The Paranormal Blog

Serious investigation in the US began with Project Sign in Dec 30. 1947 (officially known as Special Project HT-304) was head quartered at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH. There had been numerous UFO sightings in the US in 1947. Experts within the group generally agreed that the sightings were real, but tended to believe they were Soviet experimental aircraft based on German technology from WW2. Over the course of the year of it’s existence, the group had come to believe that the craft were in fact extra terrestrial in nature and issued a top secret memo as such. All copies of the memo were burned and when the public found this out the rumours of government cover-up began.

Project Sign became Project Grudge February 11. 1949. This group was formed primarily to debunk the extra terrestrial angle of the flying discs. The government appointed J Allen Hynek, an astronomer of some renown, to consult on the project. The public never accepted this debunking and loudly suggested that by the mere fact that the government was investigating at all meant the flying saucers existed. After researcher Donald Keyhoe began investigating and making accusations of cover-up, Project Grudge began to unravel and at the end of it’s life was staffed only by a Junior Air Force Officer.

Project Grudge became Project Blue Book in 1952. A new wave of sightings in 1951 and 1952 renewed public and government interest in the phenomenon. Air Force Captain Edward Ruppelt was it’s first leader and a significant sighting was made by an Air Force Pilot over an airfield in New Jersey. Dr Hynek had continued his role as consultant and over the course of time began to believe that the UFO’s were indeed extra terrestrial in origin.

Dr Hynek had degrees in General Science and a PhD in Astrophysics. During WW2 he worked at Johns Hopkins on radio projects for the US Navy. After the war he joined the faculty at OSU. He left there in 1956 and joined the Smithsonian Observatory at Harvard. By 1960 he was teaching again this time at Northwestern University.

While at OSU, he was contracted to work on Project Sign, then Project Blue Book. Initially he believed that sightings of UFOs were reported by unreliable witnesses--folks who misidentified natural or manmade objects or were just plain crazy. He originally thought the whole study was ridiculous. After examining hundreds of reports through the government projects he eventually began to believe there was in fact something unusual going on. In a 1985 interview he gave two reasons for this change of opinions. First was the completely negative and unyielding stand by the Air Force. The second was the calibre of the witnesses--police officers, professionals, and even military pilots had seen these things. Such credibility could not be easily dismissed. In one of his best known statement he said:

"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."

Late in his life, he publicly talked about his belief that UFO’s were not necessarily alien spacecraft. He believed the sheer volume of reports indicated that it was something more natural to our earth--perhaps even inter-demensional travel (which he also attributed to poltergeist activity)

Hynek was the inventor of the “Close Encounter Scale” to better catalogue UFO reports. He consulted on Speilberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” film, and even approached the UN about setting up a centralized UN UFO Authority. Dr Hynek died in 1986 at age 75 of a malignant brain tumor. His work is still widely respected.

Another wave of UFO activity occurred in 1965, significant enough for the US government to review the role of Project Blue Book and involve several universities in the study. Eventually the University of Colorado, under the direction of Edward Condon, was given the task of forming a conclusion. In January 1969 Condon delivered a 1400 page document stating basically that no further investigation of UFO’s would be helpful to science and the project was discontinued. It is important to note here that the Condon Commission was initiated by the CIA. Many prominent scientists, including Carl Sagan, Phillip Morrison, Thornton Page, and even Dr Hynek objected to this conclusion and publicly stated that further research was not only beneficial, but necessary. While many private groups continue the study, no government sponsored research has been done in the United States since the 1960’s--at least none that the public has been made aware of.

Our thanks to Robin Pyatt Bellamy for this write-up.