The Independent, Wednesday, March 19, 1997

As a five-year-old, Rob McConnell saw something that changed his life.

It made him question the church and theology. It made him accept the loss of his home, the financial hardships that have even temporarily divided his family. It made him want to find the truth about what it was that hovered over his Montreal neighborhood one summer evening in 1957.

"It was fascinating, it didn't scare us - it was WOW," said McConnell at last week's Thursday at Ten discussion, recounting his sighting of a 300 foot tubular object which moved slowly over his childhood home. "Every kid in the neighborhood saw it, and none of the adults would talk about it."

McConnell has little doubt about what it was he saw as a child - it was a UFO. Now as an adult, he is a regular guest on radio and television programs, and is the publisher of The 'X' Chronicles, a monthly newspaper he uses in an unending mission to inform people on the possibility there is more out there than we realize, or are told, about UFOs.

Fighting against society's skepticism and disbelief, McConnell also has to fight against the image of the paranoid and conspiracy theory spewing UFO hunter depicted on television, scanning the sky at night, chasing after flashing lights and seeing only what they want to see.

Instead, McConnell is a calm and humorous speaker, often asking questions of his audience. But as he pointed out, looking for proof that UFOs exists is serious business that demands open minds.

"There are things out there I don't understand," said McConnell. "The world is not black and white, and because there's something out there and we don't understand doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

The publisher explained The 'X' Chronicles receives over 700 audio and video tapes and photographs from people across the country who believe they have seen a UFO. What began as a one page newsletter, that McConnell admitted that he couldn't even give away, has grown into a monthly newspaper. The former police officer has invested his life and his life savings into the pursuit of the unknown.

With sophisticated sound and image enhancing equipment, and his own criteria for authenticity, McConnell examines all submissions. For every 100 sightings, only three percent are truly unexplainable, with the majority of sightings attributed to military exercises or weather conditions, explained the publisher. It is only those three percent that The 'X' Chronicles reports on.

"You won't find (U.S. President Bill) Clinton shaking hands with an alien in The 'X' Chronicles, you won't find photos from an alien autopsy," described McConnell.

The newspaper is also dedicated to exposing hoaxes involving UFOs and the paranormal. McConnell pointed to the 1967 sasquatch film and Fox Television's recent presentation of an alien autopsy, as examples of what he calls hoaxes.

For someone who has dedicated his life to finding the truth, McConnell said the television broadcast was particularly offensive.

"It made me sick," said McConnell. "As someone who has been in this business long enough, I can recognize someone with Turner's Syndrome. That wasn't an alien, that was a human with a chromosome disorder," he said of the show featuring an alien autopsy.

McConnell said much of his information comes from listening to people honestly, especially to the accounts of children. He cited statistics showing seventy percent of North Americans believe they've seen a UFO, and forty percent of those seventy claim to have been abducted. In the last four years, McConnell has interviewed 200 people from Niagara Falls to Toronto who believe they have been abducted by aliens.

The UFO expert argued alien visits are chronicled throughout history, in stories in the Bible and in the architecture and religious beliefs of ancient civilizations. If there is a conspiracy surrounding the possibility of alien visitations, McConnell explained it may not necessarily be to protect the earthlings, but instead to protect these other-world visitors.

"What do we do when there is something unexplained in the sky? We send out F-18s with nuclear weapons and say land or we'll blow you away. Why? Because we don't understand," said McConnell.

And while he has willingly given up everything in pursuit of the three percent of sightings which are unexplained, McConnell said, there are plenty of rewards in the search for the unknown.

"People want the truth to be known, and I want to help them get it out. People keep coming forward and I want to help them," said McConnell. "When I talk to people, and they tell me a secret that they've been carrying for 30 years about something they saw, it's worth it."