{"id":446,"date":"2025-05-23T09:58:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T08:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mindfckd.co.uk\/?p=446"},"modified":"2025-06-06T16:25:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T15:25:35","slug":"ufo-hunting-with-pooles-most-notorious-extraterrestrial-spotter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jusmedia.co.uk\/mindfckd\/2025\/05\/23\/ufo-hunting-with-pooles-most-notorious-extraterrestrial-spotter\/","title":{"rendered":"UFO Hunting With Poole’s Most Notorious Extraterrestrial Spotter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jonathan McGowan is a seasoned UFO spotter who has documented hundreds of images of what he believes to be alien phenomena, so I spent a day with him to see if I could find any truth around the mystery of UFOs. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sleepy seaside town on the south coast may not seem like the setting of high-stakes, thrilling airborne conspiracy, but according to some, Poole is. It doesn\u2019t have quite the same attention and perceived threat level as drone threats in the skies over America, but to Dorset UFO spotters, UFOs in Poole are no less real, and have increased in recent years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wish people would open their eyes, because you can see so many UFOs in this area, it\u2019s something that\u2019s hidden from us, just how close we are to this portal that releases them,\u201d Jonathan McGowan<\/a> said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Poole Quay, a subdued, cobblestoned part of the Old Town, I stood with Jonathan, a 57-year-old UFO spotter, born and bred in Dorset. Pointing up through the cloud and mist that\u2019d prevented anyone other than the two of us from coming to the waterside, Jonathan told me, \u201cNot the best day for it really\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s not a lot of people that I\u2019d be inclined to believe if they told me that they had not just seen, but documented hundreds of UFOs. Whenever I\u2019ve heard about unexplained sightings before, I\u2019d always brush them off as people\u2019s unreliable eyesight, overactive imaginations and unawareness of how easy flight radar apps are to access. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven seeing one UFO will unlock your perspective,\u201d Jonathan said. \u201cEveryone spends their lives looking down, and when they do look up, they combat logic with the lies they\u2019ve been conditioned with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t claim to know exactly what all the UFOs are, could be us travelling through time with future technology, could be a completely different species, but they\u2019re here.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan does not come across as the kind of person I might have stereotyped as a UFO spotter. He regularly does talks for natural history and wildlife societies, he\u2019s written a book on wild cats, he\u2019s a distinguished speaker and teacher in his field and is a man of science. Sure, he was interviewed in 2009 as \u2018The man who cooks and eats roadkill\u2019, but even that had a fairly rational explanation about sustainable meat consumption and his environmental concern. I had my reservations, but I wanted to know how this self-confessed scientific man really believes he has seen hundreds of UFOs over little old Poole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not at all delusional you know,\u201d Jonathan said, as if he could hear my internal scepticism, \u201cI don\u2019t ever believe stuff without reason, I won\u2019t ever jump to conclusions, and I won\u2019t believe anything without evidence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI definitely wouldn\u2019t call myself a conspiracy theorist either, they\u2019re all mental.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This took me by surprise. We were staring at a cloudy sky, hoping to spot some aliens that according to Jonathan, the government are aware of and hiding from us. I think most people, myself included, would put us in a conspiracy theorist bracket. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s these bad conspiracies you see, people not getting vaccines or covid jabs because there\u2019s a conspiracy that there\u2019s something in them to make us infertile or track us or whatever,\u201d Jonathan said. \u201cPeople grow up learning a bunch of sh*t, young people\u2019s minds are being poisoned, everyone is watching Facebook and looking at conspiracy theories rather than the news and some are so extreme that it\u2019s diabolical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just think why do people believe that, something which is really so obviously not true and completely impossible for the government or whoever to carry out even if they wanted to.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be honest, I could have said exactly that about the idea of UFOs flying out of Poole Harbour. But belief in extraterrestrial conspiracy has skyrocketed, with 7% of Britons believing they have seen a UFO according to YouGov<\/a>, which is up from 3% in 1999. There\u2019s an overwhelming distrust and criticism of governments too, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics<\/a>, 57% of adults have little to no trust in the UK government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople distrust the authorities so much that they think every conspiracy theory is true,\u201d Jonathan said. \u201cWe know people conspire because the government are all liars, so people go to the extreme and think everything is a conspiracy, which is just ridiculous. As a society we\u2019re unbalanced\u2026 but they are hiding things like UFOs from us for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was overwhelmed, but I did agree with Jonathan. I think conspiracy theories are thriving and becoming more extreme as society becomes more polarized and there are no barriers for anyone to publish anything. Conspiracy theories that many would brush off as entirely outlandish are seen as irrefutable by the people believing them in online echo chambers, and Jonathan agreed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet we were both still staring at the sky, poised and ready for an extraterrestrial spacecraft to appear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n