Newest first
The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Close encounters12 May 1989
Psychiatrist Rima Laibow founded TREAT (Treatment and Research of Experienced Anomalous Trauma) and held its first conference at Fairfield University, bringing clinicians together to discuss people reporting abductions. She treated the symptoms as real while leaving their cause open.
Photo: Doc Searls, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media12 May 1989
Vestron released Julien Temple's 'Earth Girls Are Easy' after a year's delay. Three furry aliens, played by Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans, crash their spaceship into the San Fernando Valley pool of a manicurist played by Geena Davis.
Photo: Alan Light, CC BY 2.0
Government27 Mar 1989
Contact with the Soviet Phobos 2 probe could not be restored on March 27, 1989, ending its mission at Mars; NASA's records attribute the loss to an on-board computer malfunction. An elongated shape in one of its last images was later promoted by some as a UFO.
Media1989
The International Academy of Astronautics adopted a Declaration of Principles for what to do if a signal from extraterrestrial intelligence is found: verify it first, notify other observers and the UN, announce openly, and send no reply before international consultation.
Media1989
Philippe Mora's film Communion, adapted by Whitley Strieber from his bestselling 1987 account of alleged abduction experiences, starred Christopher Walken as Strieber. The Deseret News called it a disappointment despite solid lead acting; it put Strieber's visitors on cinema screens.
Photo: John Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings1989
The civilian group Ufology Research began its annual Canadian UFO Survey with a tally of UFO reports from 1989. The series has continued every year since, giving Canada a running national count of reports.
Media1989
Dean Alioto made UFO Abduction, a low-budget found-footage film of a family menaced by aliens. Copies circulated without credits and were shown at a UFO convention, and some viewers treated it as genuine; Alioto later remade it for UPN in 1998.
Media1989
Fox turned the 1988 film Alien Nation into a weekly police series about a human detective and his Newcomer partner, a thinly veiled satire on race relations. Fox dropped it after one season in 1990; TV movies followed from 1994.
Photo: Keith McDuffee from Northborough, MA, USA, CC BY 2.0
Media29 Nov 1988
Donald Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps officer whose 1950s books and articles argued that flying saucers were real and that the Air Force was withholding what it knew, died in Virginia at 91.
Photo: CBS, "The Mike Wallace Interview" 1958 March 8, Public domain
Military10 Nov 1988
The Pentagon officially confirmed a squadron of F-117A stealth aircraft based in Nevada and released a single blurry photo. The angular jets had flown for years only at night from the Tonopah Test Range, an example of the secret aircraft often raised as explanations for some sightings.
Photo: USAF Technical Sgt. Marvin Lynchard, Public domain
Media7 Oct 1988
20th Century Fox released Alien Nation, in which alien 'Newcomers' from a crashed slave ship settle in Los Angeles and a human detective is partnered with one of them. It opened at number one in the U.S. with about $8.4 million.
Photo: User:Bearian, CC BY-SA 3.0
MediaOct 1988
A Michael Seligman-produced TV special, with actor Mike Farrell reporting from Washington, presented claims of a government UFO cover-up, including scrambled messages from a disguised military informant called 'Condor'. A New Zealand review called it a schlockumentary that said nothing new.
Photo: Mercury at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media12 Aug 1988
Orion Pictures released 'Mac and Me', in which a NASA probe collecting soil on Mars accidentally brings a family of aliens to a California desert lab. The youngest escapes, befriends a boy who uses a wheelchair, and is pursued by federal agents.
Photo: Orion Films, Public domain
Media27 May 1988
Stephen Chiodo's horror comedy Killer Klowns from Outer Space, about clown-like alien invaders, opened in limited U.S. release through Trans World Entertainment.
Photo: John Manard for Super Festivals /GalaxyCon from Ft. Lauderdale, USA, CC BY 2.0
Sightings20 Jan 1988
Driving the Eyre Highway before dawn, the Knowles family said a bright light followed them, lifted their car and left a dark ash on it. Investigators found the residue was ordinary clay and salt and the tyre damage fit fast driving; a meteorologist suggested distorted distant truck lights.
Photo: Nachoman-au, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government1988
France's space agency CNES dissolved its UFO study group GEPAN and its scientific council, after years of shrinking resources, and replaced it with SEPRA, a service focused on atmospheric reentries. CNES later said SEPRA was left with a single staff member and no editorial authority.
Sightings1988
The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, a civilian UFO group founded in 1952 by Jim and Coral Lorenzen, wound down after Jim died in 1986 and Coral two years later; its board voted to disband shortly afterward.
Media1988
Jacques Vallee published Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact (Contemporary Books), the first of his alien contact trilogy, comparing modern UFO reports with older folklore and visionary accounts and arguing the extraterrestrial idea did not explain them.
Photo: Cmichel67, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters1988
Prometheus Books published aviation journalist Philip Klass's critique of abduction research, which traced the narrative from the Hill case and argued that hypnosis and media exposure produced the reports. Psychologist Robert A. Baker praised it in the Skeptical Inquirer.
Photo: Robert Sheaffer, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media18 Dec 1987
Universal released *batteries not included, produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin, in which small living flying saucers help elderly tenants resist eviction from their New York building. Effects delays pushed the opening from June to December 1987.
Photo: Alan Light, CC BY 2.0
