Project Archives
Newspaper Clippings
Before the internet, before social media, before cable news, unidentified objects in the sky made the newspaper. Local reporters wrote up what witnesses told them, editors chose the headlines, and wire services carried the strangest stories across borders. What survives in these pages is the raw public record.
This collection draws from two primary sources: Australia's Trove digital archive, operated by the National Library of Australia, and the UFO Newsclipping Service, compiled by Lucius Farish from 1969 to 2011, which tracked press reports from newspapers in more than 30 countries.
Featured Exhibits
The 1974 New Hampshire Wave
A run of clippings tracing the August 1974 UFO wave across the Lakes Region, from Tilton police to a teenager's telescope sketch, with a tail of sightings into 1978.
The 1966 Michigan Swamp Gas Wave
The March 1966 Washtenaw County wave, the Dexter and Hillsdale sightings, and the Air Force "swamp gas" explanation that drew Gerald Ford's call for hearings.
Beyond the Sightings
The cuttings the New Hampshire collector kept beside the sightings: a Red Skelton psychic prediction, Stringfield's crash-retrieval lore, and the Viking-era space age.
Browse by Region
Australia
Nearly two centuries of Australian press coverage, from colonial-era "remarkable meteors" to Cold War flying saucer scares. Digitised from the National Library of Australia's Trove archive.
United States
The largest single collection: four decades of American press coverage compiled by the UFO Newsclipping Service, from small-town Arkansas gazettes to the New York Times wire.
United Kingdom & Ireland
British and Irish press coverage from the Rendlesham Forest era through the 1990s wave, drawn from Fleet Street broadsheets and regional papers alike.
Wales
Six decades of Welsh press coverage from the Western Mail, South Wales Argus, and 48 other regional papers. Digitised from the Archives for the Unexplained (AFU) in Sweden.
Latin America
Press coverage from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Colombia. Latin America saw some of the most dramatic UFO waves of the 1970s and 1980s, and its press covered them with less institutional scepticism than their English-language counterparts.
Europe
Continental European press coverage spanning Spain, Italy, France, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Belgium, and Ireland. Includes reporting on the Belgian triangle wave and Scandinavian ghost rocket sightings.
Rest of World
Press reports from Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, China, South Africa, India, Israel, and Malaysia. Evidence that the phenomenon is genuinely global, not confined to Western media markets.
About the Sources
Trove Digital Archive
The National Library of Australia's Trove project has digitised millions of pages from Australian newspapers dating back to the early nineteenth century. The archive has systematically searched this collection for UFO-related coverage, identifying 2,580 clippings across 203 individual newspapers. The earliest dates to 1839; the most recent to 2015.
These are mainstream press reports: news articles, wire service stories, letters to the editor, and editorial commentary. They show how Australian journalists covered aerial phenomena across nearly two centuries, from colonial-era sky mysteries through the flying saucer era to modern UAP reporting.
UFO Newsclipping Service
Lucius Farish ran the UFO Newsclipping Service from Plumerville, Arkansas from 1969 until his death in 2012. Each month he compiled photocopied newspaper clippings about UFO sightings from publications across the English-speaking world and beyond. The archive holds 425 issues containing 5,700 sighting reports from more than 30 countries.
Where the Trove collection is deep (one country, two centuries), the NCS collection is wide (dozens of countries, four decades). Together they form the most comprehensive record of global UFO press coverage held in any single archive.
