Blog

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the early years of the flying saucer/UFO mystery, magazines played a significant part in the public perception of the phenomenon. One of the most popular magazines in that era was LIFE, which started covering saucer/UFO news at the very beginning during the 1947 summer of the saucers. For anyone interested in the early history of the phenomenon, Archives for the Unexplained has a collection of related magazine articles which includes LIFE articles from 1947 t0 1966.

In the article published in the July 1947 issue headlined “Speaking of Pictures… a Rash of Flying Disks Breaks Out Over the U.S.,” it is lamented that none of the many saucers seen that summer paused long enough to get its picture taken. There are pictures, however, of two fake saucers: one an obvious saw blade with what looks to be a capacitor attached to it held up by Reverend Joseph Brasky who claimed it hit the lightning rod of his church with an explosion, and the other an aluminum disk with what looks to be spent fireworks attached held up by a man from Shreveport, Louisiana, who said it flew out from behind a signboard. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

Ted Bloecher, who passed away not too long ago at the age of 94, was a researcher/investigator who started out in the days of flying saucers as a founding member of Civilian Saucer Intelligence of New York and was active until the mid-1980s. He was an early researcher of humanoid reports starting in 1955, just after the 1954 French humanoid wave and the 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville incident, and was the author of numerous publications on the subject. Tucked away in the United Kingdom file of the downloads section of the Archives for the Unexplained website is a report he wrote titled Close Encounters of the Third Kind that was published in 1977 by the British UFO Research Association. According to the introduction, the paper was prepared for a talk he gave at the BUFORA National UFO Conference at the Centre Hotel in Birmingham, England, in November 1976. The subtitle describes the paper as “The preliminary presentation of extensive study into UFO cases involving the reported sightings of humanoids and other alien beings.” In this blog, we’ll look at some of the highlights. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

It’s always a plus when UFO cases come along with physical evidence to back them up. Sometimes this evidence is in the form of physiological effects on the witnesses, and cases involving these are numerous enough that investigators have been able to focus on them as a specific area of study. Conjunctivitis (burning red eyes), nausea, hair loss, numbness, paralysis, and burns are some of the symptoms commonly described, but a very unusual effect was reported in the following 1976 case from Bolton, England.

While the incident was said to have occurred in 1976, it didn’t show up in major media until 1987. In the March 1987 issue (page 19 of the pdf) of She magazine, there is an article by Peter Hough headlined “The UFO in Armadale Road.” According to Hough, at 5:15 p.m. on January 23, 1976, 17-year-old Shelley McLenaghan had just gotten off a bus and was 100 yards from home when she saw a UFO. She is quoted as saying, “Before that, I would have thought anybody who said they’d seen a UFO was crazy.” She added, “I think the government know far more than they let on.”

McLenaghan is then quoted describing her encounter: Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

Recently, footage taken of a video that has been described by documentarian James Fox as the holy grail of UFO videos has been shown online. The original video on VHS had been in the possession of one of the early Area 51 researchers, Chuck Clark, since 1995. Clark was reportedly offered a large sum of money to turn over the video, and he refused, whereupon underhanded means were employed to get what was on it out to the public.

This story goes all the way back to the 1990s when the United States was in the midst of its own special brand of paranoid UFOlogy, which emphasized government cover-ups and conspiracy theories fueled by the popularity of The X-Files. Area 51 had become the most famous secret base in the world after Bob Lazar, in silhouette using the name “Dennis,” was interviewed by George Knapp on KLAS in Las Vegas in May 1989. He claimed to have worked on reverse-engineering nine recovered alien space craft at a site he said was called “S-4” located in the southern section of Area 51.

The excitement stirred up by Lazar’s claim resulted in a flood of UFO tourists descending on the area. Many would stop at the only bar in the nearby small town of Rachel, Nevada, a population that usually numbers around 50 people. According to the “Rachel Timeline” section of A Short History of Rachel, Nevada by Glenn Campbell and Edith Grover, Pat and Joe Travis bought the Rachel Bar and Grill in 1988. They renamed it “The Little A’Le’Inn” and held the first annual UFO conference there in July of 1990. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

Last week, Nick Pope, full name Nicholas George Pope, passed away on April 6^th at the age of 60. A fixture in the UFO scene, Pope first gained notoriety with his 1996 book, Open Skies, Closed Minds. Besides providing an overview of UFO history up to that point, the book has an autobiographical account of his time as the head of the “UFO desk” at the Ministry of Defense from 1991 t0 1994. After the book came out, he became a go-to “UFO expert” whenever an authoritative comment was needed to punch up a news story. He maintained his interest and a media presence and was sought after as a speaker at conventions and a commentator in various documentaries. By the time of his passing, he was a well-known personality in the UFOtainment industry, having appeared regularly on Ancient Aliens and at Contact in the Desert. In the midst of his notoriety and association with the more sensationalistic aspects of UFOlogy, his commentary seemed to be heartfelt and true to his actual beliefs.

According to Pope in his book, he was a skeptic before he was assigned to the “UFO desk” in Secretariat (Air Staff) Department 2A at the Ministry of Defense. He had been with the MoD since 1985, and personnel were shifted to different sections every three to four years as a matter of policy to give them “a breadth of knowledge and experience.” When he was assigned to deal with UFO reports, he took it upon himself to learn as much as he could about the subject, and the comprehensive historical overview in the book shows the depth of his research.

Besides studying UFO history, Pope reached out to British UFO researchers, such as Timothy Good who wrote the Foreword of the book, and established relationships with organizations such as the British UFO Research Organization. This set him apart from his predecessors and helped diminish the us-and-them perception between the MoD and the British UFO community. Read more →

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

For many years, stories of recovered crashed saucers and alien bodies were usually dismissed by investigators due to the stigma created by the effective debunking of the Aztec incident by J. P. Cahn in two articles he wrote for True magazine, the first in 1952 and the second in 1956. The stigma remained until the 1970s when influential researchers started becoming open to such cases, and an early story to come out during this period was that of a 1953 crash in Kingman, Arizona, that made the news in 1973. It was looked into by National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena investigator Raymond E. Fowler, who published an article covering it titled “What About Crashed UFOs?” in the April 1976 issue of Official UFO. Leonard Stringfield included the Kingman portion of it in his 1977 book, Situation Red! Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, major science-based UFO organizations in the United States, and especially the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, looked down on contactee claims as ridiculous and unworthy of their time. This started to change as the 1970s got underway, due in part to the ideas put forward by Jacques Vallée and John Keel, but by the 1980s, things started going back to the way they were, at least in the United States. Investigators in other countries, however, stayed open to such reports, and in this week’s blog, we’ll look at a 1983 case from Brazil as it was presented in the British publication, Flying Saucer Review. Read more →

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

As fond as we are of historical UFO reports, it’s always a pleasure to write about a recent report and especially when it’s one from our own backyard. In April 2024, we wrote about a sighting from a plane landing at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, and we more recently wrote about a sighting a co-worker had from a rooftop bar in Manhattan, which we felt warranted an onsite interview and investigation. These both had intriguing videos to back them up, and the witnesses were able to be named in both instances. Happily, we just came across a sighting in Corona, Queens, with the same attributes. Read more →

Blog by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

Amidst the many assorted descriptions of UFO-related entities, silver-suited humanoids, sometimes with antennas, show up in many reports. They are described repeatedly in the 1976 Center for UFO Studies publication by David Webb, 1973 – Year of the Humanoids, and there were several reports during the 1977 flap in what has been called “The Welsh Triangle” that we wrote about recently. In this week’s blog, we’ll look at a couple of cases from the Southern United States, the second of which became quite well-known.

In the January 4, 1981, issue of The Robesonian out of Lumberton, North Carolina, there is an article (page 7 of the pdf) by Tim Lewis headlined “Shining Silver Man Stalks Forest Acres Area.”  According to Lewis, the previous Tuesday at around 10 p.m., a couple had just exited Barker Ten Mile Road when they saw a round flashing light near the turnoff at Bee Gee and McLeod. As they got closer, they were able to determine that the light was located in a vacant wooded lot. Read more →

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

Among UFO enthusiasts, in between the serious, science-based researchers and the crackpots, there are people who enjoy the mystery for the fantastic tales and the colorful people it spawns, as well as the social interaction with the like-minded. One of the first examples of this sort of person was Gray Barker, who became known for his 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. He became good friends with James W. Moseley, who would become well-known as the publisher of Saucer Smear magazine, and the two of them became notorious for pranking and poking fun at what they considered their over-serious peers. As the 1960s got under way, a group formed around Moseley, who was based in Fort Lee, New Jersey. This included Allan Greenfield, Eugene Steinberg, and Timothy Green Beckley. Of these, Beckley, Like Barker, would become a prolific publisher of UFO-related material, and in 1978, he started putting out UFO Review, which was a tabloid-style newspaper chock full of UFO news, reports, interviews, and lurid ads for UFO books, UFO merchandise, new age self-help guides and related paraphernalia. Read more →

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In 1977, there was a flap in the area of St. Brides Bay in Pembrokeshire, Wales, that involved reported sightings of craft and humanoids. The most well-known incident involved 14 Broad Haven Primary School students running inside to tell their headmaster that they had seen a yellow cigar-shaped craft land in a field. On February 17, three staff members reported they saw the same craft. The story made national news thanks to British UFO Research Association investigator and UFO Investigators Network correspondent Randall Jones Pugh, and a flap began that would result in the area being referred to as “The Welsh Triangle.” A lesser-known case involved an entire family that reported a series of strange events which Pugh covered in articles published in issues of Flying Saucer Review and the BUFORA Journal.

In April, while driving, Pauline Coombes and three (out of four) of her children were reportedly chased by a football shaped UFO. Later that year, in October, Coombes, her four children, and her mother reportedly witnessed a craft and humanoids that behaved in an especially bizarre manner. It came out that all sorts of strange happenings were said to have been occurring on the family homestead called Ripperston Farm. Journalist Clive Harold got close to the family and wrote a book about their experiences titled, “The Uninvited.” Read more →

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In 1980, The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore was published. In the book, on page 103 of the first printing, there is a bad photocopy of a photo showing two soldiers escorting a small creature. One of the soldiers is carrying a suitcase-shaped object that seems to be a respiration device, as there is a hose going from it to the creature’s mouth. The photo is said to have “reportedly first surfaced in Wiesbaden, Germany.” In 1981, Wiesbaden resident Klaus Webner took it upon himself to investigate. He wrote an article presenting his findings that was published in the September 1981 issue of The Probe Report, put out by the Britain-based Probe UFO Research Organization.

In the book, the photocopy is presented with the caption “Alien from Another World or Elaborate Hoax?” The reader is told that it, along with the “artist’s interpretation” on the preceding page, is being published “without comment about whether it may or may not pertain to certain significant aspects of the Roswell Incident.” According to the authors, “an unnamed informant” gave the original photo, which he said he bought for a dollar, to FBI agent John Quinn at the New Orleans field office. They say the photo “purports to show an alien survivor of a UFO crash in the custody of two U.S. military policeman.” Lastly, they say that it got “limited publicity in West Germany in the 1940s” and was met “with skepticism by U.S. officials of the then-existent Allied Military Government.” Read more →

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

As anyone who has looked into the subject of UFO-related humanoids knows, reported creatures come in all shapes and sizes. Some are more unusual than others, and a pair of creatures said to be seen in Italy in 1978 definitely stand out.

In the Vol. 28, No. 6, issue (page 15 of the pdf) of Flying Saucer Review, there is an article by Antonio Chiumiento headlined “An Encounter with ‘Rat-Faces’ in Italy.” The article was translated from Italian and Chiumiento is described as an “Investigator and member of the board of directors of C.U.N. (Italian National UFO Research Centre, Turin.)”

According to Chiumiento, on the morning of November 24, 1978, 61-year-old Gallio resident, Angelo D’Ambros, went to get some firewood in nearby Gastagh. At about a quarter before noon, he turned to put down a branch he had been chopping up when he “was gripped with horror” upon seeing two creatures looking at him that were “extremely close.” Read more →

Podcast: Play in new window | Download