Yesterday’s article from me was on a very controversial issue: how a number of potentially important files concerning “radiation experiments” dating back to the 1940s can no longer be found. They’re gone. Not to be seen anymore. Etc., etc. Today, I’m going to demonstrate how certain, possibly notable, papers concerning UFOs have vanished. I’ll begin with the Roswell affair. On July 28, 1995, the Government Accountability Office’s report on the Roswell affair surfaced from its National Security and International Affairs Division. The GAO’s report did not provide any smoking-guns – such as old B&W photos of dead bodies and wreckage at the crash-site on the Foster Ranch, New Mexico. The report did, however, provide something interesting and controversial. A wealth of papers from the Roswell base were missing. As the Government Accountability Office (back then, the General Accounting Office) said:

Roswell UFO Incident

“In addition to unit history reports, we also searched for other government records on the Roswell crash. In this regard, the Chief Archivist for the National Personnel Records Center provided us with documentation indicating that (1) RAAF records such as finance and accounting, supplies, buildings and grounds, and other general administrative matters from March 1945 through December 1949 and (2) RAAF outgoing messages from October 1946 through December 1949 were destroyed.” When the GAO demanded to know the reasons behind this development, they got an answer, as GAO files note: “According to this official [the Chief Archivist for the National Personnel Records Center], the document disposition form did not properly indicate the authority under which the disposal action was taken. The Center’s Chief Archivist stated that from his personal experience, many of the Air Force organizational records covering this time period were destroyed without entering a citation for the governing disposition authority. Our review of records control forms showing the destruction of other records – including outgoing RAAF messages for 1950 – supports the Chief Archivist’s viewpoint.”

Some Ufologists believe this is evidence that the government  (a) destroyed the files to prevent people, today, learning more of the Roswell affair; and/or (b) because of something else; something that went back to as far back as 1945 and, therefore, can’t be relevant, because the Roswell event occurred in 1947. Whatever the truth of the matter, it still comes down to one thing: a significant number of files from the Roswell base from the 1940s cannot be located. Now, onto another famous UFO case: Between December 26 and 29, 1980, multiple UFO encounters occurred within Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England that involved military personnel from the nearby Royal Air Force stations of Bentwaters and Woodbridge. According to numerous U.S. Air Force operatives, a small, triangular-shaped object was seen maneuvering in the forest – as were, some said, near-spectral, alien-style entities. And although the incident has been the subject of a significant number of books, intense media coverage and even parliamentary questioning, it continues to provoke furious debate within the UFO research community. And that debate was reignited only very recently when it emerged that certain files on the affair – that originated within the murky world of defense-intelligence – appear to be “unavailable.”

In a July 31, 1994 lecture at Leeds, England, Colonel Charles Halt, (USAF), one of those that had witnessed the strange object in Rendlesham Forest) divulged his recollections of what had occurred fourteen-years previously. During the course of his lecture, Halt astounded the audience by revealing something that had been hitherto unknown: an unscheduled C141 transporter aircraft arrived at Woodbridge just hours after the initial encounter, and a group of “special individuals” departed from the aircraft, headed straight out of Woodbridge’s East Gate, and disappeared into the forest. It should be noted, too, that the C141 is a huge aircraft, fully equipped to carry freight, vehicle payloads and troops. With all of that activity going on, you would think at least some files would be created. Nothing has appeared yet, though.

Moving onto Australia, in the summer of 2011, the Australian Department of Defense admitted to having misplaced a UFO file that should have been packed with reports. Natalie Carpenter, of the nation’s Freedom of Information Office, responded to media inquiries by stating that, “The files could not be located and Headquarters Air Command formally advised that this file is deemed lost.” UFO researcher-author Whitley Strieber made a very good observation, on June 6, 2011: “Last week, the Australian government announced that it has ‘lost’ its UFO files. Thus it joins the United States, which ‘lost’ all the files relating to the Roswell AFB dating from 1947 through 1952, and the United Kingdom, which recently announced that it has ‘lost’ all the files relating to the Rendlesham Forest UFO Case.” Hmm.

Over the years, I’ve come across a lot of people in the UFO field who claim to be what we might call “UFO whistleblowers.” I have to admit, though, that on many occasions they are nothing of the kind. Instead, they’re totally pathetic “Walter Mitty”-types who like to have people think they’re something special. They’re not. With that said, however, on occasions the real deal does pop up. And, today, I’m going to share with you one particular story today – a story that involved myself back in the 1990s. At the time I was busy looking into the U.K. government’s involvement in the UFO phenomenon. But, not in regards to the Ministry of Defense. As you may know, the MoD was, for many years, the place in which most of the UFO reports went to. It’s a lesser-known fact, however, that a lot of UFO-related work was also done by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K. equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency,  and by the intelligence department of the Royal Air Force; at the time the Provost and Security Services. It was while I got further into all of this that I was approached by a man who I referred to as the “Sandman.”

For years the Sandman had worked for an arm of the U.K. police force called Special Branch. Not only that, the Sandman claimed that me and two more UFO researchers in the U.K., Robin Cole and Matthew Williams. The former spent a lot of time digging into the GCHQ-UFO link, while the latter was focused almost totally on a now-closed facility in the southwest of England call Royal Air Force Rudloe Manor. For years, there were rumors that Rudloe Manor acted as a kind of “Hangar 18” facility where dead aliens and crashed UFOs were held – and way under the surface of the green fields of England. Such claims were never confirmed, of course. But, there’s no denying the fact that both Williams and Cole became big headaches for the U.K. government. Indeed, the Sandman told me that Williams, me and Cole were watched closely from 1996 to 1998 by various agencies. When this revelation surfaced, a lot of people in the UFO research field in the U.K. scoffed at such claims. They were wrong to do so. In 2012, the claims of the Sandman were vindicated. The National Archives (where the now-declassified UFO files of the Ministry of Defense are held) revealed the following:

Rudloe Manor

“File DEFE 24/1984/1 (p294) contains a 1996 Parliamentary Question from Martin Redmond MP asking on how many occasions MI6 and GCHQ have monitored UFO investigations. This was interpreted to mean ‘have the agencies been keeping watch on UFOlogists.’ A background briefing says ‘neither agency in fact undertakes such activity, though GCHQ cannot rule out the possibility’ they had monitored ‘in other contexts individuals who have made a study of UFOs.’The MP was told the government do not comment on the intelligence and security agencies (p298). File DEFE 24/1987/1 (p262-65) reveals that in 1997 Special Branch took an interest in a UFOlogist who became obsessed with rumors of a secret UFO facility beneath RAF Rudloe Manor in Wiltshire. The base had become known as the British equivalent of the secret US military airbase ‘Area 51’ among conspiracy theorists. An internal note said ‘Special Branch…do not believe he poses a specific threat to security, but they are alert to the risk that others may use him as a conduit for their activities.'” Those two men were confirmed as Williams and Cole.

Take note of all that: it was in 1996 when the Sandman told me that both Cole and Williams were being watched – by several agencies, no less – and it wasn’t until 2012 when the government confirmed that fact. And confirmed the agencies involved, too. So, despite what the debunkers sometimes say, the fact is that real “UFO whistleblowers” do surface from the shadows – and, on top of that, they do provide good, solid information.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

Where is the best place in the U.S. to see UFOs? Roswell and Area 51 get a lot of votes, and the U.S. Navy might say off the Pacific coast off of California or the Atlantic coast off of Virginia beach. However, if you ask the U.S. Air Force, it’s the Gulf coast Florida. That’s where an engineer who is also interested in UFOs claims he was told a new facility the USAF is building which will be used to track unidentified aerial phenomena.

“Normally, I wouldn’t look at this particular project with too much zeal especially since MacDill Air Force Base is about 45 miles south at the southern tip of Tampa Bay. MacDill is Central Command for Middle Eastern operations. However, being that I am a life-long UFO enthusiast and given everything occurring recently, my radar went off, no pun intended.”

This story comes from the website 528hz.space and Jeff Blask, the Plans Examiner Supervisor for Pasco County’s Building Department who wrote about the project on his blog, The Jolt. That’s right – what might be the biggest revelation in how serious the federal government is about UFOs is revealed by a lowly local government building inspector called in early April 2021 to check out plans for a few unusual structures on a Gulf coast land parcel. those structures include:

100′ Tall Tower with Radar Dome
2, 50′ collapsible Auxiliary Towers
An elevated Monitoring building with observation deck

Approved plans (Public Record)

What was being built here? Blask says he joked with the project engineer presenting that it looked like a UAP tracking station. To his surprise, the engineer responded:

“You got it! And as a matter of fact, if you are interested in that subject it may also interest you to know that this facility is not being manned and monitored by MacDill Air Force Base… it’s being monitored in its entirety by Eglin.”

Eglin Air Force Base is much farther from the site than nearby MacDill. Nervous that knowing this would end up in him receiving a visit from the Men in Black, the engineer assured Blask that the plans were not classified (Blask provides the public domain drawings on his site), but warned that “this facility will be under heavily armed guards and only people with Top Secret clearance will be allowed in” and – this is the big one – it’s just the first of a series of similar facilities planned for other coastal areas.

“This development is most likely connected to Aviator Ryan Graves’ assertion that there were sensitive air space intrusions practically daily on Florida’s East Coast for two years.”

Approved plans

(Public Record)

528hz.space links the UFO tracking facility to the revelations made last month on “60 Minutes” by former Navy Lt. Ryan Graves, who says he saw UFOs off the coast of Virginia in 2019 that are a “security threat” to the U.S. and, despite that, these UFOs continued to buzz the Atlantic coast for two years without a military response – at least none that he knew of.

That’s all there is so far. Is Blask correct in his revelation that the US Air Force is building a UAP tracking station on the Gulf Coast near Tampa? Will any details on this be covered in the upcoming Pentagon report on UAPs? Will anyone ask questions if it isn’t?

Is anyone besides Jeff Blask nervous yet?

My previous article was on the subject of the Bigfoot-UFO connection. It’s important to note, however, that Bigfoot is not the only cryptozoological creature that has been tied to aliens. Take, for example, the matter of the mysterious Dogmen. There’s no doubt that the leading researcher in the field of the Dogman is Linda Godfrey. And, interestingly, Linda has a relevant story to tell about the Dogmen; a story that ties the creatures to aliens.  In 2005, Linda was contacted by a man – a military whistle-blower, we might say – who was an expert in the field of remote-viewing. According to Linda’s Edward Snowden-like source, the U.S. Government has uncovered data suggesting that the werewolf-like Dogmen are a very ancient, alien race that closely resembles a certain ancient deity of the Underworld. And who might that be? It’s Anubis, that’s who. Linda’s informant also discovered – via remote-viewing – that the Dogmen can “jump” from location to location via portals or doorways in the fabric of space and time. Wormholes, we might say. That’s quite a story told to Linda.

Moving on: between the nights of December 26 and 29, 1980, multiple, extraordinary events of the UFO kind occurred within Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England. They were events that involved military personnel from the nearby Royal Air Force stations of Bentwaters and Woodbridge. Since that now long gone period, countless U.S. Air Force personnel, who were stationed in the area at the time, have spoken out regarding their knowledge of a small, triangular-shaped object that was seen maneuvering in the forest. Others described seeing in the dark woods almost ghostly, extraterrestrial-type beings of short size and with eerie, feline-like eyes. Strange and unknown lights were seen dancing around the night skies, circling both the forest and the twin military facilities. There were stories that the amazing movements of the UFOs were caught on radar. There is, however, something else: a strange creature seen in the very same forest.

Rendlesham Forest, as well as the Suffolk locales of West Wratting and Balsham, is reportedly home to something equally as strange – maybe even far more so – than a vehicle and creatures from another world. It is a beast that, locally, has come to be known as the Shug Monkey. Described as being a bizarre combination of giant dog, muscular bear, and large ape, the creature is said to take its name from either (A) an old English word – scucca – which means demon, and which, as we have seen already, also has a link to the naming of Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire; or (B) an old east-coast term – shucky – that translates, into modern day terminology, as hairy or shaggy. Maybe the name is even born out of a curious melding of both terms. But, whatever the true nature of the name applied to the foul, hairy entity, its presence in the woods of Suffolk is enough to strike deep terror into the hearts of those souls unfortunate enough to have crossed its path.

Now, let’s take a trip to Loch Ness, Scotland – the home of the legendary Nessies. Just like the Bigfoot creatures, the Dogmen and the Shug Monkey, the Loch Ness Monsters have connections to UFOs. On August 13, 1971, a notable encounter occurred at Loch Ness. Not with a monster, but with a UFO. The witness was one Graham Snape, who told Nessie-seeker Ted Holiday that he saw an unidentified object crossing the skies above Loch Ness in a left to right fashion, quickly, and with not even a bit of accompanying noise. The somewhat circular-shaped UFO was purple with a white center. By his own admission, Snape was unsure of the size of the object but suggested it was around five-feet in diameter. More Loch Ness weirdness hit the news in 2011, specifically in August of that year. The UK’s Daily Express newspaper splashed a headline across its pages that read: “Alert as UFO is sighted over Loch Ness.” The story was, undoubtedly, an odd one. That something occurred does not appear to be in doubt. It is, however, the nature of the “something” that remains open to debate. It was on the night of August 20, 2011 that a number of people –many being completely independent of each other – encountered something unusual in the skies over Loch Ness.

Witness descriptions of the movements of the object fell into two camps: those who said they saw it descending into the loch and those who maintained it was actually hovering above the expansive waters. As for the appearance of the UFO, it very much depended on who one asked. But, whatever it was, it quickly caught the attention of the emergency services, who were contacted by worried locals. Martin Douglas, of the Loch Ness Life Boat crew, told the Daily Mail that someone in the area had seen what, superficially at least, resembled a microlight or a hang-glider, and which actually seemed to enter the loch in a controlled flight. Oddly, however, others who saw the unknown craft described it as being somewhat balloon-shaped. Then there were those who opined it looked eerily like a fully-open parachute.  There was, then, no real, solid consensus on what was seen – or on what wasn’t seen.

And, of course, there’s the Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia that plagued the area from 1966 to 1967. The red-eyed, winged thing was not the only strange thing seen in and around the city. Men in Black prowled around, terrifying witnesses to UFOs and the Mothman itself. What all of this tells us (including the information in my Bigfoot-UFO article) is that, like it or not, where strange, cryptozoological creatures are seen, so are UFOs. Somewhere there’s an answer to all of this, but outright denying the reality of these weird connections between UFOs, aliens and monsters will get us nowhere. In fact, it will push us back, rather than forward.

While those in the U.S. anxiously awaiting the intelligence report on UFOs – which will hopefully shed more light on the UFOs buzzing US military ships and pilots which many have speculated are secret advanced hypersonic vehicles from China – Chinese media reveals that the Chinese military doesn’t bother with pilots and radar and is instead using artificial intelligence to track UFOs in its airspace. The South China Morning Post and the Hong Kong News also describe what they say is the only “officially confirmed” UFO sighting in that country, although a quick search can find more. Is the People’s Liberation Front doing more to track UFOs than the Pentagon? Do they already know more?

“The frequent occurrence of unidentified air conditions in recent years … brings severe challenges to air defence security of our country.”

Some are hard to miss

As with the Pentagon, the People’s Liberation Army has its own term for UFOs — “unidentified air conditions” or UACs. Chen Li from the Air Force Early Warning Academy revealed it in a 2019 report to a conference of senior information technology scientists in Beijing. The PLA’s task force dedicated to UACs uses AI to collect data from multiple sources – both military and media, and no matter how minute it might be – and then painstakingly identify each one, from enemy aircraft to amateur drones to natural occurrences (birds, clouds, etc.) to “other reasons.” Each is then assigned a “threat index” based on behavior, frequency, design, radioactivity, and other data. The article quotes an unnamed radar scientist based in Xian who says the numbers are going up but AI is helping to prove they’re “more likely caused by humans than aliens”.

Well, except for that one in 1998 over an airbase in Cangzhou, Hebei province. News reports at the time described a “short-legged mushroom” with two beams of light shooting down from its underside that easily sped away from two military jets sent to investigate it. While that incident was confirmed, ABC News reported in 2010 on a UFO that shut down Xiaoshan Airport in Hangzhou for an hour and affected 18 flights. Speculation at the time ranged from a camouflaged US bomber to aliens, and authorities claimed there was a military connection but offered no more info. However, ABC notes there had been many sightings in Xinjiang, Hunan, Shandong and Jiangsu provinces prior to this one.

Remember to bring your cellphone

China’s military was also blamed for reports in 2019 when UFO sightings across multiple provinces coincided with two military exercises in the Bohai Sea and Bohai Straits. Photos showed up on the Internet and there were again reports of previous sightings, but nothing more was said by officials. However, 2019 is when Chen Li and the Air Force Early Warning Academy began referring to UFOs as “unidentified air conditions.” Coincidence? The unnamed radar scientist said citizen drones have become more popular in China and US military activities in the South China Sea have become more common. Does the Chinese military  really need artificial intelligence to identify those UACs?

Is it just a coincidence that this article from China comes out as the Pentagon report is nigh and the U.S. media devotes increasing attention to UFOs? Will Russia be next?

What do the aliens on the short-legged mushroom think?

Murders made to look like suicides and accidents. Classified government documents fallen into the wrong hands. Stolen diaries; some of them burned and shredded for fear of what, one day, they might reveal. Powerful people with dangerous agendas. Famous faces. The Feds prowling around. Hollywood conspiracies. CIA agents keeping watch. Frightened people with secrets to hide. Wild sex. Drugs. Crazy parties and flowing booze. And, an incredible story of UFOs, aliens, Roswell, Area 51, Flying Saucers, and the death of a beautiful, but tragically scarred, icon. Her name was Marilyn Monroe. All of the above can be found in the pages of my new book, Diary of Secrets: UFO Conspiracies and the Mysterious Death of Marilyn Monroe. Of course, combining Marilyn, UFOs, aliens, murder and more into one heady mix is bound to provoke controversy to a significant degree. To say the very least. Many of you here at Mysterious Universe will know the bones of this story – a story that first surfaced in 1994 and that grew a year later. Since then, it has never really gone away.

The man who broke the story was Milo Speriglio, a now-deceased author and private detective. And he broke it by revealing (in a press-conference) what was said to have been a “leaked” Central Intelligence Agency document. The contents of that controversy-filled document suggested Marilyn was being wiretapped by the CIA – and that, in 1962, the Kennedy brothers (John and Robert) had secretly shared with Marilyn top secret material on UFOs, plots to kill Fidel Castro, and plans for an invasion of Cuba. The story continues that Marilyn had carefully and deeply detailed all of this in her long-gone, missing diary. The document is dated August 3, 1962, one day before Marilyn was found dead. The inference is that Marilyn was killed because of what she knew of Roswell, Area 51 and so on. That’s quite a story. Some say that’s all it is: a story and nothing else. Others in the UFO field are absolutely sure that the story and the document amount to the real deal. As for me? Well, I have carefully and quietly followed the story since it first surfaced. And, now, I’ve got to the point where I think it’s time to share with everyone all of the material I have found, most of which has never been made public before.

Certainly, one of the most intriguing developments was my discovery that the CIA quietly opened a file on Milo Speriglio and monitored his research, writings and more – all on Marilyn, of course. I managed to get the file under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. Additional files surfaced, such as the FBI’s file on Dorothy Kilgallen (a journalist who died under controversial circumstances, in 1965, while she was investigating the JFK assassination of November 22, 1963), and whose name appears in that controversial CIA document. Nineteen-Ninety-Five was the year in which the U.S. UFO magazine – edited and published for a long time by Don and Vicki Ecker – splashed the story of the document across the pages of their publication. The Ecker’s were prompted to give the story page-space following a then-recent press-conference put together by Milo Speriglio – one of the most important characters in this overall story, and who was briefly mentioned earlier. The reason for his importance? Along with UFO researcher Timothy Cooper, Speriglio was the only other one who had access to the document, itself. Anyone else who had the document at that time was working with nothing else but a second- or third-version of it.

Being watched: Marilyn Monroe and her husband, playwright Arthur Miller were both suspected of communist activities by the FBI

Surveillance: This FBI file documented an anonymous call to the New York Daily News. It's unknown how the agency found out about it

Marilyn Monroe is seen here with Jean Pierre Piquet, manager of Continental Hilton Hotel. The FBI has released a new version of files it kept on Monroe that reveal the names of some of her acquaintances who had drawn concern from the FBI

So far as can be determined, the FBI first opened a dossier on Marilyn in 1955. Specifically, in August of the year. You may wonder why. Midway through the month, the Bureau created a document with the title of: Visit of Soviet Farmers to the U.S., 1955. To the absolute annoyance of the FBI, staff at the Soviet Embassy in the United States had just then invited Marilyn to come along to a party “in honor of the Soviet Agricultural Delegation,” that was making a trip to the U.S. The Russian connection continued. On August 19, Marilyn did something amazing, taking into consideration the Cold War concerns that existed at that time. She applied to get a visa to travel to the Soviet Union. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was hardly pleased. Hoover made sure his agents shared the bad news with a handful of U.S. agencies. The list includes the Department of State (specifically, its office of the Director of Security), the office of the Attorney General, and the CIA. This document is highly important. It was the first, confirmed piece of evidence showing the CIA was taking an interest in Marilyn’s activities. For decades, the agency denied it possessed any records on Marilyn. Today, we know better.

A portion of the FBI’s lengthy file on journalist Dorothy Kilgallen

(Nick Redfern)

I should stress that Diary of Secrets was not written to specifically uphold the UFO angle against any other side of the story. This is very much a “warts and all” type affair. Much of the investigation was done on the road, checking in and out of motels, meeting with people who could help (so they said…). In doing so, I crossed paths with highly credible sources who knew of the “UFO-Marilyn-document” story years before Milo Speriglio was on the scene. But, to demonstrate that the story is a very controversial one, I have to admit I also came across whistleblowers with their own agendas, fantasists, hoaxers, outright liars and those who clearly knew a lot, but who were reluctant to say too much. Then, there was the matter of Cold War-era shenanigans and the Soviets. Did they have a strange connection to that enigmatic document? Were the “bodies” referred to in the “Speriglio document” (as I call it in the book) really aliens? Or, was there another possibility? What about a hushed-up, and very early, Soviet space flight before that of Yuri Gagarin and that went disastrously wrong? Is that what the document was referring to? Or, is the document nothing more than a well-crafted hoax? Questions like those crossed my path over and again. This is just the beginning of Diary of Secrets, a book that gets right to the heart of the most important question of all: was Marilyn Monroe killed because of what she knew about UFOs and aliens?

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

Many people with an interest in Ufology will recall how, beginning in November 2005, a controversial stash of UFO-themed papers surfaced. They collectively became known as “The Serpo Documents.” The source of the documentation, to this day, remains unknown. She, he or them  chose to use the very appropriate alias of “Anonymous.” For some saucer-sleuths, the papers are leaked, highly secret files. For others, the entire thing is nothing but a big joke that has spun wildly out of control. Others suggest disinformation to muddy the ufological waters. The Serpo papers cover a huge amount of ground, but the primary focus is on controversial claims of an “exchange program” between us and the representatives of an alien race, one which began in the 1960s. Anonymous said: “I am a retired employee of the U.S. Government. I won’t go into any great details about my past, but I was involved in a special program. As for Roswell, it occurred, but not like the story books tell. There were two crash sites: one southwest of Corona, New Mexico and the second site at Pelona Peak, south of Datil, New Mexico.”

There was more to come: “Sandia Army Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico was then notified. A recovery team from Sandia took custody of all evidence, including six bodies. The bodies were taken to Sandia Base, but later transferred to Los Alamos. The live entity established communications with us and provided us with a location of his home planet. The entity remained alive until 1952, when he died. But before his death, he provided us with a full explanation of the items found inside the two crafts. One item was a communication device. The entity was allowed to make contact with his planet. Somehow, I never knew this information, but a meeting date was set for April 1964 near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The Aliens landed and retrieved the bodies of their dead comrades. Information was exchanged. Communication was in English. The aliens had a translation device. In 1965, we had an exchange program with the aliens. We carefully selected 12 military personnel; ten men and two women. They were trained, vetted and carefully removed from the military system. The 12 were skilled in various specialties.”

And, finally, there is this from the man or woman with no known name: “Near the northern part of the Nevada Test Site, the aliens landed and the 12 Americans left. One entity was left on Earth. The original plan was for our 12 people to stay 10 years and then return to Earth. But something went wrong. The 12 remained until 1978, when they were returned to the same location in Nevada. Seven men and one woman returned. Two died on the alien’s home planet. Four others decided to remain, according to the returnees. Of the eight that returned, all have died. The last survivor died in 2002. The returnees were isolated from 1978 until 1984 at various military installations. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) was responsible for their security and safety. AFOSI also conducted debriefing sessions with the returnees.” Despite the outrageous and unlikely tale that the documents told, Serpo very quickly became a sensation within certain ufological quarters and provoked massive debate – in magazines and journals, on radio shows, and at online forums. There is, however, one issue that has, for the most part, been overlooked, ignored and forgotten. In early 2006, a source that used the named “Chapman,” and who maintained they had a background with the British Ministry of Defense, claimed to know all about the Serpo files and what they really represented.

Chapman explained: “Interesting reading. However, these are NOT real events that are being described here, although the document they come from IS REAL. I saw this information in 1969 or ’70 in Whitehall. Originally it was a CIA document authored by a lady named Alice Bradley Sheldon. Its main purpose, if you will pardon the phrase, was to ‘scare the crap out of the Soviets’ in response to them scaring the crap out of us.” Admittedly, it’s fair to say that “Chapman” was as much an unknown whistleblower as was “Anonymous.” But, what’s the most likely scenario in this strange story? That “Anonymous” told an incredible truth of alien contact? Or that this was all a Cold War-based plot designed to disrupt the Russians? I say the latter. Here’s why: Alice Bradley Sheldon was born in 1915 and, in the immediate aftermath of the horrific events that occurred at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in December 1941, chose to do whatever she could for her government. It wasn’t long before she was working in the heart of U.S. military intelligence. She ultimately rose to the rank of Major. In 1945, she married Huntington D. Sheldon.

The two decided to relocate to Washington D.C. and both accepted new and exciting careers in the CIA. Alice took part in espionage operations and worked on photo-analysis projects, such as studying imagery of Soviet military installations and then-new Russian aircraft. She remained with the CIA until 1955. As for Huntington, he rose to the position of the Director of the Office of Current Intelligence of the CIA. He held that same position until 1961. In 1967, Alice decided to turn her hand to an area that she had a great love for: that of science-fiction. She did so, however, under the alias of James Tiptree, Jr. In 1973, a collection of her short stories hit the stands. It was entitled Ten Thousand Light Years from Home. Then, in 1975, Warm World and Otherwise were published to high acclaim. More books appeared: 1981’s Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions and 1985’s Brightness Falls from the Air. Barely a handful of people knew, during her lifetime, that Alice and Tiptree were actually one and the very same.

The final years for Alice and her husband were sadly not good; not at all. Both were suffering from ill-health. Huntington finally became bed-ridden. The end was getting closer and closer. It finally arrived. On May 19, 1987, Alice shot and killed her sleeping husband, and then took her own life. Her secrets from that time spent in the employ of the CIA went with her. Unless there is a significant development in the matter of Alice Bradley Sheldon, the Serpo papers, and a plot designed to terrify the Russians, we may never get to see the full picture. But, I cannot think of a better, and more qualified, source than Sheldon –a sci-fi writer and a CIA employee – to have whipped up the saga of Serpo, as a means to freak out the Soviet Union during the Cold War.