Cheryl Costa on Muck Rack

Cheryl Costa

(She/Her)
Ohio, United States
As seen in: Roswell Daily Record
Covers:  UFO-UAP, Mysticism, Witchcraft, Paganism, Transgender and Veterans Issues, Indie film making
Doesn't Cover: Most other things that I know nothing about! I live by the policy of "Write what you know!"
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Articles by Cheryl Costa

The question of who is in our backyard

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
On Nov. 7, Politico published an article titled “Pentagon UFO boss to step down next month.” The article was an exclusive interview with Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). In the article by Politico reporter Lara Seligman, it was announced that Dr. Kirkpatrick was retiring in December. Kirkpatrick remarked, “I’m ready to move on.
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Elders share their childhood UFO encounters

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
As a UFO/UAP columnist, people drop me cards, letters, emails and such all the time. Many of them want to share a UFO sighting they had either recently or in some cases half a lifetime ago or more. Here are two elder recollections that I found in my files that were particularly engaging. The Bus in the Cow Pasture It was an overcast Thanksgiving Day in 1934. Six-year-old Edith, along with her parents, had spent the day in Binghamton, New York, at Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.
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Abductees, their experiences and mental health professionals

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
It’s been an unprecedented year 2023, the UFO/UAP topic matter has been absolutely huge this past year. With Senate Hearings and Congressional House hearings in the news, it’s the number one issue by far in congressional office mail rooms this year. Public interest in UFO/UAP topic matter has far surpassed all the election year scandal bait that’s been circulated. The bottom line in the public interest has been about getting the truth out in the open.
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Was it bats or an alien in the cellar?

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
Being in the UFO/UAP research field I get to meet a great deal of people at UFO/UAP conventions and conferences all over the United States. It’s common for me to meet experiencers who are willing to open up and share an out-of-this-world encounter with me. As a journalist, vetting such stories is an exceedingly difficult task. I served in Vietnam, 1971-1972.
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Will we be able to talk to the off worlders?

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
According to Ethnologue, which is considered to be the most extensive catalog of world languages, there are 7,117 languages spoken by the people of Earth. English ranks first followed by Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, French, Standard Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, Urdu, Indonesian and Standard German to name the top 10 languages.
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UAP talk influencing our greater culture

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
The UAP field has been like a roller coaster lately. Recent Congressional hearings with whistleblower claims that highly classified compartmented special access groups allegedly have technical hardware that was built by nonhuman intelligence.
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‘Encounters’ a UFO detective story

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
On the 27th of September, Netflix debuted the first of four episodes of “Encounters.” It’s a new UFO-themed series produced by Stephen Spielberg's Amblin Television, Boardwalk Pictures and Vice Studios. For the UFO aficionado, it’s interesting but the program isn’t going to be revealing all the secrets of the universe that most of you truly want. The truth is this program has been tailored to enlighten the average citizen of the world.
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UAP the phenomena - consciousness

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
In a previous column, I discussed UAPs in the context of hardware. In this column let’s go to the other side of the UAP phenomena, consciousness! I’ll state again as I have said previously, I am a trained mystic. 48 years as a Wicca Magickal practitioner and concurrently 26 years as a Tantric Buddhist practitioner. The topic of consciousness is familiar to me and paradoxically still an unknown country to be explored.
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UAP the phenomena-technology

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
After I announced on Facebook that I would be writing a new newspaper column, I was deluged with every sort of suggestion of what to write about. Some ideas were on point, some weren’t, and some are very deep down the UAP topic rabbit hole! I’ve adopted the guiding principle of staying somewhat in the middle of the road on the overall topic. Not too deep into presumed UAP technology, and I tend to stay away from conspiracy theories.
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Our fascination with off-world beings

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
Recently, one of the televised Congressional hearings mentioned Non-Human-Intelligences visiting our little Blue Planet. Of course, afterward there was plenty of speculative buzz on the news wires and in social media. The idea of intelligent beings from other worlds has been with us for some time, particularly in our literary fiction.
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The after-Disclosure world to come

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
I thought it might be fun to discuss some implications of Disclosure and examine the notion of general open public contact with space-faring races. Let’s say for the sake of storytelling: Imagine that our government and the governments of other world powers follow America’s lead and finally come clean with all of us about their dealings with space-faring races from wherever. Yes, there would be shock-and-awe when we get the straight story that we’re not alone in the multiverse.
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The scale of the UAP phenomenon

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
When people talk about UAP sightings, there are all kinds of perspectives and perceptions. Speak with knowledgeable persons of history, they will tell you that strange things have been reported flying in the sky and have been reported by our ancient ancestors.
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UFO/UAP facts about New Mexico

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
Since 2017 and my old “New York Skies” newspaper column, my wife Linda Miller Costa and I have become nationally known for our UFO/UAP statistics analysis work. To date, we have published fifty-two books about UFO/UAP sighting report statistics. Two national statistics books: UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001-2015 and UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001-2020.
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The reincarnation of a UFO column

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By Cheryl Costa
| Roswell Daily Record
My name is Cheryl Costa and I am a UFO/UAP journalist. I began writing about UFOs in July of 2013 for the old Syracuse Newtimes newspaper. I wrote that weekly column until the newspaper went out of business in June of 2019.
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The Diary, short story by Cheryl Costa

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By Cheryl Costa
| booksie.com
Sooner or later every writer has to dare to enter into a fictional unthinkable dark cave reality. the first 167 words are real present-day history, as of this writing 3/9/2023. The remaining 873 words are an imagined possible scenario that could come to pass. Especially if the lesson of nazi Germany is any example. at 1040 words this story is considered a short story – the genre is Historical Fiction, sub-genre is LGBTQA.
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Stateside: Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023

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By Cheryl Costa
| WUOM-FM (Ann Arbor, MI)
Today on Stateside, an update on the status of children’s hospitals and pediatric hospital wards across the state amid a surge of respiratory viruses. Plus, a writer who is working to catalog UFO sightings in Michigan dished on her recent book. Then, we spoke with State Senator Jeff Irwin about the state's ban on plastic bag bans. To wrap up, Brooklyn-based artist Robin Frohardt spoke about her installation "Plastic Bag Store," and the statement that it makes on single use plastics in our society.
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A Spiritual Evolution in our Midst

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By Cheryl Costa
| booksie.com
CreativeMarauder In a world where every issue is allowed two black and white sides... I am on the side opposite of yours. The metaphysical bent you take is interesting and I'd rather comment on that. You've already put your money where your mouth is. My brother believes he lived a past life as a Vietnamese woman. He does not subscribe to any of these new labels and it's not part of his identity (and he ain't trans either).
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The Dog Face Vedics

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By Cheryl Costa
| booksie.com
The Dog Face Vedics came about as a backstory for a collection of short stories that were supposed to be called The Vedic Chronicles. I fabricated this narrative to read like a read-in-briefing for Classified Special Access Program. In essence, a military black budget program! So, sit back and join General Edward Richard Townsend as he briefs you about Project Bolla. At about 6038 words, this story is considered a Short Story.
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Was the “Rip Van Winkle” story as an Alien Abduction Account?

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By Cheryl Costa
| booksie.com
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Quiet Heads

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By Cheryl Costa
| booksie.com
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Quiet Heads, book by Cheryl Costa

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By Cheryl Costa
| booksie.com
A Dream A Dream - Steam Valley, NY - Spring 2072 A.D. “Two tickets for the WICKED Revival,” she told the man behind the counter. As the m... Read Chapter Decoville, NY Decoville, New York - November 2080 A.D. Skirts were not intended for this sort of weather, Bernadette thought as the harsh November ... Read Chapter The Briefing The Briefing After lunch, Tom led Bernadette to the conference room. “Take a seat; you'll be joined shortly. Enjoy the briefing,”...
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Quiet Heads: Chapter 18

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By Cheryl Costa
| booksie.com
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The World After Disclosure

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By Cheryl Costa
| booksie.com
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Zuri’s Children, short story by Cheryl Costa

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By Cheryl Costa
| booksie.com
Far, Far, Away some 857 light years away, is the home world of the Draak. The Draak are sentient and very intelligent humanoid reptilians. They are smart, peaceful, and comfortable with their matriarch-based culture. As an advanced space faring race, they long ago left the lakes and ponds to conduct their spawning's. Now days they choose to use household spawning tubs. In their homes the female Draak are free to choose who they spawn with from the best and brightest of the males in their race.
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The Earhart Squadron

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By Cheryl Costa
| booksie.com
LOGLINE: In a League of their own Tuskegee airmen style project for Women pilots. In this alternate World-War-Two universe, on 7 December 1941, Pearl Harbor and the west coast of the continental USA is attacked by the Empire of Japan; simultaneously the German NavyŌĆÖs submarine force unleashes a series of devastating terror rocket attacks upon major east coast population and manufacturing centers. In Cuba, Imperial Fascist Spain with Axis support overthrows the elected government with a coup.
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The Away-Team, short story by Cheryl Costa

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By Cheryl Costa
| booksie.com
The author used to teach and proctor remote viewing classes upon occasion and have done so for about twenty years. so, what is it? remote viewing (rv) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target. it's done by connecting to an infinite cosmic source of all knowledge with the mind. there are no grand visions, only a profound sense of knowing. rv is merely data gathering about a target with a mental connection through a set of target cues.
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Fade To Black - Cheryl Costa - July 6th - Jimmy Church Radio

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By Cheryl Costa
| Fade to Black
Cheryl Costa July 6th, 2022 Mythical UFO Hotspot Tonight, Wednesday on FADE to BLACK: Cheryl Costa joins us to talk about The Mythical Daily UFO Hotspot. Cheryl recently published "The UFO Beat: The New York Skies Column July 2013 to June 2019" and the "UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001-2015", which includes over 121,000 sightings. She lists the top UFO hot spots, according to the data, and sighting reports down to the county level.
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UFO Database / Death of Marilyn Monroe

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By Cheryl Costa
| Coast to Coast AM
Date Sunday - May 16 2021 Host George Knapp Guests Cheryl Costa, Nick Redfern First Half; UFO researcher Cheryl Costa has created one of the most significant databases for serious UFO researchers with her UFO Sightings Desk Reference book. The newest addition covers USA sightings from 2001-2020.
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UFO sightings: find out where your city ranks

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By George Knapp , Cheryl Costa
| mysterywire.com
by: George Knapp Posted: May 7, 2020 / 01:06 PM PDT / Updated: May 7, 2020 / 01:06 PM PDT MYSTERY WIRE — Do you know how many of your neighbors have reported seeing a UFO? It’s more than you might think. A massive data project taken on by a New York City based author and researcher broke the numbers down, state by state, county by county, and city by city. But the rankings only scratch the surface since it only includes the cases that are actually reported.
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New York UFO Sightings / UK Paranormal Hot Spot

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By Cheryl Costa
| Coast to Coast AM
Date Sunday - April 19, 2020 Host George Knapp Guests Cheryl Costa,  Paul Sinclair First Half: Since the late 1960s, newspapers mostly stopped reporting UFO sighting accounts. This created a false impression that the UFO phenomena was something that only happened back in the 1940s-1960s. In 2013, a retired aerospace analyst, Cheryl Costa, decided to share the truth that UFO sightings occur relatively regularly.
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New York UFO Sightings / UK Paranormal Hot Spot

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By Cheryl Costa
| Coast to Coast AM
Date Sunday - April 19, 2020 Host George Knapp Guests Cheryl Costa,  Paul Sinclair First Half: Since the late 1960s, newspapers mostly stopped reporting UFO sighting accounts. This created a false impression that the UFO phenomena was something that only happened back in the 1940s-1960s. In 2013, a retired aerospace analyst, Cheryl Costa, decided to share the truth that UFO sightings occur relatively regularly.
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Blog | UFO news, disclosure and the demise of a great newspaper

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
In the spring of 2013, I walked into the office of Syracuse New Times editor-in-chief Larry Dietrich. We had a 20-minute conversation about UFOs, and at the end of the chat he invited me to show him five PowerPoint Pitch slides. Afterward, he agreed to try my New York Skies UFO blog-column for a month. At the end of the month, he told me I was doing great and to keep doing what I was doing.
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Blog | Love Thy Celestial Neighbor

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
For more than 70 years, our government has been tight-lipped about the nature of UFOs and the extraterrestrial presence among us. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the great fear was that the revelation of the truth about off-world beings would instill fear upon the vast majority of our population. In those days top government officials only needed to point to Orson Welles’ 1938 The War of the Worlds radio broadcast that terrified a lot of people.
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Blog | UFO disclosure numbers tell a story

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
So this guy comes up to me and says, “Hey, Costa! You’ve got no PROOF of real alien craft coming here.” I told him I have 147,801 eyewitness accounts. “So what!” he replies. “Some percentage is bogus.” “OK, let’s take 25% right off the top,” I proposed. “Nope!” He says, “So much more is bogus.” Related: Blog | UFO Data: What it has and doesn’t have on what’s out there I thought about what he said and then offered, “Dr. Jacques Vallee says roughly 80% is noise.
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Blog | The UFO Comfort Factor: How close is too close?

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
Recently I was a speaker at the weeklong immersion event UFOMegacon in Laughlin, Nevada, where I spoke with lots of attendees and other speakers. One of the things I noted in these conversations and was the UFO Comfort Factor. For the past six years, I have shared UFO sighting stories in this blog. One element that we tracked was the receptivity to some of the subject matter.
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Blog | Timing is everything for UFO observations

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
As a UFO researcher and journalist, folks frequently ask me about when people observe UFOs. I usually smile and reply, “That’s not an easy answer.” After Linda Miller Costa and I built the UFO sightings database which we used to create our 2017 book, UFO Sighting Desk Reference, we began a process of analyzing the raw data on a relatively superficial level.
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Is 'The 37th Parallel' really the UFO Super Highway?

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
My gut opinion has been that I didn’t think the theory of “the 37th Parallel” would hold up to statistical science. I wasn’t wrong. On Nov. 6, 2016, USA Today published an article by Jon Swartz titled “The 37th Parallel makes a strong case for UFOs.” When Ben Mezrich’s book The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America’s UFO Highway was released, Linda Miller Costa and I were deep into crunching data related to our UFO Sightings Desk Reference book.
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Bruce Maccabee - Biography & Interviews

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By Cheryl Costa, Bruce Maccabee
| Coast to Coast AM
Home > Guests > Bruce Maccabee Biography: U. S. Navy Research Physicist Bruce Maccabee is the author of The UFO/FBI Connection, The Secret History of the Government's Cover-Up. Bruce received his Ph.D. in Physics from American University, Washington, D. C., in 1970. He was hired by the U. S. Department of Navy to be a physics researcher at what was then called the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL).
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UFO Data: What it has and doesn’t have on what's out there

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
When Linda Miller Costa and I published our UFO Sightings Desk Reference book in spring 2017, a curious thing happened. We began receiving email and social media commentary asking why we only measured the UFO sighting magnitudes from 2001 through 2015. Many communications asked “Why didn’t you go back 40 years? For the record, prior to the early 1990s, most UFO sighting reports were filed with newspapers, radio stations, law enforcement and private sighting collection groups.
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Blog | UFO reportage experiences mysterious decline

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
Readers who follow the yearly UFO sighting trends here at New York Skies are probably aware that reports have been falling off rather steeply. From a high of 13,985 in 2014 to a measly 6,933 in 2018, that translates to a clear 50 percent decline in incremental amounts over the past four years. Of course, we’ve been here before: 12 years ago in 2007, when UFO sighting reports were on the rise.
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Blog | Will the Hudson Valley catch another UFO wave?

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
The Hudson Valley has a long history of strange paranormal occurrences. Most notable was the UFO wave of the 1980s, which began with sighting reports of boomerang-shaped UFOs in 1981. The wave of various UFO sightings peaked in 1983 and 1984 with many thousands of reports, followed by many books and documentaries about the subject.
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"What brand of tinfoil do you wear?" Media passes on UFO coverage

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
Despite being offered tailored UFO sightings data, local media stations nationwide passed on the opportunity, ultimately doing a disservice to the public. In the spring of 2017 just prior to the release of our book UFO Sightings Desk Reference (co-written by Linda Miller Costa), I reached out to about 60 television, radio and press outlets in the principle cities of the top 10 states for UFO sightings as of 2015.
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Blog | Why do extraterrestrial visitors come to our small planet?

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
New York Skies (Cheryl Costa) Blog | Why do extraterrestrial visitors come to our small planet? Posted on December 12, 2018 Share Tweet Share Share Email Comments Why are extraterrestrials here? It’s the most common question I get asked during media interviews, at UFO conferences, and from just everyday people who know I write about the subject. The answer isn’t easy because Earth humans don’t have a clue regarding the extraterrestrials’ interests.
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Rare egg-shaped UFO sightings are no 'yolk'

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
New York Skies (Cheryl Costa) Blog | Rare egg-shaped UFO sightings are no ‘yolk’ Posted on November 28, 2018 Share Tweet Share Share Email Comments Police officer Lonnie Zamora was on patrol on Friday, April 24, 1964, at about 5:50 p.m. in the outskirts of his jurisdiction in Socorro County, New Mexico, when he witnessed the approach of an egg-shaped craft where he was driving. The craft was spewing great amounts of flames just before it landed in the desert.
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How many people actually report UFO sightings? A reality check

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
New York Skies (Cheryl Costa) How many people actually report UFO sightings? A reality check Posted on November 12, 2018 Share Tweet Share Share Email Comments When I first started writing New York Skies in 2013, I made a point of attending a number of UFO conferences for research purposes. At that time, notable speakers and seasoned UFO aficionados told me that roughly one-third of Americans thought that UFOs existed.
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Talking about UFOs amid polite society, a reflection

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
During a writer’s workshop held last summer, I was part of a nonfiction mentoring track. I was having evaluations of selected pieces from a memoir I’m writing. The judging was on the mark, and I was very appreciative of the critiques. Also during the event, the attendees were asked to pass a talking stick around, with each author sharing the topics they had already published.
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Season of the Witch: Debunking the stereotypes of witchcraft

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
It’s Halloween season, or as some call it, the Season of the Witch. As I walk through stores selling seasonal decorations and costumes with the stereotype of the wart-covered old crone witch, I cringe. Whenever Halloween comes around, the age-old question comes up: “Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?” as was asked by Glinda in The Wizard of Oz. My answer is easy: “I’m a good witch!” What is witchcraft? It’s a form of spirituality and a religion with many sects, like any other faith.
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The mystery of Changing UFOs: The prize is hiding in the details

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
One of the most perplexing of all the UFO shapes is the Changing UFOs category. For a few years now I’ve heard many UFO enthusiasts complain that the Changing category is useless since it really doesn’t define anything, or that the observers are flawed in some way. I must admit that the previous reports of Changing or Morphing UFOs left me with the impression that these were flawed observations.
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Examining the decline: Another look at the data on UFO sighting reports

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
I have previously reported that UFO sighting reports have been on a steep decline for three years. 2018 is continuing this steep dropoff. Please note that I said “UFO sighting reports” and not sightings. I’ve been getting considerable mail that sightings are still up in North America and in Europe. It just seems that folks aren’t showing an enthusiasm for reporting their recent sightings.
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Diversity in UFO Statistics: The Truth is in the Shapes

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By Cheryl Costa
| Syracuse New Times
It’s funny how publishing UFO sightings numbers scares the hell out of some people. Many have written to me, “They (UFOs) can’t all be real!” They reassure themselves with the notion that UFO reports are largely misidentifications, and the product of kooks and crackpots. A number of other people who have purchased my book UFO Sightings Desk Reference seem to go out of their way to twist my words and suggest that I think only 7 percent of UFO sightings are real.
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