The 1990s: UFOlogy's Golden Age

Once every few years I bring out of storage a small box containing 22 VHS videotapes I started making in the early to middle 1980s of the nascent UFO documentaries and news reports. Sometimes I taped a whole show or seconds of particular footage. I don't remember much UFO news activity being reported in the 1970s on TV but in the early 1980s the floodgates opened and now you saw occasional UFO news. However, it wasn't until the 1990s that television exploded with programs devoted to UFOs plus what they thought was associated phenomena: the paranormal such as the Marfa and other lights around the world.

In the 1980s people still used emulsion film and not everyone carried still or movie cameras or we would have wound up with a lot more UFO photos and movies. In the mid- to late-1990s digital cameras became common among consumers and we started to see more UFO photos and now videos shown on TV news. Cell phones with cameras are now de rigueur but the photos of UFOs and videos haven't changed that much, just more hoaxing.

Even with almost everyone now capable of recording strange aerial phenomena, the reporting has slackened and members here are always complaining about how the MSM doesn't cover the subject as much as they would like. If you were an adult in the 1980s/1990s and you had an interest in UFOlogy, your interest was satisfied by all of the programs dedicated to UFOlogy. Here then is a partial list of the programs that were on almost every night or almost every week, and some of the names associated with the programs. Of course I can't list all of the contents of my videotapes as I might finish posting this thread next Shavuot!

Jim Dilettoso making the usual fool of himself declaring Phoenix flares didn't have the proper flare signature and "Billy" Meier's "Beamships" not being models.

Stanton Friedman clashing with Phil Klass (and losing!)

Kevin Randle stating that the "UFO" that crashed at Roswell came from far away and the beings... Such a fool!

Tons of "witnesses" to the Phoenix flares and that they swore they were not flares. A short daylight documentary was made from the same location as the popular nighttime video that's always shown and the flares are seen disappearing one at a time over different mountain peaks.

A giant and beautiful crop circle being made. A crop circle contest in which all participating teams created identical circles.

James Oberg vs. Don Ecker on Larry King over STS-48

And on, and on, almost the total history of UFOlogy up until approx. 2000. I have another bunch of "newer" tapes. Although nothing new lately, I got it all!

The photos show my 22 videotapes with contents on stickies and a closeup of one. Plus a TV GUIDE page from Feb. 1994 announcing one of the documentaries.









Time to reminisce!

In no particular order or date, movies:
1. "UFO Journals" (1975)
2. "UFO Syndrome" (1979)
3. "UFO Exclusive" (1978)
4. "UFO's: It Has Begun" (1976)
5. "The UFO Incident" (1975)
6. "UFOs Are Real" (1979)
7. UFO (1956) taped 1994

Documentaries:
1. NOVA - "The Case of the UFOs" (1989?)
2. HBO - "UFOs: WHAT'S GOING ON?" (1985) and as "America Undercover"
3. America Undercover - HBO Presents
4. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER (1991)
5. Alien Autopsy (1995)
6. UFOs UNCOVERED: OUT OF THIS WORLD (2000)
7. SCIENCE FRONTIERS (1996)
8. PARANORMAL BORDERLINE
9. UFOs: ABOVE & BEYOND (1998)
10. Disneyworld: "Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland" (1995)
11. UFO: FROM THE LEGEND TO THE REALITY (1995)
12. MORE SECRETS REVEALED
13. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
14. UFOs OVER PHOENIX: ANATOMY OF A SIGHTING (1997)
15. UFOs: THE SECRET EVIDENCE
16. OFF THE RECORD
17. EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN
18. UNMASKED: EXPOSING THE SECRETS OF DECEPTION
19. INTO THE UNKNOWN
20. SEARCHING FOR UFOs
21. UFO HOAXES
22. UFOs UNCOVERED
23. STRANGE BUT TRUE
24. INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS: BRINGING THE UFOs DOWN TO EARTH
25. WHERE ARE ALL THE UFOs?
26. CYBERLIFE
27. WORLD OF PEOPLE
28. UFOs: IT HAS BEGUN
29. Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us (1999)
30. America's Best Kept Secrets
31. UFO REPORT: SIGHTINGS (1991)
32. Memories... Then and Now
33. UFOs: Are They Getting Closer?
34. OVERLORDS OF THE UFO
35. MYSTERIES BEYOND EARTH
36. FORCES BEYOND
37. UFOs OVER ISRAEL
38. ENCOUNTERS: THE UFO CONSPIRACY (on Fox 5)

TV Shows:
1. 20/20 (1987) - Hugh Downs & Barbara Walters
2. In Search Of... (1986)
3. NOW IT CAN BE TOLD (1992)
4. CURRENT AFFAIR (1992)
5. HARD COPY (1992)
6. 48 HRS (1994)
7. MYSTERIES, MAGIC & MIRACLES (1997)
8. EXTRA! (1997)
9. PRIMETIME LIVE (1995)
10. ENCOUNTERS (1995)
11. Cristina (1995)
12. A.C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe (1995)
13. Network Earth (1995)
14. Entertainment Tonight (1995)
15. INSIDE EDITION (1996)
16. A&E
17. DISCOVER MAGAZINE (1999)
18. EYE ON L.A.
19. Access Hollywood
20. LATE SHOW

Series:
1. SIGHTINGS - Tim White
2. STRANGE UNIVERSE - Emmett Miller
3. UNSOLVED MYSTERIES - actor Robert Stack

Hosts:
1. Ron Reagan
2. Larry King
3. Joan Rivers
4. Tom Brokaw
5. Bill Kurtis
6. Oprah Winfrey
7. Sonya Live In L.A.
8. UFOAZ - Ted Loman (Cable TV show)

News:
UPN (1996)
Fox 5 News
World News With Peter Jennings
CIRCLES: CREATORS COME FORWARD
CNN World News

About Roswell, Phoenix "Lights", Dorothy Izatt, everything and everyone under the sun (and moon!)

Lots of "15 minutes of fame"
Lots of snippets

Names:
Stanton Friedman, Betty Cash, Philip Imbrognio, Leonard Stringfield, Don Berliner, Philip Klass, Don Ecker, Whitley Strieber, Larry Fawcett, Congressman Steve Schiff, Jim Dilettoso, Kevin Randle, et al.

BTW, has anyone noticed that all of the comments in the threads as well as private messages all bear the same date: 07/03/2016? The date shown for all members is that date and it also says that everyone registered on that date! Take a look on the left.

Ah yes, I remember those days.

Just recently I was telling another member tales about how back in the day, to get / read about 'conspiracy theory stuff', during the pre-AOL-invented-the-interenet-era, back then how we used to have to dail-up to local BBS computers (hosted in peoples homes), generally log in one at a time, and try to download a UFOlogy TXT file or two (UFO stuff was about all the "conspiracy theory" material there was back then), and maybe even squeeze in a 20kb UFO GIF file, via a 2400baud modem (look that one up kiddies LOL), before our daily limit ran out. Since most such 'servers' only had one "port" (meaning only one person at a time could dial in) limits were mandatory. Oh, and the "social media" of that era meant you could also go post some messages for the rest of the visitors on the standalone board kind of thing (imagine one single forum thread, without photo & hyperlink embeds), during your brief session.


BBS's didn't have the 'cool' "demo music" playing like in that video LOL!

Disneyworld: "Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland"

This one is very interesting..

BTW, has anyone noticed that all of the comments in the threads as well as private messages all bear the same date: 07/03/2016? The date shown for all members is that date and it also says that everyone registered on that date! Take a look on the left.

It doesn't say that on my screen.....?

Man I miss the 90s

a reply to: klassless

As a Millenial why did the UFO crazed died down? I gotta admit I feel like I'm born in the wrong decade. You guys have the more interesting stuff.

a reply to: starwarsisreal

For me, once we had "all" the "data" flowing freely on the Interwebs, I was able to finally really see the bigger picture for how the world works (such as facts & perspectives on the military apparatus in light of the rest of the world, Clinton's POLICE STATE (real reason there WERE black helicopters) kind of stuff). And as I went back on conspiracy theories of old (which seemed to always involve UFO's), with all the new perspectives, and saw how the UFO stuff was exactly the same old stuff as int he 90's, it became clear to me it was all always just science fiction stuff to keep "Outside the Box'ers" distracted.

I still S+F the thread!

Nice collection..... I think SIGHTINGS was my favorite from the 90's, I used to record every episode, I had a random collection of VHS tapes with all sorts of UFO stuff too... I think my ex-wife threw those tapes away.

Nowadays I get my 90's flashback with X-Files on Netflix.

originally posted by: starwarsisreal
a reply to: klassless

As a Millenial why did the UFO crazed died down? I gotta admit I feel like I'm born in the wrong decade. You guys have the more interesting stuff.

A few reasons I feel,

Today "faking" a encounter is some much easier than it was in the 90's, if you wanted to fool people and I mean really fool them then you needed stupidly expensive equipment and expertise. Now with a GoPro and a few tutorials online you can make something that is plausible (I am sure you know what I mean)..

Hence many current UFO videos that come up are disregarded before they get anywhere near MSM or news outlets..


SADLY people (in general) now just do not care all that much, there is such a different mindset now to what we had in the 90s, in school we spoke about this stuff for hours, now its all social media bollox and celebrity. People have lost that wonder, I guess someone from the 70's may same the same about the 80's???...


Indeed the 90's was perfect if you was into UFOlogy but you had to work at getting your information, there was a lot of waiting for newsletters and VHS orders Please allow 28 days for delivery,



ADDED::: would be a ton of work but maybe start getting them put online Vimeo/Youtube as long as no copyright is infringed???....



RA

The early 90s had a pretty huge new age movement that I learned a lot from, which of course covered a lot of extraterrestrial and ufo phenomena. There was some crazy things to be found on the internet, from zero-point physics to blueprints for free energy devices. I have tried to find sites like the ones I used to frequent and they are either hidden or not there anymore. There really was a lot of deep websites to get lost in with some very strange information.

Nice collection btw

a reply to: MrThortan

The wingmakers website is very intriguing, but good luck finding the original site..which is too bad, because the original site had some pretty interesting info to share. it's ultimately up to the reader though to decide wether it's real or not to them.

Let's not forget the 50s. Space, martians, flying saucers etc were hugely popular back then, especially in Hollywood. It almost feels like every other movie back then had a sci-fi space theme.

Ah, the 1990s...the decade that followed the dreaded Cold War, and highlighted in military by use of "Courier" typeface and typewriters. It was the peak of many conspiracy related things, before people sat behind a computer screen to talk to other conspirators - and actually talked face to face. Likewise you actually had to work to get whatever "proof" you thought was credible. Those days are gone. We're more interested in turning absolutely every possible thing on the face of the earth into a conspiracy. Forget about what is above it.

We're more interested in:
The idea of chemtrails.
The idea of a flat earth.
The idea of all national or international tragedies being false flags.
The idea that everyone isn't actually real.
The idea that the government(s) is(are) interested in the fact that I bought the Final Fantasy XV Collectors Edition on Amazon.

No longer:
The idea that the president is a reptilian.
The idea that Elvis is a manager at the McDonalds in a suburb of Paducah, KY.
The idea that there was an alien running around in a chefs hat in Roswell, NM.
The idea of all lights in the night sky that aren't stars must be aliens.
The idea of all lights in the night sky that aren't stars or aliens must be classified government aircraft.

...nostalgic.

Nice piece of nostalgia Klassless.

Yes I think it was a golden age of ufology from a certain perspective. There was suddenly a less reluctant attitude by media companies to debunk cases. So we suddenly saw TV shows like "Sightings" spring up and even "Unsolved Mysteries" presenting UFO cases alongside murder cases and missing persons stories. Then of course the X-Files fired imaginations. It also seemed to be the decade when the public trust in politicians and governments was reaching new lows. So the decade was rife with conspiracy and UFO lore.

However if 1947 is the start of the modern UFO era then I also think 1997 signalled the end of it in some ways. We've probably got more pro-UFO/alien shows on TV than ever before in 2016. But as those lights blinked out over Phoenix in March 1997 it feels like the age of 'classic' ufology also did. The Roswell 50th anniversary carried things on for a while. But as the internet went mainstream and we moved into 21st century things changed a lot.

In 2016 you can examine a lot more information on UFO cases just by using the internet. Back in the 90s obtaining source material was a lot more difficult. We still don't have the full picture of the jigsaw puzzle but we certainly have a lot more pieces to play with.

Anyway sticking to the nostalgia. I always remember this story from the early 1990s?



Sigh! it was almost certainly another hoax.

a reply to: mirageman

It was indeed a hoax. The whole story is on the DVD set The UFO files A.K.A. UFOs under investigation.
John Spencer and Bob Oechsler explain the details and it turns out the disc was a Sikorski helicopter which was cleverly concealed and lit.
They don't name the suspect but the guy narrating (forget the name) goes and knocks on a door somewhere only to receive no answer. Apparently someone known to those who did the research but who bottled it when scuppered or ????

Dunno if you'll find it on the gooTube but the episode was called UFOs lies and videotape and mentions some other hoaxes which I can't recall at the moment.
I think the series was Canadian made and ran to thirteen episodes (on disc at least).

Fun and games indeed.

Didn't ya just love the 90s.

a reply to: mirageman

I'm not sure it was because public trust of the government was exactly low, it wasn't exactly high during the 1960s and 1970s, and it certainly isn't very high today. Honestly, we probably share more commonalities on the social scale and relationship with government with the 1960s era.

I think a lot more of it had to do with the fact that there was just enough attainable information out there for people to get their hands on. One of those things where all of the factors to spur peoples minds was "just right." Look at it like this...

You have these people who were congregating and talking about these ideas that they thought were far out there, but believed they were irrefutably true. They spent time digging in the mud and getting their physical hands dirty, trying to find whatever scrap of evidence there was to support their ideas. Then along comes this radically new creation of the minds of some of those same scientists that might have been behind some of these things: the internet.

The internet gave those people a new medium to search for materials to support their claims. But it also gave them a new outlet for which to spread whatever knowledge they claimed to have, and connect with others on the other side of the country, continent, and eventually the world. It was new in the 90s. Eventually though, it wasn't new anymore, and people became more interested in posting selfies, duckfaces, and pictures of the food dish served to them at the local McDonalds. Those of us old enough to remember when the internet was young have gotten to witness the evolution and devolution of the internet and thus the topics that it encompassed.

Some of the old conspiracy theories were enough to make your skin crawl. I mean, they were not only believable, but they were also just downright scary. The ones I hear of post 9/11 however, a lot of them seem like a bunch of paranoid mumble jumble.

Same here budy, same here, nostalgic as well.


When cinema was actually mostly original and not a bunch of remakes like we are seeing now.

Oh yeah very nostalgic, and terribly exciting!

I remember I would be on the edge of my seat watching UFO documentaries in the 90s, but after a while the excitement began to die down. Those documentaries were very engaging and exciting but they never arrived at a satisfactory conclusion in the end. Either no conclusive evidence/proof would be presented or whatever was shown for 45-60 minutes would end up being labelled a hoax. It's like going to an asian massage parlor and not getting liquid explosion in the end. Reminds me of that joke, how do you keep a moron in suspense?

A lot of people got rich from milking the UFO cash cow back then and I'm glad for their success, but nowadays I wouldn't be able to sit through an entire UFO documentary. On the rare occasions that I watch TV now, if I pass by the History Channel and that clown from Ancient Aliens or some other UFO related BS is on I instantly change the channel.

a reply to: mirageman

It's always puzzled me why people only chase after evidence about the "craft" and "bodies" but never looked at the disinformation machines running within and without ufology circles.

There is an astonishing amount of first hand and suggestive evidence that a series of mythologies were deliberately injected into ufology, that key researchers were baited by ever more volumous faked documents and some were bribed to undermine and misdirect colleagues. Shockingly, many fell into line and became part of this mechanism in the hopes of discovering the "truth".

Many people believe these 'control mechanisms' existed to cover up advanced, conventional technologies.

My research has led me to believe that something else was going on.

People like Richard Doty produced books long after the late 90s decline and when no longer in USAF / AFOSI. Why? What conventional technology required that?

People forget that those actions, both known and suspected required mundane work orders. Budget requests, fund allocations, time sheets, performance meetings, assessments. Inter agency cooperation.

What for? I don't know. I don't think it was 'aliens' or time travellers, but nor do I think it was solely to cover the B2 Spirit or the Eurofighter.

Why? Well, it's still going on, which means somewhere there are still budget allocations and management structures to deal with this.

And by this, I mean us. For a quick example, there are still the 'shadows of interference' in two of Uk ufologys best known cases.

I'll leave you with this.

The biggest flaw in ufology is not that they didn't expose the obvious fakes, or the poor research. It's the fact that there is festering and easy to follow line of subversion and corruption running through ufology that virtually none of the big personalities have dared tackle.

Bill Moore identified 4 other ufologists working with the authorities as he did. Yet no one has ever tried to identify them. I'm fairly sure I know who they are now, who they tried to recruit in the UK and what counter factual narratives were injected using these transatlantic links.

Why I have no idea!

Fun fact. Bill Moore and Jamie Shandera received the MJ12 film. They didn't team up with Stanton Friedman, he introduced them. Jamie seemed to vanish after Moore's revelations - and there is virtually no record of his career before or after on the web.

How did Stanton discover Jessie Marcel wished to talk - the basis of Incident At Roswell? A TV producer friend let him know about Marcel.

If Moore and Shandera had the MJ12 papers years before Tim Good, and his article forced them to release their copies, then they must have had different sources?

So why are there no variations of the papers without Moore's trademark retypimg 'errors' on dates?

I'll leave you to make up your own minds. I couldn't possibly comment.

originally posted by: starwarsisreal
a reply to: klassless

As a Millenial why did the UFO crazed died down? I gotta admit I feel like I'm born in the wrong decade. You guys have the more interesting stuff.

Let's safely say that you didn't miss much! In the 1960s I was going almost every week to UFO lectures here in NYC. They were well attended and the speakers were not as weird sounding with their theories and it was always fun. At one lecture the speaker ended his talk by saying "And that's how they fly" and the audience just exploded with joyous handclapping and comments.

In the '70s we even had UFO conventions and more lectures.

In the '80s not much was happening aside from regular lectures by Frank Stranges in L.A. and some news reports and a documentary or two. Lunar anomalies in books, Roswell came out of the woodwork. And since the digital camcorder was in the future, not many UFO photos or emulsion film movies on TV. Really light fare.

Then the '90s gave everybody a chance to video UFOs and now we had TV the way it was meant to be, beat the newspapers at showing more than pages could carry. Since I had acquired a VCR in the '80s I now had to buy more videotapes to record the phenomenon.

Around 2000 things petered out 'cause every TV station was now saturated with the same ol', same ol', and what people were now recording on cellphones had already been done and it was just boring to see unwatchable night footage of lights and during the day no closeups of UFOs, no visible details and it became like Roswell, things slacked off.

So here it is almost at the end of 2016 and there has been little progress in UFOlogy with no groundbreaking anything. They're still up there, just like they always were. And we're still down here still wondering what they are.

So be glad you're here now with fresh memories. You haven't missed much.

originally posted by: imitator
Nice collection..... I think SIGHTINGS was my favorite from the 90's, I used to record every episode, I had a random collection of VHS tapes with all sorts of UFO stuff too... I think my ex-wife threw those tapes away.

Nowadays I get my 90's flashback with X-Files on Netflix.

It's too bad you lost your UFO video archive. As I view my tapes all they do is infuriate me as I watch and listen yet again to a bunch of jerks, know-nothings who tried to sound authoritative. Logic was never more violated than it was in UFOlogy, period. And I got the tapes to prove it!

If it wasn't for the few segments that show how some truth behind some claims as Roswell, Phoenix, the Hills, etc., I'd dump my tapes. But everybody was so young then!