NEW BUFORA WEBSITE – 2025! DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES

There are two kinds of light – the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

James Thurber

We would like to extend a warm welcome to the new BUFORA website after rather a lengthy period, when we were having problems with our previous website, and unable to upload new material.

We hope you enjoy new and interesting sighting and photographic reports as we upload them to the website, in addition to the huge amount of other information and BUFORA journals and magazines going back fifty years ago. We also hope that you find the simplicity of navigating the site much easier than before, enabling you to find the specific areas of the UFO subject that are of interest to you quickly and easily.

On behalf of BUFORA, we would like to wish each of you a belated very Happy New Year, and we hope that 2025 will bring more understanding and clarity about the UFO subject.

BUFORA have been very busy behind the scenes during 2023-2024 with sightings, photographs and video footage coming through to be evaluated by BUFORA’s imaging specialist, Mark Easen. When reporting a photograph or video footage, please ensure you follow the directives for this shown at the top of the sighting report form.

Photographs and video footage always require a completed sighting form, as BUFORA never evaluate images without full supporting information and a £5 donation to BUFORA. These details are shown at the top of the sighting report form. Thank you.

2023/24 were challenging years of many changes for our world and the continuing period of uncertainty continues during 2025.

Certainly, as very diverse approaches to the UFO/UAP discussions on forums and media coverage across the globe gather pace, NASA’s unprecedented meetings and discussion on the subject became headline news last year.

The subject continues to bring many extraordinary claims and narratives including high strangeness reports, and BUFORA receive a huge number of photographs and video footage from the public, with up to 80% of all sighting reports being visual.

Many of these images can be explained definitively, or with a probable cause. Sometimes the photographs and videos are of poor quality, which makes it more difficult for evaluation, even in conjunction with the completed sighting form, which remains a critical part of the image assessment.

Taking photographs/videos while driving, can create problems because of reflections and optical effects, which can be created by taking photographs and video footage through the windscreen. This can give a false understanding of what has been captured on camera. The same problems occur on any image captured through glass.

In addition, when images are captured where nothing was observed with the naked eye, there can be many reasons for this. Optical effects, dirt or raindrops on the lens, or something close to the lens, such as an insect, can present as curious images in the photograph., In addition, reflections can often give rise to misinterpretation, as documented in Mark Easen’s articles Reflecting on UFO Images, and Analysis of UFO Photographs.

The BUFORA Investigators’ Training Course 2024:

In the first few weeks of last year, there were many enquiries about the ITC from people wanting more information and some awaiting enrolment dates.

As stated in the information for the ITC on our website, this requires dedication and a suspension of personal beliefs about the subject to ensure a ‘fresh page’ from which to start the course.

Not all candidates complete the course, some leaving part way through because of work or family commitments, and there are candidates who have expectations about the ITC reflecting their individual ideas and beliefs about UFOs, which it often does not fulfil.

The ITC is concerned with the objects and lights that can be observed and misidentified in the sky. This list is huge, as will become evident as candidates progress with the course There is also the human element of how we understand a sighting or extraordinary human experience, known as a high strangeness experience in BUFORA. There are many factors that can influence how we try to explain something we see and can’t identify. These include our memory, our beliefs, and our perceptions, which can heavily influence an objective interpretation.

The ITC is a training course for potential investigators to teach them what can be observed and misidentified in the sky. This is a crucial part of UFO investigation and research, as this enables the candidate to recognise the reality, and not the uninformed misleading information gathered from the internet. In addition, the media can sometimes present sensational , disingenuous and inaccurate information about the UFO subject, without considerable and meticulous investigative methods.

There are many factors that can influence how we try to explain something we see and can’t identify. Therefore, the underlying reality of the UFO subject, as opposed to an idealistic or belief driven theory of what we want them to be, can be lost, as sighting reports, photographs and video footage seem to rule out critical thinking with many reports.

I would also like to take this opportunity to extend my congratulations to two new Accredited Investigators, who passed the BUFORA ITC recently They are Carolyn Bruce, and James Bowen. I would like to welcome them both to the BUFORA National Investigations Committee(NIC)

On behalf of BUFORA, I would also like also to extend a warm welcome to Carolyn

Bruce, James Bowen, and Alan Lester, who are all now working with the BUFORA

Committee in various roles within investigations, research, and the everyday running

of BUFORA.

Looking back over 2023/2024

In 2023 - we received 169 sighting reports. About 70% or more of these were photographs and video footage.

The rest were standard recent sightings and a small percentage of historical sightings and high strangeness reports.

2024 increased in the number of reports to BUFORA and since the beginning of this year. there has been a substantial increase in sighting reports to BUFORA, both in regular sightings, photographs and a slight increase in reports of high strangeness experiences.

A percentage of people reporting high strangeness reports to BUFORA are still requesting hypnosis as a method to elicit the truth of what they experienced. Hypnosis does not do this and can create a false narrative of their experience. BUFORA’s Code of Practice prohibits the use of hypnosis to be used as an investigative method. An extract from an article on the problem with hypnosis used in this way below:

“Contrary to popular belief, memory is far more inaccurate than we understand, particularly in the case of high strangeness experiences or traumatic events. To illustrate this, let us have a look at some quotes from several scientific articles on memory:

An extract from the British Journal of Psychiatry on the psychology of memory states:

‘It is popularly believed that memory operates as a video recorder with events being recorded and stored, awaiting recovery essentially as they were laid down. Memory is, however, a much more complex and less efficient process. Bartlett showed that biographical memory is essentially a re-constructive process in which only some elements of past experience are stored and are retrievable. Far from being recovered unchanged, he demonstrated that memories may be reconstructed and elaborated by all kinds of subsequent influences.’

It is apparent that we need to understand the functions of memory and memory retrieval with much more clarity to be conversant with the fallibility of accurate memory retrieval, specifically in relation to an understanding of these inexplicable experiences.

In an article in Scientific American in 1997 Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington states:

Researchers are showing how suggestion and imagination can create 'memories 'of events that did not actually occur"...

In an article from the International Journal of Peer Commentary and

Review, Elizabeth F. Loftus and Steven E. Clark, comment:

It is not surprising that the number of abduction stories has increased at an exponential rate as the abduction myth is weaved ever deeper into our cultural fabric.

On the question of hypnosis they write...

Decades of research on hypnotically induced memory reveal that hypnosis does not result in increased memory accuracy but merely increased output. Hypnotically induced testimony has been ruled inadmissible in most courts, because it greatly increases the witness's vulnerability to suggestion and because it is based on a false theory of memory.”

The above information is just a small extract looking at the problems with hypnosis used in this way. You can read the full article on our new website.

Concluding Thoughts

To begin, and on behalf of the BUFORA Committee, we would like to express our sincere thanks and huge appreciation to Mark Davison and Alan Lester, who have given BUFORA so much of their skill, dedication and time, in designing such an exceptional website!

I hope everyone enjoys it as much as Mark and Alan have done in creating it! Keeping it simple was always our goal, and Mark and Alan have created this website just as we envisioned.

We will be adding Mark Davison’s details to the BUFORA website, so that he can be contacted by anyone wishing to have more details and information, should they require his services. Meanwhile, should you require more details currently, please

contact him via BUFORA enquiries and we will pass your details to him.

I would also like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all my colleagues at BUFORA for their work, commitment and dedication to our voluntary, and very busy association.

Last, but never least, and on behalf of my BUFORA colleagues, I want to express my thanks and appreciation to all of our readers out there, who contact BUFORA with their sightings, photographs and many other enquiries from across the UK.

We learn so much from each other, which paves the way for understanding this complex and intriguing subject.

Always remember that the UFO subject embraces a huge and diverse landscape, which involves some scientific disciplines, folklore and mythology, religion, extraordinary human experiences, and, on occasion, neuroscience – to name but a few.

At the heart of this extraordinary subject, is the ‘human face’ of ufology, which is always the most crucial factor in UFO investigation and research.

Heather Dixon

BUFORA

February 2025