BIO

Biography: Erica Lukes

Erica Lukes was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. Professionally, she has been a Pilates instructor

for over 20 years but also is an accomplished singer, having performed with successful Utah

bands like "The Groove," "Straight, No Chaser" and "Zion Tribe." As a result of this

background, Erica performed with "Straight, No Chaser" at the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt

Lake City. Following a family trait, she is a skilled artist, specializing in figure and landscape

paintings. Her work has been exhibited and sold. Her father, R. Jeffrey Blackburn, specializes

in spectacular southwestern and western landscape art for which he is well-known in the art

world.

Erica Lukes also has an undying passion for the mysteries of the universe, particularly UFO

reports and other strange aerial phenomena. Since childhood she has been fascinated with

imagery of how vehicles and beings from space might appear and she pursued this interest

quietly but with determination. Due to her already established abilities with singing and some

voice-over production, she was approached to perform media broadcasting work.

This, coupled with her long-term interest in strange phenomena of nature, led her to take her

first steps into radio in 2014 by developing her own programming and interview techniques of

known figures in this topic. UFO reports became her specialty and she joined the Mutual UFO

Network (MUFON) in 2014 as a field investigator. She eventually became its State Director for

Utah. Within MUFON, she also became an associate producer for the MUFON

Communications Team and a part of the MUFON Experiencer Research Team, having been

cited for recognition of this work at both the 2014 and 2015 MUFON Symposia.

In 2014, she was the lead investigator into the American Airlines 434 UFO incident of the

same year. The report was notable because of radar and audio data attesting to a large

unidentified flying object passing underneath the airliner while in flight. The report was

ranked as one of MUFON's "Top Ten" cases for 2014.

Additionally, Erica was a team leader for "Project Orange," a program to study so-called "Balls

of Light" phenomenon that have ramification in real world science in the form of ball lightning

and other peculiar luminous phenomena. An offshoot of this was research into the luminous

ball phenomena in Hessdalen, Norway where she conducted on-site research with the

guidance of Hessdalen scientist Dr. Erling Strand. Hessdalen has been the site of strange

luminous light ball sightings since the 1980s.

With her proximity in the state of Utah, Erica has had a persistent interest in the Skinwalker

Ranch, a location of regularly reported paranormal activity. She has assembled several

decades worth of case reports of mass UFO sightings, alien abduction reports and animal

mutilations from her years of field research in and around the ranch.

In more recent years, and due to the information mass she has accumulated, she has chosen

to specialize in archiving of the UFO topic, finding rare and out-of-print books, periodicals,

audio and video recordings and other ephemera in an effort to create a regional library for

use by researchers in the western US. She has recently visited area universities to study their

holdings of early UFO researchers and "phenomenologists" like those of the late Dr. Frank

Salisbury of the Department of Plant Science at Utah State University. Salisbury contributed

important work on UFO reports in Utah with the help of "Junior" Hicks, a well-known UFO

investigator.

Erica is working on a forthcoming book with co-author Gordon Lore about her experiences.

with paranormal matters and investigations.

​

Erica can be seen on UFOs: The Lost Evidence on the Travel Channel, Ancient Aliens on The History Channel and Nasa's Unexplained Files on the Science Channel