The size and scope of the files kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation is of no surprise to anyone anymore. Nor are the details, for the most part, contained in the files the bureau built and maintains. Information obtained by the bureau, on anything and anyone, is carefully filed. If it is deemed to be trivial, or incidental, or of little value, it is so noted, but the file is kept anyway. Requests for files under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) often encounter lengthy delays in being granted. The delays occur for several bureaucratic reasons, but also because information linking the file to other files often requires careful redaction. Sometimes files released by the bureau contain so many blacked phrases, names, addresses, and other information as to be virtually unreadable.
Due to their nature, the FBI files offer a scandalmonger’s dream, a conspiracy theorist’s gold mine. The sheer breadth of the topics investigated and documented by the FBI ensures they contain many files of a somewhat bizarre nature. So many of these exist the bureau has classified them in a category in their files (and on their website) of Unexplained Phenomenon. Other categories include Popular Culture, Anti-War, World War II, and many others. In the Unexplained Phenomenon files one finds investigations into UFO incidents, ESP experiments, activities and unexplained events at Roswell, animal mutilations, and many others. Project Blue Book, originally an Air Force investigation in the 1950s and 1960s, has its own category of files, though it is on a later organization which usurped the Air Force name in the 1980s. Here is some of what is found in the FBI’s Unexplained Phenomenon files.
