Conspiracy theories, government cover-ups and UFOs are all topics of an upcoming lecture to be held in the Burney Center Oct. 29 at 7 p.m.

Robert Hastings, a UFO researcher, will speak about UFO presence around U.S. military bases and the government cover-ups he claims surround these events. In his lecture, he will present government documents, as well as testimonials from government officials and military personnel, as evidence for the existence and government knowledge of UFOs.

“This is very real. The Pentagon and the CIA have known about this for well over 50 years and have just decided the public should be kept in the dark as long as possible,” Hastings said. “I disagree with that policy and I am just trying to make people aware that there is creditable evidence for UFOs.”

The event, which is being sponsored by the Association for Campus Entertainment (ACE), will include a lecture by Hastings followed by a Q & A session.

“This event is going to be very dynamic. The first part is a lecture by Mr. Hastings on his years of UFO research, but that is followed by an interactive Q&A session so students can voice their opinions and ask for Mr. Hasting’s insight on the topic,” said Katie Foley, the ACE chair that selected Hastings as a speaker.

Hastings first became interested in UFOs after an experience he had while visiting his father on Malmstrom Air Force base, a nuclear missile site in Montana, in 1967.

“I happened to be present at the base air traffic control tower when five UFOs were being tracked on radar,” Hastings said. “I learned later that these objects had been maneuvering near underground nuclear missile silos.”

Since then, Hastings has spent a number of years researching UFO presence around military bases and nuclear missile sites. According to Hastings, UFO sightings and missile failures have often happened simultaneously at many of these locations. He has interviewed about 120 government personnel, including several high-ranking officials, who claim to have witnessed UFOs and he has collected various other government documents regarding occurrences of UFOs and missile failures.

“By the early 1970s, I began seeking out persons who were at other Air Force bases who may have had similar experiences,” Hastings said. “It became clear over time the more interviews I had done that virtually every nuclear missile base in the U.S. has reported UFOs at nuclear missile sites.”

Many skeptics surround the topic of UFO existence, but Hastings insists all of the information he presents at his lectures are from credible sources.

“What I offer is factual material. I present government document after document that includes high level CIA, FBI and military personnel that are behind the scenes and speaking about UFOs as a concrete reality,” Hastings said.

Hastings has lectured at around 500 universities since 1981, and his upcoming visit to UNCW will be his second.

With Halloween just around the corner, ACE is sponsoring the lecture due in part to its unusual and otherworldly content.

“I realized that his interesting topic-UFOs and UFO conspiracy theories-would be a perfect match for around Halloween,” Foley said. “Not only is the content interesting, but it can definitely set that eerie tone for the Halloween season, which is something I feel a lot of students are looking for.” Hastings realizes the skepticisms surrounding UFOs, but hopes his upcoming audience at UNCW keeps an open mind about the much-debated topic of UFO existence.

“The most important thing is that people should at least look at the evidence before drawing any conclusions,” Hastings said. “Anyone who keeps an open mind and wants to learn something new about UFOs will be quite surprised by the information that I have.”