READ MORE ABOUT THIS MYSTERIOUS FOOTAGE http://missingcinema.com/post/112045842581/the-flying-saucer-the-case-of-mikel-conrads Since the Freedom of Information act, the Project Blue Book files have become declassified and dissected. Among it’s many pages includes a piece of missing cinema history. The madcap story of Mikel Conrad: two-bit Actor, Producer, Director, and - at one time - the most wanted man by the FBI. In 1949 Mikel Conrad penned and produced The Flying Saucer as a starring vehicle for himself. The plot focused on a flying saucer which was spotted over Alaska, The twist comes in the film’s final act where it’s revealed that the Saucer is an American secret invention, and it’s inventor plans on selling it to the Russians. Ultimately they are stopped by Conrad’s character. It's said that Conrad, not one known to be very clever, started trying to drum up publicity for his film. In 1949 he started making wild claims to journalists that he had seen a flying saucer on a recent trip to Alaska - and more so - that he had 900 feet of film of that UFO (nearly 30 minutes of footage), which he said included “scenes of the saucer landing, taking off, flying and doing tricks”! Conrad even boasted to the Dayton, Ohio Journal Herald that: “The saucer footage is locked in a bank vault. I’m not showing it to anyone yet.” This of course piqued the interest of the Air Force, the OSI (Office of Special Investigations), and the FBI - who quickly tracked Conrad down and concluded that he was exactly what he was: a dopey and egotistical near-penniless actor/producer with no history of nefarious activity or craziness. Conrad was quickly captured and brought in for questioning where he confessed that the footage was faked and the bank vault was empty. He even arranged a preview of his film for the agents - pausing it repeatedly to show exactly how his special effects were accomplished. Feeling like they had seen enough, the agents made a big show of sweeping this investigation under the rug to Conrad, mostly because the Government didn't want the public to know they really thought Conrad's footage was real and wasted tax dollars on the investigation of a hoax. Conrad even included a text preamble to his film thanking “those in authority that made the release of The Flying Saucer film possible at this time”. WATCH THE FLYING SAUCER 1950 http://youtu.be/-DEQ-a0C7U0 ... but that's not the end of the story. Thanks to the Freedom of Information act and records obtained from the Conrad family, we now can piece together that Mikel Conrad was in Alaska in 1948 - and furthermore, the stories of his waning Hollywood career and uneventful death in 1982 were falsified. It turns out that Mikel played the most important role of his career when confronted by the Government Agents sent after him in 49. He successfully convinced them he was an idiot in order to protect his covert work. Mikel Conrad's The Flying Saucer was more or less a flop, but it was also an attempt to warn the American public. After seeing too much in Roswell, NM in 1947, Conrad began a personal crusade to find out as much as he could about the numerous UFO sightings across the USA. His search eventually led him to the secret Government compound in Alaska, code named: The Dish. It's theoretically where Conrad shot his infamous 900 feet of film. Conrad went off the grid in 1951 and worked far more covertly from there on out. He couldn't risk another run in with the Government, and was far more secretive of his finds. Under the codename “Birdie”, Mikel began sharing his findings with noted UFO watchdog and research networks including the Aerial Phenomena Enquiry Network (APEN), Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI), Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), International UFO Congress (IUFOC), and the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). The last known response from Birdie was made in 1980 when he said he was "on to something" near Rendlesham Forest. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident] In 2015, 33 years after the disappearance of Mikel Conrad, an investigative team discovered a locked safe deposit box under his name in the very vault he once claimed housed 900 feet of UFO footage. This abandoned box was opened under family permission, and a film canister was discovered. Unfortunately damaged due to it’s fragile stock and inadequate storage, most of the footage was lost to time. Presented for the first time to the public, this video comprises the salvageable footage from this 900 feet of film. For more information on this story, please visit: http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/02/faked-flying-saucers-serious-business/ http://www.aycyas.com/flyingsaucer.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flying_Saucer http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042469/

• published: 25 Feb 2015
• views: 301