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

While browsing through the archives of the UFO Newsclipping Service, we came across a headline that a co-worker commented would make a great T-shirt. We searched for other possible mentions of the story in periodicals of the time, and came across another headline that the reader might agree is also T-shirt worthy.

In the September 1988 UFO Newsclipping Service, there is an article on page 14 from the July 20, 1988 Eastbourne, England Gazette headlined, “UFO Kidnaps 26 Elephants.” According to the article, an African safari park in Lugo, Spain, lost 26 adult elephants. Read more →

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

This is the third part in a series looking at a case involving a woman who claimed she was with Einstein as his assistant in 1947 when he went to examine a crashed flying saucer and aliens at a military base in the American Southwest. The case was originally investigated in 1993 by Mutual UFO Network affiliated researchers Leonard Stringfield and Sheila Franklin. Franklin got the woman’s story on tape and Stringfield wrote about it in his 1994 Status Report titled UFO Crash/Retrievals: Search for Proof in a Hall of Mirrors. As Einstein supposedly made the trip in 1947, Stringfield speculated that it might have involved the saucer that allegedly crashed at Roswell, and the woman told him, “I did hear that name pop up during my trip.” The woman had agreed to provide photos of the saucer and the aliens as well as documentation to back up her story, but these never materialized. According to Franklin and Stringfield, the woman was either lying or the victim of a Men-in-Black type campaign of harassment, surveillance, search, and seizure. Read more →

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

In last week’s blog, we looked at the cottage industry that grew up around the Roswell incident. We noted that people continue to cash in on it by coming up with “new evidence” that is promised to be “the smoking gun” that ultimately fails to live up to that promise. In a pattern that has continued for decades, once one piece of “evidence” is knocked down, another one pops up in its place. This happened fairly recently in the case of the “Roswell Slides,” which were said to be pictures of an alien recovered from Roswell, but turned out to be pictures of a mummified two-year-old boy. One of the people involved, Anthony Bragalia, made his apologies and then got right back out there with more “new evidence.”

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

Rock musicians, like people from all walks of life, have reported encounters with UFOs. Famous examples include Jimi Hendrix, his former roadie and Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister, John Lennon, and Shaun Ryder of the Happy Mondays. However, unlike people with more average day jobs, rock musicians tend to be treated less seriously in the press, often due to their sometimes publicly acknowledged drug use. A good example is Dave Davies of The Kinks, who reported an experience stranger than most, but students of this subject should recognize that some of what he reported has been reported by others. Read more →

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

When it comes to helicopter UFO encounters, many people interested in this subject are familiar with what has become known as “The Coyne Incident,” named after the Army Reserve helicopter pilot, Captain Lawrence Coyne. There was another helicopter incident four years later that is lesser known, but investigators at the time were quite interested in it.

According to Coyne in the UPI story out of Cleveland, he and his crew were flying from Columbus to Cleveland, Ohio, at 11:00 p.m. on October 18, 1973, when the crew chief, Robert Yanacsek saw a red light approaching them. Coyne described it as, “shaped like an airfoil or a streamlined fat cigar.” He said it had a red light on the front, a dome in the center, and a green light on the rear. He said: “I’m a military commander. I don’t believe in UFOs, little green spacemen, and all that stuff. But I had to file an official report in detail to the Army on this thing.” Read more →

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

James W. Moseley was a part of the UFO scene from the days of the first private investigators in the early 1950s up until his death in 2012. He ran the longest running saucer group, the Saucer and Unexplained Celestial Events Research Society or S.A.U.C.E.R.S. (he and the group picked the acronym before they figured out what it could stand for) and steadily published a newsletter, known for most of its existence as Saucer Smear. Moseley has been called the Court Jester of UFOlogy due to his habit of poking fun at those who took themselves and the subject too seriously, and was involved in some hoaxes/pranks with his friend Gray Barker that became infamous. He wrote a book with Karl Pflock about his exploits in saucerdom that was published in 2002 titled Shockingly Close to the Truth: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing UFOlogist. In spite of his less-than-serious nature, he did do some serious investigation in his early days, and in one instance, looked into a saucer crash story and wrote an article about it that was published in the January 1955 issue of Gray Barker’s magazine, The Saucerian. Read more →

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

There are two cases out of France, around the time of the 1973 United States humanoid wave, that are remarkably similar in some aspects and occurred within a few months of each other. The first case, from 1973, shows up in the second edition of the Center for UFO Studies publication by David Webb, titled 1973—The Year of the Humanoids (page 16 of the pdf), and the second case, from 1974, shows up in the 1976 book by Jim and Coral Lorenzen, titled UFO Occupants (page 61 of the pdf.) Read more →

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

1984 was a serious year in UFOlogy. Researchers were taking advantage of a more efficient and accessible process for putting in FOIA requests and finding documents showing that agencies such as the FBI and CIA did have some involvement with UFOs despite statements to the contrary. The Hudson Valley wave was in full swing, and the British UFO Research Association got ahold of the tape recording made by Col. Charles Halt on one of the nights when UFOs were seen in Rendlesham Forest. With so much evidence that there was something to the mystery and official interest in it coming to light, the reporting on the UFO subject took a turn away from ridicule, and the press started being serious about UFOs as well. In the midst of this, there was a case that many researchers might find worthy of ridicule, and it’s probable that researchers of the day did as well because it came and went and remains obscure, but the reporting on it was straight forward and restrained. Read more →

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

Beginning on New Year’s Eve, 1982, there was a series of sightings throughout the Hudson River Valley north of New York City by hundreds of people willing to go on the record. They reported seeing boomerang-shaped craft the size of 1, 2, and 3 football fields, that moved slowly, hovered, and turned on an axis. This is according to the first comprehensive book on the sightings, Night Siege, which was co-authored by J. Allen Hynek, Philip J. Imbrogno, and Bob Pratt, and published in 1987. One of the standout incidents in the book, covered in Chapter Eleven titled, “Close Encounter at Indian Point,” is a sighting by what are said by the authors to be security guards (they are all un-named) over the nuclear power plant on Indian Point, on the shore of the Hudson River in Buchanan, NY, just south of Peekskill, NY. Read more →

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

In last week’s blog, we looked at some correspondence we came across in the January-February 1969 Merseyside UFO Bulletin between Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Research Association Director Gary Lesley and Maury Island principals, Fred Crisman and Harold Dahl. We started by looking at an exchange between Lesley and Dahl. In a letter dated July 23, 1967, Lesley asked Dahl for copies of photos that were allegedly taken of a flying saucer, a written statement from Dahl, and for Dahl to contact Crisman and get a written statement from him as well. Dahl replied in a letter dated August 22, 1967, that he would “allow” Lesley to have copies of the photos, would provide a statement that would have to be approved by Crisman, and would contact Crisman but added that it would be unlikely that Crisman would reply to Lesley. Dahl went on to paint a picture of Crisman that didn’t seem to fit the facts that researchers looking into Crisman’s life uncovered. In contrast to what Dahl told Lesley to expect, Lesley got a letter from Crisman, and this is what we’re looking at this week. Read more →