Before Kenneth Arnold's (1947) sighting : Collection of material on "aerial mysteries of the 19th and early 20th centuries" : "The Airship File" by Dr Thomas Bullard

Dr Thomas Bullard has now kindly given me permission to upload his collection of material entitled "The Airship File".  The title page indicates that this publication is "A collection of texts concerning phantom airships and other UFOs, gathered from newspapers and periodicals mostly during the hundred years prior to Kenneth Arnold's sighting".

This publication including a short introduction summarising research into "aerial mysteries of the 19th and early 20th centuries", with the bulk of the 407 pages of this publication being devoted to presenting the text of relevant articles from newspapers and magazines.  

The short introduction gives Dr Bullard's view that "the old reports contained which were equally as remarkable as the similarities and thereby cast doubt on the ready identification of airships with modern UFOs" although he also notes the airships sightings "... resemble the modern UFO phenomenon too closely for us to deny a kinship of some kind".

Dr Bullard's introduction also called for "researchers all over the world to join in an effort to pool our already extensive findings".  Those words, written in 1982, could equally well be written now (forty years later, in 2022). In the intervening decades there have been some efforts to pull together source materials on early "aerial mysteries" of the type requested by Dr Bullard (notably by the historical research group Magonia Exchange, an international archival project founded by researcher Chris Aubeck). However, the material that has been pulled together is (to a large extent) still not readily available to other researchers, despite the ease with which material can now be shared online as searchable PDFs. 

I have added a searchable PDF copy of Dr Bullard's "The Airship File" to my online archive, together with copies of three subsequent supplements by Dr Bullard (helpfully provided to me by Jeff Knox).

 

 

PDF - Published / funded by Robert Bigelow's NIDS : "Best UFO Cases - Europe" by Illobrand von Ludwiger (with added information regarding NIDS)

In 1998, Robert Bigelow's NIDS (the "National Institute for Discovery Science") published the book "Best UFO Cases - Europe" by Illobrand von Ludwiger (the founder of the Mutual UFO Network - Central European Section, MUFON-CES).  That book included forewords by Dr John Schuessler, Dr Bruce Maccabee and Dr Richard Haines of NARCAP and the contents listed below.

Dr John Schuessler's foreword concludes by stating that "Illobrand von Ludwiger combines all of the better attributes of scientist, investigator and researcher in bringing us this excellent view of the European UFO situation. He concludes the book by profusely referencing every section of the book to source documentation so the reader may go to the source. I hope this is just the beginning and we will be seeing similar documentation of UFO activity from other parts of the world in the near future". 

A couple of years ago, Illobrand von Ludwiger kindly kindly gave me permission to upload this book (thanks to help liaising with him from the German group IGAAP, particularly from Frank Schäpel). He also helpfully provided some comments about his interaction with Robert Bigelow and NIDS, which helped me with some research I was doing at that time into the UFO research funded by Robert Bigelow and the UFO evidence he had purchased.  Most of his comments are included in an additional section at pages 7-10 of 198 in the PDF I have now uploaded.  

Since the book was published by NIDS (which has been defunct for several years), I thought I should get permission from Robert Bigelow before making the book freely available in my online archive.  After trying to get that permission for the last 2 years via various mutual contacts, this week I had more success during an exchange of emails with Colm Kelleher (currently involved in Robert Bigelow's new Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies). During this exchange, I asked if he or Robert Bigelow had any objection to my objecting the book and very promptly obtained a favourable response. I also asked about some further NIDS material and again very promptly got a positive response which included "we are fine with you archiving it", so I'll be uploading some more NIDS material shortly. 

I have now added the book to my online archive.

1. EARLY REPORTS ABOUT UNUSUAL PHENOMENA OVER EUROPE 

2. DIFFERENT SHAPES OF UFOs SEEN OVER GERMANY

3. TRIANGULAR OBJECTS OVER EUROPE

4. THE APPEARANCE OF OBJECTS WITH A COMPLEX STRUCTURE AT DIFFERENT LOCATIONS

5. EARLY ENCOUNTERS WITH LANDED UFOs AND THEIR OCCUPANTS IN GERMANY

6. UFO LEFT METALLIC PIECE IN SWEDEN

7. PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

8. TRACES OF UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS ON MILITARY RADAR DEVICES OVER CENTRAL EUROPE

9. DEVELOPMENTS AND USE OF HIGHLY SENSITIVE MAGNETIC FIELD DETECTORS

10. PHYSICAL INTERACTION OF UFOs ON THEIR SURROUNDINGS

11. HYPOTHESES ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF UFOs

Now online - "Monumental" and "mammoth" UFO abduction catalogue/database + analysis by the "most credible" abduction researcher: Dr Thomas E Bullard's "UFO abductions: The Measure of the Mystery"

Following recent discussions I have had with researchers Jeff Knox and Theo Pajimans, I recently sought permission from Dr Thomas E Bullard to upload a searchable scan of his two-volume work, "UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery" (1987), which he has now kindly permitted. Volume 1 is a 414-page comparative study of abduction reports, with Volume 2 containing a 449-page catalogue / database of UFO abduction cases

The author of the leading encyclopedia on UFOs, Jerome Clark, has said that "Bullard's work is, in my judgment, the most important yet done on the abduction phenomenon, and it is fundamental to any understanding and discussion of same" (Jerome Clark, UFO Updates Discussion List, October 1997) and "Nobody has ever written more intelligently, more knowledgeably, and more even-handedly than Bullard on the abduction phenomenon" (Jerome Clark, UFO Updates Discussion List, October 1999). Clark has made other comments over the years on material written by Eddie Bullard,  including the views that it is "the best piece of writing I've ever seen on the subject anywhere", contains "insightful analysis" and "an intelligent, balanced discussion devoid of the sort of polemics that dominate the abduction debate".  

Veteran UFO researcher Jan Aldrich has referred to Dr Bullard as "the most credible" investigator of the abduction phenomena (Jan Aldrich, UFO Updates Discussion List, October 1997).

UFO researcher Jim Speiser has said "UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery" is a "monumental two-volume, 673 page work by a folklorist who set out to show that abductions were nothing more than 20th century fairy tales. He admits he failed. Anyone who says we're not trying to take an empirical look at this subject should get a load of this" (Jim Speiser, 1989, ParaNet File Number 00098).

Jim Speiser has also said the research in Dr. Thomas E. Bullard's ".... mammoth 600 page opus ... shows that there is not much evidence to support the contention that individual regressionists have an influence on differences between accounts, nor does hypnosis seem to be a factor in general" (Jim Speiser, 1989, ParaNet File Number 00217).

I don't mean to give the impression that everyone has agreed with all of Thomas E Bullard's conclusions.  For example, skeptic Peter Brookesmith has said "I think Ed Bullard is wrong in almost everything he's said about the relationship between folklore and ufolore." (UFO Updates Discussion List, October 1997). Earthlights researcher Paul Devereux has said Bullard "can be seriously, indeed fatally,  faulted on methodological and logic grounds, and I'm sure someone will do so before too long." (UFO Updates Discussion List, November 1997).  

Incidentally, some of the more more scholarly articles debating who is right in relation to various abduction issues were published in journals/magazines which are not yet online, which someone really should try to sort out... 

In addition to obtaining permission from Dr Bullard to upload this work, FUFOR (which originally published this work) also helpfully gave permission. Jeff Knox provided scans of both issues. 

Over 62,000 pages of the best of UFO Twitter - Archiving UFO Twitter as searchable PDFs

Thanks to code developed by a fellow Twitter user ("QEDJoe"), over 60,000 pages of material from UFO Twitter are now freely available online as searchable PDF documents in the UFO / Forteana archive I've been helping develop that is hosted on the website of the Swedish AFU.   

(The code to archive Twitter posts as PDFs developed by QEDJoe is now also freely available online and may also be of interest to those outside the UFO community since it could be applied to other material as well...).

Frankly, I'm not the world's biggest fan of Twitter or the discussion of UFOs on it. I find too many of the posts about UFOs on Twitter are extremely polarised, to the point that those posts don't really contribute to the discussion. Polarisation in discussions of ufology has been a problem for decades, but Twitter appears exacerbate this issue. Also, the restriction on the length of posts can get in the way of providing supporting references or follow-through on the points being made.

But ... the discussion of UFOs on Twitter is now a significant part of the culture of modern ufology, so someone should be making a bit of an effort to archive it. Also, many links have been posted on Twitter that may be difficult to find in the future without preserving these posts. Furthermore, the speed of communication and the size of the community on Twitter mean that it has the potential (although, sadly, this potential is rarely fulfilled...) for issues to be examined in depth relatively quickly.

So, during the last few months I have been keen to archive at least a sample of posts about UFOs on Twitter. I found some code online which was intended to parse Twitter archives into text files and was able to adapt it to work on an archive of my own Tweets to convert them to PDFs (after overcoming an encoding issue with the original code). Unfortunately, the code would not work on archives of tweets provided by some other researchers that kindly offered to act as guinea pigs.

The effort to archive Twitter material relating to UFOs (and, potentially, other topics) was given a _major_ boost recently when someone with considerably more computer coding skills than me kindly agreed to help out. "QEDJoe", a physicist with an interest in Forteana, very promptly sorted out the code I had been struggling with, getting it to work and then making some improvements. Crucially, he also stuck around to deal with some issues that arose with material provided by other researchers. That persistence eventually paid off and the code now seems to be able to cope with any Twitter archive I've thrown at it recently.  

(Some formatting issues could be the subject of improvement at some point in the future, e.g. producing the archive in chronological order or addressing a few remaining encoding issues).

Anyone can duplicate or extend this mini-project (or apply it to non-UFO material). The instructions for using QEDJoe's code are included at the link to that code above. Basically:

(1) The relevant Twitter user needs to request that Twitter provide them with a copy of the material they have posted there. This should take a minute or so, with some brief instructions with screenshots at the link below: https://twitter.com/isaackoi/status/1573650114417250304…

(2) About 36 hours later, the relevant Twitter user will get an email letting you know that the archive is available in about 24-36 hours. That person will need to download it and either process the contents themselves _OR_ send a single file ("tweets.js", in the "data" folder provided by Twitter) to an archiver (**NOT** the full archive which includes their private Twitter messages etc...). (If the Twitter user wants to, they can rename the file extension for that single file from .js to .txt then open it to see the content, which is a set of their tweets and related links etc). When sending that single file to an archiver, problems can sometimes be encountered attaching the file to an email (in which case the file can be sent using a free file sharing website, such as Wetransfer.com). 

(3) The archiver then needs to install and execute QEDJoe's code at the link above (folllowing the instructions that accompany that code). That code is run from the Command Prompt (run cmd), execute the relevant Python code, including give the path to the twitter archive file and the name to be given to the relevant PDF [e.g. : python -m tweets2pdf -f tmw.js -p "Tweets - Mick West.pdf" -i]


Twitter can, of course, be searched using the search function on that website. But I find searchable PDFs to be useful for searching (in addition to preserving the material), since it is possible to use free PDF software to give more control over a search, e.g. searching for two words where they appear in the same paragraph or excluding a result if a further keyword is present.
The nuanced control of searches available in relation to PDF material means that UFO research can be conducted more efficiently and effectively. Since most people interested in ufology have limited time (including me...), having tools that enable more efficient research is pretty important to me. More effective research within ufology would also be, well, rather nice to see.

I have reached out to some of the people active on Twitter whose posts are largely confined to UFOs/Forteana and, in my highly subjective view, are among the more interesting or useful posters on these topics on Twitter.

(There isn't an easy way to exclude certain material from a user from the archiving process, so I did not include various people whose UFO material I would have liked to include but who also post a considerably proportion of non-UFO material on their Twitter account).

The initial batch of UFO Twitter material now online using QEDJoe's code - thanks to the cooperation of the various researchers listed below - includes the following:



Tweets - Aaron Gulyas (@saucerlife) 1,222 pages

Tweets - Alejandro Rojas (@alejandrotrojas) 4,161 pages

Tweets - Bob McGwier (@BobMcGwier_N4HY) 4,210 pages

Tweets - Bradley Johansson (@bradjohansson21) 1,176 pages

Tweets - Charlie Wiser (@likeitmatters3) 1,562 pages

Tweets - Chris Rutkowski (@ufologyresearch) 844 pages

Tweets - Curt Collins (@CurtCollins579) 616 pages

Tweets - Dan Zetterstrom (@TheZignal) 5,857 pages

Tweets - Daniel Miller (@SicCoP1) 2,841 pages

Tweets - Frank Stalter (@UfoSunday) 1,214 pages

Tweets - Giuliano Marinkovic (@OmniTalkRadio) 4,805 pages

Tweets - Isaac Koi (@isaackoi) 212 pages

Tweets - Jake Mann (@itsredactedjake) 1,191 pages

Tweets - Jay Austin (JayMatthewsMMA) 2,309 pages

Tweets - Jeff Knox (@mrjeffknox) 2,170 pages

Tweets - Joe Murgia (@TheUfoJoe) 7,384 pages

Tweets - Jonathan Davies (@IWANTTOKNOWUK) 5,120 pages

Tweets - Keith Basterfield (@KeithBasterfie1) 177 pages

Tweets - Michael Huntington (@MHuntington7) 3,284 pages

Tweets - Mick West (@MickWest) 9,417 pages

Tweets - Nick Coffin (@InvNightSchool) 1,176 pages

Tweets - Steve Long (@UAPorSAP) 1,308 pages

Total Pages 62,256 pages

Now online - about 3,000 pages of President Clinton White House UFO documents (Rockefeller initiative etc), from Grant Cameron's archives

A couple of months ago, Grant Cameron kindly shared about 2,000 pages of UFO material relating to President Clinton's administration with me. I usually aim to get such material online fairly quickly, but it's taken me a bit of time to organise that material and fill in some gaps. In any event, I've now been able to upload over 3,000 pages of material to a new section for documents relating to President Clinton's administration (in the folder I created for material provided by Grant Cameron from his UFO research archive).

Some documents relating to UFOs are available on the official website of the President Clinton Library.  However, those are a relatively small fraction of the UFO material relating to the Clinton White House administration. 

A bit more material (about 167 pages) of the UFO documents obtained by Grant Cameron relating to President Clinton's White House administration are already available on Steven Bassett's website. 

However, in addition to the material recently provided to me by Grant Cameron, I recalled seeing a considerable volume of further Clinton UFO documents on Grant's old "Presidential UFO" website.  That website is, however, no longer online. Unfortunately, a lot of the material I recalled was not in the material Grant recently provided to me. So, I put a bit of time and effort (okay, it turned out to be a large amount of time and effort...) into recovering about 900 pages of documents from the various partial copies of Grant's old website on Wayback Machine's Internet Archive (using the wayback machine downloader software I have previously mentioned, using the command "wayback_machine_downloader http://www.presidentialufo.com/ --to 20180611"). I then reorganised those documents and trying to fill in some gaps. Most recently, I have then attempted to combine Grant's old collection with the further material he made available to me.

The material has two sources and I have organised the material into these two categories :

(1) Responses to FOIA requests made by Grant Cameron, particularly to his request to OSTP with the reference FOIA 01 22 (which included over 80 documents, some of which were over 100 pages long).

(2) Photographs of documents at the President Clinton Library, taken by Grant Cameron.


I think most of the interesting material is from the former source, i.e. the FOIA responses.

The material obtained by Grant Cameron in response to FOIA requests include a considerable volume of material relating to the Rockefeller Initiative. Sorted into chronological order, those documents include:

0 - index - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 00 - annotated 2 pages

0 - index - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 00 6 pages

1993 03 29_Henry Diamond to Mike Kowalok - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 01 4 pages

1993 04 21_Laurance Rockefeller to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 02 2 pages

1993 05 26_John Gibbons to C. B. Scott Jones - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 03 1 pages

1993 08 04_Laurance Rockefeller to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 04 2 pages

1993 08 25_Thomas W. Shubert, Lt Col, USAF to Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 05 6 pages

1993 11 12_Henry Diamond to Sue Bachtel - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 06 2 pages

1993 12 00_FUFOR The Roswell Events (Congressional Staff Briefing) - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 07 159 pages

1994 01 21_Schiff GAO Audit - Newspaper Cuttings - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 08 7 pages

1994 02 14_Laurance Rockefeller to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 10 4 pages

1994 02 17_C. B. Scott Jones to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 11 13 pages

1994 03 29_John Gibbons to USAF Secretary Sheila Widnall (Fax Transmittal) - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 12 5 pages

1994 04 26_Laurance Rockefeller to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 13 2 pages

1994 05 24_USAF Secretary Sheila Widnall to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 14 3 pages

1994 05 26_C. B. Scott Jones to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 15 29 pages

1994 06 01_C. B. Scott Jones to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 16 2 pages

1994 06 13_C. B. Scott Jones to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 17 35 pages

1994 07 27_Anne Bartley to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 18 7 pages

1994 08 09_Barbara Ann Ferguson to Samuel M. Sherman - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 19 5 pages

1994 08 11_C. B. Scott Jones to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 20 3 pages

1994 08 19_John Gibbons to Laurance Rockefeller - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 21 1 pages

1994 08 19_John Gibbons to Senator Claiborne Pell - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 22 1 pages

1994 09 01_John Gibbons note of call with Sidnall's office - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 24 1 pages

1994 09 05_John Gibbons to Laurance Rockefeller - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 25 2 pages

1994 09 08_Roswell Press Release - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 26 2 pages

1994 09 23_Don Berliner to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 27 4 pages

1994 09 26_The Roswell Incident, The USAF, and the New York Times by Stanton T Friedman - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 28 28 pages

1994 11 10_James McAndrew, 1st Lt., USAFR to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 30 2 pages

1994 12 02_C. B. Scott Jones to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 31 26 pages

1994 12 08_Laurance Rockefeller and Henry Diamond - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 33 1 pages

1994 12 09_Laurance Rockefeller to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 34 2 pages

1994 12 13_C. B. Scott Jones to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 36 4 pages

1994 12 15_C. B. Scott Jones to Sue Bachtel - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 37 13 pages

1994 12 15_Patti Solis to C. B. Scott Jones - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 38 1 pages

1994 12 21_William M. Webster to C. B. Scott Jones - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 39 1 pages

1994 12 26_C. B. Scott Jones to Elisabet Sahtouris - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 40 3 pages

1995 02 09_C. B. Scott Jones to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 41 2 pages

1995 03 31_C. B. Scott Jones to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 42 3 pages

1995 04 11_Laurance Rockefeller to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 43 1 pages

1995 04 12_Jack Kriethe to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 44 2 pages

1995 04 26_John Gibbons to William Hunt - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 45 1 pages

1995 04 29_C. Richard Farley, Jr. to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 46 17 pages

1995 05 01_C. Richard Farley, Jr. to Commandant, US Coast Guard - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 47 59 pages

1995 05 11_Robert G. Teets to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 48 28 pages

1995 05 25_Robert G. Teets to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 49 1 pages

1995 06 09_Tanya M. Felder, OSTP to Sue Bachtel - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 50 1 pages

1995 06 12_Robert G. Teets to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 51 6 pages

1995 07 05_John Kriethe to Tanya M. Felder - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 52 3 pages

1995 08 04_John Gibbons to Laurance Rockefeller - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 53 2 pages

1995 08 17_C. B. Scott Jones to Representative Steven Schiff - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 54 10 pages

1995 08 23_C. B. Scott Jones to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 55 23 pages

1995 08 23_Laurance Rockefeller to President William J. Clinton - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 56 6 pages

1995 09 09_Neil Freer to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 57 10 pages

1995 10 13_James M. McCampbell to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 58 14 pages

1995 11 00_Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Document by Don Berliner - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 63 129 pages

1995 11 01_Henry Diamond to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 61 3 pages

1995 11 01_Sue Bachtel to Elizabeth Haviland - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 60 4 pages

1995 11 08_Henry Diamond to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 62 4 pages

1995 11 21_Stan Gordon to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 64 6 pages

1996 02 05_Laurance Rockefeller to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 65 2 pages

1996 02 24_Robert G. Todd to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 66 25 pages

1996 02 27_USAF Secretary Sheila Widnall to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 59 2 pages

1996 02 29_Laurance Rockefeller to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 68 41 pages

1996 03 01_USAF Secretary Sheila Widnall to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 67 55 pages

1996 06 06_Henry Diamond to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 69 3 pages

1996 06 10_David Reynolds to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 70 1 pages

1996 07 10_Bruce Maccabee to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 73 2 pages

1996 09 03_Philip Mantle to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 71 2 pages

1996 10 17_Laurance Rockefeller to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 72 16 pages

1997 01 02_Bruce Maccabee to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 73b 11 pages

1997 02 28_Robert G. Todd to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 74 10 pages

1997 03 29_C. Richard Farley, Jr. to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 75 1 pages

1997 04 18_Barbara Ann Ferguson to Samuel M. Sherman - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 76 2 pages

1997 04 18_Jonathon Foster to Samuel M. Sherman - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 77 3 pages

1997 06 18_Jonathon Foster to Samuel M. Sherman - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 78 2 pages

1997 06 20_USAF Secretary Sheila Widnall to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 79 2 pages

1997 08 12_Barbara Ann Ferguson to Robert G. Todd - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 80 2 pages

1997 08 22_Barbara Ann Ferguson to Robert W. Boyajian - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 81 4 pages

1997 08 25_Barbara Ann Ferguson to Michael Filipic - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 82 3 pages

1998 01 15_Richard F. Haines to John Gibbons - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 83 16 pages

1998 05 27_Barbara Ann Ferguson to Carolyn Price - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 84 3 pages

1998 06 23_Barbara Ann Ferguson to Robert W. Boyajian - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 85 3 pages

1999 04 17_Barbara Ann Ferguson to Andrew Sparkes - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 86 3 pages

2001 02 07_Barbara Ann Ferguson to Grant Cameron - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 87 2 pages

2001 06 12_Barabara Ann Ferguson to Grant Cameron - OSTP - FOIA 01 22 - item no 88 2 pages

Total Pages 944 pages



As for the material photographed by Grant Cameron from files at the Clinton Presidential Library, I have created the following searchable PDFs of those images:

Clinton Library - File 2006-0474-F --- UFO 829 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0476-F 150 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0477-F --- Belfast trip 29 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0478-F --- Belfast trip 8 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0480-F --- Laurance Rockefeller 90 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0482-F 38 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0483-F 55 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0484-F 14 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0488-F 12 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0489-F --- Steven Spielberg 164 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0490-F 7 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0497-F 49 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0498-F 11 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0501-F 5 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0502-F 8 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0503-F 4 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0504-F 3 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0505-F 2 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0506-F 6 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0507-F 8 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0526-F 36 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0527-F --- Area 51 328 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0533-F 13 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0537-F 21 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0543-F 2 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-0550-F 12 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-1877-F --- Movie Contact 9 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-1878-F --- Allan Hills meteorite 33 pages

Clinton Library - File 2006-1879-F --- Carl Sagan 149 pages

Clinton Library - File 2008-0359-F --- Joe Firmage 51 pages

Clinton Library - File 2009-1055-F 22 pages

Miscellaneous 83 pages

Total Pages 2251 pages




The combined total from these total sources is a bit over 3,100 pages. I am still missing a few pages, but I hope to add those shortly.

Here are a few sample pages:

As requested by the CIA's Dr Ronald Pandolfi, Dr Bruce Maccabee prepared this briefing for President Clinton's science advisor, Dr John Gibbons. He notes some investigators had concluded that there has been "a compartmented study of debris and bodies" from at least one UFO crash.

"Roswell Declaration" signed by former astronauts Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper, stating they support a request for an Executive Order "declassifying any U S Government information regarding the existence of UFOs or extraterrestrial intelligence".

Second pile of Soviet material on UFOs and "Non-Recurrent Ultrafast Phenomena" now online (1980s-1990s)

Further to my upload earlier this week, another pile of Soviet material from the USSR on UFOs and "Non-Recurrent Ultrafast Phenomena" is online today, thanks to help from Ukrainian researcher Igor Kalytyuk in obtaining material from across Russia and Eastern Europe and in securing permissions from various UFO researchers and groups.  

This new upload includes 25 issues of "M-skyi treugolnik" ("M-sky Triangle"), plus issues of "UFO mif ili realnost" ("UFO Myth or Reality") and "Neperiodicheskiye bystroprotekayuschiye yavleniya v okruzhayuschey srede" (""Non-Recurrent Ultrafast Phenomena"). 

("Non-Recurrent Ultrafast Phenomena" is a new term to me which I don't recall previously hearing in my interviews of Russian UFO researchers, to be added to the plethora of terms used in the West in relation to UFOs, UAPs, AAVs, LITS etc...).

This upload adds to Soviet material that Igor and various researchers in Ukraine and Russia, particularly George Fedorovskiy and Mikhail Gershtein, have previously helped me obtain and share online.

I'll get back to uploading UFO material in English very shortly...

Soviet UFO Newsletters (USSR, 1990s ) now online - UFO Realnost, UFO Express and Mir neizvedannogo ("World of the unknown")

Ukrainian UFO researcher Igor Kalytyuk has previously helped me obtain UFO material from Russia, Ukraine and all across Eastern Europe, and helped obtain permissions to upload this material. 

Igor has now helpfully provided me with scans of 3 more sets of UFO newsletters published in the USSR in the 1990s: UFO Realnost ("UFO Reality"), UFO Express and  Mir neizvedannogo ("World of the unknown").  

I have added searchable PDF copies of these items to the USSR folder in the online archive of (free) UFO/Fortean newsletters I have been helping to create.

PDFs: More French UFO newsletters from SCEAU (gaps filled in collections of French publications SPICA and Ovni-Info)

Gilles Durand and others at the French UFO group SCEAU have worked to fill in some gaps in some French UFO newsletters (namely SPICA and Ovni-Info 34).

Most issues of SPICA had previously been provided by another French researcher, Patrice Seray. Patrice also obtained permission from Christian Morgenthaler of SPICA (which stands for "Sciences et Phenomenes Insolites du Ciel et de l'Aeronautique") and the associated board of directors for me to upload issues of SPICA. SCEAU has now helped add Issue 17 of SPICA, which I think was the final issue and the only one previously missing.

Ovni-Info 34 is rather rare. I had previously only managed to obtain 2 issues (both from Patrice Seray). Thanks to SCEAU, a further 4 issues are now online.

(Some French UFO researchers are better than those in most other countries at working together to help fill in gaps in material held by their colleagues and obtaining permissions to share that material freely online, without any drama...).

Another French UFO "catalogue"/database now online - "Catalogue Veronica" (retyped by Patrice Seray)

French UFO researcher Patrice Seray has previously helped obtain permission to make a considerable volume of French UFO material freely available online, often also providing scans of that material.  At times, Patrice appears to have been involved in a friendly competition with SCEAU and some other French UFO groups and researchers to see who could contribute the most to this free online UFO archive. 

Patrice Seray has now provided me with another French "catalogue" / database ("Catalogue Veronica"), this time associated with the French newsletter "Veronica" which was the subject of a previous post.

Patrice had to retype all 108 pages of this PDF to make this old French "catalogue" readable.

I have added this material to the "Veronica" folder in the French section of the online archive I've been helping develop during the last few years.  

EDIT TO ADD : A fellow British UFO researcher, Michael Hudson, has helpfully provided an automated English translation of the French-language "Veronica" UFO catalogue - which I have now added to the "Veronica" folder.

Collection of French UFO "catalogues"/databases from CNEGU plus more rare French UFO newsletters ("Veronica" and "Ovni-Info") added to online archive

French researcher Patrice Seray has, once again, helped obtain permission to upload UFO material and also provided relevant scans. 

Firstly, Patrice has obtained permission from CNEGU to upload a collection of French UFO "catalogues" / databases and provided me with copies of them. 

Secondly, Patrice has also provided scans of most issues of some rare French UFO newsletters : "Veronica" and "Ovni Info".

I have added this material to the French folder in the online archive I've been helping develop during the last few years.  

PDFs - 100 searchable issues of "Meyn Mamvro" (Cornwall, UK, Earth Mysteries : "ancient stones and sacred sites in cornwall") - Cheryl Straffron

The editor of "Meyn Mamvro", Cheryl Straffron, kindly responded positively to my request for permission to add copies of that newsletter to the online archive. So, I've rendered 100 issues searchable and added them to the UK folder.

"Meyn Mamvro" is devoted to Earth Mysteries, particularly "ancient stones and sacred sites in cornwall". However, there have been the occasional article, particularly in the early days, that - as its editors put it to me - "strayed into Crop Circle and anomalous aerial territory".

Scans were already available on Cheryl's "Meyn Mamvro" website, but I thought it worth adding to the online archive as a backup and to make it more accessible. Also, the copies currently on Cheryl's website are not searchable and some of you know that I like to have material in an easily searchable format. :)

While it's not really an area I focus upon very much (with my primary focus being on UFO material), "Earth Mystery" publications that I've already uploaded (to the UK folder at the link above) include:

(1) The first 70 issues of "The Ley Hunter" (with permission from the editors of those issues - with permission from Philip John Heselton, Jimmy Goddard and Paul Screeton 

(2) "Earth" (Paul Bennett's newsletter of "Paganism, Fortean & Earth Mysteries"), with Paul's permission
(3) 121 out of 122 issues of Touchstone ("Surrey Earth Mysteries", UK, 1983 onwards), with permission from its editor (Jimmy Goddard)
(4) "Amskaya", again with permission from Jimmy Goddard
(5) "Ancient Skills and Wisdom Review", "Terrestrial Zodiacs Newsletter" and "The Shaman" with the permission of their editor, Paul Screeton

(6) "Earthquest News" and "Supernaturalist" with permission from Andrew Collins

(7) "At the Edge" with permission from Bob Trubshaw
(8) Many more general Fortean publications with Earth mysteries content.

PDF: "Sequel to Scoriton" (by Norman Oliver, 1968) - Extremely rare booklet casting doubt on "notorious" and "(in)famous" UFO claim

Eileen Buckle's book "The Scoriton Mystery" (1967) detailed an investigation into the claims of Ernest Arthur Bryant to have met an Venusians in April 1965 in Scoriton, Devon (UK). One of the aliens Bryant claimed to have met allegedly gave its name as "Yamski" and implied it was the reincarnation of contactee George Adamski.

Jerome Clark, author of the impressive "UFO Encyclopedia", has referred to the Scoriton episode as "notorious" [on the UFO Updates email discussion list, on 14 February 2008]. An article on Rich Reynold's "UFO Conjecture(s)" blog in 2007 referred to the Scoriton "mystery" as "(In)famous"

The year after publication of that book, further investigations by Norman Oliver of BUFORA were detailed in his booklet, "Sequel to Scoriton". Summarising the position in the light of his father's further investigations, Norman Oliver's son recently commented that "There was little doubt that it was a fabrication and one perpetrated by individuals (whom he could not name without conclusive evidence) who should have known better, for reasons it is difficult to fathom".

 
Norman Oliver recently passed away. Norman Oliver's son came across some copies when sorting through his things and donated them to the AFU in Sweden. He mentioned to me that his father "spent much time and effort (as well as money!) investigating ... indeed it dominated his spare time over a considerable period".

His father apparently "upset the publishers of the book he and the late Eileen Buckle published on the story, not to mention Eileen herself, by insisting that the truth had to be told and self-publishing the sequel".

With the permission of Norman Oliver's son, this very rare booklet has now been scanned by the AFU in Sweden and I have uploaded a searchable copy to the online archive.

Given more recent debates regarding injuries possibly caused by UFO encounters, it is interesting to read in this booklet differing views as to cause and effect (if any) in relation to a brain tumour that Bryant had. Norman Oliver considered that the events were a fabrication by Bryant, and expressed the view that "worry" about being caught "caused the tumour to become active at this particular time". John Cleary-Baker (then editor of BUFORA's journal) asked "was the tumour responsible for the UFO or the UFO for the tumour?". Captain Ivan Mackay (then BUFORAs' chairman) suggested that Bryant may have had "a near sighting which may well have either caused a tumour or accelerated the growth of an incipient one".

New folder for UFO newsletters from Luxembourg ("CLEU"), and more from Ukraine ("Fata Morgana")

Patrice Seray in France has kindly provided me with scans of the journal "Chroniques de la CLEU". CLEU was the "Commission Luxembourgeoise D'Etudes Ufologiques", a group in Luxembourg for the study of UFOs in the 1970s-1980s. This organization was part of the CNEGU, which is a UFO research group bringing together several members of other UFO organizations in the East of France. I have created a new folder for UFO magazines/newsletters from Luxembourg.

Ukrainian UFO researcher Igor Kalytyuk has provided a scan of yet another newsletter from Ukraine. This one was entitled "Fata Morgana". I will be uploading other material from Igor, including UFO material from the USSR, shortly.

 

Devon and Cornwall (UK) UFO and Earth Mysteries newsletters added to archive: "Wisht Maen" and CUFORG's "Skywatchers"

I've added a couple of UFO and Earth Mysteries newsletters from Devon and Cornwall (which are among the most beautiful areas of England...) to the free online archive I've been helping to create.

"Skywatchers" was published by CUFORG [the "Cornwall UFO Research Group"] in the 1990s.  Issues are now very rare, as demonstrated by the fact that in my informal network of UFO researchers/groups only 2 issues were available (both held by the AFU in Sweden).  So, issues 11 and 26 are now online - with permission from Dave Gillham of CUFORG.  CUFORG still has an active Facebook group. I'll continue trying to obtain scans of further issues.

"Wisht Maen" was published by Tracey Brown and focused on Earth Mysteries in Devon. Tracey made all 5 issues of her newsletter freely available online on the Megalithic Portal website about a decade ago.  I've obtained better scans of that newsletter from the AFU in Sweden and presume (from the fact that she made some scans available) that she would be happy for the improved scans to also be made freely available online.  (I have tried emailing Tracey at an email address she used a decade ago, but not had any reply. Frankly, I don't even know if she is still around).

Jack Houck documents on John Alexander's UFO Working Group / "Advanced Theoretical Physics Conference" - from Melinda Leslie

Melinda Leslie has joined those contributing material to the online UFO archive I've been helping to develop during the last decade. Melinda has kindly provided me with copies of some documents relating to the first meeting "UFO Working Group" [or "Advanced Theoretical Physics" group] organised by John Alexander in the 1980s.  These documents were included in Jack Houck documents. Melinda was given access to them by Jack Houck's widow after his death.  

A searchable PDF version of these documents is at: shorturl.at/CEFX7

https://files.afu.se/Downloads/Documents/0%20-%20UFO%20Researchers/Melinda%20Leslie/Advanced%20Theoretical%20Physics%20WG/Jack%20Houck/pdf/ATPWG%20-%20notes%20by%20Jack%20Houck.pdf 

(Most of the notes from Oke Shannon in the PDF I uploaded yesterday relate to the same meeting, and the two sets of notes can usefully be read in conjunction with one another). 

Although I initially understood that these notes would include new material, I recognised all of them as having previously been put online by Keith Basterfield in one of his blog articles about the Working Group after he received them from Melinda.  Some of these new scans from Melinda are a little better. (Some were not, so I've used a mix of Melinda's old and new scans). In any event, I rather like having searchable PDFs of UFO documents rather than just images of them - as some of you may have noticed...

These notes from Jack Houck are discussed by Grant Cameron, Melinda Leslie and Nicole Sakach on Nicole's Youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUXzxgD9Sjg

McDonnell-Douglas aircraft company UFO research project - searchable copy of about 200 pages of documents

Oke Shannon's notes in relation to a presentation by Bob Wood of the McDonnell-Douglas aircraft company [previously "Douglas Aircraft"] to John Alexander's UFO Working Group (the "Advanced Theoretical Physics Conference") refer at page 18 of the PDF I uploaded yesterday to a $500,000 effort by that company during 1967-1969.  I've received a few requests for any information that is known regarding that project, which appears to have been a surprise to some people.  Here's a collection of about 200 pages of searchable PDFs in relation to that project. It includes material produced by Stanton Friedman and by Robert Wood when they worked for the McDonnell-Douglas UFO project.

In very brief terms, the McDonnell-Douglas aircraft company sought to derive some commercial advantage from studying UFO reports (including reports by abductees and contactees). They planned a mobile field unit to gather data using various instruments and also employed a psychic.

As outlined below, several people (including me) have previously written about that McDonnell-Douglas project and - more importantly - provided relevant documents. In particular, Grant Cameron has previously made these 200 pages of material available online more than a decade ago with technical assistance from Andrew Johnson on the Checktheevidence.com website.  That upload was discussed by Grant Cameron and Nicole Sakach in a video on Nicole's Youtube channel yesterday regarding the Oke Shannon notes (from about 56 minutes 30 seconds into that video).

For ease of reference and searching, I've created a searchable copy of those documents and (with permission from Andrew Johnson) added this copy to the rapidly growing folder I've been developing to store documents provided by Grant Cameron at:

https://files.afu.se/Downloads/?dir=.%2FDocuments%2F0%20-%20UFO%20Researchers%2FGrant%20Cameron%2FMcDonnell%20Douglas

Bob Wood has described about the McDonnell-Douglas project in various articles and books, particularly in a MUFON Journal article (in the October 2008 issue, number 486) [I really should chase MUFON for permission to upload high quality scans of older issues of that journal] and in Steven Greer's book "Disclosure".  Keith Basterfield has also posted on his blog about this McDonnell-Douglas study. The study also featured briefly a few minutes before the end of Nick Cook's documentary "UFOs : The Secret Evidence" (which can be seen on Youtube). More recent blog posts by Keith Basterfield and Curt Collins have provided updates in relation to further documents relating to a subsequent McDonnell-Douglas project related to UFOs: Project Skylite.

Dr Robert Wood has also discussed the relevant project (and his other UFO research) in the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prvQTZkFzWw 

Robert Wood was one of the first members of the UFO Working Group organised by John Alexander to discuss that group. For example, Tim Good reported in his book “Need to Know” (in Chapter 22) that Robert Wood had confirmed to Tim Good in 2005 that he was an attendee of the UFO Working Group meetings. Robert Wood reportedly stated:

"I was there … The 1985 meetings were held in the basement at BDM. The idea was to pool our knowledge of UFOs to see what we could conclude. Several people made presentations, mostly not very classified. I was out of the room for a few minutes while some special subject was discussed. All my notes were classified at the time, and they have probably been destroyed."

George Hansen in his book “The Trickster and the Paranormal” states that “McDonnell Douglas physicist Dr. Robert M. Wood” is known “for his interest in UFOs, and he was the boss of Jack Houck, who in the 1980s popularized metal-bending PK parties”. Hansen comments that “A number of military personnel, including Alexander and Stubblebine, attended those parties, and Alexander later organized parties himself (In 1982 I assisted both Houck and Alexander in organizing parties) … Robert and Ryan Wood later became notorious for touting some ludicrous UFO documents which suggested, among other things, that Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and J. Edgar Hoover were killed because of their knowledge and involvement with UFOs”.

PDF: Notes on Advanced Theoretical Physics Conference (UFO Working Group) added to Grant Cameron folder in archive - PDF version included

With thanks to Grant Cameron, I’ve converted (with his permission) the Oke Shannon’s notes released by Grant Cameron into a 26 page PDF, in the order of Grant’s scans (including a duplicated page, which means that they are 25 different pages). I've added this to part of an online folder I recently created for material from Grant Cameron. (Thousands of pages of further documents will be added to that folder shortly). 

Here's a direct link to a PDF version of Oke Shannon's notes, as currently being discussed by Grant Cameron and Nicole Sakach on her Youtube channel:

shorturl.at/bdlW5
https://files.afu.se/Downloads/Documents/0%20-%20UFO%20Researchers/Grant%20Cameron/Advanced%20Theoretical%20Physics%20WG/Oke%20Shannon/pdf/ATPWG%20-%20notes%20by%20Oke%20Shannon%20-%20SSN%20redacted.pdf

The notes by Oke Shannon helpfully released to the public by Grant Cameron are interesting and add to the information available regarding the “Advanced Theoretical Physics” UFO working group. However, I fear those notes will cause some confusion if the content is taken at face value.Oke Shannon’s notes should not be taken as entirely reliable statements of fact. In general, he was simply writing down various claims and reports. Those claims have to be evaluated in context. Unfortunately, sources (and any supporting evidence) are rarely made clear within Oke Shannon's notes.

I have in mind, for example, statements in Oke Shannon's notes such as “Navy has info” and (in relation to the Rendlesham Forest incidents of 1980) “Small people - like children (3) floated out .. Film made & flown to Germany”.

The statement “Navy has info” appears on a page recording claims by remote viewer Ed Dames (with the notes on that presentation being amongst the most detailed taken by Oke Shannon at the conference). Ed Dames is a colourful and controversial figure within the remote-viewing community and also the UFO community. He is well known for making sensational claims, particularly on Art Bell’s radio shows. (He is sometimes referred to as “Dr Doom”). Several pages of the undervalued “UFO Watchdog” website refer to numerous alleged failed predictions by Ed Dames.
http://www.ufowatchdog.com/ed_dames.htm

Furthermore, the note that "Navy has info" is followed by the words "Philadelphia exp was related?". It is now generally acknowledged that the claims regarding the "Philadelphia Experiment" were a hoax that was uncovered fairly easily. See, for example, Jacques Vallee's article "Anatomy of a Hoax" and material about Carlos Allende by by Robert A Goerman.
https://rense.com/ufo/philahoax.htm
https://windmill-slayer.tripod.com/aliascarlosallende/

As for the statements in Oke Shannon's notes regarding the Rendlesham Forest case (or the "Woodbridge, England case", no source is stated in the Oke Shannon notes. Those very brief notes contain some basic factual errors (e.g. referring to the events being on “two consecutive nights”, when in fact the main events were on the first and third relevant nights not two consecutive nights).

The remainder of the notes regarding the Rendlesham Forst incident appear to overlap substantially with the claims of Larry Warren. Those claims had been reported prior to the ATP conference in British tabloid newspapers (notably in a front cover article in the News of the World entitled "UFO Lands In Suffolk" on 2 October 1983 and a follow-up article on 6 November 1983). Larry Warren is now generally regarded (even by those that consider the Rendlesham Forest case to be interesting) as - um - unreliable.

Even veteran UFO researcher Peter Robbins, who co-authored a book called "Left at East Gate" with Larry Warren, issued a statement in 2017 about catching Larry Warren in "outright lies".
http://peterrobbinsny.com/index.php/item/307-halt-in-woodbridge-an-air-force-colonel-s-thirty-year-fight-to-silence-an-authetic-ufo-whistle-blower

More generally, pay attention to who was involved initially in the Advanced Theoretical Physics conference and when they ceased to be present for its discussions. Consider why they did not bother staying for the full thing. Also keep in mind the outcome of the Advanced Theoretical Physics conference.

For ease of reference, I'll also include a link to the recent "Project Unity" interview of Oke Shannon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23b44fxvz8I

By the way, I wrote a bit about some of the players involved in the Advanced Theoretical Physics conference and some overlapping issues in 2015 at the link below. My 2015 item was written before meeting some of those involved and before obtaining some further relevant information/material and doing quite a bit more research, so it’s a bit incomplete and shorter than if I wrote a similar item now - some 7 years later.

https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1074447/pg1

Another 238,465 PDF pages added to UFO archive : Open Minds Forum posts (8 million+ links replaced) - Aviary, SERPO, Nimitz, California Drone/CARET, Source A

The Open Minds Forum was a popular UFO Proboards discussion forum online until about the beginning of 2012.  It included numerous posts discussing UFO reports and Disclosure issues. It included several "Special Guests" boards featuring material from various UFO researchers, including John Lear, Ron Schmidt ("Zorgon"), Dan Smith, Angelia Joiner and others. Popular topics included SERPO, members of the Aviary, the California Drone / CARET photographs, Source A, and many other UFO incidents/issues.

I have now created a new archive of posts to the Open Minds Forum, with the kind blessing of its owner (Chris Iversen) and the encouragement and help of various other former members/administrators of the Open Minds Forum (including Brendan Burton, Lee Nicholson, Manuel Lamiroy and others). 

As part of creating this archive, I have merged two different incomplete archives and done various operations to find and replace over 8 million links within the archive. 

I've made the archive available both as:

(1) A html archive which can be browsed online; and 

(2) A PDF archive which can be downloaded for ease of offline archiving/searching.  The PDF archive currently includes 238,465 pages.  The PDF archive of posts to the Open Minds Forum can be searched offline (whether alone or as part of a larger search of scanned UFO books, magazines/newsletters and official documents) using free software such as PDF Xchange Editor, as I've outlined several times over the last decade as part of my UFO scanning project e.g. in my post here. 

As usual, my upload is hosted on the website of Sweden's Archives For the Unexplained.

(The archive remains incomplete and some of the links still do not work. I'd be happy to do more work on this, but I think I would probably require at least several minutes of help from someone more experienced than me with Regular Expressions and html. In particular, I'd like to use a Regular Expression to find all the links that currently seek to use javascript, which are in the format "javascript:if(confirm)...", and replace them with working links. Of course, if I could get several minutes of help from a competent programmer then there are several other UFO mini-projects that could be completed very, very quickly...).

One former member and co-owner at the Open Minds Forum, Lee Nicholson, helpfully provided the following recollections of his that forum:

"Like many, I joined the Open Minds Forum in 2006 to follow the developing "Project Serpo" story. Five fun filled years followed, and while "Serpo" failed to deliver the promised evidence, the forum went from strength to strength. I met and worked with lots of wonderful people over the years and made friendships which continue today."

"When the forum's 'doors' sadly 'closed' in Dec 2011, the site had recorded some 276,774 posts over 10,041 topic threads. Notable hoaxes such as; Serpo, CARET/Drone and 'Source A' were exposed by our staff and membership. Historic cases like the Stephensville sightings were discussed in the pages. The late John Lear, Edgar Fouche and Dan Smith spent many hours debating Area 51, the TR-3B and the 'Best Possible World'. Our members scoured the intenet for the 'smoking gun' , discussed the merits of individual sightings, videos, documents, researchers and hypotheses."

"In 2010 Kevin Day joined the forum, under the pseudonym TheSeer, to post his short story about Nimitz/Tic Tac incident, the significance of which wouldn't become apparent until 2017. We were able to confirm visits to the forum from various military and intel organisations and at one point our staff emails were being redirected to a field near Harrogate (RAF Menwith Hill/NSA) for some unknown purpose."

"Two of our staff members, Frank 'Doc' Andrews (SurferDoc) and Lilian Waters (NewYorkLily) have sadly passed away, but no doubt they too would be thrilled to see this huge body of UFO literature revived for the current generation of researchers. An epic task accomplished by respected researcher Isaac Koi and the Archives of the Unexplained (AFU). As a former member and co-owner at the Open Minds Forum, I can't thank them enough."

"Lee Nicholson, September, 2022"

The founder of the forum, Brendan Burton, also provided the following comments:

"I founded the forum and initially was the sole administrator. Indeed I had 'the keys' to the forum and bought the domain 'openmindsforum.com', later passing the domain to Chris to set up as a 'cooperative' venture. My motto was and still is "it's all Good". The rules were simple. All opinions were welcome as long as people were treated with dignity and respect. In that respect we were extremely popular and successful, we had only a few detractors. It was sad to learn of the passing of 'Doc' and I to this day hold my fellow admins with extremely high regard, and I dearly miss the good times we shared..." 

"An important note: in 'The TC' Comms the term 'Solar Warden' first arose and predates all mention anywhere else on the web."

To help others with any similar projects (and to remind myself when I do the next similar project...), it may help for me to set out some of the technical steps I followed (after quite a bit of experimentation and searching...)..  These are probably very simple to those with sufficient programming experiences, but I'm just a lawyer so I was rather pleased to get these steps to work. :) Fortunately, some of the steps I've previously set out in relation to my previous uploads of archives of pages of the huge UFOmind.com website and of posts to the the Reality Uncovered forum overlapped with this task and gave a bit of a head start, so I did not have to start from scratch with finding relevant software tools and learning relevant techniques (particularly some basic Regular Expressions).

First, I obtained and merged two incomplete archives of posts to the Open Minds Forum. 

One of the those archives is the incomplete set of pages from the Wayback Machine's Internet Archive. Sadly that archive is very incomplete. Pages archives after about 7 January 2012 were simply placeholders stating that the forum had been removed for an alleged breach of Proboards' terms of service. In any event, that archive is not easily searched.  I used the Wayback Machine Downloader to download earlier versions of the limited pages of the Open Minds Forum that had been archived on the Wayback Machine using the steps below (which obtained about 10% of the material I have now uploaded):

1) I downloaded the rubyinstaller recommended at the top of rubyinstaller.org/downloads then run the downloaded exe file

2) downloaded the zip file github.com/hartator/wayback-machine-downloader/archive/…

3) unzipped the downloaded zip file

4) Used the windows start menu to search for "Start command prompt with Ruby"

5) I followed the instructions for the github.com/hartator/wayback_machine_downloader (i.e.: copy paste this "gem install wayback_machine_downloader" into the prompt. Hit enter and it will install the program

6) Followed the "Usage" guidelines from that github page, entering commands within the same Ruby command prompt. Due to the issues I mentioned above, it was important to limit the download to the latest archived version of the Open Minds Forum website up to, say, 7 January 2012 (since some webpages from this website are incomplete thereafter). This can be done by using the "to" qualifier in a relevant download command: wayback_machine_downloader http://lucianarchy.proboards.com/ --to 20120107

7) Found the relevant files at C:\Users\YOURusername\websites

A larger (but still incomplete archive) was helpfully brought to my attention by Manuel Lamiroy, at the link below:

http://openmindsforum.com/?fbclid=IwAR02OW1MhYwIVd1X3LpM6nqw_Rw-JnUz8P50f3e2AJzOOKsdi0kk1aZ80T0

This second archive overlaps with the Wayback Machine's archive, but has considerably more pages. I understand that this larger archive is a partial copy of the Open Minds Forum made by one of its users, "Fore". 

Unfortunately, these two archives had adopted different file naming formats, such as the 2 examples below:

(a) index.cgi-action=display&board=analysis&thread=6257&page=1

(b) index.cgi%3faction%3ddisplay%26board%3danalysis%26thread%3d7466%26page%3d1

Since these two archives included different (albeit overlapping) pages, I merged the two archive. To merge the archives, it was necessary to change the file name format used in every file in one the archives.  I used the free Bulk Rename Utility to replace relevant filenames for thousands of html files. In particular, I used that software to make the following changes to the file names:

(1) Add a .htm suffix to each file

(2) Replace %3d with =

(3) Replace %3f with -

(4) Replaced %26 with &

Most of the links in these archives no longer worked. In some cases the links were in the wrong format. In many cases the link was, in any event, dead. To address these problems, I had to make various changes to the format of most links in each webpage and I also changed most external links to link to the archived page nearest 7 January 2012 by adding a relevant prefix (https://web.archive.org/web/2012010751143/http... ; i.e. 51143 after the relevant date as part of a Wayback Machine archive URL), as I discussed in my previous items at:

https://isaackoiup.blogspot.com/2021/10/realityuncovered-forum-searchable-pdfs.html

https://isaackoiup.blogspot.com/2022/03/glenn-campbells-ufomindcom-best-ufo.html

To make the necessary changes to links, I used the free "Notepad++" software (in particular, its "Find in Files" function to rapidly search and replace in a directory of about 50,000 separate html files). For some of the changes, it was useful to use Regular Expressions. The relevant changes included:

(1) Replace ?board with -board

(2) Replace index.cgi? with index.cgi-

(3) Replace index.cgi with index-cgi

(4) Replace http://www.lucianarchy.proboards.com/index with index

(5) Regular Expression replace thread=(.*?(?=")) with thread=\1.htm" to find all strings that begin with thread= with any characters until inverted commas and then replace them with the same string plus .htm (effectively adding .htm to each internal link, so that they work with the archived pages).

(6) Regular Expression replace &user=(.*?(?=")) with &user=\1.htm" 

(7) Regular Expression replace board=(.*?(?=")) with board=\1.htm" 

(8) Regular Expression replace index-cgi#(.*?(?=")) with index-cgi#\1.htm" 

(9) Replace .htm.htm with .htm

(10) Replace href="http with href="https://web.archive.org/web/2012010751143/http

One of these steps changed over 7 million links and several other steps involved changes to over 0.5 million changes each, so the total number of links replaced is over 8 million.

Finally, I also created a PDF version of the archive. I started to use Adobe Acrobat's batch create file option to convert the html files into searchable PDFs to create a PDF . Unfortunately, after 24 hours less than 5% of the archive had been converted (suggesting that the full conversion would require more than 20 days).   I raised this problem on Twitter and two users (Taras Young and "NJR") recommended trying the free "wkhtmltopdf" software. I was able to create a very brief batch file containing a loop to use wkhtmltopdf to convert each html file in a directory to a PDF, at a speed of between 5 and 10 times faster than Adobe Acrobat.  The real work is done by the (free) wkhtmltopdf software. This very short and simple batch file is just executed from within a folder of html files to cycles through the files and convert each one to a PDF file and save them in a stated directory: 

[start batchfile]

@echo off 

for %%i in (*.htm) do "C:\Program Files\wkhtmltopdf\bin\wkhtmltopdf.exe" "%%i" "E:\temp\pdfsfromhtml\%%~ni.pdf" 

[end]

It should be possible to modify this simple batch file to create others loops to rapidly complete various mini-projects in relation to archiving/searching other UFO material (including converting multi-page threads from AboveTopSecret and other forums into a single PDF per thread...).  Oh, and a related discussion prompted some thoughts on archiving "UFO Twitter".