T e d--P h i l l i p s
1 9 4 2-----2020
by Kevin Randle
From the MUFON of Ohio Newsletter, June, 2020
"He began investigating UFOs in 1964 and met Dr. J. Allen Hynek during the investigation of the Socorro UFO landing."
"Phillips was trained as an engineer and was a professional photographer. He was involved in the Vanguard Satellite Program and was a field engineer on the Minuteman Missile Project. He was also employed as an inspector for the Missouri State Highway Department, an associate of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, and made presentations at the MUFON Symposiums."
"It was Hynek who suggested that Phillips concentrate on UFO physical trace cases. Phillips and his team investigated more than 4000 physical trace cases in more than 90 countries. Phillips once said that if you told him the physical markings left by the UFO, he would be able to describe the craft that left them."
"With Hynek, Dr. Jacques Vallee and Dr. David Saunders, Phillips participated in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aerospace Sciences meetings. He also participated as a member of a small group who met with the United Nations Secretary-General. Phillips made presentations to a wide variety of groups and was a participant in several television programs and documentaries dedicated to UFOs."
"In recent years he was involved in the investigation of strange lights seen in the Marley Woods in far southern Missouri. I met him in Illinois when he made a presentation about those lights at a UFO conference there. I had hoped to talk to Phillips about this while at the conference but there never seemed to be a couple of moments when the two of us crossed paths, with one exception. I told him it was my impression, from his presentation, that he wasn't looking toward the extraterrestrial on this. He confirmed that he had thought it was some sort of terrestrial manifestation but he didn't know what it might be."
"In the 1970s, he provided a "position statement" for Ron Story's Encyclopedia of UFOs that said:"
"The available facts are mostly statistical, but by taking a large number of reports, we can begin to develop a fairly clear picture of the objects observed and the traces left behind. Obviously, a report involving a landed object is of much greater value than a nocturnal light case. The landed object immediately eliminates a number of possibilities. One would not expect a balloon to land, leave unusual traces, and then ascend vertically at high speed. Stars and planets do not appear at ground level between witnesses and a line of trees. When several witnesses observe a disk-shaped object with a metallic surface, no wings and no sound, landing, ascending vertically, they have, with their descriptions, eliminated most of the natural or conventional explanations. When these objects then leave traces at the landing site, we have something tangible to examine. I believe, after thirteen years of investigation, the data indicates a nonterrestrial origin."
"Founder and director of "The Center for Physical Trace Research"; he died on March 10, 2020. Phillips was born in 1942 and spent his life in Missouri."
© 2021 MUFON of Ohio.