A Weekly Live Recorded Podcast and Blog on UFOs/UAP
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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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
The reported sighting on February 4, 1977, of a UFO and creature by students at the Broad Haven Primary School in Pembrokeshire, Wales, was the beginning of a flap throughout the county. The area where reports were most concentrated has been dubbed “The Broad Haven Tringle.” Multiple witnesses were willing to go on record, including with the Ministry of Defense, saying they had seen not only strange craft, but silver-suited creatures as well. One dramatic encounter was recalled by a witness for Episode 3 of the 2023 series, Encounters, produced for Netflix by Steven Spielberg’s company. While this is many years later, the story told by the witness is the same as that told by the witness to an investigator who spoke to her and her mother closer to the event just months later. Read more
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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
In last week’s blog, we looked at a case from Maine (we failed to identify the location) involving two young men, David Stephens and Glen Gray, who reported encounters with multiple UFOs, a period of missing time, physical symptoms, possible poltergeist activity, and a visit by a man wearing a dark blue suit (not quite an MiB) who told Stephens, “Better keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you.” The account up to this point, as reported by Brent Raynes in the article (page 12 of the pdf) headlined “The Twilight Side of a UFO Encounter” published in the July 1976 Vol. 22, No. 2 Flying Saucer Investigator, all came from conscious recall by Stephens and Gray. Stephens later underwent regressive hypnosis to try to fill in the missing time and details came out that involved possibly being aboard a craft and examined by strange, non-human creatures. Read more
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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Last Week, we wrote about a case that Betty Hill looked into and came upon another case she was involved with that intrigued us to the point that we were moved to explore it in detail. Most significantly, it involves reported encounters with Men in Black, one from a witness/experiencer (actually a Man in Dark Blue), and the other from the doctor who worked with him to recover memories using regressive hypnosis. Read more
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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Betty and Barney Hill came to the world’s attention when the report that they were abducted in 1961 by occupants of a UFO was taken seriously in the mainstream press. What is not widely known is that Betty turned to UFO investigation after this, and when Barney died in 1969, she became more deeply involved and travelled from conference to conference giving lectures on the subject. Betty’s niece, Kathleen Marden, co-authored the 2007 book with Stanton T. Friedman, Captured!, about her aunt’s and uncle’s experience. In Chapter 25 titled, “Fall From Grace,” Betty’s “commitment to solve the UFO mystery” is described. According to the authors, Betty received cautions and criticisms from members of the UFO community who were concerned that her subjective approach and intense belief were causing her to become the subject of media attention for all the wrong reasons and putting her credibility at risk. Even so, she is credited with participation in cases that have become part of the literature, and this week, we’ll look at one of those. Read more
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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
As most people who have an interest in the subject of flying saucers/UFOs are aware, the United States Air Force had an official investigation program looking into the phenomenon for over 20 years, starting in 1948, that continued until its termination in 1969. What many might not be aware of is that England also had an early official interest in the subject, and the Ministry of Defense put together an investigation team in 1950 called “The Flying Saucer Working Party.” It lasted less than a year and was disbanded after the group issued a report recommending against further investigation. Continued sighting reports and interest among influential people caused the MoD to reconsider, and in 1952, two divisions of the Air Ministry were tasked with investigating. Read more
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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Reports of UFOs by truckers are common enough that an entire book could be devoted to this subject alone. Reports range from two drivers (a married couple) being chased by a bubble-shaped craft full of bird-like creatures, to an entire tractor-trailer being sucked up into a UFO, along with the trucker who was driving it. In 1972, a trucker in South Carolina claimed not only to have seen a UFO, but that it was following him on a nightly basis.
According to the article (page 4 of the pdf) headlined “Truck Driver Believes ‘Saucer’ follows Him,” in the January 26, 1973, Gaffney, South Carolina, Ledger, a driver for Charlotte-based Akers Motor Lines, Gerald Summey, reported that he had been followed for three months by “an oval-shaped object, which glows like a fluorescent light.” “At least a dozen of Summey’s trucker friends” are reported to have seen it as well. One sighting is described where Summey, along with another Charlotte-based truck driver, watched the object through binoculars as it landed in a field. It’s described as “oval, with a black base and holes all around the base area.” The personnel manager at Akers is reported to have had “no qualms” regarding Summey’s character and it is said that Summey “reportedly neither drinks, smokes, nor ‘pops pills’ to stay awake.”
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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Last week, we were looking into a case from Lewis County, Washington, involving Bigfoot and a UFO, and we came upon Flying Saucer News, published by James S. Rigberg, who ran the Flying Saucer News Bookstore (and Prosperity Clinic) at 359 West 45th Street in Manhattan. The story we were looking at was covered in the May 1972 issue (page 5 of the pdf) of the magazine. Also in that issue was an editorial by Rigberg suggesting that a solution to the crime wave affecting New York City at the time would be to put habitual criminals in suspended animation using cryonics until effective methods of rehabilitation were available. The back of the cover is devoted to a plea for funds to help promote this idea. This week, we’ll look into the history (how could we not) of Rigberg, his store, and Flying Saucer News. Read more
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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Chehalis, the county seat of Lewis County in Washington State, is a city that celebrates both UFOs and Bigfoot. For the 75th anniversary of Kenneth Arnold’s sighting over Mt. Rainier (120 miles east) on June 24, 1947, Arnold’s granddaughter, Shanelle Shanz, was among a group of speakers at the Chehalis City Farm during the annual “Flying Saucer Party,” which includes exhibits at and benefits the Lewis County Historical Museum. An event centered around Bigfoot, “Bigfoot: Real or Hoax?” was held on April 15, 2023, at Mcfiler’s Chehalis Theatre with presentations sponsored by the Historical Museum. Even before people started calling large, cryptic, woods-dwelling, hairy humanoids “Bigfoot,” there was an early report of “Sasquatch” terrorizing residents of the Chehalis Reservation (22 miles northwest of the city) in the March 2, 1934, edition of The Province from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. With such deep roots in UFOs and Bigfoot, it’s fitting that there should be a case in the area involving both. Read more
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Bennewitz picIn December of 1979, Paul Bennewitz, a man who wrote he had been studying the UFO phenomenon since 1948, was told by his wife that she heard a high-pitched buzzing sound right over their house after being woken up by their small dog who was barking before dawn one morning. Bennewitz had been recently seeing strange lights over Archuleta Mesa in Dulce, New Mexico, and thought to himself (not wanting to alarm his wife) that maybe what he had been observing was now observing him. His house, in the Four Hills neighborhood east of Albuquerque, had a second-floor observation deck with a view of the Manzano Weapons Storage Area at Kirtland AFB to the south. He began watching the skies nightly and managed to capture images over the MWSA of what he was convinced were brightly lit objects with unusual characteristics. This set off a train of events that involved the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, a self-proclaimed CIA-trained disinformation agent, and a well-known author and UFO researcher. What Bennewitz caught on film tends to get lost in the many tellings of this story, but a detailed examination can be found in the 2012 book, X Descending by Christian Lambright, from which the details of above account were taken. Read more
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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
After the termination of Project Blue Book was announced on December 17, 1969, throughout the early months of 1970, much was made in the press of the fact that the Air Force was no longer in the flying saucer/UFO game. Then, the existence of a physics textbook being used at the Air Force Academy that had an entire chapter devoted to UFOs became known to UFO researchers, and it was mentioned (briefly on page 4 of pdf) in the May-June 1970 APRO Bulletin that “it caused quite stir in UFO circles in the first half of 1970.” The mainstream press didn’t become aware of it until an article was published in the October 11, 1970, issue of the National Enquirer with the headline “Air Force Academy Textbook Warns Cadets that UFOs May be Spacecraft Operated by Aliens from Other Worlds.” As sensational as this headline is, it isn’t far from the truth, and after news of the chapter’s existence was published in the mainstream press, it was quickly revised. Remarkably, the author of the chapter was a major in the Air Force who was a physics professor at the Air Force Academy. Read more
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
In the midst of the excitement created by the publication in 1980 of The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore, a set of documents reportedly came into Moore’s possession that seemed to support the story of a flying saucer recovery near Roswell and a secret government body, Majestic 12, that handled such things. These became known to UFO researchers and later, the general public. They consist of eight pages, seven of which are seemingly a briefing document for President Eisenhower, and an additional page, which is a letter dated September 24, 1947, from President Harry Truman to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal authorizing the creation of Majestic 12. The subject of the briefing document is “Operation Majestic Twelve,” and the collection of pages is often referred to as “The MJ-12 Documents.” Naturally, UFO researchers considered the possibility that the documents had been forged. Barry Greenwood and Brad Sparks came to the conclusion that they had, as did the FBI, which has made copies available on their website with “BOGUS” written across every page. The questions we’ll look at in this blog are who might have forged them and why. Read more
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by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
This is the fourth part in a series looking at an early Brazilian abduction case. In 1969, José Antônio Da Silva reported that on May 4, in Bebedouro, near the Brazilian town of Pedro Leopoldo, he was taken aboard a craft by three hairy dwarves, one of whom shot a beam of light that hit him in the legs and paralyzed them. He said that he was flown through space, and that they landed at a place where he saw human bodies, drawings of animals on the walls, and answered questions put to him about Earth. According to him, he was taken back to Earth and left off at Colatina, 350km east of Pedro Leopoldo. The case was reported in a Brazilian newspaper article that was quoted in its entirety by Gordon Creighton in the November-December 1971 issue of Flying Saucer Review. In parts 2 and 3 we looked at the report of the principle investigator, Húlvio Brant Aleixo, who formed the very first Brazilian UFO organization in 1954. His report appears in the article “Abduction at Bebedouro” published in the December 1973 issue (page 7 of pdf) of Flying Saucer Review. We noted some major differences in the accounts and got as far as Da Silva being taken off the craft and finding himself in a room where he saw pictures on a wall, four human-looking bodies, and 10-12 small, long-haired, bearded men, one of whom stood five meters in front of him and seemed to be the “chief.” Read more