The Frederick Valentich UFO Incident | Classic GXP Series

In this early solo-hosted episode of Generation X Paranormal—back when Logan was still figuring out how not to sound like a caffeinated ghost hunter—we dig into one of the most mysterious UFO disappearances of all time: the 1978 vanishing of Australian pilot Frederick Valentich.

While flying a Cessna 182L over the Bass Strait, 20-year-old Valentich radioed in a chilling report: a strange, fast-moving object with four bright lights was following him. His last words? “It’s not an aircraft.” Moments later, he—and his plane—were gone.

This Classic GXP episode explores:

• The full timeline of Frederick Valentich’s final flight
• Transcripts of his eerie final radio communications
• Theories ranging from disorientation to extraterrestrial encounter
• Why this case remains one of the most compelling UFO mysteries in aviation history

Yes, this episode includes a fair share of early podcast cringe (awkward pauses, dramatic reading voice, and questionable background music), but it’s part of the charm—and the origin story—of Generation X Paranormal.

If you love unsolved disappearances, UFO encounters, and the raw beginnings of a paranormal podcast journey, this one’s for you.

Transcript

Logan Mathias (00:00.28)
coming from various directions. And then he started orbiting and the aircraft was orbiting above him.

Logan Mathias (00:46.35)
From the show today we'll be discussing the disappearance of Frederick Valentich. But before we get too far into that, I'd like to talk a little bit about the area where this incident happened. The incident occurred in an area known as the Bass Strait. Now if you're unfamiliar with the Bass Strait, I'll give you a little bit of history on it. It is also affectionately known as the Bass Strait Triangle or some people even say the Australian Triangle. At the most southern tip of

Australia lies the state of Victoria and in that state is a very large city known as Melbourne. So Melbourne is a very high traffic port. Obviously you would need to get into the port through the street and I'm going to explain that a little bit. So off to the right at the Pacific side of it there is Flinders Island which will be very important later and on the very eastern side is Kings Island. Now between those

the Bass Strait, would have to go through either side of east or west of those islands to get into Melbourne. And Melbourne being obviously very important traffic route. You know, there have been a lot of ships and, you know, definitely aircraft that have had to go through the Bass Strait in order to do trade. Now on the other side of Australia sits Tasmania and Tasmania is absolutely breathtaking. I had the pleasure of going to

not only Perth and Fremantle in Australia, but we sailed from Perth and Fremantle to Hobart, Tasmania. And along that route, we did pass King Island. you know, that area is incredibly breathtaking. It's very beautiful, but it can get pretty rough. I remember the seas being kind of shaky. you know, with that, I'm gonna go ahead and explain a little bit more about the geography. For an important trade route,

The geography of the Bass Strait is really kind of interesting. So it is generally shallow. The average depth is about 50 meters, know, 160 feet. So it is pretty shallow for such a very high traffic trade route.

Logan Mathias (02:58.232)
The prevailing winds and currents are westerly and it's divided by King Island. And that's kind of where our story kind of takes us. Before we get too deep into it, this area has had absolutely no shortage of other incidences. They date all the way back to 1797. There have been somewhere an entire, I guess, British warship, the HMS Sappho. It disappeared with well over a hundred lives.

And of course, not one shred of wreckage was found from that. There have been absolutely countless reports of ships that have sunk. And with some of these sinkings, recovery efforts were conducted. And at times the recovery ships and aircraft went missing as well. And you know, those stories kind of lead everybody down the path that this is Australia's Bermuda Triangle because

Some of those very similar issues are some of the issues we face here in the states when it comes to the Bermuda Triangle and any kind of rescue efforts. Now, does that mean that there's some kind of paranormal force at play? You know, I don't know. I think it's a difficult pill to swallow because you got to think that there are some definite environmental issues going on with both locations and they share some very similar parallels.

So is that a case of these two places have very similar geography and very similar issues with trade winds and with choppy weather and choppy seas? Is that the parallel or is there actually something supernatural happening leading to all these disappearances? You know, it's very difficult to argue it either way. If you live in the camp of, well, this is just a...

dangerous area to traverse then you may not lend yourself to the supernatural paranormal or if you're in the other camp you say well of course these two places have very similar you know parallels and this is proof of some kind of visitation or maybe a portal you know there are so many different things that we can talk about with the Greener Triangle we will at some point but it's just an interesting fact and interesting parallel

Logan Mathias (05:20.662)
And as with anywhere that has high traffic, you're going to have that feeling of there's constant movement in both the areas. I myself have sailed in both the Bermuda triangle and the Bass Strait triangle. So, you know, I'm still here and thank God, but you know, you got to play the number of odds at that point. You know, of course there's constantly traffic between these areas and yes.

Most people get in and out of there without any issues, but every once in a while that does not happen. Every once in a while we lose a flight 19 or a valentitch or something of that nature that makes us think, well, wait a minute, maybe there is something unexplained going on in these locations. But when it comes to the Bass Strait, you know, we can look at the parallels all day long. You know, there are a lot of people that have vanished.

And I don't want to get too deep into this without first saying these were real people. These are victims, whether by self-inflicted reasons or by supernatural outcomes. These are individuals that either lost their lives or if you believe in the abduction are somewhere other than where we are. And I always want to take a moment to point that out because as we review facts, you some things may

may allude to them making mistakes, may have you question their integrity or things that they've done. And I really don't want to do that. I want to look at it from a very middle of road view. And I want to make sure that we respect the loss because these families have endured a lot of loss. Gio, Frederick's father, you he never got to see his son again. It was just, it's all very tragic. And I want to make sure that we don't miss.

the fact that somebody in these or some people were lost in these events. With that being said, let's turn our attention to Freder Valentich. Coming from various directions. And then he started orbiting and the aircraft was orbiting above him. And on several occasions, he sort of stated that it towards the end, it wasn't an aircraft. And he described it as having a

Logan Mathias (07:48.085)
sort of a green light on it and also it appeared to be a sort of a silver metallic color and he described it as being of a long shape as I said before as a silver color with the various lights on it and he actually did say it wasn't an aircraft.

Logan Mathias (08:10.615)
very strange. Finally, we lost contact with him in a very strange way. The communications he was putting out seemed to break. People describe it as a sort of a metallic sound, the last transmission that was sung from just Delta Sura Julian. Now with Frederick's disappearance, there's just a whole lot to unpack here. So as with any story we talk about, especially in this show,

Let's the facts first. What do we know? What is the actual, tangible facts that we can review? On October 21, 1978, at approximately 18-19 hours, Frederick Valentich took off from his single-engine Cessna 182 that he rented from Morbin Airport in Melbourne, Australia. There appears still to be some controversy about his destination or his flight plan.

It has been reported that he filed a flight plan at Morbin to fly to King Island where he was going to pick up some friends and then fly back. At the time of the incident, the weather was clear. There were some stray strato cumulus clouds at about 5,000 to 7,000 feet. Excellent visibility with light winds. The aircraft was fully refueled with approximately five hours of flying time and it was equipped with four life jackets.

He was flying along the Bass Strait at about 5,000 feet altitude and he told air traffic control in Melbourne that he could see a large aircraft below him and wanted to know if they're aware of any aircraft in that area. The following is a transmission that has been recreated and the transmission was between Vellentich and Melbourne air traffic control. This is Gail to Sierra Juliet. Is there any known traffic below 5,000 feet? No known traffic.

seems to be a large aircraft below 5,000 of seats. What type of aircraft is it? I cannot confirm. It's full-bite, speech-me-like landing lights. The aircraft has just passed over me at at least a thousand feet above. Is there any Air Force aircraft in the vicinity? No non-aircraft in the vicinity. Seems to be playing some sort of game. He's flying over me. Nelver CEO Juliet, it's not an aircraft at...

Logan Mathias (10:36.109)
Can you describe the aircraft? As a flying cast, it's a long shape. And I'll identify it. It has such speed. It's before me right now, Melbourne. How large would the object be? Seems like it's stationary. What it's doing right now is orbiting. The thing is just orbiting on top of me. It's also got a green light and a sort of metallic like it. It's shiny on the outside. It's just vanished.

That droid just kept toggling on top of me a bit. A toddler and not an aircraft.

Logan Mathias (11:30.317)
That last transmission from Valentech was about 1912 hours and an alert was immediately declared. When at 1933 hours, they knew that that Cessna 182 had not arrived at King Island. So a full scale search and rescue operation was launched. Now that's pretty quick when you think about it. Normally you would wait a little bit, but because there was obviously transmission between air traffic control and the pilot,

they knew something was wrong right away. there was an immediate search and rescue underway. After five days of searching, no sign of the pilot or the aircraft was ever found, despite that the fact that Cessna was equipped with radio survival beacon. Okay, so there are the facts. This is what we know that happened. It's what's been cataloged from the air traffic control. It is what we know from transmissions.

So it will be classified as fact. Okay, so with that, let's move on to theories. What could have happened? Was it a supernatural event? Was it a UFO that abducted him? Or was it just the careless act of a very inexperienced pilot? So let's talk a little bit about Frederick Valentich. And of course,

I understand trying to keep in mind that this was an individual who had a life and I don't wish to to slander him, but we do need to review kind of what his character was like. So it's been reported that he was an absolute UFO buff. He was obsessed. He was obviously convinced of their existence and he was convinced in addition to that they would soon attack Earth. And there are some reports that his mother

claimed to be abducted by aliens at one particular point. there is some questioning behind that when it comes to his credibility and the UFO paranormal issue with his disappearance. Valentich had some great goals for his aviation career. He was a very eager young pilot. And unfortunately, you know, obviously nothing really happened for him, but

Logan Mathias (13:51.297)
It has been reported that was rejected by the Australian Air Force not once, but twice. He had also recently failed his second attempt at passing the commercial flight exam. So, he really only had a hundred and fifty five hours total before he made this trip. In addition to that, he was involved in three in-flight incidents. One, he entered a restricted airspace and twice he deliberately flew into clouds. So he was under the threat of prosecution for the latter.

Now do those facts alone make him culpable for his own disappearance? I don't know, that's up to suggestion. I he was pretty young. You know, we're all immature at that age and you know, especially being a male, I can tell you that I probably wasn't worth anything until I was at least 25 or 28. But anyway, you know, the fact that he was an experienced shirt, if you're going by the crash theory, which we'll get into,

Yeah, I mean that could definitely be a reason for him vanishing, but I'm not going to get ahead of myself and I want you to think about the very fact that he was young and he was eager. Could he have made a few mistakes? Absolutely. Now there are some people that want to talk about his inexperience in flying and crashing. So let's kind of break that down and unpack it a little bit.

There are some people in the aviation community that believe that he was flying upside down and that the lights that he was seeing above him were actually his lights reflecting off the floor of the ocean or I'm sorry, the surface of the ocean. Now, I can't tell you this. I've never flown upside down, at least not, not willingly. And I can tell you that I remember that. I mean, there's a sensation that you get when you're upside down flying, right?

Now Arthur Schutt at the time, was a head of an aviation company said he discounted that because if the pilot was flying upside down in that type of light, you know, at dusk, the pilot would have absolutely known that he was upside down. There are also pilots that believe that the lights that were above him could have actually been the lights of Mercury, Venus and Mars. They point that in Valentich's own transmission, he said he began circling

Logan Mathias (16:15.147)
his aircraft at some point. And in that particular bank, it's possible that he fell victim to a well-known issue called Horizon Illusion. I guess that basically boils down to becoming disoriented and could have actually turned into what we call a graveyard spiral or maybe even turned upside down. They further state that flying upside down that says no would have caused the engine to throttle

very difficultly because of the gravity and the basically the engine is starved from fuel. guess my my biggest thought on the crash theory. Okay, I understand all that and I understand that these are seasoned pilots or veterans. They understand flight and they understand, you know, surface of aircraft and how they how they react. mean, granted, I'll give them that 100 times over, but

I do know this, they never found a single piece of wreckage from this aircraft. Okay. There are reports out there that they found an oil slick, but it had to be refuted because that particular oil was not the same combustion type as the fuel that was in Valentich's aircraft. So I'd mentioned before that Valentich had a completely fueled aircraft. So if this aircraft,

supposedly or reportedly crashed into the ocean you would find an immense amount of debris and you would definitely find an oil slick because that thing was full of fuel right and speaking of wreckage now if you look online and if you do any research of your own they state that they found a cowl flap an engine cowl flap okay well this particular aircraft the Cessna 182

was known to lose that actual part in flight. So it's nothing rare, not to mention that it was on the complete western side of the strait five years later, but on the western side of the strait at Flinders Island. Now, the trade traffic can tell you that the debris technically could have gotten there, but

Logan Mathias (18:42.829)
It just doesn't make sense. least not in the amount of time and all the stuff it would have had to gone through on the ocean floor getting snagged by, you know, kelp, seaweed, all the different things on the floor of an ocean. I just I have a difficult time believing that that was the cow flap. Incidentally, in a much sooner time frame than five years, aircraft that had taken off from Tasmania to, in fact, lost that particular part.

prior to it being found. So it could have been any one of these aircraft. Now they state that this particular CalFLApp was made during the time that the aircraft that he piloted, it would have fit basically. Well, fine, but that Cessna was a very popular model aircraft. So it could have come from anything during that time, any one of those aircraft. So moving on to stage disappearance.

So there are some people that believe that Valentich, he staged this thing so he can disappear.

I have had many times in my life where I've been distraught, as I'm sure many of you have, but to stage my disappearance like that or stage something of that grandeur, I guess that would be pretty difficult to do. would take a lot of talent, would take a lot of moving parts, and arguably if you want to follow his character flaws, does it really sound like a young man with all these quote unquote character flaws and these mistakes?

could orchestrate something that immensely grandiose to stage his own disappearance? I guess I just really don't follow that. Yeah, he was having a failing aviation career and he probably thought his life would be going a little bit differently than where he was, but at that age, who the heck, one of us did not have that same feeling. I know I certainly did. Not to mention this young man actually proposed to his girlfriend. He was going to marry some

Logan Mathias (20:49.867)
So why would he want to stage his own disappearance? You know, it just doesn't check out. Yeah, I know we're talking about the flip side of something being paranormal, but I'm just talking about on a surface level, why would somebody who was engaged to be married, who loved his girlfriend, want to stage his own disappearance? I know, to me, it just doesn't pass a common sense test. And of course, now for the showstopper, the UFO theory. So.

You know, as we mentioned, Valentine was very, very obsessed with UFOs. So we do have to concede that, but would it help you to know that there were multiple accounts of flying objects in the skies prior to and after his disappearance? And you can read online. There are many people who say, all these reports came in after his disappearance. No, there were multiple accounts of this.

flying object or this particular paranormal sighting before he ever vanished. In fact, was reported that a Canadian newspaper 20 minutes before Valentich's first radio call, a vacationing plumber named Roy Manifold was photographing the sunset over Bass Strait. Who went on to report that from a spot at Crayfish Bay he took six shots

he didn't notice anything odd or unusual at the time he did take the shots. However, when he developed them, the fourth and sixth photos in the series showed some oddities. On the fourth picture, a dense, quote-unquote, black lump was noticed. What made this really an interesting photo is that this particular black lump gave the impression that it was

rising from the water. The fifth photo is a normal shot of the sun setting. And then on the sixth photo, it showed a strange mass situated in the sky directly above the position of the lump and the disturbance seen in the fourth photograph. Of course, a lot of people will say it was probably just something that he caught on his lens. He was taking the photograph and it maybe it was a bird or a fly. I mean, it

Logan Mathias (23:15.743)
You can argue that absolutely if you want to look skeptical on the whole thing, but it is rather odd that it happened on the very same night, well before Valentich's first radio transmission. I also kind of want to point out Steve Roby. Now, Steve Roby was the air traffic control officer in Melbourne that day. And you know, you can look online. There's a lot of video of this, of this man and he's

He's obviously still pretty shooken by the whole incident. And I think I want to report some of the things that he has said in the time that, that since this has happened, you know, he still says that this is still an open case and he goes on to state that he was in a unique position to, I guess, to judge Valentich's mental state. You know, he was the last person to actually converse with Valentich. And he says that he sounded genuine when he was talking to him.

He goes on to state that the NASA analyst had assessed the audio transcript and found that he was under genuine stress. And moreover, he says he just does not believe that Valentich was confused by the lights he saw. And he certainly wouldn't be confused by some bright stars or meteor shower or anything of that. And he basically said that if he suffered disorientation and crashed into the water, you would think they would have found a lot of debris.

I would think that as well. And he also states surely it would have been something found the intense searches. You know, they would have found oil. It would have found something. He goes on to state that there have been by his own account dozens of UFO sightings and reports of unexplained lights, both immediately before and after Valentich disappeared. In fact,

Mr. Roby said while he was working aircraft control about five days later, another light aircraft reported he had some strange lights and it had passed him three times at a high speed, almost jet speed coming too close to him and it forced him to land. So what do you think everyone? I mean, you got the facts. You've got the working theories about what could or what may have happened to him.

Logan Mathias (25:41.709)
You know, there's as I said, there's a lot to unpack and I think from a 30,000 foot view you got to tell yourself that You know, there's there's too much unanswered Do you believe in the fact that this guy was that emotionally compromised that he staged his own? Disappearance. No, I I don't I personally don't buy into that

And if you do, hey, that's okay too. just, I feel like a man that, that proposes to his girlfriend that has obvious plans with his family and, still pretty young. Sure. You have some setbacks when you're younger and you know, sometimes you take them hard, but to go through this intense grandiose staging of his own disappearance. I really just don't buy into that. As far as the crashing.

Sure, I absolutely have to concede that yes, he absolutely could have crashed. You know, if that was the case, however, why was there absolutely zero wreckage found? OK, yeah, you make the claim about the cowl flap, but that has also been somewhat debunked because it it could have come from his, but it could have come from a whole lot of other aircraft, too. So you can't have one without the other right.

And if he crashed, where was the rescue responder that's in the aircraft? How come it wasn't found? And he jumped on this right away. You you think about, and unfortunately I want to dive too much into this, but you think the Malaysian aircraft flight, you know, when it went down, they found nothing, right? And then much, much later they found an aileron flap or a, who was it?

Anyway, they found some debris on reunion island.

Logan Mathias (27:42.249)
I would think that that particular piece of debris is a lot heavier and probably could get pushed along by trade route or trade tides and things of that nature. I don't think a cow flap from a Cessna can go from one end of the straight to the other in five years without there being other aircraft that it could have come from. And do you believe that he was abducted? There was another accounting that

I had really thought about not putting in this show, but I do believe it's worth at least putting it on the table. So it was reported the following morning a farmer in Cape Ottaway in the area along the edge of the Valentich's path, he was there reportedly, and he observed a flying object hovering over his property.

It spooked him quite a bit. The object was approximately 30 meters across and it appeared to have a small airplane attached to its side. Now, according to the farmer, the attached aircraft was leaking oil. He was so disturbed that he he saw this that he etched the aircraft's tail number into one of his tractors so he wouldn't forget. And according to him, the number match about and assess. Now, I know everybody says, well, there's the smoking gun. Well.

Yeah, maybe or maybe not. It has also been reported that this particular gentleman was never found again and that it couldn't be corroborated. You know, I don't put a ton into that because it can never be corroborated. And at the end of the day, we just have to realize that a young man was lost. We don't know what happened to him. Is he still alive? I don't know.

If he is, you'd think he'd want to make contact. I don't know. I just don't buy into him still being around. You know, it's sad. If he crashed, he passed away that way as well. I mean, that's an awful way to go. Did he get abducted by an alien aircraft? I mean, who knows? We don't know the answer to this question. But what we do know the answer of is that this is not a one-off.

Logan Mathias (30:02.603)
This particular area is known for paranormal things that have happened. Missing ships, missing aircraft. It is a triangle of paranormal, much like our Bermuda Triangle. So you can't really just arbitrarily say that Fred Valentich was, you know, some kid, troubled kid who, who met his own fate by his own mistakes. Yeah. Okay. On the surface level, you have to concede that's possibility, but

It's a lot more. So there's a lot more variables at play, and to me, it's just not as clear cut. But tell me what you think. Thank you so much for joining us.