UFO researchers mysteriously died and vanished as far back as the 1940s, as per claims

Amid growing concerns over missing and dead scientists in the United States, some UFO researchers have claimed that this is not a recent occurrence, and mysterious suicides and plane crashes happened as far back as the 1940s. Nearly 12 people linked with the fields of space and nuclear research have either died or disappeared in the past four years. Congressman Tim Burchett and journalist Ross Coulthart are among those who first flagged the issue, after which more people started talking about it before it ultimately reached the White House. The FBI is currently investigating, even though other experts and the family members of some of these scientists do not think they are related. Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists are now claiming that hundreds of such deaths happened when UFO sightings were initially reported, and they were made to look like accidents or suicides.

UFO researchers Nigel Watson and Timothy Hood told The Daily Mail that one of the first such incidents happened at the start of the "flying saucer" era in 1947. Harold A Dahl, his son Charles and two crewmen were in a tugboat off Maury Island in Puget Sound between Washington State's Seattle and Tacoma when they saw six golden and silver doughnut-shaped objects flying above them. One of them wobbled and released thin metallic strips and black lumps. It hit the boy who was injured and the dog that died. A man in a black sedan confronted Dahl and warned him not to speak about the incident.

Kenneth Arnold was another man who also saw flying saucers and asked Air Force Intelligence to investigate. Captain William Davidson and Lieutenant Frank M Brown went to Tacoma but found no evidence of a rain of molten lead. Both of them died when their B-25 crashed. Watson says the port engine of their aircraft caught fire. Later, someone called the local newspaper and claimed, "The aircraft was shot down by a 20mm cannon because there were fragments of a flying saucer."

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Conspiracy theories on UFO researchers

Arnold also escaped death as the engine of his plane failed after he took off from Tacoma. He made a crash landing and "found that his fuel valve had been switched off." He added, "Paul Lance, a reporter for the Tacoma Times, who covered this story, died suddenly two weeks later of meningitis." Dahl's boss, Fred Crisman, who had collected debris from the site, was later investigated in a case related to the assassination of President Kennedy. This further fueled conspiracy theories that the people in the know were being deliberately silenced. Researcher Otto Binder claimed in 1971 that 137 UFO investigators had died in mysterious circumstances during the 1960s.

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Many claims were found baseless

However, several such claims made over the years have been quashed. For example, in 2016, conspiracy theorist and UFO hunter Max Spiers told his mother that he feared being killed and asked her to investigate if something had happened to him. He "vomited black fluid" at a friend's house in Poland and died. But it was later revealed that he was suffering from pneumonia and passed away after taking a combination of powerful prescription drugs.