Category: Ufos

The Pentagon Admits to Investigating UFOs, Plus: Graham Hancock Cleared of Josh Reeves's Plagiarism Charge

5/24/2019

The usual characters from cable TV ufology are very excited this week because a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that the military investigates when it receives reports of incursions into U.S. airspace by unidentified aerial vehicles. In response to a question from the New York Post that I would guess was connected to the upcoming History channel series following To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science and their efforts to explore military UFO research, the Pentagon conformed that it investigated “unidentified aerial phenomena,” a fact that should have surprised no one.

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Two New Articles Discuss UFO Demons in the Defense Department

5/23/2019

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This week, two very different articles both discussed the same bonkers idea, namely that a significant faction in the U.S. Department of Defense believes that the country is battling demons, poltergeists, psychic mind storms, and other refugees from bad horror movies. A Den of Geek article pulled together a number of statements from the past year given by various players orbiting around ESP investigator, former U.S. government paranormal researcher and To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science executive Hal Puthoff to the effect that the U.S. government has been investigating what one former employee of Robert Bigelow’s UFO research company called “bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more,” all under the cover of UFO studies.

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Christopher Mellon of To the Stars Calls for Congressional Action on UFOs

5/21/2019

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On Sunday, Christopher Mellon, a wealthy financier and scion of the Mellon banking family, published an op-ed in The Hill conveniently calling on Congress to launch an investigation into UFOs, just days before Mellon’s employer, To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, launches its new History channel TV series about government UFO investigations. Mellon served as deputy defense secretary for intelligence at the turn of the century and was a Senate staffer in the 1990s and again in the early 2000s. Now, he’s a UFO nut, who like so many other former officials mysteriously developed a passion for demanding government UFO answers only after he left government and was no longer in a position to do anything about it.

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J. Allen Hynek and the Esoteric; or, UFOs and the "Secret Teachings of All Ages"

5/15/2019

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It’s been a bit of a slow week so far in the world of the outré, so today I’d like to dip into the archival record to share a strange incident that occurred in 1971 when Jacques Vallée and J. Allen Hynek went to visit esoteric researcher Manly P. Hall at Hall’s library at the Philosophical Research Society. The building impressed Vallée greatly because of its elaborate woodwork, iron staircase, and displays of cross-cultural bric-a-brac such as Chinese sculptures. What impressed him most, he wrote in Forbidden Science, was that Hall’s library was the first occult building he had seen that was not dilapidated.

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In New SEC Filing, To the Stars Academy Reveals a Portrait of a UFO Infotainment Business

5/14/2019

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Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science submitted its latest required filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission a couple of weeks ago, and there are some interesting items in the report. Most of it is about what you would expect, but it was interesting to see how small the company is compared to the media footprint it has tried to create. For example, TTS AAS or TTS Academy (as they style themselves) reports having a total of ten employees, of whom eight are working on entertainment projects. Given that the company lists ten executives and consultants on its homepage, this is a rather surprising executive to employee ratio.

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Tom DeLonge Promises His New Music Will Make His UFO Work "Come to Life"

5/10/2019

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It continues to be a slow week in the world of fringe history and occult aeronautics, presumably because many branches of the media and our favorite fringe personalities are planning massive project releases for the summer, including a half dozen television series, some new books, and the usual array of web videos and conference appearances. So, for the time being we are in a bit of a holding pattern as we await the launch of the summer’s fringe media assault.

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Micah Hanks and Ufology's Longing for Government Approval

5/8/2019

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Today is going to be one of those days when my blog post will be brief, as I mentioned yesterday. I’d like to highlight a logical fallacy that has been making the rounds since the recent disclosure that the U.S. Navy will make it easier for its pilots to report sightings of aerial phenomena that they do not recognize, a move characterized in the media as a new UFO reporting program, though it isn’t quite that. Anyway, Micah Hanks presents the fallacy in unalloyed form in a recent Mysterious Universe posting piggybacking on the Navy announcement. He starts by saying that he doesn’t know what UFOs really are.

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Peter Levenda Returns to Ancient Astronaut Theory in New Interview

5/7/2019

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Due to a series of upcoming life events, including upcoming book deadlines as well as personal responsibilities, I’m going to have much less time for writing blog posts between now and the end of summer. As a result, there will be days when I will not be able to post and many days where posts will be significantly shorter than normal. Today is going to be a mid-length day, but I hope not less interesting for it.

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Garry Nolan Gives an "Alien" Metals Update and Shares His Postmodern UFO Views

5/4/2019

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This past week, Dr. Garry Nolan, the Stanford researcher best known for his work analyzing the stillborn corpse of a Chilean fetus alleged to be a space alien, spoke with researcher M. J. Banias about various Fortean phenomena and their connection to genetics. Nolan was an advisory board member for Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science from its founding until he resigned last summer citing conflicts of interest between To the Stars and Stanford University. Nolan continues to support To the Stars and to promote its mission and goals. Nolan suggests that the evidence for a UFO phenomenon is “overwhelming,” which is surprising since there remains not a single shred of demonstrable evidence for the presence of space aliens or interdimensional demons on Earth

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Review of "Now Apocalypse": A Quarter-Life Sex Farce with Reptilians

4/13/2019

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The cast of "Now Apocalypse" (Starz)

Starz’s Now Apocalypse is a strange mixture of quarterlifer angst, sex farce, and space aliens. Going into the series, I had no idea it would involve History Channel-style conspiracy theories about Reptilians, government cover-ups, and cattle mutilation. I’m not sure that the aliens added anything to the series, but the show certainly helps to continue mainstreaming conspiracy theories, albeit under the guise of fiction.

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