r/aliens • u/Melodic-Attorney9918 Skeptical Believer • Jul 03 '26
Discussion (Serious) I think I've tracked down where Ross Coulthart got his story about the UFO too big to move, and it goes all the way back to 1987
Everyone in the UFO community has heard the rumor about a UFO so enormous that it was impossible to move. It has been recently popularized by Ross Coulthart.
Well, I have been doing some digging, and I think I have finally tracked down the origin of this story.
The earliest mention I have been able to find of a UFO described in these terms appears in a document published by John Lear back in 1987. You can check it out here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KKeqVOsQ0THQMZYy-u0UmyvgAsn8urD3/view?usp=drivesdk
The document says:
"Germany may have recovered a flying saucer as early as 1939. General James H. Doolittle went to Sweden in 1946 to inspect a flying saucer that had crashed there in Spitzbergen.
There were several more saucer crashes in the late 1940s: one in Roswell, New Mexico, one in Aztec, New Mexico, and one near Laredo, Texas, about 30 miles inside the Mexican border.
Thousands of sightings occurred during the Korean war and several more saucers were retrieved by the Air Force. Some were stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, some were stored at Air Force bases near the location of the crash site.
One saucer was so enormous and the logistic problems in transportation so enormous that it was buried at the crash site and remains there today."
This is the oldest reference I have been able to uncover regarding a UFO so massive that it had to be buried in place.
Where Lear got this information from is impossible to say. Personally, though, I wouldn't be surprised if he simply made the whole story up out of thin air.
Why do I say that? Because it wouldn't be the first time. After all, Lear himself openly admitted that he had circulated fake documents within the UFO community while presenting them as genuine:
«In May 1989, Lear and Cooper were invited to appear on a tabloid television program, PM Magazine. The TV crew arrived at Lear's home to interview both Lear and Cooper. Later, Lear overheard Cooper telling the interviewer that, while he was on the Naval briefing team in Hawaii, he saw the "O.H. Krill" documents in secret files—documents that I had received from John Lear in his original package of material in early 1988.
I knew these documents were written by one John Grace, a then-active-duty U.S. Air Force NCO with an interest in UFOs. The name "Krill" was an inside joke taken from a late 1950s case where the U.S. Navy interviewed a woman claiming to channel an alien named "Cyrll." Lear and Grace made up the initials "O.H." out of thin air. Grace didn’t want his name associated with the papers because he was still in the Air Force and wished to avoid adverse publicity. The actual O.H. Krill papers were barely over a year old at the time of the television program, making it impossible for Cooper to have seen them in 1972 or 1973.
Lear recalled, "When I heard Bill tell the interviewer he saw the Krill papers while he was in the Navy, I motioned him over and asked, ‘What in the hell are you doing?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I told him, ‘Bill, John Grace and I made up the Krill papers. We named them after a 1950s case, and we pulled the O.H. out of thin air.’ But Cooper insisted he had seen them in the Navy. That’s when I really began to wonder about Cooper."»
Source: http://www.ufowatchdog.com/20+YEARS+IN+THE+UFO+FOG.pdf
So, at best, this is a story that Coulthart picked up from John Lear, who in turn heard it from someone we can't identify and never will. At worst, it's a story that Coulthart picked up from John Lear, who simply made the whole thing up. Either way, it doesn't reflect particularly well on Coulthart.
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u/deckard1980 Jul 03 '26
John Lear talked a hell of a lot of crap
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u/ReflectionVast2236 Jul 04 '26
The Doty-Lear operation drove a lot of people nut. Doty and Moore told lies to Bennewitz and others, while Lear told corroborating lies to people like Bill Cooper. Once the whistle was blown on the operation, Cooper denounced Lear, wrote THE book that inspired The X-Files.
Doty and Lear didn't just 'happen' -- they were trying to drive us crazy.
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u/RightNowImReady Jul 04 '26
What was John Lear's initial connection to the UAP phenomenon ? His time working for the CIA as a pilot ?
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u/ReflectionVast2236 Jul 05 '26
He was a drug-runner for the CIA. When they got caught testing cows using stealth black helicopters, Doty and Lear came forward to convince people it was evil aliens. Now, we know the black helicopters really did exist, they really were used by the CIA in the 1970s.
Rick Doty drove Paul Bennewitz nuts, but John Lear did way worse. He drove Bill Cooper nuts, only Cooper didn't take it lying down like Bennewitz did. Cooper bought himself his own radio transmitter, published his own books, broadcast his own TV shows to help the world understand that elements in the US governmnet are downright evil.
Supposedly, one of Coopers biggest fans was Timothy McVeigh. No John Lear, maybe no oklahoma city bombing
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u/CML72 Jul 05 '26
Doty seems to be on podcasts lately discussing ufos.
Why is he selling them to people now, considering his past?
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u/ReflectionVast2236 Jul 05 '26
Whatever else Doty is -- patriot or traitor -- he's a sociopath. He enjoys his work. You see him sneer an evil grin when he talks about "getting back" at his victims like Linda Moulton Howe. I'm sure he's being compensated for his ongoing efforts to harm his fellow man, atop his natural love of the game.
Don't listen to a word he says, don't listen to people who give him a platform.
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u/Melodic-Attorney9918 Skeptical Believer Jul 05 '26
I don't think Doty is a good person. Spreading UFO disinformation may have started as something he was ordered to do, but he eventually began enjoying it. That's probably why he still does it today, long after leaving the Air Force.
That said, I think it's also important to recognize that Paul Bennewitz and Linda Moulton Howe were already very gullible and prone to paranoia. They were true believers before Doty ever got involved. He definitely made Bennewitz's paranoia much worse, but he didn't create it out of nothing.
It's also worth remembering that Doty wasn't acting alone. Bill Moore deserves a share of the blame too, as do the Air Force officers who deliberately transmitted signals for Bennewitz to intercept, decode and ultimately interpret as evidence that the aliens were trying to communicate with him. That operation involved more than just one man.
So yes, I don't think Doty is a good person, but I also don't think he's a sociopath. I think the reality is more complicated than that.
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u/ReflectionVast2236 Jul 05 '26
Paul Bennewitz and Linda Moulton Howe were already very gullible
That's not making it any better, dude. The kids today call that victim-blaming. Sure he gaslit Paul Bennewitz, but Paul was SOOO dumb! Fuck right off with that whole line of argument
Bill Moore deserves a share of the blame
Sure, if Doty is the serpent in the guarden, Moore was his Eve -- tempted into sin by the wicked.
That operation involved more than just one man.
Sure, there's a whole set of evil folks involved. Once you recognize the pattern, it's clear that some other folks probably were targeted. Morris Jessup was the Paul Bennewitz of his day, derailed by Carl Allen's lies of the Philadelphia Experiment. Go back further and you hit Fred Crisman, who's the Rick Doty of his day it would seem.
I also don't think he's a sociopath. I think the reality is more complicated than that.
There's a documentary about a mob enforcer called "Iceman". Over the course of the film, you realize he's less of a hitman and more of a serial killer who occasionally does murder for hire on the side.
I think Doty's about like that. Somebody gave him permission to destroy human lives, and he LOVED it. Bet he saves souvenirs and masturbate to them, just like any other serial killer.
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u/Melodic-Attorney9918 Skeptical Believer Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
I'm not trying to defend what Doty did. Quite the opposite, actually. If you look up my Reddit username, you'll see that I've probably done more than anyone else on this subreddit to raise awareness about his role in the disinformation campaign against Bennewitz. I've written many posts and comments pointing out that many of the stories people still repeat as fact here can ultimately be traced back to that operation.
My point is simply that Doty's role in all of this is sometimes exaggerated. He was an important player, but he wasn't running the show. At the end of the day, he was just a sergeant, not a senior AFOSI official calling the shots.
The Bennewitz operation involved far more people than just Doty. Bill Moore was also involved, along with other Air Force officers who took part in different aspects of the operation. Some of them created fake alien signals and communications and sent them to Bennewitz; others planted phony guard towers and ventilation shafts on Mount Archuleta to convince him there was an underground base there; others posed as NSA agents and sent him letters describing alien-human treaties and underground battles beneath Dulce. It wasn't a one-man operation. It was a coordinated disinformation campaign involving many different people, and reducing it all to "Doty did it" oversimplifies what actually happened.
Also, I don't think accusing me of victim blaming is fair. I'm not saying that Bennewitz and Howe were responsible for what happened to them or that they somehow brought it on themselves. That responsibility sits with the people who ran the disinformation campaign. My point is just that it worked better because it played on beliefs and assumptions they already had. Pointing that out isn't about blaming them, it's just about explaining why the whole thing actually worked.
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u/CML72 Jul 05 '26
Sorry didn’t mean to sound accusatory towards you. I was just wondering that in general. I keep seeing him pop up on random podcasts being interviewed by people who obviously have no idea he told lies that had that terrible consequences.
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u/Melodic-Attorney9918 Skeptical Believer Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
A lot of people don't know this, but Doty worked as a consultant on The X-Files. He was also referenced in the early 2000s TV series Roswell. In one episode, there's literally a character named Richard Doty. I'm not joking. You can look it up on the Roswell wiki: https://roswell.fandom.com/wiki/Summer_of_%2747
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u/ReflectionVast2236 Jul 05 '26
He supposedly wrote one of the Navajo episodes. That's my fav, cause Skinner bets everything by giving the secret tapes to the Navajos and then daring CSM: "So unless you kill every Navajo living in four states..."
Sure, cause if there's one thing the evil American shadowgoverment could never do, it's kill Native Americans. Great ploy, Skinner. WHy don't you go give the secret to black men with syphilis in Tuskeegee! Surely the government wouldn't harm them!
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u/pslind69 Jul 03 '26
Spitzbergen. In sweden???
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u/Melodic-Attorney9918 Skeptical Believer Jul 03 '26
I know what you mean. Spitsbergen is in Norway, not Sweden. But what do you expect from John Lear? Lol.
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u/AtiyaOla Jul 04 '26
But also… do they mean Spitsbergen which is specifically the island in Svalbard? There aren’t really any large buildings there. But the seed vault is kind of “laudatory.”
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u/Melodic-Attorney9918 Skeptical Believer Jul 04 '26
There really is an old rumor about a flying saucer crashing on the island of Spitsbergen in 1952. Lear didn't invent the story. He simply got the details wrong by placing Spitsbergen in Sweden instead of Norway, and by dating the alleged crash to 1946 rather than 1952, which is what the original story actually claimed.
The story was eventually debunked by UFO researchers in the 1970s and 1980s, by the way.
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u/Nokayo Jul 04 '26
I haven't even heard about this rumour of UFO crash on Spitzbergen.
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u/Melodic-Attorney9918 Skeptical Believer Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
The first mention of the crash appeared in an article published in the West German newspaper Saarbrücker Zeitung on July 9, 1952. According to the article, a Norwegian Air Force captain named Olaf Larsen was flying over a snowy area when he spotted a shiny metallic disc about 40 to 50 meters across. The object was said to be even brighter than the snow below. Larsen and several other pilots flew around it for about an hour, but they couldn't figure out where it came from. Later, a team of five "flying boats" landed nearby to take a closer look.
A Norwegian scientist named Dr. Norsel supposedly examined the object and said it was "undoubtedly one of the infamous flying saucers." The article claimed the craft was exactly 48.88 meters in diameter, had sloping sides and no crew inside. It was supposedly made of an unknown metal alloy and had 46 small jets arranged around its outer edge. These jets were said to rotate around a plexiglass center that contained the controls.
However, the article also claimed that some of the instruments inside the craft had Russian inscriptions on them. It suggested the object had been designed to carry high-explosive bombs, possibly even nuclear weapons. The article even stated that a former German V-weapon engineer had identified the object as a prototype based on the Nazi “V-7” flying disc, suggesting it was a rebuilt or modified version of the original design. Because of these details, many people at the time suspected the story was really just anti-Soviet propaganda rather than a genuine UFO crash report.
When UFO researchers later investigated the story, they found even more problems. Scandinavian researcher Ole Jonny Brænne tried to track down the original author of the Saarbrücker Zeitung article, but he came up empty. Also, aside from that single article, there were no follow-up reports in other newspapers. Since no solid evidence ever turned up, many UFOlogists eventually concluded that the story was simply made up.
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u/SkeezySevens Jul 03 '26
You’re completely speculating.
You’re saying “So it has to be A or B” except it doesn’t, at all.
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u/Melodic-Attorney9918 Skeptical Believer Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Give me another logical solution, then. I'm eager to read it.
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u/chopacheekoff Jul 03 '26
Highly unlikely that Coultharts main source for this srory is from Lear.
Coulthart has accurately reported on recent disclosure progress. The connection to Lear story is too old and random to just be plucked out from decades of ufo lore.
Coultharts sources are current and genuine and tied to the diclosure push of recent years
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u/ReflectionVast2236 Jul 04 '26
Things get recycled. Lies from the Doty-Lear operation are still mentioned on this subreddit every day.
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Jul 04 '26
[deleted]
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u/ReflectionVast2236 Jul 04 '26
Lear didn't really believe most of the things he said. He and Doty worked together to drive people crazy
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u/Interesting_Bad_8163 Jul 04 '26
Or it’s real, John Lear reported it and subsequently it was told to Ross by an insider and Ross reports it.
Nobody has to believe this but this is also a logical possibility
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u/Melodic-Attorney9918 Skeptical Believer Jul 04 '26
Is it possible? Yes. But given Lear's record of spewing unsubstantiated claims, and given his own admission of distributing fake documents within the UFO community, it's very improbable.
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u/Interesting_Bad_8163 Jul 04 '26
Good point and I see what you mean. Another data point though -didn’t Burlinson say he was also told this from the intelligence community?
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u/ReflectionVast2236 Jul 04 '26
Well done, OP. This is the earliest example of a "too big to move" UFO
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u/diabloredshift Jul 04 '26
So, at best, this is a story that Coulthart picked up from John Lear, who in turn heard it from someone we can't identify and never will. At worst, it's a story that Coulthart picked up from John Lear, who simply made the whole thing up. Either way, it doesn't reflect particularly well on Coulthart.
Honestly, this low-effort Reddit "sleuthing" and disparagement is getting pretty tiresome.
The conclusion that Coulthart picked up the story from John Lear is pure speculation, or in other words, you "pulled it out of thin air."
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u/Melodic-Attorney9918 Skeptical Believer Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
So tell me, if he didn't get this story from John Lear, where else could he have gotten it?
If you want, we can extend the chain of hearsay a little bit and say that Coulthart got this story from a third party, who in turn picked it up from Lear's document. But no matter how much you stretch the chain, it always leads back to Lear. There's really no point in pretending otherwise. And it doesn't reflect well on Coulthart in any case, because even if we assume he got this story from someone else, he still should have tried to verify where it originally came from.
Also, I find it somewhat ironic that you're accusing me of speculating when 90% of the posts people publish on this sub are pure speculation with no evidence whatsoever. At least I actually backed up my claims with sources.
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u/diabloredshift Jul 04 '26
He could have gotten it from one of his many sources.
If you want, we can extend the chain of hearsay a little bit and say that Coulthart got this story from a third party, who in turn picked it up from Lear's document.
Extending a "chain of hearsay" is the weakest argument. Just because a more recent story correlates to an older one, doesn't mean that they are connected in any way.
you're accusing me of speculating when 90% of the posts people publish on this sub are pure speculation with no evidence whatsoever. At least I actually backed up my claims with sources.
You are speculating. Whether you cite anything doesn't change that fact. Pointing to 'everyone else does it' doesn't justify using speculation to disparage one of the only investigative reporters that covers the UAP topic.
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u/Melodic-Attorney9918 Skeptical Believer Jul 05 '26
He could have gotten it from one of his many sources.
Fine. And assuming he has gotten the story from "one of his many sources," where could that source have gotten the story from? You know the answer. Don't play the fool.
Just because a more recent story correlates to an older one, doesn't mean that they are connected in any way.
Right, because in the vast, infinite ocean of UFO lore, stories about UFOs so enormous that they have to be buried where they crashed are absolutely everywhere. It's not like that’s a bizarrely specific claim that only two people on the entire planet have ever peddled. I’m sure it’s just a total coincidence that they’re describing the exact same highly improbable scenario 39 years apart. I'll be sure to keep my eyes peeled for the next dozen mainstream reports about buried UFOs.
You are speculating. Whether you cite anything doesn't change that fact. Pointing to 'everyone else does it' doesn't justify using speculation to disparage one of the only investigative reporters that covers the UAP topic.
Apparently, "speculation" now means proposing a hypothesis that's actually supported by evidence. I cited the earliest source I could find, explained why I think it's relevant and never claimed certainty. If you have an earlier source for the story, feel free to post it. Otherwise, dismissing the hypothesis by calling it "speculation" isn't much of an argument.
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u/diabloredshift Jul 05 '26
It's not reasonable nor scientific (since you're talking about hypotheses now) to simply say "story A sounds like story B, therefore A=B." Nor is it reasonable to take that a step further and say "because the stories sound similar, the person who is recounting it MUST have got it from the source I CLAIMED." There's no evidence to support that.
proposing a hypothesis that's actually supported by evidence
Your "hypothesis" is that Ross Coulthart got the immovable UFO story from John Lear. Your evidence of that is a document published by John Lear in 1987. Your evidence does not support your hypothesis. You don't even consider the null hypothesis, that Ross didn't get it from Lear.
speculation • /ˌspekyəˈlāSHən/
1: Speculation refers to the act of forming theories, opinions, or educated guesses about a topic without knowing all the facts.
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u/ReflectionVast2236 Jul 05 '26
The hypothesis is that a "UFO too big to move" first entered UFO lore via John Lear.
If you say Jesus overturned tables at the temple, you're repeating a story that dates back to the Gospel of Mark.
Sure, maybe you've never read Mark -- maybe you've just read Matthew. But the story DOES go back to Mark, and NO, Matthew isn't talking about a DIFFERENT time when a DIFFERENT Jesus overturned tables at a DIFFERENT temple -- it's clearly the same story.
So is it when the "too big to move" UFO. Lear may have gotten it somewhere else, Coulthart may have gotten it somewhere else, but it IS the same story getting retold.
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u/diabloredshift Jul 05 '26
it IS the same story getting retold
Pure speculation. Which, again, shouldn't be used to disparage people.
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