John Greenewald's very-well-described FOIA success illustrates "how external narratives...were compiled and elevated within the Department of Defense." Writes Greenwald: "While the FOIA request targeted UAP-related keywords, the release does not include internal correspondence or direct discussions by General Wilson regarding UAPs. However, the broader compilation does include media commentary touching on unidentified aerial phenomena." In Vatican City, we have the Pope 'Preparing' For First Contact With Aliens This Year, Says UFO Researcher Mark Christopher Lee. No surprise here; there have been numerous books on the subject of the Catholic Church and the "many worlds" hypothesis through time. But Bernie O'Connor's access initially surprises in his We Spoke with Pope. Nope, not Chicago-born Leo XIV, but Nick Pope, who from 1991-1994 was the British Ministry of Defence's "Fox Mulder." Bernie's interview with Pope (Nick) brings out many interesting points. The Observer editor also "observes" how excellent Bernie's new book The Official History of UFO Magazine really is, while listing just a few of its many highlights. Staying in Great Britain for a moment, we find only Three UFO Reports to PSNI in 2025 But True Number Of Sightings ‘May Be Higher’. Rebecca Black takes us to the Police Service of Northern Ireland for the paltry data and remarks by Pope (Nick) as to why the numbers are so low. And back in the USA, a USAF Nuclear Specialist Claims Donald Trump 'Could Release Bombshell UFO Pictures Soon'. Sure 'nuff, but will he? is the question. Nonetheless Gene Sticco's personal perspective is quite interesting. (WM)

David Luke, whose research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena, and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, has finally been awarded full professorship, choosing the title Professor of Exceptional Experience. At the same time he has been awarded "the position of Perrott-Warrick Senior Researcher—an old, obscure and prestigious award administered to just two or three scholars every decade or so through Trinity College, Cambridge, for the specific and sole pursuit of parapsychological research." He has also launched the Psychedelic and Exceptional Experience Lab (PEEL) "to specifically explore the weirder side of human experience." Unfortunately, these new roles have required Dr. Luke to set aside his leadership of the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience undergraduate module and pass the baton to a former Ph.D student, who is no doubt thrilled to be given this opportunity. Meanwhile, Dr. Luke will be spending more time in nature and focusing on the construction of a "dream temple" in the woodlands surrounding his home, "rekindling some of the ancient traditions of healing and the origins of Western medicine." (CM)

Philosopher Michael Grosso offers a couple of thought-provoking pieces for the New Year. In the first he wonders whether reading could actually be regarded as a psychic phenomenon, arguably stretching the term but raising useful questions. He highlights the worrying decline of reading as it loses out to more palatable media in the attention economy, suggesting that our capacity to attend to not only the written word but the world itself is being eroded by modern technologies. His second post holds an even bleaker diagnosis Are We Facing a Final Choice? Grosso points to both the climate crisis and nuclear saber‑rattling as existential threats to humanity and the Earth. He then pivots unexpectedly to the mystery of consciousness, suggesting that our minds may “emerge through” the body from a wider, transpersonal field. The piece closes as a brief, apocalyptic New Year’s meditation, inviting readers to “ignite the divine kernel” within as an antidote to collective despair and the contemporary death‑drive. (JS)

The Threat potential and "possibility of technology acquisition" figured large in some British Ministry of Defence documents in the 1990s. Those real concerns as well as "Little Green Men," "the fringe element of ‘crazies’ and the lack of conventional intelligence information” as hindrances to studying UFOs sound so familiar today, in spite of the MoD's current position, as Marc Home observes. Australian researcher Keith Basterfield notes some recent US examples of Academic Funding for UAP Research. Keith remarks: "Both lines of funding are unprecedented in the academic study of UAP." Moving to a private organization, Håkan Blomqvist tells us This Is How It Happened When UFO-Sweden Was Formed. It forms an interesting comparison to other countries while noting the vagaries of preservation of UFO-related materials worldwide. Baton Rouge's The Advocate Robin Miller takes us further afield from UFOs and Government officialdom by asking Did A Rash of 1940s Sightings Lead to Plans For a National UFO Conference in Louisiana? Supposedly, "central Louisiana was called the UFO Capital of the World in 1947"—at least in the Pelican State. And Paola Harris sums up a general theme in The History of UFOS Is the History of People Not Crafts! (WM)

It may be said that cryptids are symbols of those things about which we feel fear or guilt. This makes sense, given how they are so often connected to tragedies. Mothman became a harbinger of doom after the Silver Bridge collapse. Bigfoot is thought to be responsible in certain missing persons cases. Goatman is blamed for teens meeting their demise from a train bridge in Pope Lick. Worse, these terrible events are often celebrated as excuses to drive up local tourism. How is a cryptid supposed to catch a break? In related, very sad news, Bigfoot Forensic Artist Harvey Pratt, 84, Dies. After 40 years in law enforcement using his forensic drawing skills, Pratt not only solved countless criminal cases but was also responsible for many of the images we now have of Bigfoot. A Native American, Pratt assisted David Paulides with Bigfoot cases on the Hoopa Reservation in California. His accomplishments are too numerous to list here, but Loren Coleman's obituary and homage to the man do his work justice. Rest in Peace Mr. Pratt. (CM)

Different looks at the UFO Year Past and What's to Come, starting with the "post-2017" generation of podcasters. That UFO Podcast Host Andy McGrillen and Dan Zetterström consider some relative "letdowns" in 2025 and continuing issues with whistleblower protections. They praise the September 9th House hearing, particularly George Knapp's testimony. Segueing to George and Jeremy Corbells' Real Stranger Things - The UFO Year In Review. This focuses upon their roles in making happen what did happen, despite "pushback" from different sources. Even detractors must admit that their "behind the scenes" efforts and George's hearing performance deserve acknowledgment and respect. On Need to Know, Bryce Zabel and Richard Dolan Turn The Page To 2026. Theirs is perhaps the clearest listing and discussion of the major moments of "a year defined less by breakthroughs and more by normalization, confusion, and institutional digestion of the UAP issue." They believe that—absent "an undeniable event that forces the issue into the open"—"Big D" Disclosure won't happen in 2026. And in Eric Burlison on the Lue Elizondo Controversy & the UFO Disclosure Effort in 2026 Pavel Ibarra Meda and the Congressman from Missouri discuss what Burlison stresses is "not a sprint" towards more governmental institutional openness on UFOs/UAP. Burlison is candid and measured in his remarks. There's a potentially major new witness and "short list" of about five individuals who might be called to testify under subpoena if necessary. A good insight from the actual legislative trenches. (WM)

UFO encounters from the late '60s through '80s, both lesser-known and famous. Host Martin Willis has Len Filppu describe his seminal 1967 sighting and the years of UFO "stigma" that followed, and how it altered his whole life. As often happens to people who experience such an anomalous episode, this one opened Len to other, different adventures into the Unknown. It's particularly an interesting "listen" for those who have worked with paranormal witnesses in the past. We move to 1976 and The Skyline-Sea Island Sighting, a Vancouver, British Columbia very early morning occurrence. UFO Talker host Michael Ryan and Commentator Christine Scott pore over a strange encounter that badly frightened two teenagers, whose RCMP interviews are read extremely well by Joy, Michael Ryan's wife. One wonders how/whether the girls' ordeal left a lasting impact upon their lives. The Saucers and Saints website has a John Burroughs Rendlesham UFO Bombshell. Burroughs details his side to that 1980 sensation and its aftermath, and shares his personally involved perspective on the current state of ufology. Britain's Roswell: Alien ‘Corpses’, RAF Cover-Ups & Royal Nuclear Bunkers… Inside Eerie Top-Secret UFO Research Base Dubbed ‘UK’s Area 51’ is less a Roswell-type story than an interesting and eerie look at a piece of RAF and British government post-WWII history. We conclude with a quirky but enjoyable "walk through the woods" regarding The 1986 UFO, Man Breaks 40 Years of Silence. North Yorkshire, England, paranormal investigator/author Paul Sinclair relates a tale that hits many of the same notes as do our previous cases. (WM)

In this slightly meandering piece, Larry Kravitz, MD, reflects on Near Death Experiences of a type less vaunted than the usual comforting and peaceful kind. For some, the NDE is dark and terrifying and is one from which the experiencer may, or may not suffer emotionally in later years. Meanwhile, Professor Jesse Bering of Otago University, New Zealand, tells A Tale of Two Introverted Afterlife Researchers, one of them himself and the other is the subject of his forthcoming biography The Incredible Afterlives of Dr Stevenson. Bering draws some parallels between his own academic life and experiences and those of the late University of Virginia parapsychologist Stevenson, who "desperately sought" an answer to the question of the afterlife. (LP)

Several very different views on the paranormal, beginning with a discussion between Whitley Strieber and researcher and author Grant Cameron, whose The Big Game - The Supernatural Blueprint: Investigating PSI, ESP and the Afterlife, co-authored with Desta Barnabe, came out in late September. This challenging interview moves quickly from concept to concept, but Grant's gist seems to be that to truly apprehend Reality, Consciousness must be viewed as primary and Matter only as secondary—and that efforts founded only on material science and data, and for material purposes, will therefore flounder. Australian researcher Bill Chalker covers The UFO Religion Nexus, in an essay occasioned by the first trailer for the Steven Spielberg movie Disclosure Day, projected for a June 12, 2026, release. Remarking "religious and consciousness aspects" to that trailer, Bill reviews some Australian ufological history, finding "a lot of religious impulses of differing creeds." And a co-participant with Bill in a February 2025 Australian radio program gets consideration in Bryan Sentes' Shadow Play: Jacques Vallée’s Control System Hypothesis and D. W. Pasulka on the Social Engineering of the UFO Mythology. Bryan suggests that the mantra of an advanced extraterrestrial technological cause for UFOs is a natural byproduct of (and reaction to) Western technological civilization and worldview. Well argued, though "swamp gas" was infamously connected to the 1966 Dexter and Hillsdale, Michigan, sightings. (WM)

Mitch Horowitz recounts how two books by Frances Yates and André Vanden-Broeck persuaded him that occultism is an intellectually respectable pursuit, not Adorno’s “metaphysic of dunces.” He sketches a potted definition of occultism, a case for the rehabilitation of its role in Renaissance and modern thought, and with perhaps a smidgen of indulgence, folds his own career into the genealogical sketch. While it is hard not to appreciate Horowitz’s scholarly seriousness, historical influence and personal vocation quietly stand in for argument, yielding an apologia in which taking occultism seriously more or less becomes its justification. In a similar vein, Ronald Hutton reviews a couple of new books on Shamanic practices for the Times Literary Supplement in Spirit Levels. He notes that Shamans are historically specific Tungus ritual specialists who have lent their name to a now hopelessly overextended academic category. Shamanism’s definition now oscillates between Siberian trance‑healers and virtually anyone communing with “unseen realities.” The first book Shamanism is a survey by Manvir Singh that defends a broad view, smuggling biblical figures, oracles, and modern evangelicals into the tent, helped along by memoiristic travelogue. The second Shamans by Max Carocci instead curates global images of trance‑healers, trimming his definition yet cheerfully over‑ascribing prehistoric artefacts to shamanism. Both books clarify and simultaneously deepen the semantic muddle, while demonstrating that whatever “shamanism” is, it remains aesthetically powerful and intellectually engaging. (JS)

Preston Dennett gives us some fascinating looks at truly anomalous accounts related by people like you or me. And not all of these life-changing experiences are of the fundamentally-positive kind, as so often promoted in some quarters. First up are instances where the environment and/or percipient were affected in a physical as well as psychological sense. The ten cases are helpfully summarized under the YouTube video, listing their most unusual features, and the artistic renditions of each case, sometimes even involving some motion, are remarkable. The same goes for Preston's The Scariest Night of My Life: Ten Truly Bizarre Encounters with Humanoid Extraterrestrials. These cases bring the UFO-Human meet-ups very "up-close-and-personal" while illustrating the wide variety of geographic, entity morphological, and ancillary phenomenal details reported in such instances. Most of Preston's material is not well-known, to boot. In Alien Rescue: The Onboard UFO Encounters of Patricia Cates we do have a rather better-known, ongoing series of truly strange events from early in life: sometimes quite positive interactions, sometimes the reverse; and often of mixed composition. This and other such stories from this facet of the overall UFO-Human experience are available in Preston's book Onboard UFO Encounters: True Accounts of Contact with Extraterrestrials. (WM)

In this podcast episode of Connecting With Coincidence, American parapsychologist Dean Radin examines magic as "an emerging scientific frontier—one rooted in attention, intention, and meaning." Writes host Bernard Beitman: "Drawing on decades of experimental research, the conversation examines how phenomena long dismissed as superstition—telepathy, psychokinesis, and synchronicity—have been tested under controlled laboratory conditions, with results that continue to challenge mainstream assumptions." In other news, researchers have discovered Humans Could Have As Many As 33 Senses. If you happen to be in London any time between now and the end of February, stop in at the Coal Drops Yard in King's Cross for Senses Unwrapped, an interactive exhibition that will give you a taste of those under appreciated senses, which include proprioception and the sense of ownership. (CM)

At 2025's close, it's useful to stress how worldwide the UFO matter is, and has been studied, for lo these many years. Philippe Ailleris covers the Good News of improving cooperation among European countries' various sightings reporting, while stressing how much more needs to be done to promote better understanding of the data collected and its continuing limitations. It's particularly gratifying to this reader to note Philippe's use of the Journal of Scientific Exploration paper co-authored by his wife Linda and two other Ph.D.s on Social Factors and UFO Reports: Was the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic Associated with an Increase in UFO Reporting? Philippe's observations may be compared with Lindsay Marie Marcks' Liberation Times opinion piece Silencing the Skies: Germany’s Unique Scepticism in the Age of UFO Disclosure. Marcks offers a powerful critique of German UFO reporting as hindered by "a silent fortress of scepticism and institutional resistance" and a "private, unregistered organisation operated ... by a self-taught hobby astronomer." A skeptical Spanish researcher with strong credentials has just published his December 2025 Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos UFO Fotocat Blog. As always, this is a huge resource of information on new publications, reviews of older works, and skeptical (sometimes rather acerbic) analyses of worldwide events of UFO-related importance. (WM)

In November of 2024, a mother of 7 lost her life after being run over by a hit and run driver in Chicago. More than a year went by with no concrete leads and many unanswered questions due to technical problems with some of the surrounding surveillance cameras. But a tip from a psychic led police to some unexamined camera footage from a nearby car dealership that may end up changing the outcome of this case. In other news, Strange Sound in Cincinnati Fuels Paranormal Theories. Described as an oscillating alarm, the sound  has been disturbing the peace for several weeks and is being attributed to everything from Bigfoot to an Ohio River Kraken to an old locomotive. As possible explanations get wilder, residents continue to suffer from the perplexing noise pollution, which they just wish would go back where it came from. (CM)

Different "takes" on Famous UFO Past events. Alamogordo media editor Chris Edwards remarks that "Holloman Air Force Base has long been a hotspot for UFO lore but much more subtle than in Roswell." The story Edwards relates is basically familiar but we had not come upon the "primate exchange" version before, whose origins Edwards explains. The BBC's Sophie Parker recounts a series of events that transpired perhaps one year later in The Warminster Thing: 60 Years Since Town's UFO Fascination Began. Parker's article about how the town embraced the "Mystery" is excellent, but her radio documentary adds that wonderful "local color" flavor, as well. Though most "towners" seem not to believe a UFO connection, as Warminster Mayor Andrew Cooper says, "A bit of folklore is necessary. It enriches a community." In The Cash-Landrum UFO Contamination Curt Collins takes us back to that December 1980 incident that's "cited due to its prominence, documentation, the physiological effects of the witnesses, and the involvement of the U.S. government." But Curt also remarks all the accretions and confusion that have clogged the case and offers "The Cash-Landrum UFO Case Document Collection" for those who wish to get "closer" to that mystery. And bringing us back to Chris Edwards' remark in the first article here, Kevin Randle offers The Roswell Provost Marshal; Easley vs Darden. Kevin uses the Roswell base telephone directory to correct what he believes is a misimpression about "the minutiae of the Roswell case." (WM)

UFOs and Government officials figure in these historical reviews. Crisnel Longino well-summarizes the UFO portion of Jesse Michels' interview with the former President of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia and also of the International Chess Federation. The controversial Kirsan Ilyumzinov's total career and opinions take Michels two hours to cover, with much still left out. Longino's colleague Jaja Agpalo takes us to the other end of Europe with UFO Secrets: Winston Churchill 'Ordered' 50-Year Cover-Up, Nick Pope Reveals Craft That Baffled Military Radar. Agpao observes "The UK's most compelling UFO sightings ... [and covers] the tension between public curiosity and institutional secrecy" there since WWII. Several key events and locations through time are presented along with general governmental reticence, punctuated (and proven) by the Ministry of Defence's 2008 release of 60,000 files. Now, to the U.S. as Six and a Half Years Later, the DoD’s Reply to Harry Reid’s AATIP Memo Remains Missing. John Greenewald makes a well-argued case here for the DoD as a whole not following its own provisions for some reason/s, and not being factual about it. But former officials are increasingly more vocal about some of their personal experiences, as a Government Intelligence Officer Assigned to Secret UFO Investigation 'Said Wolf-Like Creature That Walked on Two Legs Appeared At His East Coast Home Afterwards'. Reporter Sophie Gable is referring to James Lacatski, whose new book discusses "Events" both On-and Off-site of the Skinwalker Ranch from 1994 to 2010. (WM)

It's that time of year again, and Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum, has the lists prepared of the best researchers and books of 2025. Starting with cryptozoologists Bridgett vonHoldt, Ph.D. and Kristin Brzeski, Ph.D., Coleman has  awarded them the Golden Yetis for their research into red wolf DNA and a potential genetic reservoir to aid in the species recovery. Next are The Top Cryptozoology Books of 2025, starting with Bigfoot and going on to cover monsters from all around the world, for adults in the know and for introducing the world of cryptids to children. Loren's "Best of 2025" goes to Bigfooters and Scientific Inquiry: On the Borderlands of Legitimate Science by Jamie Lewis and Andrew Bartlett. (CM)

Veteran science writer Leonard David polls the representatives of three leading non-governmental interest organizations as to The State of Ufology as we close 2025. Founding executive director and President of the Society for UAP Studies Michael Cifone, Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies Executive Board Member Robert Powell, and chair of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Integration Committee, director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, former Naval F/A-18F pilot, UFO witness, and July 2023 Congressional hearing testifier Ryan Graves cover that status, their organizations' activities, and hopes for the future. Tim Binnall notes how "UFOs continued their confounding ways" in C2C's Strangest UFO Sightings of 2025. Tim links to the articles covering this motley medley, some of which might have added to Jason Colavito's ire when he typed up A Dark Carnival: 2025 in Review. Jason caustically summarizes the status quo, lists some personal problems that may decrease availability of his writings (hopefully not), and charts the monthly few "highs" and mostly "lows" of 2025 in both ufology and archaeology. To "Save the Day" for the outgoing year and provide hope for the new, Martin Willis and "UFO-Jack" confer on why Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s UFO Teaser Has Everyone Talking. They remark how the "Teaser" taps "directly into long-running UFO community themes," and that the flick "could help 'normies' engage with the topic, even if it doesn’t produce real-world disclosure." (WM)