CELEBRATING UFO WEEK ON BLAZE TV
HERE AT UAPMedia UK we love a good UFO documentary so we’ve been looking forward to Blaze TV’s UFO Week, a full seven days of programming dedicated to the subject of UFOs, since we saw the broadcast schedule little over a month ago.
Now a bi-annual occurrence, this year’s line up features a couple of hard hitting documentaries premiering for the first time on free-to-air UK television, most notably the revealing documentary The Phenomenon from film maker James Fox and Westall 66: A Surburban UFO Mystery, one of the most famous unexplained multiple witness UFO sightings. It’s not only long form documentaries that are essential viewing though as the six-episode series Roswell: The First Witness will also air throughout the week.
In the UK, we still bemoan the lack of coverage that the UFO subject receives in the press, or indeed, when it does get coverage it is still handled with a great deal of scepticism, tongue-in-cheek and eye-rolling snarky comments about ‘little green men’, so it is refreshing that a large television broadcaster is facing the topic head on.
While this isn’t the first #UFOWeek that Blaze has aired, this time it feels a little different. As we are more than aware, the overall global attitude toward UFOs (or UAP if you want to acknowledge it’s proper uptodate moniker) has shifted in the past few years and it’s becoming a more serious topic of conversation.
Space journalist and tv host, Sarah Cruddas. ©SKYHistory
Recently, we had the opportunity to talk with popular space journalist, international tv and podcast host and award-winning author, Sarah Cruddas, fresh from hosting duties on UFO Conspiracies with Red Dwarf’s Craig Charles on the History Channel, about the positive message Blaze is sending out in dedicating time to the subject.
“I think there’s less of a stigma associated now because if you go back to Project Blue Book, which was happening during the Cold War, it was more of a disinformation campaign. This was about two superpowers trying to be the first into space and eventually land on the moon but there’s also rapid development in military technology, people seeing things in the night sky which turned out to be advanced military technology which hadn’t been released back then. Now there’s less of a stigma. Military personnel are coming forward.
“When you get multiple witnesses and you get credible witnesses, we need to start taking things seriously. When these experienced pilots see something they cannot explain, we need to listen to them because they know the skies better than anyone. I think what’s happened as well over the last few decades is that humans are no longer earth bound. The UFO subject is no longer just a niche community. More and more people are seeing things we can’t explain in the sky. This is what I always love with UFO Week because there’s such an appetite for what else is out there, people are looking up at the night sky, I think particularly since the pandemic started over two years ago now, more people have been wondering about what else could be out there?
“I’m so excited for UFO Week, the shows they’ve got and the shows they have been showing are incredible. They’re absolutely perfect for getting people involved and raising awareness of that and trying to dispel that stigma. This whole community is a growing community which is inspiring other people and governments to take it seriously and broadcasters are taking it seriously now.”
Sarah’s new podcast, with co-host Luke Moore, Where’s My Jetpack?, is available on most streaming platforms and upcoming episodes will be examining our previous quests for extra-terrestrial contact and communication, as well as asking why we haven’t built our own flying saucers yet and why we’re still waiting on those tourist trips to the moon and elsewhere in the solar system on star cruisers, as we were promised in yesteryear. Sarah’s latest book, Look Up, is available at all good real and online bookstores. An extended interview with Sarah will be published in the forthcoming issue of Shadows Of Your Mind magazine.
Returning to the upcoming programming during #UFOWeek, there are some particular highlights we’d like to pull out as essential viewing.
The Phenomenon
Directed by James Fox, and running at not far under two hours is, in the opinion of many established names in the larger UFO community, the documentary to show people as an introduction to the UAP subject. The educational aspect in terms of the history of the official government knowledge of the alleged cover-up of the existence of UAP makes it an ideal starting point for those wishing for a crash course. Naturally beginning in the 1940s and the advent of modern ufology, the film takes us on a whistle-stop tour through the decades right up to the release and official acknowledgement of the infamous UAP trinity of US Navy videos, FLIR, GO-FAST and GIMBAL. James Fox has produced one of the best acknowledged documentaries on the subject in years and the UK premiere is the perfect kick-off for UFO Week. The UK tv premiere of The Phenomenon airs Monday, March 28th at 9pm.
MIRAGE MEN
While talking about government conspiracies and the great cover-up of UAP, we must also consider the role played by the psychological operations of intelligence agencies, known to infiltrate UFO groups (the CIA was reported to have infiltrated the NICAP group in the 1950s) extending their reach to various social media platforms and online forums today. No more is this evident than in the documentary Mirage Men (2013), which tells of how the US Air Force and government agencies have manipulated peoples beliefs on various facets of the the UAP subject for decades. From extra-terrestrial contact experiences, disinformation campaigns regarding secret underground bases and black projects - sometimes littered with actual facts - The Mirage Men shows the lengths taken by top officials in using counterintelligence to keep the truth hidden under a veil of stigmatism in the eyes of the general public and press. The UK tv premiere of Mirage Men airs Tuesday, March 29th at 9pm.
Westall ‘66: A Suburban UFO Mystery
The events which took place on the morning of April 6th, 1966 in South Clayton, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, will always be remembered as one of the best corroborated cases involving multiple witnesses of a ufo sighting in the history of the subject. Shane Ryan’s incredible documentary Westall ‘66: A Suburban UFO Mystery (2010) investigates how the event first unfolded over Westall High School, was witnessed by excitable school children and teachers alike as well as numerous other witnesses in the local area. One of Australia’s prominent investigative journalists, Ross Coulthart, took some time out of a hectic weekend schedule to fill in some of the details for us from when the discs were first spotted.
“South Clayton where this happened, was essentially a very busy area of Melbourne and hundreds of people saw what happened that day. It was a clear blue sky day, around 10.30 in the morning and there were hundreds of kids standing looking up at these elliptical disc shaped objects, a trio of them, hovering overhead. They’re all screaming, pointing, looking up, there’s a science teacher with them, Andrew Greenwood, another teacher at a distance with a camera, and nearby there are civilians hanging out their washing, working in market gardens adjacent to the school. Behind the school is a big open area of bushland called The Grange, where the naughty kids all went to have a cigarette or a have bit of snog, basically. So they all knew this place and as they are watching, one of these crafts starts to wobble a bit and it sinks below the trees in the bushland. A number of the kids start sprinting towards the school fence and try and climb it while the teachers are anxiously instructing them to stay inside the school grounds.
“There’s a couple of children, one of them, Terry Peck, as cheeky today as she was back then, clearly remembers running through the bush and coming to a clearing and there, slap bang in front of her, is a craft, hovering. It’s not touching the ground, it’s hovering and she can feel warmth coming from it as she puts out her hand. She recalls another little girl who’d run a bit ahead of her, who’d fainted and was lying on the ground and there are multiple witnesses who describe her being taken away to hospital in an ambulance later that afternoon. As Terry saw it, she describes how she stood there, looking at this object for a minute or so, and then it slowly rose, and all the time she can feel the heat from it and then it cantilevers to a 45 degree angle and without making a noise, it’s back up with its chums in the sky, and then all three of them zip off to the edge of the horizon. Eventually, when they went back to the school they were told in an assembly that under no circumstances could they talk about what they’d seen. Little kids being little kids, of course, ignored the warning and they went running back to the Grange after school and sneaked through the bushes. By that stage there was this massive military operation going on where the whole site had been cordoned off by soldiers with guns, there were people using Geiger counters, soil was lifted into the back of trucks and taken away and there were these indentations in the grass where the grass had been flattened This security operation went on for days, there was an exhaustive investigation into whatever it is that had come down at that site.
Artists impression of the Westall students reaction at seeing the UFO over their school.
“People often think these were just ten year old kids making it up, sitting around in the playground, getting hysterical and making up a story about UFOs. But there were other civilian witnesses, it was a rising working class suburb of mainly British immigrants and it’s quite breathtaking that 56 years later we have had no explanation from the Australian government ever. Despite my numerous attempts to elicit a response from the Defense Department or the Air Force, nobody has ever even tried to explain what happened at Westall, they’ve just stuck their head in the sand and ignored it.” The UK tv premiere of Westall 66: A Suburban UFO Mystery airs Wednesday, March 30th at 9pm.
Ross Coulthart is the author of the book In Plain Sight which is available at all good real and online bookstores. Ross is also the co-host of the excellent podcast Need To Know with author and screenwriter Bryce Zabel (Dark Skies tv series). An extended interview with Ross in which he goes into more depth about his Westall investigation will be published in the forthcoming issue of Shadows Of Your Mind magazine.
On The Trail Of UFOs: Dark Sky
Our final recommendation comes from independent production company Small Town Monsters. This follow-up to their celebrated six-part series On The Trail of UFOs… narrated by paranormal researcher and radio host, Shannon Legro, focuses on eye witness reports of strange craft and encounters in West Virginia, USA. If you have never seen a Small Town Monsters productions you’re in for a treat as director Seth Breedlove captures the atmosphere of these sleepy, seemingly innocuous, little industrial towns and the folk that live there. Each witness they encounter along the trip tells their story with such genuine conviction that you can almost imagine standing alongside the witnesses as the vents unfold. There’s an intriguing link with the local mining towns and sightings taking place around many disused locations but it’s the definitely the informative contributions from witnesses and knowledgable researchers alike that make this essential Saturday night viewing to round up UFO Week. The UK tv premiere of On The Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky airs on Saturday, April 2nd at 9pm.
As previously mentioned, with a whole week of evenings entertainment lined up on Blaze TV you can guarantee there’ll be something of interest for everybody, and it’s a testament to the channel to have this volume of quality programming available for a UK audience. Hopefully it will encourage people with just a passing interest in the UFO subject to take a closer look, ask a few more questions and put pressure on our government and mainstream media to take this subject a bit more seriously in future and end UAP secrecy.
The full schedule for UFO Week is as follows:
Monday, March 28th
9pm - The Phenomenon
11.15pm - WW2 Mystery Foo Fighters (Ep 1/2)
12.15am - Roswell: The First Witness (Ep 1/6)
Tuesday, March 29th
9pm - Mirage Men
11pm - WW2 Mystery Foo Fighters (Ep 2/2)
12am - Roswell: The First Witness (Ep 2/6)
Wednesday, March 30th
9pm - Westall 66: A Suburban UFO Mystery
10.05pm - Breaking Mysterious: Aliens (Ep 1/6)
11.05pm - Weird or What? Aliens with William Shatner
12.05am - Roswell: The First Witness (Ep 3/6)
Thursday, March 31st
9pm - Alien Deception: The Biggest Lie in History
10.30pm - UFO Town
11.30pm - Roswell: The First Witness (Ep 4/6)
Friday, April 1st
9pm - The Observers
11.30pm - Indistinguishable From Magic
1.00am - 12.05am - Roswell: The First Witness (Ep 5/6)
Saturday, April 2nd
9pm - On The Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky
2am - Roswell: The First Witness (Ep 6/6)
Sunday, April 3rd
9pm - Extraordinary: The Revelations
#UFOWeek on @BLAZETVUK commences tonight (Monday 28th March) from 9pm, until Sunday 3 April and features new UK and free TV Premieres every single night!
Blaze is available on Freeview 64, Freesat 162, Sky 164 and Virgin Media 216.
