Welcome to my website
I am a Research Fellow in Journalism at Sheffield Hallam University where I specialise in teaching media law and investigation skills. Before I entered academia I worked as a news reporter for The Sheffield Star and Yorkshire Post and spent four years working as a Press Officer in local government. My Ph.D is in Folklore and was completed at the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield, in 1999. Since 2008 I have been working with The National Archives (TNA) as their consultant for the ongoing release of the UFO files created by Britain's Ministry of Defence. My latest book, How UFOs Conquered the World: the history of a modern myth, was published in 2015.
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- Magonia Blog
- THE SUPERNATURAL IN WARTIME February 12, 2019
- SLENDERMAN - LIVING THE LEGEND February 8, 2019
- MAD ABOUT MONSTERS February 2, 2019
- THE WORLD OF SCIENCE January 22, 2019
- THE FALL AND RISE OF MODERN MAGIC January 17, 2019
- Mark Pilkington & John Lundberg – Folklore & Deception in the UFO Age
- Mirage Men in The Guardian August 18, 2014
- Mirage Men Double Disc DVD June 16, 2014
- UFOs and F-14s over Iran May 2, 2014
- We have lift off! March 27, 2014
- Mirage Men revealed by Greenwald? February 25, 2014
- Bob Sheaffer’s Bad UFOs
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- The Skeptic magazine
- Ooops! TWO errors in previous message! October 1, 2015
- October Spookiness! October 1, 2015
- Empirical Sex Talk on Dacryphilia, tonight October 1, 2015
- Little Atoms 393 – Timothy Snyder & Black Earth September 30, 2015
- Ash Pryce on "How to talk to the dead" @ Greenwich SitP, 7:30 pm, 7/10/15 September 30, 2015
- Charles Fort Institute Blog
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- Curt Collins on saucers in pop culture
- Philip Klass on the Cash-Landrum UFO case February 8, 2019
- The Cash-Landrum-McDonald UFO Incident of 1980 December 14, 2018
- Skeptoid Challenges the Cash-Landrum UFO Incident December 7, 2018
- UFOs and Alien Monsters from Outer Space October 24, 2018
- Jessie Roestenburg’s 1954 UFO Encounter and Beyond October 19, 2018
- Andrew May’s Forteana blog
- Pseudoscience and Science Fiction October 9, 2016
- Astronomical debunking October 2, 2016
- Contradiction - the All-Video Murder Mystery September 25, 2016
- Sacred Porn September 18, 2016
- Astronomical computers (old ones) September 11, 2016
- Paul Kimball’s The Other Side of Truth: Don’t believe, don’t disbelieve. Think
- Project Blue Book - A Review January 28, 2019
- Stan Friedman Retires March 13, 2018
- Halifax gets Haunted! September 29, 2017
- Haunted Extra, Vol. 1.01 - Queen's County Museum Revisited August 17, 2017
- 2017 East Coast Paraconference - Remote Viewing Panel August 15, 2017
Tag Archives: flying saucers
Churchill’s Secret War
Winston Churchill’s interest in strange phenomena and UFOs makes the cover story in the November 2018 issue of Fortean Times magazine. Top Secret War chronicles the British Prime Minister’s curiosity about a range of unexplained phenomena during his long career … Continue reading →
Close Encounters of the Playground Kind
My latest book UFO Drawings from The National Archives is published by Four Corners books on 18 September. It contains 40 colour and black and white images selected from the Ministry of Defence files at the archives in Kew. From … Continue reading →
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Tagged BBC, British UFO Files, Broad Haven primary school, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Doctor Who, flying saucers, Ministry of Defence, MoD UFO desk, Star Wars, steven spielberg, The National Archives, The Robots of Death, Tom Baker, UFO Drawings at The National Archives, UFOs, Welsh triangle
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Alien Art: 70 years of UFO sightings
70 years ago Kenneth Arnold reported nine strange ‘saucer-like’ flying objects in the sky – and launched the modern UFO mystery. On landing his plane in Oregon on the afternoon of 24 June 1947 the businessman and private pilot became world … Continue reading →
Michael Swiney (1926-2016)
Retired Royal Air Force officer Michael Swiney, who observed three UFOs while flying a training mission in 1952, has died aged 90. Swiney’s close encounter occurred shortly after a wave of unexplained sightings during the NATO operation Mainbrace. According to Captain Ed … Continue reading →
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Tagged Air Commodore, Air Marshal Sir Peter Horsley, Air Ministry, Captain Ed Ruppelt, Duke of Edinburgh, flying saucers, Meteor T7, Michael Swiney, Ministry of Defence, MoD, NATO, Operation Mainbrace, Out of the Shadows, Project Blue Book, RAF, RAF Little Rissington, The National Archives, The UFO Files, UFOs
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UFOs Conquer The World
My new book How UFOs Conquered the World was published on 14 May and is reviewed by The Sunday Times here. In his review James McConnachie says UFO believers will not like this book, ‘it is not a classic debunking. … Continue reading →
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Tagged Andrew May, Andy Owens, Brian Clegg, British UFO Research Association, BUFORA, Carl Jung, Daily Mail, David Clarke, Ezekiel, flying saucers, folklore, How UFOs Conquered the World, James McConnachie, Jenny Randles, John Pilger, Jon Ronson, Louis Theroux, Magonia, Magonia Review of Books, Marcus Berkmann, myth, Peter Rogerson, Popular Science, Star Wars, Sunday Times, the UFO syndrome, UFO myth, UFOs
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How UFOs Conquered the World
How UFOs Conquered the World: The History of a Modern Myth, will be published in hardback by Aurum Press on 14 May 2015. It is the story of the long, strange trip that I began almost forty years ago when I … Continue reading →
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Tagged alien abductions, Aurum Press, close encounters, flying saucers, How UFOs Conquered the World, Kenneth Arnold, Men in Black, Ministry of Defence, myth, UFO desk, UFOs
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14 Comments
UFOs and the mythical ‘acclimatisation programme’
Every so often the release of archive documents throws up another gem from the bygone era when flying saucers really were taken seriously by world governments. The most recent turned up in a collection of papers produced by Irish diplomats … Continue reading →
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Tagged acclimatisation programme, Anthony Eden, CIA, Colin Powell, Disclosure project, Donald Keyhoe, flying saucers, Guinness Book of Records, H.G.Wells, Kenneth Arnold, Leonard C. Lewin, literary hoaxes, Lou Cannon, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mirage Men, MJ-12 hoax, National Archives of Ireland, operation Majestic 12, Professor Robert Segal, ronald reagan, Roswell incident, Royal Irsih Academy, Stanton Friedman, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Flying Saucers are Real, The Report from Iron Mountain, The War of the Worlds, UFO cover-up, UFO myth, UFOs, USAF
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Saucery in Pop Culture
NASA’s preparations to test a saucer-shaped spacecraft have placed the iconic ‘flying saucer‘ back into the popular consciousness. In a BBC Magazine feature journalist Jon Kelly explores how the saucer ‘has served as visual shorthand for the gleaming, jet-propelled, post-war … Continue reading →
The Will Smith Effect
Despite all the claims about ‘the death of UFOlogy’, the never-ending stream of movies and satellite TV shows, such as Chasing UFOs and UFOs: The Untold Stories prove the idea of UFOs and alien visitations is more alive than ever. And the … Continue reading →
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Tagged After Earth, Chasing UFOs, David Clarke, death of UFOlogy, flying saucers, Independent Day, ITV, M. Night Shyamalan, Mark Lankester, OnePoll, popular culture, The Guardian, The Will Smith Effect, This Morning, UFO flaps, UFOs, UFOs and Hollywood, UFOs: The Untold Stories, Will Smith, Yahoo News
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Sir Patrick Moore (1923-2012): astronomer and flying-saucerer
The death of Sir Patrick Moore, at the age of 89, is a sad loss to astronomy and for all those who grew up with his iconic BBC programme The Sky at Night. Patrick will be remembered for bringing astronomy … Continue reading →
