Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 9 MONTHS.
ON 06/03/2024 MORE THAN 1.940.230
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
09-03-2024
UAP Disk Seen Over Weyauwega, Wisconsin Feb 2003, UFO Sighting News.
UAP Disk Seen Over Weyauwega, Wisconsin Feb 2003, UFO Sighting News.
Thirty four years ago, thousands of Belgian citizens reported mysterious platforms flying silently over rooftops. The Royal Belgian Air Force got involved and cooperated fully with civilian investigators. To this day, however, the origins of these craft remain unknown.
It’s hard to convey the excitement caused by the Belgian UFO wave if you were not following UFO news back in 1989 and the early 1990s. There was no shortage of UFO reports back then, and interest in the phenomenon was at a high. The sightings and photos from Gulf Breeze, Florida, dominated the American scene, wild UFO reports and stories coming out of the old Soviet Union received huge international media attention, and the Mexican video wave took off in 1991. Yet the Belgian wave seemed to top all of these stories for awhile. The reports out of this small country, headquarters of both the European Commission and NATO, received unprecedented coverage, making even the front page of the Wall Street Journal on October 10, 1990, with a story entitled, “Belgium Scientists Seriously Pursue A Triangular UFO.”
The classic triangular-shaped UFO described by hundreds of eyewitnesses during the Belgium wave: sketch by witness used to create reconstruction of the object seen at the top of story.
Credit: SOBEPS
There were many reasons for the interest generated by the Belgian wave. One was the quality of the reports themselves, the bulk of which were registered in the French-speaking region of Wallonia. There were no landings or humanoid sightings but lots of detailed multiple-witness sightings of flying platforms moving slowly and silently above rooftops. Shapes varied, but the predominant form was triangular or delta-shaped crafts. Some of the descriptions were so precise that traditional explanations of misidentified natural phenomena or conventional aircraft were ruled out. Instead, stealth fighters and other U.S. secret military aircraft became the favorite explanations suggested by skeptics, but these were quickly ruled out by the Royal Belgian Air Force (RBAF). Another reason for the wave’s importance was that it was carefully investigated and documented by a local UFO organization called SOBEPS (Belgian society for the study of space phenomena).
SOBEPS was formed in 1971 by Lucien Clerebaut, Michel Bougard, and others, and built a small but highly dedicated cadre of field investigators. By the end of the wave in 1993, SOBEPS had collected over two thousand eyewitness reports comprising twenty thousand pages, four hundred hours of audio tapes, and six hundred full inquiries. Five hundred and forty cases remained unexplained. SOBEPS also had the assistance of top-notch scientists, including Léon Brenig, a nonlinear dynamics theorist at the Free University in Brussels, and Professor Auguste Meessen, a physicist from Catholic University at Louvain. Regarding his work with SOBEPS, Dr. Brenig has said, “here is an opportunity where we can apply the scientific method.” Brenig himself became a witness of the so-called Belgian triangle while driving in the Ardennes on March 18, 1990. The whole dossier was eventually published by SOPEPS in two massive volumes, five hundred pages each, entitled Vague d’OVNI sur la Belgique (UFO Wave ver Belgium), published in 1991 and 1994 respectively. Due to financial difficulties, SOBEPS dissolved on December 31, 2007, but some of its members formed a new, smaller organization called COBEPS (Belgian committee for the study of space phenomena) to preserve the archives and work done for thirty-six years.
The two volumes published by SOBEPS entitled, “UFO Wave Over Belgium.”
Credit: SOBEPS
A final and key element in the credibility of the Belgian UFO wave was the participation and validation by the RBAF, which showed an unusual degree of openness. As the Belgian wave gained steam, the Belgian Ministry of Defence was deluged with queries from the public and the media. The task fell upon the chief of operations of the air force, Col. Wilfried De Brouwer, who was later promoted to major general and deputy chief of the RBAF. Now retired from the service, Gen. De Brouwer has continued to speak about the wave. He was one of the many international officials who spoke at the famous event at the National Press Club (NPC) in Washington, DC, in November 2007, organized by filmmaker James Fox and journalist Leslie Kean. “The Belgian UFO wave was exceptional and the air force could not identify the nature, origin and intentions of the reported phenomena,” said De Brouwer at the NPC. He also gave a detailed presentation on the wave at the MUFON International UFO Symposium in San Jose, California, in July 2008, and was one of five generals to write an essay in Leslie Kean’s new book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record.
Although the RBAF scrambled jets on three occasions during the wave, Gen. De Brouwer has explained on various occasions that they didn’t have the manpower or resources to mount a full-fledged investigation of their own, so instead they took the unusual route of cooperating fully with SOBEPS. The radar data was turned to Prof. Meessen for analysis, and Gen. De Brouwer agreed to write the postface for SOBEPS’s first volume when he was still in the service. “I must acknowledge that I somewhat hesitated when SOBEPS asked me to contribute my share to this book,” he wrote. “Indeed, I am not a UFO specialist and, moreover, it is quite delicate for somebody who occupies an official function to put on paper his personal ideas on such a disputed issue. However, I estimate that I would not have been honest towards the SOBEPS if I had refused. The air force always played a fair game on this subject and I regard this postface as a complementary element to the exceptional file written by the people of SOBEPS.”
THE EUPEN INCIDENT
Although some sightings were reported in October 1989, the first important incident of the Belgian wave took place a month later on November 29 around the small town of Eupen, which is in a region of Belgium near the German border. This initial case put the so-called “Belgian triangle” on the map and led to the start of the RBAF’s involvement. There were both daytime and nighttime sightings, although the latter were lengthier and more detailed. Gen. De Brouwer explained in his essay for Leslie Kean’s book, “a total of seventy reported sightings made on November 29 were fully investigated and none of these sightings could be explained by conventional technology. The team of investigators and I estimate that approximately fifteen hundred people must have seen the phenomenon at more than seventy different locations from different angles during this afternoon and evening.” There were a total of thirteen gendarmes (policemen) who saw the UFO from eight different locations around Eupen. Prof. Meessen summarized the case in SOBEPS’s book:
On November 29, 1989, a large craft with triangular shape flew over the town of Eupen. The gendarmes von Montigny and Nicol found it near the road linking Aix-la-Chapelle and Eupen. It was stationary in the air, above a field which it illuminated with three powerful beams. The beams emanated from large circular surfaces near the triangle’s corners. In the center of the dark and flat understructure there was some kind of “red gyrating beacon.” The object did not make any noise. When it began to move, the gendarmes headed towards a small road in the area over which they expected the object to fly. Instead, it made a half-turn and continued slowly in the direction of Eupen, following the road at low altitude. It was seen by different witnesses as it flew above houses and near City Hall.
In his 2008 MUFON lecture, Gen. De Brouwer provided additional details on this sighting: “The UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon] emitted repeatedly and simultaneously two red light beams with a red light ball at the spearhead of the beam. Subsequently, the red balls returned to the craft.” There was also apparently a second triangular craft, which made “a forward tilting maneuver, exposing the upper side of the fuselage,” continued De Brouwer. “They [gendarmes] saw a dome with rectangular windows, lighted up at the inside. It then disappeared to the North.” Two more gendarmes saw one of the craft from a monastery nearby; “one is currently the head of the police in that area, he was scared like hell,” added De Brouwer.
Statistical chart of Belgian sightings between October 1989 and September 1990, showing peaks in the November-December period and a second one in April.
Credit: SOBEPS
The Eupen incident was followed by many other UFO sightings, including several reported on December 11, 1989. One of the witnesses that evening was a personal acquaintance of Gen. De Brouwer, Col. André Amond, a civil engineer in the Belgian Army. Col. Armond worked next door to Gen. De Brouwer and wrote a detailed report for the Ministry of Defence. Col. Armond was driving with his wife around 6:45 p.m., when they noticed a strange object with flashing red lights. They stopped the car and got out to see it better. “Suddenly, they saw a giant spotlight, about twice the size of the full moon, which approached them to an estimated distance of 100 meters,” wrote De Brouwer, adding that “the colonel’s wife was frightened and asked to leave.” In his report to the Ministry, Armond “ascertained that this craft was not a hologram, helicopter, military aircraft, balloon, motorized Ultra Light, or any other known aerial vehicle.”
Various shapes were reported throughout the wave, including round, rectangular, and cigar-shaped, but the majority were triangular objects. Gen. De Brouwer notes that the differences may also be due to the eyewitnesses’ viewing angles. Researcher Marc Valckenaers listed some of the characteristics of the UFOs in SOBEPS’s second volume about the wave, including: irregular displacement (zig-zag, instantaneous change of trajectory, etc.), displacement following the contours of the terrain; varying speeds of displacement (including very slow motion), stationary flight (hovering), overflight of urban and industrial centers, and sound effects (faint humming to total silence).
Reconstruction of the incredible rectangular flying platform seen by two factory workers on April 22, 1990, described as “an aircraft carrier turned upside down.”
Credit: SOBEPS
One of the strangest reports came from two factory workers from the town of Basècles, southwest of Brussels, who saw a huge trapezoid flying platform (330 x 200 feet) just before midnight on April 22, 1990. The object moved slowly and silently, covering the entire factory courtyard. In the SOBEPS report, the factory workers described the UFO as “an aircraft carrier turned upside down.” Despite the science-fiction quality of this sighting, an almost identical report was filed nearly a year later, on March 15, 1991, by an electronic engineer in Auderghem, near Brussels, who woke up in the middle of the night when he “heard a barely audible, high-frequency whistling tone. He looked out the window and saw a large rectangular craft at very low altitude with irregular structures on the bottom,” wrote Gen. De Brouwer.
One characteristic of the Belgian wave was how close the objects were flying above the rooftops, as shown with this flying rectangular platform.
Credit: SOBEPS
Another view of the rectangular flying platform above the rooftop and sketch showing where the witness saw it.
Credit: SOBEPS
THE F-16 SCRAMBLE EPISODE
If the Eupen multiple-witness sightings of November 1989 triggered the Belgian wave, the jet fighter scramble incident during the night of March 30, 1990 marked the peak of public interest and global media coverage. The Belgian Air Force had scrambled jets on two prior occasions without positive results. The December 5, 1989 scramble was unsuccessful; when the jet reached the sky, the UFO was gone. Additionally, the December 16, 1989 case turned out to be a false alarm; the authorities quickly determined that it was a laser projection reflected by a cloud layer. Following these two fiascos, the RBAF implemented a new policy that jets would be scrambled only when a sighting was detected on radar and was visually confirmed on the ground by the police.
The SOBEPS team visiting the Royal Belgian Air Force radar facility at Glons: in the center group, left, the Society’s chairman Lucien Clerebaut and right, physicist Prof. Auguste Meessen, next to military officer.
Credit: SOBEPS
As put in a preliminary report prepared by Major P. Lambrechts of the RBAF, entitled “Report Concerning the Observation of UFOs During the Night of March 30 to 31, 1990,” the incident began at 10:50 p.m. on March 30 when the gendarmerie telephoned the radar “master controller at Glons” to report “three unusual lights forming an equilateral triangle.” More gendarmes confirmed the lights. When the NATO facility at Semmerzake detected an unknown target at 11:49 p.m., a decision to scramble two F-16 fighters was made. The jets took off at 12:05 a.m. from Beauvechain, the nearest air base, and flew for just over an hour. According to Major Lambrechts’s report:
The aircraft had brief radar contacts on several occasions, [but the pilots]…at no time established visual contact with the UFOs…each time the pilots were able to secure a lock on one of the targets for a few seconds, there resulted a drastic change in the behavior of the detected targets…[During the first lock-on at 12:13 a.m.] their speed changed in a minimum of time from 150 to 970 knots [170 to 1,100 mph] and from 9,000 to 5,000 feet, returning then to 11,000 feet in order to change again to close to ground level.
When Col. De Brouwer showed the computerized radar images of the UFO tracked by the F-16 onboard radar system in a heavily attended press conference at the Ministry of Defence on July 11, 1990, the international media went into a frenzy. Transcripts of the radio communications between ace fighter pilots, Capt. Yves Meelbergs, Lt. Rudy Verrijt, and the Glons Control Reporting Center near Liege, were also released and provide some dramatic moments. The transcripts paint a picture of the jets chasing ghost radar echoes that appear and disappear and then reappear again, but at no time are the pilots able to establish visual contact with the supposed objects. Belgium’s Electronic War Center (EWC) eventually undertook a detailed technical analysis of the F-16 computerized radar tapes, completed by Col. Salmon and physicist M. Gilmard in 1992, and later reviewed by Prof. Meessen.
An F-16 jet fighter of the Royal Belgian Air Force like the ones scrambled on the night of March 30-31, 1990.
Credit: Bernard Thouanel
Although some aspects of this case still remain unexplained, Meessen and SOBEPS accepted the Gilmard-Salmon hypothesis that most of the radar contacts were really echoes caused by a rare meteorological phenomenon. This became evident in four lock-ons, explained Meessen, “where the object descended to the ground with calculations showing negative altitude…. It was evidently impossible that an object could penetrate the ground, but it was possible that the ground could act as a mirror.” Meessen explained how the high velocities measured by the Doppler radar of the F-16 fighters might result from interference effects. He pointed out, however, that there was another radar trace for which there is no explanation to date. As for the visual sightings of this event by the gendarmes and others, Meessen suggested that they could possibly have been caused by stars seen under conditions of “exceptional atmospheric refraction.”
One frame from the F-16 onboard radar system showing the UFO lock-on during the March 1990 scramble episode, shown by the RBAF at a famous press conference in July 1990.
Credit: RBAF/ Bernard Thouanel
In a 1995 telephone interview, Gen. De Brouwer summarized his reflections on this complex case: “We always look for possibilities which can cause errors in the radar systems. We can not exclude that there was electromagnetic interference, but of course we can not exclude the possibility that there were objects in the air. On at least one occasion there was a correlation between the radar contacts of one ground radar and one F-16 fighter. This weakens the theory that all radar contacts were caused by electromagnetic interference. If we add all the possibilities, the question is still open, so there is no final answer.” De Brouwer took a more detached view of the F-16 scramble episode, however, in his 2008 MUFON lecture and his 2010 essay included in Kean’s book: “The conclusion of the Air Force, therefore, was that the evidence was insufficient to prove that there were real crafts in the air on that occasion.”
THE PETIT-RECHAIN PHOTO
The famous color slide of the Belgian triangle photographed in Petit-Rechain in early April 1990.
Seldom has the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words become more true than in the case of the extraordinary photograph of a flying triangle taken in the small town of Petit-Rechain in April 1990. This color slide became the emblematic symbol of the Belgian UFO wave. It has been published and broadcast in television programs all over the world, and it appears on the cover of the two SOBEPS volumes on the Belgian wave. It’s also one of the most analyzed UFO photos in the history of ufology. During my trip to Brussels in 1995, I had the opportunity to talk at length with Patrick Ferryn, the investigator who researched the case initially and wrote the chapter about it in the SOBEPS book. Ferryn gave me copies of the photo and samples of computer enhancements made by Marc Acheroy, professor of electricity at the Royal Military School, where the image was analyzed by the Signal Treatment Center. The details of how the photo was taken are fairly simple and straightforward.
The photographer, P.M. (who wants privacy, but has fully cooperated with SOBEPS), was a twenty-year-old factory worker, who lived in the small community of Petit-Rechain, near Verviers. He was at home with his girlfriend on the night of either April 4 or 7, 1990 (he can’t pin down the exact date), when his girlfriend first noticed the object between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m. as she took the dog to the courtyard. According to P.M.’s statement to Ferryn, he was alerted by his girlfriend, went outside, and “saw the object practically stationary towards the southwest, at about a forty-five-degree elevation. It consisted of three white round lights on a barely perceptible triangular surface. In the center there was a blinking spot of the same color, or maybe a bit more reddish than the other lights.” P.M. grabbed his camera, a Praktica model BX20 with a 55-200 mm zoom and a “Cokin” 1A 52 mm skylight filter. He shot the last two frames of a roll of 36-200 ASA Kodak color slide film. The UFO then moved slowly towards Petit-Rechain, until it was hidden by the roofs in the village. The entire episode took about five minutes.
The roll of film was sent by mail to a development house offering a special discount, and when P.M. received the slides, he noticed only frame #35 had captured the UFO; frame #36 was entirely black. Ferryn estimated that “the photo was probably taken with a focal distance between 55 and 200 mm, and with exposition time ranging from 1 to 2 seconds.” P.M. showed the photo to his factory coworkers (all of whom were later interviewed by Ferryn), but otherwise didn’t do anything to analyze or commercialize the picture. One of his coworkers knew a local photo-journalist from Verviers, Guy Mossay, who immediately saw the image’s potential value. P.M. sold the photo rights to Mossay for a small fee. Mossay then proceeded to copyright it with SOFAM (Belgium’s multimedia society for visual arts authors).
Skeptics have naturally pointed to the possibility of a hoax with profit motive. However, if that is the case, why did P.M. sell the rights to Mossay for a minor fee? Moreover, hoaxers never supply original slides or negatives for scientific analysis, as was done by P.M. Having checked his background, interviewed acquaintances, and so on, Ferryn noted that “the account of the main witnesses was coherent.” Gen. De Brouwer spent quite a bit of time explaining the details of this case during his MUFON lecture, saying of the witness that, “this guy is genuine, he is a guy who would not fake at all, I can assure you of that.” More importantly, the Petit-Rechain photo has been subjected to more scientific analysis than practically any other UFO photo in history.
When the Petit-Rechain photo is overexposed, the triangular outline of the object appears clearly.
The list of experts and institutions that have analyzed this photo include Prof. Acheroy of Belgium’s Royal Military Academy; Prof. François Louange, an expert in photo interpretation of satellite images for the French space agency, CNES; Dr. Richard Haines, a retired senior NASA scientist and respected UFO researcher; Belgium’s Royal Institute of Artistic Patrimony; and André Marion, a nuclear physicist with France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), who conducted an analysis in 2002 with improved technology. The technical details of these analyses are too numerous for this article, but suffice it to say that evidence of photographic trickery has never been found. Furthermore, of several efforts to duplicate the photo using a dark cardboard triangular model with holes and light bulbs, only one made by members of the Astrophysics Institute at Liege University somewhat resembled the Petit-Rechain photo. But the luminosity of the spots in the replica was uniform, while those in the original exhibited different shapes and spectral effects. The most recent CNRS study by Dr. Marion confirmed the previous analysis and found, as put by Gen. De Brouwer, a “halo around the craft with patterned structure,” which could have been caused by the object’s “propulsion system” of “magnetoplasma dynamic.” Marion also stated that “it would be extremely difficult to fake such a photograph.”
In the end, it’s almost impossible to guarantee the authenticity of a UFO image. There will always be a difference of opinions, but the verdict in the Petit-Rechain case appears highly favorable. Triangular UFOs were seen throughout Belgium during the early 1990s. Dozens of fuzzy videos and grainy photos were taken, but they were generally not impressive. Petit-Rechain was the great exception.
Note: Since the writing of this article, the photo turned out to be an admitted hoax.
NO EVIDENCE OF SECRET AIRCRAFT
Due to the high credibility of most witnesses in the Belgian wave and their descriptions of a silent, triangular craft being so precise, trying to explain the wave in terms of hoaxes, misidentified natural phenomena, or conventional aircraft seemed fruitless. Therefore, a number of skeptics and aviation journalists focused on trying to prove the hypothesis of secret U.S. aircraft flying over Belgium. A series of candidates were proposed, from the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to secret airships, from the F-117A stealth fighter to some other revolutionary U.S. secret military aircraft such as the alleged TR-3A Black Manta. First, you have to ponder why the U.S. would conduct tests of their most-secret aircraft in such a highly populated area like Wallonia, which is not only a U.S. ally, but also headquarters of the NATO alliance. Gen. De Brouwer put it bluntly in a 1991 interview with the French magazine, OVNI Présence: “Why would the Americans conduct tests here in Europe, without permission and with the risk of having an accident that could create a diplomatic incident on a global scale? This doesn’t involve only Belgium, but NATO, where its concept itself could be put in question. I don’t believe that the Americans could take such a risk, it’s evident.”
Major General (Ret.) Wilfried De Brouwer, who was the Royal Belgian Air Force point man for the UFO wave, during his trip to Washington, DC to participate at the National Press Club event in 2007.
Credit: Bernard Thouanel
Guy Coeme and Leo Delcroix, the two Belgian Ministers of Defence during the wave, denied emphatically the theory that the UFOs were actually U.S. aircraft and based their denial on official inquiries with the U.S. Embassy in Brussels. In a 1993 letter to French researcher Renaud Marhic, Minister Delcroix wrote: “Unfortunately, no explanation has been found to date. The nature and origin of the phenomenon remain unknown. One theory can, however, be definitely dismissed since the Belgian Armed Forces have been positively assured by American authorities that there has never been any sort of American aerial test flight.” A declassified 1990 document from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) entitled, “Belgium and the UFO Issue,” supports Delcroix’s position. After describing the basic events of the wave that had transpired up to that point, the unnamed U.S. official wrote at the very end of this memo: “The [U.S. Air Force (USAF)] did confirm to the [Belgian Air Force] and Belgian [Ministry of Defence] that no USAF stealth aircraft were operating in the Ardennes area during the periods in question. This was released to the Belgian press and received wide dissemination.”
Thirty years have now passed since the Belgian UFO wave, and no new significant evidence has been produced to prove that the sightings were caused by secret military aircraft. The reported cases remain unexplained. It seems certain that something massive and technologically advanced flew over Belgian territory during the 1989-93 period. Why and who was behind it are questions that remain to be answered. A suitable conclusion, for now, is to repeat what Gen. De Brouwer wrote at the end of his famous postface to the SOBEPS’s first volume: “The day will come undoubtedly when the phenomenon will be observed with technological means of detection and collection that won’t leave a single doubt about its origin. This should lift a part of the veil that has covered the mystery for a long time. A mystery that continues thus present. But it exists, it is real, and that in itself is an important conclusion.”
The author (left) with SOBEPS’ chairman Lucien Clerebaut at the Society’s headquarters in Brussels in 1995. The map in the background shows the locations of sightings in Belgium.
Credit: Antonio Huneeus
A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #5 (December/January 2011) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
Some view Carl Jung as a UFO debunker, others as a UFO believer, but the truth is he was somewhere in the middle. Either way, it is certain that Jung was an avid UFO researcher and fascinated with the topic. He wrote a book about the psychological symbolism and the role the UFO mythos plays in the unconscious mind.Moreover, on several occasions Jung complained that his studies would have been much easier if the UFO phenomenon was not real.
Jung the Psychologist
Jung was born in Switzerland in 1875. His father was a pastor in the Swiss Reformed Protestant Church, and his mother was from a wealthy Swiss family. He was the Jungs’ fourth child, but was the only child who survived into his childhood. As such, he grew up as an only child. Later, he wrote that he remembered enjoying his solitude.
His first experience with neurosis was at the age of twelve when a fellow student shoved him, causing him to fall and hit his head on the ground very hard. He remembered associating this experience with schoolwork, and whenever he had to go to school or do schoolwork he would faint. Overhearing his parents’ concern that this condition would cause him to be unable to support himself as an adult, Jung fought to overcome the problem and eventually returned to academics.
Although Jung had a profound interest in spirituality, his experiences triggered an interest in psychology and he decided to pursue a career in medicine. It wasn’t long before he realized that studies in psychology would allow him to combine his interests in medicine and spirituality, and in 1902, he completed his doctoral dissertation, which was titled “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena.” He graduated with a medical degree from the University of Basel.
After graduating, Jung went to work with psychiatric patients at the University of Zurich asylum. He wrote a paper on word association that he sent to Sigmund Freud. Freud was impressed with Jung’s work, and they quickly became very close. Freud considered Jung his successor. However, after several years, Jung began to develop his own ideas beyond the work of Freud, and due to their disagreements, the relationship turned adversarial.
Carl Jung (bottom right), Sigmund Freud (bottom left), and others at a 1909 celebration of the founding of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Credit: Library of Congress
Freud’s work with the ego and unconscious served as a foundation for Jung’s work. They both felt that disconnects between the conscious and unconscious minds caused neurosis in people. They also both relied on dream interpretation to explore a person’s unconscious mind as a method for subsequently resolving neurosis. In fact, one story holds that Jung and Freud interpreted each other’s dreams and both completely disagreed with the other’s analysis, thus hastening the dissolution of their friendship.
A major area of disagreement between the two was that Jung did not believe a person’s unconscious was driven solely by sexual desires, as Freud did. Jung believed other strong emotions such as fear and aspiration were just as influential. He also conceived of a deeper level of the unconscious called the collective unconscious, which he believed is a part of our unconscious mind that holds ideas and concepts shared by all humankind. He believed these base ideas are then shaped by our cultural perceptions and personal experience. For example, we all have ideas around the notions of mothers, fathers, wise elders, etc. Jung called these shared notions archetypes. Jung felt that these archetypes not only would manifest in dreams, but could be seen in people’s creative works and behavior, including art, religion, and mythology.
Jung’s contributions to psychology are numerous. Even today his ideas of extraversion and introversion are a mainstay in personality psychology. He also came up with the idea of psychological complexes and synchronicities. All of these ideas and terms are commonly used in everyday conversation today, and all were made popular by Jung.
Jung and Alchemy
It is the idea of the archetype that brought Jung to have a particular interest in UFOs. When Jung interpreted psychological meaning he would search for archetypal figures. As mentioned earlier, such figures could be a mother or father.But, in a mythological story, the archetype may be the hero, a dragon, or even a planetary entity such as the sun. However, Jung also had an interested in alchemy.
Alchemy is typically connected to legends of ancient mystics attempting to unravel the secret of turning lead into gold. The work of alchemists is credited with the development of modern chemistry. However, another side of alchemy is spiritual in nature, relating to personal transformation. Jung had a passion for alchemy in this sense, and felt that the metal lead was a metaphor for an impure soul, whereas gold was a metaphor for a perfected soul. Jung’s interest in alchemy was thus as a method of purifying the soul.
The Tabula Smaradina (Emerald Tablet), a print by Mathias Merian from the 1600s displaying alchemical symbols and imagery.
Credit: Mathias Merian
Jung wrote a couple of books focused on interpreting alchemical symbolism and processes as different stages of personal growth that mirrored his ideas. He felt these symbols were archetypes that were unconsciously manifesting in the work of alchemists. Although he acknowledged the physical goals of alchemy (an attempt to transmute lead into gold), Jung did not give it much attention in his writing and focused on the non-physical aspects that related to his psychological theories. This is very similar to the way he approached the topic of UFOs.
Jung and UFOs
In 1951, Jung wrote to a friend in the United States: “I am puzzled to death about the phenomena, because I haven’t been able yet to make out with sufficient certainty whether the whole thing is a rumour with concomitant singular and mass hallucination, or a downright fact.”
Book cover to Jung’s Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.
(Credit: Princeton University Press.)
Although Jung showed an interest in the mystery of the physical reality of the UFO phenomenon, professionally he stated, “As a psychologist, I am not qualified to contribute anything useful to the question of the physical reality of Ufos.” However, Jung could contribute by analyzing the unmistakable psychological side to the UFO phenomenon. In 1958, several of Jung’s papers regarding the psychology of UFOs were published in a book. It was originally published in German, but in 1959 it was translated to English under the title, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.
In the book, Jung argued that although there may be a physical reality to UFOs, there is certainly a portion of the phenomenon that is fantasy. He examined the difficulty many have in accepting fantastical stories of UFOs, even when they come from pilots, and points out, “What is worse, most of the stories come from America, the land of superlatives and of science fiction.”
For the sake of argument, and to examine the psychological aspects of the phenomenon, Jung presumed that UFOs are fantasy. This is an important aspect that many critics overlook when they characterize Jung as dismissive of the phenomenon altogether. UFO researchers also tend not to appreciate the portions of Jung’s book in which he examined the UFO phenomenon in regards to archetypal imagery and alchemic symbolism. Jung himself assures his readers that although his work may appear to be “unbridled fantasy” to those unfamiliar with psychology, it is actually based on “thorough research into the history of symbols.”
In his book, Jung observed that most UFO sightings describe the objects as disc shaped, which is a symbol that is often seen in alchemy and existed in the mythology of other cultures. For example, the Hindu and Buddhist symbol of the mandala is a circular disc-shaped symbol. Jung believed that the mandala is a protective sphere, which is elicited in the unconscious in times of emotional tension. Jung noted that, around the time of many of the UFO sightings, the world was under a collective stress due to “Russian policies and their still unpredictable consequences.” In short, he felt that perhaps UFOs were appearing in visions at the time because of the world’s Cold War jitters, and that the UFOs were a manifestation of a need for protection and salvation.
Jung’s book also provided detail of the analysis of particular sightings and art. One of the significant contributions to ufology made by the book is a focus on two historical broadsheets, a type of ancient newspaper, that recorded mysterious apparitions that many have speculated to be UFO related. Although Jung asserted that these reports were in the UFO literature prior to the publication of his book, Jung clearly made them popular as potential ancient UFO sightings.
The first is referred to as the Basel Broadsheet, and it dates back to 1566. It was written by Samuel Coccius and is a report of “many large black globes” that were seen flying in front of the sun “with great speed.” The Basel Broadsheet notes, “Some of them became red and fiery and afterwards faded and went out.” Jung noted the similarity of this phenomenon to modern UFO accounts.
The Basel Broadsheet from 1566 analyzed by Carl Jung in his Flying Saucer book.
The second report is called the Nuremberg Broadsheet and dates back to 1561. This report chronicles a “very frightful spectacle” that was witnessed by several people. Again, “globes” were seen near the sun, “some three in a row, now and then four in a square, also some standing alone.” There were also “two great tubes.” Jung noted that in UFO literature large tubes are considered “motherships,” and have been reported to have smaller discs that appear to fly out of them.
The Nuremberg Broadsheet from 1561 analyzed by Carl Jung in his Flying Saucer book.
In his book, Jung also examined the possibility of the physical reality of UFOs. He noted that, “unfortunately,” UFOs cannot be dismissed as purely psychological in nature. He pointed to numerous sightings, some of which have been caught in photographs and on radar. Jung even poked fun at astronomer Donald Menzel, a UFO debunker, saying that he “has not succeeded, despite all his efforts, in offering a scientific explanation of even one authentic UFO report.”
Jung was well-versed on UFO research. He wrote, “since 1947 I have collected all of the books I could get a hold of on the subject.” He was also a member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), an early civilian UFO organization that included many credible members. In fact, in his book, Jung often referred to the work of Major Donald Keyhoe, a cofounder and director of NICAP.
Prior to releasing his book, Jung was considered by UFO researchers to be a proponent of the physical reality of UFOs. In 1955, he wrote an article on UFOs for a British journal called the Flying Saucer Review. In the article, Jung stated that he had never seen a UFO himself, but that “I can only say for certain: these things are not a mere rumour: something has been seen.”
He went on to argue that the U.S. Air Force “despite its contradictory statements,” considers the phenomenon to be real and they conduct official investigations. He warned that, by concealing information on the topic, the military is making it more likely that people will panic since the public is denied “an adequate picture of what is happening.”
Jung also stated that “the ‘disks’ (that is, the objects themselves) do not behave in accordance with physical laws, but as though without weight, and they show signs of intelligent guidance, by quasi human pilots, for their accelerations are such that no normal human could survive.”
Not much was made of Jung’s 1955 article until it was reprinted in 1958 by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in the organization’s bulletin in July 1958. APRO posted the story as part of an announcement that Jung had agreed to become an official consultant for the organization. The New York Herald Tribune quickly picked up on the report and printed a story with the headline, “Dr. Jung Says ‘Flying Disks’ Suggest Quasi-Human Pilots.”
APRO Bulletin from July, 1958 with reprint of Jung’s article on UFOs.
Credit: APRO
Jung was not happy with the implication that he believed UFOs represented a physical phenomenon and later wrote a letter to United Press International news agency clarifying his position. He wrote: “I expressly state that I cannot commit myself on the question to the physical reality or unreality of the UFOs since I do not possess sufficient evidence either for or against.” He then stated, “Something is seen, but it isn’t known what.” Jung later repeated this statement in his 1958 book and in several letters.
Although Jung was clearly embarrassed by the public perception that he conclusively believed flying saucers were physical in nature, he later reiterated his prior statements and earlier criticisms of the U.S. Air Force’s handling of the matter in very strong words. He wrote:
In spite of the fact that I hold my judgment concerning UFOs—temporarily let’s hope—in abeyance, I thought it worthwhile to throw a light upon the rich fantasy material which has accumulated round the peculiar observations in the skies. Any new experience has two aspects: (I) the pure fact and (2) the way one conceives of it. It is the latter I am concerned with. If it is true that the [American Air Force] or the Government withholds telltale facts, then one can only say that this is the most unpsychological and stupid policy one could invent. Nothing helps rumours and panics more than ignorance.
It is no wonder that many have been confused as to Jung’s official stance on UFOs. He seems to have believed the phenomenon and sightings to be real, but is uncertain whether UFOs are a physical reality or are limited to a psychological phenomenon. He stated that although “by all human standards it hardly seems possible to doubt this any longer,” in the decade or more he had been studying the topic, neither he nor anyone else seems to have learned much from the study of the physical aspect of UFOs. Jung said that this is precisely why he found it much more fruitful to study the psychological aspects of UFOs, an area in which he felt he had gained an abundance of knowledge.
Jung may be right. Concrete physical proof of UFOs continues to elude us to this day. Yet, Jung is another example of a luminary who garners a great amount of respect in his field of study, who also had the vision to seriously consider the UFO phenomenon. His UFO interest is a story that should not be forgotten, and his insights into the phenomenon may help guide us today, just as his insights into the human mind continue to be a part of the bedrock of modern psychological understanding.
A version of this article originally appeared in Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
A big revelation in the 1990 Calvine UFO incident has recently happened. The most awaited UFO photo that was set to be released on January 1, 2072, was somehow found and released by UAP Media UK. This new discovery is a shock to those who always bring skepticism to the field of UFOlogy. Vinnie Adams of the UAP Media UK disclosed that his team not only found the original print of the Calvine “UFO,” taken directly from the negatives, but also the original envelope which was sent from the Scottish Daily Record to Craig Lindsay who was the MOD Press Officer that dealt with the case at the time.
Brief Information About Calvine UFO Photo
There are many videos and photographs of UFOs on the Internet, and some of them have credibility. But there is one photograph sent to the UK defense ministry, the MoD, which is considered to be the most spectacular UFO photo although somehow, it has disappeared. The photograph contains a 100-feet diamond-shaped flying saucer, hovering over a village named Calvine in the Scottish Highlands. The photo was taken in 1990.
Nick Pope worked for the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) for 21 years. From 1991 to 1994, he was the head of the MoD’s UFO project. He said that during his time in the MoD, he came across several credible UFO cases. One such case involves the photograph from the Calvine Incident.
The story of how the photograph reached the MoD’s office is phenomenal. Mr. Pope said that when he began his investigation into UFOs in 1991, it led him to a poster, hanging on the wall near his desk. The poster was an enlarged-colored photograph of the UFO from the Calvine Incident.
“The X-Files first aired in the UK in 1994 and I acquired the same nickname (Spooky) as Fox Mulder, for obvious reasons,” Nick said. “Mulder famously had his ‘I want to believe’ UFO poster on his office wall and though uncaptioned, I suppose this was my equivalent.”
Most of the UFO photos are either fake, blurry, or just a small dot in the sky, but this particular photo was clear and taken in broad daylight. According to Mr. Pope, the photograph contained an 80-foot diamond-shaped craft with a military jet in the background.
Two unnamed hikers from the Perthshire region allegedly took the photo of a large UFO while walking near the village of Calvine on August 4, 1990. “The photos were then sent to the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) who then sent them on to imagery analysts at JARIC (Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre). Yet at the time, the MoD hadn’t even publicly acknowledged that there was any intelligence interest in UFOs at all,” Mr. Pope explained.
Interestingly, the photo disappeared without any trace when the UFO investigators questioned the MoD whether Americans were testing secret prototype aircraft in the area. Mr. Pope asked the US if the craft belonged to them but they refused to admit it.
According to a 30-year rule in the UK, the MoD was supposed to release the secret UFO dossier on January 1, 2021, but the UK government banned the release for another 50 years. This secret file is said to contain the infamous UFO photo from the Calvine incident. Now, it is set to be released on January 1, 2072.
Photo found after 32 years
UAP Media UK is working hard to bring a serious resource to the British media outlets on the discussion of UFOs. One of the members of this project named Vinnie Adams has been working with Dr. David Clarke and a small team of researchers on the Calvine case from 1990 in Scotland for the last 11 months. (Source)
This led him to discover an original print of the Calvine “UFO,” taken directly from the negatives that were sent by the witnesses to the Scottish Daily Record back in 1990, just after the event occurred.
He also found the original envelope which was sent from the Scottish Daily Record to Craig Lindsay who was the MOD Press Officer that dealt with the case at the time.
Mr. Adams wrote: “According to the copy of the hand-written sighting report that was released by The National Archives (TNA) in October 2008, the witnesses gave an account of their sighting plus the color photographs to what was the joint RAF/Royal Navy Headquarters at Pitreavie, near Dunfermline (which closed in 1996).”
Nick Pope mentioned the details of the Scottish sighting in his 1996 book “Open Skies, Closed Minds,” which prompted a British Parliamentary Question in July 1996 from Martin Redmond, Former Member of Parliament for Doncaster, about the incident:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assessment his Department made of the photograph of an unidentified craft at Calvine on 4 August 1990; who removed it from an office in Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a; for what reasons; and if he will make a statement.”
Nicholas Soames, Minister of State for the Armed Forces, gave a written reply to the MP’s question:
“A number of negatives associated with the sighting were examined by staff responsible for air defence matters. Since it was judged they contained nothing of defence significance the negatives were not retained and we have no record of any photographs being taken from them.” (Hansard HC Deb., 24 July 1996, vol.282, col 39248W)
Journalist Dr David Clarke, who is also a member of UAP Media UK, was put in touch with retired RAF press officer Craig Lindsay. Craig was involved in the Calvine case back in 1990 as the go-between for the Daily Record and the MOD.
During his involvement in the case, Craig acquired an original print of the elusive photograph. Along with the photo, Craig also kept the original envelope containing the photograph sent by the Daily Record to the MOD.
In May 2022, David interviewed Craig in Scotland and was shown the original print. In June, Craig agreed to donate the photograph to the Sheffield Hallam University Archives, handing it to Dr. Dravid Clarke and Vinnie Adams. The image now resides in its new home at the Sheffield Hallam University folklore archives.
Authenticity of Calvine UFO Photo
Andrew Robinson, a senior lecturer in Photography at Sheffield Hallam University claims the authenticity of the 1990 Scottish highlands UFO photo. In his detailed analysis, he found the image showing no evidence of negative or print-based manipulation, and all visible signs suggest this is a genuine photograph of the scene before the camera. (Source)
Robinson concluded in his study:
The photograph is a color print from XP-1 or XP-2 chromogenic Black and White C41 film printed on a standard;
It is not possible to identify the object in the center of the frame. However, the evidence present suggests that this object was in front of the camera in the position shown when the photograph was captured;
Thus it follows that this is either a genuine unidentified flying object in the sky OR that any construction or manipulation used to create this effect occurred in front of the camera and not in the capturing of the scene on film nor in the subsequent processing and printing of the image;
The results of this analysis are consistent with, and support the claimed heritage of the print.
Check the video below by Nick Pope, speaking about how insiders view the Calvine UFO incident
An unidentified object that was traveling under the ocean at a speed greater than the speed of sound came dangerously close to a nuclear submarine. This claim was made by a researcher who was working on a classified operation aboard the USS Hampton when he made the statement. For many years, Bob McGwier worked in clandestine intelligence. He disclosed two incidents aboutunderwater UFOs or USOs, that he saw while performing covert operations. This claim was made several months after a video had been made public by the United States military, in which it appeared to show an unidentified flying object moving from the sky into the water in the year 2019.
UFO researcher and former fighter pilot Chris Lehto heard the story from Bob McGwire, who said that the submarine passed at incredible speed while “going deep and fast” in the late 1990s. McGwire stated that this encounter was corroborated by a member of the crew who was surprised by the speed of the Unidentified Submerged Object, also known as the USO. (Source)
“We were underway and all of a sudden I hear the sound it was really strange… it was moving so fast. I just cannot believe it because this submarine is limited in the speed it can go by the incompressibility of the water in front of it and this thing blew by us like we were standing still. I’m not going to throw anybody else under the bus here but I guarantee you the following happened: a person with knowledge of onboard systems came out and said ‘oh my God’ this goddamn thing is going faster than the speed of sound underwater but that’s faster than the speed of sound in air.”
Robert G. McGwier is the founder and Technical Advisor at Hawkeye 360. He serves as Technical Director of Federated Wireless, Inc. Dr. McGwier is the Director of Research for the Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Security and Technology, and Research Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. At Virginia Tech, he leads the overall execution of the Center’s research mission and leads the university’s program development efforts in national security applications of wireless and space systems. His area of expertise is in radio frequency communications and digital signal processing.
McGwire had another USO encounter that took place onboard the USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19) in 2008 while it was in a violent Typhoon. “I wanted to look outside and see what I could see and I was on the bridge so I was right up there underneath the American flag looking out the windows. When I noticed that even though we were in a typhoon and it was raining like mad there was no rain hitting the ship and I’m going what the heck and I looked out the window and looked up and I could see a glow above us in the sky. It was not very bright but I could see it and whatever it was blocking off the rain from the entire ship stem to stern.”
McGwire continued: “I believe I was on the port side and the reason I say that is because I took a peek outside and I could do that because I was Leeward in other words the winds were from behind me and the bulkhead of the ship were blocking the winds. So, I could look up easily so anyway it suddenly grew brighter and took off straight up and the rain returned.”
Similar to McGwire’s second encounter, in 1991, USS Kirk FF108 USO Encounter took place off the west coast of South America. The witness stated that at that time, he was a Chief of Operations and Intelligence serving aboard the Knox-class escort destroyer USS Kirk FF1087 and that they were part of a drug interdiction force consisting of the USS Kirk and three other Navy ships. Their main task was to patrol using a network of radars to track and then intercept drug planes flying out of Colombia, Panama and Guatemala, as well as to seize any smuggling ships that they could find. (Source)
The witness said that his primary position was at the CIC Combat Information Center, which he and 22 other specialists maintained 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rotating in two shifts of 11 people.
At 2 a.m. on December 16, he was on duty at CIC. The night was calm and nothing unusual happened. He said he used the break to go up to the bridge. At this time, the entire ship was in a status called “darkened ship,” when all external lights were turned off, as well as on the bridge, that is, everything around was dimly lit only by instrument panels. His friend was on deck duty that night, and they chatted when they had some free time. And suddenly, everything around was lit up in the red color:
“All of a sudden and out of nowhere, like a huge flash from a camera, emanating from the starboard bow sea level upward was a huge flash of red glowing light, which lit up our entire ship. It only lit up our ship, not the surrounding ocean, just our ship. It happened so fast, that the OOD, the navigator and I were speechless for about 5 seconds, at which time I looked at the OOD and asked him if he just saw that light. He stated yes in a sullen voice.
I then asked the navigator and he replied yes. I then took the navigator’s sound powered headset, and asked the forward and aft look outs, if they had just seen the same red flash, to which the forward look out stated, “YES! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”
After lookout said yes as well. I then immediately contacted CIC, and asked the CIC officer if we had any aircraft or surface ships in our vicinity, to which he replied clear as a whistle. I asked if we had any submarine activity in the area, to which he replied, no. At this point I looked at the OOD and asked him if we should wake up the captain or as we would call him, The Old Man. The OOD sat there stunned for a minute, as did I and everyone else.
What had just happened did not make any sense. The flash emanated from the sea, directly off of our starboard bow (like it was touching our bow), and ascended upwardly so rapidly, creating the effect of the bright red flash. The other weird aspect of this event was that only our ship was lit up within the red flash, not the surrounding sea, but our vessel only. The OOD elected not to wake the captain, and the entire incident was logged in our ship’s log as an unexplained phenomenon.
Up until this event, I did not believe in UFOss or USOss. I have no doubt that our ship, steaming along at 12 knots, came right up on a submerged unidentifiable aircraft. I don’t think the aircraft or USO had any idea we were sailing up to them. I think whatever it was, took off in a very unplanned and fast manner, and wanted to quickly identify us, thus the flash.”
In the end, after much deliberation, they decided not to wake the captain up, but simply to register it in the ship’s log as an “unexplained phenomenon.”
Many members of the United States Navy have reported fascinating sightings, and video showing UFOs entering water has even been made public. A video that was shot by the sailors of the USS Omaha in July 2019 off the coast of San Diego is one of the pieces of evidence that are being put up to support this claim. A spherical object is seen soaring over the ship and then plunging into the ocean in a video that was shared by UFO researcher and investigative director Jeremy Corbell. During this time, a member of the crew can be heard saying, “Wow, it splashed!”
The video generated considerable interest online, and when Corbell revealed that a Navy submarine had been dispatched to look for the object without success, things got even more intriguing. It is interesting to note that at around the same time, American submarines also spotted other mysterious anomalous objects that defied the laws of physics in the water nearby. The Navy has verified the authenticity of the video but claims to have no explanation for its existence.
More specifically, Luis Elizondo, a former director of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, said:
“Imagine a technology that can do 6-700 g-forces, which can fly at 13,000 miles per hour, which can evade radar and which can fly through air and water and eventually. in the space. And oh, by the way, has no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces and yet can still defy the natural effects of Earth’s gravity. This is precisely what we are seeing.” (Source)
When the Pentagon's UAP Task Force released an initial report in April of 2023, UFO researchers expressed frustration that a figure allegedly showing the shapes of anomalous craft being reported had been redacted. But when former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick appeared before a congressional committee later that year, he brought the goods with him. He displayed a pie chart describing the various shapes of craft that had been reported, with a significant majority of them being depicted as "round" or "orbs." Many other less frequently seen shapes were listed as well, including triangles, cubes, and even classic saucers, described as discs. But there was one shape missing. There was no mention of egg-shaped UFOs.
You don't hear much about UFOs of that shape in the modern era, but that wasn't always the case. There was a time when such reports were quite common. If you do a search for the phrase "egg-shaped" in the Project Blue Book files in the National Archives, quite a few pages of results are returned, but they are almost entirely from the 1950s or early 1960s. Among the first, biggest, and most widely reported took place in the first week of November 1957. It started in the vicinity of Levelland, Texas on November 2nd and 3rd. Many people reported seeing the oddly-shaped, glowing objects flying around at various altitudes and distances. The media seized on the story, starting with the Lubbock Morning Avalanche (Page 1 and Page 2.) and it was soon being reported across the country on the newswires. The event wasn't restricted to the Levelland area, however. Soon sightings were being reported across the state and even by ships in the Gulf of Mexico. More reports came in from as far away as Chicago and other locations around the western half of the United States.
Not all of the witnesses described the objects as "egg-shaped," but many did. And the incidents had something else in common. Frequently, when motorists were approached by the objects too closely, they reported that the engines in their cars would mysteriously shut down, similar to Roy Neary's truck in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. One has to wonder if Steven Spielberg got the idea from the Levelland event. He has been quoted in interviews saying that some of the concepts in the film were inspired by the work of J. Allen Hynek. (Dr. Hynek makes an appearance later in this story.)
Other notable sightings were recorded in the following days and reports began flooding into the US Air Force. In Sacramento, California, an egg-shaped object was reported and the engine of the witness' car shut down. An almost identical report came in from El Paso, Texas, with another car engine being disabled. A mass sighting took place in Orogrande, New Mexico, where between six and ten cars lost power after a "pearl-colored, egg-shaped object" passed over. One of the witnesses was a naval Chief Petty Officer with decades of experience. On the same night, November 4, three police officers and a fireman in Elmwood Park, Illinois, near Chicago saw a huge, 200-foot-long, glowing egg-shaped object that seemed to "play tag" with them for nearly an hour. Before dawn on November 5, an oval or egg-shaped object circled a Coast Guard Cutter off of New Orleans for at least half an hour. The ship picked the object up on its radar for 27 minutes in addition to visual sightings by the crew. Two military patrols reported sightings of egg-shaped objects over the Trinity nuclear detonation site. That sighting was picked up in the New York Times.
The response from the Air Force and the offices of Project Blue Book was probably predictable for anyone who closely follows this topic these days. The final Blue Book file that eventually rounded up many of these sightings is massive, with more than eighty pages attached. But smaller files were also created for many of the individual reports generated by this flap. Those files are linked above and they are instructive in terms of how the Air Force attempted to explain these incidents away and how the witnesses were treated. Within two days of the initial events, the Air Force released another official report to the press saying that ten years of investigations of more than 5,700 reports had produced "no physical or material evidence that such things exist."
The sighting in Sacramento was written off as "mass hysteria" from the coverage of the Levelland event, with no explanation offered as to why the witness' car had died. The El Paso witness was written off as being "unreliable," despite working as a U.S. Border Patrol agent. For the mass sighting at Orogrande, Texas, the Navy veteran reporting it was similarly described as being a "suspect" and potentially unreliable witness. They blamed that one on a temperature inversion and claimed that his car had likely undergone an unremarkable, normal mechanical failure. No effort was made to explain how as many as nine other cars simultaneously experienced the same failure or how they all started again after the object departed.
The reports of the police officers in Illinois were initially dismissed as "optical phenomena." Other incidents were similarly waved away as wildlife. ATIC tried to blame this huge cluster of sightings on anything possible. They blamed planets, stars, erroneous data errors, balloons, and "unreliable witnesses." They blamed nearly everything but swamp gas... anything but a truly anomalous event. They even insulted the reputations of witnesses, including military members, police, and firemen. But in the end, they were forced to come up with a more cohesive explanation because there were simply too many sightings and too many witnesses. So, in the final Levelland report, they acknowledged that many of these people had probably seen "something." They then declared that after "detailed investigations," they had concluded that "the sighting was due to a very rare phenomenon, ball lightning."
Was that really the best they could come up with? Assuming you even believe that ball lightning is real (and that's certainly debatable), we are regularly assured that it's as scarce as hens' teeth. But suddenly the Air Force was suggesting that it's as common as falling autumn leaves after a huge UFO sighting flap that they were unable to simply explain away with the usual excuses. Blaming the media for covering the stories and causing "mass hysteria" obviously wasn't going to fly either.
People were still contacting the Air Force about these events years later. In August of 1959, someone from CUFORO (the Civilian UFO Research Organization) contacted the Air Force asking about several of these sightings, as well as some others from early 1959. Major Lawrence Tacker wrote back to him, claiming to have never heard of one of the incidents and offering prosaic explanations for the others.
In June of 1965, Project Blue Book was still talking about this spate of reports. J. Allen Hynek wrote a four-page letter to Major Hector Quintanilla describing some of the events and struggling to come to some sort of conclusion. He concluded by recommending that all similar reports be collected and studied as a whole. Hynek asked that the case not be closed until he could locate and interview some of the witnesses more thoroughly. There is no record showing that he was ever able to do so and the file was eventually closed.
The majority of these reports all unfolded in less than two weeks. Then, they tapered off as suddenly as they began. A few others were reported from time to time, such as one from Baltimore, Maryland in October of 1958. But the appearances of the "egg-shaped UFOs" seemed to fade into memory. Not every object sighted was described exactly the same way, but many were too similar to ignore what appeared to be a pattern. Was it a case of a few craft rapidly zipping around and covering the entire country or had a fleet of them arrived all at once? Or is it possible that the use of the phrase was simply a fad describing something that we assigned a different name to later? We may never know, but for ufology fans, November of 1957 must have been a very exciting time to be alive.
Back on October 3, 1958, the crew of a freight train traveling through Indiana had a remarkable experience in the middle of the night. Their train was buzzed and then pursued by four glowing, disc-shaped craft that flitted back and forth across the tracks at a low altitude in an encounter that lasted for more than an hour. Despite the impressive credentials of the witnesses, including one retired Air Force bomber pilot with extensive experience, the incident never wound up generating significant attention from the media. The event, hereafter referred to as the Indiana incident, is similarly rarely mentioned in documentaries that examine the history of the UFO phenomenon, which is surprising. But the response from the US Air Force when people eventually began requesting information from the offices of Project Blue Book may be even more shocking.
I will first note that I learned of this event while browsing through the Project Blue Book files entirely by accident. When the Blue Book files were originally collected at the National Archive, they were unfortunately assembled in a haphazard fashion. Among the more than 10,000 files are many that have pages completely unrelated to the event described on the file's record card stuffed into them. Such is the case with the Indiana incident, which is buried inside a file describing an unrelated sighting near Cameron, Arizona that took place during the same month. If you click through and review the file, you will see that it contains 18 pages. Only the first four relate to the event in Arizona, while three others deal with similarly unrelated reports from Oregon, Kentucky, and Illinois. But the rest tell the remarkable tale of the Indiana incident. A thorough search of the archives for a record card or other pages related to the Indiana incident produced no results, so either a record card was never created (unlikely), it was lost, or it was too damaged to be legible. No incident number was assigned, which is also not unusual with cases from the later stages of the project.
On the date in question, a freight train identified as Monon No. 91 was traveling from Monon, Indiana to Indianapolis. The crew consisted of three men in the engine and two in the caboose. In the cab were the train's engineer, Harry Eckman, the fireman, Cecil Bridge, and Morriss Ott, the brakeman. In the caboose were Paul Sosbey, the flagman, and Ed Robinson, the conductor. Cecil Bridge was a retired Air Force bomber pilot with more than 450 hours of flight experience. At roughly 2:00 am, the men in the engine cab observed four glowing lights in the sky well ahead of the train darting around in an erratic fashion. The crew had flashlights in the cab with them and they began flashing them at the objects. As if in response, the four objects immediately began moving toward the train.
The witnesses never described the craft as "flying saucers," but they did say that they were "large round things, circular shaped on the bottom." They estimated that the objects were "about forty feet in diameter and maybe ten feet thick." They glowed with a seemingly phosphorescent light that shifted in color from white to yellow to orange. Curiously, the men said that the light from the craft did not illuminate anything around them or below them. They were flying just above treetop level, so these were not simply "points of light in the sky."
The craft shot off to the east, returning to the tracks again before flying off rapidly to the west. They disappeared from sight again, only to show up behind the train, approaching the caboose. The conductor picked up what he described as a five-cell sealed beam flashlight that "throws a good beam a long way." He began shining the light on the objects that "dodged" out of the beam when it illuminated them, seeming to behave as if they were intelligently controlled and did not wish to be hit with the flashlight beam. This pattern continued for a time until the craft took off to the northeast and did not return.
Bridge and Robinson were interviewed for the newswires the next day, but after that, they were informed by Monon rail officials that they needed to "keep quiet" about it. This request apparently originated from the Bunker Hill Air Force Base near Kokomo, Indiana. They requested that any similar sightings in the future be reported directly to them and even set up a hotline for such reports to be called in.
If the Air Force didn't want people talking about this event, it was too late. Word had gotten around and some people began to raise questions. Later that year, someone from Brooklyn, New York (whose name has been redacted) wrote a letter to the Air Force requesting information about the incident and the military's conclusions about it. The letter was forwarded to Blue Book. Not having received an answer, he sent a second letter in March of the following year. In that missive, he stated that he was sending copies of the letter to "certain members of Congress, including Senator Lyndon Johnson." (The same Lyndon Johnson who would later go on to be President.)
The letter was fielded by Major Lawrence Tacker who was working on the program at the time. He sent a memo to his colleagues at ATIC simply asking. "Do you have this" with multiple question marks. Someone named Ted Hieatt responded, saying that they had "no report, either official or unofficial, of the incident in Indiana." Tacker dutifully wrote back to the original correspondent, simply stating, "The United States Air Force has no record of this sighting." But the Blue Book file tells a very different tale. The citizen requesting the information was given that answer despite the fact that Blue Book had already assembled numerous published reports of the sighting and had obviously discussed it. Also, the Bunker Hill Air Force Base command was clearly aware of the Indiana incident and had taken steps to monitor the situation. Stating that the Air Force "has no record" of the incident was clearly not accurate and it seems unlikely that such a breakdown in communications would happen by accident.
How much of this was going on during the later stages of the program before Project Blue Book was finally shut down in 1969? While the Indiana incident never seemed to garner major headlines in the mainstream press, the story did show up periodically, such as in this article from the Detroit Free Press in December of 1958. The nature of the events in Indiana should have made this incident of tremendous interest to the Blue Book investigators. Rather than someone catching a fleeting glimpse of a fireball in the sky, this event lasted for more than an hour and was reported by multiple credible witnesses. They were able to interact with the objects using flashlights and seemingly generated an intelligently controlled response. The objects were large and barely above the level of the surrounding trees. Short of photographs or video, what more could they ask for in an incident report? And yet they appeared to sweep it away into the dustbin of UFO history.
We Need to Investigate UFOs. But Without the Distraction of Conspiracy Theories
We Need to Investigate UFOs. But Without the Distraction of Conspiracy Theories
A former government official calls for investigating unidentified anomalous phenomena without succumbing to conspiracy theories about extraterrestrials
Little else titillates and piques the national interest like unidentified flying objects and space aliens. After more than a century of films featuring intelligent creatures from other worlds, and over seven decades after the U.S. government began investigating them, UFOs remain a flashpoint for conspiracy theorists and science deniers. By any name, UFOs or unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) conjure the most vivid images and plots allowed by Hollywood and novels alike. Who doesn’t want to believe?
However, reality, as inconvenient as it can be, remains fundamental. In 2022 Congress found the courage to put into law the creation of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), jointly managed by the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Its mission is quite straightforward. Apply an unbiased scientific method and intelligence tradecraft to review existing information and data on historical UAP and investigate new data as these are provided to the office from military, federal, state and local entities as well as private citizens.
AARO’s underlying raison d’être is to investigate, evaluate, analyze and provide actionable information for use by our national security leadership. Its purpose is not to prove or disprove the existence of extraterrestrial life, but to address the safety and security of our people, our operations and our nation.
Unfortunately, it is also meant to investigate a conspiracy saturated with the distrust between our legislative and executive branches. It is time for the American people to understand that, and for the DoD, ODNI and Congress to step up to the plate and enable AARO to finish its mission absent this distraction.
AARO’s interest—all-domain phenomena (sea, air and space)—remains an ongoing concern to our national security enterprise, particularly when the phenomena are observed near our nation’s sensitive military and critical infrastructure facilities. Observations by experienced military personnel as well as data from highly capable sensors are being reviewed by AARO, accordingly, to weed out explainable observations and expose truly difficult-to-explain phenomenology using the most rigorous scientific analysis available. This is its real job: to minimize the risk of intelligence and technical surprise.
Many outside observers nonetheless have criticized AARO as supposedly part of a continuing government cover-up of the existence of aliens. Interestingly, they have not provided any verifiable evidence of this, nor are some of the more outspoken willing to engage with the office to discuss their positions or offer up the data and evidence they claim to possess. Too often these critics and their supporters rely on secondhand “friend of a cousin” reporting with no personal firsthand knowledge or rigor in their critical thinking. Some claim that those with firsthand knowledge of this supposed cover-up have relayed it to AARO, but no source in my tenure as director of the office had firsthand knowledge of anything to do with an alleged reverse-engineering program of extraterrestrial spacecraft. While those who came forward have provided valuable information (albeit not of extraterrestrials or cover-ups), those who chose to instead titillate the national interest only stir division and hatred against the credible men and women of AARO who are working faithfully to address this mission. The AARO continues to offer anyone an opportunity to provide their personal knowledge of an alleged program involving extraterrestrials for the record in a safe and nonadversarial environment. It remains perplexing that some critics are hiding behind their own cloak of secrecy and legal maneuvering, refusing to engage with the AARO when the office has been given full authority by Congress, DoD, ODNI and others in the interagency process to review all information regardless of its classification while legally protecting those who provide it.
If people claim to have evidence involving aliens, they need to come forward to AARO to enable the office to investigate it. Otherwise, hearsay in a scientific and fact-based investigation serves only as a distraction.
There also is the possibility that some observed and reported phenomena are associated with past or ongoing national security programs completely unrelated to extraterrestrials. Unfortunately, some who have been peripherally involved in these programs are taking advantage of the lack of understanding of security compartmentalization among the public—and some members of Congress—and feel that exposure of national security activities is a public right.
The harm of such exposure would be incalculable: billions of dollars and decades invested in military capabilities exposed to our potential adversaries to satisfy ill-informed curiosity. While some staffers and members of Congress may claim that they and the American people have a right to know of every classified research program, Congress already has an established process for notification of sensitive programs to the bipartisan leadership of both the Senate and House as well as the chairs and ranking minority members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, often referred to as the Gang of Eight. It is incumbent on both the speaker of the House, the Senate majority leader and both chairs of the intelligence committees to ensure that there is no risk of exposing any national security programs in a rush to find extraterrestrials, and that documents are reviewed within appropriate channels. If these members of Congress deem it appropriate not to share classified information, they are doing their job. These are not town hall topics.
Lost in the hyperbole about a government conspiracy to hide the existence of alien spacecraft and physical remains is the real potential that the unexplained phenomena represent a dangerous technological leap by our peer competitors, China and Russia (it could be weapons testing, spying or just technology testing). Such a leap would present a national security crisis. As mandated by Congress, DoD and ODNI must fully engage with and support AARO to ensure that it is receiving the resources and government-wide collaboration required. Likewise, critics of AARO must step up and become part of the solution by collaborating and providing the full disclosure of any and all information they hold.
While future book deals or selling a story to Hollywood may be hard to resist for some, they are not what this effort is about. Sensationalism and the politicization of science do not aid in finding the truth. While everyone wants an answer now, the truth will take time. Physics cannot be reinvented to fit a desired outcome, and analytic conclusions cannot be made based on questionable data and the word of “credible witnesses” alone. And when the data do not fit your theory, the theory is wrong, not the data.
In the multiple reports to Congress that I oversaw, full insight into AARO’s methodology, status and results, both unclassified and classified, has been provided. Anyone saying otherwise is not part of the 12 committees that oversee AARO’s mission; critics need to learn how access to information within Congress works. If the true issue is the scope of government classification and congressional notification, that should be addressed in the appropriate fora, not by chasing ET. This is a serious, national, fact-based scientific effort to avoid the potential for a grave intelligence failure that could lead to a devastating strategic surprise to our nation. Only science and objective evidentiary-based investigation will prevent that.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
On September 4, 1971, members of the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (National Geographic Institute) took photographs above Lake Cote for the Costa Rican governmental company that provides electricity and telecommunication services. The photographs were taken for the construction of a hydroelectric dam near lake Arenal, when the mapping agency members accidentally captured a UFO in their high-resolution camera that was mounted on the plane, pointing downwards. The photograph is considered to be the clearest and best UFO photograph ever taken.
Sergio Loaiza, Juan Bravo and Francisco Reyes were flying in a Canadian-made Areo-Commander model F680 piloted by Omar Arias, and Loaiza was in charge of aerial photography that day. They were flying above Costa Rica with a 100-pound map-making camera when Loaiza captured a photograph of a metallic disc like a typical alien “flying saucer” that can be seen flying between the F680 aircraft and the ground.
They were flying at 10,000 feet, mapping the landscape beneath with the high-resolution camera that was programmed to take photos every 20 seconds. While reviewing the negatives, Loaiza could not believe his eyes. He even said that they were completely banned from talking about it. According to UFO researcher Oscar Sierra, the photographs were analyzed in the USA and France and found to be 100% real. (Source)
The object can only be seen in the photograph in frame number #300 in the sequence, and there is no indication of it in either the frame of film that came before it or the one that was taken immediately after it. Due to the film stock and the quality of the camera, the image was incredibly clear. This object was not in either the frame before it (#299) or the frame after it (#301).
During the actual flight, the captain and his three crew members did not witness anything, and neither did the other passengers. It is estimated that the UFO was anywhere between 120 and 220 feet across, but the actual width would have depended on the object’s exact altitude.
New York Times writer and author Leslie Kean revealed that she has a framed copy of the photo taken at Lake Cote in the May 10, 2021 issue of The New Yorker by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. The article states, “…On the wall behind her desk, there is a framed black-and-white image that looks like a sonogram of a Frisbee. The photograph was given to her, along with chain-of-custody documentation, by contacts in the Costa Rican government; in her estimation, it is the finest image of a U.F.O. ever made public.”
On the New Yorker Radio Hour, she said: “I love this photo. It’s probably the best photograph of a UFO ever taken. It was taken in the 70s from a government mapping plane in Costa Rica which had a camera strapped on the bottom of the plane and it was like going over the terrain. There was this disc object and you clearly see the sun reflecting off this round object that’s got a little dot on the top and what’s important about it is that it was a government photo. There’s a clear chain of custody. It’s always been in possession of the Costa Rican government so you know it’s authentic and it’s completely unexplained.” (Source)
In 1985, computer scientist and astronomerDr. Jacques Valleeobtained a copy of the negative and circulated it to his contacts in the United States government and at a California tech company. However, none of them helped Dr. Vallee in analyzing the negative.
Eventually, in December 1987, Vallee took it to Dr. Richard Haines in San Francisco. Haines was a retired aerospace engineer who had worked for NASA, and Vallee knew him. The photo was scanned, blown up, and looked at. Haines’ first focus was on the lighting. In 1989, Vallee and Haines wrote a “Photo Analysis of an Aerial Disc Over Costa Rica” for the Journal of Scientific Exploration. The 19-page report concluded: (Source)
“In summary, our analyses have suggested that an unidentified, opaque, aerial object was captured on film at a maximum distance of 10,000 feet. There are no visible means of lift or propulsion and no surface markings other than dark regions that appear to be nonrandom… There is no indication that the image is the product of a double exposure or a deliberate fabrication.”
There has always been speculation as to whether the craft had just emerged from or was about to enter Lake Cote. There are numerous local stories concerning UFOs emerging from the water. But it is impossible to understand the path of the craft because it only appeared in one frame #300. The original negative has been kept by the Costa Rican government, and it may be found in the country’s National Archive. There are copies available, such as the one that Vallee and Haines analyzed.
Loaiza’s UFO photograph has never been explained, despite the fact that UFO skeptics have thoroughly examined it. UAP Media, a UK-based UFO research company has got a brand fresh ultra-high resolution drum scan of the original photograph.
Graeme Rendall – Author of UFOs Before Roswell and Flying Saucer Fever: “It’s a really intriguing photograph, and one which totally captures the imagination. I’m always impressed as to how “right” it looks. As to its veracity, though, I can’t say, but I’d love it to be true. It definitely looks a lot more convincing than a lot of other images I’ve seen over the years. I’d have to leave it to the photo analysis experts to pronounce sentence on it though.”
Vinnie Adams – member of UAP Media: “After looking into the case, reading about the circumstances surrounding what was seen from that aeroplane that day, and reading the analysis done previously by Dr. Jacques Vallée, it does come across as a very compelling case. The fact that after 50 years it still hasn’t been conclusively proven or debunked is very interesting. Now that we have this high-resolution drum scanned version of the image, hopefully it might reignite interest in the case and lead to further analysis and some sort of conclusion.”
Luis Elizondo – Former director of AATIP: “Although I was not around during this incident, pilot reports of smooth, shiny, lenticular craft are not new. In fact, even to this day, pilots, both civilian and military, along with their aircrew, continue to witness these types of craft and oftentimes displaying performance capabilities well beyond state of the art. Thankfully, some of these newer incidents are finding their way to Congress due to the courage of our fine men and women in uniform. During my time in AATIP, these incidents were surprisingly common.”
Jeremy Corbell – Filmmaker: “As we search for meaning behind the UFO presence, it’s important that we remember we are more effective collectively when perusing analysis. Historic images like this one from Costa Rica still have stories to tell, and new insights are sometimes just around the corner. If we can socially democratize and crowdsource our search for answers – we will arrive closer to the truth than if we simply wait for further confirmation from our governments. I’m elated higher fidelity imagery continues to emerge, especially when it allows us to get a glimpse into our UFO past. Makes one wonder what other UFO evidence is lurking in boxes or files that have remained elusive until now. I’m confident that more and more people will be coming forward with valuable insight and evidence in the near future.”
‘This thing just popped up in front of me – silver, cigar-shaped, about 45ft long’: Meet the locals who say UFO sightings in their sleepy Welsh village are proof we're not alone
‘This thing just popped up in front of me – silver, cigar-shaped, about 45ft long’: Meet the locals who say UFO sightings in their sleepy Welsh village are proof we're not alone
The ‘visitors’ first appeared in a field behind the local primary school. It was a drizzly Friday in February 1977, but most of the children in the small Welsh seaside village of Broad Haven were still enjoying their lunchtime break outdoors.
David Davies, a ten-year-old bookworm, was reading inside the classroom when the other children came in talking breathlessly about seeing a flying saucer moving in the trees beyond their playground.
Of course, David knew that was all Hollywood B-movie nonsense - but he couldn’t resist going to have a look for himself when school finished.
‘From behind some trees this thing popped up in front of me - silver, cigar-shaped, about 45ft long,’ the 57-year-old recalls today.
‘This thought just came into my mind that I had to run away.’
He sprinted home and told his mother. ‘You know what mothers are like - they can tell when you’re lying. And she was absolutely convinced that what I was saying was the truth,’ he says.
Among the witnesses of UFO activity in Broad Haven village were schoolchildren who all drew similar pictures of a craft said to have landed near their school
The Netflix documentary is co-produced by Steven Spielberg, whose UFO feature film Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out just a few months after the Broad Haven affair
Another former pupil now in his 50s, Shaun Garrison, can also remember that day vividly. ‘I did go home and tell my mum and dad and they weren’t judgmental in any way. They believed me and believed that what I saw, I believed.’
A handful of the interviewees said they also saw a silver-suited occupant of the craft. ‘Somebody walking near it, to the right-hand side of it,’ says one, David George, today.
Though many dismissed the accounts as the product of children’s lively imaginations, this was only the beginning of a plethora of strange sightings and terrifying encounters that would make Broad Haven internationally famous and the epicentre of the largest mass UFO sighting in British history.
The following month, the owner of a local hotel insisted she’d seen an ‘upside-down saucer’ hovering in a nearby field and two long-limbed but featureless humanoid creatures briefly emerging from it. Local farmers described similarly inexplicable phenomena, including mysterious moving lights, a giant silver-suited figure with no face and a herd of cows seemingly teleported into another farm.
Drawings by children at the local Broad Haven primary school depict the alien sighting in 1977
This village on the Pembrokeshire coast has been revisited, not by aliens but by Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg for a TV documentary series.
The so-called ‘Broad Haven Triangle’ is one of four alleged UFO mass sightings investigated in the Netflix series, Encounters, which have puzzled experts, infuriated sceptics and stiffened the resolve of those who believe in extraterrestrial visitations.
Spielberg, whose spectacular UFO feature film, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, came out just a few months after the Broad Haven sightings, co-produced the series through his TV arm, Amblin Television.
The other cases investigated in the series include 1994 claims by some 62 pupils at a private school in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, that they saw a spaceship and strange humanoid figures; reports by 300 people of fast-moving lights and objects in the sky above the Texas town of Stephenville in 2008; and similar sights reportedly witnessed by hundreds of Japanese people in the days leading up to and after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear-plant disaster.
A drawing of the UFO seen by schoolchildren in Broad Haven in 1977
Like these other cases, the Broad Haven episode wasn’t attested to by just one or two witnesses. In fact, 450 people in the area reported seeing UFOs in the weeks and months that followed.
Of course, Spielberg made two other feature films about visiting aliens: 1982’s ET and War Of The Worlds in 2005. He has previously revealed that he not only believes aliens exist - describing it as ‘mathematically impossible that we are the only intelligent species in the cosmos’ - but also believes the US government is hiding information from us all about them.
And there are plenty of people who agree with him - including in Congress and even the US military. Indeed, the new documentary series couldn’t be better timed for inviting sceptical viewers to reconsider the divisive issue of extraterrestrial visitors.
After decades in which Washington - like other Western governments - has airily dismissed reports of UFO sightings and alien encounters, a string of US government officials and whistleblowers have recently claimed that evidence to the contrary is being hidden.
A sign depicts an alien spaceship landing in Broad Haven
Public and media opinion tended to be equally sceptical and UFO-spotters in Broad Haven (pictured) were variously dismissed as shameless attention-seekers
Congress is now pressing the Biden administration to reveal everything it knows on the matter. And polls show more than half of British people also believe the UK government is withholding intelligence about the existence of UFOs and aliens.
Six years ago, it was revealed that former US senator Harry Reid had obtained $22million in defence funding to investigate UFOs. And in 2020, the Pentagon confirmed that three declassified videos of US Navy fighter pilots encountering what would appear to be extraordinarily fast and manoeuvrable UFOs on training missions over the Pacific were legitimate and depicted ‘unexplained aerial phenomena’ (UAPs).
If, as experts believe, these mysterious objects are beyond the technological ability of China, Russia or indeed the US, where do they come from? And how long have we been ignoring other UAPs?
‘We’re in a difficult state of ignorance,’ Dr Kevin Knuth, an astrophysicist and former Nasa research scientist, tells Encounters. ‘We don’t know what they are, we don’t know what their intentions are.’
While he admits there could be explanations other than extraterrestrial life, Knuth says that official quashing of UFO claims since the 1940s has unhelpfully discouraged serious research.
Certainly, the UK government didn’t spend much time investigating what happened at Broad Haven. An RAF officer was sent to talk to alleged witnesses and uncover whether they had instead mistaken aircraft from nearby RAF Brawdy, a theory that was later disproved. He then facetiously reported back to the Ministry of Defence that, should an alien craft indeed arrive at the airbase, ‘we will charge normal landing fees and inform you immediately’.
Public and media opinion tended to be equally sceptical and Broad Haven’s UFO-spotters were variously dismissed as shameless attention-seekers, hoaxers or deluded victims of mass hysteria.
However, the ‘witnesses’ have stuck defiantly to what they said they saw.
Francine Granville tells the documentary how a few weeks after the school incident, her mother Rose claimed she’d seen two featureless figures with pointed heads emerge from a flying saucer in a field outside the hotel they owned in Broad Haven. Worried they were after her chickens kept in a shed nearby, she shouted ‘What do you want?’. She describes feeling the heat blast from the ship as it took off hastily after her intervention.
Francine Granville tells the documentary her mother claimed she’d seen two featureless figures with pointed heads emerge from a flying saucer
The other cases investigated in the series include 1994 claims by some 62 pupils at a private school in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, that they saw a spaceship and strange humanoid figures
Granville claims that she and her mother had a second sighting one afternoon soon afterwards when they noticed a silver disc in the sky that seemed to pulsate orange light before appearing to sink into the sea. But neighbours who said they saw the same thing insisted it sank into a small island off shore.
Those neighbours were local farmers called Billy and Pauline Coombs, and they had their own astonishing stories to tell about the area’s ‘visitors’.
Their nephew Mark Marston, a child at the time, recalls seeing a glowing ‘upside-down saucer’ on a nearby hill at dusk. He even shows the hedge, still there, from which a terrifying creature - 7ft tall and wearing a silver suit topped with what looked like a motorbike visor - emerged and started walking towards him. When his father investigated the spot the following day, Marston says, he found a single ‘massive footprint’ in the mud, too big to belong to a human.
One evening a few weeks later, the Coombs claimed they saw the same sort of figure looming outside their front windows as they watched TV one evening. A police officer who responded to their call would later tell the BBC he’d never come across such a frightened family.
On another occasion, Mrs Coombs reported that a glowing football-shaped object followed her car down a rural road, somehow stalling her engine.
Her husband, meanwhile, told police that after locking up his 120 dairy cattle one night, he was called soon afterwards by a neighbouring farmer asking why the herd had suddenly turned up in his yard.
UFO researcher David Clarke, who investigated Broad Haven at the time and notes that Wales is a land with a strong tradition of folk tales about mischievous fairies, observes that teleporting a herd of cattle ‘is exactly the sort of trick the Welsh faeries used to play’.
It’s also the sort of trick hoaxers might play. And in fact, the silver-suited figure, at least, may well have been local businessman Glyn Edwards who in 1996 claimed he had bought a silver firefighters suit (which were used at the nearby oil refinery at Milford Haven) and walked around the area in 1977 as a prank. But, as investigators note, the silver suit appearances came after a lot of the UFO sightings.
Meanwhile, ex-Nasa scientist Knuth isn’t surprised to hear the UFO may have disappeared into the sea. He tells the programme that UFOs are frequently spotted flying over water, going into it or coming out of it.
And if they really do come from a far-off planet, this would make sense, he says. For while that planet might be far hotter than Earth, the temperature underwater would be far more constant. So aliens could be going from an ocean on one planet to an ocean on another. ‘It would be very easy to just hang out in our oceans,’ he says.
Contrary to the popular perception that ‘witnesses’ say they’ve seen a UFO to get attention, those who made those claims at Broad Haven insist the episode has amounted to a huge burden on their lives. The Coombs farming family stopped talking about it completely, even among themselves, says their nephew.
Dave Davies, whose eloquence made him a popular choice for TV crews seeking an interview with one of the ten-year-olds, says he was bullied horrendously when he went to secondary school by boys demanding he admit he’d lied. Indeed, when he appeared on the ITV children’s programme Magpie (to once more discuss what he saw) in 1978, he was nursing a visible black eye that classmates had spitefully given him when they knew he was going in front of the cameras.
‘We’ve been ridiculed by a lot of people, and when you’re growing up, you don’t want people to think you’re some sort of lunatic,’ says David George, one of the Broad Haven school pupils who still insists he saw a UFO. ‘I’m not embarrassed or ashamed to say that I saw something 45 years ago that I can’t explain. And to this day I still can’t.’
His latest foray in front of the cameras doesn’t answer that question either - there’s still nothing like definitive evidence of alien visitors. But the old certainties that anyone who claims to have seen a UFO must either be deranged or lying are waning. Just ask a US congressman.
US Military Has Machine That Can Levitate UFO Metal, Confirms Stanford Top Scientist
US Military Has Machine That Can Levitate UFO Metal, Confirms Stanford Top Scientist
Professor Garry Nolan is one of the most reputable experts examining the enigma of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). He has been studying UAP materials for many months and has made numerous astonishing statements about UFOs. His contributions lend credibility to this particular mystery, which many mainstream scientists hesitate to discuss.
Dr. Nolan works at Stanford University as a professor of Immunology. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize, which is a big honor. He is known as one of the best immunologists in the world. He has many patents and has written a lot of research papers. He has also started two companies listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange because of his successful inventions.
In June 2022, Australian investigative journalist Ross Coulthart interviewed Dr. Nolan and learned from him shocking UAP information that the U.S. government had been investigating for the past few years. Dr. Nolan said that one thing he is sure about is that we do not know what UAPs are: “We do know that there is something here something that I think defies explanation but that something can be studied from a scientific Viewpoint.”
Although this interview was recorded in 2022, Dr. Nolan adheres to David Grusch’s statement that the U.S. government has been lying about UAPs for the last 60-70 years. He believes the reason behind this is that the U.S. government itself does not know what they are dealing with. “Absolutely, there is a cover-up,” says Dr. Nolan. “I mean, there has been both a cover-up and a disinformation campaign to make people appear as if they were crazy.”
Coutlhart questions the potential dangers of admitting one’s thoughts on these mysterious events, to which Dr. Nolan responds, “I think it’s dangerously necessary… ignoring the physics of what these things are capable of doing.” Coutlhart further asks, “Let’s talk about ‘It.’ What is it?”
Dr. Nolan replies, “You know, I wish I knew… Whatever it is appears to be so far advanced from us that it beggars understanding.” When pressed further by Coutlhart if he believes the phenomenon to be of human origin, Dr. Nolan decisively states, “I’m sure it’s not human..I think it’s whatever it is it’s been here a long time so and certainly it’s been here longer than we’ve been civilized so at the very least who really owns the planet who was here first uh I’m not sure it was.”
Dr. Nolan explained he studied the brains of pilots who claimed to have encountered the phenomena. After their UAP/ UFO encounters, they all got damaged or hurt such as buzz noises in their head, got sick, etc. Most of them have had similar kinds of bad things. He showed the MRIs of some people that revealed damage in the middle of the basal ganglia – an area responsible for motor control and other core brain functions, including intuition.
Dr. Nolan said the damage should have killed those people, yet they were alive. He obtained MRIs of some prior to their encounters and they had the damage, so they were most likely born with it. “These are all so-called high-functioning people. They’re pilots who are making split-second decisions, intelligence officers in the field, etc,” he said.
Alleged UFO material
Former Pentagon UFO official Lue Elizondo shared a truly eye-opening statement in his interview with James Iandoli of Engaging The Phenomenon on June 11, 2021. They discussed crash retrievals and materials related to unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs). Elizondo acknowledged the sensitivity of the topic and the potential consequences of discussing it openly.
However, Elizondo expressed his belief that the US government does possess exotic materials but could not provide further details due to the lack of transparency from the government. He mentioned the three layers of analysis that can be conducted on a piece of material, namely physical, chemical, and atomic or nano-level research.
Coulthart asked the Stanford professor about this research on a peculiar material known as Bismuth magnesium. Dr. Nolan described it as a layered substance consisting primarily of bismuth, with traces of lead and magnesium. Despite his assessment of its isotope ratios showing nothing out of the ordinary, he expressed his intent to study a significantly larger sample in the future. This expanded sample size would allow him to conduct more comprehensive tests, potentially shedding light on its properties.
Terahertz Transmistter
Coulthart speculated on the material’s ability to levitate when exposed to a specific waveform. While Nolan acknowledged hearing about such claims, he had not personally witnessed or tested the phenomenon. When pressed by Coulthart about whether he had attempted any experiments, Nolan clarified that the required waveform for levitation would be “Terahertz Waves,” which he had not utilized.
Coulthart highlighted that the U.S. Army possessed the necessary terahertz transmitter for potential experiments with the Bismuth magnesium material. However, Dr. Nolan remained tight-lipped about the specifics, stating he could not discuss whether such research had been conducted.
Coulthart mentioned that Tom Delonge’s To the Stars Academy (TTSA) worked with the U.S. Army to study this material using the right equipment. Coulthart wondered why the U.S. government keeps such materials if stories about flying objects are just made up. Nolan thinks there is a lot of false information out there but believes there might be real materials that we should know about. He wants the government to tell us clearly if those special materials are real or not.
In 2019, Tom DeLonge claimed that his UFO research organization had acquired “potentially exotic materials featuring properties not from any known existing military or commercial application.” “The structure and composition of these materials are not from any known existing military or commercial application,” Steve Justice, TTSA’s COO and former head of Advanced Systems at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works said in a statement. (Source)
According to the press release, some of these materials were in the possession of investigative journalist and UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe, who, in 2004, gave a presentation at the Xcon Conference regarding these materials. In her lecture, a video of which has been on the Internet for years, she suggests that the material could become a “lifting body” with the right amount of electromagnetic static and certain RF frequency. These are undoubtedly the same materials mentioned by Tom DeLonge on his Joe Rogan interview where he stated, “if you hit it with enough terahertz, it’ll float.”
In this video, Dr. David Chester, a scientist from Quantum Gravity Research, makes several references to pulsed terahertz waves. Towards the end, he mentions that pulsed terahertz waves in a metamaterial can slow down the speed of light. He further explains that this is beneficial for anti-gravity engineering. According to him, due to the way everything couples together in the equations, a reduced speed of light requires less energy to achieve the desired anti gravitic effects.
This is some really interesting information on terahertz, thanks to Observing The Anomaly.
AAWSAP commissioned 37 scientific papers that are now public. Someone FOIA’d about UAP materials being studied and DIA responded with 5 of these papers. One paper was on spintronics and another on metamaterials. TTSA bought an alleged sample of Roswell crash material and gave it to the Army to study in 2019. According to Puthoff it appeared to be a metamaterial that acts as a waveguide at the terahertz frequency. The two papers on spintronics and metamaterials also touches on creating materials that operate at this frequency and specifically that such materials would be radiation resistant and ideal for long space travel.
Hal Puthoff also discusses the sample with UFO Joe. Notice the bolded statement below. (Source)
So the answer is, we don’t, yet, really know where it came from. And it’s true that ten years ago Linda Howe provided us with a sample. And we did a lot of tests. Got electron microscope pictures and irradiated it with various gigahertz frequencies, megahertz frequencies and so on. We couldn’t make anything out of it. So it kind of went on the shelf. And it was only after this paper on meta-materials was published, we said, “Oh my gosh. The claim here, that this could have some real utility as microscopic waveguides, would actually fit the structure, you know, that we see there.” Okay, well where do we go with that?
Well, the truth of the matter is, that piece is actually pretty mangled and what you’d really like to do is say, “Okay, well let’s have a nice, clean piece of this, and let’s irradiate with terahertz frequencies, first of all, to see if it really does act as a microscopic waveguide for terahertz frequencies. And then, if that works, we’ll iradiate it with other kinds of fields and see if there are any unexpected responses and so on.” So it is still, despite the fact it gets unbelievable publicity out there, it’s still an absolutely unknown. It does range all the way from…this was a fraud of junk material sent to us, to…no, this came off the wedge of an ET craft.
We don’t know the answer to that, and the only way we are going to get something of value is to determine its properties or maybe reproduce it under nice conditions and determine its properties. So, it is still a giant question mark out there. So even though it’s, you know, it’s like…a few percent of our effort at TTSA, it’s like 99% of our criticisms (laughs). That’s just what you get in this field. That’s the way it goes. Some of us have developed very hard skins. Another question?
Puthoff elaborates further in another interview: (Source)
Well, years later, decades later actually, finally our own science moves along. We move into an area called metamaterials, and it turns out exactly this combination of materials at exactly those dimensions turn out to be an excellent microscopic waveguide for very high frequency electromagnetic radiation terahertz frequencies. So, the wavelength is 60 microns, which is a pretty small size. But it turns out because of the metamaterial aspect of this material, those bismuth layers that act as waveguides can be one twentieth the size of the wavelength, and usually when you make a waveguide it’s gotta be about the size of the wavelength. So, in fact this turned out to be a material that would propagate sub-wavelength waveguide effects. Why somebody wants to do that we still don’t know the answer to that.
Dr. Nolan is said to have a good friendship with Jacques Vallée, Kit Green, Eric Davis, and Colm Kelleher. They all came to him to analyze the UAP materials after he had developed some wonderful instruments using mass spectrometry.
“Some of the objects are nondescript, and just lumps of metal. Mostly, there’s nothing unusual about them except that everywhere you look in the metal, the composition is different, which is odd. It’s what we call inhomogeneous. That’s a fancy way of saying ‘incompletely mixed.’ The common thing about all the materials that I’ve looked at so far, and there’s about a dozen, is that almost none of them are uniform. They’re all these hodgepodge mixtures. Each individual case will be composed of a similar set of elements, but they will be inhomogeneous,” he explained.
Dr. Nolan found out that some of the fragments from the so-called UFO crash in Brazil have extraordinarily altered isotope ratios of magnesium. He explained:
“It was interesting because another piece from the same event was analyzed in the same instrument at the same time. This is an extraordinarily sensitive instrument called a nanoSIMS – Secondary Ion Mass Spec. It had perfectly correct isotope ratios for what you would expect for magnesium found anywhere on Earth. Meanwhile, the other one was just way off. Like 30 percent off the ratios. The problem is there’s no good reason humans have for altering the isotope ratios of a simple metal like magnesium. There’s no different properties of the different isotopes, that anybody, at least in any of the literature that is public of the hundreds of thousands of papers published, that says this is why you would do that. Now you can do it. It’s a little expensive to do, but you’d have no reason for doing it.”
Dr. Vallée collected purported metal from the UFO cases dated back to 1947 and brought them to Stanford University for analysis. Dr. Gary Nolan, a Stanford microbiologist analyzed the 3-D atomic structure of the unknown metal with a state-of-the-art Multiparameter Ion Beam Imager (MIBI) capable of discerning the precise composition of matter at the level of its isotopes.
The result might be shocking for non-believers, as when he put the sample in the vacuum chamber of the machine, he found out that their composition was unlike any other known metal on Earth.
“If you’re talking about an advanced material from an advanced civilization you’re talking about something that I’ll just call it an ultra material right it’s something which has properties where somebody is putting it together again at the atomic scale so we’re building our world with 80 elements somebody else is building the world with 253 different isotopes,” Dr. Nolan said.
Could humans be altering the isotopes in these strange objects for unknown purposes? Dr. Nolan speculates that it is possible, but proving it requires getting down to the atomic level, possibly with a super quantum interference device (SQUID). However, neither his budget nor the budgets of the groups analyzing UFO/UAP encounters have that kind of funding yet.
34 years later, we still don't know what really happened during the Belgian UFO wave
34 years later, we still don't know what really happened during the Belgian UFO wave
A months-long wave of reports culminated with two Belgian Air Force F-16s chasing mysterious objects through the skies
At first, the witnesses claimed, all you noticed were the lights.
Eupen, Belgium, November 1989
They were so bright you could read by them, so brilliant that a policeman described them as "like lights on a huge football field." Only gradually did you notice the object they emitted from — a hulking triangular shape, with three enormous spotlights pointed toward the ground, and a red, flashing light at its center. "The whole thing," recalled the policeman, as if barely able to believe it himself, "was floating in the air."
It was a clear November night in 1989, near the town of Eupen, Belgium, which sits some seven miles from the German border. Heinrich Nicoll, the policeman, and his partner, Hubert Von Montigny, called their dispatcher to report the object they'd stumbled on while on a routine patrol. "Suddenly, they told me they were seeing a strange object in the sky," Albert Creutz, who was on the receiving end, told Unsolved Mysteries in a 1992 episode. "It made no noise. We joked about it and said it might be Santa Claus trying to land."
A little after 5:30 pm on the 29th November 1989 in the town of Eupen, patrolling police would inform their switchboard operator, Albert Creutz, of a huge airborne object hovering over a field in front of them. According to their report, it was “so bright it was lighting up the field like a football stadium!” [1]
Creutz, given that it was almost Christmas, returned with a quip that “it might be St. Nick!” However, the on-site officers urged him to go to the top floor of the building and look out of the window to see it for himself. Realizing the report was not a prank by his colleagues he did as suggested. Once there, he could see the mammoth craft “looking like a boat floating in the sky!”
By the time Creutz was back in position at the switchboard, residents were swamping the system with calls of the strange, bright object. When police officer, Dieter Plumanns, and his partner made their report of visual contact with the craft, Creutz told him to follow it. They did so for several minutes before it came to a stop and hovered over a retirement home.
They too stopped their vehicle and watched the bizarre scene unfold in front of them. The object was a distinct triangle with three orange/brown lights in each corner. In the middle of the underside was a bright red light that flashed at regular intervals. As Plumanns and his partner looked on, a small drone-like object left the main craft, constantly flashing in unison with the middle light above. It surveyed the area, before rejoining the triangle, which then left with great alacrity.
Thirteen reports of sightings would come from police officers alone that evening. Over sixty more would come from citizens.
The video below is a news report from 1993.
But by the time the evening was over, at least 30 different groups and three separate pairs of police officers would allege to have seen the unidentified flying object. And they wouldn't be the last. Belgium's months-long "UFO wave" culminated 30 years ago today — on March 30, 1990 — in a physics-defying chase through the skies over Europe as two Belgian Air Force F-16s pursued mysterious objects on their radars that they couldn't even see.
The Petit-Rechain Photograph
But, okay okay, did aliens really visit Belgium?
It certainly seems deeply, deeply unlikely. Yet three decades later, it's still hard to entirely dismiss the 2,000-odd sightings that took place in the country between November 1989 and April 1990. As Patrick Ferryn, the president of the Belgian committee for the study of space phenomena, SOBEPS, told The Telegraph, "You must know that most of these sightings will have the most banal explanation but there is a residue, which we simply can't explain. And of those, there may be two or three where we may have questions over where they came from."
Lots can be ruled out, though. For example, a classic photograph of the triangle-shaped aircraft, known as the "Petit-Rechain picture," is without a doubt a hoax — the forger admitted as much when he came forward in 2011. "We made the model with polystyrene, we painted it, and then we started sticking things to it, then we suspended it in the air ... then we took the photo," the prankster confessed to Reuters. Brian Dunning, the writer and producer of the podcast Skeptoid, also refutes a number of the sightings, arguing that the November apparitions were in fact a helicopter, and that the police officers were interviewed by a biased ufologist. Conflicting information, published by Reuters, claims instead that the lights over Eupen were from "a Soviet satellite breaking up."
Regardless, where things really start to get strange is in March 1990. At that point, there had been months of sporadic sightings throughout Belgium, including by an army colonel, André Amond, who claimed to have seen the lights while driving in his car with his wife in December. The Belgian military, needless to say, was well aware of the descriptions pouring in from across the country, and it had little in the way of answers.
Before we look at that, the video below features a recent interview with De Brouwers. He also discusses the aforementioned photograph, which we will look at next.
Then-Chief of Operations of the Air Staff, General Wilfried De Brouwer — who offered his account to investigative reporter Leslie Kean for her 2010 book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record — said that his initial belief was that the American military must have been testing some sort of experimental aircraft over his country. He went as far as to file inquiries with the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, prompting the Americans to create a memo, dryly titled "Belgium and the UFO Issue," which confirmed that "no USAF stealth aircrafts were operating in the... area during the periods in question."
The reports were credible enough, though, that Belgium's Air Force, federal aviation authorities, and police devised a plan to try to catch one of the unidentified intruders in action by preparing F-16s to quickly take off if a sighting was ever reported by both the police and a radar station at the same time. Sure enough, as De Brouwer recounts in UFOs, that night came on March 30, when "several policemen" and "two military radar stations" spotted an unknown object. "Once aloft, the [Belgian] pilots tried to intercept the alleged crafts, and at one point recorded targets on their radar with unusual behavior, such as jumping huge distances in seconds and accelerating beyond human capacity," De Brouwer writes.
But frustratingly, the pilots never managed to see the object they were pursuing. After analysis of the aircraft's readings, "the Air Force's decision was that the evidence was insufficient to prove that there were real crafts in the air on that occasion," De Brouwer reports. Still, throughout 1990, the Air Force was asked — and could never specifically account for — the sightings, which, all told, numbered in the thousands by the time they quietly started going away again in April.
Three decades later, explanations are still in short supply, although some scientists now consider the event to be an example of mass hysteria. Dunning, quoting UFO skeptic Philip Klass, writes, "Once news coverage leads the public to believe that UFOs may be in the vicinity, there are numerous natural and man-made objects which, especially when seen at night, can take on unusual characteristics in the minds of hopeful viewers. Their UFO reports in turn add to the mass excitement, which encourages still more observers to watch for UFOs."
But De Brouwer still believes otherwise. "I can conclude with confidence that the observations during what is now known as the Belgian wave were not caused by mass hysteria," he says in UFOs. "The witnesses interviewed by investigators were sincere and honest. They did not previously know each other. Many were surprised by what they saw and today ... they are still prepared to confirm their unusual experience."
What we do know for certain is that there is a lot we don't yet understand about our universe. Even the U.S. Army has multiple stories of chasing strange, impossible objects through the sky. While the Belgian UFO wave likely wasn't a visitation by little green men, it remains without a satisfying answer even all these decades and technological advances later. "Today there is not yet any explanation!" Amond, the colonel who saw the lights with his wife, told Kean. "That is a pity, because I want to know before dying. Give me a correct explanation of my sighting; that is all I can ask."
The video below looks at the Belgian Wave in a little more detail.
UFO sightings are usually dismissed as hoaxes or reports of misguided individuals.
Such derision arises, in part, from a psychological need to predict and control our fates.
Discounting possibilities that make us uncomfortable can make us vulnerable to those same possibilities.
I knew an intelligence officer who, decades ago, returned from the field with strong evidence that an adversary might be employing extremely unorthodox techniques to mask their activities. When he presented his suspicions to superiors, the response was: “Keep your theories to yourself. That’s so bizarre, the giggle factor will destroy your reputation.”
This "giggle factor" applied to any topic such as UFOs, ESP, or far-out theories that were so far removed from normal experience that serious intelligence professionals would snicker at both the idea and whoever advanced the idea.
Psychological Roots of the Giggle Factor
A present-day example of the giggle factor surrounds the US Defense Department’s (DOD's) investigation into UFOs, now called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs). Despite establishing a formal office to investigate UAPs and encouraging DOD employees to report sightings without fear of the consequences, the reality is that many officials working in national security privately (or not so privately) snicker at the possibility that UFOs are “real,” viewing anyone who takes the topic seriously as part of the “tinfoil hat brigade.”
I learned this from conversations with current and former officials familiar with the Pentagon’s UFO investigations while researching my new book, co-authored with Chris Gilbert, MD, Ph.D.: The New Science of UFOs: New Insights Into an Old Mystery.
One individual told me, “Yeah, the Pentagon set up the UAP investigation group, but it was all window dressing to get members of Congress who want answers about UFOs off their backs.”
Lue Elizondo, who led the Pentagon UAP investigations until 2017 said that he wanted to alert Secretary of Defense Mattis to flight safety and potential military hazards of UAPs, but the “Praetorian guard” around the Secretary wouldn’t allow it. In frustration, Elizondo resigned to continue his investigations outside the government.
Elizondo and others who took UFOs seriously were not victims of a sinister coverup or conspiracy but a fundamental psychological need to believe we have control of our lives in the present and to predict what will happen to us in the future.
Research on the roots of emotional stress demonstrates that feeling out of control in the present and uncertain about the future are two of the biggest drivers of chronic stress.1,2
As a result, we unconsciously adjust our perception of events to remain inside a low-stress comfort zone where we have at least the illusion of control and predictability of our fates.3,4
Thus, when presented evidence of uncontrollable or unpredictable changes to our lives, we tend to discount (and even giggle at) looming disruptions like climate change, COVID-19, UFOs, and other circumstances far outside our normal experience.5
In this light, the Pentagon’s persistent UFO “giggle factor” is simply the deep-seated desire most of us have to remain inside our comfort zone. And social pressure reinforces our tendency to discount improbable looming events, as no one wants to be labeled the Boy Who Cried Wolf or Chicken Little.
Military Dangers of the Giggle Factor
Although UFOs may all turn out to be misidentifications of benign human activity (errant party balloons or drones), natural phenomena (e.g., ball lightning), or perceptual errors (optical illusions), credible reports, video, and radar information captured by the US Navy in 2004 and 20153 suggest that something more exotic and unexplained is behind a few of the reports.
“Something exotic” does not necessarily mean ETs but could indicate that a foreign adversary has leapfrogged the United States in aerospace technology, which has occurred before when Russia surprised us with the first satellite (Sputnik) and both China and Russia fielded hypersonic missiles long before we did. If some UFO sightings are indeed foreign actors surveilling us or testing our responses and military capabilities (UFOs are frequently reported around U.S. military ranges and nuclear areas), then UFOs merit more than a giggle from defense officials.
But the long-standing association of UFOs with aliens will continue to cause potentially real, nonalien threats to national security from UFOs to be the “baby that is thrown out with the bathwater” and continue to be discounted. If a foreign actor surprised us in a future conflict using leapfrog technology, it’s hard to say what would happen on the battlefield, but one thing is certain: No one in the Pentagon would be giggling anymore.
The Larger Danger of the Giggle Factor
The UFO giggle factor raises a far bigger issue than the origins of mysterious flying objects that may or may not pose a threat.
Unconsciously adjusting our perceptions to reduce stress associated with potentially disruptive phenomena is normal, and even healthy under most circumstances, because stress is a big driver of both physical and mental illness.6
But the pace of change from technology, globalization, demographic shifts, and other factors is accelerating, so that unfamiliar and uncomfortable disruptions to our jobs, our relationships, and our well-being are likely to come at us at an ever-increasing rate.
Ridiculing the prospect of the most extreme of these looming disruptions will keep us in our comfort zones for a while but, sooner or later, leave us ill-prepared for the next 9/11, pandemic, war, or capitol riot.
Yes, we should not overreact to the prospect of low-probability/high-impact disruptions, but neither should we giggle, lest someone else enjoy the last laugh.
Early on Feb. 12, 2023, at least three different flights over Quebec reported(opens in a new tab)"seeing very strange lights in the sky, high above the flight paths" that were "moving in a rapid and irregular way."
"It looks like it's more than one and sort of circling," a crew member aboard a cargo flight from Chicago to Luxembourg told air traffic controllers in Canada, according to audio obtained by CTVNews.ca(opens in a new tab). "It's a bit weird."
Selected incidents from the Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System (CADORS), 2023
Since 2000, Transport Canada's database has logged more than 315,000 reports of civil aviation incidents. The cases below represent unusual "laser interference" and "CIRVIS/UFO" reports from 2023.
"Just to let you know there was a flight from the south… they saw the same thing roughly a half-an-hour ago," an air traffic controller told the Luxembourg-bound cargo flight on Feb. 12.
"So I guess we're not just dreaming then, huh?" the aviator said.
"No, you're not the first one tonight."
Roughly 24 hours later, air traffic controllers received another report, this time from an Edmonton to Yellowknife flight(opens in a new tab) operated by Air Tindi that "reported observing a rotating light" at 30,000 feet over northern Alberta.
Transport Canada routinely cautions that such "reports contain preliminary, unconfirmed data which can be subject to change."
"These reports have no potential for regulatory enforcement and often fall outside the department’s mandate," a Transport Canada spokesperson previously told CTVNews.ca(opens in a new tab). "Reports of unidentified objects can rarely be followed up on as they are as the title implies, unidentified."
"I suspect that these reports represent a small fraction of what pilots are seeing," Powell told CTVNews.ca. "Not only does the stigma of making a UAP report still exist, but the reporting form and the way it is handled would make it clear to any pilot that his report was simply filed away."
Most reports are provided to federal transportation officials by Nav Canada, a private non-profit company that owns and operates Canada's civilian air traffic control infrastructure.
The company's aviation guidelines(opens in a new tab)(opens in a new tab)direct pilots over Canada to immediately report "a vital intelligence sighting of any airborne and ground objects or activities that appear to be hostile, suspicious, unidentified or engaged in possible illegal smuggling activity." Known as "Communication Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings" or CIRVIS reports, Nav Canada even puts "unidentified flying objects" at the front of a list of examples that also includes foreign submarines and warships. When such reports are made, Nav Canada typically alerts Transport Canada and a Norad-affiliated Royal Canadian Air Force squadron in North Bay, Ont(opens in a new tab).
"Nav Canada's Aviation Occurrence Reporting Procedure is used to address instances of unauthorized or unknown aircraft in NAV CANADA managed airspace," a company spokesperson told CTVNews.ca. "Nav Canada provides all information that it receives on these incidents to the Canadian government."
"The Canadian Armed Forces and the Royal Canadian Air Force do not typically investigate sightings of unknown or unexplained phenomena outside the context of investigating credible threats, potential threats, or potential distress in the case of search and rescue," a Canadian defence spokesperson previously told CTVNews.ca(opens in a new tab).
More than half of the unusual reports filed in 2023 were classified as "laser interference" incidents, while the rest were labelled as "CIRVIS/UFO" reports.
Examples of "laser interference" from 2023 include
A Transport Canada spokesperson previously explained(opens in a new tab) that aviation reports are labelled "laser interference" when "an aircraft is targeted or reported seeing a laser beam or any other directed bright light source."
Powell, the UAP researcher, believes the "laser" label is being misapplied.
"The 'laser interference' explanation appears to be a catch-all category for pilot reports," Powell said. "Laser light sources would be below the aircraft and not above it."
CTVNews.ca has filed freedom of information requests to get more data on reports like these, which rarely feature more than a line or two of detail. For example, a publicly-available Jan. 11, 2023 report from an Exploits Valley Air Services flight(opens in a new tab) over the Gulf of Saint Lawrence simply describes "bright lights approximately 100 [nautical miles] from their position." An access to information request filed with Canada's Department of National Defence revealed a slightly longer report of "approx 4 bright lights moving around each other creating geometric shapes (triangle to hexagon)."
From drones to balloons, satellites, meteorites, flares, paper lanterns and weather phenomena, many of the reports described in this article likely have ordinary and earthly explanations. But with little sign of official investigation or follow-up from Canadian officials, most cases remain unexplained.
Donald "Spike" Kavalench is a retired Transport Canada surveillance pilot who also spent more than two decades flying for the Royal Canadian Air Force.
"Transport Canada, Nav Canada and the Department of National Defence need to work together to quickly and effectively respond to and investigate any UAP reports that could signify a potential threat to the flying public and potentially our national security," Kavalench told CTVNews.ca. "So far, that has not been done."
There has been a rise in the number of reported UFO sightings across many places in the United States since 2020. Moreover, officials have expressed concerns regarding the repeated occurrence of UFO sightings over military bases. Is there any possibility that these UFOs are controlling military actions?
Not so long ago, former US Air Force Captain Robert Salas claimed that UFOs are real and interfere in the military’s nuclear program. Additionally, former head of AATIP Luis Elizondo revealed that the U.S. Military created environments to attract UFOs to study them. He noted that there was much data that showed UFOs are interested in nuclear activities and the latest weaponry systems.
The UFO activity over US army bases has been observed since 1948, with the majority of incidents occurring at Malmstrom, Minot, F.E. Warren, Ellsworth, Vandenberg, and Walker AFBs between 1963 and 1996. Other sources stationed at Wurtsmith and Loring AFBs, where B-52 nuclear bombers were based during the Cold War era, also reported incidents.
In 1967, Captain Salas was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, when he received reports of a red glowing object hovering outside the front gate of the base. A security guard reported that the object had a saucer shape and was constantly hovering near the front gate.
At the same time, the missile system suffered a complete failure, with ten intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) going offline due to a “No-Go” (inoperable) condition, which caused several alarms to go off. After investigating the incident, a team of engineers from Boeing could not find any significant failures, engineering data, or findings that would explain how the missiles had been knocked off alert.
The cause of the failure remains unknown, but it was suggested that it could have been due to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) sent from an unknown source. Despite the severity of the situation, Salas believed that the UFO did not have hostile intentions because it could have caused permanent damage to the weapons system if it wanted to.
The incident was reported by a UFO researcher Robert L. Hastings, who collected information from various army personnel, including Staff Sgt. Louis D. Kenneweg, Airman 1st Class David Hughes, Staff Sgt. Joseph M. Chassey, and Lt. Col. Robert Peisher (USAF Ret.) in his 30 years of investigation.
A similar attraction of UFOs toward nuclear bases was noticed in Canada as well. A report from Winnipeg reveals that over 200 years, there have been 2,000 UFO sightings reported in the Canadian province of Manitoba.
In the mid-1970s, there were numerous UFO sightings all along the US-Canadian border, with Manitoba being one of the places where a large number of sightings occurred. These sightings included a high number of cattle mutilations and were often seen over restricted areas where nuclear activities were conducted.
Chris A. Rutkowski, a Canadian UFO researcher, has studied UFO sightings in Canada for over 25 years and concluded that Manitoba has a long history of close encounters with aliens. His UFO research, which contains 30,000 reports, has been donated to the University of Manitoba.
In 2017, author Grant Cameron published a book entitled “Charlie Red Star: True Reports of One of North America’s Biggest UFO Sightings,” in which he described in detail the largest UFO sightings in history witnessed by Manitobans. The province was stunned by the object known as “Charlie’s Red Star,” which was seen almost every night in 1975.
Cameron claims that Manitoba UFO sightings have connections to nuclear weapons because 35 years later, he found out that the government secretly installed nuclear missiles and other weapons in restricted areas just south of the border. He believes that the sightings stopped after the missiles had been removed in November. The author thinks that the nuclear technology that humans possess could be created after extraterrestrial contact. (click here to read the full article
Strange Occurrences Near Nuclear Bases
The Reddit user “BumblebeeExpensive” claimed to have worked at a now-closed nuclear weapons storage depot in Nevada for six years and shared various strange occurrences. “When people say UFOs are attracted to nukes, they are telling the truth. But so much more goes on,” the user writes. (Source)
The user claimed to have seen a ball of light triggering a sensor on the fence line, causing security to respond and witnessed three mutilated donkeys that were dropped off out of nowhere with various organs removed. The user also claimed to have witnessed a figure on the roof of a structure. He writes it was “30 meters from me and 14 other personnel. I took a spotlight and shined it up there and as soon as the light hit the figure it disappeared – we all saw it happen.”
“I heard a man laughing maniacally once, nothing there. Sweep with night vision and thermals revealed nothing, three other witnesses. We wrote it off as the ‘laughing Colonel,’ an urban legend passed down by the security personnel for ages.”
The user and his partner also heard a soft cooing sound coming from a hot pad loaded with 500 lbs bombs, seemingly luring them past the pad and into the pitch-black desert, but they did not pursue. During a training exercise, their machine gun overwatch team spotted two figures on thermals in the desert behind them, but their sweep revealed nothing.
The user claimed to have experienced the weirdest event when they were responding to a truck approaching on the side of a nearby mountain. They visually confirmed the truck on NVGs, but suddenly the headlights disappeared, and they believed the occupants had turned them off and were then approaching on foot. They called for K9 and moved to a blocking position where they waited for ten minutes, but their radios died, and they were out of contact for twice as long as they thought.
“We are there for about ten minutes when one by one patrol members overwatching us from high points on the inside call in lights appearing at our 12, 3, and 9 o’clock- in effect flanking us (with fence line about 300 meters behind us). We see and hear nothing, not even on NVGs or thermals, dog never reacts. Suddenly panicked patrol calls in that the lights are ‘rushing’ us. We are already locked and loaded, I tell my partner to put a grenade in the tube. Nothing happens, dog never indicates. Our radios die and after ten minutes we hike back to fence line only to discover we were out of contact for twice as long as I thought we were. Very paraphrased event cuz on phone, but our radios only started working when we were back at fence line.”
The user claimed that those events, combined with the belief that UFOs are attracted to nukes. He says: “There’s more but these were the highlights or events I’m allowed to speak about. The world is not as normal as you believe it is.”
Many other users found the same story in the video published on “The Infographics Show” YouTube channel in 2020 and began doubting BumblebeeExpensive if he copied the story. But the user later clarified that was his story and added that he is the lead writer of the show. He also claimed to be the writer of the “100-day survival series” on the channel.
“There’s things I can’t talk about as I signed a 30-year non-disclosure contract with pretty stiff penalties- but I’ll say this: I know people think that there’s these big conspiracies with the government hiding knowledge of this or knowledge of that. Truth is, yes there are big secrets. But overwhelmingly, the government isn’t actively hiding knowledge of this or that- it’s literally just ignoring it because it can’t do anything about it or it doesn’t pose a threat. It does spend some time and effort investigating it- you can see that there’s a greatly increased effort to investigate UAPs now. But the truth is that a long time ago a choice was made about certain things: do they affect national security, or could we stop it if it did? If the answer is no, we’ve got bigger or more immediate concerns like the Soviet Union starting a nuclear war,” explains Reddit user BumblebeeExpensive. (Source)
Mr. Elizondo suggested that those interested in more information about this subject read “UFOs and Nukes” by Robert Hastings. The book describes the reality of UFO incursions at American nuclear weapons facilities.
In “UFOs and Nukes,” there are documented incidents of UFO interference at the US nuclear weapons facilities. The book describes incidents where unidentified objects were seen hovering near nuclear facilities, causing malfunctions in nuclear missiles and communication systems.
Some of those incidents date back to as early as January 1945, months before the atomic bombings in Japan. Those events suggest that humans’ most dangerous weapons have been under scrutiny by unidentified observers with advanced technology. The author argues that the UFO-nukes connection is significant and may be the reason for the appearance of mysterious aerial crafts in the skies over the past 70 years. Mr. Elizondo recommends this book to those interested in learning more about this subject.
Author’s Note:The present essay was written for the inaugural event of the Sol Foundation, Stanford University, School of Medicine, November 17-18, 2023. Of course, I do not speak for or represent the Sol Foundation in any way here. The following thoughts are my own. – Dr. Jeffrey Kripal
This event feels “historic” to me. I want to begin with some reflection on it, more specifically on the relationship between this event and what we have been trying to do at my own institution, Rice University, over the last few years. I have in fact hosted two related events, in 2022 and 2023, to the same size of audience and to a similar level of excitement. These conferences emerged from our Archives of the Impossible, a broad research project dedicated to exploring anomalous phenomena across the university and its present order of knowledge and grounded in an actual physical archive that Jacques Vallee himself initiated around 2014. At present, there are some 15 collections and well over one million documents in the expanding archive. If my memory serves, it was in 2014, in Berkeley, California, where Jacques first spoke to me about placing his files and case studies in a university archive, and he had just met with a geneticist from Stanford named Garry Nolan about their shared research interests. So there are numerous conceptual, historical, and personal connections at work here.
The precise relationship between these two university-based initiatives hit me hard over the past few days as I took in the astonishing physics, movement, and luminosity of the observed craft and the chemical and atomic analyses of ejected UFO material, their obvious manufactured natures, and their anomalous isotopes. The same relationship became even clearer to me as I listened to the talk of Vallee for this conference event, “The UFO Phenomenon: A Genuine Scientific Problem.”
If I may paraphrase the talk, Jacques spoke of seven categories of strangeness. He explained to this audience that the sciences work on the first three, which involve physical material that can be analyzed and studied, as has been modeled here with such impressive success. Jacques cautioned us, however, that we err if we believe that this is the full UFO phenomenon. We essentially fall into a category error or confirmation bias, since we are looking at only what can be studied with our present scientific epistemologies and technologies. We are confusing what is there with what we can understand with our cognitive methods.
The UFO phenomenon is these first three categories, yes, but it also the remaining four, and it is precisely these that are often not talked about and not reported, much less studied, largely because of their inherent strangeness or anomalous relationship to our present way of thinking and being. If I may venture a guess here, it is not that they have not yet been studied scientifically. It is rather that they cannot be. Something else, an entirely new order of knowledge, is being called for.
It struck me listening to Jacques that the humanities at their bravest, and especially the study of religion at its furthest reaches, in fact specialize in studying exactly these, that is, the strangest stuff on the other end of the spectrum–categories 5, 6, and 7. This doesnotmean that the humanities as presently conceived and practiced are our answer; or that they are in any way sufficient. I do not believe that. But at least some of us try. Andthat, I realized, is the relationship of the two university-based initiatives. We can do the fundamental science and the public policy at Stanford–categories 1, 2, and 3. We can do the weird stuff at Rice–categories 5, 6, and 7. The inquiries are very different ones with vastly different materials and methods, but they are also very much related. They must be. That unity or shared quest is likely a part of the new order of knowledge that I hear Jacques Vallee calling for. If nothing else, it is a beginning.
So let me begin on that same shared spectrum of strangeness . . . .
* * * *
I am grateful to speak to you all at this inaugural conference of the Sol Foundation. I hope I can add something helpful and hopeful here at the end–an accent, perhaps, or a caution, perhaps even a superhuman future.
I want to begin by defining my perspective, since it blinds me to some things (especially technological possibilities), even as it brings other things into sharp focus (especially religious or spiritual possibilities). One cannot see a star through a microscope. And one cannot see a cell through a telescope. The lenses through which we see are focusing and limiting at the same time. Put differently, both the telescope and the microscope possess lenses that are intentionally distorted so that we can see at a particular level for specific purposes. So too with our professional frameworks. They are distortions of the lenses, but these disciplinary foci are also very helpful, and in fact they are necessary to see anything at all.
What I will say today is a kind of massive hunch or overwhelming intuition–largely unconscious, but not entirely so–based on reading thousands of pages of books and archival materials and engaging in hundreds of hours of conversations with experiencers and researchers from the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. I come to this practice with almost four decades of teaching and writing the history of religions. We might define the latter intellectual-spiritual discipline as the comparative study of humanity’s religious experience from the prehistoric cave paintings of Europe to today’s near-death or abduction experience, with a special focus on altered states of consciousness. It is out of this historical, comparative, and altered perspective that I will write of what Peter Skafish calls “signs that are given off by the x” of the UFO.
X, indeed. Signs, indeed.
I have six things I wish to say.
1. SIGNS OF THE UFO: IT’S ABOUT SCALE
The first thing I want to say is that the signs of the UFO extend over immense ranges of space and time, certainly across the entire globe and throughout that tiny slice of memory that we call human history, and probably much further back. Any individual contact or abduction experience in the contemporary world is a mere moment in this larger hyperobject or super-presence. Precisely because of this immensity, the UFO cannot be fully fathomed in any of its recent manifestations. We can only intuit something of its hyper-presence from a much larger perspective that is at once comparative and historical.
A number of corollaries follow. One is that no single individual can possibly fathom this. It is going to take large teams, really entire disciplines over many generations. I continue to think that higher education is our best hope here, although these institutions have major limitations and fault lines that I do not want to deny. It is entirely possible that the UFO inquiry can only be done effectively outside social institutions like higher education, but such a necessity will guarantee the subject’s marginalization and require a constant re-invention of the wheel. It will also result in endless, and dysfunctional, levels of secrecy. I do not think we have time for that.
Another related corollary involves public policy: any nation-state that approaches the UFO as a potential “threat” to its present national security, much less conceives of a program whose very purpose is to “destroy” or “shoot down” the anomaly, may be perceiving something of the situation (since the UFO as physical object is not “ours” and may well represent a potential safety problem for aviators), but little or nothing at all of the potential meaning of the fuller superpresence, which does not appear to be restricted to any local politics or air space. Obviously, our arbitrary borders mean nothing to the UFO. It “violates” them at will, and effortlessly.
This rather obvious fact need not be bad news. It may in fact be very good news. This relegation of our present national identities to a secondary status, even a potential irrelevance is, after all, very much apiece with the UFO’s consistent concerns over ecological collapse, nuclear armament, and dystopian apocalypse. Still, public policies are as important as working political responses. What we desperately need is moral, scientific, and, frankly, spiritual leadership beyond our present borders and boundaries. The U.S. is poised to provide part of this leadership, but only if it can embrace its rich combinative legal logic, affirm its immigrant or “alien” nature, acknowledge and mourn its colonizing and enslaving pasts, and affirm again its historical refusal to bow to any religious absolute.
Such historical observations are not tangential, nor are they political “opinions.” They are historical facts of immense importance and implication. Indeed, the postcolonial reading of the UFO has been with us at least since Charles Fort observed in the second and third decades of the twentieth century that these “super-constructions in the sky,” as he called them, may have an eventual effect not unlike the strange ships that showed up in the harbors of the eastern seaboard of the “new world,” a series of events for which the indigenous populations simply lacked the categories to fathom, much less the technology to defend themselves against what was coming–settler colonialism and the endless violences and displacements that come in its wake.
I am also thinking of the ways that abductions might be read as a replication on a spectral plane of the earlier physical abduction by ships of the Atlantic slave trade. The alien abductions, in other words, take place within a deep historical context, and they are experienced radically differently by different racial, ethnic, and historical communities. That should tell us something important about the understandable anxieties around the topic, especially around the lack of moral agency in many of the encounters and contacts. They are not called “abductions” for nothing.
One can often detect something of the multi-faceted leadership I am imagining in the experiencers. I take it as significant, for example, that one of our most recent experiencers, Matthew Roberts–the U.S. Naval Service Member who was stationed on the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt for the 2015 “Go Fast” radar video and later transferred to the Office of Naval Intelligence–understands the phenomenon to be fundamentally initiatory in its dynamics and spiritual in nature whose aim is a kind of unconditional love for all human beings, regardless of national politics, ethnicity, or religion. This is the sort of leadership I am talking about.
I fully understand that the vast majority of individuals are not ready for this type of “flip” into who they are before and beyond their constructed identities (there is an understatement). I understand that most people think that they are their psychological, national, and religious egos–their surface selves. This is probably the deepest provocation of the UFO–its utter disregard for our constructed local egos and the degree to which it abolishes or transcends them. There is immense potential here, but only if we are willing to surrender these righteous selves and create new public policy that constitutes a more humane and global worldview.
2. IT’S ABOUT TECHNOLOGY
The second thing I want to observe is that the UFO has taken on special urgency precisely because of our human technology. With new advances in radar, sonar, and satellite capabilities, we are seeing what was probably always there in the environment but was generally invisible. Put more bluntly, these things are not new, but our technological abilities to see them are.
It also needs to be said: many of our present global crises around ecological degradation and nuclear holocaust are precisely because of our sciences and technologies. I do not think it is an accident at all that the UFO shows such anxious interest in our warplanes (the famous “foo fighters” of World War II) and nuclear installations. So the statement “It’s about technology” is doubly meant.
Or triply. The total UFO event, after all, seems to possess both a material, technological, or physical and a mental, spiritual, or paranormal dimension. I do not want to be heard as denying that what we are dealing with here includes craft of some kind. I want to affirm that, but I also want to emphasize that the total UFO phenomenon (all seven degrees of its strangeness, to invoke Vallee’s model again) clearly violates our present ways of dividing reality up into “mind” and “matter,” into “subjectivity” and “objectivity.” I continue to think that this fundamental nonduality is the phenomenon’s ultimate power and provocation–the signs of its x.
Any discussion of “technology,” then, should take into account this fundamental both-and. It does not, of course. We continue to think in terms of our machines, our technology, our weapons. We hear about “back-engineering” and “craft.” We even hear of “biologics.” And then we slice off the spiritual or paranormal dimensions, pretending that they do not exist or do not matter. This is wrong. Diana Pasulka has been a clarion voice here, urging us to think of technology and the UFO in spiritual as well as material terms. Her voice, I think, has not been sufficiently heard or integrated, particularly by those who want to think only in terms of “now we have proof,” by which they mean, “now we have physical stuff.”
I should also add here that our present realizations around AI will likely have a major impact on our ability to understand the UFO itself, which has for decades included descriptions of the “robotic” ways that the beings are said to move or interact with humans (hey, I wouldn’t walk into a tribe of angry apes, either; I would send an expendable AI entity). Put a bit differently, AI gives us a new way of imagining and picturing what is going on, much as modern cosmology, hyperdimensional mathematics, and evolutionary biology have done so in other contexts. People do not go “up” into heaven now (we know there is no “up”). They move into “other dimensions” or “evolve” into other forms of consciousness. Science, or science fiction, has changed us.
The present case of the UFO, AI, evolution, and modern notions of space travel can be compared in some ways to the modern near-death experience, which is also heavily dependent on recent biomedical technology: people are now being “brought back” from much further into the death process. As a consequence, they are remembering more, and they are saying more. One result is a new genre of mystical literature–the near-death experience literature.
The UFO and near-death experience, then, are, in some sense, unintended but quite real consequences of modern technology. To be more precise, the two related phenomena cannot be reduced to or explained by the technologies involved, but they also cannot be experienced on a broad level without them. Of course, there were examples of both the “near-death experience” and the “UFO” before the biomedical, radar, sonar, and satellite technologies, but they were relatively rare. Not anymore.
The question of recovered bodies or “biologics” presses the case even more directly. This would indeed force our hand, as it were, make us lay our philosophical cards on the table (maybe even become more aware that we are playing such cards). Those cards assume an objectified and measurable physicalism or materialism (in which mind or consciousness is not really real), but also a type of anthropocentrism, or the idea that human beings are at the apex or center of the evolved cosmos and that our senses (and their sciences) should somehow be prioritized as uniquely corresponding to the natural world. Neither of these assumptions–the scientistic materialism nor the sense-based anthropocentrism–are adequate to the full complexity or “high strangeness” of what is actually going on.
In the words of my colleague William Parsons, such a realization, particularly one that involves biologics, would constitute a “fourth blow” to human egoism, after the Copernican, Darwinian, and psychoanalytic revolutions that relegated the conscious ego from the center of the universe (Copernicus), from the intended consequences of biology (Darwin), even from the conscious or psychological control of itself (Freud). This would be yet another blow that removes us from us, as it were. Maybe that is ultimately a good thing.
3. IT’S ABOUT RELIGION
This brings me to my third point, which, obviously, is my main point: the history of religions can be very helpful but also very misleading with respect to the signs of the UFO. Religion is the elephant in our living room. This rather obvious fact is dismissed under the intellectual cop-out that is “woo.” To the extent that we use this word and what it represents (a refusal to theorize it), we cannot grasp what is at stake, what these events mean or portend. This does not mean that “religion” is our answer. I am not saying that. I am saying something much more doubled and nuanced. Hear me out.
The history of religions is very helpful to the extent that the religions give powerful and consistent witness to something transcendent to our ordinary human experience, something Other than the social human or rational mind, even from the natural world as commonly understood, and so potentially and utterly transformative of society and the self. Cosmologically speaking, the religions commonly place this transcendent Other in the sky, the heavens, or the stars, which they often understand in fully physical terms. The similarities to the UFO are obvious. I often joke about “weird beings coming down from the sky and messing with humans–that’s called religion.” The joke is meant as a joke, but there is a comparative argument in the smile.
But we have to be very careful and precise about that comparative argument, and most people are not. They assume their own belief system, their own worldview, whatever that worldview happens to be: religious or secular, or probably a little of both.
It should be stressed at this point that many of the intellectuals and prodigies of the religions have been very aware of the basic incommensurability of a NHI (nonhuman intelligence) with human cognition and quite adept at translation and mediation of the human response. But–and here is the difficult part–these very translations are often not accepted by the believing public. This is one reason the word “mystical” (mustikos) means, quite literally, “secret.” It is not that there is some kind of whispered content that could be shared but is held back, some power game: “I have the secret, and you don’t.” It is rather that this form of knowledge is not communicable unless the listener is ready, has the requisite experience, and has “ears to hear,” as the ancient Jewish rabbi once put it. Few do, of course.
As Nietzsche put the same matter (he called it “esoteric”), what will be heard in most such cases is nothing at all. The teaching will sound nonsensical, absurd–in a word, impossible. That is because that which is being spoken is impossible within the categories of the reigning order of knowledge. We are talking about a different state of consciousness, a changed human being, and different types of bodies.
I think the physical aspects of religion, including and especially what I want to call “the physics of mystics” (the really, really strange stuff–think human levitation or precognition), have been vastly underestimated in the present regime of knowledge. Human bodies in the history of religions do all sorts of superhuman things: levitate, bilocate, know the physical future, and experience different types of conscious energy, to name just a few. These (of course) have often been read as legendary exaggerations. Exaggerations they often are, of course, but that does not mean that there is not something being exaggerated, some core truth behind the glowing tales.
I was once asked to lecture at MIT about two things: human levitation and UFOs. So I did. I think they are indeed related in their anti-gravitational properties. People do levitate. They do “fly.” And they do so silently, inexplicably, almost always in altered states over which they have little if any control. We have no way of understanding any of this in our present order of knowledge. It is simply impossible, and yet there it is.
It is also relevant that the religions are often very suspicious of the apparitional content of visionary experience, even often of experience itself, since “experience” implies a subject knowing an object, and both are being transcended or overcome here (there is philosophical sophistication). The ufological literature generally lags far behind in that it possesses little systematic understanding of the levels or types of visions, apparitions, encounters, and mystical communions, much less a theorization of experience itself. As a result, its understanding of what is actually happening is too often naive and simplistic.
My point? That we have much to learn from what we already know, that is, from the historical past; but that we have to be very careful with that past–and very suspicious. What we are often dealing with in the ufological materials is what Christian theology would call demonology or, in other more positive or transformative modes, angelology–basically, entities that are not human beings, have different types of bodies, and are not “God.” Such entities have been given multiple interpretations in the religions, but the demonic beings in particular are generally seen as fairly low within the total ecology of the religions, even “below” the living human. This does not mean that this is what such entities in fact are. We also have to remember that both the soul and its double have been called “demons.” The demon, or daimon, is in fact an ancient figure of immense importance and nuance. Calling something “demonic,” then, solves nothing at all. It only reveals one’s limiting assumptions, and probably one’s theology.
Things are different again today, but not entirely different. In the modern ufological literature, for example, the beings are often considered future humans, an interpretation to which I am much drawn and find intuitively persuasive. Future humans, moreover, often take on demonic or even “evil” qualities with respect to modern humans, for example, in the coming superhumans (Übermensch) of Friedrich Nietzsche. Indeed, I happen to think that one of our big mistakes in these realms is that we are imagining the UFO in spatial terms (I hear this kind of thinking whenever some astronomer observes that the distances are too great for interstellar travel) and not in temporal ones (they are from another time, not another star system).
My point is not to opt for a particular model–angels, aliens, or future superhumans. My point is that, even within the religious traditions themselves, far above the demons or “aliens,” and very much within the reach of living human beings, are the mystical experiences of unity, communion, emptiness, enlightenment, liberation, deification (becoming a god, or becoming an angel), and physical metamorphosis that are understood to be the real purpose and goal of human life. We do not need to sign our names to any of these particular belief systems, but we should learn from their attempts at ordering the anomalies and affirming both the physical and spiritual natures of the beings involved.
Many of the altered states of the history of religions, moreover, are inherently “apophatic,” that is, they “say away” (apo-phasis) what has been said or believed by the surrounding public or culture within the religious register, which generally understands the deity as an “object” or “being” that can be approached and engaged as such. Here we return to the basic nonduality of mind and matter that I hinted at above.
These apophatic experiences are non-translatable into sensory or rational means (which, of course, rely on the same subject/object structure), much less mathematical or scientific ones. Hence their broad rejection by the public. Again, secrecy here is not about content; it is about a kind of gnosis or deifying direct knowledge that is not transactional or communicable because it cannot be slotted into any subject/object structure. Such an apophatic or mystical sensibility, I must stress, could become a key contributor to the present discussion. This is an order of knowledge that we have simply lost but desperately need back in some new form.
That’s the good news. There is also some bad news. What we today call “religion” is also profoundly unhelpful in that it is usually not like this. It is not apophatic. Indeed, religion inevitably leads to all kinds of belief systems or interpretations, including demonic ones. From a historical and comparative perspective, none of these objectifying systems can be exclusively true for the species. It is quite possible, of course, that they are all true in some local sense, in some kind of inclusive or pluralist kind of way. That is, it is possible that all of these belief systems give relative witness to a set of human responses to this superpresence, none of which are wrong in themselves as local perspectives.
Such a comparative practice is embedded, for example, in the ancient Asian image of the five blind men and the elephant (to mix the metaphors, also standing in our living room). All five blind men feel a different part of the elephant (the trunk, the tusk, the leg, the ear, the tail). They say very different things, since they experience very different things. This is then applied to different “blind” religious perspectives: it is long and soft (the trunk); it is hard and pointy (the tusk); it is firm and strong (the leg); and so on. No one is wrong. But no one also is completely correct, either. That is a very different kind of “elephant in the living room.” This is also a very different kind of comparative argument, and one not in favor of any particular religion or culture as absolute and exclusive.
It is also possible that a pluralism may be more radical still–not a witness to a deeper unity or elephant, but to a fundamental plurality of being, an entire invisible ecology of life. Maybe what we think of as nature behaves differently in different cultural contexts because it really is different. What we would have here is a shocking multinaturalism. Maybe nature is culturally conditioned (I confess I often entertain this notion in my readings about the prevalence of human levitation in some historical epochs and its demonization or relative absence in others). Perhaps in the end this is what the UFO has been about –the production of multiple local belief systems and attending cosmologies, of these different religions and different realities.
But here is the thing. Because of modern communication, we are becoming more and more aware of these historical processes. If the UFO in its full reach means what I think it means, we are also becoming more aware of the nonhuman or superhuman presence that has inspired and shaped these histories, for better and for worse. We are much less certain of our certainties, and this is a good thing. Accordingly, the process of civilizational development, the history of religions, and perhaps even the conscious production of physical reality itself, must change; it must become more conscious and aware.
So, yes, there is a deep connection between the history of religions and the UFO, but we cannot use our present assumptions about society, science, space exploration, and extraterrestrials to understand the past within a kind of “presentism” (as if our present worldview is somehow complete or infallible). Nor can we use the assumptions of the past (about gods, or God, or angels, or demons) to understand the present or future. We have to be much more sophisticated than this kind of thinking, whichever way the arrow flies. We have to be “reflexive,” as we say in the study of religion and culture. We also have to be “transversal” in a radically comparative way, by which I mean that we have to try to sit “in between” all of them to grasp something of the hyperobject or superconsciousness that is appearing in our midst, always through the perspectives of our cultural assumptions, religious or secular upbringing, and socialization.
There is simply no debate, for example, that the UFO is related to psychical, parapsychological, and paranormal phenomena. Serious researchers have been saying this for over half a century. How many times do we need to hear this before it becomes common knowledge? Perhaps the technology effects or projects the paranormal display, like some kind of movie projector. Perhaps these anomalies are expressions of consciousness itself. Perhaps consciousness itself is the projector. Perhaps, as I have argued for over a decade, such events show us in dramatic terms that there is no final separation between mind and matter. But, as I explained above, to deny all of this, or to call it “woo,” is to settle for a small slice of the total phenomenon and reject what is being shown to us in such colorfully paradoxical ways, over and over and over again.
This comparative relationship between the UFO and the paranormal, then, might seem irrelevant, but it is in actuality very relevant, as it explains well why the sciences of the UFO have been attempted again and again but have never found a stable home in the conventional materialist-oriented sciences and their particular assumptions about mind and matter. The reason is simple: the total UFO event does not honor these assumptions. Perhaps we are at a new day. Perhaps we can do this now. I hope so.
This can be good news, then, as long as we can accept our sciences for what they are and can do, and what they are not and cannot do, and then integrate those other intellectual disciplines–like anthropology, philosophy, and the history of religions–that have rich histories of theorizing consciousness or mind and its relationship to the physical world, even and especially in the mediation of altered states. This is another way of saying that we have to embrace, study, and fund all seven categories of strangeness that Jacques Vallee has outlined for us, not just the first three. I understand that this is a hard message for those who think more and more science and technology will give us an answer. It will not. And that is certainly my message to you today: we need the whole university and the entire spectrum of strangeness to come to terms with what is happening all around us, as us, and to us.
Again, it is not that “religion” has our answers, either. Related here is the question of how the religions might react or respond to what is sometimes called “disclosure.” There appear to be two basic positions here in the literature. One position argues that the religions–more likely, the religion of the author in question–can assimilate and integrate such disclosure. The other position argues that religions are expressions of previous eras and forms of knowledge, not this one, and so they are incapable of the radical change that would be necessary. Hence, it is concluded, the necessity of secrecy or, in some cases, gradual disclosure. Speaking such a secret out loud or all at once would spell the end of civilization. Or such is the argument.
I confess I am more of the latter negative camp (I do not think that many religions can integrate the UFO, much less alien bodies), although I understand and appreciate the former positive camp as well. Perhaps I sit, or wobble, in the middle of the two. I suspect there is an important truth in both positions, and I would draw a sharp distinction to explain my own waffling (I’m good at rationalizing). I would say what I already said, namely, that religions are helpful in their insistence on translating or mediating a presence that is transcendent to the social human being, but that they are not helpful in the ways that they insist on particular belief systems, none of which can likely survive any kind of robust revelation of a species-wide cosmic condition. I suppose in the end it matters which religions or what kind of religion one is talking about, and what constitutes disclosure. I think the question is complicated.
First, I cannot help but notice that many a religious believer will literally demonize parapsychological phenomena. UFOs are real, but they are demons. Mediumship is evil. And so on. I can explain to you what such people believe are the biblical roots of such beliefs, and why the biblical texts themselves are much more complicated and, frankly, interesting, but that is not my point. My point is that some religion literally demonizes what we are trying to talk about. That takes it off the table. It does not keep it on the table.
Second, and very much related, I am quite concerned about what is sometimes called the psychedelic renaissance, a name given to the broad-based psychiatric and clinical study of psychoactive molecules in the U.S. and Europe and the pharmaceutical and legal transformations that are very much sought in their wake. Much as we see in the UFO phenomenon, the altered states induced by such psychoactive plants often display a fairly clear animist structure–plants and animals speak, paranormal powers manifest, instectoid entities appear, as do, by the way, aliens and UFOs.
What concerns me here are two basic things. First, predictably, the wildest or strangest of the psychedelic states are actively ignored or not reported at all in much of the literature. Secondly, the history of European colonialism and monotheism with respect to psychoactive plants has been absolutely awful, and often literally murderous. Has “religion,” then, welcomed the animist revelation of the plants? Certainly not these religions.
The British writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote a science fiction novel many decades ago, Childhood’s End (1953), basically arguing that full disclosure of an alien presence, even a friendly one, would render immediately irrelevant all religions on the planet, except, the book implied, Buddhism (this was or would become Clarke’s religion, of course). This was the “end of childhood,” that is, the end of religion. I am somewhat with the early Clarke here, although I seriously doubt that most Buddhist traditions can survive a fuller revelation, either. I guess I am deeply skeptical that anything resembling what we now call “religion” or “science” can survive a truly non-human or superhuman intelligence. I think we are talking about a different kind of humanity here, a future one that has not yet appeared to us.
Or maybe it has.
4. IT’S ABOUT MORAL VALUES
My following three final points are really just corollaries or appendices of my third central point, that the UFO is about religion. The fourth point I want to make is that the signs and entities of the UFO can be “good” or “bad,” or both at the same time, with respect to our present human value systems. This moral doubleness, moreover, is structurally and classically “religious,” so, again, this fourth point is really a strong corollary of the previous one.
One of the very first lessons one learns when one studies religion seriously–and by “seriously” I mean the philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and history of religions–is that the sacred is morally double-edged. There is a positive sacred. The sacred attracts, redeems, and saves. There is a negative sacred. The sacred repels, terrifies, destroys. The demon is simply the reverse of the god, as the Western magical tradition puts it. It is naive to think that the sacred is restricted to only one of these poles. That simply is not true, and it has never been true. To put things in a soundbite: religion is not about being nice or good; it is about the revelation of superhuman power and actualizing the same in both individuals and the community toward specific ends.
This moral doubleness of the sacred and stress on superhuman power plays out predictably in the abduction literature within this same doubled structure. There are enlightening or spiritual experiences of unconditional love and cosmic awareness, and it is common for such experiences to activate all kinds of paranormal effects and powers, especially telepathic and precognitive ones. There are also terrifying rapes and forced abductions, themselves imbued with uncanny power as well, that leave people scarred and scared, sometimes for life. Both happen. Both are true in this simplest of senses (“they happen”). There are also, of course, negative abduction experiences that morph into spiritually transformative experiences, and the reverse. All of this is entirely in line with what we see in the history of religions.
There are different ways to interpret such things, of course. The first way is the comparative method announced in my opening point: the UFO superpresence is immense in space and time, and no single experience of it should be taken as the whole. Hence the negative experiences are as much a part of the total picture as the positive ones are. They are two sides of the same coin, or floating sphere.
Another common interpretive move, evident also in the handling of negative near-death experiences (visions of hell, for example), is to read all negative responses as just that: as responses of the human, not of the nonhuman or superhuman presence. The social ego, it is said here, is not ready for transcendence or spiritual dissolution. And so the ego responds in fear and images of violence. I myself have made this exact argument, so I am very sympathetic to it. But I also recognize it is an interpretation and requires a basic distinction: between the human response and a superhuman presence.
Within the same basic distinction, it is also often pointed out that the “intention” of the alien presence is difficult to fathom and may in fact be positive on its own level, even if it is experienced as demonic or negative on the human level. Certainly, even some of the scariest phenomena, like those described at Skinwalker Ranch, appear to make moral distinctions between humans and animals: dogs are turned into goo; people are not.
In terms of the envisioned sexual or reproductive components of the modern abduction accounts, do we not practice animal husbandry or forced insemination all the time? Just look at your pet dog. It was once a wild wolf. Who did that? We did. Is this kind of species breeding “rape”? And are we so naive to think that we will not someday practice another kind of genetic manipulation on ourselves?
Or, in terms of animal mutilations now, do we not slaughter millions of animals every day for food? So what, exactly, constitutes the evil of a few hundred, or a few thousand, mutilated cattle? I eat hamburgers. I also live with a four-footed furry being we call “Delilah.” Can I explain this profound moral inconsistency? Nope.
What am I saying here? I am saying that I think the moral values of the super-presence are not our moral values, but they kind of are. Hence my suspicion is that this is something superhuman, not completely nonhuman. That’s a guess. Please hear it as such.
5. IT’S ABOUT DECEPTION (OR ART)
The fifth point I want to make is that secrecy and deception are at the heart of the UFO phenomenon. When students of religion look at the signs of the UFO long and hard, one of the things they take away is the profoundly deceptive quality of the apparitions and experiences. Whatever is appearing is not what is actually behind the appearances. What we are witnessing is some kind of super-intelligence engaging in camouflage and misdirection.
Beware, then. To employ a very useful metaphor, we appear to be caught inside a movie. We are not looking at the projector of those movies. We cannot trust our senses here. We cannot trust our beliefs. We cannot trust our reasons. All of these are being manipulated. We can only trust our distrust. There is camouflage. There is disinformation. And these are internal to the UFO itself. There is a much more positive way to say this. The UFO is about a most fantastic art; a real filmmaking, with physical special effects and all. We are caught inside a work of art, as Terence McKenna once observed, no doubt with a grin and a spin.
6. IT’S ABOUT ONTOLOGICAL SHOCK
The sixth point I want to make is that the UFO is finally about ontological shock. David Grusch used the phrase this last summer, and in the global moral ways I have suggested above. Historically, the phrase is most associated with the Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack, who used it in the 1990s to describe what experiencers were undergoing: a massive re-ordering of what they considered to be real in light of their abduction experiences, which in no way could be integrated into the previous materialisms of the experiencers. In historical fact, the phrase “ontological shock” was coined in the 1950s by the Protestant liberal theologian Paul Tillich (who meant something different but related to the term). In short, the phrase has a deep history in the study of religion again, even when it is being used by a military and intelligence professional or an experiencer.
There is a strong corollary to this sixth point. It is this. Any approach to the UFO that wants to normalize it, that is, reduce it to society (which is what the social sciences and the humanities do) or to nature (which is what the sciences do) is inadequate. Something much more radical is afoot. I call it the impossible.
The point is to shock us into a new conception of the real. In Peter Skafish’s terms, the “signs that are given off by the x” of the UFO are fundamentally about “ontological redistribution.” By the phrase, Skafish means to suggest something related to what I am suggesting above, namely, that we are being challenged to shift our very notions of the real and to expand the concepts through which we think and imagine. We are being encouraged to consider the possibility that our present psyches, societies, and nation-states, our religions and moral systems, even our sciences and bodies do not and cannot know what is actually so, and precisely because these same systems have distributed reality into the conventional boxes of society, nature, and God. Something else, something truly “alien,” is going on.
And so I return again to my own apophatic convictions. It is not that we do not know what the UFO is with our present categories and order of knowledge. It is that we cannot know what it is with our present categories and order of knowledge. It is not about any present society. It is not about what we think of as nature with our physics, chemistry, astronomy, or computer science. It is not about any religion, past or present. It is strange beyond any of our normalities or forms of professional knowledge.
Is there a public policy for this? I don’t know. Maybe something in stages. “Let us first acknowledge the reality of the UFO, and then . . . .” But that strategy assumes that we know what reality is, or that such a reality comports with our science and technology. We thus continue the mistake within the terms of the mistake.
SHOOTING DOWN SOULS . . . GOOD LUCK WITH THAT
I like to tell jokes, as I think these jokes crystallize my intellectual arguments, much as icebergs crystallize the ocean they float in and in fact are in another frozen or crystallized form. People remember jokes, too. They don’t remember arguments. Sometimes–okay, often–no one laughs at my jokes, no doubt because the terms of the joke do not match their understanding of the world and so can produce no sudden disjunction, shock, or what we call “humor.”
I sometimes joke, for example, that the present concern with “threats” and national intelligence is fundamentally misguided, that “they might as well be trying to shoot down souls.” I then follow up with a challenge: “Good luck with that.” Does such a joke and challenge make any sense in our present order of knowledge? No, of course not. And that is my point.
I think the joke is funny, but then I also feel very alone. Thank you all this weekend for making me feel a little less alone.
Dr. Jeffrey Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University in Houston, Texas. This essay was originally presented by Kripal at The Sol Foundation Initiative for UAP Research and Policy Symposium at Stanford University on Saturday, November 18, 2023.All copyright is reserved by the author, and this essay was reprinted here with permission. For similar commentary from Professor Kripal, see his How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming), as well as his various previous books, more about which can be found at his website, www.jeffreyjkripal.com.
Beroemdheden die ufo's hebben gezien Sinds een Amerikaanse legerofficier beweerde dat de Amerikaanse regering buitenaardse ruimtevaartuigen en 'niet-menselijke biologische overblijfselen' heeft, is de wereld volop bezig met de vraag of er buitenaards leven onder ons is. Er zijn veel ufo-waarnemingen geweest, waaronder die van beroemdheden.
Opleving van de kwestie De verklaringen van voormalig luchtmachtofficier David Grusch over mogelijke 'ufo's' hebben veel opschudding veroorzaakt. Te midden van deze 'buitenaardse controverse' kunnen we melden dat er enkele beroemdheden zijn die zonder angst voor kritiek publiekelijk hun vermeende ervaringen met buitenaardse wezens hebben ged
Miley Cyrus werd achtervolgd door een ufo Miley Cyrus beweerde dat ze visueel contact had met een buitenaards wezen. "Ik reed met mijn vriend door San Bernardino en ik werd achtervolgd door een soort ufo. Ik weet vrij zeker wat ik zag (...). De beste manier om het te beschrijven is als een vliegende sneeuwschuiver. Het had een grote ploeg aan de voorkant en het was knalgeel. Ik zag het vliegen, mijn vriend en andere auto's op de weg stopten ook om te kijken, daarom geloof ik dat wat ik zag echt was...
Miley Cyrus: 'het keek me aan en we maakten oogcontact' "... Ik trilde de vijf daaropvolgende dagen. Ik was naar de klote. Ik kon niet meer op dezelfde manier naar de lucht kijken. Ik dacht dat ze misschien terug zouden komen. Ik voelde me niet bedreigd, maar ik zag een wezen vooraan het vliegende object zitten. Het keek me aan en we maakten oogcontact, en dat heeft me denk ik echt aangegrepen, het kijken in de ogen van iets wat ik niet kon begrijpen. Je hebt helemaal gelijk dat het een vorm van narcisme is om te denken dat wij de enige wezens zijn in dit enorme universum", vertelde Miley aan Rick Owens van het tijdschrift Interview.
Kurt Russell: getuige van de 'Phoenix Lights' Een van de meest iconische lichtgebeurtenissen aan de hemel zijn de zogenaamde 'Phoenix Lights'. Het waren 6 lichten die een driehoekige vorm hadden en werden gezien terwijl ze van Phoenix naar Tucson in Arizona (VS) vlogen eind jaren 90. Dit werd gemeld door meer dan 20.000 mensen, waaronder acteur en piloot Kurt Russell.
Kurt Russell: zag de lichten vanuit zijn vliegtuig "Ik zag (vanuit zijn vliegtuig) zes lichten boven het vliegveld in een duidelijke V-vorm en meldde ze aan de verkeerstoren. Ze vertelden me dat ze niets hadden gezien of zagen, waarop ik antwoordde dat ik het als ongeïdentificeerd zou verklaren. Het waren zes objecten en ze vlogen. Het is de meest geziene gebeurtenis wereldwijd", zei Russell in een interview.
Demi Lovato: op afstand blijven Demi Lovato zei in een interview met E! News dat ze in Californië een ervaring had met buitenaardse wezens die haar kijk op de wereld veranderde. "We gingen naar de woestijn in Joshua Tree en ik zag een blauwe bol op ongeveer 15 meter afstand, misschien minder, en het zweefde boven de grond, het was alsof het afstand van me hield", zo vertrouwde ze toe aan E! News.
Demi Lovato: een verandering in haar leven Maar dat was niet de enige keer dat ze zo'n ervaring had, want op haar 28e verjaardag zag ze ook al ufo's. "We keken naar de sterren en plotseling verscheen er iets recht boven ons in de lucht, enorme lichten die een soort vraagteken in de lucht vormden. Ik realiseerde me dat mijn leven waarschijnlijk op een spirituele manier zou gaan veranderen", aldus Demi.
Camila Cabello ontdekte ufo's in haar video's In 2022 zei Camila Cabello in een interview met Jimmy Fallon dat ze ufo's had gezien tijdens een familievakantie in Chili. "Ik was foto's en video's aan het maken van mijn ouders. Toen begon mijn vader door de foto's te bladeren en hij zag toen we deze clips vertraagden twee objecten. Serieus, ik vertraagde de video en ik denk dat we waarschijnlijk een ufo hebben vastgelegd," legde de zangeres uit.
Camila Cabello: 'de buitenaardse wezens vertrouwden mij' Camila aarzelde om de video die ze had gemaakt te laten zien: "Ik twijfelde echt om hem hier te laten zien, want als de buitenaardse wezens me vertrouwden, omdat ik daar was, wil ik niet dat ze denken dat ik ze nu uitbuit. Ik zweer het, het is geen vogel, het is ook geen stipje op de mobiele telefoon, want je kunt het duidelijk zien bewegen van achter de berg, heel dicht bij de camera. Ik denk echt dat de buitenaardse wezens mij vertrouwden op het moment dat ik dit vastlegde," zei ze.
Nick Jonas zag ufo's vanuit zijn tuin Nick Jonas beweerde dat hij drie ufo's heeft gezien. "Het was waarschijnlijk ongeveer acht jaar geleden, ik was in de achtertuin van mijn huis in Los Angeles. Ik keek omhoog in de lucht en zag drie vliegende schotels. Ik draaide me om naar mijn vriend en vroeg hem: 'Zie jij wat ik zie of word ik gek?' Ook hij zag wat ik zag," vertelde de zanger in 2015 in het programma 'This Morning'.
Nick Jonas: 'die lichten gaven me kippenvel' "Ik keek op internet en zag dat er twee weken eerder drie identieke waarnemingen waren geweest. Mijn vriend, ik en andere mensen uit Los Angeles zagen het allemaal. Die lichten gaven me kippenvel, maar op een goede manier", zei hij hierover.
Khloé Kardashian: een ufo die boven Californië vliegt Khloé Kardashian zei dat ze ooit vreemde lichten en een ufo boven Californië zag vliegen, waardoor ze zeker weet dat er leven is op andere planeten.
Khloé Kardashian: een buitenaards pad Bij een andere gelegenheid, als onderdeel van haar realityshow 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians', ging Khloé met Tristan Thompson naar een pad in Malibu, Californië, om 'buitenaardse wezens te gaan spotten'. "Malibu heeft veel ufo-waarnemingen aangetrokken. Toen ik op onderzoek uitging, ontdekte ik dit pad en dit pad zou verbazingwekkende buitenaardse energie hebben. Ik ben weer zo enthousiast. Wandelen, buitenaardse wezens, is er iets beters?", zei de socialite op dat moment erover.
Olivia Newton-John: verbazingwekkende snelheid Wijlen Olivia Newton-John zei dat ze als tiener een object zag dat met "verbazingwekkende snelheid" over de velden in Cambridge, Engeland vloog. Sindsdien geloofde ze in dergelijke gebeurtenissen.
Olivia Newton-John: mogelijkheid bestaan ufo's In een interview zei ze: "Tegenwoordig geloven de meeste mensen in Engeland in de mogelijkheid van het bestaan van ufo's. Hoeveel mensen zouden daar twintig jaar geleden aan gedacht hebben?"
Dan Aykroyd: onderzoek naar buitenaards leven Dan Aykroyd, vooral bekend door zijn optreden in de film 'Ghostbusters' (1984), heeft zijn hele carrière onderzoek gedaan naar het bestaan van buitenaards leven.
Fromsurveillance balloonsto metallic orbs, over the past few weeks it seems like bizarre objects are falling out the sky left, right and centre.
Scientists are able to debunk most of these instances, like how a blue spiral that appeared over Hawaii last month was actually just a SpaceX launch.
However, some of them still do not have a logical explanation to this day, including the apparent 'flying saucer' that flew over a school in Australia in 1966.
The silvery white webs that fell on the heads of local football fans from an egg-shaped craft in Italy in 1954 also remain a mystery.
MailOnline takes a closer look at the seven weirdest unidentified flying object - or UFO - sightings, that are still yet to be explained.
An apparent photograph of the supposed Westall UFO encounter where more than 200 students and teachers allegedly witnessed an unexplained flying object descend onto a nearby open wild grass field in 1966
1. The 'Flying Saucer' - Australia
On April 6 1966, at around 11am, over 300 students and teachers at Westall High School in Melbourne, Australia witnessed a 'flying saucer' hover above the grounds.
Children and staff were said to have seen a 'round humped object with a flat base being circled by what appeared to be light aircraft'.
It was described as grey or silver-grey in colour, but it was not known whether the UFO appeared high or low in the sky, or for how long it was seen by those at the school, according to reports at the time.
There was also confusion over whether there was just one UFO or several, as some people described seeing three saucer-like objects.
One newspaper report in the 1960s said that several children who saw the flying saucer 'collapsed and became ill with fright'.
'I saw a craft. A mechanical object intelligently controlled hovering above me,' Mr Andrew Greenwood - a science teacher at the time - told a 7NEWS Spotlight documentary in 2021.
During the 20 minute encounter, witnesses said that five planes came and surrounded the object, appearing to try and herd it up, before it flew away.
A newspaper clipping outlining what several witnesses at the school saw on that fateful day in 1966
2. Red and green lights - UK
In December 1980, sightings of unexplained red and green lights were reported by US Air Force personnel stationed near Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, UK.
These occurred on three separate nights just before the New Year, saying that the lights were flying in the sky and descending into the woodland.
US Air Force officer Steve Longero broke a 36 year silence in December 2016, to reveal he also saw red and green fluorescent lights hovering over treetops.
The incident became a topic of fascination in the UK after a group of servicemen went into Rendlesham Forest to investigate the mysterious lights and came out convinced they had seen seen an alien spacecraft.
They said the SAS wanted to take revenge on the US Air Force for capturing a squad and subjecting them to a brutal interrogation.
The British Ministry of Defence said the apparent UFOs were likely to be caused by a series of nocturnal lights.
Staff Sergeant Jim Penniston sketched the craft he says he saw at the time of the incident
The incident became a topic of fascination in the UK after a group of servicemen went into Rendlesham Forest to investigate the mysterious lights and came out convinced they had seen seen an alien spacecraft
3. 'Phoenix Lights' - USA
UFO sightings are relatively common in Arizona ever since the 'Phoenix Lights' incident on the night of March 13 1997.
Five lights were seen flying in formation, either stationary or as part of a moving V-shaped aircraft.
They were reported by thousands of people between 7.30pm and 10.30pm.
Sightings came from a space of about 300 miles, from the Nevada border, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson.
At the time, the military said it was part of a routine flare exercise, but many believed there was more to it.
To date it is the largest mass-UFO sighting in the USA.
In 1996, five lights were seen flying in formation, either stationary or as part of a moving V-shaped aircraft. Image of the Phoenix Lights newspaper article from USA Today
NASA joins the hunt for UFOs with study into 'unidentified phenomena'
NASA is conducting its first ever study into unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) - known popularly asUFO's.
These are events in the sky that cannot be absolutely identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena.
Scientists are looking at current data into UAPs, and establishing which sightings are naturally-occurring or not worth further investigation.
Understanding unidentified phenomena in the atmosphere is of interest for both national security and aircraft safety.
Forget VAR, on October 27 1954 it was a UFO that caused a commotion during a football match between Fiorentina and Pistoiese in Florence, Italy.
Just after half time, thousands of fans began pointing to the sky, prompting the players to stop the game at the Stadio Artemi Franchi.
While accounts vary, general consensus is that a round spacecraft moving over the pitch, dropping silver glitter or web-like filaments as it passed
Footballer Ardico Magnini described it as 'like an egg moving slowly', while another spectator compared its shape to a cigar.
Samples of the UFO's trail were analysed at the University of Florence and were found to be made of boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium.
This debunked the theory that they were the webs of migrating spiders, as they do not contain any of these elements.
5. Alien sightings - Zimbabwe
On September 16 1994, 62 pupils of Ariel Primary School, located just outside Ruwa in Zimbabwe, saw one or more silver craft descend from the sky and land on a nearby field.
These aliens then shared messages about environmentalism telepathically, warning humans not to destroy the planet.
The alleged incident lasted about 15 minutes while the children, all aged between six and 12, were outside on break, while their teachers were in a meeting.
Not all children at the school claim they saw something that day, but some of those who did maintain it is true.
Researchers traveled to the school where they asked the kids to draw what they'd seen 'while it was fresh in their minds'
As for the humanoids some claimed to see emerge from the craft, Hofer said that most of the students' descriptions were 'very consistent of a short-looking being' and 'a lot of them described very large eyes'
One told The Sunday Mail in 2021: 'The most difficult part is that, up until today, I cannot tell what that thing was.
'I do not believe in aliens or tikoloshes. It helps explain why some of us would not want to be associated with the events of that day.'
Both the headteacher at the time and Harvard University psychiatrist Dr John Mack interviewed the children who both say their accounts and drawings were consistent.
However, some sceptics have ruled the incident as one of mass hysteria, which studies have shown are common in schools in Africa.
6. Encounter on the moors - UK
On December 1 1987, a retired police officer claims he came into contact with an alien figure while walking on Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire.
The creature made a gesture at the man, who uses the pseudonym Philip Spencer, before it ran away after he tried to take a picture of it.
He then saw a white-coloured craft which consisted of two saucer-shaped components one on top of the other rise up and disappear into the sky.
Mr Spencer then claimed that the encounter had caused his compass to break, and that he mysteriously arrived back in town two hours later than he expected later on.
His photo was studied by experts and was found to not show an animal or any evidence it had been tampered with, but it was too grainy to know for sure.
However, details of Mr Spencer's account did change after a session of hypnotherapy, when he then claimed he was abducted.
He said he taken inside the UFO and given a tour, had experiments performed on him and was forced to watch videos of apocalyptic imagery before being returned to Earth.
Sceptics also wonder why he did not photograph the spaceship.
On December 1 1987, a retired police officer claims he came into contact with an alien figure while walking on Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire.
Pictured: Mr Spencer's photo
The creature made a gesture at the man, who uses the pseudonym Philip Spencer, before it ran away after he tried to take a picture of it.
Pictured: Mr Spencer's photo
His photo was studied by experts and was not found to show an animal or any evidence it had been tampered with. Pictured: Newspaper reporting the sighting at the time
7. Unexpected Arrival - USA
At about 4:14pm on November 7 2006, a ramp employee at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, USA spotted a metallic, saucer-shaped craft hovering in the sky.
The employee notified other members of the crew of United Airlines Flight 446, which they were preparing for departure, including pilots, airline management and mechanics.
A total of 12 staff confirmed the sighting, including some passengers on other flights arriving at the airport.
Witnesses said it was a dark grey, disc-shaped craft that was 'obviously not clouds'.
After hovering silently for about five minutes, it reportedly shot up into the sky at a high velocity, leaving a hole in the clouds that eventually closed over.
Air traffic controllers did not see the object, but a United Airlines supervisor did contact those in the tower to report the sighting.
As it was not picked up by RADAR the Federal Aviation Administration refused to investigate, and ruled it a 'weather phenomenon', like a hole-punch cloud.
At about 4:14pm on November 7 2006, a ramp employee at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, USA spotted a metallic, saucer-shaped craft hovering in the sky. Pictured: An image of the UFO taken on an airport employee's phone
A total of 12 staff confirmed the sighting, which they say was a disc-shaped craft that was 'obviously not clouds'. Pictured: An image of the UFO taken on an airport employee's phone
FAMOUS UK UFO SIGHTINGS
1980 - Rendlesham Forest:Sightings of unexplained lights were reported by United States Air Force personnel stationed near Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk which became linked with claims of UFO landings
1977 - Broad Haven: A class of primary school pupils said they spotted a 'cigar-shaped' craft with a 'dome covering the middle third' near their playground, that was never debunked
1956 - Lakenheath-Bentwaters: A series of radar and visual contacts with UFOs over airbases in eastern England led to a report from the Codon Committee stating that the 'probability that at least one genuine UFO was involved appears to be fairly high'
2009 - Kim Wilde's encounter: The singer recounted on 'Loose Women' the time she saw an unfamiliar-looking light in the sky that darted back and forth while out in her garden. She credits the 'life-changing' experience for inspiring her album that followed
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.