home
esoterica
Feature Articles by binnallFeature Articles by binnall
Original binnallofamerica.com Audio
the United States of Esoterica
merchandise
contact

Lesley

Grey Matter

12.12.6

The UFO year that was 2006

What went on in the world of ufology during 2006? What were the big stories? Let us look back and see what we can come up with.

We watched in 2006, as the big 2005 story of Serpo pretty much died. The promised photos from planet Eben never materialized and people kept finding more and more flaws with the story. Eventually, even Bill Ryan, who had pretty much been the promoter of the story, admitted he no longer believed the story.

Another continuing story from 2005 and probably the biggest of those was the Gary McKinnon hacking story. Since McKinnon claimed to be hacking US government computers in search of UFO related information he received much support from the ufology community. Sadly, McKinnon has no proof of the UFO related stuff he claimed to have found. He has not yet been tried and so this story will probably continue on through 2007.

Bob Lazar was back in the news in 2006. Nothing to actually do with UFOs, but in March his home in Sandia Park, NM (just a few miles from TDF) was raided by SWAT. I never quite fully understood why, but apparently he was selling something over the internet that they did not think he should be. December finds Lazar back in the news again, and again because of something he is selling, polonium-210, the poison used to kill Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. According to Lazar he does not sell this in quantities that are large enough to poison or kill someone.

One old/new mystery brought to light during 2006 was the missing Apollo 11 tapes. This adds fuel to the fire of a NASA cover-up of UFO related information.

Then there was the Kinross story or hoax. A dive company claimed to have found the underwater, crashed remains of a F-89 that disappeared in 1953, along with what appeared to be a ufo. The radar blip of this went around the world, but a few months later things became suspicious as The Great Lakes Dive Company website disappeared from the internet and people from the company stopped answering phones or returning calls and emails. Also, it was found that the Dive company who did business out of Michigan was never registered with the State of Michigan.

Towards the end of 2006, the UK press went wild with a comment by Nick Pope, it was packaged and repackaged, first in all the UK news and then moving quickly to the US. Pope’s basic comment was something to the effect that alien technology was far superior to ours and that if they so wished they could destroy or invade planet earth. However, reading the news stories you would think that Pope had said an alien invasion was imminent, at any moment you might look up and see the invading hordes. Pope also resigned from the MOD in 2006, which is a bit of a news item as well.

Right now the big ufo story or hoax is a reported ufo crash in Siberia. First reports were that witnesses had seen something crash, which then started a large fire. Russian investigators were sent to the site, where they claim to have found nothing. The latest report is that someone who called this in is about to be arrested for a hoax.

2006 also brought back that old and much loved hoax Alien Autopsy. Thanks to a new comedy film about the Alien Autopsy, we learned even more about the old hoax.

Speaking of films, or at least DVDs, 2006 saw a rather big release of a UFO documentary, it was Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs. My local video stores even carry this one and they do not normally stock such things.

On TV we saw the new show Sci Fi Investigates. It isn’t always about UFOs, but it does have Richard Dolan as one of the investigators and they have done several ufo related shows.

The big book of 2006 seemed to be Hunt for the Skinwalker, which was actually released in Dec 2005, but is one of those things that carried on well into 2006. It’s authors Colm Kelleher and George Knapp were interviewed about the book on numerous radio shows and in print during 2006.

The other big book of 2006, was Whitley Strieber’s The Grays. It was a fiction book, but Whitley has said there is a lot in there that isn’t fiction.

Finally, Congratulations to UFO Magazine, which celebrated it’s 20th anniversary in 2006!

I am sure that I missed some rather “big” ufo events of 2006, but it is impossible to remember them all.

Coming soon in Grey Matters - what does 2007 promise on the ufology front? We will try to figure that out.

  • Contact Lesley
  • Check out Lesley's Blog HERE
  • Discuss "Grey Matters" @ theusofe HERE