Eric von Daeniken, Swiss author who popularised ancient alien theories, dies at 90

Legions of fans snapped up his more than 40 books and watched his television specials and documentary films despite academics refuting his theories.

Reuters
12 Jan, 2026


Best-selling Swiss author Erich von Daeniken, who built a lucrative career on his argument, rubbished by scientists and archaeologists, that humanity owes much of its development to the intervention of extraterrestrials, has died aged 90.

Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968, sold millions of copies with its thesis that advanced aliens had repeatedly visited Earth, leaving their mark in the form of Inca and Egyptian ruins, cave drawings and other physical monuments.

“It took courage to write this book, and it will take courage to read it,” the work begins. It acknowledged that scholars would dismiss it as nonsense, but insisted that “the past teemed with unknown gods who visited the primaeval earth in manned spaceships”.

‘Pseudoscience’ theories

Academics wrote books refuting his theories, criticising him as a purveyor of some of the more fantastical notions of pseudoscience. German news magazine Der Spiegel even had a 1973 cover story titled ‘The Daeniken Hoax’.

Nevertheless, legions of fans snapped up his more than 40 books and watched his television specials and documentary films. The over 70 million books that he sold were translated into more than 30 languages.

Von Daeniken spent the early part of his working life managing a hotel in eastern Switzerland, where a fraud conviction landed him in jail for 18 months. But as his book took off, he emerged from prison as a best-selling author.

Still, he never presented the smoking gun to fulfil astronomer Carl Sagan’s famous adage that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. “He … says that the astonishing astronomical information ancient civilisations, such as the Mayan, had is proof that there were some space travelers around to teach it to them. This fits in with his general questioning of the ability of the Egyptians to build the pyramids, or the Easter Islanders to erect those massive stone heads,” the New York Times wrote in 1974.

“His method is to use a negative — ancient peoples couldn’t have done or thought all the things they did — to prove a positive — that the ancient people were the beneficiaries of some kind of cosmological Point 4 (development assistance) programme.” Such criticism never knocked von Daeniken off his stride.

“We owe it to our self-respect to be rational and objective,” he wrote. “At some time or other, every daring theory seemed to be a Utopia. How many Utopias have long since become everyday realities!” Television specials about his books made him a well-known figure in Europe and the United States. In 2003, he opened a Mysteries of the World theme park in Interlaken — although it went bust after three years.

Return of the Aliens

In a treatise on his website, von Daeniken said he was not an esoteric, and that his work served to debunk “a world of religious and unfortunately often scientific humbugs”. “From countless old written records, I know that these ‘gods’ promised to return. Then we will experience the god shock, a total catastrophe in religion and science. And everything would have been so easy to understand — without this god shock. The evidence speaks a clear language. That is what drives me.” The release in July 2021 of a watershed US government UFO report that did not rule out extraterrestrial origins gave him hope.

“In future, anyone who talks about UFOs and extraterrestrials can no longer simply be ridiculed. People will slowly realise that many things are possible that they previously considered impossible,” he told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper.

“As soon as we are prepared and get used to the idea that we are not alone in the universe, the extraterrestrials will come to us. I expect that to be the case within the next 10 years.”

Originally published in Dawn, January 12th, 2026

Not in My Jewish Name: From Israel’s (perpetual) Crimes Against Humanity to Slandering Ms. Rachel

Plus an excursion into other current manifestations of state-sanctioned criminality and mendacity

by Phil Rockstroh / December 11th, 2025

A tragic canard of history — i.e., the assertion: “Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people; therefore, we Jews have the right to return and establish a Jewish ethno-supremacist state.”

Only by a literal reading — i.e., cracked-brained — of Old Testament mythos can we Jews claim to be the people G-d choose to [ethnically cleanse] the Levant.

DNA analysis proves the Jews of the Torah are, wait for it, the Palestinian people (and that would include a certain rabble-rousing, empire-agitating rabbi known as Jesus of Nazareth). In contrast, my Jewish DNA reveals, my ancestors origins are from Europe e.g., Germany, France, Spain, Greece, with 4% traced to northern Iran and Iraq.

Thus we can conclude the “Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jews” canard should be regarded as flat out, Flat Earth theory-level risible.

Conceived in lie Zionist perpetual crimes against humanity continue unabated:

A journalist and former detainee, identified as “Yahya” reports, during his year and ten month of incarceration in Sde Teiman prison, he was subjected to torture by electrocution, being beaten, starved, and was the victim of sexual assaults that were filmed by his jailers.

Yahya went on to relate he was sexually assaulted by a dog trained to inflict the act.

Yet Ms. Rachel is accused of all forms of depravity, including “blood libel,” by defenders of Israel — a crime against humanity disguised as a nation.

May be an image of child and text that says ‘PET ES RECYCLE > Meeting Rahaf from Gaza'”

These are the people, when I, as a Jewish person, object to the conflation of Zionism and Judaism, hiss I am a self-loathing Jew and I am committing an act of treason against my tribe.

Truth be told: if I acted as an apologist for Israel, doing so would amount to an act of treason against my soul and I would loathe myself as I made the utterance.

Update from the annals of the “most moral army on earth.”

A CNN investigation has revealed the IDF opened fire on starving Palestinians while they were desperately attempting to secure flour in Gaza. Then the IDF used bulldozers to bury their corpses in mass graves.

Their deaths were not chronicled, nor was the location of their bodies disclosed to their families.

According to the UN, since the US-brokered “ceasefire” in Gaza, the Israelis have slaughtered an estimated 360 Palestinians (and counting).

The above, since the establishment of Israel, has been the Zionist state’s conception of peace. Moreover, any act of retaliation or even resistance by Palestinians are termed as acts of terrorism.

In the late 1930s, the Gestapo entered my family’s home, arrested my grandfather, and imprisoned him in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. If he and his fellow prisoners had escaped and fought their way through the streets of Berlin, the Nazi regime would have termed them terrorists — yet history would have lauded them as heroes.

This is the context of the Palestinian struggle from 1948 to the Oct. 7 Gaza prison breakout. The response of the Zionist state: a rampage of collective punishment.

By the standards of international law, a flagrant war crime; by Israeli standards — the modus operandi of Zionist tyranny.

As brazen as SS (Schutzstaffel) officers who wore death-head skulls on their uniforms and US Jim Crow era Klansmen prone to brandishing lynching nooses, Ben-Gvir, Israeli Minister of National Security, Culture Minister Amichai Eliyahu, and other devotees to the radical right-wing death cult, masquerading as the Israeli government, have taken to affixing golden noose-pins to their lapels expressing their call for Palestinian detainees from Gaza be executed.

All as:

“An elderly woman and her son were among at least seven Palestinians killed in the latest Israeli attacks in Gaza, as the military continues to operate across the “yellow line” ceasefire demarcation.

“Health officials reported the killings on Saturday in Beit Lahiya, Jabalia, and Zeitoun, including a 70-year-old woman and her son, who were hunted down and killed by a drone in Gaza City.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said the woman and her son were chased by a quadcopter drone about one kilometre [half a mile] from the yellow line and “left there to bleed to death” as the aircraft continued hovering overhead, preventing anyone from reaching them.”

Yet Israel’s apologists bristle and insist on their perpetual victimhood because the world views their genocidal rampage through Gaza and observers posit the mindset of all too many Israelis is analogous to that evinced by racist sorehead denizens of the Jim Crow ruled US Deep South and the blood-drenched actions of the Israeli government are Third Reich adjacent.

The conduct of the Zionist state is an affront to the memory of my relatives who perished in the flames of The Shoah. Israel defenders, to their shame, represent a whole new bloc of Holocaust denialists.

Yet, through the horror of it all, the world has witnessed the true nature of the Zionist ethno-supremacist state: i.e., a perpetual crime against humanity disguised as a nation.

All the Zionist hasbara lies, including social media trolling as a national enterprise, will not cause the world to forget what we have witnessed. And the Israeli citizenry senses the fact. A recent poll reports: 40 percent of Israelis are considering or making plans to leave the country.

Personally, I will welcome them if they come in the spirit of repentance.

More from The Department of Not In My Name

Zionists are attempting to bulldoze the reality of their lawless actions, to bury the people of the world’s awareness of the massive crimes against humanity Israel perpetrates, from Gaza to the West Bank, and outward towards their neighbors in the region — rather than face the reality that Zionism, the dream of an ethno-supremacist state, has been manifested as the blood-drenched, waking-life nightmare that it is.

Israel’s apologists, relentlessly, attempt to whitewash away the nation’s perpetual transgressions by means of the proliferation of propaganda and character assassination with the soul-defying agenda of imposing censorship and intimidate critics into silence.

Withal, a comment/threat made by a Zionist troll on a recent post of mine on the subject:

From Vincent ******* “We are noticing you. Never again. #noticing Jew-haters”

I replied, “can you say that with a World Two era, Hollywood movie German accent to achieve its full effect?”

Speaking of acting in a Third Reich-adjacent manner, from the fascist-minded homefront, Donald Trump is demanding stripping US citizenship from individuals who refuse to swear absolute fealty to the tenets of what he terms: “Western Civilization.”

Quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi when asked what he thought of Western Civilization:

“I think it would be a good idea [if they tried it].” [A disputed quotation. — DV ed]

Withal, the US (a nation established in ethnic cleansing, slavery and genocide) has slaughtered over 4 million people of the Islamic faith since the early 1990s alone. Israel, a de facto Western nation, remains committed to ethnic cleansing and genocide, and the funds and weaponry to do so are supplied by the West.

Masked ICE thugs patrol US streets. The economic elite serially exploit all their greedhead minds survey, from the resources of the cupidity tormented earth to the bodies of teenage girls and women from power-devoid economic groups. As, all the while, rents, medical care, utilities, and food prices rise and rise when life’s necessities, in a civilized society, would be a birthright not a privilege of the few.

Yes, I agree with Mahatma Gandhi, we, in the West — where we have been brainwashed to believe our capitalist-imposed shackles are the very wings of liberty — should give civilization a go.

What else is on the minds of the civilized men of Western civilization?

Trump and his Heinrich Himmler toy soldier appointees to the US Department of War (Crimes) are careening towards an attempt at a military smash-and-grab of Venezuelan oil.

I thought I had witnessed the nadir of jingoistic stupid and soul-shriveling political class arrogance in the run up to the Bush-Cheney administration’s war of aggression waged against the people of Iraq. How could I have suffered from such pathology-based-optimism?

By any measure of sentience the history of imperial fuckery would serve to warn us off such a dance with catastrophe — in buying into such a dismal display of war mongering prevarication — such a psychopathic lust for mayhem and mass death.

The guiding god of empire (including the US imperium’s client state, Israel, is: Moloch, a God to whom the innocent are sacrificed. In modern imperium, his blood-crazed devotees, knowing his thirst is insatiable, proffer him libations of blood and oil.

Pete Hegseth insists his god is Jesus Christ but his guiding god is Moloch. This is the reason Hegseth does not, in any manner, regard the declarations of the Christian Messiah, The Prince Of Peace, blesser of the meek and peacemakers, Jesus Christ — who would demand of Tipplin’ Pete the question:

Why did God, the all-knowing Father, place the United States’ god-given oil beneath Venezuela’s commie soil?

Trump et al. are the emblems, in shambling human form, of the personality types i.e., one-dimensional, greed-crazed maniacs — human embodiments of the Second Law Of Thermodynamics — who cause the collapse of over-extended, corrupt-to-the-core empires.

Tragically, the remedy for the pathology of End Stage Empire is: the doubling down of said End Stage Empire by the dim and dismal machinations of belligerently obtuse imbeciles.

In this manner, Trump and his klavern of fools and tools have heard and are heeding the call of history.

Further dispatches from the realm of government-squatting fools:

The news has been “disclosed” by National Security State “whistleblower” insiders that “alien technology,” in the form of downed UAP/UFO craft and the remains of “nonhuman biologics” are in the (greed-rancid) hands of Military Industrial Complex (war) profiteers.

Of course, like a hammer that sees the world as an endless series of nails, these militaristic minded characters, straight out of a combination of Dr. Strangelove and Plan 9 From Outer Space, are warning us to watch the skies, and “be afraid, be very afraid!”

If we were not perpetually afraid, NSS and MIC types would be out of a job, wouldn’t they?

Think it through: If aliens possessed the tech they are purported to have, they could have blasted our species of bipedal, grifting ne’er-do-wells and genocidal knuckleheads to cosmic shitdust long ago and in an instant.

Same type of Big Lie storyline being deployed towards Venezuela — i.e., “narcotrafficking” Venezuelan fisherman, for the sake of US national security, must be bombed then survivors of the initial assault are to be “double-tapped” bombed.

Will we next be subject to official narratives reporting that UFO-manning aliens are the actual party delivering fentanyl to the decaying precincts of the collapsing republic?

If super intelligent aliens regard us at all, I suspect, it would be with the annoyance that we regard raccoons prone to upend garbage containers scattering the contents across the yard, albeit we humans, with our ecocidal, genocidal, and war making proclivities cannot be regarded as, in any manner, cute.

Consider this, the beauty and terror of it, at times, must be regard from what the poet Wallace Stevens termed to “central mind” of poetic imagination:

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,

We make a dwelling in the evening air,

In which being there together is enough. Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour, Wallace Stevens

As US empire, the global neoliberal order, and the Zionist state are falling apart — so are we.

We have been in service to a dictatorship of money, to a gangster imperium, and we are held and buffeted by the caprice of a soul-defying despotism that will kill what it cannot dominate.

Through it all, we are all storytellers conjuring tales of what isn’t and what has never existed. We are a fiction of possibilities, most of the latter being improbable.

How real is the tangible world that is invisible to us given its hidden-from-us order? Real enough to prove to us that it is us that must be regarded as unreal.

I am an ad hoc contrivance of myself. Only by surrendering to the implausible can I conjure a serviceable face to meet the day and to possess a modicum of plausibility I must allow myself to be transformed by the inchoate counsel of Impossible Angels.

You might not know it but, I suspect, the same goes for you.

Bear the above in mind as the world (we only believe) we know continues to fall apart.

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Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist, and essayist. His poems, short fiction, poetry and essays have been published in numerous print publications and anthologies; his political essays have been widely posted on the progressive/left side of the internet.  Read other articles by Phil, or visit Phil's website.

How a key psychological concept was undermined once 'UFOs failed to arrive': study

UFO at night in a forest (Shutterstock).

Lesley Abravanel

November 25, 2025

ALTERNET

A 1956 book favored by UFO believers that is considered "an enduring classic in the fields of new religious studies, cult research, and social psychology," is being called into question as a potential lie, according to Anna Merlan in Mother Jones.

When Prophecy Fails, written by Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, details a study of a UFO cult known as the Seekers that predicted the end of the world.

The book also introduced the theory of cognitive dissonance, which explains the psychological mechanisms for how people cope when their deeply held beliefs are contradicted by reality.

"The book is gripping, an in-depth social and psychological study of Martin’s group and how they behaved, both as it was forming and after their prophetic visions failed to take place," Merlan explains, adding that "it has served as a key basis for the psychological concept of cognitive dissonance."

That theory "was taken further by Festinger, who wrote a widely-cited followup book on cognitive dissonance and how people try to engage in 'dissonance reduction' to reduce the psychological pressure and unease they experience when confronted with conflicting information," she notes.

But a new study that examined Festinger’s recently unsealed papers claims that the book "leans on lies, omissions and serious manipulation," Merlan says.

"The article, published this month in the peer-reviewed Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, also argues that, contrary to the researchers’ longstanding narrative, the group members all showed clear signs of quickly abandoning their beliefs when the UFOs failed to arrive, and that the group soon dissolved," Mother Jones reports.

Thomas Kelly, the author of the article, says "while core members of the group stayed active in UFO spaces, they did not keep insisting on a world-ending flood, or that aliens would land and take them away."

The Seekers, Kelly notes, were quick to disavow those beliefs and eventually rebranded.

The group's leader Dorothy Martin "distanced herself completely from these events, even rewriting the story of how she developed her psychic powers," Kelly writes.

"Kelly’s paper not only undercuts the researchers’ claims and their application of the theory developed from them, but also alleges they committed scientific misconduct, including 'fabricated psychic messages, covert manipulation, and interference in a child welfare investigation,'" Merlan explains.

Kelly says that researchers "twisted the group’s behavior to fit their thesis, downplaying the proselytization they did before the prophecy failed and playing up any proselytization that occurred after."

Merlan notes that this interpretation is key, "because the thesis of When Prophecy Fails is clear: after Martin’s failed prophecy, her group doubled down, not only by refusing to acknowledge that their core predictions had utterly failed, but banding together with a new zeal to spread them."

"The interference Kelly uncovered goes beyond manipulation," Merlan notes, but not everyone agrees with Kelly's interpretation.


Poulomi Saha, a University of California-Berkeley associate professor in critical theory who is writing a book on the cultural fascination with cults, says Kelly used a narrow reading of limited materials to draw his conclusion.

"This author ends up doing what he accuses the authors of When Prophecy Fails of doing, which is cherrypicking evidence," Saha says of Kelly, adding, “if we want to critique the methods and think about how methodology has changed in 70 years, I would encourage that. We’re talking about different academic and scholarly methods 70 years ago around things like participant observation.”

Saha also says that Kelly was “very dismissive” of the fact that group members continued to believe in UFOs.

Thibault Le Texier, an associate researcher at France’s European Centre for Sociology and Political Science, says that "There are findings that people want to hear and findings that people don’t want to hear,” and regardless of what people believe, the book will probably continue to "gain a lot of attention in spite of being debunked."

"It’s also because these are fascinating stories, as riveting as a great movie," he adds.

Merlan agrees, saying, "For now, at least, Prophecy continues to be widely referred to as a classic of the genre. The aliens, it must be said, have not yet landed."

Vallée: UFO disclosure could trigger complex religious, security questions

by: George Knapp
Posted: Apr 25, 2025 

8 News Now Investigators


LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A highly respected UFO investigator warns that disclosing the truth, linked to documented human injuries and national security concerns, requires a carefully crafted strategy to avoid chaos.

Jacques Vallée has been a central figure in UFO research and debate for over six decades, often finding himself at odds with UFO orthodoxy. Vallée was among the first to argue that the unknown craft, seen for centuries in our skies and oceans, may not be from other planets, but instead from other realities.

Vallée has heard the demands for an end to official secrecy many times and, at the same time, has participated in secretive efforts himself, including a UFO study launched by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in 2008, which was hidden inside a Las Vegas aerospace company.

One focus of the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) was genuinely disturbing: the real-life health consequences for humans who come into contact with UFOs. Hundreds of serious injuries have been documented. AAWSAP investigators traveled to Brazil to obtain government files related to hundreds of Brazilians treated for injuries after being targeted by UFOs. While Vallée won’t discuss specific AAWSAP files, except for cases he provided to the database, he said those cases of UFO-related injuries were not accidental.

One focus of the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) was genuinely disturbing: the real-life health consequences for humans who come into contact with UFOs.

“I can tell you that in my files… some of which I contributed to the database of, there are at least half a dozen well-documented cases where the injuries that resulted in death were deliberate,” Vallée said.

Incidents in which UFOs deliberately cause physical harm to humans are rare, according to personnel who have seen the full AAWSAP files, but they do occur. Dr. Colm Kelleher, one of the AAWSAP managers, has said, bluntly, that UFOs are bad for human health.


Could that be a reason to keep secrets?

In his most recent book, “Forbidden Science 6: Scattered Castles,” Vallée shares private exchanges with colleagues from the AAWSAP program, including Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas billionaire. Additionally, there are conversations between and a close-knit group of scientists known as the Lonestars. The scientists, some of them former CIA contractors, accept that the U.S. government has recovered crashed vehicles of unknown origin, and that defense contractors have worked for decades to reverse engineer the technology at secretive facilities in the desert and elsewhere. They say adversary nations have done likewise, and that the race to duplicate the technology means national security is at stake.

Jacques Vallée, a rock star in the world of UFO investigations, discusses the AAWSAP database of UFO information. (KLAS)

Vallée favors transparency but worries that an official declaration could prove chaotic.

“If we want to disclose… something as simple as saying, ‘Yes, we acknowledge the phenomenon and it seems to be from space,’ we would have to… answer a hundred other questions, that this is not the end of the story,” Vallée noted. “There are religious questions… there is a religious side to all this.”

While Vallée is encouraged by the renewed interest in UFOs within Congress, mainstream media, and academia, he thinks someone needs to craft a well-planned strategy for how to unleash what would likely be the biggest news story in history.

“I think… that we should disclose with a structure,” Vallée said, adding that, “The structure hasn’t been invented yet.”

Archive.orgia801800.us.archive.org/19/items/jacques-vallee-passportto-magonia_202012/JacquesValleePassporttoMagonia.pdf

passport to magonia

conclusions. Passport to Magonia also contains Jacques Vallee's comprehensive catalog detailing the circumstances of nine hundred encounters spanning a ...

 

Nobody’s Coming to Humanity’s Rescue; We’ve Got to Save Ourselves

by Caitlin Johnstone / November 21st, 2025

AI isn’t going to save us. Tech innovation isn’t going to save us. Your favorite politician isn’t going to save us. The Epstein files aren’t going to save us. China isn’t going to save us. The aliens aren’t going to save us.

No one is coming to save us. There is no deus ex machina resolution to the plotline of the human story.

We’re going to have to save ourselves.

In ancient Greek theater, they used to resolve plays by having gods come in at the end to punish the villains and reward the heroes. The actors playing the gods would either be lowered onto the stage by a crane or raised by machine from a trap door below, hence the term deus ex machina. Today it’s used to refer to any lazy plot resolution where the protagonists are rescued out of the blue by an external force rather than by the fruit of their own struggles and character development; if the gods just come in to save them at the end, then nothing they did up until that point mattered, leaving the audience dissatisfied and staring at the writer instead of at the story.

When you look at the existential crises facing humanity today, it’s tempting to find hope in the belief that external forces will rescue us without our having to struggle or change ourselves. You see such salvation stories everywhere:

• Elon Musk is going to automate everything so we don’t have to work and then help humanity become an interplanetary species.
• Artificial superintelligence is right around the corner, and it will explode our scientific understanding of the universe and give birth to transformational new technologies.
• The release of the Epstein files will expose all the corruption that’s been poisoning our society and lead to the arrest and disempowerment of all the evil bad guys.
• Electing progressive Democrats or populist Republicans can put heroes into office who will transform the American political system for us.
• The rise of China is going to reshape the world order and help bring about the end of capitalism.
• UFO disclosure is happening any minute now, and it’s going to bring in alien technologies that will save humanity from destruction.

And it never happens. The Greek god never makes his entrance. The actors are left standing there in a long, awkward silence while the set collapses around them.

It’s never gonna happen, folks. Apollo missed his entrance, and Zeus is a no-show.

Nobody’s going to save us but us. We’re going to have to change. We’re going to have to act. We’ll keep hurtling in the direction of tyrannical dystopia, environmental catastrophe, and nuclear armageddon until we do.

We’re going to have to help each other snap out of the hypnotic trance of propaganda and awaken to the truth of what’s really going on in our world, and show each other that real change is both necessary and possible.

We’re going to have to wake up enough that we can use the power of our numbers to force our rulers to stop stealing from us, oppressing us, killing our biosphere, and murdering people.

We’re going to have to awaken from the trance of ego and become a truly conscious species, so that we can build a healthy world without falling back into our self-destructive patterning when the revolution is over.

Everyone wants change, but no one wants to change. That’s why the deus ex machina plot resolution is preferable in our minds.

It’s just a fantasy, though. Change is coming from nowhere but ourselves. Maintaining hope in the fantasy is the first obstacle preventing us from waking up to reality.

Every species eventually reaches a point where it must either adapt to changing conditions or go extinct. We are at that juncture today. We’ll either pass that test or we won’t, and if we do, it will be because of our own efforts, sacrifices, and self-transformation.

Nobody’s going to do it for us.

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Caitlin Johnstone has a reader-supported Newsletter. All her work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. Her work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece and want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. All works are co-authored with her husband Tim Foley. Read other articles by Caitlin.

 Military Divers Claimed They Found a UFO Crash Site—But They Spent Decades Sworn to Secrecy

Emma Frederickson
Thu, September 25, 2025 

POP MECH


Are These Two UFO Crashes Secretly Linked? Getty Images

On the evening of October 4, 1967, a group of teens near Canada’s Shag Harbour noticed strange orange lights in the sky plummeting toward the Atlantic ocean, hovering just above the water’s surface. They reported the incident to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, thinking it a devastating plane crash. When the Coast Guard arrived at the scene, the only evidence of the unidentified anomalous phenomenon was yellow foam in the water. Some witnesses thought the lights sinking into the sea caused the strange material to appear.

The next day, divers investigated the scene without any proof of aliens—or even a pedestrian plane crash, for that matter—which would make it seem like the case was cold. But when Chris Styles, a longtime ufologist, began poking around 33 years later, eyewitnesses kept asking him the same question: “You know about Shelburne, don’t you?”


For most ufologists, the prospect of another anomalous incident would be like an early Christmas present. But for Styles, it was more of a headache. He explained in an interview on the podcast UFO Live Shows that he didn’t want Shag Harbour to become another Roswell, the infamously confusing incident in the United States, which sparked a conspiracy theory among UFO proponents that recovered materials found in Roswell, New Mexico—including foil and rubber debris—were from an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Upon further investigation, Styles realized the “Shelburne” incident referred to a 1960s NATO minesweeping exercise off the coast of McNabs Island, a small island in Nova Scotia, Canada. According to Styles, the U.S. ships had travelled ahead along the Shelburne harbor coast, laying an eight-mile-long path of dummy mines for the exercise. The minesweepers would then come in and clear the entire course—at least that’s what was supposed to happen. Witnesses of the minesweeping mission said everything was going as planned for about an hour—that is, until “all hell broke loose” and divers were deployed into the water, Styles recalls in the podcast.

“There was no doubt what we were dealing with off of Shelburne,” Styles writes in his 2023 book, Sweep Clear 5: NATO’s UFO Encounter, quoting three Royal Canadian divers. “There were UFOs sitting on the seabed. They were occupied and there was still activity. One was trying to help the other, which was damaged.”

Following yet more research, Styles says in the interview that he came across records indicating the ships initiated DEFCON 1—the highest level of readiness for war—about 90 minutes into the mission. And it wasn’t surprising the witnesses mistook details of the exercise, like how long before things went wrong, or used ambiguous language when describing what they’d seen. According to the divers, they’d been sworn to secrecy for more than three decades.

“They ordered us to the surface and ordered us to forget what we’d seen,” the divers say in Sweep Clear 5. “Then the alarms sounded upon the command ship and panic broke out.”

As he continued his interviews, Styles began prying for more information from witnesses. He recounts on the podcast that one Air Force veteran in particular claimed to have listened to the divers talking each night. Styles says the airman remembered hearing his shipmates discuss two flying saucers lying on the ocean floor beneath the ship. That same veteran said talk continued until the end of the mission, when a U.S. Navy officer suggested the divers should stop talking about the “Soviet submarine” they were investigating, implying the vessels the men had seen weren’t extraterrestrial.

In the podcast interview, Styles claimed his editors pushed him to link his findings about what went down at Shelburne with the Shag Harbour incident. After all, in his other book, Dark Object: The World’s Only Government-Documented UFO Crash, he and co-author Don Leger hypothesize that the UFO which allegedly crashed at Shag Harbour travelled 25 miles away underwater, where it was met by another extraterrestrial ship, perhaps to rescue it. If Shelburne and Shag Harbour were connected, it would wrap the whole story up in a pretty red bow.

It wasn’t until nearly three decades into his research that Styles discovered the true year the NATO minesweeping mission occurred: 1960. Chronologically, this sets Shelburne seven years before Shag Harbour—even for an alien tale, it was impossible. The objects witnessed at the two locations couldn’t be the same.

Even though the two events proved to be unrelated—and despite the Shelburne witnesses being hesitant to share real details—Styles says in the podcast that he believed the veracity of the men’s accounts. He claims that many of the Navy veterans teared up in interviews, often asking to change the subject when their emotions became too intense. The researcher emphasized the historical context of the time, stating that Betty and Barney Hill had yet to make their famous alien abduction claims, and that space travel was still merely a science fiction dream.


Despite Styles’ extensive research, the sighting at Shelburne remains overshadowed by the Shag Harbour incident. Now, the small town of Shag Harbour is a tourist destination for alien enthusiasts. More than 50 years later, both cases remain unsolved aside from Styles’ explanation. But some experts say the possibility of unidentified submerged objects (USOs) having alien origins isn’t totally improbable—could this mean the UFOs at Shag Harbour and Shelburne really did get away?


A New Study Reveals the 10 Biggest UFO Hotspots in the U.S.

The research highlights where Americans most often report unexplained aerial phenomena.

Lindsey Puls
Creator of Have Clothes, Will Travel•
Sun, August 17, 2025




UFO sightings have always had a way of capturing our imagination. Some people see them as proof we’re not alone, others brush them off as military tests or tricks of the light. Either way, the fascination never really goes away.

To find out where Americans are most likely to spot something strange in the skies, the gaming platform 1000 Mines analyzed decades of UFO reports and patterns across the country. Their research highlights the places that consistently generate the most sightings, whether that’s mysterious lights hovering over small towns, unexplained objects darting across big-city skylines, or desert highways where legends seem to write themselves.

These are the top 10 UFO hotspots in the U.S., ranked by how often people claim to see the unexplained.

10. Chicago, Illinois (O’Hare Airport)

In 2006, United Airlines employees and pilots reported seeing a saucer-shaped object hovering over O’Hare’s Gate C17. Witnesses said it punched through the clouds at incredible speed, leaving a gaping hole in the overcast sky. The FAA brushed it off as “weather,” but when seasoned pilots insist it wasn’t? Hard to ignore.

9. Los Angeles, California

LA has a long history with UFOs, dating back to the infamous “Battle of Los Angeles” in 1942, when anti-aircraft guns fired on a mystery object over the city. Modern sightings continue, often clustered along the coast. Some theorize underwater UFO bases in the Pacific. Far-fetched? Maybe. But Navy pilots have reported “Tic Tac” shaped crafts off Southern California, so who knows.

8. Gulf Breeze, Florida

This quiet beach town made national headlines in the late ’80s when local contractor Ed Walters shared photos of bizarre flying objects. Hoax or not, the UFO buzz hasn’t completely died down. Locals still report strange lights over the Gulf, keeping Gulf Breeze on the UFO map.

7. Mount Shasta, California

Mystics and UFO enthusiasts alike flock to Mount Shasta. Some say it hides underground alien civilizations, others believe it’s a portal to another dimension. Hikers have reported missing time and unexplained lights on the mountain for decades, fueling its eerie reputation.

6. Kecksburg, Pennsylvania

In 1965, something fiery crashed in the woods near this small town. Witnesses described a strange, acorn-shaped object before the military swooped in and whisked it away. The official explanation? Nothing happened. Locals weren’t buying it, and today Kecksburg hosts its own UFO festival to keep the mystery alive.

5. Stephenville, Texas

In 2008, dozens of residents reported seeing enormous, silent aircraft, some as wide as a football field, flying in formation over town. The incident made national news and was never explained. Sightings haven’t stopped completely, and its proximity to Air Force bases keeps speculation swirling.

4. Roswell, New Mexico

It’s impossible to make a UFO list without Roswell. The 1947 crash (or “weather balloon,” if you believe the official story) helped launch America’s modern alien obsession. Today, Roswell embraces its reputation with museums, shops, and a thriving UFO tourism scene.




3. Area 51 / Rachel, Nevada

The secrecy surrounding Area 51 has made it ground zero for UFO lore. Just down the road lies Rachel, NV, a tiny desert town along the “Extraterrestrial Highway.” Whether it’s top-secret military tech or something cosmic, the mix of conspiracy theories and strange sightings keeps this spot legendary.

2. Pine Bush, New York

Dubbed the “UFO capital of the East Coast,” Pine Bush has been buzzing with activity since the 1980s. Witnesses regularly describe glowing orbs and triangular crafts. Some blame nearby military bases, others point to odd geological features. Either way, the town leans into its identity with an annual UFO fair.

1. Sedona, Arizona

Topping the list is Sedona, a stunning red rock town famous for its vortex energy fields and star-filled desert skies. UFO sightings are so common here that tours specifically for skywatchers are a booming business. Whether you chalk it up to high elevation, clear conditions, or cosmic energy, Sedona has become the ultimate UFO hotspot in America.

Whether you think these sightings are evidence of extraterrestrials, secret military projects, or just a trick of the imagination, there’s no denying UFO lore is a big part of American culture. 

And if quirky destinations are your thing, you might also enjoy reading about some of the strangest tourist attractions across all 50 U.S. states or checking out these 12 unbelievably strange islands that are hard to believe are real.

Yahoo CreatorLindsey PulsCreator of Have Clothes, Will TravelLindsey writes about travel, style, and quirky internet trends—sharing shopping tips, product reviews, and offbeat guides on Yahoo, MSN, the AP Wire, and her blog Have Clothes, Will Travel.

Have Clothes, Will Travel

Vallée: UFO disclosure could trigger complex religious, security questions


by: George Knapp
Posted: Apr 25, 2025 /

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A highly respected UFO investigator warns that disclosing the truth, linked to documented human injuries and national security concerns, requires a carefully crafted strategy to avoid chaos.

Jacques Vallée has been a central figure in UFO research and debate for over six decades, often finding himself at odds with UFO orthodoxy. Vallée was among the first to argue that the unknown craft, seen for centuries in our skies and oceans, may not be from other planets, but instead from other realities.

Vallée has heard the demands for an end to official secrecy many times and, at the same time, has participated in secretive efforts himself, including a UFO study launched by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in 2008, which was hidden inside a Las Vegas aerospace company.

One focus of the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) was genuinely disturbing: the real-life health consequences for humans who come into contact with UFOs. Hundreds of serious injuries have been documented. AAWSAP investigators traveled to Brazil to obtain government files related to hundreds of Brazilians treated for injuries after being targeted by UFOs. While Vallée won’t discuss specific AAWSAP files, except for cases he provided to the database, he said those cases of UFO-related injuries were not accidental.

One focus of the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) was genuinely disturbing: the real-life health consequences for humans who come into contact with UFOs.

“I can tell you that in my files… some of which I contributed to the database of, there are at least half a dozen well-documented cases where the injuries that resulted in death were deliberate,” Vallée said.

Incidents in which UFOs deliberately cause physical harm to humans are rare, according to personnel who have seen the full AAWSAP files, but they do occur. Dr. Colm Kelleher, one of the AAWSAP managers, has said, bluntly, that UFOs are bad for human health.

Could that be a reason to keep secrets?

In his most recent book, “Forbidden Science 6: Scattered Castles,” Vallée shares private exchanges with colleagues from the AAWSAP program, including Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas billionaire. Additionally, there are conversations between and a close-knit group of scientists known as the Lonestars. The scientists, some of them former CIA contractors, accept that the U.S. government has recovered crashed vehicles of unknown origin, and that defense contractors have worked for decades to reverse engineer the technology at secretive facilities in the desert and elsewhere. They say adversary nations have done likewise, and that the race to duplicate the technology means national security is at stake.

Jacques Vallée, a rock star in the world of UFO investigations, discusses the AAWSAP database of UFO information. (KLAS)

Vallée favors transparency but worries that an official declaration could prove chaotic.

“If we want to disclose… something as simple as saying, ‘Yes, we acknowledge the phenomenon and it seems to be from space,’ we would have to… answer a hundred other questions, that this is not the end of the story,” Vallée noted. “There are religious questions… there is a religious side to all this.”


While Vallée is encouraged by the renewed interest in UFOs within Congress, mainstream media, and academia, he thinks someone needs to craft a well-planned strategy for how to unleash what would likely be the biggest news story in history.

“I think… that we should disclose with a structure,” Vallée said, adding that, “The structure hasn’t been invented yet.”


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