Every file, one shelf

CASE FILE #001Explained
Maj. Jesse Marcel with debris, Fort Worth, 8 July 1947 (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

Roswell

United States · 1947

Flying disc announced, retracted a day later. The key records were destroyed.

CASE FILE #002Unexplained
FLIR1, 14 November 2004: still at 0:30 (US Navy, released by the DoD in 2020)

USS Nimitz “Tic Tac”

United States · 2004

Navy pilots filmed it. The Pentagon released it. Nobody has said what it was.

CASE FILE #003Unexplained
Pre-wave, NOT from the wave: 1987 NATO formation, Belgian F-16A with CF-18, Dutch F-16, Mirage F1 (USAF, SSgt David Nolan, PD-USGov)

Belgian UFO wave

Belgium · 1989–1990

Two F-16s chased radar contacts for an hour. The famous photo was a fake.

CASE FILE #004Record confirmed
Apollo 11: bootprint on the lunar surface, photo AS11-40-5878, July 1969 (NASA; colour original shown in b/w)
NASA · shown in b/w

Moon landing: staged?

The Mysteries · 1969–1972

The claims, the rocks and the mirrors still on the Moon.

CASE FILE #005Record confirmed
Ronald Reagan addressing the UN General Assembly, 21 September 1987 (Reagan Library, CC BY 3.0)
Courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (CC BY 3.0)

The Presidents’ File

The Mysteries

What they said, with the source. What actually happened.

CASE FILE #006Unexplained
The supposed UFO landing site in Rendlesham Forest, photographed in 2006 (not a 1980 photo)
Simon Leatherdale / From geograph.org.uk — CC BY-SA 2.0

Rendlesham Forest

United Kingdom · 1980–1980

A USAF colonel wrote it down. The MoD filed it. Sceptics blame a lighthouse.

CASE FILE #007Explained
The Sierra Estrella near Phoenix, photographed in 2006 (not a 1997 photo)
Ken Lund / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 2.0 · shown in b/w

The Phoenix Lights

United States · 1997

Two events, one name. Planes at 8:30, flares at 10. A governor who joked, then said he saw it.

CASE FILE #008Record confirmed
Wide hearing-room shot: Graves, Grusch and Fravor at the witness table, 26 July 2023 (US House webcast, public domain)

2023 House UAP hearing

United States · 2023

Three men under oath. One said ‘nonhuman’. The transcript is real. The details were saved for a SCIF.

CASE FILE #009Unexplained
Campo do Luzio, Colares: a site listed as observation point no. 28 in the I COMAR UFO logs (photographed 2014)
Hélio Aniceto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Operação Prato

Brazil · 1977–1978

An air force team watched the sky over Pará for months. The files describe lights, not answers.

CASE FILE #010Explained
A Chilean Navy AS 532 Cougar-family helicopter, the type of aircraft that filmed the 2014 object (not the incident airframe)
Jan Hoffmann, CC BY-SA 3.0
Draft

Chilean Navy video

Chile · 2014

Two years of official study said ‘unidentified’. Five days of flight data said ‘Iberia 6830’.

CASE FILE #011Unexplained
“One witness, a ring of marked soil, and a space agency that still files it under D.”

Trans-en-Provence

France · 1981

One witness, a ring of marked soil, and a space agency that still files it under D.

CASE FILE #012Record confirmed
Project Blue Book case file, National City, California, May 1952: first page (US Air Force / NARA)

Project Blue Book

United States · 1952–1969

12,618 sightings. 701 left unidentified. Closed in 1969.

CASE FILE #013Record confirmed
Edward U. Condon in 1947, then director of the National Bureau of Standards
Draft

The Condon Report

United States · 1968–1969

The study that closed Blue Book. Its own staff did not all agree.

CASE FILE #014Record confirmed
AARO: the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office: archival photograph

AARO

United States · 2022

The Pentagon's UFO office. Over 1,600 cases. No aliens found. Plenty of critics.

CASE FILE #015Unexplained
Gimbal and GoFast (2015): archival photograph

Gimbal and GoFast

United States · 2015

One looked fast and wasn't. The other one rotates. Neither has a name.

CASE FILE #016Record confirmed
The Pentagon's 2020 release and the UAP Task Force: archival photograph

Pentagon release 2020

United States · 2020–2021

Three leaked videos made official. Then a task force, and 144 cases.

CASE FILE #017Record confirmed
The Pyramids of El-Geezeh, from the South-West, Francis Frith, c. 1857 (J. Paul Getty Museum)

Giza Pyramids

Egypt · Reign of Khufu, 4th Dynasty

A boatman's logbook says who built it. Muons say something inside is still unexplored.

CASE FILE #018Explained
Baalbek, the grand quarry with the great block, c. 1900 (Matson Collection, Library of Congress; stereograph)

Baalbek

Lebanon · 1st century BC – 1st century AD

A 1,650-tonne block still lies in the quarry. The argument is about dates, not about aliens.

CASE FILE #019Explained
Cut trachyte stone, Puma Punku group, 1903 (Créqui-Montfort mission, Bibliothèque nationale de France)

Puma Punku

Bolivia · Built mostly in the AD 600s

Precisely cut andesite, then ransacked for 500 years. Who built it is not the mystery.

CASE FILE #020Record confirmed
Göbekli Tepe, the main excavation area from above, c. 2019 (German Archaeological Institute, photo E. Kücük, CC BY 4.0)
German Archaeological Institute, photo E. Kücük (Dietrich et al. 2019, PLoS ONE, CC BY 4.0)

Göbekli Tepe

Türkiye · c. 9500 BC

Carved pillars from 9500 BC. The date holds; what the carvings mean is still argued.

CASE FILE #021Record confirmed
Dead Sea Scrolls, photograph by Willem van de Poll (Nationaal Archief, CC0; the archive dates it 1948, to be verified)

Dead Sea Scrolls

The Mysteries · 3rd century BCE – 1st century CE

Decades of slow publication fed a cover-up story. The real scandal was forged fragments.

CASE FILE #022Record confirmed
Emerald Tablet plate in Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, Hanau 1609 (plate dated 1606), Houghton Library

Emerald Tablet

The Mysteries · First documented c. AD 800–850

Said to be found in a crypt under Hermes' statue. The paper trail starts in 9th-century Arabic.

CASE FILE #023Speculation
Cuneiform tablet with a Sumerian inscription from Ekur, temple of the god Enlil at Nippur (The Met)
Draft

Anunnaki

The Mysteries · Late 3rd – early 2nd millennium BC

The myths are real and online. The planet Nibiru is not in them.

CASE FILE #024Unexplained
The Big Ear printout of 15 August 1977 with Jerry Ehman's circled "6EQUJ5" and "Wow!". Credit: Big Ear Radio Observatory and NAAPO.

The Wow! signal

The Mysteries · 1977

72 seconds of radio signal, one word in the margin, and nothing since.

CASE FILE #025Unexplained
Enrico Fermi, c.1943-49, US Department of Energy photo
Draft

The Fermi paradox

The Mysteries · 1950 to now

A lunch question at Los Alamos, 1950. The galaxy has not answered.

CASE FILE #026Explained
Artist's impression (illustration, not a photo) of interstellar object 'Oumuamua (ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESO, M. Kornmesser, CC BY 4.0)
ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESO, M. Kornmesser / https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1820a/ — CC BY 4.0

‘Oumuamua

The Mysteries · 2017

The first interstellar visitor sped up on the way out. Here is why.

CASE FILE #027Speculation
Ezekiel’s vision, woodcut by Hans Holbein the Younger, Lyon, 1538

Ezekiel's wheel

The Mysteries · c. 593 BC

Wheels within wheels by a Babylonian canal. God's throne, or a landing craft?

CASE FILE #028Record confirmed
The crowd at Fátima looking at the sky, 13 October 1917 (Ilustração Portugueza, 29 October 1917)

Fátima 1917

The Mysteries · 1917

A crowd, a reporter and a sun that ‘danced’. What the record shows, and what it can't.

CASE FILE #029Record confirmed
The Vatican Observatory: the Pope's telescopes and the question of aliens: archival photograph

The Vatican Observatory

The Mysteries · 1891

The Pope has a telescope in Arizona. What it is for, in the Vatican's own words.

CASE FILE #030Unexplained
“Everyone has it. Nobody can say what it is. Now the question extends to animals and AI.”

Consciousness

The Mysteries

Everyone has it. Nobody can say what it is. Now the question extends to animals and AI.

CASE FILE #031Unexplained
“Nudge a few numbers and there are no stars. Design, multiverse, or luck?”

Fine-tuned universe

The Mysteries

Nudge a few numbers and there are no stars. Design, multiverse, or luck?

CASE FILE #032Unexplained
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, portrait by Christoph Bernhard Francke, c.1695

Something, not nothing

The Mysteries

Leibniz asked it in 1714. Physics, philosophy and theology still give different answers.

CASE FILE #033Speculation
Groom Lake (Area 51) area seen by Landsat, c.2000; S-4 itself appears in no official record
Draft

Bob Lazar

The Mysteries

He said he worked on alien craft near Area 51. Here is what the records show.

CASE FILE #034Explained
“A death ray, seized papers, a man from Venus. What the FBI's own Tesla file says.”

Nikola Tesla

The Mysteries

A death ray, seized papers, a man from Venus. What the FBI's own Tesla file says.

CASE FILE #035Explained
Five presidents in the Oval Office, 7 January 2009, the season of handover notes and briefings
Draft

The Book of Secrets

The Mysteries

A film invented the book. The desk drawer and the daily brief are real.

CASE FILE #036Explained
Al Jean, long-time Simpsons showrunner, who has said that with enough predictions some will come true
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Draft

The Simpsons predicted it?

The Mysteries

One real joke from 2000. A pile of doctored screenshots.

CASE FILE #037Explained
Cover of the first edition of Morgan Robertson's Futility (1898)

Futility and the Titanic

The Mysteries · 1898–1912

A novel ship called Titan hit an iceberg in 1898. Then the real one did.

CASE FILE #038Record confirmed
MKULTRA: the CIA's behaviour-modification programme: archival photograph

MKULTRA

The Mysteries · 1953–1964

A real CIA programme. Most files destroyed in 1973. Seven boxes survived.

CASE FILE #039Record confirmed
Fragment A of the Antikythera Mechanism, front, National Archaeological Museum, Athens (photo Logg Tandy, CC BY 4.0)
Logg Tandy / Wikimedia Commons - CC BY 4.0

Antikythera Mechanism

Greece · c. 150–100 BC

Bronze gears from a shipwreck that predicted eclipses. Greek, not alien; the date is the argument.

CASE FILE #040Record confirmed
The Enoch Scroll, 4Q201 (Aramaic, Qumran Cave 4), as shown by the Library of Congress in 1993. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Book of Enoch

Ethiopia · c. 3rd century BCE – 1773

Fallen angels on parchment, copied before Christ. The manuscripts are real; the Watchers are a story.

CASE FILE #041Record confirmed
The Flood Tablet, K.3375, Gilgamesh Tablet XI, in the British Museum. Photo: BabelStone, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Gilgamesh Flood Tablet

Iraq · c. 1750 BC – 7th century BC

A Babylonian Noah on a clay tablet, read aloud in 1872. Real, famous, and not the oldest version.

CASE FILE #042Explained
Trees flattened and scorched by the 1908 Tunguska blast, photographed by Leonid Kulik's expedition in 1929. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Tunguska 1908

Russia · 1908 - present

A flash brighter than the Sun, a forest laid flat, and no hole in the ground.

CASE FILE #043Explained
The Dyatlov group's tent as found by searchers on 26 February 1959, cut open and half buried in snow. Soviet investigation photo; public domain.

Dyatlov Pass

Russia · 1959 - 2022

A tent slit from the inside, bodies in the snow, and a 1959 verdict of 'a compelling natural force'.

CASE FILE #044Unexplained
Hans Glaser broadsheet on the sky phenomenon over Nuremberg, 14 April 1561 (Wickiana, ZB Zurich)

Nuremberg 1561

The Mysteries · 1561

One woodcut, one dawn, 1561. The only witness is a printer.

CASE FILE #045Unexplained
Page 1 of the USDAO Tehran message to DIA, sent 23 September 1976: subject line "Reported UFO sighting", copied to CIA, NSA and the White House.

Tehran 1976

Iran · 1976

Two F-4s, one bright light, and a US report that called it a classic.

CASE FILE #046Unexplained
AI reconstruction, not a real photo: an empty rural Zimbabwe schoolyard and dry veld, evoking Ariel School, Ruwa.

Ariel School 1994

Zimbabwe · 1994

Sixty children, one playground, and a BBC crew three days later.

CASE FILE #047Unexplained
Fold-out herbal pages of Beinecke MS 408: unidentified plants beneath lines of the unread Voynich script.

Voynich manuscript

The Mysteries · 15th century to now

Every page is written. Not one has been read.

CASE FILE #048Explained
Aerial view of the Nazca hummingbird geoglyph, one of the animal figures scraped into the desert floor of southern Peru.
Diego Delso, delso.photo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Nazca lines

The Mysteries · c. 500 BC to AD 500

Lines in the desert, best seen from above. Why draw them?

CASE FILE #049Explained
Drawing of the Baghdad battery: a small clay jar with a copper cylinder and iron rod, based on photos of the lost museum object.
Ironie, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Baghdad battery

The Mysteries · Parthian or Sasanian period; claim from 1938

A clay jar, a copper tube, an iron rod. Battery, or storage?

CASE FILE #050Record confirmed
Title slide of a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency "Project Star Gate" briefing, marked SECRET NOFORN, released in 2000.

Project Stargate

The Mysteries · 1970s to 1995

Two decades of paid psychics. The files are public now.

CASE FILE #051Speculation
Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (NASA/ESA, 2012): thousands of distant galaxies, showing the scale of the cosmos the hypothesis is about.

Simulation hypothesis

The Mysteries · 2003 to now

One of three must be true. One of them is: this is a simulation.

CASE FILE #052Record confirmed
Page 1 of NSAM 271, signed 12 November 1963: Kennedy asks NASA to plan space cooperation with the USSR. It says nothing about UFOs.

JFK's NSAM 271

The Mysteries · 1963

Ten days before Dallas, a memo to NASA about the Soviets.

CASE FILE #053Unexplained
The Hessdalen valley in winter, 1953: snowed-in farms decades before the lights. This is the valley, not a photo of the lights.
National Archives of Norway (Arkivverket), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Hessdalen lights

The Mysteries · 1981 to now

A Norwegian valley where the lights are measured, not explained.

CASE FILE #054Record confirmed
Frame from DOW-UAP-PR46, an unresolved UAP report from INDOPACOM, 2024 (Department of War)

The PURSUE files

United States · 2026

Seven batches, no clearance required, and a 40 percent figure that means less than the headlines say.

CASE FILE #055Explained
3I/ATLAS seen by Hubble on 30 November 2025 (NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt, M.-T. Hui, J. DePasquale)

3I/ATLAS

The Mysteries · 2025

Called a possible alien craft, confirmed as a comet, and perhaps twice as old as our Sun.