Ufology Research

In going through some old directories on a computer hard drive before junking it, I found the following email that had been bad-dated and was still "unread" in the Inbox. It was from 1995, almost 15 years ago!

I have tried contacting the individual, but no luck as of yet.

The story is about a radar operator who witnessed a UFO on his scope back in 1956.

I was in the United States Air Force. I was stationed at the 916th AC&W Site located near Beausejour and at Milner Ridge, Manitoba. It was in the fall of 1956 when this happened.

You are probably wondering how an American was stationed there. During that era, we were in the middle of the cold war with the Warsaw Pact. Missiles were pointed over the pole and threats, real or imagined were on everyone’s mind.

I was on duty in the radar operations building manning the scopes and calling in plots of aircraft in the area. I noticed a return in the Northeast quadrant approx 175 miles from the site. It was a strong return, therefore I was convinced it was an aircraft. The next trace showed it very far from the first plot. Since there was no other traffic in that area and seldom any was there, I suspected I had a false signal. In order to confirm, I checked the HRI (height/range indicator). In plotting the track thru dead reckoning, I saw the return at 75,000 feet. When it came up on the scope again, I set another dead reckon and spotted it again at the same altitude. The speed was in the range of 6,000 to 7,500 knots. That was faster than any known aircraft at the time.

If I had not confirmed its location on the two independent systems, I would have just passed it off as a malfunction. I did track it for about 10 minutes. It flew a fairly straight course with some variation but always at the same altitude. The closest it came to our location was in the vicinity of MacArthur Falls area.

I reported this to the controller who called it a malfunction. I did not think he was convinced until the next day when I was called in to his office and instructed not to disclose what I claimed to have seen.

I have thought many times about what happened but rarely mentioned it for fear of being labeled some sort of nut.

I am a rational, reasonably intelligent person who would gain nothing by fabricating this story.

I have withheld the man's name; if I hear anything more from him I will note his response.

Labels: 1956, Air Force, Canada, Manitoba, radar, UFO, USAF

This is just a sampling (not the complete list) of UFO reports acquired recently by Ufology Research.

July 2010, 7:00 am, Porter Creek, Whitehorse, Yukon
A football-shaped object, greenish-silver in colour, was moving across the sky, reflecting the rising Sun as it flew. It had no wings or other protuberances and soared for about 90 seconds before it was lost to sight in the distance.

August 1, 2010, midnight, Regina, Saskatchewan
Triangular-shaped group of lights seen between trees. Moved slowly, with no sound, and disappeared suddenly. (UFOINFO)

August 2, 2010, 2:27 pm, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Photo taken of interesting clouds. When examined 2 weeks later, a “rod” was visible. (MUFON)

August 5, 2010, midnight, Sauble Beach, Ontario
Three orange lights in a line appeared and flew in an irregular pattern over the lake, then shifted to form a triangle. (Pararesearchers)

August 6, 2010, 10:00 pm, Delta Beach, Manitoba
Starlike light in west began moving up, down, zig-zagging, etc. (Pararesearchers)

August 8, 2010, 11:50 pm, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Faint, flickering light in WSW, stationary. Apparently not a star or planet. (UFOROM)

August 8, 2010, 9:15 pm, Edson, Alberta
Stationary light in western sky, long before sundown. (UFOROM)

August 9, 2010, afternoon, Mississauga, Ontario
Witnesses noticed four grayish-black disc-shaped objects overhead, moving together in apparently random pattern; were rotating and moving away. Photo taken. (MUFON)

August 9, 2010, 3:00 am, Gypsumville, Manitoba
Witness was “having trouble sleeping and felt like I was being watched” so he looked out of window, saw a ball of light over trees. The top-shaped object was flashing colours and moved irregularly in sky for three hours. Video taken. (UFOROM)

August 10, 2010, Quebec?
“Rod” UFO in video of aircraft.
(http://pindz.blogspot.com/2010/08/large-ufo-rod-and-airplane-quebec.html)

August 10, 2010, morning, Trois-Rivieres, Quebec
Several people watched an intense red light low to the horizon. Through binoculars it appeared to be a triangle with blue lights on its corners. Then changed shape to a circle with white dots around it. It was visible for several hours. (UFOROM)

August 11, 2010, 9:00 pm, Gimli, Manitoba
Dozens of people reported seeing a series of bright lights moving over the lake. At one point, a large object like a bright “turnip” was seen flying over the lake. Investigation confirmed that Canadian Forces were doing training over the lake that night, dropping flares and flying patterns.
(UFOROM)

August 12, 2010, 10:45 pm, Bowmanville, Ontario
While watching the stars, witnesses saw them appear to be blocked out by a large dark shape like a boomerang, slowly progressing across the sky. (Sightings.com)

August 14, 2010, 3:00 am, Miramichi, New Brunswick
A bright light like a spotlight slowly and silently progressed across the water, made a right angled turn and flew eastward out of sight. (Media)

August 16, 2010, late evening, Hamilton, Ontario
A witness using binoculars to observe the stars saw a “silver disc-shaped object move away from the star cluster” and head east. It then stopped, then flew off at a 45-degree change in direction. (MUFON)

August 16, 2010, 1:00 am, Whitehorse, Yukon
Dozens of people witnessed a bright fireball streaking overhead, heading north, although some said it was going east. (Media)

August 17, 2010, 9:00 pm, Leamington, Ontario
A bright red light flew towards some witnesses, and when it was close enough, they could discern a dark disc-shaped object that had a red light rotating around its edge. It went NW to SE. (Sightings.com)

August 18, 2010, 2:00 am, Chilliwack, British Columbia
Several callers to a late-night radio show reported seeing “some crazy-ass lights hovering over the lake” low in the east. (Media)

August 20, 2010, dusk, Lillooet, British Columbia
Two lights were seen moving in the sky, moving west to east. In mid-flight, one of the lights dimmed and made an abrupt change in direction to the south. (Media)

August 23, 2010, 10:00 pm, Mississauga, Ontario
An object that looked like “the shield of a space shuttle” was seen flying from east to the northwest. “It had a look like a skirt at the bottom with an extremely bright white light beneath.” The witness noted: “It definitely was not an aircraft… as it had no sound and it was too far up and going too fast until it disappeared high in the west. (UFOROM)

Labels: 2010, Canada, reports, sightings, UFO

After leaving the "haunted" fishing lodge, we drove south to a tiny, out-of-the-way town called Soudan, Minnesota. Why? Well, it sits up on top of a low mountain, overlooking lush valleys, in the midst of a rich lode of iron ore.



At least it was rich. It was mined for decades until it finally closed in the 1960s when it became too expensive to operate and work the rapidly depleting ore.

But what do you do with a 50-year-old decommissioned iron mine?

The town had a brilliant idea. It marketed the mine to FermiLabs, which was looking for an underground location for its high-energy physics laboratory. Yes, it's now a neutrino detector!

They built a huge lab, about the size of a 747 hangar, about a half-mile down at the bottom of the main mine shaft.

They invite people to visit the site and go on tours of the area, including descending in the original mine car.


In the control room of the mine, at the top of the mountain. A guy sits in a chair at a set of controls which guide the cables hoisting the mine car as they wind on a huge drum. One ding from below means send it up. Two dings means send it down.









The cables came out of the building through a rusty guide cage...

















... across to a pulley above the mine car dock.

All in the open, exposed to the elements.











Well, we had to go. Donna was a bit reluctant, since going down into the mine is a three-minute roller coaster ride straight down (well, at 80 degrees, actually) in a small, six-person, rattling and clanking metal box in almost complete darkness as you plunge into a hole in the ground. It's not for the claustrophobic.



All suited up and ready to spelunk.













Opening the gate of the cage...


... to let the previous tour out.













This is what it looked like at the bottom:









And yes, there were bats. Everywhere. Apparently, they sometimes even get into the mine car and fly around while you're going down. In complete darkness.



But usually, they just attached themselves to the walls of the cave and looked cute.










At the bottom of the shaft, the cave opens up into a series of caverns, and the one into which we were led was entered through a pressurized doorway.



Inside, it was like any physics lab on Earth, with offices, computers and cubicles, except for the hundred-foot-long stack of metal plates on its side that was the detector. There was a canned presentation, and then you could watch the detector register particle impacts from both Fermilab itself (near Chicago, sent through the Earth) or from above, from cosmic rays passing through the half-mile of solid rock.



The giant cosmic ray detector.

















Very, VERY cool. (It was supercooled, as a matter of fact.)

So, from ghosts to "ghost particles," it was an interesting day. And our vacation was still just starting...

Labels: bats, cosmic, ghost, mine, Minnesota, neutrino, Soudan, tour, vacation

I sent this news release out today in response to media stories about the British MoD release of yet more UFO files:

Britain following Canada’s lead in releasing UFO files

As reported by various news agencies, the British government has released another batch of files regarding UFOs, Held by the Ministry of Defence, the 5,000 pages in 18 separate files include correspondence from British citizens inquiring about UFOs and also reporting sightings to the MoD “UFO Desk.” The files cover the years between 1995 and 2003.

In Canada, similar files have been available for some time, and are accessible through the National Archives in Ottawa. Analyses of the Canadian UFO reports have been conducted since 1989 by the unaffiliated group Ufology Research, based in Winnipeg. Its annual studies of the numbers and distribution of UFO reports in Canada are available at: http://survey.canadianuforeport.com

A 20-year longitudinal study of Canadian UFO reports covering the years 1989 to 2008 used data on more than 8,500 UFO cases, including many sightings reported to government and military agencies such as National Defence, Transport Canada, NavCan and the RCMP.
The study can be accessed at: http://bit.ly/dk2pN9

British media are noting that in the case of England, “Reports of sightings of UFOs peaked in 1996 in the UK - when science fiction drama The X Files was popular.”

It should noted that this was not the case in North America, where The X-Files TV show was produced and where it likely had the most influence. In both Canada and the United States, data shows that the number of UFO reports steadily increased during 1995 and 2003, dissimilar to the MoD results.

UFO sightings continue to be reported throughout the world in significant numbers. In Canada, the peak year was 2008, when more than 1,000 sightings were reported, and 2010 may reach a similar mark.

It should be noted that the large numbers of sightings do not prove alien visitation or mass hysteria. Most sightings can be explained or have insufficient information for conclusions but an approximately residual 5 per cent of unexplained cases each year suggests there is a real phenomenon worth studying in a scientific manner.

For more information, please contact Chris Rutkowski, research coordinator for Ufology Research, at: canadianuforeport@hotmail.com

A Kean Eye for UFOs

Book review:
UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record
Harmony Books: NY. 2010. 335 pages.


The new book by Leslie Kean about UFOs is a problem. It’s quite unlike most other books about UFOs that have been published in recent memory, and it’s very good. It’s a problem because either every contributor to her edited collection of official testimonies and UFO case histories is a liar or completely misguided, or else she’s on to something important. Something about which scientists and the general public should pay attention.

UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record is a collection of essays, some penned by Kean herself, about officially-documented and investigated UFO cases that were considered unexplained by government and military investigators. And just as the longish title infers, testimony by well-placed individuals who are and were in positions to know the facts and details about significant UFO incidents show that there is something truly perplexing going on in the skies overhead.

This isn’t a book about UFO crashes or Roswell (although it’s mentioned in passing on a few pages) nor is it about abductions by aliens and implants surgically removed from toes and noses. Nor is it about messages imparted by aliens to selected individuals or psychic vectoring of lights by self-declared Terran emissaries.

Kean’s book is about facts. She details what really happened in specific and noteworthy UFO cases that in some instances made worldwide headlines and others were never made public. She cites official documents (not disputed documents) and interviews the military or government officials involved.

Kean’s capability as an investigative journalist is clearly evident throughout the book, and she has no interest in arm-waving exercises to dismiss witnesses’ observations simply on the basis that flying saucers cannot be real. At the same time, she effectively and deliberately distances herself from “undiscriminating UFO groups” and “extremists” who “market themselves as scholars or activists” and who “compound the public relations nightmare that UFOs already face within public discourse.”

In short, Kean’s work is one of the most important works in ufology published in decades. Her background in journalism and her passionate search for the truth has allowed her to seek out respected and staid individuals to tell the story behind what seems to be a most remarkable suppression of events and information.

She starts by introducing Major General Wilfrid de Brouwer, who was in charge of the military investigation of the Belgian UFO wave of 1989 and 1990. He effectively shoots down debunkers’ suggestions that the wave was caused by mass hysteria, helicopters or secret military maneuvers. Then, Captain Julio Miguel Guerra of the Portuguese Air Force describes a UFO which flew circles around his plane in 1982. A team of scientists and military investigators could not explain his experience. Later, Captain Roy Bowyer gives testament to the cigar-shaped UFOs which flew past his commercial aircraft over the English Channel in 2007, and the associated puzzling radar returns.

And so on. Retired military personnel and advisors come forward with statements and new testimony that UFO reports have been filed and investigated by various world governments, long after Project Blue Book declared UFO research as without any merit. Brazil, Britain, Chile, France and other countries have all been relatively transparent when it comes to release of UFO files, and yet, as Kean notes, the United States seems not to have any interest in the matter. Why?

Kean and her contributors all argue that the prevailing attitude of debunking UFO reports, accelerated during the Condon fiasco, should come to an end. They dare scientists who believe the “party line” that there are no credible and well-investigated unexplained UFO cases to wake up and take a real look at the collection of factual reports described in detail in Kean’s book.

If UFOs have no bearing on national security, Kean reasons, then why are military jets scrambled to chase seemingly solid radar returns? If there is no danger to aviation, why are pilots confounded by UFOs on routine flights across the country? Why does the FAA refer pilots to Peter Davenport’s UFO Center? Why wouldn’t the FAA prefer to thoroughly investigate their own pilots’ sightings? In one chapter, new evidence provided by the head of accident investigation within the FAA even suggests that the oft-noted 1986 JAL incident over Alaska was not as easily dismissed as some writers insist. And that “punch-hole cloud formation” over O’Hare? Kean wonders why the FAA didn’t investigate the incident in the name of transportation safety, and why won’t a single witness go on record about it?

Beyond documentation of official military and government UFO case investigation, Kean seeks the root cause of cynicism and debunking of UFOs among journalists and academia. Detailed statements by the French COMETA investigators, for example, all scientists in their own right, are diametrically opposite to those made by debunkers. Official conclusions by military and government investigators in several countries collectively call for more serious and objective studies of UFO reports, especially in the light of a lack of explanations for some peculiar cases.

The simple way to debunk Kean’s work is to challenge each and every contributor’s official statements, insisting they are all in error or liars. But this in itself raises an important problem, too. Why would so many well-placed and qualified individuals, most with outstanding service records, make such statements? Not fame, surely. Not for monetary gain. Then why?

Kean carefully crafts her work in a logical and compelling manner, without wide-eyed believers’ fanaticism but with a rational approach that challenges the reader and leads toward her thesis that it’s time for a paradigm shift: a new Kuhnian “scientific revolution.” She restates and improves upon the skeptics’ rallying cry that “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence” by making a sensible, subtle adjustment: “An extraordinary phenomenon demands an extraordinary investigation.”

Kean argues that, like many other countries around the globe, the United States should create a small official department to investigate UFO sightings in a timely manner and inform the public of details regarding their actions. This would not be simply a “public relations exercise” as Blue Book and been, but a way to reassure a frustrated public that its elected officials and taxpayer-funded military are actually doing their job at protecting American interests.

Kean presents the facts of many remarkable UFO cases, summarized in most instances by the witnesses themselves. Whereas some simply express their bewilderment at what they saw and the way in which official investigation transpired, because they are in positions to know the capabilities and limitations of terrestrial aircraft, they cannot contain themselves from concluding that they could have encountered an alien craft. It’s duly noted throughout the book that only a small fraction of UFO reports are unexplained, and a smaller fraction are thoroughly investigated and studied.

The fact that a real phenomenon is manifesting in terrestrial skies is the main premise of each section of the book. Based on Kean’s presentation, it is a logical and reasonable conclusion. And that’s a problem, because UFOs aren’t real, right?

Labels: book, government, Kean, military, review, UFO