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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

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 article on the New England Historical Society website, it happened because maintenance workers “set a protective relay too low on a power line to Ontario, which then tripped the relay. It then sent power to other lines, overloading them.”  At the time, the entire U.S. was in the midst of a UFO flap, and there was speculation that UFOs had something to do with the outage. As far-fetched as that might seem, this was considered seriously by Saturday Review columnist John Fuller in his 1966 book, Incident at Exeter and was discussed in Congress in 1968 during a UFO symposium. A high-strangeness aspect to all this is that Oscar-nominated actor Stuart Whitman, claimed he was given an explanation by the occupants of two UFOs he saw in New York City the night of the blackout. Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

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 television special made by the Walt Disney Company titled Alien Encounters from New Tomorrowland that was aired in 5 U.S. cities in February and March of 1995, it was created as a means to promote a new ride at Walt Disney World Resort. While fairly typical of the UFO-related television presentations of its day, the matter-of-fact statements by narrator Robert Urich to the effect that aliens are visiting Earth in spaceships and abducting its human inhabitants, and that there are government documents that prove this, caused some to speculate that the documentary was made in partnership with U.S. government officials as part of a disclosure process. Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

For some UFOlogists, as they go through many years of research and investigation, their opinions and beliefs shift and change. Such was the case for Ted Phillips, whose involvement spanned over five decades from 1964 until his death on March 10, 2020. For much of that time, he specialized in physical trace cases and considered UFOs to be nuts and bolts craft piloted by flesh and blood extraterrestrial creatures. His views changed, particularly due to his investigation of a paranormal hotspot in Missouri that he and fellow researchers called “The Marley Woods” in an effort to conceal its location. Towards the end of his life, he saw the UFO phenomenon as being more complex than he’d previously considered it to be. Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

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 Magonia Exchange, which is a group dedicated to the collection and archiving of fortean reports. In the June 2015 issue (page 11 of pdf) of Edge Science magazine, he and National Aviation Reporting Center On Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP) associate Martin Shough detailed their investigation of a 1665 report from Barhöfft, Sweden (now part of Germany), near Stralsund, that received a lot of attention at the time. The article is an excerpt from their 2015 book, Return to Magonia. Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

According to the sighting report forms (pages 2 and 4 of pdf) filled out by Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena and the International UFO Bureau on September 18, 1973, he and 10-12 other men observed a UFO he described as a light that was “at one time, as bright as the moon” for 10-12 minutes in Leary, Georgia. According to the form, they were outside waiting for a 7:30 p.m. Lions Club meeting to start. During Carter’s presidential campaign in 1976, a reporter from the National Enquirer asked him if he would release all the information the government had on UFOs if he was elected. He is quoted in the June 8, 1976 edition of the Enquirer as saying “If I become President, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists. I’m convinced that UFOs exist because I have seen one.” When he was elected, the White House began receiving letters from UFO enthusiasts who wanted to know when he was going to make good on his promise. One of these is included in the article by Philip J. Klass, headlined “NASA, the White House, and UFOs” published in the Spring/Summer 1978 Skeptical Inquirer: Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

Argentina, especially in the area of Bahía Blanca, has had its share of high-strangeness UFO reports ranging from cars being lifted up in the air to abductions. This week, we’re looking the 1973 case involving Dionisio Llanca, a truck driver who reported he’d had an encounter with a UFO and three creatures. When questioned under the influence of hypnosis and Pentothal, he recounted being taken aboard a spacecraft, but could not recall the details when in his regular, conscious state. Whatever criticisms one might have of abduction tales told by people under hypnosis, the circumstances around the case, as reported in newspapers in the region, were unusual and mysterious. Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

In October of this year, the Royal Canadian Mint announced that it was putting out a coin celebrating a 1970 UFO case from the city of Duncan on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. This is the sixth in a series of the Mint’s Unexplained Phenomena series of 1 oz. $20 face value silver coins depicting famous Canadian UFO cases. The

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 edition (page 10 of the pdf), and Magor published his version in the Volume 1, Number 7, summer issue of the Canadian UFO Report. News of the coin celebrating the incident prompted two men, who were both attending a party in the area at the time, to separately come forward, each with his own individual explanation of what was actually seen. We wrote about this incident in a blog headlined “A UFO and Occupants in British Columbia, Canada,” posted on the Podcast UFO website on July 16, 2022, which is where the description of the incident comes from. Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

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 website devoted to the case. In Part III, we’ll look at the reports by the ground observers. Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

In Part I of this blog, we looked at a case from 1968 that involved sightings of a UFO 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 padlock removed from it. The case was officially examined by the officer in charge of UFO investigations at the base, Lt. Col. Arthur Werlich. He provided details and evidence to Project Blue Book, and they concluded that what was seen was possibly a combination of “anomalous propagation” of radar returns, a plasma ball, and celestial bodies. They 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 website devoted to the case. In Part II, we’ll look at the key elements of the case that they uncovered. Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

At the suggestion of Mr. Martin Willis, this week we are looking at a report involving a UFO incident on October 24, 1968, at Minot AFB in North Dakota. It involved sightings reported by ground observers stationed at the surrounding Minuteman ICBM complex as well as the crew of a B-52. What gives this case extra significance is that there are available photos of the B-52 radarscope to back up the crew’s account. There is a Project Blue Book file on the case that contains the conclusion that what was seen was possibly a combination of “anomalous propagation” of radar returns, a plasma ball, and celestial bodies, but an exceptional investigation begun in 2000 by members of the recently formed Sign Historical Group indicates that the incident involved something genuinely mysterious.

Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

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 issue involves an investigation by James Black (who wrote the report) and Robert Atwood of a simple crop circle that formed overnight starting on August 21, 1991, in a cornfield in Iowa that led them to other reports of strange activity in the area. The case became far more complex than a simple crop circle report, and this has ended up becoming a two-part blog. In the first part, we looked at the investigation and three witness accounts, and in the second part, we’ll look at one more account, the conclusions, and the aftermath, which included poltergeist activity reported to have been experienced by a fellow investigator at his home. Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

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. People would dial a number that would access a computer through a modem, and they could read and post messages and access files. 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 issue involves an investigation of a simple crop circle in a cornfield in Iowa that led researchers to other reports of strange activity in the area. The case became far more complex than a simple crop circle report, and this has ended up becoming a two-part blog. In the first part, we’ll look at the investigation and three witness accounts, and in the second part we’ll look at one more account, the conclusions, and the aftermath, which included poltergeist activity reported to have been experienced by one investigator at his home. Read more →

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