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From the High Desert book cover

From the High Desert

A Cultural History of Art Bell

Thumbnail for December 23, 1998: UFO Footage - Robert Kiviat

December 23, 1998: UFO Footage - Robert Kiviat

Dec 23, 1998
40m
0:00 / 0:00
Art Bell welcomes television producer Robert Kiviat, known for his Fox Network specials on UFOs and unexplained phenomena. Kiviat has secured exclusive rights to a remarkable six-and-a-half-minute UFO video shot by Sharon Rowlands, a Derbyshire housewife who captured the footage after hearing strange sounds outside her home during a wave of UFO activity in October 1997. The BBC ran the story as front-page news, and Kiviat paid a licensing fee of approximately 20,000 dollars for broadcast rights.

What makes the footage particularly significant is its striking resemblance to objects captured by NASA cameras during the famous space shuttle tether incident. Both show disc-shaped craft with a distinctive notch on the edge and a pulsing circle in the center. Kiviat plans to challenge NASA to publicly address the similarity between their own space footage and this ground-level recording from England, testing whether the agency will finally acknowledge what their cameras have captured.

Art also showcases an anonymously submitted UFO video from North Bay, Ontario, that he describes as one of the most impressive he has ever seen. Kiviat discusses his upcoming series "Could It Be True," additional cases involving UFO footage from a family traveling through Texas, and a Bigfoot video from the Florida Everglades.

Key Moments

  1. Anonymous North Bay, Ontario saucer video: Art Bell describes an anonymously submitted UFO video from Mark Hutchins, allegedly shot near North Bay, Ontario about three years earlier. He calls it one of the best he has ever seen, with audible British narration and a saucer that has clear structure as it passes overhead.

  2. Sharon Rowlands' Bonsall video sells to Hollywood: Bell reads the BBC report that Sharon Rowlands, a 44-year-old housewife from Bonsall in the Peak District, was paid roughly twenty thousand for camcorder footage of an unknown craft she filmed in October the previous year, with NASA reportedly asked to compare it to space-shuttle imagery.

  3. Kiviat: provenance is what separates real cases from junk: Kiviat argues that the central question for any UFO video is not how striking it looks but where it came from, who shot it, and whether its history can be tracked, like a painting in an art museum. He says the Rowlands case is unusual because it has that provenance.

  4. Six and a half minutes of structured craft, close approach: Kiviat says the Rowlands footage runs six and a half minutes, captured during a UFO wave over that part of England, and shows what may be the best visual evidence of a structured craft approaching the witness, holding position, and retreating repeatedly.