UFOs in Santa Barbara ― Do You Believe?

UFOs have been in the news a lot lately, and not because of what is happening in the sky, but because of what is happening on Earth. It has been called a “soft disclosure,” meaning the military is leaking bits of information on UFOs to the public rather than making a major announcement and causing a panic.

This April, the U.S. Navy acknowledged guidelines for how their pilots can report encounters with anomalous ships without fear of reprisal. This comes after a New York Times article about numerous sightings of Tic Tac–shaped UFOs around the USS Nimitz south of San Diego. According to a spokesman for naval operations, there has been an overall “uptick of interaction with aerial phenomenon” since 2014. There have been less controlled responses, too. Over two million people have signed up on Facebook to storm Area 51 on September 20 to “see them aliens.”

Santa Barbara County is no stranger to sightings and played a part in the famous Battle of Los Angeles. Two days after the Japanese shelled the Ellwood Pier near Goleta in 1942, and just a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a giant ship appeared over Los Angeles. According to UFO researcher David Marler in his book Triangular Ships, it was first spotted over Santa Maria before heading south on an inland path. Already jittery, and thinking it was the Japanese, the U.S. military fired 1,440 anti-aircraft shells on the mysterious ship. The Japanese denied having any planes over the U.S. The event has never been fully explained, though a referral to weather balloons was made.

Multiple UFO sightings have been reported since the atomic bomb was developed in the 1940s. Yet there have been no reports of actual attacks or threats to wipe out our civilization. According to many who have studied UFOs, extraterrestrials have worked to stop us from self-annihilation. They point to three alleged incidents of UFOs shutting down our nuclear missile bases. In 1967, Lieutenant Robert Salas, a commanding officer at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, reported that a hovering UFO disabled 10 missile silos on his watch. He said he saw it as an anti–nuclear war message.

A similar incident occurred at Vandenberg Air Force Base in 1964, when a test missile was destroyed shortly after launch. Lieutenant Robert Jacobs came forward in 1982 to describe a film he took of a space object approach the missile and shoot a plasma-type beam at the dummy warhead from four different angles. The warhead then fell off into the ocean. After he submitted the film to his superior officers, one called him in and asked if he and his “boys were screwing around up there.” The officer ordered Jacobs to say nothing of the film or the incident. Jacobs later spoke out because he felt unjustly treated and that “they” were telling us “to stop messing with nuclear weapons.”

Hundreds of unidentified submersible objects (USOs) have reportedly emerged from the waters between Santa Barbara and Santa Monica, and it is alleged that an undersea alien base has existed there for decades. Preston Dennett, author of the books UFOs Over California and Undersea UFO Base, has documented more than 50 water sightings, claiming that in the 1970s families would head to the Point Dume beach at night to watch the multicolored show for entertainment.

An organization formed in 1969 to give people a platform for reporting UFO or USO sightings. The Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, tallies reports from across the globe. The monthly total for July 2019 shows 563 reports of UFOs in the United States; California had the most with 68 sightings. When entering “Santa Barbara” in its database, 29 cases between November 2000 and December 2018 appear.

MUFON trains investigators to interview those who call or write about a UFO sighting and tries to assess the validity of their claims. One such investigator, Richard Browman, lives in Santa Barbara. Browman covers a triangular area from Thousand Oaks to Lompoc to Bakersfield, and he has handled one or more cases a month since 2014. In order to label a sighting truly “unknown,” Browman has to find some credibility factor in the person’s background, talk to a second witness, or have some corroborating evidence.

He tells of one case from a man who lived near Point Mugu. The man said he had heard a telepathic message to “go outside and look.” When he did, he and his family reportedly saw five or six red orbs come down the coast and hover over the naval base. The orbs danced around and then sped off. The fellow later learned that the base had gone on alert and scrambled its jets. Other local cases include anomalous lights around two Vandenberg test missiles, military jets chasing a cruising UFO over Cuyama, speeding UFOs off Leadbetter Beach, and a Bigfoot report south of Nira Campground.

While MUFON focuses on the verification of UFO sightings, other voices have become influential in the field of ufology. Investigations have shifted from focusing on the nuts and bolts of ships to studying what they are and why they arrived. Plus, more contactees are speaking out. Former soldiers have come forward with fantastic stories of secret space programs and direct contact with aliens. Rumors of pyramids, ancient civilizations, and even giant ships under two miles of ice may soon be verified as the Antarctic ice continues to melt, ufologists say. The origin of these ships go back to the Ancient Builder Race, inhabitants of Earth that preceded Adam and Eve, says Michael Salla in his book Antarctica’s Hidden History.

The MUFON Conference in Irvine celebrated its 50th anniversary this July, and more conferences are taking place as well, including one in Ventura on August 23-25. The event is put on by the Dimensions of Disclosure organization headed by Corey Goode, who claims he was part of a secret space program. Other upcoming conferences in Southern California are the Portal to Ascension in Irvine in October, the Conscious Life Expo in Los Angeles in February 2020, and the hugely popular Contact in the Desert in Palm Springs in early June 2020. UFO Con in Los Angeles in mid-June brings together media stars and UFO celebrity speakers. 

My own introduction to UFOs began with an unexpected visit to Roswell, New Mexico. I decided to check out the UFO Congress, held in Phoenix, to see what it was all about. The Experiencer sessions, where people could relate their encounters or abductions, convinced me that there was truth out there. These were normal people who had extraordinary things happen to them. I became less of a skeptic and more of a believer with every conference I attended.

People can learn of all the UFO activity on our planet by going to a conference or reading one of the many books on the subject. They can join the disclosure movement and be part of the future. As researcher Brooks Agnew said at the last Contact in the Desert, “All aliens come here because we are the greatest show in the universe.”