by Martin Willis

Thank you all for participating in the Thursday, UAP Crossfire Show!

by Author, Charles Lear 

UFOs were big news in 1973. Besides the Pascagoula and the Coyne incidents, there were flaps all over the United States. One in Piedmont, Missouri, got started that year in late February with UFO reports involving cars stalling and radio interference. These caught the attention of a physics professor, Harley D. Rutledge, who was chairman of that department at Southeast Missouri State University at Cape Girardeau. Rutledge became fascinated to the point that he put together an investigation team of scientists, arranged funding, and ended up spending more than seven years observing unexplained lights while collecting data and photographs. In late 1973, he gave a presentation of what he and the group had gathered up to that point at the fall meeting (attended by John Schuessler of the Mutual UFO Network) of the Missouri section of the American Association of Physics Teachers. Rutledge finally published a book describing the investigation titled Project Identification: The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena in 1981. Read more →

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by Author, Charles Lear 

On December 17, 1969, a news release from the Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) announced the termination of Project Blue Book. According to the document, Secretary of the Air Force Robert C. Seamans Jr. stated in a memo to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John D. Ryan that “the continuation of Project Blue Book cannot be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.” An early indication that this was coming was Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a scientific consultant for Project Blue Book for the entirety of its existence and Projects Sign and Grudge before it, finding out that there was nothing for him in the budget for the upcoming year. Of course, not everyone agreed with the Air Force’s decision and people continued seeing UFOs, but they no longer had an official organization prepared to take reports. Read more →

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by Author, Charles Lear 

In last week’s blog, we looked at UFO reports by Pennsylvania citizens that made their way from various agencies, including local police, to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, which recently released records of these. On February 2, 2024, an article by Millie Emmett headlined “UFOs reported to Essex Police highlighted in data” was posted on the Daily Gazette website that describes sightings found in a list of UFO reports released by the Essex Police. This week, we’ll look at some of the sightings described there as well as others in the Essex area. Read more →

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by Author, Charles Lear 

After Project Blue Book was deactivated in 1969, civilians were left with no official government body prepared to deal with UFO reports. This is still the case (the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office only takes reports from military personnel) and this has left local agencies, such as the police, as the organizations that people often turn to, and each one handles reports in its own way. It recently came as a surprise to Pennsylvania state representatives during a budget meeting when it was mentioned that UFO reports were received by the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. Records recently acquired from PEMA provide an inside look into how they were handled by organizations in that state. Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of the new book: Crashed Saucers

In our blog headlined “UFOs Over Scottsdale,” posted on April 15, 2024, we looked at a report of a blue, worm-like UFO captured on video over Scottsdale, Arizona. The main sources were two tabloid news agencies, Daily Mail and The US Sun, and their source was video footage posted on Instagram and Twitter/X. The reporters of both agencies failed to provide a date for the incident, properly represent witnesses, or make mention of the fact that Scottsdale is home to a UFO museum/attraction called “The UFO Experience.” We came across another intriguing case this week covered in the Mail and the Sun (U.K. edition), and this time, the reporting is much more thorough and reveals a long-standing belief by locals that there is an underwater alien base in the area. Read more →

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Crashed Saucers and Malevolent Aliens: The Emergence of the Popular Modern UFO Mythos in the Late 20th Century

by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.” & a new book to be released!

The February-March 1977 issue of the UFO Newsclipping Service, has four articles describing what would become “classic” UFO cases. One looks into the report (page 12 of the pdf) of nine-year-old Jose Cantu who said he saw “two greenish creatures about three feet tall, who rotated on a base instead of having feet, and two ‘steely’ crafts in which 2 other creatures were sitting.” His drawing showing one of the creatures with only one eye has caused them to be dubbed “The Cycloptic Aliens of Harrah.” The other three articles describe two abduction cases that have become well-known, one involving Judy Kendall covered in two papers from California, and one involving three women: Elaine Thomas, Louise Smith, and Mona Stafford covered in a paper from their home state, Kentucky. By this time, abduction claims and creature reports had come out from under the umbrella of contactee reports and the stigma that came with this association thanks to cases such as the 1973 Pascagoula Incident and the 1975 Travis Walton Incident, and news agencies were more open to reporting on them. That being said, there is an obscure case reported (page 3) in the February 2, 1977, Clarkesville, Tennessee, Leaf Chronicle, that has aspects of a contactee case, and the story told by the man who said he had an encounter with otherworldly beings is strange to the point of being ridiculous. Even so, the reporter who covered it wrote about it with a good deal of objectivity and restraint.

Read more →

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By Charles Lear (New book to be released!)

This week, we were intrigued by a recent video of a UFO over Scottsdale, Arizona, that received some news coverage. As we looked into it, we were struck by the contrast between the coverage of UFO reports in the days where print journalism was dominant and the present.

There is an article headlined “OUT OF THE BLUE Chilling moment pulsating blue cigar-shaped UFO is filmed hovering over ‘alien-hotspot’ US city leaving locals baffled” written by Dinniah Bartholomew that was posted on the website of the U.K. Sun on April 3, 2024. It includes video of a worm-like UFO glowing blue in the night sky. According to the article, the blue UFO “appeared to come out of nowhere” and hover over the city of Scottsdale, Arizona. Batholomew says photos were captured of the object, that it “appeared to make twists and turns,” that eyewitnesses gawked, and that “many people were concerned about exactly what it could be.” Quotes from witnesses are included such as a person commenting “Now it’s like separating. Dude that’s crazy.” Read more →

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

UFOs are often reported to have left behind evidence of their visits in the form of physical traces, but there are also reports of them taking something away and often it is water from tanks, pools, rivers, lakes, and oceans. There are enough of these sorts of reports that Linda Zimmermann and Michael Worden were able to devote an entire episode (“From the Vault: Everybody in the Pool”) of UFO Headquarters to the subject. Zimmermann began the episode with stories told to her by witnesses in the Hudson Valley of instances where water was missing from pools after UFO sightings in the area and estimated that there were at least five such occurrences in the region from 1975 into the early 1980s. Far from being isolated to the Hudson Valley, such reports come from all over the world and Zimmermann and Worden present several. In this week’s blog, we’ll look at some we’ve come across in our research. Read more →

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by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
There is an article headlined “The Taradale Car Crash” in the March-April 1969 Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 15, No. 7. It is described as an “adapted version” of an article written by Henk Hinfelaar and Claude Elmes of New Zealand Scientific Space Research that appeared in that organization’s newsletter Spaceview. It concerns a car accident in Taradale, New Zealand, a suburb of the Northeastern city of Napier, involving two young men who reported that a UFO was the cause. According to Hinfelaar and Elmes, not only did the young men report this to police, but the owner/driver of the car gave the same story to his insurance company, and it was used as a defense by him in a court of law. Read more →

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