95% of UFO sightings can be written off as nothing: weather phenomena; misidentified aircraft; mistakenly identified stars or planets. 5% cannot be explained. In this series we’ll be looking at the mass sightings. The abductions. The unexplained deaths. Real cases, with real people.

These are the 5%. These, are the UFO files.

The Roswell Incident is arguably the most famous of all UFO cases, but more than that, it is seen as the start of the modern UFO era. This next incident took place in June 1947 - two weeks before Roswell, and three days before Kenneth Arnold reported seeing UFOs while flying over Mount Rainier, objects that he claimed moved like a saucer skipping across water - birthing the phrase ‘Flying saucer’.

Puget Sound in Washington state is a 2800 square mile complex of bays, islands and coves. Logs from nearby “jams” escaped and floated on the surface of the waters creating a hazard for any boats. Harold Dahl takes his son, his dog and two men out to salvage the logs, taking them to nearby mills to claim a fee. They are in the waters just south of Maury Island when suddenly, something unusual appears in the clear skies above them: 6 metallic donut-shaped UFOs estimated to be 100ft across.

The objects are flying in formation, five of them circling the sixth, which seems to be in trouble. Worried that the UFO will hit his boat, Dahl quickly takes it ashore. They watch from the beach as the object veers from side to side, dangerously close to crashing into the water, when a huge explosion rips through the bay. The central object ejects hot, metallic debris which rains down into the water, onto the beach, and onto the boat. His son is struck, burning his arm. The dog too is hit, killing it instantly. The event goes on for a few minutes, time enough for Dahl to grab his camera and take photographs. Whatever was wrong with the struggling craft, the ejection seems to fix and it is once again surrounded by the others. They speed out of sight in silence. The stunned men regain their senses and collect some of the jettisoned debris. They report their finds as black, lava-like stone.

They hurriedly board the boat and head back to the dock where Dahl gives the camera to his boss, Fred Crisman. He told Crisman what had happened, but the boss was naturally sceptical. However, when the photos were developed they did show unusual flying craft. Still not convinced, Crisman went out to Maury Island himself and collected some of the strange debris.

One morning shortly after the sighting, Dahl got a knock at his door. He was shocked to open it to a man wearing a black suit. The man invited Dahl to breakfast. It was at this breakfast meeting that the man in the black suit issued a chilling warning: bad things would happen to Dahl and his family unless he kept his mouth shut.

This is the first reporting sighting of a Man in Black.

As time went by Fred Crisman wanted answers. He contacted Chicago publisher Ray Palmer, editor of sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories, who then sent Kenneth Arnold $200 (over $2,200 in 2018) to investigate. Arnold of course had by now had a very famous sighting of his own. So pleased was he with the sum of money mentioned, that he was overheard at the office of the Idaho Daily Statesman bragging about his fee.

Being a good citizen, the editor immediately sent a telegram to Air Force intelligence. The Air Force sent two Air Corps Officers, Captain Davidson and First Lieutenant Brown, from Hamilton Field up to Tacoma. They gathered the strange material from Dahl and Crisman and according to some reports they also took the photographs. They boarded a B-25 bomber with a crew of two other men for the return flight back to Hamilton Field and took off just after midnight.

That flight would never reach its destination.

Around twenty minutes after take off the flight got into difficulties over the town of Kelso. It crashed just outside Kelso, killing Davidson and Brown. The other two crew members parachuted to safety.

There are reports of suspicious deaths surrounding the aftermath of this incident, involving newsmen and reporters, and also an attempt on the life of Kenneth Arnold. I was unable to find any reliable sources to substantiate these claims. One interesting factoid that did emerge was that Fred Crisman, Dahl’s boss at the salvage company, was one of many people accused of involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Crisman even testified in front of the Grand Jury in the trial of Clay Shaw, the only prosecution connected with the entire assassination plot. Shaw was acquitted.

Subsequent searches of the crash site have yielded nothing. None of the debris, nor the photographs were seen again. This was at a time before UFO reports were common and leaves us with more questions than answers; was this an elaborate hoax? Who was the strange man in the black suit? Would the army go to the trouble of sending anyone to recover evidence unless they were convinced something happened? One thing is certain: on the 1st August 1947 Captain William Lee Davidson and First Lieutenant Frank Brown died in a plane crash. We may never find out if that crash had anything to do with a UFO.

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95% of UFO sightings can be written off as nothing: weather phenomena; misidentified aircraft; mistakenly identified stars or planets. 5% cannot be explained. In this series we’ll be looking at the mass sightings. The abductions. The unexplained deaths. Real cases, with real people...

These are the 5%. These, are the UFO files.

4 October 1967, Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia

Barrington, Shelburne County, is home to a host of small villages, the small fishing community of Shag Harbour is just one of them. Sitting on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, the population of roughly 400-450 gets most of its income from lobster fishing. One such fisherman, Laurie Wickens, is driving home with friends from a dance. The mood is relaxed, and the group are in high spirits when, off in the distance, Laurie spots unusual lights. He alerts his friends and a discussion breaks out as to what they are. The lights are moving low above the surface of the waters of the harbour. The first thought is that it’s a plane, and the mood quickly changes because it’s clear that this plane is in trouble. Because of the natural landscape, they lose sight of it over a hill, but when they top that hill, they do so just in time to see the plane crash into the murky waters of the harbour.

They rush to a nearby payphone and call the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. As is customary in such incidents, the RCMP get in touch with local fishermen, asking them to help in the search efforts. The fishermen quickly take to the waters expecting to find fire, wreckage, and bodies.

As the search is being carried out, the RCMP are conducting interviews with residents who have gathered at the scene, drawn from their homes by the crash. They report the same as Laurie Wickens and his friends: a light above the surface of the water which vanished into the flat calm waters of the harbour. They too think they have been witness to a plane crash, although there was something different about this. Something odd with the way it vanished beneath the surface.

The local fisherman arrive on the scene where the witnesses watched the light disappear. No fires. No wreckage. No bodies. What they do find is something highly unusual, and it quickly becomes clear that whatever they’re searching for is no plane. The air is thick with a smell of sulphur, the source of which is a thick yellow foam stretching half a mile long. The density of the foam and the way it dissipated, it was unlike any foam seasoned fisherman have seen before or since.

150 miles away, a few hours earlier, 12 year old Chris Styles was about to experience something life changing. He saw the lights over the waters where he lived, and despite the late hour and chilly October air, he rushed outside to watch the unusual lights. He was certain that these were not the lights of a plane. In fact, he got the distinct feeling that he should not be there: like he should not be watching. He got back in the house and received a long distance call from his grandfather over in Shag Harbour. He too had seen the lights. And they had crashed.

He’s convinced that the fishermen aren’t looking for a plane. They’re looking for a UFO.

Reporter Ray McLeod writes a story for the local paper. He also meets Wilfred Eisnor. On the night of the crash, Eisnor was burning an old boat along the shore. He took with him a camera to record the moment for posterity. About an hour before the lights vanished into Shag Harbour he saw the lights and was able to take a photograph. It soon becomes clear that whatever crashed in Shag Harbour is no plane. Through his research, McLeod is pointed in the direction of an Air Force general by the name of Bain. He is shocked to find that Bain is the head of a Canadian UFO research project, the equivalent of the US project ‘Blue Book’. He had no idea such a project existed. His research also reveals that RCMP officers saw the light and went on the record saying as much.

Navy divers are called in and they start searching the bottom of Shag Harbour. The waters are shallow and currents strong, but if the currents hadn’t taken the craft, they are convinced that whatever crashed will still be there. They search for days with crowds of locals eagerly watching from the sidelines. The official records state that the search is without success. Witnesses say otherwise. Jagged pieces of metal are seen being recovered. The official story is that they are simply markers. Used by the divers to denote areas of interest. The sightings of jagged metal don’t jibe with the official story, but eventually the search concludes and the people of Shag Harbour move on with their lives.

Well, most of them…

12 year old Chris Styles would never forget the night of October 4th and as he grew older, he started digging into the events of that night. Chris Styles has spent years researching the incident, building up a case that didn’t fall apart under scrutiny, but grew stronger. He looked into the military records of the time to get more information on what really happened in Barrington Passage. Official telexes reveal something startling: the authorities themselves thought they were dealing with a UFO. The official paperwork of the time actually shows handwritten notes from officers, one going so far as to underline the word UFO three times.

One day, Chris gets an anonymous contact from someone claiming involvement in the official search back in ’67.

He said that this was a “big event” and described it as “something out of the normal”. According to the source the object almost hit a plane outside Quebec before crashing into Shag Harbour. While it was beneath the surface he said that it was joined by a second craft which tended to it. Both moved away later, but where to?

As the Shag Harbour search was going on, something had been tracked on radar travelling underwater along the coast to Canadian Forces Station Shelburne, a joint US/Canadian submarine detection base. When this craft appeared they moved a flotilla of ships above it. Divers told researchers that they were diving over the UFO for a week and they confirmed that they saw a second craft aiding the first. As you can imagine, working on such an unusual mission, tensions between US and Canadian divers were high. One reported exchange had an officer tell arguing divers not to fall out over a ‘Russian submarine’. The diver turned and told him “I don’t know what that God damned thing is down there, but it’s no submarine. It isn’t anything from this planet. You can say whatever you want. We know what we’ve seen.”

It would be easy to write all of this off as hearsay, but a 1993 top secret RCMP X-File is revealing.

According to the official document, a second search was taking place at the same time as the search at Shag Harbour. One line towards the end of the discovered document is telling: “Perhaps it is like the thing they are looking for down off Barrington Passage [Shag Harbour], or off Shelburne.”

This confirms two things: simultaneous searches were being carried out; the object they were searching for is not a conventional aircraft. Exactly what were they searching for? We may never know for sure, but with the multiple eyes witness sightings, the strange foam left behind reported by the fishermen, and the files confirming searches taking place in two locations, the Shag Harbour Incident must rank highly in the canon of UFO research.

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95% of UFO sightings can be written off as nothing: weather phenomena; misidentified aircraft; mistakenly identified stars or planets. 5% cannot be explained. In this series we’ll be looking at the mass sightings. The abductions. The unexplained deaths. Real cases, with real people.

These are the 5%. These, are the UFO files.

7 November 2006, Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

By the side of a small access road approaching the airport, a crowd has gathered, their eyes pointed skyward. One witness had driven down Annheim Road and left her vehicle with a friend while she went to observe the metallic grey object. “It was just sitting there. It didn’t look like a plane. It looked like it had taken on the colour of its surroundings.” Easy to write off, if she’s alone. But of course, she is not. The object sits for a few minutes before ascending so rapidly, it punches a hole in the cloud cover above, drawing gasps and squeals from those around her. “It didn’t change shape. It was obviously not cloud. It was very obviously a solid object. Just a very blatant daytime sighting.” The rapid ascent of the disc through the clouds revealed a clear blue sky on the other side.

Measured by takeoffs and landings, O’Hare was the world’s busiest airport in 2014. And until 1998, it was the world’s busiest by number of passengers. A UFO hovering low over such a major international airport would surely have caused considerable consternation. Aside from the drama of a low flying object defying the flight capabilities of any known man-made craft, the safety and security concerns alone would surely send panic through governing bodies. Or so you’d imagine. Yet the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) refused to investigate the sighting on two points: the object did not appear on radar; the object could not be seen from the ATC tower. Their official stance was that this was some sort of weather phenomenon. This conclusion was reached without investigation. End of story?

Not quite.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist John Hilkevitch was working the travel desk of the Chicago Tribune newspaper, and he received word of the sighting from UFO researcher of the National UFO Reporting Centre. Hilkevitch was doing his own digging. His research quickly revealed that the crowds of civilians outside the airport weren’t the only witnesses; just after 4pm, a United Airlines ramp worker looked up and saw an object approximately 20 feet across, hovering silently over gate C-17. He tells two mechanics aboard the plane he’s working on about the object, and that conversation is overheard on company radio by a manager, who promptly walks out to see the disc with his own eyes. Two pilots parked at a separate gate also see the object. But because the disc didn’t appear on radar and wasn’t observable from the tower, the FAA aren’t interested and theorise that it’s nothing more than a trick of light on low cloud cover.

The problem is, this was mid afternoon and the lights weren’t turned on yet.

So what was United Airlines response? They had no knowledge of the incident and nothing appeared in their logbooks. It would appear that despite the multiple eyewitness reports, including those from airport workers with years of experience, the sighting was being swept under the rug. Their was nothing on radar. There was no official documentation. There was no proof. The FAA don’t want to talk about it. United Airlines say nothing happened.

Then, there’s a breakthrough. As the result of a Freedom of Information Act request, the tower logs are revealed. Below is a transcript:

A conversation between tower employees named ‘Dave’ and ‘Sue’ shows the initial scepticism as reports start coming in:

Dave: Tower, this is Dave.

Sue: Hey Dave, it’s Sue from United Tower.

Dave: Hey Sue.

Sue: Did you see a flying disc out by C-17?

Dave: Oh no don’t even start, Sue! Fly… you’re seeing flying discs?

Sue: [LAUGHS] Well that what the pilot and the ramp guys are telling us at C-17. They saw some flying disc above and we can’t see it.

Dave: Come on, Sue. I have not seen anything, and if I did I wouldn’t admit to it.


Dave’s response shows the attitude of airport workers towards these kinds of phenomena. In fact, it’s well known within the industry that reporting such events is not the done thing. The pilot of the Alaska Airlines Incident can attest to that. But the reports continue to some in. The tone at the tower changes. Now the feeling is one of concern:

???: Some of our pilots on the ground are reporting a UFO sighting at 1000 feet from the B side of the airport, did you guys see anything about it?

???: You know what, the ramp tower called me I want to say about 10-15 minutes ago we have not seen anything up here.

???: OK

???: But we will surely keep an eye out that’s for sure.


Whether or not it’s usual to report such things, clearly airport safety is a priority. The reports still come in and things get serious:

ATC: Do you seen anything above United concourse? They actually, believe it or not, they called us and said there’s a… somebody observed a flying disc about 1000 feet above the ahh… gate Charlie 17. You see anything over there?

Ground crew: We saw it a half hour ago.

ATC: Who saw it?

GC: A whole bunch of us over at the ahh… Charlie concourse.

ATC: Really? You guys… Who’s this?

GC: United taxi mechanics.


In the conversation, it’s clear that the ATC worker is reluctant to discuss this out in the open. Whether that be through fear of ridicule, or fear of repercussions. After more witnesses come forward, a warning is sent out to area pilots:

???: Somebody reported a UFO or flying disc above Charlie concourse. Nobody could see it, but use caution.

???: 8668 you can use Alpha to Northport. Use caution for the ahh… UFO.


The tower logs tell a very different story from United Airlines official line on the story.

According to Hilkevitch, United Airlines staff are forbidden from discussing the incident. During a phone conversation, a United spokeswoman told him. “My concern is that people, that employees are coming forward and talking to you, which we have not authorised and will not authorise.”

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95% of UFO sightings can be written off as nothing: weather phenomena; misidentified aircraft; mistakenly identified stars or planets. 5% cannot be explained. In this series we’ll be looking at the mass sightings. The abductions. The unexplained deaths. Real cases, with real people.

These are the 5%. These, are the UFO files.

By the time Joao Prestes Filho entered Santana de Parnaíba hospital on 4 March 1946, it was obvious to anyone who saw him that he was not long for this world. He’d been brought to the hospital by local police chief, Joao Malaquías, who had arrived at the home of Filho’s sister shortly after the Filho himself. Filho had stumbled to his sister’s house crying out in agony saying he’d been burned. The skin on his face, arms, and chest was badly burned, to such an extent that the flesh beneath was exposed. When the police chief arrived, 44 year-old father of five Filho said that there was no one to blame for his terrifying appearance, because his attacker was “not of this world”. And so began the strange tale of the gruesome death of Joao Prestes Filho.

4th March 1945 was a cheery time in the village of Araçariguama for it was carnival season. But not everyone was happy. Joao Filho preferred the peace and quiet of nature instead. On this day he chose to take his horse drawn cart to the Tieté River and go fishing. His wife took their five children to engage in the festivities, but managing five children is no mean feat, especially five children excited by the idea of a carnival, and amid the chaos of the moment, she locked the door to the house, leaving Joao a man without a key.

Electricity was yet to reach Araçariguama, and it is easy to imagine Joao returning home in the darkness, perhaps with the sounds of the festival floating through the warm evening air. When he arrived back home, he soon realised his predicament. He managed to climb into his house through an open window. This is where it gets weird. He was standing in his home aware of an unusual presence. He turned to the window where his eye was immediately drawn to a glowing object in the night sky. He was hit by a burning beam of light. Covering his face with his hands, he dropped to his knees. Though it only lasted for a moment, the effects would be catastrophic.

The farmer felt as though his body were on fire. Joao was somehow able to wrap himself in a blanket, before bursting barefoot into the deserted streets. He walked into the village over two agonising kilometres. It is here that he burst into the house of his sister.

Joao’s nephew recalled not being allowed to see his uncle, so horrific were his injuries. His father telling him in the intervening years that he was concerned that the experience of seeing his uncle in such a state would have been traumatic. The man was badly burned from the waist up, with the exception of the hair on his head. Joao was agonisingly conscious throughout his ordeal, talking to the sheriff, though he was having problems with his tongue. Eyewitnesses to Joao injuries spoke of “meat that has been allowed to boil for a while”. His hair, clothing and feet were unscathed by the burning, but his feet were cut to ribbons from his barefoot escape from his house - cut by the jagged rocks between his own house and his sister’s. It was quickly decided that if anything could be done for the poor man, it was at the hospital.

Rather than risk travelling the poorly kept road to Sao Paulo, they went to Santana de Parnaíba, where the dying man found a friend in orderly, Aracy Gomide, who tended Filho during his final hours alive. Baffled doctors were unable to diagnose Joao and it was decided that all they could do for him was to keep him comfortable. Gomide, a former army medic said that Filho spoke until he lost too much soft tissue from around his jaw. By now, Joao Prestes Filho was amazingly no longer in pain, despite seemingly decomposing.

And thank God.

Parts of his face were peeling off and whole chunks of flesh were falling away, exposing bright white bone and tendons beneath. His final act was to ask his new orderly friend for a glass of water. At 10pm that evening, Joao Prestes Filho died. The death was officially listed simply as “cardiac collapse”.

Naturally, over time this story has been embellished. Joao’s nephew said that as far as he could recall, the injuries weren’t anywhere near as bad as those described by Gomide the orderly. Could this be down to the fact that he didn’t see his uncle in his final hours? One thing is not in dispute: Something had happened to Joao, for the nephew did report darkened skin from the waist up ‘like he had been burned. Joao Prestes Filho died from injuries that he claimed came from a beam of light shot from a UFO. Whether this really happened, we will never know, but the victim of this story died from something. It is terrifying to think that he could have been telling the truth.

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Todd Sees was a 39 year old little league baseball coach and a father of two. In many ways he was a regular guy. His disappearance, however, was anything but...

95% of UFO sightings can be written off as nothing: weather phenomena; misidentified aircraft; mistakenly identified stars or planets. 5% cannot be explained. In this series we’ll be looking at the mass sightings. The abductions. The unexplained deaths. Real cases, with real people.

These are the 5%. These, are the UFO files.

2nd August 2002: Todd Sees lives at the base of Montour Ridge, a mountain near the town of Northumberland in the southern part of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. Todd’s home sits in a heavily wooded area not far from the Susquehanna River. The weather is good, so at 5am, he dons his hunting gear, mounts his quad bike, and goes looking for pre-season deer. The father of two tells his wife he’ll be back by noon. When noon rolls around, Todd is nowhere to be seen. At 2pm his concerned wife calls the police. So concerned are they at this out-of-character behaviour, a search party is quickly formed. Local and state police, paramedics, and local volunteers help in the search. The number of local volunteers involved soon grows to over 200, hinting at Todd’s popularity.

After a short search, two miles from his home, his son Nick finds Todd’s quad bike. It should be a big break in the search, but when tracking dogs are brought to the scene, they fail to get a scent. Searchers are baffled. After the search of the surrounding woodlands turns up nothing, divers are sent into the pond close to Todd’s property. Their search too is fruitless. The search of the woodlands continues on through the intense summer heat, then, on the evening of the second day, something is spotted in an area of dense scrub a stone’s throw from the pond.

It is 2 miles from the quad bike.

Firefighters hack a path through the trees and brush and as they get closer, it becomes clear that the shape spotted in the trees is a body. The worst fears of the search party have been realised: It is the dead body of 39 year old Todd Sees. His clothes are missing and Todd is dressed only in his underwear. The clothes he wore the previous morning are nowhere to be seen.

His body is emaciated; the expression on his face is one of abject horror.

But the weird is just beginning.

Within 30 minutes of Todd’s discovery, the FBI are on the scene. They take over the investigation. They will not let Todd’s wife see his body. She is told that she will have to wait 6-8 weeks to get his body back while they wait for the results of a toxicology report.

Later a boot is found 75 feet up a tree one mile from the quad bike. It is Todd’s. Aside from the look of terror on Todd’s face, there are no visible signs of struggle. No bruises. No wounds. The only visible marks are small scratches from the brush. Two separate autopsies return nothing. A toxicology report returns nothing. The cause of Todd’s death is a mystery.

So what happened to Todd Sees?

The quad bike found two miles from his home. No scents around the vehicle for tracking dogs to follow. His body found in an area of scrub so dense that firefighters needed to hack their way inside. Todd’s body dressed only in his underwear. And a boot found a mile from the quad bike in a tree. The worst part is the unforgettable look of terror on his face.

In the days after Todd was found, it was noted by locals that there was a heavy presence of military helicopters.

Upon their arrival, the FBI interviewed people in the surrounding area. There are no reports of sightings of Todd, but a nearby farm worker reported seeing something strange on the morning of Todd’s disappearance. In the general area where Todd went missing, the farm worker spotted a disc that hovered above the treeline for approx 10-15 minutes. It rose - stopped - then shone a beam of light down. Something was pulled into the beam of light and the light only vanished when the object suspended within the beam had risen into the bottom of the craft.

The worker said that the object suspended in the beam of light was a man.

The disc then went west, stopped again, before shooting upwards at an incredible rate, disappearing out of sight. The farmer said horses on the farm were agitated and nervous for approximately 12 hours after the incident.

The farmer’s story would be too easy to dismiss if not for one thing: Three men were out fishing on the nearby Susquehanna River on the morning that Todd vanished. They came back from their trip with a story they were sure that nobody would believe. They were wrong.

This all sounds too bizarre to be true. But consider this; no family member, friend or associate (e.g. family doctor) was asked to provide a positive identification of the body at any point. The body was removed from the scene of death without a coroner present - going against county law.

In all likelihood, the truth about what happened to Todd Sees died with him. Officially, Todd’s death was ruled as “cocaine toxicity”, but the family were told not to open the casket in which Todd’s body was returned to them.

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