by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
For some UFOlogists, as they go through many years of research and investigation, their opinions and beliefs shift and change. Such was the case for Ted Phillips, whose involvement spanned over five decades from 1964 until his death on March 10, 2020. For much of that time, he specialized in physical trace cases and considered UFOs to be nuts and bolts craft piloted by flesh and blood extraterrestrial creatures. His views changed, particularly due to his investigation of a paranormal hotspot in Missouri that he and fellow researchers called “The Marley Woods” in an effort to conceal its location. Towards the end of his life, he saw the UFO phenomenon as being more complex than he’d previously considered it to be.
Phillips did an interview with Brad Steiger for Steiger’s 1974 book, Mysteries of Time and Space. It appears as an excerpt in the article (page 4 of pdf) put together by Steiger headlined “Time, Space and the UFO Enigma” that was published in the 1980 edition of Beyond Reality’s UFO Special Issue. Steiger explains in his introduction that in the first chapter of his book, he theorized “that mankind has been invited to participate in a bizarre kind of contest with some undeclared cosmic opponents.” According to his theory, if human beings can come to comprehend the “preposterous clues” and “master the proper moves” they will better understand their place “in the cosmic scheme of things.” Steiger calls this contest “The Reality Game” and posits that it is purposely confusing and that UFOs are just one of many different types of paranormal phenomena that are part of it. According to him, “In such a framework, the UFO phenomenon becomes a mechanism that can bring mankind only so far in teaching him how to get in true step with Time and Space.” This is similar to the thinking of John Keel and Jacques Vallée at the time. Steiger’s interview with Phillips shows the “nuts and bolts” point of view of the phenomenon.
Steiger describes Phillips as being an inspector for the Missouri State Highway Department at the time. As for his involvement in the UFO field, according to Steiger, Phillips, at the time of the interview, had investigated over 150 UFO reports over a nine-year period and worked with Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who was a scientific consultant for Project Blue Book and was the director of the Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center at Northwestern University. According to a profile of Phillips written by Kevin Randle, “He began investigating UFOs in 1964 and met Dr. J. Allen Hynek during the investigation of the Socorro UFO landing.”
At the beginning of the interview, Phillips describes how he came to specialize in physical trace cases. According to him, while he was having dinner with Hynek in early October 1969, Hynek commented that “after all these years, it seems that it is about time we started looking into specific pieces of the puzzle, rather than running around trying to get all the information from all around the world.” He suggested that Phillips specialize, and Phillips tells Steiger that he, Phillips, “decided that the hardest evidence available is a ground effect.”
Phillips became well-known in the UFO community with his investigation of a landing report in Delphos, Kansas. The case involved 15-year-old Ronald Johnson and his parents who all reported seeing an object on November 2, 1971, that was eight feet in diameter and ten feet tall. On the ground was a ring that they said glowed at night. Mrs. Johnson reportedly touched it and experienced numbness in her hand and on her leg, where she went to brush off her fingers. Phillips, then a member of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization and founding member of the Midwest UFO Network (which would become the Mutual UFO Network) arrived on December 4, 1971, after being contacted by Hynek.
Delphos RingWhen Phillips got there, he saw a ring of un-melted snow covering the area at the time. He took samples of the soil and described it as being dry to a depth of 12 inches and containing a white substance. The samples were analyzed by Dr. Erol A. Faruk, a research fellow at the University of Nottingham, who described finding “an alkali metal salt of an organic acid.”
In an article written by Joe Harvat headlined “Hard UFO Evidence: The Ted Phillips Story,” posted August 12, 2015, on anomalien.com, Harvat wrote that Phillips quit researching after Hynek’s death in 1986 and explained that “It just wasn’t any fun without my friend.” According to Harvat, Phillips returned to active research in 1998 after Jacques Vallée convinced him “to resume his important work.”
Harvat describes there having been a change in UFO reports and quotes Phillips explaining it: “Sometime during the late 1980s, the number of incidents involving large flying objects dropped considerably. At the same time, reports involving very small UFOs increased dramatically.” According to Harvat, Phillips noticed that these sorts of reports tended to be repeated in certain areas and it occurred to him that this gave him an opportunity to go to such an area with equipment at the ready to analyze the phenomena in a way that hadn’t been done before.
The Marley Woods provided him that opportunity, and Phillips described the investigation there conducted by himself and fellow researchers during a lecture at the 2009 Ozark UFO Conference. According to him, a property owner in the area called him ten years previously and told him that he and his neighbors had had some unusual sightings and asked him if he would do some investigating and explain it. Phillips told his audience that he told him “Well, probably not the explaining part, but I’ll sure come down and look.” This began an investigation that was still ongoing at the time of the conference.
In the beginning of Phillips’s lecture, he compares the Marley Woods to Skinwalker Ranch. He describes what was reportedly seen at the Marley Woods as far back as 1937, some of it by him, personally, and presents pictures taken of some of the phenomena. According to him, there were 302 reports of amber-colored lights, 186+ of small light balls, 2 mystery lights that appear consistently in the same spots (one in the north and one in the south), a light mass that stays in location for one to one and a half hours, 71 physical trace cases, 15 reports of structured objects, 6 reports of people being affected by an unseen force, 22 incidents of cattle and horse deaths, and 13 reports of a large unknown animal. Phillips says that his first ever sighting in 44 years of research was of 5 amber lights on his 7th trip to Marley.
In 2007, Phillips put together a team called the Special Investigations Unit that worked at the Marley Woods and was prepared to go to any site, fully equipped for a detailed investigation. The team included Thomas Ferrario and Debbie Zieglemeyer (both divers), Adam Johnson (a documentary filmmaker), and Rodney Diller. Footage shot by Johnson of one incident involving a light, “UFO footage – Marley Woods – MO – 5|3|08” can be seen on YouTube. A peacock can be heard in the background that seems to be reacting to the light’s appearance.
On November 12, 2010, Phillips appeared on the webcast Conundrum, hosted by Jay Michael. At 35:46, Michael asks “Do you think that these things, whatever they are – devices, UFOs – are physical when they appear? Or, do you think that maybe they’re non-physical?” Phillips replies that he thinks “for sure, the old classic-saucer types definitely are physical, at least at certain points in time.” He points out that compaction tests of indentations found at reported landing sites consistently indicated weights of between 7 and 14 tons. He also mentions damage to trees in the area. He goes on to say that he’s beginning to think that there are points where some of the objects become “not-physical.”
Phillips advises caution in associating UFOs with paranormal activity such as ghosts and poltergeists. However, he speculates that these might be a product of advanced alien technology, “a product of their being,” or an effort to “confuse the issue.” He brings up Jacques Vallée’s views on UFOs and the paranormal and says, “I now tend to bend that way.”
It seems that in the 36 years between his interview with Steiger and his interview with Michael, Phillips had come to lean towards the same ideas Steiger explored in his book. At around eight minutes into his 2009 speech, he says that after what he’s seen at the Marley Woods, he’s gone through a “profound” change. He says, “For years – many years – you know, I was known as ‘the nuts and bolts guy.’ After seeing some of this stuff, it’s cut shorter to just ‘the nuts guy.’”
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