UFOs & The Media

Being a UFO investigator for the past 20 years, it’s now very hard to imagine a time when the majority of the western world did not believe in UFOs.  Things are much different now of course.  It is just a small minority of people who still cling onto the belief that ALL sightings can be explained away by the result of hallucinations/secret warplanes/natural weather phenomena/Venus/swamp gas, or reflections of moonlight bouncing off cabbage patch fields (delete as appropriate).

Thankfully, there are a good many scientists around the world who have joined with the rest of the public to now acknowledge the existence of these bizarre aerobatic wonders.

But why has there been such a huge change in public opinion in the last 10 years?  Is it simply down to more of these wonders visiting our skies?  Or is it that we are looking up into the heavens more often now than we did before?

The latter would be a hard argument to win in this digital age, with less and less people venturing outside, and choosing rather to switch on the computer, or choose to watch television from the 120 plus channels all vying for our attention.

I would argue that it is simply down to the huge proliferation of UFO articles being publicised in the media.

UFOs have always been seen, ever since the dawn of humankind (a number of ancient cave paintings clearly show what we now know to be UFOs), and may I refer the reader to the excellent Erich Von Daniken books if ever proof was needed.

I would argue further that there has not been an increase in UFO activity over the last 10 years, but simply, people have become more AWARE of the UFO phenomena because of the media boom in promoting this phenomena.  The UFOs have ALWAYS been here.

A classic example of this comes from a very experienced British UFO observer, Mike Oram (who has written one of the best UFO books I have ever read, “Does It Rain In Other Dimensions”, and I had the privilege of being at one of his presentations at a UFO conference) who during the early 1970s, whilst on a beach with his family on a very hot summer’s day in Weymouth, he witnessed a metallic, shimmering object, spinning and hovering in the clear blue sky above.  He instantly recognised this as a classic UFO (having observed them throughout his life), but was more astonished that no one else on the beach was observing this mysterious object.  He pointed this object out to his family, who looked up and saw the UFO, and naturally got quite excited by what they saw.  This was a valuable lesson to Mike Oram.  Here was a beach packed with sun-seekers on a hot summer’s day, and a UFO was hovering right above them, yet nobody had noticed it!  Nobody observed it!  I reiterate, THE UFOs HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE!

Why have the media started to take a very strong interest in the UFO phenomena?  As I write this, there are no less than 4 different documentaries about UFOs being shown today across the various television channels.  And what about tomorrow?  And the next day?  And that’s just the television!  What about the multitude of internet channels – highly prolific in UFO documentaries, not to mention the amount of paranormal radio shows?  And my local newsagent now stocks 7 different paranormal magazines, most of them rich in UFO articles.

All of this would have been unthinkable just 10 years ago.  So what exactly happened?

Well, like I mentioned earlier, the media has at long last started to portray the UFO phenomena with the seriousness it deserves.

Back in 1995, after my first 5 years of UFO investigations, I was getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of UFO reports being published in the newspapers despite the best efforts of our group at the Plymouth UFO Research Group attempting to get our reports out into the media.  A reporter from a local newspaper visited us in 1995 to do an article about our group, and what he said to us off-record confirmed what I had always thought. He explained that there is what is known as “The D-Notice”, which basically allowed the UK government to stop any SERIOUS articles going out to the public regarding mysterious phenomena.  Here I had it direct from the horses mouth as it were from what I had always believed to be the case – that our government was covering up any such mysterious news items from the public (there will always be contradictions to this, such as “The Warminster Thing” published in The Daily Mirror during 1965/1966, where I believe the odd occasional story seems to slip through the net of the watchful eye of the establishment).

I’m convinced other governments around the world  had in place their own D-Notice procedures.

It is always therefore astonishing to find 2 very big exceptions to this, whereby 2 governments effectively publicly announced the existence of UFOs – Belgium in 1990 and Mexico in 1991.  What provoked these 2 nations to go public?  Quite simply, they could no longer withhold the truth from the public, after what the public had witnessed.  In Belgium, in March 1990, a huge triangular object was seen moving silently across the country, with a smaller triangular object nearby.  Two F-16 jet fighters were scrambled into the air, where there were a total of 9 attempts to intercept the colossal UFO.  Each attempt failed, as the object simply outwitted the jets by doing incredibly fast manoeuvres.  The objects were seen by thousands of people, including police, military personnel, and TV news crews.  Some scientists foolishly claimed the sighting was simply a mass hallucination (I find such claims ludicrous and insulting).

In Mexico, throughout 1991, a whole sequence of UFOs were seen hovering over Mexico City, one of the most densely populated cities in the world.  This was during daylight hours, where even the main TV news station went onto their rooftop to film these wonders.  The Mexican authorities had no choice but to announce to their public the existence of these ethereal objects.  To this day, the Mexican sightings continue.

Apart from these 2 incidents, governments around the world insisted that there were no UFOs, however, in more recent years, things have changed…………

Here in the UK, just a short time ago in August 2011, a very well respected BBC sports presenter, driving to Stanstead Airport to cover a sporting event in Europe, witnessed an incredible UFO, whereby he described it was a large white saucer-shaped object, and it hovered over a field before banking to the left out of sight.  It had multi-coloured lights underneath.  There was a driver of another vehicle in front of him who also stopped to watch this bizarre sight.  The BBC allowed him to go on the news to report to millions of people exactly what he saw that morning.  Later that night, the BBC Newsnight TV show did a fascinating article on the USA and Russian secret government UFO files.

Over the last 3 years, the MOD has released thousands of previously classified documents relating to sightings of UFOs, whereby the witnesses are from literally all walks of life, ranging from police officers, to air traffic controllers and pilots.

One thing is certain – the “D-Notice” appears to have been lifted here in the UK regarding mysterious phenomena, and that includes UFOs.

How times have changed!  Keep watching the skies!