Ufo

The first encounter came the evening of Nov. 17. A Japan Air Lines crew saw a UFO as big as a battleship - and the FAA tracked it on radar. The second encounter came a few days ago, when the FAA admitted it publicly, then promptly closed its investigation, pronouncing the whole thing unresolved and inexplicable. The third encounter came Wednesday, when the FAA contended that a review of the radar tapes shows the UFO to be simply an inexplicably split image of the Japanese airliner.

Six U.S. soldiers who were reported AWOL from their intelligence posts in West Germany might have believed that they were selected to greet alien spaceships and lead a group of people to a science fiction-style heaven, according to friends and acquaintances. "They were apparently convinced that the aliens had chosen them as the chosen few to be on hand when they reclaimed the Earth," said Stan Johnson, a friend of the group's apparent leader. The six, who are being held at Fort Benning, Ga., adhered to an offshoot Christian belief called the "rapture," said Johnson.

In the apparent hope of creeping out future generations, Michael Jackson has considered having his body frozen, says the New York Daily News. The good news: Our children's children could possibly have the chance to finally figure the guy out. We aren't having all that much luck ourselves. In another surprise, we've learned that Jackson is also a big UFO fan, according to author Michael Luckman, who's writing a book called Alien Rock: The Rock 'n' Roll Extraterrestrial Connection (Pocket Books)

Robert F. Eure walked out of Temple University's Paley Library and glanced toward the heavens. Dark skies. Nothing moving. No rippling lights, no slivers of saucer-shaped metal cutting the clouds, no enigmatic whoosh. This, most assuredly, is not as Eure would have it. To know, with certainty, that there is something up there, something alive, intelligent, capable of spanning vast light years between here and wherever, would be a profound affirmation for Eure, a dogged UFO hunter and one of the few African Americans working the underground of amateur paranormal investigators.

Tom Carey thinks the Bermuda Triangle is hogwash and the moon landing was real. Elvis did leave the building, and 9/11 was an act of terror, not our own Reichstag fire. But creatures from outer space? That's another story altogether. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I dropped by his Huntingdon Valley house the other day to learn why a man would spend 20 years investigating the 1947 UFO incident known simply as Roswell, for the New Mexico community where an alien craft and its crew of little humanoids did or didn't crash.

Up, up and away! Well, not exactly. Third grader Amanda Wilson's glittery, paste-covered UFO lifted off the ground about five inches yesterday. It hovered there for a few minutes before she turned off the battery switch and let it fall. It would have stayed there for "eternity, or as long as the batteries lasted," said her teacher Janice Ordog, who was judging the projects built by students in Florence's gifted and talented classes. Streams of air from two small, battery-propelled fans lifted the Styrofoam bowl-and-cup contraption, while a wooden stick kept the craft from floating out of control.

Search the Internet for UFO, and you will find Helen Weber. She is not a strange visitor from another planet. She is president of the SHADO-USECC Fan Club, an international organization devoted to the 1969-1970 British science-fiction television show UFO. "I watched the first show, and I was hooked," Weber said. "What set the show apart from other science fiction was it had better scripts, better sets, outstanding special effects and interesting characters. . . . I still enjoy talking to other fans about the show.

Cue the spooky music. The Web's abuzz about government video that shows a giant bright spot near Mercury. "Wow. Wait till you see this," says UFO buff and YouTube channeler siniXster, narrating as a solar flare fills a view of the planet closest to the sun. "Holy smokes, look at that," siniXster says. "That is definitely some sort of manufactured object. It's cylindrical on either side. It has shape in the middle. It definitely looks like a ship to me. " Which is why the video is titled, "Amazing huge cloaked UFO next to Mercury.

Comets and UFO cults and the coming millennium spell catastrophe. And yesterday, cult experts were predicting more bloodshed was on the way through the year 2000. Temple professor William Alnore and other cult experts were "not surprised" this week when 39 computer nerds - draped with purple triangles of cloth - from the Heaven's Gate cult died in an apparent suicide pact in a San Diego county mansion. "I wasn't surprised at all because cults are dangerous," said Alnore, author of "Soothsayers of the Second Advent," "UFOs in the New Age," and "Heaven Can't Wait.

SALMON TRANSMITS A CHILLING FINAL MESSAGE Norwegian scientists tracking the migration routes of wild salmon were excited to pick up a radio signal from one fish that had been given up for lost. Then they made a chilling discovery: The signal was coming from a fisherman's freezer. Following the signal to a home in the southwestern city of Stavanger, scientists with the Norwegian Institute for Water Research found the wayward salmon destined for a dinner plate. The fish was one of 33 wild salmon researchers caught last summer in a western Norway fjord and outfitted with tiny radio transmitters, the Norwegian news agency NTB reported.

Cue the spooky music. The Web's abuzz about government video that shows a giant bright spot near Mercury. "Wow. Wait till you see this," says UFO buff and YouTube channeler siniXster, narrating as a solar flare fills a view of the planet closest to the sun. "Holy smokes, look at that," siniXster says. "That is definitely some sort of manufactured object. It's cylindrical on either side. It has shape in the middle. It definitely looks like a ship to me. " Which is why the video is titled, "Amazing huge cloaked UFO next to Mercury.

Tom Carey thinks the Bermuda Triangle is hogwash and the moon landing was real. Elvis did leave the building, and 9/11 was an act of terror, not our own Reichstag fire. But creatures from outer space? That's another story altogether. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I dropped by his Huntingdon Valley house the other day to learn why a man would spend 20 years investigating the 1947 UFO incident known simply as Roswell, for the New Mexico community where an alien craft and its crew of little humanoids did or didn't crash.

While many area residents were enjoying sunny skies, about 50 people holed up in the Tredyffrin Township library Saturday to ponder theories about visitors from well beyond those skies. Main Line MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), a division of an international nonprofit dedicated to the study of unidentified flying objects, held a free, daylong conference at the library. Topics ranged from Sasquatch to "Credible and Convincing Evidence for the Existence of UFOs. " Some participants wore MUFON T-shirts that said: "Others talk, we investigate.

While many area residents were enjoying sunny skies, about 50 people holed up in the Tredyffrin Township library today pondering theories about visitors from well beyond those skies. Main Line MUFON (Mutual U.F.O. Network), a local division of an international nonprofit dedicated to the study of unidentified flying objects, held a free, daylong conference at the library that featured five speakers. Topics ranged from Sasquatch and Big Foot to "Credible & Convincing Evidence for the Existence of UFOs.

HOLLYWOOD - Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, those likable English lads who spoofed the zombie genre in "Shaun of the Dead" and the buddy-cop actioner in "Hot Fuzz," take on yet another Hollywood staple - the sci-fi alien movie - with their latest collaboration, "Paul. " They play British sci-fi geeks who, after visiting the nerd Mecca known as Comic-Con in San Diego, set off on a road trip through the American Southwest. Traveling via RV, they have a close encounter with an alien named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen)

Karyn Dolan couldn't have been more pleased to be addressing a room full of like-minded believers. "I love going to conferences," she told the nearly 200 people who had gathered Saturday morning in a meeting room of the Sheraton Hotel in Langhorne to hear her presentation: "UFOlogy vs. Paranormal Research, Completely Different or Two Sides of the Same Coin?" "Nobody rolls their eyes at me," she said. "Nobody thinks I'm crazy. " The audience murmured and nodded in solidarity.

"There's something going on in this town that we don't know about. " "They're not from here. " "Do you honestly believe that you were forcibly removed from your bedroom by a member of an alien race?" And there you have the drift of The Fourth Kind. Trading on the same ersatz documentary chicanery as Paranormal Activity, but adding thespian reenactments to run side by side (literally) with the supposedly authentic archival video and audio tapes, The Fourth Kind is a mildly scary, totally meaningless excursion into the realms of psychological horror and alien-abduction conspiracies.

There are aliens in The X-Files: I Want to Believe, but they are not from outer space. Instead, they come from Russia: a band of demented medicos, descended on West Virginia to participate in some freaky Frankenstein shenanigans - and that's too bad. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) still has that old UFO poster on his wall, though it's a wall in his house in the middle of nowhere. He's a recluse with a beard and bitter memories, in mopey exile, retired from his job as an expert on paranormal phenomena at the FBI. So the plot of Chris Carter's second film spun off of the hit cult TV show is decidedly terrestrial, and grim and unpleasant, too. A convoluted, unconvincing mishmash of hot-button social issues - stem cell research, Catholic church sexual-abuse scandals, pedophilia, gay marriage, organ harvesting - The X-Files: I Want to Believe reunites Mulder with Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson)