The Mystery Of The Missing Files

As I noted in my post here yesterday, the FBI has quietly removed from its website a PDF collection of documentation on alleged cases of spontaneous human combustion. Instead, all you get now is a summary of the files in question.

Interestingly, the FBI has also begun to remove other Fortean files, and UFO-related data, from its site too.

For example, up until very recently - but no longer, sadly - you could also download in PDF format the FBI's 135-page file on Silas Newton, who was a key player in the legend of the alleged UFO crash at Aztec, New Mexico in March 1948.

Also: the FBI's 42-page file on Philip Corso, of "The Day After Roswell", has been completely deleted from the FBI's site. All you get now is a name check listed in the "C" section of the Bureau's online research page.

The 179-page FBI file on maverick scientist and Aleister Crowley disciple Jack Parsons is no longer available; the 287-page file on scientific genius Nikola Tesla is completely gone; as has the 789-page collection on Wilhelm "cloud-buster" Reich.

Some of the FBI's files on weird phenomena - such as its UFO papers, its animal mutilation files, its MJ12 reports, and its Project Blue Book records - are still available.

But this recent deletion of what amounts to thousands of pages of "strange secrets" that the FBI had previously posted online in a handy, downloadable format is very curious indeed.

Of course, you can still get the files by filing a written request with the FBI; but that can take time, and for some of the larger files, it can cost significant amounts of money too.

Luckily, I downloaded all the now-missing files onto a CD some time ago...