Topic
The books, broadcasts, films, podcasts and reporting that shaped what the public knows. 342 events, newest first.
Media14 Mar 2017
To The Stars Academy's 2017 SEC offering filing lists physicist Harold Puthoff, known for SRI remote viewing research, as a director from 14 March 2017 and its vice president for science and technology. The company later released Navy UAP videos.
Media26 Feb 2017
At the 89th Academy Awards, Arrival, Denis Villeneuve's film about linguists decoding visiting aliens, won for sound editing. It had eight nominations, including Best Picture, directing and adapted screenplay.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
MediaNov 2016
Denis Villeneuve's Arrival, a first-contact story centered on a linguist trying to communicate with visiting aliens, opened in November 2016. It grossed more than $200 million worldwide and earned eight Academy Award nominations, winning for sound editing.
Photo: Paramount Pictures, Public domain
MediaOct 2016
Emails to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, published by WikiLeaks, included messages from musician Tom DeLonge seeking a private meeting on a 'sensitive topic' and from astronaut Edgar Mitchell on extraterrestrial disclosure. Whether any meeting took place is unclear.
Photo: NHD-INFO, CC BY 2.0
Media24 Jun 2016
Roland Emmerich's Independence Day: Resurgence, a sequel set 20 years after his 1996 alien-invasion hit, opened in U.S. theaters. Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman returned; Will Smith did not. Reviews were largely negative.
Photo: Dick Thomas Johnson from Tokyo, Japan, CC BY 2.0
Media24 Jan 2016
Fox aired the first episode of an X-Files revival after the NFC Championship game, drawing about 13.4 million viewers in preliminary ratings. The return reunited Mulder and Scully and brought the paranormal-investigation series back to prime time.
Photo: GabboT, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media13 Oct 2015
The second Chapman University Survey of American Fears added paranormal beliefs, finding about 20 percent agreed aliens visited Earth in the ancient past and about 18 percent that they have come in modern times. Later waves of the survey tracked the same questions.
Photo: Bobak Ha'Eri, CC BY 3.0
Media15 May 2015
Six years after filming, Paramount gave Oren Peli's found-footage film Area 51, about friends who break into the Nevada base, a one-weekend run at 16 Alamo Drafthouse theaters alongside a video-on-demand release. Reviews were poor.
Media14 Mar 2015
Former Navy aviator Paco Chierici published 'There I Was: The X-Files Edition' on the Fighter Sweep site, retelling squadron mate Cmdr. David Fravor's account of chasing a white object off southern California in November 2004. It appeared more than two years before the New York Times story.
Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class John Phillip Wagner Jr., Public domain
Media20 Jan 2015
John Greenewald's site The Black Vault posted about 129,500 pages of Air Force Project Sign, Grudge and Blue Book records as searchable PDFs. The files had long been viewable on microfilm at the National Archives but had not been fully online.
Media2015
In 2015 Mexican TV personality Jaime Maussan championed the 'Roswell Slides', photos claimed to show an alien body. The figure was identified as the mummified body of a two-year-old boy, and the slides are now counted among the hoaxes he promoted.
Media2015
Filmmaker Jennifer Stein released a documentary on Travis Walton's account of being taken aboard a craft in Arizona in 1975 and how the claim shaped his life. Stein said she made it to counter efforts to debunk him; the case remains disputed.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media19 Dec 2014
Rajkumar Hirani's Hindi film PK opened, with Aamir Khan as an alien stranded in the Rajasthan desert after his ship's remote is stolen. His questions about human religious customs drive the satire. Disney-UTV released it on a record number of screens.
Photo: Bollywood Hungama, CC BY 3.0
Media4 Apr 2014
IFC released Alien Abduction, a found-footage horror film directed by Matty Beckerman about a family who encounter aliens while camping. Its story is inspired by the Brown Mountain Lights reported in western North Carolina.
Photo: Thomson200, CC0
Media28 Feb 2014
A cable documentary series built on the Mutual UFO Network's archive of more than 70,000 case files premiered on Feb. 28, 2014, with MUFON members appearing as hosts. It ran two seasons and reflected UFO case material moving into reality-style TV.
Media9 Aug 2013
The first Contact in the Desert conference ran Aug. 9-11, 2013, at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center, with dozens of speakers including Steven Greer and George Noory. Local press counted more than 500 attendees on opening day; it later became an annual event.
Photo: Niranjan Arminius, CC BY-SA 4.0
MediaJun 2013
Mirage Men, a documentary based on Mark Pilkington's book of the same name, premiered at Sheffield Doc/Fest. The book argues that U.S. intelligence agencies promoted UFO stories for disinformation and cover purposes rather than simply hiding them.
Photo: Sheffdocfest, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media22 Apr 2013
Sirius, a film built around ufologist Steven Greer's claims, premiered in Hollywood. It promoted a six-inch specimen found in Chile's Atacama Desert as a possible non-human being and argued UFO secrecy protects energy interests. Its origin was unresolved when the film came out.
Media22 Feb 2013
Dimension Films released Dark Skies, written and directed by Scott Stewart, in which a suburban family comes to believe aliens are targeting them for abduction. Reviewers called it a familiar riff on earlier abduction stories such as Communion.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media27 Jul 2012
Twentieth Century Fox released The Watch, a comedy with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade as suburban Ohio neighborhood-watch volunteers who discover aliens. Fox had renamed it from Neighborhood Watch after the Trayvon Martin shooting.
Photo: Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0
