3133 lines
223 KiB
Plaintext
3133 lines
223 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: COLLECTION OF REPORTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD FILE: UFO2573
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08-11-89 MOSCOW Headless aliens from space invade Russia! "Huge hairy
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creature" terrifies villagers in the Volga valley! Possible UFO lands in
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Moscow! Although President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's reforms haven't spawned
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U.S.-style supermarket tabloids let alone U.S.-style supermarkets glasnost's
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changed the Soviet media, as evidenced by these recent stories, and a lot of
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people seem to love it. The change's evident on state-run television, once a
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showcase for morally uplifting and dull "Boy-Loves-Tractor" movies about
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building communism, and news reports lauding factories overfulfilling the
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Five-Year Plan. Now, six days a week, as part of the breakfast TV program
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"120 Minutes," gray-haired mystic Alan Chumak waves his hands on camera to
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cure viewers from Minsk to Vladivostok of what ails them. Soviets with heart
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disease are requested to watch the self-described journalist on Tuesdays. On
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Fridays, Chumak will help viewers get rid of allergies. People with stomach
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bugs or bone and muscle aches should tune in on other days. The inability to
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watch the program's not a problem. Leave the set on, and a jar of water,
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juice or massage cream placed by the TV screen supposedly will be "charged"
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by Chumak's gestures and can be used later for treatment. Earlier this
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summer, after about a month on the air, Chumak was pulled off "120 Minutes"
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by broadcast executives, who said they wanted to make sure his treatment
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brought positive results. They must have been convinced the man in his
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mid-50s was back on TV waving his hands within a week. Since the days of the
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wild-eyed monk Rasputin, hypnotist and confidant at the court of the last
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czar, Russians have been intrigued by the occult and fantastic, and stories
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about UFOs, vanished planets and ESP have always had an eager audience. With
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glasnost, or greater openness, such topics are getting more exposure than
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ever in the once stuffy official Soviet media, and despite the firmly
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materialistic and rationalist ideology of the ruling Communist Party. In
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fact, the unlikely organ in the forefront of the weirdness campaign belongs
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to the party itself. The 1 million-circulation daily newspaper Socialist
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Industry, an organ of the party's Central Committee, has a mandate to report
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on the Soviet economy, but often makes space for news items that have nothing
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to do with either socialism or industry. On Tuesday, there was this
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intriguing account of invaders from space landing in Central Russia's Perm
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region: milkmaid Lyubov Medvedev told the newspaper, "At about 4:30 in the
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morning, I was going to the farm when I saw a dark figure seemingly riding a
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motorcycle...but when I looked closely at the figure, I noticed there was no
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motorcycle, but just something resembling a man, but taller than average with
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short legs." The creature had "only a small knob instead of a head," Ms.
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Medvedev said. "I was frightened to death...then it became fluorescent and
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disappeared." Beekeeper G. Sharoglazov saw two egg-shaped "fluorescent
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objects" as big as aircraft hovering at a height of 600-1,000 feet. Others in
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mid-July also saw aliens with no heads, the paper said. It quoted V. Kopylov,
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Communist Party boss in the Chernushinsky region, as acknowledging that
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"something unusual's going on the territory of our two collective farms." It
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was Socialist Industry as well that informed Soviets on Thursday of the huge,
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fleet-footed hairy creature that terrified residents of the Kirovo settlement
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in the Volga basin. "I saw the creature pretty well," said resident R.
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Saitov. "It was about 2 meters (6 feet) tall, its body covered with dark
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brown hair and it had shoulder-length hair...being a veterinary surgeon, I
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can say the creature was neither a man nor an ape." Saitov and a friend tried
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to approach the creature after spotting it on the other bank of a pond, but
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it bounded away at astonishing speed when they pursued it in a car. The
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newspaper noted disapprovingly that Saratov University biologists weren't
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taking reports of the sighting seriously or even deigning to talk to
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witnesses. The very official Soviet news agency Tass later picked up the
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newspaper's story for national and worldwide distribution, headlining it
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"Huge Creature Sighted in Volga Region; Men Give Chase." Earlier this week,
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however, Tass deflated another Socialist Industry report about a UFO landing.
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Last month, the paper reported in great detail on a 26-foot-wide patch of
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burned ground found near a southern Moscow highway. It quoted UFO specialist
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A. Kuzovkin as saying the grass had likely been blasted by powerful
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radiation, which he called probable evidence of the landing of an
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Unidentified Flying Object. Not so, Tass reported. Firefighters think a
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haystack simply caught fire and scorched the ground.
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08-10-89 OSHKOSH, Wis. Karen Sazama saw something strange during a fishing
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trip Thursday, and it wasn't on the end of her fishing hook. At 3:30 a.m. on
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waters near Omro, the Milwaukee woman saw what she belives was an
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unidentified flying object. Sazama said she told her fishing companion, Gary
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Michael Frye, that something funny was going on after the pair saw a light in
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the sky. "It was a glowing light, an orangish-reddish light," said Sazama,
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who was fishing with Frye in a boat. "I really got scared out there. I was
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looking for a place to hide in the boat." Sazama said the light stayed in the
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sky from 20 to 25 minutes before it disappeared. The pair were fishing on the
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Fox River and Lake Butte des Morts. "The fish weren't even biting," Sazama
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said. "We got nothing for fish, not even a bite. I told Mike `I think the
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lights had something to do with it."' Frye said the couple rented a boat from
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George's Bait Shop near Omro at 7 p.m. Wednesday for a night of fishing. Frye
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said he's sure the light was a UFO. "Yes, I would say it was a UFO. It was
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something I had never saw before. I do believe in UFOs," Frye said. "(The
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light) was bigger than a star. It was falling, but not very fast." The couple
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reported their sighting to the Winnebago County Sheriff's Department at about
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8 a.m. Thursday. George Wilz, owner of George's Bait Shop, said this's the
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first time anyone ever reported an unusual sighting to him. "I know (Sazama)
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was all shook up," Wilz said. "To me it's kind of serious." But did the
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lights scare off the pair for good? "I don't think this will prevent us from
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coming back again," Sazama said. "I just hope we don't see anymore lights
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like that again."
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08-22-89 TRUSSVILLE, Ala. Police in Trussville and Dadeville, 60 miles apart,
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reported seeing unusual lights in the sky within minutes of each other, but
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no one's rolling out the red carpet for UFOs just yet. "I'm not trying to
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start anything. I just answered a call with another officer and we saw what
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we saw," Trussville police Sgt. Nelson Byess said. "I'm not going to run out
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and print up T-shirts and bumper stickers." Byess was referring to the hoopla
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generated earlier this year in Fyffe, where people reported seeing silent,
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triangular UFOs with lights in the night sky. The numerous sightings never
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were explained. Byess said he could not see any shape connected to the
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lights, which he spotted after several residents called police about 5 a.m.
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Monday. "It hovered for a while, we watched it about 20 or 30 minutes, and
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then moved off or faded out as the sun came up," he said. "I never heard any
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sound." A little earlier, before 5 a.m., Dadeville Police Chief Terry Wright
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had just given a speeding ticket when he saw something in the sky. "I looked
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to my left and saw what I thought was the moon behind a cloud, then I
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realized the moon was on my right," Wright said. "It was round and bright to
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start with, kind of hazy, then it looked like a bright gas and moved out of
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sight after about 15 or 20 minutes. There were no colored lights, just
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white." Wright thought the bright shape was so odd he told everyone at City
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Hall and his wife about it. "I didn't want everyone thinking I was on drugs,
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but I never saw anything like it before," Wright said. "Later in the day,
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someone said they saw on the TV that Trussville reported seeing something,
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too." Information on both sitings will be recorded by Mutual UFO Network
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Inc., as the Fyffe sightings were, said section director Jeff Ballard.
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10-05-89 ROCKVILLE, Md. There's a lot of strange stuff happening out there
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tales of poltergeists, swamp monsters, maybe even dinosaurs still crashing
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through African jungles and Mark Chorvinsky's opened a "strange hotline" to
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hear all about it. "The world's a pretty strange place," says Chorvinsky, 35,
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a black-clad archivist of the bizarre and investigator of the weird who lives
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on a quiet, tree-shaded street in this Washington suburb. "Everybody knows of
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something strange that's happened to them, but they never talk about it," he
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says. "The only time it's safe to talk, it seems, is around a campfire or
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during Halloween." Now they can dial the "strange hotline" at 1-900-820-8361
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to share a scary encounter with the unknown, or hear a tape of Chorvinsky
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describing some of his favorites. Among them are the Lizard Man of South
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Carolina, the horrific winged Jersey Devil, the Manila vampire and a haunted
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stretch of rural Maryland highway where "the dreaded Snarly Yow" hass been
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spotted by motorists. Chorvinsky, in fact, recently listened to "one of the
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most amazing stories I've ever heard" from a taped message left by an
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anonymous hotline caller. It was the tale of an Arizona woman who bought a
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giant cactus as a house plant. A few days later, she was alarmed to see the
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cactus moving its prickly arms. She fled the house with her children just
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before the cactus exploded, releasing swarms of scorpions in her living room.
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That's the sort of thing that sends agreeable tingles down Chorvinsky's spine
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and fills the pages of Strange Magazine, a twice-a-year compendium of weird
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happenings that Chorvinsky founded and edits for an estimated 4,000 avid
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readers. He's also a professional magician who performed at the White House
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last year, an author who's planning a biography of Merlin the magician and a
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filmmaker whose movie short, "Strange Tangents," was screened at the American
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Film Institute, the Library of Congress and film festivals at Cannes, Berlin
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and Los Angeles. "It's about a young sorceress who tries to save her dying
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master with the help of her friend, a 3-foot-tall talking salamander,"
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Chorvinsky says. To help pay the bills, he operates a science fiction and
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magic shop in a Rockville shopping mall where customers can satisfy their
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appetites for strange schlock. The shelves are stuffed with dragons and
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wizards, crystal balls, Ninja swords, Tarot cards, horror movie classics and
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fantasy games titled "Skulls and Scrapfaggot Green" and for laughs "Batwinged
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Bimbos from Hell." Although his bushy hair, beard, mustache and suit all in
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black give him a slightly fiendish look, Chorvinsky's nobody's wacko. He's a
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good-natured skeptic who directs a global network of tipsters and
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investigators who track down reports of strange phenomena for scholarly
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discussion in his magazine. "I neither believe nor disbelieve this stuff," he
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said in an interview. "We have many skeptics who read the magazine, including
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myself. I am skeptical but open-minded. I doubt everything but I accept the
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possibility of anything." He's never seen a UFO landing in a corn field, but
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knows that "the damnedest things fall from the sky," including frogs, fish,
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sugar crystals, ice chunks and vast cobwebs spun by airborne spiders.
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Mysterious sea serpents like the Loch Ness monster may be the stuff of
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ancient folklore, he said, or they may have existed all along as monstrous
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species of marine life that somehow eluded discovery by scientists. But what
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about the strange booms and bangs in the night? The bizarre mirages of entire
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cities in the sky? The spinning wheels of light beneath the oceans? Toads
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encased in rock but still alive? "The stories that really intrigue me are
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those that give me the greatest feeling of disquieting strangeness,"
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Chorvinsky said. "The tales so strange they couldn't possibly be explained,
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the kind that give you a chill down your spine or make your hair stand on
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end. The sort of thing that makes you say, `Ooooh, that's weird'!" < EDITOR'S
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NOTE: Reports of strange phenomena may be addressed to Mark Chorvinsky, Box
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2246, Rockville, Md. 20852
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10-09-89 SECAUCUS, N.J. A consultant on the subject of unidentified flying
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objects said Monday that reports of a UFO in the Soviet Union with 10-foot
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high humanoids aboard would be treated seriously by scientists in that
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country. Stanton Friedman, who was in New Jersey to lecture Monday night,
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said in an interview that the USSR Academy of Sciences created a Commission
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on Anomalistic Atmospheric Phenomena in 1984. The commission was prompted by
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a UFO siting near the city of Gorky, said Friedman, a consultant who lectures
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on the topic "Flying Saucers Are Real" and who's examined Soviet studies of
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UFOs. He said that in April 1988, 300 scientists gathered in the Siberian
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city of Tomsk for a conference on "sporadic instant phenomena" and
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recommended that the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences draft a
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proposal on the study of UFO's. Last June, the Soviet publication "Soviet
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Military Review" included an article on "UFO's and Security." Friedman said
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the authors of the article argued that the computers required to run the
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United States' space-based antimissile defense would not be able to
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distinguish between missiles and UFO's and would increase the likelihood of
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World War III starting by accident. The article calls for international
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cooperation on the study of UFO's, Friedman said. "True, there's some
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political hype in there," he said.
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10-09-89 MOSCOW It was a close encounter of the communist kind. Towering,
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tiny-headed humanoids from outer space landed their UFO in the Russian city
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of Voronezh and emerged for a promenade around the park, spreading fear among
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residents. At least that's what the official Tass news agency said Monday.
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Tass, contributing to a string of weird tales that have crept into the
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formerly stuffy state-controlled media in recent months, said in a
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straight-faced report that Soviet scientists vouched for the UFO's landing.
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"Scientists have confirmed that an unidentified flying object recently landed
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in a park in the Russian city of Voronezh," Tass said. "They have also
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identified the landing site and found traces of aliens who made a short
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promenade about the park." A Tass duty officer, contacted Monday evening by
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telephone, refused to identify the reporter who sent the dispatch from
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Voronezh, but stood by the story. "It's not April Fool's today," he said. The
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Soviet media, unleashed by the Kremlin's policy of glasnost greater openness
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feel free now to hype incredible stories that seem more at home in the
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supermarket tabloids of the West. Recent examples include other accounts of
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UFOs, sightings of abominable snowman-type creatures and a tale about a young
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mystic who goes into a trance and flies about the cosmos. A rash of mystics
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and ESP-artists also have invaded state TV. In Buffalo, N.Y., Paul Kurtz,
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chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
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Paranormal, commented: "We're extremely skeptical of this claim. It's not the
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first one (in the Soviet media). There's many. There seems to be a rash of
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reports, largely uncorroborated." According to Monday's Tass report, a large
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shining ball or disk was seen hovering over the park by Voronezh residents.
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They saw the UFO land and up to three creatures similar to humans emerge,
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accompanied by a small robot, Tass said. "The aliens were three or even four
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meters tall (almost 10 feet to 13 feet), but with very small heads," the news
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agency quoted witnesses as saying. "They walked near the ball or disc and
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then disappeared inside." The report resembled a story last summer in the
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daily newspaper Socialist Industry, which carried an alleged "close
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encounter" between a milkmaid and an alien in Central Russia's Perm region.
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In that report, milkmaid Lyubov Medvedev was quoted as saying she encountered
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an alien creature "resembling a man, but taller than average with short
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legs." The creature, she said, had "only a small knob instead of a head."
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Stanton Friedman, a consultant who lectures on the topic "Flying Saucers Are
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Real" and's examined Soviet studies of UFOs, said in Secaucus, N.J., on
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Monday that Soviet scientists tended to treat the subject more seriously than
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American scientists. Last June, the Soviet publication Soviet Military Review
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included an article on "UFO's and Security." The Tass report, which did not
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give the date of the purported "landing" in Voronezh, said onlookers were
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"overwhelmed with a fear that lasted for several days." Genrikh Silanov, head
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of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, told Tass that scientists
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investigating the UFO report found a 20-yard depression with four deep dents,
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as well as two pieces of unidentified rocks. "At first glance, they looked
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like sandstone of a deep-red color. However, mineralogical analysis's shown
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that the substance cannot be found on Earth," Tass quoted Silanov as saying.
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"However, additional tests are needed to reach a more definite conclusion,"
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he said. Silanov said the landing site and path taken by the aliens was
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confirmed using the "biolocation" method of tracking. The agency did not
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explain what that was. Further confirmation came from witnesses in Voronezh,
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300 miles southeast of Moscow, who were not told of the experiments and whose
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accounts coincided precisely with the scientific findings, Tass said. In
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July, Tass deflated a report in Socialist Industry quoting a UFO specialist,
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A. Kuzovkin, as saying a 26-foot-wide patch of burned ground near southern
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Moscow was probably caused by the landing of a UFO. Not so, Tass reported.
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Firefighters think a haystack simply caught fire and scorched the ground.
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Russians have long been fascinated by the weird and the occult, but formerly
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they could glean their information only from rumors and underground copies of
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everything from palmistry guides to books on Eastern mysticism. The Kremlin's
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economic reforms, with their emphasis on each enterprise paying its own way,
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have also given the official press more incentive to cater to readers' tastes
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in order to increase circulation. Kurtz's committee's a UFO subcommittee
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and's been investigating the claim made by Tass. Kurtz, a professor of
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philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said Monday:
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"Since the press freedoms in the last year, increasingly it seems to be open
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season. Paranormal pandemonium's broken out in the Soviet Union, not only
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with UFOs, but faith healers, astrologers and so on. In a closed society such
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as the Soviet Union, you don't get the development of critical reason." He
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said the account "has all the characteristics of science fiction." Kurtz
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noted that scientist Silanov says the landing was confirmed by biolocation
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"As far as we can tell it's a kind of dowsing. We're very questioning of
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that. It's hardly a scientific method of testing whether anything's landed or
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not." "If this were true," Kurtz remarked, "I think chairman (Mikhail)
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Gorbachev would call a press conference and proudly announce that, with
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everybody attempting to get out of the Soviet Union, at long last here are
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some extraterrestrials in that Union."
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10-11-89 Police and residents in northeast Oklahoma say they have no clue to
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the origin of five strange, colored lights that were spotted hovering over
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Commerce and Miami late Tuesday. "I couldn't see any kind of a shape to them
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at all," Commerce resident Fran Willmert said Tuesday. "But I was looking at
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them with my eye. I noticed they were changing color and went from red to
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white to blue." Ms. Willmert said she saw the lights from her yard and "had
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never seen anything like that before." Commerce Police Chief Bob Baine, who
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looked at the lights through binoculars and a high-powered telescope, said
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"they were nothing that looked like an aircraft. We don't know what they are.
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We'd received a call about 8:30 p.m. of a UFO around the Brunswick plant and
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we thought it was a joke," Baine said. "But when officers arrived on the
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scene they saw what looked what lights that seemed to move in different
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directions." Baine said the five lights were in a group of four, with the
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fifth a short distance from the others. "Just a few minutes ago I went out
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and took a scope and could see them sitting in kind of a pattern," Baine
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said. "There was nothing that I could specify as any shape. They were like
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spots or something." Larry Ruthi, a National Weather Service forecaster at
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Norman, said a check of area reporting stations indicated no unusual
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atmospheric conditions that might explain the sightings. Ruthi said he
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contacted a weather office in Tulsa and the Central Weather Service Unit in
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Fort Worth, Texas, and both reported nothing unusual happening in that part
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of Oklahoma. "An auroral display should have been visible over a larger area
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than just Miami," Ruthi said. "Frankly, I'm at a loss as to what they're
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seeing." A disptacher with the Ottawa County sheriff's office in Miami, also
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said county officers in the field reported seeing "strange lights." "We
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thought it was just a hoax but apparently it's real because I've got at least
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three, maybe four city units and one of my county units that have seen the
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lights." The dispatcher, who asked not to be identified, said the lights were
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first reported in Miami and then moved north in the county to between
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Commerce and Cardin, near the Kansas border. The dispatcher said country
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officers also described the lights as turning different colors.
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10-10-89 MOSCOW A three-eyed alien with a robot sidekick landed by UFO and
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made a boy vanish by zapping him with a pistol, a Soviet newspaper reported
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Tuesday, in a second day of strange tales in the state-run media. But as the
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bizarre saga of the space invasion of the city of Voronezh unfolded for a
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second day, a scientist whose words were used to buttress the first published
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report voiced doubts, and said he was in part misquoted. "Don't believe all
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you hear from Tass," Genrikh Silanov, head of the Voronezh Geophysical
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Laboratory, cautioned in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from
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Voronezh. "We never gave them part of what they published." On Monday, the
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usually staid, official Soviet news agency told the world that scientists'd
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confirmed an alien spaceship carrying giant people with tiny heads'd touched
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down in Voronezh, a city of more than 800,000 people about 300 miles
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southeast of Moscow. As many as three aliens 13 feet tall left the
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spacecraft, described as a large shining ball, and walked in the park with a
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small robot, Tass reported. A Tass duty officer stood by the story. "It's not
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April Fool's today," he said. The purported close encounter in Voronezh was
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only the latest weird tale to appear in the Soviet media, which under the
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policy of "glasnost" or openness have recently told of other sightings of
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UFOs and the Yeti, or abominable snowman. Monday's report spawned rumors in
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Moscow, including one that the aliens told Voronezh residents the Earth would
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be destroyed by the year 2000 if people didn't stop polluting it.
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Nonetheless, a Communist Party paper whose avowed mission's to write about
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culture was the only major national daily to print anything Tuesday about the
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UFO, indicating more authoritative newspapers like Pravda thought the topic
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too hot to handle. Sovietskaya Kultura said its coverage was motivated by
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"the golden rule of journalism: the reader must know everything." "Of course,
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it's hard to believe in what happened in the town," it reported from
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Voronezh. "It's even more difficult to explain." The daily quoted witnesses
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as saying the UFO flew into Voronezh on Sept 27. At 6:30 p.m., it said, boys
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playing soccer saw a pink glow in the sky, then saw a deep red ball about 10
|
|
yards in diameter. The ball circled, vanished, then reappeared minutes later
|
|
and hovered, it said. A crowd rushed to the site, Sovietskaya Kultura said,
|
|
and through an open hatch saw a "three-eyed alien" about 10 feet tall, clad
|
|
in silvery overalls and bronze-colored boots, and wearing a disk on his
|
|
chest. The newspaper, quoting witnesses, gave this account: The UFO landed.
|
|
Two creatures, one apparently a robot, exited. A boy screamed with fear, but
|
|
when the alien gazed at him, with eyes shining, he fell silent, unable to
|
|
move. Onlookers screamed, and the UFO and the creatures disappeared. About
|
|
five minutes later, they reappeared. The alien'd a "pistol" a tube about 20
|
|
inches long, which it pointed at an unidentified 16-year-old boy, making him
|
|
disappear. The alien went inside the sphere, which took off. At the same
|
|
time, the boy reappeared. "Children and eyewitnesses of the abnormal
|
|
phenomenon have been questioned by police workers and journalists," wrote
|
|
Sovietskaya Kultura's Voronezh correspondent, E. Efremov. "There are no
|
|
discrepencies in the description of the sphere itself, or the actions of the
|
|
`aliens.' Moreover, all the children who became witnesses to this event are
|
|
still afraid, even now." It gave the names of only three witnesses, all
|
|
youngsters. Scientists from a nationwide group that investigates "abnormal
|
|
phenomena" were looking into the landing, the newspaper said. Silanov, who
|
|
said he belongs to the group, cast doubt on the Tass report that quoted him
|
|
as saying the aliens left behind two rocks resembling sandstone of a deep red
|
|
color that cannot be found anywhere. "The rock they described as
|
|
extraterrestrial's in fact a piece of iron oxide which could easily have
|
|
originated on Earth," according to Silanov, 50. He said there indeed was "a
|
|
landing site" or something resembling one in Voronezh. But he acknowledged
|
|
that could happen as well if there were an underground pipe or cable, or an
|
|
underground reservoir. Silanov also said the testimony of children between
|
|
the ages of 11 and 14 who claimed they witnessed the landing did not always
|
|
correspond on how the aliens looked, and that they "certainly didn't mention
|
|
the tremendous height" cited by Tass. The phone connection was abruptly cut
|
|
off before Silanov could answer more questions. Meanwhile, a Tass editor said
|
|
two Moscow-based reporters'd been dispatched to Voronezh to check on the
|
|
report on the UFO filed by local Tass correspondent Vladimir Lebedev, a man
|
|
he termed a "very serious" journalist. The editor, who spoke on condition of
|
|
anonymity, said Tass, through bitter experience, has learned to be wary of
|
|
hoaxes. In January, the news agency reported six people'd been rescued after
|
|
spending 35 days buried alive in rubble following the Armenian earthquake. It
|
|
later retracted the story.
|
|
|
|
10-12-89 NEW YORK That extraterrestrial story from the Soviet Union may have
|
|
been cleared up those 12-foot, tiny-headed guys who landed in the U.S.S.R.
|
|
were just trying to get back to New York City. "Anything's possible," says
|
|
Bill Knell, a local UFO researcher who firmly believes there was an alien
|
|
presence in a park in the borough of Queens seven months ago. "Absolutely,
|
|
there was some type of UFO in Kissena Park." Knell's assertions he also said
|
|
there may have been a return visit two weeks ago came two days after the
|
|
Soviet news agency Tass reported the presence of ETs in the town of Voronezh.
|
|
Since then, scientists have disparaged the report, attributing it to rising
|
|
sensationalism in the Soviet press under "glasnost," or greater openness.
|
|
Neither story seemed to impress local residents, who were more concerned with
|
|
Knell's presence in the park than any report of visiting ETs. "This is my
|
|
haunt. I've been coming to this park for years, and there's nothing going on
|
|
here," said Julie Ford, shaking her head and laughing. "They say that tree
|
|
there was burned by a UFO: it was broken by kids swinging on the branches."
|
|
Sure enough, Knell did offer the damaged willow as evidence that something
|
|
had beamed down there. But he also offered a mineralogist's report that a
|
|
burned oval on the ground contained particles of a type of feldspar quartz
|
|
found on the island of Aruba, not in Queens. "We find this amazing," said
|
|
Knell, who was joined by several other believers in UFOs. According to Knell,
|
|
five people riding a bus on March 9 saw "very bright lights" hovering near a
|
|
lake in the park. Since the park is located between Kennedy and LaGuardia
|
|
airports, they initially thought it was a downed aircraft, said Knell. Based
|
|
on their accounts and other evidence, Knell said, UFO investigators
|
|
determined this was a legitimate sighting. Knell thinks he knows why the
|
|
people who spotted something in Queens never saw aliens or spoke with them.
|
|
"I believe they have their own agenda, and at this time it doesn't include
|
|
communication," said Knell, who on Wednesday addressed several skeptical
|
|
reporters at the site where the UFO allegedly burned the ground.
|
|
Unfortunately, that's also the site where the remnants of a downed tree were
|
|
piled, killing off all the grass underneath, said park maintenance man Joe
|
|
Mackey, 60. "If there was a spot around here burned out, I woulda known about
|
|
it," said Mackey, who spends three days a week in the park. "It's a figment
|
|
of somebody's imagination." Perhaps, but Knell's not alone. Some residents of
|
|
Mississippi's Delta region say the Soviet description of a UFO is similar to
|
|
a fast-moving metallic ball they spotted earlier this month. Lee Abide Jr.
|
|
said he first saw the object about three or four months ago. He saw it again
|
|
early Wednesday while on his way to work at Abide Aero Flying Service about
|
|
five miles south of Greenville. "And it didn't come out of a bottle of
|
|
vodka," he said, referring to some speculation about the Soviet witnesses.
|
|
Bill Kimmel, a pilot, said he saw the object two days ago while flying to
|
|
Memphis, Tenn. He said it was round, metallic, kept changing colors and was
|
|
moving 800 to 900 mph at 3,000 feet some distance off his left wingtip.
|
|
"There was no way it was a weather balloon because no balloon can travel that
|
|
fast," he said.
|
|
|
|
10-12-89 EXLINE, Iowa Carol Drake says she was skeptical about Unidentified
|
|
Flying objects until she spotted bright reddish lights in the early evening
|
|
sky. "I wish somebody would give me a logical explanation so people would
|
|
stop teasing me," Mrs. Drake, 48, a farmer near Exline, said Thursday. The
|
|
Iowa sighting coincided with two other reports of unidentified lights to the
|
|
UFO Reporting Center in Seattle. "We'd reports from Lexington, Ky., and
|
|
Topeka, Kan., about a group of lights at very high altitude," said Robert
|
|
Gribble, director of the center. "We don't have any explanation. Everybody's
|
|
looking at the sky after the Soviet report." The Soviet news agency Tass
|
|
reported this week that citizens there saw aliens with tiny heads and large
|
|
bodies. "Usually I just get a chuckle when I hear reports about UFO," Mrs.
|
|
Drake said by telephone. "I've been getting a chuckle out of the Russian
|
|
story. The little kid in me wants to believe there are such things, but I
|
|
think it's not sensible. "I did not see any people nine to 12 feet tall, or
|
|
whatever the Russians saw." Mrs. Drake was one of many people who saw the
|
|
lights early Wednesday evening near Exline, 60 miles southeast of Des Moines
|
|
and only a few miles north of the Missouri border. She said a visitor to her
|
|
house saw the same thing as did her daughter, who lives several miles away.
|
|
"I got her on the phone and said, `Would you run outside and see if you can
|
|
see any flying saucers, or whatever it is.' She was gone for quite a while
|
|
and then came back and said, `That's bizarre.'" Mrs. Drake said the two
|
|
lights changed colors, first reddish and then changing to mostly yellow, and
|
|
were like bright headlights in the distance. It wasn't bright enough to
|
|
create light on the ground, however, and it wasn't too bright to look at, she
|
|
said. She said the lights neither blinked nor made any sound and they were
|
|
far above the horizon, thus ruling out lights on farm machinery. She said she
|
|
could see transconti7ental jets in the night sky but that their blinking
|
|
lights were minuscule compared to the unidentified lights. The lights moved
|
|
independently of each other, she said, and frightened her when they moved
|
|
directly over her house. "I'm sure there's a logical explanation for it," she
|
|
said. Although the lights appeared to be high in the sky, the source was
|
|
apparently close to her farm, she said, since she reported the lights to be
|
|
east of her house at the same time her daughter several miles away saw them
|
|
to the north. Mrs. Drake said she was alone at the time but that a visitor,
|
|
John Heubner of Fairfield, stopped by and saw the same thing. Heubner's wife,
|
|
Pat Heubner, said her husband called her Wednesday night and was breathless.
|
|
"He was so excited. Now I believe in UFOs, but I don't think he did until
|
|
now," Mrs. Heubner said. Heubner could not be reached for comment. Another
|
|
person who saw the lights was David Foster of rural Exline. "There were two
|
|
lights in the sky, then they separated and one went off," he told radio
|
|
station KBIZ in Ottumwa. He said the lights were too high in the sky to be
|
|
mistaken for farm machinery. The Appanoose County sheriff's office in
|
|
Centerville said nobody but the media called about the mysterious lights.
|
|
|
|
10-14-89 MIAMI, Okla. The mysterious lights that northeastern Oklahoma
|
|
residents have seen in the night sky for the last four days are real, but
|
|
they aren't anything to get excited about, a Coffeyville, Kan., astronomy
|
|
instructor said Saturday. "It's real, but it's caused by a very natural
|
|
phenomenon," said Don Lind, an astronomy instructor at Coffeyville Community
|
|
College. "We do have some rather large bright objects up in the night sky."
|
|
Miami officials asked Lind to use his computer to see if the lights that have
|
|
caused a stir in northeastern Oklahoma could be explained astronomically. Ken
|
|
Murphy, a civil defense radio operator, said Friday that numerous reports
|
|
refer to three different objects in the sky. The brightest's in the
|
|
west-northwest sky, another was in the southwestern sky and the dimest was in
|
|
the northeast. Some callers said the lights were flashing blue, red and white
|
|
and moving slowly across the sky. Lind found that two planets, two stars and
|
|
a turbulent, dusty atmosphere could explain all the sightings. The northeast
|
|
sighting's Jupiter the largest planet in the solar system, Lind said. He said
|
|
Jupiter's coming up at about 10 p.m. It's about 40 times brighter than the
|
|
average star and could appear to flicker through a thick atmosphere. "Being
|
|
that low on the horizon, it's in a very thick area of the atmosphere," he
|
|
said. "People are seeing this, particularly if they are using binoculars or
|
|
a very cheap telescope." In the southwest, Venus's very bright right after
|
|
sundown, and Antares appears about the time Venus sets, Lind said. "There's
|
|
something in the sky continuously for them to see," he said. And, he says, in
|
|
the west-northwest, Arkturus, a Class K orange star, is the only thing that
|
|
could be drawing that much attention. "It's been there for a long time, and
|
|
people just haven't noticed it. A lot of people now are just wanting to see
|
|
things," Lind said. The lights appear to move for the same reason the sun
|
|
appears to move the earth's rotation and they appear to flash because of dust
|
|
and pollen moving in the warm air on the horizon, Lind said. "The air's very
|
|
turbulent. It's moving almost constantly. As these stars are low to the
|
|
horizon, you are going to get a substantial amount of distortion," he said.
|
|
"Basically, there's nothing up there now that hasn't been up there for
|
|
months," he said. "The weather's nice and people are getting out on their
|
|
last fling before the winter sets in." Lind said the sightings are
|
|
predominant in northeastern Oklahoma and along the Oklahoma borders with
|
|
Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas because it's hill country. "They have a history
|
|
of seeing spook lights and this sort of thing in that area," Lind said. "They
|
|
have been proven to be nothing more than light refractions. The people are
|
|
really seeing these things." Isothermal layers or layers of different
|
|
temperatures form in the atmosphere above the hills, Lind said. Because light
|
|
bends differently in different temperatures, the layers act like a mirror
|
|
refracting starlight up and down. The reports of lights conjured images of
|
|
unidentified flying objects. Coupled with the pre-Halloween season, the
|
|
superstition linked to Friday the 13th and reports this week from the Soviet
|
|
Union of close encounters with alien spacecraft, the reports have received
|
|
national attention. "These sightings are not at all typical of UFO
|
|
sightings," Lind said. "Typical UFO sightings are only by a handful of people
|
|
for a very short period of time. These sightings are by many people over
|
|
about a week's period."
|
|
|
|
10-15-89 COLUMBUS, Ohio While scientists are skeptical about tales that a
|
|
9-foot-tall, three-eyed extraterrestrial made a 16-year-old Soviet boy
|
|
disappear and reappear, a Columbus researcher says it may be true. The Soviet
|
|
news agency Tass reported last week that an alien landed recently in the city
|
|
of Voronezh, adding fuel to the debate over whether aliens from outer space
|
|
are fact or fantasy. The account of the three-eyed alien's confrontation with
|
|
a terrified teen-ager was "confirmed" by a newspaper in the area, Tass
|
|
reported. Columbus UFO researcher Don Jernigan, however, says there's a good
|
|
chance the Soviet story's true, and that it's one of the thousands of times
|
|
aliens have visited Earth. "Nobody's been listening" to UFO researchers'
|
|
claims, but that will change now, said Jernigan, who's also president and
|
|
founder of the Phenomenon Investigation Committee. "I think this Soviet
|
|
report will give credibility to this phenomenon," Jernigan said. "People will
|
|
have to give this a lot more serious attention because Tass's the Soviet
|
|
Union's official news agency, and they don't have a reputation for playing
|
|
jokes. So I would assume this incident's a pretty good basis." But Paul
|
|
Kurtz, chairman of the Buffalo-based Committee for the Scientific
|
|
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, discounts the report. "What's
|
|
happening in the Soviet Union since glasnost lifted press censorship's a
|
|
National Enquirer-type mentality setting in there," said Kurtz, who visited
|
|
the Soviet Union in July.
|
|
|
|
10-18-89 KANSAS CITY, Mo. A large fireball of unknown origin streaked across
|
|
the sky about sunset Tuesday, according to reports from Missouri, Nebraska
|
|
and Illinois. Officials at the UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, the Strategic
|
|
Air Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Neb., and the Whiteman Air
|
|
Force Base at Knob Noster, Mo., all received telephone calls from people
|
|
who'd seen the fireball. Officials'd no explaination for the fireball. Capt.
|
|
Lance Jay at Whiteman said the command center first received a call from the
|
|
Howell County sheriff's department about 8 p.m. Witnesses in Howell County
|
|
told authorities they'd seen a round object moving in circles about 8,000 to
|
|
10,000 feet in the air. Witnesses who called Offutt described the object as
|
|
a ball of light that exploded into a streak of yellow before disintegrating.
|
|
"Whenever no one's any answers to phenomena like this, people always become
|
|
more curious about it," Lance said. "Right now we're not sure what we had."
|
|
Kathleen Freuer was driving near Kansas City International Airport when she
|
|
saw the object about 7:45 p.m. "I saw this big fireball and my first thought
|
|
was that a plane exploded," Ms. Freuer said. "That was how bright it was."
|
|
She said the event lasted only a few seconds. Ron Cop of the Federal Aviation
|
|
Administration said people reported the fireball from Springfield, Mo., to
|
|
Omaha. In addition, pilots in eastern Missouri and western Illinios called to
|
|
say they'd seen it. "It was definitely not an aircraft because we didn't have
|
|
any missing. It's probably a meteor or some space junk entering the
|
|
atmosphere," Cop said. "When you find it breaking up over a wide area like
|
|
this, that's usually what it is."
|
|
|
|
10-21-89 TUPELO, Miss. The old cliche, "A picture's worth a thousand
|
|
words,"'s been taken a step further by Joanne Pankey Cusack, a psychic
|
|
researcher who specializes in photographing and interpreting human auras.
|
|
Cusack studies the imprints left by fingertips on film to determine a
|
|
person's mental, emotional and physical state a process called Kirlian
|
|
photography. Then, by reading the patterns and colors on the film, she can
|
|
explain why that person acts the way he does, she says. Cusack, a Tupelo
|
|
native who recently moved back home, says the theory of Kirlian photography's
|
|
based on the medically accepted fact that the body does contain electrical
|
|
energy. "The theory's similar to tests such as the CAT scan, which measures
|
|
brain waves," Cusack said as she sat at the dining table in her neatly
|
|
furnished apartment. "The human body's like a computer. We send out thought
|
|
waves, energy follows thought and that, in turn, directs our life." Scattered
|
|
across the table in front of her were slides and photos she uses in her
|
|
lectures across the United States and Canada. Studying one of the pictures in
|
|
her hand she said, "I have always seen energy patterns around people, from
|
|
the time I was a small child. I assumed everyone could see what I saw. As I
|
|
got older I realized they couldn't and I became interested in finding out
|
|
more about the energy our bodies give off." Cusack first heard of Kirlian
|
|
photography while living in Houston, Texas. A professor at an Arizona college
|
|
was doing research on using the technique as a diagnostic tool. The process'd
|
|
actually been discovered decades earlier, in 1939, by a Russian electrician,
|
|
Semyon Davidovich Kirlian, who was trying to prove extra-sensory perception
|
|
existed. Kirlian photography's done by having a person place his hand inside
|
|
a heavy, black bag which blocks out light. The bag's two sleeves with elastic
|
|
cuffs and resembles a jacket. Inside's a modified instant camera the camera's
|
|
no lens attached to an electric meter. The person puts his hand through one
|
|
sleeve and places his fingers directly on the film. The photographer presses
|
|
a switch on the meter, causing a tiny electrical charge to run through a
|
|
metal plate on the camera. This charge reacts with the electricity given off
|
|
by the body and transfers an image to the film. After the person withdraws
|
|
his hand, the photographer reaches through the other sleeve and removes the
|
|
film. When the film develops, four finger imprints can be seen, surrounded by
|
|
halos of color. Cusack said she was fascinated with the process which
|
|
recorded on film the energy fields she'd seen around people all her life. She
|
|
immediately began her own research in Houston and later opened the Cusack
|
|
Kirlian Institute and Gallery in Tucson, Arizona. A friend took an "old
|
|
Polaroid camera" and modified it to suit her purposes. She recruited 80
|
|
volunteers who agreed to be photographed repeatedly. Cusack tracked the
|
|
changes in their auras in an attempt to find consistent patterns. She was
|
|
excited when she was able to document at least 36 distinctly different
|
|
patterns and began to make predictions from photographs. In her findings,
|
|
Cusack found the predominant colors in the pictures were royal blue, white,
|
|
turquoise, and sometimes red. Royal blue seemed to reflect a person's
|
|
magnetic field, Cusack said. She explained the term by saying, "It shows the
|
|
way they draw similar people to them." White shows creativity, she said, and
|
|
turquoise shows the amount of emotional balance a person may have. If red, or
|
|
other dark colors, shows up in the photo, the person's experiencing anger,
|
|
anxiety or stress, she said. The shape of the halos also explains much about
|
|
the person, Cusack said. Breaks in the halo may signal an illness. If no halo
|
|
shows up on the photograph, a person may be close to death. Cusack said
|
|
experiments done with corpses didn't show halos. She pointed to a series of
|
|
three dated photographs taken of the same man's hand. In the first photo, the
|
|
halo of color around the fingertips was barely visible, in the second the
|
|
band of color was wider and brighter, and in the third the halo'd shrunken
|
|
almost to its original size. Cusack noted the first photo was taken after the
|
|
man'd been severely depressed after being diagnosed with cancer of the
|
|
pancreas. In the second photo, his disease was in remission and his attitude
|
|
was more positive. The third photo was taken shortly after a visit with
|
|
friends who told him he should just accept his fate and prepare to die.
|
|
Cusack said the negative attitude of the friends affected her client's own
|
|
attitude, which in turn depleted his positive energy. "The patterns in the
|
|
energy field change as attitudes change," she said, adding that she believes
|
|
that all people who come in contact have an effect on each other's energy
|
|
field. "A person can pick up the magnetic energy, whether it's positive or
|
|
negative, from other people's bodies," she said. "That's why I try never to
|
|
hang around negative people for very long." When Cusack's work with Kirlian
|
|
photography became well-known, she spent much of her time traveling and
|
|
lecturing. She hosted her own radio show in Houston, Texas, and a television
|
|
talk show in San Antonio. She was also a guest on several talk shows,
|
|
including "PM Magazine." On one live television talk show, Cusack's theories
|
|
were put to a dramatic test. Cusack remembers the hostess of the show as
|
|
smiling, poised, beautiful and famous. She asked Cusack to photograph her
|
|
fingertips with the Kirlian camera and interpret the results on the air.
|
|
Cusack did so and was appalled when she peeled back the instant picture to
|
|
find a photograph that reflected anger, stress and extreme illness. Cusack
|
|
stammered something about the camera malfunctioning and asked to take the
|
|
photo again. Again, the halos in the picture were broken with dark lines and
|
|
shot through with dark red. Cusack took a third picture with the same result.
|
|
Luckily, she said, at that moment the show paused for a commercial break.
|
|
Cusack took the moment to tell the hostess privately what she saw in the
|
|
photograph. "It showed me that she was very ill and under extreme emotional
|
|
stress, that she'd had a nervous breakdown recently and that she'd probably
|
|
even tried to take her own life," Cusack recalled. "The lady just looked at
|
|
me for a minute and then said, `When we go back on the air, tell the audience
|
|
exactly what you just told me.' So I did." The women then admitted that
|
|
everything Cusack said was true. She'd had a nervous breakdown and'd tried to
|
|
commit suicide after being diagnosed with cancer. She'd also been divorced
|
|
and her husband was trying to take her children. Months later, after the
|
|
woman'd resolved some of her problems, she asked Cusack to take another
|
|
picture in a private session. This time, the photo showed a positive reading
|
|
with no red visible in the picture. Through the years, Cusack's photographed
|
|
the fingertips of a woman two hours before death and the hands of psychics
|
|
and healers from around the world. She's done a special study of people who
|
|
claim to have'd close encounters with extraterrestrials. Several months ago,
|
|
she returned to her parent's home in Sherman to care for them during an
|
|
illness. After their recovery, she decided to stay in Tupelo as a "home base"
|
|
between her lecture tours. She plans to apply for a grant to continue her
|
|
research with Kirlian photography as a diagnostic tool for mental, emotional
|
|
and physical illness. Though some critics view Kirlian photography as more of
|
|
a religious tool than a scientific one, Cusack said one of her main goals's
|
|
to help erase that "fine line between science and religion." She pointed out
|
|
that hundreds of years ago, today's medical science would have seemed like
|
|
fantasy. "When we can prove even one aspect of the unseen becoming seen, the
|
|
blending of spiritual and scientific search will produce a new age of
|
|
knowing," she said.
|
|
|
|
10-23-89 ASPEN, Colo. Author Bud Hopkins says thousands of people have close
|
|
encounters with aliens each year, but are either unwilling or unable to
|
|
discuss them. Hopkins was one of 150 participants in a "Close Encounters of
|
|
the Fourth Kind" weekend conference which included leading researchers, a
|
|
former NASA Astronaut and seven people who claim to have been abducted by
|
|
aliens. "Skepticism's fine. Ridicule isn't, said Hopkins, author of the book
|
|
"Intruders." "We have to raid the public's level of consciousness," he said.
|
|
"If these stories were just fantasies, you would expect a lot of variation,"
|
|
sid Ed Bullard, another author and UFO reseracher. "But there's a profound
|
|
coherency, an order in what they say." Aspen already may have'd its
|
|
consciousnes raised. Reports coming in over the weekend included one from a
|
|
police officer, of strange lights flickering over the mountain tops. Travis
|
|
Walton, who says he was abducted from a lumber camp in Arizona and
|
|
transported to an alien spacecraft "for five days, six hours" in 1975,
|
|
decided to make a rare public appearance at the meeting. "I want people to
|
|
understand, to accept, said Walton, 36, who talked of a rare "multiple
|
|
witness" case now famous in UFO reserach. Walton said he'd stopped his truck
|
|
to investigate a strange light that he and his six co-workers saw. Walter
|
|
approached the light and was "hit by a nasty beam" and whisked up to the
|
|
craft, he said. "When I came to, I was aboard, I was lying on my back and
|
|
they'd some sort of object across my chest. My coat and shirt were pushed
|
|
up," he said. Medical tampering with human victims's a common thread in
|
|
close-encounter tales. "I believe genetic experiementing's at the heart of
|
|
the whole thing," Hopkins said of the abduction phenomenon. Hopkins said he
|
|
sees the alien presence as manipulative, not helpful, a point which touches
|
|
on a current hot topic in the UFO research community.
|
|
|
|
10-24-89 PINE BLUFF, Ark. A Jefferson County woman says she saw a bright
|
|
white globe with a red core hovering about 100 feet over the treetops near
|
|
her home Monday night and sheriff's deputies say they saw the object. Cora
|
|
Walker of near Pine Bluff said she watched the globe hover for about an hour
|
|
before calling the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. "It came out from the
|
|
northeast at a rapid speed, and it went to the southwest," Ms. Walker said.
|
|
"Then it stood still." She started calling her neighbors. "It was a bright
|
|
light and then from it, it looked like a red flare," she said. "I've never
|
|
seen anything like it." After about an hour, the light started slowly moving
|
|
out of sight, she said. "It went straight down like a moon," she said. "I
|
|
don't know what it was, but it was a strange object." Sgt. Bernard Adams of
|
|
the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and Deputy Mark Bradley said they
|
|
watched the object until it disappeared somewhere over Watson Chapel about
|
|
9:30 p.m. Sheriff's dispatcher Glen Hopkins said several deputies reported
|
|
seeing the bright light moving from the west to the east and then back again.
|
|
He said it was also seen in Grant County. The sheriff's office notified the
|
|
Federal Aviation Administration, but FAA officials'd no radar contact with
|
|
the object, Hopkins said. Hopkins said he'd no idea what the object was. "All
|
|
I can tell you's I'd three officers who saw it," he said. Adams couldn't
|
|
identify what he was looking at, either. "I don't know really what it was,"
|
|
he said. "Whether it was a weather balloon or a satellite or what, I don't
|
|
know. To me, it was just bright lights in the air. "It did move, and it
|
|
completely disappeared afterward," he said. "It was real bright. Adams said
|
|
Pine Bluff Arsenal employees also reported seeing the object. Bradley was on
|
|
patrol just south of Pine Bluff on Highway 81 when he saw the bright white
|
|
light hovering about 150 yards above the treetops. "Someone asked me if I'd
|
|
seen a UFO, and I told them I saw an object and it was unidentified and it
|
|
was flying," Bradley said Tuesday. "When I put the binoculars on it, it was
|
|
just a white light and every once in a while you could see some red mixed in
|
|
it. The light was so bright you couldn't determine any shape to it." Bradley
|
|
said the light started to move west toward Watson Chapel, which ruled out the
|
|
possibility of the object being a weather balloon, because the winds were
|
|
from the south at the time, he was told. Larry Simpson, a disc jockey for
|
|
KCLA radio station, said he was flooded with phone calls from people in the
|
|
area who saw the strange light.
|
|
|
|
10-30-89 INDIANAPOLIS Reports of ghosts and haunted houses are the stuff of
|
|
Holloween legend and paranormal experiments, but to a group of 51 Hoosiers
|
|
they're, well, sheer poppycock. In fact, spirits and superstitions don't
|
|
stand a ghost of a chance against the Indiana Skeptics, a group of teachers
|
|
and scientists who endeavor to find rational explanations for paranormal
|
|
reports. "If someone believes he's seen a ghost or UFO visitor, it's simply
|
|
a mistake, a hallucination...or a hoax. They exist only in the mind," said
|
|
Robert Craig, the founder and chairman of the group. Craig says the Skeptics
|
|
are willing to go to the scene of UFO sightings, haunted houses, seances and
|
|
other paranormal events and literally chase the ghosts away through the power
|
|
of reason. So far, the year-old group's had no takers, but Craig's examined
|
|
Indianapolis' Hannah House, which's a reputation for being haunted. Some
|
|
visitors have reported experiences ranging from loud, unexplained noises in
|
|
the night and inanimate objects that move to shadowy figures in passageways
|
|
and an overpowering stench of burning flesh that wafts up from the basement,
|
|
where runaway slaves supposedly were killed in a fire. "All I found was a
|
|
fascinating, well-maintained older home," said Craig, an associate instructor
|
|
in multicultural studies at Indiana University. He says the sounds are caused
|
|
by unseen animals or pranksters; the objects are moved by absent-minded
|
|
visitors; the figures are imaginary. Even the scent of burning flesh can be
|
|
explained rationally. "Studies have shown that when the olfactory sensory
|
|
cells in the brain become stimulated or disturbed, as they might if you think
|
|
you're in a haunted house, the most common perception's the scent of burning
|
|
flesh," Said Craig. The same may be said for out-of-body experiences, which
|
|
many people report following life-threatening traumas such as surgery or an
|
|
auto accident. "The feeling of lightness, of numbness, of floating above your
|
|
body and sensing a warm light are part of the body's normal response to
|
|
trauma," says Craig. Paranormal experiences can also be triggered by
|
|
religious beliefs and by perpsychological stimuli, such as repressed
|
|
sexuality, he said. Craig said about 4 percent of the population's
|
|
"fantasy-prone," given to believing that paranormal experiences happen to
|
|
them regularily. He said the group tends to share many of the same
|
|
characteristics: Excessive reliance on fantasy during childhood. Emotions
|
|
that run high and often unchecked. Unusual literary tastes, especially at an
|
|
early age. A personal world-view in which the individual's either universally
|
|
persecuted or unanimously beloved. A physiological brain disorder called
|
|
Temporal Lobe Syndrome, which's symptoms similar to those of epilepsy and can
|
|
induce a trance-like state in which chemical changes take place in the body,
|
|
resulting in altered perceptions.
|
|
|
|
10-30-89 DALLAS Purveyors of parapsychology are complaining that they are
|
|
innocent victims of fundamentalist Christians, who have mounted an offensive
|
|
against Satanic religions that's persuaded many school officials to drop or
|
|
tone down Halloween celebrations. A number of psychic fairs have been
|
|
canceled nationwide recently under pressure from Christian groups, including
|
|
one in Garland this past weekend and an earlier one in San Antonio. "It
|
|
bellied up because we got calls from some Bible beaters who thought it was
|
|
cult-related and Satanic," said John Lehman, owner of the North Dallas County
|
|
Farmers Market, where the Garland fair was to have been held. "I hated to
|
|
buckle under to pressure, but every customer you lose's one that's lost for
|
|
good. It's probably not worth offending people." Psychic fairs feature
|
|
demonstrations by practitioners of parapsychological arts such as fortune
|
|
telling, tarot card reading, and "aura audits." In addition, a number of
|
|
vendors show up to hawk materials relating to new age beliefs, such as quartz
|
|
crystals, music and books. "There's been quite a few psychic fairs canceled
|
|
lately," said Len Ponath of Southwestern Parasychology, Inc., who'd planned
|
|
to attend the show. "Christians are saying psychics are Satanists, too, and
|
|
we're all getting lumped in together," he said. "But it's not the same
|
|
thing." Al Burt, who sells books and jewelry oriented to new age beliefs that
|
|
promote peace and worldwide harmony, said he thinks the oppression being
|
|
suffered by many parapsychological practitioners will not diminish soon. He
|
|
said the Christians were galvanized by events such as the murders in
|
|
Matamoros, Mexico, and are lashing out at anything they don't understand.
|
|
"They remain ignorant of what they attacking," Burt said. "There are a lot of
|
|
psychics out there and some of them probably do practice black magic. But the
|
|
majority them try to steer as far away from that practice as possible."
|
|
Ponath said he believes the same paranoia that hit the psychic fairs's
|
|
responsible for mistaken anxieties about Halloween. He said true Satanists
|
|
don't have rituals on Halloween, but instead scheduled ceremonies on the day
|
|
before and day afterward. "So many people were leaving the church, they'd to
|
|
do something to stop them, so they started attacking Satanists," he said.
|
|
"But take a lot at them Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart." Lehman said he wishes
|
|
the psychic fair could have gone on as scheduled, but he feared he would take
|
|
much criticism if it did. "I'd somebody get up in my church and say children
|
|
shouldn't wear witches and skeleton outfits on Halloween," Lehman said. "But
|
|
my feeling was that Halloween was only a lot of fun. My personal feeling's
|
|
that people who believe Halloweeen's bad are people who are not really sure
|
|
what they believe."
|
|
|
|
10-31-89 Hell's Half Acre, Devils Courthouse and other spooky spots abound in
|
|
North Carolina for trick-or-treaters bored with their old haunts and looking
|
|
for a little extra horror this Halloween. For starters, how about
|
|
trick-or-treating in Transylvania County? Local historian Betty Sherrill's
|
|
not sure why this western county was named for the eastern European home of
|
|
the notorious bloodsucking County Dracula. She said it probably'd more to do
|
|
with the translation of Transylvania, which means "through the woods," than
|
|
any propensity on the part of local folks to rise from the dead and go out
|
|
seeking donations for the Red Cross. For would-be ghouls looking for
|
|
vampires, Mrs. Sherrill suggests they try Bat Cave, a town located along the
|
|
Broad River in northeast Henderson County. The caves for which the town's
|
|
named are part of a 93-acre nature preserve and at one time were home to a
|
|
large population of the winged mammals, including at least one endangered
|
|
species. Hell's Half Acre, a town that sounds like a B-grade horror flick, in
|
|
fact's a peace-loving community of about 125 people in northwest Caswell
|
|
County, better known now as Providence. But in the early 1900s, it housed a
|
|
saloon, and a good deal of drinking and carousing went on, earning the town
|
|
its rough-sounding name, says J. Louis Oakley, 59, who was the town's first
|
|
postmaster. The Outer Banks community of Kill Devil Hills got its name from
|
|
a kind of rum that once was favored by the locals. Indians believed that his
|
|
Satanic majesty sat at Devils Courthouse in judgment of "all who were lacking
|
|
in courage or'd strayed from a strict code of virtue," according to a sign at
|
|
posted at the base. The mountain of jagged rock looms over the Great Smoky
|
|
Mountains National Park from a vantage point near the Haywood County line in
|
|
the Blue Ridge parkway.
|
|
|
|
11-02-89 CHESHIRE, Conn. When the official Soviet news agency Tass reported
|
|
a UFO sighting earlier this month, John W. White was among the earliest to
|
|
doubt the story, even though he's a firm believer in the extraterrestial.
|
|
White, a 50-year-old author and educator, said claims that 10-foot aliens
|
|
debarked the UFO and briefly abducted a 16-year-old boy in the city of
|
|
Voronezh, 300 miles south of Moscow, just didn't make sense. Most
|
|
significantly, a majority of people reporting contact with aliens have
|
|
described the creatures as being only about 4-feet tall, White explained.
|
|
Despite doubts about the sighting, White said UFO enthusiasts are
|
|
investigating the matter. "I would have liked for it to be true," White said.
|
|
"But the report was so bizarre, I'd to be very skeptical and doubted the
|
|
authenticity of it. We have to make sure it was not some hoax, or some
|
|
fantastic embroidery." Since he was a child, White's been fascinated the
|
|
unknown and the unexplained. As a teen-ager growing up in Cheshire, this
|
|
interest was satisfied by reading science fiction. But as he progressed
|
|
through undergraduate and graduate school, White came to believe UFO's are
|
|
real and not just fiction. He began to studying the subject and in the
|
|
process built an international reputation. He's written 14 books and numerous
|
|
magazine or newspaper articles about UFOs and contacts with aliens. The
|
|
primary focus of his research's been of the religious or pyschic aspects of
|
|
the UFO phenomenon. "I'm trying to bring education and credibility to the
|
|
subject," White said. As part of that continuing effort, White's organized
|
|
his third annual UFO conference, which will be held on Nov. 11 and 12 at the
|
|
Ramada Inn in North Haven. White and 11 other leaders in the field of UFO
|
|
research will speak to about 150 people who have paid $150 apiece to attend
|
|
the gathering. People will be coming from as far away as Seattle, Wash., and
|
|
western Canada. A total of 20 states and Canada will be represented at the
|
|
conference, White said. Among the speakers will be Walter Andrus, the
|
|
international director of the Mutual UFO Network, the largest UFO
|
|
organization in the world; and Whitley Streiber, a best-selling author of
|
|
non-fiction books. A University of Connecticut psychology professor also will
|
|
report on the result of his extensive interviews with people who claim to
|
|
have seen UFOs. "It's a chance for people who attend to have direct access to
|
|
researchers and contactees (those who've met aliens). Essentially, it's a
|
|
forum for public education," said White. Despite his long-time belief in
|
|
UFOs, White's only seen an unidentified flying object once in his life, and
|
|
that sighting occurred just two years ago in April in New York state. White
|
|
said the sighting also was witnessed by his oldest son, a neighbor and some
|
|
of their friends. "It was a brilliant red rectangular light that rose from
|
|
behind a tree line," White recalled. "It hovered motionless, and as it did
|
|
so...it changed its dimensions to about three times its previous size for
|
|
about 10 seconds. Then it returned to its previous size and sank behind the
|
|
tree line." White said he attempted to locate the exact area where he'd seen
|
|
the light, but he was unable to get to it because it was a swampy area. But
|
|
he said he's convinced it was a UFO. "What it was I can't say. It didn't have
|
|
a valid structure that I could see," he said.
|
|
|
|
11-06-89 CHESHIRE, Conn. When the official Soviet news agency Tass reported
|
|
a UFO sighting last month, John W. White was among the earliest to doubt the
|
|
story, even though he's a firm believer in the extraterrestrial. White, a
|
|
50-year-old author and educator, said claims that 10-foot aliens debarked the
|
|
UFO and briefly abducted a 16-year-old boy in the city of Voronezh, 300 miles
|
|
south of Moscow, just didn't make sense. Most significantly, a majority of
|
|
people reporting contact with aliens have described the creatures as being
|
|
only about 4-feet tall, White explained. Despite doubts about the sighting,
|
|
White said Unidentified Flying Object enthusiasts are investigating the
|
|
matter. "I would have liked for it to be true," White said. "But the report
|
|
was so bizarre, I'd to be very skeptical and doubted the authenticity of it.
|
|
We have to make sure it was not some hoax, or some fantastic embroidery."
|
|
Since he was a child, White's been fascinated the unknown and the
|
|
unexplained. As a teen-ager growing up in Cheshire, this interest was
|
|
satisfied by reading science fiction. But as he progressed through
|
|
undergraduate and graduate school, White came to believe UFO's are real and
|
|
not just fiction. He began studying the subject and in the process built an
|
|
international reputation. He's written 14 books and numerous magazine or
|
|
newspaper articles about UFOs and contacts with aliens. The primary focus of
|
|
his research's been of the religious or pyschic aspects of the UFO
|
|
phenomenon. "I'm trying to bring education and credibility to the subject,"
|
|
White said. As part of that continuing effort, White's organized his third
|
|
annual UFO conference, which will be held on Nov. 11 and 12 at the Ramada Inn
|
|
in North Haven. White and 11 other leaders in the field of UFO research will
|
|
speak to about 150 people who have paid $150 apiece to attend the gathering.
|
|
People will be coming from as far away as Seattle, Wash., and western Canada.
|
|
A total of 20 states and Canada will be represented at the conference, White
|
|
said. Among the speakers will be Walter Andrus, the international director of
|
|
the Mutual UFO Network, the largest UFO organization in the world; and
|
|
Whitley Streiber, a best-selling author of non-fiction books. A University of
|
|
Connecticut psychology professor also will report on the result of his
|
|
extensive interviews with people who claim to have seen UFOs. "It's a chance
|
|
for people who attend to have direct access to researchers and contactees.
|
|
Essentially, it's a forum for public education," White said. Despite his
|
|
long-time belief in UFOs, White's only seen an unidentified flying object
|
|
once in his life, and that sighting occurred just two years ago in April in
|
|
New York state. White said the sighting also was witnessed by his oldest son,
|
|
a neighbor and some of their friends. "It was a brilliant red rectangular
|
|
light that rose from behind a tree line," White recalled. "It hovered
|
|
motionless, and as it did so...it changed its dimensions to about three times
|
|
its previous size for about 10 seconds. Then it returned to its previous size
|
|
and sank behind the tree line." White said he attempted to locate the exact
|
|
area where he'd seen the light, but he was unable to get to it because it was
|
|
a swampy area. But he said he's convinced it was a UFO. "What it was I can't
|
|
say. It didn't have a valid structure that I could see," he said.
|
|
|
|
11-09-89 GRAND FORKS, N.D. More than a year after he first reported UFO
|
|
encounters, University of North Dakota professor John Salter still's
|
|
convinced they happened even though others may have doubts. Salter, who
|
|
chairs the Indian Studies Department at UND, recently mailed letters to
|
|
friends and fellow faculty members listing 18 physical changes he attributes
|
|
to encounters with extraterrestrials on March 20 and March 21, 1988. Among
|
|
the changes are improved skin tone, circulation, eyesight and hair growth, he
|
|
said. "After all these years, I have a 5 o'clock shadow," Salter said,
|
|
smiling and rubbing his chin. He also said he stopped smoking in May after 35
|
|
years of heavy tobacco use. Salter, 55, hasn't been checked by a doctor
|
|
partly because he didn't think it was necessary. Salter, president of the UND
|
|
chapter of the North Dakota Higher Education Association, was the 1989 winner
|
|
of a Martin Luther King Jr. Award from Gov. George Sinner for his
|
|
contributions to civil rights causes. For the past year, he also's been
|
|
coordinator of the North Dakota chapter of the Mutual UFO Network. He says
|
|
it's about two dozen members and helpers in the state. Salter remembers
|
|
seeing an alien about 6 feet tall while visiting a field near Richland
|
|
Center, Wis., on March 20, 1988. He also reported seeing three or four
|
|
smaller aliens in the Wisconsin woods. He and his son John Salter III, 24,
|
|
now of Quincey, Calif., reported more than an hour of "lost" time a period
|
|
blanked out in their memory as they drove a pickup truck near Richland
|
|
Center. The next day, they said, they saw what appeared to them to be a
|
|
silvery, round spacecaft five miles east of Peoria, Ill. Bernard O'Kelly,
|
|
dean of the UND College of Arts and Sciences, said he considers Salter a
|
|
credible source, and he's keeping an open mind about the professor's report.
|
|
"I certainly believe he's a fine academic citizen," O'Kelly said. "He's not
|
|
the first person I've heard of to have'd experiences related to UFOs." Salter
|
|
said he's received positive support from family, friends and students. "I
|
|
don't think I've encountered any open skepticism," he said. "It should be
|
|
reasonably clear I haven't fallen out of my treehouse." Salter thinks the
|
|
visitors to Earth may have inserted "a transplant" that caused the changes in
|
|
his body. He said he's pieced together details of the visit on March 20
|
|
through "recalls," or memory flashbacks, of the time he and his son couldn't
|
|
account for in Wisconsin. The younger Salter, who's the director of an Indian
|
|
education center in northern California, hasn't'd similar recalls and
|
|
physical changes, but his father said his psychic powers have increased. John
|
|
Sr. said he's discussed the UFO experience in detail with fellow UFO network
|
|
member Kevin Henke, a chemist at the UND Energy and Environmental Research
|
|
Center, and occasionally with student groups and other faculty members.
|
|
"Although it's a very unusual case, I do have a tendency to believe he's
|
|
telling the truth and that what he's seeing's real," Henke said.
|
|
"Unfortunately, he doesn't have anything really tangible to prove it," Henke
|
|
added. "He's had some physical changes. From a scientific point of view,
|
|
you'd like to have a medical examination before and after."
|
|
|
|
11-14-89 MILLERSBURG, Ohio Holmes County residents reported strange lights in
|
|
the sky, and a resident called the sheriff's department to investigate a
|
|
circular depression on their front lawn, authorities said Tuesday. According
|
|
to a sheriff's department news release, a family in Monroe Township
|
|
discovered the ring, about 7 inches wide and 45 feet in diameter, Saturday
|
|
afternoon. The family's no explanation for the phenomenon, the news release
|
|
said. In areas where the grass'd been matted down, the ring was about a
|
|
half-inch deep, the sheriff's department said. Judy Neville told authorities
|
|
that other than the family dogs' unusual barking early Saturday morning, no
|
|
one heard or saw anything out of the ordinary. Sheriff's Deputy Dale Renker's
|
|
investigating the incidents, the department news release said. Renker could
|
|
not be reached for comment Tuesday.
|
|
|
|
11-16-89 POCATELLO, Idaho Stanton Friedman says three decades of
|
|
investigation have given him "overwhelming evidence" that Earth's had
|
|
interplanetary visitors and governments have hidden the evidence of those
|
|
visits. "Please don't reach a conclusion until you've examined the relevant
|
|
evidence," he told about 700 people at an Idaho State University speech
|
|
Tuesday night. One of the hardest pieces of evidence Friedman cited's a 1952
|
|
memo from the National Security Council to president-elect Dwight Eisenhower,
|
|
which stated that the government recovered four alien bodies from a UFO crash
|
|
near Roswell, N.M. The memo, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act,
|
|
says the bodies were recovered about two miles from wreckage spotted by a
|
|
rancher after a severe lightning storm. Friedman said 75 percent of it was
|
|
deleted before's was released. Attempts to get more information on that
|
|
incident have been stymied because much of the NSC material from Eisenhower's
|
|
presidency remains classified and's exempt from automatic declassification
|
|
based on its age, he said. Although an initial press release told of the
|
|
incident, the next day the Army Air Corps claimed it was actually a weather
|
|
balloon radar disk. Pieces of a radar disk were shown to reporters the next
|
|
day, but Friedman said some of the participants have admitted those were
|
|
faked. An FBI memo confirms that the material in federal custody's not a
|
|
weather radar disk, he said. A group called Citizens Against UFO Secrecy's
|
|
unsuccessfully sued the Central Intelligence Agency to get documents related
|
|
to the Roswell incident, he said. The documents refer to Operation Majestic
|
|
12, the title given to the incident by federal authorities. Friedman said he
|
|
and a colleague have talked to more than 100 people connected to the Roswell
|
|
incident. He said governments use secrecy to keep information about more
|
|
advanced technologies away from other countries and because "Nationalism's
|
|
the only game in town. No government wants its citizens to owe their primary
|
|
allegiance to the planet." He said residents of this planet "must stop
|
|
believing we're the most advanced life form. Twenty-five thousand children
|
|
die each day on our planet, most from preventable causes. How do you think we
|
|
look to those from other planets?" Friedman said he commuted to the Idaho
|
|
National Engineering Laboratory periodically from 1956 to 1959 while working
|
|
for General Electric in Cincinnati. He said he was involved in planning the
|
|
flight test facility for the nuclear powered aircraft that was built at INEL.
|
|
That project, he said, had the potential to become an interstellar propulsion
|
|
system. His lecture was built around refuting the people he calls "noisy
|
|
negativists." He cited four reasons that most scientists and journalists
|
|
haven't pursued UFO phenomena: Ignorance of relevant evidence; "The laughter
|
|
curtain," a fear of ridicule which limits reports of sightings and
|
|
investigation of them; Egotism among science and government experts, who say
|
|
aliens certainly would have sought them out; An unwillingness to apply the
|
|
latest technology to studying UFOs. He said that although scientists will
|
|
admit there are billions of stars in billions of galaxies, "They assume you
|
|
can't get there from here. Future technology's not an extrapolation of the
|
|
past. Progress comes from doing things differently in an unpredictable way."
|
|
|
|
11-24-89 FYFFE, Ala. Unidentified, banana-shaped flying objects over Fyffe
|
|
were no match for Soviet space creatures in a magazines's annual ranking of
|
|
planet's strangest phenomenon. The sightings in February and March of
|
|
brightly lighted objects over the northeast Alabama town finished ninth on
|
|
the 1989 list compiled by Strange magazine. Fyffe Police Chief Junior
|
|
Garmany, who along with his assistant saw a UFO, said he understood how the
|
|
editors could rank the Soviet UFO first. "The Soviet Union one may have been
|
|
more unusual an occurrence than ours," Garmany said. "I imagine the
|
|
magazine'd a hard time ranking these things, though. All I can say's what we
|
|
seen was real, and it's unexplainable to this date." The September landing of
|
|
space creatures in the Soviet Union as reported by the official government
|
|
news agency Tass took the top spot in the magazine's Top 10, which will be
|
|
published in the March issue. "The Alabama UFOs were very odd because police
|
|
officers witnessed them, but we'd to rank the Russian Tass alien case number
|
|
one because it was covered worldwide and because Tass's such a serious news
|
|
agency," said Mark Chorvinsky, editor of the magazine, which's based in
|
|
Rockville, Md., and's a circulation of 5,000. On Feb. 10 at 8:30 p.m., while
|
|
responding to a call from a Sand Mountain homeowner who reported seeing a
|
|
peculiar flying object, Garmany and Assistant Police Chief Fred Works said
|
|
they spotted a brightly lighted object hovering above a dark county road.
|
|
Chorvinsky said Strange's the only magazine that takes "an objective look" at
|
|
such occurrences. "The position of the magazine's we do not believe what we
|
|
print, but we also do not disbelieve it." The editorial staff compiled the
|
|
list from more than 3,000 unusual occurrences featured in the bi-monthly
|
|
magazine during 1989. Other phenomena that made the top 10 included:
|
|
sightings in Greece of a "25-foot entity that resembled a frog," more than
|
|
600 symmetrical circles of flattened crops in southern England, and a 30-mile
|
|
swarm of cobwebs that fell from the sky in Dorset, England.
|
|
|
|
11-27-89 POCATELLO, Idaho The losses are mounting again in southeastern Idaho
|
|
amid another rash of cattle mutilations that have left ranchers and lawmen
|
|
grasping for explanations. "It's really frustrating us and frustrating for
|
|
ranchers, too," said Bear Lake County Sheriff Brent Bunn because no person or
|
|
thing's ever been caught in the act. This year, more than two dozen case have
|
|
been reported with the economic losses estimated in excess of $10,000. The
|
|
theories differ on how they occurred, but circumstances surrounding the cases
|
|
often are bizarre and similar. Officials said there apparently's no struggle
|
|
from the animal, no blood, no footprints and no tire tracks in the area.
|
|
Organs and genitals are removed with a sharp object. The animals obviously
|
|
were not killed for food. In the autumn of 1975, 90 mutilations were reported
|
|
throughout southeastern Idaho, along with more than 100 in other states. Then
|
|
only one was reported in Idaho the next year. Colorado investigators
|
|
attributed nearly all their cases to predators. But ranchers who lost the
|
|
animals scoffed at that conclusion, blaming humans instead perhaps satanic
|
|
worshippers. Bear Lake County rancher Kent Alleman, who's lost six animals to
|
|
mutilation in the last few months, is convinced occult or satanic worshippers
|
|
are responsible, using the organs in ceremonies. "People are very concerned,"
|
|
said Alleman, who lives in a valley with about 20 other families. "There's no
|
|
doubt it's people...satanic worshippers or a cult." The sheriff agrees people
|
|
are to blame for the mutilations but not necessarily satanic worshippers.
|
|
He's seen no sign of occult activity during his investigations. "I don't see
|
|
any cult symbolism near the animals when we find them," Bunn said. "I've
|
|
heard of no cult meetings in the area and haven't seen altars or graffiti. I
|
|
don't subscribe to the UFO theory, either. I think it's to be animals or
|
|
people."
|
|
|
|
12-08-89 BRUSSELS, Belgium The air force and police are investigating
|
|
numerous UFO sightings near the border with the Netherlands and West Germany,
|
|
officials said Friday. Since Nov. 29, dozens of people and police officials
|
|
in the northeastern Liege province said they've seen luminous objects in the
|
|
sky, with some of them describing a flying platform scanning the surface with
|
|
three huge searchlights, while others talk of dancing lights. During the same
|
|
period, air traffic controllers "found radar blips on the screens that could
|
|
not be immediately explained," said Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Michel
|
|
Mandel. At the time of the sightings there were no authorized low-level
|
|
flights in the region. "We are looking for a rational explanation," he said.
|
|
Although Mandel cast doubts on several witness accounts, the Belgian Society
|
|
for the Study of Space Phenomena said Friday it would send members to the
|
|
German-speaking region in Liege and across the border in the Netherlands and
|
|
West Germany this weekend. The society said it'd 150 witness accounts, in
|
|
addition to photo and videotaped material.
|
|
|
|
12-25-89 KALAMAZOO, Mich. Scholarly UFO studies deserve a haven of their own,
|
|
says a Michigan professor who oversees a professional journal for research on
|
|
extraterrestrials. The Journal of UFO Studies, resurrected this year from a
|
|
defunct publication of the same name, aims to give researchers something
|
|
"they wouldn't be embarrassed by writing for," said its editor, Michael
|
|
Swords. "It looks exactly like a professional journal, like any other
|
|
academic field's," said the Western Michigan University professor of natural
|
|
sciences. "The target audience's academics and researchers. "It's meant to
|
|
allow the serious people to have an outlet, which doesn't really exist right
|
|
now. This was a hole in UFO publishing that'd to be filled," Swords said in
|
|
a recent interview from his campus office. Swords, who's working on the
|
|
second annual issue, believes the $15 journal's too technical for the general
|
|
public. For example, one of the first issue's three articles of about 35
|
|
pages each discussed chemical analyses of a substance gleaned from the
|
|
Delphos Case, a supposed 1971 UFO landing site in Kansas. Another looked at
|
|
the effect of hypnosis in obtaining information from people who claim they've
|
|
been abducted by aliens. The analyses couldn't pinpoint the chemical, and the
|
|
hypnosis study by Thomas Bullard of Indiana University, a folklore
|
|
specialist, found hypnosis wasn't influencing accounts of abductions. Swords
|
|
wrote the third article, about whether other life exists in the universe. He
|
|
believes it isn't a matter of if, but of how many. "All the laws of nature
|
|
are the same everywhere and what happens once's bound to happen twice.
|
|
Chances of other high-tech extraterrestrial civilizations are equal to how
|
|
long it could exist after reaching the danger zone of technology. "Since
|
|
we're made it 45 years past nuclear weapons, I think people think there are
|
|
at least dozens if not thousands of high-tech civilizations out there," said
|
|
Swords, 49, who moved to Kalamazoo 18 years ago after earning his doctoral
|
|
degree in the history of science from Case Western University. The 174-page
|
|
journal features a book review section and a forum on different topics each
|
|
issue. All views, including those of skeptics, will be welcome, Swords said.
|
|
The second issue will take up theories about electrical fields that some
|
|
researchers blames for creating balls of light mistaken for UFOs and for
|
|
affecting psyches, may be prompting people to think they've made contact with
|
|
aliens, he said. "A lot of old-timers don't like the idea because it steals
|
|
the E.T.'s away from them," Swords said. Mark Rodeghier, scientific director
|
|
of the Chicago-based Center for UFO Studies that published about 700 copies
|
|
of the first journal issue in March, plans to run off about that many for
|
|
next year's edition. Swords said his interest in the field, which began when
|
|
he was a teen, isn't a secret, but he hasn't been teased too much by his
|
|
peers in recent years. "Sooner or later, I silence that behavior," he said.
|
|
|
|
12-23-89 LINCOLNTON, N.C. Some people believe that President Harry Truman
|
|
made a pact with an alien nation in the early 1950s that allowed creatures
|
|
from outer space to set up shop beneath the Arizona desert. Not George
|
|
Fawcett. Fawcett, an advertising sales representative for Park Newspapers and
|
|
executive director of the N.C. Mutual UFO Network Inc., says he's seen no
|
|
evidence to convince him that such a pact or community for that matter
|
|
exists. "Now, some people believe there's a whole nation of humanoids living
|
|
underneath the Arizona desert, but I don't believe it. Never have," said the
|
|
60-year-old Lincolnton man, who's been monitoring UFO activity in North
|
|
Carolina and elsewhere for nearly 45 years. For Fawcett, such reports only
|
|
degrade what for him's been a serious pursuit that began on Dec. 18, 1944. On
|
|
that day, the young Fawcett read a news item about shiny silver balls in the
|
|
sky. It changed his life. Since then, in his spare time, the former
|
|
journalist and restauranteur's filled 35 filing cabinets with 30,000 to
|
|
40,000 reports of confirmed sightings. He's set up Mutual UFO Network
|
|
chapters in several states, most recently in North Carolina, where
|
|
approximately 200 members joined him in incorporating the group as an
|
|
official non-profit organization last month. "We want to pool our time,
|
|
talent, money and other resources to continue what we've been doing
|
|
informally for about 20 years," Fawcett said. Among their first actions was
|
|
to elect eight officers with Fawcett at the helm and to establish an
|
|
investigative arm, called the Greater Charlotte MUFON Investigative Team. The
|
|
investigative unit, with Charlotte's George Lund in charge, trains members
|
|
how to check and verify or discredit sitings. Using films, manuals and
|
|
lectures, leaders of the unit teach members what to look for in the reports,
|
|
such as descriptions of land markings, severe animal reactions, sounds
|
|
similar to a swarm of bees and odors like ammonia, sulphur or burnt
|
|
electrical wire. Fawcett said the team will likely be asked to look into more
|
|
than 100 sitings this year, although he said only 20 to 30 percent of those
|
|
will be deemed real. The rest can be written off as electrical towers,
|
|
shooting stars, meteors and so on, he said. Fawcett said the proliferation of
|
|
books and movies about aliens have opened the minds of many people to the
|
|
possibility that UFO's exist. But he's as disturbed by people who believe
|
|
without investigating as he's by people who don't believe. "There's foolish
|
|
faith as opposed to blind doubt. They're both wrong," he said. Fawcett said
|
|
that while there's enough UFOs for everybody, he doesn't believe it's
|
|
necessary to see one to have faith in their existence. He said most
|
|
investigators have not actually seen a UFO. "In that respect, my experience's
|
|
unusual, he said. I saw one years ago above Lynchburg College it was 10:15
|
|
a.m., July 10 It looked like an orange," he said, describing the 4-minute
|
|
encounter. While Fawcett's convinced the objects and their inhabitants may
|
|
pose a threat to the nation's security and human survival, his next project,
|
|
proposed construction of a UFO museum in North Carolina, capitalizes on them.
|
|
"I think it would be a great tourist attraction. North Carolina's first in
|
|
flight, why not first in UFOs?"
|
|
|
|
01-18-90 QUEBEC Unidentified flying objects circular or spherical in shape
|
|
seen or observed over Quebec City & off the east coast of New Brunswick're or
|
|
remain, officially or unofficially, a puzzlement. The Tuesday night
|
|
observations vary somewhat & the times're a trifle out, but the observers
|
|
stand by their stories. Officialdom shakes its collective heads. One Quebec
|
|
City observer, identified by Le Soleil only as Christian, aged 29, said he
|
|
was walking with his mother at about 10 pm when he spotted eight strange
|
|
forms in the sky. "We were just below them," he said. "It was very bizarre.
|
|
They were like rings, with four white & yellow lights inside. There was no
|
|
noise." Christian said he watched for about 15 minutes. At one point, he
|
|
said, one of the rings accelerated & moved into position ahead of the others.
|
|
It couldn't have been a hoax, he said. Certainly not like the UFO last year
|
|
in the Beauce region south of Quebec City which turned out to be a plastic
|
|
bag covering a candle. The newspaper said it first heard about the UFOs
|
|
Tuesday night from people who saw'em from the streets. Several people phoned
|
|
the police, who'd no comment.
|
|
|
|
01-25-90 ANCHORAGE (ENGLISH BAY) Winter nights tend to be pretty uneventful
|
|
in English Bay. But Monday was nothing of the sort for a few residents there.
|
|
UFOs don't often visit the tiny village. The encounter actually started about
|
|
four miles away in Port Graham. Edward Anahonak was hauling some firewood on
|
|
his 4-wheeler to a friend's house at about 7 pm Monday when he saw an odd set
|
|
of lights hovering above Bob McMullen's house. McMullen's home's on the
|
|
western edge of the village. Anahonak, who lives in English Bay, thought it
|
|
was a helicopter, but the lights were wrong & it didn't make a sound. He said
|
|
it'd red & blue lights & "looked yellowish in the middle." It also'd a
|
|
spotlight "that lit up the trees pretty good." It was shaped like a wing, he
|
|
said, hovering over McMullen's house. Still he thought it was a helicopter.
|
|
Anahonak watched as the lights about 150 yards away moved slowly toward the
|
|
beach. "I wasn't scared," he said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "I
|
|
thought it came in for an emergency or something. I thought it was landing,"
|
|
he said. "I ran down there with my Honda. When I got there, there was
|
|
nothing." Meanwhile, in English Bay, Herman & Annie Tanape were out for a
|
|
drive. English Bay's a village of about 180 people, nestled on a hillside
|
|
overlooking lower Cook Inlet. The Tenapes often take short jaunts around the
|
|
village to combat cabin fever. It was a nice evening for a drive: windy &
|
|
clear, after weeks of clouds. It was about 7:40 pm Herman & Annie were a half
|
|
mile from their home, near the beach airstrip, when Annie told Herman she saw
|
|
a strange light. Herman didn't think much of it until he turned back toward
|
|
the village. "At first, you know, I though they were stars," Herman said.
|
|
"They were real bright." He drove closer to the lights, which he said were
|
|
hovering no more than 50 feet above the ground. He said one was red, the rest
|
|
were white. As he closed on the lights, they began to move away. He said the
|
|
lights seemed to be responding to his movements. Every time he moved closer,
|
|
they moved farther away. There was no sound. When they got within about 700
|
|
feet, Herman said, the lights turned & darted away. "It took off out to the
|
|
ocean. Like a jet," he said. "When it turned, it was just bright red." Again,
|
|
there was no sound; & that's what puzzled Herman the most. "If it was a
|
|
chopper or a plane, we would've heard it. Even if it'd a Honda engine, we
|
|
would've heard it." The object at that point appearing as a single red light
|
|
hovered at a distance over Cook Inlet. The Tanapes went to tell Vince
|
|
Kvasnikoff, the village president. Right away Kvasnikoff spotted a plane
|
|
moving toward the village. They could hear its engines. Then Herman pointed
|
|
out the red light hovering low over the inlet. "We just saw a little bit of
|
|
it," said Natalie Kvasnikoff, Vince's wife. "It was red. Flying real low. On
|
|
a windy day, the planes wouldn't fly so low. Everybody was too excited to
|
|
even think to take a picture." Soon, the light vanished. Vince Kvasnikoff
|
|
reported the incident to Roy Evans, the English Bay's public safety officer.
|
|
Evans went to the beach & scanned the horizon for about an hour. He saw
|
|
nothing, but he believes the Tanapes & the Kvasnikoffs did. "People here're
|
|
pretty honest," Evans said. "They wouldn't make this up." Bill Radtke, whose
|
|
wife Sharon was the head teacher at English Bay School for four years, said
|
|
the residents there'd "never" concoct such a story. The Radtkes live in
|
|
Soldotna now, where Sharon works as the school district's personnel director.
|
|
"They're wonderful, honest people," Bill Radtke said. "They're the most
|
|
trustworthy people I've ever worked with." Robert Gribble, who runs the UFO
|
|
Reporting Center in Seattle, Wash., said he hadn't heard anything about the
|
|
sighting. But he was anxious to get some details & phone numbers. Gribble
|
|
said he knew of no other recent sightings in the Northwest, & very few across
|
|
the nation. "It's been pretty quiet," he said. Evans said the sighting's
|
|
stirred a lot of talk & some fear in the village. "A lot of people're worried
|
|
about their kids being out." But Edward Anahonak & Herman Tanape said they
|
|
want to get another glimpse of the object. "I'm going to keep an eye out for
|
|
it," said Anahonak. "I'll be watching."
|
|
|
|
02-22-90 BOISE, Idaho At first blush, the whole idea seems insane, a
|
|
nightmare from the supermarket tabloids. But suppose, just for a moment, that
|
|
Boise native Linda Moulton Howe's theory about the ongoing animal
|
|
mutilations's correct. Support Howe's right when she concludes in her new
|
|
book "An Alien Harvest" that after a decade spent investigating the
|
|
phenomenon she found "an accumulation of human testimony that suggested the
|
|
presence of extraterrestrial mutilators." Or, as she states for forcibly in
|
|
interviews: "There isn't any question in my mind that there's an alien life
|
|
form that intrudes on this planet for reasons I don't yet understand." She &
|
|
other UFO investigators also believe the federal government knows of these
|
|
intrusions & has aggressively covered up its knowledge for decades. Other
|
|
researchers've documented eyewitness sightings by high government officials,
|
|
including the first director of the CIA, astronauts, pilots, air traffic
|
|
controllers & thousands of ordinary citizens. Documents obtained through the
|
|
Freedom of Information Act've revealed even more sightings (including one in
|
|
1987 near Emmett) & investigations the government's previously denied
|
|
conducting. "It's the best-kept secret in the world," Howe says. If she's
|
|
right, she acknowledges, the impact on this planet'd be incalculable. "But,"
|
|
she adds, "for people to deny it won't make it go away." What won't go
|
|
away're the thousands of mutilations that've occurred worldwide since 1967,
|
|
including a recent rash in southeastern Idaho. Bear Lake County was hit by 15
|
|
cattle mutilations in a recent two-month period, says Sheriff Brent Bunn.
|
|
Mutilations first hit the headlines in the mid-1970s. There were 90 cases in
|
|
Idaho, & one newspaper alone ran 50 stories on the subject between June &
|
|
December 1975. The pattern's disturbingly similar, no matter where it occurs.
|
|
Somehow, the blood's drained completely, & there're never any footprints or
|
|
tire tracks near the carcass. The animal usually's an ear missing, one eye's
|
|
carved out in a perfect circle, flesh's stripped from one side of the jaw,
|
|
the tongue's taken from deep in the throat cavity & long strips of stomach're
|
|
removed, as're the sex organs. To duplicate the cuts with current laser
|
|
technology, Howe discovered, would require equipment weighing 500 pounds &
|
|
take up to two hours. In the 1970s, public investigations, including one by
|
|
then-Attorney General Wayne Kidwell, were launched & rewards were offered in
|
|
several states. Satanic cults & UFOs were on the list of suspect, but the
|
|
conclusions reached by investigators in Idaho & Colorado was death by natural
|
|
causes & mutilation by predators. An ex-FBI agent named Kenneth Rommel was
|
|
hired by the federal government & in 1980 wrote a 300-page report. He
|
|
concluded that, without exception, the deaths & wounds were of natural
|
|
origin. Howe angrily dismisses Rommel's report as an "obvious paid-for
|
|
whitewash that didn't even deal with the real cases." "I don't know of a
|
|
predator that'd (cut up an animal that way) with so much soft tissue
|
|
available," Sheriff Bunn said. "It doesn't make sense to me. But then it
|
|
doesn't make much sense that people'd do this & leave all the meat." Lou
|
|
Girodo, now sheriff of Las Animas County in Trinidad, Colo., has investigated
|
|
100 mutilations over the past 13 years. He says, "I grew up on a farm, & I
|
|
know what a predator does. They grab, tear & gnaw." Girodo says he's seen
|
|
coyotes circle a mutilated cow repeatedly, but they wouldn't come in for a
|
|
free meal. "I've never seen coyotes act like that," he says. "Like everyone
|
|
else, I'm trying to come up with an answer." That was the debate Howe found
|
|
when she began to investigate the story in 1979. "I was a journalist & film
|
|
maker (for KMGH-TV in Denver) who was provoked by the mystery of these
|
|
bloodless animals," she said from her Atlanta office. "I knew I was getting
|
|
into something that was unexplained, but thought I could get into it & come
|
|
up with the definitive answer. It was like walking into quicksand." The
|
|
turning point came six months into the investigation when she filmed a woman
|
|
named Judy Doraty, who was put under hypnosis to help her recall an incident
|
|
that occurred in Texas in 1973. Obviously terrified, Doraty relates on film
|
|
how she was abducted by the aliens & witnessed a mutilation. "That really got
|
|
me," Howe says. "I said, `My God! It must be true,'" "A Strange Harvest" won
|
|
Howe an Emmy in 1980, but she continued to collect material on the
|
|
mutilations & other UFO phenomena. Eventually, she combined old & new
|
|
information into "An Alien Harvest," which she published privately last year.
|
|
It cost hear $45,000 to print 1,250 books, but she chose that route so she
|
|
could control the content. "It was the biggest gamble of my life," she says.
|
|
"I guess it's a testimony of how much I care about how the material'd be
|
|
presented." The material she gathered came from scores of interviews with
|
|
eyewitnesses & government officials who told her amazing stories, despite
|
|
their fear of ridicule & retribution. "I've seen grown men cry," she says.
|
|
"I've talked to men who were agonized over it. They've sworn secrecy oaths
|
|
saying they'll go to jail without a trial if they talk. And I believe these
|
|
people." In 1983, Howe was invited to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque,
|
|
NM, by an Air Force investigator. Inside a secure room, she was shown butn't
|
|
allowed to duplicate a document titled "Briefing Paper for the President of
|
|
the United States of America." The paper, she says, detailed UFO sightings
|
|
that go back tens of thousands of years & claimed manipulation of DNA on
|
|
earth's primates. Recent encounters began in the 1940s, she says, & the paper
|
|
listed dates of UFO crashes & details of live & dead aliens recovered by the
|
|
government. Other interviews & documents, detailed in the book, support what
|
|
she read. Howe says she lives two lives: one as a maker of documentary films,
|
|
the other as a clearinghouse for mutilation & other UFO information that
|
|
fills five drawers & two boxes in her home. She admits it all sounds
|
|
fantastic beyond belief, & she realizes her information poses many times more
|
|
questions than it answers. "All the hard questions you'd like answers to, I'd
|
|
like answers to, too," she says. "I don't have definite answers, & I don't
|
|
know anyone outside the government who does, & they're just sitting on it."
|
|
But she insists, "There can't be all this evidence & have it add up to zero.
|
|
Everybody'd like it to be like the movie `E.T.' But the reality seems to be
|
|
quite different."
|
|
|
|
04-04-90 DECATUR, Ill. It sounds like headlines from a supermarket tabloid.
|
|
Some said it was cigar-shaped, 15 to 30 feet long & a few even reported
|
|
having conversations with the crew. It was April 1897 & hundreds of
|
|
Illinoisans claimed they saw what they thought was a mystery airship. And,
|
|
it's still a mystery today. "Officer Moos threatened to take the visitors to
|
|
the lockup if it persisted in causing the concentration of mobs in the
|
|
streets," reported the Lincoln Courier. Robert Neeley Jr., an X-ray
|
|
technician at St. Mary's Hospital in Decatur who's studied UFO sightings for
|
|
20 years as a hobby, has dozens of files documenting 2,400 sightings in 1897
|
|
that were reported in about 40 states. Newspapers in Chicago & Bloomington
|
|
reported a flying object on April 11. A day later, a Rushville physician
|
|
reported a light that shot upward, moved rapidly, & changed directions as he
|
|
watched. Most of the 1897 sightings occurred between 7:30 & 9 pm April 9-16,
|
|
& they were evenly distributed throughout the state, Neeley's research shows.
|
|
The former Peoria Transcript said in its April 15, 1897, edition, that its
|
|
reporters'd launched a balloon to show how people's reactions'd differ. Most
|
|
stated its speed was 100 miles per hour, & some described it as "a hideous
|
|
monster with a fiery furnace" 2,000 feet in the air, according to that old
|
|
newspaper. Neeley says he's skeptical, & doesn't speculate about
|
|
extra-terrestrials or visitors from other dimensions or time travelers from
|
|
Earth's future. "Regardless of such fanciful theories, most of the 1897
|
|
reports describe an airship that seems aeronautically impossible," he says.
|
|
|
|
04-09-90 DETROIT, MI Abductions by aliens usuallyn't little green men with
|
|
antennae, but gray or white men about 3 feet tall've traumatized dozens of
|
|
people in Michigan. But they aren't suffering alone, according to a Flushing
|
|
woman, who'd an experience with little gray extraterrestrials herself & found
|
|
they cured her of lupus & Addison's disease, a serious adrenal gland
|
|
dysfunction. Shirley Coyne says her abduction occurred on a hot summer night
|
|
in 1983, when she saw the bright light of a domed UFO moving over a corn
|
|
field near her home. She said she awoke her husband, George, & they ran
|
|
outside barefoot to look at it. The last thing they remembered was the feel
|
|
of grass on their feet. Then they were back in bed, said Mrs. Coyne, adding
|
|
that her memories were revived through hypnosis sessions. "It was very
|
|
traumatic but you get over it," said Coyne, reached Sunday at a three-day
|
|
Ozark UFO conference in Eureka Springs, Ark. Coyne & her husband helped
|
|
organize a support group for alien abductees, which she said has'd a
|
|
100-percent success rate in helping people over their trauma. "In Michigan
|
|
we've 60 people we're working with who've already gone through different
|
|
stages of hypnosis & probably 20 to 30 waiting to be regressed (hypnotized),"
|
|
Coyne said. "We've a certified hypnotist & a clinical psychologist." Coyne
|
|
said the support group's like any other, helping helps people learn to deal
|
|
with & accept the experience. She said at least one person who'd an abduction
|
|
experience with aliens was in an institution before meeting with the group
|
|
but now's living a normal life. "There're many who've gone through who aren't
|
|
able to hold down jobs. They barely function," she said. "There're others
|
|
who're able to cope with it very well." She estimated there were similar
|
|
support groups in at least 23 other states. Ed Mazur, Arkansas director of
|
|
Mutual UFO Network, said Coyne's story isn't unusual. Mazur said he's working
|
|
with about four abduction cases in Arkansas. Michael Swords, a professor of
|
|
natural sciences at Western Michigan University & editor of the Journal of
|
|
UFO Studies, said he believes support groups're helpful as long as they're
|
|
"essentially healthy. From what I'm hearing, it sounds as if support groups,
|
|
as long as they don't markedly demand certain behavior, are good for people,"
|
|
Swords said. "There might be some professional who disagree." Swords said,
|
|
however, that some researchers believe reports of alien abduction may be a
|
|
"shield fantasy" for some people, developed as part of a neurosis. Swords
|
|
said those researchers think the cause of the neurosis may be stress, a
|
|
desire to be "involved" or even a bad experience in childhood. Swords, who
|
|
earned a doctoral degree in the history of science from Case Western Reserve
|
|
University, said there seem to be a lot of abductions of people reported, but
|
|
it's not nearly as high as the number of reported UFO sightings. He also said
|
|
it's always hard to investigate the reports. "It may be as real as tomorrow's
|
|
breakfast" to the victim, Swords said, "but as long as there's no conclusive
|
|
evidence sitting there you still've to say, `I'm empathetic with you, I'd
|
|
like to believe you, but the evidence's justn't there.'"
|
|
|
|
04-07-90 EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. Lauren Rose says as a teen-ager she was forced
|
|
by aliens to strip naked & undergo painful examinations. Until recently, she
|
|
didn't know who or what to blame. "I've strongly suspected our cat," Ms. Rose
|
|
said at the annual Ozark UFO Conference on Friday. "I know that's crazy, but
|
|
you don't know my cat." Some 200 self-described UFOlogists from around the
|
|
world'll attend the three-day conference that began Friday. Mayor Richard
|
|
Schoeninger proclaimed that the first alien brought to him'd be named an
|
|
honorary citizen of the resort town & given a free trolley pass. But don't
|
|
make too many ET jokes around here. These folks're serious about their
|
|
aliens. Ms. Rose, 41, of northern Virginia, said she's undergone therapy
|
|
since she was 18 to fend off fits of anxiety & depression. It wasn't until
|
|
three years ago that Ms. Rose linked the problems to abductions by aliens,
|
|
she said. "It's a very serious issue that can & does affect our mental health
|
|
& belief systems," she said. Ms. Rose said she grew up feeling like she was
|
|
being watched & followed. In her late teens, she remembers feeling compelled
|
|
to walk into the forest near her home in Colorado. But she couldn't remember
|
|
what happened in the woods until undergoing hypnosis recently, Ms. Rose said.
|
|
"Imagine someone coming out of the trees making you take your clothes off &
|
|
forcing you through a series of painful examinations," she told the group. "I
|
|
don't remember those times, but my body did. That's why I was filled with
|
|
adrenalin afterwards. I realized in that abduction that I was nothing more
|
|
than a guinea pig. They stripped the clothes off me, did the job they'd to do
|
|
& just dropped me," she said. Shirley Coyne belongs to a Michigan support
|
|
group for abductees. Ms. Coyne said she & her husband were abducted in the
|
|
summer of 1983 by a UFO that landed in a corn field. After undergoing
|
|
hypnosis, Mrs. Coyne said she could remember little gray men cured her of
|
|
lupus & Addison's disease in the large domed spacecraft. Her husband can't
|
|
remember the abduction, she said. Ed Mazure, state director of Mutual UFO
|
|
Network, said the experiences of Ms. Rose & Mrs. Coyne aren't unusual.
|
|
|
|
04-09-90 PENSACOLA, Fla. A group that investigates reports of unidentified
|
|
flying objects Monday announced plans to hold its annual meeting in this
|
|
Florida Panhandle city because of numerous UFO sightings in the area.
|
|
Fifty-five formal reports've been filed with the Mutual UFO Network from the
|
|
Pensacola area since the first sighting in suburban Gulf Breeze more than two
|
|
years ago, said Charles D. Flannigan, state director of MUFON & a Pensacola
|
|
real estate agent. About 600 visitors from across the nation're expected for
|
|
the symposium July 6-8 on the topic "UFOs: The Impact of E.T. (extra
|
|
terrestrial) Contact Upon Society." Among the speakers'll be Ed Walters, a
|
|
Gulf Breeze builder who triggered the spate of sightings by photographing a
|
|
saucer-shaped object in the sky Nov. 11, 1987, & Bud Hopkins, a New York City
|
|
author who's written two books, "Missing Time" & "Intruders," on reports of
|
|
people being abducted by aliens. Walters also's written a book, "The Gulf
|
|
Breeze Sightings," about several sightings he & others've made in this area.
|
|
|
|
04-09-90 EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. Organizers of a UFO conference held in Arkansas
|
|
say they're not so sure about a lecturer's theory that the Stealth bomber
|
|
evolved from alien technology. Bob Oechsler, a robots experts who said he
|
|
once was a NASA missions specialist, said that the B-2 Stealth craft's
|
|
primary propulsion system was removed from a recovered flying saucer. "The
|
|
project utilizes an alien power plant inside & it's disguised by the use of
|
|
four GE-F118 engines with a modification called the GE-100," Oechsler told
|
|
about 300 people who attended the three-day Ozark UFO Conference, which ended
|
|
Sunday. Oechsler was one of several featured speakers during the three-day
|
|
conference. His topic was "Alien Technology in Use Today." "There's new
|
|
technology today that's been gleaned from recovered craft of non-human
|
|
intelligence origin. The government's confirmed, high intelligence officers
|
|
I should say, that these craft were recovered," he said. A government
|
|
physicist's worked on the power source at a secret laboratory in Nevada, he
|
|
said. Oechsler was unavailable comment Monday & didn't return a message left
|
|
on the telephone answering machine at his home in Edgewater, Md. Lucius
|
|
Farish of Plumerville, Ark., an organizer of the conference, said he
|
|
understood that Oechsler'd worked for the Goddard Space Flight Center in
|
|
Green Belt, Md. Farish said he'd no scientific background but'd been studying
|
|
the subject of UFOs for 30 years. He said he wasn't committed to Oechsler's
|
|
theory about the Stealth technology. "I don't know. I don't doubt that
|
|
there're crashed & retrieved UFOs, & the idea that technology in general
|
|
could've developed from that's not unbelievable, at all," Farish said. Farish
|
|
& Ed Mazur of Mena organized the conference. "We put the first one on three
|
|
years ago & decided then to've it as an annual conference," said Mazur, a
|
|
former aerospace engineer Martin-Marietta Corp. People who attend the
|
|
conferences're "from all over the country & some from abroad," he said. "As
|
|
a rule, they're researchers into the topic. There're a few who're just
|
|
interested in learning as much as they can about the subject." Mazur, who
|
|
worked as an electronics engineer on various Martin-Marietta missile systems,
|
|
questioned Oechsler's remarks about the Stealth technology coming from
|
|
aliens. "Those're his remarks. Not everyone agrees with that," Mazur said.
|
|
Pressed on whether he was among the believers, he said, "No, not really."
|
|
|
|
04-11-90 WINNIPEG, Manitoba Unexplained flashing lights & strange circles in
|
|
the ground're spotted in Quebec, a saucer zooms over houses in Newfoundland
|
|
& a diamond-shaped object zips through the Manitoba sky. Throughout the
|
|
country, people said they saw at least 141 unidentified flying objects last
|
|
year, according to what's being touted as Canada's first national survey of
|
|
UFO sightings. "It tells us that UFOs haven't gone away, it tells us that
|
|
UFOs're being seen right across Canada," said Chris Rutkowski, a Winnipeg
|
|
researcher who compiled the study. Rutkowski put together the survey from
|
|
reports submitted to private investigators, police & the Ottawa-based
|
|
National Research Council, which supplied two-thirds of the material for the
|
|
study. Such information was always available but never marshalled into a form
|
|
that painted a picture of UFO sightings across the country, he said. More
|
|
than half the reports didn't have enough information to evaluate properly &
|
|
one third'd probable explanations, said Rutkowski, who's a degree in
|
|
astronomy & is president of the Winnipeg branch of the Royal Astronomical
|
|
Society of Canada. Of the rest, seven sightings were stamped as solidly
|
|
unknown, meaning they were seen by several people & investigated by the
|
|
police & National Research Council, without any explanation being found, he
|
|
said. He related three such incidents. Startled residents of the rural Quebec
|
|
community of Ste-Marie-de-Monnoir saw flashing lights glide over a field &
|
|
out of sight. The next morning, they found strange circles swirled into the
|
|
ground. At Wesleyville, Newfoundland, eight or nine people noticed a classic
|
|
saucer-shaped object swoop low over rooftops & along the shoreline. And near
|
|
Beaver Creek, Manitoba, people reported seeing a diamond shape with red
|
|
lights zip over their car & out across Lake Winnipeg. Rutkowski stresses that
|
|
he wants to take a rational, scientific approach to the reports & won't offer
|
|
any theories about unexplained sightings. But he hopes publicity from the
|
|
survey'll spark more people to come forward with their observations,
|
|
providing a larger body of evidence that could be investigated by scientists.
|
|
|
|
04-30-90 CORYDON, Ind. Residents of this former state capital nestled in
|
|
Indiana's southern hills've taken to star-gazing following continued reports
|
|
of UFOs. School teachers, nurses, counselors, students, a sheriff's deputy &
|
|
a high school principal're among those who claim to've seen the UFOs near
|
|
Corydon, which was Indiana's first capital city. Janet Reising, a Corydon
|
|
resident for almost 20 years, said she began to see the lights in the sky
|
|
almost three years ago, but some area residents claim the mysterious
|
|
objects've been around for 20 years or more. One of the witnesses told the
|
|
Corydon Democrat, "We aren't a bunch of kooks. We're respectable,
|
|
well-educated, professional & responsible people." Some of the sightings're
|
|
very similar, but others differ widely. Reising claims to've seen several
|
|
objects of varying colors, shapes & sizes, one so small she swears she
|
|
could've reached out & grabbed it, & another "as large as a football field."
|
|
One of the more frequent sightings involves a round, amber-colored object.
|
|
Reising & several of her neighbors saw such an object about two years ago. A
|
|
small white light came out of it & hovered "three feet off the corn" in a
|
|
field near the spectators, she said. Reising said she went to her car &
|
|
blinked her headlights one & off three times. The white light blinked three
|
|
times in return & disappeared. "This was a perfectly clear night," she said.
|
|
Reising also says she's seen a hovering cigar-shaped object over a sycamore
|
|
tree in her front yard & a rectangular-shaped object flying low in the sky
|
|
near New Middletown. Reising says two other women were with her when the
|
|
second object appeared. As they watched, the object separated into three
|
|
triangles that flew off, one behind the other. "It looked like a billboard in
|
|
New York City with different colored lights going up & down on it," she said.
|
|
Reising, an unofficial recorder of sightings in the area, has a list of more
|
|
than 300 people who claim to've seen the UFOs. Most of the sightings occur at
|
|
night, usually around 11:30 pm, but some've been reported during daylight
|
|
hours. Several people claim to've been followed by the lights. One girl said
|
|
a light followed her home from work one night & hovered above her house.
|
|
Another teen-ager said blue, white & orange lights hovered above him one
|
|
night in 1987 while he was driving a tractor up & down a field, Reising said.
|
|
Investigators from Mutual UFO Network once videotaped a brilliant orange
|
|
light flying in the sky in August 1987. The investigators were unable to
|
|
explain what the light was. They did, however, conclude that it wasn't an
|
|
airplane or a helicopter. Reising expects interest to grow in UFO-watching
|
|
this summer. As tales of the sightings travel throughout the state, they draw
|
|
curious visitors to the Harrison County town, she said. Reising said people
|
|
from as far as Bloomington & Indianapolis've made the trip in the hopes of
|
|
being the next person to sight a UFO. "Everybody brings their lawn chair &
|
|
sits down on the side of the road," she said.
|
|
|
|
04-29-90 GULF BREEZE, Fla. An ex-convict who gained some fame with photos of
|
|
what he claimed were UFOs is being haunted by earlier pictures he took of
|
|
"ghosts" to entertain his children & their friends. National attention
|
|
focused on this Pensacola suburb & the skies overhead after a weekly
|
|
newspaper, The Gulf Breeze Sentinel, in November 1987 published pictures of
|
|
purported unidentified flying objects taken by a then-anonymous resident. Ed
|
|
Walters's since acknowledged he's the photographer. Walters's a Gulf Breeze
|
|
building contractor who served 18 months in prison for forgery in Duval
|
|
County & auto theft in Alachua County during the late 1960s, but he was
|
|
pardoned less than two months ago. Walters's written a book, "The Gulf Breeze
|
|
Sightings," & reportedly's been offered $450,000 for rights to do a
|
|
television mini-series. Several UFO investigators've challenged the
|
|
authenticity of the photos, showing a saucer-shaped object with rows of
|
|
square windows in the sky. Critics now contend they're double exposures.
|
|
Their conclusions're based in part on Walter's spooky party games described
|
|
by three Gulf Breeze women who'd been friends of his two children as
|
|
teen-agers. The women spoke to the Pensacola News Journal on condition that
|
|
the newspapern't reveal their names in a story published Sunday. "This's very
|
|
incriminating evidence," said Willy Smith of Altamonte Springs, Calif. "Ed
|
|
predicted what was going to happen & he made a ghost-demon appear." A
|
|
20-year-old woman said she posed for a ghost photo taken by Walters after a
|
|
mock seance in 1986. It showes a ghost-like image with two eyes & a large
|
|
mouth that appears to be reaching out for a 16-year-old Pensacola girl. "I
|
|
thought it was a big joke," the woman said. "He intended for the picture to
|
|
show up. Then I heard someone'd taken (UFO) pictures. I immediately just knew
|
|
it was him & I didn't believe it." Walters took the ghost photo, obtained &
|
|
copyrighted by Smith, with the same Polaroid camera used for the UFO
|
|
pictures. "I think this finishes him," Smith said. "I admire Ed. If I were to
|
|
fake pictures I'd use a Polaroid. There's no negative." In March, Walter
|
|
Klass, a former senior editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology Magazine,
|
|
criticized Walters' UFO photos at a meeting of the Committee for the
|
|
Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in Washington. He argued
|
|
it's easy to make double exposures with the type of camera Walters used &
|
|
that many of his UFO photos appear to be fakes. Zan Overall of Redondo,
|
|
Calif., a member of the Center For UFO Studies, said he's publishing a paper
|
|
that also will challenge the authenticity of the photos. It will be titled
|
|
"The Ghost-Demon Photo: Ed Walters' Nemesis?" & presented at the annual
|
|
meeting of the Mutual UFO Network. The July meeting will be held in Pensacola
|
|
because of interest generated by the Gulf Breeze sightings. Walters contends
|
|
that he didn't know how to take double exposures when he photographed the
|
|
purported UFOs & that the ghost photo's the result of reflections from a
|
|
glass door behind the teen-ager. He said he's taken several similar photos at
|
|
the same spot in his home. Smith, however, said the ghost photo, recently
|
|
published in the Orlando Sentinel's Florida Magazine, is different from
|
|
recreated pictures. The ghost photo's blurry on its edges & shows up on one
|
|
plane while the images in the reflected photos're clear & on two planes
|
|
because they reflect on each side of the thick glass door. Walters, however,
|
|
still's his defenders, including photographic expert Bruce Maccabee of Silver
|
|
Springs, Md., who said he could find no evidence of double exposure in his
|
|
UFO pictures. Walters also cites a 98-second videotape of the alleged UFO,
|
|
photos taken with other cameras & hundreds of other Gulf Breeze area
|
|
residents who've said they too've seen UFOs since the pictures were
|
|
published. Such criticism's nothing new, Walters said. In his book, he wrote,
|
|
"They've tried to label me a con man, liar, occult master, etc. But my
|
|
community knows me & rejected these charges." Critics say claims of contact
|
|
with UFOs traditionally accompany hoaxes & point out that literature
|
|
advertising a May 11-13 UFO conference in Miami Beach states Walters will
|
|
attempt to draw a UFO to him during a "skywatch." However, conference
|
|
organizer Jim Moseley said Walters's never claimed to be able to draw an
|
|
object to him & that the skywatch's a promotional opportunity to coincide
|
|
with a book-signing session with Walters. Walters said he won't take part in
|
|
the skywatch. Walters also's drawn suspicion to himself by reporting four
|
|
more sightings this year, perfect timing, critics say, for stimulating sales
|
|
of his book at the UFO convention in July. Walters said it hurts him that
|
|
critics're trying to turn his ghost photos & involvement with community teens
|
|
into something bizarre. "It was something beautiful," he said. "They don't
|
|
want people to think of Ed Walters as a responsible person, but as a
|
|
ghost-deamon, Satan-worshiper holding seances."
|
|
|
|
05-07-90 PEORIA, Ill. A local woman's composing music that's out of this
|
|
world from simple little melodies to grand keyboard compositions inspired by
|
|
what she described Monday as her contacts with aliens. Connie Cook, 42, said
|
|
she's been visited by "small, yellow-skinned" aliens in her bathroom, bedroom
|
|
& seen formations of alien spaceships in the skies over Peoria many times
|
|
since 1981. "I hesitated to ever speak out about this because I feared
|
|
criticism & ridicule," Ms. Cook said. "But after so many experiences, I
|
|
decided to speak out." Ms. Cook said her life changed in November 1981 when
|
|
she watched an unidentified flying object hover over Interstate 74 in Peoria.
|
|
Two city police officers reported seeing the strange white light, which
|
|
lasted 90 minutes before disappearing. Immediately after the experience, Ms.
|
|
Cook said she began hearing music inside her head & started writing it down,
|
|
despite no prior experience composing songs. In April 1987, the sightings
|
|
became more personal as a "small, yellow-skinned" alien appeared in her
|
|
bathroom. "It identified itself as the one who's been communicating with me,"
|
|
Ms. Cook said. "It'd silver eyes & had radiant beauty. I've no prior frame of
|
|
reference to describe it." Those experiences, along with numerous sightings
|
|
of silver globes hovering & flying in formation in the sky, inspired Ms. Cook
|
|
to compose. A local music critic, Jerry Klein of the Peoria Journal Star,
|
|
described her compositions as "sometimes ethereal, haunting & eclectic."
|
|
Overall, he said of her work: "most of it's very pleasant & listenable."
|
|
Probably the people most surprised by Ms. Cook's sudden musical ability're
|
|
her parents, LaVern & Genevieve Cook of Canton. "We're just a normal,
|
|
middle-class, middle-income family," said Genevieve Cook, 69. "We were
|
|
skeptical about this at first. "But we've seen such a dramatic change in her
|
|
personality & ability. Something's happened to the girl to give her the
|
|
ability to play & compose music all of a sudden. And she isn't the type to
|
|
make this up." Experts support the sightings of UFOs. They insist people like
|
|
Ms. Cook aren't insane. Philip J. Klass, an author of four books on UFOs,
|
|
defends the sightings. "Ninety-eight% of the people're telling the truth,
|
|
they aren't nuts or crackpots," Klass said. "The other 2% are mentally
|
|
disturbed." Robert Baker, a psychology professor at the University of
|
|
Kentucky, said many people with no sign of pschological problems often report
|
|
UFO contacts. "They aren't really crazy or psychotic," Baker said. "They lead
|
|
normal lives. They just've certain fixed ideas." Baker said about 45% of the
|
|
American population's "fantasy prone" & may be more receptive to delusions of
|
|
UFOs. He said some people're able to create an identity for themselves by
|
|
sighting an alien spaceship. Ms. Cook said she's not hallucinating. She
|
|
admits, however, that some of her inter-dimensional experiences may've been
|
|
dreams. With no photographic proof to support her sightings, Ms. Cook can
|
|
only point to her music as evidence of an extra-terrestrial influence in her
|
|
life. "They work through me because I'm a writer & I'm not afraid to talk
|
|
about it," she said. "If this's a delusion, then everyone should've one. It's
|
|
had such a wonderful impact on my life."
|
|
|
|
05-11-90 INDIANAPOLIS Bruce & Becky Merida can't explain what left a 25-foot
|
|
circle of mashed grass in their field northeast of Bloomington. The only
|
|
witnesses were their 12 pigs, & they aren't talking. On Wednesday, Merida &
|
|
his uncle, Junior Merida, came across the dead & yellowish grass about 200
|
|
feet from the pig pen. "I don't know if I believe in UFOs or not, but I'd
|
|
like to know what it is. It was just like on TV, a bunch of perfect circles,"
|
|
Bruce Merida said. The grass wasn't burned, Merida's wife Becky Merida said.
|
|
There were three depressions in the middle as if something landed on a
|
|
tripod, she said. The mysterious shape, made of smaller & smaller rings, is
|
|
off Miller Road about two miles east of Dolan Road. The Meridas, who live in
|
|
Bloomington, rent about 110 acres there, growing hay in the summer & keeping
|
|
pigs all year round. A power line 50 feet from the rings led Becky Merida to
|
|
speculate that if there were such things as visitors from outer space, they
|
|
might've used the electricity to recharge a ship. "We just'd our electrical
|
|
transformer stolen two weeks ago," she said. The Meridas said they've not
|
|
called police or health officials to examine the site.
|
|
|
|
05-11-90 HAILEY, Idaho The Blaine County sheriff's office's received a rash
|
|
of reports of strange objects & lights in the sky west of Hailey in recent
|
|
weeks, but an amateur UFO tracker thinks he can explain'em away. Most of the
|
|
sightings May 2 & May 4 were reported in the same part of the sky where
|
|
strange lights were first seen by residents on the night of April 19. Mike
|
|
Fidler of Burley's a member of the Mutual UFO Network, a private organization
|
|
of volunteers who track unidentified flying object reports. He said looking
|
|
into the April report led him to believe the sightings since then may've been
|
|
due to news reports drawing attention to the night sky. Fidler said many of
|
|
the descriptions sound as if people were looking at Sirius, the brightest
|
|
start in the sky. The sheriff's office received five calls May 2 about a
|
|
bright red & blue light in the sky southwest of Hailey. Fidler said Sirius's
|
|
been visible to the southwest recently, & it sometimes twinkles different
|
|
colors when it appears near the horizon. On the night in May 4, the sheriff's
|
|
office received two more reports of lights over the mountains west of Hailey.
|
|
One caller reported seeing three lights simultaneously, & the other said he
|
|
saw two lights at the same time. Barry Parker, an astronomy professor at
|
|
Idaho State University, said he'd received a couple of reports from people in
|
|
the Pocatello area about similar lights. But he said he'd been able to see
|
|
nothing himself, & could offer no explanations for the Hailey phenomenon.
|
|
Sgt. Steve Child at Mountain Home Air Force Base said the Air Force's not
|
|
investigated any of the reports. The Idaho Air National Guard controls the
|
|
flight path west of Hailey, Child said, & had no flights scheduled in that
|
|
area April 19.
|
|
|
|
05-12-90 MIAMI BEACH, Fla. Whether orn't UFOs exist, their fans do, & they'd
|
|
a close encounter with each other at a convention here Saturday. The annual
|
|
National UFO Conference which began with a beach-side saucer watch Friday
|
|
night under an almost full moon's drawn about 200 believers & ufologists,
|
|
organizers said. The conference features speakers ranging from reporters who
|
|
document other people's sightings to contactees who claim contact with
|
|
intergalactic travelers, including one Spanish-speaking alien. "Our purpose's
|
|
to inform, enlighten & hopefully entertain people with the different aspects
|
|
of UFOs...It's up to the audience to choose who to believe," said conference
|
|
sponsor James Moseley, looking like a professor in his horn-rimmed glasses &
|
|
gray suit, a "UFO research" button pinned to his lapel. One of the workshops
|
|
teaches "how to identify & locate your counterparts, soulmates & friends from
|
|
other worlds...find out what constellation you might've arrived on Earth
|
|
from, & what your special mission might be." West Palm Beach radio host
|
|
Carole Lynn Grant was to speak about psychic healing, an art she says aliens
|
|
taught her through mental contact. "My link-up with space beings's on a mind
|
|
level. I've not been on a spaceship physically, but I've been mentally," said
|
|
Ms. Grant, who says the aliens give her information about world events before
|
|
they occur. Once, Ms. Grant says, she was "hooked up to a spaceship solidly
|
|
for three years. It was like a garden hose running from my head to the
|
|
spaceship." The star of the weekend's Ed Walters, who first reported a flurry
|
|
of sightings in the small Gulf Coast town of Gulf Breeze. Walters, a
|
|
convention new release boasts, "has apparently been able to draw UFOs to him
|
|
almost on command." On Friday morning, however, Walters wasn't magnetic, he
|
|
was miffed. He was unhappy about a newspaper report quoting a non-believer.
|
|
This "debunker," Walters said, claimed Walters'd boasted he was levitated,
|
|
asked to disrobe & examined by aliens. Not true, Walters retorted. This's
|
|
what really happened: He saw a spacecraft, moved closer & "was struck by a
|
|
blue beam." Later, he also lost one hour & 15 minutes of time & sighted
|
|
4-foot-tall beings in silver space suits. "If someone wants to conclude I was
|
|
on a spacecraft, that's their prerogative," Walters said. The five conference
|
|
workshops'll be held through Sunday.
|
|
|
|
05-18-90 ANNAPOLIS, MD Lewin Maddox didn't know what to expect when a
|
|
neighbor led him into an old barn in Pasadena during the winter of 1944. What
|
|
he saw looked like a helicopter with a wheel instead of a blade to keep it
|
|
aloft. He was intrigued but didn't think much of it. Three years later,
|
|
however, in the midst of national hysteria over an invasion of unidentified
|
|
flying objects, Maddox learned that the curious object'd been seized by the
|
|
Air Force. "The Air Force apparently thought that it might be a prototype to
|
|
a flying saucer," the Glen Burnie resident recalled. "It was seized & taken
|
|
to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. But a week later, they decided it couldn't
|
|
possibly've flown." Government officials located the man who'd apparently
|
|
constructed the odd machine, effectively ending the debate & the county's day
|
|
in the UFO glow. Now, four decades later, local UFO enthusiasts say they've
|
|
sighted hundreds of unidentified flying objects in the Chesapeake Bay region.
|
|
At a recent Maryland State Conference on UFOs held at the Maryland Hall for
|
|
the Creative Arts, more than 60 believers gathered to share their views &
|
|
experiences on the curious phenomena. "We're very serious people studying
|
|
UFOs as a scientific element," said Bob Oechsler, of Edgewater, president of
|
|
the local chapter of the international Mutual UFO Network. "We've had
|
|
numerous sightings in the last two years. It's not a question of believing,
|
|
it's a matter of looking at the factual evidence." The evidence for Oechsler
|
|
& his followers's concrete hundreds of photographs showing strange glowing
|
|
objects of all shapes & sizes, videotapes of flying machines, & dozens of
|
|
accounts from residents who allegedly've been "abducted" by aliens. "We've
|
|
had medical examinations performed on people who've been abducted," Oechsler
|
|
said. "Many people claim that UFOs are just a bunch of lights at night. But
|
|
the credible evidence's there." Two years ago, a rash of UFO sightings over
|
|
the Chesapeake Bay led to the establishment of the local chapter of MUFON,
|
|
headed by Oechsler & Debbie Regimenti of Annapolis. Both say they've seen
|
|
numerous UFOs. The group now claims a dozen members & meets every month to
|
|
discuss the latest sightings in the region. "The Chesapeake Bay's a hot area
|
|
for sightings," Regimenti said. "We try to document the sightings & look for
|
|
reasons that (aliens) are here." The first to admit that many sightings of
|
|
unidentified lights can be explained by ordinary means, Regimenti also said
|
|
that the evidence pointing to the existence of UFOs can no longer be denied.
|
|
"The government's completely stopped claiming that UFOs aren't real,"
|
|
Regimenti said. "Once they remove the stigma & allow'em to be acceptable,
|
|
then we're on the right road." Several months ago, Regimenti & Oechsler
|
|
completed a report documenting their sightings & accounts from dozens of
|
|
other county residents. Entitled the "Chesapeake Connection," the report'll
|
|
be presented at the annual MUFON symposium to be held in Florida this summer.
|
|
"It's such a complex issue," Regimenti said. "We don't know who they are, but
|
|
we're looking for clues. All I can say is, don't laugh at your next door
|
|
neighbor when he says he saw something strange. Keep an open mind."
|
|
|
|
07-02-90 GULF BREEZE, Fla. A UFO-investigating group's been split by
|
|
controversy over whether photographs of unidentified flying objects
|
|
supposedly swooping over this Florida Panhandle city're for real. The Mutual
|
|
UFO Network, scheduled to begin its annual three-day symposium Friday in
|
|
neighboring Pensacola, officially remains "100 percent" in support of the
|
|
belief the photos're authentic, says Walt Adrus, international director of
|
|
the 2,600-member group. However, many members've expressed doubts about the
|
|
photos taken by Ed Walters, a Gulf Breeze builder & ex-convict, & some've
|
|
quit the organization because of its support of Walters. "Too bad they aren't
|
|
having the symposium two days earlier (July 4), because there're going to be
|
|
fireworks," said Ray Stanford, director of Project Starlight International,
|
|
an organization based in College Park, Md., that makes advanced photography
|
|
equipment available for UFO sightings. About 600 people're expected to attend
|
|
the MUFON symposium at the Pensacola Hilton. The organization decided to hold
|
|
the conference near here because of widespread attention the Gulf Breeze
|
|
sightings've received. Several other Gulf Breeze area residents reported
|
|
spying objects similar to those in Walters' photos since the pictures were
|
|
printed in The Gulf Breeze Sentinel, a weekly newspaper, about three years
|
|
ago. National television & newspaper reports followed. The recent discovery,
|
|
in the attic of a house formerly occupied by Walters, of a model flying
|
|
saucer similar to those in his photos's given new ammunition to those who
|
|
claim it's all a hoax. Walters, who's written a book, "The Gulf Breeze
|
|
Sightings," about his encounters with UFOs, insists the pictures're authentic
|
|
&'s speculated the model was planted by debunkers. The model, fasioned from
|
|
foam plastic dinner plates & blueprint paper, will generate talk, but
|
|
Stanford said he doubted it'd change MUFON's endorsement of Walters. "Some
|
|
people believe it, not as the result of science, but almost as a religion,"
|
|
he said. "They'd still believe in the Gulf Breeze photos if Ed confessed
|
|
(they were a hoax). They'd believe he was forced to confess." Walters'
|
|
credibility also's been attacked by Tommy Smith, 22, a former Gulf Breeze
|
|
resident, who said he & Walters took double exposures of a UFO model. Walters
|
|
also's denied Smith's story. Physicist Willy Smith, a co-founder of UNICAT,
|
|
an international UFO information-gathering group, claims he's
|
|
digitally-enhanced Walters' photos to show a support under the alleged flying
|
|
saucer. Another scientist, however, remains convinced the photos're
|
|
authentic. Bruce Maccabee, an optical physicist & MUFON's Maryland state
|
|
director, said what Smith sees as as a support's merely a defect caused by
|
|
the roller on Walters' Polaroid camera. Maccabee agreed that questions about
|
|
the authenticity of Walters' photos'll be a hot topic at the symposium.
|
|
"There're a lot of reputations on the line, a lot of money on the line," he
|
|
said. "A number of MUFON members're skeptical." A one-time MUFON
|
|
investigator, Bob Boyd of Mobile, Ala., was so skeptical that he quit the
|
|
organization in 1988 because of its support of Walters. The model & other new
|
|
evidence've prompted MUFON to reopen its investigation, but Boyd said he
|
|
doesn't think the organization'll seriously study the matter. "They just want
|
|
to save face," Boyd said. "I've absolutely no confidence in a MUFON
|
|
investigation. All of these people've lost their credibility."
|
|
|
|
07-07-90 PENSACOLA, Fla. "Glasnost" is having a cosmic as well as terrestrial
|
|
impact in the Soviet Union where UFO sightings no longer're passed off as
|
|
capitalist propaganda, says an international science writer. Along with the
|
|
new openness's come a rash of reports of landings, close encounters &
|
|
sightings of unidentified flying objects, says Antonio Huneeus, a
|
|
Chilean-American journalist who's written extensively about UFOs. Huneeus's
|
|
scheduled Sunday to address the 21st annual symposium of the Mutual UFO
|
|
Network on UFOs in the "Red skies" of the USSR. Some of the Soviet UFO
|
|
encounters've been reported in the US media, but Huneeus said at a news
|
|
conference Friday that little attention's been paid in this country to what
|
|
he considers to be a particularly significant sighting by the Soviet
|
|
military. "That case was admitted by none other than the chief of Soviet air
|
|
defense forces, Gen. Igor Maltsev," Huneeus said. "He published a
|
|
statement...in a Soviet newspaper to the effect that UFOs had been detected
|
|
by several radar units." Maltsev also reported that jet fighters were
|
|
scrambled & the pilots described a disc from 100 to 200 meters in diameter
|
|
flying at speeds two to three times faster than their aircraft, Huneeus said.
|
|
The general concluded the UFO'd somehow "come to terms with gravity" & that
|
|
it "didn't seem to appear to be a terrestrial machine," Huneeus said. Most of
|
|
the attention at the symposium's focused on Ed Walters, a resident of nearby
|
|
Gulf Breeze, who's made numerous photographs of purported UFOs. Some UFO
|
|
investigators contend the pictures're a hoax but MUFON officials, who
|
|
scheduled the symposium here because of interest in UFO sightings by Walters
|
|
& others in the Gulf Breeze-Pensacola area, contend the photos're authentic.
|
|
Their authenticity, however, has been called into question by the recent
|
|
discovery of a model flying saucer found in the attic of his former home &
|
|
statements by a former Gulf Breeze resident who claimed he saw Walters take
|
|
fake UFO photos. Walters, holding up one of his pictures, pointed out that
|
|
the UFO shown flying just above a road wasn't identical, although similar in
|
|
shape, to the model. He also distributed a nine-page response, including the
|
|
results of a psychological stress evaluator test that concluded he was
|
|
telling the truth when he said he didn't make the UFO model. About 600 of
|
|
MUFON's 2,600 members're attending the conference at the Pensacola Hilton &
|
|
Pensacola Civic Center. One of the more controversial presentations was to be
|
|
made today by John L. Spencer, a UFO investigator from England, on
|
|
differences between the perceptions of UFOs in the United States & Europe.
|
|
Americans tend to attribute UFOs to visitors from outer space while that
|
|
explanation isn't necessarily accepted elsewhere, causing rifts among US UFO
|
|
enthusiasts & their counterparts overseas, Spencer said. He said there's more
|
|
emphasis in other countries on what UFOs mean rather than what they are,
|
|
citing the experience of a Swedish woman who considered her sighting a signal
|
|
to be more concerned about the environment.
|
|
|
|
07-12-90 BRUSSELS, Belgium This country's air force's joined scores of
|
|
Belgians befuddled by hundreds of UFO sightings across night skies in recent
|
|
months. In the latest report, two air force F-16 jet fighters used their
|
|
radar screens to track an object that, according to a military official,
|
|
"exceeded the limits of conventional aviation." Speaking at a news conference
|
|
Wednesday, Belgian Air Force Col. Wilfried de Brouwer said the UFO dived from
|
|
about 10,000 to 4,000 feet in two seconds. At the same time, it increased its
|
|
speed from 600 to 1,100 miles an hour. De Brouwer said the air force decided
|
|
to wait before announcing the sighting in the early hours of March 31
|
|
"because we wanted to compare the radar sightings by our pilots with
|
|
observations from radar stations. UFOs are a sensitive issue. That's why we
|
|
don't want to approach this sighting emotionally." Since last fall, hundreds
|
|
of nighttime sightings of UFO've been reported over southern Belgium. Many've
|
|
been explained. In one case, the UFO turned out to be a vertical laser beam
|
|
used by a discotheque to attract clients. However, de Brouwer'd no
|
|
explanation for the sighting by the F-16s, which approached within about 12
|
|
miles of the UFO. He said police & civilians reported four UFO sightings at
|
|
the same time. The official said those reports "speak of a triangular object
|
|
with a bright red center light."
|
|
|
|
07-30-90 ELMWOOD, Wis. Rather than the fear & alarm flying saucers might
|
|
instill in most people, residents of this community decided UFOs were cause
|
|
for a festival. The village of 1,009 residents in west-central Wisconsin
|
|
marked the beginning of the 12th annual UFO Days festival this weekend. The
|
|
reason for the celebration's the town's reputation for dozens of UFO
|
|
sightings. "Every town around here seems to've its strawberry festival or its
|
|
cucumber festival or its potato festival, so we decided to've a UFO festival
|
|
because we've had a lot of sightings," said Caroline Schoeder, a festival
|
|
organizer. Elmwood first gained national attention 15 years ago when
|
|
respected policeman George Wheeler said he was attacked by a blue light from
|
|
a large flaming ball hovering over his squad car. More recently, Chippewa
|
|
Falls businessman Tom Weber attempted raising $50 million to construct what
|
|
he called the UFO Site Center, a landing pad in Elmwood that was to beam
|
|
welcoming lights into outer space. The plan was abandoned for lack of funds.
|
|
The sightings & the festival's reputation attracted 2,000 visitors who came
|
|
to see the parades, street dances & carnival rides. Events included a chase
|
|
of 500 paper plates dropped out of an airplane. Children who captured one
|
|
could trade it in for cash prizes. The community also crowned a UFO Day's
|
|
Queen. Elmwood's economy gets a boost from the festival thanks to the sale of
|
|
souvenir inflatable rocket ships, T-shirts, caps, mugs, ashtrays, badges,
|
|
bumper stickers & cosmic headdresses. But some visitors expected a more sober
|
|
atmosphere. Rusty Paar, 23, a spectator from La Crosse, came carrying a photo
|
|
copied document that he said outlined the federal government's cover-up of
|
|
UFO landings. "This whole event just looks like a bunch of people looking for
|
|
an excuse to party," Paar said.
|
|
|
|
08-07-90 FARGO, N.D. "Mystery circles" raising questions about an alien
|
|
presence in southern England've appeared in North Dakota. John Salter,
|
|
director for MUFON, a national UFO research group, has investigated three
|
|
sites in the state in the past 16 months one 50 miles west of Grand Forks,
|
|
another near Turtle Lake & a third at an undisclosed site in southwestern
|
|
North Dakota. Based on photographs & tests, two of the sites're "bonafide,
|
|
tangible, UFO landing sites." Farmer Allen Wagner found circles in a hay
|
|
field in May, 1989, near Turtle Lake. The largest's about 100 feet wide. "We
|
|
don't want people to think that we just believe this was a UFO phenomenon,"
|
|
said Sharon Wagner. "We'd like'em just to keep an open mind." Scientists
|
|
around the world've debated how the circles formed, & have come up with a
|
|
variety of answers ranging from wind & magnetic forces to alien landings &
|
|
hoaxes.
|
|
|
|
08-17-90 The serene, rolling pastures of the McCarthy farm in northeastern
|
|
Mississippi look like the last place in the world to hide a secret. Within
|
|
four months, a calf & a heifer were found savagely butchered on the 150-acre
|
|
dairy complex. No one knows who or what slaughtered them, & the McCarthys're
|
|
afraid the culprit might come back. "He goes out there with a light & a gun
|
|
now," said Bare McCarthy, referring to her husband, Taylor. "If he catches
|
|
whoever's doing it, he just might kill'em." Although Taylor McCarthy refused
|
|
to let veterinarian William McMillan perform necropsies on the carcasses,
|
|
McMillan said he got a good enough look to sense that something wasn't right.
|
|
"They were strange kinds of deaths. There're things in both cases that really
|
|
don't add up." On April 8, a 200-pound calf was killed within yards of
|
|
McCarthy's house. The cornea of one eyeball'd been cut out with surgical
|
|
precision, as well as half the tongue, McMillan said. But what was more
|
|
unusual was that there was no blood anywhere near the body. A 500-pound
|
|
heifer was later found in early July, with the left ear & 18 inches of skin
|
|
from its left rib cage cleanly severed. Where the hide'd been, a hole was
|
|
bored through to the beast's heart, which hadn't been removed. The
|
|
veterinarian doesn't think predators were responsible for the mutilations.
|
|
Teeth'd have left jagged, not fine, cuts. McMillan does concede it could've
|
|
been the work of cults, however. Authorities in Lee County, where the
|
|
McCarthy farm's located, as well as in other parts of Mississippi, are
|
|
familiar with occult groups. Sheriff's Dept. investigator Dan Crum said Lee
|
|
County'd a problem with satanic followers roaming the countryside in 1988.
|
|
James Crocker'd prefer officials to just come right out & admit they've no
|
|
idea what happened. "There're different types of animal mutilations. One's
|
|
the cult variety. But there's another, where the incisions're entirely
|
|
different. There's never any tracks, no vehicles, no symbols, no identifiable
|
|
characteristics that could link it to any particular person or organization."
|
|
In the 1970s, a wave of unexplained livestock mutilations swept Colorado &
|
|
the Midwest. Most were marked by skillful removal of parts & organs. In 1975,
|
|
after 130 mutilation cases were reported in Colorado alone, then-US Sen.
|
|
Floyd K. Haskell, D-Colo., asked the FBI to investigate. The two incidents on
|
|
the McCarthy farm reminded Crocker of what'd plagued Colorado. He's begun
|
|
buttonholing sheriff's deputies, farmers & veterinarians throughout the
|
|
state, hoping to collect information on any other mutilations that haven't
|
|
been reported. Crocker's found out that two other similar, unexplained
|
|
mutilations've taken place in the McComb-Brookhaven area within the last six
|
|
to eight months. "This thing's a senseless slaughter of animals. I believe
|
|
it's coming to a point where a comprehensive effort's needed to compile data
|
|
on a national basis & get something done." State veterinarian Frank Rogers
|
|
said the McCarthy mutilations aren't the only cases he knows about in
|
|
Mississippi. "Previous to now, I guess six to eight years ago, we'd something
|
|
similar reported in southwestern Mississippi, around Simpson & Copiah
|
|
counties. The farmers got together & began cruising the roads & the problems
|
|
stopped." In "An Alien Harvest," a book based on interviews & alleged
|
|
classified government documents, Linda Moulton Howe advanced a novel theory
|
|
to explain the bizarre mutilations. She suggested that UFOs might be beaming
|
|
up cattle, dissecting'em & then placing the remains back on earth. "The
|
|
pattern suggests that at least one non-human intelligence's manipulating &
|
|
harvesting earth life, that the alien life forms're controlling & using human
|
|
ignorance to accomplish the harvest." Other theories that saw print during
|
|
the heyday of the mutilations in the 1970s ranged from top-secret military
|
|
units experimenting with lasers to oil prospectors hoping to use animal
|
|
viscera to determine if valuable minerals lay beneath the grass the cattle
|
|
ate. Crocker's the first to admit he doesn't have any answers. "I mean, you
|
|
pick your theory. I don't have an explanation anymore than the hundreds of
|
|
thousands of law enforcement officials who've looked into this. There's a
|
|
million theories."
|
|
|
|
08-21-90 LAS VEGAS A Las Vegas man, Robert Lazar, who says he's witnessed UFO
|
|
research by the government in the Nevada desert, has been given probation on
|
|
a pandering charge. Lazar was a key figure in an award-winning television
|
|
documentary series "UFO's: The Best Evidence." The series by reporter George
|
|
Knapp aired on KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. Lazar claimed the US government was
|
|
researching alien spacecraft at secret sites in the desert north of Las
|
|
Vegas.
|
|
|
|
09-04-90 TURTLE LAKE, N.D. Mysterious circles in a farmer's hay field've led
|
|
to record enrollment in a University of North Dakota class on UFOs.
|
|
Registration for the class called "UFOs, ETs & Close Encounters" was closed
|
|
with 148 students, the most ever to register for a coursen't required at UND,
|
|
Professor John Salter said. "Obviously, it shows a broad recognition that
|
|
UFOs're real." The Turtle Lake circles in Allen & Sharon Wagner's hay
|
|
field're among a dozen or more in four sites that've appeared in North Dakota
|
|
over the past two years. No one's come up with a logical explanation for the
|
|
dead grass, loosened sod & straight-sided depressions that range from 3
|
|
inches to 24 inches deep at the perimeter. Some've suggested the dead grass's
|
|
the result of insects, hay stacks, badgers or chemical spill, but none of
|
|
those theories accounts for the size & type of depressions at the site.
|
|
Salter, the chairman of the UND department of Indian studies, became
|
|
interested in UFOs after he saw one in Wisconsin in 1988. Though he hasn't
|
|
visited the Wagner field he's convinced the circles're a "clean & clear
|
|
example of a UFO landing site." Similar mysterious circles've been found in
|
|
grain fields in England & Manitoba. Salter's UFO class'll meet once a week
|
|
for two hours, & students'll receive three credit hours for passing the
|
|
course. Salter plans to talk about his own experiences, as well as use films
|
|
& encourage discussions. But that isn't much consolation for the Wagners, who
|
|
still're looking for an explanation for the circles even after hundreds of
|
|
people've looked at the site. "We're back where we started from. We really
|
|
don't know anything."
|
|
|
|
09-13-90 A huge Hindu meditation symbol's been mysteriously plowed into a
|
|
remote dry lake bed in the southeastern Oregon desert. The symbol, known as
|
|
a sriyantra, measures about a quarter-mile across & is oriented to true
|
|
north. It's precisely laid out in the Alvord Desert along a training run
|
|
often used by Air Guard pilots, said Capt. Michael Gollaher. "Nobody's really
|
|
saying this's a UFO type thing. The word out at this time's that this's some
|
|
type of manmade object. "Most of the speculation's this's probably some sort
|
|
of cult thing. Nobody can figure out why somebody'd go to such effort to do
|
|
this out in god-awful nowhere." The pictograph was first reported Aug. 10 by
|
|
Lt. Col. Bill Miller, who returned Aug. 24 & photographed it from his RF-4C
|
|
Phantom jet. It's unlikely the design was built before the middle of July
|
|
because pilots would've spotted it. "The people in the photo interpretation
|
|
facility process the film & they say, `What's this, a hoax?' And we say, `No,
|
|
it isn't.'" No one recognized it immediately, but one of the photo
|
|
interpreters took a copy of the photograph home, where his wife, Alicia
|
|
Gloeckle, identified it in her series of Time-Life books on the occult. The
|
|
design's a square with T-shaped appendages on all four sides. Inside're three
|
|
concentric circles. Inside those're two concentric circles of lotus leaves.
|
|
Inside those're nine graduated triangles, four pointing one way & five
|
|
pointing the opposite, all overlapping. At the very center's another circle.
|
|
"It's a focusing device in meditation. This particular one symbolizes the
|
|
continuing of generations. It's a fertility type of thing, the continuation
|
|
of the species & the Earth." Sgt. Charlie Swindell drove out to the site on
|
|
US Bureau of Land Management range land. "It's beautifully done. I'd love to
|
|
meet the person that did this." Swindell measured the sriyantra to be 1,563
|
|
feet square. "The circle in the center's 9' 3", with a one-inch deviation,
|
|
which I consider to be a pretty doggone good circle." The design's made of
|
|
plowed furrows measuring six inches across & four inches deep. Swindell found
|
|
a number of surveying stakes at corners driven deep in the ground, with nails
|
|
& pink plastic ribbons on them. "Some of the architects around here said it'd
|
|
take $75,000 to $100,000 to survey it & lay it out." Swindell theorized that
|
|
someone used a garden tractor or rototiller to plow the furrows. Such a
|
|
machine could've folded over the earth to cover the tire tracks. There was
|
|
one motorcycle track through the design, apparently left by someone who never
|
|
noticed what he was riding through. "Unless you knew what you were looking
|
|
for, you wouldn't necessarily pay attention. But from the air it's very
|
|
visible." None of the ranchers he talked to in the area knew anything about
|
|
the design. "Somebody'd to be out there in 120 degrees for a couple of weeks
|
|
doing this. Because of the sparse population, you certainly could get away
|
|
with it."
|
|
|
|
09-14-90 LEOLA, S.D. Those odd marks that swirl through John Reis' wheat
|
|
field'll be gone soon before they can be checked out by UFO experts. Reis
|
|
said that two months ago, he noticed the pattern, which looks like a
|
|
backwards question mark. He went public with the news last month, looking for
|
|
answers, but all he got were a few phone calls from the curious. Reis's to
|
|
disk the field soon, & the marks'll be gone. "I've got other fields to do
|
|
first, but if it rains, I'll go in there & take it out. I don't want to, but
|
|
some of those weeds could get mighty tall by next spring." The marks
|
|
attracted the attention of a group known as the Mutual UFO Network. One of
|
|
the two active members of the group in South Dakota, Davina Ryszka of Custer,
|
|
said she wished she'd known about the incident sooner. "This's the first
|
|
we've heard of in South Dakota." The description of the patterns sounds
|
|
similar to some in England & that unusual circles've been found in North
|
|
Dakota fields.
|
|
|
|
09-18-90 ODESSA, Mo. When Lynda Lowe saw the circle of flattened grain in her
|
|
sorghum field, she was flabbergasted. But she eventually decided it was
|
|
probably just a trick of the wind. Others who've seen the circle in the field
|
|
near this west-central Missouri town think it could be something more
|
|
mysterious. UFO enthusiasts've been gathering near the field the last few
|
|
days, tromping the grain & getting in Mrs. Lowe's hair. "It doesn't look the
|
|
same. People've really messed it up & it's twice as big now. One of those
|
|
guys down there...thought maybe the spaceship'd landed again. There's been
|
|
some weird people out here." Mrs. Lowe & her husband, Roger, who own 140
|
|
acres about three miles from Odessa, first saw the strange configuration four
|
|
days ago. It was 20 to 30 feet wide. "We live on a hill & the field's down by
|
|
the road. I could see it from the house Friday, & I jumped in the car & drove
|
|
down there." The couple, although confused by the ring, didn't tell many
|
|
people about it. "I don't believe in UFOs for one thing. But it was strange.
|
|
It looked like a perfect circle somebody cut in the field. It was all just
|
|
lying flat & smooth." Then over the weekend, a woman photographer driving
|
|
through the area saw the field, took some pictures & began telling people
|
|
about it. The woman apparently'd seen pictures of mysterious circles in
|
|
fields in England. "She begged Rogern't to cut it. He should've cut it right
|
|
then." Tim Meyers, an investigator for the Lafayette County Sheriff's Dept.,
|
|
went to see the circle after his department heard reports of it. But it
|
|
appears to just be vandalism. "It looked more like kids trying to knock down
|
|
grain with a four-wheeler than a spaceship to me." "I've farmed here all my
|
|
life & I've never seen anything like it," said Terry Henning, who lives two
|
|
miles from the Lowes. "In England, they've seen a lot of lights in
|
|
association with the circles," said Thomas Nicholl, a Leawood resident &
|
|
member of the Mutual UFO Network. "In the absence of other information
|
|
(here), it's hard to tell what happened. It makes no sense." Erich Aggen Jr.
|
|
of the Mutual UFO Network & Monty Skelton of the Inter-Continental
|
|
Association of Research Enterprises took samples of the crops to send to
|
|
laboratories. "It's perplexing," Skelton said. "Had a heavy craft landed
|
|
there, some stalks'd have been broken & the grain crushed. It doesn't hold
|
|
water, as far as some type of craft landing, but it wasn't wind, either."
|
|
|
|
09-21-90 BATES CITY, Mo. Roger & Lynda Lowe, whose farm attracted national
|
|
attention this week after two mysterious circles appeared in their sorghum
|
|
field, aren't alone. Area residents're reporting similar circles in three
|
|
other fields two in Kansas & one in Missouri. They gave the oddities little
|
|
thought until they heard about the Lowes' field. "It's us wondering, `What on
|
|
earth?'" said Ruth McCahon of Raytown. She & her husband, John, were at their
|
|
farm south of Osceola last Friday when they saw a circle 30 to 40 feet wide
|
|
in their sorghum field. Three circles also've appeared in a pasture southwest
|
|
of Oskaloosa, Kan., & one in a field west of Topeka. But don't assume the
|
|
circles're proof of UFOs. The Lowes believe the wind's to blame, & scientists
|
|
& others agree there're more earthly explanations than UFOs. "Crop circles're
|
|
a phenomenon that've been going on in England since the early 1980s," said
|
|
Barry Karr, spokesman for Skeptical Inquirer, the official journal of the
|
|
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. The
|
|
organization's dedicated to debunking UFO & ghost sightings. "After 24 years
|
|
of investigating famous UFO cases, I've never found one that can't be
|
|
explained in earthly terms," said Philip Klass, a founding member of the
|
|
committee, who lives in Washington. "I'm quite certain that we've no alien
|
|
visitors in our skies. Whatever's generating these circles, it isn't an alien
|
|
spaceship." Some circles found elsewhere've proven to be the doings of
|
|
mischievous farmers or neighbors who'd rather propagate stories than irrigate
|
|
crops, Karr said. The Missouri circles're the first Karr's heard about in the
|
|
Midwest. Other circles've been found in Florida & Canada, he said. Barring a
|
|
hoax, there may a scientific explanation: the air itself. Meteorologists
|
|
speculate the crop circles may be caused by any of several atmospheric
|
|
disturbances. The two most likely candidates're microbursts, or spinning
|
|
winds that sometimes're called dust devils. Both're caused by temperature
|
|
differences in the upper & lower atmospheres that cause swirling winds or
|
|
powerful downdrafts. The swirling winds're "a common way for the atmosphere
|
|
to transfer momentum within a short space," said Glen Marotz, a meteorologist
|
|
& professor of civil engineering at the University of Kansas. "When the
|
|
atmosphere's faced with an energy imbalance, it acts like you'd expect it
|
|
would. It tries to get rid of them. One way's to create a spinning vortex.
|
|
There's nothing uncommon about that." Microbursts're sudden & powerful
|
|
downdrafts that easily could compress crops. "Microbursts've been implicated
|
|
in aircraft crashes when hard downdrafts're created." All the circles're near
|
|
roads & trees. Witnesses say none of the trees lost limbs, as they probably'd
|
|
have in a wind storm. Farmers say no crop disease could've caused the damage.
|
|
No tire tracks or footprints've been found in the circles. And in each case,
|
|
people who live near the circles say they neither heard nor saw anything
|
|
unusual. At the Lowes' place, the circles ruined about $1,000 worth of
|
|
sorghum. But the puzzling phenomenon turned the farm field into a tourist
|
|
attraction. Wednesday night, up to 43 cars were parked at one time along the
|
|
road. Lowe harvested the crop & obliterated the circles Thursday. The New
|
|
York Times's called twice & relatives of his from California, Boston & New
|
|
York phoned after seeing the circles on television. "I didn't ask for the
|
|
notoriety, & I'd rather've had (the sorghum) in the silo & forgot about it.
|
|
But it happened, & there's nothing I can do about it."
|
|
|
|
09-27-90 TOLEDO, Ohio When Harold Bricker left the marina at East Harbor
|
|
State Park, he thought he was taking a routine fishing trip with his family.
|
|
It became bizarre when Bricker encountered what he says was a sea serpent on
|
|
Lake Erie. The Bricker family saw a large creature moving in the water about
|
|
1,000 feet away from their boat. They described it as black, about 35 feet
|
|
long, with a snakelike head. It moved as fast as their boat. "I told my son
|
|
that I wanted to get a look at it," Bricker said. "My son said, `No way, that
|
|
thing's bigger than we are.' So we stayed where we were." They watched the
|
|
serpent disappear beneath the surface about two miles north of the Cedar
|
|
Point Amusement Park near Sandusky. When Bricker returned, he told park
|
|
rangers about the sighting. His story was backed up by his family, including
|
|
his wife Cora, 68, & son, Robert 35. Since the Bricker family saw the
|
|
creature Sept. 4, sea serpent mania's spread among lake front communities in
|
|
Ohio. The monster's been reported by five people on three separate occasions,
|
|
including a Huron firefighter & a 50-year-old grandmother from Pennsylvania
|
|
who was vacationing at her Lake Erie cottage. John Schaffner, editor of the
|
|
Beacon, a weekly newspaper in Port Clinton, has a toll-free phone for people
|
|
to call if they see the serpent. And in Huron, Thomas Solberg, owner of Huron
|
|
Lagoon Marina, has offered a $5,000 reward to anyone who captures the
|
|
creature alive. He's posted a sign at his marina calling it the future home
|
|
of the Lake Erie sea serpent. While the public's fun with Ohio's version of
|
|
the Loch Ness monster a creature that's haunted the Scottish lake for
|
|
centuries the sightings baffle local researchers. Charles Herdendof, a marine
|
|
biologist investigating the creature, said it's possible that there's
|
|
something unexplainable in Lake Erie. He frequently encounters inexplicable
|
|
things in his research. During an expedition in the Atlantic Ocean, a robot
|
|
camera videotaped a 20-foot long green shark that he said was 1,000 miles
|
|
south of where any like it'd ever been seen. Fred Snyder, a researcher with
|
|
the Ohio Sea Grant, an organization that examines Great Lakes issues, said
|
|
it's highly unlikely that a monster's living in Lake Erie. "I'm not trying to
|
|
be the sour old guy who throws a bucket of water on things. I love UFOs & the
|
|
Loch Ness monster I'm still just hoping that all of those're going to be
|
|
real. But something about the one in Lake Erie, I don't see where it could
|
|
come from." The reports're similar to about six made in 1985 & 1987, all of
|
|
huge snakelike creatures being seen in Lake Erie. The US Coast Guard'd no
|
|
other reports of a mysterious creature this year before the Bricker family
|
|
sighting. After the reports began this year, Schaffner's newspaper ran a
|
|
contest to name it. The name South Bay Besse was chosen in part because of
|
|
the location of the Davis Besse Nuclear Power plant near Port Clinton. "If we
|
|
look at things like the stories about the Loch Ness monster, which I don't
|
|
necessarily discount, Loch Ness'd connections to the ocean, it's
|
|
prehistoric," Snyder said. "When you look at Lake Erie, a lot of people kind
|
|
of assume, like most places in the world, it must be millions & millions of
|
|
years old. It's not the case. The glaciers receded & the area stabilized
|
|
about 12,000 years ago which, geologically, is just yesterday...So the
|
|
monster really can't be anything left over from the dinosaur days because
|
|
it's just too young." Snyder doubts a creature could've gotten in from the
|
|
Atlantic Ocean because of the difficulties of navigating the St. Lawrence
|
|
Seaway. "A big question's why hasn't the monster been noticed before, why's
|
|
this just now popping up. Let's go back to Loch Ness monster. That seemed to
|
|
be reported for hundreds of years periodically. There've been legends, like
|
|
Bigfoot. Even the Indians were talking about Bigfoot being there. Well, Lake
|
|
Erie Larry or South Bay Besse seems to've popped up around 1985, & if it'd
|
|
been in here for hundreds & thousands of years, there sure seems like there'd
|
|
be local legends among the Indians, among the settlers," Snyder said. "I
|
|
truthfully don't know what people've been seeing, but it's hard for me to
|
|
believe that there could be a monster out there." The sturgeon's Lake Erie's
|
|
largest fish reaching up to 300 pounds & 10 feet in length. But the
|
|
sturgeon's on the endangered species list &'re bottom dwellers. He speculated
|
|
that monster sighters may've seen a school of fish & mistakenly thought it
|
|
was a creature.
|
|
|
|
09-27-90 WICHITA, Kan. State troopers & motorists sighted a shimmering light
|
|
in the Kansas sky this morning. The National Weather Service said it was a
|
|
research balloon, not a UFO. Shortly before dawn, people from Marion to South
|
|
Haven in central Kansas began telephoning news departments at radio stations
|
|
with sighting reports. The object appeared to be stationary. Marissa Gray, a
|
|
Wichita woman who works the overnight shift at Winfield State Hospital, said
|
|
the object was clearly visible when she left Winfield for Wichita about 6:45
|
|
am. "It was so bright then I thought it was a chopper." A National Weather
|
|
Service spokesman said the light was the rising sun reflecting off a huge
|
|
National Scientific Balloon Facility research balloon launched from Fort
|
|
Sumner, NM earlier this week. The balloon's 450 feet in diameter & was filled
|
|
with 29 million cubic feet of gas. It originally rose to an altitude of
|
|
110,000 to 130,000 feet, the spokesman said. Its altitude & size made it
|
|
appear closer than it was as it began descending.
|
|
|
|
09-26-90 MIAMI, FL A former air traffic controller's positive he's unraveled
|
|
the secret of Flight 19, five Navy torpedo bombers that vanished in 1945 &
|
|
fed the Bermuda Triangle legend, but getting proof's going to be expensive.
|
|
Jon Myhre's solution was videotaped for a segment on NBC-TV's "Unsolved
|
|
Mysteries." But doubters include the Navy, Smithsonian Institution, six
|
|
publishers who rejected his book manuscript & People magazine, which held
|
|
Myhre's story after buying exclusive rights to his account. "I've given it my
|
|
best shot. I've done everything I can do," said Myhre, of Lantana, who's
|
|
spent his life savings of more than $100,000 to plot & pursue Flight 19's
|
|
five Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers. "I know I'm right. I'm justn't in
|
|
a position to prove it." Myhre's videotape, shot from a mini-submarine in
|
|
July, of an upside-down Avenger sitting in 390 feet of water about 35 miles
|
|
off Cape Canaveral, but doesn't have its serial number. The plane, just 2
|
|
miles from where Myhre predicted Flight 19 went down, was originally spotted
|
|
during the search for debris from the explosion of the space shuttle
|
|
Challenger, but ignored then. Flight 19's disappearance became part of the
|
|
legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area where ships & planes supposedly
|
|
disappear under mysterious circumstances involving UFOs, magnetic fields &
|
|
other such phenomena. Flight 19 even figured in "Close Encounters of the
|
|
Third Kind," in which first the planes & then the men were returned by
|
|
aliens. Myhre's answer to the puzzle came with a flash eight years ago when
|
|
he read the final radio transmissions from the warplanes, which took off from
|
|
Fort Lauderdale for a training flight over parts of the Bahamas on Dec. 5,
|
|
1945. The squadron leader's reported that both of his compasses were out of
|
|
order. At one point, the squadron leader plotted a northeasterly course based
|
|
on the assumption he'd somehow reached the Florida Keys, on the opposite side
|
|
of Florida. Myhre thinks that was part of the Bahamas' Abacos chain. At
|
|
another point he reported he was over an island & no other land was visible.
|
|
Myhre, who's flown the region for years, believes that was isolated Walker's
|
|
Cay. By re-plotting the flight from Walker's Cay, using the Navy
|
|
transcriptions of the flight's radio reports, Myhre came up with a location
|
|
where he thought Flight 19, its planes out of fuel, may've ended. The spot
|
|
was east of Cape Canaveral. The Avenger he filmed was found 2 miles away.
|
|
Myhre learned of the plane spotted during the Challenger search from news
|
|
reports. This summer, with $25,000 raised by two partners, he hired a small
|
|
research submarine & located the wreckage. He was unable to locate a complete
|
|
aircraft serial number on the upside down wreck. Footage of the Avenger shows
|
|
the last three digits 209 of a five-digit Navy service number on the left
|
|
wingtip. Flight 19's lead airplane number was 73209, & Navy records show only
|
|
two other Grumman TBM Avengers with service numbers ending in 209, & neither
|
|
was lost at sea. "The only thing we didn't get was a positive ID on the
|
|
plane's serial number," Myhre said, but raising the Avenger could cost
|
|
$250,000. The plane's landing gear's extended, leading some to suggest that
|
|
plane was lost while trying to land on an aircraft carrier instead of the
|
|
squadron's suspected ditch. But Myhre insists he's the right plane & knows
|
|
where the others are. "The other planes're further north in much deeper
|
|
water, I'm certain. This was just the first to ditch. And the tragic thing
|
|
about it's he was only about seven minutes from land. If they'd just kept
|
|
going west..."
|
|
|
|
10-08-90 ELMWOOD, Wis. A recently published book billed as an expose of the
|
|
government's clandestine search for extraterrestrial life in Elmwood's
|
|
renewed interest in this west central Wisconsin town. Mayor Lary Feiler, 48,
|
|
has gone from a small town administrator to a sought-after guest on talk
|
|
shows dealing with UFO sightings. He attributes the recent fame to "Out
|
|
There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extra-Terrestrials," written by
|
|
former New York Times reporter Howard Blum. The book mentions the town of
|
|
1,009 about 45 miles west of Eau Claire throughout the text, commenting on
|
|
residents' reports of numerous UFO sightings in the surrounding hills over
|
|
the past 15 years. The stories've become the focus of an annual community
|
|
festival called "UFO Days." In the last two weeks, Feiler's been interviewed
|
|
by telephone on two radio stations in New Zealand & one in Australia &
|
|
featured on the TV programs Hard Copy & The Oprah Winfrey Show. Although the
|
|
book's accurate, it exaggerates some details. The harrowing description of
|
|
Carol Forster's encounter with a UFO was "played up as much more dramatic
|
|
than she ever reported it." The efforts of Tom Weber to build a
|
|
multimillion-dollar landing site for UFOs near Elmwood're described in the
|
|
book. Weber spent two years trying to build an extraterrestrial welcome
|
|
center on a high plain above the village. Now, living near Mauston, where
|
|
he's recovering from a heart attack, he doubts the book'll result in
|
|
significant donations to his "UFO Site Center." "It might generate funds for
|
|
Howard Blum, but it's not going to result in anything meaningful." Blum
|
|
disagreed. "When I wrote `Wanted,' the government said nothing could be done
|
|
about Nazi war criminals. But since its publication, many've been deported."
|
|
For Blum, who was in Milwaukee last week as part of a 12-city promotion tour,
|
|
"Out There" is an effort to force the federal government to reveal the extent
|
|
of its spending on UFO research & its "malicious & illegal attempt to
|
|
discredit UFO believers. I hope that the government'll tell all & that we'll
|
|
find out how much money's being spent on the search for extraterrestrial
|
|
life. After all, it's our tax money." Blum already's sold the television
|
|
rights to his book.
|
|
|
|
10-13-90 NORTH HAVEN, Conn. The stories'll be flying this weekend about alien
|
|
creatures with three-digit hands & windowless, disc-shaped spacecraft. And no
|
|
one'll be laughing. More than a dozen UFO researchers & people who claim
|
|
to've been abducted by aliens're meeting in North Haven for the fourth annual
|
|
international conference on "The UFO Experience." Robert Luca & Betty
|
|
Andreasson Luca of Connecticut'll be there. Betty, 53, who doesn't want her
|
|
address known, says she was a 7-year-old Massachusetts resident when aliens
|
|
first visited her in 1944. Luca, whose encounters've been described in
|
|
several books, says she was abducted three times by gray-skinned, hairless
|
|
creatures, 3 feet to 4 feet tall with three-digit hands & holes for ears &
|
|
nostrils. "It's not only me. There're hundreds of thousands of cases already
|
|
documented worldwide. There're many who haven't reported it because they
|
|
can't deal with the bizarreness of it." Ed Walters of Gulf Breeze, Fla., will
|
|
also be there. He'd tell the conference about the day he came home from a
|
|
construction job in 1987 & saw a round, glowing object hovering near his
|
|
driveway. It was the first of his reported experiences with UFOs. UFO
|
|
researchers attending the conference issued an appeal to President Bush to
|
|
"take the wraps off the governmental cover-up of the UFO situation." "We want
|
|
Bush to put an end to the secrecy over research by the intelligence &
|
|
military community into UFOs & to tell the American public & the rest of the
|
|
world the truth about what they've found," said John White, whose business,
|
|
Omega Communications, is putting on the conference. A copy of the appeal was
|
|
mailed to the White House. White, who describes himself as a researcher of
|
|
paranormal phenomena, said the conference at the Holiday Inn's a chance for
|
|
people (at a full weekend cost of $150, unless they pre-registered for $120)
|
|
to meet the leading figures in the field of UFO research. White saw a UFO in
|
|
1987 in Pine Bush, NY. He described his encounter as a nighttime sighting of
|
|
an unusual light. "I didn't see a metallic craft without windows. As a
|
|
seasoned investigator in these phenomena, I was unable to explain it by any
|
|
natural cause." Ninety% of UFO reports come from well-intentioned people
|
|
whose sightings can be explained as natural phenomena or known technology,
|
|
according to Robert Bletchman, a Manchester attorney & public relations
|
|
director the Mutual UFO Network. The network estimates 2.5 million Americans
|
|
have'd valid UFO sightings, including 25,000 Connecticut residents. It's
|
|
possible some sightings may be explained by secret military projects, such as
|
|
development of the Stealth bomber, long kept under wraps. But: "I'm convinced
|
|
some UFO sightings represent human contact with an extraterrestrial
|
|
presence." "For someone to tell me (there's no such thing as a UFO) after
|
|
never having looked at all the evidence, then that's just an ignorant
|
|
opinion." Kenneth Feder, an anthropology professor at Central Connecticut
|
|
State University who's studied UFO literature, said many believers're people
|
|
who take comfort from the idea there're more intelligent beings somewhere in
|
|
the universe. "I'm not saying these folks're replacing their religions with
|
|
UFOs, but there's an undercurrent in most UFO literature that we've screwed
|
|
up the planet badly & these guys're out there watching & will come down &
|
|
take charge when we're about to destroy ourselves."
|
|
|
|
10-19-90 MILAN, Ill. Droves of camera-toting tourists're flocking to Kathy
|
|
Bost's corn field to take a look at a giant circle that's causing some to
|
|
wonder if flying saucers've been visiting western Illinois. Bost isn't sure
|
|
a flying saucer landed on her farm. But she says no one's offered a better
|
|
explanation for the perfect circle, 46 feet in diameter, sitting smack-dab in
|
|
the middle of acres of corn. Her brother-in-law, James Lawson, was harvesting
|
|
corn from Bost's rural Rock Island County farm when he saw a site that nearly
|
|
knocked him off his combine. The stalks'd been bent over & flattened in a
|
|
sweeping, clockwise pattern. A small circle of brown dirt peeked through the
|
|
center. "That's the strangest thing, I tell you. It's like something landed
|
|
there, in a sense." Lawson told police that he spotted no footprints, vehicle
|
|
tracks or cut marks that'd indicate a hoax. "We checked it out, & we don't
|
|
have any explanation at this time," said Rock Island County Sheriff Mike
|
|
Grchan. "If it's kids or pranksters, it'd be awfully hard to swish the corn
|
|
down that flat & even." With police stumped, geologists from nearby Augustana
|
|
College were brought in to determine the source of the smashed circle. "The
|
|
best they could come up with's a wind phenomenon." Though Bost isn't
|
|
convinced she now owns a UFO landing pad, she doesn't discount the
|
|
possibility. And the doubts haven't discouraged the carloads of
|
|
curiosity-seekers, who stream toward the mysterious clearing & turn Bost's
|
|
desolate corn field into a scene out of "Field of Dreams." "I've got a small
|
|
farm, but I've never'd anything like this," said a perplexed Virgil
|
|
McCormick, 59, of nearby Reynolds. "I hope it's (caused by) the wind." "I'd
|
|
like to've been here when it happened," said Gene Nielsen, who drove 60 miles
|
|
from his Annawan farm. "There's lots of other things people don't know about,
|
|
& I thought, `By golly, it beats going to England.'" Nielsen was referring to
|
|
300 crop circles similar to the one in Milan that've appeared in England &
|
|
continental Europe during the past year. Scientists've spent millions of
|
|
dollars trying to determine the origin of the circles, but so far've failed.
|
|
Similar circles also've been discovered in Canada, Japan & the United States,
|
|
including six in North Dakota in less than two years. "Most of us're quite
|
|
convinced that many of these circles're bona fide UFO landings or're related
|
|
to UFOs," said John Salter, sociologist at the University of North Dakota &
|
|
director of that state's chapter of the Mutual UFO Network. Because the Milan
|
|
circle lacks scorch marks, it's doubtful a UFO landed there. But it could be
|
|
a "calling card" left by aliens using some sort of energy beam. "There isn't
|
|
any reason to be afraid," Salter said. "These're formed by visitations
|
|
designed to sensitize us that is, us humans to the existence of
|
|
extraterrestrial life."
|
|
|
|
11-05-90 CHARLOTTE, NC More than 150 people attended the annual meeting of
|
|
the Mutual UFO Network where they heard a hypothesis that the government's
|
|
agreements with creatures from outer space. "One must consider these
|
|
possibilities, all possibilities when studying UFOs, but still maintain a
|
|
healthy dose of skepticism," said ufologist Ginger Richardson at the meeting
|
|
at Charlotte's Pfeiffer College. "As ufologists, we must wade through the
|
|
garbage to get to the kernel of truth...We know something's definitely going
|
|
on." Ms. Richarodson said according to the hypothesis, the government gets
|
|
advanced technological knowledge in exchange for harmless medical experiments
|
|
on humans. But according to the hypothesis, the aliens've violated the pact
|
|
by implanting trackers in human brains, murdering humans for food &
|
|
impregnating women to create hybrid offspring. MUFON's an international
|
|
organization founded in 1969 to investigate the UFO phenomenon. Topics at the
|
|
meeting ranged from evil aliens abducting humans to creating an atmosphere
|
|
for bilateral exchange. Steven Greer of Asheville says all aliens aren't
|
|
evil. A real chance exists for bilateral communication. It's called the CE5
|
|
Initiative, "CE" meaning close encounter. But humans must extinguish
|
|
destructive behaviors, like war, before alien contact can begin. "The
|
|
extraterrestrial civilizations're out there & are indeed wanting us to get to
|
|
the place where they feel more comfortable having an exchange," said Greer,
|
|
director of the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence in
|
|
Asheville. "But they're cautious of their own security as well."
|
|
|
|
11-11-90 BILOXI, Miss. Space aliens're just make-believe, Eddie Hickson's
|
|
father told him. Years later, the elder Hickson said those same space
|
|
aliens'd snatched him from the banks of the Pascagoula River in Jackson
|
|
County & took him on board their dome-shaped craft. Charles Hickson Sr., a
|
|
modest Gautier man & a retired shipfitter foreman at Ingalls Shipyard, told
|
|
a crowd of about 200 conventioneers at the Great Gulf Coast UFO Gathering in
|
|
Biloxi about the day that changed his life. Hickson, now 59, & fellow
|
|
shipfitter Calvin Parker were fishing at an abandoned shipyard Oct. 11, 1973.
|
|
"All of the sudden I heard some kind of hissing sound like steam leaking out
|
|
of a pipe," Hickson said. "I saw some kind of craft hovering about 18 inches
|
|
about the ground. I didn't know what to do. It appeared round with a dome on
|
|
top & there were two blue pulsing lights on what appeared to be its front. A
|
|
door opened & a very brilliant light came out, then three things came out &
|
|
two of'em took ahold of me & one took Calvin. When the one took hold of my
|
|
left arm, it hurt, & then I didn't feel anything but my eyes. They were about
|
|
5-foot, 6-inches tall & they'd elephantlike skin, grey & very wrinkled. The
|
|
skin ran horizontal. Their arms were very long in proportion to the rest of
|
|
their bodies." His book, UFO Contact in Pascagoula, may soon be made into a
|
|
movie. Once the beings released him inside the craft, Hickson became
|
|
suspended in midair & watched an electronic eye come out of the craft's wall,
|
|
scan his body, then retract into the wall. After hypnosis unlocked his
|
|
subconscious, Hickson recalled the faces of three male human-looking beings,
|
|
who observed the examination from behind a window. "I kept wondering what
|
|
they were going to do to me. They glanced at my eyes; then they carried me
|
|
back & out through the brilliant light & put me down on the ground. Calvin
|
|
was lying there on the river bank, his arms outstretched, & he seemed to be
|
|
going into shock. I'd to slap him & scream at him to get his attention," said
|
|
Hickson, a Jones County native & Army veteran of the Korean War. Parker now
|
|
lives in south Louisiana & has suffered two nervous breakdowns since the
|
|
incident. Fearing they'd be labeled insane, Hickson & Parker considered
|
|
keeping their experience a secret, but reported it to the Jackson County
|
|
Sheriff's Dept. that night. Since that eerie evening, the aliens've
|
|
communicated with Hickson telepathically. Rubbing a flat, gray, quarter-sized
|
|
object, Hickson explained that the disc heats up before he receives
|
|
telepathic messages. Hickson's undergone numerous psychological evaluations.
|
|
"I know these things sound very strange & I don't expect you to believe them,
|
|
but I hope one day you will." Eddie Hickson, 36, has never thought his father
|
|
was insane. He's watched him turn down handsome cash offers for his story
|
|
over the years, fearing people'd think it a hoax. "I know in my heart & my
|
|
mind that daddy didn't make this up."
|
|
|
|
11-15-90 BEND, Ore. The elaborate Hindu meditation symbol carved in a
|
|
southeastern Oregon desert last summer probably was made by UFOs & not a band
|
|
of Iowa artists, a science professor claims. James Deardorff, a research
|
|
professor emeritus at Oregon State University, alleged the government
|
|
concocted a "cover story" with Iowa artist Bill Witherspoon & five others to
|
|
explain the quarter-mile-wide symbol. "Their story doesn't make any sense. I
|
|
wonder if the government took'em out & told'em what to say, where they camped
|
|
& how they did it." Deardorff retired four years ago from teaching in the
|
|
university's Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences. He now looks into the "UFO
|
|
phenomenon" full time. Witherspoon said in a telephone interview there's
|
|
nothing mysterious about the huge shri yantra symbol he & others dug in a dry
|
|
lake bed north of the Alvord Desert. "No, it wasn't aliens. It was just some
|
|
guys." Mark Armstrong, spokesman for the US BLM, also denied that the
|
|
government tried to hide the truth about the Hindu symbol. "There's no
|
|
connection between any so-called UFO activities & this drawing that
|
|
Witherspoon & those with him did. We're fully satisfied that we got to the
|
|
truth of the matter." Witherspoon & five companions laid out the intricate
|
|
design using an old garden cultivator, 12 miles of twine, survey stakes, a
|
|
tape measure, a pair of binoculars & a blueprint. The design was discovered
|
|
by an Idaho Air National Guard pilot during a training flight Aug. 10. The
|
|
discovery wasn't revealed publicly until mid-September, however. Witherspoon
|
|
later came forward to claim the work. The BLM fined him & his group $100 for
|
|
defacing public land. Deardorff said he wasn't convinced after studying a
|
|
videotape of the symbol & studying Witherspoon's account. "My concern in
|
|
this's that some group in some branch of our government's behind this in
|
|
doing their best to keep the citizenry from connecting the ground pattern to
|
|
the patterns in the wheat in southeast England, for example, because of the
|
|
reported UFO association with the latter." He was referring to unexplained
|
|
large circles & other geometric shapes that appeared in England last spring
|
|
& summer. Deardorff was suspicious about a number of elements in
|
|
Witherspoon's story, including the fact that the drawing supposedly was
|
|
discovered just a day after it was completed but wasn't reported until about
|
|
40 days later. "Why that big delay? The time was there for'em to build up a
|
|
cover story." He also didn't believe that the artists could've drawn such a
|
|
perfect symbol, with its neat, uniform furrows, with an old cultivator. And
|
|
he questioned whether the artists could've worked in the 90-degree desert
|
|
heat for 10 days without running short of water. Deardorff also wondered
|
|
about the lack of footprints around the symbol. Witherspoon said a rainstorm
|
|
washed'em away. Deardorff asked why the artists didn't explain why they chose
|
|
the ancient meditation symbol. "It's as if they want to stay away from any
|
|
discussion of the symbol. I can't see anything in the confession letter that
|
|
rings true." Deardorff's filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the
|
|
BLM to get Witherspoon's address, & said one of his associates plans to
|
|
closely question the artist.
|
|
|
|
11-19-90 CULVER, Ind. Reported sightings of unidentified bright lights in the
|
|
sky've dozens of residents in this small farming town thinking about close
|
|
encounters, possibly of the third kind. Since early October, talk's centered
|
|
on strange light patterns hovering above the town's landscape in northern
|
|
Indiana. Melanie Wagner's seen lights about three or four times a week,
|
|
usually around 8:15 pm while driving along Indiana 10, a desolate country
|
|
road. She first saw the lights Oct. 4 & has been seeing'em every clear night
|
|
since then. "I've seen lights suspended in the sky, then go up & down, & go
|
|
in all directions. I've seen'em turn off all their lights & appear to've
|
|
disappeared. And then turn'em back on several hundred feet across the sky"
|
|
Wagner's seen four to five different light patterns but that the most
|
|
common's triangle-shaped. Other people've reported bow ties & circular
|
|
patterns. Fred Karst, editor of The Culver Citizen, said his newspaper's
|
|
received "quite a number of calls" about possible unidentified flying objects
|
|
in recent weeks. He even saw some strange lights in the sky the evening of
|
|
Oct. 4, the same night of Wagner's sighting. "I don't know whether it was a
|
|
UFO or not, but at the time, I thought it was a meteor. It descended in the
|
|
sky above me down toward the horizon. I didn't attach any greater
|
|
significance to it until I started hearing other people'd been seeing
|
|
different things that same night." While some people speculate the lights're
|
|
military aircraft, officials at Grissom Air Force Base, two counties south of
|
|
Culver, say that's not possible. "Nothing that they (citizens) describe meets
|
|
the description of what we'd be flying out here," said Lt. Bill Harrison, a
|
|
public information officer with Grissom. The base flies KC-135 strato tankers
|
|
(similar to a Boeing 707) & A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft. Capt. Cathi
|
|
Kiger of the Indiana National Guard said flares're often used for training
|
|
exercises & on ranges when firing artillery. "But I can't find anything that
|
|
we might've done that'd have contributed to these lights." A dispatcher for
|
|
the Marshall County Sheriff's Dept. said the department's received "a couple
|
|
phone calls but we never found anything." And Argos Police Chief Jim Buroughs
|
|
said there're lots of "rumors on the streets but I haven't seen anything
|
|
yet." However, Gary Flagg, a security guard from Argos, has seen something,
|
|
& often. He's been keeping a log since he first spotted the lights on March
|
|
7. He was driving to work at 9:45 pm when he says he saw a white,
|
|
triangular-shaped light pattern. "I just stopped on 17th Road (in Marshall
|
|
County) & got out of the car & watched. That one was about 500 feet over the
|
|
top of the car," he said, reading from his log. "It moved real slow,
|
|
extremely slow. I don't even know how it stayed in the air." Flagg didn't
|
|
report the sighting to police, but did confide in his wife. Then on Oct. 3 &
|
|
5, he was driving with his family when again the triangle-shaped lights
|
|
appeared. His sister, Cindy Flagg, a preschool teacher who describes herself
|
|
as "a skeptic," also saw them. "There was a triangular thing going over. It'd
|
|
three or four lights...It was going really slowly & there was no sound." A
|
|
common place to watch's been the Poplar Grove United Methodist Church &
|
|
cemetery, located along Indiana 10. Jan Johnson, a Culver Citizen
|
|
photographer who went to the cemetery with Wagner one night, shot a picture
|
|
of the object, which resembles "a string of pearls. That's what the light
|
|
pattern looks like. I saw little flashing twinkling lights...I don't know
|
|
(what it was); I'm dying for someone to tell me what I've shot."
|
|
|
|
11-26-90 MOLINE, Ill. There mayn't be a grain of truth to it, but some
|
|
Illinois farmers think they might've experienced a close encounter of the
|
|
corn kind. "People might think it's crazy," said Mike Thompson, "but it was
|
|
there." The "it" is a 64-foot, perfectly round section of flattened
|
|
cornstalks found on farmland Thompson's leasing near Moline. The patch of
|
|
crushed crop's like a 46-foot imprint found by farmer James Lawson Oct. 16 in
|
|
his field in rural Milan. Except for their differences in size, the two
|
|
patches of trampled earth're almost identical. Both're in Rock Island County
|
|
only several miles from each other, & both're a few hundred feet from major
|
|
highways. The one on Thompson's property near John Deere Expressway was found
|
|
by Port Byron farmer Mike Searle as he was helping harvest corn for Thompson.
|
|
"I about ran into it, so I backed out & went around it," Searle said. "I was
|
|
surprised. All the corn around it was standing. It was fine. There's got to
|
|
be a reason for it, but when you figure it out, tell me." Lawson's already
|
|
figured out that the circle on his property was made by an unidentified
|
|
flying object. "Whatever it was, it came down from the elements & took off,"
|
|
reasoned Lawson. "I think it's a UFO landing. I think they landed there."
|
|
Lawson never believed in UFOs before. "But I definitely do now." Word of the
|
|
first strange circle brought hundreds of onlookers to Lawson's farm, & he's
|
|
been interviewed by dozens of reporters. Lawson was scheduled to appear on
|
|
NBC's "Unsolved Mysteries" with people from North Dakota & Missouri who also
|
|
discovered circles in their corn fields. But when the other two men decided
|
|
against being interviewed, the show was canceled. Rock Island County Sheriff
|
|
Mike Grchan plans to consult experts at the universities of Illinois & Iowa
|
|
& to ask the Illinois State Police to've their patrol airplane keep an eye
|
|
out for anything similar. In the meantime, Grchan's a few ideas about how the
|
|
circles got there. One's that the phenomenon was caused by the wind. Another
|
|
is that "It's reallyn't explainable."
|
|
|
|
12-01-90 CASPER, Wyo. Unidentified flying objects're actually messengers from
|
|
a higher intelligence trying to help people understand reincarnation. Leo
|
|
Sprinkle, a former University of Wyoming professor, said that 75% of the
|
|
people who have'd some contact with UFOs believe in reincarnation, showing
|
|
the two issues're linked with each other. Encounters with UFOs can be
|
|
experienced at four scientific levels, ranging from the physical level to the
|
|
spiritual level. At the physical level, researchers hope to prove or disprove
|
|
the existence of UFOs with physical evidence, while at the spiritual level,
|
|
UFOs're seen as "a program for cosmic consciousness conditioning," improving
|
|
awareness of reincarnation.
|
|
|
|
12-31-90 ASHEBORO, NC It fell from the sky over Randolph County, butn't
|
|
everyone can say what it was. Steve Harrell's 7-year-old son saw it & cried
|
|
"Jet crash! Jet crash!" Harrell turned his video camera toward it & began
|
|
shooting. "It was a bright light falling from the sky," said Harrell. "I
|
|
didn't know what to think. It looked like a big ball of fire. It started
|
|
floating down & then it was gone." He heard no crash & found no jet, & was
|
|
left with the suspicion he'd witnessed something strange about 5:30 pm that
|
|
Christmas Day as he videotaped son Nathan on his new go-kart. "I don't think
|
|
it came from outer space. There's an explanation. Got to be." The Asheboro
|
|
Municipal Airport didn't have one, neither did the Randolph County Sheriff's
|
|
Dept., neither did the local television crew who took Harrell out in a
|
|
helicopter to search the area. George Fawcett, director of the NC Mutual UFO
|
|
Network, thinks he knows. "Off the top of my head, with out having really
|
|
investigated, it looks good. It fits the pattern of a large number of UFO
|
|
sightings in North Carolina large objects seen at low altitude...multiple
|
|
lights."
|
|
|
|
01-14-91 VANCOUVER, BC A UFO organization says tiny worms could hold a clue
|
|
to the mysterious rings that've appeared in fields from England to northern
|
|
British Columbia. The rings've been blamed on everything from whirlwinds to
|
|
UFO's. Scientific analyses of soil from 2 Canadian crop circles show
|
|
astronomically high numbers of microscopic nematodes threadlike, often
|
|
parasitic worms that live in the soil, said Mike Strainic of MUFON. Soil
|
|
samples from rings in Saskatchewan & Dawson Creek were sent to agricultural
|
|
scientists in eastern Canada & the United States. Soil from both rings'd
|
|
identical counts of nematodes 8 times that of inside & outside the rings.
|
|
"Scientists are looking into the significance of the high count," adding that
|
|
more analysis is being done on the samples.
|
|
|
|
03-12-91 LOS ALAMOS, NM Oft-maligned UFO-debunker Phillip J. Klass chided
|
|
people who cling to flying-saucer lore, telling a Los Alamos National
|
|
Laboratory colloquium such believers've failed to produce any evidence. Klass
|
|
spends 20 to 40 hours a week investigating reported sightings of unidentified
|
|
flying objects, or UFOs. All're explainable as meteor firefalls, abandoned
|
|
space junk burning up as it re-enters Earth's atmosphere, ball lightning or
|
|
retail UFO kits such as balloons with flares attached. "There's not a single
|
|
piece of physical evidence, a single piece of metal that could not've been
|
|
made in this world...not a single photograph that'll hold up under rigorous
|
|
scrutiny," Klass told about 300 people. Most of'em were Los Alamos
|
|
scientists. He drew laughter as he told of 1 sighting reported by a woman
|
|
who's dog shrank to the ground in terror. The dog was whimpering because it
|
|
was cold out that night. Her sighting on March 3, 1968, was among several
|
|
from people hundreds of miles apart. All reported seeing a cigar-shaped craft
|
|
in the sky over the Midwest. Klass said it was a jettisoned Soviet rocket
|
|
burning up as it fell to Earth. He said 98% of all such sightings come from
|
|
people who sincerely believe they saw a UFO. Kendrick Frazier, editor of
|
|
Skeptical Enquirer magazine, said Klass "is hated & detested by UFO
|
|
believers. He comes up with powerful evidence to puncture holes in their
|
|
claims." Klass, former senior avionics editor with Aviation Week & Space
|
|
Technology magazine, has written 4 books on UFO's, including "UFOs: The
|
|
Public Deceived." Klass criticized former New York Times reporter Howard
|
|
Blum, who's written a book called "Out There: The Government's Secret Quest
|
|
for Extraterrestrials." "Blum's written a book that's essentially fiction &
|
|
labeled it non-fiction."
|
|
|
|
03-11-91 CUSTER, S.D. Davina Ryszka says her hobby sometimes makes people
|
|
look at her a little funny. She likes to check into sightings of unidentified
|
|
flying objects. Ryszka's the state director of the Mutual UFO Network, a
|
|
Texas-based non-profit corporation that tries to document UFOs. Ryszka'd like
|
|
South Dakotans to keep their eyes to the skies for unusual objects butn't to
|
|
forget the ground, too. Her group's checking out some puzzling rings found in
|
|
crop fields. Circle-shaped patterns of flattened crops're most common in
|
|
England, but they've also appeared in Japan, New Zealand, the Soviet Union &
|
|
South Dakota. Last year, a circle appeared under a power line in a pasture
|
|
south of Eagle Butte. And last summer, a question mark-shaped depression
|
|
showed up in a Leola-area wheat field. Nobody's been able to explain the
|
|
patterns. Ryszka's been interested in UFOs since she was a teen-ager on her
|
|
parents' ranch in western Montana. There were plenty of UFO sightings there,
|
|
although she's never seen 1. "I've always hoped to." She's sure that reports
|
|
of unexplained events & objects like UFOs point to an exciting conclusion,
|
|
but she's not sure just what it is. "I've read so many accounts from so many
|
|
good, upstanding citizens. They'd have nothing to gain by going public." But
|
|
she'll risk having people "look at you a little funny" in order to be a
|
|
clearinghouse for observations & sightings of things that can't be readily
|
|
explained. Ryszka gets help from a Winner woman, Yvonne Hermsen, who said
|
|
some people might think she's as strange as the crop rings she's
|
|
investigated. "I may get branded as a real nut case." Recently, strange
|
|
lights in eastern South Dakota, possibly from a meteor, were all the rage.
|
|
"They caused a lot of talk & commotion around here."
|
|
|
|
03-25-91 BILOXI, Miss. It's been 17 years, but Charles E. Hickson still
|
|
remembers every detail of his intriguing abduction by aliens onto an
|
|
unidentified flying object in Pascagoula in 1973. Hickson, 1 of 4 speakers at
|
|
the first UFO International Conference held in Biloxi, told of his unique UFO
|
|
experience that occurred on a fishing trip with his friend, Calvin Parker.
|
|
Sitting on a bank near a bridge on the Pascagoula River, Hickson & Parker
|
|
unexpectedly saw an unusual round or oblong aircraft about 30 feet long land
|
|
near them. Immediately they were approached by 3 robot-like creatures who
|
|
picked Hickson up & carried him aboard the aircraft. "Calvin fainted so he
|
|
didn't know what'd happened, but I was carried aboard by these robots. Once
|
|
inside an object came out of the wall which seemed to scan my entire body
|
|
from top to bottom. I saw living beings through a window but they never
|
|
touched me or said anything to me." The beings in the window looked similar
|
|
to humans, with light colored skin & normal facial features. "I didn't know
|
|
what was going on. But I felt suspended for about an hour or hour & a half
|
|
while they inspected me." Eventually, the robots took Hickson back outside to
|
|
the river bank & the aircraft left, leaving him in a state of shock &
|
|
disbelief. However, knowing that his experience wasn't his imagination
|
|
playing tricks on him, Hickson's come very strongly to believe that what
|
|
happened to him was a visit by real alien beings who arrived on earth from
|
|
another planet or sphere in what're known as unidentified flying objects.
|
|
He's continued to've contact with the aliens in the years since that time &
|
|
that there'll be further UFO activity in the near future. "There's no doubt
|
|
in my mind that UFOs exist." Also speaking at the conference, which drew
|
|
several hundred UFO enthusiasts from across the Gulf Coast & other parts of
|
|
the United States, were UFO experts Antonio Huneeus, a UFO investigator &
|
|
researcher; Budd Hopkins, an author of UFO books who himself experienced a
|
|
sighting in 1964; & Stanton Friedman, a UFO investigator, scientist, author
|
|
& maker of documentary UFO movies. Huneeus said UFOs're a global phenomenon
|
|
& has recently, since the period of Glasnost in the USSR, been able to study
|
|
many sightings in Russia which were formerly kept secret. Sightings've
|
|
occurred in almost every country around the world. Showing slides of
|
|
photographs said to be taken of actual UFOs, 1 of the problems all legitimate
|
|
UFO investigators must deal with're the people who deliberately take photos
|
|
or make claims which later're proven to be hoaxes. "We do study UFOs
|
|
seriously, & we may not've the final answers, but we do believe we've some
|
|
evidence that some UFO sightings're real." Friedman, who's studied the
|
|
phenomenon for 32 years, is convinced that some UFOs're indeed alien aircraft
|
|
& that the US government's known this to be true since 1947. "None of the
|
|
arguments made by the skeptics can stand up under careful scrutiny. Alien
|
|
visits're the biggest story of the past millenium."
|
|
|
|
03-26-91 GRAND FORKS, N.D. A University of North Dakota professor & his
|
|
son've been interviewed about their alleged run-in with extraterrestrials for
|
|
a television show about unidentified flying objects. John Salter & his son
|
|
were interviewed for the television show "UFO Abductions" which its producer,
|
|
Sharron Gayle, said's likely to air on CBS television later this year. The
|
|
interviews'll be combined with actors' portrayals of their alleged 1988
|
|
encounters. Salter says his health's improved in 21 ways since the incident.
|
|
The professor, who chairs the Indian studies department at UND, now teaches
|
|
a class about UFOs.
|
|
|
|
04-01-91 Nebraskans who think they've seen ghosts, unidentified flying
|
|
objects or other weird things now've a telephone help line they can call for
|
|
assistance & information. E.A. Kral of Grand Island, an English teacher with
|
|
an interest in paranormal phenomena, started the Nebraska Scientific Claims
|
|
Investigation phone line 3 years ago with a $10,000 donation to the
|
|
University of Nebraska Foundation. "It seems to me it answers the question
|
|
`who do you call?' & it answers it in a responsible, professional manner.
|
|
This' not a matter of reinforcing beliefs. It's a matter of trying to seek
|
|
the truth." A caller to the line got a recorded message saying reports of
|
|
paranormal phenomena could be left on a recording device, & the call'd be
|
|
returned later. The answering machine's located in Omaha, at the University
|
|
of Nebraska Medical Center Dept. of Psychiatry. During regular business
|
|
hours, staff members take messages & either return calls or refer'em to local
|
|
people with expertise in the particular topic of the call. The phone number's
|
|
402-559-5035. Despite limited publicity, about 50 serious callers've
|
|
contacted the phone line, said facilitator Katherine Karrer. More than half
|
|
of the calls've come from students or others doing research on topics in the
|
|
paranormal. The line offers confidential help & information to people with
|
|
questions about the paranormal. Kral saw the need for the phone line after
|
|
his own experience delving into reports of UFOs during the 1970s. Originally
|
|
a believer, Kral became a skeptic after years of research. In the process, he
|
|
realized that people who were curious or concerned about paranormal topics'd
|
|
nowhere to turn for independent, scientific information. People seeking
|
|
information're referred to a collection of materials housed at the McGoogan
|
|
Library of Medicine at the medical center. The collection, which was set up
|
|
with an additional donation from Kral, includes materials by both believers
|
|
& skeptics on each topic. Other calls come from people who've had unexplained
|
|
experiences or've questions about paranormal claims. "It's mostly for people
|
|
who were very uncomfortable with the phenomena. Usually they just really want
|
|
to talk to someone who knows about it." The calls've covered a variety of
|
|
topics, including several ghostly experiences & 1 from a person reporting
|
|
time travel. The phone gets a workout whenever there's publicity about a
|
|
strange phenomenon or when a movie about the occult's released. If that
|
|
pattern holds, the line might get a rash of calls in May following the third
|
|
annual conference on Exploring Unexplained Phenomena in Lincoln. Topics to be
|
|
covered at the May 17-19 conference, sponsored by the Fortean Research Center
|
|
of Lincoln, will include ghosts, crop circles, UFOs & spontaneous human
|
|
combustion. It'll be at the Nebraska Center for Continuing Education. Among
|
|
conference speakers: John Keel, author of several books & articles on the
|
|
unexplained; Larry Arnold, a researcher on spontaneous human combustion;
|
|
Harry Jordan, who says he's evidence of architectural artifacts on Mars;
|
|
William Roll, a parapsychologist; & Budd Hopkins, a UFO abduction researcher.
|
|
There's a fee for the conference.
|
|
|
|
04-08-91 EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. Lou Farish's heard the snickers of those who
|
|
discount talk of cow mutilations, crop circles & extraterrestrial
|
|
kidnappings. But he isn't laughing. He helped organize the third annual
|
|
Ozarks UFO Convention. "I'm assuming the skeptics don't know anything about
|
|
the subject or they don't want to face the implications of the subject. They
|
|
don't want their world disturbed." About 400 people attended. "The
|
|
implication of the subject...is we're definitelyn't alone. I don't know if
|
|
we're in danger. There's that possibility," said the part-time postal clerk
|
|
who publishes a UFO news-clipping service with worldwide circulation.
|
|
"There're beings out there who don't seem to've any hostile intent toward us.
|
|
There're other beings out there who simply don't care they've an agenda to
|
|
carry out & they don't care if we know about it. They're going to do their
|
|
job. Period. I don't know if there're any out there who're hostile or not.
|
|
But the universe's a big place." The conference featured UFO researchers from
|
|
the United States & other countries. Linda Howe, an author & film producer
|
|
from Pennsylvania, spoke about animal mutilations. Farish said a cow was
|
|
mangled in Berryville 2 months ago by an incision produced by high heat,
|
|
along the lines of a laser. Sergei Bulantsev, a UFO researcher from the
|
|
Soviet Union, told conference-goers that aliens in his country're better
|
|
looking than those in the United States. "They're just like Europeans, like
|
|
foreign tourists," he said of the aliens that visit the Soviet Union. "It
|
|
seems to be different teams of aliens're operating in our 2 countries."
|
|
George Wingfield of Glastonbury, England, said circles're being cut out of
|
|
crop fields all over the world. He wasn't sure why the numbers of
|
|
incidents're increasing. "I can't explain, but it does seem that there's been
|
|
a sort of response to the fact that people're & taking interest in these
|
|
sightings."
|
|
|
|
04-15-91 EUGENE, Ore. The UFO Contact Center International provides a haven
|
|
from the hostility & ridicule that follows the terror of being abducted by
|
|
aliens, members say. "I tried to talk to a close friend, & now we haven't
|
|
talked since. I get that from a lot of people," center board member Clay
|
|
Kruger said. "But (at the center) I wasn't laughed at, I wasn't ridiculed. I
|
|
could talk to people who'd real good track records, real pillars of society."
|
|
Several members shared their unearthly stories with a small audience at the
|
|
University of Oregon. Kruger's first contact with UFOs occurred in July 1989
|
|
at his home in Kent, Wash. He awakened 1 night to see a cylindrical object
|
|
outside, about 6 by 8 feet. It radiated a purple glow around the back yard &
|
|
later went to the front of the house. Suddenly, he found himself against a
|
|
wall with nothing beneath him. He looked down to see a grass field in his
|
|
neighborhood. Kruger recounted 2 more nocturnal episodes alien contact 1
|
|
featuring a monkey-like being in his living room. Aileen Bringle, director of
|
|
the UFO Contact Center International, said the trauma of her first encounter
|
|
38 years ago led her to organize the center in 1978. Today, there're 60
|
|
regional groups in North America. Bringle, of Federal Way, Wash., described
|
|
her first encounter in 1953. It was midnight. She was asleep in the car next
|
|
to her husband, who was driving west near Pendleton. She awakened to his
|
|
screams & looked out the window to see the entire landscape fully illuminated
|
|
in green. "When something unknown's happening, there's no way to rationalize
|
|
it. We thought it was Hanford blowing up." Eventually the sky darkened & the
|
|
couple went on their way. Since then, Bringle's seen a UFO over Wyoming; been
|
|
told by her ex-husband that 5 aliens entered his bedroom & stomped on a pair
|
|
of shoes; & earlier this year awakened to find fingerprints on the insides of
|
|
her thighs. "That really disturbed me. I live alone." Bringle said the debate
|
|
about UFO contact intensified in 1987 when author Whitley Strieber published
|
|
"Communion," an account of being abducted from his secluded New York cabin.
|
|
"Scoffing at (abductees) is as ugly as laughing at rape victims," he wrote.
|
|
In 1988's "UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game," Philip J. Klass included a
|
|
"Post Script for Potential Abductees." "If you worry that your teenage
|
|
daughter may be abducted & impregnated with UFOnaut sperm," he wrote, "shift
|
|
your worries to more prosaic causes of pregnancy." Bringle calls Klass a
|
|
"paid debunker." Francesco Pagliaro set up the meeting after reading a letter
|
|
Bringle'd written in Omni magazine. "I know these people're sincere. You can
|
|
see it in their faces."
|
|
|
|
04-30-91 COHOES, N.Y. ALIENS GIVE ABDUCTEE GOOD HEALTH, BAD WORK RECORD!
|
|
Cruel-To-Be-Kind Space Magi Implant Disease-Killing Licorice Stick! Jobless
|
|
Victim Laments: `They Ruined My Life, But Cured My Cold!' Were life a
|
|
supermarket tabloid, those headlines'd sum up Richard Price's story. When he
|
|
was 8, aliens did take him aboard their ship. They did implant a substance
|
|
soft, like stale licorice in his stomach, an implant that seemed to keep him
|
|
healthy. They did spoil his employment prospects, messing up his mind so he
|
|
couldn't hold a job. Really. A Florida insurance company took his story so
|
|
seriously it agreed to pay off on a prank UFO abduction insurance policy.
|
|
Price's getting $10 million-a dollar a year for 10 million years. UFO
|
|
devotees & skeptics agree that Price probably believes his own story. UFO
|
|
believers say they can't absolutely prove it, but they're willing to accept
|
|
his tale. Skeptics say they don't have to prove anything that Price proves
|
|
he's a kook every time he opens his mouth. Family, friends, psychiatrists
|
|
these were the first to disbelieve Price's tale. His parents warned himn't to
|
|
talk about it; he kept talking, so they stuck him in a mental hospital when
|
|
he was 17. "I finally denied it all just to get out. After that, I kind of
|
|
kept it quiet." Lately, Price's begun talking again about his alleged
|
|
abduction Sept. 23, 1955 & people're starting to, well, almost believe him.
|
|
"We've no reason to disbelieve him," says Budd Hopkins, author of the 1987
|
|
bestseller "Intruders" about alien visitations. "I've seen nothing that'd
|
|
make me doubt that he's simply telling the truth." Retired University of
|
|
Kentucky psychologist Robert Baker, who's written scholarly articles
|
|
debunking UFO abduction claims, says Price's a harmless crank. People who
|
|
make such claims're what psychologists once called "simple schizophrenics.
|
|
They're not very bright, & they've to've some explanation for their
|
|
inadequacies." Like other UFO abduction claimants, Price's involvement with
|
|
aliens' an ongoing thing. Price says that while driving a cab, he saw 2
|
|
glowing beings in a house. After seeing them, he suffered a 3-hour memory
|
|
lapse during which aliens may've abducted him again, or at least stiffed him
|
|
on cab fare. Price also thinks he's being trailed by 1 of the MIBs-Men In
|
|
Black: human automatons with black clothes & glasses who try to intimidate
|
|
UFO abductees into silence. "I've never heard of a UFO case that can't be
|
|
explained in prosaic or earthly terms," says Philip J. Klass, whose book "UFO
|
|
Abductions: A Dangerous Game" has become something of a bible for UFO
|
|
skeptics. If anyone can prove otherwise, he'll refund the full purchase price
|
|
of all his books. He's also offered $10,000 for proof of an alien abduction.
|
|
Confirmation by the FBI'll satisfy him. Instead of aliens doing the
|
|
kidnapping, "I could sooner believe that they're ghosts or poltergeists or
|
|
some of Santa Claus' mischievous elves." Skeptics & believers admit Price's
|
|
a troubled man. Price says "UFO stress" has kept him from holding a job for
|
|
more than a decade. The incident's hurt his marriage, & his UFO claim
|
|
embarrasses his wife & 3 sons. Price says he wants to see the aliens again &
|
|
ask "'What did you do this for, why did you screw up my life?' If they're
|
|
that advanced, it seems like they'd try to do something to help the person
|
|
they're abducting." The villains're not aliens but people such as Hopkins,
|
|
who perpetuate "this type of stupidity & nonsense," Baker says. "Through
|
|
their naivete & lack of understanding of human psychology, they've ballooned
|
|
this thing into a national headache." Abduction stories appear throughout
|
|
history, tailored to the whimsies of the times. In the Middle Ages, people
|
|
claimed flying dragons swooped down & abducted them. Later, fairies & trolls
|
|
did the kidnapping. In the late 1800s, stories appeared of aliens in
|
|
spaceships like the early dirigibles. In the 1940s, spaceships were
|
|
transformed into the flying saucers popularized by science fiction pulp
|
|
magazines. That's the kind of craft Price describes. While playing in a
|
|
cemetery by his home in nearby Troy, N.Y., Price claims, 2 helmeted aliens in
|
|
red & blue uniforms took him aboard their ship. He couldn't resist, as if his
|
|
will'd been sapped. The aliens, with pinkish-gray skin & about 4 to 5 feet
|
|
tall, showed him a movie then'd him undress so they could examine him. They
|
|
inserted the implant a 4-millimeter-long chunk of dark material & told him to
|
|
leave it alone or he'd die. It lay visible just below the skin until 1989,
|
|
when it broke through & popped out, he says. Until then, Price says, he'd
|
|
been healthy & thinks the implant may've had something to do with it. Since
|
|
the implant came out, he's suffered persistent colds. The implant's intrigued
|
|
UFO investigators. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist's run
|
|
tests on the substance but says he hasn't yet identified it. "I don't know if
|
|
it's animal, vegetable or mineral," says the physicist, who asked that his
|
|
name be withheld. While Price "is a little bit of a crackpot," the physicist
|
|
says he hopes the implant'll prove to be genuine. "Finding other intelligent
|
|
life in the universe'd be completing the Copernican revolution." Implants're
|
|
common in abductees' stories, though Price's among the first UFO
|
|
investigators've been able to study. UFO researchers theorize implants may be
|
|
like radio tags humans use to track wildlife. Price's story's 1 of at least
|
|
1,000 reported cases of people who claim aliens took'em aboard their
|
|
spaceships. 1 of Price's fellow travelers' Ed Walters of Gulf Breeze, Fla.,
|
|
a building contractor who thinks aliens took him on a joyride in 1988.
|
|
Walters says he was photographing UFOs when he suffered a 90-minute memory
|
|
lapse. Under hypnosis, he recalled being taken aboard a spaceship. "It's kind
|
|
of good I didn't have any conscious recall. If I could remember all that
|
|
stuff, I'm sure it'd be very disturbing." David Jacobs, a history professor
|
|
at Temple University in Philadelphia, says he & Hopkins've been awarded a
|
|
grant to find out how many people've been abducted by aliens. Jacobs won't
|
|
say how much the grant was & identifies the source of the money as a "Las
|
|
Vegas financier" who wants to remain anonymous. The details of abductees'
|
|
stories're generally hazy, a sign that they're not fabricating the tales. If
|
|
they were imagining it, dreaming or just plain faking, "every story'd be rich
|
|
& filled with idiosyncratic situations from their own lives. We know this
|
|
from hallucination & fantasy studies." In abductee accounts, the aliens seem
|
|
bored, like medical technicians tired of taking X-rays. "These creatures
|
|
don't seem to've the sensitivity of humans. They've a job to do & they do
|
|
it," says Walter Andrus, director of the Mutual UFO Network in Seguin, Texas.
|
|
"We're not talking about the standard science fiction contact, where 2 equals
|
|
meet in a dramatic situation & exchange presents. We're talking about
|
|
exploitation. Humans're just specimens." Abductees're not publicity seekers,
|
|
investigators say. Of 300 abductees Hopkins' studied, only 9 have allowed
|
|
their names to be used. Price does seek publicity, hoping it'll vindicate
|
|
him. Surprise, he's writing a book. He doesn't feel as if he's cashing in; he
|
|
figures the aliens owe him. Lately, he's gotten some dubious national
|
|
attention. He appeared on the TV tabloid show "Hard Copy" & Joan Rivers' talk
|
|
show & was written up in UFO Universe, the supermarket tabloid of UFO
|
|
magazines. Among the magazine's cover stories: "Elvis Presley's Mysterious
|
|
UFO Connection" & "Strange Pregnancies! What Do Aliens Want With Our Women?"
|
|
The purveyors of such headlines "used to be people looking for God. Now it's
|
|
aliens," says UFO skeptic Baker. "They're looking for aliens instead of God,
|
|
or Jesus, or Moses, or Napoleon. They're to be pitied. They're unfortunate
|
|
people."
|
|
|
|
05-13-91 LINCOLNTON, NC Danny Barger of Lincolnton's never seen a UFO, but
|
|
that doesn't keep him from looking for them. Barger's a field investigator
|
|
for the Mutual UFO Network. He looks into people's reports of strange
|
|
sightings & events for evidence of UFOs & for evidence of alien life. Since
|
|
1950, investigators've documented 11 fourth-kind close encounters in North
|
|
Carolina. The fourth kind're those in which a person claims to've actually
|
|
seen an alien being or been abducted. None occurred in Lincoln or Gaston
|
|
County. Right now, Barger's investigating a case in Charlotte. The reports
|
|
get strange & stranger, such as 3-finger marks without fingerprints on the
|
|
inside of house windows. Barger keeps more than 300 books on UFOs & magazines
|
|
dating back to 1953, when he was 12. Barger himself's never seen a UFO. "I
|
|
don't go out at night looking up at the sky expecting to see one. People say,
|
|
`If I haven't seen it, it's not so.' I've got the interest without seeing it.
|
|
I've met enough people. All these people're not lying. I believe some of the
|
|
sightings're actually UFOs."
|
|
|
|
05-18-91 GRAND FORKS, N.D. A UND professor whose story of an encounter with
|
|
aliens was featured on a network television special saysn't only Hollywood
|
|
filmmakers believe in UFOs. John Salter, chairman of Indian studies at UND,
|
|
claims to've come across a group of aliens in 1988 while driving with his son
|
|
on a highway near Richland Center, Wis. Studies show that a majority of
|
|
Americans recognize the reality of unidentified flying objects & attribute it
|
|
to extraterrestrials. The US government's more serious about UFO encounters
|
|
than it acknowledges, & even the pope's gotten in on the action. "The
|
|
Vatican, under urging by the Jesuits, has set up a special office to make
|
|
contact with visiting extraterrestrials & offer'em the Mother Church. While
|
|
that certainly says we're making progress, my feeling's the
|
|
extraterrestrials've a very satisfactory theology in their own right." Salter
|
|
watched CBS' special, "Visitors from the Unknown," on a wide screen
|
|
television with a group of 20 people in a lounge in Grand Forks. Salter's
|
|
story climaxed the hour-long show. The 15-minute segment on Salter contained
|
|
footage of an interview with him done in February in Grand Forks, as well as
|
|
narration by Salter & son John. Actors were used to recreate certain scenes.
|
|
Salter & his son both claim to've had amnesia right after the alleged
|
|
encounter. They later recalled through flashbacks their visit with a group of
|
|
aliens. The aliens were short & big-eyed. Their ships were spinning
|
|
saucer-types similar to those in popular movies such as "Close Encounters of
|
|
the Third Kind" & "E.T." Salter claims a larger alien used a "telekinetic
|
|
force" to prevent Salter from hitting the ground after he tripped. The aliens
|
|
also did medical examinations of Salter & his son. Salter also claims that
|
|
the aliens gave him a nose implant & injections in the throat & upper chest
|
|
that've resulted in a long list of beneficial physiological changes. None of
|
|
the changes've been verified by doctors. Salter's colleagues at UND seem to
|
|
believe his story, or at least're too polite to say otherwise. "I've
|
|
encountered virtually no open skepticism. I assume there's some. It just
|
|
hasn't been openly manifested. My UFO courses've been brimful. No sweat with
|
|
the students." The aliens were nice & he wouldn't mind seeing'em again.
|
|
|
|
05-28-91 HUNT, Texas Unlike its counterpart in England, there's no question
|
|
about who built the Kerr County arches. But why Stonehenge II was built's
|
|
just as elusive as the mystery surrounding the prehistoric megaliths rising
|
|
up from the English countryside. "We didn't set out to build Stonehenge,"
|
|
said Al Shepperd, who designed it along with neighbor Doug Hill. "We were
|
|
just messing around with rock & it kind of grew. We certainly'd no idea the
|
|
way it'd turn out." Far from the Salisbury Plain, this modern-day monument
|
|
rises in a pasture along a rural lane in the Hill Country, 2 miles west of
|
|
Hunt on Farm Road 1340 about 115 miles west of Austin. The massive
|
|
structure's generally 60% as tall as the original & 90% as large in
|
|
circumference. "When you turn the corner, you know what a great curiosity
|
|
it's & the mindset why's it here? Why's the original 1 built where it is?"
|
|
said Phil Neighbors, executive vice president of the Kerrville Area Chamber
|
|
of Commerce. Many theories exist about the origins of the English Stonehenge,
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but no 1 knows for sure who built it or what prompted its conception. But
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Stonehenge II was born at the Kerrville dump in the summer of 1989. Hill, a
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tile contractor, was gathering limestone for his patio but decided 1 stone
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was too large for his use. So he crossed the road & stood it upright in
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Shepperd's field. "Doug pulled up at 7:30 am & said `I've got a rock out here
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for you,'" said Shepperd. "I said, `It looks kind of funny by itself, let's
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put an arch somewhere.'" Hill constructed an arch 13 feet tall, with a 3-foot
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wide opening. Together, the haphazardly placed limestone & the man-made frame
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reminded Shepperd of Stonehenge, which he'd visited earlier in 1989. The 2
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then set out to create a replica of the famous landmark. From August 1989 to
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May 1990, Hill built hollow plaster arches that were reinforced with steel
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rods & metal lath. Each pillar of the arches' set in concrete for stability.
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The plaster was tinted a dark gray & allowed to weather to resemble the stone
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|
of the original. The 4 inner arches're 11-12 feet tall. The ones that ring
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the outside vary from 9 to 11 feet tall to compensate for the slope of the
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|
land. 5,000 square-feet of plaster & 800 bags of cement were used in the
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|
construction. Hill was more interested in making the Stonehenge replica look
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right than trying to match the scale of the original. He didn't attempt to
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|
align the sculpture with astronomical bodies as the original Stonehenge
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|
appears to be since the hills in the area block the sun at various times
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|
anyway. "It's probablyn't perfect, but it gets the point across. It's a play
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|
thing. I like to think of it as a work of art, but I haven't found anyone
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|
else who needs 1." Since the early days of construction, cars've screeched to
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|
a halt when the project comes into view. Already, there's been a wedding,
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|
youth campouts & numerous photo sessions including 1 for a ballet troupe &
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|
rock album cover at the site. The story's appeared on national television &
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|
in a children's magazine. "People thought we were crazy. They thought we were
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|
getting into satanism." Butn't everyone likes Stonehenge II. An employee of
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|
a nearby youth camp told him she looks the other way when she drives by
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|
because she believes the design's evil. "She's thoroughly against it, like it
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|
was an idol." But most people see the sculpture as a quirky tourist
|
|
attraction. "It's another thing that draws attention to Kerrville & Kerr
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|
County." The Kerrville Area Chamber of Commerce includes the sculpture on its
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|
list of attractions. "We encourage people to come & look." Shepperd & Hill're
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|
planning to add a log book for visitors to sign. T-shirts depicting the
|
|
project're also a possibility. The 2 designers now're discussing a second
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|
project in the 22-acre field that'd depict the crash of an unidentified
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|
flying object. It'll be up to the visitor to decide if the UFO's any symbolic
|
|
connection to Stonehenge. Shepperd generally visits the site during the day
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|
& doesn't get hooked into its mysticism. Hill, though, says the replica's a
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|
special place. "I come out every solstice. Full moons're really nice to see
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|
the shadows on the ground's something you can't experience anywhere else." At
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|
leastn't in Kerr County. There's a slightly scaled down, but mathematically
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|
correct Stonehenge at the University of Missouri-Rolla that was built by some
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|
years back by some engineering students.
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06-24-91 COLLEGE PARK, Md. If you think you've seen Elvis recently, call Chip
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|
Denman immediately for a reality check. Denman's Mr. Bah Humbug himself. He's
|
|
president of the National Capital Area Skeptics, a 350-member society of
|
|
debunkers & naysayers who claim to serve "at the front lines in the battle
|
|
against gullibility & fraud." They erupt in rib-poking laughter at rumors
|
|
that Elvis Presley's still alive. Their eyebrows arch at mention of ghosts,
|
|
UFO abductions or the wonders of astrology. Bigfoot sightings're dismissed as
|
|
hokum, New Age mysticism as balderdash. But Denman, a pony-tailed
|
|
statistician at the Univ. of Maryland, hastens to squelch any suggestion that
|
|
his colleagues're mere spoilsports. "We're not a bunch of old fogies who sit
|
|
around harrumphing & scoffing. We try to maintain a high level of good humor
|
|
& a sense of fun about what we're doing." The group publishes a quarterly
|
|
newsletter titled "Skeptical Eye" & a monthly calendar of events called
|
|
"Shadow of a Doubt." Members attend a "Seeing's Believing" film series & hear
|
|
lectures on such topics as "Magic of the Gurus of India" & "Animal Quackers:
|
|
Pseudoscience for Pets." Denman & a magician friend staged a Halloween show
|
|
titled "Seance! or Things That Go Bump in the Night," a theatrical spoof of
|
|
the clairvoyant's tricks of the trade. For more than a year, the skeptics've
|
|
offered a $1,000 award to anyone who can demonstrate psychic powers mind
|
|
reading, dousing or levitation, for example under scientific test conditions.
|
|
So far, nobody's stepped forward. Led by Denman, the skeptics banded together
|
|
4 years ago to promote scientific inquiry based on hard evidence, & to combat
|
|
"irrationality, superstition & just plain nonsense." They include scientists,
|
|
educators, lawyers, doctors & other white-collar professionals. "We all share
|
|
the idea that the scientific process' a good strategy for working in the
|
|
world & making decisions, no matter whether you're getting medical treatment
|
|
or buying a used car. We say, go kick the tires. Don't take the salesman's
|
|
word for it." Denman's not only a scientist but's been an amateur magician
|
|
since childhood, when he was fascinated by his father's card tricks. "As a
|
|
scientist, I'm concerned with how things really work. And as a magician, I've
|
|
come to appreciate how bright, well-educated, intelligent people can be
|
|
fooled so easily." Denman doesn't believe in ghosts. "To believe in
|
|
apparitions'd require a radical change in what we know about modern physics."
|
|
Most people've had some "remarkable, compelling, personally spooky
|
|
experiences' that defy explanation, but mistakenly try to explain'em as
|
|
paranormal events. "As a scientist, I'd much rather say I don't know what it
|
|
was." Denman doesn't rule out the possibility of future contact with
|
|
intelligent beings from an alien planet. He finds that prospect much more
|
|
plausible than speaking with the voice of a long-dead warrior from Atlantis,
|
|
or willing your body to float in air, or bumping into an older, wiser Elvis
|
|
somewhere. "I can say with some degree of certainty that I've never seen
|
|
Elvis walking around my neighborhood. I'm so skeptical that I can hardly
|
|
believe it." The telephone number for the National Capital Area Skeptics'
|
|
301-587-3827.
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**********************************************
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* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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********************************************** |