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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

This past week, I found myself in the position of having two co-workers who are UFO witnesses and decided to take advantage of this and have them tell their stories for this blog.

The first story is that of Ilya Vett, 54, who has been with the organization for over three years, and he first told it to me not long after I met him. He grew up in the area of New Paltz, New York, which is near Pine Bush and the Hudson Valley. Both of those areas are notorious for UFO flaps in the 1980s (Ilya and I went to the 2022 Pine Bush UFO Fair where I met up with Martin), which is when Ilya said he had his sighting. Ilya also told me that his wife, prior to their marriage, had a sighting of a UFO with her family while they were driving. According to him, when they got home, it was over their house.

As for Ilya’s story, he recorded it for me on his own time not prompted by any questions from me. According to him, he and some friends were riding their bikes on Prospect Street in New Paltz sometime in the fall (school had started) “in the early 80s.” It was dark, and they were heading north towards Henry W. Dubois Drive. The area was undeveloped at the time, and there were “a lot of trees” on both sides of the road. They heard what Ilya indicated through vocalizations was a combination of a whoosh and a hum, though he settled on it not being “distinct.” Read more →

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

While June 24, 1947, marks the beginning of the modern-day UFO mystery, claims of earlier encounters and incidents, Maury Island for example, are found throughout the literature. One such case is that of Udo Wartena, a Dutch immigrant working as a miner for the Northwest Mining Syndicate in Broadwater County, Montana. Wartena claimed that in 1940, an alien invited him to go on board a huge flying saucer.

The case came to light in the 1990s, and is based on the testimony of Wartena just before he died in 1989. Prior to this, he reportedly kept the story to himself, not even telling his wife. It was included in the 1993 book, Aliens and UFOs by James L. Thompson. Australian researcher Warren P. Aston looked into it after reading the book and presented his findings at the July 1997 Mutual UFO Network International Symposium in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more →

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In last week’s blog, we looked at the beginning of the modern crop circle phenomenon that first got the attention of the media and UFO researchers in 198o. This was described in the 1986 report compiled by Paul Fuller and Jenny Randles (written by Randles) for the British UFO Research Association titled Mystery of the Circles. According to Randles, the idea that UFOs had something to do with the mystery came from the fact that the first circles appeared in the West Country in the area of Warminster, which had become famous in the 60’s as a UFO hotspot. When we left off, that idea was falling out of favor with researchers, particularly Ian Mrzyglod of the newly formed organization, PROBE, who is quoted from the March 1982, Vol. 2, No. 4, PROBE Report: “…even to suggest that the flattened circles were UFO landing nests is wildly speculative wishful thinking, without any foundation.” After a lull in attention in 1982, things picked up after eight sets of five circles appeared that were made up of one large circle surrounded by four smaller circles at equidistant locations. Prior to this, there had been only single circles or two or three in a row.

Playing a large part in the media attention was the fact that the circles appeared in the summer, often called the silly season due to the fact that stories of a less-than-serious nature are used as filler in the midst of what is traditionally a slow news period. And, it did get silly. One example presented by Randles is Daily Express columnist Jean Rook being sent to one of the sites “to come up with a lovely, poetic ode to ‘E.T.,’” the titular alien from the movie. According to Randles, Rook “found physical evidence of his presence in the midst of one of the rings – a poppy.”

Randles emphasizes that “serious UFO investigators refused to get involved” and notes that she, herself, refused to appear on BBC and ITV television, even though she had a new book to promote, The Pennine UFO Mystery. Read more →

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

Within UFOlogy, there are several areas of specialization, such as abductions, landing traces, humanoids, contactees, military encounters, etc. They often have their own specialized literature put out by individual researchers or organizations, and many have come and gone in terms of popular fascination and press coverage. One aspect that has fallen by the wayside is crop circle research, also known as “cereology.” Its early history, and the reasons for it falling out of favor with the press, and even among UFOlogists, is summed up neatly in the 1986 report, Mystery of the Circles, “compiled by” by Paul Fuller and Jenny Randles (Randles is the writer) for the British UFO Association. Of course, their report didn’t put an immediate end to the phenomenon or the activity of researcher/investigators who were focused on it, but it did presage the eventual waning of interest to where very few in the community continue to consider it seriously as having anything to do with UFOs.

According to Randles, mystery circles in the British West Country first started getting media attention in August of 1980, but “persistent local rumors” of them appearing in oat, barley, and wheat fields throughout Wiltshire and Hampshire goes back to at least 40 years before that. As of the release of the report, mysterious circles had shown up in fields between May and August for six successive years. Randles points out that the reason BUFORA became involved was because of the appearance of circles in the area of Warminster, which was notorious for a UFO flap in the 1960’s involving an object known as “The Warminster Thing.” She explains that this “created a definite hype which sees these marks regarded as ground traces left by a landing, or hovering, spacecraft.” Read more →

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the Volume 26, Number 6, March 1981 Flying Saucer Review, there is an article (page 7 of the pdf) by Russian UFO investigator Nikita A. Schnee headlined, “Contact Reported Near Pyrogovskoye Lake.” It tells the tale of an unnamed Red Army officer who said he was taken aboard a craft by “two men in dull-coloured cellophane like garments,” who told him they wanted to have a talk. In his introduction, Schnee explains that Soviet UFOlogists were of the belief that there were no Russian CE-3 cases. He cites Felix Y. Zigel, an assistant professor at the Moscow Institute of Aviation, who presented his opinion in the second issue of Observations of UFOs in the USSR that, in Schee’s words, “such reports are the fruits of sick minds, or obvious hoaxes with the aim of making money or obtaining publicity.” With that said, Schnee assures the reader that in his report, “all the events described actually (emphasis in the original) took place and are not products of the contactee’s imagination.” He says this “has been proved, quite convincingly” through examination of the witness and “the landing site of the UFO.” As the reader shall see, Russian UFOlogists had a unique style of landing site examination in those days. Read more →

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 
Brazil has a history of official UFO investigation almost as long as that of the United States. However, it has an official policy on disclosure that predates the U.S.’s by more than a decade. In 1954, the Brazilian Air Force started The First Confidential Inquiry into Unidentified Aerial Objects in response to the first major flap in that country. In 1969, the Sistema de Investigação de Objetos Aéreos Não Identificados (SIOANI) was established, and nearly 100 detailed case files were accumulated up until its termination in 1972. After this, in 1977, in response to reports of injuries and deaths as a result of UFO encounters in the area of Pará (mainly in Colores) Operação Prato was authorized by Colonel Protásio Lopes de Oliveira. This resulted in more than 2000 photos, 16 hours of film, and a 179-page report. The First Confidential Inquiry, SIOANI and Operação Prato files were classified for decades, but thanks to a freedom of information campaign begun in April of 2004 by the Brazilian UFOlogist and publisher of UFO Revista, Ademar José Gavaerd, many of the files were shown to him and other UFOlogists in 2005 as a prelude to releasing them to the general public. Then, in 2010, Brazil issued Ordinance 551/GC3, requiring every branch of the military and aviation sectors to collect and transfer all UFO reports to the Aerospace Defence Command in Brasilia along with any material proof by way of photos or video on a yearly basis. There, it is to be catalogued and made available to the public. Along with this, since 2012, the Air Force has periodically released declassified files through the Brazilian National Archives, and recently released 893 reports in May of this year. In this blog, we’ll look at the history of the Air Force investigation, the efforts of Gevaerd and other UFOlogists to gain access to the case files, and some of the most interesting (at least to us) cases (translated files can be found here) found within them. Read more →

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the course of researching UFO cases in Spanish speaking countries, one is bound to run into Scott Corrales and Inexplicata: The Journal of Hispanic UFOlogy. It exists today as a website, but in the fall of 1998, Corrales put out the first print version. In issue number 3, put out in the spring of 1999, Corrales celebrates the public reception of the first two issues and notes that there were 1800 visitors to the inexplicata.com website. In that issue is an article by Javier Garcia Blanco headlined “Roadside Encounters: UFOs, Aliens and Missing Time,” that Corrales promises, “does for driving what Spielberg’s Jaws did for swimming: you won’t want to get behind the wheel!” Blanco is credited with being the editor (along with Angel Briongos Martinez) of the Spain-based magazine Declasificado and the director of LACIP.

The first case Blanco goes into is that of “veteran radio personality” Pedro Mateo and his wife, Gloria Jiménez. According to him, Mateo described what he said happened to him and his wife on June 26, 1977, after explaining, “I have it etched upon my mind because we were flying to Dusseldorf that day, and most of what happens to me I write in a notebook.” He said that after leaving Zaragoza at around 5:00 a.m., they were just past the town of Los Garrigues after sunrise when they saw a disk-shaped object off in the distance. He wasn’t “overly concerned” at that point, but got scared when it proceeded to move quickly and silently towards them. Read more →

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the August 1975, APRO Bulletin, the front-page story, headlined “UFOs ‘Escort’ Mexican Aircraft” has details of a pilot’s reported UFO encounter. Backing him up is confirmation from the air traffic controller who was in contact at the time. What’s not included are details of the aftermath, which include reports by the witness of encounters with Men in Black. This part of the story can be found in the 1990 book, The UFO Silencers by Timothy Green Beckley, and in the 1997 British UFO Research publication (page 21 of the pdf) by Robert Bull, Men in Black: A Preliminary Report.

According to the Bulletin, at 10:30 a.m. on May 3, 1974, 23-year-old Carlos Antonio de los Santos Montiel, took off from Zihuatenajo, state of Guerrero, in his Piper Aztec 24 with the registration, XB-XAU. He was headed for Mexico City on a cloudy day with poor visibility and had to climb to 14,500 feet to get above it.

When he was over Tequesquitengo, he dropped down to try and get a look at Lake Tequesquitengo so he could verify his position. When he got below the clouds, fog and mist near the ground blocked his view of the lake, but his attention was quickly drawn to another matter altogether. To his right, he saw a 3-meter-diameter saucer with a cupula on top that had what looked like a small window and an antenna. He looked to his left and saw an identical object. Both were 20 centimeters above the wings and about 1 ^½ meters from the cabin. Read more →

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Let’s preserve this important UFO material for future generations!

 

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

On October 7, 1977, Prime Minister of Grenada Sir Eric Gairy gave a 90-minute speech during the 32^nd session of the General Assembly of the United Nations urging the organization to create an agency that would monitor UFOs. This led to a presentation and panel discussion over one year later, organized and produced by Lee Speigel, that included Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Dr. Jacques Vallée, and Col. Gordon Cooper. While this was considered a high point at the time in terms of gaining respectability for the UFO Waldheim Meeting. Credit: ICUFON Archives subject (Grenada issued a set of stamps in 1978 commemorating Gairy’s efforts) and still is today, not everyone was happy about it, particularly the directors of the Scientific Bureau of Investigation, formed in January of 1979. Read more →

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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the January 12, 1982, New South Wales, Australia Pix-People, there is an article (page 11 of the pdf) by “Australia’s leading authority on UFOs and psychic phenomena,” John Pinkney, headlined “UFO terror grips a NSW township.” Pinkney’s weekly column for the publication is “The Pinkney Report–Investigating the Incredible.” It seems there was a flap in the town of Nowra, and one case in particular is reported to have been investigated by the Scientific Bureau of Investigation. SBI had its own publication at the time, and a report on the case was published in the Vol. 3, No. 6 SBI Report. SBI was based in Staten Island, NY, and one member readers might recognize was Peter Robbins, who is listed as art director for the magazine.

According to Pinkney, “dozens of people” were “caught up in bizarre events” in Nowra, which is 150 km south of Sydney: railway men reported they saw lights hovering over abandoned mineshafts; a foal was found with its leg cut off “neatly from its shoulder; a “huge, brightly lit object” paced a bus with 40 passengers “for seven minutes, before vanishing up a shaft of light in the clouds;” a newspaper man saw a mass of what looked like meteorites fly up from the ground into the air in 1978; a 12-meter-diameter ring was found burned into a field after a farmer told police that “a weird thing had crashed on his property, starting a bushfire;” and two hunters shot at a two-meter-tall, human-like entity that vanished and left an overpowering odor that made one of the hunters sick for several hours.  Pinkney’s main focus, however, is on a case involving not only some unusual trace evidence, but physical effects on the witness as well.

According to Pinkney, Frank Burke, a pastrycook, was driving through the Kangaroo Valley heading home from work at around 10:30 p.m. when a “blazing light” engulfed the car. Burke said it lit up the area in a radius of around 25 feet and “was so intense I could have read the fine print of a newspaper or counted the ants at the roadside.” He was listening to music coming from a cassette player/recorder sitting on the seat next to him, and it stopped playing as soon as the light came down. Read more →

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Near the end of the 20^th century, human abducting, cattle mutilating, Grey aliens flying sport-model saucers dominated the popular UFO narrative. However, there are reports that differ greatly from such accounts that offer insight into what might be an even stranger phenomenon. In the September 12, 1999, edition of the Trenque Lauquen paper, La Opinión, there is an article (page 16 of the pdf) headlined “Extraterrestrial Encounter?” It tells the tale, mostly in the words of the witness, Carlos Colón, a resident of Trenque Lauquen, who said he had a strange encounter on August 25^th. During a follow-up investigation by a Spanish UFOlogist almost 20 years later, Colón shared details of the aftereffects of his encounter which he had formerly chosen not to share with the press and other investigators.

According to the article, Colón was “a well-known mechanic of agricultural machinery” and often travelled on the roads around Trenque Lauquen in his pickup truck. He had originally wanted to keep his story to himself and was still concerned that he wouldn’t be taken seriously. Read more →

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