On the night of Oct. 4, 1967, perhaps dozens of witnesses saw a large string of amber lights drop into Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, float on the water, and leave a thick yellow foam on the surface. Investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canadian Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, and other government agencies, who labeled it a "UFO" in official documents when nothing else could be found to account for it. Perhaps the best documented UFO crash. Also in the midst of many other UFO sightings in the area. Pages contain a detailed summary of case, mainly from book Dark Object. Includes maps, copies of many documents, newspaper articles, and even comic book treatment.
During the 2003/2004 Democratic Presidential primaries, candidate Gen. Wesley Clark spoke of his personal belief that mankind would eventually achieve faster-than-light travel and explore space beyond our solar system. What prompted Clark's radical remarks? At a political rally for John Kerry in Reno, Nevada on Oct. 30, 2004, I asked Gen. Clark if he had ever been briefed on the subject of UFOs when he was in the military. Clark didn't deny it nor did he directly confirm it, instead dropping carefully worded hints that UFOs were real. He said that he had "heard a bit" in the military, that there were indeed "things going on," and like his earlier faster-than-light remarks, said we would have to develop our own mathematics. He even dropped a very broad hint about Roswell. Click on link for full story.
A brilliant cigar-shaped UFO shooting red flames out the rear and leaving an enormous spiral trail was seen by hundreds of witnesses in southern California on up through northern Nevada, including many CAA ground controllers and dozens of pilots on the ground and in the air. The sighting lasted for an hour. The spiral trail and other reports of maneuvering plus the duration of the sighting rule out a meteor, and no man-made craft could replicate what was described. What was it? The incident received national press coverage after the pilots of a United Airlines flight held a press conference a few days later reporting their sighting. Includes a dozen newspaper stories on the incident plus half a dozen more describing a similar mass sighting of a fireball with trail from a day before over the southern U.S. Also includes a listing of 40 other U.S. UFO sightings during this period, including numerous high quality pilot, military, ground controller, and scientist/engineer sightings..
1994 video of an anomalous object over an Air Force fighter jet training range northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada (Nellis Range) provides some of the best evidence yet of intelligently-controlled, unknown objects invading our airspace. Includes audio with transcripts of perplexed range personnel. Tracking overlay enables precise determination of object flight characteristics. The object traveled slowly at first, then made a right angle turn and accelerated rapidly straight for the camera approaching supersonic speed, yet shows no obvious propulsion system It showed three distinct periods of rapid acceleration followed by rapid deceleration and at one point went into a steep climb.
The first of a number of articles on the Kecksburg UFO crash. A weird unknown object came down near the hamlet of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania on December 9, 1965, and got whisked away by the military. The Kecksburg crash was immediately preceded by a bright fireball seen by thousands that passed over the Great Lakes region. However, a 1967 astronomy article claimed the fireball trajectory was at right angles to a trajectory needed to take the fireball in the direction of Kecksburg. Some debunkers claim this "proves" that the fireball had nothing to do with Kecksburg. However, this analysis is subjected to true skeptical review here. It turns out that tiny, easily-made errors in triangulation can account for the discrepancy. Mathematical evidence from the smoke trail photos used in the original triangulation strongly suggests the proposed trajectory was probably badly in error. Includes scanned photos of the smoketrail from the article and alternate trajectory maps. (Note: the Cosmos 96 Venus probe at right, which superficially resembles what was seen at Kecksburg and has been previously offered as a skeptical explanation, was conclusively ruled out as a crash object by NASA in 2003.)
Maps and photos of the of the Woodbridge air base area and surrounding Rendlesham forest where these very famous UFO sightings by U.S. airmen occurred in December 1980. Includes some links to important documents by Deputy Base Commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt, who wrote up the incidents in a well-known memo to the British Military of Defense. And yes, the infamous skeptical explanation of a nearby lighthouse is covered.
In an article by a Virginia historian, according to oral tradition, artwork in this 1858 Virginia pie safe supposedly depicts an alien visitation from earlier in the century. If true, depictions of "bug-eyed" aliens would seem to predate modern science fiction. Just to complicate things, the historian personally told me he hoaxed the story as a joke on the editors (but never corrected the story when they didn't get it?).
Researcher Robert Durant takes Popular Mechanics' science editor Jim Wilson to task for his grandstanding, rumor-mongering, and many false statements in Popular Mechanics magazine and in a recent National Public Radio interview. Includes link to Durant's transcript of Wilson's July 2003 NPR interview.. For a taste of the absurdity of Wilson's Roswell assertions, he claims that both "nothing happened" or maybe it was really the crash of a super-secret, unheard-of spy craft. Thus simultaneously "nothing happened" and "something happened." Or how about Roswell being cloaked in secrecy because of a base doctor's scandalous court-martial for adultery with a nurse? Yeah, right!
The classic Socorro N.M. UFO case of April 24, 1964, is back in the news, with a new generation of debunkers claiming it was a hoax, now magically perpetrated by super-genius N.M. Tech students in Socorro, who seem to be able to violate natural law. One claim is that officer Lonnie Zamora saw a hoax "balloon". But historical wind records prove this impossible. Zamora's UFO would have had to fly against the wind. Includes detailed graph of surrounding weather stations showing true wind directions at time of sighting. Part of a new section that will analyze the Socorro case in detail, including a 3D virtual recreation of the case using Google Sketch-up models and Google Earth (used to make illustration at right).
It is often claimed that hardly anybody considered extraterrestrial origins for the new flying saucers in June/July 1947. But a detailed review of newspapers shows the idea popping up all over the place, most commonly in editorials or letters-to-the-editor. Most of the time it was dismissive or satirical, but there were also a number of dead serious examples, including from Kenneth Arnold, the pilot who started the whole modern UFO era with his sighting on June 24, 1947. Even the military came out with denials of ET origins, including the Pentagon just before the press release from Roswell base that they had recovered a flying saucer, and from Gen. Roger Ramey, the main actor in debunking Roswell as a weather balloon, who was ridiculing the "men-from-Mars" idea over a week before Roswell.
It is also often claimed that the Roswell case completely dropped off the map after it was debunked as a weather balloon in 1947. But there are actually many print references to it before the case was reopened in 1978 and delved into in depth. This list is culled from previously known references plus a new electronic search of current digitized books, magazines, and newspapers.
Illustration of officer Lonnie Zamora's egg-shaped UFO departing in straight line toward mine in the distance at right (white at base of mountains) and passing over dynamite shack (yellow), both to the WSW, but winds were probably out of the SSW or SW, meaning UFO flew into the wind, impossible for a hoax "balloon."
Debunker Tim Printy made a number of outrageously false claims about my writeup on the Kecksburg case, particularly my criticisms of an astronomy paper on the trajectory (companion piece below) of a widely seen fireball associated with the case. This is my rebuttal to Printy's nonsense. E.g., in the graphic at right, in order to supposedly counter my argument that the photos of the 1965 fireball showed a thinning trajectory away from the cameras and in the direction of Kecksburg, Printy claimed this photo from a well-studied fireball from 2000 showed a thinning trajectory as it approached the camera. In reality, Printy got the direction of the fireball BACKWARDS; the trail got wider as it approached the camera, exactly as one would predict from simple geometrical perspective arguments. Oops!
A 3D model of the Socorro craft overlaid on a photo of the "landing
site" that I took in July 2012, gives an idea of how close officer Zamora was (probably within 50 feet) and how good a look he would have had at the craft. Principle investigator Dr. J. Allen Hynek commented then that it would have been virtually impossible for Zamora to have NOT recognized something like a helicopter or balloon from this close a distance. Winds also made a balloon impossible (below).
`Portal page to the famous Lonnie Zamora Socorro, N.M., UFO case, one of the very best of all time. Currently includes links to recorded interviews with witnesses, such as policeman Lonnie Zamora, principle witness, and other witnesses, such as investigator Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Socorro newspaper publisher, Louis Reidel, and gas station operator Opel Grinder, plus links to two other Socorro pages below.
