Alien Abductions In Sci-Fi

With Halloween around the corner I've been rewatching some of the scariest films I remember from my childhood about the alien abduction phenomenon. I shared my thoughts about these films on Facebook and thought those social media posts were thoughtful enough to record on this blog.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- 

INTRUDERS

Tonight’s film is ‘Intruders’ based on the late Budd Hopkins’ book about cases of alleged alien abduction. It is terrifying because it is based on experiences that people actually believe happened to them… and I’ve got no reason to disbelieve them… though it raises complex questions about what the word “real” actually means… can something exist without being physical, and therefore not have to obey the normal laws of physics that govern the physical universe? Is there a non-physical world that has its own separate laws? Are these alien abductions an example of these two linked but separate realities colliding? Is human consciousness a kind of bridge allowing this? These are some of the questions I will be considering as I take a look at some of the films and classic literature in this sub genre of UFOlogy.

Watch it HERE.

THE UFO INCIDENT

Next up on my Alien Abduction filmography list is ‘The UFO Incident’, a 1975 television film based on the bestselling book ‘The Interrupted Journey’ written by John G. Fuller. It documented the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction case, the first widely publicised UFO close encounter of the fourth kind.

While I believe that the accounts of alien abduction experiencers are legitimate because of the large numbers of witnesses experiencing the same thing. The large numbers, perhaps as many as 5% of the population are alleged to be abductees, also makes me question if this is a physical phenomenon or not. In other words do these accounts of alien abduction represent “nuts and bolts metallic spacecraft” piloted by “flesh and blood” alien beings who have travelled to Earth from another planet in the physical universe, or, is something else happening? 

The lack of physical evidence had led me to conclude that although “real” in the sense that the experiences were not delusions or imaginary, that alien abductions must be a paranornal or non-physical phenomenon? In other words that a real external intelligence is interacting with human consciousness but no one is physically taken onboard an alien spacecraft. That alien abductions have more to do with ghosts and demons than extraterrestrials was my conclusion.

However the Hill abduction makes me want to rethink this conclusion for two reasons. One the famous “Star Map” Betty Hill recalled being shown onboard the UFO, which she drew and was discovered after years of research to (potentionally) match the postions of real stars, Zeta I and II Reticuli. 

The second reason is the dress Betty was wearing on the night of the alleged  alien abduction. Betty claimed under hypnosis that a large needle was inserted into her stomach, according to the alien beings this was a pregnancy test. Stains on the dress Betty was wearing in the region where the needle was allegedly inserted is evidence that something physical happened to the Hills.

Whatever the phenomenon of alien abductions represents, it appears to be able to move between the physical world and the metaphysical world in a similar way to how we can travel between land and sea.

One last note. Even if you are sceptical about alien abductions, ‘The UFO Incident’ is an excellent film, telling a very real love story. It would just as easily be a good choice for a Valentine’s film as a Halloween film and stars James Earl Jones (Voice of Darth Vader) who just recently passed away. 

Watch it HERE.

COMMUNION 

Probably the first Alien Abduction film I ever saw. I remember my dad having an audio book of the original book written by Whitley Strieber, read by Planet of the Apes actor Rodney McDowell, this was probably the first time I was ever scared by something being read from a book. 

Watching the film again and having recently read the new edition of the book, it is clear to me that the encounters are not always (if ever) in the physical world. Instead they occurred in a dreamworld. But these are no ordinary dreams as they have a real physical impact such as injuries. Also other witnesses report having similair experiences in the 1980s before series like the X-Files popularised stories of alien abductions. 

SETI are currently looking for radio signals from extraterrestrials in far away solar systems. Perhaps we are receiving messages from them, but not in the form of radio signals. What if the aliens can communicate via sending signals directly into the human mind? Perhaps using human imagination and expectations based on our folklore and popular culture to take form in dreams. Perhaps even using the human nervous system to create sensations like pain that can cause physical injury.

Watch it HERE.

Listen to the audio book HERE.

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT 

Perhaps the best ancient astronaut film. Before Erich von Däniken wrote Chariots of the Gods and popularised the idea that ancient aliens visited Earth in the past, Nigel Kneale got there first in Quatermass and the Pit. Originally a six part television series on the BBC it was later remade as a film by Hammer Studios and given the title “Five Million Years To Earth” for its American release.

While not an Alien Abduction film, the backstory is that ancient aliens abducted primitive apemen five million years ago, experimented on them to increase intelligence and the result were early humans. 

Ridley Scott referenced this film in the film commentary on the blu ray release of Prometheus, an ancient astronaut film that borrows far more ideas form Nigel Kneale’s script than the books of Erich von Däniken. The 3D holograms seen in the Engineer spaceship in Prometheus echoing a scene in Quatermass and the Pit where a “ghost” is seen by a soldier (offscreen) in the alien spaceship.

Considering that there are nearby stars which are much older than sun, it is possible that intelligent life evolved on planets orbiting these stars milllions of years before life started on Earth. Statistically it is more likely that aliens could have visited Earth in the remote past and gaps/leaps in mankind’s decelpment from apes to modern humans could be explained by alien engineers experimenting with human DNA. We are currently splicing DNA from plants and animals together. So why not? After all, until Charles Dawin’s Theory of Evolution the accepted explanation for most of human history for mankind’s existence was that the “Gods”, which became “God” in the later monotheist religions, created humans in their own image. So the concept that beings from the sky/stars created mankind is actualy an ancient one. 

RONEY: Quatermass - it’s a pentacle.

QUATERMASS: What? 

RONEY: Those marks. One of the ancient cabalistic signs. They were used in ancient magic(k).

From ‘Quatermass and The Pit’ (BBC, 1958-59). Later remade and adapted into ‘Five Million Years To Earth’ (Hammer Films, 1967)

DOCTOR WHO - THE DAEMONS

Doctor Who’s unofficial remake of Nigel Kneale’s ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ and my personal favourite Doctor Who story. I think this must have been my first exposure to the Ancient Astronaut Theory that Ancient Aliens have been helping humans develop for the last 100,000 years or more.

Perhaps the most interesting concept borrowed by the Doctor Who writers from Nigel Kneale’s script is the concept that Magick (yes with a “k” on the end to differentiate the real power to manipulate reality from magic, which is simply a conjuring trick) could be developed into an advanced  science with practical applications.

Eyewitness accounts of odd symbols resembling Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on wreckage/debris from alleged UFO crashes like the one at Roswell in 1947 are well known inside the UFO field. What if instead of writing these were occult symbols? What if instead of using physics to travel through space the aliens have developed an alternative science based originally on what we would call magick? 

Chemistry is an example of a science that began as a pseudo science. The treating of illnesses with magical potions. This was the beginning of treating illnesses with specific drugs to remedy a particular disease or other health problem. 

There is a certain amount of theatrics involved with cases of alien abductions. Why would the aliens want to scare the people they are abducting? The aliens should be capable of tranquillising the subjects of their experiments, so that they would have no distress or memory at all of anything happening. The way we do with animals, for instance, if a large and dangerous zoo animal needed to be seen by a vet.

It is widely believed in paranormal research circles that poltergeists feed off human fear and anger, and that the best thing to do if you are experience such a haunting is to simply ignore it until the poltergeist runs out of energy effectively. Could the aliens seen in abductions be using similar paranormal energies generated by negative human emotion to travel between different dimensions? Perhaps a non-physical realm where the laws of physics do not apply, making interstellar travel possible?

One last thought … it is suggestive that the alleged covert group set up by the US Government to study the alleged UFO wreckage found at Roswell in 1947 was called Majestic 12 … as in Magic or Magick 12. 

HAWTHORNE: Oh, you could go on all day and all night showing us pretty pictures. I mean, horns have been a symbol of power ever since

DOCTOR: Ever since man began? Exactly. But why? All right, Captain Yates, the curtains. Now creatures like those have been seen over and over again throughout the history of man, and man has turned them into myths, gods or devils, but they're neither. They are, in fact, creatures from another world.

BENTON: Do you mean like the Axons and the Cybermen?

DOCTOR: Precisely, only far, far older and immeasurably more dangerous.

JO: And they came here in spaceships like that tiny one up at the barrow?

DOCTOR: That's right. They're Daemons from the planet Daemos, which is?

JO: Sixty thousand light years away on the other side of the galaxy.

DOCTOR: And they first came to Earth nearly one hundred thousand years ago.

From ‘Doctor Who: The Daemons’ (BBC, 1971)

FIRE IN THE SKY

Probably the scariest of the Alien Abduction films, ‘Fire In the Sky’ is based on the alleged (the other witnesses passed lie detector tests) experiences of Travis Walton as described in his book ‘The Walton Experience’. If not for this case I would probably separate cases of alleged alien abduction and the UFO sightings into two distinct and separate types of phenomena, one involving “nuts and bolts” physically real but unknown aircraft. And the other real only in that it involves something (possibly intelligent) external affecting (possibly communicating) with the human mind. In the case of the latter, whatever it is using popular culture, folklore and religious beliefs to construct a lucid dream so real that it can cause physical injury on the experiencer.

…However, unfortunately it isn’t that easy to separate UFO sightings and alien abductions, and Travis Walton’s experience perhaps best documents why.

Walton was seen being struck by an energy beam from a UFO by multiple witnesses. It was clearly a physical object not a dream or hallucination. 

Perhaps then the UFO occupants can choose between many different communication channels to make contact with humans, much in the same way we decide between having a face to face meeting, or making a phone call or arranging a Microsoft Teams or Skype meeting. The only difference being that the UFO occupants can use consciousness itself as a communication channel when face to face encounters are not necessary or possible. 

Watch Joe Rogan interview Travis Walton HERE.

ROSWELL

Docudrama about Major (Later Lieutenant Colonel) Jesse Marcel, who in 1947 was the Intelligence Officer for the 509th Composite Group (509 CG), a bomb group of the United States Army tasked with the operational deployment of nuclear weapons. And in 1947 still the only such operational group at that time. It was the 509th that conducted the atomic bombings in Japan that ended the Second World War. Let that sink in for a moment. This group was about as elite and as important to defence as it possibly gets. 

Now consider this … it was the Major Jesse Marcel who as the Intelligence Officer of the 509th was the first army officer to investigate an alleged “Flying Disk” crash in Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. And after seeing the wreckage confirmed it was wreckage from a flying saucer. This story was then realised to the press and went viral around the world, including the major British newspapers like The Times!

… Then the next day… the United States Army apologised and said it was all a big mistake… it was just a weather balloon. How anyone could possibly believe that someone with the background and position Marcel had could possibly make such a mistake boggles the mind. The story becomes even more ludicrous when you realise th at following this alleged mistake of comic proportions Marcel was promoted. It just doesn’t make any sense.

About 30 years later Marcel and dying, he finally broke his silence and confirmed it was not a weather ballon. It was what he originally said a “flying saucer”, a term which since 1947 had become synonymous with alien spacecraft. And the United States Army was forced to admit that the weather balloon story was indeed just a cover story as Marcel claimed. The new official account was that what was recovered was a giant sized, high altitude Mogal survaliance balloon, part of a top secret project to spy on Russia and determining if that had developed their own Atomic Bomb (which they finally did two years later in 1949). For me this still doesn’t make sense. A balloon is a balloon, no matter how big or top secret it is. I think I was about ten when I first heard this story in the 1990s, since then the offical story has just grown even more hard to believe. Nonsense about 6ft tall crash test dummies from the 1950s being confused with child sized dead aliens seem in the 1940s. Now people from a military town can’t tell the difference between dummies and dead aliens? 

I don’t believe it. I’ll believe Marcel.  Just think about logically, if it wasn’t for the implications, I don’t think anyone could possibly believe the ballon story.

Watch it HERE.

ALIEN

My favourite film. On the documentary that accompanies the DVD realease, the director Ridley Scott explains that the complex lifecycle of the Alien creature was based on real parasitic wasps, who inject their embryos into caterpillars which paralysis their host until the lava are ready to burst out. Combined with the “used future” look that Ridley Scott borrowed from the writer Dan O'Bannon’s first film ‘Dark Star’, the complex life circle of the alien gives the film a sense of realism lacked in the B movie space monster films of the 1950s that ‘Alien’ owes much of it’s film DNA to.

Another seed of reality that would go I noticed by most filmgoers in 1979 was the location of the alien planet in the film, Zeta II Reticuli system. The same star system where the humanoid “grey” aliens responsible for the Betty and Barney Hill abduction in the 1960s allegedly originated from.

Weirdly, the life circle of the fictional alien in the film in some ways echoes the bizarre reproductive experiments reported by alleged alien abductees under hypnosis in the real world. These experiments involve the hybridisation of humans with aliens, using human women as incubators before the unborn hybrid is removed and finishes gestating in an artificial womb onboard a UFO. Such bizarre stories are easily the most fringe and controversial aspect in an already fringe enough topic… but the stories are consistent.

Assuming these stories reflect something that is a physical reality and are not an attempt to communicate using symbolism via visions and dreams, what do these accounts potentially tell us about the greys and their motives for abducting people? 

Could it be that like the fictional alien in the Ridley Scott film, the greys can only reproduce by fusing their own DNA with that of another species and using this other species as a host to gestate their offspring? 

Zeta II Reticuli system is estimated to be twice as old as our own sun. Any potential life originating from there then, could potentially be twice as old as life on Earth, which could include intelligent life. Any intelligent life that left their home planet millions of years ago could possibly evolve to make hybridisation with other species possible. It would be the fastest way to adapt to the environment of a new planet and also avoid the fate of the Martians in HG well’s novel ‘The War of the Worlds’, where the Martians all died from exposure to Earth’s microbes that they had no immunity to. 

THE FOURTH KIND

The Fourth Kind is a disturbing film to watch, but very interesting. If aliens are travelling from other solar systems to Earth, it is impossible for them to be coming in nuts and bolts spacecraft travelling slower than the speed of light. UFOs are seen too often and seem to be reacting to current events on Earth too quickly. For example the first Atomic Bomb was detonated in 1945 and within two years in the same region flying saucers turn up, seemingly investigating our nuclear weapon tests. If these objects came from another solar system they would need to be at least approx 4 light years away. Meaning it would take a radio signal at least that time to reach our nearest neighbouring solar system. Then travelling at light speed take another four years to get to Earth. That’s eight years total. As UFOs were being seen in 1947 (and earlier) in the American Southwest and were seemingly interested in nuclear weapons, it would seem to indicate they could send signals and travel faster than light to get here two years after the first Atomic Bomb test.

While travelling faster than light is impossible in our physical universe, other universes could potentially have different laws of physics that allow objects to travel faster than light.

So if such a parallel universe existed it could be used as a kind of cosmic motorway. The only problem is how could an object travel between parallel universes?

Arthur C. Clarke famously said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Could aliens be using what we would call magick (yes with a “k” to differentiate real magick from fake magic conjuring tricks) to open portals into other dimensions? This might sound absurd, but a lightbulb would appear to be magical to someone who had no knowledge of electricity. I’m only suggesting that there might be something to magick which could potentially be developed into another science one day. Perhaps a science of the Mind or Consciouness. 

With this in mind it is interesting that one of the aspects of real world alien abduction mythology which is highlighted in the film is the phenomenon of alleged screen memories. These are distorted memories of real events subtly altered either by the sub consciouness mind to make the memories accessible without driving someone insane, or, perhaps artificially altered by the aliens encountered during abductions to hide their activities. Put simply instead of remembering an alien, abductees remember other mundane things instead in their place. In the film the aliens are replaced in the memories of the protagonist by an owl, something which is widespread in real abduction accounts. Which is interesting because the owl has long been an important symbol in ancient religions. The owl was associated with the Ancient Greek godess of wisdom Athena. And even today owls are still allegedly ‘worshiped’ in outlandish rituals by the quasi secret group the Bohemian Club.

It could simply be that the large black eyes of owls lend the creatures to being good standins for the black eyed grey aliens mostly associated with abductions. But an alternative explanation could be that owl and other esoteric symbolism is somehow being used to generate somekind of energy or power (for lack of a better similarly as this psychic power may not  be energy in the scientific sense of the word that can be measured) which is used to phase in and out of our physical universe in ways we don’t yet understand.

In 2000 Guardian newspaper journalist Jon Ronson and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones secretly filmed the “Cremation of Care” mid summer ceremony conducted at the secretive Bohemian Grove. Watch The Secret Rulers of the World - episode 2 which was shown on Channel 4 HERE.

The Welsh Roswell: Did A UFO Crash In North Wales In 1974? - Richard's Room 101

What has become known in UFO circles as the “Welsh Roswell” or Berwyn Mountain incident splits the UFO research community into two distinct camps, those who believe that an alien spacecraft crashed on the Mountain range and those who believe the seemingly out-of-this-world events can be explained by a combination of natural phenomena and the popularity of shows such as the X-Files which feed the public’s need to believe in the unexplained. What is not in any doubt is that something happened on the Berwyn Mountain, North Wales on the night of January 20, 1974. The events on the mountain range were witnessed by the whole community. Police Constable Gwilym Owen stated, “there was a great roar and a bang. The Sky lit up over the mountains. The colour was yellowish but other people in the valley described seeing blue light.” 

   

Annie Williams who lives in the nearby town of Llandrillo told investigators about what she witnessed that January night. “I saw this bright light hanging in the sky,” she said. 

   

“It had a long fiery tale which seemed to be motionless for several minuets, going dim and then very brilliant, like a dormant fire which keeps coming to life. It would have been like an electric light bulb in shape, except that it seemed to have rough edges. Then fell somewhere behind my bungalow, and the earth shook.”

 

   

Other witnesses also reported the ground shaking as if something had crashed into the side of the mountain. David Hughes of the local village post office at Ysbyty Ifan reported that “The whole house shook violently and suddenly. It began quite suddenly, lasted for a few seconds, then stopped just as suddenly.” 

    

Hundreds of locals fearing a plane had crashed on the mountain phoned the emergency services, and within an hour police were searching the mountain. Five days after these mysterious events, on January 25, 1974, it was reported in the British press that an RAF mountain rescue team had also been dispatched to the area, but allegedly found nothing. One member of the public who heard an explosion and was convinced something had crashed into the mountain was district nurse Pat Evans. Thinking that a plane had crashed after contacting Colwyn Bay police she made her way up the mountain to offer assistance to the survivors while they waited for the emergency services to arrive. Instead of finding a crashed plane, however, she saw a bright ball of red light on the mountainside.

   

“There were no flames shooting or anything like that. It was very uniform; round in shape … it was a flat round”. As she watched, she observed the light change in colour from red to yellow and then white. Smaller “fairy lights” could be seen nearby. Too far away to reach on foot, the nurse turned back to head home, puzzled by what she had seen. 

    

 After the initial frenzy of media interest, the story gradually died down and was almost forgotten about, until the mid-Nineties when the Roswell UFO crash was approaching its 50th anniversary and the alien autopsy hoax was generating new interest in an old topic.

     

Alien bodies and Wreckage 

In 1996 retired police sergeant Tony Dodd published in UFO Magazine an account of a man who claimed he was in the British Army at the time of the Berwyn Mountain crash. According to this anonymous whistleblower in January 1974 his unit “received orders to proceed with speed towards North Wales.” After arriving at Llangollen, North Wales on the evening of January 20, Dodd’s source noticed a great deal of “ground and air” activity in the area. “We, that is myself and four others, were ordered to go to Llandderfel and were under strict orders not to stop for any civilians.” 

    

Upon arriving in the small Welsh village his team was then ordered to load two large oblong boxes into their vehicles and to take them to the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Porton Down in Wiltshire, England. Warned not to look inside, some hours later they arrived at Porton Down and delivered the mysterious cargo. 

      

It is then alleged that the staff at Porton Down opened the boxes still within sight of Dodd’s informant and others. Inside we are told were the remains of two alien beings “five to six feet tall” which had been put inside “decontamination suits.” The Porton Down staff removed the suits, revealing creatures to be “so thin they looked almost skeletal with a covering skin.”

     

The Army source also told Dodd, “Although I did not see a craft at the scene of the recovery, I was informed that a large craft had crashed and was recovered by other military units.” Even more bizarre was this former Army man’s claims that he was told by others in his unit that they had also delivered extraterrestrial beings to Porton Down, but that these creatures were “still alive.” 

    

While the claims of Dodd’s British Army source have never been proven to have really occurred, it is interesting at least that someone that nobody disputes investigated the UFO phenomenon for the British Government, Nick Pope, wrote a science fiction novel, Operation Thunder Child, in which alien creatures are taken for study at Porton Down. “In any contact with an extraterrestrial civilisation the key strategic objective would be to open lines of communication and facilitate peaceful contact. Secondary objectives would include information exchange, with a particular emphasis on science and technology,” Nick Pope told me in an interview for my Sci-Fi Worlds column in 2009.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF OF AMERICA

Another Crashed UFO in New Mexico? - Richard's Room 101

So entrenched has the 1947 Roswell crash become in the minds of many UFO researchers, that it is often overlooked that the Roswell incident was not actually the first crashed saucer story to enter the public consciousness. That distinction belongs to another alleged UFO incident in the New Mexico desert. This time near Aztec, a small town in the upper western portion of the state, hundreds of miles away from the Roswell crash debris field found by Mac Brazel’s on the Foster Ranch in the summer of 1947. 

  

In his 1950 best-selling book Behind The Flying Saucers gossip columnist Frank Scully alleged that a flying disk had been found on a ranch 12 miles from Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948, the year after the alleged Roswell crash. In Paul Kimball’s 2003 documentary Aztec 1948 UFO Crash UFO researcher Nick Redfern summed up the alleged events at Aztec: “The jest of the Aztec tale is that in 1948 a flying saucer complete with anywhere between 14 to 18 bodies crashed in Aztec, New Mexico and was recovered in high secrecy by the US government.”

   

According to Scully, he was told about the Aztec crash by a man he called “Dr. Gee”, who was supposedly a specialist in magnetic anomalies working for the US government at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where famously the Manhattan Project to develop the Atomic bomb had been centred. Dr. Glee explained to Scully that the alien vehicle used some kind of magnetic propulsion system to levitate and that this was the reason he was brought in by the US government.

  

In his book and talks, Scully claimed that Dr. Gee had been flown out by helicopter to the New Mexico desert in April 1948 to look at the wreckage of a flying saucer that had crashed there. The Doctor also allegedly told Scully that the deceased bodies of the spaceship’s alien crew, who were described as small humanoid beings just over three feet tall, were also found at the crash site. The bodies of these creatures were said to be hairless, with soft downy skin, and two of the crew may have still been alive for a short time after the impact of the crash. Later accounts of the Roswell incident would also involve the recovery of similarly described deceased alien beings. In their 1994 book The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell authors, Kevin D. Randle and Donald Schmitt wrote: “Stringfield, from his sources, said that he was able to draw a number of conclusions. According to Stringfield, the beings are humanoid, three and a half to four and a half feet tall … There was no hair on the head … In fact, there isn’t much hair on the bodies.” 

  

As well as the biology of the aliens found at the two crash sites, there are also similarities between the Roswell debris found by Mac Brazel a year earlier and the lightweight but durable metal the Aztec saucer was said to be constructed from. In Behind the Flying Saucers Scully wrote: “It looked like aluminium, but wasn’t of a metal known to this earth.” 

  

Another similarity to Roswell are the pictorial symbols similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics alleged to be on the inside of the Aztec craft. The son of Major Jessie Marcel, who was one of the men sent by Colonel Blanchard to investigate the debris found by Brazel on the Foster Ranch, also reported seeing strange purple writing that resembled hieroglyphics on pieces of the Roswell debris. In his book The Roswell Legacy published in 2007 for the 60th anniversary of the Roswell crash, Jesse Marcel Jr. described what he remembered being shown by his father back in July 1947. 

  

“As I looked at the piece, with the light reflecting on the inner surface, I could see what looked like writing. At first I thought of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but there were no animal outlines or figures. They weren’t mathematical figures either; they were more like geometric symbols-squares, circles, triangles, pyramids, and the like. Approximately one-fourth of an inch tall, they were imprinted on the inner surface of the beam, and only on one side. They were not embossed into the I-beam but seemed more like part of its surface.” 

  

The parallels between the alleged alien creatures and materials described by Aztec and Roswell witnesses are intriguing. In The Roswell Incident, published in 1980, the authors Charles Berlitz and William Moore even speculated that the Aztec crash story was a garbled version of the Roswell crash. 

  

There are some big problems with the credibility of the Aztec crash story, however. Scully’s book was debunked in two articles in True magazine published in 1952 and 1956. Written by San Francisco Chronicle reporter J. P. Cahn, the two articles revealed that Dr. Gee, who he named as Leo GeBauer, and Scully’s other main source Silas Newton, were in fact two slick oil conmen who had hoaxed Scully. 

  

The Aztec incident has been revived somewhat in recent years by a book by Scott Ramsey, a UFO researcher and successful businessman from North Carolina. One anomaly highlighted by Ramsey that should give sceptics pause for thought is a mystery road off of Hart Canyon which leads to what he believes was the crash site, a deforested area surrounded by trees with broken branches as if something had flattened the area. The mysterious dirt road doesn’t appear on any road maps of the area until around 2003, and it is unknown where the road came from or who made it. Ramsey suggests that the road was made by military personnel attempting to extricate the Aztec saucer after it was forced to make an emergency landing at Hart Canyon. This might seem like wild speculation, however, there is some physical proof at the alleged crash site that something happened there in 1948. 

  

Adding to the mystery is a concrete slab sticking up out of the ground at the alleged crash site. Like the road, there are no records or reasons why it should be there in the middle of nowhere. Ramsey believes the slab was made by the military to support one of the legs of a crane used to carry out the crashed saucer. Laboratory tests have also shown that the concrete slab dates to around 1948, the year of the alleged saucer crash.

  

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

1986 UFO Cases

The 1980s were a boom period for UFOs with bestselling books like The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore and input from Stanton Friedman, Timothy Good’s Above Top Secret and Whitley Strieber’s Communion. There were also movies and TV series like Steven Spielberg’s ET: The Extraterrestrial, Predator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Cameron’s Aliens, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and documentaries such as Unsolved Mysteries.
 
And if all that wasn’t enough in 1987 US President Ronald Regan even spoke about "an alien threat from outside this world" in a speech to the United Nations, and that same year the major US soap opera The Colbys featured a storyline in which the character Fallon reported being the victim of an alien abduction! In a guest article for this blog UFO author and historian Rupert Matthews wrote: "The Colbys TV series and Whitley (Strieber) book launched the abduction phenomenon into the mass media. Suddenly the television, magazine and newspaper world could not get enough abduction stories. Many researchers took to hypnotic regression of witnesses in an effort to get more details and more coherent versions of events. Sadly some researchers had little or no training in hypnotic treatments and made some key errors of technique that would later discredit their findings. Nevertheless UFOlogy in the later 1980s became dominated by abduction stories obtained largely by hypnotic regression. It seemed that the answer to the entire UFO riddle might finally be within grasp of researchers."
 
The decade also ended with Bob Lazar's famous allegations that he had worked at the secret Nevada Area 51 or Groom Lake base back in the late 1980's on a back-engineering program involving captured alien saucers. There’s no doubting then that the 1980s marked a turnaround in the popularity of the UFO subject after years of declining interest in UFOs following the US Air Force’s decision to close down their UFO investigation Project Bluebook in 1969.
 
One year that seems to stand out is 1986. What with it being 25 years now since the UFO events of that year I asked Nick Redfern, who blogs for UFOMystic, if there were any good 1986 cases I should research. Nick replied: "Probably the only two good ones I can think of for that year, is one which was a Jumbo Jet sighting of a UFO over Alaska. I'm pretty sure a Google search will find it. And I know there was a very good Brazilian military UFO chase/sighting in that year, and that the US Defense Intelligence Agency released its files on the case a few years ago, so they may be at the DIA website, as they have their FOIA-UFO files posted there."
 
A Google search found an AP article entitled "FAA Presses Investigation of Lights Seen Over Alaska" about the Jumbo Jet sighting Nick Redfern had told me about. The sighting took place on November 17, 1986 and involved an encounter between a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 freighter aircraft and three UFOs as it flew over Alaska, en route from Iceland to Anchorage.

According to the crew, "two small objects and one huge Saturn-shaped object were in sight and on radar for more than 30 minuets". The unidentified lights were "yellow, amber and green" and the largest one "showed up on the plane's weather radar".

The pilot changed course and altitude multiple times in an attempt to explain the unidentified objects and VHF radio communications were garbled at the time of the sightings.
 
In 2006 the pilot, Capt. Kenju Terauchi, was interviewed by two Kyodo News journalists about the sightings. The interview was picked up by various UFO websites. Here is an extract from the interview on UFOcasebook.com:

"Suddenly,” Terauchi said, "600 meters below, I saw what looked like two belts of light. I checked with the Anchorage control tower. They said nothing was showing on their radar." But something was emitting those lights, and whatever it was seemed interested in the jumbo, for it adjusted its speed to match to match the plane's – "like they were toying with us," said Terauchi.   That went on for seven minutes or so. "Then there was a kind of reverse thrust, and the lights became dazzlingly bright. Our cockpit lit up. The thing was flying as if there was no such thing as gravity. It sped up, then stopped, then flew at our speed, in our direction, so that to us it looked like it was standing still. The next instant it changed course. There's no way a jumbo could fly like that. If we tried, it'd break apart in mid-air. In other words, the flying object had overcome gravity."

 
But the strange events of flight 1628 were not over yet for Capt. Terauchi and his crew. UFO authority Richard H. Hall wrote about the third "gigantic" UFO Terauchi witnessed that night in the second volume of his The UFO Evidence:

About 5:30pm, while in the vicinity of Fairbanks, AK, Capt. Terauchi checked a white light behind the plane and saw a silhouette of a gigantic spaceship. It was walnut-shaped, symmetrical above and below, with a central flange. Capt. Terauchi said, “It was a very big one, two times bigger than an aircraft career.” At its closet point, the large object cast such a bright light that it illuminated the cockpit, and Terauchi could feel heat on his face. Radio communications again became garbled during the close approach. The veteran crew became frightened by the large object and requested permission to change course. After the course change they looked back and saw the object still following them. Increasingly fearful, they requested a descent to get away from the UFO (“We had to get away from the object.”) After they descended and turned again, the object disappeared. The FAA at first confirmed that several of its radar traffic controllers had tracked the B-747 and the large object, and that US Air Force radar had also done so. Later official statements backed away from this and tried to a ascribe the radar targets to weather effects. On December 29, 1986, the FAA issued a report saying, We are accepting the descriptions of the crew, but are unable to support what they saw.

More recently the Japan Air Lines flight 1628 sighting was featured on the History Channel's UFO Files series in an episode entitled "Black Box Secrets" and the case has gained a reputation as being perhaps one of the best UFO sightings ever.

Another good pilot aircraft sighting in 1986 happened on May 11, in Sedona, AZ. A pilot, Robert H. Henderson, and his wife travelling in a Cessna 172 saw a dome-shaped object make a head-on pass at them and fly beneath their plane at an estimated 1,200 mph.
 
There were a concentration of sightings in Brazil in 1986, including many physiological effects cases between March 19 and June 15. The best of which was the UFO chase case Nick Redfern had mentioned. The Telegraph ranked this case, known as São Paulo sighting after the airport where the UFOs were tracked from, number eight in a 2009 "list of 10 of the most famous UFO incidents in history". Telegraph contributor Sasjkia Otto wrote in the newspaper that on the night of May 19, 1986 “around 20 UFOs were seen and detected by radar in various parts of Brazil. They reportedly disappeared as five military aircraft were sent to intercept them."
 
The São Paulo case was discussed openly by high ranking Brazilian officials. It was first reported by Colonel (Ret.) Ozires Silva, president of the state-owned oil company Petrobrás, who was flying on an executive Xingu turbo-prop, when he and the pilot saw and pursued the mysterious lights for about 25 minutes. The incident was covered widely in the Brazilian media at the time, leading to a press conference at the Ministry of Aeronautics in Brasilia on May 23, with air traffic controllers and air force pilots involved in the scramble mission.

At the press conference the Minister of Aeronautics, Brigadier General Otávio Moreira Lima, said: “Between 20:00 hrs (5/19) and 01:00 hrs (5/20) at least 20 objects were detected by Brazilian radars. They saturated the radars and interrupted traffic in the area. Each time that radar detected unidentified objects, fighters took off for intercept. Radar detects only solid metallic bodies and heavy (mass) clouds. There were no clouds nor conventional aircraft in the region. The sky was clear. Radar doesn't have optical illusions. We can only give technical explanations and we don't have them. It would be very difficult for us to talk about the hypothesis of an electronic war. It's very remote and it's not the case here in Brazil. It's fantastic. The signals on the radar were quite clear."

The Minister also announced that a commission would study the incident. Air Force Major Ney Cerqueira, in charge of the Air Defense Operations Center (CODA), added: "We don't have technical operational conditions to explain it. The appearance and disappearance of these objects on the radar screens are unexplained. They are Unidentified Aerial Movements... The technical instruments used for the identification of the lights had problems in registering them. CODA activated two F-5E and three Mirages to identify the objects. One F-5E and one Mirage remained grounded on alert. A similar case occurred four years ago (1982 Commander Brito VASP airliner radar-visual incident). The lights were moving at a speed ranging between 250 and 1,500 km/hr. [150 to 1,000 mph] The Air Force has not closed the case."

Today São Paulo continues to be a UFO hotspot. In March 2011 a video shown on Brazilian TV of a disc-shaped object hovering in the clouds for a minute or so – before disappearing in a bright flash was widely circulated. The Telegraph writing that: "The television station explained the clip originated from two motorists who saw the object as they were driving near the town of Agudos in Sao Paulo state. They hopped out of the car to shoot the video with their hand-held camera. According to the TV station, the cameramen reported the earth shaking at the same time the unidentified flying object vanished in a blast of light."

In 2010 Brazil's government ordered its air force to officially record any sighting of unidentified flying objects.

There were other sightings in 1986. In Butler, PA, on January 7, a UFO emitted six light beams toward the ground. And around 20 minuets later in Pittsburgh, a silver-gray disk with body lights and mist formed around it was seen hovering above the city, before moving out of sight.

There was also a good landing case in Calalzo di Cadore, Italy on August 15 of that year. Strong physical traces were left at the landing site, and after a two hour memory loss the witnesses reported seeing two humanoid beings.
 
The 1980s then saw an increase in the popularity of the UFO subject, and while blockbuster films such as ET and bestselling books like Communion played a large part in this turnaround, solid UFO cases like those of 1986 were also important.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/05/us/faa-presses-investigation-of-lights-seen-over-alaska.html
http://www.ufocasebook.com/jal1628surfaces.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/6041498/UFO-Files-top-10-UFO-sightings.html
http://www.phenopedia.com/index.php/1986_S%C3%A3o_Paulo_UFO_sighting
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8357480/UFO-spotted-in-Sao-Paulo.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10947856
Richard H. Hall, The UFO Report: A Thirty Year Report Volume II, (Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2001) p.142-143.

The Truth Behind Roswell

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Roswell.

-----------------

The Truth Behind Roswell

By Rupert Matthews

When I first started investigating the Roswell UFO Crash in detail there were two aspects that really surprised me. The first was the date on which the Flying Saucer was alleged to have crashed into the desert near Roswell: July 1947. The second was the date on which the investigation into the apparent crash had begun: 1978.

My previous reading on the Roswell Crash had, I must admit, been rather sketchy and had been restricted to secondary sources such as magazine articles or books written by people who had not been there. I had somehow come to form the impression that the crash had taken place in the 1950s and had been investigated at the time. Shows how wrong you can be.

As I started to work my way through the assorted eyewitness accounts given in interviews, written as letters or in books I was in for another surprise. Nobody had claimed to have seen a UFO crash near Roswell at all. One person had seen a UFO. Another had heard a loud bang and seen some scraps of debris. A third had seen the US military cordon off a large area of ground. A fourth had seen a crashed aircraft of some kind. A fifth had seen some dead bodies.

However, when all the various accounts were put together they did form a cohesive story that held together pretty well. Quite clearly something very odd and unusual had fallen from the skies on to the desert near Roswell in early July 1947. The United States Air Force had moved quickly to recover the object and had thrown a veil of secrecy around the whole incident. Those who had seen debris from the crash all agreed that it was composed of very odd materials that they did not recognise and that it had some odd properties.

But I kept getting pulled back to the two initial surprises. The early date bothered me. July 1947 was a long time ago, even further in terms of UFO research. The epochal sighting by Kenneth Arnold that propelled Flying Saucers into the international media had taken place on 24 June 1947 - just over a week before the alleged crash at Roswell. That timing had two important impacts on the Roswell story.

The first is that Flying Saucers (or Flying Disks as they were also termed in 1947) were a major news item across the media at the time. Everyone was talking about them, far more than is the case today. The second was that there was no generally agreed description of what a UFO was like (and even the term UFO had not been coined). These were very early days indeed. It was possible that almost any unusual object in the sky or falling to the ground would be described as being a Flying Saucer. So just because the people who saw the object that fell at Roswell called it a Flying Saucer does not mean that it was what we would today term a UFO.

Reading the very few descriptions of the object given by those who claim to have seen it, does not read like more recent witness statements of a UFO. The object was said to be roughly triangular or conical in shape with stubby little wings or fins. There does not seem to have been anything terribly odd about it all, it sounds very mundane.

The fact that investigations did not begin until more than 30 years after the event also bothered me. Several of the key witnesses had died over the years. Their accounts survived only second hand. A neighbour remembered what one man had told him 30 years earlier. A son recalled what his father had told him. Such accounts are intrinsically vague and lack detail. Crucially the person is not there for the investigator to ask for more detail or to seek out cross references. Other witnesses were still alive, but they were being asked to recall events more than 30 years old. The human memory is a notoriously frail and deceptive thing. Dates can be blurred and details merged. One of the witnesses who was able to give a very good and clear description of dead bodies could not be certain when he had seen them - he did not even know which year never mind the precise day. Even more alarming is the fact that we humans are rational creatures and we seek to rationalise events. We are all capable of misremembering events so that they fit into an accepted pattern better than what we actually saw. After 30 years all sorts of details could easily be forgotten or remembered incorrectly.

By the time I was half way through my research I had almost given up hope of ever finding out what had really happened at Roswell back in 1947. There were so many contradictions in the evidence, so many details that did not match, so many accounts that were vague.

But then I decided to take a step back from all the mass of fine detail and look at the bigger picture. There was one thing that all those people who had been in Roswell in 1947 did agree on. Something had happened and that something had been very odd indeed. True, some witnesses contradicted each other. True, some details that at first seemed linked to the crash turned out to be quite unrelated. True, some apparent facts turned out to be nothing of the sort.

But in the final analysis something fell out of the sky in early July 1947. The United States Air Force did move quickly to collect the wreckage, then quickly launched a determined effort to kill the story and keep the find secret.

Can I tell you what it was that fell from the sky? No. There are several possibilities that would fit the evidence - and an alien spacecraft is but one of those.


Rupert Matthews is the author of the book Roswell which is available on Amazon and from all good bookshops. You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He also maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

UFO Crashes in Britain

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Roswell.

-----------------

UFO Crashes in Britain
By Rupert Matthews

The evidence for UFO sightings, and landings, in the UK is widespread, numerous and often compelling. But when it comes to UFO crashes, I find that most people simply shake their heads. “You mean Roswell,” they say. But I don’t mean Roswell. I mean UFO crashes in Britain.

Now, I would be the first to admit that the evidence pointing to the fact that any UFO had ever actually come down in Britain is nowhere near as impressive as that for UFO sightings or voluntarily landings, but that does not mean that it does not exist.

Take, for instance, the events at Conisholme, Lincolnshire, in January 2009. In the winter’s evening several locals reported seeing two orange-red spheres flying over this small village some miles northeast of Louth. The objects were trailing what appeared to be yellowish arms or threads behind them. Suddenly there came the most almighty bang, followed by a vicious whirling noise. Before long police were on the scene, cordoning off access to the nearby wind farm. Something had hit one of the enormous wind turbines, smashing one 65-foot long blade and mangling a second. Whatever had hit the turbine had not only done some impressive damage, it had also left behind a small quantity of lightweight material.

Opinions differ as to what had happened. The company that runs the windfarm, Ecotricity, refused to speculate. They merely confirmed that a turbine had been damaged and was being repaired. Some locals thought that a stealth aircraft from one of the nearby air bases had been to blame. Others said they knew what a stealth aircraft looked like at night - or rather what its jet engines looked like - and that the orange balls had not been that. They blamed a UFO.

Even if the wind turbine at Conisholme had been destroyed by a collision with a UFO, I am not sure that this truly counts as a UFO crash. Nobody reported the object having actually impacted the earth at all.

Other events reported in the press as being a “UFO Crash” turn out to be more or less routine sightings dressed up to make the headline more exciting. On 26 January 2009, for instance, a woman walking her dog along Baytree Road in Clevedon, Somerset, saw a cigar- or rocket- shaped UFO plummet to the ground accompanied by a shrieking or howling noise. The object came down in the playing fields of a school, rested there for a while, then the noise restarted and the object took off at high speed heading west. Dramatic stuff, but quite clearly the object did not crash - as the newspaper headlines next day had it - but had landed and then taken off again.

Rather better known is the Berwyn Mountain Incident of 1974. On the evening of 23 January several people in northern Wales and adjacent areas of England reported seeing green lights in the sky. The lights were reported to be spherical or saucer shaped and to be moving erratically in odd patterns and formations. Then, at 8.38pm, residents around the Berwyn Mountain in Wales heard a deafening rumbling explosion and the ground shook. People came out into the streets. One man said he had seen lights over the mountain just before the crash and speculated that an aircraft had crashed. Phone calls were put through to the emergency services. While waiting for more help to arrive, the local policeman rounded up a nurse and went up on to the mountain to see if they could help.

Not long afterwards a convoy of army trucks arrived, the men cordoned off the mountain and refused admittance to anyone. The policeman and nurse came back down under army escort. They said that they had seen lights and debris as if from a crash, but had been instructed to leave. The nurse would later say that she had got close to the crash and seen bodies that did not seem to be human.

The official explanation for the events at Berwyn are that an unusually large meteor hurtled across the sky at the same time that an earthquake struck Berwyn. Some geologists have speculated that the lights were the rare, and largely unexplained phenomenon, of earthquake lights which are sometimes reported in the air just before earthquakes strike. Others remain convinced that it was a UFO that crashed at Berwyn, though very little of the craft seems to have survived the impact.


Rupert Matthews is the author of the book Roswell which is available on Amazon and from all good bookshops. You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He also maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

RAF Rudloe Manor and the UFO Files

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Roswell.

-----------------

RAF Rudloe Manor and the UFO Files
By Rupert Matthews

I think I first heard about the highly secretive military base at Rudloe Manor when I used to go down to visit relatives in Bath. That would have been sometime in the 1970s. We went to visit local sites, including Lacock Abbey, Solsbury Hill and Bath Abbey.

One time we went to see the Box Tunnel - that great engineering marvel of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. As we stood watching the trains thundering up and down the main line from London to Bristol I noticed a high wire fence topped by barbed wire and hung with notices indicating that dire penalties would come to anyone who strayed over the fence.

"What’s over there?" I asked my uncle.

He glanced at the fence. "Oh, some RAF place," he replied. "Very hush hush." And we went back to watching the trains.

That was during the Cold War, of course, and everyone who knew about Rudloe Manor assumed that the highly secretive things that went on there had something to do with tracking Soviet aircraft, intercepting Soviet radio messages or some other top secret defensive purpose. It never crossed our minds back then that Rudloe Manor had anything to do with UFOs.

It was not until some 20 years later that I began to hear rumours that the well guarded base at Rudloe Manor might have some UFO link. One of the boys I had been at school with was by then a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF. One time when he was on leave and we were down the pub I mentioned about RAF Rudloe Manor. He fixed me with a cool stare.

"I don’t know what goes on there," he said. "And I suggest you don’t ask too many questions. Brass hats can get very touchy about places like that."

"Interesting," I thought.

By the later 1990s the rumours had begun to take a more definite form. All the information came from serving or former RAF personnel who had worked at Rudloe Manor. Understandably, these people preferred to remain anonymous as they feared the government might prosecute them for breaching the Official Secrets Act. A perfectly reasonable concern, but it had the effect of making it impossible to check whether these witnesses had ever worked at Rudloe Manor and, if so, in what capacity. Inevitably this led some to suspect that the stories were not as reliable as they might be.

According to these reports, there was a vast underground complex beneath the apparently innocuous barracks and office buildings scattered in the grounds of the old manor house. This much could be checked out and was accurate. The manor had been taken over by the RAF at the start of World War II precisely because these huge underground caverns existed. They were the abandoned workings from which the much prized Bath Stone had been quarried out in the 19th century. Being deep underground the tunnels and caves were, of course, proof against German bombing. From 1940 onward a whole range of government and military units and installations were located in the tunnels of Rudloe Manor where they would be safe from the Luftwaffe. Much of what went on there at the time is now well known and while it was all vital to the war effort is hardly controversial.

When the war ended, however, the government did not return Rudloe Manor and its underground caverns to its prewar owners as happened to most wartime acquisitions. It was kept by the government. And it was kept very secret. It has since been revealed that one function of the caves was to house a government communications centre that would be activated if a nuclear war began. Other uses of the caves remain highly classified and top secret.

One of these top secret purposes is the Central Computer Complex (CCC). Quite what the CCC does is not entirely clear. Some say it controls the Trident nuclear missile firing systems, others that it has a role in 'sigint' or signals intelligence. Nobody really knows. One of the most intriguing of the few facts to come out of CCC is that there is another section of the caverns under Rudloe Manor that is accessed only through CCC (itself heavily guarded and accessed only by those with high security clearance) by way of a door that is guarded 24/7 and that only a few of those cleared to enter CCC are permitted to pass.

Now what can be behind that door? Obviously something highly sensitive.

Back on the surface, Rudloe Manor has long been the HQ of the RAF Provost & Security Services (PSS), which is responsible for all aspects of security affecting the RAF. It includes personnel from MI5 and MI6 who liaise with the PSS and - at least from time to time if not permanently - CIA personnel as well. We know from declassified government documents that the PSS collated and sifted UFO reports for several decades. They binned any reports that they felt could be explained as sightings of aircraft, birds, planets and so forth, then investigated those that remained unexplained. Several of those unexplained reports were swiftly taken off the desks of the lowly staff at PSS and sent for analysis "elsewhere" - to behind that door in CCC apparently.

In the early 1990s UFO investigators in Britain began to notice that there was a cluster of high quality sightings over the Box-Rudloe-Corsham area of Wiltshire. This reminded some of a similar cluster of sightings over Warminster, a few miles to the south, in the 1960s. Intrigued, investigators began paying more attention. The sightings were found to centre over Rudloe and to consist largely of UFOs without wings that pulsated with colours of blue, red or green. Often they were said to be diamond or conical in shape.

So what can we say with confidence about RAF Rudloe Manor. Well, it is top secret, contains vast underground caverns that are off limits to all but a very few people with top level security clearance, has been part of the RAF UFO investigation process and is a centre for UFO sightings. Beyond that we really don’t know. Some claim that the place is a liaison venue for the British government to interract with aliens. Others that objects retrieved from UFOs are stored there.

Perhaps one day we will know the truth.


Rupert Matthews is the author of the book Roswell which is available on Amazon and from all good bookshops. You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He also maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

A Room 101 Interview with Timothy Good

This fortnight in Room 101, it's the latest in our series of special text interviews. After many years of following his work, I'm finally getting the chance to ask best-selling author and UFO researcher Timothy Good some questions. From Above Top Secret (which many consider the Bible of Ufology) to Unearthly Disclosure and his latest Need to Know, Good has written some excellent books. I'm sure you will all enjoy this interview as much as I did...here we go... 

  

Richard Thomas: First things first. Thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions. I really appreciate it and I'm sure the BoA readers will too.

Your very first book, co-written with Lou Zinsstag, was George Adamski The Untold Story. What most impressed you about Adamski and have your thoughts on him changed much since writing the book?  

  

Timothy Good: Adamski's photographs (and films) impressed me a great deal. Also, his initial encounter near Desert Center, California, in November 1952, was witnessed by six people who signed affidavits testifying to the fact. I knew two of those people, and they weren't lying. His famous photos, taken with a plate camera attached to a telescope, have been authenticated by a number of qualified people. As for his films, the last and best one - showing a craft similar to the one he photographed in 1952 - was taken at Silver Spring, Maryland, in February 1965, witnessed by my friend Madeleine Rodeffer and three US government employees. The 8mm colour film was authenticated by Bill Sherwood, an optical physicist and a senior project development engineer for the Eastman-Kodak company in Rochester, NY. In May 1998 I was invited to the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office in the Pentagon, which at that time handled the unmanned spy planes programme. The director, Major Kenneth Israel, implied to me that the film was genuine. Unfortunately, copies of the film (sometimes shown in documentaries) are unconvincing, being darker and more contrasty than the original film. Individual frames light-enhanced by Sherwood show much more detail.

  

As for Adamski's claim that the aliens he met were from all the planets in the solar system - Venus and Mars in particular - this has understandably given rise to much ridicule. Most likely, this was a smoke screen to protect their actual origin. However, I don't discount the possibility that alien bases exist on the other planets in our system. Indeed, I think it quite likely that Venus and Mars, and several moons of Saturn and Jupiter, for example, qualify in this respect. Any adverse temperatures and pressures can be dealt with by means of advanced technology. And they most definitely have had bases on Earth for a very long time.

  

I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that Adamski held a US Government Ordnance Department card, which gave him access to US military bases and other restricted areas. He liaised with many high-ranking military personnel, including Lord Mountbatten and Lord Dowding on one occasion, and even - in 1963 - with President Kennedy.

  

Richard Thomas: I understand that you may have had what might be called a "contactee experience" yourself, what do you think happened?

  

Timothy Good: Yes, in fact I've had several encounters with beings I believe were from elsewhere. The first occurred at a diner near the Arizona/California border in November 1963 while I was on tour with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It would take me too long to go into all the details, but it involved an unusual young woman who - in the presence of three of my colleagues - responded very positively, but non-verbally, to my telepathic question as to whether she was from elsewhere. Just after we left the diner in our convoy of three coaches, I was astonished to see a road sign for Desert Center - I'd no idea we were anywhere near there. Quite a coincidence! 

  

The second encounter took place in the lobby of a hotel in the middle of New York in February 1967, between a rehearsal and concert with the London Symphony Orchestra. About half an hour after I'd transmitted a telepathic request for definitive proof that some aliens were living among us, an immaculately suited man walked into the lobby then sat beside me. Following my telepathic request to indicate by means of a certain sign if he was the person I was looking for, he did so immediately. Neither of us spoke. It was a cathartic experience for me.

  

Richard Thomas: One of your books is called Alien Base. What do you think of the possibility that Earth could have already been covertly colonised by extraterrestrials or, alternatively, that another intelligent species could have evolved here long before mankind?

  

Timothy Good: I'm convinced that Earth was colonized by ETs millennia ago, and that we humans are a hybridized species. Apparently, hybridization started at the time of Homo erectus. There are many different species of extraterrestrials. The abductions in more recent times seem to involve the use of humans for hybridization purposes. But for whose benefit? In the 1990's I spent a lot of time investigating cases in Puerto Rico and it's clear to me that the animal mutilations and abductions are related to the abduction phenomenon. For example, I interviewed a family who encountered bug-eyed creatures that had developed some human characteristics - specifically wispy traces of hair on their heads. Are they trying to adapt to our planet, and if so, why?

  

Richard Thomas: Over 20 years ago now, in Above Top Secret, you were the first researcher to make public the controversial MJ-12 documents. What are your current thoughts on the documents and MJ-12?

  

Timothy Good: As I have stated repeatedly in my books subsequent to Above Top Secret, the MJ-12 papers are forgeries. The purpose, in my view, was to smoke out some of the real MJ-12 members or those who were knowledgeable about the organization. The ruse worked. Several former military and intelligence personnel - e.g. Dr Eric Walker, a British-born scientist - have confirmed that MJ-12 existed (see Need to Know).

  

Richard Thomas: It is commonly believed in Ufology that the UFO cover-up began in early July 1947 after the famous Roswell Incident. So, when I read your latest book, Need to Know: UFOs, the Military and Intelligence, I was intrigued to learn of a possible 1933 UFO crash recovery in Milan, Italy. The possible existence of a top-secret group - Gabinetto RS/33 - allegedly set up after the supposed 1933 crash, to deal with "unknown aircraft" was also very interesting. How likely do you think it is that a UFO did crash and that an Italian MJ-12 like group was set up in 1933? 

  

Timothy Good: The UFO cover-up seems to have begun in 1933 with the top-secret RS/33 group. Other governments – that of Sweden in particular – also became concerned about intrusions of strange flying machines that year. Unfortunately we don't have an actual description of the type of unknown aircraft which came down in Italy. I think it possible that a UFO did crash, but I have no definitive information on that particular case. However, the RS/33 documents – which include descriptions of unexplained craft seen by pilots in 1936 - are evidently genuine.

  

Richard Thomas: What do you think of a possible link between Gabinetto RS/33 and flying saucers allegedly built by the Nazis during WWII? Perhaps you might have some thoughts on the Nazi "Bell" device discussed in Nick Cook's The Hunt for Zero Point.

  

Timothy Good: Roberto Pinotti, who co-authored a book with Alfredo Lissoni on the case, believes that the alleged retrieval led to some German "reverse engineering". I don't know if that’s true. And as I said, we don't have (or at least, I don’t have) an actual description of the craft involved. As for the "Nazi hypothesis", one of the world's leading aviation historians, Bill Gunston, who wrote the foreword to Need to Know, believes there is no serious evidence that the Germans actually produced any highly advanced flying discs, though he concedes that they were beginning to work on a conventionally propelled craft with circular aerofoils. Re "the Bell", it definitely existed and a great deal of information can be found in both Nick Cook's book and Igor Witkowski's superb Truth About the Wunderwaffe , but there seems no evidence that its use was related to flying machines of any sort. As Witkowski concludes on the final page: "There is no evidence that the Germans mastered the production of 'flying saucers' with a revolutionary propulsion. One may on the other hand prove that they were attempting to use analogous bell-shaped objects as a weapon."

  

Richard Thomas: One of my favourite cases is the Berwyn Mountain Incident or "Welsh Roswell." What do you think may have happened in the Berwyn Mountains in 1974? And what do you think of the possibility of an MJ-UK group?

  

Timothy Good: I never investigated this case personally, so I keep an open mind. As to the possibility of a "MJ-UK", probably an equivalent team was set up, but I have no specifics. The top-secret "Flying Saucer Working Party" (1950-51) would qualify in many respects. Whatever the case, the UK is subservient to the US regarding these matters.

  

Richard Thomas: What are your thoughts on the recent UFO activity in the UK, particularly the police helicopter sighting near RAF St Athan, a military base outside Cardiff? Interestingly, when I asked Nick Pope about the sightings he said: "Some sightings have clearly been caused by Chinese lanterns, but the MoD appear to be using this as an excuse not to investigate." 

  

Timothy Good: I've yet to see a detailed official report, so I can't comment. Chinese lanterns (or "UFO balloons") have been responsible for nearly all the UFO sightings reported this year - and to a lesser extent, last year. They are a damned nuisance - particularly for us researchers. 

  

Richard Thomas: Given that your latest book is called Need To Know, how much do you think US Presidents and British Prime Ministers are allowed to know about UFOs? Also how much do you think big corporations might know?

  

Timothy Good: A number of US presidents have been briefed on aspects of the alien problem. They were told as much as they needed to know. However, Eisenhower and Kennedy, for example (and perhaps a few others) also had direct contact with extraterrestrials. The most knowledgeable president, in my opinion, is George H. Walker Bush. As for the present incumbent of the White House, a friend of mine asked him what he knew about the UFO situation. “Ask Cheney,” came the terse reply. I doubt that many British prime ministers have been told much. I think that Margaret Thatcher, thanks to her rapport with Reagan, learned a few things. As far as big corporations are concerned, I’m told that there is indeed a degree of corporate involvement.

  

Richard Thomas: In Alien Contact you interviewed Bob Lazar about his alleged experiences at S-4, a supposed ultra-top-secret facility near Area-51/Groom Lake where, according to Lazar, alien technology is being studied and reverse-engineered. How much of Lazar's story do you think might be true? And do you still think reverse engineering could be going on at Area 51? 

  

Timothy Good: Lazar claimed to be a nuclear physicist. He isn't. However, he is a talented engineer and launches his own rockets and drives and maintains a jet-powered car (or used to). Definitely something odd seems to have happened to him, but I remain dubious about some of his claims. Perhaps he was exposed to S-4 (which does, or did, exist) in case he came up with some original ideas. Or it could have been an experiment to test public reaction, knowing that he would tell the media. I just don't know. It's important to bear in mind that Lazar was drugged on several occasions by the security personnel at S-4. I have no idea what’s going on there now. 

  

Richard Thomas: Ben Rich, the second director of the famous Lockheed's Skunk Works and sometimes called the "father of stealth," once made the incredible comment that: "We now have the technology to take ET home." In light of this, how successful do you think any reverse engineering efforts may have been? And what are your thoughts on the idea of a secret space program? 

  

Timothy Good: In addition to having reverse-engineered some recovered alien vehicles, I believe that we’ve been given highly advanced technology – including spacecraft - by certain allied extraterrestrials. As Ben Rich stated at the University of California School of Engineering in 1993: “We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects . . . and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity.” 

  

Richard Thomas: One of the most interesting chapters in Alien Contact is called "Cosmic Journey." What was Cosmic Journey and what do you think about it now?

  

Timothy Good: The 1989 Cosmic Journey Project, supported by the US government, NASA and Rockwell International, was a proposal for an international touring presentation of space-related materials, such as a mock-up of the space shuttle, and even 6,000 square feet of UFO-related material. I was invited to become the official consultant on UFO research. The main portion of the show, I learned, would be the future of space and the technical advances predicted over the next 100 years. To my everlasting regret, I was unable to make the private meeting with the organizers in Florida, and recommended former NASA engineer Bob Oechsler to fill the position. The rest is history (see Alien Liaison/Alien Contact). Suffice it to say that Bob learned a great deal and claimed to have had some extraordinary experiences while working on the project – which eventually was cancelled. 

  

Richard Thomas: What are your plans for the future? Are you working on anything or have any new cases grabbed your attention recently?

  

Timothy Good: I’m always working on new cases. I have no plans for a new book, however - I’ve yet to sort all my files relating to the last one, which took several years of intensive work. There’s also the question of money. Unearthly Disclosure (2000), for example, cost me around £35,000 – flights, local transport (including hired planes), hotels, researchers, translators, on-site interpreters, a forensic specialist, and so on. As for (relatively) recent cases that have grabbed my attention, the mile-wide craft of unknown origin seen by multiple witnesses in January this year over Stephenville, Texas, impressed me, as did the radar-confirmed sighting by two airline pilots and passengers of two apparently mile-wide craft over the Channel Islands in April last year.

  

Richard Thomas: Thanks again, I look forward to your future books, interviews and lectures. 

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA