UFO

FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder under a triangular UFO in 1993.

UFO is an abbreviation for Unidentified Flying Object. Technically, a UFO is any object in the air which has not been or cannot be identified. However, the phrase is more commonly used to describe crafts that are of alien origin. (TXF: "Deep Throat", et al.) UFOs are frequently witnessed by soldiers during wartime. (TXF: "E.B.E.") In fact, it is strongly held by believers in UFO phenomena that there is military complicity or involvement in abductions. (TXF: "Patient X") A UFO may also be described as a flying saucer, a fallen angel, or a foo fighter. (TXF: "Pilot", "Fallen Angel", "Apocrypha", et al.) No other object has been misidentified as a flying saucer more often than the planet Venus. (TXF: "José Chung's From Outer Space")

For individual uses of the terms "flying saucer", "fallen angel" and "foo fighter", see Related Terms.

History of Activity, Sightings and Organizations

1900s

On June 30, 1908, Tunguska tribesmen and Russian fur traders looked up into the southeastern Siberian sky and saw a fireball streaking to Earth. When it hit the atmosphere, it created a series of cataclysmic explosions that, even in November 1996, was still considered to be the largest single cosmic event in the history of the human civilization. The power of the blast leveled trees in a radial pattern for 2000 kilometers.

By 1996, no real, definitive evidence had ever been found to provide a satisfying explanation of what the fireball had been but it was speculated that it had been a piece of a comet, an asteroid, or even a piece of anti-matter. (TXF: "Tunguska") In November 1996, Mulder uncovered evidence that the fireball had been a rock carrying an alien cancer known as "black cancer". (TXF: "Terma")

1940s

Around the conclusion to World War II, news stories reporting UFO sightings were released to the public. (TXF: "Redux") According to Michael Kritschgau in 1997, these UFO sightings were part of a military hoax that started when, playing on a virulent national appetite for bogus revelation and a public newly fearful of the atomic bomb, the US Military Command began to "fan the flames" of UFO stories released to the public and used this phenomenon to satisfy the military's need for something to deflect attention away from its nuclear arms strategy. (TXF: "Redux")

In 1945, a UFO crashed into the Pacific Ocean as the consequence of a hostile encounter with a B-20 that was transporting a nuclear bomb planned to be the third similar bomb dropped on Japan during World War II, and an accompanying squadron of P-51 Mustang airplanes. The American planes also crashed into the ocean following this encounter. Several secret salvage attempts to recover the UFO were made after this incident, including a search of the area later the same year by the Zeus Faber, a US submarine whose crew were mostly killed by an alien virus they unknowingly brought aboard. (TXF: "Piper Maru", "Apocrypha")

In 1947, the year of the first supersonic flight, a UFO reportedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. (TXF: "Redux", "Deep Throat") This spacecraft and a body at the site were reportedly recovered at the time. (TXF: "Paper Clip") Parts from the wreckage of the craft were supposedly shipped to six sites, including Ellens Air Base in Southwest Idaho. (TXF: "Deep Throat") "Deep Throat" would later claim that, after this incident, even at the height of the Cold War, an ultrasecret, international conference took place at which the attending countries agreed that, should any extraterrestrial survive a crash, the country that held that being would be responsible for its extermination. (TXF: "E.B.E.") Also following the Roswell incident, the US military opened several official investigations - such as Project Sign, Project Grudge, Project TWINKLE, Project "Blue Book" and Operation Majestic 12 - and brought in college professors and Congressmen who, after being provided with facts, fuzzy pictures and eyewitness accounts, became convinced that aliens had been visiting Earth, a belief that Doug MacArthur also came to share.

According to Michael Kritschgau, the military had realized that, the more they denied the Roswell story, the more people thought it was true that aliens had indeed landed and the realization that this represented a made-to-order cover story for Generals looking to develop the national war chest had led the military to open their official investigations related to UFO reports. Kritschgau described the facts that the military had shared with the college professors and Congressmen as "bogus" ones, "fed" to those people, and believed that Doug MacArthur had been "hooked" by the military into believing their hoax of alien visitations. Kritshgau also believed that, soon after the first supersonic flight, every experimental aircraft being flown had been a UFO sighting. (TXF: "Redux")

Information about both the Roswell incident and the location of the UFO that crashed in the Pacific Ocean was added to the MJ documents. (TXF: "Anasazi", "Piper Maru")

1960s

In August 1967, four sightings of UFOs were made near Lake Okobogee, Iowa. One of the sightings was reportedly witnessed by the pilot of a National Weather Service plane as well as four of the nine girls in a Girl Scout troop and their Den Mother. The four Girl Scouts were Lisa Tyrell, Bonnie Winston, Dorreen McAllister and Darlene Morris. The United States Air Force claimed that the UFO was a weather balloon caught in a wind sheer, but no weather balloons were launched that day within seven hundred miles. By 1993, Darlene Morris' name was on record at the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Illinois, in connection with the sighting made by her and the other Girl Scouts. (TXF: "Conduit")

In 1994, "Deep Throat" claimed that, while he was with the CIA in the Vietnam War, a UFO was sighted for five nights over Hanoi but was shot down by the Marines and brought to "Deep Throat"'s group. (TXF: "E.B.E.")

1980s

For some of the night of June 3, 1985, a UFO could be seen in Pulaski, Virginia, outside and above a ramshackle house where Duane Barry lived. The craft was present as extraterrestrials visited him there. (TXF: "Duane Barry")

1992

Many sightings of UFOs were added to the X-files and, shortly after first being partnered with FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in 1992, Special Agent Fox Mulder admitted that the X-files had, at first, seemed to him like "a garbage dump" for "the kind of stuff that most people laugh at as being ridiculous," such as UFO sightings.

A bright light from a UFO illuminates Billy Miles' abduction of Theresa Nemman in 1992.

A bright, white light from a UFO appeared in and gradually engulfed an area of Collum National Forest, Oregon, during Billy Miles' consecutive abductions of both Karen Swenson and Theresa Nemman in March, 1992. The latter abduction was witnessed by Mulder and Billy Miles' father, Detective Miles, and Mulder later described this experience to Scully, who had seen the light from a distance, as "incredible". Together, the agents, while driving, had previously experienced a similar bright light; Mulder had implied at the time that he also attributed this to a UFO. Under hypnosis, Billy Miles revealed, on March 22 of that year, that he had first seen the light while he and all his friends had been celebrating their graduation at a party in the forest. He claimed that the light had taken him away to a "testing place" where an anonymous group had coordinated the abductions. According to Billy Miles, the light had also given him the group's orders. (TXF: "Pilot")

The actual source of the bright light does not appear in The X-Files pilot episode, but something must have created the light and this source is, by definition, an Unidentified Flying Object, both to Mulder, Scully and the other characters as well as the viewers watching the episode. It is likely that the light also appeared during the abduction of Ray Soames.

According to Chris Carter, the source of the light was really "a lighting rig that actually took something like eight hours to construct." (The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths and the Movies, p. 29)

1993

A newspaper article about the UFO activity near Ellens Air Base.

Reports of UFO sightings near Ellens Air Base, the same site where parts from the wreckage of the UFO that crashed in Roswell were supposedly shipped, were published in a newspaper article written by C. Carter and headlined, "Ellens Air Base Mecca for UFO Buffs". Scully viewed this article in 1993, shortly before she headed to Idaho with Mulder to begin investigating reports of pilots disappearing from the airbase; these pilots included Lieutenant Colonel Robert Budahas, who had been missing for four months, and six other pilots who, since 1963, had also gone missing. Scully was a reluctant companion on the case, however, and after reading the article, she hoped that Mulder was not leading her on "some UFO goose chase".

During this investigation, the agents met three witnesses who claimed to have made UFO sightings; a woman named Ladonna, who served the agents at "The Flying Saucer" diner and claimed to have seen a UFO while she had been "out on the back porch, taking out the garbage", as well as two teenagers called Emil and Zoe, who claimed to have seen UFOs from Ellens Air Base on many occasions and revealed that the crafts were allegedly stored in Yellow Base, a hangar that was approximately ten miles from the perimeter of the airbase.

The agents themselves encountered UFOs that passed over Ellens Air Base. Shortly before he and Scully first met Emil and Zoe, Mulder alone watched a light demonstration involving two UFOs above the airbase and, after almost half an hour of observing this spectacle, he showed the sight to Scully. Both agents were amazed by this experience but, as they continued to watch the spectacle together, the UFOs seemed to collide. Scully was able to distinguish between these UFOs and a helicopter that she and Mulder then saw. While intruding on the airbase after witnessing these two UFOs, Mulder saw two more, one of which was airborne and another that was being stored in a hangar. Scully ultimately reported seeing the two UFOs she had witnessed, in an official FBI report.

The airborne UFO that Mulder alone sees at Ellens Air Base was actually a lighting rig. "[It was] basically this kind of 70s Disco thing," laughed Mat Beck, "so what was supposed to be this mysterious high-tech spaceship was making some pretty funny-looking, little colored circles on the ground." ("The Truth About Season 1", TXF Season 1 DVD special features)

The military had admitted that the pilots assigned to Ellens Air Base were flying experimental aircraft but several theories regarding the nature of the UFOs seen in and near the airbase were suggested. Mulder suspected that the military was flying planes built using UFO technology salvaged from Roswell and flown by pilots such as Colonel Budahas, who was returned while the agents were investigating his disappearance. Mulder also thought that, if the military revealed they were secretly keeping a UFO, it would be confirmation of the existence of extraterrestrial life. Alternatively, Emil believed that the crafts were actually some kind of "star wars, cyber-tech, newfangled hardware" that the US military would deploy during Desert Storm II or a similar mission; Emil humorously imagined a UFO flying over Saddam Hussein's house. Scully subscribed to the belief that each UFO was a stealth bomber or an Aurora spy plane. The case was closed by Scully before the UFOs could be identified, however. (TXF: "Deep Throat")

In August 1993, Mulder referred to Lake Okobogee as a UFO hotspot in reference to the 1967 sightings there and - while investigating the disappearance of Darlene Morris' daughter, Ruby, from the same area - he claimed to the bartender at the Pennsylvania Pub that he didn't believe in UFOs but thought they were entirely due to "a bunch of crazy people, howling at the moon"; the bartender replied by suggesting that, if Mulder rode with the bartender and his fellow riders out to Lake Okobogee sometime, Mulder might see some things that would change his mind. After Ruby Morris was returned, evidence revealed that she had been aboard a UFO, but she refused to talk about her experience, claiming that she had been told not to, and, due to humiliation her mother had had to bear as a result of her own claims that she had seen a UFO, the only explanation that Darlene Morris would accept was that her daughter, Ruby, had gone riding with one or more motorcyclists. (TXF: "Conduit")

By the end of 1993, the continental United States was surrounded by an electronic fence that reached 15,000 miles into space and was used to track and monitor the 7,087 man-made objects that orbited the Earth, but the fence also served as an alert for the approach of UFOs. Operation Falcon, a secret arrangement to sanitise any future UFO crash site in the area, had been organized and drills representing Operation Falcon had been carried out. Several UFO organizations had also been set up, including the aforementioned Center for UFO Studies, the National Investigative Committee of Aerial Phenomenon‏‎ and the Mutual UFO Network.

Mulder had, by this time, investigated UFO sightings in Gulf Breeze and he published an article in Omni about these sightings, using the pseudonym "M.F. Luder." (TXF: "Fallen Angel") He would later claim that, when he had first seen the Gulf Breeze photos, he had known they were a hoax. (TXF: "E.B.E.")

At 23:17 one night in late 1993, a UFO breached the electronic fence off the coast of Connecticut and crashed slightly west of Lake Michigan, outside Townsend, Wisconsin. The UFO's activity was tracked and recorded, and was reported by Chief Karen Koretz and a higher ranking male officer to Colonel Calvin Henderson at the US Space Surveillance Center at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. Although this UFO was suspected of being a craft, Colonel Henderson, the Air Force's premiere reclamations expert, interrupted normal procedure, specifically to officially report the UFO's activity, to ensure that the UFO was officially reported as being a meteor. He then made a phone call to secretly report the presence of the crashed UFO and order the mobilization of Operation Falcon. Meanwhile, Deputy Jason Wright alone saw the crash site from a distance, as an explosion in the Wisconsin woods, but was killed shortly after.

Even though the military continued to contain information regarding the UFO's nature and publicly released false information, "Deep Throat" relayed knowledge of the craft's presence and Operation Falcon to Mulder, who headed to the area and saw the military clean-up operation in effect but was subsequently captured. During his temporary imprisonment, Mulder first met Max Fenig, a member of NICAP who had been following Mulder's activities and had read his article in Omni about the Gulf Breeze sightings.

A few days after the UFO crash had first been reported, Chief Koretz announced to another higher ranking male officer that she was detecting "flash traffic" in the same area where the previous UFO had crashed. This UFO was much larger than the earlier one. It did not answer repeated calls for identification and was not listed in the Air Force's orbital or suborbital inventory. Chief Koretz again initially referred to the UFO as a "craft" but was reminded by the male officer that the object was to be termed as a "meteor". This time, the UFO was not only tracked at the US Space Surveillance Center, but also by Whitmarsh Air Force Base.

A light from a UFO surrounds Max Fenig as he is suspended in the air, while Fox Mulder watches.

The UFO abducted Max Fenig and he was subsequently taken to the Lake Michigan waterfront. After he arrived in a warehouse there, Mulder saw the light from a UFO illuminate Max's body as it was suspended in the air. Seemingly, the light engulfed the area and Max completely disappeared. (TXF: "Fallen Angel")

The UFO that Max Fenig encounters moments prior to arriving at the Lake Michigan waterfront is likely the same thing that kills Deputy J. Wright, due to both incidents featuring the camera as the "UFO" or an alien with flight capability. Like Billy Miles' abductions in the pilot episode of The X-Files, the source of the light in which Max is suspended is not shown but presumably must exist and is, by definition, a "UFO".

1994

In the spring of 1994, an Iraqi fighter pilot, named Sadoun Janadi, encountered a UFO while he was patrolling the skies of Iraq. Believing he was under attack, the pilot fired a missile from his plane that hit the UFO and caused it to crash near a NATO surveillance station in Hakkari, Turkey, on the Turkey/Iraq border. Soldiers stationed there were woken by the noise of the UFO crashing before they saw the crash site from a distance and, as they prepared to investigate the incident, a similar UFO appeared in the sky above.

As truck driver Frank Druce drove down Route 100 in Reagan, Tennessee one night around the same time, he tuned his vehicle's radio to hear excited callers hysterically reporting UFO sightings. The second caller he heard, a female, claimed she had seen three UFOs flying over Chester County, and the next caller agreed with her before adding that six troopers had been chasing the UFOs "down twenty-two". The second and first callers then reported currently seeing a UFO over their area's water tower. Frank Druce himself subsequently saw a UFO, in the sky above his truck, and reported the sighting later that night.

The next day, these sightings were investigated by Agents Scully and Mulder, the latter having previously investigated multiple sightings at Chesapeake Bay, the Okoboji Lakes and Area 51 in Nevada. He had learned that a total of a dozen witnesses, including a squad of police vehicles, had become excited over the most recent sightings. When the agents questioned Frank Druce, however, his description of the UFO he had seen was different from a description he had given on the previous night. Mulder initially suspected that the UFO Frank Druce had seen was a secret military aircraft, launched from the nearby airbase at Little Rock.

As the agents continued to investigate Frank Druce's sighting, they were led to the conclusion that his truck was carrying the wreckage of the Iraqi UFO but were also fooled several times, first into mistakenly believing that seventeen UFOs had been spotted in one hour near Fort Benning, Georgia, where the US Army was hiding the wreckage of the Iraqi UFO, before secondly being the victims of a hoaxed close encounter with a UFO, an incident that included some but not all of the phenomena associated with UFO sightings.

The next day, Mulder contacted several organizations that had hotlines for UFO reports (including the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, MUFON and NICAP). At least one of these organizations had received news of a UFO sighting on the east bank of the Columbia River. None of the organizations had ever reported a week of such activity as there currently was; the UFO sightings had started in Tennessee, where Frank Druce had encountered one, and had since been following the path of the truck. After the hoax involving the agents on the previous night, there had been seven sightings in Mattawa, Washington, a hundred miles away from the site of the hoax; Mulder suspected that this UFO activity was due to aliens trying to recover their colleague.

While subsequently searching through Mattawa, the agents found a UFO party, led by a man named Freddie, who claimed that attendees of the party had seen UFOs over the nearby Hanford Power Plant. The agents distantly witnessed Frank Druce exit the power plant and they crept inside, but saw neither the wreckage of the Iraqi UFO nor its occupant. (TXF: "E.B.E.")

The Blue Beret UFO Retrieval Team - a secret, elite, military crash retrieval unit - had been organized by July 7, 1994 and, even though the group consisted of Caucasian men, they operated in Puerto Rico, where they were charged with protecting the Arecibo Ionospheric Observatory from intruders. The team was authorized to display terminal force. (TXF: "Little Green Men")

Duane Barry, who claimed he was a multiple abductee, escaped from a psychiatric institution]] in August 1994 and took several hostages at Travel Time Travel Agency. Shortly before Agent Mulder called the travel agency in an effort to persuade Duane Barry to release his hostages, Agent Lucy Kazdin, the FBI's negotiation commander during the hostage situation, instructed Mulder, "Whatever crap you gotta make up about spacemen or UFOs, just keep him on the phone".

Soon after, a brilliant white light from a UFO briefly appeared outside the FBI's Negotiation Central Command, where Agents Kazdin and Mulder were. The light grew in brilliance before fading. After entering the nearby travel agency, Mulder asked Duane Barry if the light was the extraterrestrials who had abducted him many times and, after Mulder was taken as a hostage himself, he continued to query Barry about his abduction experiences, asking if the aliens took him to a ship and how he got there. When Duane Barry prompted Mulder to tell another of the hostages what the aliens' business was, Mulder hesitantly replied to Duane Barry, "They take you aboard the ship, to perform the tests".

Following the hostage situation, Duane Barry believed he was visited by aliens and the light from a UFO while subsequently hospitalized, moments before escaping from the hospital. (TXF: "Duane Barry")

Duane Barry then kidnapped Scully and took her to Skyland Mountain, where Mulder saw a UFO in the sky as it left the area. Duane Barry claimed that Scully, who was nowhere to be found, had been taken by an unnamed group, implying that the same group was flying the UFO. Even though Barry reacted in fear as he and Mulder saw another craft with a bright light approach in the sky, the craft was actually a Search and Rescue helicopter that carried the two men down to the summit of Skyland Mountain. Duane Barry insisted that Mulder had seen a ship, but Mulder retorted that he had seen a helicopter and similarly later recounted to Assistant Director Walter Skinner that the craft he had seen when he had reached the top of Skyland Mountain had been an unmarked helicopter working the area. (TXF: "Ascension")

1995

In January 1995, the crew of the research vessel Alta sighted a UFO that crashed into the Beaufort Sea, in the Arctic Circle. The crew of the Alta recovered the UFO's occupant, a shape-shifting alien bounty hunter who the crew mistook as a Russian fighter pilot, and, two days later, this incident was reported in a television news broadcast in the area of Scranton, Pennsylvania. (TXF: "Colony")

A short time later, the nuclear submarine USS Allegiance encountered this UFO in the Beaufort Sea, at a position 67 miles north of Deadhorse, Alaska and at a cruising depth of 1,000 feet. Although the submarine was on a cartography mission, its crew was ordered to destroy the craft even before the UFO was identified but the submarine was subsequently disabled during the encounter.

Even though the alien bounty hunter was determined to return to the craft, an attack fleet left Anchorage, in an effort to prevent the alien from leaving, one morning, five days after the USS Allegiance encountered the UFO. On the night after the day in which the attack fleet was deployed, X informed Mulder of the submarine's encounter with the UFO and the attack fleet's recent launch.

Mulder followed the alien bounty hunter to Alaska, where they met in the submarine conning tower, which protruded up through the ice, but the alien initially pretended to be and was physically disguised as a member of the submarine's crew, Lieutenant Terry Wilmer. Even though the alien bounty hunter recounted a fictionalized recent history of his activities as Lieutenant Wilmer, Mulder admitted that he had realized the imposter's true identity when he promised to allow the alien to return to the UFO only if the extraterrestrial revealed certain information. (TXF: "End Game")

One night in April, 1995, Kenneth Soona told Mulder during a private meeting with him that the MJ documents, which Soona had downloaded on April 10, probably contained the original Defense Department's UFO intelligence files, including all information since the 1940s concerning such classified topics as the Roswell incident and Majestic 12. (TXF: "Anasazi")

Soon after, Mulder encountered a UFO while at the Strughold Mining Company with Scully; he saw the light from the UFO through a window as he stood inside the building and, after he rushed outside, he witnessed the craft pass over both the building and himself. During this sighting, Scully was in a long horizontal shaft inside the building and noticed small beings that scurried past her before a long, thin strip of light shone from the opposite end of the shaft where she saw one of the alien beings standing at a doorway, through which a bright, white light could be seen. (TXF: "Paper Clip")

By October 1995, UFOs that had been recovered by the Syndicate had been brought to Nevada. (TXF: "Apocrypha")

In that month, a ship called the Talapus, under orders from the Syndicate but allegedly seeking a Japanese submarine sunk in World War II and rumored to be carrying a load of gold bullion, salvaged the UFO that had crashed in the Pacific Ocean in 1945 and brought it to Newport News, Virginia. (TXF: "Nisei", "Apocrypha") Mulder saw the UFO being guarded by military US personnel and worked on, in a warehouse the size of a hangar near the docked Talapus at the US Coast Guard Headquarters in Newport News. (TXF: "Nisei") He later realized that the object was a UFO or the remains of one. (TXF: "Nisei", "Piper Maru") However, Scully was lied to by a Syndicate elder that the object was actually a piece of a Russian nuclear submarine that had been raised, an explanation she subscribed to. (TXF: "731", "Piper Maru") Mulder also believed that the UFO had probably been carrying an alien being that he and Scully had recently seen in a video recording of an autopsy. (TXF: "Nisei")

A short time later, the crew of the Piper Maru, a French salvage ship, made an attempt to recover one of the squadron of aircraft that had downed the UFO but were, like the Zeus Faber's crew, affected by the same alien virus. The Piper Maru's last given position before the ship limped into port in San Diego was at the same coordinates where the UFO had been recovered by the Syndicate. (TXF: "Piper Maru", "Apocrypha")

The Syndicate suspected that the French had really been searching for the downed UFO. The Cigarette Smoking Man, a member of the Syndicate, acted alone and moved the salvaged UFO to another location, later explaining to his conspiring associates that the recent attempts to recover the craft had increased the group's need for security and that he had moved the UFO as a safeguard in the event that anyone else was looking for it. He also assured his colleagues that the craft would now be completely inaccessible to those searching for the UFO. (TXF: "Apocrypha") When the same elder who had lied to Scully about the object's nature suggested that the UFO be brought to Nevada like the others, the Cigarette Smoking Man replied that security leaks and a heightened public interest had made the base of Nevada unviable. (TXF: "731", "Apocrypha")

The UFO had actually been taken to Silo 1013, one of approximately two hundred missile silos in Black Crow, North Dakota. Alex Krycek, possessed by the alien virus, was allowed access to the UFO but Mulder and Scully were prevented from even viewing the craft by the Cigarette Smoking Man and armed soldiers working for him. The alien virus reentered the UFO after painfully exiting Krycek's body. (TXF: "Apocrypha")

1996

James Earl Carter, Jr. thought he saw a UFO once but, by early 1996, it had been proved that the former US President had merely seen the planet Venus.

One night in early 1996, teenagers Harold Lamb and Chrissy Giorgio believed they saw a UFO while on their first date together, in a car on a darkened road in Klass County, Washington. They also believed they lost consciousness, moments before another UFO appeared in the same area as the first craft and that, while two Grey aliens had apparently emerged from the light beneath the first craft, a third alien descended to the ground in the shaft of light emitting from the second craft. Under hypnosis, Chrissy Giorgio later claimed that she and Harold Lamb had been aboard a spaceship, surrounded by aliens.

Roky Crikenson claimed to have witnessed the teenagers' alien abduction, that he had been taken aboard the third alien's "hover vessel" that headed into Inner Space - towards the alien's domain of the Earth's molten core - and that, on the next night, he had been visited by two Men in Black who threateningly tried to convince him that, instead of a UFO, he had seen merely the planet Venus, which had been at its peak brilliance on the previous night.

When Chrissy Giorgio was re-hypnotized, she recalled that she had been in an office, surrounded by men, the closest of whom looked like a doctor while the others seemed to be arguing, some in uniform and others in suits; seemingly, the other men had been dressed as a CIA agent, an Air Force officer and an Army man. Apparently, after the doctor had hypnotized her, the Air Force officer had told the doctor to ask her if she knew where the Grey aliens' UFO had gone, but the doctor had not asked the question because, before he could do so, the CIA agent had wondered how she would know the answer. Supposedly, the Army man had asked if any of the other UFOs had been recovered, to which the Air Force officer had replied that an unnamed group, in which he was included, was "combing the area" but that the current weather made their search difficult.

Writer José Chung later investigated the sightings in Klass County and spent three months there, during which time he interviewed Blaine Faulkner, who claimed to have read every book ever written about UFOs and aliens. Faulkner claimed that he had been in a field one night, looking for UFOs as there been some recent sightings so he was simply hoping to stumble across one, when he met Agents Mulder and Scully.

According to Mulder, he had later been driving in a car on a darkened street in Klass County when he had met Lieutenant Jack Sheaffer who, along with Air Force Major Robert Vallee, had gone AWOL from an airbase; apparently, Lieutenant Schaeffer was walking naked along the road when Mulder met him and, in a roadside diner, later claimed that, similar to the image of the Virgin Mary projected over the French trenches in World War I, seeing a UFO from another galaxy would also cause the enemy to hesitate during wartime. Mulder also claimed Lieutenant Schaeffer had admitted that UFOs were merely secret military airships and that he was a pilot of one of these crafts, who would take abductees back to the base, where they would be hypnotised and made to believe such fantastical things as they had been abducted and probed by aliens.

While later questioning Agent Scully, Chung suggested that the fact that "truth is as subjective as reality" might help explain why, when people would talk about their "UFO experiences", they would always begin their account by saying, "Well, now, I know how crazy this is going to sound, but...." He also told her that, during his time in Klass County, he had become good friends with the cook from the same roadside diner that Mulder and Lieutenant Schaeffer had apparently visited; the cook had told Chung about the night of the supposed visit and, differing from Mulder's account, the cook's story had not included the lieutenant but told of how, visiting the diner alone, Mulder had ordered piece after piece of sweet potato pie while asking the cook a question each time, the first of which was whether the cook had ever seen a UFO in the area.

According to Scully, she and Mulder met with Detective Manners, who they were working with, on the next day, in an area of forest that was apparently the crash site of a kind of top-secret experimental airplane that had been the cause of all the recent UFO sightings. Due to the military having refused assistance from the agents and Detective Manners, Mulder suspected that the reason the military did not want assistance was because the crash represented their alibi, for which they instead wanted witnesses. (TXF: "José Chung's From Outer Space")

1997

One night in 1997, repeater Max Fenig and 134 other passengers and crew died when Flight 549 plummeted 29,000 feet and crashed in a wooded area approximately thirty miles from Albany, New York. (TXF: "Tempus Fugit") The incident was subsequently investigated by a trained group of crash investigators as well as Agents Mulder and Scully, with Mulder ultimately coming to the belief that a UFO had intercepted Flight 549 and had made an unsuccessful attempt at abducting Max Fenig, who had a bag containing one of three interlocking alien technological components and alone had immediately realized the nature of the craft, before both aircrafts had crashed as the result of a military plane, most likely an F-15 Eagle, carrying out orders to shoot down the UFO. Mulder came to this conclusion after apparently finding the crashed wreckage of the UFO and its seemingly alien occupant at the bottom of Great Sacandaga Lake, but the wreckage was secretly uncovered by the military soon after. (TXF: "Tempus Fugit", "Max")

Earlier in the investigation, Sharon Graffia - an employed aeronautical engineer who had been an associate of Max Fenig and had stolen the three interlocking alien components, one of which he had been carrying aboard Flight 549 and another of which was in her possession - was in a motel room when lights from a UFO appeared through the windows. (TXF: "Tempus Fugit", "Max") She later went missing and her motel room was found to have been trashed, as if it, too, had been dropped from an altitude of 29,000 ft. At the Flight 549 crash site, the crash team leader, Mike Millar, witnessed a UFO searching the area before it flew over him and then departed; he subsequently found Sharon Graffia, distressed by her abduction experience, nearby.

On Mulder's way to Great Sacandaga Lake, he spoke to a man named Bruce Bearfeld, who claimed to have seen lights from a UFO visit in the direction of the lake, over Democrat Point. Bearfeld guessed that the lights could be from some kind of Search and Rescue operation. (TXF: "Tempus Fugit")

Agents Mulder and Scully later watched a video recording made by Max Fenig, in which he claimed that extraterrestrials were secretly visiting Earth in alien ships and that certain high-ranking members of the military-industrial community had not only covertly recovered some of these craft but had salvaged some of the alien technology for use in military applications.

Shortly after Mulder obtained the third interlocking alien component from the baggage claim department in Syracuse Hancock International Airport, he tried to bring it with him from Syracuse to Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., via Flight 501, but became aware during his flight that the plane was about to be intercepted, engaged and boarded. He consequently warned a stewardess and instructed her to tell the plane's captain to immediately initiate evasive maneuvers, but the stewardess was prevented from doing so by Scott Garrett, an armed man who held Mulder at gunpoint and took the bag containing the third alien component from him, moments before the UFO arrived outside the plane. Even though Mulder warned Garrett to surrender the bag, Flight 501 landed with neither Garrett nor the bag on board and, regarding Garrett's whereabouts, Mulder noted, "I think he got the connecting flight." (TXF: "Max")

Later in 1997, Mulder told Scully that a forensic anthropathologist named Arlinksy, who Mulder had been in contact with over the previous four years, had, several years before 1997, been involved in a UFO photo enhancement scandal. Mulder described the scandal as "embarrassing" but revealed that Arlinksy still continued to profess his innocence.

Shortly thereafter, Michael Kritschgau attempted to explain to Mulder that the thousands of UFO sightings reported throughout history had actually been due to above-top-secret military aircraft, concept-designed to feed hysteria. (TXF: "Gethsemane") Kritschgau also tried to convince Mulder of his own belief that UFO sightings were part of a military hoax but, after Mulder began to subscribe to Kritshgau's theory, the Cigarette Smoking Man warned him that he had been deceived by Kritschgau. (TXF: "Redux", "Redux II") Two years later, Kritshgau would recall that he had lost his job and home after Mulder had asked him for a favor - namely, to "blow the whistle on Uncle Sam's UFO propaganda mill." (TXF: "The Sixth Extinction")

1998

Prior to 1998, video footage of Jeffrey Spender, undergoing hypnosis at age eleven, was recorded. In this video, he seemed to recall an event in which he and many other people had seen an airborne UFO that had started to abduct both his mother, Cassandra Spender, and himself. By 1998, Jeffrey Spender had come to conclude that the story he had told in the video had originally been concocted by his mother as a substitute for the maddening fact that young Jeffrey's father had left the family. (TXF: "The Red and the Black")

In 1998, two boys, including one named Dmitri, witnessed a UFO descend from the sky until it passed out of sight behind some mountains in Kazakhstan, in the former Soviet Union. The boys initially planned to tell their parents of the spectacle they had seen, but soon discovered that their home had been incinerated and destroyed by faceless aliens who had also killed the other inhabitants of the boys' home by setting them alight. (TXF: "Patient X")

Soon after this incident, Agent Mulder spoke at a UFO conference in Boston, Massachusetts at which he broadcast his feelings about the government and their conspiracies against the American public. (TXF: "Patient X", "The Pine Bluff Variant") Likewise, much to the disapproval of other attendees at the event, Mulder suggested that the belief strongly held by believers in UFO phenomena, that there was military complicity in abductions, could be wrong and that belief in such phenomena might be entirely due to the military alone.

At the conference, Mulder also reviewed video footage of Cassandra Spender, whose son, Jeffrey, later warned both Mulder and Agent Scully that Cassandra had actually been a member of a UFO cult, along with victims of another recent mass burning on Skyland Mountain. According to Jeffrey Spender, the UFO cult had believed that they would be carried to immortality aboard some kind of "mother wheel". (TXF: "Patient X")

Numerous individuals, including Scully, Cassandra Spender and "Quiet Willy", gathered on Ruskin Dam, in Pennsylvania, where they witnessed a UFO fly over them but were, themselves, subsequently victims of yet another mass burning by the faceless aliens. (TXF: "Patient X", "The Red and the Black") Under hypnosis, in a state of hypnogogic trance, Scully recalled this incident and how, after the mass burning on Ruskin Dam, the faceless aliens had been destroyed by fire themselves, after another UFO had flown over them. This UFO had then, apparently, come at the group of remaining survivors and had abducted Cassandra Spender alone, explaining why she was currently missing, but Mulder, who suspected the incident had been staged by the military, believed that Cassandra had really been taken aboard a military aircraft as part of the staging.

Following the mass burning on Ruskin Dam, another UFO crashed in Wiekamp Airforce Base, West Virginia, plummeting into the ground and erupting into a gigantic explosion that left the downed craft burning. The lone survivor of the crashed UFO, a faceless alien, struggled to pull the body of a similar alien from the wreckage but, moments after doing so, he was taken into custody by armed Army men who arrived in trucks. This incident was mentioned to the other members of the Syndicate by the First Elder, who referred to the UFO as a "spacecraft".

A short time later, Mulder managed to board the back of a truck, carrying the faceless alien survivor and driven by an alien bounty hunter, as the vehicle exited Wiekamp Airforce Base. After the bounty hunter stopped the truck and followed Mulder into the back of the vehicle, both Mulder and the bounty hunter saw the light from a UFO engulf the entire truck from above the vehicle, moving from its front to its rear, where another faceless alien, backdropped by the light, appeared, after several moments. Even though the bounty hunter had apparently been preparing to kill the faceless alien survivor before the arrival of the UFO, Mulder seemingly believed the newly arrived faceless alien was about to set fire to the bounty hunter and consequently fired his gun at the visitor; Mulder was completely alone in the truck when Army men later took him from the vehicle. (TXF: "The Red and the Black")

In the same year, another UFO was being hidden underground, buried beneath ice and snow in Wilkes Land, Antarctica, and was being monitored by men who took orders from the Cigarette Smoking Man and were assigned to an ice station in the area. Many people infected with the alien black oil virus had been taken aboard this UFO and were being kept there, in a state of cryogenic freeze; in 1998, these individuals included Agent Scully. When Mulder attempted to travel to the Syndicate base in an attempt to rescue Scully, part of the ground beneath him gave way near the base and he fell underground, where he slowly made his way into the UFO.

Once the Cigarette Smoking Man - who was visiting the ice station - became aware of Mulder's presence and reported it to the men under his authority, some began to follow his instructions for several of the men to arm themselves and head into the UFO below them. Mulder found Scully and added a vaccine for the alien virus to the UFO, causing both the craft to become active and long-clawed aliens, mutated from the black oil virus, to eventually gestate from the humans aboard the UFO. As malfunctions and disruptions started to occur in the Syndicate base, the men there evacuated the ice station, after the Cigarette Smoking Man directed them to do so.

Meanwhile, Mulder hurriedly helped Scully leave the UFO, both agents being chased by several of the long-clawed aliens. The craft then began to takeoff from its underground position, breaking up the snow and ice above it, destroying the ice station and landing the FBI agents - who had exited the UFO atop the craft - on the ground, where Mulder watched as the UFO completed its ascent and tried to make sure that Scully saw the craft as it rose in the sky. (The X-Files Movie)

Mulder later included an account of his and Scully's encounter with this UFO in an official report he presented to OPR panelists, including Assistant Directors J. Maslin, D. Bart and Skinner. The account referred to a spaceship buried under polar ice and the agents' death-defying escape from it. When AD Bart questioned Mulder - during an OPR meeting with the agents - whether he was genuinely asking the OPR panelists to seriously accept his report, Mulder explained that the ice had become superheated from the ship as it had risen beneath the agents, causing the ice to collapse. (TXF: "The Beginning")

By November 1998, it was rumored that a black mailbox outside Area 51 was the best place for civilians to see Freedom Mountain and the UFOs over the area in Nevada that encompassed Area 51 and was known as "Dreamland". (TXF: "Dreamland II")

In November 1998, a UFO was at Area 51 in Groom Lake, Nevada when the craft was given a regular preflight examination and all its systems checked out. (TXF: "Dreamland") However, General Wegman, who was assigned to Area 51 where he was secretly providing Mulder with information and knew that Mulder would be in the area while the craft was in flight, later sabotaged the UFO before it was launched, his motive allegedly being merely that he wanted Mulder to see it. (TXF: "Dreamland II") Occupied by two pilots under the general's command (Captain Robert McDonough, piloting the craft, and his co-pilot), the UFO was launched on a routine training flight from Area 51 at 2300 hours and headed south.

Meanwhile, Mulder and Scully were heading to Area 51 on Highway 375 when they were intercepted by a deployment of armed soldiers and Man in Black Morris Fletcher who, after Scully asked him whether he and the soldiers were hiding top secret test flights or using technology from UFOs, ridiculed the suggestion and denied the existence of such craft. Moments later, the group saw the same UFO that had launched from Area 51 fly overhead. As the group watched, the UFO suffered an unexpected systems failure, at approximately 2315 hours. The malfunction in the craft was due to General Wegman's earlier sabotage and caused a warp, a tear in the space-time continuum. (TXF: "Dreamland II", "Dreamland") The UFO suddenly lost altitude at 2317 hours, over Highway 375 and crashed near the highway but out of sight of the gathered group. One of many effects caused by the warp in the space-time continuum was that Scully's memory of the UFO sighting was lost. (TXF: "Dreamland")

General Wegman later claimed to Mulder that neither he nor anyone one else assigned to Area 51 knew the nature of the crafts, the black-budget projects, that they flew from the military airbase, and that all those crafts were engineered in Utah. Wegman also claimed that he had contacted Mulder because he had seen Mulder's file and had learned that the FBI agent had "chased" UFOs for years.

Shortly thereafter, two guys and a girl happened to find a white mailbox that one of the guys excitedly believed was the famed black mailbox of UFO lore and that the mailbox had been painted white in an effort to hide it. The same guy said he knew another male who, apparently, had seen five UFOs in one night. The area where the white mailbox could be found was one of the first places where the warp reversed, as the anomaly snapped back, erasing memories since the UFO crash and removing some but not all of the warp's effects. (TXF: "Dreamland II")

1999

Following the discovery of several extraterrestrial artifacts on Ivory Coast, West Africa in 1999, a craft that had come ashore was found by African men in the same area where the artifacts had been uncovered. Scully traveled to the Ivory Coast to investigate these discoveries and saw the craft, shortly after it had been found. (TXF: "Biogenesis") Scully tried to keep the finding of the craft a secret but news of its existence nevertheless passed to several people, including Amina Ngebe, a Professor of Biology at the University of Ivory Coast, and Dr. Barnes, the head of the biology department at American University who strongly believed that the craft was extraterrestrial in origin. (TXF: "The Sixth Extinction", "Biogenesis") Excavation of the craft revealed that its markings, when deciphered, were words from several human religious texts and a complete map of the human genome. These bizarre findings seemed to connect the craft to the 'Panspermia' theory that human life is extraterrestrial in origin. Several strange occurrences similar to those described in the Bible (a swarm of insects, a sea of blood) along with other phenomena occurred during the excavation. After Dr. Barnes apparently became sick and Scully advised that he lie down, the doctor suspected that Scully and Ngebe wanted to take the credit for the finding of the craft and threatened them that the discovery was his. Investigating strange phenomena, Barnes found that the craft appeared to be able to reanimate dead matter. Scully and Ngebe managed to incapacitate Barnes and leave. Dr. Barnes later died trying to bring back a human using the craft's power. (TXF: "The Sixth Extinction") Ngebe and the police force would later return and find his body. The craft still appears to be submerged in the coast and has not been seen or heard of again.

2000

While in his bedroom one night in 2000, Jason McPeck, an eleven-year-old boy suffering from cancer, observed a bright light from a UFO that descended from the sky outside his house. The silhouettes of walking men appeared from under the light. Having apparently been cured of his cancer as a result of this encounter, Jason McPeck told Agent Scully, when she later interviewed him, that he had been visited by angels who had looked like men and had come from the sky in "a ball of light" but the Cigarette Smoking Man later claimed to be responsible for curing Jason McPeck's cancer, using a microchip inserted at the back of the boy's neck, and Scully saw evidence of this. (TXF: "En Ami")

By 2000, there had been years of sightings and eyewitnesses accounts of UFOs and aliens but people still refused to believe in these things, due to a lack of real proof. (TXF: "Within")

In May 2000, a UFO collided with a Navy jet fighter and consequently crashed in Oregon, landing twenty miles outside Bellefleur, in a forest where it initially continued to burn but soon began rebuilding itself. Although the Navy quickly recovered their craft, several unsuccessful attempts to find and recover the UFO were made. Individuals who searched for the UFO included Alex Krycek, under the guidance of the Cigarette Smoking Man, Richie Szalay - who AD Skinner would later describe as a "UFO nut" - and his friend, Gary Cory, as well as Mulder and Scully. (TXF: "Requiem", "This is Not Happening") The Cigarette Smoking Man regarded the UFO as a singular opportunity to rebuild the Syndicate's Project and claimed that recovery of the craft was all-important, as possessing the UFO equated to possessing the answer to "all things, every possible imaginable question." Even though Scully and Mulder did not bring the UFO back to the FBI with them, AD Skinner believed it would still be possible for Mulder to present a UFO to his superiors. To this end, the Assistant Director facilitated the agents pooling their search efforts with those of Alex Krycek, Marita Covarrubias (who had also been working for the Cigarette Smoking Man) and the three Lone Gunmen; this collaboration was successful in locating the UFO.

After Mulder headed to the site of the craft with AD Skinner, he was taken aboard the ship (which was now airborne in a position only slightly above the ground). Just prior to Mulder's abduction, there were at least three instances of UFO activity and reported alien abductions in the Pacific Northwest. Abducted at the same time as Mulder were several abductees including Deputies Ray Hoese and Billy Miles, as well as Gary Cory. (TXF: "Requiem") Theresa Hoese (who Billy Miles had abducted years previously, when her surname had been "Nemman", but who was now married to Deputy Hoese) was also taken aboard the UFO. (TXF: "Requiem", "Pilot") The craft was occupied by at least six alien bounty hunters, intent on covering up evidence of aliens and UFOs. (TXF: "Without") As AD Skinner watched, the UFO launched and departed the area, a sight the Assistant Director subsequently refused to deny having seen. (TXF: "Requiem", "Within") According to Richie Szalay in 2001, not many UFO sightings were reported after this incident in Oregon. (TXF: "This is Not Happening")

Following Mulder's abduction, UFO activity took place all over the southwestern states and the specific craft he was on headed to the Arizona desert. (TXF: "Within") There, at least one alien bounty hunter unsuccessfully attempted to abduct Gibson Praise; the bounty hunter's efforts were hampered by the FBI, who eventually killed the alien. (TXF: "Without") Meanwhile, the UFO carrying Mulder moved at night from a stationary position not far from the Burro Bend Cafe to a position farther into the desert. (TXF: "Within", "Without") An FBI helicopter landed near the UFO but left the area, not long after. (TXF: "Without")

2001

For a period of two weeks in 2001, many UFO sightings were made in Montana. These sightings began suddenly and Richie Szalay, who frequently visited internet chat rooms to talk about such topics as sightings, followed the news to Montana, hoping to find his abducted friend, Gary Cory.

At 12:58am one morning in 2001, the UFO that Mulder was aboard was chased along Fanning Ranch Road in Helena, Montana, by Richie Szalay in a car but it quickly passed over a hill, traveling into a big field beyond sight of Richie Szalay, and left Theresa Hoese's unconscious body on the ground. This UFO encounter was reported to the FBI one night, soon thereafter. When learning of the encounter, Scully noted that she had drawers full of reports that began with accounts of events very similar to a young man chasing a bright object across the sky, tracking the UFO all the way to a big field where it disappeared but where the youth reportedly saw an alien.

After Theresa Hoese was taken from St. Jean's Hospital by Jeremiah Smith, Special Agent Monica Reyes - who suspected that Theresa Hoese had been the victim of a UFO group or cult she believed Mulder had joined and that the purpose of the group was related to recent well-known news stories about transport to a mothership, and the idea of a giant motherwheel or Heaven's Gate - saw the UFO carrying Mulder, while she was driving in Montana. The UFO passed over a hill, into a field beyond Reyes' sight, where it left the deceased bodies of Gary Cory, who was subsequently recovered by the FBI, and Fox Mulder, who was taken by Jeremiah Smith and accomplice Travis Clayton Moberly. Special Agent John Doggett - who, for the past few months had been searching with Scully for a break on the case involving Mulder's disappearance - was highly skeptical that spaceships were involved and referred to Reyes' account of her UFO sighting as "mumbo jumbo".

According to Travis Clayton Moberly and Jeremiah Smith, they would help recover abductees after the ships came in and, after FBI personnel finally located Mulder's body in a wooded area near a compound belonging to Smith and Moberly, Scully saw a UFO that flew over the compound and abducted Jeremiah Smith from within. (TXF: "This is Not Happening")

Later in 2001, Billy Miles' apparently deceased body was found floating fifty miles off-shore, in the Atlantic Ocean, off Cape Fear, North Carolina. After being revived and secretly transformed into a supersoldier, he claimed that a memory of having been aboard a spacecraft or ship was one of the few recollections he still had. (TXF: "DeadAlive")

Designs, Systems & Capabilities

Designs of Crafts Sighted

The two UFOs that Mulder and Scully watched above Ellens Air Base in 1993 resembled two small, circular lights in the sky. Their design inspired Scully to uncertainly posit the notion that they were actually lasers, being shot from the ground and reflecting up off the clouds.

The UFOs that Mulder alone saw inside Ellens Air Base in 1993 were both dark and triangular in design. The first craft he saw had many bright lights that shone down on him, in a moving pattern. The second UFO was only partially visible, as the craft was shrouded by large sheets of plastic draped from the ceiling of the hangar where it was stored. (TXF: "Deep Throat")

Most alien spacecraft seem to be either triangle-shaped, or disk/saucer shaped, and of varying sizes. All of them tend to have an aperture on their underside, in the center, which emits light and seems capable of lifting things in to the craft. Other lights are seen on them, though what purpose these serve is unclear. Both of the ancient spacecraft found were triangular in shape.

Designs in Depictions

The "I Want to Believe" poster on Mulder's wall.

In his office at the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington, D.C., Agent Mulder would often display photographs of UFOs on the walls. A poster on one wall proclaimed "I Want to Believe", under the image of a disc-shaped UFO. (TXF: "Pilot", et al.)

In 1993, a sign outside "The Flying Saucer" diner, in Southwest Idaho, included a painted, cartoon depiction of another disc-shaped UFO, slightly higher than the rest of the sign. The UFO was connected to the main body of the sign by a thick, yellow trail emitted from the base of the craft.

Behind the bar in "The Flying Saucer" diner, four grainy photographs of UFOs were affixed to the bottom of a shelf, including one Ladonna claimed to have taken of the craft she had allegedly seen while she had been taking out the garbage. This image was clearer than the others and the UFO it featured, a dark triangle, was larger than those in the other images. Ladonna revealed she was selling limited edition prints of this image at twenty dollars each, but only had five left, before Mulder bought one. Emil later claimed that the UFO in this picture looked exactly like the crafts from Ellens Air Base he had seen but, while alone with Mulder, Scully revealed her suspicion that, even if Mulder had shown Emil an image of a flying hamburger, Emil would still have claimed that the UFOs he had seen looked exactly like the picture. Shortly after, Mulder showed Scully a black-and-white photograph that supposedly featured the UFO that had crashed in Roswell in 1947. Like the photograph that Ladonna had given him, this picture contained a dark triangle. Mulder was confident in his belief that there was a remarkable resemblance between the two photographs. (TXF: "Deep Throat")

An article that first alerted Mulder and Scully to the abduction of Ruby Morris was published in an edition of The National Comet. A picture on the front cover of the publication included a black-and-white line image representing the abduction, in which a saucer-shaped UFO could be seen, shining a light down on a camper, standing outside a tent.

The UFO sighting made in 1967 by the pilot of a National Weather Service plane as well as four Girl Scouts and their Den Mother was photographed by one of the girls, using an Instamatic camera. In 1993, Mulder showed Scully a light-blasted, digitally enhanced enlargement of the badly composed image. She initially wondered whether the photograph had been taken by the pilot, before Mulder clarified its origin. The UFO in this picture was oblong-shaped and was located above the tops of trees in the image.

In 1993, the bartender at the Pennsylvania Pub had a tattoo of a flying saucer that had a red and white top dome while the bottom was mostly a metallic gray. Mulder commented that the image made "a nice tattoo". (TXF: "Conduit")

Systems & Capabilities

Power Supply

In 1994, Freddie claimed that the UFOs seen over the Hatton Power Plant were drawn to electric power. (TXF: "E.B.E.")

In 1997, Max Fenig was involved in the theft of what was believed to be an alien power source, resulting in the destruction of a passenger jet. The exact nature of the device was never confirmed. (TXF: "Max")

Propulsion

Shortly after seeing Mulder's UFO poster upon first entering his basement office in 1992, Dana Scully told him that she did not believe in the existence of extraterrestrials, as conventional wisdom held that, "given the distances needed to travel from the far reaches of space, the energy requirements would exceed a spacecraft's capabilities." (TXF: "Pilot")

In "The Flying Saucer" diner in 1993, Ladonna claimed that the craft she had seen while taking out the garbage hovered and was "quiet like a hummingbird." Similarly, Emil later claimed that the UFOs from Ellens Air Base would occasionally approach at a low altitude, activate a noisy braking system and then silently hover.

The two UFOs above Ellens Air Base that both Mulder and Scully watched seemed to dance across the sky at incredible speed, leading Scully to dispute Mulder's belief that the UFOs were aircraft, stating that, "Aircraft can't maneuver like that". (TXF: "Deep Throat")

Weaponry

The UFO article Scully viewed in 1993, before she and Mulder headed to Ellens Air Base, included a section of text that read "UFO technology with stealth weaponry".

Zoe later claimed that, on one occasion, aircraft from Ellens Air Base had dropped bombs. (TXF: "Deep Throat")

Invisibility

Most of the ships seen after the dissolution of the Syndicate in 1999 featured a cloaking device. Presumably, the ships seen previously shared this technology, but it was not known about until 2000. (TXF: "Requiem"). In 1993, in Townsend (Wisconsin State) a UFO-crash surviving alien was able to remain invisible. Presumably he had a some kind of portable cloaking device that suggests that the crashed UFO also shared this technology. (TXF: "Fallen Angel").

In 2016, a man-made UFO/ARV ("Alien Reproduction Vehicle") also featured a cloaking device. This UFO was in a hangar and was disappeared way remote control.. According to scientists working in the hangar, and the well-known showman Tad O'Malley, the ARVs have had this technology since 1947, but this information has not been confirmed. (TXF: "My Struggle")

Self-Repair

At least one alien spacecraft was capable of repairing itself, according to Alex Krycek. (TXF: "Requiem"). It seems that the alien bounty hunter's UFO was also capable of self-repair. In januar,1995 the crew of the Alta research vessel saw that the UFO falled into the Beaufort Sea and exploded, but later the UFO was able make inoperable a nuclear submarine. (TXF: "Colony"/"End Game").

The Cigarette Smoking Man's words suggests that only a special type of alien spacecrafts are capable of self-repair (TXF: "Requiem"), presumably with alien nanotechnology. These include even likely the ancient alien ships, the so-called "origin of life" ships, which were found in Africa (Ivory Coast) and near the Canadian border. (TXF: "Biogenesis"/"Amor Fati" I-II., "Provenance"/"Providence").

Associated Phenomena

During Billy Miles' consecutive abductions of both Karen Swenson and Theresa Nemman in Oregon in 1992, a bizarre dustdevil momentarily swirled around each abductee as the bright light from the UFO engulfed the area and then faded. After the abduction of Karen Swenson but prior to that of Theresa Nemman, Scully discovered strange dirt on the floor of the same forest where the light from the UFO had appeared.

Shortly after finding that nine minutes had gone missing during their own encounter with the bright, white light while driving, Mulder told Scully that abductees and people who had made UFO sightings had also often reported unexplained time loss. Conventional science, however, held that time was a universal invariance and could not just disappear. Other unexplained phenomena the agents encountered about the same time were a compass in the car strangely spinning in different directions and the car losing all power, including the vehicle's brakes and steering; the car would not start when Mulder tried turning the key but the vehicle powered up, seemingly of its own accord, soon after. This incident occurred on a section of highway where Scully and Mulder had previously driven, upon arriving in Oregon. Mulder had spray-painted the road with a large orange "X" after the radio in the car he and Scully had been traveling in had abruptly become active and had begun searching through radio bands without either of the agents controlling it. (TXF: "Pilot")

Mulder also implies a relation between the area's UFO activity and turbulence experienced by the 747 he and Scully take to Oregon, moments before the aircraft lands.

Pilots assigned to Ellens Air Base exhibited abnormal behavioral problems. About two years prior to his disappearance in 1993, Colonel Budahas, a test pilot who had likely never washed out of anything in his life and had been presented with a presidential commendation, developed a rash under his arms that he and his wife, Anita, noticed. Even though they thought the rash was an innocent allergic reaction, Colonel Budahas' entire personality subsequently seemed to become more crazy and unpredictable; he started to do things like sprinkle Tetrameal-D all over his food, at a dinner party he and others had. When his wife tried to talk to him about these things, he would get extremely angry, yell at their children - Josh and Leslie - for no reason and then shake, like he was having a seizure.

Shortly before his disappearance, Colonel Budahas reportedly suffered a psychotic episode, violated base security procedure and commandeered a military vehicle. After he barricaded himself in his home, Military Police, who believed he was armed, raided his home and found him sitting trembling in a corner of a room, wearing only his underwear, and his skin had a crimson red, oozing rash that looked as if it had been burned and blistered. Colonel Budahas was subsequently hospitalized but members of the military, including a Colonel Kissel, refused to make any comment on him at all. After Colonel Budahas was returned home, Scully suspected that his strange behavior was due to a nervous breakdown but Mulder argued his belief that pilots such as Colonel Budahas and were physiologically incapable of dealing with the stress of flying such sensitive and advanced aircraft, of doing the kinds of maneuvers the agents had witnessed when they had seen the two UFOs above the airbase, performed at the extremely fast speed the agents had seen the maneuvers being done.

Similar to their refusal to remark on Colonel Budahas during his disappearance, the military, in regard to the six pilots who had gone missing from Ellens Air Base since 1963, would say only that the pilots had accepted the risks of flying experimental aircraft.

Like Colonel Budahas, Jim McLennan was another test pilot who was assigned to the base but started acting strangely almost two years before Mulder and Scully investigated the pilots in 1993. When the agents visited him, they saw him pull strands of hair from his closely shaved head and tie them to a hook used for flyfishing. His wife stated that she thought her husband acted strangely due to stress and claimed that the military had given him "plenty of therapy and treatment". Even though Scully later reinforced the idea that Jim McLennan's odd behavior was due to extreme stress by suggesting that he was suffering from a syndrome called stereotypy, Mulder reminded her that pilots were supposed to thrive on pressure, not fold under it. (TXF: "Deep Throat")

Following Colonel Budahas' return, he demonstrates memory loss but Mulder attributes this condition to the military having selectively wiped parts of the colonel's memory rather than attributing it to the UFOs flown by the military. Mulder later demonstrates memory loss himself, after being captured on Ellens Air Base and being experimented on, injected with an unknown substance and having drops forced into his eyes. This supports his theory explaining the loss of memory he and Colonel Budahas experience.

Moments before Ruby Morris was abducted near Lake Okobogee in 1993, she was sleeping with her brother, Kevin Morris, while their mother, Darlene, slept in a cabover camper nearby. The camper shook with a tremor that started as a mild tremble and grew in intensity, while light started to flood through the camper's windows, to become a rocking quiver until both the light and the shaking dissipated. When Darlene Morris tried to leave the camper moments after her daughter's abduction, she burned her hand on the exit door, which was searing hot, but finally managed to open the door using an oven mitt.

The top of the camper's exterior was later discovered to show evidence of blistering heat, as the paint on the roof had been charred black and could be easily crumbled into ash. Similarly, the leaves on the treetops near Lake Okobogee had been burned away, leaving only thick trunks; this was evidence of either extreme heat, or an electrical storm. On the waterfront, grains of sand had solidified to become a shard of glass, as they would at a temperature of twenty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit. After Ruby Morris was returned, Agents Mulder and Scully found that Ruby's medical records showed there was both an attendant reduction in the lymphocyte population and a release of glucocorticoids, symptoms of weightlessness similar to imbalances reported by shuttle astronauts.

During the duration of Ruby Morris' abduction, binary sequence handwritten by Kevin Morris is decoded as encrypted contents including a classified defense satellite transmission, the illustration Da Vinci's Universal Man, a DNA double helix, a section of music from the Brandenburg Concertos, some lines from the Koran and a Shakespearean sonnet. Mulder and Scully later find sheets of binary sequence on the floor of the Morris residence, arranged in such a way as to resemble a large picture of Ruby Morris' face. The source of this digitized information is not directly established as being a UFO but, after Kevin Morris claims to be receiving the information from static on a television, Mulder comes to the conclusion that Kevin is some kind of conduit, link or connection to whoever or whatever has taken Ruby and, if there was an abduction, that Kevin was "touched" in some way.

The bartender at the Pennsylvania Pub in 1993 had a deformed ear that looked like the skin had been badly burned, but he kept it hidden under his hair. After Mulder entered the pub with Scully and claimed to the bartender that he himself was a nonbeliever in flying saucers, the bartender showed his ear to the agents as an example of the kind of things that might change Mulder's mind and told the agents he had gotten "a killer sunburn in the middle of the night". (TXF: "Conduit")

Another type of older alien spacecraft has been seen at least twice. This type is at least several million years old, and features writing engraved on the hull. The writing contains passages from religious texts and excerpts from world mythology, as well as scientific data about human origins, evolution, and genetics. One such ship was discovered on the Ivory coast, buried beneath the sand on a beach, while another was found buried on the Canadian side of the U.S.-Canada border. These ships, and even components of them, were shown to be extremely powerful. Even rubbings of the writings etched in to the hull, or images of pieces of the ship, could have a profound effect on certain individuals. Particularly those whom had previously been exposed to alien experimentation or the black oil/purity virus. Associated phenomenon include hallucinations, illusions, strange animal activity, and the onset of dangerous over-stimulation in the frontal lobe, as occurred in the case of agent Mulder. In addition, a shard of the hull was shown to be able to move under its own power, by both spinning and flying across a room. (TXF: "Biogenesis")

This type of vessel was, in at least once case, shown to be capable of operation even after millions of years of disuse. This second craft of this type sported similar etchings, but of slightly different material. It, and a component from it, were shown to react to the presence of William. A piece of this craft was also capable of levitation, and was abl to heal injuries. It was capable of killing people of its own volition, using some sort of fire-based method. That it was able to target a crowd of individuals yet specifically sheild William from any harm suggests that it may have had some degree of intelligence. (TXF: "Provenance", "Providence")

Like the super-soldiers, at least some alien craft were vulnerable to disruption when exposed to magnetite. According to the Cigarette Smoking Man, the craft that crashed in Roswell was brought down by magnetite. It is unclear if this was accidental due to the craft drifting too close to a deposit of the ore, or if magnetite was actually used to intentially attack it.

Appearances

• TXF:
  • "Pilot" (Season 1)
  • "Deep Throat"
  • "Conduit"
  • "Fallen Angel"
  • "E.B.E."
  • "Little Green Men" (Season 2)
  • "Duane Barry"
  • "Ascension"
  • "José Chung's From Outer Space" (Season 3)
  • "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man" (Season 4)
  • "Tempus Fugit"
  • "Max"
  • "Patient X" (Season 5)
  • "The Red and the Black"
• The X-Files Movie
• TXF:
  • "Dreamland" (Season 6)
  • "Dreamland II"
  • "One Son"
  • "Biogenesis"
  • "The Sixth Extinction" (Season 7)
  • "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati"
  • "Requiem"
  • "Within" (Season 8)
  • "Without"
  • "This is Not Happening"
  • "Provenance" (Season 9)
  • "Providence"
  • "My Struggle" (Season 10)
  • "Founder's Mutation"

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