A Christmas story from Britain’s Roswell: the Rendlesham Forest UFO legend ‘What the hell is it?… Who is in charge?’ These were the questions that Airman 1st class Kurt Loutzenheiser asked US Air Force Security Police when he was confronted with ..read more

I am pleased to announce the launch of the National Folklore Survey #NFS In Charlie Cooper’s new series Myth Country (streaming on BBC I-player) the actor and writer reveals his passion for folklore and how the peculiar rituals and traditions of this ..read more

Did aliens build the mysterious Nazca lines in the Peruvian desert? Are they linked with the so-called ‘Nazca mummies’ recently promoted as ‘non-human’ fossils that some claim are more than 1,000 years old? The answer to these two questions is a simple No ..read more

RAF test pilots reveal their close encounters with UFOs UFOs – or UAP – are a worldwide phenomenon. Since 2017 when new testimony from US Navy aircrew first emerged media attention has been focused on North America. But British military pilots have reported close encounters with ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ since 1916. During my research for the UK National Archives UFO project (2008-2013) I interviewed 25 retired and serving aircrew who served with the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm. All had reported encounters with ‘aerial phenomena’ between 1944 to 1966, when such things wer ..read more

A number of US Presidents have expressed an interest in UFOs and extraterrestrials but only one has ever reported a sighting: Jimmy Carter. The 39th President held office from 1977 until 1981 during a period of intense public interest in UFOs. Jimmy Carter in 1977 (credit: US DoD) Soon after Carter took office Sir Eric Gairy, president of the small Caribbean island republic of Grenada, called upon the United Nations General Assembly to make 1978 ‘the year of the UFO’. His attempts failed to gain any traction but the release of Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movie Close Encounters of the Third ..read more

The summer of 2023 may mark the highpoint of a renewed resurgence of interest in UFOs both in the corridors of the Pentagon and for the world’s media. But all the online debate around whistleblowers and imminent disclosure obscures the fact that UAP are a global phenomenon. Cover image from vol 1 of Project Condign report So far the response of the UK government to US intelligence interest and NASA’s separate, ongoing study, has been muted. The official line is that MoD closed its UFO desk in 2009 after some 50 years acting as the focal point for sightings reported by members of the publi ..read more

Much has been written about the dread experienced by J. Robert Oppenheimer following the detonation of Trinity in 1945, depicted in Christopher Nolan’s new movie biopic of ‘the father of the atomic bomb’ But one of the most chilling outcomes of the Cold War nuclear stand-off that followed was the fear that a nuclear device could be smuggled into the West by air or sea…and there was no effective method to detect its presence – until it was too late The innocuous cover of the report commissioned by the British Government in 1950 to investigate the threat posed by the clandest ..read more

How a classic UFO ‘mystery’ was solved by a cold case investigation. Three decades ago in the early hours of Wednesday 31 March 1993 dozens of people across western Britain saw UAPs in the night sky. Read my latest SubStack post for the full story of the Cosford UFO flap ..read more

Unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) have long been SETI’s elephant in the room. Astronomers seek evidence of ET intelligences by searching for exo-planets and listening for signals from alien civilisations. But should the search effort be restricted to outer space? What if anomalous phenomena exist in the Earth’s atmosphere or even on the surface of the planet? Are SETI looking down the wrong end of the proverbial telescope? Read more about my adventures at the Durham Law School symposium on UAPs and SETI in my SubStack blog ..read more

Folklore experts from across the world will gather in Sheffield this summer to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the birth of urban legend studies in Steel City. Sheffield Hallam University was chosen to host the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR) conference in 2023 due to its high profile as an international centre for research excellence in folklore and cultural heritage. Scholars who specialise in supernatural legends, rumours, conspiracy theories and ‘friend of a friend’ stories first met at Halifax Hall at the University of Sheffield for the very first confere ..read more