10,000+ pages of skeptical UFO discussion - James Easton's "UFO Research" forum (1999-2004) - Now online as searchable PDFs

James Easton was a Scottish UFO skeptic that operated the "UFO Research List" ("UFORL") between 2001 to 2004 , which was basically for informed UFO sceptics to discuss various issues/cases. Those skeptical discussions tended to be more detailed than the discussions of UFO issues on more recent skeptical forums like the James Randi JREF forums.

The posts to the UFO Research List included some of the most detailed public skeptical examinations of Rendlesham, Kecksburg and various other UFO incidents. Participants included many of the leading UFO skeptics of the early 2000s.

Those posts were archived on a public forum on the Yahoo Groups website in html format (with a rather horrid search interface). All content on Yahoo Groups has unfortunately since been deleted, including that archive of UFORL posts.

James Easton repeatedly posted his "housekeeping" rules which stated: "The list archives are *PUBLIC* ...".

I think that post, and other material posted by James Easton, implied permission to share material from UFORL elsewhere. I’ve tried contacting James Easton for about a decade to confirm my inference before posting a PDF archive I’ve created of posts to his group. Over the years, I've used email addresses supplied by various people and attempted to contact James Easton about this by posting in Joe McGonagle's Ufologyinuk List and contacting Ian Ridpath and others. I mentioned on Facebook and elsewhere in 2014 that no-one seems to have been in touch with James Easton for quite a few years. He may have passed away a few years before that. I posted in 2014 that I was tempted to share a PDF archive of UFORL posts to enable efficient/effective searches by other researchers, but would have prefered to have his express blessing.

Since another 7 years have passed without my being able to contact James Easton and no one has objected to my inference that James Easton impliedly gave permission for posts to be shared, and would have wanted to see this material shared and disseminated, I have now uploaded the relevant PDFs I've created. These PDFs total over 10,000 pages.

(Archived email versions of these posts were kindly supplied to me by Italian researcher Edoardo Russo about a decade ago).

By the way, in case anyone else wants to create their own PDF archive of relevant posts from Yahoo Group posts, I’ll post below the text of macros I created to tidy up the archived email versions of the UFORL archives for post-2001 and pre-2001 material respectively before converting them to PDFs.  The results are imperfect, but much more readable than the raw archived format of the emails.

Click on the image below (of James Easton) for a link to the folder containing these PDFs:








Macro to tidy up Edoardo Russo's copy of James Easton's List archives
for 2001 onwards:
Sub CleanUp()
With Selection
.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
With .Find
.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
.Text = "From ???(*)^13From:"
.Replacement.Text = "^mFrom:"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "MIME-(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Mailer(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-Type(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Reply-To:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Reply-to:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-type(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-Transfer(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-transfer(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-disposition(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-Disposition(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Status:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "^13To:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "^13Reply-to:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "^13Message-id(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "In-reply-to:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "In-Reply-to:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Mime(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-MSMail(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Delivered-to:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Mailing-List:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Priority(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Sender:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "^13Sender:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-BeyondMail(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Yahoo(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-AOL-(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAllwdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-AOL-(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "UFO Research List - http:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-eGroups(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "MIME-Version(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Mailing-List:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Delivered-To:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Precedence:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "List-Unsubscribe:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-MD(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Return(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Originating(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Spam(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
End With
End Sub




Macro to tidy up Edoardo Russo's copy of James Easton's List archives
for 1999-2000 onwards:

Sub CleanUp()
With Selection
.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
With .Find
.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
.Text = "From ???(*)^13Date:"
.Replacement.Text = "^mDate:"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "MIME-(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Mailer(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-Type(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Reply-To:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Reply-to:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-type(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-Transfer(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-transfer(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-disposition(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Content-Disposition(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Status:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "^13To:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "^13Reply-to:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "^13Message-id(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "In-reply-to:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "In-Reply-to:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Mime(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-MSMail(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Delivered-to:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "Mailing-List:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Priority(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Sender:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "^13Sender:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-BeyondMail(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-Yahoo(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-AOL-(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAllwdReplaceAll
.Text = "X-AOL-(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = "UFO Research List - http:(*)^13"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
End With
End Sub