Podcast UFO

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  Recently, footage taken of a video that has been described by documentarian James Fox as the holy grail of UFO videos has been shown online. The original video on VHS had been in the possession of one of the early Area 51 researchers, Chuck Clark, since 1995. Clark was reportedly offered a large sum of money to turn over the video, and he refused,...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  Last week, Nick Pope, full name Nicholas George Pope, passed away on April 6 th at the age of 60. A fixture in the UFO scene, Pope first gained notoriety with his 1996 book , Open Skies, Closed Minds . Besides providing an overview of UFO history up to that point, the book has an autobiographical account of his time as the head of the “UFO desk” at...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  For many years, stories of recovered crashed saucers and alien bodies were usually dismissed by investigators due to the stigma created by the effective debunking of the Aztec incident by J. P. Cahn in two articles he wrote for True magazine, the first in 1952 and the second in 1956. The stigma remained until the 1970s when influential researchers...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  Screenshot Throughout the 1950s and 60s, major science-based UFO organizations in the United States, and especially the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, looked down on contactee claims as ridiculous and unworthy of their time. This started to change as the 1970s got underway, due in part to the ideas put forward by Jacques Val...

Blog by UFO History Buff & Author , Charles Lear  Amidst the many assorted descriptions of UFO-related entities, silver-suited humanoids, sometimes with antennas, show up in many reports. They are described repeatedly in the 1976 Center for UFO Studies publication by David Webb, 1973 – Year of the Humanoids, and there were several reports during the 1977 flap in what has been called “The Welsh...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  Timothy Green Beckley Among UFO enthusiasts, in between the serious, science-based researchers and the crackpots, there are people who enjoy the mystery for the fantastic tales and the colorful people it spawns, as well as the social interaction with the like-minded. One of the first examples of this sort of person was Gray Barker, who became known...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  In 1977, there was a flap in the area of St. Brides Bay in Pembrokeshire, Wales, that involved reported sightings of craft and humanoids. The most well-known incident involved 14 Broad Haven Primary School students running inside to tell their headmaster that they had seen a yellow cigar-shaped craft land in a field. On February 17, three staff mem...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  In 1980, The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore was published. In the book , on page 103 of the first printing, there is a bad photocopy of a photo showing two soldiers escorting a small creature. One of the soldiers is carrying a suitcase-shaped object that seems to be a respiration device, as there is a hose going from it to th...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  As anyone who has looked into the subject of UFO-related humanoids knows, reported creatures come in all shapes and sizes. Some are more unusual than others, and a pair of creatures said to be seen in Italy in 1978 definitely stand out. In the Vol. 28, No. 6, issue (page 15 of the pdf) of Flying Saucer Review , there is an article by Antonio Chiumi...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  On January 20, 2026, Francis Lee Ridge passed away. His contributions to UFO investigation and research spanned six decades, and thanks to his efforts, a treasure trove of historical UFO-related material is available to anyone with an internet connection. According to Ridge’s bio at nicap.org, he was born on October 13, 1942. In 1960, he became an...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  In 1969, Passport to Magonia by Jacques Vallée was published. Its central thesis is that there may be a link between folklore, particularly stories of the Fae folk, and UFO lore. In the Vol. 25, No. 6, issue (page 25 of the pdf) of Flying Saucer Review , there is an article by Eileen Morris headlined “The Winged Beings of Bluestone Walk” covering a...

By: Albert Wain In 2015, while handling an inspection claim for damaged furniture in Buffalo, New York, I met with a client at his home. He was around eighty years old and wore a cast on one arm. As we walked through his condo inspecting the damaged pieces, he explained that he was battling bone cancer in his arm and that his wife of many years had recently passed away. At one point, he brought me...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  The cattle mutilation mystery and its association with UFO activity didn’t get the attention of researcher investigators until the 1970s. There is an article on page 2 of the March 1975 APRO Bulletin , headlined “More on Mutilations,” discussing the findings of APRO Field Investigators Bill Pitt, Lee Spiegel, and Kevin Randle. It was the opinion of...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  For many people growing up in the 1970s (of which this writer is one), seeing a UFO documentary was their first in-depth look into the subject. These films often came along with books tied in, and major publishers such as Bantam were getting onboard. More and more people were willing to accept the idea that UFOs were worthy of serious consideration...

Simulcast on YouTube, Facebook & Twitter | Tuesday, January 20, 2025 @ 11:00 AM EST (-5GMT) Podcast UFO will be attending and livestreaming a historic press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2026. 11:00am – 1:00pm ET. For the first time publicly, Dr. Italo Venturelli, a leading Brazilian neurosurgeon, will describe his direct hospital contact in 1996 with...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  The first feature-length UFO documentary was titled, appropriately, Unidentified Flying Objects with the subtitle, The True Story of Flying Saucers. It was produced by Clarence Greene and released in 1956. Researcher Robert Barrow devoted a blogspot.com site to it titled UFO: The True Story of Flying Saucers and posted from June 2008 until July 202...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  For many people growing up in the 1970s (of which this writer is one), seeing a UFO documentary was their first in-depth look into the subject. These films often came along with books tied in, and major publishers such as Bantam were getting onboard. More and more people were willing to accept the idea that UFOs were worthy of serious consideration...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  Throughout 1954 in France, there was a wave of humanoid reports that received national and international press coverage. That same year, Italy experienced a wave of its own that didn’t get nearly as much attention, although one particular case has since become a classic. A detailed account (page 12 of the pdf) of the case and a follow-up investigat...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  In 2019, U.S. Navy pilot Lt. Ryan Graves began speaking publicly about regular encounters by flight teams starting in 2013 with UFOs. On July 26, 2023, he testified before congress and said that on one occasion, two jets were forced to make evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision with an object he described as a clear sphere with a black cube inside...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  In last week’s blog , we looked at a case from Spain that involved three airmen who were stationed at a Spanish Air Force base near Talavera La Real. It was investigated by Juan José Benítez who wrote a report (page 4 of the pdf) and sent it to Flying Saucer Review . The report was translated into English by Gordon Creighton, and it was published i...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  In the Vol. 23, No. 5, February 1978 Flying Saucer Review , there is a report (page 4 of the pdf) out of Spain headlined, “Encounter at Talavera.” It was written by Juan José Benítez and translated by Gordon Creighton. Benítez got the story from the main witnesses who were three airmen stationed at a Spanish Air Force base near Talavera la Real, cl...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  This past week, I found myself in the position of having two co-workers who are UFO witnesses and decided to take advantage of this and have them tell their stories for this blog. The first story is that of Ilya Vett, 54, who has been with the organization for over three years, and he first told it to me not long after I met him. He grew up in the...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  While June 24, 1947, marks the beginning of the modern-day UFO mystery, claims of earlier encounters and incidents, Maury Island for example, are found throughout the literature. One such case is that of Udo Wartena, a Dutch immigrant working as a miner for the Northwest Mining Syndicate in Broadwater County, Montana. Wartena claimed that in 1940,...

In last week’s blog, we looked at the beginning of the modern crop circle phenomenon that first got the attention of the media and UFO researchers in 198o. This was described in the 1986 report compiled by Paul Fuller and Jenny Randles (written by Randles) for the British UFO Research Association titled Mystery of the Circles. According to Randles, the idea that UFOs had something to do with the m...

by UFO History Buff &  Author , Charles Lear  Jenny Randles Within UFOlogy, there are several areas of specialization, such as abductions, landing traces, humanoids, contactees, military encounters, etc. They often have their own specialized literature put out by individual researchers or organizations, and many have come and gone in terms of popular fascination and press coverage. One aspect...