by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
On November 24, researcher/investigator Christopher O’Brien died in a tragic mishap. According to the post by Loren Coleman on his site Cryptozoonews, O’Brien was staying at the house of Ron James in Sedona, Arizona, helping him with the sequel to his film, Accidental Truth, when he started experiencing what James described as “catastrophic breathing difficulties” and tried to drive himself to the hospital. According to James, he likely lost consciousness and “crashed his car into a stone sign and was fatally wounded.” James wrote that he asked for a sign from his “departed friend” as he was returning from San Francisco and stopped by the crash site. He includes a picture of what he found, which was a piece of stone on the ground with the words “Church of Chris” (the final “t” was covered by debris). O’Brien leaves behind many friends in the UFO/Paranormal community who mourn his loss and celebrate his contributions.
O’Brien was a rare breed of researcher, and his methods and integrity remain as a standard that other researchers should be measured by. He appeared on Martin’s show on December 14, 2021, where he mostly talked about a UFO data acquisition system (developed as part of the Unidentified Flying Object Data Acquisition Project) and his involvement with it. He describes duplicating footage shot in Salida, Colorado, in 1995 of what became known as the “Edwards Cigar” when he happened to see a long strand of spider web floating in the breeze and shot footage of it as it was backlit by the sun. He explains, “We need to be intellectually honest about this stuff.” He adds “I’m just as willing to debunk a case or explain it away as I am to confirm it as being high strange.
The history of UFOlogy is made up of stories that range from genuine mystery to outright fraud. The choice of what to take seriously and what to discard can be difficult for those in the early stages of exploring the subject. A good maxim to start with might be “consider the source,” and some good claims to examine with this in mind are those involving metals (lately referred to as “metamaterials”) said to have been recovered from flying saucers/UFOs.
BIO: Daniel Alan Jones is an investigative reporter for The Vortex, a show that explores the mysteries of the world and beyond. He has been researching unexplained phenomena for over a decade and has visited strange sites, conducted numerous interviews, and provided media coverage for several events. Daniel manages online groups including the Texas UFO Network and the Texas Cryptozoology Network. He is a native Texan and professional drummer as well as a private music instructor in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Daniel focuses primarily on the fields of ufology and cryptozoology as an ethnographic study in cultural anthropology. He was part of the 2021 Trinity Giant Salamander Expedition, led by world-renowned cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard, in search of an elusive cryptid purported to exist in the Pacific Northwest while also exploring the Patterson-Gimlin film site in Bluff Creek, California. Daniel’s work has appeared on a variety of media platforms including Spectrum News, the Star-Telegram, Bigfoot Times, Fox News, the Roswell Daily Record, and he has been involved with many events including the Texas Bigfoot Conference, Alien Con, the Edinburg UFO Conference, Bigfoot Roadshow, the MUFON Symposium, Texas UFOcon, the Oklahoma Bigfoot Symposium, the Roswell UFO Festival, and others. His current research project “Aurora” chronicles over a century of history about the facts, fiction, and folklore from a Texas legend from 1897!
In the early 1970s, reports of people experiencing periods of missing time started turning up during investigations. A