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 WORLD OF SCIENCE January 22, 2019
- THE FALL AND RISE OF MODERN MAGIC January 17, 2019
- LAW AND LEGEND January 14, 2019
- THE MAN WHO MADE THE BLOTS January 11, 2019
- BLOOD AND SOUL January 7, 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
- 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
- UFO History: The Saucers from Atlantis July 13, 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
- 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
- 2017 East Coast Paraconference - August 11, 12, 13 August 6, 2017
Tag Archives: MoD
Black Projects, UFOs and the mysterious MO D-Notice
Has the Ministry of Defence ever suppressed media stories about Black Project aircraft operating secretly over the British Isles? For many years conspiracy-minded aviation writers and UFOlogists have claimed the government has, on occasions, used its contacts in the Press … Continue reading
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Tagged Astra, Aurora, Black Projects, Calvine incident, Calvine UFO, Condign report, D-Notice, DA Notice, DA-Notice committee, Daily Record (Glasgow), Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee, Defence Intelligence Staff, DI55, DPBAC, DSMA notices, Freedom of Information Act, Jacob Ecclestone, JARIC, Ministry of Defence, MoD, National Union of Journalists, NUJ, Owen Hartop, RAF Boscombe Down, SR-71 Blackbird, TR-3 Black Manta, UAPs, UFOs, unidentified aerial phenomena
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Farewell to the ‘mystical astronaut’: Edgar Mitchell 1930-2016
Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon who became a celebrity believer in the UFO myth, has died aged 85. The Guardian newspaper once described the retired NASA astronaut as being an unlikely name on the list … Continue reading
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Tagged A Monstrous Commotion, Alan Shepard, Andrew Smith, Apollo 14, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, Dr Edgar Mitchell, Ed Mitchell, epiphany, ESP, Gareth Williams, George W Bush, Gordon Brown, Huffington Post, Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), Kerrang!, Lee Spiegel, Loch Ness Monster, Lord Hugh Dowding, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ministry of Defence, MoD, Moondust, NASA, Nick Margerrison, RAF, Richard D. Hall, Roswell UFO crash, sixth man on the moon, The Guardian, The National Archives, The Sun, UFO files
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Eric Joyce MP: The MoD and those pesky UFOs
The MP for Falkirk, Eric Joyce, has claimed some UFOs logged by the Ministry of Defence were actually secret flights by experimental aircraft. Joyce was a major in the British Army and served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Defence Minister … Continue reading
Haunting my bookshelves in 2012:
Here’s my choice of other key books that floated my folkloric boat during 2012: The Legend of Spring-heeled Jack: Victorian urban folklore and popular cultures, by Karl Bell (Boydell Press). As readers of my blog will know, the mysterious figure … Continue reading
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Tagged A Natural History of Ghosts, Bloomsbury, David Clarke, folklore, ghosts, Hallucinations, Jack the Ripper, Karl Bell, Ministry of Defence, MoD, Oliver Sacks, Roger Clarke, spring-heeled jack, Sweeney Todd, The Angel of Mons, The National Archives, The UFO Files
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Worryingly big sea monsters
Last week it was UFOlogy in a Field. This week it’s UFOlogy in a pond. No, I’m not talking about the ‘submarine saucer’ (Nessie), but a subject I’ve mentioned elsewhere in my blog on ‘Sea Monster Files.‘ Two years … Continue reading
The Inconvenient Truth is Out There…
The truth about the British Government’s interest in UFOs has been released by The National Archives. In what I believe to be the most important revelation so far in the British disclosure programme, the MoD’s Defence Intelligence Staff admit that … Continue reading
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Tagged DI55, Fylingdales, Lakenheath, M, MoD, Nick Pope, The National Archives, UFOs
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Churchill did not ‘order a UFO cover-up’
In Bad Science this week Ben Goldacre asked “Why don’t journalists link to primary sources?”. He opined that if readers were directed to the original sources of headlines like ‘wind farms blamed for the stranding of whales’ (Daily Telegraph), they … Continue reading
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Tagged Bad Science, Ben Goldacre, Daily Telegraph, foo fighters, MoD, National Geographic, UFO, V2, Winston Churchill
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