B.J. Booth - UFOs Caught on Film: Amazing Evidence of Alien Visitors to Earth

EARLY SIGHTINGS (1800s1940s)

THE GOLDEN AGE OF FLYING SAUCERS (1950s60s)

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS AND BEYOND (1970s80s)

THE X FILES (1990s)

EVERYONES GOT A CAMERA (Latest sightings)

It is often considered that the Kenneth Arnold sighting and the Roswell case of 1947 signal the beginning of Ufology. But reports of unknown flying objects were made thousands of years before the first image was fixed on a metal plate in the 1820s. In Val Camonica, Italy, ancient paintings, dated around 10,000 BC, depict what many believe to be ancient astronauts. Many respected historians have suggested that these visitors, who possessed knowledge far superior to ours, were extremely influential in advancing our technology, our religions and cultures.

According to Zecharia Sitchin, visitors known as the Anunnaki visited our planet 450,000 years ago. They came, he believes, from a planet far beyond Neptune, called Nibiru. His theories are controversial, and many scholars of early cultures have argued that his interpretations are faulty, but many people believe that these visitors helped to build ancient structures such as the pyramids of Egypt. Many early constructions across the globe seem to have been decorated with depictions of what appear to be flying machines and their pilots.

I was raised during the 1950s and 60s, the Golden Age of sci-fi movies and, from the very first, I was hooked. The possibility of space travel and life on other planets has shaped my work for 50 years. During this time I have researched thousands of cases and studied numerous alleged photographs and videos of UFOs. It is an ongoing mission.

Ultimately, in 2000, after serving as a writer and editor on various internet websites, I created my own site, www.ufocasebook.com. Since then, I have had hundreds of photographs sent to me and I research each one as deeply as possible, seeking to answer, Are we alone in the Universe?

The photographs in this book are only a small portion of the vast range of great images that have captured what we call UFOs unidentified flying objects. They raise many interesting questions.

So, journey with me, as we take a look at what I believe are some of the best photographs of UFOs from around the world. I hope they pique your interest.

One of the very first sightings of what could have been a UFO occurred as early as 1865. Fortunately, there are still newspaper accounts of this and other early sightings. In this year, The Missouri Democrat newspaper published a report from a trapper called James Lumley who claimed to have seen an unidentified, bright luminous body in the sky near the Upper Missouri River. The next day, he reported that he had found a crashed craft of some type that had cut a path through the woods. He claimed that the object had different compartments and hieroglyphic-like symbols carved into its surfaces. The incident signalled the beginning of UFO reports in America and around the world.

One of the most notable events during this period was the legend of the UFO which crashed into the small town of Aurora, Texas in 1897. The story was eventually made into a movie. Another legend that morphed into a popular UFO mystery, was the case of an alleged UFO crash in Missouri in 1941. The event was published in Leo Stringfields book UFO Crash / Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum, which brought the case serious credibility.

During US-German dogfights in World War II, a number of unidentified balls of light were recurrently seen by both sides. They seemed to follow military aircraft at high speed. The 415th Nightfighter Squadron named these strange phenomena foo fighters. The sightings were regular and they began to be formally reported from 1944. Both sides worried that their enemy had developed a new, secret technology. The mystery of what the foo fighters might have been and why they were there has never been adequately resolved.

The so-called modern age of UFOs began in 1947. At this time, fascinating reports fuelled the publics imagination after pilot Kenneth Arnold reported sighting a succession of nine supersonic bright lights around his plane. Hardly had people had time to catch their breath when, within a month, rumours of the alleged Roswell crash (see footnote from ) brought the idea of unidentified flying objects to the forefront of the general publics consciousness.

Sadly, not every recorded event has been caught on camera. Luckily, many have been and, therefore, here is an inspiring collection of early images for you to ponder.

This photograph was taken looking towards Mt. Washington. On top of the mountain is a weather observatory where some of the worlds highest winds have been recorded. In 1870, photographic equipment was installed at the facility to capture cloud formations. The newly installed camera produced an extremely interesting image in stereo format of an unknown flying object. Because there were no planes in the air during that era, what we have here is a UFO. But where did this craft come from? And what was it doing?

This image shows what appears to be a cigar-shaped object. The stereo image was registered by Clough & Kimball in 1871. Often called the oldest UFO photograph ever taken, it was the subject of a bidding war on eBay in 2002, when finally the photo was purchased for $385 by Samuel M. Sherman, the president of Independent-International Pictures Corp.

there were no planes in the air during that era