A Gray in the Night
Eli Libson is a Twin Cities based artist and game designer. He’s also an experiencer with some strange UFO stories. He came out to Elmwood, WI last July for UFO Days 2022 looking for someone to hear his story. This long-form podcast audio includes a 1960s encounter between an ore train on the Sioux Line out of Superior, WI, a alleged psychic download, an encounter with Gray, and mysterious implant under the skin.
Plum City UFO 1975
Attend a free lecture about UFO Encounters like this from the Elmwood Area at this year’s UFO Days 2022, July 29-31.
“About the same time as George Wheeler’s first sighting, there was a UFO flap in this area – Ellsworth, Plum City, Elmwood, River Falls. That was in the spring of ’75, and people were going out at night in carloads to certain places in this area looking at these things,” said MUFON investigator Dr. Jack Brostrack. “I talked to several people during that time … there were two excellent sightings – Carole Forster, who lives just outside of Elmwood, and Mr. and Mrs. [Gibson] of Plum City. They actually saw a structure.”
The story of Elmwood schoolteacher Carole Forster’s encounter is well-known and told in previous articles. The story of the Plum City UFO is more obscure and has nearly been forgotten. It happened March 14, 1975, the night after high-profile UFO sightings in Mellen and Ashland, WI, and only twelve days after Forster’s frightening encounter. Two young couples snowmobiling in the woods near Plum City encountered a UFO.
The encounter occurred well past dark. Documents indicate it was nearly 10:30 PM when Mr. and Mrs. William Gibson of Plum City and Mr. and Mrs. Michael Kitchner of Maiden Rock saw two bright lights coming over a hill and a big red light associated with it. Mrs. Gibson later told the story to Dr. Jack Brostrack, professor of biology at University of Wisconsin-River Falls and MUFON UFO investigator.
The story seems to suggest they first saw the lights approaching from above tree level in a rural wooded area where they were snowmobiling. Gibson said they initially assumed they were seeing lights from a road in the distance; they thought the approaching lights belonged to a car coming over a hill. Then they realized there was no road in that direction. Meantime, the lights kept drawing closer. Finally, an object came into view. It came down, Gibson said, almost to treetop level and just hovered there.
The sudden appearance of the otherworldly craft frightened the snowmobilers.
The object had two huge “over-sized” lights in front and a smaller red one toward the back. Brostrack says the witnesses described it as “kind of oval-shaped. They didn’t describe it as being really saucer-shaped. It could have been long and torpedo-shaped, but at least from the side, it was kind of oval.” Mrs. Gibson observed four legs, like landing gear, extending from the underside. The object appeared to be metallic with a surface that reminded of “crinkling up aluminum foil and then stretching it out again.”
She didn’t know who the farmhouse belonged to; she just ran to the front door, on the edge of breaking down into hysterical sobbing.
The sudden appearance of the otherworldly craft frightened the snowmobilers. They returned to their snowmobiles and went in the opposite direction as fast as they could. They stopped at the first farmhouse they came to. Mrs. Gibson panicked. She didn’t know who the farmhouse belonged to; she just ran to the front door, on the edge of breaking down into hysterical sobbing. She told Brostrack that she felt scared to death. Brostrack interviewed both couples, and the Kitchner’s corroborated the story.
It’s a worthy close encounter case on its own, but when correlated with other local cases in the Eau Galle-Chippewa River valleys from around the same time, a pattern emerges. Plum City is about fifteen miles directly south of Elmwood and about twelve miles west of Durand. Arkansaw, WI is between them, on the same road.
- Doverspike and Fedie, Durand, WI, January 21, 1975: Mitch Doverspike and Scott Fedie of Durand have a close encounter on a rural road with a UFO that appeared as a big round bright light. Sightings continued around the Durand area for the next several weeks.
- Carol Forster, March 2, 1975: A UFO pursues and harasses the car of schoolteacher Carole Forster and her three children as they drive from Arkansaw toward Elmwood.
- George Wheeler, April 7, 1975: Elmwood police officer, George Wheeler, sees flaming ball of fire in his first encounter.
In addition to the above closely related local cases, the Plum City incident took place the day after the phenomenal landing case in Mellen, WI and the subsequent sightings in Ashland. Considered in the context of other area encounters from 1975, the Plum City incident fits the profile.
Join us for a discussion of this case and other area sightings at UFO Days 2022 in Elmwood, WI the last weekend in July.
It’s Happening.
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Bayfield, WI UFO Sept 1975
Man Reports Daylight Disc
September 15, 7:00-7:20 PM
Garner Hadland, Bayfield, WI, owner of local Cable TV station, reported that he had seen a circular UFO hovering over the hills of Bayfield in daylight. It appeared to have no windows, looked like it was made of “cast aluminum,” had a dome on the top and a hump on the bottom, size about 100 feet in diameter. It was tilted, which allowed a better view. Hadland also stated that there were “vapor trails” leading upward into the sky. It was hovering down over the trees and one side of it, the side away from the sun, was bright orange… He went home to get his camera, but his wife and son become so excited that they hurried out forgetting the camera, for which he is still kicking himself. When they arrived at the scene the UFO had moved, but they followed it until it zoomed off. He mentioned in his telephone conversation that one other man had observed the vapor trails in the sky but apparently did not see the object. I have asked him to check for any other observers. He has the book, THIS BAFFLING WORLD, by John Godwin, and told me the object he saw resembled a picture on page 84, the picture in the lower photograph being observed by two people. I have asked Hadland for a written report.
Eugene T. Lundholm, “Man Reports Daylight Disc,” Skylook: The UFO Monthly 97 (December, 1975)
Big Revelations from UFO Hearing
It’s been more than half a century since we’ve conducted congressional hearings on UFOs. On Tuesday, May 17, 2022, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, Ronald S. Moultrie, and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, Scott W. Bray testified before the House of Representatives on behalf of the Department of Defense office investigating Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (also commonly known as UFOs). They represented the UAP task force and discussed their current progress or lack thereof. After the public part of the hearings concluded, representatives with appropriate security clearances went into a closed-door top-secret continuation of the conversation with the witnesses.
Members of the UFO community were disappointed by the public side of the hearings. It seemed like another Pentagon smokescreen. Two government officials saying, “Nothing to see here. Nothing is happening.” They offered two exceptionally lame videos cunningly selected to diminish public interest. One was a video shot on a smartphone from the cockpit of a jet fighter. It shows a balloon-like shape zip by in a split second. Could have been just about anything. The second video was the USS Russel video of triangular objects in the sky which have already been debunked as conventional objects made to appear triangular-shaped by a camera lens bokeh illusion.
It was also disappointing to see how little Bray and Moultrie seemed to know about the real history of the phenomenon and the history of government investigations into the phenomenon. They did not do their homework, and they have a lot of catching up to do. If they are really the government experts on the subject, then the government doesn’t know jack about UFOs. The representatives grilling them were better informed on the subject than these two fellows.
Nevertheless, there was actually a lot of important information that came out of the hearings. This article contains a few of the highlights, but you can read the whole transcript here or watch a video of the hearings below:
Read MoreGovt. UFO Documents Released
I haven’t been keeping readers of UFOdays.net up to date with the latest UFO news. Since early summer 2021, there’s been so much mainstream media coverage that I have not felt the same urgency about the task. And it’s difficult to keep up with it all. But a headline from the US edition of The Sun, a major British tabloid and source of sensationalist news, has me jumping back into the game.
It’s the type of headline you might ordinarily be justified in completely ignoring: “XXX-FILES UFOs had sexual encounters with witnesses and left one woman PREGNANT, bombshell Pentagon docs wildly claim.” Sounds like supermarket tabloid silliness. But the headline is misleading. You need to read the story. There’s legitimate and credible information to be found therein.
The article is based on a successful FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request filed by THE SUN to obtain the records of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program (AATIP) which was formerly headed by Lu Elizondo.
Read MoreMore Elmwood-Ellsworth UFO Stories
Roger Weber and Marge Hartung Stories
“People think you’re nuts, but when you see something, you see something. I don’t know if it’s a UFO or our government. But there is something there, and it gives you an eerie feeling,” said Roger Weber, a salesman for Durand Implement in Elmwood, WI. “If they want to think I’m nuts, they can think I’m nuts.”
In the same 1988 issue of Agri-View reporting Weber’s story, an Elmwood village board member estimated that there had been “roughly 30 sightings of UFOs in the Elmwood area, most in the 1970s.” Weber’s stories account for at least two of those, and a few of them belong to his neighbors.
Weber’s first UFO encounter occurred as a witness to the famous Carole Forster story on March 2, 1975. The Carole Forster story was part of the local UFO Flap of 1975. Weber was visiting his mother’s farm home between Eau Galle and Elmwood on the night schoolteacher, Carole Forster, pulled into the driveway to evade the pursuing UFO.
Read MoreAshland Area UFO over Lake Superior
One warm summer night circa 1985, ten or eleven-year-old Joe Bender saw a UFO hovering over Lake Superior. He wasn’t the only witness. It happened during a family reunion on the Bad River Reservation near Ashland, WI. His whole family, and extended family, saw the craft and got swept up in the ensuing panic. Bender doesn’t remember the exact date, month, or year, but the actual encounter itself remains clear in his mind.
Bender’s mother and his aunts and uncles gathered for an evening of camping on the southeast shoreline of Chequamegon Bay, just east of Ashland. The adults built an enormous bonfire on the shore while the children played. Perhaps the light of the big bonfire attracted some attention. Around 10PM, someone spotted a bell-shaped UFO hovering over the water, illuminated with panels of colored lights. The craft seemed to be hovering about 200 feet over the water somewhere between the campers and the city of Washburn on the opposite shore. A comical panic ensued at the campsite as family members scrambled to take cover behind one another.
Read MoreMedford MN UFO Landing
Remember that one time in 1975 when a UFO visited Medford, MN? The excitement made the little town briefly famous. Some 60 miles south of Minneapolis, Medford a population of less than 700, but the Medford UFO story was featured locally, on Twin Cities radio, on national television, and even on Japanese television. UFO investigators like J. Allen Hynek came to Medford. It’s one of Minnesota’s most high-profile cases.
Something Unexplainable
The flashing object appeared over the small rural community Sunday evening after dark, November 2, 1975. As teenager Janet Kay sat at the dining room table doing her homework, she looked out the window of her Medford home and saw the lighted object moving slowly toward the earth. “I saw a UFO come down out of the sky,” she later told the film crew from Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of. Janet was a senior at Medford High School where she excelled in English and creative writing, talents she utilized in her role as editor of the school paper. She was active in band and sports, and she planned on pursuing a career in Journalism. She had also placed as one of the finalists for Steele Country’s upcoming Junior Miss Pageant. Reminiscing about her UFO sighting, she told the film crew, “At the time, it wasn’t scary. It didn’t frighten me when I looked out the window and saw it. But afterwards, when I realized what I had seen was unexplainable, that’s when it started to get scary.”
She wasn’t the only one in Medford who saw the object. Janet’s brother Jerry and her mother Mrs. Helen Kay saw the UFO too. Together, they watched it slowly descend out of the sky. “It was about 700 feet from the house and it disappeared behind one of the buildings,” Mrs. Helen Kay told the Owatanna People’s Press.
Following the Object
The darkness apparently obscured the shape of the object, but everyone saw the lights. Mrs. Kay said, “It flashed red, green and white. I was surprised when it first came down. It was quite large. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Jerry said he saw something that looked like smoke coming from the object. From their line of sight inside the house, the object disappeared behind a nearby blue shed, presumably landing in the football field beyond. The Kays got into their car to drive over and investigate. “When we got there, it was gone. Then it appeared above the trees by the hill west of Medford.” They sighted it above the trees on the hill west of Medford. It appeared to be travelling northeast.
Read MoreReport from UFO Days 2021
Elmwood’s UFO Days celebration is back. After a Covid-year hiatus, the festival seemed better than ever. I was on location for most of the weekend. The owners of the Wretched Raven shop hosted a UFOdays.net table and gave us a base of operation. On Saturday, Tom Forster conducted his famous bus tour of area UFO sightings, while I was in the American Legion shelter introducing people to Elmwood’s UFO history.
I met lots of people, heard some new Elmwood-area UFO tales, ate too many cheese curds, drank too much AF beer, and had a splendid time. Here’s a video montage of the weekend.
Montello, WI UFO
Images of a recent UFO over Wisconsin are making the rounds on the internet. A video blogger from Montello, WI believes he caught a UFO on camera passing over his house on June 13, 2021. Carrie Williams Howe’s YouTube show, the HomesteadHow, is about a family of six who left the city to figure out how to make life work on a 20 acre homestead. While trying to photograph the Milky Way over his home, Howe heard an engine sound from above. He caught images of what might be a conventional type of drone or air craft passing over his home. Or it might be a flying saucer! You decide after watching this entertaining episode of HomeSteadHow.
Read more local UFO stories from UFOdays.net
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Govt to open New “Project Blue book”
UFO Report Inspires New Government Initiative to Study UFOs
Immediately after the release of the new intelligence report on unidentified aerial phenomena, the government called for the formation of something akin to a new Project Blue Book effort, either in the form of a much more robust Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) or a follow-up program. Meanwhile, the mainstream media, no-longer snickering or playing the theme music from X-Files, rushed to publish reaction pieces. “Buckle up. We ultimately could be in for a long and wild ride,” Tim McMillan says to conclude his in-depth analysis on the new UAP Report from the Office of the the Director for National Intelligence.
We didn’t get the Disclosure we might have hoped for last Friday afternoon (June 25, 2021), but what we got is almost just as good. The following article collects and collates media and government reactions from over the weekend.
Read MoreElmwood Police Officer Encounters UFO
After police officer George Wheeler first encounter with a UFO at Elmwood in April 1975, he was eager to see another. An article in the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram recounts the story of his encounter and speculates optimistically about the possibility of a future UFO encounter for the officer. The article proved to be eerily prophetic. Twelve months later, Wheeler encountered the phenomenon outside Elmwood again, but in that second encounter, things did not go as well as he had hoped. Here’s the story of his first encounter in April, 1975. This article is one in a series of 1975 UFO incidents in Minnesota, Western Wisconsin, and Iowa.
Read the full text of the article below.
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UFOs at The Tipping Point
Awareness of the reality of UFO phenomenon is at the tipping point in American society, and when it tips, it will force not just government disclosure, it will force us to rethink the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. A flurry of media attention after last week’s leak in the New York Times illustrates.
Many in the UFO community expressed their disappointment with the purported conclusions of the as-yet unreleased Pentagon report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) to the Senate Intelligence Committee. According to anonymous sources who have previewed the report, the government claims there is no evidence that the phenomenon is extra-terrestrial, but neither is evidence that it’s not. To the UFO faithful who have been hoping for nothing less than full government Disclosure with a capital D, this sounded like more obfuscation. But as we pointed out in last Thursday’s analysis piece, you just need to read between the lines. According to those anonymous leaking sources, the Pentagon report also states that some of the phenomena behaves and performs in a manner that defies physics and exceeds our level of technology.
China and Russia
The NYT article mentions the possibility that China or Russia is behind the UFOs. No one in a position to know seriously believes that. Least of all China who, last weekend, more-or-less admitted that they have their own UAP problems to contend with. They suspect American surveillance drones, and they’re probably right on most counts, but China has had bonified UFOs too, and they are in a new space race with the US to lead the way to disclose it. The Chinese military has created an Artificial Intelligence network to track and better identify the increasing number of “unidentified air conditions” they face. Former head of the Pentagons UFO program, Luis Elizondo, pointed out to Tucker Carlson and to the Washington Post that, after the iron curtain of the USSR fell, Russia conceded that they’ve been visited too and had their own programs and scientists trying to understand the mystery. “They were seeing exactly the same things in their skies that we were.”
Read MoreLeak from the new Intelligence Briefing on UFOs
GOVERNMENT FINDS NO EVIDENCE THAT AERIAL SIGHTINGS WERE ALIEN SPACECRAFT
That’s the disappointing headline for the online version of the new article in the New York Times which purports to spill the beans on the new government report on UFOs, but don’t let it fool you. It’s a deceptive headline. The print version of the June 4 New York Times has a much more accurate and sober-minded headline across the top of the story: “U.S. Concedes It Can’t Identify Flying Objects.” Let’s go with that headline:
U.S. Concedes It Can’t Identify Flying Objects
Despite the deceptive headline for the online version, this story is the hottest UFO news we’ve seen since the Times broke the 2017 story. Now we know what all the hype and build up has been about. This is a total game-changer, a huge piece in the ongoing piecemeal disclosure, that overturns the findings of the Condon Committee and is certain to embarrass a lot of debunkers.
The article is attributed to Julian E. Barnes “a national security reporter based in Washington, covering the intelligence agencies” and Helene Cooper, a Pentagon correspondent. It’s interesting that Kean and Blumenthal weren’t called upon to contribute, but this is a HOT SCOOP, and the Times likely did not have time to develop the article.
Since this is a momentous occasion and our first peak into the most highly anticipated government document since the Declaration of Independence, let’s do a close up read through of the New York Times article, shall we? For the sake of clarity, the text from the Times will appear below in Blue Bold Italics.
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UFOs on Navy Radar and More
I started this blog nearly two years ago. In addition to chronicling the local UFO story for Minnesota and Western Wisconsin, I wanted to keep an eye on recent developments in the national UFO story. By summer of 2019, a year and a half had already elapsed since the watershed publication of the Kean and Blumenthal New York Times story. The ball was already rolling. Congressional briefings were taking place. It was pretty obvious that the national UFO story, which had languished on the paranormal conspiracy fringes since the 1970s, was about to go mainstream again. That’s why I adopted the tagline, “It’s Happening.”
But it wasn’t happening very fast. Weeks and months went by during which not much happened at all, and I spent a lot of time searching Google, looking for legitimate UFO news in the media and wishing for new content to feed the blog. That’s no longer the case. Frankly, I can’t keep pace with the stream of news coverage devoted to the topic, much less find the time to write my own analysis. A few weeks ago, media coverage began a rapid escalation that culminated in the dam-burst 60 Minutes report. Since then, I have despaired of being able to keep up with the flood of new stories appearing daily in the media.
It’s not that there’s been an increase in UFO activity, just an increase in national conversation as more and more government and military officials go on the record admitting that the phenomena is real, unidentified, and possibly non-human in origin. I call this process the Piecemeal Disclosure. When the truth finally does come out, I don’t expect to discover any vast conspiracy or government coverup. I expect we will discover a vast government incompetence created by an atmosphere of belligerent denial.
Last week, we took several steps closer to that Disclosure, whatever it may be. Here’s a rundown on some of the top stories from the last week in May, 2021.
Read More60 Minutes, New Yorker, and more UFO News
The UFO story has really gone mainstream, crossing the threshold of acceptability in the media. The last month has seen almost daily features over a variety of news platforms including heavy-hitters like 60 Minutes and The New Yorker. Just this last weekend has been a whirlwind, with a new revelations and a new leaked UFO video from the Navy. Let’s take a look at some of the new stories and media features.
NBC News Feature Story
In April, NBC did a feature on the tic-tac story with another interview with pilot David Fravor and touched on some other relevant points of the Navy sightings with the obligatory appearance of Lu Elizondo and discussion about the recent developments.
DOD Inspector General Gets Involved
In a sign that the government is finally starting to get serious about the UFO question, the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General has announced the launch of a formal evaluation into The Pentagon’s actions regarding “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” or UAP. You can read the whole story in this article from The Debrief.
New Yorker Feature Story
The May 10, 2021 issue of the New Yorker has a great, well-balanced, and in-depth story that attempts to provide context for the current situation. It’s a long read, but if you are new to the national UFO story, this is a quality piece of journalism that provides a perspective and analysis. Read “How the Pentagon Started Taking UFOs Seriously” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. The write-up provides a great crash course and a who’s-who to help decipher the current UFO dialogue.
The New Yorker released an accompanying podcast titled “Are UFOs a National Security Threat“. Together with the article, these resources bring the power of balanced, sober-minded journalism to an otherwise sensationalism-driven subject.
UFOs on The Hill
Speaking of the New Yorker piece, The Hill featured an interview with Gideon Lewis-Kraus discussing his research and the surprising shift in media attitude toward the formally taboo subject.
New Navy Video of UFO from USS Omaha
On Friday 5/15, Jeremy Korbell and George Knapp’s Mystery Wire leaked another legitimate UFO video, this one shot from the control room of the USS Omaha. It shows a UFO off the coast of California dip into the ocean while Navy personal attempt to track its path. The Pentagon has confirmed the authenticity of the video, and a descent audio track lets us listen in on the Navy sailors trying to understand the object.
CBS Sunday Morning
In anticipation of the 60 Minutes piece, CBS Sunday Morning featured a story titled “Something in the air: The increased attention to UFOs,” which has an interview with journalist Leslie Kean, Harvard Astrophysicist Avi Loeb, and Astronomer Seth Shostak of Seti.
60 Minutes Feature Story
The 60 Minutes story didn’t break any new ground or make any new disclosures, but it did bring the second pilot from the now-famous tic-tac incident in front of the camera, raising the credibility of that story. More importantly, the story shoved the entire discussion into primetime mainstream media credibility. This link has the story with a transcript. You can watch the whole segment below:
As we draw nearer to the June deadline for the Pentagon report to the Senate on UAP activity, we can expect to see more stories coming out. Rumor has it that there’s going to be some fresh newspaper content in the coming weeks. Whatever the case may be, we’ll keep you up to date at UFOdays.net because these really are UFO Days like we haven’t seen in a generation.
It’s happening.
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UFO Disclosure in 2021?
So far, it seems like 2021 UFO news coverage has outpaced all previous years combined, at least since the 1950s.
Nearly two years ago, when I launched UFOdays.net, I told you “It’s happening.” At that point, back in the summer of 2019, the national UFO story was just beginning to shake loose. If you were watching closely, you could see the dam beginning to crack. I wanted to call attention to the developments and the progress the government was making toward disclosure.
Since December of 2020, the UFO story has been in the news every week if not every day. Ironically, I haven’t made a single post in 2021. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe I lost interest when UFOs went from being an obscure and unpublicized phenomenon to a regular mainstream media feature. Maybe the story has been developing too fast for me to keep up. Or maybe the men in black got to me.
Whatever the truth might be, here’s a rundown on the last four months of developments.
Read More2020 UFO NEWS RECAP
The year 2020 was a huge year for UFO news. Sadly, the biggest event of the year, Elmwood, Wisconsin’s annual UFO Days event, was cancelled due to the virus, but there were plenty of UFO news stories to keep us occupied. Wouldn’t you know it, the “News” page at UFOdays.net crashed today as I attempted to update it. Thanks covert CIA deep-state tech manipulators. Now I’m going to have to rebuild all those entries. No worries, here’s a rundown on the major 2020 stories–sort of a Year in Review.
The fun started in 2020 with the still-unexplained Colorado Drone Swarm mystery. The drones appeared in late 2019, but lingered on into the new year. I have a gut feeling that those drones are just the same phenomena we’ve been observing since 1947, now wrapped in a new updated guise for the continuing bafflement of human beings. If so, the Colorado incidents, which persisted into early 2020, are some of the most high profile and wide-spread UFO incidents we’ve had in recent history.
The year 2020 also saw some amazing steps toward Disclosure. The Pentagon officially released the three UAP gun camera videos of the phenomenon taken by Navy pilots. The videos had been previously leaked by Christopher Mellon and the now-collapsing To the Stars Academy venture, but in 2020, the Navy went on the record to confirm that the videos depict encounters with unknown aerial phenomenon.
We had some break through journalism in 2020, such as the Popular Mechanics exposé on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) that essentially revealed that UFOs are real, the government knows it, but doesn’t want to admit it, doesn’t know how to deal with it, and doesn’t know what to do about it. Then there was the FOIA releases obtained by The Drive regarding Navy pilot encounters off the East Coast. The biggest story of the year was the New York Times piece by Kean and Blumenthal which hinted about the Wilson Memo, UFO crash retrievals, and steps toward disclosure. All of this buzz even got scientists thinking there might be something to it worth studying.
Then things really came to a head when the Senate Intelligence Committee got involved. A new bill, headed by Marco Rubio revealed the existence of ongoing UFO program in the Navy and drafted a bill demanding a report that amounts to Disclosure. The bill was signed into law just last week along with the Coronavirus relief bill, and that means that the Pentagon has 180 days to comply.
The icing on the cake was the release of the new James Fox documentary The Phenomenon which is, arguably, the best film presentation of the UFO mystery ever created. If you haven’t seen, resolve to do so in the new year 2021.
Will there be significant UFO stories in 2021? Without a doubt.
Keep up with the latest developing stories in UFO News here at UFOdays because “It’s Happening!” and you don’t want to miss it. At UFOdays, we keep an eye on the UFO beat, and we’ll post links to the most recent and credible stories here at your one-stop source for quality UFO News without the UFO nuts.
GOVT UFO PHOTO AND BRIEFINGS LEAKED
Check out this leaked government photo of a UFO. The picture of a “cube-shaped object” was taken on the cell phone by a pilot in an F/A-18 fighter jet off the East Coast of the United States in 2018. It doesn’t really look cubical from this angle. But the photo has been circulated through the DoD Intelligence circles and shown to members of congress along with UFO analysis other photos, including an unreleased photo of a black triangle UFO.
The Navy pilots who took the above picture say the object was hovering, stationary. The photo is part of an important leak of Govt UFO information. Here’s a close up of the object in the photo.
Thanks to recent revelations through the New York Times and To the Stars Academy, we know that the Pentagon has secret UFO programs dedicated to collecting, collating, and thinking about the problem of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. We also know that representatives of these programs have recently briefed DoD Intelligence, members of congress, and even the president of the United States. But what did those briefings say? And were there pictures?
That’s exactly what the appropriately named investigative journalism website The Debrief (thedebrief.org) wanted to know. The Debrief covers Science, Technology, and Defense issues. Through a series of Freedom of Information requests and off-the-record conversations with high-level officials in a position to know, The Debrief has delivered the goods, or at least some of them.
Read MoreStrangers in the Night: Eden Prairie UFO Story on Fox News
Yesterday, Fox 9 KMSP ran a local UFO story titled “Strangers in the Sky.“
There’s probably a lot more to this story, but here’s a quick summary. A guy from Eden Prairie has been observing lights hovering and traversing in the sky near the Flying Cloud Airport since May 2020. He’s taken a lot of video. No one can tell him what he’s seeing. The lights appear only after the airport is closed down (11:00 PM) at night. The lights do not have radar signatures. He’s contacted the police and the FBI. The police assume it’s private drones illegally operated in the restricted fly zone around the airport, but they’ve been unable to nab the drone operator.
By itself, this is sort of a non-story, which is the direction that Fox News ends up taking it to save their own credibility. It turns into an air-hazard story about drones and airports. But that’s ignoring a much bigger story which includes the Colorado Drone Swarms (aka UFOs) of late 2019 and early 2020.
Obviously, it’s easy to dismiss these reports as misidentified drone sightings, but the combined powers of the FAA, the FBI, and local law enforcement have been unable to do that definitively in Colorado or in Eden Prairie. For those who are familiar with the ever evolving UFO phenomenon, it would come as no surprise to learn that UFOs have begun to camouflage themselves as drones. These objects, which in the nineteenth century traversed the North American skies as “air ships” and dirigibles with sails and propellers, are ever evolving, keeping pace with our own technology, keeping us just on the edge of uncertainty about their origin.
Anyway, this is a local Minnesota UFO story, right up our alley at UFOdays.net. Check it out on Fox 9.
Read MoreAaron Rodgers UFO Encounter
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has launched a lot of flying objects down the field in his career, but he’s also had an encounter with an Unidentified Flying Object. At UFOdays.net, we are about Wisconsin, Minnesota, and UFOs. It all comes together when Rodgers tells the story of a UFO he saw in New Jersey fifteen years ago.
The Aaron Rodgers UFO story has been around for a while, but Rodgers recently retold the incident in a Pat McAfee interview.
Read MoreNUFORC AUDIO
Listen in on the UFO Hotline from 1974-1977. Here’s hours and hours of authentic UFO-encounter audio entertainment for those long drives on lonely rural highways in the middle of the night.
In 1974, Robert Gribble started the National UFO Reporing Center (NUFORC) near Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. The NUFORC’s 24 hour hotline number was distributed to police, airports and military bases, with a request to refer claimed UFO witnesses to the NUFORC. Gribble or his associates took hundreds of telephone calls from people who claimed to have seen UFOs. These recordings were compiled and edited by Wendy Connors, who operated the now-defunct Faded Discs website. Text files summarize each call, including location, date and a brief description of the conversation and claimed UFO encounter. https://archive.org/download/National…
Witnesses range from ordinary citizens to pilots, military personnel, Federal Aviation Administration employees, police and scientists. The UFO cases range from lights in the skies to close-up encounters with flying saucers, cylindrical objects and other aircraft. Other calls include claimed encounters with animal mutilation, large Bigfoot-type beings, amnesia and possible alien abduction cases, or sightings of humanoid UFO occupants. A few calls show how meteors entering the Earth’s atmosphere can be mistaken for something more exotic. Reports come from all 50 states, but lean towards the western half of America. The NUFORC still operates as of March, 2009, now with Peter Davenport as director. Read More
Joe Soucheray on George Wheeler and Elmwood UFOs
Joe Soucheray, Minneapolis Tribune, Thurs. April 17, 1975
Pierce County, Wis.
The road from Ellsworth begins its run into Elmwood on the flat and then dips and turns like a roller coaster until finally Elmwood is in sight, a little movie-set town with a church spire, set in a deep-walled valley cut by the Eau Galle River. At night you can go up on the hills, look down and the lights of Elmwood, Ellsworth and Plum City—the so-called Piece County Triangle—shine like cities seen from an airplane window. Eerie twinklings.
In the early morning of April 7, as he was finishing his rounds up near Tuttle Hill in Elmwood, retired police chief George Wheeler saw a new light the likes of which made him scream and dive into a ditch for cover.
“I thought for sure a plane was crashing,” said Wheeler. “I thought a plane was going to wipe out the town. It was something, the size of a football field, about 1,500 feet off the ground. I hit the ditch and the thing passed over me and I saw a blue flame shoot out of it. It cut across town at a right angle and moved at a fantastic speed, I’d say 1,500 to 1,800 miles per hour if I had to guess.”
“I thought for sure a plane was crashing,” said Wheeler. “I thought a plane was going to wipe out the town.”
Wheeler said he got back into his car and drove to the top of Tuttle Hill. From there he studied the object at length and described it as cigar shaped, 100 yards long, casting a white light on the ground. It was silent, he said. It sped off towards Ellsworth and Wheeler. He hesitantly put in a call to the Ellsworth Village Hall. They told him he wasn’t crazy, people had been making similar reports for about two hours.
Read MoreThe Phenomenon
We’ve been waiting for director James Fox’s new UFO documentary, The Phenomenon, for a long time. Today we learned it’s going to be released digitally on October 6, 2020. James Fox is the director who brought us the UFO documentaries Fifty Years of Denial (1997), Out of the Blue (2003), and I Know what I Saw (2009). For the last six years, he’s been working on a followup feature-film documentary titled “The Phenomenon.” It’s been subject to numerous delays and frustrations, but it’s finally going to be released, and we can’t wait to get out the popcorn.
Check out the trailer here:
The Scoop on UFO Crash Retrievals
The two journalists who gave us the New York Times story about government UFO programs and UFO crash retrievals have released a follow-up piece in the Times Insider. In the article titled “Do We Believe in U.F.O.s? That’s the Wrong Question,” Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal offer a few clarifications. They disavow any type of faith or conviction that UFOs exist because “their existence, or nonexistence, is not a matter of belief … unidentified means we don’t know what they are.”
No one’s going to argue with that. What we want to know about is the controversial claim they made about our government researching extraterrestrial debris and materials from downed UFOs! Read More
UFO Crash Retrievals too Good to be True?
Last week, The New York Times published an explosive story about the Pentagon’s no-longer secret UFO investigations. The revelation of the ongoing secret program to study UFOs is a major story all on its own. But the authors of the article, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, took it a few steps further by suggesting that the US government is in possession of debris and materials retrieved from crashed alien vehicles.
That’s not a new idea in UFO circles. It’s pretty much an article of faith among UFO folks that the government is in possession of crashed alien spacecraft. This narrative began in 1947 when the Army Air Force made the announcement that they had obtained a crashed flying saucer, only to later announce that the debris was actually the remains of a weather balloon. They later amended the story again, changing it to the remains of a secret spy balloon. Ever since then, the idea that the government is secretly studying the retrieved debris of a crashed flying saucer has been a standard plot line featured in hundreds of Sci-fi movies. It’s been further fueled by people claiming to have worked on studying the artifacts or even working in secret government R&D to reverse engineer exotic alien technology. But is it really true? Skeptics are not convinced, and those making the controversial claims can never seem to offer evidence. Read More
New York Times UFO Crash Retrievals
Government Disclosure about UFOs took another big step forward today with the revelation of an ongoing aerial phenomenon study program hidden away inside the Office of Navy Intelligence.
The cat keeps coming out of the bag in piecemeal Disclosure. A brand-new piece in The New York Times by Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean reveals the existence of an ongoing Pentagon Program to study UFOs, something we first reported on here. Blumenthal and Kean are the same team that broke the 2017 story about the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Their new article is titled “No Longer in Shadows, the Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public.”
We have things flying over our military bases and places where we are conducting military exercises, and we don’t know what it is, and it isn’t ours.
The short feature describes the Senate Intelligence Committee’s call for government transparency on UFO investigations and the organization of a United Aerial Phenomenon Task Force. It also reveals that, despite Pentagon denials, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) formerly headed by Luis Elizondo was never disbanded. Instead, it moved under the jurisdiction of the Office of Naval Intelligence. That’s new information. Read More
It’s Evil. It’s Still Out There
Carole Forster story in Howard Blum’s Out There
“My life has never been the same,” Elmwood schoolteacher Carole Forster told New York Times investigative reporter Howard Blum. “At first we thought the fear would go away. The kids slept that night all together in the living room with the lights on. They kept that up for three years. Sleeping all together. The lights always on. They were always afraid. They still have nightmares.”
This weekend, the last weekend in July, is UFO Days in Elmwood, WI—or it would be if not for the Covid-19 cancellations. Carole Forster’s story, which was featured both in Blum’s 1990 book and on a national television show, is one of the stories that makes Elmwood the UFO capital of the world. Read More
1975 UFO Landing, Mellen, WI
Fifteen-year-old Jane Baker scooped up the two cats, Scamp and Babe, and headed outside to put them in the garage for the night. The rest of the family was settling in. It was 9:00 PM on March 13, 1975. Philip Baker had his shoes off and made himself comfortable in front of the TV for an episode of the private detective series Harry O while his wife sorted seed packs for spring planting.
As Jane rounded the corner of the house, an unexpected bright light drew her attention to the road. A silvery disc-shaped object with a domed top sat on the road just up the hill to the north. She recalled, “I was carrying two cats. I was walking to the garage. And I got by this corner, right by the house here, and I looked, and there was this weird object with funny noises, and it was really bright.” The dome on top of the disk gave off a yellow-white glow. Around the object’s midsection a row of alternating green and red lights blinked on and off. Jane said it lit the whole hill.
She put the cats in the garage and vaulted back to the house, tumbling through the door, “Dad! Dad! Come quick! There’s something out there!”
World UFO Day / UFOdays.net
Happy World UFO Day!
Here’s to one year of publishing UFO stories. Yes, we started this venture twelve months ago, on World UFO Day. We dedicated the website to covering legit UFO News and to publishing local UFO stories from Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. In addition, we’re all about special days and celebrations associated with the UFO phenomenon, so World UFO Day is right up our alley. Thanks for being being a reader of UFOdays.net, and thanks for sharing our stories with your friends.
So what is World UFO Day? The UFO community can’t even decide when it is, much less what it is. Two dates, just over a week apart, compete for the title of World UFO Day.
July 2, World UFO Day
For reasons that are not entirely clear, July 2 is designated “World UFO Day.” We don’t know who originally created World UFO Day or why they chose July 2. According to the internet, the date was chosen to commemorate the day of the famous Roswell crash in 1947. That theory doesn’t work well because the so-called saucer crash occurred in June, not July. The army announced the recovery of the crashed object on July 8, 1947, and the press release (mistakenly) claimed that the disc had crashed in early July–but it never designated a date. Read More
New Air Force UFO Near-Miss Reports
On July 25, 2015, an MC-130P Combat Shadow search and rescue tanker had to take evasive action to avoid hitting an unidentified object during a nighttime training mission near Niagara Falls International Airport in New York State. While on approach to the airport, the pilot saw through night-vision goggles an object that appeared to be illuminated by a single external light accelerating from left to right in front of his plane. The pilot executed an emergency climb and roll to the left, and the wing of the plane passed directly over the object. The same object showed up as a hot spot on the planes Infrared Detection System.
Disclosure keeps trickling out. Read More
Senate Bill Reveals Navy UFO Research
Did the Senate Intelligence Committee just spill the beans on government UFO research? The new provision about UFO disclosure from the Intelligence Committee reveals an otherwise secret Navy UFO research group called the Aerial Phenomenon Task Force.
The Senate Intelligence Committee wants public disclosure regarding UFOs. They want the Senate to order the DOD and all U.S. intelligence agencies to relinquish their secrets in a public report on UFO incidents and government research into the subject. And they want it done in 180 days.
Read the story: Senate Intelligence Committee Demands UFO Disclosure
The funny thing is that, according to the government, there hasn’t been any military or government-level research on UFOs since the end of Project Blue Book in January 1970. The Pentagon has even denied that the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) revealed by the New York Times in 2017 was conducting UFO research. According to the language in the new provision, that’s not the case at all. Read More
Senate Intelligence Committee Demands UFO Disclosure
UFOs are on the Senate agenda and the Senate Intelligence Committee wants answers. Not only that, they want the answers made public! In UFO parlance, that’s called “Disclosure.” A June 23, 2020 report in Politico carries the story.
Records of UFO Investigations and Incidents to be made Public
Frustrated by a complete lack of transparency and a failure to systematically deal with UFO intrusions into U.S. airspace, the Senate Intelligence Committee is throwing down the gauntlet. A new provision in the annual intelligence authorization bill demands U.S. intelligence agencies and the DoD to cooperate in creating a detailed and coordinated report about such intrusions. The Intelligence Committee wants to see the information from the Office of Naval Intelligence, the FBI, satellite data, other surveillance data, and even data obtained through espionage. The report is to be completed jointly by the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense within 180 days. What’s more, the Senate Intelligence Committee wants the report made public. Read More
Trump Promises Roswell Disclosure
In a Father’s Day-themed father-son interview hosted by the president’s reelection campaign, Don Trump Jr. asked his father if he would consider opening up Roswell to let us know if there’s aliens. Don Trump Jr. says, “Before you leave office, will you let us know if there’s aliens, because this is the only thing I really want to know. I want to know, what’s going on. Would you ever open up Roswell and let us know what’s really going on there.”
The President replies, “So many people ask me that question … There are millions and millions of people that want to go there, that want to see it. I won’t talk here about what I know about it, but its very interesting. But Roswell is a very interesting place. With a lot of people who would like to know what’s going on.” He concludes the interview by saying he’ll have to think about declassifying it. Really? Read More
UFO Follows Elmwood Schoolteacher’s Car
The Carole Forster Encounter
March 2, 1975. The craft first appeared as a bright star following the schoolteacher’s car. She and her children sang, “Star Light, Star Bright, First Star I see Tonight.” It wasn’t a star. It descended to intercept the vehicle, nearly landing in front of them. The children screamed. It looked like “two saucers that had been put together” ringed with lights and portholes. Carole Forster put the car in reverse, honked the horn, and drove backwards up the highway with the UFO in pursuit. She doesn’t want to talk about it. Read More
UFO Days 2020 Cancelled
Now it’s official! UFO Days 2020 has been cancelled. It’s not happening.
42-Year-Old Festival Succumbs to Covid-19
Last Monday (June 1), the Elmwood Area Community Club (EACC) voted to cancel UFO Days 2020. Concerns over Covid-19 took priority over what would have been the town’s 42nd consecutive celebration of extraterrestrial visitors to rural Wisconsin. It was a difficult decision for the EACC and unwelcome news for fans of the festival, but we reluctantly salute the Community Club for putting the priority on public health and safety.
Out of an abundance of caution …. UFO Days is cancelled.
In years when there isn’t an international pandemic going around, the festival occurs in Elmwood over the last weekend in July to celebrate the city’s rich heritage of UFO sightings and strange encounters. You can read about the Elmwood Encounters here.
Plan B
So what are you going to do for the last weekend in July? Does it involve chicken poop raffling or UFOs? We want to know! Send us your plans by commenting below or on Facebook.
There’s a few options still on the table. Here at UFOdays.net, we’ve been discussing the possibility of staying home with a few cases of beer and a marathon viewing our entire collection Steven Spielberg’s classic movie E.T. As you can see, if we watch every VHS tape in the collection, we will have more than 48 hours of viewing, ample material to get us through the weekend.
Speaking of collectibles, we’re hoping to get our hands on some of the UFO Days 2020 souvenirs. Rumor has it that T-shirts and buttons will still be available. Another rumor has it that the Sandbar and Kerns will be doing something … but you didn’t hear it from us.
If you love UFO Days and are sad to see it cancelled, express your condolences at the Official Elmwood UFO Days Facebook Page. If your polite, they might even hook you up with a 2020 T-shirt or button.
Follow UFOdays.net and Like us on Facebook. Because “It’s Happening.” (But not in 2020.)
Close Encounters and the Plymouth, MN UFO
Remember the creepy poltergeist quality of Spielberg’s Close Encounters movie? Here’s a similar true story from Plymouth, MN with that same eerie, paranormal vibe. This one features a family harassed by a series of encounters spanning fifteen years, a strange blue light that seems to threaten a child in his crib, an object in the sky, and a case of mechanical-electrical interference with a moving vehicle. It’s like a series of scenes from Spielberg’s iconic movie, but it all happened two years before the movie was made.
Sheila’s Story
Sheila was a thirty-two-year-old housewife when the incident occurred. It wasn’t her first encounter. She and her family seem to have been almost haunted by UFOs. But the night of the blue light left her more frightened than any previous encounter.
We can understand how others might be skeptical, but we’ve seen so many of them.
She did not report the unnerving encounter until the opportunity arose in 1979 to present her story to Bradley Ayers, a field investigator for Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in Evanston, Illinois. Ayers covered western Wisconsin, Minnesota, the eastern Dakotas, and northern Iowa on behalf of the center from 1975-1979.
Along with reporter Carol Byrne of the Minneapolis Star, Ayers interviewed Sheila and her brother-in-law. The following is an excerpt from the May 8, 1979 Minneapolis Star feature story about the close encounter. Read More
MPLS Area UFO Abduction Story
Not all visitors are welcome.
UFO Stories often seem to take a dark turn. Here’s one about a woman chased by a UFO around several dark turns. It happened the same month as the Durand, WI sighting, at the beginning of 1975, an incredible year of UFO encounters in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and northern Iowa.
Kay was a young housewife and mother of two with a home in a Minneapolis suburb. At the time of the incident, she was taking night classes at a local college. On the way to school one night in January 1975, a mysterious light pursued her vehicle in a terrifying chase. That’s when life started to turn sideways for Kay. When her doctor could not help her, he referred her to a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist referred her to the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in Evanston, Illinois. They sent Bradly Ayers to investigate. Read More
Navy Hazard Reports and UFOs
We’ve got a flying suitcase, some balloons, and some drones.
The Navy just released new documents about the 2013-2014 encounters off the East Coast. That particular branch of our armed forces has been generously forthcoming lately, but the latest revelations are not the juicy type stuff that UFO followers hoped to learn. As reported on the The War Zone and in a new article in The New York Times, the Navy has responded to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests about a series of encounters between Navy pilots and unidentified craft off the East Coast. Read More
BREAKING: Brazil UFO Crash
On the night of May 13, a circular blue light danced in the sky over a small city in Magé, Brazil before turning red and allegedly crashing. Some say the object descended and crashed into a lake, others say into a nearby forest. Then came the military, explosions and UFO crash site, all captured on video. (See UPDATE at end of article regarding military and explosions.)
Dozens of amateur smart phone videos from witnesses on the ground captured the nocturnal light’s movement, and some also included military helicopters flying over the city.
Lights in the Sky then Crash
“There is a light on the horizon, which has been standing still for over ten minutes,” says one person in a video. “And in the sky a lot of lights, lights flash, dim, increase and keep moving… As if it were coming from the other side. There’s a red one now.” Read More
UFOs over Durand, WI
In 1975, Dr. J Allen Hynek, formerly of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, was called upon as a consultant regarding a UFO sighting in Durand, WI. The recently-cancelled History Channel show Project Bluebook has now made Hynek famous through a fictionalized and sensationalized telling of his story, but he was a real scientist leading UFO research in the mid-1970s.
The story kicks off on a cold January day in Durand, Wisconsin, a small town on the banks of the Chippewa River near its confluence with the Mississippi River. In 1975, the town had a population of 2000 or so, just a few hundred more than it does today. Durand sits near the Minnesota border, 25 miles south-east of Elmwood. Read More
UFO near 3M Oakdale, MN
The UFO that flew over Oakdale and Maplewood probably had nothing at all to do with the 3M corporation. But a flying saucer was apparently seen by multiple witnesses in the neighborhood of the famous corporation’s Maplewood campus. Maybe it was checking out our Magic Scotch Tape technology, or maybe it was just passing by.
Minnesota corporation 3M is famous for research and development of a wide range of products including abrasives, adhesives, synthetic rubber (used by astronauts), household products, Scotch tape, and the Post-it note. They also produce components for consumer-electronics, solar energy, medical devices, and lots more. In 1962 they established their global headquarters in Maplewood, MN, and in 1978, a flying saucer cruised the neighborhood near the 3M Campus. Read More
Project Blue Book Cancelled
I finally made it through the first season of Project Blue Book, just a few days before the History Channel announced that the show has been cancelled. I was initially reluctant to watch the series because it didn’t do serious UFO researchers any favors. Yes, it’s true, the episodes are loosely based on real Air Force files (code-named Project Blue Book) and some high-profile cases. It’s also true that Dr. J. Allen Hynek served as a consultant to Project Blue Book. The Air Force hired him to debunk UFOs by ascribing them to misidentified natural phenomena such as Mars, Venus, meteors, temperature inversions, and even swamp gas. Hyneck himself tells this story in his books on the subject. Eventually, over the course of more than a decade, Hyneck went from skeptical debunker to serious researcher and UFO believer.
This was a great show. At UFOdays.net, we might be biased, but it’s sad to see Blue Book pulled off the air. I’ll admit that, as a researcher in the field and an avid reader of Project Bluebook files, I was pretty excited about the release of the History Channel series. A lot of people were. The New York Times even did a feature on the show shortly after it premiered last year. Read More
Something Very Real
Flying Saucers 1947: Chapter Four
When the Arnold story first appeared in print, several corroborating stories immediately surfaced from earlier months in 1947 and, in some cases, even before. People who had recently witnessed a strange sight in the sky that they could not explain came forward and reported their stories to local newspapers. Most never caught the attention of government investigators. The incidents also occurred outside of the United States. International stories of the phenomenon are rare, but they do exist. Sightings occurred over Bombay, in Budapest, in Belgium, and in South America.[1] The hundreds of sightings that occurred in the United States in 1947 are more readily available because US newspapers eagerly documented them during the height of the wave. Many of the anecdotes can be easily dismissed as meteors, misidentified military aircraft, drifting weather balloons, and even unusual cloud formations. Some of the stories, however, seem to describe encounters with the type of unexplained phenomenon witnessed by Kenneth Arnold.
Burning the Wind over Tennessee
Summer 1945
Charlie T. Hamlet began reading reports about Kenneth Arnold and the flying saucer phenomenon in early July because he was in charge of the news copy room for the Kingsport Times News of Kingsport, Tennessee. He read the stories coming over the newswire with great interest; he had experienced something similar two years earlier. In the summer of 1945, not long before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Charlie Hamlet saw several discs “burning the wind” over his house. The Associated Press picked up his retelling of the story, and it circulated in papers around the country.[2]
“They were disc-like in shape and looked to be the size of a man’s head,” he said. “They were of a bright aluminum color, were going at terrific speed and disappeared over the high school, about three blocks down the street.” Read More
Pentagon Releases UFO Videos
While world headlines are dominated by Covid-19, the Pentagon quietly and unceremoniously released to the public the three gun-camera videos of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena which have been circulating since 2017. CNN covered the story. This comes some seven months after the Navy confirmed that the videos in circulation were authentic and do indeed depict US pilot encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena.
The three videos popularly titled Gimbal, Tic-tac, and Go-Fast have become the most-featured UFO evidence in history, appearing in innumerable new stories, articles, films, television features, documentaries, and blogs like this. The new officially released versions of the video do not reveal any new information. They are the same videos we’ve been watching for more than two years. So what is the significance of an official Pentagon release of the videos?
Early Birds
Flying Saucers 1947: Chapter Three
By the time US Army Air Force Intelligence Officers Captain William Lee Davidson and First Lieutenant Frank Mercer Brown met Kenneth Arnold on July 12, the great Flying Saucer wave of 1947 was in full swing. The daily papers featured saucer sighting stories, some spurious and some serious. The Air Force was particularly interested in sightings reported by what they considered to be credible and qualified observers—people with military experience, people familiar with aircraft, scientists, and meteorologists. Sightings which reportedly occurred on or before June 24 carried additional potential to corroborate Arnold’s sighting or possibly reveal details which might explain the origins of the phenomenon. According to, Edward J. Ruppelt, onetime head of Project Blue Book, the Project Sign “Estimate of the Situation” pointed out that “reports hadn’t actually started with the Arnold Incident. Belated reports from a weather observer in Richmond, Virginia, who observed a ‘silver disk’ through his theodolite telescope; and F-47 pilot and three pilots in his formation who saw a ‘silver flying wing,’ and the English ‘ghost airplanes’ that had been picked up on radar early in 1947 proved this point.”[1]
The Balloon Man
Richmond, Virginia, April 1947
When Davidson and Brown interviewed Kenneth Arnold, they told him that he was not the first to have seen the phenomena. They had in their possession reports of other sightings, some from as early as April of that year. Thanks to the Air Force’s Project Blue Book files, we can examine the April case that Davidson and Brown had in mind, a case also referenced in the “Estimate of the Situation.” Read More
The Man who saw the Men from Mars
Flying Saucers 1947: Chapter Two
UFO literature has thoroughly documented, retold, and embellished the Kenneth Arnold story ad nauseum. Another telling of the same events will not contribute anything new to what has already been narrated so many times. Nevertheless, the broader media story of the 1947 flying saucer wave hinges on that single event to such an extent that another recapitulation cannot be omitted. Even beyond his initial sighting, Arnold played a significant role in the strange drama that unfolded over the summer of 1947. Moreover, several points of his story require clarification, and objections raised by skeptics deserve some attention.
Publicity around Arnold’s sighting has never completely subsided. For the last seventy-three years, a steady stream of publications, books, documentaries, and programs on the history of the UFO phenomenon reference the Kenneth Arnold sighting and retell his story. Arnold himself was ultimately persuaded to contribute his own telling of the story in a sensationalized and partially fictionalized book he co-authored with Raymond Palmer, an editor of science fiction pulp magazines. He and Palmer titled the book The Coming of the Saucers.
The Man Who Started Mass Hysteria
According to the conventional version of the story, the great flying saucer wave of 1947 began when private pilot and businessman Kenneth Arnold reported an air-to-air sighting of nine resplendent flying objects in formation over the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. He described them as saucer-shaped. The Associated Press picked up Arnold’s saucer story, sending the sensational headlines to newspapers across the United States. Read More
UFO Researcher in Hudson, WI
Chad Lewis is a lot like you. He’s interested in weird stuff.
Lewis has made a name for himself as a researcher and writer in the field of UFOs and other weird supernatural stuff. He’s an established author, lecturer, and researcher in the field of the paranormal with a library of books bearing his name.
Despite the subject matter in which he is interested, Lewis is not a fruitcake. He has a Bachelors and Masters in Psychology, but for more than two decades, he has been travelling the globe in search of unique and bizarre stories and history. How did he get started down this path? Right here in Wisconsin with local Wisconsin UFO stories.
We recently caught up with Lewis in February 2020 when he gave a talk on UFOs at the public library in Hudson, WI. Check out this video interview on the subject of Wisconsin UFOs.
Lewis now conducts regular speaking engagements across Wisconsin and further abroad. If we were really clever, we’d get him scheduled to come speak at Elmwood’s annual UFO Days festival. You can check out Lewis at his website and you can buy his books on Amazon.
Operation Charlie and the X Raids
Flying Saucers 1947: Chapter One
The UFO wave of 1947 begins in January of that year with a series of UFO incursions over England. RAF pilots attempted to intercept the intruders, and the mysterious craft were tracked on radar.
Charlie the X-Raider
On the evening of January 16, 1947, Flight Lieutenant David Richards took his post as a senior controller and second in command of the Filter Room at Bentley Priory.[1] Discretely tucked away in the midst of fifty acres of beautiful wooded commons in the London suburb of Stanmore, the magnificent Victorian mansion of Bentley Priory seems an unlikely place for a Royal Air Force command center. The enormous hall looks more like the palatial home featured in the BBC’s popular Downton Abbey than it looks like an air force base, but it served the RAF in that capacity from 1936 to 2008. From its headquarters behind those walls, RAF Fighter Command conducted strategic operations, planned and coordinated the great Battle of Britain, and formed the plans for the invasion of Normandy. Read More
Air Force UFO Spy and Piecemeal Disclosure
How are we supposed to believe anything this guy says?
Richard Doty was a featured speaker at a recent UFO convention (UFO Mega Con in Laughlin, NV), and after his presentation, he sat down for an exclusive interview to Mystery Wire’s George Knapp. You should watch the interview. Doty says some wild stuff. He believes that the MJ12 documents (although fake) have some basis in reality, that Area 51 has a UFO connection in the form of a secret satellite surveillance program that has possibly photographed extraterrestrial craft, that Bob Lazar’s stories are probably mostly accurate maybe, that there really is some deep government conspiracy that swallows up UFO evidence, and that UFOs pose a credible threat to national security.
The man sounds credible (except the dodgy endorsement of Bob Lazar for the sake of Knapp which Doty avoids by clarifying that he did not have access to the same levels of Area 51 as Lazar would have been working). But honestly, why should we believe him now? Read More
Elmwood Encounters 1975
Officer George Wheeler and schoolteacher Carole Forester encountered UFOs around Elmwood in 1975, but there’s a lot more to the story than just two or three UFO encounters. This lecture puts the Elmwood Encounters in context as part of a larger area-wide UFO Flap that had everyone looking to the skies. I delivered this lecture live at UFO Days 2022 in Elmwood, WI.
By the way, UFO Days 2022 was a blast! The bus tours to the local UFO encounter locations were packed out. They had to add an extra trip to pick up the overflow. The lectures were also well-attended. I picked up some more exciting local UFO stories and lore, met a bunch of people, did an interview for a podcast, and a whole bunch more stuff than that.
UFO Lectures and Bus Tours
It’s happening! July 29-31, 2022
UFO enthusiasts rejoice! Elmwood’s annual UFO Days celebration is happening. You don’t want to miss it this year. In addition to the regular street carnival fun, antique car show, tractor pull, craft fair, food vendors, parade, and live music, there’s a bunch of extraterrestrial stuff going on. For good reasons Elmwood is called the UFO CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!
Bus Tour of UFO Encounter Sites
The festival has scheduled free bus tours that bring you to the locations around rural Elmwood where the famous encounters occurred. Tom Forester, the son of the schoolteacher chased by the flying saucer in 1975, leads the tour and narrates the encounters. Tom was one of the children in the car the night the UFO Followed Elmwood Schoolteacher’s Car, and he’s had his own mysterious encounters since then. Bus tours will be on Saturday afternoon.
UFO Lectures and Presentations
Learn the details about real UFO stories that really happened in and around Elmwood.
Amazing and freak-you-out lectures in the city’s air-conditioned auditorium tell the stories of Elmwood’s famous UFO history. Bill Johnson was a researcher with APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization) when the George Wheeler UFO encounters happened, and he conducted the initial case investigation. He will present that story and other important cases from Elmwood. That same day, yours truly from UFOdays.net will offer a presentation titled “The Elmwood Encounters” exploring additional local stories, old and new, for a broader picture of UFO activity around Elmwood. Both lectures are free and open to the public.
Oh, and we are also still hoping that local UFO Researcher and paranormal superstar Chad Lewis might work the festival into his schedule and favor us with a special presentation on weird Wisconsin stuff and UFOs. We’ll let you know as the last full weekend in July draws nearer.
Saturday, July 30
- 1:00 PM UFO Investigation in Elmwood: Bill Johnson
- 5:00 PM The Elmwood Encounters: UFOdays.net
UFOdays.net at the Wretched Raven
UFOdays.net will again have a table set up at the Wretched Raven novelty shop at 116 S. Main Street, Elmwood. Stop in to do some extraordinary shopping at the Raven, pick up some free stuff from UFOdays.net, listen to a UFO story, and tell us about your own encounters. We are always looking for more Elmwood Area stories to add to the chronicle. We plan to be there throughout the three days of the festival, eating cheese curds and UFO Burgers and talking about weird stuff.
Don’t wait until Disclosure to hit the souvenir shop. If you have never made the annual UFO pilgrimage to Elmwood, this is your year. It’s not too far to Elmwood. If the aliens can make the trip, so can you.
It’s Happening.
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NDAA forms new UFO Office in DOD
Looks like the US Government might be officially back in the UFO business.
An important amendment to the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) concerning UFOs and Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) has been approved. Outside of secret projects and clandestine DoD programs, this follow-up to the June 2021 Intelligence Committee report is the first major incentive to reckon with the UFO phenomenon since the Air Force ended Project Blue Book in 1969. Speaking from a UAP conference in San Marino, former Pentagon insider and UFO whistleblower Luis Elizondo explained, “The National Defense Authorization Act is basically the directive by congress to the Department of Defense saying ‘Thou shalt do something if you want to get paid.’ So it’s a big deal.”
It does look like a big deal.
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