Around 1997, I was in between news reporting jobs. I had in the previous year one an Associated Press Award for best crime story.   I was a crime investigative reporter for the Washington Daily News.  For several years I have been writing fiction novels and short stories (many short stories published and was working on novels to be published or made into movies. Most of the stories were those Stephen King kind.  I sought to scare people into realizing the importance of life and the meaning of relationships. I wrote of psycho organ grinding monkeys, to end-of-the-world confrontations of good and evil, to a hunted Crematory. I had signed a three book contact for possible movies when I got into a near fatal car accident.  I was never really able to ride the writing horse again with my fiction stories, but I continued to pursue short story news items. When I moved to Salisbury and looking for another newspaper gig, I discovered Art Bell. It was also Alien Week on TV.  As an English major I knew alot about mythology and thought that UFOs and aliens were a kind of modern day mythology.  For the fun of it, I started reading about the sightings -especially the local ones.  I think X-Files was one of the top TV shows at the time.  I thought, why not investigate UFO sightings as a crime investigative would report true crime reports. Essentially I would write them as I would if I had got the call from my newspaper desk. I would go do the when, what, how, and when, and who.........just the facts and let everyone sort them out. Before I knew it, I had created American UFO News. I was collecting reports around the country and doing an internet newsletter. Months later, I was a regular on several radio stations. I even started my own internet radio show that became quite popular and was picked up by a station in New York City. I received all sorts of reports. Some came from average normal people who saw an UFO - an unidentified flying object - which does not mean it was from an alien race, but something that flew in the air they could not readily identify. Then, I got the alleged alien abduction victims with very strange tales. 

I was doing this as entertainment but treating the reports as cases to investigate as an honest true reporter. I merely collected the available information and reported it.  I was an UFO expert source for a TV network and was interviewed by China's news media questioning a major sighting they had in their country. I won't mention names, but there are several that seem to always pop up when media need opinions on UFOs. Some of these people make far fetched claims that I questioned as a true reporter only to be - excommunicated from them.  I was collecting a great resource for ufo sightings, dating back to the first American reported UFO sightings that went to the pilgrims  to today's latest reports.  We had sightings by state, category, etc.  I collected the information objectively. Sometimes I wondered if I wasn't a great resource for China.  Top secret military aircraft is observed by Joe Public and they send me the report and I publish it or put it in a data bank.

As when I started this adventure to the present day, I've not seen evidence that would make me believe there are aliens from another world or planet visiting our own.  I have heard stories of abductions from people that I believe - believe- something extraordinary had happened to them.  When I received a report I simply recorded the facts given - eye witness accounts of things unidentified or unexplained. I thought reports of aliens are a modern day mythology like the Greeks of old believing in Zeus and seeing fantastic creatures. Or even in the old days in Europe when some believed in vampires and werewolves.  There is a great proportion of Americans that believe Earth has been or even "is" visited by aliens.  Many believe there is extraterrestial life outside of Earth.  If life can be found on Mars or the Moon, the possibility of a more advanced life form must live somewhere in the infinite number of solar systems.

So, I collect the stories in the form of entertainment. But, I record them and with what limited time and resource as an official Associated Press Reporter would.  This was just a fun hobby I started when I had alot of free time.  Now, I'm a semi-famous artist who paints 12 hours a day with a mission to bring Light and Hope into people's homes.  The old aufonxpi mailing list is always alive and very active. I've never closed that down.  Somehow people find the old telephone number I used when I was staying at my mom's for several months.  People from around the world call her on occasion.  Just yesterday, she received a call........it sounded like a young person, whispering in the phone not to be overheard by something.... "I just saw a UFO and an ET.  He's got really big eyes........" then they hang up."  One person called giving my mom a live report of observing an UFO by their home and suddenly hung up saying, "Oh, gotta go, wife just got home."  My mom, now retired, tells me of the calls she still gets.  I think they amuse her. 

Everyday somewhere in America someone sees a UFO.  They see something they can't explain and would like to report it to someone.  Most people that call or report seem and are very logical and normal and report what they saw. Some believe they seriously have had encounters with aliens.  Some may simply have a minor psychological problem while others are as sane and lucid as the best of us.  I always tried to report and see things as truthfully as I could as I had being a reporter. I think I had a lot of readers and listeners for that fact.  It's kind of like going ghost hunting.  You may not believe in ghosts, but its fun hunting them.  And if you ever did find one, you would believe.  I like collecting the stories and reports. I think it would be awesome to find we are indeed visited by ET's - hopefully friendly -

The reason I wrote all of this very long piece about my thoughts on UFO's..... my Mary doesn't want people to think I am a "coo coo," and have an effect on my soaring artistic success. I just like collecting the stories and making reports.  I just state the available information and what the person reports to me.  I let the readers decide what they will. I treat each story like a news report handed to me over my desk and use the basic Associated Press protocol.  So, don't think of me as weird. Remember me as a great artist :) .....this is something fun, an escape from 12 hours a day of painting - like going fishing or bowling. I think many of you will find reports interesting, entertaining, intriguing.  You may like making educated guesses of what the people reported actually saw - especially in your local area.

Because I don't have time but to paint, I will try to create American UFO News as a resource by providing links and news services and  on occasion will write on some of the reports.  I will try to dig up the huge collection of reports I had once collected and filed away on discs somewhere in boxes. 

Again, this is purely for fun for me. I am merely a reporter. It is up to you to decide if you want to laugh or ponder, to try to solve the puzzle or find your local ET guru who has built a UFO landing pad  on their property.  Who knows............. maybe there will be contact. One thing I can know for sure - someone, somewhere, is going to see something very strange and want to report it.

Stefan Duncan