Allan Hendry

Who is Allan Hendry?

Allan Hendry is an American astronomer and ufologist. UFO historian Jerome Clark calls him "one of the most skilled investigators in the history of UFO research." He was the main investigator for the Center for UFO Studies in the 1970s.

He earned a B.A. in astronomy from the University of Michigan in 1972. His wife Dr. Elaine Hendry is a physicist and UFO researcher; she was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of UFO Studies, the only currently living peer reviewed UFO periodical.

Hendry was hired for CUFOS by the organization's founder, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who was seeking a full-time investigator with scientific expertise and an open-minded attitude, and who was neither a debunker nor a "UFO believer".

As the chief investigator for CUFOS during most of the 1970s, Hendry personally investigated over 1000 UFO reports. He was able to find mundane explanations for the vast majority of UFO cases, but he also judged a small percentage of cases to be unexplained. One of the most famous "unexplained" cases he investigated was the Val Johnson Incident in 1979, in which a deputy sheriff in Minnesota experienced a "collision" with an unknown object which damaged his patrol car and left him temporarily unconscious. Hendry was the primary ufologist to investigate the case; in 1980 he debated the incident with well-known UFO debunker Philip Klass at a symposium held at the Smithsonian Institution.