State of Affairs or Affectation in Ufology Updates We’ve all been aware of the recent advances in some areas of Ufology updates. Some embrace it and some are still suspicious. As much as we may not like to admit it, To The Stars Academy is raisin...
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WEIRD WIRED WORLD OF UFOLOGY by Timothy – “Mr UFO” – Beckley Let me tell you “radio” sure as hell has changed from when I was a kid. A lot of stations went off the air at sunset and your choice of music or talk was severely limited. You couldn’t choose from rap, or Reggie and classic […]
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This article (below), appeared in The Guardian on 1985 January 5 under the heading, A Flashlight in the Forest (below). It is reproduced here, slightly edited to clarify and update various points, and with the addition of several illustrations.
IN December 1980, something remarkable was said to have occurred outside the US Air Force base at Woodbridge, near Ipswich in eastern England. News of the event leaked out slowly, finally hitting the headlines in October 1983: “UFO lands in Suffolk – and that’s official”, screamed the front page of the News of the World, a popular UK tabloid.
The story was sensational. It told of a group of American airmen who were confronted one night with an alien spaceship in Rendlesham Forest, which surrounds the air force base. According to the story, the craft came down over the trees and landed in a blinding explosion of light.
The airmen tried to approach the object, but it moved away from them as though under intelligent control. The following day, landing marks were found on the ground, burns were seen on nearby trees, and radiation traces were recorded. There was even talk of aliens aboard the craft, and allegations of a massive cover-up. It had all the ingredients of a classic UFO encounter.
The News of the World’s informant was a former US airman. He was given the pseudonym Art Wallace, for he claimed that his life had been threatened if he talked [note: his real name is Larry Warren, as everyone now knows]. Yet here he was freely giving interviews to newspapers and television.
While his fantastic story might be doubted, it was impossible to shrug off a memo written by the deputy base commander, Lt. Col. Charles I. Halt, to the Ministry of Defence, which was publicly released in the United States under the Freedom of Information Act. Halt’s memo, reprinted in full here, is not as sensational as Wallace’s story, but it is prime documentary evidence of a type rarely encountered in UFO cases.
CNN coverage
UFO researchers in Britain could scarcely believe their luck: this was The Big One, final proof that We Are Not Alone. The News of the World paid £12,000 for the story. A subsequent book about the case, Sky Crash by Brenda Butler, Jenny Randles, and Dot Street, described it as “unique in the annals of UFO history...the world’s first officially observed, and officially confirmed, UFO landing and contact”.
All that evidence, backed up by the word of the US Air Force, could not possibly have a rational explanation. Or could it? I have my own detective story about the Rendlesham Forest UFO.
Soon after the News of the World story appeared, I went in search of local opinions about the case. I made contact by telephone with a forester, Vince Thurkettle, who lives within a mile of the alleged UFO landing site [he now lives in Norfolk]. Immediately I was brought down to Earth. “I don’t know of anyone around here who believes that anything strange happened that night,” he told me.
So what did he think the flashing light was in Rendlesham Forest? I was astonished by his reply. “It’s the lighthouse,” he said.
That lighthouse lies at Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast, five miles from the forest. Thurkettle plotted on a map the direction in which the airmen reported seeing their flashing UFO, and found that they were looking straight into the lighthouse beam.
Could this really be the answer? I visited the site with a camera crew from BBC TV’s Breakfast Time programme. On the way there, the cameraman was sceptical about the lighthouse theory. I didn’t blame him.
It was past midnight when Vince Thurkettle took us to the site of the alleged landing, and it felt spooky. The area had by now been cleared of trees as part of normal forest operations, but enough pines remained at the edge of the forest to give us a realistic idea of what the airmen saw that night [see photo below].
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Night light: I took this photograph on my second visit to the forest, in 1983 November. The Orford Ness lighthouse is the bright yellow-white light at right of centre, seen between trees that were still standing at the edge of the forest, although the area in which I was standing had by then been cleared. Two other whitish lights left of centre were on a building or buildings in the valley, which I did not identify at the time. At far left are two red lights on tall aerials on Orford Ness itself...
Sure enough, the lighthouse beam seemed to hover a few feet above ground level, because Rendlesham Forest is higher than the coastline. The light seemed to move around as we moved. And it looked close – only a few hundred yards away among the trees. All this matched the airmen’s description of the UFO.
Slash and burn: Cuts made by foresters on pine trees of Rendlesham Forest give the impression of burn marks. Photos taken in 1983 November.
The conclusion was clear. Had a real UFO been present as well as the lighthouse, the airmen should have reported seeing two brilliant flashing lights among the trees, not one. But they never mentioned the lighthouse, only a pulsating UFO – not surprisingly, since no one expects to come across a lighthouse beam near ground level in a forest.
So startlingly brilliant was the beam that the television cameras captured it easily [see still frame at left]. The formerly sceptical cameraman was convinced. My report was shown the following morning on Breakfast Time, much to the dismay of UFO spotters and the News of the World reporter...
The lighthouse theory soon had its supporters and its detractors. But there were still too many open questions for the case to be considered solved. For instance, what about those landing marks?
Some weeks later [in 1983 November] I returned to Rendlesham Forest in search of answers. The landing marks had long since been destroyed when the trees were felled, but I now knew an eyewitness who had seen them: Vince Thurkettle. He recalled for me his disappointment with what he saw.
The three depressions were irregular in shape and did not even form a symmetrical triangle. He recognized them as rabbit diggings, several months old and covered with a layer of fallen pine needles. They lay in an area surrounded by 75ft-tall pine trees planted 10ft to 15ft apart – scarcely the place to land a 20ft-wide spacecraft. [Note: this is one of the various estimates of size that have been made. Witness Jim Penniston has said the object was “the size of a tank” although Halt’s memo described it as 2–3 metres across].
The “burn marks” on the trees were axe cuts in the bark, made by the foresters themselves as a sign that the trees were ready to be felled. I saw numerous examples in which the pine resin, bubbling into the cut, gives the impression of a burn [see photos below].
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Slash and burn: Cuts made by foresters on pine trees of Rendlesham Forest give the impression of burn marks. Photos taken in 1983 November.
Additional information came from other eyewitnesses – the local police, called to the scene by the Woodbridge air base. The police officers who visited the site reported that they could see no UFO, only the Orford Ness lighthouse. Like Vince Thurkettle, they attributed the landing marks to animals. The case for a landed spacecraft was looking very shaky indeed.
What had made the airmen think that something had crashed into the forest in the first place? I already knew from previous UFO cases that a brilliant meteor, a piece of natural debris from space burning up in the atmosphere, could give such an impression. But I was unable to find records of such a meteor on the morning of December 27 [the date given in Halt’s memo].
What had made the airmen think that something had crashed into the forest in the first place? I already knew from previous UFO cases that a brilliant meteor, a piece of natural debris from space burning up in the atmosphere, could give such an impression. But I was unable to find records of such a meteor on the morning of December 27 [the date given in Halt’s memo].
Here the police account provided a vital lead by showing that Col. Halt’s memo, written two weeks after the event, had got the date of the first sighting wrong. It occurred on December 26, not December 27.
With this corrected date, I telephoned Dr John Mason, who collects reports of such sightings for the British Astronomical Association. He told me that shortly before 3 am on December 26 an exceptionally brilliant meteor, almost as bright as the full Moon, had been seen over southern England. Dr Mason confirmed that this meteor would have been visible to the airmen at Woodbridge as though something were crashing into the forest nearby. The time of the sighting matched that given in Col. Halt’s memo.
Finally, I turned to the question of the radiation readings. I learned [from the UK’s National Radiological Protection Board] that readings like those given in Col. Halt’s memo would be expected from natural sources of radiation such as cosmic rays and the Earth itself. In short, there was no unusual radiation at the site.
As for the star-like objects in the final paragraph of Col. Halt’s memo, they were probably just that – stars. Bright celestial objects are the main culprits in UFO sightings and have fooled many experienced observers, including pilots. The object seen by Col. Halt to the south was almost certainly Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.
If it seems surprising that a colonel in the US Air Force should identify a star as a UFO, consider the alternatives. Is it likely that a bright, flashing UFO should hover over southern England for three hours without being spotted by anyone other than a group of excited airmen? And if Col. Halt really believed that an alien craft had invaded his airspace, why did he not scramble fighters to investigate? [Actually, we now know from Halt himself and from RAF Watton that Halt asked if anything was seen on radar, but evidently nothing was. Researcher Nicholas Redfern found that Halt’s call was logged by RAF Watton at 03.25 on December 28, which shows that Halt’s memo got the date of the second sighting wrong, too].
UFO hunters will continue to believe that an alien spaceship landed in Rendlesham Forest that night. But I know that the first sighting coincided with the burn-up in the atmosphere of an exceptionally bright meteor, and that the airmen who saw the flashing UFO between the pine trees were looking straight at the Orford Ness lighthouse. The rest of the case is a marvellous product of human imagination.
POSTSCRIPT:
One of the original promoters of this case, British UFOlogist Jenny Randles, who has probably spent more time investigating and writing about it than anyone else, has gradually come to accept most of the explanation outlined above, although she still nurtures the belief that something unusual may have happened even if it wasn’t a genuine UFO. In a 1998 book on the case, UFO Crash Landing, she writes glumly: “Many people think the Rendlesham story is a nonsense that was debunked out of existence. One might even be tempted to argue that if a UFO case like Rendlesham falls, then none is safe. The whole mystery may collapse into misperception and witness exaggeration.”
That, of course, is exactly why the UFO community dare not let Rendlesham fall.
The National UFO Reporting Center has reported that a Summerville, South Carolina man has reported that he was walking his dog on Saturday, December 7th of 2013, at about a quarter past 7PM eastern time, when he witnessed a bright red, glowing object...
Two separate video shots capture what appear to be unidentified flying objects flying over a forest fire in West Kelowna, British Columbia, outside of Vancouver Canada. According to huffingtonpost.com, Castanet.net, a news organization i...
ufocasebook.com
Recently, New York Magazine featured a thoughtful article on ufology, Mark Jacobson’s “The End of UFOs,” which presented a recap of the recent MUFON Symposium in Pennsylvania.
In the commentary Jacobson provided, I found the following excerpt particularly poignant, in light of a culture of belief that surrounds a subject about which, in pure honesty, I feel a number of its great adherents remain very “in the dark”:
“Fernando Garces-Soto, a wry, 60-ish Colombian-born music producer from Miami and fellow witness, was taking it more personally. ‘I’m spending a $1,000 to come to this. That’s a lot of money for the same old stories. This rehash, and more rehash. Probably next year I’ll spend another $1,000. What choice do I have?’ Fernando exclaimed, finding the existential humor of the situation. ‘I’m obsessed,’ he sighed. ‘I’m all messed up.’ "In truth, maybe we’ll stay “messed up” if we continue re-hashing and re-hashing, and hiring only “celebrity Ufologists” to come out and give lectures because they are “the big names in the field,” and hence, the ones who will sell tickets.
There are a great many brilliant thinkers out there whose names you never hear, and who wouldn’t sell tickets to a large-scale event; but what they have to offer might do more than just amuse or entertain… it might cause you to think.
Innovators in ufology today, who actually present the best case for the existence of a phenomenon which we don’t fully understand?
Arguably, many of the brightest thinkers aren’t names you would even know… and hence, from a practical business standpoint, you likely won’t hear them lecturing at large-scale UFO events. I think we all have to understand this… but we also must remember to try and overcome our reservations about listening to new voices in the field, whose work we know nothing about… just like we must overcome our feelings about what a UFO skeptic has to say on the subject.
In truth, we might learn something meaningful from each of them. Innovators in Ufology today, who actually present the best case for the existence of a phenomenon which we don’t fully understand?
In truth, we might learn something meaningful from each of them.
So is ufology “dying”?
Is there so little to this phenomenon that there is nothing to be studied at all? I think that’s hardly the case; the problem, instead, is that we have become hung up in the ideological extremes, and the cult of personality surrounding those who have (and I say this in appreciation of their work) dedicated their lives, and livelihood, to studying this mystery.
For a few of them, it has led to fame and notoriety… I wonder if they, after working so hard, and for so long, would really want people to shrug off new ideas and good research that may arise elsewhere, in favor of an autograph instead? It’s food for thought…
Still, I would argue that the newest, and best innovators in this field are “below the radar,” so to speak. You may not find them at conferences, because they don’t draw crowds; you won’t see them on television, because they aren’t sensational enough to bring ratings. You may not even read about their work, because some of them are applying technical thought to the subject that publishers wouldn’t find appealing on any printed page… but they are out there, and they are working.
I know, because I am familiar with many of them myself. In fact, I would argue that some of the best innovations in the study of unidentified aerial illuminations aren’t even generally accepted as what we call “UFOs,” and largely due to the fundamental (but timeless) misinterpretation of the acronym UFO–meaning simply an unidentified flying object–being taken to mean an extraterrestrial spaceship, which was never the intended use of the term.
Serious study of UFOs will always be criticized, but arguably, this is largely because its detractors are among those who don’t know where to look for the good research that’s being done.
These critics will continually watch the sensational television shows, and sit in the back rows at popular conferences and events, criticizing arguments that, at times, are so easily deconstructed that it’s easily likened to shooting fish in the proverbial barrel. But what they are criticizing often isn’t the most meaningful, relevant, or up-to-date information on the subject; perhaps they should spend their time and criticisms more wisely, and go looking for a harder argument to deconstruct.
And as for the groups who continually prop ufology high atop a rickety scaffolding of old cases, fringe theories, and sensational claims, they should learn to expect that critics will continue to attempt to debase their arguments.
In truth, neither of these opposing sides seems to be interested in discussing the most relevant details pertaining to true anomalies which may exist in our world.
KENS NOTE: I have been harping for years as to why all of the UFO conferences do not have a showcase of UFO photos. I had a presentation of UFO photos at the Baltimore Conference a few years ago and I feel it was a hit. There are many original and real UFO photographs.
Thanks to Ken Pfeifer
ufocasebook.com WW II Document Research (In search of "Foo-Fighters") By Andy Roberts (Originally published in: UFO BRIGANTIA No 66, JULY 1990) Every student of the history of UFOs knows of the phenomenon seen during WWII and known as foo...
Oil painting by Chris Lambright based on photographs taken of the actual landing site. The witness, Sgt. Lonnie Zamora, has seen this illustration and stated that it is a good representation of what he observed. (thanks to UFOs at Close Sight for ...
By Steve Rose
The Guardian
In a new documentary, US government agents claim they spent decades giving fake evidence of extraterrestrials to gullible ufologists. But why? And how can we trust them now?Hidden among the avalanche of documents leaked by Edward Snowden were images from a Powerpoint presentation by GCHQ, entitled The Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations. Images include camouflaged moths, inflatable tanks, women in burqas, and complex diagrams plastered with jargon, buzzwords and slogans: "Disruption Operational Playbook", "Swap the real for the false and vice versa", "People make decisions as part of groups" and, beneath a shot of hands shuffling a deck of cards, "We want to build Cyber Magicians". Curiously, sandwiched in the middle of the document are three photographs of UFOs. Not real ones – classic fakes: one was a hub cap, another a bunch of balloons, and one that turned out to be a seagull.
Devout ufologists might seize upon this as further proof that our governments "know something" about aliens and their transportation methods, but really it suggests the opposite: the UFO community is a textbook case of a gullible group susceptible to manipulation. Having spent too long watching the skies and The X-Files, it's implied, they'll readily swallow whatever snippet of "evidence" suits their grand theory.
If there really is a UFO conspiracy, it's surely the worst-kept secret in history. Roswell, Area 51, flashing lights, little green men, abductions – it's all been fed through the pop culture mill to the point of fatigue. Even the supposed enforcers of the secret, the "men in black", have their own movie franchise. But a new documentary, Mirage Men, unearths compelling evidence that UFO folklore was actually fabricated by the US government. Rather than covering up the existence of aliens, could it be that the real conspiracy has been persuading us to believe in them?
Mirage Men's chief coup is to land an actual man in black: a former Air Force special investigations officer named Richard Doty, who admits to having infiltrated UFO circles. A fellow UFO researcher says: "Doty had this wonderful way to sell it – 'I'm with the government. You cooperate with us and I'm going to tell you what the government really knows about UFOs, deep down in those vaults.'" Doty and his colleagues fed credulous ufologists lies and half-truths, knowing their fertile imaginations would do the rest. In return, they were apprised of chatter from the community, thus alerting the military when anyone was getting to close to their top-secret technology. And if the Soviets thought the US really was communing with aliens, all the better.
The classic case, well-known to conspiracy aficionados, is Paul Bennewitz, a successful electronics entrepreneur in New Mexico. In 1979, Bennewitz started seeing strange lights in the sky, and picking up weird transmissions on his amateur equipment. The fact that he lived just across the road from Kirtland air force base should have set alarm bells ringing, but Bennewitz was convinced these phenomena were of extraterrestrial origin. Being a good patriot, he contacted the Air Force, who realised that, far from eavesdropping on ET, Bennewitz was inadvertently eavesdropping on them. Instead of making him stop, though, Doty and other officers told Bennewitz they were interested in his findings. That encouraged Bennewitz to dig deeper. Within a few years, he was interpreting alien languages, spotting crashed alien craft in the hills from his plane (he was an amateur pilot), and sounding the alert for a full-scale invasion. All the time, the investigators were surveilling him surveilling them. They gave Bennewitz computer software that "interpreted" the signals, and even dumped fake props for him to discover. The mania took over Bennewitz's life. In 1988, his family checked him into a psychiatric facility.
There's plenty more like this. As Mirage Men discovers, central tenets of the UFO belief system turn out to have far earthlier origins. Mysterious cattle mutilations in 1970s New Mexico turn out to have been officials furtively investigating radiation in livestock after they'd conducted an ill-advised experiment in underground "nuclear fracking". Test pilots for the military's experimental silent helicopters admit to attaching flashing lights to their craft to fool civilians. Doty himself comes across as a slippery character, to say the least. "He remains an absolute enigma," says Mark Pilkington, writer of the book Mirage Men, the basis for the documentary. He found the retired Doty working as a traffic cop in a small New Mexico town. "Some of what he said was true and I'm sure a lot of it wasn't, or was a version of the truth. I have no doubt Rick was at the bottom of a ladder that stretches all the way to Washington. It's unclear to what extent he was following orders and to what taking matters into his own hands."
Doty almost admits to having had a hand in supposedly leaked "classified" documents, such as the "Majestic 12" dossier – spilling the beans on a secret alien liaison committee founded by President Truman. But he denies involvement in the "Project Serpo" papers – which claimed that 12 American military personnel paid a secret visit to an alien planet in the Zeta Reticuli system – only to be caught out as the source of the presumed hoax. The Serpo scenario, it has been noted, is not unlike the plot of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Does that suggest that the forgers lazily copied the movie? Or that the movie is based on real events and Spielberg was in on the conspiracy?
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| Close Encounters of the Third Kind |
The place of movies in the grand UFO conspiracy is a tricky area. Depending on which theory you subscribe to, Hollywood's steady stream of sci-fi is either a deliberate exaggeration, designed to make the "truth" look unbelievable (the "you've been watching too many movies" defence), or it's a way of psychologically preparing the populace for staggering alien secrets yet to be revealed. There are at least grounds for suspicion in the latter camp. Pilkington points to the CIA's Psychological Strategy Board, founded after the second world war to promote US propaganda. Associated with the board was veteran film producer Darryl Zanuck. In 1951, Zanuck executive-produced seminal alien-visitation sci-fi The Day the Earth Stood Still, often cited as a government-sanctioned testing of the waters for alien contact. Like Zanuck, the film's writer, Edmund North, was ex-military, while director Robert Wise apparently became a UFO believer on account of discussions he had with Washington figures during the making of the movie.
Steven Spielberg is a less likely government stooge, though he has been obsessed by aliens his entire career, from Close Encounters and ET up to War of the Worlds and the last Indiana Jones film (not forgetting his producer role in Falling Skies, Transformers and, er, Men in Black). If anyone's paving the way for the big reveal, it's Spielberg, but, after 30 years of paving, we're still waiting.
Mirage Men finds an even more extreme example in the form of industry veteran Robert Emenegger, who claims that in 1971 he was approached by the Pentagon to make a film revealing "what the government really knows". The Pentagon's big lure was that they would let him incorporate top-secret footage of an alien craft landing at Holloman Air Force Base in the 1960s. Predictably, the footage never materialised but Emenegger – no less cryptic a character than Richard Doty – claims to have seen it, and still believes alien contact has been established. He went ahead and made his documentary, entitled UFOs: Past, Present And Future. Presented by Rod "Twilight Zone" Serling, it culminates in a rather anti-climactic "reconstruction" of the Holloman UFO landing.
In the cold light of the post-cold war, the evidence is starting to look pretty shaky for UFOs. Numbers at UFO conventions and clubs are dwindling. The UK's Ministry of Defence closed its UFO desk in 2009, and, like many countries, has declassified its UFO documents. If there was any smoking gun, you'd imagine it would have been found in our current golden age of leaks and disclosures – but so far there's only been more smoke. On a Guardian webchat in 2010, relating to Wikileaks' release of the US embassy cables, Julian Assange asserted that "many weirdos email us about UFOs" but he'd come across nothing concrete. There were references to UFOs in the cables, he noted, but mostly to do with UFO cults rather than UFOs themselves – in the same way that GCHQ's Art Of Deception slideshow references UFO cults.
If nothing else, the leaked GCHQ document tells us the Mirage Men are still out there, sowing deception and disinformation. These days they're more likely to be targeting suspect extremist religious groups, or hackers and online fraudsters. Meanwhile, recent claims to have "deciphered" hidden backwards messages about UFOs in Edward Snowden's interview only go to show how desperate the alien conspiracy cause has become.
There's something else ufologists are a textbook example of: cognitive dissonance – the mental distress of trying to hold two conflicting worldviews simultaneously. The term was coined in the 1950s by psychologist Leon Festinger, who illustrated it with the example of a UFO cult shattered by the unfulfilled prophecy of an alien visitation. Some tenacious devotees still refuse to accept Mirage Men's findings, says Pilkington: "If beliefs are strongly held, nothing can sway them and anything that appears to undermine them will just be absorbed and repurposed. So if you're really, really dedicated, this is just chaff to throw you off the trail." Pilkington himself has been accused of working for MI5 or being a stooge controlled by the government, if not the aliens. "If I'm under intelligent control from elsewhere then I'm unaware of it, and I'm a victim, and it would be against my programming for me to be able to prove it," he reasons.
As always in the conspiracy-theory hall of mirrors, it's possible to flip the hypothesis on its head: what if the lies and hoaxes Mirage Men reveals are simply a smokescreen for the fact that the authorities really do know secrets about extraterrestrials? What better way to conceal them than by getting "found out" in their disinformation tactics? What better way of throwing sceptics off the scent than disseminating the confessions of an ex-man in black like Richard Doty, in documentaries, and articles in respectable new organisations – like this one. Perhaps we're no closer to knowing if the truth really is out there, but we can be sure the lies are.
mufon.com
Three Joplin, MO, UFO witnesses are speaking out on the July 8, 2014, sighting where the object was originally reported as “bigger than a house,” according to Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Missouri Assistant State Director Margie Kay and STAR Team Investigator Larry Jordan.
Kay and Jordan examined sites on July 13 where three credible witnesses saw a UFO and had strange experiences.
From Kay’s report issued today:
“A retired airline pilot who asked to remain anonymous, Joplin Globe general manager John Cruzan and health technician Traci Cruzan of south Joplin, Missouri, had a close encounter with an Unidentified Flying Object.
“On July 8 at 9:15 p.m. the retired pilot was walking his dog in front of his house when he noticed a quarter-sized object with orange lights in the sky north of his location. As the object approached from a high altitude to a low altitude on a straight-line trajectory he realized that it was no standard aircraft. The object was very large, teardrop in shape with multiple orange, blue, and yellow lights underneath.
“As John Cruzan and his wife Traci rounded the corner in their Jeep, the pilot flagged them down. The two jumped out of their vehicle just as the object was flying an estimated 300 feet or less overhead. The three witnesses said that the object was approximately one-acre wide and one-acre in length. They said that there was absolutely no sound coming from the object whatsoever, and that this concerned them.
“The pilot said, ‘I know what different aircraft sound like and there should have been a engine sound but there was none. And what was keeping that thing in the air? There were no wings or tail and it was flying too slow to be airborne.’
“The witnesses all said they felt like the situation was surreal. The pilot said that there was no sound in the area as he watched the object overhead, yet John Cruzan heard the pilot’s dog barking at the object. The neighborhood dogs all barked at the object as it flew over the homes in the area.
“The three witnesses watched the object go down behind trees and thought that it may have landed in a nearby cow pasture. They jumped in the Jeep and raced to the field which is approximately one mile away from their homes.
“As the three pulled to the side of the road, the vehicle’s warning beep started to go off. There were no doors open to cause the sound. John shone a large bright flashlight into the field but the flashlight went very dim. He had a difficult time getting the Jeep in to gear, which never happened before.
“Finally, he got the Jeep to move on, and then turned around, but when they arrived at the same spot the vehicle’s warning beep again went off and the flashlight went dim again. The next day, the radio’s presets were all gone.”
Missouri MUFON investigators found anomalous electro-magnetic field readings on the ground at the site as well as the top of the Cruzan’s vehicle. More investigative techniques will be used in the near future including testing of trees and grass at the site.
The story was originally covered as: Missouri couple says UFO was ‘bigger than a house’
The three witnesses decided to go public in an effort to get answers to what they saw. Missouri MUFON requests that any other witnesses to this event or similar events contact Margie Kay at 816-833-1602 or margiekay06@yahoo.com.
Joplin is a city in southern Jasper County and northern Newton County in the southwestern corner of Missouri, population 50,150.
Missouri has a current UFO Alert Rating of 4 with a higher than average number of recent reports nationally. Missouri had 24 UFO reports in July 2014 – the 9th highest reporting state – while California had 104 reports as the highest reporting state. The above quotes were edited for clarity. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.
The UFO Alert Rating System is based on five levels – 1 through 5 – where states with 150 or more reports for the month are rated an Alert 1; states with 100 or more reports are rated an Alert 2; 25 reports or more for the month are rated an Alert 3; 13 or more reports are rated an Alert 4; and those states with less than 13 reports for the month are an Alert 5.
Kay and Jordan examined sites on July 13 where three credible witnesses saw a UFO and had strange experiences.
From Kay’s report issued today:
“A retired airline pilot who asked to remain anonymous, Joplin Globe general manager John Cruzan and health technician Traci Cruzan of south Joplin, Missouri, had a close encounter with an Unidentified Flying Object.
“On July 8 at 9:15 p.m. the retired pilot was walking his dog in front of his house when he noticed a quarter-sized object with orange lights in the sky north of his location. As the object approached from a high altitude to a low altitude on a straight-line trajectory he realized that it was no standard aircraft. The object was very large, teardrop in shape with multiple orange, blue, and yellow lights underneath.
The three Joplin, MO, witnesses drove one mile away to this field where they believed the UFO may have landed. (Credit: MUFON)
“The pilot said, ‘I know what different aircraft sound like and there should have been a engine sound but there was none. And what was keeping that thing in the air? There were no wings or tail and it was flying too slow to be airborne.’
“The witnesses all said they felt like the situation was surreal. The pilot said that there was no sound in the area as he watched the object overhead, yet John Cruzan heard the pilot’s dog barking at the object. The neighborhood dogs all barked at the object as it flew over the homes in the area.
“The three witnesses watched the object go down behind trees and thought that it may have landed in a nearby cow pasture. They jumped in the Jeep and raced to the field which is approximately one mile away from their homes.
“As the three pulled to the side of the road, the vehicle’s warning beep started to go off. There were no doors open to cause the sound. John shone a large bright flashlight into the field but the flashlight went very dim. He had a difficult time getting the Jeep in to gear, which never happened before.
The Jeep the witnesses were driving experienced mechanical problems when they were close to the area where they believed the UFO landed. (Credit: MUFON)
Missouri MUFON investigators found anomalous electro-magnetic field readings on the ground at the site as well as the top of the Cruzan’s vehicle. More investigative techniques will be used in the near future including testing of trees and grass at the site.
Investigators took readings at the original area, pictured, where the sighting occurred. (Credit: MUFON)
The three witnesses decided to go public in an effort to get answers to what they saw. Missouri MUFON requests that any other witnesses to this event or similar events contact Margie Kay at 816-833-1602 or margiekay06@yahoo.com.
Joplin is a city in southern Jasper County and northern Newton County in the southwestern corner of Missouri, population 50,150.
Google Map of the sighting area. (Credit: Google Maps)
The UFO Alert Rating System is based on five levels – 1 through 5 – where states with 150 or more reports for the month are rated an Alert 1; states with 100 or more reports are rated an Alert 2; 25 reports or more for the month are rated an Alert 3; 13 or more reports are rated an Alert 4; and those states with less than 13 reports for the month are an Alert 5.
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| General Eisenhower |
emag.openminds.tv
Retired New Hampshire state representative, Henry McElroy, Jr. Made some bold claims that were released via a video statement on YouTube on May 11, 2010. He said that as a state representative he served on the State Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs Committee and one of the ongoing topics was related to extraterrestrial visitation. He went so far as to say that he viewed a document meant to brief President Eisenhower on this issue.
McElory stated that “The document I saw was an official brief to President Eisenhower.To the best of my memory this brief was pervaded with a sense of hope, and it informed President Eisenhower of the continued presence of extraterrestrial beings here in the United States of America.”
McElroy went on to say that the briefing seemed to imply that a meeting could be arranged between President Eisenhower and the extraterrestrials, a meeting that McElroy believes did occur.
Larry Bryant, UFO researcher and founder of the website www.theUFOchronicles. com, was able to email McElroy through an intermediary to get some clarifications on McElroy’s statements. In his response, McElroy stood by his original statement, but replied that he was not interested in talking about it further with anyone. According to Bryant, McElroy wrote, “I have nothing more to say on this topic that can’t be gleaned from viewing of the video, the script, and President Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Speech.”
ufocasebook.com
On a chilly Saturday night in November 1974, three teenage boys lit up a Carbondale, Pennsylvania silt pond and sparked a UFO legend that still glows 40 years later.
The boys, including Robert Gillette Jr., reported to police on Nov. 9 they saw “a red, whirring ball fly over Salem Mountain and into the mine pond.”
What would become known as the “Carbondale UFO” drew police officers, military, UFO enthusiasts and curious spectators from across the country. The glow lasted nine hours. After two days, a diver emerged from the murky waters with nothing but an old railroad lantern in hand.
Twenty-five years later, Mr. Gillette admitted throwing the battery-powered lantern into the pond to scare his sister, but the legend lives on.
The city plans to mark the upcoming 40th anniversary of the “close encounter” during the Pioneer Nights - Ethnic Heritage Festival with the Carbon D. Alien Regatta on Saturday.
Alex Kelly, co-owner of Icon Technologies, grew up down the road from the silt pond. He doesn’t remember any UFOs or little green men but he does recall the “chaos the next day.”
“There were cars everywhere, we couldn’t get out of our driveway,” he said.
A Scranton Times reporter described seeing licenses plates from 17 states and Canada at the pond. A story published on Nov. 12, 1974, reports that crowds showed up from New York and Connecticut. Every regional newspaper, radio and television station was live from the scene including a three-man news crew from Philadelphia. UFO specialists from New York, New Jersey and Northwestern University in Illinois investigated. A lengthy report by Matthew J. Graeber from the UFO Research Investigation Center in Philadelphia is still on file today at the Carbondale Historical Society.
Police manning the overwhelmed phone lines reported calls from as far away as England. People of all backgrounds and occupations surrounded the pond behind Russell Park, making the light in the water the lesser of then-police chief Francis Dottle’s worries. He was more concerned about the masses on the shore.
Mr. Kelly said believers and non-believers of the legend are separated into a few groups. Some believe the glow was caused by a lantern thrown into the pond. Others insist a craft from outer space landed in the small pond and the government covered it up.
One popular theory is that the illumination came from a fallen spy satellite, maybe from Russia, maybe from the United States, he said.
Jim Racht, also a co-owner of Icon Technologies, said, “People either roll their eyes or say, ‘Yeah, they took something out of there.’”
Involved with the Carbondale Historical Society and the Route 6 Task Force, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Racht began researching the event after an interview for WVIA’s My Town documentary about the city. Mr. Kelly said when Michele Bannon, city clerk, suggested including the UFO landing in the town’s history, the two men raised their hands and got to work. One question they asked themselves was if there was a UFO, who was drove the craft?
Shortly after the documentary premiered in 2012 the two men started the website, carbondalien.com. The site features old and new photos of Carbondale doctored to include the life-sized green extraterrestrial plastic figure, which they took to the WVIA documentary premiere. A comprehensive history of the lore is also on the site.
In Mr. Racht’s 2010 book about the history of Carbondale, he dubs the incident the “Birth of a Suburban Legend.”
Sitting in their office next to a nearly five-foot-tall green extraterrestrial-looking figure wearing a white T-shirt, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Racht said one thing that most Carbondale residents agree that a flat bed truck hauled something covered by a blue tarp away from the scene all those years ago.
What it concealed remains a mystery.
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