Clift said he has been interested in UFOs since he was 12 years old, although he only started researching them 10 years ago after retiring.}

March 12, 2007-It began, he'll tell you, about 50 years ago, in the early 1950s, when he saw the object in the sky. He was the only one, as far as Clifford Clift knows, who saw the light moving silently across the eastern Colorado sky that night when he was about 12 years old.

But from that day, Clift was convinced. There was something out there. He was too busy at work for 35 years, running Clift Realty, being a broker and developer. But then, when Clift retired, it was time to think again about that night and the UFO above his home near Brush. He began gathering information -- government documents, eyewitness accounts, Project Blue Book. The Incident at Roswell. The night skies over Washington, D.C.

Now Clifford Clift is a believer. "I know some people think we're crazy." he told friends at a meeting this week, "but I believe the UFOs exist, they are manufactured objects and they are not of this Earth." Some would put Clift and other members of MUFON -- Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network -- in a group of other "crazies" that follow the UFO reports, but those people could be badly mistaken. Clift is the state director of MUFON, a network that has members in 25 states. They discredit the hoaxes and confirm the truths of UFOs.

In the local MUFON meeting Thursday night, Clift gave a history lesson of sorts, tracing UFOs from World War II to the sighting at O'Hare Airport in Chicago last November. He spoke of reports of UFOs by airline pilots, military experts, politicians, scientists, astronauts and astronomers. He spoke of unexplained aerial events, of the crashes and military cover-up at Roswell, and of 1952 -- the big year of UFOs.

He also spoke of his beliefs. Active in his church, Clift said he can easily fit his Christian faith with his belief in UFOs. "The Bible says God created the heavens and the earth. It's pretty egotistical of us to believe that in the entire universe, we're the only life that God created," he said. Clift will continue to study, to investigate, to believe. He knows some don't and some never will. But he also believes that one day people will know.

The truth is out there...

-- Staff writer Mike Peters' column about Weld County people appears Mondays in the Tribune. His humor column, the Gnarly Trombone, appears Saturdays.

BREAKOUT:

For information about MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), call Clifford Clift at 302-9118.

To report a UFO sighting, 303-451-5992

Source & References:

http://www.greeleytrib.com/article/20070312/NEWS/103110133

aleech@seacoastonline.com

PORTSMOUTH -- The truth is out there.

For the better part of four decades, Portsmouth resident Art C., who asked that his last name not be printed, has investigated reports of unidentified flying objects in New England. UFO Digest this month published some of his research on an 1896 sighting at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

The world of the "paranormal" has always fascinated Art, but his interest is in the truly unexplainable -- reports in which every possible Earthly explanation has been explored and nothing has stuck.

"In my mind, I don't know it's a real UFO until I've investigated and eliminated all other possibilities," he said. "Only about 5 percent have no (other) explanation."

But that hasn't deterred him at all, because it's that 5 percent that prove to him UFOs are not simply the creation of a small group of hallucinating lunatics, he said.

The National UFO Reporting Center provides details of more than 15,000 reported sightings, with more than 500 reports in Maine and New Hampshire. There are more than 100 UFO sightings reported throughout the world every day, according to Art, and many go unreported.

As an investigator, currently with the New Hampshire Mutual UFO Network, Art said there is a detailed protocol for each investigation. The system is centered around validating reports and determining whether there are any obvious alternative explanations, such as aircraft or other activity in the area that could create the illusion of a UFO. Art said one report was relayed to him years ago by the owner of a small airport in Haverhill, Mass. The sighting happened during a "flap," an extended period of time in which there is a high concentration of sighting reports.

"His wife heard a whizzing sound outside, so he stepped out to see what the sound was," said Art.

"He saw -- as he described -- one saucer on top of another one with a series of lights along the rim. He waved it down, because he thought it was (an aircraft) in trouble.

"As he's waving at it, not more than 50 yards away, the two occupants inside turned their head(s), and they had two antennae on both of their heads. They looked right at him. When he saw that, he stopped waving ... then it took off."

Most of the time, Art said, investigators have to go out and ask people if they've seen something, because people are rarely willing to report UFO sightings voluntarily. Some reports go to the UFO reporting center, but most disappear, classified as simple calls reporting unidentified flying objects to police departments. Art, 60, said his involvement with UFOs evolved from a general interest in space as a child growing up in the 1950s -- when discussion about aliens and UFO sightings was becoming commonplace and literature was being printed on reports. The infamous Roswell incident, in which, some believe, the government hid evidence of an alien craft after it crashed in Arizona, took place in 1947.

From there, Art started working on reports with other interested investigators like Ray Fowler, Walter Webb and John Keel. Now, under the leadership of Peter R. Geremia, he does mostly research for MUFON. Humankind has a long history of reporting unidentified objects in the sky, from as far as cave drawings, according to Art, to the thousands of eye-witness reports and photographs taken every year by people throughout the world. People naturally seek answers.

"From the caveman who saw something moving up there to modern man, we're always looking to the skies, saying �What's that?'" he said. "There's something about the unknown that we want to make known within ourselves, whether it be God or something else. I think as a world we want something more intelligent than us, something greater than we are.

"What do I say to people who don't believe? I say open your minds. Open your minds to what could be, what might be, and what possibly is."

Source & References:

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/03132007/nhnews-ph-por-ufo.dude.html

Photo by Rich Beauchesne

Mar 09, 2007 at 04:29 PM

For as long as man has had a neck, he has looked to the stars for answers to questions that he could not answer himself. Where did we come from? Why are we here? What else is out there? Why is bologna round if sliced bread is square?

If you look toward the night skies long and regularly enough, you stand a good chance of joining the thousands of people who have seen a UFO first-hand. Ever since the Roswell UFO incident in July of 1947, there are a growing number of people who scan the skies, looking for evidence to confirm the existence of UFOs and the beings that pilot them.

Sonora resident Mark Olson (known by friends and family by his nickname of �Markos�) is one of those people.

�I wouldn�t say I�m an expert, but I�ve been fascinated with the subject most of my life,� Olson said of his UFO interest. �I�ve seen objects all my life basically.�

Olson grew up in El Paso, Texas, where he said his home was surrounded by Air Force bases. The oldest of four children, Olson eventually moved to the Bay Area in 1988 and worked as an interpreter for the deaf at a university before moving to the Mother Lode in 2000 to be closer to his parents. Olson, who is a few months shy of his 41st birthday, said he began to experience regular �UAP� sightings (he prefers the term �Unidentified Aerial Phenomena�) at his home near Lyons Bald Mountain beginning in April of 2004.

�Since then we�ve been seeing these things almost every day,� Olson said. �We saw so many of them that I decided to get a camcorder back in May. I was practicing how to use it, and I was videotaping the sky and I saw a jet and started to record it. But then I saw an object rotating around the jet. I was like, �Holy mackerel.��

He has seen �literally hundreds� of UAPs and has videotaped nearly all of them. He began documenting so many instances that he started a website to post the videos in hopes that somebody would be able to analyze the videos and possibly shed light on the objects they contained.

�I had no idea what they could be because they were nothing like I had ever seen,� he said. �I�d say some of them might be military. Others, I have no idea. They could be anything. That�s the problem when you try to investigate this stuff � it�s what are they and how do you find out?�

The website, www.sonorasightings.com, was moderately popular, generating over 130,000 hits during its time on the Internet. Markos has since had to take the website offline due to health problems, but many of the videos are still available to see elsewhere on the web (at www.youtube.com by searching for �sonora sightings,� or by going to http://www.uforoadtrip.com/clips.php and clicking on the �Sonora Sightings� link).

As a result of his videos, Olson was contacted by famous UFOlogist (one invovled in the study of UFOs) David Sereda, who put Olson and a smattering of his camcorder clips in his films, �Visitors: California UFO Wave� and �Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs.� While Olson isn�t sure what any of his UAPs are or where they come from, he does believe in life on other planets.

�I believe that there�s empirical evidence from over the last thousands of years that these things have been visiting us,� Olson said. �I have a personal theory that civilizations have risen and fallen on this planet, and some have probably made it out to space and maybe their descendants are coming back to visit.

�Back in the olden days people thought the world was flat, and they didn�t believe anybody would ever fly, and then they didn�t believe that the sound barrier would ever be broken,� he continued. �It�s all a matter of how large your mind is.�

Perhaps the most interesting aspect about Mark Olson is that he is also an ordained priest with the Metropolitan Community Church, an international Christian congregation. Many practicing Christians feel that extra-terrestrial life and the Bible�s account of creation are mutually exclusive because the Bible makes no mention of other lifeforms other than those found on this planet. But Olson feels differently.

�The way I look at it is, the greater the universe, the greater the glory of the God that created it,� he said. �And I also think that it would be an awful waste of space. Here�s how I describe it when people ask me. You�re standing on a beach and you�re at the edge of the beach farthest from the ocean. Somebody comes up and points to a grain of sand and said to you, �See this little grain of sand at the edge of the beach? That is the only place on this beach that you will find life.� �Would you believe them? How could there not be life on the rest of that beach, or what about the ocean? That�s the galaxy, and what about the rest of the universe?�

He also believes that UAPs were obliquely mentioned in the Good Book.

�I think the Bible has mentioned extra-terrestrials,� he said. �If you think about it, the people of the time were primitive. If you lived in mud huts or twig houses and didn�t have electricity or anything, and you saw a UFO, how would you describe it? �A ball of light,� or �a wheel of fire�...there are several descriptions in the Bible that could be UFOs, just that they didn�t know how to describe them.�

Although www.sonorasightings.com is no longer active and his sky watching time has decreased due to health concerns, Mark Olson is still an avid observer of UAPs and encourages us all to look up from time to time.

�Anybody�s who�s interested only has to pay attention to the sky, just look up and watch,� he said. Turn off your radios, turn off your TVs, turn off your VHS and DVD players and just watch the sky. You�ll be amazed at what you see.�

Source & References:

TIMOTHY GOOD

Saturday, April 7, 2007

The Intruders Foundation (IF) is proud to present a special evening with the distinguished British author and researcher, Timothy Good. Mr. Good's first book, ABOVE TOP SECRET has long been a classic in UFO literature. And his latest book, NEED TO KNOW - UFOs, THE MILITARY AND INTELLIGENCE, is currently a bestseller in the United Kingdom. Timothy Good's special area of study is the shadowy world of the government cover-up of UFO reality. He has unearthed many striking official documents, some of which deal with the earliest years of the UFO phenomenon, such as official reports of huge UFOs by fliers during World War II. He has lectured extensively around the world, but rarely in the New York area, so it is our unique privilege to present him on April 7th.

In the past, Mr. Good has presented the case for UFO reality before many distinguished audiences, such as the Royal Canadian Military Institute, the Royal Navy Station Portland, the House of Lords All-Party UFO Study Group, the Institute of Medical Laboratory Sciences, and the Oxford and Cambridge Union Societies. In May 1998 he was invited to the US Pentagon to discuss the UFO subject at the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office, and in 2002 he spoke at the headquarters of the French Air Force.

We have often said about previous seminar speakers, that he or she should not be missed by anyone interested in the UFO phenomenon, but in the case of Timothy Good, that description is extraordinarily apt. He makes few trips to NYC from his native London, so we urge you not to miss this rare appearance by one of the world's leading UFO researchers.

REGISTRATION & INFORMATION

The seminar will be held on April 7th at the new meeting rooms of A.R.E., located on the SECOND FLOOR at 241 W. 30th Street (between Seventh and Eighth Avenues), New York, NY. The price of the seminar is $30 for non-members and $20 for members of IF, seniors and students. Reservations must be made by telephone at 212-645-5278, and will be filled on a first come, first served basis. Payment must be made in advance to secure the reservation. Make checks payable to the Intruders Foundation, P.O. Box 30233, New York, NY 10011. Seating is limited. Book early! Only 60 reservations will be accepted!

On-street parking is generally available in the neighborhood. The seminar will begin at 7:30 PM and end at 10:00 PM. Doors open at 7:00 PM. There will be a one half-hour intermission, during which light complimentary refreshments will be served. A book table will offer books, videotapes and other material for sale to those interested. For additional information, call IF at 212-645-5278.

Hope to see you there!

The Intruders Foundation Seminar Series is presented in the interests of open-minded scientific learning and the free exchange of research, ideas, and theories. IF makes no specific claims or endorsements regarding any materials, views, or subject matter presented by our guests.

Want to know more about Budd Hopkins and his nonprofit scientific research organization, as well as past and future IF events? Please visit our website�

Intruders Foundation Website: www.intrudersfoundation.org

Source & References:

www.intrudersfoundation.org