There is one thing UFO believers and UFO skeptics have in common – besides a love for one of the two stars of “The X-Files” – and that is a mutual dislike/disgust/frustration/hatred of blurry photos. While this trait is shared with Bigfoot and other cryptid fans, it’s most pronounced amongst those hoping for confirmed visible evidence and identification of strange aerial phenomena. Well, folks … your prayers, burnt offerings, magic lamp wishes and animal sacrifices have been answered. Everyone’s favorite Harvard genius astrophysicist who believes in UFOs – Abraham ‘Avi’ Loeb’ – has made a personal commitment to provide clear UFO photos and videos very soon … possibly as early as this summer.

I thought YOU had the cellphone.

“I really want the next generation to be free to discuss it, and for it to become part of the mainstream. My hope is that by getting a high resolution image of something unusual, or finding evidence for it, which is quite possible in the coming year or two, we will change it.”

In an interview with The Guardian, Loeb compares himself to a fisherman on the beach who can’t see any fish because he’s not casting a net. Loeb has two UFO nets to cast – the first is data collected by the mini-satellite network of Planet Labs which will take photos from space of the entire surface of the Earth once per day. On the ground, Loeb and his Galileo Project are setting up a worldwide network of telescopes controlled by artificial intelligence to search the skies for UFOs – learning as they go along to eliminate birds, planes, bugs, clouds and other explainable anomalies.

Between the photos from above and below, Loeb thinks a clear picture of one or many UFOs will be taken. And that’s a good thing for both sides of the discussion.

“I really want the next generation to be free to discuss it, and for it to become part of the mainstream. My hope is that by getting a high resolution image of something unusual, or finding evidence for it, which is quite possible in the coming year or two, we will change it.”

Loeb and his combined Planet Labs/Galileo Project search is not without competition. Last week, Hakan Kayal, a Professor for Space Technology at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Germany, revealed he has already set up a dual AI-controlled SkyCAM-5 camera system on a university building that has been watching for UFOs since December 2021. While Kayal may e ahead of Loeb on from-the-ground scans, he’s not incorporating satellite images. Perhaps they should join forces – it would provide a good example for the next generation and move the search for extraterrestrial intelligence even closer to the mainstream.

We needs some photos like this … only real.

Avi Loeb has always been open about his expansive beliefs in UFOs and extraterrestrials – he led the team who believed the ‘Oumuamua interstellar comet could be an ET spacecraft exploring our solar system. You can’t have big discoveries without some big ideas … even if some end up to be big mistakes.

Let’s hope Avi Loeb finds and photographs the UFOs … before someone (or something) shuts him down.

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

The more that military aircraft advance, the more difficult it will be to differentiate between a genuine UFO and something constructed out at the likes of Area 51. Although there is no doubt in my mind there is a real UFO phenomenon, there are also high-tech craft flying around that are ours and no-one else’s. So, with that said, today I’ll share with you some examples of what I believe to be highly advanced planes that many might suspect are the work of extraterrestrials. Here’s the first story: It was around 11:00 p.m. on September 26, 1994, when a small, twin-tailed aircraft crash-landed onto the lengthy runway at Boscombe Down, which is situated in the English county of Wiltshire. At around the time of the incident, a number of aviation enthusiasts were listening in on air-band radios and were aware that something untoward had taken place. The following day, several of those same enthusiasts drove to the installation – which is near to the A303 road and not at all far from Stonehenge – and were apprehended by local police who had set up road-blocks to keep away prying eyes. Before being ushered away, however, a number of people succeeded in catching sight of a disabled aircraft. It was situated at the end of the runway and, aside from its twin-tail fins, was completely covered over by tarpaulins.

(Nick Redfern)

Aliens visiting Stonehenge? Or did something of ours cause all the problem?

The account of the crash at Boscombe Down is made all the more intriguing by a story that was published in the U.K.’s Salisbury Times newspaper on August 23, 1994 – just about a month before all hell broke loose at Boscombe Down. The location: the aforementioned A303 road. The article states: “A green flying saucer hovered beside the A303 road at Deptford last week – according to a lorry driver who rushed to Salisbury police station in the early hours of the morning. The man banged on the station door in Wilton Road at 1:30 a.m. on Thursday after spotting the saucer suspended in mid-air. ‘He was 100 per cent convinced it was a UFO,’ said Inspector Andy Shearing. The man said it was bright green and shaped like a triangle with rounded corners. It also had green and white flashing lights. Other drivers had seen it and were flashing their car lights at him. A patrol car took the driver back to the spot but there was no trace of the flying saucer. Inspector Shearing said police had been alerted about similar sightings in the same area in the past.” Although the Salisbury Times called the object a “flying saucer,” the description of it being “shaped like a triangle with rounded corners,” sounds very much like the a “secret aircraft” called the TR-3A. Some say it has the ability to hover – and in silence, no less. Seeing such a thing would surely make one think they had seen a real UFO.

Moving on, there are the so-called “Flying Triangles” that have been seen for years, but that know can be sure if they are “ours” or “theirs.” It was in the summer of 1989 that Chris Gibson had what can accurately be termed the encounter of a lifetime. An engineer with an Honors degree in geology and someone who’s worked focused on oil-exploration, Gibson was also attached to the U.K.’s Royal Observer Corps. The work of the ROC – which closed down in December 1995, after seventy years of work to help protect the United Kingdom from attack – required its volunteers to keep a careful watch on the skies above and what was flying in those same skies, too. As luck – or fate – would have it, and at the time when the Aurora program may very well have been compromised, Gibson was working on an oil rig in the North Sea. The name of the rig was the Galveston Key. It was August 1989, specifically, when one of Gibson’s colleagues, a friend named Graeme Winton, who went to university with Gibson, excitedly told Gibson to come with him to the deck. There was something Winton needed to show him.   A startled and amazed Gibson caught sight of something incredible in the skies above. A pair of General Dynamics’ F1-11 aircraft were shepherding a very strange-looking, completely black aircraft. And, a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker seemed to be fueling it. It was in the form of a triangle.

(Nick Redfern)

Flying Triangles: UFOs or high-tech craft of ours?

When it comes to the matter of Area 51 and the 1970s, there are two important issues that cannot be ignored. And they should not be ignored. One was the early development of what has become known as “Stealth” technology for aircraft The other issue revolves around NASA and is a real can of worms. We’ll begin with matters of the stealthy kind. It was in 1988 that both the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter and the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit were unveiled for one and all to see. The completely black, triangular-shaped aircraft caught the world’s attention, primarily because of their strange, angular shapes. It’s intriguing to note that in 1982 a wave of encounters with what became known as “Flying Triangles” began over portions of New York State, specifically in Hudson Valley. In their 1988 book, Night Siege, authors Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Philip J. Imbrogno and Bob Pratt wrote: “Can 7,000 eyewitnesses be wrong? They were there to witness the huge, hovering object in the sky, three flashing lights, the eerie silence. They are ordinary people from all walks of life: stay-at-home moms, kids, business people, engineers. They tell their stories here, and they all agree on one thing: they saw the same massive object cruising over their backyards. And it was like nothing they had seen before…” Sounds just like a UFO story, right? Maybe not, though. Possibly the whole thing was down to us. Perhaps, there are more “home-grown” secret aircraft than we can imagine.

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

A UFO investigator in Brazil has come forward with a startling revelation – official documents from the Brazilian government detailing UFO encounters with indigenous people between 2013 and 2016, videos of their testimonies, videos of UFOs and evidence of possible alien contact … some which was violent and possibly fatal.

“The investigation by Rony Vernet, engineer and researcher of unidentified aerial phenomena, culminated in the release of more than 120 pages of official documents by the Brazilian government and more than 20 minutes of videos, including the affected indigenous people testimonials as well as a UAP footage filmed by Paula Colares, who was doing her doctoral research in anthropology in the tribe.”

The UFOs reportedly shot beams of light at the people on the ground.

Rony Vernet is an electronics and computer engineer, UAP researcher and the founder of UAP Brazil, where he first revealed the fruits of his Freedom of Information request to the Brazilian government for what were UAP encounters beginning in 2013 by members of the Kampa do Amônia Indigenous Tribe living in the Apiwtxa Village in the sparsely populated, rainforest covered state of Acre in northwestern Brazil on the Peruvian border. While the initial UFO sightings were just that, the documents (read them here) revealed the first violent contact occurred on on July 24, 2014, when a UAP reportedly “descended into the village and fired light beams at the indigenous people.” In an interview with The Daily Star, Vernet shared more from the documents.

“People jumped scared out of the house, which led to one of the women, three months pregnant, to lose the child. According to the people who witnessed the fact, the light – in the colours green and red – is very strong, fast and silent and approaches the house without anyone noticing, with the light low and then increases its bright.”

Vernet says the villagers asked for help from the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), which contacted the Federal Police and the Armed Forces. Meanwhile, the UAP sightings continued into 2015, prompting an investigation to be opened by the Federal Public Ministry after University College London researcher and anthropologist Carolina Comandulli also witnessed one of the UAPs. Coincidentally, the sightings in Apiwtxa village ended in 2015. However, the violent contacts picked up a year later.

“This time in the Kampa and Isolados do Envira indigenous tribe, when a light phenomenon descended and was received with shotgun fire by an indigenous person who then received a beam of light and had to be hospitalized.”

A news account, translated on the UAP Brazil website, says the villagers Indians thought it was a drone at first, but changed their minds when “it burned the beaks of all the lanterns and emitted strong electrical discharges.” Indigenous professor Airton Silva de Oliveira interviews the witness, who told him the UAP “turned on red, blue and green lights” and had an odor of burning tires.

What was the origin of these UAPs?

In addition to the testimonies in the more than 120 pages of official documents, the cache also included more than 20 minutes of videos filmed by Paula Colares (watch them here), who was doing her doctoral research in anthropology with the tribe. The videos are available for viewing on the UAP Brazil website, as are the government documents, which Rony Vernet translated into English.

Federal Police Testimonials - Part 1

Federal Police Testimonials - Part 2

UAP footage obtained by the Federal Police

Kudos are in order for Rony Vernet, whose dogged efforts paid off with the release of the documents and videos, and who later spent countless hours translating them to English. Kudos also go to the researchers who interviewed the indigenous villagers and recorded their experiences, and to Paula Colares who recorded the UAPs.

There’s still one batch of kudos left – for the person(s) who identify what these Brazilian villagers saw.

“Pirouettes” are something we expect to see done by dancers at the ballet or during the figure skating competition at the upcoming Winter Olympic Games. But in the sky? By UFOs?

“A video made in the Los Naranjos urbanization, located in the El Hatillo Municipality, southeast of Caracas, captured the exact moment in which at least three unidentified flying objects crossed the skies of the Venezuelan capital at high speed, and carried out some pirouettes before disappearing from the scene.”

Remember to hold your hand steady when recording UFOs.

The video described above was reportedly taken at around 10:30 am on Friday, January 21, 2022, by Luis Alfredo Sanz, who claimed to UFO investigator Héctor Escalante of Ovnis en Venezuela (UFOs of Venezuela) that he was sunbathing when he decided the blue sky was pretty enough to share with his family so he took a short video of it. Sanz claims he saw nothing in the sky but blue, but upon later viewing of his phone he “noticed that there were some bright sparks.”

“When making a graphic analysis of the video, presented here in slow motion, it can be distinguished that the three bodies, which are light in color with a dark fragment at one end, and have apparent wings or propellers, do not seem to have similarities. with birds or insects.”

The account posted by Héctor Escalante does not say who did the graphic analysis and includes only still images, with only one showing the non-magnified version. (See them here.) That means we have to take his word that there were three of these UFOs, they were traveling extremely fast and were too high to be drones. Unfortunately, the magnifications seem to contradict the observation that the “three bodies” do not look like birds or insects – in fact, that’s exactly what the magnifications look like. (Take another look.) Escalante provides a link to his blog, but it doesn’t appear to have the original video posted either.

Wait! I need to get my phone!

It’s too bad this recording of three alleged UFOs over Caracas is not provided or better analyzed, since Venezuela has had many good UFO sightings recently and Héctor Escalante is a good source of information – he investigated one in April 2021 over Fort Tiuna Military Complex, one of Venezuela’s most important military installations, and another in March 2021 taken by a cyclist in the Venezuelan Andes. His Instagram page and blog have some other recent reports from different areas of Venezuela. Media reports on the sighting have no other information either.

Venezuela is a politically volatile country, so some of these UFOs could easily be military operations or surveillance drones. With this video claiming to capture three high speed UFOs over the country’s capital city, it would be helpful to have more information. Because of that, the needle on the UFO Meter is pirouetting between “bugs” and “drones” for now.

A couple of days ago I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe with this title: “Taking a Look at Some of the Most Interesting Figures Tied to the Roswell ‘UFO Crash.'” It highlighted some of the very intriguing aspects of the Roswell affair. So, with that in mind, I thought today I would share with you some interesting – and lesser-known – aspects of the Rendlesham Forest “UFO landing” incident of December 1980 in Suffolk, England. Based upon their personal encounters, many of those who were present believed that something almost unbelievable came down in the near-pitch-black woods on the night of December 26. Lives were altered forever – and for the most part not for the better, I should stress. Many of those who were present on those fantastic nights found their minds dazzled, tossed and turned – and incredibly quickly, too. The incidents involved American military personnel who, at the time it all happened, were stationed in the United Kingdom. Their primary role was to provide significant support in the event that the Soviets decided to flex their muscles just a little bit too much – or, worse still, planned on hitting the proverbial red button and ending civilization in hours. Maybe, even in minutes. Depending on who you ask, those who were were in the area came face to face with a crashed Soviet satellite, a secret drone-type craft, extraterrestrials, an early stealth plane, time-travelers, and a top secret experiment involving mind-manipulation. It’s clear already that the Rendlesham affair was confusing from the beginning. Perhaps, though, we might get a few answers to what really happened. And from some who knew more than the rest of us.

(Nick Redfern) A Mystery that still continues

In November 2000, Georgina Bruni’s Rendlesham-themed book was published. Its title: You Can’t Tell the People. I found from Georgina that in late December 1980 a team from the U.K.’s biological-chemical facility in Wiltshire, Porton Down, was dispatched into the heart of Rendlesham Forest. Dressed in full-body protection (hazmat) outfits, they entered into the woods on a classified operation. It was assumed among those in the UFO research community who Georgina had confided in, that the Porton Down team was there to try and determine what happened over the course of those three nights and to see if there were any chemical or biological hazards still present. Georgina confided in me a list of various characters in this story who knew of the Porton Down ties to Rendlesham. By “a list” I mean she gave me the names of several people who had confided in her. Georgina was clearly worried about what she had uncovered – to the extent that she asked me to sign a sheet of paper that basically stated I would not reveal the names of those sources. It certainly wasn’t a legally-bounding contract, but, out of respect for Georgina, I agreed to take it as exactly that. I’m sure that part of the reason was because Georgina wanted to get the scoop for her own book on the case – which, as an author myself, is something I can easily understand. That said, I also got a feeling that Georgina had certain concerns about publicizing the names of the people who were sitting on the Porton Down story – and who had done so for years. So, the names stayed hidden. Now, onto another intriguing angle that was brought forth by people with something to say.

(Nick Redfern)

The Rendlesham  affair: Secret experiments, time-travelers, aliens or something else?

On October 25, 1988 Squadron Leader E.E. Webster of RAF Watton wrote me the following, after I raised questions about RAF Watton’s claimed connections to the Rendlesham Forest case: “Our log book for the period does indeed say that a UFO was reported to us by RAF Bentwaters at 0325 GMT on 28 December 1980 but that is all the information we have.” Apparently, though, it actually wasn’t “all the information we have.” Someone – or an agency – was being decidedly economic with the facts, such as those facts were. Nick Pope revealed that Georgina Bruni’s RAF Police sources knew of a far greater story concerning RAF Watton than the brief one provided to me by Squadron Leader E.E. Webster in 1988. Apparently, on the very same night that staff at RAF Watton recorded the presence of a UFO (on December 28, 1980), a pair of military dog-handlers were patrolling the facility when something very strange happened. The pair was shocked and baffled to see just outside the perimeter fence a number of figures. No, they were not aliens. They were all too human: they were dressed in NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) outfits, head-to-foot. One of Georgina’s police sources revealed that he and his comrades were interviewed, questioned, and warned to remain silent with regard to what they had seen on that cold, winter’s night. Or, rather, who they had seen.

Now, onto another revelation; this one from a man who wanted to reveal what he knew. The genesis of this part of the story dates back to 1986. That was the year in which the late Graham Birdsall – who ran the popular and successful U.K.-based UFO Magazine – had a notable conversation with a man named George Wild. Back in the eighties, Wild was employed as a prison officer at a facility called Armley Prison. Built in the 19^th century, and located in Leeds, England, it is a “Class C” jail, which means the prisoners are considered those who “cannot be trusted in open conditions but who are unlikely to try to escape.” George Wild quietly confided in Birdsall something highly disturbing, something that he had learned from a fellow officer: that on the night of December 27, 1980, the U.K. government’s Home Office was hastily readying local law-enforcement personnel to evacuate several prisons in Suffolk. Wild said that he knew for sure one of the prisons was HM [Her Majesty’s] Prison Highpoint North. It is situated in the village of Stradishall, Suffolk, which is approximately forty-four miles from Woodbridge. As for the primary role of the Home Office, its staff state that: “The first duty of the government is to keep citizens safe and the country secure. The Home Office has been at the front line of this endeavor since 1782. As such, the Home Office plays a fundamental role in the security and economic prosperity of the United Kingdom.” The inference was that the planned evacuations were due to what was happening in Rendlesham Forest.

(Nick Redfern)

Graham Birdsall, Rendlesham and a prison

Still on this matter of significant sources, there’s a story that surfaced on July 31, 1994. The source of the story? None other than Charles Halt, the man who prepared the almost-legendary “Halt Memo” on the Rendlesham case. In a lecture at the city of Leeds, U.K., Halt revealed that only a few hours after the first night of activity in the woods, a C141 Starlifter aircraft, which was used in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, arrived. A number of what were intriguingly termed “special individuals” exited the plane and made their quick way to the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge. Not even Halt knew what was going on. The team was in the woods for a number of hours, after which they left the woods, took their seats on the plane, and got the hell out of Dodge. What all of this data means – from key figures willing to share what they knew – is that there is still a great deal to be solved when it comes to Rendlesham. Let’s hope even more will come forward with what they know.

Those who take the view that the UFO phenomenon has no reality to it should take a look at some, hard-to-deny, cases involving military pilots. And, guess what? That’s the theme of today’s article: reports of UFOs by expertise pilots. We’ll begin with a 1973 military helicopter incident. One of the most notable UFO encounters ever recorded occurred shortly after 11:00 p.m. on October 18, 1973. That the prime witnesses were serving members of the U.S. Army Reserve only added to the credibility of the report. Having departed from Port Columbus, Ohio, their UH-1H helicopter was headed for its home base at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. Aboard were Captain Lawrence J. Coyne; Sergeant John Healey, the flight-medic; First Lieutenant Arrigo Jezzi, a chemical engineer; and a computer technician, Sergeant Robert Yanacsek. All seemed normal as the crew climbed into the air and kept the helicopter at a steady 2,500 feet altitude. But approximately ten miles from Mansfield, they noticed a “single red light” to the west that was moving slowly in a southerly direction. Initially they thought the object might be an F-100 aircraft operating out of Mansfield. Nevertheless, Coyne advised Yanacsek to “keep an eye on it.”

These were wise words, as suddenly the unidentified light changed its course and began to head directly for them. Captain Coyne immediately swung into action, putting the helicopter into an emergency descent, dropping 500 feet per minute. Equally alarming was the fact that radio contact with Mansfield Tower could no longer be established, and both UHF and VHF frequencies were utterly dead, too. When it seemed that a fatal collision was all but imminent, the red light came to a halt, hovering menacingly in front of the helicopter and its startled crew. At that close proximity to the object, Captain Coyne and his team were able to determine that this was no mere light in the sky. Coyne, Healey, and Yanacsek agreed that the object before them was a large, gray-colored, cigar-shaped vehicle, which they described as being somewhat “domed,” and with “a suggestion of windows.”

(Nick Redfern)

They could now see that the red light was coming from the bow section of the object. Then without warning, a green “pyramid shaped” shaft of light emanated from the object, passed over the nose of the helicopter, swung up through the windshield, and entered the tinted, upper window panels. Suddenly the interior of the helicopter was bathed in an eerie green light. A handful of seconds later the object shot off toward Lake Erie. But the danger was still not over. To the crew’s concern, the altimeter showed an altitude of 3,500 feet and a climbing ascent of 1,000 feet per minute, even though the stick was still geared for descent. The helicopter reached a height of 3,800 feet before Captain Coyne was able to safely and finally regain control of the helicopter. Shortly thereafter, all radio frequencies returned to normal and Coyne proceeded on to Cleveland Hopkins Airport without further problems. Moving on…

One of the more interesting UFO-themed documents – that demonstrates post-Project Blue Book, 1969 interest in the UFO puzzle – focuses on those strange Flying Triangle-type UFOs, specifically over Belgium in the 1989-1990 time-frame. The story originates with the U.S. Department of Defense and is titled “Belgium and the UFO Issue.” Circulated widely among the U.S. Intelligence community, it reveals the following: “Numerous UFO sightings have been made in Belgium since Nov 89. The credibility of some individuals making the reports is good…Investigation by BAF [Belgian Air Force] continues.” In a January 1997 interview, Nick Pope told me of this affair: “I approached the Belgians to get a comparison after their sightings. I phoned the Air Attaché at the British Embassy in Brussels and he spoke to one of the F-16 pilots who had been scrambled to intercept a Flying Triangle over Belgium back in 1990. Well, the Air Attaché reported back to me that the corporate view of the Belgian Defense Staff was that they did believe that they were dealing with a solid, structured craft. Apparently, the word from the Belgians was: ‘Thank God it was friendly.’ If it hadn’t been, it was made clear to me that there was very little that the Belgian Air Force could have done anyway – despite the fact that the F-16 is no slouch.”

(Nick Redfern)

The late U.K. UFO researcher, Omar Fowler, with a model of one of the “Flying Triangles”

Now, let’s have a look at the U.K. and its pilots and UFOs. At around 10:20 a.m., on the morning of April 29, 1957, two British Royal Air Force Hunter aircraft took to the skies from an RAF base called Odiham, located in the English county of Hampshire. The plan was for the aircraft to take part in a mid-air military training exercise. Things didn’t quite turn out as planned, however. When the planes reached a height of roughly 45,000-feet, one of the pilots found himself confronted by what can only be described as an undeniable, unidentified flying object. The official Air Ministry report on the affair states: “…when over Hayling Island Mission 28 No. 2 saw a large white object at 10 o’clock slightly above. The object was circular with a white slightly curving tail hanging below. The time was approx. 1110. Formation leader was informed and both pairs turned east onto a northerly heading to look for the object. At first the object was thought to be a parachute but later it was realized that the object must have been larger and at a greater distance because of the slow passing speed.”

One of the most fascinating of all UFO pilot-based encounters – an incident that almost resulted in a mid-air collision between a UFO and a Meteor jet – occurred over Royal Air Force Gaydon, Warwickshire, England, on the night of October 21, 1957. Less than a week later, the UK media was chasing down the story. Describing RAF Gaydon as “one of the RAF’s top V-bomber stations,” the Sunday Express newspaper stated that the Air Ministry (today, the Ministry of Defense) had taken rapid steps to get to the heart of the mystery. Reportedly, the UFO was seen visually by the pilot and tracked by ground-radar personnel – and only a few minutes apart. Questions, unsurprisingly, were quickly being asked: could the UFO actually have been a Soviet spy-plane? It was certainly a scenario that the Air Ministry felt important enough to address. Although – as will become apparent – the description given by the pilot did not sound like that of the average Russian aircraft. Plus, six days after the event occurred, Air Ministry staff were still scratching their heads. The reports can still be found in the U.K.’s National Archive.

(Nick Redfern)

The National Archives, where the U.K. Ministry of Defense’s pilot-based UFO reports are held.

UFOs have captured the popular imagination for the past seven decades. For most of this time, the subject has been treated with casual derision by mainstream media—as the butt of a lighthearted story at the end of the nightly news, underscored by X-Files music and obligatory references to “little green men.”

The media’s dismissive attitude towards UFOs stands in stark contrast to the views of numerous, highly-respected individuals in the spheres of politics and science who have, over the years, stated either publicly or confidentially their firm belief that the UFO enigma is not only worthy of serious study, but that it may even be representative of non-human intelligences.

Here are 10 of the most shocking statements about UFOs by scientists and government officials…

General Nathan Twining.

10. General Nathan Twining

General Nathan Twining served as Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force between 1953 and 1957, and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between 1957 and 1960. A highly distinguished officer, Twining rose through the ranks from a lowly private to a four-star general answering directly to the Secretary of Defense and the President himself.

In a once secret letter to Air Force Headquarters dated 23 September 1947, General Twining, then head of Air Materiel Command, stated that flying saucers were “real and not visionary or fictitious,” that they had “metallic or light reflecting surface[s],” that they were “circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top,” and were sometimes sighted in “well-kept formation flights varying from three to nine objects.”

Twining’s unambiguous comments in this then-secret letter about the physical reality of flying saucers were in direct contradiction to the USAF’s public position at the time that UFO reports were the product of mass hysteria or misidentifications of mundane phenomena.

Wilbert. B. Smith.

9. Wilbert B. Smith

Between 1947 and 1969, the US Air Force operated UFO investigation projects under three different codenames: Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book. Less well known is that America’s Northern neighbour was also taking a keen interest in flying saucers during the Cold War. Between 1950 and 1954, the Canadian government officially operated its own UFO study project—Project Magnet—with the objective of collecting data about the phenomenon and applying it in the spheres of military engineering and technology. The project was headed by Wilbert Brockhouse Smith, a senior radio engineer for Transport Canada’s Broadcast and Measurements Section.

In a previously top secret Canadian government document dated 21 November, 1950, drawing from information he had obtained via the Canadian embassy in Washington D.C., Smith noted of UFOs that: “The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.”

Professor Hermann Oberth.

8. Hermann Oberth

One of the boldest perspectives on UFOs during the 1950s came from Professor Hermann Oberth. A pioneer of rocketry and astronautics, and mentor to Werhner von Braun, Oberth was arguably one of the most influential engineers of the 20th Century. In an article for the American Weekly on 24 October, 1954, Oberth wrote:

“It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system. I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our earth for centuries. I think that they have been sent out to conduct systematic, long-range investigations, first of men, animals and vegetation, and more recently of atomic centers, armaments and centers of armament production. They obviously have not come as invaders, but I believe their present mission may be one of scientific investigation.”

Roscoe Hillenkoetter.

7. Roscoe Hillenkoetter

Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter became America’s first CIA Director in 1947 and, before that, was head of the Central Intelligence Group (CIG). He had previously been wounded during the attack on Pearl Harbor and commanded the USS Missouri in 1946. He retired from military service with the rank of Vice Admiral. In 1960, in a letter to Congress, Hillenkoetter famously wrote:

“Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. To hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel.”

Curiously, during his retirement years, Hillenkoetter joined the board of directors for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP)—America’s leading civilian UFO investigations group. In their ground-breaking book, Clear Intent, authors Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood describe Hillenkoetter’s high-level involvement with NICAP as being a key move in the CIA’s successful infiltration and dismantling of NICAP. More men with CIA ties would join NICAP in the years to follow, and these individuals came to control the organization from within during the 1960s and 1970s as its founder, Donald Keyhoe, was pushing ever harder for government disclosure of UFO reality. Eventually, Keyhoe was ousted as NICAP Director by Joseph Bryan, former chief of the CIA’s psychological warfare staff. By 1980, NICAP was defunct.

Senator Barry Goldwater.

6. Barry Goldwater

Barry Goldwater was best known as the five-term Senator from Arizona and as the Republican Party nominee for President of the United States in 1964. Goldwater was a significant force in American politics across four decades. In an official United States Senate letter dated 28 March, 1975, in response to an enquiry regarding his publicly stated interest in UFOs, Goldwater wrote:

“About ten or twelve years ago I made an effort to find out what was in the building at Wright Patterson Air Force Base where the [UFO] information is stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above Top Secret.”

In another Senate letter, dated 19 Oct. 1981, Goldwater further stated: “I have had one long string of denials from chief after chief, so I have given up… this thing [the UFO issue] has gotten so highly classified… it is just impossible to get anything on it.”

Victor Marchetti.

5. Victor Marchetti

Victor Marchetti served in the CIA from 1955 to 1969. Towards the end of his CIA career, Marchetti worked for several months as special assistant to CIA Deputy Director Rufus Taylor. Marchetti was also involved in establishing the Top Secret Pine Gap satellite ground station near Alice Springs in Central Australia—long rumoured by UFO conspiracy theorists to be Australia’s Area 51.

In an article for Second Look magazine in May, 1979, Marchetti raised eyebrows with the following statement:

“I do know that the CIA and the US government have been concerned over the UFO phenomenon for many years and that their attempts, both past and recent, to discount the significance of the phenomenon and to explain away the apparent lack of official interest in it have all the earmarks of a classic intelligence cover-up… My theory is that we have, indeed, been contacted – perhaps even visited – by extraterrestrial beings, and that the US government, in collusion with other national powers of the Earth, is determined to keep this information from the general public.”

Col. Gordon Cooper.

4. Gordon Cooper

The late, great astronaut Colonel Gordon Cooper was legendary for his role in the first human space flight program, Project Mercury, and his exploits were chronicled in the classic 1983 movie The Right Stuff (which co-starred Dennis Quaid as Cooper). Cooper had a number of UFO sightings during his military career and maintained until his death in 2004 that the US government had long been engaged in a large-scale UFO cover-up.

In a letter to Ambassador Griffith, Mission of Grenada to the United Nations in New York, dated 9 September, 1978, Cooper wrote:

“For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists and astronauts. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us… I feel that we need to have a top-level, coordinated program to scientifically collect and analyze data from all over the Earth concerning any type of encounter, and to determine how best to interface with these visitors in a friendly fashion.”

Lord Hill Norton.

3. Lord Hill Norton

One of the most high-ranking military officials (retired) ever to speak out on the UFO issue was the late five-star Admiral of the Fleet the Lord Hill Norton, who served as Britain’s Chief of Defence Staff and as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. Lord Hill Norton maintained a longstanding interest in UFOs during his later years. In his foreword for Timothy Good’s bestselling expose of government UFO secrecy, Beyond Top Secret (1996), Lord Hill Norton wrote:

“The [UFO] evidence is now so consistent and so overwhelming that no reasonably intelligent person can deny that something unexplained is going on in our atmosphere… there is a cover-up: in the United States on a massive scale, in Great Britain, and in several other countries.”

Fife Symington.

2. Fife Symington

One of the most famous mass UFO sightings of the past 30 years has to be the Phoenix Lights incident, in which thousands of individuals reported seeing a series of stationary lights over the Arizonian capital on the night of March 13, 1997. A delta or triangular-shaped craft of immense proportions was also widely reported as travelling low and slow over Arizona more broadly on the same night. The US air force was quick to attribute the sightings to misidentifications of military flares, and the then-governor of Arizona, Fife Symington, joined the debunking bandwagon when he staged a comedic press conference in response to the concerns of his constituents, going so far as to parade a man in front of the cameras dressed a ridiculous rubber alien costume.

Unknown at that time, however, was that the Governor himself had been among the witnesses to the Phoenix Lights. 10 years later, speaking at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. in November of 2007, Fife Symington stated in front of the world’s media:

“In 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I saw something that defied logic and challenged my reality… I witnessed a massive delta-shaped craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona. It was truly breathtaking. I was absolutely stunned… As a pilot and a former Air Force Officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I’d ever seen. The incident was witnessed by hundreds—if not thousands—of people in Arizona, and my office was besieged with phone calls from very concerned Arizonians. There are many high-ranking military, aviation and government officials who share my concerns… We want the government to stop putting out stories that perpetuate the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth conventional terms. Investigations need to be re-opened, documents need to be unsealed and the idea of an open dialogue can no longer be shunned. Incidents like these are not going away. When it comes to events of this nature that are still completely unsolved, we deserve more openness in government, especially our own.”

1. Luis Elizondo

In December 2017, the New York Times broke a dramatic story: the American government had been operating a secret UFO study program between 2008 and 2012 called the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The conclusions of the $22 million Pentagon project, which, according to the Times, continues quietly to this day, were that “aircraft” of apparently unearthly origin are routinely penetrating America’s airspace.

The man who headed the Pentagon UFO project, Luis Elizondo, told journalists that these “aircraft” or “UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena),” were performing manoeuvres that fly in the face of our known laws of physics. Even more shockingly, Elizondo revealed that the Pentagon has been recovering bizarre metal alloys from alleged UFO crashes which currently are being studied and stored by billionaire defense contractor Robert Bigelow.

Discussing the Pentagon UFO project live on air in December 2017, Elizondo told CNN:

“We have identified some very, very interesting anomalous types of aircraft… let’s call them ‘aircraft.’ Things that don’t have any obvious flight surfaces, any obvious forms of propulsion, and [that have] extreme manoeuvrability beyond the healthy G-forces of a human or anything biological; hypersonic velocities; low observability; [and] positive lift, seemingly defying the laws of aerodynamics.”

When encouraged by the news anchor to speculate as to the nature and origin of these mystery aircraft, Elizondo replied: “We’ve deliberately stayed away from going down the rabbit hole of ‘who’s behind the wheel and what are their intentions’… what we wanted to do was to let the data speak for itself.”

The anchor responded by nudging Elizondo again: “Let me ask you point blank the question: do you believe that life from somewhere else, while you ran this program, came here, visited, observed?” Elizondo stunningly replied: “There is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.”

West Yorkshire, England, is what’s known as a metropolitan county and includes the larger cities of Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield, as well as enough smaller towns to have a population of over 2.3 million people … and a number of extraterrestrials. In a surprising report, the West Yorkshire police revealed their area of responsibility summoned them to at least nine instances where a county constituent reported an encounter with a UFO and/or extraterrestrials. Is West Yorkshire a UFO hotspot or should someone check the water supply?

An average day in West Yorkshire?

“Caller is reporting he thinks he has seen a UFO. He could (see) this ‘thing’ in the sky that kept appearing then disappearing. This occurred 22 times where ‘something flashed’ then it disappeared, then it flashed again. (He) says he watched this happen for approx 15 mins.”

Yorkshire Live recently provided a list of the West Yorkshire UFO and alien reports and many sound like this one from Morley, Leeds – unusual lights that could be planes, drones or those pesky Starlink satellites. However, some defy those explanations, like this one from Knottingley, Wakefield.

“Caller reporting white orbs in the sky; two shot off like shooting star; he’s seen some disappear; he has this on video; he’s seen 10 tonight; and they’re moving really weird; He can’t see them now. But he’s seen them last two nights. He’s just seen another now, and another one.”

Then there are the alien encounters, like this one from Skircoat, Halifax:

“Reporting he has seen an alien…he has seen something floating in the sky, talking to him.”

A woman in Weetwood, Leeds, reported being abducted, and a man in Skircoat, Halifax, said he had a close encounter.

“Reporting he has seen an alien…he has seen something floating in the sky, talking to him.”

While nine UFO/alien reports in one year in a county of 2.3 million residents might not qualify it as a paranormal hotspot (read about all of them here), West Yorkshire has a history of them that probably influences its police force to give the calls special attention. The most infamous involves former constable Alan Godfrey who claimed to have seen a UFO hovering over Burnley Road in Todmorden in 1980 and, under hypnosis, claimed to have been abducted and spent time in a spaceship. This was five months after finding the body of a missing man, Zigmund Adamski, who was reported to be strangely dressed, had his head shaved and sporting a bore a ring of burn marks, showed a slimy yellow-green substance seeping from a neck wound, and appeared to have been dropped into a railroad cola bin from a high altitude. To this day, Godfrey claims the two incidents ruined his life because of media coverage and investigations by the government.

Another typical day in West Yorkshire?

Then there was Russ Kellett, who in 2020 revealed a 1999 UFO abduction in Bingley, West Yorkshire, in which he remembers being in a spaceship with British pop star Robbie Williams. And in December 2021, a woman also from Todmorden broke her 40-year silence about witnessing a diamond-shaped UFO there in 1981 because it was approximately one year after Godfrey’s famous incident because she didn’t want her life ruined. Then there’s this — Todmorden has had unexplained cattle and sheep mutilations since the 1960s which many people blame on alien experiments, and there have been many alien big cat sightings which some have also attributed to ETs.

If you were a West Yorkshire constable, would you pay special attention to UFO and alien reports?

Or would you put in for a transfer to another county?

Trivia buffs will know that Italy contains two other countries within its boundaries – the famous Vatican City and the not-so-famous San Marino. The Most Serene Republic of San Marino is located in northeastern Italy, has a population of over 33,000, and is led by two equal heads of state known collectively as Captains Regent. The current Captains Regent may make San Marino more famous than Italy or Vatican City as they recently approved allowing the country to make a historic United Nations request to host periodic UFO/UAP conferences.

San Marino’s Mount Titan castle

“On January 12, 2022, in fact, an important meeting took place in San Marino. Dr. Roberto Pinotti and Dr. Augusto Casali were received by the Most Excellent Captains Regent [Capitani Reggenti], the Heads of State of the Republic of San Marino. The object of the cordial meeting, which lasted over an hour, was the presentation of the Titano Project to the highest authorities of the Republic.”

The meeting was announced by Paolo Guizzardi, creator and project manager of Project Titan (Titano Project) – named for Mount Titano, the highest peak in San Marino. Roberto Pinotti is the President of the Centro Ufologico Nazionale (CUN) of Italy, President of the International Coalition for Extraterrestrial Research (ICER), the UFO organizations behind the project, and former editor of UFO magazine. Pinotti is also the author of “UFO Contacts In Italy: Volume One : 1907 – 1978” which contains photos he claims are of real extraterrestrials that landed in Francavillia, Italy, starting in 1956.

The author of “UFO Contacts In Italy: Volume One : 1907 – 1978” is Dr. Robert Pinotti, the founder of the National UFO Center (CUN) who is considered to be a leading expert in European UFO sightings. In that capacity, he has acted as a UFO consultant for the Italian government and claims to have seen secret documents on encounters from the Italian Department of Defense.

Augusto Casali is San Marino’s former Minister of Tourism who previously helped hold a series of International Symposia on Unidentified Flying Objects under the auspices of the San Marino government.

“Dr. Pinotti then gave a clear picture of the latest developments of the situation in the USA that sees the full “clearance” of the UAP phenomenon, making it clear that the only reasonably foreseeable obstacle that could have had negative repercussions for San Marino was now overcome.”

According to Guizzardi, the Captains Regent were impressed with the presentation and like the idea of San Marino and Mount Titan becoming the new “Geneva of UFOs.” The next step is for Francesco Mussoni and Giacomo Simoncini, the current Captains Regent, to the Grand and General Council, San Marino’s legislative body, for approval. (They need to do this quickly because they only serve six month terms as Captains Regent). Since this is an international program, Guizzardi says the proposal would then be presented to the United Nations for a preliminary examination, discussion and ultimately a vote by the General Assembly.

I didn’t know there was another Geneva.

Project Titan obviously has two purposes – to tap into the rising interest of UFOs around the world by becoming a center for international meetings, and to use that publicity to turn it into a tourist attraction. It obviously has a high-powered and highly experienced UFO research team behind it. However, Pinotti points out that this was tried once before in 1978 by Sir Eric Gairy, then Prime Minister of Grenada, who made a similar proposal to the UN which was shut down by the UK.

Will San Marino become the “Geneva of UFOs”? Let’s hope so. It beats Area 51 in the summer.