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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMinnville_UFO_photographs] | [TOKENS: 3563] |
Contents McMinnville UFO photographs The McMinnville UFO photographs were taken on a farm near McMinnville, Oregon, United States, in 1950. The photos were reprinted in Life magazine and in newspapers across the United States, and are often considered to be among the most famous ever taken of an alleged UFO. Experts have concluded that the photos are a hoax, but many conspiracy theorists continue to argue that the photos are genuine, and show an unidentified object in the sky. For some ufologists, the photographs depict a metallic-looking artifact, discoidal in shape, several tens of meters in diameter, located about a kilometer from the lens and moving across the sky from northeast to west, as Trent recounted in his story. All scientists who have examined the prints and negatives agree that they have not been falsified or retouched, and all scientific studies and analyses have concluded that the photographs show a scale model or similar object, of small size, suspended from an overhead power line close to the lens. The most recent analyses highlight the existence, with an extremely high probability, of a suspension thread. Until his death in 1998, Paul Trent always defended the sincerity of his account. His testimony is confirmed by Evelyn, his wife, who was present at his side at the time. A festival dedicated to UFOs was created in McMinnville in 1999. After that of Roswell, it is the most attended in the United States. Alleged sighting Although these images have become known as the "McMinnville UFO Photographs", Paul and Evelyn Trent's farm was actually just outside Sheridan, Oregon, approximately 13 miles (21 km) southwest of McMinnville, which was the nearest larger town. According to astronomer William K. Hartmann's account, on 11 May 1950 at 7:30 p.m., Evelyn Trent was walking back to her house after feeding caged rabbits on her farm. Before reaching the house she claimed to see a slow-moving, metallic disk-shaped object approaching her from the northeast. She yelled for her husband, Paul Trent, who was inside the house; upon leaving the house, he claimed to have also seen the object. After a short time, he went back inside their home to obtain a camera already loaded with film; he said he managed to take two photos of the object before it sped away to the west. Paul Trent's father claimed he briefly viewed the object before it flew away. Hartmann's version of the incident traces back to an interview the Trents gave to Lou Gillette, of radio station KMCM (later KLYC) in McMinnville and quoted in The Oregonian newspaper on 10 June 1950; however, two days earlier on 8 June, the Trents had given a slightly different version of the incident to the McMinnville newspaper, the Telephone Register. In that version, Evelyn Trent stated "We'd been out in the back yard. Both of us saw the object at the same time. The camera! Paul thought it was in the car but I was sure it was in the house. I was right—and the Kodak was loaded with film..." Initial publicity The roll of film in the Trent's camera was not entirely used up, so the film was not developed until the remaining frames were used in shooting family photographs for Mother's Day. In a 1997 interview, the Trents claimed that they initially thought the object they had photographed was a secret military aircraft, and feared the "photos might bring them trouble". When he mentioned his sighting and photographs to his banker, Frank Wortmann, the banker was intrigued enough to display them from his bank window in McMinnville. Powell published the story and photos on the front page of the June 8, 1950, edition of the local daily, the Telephone Register. The story and photographs were then picked up by the news agency International News Service, which publicized them by distributing them nationwide. The magazine Life published, on 26 June 1950, cropped versions of the photos from the negatives as well as a portrait of Paul Trent holding his camera; the object was described as a "Chinese coolie hat". In the Life magazine of 26 June 1950, the American farmer is described as an honest person; furthermore, the magazine assures that the negatives show no signs of alteration. While the original photographs are reminiscent of the style of those taken by the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s, the retouched versions following the era's standards for UFO photography present blurred shapes and a restricted horizon line partially describing the aerial trajectory without the observer being able to fully restore the scale. The story and photos were subsequently picked up by the International News Service (INS) and sent to other newspapers around the nation, thus giving them wide publicity. Life magazine published cropped versions of the photos on June 26, 1950, along with a photo of Trent and his camera. The Trents had been promised that the negatives would be returned to them; however, they were not returned—Life magazine told the Trents that it had misplaced the negatives. Condon Committee investigation In 1967, the negatives were found in the files of the United Press International (UPI), a news service which had merged with INS years earlier. The negatives were then loaned to Dr. William K. Hartmann, an astronomer who was working as an investigator for the Condon Committee, a government-funded UFO research project directed by Edward Condon and based at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Trents were not immediately informed that their "lost" negatives had been found. Hartmann interviewed the Trents and was impressed by their sincerity; the Trents never received any money for their photos, and he could find no evidence that they had ever attempted to profit from them. In Hartmann's analysis, he wrote to the Condon Committee that "This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical, appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disk-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two witnesses." One reason for this conclusion was due to the photometric analysis of the images. Hartmann noted that the brightness of the underside of the object appeared to be lighter than the underside of the oil tank seen in the images. This could be due to the effects of atmospheric extinction and scattering, the same effects that make distant mountains appear "washed out" and blue. This effect suggested the objects were further from the camera than the tank, not small, local objects." Hartmann did, however, also point out the possibility that the images were manufactured. He noted that "The object appears beneath a pair of wires, as is seen in Plates 23 and 24. We may question, therefore, whether it could have been a model suspended from one of the wires. This possibility is strengthened by the observation that the object appears beneath roughly the same point in the two photos, in spite of their having been taken from two positions." and concludes "These tests do not rule out the possibility that the object was a small model suspended from the nearby wire by an unresolved thread." Hartmann also noticed a discrepancy that would later become the main point of objection for later skeptics. He noticed that the overall lighting of the image was consistent with the lighting that would be expected around sunset, but noted that "There could be a possible discrepancy in view of the fact that the UFO, the telephone pole, possibly the garage at the left, and especially the distant house gables (left of the distant barn) are illuminated from the right, or east. The house, in particular, appears to have a shadow under its roof that would suggest a daylit photo, and combined with the eastward incidence, one could argue that the photos were taken on a dull, sunlit day at, say, 10 a.m." After Hartmann concluded his investigation he returned the negatives to UPI, which then informed the Trents about them. In 1970, the Trents asked Philip Bladine, the editor of the News-Register (the successor of the Telephone-Register), to return the negatives; the Trents noted that they had never been paid for the negatives and thus wanted them back. Bladine asked UPI to return the negatives, which it did. However, for some reason, Bladine never contacted the Trents to inform them that the negatives had been returned. Ufologist analysis In 1975, negatives from the files of the News-Register were studied by ufologist Bruce Maccabee, who concluded that the photographs were not hoaxed and showed a "real, physical" object in the sky above the Trent farm. According to Maccabee, his analysis was based on densitometric measurements, similar to the photometric analysis done by Hartmann. Maccabee argued that the relative position of nearby power lines and the brightness of the object's underside suggested it was a large object at some distance from the camera. Maccabee said he could find no evidence of a suspending thread or string, and rejected skeptical conclusions that the photo was staged. Hoax explanation In the 1980s, Philip J. Klass and Robert Sheaffer, journalists and notable UFO skeptics, concluded that the photos were faked and that the entire event was a hoax. Their primary argument was that shadows on a garage on the left-hand side of the photos proved that the photos were taken in the morning rather than in the early evening, as the Trents had claimed. Klass and Sheaffer argued that since the Trents had apparently lied about the time the photos were taken, their entire story was thus suspect. They also noted that the Trents had shown an interest in UFOs prior to their claimed sighting. Additionally, their analysis of the photos indicated that the object photographed was small and likely a model hanging from power lines visible at the top of the photos. They also believed the object may have been the detached side-view mirror of a vehicle. The object has a shape that is very similar to the round mirrors that were used on Ford vehicles for decades, or similar models on almost all vehicles of the era. Additionally, Klass found several contradictions in the Trents' story of the sighting and noted that their version of the incident changed over the years. He concluded that the Trents had hoaxed the event. When Sheaffer sent his research and conclusions to William Hartmann, Hartmann withdrew the positive assessment of the case he had sent to the Condon Committee. In April 2013, three researchers with IPACO posted two studies to their website entitled "Back to McMinnville pictures" and "Evidence of a suspension thread." They argued that the geometry of the photographs is most consistent with a small model with a hollow bottom hanging from a wire suspended from the power lines above. They stated that they had detected the presence of a thread above the object. They concluded that "the clear result of this study was that the McMinnville UFO was a model hanging from a thread." 2013: the implementation of IPACO software In 2013, three researchers, the Frenchmen Antoine Cousyn and François Louange and the Briton Geoff Quick, re-examined Trent's photos using IPACO software. This software, which uses military intelligence techniques, was developed specifically for the analysis and study of unidentified aerospace phenomena. The scientists concluded that the geometry of the model presented in the photos was compatible with that of a small object placed near the lens and potentially suspended by a transparent thread (for example a nylon fishing line) from the power lines. These conclusions were nevertheless rejected by Bruce Maccabee, who contested the IPACO analysis and reaffirmed his previous conclusions: there was no suspension thread and the object was not a model. In 2015, Sheaffer responded to Maccabee's claims by citing the analysis of an American researcher, Jay J. Walter, who had, according to him, detected traces of a thread above the object. Sheaffer stated that the most recent analyses demonstrated that Trent's photos did not depict a UFO, acknowledging however that it would be good, to put an end to contradictory debates, for these claims to be confirmed by other researchers using high-resolution scanners from the negatives or the first published photos. An improvement to a module of the IPACO software reinforced the team's conclusions; it showed that the pixels in the photo located at the potential location of this thread, and particularly near the object, appeared darker than the sky background, even if the difference was not visible to the naked eye, proof, according to the researchers, of the existence of an obstacle to light; it even allowed estimating the angle of the suspension thread relative to the vertical (on the order of ten degrees) due to the wind. The researchers developed two other arguments in support of their thesis. In a photo taken a month later in the same place by the Life photographer, the lower power line connecting the house to the garage was in a slightly higher position at the level of the object, as if relieved of the weight of the model while the upper line had retained the same tension. Furthermore, the lines of sight of Nobbr intersected directly below the power lines or nearby: the photographed object could have been almost motionless, only subject to wind sway. Weather information, collected by Maccabee from meteorologists' archives, moreover reported the existence of a light wind blowing from the east or northeast, i.e., sensibly from left to right in the photographs, at a speed of about 4.5 metres per second (15 ft/s). The results of these two studies affirming the existence of a suspension device were detailed in November 2014 in the magazine Ufomania; Didier Gomez, responsible for the publication of this ufological quarterly, synthesized and commented on this publication. According to the authors of these works, the scale model (estimated size 12 centimetres) would be suspended 70 centimetres (28 in) below the lower power line, at a distance of about 4.60 metres (15.1 ft) from the lens. However, Bruce Maccabee and ufologist Brad Sparks persisted in contesting the scientific results, the method used, and the results obtained, both for the initial analysis and the supplementary study. Sparks even evoked, without the slightest proof, falsification of raw numerical data and inconsistencies in the conclusions. Legacy Evelyn Trent died in 1997 and her husband Paul on 13 February 1998; they had left their farm for a retirement home in McMinnville. Until the end, they maintained the truthfulness of their account and the authenticity of their photographs without ever, however, seeking to spontaneously mention this episode unless questioned. They did not seek any publicity around this event and showed no particular interest in ufology in general. According to Popular Mechanics magazine, in an article published in July 1998, despite the in-depth analysis by skeptics, they had found nothing to cast doubt on the Trents' integrity nor any financial interest for them in fabricating fake UFO photos. The McMinnville photographs are undoubtedly the first of their kind to have been studied so thoroughly and to have sparked such controversies in the scientific community. Even in the 21st century, the debate about their interpretation is not closed; proponents and opponents of the unidentified flying object thesis continue to produce contradictory studies. The McMinnville photographs reinforced in public opinion the image of extraterrestrial vessels in the shape of "flying saucers", the figurative expression having appeared in 1947, three years before McMinnville, following the testimony of Kenneth Arnold. In March 1954 (or 1957) a UFO is reputed to have been photographed above Rouen by an anonymous pilot; no element of the setting in which it evolved is visible in the photo, which shows the object in tight framing; its shape is very similar to that observed in McMinnville. An article titled "Something in the Sky" published in July 1957 in the Royal Air Force Flying Review is the only publication mentioning this sighting. Two interpretations are given: a UFO belonging to the same "family", or a fake reusing the Nobbr from McMinnville cropped and distorted. Several decades after the events, the McMinnville case continues to arouse public curiosity and interest, beyond scientific studies; the photos are widely reprinted and published. Thus, Time magazine devoted the cover of its 3 May 2010 edition to evoking the 60th anniversary of the photos. The interest aroused by these photographs, among the most publicized of those supposed to represent UFOs, led in 1999, one year after Paul Trent's death, to a ceremony in memory of him and his wife, celebrated in a McMinnville hotel. The following year, fifty years after Trent's photos, the tribute evolved into a more organized and commercial form: the "UFO Festival", initiated by the chain of hotel and brewing establishments McMenamins, was created. This festival, held over a weekend in May, grew in scale over the years; its program includes lectures, debates, and film screenings, a parade, and a costume contest, but it also welcomes sellers of UFO-related objects and McMinnville memorabilia. It became the second largest national event on this theme in the United States behind that of Roswell and attracts thousands of visitors. See also References Bibliography External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorman_dogfight] | [TOKENS: 1627] |
Contents Gorman dogfight The Gorman dogfight was a widely publicized UFO incident which took place on 1 October 1948, in the skies over Fargo, North Dakota, United States. United States Air Force (USAF) Captain Edward J. Ruppelt wrote in his bestselling and influential The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects that the "dogfight" was one of three "classic" UFO incidents in 1948 that "proved to [Air Force] intelligence specialists that UFOs were real," along with the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter and the Mantell UFO incident. In 1949, the official explanation made by the USAF was that the Gorman dogfight had been caused by a lighted weather balloon. Background Although he was only 25 years old when the incident occurred, George F. Gorman was a veteran fighter pilot of World War II. After the war he became the manager of a construction company; he also served as a second lieutenant in the North Dakota National Guard. On 1 October 1948, Gorman was participating in a cross-country flight with other National Guard pilots; he was flying a P-51 Mustang. His flight arrived over Fargo at approximately 8:30 PM. Although the other pilots decided to land at Fargo's Hector Airport, Gorman decided to take advantage of the clear, cloudless conditions and get in some night-flying time, staying aloft. Around 9:00 PM he flew over a stadium where a high school football game was being held. Gorman noticed a small Piper Cub plane flying some 500 feet below him; otherwise the skies appeared clear. Shortly after he noticed the Piper Cub, Gorman saw another object to his west. When he looked for the outline of a wing or fuselage he could see none; this contrasted with the Piper Cub, whose outline was clearly visible. The object appeared to be a blinking light. At 9:07 PM Gorman contacted the control tower at Hector Airport and asked if it had any air traffic in the area other than his P-51 and the Piper Cub. The tower answered that it did not, and it contacted the Piper Cub pilot, A.D. Cannon. Cannon and his passenger answered that they could also see a lighted object to the west. Dogfight Gorman told the tower that he was going to pursue the object to determine its identity. He moved his Mustang to full power (350 to 400 MPH), but soon realized that the object was going too fast for him to catch it in a straight run. Instead, he tried cutting the object off by turns. Gorman made a right turn and approached the object head-on at 5,000 feet; the object flew over his plane at a distance of about 500 feet. Gorman described the object as a simple "ball of light" about six to eight inches in diameter. He also noted later that when the object increased its speed, it stopped blinking and grew brighter. After his near-collision, Gorman lost sight of the object; when he saw it again it appeared to have made a 180-degree turn and was coming at him again. The object then made a sudden vertical climb; Gorman followed the object in his own steep climb. At 14,000 feet his P-51 stalled; the object was still 2,000 feet above him. Gorman made two further attempts to get closer to the object, with no success. It seemed to make another head-on pass, but broke off before coming close to his fighter. By this point the object had moved over Hector Airport. In the control tower the air traffic controller, L.D. Jensen, viewed the object through binoculars but could see no form or shape around the light. He was joined by Cannon and his passenger from the Piper Cub; they had landed and walked to the control tower to get a better view of the object. Gorman continued to follow the object until he was approximately twenty-five miles southwest of Fargo. At 14,000 feet he observed the light at 11,000 feet; he then dived on the object at full power. However, the object made a vertical climb. He tried to pursue but watched as the object passed out of visual range, last sighted at 9:27 PM. At this point, Gorman broke off the chase and flew back to Hector Airport. Gorman's account On 23 October 1948, Gorman gave a sworn account of the incident to investigators. His statement was often reprinted for decades afterwards in numerous books and documentaries about UFOs. The statement read: I am convinced that there was definite thought behind its maneuvers. I am further convinced that the object was governed by the laws of inertia because its acceleration was rapid but not immediate and although it was able to turn fairly tight at considerable speed, it still followed a natural curve. When I attempted to turn with the object I blacked out temporarily due to excessive speed. I am in fairly good physical condition and I do not believe that there are many if any pilots who could withstand the turn and speed effected by the object, and remain conscious. The object was not only able to out turn and out speed my aircraft ... but was able to attain a far steeper climb and was able to maintain a constant rate of climb far in excess of my aircraft. Air Force investigation Within a few hours, military officers from Project Sign – the United States Air Force's (USAF) study of UFO phenomena – arrived to interview Gorman, Cannon, his passenger, and the control tower personnel at Hector Airport. The officers also checked Gorman's P-51 Mustang with a Geiger counter for radiation. They found that the Mustang was measurably more radioactive than other fighters which had not flown for several days; this was taken as evidence that Gorman had flown close to an "atomic-powered" object. USAF investigators also ruled out the possibility of the lighted object being "another aircraft, Canadian Vampire jet fighters, or a weather balloon." Their initial conclusion, writes UFO historian Curtis Peebles, was "that something remarkable had occurred" to Gorman in the skies above Fargo. However, further investigation by Project Sign personnel soon revealed flaws in the evidence. A plane flying high in the Earth's atmosphere is less shielded from radiation than one at ground level, thus the Geiger readings were considered invalid evidence for stating that the lighted object was atomic-powered. In addition, the Air Weather Service revealed that on 1 October it had released a lighted weather balloon from Fargo at 8:50 PM. By 9 PM the balloon would have been in the area where Gorman and the Piper Cub passengers first saw the lighted object. Project Sign's investigators also believed that the incredible movements of the object were due to Gorman's own maneuvers as he chased the light—the object's maneuvers were an illusion brought about by the movements of Gorman's fighter. The investigators also believed that, as the weather balloon passed out of sight, Gorman had come to believe that the planet Jupiter was the UFO, and therefore he had been chasing the planet as he flew south of Fargo before giving up and returning to land. By early 1949 the Gorman case was labeled by Project Sign and its successors, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book, as being caused by a lighted weather balloon. Aftermath The Gorman dogfight received wide national publicity and helped fuel the wave of UFO reports in the late forties. Although some UFO researchers, such as James E. McDonald and Donald Keyhoe, disagreed with the USAF's conclusions and continued to regard the case as unsolved, other UFO researchers agreed with Project Sign's conclusions in the case. As UFO historian Jerome Clark writes: "unlike some Air Force would-be solutions this one seems plausible" and that, in his opinion, "After the Mantell Incident the Gorman sighting may be the most overrated UFO report in the early history of the phenomenon." In popular culture See also Notes References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Washington,_D.C._UFO_incident] | [TOKENS: 3802] |
Contents 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident From July 12 to 29, 1952, a series of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings were reported in Washington, D.C., and later became known as the Washington flap, the Washington National Airport Sightings, or the Invasion of Washington. The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 18–19 and July 26–27. UFO historian Curtis Peebles called the incident "the climax of the 1952 (UFO) flap"—"Never before or after did Project Blue Book and the Air Force undergo such a tidal wave of (UFO) reports." This went on to become one of the most known UFO sightings ever. 1952 UFO flap The 1952 UFO flap was an unprecedented rash of media attention to unidentified flying object reports during the summer of 1952 that culminated with reports of sightings over Washington, D.C. In the four years prior, the US Air Force had chronicled a total of 615 UFO reports; during the 1952 flap, they received over 717 new reports. Project Blue Book director Edward J. Ruppelt later recalled: "During a six-month period in 1952... 148 of the nation's leading newspapers carried a total of over 16,000 items about flying saucers." On April 3, the Associated Press reported on an upcoming story in Life magazine that would reveal the Air Force was taking a serious interest in flying saucers. The June edition of Look magazine featured a story where astrophysicist Donald Howard Menzel proposed flying saucers were optical mirages created by temperature inversions. American papers covered similar statements from French astronomer Ernest Esclangon who debunked the "flying saucer reports" by explaining they could not be supersonic craft because no sonic booms were reported. On April 7, Life magazine, featuring Marilyn Monroe on its cover, published the Flying Saucer article under the title "Have We Visitors From Space?", becoming the most reputable outlet to seriously consider the possibility that flying saucer reports might be caused by extra-terrestrial spaceships. Publicity surrounding the piece is believed to have contributed to the subsequent wave of reports that summer. Sightings over Washington, D.C. At the height of the UFO flap, there were UFOs reported at the nation's capital on two consecutive Saturday nights. At 11:40 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, 1952, Edward Nugent, an air traffic controller at Washington National Airport, spotted seven objects on his radar. The objects were located 15 miles (24 km) south-southwest of the city; no known aircraft were in the area, and the objects were not following any established flight paths. Nugent's superior, Harry Barnes, a senior air-traffic controller at the airport, watched the objects on Nugent's radarscope. He later wrote: "We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed ... their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft." Barnes had two controllers check Nugent's radar; they found that it was working normally. Barnes then called National Airport's radar-equipped control tower; the controllers there, Howard Cocklin and Joe Zacko, said that they also had unidentified blips on their radar screen, and saw a hovering "bright light" in the sky, which departed with incredible speed. Cocklin asked Zacko, "Did you see that? What the hell was that?" At this point, other objects appeared in all sectors of the radarscope; when they moved over the White House and the United States Capitol, Barnes called Andrews Air Force Base, located 10 miles (16 km) from National Airport. Although Andrews reported that they had no unusual objects on their radar, an airman soon called the base's control tower to report the sighting of a strange object. Airman William Brady, who was in the tower, then saw an "object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail ... [it was] unlike anything I had ever seen before." As Brady tried to alert the other personnel in the tower, the strange object "took off at an unbelievable speed". On one of National Airport's runways, S. C. Pierman, a Capital Airlines pilot, was waiting in the cockpit of his DC-4 for permission to take off. After spotting what he believed to be a meteor, he was told that the control tower's radar had detected unknown objects closing in on his position. Pierman observed six objects—"white, tailless, fast-moving lights"—over a 14-minute period. Pierman was in radio contact with Barnes during his sighting, and Barnes later related that "each sighting coincided with a pip we could see near his plane. When he reported that the light streaked off at a high speed, it disappeared on our scope." Meanwhile, at Andrews Air Force Base, the control tower personnel were tracking on radar what some thought to be unknown objects, but others suspected, and in one instance were able to prove, were simply stars and meteors. However, Staff Sgt. Charles Davenport observed an orange-red light to the south; the light "would appear to stand still, then make an abrupt change in direction and altitude ... this happened several times." At one point both radar centers at National Airport and the radar at Andrews Air Force Base were tracking an object hovering over a radio beacon. The object vanished in all three radar centers at the same time. At 3 a.m., shortly before two United States Air Force F-94 Starfire jet fighters from New Castle Air Force Base in Delaware arrived over Washington, all of the objects vanished from the radar at National Airport. However, when the jets ran low on fuel and left, the objects returned, which convinced Barnes that "the UFOs were monitoring radio traffic and behaving accordingly". The objects were last detected by radar at 5:30 a.m. The sightings of July 19–20, 1952, made front-page headlines in newspapers around the nation. A typical example was the headline from the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa. It read "SAUCERS SWARM OVER CAPITAL" in large black type. By coincidence, USAF Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the supervisor of the Air Force's Project Blue Book investigation into UFO sightings, was in Washington at the time. However, he did not learn about the sightings until Monday, July 21, when he read the headlines in a Washington-area newspaper. After talking with intelligence officers at the Pentagon about the sightings, Ruppelt spent several hours trying to obtain a staff car so he could travel around Washington to investigate the sightings, but was refused as only generals and senior colonels could use staff cars. He was told that he could rent a taxicab with his own money; by this point Ruppelt was so frustrated that he left Washington and flew back to Blue Book's headquarters at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. Upon returning to Dayton, Ruppelt spoke with an Air Force radar specialist, Captain Roy James, who felt that unusual weather conditions could have caused the unknown radar targets. On July 24, two Air Force colonels took off from Hamilton Air Force Base bound for Colorado Springs; they reported witnessing unidentified triangular objects. At 8:15 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, 1952, a pilot and stewardess on a National Airlines flight into Washington observed some lights above their plane. Within minutes, both radar centers at National Airport, and the radar at Andrews AFB, were tracking more unknown objects. USAF master sergeant Charles E. Cummings visually observed the objects at Andrews, he later said that "these lights did not have the characteristics of shooting stars. There was [sic] no trails ... they traveled faster than any shooting star I have ever seen." Meanwhile, Albert M. Chop, the press spokesman for Project Blue Book, arrived at National Airport and, due to security concerns, denied several reporters' requests to photograph the radar screens. He then joined the radar center personnel. By this time (9:30 p.m.) the radar center was detecting unknown objects in every sector. At times the objects traveled slowly; at other times they reversed direction and moved across the radarscope at speeds calculated at up to 7,000 mph (11,250 km/h). At 11:30 p.m., two U.S. Air Force F-94 Starfire jet fighters from New Castle Air Force Base in Delaware arrived over Washington. Captain John McHugo, the flight leader, was vectored towards the radar blips but saw nothing, despite repeated attempts. However, his wingman, Lieutenant William Patterson, did see four white "glows" and chased them. He told investigators that "I tried to make contact with the bogies below 1,000 feet," and that "I was at my maximum speed but...I ceased chasing them because I saw no chance of overtaking them." According to Albert Chop, when ground control asked Patterson "if he saw anything", Patterson replied "'I see them now and they're all around me. What should I do?'...And nobody answered, because we didn't know what to tell him." After midnight on July 27, USAF Major Dewey Fournet, Project Blue Book's liaison at the Pentagon, and Lt. John Holcomb, a United States Navy radar specialist, arrived at the radar center at National Airport. During the night, Lieutenant Holcomb received a call from the Washington National Weather Station. They told him that a slight temperature inversion was present over the city, but Holcomb felt that the inversion was not "nearly strong enough to explain the 'good and solid' returns" on the radar scopes. Fournet relayed that all those present in the radar room were convinced that the targets were most likely caused by solid metallic objects. There had been weather targets on the scope too, he said, but this was a common occurrence and the controllers "were paying no attention to them". Two more F-94s from New Castle Air Force Base were scrambled during the night. One pilot saw nothing unusual; the other pilot saw a white light which "vanished" when he moved towards it. Civilian aircraft also reported glowing objects that corresponded to radar blips seen by Andrews radar operators. As on July 20, the sightings and unknown radar returns ended at sunrise. Air Force explanation Air Force Major Generals John Samford, USAF Director of Intelligence, and Roger M. Ramey, USAF Director of Operations, held a well-attended press conference at the Pentagon on July 29, 1952. In his opening comments, Samford noted that, out of the hundreds of UFO reports in recent years investigated by the Air Force, there was "a certain percentage of this volume of reports that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things" but that none of them posed any national security threat. At the event, Samford stated that the visual sightings over Washington could be explained as misidentified aerial phenomena such as stars or meteors, and unknown radar targets could be explained by temperature inversion, which was present in the air over Washington on both nights the radar returns were reported. In addition, Samford stated that the unknown radar contacts were not caused by solid material objects, and therefore posed no threat to national security. In response to a question as to whether the Air Force had recorded similar UFO radar contacts prior to the Washington incident, Samford said that there had been "hundreds" of such contacts where Air Force fighter interceptions had taken place, but stated that they were all "fruitless". It was the largest Pentagon press conference since World War II. Press stories called Samford and Ramey the Air Force's two top UFO experts. Among the witnesses who supported Samford's explanation was the crew of a B-25 bomber, which had been flying over Washington during the sightings of July 26–27. The bomber was vectored several times by National Airport over unknown targets on the airport's radarscopes, yet the crew could see nothing unusual. Finally, as a crew member related, "the radar had a target which turned out to be the Wilson Lines steamboat trip to Mount Vernon... the radar was sure as hell picking up the steamboat." Air Force Captain Harold May was in the radar center at Andrews AFB during the sightings of July 19–20. Upon hearing that National Airport's radar had picked up an unknown object heading in his direction, May stepped outside and saw "a light that was changing from red to orange to green to red again...at times it dipped suddenly and appeared to lose altitude." However, May eventually concluded that he was simply seeing a star that was distorted by the atmosphere, and that its "movement" was an illusion. At 3 a.m. on July 27, an Eastern Airlines flight over Washington was told that an unknown object was in its vicinity; the crew could see nothing unusual. When they were told that the object had moved directly behind their plane, they began a sharp turn to try to see the object, but were told by National Airport's radar center that the object had "disappeared" when they began their turn. At the request of the Air Force, the CAA's Technical Development and Evaluation Center did an analysis of the radar sightings. Their conclusion was that "a temperature inversion had been indicated in almost every instance when the unidentified radar targets or visual objects had been reported." Project Blue Book would eventually label the unknown Washington radar blips as false images caused by temperature inversion, and the visual sightings as misidentified meteors, stars, and city lights. In later years two prominent UFO skeptics, Donald Menzel, an astronomer at Harvard University, and Philip Klass, a senior editor for Aviation Week magazine, would also argue in favor of the temperature inversion/mirage hypothesis. In 2002 Klass told a reporter that "radar technology in 1952 wasn't sophisticated enough to filter out many ordinary objects, such as flocks of birds, weather balloons, or temperature inversions." The reporter added that "UFO proponents argue that even then seasoned controllers could differentiate between spurious targets and solid, metallic objects. Klass disagrees. It may be that 'we had two dumb controllers at National Airport on those nights'...[Klass] added that the introduction of digital filters in the 1970s led to a steep decline in UFO sightings on radar." In his 1965 book Anatomy of a Phenomenon, UFO researcher Jacques Vallée lists the 1952 Washington incident as an example of a widely discussed case which is "rather poor" and "in [UFO researchers'] files would be considered second-rate". In his book, The Report On Unidentified Flying Objects, author Edward J. Ruppelt wrote that radar and control tower personnel he spoke to, as well as some Air Force officers, disagreed with the Air Force's explanation. Michael Wertheimer, a researcher for the government-funded Condon Report, investigated the case in 1966, and stated that radar witnesses still disputed the Air Force explanation. Former radar controller Howard Cocklin told the Washington Post in 2002 that he was still convinced that he saw an object, stating that "I saw it on the [radar] screen and out the window" over Washington National Airport." White House concern and CIA interest The sightings of July 26–27 also made front-page headlines, and led President Harry Truman to have his air force aide call Ruppelt and ask for an explanation of the sightings and unknown radar returns. Truman listened to the conversation between the two men on a separate phone, but did not ask questions himself. Ruppelt, remembering the conversation he had with Captain James, told the president's assistant that the sightings might have been caused by a temperature inversion, in which a layer of warm, moist air covers a layer of cool, dry air closer to the ground. This condition can cause radar signals to bend and give false returns. However, Ruppelt had not yet interviewed any of the witnesses or conducted a formal investigation. CIA historian Gerald Haines, in his 1997 history of the CIA's involvement with UFOs, also mentions Truman's concern. "A massive buildup of sightings over the United States in 1952, especially in July, alarmed the Truman administration. On 19 and 20 July, radar scopes at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base tracked mysterious blips. On 27 July, the blips reappeared." The CIA would react to the 1952 wave of UFO reports by "forming a special study group within the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) to review the situation. Edward Tauss reported for the group that most UFO sightings could be easily explained. Nonetheless, he recommended that the Agency continue monitoring the problem." The CIA's concern with the issue would lead to the creation, in January 1953, of the Robertson Panel. The Robertson Panel The extremely high numbers of UFO reports in 1952 disturbed both the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Both groups felt that an enemy nation could deliberately flood the U.S. with false UFO reports, causing mass panic and allowing them to launch a sneak attack. On September 24, 1952, the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) sent a memorandum to Walter B. Smith, the CIA's Director. The memo stated that "the flying saucer situation ... [has] national security implications ... [in] the public concern with the phenomena ... lies the potential for the touching-off of mass hysteria and panic." The result of this memorandum was the creation in January 1953 of the Robertson Panel. Howard P. Robertson, a physicist, chaired the panel, which consisted of prominent scientists and which spent four days examining the "best" UFO cases collected by Project Blue Book. The panel dismissed nearly all of the UFO cases it examined as not representing anything unusual or threatening to national security. In the panel's controversial estimate, the Air Force and Project Blue Book needed to spend less time analyzing and studying UFO reports and more time publicly debunking them. The panel recommended that the Air Force and Project Blue Book should take steps to "strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired." Following the panel's recommendation, Project Blue Book would rarely publicize any UFO case that it had not labeled as "solved"; unsolved cases were rarely mentioned by the Air Force. In popular culture References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Zamora_incident] | [TOKENS: 933] |
Contents Lonnie Zamora incident The Lonnie Zamora incident was an alleged UFO sighting that occurred on April 24, 1964 near Socorro, New Mexico when Socorro police officer Lonnie Zamora claimed he saw two people beside a shiny object that later rose into the air accompanied by a roaring blue and orange flame. Zamora's claims were subject to attention from news media, UFO investigators and UFO organizations, and the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book listed the case as "unknown". Conventional explanations of Zamora's claims include a lunar lander test by White Sands Missile Range and a hoax by New Mexico Tech students. Incident On April 24, 1964 at approximately 17:45, Socorro Police radio dispatcher Nep Lopez received a radio call from Sergeant Lonnie Zamora reporting a possible motor vehicle accident. Zamora advised Lopez that he would be “checking the car down in the arroyo". Shortly after, Lopez received another radio call from Zamora asking Lopez to look out of the window, to see if he could see an object. When Lopez asked Zamora to describe it, Zamora said "it looks like a balloon” and requested New Mexico State Police Sergeant Chavez meet him at his location. When Chavez arrived, he asked Zamora what the trouble was. Zamora led him to examine some burning brush. When other police officers arrived they noted patches of smoldering grass and brush. There were also shallow holes in the ground, that Zamora said was from the object landing. Zamora's claims Zamora told authorities he was pursuing a speeding car south of Socorro, New Mexico when he "heard a roar and saw a flame in the sky to southwest some distance away—possibly a 1/2 mile or a mile." Believing a local dynamite shack might have exploded, Zamora said he discontinued the pursuit and investigated the potential explosion. Zamora claimed to have observed a shiny object, "to south about 150 to 200 yards (450 to 600 ft; 140 to 180 m)", that he initially believed to be an "overturned white car ... up on radiator or on trunk". The object was "like aluminum—it was whitish against the mesa background, but not chrome", and shaped like the letter "O". Zamora claimed to have briefly observed two people in white overalls beside the object, who he later described as "normal in shape—but possibly they were small adults or large kids." Zamora claimed to hear a roar and see a blue and orange flame under the object which then rose and quickly moved away. Investigations and explanations Zamora's claims were investigated by Project Blue Book and ufologists, and have been reported in the popular press. Several explanations have been presented. UFO skeptic Steuart Campbell has suggested that everything seen and heard by Zamora and fellow witnesses was "almost certainly" a mirage of the star Canopus. It has also been suggested Zamora witnessed the testing of a lunar landing device by personnel from the White Sands Missile Range. Skeptic Robert Sheaffer suggested that the incident was a hoax perpetrated by students at New Mexico Tech. Then-president of New Mexico Tech Stirling Colgate supported this theory, and wrote that the object observed by Zamora was: "A candle in a balloon. Not sophisticated." Skeptic Philip J. Klass, who visited Socorro several years after the incident, claimed that the entire event was part of a conspiracy plot by the municipal government to increase tourism. Aftermath In 1966 the president of the Socorro County's Chamber of Commerce, Paul Ridings, proposed developing the site of Zamora’s claimed UFO encounter to make it more accessible to tourists. Consequently stone walkways and steps were built into the arroyo from the mesa top, with a rock walkway circling the supposed landing site that included some wooden benches. However these were built approximately a quarter mile from the actual site of Zamora’s alleged sighting due to local rumors that the original site was contaminated by radioactivity. In 2012 Socorro city officials Ravi Bhasker and Pat Salome commissioned local artist Erika Burleigh to paint a mural on a spillway facing Park Street to commemorate Zamora's alleged UFO sighting. Zamora died on November 2, 2009, in Socorro; he was 76 years old. See also References Further reading External links 34°02′33″N 106°53′52″W / 34.04250°N 106.89778°W / 34.04250; -106.89778 |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatwoods_monster] | [TOKENS: 1261] |
Contents Flatwoods monster The Flatwoods monster (also known as the Braxton County monster, Braxie, or the Phantom of Flatwoods), in West Virginia folklore, is a creature reported to have been sighted in the town of Flatwoods in Braxton County, West Virginia, United States, on September 12, 1952, after a bright light crossed the night sky. Investigators now suggest the light was a meteor and the creature was a barn owl perched in a tree with shadows making it appear to be a large humanoid. History At 7:15 p.m., on September 12, 1952, two brothers, Edward and Fred May, and their friend Tommy Hyer, said that they saw a bright object cross the sky and land on the property of local farmer G. Bailey Fisher. The boys went home and told their mother, Kathleen May. The four of them, accompanied by local children Neil Nunley and Ronnie Shaver, and Kathleen's cousin West Virginia National Guardsman Eugene Lemon, went to the Fisher farm in an effort to locate whatever it was that Edward and Fred had claimed to see. The group reached the top of a hill, where Nunley said they saw a pulsing red light. Lemon said he aimed a flashlight in that direction and momentarily saw a tall "man-like figure with a round, red face surrounded by a pointed, hood-like shape". Descriptions of the creature varied. In an article for Fate Magazine based on his tape-recorded interviews, UFO writer Gray Barker described the figure as approximately 10 feet (3 m) tall, with a round blood-red face, a large pointed "hood-like shape" around the face, eye-like shapes which emitted greenish-orange light, and a dark black or green body. May described the figure as having "small, claw-like hands", clothing-like folds, and "a head that resembled the ace of spades". According to the story, when the figure made a hissing sound and "glided toward the group", Lemon screamed and dropped his flashlight, causing the group to run away. The group said they had smelled a "pungent mist" and some later said they were nauseated. The local sheriff and a deputy had been investigating reports of a crashed aircraft in the area. They searched the site of the reported monster but "saw, heard and smelled nothing". According to Barker's account, the next day, A. Lee Stewart Jr. of the Braxton Democrat claimed to have discovered "skid marks" in the field and an "odd, gummy deposit" which were subsequently attributed by UFO enthusiast groups as evidence of a "saucer" landing. According to former news editor Holt Byrne, "newspaper stories were carried throughout the country, radio broadcasts were carried on large networks, and hundreds of phone calls were received from all parts of the country." The national press services rated the story "No. 11 for the year". A minister from Brooklyn came to question the May family. A Pittsburgh paper sent a special reporter. UFO and Fortean writers like Gray Barker and Ivan T. Sanderson arrived to investigate. Conventional explanations After investigating the case in 2000, Joe Nickell of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry concluded that the bright light in the sky reported by the witnesses on September 12 was most likely a meteor, that the pulsating red light was likely an aircraft navigation or hazard beacon, and that the creature described by witnesses closely resembled an owl. Nickell suggested that witnesses' perceptions were distorted by their heightened state of anxiety. Nickell's conclusions are shared by a number of other investigators, including those of the Air Force. On the night of the sighting on September 12, 1952, a meteor had been observed across three states—Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. According to Nickell, three flashing red aircraft beacons were also visible from the area of the sightings, which could account for descriptions of a pulsating red light and red tint on the face of the supposed monster. Nickell concluded that the shape, movement, and sounds reported by witnesses were also consistent with the silhouette, flight pattern, and call of a startled barn owl perched on a tree limb, leading researchers to conclude that foliage beneath the owl may have created the illusion of the lower portions of the "creature" (described as being a pleated green skirt). Researchers also concluded that the witnesses' inability to agree on whether the "creature" had arms, combined with May's report of it having "small, claw-like hands" which "extended in front of it", also matched the description of a barn owl with its talons gripping a tree branch. According to skeptic Ryan Haupt, even though local boy Max Lockard admitted he had driven his Chevy truck around the site "hoping to see something", "paranormal investigators concluded that the tracks, oily residue, and bits of a rubbery substance must have been left by the creature and not the truck". Haupt explains nausea reported by some of the witnesses as a symptom "consistent with hysteria and over-exertion". Legacy Officials in Flatwoods erected a welcome sign which designated the town as "Home of the Green Monster". Located in the town of Sutton, the Braxton County seat, is the Flatwoods Monster Museum, which is dedicated to the legend. The Flatwoods Monster Museum is open from 9 AM to 5 PM Tuesday through Friday, and 10 AM to 4PM on weekends. The museum also offers free admission to its visitors. The Braxton County Convention and Visitor's Bureau also built a series of five tall chairs in the shape of the monster to serve as landmarks and visitor attractions. The Bureau rewards visitors who photograph all five chairs with "Free Braxie" stickers. The legend of the Flatwoods monster has also inspired media beyond West Virginia. The video games Fallout 76 and Everybody's Golf 4 contain references to the legend. In television, the second episode of the 2019 History Channel series Project Blue Book titled "The Flatwoods Monster" is based on the Flatwoods incident. Since 2019, Flatwoods, West Virginia has been hosting a Flatwoods Monster Convention. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B4nio_Villas_Boas] | [TOKENS: 1395] |
Contents Antônio Vilas-Boas Antônio Vilas-Boas[a] (1934–1991) was a Brazilian farmer (later a lawyer) who claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials in 1957. Though similar stories had circulated for years beforehand, Vilas-Boas' claims were among the first alien abduction stories to receive wide attention. Some skeptics today consider the abduction story to be little more than a hoax, although Boas nonetheless reportedly stuck to his account throughout his life. Early life Antônio Vilas-Boas was the son of Jerônimo Pedro Vilas-Boas (1887–1963) and Enésia Cândida de Oliveira (1897–1963), and was born in São Francisco de Sales. Vilas-Boas' story The existence of Vilas-Boas's testimony was made possible via Dr. Olavo Teixeira who performed a detailed interview and medical review in 1958. At the time of his alleged abduction, Antônio Vilas-Boas was a 23-year-old Brazilian farmer who was working at night to avoid the hot temperatures of the day. On October 15, 1957, he was ploughing fields near São Francisco de Sales when he saw what he described as a "red star" in the night sky. According to his story, this "star" approached his position, growing in size until it became recognizable as a roughly circular or egg-shaped aerial craft, with a red light at its front and a rotating cupola on top. The craft began descending to land in the field, extending three "legs" as it did so. At that point, Boas decided to run from the scene. According to Boas, he first attempted to leave the scene on his tractor, but when its lights and engine died after traveling only a short distance, he decided to continue on foot. However, he was seized by a 5-foot-tall (150 cm) humanoid, who was wearing grey coveralls and a helmet. Its eyes were small and blue, and instead of speech it made noises like barks or yelps. Three similar beings then joined the first in subduing Boas, and they dragged him inside their craft. Once inside the craft, Boas said that he was stripped of his clothes and covered from head-to-toe with a strange gel. He was then led into a large semicircular room, through a doorway that had strange red symbols written over it. (Boas claimed that he was able to memorize these symbols and later reproduced them for investigators.) In this room the beings took samples of Boas' blood from his chin. After this he was then taken to a third room and left alone for around half an hour. During this time, some kind of gas was pumped into the room, which made Boas become violently ill. Shortly after this, Boas claimed that he was joined in the room by another humanoid. This one, however, was female, very attractive, and naked. She was the same height as the other beings he had encountered, with a small, pointed chin and large, blue catlike eyes. The hair on her head was long and white (somewhat like platinum blonde) but her underarm and pubic hair were bright red. Boas said he was strongly attracted to the woman, and the two had sexual intercourse. During this act, Boas noted that the female did not kiss him but instead nipped him on the chin. When it was all over, the female smiled at Boas, rubbing her belly and gestured upwards. Boas took this to mean that she was going to raise their child in space. The female seemed relieved that their "task" was over, and Boas himself said that he felt angered by the situation, because he felt as though he had been little more than "a good stallion" for the humanoids. Boas said that he was then given back his clothing and taken on a tour of the ship by the humanoids. During this tour he said that he attempted to take a clock-like device as proof of his encounter, but was caught by the humanoids and prevented from doing so. He was then escorted off the ship and watched as it took off, glowing brightly. When Boas returned home, he discovered that four hours had passed. He later became a lawyer, married and had four children. He stuck to the story of his alleged abduction for his entire life. Though some sources say he died in 1992, he died on January 17, 1991. Investigation Following this alleged event, Boas claimed to have suffered from nausea and weakness, as well as headaches and lesions on the skin which appeared without any kind of light bruising. Eventually, he contacted journalist José Martins, who had placed an ad in a newspaper looking for people who had had experiences with UFOs.[citation needed] Upon hearing Boas' story, Martins contacted Olavo Fontes of the National School of Medicine of Brazil; Fontes was also in contact with the American UFO research group APRO. Fontes examined the farmer and concluded that he had been exposed to a large dose of radiation from some source and was now suffering from mild radiation sickness. Writer Terry Melanson states: According to Researcher Peter Rogerson, the story first came to light in February, 1958, and the earliest definite print reference to Boas' story was from the April–June 1962 issue of the Brazilian UFO periodical SBESDV Bulletin. Rogerson notes that the story had definitely circulated between 1958 and 1962, and was probably recorded in print, but that details are uncertain. Vilas-Boas was able to recall every detail of his purported experience without the need for hypnotic regression. Further, Vilas-Boas' experience occurred in 1957, which was still several years before the famous Hill abduction which made the concept of alien abduction famous and opened the door to many other reports of similar experiences. Researcher Peter Rogerson, however, doubts the veracity of Vilas-Boas' story. He notes that several months before Vilas-Boas first related his claims, a similar story had been printed in the November 1957 issue of the periodical O Cruzeiro, and suggests that Vilas-Boas borrowed details of this earlier account, along with elements of the contactee stories of George Adamski. Rogerson also argues: See also Notes Related media Flávio Cavalcanti (TV Tupi) interviews (audio only) "ANTONIO VILLAS BOAS - um dos maiores casos de abdução da ufologia". www.youtube.com (in Portuguese). ovnis&ufos insanos. Retrieved 9 March 2025. References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakenheath-Bentwaters_incident] | [TOKENS: 1987] |
Contents Lakenheath-Bentwaters incident The Lakenheath-Bentwaters Incident was a series of radar and visual contacts with unidentified flying objects over airbases in eastern England on the night of 13–14 August 1956, involving personnel from the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Air Force (USAF). The incident has since gained some prominence in the literature of ufology and the popular media. The final report of the Condon Committee, which otherwise concluded that UFOs were simple misidentifications of natural phenomena or aircraft, took an unusual position on the case: "In conclusion, although conventional or natural explanations certainly cannot be ruled out, the probability of such seems low in this case and the probability that at least one genuine UFO was involved appears to be fairly high". It has, however, also been argued that the incidents can be explained by false radar returns and misidentification of astronomical phenomena. The incident The commonly cited sequence of events is recorded in the original Project Blue Book file by the USAF, subsequently analysed by the Condon Committee's report and by atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald. The incident began at the USAF-tenanted RAF Bentwaters, Suffolk, on the evening of 13 August 1956. This was a dry, largely clear night with, observers noted, an unusually large number of shooting stars, associated with the Perseid meteor shower. At 21:30, radar operators at the base tracked a target, appearing similar to a normal aircraft return, approaching the base from the sea at an apparent speed of several thousand miles per hour. They also tracked a group of targets moving slowly to the north-east which merged into a single very large return (several times the strength of that from a B-36) before moving off the scope to the north, as well as a further rapid target proceeding from east to west. A T-33 trainer from the 512th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, crewed by 1st Lieutenants Charles Metz and Andrew Rowe, was directed to investigate the radar contacts, but saw nothing. No visual sightings of the objects were made from Bentwaters in this period with the exception of a single amber star-like object which was subsequently identified as probably being Mars, then low in the south-east. At 22:55, a target was detected approaching Bentwaters from the east at a speed estimated around 2,000–4,000 miles per hour (3,200–6,400 km/h). It faded from the scope as it passed over the base (possibly suggesting anomalous propagation as a source for the target, although ground-based radars almost always have a blind spot overhead), reappearing to the west. However, as it passed overhead a rapidly moving white light was observed from the ground, while the pilot of a C-47 at 4,000 feet (1,200 m) over Bentwaters reported that a similar light had passed beneath his aircraft. At this point, Bentwaters alerted the U.S.-tenanted RAF Lakenheath base, 40 miles (64 km) to the north-west, to look out for the targets. Ground personnel at Lakenheath made visual sightings of several luminous objects, including two which arrived, made a sharp change in course, and appeared to merge before moving off. The angular size of these objects was compared to that of a golf ball at arm's length, and they were stated to dwindle to pinpoint size as they moved away, an observation which seemed to rule out a bolide or bright meteor. The final phase of the incident was described in some detail by Technical Sergeant Forrest Perkins, who was the Watch Supervisor in the Lakenheath Radar Air Traffic Control centre, and who wrote directly to the Condon Committee in 1968. Perkins claimed that two RAF De Havilland Venom interceptors were scrambled and directed towards a radar target near Lakenheath. The pilot of the first Venom achieved contact, but then found that the target manoeuvred behind him and chased the aircraft for a period of around 10 minutes despite the latter's taking violent evasive action; Perkins characterised the pilot as "getting worried, excited and also pretty scared". The second Venom was forced to return to its home station due to engine problems; Perkins stated that the target remained on their screens for a short period before leaving on a northerly heading. Investigation by the Condon Committee The Condon Committee included the case in its analysis largely in response to Perkins' letter. Aside from the Blue Book file, it was able to obtain a previous classified teleprinter message, transmitted three days after the incident, from 3910th Air Base Group to Air Defence Command at Ent AFB; the teleprinter message's description of the events, including the 'chase' episode, largely agreed with that of Perkins. Based on the information available, the Committee's researcher (Thayer) felt that while anomalous propagation was possible, the lack of other targets on radar scopes at the time made it unlikely. Focusing on the later phase of the incident at Lakenheath, he came to the remarkable conclusion that "this is the most puzzling and unusual case in the radar-visual files. The apparently rational, intelligent behavior of the UFO suggests a mechanical device of unknown origin as the most probable explanation of this sighting". Aviation journalist and noted UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass concluded, however, that the incident could be explained as a combination of false radar returns and misperceptions of meteors from the Perseid stream. The account of Freddie Wimbledon and a further civilian witness Little information emerged on the case until the late 1970s, when an article in the Daily Express, and a subsequent piece by astronomer Ian Ridpath in the Sunday Times, produced further witnesses. Flight Lieutenant Freddie Wimbledon wrote to the Sunday Times on 19 March 1978 contesting Ridpath's statement that the incident had effectively been explained by Klass. Wimbledon had been the radar controller on duty at RAF Neatishead at the time of the sightings. While his account of events agreed with that of Perkins in some details, including the description of the aircraft being apparently chased by the object, he stated that it had in fact been his team who directed the two Venoms to the interception and that the U.S. personnel at Lakenheath would have been merely 'listening in'. Wimbledon disagreed with Klass' analysis, remembering the incident as involving a solid radar return tracked from three sets on the ground and one in the intercepting aircraft. The same 1978 press interest in the case also elicited a letter from a John Killock to the Daily Express in which he claimed to have seen, in August 1956, both a single, rapidly traveling white light at Ely, along with a Venom, and subsequently an odd group of amber lights. Recent research Four British Fortean researchers, Dr. David Clarke, Andy Roberts, Martin Shough, and Jenny Randles, have since conducted a study that has indicated that the incident, or incidents, were much more complex than the Condon Report had suggested. Most significantly, the aircrews originally involved in the incident, Flying Officers David Chambers and John Brady from the first aircraft and Flying Officers Ian Fraser-Ker and Ivan Logan from the second, were located and interviewed. The aircrews involved all flew with 23 Squadron from RAF Waterbeach and were scrambled at 02:00 and 02:40 on 14 August – around two hours later than Wimbledon and Perkins claimed the interceptions occurred. In contrast to the reports given in the original classified teleprinter message and in the accounts of both Wimbledon and Perkins, the aircrews both stated that the radar contacts obtained were unimpressive and that no 'tail-chase', or action on the part of the target, occurred. They also asserted no visual contacts were made. The first pilot, Chambers, commented that "my feeling is that there was nothing there, it was some sort of mistake", while Ivan Logan, the second Venom's navigator, stated that "all we saw was a blip which rather indicated a stationary target". At the time 23 Squadron decided that the radar contact had, if anything, been with a weather balloon. To add to the contradictory nature of the accounts collected, another Venom crew was traced who had been scrambled much earlier in the evening. Flying Officers Leslie Arthur and Grahame Scofield were not told of the nature of their target and were forced to return to base after the aircraft's wingtip fuel tanks malfunctioned; Scofield recalled listening in to the radio communications of the intercepting pilots while back at Waterbeach later in the evening. Scofield's account of the overheard radio transmissions agreed, puzzlingly, with those of Wimbledon and Perkins, though he felt able to identify the crews as Chambers / Brady and Fraser-Ker / Logan. The time and path of Scofield's flight was identified as one which could also convincingly explain the sighting of a Venom at Ely by the civilian, Killock, who had claimed to see anomalous lights. The new research additionally revealed that 23 Squadron's Commanding Officer, Wing Commander (later Air Commodore) A. N. Davis, had also been diverted to investigate the radar returns while flying a Venom from RAF Coltishall. As the interception would have occurred at the same time as that described by Wimbledon and Perkins, it has been suggested that Davis and another pilot were the two described in their accounts. Since the officers and pilots did not make visual contact with the objects, the most likely conclusion is that radar spoofing technology was being tested. Radar jamming and deception is a technique used particularly by militaries to create false targets on radar. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFOs_of_Pudasj%C3%A4rvi] | [TOKENS: 461] |
Contents UFOs of Pudasjärvi The UFOs of Pudasjärvi (Pudasjärven ufot) were light phenomena and flying objects that many people reported seeing in and around the Pudasjärvi's area in North Ostrobothnia, Finland in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The highest number of sightings was reported in January 1971, and the largest regional concentration of sightings was in Särkivaara (now Syötekylä [fi]), located about 145 kilometres (90 mi) northeast of Oulu and about 165 kilometres (103 mi) southeast of Rovaniemi in the vicinity of Iso-Syöte near the Taivalkoski's municipal border. In terms of timing, it was also related to the Saapunki's "light ball" [fi] seen in Kuusamo in January 1971. The interest of UFO researchers and the press in the UFOs of Pudasjärvi was aroused by a sighting in September 1969. After that, UFO researchers from other parts of Finland and Sweden visited the region. Scientists also took a prominent part in the public debate sparked by the UFO sightings in Pudasjärvi, commenting skeptically on the alleged observations and evidence; some parties even tried to find uranium in Pudasjärvi, inspired by the UFO sightings. An earthquake light has been proposed as an explanation for the Pudasjärvi phenomena; based on seismic magnitude measurements made in Finland, there are more earthquakes than usual in Northwestern Kainuu and Southeastern Lapland, most of which can only be detected with a seismometer, and on the other hand, the Pudasjärvi region is home to an ancient fault line and the boundary between different rock types. In the 1970s, engineer Ahti Karivieri [fi] (1933–2022) and motorist Atte Särkelä [fi] (1936–2021) planned and implemented a small-scale photography project. The result was approximately 400 shots of color slides, black-and-white photos and infrared images. The best and most research-valuable images were obtained on infrared film. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Lake_Incident] | [TOKENS: 3201] |
Contents Falcon Lake Incident The Falcon Lake Incident was an alleged UFO encounter on May 20, 1967, at Falcon Lake, within Whiteshell Provincial Park in the Canadian province of Manitoba. Unlike typical UFO reports, the lone witness, Steve Michalak, claimed to hear human voices, said the craft was man-made, and claimed burns on his abdomen were caused by its exhaust. CBC News has called it "Canada's best-documented UFO case". Initially telling police he was burned by a spaceship, Michalak later told the press it was a man-made aircraft, prompting investigations by law enforcement and the military. Despite agreeing not to disturb the site, Michalak unexpectedly visited it with another person and gave authorities objects he claimed he had collected from the site. When some of those objects tested positive for low-level radioactivity, chemists suggested the objects might have been contaminated with substances like radium-based paint, which was accessible at the time. In 1968, Michalak told press his burns had returned and they photographed a grid-like pattern of marks on his abdomen that bore little resemblance to his earlier burns. A psychiatrist concluded the new wounds were likely self-inflicted. In 2017, CBC news quoted Michalak's son as saying: "If Dad hoaxed this – remember we're talking about a blue-collar, industrial mechanic – if he hoaxed it then he was a freakin' genius." Overview On May 20, 1967, Steve Michalak reported to a passing member of the highway patrol that he had been burned by a "spaceship". Later that night, Michalak sought medical treatment for first-degree burns. Two days later, Michalak contacted the press, and the resulting media coverage triggered multiple civilian and official investigations in both Canada and the United States. On May 23, a civilian UFO investigator photographed Michalak's torso, showing typical burns that were irregularly shaped and unevenly spaced. Though he had promised not to disturb the site, on June 26 Michalak unexpectedly reported to authorities that he had returned to the supposed landing site to collect artifacts, including a burnt shirt, steel tape, and a soil sample. After a soil sample provided by Michalak tested positive for potentially dangerous levels of radioactivity, he led authorities to the landing site. While trace amounts of radiation were found, suggestive of a natural radium vein or perhaps contamination by a luminescent radium paint, nothing dangerous was detected. Near the end of 1967, Michalak published his story in a booklet. The following January, he again contacted the press, which ran photographs of Michalak with a grid of uniform, evenly spaced marks on his abdomen that he described as burns that had come back. A Mayo Clinic psychiatrist who examined Michalak reported that his lesions were diagnosed as "obviously factitial," though they did not find overt evidence of significant mental illness. Spaceship report of May 20 On Saturday, May 20, 1967, at approximately 3 p.m., Constable G. A. Solotki of the Falcon Beach Highway Patrol was driving on Trans-Canada Highway 1 when he was flagged down by Steve Michalak. Michalak warned the constable not to approach too closely, citing fears of spreading a skin disease or radiation. According to a police report from just days later, Michalak, a 50 year old mechanic, reported seeing "two spaceships" that glowed red and rotated. He claimed he had touched the craft and that his hat and shirt had been burned; however, he refused to show the officer the burned shirt, claiming it was in the briefcase he was carrying. Solotki witnessed a burn on the hat but not on Michalak's head. Michalak showed marks that Solotki said appeared consistent with rubbing ash on the skin. While Michalak claimed he had been prospecting, Solotki noticed he had no camping or prospecting equipment, nor a vehicle. Solotki reported that he felt Michalak "had been on a drunk and was suffering from a hangover". Solotki's report notes he did not smell alcohol on Michalak and that he offered to help him return to Falcon Beach and seek treatment, but the offer was declined. Returning home to Winnipeg on a Greyhound bus, Michalak was treated that night for first-degree burns as an outpatient at the Misericordia Health Centre. Public claims of unidentified aircraft and human voices Michalak contacted The Winnipeg Tribune and was interviewed at his home by reporter Heather Chisvin. The paper subsequently published his account under the title "I was burned by UFO," along with a photo of Michalak posing with his drawing of the object he reportedly witnessed: a disc-shaped craft consistent with the classic "flying saucer". On May 23, papers throughout the region reported Michalak's claim of having seen strange objects at Falcon Lake the prior Saturday. According to Michalak, one of the objects landed; he described it as 35 feet long and metallic. He stated that a door had opened, emitting bright violet light, air-hissing sounds, and voices that were "definitely human." Michalak reported speaking to the craft in multiple languages but received no response. He was reportedly burned in a "checkerboard pattern" when the craft took off; the press quoted his family doctor as having examined the burns. Michalak also reported headaches, vomiting, rapid weight loss, and emitting a "foul smell" after his encounter. He claimed the craft had left behind a circular indentation where grass and leaves had been removed, which he presumed was caused by the craft's heat. A burnt undershirt was photographed, showing a grid-like pattern of marks that differed from his irregularly shaped burns. The incident was investigated by various Canadian authorities, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), the Department of Health, and the Department of National Defence, as well as American authorities such as the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) and the United States Air Force (as a part of the Condon Committee). On May 23, Michalak was visited by J. B. Thompson, a member of the UFO group APRO. Thompson photographed Michalak's burns, which medical records described as "several round and irregular shaped burns the size of a silver dollar." While Michalak claimed the burns formed a grid caused by exhaust from evenly spaced holes in the craft, Thompson's photo shows irregularly shaped, blotchy burns. That same day, two members of the RCMP interviewed Michalak at his home. He reported having lost 13 pounds in the three days since the incident due to nausea, vomiting, headaches, and a strange taste and smell. The officers witnessed the burns on his abdomen, likening their appearance to "an exceptionally severe sunburn" localized to one spot. Michalak recalled his encounter with Constable Solotki and explained his unwillingness to show the officer his shirt by saying he feared he had been exposed to radiation and did not want to contaminate anyone. He further explained his previous reluctance to provide a specific location by claiming he had discovered a high-quality nickel strike nearby and wanted to protect the site. However, he offered to escort officers there once he was physically able. Michalak showed the officers his burnt cap, melted grinder goggles, and burnt undershirt. The shirt was sent to a lab to be tested for radioactivity, but none was found. A partially melted glove was given to J. B. Thompson. On May 25, the RCMP and the RCAF conducted an aerial search followed by a ground search. They found objects Michalak had mentioned discarding, such as a shopping bag and an old saw he had found along a trail, but failed to find the supposed landing site. On May 26, police interviewed employees of the Falcon Hotel, who recalled that Michalak had consumed several beers the night before the incident, despite his denials of any alcohol use. On June 26, Michalak contacted the RCAF to report that he and a partner, Gerald Hart, had located the landing site over the weekend. Although he had promised to guide investigators to the location, he now refused to cooperate, citing concerns about his mineral claim. Despite previous instructions from authorities not to remove items from the site, Michalak reported that he had already collected several items, including his burnt outer shirt and soil samples. The sample provided by Michalak was tested and found to be "highly radioactive." Consequently, officials swept Michalak's home for signs of radioactive materials and took possession of the remaining soil. In light of the lab report showing potentially dangerous radioactivity, Michalak reportedly became fully cooperative and agreed to lead authorities to the site. Upon arrival, investigators noted a semicircle where moss had been removed. While trace amounts of radiation were detected in a rock crevice, the levels posed no danger to life. Chemists suggested the radiation may have resulted from contamination by commercially available radium-based luminescent paint. On June 30, the press reported that Michalak's case was being investigated by defense authorities amid a surge of UFO reports in the area. The incident was featured in the May/June bulletin of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). In October, the press reported that Michalak had been interviewed by Professor Ray Craig of the Condon Committee at the University of Colorado, and that Michalak had led the RCMP to the reported landing site, where they confirmed the presence of burnt vegetation. On November 6, Minister of National Defense Léo Cadieux stated that the government would not publicly release the official investigation report. A series of dramatic comic strips about the incident ran in newspapers in November 1967. 1968: burns allegedly return Late in the year, Michalak published his account in a 40-page pamphlet titled My encounter with the UFO, published in 1967 by Osnova Publications in Polish and retold by Paul Pihichyn, who had translated the account into English. On January 17, 1968, the Winnipeg Tribune reported Michalak's claim that the burns had returned, noting he claimed they had previously returned once before. Michalak was photographed showing a grid of uniform, evenly spaced marks, which were significantly different from the unevenly shaped burns described in medical records and depicted in the Thompson photo eight months prior. Many sources mistook the 1968 grid marks for being the actual burns from May 1967. On August 6, 1968, a psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota examined Michalak. In the resulting report, the physician observed, "Despite the fact that his lesions have been diagnosed as obviously factitial, I can find no overt evidence of significant mental or emotional illness." By October, American UFO conspiracy theorists had accused the Canadian and American governments of covering up the incident. By November 14, 1968, Michalak was himself accusing the government of a coverup to avoid a national panic. Editorials called on the government to release documents about the Falcon Lake sighting. Metallic debris claim By November 1968, newspapers reported on a piece of metal that Michalak said he had found near the supposed landing site. The material was analyzed by professional astronomer and UFO researcher Peter Millman, who found it to be 95% silver but very slightly radioactive, on a level likened to a glow-in-the-dark wristwatch. Millman suggested the metal had been dipped in pitchblende to create a hoaxed artifact. Skeptical reaction Skeptics of the Falcon Lake UFO Incident state that Michalak's burns were a result of an accident stemming from alcohol use, and that his claim was made to hide their true cause. In reporting the incident, Michalak likely intended to dissuade any competitors from prospecting at his site. The subsequent frenzy by the public and media caused the reverse effect, however, with numerous individuals descending upon the site. The pieces of melted, radioactive metal were purported by skeptics of the case to have been planted after the incident to solidify the hoax. John B. Alexander, writing in the Journal for Scientific Exploration, states that some of Michalak's long-lasting effects, including the skin lesions, which he claimed were due to exposure to the exhaust blast, were a result of an allergic reaction. Alexander highlighted the inconsistencies within Michalak's testimony regarding the event. Aaron Sakulich, writing for the Iron Skeptic, agrees with the alcohol-use explanation. Michalak's inconsistencies in his testimony when discussing his interactions with highway patrol officer G. A. Solotki, as well as the nature of the drinks Michalak had prior to the incident, were of note. Michalak's claims about his interactions with G. A. Solotki are directly disputed by Solotki's own report for the RCMP the night of the incident, which stated Michalak was reluctant to answer questions despite his visible burns and possibly inebriated state. By claiming he was the victim of a UFO-related attack, Michalak could deflect attention away from prospecting competition on a site where he had already staked a claim. In popular culture The incident was featured in Unsolved Mysteries (Season 5, Episode 8), where Michalak was interviewed about his account of the events alongside dramatic reenactments. In 2010, singer-songwriter Jim Bryson and The Weakerthans released the album The Falcon Lake Incident, which was named after the event and recorded in a cottage at Falcon Lake. Speaking with the National Post, John K. Samson stated that he "[did not] believe in extraterrestrials" but "certainly believes in people's encounters." The 2013 film Rulers of Darkness was inspired by the events. In the film, the protagonist's mother is killed by burns from a UFO at Falcon Lake, mirroring Michalak's claims. Fifty years after the incident, Michalak's son, Stan Michalak, and ufologist Chris Rutkowski published When They Appeared—Falcon Lake 1967: The Inside Story of a Close Encounter, which compiled the case according to eyewitness testimony. Other books on the subject include George Dudding's The Falcon Lake UFO Encounter. In 2018, the Royal Canadian Mint commemorated the 50th anniversary by issuing a $20 non-circulating silver coin as part of its Canada's Unexplained Phenomena series. Illustrated by Joel Kimmel, the coin features glow-in-the-dark elements, the first coin to have this trait, with beams emanating from the craft's underside. The front side depicts Queen Elizabeth II, while the back shows Michalak falling from an exhaust blast in the Manitoba wilderness while a UFO hovers above him. Only 4,000 coins were made, initially retailing for $129.95. Documents and burned articles of clothing pertaining to the incident were donated to the University of Manitoba Archives in 2019. Falcon Beach Ranch, owned by Devin and Kendra Imrie, who inherited the land containing the alleged landing site, offers a "UFO Tour" for visitors wishing to explore the area. See also References External links Library and Archives Canada contains an extensive collection of the archived documents from civil authorities referring to the incident within its database, compiled under a special database titled Canada's UFOs: The search for the unknown: The Canadian Encyclopedia discusses the Falcon Lake Incident as a part of its UFOs in Canada article. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_UFO_incident] | [TOKENS: 2090] |
Contents Jimmy Carter UFO incident Jimmy Carter, United States president from 1977 until 1981, reported seeing an unidentified flying object while at Leary, Georgia, in 1969. While serving as governor of Georgia, Carter was asked (on September 14, 1973) by the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City to file a report of the sighting, and he filed a statement on September 18, mailed September 20. Since its writing, the report has been discussed several times by both ufologists and by members of the mainstream media. Sighting One evening in 1969, two years before he became Governor of Georgia, Carter was preparing to give a speech at a Lions Club meeting. He reported that at about 7:15 pm, one of the guests called his attention to a strange bright white object, about as bright as the moon, that was about 30 degrees above the horizon to the west of where they were standing. It moved toward their direction, but stopped beyond a stand of pine trees some distance from them. The object then changed color, first to blue, then to red, then back to white, before appearing to recede into the distance. Carter felt that the object was self-illuminated, and not solid in nature. Carter's report indicates that it was witnessed by about 10 or 12 other people, and was in view for 10 to 12 minutes before it passed out of sight. In 1973, Carter reiterated: There were about twenty of us standing outside of a little restaurant, I believe, a high school lunch room, and a kind of green light appeared in the western sky. This was right after sundown. It got brighter and brighter. And then it eventually disappeared. It didn't have any solid substance to it, it was just a very peculiar-looking light. None of us could understand what it was. Speaking in a 2005 interview, Carter said: All of a sudden, one of the men looked up and said, 'Look, over in the west!' And there was a bright light in the sky. We all saw it. And then the light, it got closer and closer to us. And then it stopped, I don't know how far away, but it stopped beyond the pine trees. And all of a sudden it changed color to blue, and then it changed to red, then back to white. And we were trying to figure out what in the world it could be, and then it receded into the distance. The exact date on which the sighting occurred has been called into question by investigators. According to the report that he filed with the International UFO Bureau four years after the incident, Carter saw the UFO in October 1969. However, investigators have cited Lions Club records as evidence that it occurred nine months earlier. According to a meeting report that he filed with the Lions Club, Carter gave his Leary speech on January 6, 1969, not in October. The setting of his January meeting as described in his report to the Lions Club also matches the setting that he would later describe to the media when speaking about his sighting. His report to the Lions Club made no mention of the sighting itself. Other evidence rules out the October 1969 date and is consistent with January 1969. First, Carter visited the Leary Lions Club in his capacity as district governor of the Lions Club. His term ended in June 1969. Second, the Leary Lions Club disbanded several months before October 1969. Object and investigation According to an investigation[by whom?] carried out in 1976, some seven years after the event, most of those present at the meeting either did not recall the event, or did not recall it as being anything important. According to Fred Hart, the only guest contacted who remembered seeing the object: "It seems like there was a little—like a blue light or something or other in the sky that night—like some kind of weather balloon they send out or something ... it had been pretty far back in my mind." While puzzled by the object and its origins, Carter himself later said that, while he had considered the object to be a UFO—on the grounds it was unexplained—his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft. On January 6, 1969, the sky was clear in Leary and the planet Venus was near its maximum brightness and in the direction described by Carter. Ufologist Robert Sheaffer concluded that the object that Carter witnessed was a misidentification of Venus.[self-published source] Ufologist Allan Hendry did calculations and agrees with the assessment of it being Venus. This could also be the Venus "halo", as was discussed on The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast #105 in a 2007 interview with Jimmy Carter. In the interview Carter stated that he did not believe the object was Venus, explaining that he was an amateur astronomer and knew what Venus looked like. He also said that as a scientist he did not believe it was an alien craft and at the time assumed it was probably a military aircraft from a nearby base. However, he said that the object did not make any sound like a helicopter would do. Carter also said that he did not believe that any extraterrestrials have visited Earth. In the podcast interview, he also stated he knows of no government cover-up of extraterrestrial visits and that the rumors that the CIA refused to give him information about UFOs are not true. In 2016, the hosts of episode #561 of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast read a letter forwarded by a member of the Carter family from Carl G. "Jere" Justus, giving his explanation of Carter's UFO sighting: After recently reading the book Georgia Myths & Legends, by Augusta Chronicle columnist Don Rhodes, specifically Chapter 5, "Jimmy Carter and the UFO", I am virtually certain that I have identified the source of what it was that President Carter saw. In the 1960s and early 70s, I worked on an Air Force sponsored project that studied the upper atmosphere using releases of glowing chemical clouds, produced by rockets launched from Eglin AFB rocket range in Florida. Some of these chemical clouds, notably sodium and barium, were visible by the process of resonance scattering of sunlight. Clouds of this type had to be launched not long after sunset or not long before sunrise. This was due to the fact that the cloud had to be in sunlight at high altitude, while it was still dark enough at ground level for the cloud to be visible against the dark sky. In Carter's official 1973 UFO report, as given in the Rhodes book, he stated that he had seen the phenomenon in October, 1969, at 7:15 pm EST. However, it has been determined from Lions Club records that Carter must have seen the "UFO" when he spoke to their Leary, GA Chapter on January 6, 1969. The report "U.S. Space Science Program Report to COSPAR, 1970" (QB504.U54, Appendix I, page 154) documents that there was a barium cloud launched from Eglin AFB (Rocket Number AG7.626) and released on January 6, 1969 at 7:35 pm EST (January 7, 1969, 0035 UTC) [COSPAR stands for Committee on Space Research]. The reported altitude for this cloud was 152 km. With a distance between Leary, GA and Eglin AFB, FL of about 234 km, this cloud would have appeared in the sky at an elevation of 33 degrees (consistent with Carter's estimate of a 30 degree elevation). Carter's report notes that stars were visible, so the night must have been clear. I can verify from personal experience that under clear skies, a barium cloud such as this would easily have been visible from the distance of Leary, GA. Carter reported the UFO "appeared from West". The direction of Eglin AFB from Leary, GA is approximately WSW. Thus this barium cloud at Eglin is consistent with Carter's reported "UFO" as to time, elevation, and direction. Furthermore, the appearance reported by Carter is totally consistent with a high-altitude barium cloud. His report stated that it was "bluish at first, then reddish, luminous, not solid". A neutral barium cloud would initially glow bluish or greenish, with parts of it taking on a reddish glow as some of the barium becomes ionized in the high altitude sunlight. The size and brightness, reported as being about that of the moon, would also be consistent with a barium cloud at Eglin, as viewed from Leary, GA. Carter has been reported as saying that he never believed that he had seen an alien spacecraft, but that he had no idea exactly what it was. I'm interested in exploring if this information could be relayed to President Carter, so that if he wishes to, he can better understand what it was that he saw back then. In 2020, Justus completed an extensive study of the high-altitude barium release clouds, concluding that what Carter saw was "totally consistent" with what was launched that evening from Eglin AFB. Justus described several physical aspects supporting consistency, and submitted a copy of the report for archival at the Jimmy Carter Library. Personal impact The sighting is said to have had a personal impact on Carter and his perception of UFOs and UFO sightings. During his 1976 election campaign, he is said to have told reporters that, as a result of it, he would institute a policy of openness if he were elected to office, saying: One thing's for sure, I'll never make fun of people who say they've seen unidentified objects in the sky. If I become President, I'll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists. Despite his earlier pledge, once elected, Carter distanced himself from disclosure, citing "defense implications" as being behind his decision. 1970s media reports See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_incident] | [TOKENS: 1021] |
Contents Robert Taylor incident In ufology, the Taylor Incident, a.k.a. Livingston Incident or Dechmont Woods Encounter is the name given to claims of sighting an extraterrestrial spacecraft on Dechmont Law in Livingston, West Lothian, Scotland, in 1979 by forester Robert "Bob" Taylor (1919–2007). When Taylor returned home from a trip to Dechmont Law dishevelled, his clothes torn and with grazes to his chin and thighs, he claimed he had encountered a "flying dome" which tried to pull him aboard. Due to his injuries, the police recorded the matter as a common assault and the incident is popularly promoted as the "only example of an alien sighting becoming the subject of a criminal investigation". Taylor's story According to Taylor, a forestry worker for the Livingston Development Corporation, on 9 November 1979 he parked his pickup truck at the side of a road near the M8 motorway and walked along a forest path up the side of Dechmont Law with his dog, red setter Lara. At 10 a.m., he rounded a corner in Deans Forest and saw the object. Taylor reported seeing what he described as a "flying dome" or a large, circular sphere approximately 7 yards (6.4 m; 21 ft) in diameter, hovering above the forest floor in a clearing about 530 yards (1,590 ft; 480 m) away from his truck. Taylor described the object as made of "a dark metallic material with a rough texture like sandpaper", and featuring an outer rim "set with small propellers". Taylor claims he experienced a foul odour "like burning brakes" and that smaller spheres "similar to sea mines" seized him and were dragging him in the direction of the larger object when he lost consciousness. According to Taylor, when he later awoke, his dog was barking furiously and the objects were gone, but he could not start his truck, so he walked back to his home in Livingston. He lived at 4 Broomyknowe Drive, at Livingston Station (now Deans, West Lothian), near Livingston United F.C.. He had been a forestry worker for 15 years. Later he moved to Berrydale Road in Blairgowrie and Rattray. Livingston Development Corporation (LDC) agreed to add a commemorative plaque in 1990, due to his case's worldwide notoriety. It was the world's first plaque commemorating an alleged UFO incident, and installed in January 1992. Police investigation Taylor's wife, Mary, reported that when he arrived home on foot, he appeared dishevelled and muddy with torn clothing and ripped trousers. She called the police and a doctor, who treated him for grazes to his chin and thighs. His wife telephoned Malcolm Drummond, the head of the Livingston Development Corporation. Police accompanied Taylor to the site where he claimed he had received his injuries. They found "ladder-shaped marks" in the ground where Taylor said he had saw the large spherical object and other marks that Taylor said had been made by the smaller, mine-like objects. Police recorded the matter as a criminal assault. Ufologists The story drew attention from ufologists, and Taylor became notable among UFO enthusiasts as having experienced "the only UFO sighting that was subject to a criminal investigation". Ufologist and author Malcolm Robinson accepts Taylor's story, saying he believes "it could be one of the few genuine cases of a UFO encounter". Sceptical reception In 1979, the UFO sceptic Steuart Campbell visited the scene of the incident with the police. Campbell was convinced that a simple explanation would be found. On his second visit to the site, he stated that he had observed some PVC pipes in an adjoining field. He discovered that the local water authority had laid a cable duct within 100m of the clearing. He came to the conclusion that stacks of pipes might have been stored in the clearing and were responsible for the ground markings. Patricia Hannaford, founder of the Edinburgh University UFO Research Society and a qualified physician, advised Campbell on medical aspects of the case. She suggested that Taylor's collapse was an isolated attack of temporal lobe epilepsy, and the fit explained the objects as hallucinations. Symptoms such as Taylor's previous meningitis, his report of a strong smell which nobody else could detect, his headache, dry throat, paralysis of his legs and period of unconsciousness suggested this cause. Steve Donnelly, a physicist and editor for The Skeptic, also considered the incident to be explained by an epileptic attack. Campbell suggested Taylor's attack might have been stimulated by a mirage of Venus. Local businessman Phill Fenton published a report in 2013, speculating that Taylor "may have suffered a mini-stroke and been exposed to harmful chemicals which left him confused and disoriented" and that "the UFO he believes he saw could have been a saucer-shaped water tower nearby". See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash%E2%80%93Landrum_incident] | [TOKENS: 3278] |
Contents Cash–Landrum incident The Cash–Landrum Incident was an unidentified flying object sighting in the United States in 1980, which witnesses claimed was responsible for causing health and property damage. Uncharacteristically for such UFO reports, this resulted in civil court proceedings, though the case ended in a dismissal. A number of skeptical investigators, including Philip J. Klass, Peter Brookesmith, Steuart Campbell, Curt Collins, and Brian Dunning, questioned the details and overall authenticity of the incident. Incident report On the evening of December 29, 1980, Betty Cash (aged 51), Vickie Landrum (57), and Vickie's grandson Colby Landrum (7) were going home to Dayton, Texas, in Cash's Oldsmobile Cutlass car after dining out. They later said that about 9 p.m., while driving on an isolated two-lane road in dense woods, they saw a light above some trees and that they first thought it was an airplane approaching Houston Intercontinental Airport (about 35 miles [56 km] away) and gave it little notice. A few minutes later on the winding roads, they saw what they believed to be the same light as before, but thought it was now much closer and brighter. They said that it came from a huge diamond-shaped object, which hovered at about treetop level, and that its base was expelling flame and emitting significant heat. Landrum told Cash to stop the car, fearing they would be burned if they got closer. A born again Christian, she interpreted the object as a sign of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, telling Colby, "That's Jesus. He will not hurt us." Cash said she was anxious, and considered turning the car around, but abandoned this idea, because the road was too narrow and she presumed the car would get stuck on the dirt shoulders, which were soft from that evening's rains. Cash and Landrum said that they got out of the car to examine the object, but that Colby was terrified, and so Landrum said she quickly returned to the car to comfort him. Cash remained outside, "mesmerized by the bizarre sight", as Jerome Clark wrote. He went on: "The object, intensely bright and a dull metallic silver, was shaped like a huge upright diamond, about the size of the Dayton water tower, with its top and bottom cut off so that they were flat rather than pointed. Small blue lights ringed the center, and periodically over the next few minutes flames shot out of the bottom, flaring outward to create the effect of a large cone. Every time the fire dissipated, the UFO floated a few feet downward toward the road. But when the flames blasted out again, the object rose about the same distance." They said the heat was strong enough to make the car's metal body painful to the touch. Cash said she had to use her coat to protect her hand from being burned by the door handle when she finally got back in the car. When she touched the dashboard, Landrum claimed her hand pressed into the softened vinyl, leaving an imprint that was evident weeks later. Investigators cited it as proof of their account; video evidence of this was shown in UFOs: What's Going On, a 1985 HBO documentary. They said that the object then ascended over the treetops, and rose higher in the sky, and then a group of helicopters approached it, surrounding it in tight formation. Cash and Landrum counted 23 helicopters, and later identified some of them as tandem-rotor Boeing CH-47 Chinooks used by military forces worldwide. More specifically, Cash claimed that they had "United States Air Force" markings. With the road now clear, Cash says she drove on, claiming to see glimpses of the object and the helicopters receding into the distance. From first sighting the object to its departure, they said the encounter lasted about 20 minutes. Based on descriptions given in John F. Schuessler's book about the incident, it appears[according to whom?] that they were southbound on Texas state highway FM 1485/2100 when they claimed to have seen the object. The initial location of the reported object, based on the same descriptions, was just south of Inland Road, approximately at 30°05′33″N 95°06′39″W / 30.0926°N 95.1109°W / 30.0926; -95.1109.[original research?] But as published in Skeptical Inquirer, Robert Sheaffer has concluded that despite media reports to the contrary, "neither Cash, nor Landrum, nor Schuessler had any idea [of precisely] where this incident actually took place!". The witnesses claimed that after the UFO and helicopters left, Cash took the Landrums home, then retired for the evening. That night, they reportedly all experienced similar symptoms, though Cash to a greater degree. The claim was that they suffered from nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, generalized weakness, a burning sensation in their eyes, and feeling as though they were suffering from sunburn. Over the next few days, Cash said her symptoms worsened, with many large, painful blisters forming on her skin. When taken to a hospital emergency room on January 3, 1981, Clark writes, Cash "could not walk, and had lost large patches of skin and clumps of hair. She was released after 12 days, though her condition was not much better, and she later returned to the hospital for another 15 days." In a 1985 HBO documentary, UFOs: What's Going On, Cash's hair loss was shown in pictures and she claimed doctors switched from treating her for burns to treating her for radiation sickness after realizing she had been exposed to radiation. Later, she was treated for cancer. The Landrums' health was somewhat better, though reportedly both suffered from lingering weakness, skin sores and hair loss. In April 1981, Vickie was found to be developing a cataract in one eye, and Betty was first treated for breast cancer in 1983. Neither condition was known to have been present prior to their UFO encounter. However, Brad Sparks contends that, although the symptoms were somewhat similar to those caused by ionizing radiation, the rapidity of onset was only consistent with a massive dose that would have meant certain death in a few days. Since all of the victims lived for years after the incident, Sparks suggests the cause of the symptoms was some kind of chemical contamination, presumably by an aerosol. In Gary P. Posner's contributed Cash-Landrum chapter for the 60-authored compendium titled The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony, he agrees with Sparks about ionizing radiation, but concludes that there are "myriad reasons for skepticism of virtually every aspect" of this case. For example, regarding the above chronology in Clark (1998), Posner notes that Betty's actual medical records, as detailed in Schuessler (1998) document that she was initially hospitalized from January 2–19, her attending physician noted "little, if any, hair loss" upon admission (though it did develop weeks later), and her dermatology consultant diagnosed only cellulitis/swelling of the scalp and face with no mention of any skin loss. During their Bergstrom Air Force Base interview eight months post-incident (see "Legal action" below), when asked to sketch a picture of what they saw "if it had a discernible shape," Betty drew and signed (see "External links" below) what she described as "a diamond" (Vickie concurred, added flames shooting down from the pointed bottom, and also signed the sketch). However, in their "first documented reports of the incident" (recorded, and then transcribed by John Schuessler's wife Kathy) a mere 34 days following their alleged close encounter, Betty Cash stated that she "could not get up close enough [and] the lights were too bright" for her to discern the shape, and Vickie said that she also "couldn't tell," adding that only her seven-year-old grandson Colby "swore it looked like a big diamond." One day in April 1981, a CH-47 helicopter flew into Dayton. As Colby watched, he became very upset. Landrum decided to take him to the spot where the helicopter had landed with the hope that it would seem less frightening on the ground. When they reached the landing zone, they found a lot of people there already and had to wait some time before they were allowed to go inside the helicopter and talk to the pilot. Landrum and another visitor both claimed that the pilot said he had been in the area before for the purpose of checking on a UFO in trouble near Huffman. When Landrum told the pilot how glad she was to see him, because she had been one of the people burned by the UFO, he refused to talk to them further and hustled them out of the aircraft. However, this confrontation was born of confusion, as the pilot's incident, though also involving a reported unidentified craft, had apparently taken place in July 1977, more than three years prior to Landrum's. In May 1982, UFO investigators interviewed a Dayton police officer, Patrolman Lamar Walker, and his wife Marie, who claimed to have seen approximately 12 Chinook-type helicopters the same night and near the same area in which the Cash-Landrum event had allegedly occurred. They did not report seeing a UFO or unexplained lights, but said that one or more of the helicopters "had some type of a [bright] light shining down." Aftermath Eventually, Cash and Landrum contacted their U.S. Senators, Lloyd Bentsen and John Tower, who suggested that the witnesses file a complaint with the Judge Advocate Claims office at Bergstrom Air Force Base. In August 1981, Cash, Landrum, and Colby were interviewed at length by personnel at Bergstrom Air Force Base, and were told that they should hire a lawyer, and seek financial compensation for their injuries. With attorney Peter Gersten taking on the case pro bono, the case wound its way through the U.S. courts for several years. Cash and Landrum sued the U.S. federal government for $20 million. Testimony of officials from NASA, the Air Force, and the Army and Navy was given. Persuaded by their testimony (and other evidence) that no agency of the U.S. government possessed any such UFO, and that no military personnel had operated any of the reported helicopters, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed their case on August 21, 1986. The incident received coverage in both the tabloid press and mainstream media: Betty Joyce Cash (née Collins) died aged 69 on December 29, 1998, 18 years to the day after her claimed close encounter. Vickie Marzelia Landrum (née Holifield) died aged 83 on September 12, 2007. Investigations Landrum telephoned a number of U.S. government agencies and officials about the encounter. When she telephoned NASA, she was steered toward NASA aerospace engineer John Schuessler, long interested in UFOs. With some associates from civilian UFO research group Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), Schuessler began research on the case, and later wrote articles and a book on the subject. Astronomer Allan Hendry of Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) also briefly investigated the Cash–Landrum case. Due to the Chinook helicopters' presence, the witnesses presumed that at least one branch of the United States Armed Forces had witnessed the object, maybe even escorting or pursuing it. However, investigators could find no evidence linking the helicopters with any branch of the military. In 1982, Lt. Col. George Sarran, of the Office of the Inspector General of the United States Army, began the only thorough formal governmental investigation into the supposed UFO encounter. He could not find any evidence that the helicopters the witnesses claimed to have seen belonged to the U.S. Armed Forces. Sarran stated that "Ms. Landrum and Ms. Cash were credible ... the policeman and his wife [who claimed to have seen 12 helicopters near the UFO encounter site] were also credible witnesses. There was no perception that anyone was trying to exaggerate the truth." (quoted in Clark, p. 177) In 1994, UFO skeptic Steuart Campbell suggested that the witnesses may have observed a mirage of the star Canopus, which lay exactly in line with the road. In 1998, journalist and UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass, found a few reasons to doubt the story by Cash and Landrum: When Schuessler inspected Betty's car in early 1981 and used a Geiger counter to check for radioactivity, he found none. Presumably he also checked for radioactivity when he visited the site of the (alleged) incident, and found no abnormal radiation ... [Schuessler] provides NO medical data on Betty's health PRIOR to the UFO incident. Nor does he provide any medical data on the prior health of Vicki or Colby. [emphasis in original] UFO researcher Curt Collins details the unsuccessful efforts of the Texas Department of Health's Bureau of Radiation Control to detect any residual radiation in the vicinity of the reported incident. He quotes from a 1981 Houston Chronicle article in which Russ Meyer, manager of the state's public health department in Houston, says, "If there had been radioactive contamination in large amounts, some would still be left there." The Chronicle article goes on: "However, he said certain types of radiation – such as ultraviolet light, infrared light and low-energy X-rays – might not leave any residual traces." Other UFO researchers point out that high-energy ionizing radiation of the kind that can cause damage to human beings, such as gamma radiation, does not induce radioactivity in objects and would not have left behind any residual radioactivity in the area.[citation needed] Skeptical British ufologist Peter Brookesmith writes: "Sceptics have always asked a blunt and fundamental question: What was the trio's state of health before their alleged encounter?". Brookesmith also wrote: "To ufologists, the case is perhaps the most baffling and frustrating of modern times, for what started with solid evidence for a notoriously elusive phenomenon petered out in a maze of dead ends, denials, and perhaps even official deviousness." In December 2018, Brian Dunning investigated the case and reported his findings on the Skeptoid podcast. He found that Cash's doctor's notes attribute her hair loss to the autoimmune disease alopecia areata, that her other symptoms could be caused by illness that started before the incident, and that Landrum's only documented illness is developing cataract in one eye. Dunning concludes: In my experience, it's completely plausible that Cash and Landrum wrongly, but honestly, placed the blame for their health problems onto whatever they saw; and even pushed the truth a bit trying to get the Air Force to pay for it. When you believe in your heart that the Air Force did something wrong that harmed you, you don't necessarily feel that it's wrong to exaggerate evidence – like seeing the words Air Force on the side of the helicopters, adding on symptoms to people who didn't have them, even faking sunburn spots on your arm – as long as it's in pursuit of what you believe to be a just settlement. According to Texas Monthly, "To this day, there is no conclusive explanation of the night’s events." [Note: The Texas Monthly article by Pamela Colloff, cited above and below, contains an erroneous "1969" byline date (the C–L incident occurred 11 years thereafter). Colloff is uncertain but thinks she probably wrote it in 1996 or '97 (per this e-mail).] See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanfretta_UFO_Incident] | [TOKENS: 1892] |
Contents Zanfretta UFO Incident The Zanfretta UFO incident was an alleged alien encounter that occurred on December 6, 1978 near the town of Torriglia, in the province of Genoa, northern Italy, and which involved security guard Pier Fortunato Zanfretta, who claimed to have had a close encounter with an extraterrestrial being during a night patrol and to have also seen a triangular spaceship that blinded him with an extremely intense light before disappearing into the sky. Following the media frenzy caused by the news spreading across the country, Zanfretta agreed to undergo a regressive hypnosis session, through which he reportedly remembered being abducted and taken aboard the extraterrestrial craft. However, the use of hypnosis was deemed invalidating by skeptics, as it has no scientific validity and tends to induce false memories in patients. Zanfretta later claimed to have been abducted by the extraterrestrial beings 11 times between 1978 and 1981. He also claimed to have received an alien artifact, but was never able to prove its existence. His story is the most documented alleged alien abduction case in Italian ufology. Initial encounter On the evening of December 6, 1978, night watchman Pier Fortunato Zanfretta – 26 years old at the time – was carrying out his usual patrol in the area of Marzano, a hamlet in the municipality of Torriglia, on the Genoese mountains. According to his version, around 11:30 p.m., he noticed four unusual lights in the garden of a mansion known as "Casa Nostra", which belonged to a local dentist. The gate and the front door were wide open. Convinced that a group of thieves were attempting to break in, he decided to intervene to prevent the theft. Once inside through the backyard, he saw a red, oval object with a diameter of over 10 metres (33 ft). At this point, he radioed his supervisor, who recalled him screaming. On turning around, Zanfretta reported running into beings who were 3 metres (9.8 ft) tall, with mottled skin as though they were fat or wearing a rumpled suit. The creatures had yellow triangular eyes, and clawed feet. When the supervisor asked if he was being attacked by men, Zanfretta was said to have responded "No, non sono uomini, non sono uomini..." (No, they are not men), at which point communication was lost. Zanfretta was later found unconscious and in "a state of shock" by his colleagues. The event was reported to the Carabinieri – one of the Italian police forces – at around 12 pm the following day, December 7, by the owner of the security company where Zanfretta worked. An investigation followed and brigadier Antonio Nucchi collected 52 accounts of strange events between the municipalities of Torriglia and Propata. Many people reported seeing a large bright object in the sky on the night of the Zanfretta incident; however, there is no evidence that those testimonies were reliable. The Carabinieri also certified that in the garden of the mansion there was a semicircular imprint of approximately 2 metres in diameter and 3 metres in length where the grass was flattened. Meanwhile, some journalists became interested in the story. Within days, Zanfretta's incident became a case of national interest, especially after he was invited to appear on the television variety show Portobello to share his version of the events. Journalist Rino Di Stefano – who first took an interest in the case and later published a book about it in several editions – proposed subjecting Zanfretta to a regressive hypnosis session to better remember what he had experienced on the night of December 6. The session was conducted on December 23, 1978 by Mauro Moretti, a psychotherapist and medical hypnotist, in the presence of journalists and ufologists. While under hypnosis, Zanfretta claimed that the alien beings had abducted him, taken him to a brightly lit room in their spaceship, and subjected him to painful experiments. He also added to the description of the aliens saying: "They are green, with triangular yellow eyes, with big thorns, they have green flesh and their skin is full of wrinkles as if they were old. Their mouths look like they’re made of iron, they have red veins on their heads, pointed ears and arms with fingernails… with round things… They come from the third galaxy." — Rino Di. Stefano, The Zanfretta Case: Chronicle of an Incredible True Story (2014) Other encounters On the night of December 27, 1978, Zanfretta disappeared again after a frantic radio communication in which he announced that his car had stopped. The search for him was hampered by the fog and rain that weighed on the area that night. He was found just over an hour later near a mountain road, not too far from the Fiat 127 car he had been driving, in a state of deep shock. The policemen who rescued him testified that his clothes were dry and his body was particularly warm despite the rain and low temperatures. Also, what appeared to be large footprints were noticed near the site of the discovery. Zanfretta explained that he had been abducted again by the same aliens and that they wanted to take him away permanently. Because of his statements, he was interviewed by a neurologist who, on January 31, 1979, issued a certificate declaring that he had not detected any alterations in his thinking or psychosensory disturbances, and that no observation period or therapeutic advice was necessary. Following the second incident, the security company Zanfretta worked for decided to relocate him to another area of the province and replace his vehicle with a Vespa scooter. On July 30, 1979, the man disappeared for a third time and was found about 2 km (1.2 mi) away from his motorcycle, racing disoriented in the darkness. A fourth similar incident occurred months later, on December 2, 1979. In the early 1980s, due to the numerous strange events that continued to involve Zanfretta, the Genoa police commissioner revoked his gun license, which led to him losing his job as a guard. Investigations and explanations Skeptical researchers harshly criticized the approach to the case by ufologists and sensationalist newspapers, and pointed out that the use of regressive hypnosis to reconstruct the event – in addition to having no scientific value – had been performed without any precautions for the subject, which, as has emerged in many cases, creates the possibility of inducing suggestions and false memories. Among the most critical aspects of the procedure, they reported the fact that the questions to be asked to the patient were discussed while he was already hypnotized. The administration of Penthothal was also considered unreliable since scientific evidence shows that this narcotic reduces inhibitions but doesn't make confessions made under its influence reliable. Although most skeptical journalists had no doubt that Zanfretta was in good faith and had no mental disorders, they concluded that the hypnosis sessions had invalidated his process of reconstructing the events. It was noted that the alien's race name, Dargos, strongly resembled that of Hydargos, the antagonist of Grendizer, a very popular show in Italy in 1978. Furthermore, the description of the aliens recalls one of the monsters that appeared in Zagor, a famous Italian comic book series. Hypnotist Mauro Moretti responded to these claims by stating that the subject had no familiarity with science fiction; however, this assertion was disputed because in the late 1970s there were a large number of sci-fi products appearing on television and in various types of advertising, and it was therefore unlikely that Zanfretta had no visual references in this regard. The skeptics also demonstrated that the supposed evidence for the extraterrestrial hypothesis had logical or natural explanations, which were omitted or manipulated by those who wanted to profit from the story, such as some tabloid newspapers and ufology magazines. The strange circle of crushed grass found after the first alleged encounter corresponded to the point where the owners of the mansion used to keep their horse tied up during daylight hours, and the temperature of Zanfretta's clothes was compatible with what they would have had if he had remained in the car for a while and not outside. As for the second encounter, what were described as giant footprints were actually compatible with simple puddles. Lastly, the alleged sightings of strange objects in the sky by other people at the time of the events have never been authoritatively verified. CUN, the Italian National UFO Center, declared on several occasions through its representatives that it did not consider Zanfretta's story to be reliable. In popular culture The case was the subject of the play "Loro– Storia vera del più famoso rapimento alieno in Italia" ("They— The True Story of the Most Famous Alien Abduction in Italy"). References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaikoura_lights] | [TOKENS: 1283] |
Contents Kaikoura lights The Kaikōura lights is a name given by the New Zealand media to a series of UFO sightings that occurred in December 1978 in the skies above the Kaikōura mountain ranges in the northeast of New Zealand's South Island. 21 December 1978 The first sightings were made on 21 December when Vern Powell and Ian Pirie, pilots of a Safe Air Ltd cargo aircraft, observed a series of strange lights around their Armstrong Whitworth AW.660 Argosy aircraft while flying from Blenheim to Christchurch. These objects were also tracked on radar by air traffic control at Wellington Airport. Residents of the Clarence Bridge and Kekerungu areas reported seeing strange lights around the same time but did not think much about them. 30-31 December 1978 Late on 30 December 1978, a television crew organised by Melbourne's Channel 0 boarded a Safe Air plane that was making a newspaper run between midnight and 1:00am from Wellington to Christchurch, with the intention of recording background film for a network show about the sightings of 21 December. The group consisted of Melbourne-based television reporter Quentin Fogarty (who had been holidaying in New Zealand), freelance cameraman David Crockett from Wellington, Crockett's wife Ngaire who operated a tape recorder, and the two Safe Air pilots, Bill Startup and Bob Guard. While the Crocketts and Fogarty were filming a piece to camera, Startup shouted at them to come up to the flight deck as the pilots had seen strange lights. For many minutes at a time on the flight to Christchurch, unidentified lights were observed by the five people on the flight deck. The lights were tracked by Wellington air traffic controllers and were filmed in colour on 16mm film by the television crew. The Safe Air pilot, Bill Startup, reported that a very large white light seemed to track his plane, moving above, below and in front of it. David Crockett shot film showing objects tracking the plane. After delivering its newspapers to Christchurch, the cargo plane then took off again for Blenheim at 2:16am with Fogarty and David Crockett still on board. Ngaire Crockett opted to stay in Christchurch because she was frightened, so her place was taken by Dennis Grant. Grant was a Christchurch-based TV1 journalist that Fogarty had been staying with while on holiday. The night was very dark with low and scattered cloud. When the aircraft reached about 2000 feet, it encountered what appeared to be a large lighted orb which fell into station off the wing tip and tracked along with the cargo aircraft for almost quarter of an hour while being filmed, watched, tracked on the aircraft radar and described on a tape recording made by the TV film crew. Fogarty can be heard on the recording saying "let's hope they're friendly". After landing at Woodbourne Airport at Blenheim around 3:00am on 31 December, Fogarty interviewed the pilots then returned to Melbourne where the footage aired on prime-time news that night and was later shown on news networks around the world. Astronomers suggested the lights recorded on the film looked like Jupiter or Mars, though they admitted that the planets would not show up on radar. Another suggestion they made was that the lights could be ball lightning or meteorites. British astronomer Patrick Moore thought the lights were of terrestrial origin, perhaps a reflection, a balloon or an aircraft. Channel 0 producer Leonard Lee took the 31 December footage of the lights to optical physicist Bruce Maccabee in the United States. Maccabee worked for the US Naval Surface Weapons Center in Maryland and specialised in laser technology. Maccabee also flew to New Zealand and Melbourne to interview witnesses. He calculated that the object was extremely bright and about 20 m or more in diameter, making it unlikely to be plasma or ball lightning. The DSIR disputed his calculations, stating that the lights were most likely to be from a fleet of stationary squid fishing boats in the sea below the aircraft. Maccabee refuted the statements by the DSIR, who had no proof that squid boats were in the area, and concluded that the event did involve "unknown objects or phenomena fitting the definition of UFOs". Declassified documents from the CIA, taken after the dispatch of a Lockheed P-3 Orion to the area after the sightings, stated that the sightings were "unique among civilian UFO reports because there is a large amount of documentary evidence which includes the recollections of seven witnesses, two tape recordings made during the sightings, the detection of some unusual ground and airplane radar targets, and a 16mm colour movie." A DSIR briefing to the United Nations in January 1979 stated that: After the sightings, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, the police and the Carter Observatory in Wellington cooperated in an investigation, the results of which were lodged in the National Archives in Wellington. The New Zealand Ministry of Defence attributed the sightings to lights from squid boats reflected off clouds, unburnt meteors, or lights from the planet Venus or trains and cars. Fogarty and Startup later wrote books about the incident of 30-31 December 1978. Guard later stated that he didn't know what the objects were, but he didn't believe in UFOs. He said that pilots see a lot of unidentified things, but he wouldn't report such an incident in the future because "it's not worth the hassle". David Crockett made a documentary and gave lectures about the sighting. Blenheim filmmaker Paul Davidson bought the Safe Air Argosy in 1990 when it was about to be scrapped, and made a documentary in 2008, focussing on the stories of those on board the Argosy rather than the debate about UFOs. For some years he ran UFO-themed experiences where visitors could sit in Captain Startup's seat and learn about the incident. Other sightings A spate of sightings followed the initial reports and an Air Force Skyhawk was put on stand-by to investigate any positive sightings. A TV1 film crew captured an image of a UFO near the Clarence River on 3 January 1979. Lights have appeared intermittently since the initial December 1978 sightings, with the most recent sighting being reported during 2015. See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvine_UFO] | [TOKENS: 2859] |
Contents Calvine UFO photograph The Calvine UFO (also known as the Calvine Sighting) was a reported sighting of an unidentified flying object (UFO) near the hamlet of Calvine in Perthshire, Scotland in August 1990. The sighting was originally reported to the Daily Record, a Glasgow-based tabloid newspaper, by two men who claimed that they witnessed an unknown diamond-shaped craft while walking on the moors above Calvine on the evening of 4 August 1990. They reported seeking shelter under some nearby trees from where they watched the craft, taking photographs while it hovered silently above before ascending vertically and disappearing from view. The two witnesses later told their story to the Daily Record and handed over their prints and original negatives, which were later passed on to the Ministry of Defence (MOD). The original negatives and prints subsequently disappeared and the story was never published by the Daily Record. The identity of the witnesses remains unknown despite efforts to locate them by a team of researchers led by investigative journalist David Clarke. In the following years, reports of the sighting and rumours of the photograph gradually surfaced, and the case slowly gained public interest. Partial documentation included in Ministry of Defence documents released by The National Archives in 2009 helped provide further insight into the sighting and attracted more attention. This ultimately led to the discovery of an original photographic image of the UFO by Clarke, which was subsequently published in the British-based tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail on Saturday 13 August 2022, with an online release the night before. The publication of the image led to significant media coverage which has been maintained through subsequent stories, with news outlets leading their coverage with often sensational headlines describing the Calvine photograph as "the best UFO picture ever" (2022), the "best ever photo evidence" (2023), the "World's clearest UFO photo" (2024), and "the best UFO photograph ever seen" (2025). Historical background The existence of the Calvine photographs was first reported by former Ministry of Defence desk officer Nick Pope in his 1996 book Open Skies, Closed Minds based on his experiences logging UFO sightings reported to the MOD while assigned to Sec(AS)2 on what was known as ‘the UFO desk’, from 1991 to 1994. In the book, Pope briefly describes the Calvine sighting, which took place a year before he arrived at Sec(AS)2, as "one of the most intriguing in the Ministry of Defence's files". He explains how two men out walking above Calvine became aware of a low humming sound and turned to see a large diamond-shaped object in the sky. The object hovered for about ten minutes, during which time one of the men captured six photographs, before flying off vertically at great speed. During the sighting a jet, identified by the MOD as a Harrier, made several low-level passes "as if the pilot had seen the object as well and was homing in for a closer look". Pope explained that expert analysis undertaken by the MOD had concluded the photos were "not fakes" and the sighting was marked as "object unexplained, case closed, no further action". He also explained that there had been a poster-sized version of one of the original photographs on his office wall until it was removed by his Head of Division. In an April 2001 interview with David Clarke, Pope added that MOD analysts determined the object to be a "solid craft", at least the size of a Harrier or Hawk fighter jet. The MOD reportedly concluded that there were no indications the images were a hoax, that "this was for real, that it was a good one". Sean Kirkpatrick, former director of the United States Department of Defense's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, has been quoted as concluding that it is a reflection in the lake and the photo has been doctored: "If you look carefully towards the right side and in the raw image, the top and bottom are reflections of each other.” Release of MOD files Despite Pope's description of the Calvine sighting in Open Skies, Open Minds, it gained little public attention until 2008, when the National Archive began to release the MoD's UFO reports as part of the 'open government' initiative. Clarke, who was known for his investigation of UFO reports, was invited to supervise the release and publication of the UFO files. Among the released documents were materials related to the Calvine sighting, including a government briefing from the MoD Secretariat Air Staff, and a handwritten summary of the sighting from a Sec(AS)2 officer both dated September 1990 (DEFE 24/1940/1 – pages 113–116). Additionally, two poor-quality photocopies of Vu-Foils (images on transparent plastic) made from cropped versions of the original photographs were included in records assembled by DI55, a branch of the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (DSTI) that dealt with missiles and air defence. (DEFE 31/180/1 – pages 36–7). These files revealed the images were the subject of an investigation by DI55 and a RAF photo analyst agency. Clarke later wrote The UFO Files, which explored various UFO sightings documented in the MoD archives, including the Calvine incident. The released documents on the Calvine UFO were publicised through Clarke's blog. 2015 Channel 5 documentary The release of information from the National Archives, along with publicity from Clarke and Pope, led to increasing public interest in the case, especially within the U.K. and in 2015, the incident was featured in the sixth episode of the Channel 5 documentary series Conspiracy. The episode, titled "Alien Cover-Up", included interviews with Clarke and Pope and featured a reconstruction of the sighting filmed on the moors above Calvine. For the programme Pope worked with a graphic artist to recreate the Calvine photograph based on his recollection of the image and the photocopies from the UK National Archives. This reconstructed image was later republished in various media outlets, including HuffPost, being mistaken by some for as a genuine image of the sighting. Pope has since discussed the incident, speculating on potential links to the alleged Aurora project. Discovery of the Calvine photograph In 2018, Clarke renewed his investigation into the sighting, seeking to locate both the missing photographs and the witnesses. His interest was sparked by a Defence Intelligence Officer's claim that the witnesses had photographed a classified U.S. black project platform that to this day remains Top Secret. This source suggested the platform had been flown from RAF Machrihanish, escorted by U.K. and U.S. aircraft, and the photos had been carefully kept out of the public domain. Clarke and a small team of researchers, including Vinnie Adams, Matthew Illsley, and Giles Stevens, worked to uncover further details of the Calvine sighting undertaking interviews with former MoD staff; conducting public searches; and publishing updates throughout 2020 and 2021. In 2020, the Scottish UFOlogist Straiph Wilson launched a search via a local newspaper for the witnesses; however, no one came forward. A handwritten summary of the Calvine incident released by the MOD in 2009 (TNA DEFE 24/1940/1 – page 113) briefly mentioned that a report of the sighting had been passed to "RAF Press Officer, Pitreavie MHQ", however the name and phone number of the person concerned had been redacted. Clarke was able to track down the person in the post at the time; retired RAF Press Officer Craig Lindsay, who he first contacted in August 2021. In their first phone call Lindsay told Clarke: “I’ve been waiting for someone to call me about this for 30 years!" Over the course of a number of interviews, Lindsay revealed that the Record had provided him with a print of one of the images along with contact details for one of the witnesses. Lindsay had phoned the witness, who turned out to be working in a hotel in Pitlochry, and interviewed them over the phone. He then typed up a short report of his findings which he faxed, along with a photocopy of the image provided by the Daily Record, to the MOD in London at which point he was told to 'leave it to London'. In October 2021 Lindsay emailed Clarke a copy of a photocopy of the original photograph sent to him by the Daily Record but told him he couldn't find the print itself. The following May, Clarke travelled to Calvine to interview Lindsay in person at which time he revealed the original photograph along with its envelope and the photocopies he had faxed to the MOD, all of which he had safely kept in his possession for over 32 years. Lindsay would not allow Clarke to handle the print as he didn't want to reveal a name written on its rear however agreed to be photographed with it. The resulting image which Clarke later shared via his blog was the first time that this, the only surviving photograph of the Calvine sighting had been reproduced since Lindsay acquired it in 1990. In the photograph Lindsay appears slightly ill at ease, carefully holding the original print against a piece of cardboard so as not to reveal the name on the reverse which he wished to keep secret. On 27 June 2022, Clarke and Vinnie Adams interviewed Lindsay at RAF Pitreavie Castle at which point he agreed to donate the print and other items to Sheffield Hallam University's Special Collection and handed them over to Clarke. Upon his return Clarke immediately took the image to a photographic specialist at the university, Andrew Robinson, who produced high-resolution digital copies and conducted an in-depth analysis of the original image and other materials resulting in a detailed report, prior to the materials being added to the university's collection. An extended report including additional information and analysis was published online in 2024. Robinson's analysis concludes that the photograph is genuine and that "as far as can be determined the image itself is a genuine photograph of a scene before the camera". Whilst not ruling out the possibility of staging in front of the camera, as has been suggested by some commentators, he finds no evidence of this. The photograph, Lindsay's eyewitness account, and the results of Robinson's analysis were first made public via a post on David Clarke's website. The publication of the image sparked worldwide interest in the Calvine story resulting in the photograph and Lindsay's eyewitness account being republished by numerous news outlets prompting much speculation and debate on social media between those who believed this to be a hoax; evidence of alien life; or a secret military aircraft. Clarke and his research team later discussed their discovery in an online Q&A on the UFO podcast 'The Disclosure Team'. Clarke was told by a Ministry of Defence officer that people at the Ministry knew the object was "an experimental craft belonging to the US." The search for Kevin Russell On the reverse of the original Calvine photograph, in red chinagraph (used by photographers at the time to mark up contact sheets) is a handwritten credit which reads "Copyright Kevin Russell c/o the Daily Record, Glasgow". This was present when Lindsay received the print from the Daily Record and he believed it to be the name of one of the witnesses. Clarke contacted the Daily Record and was told that no-one by that name had ever worked there as a staff or freelance photographer and they had no knowledge as to why the name might be on the rear of the image. Clarke's team then carried out an intensive search contacting more than 400 people by that name worldwide in an attempt to track down a Kevin Russell who might have worked in a hotel in Pitlochry at the time of the sighting. A photograph of someone known by that name, who worked as a kitchen porter at a hotel in Pitlochry in the summer of 1990 was provided by a former co-worker and first published in the Daily Record in March 2023. However when the person identified was finally tracked down in 2024 he denied any knowledge of the UFO. In an interview for The Guardian story published in February 2025, Nick Pope, who had access to the Calvine files during his time at the MoD, acknowledges he is aware of the name Kevin Russell, however refused to comment on this or any of the names that have been linked to the story. He explains the fact that the photographer has not come forward by suggesting that “at the very least... a fairly robust conversation was held” however dismisses conspiratorial suggestions that the witnesses might have been disappeared or "assassinated by the deep state" as "pure nonsense". Despite widespread coverage of the search in the media, no one has yet come forward and Clarke's research team were unable to identify anyone else by the name Kevin Russell who might have been one of the witnesses. The Program documentary (2024) The Program is a documentary by American film-maker James Fox released on Apple TV and Amazon Prime on 16 December 2024. The Calvine UFO is featured as one of a number of famous UFO cases including Socorro, New Mexico (1964), Colares, Brazil (1977) and Voronezh, Soviet Union (1989) and the Calvine photograph briefly appears in the trailer for the film. and has been used in other advertising materials. The film explores the U.S. congressional effort to uncover government knowledge about UFOs and UAPs and includes an in-depth review of the Calvine case which Fox considers "the most compelling photographic case in (UFO) history".[citation needed] For the documentary, Fox travelled to the U.K. to interview David Clarke and Robinson in Sheffield where he was able to view the original Calvine photograph, before traveling to Scotland to undertake the first ever on-camera interview with Lindsay and to visit Calvine. Filming took place at An Teampan, the hillside above Calvine that Clarke's team had identified as the most likely location for the sighting. Pope also provides a detailed account of his knowledge of the sighting from his time as the UFO desk officer between 1991 and 1994. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident] | [TOKENS: 3539] |
Contents Rendlesham Forest incident The Rendlesham Forest incident was a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights near Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, England, in December 1980, which became linked with alleged UFO landings. The events occurred just outside RAF Woodbridge, which was used at the time by the United States Air Force (USAF). USAF personnel, including deputy base commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt, claimed to have seen things he described as a UFO. The occurrence is the most famous of alleged UFO events to have happened in the United Kingdom, and is among the best-known reported UFO events worldwide. It has been compared to the Roswell UFO incident in the United States and is sometimes called "Britain's Roswell". The UK Ministry of Defence has stated that the event posed no threat to national security, and therefore, it was never investigated as a security matter. Skeptics have explained the sightings as a misinterpretation of a series of nocturnal lights: a fireball, the Orfordness Lighthouse, and bright stars. Main events Around 03:00 on 26 December 1980 (reported as 27 December by Halt in his memo to the UK Ministry of Defence) a security patrol near the east gate of RAF Woodbridge saw lights apparently descending into nearby Rendlesham Forest. These lights have been attributed by astronomers to a piece of natural debris seen burning up as a fireball (meteor) over southern England around that time. Servicemen initially thought it was a downed aircraft. According to Halt's memo, upon entering the forest to investigate, they witnessed a glowing object that was metallic in appearance with coloured lights. As they attempted to approach the object, it appeared to move through the trees, and "the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy". One of the servicemen, Sergeant Jim Penniston, later claimed to have encountered a "craft of unknown origin" while in the forest, although there was no publicised mention of this at the time and there is no corroboration from other witnesses. Penniston also described touching the encountered craft and finding it to be very warm to the touch. Shortly after 04:00 local police were called to the scene but reported that the only lights they could see were those from the Orford Ness lighthouse, some miles away on the coast. After daybreak on the morning of 26 December, servicemen returned to a small clearing near the eastern edge of the forest and found three small impressions on the ground, as well as burn marks and broken branches on nearby trees. At 10:30 the local police were called out again, this time to see the impressions, which they thought could have been made by an animal. Georgina Bruni, in her book You Can't Tell the People, published a photograph of the supposed landing site taken on the morning after the first sighting. Halt visited the site with several servicemen in the early hours of 28 December 1980 (reported as 29 December by Halt). They took radiation readings in the triangle of depressions and in the surrounding area using an AN/PDR-27, a standard U.S. military radiation survey meter. Although they recorded 0.07 milliroentgens per hour, in other regions they detected 0.03 to 0.04 milliroentgens per hour, around the background level. Furthermore, they detected a similar small 'burst' over half a mile away from the presumed landing site. Halt recorded the events on a micro-cassette recorder (see § The Halt Tape). It was during this investigation that a flashing red light was seen across the field to the east, almost in line with a farmhouse, as the witnesses had seen on the first night. The Orford Ness lighthouse is visible further to the east in the same line of sight. Later, according to Halt's memo, three star-like lights were seen in the sky, two to the north and one to the south, about 10 degrees above the horizon. Halt said that the brightest of these hovered for two to three hours and seemed to beam down a stream of light from time to time. Astronomers have explained these star-like lights as bright stars. Location Rendlesham Forest is owned by the Forestry Commission and consists of about 5.8 square miles (15 km2) of coniferous plantations, interspersed with broadleaved belts, heathland and wetland areas. It is located in the county of Suffolk, about 8 miles (13 km) east of the town of Ipswich. The incident occurred in the vicinity of two former military bases: RAF Bentwaters, which is just to the north of the forest, and RAF Woodbridge which extends into the forest from the west and is bounded by the forest on its northern and eastern edges. At the time, both were being used by the United States Air Force and were under the command of wing commander Colonel Gordon E. Williams. The base commander was Colonel Ted Conrad, and his deputy was Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt. The main events of the incident, including the supposed landing or landings, took place in the forest, which starts at the east end of the base runway or about 0.3 miles (0.5 km) to the east of the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge, from where security guards first noticed mysterious lights appearing to descend into the forest. The forest extends east about one mile (1.6 km) beyond East Gate, ending at a farmer's field at Capel Green, where additional events allegedly took place. Orfordness Lighthouse, which sceptics identify as the flashing light seen off to the coast by the airmen, is along the same line of sight about 5 miles (8.0 km) further east of the forest's edge. At that time it was one of the brightest lighthouses in the UK. Primary and secondary sources The first piece of primary evidence to be made available to the public was a memorandum written by the deputy base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt, to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Known as the "Halt memo", this was made publicly available in the United States under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act in 1983. The memorandum was dated "13 Jan 1981" under the title "Unexplained Lights". The two-week delay between the incident and the report might account for errors in the dates and times given. The memo was not classified in any way. David Clarke, a consultant to the National Archives, has investigated the background of this memo and the reaction to it at the MoD. His interviews with the personnel involved confirmed the cursory nature of the investigation made by the MoD, and failed to find any evidence for any other reports on the incident made by the USAF or UK apart from the Halt memo. Halt has since gone on record as saying he believes that he witnessed an extraterrestrial event that was then covered up. In 1984, a copy of what became known as the "Halt Tape" was released to UFO researchers by Colonel Sam Morgan, who had by then succeeded Ted Conrad as Halt's superior. This tape chronicles Halt's investigation in the forest in real time, including taking radiation readings, the sighting of the flashing light between trees, and the starlike objects that hovered and twinkled. The tape has been transcribed by researcher Ian Ridpath, who includes a link to an audio download and also a step-by-step analysis of the entire contents of the tape. In 1997, Scottish researcher James Easton obtained the original witness statements made by those involved in the first night's sightings. One of the witnesses, Ed Cabansag, said in his statement: "We figured the lights were coming from past the forest since nothing was visible when we passed through the woody forest. We would see a glowing near the beacon light, but as we got closer we found it to be a lit-up farmhouse. We got to a vantage point where we could determine that what we were chasing was only a beacon light off in the distance." Another participant, John Burroughs, also stated: "We could see a beacon going around so we went towards it. We followed it for about two miles [3 km] before we could [see] it was coming from a lighthouse." Burroughs reported a noise "like a woman was screaming" and also that "you could hear the farm animals making a lot of noises." Halt heard the same noises two nights later. Such noise could have been made by Muntjac deer in the forest, which are known for their loud, shrill bark when alarmed. In June 2010, retired Colonel Charles Halt signed a notarised affidavit, in which he again summarised what had happened, then stated he believed the event to be extraterrestrial and that it had been covered up by both the UK and US. Contradictions between this affidavit and the facts as recorded at the time in Halt's memo and tape recording have been pointed out by skeptics. In 2010, base commander Colonel Ted Conrad provided a statement about the incident to Clarke. Conrad stated: "We saw nothing that resembled Lieutenant Colonel Halt's descriptions either in the sky or on the ground", and: "We had people in position to validate Halt's narrative, but none of them could." In an interview, Conrad criticised Halt for the claims in his affidavit, saying that "he should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and Britain both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better." Conrad also disputed the testimony of Sergeant Jim Penniston, who claimed to have touched an alien spacecraft; he said that he interviewed Penniston at the time and he had not mentioned any such occurrence. Conrad also suggested that the entire incident might have been a hoax. Two officers from the Suffolk Constabulary were called to the scene on the night of the initial sighting and again the following morning but found nothing unusual. On the night of the initial incident they reported that the only lights visible were from the Orford lighthouse. They attributed the indentations in the ground to animals. The Suffolk Constabulary file on the case was released in 2005 under the UK's Freedom of Information Act and can be accessed on their website. It includes a letter dated 28 July 1999 written by Inspector Mike Topliss who notes that one of the police constables who attended the scene on the first night returned to the site in daylight in case he had missed something. "There was nothing to be seen and he remains unconvinced that the occurrence was genuine," wrote Topliss. "The immediate area was swept by powerful light beams from a landing beacon at RAF Bentwaters and the Orfordness lighthouse. I know from personal experience that at night, in certain weather and cloud conditions, these beams were very pronounced and certainly caused strange visual effects." Evidence of a substantial MoD file on the subject led to claims of a cover-up; some interpreted this as part of a larger pattern of information suppression concerning the true nature of unidentified flying objects, by both the United States and British governments. However, when the file was released in 2001 it turned out to consist mostly of internal correspondence and responses to inquiries from the public. The lack of any in-depth investigation in the publicly released documents is consistent with the MoD's earlier statement that they never took the case seriously. Included in the released files is an explanation given by defence minister Lord Trefgarne as to why the MoD did not investigate further. Skeptical analysis One proposed theory is that the incident was a hoax. The BBC reported that a former U.S. security policeman, Kevin Conde, claimed responsibility for creating strange lights in the forest by driving around in a police vehicle whose lights he had modified. However, there is no evidence that this prank took place on the nights in question. Other explanations for the incident have included a downed Soviet spy satellite, but no evidence has been produced to support this. The most widely accepted explanation is that the sightings were due to a combination of three main factors. The initial sighting at 03.00 on 26 December, when the airmen saw something apparently descending into the forest, coincided with the appearance of a bright fireball over southern England, and such fireballs are a common source of UFO reports. The supposed landing marks were identified by police and foresters as rabbit diggings. No evidence has emerged to confirm that anything actually came down in the forest. According to the witness statements from 26 December, the flashing light seen from the forest lay in the same direction as the Orfordness Lighthouse. When the eyewitnesses attempted to approach the light they realised it was further off than they had thought. One of the witnesses, Ed Cabansag, described it as “a beacon light off in the distance” while another, John Burroughs, said it was “a lighthouse” (see Statements from eyewitnesses on 26 December). Timings on Halt's tape recording during his sighting on 28 December indicate that the light he saw, which lay in the same direction as the light seen two nights earlier, flashed every five seconds, which was the flash rate of the Orfordness Lighthouse. The star-like objects that Halt reported hovering low to the north and south are thought by some sceptics to have been misinterpretations of bright stars distorted by atmospheric and optical effects, another common source of UFO reports. The brightest of them, to the south, matched the position of Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. In his 6 January 2009 Skeptoid podcast episode titled "The Rendlesham Forest UFO," scientific sceptic author Brian Dunning evaluated the original eye-witness reports and audio recordings, as well as the resulting media reporting of this incident. Dunning concluded: Col. Halt's thoroughness was commendable, but even he can be mistaken. Without exception, everything he reported on his audiotape and in his written memo has a perfectly rational and unremarkable explanation... All that remains is the tale that the men were debriefed and ordered never to mention the event, and warned that "bullets are cheap". Well, as we've seen on television, the men all talk quite freely about it, and even Col. Halt says that to this day nobody has ever debriefed him. So this appears to be just another dramatic invention for television, perhaps from one of the men who have expanded their stories over the years. When you examine each piece of evidence separately on its own merit, you avoid the trap of pattern matching and finding correlations where none exist. The meteors had nothing to do with the lighthouse or the rabbit diggings, but when you hear all three stories told together, it's easy to conclude (as did the airmen) that the light overhead became an alien spacecraft in the forest. Always remember: Separate pieces of poor evidence don't aggregate together into a single piece of good evidence. UFO Trail In 2005, the Forestry Commission used Lottery proceeds to create a trail in Rendlesham Forest because of public interest and nicknamed it the UFO Trail. In 2014, the Forestry Service commissioned an artist to create a work which has been installed at the end of the trail. The artist states the piece is modelled on sketches that purportedly represent some versions of the UFO claimed to have been seen at Rendlesham. Change of heart In 2010, Jenny Randles, who first reported the case in the London Evening Standard in 1981 and co-authored with the local researchers who uncovered the events, the first book on the case in 1984, Sky Crash: A Cosmic Conspiracy, emphasised her previously expressed doubts that the incident was caused by extraterrestrial visitors. Whilst suggesting that a UAP, an unidentified aerial phenomenon of unknown origin, might have caused parts of the case, she noted: "Whilst some puzzles remain, we can probably say that no unearthly craft were seen in Rendlesham Forest. We can also argue with confidence that the main focus of the events was a series of misperceptions of everyday things encountered in less than everyday circumstances." Possible hoax In December 2018, David Clarke, a British UFO researcher, reported a claim that the incident was a set-up by the SAS as a revenge plot on the USAF. According to this story, in August 1980, the SAS parachuted into RAF Woodbridge to test the security at the nuclear site. The USAF had recently upgraded their radar and detected the black parachutes of the SAS men as they descended to the base. The SAS troops were interrogated and beaten up, with the ultimate insult that they were called "unidentified aliens". To enact their revenge, the SAS "gave" the USAF their own version of an alien event; "....as December approached, lights and coloured flares were rigged in the woods. Black helium balloons were also coupled to remote-controlled kites to carry suspended materials into the sky, activated by radio-controls." However, Clarke's investigation concluded that the story was itself a hoax. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkley_Moor_UFO_incident] | [TOKENS: 1198] |
Contents Ilkley Moor UFO incident There was an alleged UFO incident on Ilkley Moor on 1 December 1987. A retired police officer claimed that he had been abducted by aliens while on a morning walk and briefly held on their craft before being returned to the moor. The man took a photograph of the moor which he said shows one of the aliens that abducted him. The photograph subsequently became a news story in the UK. It has been cited as one of the strongest pieces of evidence that we have that extraterrestrials have visited Earth. It has also been described as “incredibly blurry”. Sceptics have dismissed the incident as a hoax, saying that the photograph shows something else, such as a man or a cardboard cut-out. Background Ilkley Moor is an area of moorland between Ilkley and Keighley in West Yorkshire, England. There have been many UFO sightings on the moor. Sceptics have suggested that this is because of the nearby proximity of Menwith Hill airforce base and Leeds Bradford Airport. Philip Spencer (a pseudonym) had moved from London to remote West Yorkshire with his wife and child in order to be closer to his wife's family following his retirement from the police force. On the morning of 1 December 1987 Spencer began walking across Ilkley Moor to visit his father-in-law in East Morton. He had taken a camera with him as well as a compass, in case there was fog. Incident According to Spencer, he was walking up a small hill when he noticed an odd-looking figure just up the trail ahead of him. It was dark green and about four feet tall with an oversized head and long, thin arms. The creature made a gesture at Spencer, which he took to be a gesture telling him to stay away, but he took out his camera and took a picture of it. The creature then ran away and Spencer followed it. He lost the creature in the fog but then saw a craft rise from the moor and disappear into the sky. He described the craft as being of a whitish colour and consisted of two saucer-shaped parts that were attached, one on top of the other. There was also a loud hum. He did not take a photograph of the craft. Rather than continue with his planned route, Spencer headed to another town that was about a half hour away. When he arrived he discovered that it was about two hours later in the day than he expected it to be. Additionally, the compass that he had taken with him was pointed in the opposite direction than it should have. Initial aftermath In the days following the alleged incident, Spencer made contact with UFO researchers Jenny Randles and Peter Hough. Hough claimed to have been “extremely sceptical” at first but later came to believe Spencer. Spencer handed over the copyright of the photo to Hough. Although the story quickly made the news Spencer insisted on keeping his anonymity. Various write-ups of the case have made it clear that Spencer did not make any money from the story. As well as examining the site, Hough sent the photograph to a number of experts. A wildlife photographer who examined the photograph said that it was not from any known animal. Experts from the Kodak laboratory in Hemel Hempstead said that they could not detect any evidence of tampering. Bruce Maccabee, a US Navy optics expert and ufologist, concluded that the photograph was “too grainy for proper testing”. According to ufologist Nick Redfern, Spencer was hassled by the Ministry of Defence a few days after the incident on the moor. He says that they opened a file on Spencer and sent two men in black to his home to intimidate him into silence. Account changed under hypnosis While the photograph was being examined Spencer claimed that he experienced strange dreams. Following Hough's advice he attended a session of regressive hypnotherapy. This was carried out by Jim Singleton on 16 March 1988. Under hypnosis Spencer's original account of the incident changed. Singleton has called it a “genuine recall”. Spencer now recalled that upon seeing the creature on the hill he was instantly paralysed. He was then lifted up a few feet and pulled into the craft. When he entered the craft a voice told him to be calm. A group of green aliens then performed medical experiments on him, inserting items into his nose and mouth. He was given a tour of the craft and shown a film. The film showed apocalyptic imagery, including nuclear explosions, famines and floods. Spencer was then shown a second film. He has never revealed the contents of the second film, saying that the aliens who abducted him do not want humanity to know. Following this Spencer was returned to Ilkley Moor, where he then took the famous photograph. He claimed that the alien was actually waving goodbye to him, not telling him to stay away, as in his original account. Legacy The Ilkley Moor incident generated headlines in the UK at the time and remains one of the country's most famous UFO sightings. Nick Pope, a journalist who previously worked at the ‘UFO desk’ of the Ministry of Defence included this event in a 2011 list of "Top 10 UFO incidents in the UK". It has been cited as one of the most persuasive UFO incidents to ever occur. Sceptics have claimed that the whole incident is a hoax. They have said that the photograph is so blurry that it is far from proof of any alien visitors to Earth. They have argued that the “alien” in the photograph could easily be a man or a cardboard cut-out. Sceptics have also asked why Spencer did not take a photograph of the craft, noting that such a photograph would be more difficult to fake. Sceptics have also dismissed the supposed physical evidence of the broken compass, saying that it is easy to manually wreck compasses. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jetpack_man] | [TOKENS: 680] |
Contents Jetpack man Jetpack man (also described as guy in a jetpack and Iron Man) is an unknown person or object observed flying what appeared to be an unauthorized jetpack around the Los Angeles area at least five times from 2020 to 2022. Multiple airplane pilots reported seeing the jetpack man at altitudes around 5,000 feet (1,500 m). It is unknown whether each sighting was the same person, or whether it might have been a drone designed to look like a person with a jetpack. Neither jetpacks nor large drones are commonly flown at that altitude or at that distance from land, and there were no sightings of a takeoff or landing. It was theorized by the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration that the jetpack man was a novelty helium balloon. Sightings On August 30, 2020, two different airline pilots reported seeing a "guy in a jetpack" hovering near Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) at 3,000 feet (910 m), 300 yards (270 m) from the course of planes on a 10 miles (16 km) final approach. In November 2020, a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter crew recorded a video of what appeared to be a balloon of the fictional character Jack Skellington from the film The Nightmare Before Christmas. The video was recorded over the Beverly Hills area. A balloon is believed by many to be the explanation for the phenomenon. The behavior of the balloon was similar in the footage to the jetpack man as it was and would later be described. The LAPD later released the footage in November 2021. The Federal Bureau of Investigation released a statement on the matter, remarking that "the FBI has worked closely with the FAA to investigate reported jet pack sightings in the Los Angeles area, none of which have been verified," and later adding that "One working theory is that pilots might have seen balloons." On October 14, 2020, a China Airlines flight reported seeing "a flying object like a flight suit jetpack" at 6,000 feet (1,800 m) during the approach to LAX. On December 21, 2020, a pilot and flight instructor with Sling Pilot Academy captured the first video of such a flying object, at around 3,000 feet (910 m) near Palos Verdes and Catalina Island (south of Los Angeles). The academy posted the video to their Instagram account, commenting: The video appears to show a jet pack, but it could also be a drone or some other object. If it is a 'guy in a jet pack' then it remains to be seen whether it is a legal test flight... or related to the jet pack sightings near LAX recently that caused disruptions to air traffic. On July 28, 2021, a pilot reported seeing a flying object that looked like a man in a jetpack, roughly 15 miles (24 km) off the California coast, at 5,000 feet (1,500 m). In air traffic control chatter, the flying object was referred to variously as "the UFO" and "Iron Man". A sixth sighting of jetpack man occurred in June 2022 15 miles east of LAX at about 4,500 ft (1,400 m). See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Theodore_Roosevelt_UFO_incidents] | [TOKENS: 3215] |
Contents Pentagon UFO videos The Pentagon UFO videos are selected visual recordings of forward-looking infrared (FLIR) targeting cameras from United States Navy fighter jets based aboard the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2004, 2014 and 2015, with additional footage taken by other Navy personnel in 2019. The four Infrared videos taken from aircraft's targeting pod have been widely[citation needed] characterized as officially documenting UFOs and received extensive coverage in the media since 2017. The Pentagon later addressed and officially released the first three videos of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) in 2020, and confirmed the provenance of the leaked 2019 videos in two statements made in 2021. Footage of UAPs was also released in 2023, sourced from MQ-9 military drones. Publicity surrounding the videos has prompted a number of explanations, including drones or unidentified terrestrial aircraft, anomalous or artifactual instrument readings, physical observational phenomena (e.g., parallax), human observational and interpretive error, and, as is typical in the context of such incidents, extraordinary speculations of alien spacecraft. Background On 14 November 2004, fighter pilot Commander David Fravor of the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group investigated radar indications of a possible target off the coast of southern California. Fravor said the operator had told him that the USS Princeton (CG-59), part of the strike group, had been tracking unusual aircraft for two weeks prior to the incident. The aircraft would appear at 80,000 feet (24,000 m) before descending rapidly toward the sea, and stopping at 20,000 feet (6,100 m) and hovering. Fravor reported that he saw an object, white and oval, hovering above an ocean disturbance. He estimated that the object was about 40 feet (12 m) long. Fravor and another pilot, Alex Dietrich, said in an interview that a total of four people (two pilots and two weapons systems officers in the back seats of the two airplanes) witnessed the object for about 5 minutes. Fravor says that as he spiraled down to get closer to the object, the object ascended, mirroring the trajectory of his airplane, until the object disappeared. A second wave of fighters, which included weapons systems officer Lieutenant Commander Chad Underwood, took off from Nimitz to investigate. Unlike Fravor, Underwood's fighter was equipped with an advanced infrared camera (FLIR). Underwood recorded the FLIR video, and coined the description "Tic Tac" to describe the infrared image; Underwood later explained that the term was partially inspired by a joke in the 1980 comedy Airplane!. Underwood did not observe the object with his own eyes, saying: "I was more concerned with tracking it, making sure that the videotape was on so that I could bring something back to the ship, so that the intel folks could dissect whatever it is that I captured." During 2014–2015, fighter pilots associated with the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group were operating off the East Coast of the United States when they recorded the GIMBAL and GOFAST videos while reporting instrument detections of unknown aerial objects which the pilots were unable to identify. Release of videos On 16 December 2017, The New York Times reported on the incidents, and published two videos, termed "FLIR" and "GIMBAL", purporting to show encounters by jets from Nimitz and Theodore Roosevelt with unusually shaped, fast-moving aircraft. Additionally, the Washington Post published a video of a similar encounter, titled "GOFAST". The reports became subject to "fevered speculation by UFO investigators". Those stories have been criticized by journalism professor Keith Kloor as "a curious narrative that appears to be driven by thinly-sourced and slanted reporting". According to Kloor, "Cursory attention has been given to the most likely, prosaic explanations. Instead, the coverage has, for the most part, taken a quizzical, mysterious frame that plays off the catchy 'UFO' tag in the headline". The videos, featuring cockpit display data and infrared imagery, along with audio of communications between the pursuing pilots, were initially provided to the press by Christopher Mellon, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Around the same time, Luis Elizondo, the director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, had resigned from the Pentagon in October 2017 to protest government secrecy and opposition to the investigation, stating in a resignation letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis that the program was not being taken seriously. According to Wired magazine, a copy of one of the videos had been online, in a UFO forum, since at least 2007. In September 2019, Susan Gough, a Pentagon spokeswoman, confirmed that the released videos were made by naval aviators, and that they are "part of a larger issue of an increased number of training range incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena in recent years". On 27 April 2020, the Pentagon formally released the three videos. In February 2020, the United States Navy confirmed that, in response to inquiries, intelligence briefings presented by naval intelligence officials have been provided to members of Congress. In April 2021, Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough confirmed that publicly-available video footage of what appeared to be an unidentified triangular object in the sky had been taken by Navy personnel aboard USS Russell in 2019. Science writer and skeptical investigator Mick West suggested the image was the result of an optical effect called a bokeh, which can make out of focus light sources appear triangular or pyramidal due to the shape of the aperture of some camera lenses. The Pentagon also confirmed photographs of objects described as "sphere", "acorn" and "metallic blimp". The following month, Gough further confirmed a second video had been recorded by Navy personnel and is under review by the UAP Task Force. The video, recorded on 15 July 2019, aboard the USS Omaha, purportedly shows a spherical object flying over the ocean as seen through an infrared camera at night, moving rapidly across the screen before stopping and easing down into the water. Mick West also commented on the video, stating that "What we’ve got to go with here is the simplest explanation and really the simplest explanation is that it’s just a plane. It moves like a plane, it acts like a plane". In early 2023 an object was filmed by two MQ-9 drones in South Asia that was initially believed to be "truly anomalous", but later described its trail as a "shadow image". The second video footage enabled to identify the heat signature of the engines of what is believed to be a commuter aircraft. On 31 May 2023, Sean M. Kirkpatrick shared an infrared video in a public meeting of NASA's UAP independent study team recorded in the western United States in 2021 in which full analysis, combined with commercial flight data in the region, led the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to conclude that they were commercial aircraft. On 19 April 2023, the Pentagon released another video featuring MQ-9 drone footage from the Middle East depicting an unidentified aerial phenomenon. Sean M. Kirkpatrick, director of AARO, briefed a Senate Armed Services subcommittee that it resembled a small "metallic orb". However Kirkpatrick said they are unable to fully identify anything from this video. He told ABC News that no explanation could be made of the object from the video, due to a lack of data. Some skeptic ufologists have pointed out that said aerial phenomenon might be just a balloon. Potential explanations As of 2020, the aerial phenomena recorded from the Nimitz and Roosevelt events are characterized by the Department of Defense as "unidentified". Widespread media attention to these events has motivated theories and speculations from private individuals and groups about the underlying explanation(s), including those focused upon pseudoscientific topics such as ufology. Regarding the pseudoscientific explanations, writer Matthew Gault stated that these events "reflect the same pattern that's played out dozens of times before. Someone sees something strange in the sky ... and the public jumps to an illogical conclusion". Mundane, skeptical explanations include instrument or software malfunction, anomaly or artifact, human observational illusion (e.g., parallax) or interpretive error, or common aircraft (e.g., a passenger airliner) or aerial device (e.g., weather balloon). Mick West argued, "Any time something unidentified shows up in restricted airspace, then that's a real problem", but cautioned that believers in "alien disclosure" are "encroaching on these real issues of UAPs". West cautioned that "the report suggests the majority of cases, if solved, would turn out to be a variety of things like airborne clutter or natural atmospheric phenomenon. A lack of data does not mean aliens are the likely answer". He stated that the recorded UFOs might well be commercial airplanes or balloons, distorted by the infrared glare. Writing in The New York Times, author and astrophysicist Adam Frank stated that with respect to claims of "evidence of extraterrestrial technology that can defy the laws of physics", the pilot's reports and cockpit instrumentation videos "doesn't amount to much". Frank speculated that it was possible the UFOs in the videos are "drones deployed by rivals like Russia and China to examine our defenses — luring our pilots into turning on their radar and other detectors, thus revealing our electronic intelligence capabilities". Astronomer Thomas Bania speculated that they could be some form of electronic warfare fielded by China or Russia "trying to get intelligence of exactly what our weapons systems are capable of doing". Following the congressional intelligence briefings and in order to encourage pilots to flag disturbances that "have been occurring regularly since 2014", the US Navy announced it had updated the way pilots were to formally report unexplained aerial observations. Commenting on these updated guidelines, a spokesman for the deputy Chief of Naval Operations said, "The intent of the message to the fleet is to provide updated guidance on reporting procedures for suspected intrusions into our airspace". Regarding the new guidelines, the spokesman said that one possible explanation for the increase in reported intrusions could be the rise in availability of unmanned aerial systems such as quadrocopters. United States Senator Marco Rubio, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, said that he feared the UFOs in the videos may be Chinese or Russian technology. Retired Admiral Gary Roughead, who commanded both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets before serving as Chief of Naval Operations from 2007 to 2011, said in 2020 that in his time, "most of the assessments were inconclusive" as to what these videos showed. In the context of a lecture on China's 21st century military strategy, Roughead commented that development of unmanned autonomous aircraft that had the capability to be used as submersible military assets was a priority of the US, as well as other nations such as China and Russia. Adam Dodd and security expert Jack Weinstein say that neither of these countries presently have the capability to produce aircraft with such extraordinary capabilities, and noted that they would normally keep any such high level technology from being observed and documented by a rival country such as the US. Media commentary has also noted that, if China or Russia had the level of technology that allowed for extreme speeds and maneuverability exhibited by the UAPs, then the US would be aware of it. However, in response to this, Weinstein said, "I won't go that far. China has developed some good technology much faster than we thought they were going to". According to New York magazine writer for the Digital Intelligencer, Jeff Wise, UAP may not represent actual aircraft speeds and maneuverability, since advancements in electronic warfare (EW) techniques, similar to early "radar spoofing" used by the US military, could deceive sensors to give false velocity and position information and result in reports of "unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics". Wise writes that this might be "the crucial, missing context for what military pilots might actually be seeing" and speculates that US adversaries may have developed EW capabilities that exploit weaknesses of US systems and "gaps in its electronic warfare capabilities" that allow sensor information to be missed, or erroneous tracking data to be created. In 2023, David Fravor, the pilot who reported the USS Nimitz sighting from the FLIR video, gave testimony under oath regarding the incident in a United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing. Alongside him was fellow former fighter pilot Ryan Graves, and former intelligence officer David Grusch. Fravor repeated his claims that, in his opinion, "the technology that we faced was far superior than anything that we had." June 2021 UFO report On 25 June 2021, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a preliminary report on UAPs, largely centering on evidence gathered in the last 20 years from US Navy reports. The report came to no conclusion about what the UAPs were, based on a "lack [of] sufficient data to determine the nature of mysterious flying objects observed by military pilots — including whether they are advanced earthly technologies, atmospherics, or of an extraterrestrial nature", though in a limited number of incidents, UAP reportedly appeared to exhibit unusual flight characteristics, including high velocity, breaking the sound barrier without producing a sonic boom, high maneuverability not able to be replicated otherwise, long-duration flight, and an ability to submerge into the water. Some of the UAPs appeared to move with no discernible means of propulsion, and it was noted that the alleged high speeds and maneuvers would normally destroy any craft. These observations could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception, and require additional rigorous analysis. The report indicated that, in most cases, the UAP recordings probably were of physical objects, and not false readings, as individual instances had been detected by different sensor mechanisms, including visual observation. The report also stated that "UAP probably lack a single explanation", and proposed five possible categories of explanation: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, US government or industry development technology, foreign craft, and an "Other" category. The report raised concerns that the UAPs could be a safety issue, with regard to a possible collision with US aircraft, and that they could pose a security threat if they were foreign craft gathering information about the US. The report indicated that investigation of the topic would continue, including development of reporting protocols. The report also indicated that, of the sightings reported, all except one (confirmed as a weather balloon) lack sufficient information to attribute a specific explanation or explanations. FOI request by The Black Vault The Black Vault, a government transparency site that had previously released UAP material, made a Freedom of Information request of the Government for the release of more video footage, filed to the US Navy in April 2020. Some two years later, the government confirmed it had more footage, but refused to release it, citing concerns for national security. Deputy director of the Department of the Navy's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) program, Gregory Cason, stated in the response: "The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities." In popular culture The videos were featured in the 2019 History Channel series Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation. On 5 October 2019, episode 1361 of The Joe Rogan Experience featured the videos and interviewed Fravor. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Grusch_UFO_whistleblower_claims] | [TOKENS: 4833] |
Contents David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims David Grusch is a former United States Air Force (USAF) officer and intelligence official who has claimed that the U.S. federal government, in collaboration with private aerospace companies, has highly secretive special access programs involved in the recovery and reverse engineering of "non-human" spacecraft and their dead pilots, and that people have been threatened and killed in order to conceal these programs. Grusch further claims to have viewed documents reporting a spacecraft of alien origin had been recovered by Benito Mussolini's government in 1933 and procured by the U.S. in 1944 or 1945 with the assistance of the Vatican and the Five Eyes alliance. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have both denied Grusch's claims, stating there are no such programs and that extraterrestrial life has yet to be discovered. No evidence supporting Grusch's UFO claims has been presented and they have been dismissed by multiple, independent experts. Background David Charles Grusch is an Afghanistan combat veteran and a former USAF intelligence officer who worked in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). From 2019 to 2021, he was the representative of the NRO to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. He assisted in drafting the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023, which includes provisions for reporting of UFOs, including whistleblower protections and exemptions to non-disclosure orders and agreements. Congressional interest in UFO sightings immediately prior to Grusch's public claims surrounded questions about the four objects that the Air Force shot down in February 2023. Grusch's claims On June 5, 2023, independent journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal provided a story detailing Grusch's claims of a UFO coverup by the government to The Debrief, a website that describes itself as "self-funded" and specializing in "frontier science". The New York Times and Politico declined to publish the story, while The Washington Post was taking more time to conduct fact-checking than Kean and Blumenthal felt could be afforded because, according to Kean, "people on the internet were spreading stories, Dave was getting harassing phone calls, and we felt the only way to protect him was to get the story out". According to Kean, she vetted Grusch by interviewing Karl Nell, a retired Army colonel who was also on the UFO task force, and "Jonathan Grey" (a pseudonym) whom Kean described as "a current U.S. intelligence official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC)". Kean wrote that Nell called Grusch "beyond reproach" and that both Nell and "Grey" supported Grusch's claim about a secret UFO retrieval and reverse engineering program. Grusch claims that the U.S. federal government maintains a highly secretive UFO retrieval program and possesses multiple spacecraft of what he calls "non-human" origin as well as corpses of deceased pilots. He also claims there is "substantive evidence that white-collar crime" took place to conceal UFO programs and that he had interviewed officials who said that people had been killed to conceal the programs. Grusch elaborated on his claims in a subsequent interview with the French newspaper Le Parisien on June 7. He said that UFOs could be coming from extra dimensions; that he had spoken with intelligence officials whom the U.S. military had briefed on "football-field" sized crafts; that the U.S. government transferred some crashed UFOs to a defense contractor; and that there was "malevolent activity" by UFOs. During a July 26, 2023, Congressional hearing, Grusch said that he "was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program to which I was denied access" and that he believed that the U.S. government was in possession of UAP based on his interviews with 40 witnesses over four years. He claimed in response to Congressional questions that the U.S. has retrieved what he terms "non-human 'biologics'" from the crafts and that this "was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the [UAP] program I talked to, that are currently still on the program". When Representative Tim Burchett asked him if he had "personal knowledge of people who've been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal" the government's possession of "extraterrestrial technology", Grusch said yes, but that he was not able to provide details except within a SCIF (Sensitive compartmented information facility). BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight on August 3, 2023, interviewed Grusch. When asked about the U.S. having "intact and partially intact alien vehicles in its possession", Grusch repeated his claims. Responses from relevant experts Grusch's assertions are primarily based on alleged documents and his claimed conversations, rather than testable evidence. Claims that the government is engaged in a conspiratorial effort to conceal evidence of extraterrestrial visitation to Earth are broadly considered untrue by the majority of the scientific community, because such claims oppose the best currently available expert information. Joshua Semeter of NASA's UAP independent study team and professor of electrical and computer engineering with Boston University's College of Engineering concludes that "without data or material evidence, we are at an impasse on evaluating these claims" and that, "in the long history of claims of extraterrestrial visitors, it is this level of specificity that always seems to be missing". Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, published a critique of the Grusch claims on June 22 with Big Think. Frank writes that he does "not find these claims exciting at all" because they are all "just hearsay" where "a guy says he knows a guy who knows another guy who heard from a guy that the government has alien spaceships". Frank also said of the Grusch account that "it's an extraordinary claim, and it requires extraordinary evidence, none of which we're getting", adding "show me the spaceship". The Guardian printed an opinion piece by Stuart Clark about Grusch's claims which included questions from three scientists. Harvard University astronomer Avi Loeb, who co-founded the UFO-investigating Galileo Project, noted that nothing extraterrestrial has been observed. Radio astronomer Michael Garrett noted that crashed landings of alien craft "would imply that there must be hundreds of them coming every day, and astronomers simply don't see them". Sara Russell, a planetary scientist from the Natural History Museum in London, said that, "if you give me an alloy, it would take me less than half an hour to tell you what elements are in it", and that "it should be easy to understand whether something falling to Earth is man-made or extraterrestrial, and if it is the latter, whether it is naturally occurring or not". Greg Eghigian, a history professor at Pennsylvania State University and expert in the history of UFOs as it occurs in the context of public fascination, notes that there have been many instances over recent decades in the U.S. of people "who previously worked in some kind of federal department" coming forward to make "bombshell allegations" about the truth regarding UFOs with the whistleblower claims by Grusch fitting this pattern. Eghigian describes the 1940s–50s media enthusiasm about flying saucers, and comments that the successful books on the subject by authors Donald Keyhoe, Frank Scully, and Gerald Heard "provided the model for a new kind of public figure: the crusading whistleblower dedicated to breaking the silence over the alien origins of unidentified flying objects." Since then all these similarly credentialed claimants have been unable to provide any further corroboration. Eghigian said that "a new kind of sobriety needs to be interjected here" and that the Grusch story "ups the ante" but is "very hard to take seriously unless we start getting some real evidence that's of a forensic nature to prove these things". Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute writing on MSNBC.com about Grusch's claims, said that the claims are extraordinary, before asking, "But where is the evidence? It's MIA. Neither Grusch nor anyone else claiming to have knowledge of secret government UAP programs has ever been able to publicly produce convincing photos showing alien hardware splayed across the landscape. And remember, we're not talking about a Cessna that plowed into a wheat field. We're talking about, presumably, an alien interstellar rocket, capable of bridging trillions of miles of space, and sporting technology that is obviously alien". Shostak concluded that, "from the standpoint of science, there's still no good evidence [that extraterrestrials are visiting the Earth], only an 'argument from authority'". Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, said of the July 26, 2023, congressional hearing that "it's astonishing it's come this far without any real evidence, without anybody in the scientific community making an appearance" and "we are still seeing not a shred of physical evidence". The physicist and cosmologist Sean M. Carroll said of Grusch's claims about alien visitors, "the evidence is laughable". Grusch was "talking about the holographic principle and extra dimensions and stuff like that" which should "set off your alarm bells," he said. He concluded that Grusch "has all of the vibes of a complete crackpot". Laurie Leshin, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) director for NASA, when asked by reporter in August 2023 if she had "seen spacecraft made from outside of this world", replied "Absolutely not. No." with a laugh and head shake. Physicist and popular science writer Michio Kaku said "so far we have not seen the smoking gun" to prove any of Grusch's claims. However, he also suggested that "the burden of proof has shifted, now the Pentagon has to prove these things aren't extra-terrestrial". That prompted Real Clear Science editor Ross Pomeroy to comment, "no, the burden of proof has not shifted. Aliens are not the default explanation when a simpler explanation readily does the job". According to Pomeroy, "Kaku is seriously jeopardizing his reputation and misleading the public through his unscientific new stance on UFOs." Responses from the United States government White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred questions about Grusch's complaint to the Department of Defense (DoD). In a statement, Sue Gough, spokesperson for the Pentagon, said: "To date, AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of any extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently. AARO is committed to following the data and its investigation wherever it leads." General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave an interview to The Washington Times on August 6, 2023, in which he stated that he had never encountered evidence that would verify the claims made by Grusch regarding "quote-unquote 'aliens' or that there's some sort of cover-up program". Milley added that he was unsurprised that such rumors would circulate and be believed by some within an organization as large as the U.S. military. NASA stated: "One of NASA's key priorities is the search for life elsewhere in the universe, but so far, NASA has not found any credible evidence of extraterrestrial life and there is no evidence that UAPs are extraterrestrial. However, NASA is exploring the solar system and beyond to help us answer fundamental questions, including whether we are alone in the universe." In response to Grusch's claims, Representative Mike Turner, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said, "every decade there's been individuals who've said the United States has such pieces of unidentified flying objects that are from outer space" and that "there's no evidence of this and certainly it would be quite a conspiracy for this to be maintained, especially at this level". Senator Lindsey Graham found the claims unreasonable, saying, "If we'd really found this stuff, there's no way you could keep it from coming out". Senator Josh Hawley said, "I'm not surprised, necessarily, by these latest allegations, because it sounds pretty close to what they kind of grudgingly admitted to us in the briefing". Some senators, though not concerned about Grusch's specific claims, were concerned that Congress might not have been briefed on special access programs. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who led a Senate hearing on UFOs in April 2023, said she intends to hold a hearing to assess whether "rogue SAP programs" existed "that no one is providing oversight for". Senator Marco Rubio, vice-chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said, "there are people who have come forward to share information with our committee over the last couple of years" with "first-hand knowledge" and that they were "potentially some of the same people perhaps" referred to by Grusch. In July 2023, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds led a proposed 64-page amendment to the 2024 National Defence Authorization Act, named the UAP Disclosure Act 2023, which proposes wider access to records of UAP and federal government ownership of any "recovered technologies of unknown origin". The enrolled bill directs the National Archives to collect government documents about "unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and non-human intelligence". On January 13, 2024, members of the House Oversight Committee's national security subcommittee received a classified briefing from the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG) Thomas A. Monheim regarding UAP reporting transparency. Some members said they were frustrated by the lack of new information regarding Grusch's allegations. On behalf of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and in response to Grusch's claims, Representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett organized a hearing on July 26, 2023. Grusch testified at the hearing along with other witnesses, during which he repeated his earlier UFO claims. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked the witnesses, "If you were me, where would you look?" regarding evidence to validate their claims. Grusch replied, "I'd be happy to give you that in a closed environment. I can tell you specifically." Following the hearing, and according to Burchette, officials informed the lawmakers "that Grusch doesn't currently have security clearance to discuss the issues in a SCIF". Following the hearing a bipartisan group of U.S. representatives called for the formation of a select committee on UAPs with subpoena power. Following the hearing, AARO's director Sean Kirkpatrick wrote on his LinkedIn page that, "contrary to assertions made in the hearing", Grusch "has refused to speak with AARO" so that some details said to have been given to Congress had not been provided to his office and also that the hearing was "insulting ...to the officers of the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community who chose to join AARO, many with not unreasonable anxieties about the career risks this would entail". Sean Kirkpatrick In 2024, after retiring from AARO, Kirkpatrick wrote an opinion piece for Scientific American in which he said that the US Government UFO coverup allegations "derive from inadvertent or unauthorized disclosures of legitimate U.S. programs or related R&D that have nothing to do with extraterrestrial issues or technology. Some are misrepresentations, and some derive from pure, unsupported beliefs. In many respects, the narrative is a textbook example of circular reporting, with each person relaying what they heard, but the information often ultimately being sourced to the same small group of individuals." Kirkpatrick further described the allegations' supporters as "a small group of interconnected believers and others with possibly less than honest intentions," who promote a "whirlwind of tall tales, fabrication and secondhand or thirdhand retellings". In a 2024 interview with Peter Bergen, Kirkpatrick said about Grusch: He's one of the individuals that I think this kind of, this core group of people have influenced him, have told him this information. He may have misinterpreted things that people have said, or he may have just fallen into the influence of what these folks have been telling him. At either event, at the time I left he had not come in to speak to AARO.: 32:20 Burgen further characterized what Kirkpatrick was saying as an ironic twist on conspiracy theories about government cover ups. "The true believer about UFO's thinks that there is a government conspiracy to hide real evidence of aliens. What Kirkpatrick is saying is the actual conspiracy is being carried out by a group of UFO true believers to get the government involved in the business of investigating aliens.": 33:00 Burgen suggested to Kirkpatrick that this might be, in Pentagon jargon, a "self-licking ice cream cone", a non-productive endeavor that only perpetuates its own existence. To which Kirkpatrick responded "That is a self licking ice cream cone, exactly.": 33:28 Media reporting on Grusch's claims Keith Kloor writing for the Scientific American on August 25, 2023, draws a line from "these outlandish assertions" by Grusch "to the vast repository of so-called studies" funded over past years by Robert Bigelow. Kloor also points to the specific references to "a football field–sized UFO" showing up in one of the claims made by Grusch and in past claims by Bigelow. Ken Klippenstein reported in The Intercept, that Grusch was twice committed after incidents in 2014 and 2018 that involved drunkenness and suicidal comments. Police records mentioned post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After the incident in 2018, Grusch was placed under an emergency custody order and transported to an emergency room. A mental health specialist requested a temporary detention order, whereupon Grusch was transferred to Loudoun Adult Medical Psychiatric Services, an inpatient program in the Inova Loudoun Cornwall Medical Campus in Leesburg. The article in The Intercept noted that "Grusch's ability to keep his security clearance" despite this history "appears to contrast with the government's treatment of other employees". In 2024, Grusch sued Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman and an unidentified Sheriff’s Office employee for $2.5 million for releasing the information to Klippenstein. The British journalist Nick Pope, who previously ran the British Ministry of Defense "UFO Desk", initially expressed hope for confirmation or disconfirmation of Grusch's claims, but now that Grusch has lost his security clearance and there is still no "smoking gun" Pope says it is difficult to see how the claims could be confirmed. He added that while he was at the Ministry of Defense if the US government had acquired craft and bodies, "they didn't tell the UK". Marina Koren wrote in The Atlantic that the case fits a long pattern of previous unprovable claims and that, "so far, the best evidence [Grusch has] come up with, besides his own word, is the government's denial". Matt Laslo, writing for Wired, described the sympathetic hearing of Grusch's claims by some members of Congress as an indication that in "our strange new political universe of alternative facts turned dystopian reality, once-fringe notions have built-in fan bases in today's Capitol". The conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson publicized the claims in a video posted to Twitter, and in a video interview of Grusch. Tom Rogan, writing in the Washington Examiner, was skeptical regarding Grusch's claims, but opined that they should be further investigated. Andrew Prokop, a political news correspondent for Vox, wrote on June 10 that, "skeptics question whether Grusch is just repeating tall tales that have long circulated through the UFO-believing community, suggesting he may be just a gullible sap (if not an outright fabulist)." Prokop went on to state that, "mainstream media sources have so far remained wary of Grusch – The New York Times, Washington Post, and Politico were all offered his story but none thought it was publishable. The Debrief, which published it, is a notably UFO-friendly outlet, as are Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, the two journalists who wrote the story. And purported bombshells like this in the past have tended to fizzle out." Sean Thomas expressed confusion in his opinion piece for The Spectator that, preceding Grusch, there have been others trying to convince officials and the public that UFOs are worthy of serious considerations including some who themselves were high-ranking U.S. officials. The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat noted in a June 10 opinion piece that one interpretation of the flap is that parts of the U.S. government see benefit in promoting belief in UFOs, noting similarities between Grusch's claims and the claims of Garry Nolan, Stanford pathology professor and longtime proponent of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis, among others. (According to Leslie Kean, Nolan knows and respects Grusch.) Matt Stieb, writing for New York, described Grusch's claims in Coulthart's interview as "crazy". Ezra Klein, a columnist with The New York Times, posted a podcast interview with Kean on June 20, 2023, noting that "the main reactions" to Kean's recent story about Grusch "have been to either embrace it as definitive truth or dismiss it out of hand." Klein asked a series of skeptical questions. Kean agreed that it is difficult to believe that the federal government could maintain secrecy for such a program for several decades. Steven Greenstreet, a documentary filmmaker and an investigative journalist, criticized Grusch in a video with the New York Post for previously attending UFO conventions and associating with the Skinwalker Ranch ufologists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, whom he met at a Star Trek Convention and both of whom sat behind Grusch at the July 26 Hearing and whom Representative Tim Burchett recognized from the dais and read their statements into the record. Outside the United States, the story received attention from multiple foreign mainstream news outlets, in such countries as Denmark, Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Croatia, and Turkey. The 2023 House Committee hearing at which Grusch testified brought much wider coverage to his claims including major international outlets like the BBC, CNN, and others. Grusch claimed that intentional disinformation was being promoted by the US government to cast doubt on the veracity of "non-human" UFO claims such as his. Adam Gabbatt of The Guardian described Grusch's position as "a common conspiracy trope in the UFO community". Others have suggested that, for ulterior motives, Grusch was given disinformation about aliens in order to encourage the public to believe in the extraordinary claim of aliens. Gareth Nicholson, editor for the South China Morning Post, wrote that "the current UAP flap could be an attempt by the US military to engage in a disinformation campaign to disguise real aerospace breakthroughs or an attempt to flush out advanced technologies held by rivals such as Russia and China". See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_sightings_in_South_Africa] | [TOKENS: 222] |
Contents UFO sightings in South Africa This is a list of alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects or UFOs in South Africa. 1914 phantom monoplanes From 11 August to 9 September 1914, thousands of South Africans in various parts of the country observed what they believed to be a nighttime monoplane, or believed to observe its headlights, while in some cases the aerial vehicle performed sophisticated maneuvers. This was in the weeks leading up to the South West Africa campaign during the First World War, and many suspected a hostile German monoplane on a possible spy or bombing mission. However, these possibilities were discounted and the provenance of the plane remained unknown. Likewise its destination, landing or refueling places and the identity of its pilot remained unknown, causing some to examine it as a case of mass hysteria. 1970s sighting 1990s sightings 21st century Crash claims and hoaxes Documents claiming that alien spacecraft were shot down by South African aircraft on 7 May 1989 and 15 September 1995 were determined to be hoaxes. See also Notes External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec,_New_Mexico_UFO_hoax] | [TOKENS: 1199] |
Contents Aztec crashed saucer hoax The Aztec crashed saucer hoax (sometimes known as the "other Roswell") was the allegation that a flying saucer crashed in 1948 in Aztec, New Mexico. The story was first published in 1949 by journalist Frank Scully in his Variety magazine columns, and later in his 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers. In the mid-1950s, the story was exposed as a hoax fabricated by two con men, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer, as part of a fraudulent scheme to sell materials they claimed to be alien technology. Beginning in the 1970s, some ufologists resurrected the story in books claiming the purported crash was real. In 2013, an FBI memo claimed by some ufologists to substantiate the crash story was dismissed by the bureau as "a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated". Story According to Scully, in March 1948, an unidentified aerial craft containing sixteen humanoid bodies was recovered by the military in New Mexico after making a controlled landing in Hart Canyon 12 miles northeast of the city of Aztec. The craft was said to be 99 feet (30 m) in diameter, the largest UFO to date. Scully named as his sources two men identified as Newton and Gebauer, who reportedly told him the incident had been covered up and "the military had taken the craft for secret research". Scully wrote that the crashed UFO along with other flying saucers captured by the government had come from Venus and worked on "magnetic principles". According to Scully, the inhabitants stocked concentrated food wafers and "heavy water" for drinking purposes, and every dimension of the craft was "divisible by nine". Science writer Martin Gardner criticized Scully's story as full of "wild imaginings" and "scientific howlers". Hoax During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Silas Newton and Leo A. Gebauer traveled through Aztec, attempting to sell devices known in the oil business as doodlebugs. They claimed that these devices could find oil, gas and gold, and that they could do so because they were based on "alien technology" recovered from the supposed crash of a flying saucer. When J. P. Cahn of the San Francisco Chronicle asked the con men for a piece of metal from the supposed alien devices, they provided him with a sample that turned out to be ordinary aluminum. In 1949, author Frank Scully published a series of columns in Variety magazine retelling the crash story told to him by Newton and Gebauer. He later expanded these columns to create Behind the Flying Saucers in 1950, a best selling book that influenced public perceptions about UFOs. Two years later, in 1952, the hoax was exposed in True magazine, with a follow-up article in 1956 presenting other victims of Newton and Gebauer. One of the victims was the millionaire Herman Flader, who pressed charges. The two were convicted of fraud in 1953. Influence on ufology Through the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, most ufologists considered the subject thoroughly discredited and therefore avoided it. In 1966, the book Incident at Exeter mentioned rumors of dead alien bodies stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Those rumors inspired the 1968 novel The Fortec Conspiracy. In 1974, ufologist Robert Spencer Carr publicly claimed alien bodies recovered near Aztec were stored at "Hangar 18" at Wright-Patterson, prompting official denials from the Air Force. However, in the late 1970s, author Leonard Stringfield purported that not only was the incident real, but that the craft involved was one of many captured and stored by the U.S. military. In later years, many accounts, allegedly first-hand, of the Roswell crash contained the Aztec crash story, with some claiming the craft was made of a material impervious to all heat, and others alleging the craft was damaged by the crash. The supposed humanoid bodies were said to measure between 36 inches (91 cm) and 42 inches (110 cm) in height, and weigh around 40 pounds (18 kg). Ufologists claim that shortly after the craft was downed, the military cleared the area of evidence, including the bodies, and subsequently took it to Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson. FBI memo In April 2011, the FBI launched The Vault, an online repository of public records released under the Freedom of Information Act. After the Vault launched, a one-page March 22, 1950 memorandum by Guy Hottel (special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington Field Office) drew renewed attention online, and the FBI later described it as the Vault's most-viewed document. The memo relays a third-party account claiming that an Air Force investigator had reported three circular craft recovered in New Mexico. The memo describes the objects as "approximately 50 feet in diameter" and states that each contained three small humanoid bodies "only three feet tall," wearing "metallic cloth." It attributes the alleged recovery to interference from a "high-powered radar" installation in the area, and ends by noting that "No further evaluation was attempted." In 2013, the FBI stated that the memo "does not prove the existence of UFOs" and characterized it as an unconfirmed "second- or third-hand claim" the Bureau did not investigate. The FBI also stated that the memo had been released publicly decades earlier and had been posted online prior to the 2011 Vault launch. Fundraiser The incident gave birth to the Aztec UFO Symposium, which was run by the Aztec, New Mexico, library as a fundraiser from 1997 until 2011. See also References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Falls_saucer_hoax] | [TOKENS: 1202] |
Contents Twin Falls saucer hoax The Twin Falls saucer hoax was a hoaxed flying disc discovered in Twin Falls, Idaho, United States, on July 11, 1947. Amid a nationwide wave of alleged "flying disc" sightings, residents of Twin Falls reported recovering a 30 in (76 cm) "disc". FBI and Army officials took possession of the disc and quickly proclaimed the object to be a hoax. Press reported that local teenagers admitted to perpetrating the hoax. Background On June 24, 1947, civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold reported a sighting of 'flying discs'. By June 27, disc sightings were being reported nation-wide. On July 1, Twin Falls Times-News declared that "flying saucers have invaded" the Twin Falls region after a forest ranger and his companion reported seeing eight to ten "discs" flying in a V-shaped formation over Galena Summit. The two men were marking timber about three miles south of Galena Summit when they reportedly heard a buzzing noise overhead and saw shining objects above themselves. One of the witnesses, Walter Nicholson, was quoted as saying "it wasn't anything like an airplane". The following day, on July 2, press reported on a second sighting. Mr. and Mrs. J. F. Meuser were reportedly driving near Malta, Idaho, when they spotted a lone "big ball of fire" about the size of the moon, only "much brighter". A third sighting was reported on July 3; railway foreman B. G. Tiffany contacted the Times-News with a story of him and his crew having seen a fleet of nine discs noiselessly flying in a V-shaped formation over Hollister, Idaho, a month prior. Two additional sightings were reported on July 4. Twin Falls resident R. L. Dempsey reported seeing two discs over the city. Three residents of Richfield, Idaho, reported having seen a single disc. On July 5, a group of 60 picnickers reportedly witnessed 35 discs in the skies over Twin Falls, making it the "largest number of the mystery devices reported anywhere in the nation" according to local press. On July 7, additional sightings were reported, with one report naming three 14- to 15-year-old boys as witnesses of a lone disc that was "the size of a motor scooter wheel". The Twin Falls disc was not the first story of a recovered disc. On July 8, it had been reported that Army personnel at Roswell had recovered a 'flying disc'; the following day, it was reported that the Roswell debris was an ordinary weather balloon. On July 10, United Press reported on a hoax saucer allegedly recovered in North Hollywood. Twin Falls 'disc' On July 11, the press reported the recovery of a 30-inch (76 cm) disc from the yard of a Twin Falls home. Residents reported hearing a "thud" around 2:30 am but dismissed the noise as a truck. At 8:20 am, a next-door neighbor reportedly discovered a "disc" and contacted police. Local police arrived and took possession of the object. The matter was referred to both FBI and military intelligence. Multiple officers from Fort Douglas (two lieutenant colonels, two first lieutenants, and a civilian) flew in to investigate. Authorities "clamped down a lid of secrecy pending the outcome of further investigation". Local press featured a piece on Army "cloak and dagger" during the disc investigation, mentioning that photographs of the object were confiscated. That same day, the FBI Special Agent In Charge Guy Banister reported the object had been turned over to the Army. On July 12, it was reported nationally that the Twin Falls disc was a hoax. Press reported that four teenagers had confessed to creating the disc. Photos of the object were then publicly released. The object was described as containing radio tubes, electric coils, and wires underneath a Plexiglas dome. According to Deseret News: "The disc is described as being thirty inches in diameter and resembling the base of an old-fashioned chandelier. It has a dome-like bubble, made of plexiglass, on one side and steel dome-like bubble on the other. Inside the plastic dome are three silver painted radio tubes with wires attached to what appears to be an electro-magnetic coil on the outside." The Independent Record further described it, stating: "The object measured 301⁄2 inches in diameter with a metal dome on one side and a plastic dome about 14 inches high on the opposite side, anchored in place by what appeared to be stove bolts. The gadget is gold painted on one side and silver (either stainless steel, aluminum, or tin) on the other. It appeared to have been turned out by machine." Reception and influence The Twin Falls hoax, with its nationally published image showing a bemused army officer holding a disc-like object of mundane construction, has been called the "coup de grâce of press coverage" on the 1947 flying disc craze. In the days following the story, "press accounts rapidly fell off". The Twin Falls hoax was not the last recovered saucer hoax. On July 28, 1947, just weeks after the Twin Falls hoax, there were reports of recovered disc debris at Maury Island, Washington. In 1949, another 'crashed disc' story circulated as part of the Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax. In the late 1960s, Guy Banister, the FBI official who had overseen both the Twin Falls and Maury Island cases, was posthumously accused of involvement in the JFK assassination by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, as dramatized in the 1991 film JFK. Fringe conspiracy theorists including Kenn Thomas, Nick Redfern, and Peter Lavenda would cite the two cases in connection with both UFO conspiracy theories and JFK assassination conspiracy theories. References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_sightings_in_Canada] | [TOKENS: 2341] |
Contents UFO sightings in Canada Below is a partial list of alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects or UFOs in Canada. According to a memo written by the Department of National Defence, sightings of unidentified flying objects in Canada occurred throughout the first half of the twentieth century. However, the Canadian government did not take interest in collecting information on sightings until 1947. 1951, Gander, Newfoundland On February 10, 1951, a U.S. Navy aircraft flying to Iceland from Gander reported a near-collision with a large, orange, circular UFO that “almost literally flew circles around" the American aircraft. 1960, Clan Lake, Northwest Territories On June 18, 1960, a prospector told the Yellowknife RCMP detachment that a month earlier, he and his partner saw a UFO at Clan Lake, located 30 miles north of Yellowknife. According to UFOlogist Chris Rutkowski, the men claimed they saw a hovering object 4 to 6 feet wide that hit the surface of the lake. The RCMP investigated, but found nothing. 1967, Falcon Lake, Manitoba Stefan Michalak claimed he was burned by one of two flying saucers with which he reportedly came into contact on May 19, 1967, near Falcon Lake, Manitoba. Ufologists claim that images of Michalak in the hospital show a grid of burn marks on his chest, and a similar grid appears burned into his T-shirt. Ufologists consider it to be one of the most documented UFO stories in Canada. Two books have been written on the alleged Falcon Lake occurrence: Skeptic Aaron Sakulich reviewed the report made by Michalak to police shortly after the incident, along with other evidence, and concluded that Michalak was indeed burned, but that the burns were likely caused by an accident brought on by alcohol consumption, and that Michalak, who was prospecting for silver ore near the lake at the time, probably made the story up to keep other prospectors out of the area. In April 2018, the Royal Canadian Mint released a $20 silver coin depicting the alleged event as the first of its Canada's Unexplained Phenomena series, stating "According to Stefan Michalak’s account, two glowing objects descended from the sky on May 20, 1967, near Falcon Lake, Manitoba, where one landed close enough for him to approach. When the craft suddenly took flight, its emission set Michalak’s clothes ablaze, leaving him with mysterious burns… and an unusual tale to tell." 1967, Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia The incident was the purported crash of an unidentified flying object in Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia in October 1967. On October 1, 2019, the Royal Canadian Mint released a $20 silver glow-in-the-dark coin depicting the sighting as the second of the Canada Unexplained Phenomena series. 1969, Prince George, British Columbia In Prince George, British Columbia, three unrelated witnesses reported a strange, round object in the late afternoon sky on January 1, 1969. The sphere radiated a yellow-orange light and appeared to ascend from 2,000 to 10,000 feet. 1974, Langenburg, Saskatchewan Around 10:30 a.m. on September 1, 1974, Langenburg, Saskatchewan area farmer Edwin Fuhr claims to have seen five saucer-shaped objects hovering approximately one foot off the ground near a slough. Believing it to be a prank, Fuhr walked closer and noticed the saucers were also rotating at a high speed. When his swather would not restart, Fuhr sat for 15 minutes watching the objects before they took off, too scared to move. He described takeoff as being extremely fast, with no noise and the objects emitting nothing but a grey vapor. An RCMP report found five circles, matching Fuhr's description of the objects. No physical evidence in the area indicated someone had driven in and made the circles. In 2024, the Royal Canadian Mint commemorated the event with a special silver coin. 1975–1976, Southern Manitoba Several sightings were reported of a red glowing UFO, sometimes described as "mischievous" or "playful", sighted in Southern Manitoba in 1975 and 1976. The UFO was nicknamed "Charlie Redstar" by the public. 1978, Clarenville, Newfoundland and Labrador A single sighting of a UFO by twelve individuals in the early morning October 26, 1978 occurred in Clarenville, Newfoundland and Labrador near Random Island. The object was reportedly oval-shaped with a fin on its tail. Individuals who spotted the object called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the dispatched officer, Constable James Blackwood, witnessed the UFO hover 100 feet (30.5 m) above the water for around one or two hours before vanishing. Blackwood used a telescope specialized for drug surveillance to observe the UFO, and other eyewitnesses used binoculars. According to Blackwood, when he shone his headlights the object would react by shining its headlights back. Reportedly Blackwood was attempting to contact the pilots of the craft. It left no evidence of its appearance apart from eyewitness testimony of the event. In 2016, a separate sighting occurred in Clarenville regarding a resident who spotted lights hovering over the water over Random Island. In 2020, the sighting was depicted on a $20 silver glow-in-the-dark coin as the third of the Canada's Unexplained Phenomena series by the Royal Canadian Mint. 1990, Montreal, Quebec On November 7, 1990, in Montreal, Quebec, witnesses reported a round, metallic object of about 540 metres wide over the rooftop pool of the Bonaventure Hotel. Eyewitnesses saw 8 to 10 lights forming into a circle above them, emitting bright white rays. The phenomenon lasted three hours, from 7.20 to 10.20 p.m., and moved slowly northwards. While none could identify the lights, a few witnesses, according to the next day's report in La Presse, were ready to express their belief that they were visited by aliens. A few witnesses say what they saw in a televised interview on CBC. The sighting was commemorated in 2021 on a $20 silver glow-in-the-dark coin as the fourth installment of the Canada's Unexplained Phenomena series by the Royal Canadian Mint. In November, 1989, in Campbellton, New Brunswick 2 sisters living on Van Horne Crescent witnessed 3 triangular UFOs hovering just over Sugarloaf Mountain. The aircraft were all silent and each eventually taking turns moving quickly backwards and shooting forward even faster before disappearing into the night sky. 1997, Trail, BC At least two women standing on the bridge over the Columbia River, waiting for the fireworks show, on the evening of July 1st, witnessed three small lights above them and they quickly took off down the river, just a foot or two above the water, they zig-zagged along the river heading eastbound until they flew out of sight. The two women, who were strangers, looked at one another in awe, realizing that was not part of the fireworks show, they hadn't yet began, it was still daylight. 2010, Harbour Mille, Newfoundland and Labrador During the night of January 25, 2010 there were multiple UFO sighting reports in Harbour Mille, Newfoundland and Labrador. Royal Canadian Mounted Police initially stated the reports were due to a missile launch, but later retracted the statement, and the Office of the Prime Minister stated that the UFOs were not missiles. Due to Harbour Mille's proximity to Saint Pierre and Miquelon, residents suspected French military activity, an assumption which was dispelled by an official statement by the French Government confirming there was no military activity taking place during the reported incident. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police referred to the event as an unexplained sighting, and NORAD stated there was no known rocket launch at the time. The event prompted Member of Parliament for the constituency Harbour Mille was in at the time, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte MP Gerry Byrne to press the government for further information regarding the incident and criticized the Conservative government on its lack of transparency. 2014, Kensington, Prince Edward Island While putting out a bonfire late in the evening of June 4, 2014, John Sheppard witnessed unusual lights in the sky over the Gulf of St. Lawrence and captured 22 minutes of it on his cellphone. After reporting the incident to MUFON and their investigation concluding it being a confirmed sighting, CBC covered the event. The next day, CBC released a follow-up article in which a series of alternate explanations for the event were presented. 2014, North York, Ontario Between 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, 2014, there were multiple UFO sighting reports in North York, Ontario. At around 9:00pm on Saturday, July 26, 2014, Sarah Chun witnessed a string of six or seven diagonal flashing lights in the sky from the window near her dining table in her condominium in North York before going outside to her balcony to observe. She observed the flashing lights for about 25 minutes and recorded two videos on her iPad, which were later posted on her YouTube channel. Toronto Police's 32 Division reported receiving several calls on the unidentified flying objects between 7:00pm and 10:00pm that night. Several police officers witnessed the lights, and one Toronto police officer who saw one of the lights speculated that it was a quadcopter launched from a building, but did not investigate while he was on bike patrol. The event was witnessed by many people, including Roxanna Maleki, a local musician, who had exited a movie theatre due to a fire alarm and who had posted a video to her Facebook account. Sebastian Setien, a resident of North York, reported that he was entertaining guests while barbecuing on his balcony and took a photo at 4:18 p.m. He and his guests came back out later at around 8:40 p.m. and saw the lights but he lost all internet connection while recording the video on his phone. It was also reported that there were some minor power outages in Toronto, including at the subway station in North York, and at the Cineplex movie theatre which briefly tripped the fire alarm. Further photographs and a video from another location in North York were also reported. Several other explanations were given including a quadcopter, Chinese lanterns, and flying kites with LED lights. Canadian UFO Survey results According to the 2002 Canadian UFO Survey published by Ufology Research of Manitoba, Toronto had the largest number of sightings with 34, followed by Vancouver with 31 and Terrace, B.C. with 25 reports. In 2002, a typical UFO sighting lasted approximately 15 minutes. The Canadian Federal Government (as of 2007) directs all UFO sightings to Chris Rutkowski of Ufology Research of Manitoba. On July 15, 2018, a Canadian news site mentioned a new study conducted by Ufology Research, formerly known as Ufology Research of Manitoba, stating there were more than 1,000 UFO sightings reported in Canada in 2017. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_sightings_in_the_Czech_Republic] | [TOKENS: 943] |
Contents List of UFO sightings in the Czech Republic This is a list of alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects or UFOs in the Czech Republic. 1976, Radkov In 1976 a family saw a triangular UFO similar to boomerang while sitting at the campfire behind their cottage in Radkov. Two years later, a similar object was unsuccessfully chased by a military aircraft from Žatec above Western Bohemia. In 1992, similar object was observed in Cheb, near Prague and near Dvůr Králové. 1987, Vranov Vranov UFO incident is considered the most famous and arguably the most serious incident of sighting of an unidentified flying object over Czech territory. This incident took place on 12 July 1987 in Vranov nad Dyjí above the Vranov Reservoir, which was full of visitors. The observation began at 12 noon local time. The crew of the helicopter regiment was ordered to pursue an unknown object. The weather on the day of the event was typical for the season and climate, with cumulus clouds above 1.5 km. The object, i.e. the target of the helicopter regiment, was first located in Austria, close to the state border. At first the pilots thought the guidance station was vectoring them onto the cloud. After a while, a black object in the shape of a cigar flew over them. They received an instruction from the ground to shoot down the object, but according to the pilots' description, the machine behaved very strangely. Whenever the machine was aimed in the crosshairs, it immediately changed direction. Moreover, shooting was also not possible due to the fact that they were located above the Vranovská dam, which was full of people, i.e. vacationers. After two minutes of visual contact, the object disappeared behind the cloud. The pilots flew on. First Lieutenant Jaroslav Špaček claims: Then probably the worst situation occurred during the entire flight. The object was flying directly towards their helicopter and they had to dodge it with great difficulty. At great, allegedly supersonic speed, the object, the target of the helicopter regiment, then moved over Brno, Jaslovské Bohunice and towards Bratislava, where after a while it was no longer visible on the radar. 1991, Miličín On 12 July 1991 a glowing round object was seen near Miličín causing panic among local population. Sphere appeared randomly, silently followed people, scaring them to death. It was allegedly seen by hundreds of witnesses and only a few people spoke. Local pastor reportedly told people that this was a divine miracle and they should keep quiet about it. Several people testified that they saw the outlines of figures in the sphere. In some cases the figures even left the sphere and were walking on a roof of an empty cottage and were "repairing" something leaving behind large and four-fingered footprints in the mud. One man was so bewitched by the sphere that he set off after it into the darkness, despite the neighbors calling him back, only to return later and confused. Another person reports a waste of time. And one lady said that figures came to her house and left only after she screamed, cried and prayed loudly. 1992, Tři Sekery On 5 May 1992 military radars showed an object approaching the Czechoslovak border from Germany. It crossed border near Tři Sekery. it was heading to the village of Hvozd. Several fighter jets and helicopters were sent after the object. Although the object was visible on the radar and was also seen by a number of observers from the ground, pilots did not find it despite the good weather. According to the radar, the unknown object headed towards Chomutov and suddenly disappeared near Jirkov. 1993, Borová On 21 August 1993 Mr. Š took his dog for a walk and came across an object similar to a flatfish without a tail and about 70 cm in length and 40–50 cm in height. The strange object was standing or hanging about 30 or 40 cm above the road and was not moving. Then he started to move and began to float noiselessly. The day after, sightings of UFOs of various shapes and sizes sprang up in a number of places in the Czech Republic. Shapes varied from cigar-shaped planes to glowing triangles. 2009 During late May 2009 there were various reports of people seeing flying objects on various places in the Czech Republic. See also References |
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