My photo of a UFO made from a banana-split dish and modelling clay
(from UFO Sightings)
I have been interested in UFOs since I was a child in the 1960s. Reading the widely-published misinformation of authors such as Donald E. Keyhoe and Frank Edwards, I was persuaded that 'there must be something to it.' Of course, UFOlogy in those days was much less wild than it is today. Even Keyhoe disbelieved most if not all claims of UFO "contact", and the early "abduction" cases. As I noted in The UFO Verdict (chapter 3),
the willingness to believe on the part of the UFO movement has steadily grown with each passing yearThose words were written over 15 years ago, and subsequent events have proved them to be absolutely true. Since they were written, the credulity of the UFO Movement has expanded to take in:
- The supposed "UFO Crash" at Roswell, New Mexico, now with- a supposed "Alien Autopsy" film.
- A veritable Epidemic of supposed "UFO Abductions", including
- Supposed "UFO Abductions" that take place right in your own bedroom, and "beam you up" right through the ceiling, just like in Star Trek. No longer do you need to go out to deserted roads late at night to run into aliens. Since Budd Hopkins' books were published in the early 1980s, the aliens now come right into your bedroom to get you.
When I became older and a little wiser, I read other, more skeptical, UFO authors such as Dr. Donald H. Menzel. I realized that the UFO proponents were not being careful, reliable, or accurate in their statements on the subject. I began to correspond with the late Philip J. Klass in 1968, and we met the following year. We've been good friends ever since. I first met James Oberg in 1975. I met Gary Posner in 1977, and James McGaha in 1987.
When I attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois,
during the very exciting yet frightening time of the Vietnam War
protests, I majored in mathematics, and also took many astronomy
classes. In fact, I had enough astronomy classes for an astronomy
major, although I would have needed more physics classes to major in
astronomy. I got to know the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek (1910-1986) quite
well, I found him to be a most interesting character. He was the U.S.
Air Force's chief astronomical consultant for the celebrated Project
Bluebook . While a man of much personal integrity, he was
also gullible in the extreme. He believed himself able to determine the
sincerity, and even the reliability of an individual, simply by his
intuition as he listened to their story. He was valuable to
Northwestern in his role as Astronomy Department Chairman. Hynek was
largely responsible for the construction of Northwestern's Lindheimer
Astronomical Research Center right on campus, which has
since been demolished since little useful research could be done from
that location. Hynek's skills were primarily political and personal,
rather than scientific. He did not generally teach advanced-level
astronomy courses, he made few if any tangible contributions to the
science of astronomy during his decades 
at Northwestern, and was primarily known for
his interest in UFOs. His presentations and media appearances on the
subject of astronomy were first-rate. Hynek was a great popularizer of
astronomy. However, he was not greatly esteemed by his fellow
astronomers - in fact, he was frequently the butt of their private
jokes. Hynek envisioned himself as "The Galileo of UFOlogy", (see, for
example, Newsweek magazine, Nov. 21, 1977,
p.97.) but unlike the original Galileo, Hynek had no demonstration that
could be made to believers and unbelievers alike to allow them to
evaluate his claims. If the original Galileo had no more solid evidence
to offer than did the Galileo of UFOlogy, his name would be forgotten
today.
My article on the famous Campeche, Mexico 'Infrared UFO Video' was published in the September/October 2004 issue of The Skeptical Inquirer.
Information on the Heavens' Gate UFO Suicide Cult, led by Marshall Herff Applewhite. Here is a scan of an actual hand-written recruiting poster used by the Applewhite cult in Oregon in 1991 (thanks to Dan Bigelow for providing the image). I attended one of the cult's recruiting meetings at the University of Maryland in College Park in 1976. In it, cult members talked glowingly about the coming "harvest," in which those who were ready to be "harvested" would be taken up to the "next level" by the UFOs. Asked about the whereabouts of "Bo and Peep" (Applewhite and Nettles), the group's leaders, the cultists claimed to not know where they were. He was lying: Bo and Peep were sitting right in the audience, and indeed arriving early I saw all of the cultists chatting with them.
The famous NASA STS-48 Space Shuttle "UFO Video" has been widely promoted on The TV show HARD COPY and by Richard Hoagland. Here James Oberg explains what it really was.
I am honored that the well-known space writer James Oberg has asked me to host a collection of his classic papers debunking frequently-made sensationalist claims. )
The Norway Spiral and the Birth of an Internet Mythology. (December, 2019)
STS-88 and the "Black Knight" UFO - What is it? ( October 2014)
The Skylab 3 "UFO Photos" of 1973 ( December 2011)
The Failure of the "Science" of UFOlogy (Winner of the Cutty Sark Prize, also published in The New Scientist, 1979) Soviet Saucers (OMNI, 1994)
The Black Box Approach to UFO Perceptions (Conference paper, 1985)
The Great Soviet UFO Coverup (MUFON UFO Journal, 1982)
The Apollo 11 UFO Incidents (from UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries, 1982)
The Dogon tribe and The Sirius Mystery (from UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries, 1982)
Astronaut "UFO" Sightings (from The Skeptical Inquirer , 1978)
A Giant UFO over Two Continents (from Fate Magazine, 1983)
Did President Jimmy Carter see a real UFO?
The very famous Travis Walton UFO Abduction Story was made into the movie Fire In the Sky. Here is an inside account of that incident, by one of the first reporters on the scene, sent by the National Enquirer. The story he tells is very different than what you will hear from the mass media!
My review: Unexplained’ Cases—Only If You Ignore All Explanations, of Leslie Kean's book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record .
Read the long-unavailable Condon Report on-line, courtesy of the National Capital Area Skeptics.
Kenneth
Arnold, Mt. Rainier, Washington, June 24, 1947.
Trent
photos, McMinnville, Oregon, May 11, 1950.
Frank
Scully's "UFO Crash" story, 1950 (Aztec, New
Mexico).
Trindade Island, Brazil, 1958 (external
site).
The
Kecksburg, PA "UFO Crash" (actually the great
Fireball Meteor of Dec. 9, 1965).
Rendlesham UFO "landing" (or
"crash"), Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, Dec. 26, 1980
(external site).
"UFO abduction" researcher David Jacobs claims that people are Entirely Unpredisposed by the existing Science Fiction literature to tell stories of supposed abductions by aliens. Here Martin Kottmeyer shows how dead wrong Jacobs is.
More great writings by Kottmeyer:
The Eyes That Spoke
The Eyes Still Speak
Still Waiting - A List of [failed] Predictions from the "UFO Culture"
Is the Space Conspiracy book Alternative 3 really "banned" in the United States, as some claim? The spoof's authors have confessed all. (You can even watch the bad acting in the original video here!)
A Close Encounter with Whitley Strieber, best-selling author of "Communion" and many other books. (espaņol)
Erich Von Daniken's Ancient Astronauts - Science or Charlatanism? (en Espanol aqui)
The Klass Files - CSICOP's
on-line collection of the UFO writings of Philip J. Klass (1919-2005).
Debunking the famous Roswell Alien Autopsy film.
Tim
Printy's UFOs: A Skeptical View .
Also see his skeptical newsletter SUNlite
(whose title pays homage to the late Philip J.
Klass).
Ian Ridpath's UFO Skeptic Pages
Find out about Crop Circles - from the people who make them! (Whitley Strieber says that Crop Circles are "two-dimensional portraits" made by dead people.)
The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup by Philip J. Klass
Roswell Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe by Karl T. Pflock
UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game by Philip J. Klass
UFOs: The Public Deceived by Philip J. Klass
The UFO Invasion Edited by Kendrick Frazier, Barry Karr, and Joe Nickell.
Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth by Curtis Peebles.
Bringing
UFOs Down to Earth (for young readers) by
Philip J. Klass
George Noori
now hosts the ever-popular popular Coast
to Coast AM radio talk show, which peddles a
steady stream of wild conspiracy and paranormal claims to millions of
eager listeners. Here's a photo of a supposed "Chupacabra" from that
site.
The Roswell UFO Crash! (Now read the Skeptics' version of what happened at Roswell.)
The Home Page of the late Stanton Friedman, the famous Flying Saucer Physicist, who told all about the "Cosmic Watergate"!
The Home Page of MUFON, the largest UFO group in the U.S.
Rock star Tom DeLonge will bring you 'UFO Disclosure' via his "To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences".
The nonconformist physicist Bernard Haisch and his pals are pursuing 'breakthrough propulsion' notions in physics like the "zero-point energy". His private California Institute for Physics and astrophysics boasts of being "a few blocks from the Stanford University campus," as if academic respectability were contagious.
Haisch is pretty boring, but the nonconformist physicist Jack Sarfatti, who operates StarDrive.org, is anything but. He sings operetta, name-drops celebrities, and writes of long-ago love affairs, while promoting theories designed to turn 'old phyics' on its head. He even boasts of receiving a phone call from an alien's intelligent computer back in 1953.
Dr. Steven Greer's wild-and-woolly new effort, "Sirius Disclosure" and "Close Encounters of the FIfth Kind."
The Official U.S. page for Swiss UFO contactee Billy Meier , "Contactee" and "Prophet." Read about his friends from the Pleaides. Then read Derek Bartholomaus' pages debunking the fables of Billy Meier,
A former French race car driver, now calling himself Rael, has set up a UFO religion to worship the extraterrestrials who supposedly created us. (And now they claim they're going to start cloning people!).
For the serious researcher - my pages on Historical UFO information.
John Greenwald Jr's The Black Vault.Isaac Koi's huge collection of UFO information.
Archives for the Unexplained, in Sweden,
Lots of fascinating stuff on forgetomori.com
.
"Extraordinary Claims, Ordinary Investigations." (More than "ordinary,"
I'd say!)
The Anomalist - a fascinating, eclectic collection of UFO and "paranormal" stuff, typically quite well-written.
UFOseek - UFO search engine, with links to many sites and articles arranged by subject.
Project 1947, a large collection about the early years of UFO signtings.
From ufoevidence.org, a very complete catalog of UFO sightings and claims
