In or around 1947 through December of 1969, the branch of the Air Force of the United States of America routinely looked into and investigated UFO reports and sightings. The investigation, called Project Blue Book was established at a government level and was put into place to evaluate the phenomena of Unidentified Flying Objects.

During that 22 year period, the project team investigated a reported 12,618 sightings of unidentified objects. Out of that impressive number, only seven hundred one of the sightings remained unidentified. It has been reported that the investigations of the Unidentified Flying Objects were lacking in professionalism and scientific methodology which brings into questionable authenticity.

In January 1970, Project Blue Book was officially closed and all records and files were transferred to Maxwell Air Force Base. At that time, the records were put on public view at request only and five years later were transferred to microfilm and placed in the public archive for public use. Before making them openly available, all references to witnesses was blacked out or removed to protect the privacy of the public, although in years past, the documents were unchanged. In 1998, a set that had not been redacted was discovered that contained all the information including some documents that did not exist in the archives.

Why would previously open documents suddenly be evaluated and have certain key pieces of evidence removed before making them public property? Was there something in those documents that the Government did not want leaked to the general public?

Many UFO researchers are convinced that the investigations were conducted in an unscientific fashion and that the goal was to label findings as identified to avoid public hysteria. This ideology has been given support by the subsequent release of CIA documents about UFOs that suggest that any evidence contrary to an identified sighting were passed to authorities but never included in project blue book.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek served as the astronomical consultant to the United States Air Force and worked in Project Blue Book. Dr. Hynek was a professor of astronomy at Ohio State and the chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern. His role with project blue book was to assist in the determination of astronomical explanations for any UFO sightings.

Hynek was an initial skeptic of UFOs but hundreds of UFO reports later became convinced that the phenomenon deserved serious study. Hynek became disillusioned at the casual handling of scientific evidence and the non-scientific manner in which the projects were being ran. After Project Blue Book closed, he formed a private organization to study UFOs that was staffed with scientists and trained technical experts. In 1972, Dr. Hynek wrote and published, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Study, that presented his categorization of sightings.

The incomplete case files in Project Blue Book are categorized as being mishandled and poor document maintenance. Copies of other “missing cases” reported as lost by Project Blue Book have been discovered in certain other files from other organizations. Copies of some of the missing files have been found at CUFOs. Is it worth noting that these missing files had indeed been kept by the very researcher contracted to research UFOs? Perhaps Dr. Hynek considered the documents important to prove something that was being hidden.

Does this evidence of the poorly handled files and document management point to a larger cover up in the Government regarding Unidentified Flying Objects and evidence of extraterrestrial beings? Government cover ups and misinformation have always been tossed around concerning UFOs and extraterrestrials. Perhaps the evidence and lack of evidence in Project Blue Book is just another piece of the conspiracy worth noting.

Considered to be one of the most important encounters of its kind, the crash of a UFO and the subsequent capture of its crew in Varghinia, Brazil in 1996, is still shrouded in government and military secrecy. Not only did a UFO crash and its crew apprehended but the reports give a strong indication that one of the military personnel exposed to the aliens died shortly thereafter due to his contact with the extraterrestrial life form.

The encounter began just after midnight in the wee hours of January 20, 1996. The North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) contacted the Brazilian I Centro Integrado de Defesa Aerea e Controle de Trafego Aereo (Integrated Center on Air Defense and Air Traffic Control) to warn them that American satellite radar had picked up an unidentified craft coming down in the southern part of their country.

It was not long before reports of the event began to come in to authorities. Farmers Augusta and Eurico Rodrigues called to say they saw a silent, unlit UFO passing over their farm, frightening the animals. Within two hours the Fire Department, in Brazil a part of the military, in Varghinia began receiving reports of a "strange creature" in their town. At first the report was not taken seriously, the firemen assuming a prank was in the works. Yet, every report had to be investigated and they were quite surprised when they encountered the creature.

The alien was described as being about 5 foot tall with long arms, short legs, and large, triangular feet. It has soft, brown skin and bulging, large red eyes. There were three rounded horn-like protrusions on its head. A strong ammonia-like odor was also reported to exude from the entity. The alien was easy to capture, as it appeared to be in a dazed or confused state of mind. Later in the day three young women spotted another of the beings. Taking a shortcut home through a wooded area, Lilliane Fatima, Valquira Fatima, and Andrade Xavier came upon the second creature the military managed to capture. Ultimately it was reported that up to seven of the ET's were captured that day.

While reports vary, it is a common theme of the reports that at least one of the beings died and was taken to a hospital for autopsy. At least two others were sent to the University of Sao Paulo to be studied further. It was during the capture of the second alien that tragedy loomed over the horizon for one of the military personnel involved. At one point 23 year old Corporal Marco Eli Chereze, a part of the Military Police unit that responded to the three girls' report tried to support the seemingly disoriented alien by grabbing onto its arm with his bare hand.

A few days later, he discovered a small, but growing, tumor under his arm. While removing the tumor should have been done immediately, it was not ablated. Corporal Chereze became increasingly ill. He suffered strong backaches, paralysis, and fevers which quickly required hospitalization. The Corporal's family became enraged as he was kept in isolation. On February 15th, less than a month after the encounter, Corporal Chereze was dead of what was officially listed as a "generalized infection." No autopsy report was released and his family was refused permission to exhume his body for further, independent, examination.

The official government position on the Vaghinia incident is that it never happened. Noted Brazilian ufologist Vitorio Pacaccini was the one responsible for making the majority of the investigations for the public. He listed over 25 sources, civilians, doctors, and military personnel who shared their stories with him. The consistency of the reports and descriptions of the aliens over a wide range of unrelated people convinces him that the event is as real as the government's cover-up of the facts of the aliens and the death of Corporal Chereze.

Even though reports of strange flying objects have been made throughout history, no one really tried to make a concerted study of them until the second half of the 20th Century. It was around the advent of World War II that the number of UFO sightings really began to multiply around the world. Beginning with the "ghost" flyers in the1930's through the foo fighters of the 1940's sightings of unidentifiable aerial objects were becoming codified through the 1950's.

With the post-war "Cold War" heating up between the United States and the Soviet Union, this increase in sightings of unknown and technologically superior aircraft presented a unique problem for those responsible for national defense. It became necessary for them to make a special effort to analyze these reports and try to figure out whether they were advanced enemy craft or something else. Regrettably, whatever was discovered, the military efforts at ufology did not pass on their findings to the general population. They hid their findings under the guise of national security and officially stated there was no problem, this despite an increasing number of events and continued invasion of the airspace around military bases and nuclear facilities.

Ufology for the public was left to the civilians to figure out. With the urging of the military, the media and scientific community was encouraged to ridicule the entire field of UFO studies. With a lack of backing from the mainstream establishment, ufology quickly ran into trouble as a real science. Academia mostly abandoned the subject to amateurs. There was no scientific consensus or peer review systems set in place. Anyone could call themselves a ufologist without any organizational body to take them to task to prove their credentials. Even accepted and mainstream scientists like Jacques Vallee and J. Allen Hynek encountered ridicule of their work even though Hynek originally became involved in ufology through the military studies.

At best, ufology has been relegated to the status of a "pseudoscience." While ufologist protest this labeling, they still rarely maintain or sometimes even adhere to the simplest of scientific methodology in their research. They often make bold statements with no real supporting evidence. Many theories are not only implausible but impossible to quantify or qualify by any known scientific process. There is no single moderating and overseeing community to establish control guidelines or methodology to satisfy the necessary demands of scientific standards of research or peer review.

There are a few major difficulties with the UFO phenomena, which make a scientific approach more difficult. The observed events are neither predictable, convenient, nor replicable. This makes scientific experimentation very near impossible to formulate. Skeptics argue that, with no physical evidence, ufology cannot equate itself with science at all.

Until ufology can find ways to codify and compartmentalize these problems, it will never be taken as true science. Until a form of standardization and peer review is adapted, the skeptics, unbelievers, and hoaxers will continue to flood any discussion of the UFO phenomena with scurrilous, derogatory, and deceptive information without any great fear of being discovered or disavowed.

There is a sinister element to the still unexplainable phenomena of cattle mutilation. While first popularized by the media in 1967 when the Condon Committee out of Colorado investigated a mutilated horse, the phenomena had already been growing in the United States for twenty years. First referred to as the "slashing of cattle," it seems to have begun in New Mexico in 1947, the same year as the alleged Roswell UFO crash. Since that time over 10,000 cases have been reported, encompassing all 50 states and more reports coming from England.

Even though there is sometimes a minor difference in the remains of the dead animals, there is a great deal of similarity throughout each event. The cuts made on the cattle are surgically precise and clear, precluding the cause being predatory animals whose teeth and claws would leave jagged rips and tears. The eyes, udders, genitalia, and less often the anus are removed. Often the lips and tongue are cut away from the throat and sometimes one ear is missing. There are sometimes major organs, especially the heart and liver, missing from the body and yet no entry or exit wounds are present and sometimes the pericardium is still present and intact.

The bodies are also predominately drained of blood and there is no blood anywhere near the body or the wounds. This indicates that the animals were killed elsewhere and then disposed of in the places their bodies are found. Mutilated cattle are avoided not only by other cattle but also by scavengers who will shy away from these otherwise available meals. What little blood as tends to be left in the body is abnormal. It is a pinkish color and will not coagulate for days. Laboratory tests, including those done by the Los Alamos laboratory, have been inconclusive as to the cause.

As well as these abnormalities in the bodies of the slain beasts, there are other anomalies. There are no tracks around the bodies. No human, animal, or vehicle marks are found anywhere near where the cattle are found. Sometimes a few strange and unaccountable holes are found in the ground next to the carcasses. Often the bones are fractured by what appears to be impact with the ground from a high fall and the ground beneath them has been depressed where the body seems to have landed. Some animals have been found draped over fences or caught up in treetops.

While the majority of cattle mutilations seem to happen at night, there have been daytime reports, sometimes when potential witnesses have been in the area and still seen nothing. One case reported to the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) from 2002 discusses a 1997 incident in Utah. A couple of ranchers were tagging their new calves. One of them had been done early and they continued with the rest of their calves, never being more than 300 yards from any of them. Before the herd was completed, less than an hour later, the calf was found to have been "completely eviscerated -- most muscle and all internal organs were missing. There was no blood, entrails, or apparent disturbance at the scene."

Law enforcement officers throughout the country are perpetually stumped about these mutilations. According to Lander County, Nevada, Deputy Sgt. Keith Altemueller. "There's no evidence I have of what happened, how it happened or who did it. There are no tracks, no sign of disturbance and generally no blood. The cuts are very sharp -- very unusual! I've lived in the desert all my life; I've seen what predators do. This is not what predators do." After a half-century of mutilated animals, there are also a few horses, sheep, and dogs found mutilated in the same manner, there are no suspects, no arrests, and no convictions. No one has been able to discover who is perpetrating this horrible act.

There are several theories. Government and mainstream science institutions try to pass the mutilations off as either natural predators or criminally insane cultists even though the evidence shows neither is possible. Some people believe it is the government or military itself running covert tests. Most people tend to put the blame on extraterrestrial aliens in UFO's.

There are several possible reasons the cattle are being targeted for these mutilations. Since bovine blood has particular characteristics that are similar to human blood, it is thought they could be using cattle in genetic experiments. One would think though that as many people as vanish every year the aliens would have no need of a surrogate experimental animal. There has yet to be any photographic or video evidence of such abductions so how much harder would it be to abduct humans for experimentation?

Despite many hard-hit ranch areas forming watch groups to try and catch the culprits, they have been unsuccessful as yet. With no peripheral evidence at the scene other than a dumped body, investigators have little or no hope of tracking down the cause of this ongoing phenomenon.

Contrary to the American model of UFO investigation, which is to leave it to the civilian agencies, the European governments do not always ignore unknown aircraft in their skies. One example of this interest in finding out what is actually going on is the French Government. In 1977 they created GEPAN, the Groupe d'Étude des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés (unidentified aerospace phenomenon research group). This was begun as a unit of France's Space Agency CNES, the Centre National d'Études Spatiales. At first the unit, whose mission statement was to investigate unidentified aerospace phenomena and make its findings available to the public, was not taken very seriously.

GEPAN was reorganized and renamed SEPRA, the Service d'Expertise des Phénomènes Rares Aérospatiaux (rare aerospace phenomena expertise department) and given expanded resources and responsibilities. It was now put out to all French law enforcement that they should direct any such reports to SEPRA. It was hoped that with their expanded database, more could be learned from the investigations. Now whenever there seemed to be even trace physical evidence of UFO activity, SEPRA could access the technical resources of the French Space Agency, CNES, to make more exhaustive scientific investigations.

SEPRA operated until 2004 when it was once more reorganized and reopened and renamed GEIPAN, the Groupe d'Études et d'Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés (unidentified aerospace phenomenon research and information group) in 2005. More emphasis was now placed on making their investigations more transparent to the public and in 2007 the unit's archives were made available online to all interested persons.

The French Space Agency, CNES, was founded in 1962 to conduct space activities and observations for both national reasons and as a part of the greater European Space Agency (ESA) and international cooperation. The establishment of GEPAN in 1977 was undertaken under the direction of Dr. Claude Poher, already with the CNES and experienced in the statistical analysis of thousands of observations around the world. As well as the small number of full-time staff CNES appointed them a scientific advisory board made up of physicists, astronomers, and legal experts.

A specific criteria for investigation and analysis was developed. These included not only physical trace evidence investigation but also psychological analysis of witnesses. Arrangements were made with law enforcement, the separate military branches, and meteorologist to funnel relevant reports to them. SEPRA replaced them in 1988, headed up by M. J-J. Velasco, an original member of GEPAN. Its mission was to investigate all re-entry phenomena including totally known objects like satellites and missile launch hardware. Regrettably, with this addition to their duties, the study of UFO's was drastically diminished. By the time the unit was once more reorganized into GIEPAN, there were over 3,000 investigated incident reports. While most were ultimately explained as mundane objects, there are still over a hundred listed as requiring further investigation and a handful rated as totally unknown.

While maintaining the past integrity of the project, GEIPAN has added an important element to their overall mission. They are specifically mandated to make all the information they uncover accessible and available to the public. To this end, their archives are maintained online in both French and in English. GEIPAN is currently overseen by an independent steering committee chaired by the former Director General of the CNES, Yves Sillard and 15 members made up of civil and military authorities and research scientists from the national science research center and the national weather service.

It is rare to find this much government openness about UFO's anywhere in the world. One can only imagine if the government of the United States or Russia was to suddenly come clean with the information they have sat on for decades.

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Essential Links:

Official Site of GEIPAN (in French)

CNES website for GEIPAN (in English)
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One of the most likely places to spot a UFO is in Colorado. With its wide-open skies and the high altitude clarity of the air, Colorado is ideally suited for watching out for unusual aircraft activity. With the Rocky Mountains being a major part of the landscape, UFO's also seem to have plenty of room to hide in. It is no wonder Colorado ranks as the state with the highest number of UFO sightings and the most prolific spot of all is the San Luis Valley area in Southern Colorado.

Just North of the town of Hooper on Highway 17, Judy Messoline used to try running a cattle ranch. It did not take long to find that cattle didn't grow well on rocks so she sold them off. With so many people in the area talking about the strange sights and UFO's they had seen, Ms. Messoline decided to indulge the UFO hunters and provide a place with wide open spaces and a huge panoramic view to set up their cameras and binoculars and observe the sky. So in 2000 she constructed a ten-foot high metal platform, called "The UFO Watchtower" as a central observation post. The Watchtower doesn't need to be very high because, as she says, "When you're already at 7,600 feet, you don't need to be much higher."

As the Watchtower became more popular she added a campground area and a souvenir shop to cater to the crowds that flocked to the viewing platform. The most ironic aspect of the establishment is that Ms. Messoline was originally a skeptic about UFO's when she first built the Watchtower. It was not until after she had personally witnessed over two dozen UFO sightings that she became a true believer.

While The Watchtower is primarily for the purpose of observing the vast expanse of space from the Great Sand Dune in the East to the Range of the Rocky Mountains in the West, it has become much more. To the casual adventurer the UFO Watchtower is a truly American roadside attraction, complete with souvenir gift shop. For those who need a sympathetic and understanding ear about strange things seen, Judy provides a sort of unofficial UFO counseling service to her patrons.

As one can imagine, most of the UFO observation goes on at night. For the brightly-lit daytime in between UFO spotting, a visitor to the Watchtower can also wander into the "Healing Garden," a twin circle of rocks and lovingly placed offerings from previous visitors. Ms. Messoline was surprised when psychics visiting the Watchtower informed her that the Garden had created a twin vortex of cosmic energy due to its proximity to a UFO hotspot.

One can only assume the aliens or whomever it is that pilot the strange unidentified craft so frequently spotted from the observation point of the Watchtower did not mean to provide such a fascinating boost to the local economy. Still, if you want to increase your chances of spotting an unusual light in the sky or possibly a close encounter, Colorado's San Luis Valley provides an excellent chance. About one in every four people living there have seen a UFO at one time or another. Hanging out at the Watchtower gives you not only a fine place to observe, but also plenty of company to share stories with and confirm your sighting when it comes.

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Important Links:
Official Site of the UFO Watchtower
Photographer: Plazak
Photographer: yunalesca
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While many UFO sightings take place high in the sky or at a distance, occasionally one will be seen close up to the witnesses. There have even been the occasional reports of UFO's being too close at times. One such report comes from the Appalachian Mountains of Southeastern Kentucky.

It was a cold night on January 14th, 2002 as a CSX train with two engines was pulling a 16,000-ton line of coal and freight cars from Russell to Shelbiana, Kentucky. Near milepost 42 the double track was running beside the Big Sandy River and a cliff face carved out of the mountainside to provide room for the tracks. The terrain is rugged and concealing along the river valley. At 2:47 a.m., as the train was approaching a bend, the conductor saw lights ahead. Figuring it was just another train coming toward them on the other track he doused his own headlights as a courtesy.

Then the encounter went haywire for the train. As it came around the bend the electrical system began to cut in and out and the diesel engines of both locomotives died. The proximity alarm began to scream a warning at the driver. Looking out the window the train crew saw a very strange sight. Hovering over the river and the tracks were a group of unidentifiable objects. They were described as being of a metallic silver color with multiple colored lights on both the bottom and middle section of the craft. At least three of the objects were directing what looked like search lights onto the surface of the river.

The train crew could see no windows on the craft which they estimated as being maybe 20 feet long and about half that much tall. What was of the most imminent concern was one of the objects hovering about 10 feet above the tracks they were on. Despite the emergency braking system activating as soon as the power died, one does not stop 16,000 tons instantly. Inevitably the UFO was struck by the train’s locomotive. It clipped the front engine and then bounced around to cut a piece from the second engine and damage the first two coal cars. The unidentified objects immediately took off from the area and vanished into the sky.

It took nearly two miles for the train to finally come to a halt. After it stopped the power returned and the crew contacted their dispatcher in Jacksonville, Florida to appraise him of the situation. After a quick inspection of the damage they were ordered to try and make it to the Paintsville rail yard where, even though it was barely operational anymore, they would be able to drop off the damaged equipment. Their new destination was about 20 miles further down the tracks and they made it to Paintsville by around 5:15 a.m.

The crew was immediately taken off the train and questioned by a group of men they did not know. The only thing they were sure of was that they were not railroad personnel. After two hours of this, the men were taken out and placed on a smaller railroad carrier headed for Martin, Kentucky. They noticed as they left that the two engines and two damaged rail cars had been removed from the train but they didn't see where they had been taken to.

After arriving at Martin, the train crew spent more time being interviewed by railroad inspectors. They were finally sent to Shelbiana for an eight-hour layover before their next shift began, working another train back towards Russell, Kentucky. As they passed through Paintsville they saw absolutely no evidence of the train they had been in when they ran into the UFO or of the huge number of people that had mysteriously appeared to work on the damaged train.

Official records of the repair of the engine state the crumpled roof and smashed window were caused by a rock slide in one of the train way tunnels that dot the tracks through this mountainous region. Still, no report of the rockslide or its cleaning up has been found. The CXS Railroad has routinely kept their business to themselves and rarely are incidents along the line made public unless a train has hit someone. That nothing of this incident, or even a rockslide, made it into any of the local newspapers is not unusual.

UFO's have often been spotted hovering over water. What they are looking for as well as what these particular objects were after is unknown. Whether the UFO the train hit managed to continue flying or crashed into the Big Sandy River is also unknown.

While most of the official government investigation into UFO's has been done by either the Air Force or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has occasionally gotten called in to check out unusual phenomena. The FBI is not as secret with their information as popular television and conspiracies would make them out to be. In fact, one section of their website, known as "The Vault," holds a vast amount of publicly available documents for anyone to peruse. Among the sections on such diverse interests as Civil Rights, Counter-Terrorism, Gangs and Extremist Groups, Organized Crime, and a host of others is a section labeled "Unexplained Phenomena." It is here that one can find many records on the various investigations the FBI has on UFO's.

One particular page has drawn a great deal of interest lately. It is a copy of a memo sent to the Director from Special Agent Guy Hottel, Head of the Washington Field Office, on March 22, 1950. It is in reference to a report that he had gotten from an Air Force informant about what they had recovered at the Roswell, New Mexico crash site in 1947. Realize this memo only states what was reported to the FBI through an informant. Mr. Hottel does not vouch for the truth of the report, merely that these were the stated facts.

The Air Force investigator is not identified but what he reports was that the Air Force had recovered three flying saucers from New Mexico. The report states that each craft contained three occupants, humanoid but only about three feet tall. The approximate 50-foot diameter of the craft is consistent with many flying saucer reports. One thing left out of public reports at the time is the interesting conjecture that a Government high-powered radar set-up was believed to be the cause for the saucers to crash in the first place.

Reading through the wealth of reports open to the public offers interesting facts and allows one to conjecture what may be written between the lines. Even on the very first page of the first of 16 sections on UFO reports and investigations can be found such anomalous reports as one by a Mr. Dick Rankin, a pilot with over 7,000 hours of flight experience. Mr Rankin attempted to identify the numerous UFO's spotted over Bakersfield, California on July 3, 1947 as being Navy XFSU-1 experimental aircraft, the V-173 "Flying Pancake." However the FBI follow-up with the manufacturer of the aircraft, Chance Vought, Inc. of Stratford, Connecticut, states that they were told only one of the prototype aircraft was ever constructed and that it was never taken out of Connecticut. So, we are back to wondering just what did pass over California that day.

Delving into "The Vault" offers such diverse reports as the communications and cooperation that the FBI had with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). The Vault contains the correspondence between them from 1957 to 1969. Also included in The Vault" are what investigations the FBI could do on cattle mutilations in the western and mid-western states between 1974 and 1978. Contrary to popular misconceptions, the FBI does not have jurisdiction everywhere but only on Federal land and where they have been invited by local law enforcement. Thus most of what can be found here was investigated on Federal lease land and Indian reservations.

There is a section containing information and correspondence between the FBI and a group, who in 1989 contacted the Bureau, calling themselves "The New Project Blue Book." There is even a section on the FBI's investigations into Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP) since it to is an Unexplained Phenomena. There is a section on Majestic-12 and Silas M. Newton also awaiting the inspection of anyone interested.

While it is unlikely that one will discover some great hidden secret in these publicly released documents, there is always the possibility they may provide just the clue needed to bring more, seemingly unrelated information, together for a better understanding of the UFO phenomena. If nothing else, it can give you an insight into the raw data used to investigate this ongoing mystery that does truly effect everyone on our planet.

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The Essential Links:

The Vault Main Page

The Unexplained Phenomena Main Page

The Guy Hottel Memo

Main Page UFO Reports 1947-1954

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For reasons as yet understood, Mexico has cataloged more UFO video and UFO sightings that any other country in the world. The people of this Southern North American country have experienced and been exposed to the widest possible types of UFO's of anyone else. They have videotaped spheres, disks, triangles, cylinders, and gaseous plasma UFO's. They have seen UFO's that have split apart and others that have come together to form even larger craft. They have been spotted individually and in huge clusters. These mysterious events are quite frequent in brad daylight over populous areas where documentation of the event is easy. But there is one type of UFO that seems to be almost exclusively peculiar to Mexico, the floating humanoid shaped UFO's.

Salvador Guerrero filmed the first reported occurrence of this new UFO type in March of 2000. Mr. Guerrero is a well-respected UFO investigator in Mexico and has filmed many UFO sightings around Mexico. On this day he was filming from on top of his home in Colonia Agricola Oriental when he spotted a dark object in the sky. It was when he zoomed in on the object he got a shock. What he was filming appeared to be a human form with visible arms and legs slowly spinning on its axis. It appeared to be free-floating and not really moving forward or backward.

The sighting lasted for several minutes as Mr. Guerrero filmed the strange object before it slowly moved off and disappeared behind a building. In December of 2000 he again sighted and filmed one of these humanoid-shaped objects. This time he was not alone but was in the company of a friend, Juan Flores who was helping him search the sky. While his March encounter was the first made public, it was not the first sighting of the object.

A month before Mr. Guerrero saw this unusual object in the sky. Another noted and respected UFO videographer, Amado Marquez had spotted the humanoid-shaped UFO in February of 2000 at his home in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. His sighting was of the "little man" flying horizontally across the sky in an upright position. Marquez stated that he saw no evidence of wings, parachute, or any other indication of a propulsion device. He did not make the film public until he became aware of Mr. Guerrero's filming of the same thing.

The figure was spotted by a third UFO videographer in July of that year. Also living in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Gerardo Valenzuela spotted the humanoid-shaped UFO as it was descending from the sky. He filmed the object until it passed behind a hill. There were other credible reports of the "little flying man" during this time.

On October 1, 2000 the newspaper, La Prensa, of Mexico City contained a story given them by a commercial airline pilot of his sighting of the strange humanoid-shaped UFO. As translated, the article said, "A commercial airline pilot from AeroCalifornia who wanted to omit his name to avoid problems in his work reported the sighting of a "little flying man" who was flying at the same altitude of the plane before landing. According to the pilot this "flying man" had a kind of backpack in his back and was flying freely. The pilot added he saw perfectly well arms and legs."

Since 2000 the humanoid-shaped UFO has been seen intermittently around Mexico. It is unknown if this object is truly an extraterrestrial or if it is a human in some type of advanced secret military flying harness. What is known is that whenever it has been spotted it leaves amazement in its wake.

If UFO's truly are spacecraft from another world then one would have to realize that, like any built thing, accidents can happen. Even without knowing what makes them fly or who or how they operate, it is still a reasonable assumption that they can break or falter just as any machine can do. Undoubtedly the most famous supposed UFO crash was in the New Mexico desert near Roswell in 1947. This, however, was by no means a unique, or for that matter, rare event.

When investigating UFO crash reports from around the world, the totals are surprising. Since the middle of the 20th Century with the advent of the "foo fighters" and "ghost rockets" seen across Europe during World War II until the end of the century, there were over 200 reports of UFO's crashing here and there around the globe. This average of 4 crash reports a year has not diminished with the onset of the 21st Century either. As example let us look at the brief time period between May of 2006 and January of 2007.

On May the 20th, 2006 a large number of eyewitnesses saw a flaming object crash into the sea near Port Shepstone, South Africa. The point of impact was just beyond the breaker line offshore from Port Shepstone High School. Along with school students and teachers who were outside attending a sporting event, local fishermen and other bystanders also saw the crash. Along with flames, the witnesses reported the water "exploding" and a cloud of smoke lingering for a short time over the spot the object hit. The National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) responded to the reports with police, rescue boats, and aircraft and covered a 12 square mile area but found no evidence of the downed object. Further checking showed no known aircraft either missing or overdue.

A mere seven months later the villagers between the towns of Yeniseisk and Lesosibirsk in Siberia reported a "flying apparatus" plunging from the sky at about 10 a.m. on the morning of December 1st, 2006. The crash caused a forest fire according to the Krasnoyarsk Territory Directorate for Internal Affairs. The Ministry for Emergencies stated that no aircraft were moving in the area at the time and that they had no reports of missing ail vessels. Investigators from the Transport Prosecutors Service and the Aircraft safety group Rosavianadzor rushed to the area.

Strangely, later that day Siberian officials released the statement that nothing unusual had occurred. Siberian Regional Centre of the Ministry for Emergencies spokesperson, Sergey Andriyanko, stated that all of the local witnesses "had reported false information" about the crash, and that "despite previous official claims to the contrary" there was now no evidence of the reported forest fire. "We report officially it has been a false alarm," Andriyanko said.

A single month later, on the 1st day of January 2007, South Africa was again the location of a UFO crash report. The Administrative Manager of the mining town of Lephalale, Leonie Ras, made the report. She stated that on that morning she was reading her email when she heard a noise like "an Airbus aircraft starting its engines and increased rapidly until the sound was like a million turbines screaming in unison." Running to a window she stated she first the clouds take on a bright orange-red color. Suddenly "a bright object plunged from the clouds to the earth, at a terrible speed, and hit the ground with an almighty bang." Her son-in-law, Cobus Nel also heard the sound but did not make it to a window in time to see the object as it fell to Earth.

The local police station was inundated with reports and questions about the bright light, noise, and crash but could provide few additional facts as their best guess was that the actual crash site was located in a heavily forested area just across the Border in Botswana approximately 28 miles away.

Less than two weeks later, on January 10th, 2007, another UFO crash was reported. Occurring about 60 miles from the provincial capital of Kerman, Iran, eye witnesses reported the object had been flaming and putting off a thick smoke before impacting the ground. People witnessed the falling of this fiery object from the sky from several surrounding villages. The Deputy Governor General of Kerman province Abulghassem Nasrollahi, stated that while the object made a large explosion on impact that no property was damaged due to the crash. Despite rumors that the crash was of a conventional aircraft, he reported that all such vehicles were safe and accounted for.

As with all UFO reports, there is a good chance that some of these many crashes were actually something mundane that had been misidentified. There are some, however, that defies all logical explanation. Regardless, the number of unidentified crashes does lead one to realize that even highly advanced technology has the potential to fail. One can also take in to account the possibility that sometimes the militaries of the world get lucky and shoot an unidentified aircraft down. Whatever else you may want to believe about UFO's, they are as subject to accidents as any other physical construct.