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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

John Keel, most well-known as the author of the 1975 book, The Mothman Prophecies, was a controversial figure in flying saucer/UFO world back in the late 1960s and throughout the 70s due to his unorthodox views. He was first and foremost a fortean (interested in all things strange) and it was his view that whatever was behind the flying saucer/UFO phenomenon was not extraterrestrial and might be behind other phenomena as well. From May 1969 to April 1974, Keel put out the “irregular newsletter,” Anomaly. He asked those wishing to receive a copy to send him a self-addressed, stamped manila envelope, and the number of copies he printed depended on the number of envelopes he received. For fans of Keel, issue No. 1 provides a detailed look at his views and investigative methods (in the form of “concrete suggestions for investigating the phenomena”) just after his adventures in West Virginia and New York that he chronicled in The Mothman Prophecies. Read more →

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.

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

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.

Metamaterial is a word that popped up in UFO world thanks to To The Stars Academy announcing in a July 25, 2019, press release that it had “acquired multiple pieces of metamaterials and an archive of initial analysis and research for their controversial ADAM Research Project.” It is explained that ADAM stands for “Acquisition and Data Analysis of Materials” which is an “academic research program” for the purpose of “exploiting of exotic materials for technological innovation.” Read more →

by Martin Willis

 

Here is a briefing below that I had generated.

Sources:

• Hearing Wrap Up: Transparency and Accountability Needed to Provide Accurate Information on UAPs to the American People – United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability
• UFOs and UAPs should be studied by the U.S., experts tell congressional hearing : NPR

Summary:

A joint hearing was held by the House Oversight Committee subcommittees on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation and National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs on November 13, 2024, focusing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs). The hearing featured testimonies from four experts: Retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, Author and Former DoD Official Luis Elizondo, Former NASA Associate Administrator Michael Gold, and Journalist Michael Shellenberger. Read more →

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In last week’s blog, we began looking at documents that provide a behind the scenes look at the rivalry between the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization and the Mutual UFO Network. APRO was founded in 1952 by Coral and Jim Lorenzen and MUFON was founded in 1969 by members who split off from APRO amidst bad feelings. Things came to a head during the investigation of the 1981 Cash-Landrum incident. As it was reported to have taken place in Huffman, Texas, APRO handed the case over to the director of the Houston-based Vehicle Internal Systems Investigative Team, John Schuessler, who was also the deputy director of MUFON. Coral wrote an article one and a half years after the reported incident that was published in the June 1982 Vol 30, No. 6 APRO Bulletin headlined “Rumors Permeate Cash-Landrum Case” wherein she claimed to know that what witnesses Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and Colby Landrum saw was a “U.S. experimental aircraft.” She also insinuated that Schuessler, MUFON director Walt Andrus, and former Project Blue Book consultant and founding director of the Center for UFO Studies J. Allen Hynek were part of a cover-up as they all had ties to various government organizations. Schuessler responded with a five-page letter to Jim Lorenzen defending himself and pleaded that if APRO had real knowledge of what it was the witnesses saw, he should share it as all three witnesses, particularly Betty Cash, seemed to have suffered the effects of radiation poisoning. This week, we’ll begin with Coral’s response. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

After Project Blue Book was shut down in 1969, private UFO groups were the only organizations left in the U.S. that would take UFO reports, and the two biggest were the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. Donald Keyhoe was ousted as NICAP’s director just three days before the December 17, 1969, press release announcing Blue Book’s termination, and NICAP quickly became a shadow of its former self while APRO, run by its founders Jim and Coral Lorenzen, remained a formidable and influential organization. That same year, a group of APRO investigators living in the Midwest organized by Walt Andrus as the Tri State Study Group, decided on May 31^st to branch off from APRO and operate as the Midwest UFO Network. This was in reaction to the Lorenzens’ move towards a more centralized management strategy seeking to direct all field investigations from their office in Tucson, Arizona. The Lorenzens, particularly Coral, who had a reputation for being contentious (she frequently took out her ire in the pages of the APRO Bulletin, and her earliest targets as far back as 1952 were Albert K. Bender and James W. Moseley) took the Midwestern group’s decision personally and held a grudge for years to come. The Midwest UFO Network soon outgrew its Midwestern boundaries and the name was changed to the Mutual UFO Network in 1973. A rivalry developed between the two, and this resulted in clashes when they happened to converge on a given case, and a prime example of this is the 1981 Cash-Landrum case. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the early 1970s, reports of people experiencing periods of missing time started turning up during investigations. A case (page 12 of the pdf) involving a young couple in England is “Presented by Norman Oliver” in the Vol. 6, No. 1, May/June 1977 BUFORA Journal. Derek Jones is credited as the investigator.

According to the article headlined “Time Lapse Extraordinary,” at 9:30 p.m. in mid-January 1974, while driving on the A 52 near Werrington, Stoke-on-Trent, a “student teacher and his fiancée” saw a faint, large green light pass over the road from right to left that they assumed was a helicopter due to its size. It turned and started following the road, staying ahead of the car as if it was “pacing” it. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

Rosedale Humanoids and Craft2In 1973, the U.S. experienced a wave of humanoid reports that are documented in the 1976 Center for UFO Studies publication by David Webb appropriately titled “1973 – Year of the Humanoids.” These sorts of reports weren’t unique to the States and just two years before, in 1971, a report came out of Canada that was looked into by William K. Allan, described as the “tireless UFO investigator of Calgary” in the June 1972 Flying Saucer Review Case Histories Supplement 10 where his report was published (page 6 of pdf). Read more →

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

1973 was a great year for fans of high-strangeness UFO reports. The most famous of these is the October 11^th case from Pascagoula, Mississippi, where Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker said they were taken aboard a craft by elephant-skinned humanoids with crab-claw like hands. After their story hit the papers, an article appeared in the October 18, 1973, edition of The Pensacola News ( part 1, part 2 ) headlined “Pickup by UFO Reported.” According to the article, a “Pensacola businessman” (later identified as an electrician) reported an encounter of his own, and his story was even more dramatic than Hickson and Parker’s. UFO investigators at the time seem to have mostly ignored it, as it doesn’t appear in periodicals of the day such as The APRO Bulletin or Flying Saucer Review. This might have been due to the continued focus on the Pascagoula case and the extreme nature of the claim by the man in Pensacola. Read more →

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

South Africa has had its share of UFO reports, and thanks to Zimbabwe-based researcher Cynthia Hind, who put out UFO Afrinews from July 1988 to July 2000, we have a record of many of them. In the 1970s, Charles Bowen, the editor of London-based Flying Saucer Review, also had his eye on South Africa, and in the January-February 1973 issue, he mentions a flap there that, according to him, began in July 1972. Along with other reports, he presents a newspaper account of a dramatic case involving a UFO that seemingly damaged a tennis court in the town of Rosmead in the Eastern Cape Province. Hind gives details of the case in the first issue of UFO Afrinews, calling it “perhaps my best case” when it comes to physical trace cases and references her book, UFOs: African Encounters, as the source. Read more →

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the annals of UFOlogy, there are many cases that, like zombies, refuse to stay buried even in the midst of convincing arguments and evidence debunking them. The case of the reported crash of an airship and recovery of its unearthly pilot in Aurora, Texas, in 1897 is a prime example of this. Read more →

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