Podcast UFO

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

The first two years of the 1970s seems to have been a slow period for UFO reports in the U.S. if the 1970 and 1971 UFO Chronology hosted on the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena website is any indication, with the 1970 chronology consisting of 5 pages, and the 1971 consisting of 8 pages. As a comparison, the 1966 chronology page count is 35 and the 1967 count is a massive 85. This might have been expected after the release of the Condon Report and the termination of Blue Book. There is a comment to this effect in the 1971 chronology: “An apparent lull in sighting reports may be the result of the closing of Project Blue Book and the media coverage of this for several years, and may not reflect the actual situation.” By 1973, things would pick up in the U.S. in a big way (35 pages in that chronology) with high-strangeness cases dominating the headlines. However, there seems to have been a head start on this in other parts of the world and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization had people in place to investigate and report. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In last week’s blog, we looked at a highly strange report out of Ohio that involved UFOs, Bigfoot-type creatures, and “black forms,” all of which reportedly besieged the family of “Robert S.” in Ohio during the months of June and July in 1981. The principal investigator was Dennis Pilichis, who self-published a booklet in 1982 titled, Night Siege: The Northern Ohio UFO-Creature Invasion. The witnesses, Robert S. and his sons, reportedly shot at “black forms” and hairy creatures with glowing red eyes, and Pilichis wrote that he saw a ladder leaning up against the house and shotgun shells littering the yard when he arrived, and upon investigation, found strange, three-toed footprints. This week, we’ll look at Pilichis’s claim that he witnessed a siege from the roof first-hand, along with investigators who were assisting him, and we’ll share some thoughts on the validity of the case from the researchers involved in the making of the Small Town Monsters Mysteries and Monsters episode, “Sasquatch Night Siege.” Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In 1981, there was a highly strange report out of Ohio that involved UFOs, Bigfoot-type creatures, and “black forms,” all of which reportedly besieged a family in Ohio during the months of June and July. Reports of Bigfoot-type creatures and UFOs being seen in the same area at or near the same time are not all that unusual, particularly in the area around Chestnut Ridge in next-door Pennsylvania, focused on by researcher Stan Gordon. However, questions remain about the Ohio case, and unfortunately, the main investigator passed away in 2022. Also, the main witness has never been identified, so following up on the story is difficult.

The case was investigated by Dennis Pilichis who wrote about it in a booklet he self-published in 1982, titled Night Siege: The Northern Ohio UFO-Creature Invasion. It has a forward by Berthold Schwartz MD, who was a psychiatrist with a long-time interest in paranormal subjects, was a frequent contributor to Flying Saucer Review, and wrote about what was one of Stan Gordon’s strangest Bigfoot/UFO encounter cases in the July 1974 issue. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

On the morning of April 17, 1966, two sheriff deputies, Dale Spaur and Wilbur “Barney” Neff, chased a UFO from Portage County, Ohio, for 86 miles all the way into Pennsylvania. They chased the object at speeds ranging from 80 mph to 105 mph. According to them, there were times when the object actually stopped and waited for them to catch up to it. Other law enforcement officers witnessed the object after being alerted by radio communications between the deputies and their dispatcher. According to Project Blue Book Director Hector Quintanilla, the officers chased the planet Venus. Spaur stuck to the story that they had chased a physical object as others went silent, and he ended up losing his job and his family. A case that is remarkably similar is reported to have occurred in June of that year, and the officer who reported it also seems to have suffered for speaking out, but to a lesser extent than Spaur.

There is an article (page 3 of the pdf) by Bob Lindsey in the October 27, 1977, Richmond, Virginia, Times Dispatch headlined “UFO Sighting Changed Stevens’ Life.” Under the headline, there is a quote from William L. Stevens Jr.: “I often stop and wonder if you’re better off when you see something like that, to keep your mouth shut.” Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 
In 1980, The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore was published that told the sensationalized story of a forgotten 1947 report by the U.S. Army Air Forces that they recovered a “flying disk” on a ranch in New Mexico, north of Roswell Army Air Field. This was also the year of the Rendlesham Forest Incident, which is sometimes referred to as “Britain’s Roswell” (December 26-28), and the Cash-Landrum Incident (December 29). The Cash-Landrum Incident is significant because the witnesses, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and her grandson, Colby Landrum, showed symptoms of what seemed like radiation poisoning after they reportedly saw a large craft, seemingly in distress, being escorted by as many as 23 Chinook helicopters. While all of the above cases continue to be discussed and continue to fascinate, a case that got a lot of attention that same year has been largely forgotten. It is interesting to note that it also involved what seemed to be the effects of radiation on the witnesses prior to the Cash-Landrum incident.

In the September 11, 1980, Anderson, South Carolina, Daily Mail, there is an article (page 8 of the pdf) by Louise Ervin headlined “Jerry McAlister saw ‘something strange.’” Ervin, begins her article asking, “Did a vehicle from another world pay a visit to the Broadway lake area this morning?” According to her, “Jerry McAlister of Parnell Road” wasn’t sure, but was “positive he saw something strange in his back yard” at 4:20 that morning, and since then, “the news media has beaten a path to his door.” Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

UFO abduction accounts of grey aliens taking people from their homes and examining them in their spaceships started becoming typical after the publication in 1981 of Budd Hopkins’s book Missing Time. However, there is an early account with these elements in the 1977 book Abducted!: Confrontations With Beings From Outer Space by the founders of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, Coral and Jim Lorenzen. The case was investigated by APRO Field Investigator Kevin Randle and APRO Consultant and Director of Research Dr. James Harder. Years later, Randle presented his thoughts on the case, which provide some insight into how the typical UFO abduction narrative might have evolved. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

As far as well-known Australian UFO cases go, a 1988 report of an encounter in a desolate area known as the Nullarbor by the Knowles family, a mother and her three adult sons, is on a lot of lists, including Wikipedia. According to the article headlined “UFO Encounter on Nullarbor Plain Reported” in the January 21, 1988, Canberra Times, the family told police in Ceduna that they were chased by a UFO after watching it chase a truck and a car going in the opposite direction. They reported that it picked up their car, shook it violently, and then put it back down facing the other way with such force that one of the tires was blown. Sergeant Fred Longley of the Ceduna Police is quoted as saying “We have to take it seriously, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. There were too many witnesses, the car was damaged and was covered in ash from the object and they were clearly shaken up.” While there has been much speculation as to what might have happened (and some doubt as to the validity of the story) there was another instance in Australia in 1971, that not only involved a UFO reportedly picking up a car, but seemingly carrying it for long distances. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

When I mentioned to my Russian co-worker, Sasha (in the construction shop at the Metropolitan Opera), that I was going to write about a 1989 UFO, occupant, and robot report from Voronezh that got the world’s attention thanks to a Tass article he said, “Oh, yeah, there were all kinds of crazy reports in the newspapers back then. We didn’t take them seriously.” He explained that because of glasnost (the opening up of Russia to the West and loosening of restrictions under Gorbachev), news companies felt free to report on UFOs and other paranormal subjects that they knew would sell papers. He said they called papers that carried such stories “yellow papers.” My knowledge of the case came from sensationalized narratives on UFO websites, but after actually taking the time to find the original newspaper reports, it seems that the story is the result of a combination of over-zealous UFO researchers, credulous reporters, and perhaps less than scrupulous editors taking advantage of the new political climate.

On October 9, 1989, the Russian newspaper Tass, carried a story under the headline “A UFO Said to Have Landed in a Park at Voronezh.” According to the article, witnesses reported that “an enormous ball or luminous disc” landed in a park, “two or three extraterrestrial beings” and a “small robot” came out, walked around the craft, and then went back inside. The creatures are described as 3-4 meters tall with “tiny heads.” The craft is said to have then taken off silently and to have “disappeared in a wink.” Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the fall of 1978, there seems to have been a flap in the comune (municipality) of Torrita di Siena in the Tuscany region of Italy from September 13^th to the 20^th. This is mentioned by Maurizio Verga in his introduction to the article (page 6 of the pdf) he translated by Dr. Roberto Pinotti headlined “Landing, E.M. Effects and Entities at Torrita di Siena” published in the Vol. 25, No. 4 (November 1979) Flying Saucer Review. According to Verga, during that week, “there was a massive onset of the UFO phenomenon” with a peak of 40 reports on the 14^th and a total of 120 cases. He speculates that many of these were the result of “the heavy TV, radio and press coverage of the main UFO sightings and encounters,” and he describes the case covered in the article by Pinotti, who did a thorough boots-on the-ground investigation, as “one of these.” He describes Pinotti as “the leading authority of Italian ufology and well known to FSR readers.” What Pinotti reported was apparently intriguing enough that this case ended up being recounted in numerous publications and was revisited in 2011 by a reporter from one of the first Italian newspapers to cover it. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

The first two years of the 1970s seems to have been a slow period for UFO reports, if the 1970 and 1971 UFO Chronology hosted on the National Investigations Committee on Arial Phenomena website is any indication, with the 1970 chronology consisting of 5 pages, and the 1971 consisting of 8 pages. As a comparison, the 1966 chronology page count is 35 and the 1967 count is a massive 85. This might have been expected after the conclusion by Edward U. Condon in his report that “further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.” This prompted the U.S. Air Force, which had funded the study led by Condon at the University of Colorado, to shut down Project Blue Book in 1969. There is a comment to this effect in the 1971 chronology: “An apparent lull in sighting reports may be the result of the closing of Project Blue Book and the media coverage of this for several years, and may not reflect the actual situation.” By 1973, things would pick up in a big way (35 pages in that chronology) with high-strangeness cases dominating the headlines. In 1972, however, there was a report that seems to have presaged the things to come. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

New Jersey, as everyone in UFO world is aware, was ground zero for a full-on flap involving what most witnesses reported as mysterious drones. What’s noteworthy is that this same region was where residents panicked during Orson Welles’s radio production of The War of the Worlds in 1938. It’s also the area where there were two flaps in 1966, one in January and another in October, with the most dramatic reports centered around the Wanaque Reservoir. In this blog, we’ll focus on the January flap. At that time, several different investigators arrived on the scene, and as a result, there are several different versions of what happened.

Read more →