Podcast UFO

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

It has been determined by many researchers in the scientific community that during hypnosis, false memories are very likely to be generated, and distinguishing them from real memories is difficult, if not impossible without some means of confirmation. This is, for instance, the conclusion of a report for the U.S. Department of Justice by Martin T. Orne et al. titled “Hypnotically Refreshed Testimony: Enhanced Memory or Tampering with Evidence?” published January 1985 in Issues and Practices in Criminal Justice. With the above in mind, it is helpful for researchers attempting to evaluate a case when a distinction can be made between elements of the report derived from conscious recall and elements derived through the use of hypnosis. A case where this can be easily done is that of Judy Kendell of Zamora, California, thanks to a newspaper article announcing her intention to undergo hypnosis to recover around four hours of missing time, and another article in a different paper after the procedure, which was, apparently, well attended. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

Pictures of UFOs have played a large part throughout the history of investigations into the mystery. The first organization to present them on a regular basis in its publication was the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, which, in 1956, upgraded from using mimeograph and started printing the APRO Bulletin, enabling the reproduction of photos with a reasonable degree of quality. While some cases, such as the one involving a series of photos taken by Rex Heflin in Tustin, California in 1965, stirred up a great deal of enduring interest, others just came and went with little fanfare. An example of the latter is a case from 1977 involving six photos taken by a young boy in Indiana which was first reported in the March 20, 1977, Indianapolis Star. In the April 1977 APRO Bulletin, the photos were reported to have been examined by APRO’s staff and two consultants and “considered to be genuine.” Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In 2006, a report of strange creatures being encountered on a farm in North Dakota was looked into by a MUFON investigator who considered the witness to be credible. It was first covered on local radio and then picked up by the Fargo, North Dakota, Forum. The case came to the attention of Patrick Gross, who maintained the UFO Related Entities Catalog up until 2019 it seems (the year of the last update on his website), thanks to a reader who wrote him an email saying he heard about the case on KFYR Radio on October 25 and 26, 2006. The case is detailed with as many sources as Gross was able find and was entered in the catalog.

The e-mail reads as follows:

I was looking for info on a report of 2 or 3 aliens on a hog farm near Bismarck ND in or near Tappen ND attempting to take a hog, man confronted the strange people reported to be 6 to 7 feet tall and woke up some time later with a hog gone and markings of a space ship…reported on KFYR radio 10/25 and 26,2006 also several sonic booms were heard in the area.

Gross provides a transcript of the article by Dave Olson in the October 27, 2006, Fargo, North Dakota, Forum headlined “Creature Sightings Stir Talk,” which can be found on page 3 of the December 2006 UFO Newsclipping Service. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

The 1970s saw a shift in what sorts of UFO reports newspapers would print and what UFO researchers would consider worthy of investigation. John Keel wrote an article headlined “Never Mind the Saucer! Did You See the Guys Who Were Driving?” that was published in the February 1967 issue of True magazine. According to Brent Raynes on page 4 of his article, The Keelian Perspective, Keel recalled a visit to the office of the editor at True after the article came out: “He said he had something to show me. And he waved his hand towards the corner of his office and there were about six mail bags. He said, ‘This mail is for you, Keel.’” Raynes describes there being “thousands of letters, many from people claiming UFO abduction and contact experiences, including ‘memory lapses for long periods of time.’” As Keel, and then others, such as APRO founders Jim and Coral Lorenzen, became more and more open to cases involving UFO occupants, the report by Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker that they had been taken aboard a craft in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and examined by strange creatures, hit the papers in 1973. It was taken seriously, and after that, many more UFO and creature cases would be reported, investigated, and make headlines throughout that decade. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

Many people who have more than a passing interest in the UFO subject might be aware that the scene in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where several UFOs go speeding by the main character’s stalled car, followed by police cars in hot pursuit, was based on a real case. This was the 1966 incident where police officers Dale Spaur and Wilbur “Barney” Neff reportedly chased a single UFO at high speed across the state of Ohio into Pennsylvania, with other officers joining them in the chase. However, another scene in the movie, where a house occupied by a mother and son is flooded with light from a UFO, was also inspired by a real case, but this one is not nearly so well known.

The front-page headline of the November 1963 APRO Bulletin is “Family Beseiged [sic] by Discs.” According to the article, on October 21, 1963, at his ranch near Tranca, Argentina, Antonio de Moreno was woken up by a fifteen-year-old employee who told him there seemed to have been an accident at the railway tracks about a half mile away from the house, as, in the reporter’s words, “there was a lot of light and people moving around at that location.” Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the January 28, 1974, Jacksonville Journal out of Florida, there is an article (pages 5 and 9 of the pdf) by Lloyd Brown headlined “Did a Creature From UFO Land Here?” that tells the story of a Jacksonville man’s report of a UFO and creature encounter in 1972. He is said to have delayed in reporting it because he was afraid of being called, in his words, “some kind of nut.” According to the account, he decided to come forward after attending a lecture at Florida Junior College by the director of the UFO Research Institute, Stanton Friedman.

According to Brown, two years ago, 62-year-old Norman R. Chastain “of 2507 Kershaw Drive” found a plant growing in his yard that looked like “a devil’s head,” brought it to the paper, and a picture of him holding it was published in the Journal.  That picture is presented in the 1974 article as well. Chastain is said to have not mentioned an incident prior to finding the plant and that he decided to talk about it now.

According to the account, late at night on January 26, 1972, Chastain, an electrician for the Seaboard Coast Railroad Company, was fishing near the eastern tip of Blount Island in the St. Johns River. At around 3:00 a.m., he noticed, in his words, “several orange and blue lights from over the St. Johns Bluff Monument.” He thought they were from a police or mosquito control helicopter, but he heard no sound. He said, “After a few minutes, the lights came directly towards my boat, and I could make out the outline of something like a half of a ball with lights flashing and changing colors about every minute.” 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 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 →