Glenn Steckling

Background and Aviation Career

Glenn Steckling is a university-educated American aviator, author, astronomer, and UFO researcher who has served as director and copyright holder of the George Adamski Foundation since the early 1990s. He is a veteran 30-year commercial airline pilot with more than 23,000 hours of flight time accumulated across multiple continents, giving him unique expertise in aerial phenomena observation and aviation safety. His background in aviation, combined with his family's deep historical involvement in UFO research, positions him as both a credible witness to the plausibility of anomalous aerial craft and an archivist of mid-20th-century contactee documentation.

Steckling is the son of Fred Steckling and Ingrid Steckling, both of whom were personal friends and close collaborators of George Adamski, widely recognized as the pioneer of the modern UFO contactee movement. After his father's death in 1991, Glenn assumed stewardship of the Foundation and its mission to preserve, document, and promote Adamski's teachings and research.

The Adamski Foundation and Contactee Legacy

The George Adamski Foundation represents one of the oldest continuously operating UFO research organizations in existence, with more than 60 years of institutional history. As its director, Steckling oversees an extensive archive of contactee literature, correspondence, photographs, and materials accumulated by Adamski himself, as well as subsequent research conducted by his father Fred Steckling.

Steckling has undertaken significant editorial and republication work to preserve contactee-era materials for contemporary audiences. He updated his father's seminal 1981 work "We Discovered Alien Bases on the Moon" for republication in 1997, substantially revising and expanding it to include new research and updated context. Most notably, he extensively edited and supervised the republication of Adamski's classic text "Behind the Flying Saucers" in 2015, ensuring its continued availability to researchers and historians of the UFO phenomenon.

Connection to the Mojave Desert Contactee Sites

Steckling maintains active custodial and educational roles at the iconic Mojave Desert contactee landmarks. He regularly conducts guided tours of Giant Rock and the Integratron—the latter a geodesic dome structure designed according to instructions claimed by contactee George Van Tassel to have received from extraterrestrials. These sites remain central pilgrimage destinations for UFO enthusiasts and researchers exploring the historical geography of the American contactee movement.

At annual events like Contact in the Desert, Steckling serves as both educator and vendor, facilitating tours and discussing the historical significance of these locations while providing literature and materials from the Adamski Foundation archives. This work makes him an accessible custodian of contactee history for thousands of researchers and curious visitors annually.

Author and Public Educator

Beyond his archival work, Steckling is an accomplished author and public speaker who has contributed numerous articles and analyses to UFO literature. He has appeared on multiple podcast platforms including Talking Weird, Spreaker, and Gaia's Adamski's Otherworldly Revelations, where he discusses contactee accounts, early UFO sightings, alleged lunar bases, and the epistemological status of contactee claims within contemporary UFO research.

Significance and Contemporary Role

Steckling's work represents an essential bridge between two historically distinct phases of UFO research: the post-war contactee movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and the contemporary UAP/UFO disclosure era beginning in the late 2010s. While the contactee movement has often been marginalized or dismissed by skeptical researchers, Steckling's careful curation and republication of these materials has ensured their preservation and continued availability for academic examination.

His dual credentials—as both a trained aviator capable of assessing aerial phenomena and as a dedicated archivist—lend credibility to his advocacy for the serious study of contactee accounts within modern UFO discourse. In an era increasingly focused on governmental UAP documentation and military eyewitness testimony, Steckling reminds researchers that civilian contactee claims from earlier decades may contain valuable data points for understanding the broader history and nature of the phenomenon.

As of 2025, Steckling continues active involvement in UFO conferences, media appearances, and Foundation operations, maintaining George Adamski's legacy as a foundational figure in contactee history while supporting contemporary efforts toward UFO disclosure and scientific study of anomalous aerial phenomena.