by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
In last week’s blog, we profiled General Alfredo Moacyr Uchoa, who became a UFO investigator after retiring from his over 30-year career in the Brazilian Army. While he spent most of his career at the Military Academy of Brazil where he was a professor of engineering mechanics, head of the math department, and deputy director, he’d had an interest in the paranormal and the esoteric since the age of 18. After his retirement in 1963, he moved to Brasilia in 1968, and his son, Paulo, told him about a plantation owned by Wilson da Silva 120 km to the southwest where regular UFO activity was reported. Uchoa put together a group of 7 people, including his son, and they began visiting the plantation repeatedly starting in March. Bob Pratt was able to interview Uchoa and wrote an article headlined “The UFO reports of Brazilian General Alfredo Moacyr Uchoa” which can be found in the online magazine Alternate Perceptions. Gordon Creighton wrote a 3-part series of articles based on information he got from a 9-part series of articles by Eduardo Santa Maria that appeared in the Rio de Janeiro paper O Dia from October 26, to November 4, 1972. Creighton’s articles were published in the Flying Saucer Review Case Histories Supplements 12, 15, and 16, December 1972, June and August 1973 respectively. When we left off, we were telling the story of the investigation as told by Creighton. Read more
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Brazilian UFOlogy goes back a long time. One of the first UFOlogists there to come to international attention was Dr. Olavo Fontes, who wrote regular reports in the late 1950s and into the 60s for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization that were published in the APRO Bulletin. Fontes wrote the first report on the 1957 Antonio Villas Boas abduction 
On November 9, 1965, a huge portion of the Eastern United States experienced a power outage that began at 5:17 p.m. and lasted until 7:00 a.m. the next day in most areas. According to an 
UFO documentaries and television specials play a big part in introducing people to the subject. Sometimes they’re well researched and made with care by creators with a passionate interest in the subject, and sometimes they’re made mostly for the sake of making money. In the case of a 
Astronauts have reported UFOs since the beginning of human space exploration. Some sightings can be explained as ice particles, satellites or debris, but others remain a mystery. In 1965, a report involving not only a UFO, but an occupant as well, was received by mission control and was recorded in official records. This was on top of another earlier report just a few days earlier.
People have probably been reporting strange things in the sky for as long as they’ve been able to communicate. Chris Aubeck is a researcher who reaches far back in the historical record searching for UFO cases and is a founder of the 
According to the sighting report 
Argentina, especially in the area of Bahía Blanca, has had its share of high-strangeness UFO reports ranging from 
In October of this year, the Royal Canadian Mint 
Duncan incident, involving a sighting by a nurse working in the Cowichan District Hospital, occurred in the midst of a flap in the area. It was investigated by John Magor, editor and publisher of the Canadian UFO Report, and he provided a report to the Victoria Times. The Victoria Times published an article on the case on page 1 of the January 5, 1970 
This is the third part of a series looking at a case from 1968 that involved sightings of UFOs on October 24, 1968, by ground observers stationed at the ICBM missile complex surrounding Minot AFB in North Dakota. A B-52 was flying in the area, and the pilot was requested to change course and investigate. The result was a UFO encounter that was caught on photographs of the B-52 radarscope, and the pilot, Maj. James A. Partin, and co-pilot, Captain Bradford Runyon, reported that they’d had a visual sighting of the object when it was on the ground. In addition to the sightings, it was reported that the outer and inner perimeter alarms of the missile site designated Oscar-7 went off and that a padlocked entry hatch there was found open with a plug-style gate secured by a combination lock removed from it. The case was officially examined by the officer in charge of UFO investigations at the base who provided details and evidence to Project Blue Book. The Blue Book conclusion was that what was seen was possibly a combination of “anomalous propagation” of radar returns, a plasma ball, and celestial bodies. It was also concluded that the break-in was unrelated. The case lay dormant for 30 years until Runyon contacted the Center for UFO Studies and filled out a sighting report form. The case caught the interest of members of the newly formed Sign Historical Group and they did a thorough investigation that included many interviews with witnesses. They’ve made material they gathered available as part of the Sign Oral History Project on a 
by Charles Lear, author of 
In 1986, Jim Speiser of Fountain Hills, Arizona, got the urge to create an electronic forum dedicated to a discussion of paranormal topics. He started a BBS (bulletin board system) using six personal computers located at various locations in the U.S. and Canada linked together with a Fidonet system. Speiser called his new BBS “The ParaNet.” In the summer of 1991, there was a “spin-off” of ParaNet named the Multi-national Investigations Cooperative on Aerial Phenomena, and ParaNet published a magazine called Continuum to get their investigations reports out to the public. The first case in the Volume 1, Number 1, September 1991 