The Micah Hanks Program

In December 1967, Maryellen Kelley felt an electric shock go through her body as she stood outside her home in Mohomet, Illinois, watching an orange UFO pass overhead. She was later stricken with a headache, and the skin on her hands, face, and legs reddened as if burned. In October 1973, trucker Eddie Webb was blinded for several days after a bright light struck him while driving along a stretch...

It was shortly after 6 PM on January 8, 2008, when witnesses Mike Odom, Lance Jones, and Steve Allen first noticed a series of bright, flashing lights passing through the sky. The lights appeared to be at an estimated 3500 feet, spanning a distance of close to half a mile across the portion of the sky they covered. The "ship," as the trio later referred to the spectacle, passed silently through th...

In July 1947, something crashed on a sprawling ranch outside the town of Roswell, New Mexico. The wreckage was discovered by the property owner, Mac Brazel, who reported it to the U.S. Army Air Force: shortly thereafter, newspapers ran the sensational headline "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region." The rest, as they say, is history.  However, the real history of alleged UFO cras...

"The [Senate Intelligence] Committee supports the efforts of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force at the Office of Naval Intelligence to standardize collection and reporting on unidentified aerial phenomenon, any links they have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to U.S. military assets and installations." This passage appeared in a recent Senate Intelligence Com...

What are UFOs, and what constitutes actual UFO study? While the term "UFOlogy" is commonly used for modern UFO research, there is very little science involved in the majority of the study of this once-taboo subject. Is there a path toward a more unified effort in studying and, perhaps, solving this mystery?  After Summer Solstice news and other headlines, we turn our attention to controversies sur...

Recently, astronomers have begun to notice something odd about a long-standing space mystery: the curious fast radio bursts (or FRBs) that were first discovered back in 2007. In recent weeks, the FRBs appear to be firing off light pulses on a schedule... but what could that mean? This week, after news and the long-awaited announcement about an all-new supplemental podcast we have just launched , w...

Mysterious sounds of unexplained origin have been documented in places all around the world. Such noises are often likened to thunder-like "booms" or explosions, and although a number of suggestions have been made as to what their causes may be, no conclusive determinations have been made. What are the "mystery booms," and what kinds of phenomena--natural or otherwise--might account for their occu...

What  are  UFOs? Is there more than one answer to this question, and does new information forthcoming on the subject in recent years, which includes videos of unidentified objects or aircraft obtained by the Navy, change the fact that the UFO subject bears qualities of "mythic" proportions?  After news about the exciting achievements of SpaceX and their successful launch of astronauts Bob Behnken...

Most historians of the UFO subject would recognize its beginning in 1947 with Kenneth Arnold's sighting of mysterious flying "saucers" over Mount Ranier, Washington. However, similar descriptions of unusual aerial phenomena have persisted throughout history. Many--if not most--of these incidents represent natural phenomena observed by people in prescientific times, although their study today may b...

Between 2013 and 2019, several incidents involving unidentified "rogue" aircraft encountered by Navy pilots occurred in military airspace off the East Coast of the United States. The incidents, detailed in newly released "hazard reports" obtained via Freedom of Information Act request by The Warzone  and other outlets, are shedding new light on the ongoing saga of the Navy's UFO encounters... but...

What does the government really know about UFOs? Does our military possess information about unexplained aerial phenomena that remains unknown to the general public, and what are their attitudes toward it? For several years now, we have slowly been getting a clearer picture of what the U.S. government does—and does not—know about UFOs. As shown by the recent "official" release by the Department of...

In 2017, the  New York Times  featured the article " Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program ," which initiated a system reset for public perception of the UFO phenomenon. However, UFOs weren't always considered among the ranks of "all the news that's fit to print" as far as topics covered by "The Gray Lady," which has remained for decades an American "newspaper o...

For many, the idea of any large, unrecognized mammals still existing in North America would seem impossible; add to that that the words bipedal primate,  and the subject goes from "impossible" to just plain crazy. That wasn't the case for Jeffrey Meldrum though, when he came upon the trackway of an animal that left an "enigmatic track of 15-inch footprints in Washington."  This week on  The Micah...

In 1958, psychologist Carl Jung authored one of the most unusual essays of his entire lifetime. Titled  Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies,  he both acknowledged the mytho-psychological components of the UFO mystery, while acknowledging that myths and symbols alone cannot be tracked on radar. But what does the study of the mythological element in UFO sightings tell us about...

In October 2017, a mysterious visitor was spotted by astronomers as it passed through our solar system. First believed to be a comet, the strange object was named 'Oumuamua, meaning 'scout' or 'first distant messenger.' Since its discovery, 'Oumuamua has continued to baffle scientists, displaying unusual acceleration and other capabilities that leave its identity and origins in question. This week...

On the night of March 30, 1990, a Belgian gendarmerie placed a call to the Control Reporting Station at Glons to report a sighting of an unidentified flying object. The craft had three lights that could be seen changing colors from red to yellow to green, and within the hour a pair of F-16s had been dispatched to attempt to intercept the object, in what would become one of the most widely-discusse...

This week on  The Micah Hanks Program , as we celebrate National Doctor's Day, we send a special thank you to doctors everywhere for their work in the midst of the current pandemic, along with hearing what advice a certain time-traveling Doctor had to pass along in light of current events. We then shift our attention to the news, and a quick check-in from Ryan Sprague of the Somewhere in the Skies...

On this edition of  The Micah Hanks Program , after news and listener emails pertaining to strange things in our skies, we have an odd question about pandemics in mind: how are outbreaks like UFO flaps, and why do some similarities exist between the two? To look at these questions, and how science applies to both scenarios, we are joined by retired epidemiologist Thomas Glass, Ph. D., an expert on...

For centuries, there have been stories about large, manlike animals in the Pacific Northwest and other remote parts of America. The creature known as Sasquatch or Bigfoot has long been searched for, but meager physical evidence has left its existence in question. Hence, many skeptics and advocates alike have proposed that only one thing will ever settle the debate: a body. After catching up on new...

In 1977, panic had struck the northern coast of Brazil. Many residents on the island of Colares and nearby locales like Belém were reporting nighttime observations of strange lights in the sky, which often cast bright beams of light toward individuals that left burns, unusual markings, and other physical effects.  The reports became so concerning that local officials requested aid from the Brazili...

This week, biologists are excited about what might be a unique protein found inside an ancient meteorite, which could have tremendous implications not just for alien life, but also raises questions about the origins of life here on Earth. Astronomers have also located what is believed to be evidence for the biggest explosion ever found in the cosmos, and an unusual, anaerobic life form that lives...

This week, we lead off with news about artificial intelligence, and the passing of an influential NASA mathematician, Katherine Johnson, before turning our attention to Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force study of UFOs, and its scientific consultant J. Allen Hynek.  During the early years of the Air Force's UFO investigations, Hynek, a professor of astronomy at Ohio State University, was tasked...

On this special edition of  The Micah Hanks Program , after opening news pertaining to astronomy and the search by scientists for extraterrestrial life, we are joined by freelance investigative reporter Lt. Tim McMillan, who recently published an article in  Popular Mechanics  which gives us the most complete perspective to-date of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a my...

This week on  The Micah Hanks Program,  we launch into this week's news with a look at the European Space Agency's ambitions to study our Sun. Meanwhile, something odd is sending messages to Earth... are we getting any closer to solving the mystery of fast radio bursts?  Then later in the program, there is perhaps no place in paranormal lore that has attracted more attention than Skinwalker Ranch,...

This week on  The Micah Hanks Program , we celebrate a belated Groundhog Day, and the peculiar annual tradition about an immortal groundhog who can predict the future, along with what scientists have revealed about a 3000-year-old mummy that has people talking (including the mummy). We then shift our attention over to the topic of magnetic pole reversals, and the "dark side" of Wikipedia, one of t...