Roland Gehardt is a trained retail salesman and became interested in UFOs by reading Däniken’s first book “Chariots of the Gods”. He has been an active field researcher in the UFO field for over 30 years now. He had published 25 issues of “UFO Information” magazine since 1983 through 1986, when he decided to join CENAP.

Gehardt owns one of the largest existing UFO archives and libraries in German language and since 2002 he has been the organizer of the infamous Cröffelbach UFO meeting in South Germany.

He recently joined the staff of Incognitas magazine (www.incognitas.de) and is holding lectures in Germany and abroad.

Contact details:
Roland Gehardt
Großgartacherstr. 214 B
74080 Heilbronn, Germany
Tel: 07131/ 256314, Fax: 07131/ 256314
Email: rgehard@aol.com
Homepage: www.ufo-meldestelle.de.vu

A journalist with a regular column on UFOs in the daily newspaper Diario de Noticias since 1975, he was co-founder and chairman of Portugal national UFO center CEAFI (Centro de Estudos Astronómicos e Fenómenos Insólitos), editor of its journal Insolito (1975-1981),  and later director of CNIFO (Comissão Nacional de Investigação do Fenómeno Ovni), as well as edtor of its journal Anomalia (1993-1996).

He graduated in History  and got a Ph.D. from Porto University in 2005, with a thesis about “The Extraterrestrial Imagery in the Portuguese Culture – from the Modernity to the middle of the XIX Century” (the first one of its kind presented to a Portuguese university).

Joaquim Fernandes is teaching at Fernando Pessoa University, in Porto, within which he co-founded  a Centro Transdisciplinar de Estudos da Consciência aiming to study neurobiological bases of the religious phenomena, and his a co-editor of its annual journal  Cons-Ciências (2002-).

A member of the Society of Scientific Exploration, he is also chairman of Project MARIAN (Multicultural Apparitions Research International Academic Network).

He is author of several books, among them a few about UFOs and Fatima apparitions.

e-mail: j.fernan@clix.pt

webpage: http://www.ufp.pt/homepage/jfernan/

Born in 1946, in Belgium.

Former photographer. In charge of a company involved in  videoconferencing, audiovisual for corporate, and production of documentary-films.

Interested in the UFO phenomenon and lost civilizations since the   early Sixties. Co-founder of SOBEPS, with Lucien Clerebaut (1971),   and of KADATH – Chroniques des Civilisations Disparues, with Ivan  Verheyden (1973).

Co-author of.

– “Kadath, Chroniques des Civilisations  Disparues”, with Ivan Verheyden & al., Robert Laffont éd., Paris  1976.

– “L’Affaire de Glozel”, with Jacques Gossart & Nicole Torchet,  éditions Copernic, 1978.

– “Vague d’OVNI sur la Belgique”, Vol. 1 &  2, with Lucien Clerebaut, Michel Bougard & al., SOBEPS ed., 1991,  1994.

Many articles in the magazines Inforespace and Kadath.

Other hobbies & interests: pre-Columbian America, prehistory, history  and arts of the Native Americans; US litterature, the Southwest,  blues, old-time & folk-music.

Postal address:

Parklaan, 46A

B 3080 Tervuren

BELGIUM

Email: patrick.ferryn@skynet.be

Links: www.sobeps.org and www.kadath.be

Mikhail Borisovich Gershtein was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg),  in 1972. He graduated at Russian State Pedagogical University in 1994.

Since 1988 his articles have often appeared in the local and national media. He has worked  for seven years (1993-2000) as a journalist and UFO expert for the St. Petersburg magazine Anomaliya, and since 2001 he has been editor-in-chief of the monthly e-zine UFO Navigator. Since 2004 he is also executive editor of  popular magazine Nexus (Russian edition).

In 2002 he was elected as a Chairman of Russian Geographical Society’s UFOlogical Commission.

e-mail: ufo_miger@mail.ru

Born in 1965, Robert Moore has been interested in UFOs since childhood. He first became involved in the subject during the 1980’s, and has been intermittently active since that date.
A BUFORA Accredited Investigator of long-standing, he has been editor of some UFO magazines (most significantly BUFORA Bulletin) during the latter part of the 1990’s.
He was also one of the co-authors of UFOs: The Final Answer (Blanford 1993).
Resigning from BUFORA in 1999, Robert then assisted in the attempted re-establishment of UFOIN (UFO Investigators Network) during the early 2000’s.
He later left the subject in 2000 to read archaeology at tertiary college and later University  – returning to Ufology following his graduation from University in 2007. Professionally he has a BA (hons) degree and HNC diploma in archaeology and notable experience in ICT.
His main study areas include the alleged attributes of true UFOs and British “Unknowns”, the British UFO movement 1970-2005, IFOs and perception, earthlight phenomena and the application of I.T. within UFO research (especially in regards to digital archiving and dissemination of research).
He is also author of the Ufology Handbook – a free e-book outlining the UFO phenomena in its totality.
From 1999 up to the present Robert has also been compiling PRIMEBASE – an attempt to list all documented British unknowns; the first draft now being available on the Internet. Robert’s recent projects include the digitalisation of British UFO magazines and books as an intellectual resource for other researchers.

e-mail: rs_moore@hotmail.co.uk

GROSS, Patrick France Born 1963 in Mulhouse, France School teacher, entered the world of Informatics when personal computers appeared and is currently an IT engineer. Became interested in the study of UFO reports in 1999 and is conducting documentation research and field investigation in the south of Alsace. He is a member of several UFO groups in France and takes part in several discussion forums. Patrick Gross is opposed to making profit with UFO matters and offers articles and case file for free on his website. Main current projects: – Exhaustive documentation of the 1954 flying saucer wave in France. – Exhaustive formal catalogue of UFO related entities reports worldwide. – GUP Project, a free quality assurance system for field investigators. Apart from his interest in ufology and professional informatics, Patrick Gross is also an astrophysics buff, a Syd Barrett fan and an amateur rock musician (singing and playing various instruments) and has a deep interest in aviation history.

Postal address:

186 rue de Dornach 68350 Brunstatt FRANCE

Phone: (33) 03 89 06 08 81

eMail: ufologie@inbox.com Website: www.ufologie.net

I was born in Norrkoping, Sweden, in 1950.

My UFO interest was spurred in the mid-60s when I read the books in Swedish by pioneering ufologist K. Gösta Rehn (UFOs: Here and Now, also published in English), and also the fascinating American contactee literature, translated and published in Swedish by the Parthenon publishing company (both the Rehn and Parthenon archives are now part of AFU). In 1969 I wrote my first articles on UFOs for the school paper and for a local newspaper. In 1970, I was one of the founding members of UFO-Sweden, the national UFO organization. For a couple of years I was an editorial member of their magazine UFO-Information and headed the organization’s report centre for about one year. In 1973, in the company of a few ufological friends, I left UFO-Sweden (at that time a group with an occult-New Age oriented belief system that left us dissatisfied), We founded a group with the acronym AFU; an acronym which in 1980 took the meaning Archives for UFO Research and became a self-owning foundation.

In the 1970s and 1980s I was one of the first persons to go through the formerly secret Swedish archives concerning the ghost flier wave in the 1930’s, and the ghost rockets in 1946. I have also been involved in the study of several Swedish close encounters, particularly the Domsten case (Swedish booklet written with Clas Svahn) and the Mariannelund (Gideon Johansson) humanoid sighting case (Swedish version of this study is available on UFO-Sweden’s web site and has recently been printed in UFO-Sweden’s UFO-Aktuellt magazine).

I am today the principal manager and “chief administrator”, as well as the chairman, of AFU, one of the largest UFO-related archives & libraries in the world with a catalogued books and documents library of more than 8.000 volumes (5.000 different titles), 23.000 catalogued magazine issues, 30-40.000 news clippings (soon 10.000 of them are catalogued), 2.000 audio cassettes (recently catalogued to 50 %), some 600 videos, extensive personal and organizational files from (mainly) Scandinavian ufologists and groups, and a lot of pictures, posters and other paraphernalia.

Besides my UFO interest, and activities with AFU, which takes too much time, I work part-time (75 %) as a database manager with the town’s largest housing company. My daily work involves a lot of SQL coding. I am also aiming to become the company’s historian by caring for the company’s archive and studying the local history of our houses and housing areas at local archives. Since I was 15 I have been a member of Swedish and international societies that study the history of ships and shipping and also of aviation history. There was a time in my youth when I was a ship spotter of sorts in the harbour of my hometown, sea ships – not space ships. Times have changed but I am still interested in marine history, too.

I have contributed to several international compilations of UFO Research: “UFOs 1947-1987 The 40 Year Search for an Explanation” (Fortean Tomes 1987, ed. Evans/Spencer), ”Phenomenon” (Futura 1988, ed. Spencer/Evans) and ”UFOs & Alien Contact” (Prometheus Books 1998, Bartholomew/Howard). In 1997 I wrote the chapter ”General Doolittle and the Ghost Rockets” for the book ”UFO 1947-1997 Fifty Years of Flying Saucers” (John Brown). In the same year I contributed a chapter on Swedish cases from 1947 for Jan Aldrich’s ”Project 1947: A preliminary report on the 1947 UFO sighting wave” (UFO Research Coalition).  In a not too distant future I hope to find the time for more original writing – based on research in the AFU archives – but for the moment this is not possible due to my ‘civilian’ work and the work-load created by the steady flow of incoming collections and materials to AFU.

My future hope is to develop the AFU archives even further. One immediate problem, as I write this in December of 2005, is trying to find (and finance!) a new combined locality – under one roof – for the AFU collections, since the three buildings where the archives are now housed will be undergoing substantial repairs, probably during the years 2006-2008. The collections will have to be moved out, for a while, at three different localities, then moved back again. Since we already have a problem with having three archives at different places along the same street, the best thing for the future would be moving into a completely new, larger facility that can hold everything under one roof. Our dreams in 1973, when we started AFU, have been realized to a degree far above what we could then even fantasize about. Now is the time to envision and create the future for AFU, once again.

Address:

Archives for UFO Research Foundation (AFU),

P.O.Box 11027

S-600 11  Norrkoping, Sweden

Email: afu@ufo.se

Born in Turin (1957), classical and pedagogical studies, later theology and nursing, is presently working as a human resources manager in a private clinic.

Interested in UFOs since a teenager, he was director of local CUN branch (1975-1978); a founding member of Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici in 1985, he’s been intermittantly serving as a CISU board member.

A most active field investigator since the mid-‘70s, he has investigated hundreds of reports, expecially close encounters and military witnesses. He is also a frequent writer, with dozens of articles published (in Ufologia, Notiziario Ufo, Ufo – Rivista di informazione ufologica, etc.). See Paolo Fiorino’s Bibliography.

Specializing in CE3 (humanoid) reports since 1978, in 1984 he became coordinator of  the archiving and cataloguing “Project Italy 3” on such Italian cases.

In 1997 he began collecting and cataloguing Italian UFO sightings with military witnesses or military implications (OVNI-F.A.) and established a regular contact between CISU and the Ministry of Defence, finally leading to a complete declassification of the UFO files by the Italian Air Force.

He has also long been interested in sociological aspects of the UFO subject, and has built the largest existing Italian collection of UFO-inspired objects (toys, comics, gadgets, furniture, advertising, music and anything else).

Mailing address: Corso Brescia 35, 10152 Torino, Italy

e-mail: paolofiorino@yahoo.it

Dan D. Farcas was born in Reşiţa, Romania, on April 1, 1940. He is married and has one adult daughter.

He graduated in mathematics and physics (University of Timişoara, 1960) and obtained a doctor’s degree (PhD) in mathematics (the University of Bucharest, 1979). He followed IBM courses in data processing and M.I.S. in Bucharest (1968), Paris (1969), Bonn (1971), as well as other courses in: demography, mathematical modeling, data processing etc. Since 1962 he is working as computer analyst, programmer, trainer, consultant and manager of great IT projects in Romania. He was in leading positions in the Romanian Institute of Management (IROMA) and at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of Ministry of Health Romania. He is Member of the Romanian Academy of Medical Sciences (since 1991) and vice-president of the Romanian Society of Medical Informatics (since 1991). He is still active in NCHS as a consultant in eHealth.

With the mother tongue Romanian, he is good in English, French, and Hungarian but understands some basics of other European languages, including Russian, German and Italian.

Since 1971 he has published 20 books, all in Romanian, half of them about computers, mathematical modeling, popular science and the other half about UFOs. Initially he was interested only in extraterrestrial supercivilizations (see his opinion at http://www.asfan.ro/supercivilizations_and_the_extraterrestrial_hypothesis.htm), but writing his book “Why are silent the Extraterrestrial civilizations” (1983), he was stressed by the statistical relevance of the UFO phenomenon and became interested in it.

After 1990 he has published several books including digests and comments on the foreign (mainly American, English and French) UFO literature, with an emphasize on three topics: abductions, spiritual and religious issues, military and political ones. He also published up to 7-800 articles and had tens of radio and TV presentations on the same topics. He made only accidentally field investigations, as in the Certesti CEIII case (see at http://asfan.home.ro/a_close_encounter_of_third_kind_in_romania.htm).

Since 1998 he has been vice-president of the Association for the Study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (ASFAN)   and he has been active with the editorial board of the European Journal of UFO and Abduction Studies (2000-2003).

Private address: str. Pascani 3, ap.29, 062081 Bucharest, Romania. Phone +401-4138383, e-mail: dandfarcas@yahoo.com

http://www.asfan.ro/english.htm

Following a Grammar school education in the south of England and extramural pre-entry classes in Fine Art at Brighton College of Art and Design, Martin confounded expectation by opting for a career in Lithography, completing a part-time 3-year course in photographic and print science at London College of Printing. Whilst remaining an enthusiastic autodidact he has worked as (among other things) a photolithographer, an electrician’s mate, a semi-professional musician (playing several instruments, including traditional Celtic fiddle with the Cnoc Ciuil Ceilidh Band), and has been a professional landcape painter and gallery-owner in the north of Scotland for 15 years. He presently lives in a glen in Ross-shire, in the Scottish Highlands.

His main interest in ufology is about radar cases. Martin Shough has compiled and evaluated an extensive catalogue of such events and has worked on analyses of a number of UK military radar reports dating back to 1946 (principally with David Clarke). He is a UK Research Associate for the National Aviation Reporting Center for Anomalous Phenomena, (NARCAP).

As such, he is the author of (among others):

– Radar & the UFO, in “UFOs 1947-1987: The 40-year Search for an Explanation”, (Evans & Spencer, eds., Fortean Tomes, London 1987);

– Radar-Visual Encounter at Bentwaters’, in “Phenomenon” (Evans & Spencer, ed., Futura, London 1988);

– A Review of Twenty-One Ground and Airborne Radar UAP Contact Reports Generally Related to Aviation Safety for the Period October 15, 1948 to September 19, 1976 (NARCAP Technical Report # 6, 2002);

– Anomalous Echoes Captured by a B-52 Airborne Radarscope Camera: A Preliminary Report (82pp, for a major study of the 24 Oct 1968 Minot AFB incident currently in preparation by Tom Tulien);

– Radar Coverage and Propagation Conditions in “Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International Airport on November 7, 2006”, Richard F. Haines ed.,  (NARCAP Technical Report #10, 2007);

– Report on Aerial Phenomena Observed near the Channel Islands, UK, April 23 2007 (March 2008, 180pp, publication pending, with Jean-Francois Baure, David Clarke and Paul Fuller).

Outside ufology, his other interests include theoretical physics (he has a particular interest in the quantisation condition for a scale-free fractal spacetime in which all position states are doubly and nonlocally connected; see the online essays A Speculative Ontological Interpretation of Nonlocal Context-dependency in Electron Spin and Foundations of an Alternative View of Mechanics).

e-mail: parcellular@btinternet.com

website:  http://www.geocities.com/parcellular/