textfiles/ufo/UFOBBS/2000/2833.ufo

SUBJECT: THE OMNI OPEN BOOK FIELD INVESTIGATOR'S GUIDE       FILE: UFO2833

PART 1

ARTICLE BY DENNIS STACY

A GUIDE FOR THE SERIOUS UFO INVESTIGATOR SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND AND EXPLAIN ONE 
OF THE GREAT MYSTERIES OF THIS CENTURY.

EDITOR'S NOT: This is the first of twelve chapters in the Omni Open Book Field 
Investigator's Guide, the ultimate tool kit for hunting UFOs. In his first 
installment, Dennis Stacy tells UFO hunters how to locate "prey"--in other 
words, a UFO worth investigating at all.

The Need for a Guide:

On November 2, 1957, at about 10:00 p.m. --long before the world at large knew 
of it--the Soviets launched their second dog-carrying Sputnik. An hour later, 
on the flat plains of the Texas panhandle, near the otherwise unremarkable 
town of Levelland, ranch hands Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz encountered 
something that forever changed their lives.

According to Saucedo's signed statement, "I was traveling north and west on 
Route 116, driving my truck. At about four miles out of Levelland, I saw a big 
flame, to my right front. I thought it was lightning." The white and yellow 
torpedo-shaped object, Saucedo went on to say, apparently made his truck's 
motor stop and the headlights fail. Traveling at some 600 to 800 miles an 
hour, he estimated, the object generated so much heat he "had to hit the 
ground."

Over the next two hours, Patrolman A.J. Fowler would receive at least a dozen 
more calls, all of them from independent witnesses reporting much the same 
thing. For instance, at 12:05 a.m., a 19-year-old Texas Tech freshman said he 
was driving his car nine miles east of Levelland when the motor suddenly 
"started cutting out like it was out of gas." The Headlights dimmed, then went 
out altogether after the car rolled to a stop. The student raised the hood but 
could find nothing obviously wrong with the engine or electrical wiring. 
Returning to the driver's seat, he now noticed an egg-shaped object, flat on 
the bottom, sitting astride the highway in front of him. It glowed bluish-
green, he reported, and looked to be 125 feet long and made of an 
alumin9imlike material with no viable details or markings. Frightened, he 
tried turning the motor  over again, but the car would not start. Shortly, the 
UFO rose "almost straight up," disappearing "in a split instant." He tried the 
ignition again; the car started, and the lights came on, and he drove home, 
although he did not report the incident to Fowler--"for fear of ridicule"--
until the following afternoon, after his parents told him he should.

Nationwide, the Levelland sightings garnered almost as much press attention as 
the new Soviet satellite, eventually forcing the Air Force's Project Blue Book 
to send an investigator to the site,(Project Blue Book, first under the 
auspices of the Air Technical Intelligence Center, or ATIC, and later run out 
of the Foreign Technology Division, was the official Air Force agency charged 
with investigating UFOs. Its immediate predecessors, also associated with the 
Air Force, were Project Sign and Project Gudge.) According to the now-deceased 
astronomer J. Alien Hynek of Northwestern University, The Project Blue Book's 
scientific consultant, the Levelland investigation, conducted by a member of 
the 1006th Air Intelligence Service Squadron (AISS) was cursory at best. 
Writing in his now classic book, The UFO Experience (Henry Regnery Company, 
Chicago 1972), Hynek states, "I was told that the Blue Book investigation 
consisted of the appearance of one man in civilian clothes at the sheriff's 
office at about 11:45 a.m. on November 5; he made two auto excursions during 
the day and then told Sheriff Clem that he was finished."

According to Temple University historian David Jacobs, author of another 
classic volume, The UFO Controversy in America (Indiana University Press, 
Bloomington, 1975), "the officer failed to interview nine of the fifteen 
witnesses and also erroneously stated that lightning had been in the area at 
the time of the sightings." Indeed, the Air Force and Project Blue Book 
ultimately attributed the incidents to "weather phenomenon of [an] electrical 
nature, generally classified as 'ball lightning' or 'St. Elmos's fire,' caused 
by stormy conditions in the area, including mist, rain, thunderstorms, and 
lightning." the engine stalls and headlight failures? "Wet electrical 
circuits," said the Air Force. "Privately," Jacobs observes, "Blue Book 
officers believed the Levelland sightings were obviously an example of mass 
suggestion."

The upshot of the ball lightning pronouncement was an angry spate of 
criticisms by editorial writers and the growing legion of civilian UFO 
organizations, charging the Air Force with ignorance or incompetence at best 
and a purposeful cover-up of the UFO phenomenon at worst. The outrage was 
exacerbated when 500 more UFO cases poured into Project Blue Book over the 
next couple of months, making it the most explosive UFO year since 1952.

In response to all the brouhaha, the Air Force launched an investigation of 
its own UFO operation. The recommendation? That some 20 men be assigned to a 
UFO detail. What's more, suggested the Air Technical Intelligence Center at 
Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio,, where the study was done, 
the Air Force would do well to create a standard UFO kit containing an 
operating procedure manual and other tools necessary for investigating the 
mysterious,alleged craft. That way, when the 20 UFO experts went out on 
assignment, there would be no more foolish errors. They'd know what to do.

The report also recommended that the Air Force investigate press reports and 
not just those reaching Project Blue Book through direct channels, including 
Air Force pilots or radar operators. It was assumed that such actions might 
deflect civilian criticism and at the same time drastically reduce the number 
of reports classified "unknown" or "insufficient data." Indeed, as of November 
1958, these two categories were accounting for 20 percent of all UFO reports 
received to date.

Unfortunately, the staff recommendations were never implemented. The notion of 
a UFO tool kit was quickly quashed, along with any idea of a rapid deployment 
team. Instead, Project Blue Book limped along much as it had before, 
understaffed and underfunded Press clippings were stuffed into boxes and later 
thrown away. Letters and reports from the general public generally went 
unanswered and uninvestigated.

Even so, from the summer of 1947 until December 19, 1969, Air Force 
representatives amassed 12,618 official case reports of UFOs, defined by the 
Air Force as "any aerial object or phenomenon which the observer is unable to 
identify." (Hynek would later amend the definition of a UFO to refer to any 
flying objects which "remain unidentified after close scrutiny of all 
available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common-
sense identification, if one is possible.") Of the 12,000-plus cases studied, 
701, or almost 6 percent, were classified "unknown."

Those cases that were investigated--like Levelland--were typically looked into 
lackadaisically when they were looked into at all. The Air Force also indulged 
in a little creative bookkeeping. Those cases classified as "probable" or 
"insufficient data" were counted on the solved side of the ledger instead of 
the unsolved side, skewing the percentage of true unknowns. A growing number 
of critics contended that, far from being an investigative agency, Project 
Blue Book amounted to little more than a public relations ploy, one designed 
to downplay the phenomenon's prevalence and possible importance.

Even Hynek himself was ultimately disillusioned by his experience as 
scientific consultant. "I can safely say that the whole time I was with the 
Air Force, we never had naything that resembled a really good scientific 
dialogue on the subject," he said shortly before his death in 1986.

Project Blue Book's death knell was sounded in the spring of 1966, in the wake 
of another Air Force boondoggle. At a press conference in March of that year, 
Hynek attributed some intriguing Michigan sightings to "swamp gas"--the 
spontaneous ignition of methane. The resulting editorial uproar pictured the 
Air Force team more as buffoons than villains. If the ball lightning and mass 
hysteria explanation of almost a decade earlier had been the first straw in 
the public's negative perception of the Air Force's handling of UFO 
investigations, swamp gas was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Before the decade was up, the Air Force would be out of the UFO business for 
good. One driving force: a controversial University of Colorado study directed 
by physicist Edward U. Condon. Condon's largely negative report summary 
concluded that chasing UFOs was a waste of time. Indeed, UFOs seemed shrouded 
in secrecy, Condon declared, only because the Air Force resisted "premature 
publication of incomplete studies of reports."

Thrilled by Condon's publicized pronouncements--few reporters were about to 
wade through a 965-page report in search of any UFO gems--the Air Force seized 
the offered brass ring. On December 17, 1969, in the wake of the 
Colorado\Condon study, Secretary of the Air Force Robert C. Seamans, Jr., 
announced the closure of Project Blue Book, saying that its continuance 
"cannot be justified either on the ground of national security or in the 
interest of science."

Hynek was one of several scientists who saw the situation differently. "When 
the long-awaited solution to the UFO problem comes," he said, "I believe that 
it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science, 
but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum jump."

A Civilian Blue Book?

With the Air Force out of the picture since 1969, the burden of investigating 
the UFO phenomenon has largely fallen on the shoulders of individuals and a 
handful of civilian UFO organizations. While individuals are hardly hampered 
by bureaucratic rules, public relations considerations, and other policy 
requirements, they can only do so much on their own. Moreover, the weight of 
their public pronouncements is linked, directly or indirectly, to their 
personal and professional credentials. It's one thing for an established 
astronomer, such as Hynek, to speak out about the phenomenon in general; it's 
another thing altogether for, say, an advertising executive or fast-food 
clerk to claim that Earth is being invaded by genetic engineers from another 
planet or galaxy.

The same is also true of UFO organizations, which are only as good and 
efficient as their collective members. One overripe member may not spoil the 
whole barrel, but he or she can certainly detract from the overall 
respectability of the subject by his or her unbridled comments about what the 
UFO phenomenon does or does not ultimately mean. As Hynek and others have been 
quick to point out, the U in UFO stands for "Unidentified," not necessarily 
for extraterrestrial spaceships and alien abductors in that order. All three 
may or may not be related. Some UFOs, however, are almost certainly 
unrecognized or little understood natural phenomena, swamp gas and ball 
lightning very possibly included.

The one undeniable truth about the UFO phenomenon--Air Force pronouncements 
aside--is that further investigation is still required. According to one 
Gallup Poll, some 15 million adult Americans have at one time or another in 
their lives witnessed what they believed to be a UFO. Compare that figure with 
the 12,618 UFO reports the Air Force collected over 22 years, extrapolate it 
worldwide, and it's painfully clear that the UFO phenomenon represents both 
the most prevalent and underreported anomalous phenomena of this or any other 
century. Even if UFOs aren't a three-dimensional, solid physical object, any 
student of human psychology or sociology worth his or her salt should be 
suitably intrigued as to why humans continue to report UFOs in vast numbers in 
the absence of any unusual stimuli. To say that the best interests of science 
will not be served by further study of the UFO phenomenon--in all its myriad, 
mysterious manifestations--is to say that science should concern itself only 
with things humans don't do, as one of the things they do do is report UFOs--
even in the face of peer and public ridicule for doing so. If human behavior 
isn't of scientific interest, then we might as well drop the soft science 
disciplines of anthropology, perceptual psychology, and social interaction 
from the academic curriculum.

In installments to follow, Omni will provide you with the UFO tool kit the Air 
Force never produced. The Project Open Book tool kit will allow you to conduct 
your own investigation of the persistent UFO phenomenon. It will contain tips 
and techniques about locating and classifying UFO reports. It will tell you, 
precisely, how to investigate UFO reports. And, it will tell you how to report 
and then investigate a sighting of your own. You'll learn how to interview 
witnesses, how to collect physical evidence (where indicated), and how to 
sniff out potential hoaxes. You'll be instructed in the finer arts of audio 
and photographic analysis, both still and video. And you will be provided with 
the names and numbers of information sources, both print and electronic. 
Hopefully, when your own research is done, you'll share it with your 
colleagues. Collectively, we may be able to do what the Air Force couldn't.

Overcoming the Ridicule Factor

In order to investigate a UFO case, you must, of course, first find one. 
Despite the perceived plethora of sightings, this is not always as easy as it 
seems. For one thing, the overwhelming majority of UFO sightings are never 
reported. The reason for this reluctance is fairly straightforward: fear of 
ridicule. Hynek lamented this situation in a letter written to the magazine, 
Physics Today, in which he solicited UFO reports from scientifically trained 
observers. "It has been my estimate over the past 20 years," Hynek noted, 
"that for every UFO report made, there were at least 10 that went unreported. 
Evidence for this comes from the Gallup Poll, the many UFO reports I 
subsequently learned of that were not reported to the Air Force, and from my 
own queries. There has always been a great reluctance to report in the face of 
almost certain ridicule. It would seen that the more trained and sophisticated 
the observer, the less prone he is to report unless he could be assured of 
anonymity as well as respect for his report."

Many respondents only reinforced Hynek's fears. One report, from a man who is 
now a professional astronomer, had gone unreported for 11 years, precisely 
because of a reluctance to face ridicule or embarrassment by peers--and this 
despite the fact that his own sighting was corroborated by several other 
credible witnesses, including at least two police officers.

In the summer of 1960, near Walkerton, Ontario, the story went, the man had 
observed a ball of light hovering near a tree. As he and several of his 
relatives approached to take a picture, "it noticed us, and noiselessly 
accelerating at a very high rate, headed almost directly south, disappearing 
over the horizon in about two and a half seconds."

Yet another astronomer had failed to report a pertinent observation out of 
embarrassment as well. To sustain his self image as the ultimate scientist, he 
"preferred to regard his sighting as being of an unusual physical phenomenon," 
according to Hynek, "rather than admit the possibility, perhaps even to 
himself, that it was a genuinely new empirical observation."

Given the embarrassment that seizes the best, most respectable UFO witnesses, 
any investigator worth his or her salt must learn to cope with the "ridicule 
factor" before an investigation in earnest can begin. But given the right 
circumstances, the right individual, and the right approach, the curtain of 
ridicule can be overcome, as the large response to Hynek's letter in Physics 
Today clearly indicates. For this to happen, the witness/reporter must have 
confidence in his or her confidante, as Physics Today respondents clearly did 
in Hynek after seeing his credentials. Even with such confidence, moreover, 
the UFO witness often must still be drawn out. Few of those embarrassed by a 
close encounter, after all, will volunteer the information unless asked to do 
so.

Given the ridicule factor, the UFO hunter in search of a case to investigate 
must follow two basic rules: First, to learn about someone's UFO experience, 
it's best to ask. Even a lifelong friend may be reluctant to broach the 
subject of a UFO sighting unless drawn out. And second, when you do ask, ask 
those who have the most confidence in you--your family members and closest 
friends. A complete stranger is likely to react with serious reservation when 
another stranger arrives suddenly on his doorstep, asking questions about 
UFOs. (The stranger the UFO experience this subject has had, moreover, the 
higher his or her resistance will be.)

An example from my own experience may be instructive. In the early 1980s, I 
was hired to write a weekly column for the San Antonio Express-News about 
unusual events that had taken place in the state of Texas over the years. The 
first six months or so went well enough, but inevitably the scramble for 
material, or at least significantly different material, set in. By October 
(the series had begun the previous December), I was asking friends and 
acquaintances--except for "Rudy"--if anything strange or unusual had ever 
happened to them.

My reasons for not asking Rudy were obvious. He taught history at a local 
community college, and the shelves of his personal library in a prominent 
neighborhood on the north side of town were overburdened with straight 
literature, including some 10,000 historical biographies. I had worked with 
him on several occasions and was well aware of his disdain for anything 
unusual--typified by his attitudes toward mysticism, astrology, and anything 
else that remotely smacked of the occult. I assumed this would naturally 
include flying saucers and UFOs, too. But I also knew that he had been a B-24 
bombardier during World War II and the heyday of the so-called "foofighter" 
phenomenon, in which glowing balls of light had perplexed both Allied and Axis 
aircrews during the closing nights of the war.

On the extremely remote possibility that he might have encountered a 
foofighter, I asked Rudy if anything strange had ever happened to him during 
his flying days in the war, "No, nothing ever did," he said matter-of-factly, 
and that, I assumed, was naturally that. After a brief pause, though, he 
said, "but last November, I was driving back from Austin . . .," and promptly 
launched into his personal UFO story. Rudy had a sister who lived in Austin, 
75 miles north of San Antonio on Interstate Highway 35, whom he frequently 
visited. He had been returning to San Antonio alone late one night, probably 
after Thanksgiving, and was just south of New Braunfels, about 20 miles from 
his own home. The sky was overcast, with a ceiling of about a thousand feet, 
and traffic on the highway was relatively light, although there were other 
cars and trucks in both the north-and southbound lanes of the four-lane 
highway.

Rudy first became aware of something visible in the upper portion of his 
windshield, but continued driving while leaning forward to look up through the 
curved glass. To his amazement, he told me, what looked like a flying saucer 
flew into view, traveling slowly southward and directly over the righthand 
lane he was in. He pulled off onto the shoulder--the only car to do so--
stopped, and stepped outside for a better view.

The object was underneath the overcast, probably 800 or 900 feet overhead. "I 
can see it clear as daylight now," he said, a year after the fact. "It was 
perfectly circular and just under 100 feet in diameter. The outer rim 
consisted of a broad flange divided into what might be flaps or at least 
individual segments. An antenna hung down from the middle of the object, and 
the central portion, the area inside the flaps or flanges, slowly rotated on 
its own axis as the whole continued southward down the highway."

A short distance away, Rudy told me, the vehicle initiated a sharp U-turn and 
started back up the north side of the highway, slowly rising as it did. 
Eventually it entered the clouds and disappeared from view. Rudy waited a few 
more minutes to see if it would reappear. When it didn't, he got in his car 
and drove home. "All the way home," he said, "I kept thinking. Sell, that's 
it. I'll get up in the morning and the headline will read 'UFO Mystery 
Solved!'" But if anyone else had seen or reported Rudy's UFO it certainly 
wasn't in the San Antonio papers, and it was almost certainly nothing Rudy 
himself would ever bring up in casual cocktail or coffee conversation unless 
directly confronted.

Almost as remarkable as the sighting itself, perhaps, was Rudy's reaction to 
it. True, it was unusual and unexpected, apparently a flying craft of 
technology radically different from his old B-24 Liberator--but also nothing to 
lose a night's sleep over. Class was tomorrow night, and life went on. 
besides, who does the average citizen call to report a UFO, especially when 
that UFO has already disappeared into the clouds?

One might say then, that the UFO investigation begins at home. Ask your 
parents, your husband or wife, your aunts and uncles, your cousins, your 
neighbors and acquaintances. Many of these cases may only be anecdotal; others 
may involve data--such as the names of other witnesses and a possible paper 
trail--that can be used to fill in and corroborate the historical record, if 
nothing else.

If the witness you wish to approach is a total stranger, we suggest you do so 
with kid gloves. It would help if you had some credentials--say, a few UFO 
cases you have investigated in the past--to boost your credibility. Otherwise, 
you should utilize what, in the vernacular of the Nineties, we call 
"networking." For instance, if a friend has witnessed something unusual, and 
then refers you to a second witness, the second witness, knowing your 
connection to the case, may be more willing to talk. Above all, do not 
approach potential witnesses, especially strangers, with theories involving 
aliens and extraterrestrial ships. You will be far more likely to gain 
confidence if you say, simply, "I understand the other night you witnessed 
something a bit out of the ordinary. I've been collecting some information on 
this and wonder if I could speak to you as well." (This will be covered in 
greater detail in an upcoming chapter on interviewing witnesses.)

UFOs in Print

If you find it hard to get your leads from people, you may be interested to 
learn that a countless variety of fascinating cases--most merely reported but 
not thoroughly investigated--are described in print. Coverage of UFO sightings 
by the nation's major daily newspapers tends to vary widely, depending on 
whether or not UFOs are in vogue at a particular time. A much more consistent 
source of UFO sighting reports is the small community daily or weekly 
newspaper. So many sightings have been reported in the Gulf Breeze, Florida, 
area in recent years, for example, that the local paper, The Islander (P.O. 
Box 292, Gulf Breeze, Florida 32562) has been offering mail subscriptions to 
investigators.

Another excellent source of current UFO sightings in localities around the 
United States is the U.F.O. News clipping Service, edited and published by 
Lucius Farish, Route 1, Box 220, Plumerville, Arkansas 72127. Each 20-page 
issue consists of copies of newspaper clippings submitted by Farish's far-
flung web of correspondents and clippers. It regularly includes Canadian and 
English newspaper clippings, as well as articles translated from foreign-lan-
guage papers.

Numerous annual national and regional UFO conferences also provide a rich 
source of contemporary reports--and often the original witnesses themselves. 
To find out about local conferences and newsletters which may alert you to 
cases open for investigation in your area, you may contact:

The Mutual UFO Network of Seguin, Texas. MUFON holds an annual symposium every 
July; this year's will be in Seattle. For more information, write 
international director Walter Andrus, Jr., at MUFON, 103 Oldtowne Road, 
Seguin, Texas 78155-4099. For other case material, you can subscribe to the 
MUFON UFO Journal.

The J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, 2457 West Peterson Avenue, Chicago, 
Illinois 60659. The center also publishes the annual Journal of UFO Studies 
and the bi-monthly International UFO Reporter.

The nonprofit Fund for UFO Research at Box 277, Mount Rainier, Maryland 20712, 
which sells copies of its reports.

Finally, for those of you online, the Internet is a great place to learn of 
UFO sightings in your area. As you traipse from one bulletin board to the 
next, you will read the postings of local residents whose stories have never 
been reported before. You can correspond with these witnesses through E-mail, 
gathering potentially interesting data, possibly discovering a case you fell 
is worth further investment of your time.

Blast from the Past

If you can't find a suitable case in periodical literature, at conferences, or 
online, moreover, you might try digging around in the past. "Consult your 
local library or the major archives," advises Jan Aldrich, a UFO researcher 
recently retired from the military. "You'll probably be surprised by the 
treasure throve of uninvestigated cases."

With a grant from the Maryland-based Fund for UFOResearch, Aldrich is 
presently re-examining UFO press clippings from the year 1947, popularly 
perceived by the public as the year the modern UFO era began, following the 
sighting by pilot Kenneth Arnold of nine silvery, crescent shaped objects near 
Mount Rainier, Washington, on June 24, 1947.

Much of Aldrich's present work replicates an earlier 1967 study done by 
investigator Ted Bloecher while with the now-defunct National Investigations 
Committee on Aerial Phenomena. Bloecher's "Report on the UFO Wave of 1947" 
was, essentially, a collection and analysis of press clippings demonstrating 
that Arnold was hardly alone in his experience. In fact, UFOs were being seen 
and reported in large numbers up and down the country, form Washington to 
Maine.

But Aldrich's ongoing investigation delves even further. "Good as Bloecher's 
study was," says Aldrich, "it wasn't complete. For example, he didn't include 
any newspapers from Montana or from many provinces in Canada."

By examining the Helena, Montana, Independent Record, Aldrich discovered that 
a local flurry of UFO sightings was just getting underway, even as the 
national flap spurred by Arnold's sighting was fading in other areas of the 
country. Aldrich also discovered that UFOs continued to be reported in Canada 
in great numbers. "In fact," he notes," the Canadian wave was even more 
pronounced in terms of population density than what was happening in the 
United States."

From a microfilm copy of Project Blue Book files scheduled to be destroyed but 
inadvertently discovered at the last minute by a university researcher, 
Aldrich was able to locate another unpublished discovery: 2,000 to 3,000 
letters written by U.S. citizens in the wake of an April 1952 article about 
UFOs by Bob Ginna published in Life magazine. "Blue Book was swamped at the 
time," says Aldrich, "and then-director Edward Ruppelt apparently didn't care 
about the letters or trying to follow them up. They were just stuffed into a 
file, which, fortunately, someone put on microfilm." The majority of the 
letters, says Aldrich, consist of individual theories or explanations for the 
UFO phenomenon, "but about 20 percent were personal case reports, the earliest 
dating back to 1913."

Interestingly, letters addressed simply "Flying Saucers, Washington, DC," 
eventually found their way into the file. In toto, the letters indicate that, 
while Arnold may have gotten the headlines and generated the furor, the UFO 
phenomenon itself was arguably around much earlier. It also proves that one 
individual, armed with nothing more than a microfilm reader, can still make a 
difference in our eventual understanding of what may well be one of this 
century's most misunderstood mysteries.

Choosing Your Case

As a UFO investigator, you will soon find that, with the right approach and 
the right reading material, you will unearth endless instances of reported 
UFOs. But the truth of the matter is, not all reports are created equal. For 
instance, you may want to delve into the past, but if all the witnesses to a 
given sighting have died, and if there is little documentation, there may not 
be much you can do. A UFO reported by your friend, a college student, while 
drunk and staring at the stars, is not as compelling as a UFO reported by 
three separate individuals--such as a policeman, an astronomy professor, and a 
teacher--while stone sober. If the second UFO has left any physical evidence--
from a burnt area of land to some blips on the airport's radar screen--so much 
the better.

As you hunt down UFO cases you wish to investigate, you will also find it is 
better to pursue those closer to home. Indeed, a thorough UFO investigation is 
time-intensive. It often requires multiple interviews with multiple witnesses. 
You may need to visit the site of the report at various times of the day and 
year, sometimes with specialists in tow. What's more, the input of those well 
versed in local habits, history, geography, and atmospheric phenomena may be 
invaluable to your research.

For instance, a few years back, hundreds of witnesses reported a weird, 
boomerang-shaped UFO over Westchester County and other parts of New York. It 
later turned out that at least some of the reports were made when pilot-
hoaxers using a local airport in the town of Stormville decided to fly in 
boomerang formation. Someone making a few phone calls from London could not 
have learned about the hoax as easily--it at all--as the local investigators 
on the scene who ultimately did. The takehome message is this: If you live in 
New Jersey, it makes more sense to investigate cases in Newark or Asbury Park 
than in Santa Barbara.

Starting a File

This chapter has given you enough material to get started. We suggest that you 
empty a file drawer, get a few folders out, and start collecting. We'd like 
you to spend the next few weeks just keeping your eyes and ears open. Speak to 
friends and relatives. Read the local paper. Scour the Internet. Anytime 
something of interest enters your field of vision, clip it, load it onto a 
disk, or jot it down, and put it in your drawer.

At the end of this period, you may have a case--a completely original case, 
never before investigated by anyone--you will feel it's worthy of your time 
and effort.

Next month, in the second installment of the Omni Open Book Field 
Investigator's Guide, we'll provide you with some tools of the trade, so your 
own investigation may begin.



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