Topic
Encounter and abduction accounts, and the researchers who studied them. 88 events, newest first.
Close encounters1982
Scientists including Stanford's Peter Sturrock formed the Society for Scientific Exploration to study anomalous phenomena. Its council first met on Jan. 5, 1982 in Washington, its first annual meeting followed that June, and it later launched the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
Photo: Mohammad Javanshiry, Public domain
Close encounters1981
New York artist Budd Hopkins published Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions, drawing on interviews and hypnosis sessions with people who reported unexplained gaps in memory. It helped put abduction reports at the center of UFO research.
Photo: Carol Rainey, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters1980
University of Wyoming psychologist R. Leo Sprinkle founded the Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation, held in Laramie each June, where people reporting contact experiences met. His papers on the psychology of UFO witnesses are held at the university's American Heritage Center.
Photo: Tony Webster, CC BY 2.0
Close encounters26 Nov 1979
Friends of Franck Fontaine, 19, told police he vanished from a car near Paris after a UFO appeared; he reappeared a week later. France's GEPAN found nothing of value. In 1983 friend Jean-Pierre Prevost told a reporter he had staged it and hidden Fontaine in an apartment.
Photo: Alvar Lavague, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters1979
Allan Hendry, chief investigator for Hynek's Center for UFO Studies, published a guide drawn from 1,307 reports he probed in 15 months. He found prosaic causes for all but about 8.6 percent; skeptic Philip Klass praised it highly in a review.
Close encounters1979
Jacques Vallee published Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults (And/Or Press), a critical look at contactee groups and UFO cults that questioned the motives of those promoting alien-contact beliefs.
Photo: Cmichel67, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters1979
Investigator Raymond Fowler published The Andreasson Affair (Prentice-Hall), a book-length account of Betty Andreasson's claim that she was taken aboard a UFO from her Massachusetts home in 1967, based largely on hypnosis sessions.
Close encounters6 Dec 1978
Security guard Pier Fortunato Zanfretta radioed in shortly after midnight near Marzano di Torriglia, above Genoa, saying he had met tall beings. Carabinieri logged ground marks and local glare reports; he later described more encounters under hypnosis. A magistrate closed the file as no crime.
Photo: Davide Papalini, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters1978
A 1978 Gallup survey found 57 percent of Americans who had heard of UFOs thought they were something real rather than imagination, the highest result Gallup recorded with that wording. Gallup later noted that 'real' did not necessarily mean alien craft.
Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
Close encountersMay 1977
Stanford's Peter Sturrock mailed a UFO questionnaire to 2,611 American Astronomical Society members; 1,356 replied. Most said the subject certainly, probably or possibly deserved study, and 62 said they had seen or recorded something unidentified they thought might be UFO-related.
Close encounters5 Nov 1975
Logger Travis Walton went missing after his crewmates said a glowing object struck him in a clearing in Arizona's Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. He reappeared days later saying he had been taken aboard a craft; many have questioned the story, which he still defends.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters14 Sep 1975
Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, later leaders of Heaven's Gate, spoke on UFOs and salvation at a Waldport inn; about 20 local people gave up their belongings and left with them. The departures became national news that fall, including on CBS's evening newscast.
Photo: James St. John, CC BY 2.0
Close encounters1975
Swiss farmer Eduard 'Billy' Meier said in 1975 that visitors from the Pleiades had landed and spoken with him, and he released photos of their 'beamships'. Critics, notably Kal Korff, argued the craft were small models, and most ufologists rejected his claims.
Close encounters13 Dec 1973
French motor-sport journalist Claude Vorilhon said a small being stepped from a craft that landed in a volcanic crater near Clermont-Ferrand and gave him a message. Renamed Rael, he built a UFO-based religion whose Clonaid company made an unproven 2002 human cloning claim.
Photo: Romary, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encountersNov 1973
A Gallup poll fielded Nov. 2-5, 1973 found 11 percent of U.S. adults said they had seen something they thought was a UFO. Gallup has repeated the question in later polls; in July 2026 the share was 17 percent.
Close encounters11 Oct 1973
Shipyard workers Charles Hickson, 42, and Calvin Parker, 19, told the Jackson County sheriff that creatures took them aboard a glowing craft while they fished on the Pascagoula River. Deputies found them genuinely frightened; many people doubted the story.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters1973
Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, former scientific consultant to Project Blue Book, started the Center for UFO Studies, initially run from a room in his Evanston home. He led it as scientific director until his death in 1986; it continues as a research library and archive.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Close encounters1972
Northwestern astronomer J. Allen Hynek, long a scientific consultant to the Air Force's UFO projects, published The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. It sorted reports into close encounters of the first, second and third kind, a scheme later echoed in Spielberg's 1977 film.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Close encounters26 Dec 1969
The American Association for the Advancement of Science sponsored a two-day UFO symposium at its Boston meeting. Its papers appeared in 1972 from Cornell University Press as 'UFO's: A Scientific Debate', edited by Carl Sagan and Thornton Page.
Photo: NASA/JPL, Public domain
Close encounters31 May 1969
Walt Andrus and chemistry professor Allen Utke founded the Midwest UFO Network as a regional network of field investigators. As it spread beyond the Midwest it was renamed the Mutual UFO Network, keeping the MUFON acronym; Guinness lists it as the largest civilian UFO investigative group.
