Ross Coulthart's periodic Question-and-Answer offering features an initiative by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to gain access to one of the world's leading repositories of quality UFO-related information, the National UFO Historical Records Center (NUFOHRC). Ross not only lauds this move, but suggests he may one day donate his own considerable data holdings to David Marler's non-profit New Mexican archive. This in response to a Brandi Vincent DefenseScoop article Pentagon Seeks Access to Vast Private UFO Records Collection, referencing a "Notice of Intent to Sole Source: Historical UAP Data and Analysis Subscription" marking "AARO's latest publicized step to fulfill its congressional mandates to review the complete historical record of the federal government's UAP involvement dating back to 1945." Vincent provides more information on the value of this remarkable resource. Pavel Ibarra Meda adds "a massive scoop of something that I've been sort of sitting on for a few months" in AARO Is Reportedly Hunting for Dr. J. Allen Hynek's Never-Before-Seen UFO Data. NUFOHRC's holdings consist of far more than Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) files, including two other major early US UFO organizations: NICAP (the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena), and APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization), led by Coral and Jim Lorenzen, as well as numerous other world-renowned organizations and individuals. Having known David Marler for some two decades, since before David's joining the CUFOS Board as its archivist, I consider him the model for serious research, dedication to extending sound UFO data to the whole discipline and educating the public, and excellent, principled judgement in dealing with legal/governmental matters. (WM)

A landmark study out of New York University—the  Aware II Study—has determined that the moment all brain and heart activity stops does not mean a clean break with consciousness. Utilizing data from 550 NDE study participants, they found that approximately one fourth experienced something extraordinary while gone. These experiences were consistent across medical histories, cultures, and belief systems—and so could not be dismissed. Ready For the Great Experiment? Philosopher Michael Grosso's experiment proposes that we find a way through the "death barrier" to "see how close we are to a paradise of love." In other words, can we possibly find a way to cross over without actually dying? We are so close to being able to project our consciousness from our bodies to find out what lies beyond in a nearby world. The next question of course, is how many will want to have the experience. (CM)

Different perspectives on Knowing the Big Question (Is Anyone "Out There"?), beginning with one who certainly can speak from experience. Martin Willis' remarkable conversation with Alex Dietrich, the retired Naval officer and strike fighter pilot who saw a UFO, presents the human half of a UFO/human interaction, and how she has integrated it into her life. In Held for Questioning, "Chris" reviews part of recent "Dr. Phil" conversation with David Grusch as a springboard to Jacques Vallée's accounts of one "Gilbert's" contacts with "a live alien entity" evidently under military control. These come from passages in Vallée's new Forbidden Science 7: Final Report: The Journals of Jacques Vallee 2020-2025, from Anomalist Books. A very different perspective! Above the Norm tackles the matter in a different way, as A Strange New Method Could Reveal Alien Signals Hidden Among The Stars. The key behind this initiative was, of all things, fireflies. Finally, Shayne Dahl may not be trying to "determine whether extraterrestrial visitors are actually present" per se, but he's very interested in the "Techno-Shamanism" human movement behind what we'd call "CE-V communication strategies." Read Eric Hattum's Southwest Based UCalgary Researcher Examines UFO Contact Through Anthropological Lens in the Saskatchewan news site DiscoverMooseJaw. (WM)

The foundations of probably one of the most exotic "new discoveries" about the Giza Pyramids may be crumbling. Newsweek's Jordan King notes a 2022 Italian research paper alleging "synthetic aperture radar Doppler tomography" had "indicated vast shafts, chambers and tunnels" beneath the pyramid of Khafre/Chephren. And this led to further speculations about underground cities and such. (This technology, Synthetic Aperture Radar Doppler Tomography, is being brought to Skinwalker Ranch to try to map something inside the mesa, thought to be something large and metal, according to other measurements.) But there's more exciting news from southeastern Türkiye, per Christopher Plain's 11,000-Year-Old Stone Sculpture Unearthed at Göbekli Tepe's Mysterious Sister Site Was Carved Millennia Before the First Human Societies. It's a 70-centimeter-tall "unique stone sculpture depicting a human figure riding a leopard," found at Karahan Tepe. Plain clarifies what's being surmised about this artifact's significance in the continually developing archaeological understanding of that region -- and the larger story of human societal development. Of course, when discussing major past monuments another looms large, so the BBC's Fiona Macdonald offers 'Locked to the Sun and Moon': The Startling 1960s Theory That Stonehenge Was a Prehistoric Computer. Macdonald chronicles Gerald Hawkins' work with another (at that time) modern technology, which theory ruled "for several decades," yet's recently called "a trendy metaphor for the time...but now wildly inappropriate for understanding Stonehenge." So we conclude by going with Ruth Schuster to another Brouhaha in Academia: Did We Really Hunt Mammoths?. Schuster has fun with this scholarly melee concerning perhaps an even earlier and more basic question than the others! (WM)

August 5th and 6th marked annual Nessie sightings 12 and 13 according to the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register, and with four months left in the year it seems likely there will be more. Both sightings were indicative of something eel-like under the dark waters, and as usual the photos taken did not do the sighting justice. Back on this side of the pond, Odd 'Ogopogo Tooth' Found at Canadian Lake. Discovered by a child looking for treasures along the shore, the fossilized piece resembles an arrowhead or a sturgeon tooth.The beauty of the find is in the mystery because just maybe the tooth came from the mouth of Lake Okanagan's resident monster. (CM)

Someone Who Should Know has confirmed there's a plan for a form of "transparency" in the event of solid proof that non-human-intelligence(s) exist. Zakiya Lathan reports that Dr. Jennice Vilhauer, who has the position, expertise, and above all gravitas to make that claim has so done. Lathan and Vilhauer both emphasize that a "plan" doesn't indicate, much less "prove," an NHI reality, but it seems prudent to have a such a plan in place regardless. On the other hand, New York Post's Richard Pollina headlines that Dr. Phil Accuses US Government of Lying 'Straight to Our Face' for Ignoring Legitimate UFO Reports. McGraw, regarded by some as President Trump's chosen vessel to prepare the Body Politic, minces absolutely no words in this article. So NewsNation's Jesse Weber ponders a huge question about UFOs: Is Earth Being Ghosted by the Rest of the Universe? Weber enlists none other than Dr. Vilhauer's boss at the UAP Science Advisory Council, Dr. Avi Loeb, who even intimates that the "orbs" so fashionable in the PURSUE files could just theoretically be from really far-off "factories." Weber considers other ET communication possibilities with Raoul Peter Mongilardi, author of the 4-book series Next to the Gods. During that conversation our lunar neighbor comes in for discussion, and Alec Fernandes reports that Scientists Think Alien Debris Might Be Buried in Moon Dust. And the ET creators might not have themselves landed on Selene/Chang'e/Tsukuyomi/Luna! (WM)

We start our short work week off with Tim Binnall and the first of two reports from The Cotton State. The witness description and video imagery don't look beyond "prosaic" here, but Binnall colleague Alec Fernandes has a more recent case where Strange Lights Over Tuscaloosa Spark UFO Speculation. And this one has Folks Who Should Know guessing a bit. Now to the Coal/Steel State and Tim as an Eerie Orb in Sky Troubles Pennsylvania Woman. Not as in "Erie Pennsylvania," but this Blakely borough, with its own "quirky" history, has a new claim to fame. And Tim closes our Coast to Coast foursome with a gory Five Horses Found Mutilated Following UFO Sighting in Argentina. Whether the video is or isn't connected with the mutilations, this is a disturbing case indeed. To another South American destination Jenny Alejandra Bustos takes us, with Colombia: UFO or Hot Air Balloon? Video Divides Public Opinion (2026). The "divide" amongst commenters on the event is typical. And Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country takes us 'way away from home as Curiosity Captures a 'Jellyfish' Shape on Mars, Echoing Earthly UAP Reports. "Camera artifact" seems the general explanation here, but the imagery is surely spooky! (WM)

It's been 8 months since we first heard news of Nancy Guthrie's abduction. In an effort to turn up leads, police have offered one million dollars to anyone providing information that leads to the closure of this case. Having said that, you'd expect psychics to be lined up out the door, but to date no one has taken up the challenge. Or have they? "Where are the psychics?" is a fair question, but maybe things are happening behind the scenes. Some police departments don't like to reveal their use of psychics. On a parapsychological tangent, we have an unbiased assessment of ghost hunting equipment in She Blinded Me With Science. Not all devices for detecting the paranormal are created equal. Some are made to sit on stable, stationery surfaces, not transported on foot through supposedly haunted houses. Electrical appliances produce AC electromagnetic fields, which essentially render an EMF reader useless (although you'd never hear a spook hunter admit that). REM pods with their flashing lights are also easily interfered with by cellular data, car keys, and the two-way radios that are evidently in wide use on paranormal hunts. Tried and true cameras and video recordings catch real evidence as often as not. Laser grids are very nearly pointless due to how infrequently a full-bodied apparition is caught. Ghost hunters are urged to not be drawn in by the newest and shiniest ghost hunting devices. (CM)

Kevin J. Guhl's well-sourced "Airship craze" is a tale of a rather 1950s-ish UFO encounter, reported by a "real" observer with otherwise apparently-excellent credentials. It's one we've never heard of, with numerous other interesting details about this long-ago era. From Andreas Faber Kaiser, and courtesy of Inexplicata, we have UFOs in Ancient China. At the very least, these "Wonders in the Sky" help round out our worldview of the topic's vintage. Ellsworth Toohey extends our vision on the matter with For Centuries People Have Watched Glowing Orbs Drift Through Storms. Toohey reports a possible "earthy" explanation for the phenomenon. Closer to the present, Inexplicata offers Chile: UFO Cases from 1969. A varied assortment of incandescent, multicolored, and "fireball" objects fell, and rose, in reports this year, together with a most-strange CEIII (beware of the duplicated February 12th passage in that March 6th humanoid event, as well). And Susan Demeter has another memorable human-interest story, this also a CEIII, from 1987 in Where the Otherworld Waited. (WM)

The current UFO sensation is getting unruly as we careen towards the political midterm elections. And Ross Coulthart here injects the long-controversial Majestic 12 documents back into the discussion! Ron Taub has the story. A "hot burner" is Pavel Ibarra Meda's Jeremy Corbell Corroborates UFO Luring Ops with Something Other than Psionics. Sketching the highlights from a recent Corbell/George Knapp Weaponized podcast, Pavel has interesting information about the apparently-concluded Skywatcher project and prime mover Alex Klokus' new endeavor, and considerable questioning of the utility of psionics. In that Weaponized conversation A New Wave of UFO News - Why They're Spying on Whistleblowers, George and Jeremy comment upon the low "signal to noise" ratio in recent events. They also dispel some stories, catch up on what's more important, and George states "I don't think there's ever going to be an announcement that we would call disclosure." There's mysterious references to upcoming news related to Skinwalker Ranch "that will change things," interesting bits about the role of Lockheed Martin and "materials...from somewhere else," and ODNI depredations upon whistleblowers—plus much more. Back to Pavel's Psicoactivo in The FBI's UFO Investigation Office's Name & Challenge Coin Have Been Revealed!. With Ask A Pol whiz Matt Laslo and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna's help we have three more "scoops" to contemplate. Lastly, in The Message No One Understood Just Got Decoded Cristina Gomez summarizes takeaways from a long Matthew Brown interview with Jesse Michels, with some flat-out scary and weird elements. (WM)

Lysette Voytsko has learned that poltergeists in the US and the UK are not quite the same thing. Though both are mischievous and disconcerting, in the US they are defined as RSPK—Recurrent Spontaneous PsychoKinesis, which “is an unconscious burst of a person’s mental energy having an effect on their physical environment.” In the UK, such phenomena is more likely to be interpreted as the activity of the ghost of a deceased person. Lysette gives an interesting overview of how the history of each nation has influenced their differing interpretations. Next, she explains why Parapsychology Needs Consistent News Coverage—Not Our Belief. Looking back through the history of the subject and the criticisms of it, she feels that parapsychology has been “pushed back to the margins” despite “some high-quality findings in mainstream academic journals.” Meanwhile, scientists remain unconvinced of the reality of physic phenomena in the absence of controlled experiments, and the general public lacks reporters who can “provide analyses or context” for the subject. (LP)

The thylacine, aka the Tasmanian Tiger, was hunted to extinction by humans who believed this marsupial to be a danger to livestock. New research has revealed, however, that this assumption was incorrect, reports Ryan Whalen. Examination of thylacine skulls has provided evidence that while they were a predator species, what they hunted were smaller animals like rabbits, not sheep or cattle. Sharon Hill reports on another case of mistaken identity in Why the Giant Squid Is Not the Kraken, or a Cryptid. Prior to the 19th century, sailers acknowledged the existence of large or even giant cephalopods, viewing them as a curiosity, something useful but certainly not frightening. It took 19th century media to turn giant squid into cryptids or kraken, because "nature was seen as entertainment, and media became popular and expedient." In other words, the notion that giant squid were/are monsters is a fallacy whose time has passed and needs to be discarded, regardless of what garners media attention. (CM)

A set of articles from the Institute of Hispanic Ufology beginning with a Spanish case from the late 1970s that has just about everything, including a nod to Barney and Betty Hill. And it's followed by more weird encounters along Spanish highways. Javier García Blanco concludes his cavalcade of creepy curiosity with "And don't forget—you could be next..." Inexplicata's Director Scott Corrales gives us A Survey of Close Encounter Experiences. They are outstandingly interesting, and some even had beneficial aftereffects. UFOs and Extraterrestrials - Dominican Sightings and Experiences simply adds additional High Strangeness to this set of articles. Evelin Borjas writes of Honduras: Secret UFO Sighting Areas Revealed. This contemporary piece offers a travel guide for truly "out-of-this-world" encounters, whether "physical, astral, spiritual, and telepathic." And with Manuel Carballal: Other Earthly Saucers we have a historical catalogue of human-made sky craft that is quite interesting in spite of its down-to-earth-formed objects. (WM)

Columbian troops tasked with patrolling the jungle were recently terrorized by an unseen entity. Soldiers reportedly felt like something was watching them, particularly at night, and one was grabbed by the legs and nearly dragged away before his screams alerted his fellow troops and he was rescued. Meanwhile, 'Paranormal Visions' Send Honduran Children to Hospital, after several on a school bus began complaining of "visions" of goblins in trees. Poisoning was ruled out by doctors (which is surprising given the traditionally lousy ventilation in school buses), and a final cause was settled upon: heatstrokes causing hallucinations. (CM)

Benjamin Jackson canvasses British Ufologist-publisher Philip Mantle on his introduction to, and service within, ufology, and his latest book, Once Upon A Missing Time: A Novel of Alien Abduction. Fiction though the book may be, it's informed by real-life experiences of people who've felt they've been touched by the Anomalous. Miguel (Red Pill Junkie) Romero offers You Are Not Alone: A Whimsical Paranormal Pilot, Starring Steve Berg. This is about a 2019-and-so-far-not-picked-up pilot show that focuses on another sector of the UFO Matrix—and how conference-goers themselves may be looking for some kind of "safe space"—in terms of human acceptance as well as a geographic location. We move to Gene Steinberg's The Paracast podcast, in which he and Geneva interview Veteran UFO Researcher Kevin D. Randle. Here Kevin represents the height of the "serious researcher" into the history of the ramifying mystery. Kevin describes his own changing impressions of key UFO and abduction experiences, whose latest findings he's just chronicled in UFO Sightings and Alien Visitations: Facts and Falsehoods. And we conclude with Blind imagery website Managing Editor Jonas Cuénin's We Are Not Alone: A Fascinating Photographic History of UFOs, about an exhibition of UFO imagery and what it reveals about the human element. (WM)

Ian Towle of the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, argues that the human family tree needs a taxonomic rethink. The familiar division into Homo, Australopithecus and Paranthropus is increasingly hard to reconcile with new fossils, genetic evidence, and methods of establishing relatedness. Traits once treated as defining particular genera such as brain size, jaws, diet, or tool use also appear in genera where they shouldn’t. The current classification system risks entrenching the idea of a neat march from primitive to advanced, when evolution was altogether messier. Towle’s remedy is radical, subsume Australopithecus and Paranthropus within Homo, abandoning the neat ladder in favor of a messier but more plausible evolutionary history. And Darren Orf, writing in Popular Mechanics, reports on research testing a set of 87 fossil skull fragments against six competing models of evolutionary change in For Eons, Human Evolution Barely Budged—Then It Exploded. Now Scientists Know Why. The best fit was a punctuated equilibrium, long spells in which hominin skull and facial anatomy changed little (the equilibrium), interrupted, or one might say "punctuated" by comparatively rapid bursts of change. The authors suggest that culture may have helped Homo sapiens break out of this long evolutionary waiting room. Tools, cooking, cooperation, and social learning could have buffered environmental pressures, allowing petite jaws and energetically expensive brains to develop more quickly. The claim that "Now scientists know why" is perhaps the editor’s own response to selection pressures, rather than the authors’ more circumspect scientific conclusion. (JS)

A Jacques Vallée potpourri, with Vallée opening Martin Willis' conversation noting that, finally now, "it's officially recognized that the phenomenon is real." Much of the conversation flows around Dr. Vallée's latest book Forbidden Science 7: Final Report: The Journals of Jacques Vallée 2020-2025, published by Anomalist Books, as are all seven of this remarkable series. It's apparent why this is such a great conclusion to Vallée's journals and so important for current ufological discourse, but the conversation here covers numerous other areas in Vallée's remarkable life and career. Disclosure Team's Vinnie Adams launches from Vallée's concluding volume in The Final Report: CAPELLA, The Invisible College & 70 Years of UFO Research - Jacques Vallée. Here Vallée discusses the frustration of the AAWSAP database project that was cut off before completion, and his new project that will make good on the deficiencies in such databases and get the attention of the Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. I found the questions here especially interesting and complementary to Martin Willis' interview. Psicoactivo has potentially more information on the whereabouts of the lead item in the Disclosure Team interview as Dr. Jacques Vallée's Coveted UAP Database May Already Be in a Public Company. This adds another potential odd "wrinkle" to the multifarious UFO Story since 2017. And Chris Lehto seizes upon another major component of Vallée's thinking in The UFO Control System Is Invisible — Here's Why (Vallée Was Onto Something). Former fighter pilot Lehto thinks Vallée was "on to something huge...from maybe the wrong end." Chris explains his own notion of "Control" as presented in his new books, Our Fractal Universe, actually a two-book set. Wonder what Jacques' response would be? (WM)

It is with great sadness that we pass on the news of the passing of Larry Dossey, a brilliant and wonderful man. Larry received his M.D. in 1967, became a battalion surgeon in Vietnam in 1968–69, and founded with eight others the Dallas Diagnostic Association in 1974. He retired from medical practice in 1988 to write full time, which would eventually total more than 150 articles and 13 books by 2016, including One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters. He also served as co-chairman of the Panel on Mind/Body Interventions at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the National Institutes of Health from 1992–95, co-founded and edited the peer-reviewed journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine from 1995–2004, and was co-founder and executive editor of the peer-reviewed journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, from 2005–21.Larry was recognized as a pioneer in what has come to be known as nonlocal consciousness, a term he coined in 1981. His work had a profound influence on medical education and consciousness research. We met Larry several times over the years at annual meetings of the Society for Scientific Exploration and loved his insightful presentations. This is a difficult goodbye. (PH)