From a journalist specializing in conspiracy theories, an examination of mysterious deaths and missing persons related to sightings of UFO phenomena.

Everyone has heard of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But what about close encounters of the fatal kind? The field of UFOs is rife with unsettling examples of suspicious deaths. Accounts of accidents that might not have been accidents after all, abound. Researchers and witnesses have vanished, never to be seen again. Conveniently timed heart attacks are reported. Out-of-the-blue suicides that, upon investigation, bear the distinct hallmarks of murder, are all too common. And grisly deaths at the hands of both extraterrestrials and government agents have occurred. Highlights of Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind include:

• The strange saga of the incredible melting man


• The UFO-related death of the first U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal


• The mysterious disappearances of military pilots and their connection to UFOs


• The connections between national security and the sudden deaths of UFO investigators


• Getting too close to the cosmic truth about alien abductions


• Roswell, and what the government really knows about UFOs can—clearly—be a deadly business

The government’s latest admission of the existence of Area 51 is barely the tip of a very big iceberg.