Simulcast on KGRA Digital Broadcasting, YouTube, Facebook, Rumble & Twitch – Tuesday, April 01, 2025 @ 7:00 PM EDT (-4GMT)
BIO: Ted is an emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union, where he co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, California, USA. Along with Martinez Hewlett, Joshua Moritz, and Robert John Russell, he co-edited, Astrotheology: Science and Theology Meet Extraterrestrial Intelligence (2018). Along with Octavio Chon Torres, Joseph Seckbach, and Russell Gordon, he co-edited, Astrobiology: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy (Scrivener 2021). In the field of Ufology, Ted served one stint as Louisiana State Investigator for MUFON. Currently he holds active membership in the Society for UAP Studies and the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. He is author of UFOs: God’s Chariots? Spirituality, Ancient Aliens, and Religious Yearnings in the Age of Extraterrestrials (Career Press New Page Books, 2014).
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.
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.
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 
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.
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 13th to the 20th. This is mentioned by Maurizio Verga in his introduction to the