Photograph-At his Barrington home, Ted Loder, a Disclosure Project researcher and retired University of New Hampshire professor, shows a presentation containing information about UFOs.-(John Huff/Staff photographer)

By CHLOE JOHNSON, Staff Writer

ljohnson@fosters.com

For beings who may or may not have visited Earth, aliens sure have spent a lot of time in the public eye.

The British Ministry of Defense revealed this month that the number of reported UFO sightings there rose to 135 last year from 97 in 2006.

Details of reported sightings were released for the first time in 2007, including an archive dating back to 1998. Sightings were of shapes, lights and formations, according to British press reports.

There hasn't been a similar increase in the United States, but last month, reports of a UFO sighting by more than 30 residents of Stephenville, Texas, made national news. People, including a police officer, local news reporter and pilot said they saw a large, silent object with bright lights flying low and fast.

Ted Loder, a former University of New Hampshire oceanography professor, is a researcher with the Disclosure Project, which works to expose evidence of extraterrestrial life. He lives at the end of a dirt road in Barrington, surrounded by woods where he says he has a clear view of the stars from the balcony.

His bookshelves are stacked with hundreds of UFO books. By a window, a small object bearing prisms slowly rotates, sending morning rainbows fluttering around the room's exposed-beam ceiling.

The Disclosure Project is a nonprofit research organization seeking to disseminate declassified government documents on extraterrestrials and provide witness testimony about UFOs. Loder said the knowledge that UFOs are real and visiting Earth first was established after World War II with the aerial phenomena classified as "foo fighters," along with the alleged spacecraft crash near Roswell, N.M.

"We knew that this was happening, and we also knew they could fly circles around us," he said.

Loder said the acronym UFO was coined to confuse people.

"We know what they are," he said. "They're extraterrestrial vehicles."

The strongest evidence that UFOs have visited the Earth's atmosphere can be found among hundreds of government documents on the subject dating back to the 1940s, he said. The Disclosure Project has collected such documents, along with almost 70 expert and military witness accounts. Since the materials were made available online and otherwise publicized, Loder said, more witnesses have come forward, with the total now at nearly 500.

He said there are several reasons government officials would keep UFO information highly classified, including a desire to use alien technology to gain superiority over other nations.

He also said technology that can travel so far and fast through space would disrupt the energy infrastructure, making dependency on fossil fuels obsolete — a notion corporate stockholders would reject. Knowing the government knew such technology existed for decades also likely would enrage the public, he added, given the current energy crisis and the number of years that evidence has been available.

Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center, a Seattle-based nonprofit that collects sighting information through a hot line, said the UFO phenomenon addresses "the most important scientific question that has ever confronted mankind," which he said is whether humans are alone in this galaxy or not.

But "from my vantage point, the resounding answer to that question is 'No,' he wrote in an email to Foster's.

Any fluctuation in reported sightings — even if statistically significant — has little value, he argued. It may say nothing about the number of UFOs, if any, that may be near Earth, he said.

There are probably many recent factors that determine the number of reports to the Center, including new UFO movies, documentaries about the subject or a dramatic sighting, he said.

He said he has heard claims that sightings are on the increase in the U.S., but has not seen evidence to supports that. The center compiles reports by month, and there has been no dramatic increase in recent years.

But the number of reports has been consistently in the triple digits since the year 2000, with the exception of December 2007, when it was 77. There were 529 reports in September 2004.

Among the more interesting cases reported to the center is one in Exeter in 2005. A former U.S. Navy chief petty officer reported seeing a huge, cigar-shaped craft with multiple windows along its side while mowing his lawn.

Davenport, who said he has decades of experience in the UFO field, wrote for the Derry News in 1965 about the famous "Incident at Exeter." He said he interviewed several witnesses in the town, where he had attended high school just before going to college.

That morning, according to the report, many people saw a peculiar disc-shaped object. Later, a young man and two police officers saw the object closer, but reported it moved fast.

Peter Geremia, director of the New Hampshire chapter of MUFON, or Mutual UFO Network, said any increases could be due to more people watching the skies or being willing to report sightings.

But the vast majority of sighting reports are misidentification of natural or man-made events, he said.

"It's that last 10 percent or so that is interesting," Geremia said.

Jason Lorefice, lead investigator for Paranormal Investigators of New England, based in South Burlington, Vt., said he isn't aware of any significant reports in the region recently. The group investigates UFO sightings as well as reports of supernatural, occult or other unexplained activity.

The region's point of interest for UFO watching is in an area south of Boston known as the Bridgewater Triangle. It long has been known for reports of unusual and unexplained activity, with the first UFO sighting dating back to 1760, the Disclosure Project's Loder said.

The fascination with extraterrestrials continues to grow, with one example being a new History Channel show called "UFO Hunters," he said.

Stratham resident Kathleen Marden was a guest this month on an episode of the show, which featured her book about the alien abduction reported by her aunt and uncle, Betty and Barney Hill. The book, "Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience," released in 2007, offered more information on the incident, which the Hills said happened in 1961 on their honeymoon in the White Mountains.

The Hills' report remains one of the most famous accounts of alien abduction, and many subsequent sightings have similarities.