Podcast UFO

by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.” & a new book to be released!

Just this week, video of a UFO taken by a passenger on a plane coming in for a landing at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York, made international news. Video footage of UFOs constantly appears online and more often than not leads to a dead end for researchers trying to identify witnesses or turns out to be faked. In this case, not only was the witness identified, but she appeared on News Nation for an interview, along with a researcher looking into the case who considered the video to be authentic.

The witness is Michelle Reyes, who was capturing video of the New York skyline while sitting next to her daughter, who had the window seat. The Verrazano Bridge is centered in the frame as a black, elongated, oval-shaped UFO goes whizzing by from right to left, which in this case is northeast to southwest. Reyes posted the video on Facebook, and researcher/investigator Ben Hansen (who was a guest on PodcastUFO on February 16, 2021) managed to find her and interview her. Read more →

by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.” & a new book to be released!

The February-March 1977 issue of the UFO Newsclipping Service, has four articles describing what would become “classic” UFO cases. One looks into the report (page 12 of the pdf) of nine-year-old Jose Cantu who said he saw “two greenish creatures about three feet tall, who rotated on a base instead of having feet, and two ‘steely’ crafts in which 2 other creatures were sitting.” His drawing showing one of the creatures with only one eye has caused them to be dubbed “The Cycloptic Aliens of Harrah.” The other three articles describe two abduction cases that have become well-known, one involving Judy Kendall covered in two papers from California, and one involving three women: Elaine Thomas, Louise Smith, and Mona Stafford covered in a paper from their home state, Kentucky. By this time, abduction claims and creature reports had come out from under the umbrella of contactee reports and the stigma that came with this association thanks to cases such as the 1973 Pascagoula Incident and the 1975 Travis Walton Incident, and news agencies were more open to reporting on them. That being said, there is an obscure case reported (page 3) in the February 2, 1977, Clarkesville, Tennessee, Leaf Chronicle, that has aspects of a contactee case, and the story told by the man who said he had an encounter with otherworldly beings is strange to the point of being ridiculous. Even so, the reporter who covered it wrote about it with a good deal of objectivity and restraint.

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By Charles Lear (New book to be released!)

This week, we were intrigued by a recent video of a UFO over Scottsdale, Arizona, that received some news coverage. As we looked into it, we were struck by the contrast between the coverage of UFO reports in the days where print journalism was dominant and the present.

There is an article headlined “OUT OF THE BLUE Chilling moment pulsating blue cigar-shaped UFO is filmed hovering over ‘alien-hotspot’ US city leaving locals baffled” written by Dinniah Bartholomew that was posted on the website of the U.K. Sun on April 3, 2024. It includes video of a worm-like UFO glowing blue in the night sky. According to the article, the blue UFO “appeared to come out of nowhere” and hover over the city of Scottsdale, Arizona. Batholomew says photos were captured of the object, that it “appeared to make twists and turns,” that eyewitnesses gawked, and that “many people were concerned about exactly what it could be.” Quotes from witnesses are included such as a person commenting “Now it’s like separating. Dude that’s crazy.” Read more →

by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

UFOs are often reported to have left behind evidence of their visits in the form of physical traces, but there are also reports of them taking something away and often it is water from tanks, pools, rivers, lakes, and oceans. There are enough of these sorts of reports that Linda Zimmermann and Michael Worden were able to devote an entire episode (“From the Vault: Everybody in the Pool”) of UFO Headquarters to the subject. Zimmermann began the episode with stories told to her by witnesses in the Hudson Valley of instances where water was missing from pools after UFO sightings in the area and estimated that there were at least five such occurrences in the region from 1975 into the early 1980s. Far from being isolated to the Hudson Valley, such reports come from all over the world and Zimmermann and Worden present several. In this week’s blog, we’ll look at some we’ve come across in our research. Read more →

by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
There is an article headlined “The Taradale Car Crash” in the March-April 1969 Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 15, No. 7. It is described as an “adapted version” of an article written by Henk Hinfelaar and Claude Elmes of New Zealand Scientific Space Research that appeared in that organization’s newsletter Spaceview. It concerns a car accident in Taradale, New Zealand, a suburb of the Northeastern city of Napier, involving two young men who reported that a UFO was the cause. According to Hinfelaar and Elmes, not only did the young men report this to police, but the owner/driver of the car gave the same story to his insurance company, and it was used as a defense by him in a court of law. Read more →

by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”

A pioneer saucerologist/UFOlogist, Ted Bloecher, who mostly went uncelebrated except among his peers and a small number of enthusiasts, passed away on January 22 of this year at the age of 94. He was not known because of book sales, lectures, appearances on television or in documentaries, but for his research with and contributions to various organizations beginning in 1954 with Civilian Saucer Intelligence New York of which he was a founding member. He was mostly interested in cases involving humanoids, and his association with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena seems to have helped Director Donald Keyhoe, who had an aversion to humanoid cases due to his hardened stance against contactee reports, become more open-minded. Besides this, he was a Broadway performer, and his credits include ensemble work in Oliver! and Hello, Dolly! He quit active research in the mid-1980s and donated his UFO files to the Center for UFO Studies and archives to the New York Public Library. Read more →

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