1965: UFO Sightings Gain More Respect

Pressure was mounting for UFOs to get more atten­tion from science and government. This was boosted by a summer wave of sightings in the USA. In Exeter, New Hampshire, some impressive sightings involving police occurred. Award winning writer John Fuller produced a book, Incident at Exeter, which proved to be a model for all future case histo­ries.

On June 4th the first, and best UFO encounter made by an astronaut was reported by James McDivitt whilst flying in Gemini 4 over the Hawaiian Islands. He described a beer-can like object and took photographs. NASA released two pictures of white blobs, which turned out to be sunlight reflecting off window bolts. The real pictures were allegedly never traced. The astronaut has always been convinced that he saw something unidentified. 

A month later, on July 1st, Europe's first major alien contact occurred at Valensole, France when a farmer disturbed some 'boys' taking lavender from his field, who turned out to be typical small humanoids standing beside an egg-shaped craft. This encounter has many similarities with the Socorro case. When shown a picture drawn by Lonnie Zamora, the farmer asked who else had seen 'his' UFO. There is evidence that the farmer also suffered an abduction, but preferred not to discuss any further details. 

French ufofogy came of age during 1965 with the publication of the book Anatomy of a Phenomenon by Dr Jacques Vallee, which included the first truly sci­entific analysis of the subject. Allen Hynek was so impressed with Vallee's contribution that they later teamed up in the USA, where Vallee was to make his home. They formed what was called an 'invisible college' for scientists who wanted to research UFOs but were afraid of ridicule from those who might cause problems with their grants and funding. 

Finally, on August 7th, the global wave of activity generated a vital case that received no publicity outside the UFO community, but did add a crucial piece to the jigsaw about 'space babies'. At San Pedro de los Altos in Venezuela, a top gynecologist and two businessmen were at a riding stables when an oval object appeared and two tall, blond figures hovered in a beam of light. The aliens explained to the doctor that they were friendly and exploring the possibility of whether humans and aliens could inter­breed to form a better species. But, they warned, there was also a race of small, more aggressive beings visiting the Earth who were less interested in human welfare and regarded humans as mere laboratory experiments.