James Fox is a respected Ufologist and film maker, with an amazing track record of producing high quality content with films like «Out of the Blue» and «I Know What I Saw». He is one of the best and brightest in the world of Ufology today.

James has been getting raked over the coals. Well known Ufologists have been speaking out about the show with scathing reviews and snide comments. One example is the article Ufologist Robert Hastings wrote about Chasing UFOs, in which he describes the show as «Blair Witch Project meets Inspector Clouseau». Ouch! Hastings explores many of the shows shortcomings and makes several references to Fox and his involvement in the show.

Even James Fox has made public statements regarding his disappointment in the show. A recent quote from Fox sums up his frustrations, “My credibility and reputation has, deservedly, taken a serious hit.”

I disagree James.

James Fox has a reputation for taking risks, and for pushing the envelope. James Fox is a true soldier for Ufology, always working tirelessly and taking chances to educate the masses on the subject of UFOs. His films are a prime example of his dedication, and the National Press Club Event, which was the basis for «I Know What I Saw» was a triumph. Everything Fox has accomplished comes with great risk to his credibility and reputation. More Ufologists need to be as fearless and dedicated as Fox is. That goes for you as well, Mr. Hastings.

So Chasing UFOs may be a waste of time for educated, seasoned Ufologists, and it may add fuel to the fiery criticism of UFO investigation from the many skeptics out there waiting for opportunities like this to discredit the cause. But the simple fact is, this show gets people talking about UFOs. And believe it or not, many out there will most likely learn about events that they were not familiar with. And I would hope that those who do, will follow up by seeking more information on the Internet. We have to remember that the general viewing public knows very little about Ufology. This show is disseminating information on these UFO cases out there to be digested by the public. That is what matters, and that is all James Fox was trying to do.

When the Ufology community was shocked to see Fox attached with this show in the early press releases, I stood up to applaud James for taking a risk like this to work towards his ultimate goal. To get the word out, and educate as many people as possible on UFOs. Additionally, I would assume that many folks out there are newly familiar with James Fox due to «Chasing UFOs» and will hopefully be seeking out and viewing his films. The more people to see «Out of the Blue» and «I Know What I Saw» the better. In my opinion, this show does have a purpose and has helped the UFO cause more than it has hurt it. It spreads the word and gets people talking about UFOs, and that is extremely important.

It is time to give James Fox a break. I don’t think any less of James or his credibility because of «Chasing UFOs» and neither should any of you. He will no doubt follow this misstep with another exceptional film on UFOs and we will all soon forget the look on his face from the night vision «face cam» as James is startled by the mating calls of a wild boar.

We should all be willing to take risks like James Fox has in the name of Ufology. Thank you James for all your hard work, I will still be watching «Chasing UFOs». Yes, I will cringe a bit from time to time but its not all bad. The show does have some redeeming qualities and it will hopefully continue to plant the seeds for people to dig further and learn more about these UFO cases. We all need to stop being so critical and elitist, and just see «Chasing UFOs» for what it really is.

• Project Sign (1947–1949),
• Project Grudge (1949–1952), and
• Project Blue Book (1952 to 1969).

For decades afterwards, he conducted his own independent UFO research, developing the Close Encounter classification system, and is widely considered the father of the concept of scientific analysis of both reports and, especially, trace evidence purportedly left by UFOs.

Hynek was born in Chicago to Czech parents. In 1931, Hynek received a B.S. from the University of Chicago. In 1935, he completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics at Yerkes Observatory. He joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ohio State University in 1936. He specialized in the study of stellar evolution and in the identification of spectroscopic binaries.

During World War II, Hynek was a civilian scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where he helped to develop the United States Navy’s radio proximity fuze.

After the war, Hynek returned to the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ohio State, rising to full professor in 1950.

In 1956, he left to join Professor Fred Whipple, the Harvard astronomer, at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which had combined with the Harvard Observatory at Harvard. Hynek had the assignment of directing the tracking of an American space satellite, a project for the International Geophysical Year in 1956 and thereafter. In addition to over 200 teams of amateur scientists around the world that were part of Operation Moonwatch, there were also 12 photographic Baker-Nunn stations. A special camera was devised for the task and a prototype was built and tested and then stripped apart again when, on Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched its first satellite, Sputnik.

After completing his work on the satellite program, Hynek went back to teaching, taking the position of professor and chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University in 1960.

Hynek’s son Joel Hynek is an Oscar winning movie visual effects supervisor who directed the design of the so-called camouflage effect from the movie Predator.

Early Involvement in UFOs (Project Blue Book)

In response to many «flying saucer» sightings (later unidentified flying objects), the United States Air Force established Project Sign in 1948; this later became Project Grudge, which in turn became Project Blue Book in 1952. Hynek was contacted by Project Sign to act as scientific consultant for their investigation of UFO reports. Hynek would study a UFO report and subsequently decide if its description of the UFO suggested a known astronomical object.

When Project Sign hired Hynek, he was initially skeptical of UFO reports. Hynek suspected that UFO reports were made by unreliable witnesses, or by persons who had misidentified man-made or natural objects. In 1948, Hynek said that «the whole subject seems utterly ridiculous,» and described it as a fad that would soon pass.

For the first few years of his UFO studies, Hynek could safely be described as a debunker. He thought that a great many UFOs could be explained as prosaic phenomena misidentified by an observer. But beyond such fairly obvious cases, Hynek often stretched logic to nearly the breaking point in an attempt to explain away as many UFO reports as possible. In his 1977 book, Hynek admitted that he enjoyed his role as a debunker for the Air Force. He also noted that debunking was what the Air Force expected of him.

Change of opinion

Hynek’s opinions about UFOs began a slow and gradual shift. After examining hundreds of UFO reports over the decades (including some made by credible witnesses, including astronomers, pilots, police officers, and military personnel), Hynek concluded that some reports represented genuine empirical observations.

Another shift in Hynek’s opinions came after conducting an informal poll of his astronomer colleagues in the early 1950s. Among those he queried was Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the dwarf planet Pluto. Of 44 astronomers, five (over 11 percent) had seen aerial objects that they could not account for with established, mainstream science. Most of these astronomers had not widely shared their accounts for fear of ridicule or of damage to their reputations or careers (Tombaugh was an exception, having openly discussed his own UFO sightings). Hynek also noted that this 11% figure was, according to most polls, greater than those in the general public who claimed to have seen UFOs. Furthermore, the astronomers were presumably more knowledgeable about observing and evaluating the skies than the general public, so their observations were arguably more impressive. Hynek was also distressed by what he regarded as the dismissive or arrogant attitude of many mainstream scientists towards UFO reports and witnesses.

Early evidence of the shift in Hynek’s opinions appeared in 1953, when Hynek wrote an article for the April 1953 issue of the Journal of the Optical Society of America titled «Unusual Aerial Phenomena,» which contained what would become perhaps Hynek’s best known statement:

«Ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and people should not be taught that it is. The steady flow of reports, often made in concert by reliable observers, raises questions of scientific obligation and responsibility. Is there … any residue that is worthy of scientific attention Or, if there isn’t, does not an obligation exist to say so to the public—not in words of open ridicule but seriously, to keep faith with the trust the public places in science and scientists» (Emphasis in

The essay was very carefully worded: Hynek never states that UFOs are an extraordinary phenomenon. But it is clear that, whatever his own views, Hynek was increasingly distressed by what he saw as the superficial manner most scientists looked at UFOs. In 1953, Hynek was an associate member of the Robertson Panel, which concluded that there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and that a public relations campaign should be undertaken to debunk the subject and reduce public interest. Hynek would later come to lament that the Robertson Panel had helped make UFOs a disreputable field of study.

When the UFO reports continued at a steady pace, Hynek devoted some time to studying the reports and determined that some were deeply puzzling, even after considerable study. He once said, «As a scientist I must be mindful of the past; all too often it has happened that matters of great value to science were overlooked because the new phenomenon did not fit the accepted scientific outlook of the time.»

In a 1985 interview, when asked what caused his change of opinion, Hynek responded, «Two things, really. One was the completely negative and unyielding attitude of the Air Force. They wouldn’t give UFOs the chance of existing, even if they were flying up and down the street in broad daylight. Everything had to have an explanation. I began to resent that, even though I basically felt the same way, because I still thought they weren’t going about it in the right way. You can’t assume that everything is black no matter what. Secondly, the caliber of the witnesses began to trouble me. Quite a few instances were reported by military pilots, for example, and I knew them to be fairly well-trained, so this is when I first began to think that, well, maybe there was something to all this.»

Regardless of his own private views, Hynek was, by and large, still echoing the post-Ruppelt line of Project Blue Book: There are no UFOs, and reports can largely be explained as misidentifications.

Hynek remained with Project Sign after it became Project Grudge (though with far less involvement than with Project Sign). Project Grudge was replaced with Project Blue Book in early 1952. Hynek continued as scientific consultant to Project Blue Book. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt (Blue Book’s first director), held Hynek in high regard: «Dr. Hynek was one of the most impressive scientists I met while working on the UFO project, and I met a good many. He didn’t do two things that some of them did: give you the answer before he knew the question; or immediately begin to expound on his accomplishments in the field of science.»

Though Hynek thought Ruppelt was a capable director who steered Project Blue Book in the right direction, Ruppelt headed Blue Book for only a few years. Hynek has also stated his opinion that after Ruppelt’s departure, Project Blue Book was little more than a public relations exercise, further noting that little or no research was undertaken using the scientific method.

Turnaround

Hynek began occasionally disagreeing publicly with the conclusions of Blue Book. By the early 1960s—after about a decade and a half of study—Clark writes that «Hynek’s apparent turnaround on the UFO question was an open secret.» Only after Blue Book was formally dissolved did Hynek speak more openly about his «turnaround.»

By his own admission, the soft-spoken Hynek was cautious and conservative by nature. He speculated that his personality was a factor in the Air Force keeping him on as a consultant for over two decades.

Some other ufologists thought that Hynek was being disingenuous or even duplicitous in his turnaround. Physicist Dr. James E. McDonald, for example, wrote to Hynek in 1970, castigating him for what McDonald saw as his lapses, and suggesting that, when evaluated by later generations, retired Marine Corps Major Donald E. Keyhoe would be regarded as a more objective, honest, and scientific ufologist.

It was during the late stages of Blue Book in the 1960s that Hynek began speaking openly about his disagreements and disappointments with the Air Force. Among the cases where he openly dissented with the Air Force were the highly publicized Portage County UFO chase (where several police officers chased a UFO for half an hour), and the encounter of Lonnie Zamora. A police officer, Zamora reported an encounter with a metallic, egg-shaped aircraft near Socorro, New Mexico.

In late March 1966, in Michigan, two days of mass UFO sightings were reported, and received significant publicity. After studying the reports, Hynek offered a provisional hypothesis for some of the sightings: a few of about 100 witnesses had mistaken swamp gas for something more spectacular. At the press conference where he made his announcement, Hynek repeatedly and strenuously made the qualification that swamp gas was a plausible explanation for only a portion of the Michigan UFO reports, and certainly not for UFO reports in general. But much to his chagrin, Hynek’s qualifications were largely overlooked, and the words «swamp gas» were repeated ad infinitum in relation to UFO reports. The explanation was subject to national derision.

Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS)
Main article: Center for UFO Studies
Hynek was the founder and head of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). Founded in 1973 (originally in Evanston, Illinois but now based in Chicago), CUFOS is an organization stressing scientific analysis of UFO cases. CUFOS’s extensive archives include valuable files from civilian research groups such as NICAP, one of the most popular and credible UFO research groups of the 1950s and 1960s.

Speech before the United Nations

In November 1978, a statement on UFOs was presented by Dr. Allen Hynek, in the name of himself, of Dr. Jacques Vallee, and of Dr. Claude Poher. This speech was prepared and approved by the three authors, before the United Nations General Assembly. The objective was to initiate a centralized United Nations UFO authority.

UFO origin hypotheses

In 1973, at the MUFON annual symposium, held in Akron, Ohio, Hynek began to express his doubts regarding the extraterrestrial (formerly «interplanetary» or «intergalactic») hypothesis. His main point led him to the title of his speech: «The Embarrassment of the Riches.» He was aware that the quantity of UFO sightings was much higher than the Project Blue Book statistics. Just this puzzled him. «A few good sightings a year, over the world, would bolster the extraterrestrial hypothesis—but many thousands every year From remote regions of space And to what purpose To scare us by stopping cars, and disturbing animals, and puzzling us with their seemingly pointless antics»

In 1975, in a paper presented to the Joint Symposium of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics in Los Angeles, he wrote, «If you object, I ask you to explain – quantitatively, not qualitatively – the reported phenomena of materialization and dematerialization, of shape changes, of the noiseless hovering in the Earth’s gravitational field, accelerations that – for an appreciable mass – require energy sources far beyond present capabilities – even theoretical capabilities, the well-known and often reported E-M (sc. electro-magnetic interference) effect, the psychic effects on percipients, including purported telepathic communications.»

In 1977, at the First International UFO Congress in Chicago, Hynek presented his thoughts in his speech «What I really believe about UFOs.» «I do believe,» he said, «that the UFO phenomenon as a whole is real, but I do not mean necessarily that it’s just one thing. We must ask whether the diversity of observed UFOs . . . all spring from the same basic source, as do weather phenomena, which all originate in the atmosphere», or whether they differ «as a rain shower differs from a meteor, which in turn differs from a cosmic-ray shower.» We must not ask, Hynek said, what hypothesis can explain the most facts, but we must ask, which hypothesis can explain the most puzzling facts.

«There is sufficient evidence to defend both the ETI and the EDI hypothesis,» Hynek continued. As evidence for the ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) he mentioned, as examples, the radar cases as good evidence of something solid, and the physical-trace cases. Then he turned to defending the EDI (extradimensional intelligence) hypothesis. Besides the aspect of materialization and dematerialization he cited the «poltergeist» phenomenon experienced by some people after a close encounter; the photographs of UFOs, some times on only one frame, not seen by the witnesses; the changing form right before the witnesses’ eyes; the puzzling question of telepathic communication; or that in close encounters of the third kind the creatures seem to be at home in earth’s gravity and atmosphere; the sudden stillness in the presence of the craft; levitation of cars or persons; the development by some of psychic abilities after an encounter. «Do we have two aspects of one phenomenon or two different sets of phenomena» Hynek asked.
Finally he introduced a third hypothesis. «I hold it entirely possible,» he said, «that a technology exists, which encompasses both the physical and the psychic, the material and the mental. There are stars that are millions of years older than the sun. There may be a civilization that is millions of years more advanced than man’s. We have gone from Kitty Hawk to the moon in some seventy years, but it’s possible that a million-year-old civilization may know something that we don’t … I hypothesize an ‘M&M’ technology encompassing the mental and material realms. The psychic realms, so mysterious to us today, may be an ordinary part of an advanced technology.»

In Hynek and Vallee’s 1975 book The Edge of Reality, Hynek publishes a stereoscopic photograph of a UFO he took during a flight. According to the book the object stayed in sight long enough for Hynek to unpack his camera from his luggage and take two exposures. UFO researcher Robert Sheaffer writes in his book Psychic Vibrations that Hynek seemed to forget that he had photographed and published these two photographs as he told a reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail that he had never seen a UFO. The article quotes Hynek saying that in all the years he has been looking upward «He has never seen ‘what I would so dearly love to see. Oh, the subject has been so ridiculed that I would never report a UFO even if I did see one — not without a witness’».

Steven Spielberg movie

Hynek developed in his first book the close encounter scale to better catalogue various UFO reports. Dr. Hynek was also the consultant to Columbia Pictures and Steven Spielberg on the popular 1977 UFO movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and made a brief, non-speaking appearance in the film (after the aliens disembark from the ‘mother ship’ at the end of the film, he can be seen, bearded and with pipe in mouth, stepping forward to view the spectacle).

Views on UFOs

Artistic impression of a grey alien.

At a 1996 conference in Chile, Gevaerd reported that UFO sightings around the world had risen by more than 200% in the past year. He said «there are places where there has been a 400 percent rise. This means a true wave of UFOs visiting Earth, and I have more then 100 slides to prove it». Speaking at the Australian International UFO Symposium in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia in October 1996, he discussed two aliens allegedly captured by the army after their space vehicle crashed in Varginha, Brazil on 20 January 1996. The description of one of the creatures was similar to that of the standard short grey alien, but it had greasy brown skin, red eyes and protuberances that could have been horns. Both aliens were viewed by many witnesses, but the army warned them not to discuss the subject. Speaking later, he said that six aliens were captured and several parts of their UFO. There were witnesses among the firefighters who were the first officials on the scene, and the military confirmed the story.

In 1997 Gevaerd’s Brazilian Committee of Ufologists organized the First World Forum of Ufology in Brazil, held in Brasilia. Answering questions from the audience during a 2001 talk show, he described the great advances that had been made in ufology in recent years, and particularly in Brazil, which he described as a leading center of research. He defended serious research into UFOs against quacksters seeking to make money, and commentators who ridiculed the subject. He discussed the many documented sightings, including reports in the Bible. He noted that there was evidence that extraterrestrials had been involved in the construction of the Egyptian pyramids. He said that many different alien species had visited Earth, and that for some reason all had two arms, a torso, two legs and a head.

Gevaerd has denounced the controversial Urandir Fernandes de Oliveira, saying he had faked images of UFOs with devices such a laser pens. Talking of a video of flying saucers over Haiti released on YouTube in late 2007, which had more than 8 million hits on YouTube, he said «It was the largest UFO phenomenon over the past 10 years. But it was a deliberate fraud. These things, while they popularize ufology, stink». He said that unmasking fraud is a major job for ufologists: easy to produce and release videos makes it difficult to separate what is fabricated from what is just inexplicable. However, when his friend the Portuguese ufologist Nuno Alves was found by a rival magazine UFOVIA to have invented a report of a UFO crash in Holland in 1970, he came to Alves’ rescue. The attacks by Alves and Gevaerd against the UFOVIA reporter were so violent that the magazine denounced both men to the police, accusing Geveard of electronic crimes and digital frauds.

In July 2008 Gevaerd asked «if we already have machines that can investigate the soil of Mars, why should other extraterrestrial beings be unable to develop technology to reach Earth

In February 2007 the feature-length documentary Fastwalkers was released, featuring interviews of Gevaerd and others on the subject of UFOs and extraterrestrials. In July 2007 the offices of UFO Magazine were raided, with valuable information taken from filing cabinet folders, along with four computers. A police officer said «it is clear that the action was premeditated and carried out by elements that had knowledge of the activities of UFO Magazine, experience with computers and knew where to find the company’s most important files». Gevaerd said that efforts to stop publication would have the opposite effect. That week the magazine launched its 25th DVD documentary, The Phoenix Lights, depicting one of the largest UFO waves in the news, in March 1997, in the city of the state of Arizona, USA.

Gevaerd was a keynote speaker in June 2008 at the first International Meeting of ufology experts in Lisbon, discussing the Varginha UFO incident. In August 2009 he was a keynote speaker at a ufology conference in San Clemente, Chile. He was slated as a speaker at the 18th Annual International UFO Congress Convention and Film Festival in Laughlin, Nevada in February 2009, speaking on the need for the public to demand that the government release information about extraterrestrial life.

Crop circles

Discussing UFO sightings and crop circles that appeared near Riolandia, Sao Paulo in January 2000, he said that the bent reeds were not evidence. What counted was the appearance of discoidal objects. In 2002, Gevaerd investigated crop circles in the fields of Alton Barnes in southern England, 30 km from the resort of Avebury. He speculated that the circles and other designs in the British fields represented some kind of coded message. In November 2008, crop circles were found in the west of Santa Catarina. Gevaerd investigated the circles, which he said were similar to crop circles he had investigated in Europe, starting with fields located some 150 miles from London. Later he found that they were fraudulent. He said they differed in significant respects from genuine crop circles, and there was evidence of fabrication.

Government information

Gevaerd has said that one of the reasons why ufologists do not let themselves be discouraged by lack of proof for their theories is due to the fact most of them believe in the existence of a government conspiracy to hide the truth from the people. On 15 April 2004 Gevaerd’s Brazilian Committee of Ufologists launched a campaign called «Freedom of Information Now!» with the goal of pressuring the government to release information on UFO sightings.

«UFO» over Rio de Janeiro, created by artist Peter Coffin

On 20 May 2005, Gevaerd led a delegation of ufologists who met with Brazilian Air Force officials in Brazilia headed by Brigadier Telles Ribeiro, chief of the Air Force’s Center for Public Communications. In an interview after the meeting, Gevaerd said his group had been shown information on three specific cases: the testimony of the head of Varig, Nagib Ayub, on a UFO seen in the airspace in Rio Grande do Sul in 1954, testimony from pilots who pursued 21 UFOs flying over Sao Paulo, Sao Jose dos Campos and Rio de Janeiro in May 1986, and a Brazilian Air Force investigation of UFOs held in 1977 in Para, by Colonel Uyrange Holland, who died in 1997. According to Holland, «we detected at least nine forms of objects. Probes, spaceships, flying saucer shape … All reports were sent by the 1st Comar to Brasilia». At a 2007 seminar on UFOs in Chile, he disclosed «Operation Plato», a highly secret UFO research project conducted by the Brazilian Air Force.

In August 2008 Gevaerd stated that the government has plenty of information that UFOs enter Brazilian air space every day, but refuses to publish it. Discussing the campaign for release of government information, at a September 2008 meeting of UFO enthusiasts he said «We are being visited by many civilizations from other planets. I have a feeling that we will soon have an answer to the questions we are all seeking».

In April 2009, Gevaerd described the declassification of documents that have always been declared TOP SECRET as a historic event. He said no country had gone so far in the disclosure of information on UFOs. In September 2009, Gevaerd announced receipt of a significant new set of UFO government documents, some of which had been secret for 80 years. The documents included fresh details of UFO reports from the night of 19 May 1986, when 21 spherical objects, which according to military sources were 100 feet in diameter, were detected by radar and sighted by civilian pilots and literally blocked the main airports in Brazil including Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. However, Gevaerd said in an interview that tapes of the interception operations from that event had been destroyed. In March 2010 Gevaerd discussed the downgrading of UFO documents by the administration of President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, saying that in 2009 he had received between 50 and 80 documents with a total of four thousand pages contained info
rmation from armed forces investigation of the UFO phenomenon.

In an August 2010 interview with Terra Magazine, Gevaerd commented on the Federal Government decree that the air force should send records of any UFO sightings to the National Archives, saying the decision was in response to the campaign by the Brazilian Committee of UFO enthusiasts for freedom of information. He noted that documents already released confirmed that UFOs had been sighted frequently, and said that the government had more than 12 tons of documents about these sightings. Commenting on some initial documents released by the Air Force on 20 March 1996 sightings of UFOs in five cities in southern Brazil, he said «It’s just the tip of the iceberg». The Air Force had said they would not release any secret documents. Brigadier Jose Carlos Pereira, in charge of UFO records, said «If an extraordinary phenomenon happen, obviously that will be kept under wraps».

Greer was trained as a Transcendental Meditation teacher in 1975. In 1993 Greer founded The Disclosure Project whose goal is to disclose to the public the government’s knowledge of extraterrestrials. In 1994 Greer appeared in Larry King’s TV special The UFO Coverup. As of 1995, Greer was chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Caldwell Memorial Hospital and the head of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) whose goal is to initiate contact with extraterrestrials.

In May 2001, Greer held a press conference in D.C that featured «20 retired Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration and intelligence officers» who demanded that Congress begin hearings on «secret U.S. involvement with UFOs and extraterrestrials». According to a 2002 report in the Oregon Daily Emerald, Greer has gathered 120 hours of testimony from various government officials on the topic of UFO’s, including Brigadier General Stephen Lovekin and astronaut Gordon Cooper. In 2002 Greer appeared three times on the radio show Coast to Coast AM.

In 2012, Greer raised enough funds through crowdfunding to support the release of a UFO documentary called Sirius.

Hellyer was born and raised on a farm near Waterford, Ontario. Upon completion of high school he studied aeronautical engineering at the Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute of Aeronautics in Glendale, California, graduating in 1941. While studying he also obtained a private pilot’s licence.

After graduation, Hellyer was employed at Fleet Aircraft in Fort Erie, Ontario, which was then making training craft for the Royal Canadian Air Force as part of Canada’s war effort in World War II. He attempted to become an RCAF pilot himself, but was told no more pilots were necessary, after which he joined the Royal Canadian Artillery as a private for the duration of the war.

Hellyer earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto in 1949.
Early political career
First elected as a Liberal in 1949 federal election in the riding of Davenport, he was the youngest person ever elected to that point in the Canadian House of Commons. He served a brief stint as Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of National Defence, and made a good impression. He was then named Associate Minister of National Defence in the cabinet of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. This post was short-lived, though, as Hellyer lost his seat when the St. Laurent government lost the 1957 election two months later.

Hellyer returned to parliament in a 1958 by-election in the neighbouring riding of Trinity, and became an effective opposition critic of John Diefenbaker’s Progressive Conservative government.
Cabinet minister and Liberal leadership candidate
When the Liberals returned to power in the 1963 election, Hellyer became Minister of National Defence in the cabinet of Lester B. Pearson. This was the most notable period in Hellyer’s political career. As Minister of Defence, he oversaw the drastic and controversial integration and unification of the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Air Force into a single organization, the Canadian Forces.

Hellyer contested the 1968 Liberal leadership election, placing second on the first ballot, but slipped to third on the second and third ballots, and withdrew to support Robert Winters on the fourth ballot, in which Pierre Trudeau won the leadership. He served as Trudeau’s Transport Minister, and was Senior Minister in the Cabinet, a position similar to the current position of Deputy Prime Minister.
A political nomad, 1969–1988
In 1969, Hellyer issued a major report on housing and urban renewal in which he advocated incremental reforms rather than new government programs. He called for greater flexibility in Canada’s mortgage loan system, and encouraged corporate pension funds to invest more money in housing programs. His approach did not meet with universal acceptance. Some provincial and municipal governments were openly skeptical, and Heward Grafftey, a left-leaning Progressive Conservative with an interest in housing, called for a more radical approach.

Hellyer’s report also called for the suspension of the “wholesale destruction of older housing” and for “greater sensitivity… in the demolition of existing housing” (Milner, 1969). Grand urban renewal projects would come to an end as a result of his Task Force. Hellyer resigned from cabinet and the Liberal caucus in 1969 over a dispute with Trudeau over the implementation of the housing program.

Hellyer sat in Parliament as an independent for several years. After his 1971 attempt to form a new political party, Action Canada, failed, Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield invited him to join the PC caucus. He returned to prominence as an opposition critic and was re-elected in the 1972 election as a Progressive Conservative. He lost his seat, however, in the 1974 election.

Despite this loss, Hellyer contested the PC leadership election of 1976. His views were too right wing for most delegates, and alienated many Tories with a speech attacking Red Tories as not being «true conservatives». He finished a distant sixth of eight contestants on the second ballot; Joe Clark won the leadership.

Hellyer rejoined the Liberal Party in 1982, but remained mostly silent in politics. In 1988, he contested the Liberal nomination in the Toronto riding of St. Paul’s, losing to Aideen Nicholson, who had defeated Hellyer 14 years previously when he was a Tory MP in the adjacent riding of Trinity.
Canadian Action Party
In 1997, Hellyer formed the Canadian Action Party (CAP) to provide voters with an economic nationalist option following the collapse of the National Party of Canada. Hellyer believed that both the Progressive Conservative and Liberal parties were embracing globalization, and that the New Democratic Party was no longer able to provide a credible alternative. CAP also embraced Hellyer’s proposals for monetary reform: that the government should become more involved in the direction of the economy by gradually reducing the creation of private money and increasing the creation of public money from the current ratio of 5% public / 95% private back to 50% public and 50% private.

His party remained a little-noticed minor party, and Hellyer lost bids for a seat in the Canadian House of Commons in the 1997 and 2000 elections.

Following the 2000 election, and a resurgence for the New Democratic Party, Hellyer approached NDP leadership to discuss the possibility of merging the two parties into ‘One Big Party’. This process was furthered by the passage of a unanimous motion at the CAP’s convention in 2003.

In early 2004, after several extensions of the merger deadline, the NDP rejected Hellyer’s merger proposal which would have required the NDP to change its name. Hellyer resigned as CAP leader, but remains a member of the party. Rumours that he might run for the NDP in the 2004 election proved to be unfounded.
Peace in space and UFO advocacy
On 3 June 1967, Hellyer flew in by helicopter to officially inaugurate an Unidentified flying object landing pad in St. Paul, Alberta. The town had built the landing pad as its Canadian Centennial celebration project, and as a symbol of keeping space free from human warfare. The sign beside the pad reads:

«The area under the World’s First UFO Landing Pad was designated international by the Town of St. Paul as a symbol of our faith that mankind will maintain the outer universe free from national wars and strife. That future travel in space will be safe for all intergalactic beings, all visitors from earth or otherwise are welcome to this territory and to the Town of St. Paul.

Throughout his life, Hellyer has been opposed to the weaponization of space. He supports the Space Preservation Treaty to ban space weapons.

In early September 2005, Hellyer made headlines by publicly announcing that he believed in UFOs. On 25 September 2005, he was an invited speaker at an exopolitics conference in Toronto, where he told the audience that he had seen a UFO one night with his late wife and some friends. He said that, although he had discounted the experience at the time, he had kept an open mind to it. He said that he started taking the issue much more seriously after watching ABC’s Peter Jennings’ UFO special in February 2005.

Watching Jennings’ UFO special prompted Hellyer to finally read U.S. Army Colonel Philip J. Corso’s book The Day After Roswell, about the Roswell UFO Incident, which had been sitting on his shelf for some time. Hellyer told the Toronto audience that he later spoke to a retired U.S. Air Force general, who confirmed the accuracy of the information in the book. In November 2005, he accused U.S. President George W. Bush of plotting an «Intergalactic War». The former defence minister told an audience at the University of Toronto:

«The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning…The Bush Administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide.»

Hellyer told the audience that in December 2004, he had enjoyed reading and had endorsed a book by Alfred Webre entitled «Exopolitics — Politics, Government and Law in the Universe». He ended his 30 minute historical talk with a standing ovation by stating:

«To turn us in the direction of re-unification with the rest of creation the author is proposing a “Decade of Contact” – an “era of openness, public hearings, publicly funded research, and education about extraterrestrial reality”.»

In 2007, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Hellyer is demanding that world governments disclose alien technology that could be used to solve the problem of climate change:

«I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation…that could be a way to save our planet…We need to persuade governments to come clean on what they know. Some of us suspect they know quite a lot, and it might be enough to save our planet if applied quickly enough.»

In 2010, Hellyer accused Stephen Hawking of spreading misinformation about threats from aliens. Hawking has warned humanity against contacting aliens. According to Hawking, if human beings tried to contact aliens, they could invade us and take away our most important resources. Hawking had also said that though most extraterrestrial life could be only in the form of small animals, there could also be «nomads, looking to conquer and colonize» other planets. Hellyer told the Canadian Press that

«the reality is that they (aliens) have been visiting earth for decades and probably millennia and have contributed considerably to our knowledge.»

Blaming Hawking for scaring mankind about aliens, he said, «He (Hawking) is indulging in some pretty scary talk there that I would have hoped would not come from someone with such an established stature.»

Early life and education
She was born as Linda Moulton in Boise, Idaho. Howe entered the 1963 Miss Boise pageant for college scholarships and went on to win the 1963 Miss Idaho crown and scholarships, and participated in the Miss America Pageant that year in Atlantic City. Howe received her 1965 B.A. cum laude in English Literature from the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 1966, Howe was awarded the Stanley Baubaire Scholarship for her Master’s Degree work at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. She received her Masters Degree in Communication from Stanford University in 1968, where she produced a documentary film for the Stanford Medical Center and her Master’s Thesis, «A Picture Calculus,» at the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

Career

Howe has devoted her documentary film, television, radio, writing and reporting career to productions concerning science, medicine and the environment. She has received local, national and international awards, including three regional Emmys, a national Emmy nomination and a Station Peabody award for medical programming. While she was Director of Special Projects at KMGH-TV, Channel 7, Denver, Colorado from 1978 to 1983, her documentaries included Poison in the Wind and A Sun Kissed Poison which compared smog pollution in Los Angeles and Denver; Fire In The Water about hydrogen as an alternative energy source to fossil fuels; A Radioactive Water about uranium contamination of public drinking water in a Denver suburb; and A Strange Harvest (1980) and Strange Harvests (1993), which explored animal mutilation mystery. Another film, A Prairie Dawn, focused on astronaut training in Denver. She has also produced documentaries in Ethiopia and Mexico for UNICEF about child survival efforts and for Turner Broadcasting
in Atlanta about environmental challenges in the television series Earthbeat.

In addition to television, Howe produces, reports and edits the award-winning science, environment and earth mysteries news website, Earthfiles.com. She also reports monthly science, environment and earth mysteries news for Premiere Radio Networks Coast to Coast AM with George Noory and weekly news updates for Dreamland Radio at Unknowncountry.com.

In 2005, she traveled to Amsterdam, Hawaii, and several other U.S. conferences to speak about her investigative journalism. She was interviewed for the Canadian award-winning documentary, Star Dreams, about crop circles.

In 2004, Howe was on-camera television reporter for The History Channel’s UFO Files documentary investigation of an August 2004 cow death in Farnam, Nebraska. She also traveled to Florence and San Marino, Italy, to speak about her «earth mysteries» investigations. She also produced and reported Earthfiles segments for Comcast Cable broadcasts in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In 2003, Howe traveled to England to report about the proliferation of crop formations and small, mysterious lights there and in other European countries. She also investigated aerial light phenomena in Brazil. In 2002, She traveled to Norway to join astronomers, physicists and engineers in the study of «thermal plasmas of unknown origin» in the Hessdalen valley (see Hessdalen light). In 2001, she traveled to Hong Kong and Laos to report for The Discovery Channel television series, Modern Mysteries of Asia.

A few of Howe’s other television productions have included The World of Chemistry for PBS; a two-hour special Earth Mysteries: Alien Life Forms in association with WATL-Fox, Atlanta. Howe was Supervising Producer and Original Concept Creator for UFO Report: Sightings financed by Paramount Studios and the Fox network in Los Angeles. Its first broadcast was in October 1991, which became the Sightings series on Fox.

Howe has traveled widely for research and productions. She wrote the book Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles, 2nd edition, September 2002, about accounts and research regarding biophysical and biochemical changes in affected cereal crops by complex energy systems; An Alien Harvest about animal mutilation; Glimpses of Other Realities, Volumes I and II about U.S. military, intelligence and civilian testimonies concerning «unidentified phenomena interacting with earth life».

Howe was also asked to speak as an investigative reporter at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and has been interviewed on a Larry King Live special, CNN; The O’Reilly Factor, Fox; Sightings and Strange Universe, Fox; NBC’s The Other Side; Britain’s Union Pictures, ITN and BBC; The Discovery Channel special Evidence On Earth; and the NBC network special, Mysterious Origins of Man.

Film and television background

Howe reported news and produced the weekly live news program, Inquiry, at KNBC-TV, Los Angeles, 1968–1974; produced and wrote House Call with Timothy Johnson, M.D., WCVB-TV, Boston, 1974–1978; Director of Special Projects, KMGH-TV, Denver, 1978–1983; Owner Linda Moulton Howe Productions, 1983 to present; produced, wrote, directed and edited three documentaries for UNICEF, including UNICEF’s 40th Anniversary in New York City, 1984, and New Hope in Child Survival in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1985; produced, wrote, directed and edited The Mole for World of Chemistry series, PBS, Washington, D.C., 1986; produced, wrote, directed and edited Information’s Electronic Future in Denver, Colorado, 1987; Director of International Programming for Earthbeat, WTBS-TV, Atlanta, 1989–1990; produced, wrote, directed and edited Earth Mysteries: Alien Life Forms, and was Producer and Live Studio Host for a Roswell UFO Crash special audience event for WATL-TV, Atlanta, 1990; Supervising Producer and Original Concept Creator, UFO Re
port: Sightings, Paramount Studios/FOX Network, Los Angeles, 1991; produced, wrote, directed, edited Strange Harvests 1993, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1994; segment productions TN, Discovery Channel, Learning Channel, History Channel, 1995-2007.

Criticism

Joe Nickell, noted skeptic and Senior Research Fellow for The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, described Linda Moulton Howe as a «credulous journalist» in a 2002 article in Skeptical Inquirer magazine regarding her belief in the genuineness of visible light phenomena allegedly witnessed and photographed in crop circles.

Awards

Howe was an honored medical producer in Boston’s WCVB Station Excellence Peabody Award. As Director of Special Projects at the KMGH-TV station in Denver, Colorado, she received the Aviation & Space Writers Association Award for Writing Excellence in Television, a Chicago Film Festival Golden Plaque for A Radioactive Water, Colorado’s Florence Sabin Award for «outstanding contribution to public health» and several dozen other local and regional awards, including Emmys. She also worked as Director of International Programming for Earthbeat, an environmental series broadcast on Turner’s WTBS Superstation, in Atlanta, Georgia.

From the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico where he worked, Fry had planned to join the July 4, 1949 evening festivities in nearby Las Cruces but missed the last bus. Finding the Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOQ) where he stayed too hot, he decided to explore a path in the desert he had never been down. There, Fry claimed a 30 foot (10 m) diameter, 16 foot (5 m) high «oblate spheroid» landed in front of him, and he talked remotely with the pilot who operated the craft from a «mother ship» 900 miles (1400 km) above Earth. Fry claimed he was invited aboard and flown over New York City and back in 30 minutes. During the flight and subsequent meetings, Fry asserted that he talked with the pilot named Alan, (pronounced «a-lawn») who gave Fry information on physics, the prehistory of Earth including Atlantis and Lemuria and the foundations of civilization.

Truth or fiction

Shortly after Fry went public with his story in 1954, he failed a dubious lie detector examination about his claims. Fry also took photos and 16 mm film of supposed UFOs, but subsequent analysis of the original footage has provided evidence the UFOs were fake.

Later, Fry received a doctorate, however the «degree» was from a mail-order outfit in London, England called Saint Andrew College and was a «Doctorate of Cosmism».

Many years later, Fry also changed the date the event took place from July 4, 1950 to July 4, 1949.

Swiss UFO contactee Billy Meier has identified Daniel Fry as an authentic contactee.

Understanding Inc.

Understanding Vol II Issue #9, October 1957

In 1954, Fry published his first book called The White Sands Incident and a year later started an organization called Understanding which published a monthly newsletter by the same name. Understanding was eventually incorporated as a non-profit corporation, which was described in a 1959 pamphlet as «From a start of nine members at El Monte, California in 1955, Understanding Inc., has grown into an international organization of more than sixty units and many members-at-large throughout the world. These units and members have sponsored hundreds of lectures and meetings, circulated thousands of books and magazines to reach many people in the spirit of ‘bringing about a greater degree of understanding among all the peoples of the earth and preparing them for their eventual inevitable meetings with other races in space.»

Using Alan’s ideas as a foundation, Understanding Inc. served to spread alternative social and spiritual ideas by speeches, meetings and in the newsletter. The newsletter, first published in 1956, was typically about 20 pages long, published monthly and ran for 240+ issues until October 1979.

Understanding Inc. peaked in the early sixties with about 1,500 paid members and 60 or so «Units» in America. Mid-way through its waning years in 1974, Understanding was donated 55 acres (220,000 m) of land including eight buildings near Tonopah, Arizona by Enid Smith. The buildings, first intended as a religious college, had the coincidental feature of being round and saucer shaped. Understanding Inc. had fully taken the property over by

Understanding Inc. was considered by some to be a cult, but Daniel insisted that it wasn’t in a 1969 Daily Courier article: «The group is not mystic, he says, and is not a flying saucer watching organization although some members hold definite beliefs and interests in both areas. Understanding Inc. which is a non-profit, tax exempt corporation, works on the principles that there is nothing that members are required to believe or accept or do, Dr. Fry said.» During the early 1970s, Professor Robert S. Ellwood of the University of Southern California studied many new and unconventional religious and spiritual groups in the United States. During his research, he attended a meeting held in Inglewood, California by members of Understanding, Inc. and noted that, «There is no particular religious practice connected with the meeting, although interestingly the New Age Prayer derived from the Alice Bailey writings is used as an invocation.»

From 1954 onward, with little reimbursement, Fry gave thousands of lectures to organizations such as service clubs, radio and television stations. He also published other books such as Atoms, Galaxies and Understanding, To Men of Earth, Steps to the Stars, Curve of Development, Can God Fill Teeth and Verse and Worse. He, along with other contactees would a

Key points in Fry’s life

The first key point was in late 1919 when Emily, Fry’s grandmother who was his sole guardian, made the decision to move to South Pasadena, California to be near Fry’s uncle Walter. Fry would live in and around the South Pasadena area for the next 35 years and get in on the ground floor of the early rocket research which Pasadena was host to in the 1940s and 1950s.

The next important point was in 1949. After the war, when there were massive layoffs, Fry had moved to Oregon to find a way to make a living, and because of Fry’s work with Edmund Sawyer at Crescent and other related rocketry work, he got a job with Aerojet setting up instrumentation to test rockets at the test range in White Sands, New Mexico. It was that year that he had his reported «incident» with Alan which altered the trajectory of his life.

Most of the events following 1919 and 1949 were a result of the changes that had happened during those years. After 1919, Fry turned his working knowledge of explosives into jobs with rockets, which evolved, thanks in part to his early involvement with Crescent, into jobs with rocket instrumentation.

After 1949, because of his alleged contact with Alan, he became a founding member of the contactee movement, form Understanding, published 240+ issues of the Understanding newsletter, authored multiple books and gave thousands of lectures, interviews and talks. Fry became the 1972 vice-presidential nominee of the Universal Party along with the presidential nominee and fellow contactee Gabriel Green.

The last point of interest was in 1978. For Christmas that year, Fry would note with frustration the dwindling membership and see the library and kitchen at the Tonopah site burned to the ground by an arsonist. Shortly before the fire, Daniel would turn over the Understanding organization to Mr. and Mrs. Sellman and move to Alamogordo, New Mexico with his second wife Florence. Less than a year later, the Sellmans quit, along with a number of other long time board members like Tahahlita, because of Daniel’s refusal to negotiate a settlement over the Tonopah site lawsuit related to Enid Smith’s contested will. With the Understanding organization in tatters, the publication of the newsletter ceased in 1979 for the first time in over 20 years. A year later Florence would be dead from breast cancer.

Professional life

Crescent Marketing Pamphlet (1950)

In his professional life, he worked as a «powder man» or explosives supervisor in the 1930s and 1940s on such jobs as the Salinas Dam near San Luis Obispo, California, for the Basic Magnesium Corporation and on the Pan American Highway in Honduras. From 1949 until 1954, Daniel worked at Aerojet designing, building and installing transducers for control, feedback and measurement of rockets during flight and static tests. From 1954 onward, Fry helped build the Crescent Engineering & Research Company into a multimillion dollar company along with the founder, Edmund Vail Sawyer, eventually becoming the Vice President of Research and a stockholder. Crescent made parts related to rockets including transducers, and did JATO rocket nozzle rework during the war.

In the early 1960s Fry sold his share in Crescent and moved to Merlin, Oregon where he ran the Merlin Development Company until moving to Tonopah, Arizona in the 1970s. There he looked after Enid Smith until her death and managed her estate including property she had donated to Understanding, Inc. Shortly before Understanding ceased to function in 1979, Daniel retired to Alamogordo, New Mexico but a few years later restarted publication of the Understanding newsletter, by now reduced to a single 8″ x 14″ page, which he continued until 1989.

Personal life

Daniel William Fry was born on July 19, 1908 near a small steamboat landing on the Mississippi River called Verdon Township in the northern part of Aitkin County, Minnesota to Fred Nelson Fry and Clara Jane Baehr. Clara died in 1916 and left Daniel and his older sister, Florence, to be raised by their grandmother while Fred found work where he could as a carpenter and labourer. Fred died two years later in 1918 during the influenza pandemic and left Daniel orphaned at the age of ten. He and his sister were reared under the guardianship of his grandmother and came with her to South Pasadena, California in 1920. Daniel attended the now defunct El Centro Elementary school and went to high school in Antelope Valley.

His parents left practically no estate and at the age of eighteen he found himself entirely dependent upon his own resources. He completed high school but because of increasing unemployment that preceded the 1930s depression he abandoned plans for university. However, he found what jobs he could and studied during the evenings. He worked through the subjects he would have taken at university by using material from the Pasadena Public Library. He became interested in chemistry and eventually specialized in the use of explosives finally settling on the new field of rocketry.

He married his first wife, Elma, in 1934 and had three children. He divorced Elma in 1964 while in Merlin, Oregon and took up common-law residence with Bertha (aka Tahahlita) until moving to Tonopah, Arizona in the mid 1970s. There he married Florence, and before Florence died of breast cancer in 1980, they retired to Alamogordo, New Mexico. Fry then married Cleona, a local Alamogordo resident in 1982 and lived with her until his death on December 20, 1992.

In 1964 he and his wife Mary Evans (1936–2010) founded the Mary Evans Picture Library, an archive of historical illustrations. In 1981 he co-founded the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena.

Evans was an exponent of the Psychosocial Hypothesis of UFOs as culturally shaped visionary experiences.

Books published

Intrusions: Society and the Paranormal. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

The Evidence for UFOs. Wellingborough, Northampton, England: Aquarian Press, 1983.

Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors. Wellingborough, Northampton, England: Aquarian Press, 1984.

Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guardians. Wellingborough, Northampton: Aquarian Press, 1987.

Alternate States of Consciousness: Unself, Other-self, and Superself. Wellingborough, Northampton: Aquarian Press, 1989.
Frontiers of Reality, Aquarian Press, 1989
Evans, Hilary, and John Spencer, eds. Phenomena: Forty Years of Flying Saucers. New York: Avon Books, 1989.

Evans, Hilary, and Dennis Stacy, eds. UFO 1947-1997: Fifty Years of Flying Saucers. London: John Brown, 1997.

Evans, Hilary, and Robert Bartholomew, eds. Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behaviour. San Antonio, Texas: Anomalist Books, 2009.

Friedman was employed for 14 years as a nuclear physicist for such companies as General Electric (1956–1959), General Motors (1963–1966), Westinghouse (1966–1968), TRW Systems (1969-1970), Aerojet General Nucleonics (1959–1963), and McDonnell Douglas, where he worked on advanced, classified programs on nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets, and compact nuclear power plants for space applications. Since the 1980s, he has done related consultant work in the radon-detection industry. Friedman’s professional affiliations have included the American Nuclear Society, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and AFTRA.

UFO investigations and advocacy

In 1970, Friedman left full-time employment as a physicist to pursue the scientific investigation of UFOs. Since then, he has given lectures at more than 600 colleges and to more than 100 professional groups in 50 states, nine provinces, and 16 foreign countries. Additionally, he has worked as a consultant on the topic. He has published more than 80 UFO-related papers and has appeared on many radio and television programs. He has also provided written testimony to Congressional hearings and appeared twice at the United Nations.

Friedman has consistently favoured use of the term «flying saucer» in his work, saying «Flying saucers are, by definition, unidentified flying objects, but very few unidentified flying objects are flying saucers. I am interested in the latter, not the former.» Friedman used to refer to himself as «The Flying Saucer Physicist», because of his degrees in nuclear physics and work on nuclear projects.

Angelucci claimed that he suffered from poor health and extreme nervousness for most of his life, and eventually moved for health-related reasons from Trenton, New Jersey, to California in 1948, where he took a job on the assembly line at the Lockheed aircraft plant in Burbank. Another contactee, George Van Tassel, was also employed for a time at this plant.

In his books, Angelucci says he was particularly terrified of thunderstorms and was attracted to California because he had heard that thunderstorms were very rare there. Angelucci wrote the first version of his pseudoscientific account of matter, energy and life, The Nature of Infinite Entities in 1952, based on «research» done earlier in Trenton, including the launching of a giant cluster of weather balloons.

Beginning in summer 1952, according to Angelucci in his book The Secret of the Saucers (1955), he began to encounter flying saucers and their friendly human-appearing pilots during his drives home from the aircraft plant. These superhuman space people were handsome, often transparent and highly spiritual. Eventually Angelucci was taken in an unmanned saucer to earth orbit, where he saw a giant «mother ship» drift past a porthole. He also described having experienced a «missing time» episode and eventually remembered living for a week in the body of «space brother» Neptune, in a more evolved society on «the largest asteroid», the remains of a destroyed planet, while his usual body wandered around the aircraft plant in a daze.

In his later book, The Son of the Sun, Angelucci related an account that he claimed had been told to him by a medical doctor calling himself Adam, whose experiences were similar to his own. He also published several pamphlets on space-brotherly themes, such as «Million Year Prophecy» (1959), «Concrete Evidence» (1959) and «Again We Exist» (1960).