LANDING AND TRACES AT VALENSOLE Near the French village of Valensole, farmer Maurice Masse was smoking a cigarette just before starting work at 5:45 A.M. on July 1, 1965, when an object came out of the sky and landed in a lavender field 200 feet away. Annoyed and assuming that a helicopter had made an … Read more
ALASKA MOTHERSHIP When he first saw them, Japanese Airlines officer Kenju Terauchi, who was piloting a Boeing 747 cargo plane, thought they were lights from a military aircraft. He soon learned otherwise. During the next half hour he and his crew realized that things of a decidedly unearthly character had joined them in the skies … Read more
ANGEL HAIR It was the strangest sight to ever grace the sky over Oloron, France. In the early afternoon of October 17, 1952, according to one of the many witnesses, high school superintendent Jean-Yves Prigent, there appeared a “cottony cloud of strange shape. . . . Above it, a narrow cylinder, apparently inclined at a … Read more
A UFO FOR THE PRESIDENT-TO-BE One night in 1974, from a Cessna Citation aircraft, one of America’s most famous citizens saw a UFO. There were four persons aboard the plane: pilot Bill Paynter, two security guards, and the governor of California, Ronald Reagan. As the airplane approached Bakersfield, California, the passengers called Paynter’s attention to … Read more
UFO Encounters: Sightings, Visitations, and Investigations – OF SAUCERS AND SCIENTISTS “Have We Visitors from Space?” Life magazine asked in an article in its April 7, 1952, issue. It was a question people all over the world were asking in wonder or fear or both. What, short of intruders from other worlds, could explain the … Read more
BURNED BY A UFO Stephen Michalak was searching for minerals along Falcon Lake, 80 miles east of Winnipeg, Manitoba, on May 20, 1967, when he heard the cackling of geese. Looking up into the early-afternoon sky, he saw two glowing oval-shaped objects on a steep, swift descent. One abruptly stopped its downward flight while the … Read more
UFO Encounters, Sightings, Visitations, and Investigations: THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY TAKES CONTROL A few minutes before midnight on Saturday, July 19, 1952, an air traffic controller at National Airport in Washington, D.C., noticed some odd blips on his radar screen. Knowing that no aircraft were flying in that area—15 miles to the southwest of the capital—he … Read more
“BALL LIGHTNING” IN EEVELLAND On November 2, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik II into orbit. Within hours, coincidentally or otherwise, a UFO wave erupted in the United States. At first the wave appeared to be concentrated in a small backwater area of west Texas, where a series of remarkable UFO encounters took place. The … Read more
THE SENATOR’S SOVIET SAUCERS Georgia Senator Richard Russell was a major figure in the U.S. Senate. As head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he exerted enormous influence over the American defense establishment. When he spoke, the military listened. So when Russell reported what he had seen while traveling through the Soviet Union, no one … Read more
UFO Encounters, Sightings, Visitations, and Investigations: THE INVADERS Flying saucers were supposed to be a fad. Pundits tied these strange shapes in the sky to “war nerves,” a sort of delayed-response reaction to the traumas of World War II. They were also supposed to be a peculiarly American delusion. Unidentified flying objects, however, have survived … Read more
