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by Charles Lear

That UFO sightings, more often than not, have prosaic explanations should surprise no one.  Whether or not an explanation is accepted by witnesses and believers is another question.

An important factor influencing acceptance is the credibility of the investigator.  It should be safe to say at.this point that civilian UFO investigators have more credibility than government employed investigators.  This is because, far too often, commonly mistaken objects have been indiscriminately offered as explanations by public officials in order to put a case to rest.  This is unfortunate because there are occasions where a good solution to a case that could help clear out some of noise in the signal may be dismissed by many due to what has become a reflexive reaction.  From a list that seems logical, here are the most commonly misidentified objects listed from 1-7: military experiments, airplanes, Venus, balloons, weird cloud formations, missile tests and lightning.  Of these, Venus and balloons are the most infamous of abused identification choices but balloons, particularly weather balloons, have been a sore spot for civilian researchers and witnesses since the early days of the modern, post 1947, UFO era.

The July, 1947, headlines announced that the Air Force had recovered a “flying saucer.”  At a press conference set up to address the story, which originated from an Air Force press release, a weather balloon was displayed and the press was told that it was this that was recovered.  The press and public accepted the explanation until researcher, Stanton Friedman, investigated the case beginning in 1978 and found discrepancies and evidence of a cover up.  The case gained so much notoriety, that New Mexico Congressman, Steven Schiff was moved to pressure the General Accounting Office for Air Force records related to the event.  The Air Force took it upon themselves to investigate and, in 1995 released “Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert.”  The authors of this 1000 page report came to the conclusion that what was recovered was not a weather balloon but a string of balloons that were part of a developing top secret project.  The project was named, ”Project Mogul” and its purpose was to detect Soviet nuclear weapons tests.  The report failed to convince most of those who adhered to the extraterrestrial cash theory.

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The UFO mystery is not a 20th century phenomenon, but it did in many ways come into prominence in the 20th century. Serious study of UFOs began around World War II and thrived in the following decades. During this golden age of UFO study radio was the dominant form of electronic media. Although film and television existed, radio was a much more important source of timely news and information. Also during this time UFO investigators would find audio recording devices much more portable, reliable and affordable than film equipment. All of this led to an incredible amount of information from the golden age of UFO study being stored in audio formats.

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by Charles Lear

Was the death of Frank Edwards, famous newscaster and UFOlogist, predicted by the space people?  This story shows up in a lot of literature from the time and many people took it seriously.   An additional oddity offered up in the account is that the time of Edward’s death was a few hours before midnight, June 23^rd, 1967.  This was almost twenty years to the day after June 24, 1947, which was the date of the sighting by Kenneth Arnold that many consider the beginning of the modern UFO mystery.

The story begins in New York City during the 1967 Congress of Scientific UFOlogists.  It was billed as “New York’s first flying saucer convention” and took place over a weekend starting Friday, June 23^rd and ending Sunday, June 25^th.  The chairman of the event was Jim Moseley and speakers included: Ivan Sanderson, John Keel, Frank Stranges, James Randi, Howard Menger Long John Nebel and Gray Barker.  In the audience was Dr. Edward Condon, presumably researching for the Air Force funded University of Colorado UFO study.  The organizers had arranged to have a court reporter, Bessie J. Gibbs present and a transcription of the entire convention was published and available for the price of five dollars.

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By Charles Lear

For many people, the late night radio show, “Coast to Coast AM” hosted by Art Bell, was their source for a steady stream of discussion on the subject of UFOs.  It began in 1988 as a forum for political discussion with call-ins and interviews and, by 1995, it had evolved into a platform for the paranormal.  Bell broadcast from his home in Pahrump, Nevada and handled five phone lines by himself putting unscreened call-in guests on the air to discuss strange experiences, conspiracy theories, UFOs and aliens.  At its peak in the late 1990’s, the show was broadcast on over 500 stations and had an estimated 15 million listeners.  Bell had discovered, and proven to others, that UFOs and the paranormal could be big business in broadcasting but, as would be expected given the long history of radio, he wasn’t the first.

Near the end of the year 1949, Frank Edwards, newscaster for the American Federation of Labor sponsored Mutual Broadcasting System, received an advance copy of the January, 1950 edition of True Magazine.  Edward’s attention was captured by a, now historic, article by Donald E. Keyhoe, “The Flying Saucers Are Real.”  Edwards got permission from the editor to break the story on air and from that moment on, continued to include UFO reports and other stories of Forteana in his broadcasts.  Though not proven, it is quite likely that these new reports and stories were a great help in propelling Edward’s show to become one of the top three radio news shows in early ‘50s America.  He left MBS in 1954 and, shortly thereafter, created and hosted a syndicated radio show called, “Stranger Than Fiction” which was fully devoted to Forteana and UFOs.  Edwards is best known to UFOlogists as the author of the 1966 classic, “Flying Saucers – Serious Business.”  Edward’s new radio show was short-lived but another broadcaster came up with a show of his own that would go on for many years with great success.

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By Charles Lear

The decade of the 1970’s was a strange one in America.  The counter-culture of the late 50’s gained momentum through the 60’s and, by the 70’s, it had gone mainstream.  Experimentation was everywhere in the arts, culture and politics of the era and the minds of the general population were open to possibilities that were, perhaps, beyond the capabilities of the science of the day to explain.  It was a good time for UFOlogy and many documentaries on the subject started to appear in movie theaters that culminated in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 fictional treatment, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”  The title of the movie comes from J. Allen Hynek’s system of sightings classification and CE3 designated a UFO sighting that involved beings.  In 1973, CE3 sightings hit a peak and that year was designated, “The Year of the Humanoids” in a report published by the Center for UFO Studies, written by David Webb from files provided by Ted Bloecher.  Both men were co-chairman for the Mutual UFO Network associated, Humanoid Study Group.

Webb wrote that from August into December of 1973, there were 70 reports in files available to him of humanoids associated with UFOs, with 55 of them being within the continental United States.  These sorts of reports have always made up a small percentage of the overall reports and Webb acknowledged this.  He went on to consider that, if one was to assume that UFOs are piloted extraterrestrial crafts visiting Earth, more could be learned about the visitors by studying them than studying the crafts.  The first step, as he saw it, was to organize the sightings.  Humanoids seen in association with craft were of primary interest followed by those seen in the proximity of UFO activity.  Webb mentions contactee reports with caution, “monster” sightings and finally abduction reports.  He distinguished humanoids from “monsters” and ape-like creatures such as Bigfoot, which he termed, “anthropoids.”

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By Charles Lear

  In the early days of the modern UFO era, if you were an American and you saw something strange in the sky and wanted someone to investigate, you reported it to the Air Force.  If the Air Force dismissed your case as unworthy of study before 1952, there were no other organizations to turn to.  There were a few private individuals who might be willing to look into it, but they were usually under contract with publications such as True Magazine, Look Magazine, and Fate, which meant that there would be some publicity involved.  There was a need for a private organization of dedicated researchers and, by the end of 1952, three groups had formed to fill it.  The first two were the International Flying Saucer Bureau founded by Albert K. Bender, based in Connecticut and Civilian Saucer Investigation, a Los Angeles based group.  IFSB had Gray Barker, an imaginative writer, as its chief investigator while CSI was founded by North American Aviation engineer, Edward J. Sullivan and had, as one of its investigators, Walther Riedel, one of the V-2 creators who had come to America as part of operation paperclip.  The third group was The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization started in January, 1952 by Jim And Coral Lorenzen.  Both IFSB and CSI had ceased operations by 1954, while APRO continued until 1988.  In 1954, an organization was formed in New York City called, Civilian Saucer Intelligence New York by Alexander Mebane, Isabel Davis, and Ted Bloecher, who held CSI-LA in high regard.  CSI-NY is notable, not only for the caliber of their primary researchers but also, for their association with the biggest names in early saucer and paranormal research.  They would also have a huge impact on UFOlogy with their assistance to a young J. Allen Hynek.  Hynek, as a consultant for the Air Force’s Project Blue Book was, discretely, seeking outside help in the midst of what he felt was a less than earnest attempt by the Air Force to get to the root of the mystery.  The group lasted for five years and shortened the name to Civilian Saucer Research in July of 1957.  They did a lot of hard work researching and cataloguing sightings reports, held monthly meetings and published newsletters for their membership.  Many of the publications were archived by the Center for UFO Studies and are available today on the CUFOS website.  Reading through them, one is taken back to a time in UFOlogy when “flying saucer” was still the major term being used and some of its most colorful characters were just coming to public attention.

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