“I want to believe.” These are the words of notorious X-Files hero Fox Mulder, who convinced an entire generation that the truth is out there – we just have to find it. But on July 2, it won’t only be sci-fi enthusiasts trying out their ET sleuthing skills, as everyone on planet earth will have to opportunity to celebrate World UFO Day.
UFOs have been the stuff of legend for centuries, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that freaky flying saucers grabbed national and international mainstream attention. Since then, UFOs have captured the minds of old and young alike, and witness’ stories have proliferated around the world.
World UFO Day serves as a way for everyone to come together and watch the skies on the same night in search of UFOs, but that’s not its only purpose. Many see the holiday as a way to spread knowledge and awareness of UFOs, making a case for their existence, and hoping to make disciples out of the dubious.
So why July 2? For many, this date represents the anniversary of the famed and all-but-confirmed 1947 incident in Roswell, New Mexico. Believers claim a UFO crash landed there, deep in the American southwest, but that the government has been covering it up ever since. What do you believe?
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by Patrick Connolly May 2, 2019 (orlandosentinel.com)
• Mike St. Lawrence of Altamonte Springs, Florida has sold nearly 7000 ‘alien abduction insurance’ policies since 1987. A digital-only policy costs $19.95, while a paper copy costs $24.95, in return for $10 million in coverage which is paid in installments. A claimant will receive $1 a year for 10 million years. The cast of “The X-Files” and the producers of the movie “Contact” took out abduction coverage.
• St. Lawrence (71) has accepted and began paying on two claims. Early in the 1990s, one policy holder filed a claim, saying that he had been abducted. This man produced a UFO implant and, according to St. Lawrence, an MIT professor determined that it was “not made of any earthly substance.” To authenticate a claim, St. Lawrence normally requires the signature of an authorized extraterrestrial. But Lawrence waived that requirement for this individual. Another abductee policy holder produced a dark Polaroid photo of the inside of an alien spaceship with his claim. After some consideration, St. Lawrence approved the claim. Both of them are now due $10 million.
• In the event the aliens insist on conjugal visits or consider the abductee a meal, that person could receive $20 million under the policy’s double indemnity coverage.
• St. Lawrence said that while there are some exceptions, most people understand the insurance policy is a joke. “It says on our website, ‘You can’t get it if you don’t get it,’ ” says St. Lawrence. “I’ve had professors use my policy in their college class on critical thinking.”
• Donald Blackwell, a Hudson, Florida resident who claims to have been abducted multiple times, bought two policies for friends after reading an article in the St. Petersberg Times. “I enjoyed seeing how facetious it was,” Blackwell said. “I got a kick out of it, and I’m still laughing about it. Of course, I am the beneficiary.”
• St. Lawrence’s Alien abduction insurance policies are available at ufo2001.com.
People prepare for the worst. They buy car insurance, health insurance, eye and dental insurance, maybe even flood insurance. But what about alien abduction insurance?
Mike St. Lawrence, an Altamonte Springs resident who once had ambitions of becoming a comedy writer, started selling UFO abduction policies in 1987 after reading “Communion” by Whitley Strieber.
“It was a best-selling book that kind of brought the UFO abduction phenomena to the public’s consciousness,” St. Lawrence, 71, said.
Mike St. Lawrence
He changed the name to “alien abduction insurance” upon realizing the term alien trumped UFO in public discourse. Otherwise, the policy has remained largely the same since its inception.
A digital-only policy costs $19.95, while a paper copy will set a person back $24.95. As for the amount of coverage you get for that price, it’s $10 million.
Out of 6,000 — 7,000 active policies, St. Lawrence has accepted and began paying two claims.
One man, early in the 1990s, reached out to St. Lawrence and claimed that he had been abducted. This man produced a UFO implant and, according to St. Lawrence, an MIT professor determined that it was “not made of any earthly substance.”
To authenticate a claim, St. Lawrence requires the signature of an authorized extraterrestrial but waived the requirement for that individual.
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• Many people know “Foo Fighters” as the name of ex-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl’s rock band. But where did the name come from?
• The term “foo fighter” was first coined by the US Army Air Force in World War II, as a term for strange phenomena sighted in the sky. In November 1944, pilots flying over Western Europe had spotted glowing objects flying quickly around the night sky – which were thought to be a new Nazi secret weapon.
• These objects were dubbed “foo-fighters” by a radar operator, Donald J. Meiers, who named them after a then-current comic strip called Smokey Stover. Smokey was a fireman, or “foo fighter”, who traveled to incidents in his “Foomobile”. The term was in common usage by the 1930’s, even showing up in a Daffy Duck cartoon.
• “Had I actually considered this to be a career, I probably would have called it something else, because it’s the stupidest fucking band name in the world,” said Grohl.
• Grohl has long been fascinated by the extraterrestrial phenomenon. In 1996, he and his then-wife Jennifer Youngblood made a brief cameo appearance in an episode of the X-Files tv show. (see video clip below)
• [Editor’s Note] Actually, there were accounts of American pilots seeing glowing “foo fighter” balls as early as the summer 1943 on a bombing run over industrial targets around Schweinfurt, Germany, which resulted in a disastrous loss of American planes and crew. Survivors secretly spoke of these ‘foo fighters’ assisting the Nazi Luftwaffe in their defensive attacks. Did Hitler’s extraterrestrial allies deploy these orb craft to help protect Germany’s industrial efforts to build a space fleet, which soon led to the Nazi’s relocating their spacecraft industry to Antarctica?
Foo Fighters – a name that’s synonymous around the world with heavy guitar anthems and the legend that is Dave Grohl. But why did Big Dave pick such an unusual name? What does “Foo Fighters” actually mean?
Back in the Nirvana days, Grohl had written and recorded songs but had kept them to himself as he considered Kurt Cobain to be the musical genius in the group. When Cobain died in April 1994, it looked like Dave would join another band as a superstar drummer, but the world was surprised when he came out of the studio with a whole album’s worth of his own songs, recorded pretty much by himself.
Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters
But Dave still wasn’t confident enough to release the music under his own name. He told Clash magazine in 2010: “Around the time that I recorded the first FF [demo] tape, I was reading a lot of books on UFOs. Not only is it a fascinating subject, but there’s a treasure trove of band names in those UFO books!”
“I had recorded the first record by myself, but I wanted people to think that it was a group, I figured that FOO FIGHTERS might lead people to believe that it was more than just one guy. Silly, huh?”
“Had I actually considered this to be a career, I probably would have called it something else, because it’s the stupidest fucking band name in the world.”
The term “foo fighter” was first coined by the US Air Force in World War II, as a term for strange phenomena sighted in the sky, before the term “unidentified flying objects” became a term. In November 1944, pilots flying over Western Europe had spotted glowing objects flying quickly around the night sky – which were thought to be a new German “secret weapon”.
Dave Grohl and wife in the background of the X-Files tv show – S3 E17
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• Based on the true story of J. Allen Hynek’s evolution from UFO skeptic as the head astronomer for Project Blue Book, to a believer suspicious of a government cover-up, premiered on January 8th on the History Channel. Project Blue Book was an Air Force project to ‘study’ and ultimately debunk all UFO reports, which existed from 1952 to 1969.
• The show, entitled “Project Blue Book” is executive produced by Robert Zemeckis. Aidan Gillen, Game of Thrones’ “Littlefinger”, portrays the brilliant but arrogant J. Allen Hynek. Set in the simpler times of the 1950’s and 60’s, the historical drama brings forth the underlying paranoia of government agendas and Soviet espionage that was brewing just below the surface.
• Project Blue Book works as a paranormal procedural in the X-Files mold; the story moves quickly, the performances elevate the scripts and episodes strike the right balance between the character’s relationships and a darker scenario that drives the season-long arc of a ‘very watchable’ show.
After World War II, as tensions with the Soviet Union fueled both the space race and fears of nuclear apocalypse, the U.S. Air Force started investigating UFOs. For help debunking the strange reports flowing in from across the country, the military enlisted J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer later known for developing the “close encounter” classification system. But over the years, Hynek grew less skeptical about UFOs and more suspicious of his bosses’ agenda, even as he remained instrumental to the 17-year study Project Blue Book.
His story is so obviously the stuff of prestige TV that it’s surprising it has taken so long to reach cable, in the form of a sci-fi drama from executive producer Robert Zemeckis that premieres on Jan. 8 on History. Project Blue Book smartly casts Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones‘ Littlefinger) as the brilliant but arrogant Hynek. Captain Michael Quinn (Michael Malarkey) is the grounded Scully to his obsessive Mulder, a World War II hero charged with overseeing Allen–and ensuring that he toes the Air Force line. Above Quinn’s pay grade, a cover-up is brewing. And at home, Allen’s long absences have primed his wife Mimi (Laura Mennell) for a friendship with a mysterious new woman in town (Ksenia Solo).
Many great historical dramas–Mad Men, Halt and Catch Fire, The Knick–have been built on similar setups, following difficult visionaries who struggle against contemporary mores and authorities to shape the future we inhabit. Project Blue Book calls back to The Americans too, with Soviet spies sniffing around Allen’s classified research.
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by Nicola Gage and Daniel Keane February 2, 2018 (abc.net.au)
• Paul Curnow of South Australia’s Astronomical Society says that UFO sightings are common in South Australia. UFO reports in the Aussie state can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century. But the sightings rapidly increased after WWII. Here are a few random examples.
• In 1947, five metallic objects were seen by three people working at the Commonwealth railways in Port Augusta. A government astronomer was called in, but couldn’t explain the sighting.
• On January 22, 1954, the Bunyip newspaper reported three people had sighted a pure white flying saucer over Gawler. SA, travelling at a terrific speed.
• On February 4, 1973 in Kimba, SA, on the remote Eyre Highway, four people in three separate cars all spotted in the scrub an orange rectangle similar to an illuminated door with a being standing inside the doorway.
• In 2006 in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges, scores of people many kilometers apart saw a large sphere hurtling through the air.
• In the early hours of January 20, 1988, Faye Knowles and her adult sons Patrick, Wayne and Sean were driving along the remote Nullarbor Plain from Perth to Melbourne when a UFO tormented them for 90 minutes. A large glowing sphere chased them down the highway, landing on their roof. It picked their car up off the road, shook it violently and dropped it back down on the road rupturing a tire. Sean Knowles put his foot on the accelerator as his mother screamed, but their voices were distorted like time was slowing down. The object emitted some sort of black soot that covered the car.
• The Knowles family made it to the Ceduna police department and gave their report, along with their evidence of a severely dented car with black soot all over it. When Ceduna police phoned SA police to shed some light on the matter, Senior constable Mick Abbott replied, “If you stay on the line, I’ll transfer you to agents Mulder and Scully from our X-Files division.” The police eventually chalked it up to the car’s tire blown at a high rate of speed, and brake dust covering the car.
• [Editor’s Note] Judge for yourself whether the family was telling the truth in the classic video below.
It’s a question many of us have asked ourselves: are we alone in the universe?
From flying saucers to balls of light rocketing through the sky, South Australia has had its fair share of reported UFO encounters.
One avid ABC reader has asked us to delve into the history of the state’s major cases, as part of our Curious Adelaide campaign.
So we dusted off some of South Australia’s oldest X-Files to find answers.
We’ll start in the outback, where a traumatised family was allegedly lifted off the ground by aliens.
It was still dark in the early hours of January 20, 1988, when the Knowles family was driving along the remote Nullarbor Plain.
The seemingly mundane trip from Perth to Melbourne quickly turned to terror when they encountered an unidentified flying object that tormented them for 90 minutes.
A large glowing object “like a big ball” chased Faye Knowles and her adult sons Patrick, Wayne and Sean down the highway, before landing on their roof and plucking them into the air.
“It apparently picked the car up off the road, shook it quite violently and forced the car back down on the road with such pressure that one of the tyres was blown,” a police spokesman told media at the time.
In a state of shock, Sean Knowles put his foot on the accelerator as his mother screamed but, according to reports, their voices distorted like time was slowing down.
“I wound down the window and I felt this thing on the roof… all of this smoke stuff started coming into the car, the car was covered in black stuff,” Faye Knowles told reporters after the incident.
“It was a small light and all of a sudden it became big like this, like a big ball.
“We thought we were dying, then we got out the car and we hid behind a little tree and the bushes and it couldn’t find us.”
The family eventually made it to Ceduna and reported the bizarre events to police who took the report seriously, given the state of the car, which was dented and had dust over it.
The story made headlines around the world with sceptics and believers alike trying to make sense of what happened on that lonely stretch of road.
UFO reports in the state can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century but it wasn’t until the early Cold War that they started appearing all over the place.
Rockets were a new invention, originally for military purposes, that made the stars seem closer than ever before.
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