UFO encounters sometimes seem to happen all of the time, to people all over the place and from all walks of life. Yet the ones that really seem to capture our attention and imaginations are the ones that happen to well-known figures and celebrities. Indeed, in this culture of celebrity these cases tend to absolutely fascinate, and show us that it is not always some nobody out in the sticks who meets up with otherworldly forces. Here we will look at a selection of some very high profile actors and musicians who have allegedly had encounters with UFOs and aliens just as bizarre as anyone else’s.

A very famous actor who has actually garnered quite the reputation for being a complete UFO nut is Canadian actor Dan Aykroyd, of Ghostbusters fame. He’s apparently pretty hardcore into it, and Ackroyd is also known for being rather an expert on the subject. Not only is he intensely interested in the UFO phenomenon, but he has become a sort of champion of pressuring for full disclosure from the government on the truth of the phenomenon, and has just so happened to have had his own sightings on more than one occasion. In a 2015 episode of The HuffPost Show with host Marc Lamont Hill, the topic turned to the strange and he talked candidly about the U.S. Air Force’s UFO alleged cover-up and some details about his own personal UFO sightings. When asked if he truly believed in UFOs, Aykroyd answered:

I do, absolutely, and I’m not alone. I have seen four, and I can’t say that they are alien craft and neither can the Air Force. The Air Force has been very interested in this. They don’t deny the existence of these hyperdynamic, super aerodynamic craft. They don’t deny. Their anguish comes in that they can’t tell you. They want to tell you anything but that they are extraterrestrial. Any excuse at all, even if they are unknown or unsolved. The Air Force cannot just come out and admit that there are extraterrestrial beings far in advanced of our culture that have built these machines. They are very interested in what is going on, but like us, they don’t know. I believe that there are probably many species coming and going and that the Air Force is very interested, but they can’t come out and say. Because then you’re going to go, ‘well wait a minute, the parish priest, the cop on the street, the President — you don’t got the power. They’ve got the power!’ You’d have complete breakdown of society.

On the show, Aykroyd went on to give some further details into his own strange UFO sightings, saying:

Two specifically were definitely aerial constructs of some kind. One of them with a light, and one of them dull gray, and they were structures – one of them going very slow, one of them hovering over me. Then there were the two that my wife and friends and I saw – a high altitude sighting many years ago in Martha’s vineyard. Two flying side by side. They were at about 100,000 feet up, and they were going fast.

Dan Aykroyd

Aykroyd has also gone on and on about UFOs on his Facebook page, often referencing research and books and talking about his conspiratorial ideas about government cover-ups. He actively plugged the 2014 book The FBI-CIA-UFO Connection: The Hidden UFO Activities of USA Intelligence Agencies on his page, which goes over the vast research done on declassified documents by a physicist named Dr. Bruce Maccabee, who spent thirty-six years at the Naval Surface Warfare Center. Aykroyd would say in a Facebook post of the book:

Ex-Naval Surface Warfare employee and physicist Dr. Bruce Maccabee has assembled the most extensively and meticulously researched body of documentary evidence ever compiled on the U.S. government’s genuine interest in the UFO phenomena. The USAF has NEVER denied the existence of these super-performance aerodynamic vehicles. The Air Force’s continued anguish over PUBLIC disclosure is not due to the military’s genuinely admitted reality of these machines’ existence but due to the government’s struggle to categorize the phenomena as being ANYTHING but extra planetary in origin.

Another big name actor who has had his own experience is Russel Crowe, who while hanging out with a friend in the suburb of Woolloomooloo, in Sydney, not only saw a UFO, but claims to have actually filmed it. Apparently he and his friend were out watching and photographing fruit bats when they saw two mysterious crimson flashes or streaks floating across the sky. Never mind the mystery of why an A-list Hollywood star was out randomly taking pictures of fruit bats, what was this unidentified object he says he saw? Crowe captured images with his camera and put together a time lapse sequence that seems to show them flying across the sky, and he would later excitedly post the images to his Twitter account with the words “UFO? Time Lapse Photos Outside RC’s Woolloomooloo Office (THESE ARE REAL!)” He would insist that the photos were not due to camera flash or any sort of artifact on the lens or lens flare. A lot of people have been quick to point out that the images are inconclusive and it could all just be a publicity stunt, but Crowe has always alleged that the photos are of actual UFOs.

Russel Crowe

Actor Kurt Russel also had a bizarre encounter while piloting a small plane towards an airport in Phoenix, Arizona. As he approached, he claimed to see a triangular formation of lights not far from his plane. At the time he was with his son Oliver, and they both saw the strange phenomenon and at the time they did not realize what they were seeing. It would not be until years later that Russel was watching a program about UFOs and realized that his sighting had happened during the famous Phoenix Lights mass UFO sighting in 1997. In fact, it is even believed that Kurt Russel was one of the first pilots to call their sighting in. Russel has explained of that night:

We were on approach. I saw six lights over the airport in absolute uniform in a V shape. Oliver said to me – I was just looking at him, I was coming in, we’re maybe a half a mile out – and Oliver said, ‘Pa, what are those lights?’ Then I kind of came out of my reverie and I said, ‘I don’t know what they are,’” Russell recalled, “‘Are we okay here?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna call in,’ and I reported it.

A more obscure actor, at least in this day and age is the great Jackie Gleason, who outdoes these other reports in that he is rumored to have actually seen alien bodies. A lot of younger readers might not recognize the name, but in his day the comedian, actor, and writer Jackie Gleason (1916- 1987) was a legendary icon. Probably best known for his character Ralph Kramden in the hit television series The Honeymooners and his role as Sheriff Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit series of films, Gleason had a long and storied career, appearing in countless movies and TV shows in the 1950s and 60s, including his own The Jackie Gleason Show, also launching a successful music career, and he was a very famous and well-known stalwart of the entertainment industry and a household name. Behind the scenes, though, he had an array of unconventional hobbies that many people did not really know about and which he tried as much as possible to keep out of the public eye.

Jackie Gleason

You see, Jackie Gleason was a complete an unrepentant paranormal and UFO geek. He spent hours reading about all areas of parapsychology, Forteana, aliens, and the unexplained, and obsessively collected books on such things, in particular UFOs. Indeed, he is widely known as having had one of the largest private collections of books on UFOs in the country, which would be donated to the University of Miami after his death. In the biography The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason, author William A. Henry III explains of this intense interest and fascination thusly:

Jackie Gleason had a lifelong fascination with the supernatural. He would spend small fortunes on everything from financing psychic research to buying a sealed box said to contain actual ectoplasm, the spirit of life itself. He would contact everyone from back-alley charlatans to serious researchers like J.B. Rhine of Duke University and, disdaining the elitism of the scholarly apparatus, would treat them all much the same way. Gleason was a frequent insomniac. He would stay up high the night reading (or rereading) some of the hundreds of (UFO and paranormal phenomena) volumes in his library.

It was partly this interest that led to his friendship with former president Richard Nixon, who was also interested in UFOs. Gleason had also long supported Nixon’s campaigns and was a staunch Republican, and as Nixon had a vacation compound not far away from Gleason’s Florida home the two would strike up a friendship to become frequent golfing buddies, chattering about UFOs and other weird stuff the whole time. It was after one of these golf outings on February 19, 1973 that Nixon apparently showed up alone at Gleason’s door in the middle of the night and allegedly excitedly told Gleason to get dressed because he wanted to show him something, after which the comedian was taken to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida and guided by armed guards to a top-secret, highly secured remote installation. Things would purportedly get very strange from here.

Gleason was reportedly led into an underground area through sterile corridors and past several ominous laboratories, at one point passing a weird twisted metal mass encased in glass that Nixon told Gleason was the remains of a UFO. Gleason supposedly wasn’t sure what to think of this, and at first thought the president was just joking around, but he would soon find that this was no joke as he was led into a large chamber area where there were “six or eight of what looked like glass-topped Coke freezers.” Within each of these freezers was allegedly the mangled remains of tiny humanoid bodies, according to Gleason “only about two feet tall, with bald heads and disproportionately large ears.” These, he was told, were the remains of the occupants of a UFO that had crashed “nearby,” and to say it was shocking to the great comedian would be an understatement. It is unclear how much truth any of this holds, a it is mostly known from the memoirs of his jilted, vindictive ex-wife, but it is very odd and entertaining all the same.

The list of celebrity encounters with aliens and UFOs doesn’t stop at actors, and the music world is full of such stories. One of the famous and indeed most bonkers accounts comes from the former lead singer for Van Halen and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Sammy Hagar. According to him, back in the 1970s long before he was famous he had a very vivid dream in which he was apparently visited by two extraterrestrials who plugged him into a machine and tapped into his mind, reading his thoughts and at the same time downloading information into him. He apparently then began to wake up, which prompted the aliens to unplug the machine and shout some sort of cryptic numerical equations at him, after which he woke to hear a “POW” as the room turned white for a few moments. Although this all happened in a dream, Hagar was very quick to insist that it in fact was real, and that actual aliens had infiltrated his mind to go about their business within his dream. In an interview with MTV he would describe of the incident:

I was lying in bed one night dreaming. I saw a ship and two creatures inside of this ship. I couldn’t see their faces. I just knew that there were two intelligent creatures, sitting up in a craft in the Lytle Creek forest area about twelve miles away in the foothills above Fontana. And they were connected to me, tapped into my mind through some kind of mysterious wireless connection. It friggin’ happened. It was real. They were plugged into me. It was a download situation ..Aliens were plugged into me … Either a download or an upload. At the time, I didn’t know how to fucking explain it. But they were downloading or uploading – that’s the simplest way to put it. They were tapped into my brain and the knowledge was transferred back and forth. I could see them and everything while it was happening … Like an experiment: ‘Let’s see what this guy knows’.

Oh, I could see them – two guys on this little hillside. They were playing with a numerical code but it wasn’t from our numerical system. And then, suddenly, this telepathic connection broke. And I could actually see them go back to their ship in a beam of light – zap, like lightning. For a second there was an infinity of white. I couldn’t move. And then it was over. It scared me nearly to death. It was an experience I couldn’t understand. My ego was telling me: They’re programmed you to be a rock star! So I used it as a tool to write songs about outer space and the future, songs like Crack In The World and Silver Lights, which is about the second coming of Christ – Jesus coming back in a spaceship.

Sammy Hagar

Pretty wild to say the least. Just as well-known and also with his own completely bizarre story is the legendary John Lennon, who once told his friend, magician Uri Gellar, a rather astounding tale. Lennon told him that as he was lying in his bed one day he had noticed a bright light seeping through the cracks of the door to the room, and when he got up to see what was going on it had gotten very weird very quickly. He told Gellar that the door opened and into the room stepped four “bug-like” aliens that then used some sort of telepathic power to push him back and then left behind a strange egg-like device. According to Gellar, Lennon would purportedly excitedly tell him:

About six months ago, I was asleep in my bed, with Yoko, at home, in the Dakota Building. And suddenly, I wasn’t asleep. Because there was this blazing light round the door. It was shining through the cracks and the keyhole, like someone was out there with searchlights, or the apartment was on fire. That was what I thought — intruders, or fire. I leapt out of bed, and Yoko wasn’t awake at all, she was lying there like a stone, and I pulled open the door. There were these four people out there. Well they didn’t want my f—in’ autograph. They were, like, little. Bug-like. Big bug eyes and little bug mouths and they were scuttling at me like roaches.”

I’ve told this to two other people, right? One was Yoko, and she believes me. She says she doesn’t understand it, but she knows I wouldn’t lie to her. I told one other person, and she didn’t believe me. She laughed it off, and then she said I must have been high. Well, I’ve been high, I mean right out of it, a lot of times, and I never saw anything on acid that was as weird as those f—in’ bugs, man. I was straight that night. I wasn’t dreaming and I wasn’t tripping. There were these creatures, like people but not like people, in my apartment.

They did something. But I don’t know what it was. I tried to throw them out, but, when I took a step towards them, they kind of pushed me back. I mean, they didn’t touch me. It was like they just willed me. Pushed me with willpower and telepathy. I don’t know. Something happened. Don’t ask me what. Either I’ve forgotten, blocked it out, or they won’t let me remember. But after a while they weren’t there and I was just lying on the bed, next to Yoko, only I was on the covers. And she woke up and looked at me and asked what was wrong. I couldn’t tell her at first. But I had this thing in my hands. They gave it to me. I’ve been carrying it round ever since, wanting to ask somebody the same question. You have it. Maybe you’ll know. I’ve never seen anything like it. Keep it. It’s too weird for me. If it’s my ticket to another planet, I don’t want to go there.

At this point, Lennon allegedly produced from his pocket a small, metallic egg-like object and gave it to Gellar. It was supposedly completely smooth and with no markings or any sort of seams. Gellar supposedly still has it, and he has never quite figured out just what in the world it is. Joining the ranks of famous musicians who have seen aliens or UFOs is the legend David Bowie, who between having his demon-infested swimming pool exorcized and carrying talismans around to prevent witches from stealing his semen also saw his fair share of alien spacecraft. Apparently Bowie went through a phase in which he was dating a girl who would regularly bring him to meditation and UFO watching sessions, and during this time he apparently saw UFOs on many occasions. He reportedly once said of this

We did see UFOs – absolutely. I made sightings six, seven times a night for about a year when I was in the observatory. We had regular cruises that came over . . . they would be stationary for about half an hour, and then after verifying what they’d been doing that day, they’d shoot off.

David Bowie

Not as famous in the U.S., but practically a household name in England is the singer songwriter Robbie Williams, who has allegedly had scores of weird UFO experiences. He has sighted them on many occasions, and he has said of some of the weirder of these cases:

 I was at the Beverly Hills Hotel and I was lying on my sun lounger outside at night, looking up. Then, about 300 foot above me, there was this square thing which just passed over my head silently and then shot off. The next one was the weirdest one yet. I’d just written a song called Arizona, and it’s all about alien contact and I was playing that. I stood on the balcony and there was this big ball of gold light that turned up – we thought it was Venus or Mars or something. Then the song stops playing and it disappears. But then we put Arizona on again and the ball turned back up. It happened four times. After that a massive electrical storm started and these two big massive balls of light started dancing in the sky. It was like a whole light show for about an hour. It’s absolutely bonkers. Seriously, I want to go out and investigate these things. I’m stopping being a pop star and being a full-time ufologist.

These are all certainly spectacular accounts, made even more so by the fact that they have been given by some of the most famous and beloved stars of song and film. Whether any of it is true or the result of drugs and delusion is anyone’s guess, but it is all certainly odd and alluring to hear these mega-stars coming forth with their tales. At the very least it adds another layer to the already eccentric world of fame, and such stories serve to draw in curiosity and wonder.

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Over the years I’ve written a number of books on the Men in Black mystery. They are On the Trail of the Saucer Spies, The Real Men in Black, Men in Black, Women in Black, and The Black Diary. As a result of the fact that I write a lot on this strange subject, I occasionally get asked if government agencies ever take an interest in the MIB mystery. The answer is: yes, they do. Sometimes, it’s a deep interest, no less. For example, in the late 1950s the FBI wanted to see a copy of Gray Barker’s 1956 UFO/MIB-themed book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. It just happens to have been the very first book on the MIB subject ever published. The story goes as follows: On November 22, 1958, an inquiring citizen of Oklahoma City contacted J. Edgar Hoover about certain claims Barker had made, in his book, about the FBI and the MIB. The letter-writer said: “Recently many rumors have been printed in UFO periodicals, concerning reports that Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have discouraged certain saucer investigators, particularly Mr. Albert Bender of Bridgeport, Connecticut, from further research into the secret of these elusive discs. Since you are the Director of the FBI, I would like to know whether or not these reports are factual or whether they are just rumors.” Hoover’s response to the letter-writer was swift and right to the point: “I am instructing a Special Agent of our Oklahoma City Office to contact you concerning the matter you mentioned.” A note from Hoover to the special agent in charge at Oklahoma City added: “An agent of your office should contact [the letter writer] immediately and secure copies of or information concerning the periodicals described.”

Nick Redfern’s MIB-themed books (U.S. and overseas editions)

In a memorandum to Hoover dated December 9, 1958, the Oklahoma office of the FBI reported that the periodical in question was titled the Saucerian Bulletin and was published by Gray Barker (it was previously just called the Saucerian). The FBI further noted for Hoover’s attention that the Saucerian Bulletin reported that the three men responsible for silencing Albert Bender were from “the FBI, Air Force Intelligence, and the Central Intelligence Agency.” Director Hoover was far from happy with this – and that’s putting things mild. An FBI report of December 12 reads as follows: “Bender formed the International Flying Saucer Bureau in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1952 to look into the flying saucer mystery. In 1953 Bender allegedly stated that he knew what the saucers are. Then ‘three men in black suits’ silenced Bender to the extent that even today Bender will not discuss the matter of his ‘hush-up’ with anyone.” A month later, on January 22, 1959, Hoover was still on the trail of Barker, Bender and the Men in Black and wrote in a memorandum to one of his special agents: “The Bureau desires to obtain a copy of the book written by Gray Barker entitled They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. Reportedly, the book was published by University Books, Inc., Illinois. Contact this publishing house and if possible, obtain a copy of this book.”

Three weeks later, a copy of Barker’s book was in Hoover’s very own hands, as were all available copies of Bender’s Space Review. The FBI subsequently noted that its files contained “no information pertaining to the hush-up of Bender.” On the subject of Bender’s Space Review journal the FBI noted: “This magazine contains numerous articles and squibs concerning the sighting of flying saucers throughout the world. It does not appear to have any security significance.” Collectively, this all demonstrates that whoever Bender’s (and Barker’s) mysterious black-garbed visitors were, they were definitely not FBI agents, as Barker had suggested in They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. The FBI were as puzzled as everyone else. In other words, the real Men in Black remain as mysterious and elusive as they always have been.

A new style of rock art has been discovered in Australia by archaeologists. The art depicted the harmonious relationship between humans and animals in ancient times. This style of rock art has been named Maliwawa Figures in reference to the area in which the drawings were located.

These drawings have been referred to as the missing link in Aboriginal art between the realistic drawings of animals from around 12,000 years ago and the stick figure paintings from approximately 4,000 years ago (also called X-Ray art). It is believed that these newly discovered Maliwawa Figures date back between 6,000 and 9,400 years ago.

For the past 12 years, Paul Taçon and his team discovered 570 examples of Maliwawa Figures at 87 different sites within an 80-mile location in Arnhem Land which is an area of vast wilderness in the northern part of Australia that has rugged coastlines, rivers, remote islands, and waterfalls. It is just slightly less than 100,000 square kilometers (just under 39,000 square miles) which means that this incredible wilderness is larger than Hungary, Portugal, and Austria.

Arnhem Land

In an interview with BBC, Taçon, who is the Australian Research Council laureate fellow and Griffith University chair in rock art research as well as an author of the study, described the uniqueness of their discovery, “We came across some curious paintings that are unlike anything we’d seen before.”

The most significant aspect of the art is that it depicts such a great relationship between humans and animals. In fact, of the hundreds of drawings uncovered so far, only one showed a hunting scene. According to their paper, “Animal-human relationships appear to be central to the artists’ message.” “The artists are clearly communicating aspects of their cultural beliefs, with an emphasis on important animals and interactions between humans and other humans or animals.”

Interestingly, the majority of the Maliwawa Figures measure at least two and a half feet in height with some of them being life-size. While they were drawn with red outlines, several of them had some detailed work done inside of the lines which could indicate that more than one artist helped to create the art. The paper read in part, “It is even possible only a couple of artists made most of the paintings.” “We know… that individual rock art artists can produce a remarkable number of paintings in their lifetime.”

One of the animals depicted in the rock art was a dugong.

Some of the animals depicted in the drawings include bilbies which have never been seen before in any known Indigenous rock art. What’s even more interesting is that bilbies weren’t believed to have lived in Arnhem Land. At one point they inhabited about 70% of Australia but not in that specific northern area, although since the rock art depicted the animal, it’s very possible that they did live in Arnhem Land at one point in time.

Another interesting figure was of a dugong which is the oldest-known drawing of the marine mammal. Several pictures of the rock art can be seen here.

Scene of two male Maliwawas with ball headdresses reaching down to a shorter indeterminate human figure with a snake behind the male on the right and behind the left male a female and a macropod, Namunidjbuk.

Photo by Paul Taçon.

Digital tracing of panel of three bilby-like animals, Awunbarna.

Image by Fiona Brady.

Maliwawa dugong above and to the left of a small Maliwawa macropod, Namunidjbuk.

Photo by Paul Taçon.

Large male Maliwawa human figures from an Awunbarna site.

Photo by Paul Taçon.

Large male Maliwawa human figures from an Awunbarna site.

Photo by Paul Taçon.

Maliwawa macropod, Namunidjbuk.

Photo by Paul Taçon.

• Their paper was published in the journal Australian Archaeology and can be read in full here.

A couple of days ago I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe on the FBI’s file on the late ufologist Stanton Friedman, which the FBI has now uploaded to its website, The Vault. As I noted in that same article, the file contains almost nothing on Stan’s UFO-based writings and/or research. Indeed, there’s no evidence that the FBI took any kind of specifically significant interest in Stan. Most of the file is on other, fairly mundane issues. With that said, I thought today I would show you a few more examples of other people in Ufology who had files opened on them, but who were watched for reasons far beyond UFOs. The Freedom of Information Acts of the United States and Australia have both allowed for the declassification of significant files on people in Ufology, but where UFOs were specifically not the primary reason for the secret watching. For example, Contactee George Van Tassel had an FBI file opened on him that runs to – wait for it – no less than 319 pages! That’s almost five times larger than Stan’s file. Van Tassel was primarily watched because of his politics – the FBI file makes that abundantly clear. There was also another reason, too. It was a very odd one. In April 1965, rumors flew around the FBI that Van Tassel had perfected a futuristic device which could cause blindness. It was a device connected to an unnamed “…ultra-rightist with tendency toward violence.” The story ultimately fizzled out, however, and the FBI moved onto other things. It was also in 1965 that the FBI finally closed its “George Van Tassel File,” referring to the man as “…an eccentric, self-ordained minister of a quasi-religious organization” and “…a mental case.” You can now read the whole Van Tassel file at The Vault.

As for Van Tassel’s fellow-Contactee, George Adamski, it wasn’t Flying Saucers and aliens from Venus that bothered the FBI. It was Adamski’s rants against the U.S. government that got the FBI angry and concerned. In his early lectures Adamski would regularly champion the Russian way of life – and its military power. For example, check out these words from Adamski, which were spoken at one of his earliest presentations: “If you ask me [the aliens] probably have a Communist form of government and our American government wouldn’t release that kind of thing, naturally. That is a thing of the future – more advanced.” Adamski also said (while the FBI quietly listened and took note): “Russia will dominate the world and we will then have an era of peace for 1,000 years.” And there’s this from the FBI’s file on Adamski, too: “…the United States today is in the same state of deterioration as was the Roman Empire prior to its collapse and it will fall just as the Roman Empire did.” It’s clear from reading the whole file that the FBI thought Adamski’s claims of alien encounters were ridiculous and of no concern. What the FBI was worried about was this: Adamski, in the early to mid 1950s, had a huge following. His lectures brought in huge audiences. And all of his massive numbers of disciples were being told that Communism was a very good thing and that the U.S. was on its way out. And that is why the FBI opened a lengthy file on Adamski. Now, let’s take a trip to Australia.

An extract from the FBI’s file on “Men in Black” writer Gray Barker (FBI, 1959)

Gray Barker, the first person to write a book on the Men in Black Phenomenon (1956’s They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers), had a file opened on him in the late 1950s. The reason: someone who had read his book sent a letter to J. Edgar Hoover, demanding to know if the U.S. government really did silence people who got too close to the truth about UFOs (the person’s name is deleted in the declassified file). Hoover quickly demanded that one of his special-agents get a copy of Barker’s book as soon as possible, which – as the files show – is exactly what happened. Barker was terrified when he found that the FBI was onto him and that they even had a copy of the Barker book. The files makes it clear, though, that Hoover wasn’t specifically interested in Barker’s Men in Black. Rather, Hoover was outraged by Barker’s claims that the U.S. government threatened ufologists. I could go on and on with more and more examples of how – just like Stan Friedman – files were opened on Ufologists, but when UFOs were specifically not the primary reason for the surveillance. Keep that in mind if, one day, you decide to apply to see if you have your very own FBI file. If such a file does exist, the chances are that the file will be far more about politics than black-eyed dwarfs from Zeta Reticuli.

“The Big Bang was not the beginning. There was something before the Big Bang and that something is what we will have in our future.”

“We are seeing them. These points are about eight times the diameter of the Moon and are slightly warmed up regions. There is pretty good evidence for at least six of these points.”

Would you argue with a Nobel Prize winner in physics? How about the late Stephen Hawking? Then good luck disputing this theory by Sir Roger Penrose, who won this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics for his work proving that black holes exist. In congratulatory interviews, Sir Penrose has discussed his belief in “Hawking points” – radiation leaked by evaporating black holes (a Stephen Hawking concept) which remains as an anomalous region in space after the black hole is gone.

Penrose then adds his own spin on Hawking points:

“The existence of such anomalous regions, resulting from point-like sources at the conformally stretched-out big bang, is a predicted consequence of conformal cyclic cosmology, these sources being the Hawking points of the theory, resulting from the Hawking radiation from supermassive black holes in a cosmic aeon prior to our own.”

Stephen Hawking

“In a cosmic aeon prior to our own.” In other words, in a universe prior to the one that began with the Big Bang. In his recent paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Penrose links these Hawking points to his own theory of conformal cyclic cosmology – the that the universe dies and is reborn infinitely, with each being created by its own Big Bang. He suggests that not everything is destroyed in the death of a universe and believes that Hawking points are survivors of a previous one.

“I think it’s a bad thing to get a Nobel prize too early. I know scientists who got their prize too early and it spoiled their science. If you’re going to get a Nobel prize for science it’s good to get in when you’re good and old, before you’re absolutely clapped out, when there is still something to do, that’s my advice.”

Before you attempt to disprove Sir Roger Penrose’s theory on Hawking points, consider that he’s been working on it since the 1964 publication of his paper, “Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities”, and spent much time working with Stephen Hawking, including together winning the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1975 and the Wolf Foundation Prize for Physics in 1988. Despite all of those awards and one-half of the 2020 Nobel for Physics (the other half was awarded jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for their work on black holes), Sir Penrose’s theory, like that of the Big Bang in general, is controversial and not universally accepted – in this or any previous universe.

“Sadly, this award was too much delayed to allow Hawking to share the credit with Penrose.”

In an interview with The Telegraph, Professor Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge, agrees with Penrose’s idea that it’s better to get the award late in life, but this one was sadly too late for Stephen Hawking to share with him.

Perhaps they will … in the next universe.

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“If they had been called upon by the president to launch [the nukes] they couldn’t have done it.”

Former U.S. Senator Harry Reid – known for instituting the secret Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) in the Defense Department to study UFOs and unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP) – appears in a newly-released documentary on UFO cover-ups by governments worldwide. In this case, Reid is referring to numerous accounts by military personnel working at nuclear missile sites of UFO sightings over them and some actual interference by the UFOs, including full shutdowns of the launch systems, resulting in the security crisis Reid describes in a trailer for the documentary.

“Including shocking never-before-seen testimony from high-ranking government and military officials, NASA Astronauts, and riveting footage, the timely film includes bombshell reveals about UAP incursions at nuclear weapon facilities and the monumental events behind the NY Times’ recent disclosure of UFO videos and The Pentagon’s classified UFO Program. Providing eye-opening evidence that mankind is not alone in the universe, Senator Harry Reid says “The Phenomenon makes the incredible credible.”

Harry Reid

Director James Fox is known for “UFOs: 50 Years of Denial?” and “I Know What I Saw,” and the newly-released “The Phenomenon” is expected to build on that base of UFO research and exposure – in particular, UFOs allegedly disrupting operations at nuclear weapons facilities. One such incident was reported by Captain David D Schindele, a Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missile launch crew commander at the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. In 1966, after UFOs were seen around the base, 10 ICBMs suddenly switched to ‘off-alert’ and could not be launched until they were reset. Schindele says he reported it up the chain of command, but he and the others who either saw the UFOs or the unexplained shutdown or both were told to never speak about to anyone for the rest of their lives. Schindele didn’t – until he mentioned the incident in an interview in 2010 and then in great detail in his tell-all book in 2017.

“Nobody has to agree why it’s there, but shouldn’t we at least be spending some money to study this phenomenon? Shouldn’t we study the stuff? The answer’s yes. And that’s all this was about. And why the federal government all these years has covered up, put brake pads on everything, stopped it. I think it’s very, very bad for our country.”

Harry Reid has long been a proponent – both publicly and privately – of UFO and alien disclosure by the U.S. government, and hinted there is real physical evidence being hidden after the recent videos of UFO encounters with military pilots were released and eventually confirmed. When asked what “stuff” or other confirmed UFO sightings he’s referring to, Reid says “most” of it “hasn’t seen the light of day.”

Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO

There have been encounters between military pilots and UFOs since there were military pilots, and many can eventually be explained by mistaken aircraft (there’s and ours), equipment anomalies, poor visibility and other causes. That doesn’t cover all of them, but what Reid is referring to are special cases concerning nuclear missiles and weapons – a main reason for the Cold War with the Soviet Union. And Captain Schindele’s encounter is not the only one – American Military News reveals that Robert Hastings, who Schindele first told of his encounter in 2010, claims he’s heard of at least 120 former U.S. service members who witnessed UFOs flying around nuclear weapons facilities and/or deactivating equipment. Whether this is aliens, a foreign country, homegrown saboteurs or something else, this is a security risk that should be dragged kicking and screaming into the daylight already.

Will Harry Reid do the dragging? It’s worth remembering that he backtracked on his comments about the government having already recovered alien materials.

• “The Phenomenon” is available for downloading.

Just a couple of days ago, the FBI placed their file on the late UFO researcher/author/nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman onto their website, The Vault . The file runs to 61 pages. Don’t get too excited, however: there isn’t much at all in the material that will have ufologists foaming at the mouth. There is one interesting part of the file, though. It states that Friedman “…on February 27, 1984, contacted the Chief of Freedom of Information Privacy Acts (FOIPA) Section, Records Management Division of the FBI and requested information regarding weekly intelligence conferences with a proposed study of flying saucers. At the time Friedman made this request, he provided specific file numbers of FBI HQ files in which this information was contained. It is not known how Friedman obtained these file numbers [italics mine].” That’s really the only part of the file that is of any particular interest. The rest is all of a bureaucratic nature. I did wonder – before I dug into the file – if there might have been something related to the bogus Majestic 12 documents that got so many ufologists foaming at the mouth in the late 198os. After all, Friedman’s colleague Bill Moore (co-author with Charles Berlitz of the 1980 book, The Roswell Incident) had a file opened on himself by the FBI. And the FBI also opened a file on the MJ12 papers. Clearly, however, the FBI wasn’t interested in Friedman’s research into the MJ12 documents. So, does that mean the FBI had zero interest in those controversial, alleged 1947-period papers? No.

We do know something of deep interest though, thanks to the staff of the Bureau Co-Director within the Office of Information and Privacy. In correspondence (back in the 1990s), I was informed by office staff of the existence of an FBI “Main File” on Majestic 12,. It’s now in what is termed “closed status.” The title of the file is not something along the lines of “Potentially leaked document” or “Questionable document,” as one might imagine, given the strange story. Rather, the file title is nothing less than – wait for it – “Espionage.”Almost certainly, the reason why the FBI titled their MJ12 file “Espionage” was for the following reason: at one point in 1988, the FBI pursued the admittedly intriguing theory that the MJ12 documents might have been created by Russian disinformation experts and counterintelligence agents. Now, we come to the next stage. It helps to explain what was going on behind the scenes and expands on the above.

In 1999, Gerald K. Haines – in his position as the historian of the National Reconnaissance Office – wrote a now-declassified paper titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” Haines said that in the 1970s and 1980s there were “…concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using U.S. citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive U.S. weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the U.S. air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings [italics mine].”

Directly connected to the Soviet theory is the fact that, as U.S. Intelligence learned to its consternation during both the 1970s and the 1980s, an unclear number of unnamed UFO researchers – with important links to the U.S. defense industry – had been compromised by Soviet agents. It went like this: those saucer-seekers who just happened to work in the field of defense, and who had been caught tightly in a Kremlin web, would secretly provide the Russians with top secret data on the likes of the F-117 Nighthawk “stealth fighter” and the B-2 Spirit “stealth bomber” – which, at the time, were still highly classified and in test-stage out at the likes of none other than Area 51. In return, the KGB would provide those same American researchers with sensational documents on crashed UFOs and dead aliens. The plan that Moscow had in mind was for the Russians to get their eager hands on real, top secret, non-UFO-themed U.S. military/intelligence documents that could be used to advance Russian military aviation programs. But, those UFO investigators who worked in the defense world would receive nothing but faked garbage from their Soviet handlers, such as – you’ve got it – the Majestic 12 documents. That was the theory U.S. intelligence was concerned by. You can learn the the whole story in my 2019 book, Flying Saucers from the Kremlin.

There’s no doubt there is a fascinating back-story concerning the MJ12 documents (that still has yet to be fully resolved). As the FBI’s file on Stan Friedman shows, though, the Bureau seemingly had no interest in Stan and his MJ12 research, even at the height of the FBI’s investigations into those inflammatory papers in late 1988.

Ever since we have ventured off of our world and into space we have uncovered various mysteries and shed light on how the universe works. It has been a great time of scientific discovery, and we have made great strides in pushing out into the vast solar system that once was just flickers within our imagination. Yet for all that we have uncovered and all of the questions we have answered there have been perhaps even more questions and mysteries posed. Some of the stranger of these are the myriad stories of alien forces beyond our understanding lurking in the background of these space travels of ours, with all manner of unusual claims made by astronauts and amateur space watchers. One odd incident concerning this is claimed to have happened during a fateful space shuttle mission, during which, according to some, aliens crashed the party and ruined everything.

On February 25, 1996, Space Shuttle Columbia was engaged with mission STS-75, the 75th Space Transportation System mission flown by NASA’s four space shuttles. The 15-day mission had the primary objective of deploying the Tethered Satellite System Reflight (TSS-1R) experiment, which entailed using a joint NASA/Italian Tethered Satellite System in order to harness a new source of spacecraft power by utilizing a special electrodynamic tether system to collect power within the electrically charged ionosphere. The idea was that the cables would conduct electricity from the ionosphere and convert it into power, thus paving the way to a cheap energy source for satellites, space stations, and spacecraft. In order to achieve this, the plan was to deploy the satellite and 20.7 kilometers (12.9 mi) of tether and then measure how much current could be gathered, as well as monitor the physics of the tether’s movement and various other factors. It was meant to be a fairly groundbreaking mission, but something would go wrong.

Space Shuttle Columbia

Over a period of 5 hours the astronauts carefully unreeled the satellite on its thin tether to a length of 19 kilometers, after which they had only one kilometer to go before they planned to stop it and begin their experiments. However, as the shocked 7-man crew of the Columbia looked on, the tether began to ripple, before finally snapping to send a long portion of it, as well as the satellite attached to it, drifting off into space. Although a lot of data had still been gained from the mission, the loss of the satellite and tether was a crushing blow and launched an extensive investigation into the incident. According to NASA, the reason would be found to have been a weakening of the cable due to pinholes in the insulated cover of the tether, which had allowed air trapped beneath to seep out into space, and these air bubbles were then transformed into plasma from the roughly 3,500 to 5,000 volts of power coursing along it. This in turn caused a local explosive electrical discharge from the copper wire in the tether to a nearby electrical ground, causing the cable to snap. However, this official view would be challenged.

During the unfortunate incident, astronauts had filmed the whole thing, and as soon as the video became available to the public people started noticing something very odd about it. The video footage shows what appear to be a series of bright spots or lights whizzing about the area, in particular seeming to swarm around and hover about the tether. Those who saw this quickly came to the conclusion that these were UFOs, and stated that obviously these UFOs had been attracted to the tether for some reason and had caused it to break. The objects became even more pronounced when enhanced videos began circulating not long after the original footage was released. Still other more far out theories emerged as well, such as the claim that these were not UFOs, but rather some sort of lifeform living in space, a sort of “space amoeba” of sorts. These creatures are theorized as living in the void and feeding on space debris or electrical energy, and it is just about as weird as it sounds. The site Secrets of the Universe explained of these hypothetical organisms and their relation to the tether incident:

They exist in a spectrum not visible to the naked eye under normal conditions. They appear to be totally harmless, feeding off electrical or other energy. If you look closely at the footage you will observe them increasing in brightness near electrical storms. With this in mind it is not in the least surprising to find them swarming around the electrodynamics tether which is NASA’s attempt to harness the very energy that they feed on.

One of the mystery objects filmed near the broken tether

It is all very entertaining, but as soon as these conspiracy theories began making the rounds NASA and the astronauts who had actually been on the mission were quick to dismiss the possibility that these were aliens of any kind. It was all explained by astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz as “a little bit of debris that kind of flies with us,” meaning ice crystals and other miscellaneous tiny objects that sort of fly along with the shuttle in the weightlessness of space. In addition to this, a water dump from the shuttle, which is a completely normal and routine procedure, had been carried out not long before the experiment began, meaning there was more of this debris surrounding the shuttle than usual. It is perfectly harmless and the particles are miniscule, but when illuminated by the sun, compounded by the effect of the camera’s image intensifier circuit, which is known to distort bright objects, the objects seem much larger, more robust, and brighter in the video footage than they really are. The telephoto lens of the camera is also used with a circular mirror that has a hole in the middle, which can leave an artifact on the images. One of the astronauts, Tom Jones, made a lengthy statement about the incident trying to clear up the confusion and also dispel the idea that NASA was hiding evidence of aliens in any way. He told Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine:

Astronauts have not seen any evidence of alien life. Reports of unidentified flying objects in images returned from the shuttle or space station have turned out to be ice crystals, drifting orbital debris, lightning flashes, or meteors streaking through the dark atmosphere below. So far, our search for extraterrestrial life — and other civilizations in space — has turned up no proof of alien civilizations. I was on the shuttle Columbia — STS-80 — and even made a blog entry, ‘Did UFOs Visit The Shuttle Columbia?’ Because when we came back from that mission in 1996, NASA got several queries from people who were watching the video — NASA TV back then — and said, ‘Hey, we saw spaceships on the shuttle video. What’s NASA got to say about that?’ I looked at the video and I said, ‘Oh, I know what this is — this is just ice crystals floating along beside the ship for the first couple of days of the flight.’ What looked to some people like a spaceship streaking across the star field, was — to us, looking out the windows — a complete non-event. And yet, it was very significant to people who were watching. Certainly, nothing in the way of spaceships.

Now, I’m aware that there have been a couple of astronauts in the past who’ve spoken out and said they know from other people that there’s evidence of UFOs and spaceships that have visited the Earth and that the government might be withholding it. They all seem to be secondhand, or they seem to be sightings of things that they’ve seen in orbit that, perhaps, they couldn’t explain at the time. And that’s where the story seems to peter out.

Also curious is that NASA made no mention at all of any such objects surrounding the shuttle or the tether in any of their mission reports, and it seems as though perhaps this really was a mundane occurrence. Yet conspiracy theories are not quick to die, and there are certainly those who do not buy the official statements. For them this is all a cover-up and an effort for NASA to spread disinformation and bury the truth. Such theories point to the constant perceived opaqueness of NASA and the numerous times the agency has cut feed to cameras at the slightest whiff of something odd. Is NASA up to something? Are there really strange forces at work up there in space? What really happened during the STS-75 incident? Was this just misidentified ice crystals or something else? Amazingly enough it is still being debated, and if anything it shows that there are plenty of mysteries that are being generated by our being in space, whether real or imagined.

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