Conscious Recall Versus Hypnotic Regression in an Abduction Case

2 jun 2025 · Podcast UFO

00:08:54

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear

It has been determined by many researchers in the scientific community that during hypnosis, false memories are very likely to be generated, and distinguishing them from real memories is difficult, if not impossible without some means of confirmation. This is, for instance, the conclusion of a report for the U.S. Department of Justice by Martin T. Orne et al. titled “Hypnotically Refreshed Testimony: Enhanced Memory or Tampering with Evidence?” published January 1985 in Issues and Practices in Criminal Justice. With the above in mind, it is helpful for researchers attempting to evaluate a case when a distinction can be made between elements of the report derived from conscious recall and elements derived through the use of hypnosis. A case where this can be easily done is that of Judy Kendell of Zamora, California, thanks to a newspaper article announcing her intention to undergo hypnosis to recover around four hours of missing time, and another article in a different paper after the procedure, which was, apparently, well attended.

According to the article (page 3 of the pdf) by Spencer Sias, headlined “Hypnotist Will Help Woman Find Four Hours Lost During Trip,” published in the January 26, 1977, Davis, California, Yolo County Shopping News, Kendell was scheduled to be hypnotised that Saturday to find “four hours that experts think may have been stolen from her by space creatures who abducted her in an unidentified flying object.” The term “frontloading” comes to mind, but the circumstances that led Kendell to contact Center for UFO Studies Director J. Allen Hynek looking for answers are described in detail.

According to Sias, Kendell drove her two sisters home to Zamora one “pitch black” night in 1970 after leaving their grandmother’s house in Bodega Bay at 5:30 p.m. Although the trip should have taken about three hours, they arrived in Zamora seven hours later at 12:30 a.m.

The youngest sister, 22, was reportedly asleep as Judy, 23, and her older sister, 25 (all ages are at the time of the article), found themselves driving much longer than expected as they looked for the turnoff for Zamora after crossing the Cache Creek bridge on Interstate 505. Sias says they agreed they should be getting there and then quotes Judy as saying, “Shortly after that we were back in front of the flashing yellow light in front of the bridge again.”

According to Sias, when they got home, their parents were angry and thought their story was “baloney.” Kendell said her father called her grandmother and confirmed they left at 5:30 and then checked a map to see if they had driven in a circle and concluded that wasn’t a plausible explanation. Kendell added that if they had driven for seven hours straight, they would have run out of gas.

With no explanation and everyone safe at home, the mystery is said to have been forgotten until 1975, when Judy and her older sister went to see Escape to Witch Mountain “featuring a Winnebago taking off into the sky” and “remembered the ride at the same time.” Sias says, “Curiously, whenever Judy talks about the experience, she refers to ‘setting down in front of the flashing light again’ as if they were floating in the air.”

According to Sias, Kendell saw a UFO that summer that she didn’t report, but it reminded her of her experience. She talked with some friends and one of them suggested that she write to Hynek. Although Hynek didn’t reply himself, his “fellow researcher,” Alvin H. Lawson, an English professor at California State University, contacted her and expressed an interest in her case.

Lawson is reported to have contacted researchers in Los Angeles who checked out Kendell’s credibility and she is said to have agreed to be hypnotized that coming Saturday “to see whether she remembers being aboard a space craft.”

Her hypnosis session is described in the article (page 1 of the pdf) headlined “Woman in Trance Tells of Space Ordeal” in the January 31, 1977, Davis, California, Enterprise. According to the reporter, Kendell underwent hypnosis “shivering on her warm living room couch” in front of a “roomful of calm UFO researchers and incredulous friends…” The article is written as if the reporter was present, so this seems to have been quite the public spectacle.

In this account, the events are said to have taken place “on a Sunday in November 1971 or 1972.” The rest of the brief account matches the one in the Shopping News.

According to the reporter, Kendell realized for the first time during the hypnosis “that she was kidnapped by a space ship.” She is described as shielding her face to avoid seeing “a space creature she described as having a bulbous head with saucer-sized red-pupiled gelatinous eyes.” She is reported to have said it had holes for ears, an almost translucent white face with a mask covering the lower part, red veins on its neck that were “not like the purple ones we have,” a human-like body, and hands “like ours” with five fingers.

Kendell reportedly said she was told by the creature in English, “it’s okay, it’s okay,” in a voice that “sounded like it was muffled and coming through a distant megaphone.” She is described saying “But it’s not okay” in “a small tight voice” and then grabbing her right side and leaning over “as if in pain.” According to the reporter, the hypnotist, Dr. D. W. McCall, asked her what was happening, and she replied that she felt like she got poked.

McCall is said to have taken her through her experience repeatedly, and the story is told that “she relaxed after being poked and was lying on a cold table with a sheet over her,” and in disgust, announced that she was being catheterized and having urine taken from her. She reportedly saw three creatures at the foot of the table and couldn’t describe their faces, and also saw a human woman with blue eyes and straight black hair “who handed the creature a tube of colorless fluid, ‘that you can’t see through.’” Kendell is said to have been mystified as to how the woman knew her name as she tried to reassure her.

Kendell is reported to have described the creatures looking at her feet throughout the experience, and to have said that they probed her ear with something cold and hard, and that one creature put a “heavy machine over her eyes” with what sounded like a “quiet motor whirring inside.” McCall is said to have asked, “Is it a brain reading machine?” to which Kendell replied, “I don’t know.”

According to the reporter, she described being in a round room circled with windows and seeing two bucket seats on one side with a “console with a lever like a car gear shift in the middle.” She is said to have pointed to her left and described seeing “a table with what looked like doctors’ ‘probes’ on it along with a black box that had “speaker holes in it.”

Kendell is quoted talking about her sister who, according to the reporter, wished to remain anonymous and wanted nothing to do with the hypnosis: “I can hear her calling my name. She is crying. She is really upset. She sounds far away. I hope she is alright.”

The next thing Kendell reportedly recalled was finding herself behind the wheel of her car without knowing how she got there. McCall is said to have “ran her through the experience again” whereupon she remembered being carried by three creatures dressed in grey who threw her into the car. She is quoted as saying, “They must have carried me because I couldn’t walk.”

According to the reporter, Kendall said her sisters seemed to suddenly materialize “and when they were in the car, it was pitch black.” Kendell, “in a disbelieving voice,” is quoted as saying, “We just landed on the road – in my car?!” and with “certain amazement,” adding, “In my car.”

Lawson is reported to have said that, in the reporter’s words, “Judy’s story could be as much an idiosyncrasy in human makeup as an abduction by space creatures.” The other researchers are described as being “in many ways as mysterious as the story itself,” and not saying “for certain how they felt about Judy’s story.” McCall is reported to have said that he had hypnotized “about” six others who had similar stories.

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20 mei· Podcast UFO
This week on Podcast UFO, Martin Willis welcomes researcher and author Christian Lambright for a wide-ranging conversation on UFO disclosure, government secrecy, witness testimony, and the legacy of legendary investigator Ray Stanford. The discussion begins with Neil deGrasse Tyson’s apparent shift in attitude toward UFOs and explores why mainstream scientists and media figures may now be taking the subject more seriously. Along the way, the conversation dives into the psychology of belief, the reliability of eyewitness accounts, and how memory and perception can shape extraordinary experiences. Christian also shares fascinating insights into Ray Stanford’s remarkable UFO photography and film archive, including discussion of the mysterious “beam ahead” footage and other little-known cases that continue to challenge conventional explanations. The episode examines famous sightings, government transparency, the possibility of hidden programs buried within private contractors, and whether disclosure may ultimately come from outside official channels altogether. Thought-provoking, skeptical, and open-minded, this is a deep discussion about one of the world’s greatest enduring mysteries.
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751. Robert Powell
13 mei· Podcast UFO
Robert Powell joins Podcast UFO to discuss the controversial May 8 UFO file release and why SCU says much of the material lacks the metadata needed for real scientific analysis. We discuss over-classification, AI-assisted UAP research, the Aguadilla case, government transparency, and the growing involvement of academia in UFO studies. Robert also previews the SCU 2026 Conference in Toronto featuring Christopher Mellon, Dr. Randy Bostick, Kevin Knuth, and many others.
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An Unusual Physical Trace Case From England
26 apr· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
It’s always a plus when UFO cases come along with physical evidence to back them up. Sometimes this evidence is in the form of physiological effects on the witnesses, and cases involving these are numerous enough that investigators have been able to focus on them as a specific area of study. Conjunctivitis (burning red eyes), nausea, hair loss, numbness, paralysis, and burns are some of the symptoms commonly described, but a very unusual effect was reported in the following 1976 case from Bolton, England.
While the incident was said to have occurred in 1976, it didn’t show up in major media until 1987. In the March 1987 issue (page 19 of the pdf) of She magazine, there is an article by Peter Hough headlined “The UFO in Armadale Road.” According to Hough, at 5:15 p.m. on January 23, 1976, 17-year-old Shelley McLenaghan had just gotten off a bus and was 100 yards from home when she saw a UFO. She is quoted as saying, “Before that, I would have thought anybody who said they’d seen a UFO was crazy.” She added, “I think the government know far more than they let on.”
McLenaghan is then quoted describing her encounter:
Peter Hough
I saw a red and green light in the sky, thought ‘what’s that?’- it was a bit weird. The lights were about four or five times the size of a star. Then, as if they’d said, ‘we’ll catch your eye with the space ship,’ the lights merged and the semblance of a real nuts-and-bolts craft zoomed in. It was the size of a small house, flat on top, with sloping sides and sloping underneath, with a trap door, tripod legs. It was spinning on an axis, then righted itself, I could see portholes with light shining through.
Suddenly, it tilted towards me, then there was a terrible pressure on my head and shoulders, an off taste in my mouth. My teeth seemed to vibrate. When I tried to run it was like being in a nightmare. My arms and legs moved, but in slow motion. I tried to scream, nothing came out. Then everything went hazy until I remember bursting through the side door at home.
Mother was cooking tea. She gave one look at me, then said ‘What on earth’s happened?’ She thought I’d been raped. I grabbed her arm, dragged her outside and pointed at the sky, but whatever it was had gone. We went back into the kitchen and I started to calm down. Then I noticed the time – ten minutes past six. A ten-minute walk had taken me 45 minutes.

According to Hough, when McLenaghan’s father got home that night, the family called the Bolton Police, who didn’t believe Shelley’s story and suggested she had misidentified a low-flying plane.
Over the weekend, McLanaghan developed a rash that covered her upper body from the neck down. Along with this, her eyes hurt, her joints ached and “she had problems with her mouth.” She went to a doctor who told her mother that the symptoms were due to hysteria and a means to get attention. However, a dentist she went to thought otherwise and was puzzled by the condition of her teeth: her top fillings had come out, and her bottom fillings had turned to powder. Hough describes this as being what would come from a serious head injury like one might get from a car accident.
According to Hough, the family was visited by two men eleven days later at 7:00 p.m. in the midst of a downpour. They were “an odd couple,” and one of them said he was an RAF commander. Hough points out that that rank only exists in the Navy. The “commander” was around 40, had fair hair, only one arm, and “did most of the talking,” while the other man was dark-skinned, small, and sat silently with “a black box on his knee.” This man said it was a tape recorder, but reportedly never changed a tape in the course of a four-hour discussion.
McLenaghan said the “commander” gave her a “grilling” calling her a liar, “stupid enough to wrongly identify a weather balloon,” and just looking for publicity. She told him that the Bolton Evening News and Granada TV must have heard about her sighting from the police and that she hadn’t cooperated with them, and “he seemed placated.” He said this was good and insisted that she, in her words, “not mention it to anyone – especially UFO organizations.”
McLenaghan describes being pushed to the point of breaking down, at which point the “commander” would talk to her parents “about something trivial.” She says the men “had a strange effect on all of us,” and that her father, who was normally protective, “sat by while this man was tearing me to pieces.” She says the man seemed to know about her rash even though the family hadn’t said anything about it. Hough adds that when her father asked for identification, the men evaded the issue and then said “We investigate these sort of things.” They then drove off in a black car.
According to Hough, McLenaghan agreed to help him and Jenny Randles “reopen the case,” and he recounts McLenaghan’s experiences under hypnosis. She described herself lying on a table in a strange room with, in Hough’s words, “a figure with long blond hair” examining her feet. She then found herself running home.
Hough says that during a second session, McLenaghan said she was talked to by the “commander” twice. She is quoted as saying, “But I can’t say anything about the hypnosis because I wasn’t conscious. Maybe it was something like a nightmare.”
What is noteworthy here is that Randles was the director of investigations for the British UFO Research Association from 1981 until 1993 and instrumental in getting a moratorium put into place starting in 1988 on the use of hypnosis in investigations by BUFORA members. She and Hough wrote several books together covering UFOs and the paranormal.
The article ends with a final quote from McLenaghan: “If anyone has an experience they can’t put in a box, file away and take out as a normal memory, they’re bound to ask just what happened. Why did they choose me?”
In a box below the article, Randles is quoted explaining why McLenaghan’s case was re-investigated: “Because the information is verifiable via other people, for example Shelley’s parents, and also because of the associated effects of the sighting – Shelley’s rash and crumbled fillings. One odd aspect is the medical silence over these; we have asked in vain to look at Shelley’s medical records of the time.”
This case is included in A Catalogue of UFO-Related Human Physiological Effects (page 69 of pdf) published in 1996 by John Schuessler, and in Jacques Vallée’s 1990 book, Confrontations. Accounts can also be found in the March 22, 1988, Weekly World News, and the July 30, 1987, Australasian Post.
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Blog: The Chuck Clark UFO Video!
20 apr· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Recently, footage taken of a video that has been described by documentarian James Fox as the holy grail of UFO videos has been shown online. The original video on VHS had been in the possession of one of the early Area 51 researchers, Chuck Clark, since 1995. Clark was reportedly offered a large sum of money to turn over the video, and he refused, whereupon underhanded means were employed to get what was on it out to the public.
This story goes all the way back to the 1990s when the United States was in the midst of its own special brand of paranoid UFOlogy, which emphasized government cover-ups and conspiracy theories fueled by the popularity of The X-Files. Area 51 had become the most famous secret base in the world after Bob Lazar, in silhouette using the name “Dennis,” was interviewed by George Knapp on KLAS in Las Vegas in May 1989. He claimed to have worked on reverse-engineering nine recovered alien space craft at a site he said was called “S-4” located in the southern section of Area 51.
The excitement stirred up by Lazar’s claim resulted in a flood of UFO tourists descending on the area. Many would stop at the only bar in the nearby small town of Rachel, Nevada, a population that usually numbers around 50 people. According to the “Rachel Timeline” section of A Short History of Rachel, Nevada by Glenn Campbell and Edith Grover, Pat and Joe Travis bought the Rachel Bar and Grill in 1988. They renamed it “The Little A’Le’Inn” and held the first annual UFO conference there in July of 1990.
According to the timeline, Campbell moved into the Little A’Le’Inn in January 1993, and started “publishing his Area 51 Viewer’s Guide.” In August 1993, he was “kicked out” by Joe Travis and started the Area 51 Research Center in a mobile home in the trailer park owned by the founder of Rachel, D. C. Day.
The first Area 51 researcher to gain notoriety was Norio Hayakawa. According to his autobiography on DreamlandResort.com, he first became interested in Area 51 in 1987 when Bill Moore sent him a copy of a satellite photo of Groom Lake taken by the Russians along with a 10-page research paper. He says he attended a lecture given by Bill Steinman who wrote The Crash at Aztec, which had a chapter devoted “to the mysterious base in Nevada, and also that “Area 51 was briefly mentioned” in the 1988 TV special UFO Cover-Up?: Live! He goes on to describe the developments that led to Rachel being permanently associated with extraterrestrials and credits Campbell as being the person to discover the Area 51 vantage point that came to be known as “Freedom Ridge.”
It appears that Clark’s history with Rachel and Area 51 begins around 1991. There is a 1995 video covering a UFO Clark said he saw over Area 51, and he is described as an author and astronomer who has lived near the base “for the past four years.”
A comprehensive look into his history and activity regarding Area 51 is presented in the article “Chuck Clark: The Desert Astronomer Who Kept Looking at Area 51” posted on UAPedia. According to the writer, “biographical data on Chuck Clark is sparse, which is itself very Rachel. In a video posted 17 years ago on YouTube, Clark says he formerly lived adjacent to Vandenburg AFB in Southern California and was the director of the Western Spaceport Observatory. A web search failed to find any such observatory, so it might have been an amateur facility and Clark is often described as an amateur astronomer. He describes capturing footage a UFO passing by a rocket during launch and what seems to be that footage is shown.
According to the UAPedia article, Clark has been described as ex-military and there is a link to an Area 51 tour site where Clark is described as “ex-Air Force Captain Chuck Clark.” Anyone with access to military records could, of course, verify this.
Clark put out his own guide for Area 51 tourists around 1995-96 titled The Area 51 & S-4 Handbook, which is said to have angered Campbell. He continued his observation of Area 51 into the 21st Century and ran into trouble with the Air Force and the FBI. According to the UAPedia article and other sources, Clark had discovered sensing devices on public land, dug them up, reburied them, and mapped them. After Clark showed several of them to a Las Vegas TV crew (KLAS), Air Force personnel and FBI agents raided his trailer and took his computer, photos and records. One of the sensors reportedly went missing and Clark was charged with “malicious interference with a communications system used for the national defense.” He reached a deal to either replace the sensor or pay restitution, and the case was dismissed in January 2005.
James Fox made the acquaintance of Clark when he was working on his first UFO documentary. He spoke about this in an interview with Richard Dolan. According to him, he interviewed Clark about his reported Area 51 sighting and later got a phone call from him saying he had something to show him and that in Fox’s words, “When you see it, your jaw is gonna hit the floor.”
Fox says he drove twelve hours to Clark’s double-wide trailer in Rachel where Clark told him that what they were going to watch was shot by two men from Los Angeles, one around 19 and the other around 30. Fox says it was a typical Area 51 road-trip video with them hitting all the stops and that there is then a section shot at dusk from what seems to be the armrest of the car.
At this point he describes the men being in a panic and seeming like they’re trying to crawl under the seats. According to him a “yellowy-orange light” flooded the inside of the car and the shadows shifted as if the light source was on a pendulum. He describes the effect as “fluid” like “something you’ve ever seen before.” One of the men, Fox assumes it was the younger man, said he was getting out and in the midst of his companion’s protests, took the camera and started filming what was above the car. Fox describes it as a “perfect, perfect flying saucer” at about the height of a telephone pole. He says it was rocking and that it glowed like “phosphorous on a beach.” He says there were seams like the lines in a sliced pizza.
What was on the video can now be seen thanks to Logan Paul who made arrangements to see the video through Royce Meyers, known for running the website UFO Watchdog. On the May 9, 2023, episode of his Impaulsive podcast, Paul admitted to secretly filming the video using a button camera after Clark had refused to sell him the video for $1oo,ooo. He says he’s waiting for the right time to release it, describes it as “compelling, not convincing,” and that “everything about it screams bullsh*t.”
Coming full circle in the Area 51 saga, Paul chose to show his footage for the first time to Bob Lazar (at around 1:22:00) when Lazar was a guest on the April 13, 2026, episode of American Alchemy hosted by Jesse Michels. Lazar comments that “it’s moving the right way, it’s the right color, and it’s the right shape. It makes it very compelling.”
Adding some context, Reddit user SignalsIntelligence posted a link to a transcript of an interview he did with Clark regarding the video, where it came from, and where it is now. According to Clark, he got the video from someone who “was in the media out of Hollywood, Burbank.” He was a cameraman for a, in the writer’s words, “major network news organization,” the name of which was redacted. Clark got to know him when he was in the area working on a non-UFO-related Area 51 documentary. This person was “acquainted with at least one” of the men who shot the video. They had brought it to him, he made a copy of it, and he gave it to Clark to evaluate. Clark said he made a promise not to release it and that the man had since died.
As for Paul offering to buy the video from him, Clark says he didn’t recall Paul offering him money. He adds that he “made it pretty clear that it wasn’t for sale.” He says he was “advised” afterwards that Paul had $200,000 with him.
Meyers made an unsuccessful attempt to locate the men who had shot the video by posting stills on X on March 26, 2022. Their identities remain a mystery.
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Remembering Nick Pope
13 apr· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Last week, Nick Pope, full name Nicholas George Pope, passed away on April 6th at the age of 60. A fixture in the UFO scene, Pope first gained notoriety with his 1996 book, Open Skies, Closed Minds. Besides providing an overview of UFO history up to that point, the book has an autobiographical account of his time as the head of the “UFO desk” at the Ministry of Defense from 1991 t0 1994. After the book came out, he became a go-to “UFO expert” whenever an authoritative comment was needed to punch up a news story. He maintained his interest and a media presence and was sought after as a speaker at conventions and a commentator in various documentaries. By the time of his passing, he was a well-known personality in the UFOtainment industry, having appeared regularly on Ancient Aliens and at Contact in the Desert. In the midst of his notoriety and association with the more sensationalistic aspects of UFOlogy, his commentary seemed to be heartfelt and true to his actual beliefs.
According to Pope in his book, he was a skeptic before he was assigned to the “UFO desk” in Secretariat (Air Staff) Department 2A at the Ministry of Defense. He had been with the MoD since 1985, and personnel were shifted to different sections every three to four years as a matter of policy to give them “a breadth of knowledge and experience.” When he was assigned to deal with UFO reports, he took it upon himself to learn as much as he could about the subject, and the comprehensive historical overview in the book shows the depth of his research.
Besides studying UFO history, Pope reached out to British UFO researchers, such as Timothy Good who wrote the Foreword of the book, and established relationships with organizations such as the British UFO Research Organization. This set him apart from his predecessors and helped diminish the us-and-them perception between the MoD and the British UFO community.
Pope’s assignment came when The X-Files was popular and he describes his co-workers calling him “Spooky” and whistling The X-Files theme when passing him in the hallway. He was fully aware how unusual his job was, and when Focus, the MoD’s in-house journal, started a regular feature on unusual jobs within the organization, he was the first person to be profiled.
Pope presents cases he looked into, and the most notable of these was what has become known as “The Cosford Incident” which involved over 30 reports to the MoD of bright lights over the Southwest England in areas that included RAF Shawbury and RAF Cosford, overnight from March 30-31, 1993.
According to him in his book, the MoD was “asked to take part” in the production of a Central Television program on UFOs. While such a request would normally have been refused, Pope persuaded his superiors that it would be good to explain the Ministry’s policy on UFOs on camera and “lay to rest a few misconceptions.” On April 24, 1994, he was interviewed by producer Lawrence Moore and “freely admitted that many of the cases on file cannot be explained today in conventional scientific terms.”
Just before his book came out, Pope made his first BBC Television appearance on the Newsnight program. A segment was devoted to him and his book and begins with an actor dressed like him on a shadowy office set reading from the book over ominous background music. The actor reads from the section describing cases Pope looked into, and witness interviews are presented covering incidents in Bonnybridge, Scotland, and Dorset, England. Pope is then interviewed, and he is remarkably confident and articulate in this very early television appearance. The interviewer, Peter Snow, is noticeably taken aback when Pope says that he is “convinced by the sheer weight of evidence” that some of what are seen in the sky “are extraterrestrial in origin.”
After moving on from Sec (AS) 2a with what he describes in the book as a promotion, Pope continued investigating UFO reports in his spare time, and there is an early account (page 14 of the pdf) of one of these in the article by Mike Merritt headlined “Expert in UFO Probe on Isle” published in the November 4, 1996, Sun. According to Merritt, “Top UFO hunter Nick Pope is probing a mystery mid-air explosion which sparked a massive search nine days ago.” Pope is quoted as saying, “This sighting off (the Isle of) Lewis could be a UFO – I would not rule it out until I look at the reports I have asked for.” The caption under his picture at the top of the column reads “Pope… former MoD man,” which is inaccurate because he was still with the MoD at that time.
Pope left the MoD in 2006, and in 2007, the Ministry made the decision to release its UFO files. Pope describes this on his website, Nick Pope in the section titled “MoD UFO Files.” According to him, there were three reasons for the decision: the French had released their UFO files that year, it would be good P.R., and there had recently been a huge number of Freedom of Information Act requests for UFO-related documents. Pope describes the laborious process of review, redaction, and digitizing which led to the first group of documents being released in 2008 and the final group in 2019. As for his involvement, Pope says that the staff at the National Archives asked him to select cases to highlight in the media, and that he did “literally hundreds” of interviews across all media “and thus became the public face of the file release project.”
As can be seen in the section titled, “Spokesperson” on his website, Pope embraced his fame as a “UFO expert” and capitalized on it working in film, television, video games, and advertising. Besides his appearances on sensational programs such as Ancient Aliens, in 2019, he began appearing as a regular guest on The Basement Office with Steven Greenstreet starting with the first episode which premiered on May 29th. While still advocating for the extraterrestrial hypothesis and displaying obvious enthusiasm when discussing cases that he has a personal interest in, his commentary is restrained and well-informed.
Pope wrote a total of six books in his lifetime which include three books on UFOs, two science fiction novels, and one action thriller. Besides Open Skies, Closed Minds, his other two UFO books are The Uninvited, a book about abductions published in 1997, and Encounter in Rendlesham Forest written with John Burroughs and Jim Penniston (both USAF Ret.) about the reported lights and UFO landing near RAF Woodbridge in 1980 that was published in 2014.
R. I. P. | Check out Martin’s Tribute HERE
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A UFO Crash in Kingman, Arizona?
6 apr· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
For many years, stories of recovered crashed saucers and alien bodies were usually dismissed by investigators due to the stigma created by the effective debunking of the Aztec incident by J. P. Cahn in two articles he wrote for True magazine, the first in 1952 and the second in 1956. The stigma remained until the 1970s when influential researchers started becoming open to such cases, and an early story to come out during this period was that of a 1953 crash in Kingman, Arizona, that made the news in 1973. It was looked into by National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena investigator Raymond E. Fowler, who published an article covering it titled “What About Crashed UFOs?” in the April 1976 issue of Official UFO. Leonard Stringfield included the Kingman portion of it in his 1977 book, Situation Red!
The beginning of the renewed interest in crash recovery stories can be traced back to January 15, 1974, when Robert Spencer Carr claimed during a debate at the University of South Florida that the government was keeping two saucers inside Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson AFB. This was reported on in the January 16, 1974, edition of The Tampa Tribune. According to the article headlined “Does USAF Have UFOs?” by Frank Bentayou, Carr was a “mass communications instructor” at the university.
It was around this time that Fowler began looking into an article that was published in the Framingham, Massachusetts edition of the Middlesex News on April 23, 1973. Kevin Randle described this in a report he submitted to NICAP on February 19, 2007. According to Randle, the article is based on an interview of a man named Fritz Werner by two teenage UFO researchers, Jeff Young and Paul Chetham. Fowler contacted Werner and also interviewed him. He wrote a report for NICAP, which Randle has said he has a copy of, and presented Werner’s story, along with a signed affidavit, dated June 7, 1973, in the April 1976 issue of Official UFO:

I, Fritz Werner, do solemnly swear that during a special assignment with the U. S. Air Force on May 21, 1953, I assisted in the investigation of a crashed unknown object in the vicinity of Kingman, Arizona.
The object was constructed of an unfamiliar metal which resembled aluminum. It had impacted 20 inches into the sand without any sign of structural damage. It was oval and about 30 feet in diameter. An entranceway hatch had been vertically lowered and opened. It was about 3½ feet high and 1½ feet wide. I was able to talk briefly with someone on the team who did look inside only briefly. He saw two swivel seats, an oval cabin, and a lot of instruments and displays. A tent pitched near the object sheltered the dead remains of the only occupant of the craft. It was about 4 feet tall, dark brown complexion and had 2 eyes, 2 nostrils, 2 ears, and a small round mouth. It was clothed in a silvery, metallic suit and wore a skull cap of the same type of material. It wore no face covering or helmet.
I certify that the above statement is true by affixing
my signature to this document this 7th day of June, 1973.

Signature: Fritz A. Werner
Date Signed: June 7, 1973
Witness: Raymond E. Fowler
Date Signed: June 7, 1973

According to Fowler, in the process of trying to verify Werner’s story, he contacted Wright-Patterson AFB, former Blue Book personnel, the Atomic Energy Commission, Stanford Research Institute, “and a number of persons employed within the military-industrial complex.” While he didn’t find any corroborating witnesses, the tests, dates, people, and places in Werner’s personal account which follows “checked out very well.”
Werner’s story as he told it to Fowler is the same as that in the affidavit with more details added. He explained that he had been working for the AEC under Dr. Ed Doll as a project engineer for Operation Upshot-Knothole. This involved a series of three atomic explosions at the atomic proving ground in Nevada, and Werner’s job was to measure the effects of the blasts on different buildings built for the tests, which were the “tests” Fowler was referring to.
According to Werner, he got a phone call from Doll who told him he was going on a special job the next day. He reported for his assignment and was driven to Indian Springs AFB where he and about 15 other “specialists” got on a plane, were told not to “fraternize,” and were flown to Phoenix, Arizona. There, they got on a bus with blacked out windows. Others were already onboard and they were driven or four hours to what Werner thought might have been the area of Kingman. On the way, an Air Force colonel told the group that they were to conduct an investigation on a crashed “super-secret Air Force vehicle” based on their own individual specialties only. Werner’s job was to determine the forward and vertical velocities of the vehicle when it crashed.
Werner was escorted to the crash site, and it was there that he happened to glance inside a tent with an armed guard in front of it. This is where he said he saw the body and he speculates that the creature’s dark brown skin may have been due to exposure to our atmosphere. This was the explanation for the “chocolate-brown” skin color of the Aztec creatures.
When everyone was done and back on the bus, the colonel had them raise their right hands and take an oath that they wouldn’t tell anyone what they had seen. They were told to write out a report in longhand and were given a number to call when they were finished. When Werner finished his, he called the number and an airman came and picked it up.
Kevin Randle took an interest in the case and wrote numerous blogs about it, which were mostly dismissive. In his August 14, 2024, post titled “The Kingman UFO Crash Conundrum,” Randle tells the reader he “was unimpressed with it (the case) for several reasons.” His reasons included the fact that Stansel was the only witness, there was no documentation supporting his story, “and a suggestion that Stansel, after he had been drinking, told wild stories.”
What throws a new light onto Stansel’s tale is part of the interview with Young and Chetham “that seems to have been left out of this whole tale.” Randle, presents a transcript of a section of the interview with Young and Chetham that starts with Stansel being asked, “Did you say that you had contacted beings from other planets?” Stansel answered, “Yes, but now we’re getting into things where you’ll just have to take my word for it because I can’t produce it or prove it.”
Stansel said he met with a group once a week and that after a year they were able to make psychic contact. He said he “learned astral projection” and was able to project himself onto a ship. He then goes on much like many contactees have done throughout the years.
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A 1983 Contactee Case
29 mrt· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Screenshot
Throughout the 1950s and 60s, major science-based UFO organizations in the United States, and especially the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, looked down on contactee claims as ridiculous and unworthy of their time. This started to change as the 1970s got underway, due in part to the ideas put forward by Jacques Vallée and John Keel, but by the 1980s, things started going back to the way they were, at least in the United States. Investigators in other countries, however, stayed open to such reports, and in this week’s blog, we’ll look at a 1983 case from Brazil as it was presented in the British publication, Flying Saucer Review.
In the Vol. 29, No. 4, April 1984 issue of FSR (page 10 of the pdf), there is a translation from Portuguese by Gordon Creighton of an article by Marcos Bedin that appeared in the December 18, 1983, O Estado out of Florianópolis, Brazil. It’s presented under the headline “A New Brazilian ‘A. V. B.’” The initials stand for Antônio Villas Boas, who claimed (page 5 of pdf) in 1957 that he was taken aboard a craft where he had a sexual encounter with an alien female.
According to the article, 49-year-old father of six, Antônio Nelso Tasca, was well-liked in his former community of Chapecó where he had worked as an announcer at Radio Chapecó. Three years prior to the time of the writing he left Chapecó and went to work in various locations. He had a good reputation and was “well-known for his impeccable honesty.” He ended up in Barreiras where he became a cattle rancher.
At around 8:00 p.m. on December 14, 1983, Tasca was driving alone on a road that led to route BR-282 at Chapecó. When he was about 1,000 meters from a Coca-Cola factory, he felt an urge to stop. He pulled over and parked about 5 meters from the road and saw a stationary object up in the air to his right. He got out of the car and walked towards it and saw it was circular, lit from the inside, and emitting beams of white light. According to Bedin, “He at once realized it was a UFO or ‘flying saucer,’ such as he had read about in dozens of books on the subject.”
Feeling he was brave enough to handle a meeting with whatever might be occupying the craft, Tasca continued walking until he suddenly felt strong waves of heat. Thinking this might be some sort of radioactive emission, he turned around and started towards his car but only made it a few steps before a shaft of light came down and pulled him up into the craft at an “unimaginable speed.” He was terrified, and in the midst being taken, he went unconscious.
When he woke up, he was lying naked in a dark place feeling constricted and sensing a lack of air. His first thought was that he had been buried alive. He was then gradually able to move his legs and arms and breath with difficulty. The darkness and oppressiveness filled him with a terror such as he had never felt before and he broke down into tears. He then felt small hands or claws touching his body and realized that two or three creatures were examining him.
After a while, the creatures left and then the space he was in became lit up. Still terrified, Tasca saw he was in a room with no sharp angles and no indications of any doors or windows with the walls and ceiling being the source of the light.
Tasca saw his clothes lying nearby on the floor and he went to put them on when a door opened in a wall and “a very beautiful small woman came in, a woman with delicate skin and light-coloured clothing.” The italics are Creighton’s and he seems to be using them to emphasize where Tasca’s story is reminiscent of Boas’s. Tasca is quoted describing her: “She was an enchanting woman, with wide-set eyes like Bruna Lombardi – eyes extending backwards in the oriental style.” He said she was wearing something similar to slippers on her feet and that her clothing resembled pajamas.
According to Bedin, as a flood of questions welled up in Tasca’s mind, before he could say anything, a telepathic link was established, and the woman told him her name was Cabalá from, in Bedin’s words “the world of Agali.” She said he had been chosen to be given a message for the people of Earth, in Bedin’s words, “warning against destroying the planet and against other typical malpractices of Earthlings.”
Tasca asked her why he, a person of no influence with no special traits should be chosen to receive such a message, and the woman replied, “Because you have always believed in the existence of higher civilizations. Because you have always desired to have contact with me, and because you have a cosmic mind.”
After this, in Creighton’s italics, it is explained that an incident followed that Tasca didn’t want to reveal because “it would create problems of a personal nature for him and he therefore prefers to keep silent about it.” Tasca said that he would leave a complete account of what took place with his children before his death.
Tasca warned Cabalá that his memory was bad, and she assured him that he wouldn’t forget the message. She went over to a crescent-shaped desk coming out of the wall (the only furniture in the room) pressed a button, and a “sort of monstrance” holding a “diadem” rose out of the floor. Cabalá placed the “diadem” (described as yellow, red, and green, and having eight sections), on Tasca’s head, gave him the message, and told him to repeat it twice.
After that, Cabalá told Tasca the message would never be removed from his mind and then “the extraterrestrial woman took her leave of him, raising aloft her right hand with open palm.” Creighton added an asterisk and his footnote reads “Just as A. V. B.’s little lady did!” In fact, Boas reported that his “little lady” pointed at him, her belly, the ground, and then at what he believed was the southern sky.
The room went dark, and Tasca felt himself being conducted to another room by the creatures that had examined him. He lost consciousness, and when he came to, he was lying on a rock on top of a small plateau next to the BR-282. A diesel factory was nearby and when he was able to muster up the strength to make his way down, he went to the factory. Someone in the office agreed to notify his family, who had already called the police, and when Tasca went to his car he found them and the police waiting for him.
Screenshot
At his son’s home in Palmital, Tasca’s family noticed there were what looked like burn marks on his back, one of which was “W” shaped. He was examined by Dr. Júlio Zawadscki who gave a statement that he was mystified by the marks, as they caused Tasca no pain or any other symptoms associated with first or second-degree burns.
The first person Tasca approached to deliver Cabalá’s message was Bedin. According to Bedin, Tasca sat down at a typewriter in the newspaper office in Chapecó and “instantly produced” the text that follows in the article for more than half a page.
As is typical of contactee messages, there is a warning against the use of nuclear weapons and it is explained that a “total nuclear war will drive the Earth off its celestial orbit and cause grave disturbances to life on neighbouring worlds, some of them worlds existing in dimensions of which terrestrial man still has no inkling.” There are instructions to abolish imperialism, preserve human reproductive functions, and not engage in potentially disastrous experiments with genetics. Finally, it is promised that the “Masters of Supreme Wisdom” will come back to Earth, establish a paradise, and resurrect the dead “within the beam of the four Xis.”
A translation of the article without the message is included in the February 1984 UFO Newsclipping Service (page 14 of the pdf) and Tasca’s case is included in the UFO Related Entities Catalogue where there is an abundance of additional information.
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Silver-Suited Humanoid Reports
16 mrt· Podcast UFO
Blog by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Amidst the many assorted descriptions of UFO-related entities, silver-suited humanoids, sometimes with antennas, show up in many reports. They are described repeatedly in the 1976 Center for UFO Studies publication by David Webb, 1973 – Year of the Humanoids, and there were several reports during the 1977 flap in what has been called “The Welsh Triangle” that we wrote about recently. In this week’s blog, we’ll look at a couple of cases from the Southern United States, the second of which became quite well-known.
In the January 4, 1981, issue of The Robesonian out of Lumberton, North Carolina, there is an article (page 7 of the pdf) by Tim Lewis headlined “Shining Silver Man Stalks Forest Acres Area.” According to Lewis, the previous Tuesday at around 10 p.m., a couple had just exited Barker Ten Mile Road when they saw a round flashing light near the turnoff at Bee Gee and McLeod. As they got closer, they were able to determine that the light was located in a vacant wooded lot.
They turned onto McLeod Street, and a shiny figure came out of the bushes waving its arms as if it was signaling them to stop. They thought better of it, sped up, and continued on.
Lewis tells the reader that he did some research after hearing the story and found an article in the Robesonian files that described multiple reports of the same sort of figure. There is a reprint of the article headlined “Area Residents Report Sighting UFO Sunday.”
According to the article, dated December 30, 1974, county dispatcher Fred Barnes said there were four calls from residents who said they saw an “object or subject wearing a silver and black suit and wearing some kind of helmet.” They all said that when they saw it, it jumped into the bushes at the intersection of Forest Road and Barker Ten Mile Road. There were also reports of a white object with bright lights over Forest Acres. Four deputies investigated and didn’t find anything.
Lewis notes that that the events reported in both instances occurred in the month of December around the time of a full moon in the same area. He then goes on to describe other strange reports received by the staff at the paper.
According to Lewis, there was a series of recent reports from residents living along a railroad track going through Forest acres involving loud wailing and voices speaking in a foreign language. About two weeks prior to Lewis’s article, a resident said she saw a figure run from her yard into the woods. When her husband went outside to investigate, he found a set of fence posts had been pulled out of the ground. Lewis has this to say about the effort involved: “Evidently, this had to have taken super-human strength to have pulled fence posts out of the ground bare-handed.”
During the “Year of the Humanoids,” on October 17, 1973, 26-year-old, recently-elected Falkville, Alabama, Chief of Police Jeff Greenhaw reported an encounter with a silver-suited humanoid and had four Polaroid photos to back it up. A comprehensive examination of the case can be found in the blog by Mark Russell Bell headlined “Detailed Report of Jeff Greenhaw’s Falkville Incident Alien Encounter Testimonial” posted on August 4, 2020, at metaphysicalarticles.org. Along with reproduced articles on the case from Official UFO Magazine, Bell includes one from the October 19, 1973, Birmingham News and one from the November 16, 1973, Decatur Daily. His source for those was the 1975 book by Ralph and Judy Blum, Beyond Earth: Man’s Contact With UFOs. The originals are available with a subscription at newspapers.com and the Decatur Daily website.
According to the Birmingham News article headlined “Falkville Chief Says ‘Howdy’ to Spaceman,” Greenhaw was at home when he received a call from a woman who told him, in the reporter’s words, “that a spaceship with flashing lights had landed in a field west of the city.” Because there had been “numerous reports” of UFOs in the area, Greenhaw took along a camera as he drove to the site.
As he was driving down a gravel road, he saw a human-shaped creature standing in the middle of it. The creature walked towards him, and Greenhaw took four photos. He said “I was scared stiff.” The creature was covered in a material like tin foil and had an antenna on top of its head. Greenhaw said, “It moved stiffly, like a robot, and didn’t make any sounds.”
Greenhaw turned on the blue flasher on top of his car, and the creature turned around and took off running down the road. Greenhaw said, “I jumped into my car and took after him, but I couldn’t even catch up with him in a patrol car. He was running faster than any human I ever saw.”
Greenhaw told the paper he received multiple calls the day after from people who said they had seen UFOs in the area during the time of his encounter. His wife is reported to have laughed the incident off, and Greenhaw commented, “She wouldn’t be laughing if she saw what I saw.”
There is a follow-up article in the November 16, 1973, Decatur Daily. Headlined “Falkville Police Chief Resigns Under Pressure,” it describes the unfortunate events in Greenhaw’s life following his encounter. Besides being asked to resign by the mayor, his car engine “blew up,” his wife divorced him, and his mobile home burned down. Greenhaw is quoted describing his situation:
“So now I’ve lost my car, my wife, my home, and my job, and I guess I’ll just have to go where ever I can to find another job. I had planned to stay in Falkville in spite of all of the problems I have been having, but now it doesn’t look like I can.”
The four photos made the rounds among UFO enthusiasts and were used on the cover of Beyond Earth.
Georgia-based NICAP Investigator Marion Webb looked into the case and a report is presented on the front page of the October 1974 UFO Investigator under the headline “Police Chief’s Nightmare: Real or Contrived.” According to the article “an official received word of a rumor that several firemen from a nearby community may have collaborated on a hoax which involved their ‘borrowing’ silver firefighting uniforms.”
Webb managed to acquire such a suit, added aluminum foil to the hood and feet, and had his picture taken wearing it. While there were similarities to Greenhaw’s photos, Webb found it difficult to move in the uniform, which contradicts Greenhaw’s claim that the creature outran his car. Webb speculated that Greenhaw had only gone a short distance before spinning out in the gravel, which is a detail that shows up in Bell’s blog.
Greenhaw stayed away from public exposure for most of the remainder of his life, but gave an interview in 2020 to Red Water Filmworks. In the recording posted on YouTube, he describes coming upon the creature and saying “something to the effect (of) ‘howdy stranger,’” and getting no response. He says he initially thought someone was “pulling a prank” but that “things just started that was so strange.” He said that the creature moved stiffly with “no bending of the arms and legs…” Describing its running after it turned away, he said it was “like it had springs on its feet or something.”
Greenhaw added that almost to the day, 10 years later, someone broke into his house and took the four photos, along with his service revolver and shotgun. He said he thought it was “really weird” that the only three things he had with him that night should turn up missing.
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Timothy Green Beckley’s UFO Review
8 mrt· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Timothy Green Beckley
Among UFO enthusiasts, in between the serious, science-based researchers and the crackpots, there are people who enjoy the mystery for the fantastic tales and the colorful people it spawns, as well as the social interaction with the like-minded. One of the first examples of this sort of person was Gray Barker, who became known for his 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. He became good friends with James W. Moseley, who would become well-known as the publisher of Saucer Smear magazine, and the two of them became notorious for pranking and poking fun at what they considered their over-serious peers. As the 1960s got under way, a group formed around Moseley, who was based in Fort Lee, New Jersey. This included Allan Greenfield, Eugene Steinberg, and Timothy Green Beckley. Of these, Beckley, Like Barker, would become a prolific publisher of UFO-related material, and in 1978, he started putting out UFO Review, which was a tabloid-style newspaper chock full of UFO news, reports, interviews, and lurid ads for UFO books, UFO merchandise, new age self-help guides and related paraphernalia.
Timothy Green Beckley left this planet on May 31, 2021. Records of his age at the time of his passing range from 65 to 69. According to the IMDb, he was born on March 4, 1952, as Jeremy Stone. In addition to his interest in the paranormal, he was an actor in and producer of soft-core porn/horror movies and was known to fans as “Mr. Creepo.” He wrote and published many books on the paranormal with a definite sensationalized bent and was active in the community up until his death. According to what is believed to be his self-authored bio, “Tim Beckley had so many careers that even his own girlfriend didn’t know what he did for a living… Timothy Green Beckley has been described as the Hunter Thompson of UFOlogy by the editor of UFO magazine Nancy Birnes.” His bio contains the claims that his life was saved by an invisible force at the age of three, he started having out of body experiences at the age of six, he had his first UFO sighting at age ten, and had two more after that in the course of his life.
As near as we can tell, the first issue of UFO Review, “Collectors Edition,” Vol. 1, No. 1, came out prior to June 1978. The month and day are not noted anywhere, but there is a 1978 copyright as well as a notice for the 15th Annual National UFO Congress in Cleveland (organized by Moseley) in June.
The front-page headline is “Top Secret UN Committee Probes Startling Case of Mexican Doctor Who Claims: ‘I Examined a Live Space Alien,’” which sits over a photo purported to be “startling photographic proof” that “UFOs have a base beneath Lake Ontario.” Inside, on page 2, is “On the Trail of Flying Saucers” by Timothy Green Beckley–Mr. UFO. It starts off with the heading, “Welcome Aboard,” and Beckley proceeds to tell the story of his motivation for creating the newspaper and the process of bringing it to life.
According to Beckley, it occurred to him that while interest in UFOs was “at an all-time high,” there weren’t many “sources to turn to for legitimate information on this vital subject.” He assures the reader that those who are aware of his 15 years of research “will instantly recognize my sincerity when it comes to getting to the bottom of the mystery and placing before the public all the information that is available.”
UFO Review ad.
Beckly says “one of the main reasons” that the paper is being put out at this point in history is that the public is hungry for the truth and that Close Encounters of the Third Kind, “has ignited a spark that has turned into a full-blown flame and it is up to someone to kindle the fire before it goes out.” Beckley says he has been busy “spreading the word” in areas where UFO stories wouldn’t be touched and proudly announces that two of his articles will be appearing in Swank and Knave.
Beckley then relates how “a well-known New York City publisher” hired him and his staff at Global Communication to put together a UFO magazine and then told him to drop the project because he, the publisher, had done some research and had found that UFO magazines don’t sell very well. Beckley explains that he tried in vain to make the argument that the magazines didn’t sell well because of poor distribution and then opted to publish a magazine with his own money in the economical tabloid form.
To the right of Beckley’s article there is an ad for three of his books: Book of Space Brothers, a book of “alleged communications from space;” Subterranean World, covering the theory that some UFOs come from an underground base populated by descendants of the people of Atlantis; and People of the Planet Clarion, about the claims and messages of contactee Truman Bertherum.
The lead story about the UN committee hearing about the examination of the alien is on page three. This would have happened just before the presentation at the UN on UFOs organized by Lee Speigel (listed as UFO Review’s chief of field investigations staring with issue number 3) at the behest of Grenada Prime Minister Eric Gairy. According to the report, a Mexican doctor in Guadalajara was visited by a man who said he was very ill. Upon examination, the doctor saw that the man’s skin was unusually pink and that he had no hair follicles except for those on his head. The man then said he had wanted to be examined to prove he was not human and proceeded to say that Earth had been visited regularly by beings from other planets and that there was concern about our slow development. The doctor felt obligated to report the encounter to “someone in authority” and Ambassador Francis Redhead of Grenada “was called in to investigate the matter.” The doctor was subsequently “invited to UN headquarters to tell his story.”
The Centerfold Story is “Flying Saucers & Big Foot are Related!” by Jim Barnett. Barnett presents cases where Bigfoot creatures and UFOs were reported in the same area around the same time. Under the centerfold artwork by Dick Massa, the reader is told that it’s available as a poster for $3.80.
For Gray Barker fans, there is what would be a recurring column by him called “Chasing the Flying Saucers.” In this first one, Barker describes waking up in his West Virginia home on January 9th to see 12 inches of snow covering the area, making breakfast, and opening the West Virginia Reader. He describes a report involving four women spotting a classic saucer while driving. The driver described tears starting to flow uncontrollably from her eyes upon spotting it.
Barker describes rescuing the bacon he was cooking before it burned and then satisfying his hunger with some cinnamon rolls before digging into other reports from S.A.U.C.E.R.S. (Saucers and Unexplained Celestial Events Research Society) which was Moseley’s group that often had him as its sole member. He then presents the details of some more cases and ends describing a discussion of a case with a woman from his office, which might give the reader the impression that he makes his living as a professional UFOlogist. Right in the midst of the article on page 12 there is an ad for books by Barker and saucer related tape recordings for sale describing him as “one of the top UFOlogists in America.”
UFO Review lasted until issue 39, which is the “official program” for the 1994 National New Age, Cosmic Conspiracies & UFO Conference held from May 20-23 in San Diego, California. Beckley was the organizer and speakers included Jim Moseley, Dr. Frank E. Stranges, and Sean David Morton. The keynote address was given by Vince Davis, who was notorious as one of the “Gulf Breeze Six.” Despite the sensationalism and the silliness contained in the paper throughout its existence, there are reports of some noteworthy cases. If nothing else, UFO Review provides a look into the popular, unabashedly commercial side of UFOlogy at that time.
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A Welsh Triangle Window Area?
2 mrt· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
In 1977, there was a flap in the area of St. Brides Bay in Pembrokeshire, Wales, that involved reported sightings of craft and humanoids. The most well-known incident involved 14 Broad Haven Primary School students running inside to tell their headmaster that they had seen a yellow cigar-shaped craft land in a field. On February 17, three staff members reported they saw the same craft. The story made national news thanks to British UFO Research Association investigator and UFO Investigators Network correspondent Randall Jones Pugh, and a flap began that would result in the area being referred to as “The Welsh Triangle.” A lesser-known case involved an entire family that reported a series of strange events which Pugh covered in articles published in issues of Flying Saucer Review and the BUFORA Journal.
In April, while driving, Pauline Coombes and three (out of four) of her children were reportedly chased by a football shaped UFO. Later that year, in October, Coombes, her four children, and her mother reportedly witnessed a craft and humanoids that behaved in an especially bizarre manner. It came out that all sorts of strange happenings were said to have been occurring on the family homestead called Ripperston Farm. Journalist Clive Harold got close to the family and wrote a book about their experiences titled, “The Uninvited.”
In the Vol. 23, No. 1, June 1977 issue (page 6 of the pdf) of Flying Saucer Review (page 6 of the pdf), Pugh includes Coombes’s report in “West Wales Roundup,” just after his article on Broadhaven. He presents the details from an article (in which he named as a “local UFOlogist”) by Hugh Trumbull that was published in the April 14, 1977, edition (page 15 of the pdf) of the Western Telegraph. According to the article headlined, “Chased by a Flying Football,” Coombes had seen three UFOs that year. In this instance, she was driving near Little Haven with her three children, when her 10-year-old son, Keiron, saw a light coming down towards them. He described it as yellow, about football-sized, with a beam coming out of the bottom.
The object followed along the side of the car, hopping over hedges, for over a mile. When they reached the farm, the car’s engine and lights died. They went to get Coombes’s husband, Bill, but the object was gone by the time he came out.
Pugh wrote an article covering a sighting Coombes and all four of her four children said they’d had, along with her mother, on October 30, 1977. It’s headlined “Stack Rocks Humanoid Display” and was published in the Vol. 23, No. 6, April 1978 issue (page 8 of the pdf) of Flying Saucer Review.
According to Pugh, they were pulling up to the farm in their car when Coombes’s mother drew her attention to something in the sky. Coombes stopped the car and everyone got out to look. They described it as a “round, flat disc, whitish in color” moving towards the sea at what Coombes estimated was at around 200 feet “at the speed of a motor-boat going fast across the bay” or at about 20-30 mph.
It came down to about the height of nearby Stack Rocks, maintained the same speed and then went into the side of the islet and disappeared. Coombes said she and her mother expected an explosion, but there was none, and “both women were quite adamant that ‘it just disappeared into the rock.’”
The entire group crossed two fields to get to the water’s edge. The water between them and the islet at this point was only about 400 feet wide, and as they approached, they saw what they first thought were, in Pugh’s words, “two skin-divers going about their business in the deep waters around the Stacks.” They then realized that the heads of the figures were elongated and much larger than a normal human head. Coombes described them as “rectangular in shape with the corners rounded off.” When asked if she was sure they weren’t divers or fisherman, Coombes said that while “they were human in shape, they were definitely not human beings.”
They watched for about 15 minutes as, in Pugh’s words, “the silver-clad humanoids moved about on the uneven surface of the Stack Rocks.” Pugh points out that the islet rises “abruptly” to a height of about 80-100 feet and that the surface of the rock is such that it would require a good deal of caution in order not to fall off.
Coombes said they saw “a door opening and shutting fairly rapidly on the right-hand side (the Broad Haven side) of the rock face.” The door seemed to be about the same size as a normal household door, had a “shimmering haze” around it, and the space behind it was “quite black.” It opened and closed, in Pugh’s words, “much as would the sliding doors of a serving hatch in a restaurant,” and the group saw a “silvery clad humanoid” repeatedly come into view and leave as if it was walking up and down some steps.
The other figure moved across the rock face as if it was a smooth surface and even seemed to walk on the water. Eventually it went out of view behind the left side of the islet towards the sea. The other figure then vanished “abruptly” along with the door.
According to Pugh, he and BBC news reporter David Allen interviewed Coombes and the children on December 1st. One thing that came out was that Coombes took a different road home that day and “could not fathom why she decided to take that particular route.” Pugh tells the reader that he is convinced that Coombes “has a psychic ability to see things not normally visible to other people” and mentions there being a paranormal aspect to the farm without going into specifics. As for Coombes’s credibility, he reports that she stuck to her story and was prepared to take any test that would prove she wasn’t imagining things.
Pugh ends his article relating a sighting of his own through his bedroom window overlooking St. Brides Bay, Pembrokeshire. According to him, he saw a crescent-shaped object with a tube sticking up about 3 feet and a dome on top sitting in a field. As he pulled aside the curtain exposing the light from his room, the object took off vertically at great speed.
The Coombes family shows up repeatedly in reports published in the BUFORA Journal throughout 1977 into 1978. In the Vol. 6, No. 2, July-August 1977 issue (page 16 of the pdf) Pugh says the family reported seeing a 7-feet-tall silver-clad humanoid looking in at them through their living room window. Coombes can be seen on YouTube describing this to a group of visitors at her farm.
In the Vol. 6, No. 1, January-February 1978 issue (page 17 of the pdf), there is a report by Pugh that on May 17, 1977, Coombes’s twin daughters, Joanne and Layann, saw a silver-suited being walking around on the farm that then went through a hedge and a barb-wire fence and disappeared. He says they also saw “a silver-white ‘platelike object’ with a red light” that landed, put out a stair ramp, and ejected a box down it. The stairs then retracted, the door shut, and the craft took off. The family investigated and found no box but did find large footprints in the area. In the meantime, the twins and Coombes’s eldest daughter Katrina are said to have shouted out to the adults as they had seen a craft similar to the first one fly into the water by the Stack Rocks.
Pugh wrote a book about the flap with Fredrick “Ted” William Holiday titled The Dyfed Enigma that was published in 1979. The Uninvited by Clive Harold published that same year focuses on the events reported at Ripperston Farm which were said to have also included televisions exploding and a herd of cows being mysteriously transported from a locked field to a neighboring farmyard.
Pugh can be seen talking about the events he investigated here.
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Blog: Mr. X.
21 feb· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
In 1980, The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore was published. In the book, on page 103 of the first printing, there is a bad photocopy of a photo showing two soldiers escorting a small creature. One of the soldiers is carrying a suitcase-shaped object that seems to be a respiration device, as there is a hose going from it to the creature’s mouth. The photo is said to have “reportedly first surfaced in Wiesbaden, Germany.” In 1981, Wiesbaden resident Klaus Webner took it upon himself to investigate. He wrote an article presenting his findings that was published in the September 1981 issue of The Probe Report, put out by the Britain-based Probe UFO Research Organization.
In the book, the photocopy is presented with the caption “Alien from Another World or Elaborate Hoax?” The reader is told that it, along with the “artist’s interpretation” on the preceding page, is being published “without comment about whether it may or may not pertain to certain significant aspects of the Roswell Incident.” According to the authors, “an unnamed informant” gave the original photo, which he said he bought for a dollar, to FBI agent John Quinn at the New Orleans field office. They say the photo “purports to show an alien survivor of a UFO crash in the custody of two U.S. military policeman.” Lastly, they say that it got “limited publicity in West Germany in the 1940s” and was met “with skepticism by U.S. officials of the then-existent Allied Military Government.”
In his article headlined “The Strange Case of ‘Mister X,’” Webner describes Berlitz as “inventor of the Bermuda Triangle and mystification man of all things which are surroundable [sic] with the haze of mystery, and realisable [sic] in hard cash.” He describes the book as “nothing more than a mixture of far-fetched speculations, fantasies and false information.”
Webner didn’t have to look far to establish the origin of the original photo. According to him, he found an article in “the archives of the local newspaper Wiesbadener Tagblatt” that had three photos under the headline “Flying saucers over Wiesbaden. A Giant Flying Disc Crashed at the Bleindenstadter Kopf. Crew Member is in Protective Detention. No Cause for Panic.”
According to Webner, the article reports that a “crew member” had been taken into protective custody after a search for a saucer that had crashed overnight near Wiesbaden. He says the detainee is described as a “strange creature with only one leg moving about a rotating plate. His arms come to an end in four stubby fingers.” It reportedly had “large glaring eyes” and an oval-shaped head. The creature, called “Mr. X” in the article, was said to have been taken to the Neroberg Hotel where it would be taken for daily walks between “14 and 15 hours” in order to get used to our atmosphere. A search for other crew members was said to be ongoing. The photo used in the article showing the creature in custody is presented in Probe. The reproduction in Probe is of much better quality than the photocopy seen in The Roswell Incident, but they both come from the same source.
Webner tells the reader that the article was published on April 1, 1950. According to him, on April 15, 1981, he was able to talk with the reporter and the photographer.
The reporter was Wilhelm Sprunkel, and he told Webner that the whole thing was an April Fool joke. Sprunkel wanted to make the photo as realistic looking as he could, so he called the local U.S. liaison officer (we presume he told him his plan) and asked if he could “borrow” two soldiers. The officer laughed and said he needed to get permission from the commanding officer. The commanding officer also laughed and said he needed to get permission from headquarters in Heidelberg. Permission was granted, and Sprunkle proceeded with his plan with the help of photographer Hans Scheffler.
First, Sheffler created fake saucer photos using pictures he took of “light fountain glasses from Wiesbaden’s cure house pond.” He cut out saucer shapes and stuck them on photos that would provide a background. One of these, showing two saucers over the Market Place Church, is reproduced in Probe.
For the creature, Scheffler enlisted the aid of his five-year-old son, Peter. One of the soldiers held a jerry can and Sheffler painted in the “hose, breathing gear, horror head, griffin hands, one leg and foot-plate.” The source of the photos was given as “3 TRANSLAG/USA PHOTOS” which was invented by Sprunkel using the name of a local business.
The story caused a sensation, and the American Wiesbaden Post reprinted it along with the photos. Sprunkle got a call from a female journalist who wanted to buy the copyright for the Mr. X photo, and it took Sprunkle around 20 minutes to convince her that the story was a joke. The Wiesbaden Tagblatt published a confession on April 3rd under the headline “Tuchtig Reingefallen!” which Webner translates to “Good Letdown!” and Google translates to “Fell Right In!”
As for how Moore and Berlitz got ahold of the photocopy, Webner says it was discovered by UFO Information Network affiliate Barry Greenwood. According to Webner, UFOIN had “acquired a bundle of FBI photocopies” thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. Because the photocopy was in such bad shape, another UFOIN affiliate, Lawrence Blazey, made the “artist’s impression.” He says, “William Moore ordered this material for his book The Roswell Incident and Mister X was born for the second time.”
Webner says his investigation was easy, as there were only two newspapers in Wiesbaden. According to him, he was told by employees at Wiesbadener Tagblatt that neither Belitz nor Moore had contacted anyone at the paper and neither had anyone else. He tells the reader that Sprunkle, Scheffler, “and even Mister X himself, Peter Scheffler are still employed there.”
Webner’s research resulted in the paper publishing an article on April 22, 1981, headlined, “A Tagblatt April Fool Joke in the files of the FBI…” Webner laments that his name wasn’t mentioned.
As for the Roswell story, Webner concludes that “the latest research says” that “‘Crashed flying saucers’ and ‘crew members on ice’ are fantasies and not facts!”
https://archive.org/details/charles-berlitz-william-l.-moore-the-roswell-incident-1980_202012/mode/2up
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Rat-Faced Creatures From a UFO
16 feb· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
As anyone who has looked into the subject of UFO-related humanoids knows, reported creatures come in all shapes and sizes. Some are more unusual than others, and a pair of creatures said to be seen in Italy in 1978 definitely stand out.
In the Vol. 28, No. 6, issue (page 15 of the pdf) of Flying Saucer Review, there is an article by Antonio Chiumiento headlined “An Encounter with ‘Rat-Faces’ in Italy.” The article was translated from Italian and Chiumiento is described as an “Investigator and member of the board of directors of C.U.N. (Italian National UFO Research Centre, Turin.)”
According to Chiumiento, on the morning of November 24, 1978, 61-year-old Gallio resident, Angelo D’Ambros, went to get some firewood in nearby Gastagh. At about a quarter before noon, he turned to put down a branch he had been chopping up when he “was gripped with horror” upon seeing two creatures looking at him that were “extremely close.”
They were hovering about 40 cms above the ground and D’Ambros estimated that one of them was 1 m 20 cm tall while the other was 1 m. They were “extremely thin,” and had yellowish skin that was tight to where D’Ambros could see large veins on the head and hands of the larger creature that was closest to him. Their heads were bald, smooth, large and pear-shaped, and they had “enormous” pointed ears that stuck straight up. They had no eyelids and large, sunken white eyes. Their noses were long and almost went below their lower lips, and they had large mouths with a long, pointed tusk at each end.
They seemed to be wearing dark, tight overalls, and sticking out of the sleeves and leggings were huge hands and feet that were out of proportion to the rest of their bodies. Their ring fingers were bigger than the others, and their nails were long.
As D’Ambros stood frozen in terror, the smaller creature began moving back and forth in rapid leaps between D’Ambros’s left and right side as though gliding and without moving its feet. As it did so, there was the sound of air displacement and the rusting of vegetation due to its ears brushing the lowest branches of the trees nearby.
D’Ambros managed to overcome his terror enough to shout “Help!” as loud as he could. He then got the strength to ask the creatures who they were and what they wanted with him. It was of no use as he only got “incomprehensible mumblings” from the smaller creature.
Suddenly, D’Ambros’s attention shifted to the larger creature that had remained almost motionless about a meter away from him. The creature grabbed the billhook (also known as a “sling blade”) D’Ambros was carrying at a spot that had no cutting edge and attempted to take it from him. D’Ambros became determined not to let the creature have it, as it was his only defense should they should prove hostile.
D’Ambros tightened his grip, and the creature grabbed onto the tool further down, at which point, D’Ambros felt what seemed to be “a slight electrical shock.” The creature made one more attempt using both hands, and D’Ambrose felt what was clearly another shock go up his arm.
D’Ambros became “furious” as the creature refused to give up, and he used his free hand to grab a large branch he had cut and was ready to hit the creature. Both creatures, seeming to recognize the threat D’Ambros posed to them, “fled instantly.”
D’Ambros recovered “his normal calm” and then, compelled by curiosity regarding the origin of the creatures, ran after them “as fast as he could along the mule-track along which they had come.” Finally, in a clearing, he saw a disk-shaped metallic object with a dome on top standing on four legs. The upper part was red, and the lower part, separated by a white band around the middle, was blue, while the legs were aluminum grey. Without the legs it was about two meters high and four meters wide.
As soon as D’Ambros spotted the craft, he saw the hand of one of the creatures closing “from inside the dome, a sort of trap-door by drawing it backwards.” The craft then took off silently at an angle at great speed while putting out a “burst of red flame.” It quickly went out of sight behind some fir trees.
When D’Ambros got home, he kept his story to himself but was so disturbed that he skipped his lunch. He then decided to confide in his son in law, Luciano Munari. The next day, Munari got someone to go with him and went to the spot where D’Ambros said he’d seen the craft.
At the site, Munari saw a 3.5 m circular area of grass that was blackened more from oil than burning and swirled flat in an anticlockwise direction. When he touched the grass, his hands stayed clean. He also saw two impressions that were U-shaped, 20 cm long, 3 cm wide, and 3 cm deep, and some bushes that had been uprooted, “this being the result of the displacement of air as the ‘object’ departed.”
Many of the local townsfolk didn’t believe the story and Munari decided to photograph the site as proof. Unfortunately, it snowed, and he wasn’t able to get back there until December 3rd. He went with some of the non-believers who helped him clear away the snow, and he took some black and white photos that didn’t show the details of the impressions very well. He tried again with color film on the 10th and circled the marks with yellow paper to make sure they’d show up. The photos are not included in the article.
Thanks to “an initiative of Munari,” the story made the local paper, Giornale di Vicenza, under the headline, “I Was Attacked by Two Martians: They Wanted My Billhook.” After it appeared, D’Ambros was swarmed with curiosity seekers and local UFO enthusiasts.
The billhook’s blade reportedly had an imprint about the size of a pinky, and the cutting edge had turned red. Local UFO “students” took it for testing but brought it back when they found that the lab work would be too expensive. Munari told Chiumiento that D’Ambros started using it again, and that the imprint and discoloration were no longer visible.
According to Chiumiento, he (he uses what I assume is the royal we) found out about the case when a “fellow investigator” sent him the article. He went to Gallio in the fall of 1979 and was told by the D’Ambros family that the site was still blackened, but he wasn’t able to see it for himself because it had snowed.
He went there again in February 1980 and got a statement from Munari who said he believed his father in law’s story, and that he had read UFO Report by J. Allen Hynek. He said he saw there was a resemblance between the marks he saw and the marks pictured in photos in the book, which Chiumiento identifies as photos of the Socorro landing site.
Chiumiento made several visits and established that D’Ambros and Munari had good reputations. He compares the creatures reported by D’Ambros to the ones reported in the 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville case. He then includes descriptions of five more sightings in the area around the same time, including one where a witness gave photos he’d taken, along with the negatives, to a man identifying himself as an Air Force officer who “was never seen again.”
Chiumiento predicts that the Gallio case will become as well-known as the Kelly-Hopkinsville case and argues that it supports the theory “which asserts the presence here of UFO occupants of unknown but in any case non-terrestrial origin.”
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Francis Lee Ridge Remembered
9 feb· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
On January 20, 2026, Francis Lee Ridge passed away. His contributions to UFO investigation and research spanned six decades, and thanks to his efforts, a treasure trove of historical UFO-related material is available to anyone with an internet connection.
According to Ridge’s bio at nicap.org, he was born on October 13, 1942. In 1960, he became an active investigator as head of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena Indiana Subcommittee and remained in that position until 1970.
In 1970, Ridge began a project called MADAR (Multiple Anomaly Detection and Automatic Recording) which he continued throughout his life. He created detection and recording systems to gather data on geomagnetic, electromagnetic, and background radiation anomalies and monitored them at his home in Newburgh, Indiana.
In April 2016, “a new idea was conceived to create a network of affordable devices.” This resulted in the creation of the MADAR-III DataProbe system with the help of MADAR member Rich Vitello and his team at ARUFON after a “costly and disastrous false start” in the fall. By May 2018, the system was operational, and as of 2023, there was a network operating with 221 members operating 168 sites (56 of which were “DAS-equipped”) throughout the world.
In 1972, Ridge became Indiana state section director for the Mutual UFO Network and state director in 1986. He was also a field investigator for the Center for UFO Studies. He investigated hundreds of cases and created the Regional Sighting Information Database which, as of the last update in 2023, had 4,000 entries covering the area of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. He also ran the UFO Filter Center doing computer studies on regional and nationwide sightings.
In 1997, Ridge was authorized to start work on a website for NICAP. The site contains a wealth of information for historical researchers including NICAP casefiles, biographies, chronologies, publications, documents, and links to other resources.
Ridge was project coordinator for The Nuclear Connection Project, which focused on UFO reports around nuclear sites, and in 2006, he led a re-investigation into the Mantell case which concluded that “Mantell was chasing a real UFO.” The report in book form, titled The Mantell Incident: Anatomy of a Re-Investigation was published in 2010.
Along with a link below the bio to the Mantell book, there is a link to his 1994 book Regional Encounters: The UFO Center Files, and his 2021 book CAP POINT: A series of staggering events with global implications for everyone on planet earth.
At the bottom is a position statement regarding the UFO mystery:
“There is no question or doubt that most UFOs are actually IFOs (Identified Flying Objects). For the subset of events that cannot be explained, there is a small group of sightings that demonstrate solid objects under intelligent control. I am convinced that these objects are somebody else’s craft. Although I cannot prove that the intelligence behind the phenomena is ET in nature, I consider the ETH to be the least unlikely. I also feel that there is a nuclear connection (or one that indicates a cause and effect relationship with serious world events that could lead to a nuclear threat) and that the evidence in the form of military sightings indicates we are being observed and are obviously scientifically and militarily inferior to this presence.”
In Ridge’s “detailed” biography, also found on the NICAP website, there is much more information regarding his activities. There are also links to his afore-mentioned books and several papers written by him. An updated version now begins with his obituary written by his friend Phil Leech.
Francis Lee Ridge made a huge contribution to UFOlogy and his efforts are greatly appreciated, particularly by those of us who are passionate about the history of the subject. R.I.P.
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Faeries From a UFO
1 feb· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
In 1969, Passport to Magonia by Jacques Vallée was published. Its central thesis is that there may be a link between folklore, particularly stories of the Fae folk, and UFO lore. In the Vol. 25, No. 6, issue (page 25 of the pdf) of Flying Saucer Review, there is an article by Eileen Morris headlined “The Winged Beings of Bluestone Walk” covering a case that certainly seems to support Vallée’s ideas.
According to Morris, a “necessarily brief” version of the story told by Jean Hingley first appeared in the January 12, 1979, edition of The Dudley Herald. She says she met Hingley and her husband “a number of times” both at their residence and at her own, and describes them as “honest, hard-working people.” She took notes and used them to type up Hingley’s version of events and then had Hingley read it. Hingley was “satisfied that it is accurate.”
According to the account written as if Hingley was telling it in the first person, she lived “in a small council house in Bluestone Walk, Rowley Regis, near Birmingham,” with her husband, Cyril, and their Alsatian, Hobo. On January 4, 1979, it was a cold, dark morning, and there was snow on the ground as she saw her husband off to his job at a cement works (she worked at a company that made soundproofing for cars). She was at the back door of the house that opened out to the road, and as her husband drove off, she noticed a light from the area of the garden.
Thinking her husband had left the light on in the car port on the other side of the garden, she walked over to it with the dog to check and saw that the light was off. She turned to go back to the house and saw an orange light over the garden that turned white and lit up the whole area. She went into the house through the back door and there “was a sound like Zee… zee… zee…” as three “beings” floated through the door and went past her.
The creatures were between 3 and 4 feet tall, glowed brilliantly, “had wonderful wings,” and were about a foot above the floor. Hingley was terrified and grabbed onto the steel sink in the kitchen. She was “frozen” with her mouth wide open and unable to speak.
The dog went over to his water bowl “swaying from side to side.” His hair was sticking out “like a hedgehog’s,” and he seemed as if he was drugged. He then lay down on the floor, “stiff, with his eyes open.”
“After a while,” the fear seemed to go away, and Hingley felt as if she was lifted up. She felt like a different person as if she was “in Heaven,” and seemed to float into the “lounge.” She was warm, even though the doors were wide open.
She was blinded by a bright light and covered her eyes. It seemed to her that the creatures were reading her mind: “It was like a light or an X-ray penetrating my mind.” She could hear their artificial Christmas tree shaking.
She took her hand from her eyes and could see the creatures shaking the tree. The light surrounding them was dimmer as if they had turned it down. They were “slim ‘men,’” and were wearing “silvery-green tunics and silver waistcoats with silver buttons or press studs.” They had pointed hands and feet covered with the same silvery green and wore pointed caps, also of that color, “with something like a lamp on top.” Covering their heads were transparent helmets. Their faces were waxy, white, and corpse-like, and they had “black diamond” eyes and thin mouths.
Their wings were large and oval-shaped, glowed with “rainbow colours,” and were covered with dots Hingley describes as being like “‘Braille’ dots.”
The creatures floated around and touched everything in the lounge. Hingley was finally able to speak and said “Three of you and one of me. What are you going to do? What do you want with me?”
The creatures all touched the buttons on their chests and their voices then seemed to come from there. They all spoke together and said, “We shall not harm you,” and when Hingley asked where they came from, they said, “We come from the sky.”
The creatures shook the tree again, and “the little fairy fell from the top.” Hingley wanted to pick it up but wasn’t able to move. She explained about the tree, Christmas, and Jesus, and the creatures said they knew who Jesus was.
Hingley saw the creatures looking at the Honour list in the Sunday paper on the table. She explained that the people listed had been made lords, and the creatures replied, “There is only one Lord.” Hingley then told them she was just a working woman and suggested that they should go see the Queen or a “real lady.” They said, “You are a lady.”
The creatures then sat on the couch and “bounced like children,” causing Hingley to say in a sharp tone, “Be careful of the furniture.” They “put the light up,” and she became concerned that they had the power to hurt her, and she felt she should be friendly. She said “I can’t call you ‘creature,’ so I shall call you ‘gentlemen.’” She started to say, “Nice to see you! Nice.” They replied saying, “Nice.”
The creatures floated around the room with their wings fluttering “gently” and made no sound. They went through a door and “folded their wings behind their backs like pleated fans,” went upstairs, and then came back. They picked up some tapes, looked at cigarette packs, whiskey, and sherry on the sideboard, and Hingley asked, “Do you want a drink?” They replied, saying “Water,” three times.
Hingley went and filled four glasses so she could drink with them and show that the water wasn’t poison. When she brought the glasses in on a tray, it felt as though the tray was “magnetized towards them.” They took the glasses, seemed about to lift their helmets, and then “put the ‘power light’ on,” so she wasn’t able to see them drink. When they put the glasses back, they were empty.
A long discussion then followed in which the creatures told Hingley they’d been to Australia and New Zealand to talk to people there, and no one seemed to be interested. Hingley asked if she should “tell people on Earth about it,” and they said, “Yes.” They told Hingley that everyone goes to heaven, and “It’s a man’s world,” and Hingley said she hadn’t been to chapel “for a year or two.” They said there was “no need to worship in synagogues,” and Hingley tells the reader that she didn’t know the word for the Jewish place of worship until her husband told her.
Hingley then offered the creatures some mince pies, and they “each lifted a mince pie from the plate as though their hands were magnetic.” Hingley saw they were looking at the cigarettes again, and she decided to demonstrate how people smoke them. When she lit one with a match, the creatures leapt back as if they were scared and then floated out the door. Hingley put out the cigarette and ran after them asking them to come back.
Outside, she saw them, still holding the mince pies, get into an orange cigar-shaped craft that was 8-10 feet long and about 4 feet high. It seemed to be covered with shiny plastic, had port holes, “a scorpion tail” on the back, and a “kind of wheel” on top. Once inside the ship, they flashed the lights twice and took off heading towards Oldbury.
In the aftermath, Hingley found that the tapes the creatures had touched were ruined by distortion. She was left with sore eyes for a week and had to wear dark glasses. She felt ill and had to take a leave from work.
As strange as this story is, Morris assures the reader that Hingley told it to people from the following organizations who went to her house: The Oldbury Police, the West Bromwich Police, and the UFO Studies Investigation Services. The case is mentioned in Northern UFO News No. 57 (page 4 of the pdf), and the reader is told that the case is being investigated by UFOSIS and UFORA under the supervision of Mark Pritchard and Martin Keatman and that “landing marks in the snow were seen and photographed.”
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A Conversation Worth Remembering — Hint: Roswell
31 jan· Podcast UFO
By: Albert Wain
In 2015, while handling an inspection claim for damaged furniture in Buffalo, New York, I met with a client at his home. He was around eighty years old and wore a cast on one arm. As we walked through his condo inspecting the damaged pieces, he explained that he was battling bone cancer in his arm and that his wife of many years had recently passed away.
At one point, he brought me into a room lined with photographs of various aircraft. He told me he was a retired Air Force officer who had flown many combat missions in Korea and Vietnam. This, he explained, was his room of memories. He spoke easily about his time in the military, and it was clear he was enjoying the conversation. When we finished the inspection, I asked if we might sit for a while and visit before I headed out. He smiled and said, “That sounds nice.”
We discussed his wife and the life they had shared, his military service, and I shared a little about my own life as well. Because I’ve always had an interest in the UFO topic — and because he seemed receptive — I decided to ask.
“So,” I said, “have you ever seen anything up there you couldn’t quite explain? A flying saucer or something like that?”
“You mean like a spaceship, or something like that?”
“Yes,” I replied.
He looked up at the ceiling for a few moments, his eyes moving back and forth, then said, “Nope. Not that I recall. Some of the other pilots and I would see these things called contrails and couldn’t figure out where they came from, but no UFOs.”
I was, of course, disappointed and was about to move on to another subject or get ready to leave when his demeanor changed. He stared at me with a look that suggested he wasn’t sure whether he should tell me something — or whether I would even believe him.
“I’ll tell you something that happened while I was with another pilot at an officers’ club in Korea,” he said, “if you’re interested.”
“Yes, of course,” I said.
He told me they had been sitting at a table with two young pilots they met that night, playing pool and drinking beer. As the evening went on, the conversation drifted through careers and the usual pilot talk. At some point, the two young men mentioned that their first assignment out of flight school had been Roswell Air Base.
“My friend and I chuckled a little,” he said, “and one of us asked, ‘Oh, isn’t that where the flying saucer supposedly crashed?’”
Both men went silent. Their expressions turned serious. They looked around the room nervously, then at each other, and back at us. Finally, one of them spoke quietly.
“They were there,” he said. “We saw them.”
They tried to get the young men to explain, to tell them more, but neither one would say another word about it.
“And I guess,” he added, “that’s all I can tell you as well.”
My visit ended shortly after that, and I moved on with my business and with my life. In reflection, I cannot speak to the sincerity of the two young airmen from Roswell. But I will never doubt the sincerity of the story I was told by a very fine older gentleman — and a patriot.
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An 1897 Cattle Mutilation
25 jan· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
The cattle mutilation mystery and its association with UFO activity didn’t get the attention of researcher investigators until the 1970s. There is an article on page 2 of the March 1975 APRO Bulletin, headlined “More on Mutilations,” discussing the findings of APRO Field Investigators Bill Pitt, Lee Spiegel, and Kevin Randle. It was the opinion of APRO at the time that “no satisfactory evidence has emerged which links UFOs to mutilated animals.” The first mutilation to get the public’s attention was that of a horse named Snippy found by its owners in the San Luis Valley of Colorado on September 8, 1967. Shortly after that, in his article (page 8 of the pdf) in the July/August 1968 Flying Saucer Review headlined “West Virginia’s Enigmatic Bird,” John Keel mentions that cow and horse mutilations are “now common” in the midst of sightings of the Mothman and UFOs in the area around Point Pleasant. However, there is a report far earlier than this that, by most accounts, appeared in the April 23, 1897, Yates Center Farmer’s Advocate. This involves a mystery airship caught in the act of abducting a cow right in front of prominent Woodson County, Kansas, citizen Alexander Hamilton (not the one on the 20-dollar bill). While the Advocate article remains elusive, Redditt user Remseey2907 found an article in what appears to be the Globe Democrat that includes the details of and references the Advocate article.
According to the Democrat article dated April 26th and headlined “The Airship Steals,” Hamilton, a farmer who lived near Yates Center, said that “last Monday at 10:30 o’clock,” (April 19th) he and his family “stood mute in wonder and fright” as an airship appeared and proceeded to, in the reporter’s words, “swoop down upon the cow lot and steal a 2-year-old heifer.” Backing up Hamilton’s story is an affidavit signed by eleven prominent citizens, including a sheriff and a justice of the peace, stating that they believe Hamilton’s story “to be true and correct.”
The details of the story are presented in Hamilton’s words. According to him, “we were awakened by a noise among the cattle.” He got out of bed, went to the door thinking that his bulldog “was performing some of his pranks,” and was astonished to see an airship coming down over his cow lot “almost forty rods from the house.”
He called his son, Wall, and his tenant, Gid Heslip, and after grabbing some axes, they “ran to the corral.” When they were about fifty yards from the ship, it was no more than thirty feet above the ground. Hamilton describes it as cigar-shaped, about 300 feet long, with a carriage underneath “made of panels of glass or other transparent substance, alternating with a narrow strip of some material.” The rest of the craft was dark red.
It was brilliantly lit from within and had three external lights: “an immense searchlight,” and two smaller lights, one red and one green. The searchlight was pointed directly on Hamilton and the others and then “a great turbine wheel about 50 feet in diameter, which was slowly revolving below the craft, now began to buzz…”
The craft rose up, and when it was about 300 feet high, it appeared to be hovering over a two-year-old heifer that seemed to be stuck to a fence. They went over to her and saw there was a half-inch red cable tied in a slip knot around her neck that went up to the ship. They tried to free the cow but were unable to, and they watched as the ship rose up and carried the cow away towards the southwest.
According to Hamilton, Link Thomas of Coffey County, about four miles west of LeRoy, Kansas, found the hide of the cow, along with its head and legs, in his field on Tuesday. Hamilton was able to identify it by his brand on the hide.
This story got widespread public exposure thanks to Frank Edwards’s bestselling 1966 book, Flying Saucers–Serious Business, and Jacques Vallée included it in his 1965 book, Anatomy of a Phenomenon, and his 1969 book, Passport to Magonia. It seems, however, that the story was a hoax and how this was discovered is told in detail by Jerome Clark in his article (page 94 of the pdf) headlined “The Great Airship Hoax,” published in the February 1977 issue of Fate magazine.
According to Clark, “the truth about the affair” came out in an article published in the January 28, 1943, Kansas newspaper, the Buffalo Enterprise. A week before, the paper had recounted Hamilton’s original tale, and this prompted Ed F. Hudson, who had been the editor of the Farmer’s Advocate in 1897, to write a letter to the Enterprise. According to Hudson, he had just installed a small gasoline engine to replace hand power on his “old Country Campbell press” and invited friends, including Hamilton to watch it operate. Hudson explains the origin of the story: “Hamilton exclaimed, ‘Now they can fly,’ hence the airship story that we made up.”
Clark says the Enterprise article was discovered in 1976 by an American correspondent of Fortean Times Editor J. M. Rickard. Rickard sent Clark a copy, and Clark got a letter seeking confirmation published in the September 16, 1976, Yates Center News. This got a reply from Donna Steeby of Wichita, Kansas who said that her 93-year-old mother, Ethel L. Shaw, had heard the story from Hamilton, himself. Shaw provided Clark with a statement.
According to Shaw, when she was about 14 years old, she was at the Hamilton house with Mrs. Hamilton and their daughter, Nell, when Mr. Hamilton came in and said “Ma, I fixed up quite a story and told the boys in town and it will come out in the Advocate this weekend.” Mrs. Hamilton was “rather shocked” by the story but the girls weren’t bothered “as we felt it was just a fabricated story.”
Shaw goes on to say that “it seems there were a few men around who had formed a club which they called ‘Ananias’ (Liars’ Club).” To her knowledge, the club broke up not long after the story was published. She adds that the men who signed the affidavit “knew it to be a falsehood but simply went along with it for the fun.”
According to Clark, Lucius Farish had an article about the case published in the April 1966 issue of Fate in which he proclaimed “this case (is) one of the most astounding to be found on record!” The editor’s note at the end of Clark’s article states: “Lucius Farish has asked us to convey his apologies to Fate readers for his unwitting role in publicizing this fallacious incident.”
Thanks to Redditt user tweedboltmegacorp for posting the link to the Fate issue.
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Chariots of the Gods: Its Beginning and Aftermath
18 jan· Podcast UFO
by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
For many people growing up in the 1970s (of which this writer is one), seeing a UFO documentary was their first in-depth look into the subject. These films often came along with books tied in, and major publishers such as Bantam were getting onboard. More and more people were willing to accept the idea that UFOs were worthy of serious consideration, and this meant that more and more people were willing to spend money on movies and books covering the subject. What had formerly been mostly confined to a subculture of enthusiasts, was now becoming a somewhat profitable entertainment industry. Indeed, it may come as a surprise to some readers, but between the summer of the saucers in 1947, and 1968, there were only two documentaries made in the midst of all the science fiction saucer films that became popular starting in the 1950s.
The beginning of the 1970s wave of UFO documentaries can be traced back to the 1968 book Erinnerungen an die Zukunft (Memories of the Future) by Erich von Däniken published by Econ-Verlag in West Germany. The book not only whetted the public’s appetite for UFOs and aliens (especially ancient ones), but opened up the doors for all things strange and mysterious, including Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, ghosts, and lake monsters.
The book was translated into English and published in 1969 by Souvenir Press in England as Chariots of the Gods? and under the same title in 1970 by Putnam in the United States. It made The New York Times bestseller list and was the source (along with von Däniken’s second book published in 1970, Return to the Stars) for a film with the German book title. This was produced by Berlin-based Terra-Filmkunst, directed by Harald Reinl, and released in West Germany in 1970. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Film.
In 1972, the English version, Chariots of the Gods (note the lack of the question mark), was released in the United States by Sun International Pictures. According to the website the-numbers.com, which lists it under its German title, it ranked 25th in all-time highest grossing documentaries and had grossed $25,900,000 as of this writing.
Past guest: Erich von Däniken 1935-2026
Before becoming a successful author, Von Däniken’s future didn’t look so bright as he came into adulthood. According to the introduction of an interview with him presented on pages 51 and 52 of the August 1974 Playboy magazine, his father took him out of Catholic school when he was 19 and apprenticed him to a hotelier. This was after he was convicted of stealing money from a camp where he worked and an innkeeper. He was given a four-month suspended sentence, and a psychiatrist who examined him said he showed a “tendency to lie.”
After sticking with the apprenticeship “for a while,” he ran off to Egypt, got involved in a sketchy jewelry deal, and wound up being convicted of fraud and embezzlement upon his return. This time he served nine months in jail, and he told Playboy that he had experienced a vision there but didn’t see fit to share the details.
Von Däniken returned to the hotel business as a manager. For the next twelve years, on vacations, he traveled the world and gathered material for his book. Law officials began to wonder how a man of his means was able to afford this and found that he had obtained $130,000 in loans by “falsifying hotel books.” He was convicted on charges of fraud and embezzlement and spent a year in prison. At the trial he was described as a liar and a criminal psychopath by a court appointed psychiatrist.
As it turned out, jail served him as a writer’s retreat. His book was published in Europe by then, and was a best seller, so he was able to easily pay off the $130,000. While doing his time, he wrote his second book, and continued his career as a writer after his release. As of this writing, his biography at daniken.com states that he is the author of 49 books which “have sold at around 70 million copies and have been translated into 32 languages.” According to the “Books” section of the site, his “last and final book,” Notizen aus meinem Leben (Notes of my Life) was published in 2024.
The movie set the tone for 1970s UFO docs. It opens with a shot of outer space for the title sequence and then moves into footage of Mount Palomar observatory as the narration begins. The soundtrack was done by German composer Peter Thomas, who, like Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer best known for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, became renowned for his creative use of a variety of sounds and instruments. For Chariots, Thomas made use of orchestral and jazz styles with electronic beeps and burbles sprinkled in throughout. Interspersed with footage taken from all over the world, there are talking heads with academic titles offering speculations on alien intervention in not only our architecture, but also our culture, religion, and genetic makeup.
The success of Chariots spawned a series of movies in the same vein. For television, it was re-edited, Rod Serling was hired to do the narration, and it aired in 1973 as In Search of Ancient Astronauts. Serling also did the narration for The Outer Space Connection, created by Alan Landsburg Productions and released in theatres in 1975. Besides rehashing the ideas from Chariots, it veered into other realms of the mysterious, including the Bermuda Triangle “mystery,” which had captured the public imagination thanks to Charles Berlitz’s 1974 book The Bermuda Triangle.
Then, in 1975, William Shatner hit the big screen in Mysteries of the Gods. This was based on Von Daniken’s 1974 book Miracles of the Gods and was another movie made in Germany (produced by Terra-Filmkunst, directed by Harald Reinl) and redone for American release with Shatner’s narration and added footage of him interviewing “experts.” This includes what may have been the first big-screen appearance of a crystal skull, and a prediction by Jeanne Dixon that the Earth would be visited by aliens in August of 1977.
Von Däniken’s theories and claims were challenged early on, notably in two books: Clifford Wilson’s 1972 book, Crash Go the Chariots, and Ronald Story’s 1976 book, The Space Gods Revealed. Carl Sagan wrote in the forward of Story’s book, “I know of no recent books so riddled with logical and factual errors as the works of Däniken.”
Von Däniken commented on his critics for Playboy and is quoted in the introduction: “I’m the only author who has really frightened the critics. Other writers sit at home and wait for miracles. I’m making miracles.”
Von Däniken passed away on January 10th.
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LIVE STREAM: Varginha UFO Crash & Witnesses
17 jan· Podcast UFO
Simulcast on YouTube, Facebook & Twitter | Tuesday, January 20, 2025 @ 11:00 AM EST (-5GMT)
Podcast UFO will be attending and livestreaming a historic press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2026. 11:00am – 1:00pm ET. For the first time publicly, Dr. Italo Venturelli, a leading Brazilian neurosurgeon, will describe his direct hospital contact in 1996 with a living, non-human intelligent being following the infamous Varginha incident. Multiple Brazilian witnesses, medical professionals, and officials will present first-hand testimony regarding the reported crash of an unidentified object, the capture of non-human entities, and the subsequent involvement of Brazilian authorities and the U.S. Air Force. Organized by investigative journalist and filmmaker James Fox, the press conference will introduce new medical, forensic, and governmental evidence, including testimony from Dr. Armando Fortunato, the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy of a military police officer allegedly injured during the incident. The event coincides with the release of Fox’s new documentary Moment of Contact: New Revelations of Alien Encounters and follows growing calls for transparency after The Age of Disclosure. This press conference aims to present unprecedented data, encourage mainstream discussion, and prompt further governmental investigation into non-human intelligence encounters.
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