Podcast UFO

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 45^th 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 75^th 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 

In 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 

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 →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 
This is the third part in a series looking at an early abduction case reported in Brazil. In 1969, José Antônio Da Silva reported that 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 this took place in Bebedouro, near the Brazilian town of Pedro Leopoldo, that he was flown through space, 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 that was directly quoted by Gordon Creighton in an article in the November-December 1971 issue of Flying Saucer Review. Last week 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 aboard the craft. Read more →

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In last week’s blog, we looked at the case of José Antônio Da Silva who, in 1969, reported that he was taken aboard a flying saucer by three hairy dwarves, one of whom shot a beam of light that hit him in the legs and paralyzed them. He said this took place in Bebedouro, near the Brazilian town of Pedro Leopoldo, that he was flown through space, 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. His story was reported in the November-December 1971 issue of Flying Saucer Review in an article by Gordon Creighton, who quoted directly from a Brazilian newspaper article and then commented that the creatures had tricked Da Silva into believing he’d been to space. We noted that this fitted in with Creighton’s beliefs based on the ideas of Jacques Vallée, John Keel, and particularly those of anthroposophy. This week, we’ll look at the case as reported by Brazilian investigator Húlvio Brant Aleixo, who formed the very first Brazilian UFO organization in 1954, around the same time as the first United States organizations. Read more →

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by UFO Author, Charles Lear 

In the April 1971 issue (page 6 of the pdf) No. 1-2 of the Scandinavian Newsletter, published by UFO-Sweden, there is an article headlined “I met a flying saucer.” According to the abstract, the report that follows was first published in the Norwegian weekly magazine Hjemmet and translated into English by Anton Lidström of the Trondheim UFO Society. The case involves an encounter with a flying saucer reported by a man who said he came upon it while driving near Helleland, Norway, at around 5:30 p.m. on October 29, 1970. According to the report, the encounter left him without a windshield, and he seemed to have suffered some physical effects as well. Read more →

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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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