Has UFO disclosure begun?

Governments are said to be gearing up to disclose what they know about UFO's? Will they, or is it just another misinformation campaign?



This year we have had unprecedented news coverage of UFO's. It started with Stephensville, TX and has gone to this point with the UK releasing yet more documents. But what does it mean? Will we finally find out the truth, or is this just more covering of a huge secret?

It's entirely possible that the "government" doesn't know any more about UFOs than we do, so how do you tell the public you have no idea what is flying around in our skies? And can the public accept that? On the other hand, how do you tell the public you do know and have been lying for years?

It's tricky on both sides. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. What are your thoughts? Leave comments below:

UFO Crash in Needles Ca?

Here is an interesting UFO report that may have involved a crash. The report comes from George Knapp.:
"A large object with a turquoise hue plummeted out of the sky earlier this summer and plowed into the earth south of Las Vegas. Eyewitnesses say this was no meteorite, especially since a bunch of helicopters hauled it away. Chief Investigative Reporter George Knapp has the story."

Paranormal believer Erik Beckjord dies at 69

This report that Eric Beckjord has passed has been published:

Sam Whiting, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, July 25, 2008

Erik Beckjord, a paranormal investigator who tried to share his theories at his UFO, Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster Museum in North Beach, has died at age 69.

Mr. Beckjord, who had prostate cancer, died June 22 near his home in Lafayette, where he was caretaker of the Crosses of Lafayette, a monument dedicated to the more than 4,000 American troops who have died in the war in Iraq.

According to his Beckjord Blog, he was in charge of updating the sign displaying the total death count at the monument, which includes thousands of small white burial crosses on a hillside overlooking Highway 24 and the Lafayette BART Station.

Jon-Erik Beckjord was born in 1939 in Duluth, Minn. His father was Col. Philip Beckjord, a physician who ran Army field hospitals in Germany during World War II.

Mr. Beckjord grew up overseas and in the Washington area. He came west to attend graduate school at UC Berkeley. Eventually he went to Hollywood, where he was living when the Malibu fires of 1993 tore through his first Bigfoot Museum. According to family friend Molly Hanson, he lost what he claimed were nine huge track castings of the footprints of the elusive Sasquatch and the only known existing hair and blood samples. But the Bigfoot Museum survived.

Mr. Beckjord surfaced in San Francisco three years later. He opened his Bigfoot, UFO and Loch Ness Monster Museum on Union Street just west of Washington Square on Halloween in 1996. An additional area of expertise was crop circles, which he documented on expeditions to the United Kingdom.

"I'm not going to waste a whole lot of time convincing the skeptics," he told a reporter a few days before opening, "because the skeptics are not going to pay even a dollar to get in here."

The nonskeptics were expected to pay $3 ($2 for children) to come in and see his science fair-style displays, but the main attraction was the oversize museum founder and curator, who sat at a desk willing to discuss at length any sightings or other documentation.

He trusted hunches and distrusted the government. One of his hunches was that clues to solve the Nicole Simpson murder were buried in wet leaves at the scene. Under cover of night, Mr. Beckjord said, he went to the scene with a psychic to investigate. The evidence he collected was in a special "O.J. Room" at the museum.

"A lot of this weirdness is right under our noses," he said at the time. "We may belong to aliens. We may be experimental animals. But I can't prove it."

As it turned out, the lack of any substantial evidence was a detriment to paid admission at the museum. It didn't last long. He then operated Captain Neon, a repair company for electrical appliances.

Survivors include brothers Ross Beckjord of British Columbia, and Peter Beckjord of Maryland and sister Pam Forbes of Virginia. A private service and burial will be in Duluth in autumn.

Donations may be made to Hospice of the East Bay, 3470 Buskirk Ave., Pleasant Hill, CA 94523.

E-mail Sam Whiting at swhiting@sfchronicle.com.

There is some controversy that the report may not be true, if it is then R.I.P. If not, then it's not totally unexpected from him.

Is It Real??

A couple of things in this video (below) make it a difficult image to fake. One is the consistency of the UFO to go out of focus when the camera auto-focus iris changes. The second is it moves behind the trees. Either the trees are artifacts put in the video in post so the UFO can move behind them, or the hoaxer made a complicated mask of the tree limbs to match the video and layered it over the image so the UFO would appear to go behind it.
All of this can be done with software available now, some pro and some off the shelf. But it would be a time consuming job to get this quality and you would need to know the software very well.
One other thing about the UFO. It looks like something I've seen before, especially the bottom. So it may be a model. If this is fake, and I'm sitting on the fence on this one, then it's one of the best I've seen! Take a look:


If this is not fake then we need more videos of UFO's with this clarity! What do you think, fake or real?
J

The Flatwoods Monster

In September of 1952 an unusual object came to rest on a hill in West Virginia. The events of that night have come to be known as the Braxton County Monster and the Phantom of Flatwoods, or the Flatwoods Monster. The monster was described as being a large pulsating red ball of light that hovered above or rested upon the ground. Some believe that it may have been a powered craft that was piloted by the second entity, that was at least 10 feet tall and that it had a red face which appeared to glow from within, and a green body.
Witnesses described the creature's head as having bulging, non-human eyes and as either being shaped like a heart/an Ace of Spades, or as having a large heart/Ace of Spades shaped Cowling behind it. The creature's body was described as being man-shaped and clad in a dark pleated skirt; later described as being green. Some accounts record that the creature had no visible arms, while others describe it as having short stubby arms; ending in long claw-like fingers, which protruded from the front of its body.
Whatever it was it scared the dickens out of the witnesses and made them sick.

Here is an account of the event:
At 7:15 pm, on the night of September 12, 1952 two brothers, Edward and Fred May, and their friend Tommy Hyer (ages 13, 12, and 10) witnessed a bright object cross the sky. The object appeared to come to rest on land belonging to local farmer G. Bailey Fisher.

Upon witnessing the object, the boys went to the home of the May brothers' mother, Kathleen May, where they reported seeing a UFO crash land in the hills. From there, Mrs. May accompanied by the three boys, local children Neil Nunley and Ronnie Shaver, and 17 year old West Virginia National Guardsman Eugene 'Gene' Lemon, traveled to the Fisher farm in an effort to locate whatever it was that the boys had seen.

After traveling about ¼ of a mile the group reached the top of a hill, where they reportedly saw a large pulsating "ball of fire" about 50 feet to their right. They also detected a pungent mist that made their eyes and nose burn. Lemon then noticed two small lights over to the left of the object; underneath a nearby oak tree, and directed his flashlight towards them, revealing the creature, which is reported to have emitted a shrill hissing noise and to have begun to glide towards them before changing direction and heading off towards the red light. At this point the group fled.

Upon returning home Mrs. May contacted local Sheriff Robert Carr, and Mr. A. Lee Stewert; co-owner of the Braxton Democrat, a local newspaper. Stewert conducted a number of interviews and returned to the site with Lemon later that night where he reported that "there was a sickening, burnt, metallic odor still prevailing". Sheriff Carr and his deputy Burnell Long searched the area separately, but reported finding no trace of the encounter.

Early the next morning; on Saturday September 13, Mr. A Lee Stewart visited the site of the encounter for a second time and discovered two elongated tracks in the mud, as well as traces of a thick black liquid. He immediately reported them as being possible signs of a saucer landing based on the premise that the area had not been subjected to vehicle traffic for at least a year. It would later be revealed that the tracks most likely belonged to a 1942 Chevrolet pickup truck driven by local Max Lockard; who had gone to the site to look for the creature some hours prior to Stewert's discovery.

After the event, Mr. William and Donna Smith; investigators associated with Civilian Saucer Investigation, LA, obtained a number of accounts from witnesses who claimed to have experienced a similar or related phenomena. These accounts included the story of a mother and her 21 year-old-daughter, who claimed to have encountered a creature with the same appearance and odor a week prior to the September 12 incident; the encounter reportedly affected the daughter so badly that she was confined to Clarksburg Hospital for three weeks. A statement from the mother of Eugene Lemon, in which she said that, at the approximate time of the crash, her house had been violently shaken and her radio had cut out for 45 minutes, and a report from the director of the local Board of Education in which he claimed to have seen a flying saucer taking off at 6:30 on the morning of September 13 (the morning after the creature was sighted).

After encountering the creature, several members of the September 12 group reported being overcome with similar symptoms which persisted for some time, which they attributed to having been exposed to the mist emitted by the creature. The symptoms included irritation of the nose and swelling of the throat. Lemon was reportedly the worst affected. He suffered from vomiting and convulsions throughout the night, and had difficulties with his throat for several weeks afterwards.

A doctor who treated several of the witnesses is reported to have described their symptoms as being similar to victims of mustard gas, though such symptoms are also commonly found in sufferers of hysteria, which can be brought on by exposure to a traumatic or shocking event. (Wiki)

The town of Flatwoods holds an annual one day Monster Day Festival that takes place in the Flatwoods Outlet parking lot. A Braxton County Monster Museum is operated near the town of Flatwoods, and local gas stations sell Monster-related artifacts.

The following is a video of Stanton Friedman (ufologist) who visited the Flatwoods area, Here is his impression of the event...


The Flatwood Monster, like all monsters has it's place in cryptozoology and ufology. What happened on that hill is anyones guess, but to date no one has been able to completely refute the described events.
Comments welcome.
J.