The UFO Files: The Inside Story of Real-life Sightings

I have to admit that I am strangely fascinated by the UFO myths and legends that have become a part of our cultural folklore. I have no idea what they are or where they come from and remain an interested sceptic. This book gives a straighforward account of the history of UFOs over the last one hundred years or so. It's an easy read but this isn't a criticism - it gives plenty of detail too with original documentation to back up the evidence collected. What I liked was that the author didn't strive to put across any personal POV whilst giving lots of information allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions. Some other UFO books have proved to be very hard going, almost over-laden with detail as every eye-witness account is described in minute detail, this book manages to be clear and informative but not dull. For anyone with an interest in the subject I'd recommend this as a welcome addition to the more reputable books available.

Now that the MoD has lost funding for the UFO desk, details of previously undisclosed sightings have been revealed to the British public, many in this unbiased, straight-down-the middle, non-judgemental anthology. Apparently, the majority of early UFOs were cigar-shaped - a ploy of Churchill's I pondered? Compiled in date order and illustrated with copies of original RAF and MoD paperwork raised at the time, it leaves the readers to make their own decisions as to the validity of each claim. My 1991 sighting was not included, much to my chagrin, but the sheer volume of unexplained encounters world-wide leaves the impression that there surely IS something out there!

Wanted to read something a little different. It has a broad coverage of the subject and was pretty much what I expected. Interesting to read a little about 'official' recording and coverage.

The best book on the subject apart from The Hunt For Zero Point, No aliens hear just good reporting on the subject with info on lighter than air crafts with modern light and strong materials as well as the stealth of modern flying crafts such as the B.2. Northrop Bomber. Even information on Project Winter-haven from the early 1950.s connected with Thomas Townsend Brown. Shows the disinformation of the media and the military to keep high tack technology secret. Highly recommended.

David Clark is one of the best UFO authors this country has ever produced, he might not be the best known but that is mainly because his work is based on solid factual research. You won't find too many 'space aliens stole my baby,' kind of claims here, but you will learn a lot about events that lead to UFO reports, and you'll get intelligent and solid investigations of Britain's best known UFO cases. One of most welcome things about this book is the way it's written in a no-nonsense, informative style. A lot of other UFO books appear to think breathless claims and rambling arguments are the way to go.

According to Fortean Times columnist David Clarke, UFOs are a wide variety of things, "including bright stars and planets, advertising blimps and balloons, hoaxes, concert lights, meteors and space junk burning up in the atmosphere". The book covers various UK occurrences, such as Rendlesham forest, which apparently was a misidentification of light coming from a lighthouse. There's also a discussion of crop circles, which apparently were all hoaxed by two generations of circle makers, the first of which was two old men called Doug and Dave, who were followed by teams such as the London based team of Rod and John. Skyhook balloons, the U2 spy plane and the Aurora stealth fighter explain the remainder of the sightings. He doesn't provide any evidence to substantiate such theories.

I was expecting a really fascinating read here. instead we have a few black & white illustrations ,no great stories about cover ups conspiracy theories ,all the stuff that makes this subject so interesting.

A very interesting and thought provoking insight into a fascinating subject. This are of UFO sightings and the very real possibility of alien sightings and the probing into the existence of non-terrestrial life is one of growing interest to a vast range of people - a truly recommended book!

One thing I like about this book is the way he places the public concept of UFOs in the context of the time period involved, and then he shows how that concept changes and evolves as the time context changes. Other than that, it is yet another historical account of the modern UFO era, and I have read many. This one has a British slant to it and a number of new cases have been published, but it seems to me, to be just more of the same. For instance, there are the usual numerous accounts of jets being scrambled to chase some visual or radar will-o'-the wisp, but not much elucidation as to what they might be. Toward the end of the book he does touch on this to a small degree, but I believe it is possible to make some pretty good speculations on what many of them might be. Here is one that I think was missed entirely: Radar and particle accelerators are siblings in time. Both were dependent on the prior invention of the klystron tube by the Varian brothers in the late 1930s. Radar, of course, found an almost immediate military application and it use became wide spread during WWII.Today there must be many thousands of people who are intimately familiar with this technology. The technology of particle accelerators, on the other hand, has remained rather esoteric. Other than its use in research facilities, its most common application is the inner workings of machines used for zapping cancer tumors. This is not to say that a military use hasn't been investigated, and there was some brief public mention of it as a "Star Wars" weapon during the Reagan administration. If a military application of this technology has been developed, it has been kept under pretty tight wraps. The best speculation that I have found is by one Tom Mahood (search on: Particle Beams and Saucer Dreams). It's probably because I have some exposure to particle accelerators myself that I find his analysis so believable. Mahood himself is an interesting study. The way I understand it, he was originally trained as a civil engineer and worked in the area of traffic control. Somewhere along the line he developed an interest in UFOs and, in particular, the goings on at Area 51. His investigations so intrigued him that he went back to school and obtained a masters degree in physics in order better understand what he was observing. He apparently worked as a physicist for a period of time specializing in research on gravity. Somewhere along the line he apparently lost interest in UFOs, and the last I read he was back working in his old field of traffic control. I tried to contact him once at the email address shown at the bottom of his essay but I received no reply. Here is another speculation that I believe deserves more attention: Most people have a rudimentary concept of what a mirage is, but I think the phenomenon is larger than is generally realized. Mirages are usually divided into inferior and superior depending on whether the false horizon is below the natural horizon or above it. In addition, they are also active at night which I believe is not generally understood. For a mirage at night one may not see anything at all unless the scene observed has a source of light in it. Suppose, for example, there is a brightly lit interstate crossing which is surrounded by dark desert, and this is observed courtesy of a superior mirage at some distant location. Observers at the distant location would see a formation of lights in the sky at some elevation above the horizon. The lights may even appear to move if there is some undulation in the temperature inversion layer that caused the mirage in the first place. Maybe the famous Phoenix lights could be explained in this manner. It seems to me that the two speculations above have the potential to explain many sightings -- one way or the other.

It was a gift very much appreciated for it's spell binding truth's.

book looks different from picture