Among the many, many UFO reports out there, some of them have truly stood the test of time and proven to be even more unexplainable than most. These are the cases that have come from very credible witnesses, with corroborating evidence to show that they are not making all of this up, and it is cases like these that truly inspire wonder and awe. One such UFO encounter happened in the skies of Australia, and has served to incite debate and discussion to this day.

On August 31, 1954, a Lieutenant J.A. “Shamus” O’Farrell was returning to Royal Australian Navy Air Station Nowra, in New South Wales, aboard his Sea Fury aircraft. It had been a routine standard night-navigation exercise at dusk, and at 7:10 PM O’Farrell contacted the air base with a routine radio communication. Up until that point everything had been going smoothly and without issue, but things were about to get very strange. Shortly after this radio contact with the base, O’Farrell allegedly saw a very bright light closing in on him fast from his 1 o’clock position. This anomalous light then crossed in front of his aircraft to take up a position on his port side, where it appeared to match his speed. He then noticed a second bright light approaching from his 9 o’clock position, which passed the plane about a mile in front of it and then returned to the position of the original light. He would later describe each object as a “vague cigar shape with the bright light situated centrally on top.” He would say of what happened:

I was just over 12,000ft. It was a fine dark night. The stars were all out with no moon, no clouds, no bad weather and good visibility. A pleasant night for night flying. I had been airborne for about two hours and was somewhere in the Goulburn region, near Canberra. When I left Nowra, the radar there was not working, but they were hoping to get it on line by the time I returned. The operators asked me to call so that they could do a check-tune on me as I came in. I was surprised when I saw two aircraft, on either side of me, each with a single bright light above it, but with no navigation lights. In fact, it was quite a shock because everything was going well. I was keeping a lookout, constantly scanning from one side of the aircraft to the other. They came from astern and I looked out to one side and thought, ‘Gee, what is that?’ I continued to look around and there, on the other side, was another one. They were in formation with me, and holding their station with me and they were about the same distance out on either side. And then I thought about it for some time to make sure I wasn’t seeing things that weren’t there. But sure enough, I could see two dark cigar-shaped objects – not very long, about the size of a Dakota – but their central bright lights made their outline quite distinct. I could see no other details, no other lights – just one bright centrally placed light over the top of each mass.

Sea Fury aircraft

The two mysterious objects would be reported as approaching and later leaving extremely fast, much faster than his own aircraft, later estimated as having been moving at 1,000 mph or more, and the shocked O’Farrell contacted Nowra to see if their radar was online yet and whether they were seeing this. After telling the base what had happened they confirmed that they had two objects on their radar that matched the position he described, after which the two lights fell into the 9 o’clock position and sped off to the northeast. The radar team would lose track of the objects after that, and at the time there was no rational explanation for what they could be. In an interview with ufologist Bill Chalker, O’Farrell would later say of the incident and his conversation with the base:

I said, “Nowra, this is 921. Do you have me on radar?” “And a few seconds later they came back and said, “Affirmative 921. We have you coming in from the west. We have another two contacts as well. Which one are you.” “I said, “I think I’m the central one.” And so they said, “Do a 180…for identification.” So I did a quick 180 and then continued on around and made it a 360 back to where I was going. “They said, “Yes, we’ve got you. You’re the centre aircraft.” I said that’s correct. They then said to me, “Who are the other two aircraft,” and I said, “I don’t know. I was hoping you would tell me, because I didn’t think there was anyone up here. They said, “Well there shouldn’t be, and they certainly shouldn’t be that close to you.”

So the conversation went on like this and I was very pleased to be talking to somebody because it gave me a lot of reassurance. With that these two aircraft came in quite close to me and I could really see the dark mass and that they were quite big, but I couldn’t make out any other lights or any other form of an aircraft. With that they took off and headed off to the north east at great speed. I was about to press the button and tell them at Nowra that the two aircraft were departing when Nowra called me up and said, “The other two aircraft appear to be departing at high speed to the north east. Is that correct?” and I said, “Yes!”. And they said, “Roger, we’ll see if we can track them.” They tracked them for a while and then lost them. I came in and landed at 7.30 (1930) and when I got there there were quite a few people waiting for me. I thought it was a bit strange and so they came over, and they said, “You sure you had aircraft out there!” and I said yes.

Upon landing, he was met by the Surgeon Commander, who would give him a full medical check-up to find nothing physically wrong with him. Although the Directorate of Naval Intelligence deemed O’Farrell to be a seasoned, well-respected pilot and “an entirely credible witness,” and despite this and the corroboration from the base radar, he would claim that the main attitude around the base was that no one completely believed it. After this, the case was quietly kept secret until it began to leak into the news in December of that year. Before long there were headlines all over the papers talking about the “Sea Fury Incident,” forcing the Royal Navy to make a statement. Incredibly, the Navy Minister would be quite forthcoming about what had happened, while stopping short of saying that these had been aliens from outer space. He would say:

It is a fact that on a night cross-country flight from Nowra on August 31, at 13,000 feet above Goulburn, a pilot in a Sea Fury observed two lights on his radar, with vague shapes underneath. The lights passed ahead of him at a very fast speed as he flew at 220 knots (just under 250mph). The pilot made contact with Nowra and advised them. It was later ascertained that the only other aircraft in the vicinity was a TAA Convair. This was passed by Naval Intelligence to RAAF Intelligence.

The news brought a great amount of unwanted attention to O’Farrell, who was afraid that this was going to ruin his career. He was approached by numerous news agencies who constantly harassed him, even as the military tried to distance itself from the whole affair and sweep it under the carpet. As this was going on he also faced a good amount of ridicule from those who didn’t believe him, including close colleagues. The other pilots thought he had lost his mind, and it all took its toll of O’Farrell, who continued to insist that he was telling the truth but just wanted to leave it behind him. He would say:

I was bit ashamed about it all. People thought that I had flipped my lid, lost control, done something silly. And it was a bit of a joke by the rest of the aircrew. People would have a few drinks and say to you, ‘Have a drink O’Farrell and tell us more about the flying saucers.’ As the years went by I became more embarrassed and I just wiped it out of my memory and never worried about it again. It has always intrigued me. It has always worried me. To this day I am as certain as I was then that I saw two objects flying in close formation with me. And I am convinced that they weren’t aeroplanes that come from the Navy, Army or the Air Force, or Civil aviation. Whatever they were, they were very fast craft and they very, very good performance. I saw no explanation, but I didn’t see any need to tell anybody else about it or talk about it.

However, he would never really be able to escape it. Over the years, O’Farrell’s case would be pursued by several UFO researchers, including Australian ufologist Bill Chalker and American UFO researcher Dr. Allen Hynek, who interviewed him and could find no rational explanation for what he had experienced. In particular, O’Farrell would remember how when he had met Hynek in 1973, the researcher had been very interested in the case, in that it was in his opinion one of the stronger cases he had come across. O’Farrell would say of this:

The interesting thing he (Hynek) said was that all of these sightings had been made by professional people in aviation. By that he meant they were military pilots, military aircrew, civil aviation operators, air traffic controllers, and the like, or airline pilots. These were the ones he was now (1973) going around meeting the people themselves and investigating. All the others he had written off and had been able to explain down to some other phenomena. It came to the point where he said, “Your sighting cannot be explained away.” And he left it at that. To this day I wouldn’t know where it came from or where it went.

Interestingly, the official files on the case would be classified for decades, and it was only after they were declassified that it would be learned that O’Farrell had not been as nuts as many had made him out to be. It would turn out that there had actually been two further independent witnesses to the event. One was an officer from the Department of Aviation who had been out repairing a navigation beacon when he had visually seen the two lights streak past shortly after the incident, and the objects had also been detected by an air traffic controller in the tower at Sydney’s Mascot Airport, who had logged in two strange fast-moving lights passing to the south of the city. Why had these reports been kept under wraps while O’Farrell was being lambasted by everyone as being a liar or a kook? Also rather odd is that the original tape of O’Farrell’s communication with the base during the incident has disappeared, as have several official files on the matter. Without those files, it is hard to say what is really going on here, but Chalker is convinced that this is a very credible account that deserves serious consideration, saying on the TV program The Extraordinary:

One has to bear in mind the credentials that come with the sighting. You have a highly qualified and experienced pilot, you have confirmation from the ground from the radar operator. You have two separate ground witnesses all confirming the presence of two unidentified aircraft of some description. And doing things that were apparently inexplicable beyond the capabilities apparent at that time.

The Sea Fury case has gone on to be considered one of the most credible unexplained UFO encounters out there, and there are many questions still lingering about it. What did O’Farrell see out there? Was this some kind of experimental aircraft or something else? Why were the other witness accounts covered up and why were the files doomed to be classified or to go missing entirely? It is hard to say that he could have possibly just been seeing things because there are other corroborating reports, such as the radar evidence and the other sightings, so what was going on here? Whatever the case may be, the Sea Fury UFO incident has managed to become a classic case that has continued to elude understanding.

Over the years (decades, in fact) there have been claims to the effect that more than a few people in the UFO field have been murdered for what they knew. We’re talking about those who allegedly got too close to “the truth,” and who just had to be exterminated by the likes of the Men in Black and hired assassins. There’s no doubt this is one of the most controversial angles of Ufology. For that reason, it’s a topic that should be examined carefully. Very carefully. Today, I’m going to share with you a number of such cases that, as I see it, are worth addressing. For example, there was the jump (or, maybe, the ruthless push) of the first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal from the 16^th floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Maryland on May 22, 1949. It has been rumored that it was top secret knowledge of UFOs and aliens that led to Forrestal’s breakdown. Ufologists will tell you that Forrestal – a man with a mind filled with swirling secrets – was overwhelmed by the dark, alien secrets he suddenly found himself burdened with. The only thing we know for sure is that just a couple of months before Forrestal’s life was no more, he told his long-time friend, William O. Douglas, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court: “Bill, something awful is about to happen to me.” Something awful did happen. Death came for Forrestal. The very first fatal victim of a UFO cover-up? Maybe.

James V. Forrestal

Now, let’s take a look at a now-dead writer, Danny Casolaro. From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, Casolaro claimed he was hot on the trail of what he called “The Octopus.” It was said to have been a worldwide organization with tentacles all across the world (hence the term “Octopus”) that manipulated major events, made murders look like suicides, and even sought to have us all under some kind of “New World Order” in the years ahead. The Octopus also had a connection to the UFO subject, said Casolaro. It was the summer of 1991 – specifically August 1 of that year – when the body of a middle-aged man was discovered in a hotel room in the Martinsburg, West Virginia Sheraton Inn. His body was lying in the shower. It was a grim sight for the maid that made the discovery. The man, it seemed, had committed suicide: his wrists were cut deep, something which effectively meant that without anyone to help him, the man was doomed. And, he was. It didn’t take more than a few moments for hotel staff to figure out who, exactly, the man was. He was identified by the person on the front-desk as none other than Danny Casolaro. He was an investigative journalist of the Woodward and Bernstein variety. Casolaro’s death was a big tragedy for his family and friends. Suicide is always a terrible tragedy – and not just for the victim, but also for those left behind who have to pick up the pieces. But, was Casolaro’s death really just the suicide that it appeared to be?

Danny Casolaro

Many people in the field of conspiracy theorizing doubted the official theory for Casolaro’s death. More were fascinated by the UFO angle to it all.  Casolaro said he had proof of the existence of the so-called secret group known as Majestic 12. Supposedly, it oversaw Area 51, and the wreckage and alien bodies said to have been found in New Mexico in the summer of 1947 – the legendary Roswell affair, of course. For the record, the Majestic 12 issue has been an integral one to the field of Ufology for decades. For some UFO investigators, Majestic 12 is the real deal. For others, though, it’s nothing but government disinformation designed to confuse the Roswell incident even further. By early 1991, Casolaro’s head was spinning – which is hardly surprising. Unfortunately, Casolaro did not live to see the truth of the Octopus unveiled – by himself, he hoped. The matter of his death in August 1991 ensured that. While Casolaro’s death could have been due to suicide – certainly, that’s what it looked like – there were solid and valid reasons to suggest that his death was due to something very different. At the time of his passing, Casolaro was certainly not in a state of woe or depression. It was the exact opposite: he was energized by new leads, and new revelations, in his quest to find the truth of the Octopus, its activities, and its motivations.

Now, onto the matter of the infamous Roswell “UFO crash” affair of July 1947. Miriam Bush was someone who knew exactly what happened just outside of Roswell in early July of 1947. Not only that, she may well have paid for that knowledge with her life. Miriam has, at times, been incorrectly described as a nurse who worked at the military hospital at the Roswell Army Air Field. She was not: Miriam was actually an executive secretary at the facility. The distinction may sound small, but the fact is that Bush’s position meant that she would have been in a prime position to see the mangled bodies when they were secretly brought to the base. It’s hardly surprising, given the circumstances and the subsequent warnings issued to Bush and others in the base hospital at the time, that Miriam Bush became deeply paranoid and even in fear of her life. Although she had been told by high-ranking personnel at the base never, ever to discuss what she had seen, Bush secretly chose to confide in her family, but warning them to never tell anyone what had happened and what she knew. For Bush, though, the Roswell affair came to dominate her life: she became even more paranoid, entered into a loveless marriage, and soon started hitting the bottle to a serious degree. Miriam would soon be a full-blown alcoholic. Such were the effects of what can happen when finds oneself tangled in a conspiracy as disturbing and dark as the Roswell event surely was.

For Miriam Bush, matters came to a head – and to a shocking and suspicious end – in the late 1980s. Without warning, and on a particular day in December 1989, she took off for San Jose, California and checked into a local motel under her sister’s name – a strange action, and which further suggests that she was concerned she was being watched. After all, why would she try and obfuscate her real identity, if she had nothing to hide? The very next day, Bush was found dead in that very same motel room: a plastic-bag was around her neck. It had been tied tightly. Marks on her arms were indicative of a scuffle having occurred at some point after she checked in the motel. Despite the evidence suggesting she was murdered, the official conclusion was that Bush had taken her own life.

Morris K. Jessup

In 1955, one of the most controversial of all the many and varied UFO books published in the fifties was released – and, for the UFO field, to a distinct fanfare. Its title was The Case for the UFO. The author was Morris K. Jessup. His book was a detailed study of the theoretical power-sources for UFOs: what was it that made them fly? How could they perform such incredible, aerial feats, such as coming to a complete stop in the skies, hovering at incredible heights? Jessup believed that the vitally important answers lay in the domain of gravity. Or, as he saw it: anti-gravity. Jessup may well have been onto something, as it wasn’t long at all before the world of officialdom was on Jessup’s back – specifically senior figures in the U.S., Navy. And it was one particularly intriguing office of the Navy that was watching Jessup – a “special weapons” division. Clearly, someone in the U.S. Navy was interested in, and perhaps even concerned by, Jessup’s findings and theories. Maybe, that same office of the Navy was worried that Jessup just might stumble onto the same technology that was being used to fly Uncle Sam’s very own UFOs – those UFOs which the military were very happy for the public to perceive them as alien spacecraft, as it all helped their long-term plan to fabricate an alien invasion. Just like Miriam Bush,  Jessup became deeply worried – paranoid, even – that he was being spied on by certain elements of the U.S. government. In the early evening of April 20, 1959, the lifeless body of Morris Jessup was found in his car, which was parked in the Matheson Hammock Park in Miami, Florida. The car’s engine was still running and a hosepipe, affixed to the exhaust, had been fed through the driver’s side window. Jessup was dead from the effects of carbon-monoxide. Jessup’s body was found by a man named John Goode, who worked at the park. Shocked at the sight before him, Goode quickly called the police, who arrived in no time at all. The verdict was suicide. Not everyone in the UFO field at that time agreed.

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If you know the history of the Men in Black phenomenon, you’ll also know that the whole thing began in the early 1950s with a guy named Albert Bender. He found himself on the wrong side of the creepy MIB. It was something that altered his life forever. And also something that led to the coining of those three, memorable words: Men in Black. But, what about Bender’s life before that trio of menacing, strange characters were on the scene? Not many people – even in Ufology – are aware of those earlier years; a time when, for Bender, the nightmare had yet to begin. With that said, let’s have a look at what went down in that pre-MIB period. It all began in a dark, eerie attic in a three-story, old house at 784 Broad Street, Bridgeport, Connecticut. And it revolved around a young man (Bender, of course), who was an undeniable eccentric and someone with a fascination for the realms of monsters, the supernatural, alchemy, the paranormal, and the occult. And with a significant degree of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and an obsession with clocks. Without him, they (the Men in Black) may never have left the terrible marks – or, perhaps, more correctly, the ugly scars – on society they most assuredly have. But, I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. Read on…

The early years of Bender’s life were nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, quite the opposite was the case. Born in 1921, Bender lived in Duryea, Pennsylvania, where he worked in a factory. In the aftermath of the terrible attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1941, Bender joined the United States Army Air Corps, stationed at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. He served from June 1942 to October 1943 – as a dental technician – and was given an honorable discharge. Bender, his mother Ellen, and his stepfather, Michael Ardolino, made a home for themselves in Bridgeport, Connecticut. And, that’s when things started to get weird. Very weird. Too weird, some might say.  Michael J. Bielawa – a poet and the author of Wicked Bridgeport – states that Bender “…was employed as chief timekeeper at Acme Shear Co., the world’s largest manufacturer of scissors. The factory was located across the Pequonnock River from downtown at Hicks and Knowlton Streets. Perhaps it was Bender’s sense of humor, but in an ironic salute to his job Bender filled his living space with an assortment of twenty chiming clocks. Every fifteen minutes, half hour and on the hour, 784 Broad Street resounded with the din of bells, bells, bells.” The strangeness had well and truly begun. It was followed by Bender’s decision to convert the attic room in which he lived into what can accurately be termed as his “Chamber of Horrors.”

Artwork of bloodsucking bats, monsters, ghouls and skulls adorned the walls. There was barely a space for wallpaper. Imagery of vampires, the Moon, a horse’s head, and black cats could be seen. Interestingly, Bender painted a picture that showed a cloaked man wearing a fedora hat while prowling around an old, tree-shrouded cemetery after sunset. Both the cloak and the hat were, of course, black in color. Does that mean the MIB were already getting their claws into Bender? I should stress there’s no evidence of that, but who knows? Fedoras were, and still are, part and parcel of the outfits of the MIB. In light of that, just maybe there’s a part of the story that has been lost forever. Bender was very much a loner (he would marry later, though). Girlfriends were nowhere in sight. Much of his spare-time was taken up watching sci-fi movies and horror flicks on Saturday nights. By Bender’s own admission, his visits to the local cinema were always made alone. As were the late-night walks back home. When the few friends Bender had called on him, he would entertain them with spooky sound-effects that boomed around the room. It was all good fun – albeit undeniably odd. And, it surely cannot have been healthy to have lived in such a claustrophobic situation. Even Bender himself had to admit: “Late at night the attic became a creepy place.” No shit!

Interestingly, Riley Crabb – the director of Borderland Sciences Research Associates and who followed the Bender affair – went on record as saying of Bender that, for years, he had: “…dabbled in magic, with no success in table-tipping, and surprising success with a yes-or-no technique using the Holy Bible. There was a history of psychic phenomena in his family.”

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