sky.

(Credit: MUFON)

The full report, verbatim, reads:

While walking dogs at night outside back of house I noticed two strange lights flying around in the night sky. At first I thought helicopters or drones but the more I watched I don’t think this is the case. They didn’t look too far away, maybe a mile or so and seemed to manoeuvre effortlessly through the sky. After watching for a few minutes I went for my phone and recorded them. After recording I went inside to put dogs in and when came back out they were gone.

Map of Livingston, where the UFO video was captured.

(Credit: MUFON)

While the objects do seem odd, and must have been quite a sight, they could still be drones. As mentioned in relation to another recent sighting, drone technology continues to improve, and flying them at high speed through twists and turns has become a burgeoning sport. Check out the video of a drone racing championship in the UK below.

Take a look at the video, which can be downloaded here, and let us know what you think.

From the Phoenix Lights to the Mogollon Monster, Arizona has long been known as a mecca for the strange. According to the Mutual UFO Network’s reporting archives, Arizona ranked as one of the top three states in the country for UFO sightings per capita in 2013. Arguably, one of the most concentrated areas of reported anomalous activity is centered in Yavapai and Coconino counties. This area was first inhabited by indigenous tribes including the Anasazi, Hohokam, and the Sinagua, all of whom were deeply rooted in the belief that their ancestors came from the stars. Petroglyphs dot the canyon walls, hinting that visitors from other worlds had wandered amongst them and many locals maintain the belief that otherworldly visitors remain attracted to this unique area.

Sedona, a small city located within this region, has roughly ten thousand residents and attracts more than four million tourists annually. Some come solely for the natural beauty of the unique red-colored sandstone formations while others come to explore the mystical and spiritual implications of the area. Known for its vortices (sites where the energy of an area is allegedly magnified), metaphysical bookstores, crystal shops, and aura readers, the city openly embraces its eclectic personality. In fact, these traits, combined with the abundance of UFO sightings, have prompted many paranormal researchers and enthusiasts to relocate here permanently.

Just outside of Sedona down a long, rough, dirt road winding through the desert lays an expansive ranch that currently sits quietly deserted. The weeds are overgrown and the ground is parched. In the distance you can hear the eerie squeak of the windmill slowly turning. The gate towards the main ranch house is closed and a small sign indicates that trespassing is illegal as the property is owned by the United States government, specifically the U.S. Forest Service. Hiking trails line the outside of the perimeter, though they seldom see many visitors. But the ranch wasn’t always this way and there are some who firmly believe that this serene piece of land isn’t as quiet as we’re led to believe. 

Bradshaw Ranch

In 1945, Bob Bradshaw, a budding photographer and actor, moved to Oak Creek Canyon to alleviate seasonal allergies. Soon after he opened a Kodak licensed photography shop and quickly established himself as a pillar in the community. It was during this time that Hollywood gained significant interest in using the majestic red rocks as a backdrop in Westerns, television programs, and commercials. Bradshaw became integral in their productions.

Part of a western set used in commercial shoots at the Bradshaw Ranch.

(Credit: Sedona Monthly)

In 1960, Bradshaw acquired a large parcel of land covering 140-acres. At the time, the only remaining structure was an old adobe house. He quickly put to use his Hollywood contacts and utilized the ranch as a filming destination. According to ADayintheWest.com, the tour company operated by the Bradshaws, Bob worked on twenty-eight films, nineteen television shows, and seventy-seven commercials during his lifetime, and the ranch itself hosted five films, two television series, and numerous commercials. An old western town movie set was erected on the grounds during filming of the 1967 Elvis Presley film Stay Away Joe, and remained a fixture of the property until the 1986. Bitter Creek, as the town was known, was rebuilt in the mid 1990s. It was during this time when John Bradshaw took over management of the land and utilized it as a dude-ranch: a tourist destination for horseback rides, cookouts, and jeep tours. Bradshaw Ranch wasn’t all Hollywood glamour though; it hosts an obscure history that revealed itself suddenly, though for those involved, not unexpectedly. 

Strange Anomalies Plague the Bradshaw Family:

Dirt road leading to the ranch.

It was in 1992 that Bob Bradshaw Jr.’s wife Linda, along with several of her sons, began to catalog unusual activity on the property. It began slowly with sightings of unusual lights in the clear desert sky and escalated into tales of Bigfoot, UFOs, extraterrestrial beings, dinosaurs, and strange creatures. The experiences she reported, along with other witnesses, border on the strange side, even for the UFO community.

Linda firmly believed that the ranch was home to what she referred to as a light portal. She inferred that whatever the anomalous and strange activity occurring was due to an inter-dimensional window to which creatures benign and benevolent could freely travel from one dimension to another. This is not a new notion however; in 1975 the interdimensional hypothesis (IDH) was presented as a favorable theory by Jacques Vallée in his collaboration with Dr. J. Allen Hynek, The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. IDH states that UFOs and related paranormal phenomena are not visitations from other planets, but from other dimensions that coexist as separate entities alongside our own.

In 1995, Linda, along with her close friend and UFO researcher Tom Dongo, published a book filled with their alleged encounters and photographs they claim are otherworldly beings, strange flying craft, and unexplained light anomalies. Merging Dimensions: The Opening Portals of Sedona was a book they thought would change the world, but they were both disappointed and frustrated that it released to little fanfare.

One encounter Linda described was that of being woken by one of her sons, who was in the company of a woman and her daughter, in the early hours of the morning. She alleges that at approximately 2:45 a.m. her son and the woman not only spotted an unidentified craft but had an encounter with extraterrestrial beings as well. She describes:

Strolling past the window were four short-statured aliens wearing tight-fitting one-piece uniforms of a light tan color. They were what are typically called the Zeta Reticuli (also known as the Grays), only these appeared to be a bit more ashen-colored, almost white. Once the beings were out of sight and the witnesses recomposed themselves, the three of them jumped into their car and sped to the house where I was sleeping. I remember so vividly how my son vigorously shook my arm to wake me up. I can still hear the trepidation in his voice as he said, “Mom, wake up. They’re here!” I raised up and said, “Who’s here?” He exclaimed, “The aliens, Mom.”

The encounter further evolved when Linda saw one of the beings outside, and resolved to investigate further the following day. Small unexplained footprints were spotted in the dirt and the evidence was documented via her son’s video camera. If the story is to be believed, the strangest turn occurred when the witnesses spotted what they referred to as a dinosaur in one of the washes. Two of the witnesses described a dusty-colored, five foot, lizard-like dinosaur that stood erect, while the other two only made it in time to see a long tail vanishing into the bushes. In future encounters, they would discover large reptilian-like prints on a reoccurring basis.

The strange sightings persisted, and Linda continued to document to the best of her ability. She would take photographs in random areas to see if things would develop on film that she could sense but were invisible to the naked eye. The photos were taken on 35mm film and developed at a local photo processing center. She amassed a large collection of photos of light anomalies, what she believed to be alien beings, as well as various unidentified craft. She also captured and had interactions with a Bigfoot she referred to as “Big Girl” and believed that she was in the company of young offspring as well.

As a self-described animal lover, Linda became increasingly agitated that some of her dogs and horses were falling ill with tumors and other maladies the vet could not rationally explain. She was also disturbed to discover that someone or something had torn the manes off several of her horses. She was perplexed, stating, “Her lovely, long golden mane was missing. The mare’s mane was not cut off evenly. It looked as if it had been torn off, resulting in extremely jagged edges.” She surmised that it could not be the work of humans, but what ripped the hair and the purpose of the action remains a mystery to this day.

The unusual activity on the ranch continued to be an almost everyday occurrence until the late 1990s when it seemed to stall quite suddenly.

Rumors of a Cover-Up

On September 22, 2000 in a USDA Forest Service Release, Bill Kusner, spokesperson for Keep Sedona Beautiful, alluded to the government’s interest in the property. He stated,

These public purchases will serve to preserve the spectacular open landscape well known throughout the world, to provide opportunities for additional access for recreation, and to protect archaeological resources. Keep Sedona Beautiful is hopeful that a $3.5 million appropriation in FY 2001 will allow for the purchase of 90 acres in Yavapai County locally known as the Bradshaw Ranch.

US Forest Service sign at Bradshaw Ranch.

(Credit: Cottonwood Hotel)

After years of property tax hikes and the government’s pressing interest in the property, the ranch became another parcel of federal land, acquired by the U.S. Forest Service. In May of 2003, the Bradshaw’s vacated the property.

Conspiracy theorists were quick to dismiss Kusner’s words, and insinuated that the ranch was really purchased in order to conceal the powerful inter-dimensional portal alleged to exist on the property. Others speculate that it was a tactical maneuver to conceal a top-secret military base and an even larger extraterrestrial cover-up.

There have been rumors for decades of the existence of top-secret underground bases and an elaborate tunnel system, which some suggest is used by both extraterrestrials and the U.S. military. They vary in location, and some believe there to be entrances at a large cement plant in Jerome, beneath Bradshaw Ranch, and in various canyon areas around Sedona. Numerous reports of hikers encountering and being threatened by heavily armed soldiers with no visible insignias on their uniforms have strengthened this opinion in believers. UFO researcher Tom Dongo expands on these ideas in his book Mysterious Sedona: Year 2000 edition:

A machine gun, usually an M-16 (or in some cases semi-automatic pistols) is then leveled at the hikers. By the tone of the voice of the “soldiers” the hiker(s) is left with no doubt that he will be shot on the spot if he does not turn around, retrace his steps, and rapidly leave the area . . . every single one of these gunpoint encounters has taken place along the route of the probable tunnel system.

Those looking for hard evidence of these claims won’t find it. There are plenty of stories of suspicious activity, missing persons, and aliens and UFOs spotted in conjunction with soldiers, but no substantiated evidence exists to prove these theories. Military activity in the area could very well be routine training exercises and those hikers asked to turn around may be done for their own safety.

The Ranch Today

There are a variety of researchers and authors who supplement their time by providing UFO and vortex tours in the area. Several of these tours include a visit to Bradshaw Ranch for those hoping to catch something out of the ordinary. Tourists can venture out with Sedona resident Jocelyn Buckner, who wrote a guide specifically focused on the ranch. She urges visitors to respect the fence-line and claims, “There’s no reason to trespass. Invite the ‘unseen others’ to visit you. You will hear, see, or feel them if you remain open.”

The most reported “sightings” during these tours are photos of “orbs.” The orbs are not visible to the eye, but show up on photographs often looking as if they are attracted to certain individuals. The orb phenomenon is an extremely controversial topic with proponents offering up the “it’s not dust” mantra. Opponents and many professional photo analysts surmise that the majority of objects referred to as orbs have very simple, terrestrial explanations. Objects appearing in the circle of confusion, or the point where the lens of a camera cannot focus, and dust, moisture, and other particles in the area can form this optical illusion.

The ranch continues to attract international recognition as a paranormal hotspot through various television programs, books, and websites. In April of 2013, Discovery Channel’s Uncovering Aliens filmed multiple segments at the ranch. During filming, self-described extraterrestrial contactee Steven Jones alleges that he experienced his own bout of the unknown. While an interview was being conducted with Dongo, Jones had wandered off on his own, past the properties windmill above the fence-line on the hill. Jones returned thirty-or-so minutes later, interrupting the crew, flustered, asking the time and yelling for everyone to look at his wristwatch. It had stopped. He recounted that he had heard unusual voices or odd whispers coming from somewhere around him, experienced a brief period of missing time, and visually pointed out the electrical disturbance of his watch. The experience was not aired on television, and we can only speculate as to what really happened when Jones was alone in the desert.

Conclusion

Bradshaw Ranch is set to remain an enigma. The likelihood that any serious investigation could take place, akin to the in-depth scientific endeavors of the National Institute for Discovery Sciences (NIDS) at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, is slim. The U.S. Forest Service maintains a strict no trespassing policy in order to protect the historic and anthropological landmarks on the land.

This small piece, as well as the expansive canyons surrounding Sedona, will continue to be shroud in mystery and attract the curious and likeminded. Its residents will continue to defend their experiences and beliefs wholeheartedly and unapologetically. If you do take a trip out to Bradshaw, you may not see anything mysterious, but there is a calm quiet, an eerie breeze, and maybe, locals will tell you, something watching unseen in the distance.

This story originally appeared in the last issue of Open Minds Magazine.

Steven Spielberg is really into UFOs. This is not too hard to imagine given movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET: The Extraterrestrial and his mini-series Taken, among others. In a recent interview with journalist Lee Speigel, I discovered that he also lent a helping hand in a 1970s effort get the United Nations to investigate UFOs.

Devils Tower National Monument. The location of a UFO rendezvous in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

(Credit: Alejandro Rojas)

Lee Speigel

I am currently in Hulett, Wyoming, where I can see Devils Tower National Monument, which was popularized by the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Tomorrow, I will be doing a talk about Spielberg and his history of interest in the UFO phenomena at the Devils Tower UFO Rendezvous which commemorate the 40th anniversary of the movie. In my talk I will be playing a clip of Speigel describing a meeting with Spielberg who was interested in his effort to display the best UFO evidence at a general session of the United Nations.

Speigel was a young New Yorker at the time who had just put together a record album documentary on UFOs. He realized there were a lot of credible people talking about UFOs and pitched the project to CBS Inc., who liked the idea and sent him around the country to interview these people. Among those he interviewed were scientists, politicians, law enforcement and an astronaut, Gordon Cooper, who relayed his personal UFO experience.

Dr. Wernher von Braun and Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper during the MR-3 (Freedom 7) mission on May 5, 1961, which put the first American, Alan Shepard, in space.

(image credit: NASA)

A couple years after producing his record, Speigel heard about an effort to get the United Nations to officially look into the UFO issue. The effort was initiate by Grenada’s Prime minister, Sir Eric Gairy. He decided that what the effort needed was a presentation with the likes of the credible people he had in his record. So, with the confidence of a young New Yorker, he contacted the ambassadors to Granada and offered his services. The government of Granada liked his idea and the event planning began.

Two of the people Speigel enlisted for his presentation were Dr. J.Allen Hynek and Dr. Jacques Vallee. Hynek was a well-known astronomer who acted as a consultant to the U.S. Air Force’s official public UFO investigations from their inception in 1947 to their end in 1969. He then went on to form his own civilian UFO investigation organization, and is arguably the father of modern civilian UFO research. The later, Vallee was a student of his at Northwestern University, and went on to become an author and UFO researcher as well.

Hyenk and Vallee also played important roles in the conception of the movie Close Encounter of the Third Kind. Hynek actually developed the Close Encounters UFO sighting categorization system, and was a consultant for Spielberg on the movie. Vallee, being French, was the inspiration for one of the lead characters in the movie, Claude Lacombe, played by French director Francois Truffaut.

J. Allen Hynek can be seen in a scene towards the end of the Close Encounters movie.

(Credit: Columbia Pictures)

“It was amazing,” says Speigel. “One day I got a call from Spielberg’s publicist to see if I wanted to go out to Hollywood to meet with Steven, Dr. Hynek and Dr. Vallee.”

Speigel’s first response was, “Why do you want me there?”

He didn’t think anyone knew who he was. He was told that Spielberg had heard of his upcoming U.N. presentation and he wanted to talk to the group and offer his assistance.

Speigel says the three men did meet with Spielberg to talk UFOs. Understandably, he says it was an amazing experience. At the end of the meeting, Spielberg said his office would help with anything they needed, and Speigel says they did provide some graphics and information that was incorporated in the U.N. presentation.

So what happened with the U.N. and UFOs? Well, on November 27, 1978, Speigel, Hynek, Vallee, Gairy, Cooper and other credible witnesses and researchers did put on a presentation that included photos and video.

As a result, the U.N. passed a decision on UFOs, which holds less weight than a resolution, but is official none the less.

Their decision included this verbiage: “The General Assembly invites interested member states to take appropriate steps to coordinate on a national level scientific research and investigation into extraterrestrial life, including unidentified flying objects, and to inform the secretary-general of the observations, research and evaluation of such activities.”

Meeting at the UN on UFOs. Clockwise from left: astronaut Gordon Cooper, astronomer Jacques Vallee, astronomer/astrophysicist Claude Poher, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, Grenada Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy, UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, Morton Gleisner of the Special Political Committee, Lee Speigel, researcher Len Stringfield, and University of Colorado psychologist David Saunders 

(Credit: Lee Speigel)

The U.N. was to follow up on Granada’s UFO request the following year, but by then Granada had undergone a coup that unseated Gairy and the subject was dropped.

You can read more about the U.N. event at Lee Speigel’s website, and on various interviews on the Open Minds UFO Radio Podcast. It is also part of my presentation on Official Government UFO Agencies seen below.

New unidentified signals from deep space have been detected by the Breakthrough Listen project, an attempt to detect evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization. Similar signals have been detected before, but more signals than ever were recorded recently, and, according to the Breakthrough Listen project, an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization has not been ruled out as a potential source.

The type of signals recently observed are called fast radio bursts (FRBs). They are extremely short bursts, but also extremely bright. Most of the FRBs detected thus far have been singular events, which is not so mysterious. Scientists often discover mysterious radio transmissions, but they are typically due to cosmic events. What makes the newly discovered signals mysterious is that they repeat, unlike a cosmic event which sends out one large signal when the event takes place.

FRB 121102 was discovered on November 2, 2012, giving it its name. In 2015, it was found that FRB 121102 repeats, then in 2016 it was traced back to a galaxy billions of light years away. However, scientists know of nothing in that area which would be creating a repeating signal.

On August 26 of this year, scientists with Breakthrough Listen used the Green Bank Telescope to observe FRB 121102. They recorded ten 30-minutes scans and detected 15 bursts. This may not sound like much, but up until this point there had been less than two dozen FRBs recorded.

The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Radio Telescope (GBT) focuses 2.3 acres of radio light. It is 485ft tall, nearly as tall as the nearby mountains and much taller than pine trees in the national forest. The telescope is in a valley of the Allegheny mountains to shield the observations from radio interference.

(Credit: National Radio Astronomy Observatory)

So what could these FRBs be?

“Several explanations for FRBs have been suggested,” explains a recent article in Newsweek. “One is a cataclysmic event, such as a neutron star collapsing into a black hole. But such an event would produce only one burst and therefore does not explain the repeating pattern of FRB 121102. Another possible explanation is that they are coming from a young, highly magnetized neutron star, but so far nothing like this has been detected in this region of space.”

After acknowledging the mystery of the discovery, Newsweek goes on to conclude, “Despite widespread speculation, the possibility of the signals coming from an advanced alien civilization has been largely ruled out.”

Of course, not everyone agrees. A recent article in New Scientist covers some ideas scientists have come up with which would include potential alien sources for the signals.

Breakthrough Listen is part of what is called the Breakthrough Initiative. It is financed by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. While Musk, Bezos and Bigelow have decided to spend their fortunes on building spacecraft and/or habitats for humans to get to and inhabit space, Milner has decided to look for aliens.

Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking announcing the $100 million Breakthrough Initiative in London in 2015.

(Photo via Breakthrough Initiative)

There are thee parts to the Breakthrough Initiative. The first two announced were Listen and Message. The first aimed at listening for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, much like what the SETI Institute is known for. The second, Breakthrough Message, entailed a $1 million prize for the creation of messages to send to space. However, the messages will not be sent, probably because Stephen Hawking, an associate of the initiative, has expressed concern about what will happen if aliens find out we are here.

The third, Breakthrough Starshot, plans to send hundreds of tiny spaceships to the closest star system, Alpha Centauri, to look for signs of life. These spacecraft would largely consist of sails that are pushed along by lasers here on Earth. Once they reach their destination, the little spacecraft will have a few hours to record video and whatever other telemetry they will be able to obtain. The data will then be sent back to earth via lasers. However, because we are talking about such vast distances, the data will take four years to reach Earth, even at the speed of light.

Artist depiction of Breakthrough Startshot.

(Credit: Breakthrough Initiatives)

Coincidentally, or not, the New Scientist article explains that this type of spacecraft could be responsible for the FRBs.

The article posits:

…maybe they are using these powerful radio beams to power light sails, which push spacecraft along by bouncing light off a large, reflective sheet. A sail that requires a beam as powerful as an FRB would be much bigger than any we’ve ever considered making on Earth. Such an alien light sail could carry almost a million tonnes – in contrast, the International Space Station only weighs about 420 tonnes.

If there were many extraterrestrial civilizations with colossal alien cruise ships, there could be many powerful radio beams sweeping through the sky, each following the path of a sail. When the beam’s path intersects with the Earth’s, we’d see a bright but fleeting burst of radio waves.

The Breakthrough Initiative’s press release includes this bit of speculation In their recent announcement on this latest discovery. According to the Breakthrough Initiative press release, “Possible explanations for FRBs range from outbursts from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, to more speculative ideas that they are directed energy sources used by extraterrestrial civilizations to power spacecraft.”

So, in the end, we can not be sure what is causing the FRBs, but an alien civilization is not being ruled out. At least not by everyone, especially the Breakthrough Initiative.

A technical summary of Breakthrough Listen’s discovery has been releases in an Astronomer’s Telegram, and will be released in further detail in an upcoming article in a scientific journal.

Open Minds UFO Radio: Alejandro and Martin discuss the latest UFO news, including the recent detection of mysterious signals from space and humanity’s plans for Mars. No special guest in this episode, besides the always special ufo news presenter Martin Willis of Podcast UFO. Martin and Alejandro talk at length about some of their favorite topics that have recently made headlines and/or were featured articles on OpenMinds.tv. This includes the discovery of signals from space by an organization searching for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Signals that some scientists speculate could be the result of advanced extraterrestrial technology. We also discuss Mars, Alejandro’s visit to the set of the National Geographic Channel’s Mars TV show set, and current plans to get humans to Mars within the next 10 years!

Chris Rutkowski is a science writer and UFO researcher. He has authored several books on UFOs and has also taught courses on the subject. Next month Rutkowski will begin teaching his latest UFO course for the continuing education program for the St. James-Assiniboia School Division in Winnipeg.

UFOs are still somewhat of a taboo topic and often met with ridicule in the world of academia, so UFO courses are few and far between. However, ridicule is something Rutkowski combats well with a well developed sense of humor. And, being a science writer, Rutkowski also understand how to bring credibility to a topic that is often misunderstood.

“I often get asked, ‘What is really going on? And where do I get good information?,’” says Rutkowski. “Such courses are a way to educate the public about a very confusing subject.”

Although the public’s curiosity is healthy when it comes to UFOs, it was Rutkowski’s relationship with the St. James-Assiniboia School Division that helped get the course created.

“I have been teaching courses on writing for several years. They asked me if I had ideas about other courses I could do and I suggested a course on UFOs,” explained Rutkowski. “Because my latest book came out a few months ago and is about a major UFO case in our area, and because it’s been getting a lot of attention, they knew about it and thought it would make a good special interest class.”

Rutkowski’s latest book, co-authored with Stan Michalak, is titled When They Appeared. It is about a famous alleged UFO encounter in 1967 near Falcon Lake, which is a bit less than 100 miles east of Winnipeg. According to the book’s description, the incident was the most investigated UFO event in Canada’s history.

The story is very odd. On May 20, 1967, Stefan Michalak, father of the co-author, says he came across a strange craft. It had some sort of vents on the side. It took off and in the process injured Stefan, who suffered from burns on his chest in the pattern of the vents on the craft.

Stefan Michalak’s sketch of the strange craft he encountered.

Stefan Michalak was treated at a hospital for burns to his chest and stomach that later turned into raised sores on a grid-like pattern.

The news soon got ahold of the story and it became a media sensation.

“It just flipped our lives over,” Stan recently told CBC News. “It took several years before it finally died down.”

Rutkowski’s UFO class will be held at John Taylor Collegiate.

(Credit: John Taylor Collegiate)

I asked Rutkowski if he felt teaching the public about UFOs was important. He replied, “Yes, in that there is a real thirst from the public for information about UFOs beyond tabloid news.”

As a science writer, and someone who takes the UFO phenomenon seriously, I also asked what approach Rutkowski takes in presenting the course material.

“I include some discussion on critical thinking and how to evaluate UFO reports and claims,” Rutkowski replied. “I do acknowledge that there is much we don’t know, but that there is much we do.”

If you live in the Winnipeg area, you can register for Rutkowki’s UFO course, which starts September 25, 2017,  at www.localcourses.com, and you can find the book at the publisher’s website, McNallyRobinson.com. To find out more about his work, you can follow Rutkowski’s UFO Blog at uforum.blogspot.com.