1.8 MiB
apparently has been subjected to great heat. Three depressions are where the UFO legs apparently were. (Clark III 296–297; Patrick Gross, URECAT, July 10, 2007)
Late July — 4:30 p.m. Richard H. VanPelt and his teenage son are driving on Beeler Road south of Shawnee High School in Lima, Ohio, when they see a Saturn-shaped metallic object hovering above Breese Road 600 feet away. It is about 1,200–1,500 feet in the air and has a revolving ring around its center. It suddenly starts to move to the southwest, then tips on end and with tremendous speed goes straight up and out of sight. (Richard H. VanPelt, “Letter,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 3 (June/July 1984): 2)
August — 7:00 p.m. Raimo Blomqvist is visiting with his parents at their summer cottage at Kallavesi lake, Finland, when he suddenly notices a strange, colorful ball of light coming from the sky. The light approaches and turns out to be an oval glowing object. While it is hovering above the shallow water of an island he sees something fall from the object and hears a sound resembling hot metal touching cold water. The object shoots straight upward. Blomqvist recovers a 2–2.5-inch piece of stone. In 1975, Blomqvist contacts UFO investigators and gives them the stone.
The fragment is x-ray analyzed at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, which states that it appears to be volcanic. Analysts at the University of Turku look at it with a mass spectrometer and conclude it is mostly iron, not a piece of ore, not volcanic, not a meteorite, and not machined, although it has been subjected to a temperature of around 650° C. (“Fragment Fell from UFO,” APRO Bulletin 26, no. 6 (December 1977): 1, 3; “Foreign Forum,” IUR 3,
no. 3 (Mar. 1978): 2)
August — Midnight. Air Policeman Arthur McEnaney and other guards see a round UFO hovering above a four-silo Atlas complex near Francis E. Warren AFB, Cheyenne, Wyoming. (Nukes 159)
August 9 — 9:00 p.m. Baltazar Flores, Franciso Perez, Ruben Lozaya, and Elpidio Salas are camping near the Cerro Viejo, Sonora, Mexico, where they plan to explore for minerals. Suddenly a “dark, cloud-like object” approaches at high speed. As it passes by, the trees shake and they hear an explosion. They return the next day and less than 2 miles from their campsite they find a compact, gelatinous mass of green-turquoise color about 8 inches long.
When they poke it with a stick, the stick becomes covered with a sticky substance like chewing gun. They report the incident to the authorities, but no one is interested. One of the witnesses returns 3 days later and finds most of the mass gone, with some residue on the rocks and grass. (“Strange Gelatinous Fall in Mexico,” APRO Bulletin, November 1964, p. 1; Clark III 1102)
August 11 — 5:30 p.m. John Dodson, 15, and Frankie Jimenez, 14, are walking near the railroad tracks south of State Highway 281 east of Defiance, Ohio, not too far from the General Motors foundry. They see a slowly rotating whitish disc apparently hovering above a GM water tank. The object has a lighted flange-like base, a dome on top, and is making a whirring or hissing noise. It begins to move horizontally at a moderate speed, then shoots up vertically and disappears. (“Maney Reports Boys’ Sighting,” APRO Bulletin, November 1964, p. 5)
August 18 — 12:35 a.m. USAF Major D. W. Thompson and First Pilot 1st Lt. J. F. Jonke are flying a C-124 transport with the 31st Air Transport Squadron, 1607th Air Transport Wing, 200 miles east of Dover AFB in Delaware at 9,000 feet over the North Atlantic. A blurred reddish-white glare appears ahead and 500 feet below them on a collision course. Thompson takes evasive action, and the light makes a right turn and disappears. Air traffic control shows nothing on their radar in that location. (NICAP, “Object on Collision Course with C-124”; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 50–51; Sparks, p. 300)
August 22 — 9:35 p.m. Robert D. Briele, an engineer for WFBR-AM radio, and a friend watch a lighted triangular object pass directly overhead in Baltimore, Maryland. Through binoculars he can see a steady white light at each corner. A small green light is also on one corner and a red light in the center. The object moves slowly and silently from northeast to southwest, disappearing in 10 minutes. (“UFO Sighting Wave Persists,” UFO Investigator 2, no. 12 (Sept./Oct. 1964): 5)
August 30 — Night. Clifford Runyon and Connie Thies are driving from Tipton to Bennett, Iowa, when they see a cigar- shaped object with two bright lights hovering 500 feet up in the eastern sky. The UFO climbs as they drive toward it, and their radio goes out and the car engine sputters. (“UFO Sighting Wave Persists,” UFO Investigator 2, no.
12 (Sept./Oct. 1964): 5)
September 4 — Declassified documents show that from 1962 through 1964, the CIA has spent a total of $2.6 million to finance the campaign of Eduardo Frei Montalva for the presidency of Chile and spent $3 million in anti–Salvador Allende propaganda “to scare voters away from Allende’s FRAP coalition.” Richard Helms coordinates the action. The CIA considers its role in the victory of Frei a great success. They argue that “the financial and organizational assistance given to Frei, the effort to keep [Julio] Durán in the race, the propaganda campaign to denigrate Allende—were ‘indispensable ingredients of Frei’s success,’” and they think that his chances of
winning and the good progress of his campaign would have been doubtful without the covert support of the US. Thus, in 1964 Allende loses once more as the FRAP candidate for president. (Wikipedia, “Salvador Allende”)
September 5 — 10:00 p.m. Donald Schrum and his friends are bow-and-arrow hunting in an isolated area of Placer County, California, near the Loch Leven Lakes in the vicinity of Cisco Grove. Schrum becomes separated from his companions. At sunset he decides to sleep in a tree for the night. Later he sees a white light zigzagging at low altitude and, thinking it is a helicopter, jumps out of the tree and lights fires to attract its attention. The light turns toward him and stops about 50–60 yards away. The object’s strange appearance frightens Schrum, so he climbs back up in the tree. After a while two humanoid beings and a robot-like creature approach the tree. From then on, Schrum is in a state of siege as the beings try to dislodge him from the tree. At one point a white vapor emanates from the robot’s mouth and Schrum blacks out, but wakes up again, nauseous, and begins lighting matches and throwing them down to frighten the beings away; they back away. Finally, he shoots an arrow at the robot; when it hits, there is an arc flash and the robot is knocked backwards. This is repeated two more times, and the humanoids scatter each time. A second robot appears and a vapor renders Schrum unconscious. When he awakes, he discovers that the two humanoids are climbing up the tree toward him, so he shakes the tree and throws things down at them to ward them off. The same actions are repeated all night. Near dawn, more beings approach and “large volumes of smoke” drift up and he blacks out. He awakes hanging from his belt, and the creatures are gone. Later, when reunited with his companions, Schrum finds that one of the other hunters, who also have gotten lost and separated from their camp, saw the UFO. (NICAP, “Cisco Grove / Alien Encounter”; Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 17–23; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 210–212; Sparks, p. 301; Clark III 236–240; Ted Bloecher and Paul Cerny, “The Cisco Grove Bow and Arrow Case of 1964,” IUR 20, no. 5 (Winter 1995): 16–22, 32)
September 14 — 10:55 p.m. Astronomers Luis Ferro and Renato Matteassi at the San Miguel Observatory, Buenos Aires, Argentina, watch an object with the apparent size twice that of the Moon passing across the constellation Lyra.
The central portion is white and green, while the rear looks like half-rings of blue. Its speed is estimated as three times the speed of sound. They watch it for 3 minutes moving toward Jupiter. (Gordon Creighton, “Argentina 1963/1964: Part IV,” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 3 (May/June 1966): 28)
September 15 — 8:27 a.m. USAF Lt. Robert Jacobs is officer-in-charge of photo-optical instrumentation for the 1369th Photographic Squadron at Vandenberg AFB [now Vandenberg Space Force Base] near Lompoc, California. His crew films an SM-65F Atlas missile launch where a UFO allegedly causes the ICBM’s warhead to malfunction over Big Sur, California. At the time of the filming, apparently no one knows anything about a UFO sighting. But the next morning, Jacobs is ordered to report to the office of Maj. Florenz J. Mansmann, First Strategic Aerospace Division, his commanding officer, where he is shown the film and told to forget it ever happened. Kingston George, the project engineer for the experiments and who probably never saw the film, “identified” the object as “nothing to do with UFOs” in an article in the Skeptical Enquirer. Before Mansmann’s death, and 40 years after the actual event, the major confirms the UFO incident in writing. The controversy centers on the opinions of some researchers who suggest that the telescope imaging system is not adequate enough to produce the results described by Jacobs and Mannsman. However, several other researchers have shown that, with the viewing conditions at the height of the equipment used, and the imaging systems operating at that shoot, the incident could have occurred as described. (NICAP, “The Big Sur Filming / UFO Disables Dummy Warhead?”; Robert Jacobs, “How a UFO Destroyed an American Rocket,” Flying Saucer Review 29, no. 1 (October 1983): 23–24; Kingston
A. George, “The Big Sur ‘UFO’: An Identified Flying Object,” Skeptical Inquirer 17 (Winter 1993): 180–187; Robert Hastings, “A Shot across the Bow: Another Look at the Big Sur Incident,” IUR 31, no. 1 (January 2007): 3–11, 20–24; Mark Rodeghier, “Image Resolution of the Optical System at Big Sur,” IUR 31, no. 1 (January 2007): 20; Robert Hastings, “Answers on Big Sur,” IUR 31, no. 4 (Mar. 2008): 18; Robert L. Hastings, “UFOs Are Stalking and Intercepting Dummy Nuclear Warheads during Test Flights,” UFOs & Nukes, August 23, 2011; Nukes 187–217)
September 16 — 6:55 p.m. Several teenagers at Little Hulton, Greater Manchester, England, watch a noiseless, pearly white triangular object traveling with its base forward toward the north. (“Manchester Disbeliever’s Testimony,” Flying Saucer Review 10, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1964): 25)
September 18–24 — Numerous high-speed UFOs are reported and tracked on radar in an area between Surabaya, Malang, and Bangkalan, Java, Indonesia. Antiaircraft batteries and Air Force pilots reportedly open fire on them, even though officials suspect they could be British aircraft from the HMS Victorious protecting Malaysia. (Good Above, p. 429; Rahadian Rundjan, “Mencari UFO di Langit Indonesia,” Historia, June 19, 2017)
Late 1964 — Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander 1Lt. Philip E. Moore is on duty in Site 7 (east of Hagerman, New Mexico), one of the 579th Strategic Missile Squadron’s underground Atlas missile launch facilities at Walker
AFB [now closed] in Roswell, New Mexico. He gets a call from an adjacent missile silo around 10–15 miles away, saying that a UFO is hovering and maneuvering over their site. Maj. Dan Gilbert sends three enlisted crew members—T/Sgt. Jack Nevins, Airman1C Bob Garner, and Airman 1C Mike Rundag—above ground to see what is going on. They see a silent light that moves very quickly (instant stop and instant go) back and forth between Site 6 and Site 8. Gilbert goes up and sees the same activity. (Nukes 152–157)
October — An engineer and three technicians at the Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, see a triangular- shaped object speed in from the north, make a 90° turn, and disappear in under a minute. They all agree that it moved faster than a jet. (Harold H. Deneault Jr., “UFOs Return to Washington,” Fate 18, no. 7 (July 1965): 48– 49)
October 7 — 11:10 p.m. R. Shannon and his wife see a blood-red triangle in the sky above Dulwich, London, England.
They watch it for 10 minutes before it begins revolving swiftly, almost to a blur, then explodes silently and disappears. (R. Shannon, “Dulwich De-Materialisation?” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1965): 28)
October 22 — Flying Saucer Review editor Waveney Girvan dies, and Charles Bowen takes control and oversees the magazine until 1982, its most influential period. (Charles Bowen, “Our Friend Waveney Girvan,” Flying Saucer Review 10, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1964): 5; Clark III 498)
October 29 — 12:00 midnight–3:00 a.m. Irene Page watches a sparkling ball of light that maneuvers around her yard, illuminating her property in Brimfield, Massachusetts. When she first sees it, the TV set fades, and lights in the room blink on and off several times. (“Flashing UFO Seen Three Hours,” APRO Bulletin, July/Aug. 1965, p. 7)
November 3 — 8:15 p.m. A barking dog alerts the caretaker of the Butano Creek Girl Scout Camp near Pescadero, California. He goes outside and sees a bright light maneuvering erratically in the northeast. He flashes an SOS signal at it with a flashlight, and the light silently moves toward him. He flashes more SOS signals and it moves even closer, hovering above some trees a half mile away and moving back and forth. It lights up the sky like a full moon. The caretaker and another employee run into a cabin to get their wives. The four watch for a while longer, then flash another SOS. The light approaches again, then retreats, dims, and takes off. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, p. 242)
November 5 — J. Allen Hynek writes to a citizen interested in the Socorro, New Mexico, case and affirms his opinion that Lonnie Zamora’s story was “told by a man who obviously was frightened badly by what he did see.” He says he cannot dismiss it as a hoax or hallucination. (Bill Murphy, “The Swamp Gas Aftermath: Some Notes from the Gerald Ford Files,” IUR 33, no. 2 (July 2010): 12–13)
November 9 — 8:00 p.m. Trevor Foss responds to his son’s call to watch a light in the northern sky over Kailoa Station, Gisborne, New Zealand. Through night binoculars he sees a ball of light traveling south toward him. It takes 5 minutes to reach the southern horizon and has rotating light beams that project downward and to the rear, as well as 6 jet-like blue flames. (“Farmer Observes Sphere,” APRO Bulletin, January 1965, p. 8)
November 14 — Midnight. Astronomers at the San Miguel Observatory, Buenos Aires, Argentina, see an elongated, flat, reddish-orange object crossing the sky from east to west and then back again at a speed 4.5 times that of a satellite. (“Mystery Object over Argentina,” APRO Bulletin, January 1965, p. 2; Gordon Creighton, “Argentina 1963/1964: Part IV,” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 3 (May/June 1966): 28)
November 19 — 9:00 p.m. The USS Gyatt destroyer is stationed in the Atlantic Ocean about 220 miles northwest of Puerto Rico when its radar detects a bogey approaching the island from the northeast at speeds exceeding Mach 1. The ship relays a message to Roosevelt Roads Naval Station [now José Aponte de la Torre Airport] in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, which then contacts Lt. Cmdr. K. H. Woodsbury, pilot of an F-8C aircraft of Utility Squadron Eight that is already flying in the neighborhood at an altitude of 30,000 feet. The aircraft reports a stranger closing in very fast. The pilot describes the object as delta-shaped and about the size of a fighter. Its color is black or gray and it has no contrail or lights except for a light source emitting from the tail during periods of acceleration. The pilot pursues the object but cannot intercept. The target accelerates out of sight in a wide starboard turn climbing through 50,000 feet at about an 18°–20° angle in excess of Mach 1. Woodsbury says: “Its speed, acceleration, ceiling and ability to decelerate exceed any aircraft I have ever seen or heard of. There is no reasonable explanation for this target.” During the encounter the SPS-49 radar is jammed for a short period of time. Other radar encounters take place in the Caribbean November 16–18 and 24. (NICAP, “U.S.S. Gyatt Tackles Bogey”; Sparks, p. 302)
November 21 — The FBI sends Martin Luther King Jr. a “suicide package” note that contains audio recordings of his sexual indiscretions and a letter telling him, “There is only one way out for you.” The FBI’s COINTELPRO program is also targeting Malcolm X. (Wikipedia, “COINTELPRO”)
November 22 — 10:45 p.m. Private pilot George Henry Lissauer is driving near Georgetown, South Carolina, when he sees two large, silvery, oval-shaped UFOs, each accompanied by 6–8 smaller objects. The formations are moving
slowly at about 3,000 feet altitude. After 2–3 minutes, the smaller objects go into the larger objects and disappear. Lissauer goes directly to Myrtle AFB [now Myrtle Beach International Airport] and reports them. (“Increased Landings Hint New UFO Phase,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 3 (June/July 1965): 2; Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects: A Further Look,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 3)
November 25 — 12:45 a.m. A 29-year-old woman sees two lighted objects land on a hilltop near New Berlin, New York. Through binoculars she can see some 9–11 humanoid beings apparently engaged in repair work on a round object with landing struts for four hours. Some of them are holding boxes filled with unusual gadgets. The next day, she and her husband and father-in-law find two equilateral triangular imprints on the site, as well as a cable with some thin aluminum strips and insulation. Around 4:55 a.m., one UFO shoots straight up and abruptly disappears, while the other rises straight up a minute later and follows the other one. (Berthold E. Schwarz, “New Berlin UFO Landing and Repair by Crew,” Flying Saucer Review 21, no. 3–4 (November 1975): 22–28)
November 26 — 11:00 p.m. A family of five in Adams, Wisconsin, is returning home from Thanksgiving dinner when an extremely bright light appears over their car, completely shutting off its headlights and radio. The father jumps out of the car and looks straight up into the light, shading his eyes with his hands, but he is persuaded to come back. Suddenly the light disappears and the electrical systems return. No one talks about the incident for 16 years, when the father says the light was “motionless like a floodlight of gigantic proportion.” (“Recently Reported,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 2, no. 10 (October 1981): 5; “Out of the Not-Too-Distant Past.” IUR/Frontiers of Science 3, no. 6 (Jan./Feb. 1982): 13–14)
December 19 — 3:50 p.m. Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland tracks two large targets on radar moving at 6,900 mph. (Harold H. Deneault Jr., “UFOs Return to Washington,” Fate 18, no. 7 (July 1965): 46–47; Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, p. 87; Sparks, p. 303)
December 21 — 4:50 p.m. Kenneth Norton Jr., 14, is looking out his bedroom window in Staunton, Virginia, when he sees a “fast-moving object without wings or tail structure.” He describes it as cigar-shaped and about 125 feet in diameter, in view for 5 seconds. (Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, January 15, 1965; “‘Saucer’ Reports Are Flying,” Staunton (Va.) Daily News Leader, January 15, 1965, p. 2; Clark III 493)
December 21 — 5:00 p.m. Driving east on US Highway 250, Horace Burns is approaching Fishersville, Virginia, when an enormous object appears from the north and descends slowly in a gradual slant. Just before it crosses the highway 200 feet in front of him, the UFO narrowly misses power lines. It is so huge that when it passes nearly in front of him, it fills his entire windshield. The UFO comes down gently and lands in a field to Burns’s right. Meanwhile, Burns’s car engine has shut off. The object appears to be at least 125 feet in diameter and 80–90 feet high. After 60–90 seconds, it rises up several hundred feet, makes a sound like rushing air, and shoots off to the northeast, vanishing from sight. A high level of radioactivity is detected at the site December 30 by investigators German professor Ernest G. Gehman and engineer Harry M. Cook. They obtain a Geiger counter reading of 16–18 milliR/hr. Two Blue Book investigators—T/Sgt. David N. Moody and S/Sgt. Harold T. Jones—visit the site with Gehman on January 12 and take further readings (1.5 milliR/hr on Burns’s left rear car door). They dispute Gehman’s earlier results, but a possible 11x–12x drop in radiation level in 13 days possibly indicates a radionuclide with a 3–4 day half-life. (“‘Saucer’ Reports Are Flying,” Staunton (Va.) Daily News Leader, January 15, 1965, pp. 1–2; NICAP, “Car Engine Fails after Object Lands”; “Opposition Flap 1965,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 3 (May/June 1965): 3–4; Clark III 491–494, 950; Sparks, p. 303)
December 22 — A D-21 drone (renamed from Q-12 in its transition to Project Tagboard) mounted on an M-21 begins captive flight-testing at Area 51 in Nevada. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed D-21”)
December 22 — The first flight of an SR-71 Blackbird takes place at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, piloted by Robert J. Gilliland. The SR-71 reaches a top speed of Mach 3.4 (~2,588 mph) during flight testing. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird”)
1965
1965? — A-12 pilot Ken Collins continues to test A-12s at Groom Lake, Nevada. One night (in 1964 or 1965 maybe), he is awakened by base commander Col. Hugh “Slip” Slater and asked to take an A-12 up to find a Russian reconnaissance balloon that is floating in American airspace in a westerly direction with the prevailing winds.
Collins is tasked with finding the balloon visually and using radar. In the air, he realizes it is a wild goose chase because, flying at 2,200 mph, even if he sees the balloon briefly it would be behind him in a second. He identifies an object on radar 350 miles away. He circles it as closely as he can, which is a circle with a radius of 400 miles.
He never makes visual contact and returns to Area 51. Jacobsen says that this Soviet violation of US airspace has “never been declassified.” (Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 195–196)
1965 — USAF Gen. Curtis LeMay writes in his autobiography that some UFOs are not explained very easily: “There is no question about it. These were things which we could not tie in with any natural phenomena known to our investigators.” He expresses his dislike of NICAP’s position that USAF is trying to muzzle the media. “There were some cases we could not explain,” he writes. “Never could.” (Curtis E. LeMay, Mission with LeMay, Doubleday, 1965, pp. 541–543)
1965 — Less than 20% of the public believes in UFOs, according to polls and private Air Force and NICAP estimates.
This soon rises to 33% by July. (Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, p. 94)
1965 — John Harney begins publication of the Merseyside UFO Research Group Bulletin in Liverpool, England. (Merseyside UFO Research Group Bulletin, no. 2 (June 1965))
1965 — Jean-Pierre D’Hondt founds Groupement Nordiste d’Études des OVNI in Lestrem, Pas-de-Calais, France. It publishes Recherches Ufologiques from 1977 to 1983. (Recherches Ufologiques, no. 1 (1977))
1965 — Jacques Bonabot, Jean-Gérard Dohmen, and Roger Lorthioir found Groupement pour l’Étude des Sciences d’Avant-Garde in Bruges, Belgium. It publishes Bulletin du GESAG. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 135)
1965 — G. J. Kok and S. Sluis found the Werkgroep Nederlands Onderzoek Bureau voor UFOs (later UFO-Workgroep Nederland) in Uithuizermeeden, Netherlands. It publishes Tijdschrift voor Ufologie. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 215)
1965 — Tomezo Hirata founds the Japan UFO Research Association in Kobe, Japan. It publishes JUFORA from 1967 to 1991. ()
1965 — Ross Liverton reports a ring of bare earth, 8 feet wide, in the ground on Waiheke Island, New Zealand, where a UFO is seen. It remains visible for 4 years. The site contains some unidentified whitish material that resolves into fibers during a soil immersion test. Vallée says the material is “vegetal in nature.” (Vallée, Invisible College, pp. 36–37; Ted Phillips, “Landing Report from Delphos,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 9 (February 1972): 10)
1965 — A couple is driving on a country road in Buenos Aires province, Argentina, when their car engine begins to fail, so they pull over in front of a tree. They notice an object behind the tree that emits a luminous ray toward them that bends at three places, vertically and horizontally, to avoid the tree. The woman’s cheek feels as if something is probing her. (Jean Bastide, La Mémoire des OVNI, Mercure de France, 1978; “Beam of Light with Three Corners,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 4, no. 6 (Dec, 1983/Jan. 1984): 4)
1965 — A short color film of a “huge, windowed, hovering craft” with three smaller objects attached to it “as a kind of tail” is taken by a converted RAAF aircraft during a photo-mapping flight over central Australia. A door on the large object opens—two vertical panels and two horizontally aligned panels slide apart—and the three smaller objects fly inside. A US Air Force sergeant with a top-secret clearance is shown this clip at a CIA screening in Texas in 1967. He says the filmed image of the UFO is extraordinarily clear, filling the entire screen. (Budd Hopkins, Missing Time, R. Marek, 1981, p. 253)
January 5 — 5:56 p.m. NASA engineer Dempsey Bruton, head of the Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, observes a round, bright-yellow light rising from the horizon. The apparent size of the object is that of a nickel held at arm’s length. As the object reaches an overhead position, it disappears. The length of observation is approximately 8–9 seconds. The witness claims that his wife and brother-in-law also see the object. (NICAP, “Bright Yellow Light Flies Ahead”)
January 11 — Mrs. Paul Zimmerman Gearhart and her two sons see a triangular UFO that flies slowly out of the southeast and then “suddenly plunged into the sea some miles offshore” at Tillamook Head, Oregon. It leaves behind two trails of fire. (Sanderson, InvRes, p. 50)
January 11 — 4:20 p.m. At least 12 persons, including six Army Signal Corps communications system specialists, at the Munitions Building at Nineteenth Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., observe 12–15 white oval objects maneuvering erratically at 12,000–15,000 feet altitude above the US Capitol Building. Two delta- wing jets, apparently from Andrews AFB in Maryland, are seen in pursuit, but the objects easily outmaneuver them. Among the witnesses are Paul M. Dickey Jr., Edward Shad, Sam Webb, Jack McBride, and Sam Marrone. The objects are also tracked on radar. The Defense Department denies the incident, but the witnesses publicly maintain their story. The Pentagon forces a TV crew about to interview the witnesses to shut down that evening. (NICAP, “Over a Dozen Ovals Chased by AF Jets”; Harold H. Deneault Jr., “UFOs Return to Washington,” Fate 18, no. 7 (July 1965): 47–48; Frank Edwards, FS Serious Business, Bantam ed., 1966, pp. 67–68)
January 12 — 1:00 a.m. Department of Justice Inspector Robert E. Kerringer [or is it Donald E. Flickinger, an agent of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms?] is driving near Lynden, Washington, when he sees a low-flying object, 30 feet in diameter, that avoids collision with his car at the last moment. He gets out and sees it hovering for one minute, then it flies off at high speed with a sound of rushing air. He learns that nearby Blaine Air Force Station [now closed] is tracking the UFO. (NICAP, “Driver Avoids Collision with 30ʹ Object”; Sparks, p. 303; “New Sightings Put AF on Spot,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 1 (March/April 1965): 4; Frank Edwards, FS Serious Business, Bantam ed., 1966, pp. 54–55)
January 12 — 10:58 a.m. The Kiwi Transient Nuclear Test is conducted at Area 25 of the Nevada Test Site as part of Project NERVA. The nuclear rocket engine code-named Kiwi is allowed to overheat until it bursts, sending fuel hurtling skyward. Deadly radioactive fuel chunks as large as 148 pounds shoot up into the sky and last as far away as a quarter mile. A radioactive cloud rises up to 2,600 feet, then drifts out over Los Angeles, California, and out to sea. The AEC calls it a “safety test,” but the USSR says it violates the test ban. (Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 309– 310; Wikipedia, “NERVA”)
January 12 — 6:30 p.m. A NASA public relations employee named Milliner and her husband are walking toward their house when they see a bright yellow object moving swiftly over the Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Virginia. They watch it for 2 minutes. (Harold H. Deneault Jr., “UFOs Return to Washington,” Fate 18, no. 7 (July 1965): 48)
January 12 — 8:20 p.m. A Mrs. Jubert in Custer, Washington, sees through her window what seems to be the landing lights of an airplane apparently coming into her yard. She herds her three teenage girls outside in the opposite direction. The four lights merge into one intense white light, which moves in a straight line toward the house, lifts several hundred feet and clears a clump of evergreens, then dips down on the far side and touches the ground. A border patrol officer also sees the object after he is alerted by radio. He is buzzed by the UFO, which is low enough that he stops his car, gets out, and watches it move out of sight. Where the object lands in 16 inches of snow, they find a large circular imprint about 10–12 feet in diameter. The ground beneath the melted snow ring shows evidence of having been scorched. Oval-shaped tracks 8 inches long and 8 inches apart, in a single file, are found leading from the landing site to the evergreens, where they disappear. One month later, the circular area still shows traces. (“New Sightings Put AF on Spot,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 1 (March/April 1965): 4; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 152–153; Ted Phillips, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings, CUFOS, 1975, p. 34)
January 14 — Around 12:00 midnight. Old Dominion college student James Myers sees a diamond-shaped object rise from the ground to 1,500–2,000 feet near Norfolk, Virginia. He loses sight of it behind a church and when it reappears it looks round, bright, and silvery. (Harold H. Deneault Jr., “UFOs Return to Washington,” Fate 18, no. 7 (July 1965): 49)
January 15 — 9:45 p.m. Mathew Rybczyk is watching TV at his home in Manchester, New Hampshire, when the set goes blank. Going outside to see if the antenna is damaged, he sees a flashing light moving across the tree line to the east and making a humming noise. When the light disappears, the TV set comes on again. (Manchester (N.H.) Sunday News, January 17, 1965; Schopick, p. 148)
January 15 — 10:00 p.m. Charles Knee Jr., a former newsman, is driving on State Highway 4A between Wilmot and Enfield, New Hampshire, when the radio suddenly stops, the lights on the car go out, and the engine quits. He loses control of the car and pulls to the side of the road and then hears a loud humming sound like a high- frequency electrical whine. He opens the car door, steps out, and sees a bright light below the cloud cover at around 2,000–5,000 feet altitude. It seems to hover for a moment and then takes off to the south. As the light leaves and the whine dies away, the headlights and radio come on and the motor starts by itself. The whole thing lasts about 15–20 seconds. (Manchester (N.H.) Sunday News, January 16, 1965; Schopick, pp. 148–150)
January 19 — NICAP Acting Director Richard H. Hall meets with a CIA agent and passes on some UFO case information and other materials to OSI for preparation of a paper on UFOs. Hall is given a direct phone number for the agent’s office. He uses the phone line only once to “report some high-quality UFO sightings to the CIA.” He is also given a CIA security clearance without his consent or knowledge. A January 25 CIA memo confirming the meeting shows an inordinate amount of interest in NICAP, given the CIA’s mandate for acquiring foreign intelligence. (ClearIntent, pp. 231–234; Richard H. Hall, Uninvited Guests, Aurora, 1988, pp. 11, 354–358; Good Above, pp. 349–350)
January 19 — Hall also meets for 90 minutes with retired Navy Capt. John Lawrence Counihan who is on the staff of Sen.
Thomas J. Dodd (D-Conn.). Counihan says that the Committee on Astronautics and Space Science would be considered “nutty” if it took up hearings, but it might be willing to consider an informal briefing by NICAP. (Swords 306)
January 19 — 6:15 p.m. William Blackburn, a draftsman at a General Electric plant, is chopping wood at an archery range east of Staunton, Virginia, in an area known locally as Brands Flats. He sees two saucer-like shapes in the sky at 2,000–4,000 feet altitude. The larger one seems to be about 80 feet across. The smaller one, 20 feet across, descends quickly and silently and lands 45–55 feet away from Blackburn. A door opens, making a slight noise and revealing an interior light. Three figures, each 3 feet tall and wearing tight-fitting metallic-looking suits, emerge. They have reddish-orange skin and piercing eyes. One has an extra-long finger on its left hand. They speak in an unintelligible language, then return to the UFO. The door closes so perfectly that an outline cannot be seen, and the object takes off. The entire episode lasts only 5 minutes. Blackburn sees no traces in the snow, but thinks the object and humanoids are hovering. (NICAP, “Two Humanoids Approach Witness”; Clark III 196)
January 23 — 8:40 a.m. Two separate cars driving in different direction stall out near the intersection of US Hwy 60 and State Route 614 in Lightfoot, Virginia. One of the drivers, Thomas F. Mains, sees a lightbulb- or mushroom- shaped object 75–80 feet tall and 10–25 feet wide, hovering over nearby field about 4 feet off the ground. It is metallic gray, with red-orange and blue lights and is making a vacuum cleaner noise. It suddenly accelerates horizontally to the west against the wind and disappears. (NICAP, “UFO Hovering over Field Stalls Cars”; Sparks, p. 304)
January 25 — Night. Policeman Woody Darnall, his family, and several neighbors see a glowing object hovering on a mountainside near Marion, Virginia. It seems to explode and take off in a shower of sparks. A group of Marion residents and state forest officials climb to the area and find several treetops bent over and one green tree on fire where the UFO was seen. (Harold H. Deneault Jr., “UFOs Return to Washington,” Fate 18, no. 7 (July 1965): 52)
January 25 — Night. Nine persons near Fredericksburg, Virginia, see a UFO that resembles a “Christmas sparkler.” One witness says it looks like a spinning top spitting sparks out of the bottom as it moves up the Rappahannock Valley at treetop level. (Harold H. Deneault Jr., “UFOs Return to Washington,” Fate 18, no. 7 (July 1965): 52)
January 26 — Evening. Rev. H. Preston Robinson and others in Marion, Virginia, watch an object hovering 600 feet above the city. The object makes a steady buzzing sound and has several lights on its round bottom. Spinning clockwise, it shoots out of sight at fantastic speed. It emits a ball of fire as it disappears. (Harold H. Deneault Jr., “UFOs Return to Washington,” Fate 18, no. 7 (July 1965): 52)
January 26 — Evening. Steven Houffer, 16, and six friends are driving on US Highway 250 near Brands Flats, Virginia, when they see a small man walking toward the road from a field. He sits down and peers intently at passing cars. Houffer stops the car and he and his friends get out. When they approach, the being runs up a hill. Two other entities appear and run in the same direction. They are all about 3.5 feet tall, wear silvery one-piece garments, and leave no footprints. Police officers conduct a search with local photographer Charles Weaver, but find nothing.
Some time later, Houffer and Weaver see a “glowing aluminum barn,” which they go down to investigate. Weaver is walking around inside when something hits him on the head. The two turn to run after Weaver snaps a photo. In the light of the flashbulb, they see a little man standing by the barn. The photo is allegedly confiscated by government agents. A local man, Donald Cash, 6 feet tall, confesses to dressing up in overalls to pose as an alien, although his story does not completely match the details of the account. (“UFO Posses Hit,” Staunton (Va.) Daily News Leader, January 28, 1965, pp. 1–2; Jerome Clark, “Two New Contact Claims,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 3 (May/June 1965): 20–21; “Fed Up with Play: Green Man Confesses,” Staunton (Va.) Daily News Leader, January 31, 1965, p. 1)
January 27 — 6:00 p.m. NASA research engineer A. G. Crimmins Jr. observes an object at Plum Tree Island Wildlife Refuge, near Poquoson, Virginia, that is approximately 75 feet across and 10–15 feet in height. The object has 3– 7 lights colored red and orange and appears to rotate. It moves approximately a quarter mile west of its original position on a zigzag course and then appears to land on the ocean shore. It remains still for about 5 minutes, then takes off to the north and turns right to depart to the east at a high rate of speed. Crimmins watches it through 20x binoculars. The same object is apparently seen by retired USAF Maj. John R. Nayadley, another NASA research engineer, who observes a V-shaped object with blinking red-orange lights over Hampton, Virginia. (NICAP, “Zig-Zagging Object Lands / Takes Off”; “New Sightings Put AF on Spot,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 1 (March/April 1965): 4; UFOEv II 156)
January 27 — 11:15 p.m. Donald Keyhoe and NICAP board member Joseph Bryan III appear on the Les Crane Show and are questioned skeptically by Crane. (Donald E. Keyhoe, “The Crane Show Fiasco,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 1 (March/April 1965): 6)
January 29 — In Monterey, California, Mayor George Clemens and his family see a bright light performing acrobatics in the northern sky. It hovers, then shoots straight up about 500 feet, fades, drops down, and hovers again. Then it drops toward the water and disappears. The Coast Guard finds nothing. (Sanderson, InvRes, p. 50)
January 30 — 2:00 a.m. TV repairman Sid Padrick is walking along Manresa Beach near his home in Watsonville, California. He hears a jet-like noise and sees a huge UFO moving slowly towards him. He hears a voice saying,
“We are not hostile,” and inviting him aboard. He enters the craft and sees a human in a flying suit who calls himself “Xeno” and gives Padrick a tour of the ship and other crew members that culminates in a deeply spiritual experience. Padrick reports his experience to Hamilton AFB [now closed] on February 4 and receives a 3-hour visit from Maj. Damon B. Reeder on February 8, and perhaps other officers after that. (Jerome Clark, “Two New Contact Claims,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 3 (May/June 1965): 20–21; Clark III 869–871; Good Above, pp. 293–298; Good Need, pp. 247–251; Lorenzen, Encounters with UFO Occupants, Berkley Medallion, 1976; “Contactee Loses Court Case,” UFO Investigator, April 1971, p. 1; Patrick Gross, URECAT, August 19, 2008; Marcus Lowth, “Sidney Padrick’s California Beach Encounter with ‘Xeno,’” UFO Insight, October 12, 2017; Curt Collins, “1965: UFO Contact in California,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, December 30, 2021)
February — George Langelaan, ex-secret service officer and author of the short story “The Fly,” gives a lecture at Mourenx, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France, and declares that the Russian and US secret services have collaborated on the UFO problem and concluded that the objects are extraterrestrial. (Good Above, p. 133)
February 3 — 8:45 p.m. A man sees a light on the beach near Penguin Street, South New Brighton, New Zealand, and gets out of his car to observe it. He hears a modulated whistling sound and sees an object, 22 feet wide, rise from the beach to an altitude of 60 feet. He returns with other witnesses and a dog that gets restless at a spot where grass is flattened. Another witness sees the UFO as it is rising above the suburb. (Vallée, Magonia, p. 305)
February 11 (or 15) — Night. A Flying Tiger Line cargo aircraft (Flight F-169) en route from Anchorage, Alaska, to Tachikawa Airfield, Tokyo, Japan, encounters three gigantic, glowing, red UFOs, at least 200 feet in diameter, about 4 hours out of Anchorage. The aircraft radar also picks them up about 5 miles off the wing. They pace the plane for 30 minutes, then speed away at 1,380 mph. (NICAP, “Radar/Visual over Pacific Ocean”; Richard H. Hall, Uninvited Guests, Aurora, 1988, pp. 249–250; Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, pp. 128–129)
February 11 — The Pentagon sends Blue Book chief Maj. Hector Quintanilla to Richmond, Virginia, on a debunking tour.
Stressing delusions and hoaxes, he tells reporters that not a single UFO report is genuine. His press conference display includes false UFO photos and fake debris. “I am a facts man,” Quintanilla says. “I cannot explain why people want to see UFOs.” (“AF Misleads Senator,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 2 (May/June 1965): 4)
February 16–18 — Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Richard F. Gordon Jr., Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, and Rusty Schweikart visit Sedan Crater and Buckboard Mesa at the Nevada Test Site to practice carrying out geological observations in preparation for a moon landing. (Nevada National Security Site, “Apollo Astronauts Train at the Nevada Test Site,” July 2019)
February 26 — 3:00 p.m. George Adamski takes his last film of a spaceship at Madeleine Rodeffer’s house in Silver Spring, Maryland. (Clark III 41; Good Above, pp. 374–377; Douglas Curran, In Advance of the Landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space, Abbeville, 1985, pp. 42–48; Rene Erik Olsen, [George Adamski photo analysis], Adamski Foundation; Marc Hallet, A Critical Appraisal of George Adamski: The Man Who Spoke to the Space Brothers, The Author, 2016)
February 27 — The first conference of Australian UFO organizations takes place in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. It is arranged by W. Howard Sloane of the Ballarat Astronomical Society to share information and remove some of the stigma of UFO research. The conference is held at the Ballarat Municipal Observatory in Mount Pleasant.
Representatives of the Perth UFO Research Group, the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society, the UFO Investigation Centre NSW, and the Flying Saucer Research Society of South Australia are in attendance.
Witnesses include Rev. William Gill and Charles Brew. Former Air Marshal George Jones attends, and the RAAF is represented by B. G. Roberts, senior research scientist at the Operational Research Office, Department of Air. Roberts says that the RAAF has determined that 90% of reports are explainable, but that only those that might be a threat to national security are worth investigating and “there are no documents, files, or dossiers held by the Department which prove the existence of ‘flying saucers.’” The researchers quiz him on the 1953 Drury photographic case, but Roberts is unaware of that one. Jones insists on keeping an open mind about reports like those by Gill and Brew. (Swords 391–392; “First Australian Convention of UFO Groups,” Australian Flying Saucer Review (UFOIC), no. 8 (June 1965): 13–15)
March 2 — 1:55 p.m. John F. Reeves, 65, retired, while walking in the woods east of Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida, sees a bluish-green and reddish-purple object 20–30 feet in diameter, 6 feet thick, saucer-shaped, and with an outer rim and a stairway, two 2-foot windows on top, landed on the ground on four 4-foot legs about 2,000 feet away. He approaches to 100 feet. After watching the object for 10 minutes, he sees a robot-like being about 200– 300 feet away, about 5 feet tall, wearing a gray-silver uniform, glass dome headgear, wide-spaced eyes, and pointed chin. It walks to 15 feet away from Reeves, stares at him for 1.5 minutes, points a box or 6–7-inch black object at Reeves that emits a flash 3 times, then walks back to the landed vehicle and climbs in. The object has
Venetian blind–like blades on the rim that open and close; the rim starts rotating counterclockwise, the landing gear retract, then it takes off with a whooshing-rumbling sound and disappears vertically in less than 10 seconds, dropping two sheets of paper with indecipherable writing, and leaving indentations and footprints in the ground. The case is investigated by MacDill AFB in Tampa. Richard Hall supervises the investigation for NICAP and concludes it is a hoax. (NICAP, “Landed Object and Entity Case / Hoax”; “The Florida ‘Landing’ Incident,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1965, pp. 1, 3; Joan Whritenour, “UFO Lands?” Interplanetary Intelligence Report 1, no. 1 (May 1965): 4; “Project Blue Book,” Interplanetary Intelligence Report 1, no. 2 (July 1965): 8; Clark III
209–218; Jerome Clark, “Passport to Moniheya,” IUR 20, no. 3 (May/June 1995): 10–19; Sparks, p. 304) March 5 — Two Air Force radar technicians are repairing the height-finder antenna at Benton Air Force Station [now
Ground Equipment Facility QRC] in Ricketts Glen State Park near Red Rock, Pennsylvania, when they see a small, saucer-shaped object land nearby. As they approach it, a beam of light comes out and strikes both of them. That is the last thing they remember, and they fail to report to the command post. Their equipment is left behind at the antenna, but air police cannot locate the men. Pennsylvania State Police assist in a search of the area. About 16 hours later, a state trooper locates the two men walking along State Route 487 south of Lopez, about 10 miles away. They seem dazed, so they are taken to a hospital in Williamsport, where they are found to be dehydrated and confused. No alcohol or drugs are found. They are then taken to an Air Force hospital at Stewart AFB [now Stewart Air National Guard Base] in Orange County, New York. Trace amounts of alpha radiation are found on their clothing and strange marks are on their necks. AFOSI special agents interview them, but the men cannot remember anything. After 2 weeks in the hospital, they are released back to their unit. (“Pennsylvania Abduction from Air Force Base,” Filer’s Files, September 9, 1999; Good Need, pp. 251–252)
March 8 — 7:40 p.m. J. H. Martin, an instrument maker for the National Bureau of Standards, and his two sons observe in Mount Airy, Maryland, six lights he estimates to be 1,000 feet away and moving at a speed of 20 mph with no sound. They appear as three pair of lights, all with the same intensity. They are comparable to a traffic signal. The lights pass between the barn and the house at an estimated altitude of 100–500 feet, flying in a straight line toward the hills two miles away. They are in view for approximately 3 minutes. (NICAP, “Six Lights Just Miss House”; Sparks, p. 304)
March 15 — Around 1:00 a.m. James W. Flynn is deep in the Everglades in his swamp buggy, somewhere east of Immokalee, Florida, with his four hunting dogs. He sees a hovering object like an upside-down cone about 200 feet above some cypress trees slightly over a mile away. It moves back and forth from its original position.
Through binoculars it looks 25 feet high and 50 feet in diameter, with square windows emitting a yellowish glow. Around its base an orange-red glow extends downwards and illuminates the ground some 75 feet around the rim. Some 40 minutes into the sighting, Flynn decides to approach it in his buggy. A high-pitched ringing sound bothers one of his dogs. He stops 600 feet away and walks, waving his arms, toward the UFO, which is hovering 4 feet off the ground. A blast of wind from the object nearly knocks him off his feet. He continues, and at 75 feet from the UFO he waves his arms again. The object beams a light like a “welder’s torch” that hits his forehead. He blacks out twice. When he wakes up he is temporarily blinded. In the morning he finds a symmetrical circle of burned ground. The tops of trees are burned. Flynn makes his way to the home of Henry Osceola (or Henry Billy) later in the day and arrives at his own home in East Fort Myers on March 17 and spends 5 days in the hospital with damage to his right eye, bruises, burns, deep muscle tissue damage, and loss of hearing. His eye damage is permanent. The landing marks and burned trees are verified by the Lee County sheriff’s office. (NICAP, “Everglades / James Flynn Case”; Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 12–16; Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, pp. 192–195; Clark III 438–440; Patrick Gross, “UFO in the Everglades, USA 1965”)
March 17 — 10:00 p.m. Walter Jacobs, steward on the freighter Iron Duke, sees a bright orange object with a dent on top and a knot on the bottom off Newcastle, New South Wales. He takes a photograph but it is not published. (“UAO Photographed Clearly in Australia,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1965, p. 1)
March 18 (or 21) — 7:06 p.m. Capt. Yoshiharu Inaba is flying a TOA Airlines Convair 240 from Osaka to Hiroshima, Japan, at an altitude of 6,500 feet. Just after the aircraft passes Himeji, Hyogo, an elliptical luminous object appears and follows the plane. Inaba makes a 60° turn to avoid a collision, but the object makes a similar maneuver then follows along the plane’s left wing for about 56 miles. Emitting a greenish light, the object affects the automatic direction finder and the radio. As copilot Tetsu Majima radios the Matsuyama control tower, he hears frantic calls from Joji Negishi, the pilot of a Tokyo Airlines Piper Apache, who says he is being chased by a luminous object over Matsuyama. The object shoots away and disappears. (NICAP, “Object Paces Japanese Airliner”; “UFO Encounters over Japan,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 1 (March/April 1965): 6; Timothy Green Beckley, “Saucers Chase Japanese Airliner,” Fate 18, no. 8 (August 1965): 32–35; Schopick, pp. 150–153; Good Need, p. 253; Patrick Gross, “Aircraft–UFO Encounters, Japan, March 18, 1965”)
April 20 — John Carstairs Arnell, scientific advisor to the Canadian Chief of Air Staff, prepares a four-page “Suggested Statement by the Minister of National Defence,” Paul Hellyer. It reiterates the US opinion that UFOs do not constitute a national security threat because most sightings involve natural phenomena seen by unreliable witnesses. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 16–23)
April 24 — 5:30 p.m. Ernest Arthur Bryant is walking toward Scoriton Down near Scoriton (or Scorriton), Devon, England, when he sees a saucer-like object approach him. It stops nearby and a door opens. Three beings appear and beckon to him. He approaches the saucer. Two of the three beings appear to be nonhuman, but the third seems to be a youth in his teens. The youth speaks with an accent that Bryant thinks might be Russian and calls himself Yamski. He says that he is from Venus, and then remarks that he wished “Des” was there, as he would understand what is happening. At the close of their conversation, he says that in a month he will return and bring proof of “Mantell.” Ufologists who eventually hear the story immediately associate Yamski with George Adamski, the controversial contactee who died on April 23. Adamski was of Polish background and had a noticeable accent. If this were Adamski, he has lost any signs of aging. Adamski’s friend Desmond Leslie was a coauthor of his first book. Captain Thomas F. Mantell, piloting an F-51, had been killed in 1948 when he began chasing what he thought was a UFO. According to Bryant, the saucer returns June 7 and leaves some items, including several pieces of metal, allegedly from an F-51. He reports the story to the British UFO Research Association, which launches an investigation. The various items Bryant turns over to the two investigators (a turbine fitting, metal parts, a broken bulb and fitting, a phial containing silver sand, and a piece of paper on which the words “Adelphos Adelpho” are written) prove to be mundane and irrelevant to the F-51, according to aeronautical engineer Leonard
G. Cramp. In spite of problems with the story, one of the investigators, Eileen Buckle, rushes into print with a book, The Scoriton Mystery. Shortly afterward, Bryant unexpectedly takes ill and dies from a brain tumor on June 24, 1967. The other investigator, Norman Oliver, visits his widow. She says that she is familiar with the story in the book, as her husband had presented it to her first as the script for a science fiction novel. It is only after the investigation is well along that she realizes her husband was trying to sell the story as a real event. She indicates that the supposed items related to Mantell were purchased at a naval surplus store. Alice Wells, head of the Adamski Foundation, dismisses the Scoriton story from the beginning, as does Desmond Leslie. Between their rejection and Oliver’s uncovering of the hoax, few remain to support Bryant except Buckle. (Clark III 1040–1044; Story, pp. 324–326; Eileen Buckle, The Scoriton Mystery, Spearman, 1967; Norman Oliver, Sequel to Scoriton, The Author, 1968; Patrick Gross, URECAT, August 19, 2006)
May — Hayden C. Hewes’s Interplanetary Intelligence of Unidentified Flying Objects publishes the first issue of the Interplanetary Intelligence Report, which lasts through September/October 1966. (Interplanetary Intelligence Report 1, no. 1 (May 1965))
May 1 — Pilots Robert L. Stephens and fire control officer Daniel Andre reach a speed of 2,070 mph in a Lockheed YF- 12A at Edwards AFB, California. The YF-12A also reaches an altitude record of 80,257 feet. (Wikipedia, “Robert L. Stephens”)
May 6 — 9:10 a.m. The crew of a US Navy ship in the Philippine Sea notices an aircraft approaching. At 9:14 a.m., the SPS-6C air search radar detects four targets at ranges up to 22 miles for the next 6 minutes at extremely high speed (3,500 mph), making various maneuvers. As seen through binoculars, they appear as three lighted objects, one of 1st stellar magnitude the others 2nd magnitude. The objects hover directly over the ship for 3 minutes.
There is no IFF response. One object to starboard appears larger on radar. The objects depart to the southeast at extremely high speed. (NICAP, “Radar/Visual by U.S. Flag Ship in the Philippines”; Sparks, p. 305; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 93–94)
May 24 — 12:05 a.m. John Burgess, James Tilse, and Eric Judin are playing cards at the Epsom Retreat Hotel near Epsom, Queensland, when their attention is drawn to something on or near the ground. It appears to be a disc- shaped object with banks of lights underneath it to their southeast. Tilse estimates its diameter to be 30 feet, Judin as 20 feet, and Burgess as 6 feet. In the moonlight, its color seems to be charcoal. At times, it seems to approach them, then recede. Finally, it rapidly rises to about 300 feet, then it accelerates away to the northeast. Burgess and Judin heard a buzzing sound. Total duration is 40 minutes. Two days later, a circular depression is found nearby close to a telephone line. Tilse says that “tops of trees appear to be burned.” (“The James Tilse Report,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1965): 13–14; Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, p. 63; “UAO Buzzes Hotel in Australia,” APRO Bulletin, Jan./Feb. 1966, p. 3; Keith Basterfield, “Cold Case Investigation: Eton Ridge, Queensland, 24 May 1965,” Unidentified Aerial Phenomena— Scientific Research, June 13, 2012)
May 28 — 3:25 a.m. An Ansett-ANA DC-6b airliner piloted by Capt. John Barker is flying over Bougainville Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia, when it is paced for 10–15 minutes by an oblate UFO with exhaust gases coming from it. The copilot and a stewardess also see the object. Barker takes photos of the UFO, but when he lands in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, he is not allowed to have the film processed until he returns to Australia.
When he eventually arrives in Brisbane, he is flown directly to Canberra where both the film and the flight recorder are confiscated. The Directorate of Air Force Intelligence in Canberra later denies that any such incident took place. However, an official statement by Barker to the RAAF surfaces, in which he says: “I had always scoffed at these reports, but I saw it. We all saw it. It was under intelligent control, and it was certainly no known aircraft.” (Good Above, pp. 168–170)
June — Systems analyst Jacques Vallée publishes Anatomy of a Phenomenon, which generates particular excitement for its sober, scientific treatment of the UFO phenomenon. Well reviewed, it plays a significant role in the renaissance of interest in UFOs as scientists express a willingness to examine the UFO problem. It is the first book by a working scientist to argue for the extraterrestrial hypothesis. (Jacques Vallée, Anatomy of a Phenomenon, Regnery, 1965; Clark III 1213)
June — 6:30 p.m. Mrs. J. Whitehead is in the garden at her cottage in Flasby, North Yorkshire, England, when a large disc-shaped object passes over, making a slight swishing noise. On the underside are three “windows” in a triangular formation. She feels a strange calming sensation as the UFO passes by. (Jenny Randles, “Fake Photographs, Real Sightings,” IUR 11, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1986): 11)
June 4 — During the Gemini 4 mission, astronaut James McDivitt spots an object that he describes as a “white cylindrical shape with a white pole sticking out of one corner of it.” He takes two photos of it. His partner, Ed White, is asleep at the time. McDivitt maintains that it was some unknown but man-made piece of debris, while James Oberg, flight controller at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, argues that it is most likely the Titan II second stage of the craft. (“‘Object’ Astronaut Sighted Still Unidentified,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 3 (June/July 1965): 3; Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, pp. 212–213; “The Gemini IV Photograph,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1965): 3; Condon, pp. 205–207; Good Above, pp. 378–379; “Gemini 4 Astronaut James McDivitt UFO Sighting,” SpaceTimeForum YouTube channel, June 9, 2013; Center for UFO Studies, [case documents]; Lee Speigel, “NASA UFO Files Revealed on Science Channel Special,” HuffPost, March 27, 2012; Patrick Gross, “NASA Photographs of Unidentified Objects”)
June 7–8 — 7:50 p.m. Meteorological officer Jorge Stanich is performing a routine observation at the Argentinian Deception Station on Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, when he notices a stationary, bright, yellow light at an altitude of 25° above the horizon. He estimates its distance at 1.2 miles. The object is visible for 5 seconds. Six and a half hours later, at 2:20 a.m., he again sees a stationary light in the northwest at an altitude of 40° above the horizon for 4 seconds. (Daniel A. Perisse, “Deception Island UFO Sightings,” MUFON 1987 International UFO Symposium Proceedings, Mutual UFO Network, 1987, pp. 142–146)
June 18 or 20 — 4:20 p.m. The Commander of the Chilean Aguirre Cerda Research Station [destroyed in 1967] on Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, Mario Jahn Barrera, together with Chilean Air Force pilot Lt. Benavidez, a meteorologist, and seven other witnesses, observe a UFO that maneuvers rapidly on an oscillating course for 25 minutes. (Good Above, p. 309; Daniel A. Perisse, “Deception Island UFO Sightings,” MUFON 1987 International UFO Symposium Proceedings, Mutual UFO Network, 1987, p. 146)
June 19 — 4:00 a.m. Two farm boys are stacking hay near Rocky, Oklahoma, when a bright white, circular, wingless craft appears and descends at a 45° angle to the height of nearby telephone wires. The apparent size of the full moon, it moves horizontally across the farmyard. It has numerous lights around the outside and appears to be rotating in a counterclockwise direction. Their dogs start barking at it. They believe it is going to crash, so they run back into the barn after 3 minutes. It is last seen over a small silo. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 104–106)
June 25 — The Phoebus 1A nuclear rocket engine is tested at Area 25 of the Nevada Test Site as part of Project Rover. It runs at full power for 10.5 minutes. Unfortunately, the intense radiation environment causes one of the capacitance gauges to produce erroneous readings. When confronted by one gauge that says the hydrogen propellant tank is nearly empty, and another that says it is a quarter full, and unsure which is correct, the technicians in the control room choose to believe the one that says it is a quarter full. But the tank is indeed nearly empty, and the propellant runs dry. Without liquid hydrogen to cool it, the engine, operating at 2,000° C., quickly overheats and explodes. About a fifth of the fuel is ejected and most of the rest melts. The whole decontamination effort takes 400 people two months to complete, and costs $50,000. (Wikipedia, “Project Rover”)
June 25 — Frank Stavano and 24 other witnesses hear a loud, inexplicable explosion at his father Joseph’s farm near Carrollton, Ohio. Two days later, Joseph Stavano is cutting hay when he discovers a strange circular formation
from which the wheat is completely missing in the center for a diameter of 26 feet; at the edges the stubble is bent or broken outward at an angle of 20–30° from the horizontal. No other path leads into the circle but his own. Soil samples show no evidence of explosives or other foreign matter. (“Photograph of Carrollton, Ohio, Ground Mark Received at CUFOS,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 1, no. 6 (October 1980): 1–2)
July — Hynek writes a letter to the Air Force calling for a systematic study of UFOs. He writes that “enough puzzling sightings have been reported by intelligent and often technically competent people to warrant closer attention than Project Blue Book can possibly encompass at the present time.” (J. Allen Hynek, “Are Flying Saucers Real?” Saturday Evening Post, December 17, 1966, p. 20)
July — 11:30 p.m.–midnight. Talking on the phone in her second-floor bedroom in Lake Forest, Illinois, Pat Harvey sees a flash and hears a commotion or “rustle” outside. When she finishes the conversation, she looks out the window toward her neighbor’s lawn and sees a transparent bubble of light about 100 feet away. Inside the globe are several individuals who look like normal human beings, though slightly shorter (5 feet tall) and with skin that looks tanned. They are lying down in a somewhat haphazard arrangement. There are no visible instruments or seats. The object bobs up and down slightly, and the beings’ arms are moving in a way that reminds Harvey of “rowing motions.” (Clark III 277; Patrick Gross, URECAT, June 21, 2008)
July 1 — 5:45 a.m. Maurice Masse is farming just north of Valensole, Alps-de-Haute-Provence, France, when he is startled by a whistling sound and sees an elliptical object resting on four legs some 200 feet away from him in his lavender field. Squatting on the ground near the object are two figures about the size of 8-year-old boys, apparently looking at a lavender plant. Masse approaches them to about 20 feet and the figures stand up. They are dressed in gray-green overalls and have smooth, pumpkin-like heads. Their eyes are large and slanted, their mouths have no lips and look like little holes. He hears some grunting sounds, and Masse hints that there is a telepathic communication. One of the figures points a pencil-like object at Masse and he is paralyzed. They enter the UFO through a door and the object shoots off at enormous speed with a whistling sound. It takes Masse another 20 minutes to regain control. Tracks left by the landing gear are found later by Masse and confirmed by gendarmes. (Wikipedia, “Rencontre de Valensole”; NICAP, “Humanoids near Elliptical Object with Legs on Ground”; Clark 1205–1207; Good Above, pp. 133–134; G.E.P.A. Investigation, “The Significant Report from France,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1965): 5–6; Aimé Michel, “The Valensole Affair,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1965): 7–9; Luis Schönherr, “Luis Schönherr’s Questionnaire,” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 3 (May/June 1966): 21; G.E.P.A. Representative, “A Tentative Reply to Luis Schönherr’s Questionnaire,” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 3 (May/June 1966): 22–23; Aimé Michel, “Valensole—Further Details,” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 3 (May/June 1966): 24–25; Aimé Michel and Charles Bowen, “A Visit to Valensole,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1967): 6–12; Kim Hansen, “UFO Casebook,” UFOs 1947– 1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 66–69; Patrick Gross, “Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind: Valensole, France, 1965”)
July 2 — 7:15 p.m. Five garrison members of the British Antarctic Station B [abandoned in 1969] on Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, have a UFO sighting while conducting routine meteorological observations. The witnesses see a light in the north quadrant, zigzagging, hovering, and accelerating at times, and maintaining altitudes between 20° and 45° above the horizon. The light is green and red, at times yellow, and is observed for perhaps 15–20 minutes. The edges of the light resemble those of a bright star. (Schopick, pp. 153– 155; Frank Edwards, FS Serious Business, Bantam ed., 1966, p. 162; Good Above, p. 309; Daniel A. Perisse, “Deception Island UFO Sightings,” MUFON 1987 International UFO Symposium Proceedings, Mutual UFO Network, 1987, p. 146; Richard H. Hall, “UFO Sightings at Scientific Stations in Antarctica, July 1965”)
July 3 — 5:03 p.m. Two meteorologists at the Argentine Orcadas Base on Laurie Island in the South Orkney Islands, Antarctica, observe for 15 seconds a round, bluish-white object moving east to west on a parabolic path. Two variometers (magnetic field measuring instruments) register sudden and strong disturbances. (Schopick, pp. 153– 155; Daniel A. Perisse, “Deception Island UFO Sightings,” MUFON 1987 International UFO Symposium Proceedings, Mutual UFO Network, 1987, pp. 147, 153; Richard H. Hall, “UFO Sightings at Scientific Stations in Antarctica, July 1965”)
July 3 — 7:20 p.m. The meteorologist and eight other witnesses at the Chilean Aguirre Cerda Station [destroyed in 1967] on Deception Island, Antarctica, watch for a total of 20 minutes a bright and apparently solid object zigzagging from the east quadrant to the south quadrant. It maintains an altitude above the horizon between 35 and 20 degrees. It is white and star-like with some orange hues. (Daniel A. Perisse, “Deception Island UFO Sightings,” MUFON 1987 International UFO Symposium Proceedings, Mutual UFO Network, 1987, pp. 147, 153–154; Richard H. Hall, “UFO Sightings at Scientific Stations in Antarctica, July 1965”; Good Above, p. 309)
July 3 — 7:42 p.m. 17 people (including three visiting Chilean personnel) observe a lens-shaped disc that maneuvers erratically across the sky for about an hour at the Argentine Deception Station in the South Orkney Islands, Antarctica. The object changes colors (red, yellow, green, orange, blue, white) as it zigzags from a position about 30° above the horizon in the north-northwest. The object hovers, accelerates, reverses direction, and changes its luminosity. At times it goes behind some clouds, but it is also seen in front of some cirrus clouds. Finally, it disappears to the northwest, decreasing in size and gaining altitude. Cpl. Uladislao Duran Martinez takes 10 color photos through theodolite and field glasses. (“Chile, Argentina Confirm UFO Films,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 4 (Aug./Sept. 1965): 2; Dan Lloyd, “Things Are Hotting Up in the Antarctic,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1965): 4–5; Schopick, pp. 155–159; Daniel A. Perisse, “Deception Island UFO Sightings,” MUFON 1987 International UFO Symposium Proceedings, Mutual UFO Network, 1987, pp. 147, 154; Richard H. Hall, “UFO Sightings at Scientific Stations in Antarctica, July 1965”; Good Above pp. 309–310; Condon, pp. 99–100)
July 6 — 6:52 p.m. Chief Mate Torgrim Lien of the Norwegian ship TT Jawesta watches a star-like UFO through binoculars in the North Atlantic Ocean about 900 miles southwest of the Azores. He, the captain, and other officers see an intense blue, fiery tongue of light approaching the ship at tremendous speed. As it gets closer, he sees it is a cigar-shaped UFO with a row of square windows. (“‘Cigar’ Passes a Few Hundred Feet above Norwegian Ship,” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1966): 32)
July 9 — 4:30 p.m. A white cylindrical object is seen flying over Santa Maria Island in the Azores islands, Portugal. All electric clocks at the Santa Maria Airport stop when the object passes overhead. Weather personnel and other witnesses all agree that the UFO is at an altitude of 24,000–30,000 feet. At no time does it make any sound.
According to witnesses, the clocks stop at the same time the UFO reaches the zenith directly over the airport. Attempts to identify it are unsuccessful. (NICAP, “Clocks at Airport Stopped When UFO Passes Over”; “The Portuguese UAOs,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1965, p. 7; “United Press International Reports on Two UFOs,” Fate 18, no. 11 (November 1965): 59–61; Schopick, pp. 160–162)
July 9 — 10:00 p.m. Connie Wolferd and other residents of Bunker Hill, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, watch a clam- shaped object, about 10 feet in diameter, with red lights around its rim hover above some nearby trees. Wolferd is sitting on the porch listening to the radio when it suddenly stops functioning. The living room lights flicker (although fluorescent lights in the kitchen and bathroom do not), and a neighbor’s loud TV suddenly stops. She hears something making a “bleep-bleep” sound, looks up, and sees the object. Neighbors find the leaves of nearby trees are singed. (“Bunker Hill Girl Tells of Seeing Unidentified Flying Objects in July,” Lebanon (Pa.) Daily News, August 10, 1965, p. 20; Schopick, pp. 177–178)
July 12 — 4:30 a.m. Laura de Freitas Machado Fernandes gets up to go to the well for some water at her home in Porto, Portugal, near the Porto Airport. She notices a luminous red object shaped like a cardinal’s hat coming from the west at high speed. It stops in mid-air and hovers above some nearby woods, rocking back and forth. She rushes back to warn her husband, Manuel Fernandes. They notice that their radio set has started making a loud noise. They estimate the object is about a quarter-mile away. Its top part is orange, and on its brim is a flickering red light. They watch it for 3 minutes before it takes off to the north at full speed. The radio goes back to normal. (“The Portuguese UAOs,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1965, pp. 3, 7; “United Press International Reports on Two UFOs,” Fate 18, no. 11 (November 1965): 59–61; Schopick, pp. 162–167)
July 15 — 11:00 a.m. An object descends near the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Tidbinbilla, Australian Capital Territory, interfering with its tracking of Mariner 4. It is also observed by control tower operators at Canberra Airport. (“Canberra Incident,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1965): 18–19; Schopick, pp. 167–169; Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, p. 106; Randall C. Hecker, “Did UFO Sabotage Mariner IV?” Fate 20, no. 5 (May 1967): 32–37)
July 19 — 5:30 p.m. Denis Crowe, an aircraft artist, is strolling along a beach at Vaucluse, New South Wales, when he encounters a glowing disc resting on legs. It is about 20 feet in diameter and 9 feet high. The top and bottom are silver gray and the rim in between is glowing greenish-blue. A hollow area at the very top seems to be a glass dome. There are no windows or antennae. Dogs in the neighborhood all bark at it. When Crowe is 50–60 feet from the object, it takes off with a sound like air forced from a balloon. He watches it for about 10 seconds until it disappears into the clouds. After the object takes off, the dogs are strangely silent. (NICAP, “Glowing Disc on Legs Freaks Dogs”; Bill Chalker, “Tully Saucer Nests of 1966, Part Two,” IUR 23, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 16–17; Good Above, p. 531)
July 26 — 9:35 p.m. Astronomers Robert Vitolniek, Ian Melderis, and Esmeralda Vitolniek at the Baldone Astrophysical Observatory in Latvia are observing noctilucent clouds when they see a star-like object drifting slowly westwards. Through binoculars the light seems to be sharply defined, and through a telescope it looks like an array of three greenish lights around a larger, central sphere. After 20 minutes, the three smaller lights move away from the central one, and they disappear into the distance at 10:00 p.m. (Felix Ziegel, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” Soviet
Life, no. 137 (February 1968): 27; Hobana and Weverbergh 286–287; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 60–61)
July 26 — Night. Adilon Batista de Azevedo, 14, leaves home with two friends to go to a movie theater on the outskirts of Carazinho, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. When they pass a vacant lot on Rua David Canaberra between the Rua 15 de Novembro and the Rua Alexandra de Motta, they see a light beam coming from a cloud illuminating an area about 33 feet in diameter and hear a buzzing noise. The other boys run, but Adilon remains and sees an oval- shaped object landing in the vacant lot and hovering about 3 feet off the ground. Another smaller object descends and hovers next to the first. Two beings about 5 feet tall emerge from the larger object and walk around it. They are wearing dark clothing and light helmets. After 5 minutes, 3 others emerge from the smaller object and converse with the others. The beings reenter the objects, which take off several minute apart. Adilon gets a headache that remains with him for 5 days. Possible helicopters? (“Research in Brazil,” SBEDV Boletim, no. 45– 47 (July/Dec. 1965): 7–9; Patrick Gross, URECAT, April 6, 2008; Brazil 73–74)
July 28 — 9:40 p.m. A USAF Reserve major and his wife observe a manta ray–shaped object fly almost directly overhead at Carswell AFB [now Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base], Fort Worth, Texas, below 1,000 feet altitude. The object moves at a constant speed on the same course. The object is approximately 40 feet long and has two brilliant white lights pulsating off and on once every second. It is completely silent and flies directly through the Carswell control zone at low altitude. The sighting is verified by three other persons on duty. The report states: “This sighting was a positive observation, under ideal circumstances, of a definite object of an unconventional nature—possibly of foreign origin, which could be a threat to national security.” (NICAP, “RAPCON Fails to Identify Low Flying Manta Ray”)
July 31 — 1:05 a.m. Wynnewood, Oklahoma, police officer Lewis Sikes, 29, reports a UFO to the northeast. A little later, simultaneous radar fixes are obtained at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City and Carswell AFB [now Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base], Fort Worth, Texas. Both Tinker and Carswell track the object to a point 15 miles southwest of Tinker when it disappears. A few minutes later, it is tracked to a point 29 miles south of Tinker when it is lost again. (NICAP, “Gnd/Visual and AF Radar”)
August 1 — 1:30–4:30 a.m. Various personnel from Francis E. Warren Air Force Base west of Cheyenne, Wyoming, report more than 70 UFOs near the base’s ICBM Minuteman I launch control facilities (LCFs) and launch facilities (LFs, missile silos). A Lieut. Anspaugh logs the reports and incoming telephone calls for three hours. The reports begin with a “large circular object emitting several colors but no sound” seen by civilians over Cheyenne itself at 1:30 a.m. This results in an alert at the base for all personnel to be on the watch for anything suspicious. Five objects are spotted over the Sioux Army Depot [now closed] in Sydney, Nebraska, at 1:45 a.m. Two UFOs are seen over the Echo LCF southeast of Pine Bluff at 1:48 a.m. Nine more objects are sighted at 2:50
a.m. The Echo LCF reports six UFOs stacked vertically. A Strategic Air Command team at the H-2 LF northeast of Gurley reports a white UFO directly overhead at 3:00 a.m. The Sioux Army Depot reports five objects going east at 3:35 a.m. Reports of white, round- or oval-shaped objects in various formations, continue solidly at the H- 2 LF for the next 40 minutes. At 4:05 a.m., the Warren base commander calls to say that the Quebec LCF southwest of Chugwater has nine UFOs in sight: four to the NW, three to the NE, and two over Cheyenne. Sightings continue to be reported the next two nights at missile sites assigned to Warren AFB, for a total of 148 objects seen by 143 combat defense force airmen, missile maintenance men, and NCOs. The sheer scope and blatant ostentation of the UFOs’ reported aerial displays over a sensitive atomic missile base is remarkable. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 209–211; Robert L. Hastings, “Remarkable Reports from the Missile Field,” IUR 32, no. 1 (August 2008): 8–14, 23–27; Robert L. Hastings, “Yet Another Nuclear Missile Launch Officer Talks about UFOs at F. E. Warren AFB,” UFOs & Nukes, February 5, 2012; Nukes 223– 238)
August 1 — 8:08 p.m. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol starts receiving 25–30 visual sightings of UFOs, many by police and highway patrol troopers from Purcell north to Norman to Chandler and back south through Meeker and Shawnee, Oklahoma. The sightings continue through dawn and vary from one to four objects that start and stop, often having a red color and varying to a white and blue luster. (NICAP, [case documents])
August 1 — 9:08 p.m. Four objects, bluish-white with a red haze, are seen from the control tower at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. T/Sgt John R. Lang, 34, is the watch supervisor. All the objects appear at approximately 22,000 feet altitude. One is moving south, and another is moving north at speeds of 150–200 mph. Two of the objects appear stationary. The 746th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron reports radar contact with one object at 10,000 feet in the vicinity of Norman, Oklahoma, 20 miles south of Tinker AFB. The duration is 90 minutes. An Air Force weather observer, who wishes to remain anonymous, looks at a UFO through his
40x-telescope at Oklahoma City. It is tilted about 45° then straightens out. “It looked like Saturn with a flat top and flat bottom.” (NICAP, “Four Lights Observed, Radar Contact on One”; “UFOs Leave Local Radar Tracks,” Wichita (Kan.) Beacon, August 2, 1965, pp. 1–2; “Radar Didn’t Detect UFOs Spotted in Area,” Minneapolis Star, August 3, 1965, pp. 1, 4)
August 1 — Night. A TWA Boeing 707 airliner flying west of Topeka, Kansas, picks up 12–15 targets on Air Intercept Radar flying toward them at high speed on a 50-mile scope. They change to a 20-mile scope and observe the objects approaching in formation. The pilot, copilot, and engineer all witness this clearly. The aircraft passes the objects but cannot see them visually. Two films of the scopes are taken. (NICAP, “707 Picks Up 12–15 Targets”)
August 1 — Night. Two rookie police officers in Caldwell, Kansas, speed toward the airport to investigate local sightings when they see an egg-shaped machine about 300 feet long hovering above the ground. They try to get closer, but it disappears behind a hedgerow and shuts its lights off. They return the next day, but find no traces. (“Caldwell Officers Are ‘Believers’ Now,” Wichita (Kan.) Beacon, August 2, 1965, p. 1; Jerome Clark, “The Greatest Flap Yet?” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1966): 27–28)
August 2 or 3 —1:30 a.m. Mr. A. L. Smith, accompanied by his 14-year-old son Alan and three other witnesses, watch an unusual, multicolored UFO over Tulsa, Oklahoma. The UFO is slowly moving toward the witnesses. Still several hundred yards away, it pauses briefly and hovers. At that precise moment, Alan snaps a photograph with his inexpensive camera, using ASA 64 film. Alan decides not to try for a second shot. He takes his camera inside the house and runs back outside just in time to see the object rapidly flying away into the night sky. The photo is a probable fake of a color wheel for an aluminum Christmas tree. (NICAP, “The Smith / Tulsa Photo Case”; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, p.147; Larry Robinson, “The Tulsa Photo,” MidiMagic, October 25, 2016; Patrick Gross, “Project Blue Book Case 9966”)
August 2 — Project Blue Book puts out an official USAF press release declaring the majority of the sightings on August 1 are “most likely” due to the planet Jupiter and the stars Rigel, Capella, Betelgeuse, and Aldebaran, “clearly visible in the eastern sky.” But astronomer Robert Risser of the Kirkpatrick Planetarium in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, counters that Jupiter and the four stars are “on the opposite side of the earth” at the time of the sightings. (“Mystery Flying Objects ‘Seen’ in Eight States,” Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1965, p. 1; Clark III 388)
August 2 — 2:30 a.m. Unidentified blips show up on the Weather Bureau radar screen at the Wichita Municipal Airport [now Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport] in Kansas and continue intermittently until after 6:00 a.m. Most of the sightings are in the vicinity of Wellington, Kansas. The altitude ranges from 5,000–20,000 feet.
Wichita meteorologist John Shockley tracks several UFOs on the Weather Bureau radar flying at altitudes of 6,000–9,000 feet. His assistant Ellis Pike notes that they look just like airliner blips. They brighten and dim on the screen, moving at 45 mph. At least four citizens see colored glows in the southern sky during the early morning hours. One says: “They were red and exploded in a shower of sparks and at other times fluttered like a leaf in the clear sky.” (NICAP, “Weather Radar Blips and Sky Glows”; Condon, pp. 158–160)
August 2 — 3:00 a.m. KXWI-TV news photographer Robert Campbell hears on his radio a conversation between Oklahoma and Texas highway patrolmen that a UFO has been tracked on radar and is streaking towards the Texas border. Campbell takes his 4-by-5 Speed Graphic camera and drives into Sherman, Texas, where he locates Chief of Police Peter McCollum. Together they search for the object and soon see it hanging stationary one mile east of Bells on US Highway 82. The object has a “Mercury capsule” shape at one end, possibly rounded at the other end. Several distinct bands circle the cylinder, with disc-shaped embossments on the surface. He takes four camera exposures, two minutes each at three-minute intervals. The negatives are carefully examined by USAF scientific advisers and astronomical experts. No acceptable explanation can be found for the object recorded on the negatives. (NICAP, “The Sherman, Texas, Photo Case”; “Sherman 1965,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library, February 5, 2014; Patrick Gross, “The Sherman Case, Texas, USA, 1965”)
August 2 — The crew of the Russian steamship Raduga in the Red Sea watch a fiery sphere emerge from the water 2 miles away, causing an enormous pillar of water to rise and collapse. It hovers above the surface at an altitude of 490 feet. A motorboat with six Arab fishermen is in the area and also sees the object, which is apparently 200 feet in diameter. The object shoots straight up, and the boat is hit by a strong wave that overturns it. (Stonehill and Mantle, Russia’s USO Secrets, Flying Disk, 2020, pp. 59–60)
August 2 — As they patrol near Eagle Mountain Lake, two Tarrant County, Texas, deputy sheriffs see an object as bright as burning magnesium land. An extensive investigation by police finds no traces. (Sparks, p. 306)
August 3 — 12:37 p.m. Los Angeles County Highway Accident Investigator Rex Heflin takes four clear Polaroid photos of a hat-shaped UFO on a lonely stretch of road near Santa Ana, California. The object is silent, and a beam of white light is rotating beneath it. He radios his supervisor, but the radio goes dead. One of Heflin’s coworkers offers to send the photos to Life magazine; he does, but Life declines to use them. Soon, someone from NORAD
shows up demanding the prints and Heflin turns them over. They are not seen again. The photos are most likely a prank hoax by Heflin using a hubcap, complicated by flawed photographic analyses and investigations. (NICAP, “Santa Ana / Rex Heflin Photos”; “Calif. Man Snaps UAO Photo,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1965, pp. 4, 6; “Photo ‘Hoax’ Label Questioned,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 5 (Nov./Dec. 1965): 8; “The Heflin Story,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 6 (Jan./Feb. 1966): 7–8; Schopick, pp. 170–174; Ralph Rankow, “The Heflin Photographs,”
Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1968): 21–24; UFOEv II 284–286; Condon, pp. 84–85, 437–455; Robert J. Kirkpatrick, “The Heflin Case: Then and Now,” IUR 11, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1986): 10–13, 23; “Heflin’s 1965 Photos Finally Validated,” RR0; Ann Druffel, Robert M. Wood, and Eric Kelson, “Reanalysis of the 1965 Heflin UFO Photos,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 14, no. 4 (2000): 583–622; Ann Druffel, “Goodbye, Rex Heflin,” UFO, August 2006, pp. 52–63; Mary Castner, unpublished document)
August 3 — Before 12:00 midnight. Three young men watch a triangular object with a light at each of its points move from north to south along the Jura Mountains from Biel/Bienne to Vignelz, Canton Bern, Switzerland. Suddenly it stops, changing color from yellow to dark red, makes a 180° turn, then takes off “like lightning” toward the east where it vanishes. (“Bright Pointed Triangle Again,” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1966): iii)
August 4 — 1:30 a.m. Don Tenopir, 44, is driving a truck on State Highway 15 about 25 miles south of Abilene (near Elmo, Kansas), when all his lights go out. They come back on intermittently. A UFO passes just above his truck with a wind-like sound and hovers about 100 feet in front of him. Tenopir stops his rig, and the object slowly rises and takes off to the southwest. It seems to be 14–15 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick with a 4-foot hump in the middle, and orange-colored. It is shooting off rays in spurts. He stops in Abilene to report his sighting to Abilene Reflector-Chronicle reporter Ed Corwin. (“Beatrice Trucker Joins UFO Viewers,” Beatrice (Neb.) Daily Sun, August 5, 1965, p. 1; Jerome Clark, “The Greatest Flap Yet?” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1966):
August 4 — Night. Radar operators at Calumet Air Force Station [now operated by Keweenaw County] near Phoenix, Michigan, track 7–10 objects in V-formation traveling from southwest to north-northeast at about 9,000 mph over Lake Superior. The same night, radar targets at Duluth, Minnesota, are chased by USAF jets. (Sparks, p. 306; Center for UFO Studies, [case documents])
August 8 — 11:30 p.m. A luminous UFO is allegedly photographed in Beaver, Pennsylvania, by James Lucci, 17.
According to estimations by witnesses, the diameter of the UFO is around 42 feet. Lucci is photographing the full moon with his brother John, 23. According to them, a shining object appears from behind a hill. James manages to take two shots before the flying object leaves. His friends encourage him to send the photos to the Beaver County Times, where they are analyzed and declared authentic. However, both the Colorado project and UFO researchers determine the photo is a hoax created by holding a plate up next to the moon with a fist (probably John’s) and blurring it with motion. (Condon, pp. 83–84, 455–457; Mark Cashman, “The End of a Photographic Case,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 21–23)
August 9 — 6:00 p.m. A professional astronomer and his wife, along with three others, are driving eastward on Long Island, New York, when then see a silvery disc heading slowly south. Its base has a ring of bluish-white lights that make the object appear to rotate. It has a white light on top. After accelerating, the object becomes a white, starlike object far to the east. It moves up and down for another 5 minutes, then rapidly moves south and disappears over the Atlantic Ocean. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 75–76)
August 11? — 3:30 p.m. David Gibson is sitting in the front yard of his house in Waverly, Iowa, with his father and sister. They hear a high-pitched whine and see an object descending to the south. The silvery UFO is about 15–20 feet in diameter and looks like two saucers put together. It lands on a tree-lined hill out of view and the whining sound fades away. Gibson walks about a half-mile to take a look and briefly sees a “being,” about 3–3.5 feet tall, watching him from behind a tree at the top of the hill. It quickly vanishes and he hears a rush of air. He reaches the spot but sees no footprints. About 40 feet south of the tree he finds a burned area about 15–20 feet in diameter and three rectangular impressions in the shape of a triangle. (Jerome Clark, “Iowa’s Bashful Humanoid,” Flying Saucer Review 21, no. 3/4 (November 1975): 52–53)
August 12 — 11:15 a.m. Maj. Jack D. Bond is sitting in a passenger seat of a T-29 aircraft on a heading of 300° and descending from 4,000 feet to 3,000 feet near Springfield, Ohio. He sees a UFO ascending and descending that is slightly higher than the T-29. It appears to be 5–7 miles away and moving in a general direction of 90°. The object’s speed is highly erratic during the 3 ascents and descents that the object makes. On its third descent the object appears to level off and accelerate at a speed of 690 mph or more. Project Blue Book evaluates this sighting as a solar mirage, even though the position and time of day rule that out. (NICAP, “Object Has 3 Ascents and 2 Descents”; Clark III 388–389)
August 13 — 9:30 p.m.? Leonard Chalupiak has just put his car into his garage at Baden, Pennsylvania, when he sees a disc-shaped object about 300 feet in diameter flying in front of the moon toward the north at about 50 mph and
2,300 feet away. It is surrounded with orange lights that weaken as a blue light comes on, which is intense for about 3 seconds. Then all the lights disappear and a sort of “shock wave” that shakes the tree leaves commences. The witness goes into his house and calls the Air Force. About 20 minutes later his vision becomes hazy, his eyes grow painful, and he gradually loses vision in both eyes. He notices his entire body is sunburned. A medical examination indicates exposure to ultraviolet radiation. His vision returns gradually over several days. The Air Force labels it a hoax, perhaps confusing it with the Beaver, Pennsylvania, hoax photo of August 8. (NICAP, “Object Crosses Moon / Medical Effects on Witness”; Vallée, Magonia, p. 313)
August 16 — 10:45 p.m.–12:20 a.m. A woman leaves her house on the northwest edge of Sedalia, Missouri, to drive to a drug store. As she is returning home, she sees an unusual figure in the ditch to her right. It turns and waves at her, then stumbles as it climbs out of the ditch. Something (a large bird?) flies up in the air a few feet from the car. She steps on the gas and goes home, where her husband asks her where she has been because it is now 12:25 a.m. In 1977, she undergoes hypnotic regression with hypnotist Ron Owen and recalls an abduction experience where she undergoes some type of examination. (Clark III 278–279; Patrick Gross, URECAT, August 25, 2008)
August 18 — 9:50 p.m. Michael S. Henry and another college student are driving 3 miles south of Noblesville, Indiana, when a large red lighted object swoops down on their car. The radio and ignition go dead. The UFO looks like a top, with a large, gray cone and a flat or slightly domed top. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 15)
August 19 — 3:00 a.m. Thelma B. Schumaker and her mother, Mrs. W. H. Blackburn, are awakened by an explosion in their backyard in Mount Airy, North Carolina. The sound seems to rise and travel west. They see a bright golden cigar hovering in the north. The object moves to the right then to the left, then up and down, left again, then disappears behind some high oak trees. The next morning, the witnesses find a 6-inch-wide circle of depressed sod that is worn down to the soil. The circle is 12 feet in diameter. (Ted Phillips, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings, CUFOS, 1975, p. 37)
August 19 — 8:20–9:00 p.m. Harold Butcher, 16, is milking the cows in his father’s barn in Cherry Creek, New York, and listening to radio station WKBW. Just outside, a 3-year old bull is tied by its nose to a metal pipe. Harold hears the bull make a noise “like I have never heard come from an animal before.” Looking out the window, he sees the animal is bending the pipe. Simultaneously, he sees a metallic-looking, football-shaped UFO about 50 feet long and approximately 20 feet thick hovering just above the trees an estimated 450 feet from the barn. Slowly, the object descends behind a maple tree, emitting a red vapor from around its edges and a “beep-beep” sound.
Meanwhile, the radio is emitting static, even though WKBW usually has a clear signal. Harold calls the house on an intercom, then runs outside. As he approaches the bull, the UFO rises and moves behind some clouds “as fast as a snap of my fingers” emitting red vapor toward the ground, then bounces back to the ship as it hovers about 10 feet in the air. The noise also increases to a level approximating a sonic boom as it goes up. As the UFO disappears, the clouds turn green. Inside, the boy’s mother, Mrs. William Butcher, notes that there is “definite interference” in her radio reception. Harold’s brother, Robert, also goes outside and the two boys see that the UFO has reappeared, this time hovering over a pine grove. It ascends again, emitting the red vapor and turning the clouds green. Others in the house include William Butcher Jr. and Kathleen Brougham, a friend. They do not see the object. It returns twice at 8:45 and 9:00 p.m., finally disappearing to the southwest. Trooper E. J. Haas and a fellow officer arrive on the scene shortly thereafter. As they all walk out to inspect the area of the initial sighting, they notice a pungent odor. Harold and the young daughter suffer from upset stomachs. Mrs. Butcher says the cows produce only one can of milk that evening, as opposed to their usual two and a half cans. Harold discovers a purple, oily-smelling liquid and gives a sample of it to the state police, who turn it over to Capt. James A. Dorsey and five others from Niagara Falls Air Force Base [now Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station], who come to investigate the report the following afternoon. When NICAP investigator Jeffrey Gow arrives on the scene, he notices the foot-tall grass in the area “seemed to be bent over in long curved sweeps.” Radar targets are picked up between 8:00–8:30 p.m. by an AN/FPS-6 Long Range Height Finder Radar of the 763rd Radar Squadron at Lockport Air Force Station [now closed] near Shawnee, New York. The target is sighted near the upper limit of the radar. (NICAP, “Close Encounter Has Radar Evidence”; NICAP, “Cherry Creek (Butcher) Trace Case”; Center for UFO Studies, [case documents]; “Landing Probed by NICAP, AF,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1965): 7; “The Cherry Creek Incident,” APRO Bulletin, Nov./Dec. 1965, p. 7; Schopick, pp. 178–184; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 170–172; Robert A. Galganski, “Incident at Cherry Creek,” IUR 21, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 3– 12, 27–29; Sparks, p. 307; Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp. 118–124)
August 30 — Hynek writes to Lt. Col. John Spaulding in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force to suggest that the Pentagon work with the National Academy of Sciences to establish a panel of physical and social scientists to study the UFO phenomenon. (Center for UFO Studies, [Hynek correspondence], p. 1; Swords 306)
September 3 — Around 1:00 a.m. Exeter, New Hampshire, Police Officer Eugene F. Bertrand Jr. comes across a woman parked on State Highway 101. “She was real upset,” he says, “and told me that a red glowing object had chased her.” Around 2:00 a.m., while walking home to Exeter on Route 150 (Amesbury Road) near Kensington, New Hampshire, teenager Norman J. Muscarello is terrorized by a large object with four or five bright red lights that approaches from nearby woods and hovers over a field. Horses are spooked. Muscarello gets a ride to the Exeter police station, pale and shaken, and reports the incident at 2:24 a.m. Officer Bertrand drives him back to the field along Route 150 to investigate. When he is called to investigate Muscarello’s report, the earlier incident causes him to pay attention. At first Bertrand and Muscarello see nothing, but when Bertrand flashes a light around the field around 3:00 a.m., a huge dark object with red flashing lights rises up over the trees, moving back and forth, tilts, and comes toward them. They both see pulsating red lights that dim from left to right then right to left in a 5- 4-3-2-1 then 1-2-3-4-5 pattern. Each cycle takes about 2 seconds. The object hovers for several minutes, and everything is silent except for the dogs and horses. Then it darts, turns sharply, slows down, and begins to move away. Another patrolman, David R. Hunt, pulls up and sees the pulsating lights and the UFO. Bertrand says the lights are always in a line and at a 60° angle; when the object moves, the lower lights are always forward of the others. In the daytime, the police station calls Pease AFB [now Pease Air National Guard Base] in Portsmouth to reconfirm the incident. By 1:00 p.m., 2–4 police officers arrive to interview the three witnesses at length.
Journalist John G. Fuller investigates the case during the next month. He finds a huge gap between media coverage and local perceptions. Raymond Fowler finds that the local advertising plane operated by Sky-Lite Aerial Advertising Agency of Boston was not running between August 21 and September 10. (Wikipedia, “Exeter incident”; “UFOs Panic Police, Motorists,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 4 (Aug./Sept. 1965): 1, 3–4; “The Exeter,
N.H. Case,” APRO Bulletin, Nov./Dec. 1965, pp. 7–8; John G. Fuller, “Outer-Space Ghost Story,” Look, February 22, 1966, pp. 36–42; Clark III 440–444; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 154–166; John G. Fuller, Incident at Exeter, Putnam’s Sons, 1966; Schopick, pp. 197–199; Sparks, p. 307; Jean Fuller, “The Exeter Incidents,” Flying Saucer Review 13, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1967): 25–27; “Tale of an ‘Exeter Terrestrial,’” IUR 8, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1983): 12– 14, excerpted from Exeter Area High School newspaper, Talon 5, no. 1 (1981); Kim Hansen, “UFO Casebook,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 69–72; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, pp. 143–145; Schuessler, “The Exeter, N.H. UFO Case, September 3, 1965: Briefing Document,” October 2002; Martin Shough, “Exeunt Exeter? Should This 1965 New Hampshire Classic Finally Shuffle Off the Stage?” April 2012; Center for UFO Studies, [case documents]; Center for UFO Studies, [John G. Fuller tape-recorded interview transcripts, part one, part two]; Patrick Gross, “The Exeter Cases, 1965”)
September 3 — 11:00 p.m. Brazoria County Sheriff’s Deputies Billy E. McCoy and Robert Goode are patrolling Highway 36 between West Columbia and Damon, Texas. They see a dark-gray triangular object, 150–200 feet long and 40–50 feet thick at the middle, with a long, bright, pulsing, purple light on the right side and a long blue light on the left side. It approaches to within 150 feet from the highway and 100 feet in the air. Purple light illuminates the ground beneath the object and the interior of the police car, and the object casts a shadow in the moonlight. Goode feels heat on his left arm; an alligator bite on his left index finger is suddenly relieved of pain, later healing rapidly but unnaturally. They drive away in fear but return later that night to find the object still there. (NICAP, “Dark Grey Disc Shadows Police Car”; “UAO Pursues Police,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1965, pp. 1, 3; Clark III 355–357; Sparks, p. 308; Michael D. Swords, “Damon, Texas Comments, by Request from Kandinsky,” The Big Study, March 26, 2011; “Damon 1965,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library, February 5, 2014; Patrick Gross, “Damon, Texas, September 1965”)
September 6 — 9:30 p.m. Capt. Marcelo Cisternas is piloting a DC-6b at 8,500 feet for LAN Chile Flight 904 in northern Chile when he sees a zigzagging object change course and approach his airliner. The UFO follows the aircraft for 13–14 minutes at a distance of 1.8 miles. It is emitting a light of an intense color that shifts to radiant white.
Cisternas checks with control towers in Arica and Iquque, but no other flights are expected in the area. (Good Above, p. 311)
September 10 — 8:30 a.m. Farmer Antônio Pau Ferro is working on his farm in São João, near Garanhuns, Pernambuco, Brazil, when he hears a noise and sees two metallic objects descending from the sky about 26 feet away. They touch the ground in a uniform motion, let two humanoids about 2.5 feet tall exit, then rise up again to 16 feet and hover. The beings approach Ferro, then move back to the two UFOs. They pick up a tomato and examine it. The objects descend and envelop them, then take off with a whining and then a low sound. (Clark III 523; Brazil 76; Patrick Gross, URECAT, May 17, 2008)
September 14 — 1:00 a.m. Engineer Paul Green is riding a motorcycle south of Langenhoe, Essex, UK, near Langenhoe Hall Lane when he hears a high-pitched humming to the east and notices a pinpoint of blue light moving in his direction. The humming becomes a loud buzzing, and his engine sputters and dies and the headlight goes out. The
light resolves into an enormous domed disc that tilts and slowly descends. The underside of the disc has numerous round items. Green walks toward the object, but he feels paralyzed as the flashing blue light becomes intense, fluctuating in rhythm with his heartbeat. He feels a tingling like an electric shock. The object seems to land in an area with farmhouses. Green notes that another cyclist has had a similar problem, but with some difficulty he gets his cycle started. The next day he notices that his hair and clothes are imbued with static electricity. (Bernard E. Finch, “The Langenhoe Incident,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1965): 3–4)
September 16 — Just after 12:00 midnight. Constables John Lockem and Koos de Klerk are patrolling on the Pretoria- Bronkhorstspruit highway in South Africa when their police van headlights suddenly illuminate a domed, disc- shaped object sitting on the road. The UFO is copper colored and about 30 feet in diameter. Within seconds, the object lifts off the road, emitting tongues of flame from two tubes or channels on the underside. Flames from the macadam road surface shoot up in the air about 3 feet as the UFO departs, blazing long after it is out of sight.
Later investigation shows that part of the road is caved in as if from a heavy weight, and the gravel is separated from the tar in a severely burned area about 6 feet in diameter. Lt. Col. J. B. Brits, district commandant of Pretoria North, tells the media that the incident is considered “as being of a highly secret nature and an inquiry is being conducted in top circles.” Samples of the road surface are taken for analysis by a leading scientific agency; the report is never made public. (Philipp Human, “Two Policemen See Saucer on Main Road,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1965): 9–11; “Police See UFO Blast Off from Highway,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 4
(Aug./Sept. 1965): 5; Schopick, pp. 187–192; UFOEv II 183–184)
September 17 — A UFO is seen hovering above Medina del Campo, Valladolid, Spain, for several hours. Heliodoro Carrión takes off in his light plane and goes to 15,000 feet. An Iberia Airlines jet passes him on the way up at 24,000 feet. Carrión estimates the UFO is at least 4 times larger than the jet. (“More Sightings over Spain,” APRO Bulletin, Jan./Feb. 1966, p. 1)
Late September — 9:15 p.m. Two French submarines, the Junon (S648) and the Daphné (S641), escorted by the logistic support vessel Rhône, are anchored off Fort-de-France, Martinique, when a large luminous object the color of a fluorescent tube arrives slowly and silently from the west. Michel Figuet on the Junon goes into the coming tower and gets six pairs of binoculars that he distributes to companions. There are 300 witnesses, including four officers on the Junon, three officers on the Daphné, a dozen French sailors, and personnel of the weather observatory. All witnesses aboard the Junon see the object as a large ball of light or a disc on edge arriving from the west. It moves slowly, horizontally, at a distance estimated at 6 miles south of the ships, from west to east. It leaves a whitish trace similar to the glow of a TV screen. When it was directly south of the ships the object drops toward the earth, makes two complete loops, then hovers in the midst of a faint halo. Figuet watches the object vanish in the center of its glow “like a bulb turned off.” The trail and the halo remain visible in the sky for a full minute. At 9:45 p.m. the halo reappears at the same place, and the object switches on again. It rises, makes two more loops, and flies away to the west, where it disappears at 9:50 p.m. (Jacques Vallée, “Estimates of Power Optical Output in Six Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Defined Luminosity Characteristics,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 12, no. 3 (1998): 348–350)
September 23 — A major blackout in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico, coincides with the appearance of a glowing, disc- shaped UFO hovering low over the city. Witnesses include the governor of Morelos state, Emilio Riva Palacio; Valentín López González, the mayor of Cuernavaca; 24th military zone chief Gen. Rafael Enrique Vega; Joaquín Díaz González, president of the Lion’s Club; founder of the Folkloric Ballet of Mexico, Amalia Hernández; and future Mexican President Luis Echeverría. The power only fails as long as the UFO is there. (Frank Edwards, FS Serious Business, Bantam ed., 1966, p. 145; Schopick, pp. 192–196; Antonio Huneeus, “UFO Sighting by Mexican President Luis Echeverría,” OpenMinds, October 6, 2011)
September 26 — The Centro Ufologico Nazionale is founded in Milan, Italy, as a test of cooperation among several regional UFO groups. It begins publishing Notiziario UFO, edited by Roberto Pinotti, in January 1966. (Story, p. 67; 1Pinotti 143–146; Notiziario UFO 1 (1967))
September 28 — USAF Director of Information Gen. Eugene B. LeBailly writes to the military director of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board, saying that Gen. Arthur C. Agan has found Project Blue Book to be a worthwhile program and that the Air Force should continue to investigate UFOs “to assure that such objects do not present a threat to our national security.” The project will remain at the Foreign Technology Division (Wright-Patterson AFB). He also requests that a “working scientific panel composed of both physical and social scientists be organized to review Project Blue Book—its resources, methods, and findings.” (Maj. Gen. E. B. LeBailly, “Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs),” memorandum for military director, Scientific Advisory Board, September 28, 1965)
Fall — 10:30 a.m. A Chesapeake & Ohio train is moving 8 miles south of Fostoria, Ohio, when the fireman and engineer see a large cigar-shaped object in the sky a considerable distance away. It is dark in color and positioned at a 45° angle from the horizon. It appears to be creating its own cloud screen. Suddenly a small object falls out of the tail and descends slowly in a fluttering fashion. Near the ground the small object stabilizes, emits coal-black smoke from its top, and then rises upward faster and faster. Three more objects leave the large one, each taking 10–12 minutes. They go off in different directions. After the last one leaves, a white cloud forms around the large object, which remains in the sky with other normal white clouds. (Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects and Cloud Cigars,” IUR 29, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 3)
October — The Tasmanian UFO Investigation Centre is formed in Hobart, Tasmania, by Robert Burge. It publishes the TUFOIC Newsletter for many years, but the organization folds in December 2015. (TUFOIC Newsletter, no. 7 (1971); Keith Basterfield, Vladimir Godic, and Pony Godic, “Australian Ufology: A Review,” JUFOS 2 (1990): 25)
October 1 — The Swedish Defense Staff transfers the responsibility for UFO investigation to the Swedish National Defence Research Institute [now the Swedish Defence Research Agency] in Sweden, where it remains. Few civilian reports are classified as secret, but sensitive reports by the military are restricted. (Swords 367–368)
October 2 — John G. Fuller summarizes the Exeter sighting in his “Trade Winds” column in the Saturday Review. He writes to his editors beforehand that “reliable, but off-the-record information from the Pease AFB indicates frequent radar blips and fighters are constantly scrambled to pursue these objects. This information is not official, but it comes from a reliable source.” (John G. Fuller, “Trade Winds,” Saturday Review 48, no. 40 (October 2, 1965): 10, 16)
Mid-October — 9:30 a.m. Bill Hertzke, a ranch hand on the Circle J Ranch near Cochrane, Alberta, is on his horse in a pasture when he sees an object like a small airplane parked on the ground. It is silver-gray with swept-back wings, about 16 feet long, a wingspan of about 12 feet, and its fuselage is about 4-5 feet deep. He rides over and examines it. The exterior is irregular, “like a waffle.” A transparent dome covers the cockpit. Through it he can see complicated instruments (knobs, dials, and switches), a TV screen, and two transparent (like Plexiglas) bucket seats. There are no visible motors, propellers, jets, insignia, or identifying marks of any kind. It has an exterior door about 2 feet wide and 3 feet high that is open about 2 inches. His horse is extremely skittish, so he ties it to a tree and returns on foot. He spends 10–15 minutes examining it and can see no landing gear (although it seems to be suspended 18–20 inches off the ground) or seams of any kind. He realizes he can go inside the door but is a bit too scared to even touch the object, and has to return to chores anyway. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 87–102)
October 21 — 6:10 p.m. Five witnesses are in a car near Saint George, Minnesota, returning to their homes in Gibbon from a bow-hunting trip. Arthur A. Strauch, a Sibley County deputy sheriff, is the first to spot a strange object that seems to be 2,000 feet above the ground and a quarter of a mile distant in the northwest sky. After watching for about 10 minutes from the car, the group drives down the road about a half mile and stops. Strauch observes it both with the naked eye and through 7x35 binoculars. At first they hear no sound, but as the object flies over them, Donald Martin Grewe describes the sound as a “whistling whine.” Strauch snaps a photograph just as the object begins to move. The object then flies into the wind for several hundred feet, then stops for a few seconds, at which time its lights change from bright white to dull orange, alternating several times. It then moves toward the southeast at a high rate of speed and disappears out of sight. (NICAP, “The St. George Multiple-Witness Photo Case”; “Deputy Snaps UAO Color Photo,” APRO Bulletin, Nov./Dec. 1965, pp. 1, 3; Story, pp. 351–352; Patrick Gross, “The St. George Multiple-Witness Sighting and Photograph, USA, 1965”)
October 22 — Afternoon. Geof Gray-Cobb, a Canadian technician working with the Deep Space Instrumentation Facility [now the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory] in Gauteng, South Africa, in tracking Mariner 4, is present when the spacecraft’s signal strength begins rising at a point when it should not have. The team alerts the Jet Propulsion Lab. The signal strength is now so high that the instruments are clicking as they max out. Gray- Cobb says the “raw radio energy” is coming in indecipherable “blips and dashes.” Nothing can be seen visually. Eight minutes later, everything goes silent. JPL later asks them to point their dish in the direction it was pointing when they picked up the signal. They do, but forget to correct for the earth’s rotation. Nonetheless, they get the signal again, which means it is a local source. Nothing is visible in the sky, but a sound sweep reveals that the source is a perfect circle 2° in diameter. The team directs a packet of radio pulses at the source, but it falls silent. Two months later, Gray-Cobb discovers that the pages for the event are gone from the log; the tape recording of the event is also missing. The manager tells him that two men with “authorization” had come three days after the event to confiscate the tapes. (Michael D. Swords, “Gazing at the Moons,” IUR 32, no. 4 (October 2009): 16)
October 22 — Evening. José Camilo Filho is walking through a field near the city cemetery in Canhotinho, Pernambuco, Brazil, when he runs across two little men only 3 feet high with whitish hair sitting next to a tube 4 feet tall and
resting on the ground. When they see Camilo, they jump up in a disorganized fashion, colliding with each other. One picks up the tube and the other points a straw at Camilo, who runs ahead. He decides to return and take a closer look, but the men and tube are gone. (Gordon Creighton, “The Humanoids in Latin America,” in Charles Bowen, ed., The Humanoids, special issue of FSR, Oct./Dec. 1966, p. 45; Patrick Gross, URECAT, July 27, 2008; Brazil 75)
October 23 — Night. KEYL-AM radio announcer James F. Townsend, 19, is driving on State Highway 27 four miles east of Long Prairie, Minnesota, when he slams on his brakes to avoid hitting a rocket-like device resting on three legs or fins. As his car skids to a stop 20 feet from the object, the vehicle’s motor and electrical system die. The object looks like it is made of stainless steel, stands 30–40 feet high, and is 10 feet in diameter. In a circle of light under it, Townsend sees three things that resemble beer cans with “tripod legs and three matchstick arms.” They have no eyes, but Townsend feels as if they are looking at him. He gets out of the car to try to knock one over, but they come over to him and they stand there looking at him. Eventually they turn around and “scoot under the ship,” disappearing into the light beneath it. An ear-splitting humming sound emanates from the UFO, which assumes a bright illumination and shoots off. The Todd County sheriff and UFO investigators assume that Townsend, a deeply religious man, is sincere. (“‘Space Things’ Stop His Car,” Minneapolis Star, October 25, 1965, pp. 1, 4; Sparks, p. 308; “‘Little, Little Men’ in Minn.,” APRO Bulletin, Nov./Dec. 1965, p. 8; Clare John Jansen, “Little Tin Men in Minnesota,” Fate 19, no. 2 (February 1966): 36–40; Clark III 280; Patrick Gross, URECAT, January 5, 2008)
October 25 — The Betty and Barney Hill story is publicly revealed in an article by reporter John H. Luttrell in the Boston Traveler newspaper. He has obtained a copy of the tape recording at the Quincy Center UFO group, as well as a tape of an interview the Hills gave to UFO investigators after they completed their therapy. UPI picks up the story the same day. The Hills are caught completely by surprise. (Clark III 585)
October 27 — The Air Force issues a press release that gives two basic explanations for the Exeter, New Hampshire, sightings: Some stem from a high-altitude SAC exercise out of Westover AFB [now Westover Air Reserve Base] near Chicopee, Massachusetts; others are explained by temperature inversion that causes the appearance of stars and planets to dance and twinkle. Around the same time, John Fuller hears from an Air Force pilot that pilots have been ordered to shoot down UFOs when possible, but the objects appear to be “invulnerable” and can outmaneuver any aircraft. (John G. Fuller, Incident at Exeter, Putnam’s Sons, 1966, pp. 201–202, 205–206)
Early November — The USAF Scientific Advisory Board meets in Houston, Texas, to discuss the UFO investigation and the possibility of an independent study. (USAF Scientific Advisory Board, Special Report of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project “Blue Book,” Brian O’Brien, chairman of the Advisory Board, March 1966)
November — 2:00 a.m. Aaron David Kaback is on duty at the motor pool in the Army’s Fort Riley Military Reservation in Kansas when the duty officer takes him to a remote area of the base where they see a landed UFO with an Army helicopter flying above it. He contacts Leonard Stringfield about his story. A subsequent investigation by Citizens Against UFO Secrecy finds many discrepancies in Kaback’s account and very little credibility. (“Ft.
Riley Landing: Hoax or Delusion?” Just Cause 1, no. 6 (September 1978): 11–14; Clark III 603–604; Kevin D. Randle, A History of UFO Crashes, Avon, 1995, p. 201)
November 5? — Day. Mauritz Löugren and a friend see a triangular-shaped object moving back and forth for 20 minutes over Luleå, Sweden. It disappears silently to the west at great speed. (“World Round-Up,” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1966): iii)
November 9 — 5:16 p.m. The Northeast power blackout, a significant disruption in the supply of electricity, affects parts of Ontario, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Over 30 million people and 80,000 square miles are left without electricity for up to 13 hours. The cause of the failure is the setting of a protective relay on one of the transmission lines from the Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Power Station No. 2 in Queenston, Ontario, near Niagara Falls. Prior to and coincident with the blackout, there are a number of reports of unusual lights in Syracuse and Niagara Falls, New York, and Holliston, Massachusetts, and there is speculation that the blackout is related to UFO activity in some way. But there is no evidence of a direct connection. (Wikipedia, “Northeast blackout of 1965”; “New Clues to UFO Electrical Interference,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 5 (Nov./Dec. 1965): 3–4; “The Question of the Power Blackouts,” APRO Bulletin, Nov./Dec. 1965, pp. 4–6; John G. Fuller, Incident at Exeter, Putnam’s Sons, 1966, pp. 230–235; Schopick, pp. 201–203; Condon, pp. 110–115; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 130–137; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman
Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, p. 145; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report,
Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 99–102)
November 10 — Before dawn. Actor Stuart Whitman is staying in a hotel in Manhattan, New York City, during the Northeast power blackout. He hears a “sound, like a whippoorwill whistling outside my twelfth-story window.” He steps to the window and sees 2 luminous UFOs hovering nearby, one orange, the other blue. He hears voices from the UFOs in his head, telling him they are fearful of earth because humans are messing around with “unknown quantities” that might disrupt the balance of the universe. They claim the blackout is a small demonstration of their power and ask Whitman to do what he can to fight malice, prejudice, and hate on earth. The objects disappear. (“El Paso Blackout Recalls New York Experience to Actor,” El Paso (Tex.) Herald-Post, December 24, 1965, p. 4; Jerome Clark, “The Greatest Flap Yet? Part IV,” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1966): 10; Clark III 1280–1281; Patrick Gross, URECAT, July 25, 2008)
November 26 — 8:00–9:00 p.m. Numerous power outages around St. Paul, Minnesota, are accompanied by observations of white or blue lights in the sky. (“Power Outages Accompanied by Flashes,” APRO Bulletin, Jan./Feb. 1966, pp. 3–4; Schopick, pp. 199–201)
November 30 — 3:30 a.m. Seaman Ian Kinsey is on watch at Canadian Forces Base Cornwallis [now Cornwallis Park] in Nova Scotia. As he is passing a window, he sees a lighted yellow oval object resting on the beach. Five minutes later a sliding door on the object’s side opens, emitting a white light. Then a smaller, cigarette-shaped UFO enters the larger object through the dear. The bigger object rises, pushing rocks and logs away from the center of the beach. It cruises slowly over a mountain and disappears. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 59–61)
December 5 — During the Gemini 7 mission, the astronauts mention a “bogey.” James Oberg, based on his trajectory analysis of the mission, describes the astronauts’ comments as referring to booster-associated debris and not a reference to some sort of UFO. Astronaut Frank Borman later confirms that what he saw was not a UFO. When he offers to go on the television show Unsolved Mysteries to clarify, the producers tell him, “Well, I’m not sure we want you on the program.” (Wikipedia, “UFO sightings in outer space”; Condon, pp. 207–208; Good Above, p. 378)
December 9 — 4:47 p.m. A large, brilliant fireball is seen by thousands in at least six states and Ontario, Canada. It streaks over the Detroit, Michigan–Windsor, Ontario, area, reportedly drops hot metal debris over Michigan and northern Ohio starting some grass fires and causes sonic booms in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area. It is generally assumed and reported by the press to be a meteor after authorities discount other proposed explanations such as a plane crash, errant missile test, or reentering satellite debris. However, eyewitnesses in the small village of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, claim something has crashed in the woods. A boy sees the object land; his mother Frances Kalp sees a wisp of blue smoke rising from the woods and alerts local radio station WHJB. Another observer reports feeling a vibration and “a thump” about the time the object reportedly lands. Others from Kecksburg, including local volunteer fire department members (Carl Metz and Paul Shipco), report seeing an object in the shape of an acorn and about as large as a Volkswagen Beetle. Writing resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs is also said to be in a band around the base of the object. A reporter and news director for WHJB, John J. Murphy, arrives on the scene of the event before authorities have arrived, in response to several calls to the station from alarmed citizens. He takes several photographs and conducts interviews with witnesses. His former wife Bonnie Millslagle later reports that all but one roll of the film is confiscated by military personnel.
WHJB office manager Mabel Mazza describes one of the pictures: “It was very dark and it was with a lot of trees around and everything. And I don’t know how far away from the site he was. But I did see a picture of a sort of a cone-like thing. It’s the only time I ever saw it.” Witnesses further report that an intense military presence, most notably the US Army, is secures the area, orders civilians out, seals the area within 2 hours of the event, and then removes an object on a flatbed truck. The military claims they have searched the woods and can find “absolutely nothing.” The official explanation of the widely seen fireball is that it is a mid-sized meteor, as suggested, for example, by University of Michigan astronomer William P. Bidelman. However, speculation as to the identity of the Kecksburg object (if there was one—reports vary) include an alien craft; debris from Kosmos 96 (James Oberg), a Soviet space probe intended for Venus that fails and never leaves the Earth’s atmosphere (now seen as unlikely); a General Electric Mark 2 Reentry Vehicle launched from Johnson Atoll in the Pacific Ocean on December 7 by the Air Force as a spy satellite (John Ventre and Owen Eichler); and a secret Corona spy satellite, KH-4A 1027, launched from Vandenberg AFB [now Vandenberg Space Force Base] on December 9 (Bob Wenzel Gross). (Wikipedia, “Kecksburg UFO incident”; Stan Gordon, “The Kecksburg UFO Crash: An Interim Report,” Flying Saucer Review 37, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 2–5; Kevin D. Randle, A History of UFO Crashes, Avon, 1995, pp. 95–120; Leslie Kean, “Forty Years of Secrecy: NASA, the Military, and the 1965 Kecksburg Crash,” IUR 30, no. 1 (October 2005): 3–9, 28–32; Robert R. Young and Leslie Kean, “Kecksburg Controversy,” IUR 30, no. 3 (May 2006): 25–28; Peter Brookesmith, “Rockets, Reptiles, and a Resurrection,” Fortean Times 360
(December 2017): 28; Clark III 340; Good Need, pp. 255–258; “Five Decades Later, the Kecksburg UFO Is Identified (Probably),” Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette, December 6, 2015; Matthew Dinkel, “Acorn from Space: The Kecksburg Incident,” Pennsylvania Center for the Book, Fall 2010; Center for UFO Studies, [case documents]; “Missile, Reentry Vehicle, Mark 2,” Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum)
December 13 — An amateur astronomer in Fort Worth, Texas, watches a UFO through several different telescopes. It has a recessed ring with small dark objects attached around its edge and a dark cross on its bottom. It moves from directly beneath the Moon and past Arcturus, then suddenly disappears. (Michael D. Swords, “Gazing at the Moons,” IUR 32, no. 4 (October 2009): 14)
December 15 — 8:45 p.m. C. M. W. Martyn of Worcester Park, southwest London, England, watches a “candle-wax white” triangular object, about 130 feet wide and completely silent, pass over his home toward the northwest at about 1,200 mph. (“Surrey Deltavolant?” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 2 (March/April 1966): 35)
December 19 — 11:45 p.m. Edward A. Bruns is driving his father’s 1962 Ford pickup truck, heading west just south of Herman, Minnesota. He sees a bright, oval-shaped object hovering several feet above the road. It covers the entire road and is shaped like two saucers with a dome on top. A window-like structure surrounds the dome and emits a green light. Suddenly the truck engine stops, the headlights go out, and the vehicle lifts up, spins violently to the right, ending up in a ditch on the other side of the road. Stunned, Bruns stares at the UFO, which makes a whistling sound, emits sparks, shoots upward, and disappears. He runs home, scared and nervous. His father goes to the site of the crash but cannot get the truck out. A reporter later confirms seeing the truck in the ditch with a complete “absence of skid marks in the snow to account for how it got there.” (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, p. 50)
1966
1966 — Jacques and Janine Vallée publish Challenge to Science: The UFO Enigma, a general survey of the present state of the UFO problem. The first section gives an analysis of UFO patterns by examining UFO features, the second part deals with sighting frequencies, and the third part analyzes cases according to type. (Jacques and Janine Vallée, Challenge to Science: The UFO Enigma, Regnery, 1966; Clark III 1213)
1966 — Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan coauthors a book with Russian astrophysicist Iosif Shklovsky on Intelligent Life in the Universe (an expansion of Shklovsky’s 1962 book) in which he speculates that Earth might have been visited by aliens many times in the past few billion years, at least once in “historical times.” Discussing the biological as well as astronomical issues of the subject, its unique format—alternating paragraphs written by Shklovsky and Sagan—allows them to express their views without compromise. (I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan, Intelligent Life in the Universe, Holden-Day, 1966; Michael D. Swords, “SETI/ETI and UFOs,” JUFOS 5 (1994): 142–145)
1966 — Roger A. MacGowan and Frederick I. Ordway III publish Intelligence in the Universe, discussing cosmology, biological origins and evolution, SETI within and outside the solar system, and speculations on intelligence. (Roger A. MacGowan and Frederick I. Ordway, Intelligence in the Universe, Prentice-Hall, 1966; Michael D. Swords, “SETI/ETI and UFOs,” JUFOS 5 (1994): 145–146)
1966 — Francis Schaefer founds the Cercle Français de Recherches Ufologiques in Forbach, Moselle, France. From 1975 to 1984 it publishes Ufologia. (Ufologia, no. 1 (Nov./Dec. 1975))
January 7 — 4:10 a.m. Police Constable Colin Perks is checking business property along Alderley Road in Wilmslow, Cheshire, England, when he hears a high-pitched whine. He sees a greenish-gray glow in the sky about 300 feet away and 35 feet in the air. It comes from a glowing elliptical object about 30 feet long and 20 feet wide that remains stationary for 5 seconds before moving away quickly to the east-southeast. (J. Cleary-Baker, “Police Constable Observes a UFO,” BUFORA Journal and Bulletin 1, no. 9 (Summer 1966): 5; UFOFiles2, pp. 73–75; Jenny Randles, “Perks of the Job,” Fortean Times 344 (October 2016): 29)
January 7 — 3:27 p.m. High school student Gary Finch is driving on the Wilmer-Georgetown Road about 3 miles southwest of Georgetown, Alabama. He sees a large silver ball about 15–20 feet in diameter that descends then hovers about 5 feet above the road. On top of it is a cone with a large green light, and it is making a whining sound. As he approaches it, his car engine cuts out and his watch stops. After 1–2 minutes, it disappears in a gradual climb. (“Mobile Reports Flying Objects,” Selma (Ala.) Times-Journal, January 13, 1966, p. 10; NICAP, “E-M Effects on Car and Watch”; Schopick, pp. 75–76; Hynek UFO Report, p. 42)
January 8 — Night. A luminous, disc-shaped object cruises low from north to southwest among the buildings of Valencia, Venezuela. At 10:00 p.m., two similar objects are seen flying at a higher altitude. (“More S.A. Sightings,” APRO Bulletin, March/Apr. 1966, p. 8)
January 11 —7:40 p.m. A nurse and others together in a car near Myerstown, Pennsylvania, see a luminous disc, like one saucer inverted on top of another, at relatively close range as it hovers above their car. After about 5 minutes, the object suddenly accelerates and speeds away. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp.
January 12 — Pilots Alvin S. White and Carl Cross reach a speed of 2,020 mph in a North American XB-70 Valkyrie at Edwards AFB, California. (Wikipedia, “North American XB-70 Valkyrie”)
January 14 — 5:55 p.m. After his 11-year-old son runs into the house in Weston, Massachusetts, and says a flying saucer is outside, an associate laboratory director at Massachusetts Institute of Technology goes outside with the rest of the family and sees an erratically moving bright light. They observe it through binoculars for 5–10 minutes. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 43, 52–53)
January 17 — A B-52G Strategic Air Command bomber collides with a KC-135 tanker during mid-air refueling at 31,000 feet over the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain. The tanker is completely destroyed and the B-52G breaks apart, killing 3 of its 7 crew members. Of the four Mk28-type hydrogen bombs the B-52G carries, three are found on land near the small fishing village of Palomares, Spain. The non-nuclear explosives in two of the weapons detonate upon impact with the ground, resulting in the contamination of a 0.77-square-mile area by plutonium.
The fourth, which falls into the Mediterranean, is recovered intact after a 2 1⁄2-month-long search. Some 800 individuals with no hands-on expertise improvise search and decontamination procedures. More than 1,400 tons of radioactive soil and plant life are excavated and shipped to the Savannah River plant in South Carolina for burial. (Wikipedia, “1966 Palomares B-52 crash”; Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 297–300)
January 18 — 4:55 p.m. Two surveyors are taking readings at China Lake Naval Ordnance Test Station [now Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake] in the western Mojave Desert, California. The surveyor using a theodolite hears a hum, looks up, and sees a UFO flying nearly straight at him from an angle of 35°–40° and from almost exact north. It passes directly overhead at less than 150 feet, then dives smoothly, turns to the east, then comes to within 10 feet of the sloping ground. The surveyor observes the object through the theodolite until it is lost in front of a lava flow about 2 miles away. Both observers (the other one is in a truck) say it is moving at 150 mph and it is a dull black color and very quiet. They attempt to report the sighting, but the radio is garbled. Their truck has difficulty starting, and the theodolite exhibits an odd change in the gravity reference indicator, requiring it to be
re-leveled. (“A Professional Observation,” IUR 7, no. 2 (March 1982): 7–8)
January 19 — Around 9:00 a.m. A banana grower, George Pedley, is driving a tractor about one half mile from a farmhouse at Tully, Queensland, Australia, owned by Albert Pennisi. Pedley’s attention is drawn by a hissing sound, clearly heard over the noise from the tractor’s engine. He looks about for the source of the noise and sees an unusual object about 75 feet away. It is some 30 feet in the air, rising vertically, and is shaped like “two saucers face to face.” It is light gray in color, dull, and non-reflective. He estimates its size as 25 feet long by 8–9 feet deep. The hissing diminishes as the object rises to a height of 60 feet, then departs, climbing at about an angle of 45°, extremely fast, to the southwest. The duration of his observation is only 5–6 seconds. The object appears to be always rotating. After its departure, Pedley finds a clearly defined, nearly circular depression in swamp grass, in a water-filled lagoon, at the point where he first saw it. The marking is about 32 feet long by 25 feet wide. The grass on the surface of the water is flattened in a clockwise direction. Royal Australian Air Force intelligence officers find a variety of circles in the area, ranging from 8 to 30 feet in diameter. Within each circle the plant roots are pulled completely out of the soil, as if the ground has been subjected to an intense rotary force. (“The Tully ‘Nests’: How Freakish Can Whirlwinds Be?” Australian Flying Saucer Review (Victorian Edition), no. 5 (July 1966): 3–7; “UFOs No Strangers to Tully,” Australian Flying Saucer Review, no. 9 (November 1966): 15; “1966: Tully…After Tully,” Australian Flying Saucer Review, no. 9 (November 1966): 16–21; Keith Basterfield, Vladimir Godic, and Pony Godic, “Australian Ufology: A Review,” JUFOS 2 (1990): 26–27; Bill Chalker, “The 1966 Tully Saucer ‘Nest’: A Classic UFO Physical Trace Case,” 1997; Bill Chalker, “Tully Saucer Nests of 1966—Part One,” IUR 22, no. 4 (Winter 1997–1998): 14–20; Bill Chalker, “Tully Saucer Nests of 1966, Part Two,” IUR 23, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 17, 31; Clark III 1136–1138)
January 19 — 7:55 p.m. Two luminous objects pass over Acarigua, Venezuela, one from the north, the other from the east. When the paths of the two objects cross, the lights go out in the entire city. (“More S.A. Sightings,” APRO Bulletin, March/Apr. 1966, p. 8)
February 3 — A six-member Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project Blue Book, headed by University of Rochester optical physicist Brian O’Brien, meets at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. All but one (astronomer Carl Sagan)
are members of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (psychologist Launor F. Carter, industrial psychologist Jesse Orlansky, rocket scientist Richard W. Porter, computer engineer Willis Ware), and none have any sympathy with the idea that UFO reports represent anything extraordinary. Also attending is Lt. Col. Harold A. Steiner, assistant secretary to the Scientific Advisory Board. They receive a briefing from Quintanilla, review the Robertson Panel report, and examine a few UFO cases. The group recommends that Blue Book “be strengthened to provide opportunity for scientific investigation of selected sightings in more detail and depth than has been possible to date.” Furthermore, USAF should negotiate contracts “with a few selected universities to provide scientific teams to investigate promptly and in depth certain selected sightings of UFOs…. The universities should be chosen to provide good geographical distribution.” They also conclude that “perhaps 100 sightings a year might be subjected to this close study, and that possibly an average of 10 man-days might be required per sighting so studied. The information provided by such a program might bring to light new facts of scientific value.” The group recommends that Blue Book data be given “wide unsolicited circulation among prominent members of the Congress and other public persons.” The Air Force ignores their recommendations. ((USAF Scientific Advisory Board, Special Report of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project “Blue Book,” Brian O’Brien, chairman of the Advisory Board, March 1966; Clark III 1191)
February 6 — 6:05 a.m. Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth R. Gulley see a tadpole-shaped object about 14 feet long and 2 feet wide with eight yellow-and-red, neon-like lights at 250–500 feet altitude in Nederland, Texas. It casts a pulsating red glow on the lawn. Her house and street lights go out as high-frequency sound assaults the witnesses’ ears. The object blinks out when aircraft pass overhead, then comes on again afterward. It departed to the west about 1.5 miles to the vicinity of the airport, where an aircraft’s landing lights light up the UFO. Then it disappears in a slow climb. (NICAP, “House Lights Go Out When ‘Tadpole’ Flies Over” ; Sparks. p. 309; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 103–104)
February 6 — Around 8:00 p.m. Several persons in the barrio of Aluche, Madrid, Spain, allegedly see an unusual flying object. Looking out a window, Maria Ruiz Torres watches an object descending. She sees a “gigantic eye” looking at her through a porthole. Another witness, Juan Jiminez Dias, thinks he sees a door open in the craft. Other observers include soldiers at a nearby ammunition dump. Motorist José Luis Jordán Peña gets a close, extended view of the object, which he characterizes as “enormous.” Jordán Peña sends Spanish ufologist Antonio Ribera a sketch of the UFO, which has three legs and a curious symbol on its underside—something like two reverse parentheses with a vertical bar positioned between them. No other witness mentions anything like this. In 1992, Jordán Peña confesses to hoaxing his sighting, including the landing marks and physical traces, in order to prove his theory that paranoia is much more widespread in Spain that psychiatrists are willing to admit. (Antonio Ribera, “The San José de Valderas Photographs,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1969): 3–10; “Background of ‘Ummo’ and the Sightings,” CUFOS Bulletin, Spring 1977, pp. 2–3; Clark III 1183; Scott Corrales, “The UMMO Experience: Are You Experienced?” Strange Magazine, January 31, 2001; Alain Moreau, “UMMO: Une imposture?” Les Cles de l’Inexplique)
February 27 — A nationally broadcast public affairs interview program, The Open Mind, presents a panel discussion titled “Are Flying Saucers Only Science Fiction?” Princeton University history professor Eric F. Goldman is moderator. Panelists include astronomer Donald H. Menzel, plant physiologist Frank B. Salisbury, journalist John G. Fuller, psychologist R. Leo Sprinkle, and astronomer J. Allen Hynek. Menzel calls the Exeter police officers “hysterical subjects,” although he cannot remember their names and is unfamiliar with the case. (“Notable Broadcasts of the Past: The Open Mind NBC Public Affairs Presentation, February 27, 1966,” Journal of UFO History 1, no. 2 (May/June 2004): 3–6)
March — Kathleen Reeves and a friend are walking on a rural road near their homes in Toledo, Oregon, when they think they see a neighbor’s field on fire. The fire seems oddly dome-shaped. They continue walking and see another smaller, duller light. Kathleen thinks it might be a prank, so she throws a rock at it. Suddenly, a group of much larger lights come on all around the small one. Frightened, the girls run home. Over the next few months, through October, the Reeves home experiences such poltergeist phenomena as whirring or sawing noises, rose-colored lights inside, small rings of light that crawl over the bedroom walls, and light beams. (Michael D. Swords, “A Trick of the Light,” IUR 31, no. 2 (June 2007): 8)
March 5 — The D-21 is first launched from an M-21 off the coast of California. The drone is released but stays close to the M-21’s back for a few seconds, which seems like “two hours” to the M-21 crew. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed D- 21”)
March 6 — 2:00 a.m. Ivan de Almeida and other medical staff at the Lourenço Jorge Municipal Hospital in Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, watch an oval object with a bright red-orange light that shines on the ocean waters
below. After 2 hours it climbs up slowly, dims, and disappears. (Olavo T. Fontes, “Report from Brazil: The First UAO Sightings in 1966,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1966, p. 5)
March 12 — 10:40 a.m. A security guard at the Fábrica Nacional de Motores in Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, alerts 10 employees to a mysterious light that is approaching the factory. It descends to 1,500–1,800 feet and hovers above the plant. The object is approximately 18 feet in diameter and emits a brilliant white light that makes it difficult to look at directly. It periodically flashes even brighter. Plant director Col. Jorge Alberto Silveira Martins calls the Army and Air Force. After 30 minutes, the object dims and moves away at tremendous speed before the Army trucks arrive. (Olavo T. Fontes, “Report from Brazil: The First UAO Sightings in 1966,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1966, p. 5)
March 14 — 3:30 –5:30 a.m. Washtenaw County sheriff’s deputies Buford Bushroe and John Foster see highly maneuverable disc-shaped UFOs with flashing red and green lights over Dexter, Michigan. They call in a report that sets off a two-and-a-half hour chase that stretches over three counties and out over Lake Erie. Police from five jurisdictions are involved. Selfridge AFB [now Selfridge Air National Guard Base], near Mount Clemens, reports tracking UFOs on radar over Lake Erie. (UFOEv II 184–185; O’Connell 177; Patrick Gross, “Michigan 1966: Sheriffs Watch High-Performance Discs, Also Tracked on Radar”)
March 16 — 5:45 p.m. Many people see a white, oval object crash into the Atlantic Ocean close to the Ilha Cagarras off Ipanema, Brazil. Some see a few smaller white parachute-shaped objects fall from it. A thorough search turns up nothing in the sea or the island itself. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 54)
March 17 — 4:25 a.m. Police Sgt. Neil Schneider and Deputy David Fitzpatrick see top-shaped objects making sharp maneuvers over Milan, Michigan. They alternatively hover, rise and fall quickly, dart around at jet-like speed, dimming and brightening periodically. Two objects are operating together, while a third UFO hovers at a lower altitude. (UFOEv II 185; O’Connell 177; Sparks, p. 310)
March 20 — 7:30 p.m. After his dogs start making a racket, Frank Mannor and his 26-year-old son Ronald see strange lights over a swampy area in Dexter Township, Michigan. They walk over to the area for a look, taking about 30 minutes, and see a pyramid-shaped object with a rounded top, corrugated surface, and blue, red, and white lights. Mannor’s son-in-law Bob Wagner, back at the house, sees the object light up and rise to 500 feet, then come down again making some noise. Washtenaw County sheriff’s deputies David Fitzpatrick and Stanley McFadden arrive about 9:00 p.m. drive towards the swamp on Quigley Road. They see a brilliant light that dims and then reappears. By this time a crowd has gathered. One man reports that when two flashlights appear in the distance, the object seems to react by flying away at high speed. At another point the object passes directly over the Mannors with a whistling sound like a rifle bullet ricocheting. It remains in the swampy area for 30 minutes. (“Swamp Gas Answer Disproved,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 7 (March/April 1966): 5; UFOEv II 185–186; O’Connell 175–177, 184–185; Sparks, p. 310; Center for UFO Studies, [case documents]; Patrick Gross, “Hillsdale, Michigan, 1966: The Infamous ‘Swamp Gas’ Case”)
March 21 — 10:32 p.m. Cynthia “Pinky” Poffenberger and 16 other Hillsdale (Michigan) College students see a football- shaped object with red, green, and white pulsating lights descend from the sky and pass close to their dorm. It settles in a hollow in the Slayton Arboretum about 1,500 feet away. Some 87 students collect to watch the UFO, then they notify Civil Defense Director William Van Horn, who arrives with police. From the dormitory, the landed lights appear yellowish-white, dimming and intensifying. Only student Barbara Kohn stays most of the night, watching the lights vanish, reappear, and recede. Around 5:10 a.m., Kohn sees a lighted object move away and disappear from sight. Radiation is later detected at the landing area of about 330–600 microroentgens/hr, roughly 10–20 times the background level. (O’Connell 177–180, 185–188; Clark III 950; Sparks, p. 311; Center for UFO Studies, [case documents]; Jack Butler, “UFO: In 1966, Hillsdale Had Its Own Close Encounter,” The Collegian (Hillsdale College), March 19, 2015)
March 22 — Morning. Contactee George Hunt Williamson sees three large UFOs with brilliant, flashing, blue-white lights hover above him for one minute in Key West, Florida. He hears a familiar buzzing in his head. (Michael D. Swords, “A Little Walk in the Strange Life of George Hunt Williamson,” IUR 26, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 14, 32)
March 22 — 10:00 p.m. Several people standing outside the Waterfront Playhouse in Key West, Florida, during an intermission, see three UFOs ringed with flashing blue-white lights hovering nearby. They zoom off over the Gulf. (“Keys Theatre-Goers Report ‘Flying Discs,’” Miami (Fla.) Herald, March 24, 1966, p. 3-C)
March 23 — 5:05 a.m. As Sheppard AFB (near Wichita Falls, Texas) civilian instructor William E. “Eddie” Laxson is driving west on US Highway 70 eight miles south of Temple, Oklahoma, he finds the road blocked by a wingless aircraft, shaped like a fish, in the road. It is about 75 feet long, nearly 8 feet high, 12 feet wide, with a Plexiglas bubble on top, and bright lights forward and aft. Laxson stops his car about 300 feet away and walks to within 50 feet, noticing a designation on its side like “TLA138” or “TLA738” or “TL 4768.” He sees a “man” wearing a baseball cap or mechanic’s hat climbing up steps or a ladder on the object. Soon after it lifts off with a hissing or
high-speed drilling sound and heads off southeast at about 700 mph. There are no landing traces. Laxson finds another witness, truck driver C. W. Anderson, parked a mile down the road. Laxson thinks it is some kind of military vehicle. (NICAP, “Wingless Craft Blocks Road / ‘Man’ Observed”; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 208–210; Clark III 681–682; Sparks, p. 312)
March 23 — 5:00 p.m. At least a dozen adults and children in Trinidad, Colorado, see two disc-shaped objects with domes flying in-line, traveling with a bobbing motion over the terrain. (“Discs at Trinidad, Colorado,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1966, p. 1; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 51–52)
March 23 — 11:50 p.m. John T. King sees a yellowish, elliptical object with a dome-like projection on top just off the ground near Bangor, Maine. It has a yellow-orange light in the center, a bluish light on the right, and a white light on the left. When the object moves toward his car, the car lights dim and his radio stops playing. King says he can hear the elderberry bushes scraping as it approaches and hovers 50 feet away. Frightened, he takes his .22 magnum pistol and fires it four times at the UFO, which glows brightly and takes off at high speed, making a “zinging” sound like the recoil of a spring. (“Close-Range Sightings Increase,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 7 (March/April 1966): 3)
March 23–25 — Hynek spends three days in Michigan, interviewing witnesses in Dexter and Hillsdale, finding the reports contradictory and vague, and encountering a media frenzy. He participates in a police UFO chase that turns out to be the star Arcturus. A photograph taken by Deputy David Fitzpatrick on March 17 is obviously a time lapse of the Moon and Venus. He interviews two Hillsdale students, Sara Robechek and Jo Wilson. William Van Horn tells him that he at first thought the lights were marsh gas until they rose into the air 150 feet and he seemed to perceive a “convex-shaped” solid mass between two lights. (O’Connell 183–190)
March 25 — Quintanilla needs quick answers, so he schedules a press conference at Selfridge AFB [now Selfridge Air National Guard Base] near Mount Clemens, Michigan, for Hynek to make a statement. Hynek, disappointed with the quality of the sightings and suspecting a mundane explanation, announces: “It would seem to me that the association of the sightings with swamps, in these particular cases, is more than coincidence. No group of witnesses observed any craft coming to or going away from the swamps. The glow was localized there…. It appears to me that all the major conditions for the appearance of swamp lights were satisfied.” The swamp gas theory doesn’t go over very well with the witnesses, the media, or the public. (“Termed Marsh Gases by Air Force Expert,” Lansing (Mich.) State Journal, March 25, 1966, p. 11; “Gas Theory Belittled by Viewers of UFOs,” Lansing (Mich.) State Journal, March 26, 1966, p. 1; “Swamp Gas Answer Disproved,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 7 (March/April 1966): 5; O’Connell 190–198; Swords 307; Jennie Zeidman, “I Remember Blue Book,” IUR 16, no.
2 (Mar./Apr. 1991): 12)
March 25 — House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Mich.) issues a press release proposing that Congress investigate the rash of UFO reports in southern Michigan and the rest of the country: “I think the American people would feel better if there was a full-blown investigation of these incidents, which some persons allege have taken place.” (Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, [Ford UFO news releases and other documents])
March 25 — Mrs. R. H. Chappell and her sister Janie Kidd see two triangular UFOs hovering 40–50 feet above Saanich Inlet, British Columbia. Ruby-red lights flash back and forth between them, as if they are signaling. The objects remain motionless for a couple of minutes before moving off slowly and gracefully. (Marler 79)
March 25 — Evening. Mrs. Robert Gorisek of LaSalle, Illinois, sees a triangular object hover above her car for more than an hour as she is driving home from work. The object keeps up with them as they drive through several towns. It has red, orange, and white lights. (“UFO Sightings Widespread over Country,” Great Bend (Kan.) Daily Tribune, March 25, 1966, p. 1)
March 27 — 5:30 a.m. Both Federal Aviation Administration operators at Muscogee County Airport [now Columbus Metropolitan Airport] and military operators at Fort Benning report a radar-visual sighting of a maneuvering, oblong, green-white object over Columbus, Georgia. The object appears to change shape from cigar to wedge to triangle. (“Glowing Object in Sky Is Sighted in Georgia,” Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, March 28, 1966, p. 14; Center for UFO Studies, [case documents])
March 28 — Gerald Ford writes to George P. Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Science and Astronautics Committee, and L. Mendel Rivers (D-S.C.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, saying he is dissatisfied with Hynek’s explanation of the Michigan sightings. He “strongly recommends” a House committee investigation into the “UFO phenomena.” (Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, [Ford UFO news releases and other documents])
March 28 — University of Arizona atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald writes a 2-page letter to Thomas F. Malone, chairman of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Atmospheric Sciences, urging that a
panel be set up by a scientific body to study Blue Book’s UFO files. He also writes to his legislator Rep. Morris
K. Udall (D-Ariz.) about the idea, asking him to pass the letter on in confidence to Gerald Ford (R-Mich.). (Bill Murphy, “The Swamp Gas Aftermath: Some Notes from the Gerald Ford Files,” IUR 33, no. 2 (July 2010): 11, 13; Clark III 696)
March 28 — 8:00 p.m. A man driving about 60 mph in Fayetteville, Tennessee, encounters a large, lighted object only 3 feet above the road on a hilltop. The object is oval-shaped, 23 feet long, dark gray, and has about 30 lights around its perimeter. As it flies off, his car engine and headlights die. The driver has to replace the light bulbs in his headlights after the incident. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (September 2011): 19; Sparks, p. 312)
March 29 — NICAP board member Charles A. Maney writes to Gerald Ford, imploring him to contact NICAP for proof that the Air Force is withholding evidence about UFOs. (Bill Murphy, “The Swamp Gas Aftermath: Some Notes from the Gerald Ford Files,” IUR 33, no. 2 (July 2010): 12)
March 29 — 4:15 p.m. A 10-year-old boy and his Dalmatian are walking familiar paths in a wood lot behind their home near Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. He notices something silver on a ridge and walks toward it. He sees an “L” shaped box, long side parallel to the ground, sitting on tripod legs. His dog runs ahead and sniffs the boxy structure, and then, appearing uninterested, the dog goes off into the woods. The boy stops about 24 feet away, not sure what he is seeing. The object makes intermittent sounds and movements in the following minutes. Then a blast of air from the object sends debris flying. A short high-pitched, then low-pitched, sound is heard as the object lifts off the ground about one foot, stops, swings in a clockwise motion, and settles back on the ground.
Intermittent electric-like humming sounds are heard until the object again, with a blast of air stirring up debris and the same sounds as earlier, ascends vertically, this time to about 10 feet, where it pauses, moves horizontally, pauses and rotates clockwise again, then accelerates straight up. On the final ascent, the sound increases in pitch and loudness. The witness’s mother and sister who were at some distance from him also hear the sound. When the object moved horizontally, saplings directly under it swayed. Three elongated imprints are found in the form of a triangle. Reportedly plants do not grow in the area for the next 2 years. (NICAP, “Hampton Area, New Hampshire: March 29, 1966”; Raymond Fowler, “The Flying Box, and Other Cases,” IUR 28, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 15–20, 26)
March 29 — 9:15 p.m. Charles Cozens, 13, is strolling in a field behind the Hamilton Mountain Police Station in Hamilton, Ontario. He sees two luminous oval objects about 8 feet in diameter descend and land, making a buzzing sound. The objects have a row of multicolored lights around their rims “flickering like a computer.” He approaches for a closer look and touches the nearest object, which feels hard and smooth like metal, but neither hot nor cold. He then touches an antenna-like projection at the end of one of the objects and receives a shock.
Frightened, he runs home. His parents confirm a 3-inch burn mark on his hand and question him thoroughly before reporting the incident to authorities. His first-degree burn is treated at a hospital and heals normally. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 4–5; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 45–46)
March 30 — 8:35 p.m. A woman and her four children watch an oval object crossing the road as they are driving south about 9 miles north of Lewisburg, Indiana. It comes close to the car and she hears a pulsating sound, but it seems to come through the car radio, not directly from the object. She drives away, but the UFO pursues her for 8 miles. It changes from reddish-orange to blue-white before it accelerates away. (Sparks, p. 313)
March 31 — 2:00 a.m. Jeno Udvardy is driving home from a late work shift near Vicksburg, Michigan. He sees a cluster of lights on the highway ahead and slows down. When he is within 10 feet, he realizes the lights are on a disc hovering a few feet above the road. It has a brilliant white light, and red, green, and purple blinking lights.
Udvardy backs up and his car is buffeted by gusts of wind as the object lifts up. The car motor stalls. He rolls down the window and hears a humming sound. Moments later, the UFO speeds off at a steep angle. (“Close- Range Sightings Increase,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 7 (March/April 1966): 3)
March 31 — JANAP 146(E), a joint Canadian–US instruction, adds that photos should be sent to the US Director of Naval Intelligence and adds special CIRVIS reporting instructions for unidentifiable objects. The Canadian Air Defence Command ends its investigation of UFOs and transfers the responsibility to the Directorate of Operations. (Joint Chiefs of Staff, “JANAP 146(E) Canadian–United States Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings,” March 31, 1966; Antonio F. Rullán, “Blue Book UFO Reports at Sea by Ships,” December 10, 2002; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Canada, Signet, 1981, pp. 171–172)
April 1 — 10:40 p.m. A man driving 5 miles south of Tangier, Oklahoma, reaches a hilltop and sees a green object wider than the road flying north at very high speed, emitting a shrieking noise and a “heat wave.” The car engine dies. (Sparks, p. 313)
April 1? — Night. Students at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, see a star-like object that looks football-shaped through binoculars. It moves in geometric angles around two bright stars until it shoots straight up and disappears. (Michael D. Swords, “We Know Where You Live,” IUR 30, no.2 (January 2006): 10–11)
April 2 — 2:02 p.m. James Kibel, a Melbourne businessman who is a member of the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society, sees a shiny, hemispherical object above his garden in Balwyn, Victoria. It looks to be 20–25 feet in diameter and 120 feet in the air. “It seemed to float down towards me,” he says. “It resembled a big mushroom with a stalk pointing towards the earth.” He snaps a Polaroid photo, after which the object takes off and disappears to the north. However, when B. Roy Frieden, professor of optical sciences at the University of Arizona, examines the photo, he finds a jagged line of discontinuity running across the center of the image suggesting there are separate photos joined together and rephotographed. In 2017, Canadian researcher François Beaulieu reexamines the original and notices the reflection of the house below in the shiny object, and he finds that the discontinuity is actually caused by the Polaroid developing chemicals spreading unevenly across the photo. (“V.F.S.R.S. Member Snaps a UFO,” Australian Flying Saucer Review (Victorian Edition), no. 5 (July 1966): 2; “Report on UFO Photographed at Balwyn,” Australian Flying Saucer Review (Victorian Edition), no. 6 (December 1966): 11–12; Story, p. 40; Keith Basterfield and Paul Dean, “Stage One Report on the 2nd April 1966, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, UFO Observation and Photgograph by James Johnson Kibel,” 2016; Keith Basterfield and Paul Dean, “Stage Two Report on the 2nd April 1966, Balwyn, Melbourne, Victoria, Visual and Photographic UFO Sighting by James Johnson Kibel,” 2016; François Beaulieu, “A Re-evaluation of the Balwyn UFO Photograph,” February 23, 2017)
April 4 — 7:50 p.m. Businessman Ron Sullivan is driving about 60 mph near Burkes Flat, Victoria, Australia. In the distance he sees a light near the road. Suddenly, the headlights of his vehicle bend to the right and light up a nearby fence. He brakes his car. In the middle of an adjacent field, he sees a column of light some 25 feet high and shaped like an inverted ice cream cone, 3 feet wide at the bottom and 10 feet wide at the top. It then rises to a height of 20 feet, after which the whole light complex disappears. There is no associated noise. Sullivan drives on to Wycheproof, where he checks his lights but finds nothing wrong. On the night of April 7, 19-year-old Gary Taylor is killed at the same spot when the car he is driving leaves the road and hits a tree. Police find a circular impression about 2–5 inches deep and 5 feet in diameter in the freshly plowed field. (NICAP, “Bent Headlights Case”; Bill Chalker, “The Bent Headlight Beam Case Revisited,” UFO Research Australia Newsletter 5, no. 3 (May/June 1984): 17–29)
April 5 — 1:30 a.m. A woman in Durhamville, New York, is awakened by a flash. She thinks her trailer heater has exploded, but everything is in order. The next day, three witnesses tell her a pulsating, luminous object had flown directly above her trailer. (Vallée, Magonia, p. 327)
April 5 — 3:00 a.m. Lillian Louis, in Lycoming, New York, sees a spinning object from her kitchen window. It seems to be 10 feet in diameter and is shooting exhaust 20 feet above the ground near her house. It departs suddenly, leaving a trail. (Sparks, p. 313)
April 5 — The House Armed Services Committee conducts the first public hearing by the US Congress on the topic of UFOs. Air Force Secretary Harold Brown testifies that while USAF has done an excellent job on UFOs, perhaps there is room for “even stronger emphasis on the scientific aspects.” Hynek recommends that a “civilian panel of physical and social scientists … examine the UFO problem critically for the express purpose of determining whether a major problem exits.” Quintanilla is the only other witness. After Committee Chairman L. Mendel Rivers expresses some enthusiasm for the idea, Brown suddenly realizes that maybe he has found a way to get the Air Force out of UFO investigations. Shortly after the hearing, Brown tells the USAF Office of Scientific Research to accept the February 3 O’Brien recommendation to seek a university that will accept a contract to study the 600 officially unidentified UFO sightings. (US House Committee on Armed Services, Hearing, Unidentified Flying Objects, 89th Congress, 2nd Session, April 5, 1966; Clark III 1192)
April 5 — Midnight. W. Smith and another man in Alto, Tennessee, stop to watch a 100-foot long UFO hovering 15 feet above a swamp. They try to follow it, but it flies away, flying between a high-tension power line and a row of trees. Cows, dogs, and horses are restless in all the areas where the object passes over. (Sparks, p. 313)
April 6 — Around 11:00 a.m. A class of students and a teacher from Westall High School [now Westall Secondary College] in Clayton South, Victoria, Australia, are just completing a sport activity on the main oval when they see an object, described as a gray saucer-shaped craft with a slight purple hue and about twice the size of a family car. Witness descriptions are mixed: Andrew Greenwood, a science teacher, tells The Dandenong Journal at the time that he saw a silvery-green disc. According to witnesses, the object is descending and then crosses and flies over the high school’s southwest corner, going in a southeasterly direction before disappearing from sight as it descends behind a stand of trees and into a paddock at The Grange in front of the Westall State School (primary students). After about 20 minutes, the object—with witnesses now numbering over 200—then climbs at speed and
departs towards the northwest. As the object gains altitude, some accounts describe it as being pursued from the scene by five unidentified aircraft that circle it. Some describe one disc, others claim to see three. The Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society arrives on the site on April 8, speaks to students, and views the ground marking, originally described as a large patch of yellow, flattened grass with a swirly pattern. (“Audio Reveals Creepy Details of Australian UFO Mystery,” Melbourne Herald Sun, August 7, 2018; Wikipedia, “Westall UFO”)
April 6 — NICAP Assistant Director Richard Hall writes to Gerald Ford, congratulating him on his call for a congressional investigation, saying, “History will record the important role you have played in helping to bring about a rational study of UFOs and public enlightenment on the subject.” (Bill Murphy, “The Swamp Gas Aftermath: Some Notes from the Gerald Ford Files,” IUR 33, no. 2 (July 2010): 10, 13)
April 8 — 8:05 a.m. Mike Dorsey and Gary Hunt, both 12, are walking along Redcoat Road in Norwalk, Connecticut, when they see sunlight reflecting off a distant object to the west and behind them. It zooms toward them in a flash, passes overhead from west to east, turns, makes a second pass from east to west, turns again, and makes a third pass. It makes a low humming sound when it passes about 15 feet above them. The boys run to the Holy Ghost Seminary nearby and hide under a nearby bridge abutment as the object continues to maneuver. When it hovers, it does so edge down and makes a fluttering motion. The disc looks metallic, 8 feet in diameter, has a black spot on top near its rim, and a red light on top of an antenna-like protrusion. Red and white lights appear to rotate counterclockwise. Nearly 2 hours later, the object takes off in a burst of speed. (“Boys Chased by UAO,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1966, p. 5)
April 17 — 5:00 a.m. Portage County Deputy Sheriff Dale F. Spaur and Deputy Wilbur Neff are 4 miles east of Randolph, Ohio, when they see a moving light through some trees at the top of a small hill along the road. The light is headed in their direction. They have heard of a UFO reported over police radio that night and figure this must be what was seen. The object hovers 50–100 feet in the air, bathing the two officers in a bright light. Spaur’s eyes water up. They rush to the cruiser and radio the station; the dispatcher says to wait there until a car with a camera arrives. The object makes some sharp maneuvers, and Spaur drives toward it cautiously. The UFO is 18–24 feet thick and about 35–45 feet in diameter. The object is so bright he hardly needs his headlights to drive. It speeds up whenever Spaur accelerates, and soon he is driving at 80 mph. As the UFO reaches Mahoning County, the pursuit is being broadcast over police radios in three counties. As they reach East Palestine, Ohio, Patrolman H. Wayne Huston sees the UFO and follows Spaur and Neff, at times reaching 100 mph. Just before 5:30 a.m., two police officers in Salem, Ohio, see the UFO as a “bright ball” much larger than a jet. They also see three jets following it, apparently Air Force Reserve planes from Youngstown, Ohio. Police officer Frank Panzarella in Conway, Pennsylvania, sees the UFO, very bright and in the “shape of a half of a football.” He hears on his radio that a jet interception is in progress. Now in Pennsylvania, Spaur and Neff are given orders to abandon the chase. For most of the event, the object has remained at 1,000 feet, but now it rises to 3,500 feet and hovers. Then it shoots even higher and disappears. In 30 minutes, many police and civilians have seen the UFO. Panzarella alerts the Rochester, Pennsylvania, police operator, John Beighey, and asks him to contact the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport. Beighey calls Panzarella and says the Air Force wants to talk to the police witnesses. Spaur, Neff, and Huston go to the Rochester, Pennsylvania, police station and Spaur phones the USAF station at Pittsburgh. Spaur speaks to some colonel who tries to convince him he has seen something conventional.
NICAP’s William B. Weitzel, a philosophy professor, begins his own investigation, tracking down witnesses. Within a few weeks, he or his NICAP associates have interviewed all the police officers, as well as several others who have figured in the UFO chase, either as dispatchers or as those who overheard the radio communications.
NICAP members also interview some civilians who claim to have seen a UFO at the same time of the chase and/or had monitored police scanners. (NICAP, “Portage County UFO Chase”; Sparks, p. 314; “Saucer Chase Sets Probers Humming,” Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal, April 18, pp. 1–2; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 113–124; Patrick Gross, “1966 Portage County UFO Chase by Policemen”; William B. Weitzel, “The P-13 UFO: Summary Report on April 17, 1966, UFO ‘Chase’ from Portage County, Ohio, into Conway, Pennsylvania,” June 28, 1966; William B. Weitzel, “The Portage County Sighting,” April 8, 1967; NICAP, [case photos and drawings]; Michael D. Swords, [case files and clippings]; Center for UFO Studies, [Gerald Buchert photo case file]; Center for UFO Studies, [clippings, part one, part two]; Clark III 906–914)
April 18 — The Air Force begins a cursory investigation into the Portage County, Ohio, police chase case. Initially they telephone local news outlets, seeking information. However, local newspapers and radio have only vague outlines of the case. Air Force investigators also interviewed meteorologists and weather agency personnel, hoping to learn that a weather balloon was launched in the area during the UFO chase. They learn that there were no weather balloons launched that morning, and also that the wind had been so mild that the police would have had no difficulty catching up with any wind-borne object. Quintanilla calls Spaur to ask him about “this mirage you saw.” Spaur insists he has seen a clearly defined metallic object maneuvering at very low altitudes. When
Quintanilla asks if they watched the object for more than a few minutes, Spaur asserts that he and Neff chased it for over half an hour, and that Huston saw the object for much of that period, and that Panzanella too had seen it. Quintanilla then, as Spaur said, “kind of lost interest.” (Clark III 910)
April 18 — An egg-shaped object, 80 feet in diameter and 15 feet high, is observed from a distance of 80 feet by a 42- year-old witness driving a car near Battle Creek, Michigan. The object supports a cockpit with windows and three rows of lights, emits red flames, and makes the same noise as a heavy truck on wet pavement. The object follows the car for some time. (Vallée, Magonia, p. 329; Sparks, p. 314)
April 19 — 10:45 p.m. In Peabody, Massachusetts, witnesses report an oval object with red, green, and white body lights, oscillating up and down when in motion. The object appears to land in a field off State Highway 114. At 12:00 midnight, two men driving along that route see the lighted disc rise and fly away. (Vallée, Magonia, p. 329)
April 21 — William Dean Howe, MP for Ottawa, Ontario, urges a serious investigation of UFOs in the Canadian House of Commons. (“Canadian Projects,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 10 (Feb./March 1969): 6)
April 22 — Quintanilla announces in a press release that the Portage County, Ohio, UFO is an Echo satellite, with later observations (in Pennsylvania) of Venus. Quintanilla calls Spaur’s superior, Portage County Sheriff Ross Dustman, to give him this explanation, and Dustman laughs out loud. (Clark III 910)
April 22 — Lt. Col. Robert R. Hippler of the USAF Directorate of Science and Technology is tasked with recruiting a university for the UFO project suggested by the O’Brien committee in February. He assembles a panel of experts that suggests he bring in H. Guyford Stever, head of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. Stever queries MIT, Harvard, the University of California, Northwestern University, and the University of North Carolina, but all refuse to deal with UFOs. (Swords 307–308)
April 22 — 9:00–9:45 p.m. Witnesses in Beverly, Massachusetts, including two police officers, see a platter-shaped object the size of a large automobile with 3 red-green-white lights hover silently over Beverly High School then depart to the southwest. At one point, witnesses see the object only 20–30 feet above the head of another witness. (Condon, pp. 266–270; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 106–108; Roy Craig, UFOs: An Insiders’ View of the Official Quest for Evidence, University of North Texas, 1995; Sparks, p. 314; Patrick Gross, “The Case in Beverly, Massachusetts, USA, on April 22, 1966”)
April 23 — 10:45 p.m. On hearing a listener call in a live UFO sighting on WMEX radio, Jeanne Kalnicki of Dorchester, Massachusetts, goes to the window with her two daughters and sees an oval, domed UFO with a ring of blinking red lights bobbing up and down above a building across the street. A yellow light is on top of the dome and alternately flashes on when the red lights blink off. It moves across the street and appears to be moving directly toward them at eye level. Humming, the object moves between their apartment building and the one next door, where it hovers for a few minutes. When the yellow light goes off, Kalnicki can see a glow within the dome. The object then moves erratically away to the east. The family goes to bed, but at 5:00 a.m., 11-year-old Judy Kalnicki is too upset to sleep, She wakes up when she sees a light coming in her window and realizes that the UFO is right outside, bobbing up and down, looking about the size of their 1955 Lincoln automobile, and flashing its lights as before. Thinking it is going to come inside her bedroom, Judy screams. Seemingly in response, the object speeds up its bobbing motion, and she hears a heavy thudding sound. The windows rattle, Judy’s bed rocks, and all the lights in the house go off. Downstairs, their German shepherd is whining and scratching at the door. The entire family rushes to the back porch, where they watch the object for about 12 minutes moving to the north toward Boston. The lights come back on. NICAP’s investigation shows that the power failure affected 2,500 homes in the area and was caused by two cables burning out a block away from the Kalnicki apartment. One particle on the window sill registered a strong radiation reading of .025 millimentgens per hour from a Geiger counter. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 46–47)
April 24 — Night. Marvin and Viola Swartwood are driving in a rainstorm on State Highway 34B near Fleming, New York, when a “brilliant, flashing ball of fire” appears three feet above the front and slightly to the right of their car. The fire ball lights up the surrounding area, falls onto the car with a loud snap, and vanishes. As the ball lightning hits, Viola feels a shock in her neck and an impulse in her right arm. They drive to the sheriff’s office and then to a local hospital because the right side of Viola’s body is partially paralyzed. She is in satisfactory condition 5 days later. There is no damage to the car or any reports of normal lightning in the area. (“‘Ball of Fire’ Hits Car; Woman Passenger Hurt,” Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard, April 28, 1966, p. 38; “Ball-of-Fire Victim’s Condition Improving,” Binghamton (N.Y.) Press and Sun-Bulletin, April 29, 1966, p. 3C; Mark Rodeghier, “UFO/Vehicle Very Close Encounters,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 24)
April 25 — 8:52 p.m. Florida Gov. W. Haydon Burns’s campaign airplane is paced by a UFO. Copilot Herb Bates first notices the UFO when the Convair takes off from Orlando, Florida, headed for Tallahassee. It appears as two bright yellow globes side by side. In the vicinity of Ocala, at about 6,000 feet, everyone on board is alerted and watches the object pacing the plane on the right side. The lights fluctuate in brightness but are very distinct. Burns
orders the pilot to turn toward the UFO, and the lights quickly begin a steep climb then disappear. (Bill Mansfield, “I Was with Burns and Saw ‘Flying Saucer,’” Miami (Fla.) Herald, April 27, 1966, p. 1; “Florida Governor Sights UFO,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 8 (May/June 1966): 3; “Governor Haydon Burns Sees a UFO,” Educating Humanity, April 26, 2016)
Late April — When he learns that Rep. J. William Stanton (R-Ohio) has expressed an interest in the UFO chase, NICAP investigator William B. Weitzel writes him a detailed letter, outlining the inconsistencies and shortcomings of Quintanilla’s explanations. Portage County (Ohio) Judge Robert Eugene Cook (an acquaintance of Spaur and Neff) also writes to Stanton, defending the police officers’ judgment and characterizing the Air Force investigation as “grossly unfair” to Spaur and Neff. Stanton fails to get an answer from the Air Force, so he contacts USAF Chief of Community Relations Division Lt. Col. John Spalding, who promises to send an investigator. Stanton later writes to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara about Blue Book’s treatment of his constituents. (Clark III 911)
May 4 — 4:30 a.m. An FAA air traffic controller tracks an unidentified non-transponding target for about 5 miles at Charleston, West Virginia. The crew of Braniff Airline Flight 42, headed east at 33,000 feet, sees a white-blue object giving off brilliant, flaming light of alternating white-green-red colors. The radar shows the object veering 8–10 miles away at the 10 o’clock position, then approaching the Braniff airliner to a distance of 3 miles. It then makes a 180° left turn to the northwest within a diameter of 5 miles at 1,000 mph, which the Braniff crew confirms as the object descends from 20° above the horizon. (NICAP, “Charleston R/V Case”; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 83–86)
May 8 — A Gallup Poll taken April 14–19 reveals that 46% of Americans who have heard about UFOs think they are real, although only 7% think they are from outer space. 5% of US adults have seen a UFO. (“Five Million Say They’ve Seen Saucers,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 8 (May/June 1966): 7; Robert J. Durant, “Evolution of Public Opinion on UFOs,” IUR 18, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1993): 11–12; Lydia Saad, “Eyewitnesses to Flying Saucers,” Gallup Vault, April 12, 2016)
May 8 — Quintanilla calls Spaur again and tells him to be ready for an interview the next day. ()
May 9 — Weitzel is at Portage County police headquarters in Ravenna, Ohio, to record Spaur’s interview and has brought two reporters and UFO researcher David Webb. Dustman is there too. Quintanilla asks Weitzel and Webb to leave, and the reporters leave as well. The interview becomes heated at times. (“Interview with Deputy Sheriff Dale Spaur, 1966,” SpaceTimeForum YouTube channel, March 28, 2013; Clark III 911–912)
May 10— The documentary “UFOs: Friend, Foe, or Fantasy?” appears on CBS Reports, hosted by Walter Cronkite and narrator Bill Stout. Guests include Carl Sagan, Donald Menzel, Harold Brown, Lawrence Tacker, Donald Keyhoe, and J. Allen Hynek. The tenor of the show is to debunk UFOs, although Cronkite says the CIA has been secretly tracking UFO sightings around the world, even as it denies doing so. Air Force Capt. Gary Reese claims that NORAD’s satellite-tracking radar covers altitudes from 100,000 feet to 2,000 miles up but never finds any UFOs. He neglects to mention that UFOs are found in the atmosphere below 100,000 feet. (Even so, NORAD has been detecting occasional Unidentified Satellites, USATs, for years.) Reese makes a broad statement that the Air Force has never substantiated a “flying saucer” despite NORAD’s covering “nearly every square foot of the US” on its radar. USAF Maj. Albert Morse of NORAD spacetrack network supports Reese. A handwritten letter by Robertson Panel member Thornton Page, discovered in the Smithsonian’s archives by Michael Swords, confirms the CIA’s long-suspected role in the CBS program. In the September 10, 1966, letter, Page relates to Frederick C. Durant that he “helped organize the CBS TV show around the Robertson Panel’s conclusions.” Quintanilla has spent 3 days editing and censoring the TV program’s script to make sure it conforms to USAF public relations policy. (“UFOs: Friend, Foe or Fantasy? 1966” nutsandbolts ufo YouTube channel, February 15, 2013; “Columnists Hit NBC Documentary,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 8 (May/June 1966): 8; Clark III 808; Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 206–207; Terry Hanson, “Close Encounters of the Nuclear Kind,” Online Journal, March 31, 2009; Swords 195–196, 308)
May 17 — Weitzel writes to Quintanilla with another critique of the Blue Book explanation. Even Hynek urges FTD to change the designation to “unknown.” ()
May 21 — 3: 15 p.m. William C. Powell is flying a light Luscombe aircraft over Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, with one passenger, Muriel McCrave. He spots a bright-red circular disc with a dome on top as it is apparently following an outbound flight of Navy jets from NAS Willow Grove [now NAS Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove] at 4,500 feet. The object makes a sharp turn without banking and approaches his plane on a near-collision course, passing below the starboard wing about 300 feet away and disappearing to the rear. They both get a good look at the object, which has no wings or visible means of propulsion. (NICAP, “Domed Disc Observed by Pilot and Passenger (Powell Case)”; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on
Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 45–46)
May 22 — A witness driving between Blue River, British Columbia, and Jasper, Alberta, sees a gray object the size of a car and shaped like a bowl land on the road and make a whining noise. After it silently takes off, the object leaves three impressions of landing pads about 4 feet square. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Nihgt, 2022, p. 184)
June — Broadcaster Frank Edwards publishes Flying Saucers—Serious Business, and it becomes one of the best-selling UFO books of all time. (Frank Edwards, Flying Saucers—Serious Business, Bantam, 1966; Clark III 435; Nick Redfern, “Spying on the Saucer Writers,” Mysterious Universe, February 20, 2012)
June — 3:15 a.m. Edward Argerake is asleep at his home in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, when his bedroom explodes in light. He hears a pinging noise a light source begins pulsing with diffraction rings outside his window shades. He begins to feel numb and weak, but the sounds grows louder and he lapses into unconsciousness. He wakes up at 6:15 a.m. and the light and noise are gone. Because of this event he becomes interested in UFOs and joins NICAP’s Massachusetts subcommittee. (Michael D. Swords, “A Trick of the Light,” IUR 31, no. 2 (June 2007): 10–11)
June 1 — 10:30 p.m. On Lake Ontario, off Clarkson, Ontario, former RCAF pilot Richard H. Plewman and Jack Grant are cruising on the lake when they see lights on the water ahead. They can see a disc with a dome on top casting an oval reflection on the lake surface. Around the dome is a row of bright yellow lights; blue-green lights are visible around the lower perimeter. After hovering briefly, the UFO takes off at high speed and disappears. (“New Reports by Space Experts Add to UFO Proof,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 9 (Aug./Sept. 1966): 5)
June 2 — 7:30 p.m. Harold Harper is talking with neighbors in his front yard in Massillon, Ohio, when they see a large lighted object coming from the southwest. It is about 50–60 feet in diameter, smoky in color, and cigar-shaped with a ball on one end. It stops and hovers at about 1,000 feet altitude. Then three smaller objects appear to come from it; they gain altitude, separate, and disappear at terrific speed in different directions. The large object goes straight up at terrific speed. (Massillon (Ohio) Evening Independent, June 3, 1966; Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects: A Further Look,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 25–26)
June 6 — James McDonald has obtained a small amount of money from the Office of Naval Research to travel to Wright- Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, and examine the Blue Book files. On his first visit, he is steered to an unedited copy of the Robertson Panel report. As it has not been released, McDonald is disturbed, seeing it as evidence that the CIA is directing a cover-up. (Clark III 1017)
June 6–10 — The US Army releases Bacillus globigii into the tunnels of the New York City Subway system during peak travel hours as part of a field experiment on the vulnerability of subway passengers in New York City to covert attack with biological agents. (“How the U.S. Government Exposed Thousands of Americans to Lethal Bacteria to Test Biological Warfare,” Democracy Now!, July 13, 2005)
June 8 — McDonald visits Hynek at the Lindheimer Astrophysical Research Center in Evanston, Illinois, saying heatedly that he should have spoken up about the CIA cover-up and all the absurd explanations that he made up: “Allen, how could you have sat on this data for 18 years and not let us know about it?” Hynek’s then-associate Jacques Vallée has to intervene. Hynek replies that if he did, the Air Force would just replace him and he would lose access to all the files. McDonald says Hynek should have spoken up in 1953 and cannot get Hynek to agree that he is even a little bit timid. (O’Connell 201; Clark III 696)
June 8 — X-15 pilot Joseph A. Walker is killed when his F-104 Starfighter chase aircraft collides with a North American XB-70 Valkyrie. At an altitude of about 25,000 feet, Walker’s Starfighter is one of five aircraft in a tight group formation for a General Electric publicity photo when his F-104 drifts into contact with the XB-70’s right wingtip. The F-104 flips over, and, rolling inverted, passes over the top of the XB-70, striking both its vertical stabilizers and its left wing in the process, and explodes, killing Walker. The Valkyrie enters an uncontrollable spin and crashes into the ground north of Barstow, California, killing copilot Carl S. Cross. Its pilot, Alvin S. White, ejects and is the sole survivor. (Wikipedia, “Joseph A. Walker”)
June 11 — Early morning. Several witnesses driving from Dabajuro to Coro, Falcón State, Venezuela, stop to watch a triangular object that stops and hovers in midair for short intervals. The object gives off a beam of light in various directions. (“The South American Scene,” APRO Bulletin, July/Aug. 1966, p. 8)
Mid-June — 1:30 a.m. Student pilot Joseph Gambucci is flying near Hibbing, Minnesota, when he sees a bright, elliptical light making three 360° turns to the left at approximately 3,000 mph. The light is white, mixed with green and red. It climbs to 40° above the horizon then disappears at a height of 31,000 feet. Gambucci checks with Duluth Air National Guard Base, which reports having a UFO on radar at the same position as his aircraft. Other radar units in northern Minnesota and southern Canada are said to track the object. (NICAP case file)
June 16 — Dusk. Several witnesses in Uniopolis, Ohio, watch a domed black disc with lights and a powerful light beam shining from its bottom. One of the observers is alerted by his dog barking persistently and looking to the south. The object flies directly over the house, heading north, and is also seen by his wife, a neighbor, and the neighbor’s children. The light beam shines into a nearby wood, lighting up the trees. (Michael D. Swords, “The Timmerman Files,” IUR 26, no. 4 (Winter 2001–2002): 13–14)
June 19 — 12:05 a.m. A group of Boy Scouts camping out at Mount Mitchell State Park, North Carolina, sees three red pulsating lights in a triangular pattern approach, then hover until about 5:00 a.m. The lights blink at different speeds, with the center one turning white every fifth pulsation. At sunrise, the object lifts up, appearing red and bell-shaped through binoculars. Six smaller objects are hovering nearby on either side of the larger object, changing formation. The group then disappears behind a mountain. When the Scouts start to explore in the direction of the objects, about 60 feet from their camp they discover trees with broken branches and some crushed undergrowth, plus three holes in the ground forming an equilateral triangle. (Fred Merritt, “A Preliminary Classification of Some Reports of UFOs,” IUR 28, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 10; Sparks, p. 315)
June 23 — 3:42 a.m. NASA contract flight engineer Julian Sandoval and two independent witnesses see a glowing elongated object with a blunt end. It has a series of four body lights varying from brilliant green to a bluish tinge, and is hovering at an estimated 12,000 feet near Placitas, New Mexico. When the object moves its glow brightens, and it appears to be a powered craft. The witnesses watch the object for an hour and a half, after which it climbs vertically, accelerates to a high velocity, and disappears to the northeast in about 12 seconds. In a report to NICAP, Sandoval estimates the departure speed at “Mach 6 or better.” (“New Reports by Space Experts Add to UFO Proof,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 9 (Aug./Sept. 1966): 3)
June 25 — 9:30 p.m. Several objects violate the air space over the Ellsworth AFB H-01 missile launch facility southwest of Union Center, South Dakota, setting off the vibration sensors. Helicopters attempt to chase the objects, but they fly away quickly to the north-northeast. Other sightings take place over the next week. (National UFO Reporting Center, [case report]; Nukes 241–245)
June 30 — On James E. McDonald’s second visit to Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, his request for a photocopy of the Robertson Panel report is denied. (Clark III 696)
June 30 — Richard Helms becomes director of central intelligence. He is the first DCI since Dulles to push hard for results in the mind-control field. Operation MKSearch goes into overdrive. Old projects are resurrected, abandoned projects reactivated. The safe houses are told to expect a steady supply of Viet Cong expendables to experiment on. One of the projects to be revived is the less than successful Operation Mindbender. Renamed Operation Spellbinder, the assignment is to create a sleeper killer, a real-life Manchurian Candidate. A hypnotist is recruited from the American Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. He becomes known to the CIA staff as “Dr. Fingers” and is selected because his file states that he has no qualms about conducting potentially terminal experiments. The intended victim of the experiment is Fidel Castro. After attempts to program several would-be assassins, the operation is discontinued and written off as a complete failure. (Sid Taylor, “A History of Secret CIA Mind Control Research,” Nexus, April/May 1992; “Project Spellbinder,” in Brad Steiger and Sherry Steiger, Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier, 2nd ed., Visible Ink, 2012)
July — 11:00 a.m. An Air Force Douglas C-47 Skytrain is flying 25 miles southwest of Provo, Utah, when the pilot snaps two color-slide photos of a reddish disc-shaped object that briefly comes into view before speeding away. The Condon commission declines to examine the photos in detail, noting some discrepancies. (Condon, pp. 270–273; Patrick Gross, “UFOs Photographed”)
July 4 — The Freedom of Information Act, requiring the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the US government, is signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. (Wikipedia, “Freedom of Information Act (United States)”)
July 7 — In a Blue Book briefing, Brig. Gen. William C. Garland, deputy chief of USAF Public Information at the Pentagon, again denies that NORAD radars have picked up any “spaceships,” interplanetary “interlopers,” or “extraterrestrial vehicles.” (Clark III 808)
July 9 — 2:00 p.m. Kenneth Arnold takes a 16mm film of a UFO over Idaho Falls, Idaho. The object looks like a weather balloon, but it is flying at a speed of 45–75 mph into a north-northwest wind. (Kim Hansen, “UFO Casebook,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 53)
July 13 — 2:00 a.m. Railway linesman Camillo Faieta is on duty at the crossing in Fornacette, Pisa, Italy, when he is dazzled by a powerful light coming from the Emissario Canal. The light goes out and he sees an object hovering above a small islet in the canal. Two little men emerge, but the bright light comes on again and the object takes off. Police turn up other witnesses, but Italian and US air force officers from the nearby Camp Darby military complex tell Faieta not to speak about the incident any further. (1Pinotti 147–148)
July 18 — 9:00 a.m. Service station personnel in Baytown, Texas, see a white object shaped like two saucers face-to-face with a row of square windows in between. The object is hovering above a store about 300 feet away, then it begins moving, rapidly accelerates, and speeds away. (James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 57–58)
July 19 — MP John Langford-Holt asks UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the House of Commons whether, since the Defence Secretary is responsible only for air defense implications of UFOs, he would allocate the assessment of their wider implications to another department. Wilson says he will not, but that reports are taken seriously when there is adequate information. (Good Above, p. 60)
July 20 — James E. McDonald’s third visit to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. He is again denied a copy of the Robertson Panel report because it has been “reclassified.” He is convinced that USAF has done a lousy job of investigating UFOs and that UFOs are actually good evidence for the ETH. (Clark III 696)
July 22 — 9:00 p.m. W. J. Norton, curator of the Ludlow Museum, and his family see a UFO shaped like a silver isosceles triangle to the east of Llandrindod Wells, Powys, Wales. It hovers for 30–40 seconds and emits a low hum. (“Llandrindod Triangle,” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1966): 32)
July 22 — 11:25 p.m. While driving his son home from the railway station in Fremont, Indiana, a realtor and retired WWII Navy officer see an illuminated, 25-foot diameter disc with portholes on its lower convex surface. The object descends low over the car and hovers above it. They have it in view about 5–8 minutes. When two other cars approach, the object extinguishes its lights, then shoots straight up into the sky, leaving a trail of bluish light. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 108–109)
Late July — Col. J. Thomas Ratchford, an AFOSR scientist, approaches the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, about contracting with the Air Force for a UFO study. Its director, Walter Orr Roberts is interested, but William W. Kellogg, associate director of the Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics, is not. Roberts suggests the University of Colorado. Ratchford talks to prominent University of Colorado physicist Edward U. Condon, who hesitates but finds the $300,000 offered by the Air Force (plus $13,000 in operating expenses) attractive. (Clark III 1192)
Late July — 7:00 p.m. Raquel Jodorowsky is in a traffic jam in Mexico City, Mexico, as people are getting out of their cars and looking to the sky. A large glowing object is hanging at 45° above the horizon to the east. The object ejects smaller bright objects that fly away. After 30 minutes the large object dims, becomes smaller, and disappears. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 11)
July 29 — J. Allen Hynek writes to a citizen interested in UFOs and says that he thinks the Portage County, Ohio, case should be labeled unidentified and has told the Air Force as much. Its evaluation as a satellite or Venus has not originated with him as a mere consultant. (Bill Murphy, “The Swamp Gas Aftermath: Some Notes from the Gerald Ford Files,” IUR 33, no. 2 (July 2010): 12)
July 30 — The fourth and final launch of a D-21 drone from an M-21 ends in disaster 150 miles off the coast of California. Unlike the three previous launches, this one is performed straight and level, not in an outside loop to assist in the separation of the drone from the aircraft. The D-21 suffers engine problems and strikes the M-21’s tail after separation, leading to the destruction of both aircraft. The two crew members eject and land at sea. The pilot, Bill Park, survives, but the launch control officer, Ray Torrick, drowns. Johnson decides to refit the D-21 to launch from a B-52 bomber in order to not endanger any more M-21s. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed D-21”)
August 1 — Jacques Vallée meets, through his friend Aimé Michel, with physicist Yves Rocard and gives him a copy of outstanding Blue Book UFO reports, but the contact goes no further. (Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science, North Atlantic, 1992, pp. 55, 198, 201–202)
August 1 — 7:45 p.m. Several children are playing outside in Rushville, Indiana, when they see an object hovering above a tree near them. Its altitude is about 75 feet. They describe it as round, brighter than the moon, silver, and about 4 times larger than the full moon. It has a fuzzy edge and rocks slightly as it hovers. One girl, Donna Glosser, calls it to the attention of others who are about a half-block away. When she does, the object changes to reddish- orange, seems to revolve, and moves across a road so fast it seems to jump. It stops abruptly over some trees on a hill about one block away. At least one adult watches the object for 5 minutes. The same object is apparently seen by a group of teens at the Dairy Delight Drive-In about a mile and a half away. It becomes brighter after 45 seconds and speeds away. (“Children Watch Object in Central Indiana,” APRO Bulletin, July/Aug. 1966, p. 8)
August 7 — The Washington Star runs an article on UFOs by retired USAF Lt. Col. Charles Cooke saying that he has analyzed first-hand UFO encounters by Air Force pilots that show strong support for the ETH. ()
August 9 — Robert J. Low, assistant dean in the University of Colorado Graduate School, is also interested in the UFO project. He consults with several scientists and reports on what they tell him in a memo to E. James Archer, dean
of the graduate school, and Thurston E. Manning, university vice president. The memo, which is not sent to Condon and is intended to show university officials that the project will not embarrass them, says: “Our study would be conducted almost exclusively by nonbelievers who, although they couldn’t possibly prove a negative result, could and probably would add an impressive body of evidence that there is no reality to the observations. The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer.” He recommends stressing the psychology and sociology of the witnesses rather than physical evidence. The memo stays under wraps for a year and a half. (Robert J. Low, “Some Thoughts on the UFO Project,” memo to E. James Archer and Thurston E. Manning, August 9, 1966; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, p. 239; Clark III 1192)
August 15 — Office of Scientific Intelligence Deputy Director Karl H. Weber writes to Col. Gerald E. Jorgensen, chief of the USAF Community Relations Division, that “We are most anxious that further publicity not be given to the information that the [Robertson] panel was sponsored by the CIA.” Weber notes that there is already a sanitized version available to the public. (Gerald K. Haines, “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947–90,” Studies in Intelligence 40, no. 5 (1997): 67–84)
Mid-August — Rep. J. Edward Hutchinson (R-Mich.) introduces HR 866 for an investigation into Project Blue Book’s methods. ()
August 16 — Iraqi Air Force Col. Munir Redfa defects by flying a MiG-21 to Israel. In what is considered one of Mossad’s most successful operations, Redfa’s entire extended family is smuggled safely out of Iraq to Israel. The MiG-21 fighter is evaluated by the Israeli Air Force and later loaned to the US for testing and intelligence analysis at Area 51. Knowledge obtained from analysis of the aircraft is instrumental to the successes achieved by the Israeli Air Force in the Six-Day War. (Wikipedia, “Munir Redfa”)
August 16 — The chief of the Australian Directorate of Public Relations writes to the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence requesting reconsideration of its decision to stop making summaries of UFO sightings reported to the Department of Air available to the public. DPR hopes the summaries will be useful in responding to public inquiries and thinks that restricting them will reinforce the theory that the government has something to hide. The summaries continue to be published erratically through the end of the 1970s. (Swords 393–394)
August 19 — 4:50 p.m. US Border Patrolman Donald E. Flickinger, in the process of taking two prisoners back to Canada, sees a silvery domed disc floating down the side of a hill near Donnybrook, North Dakota, about 10 feet off the ground. It moves across a valley and climbs to 100 feet, hovers over a reservoir, then appears to land in a field 250 feet away. It tilts on edge and rises into the clouds at high speed. Flickinger finds three odd indentations in the field in the form of a triangle with sides of 10–12 feet. Some stones alo seem to have been moved recently. (Hynek UFO Report, photo betw. pp. 152–153; Condon, pp. 273–274; Sparks, p. 317)
August 20 — Afternoon. Some boys looking for a lost kite on the Morro do Vintém in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, discover the bodies of two dead males and report them to the authorities. The Morro do Vintém is a hill with difficult terrain, and the police are unable to reach the bodies until August 21. When a small team of police and firefighters arrive, they encounter an odd scene: the bodies are resting next to each other, partly covered by grass. Each one is wearing a formal suit, a lead eye mask, and a waterproof coat. There are no signs of trauma or struggle. Next to the corpses, police find an empty water bottle and a packet containing two wet towels. A small notebook is also identified, on which were written the cryptic instructions, “16:30 be at the specified location.
18:30 ingest capsules, after the effect protect metals await signal mask.” The two men are identified as Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana, two electronic technicians from Campos dos Goytacazes. Following an investigation, police reconstruct a plausible narrative of the men’s last days. On August 17, Cruz and Viana leave Campos dos Goytacazes saying that they needed to purchase some materials for work (although they tell others they are on a secret mission). The two men then board a bus to Niterói and arrive at 2:30 p.m. Evidence shows that the waterproof coats were purchased at a shop there, and one bottle of water from a local bar. Upon being interviewed, the waitress from the bar described Miguel as “very nervous,” and noticed he frequently checked his watch. That is the last time they are known to have been seen alive; it is presumed they go directly from the bar to the spot where they were discovered. One theory revolves around the testimony of a friend of the two men, who claims that they are members of a group of “scientific spiritualists” who are apparently attempting to contact extraterrestrials or spirits using psychedelic drugs. Believing that such an encounter would be accompanied by blinding light, the men cut metal masks to shield their eyes and may have died of drug overdoses. This account is corroborated by the esoteric diary entry found at the scene and by mask-making materials and literature concerning spirits found at the men’s homes. In April 1980, Jacques Vallée locates the exact spot where the bodies were found and notes that no vegetation is growing there. (Wikipedia, “Lead Masks Case”; Charles
Bowen, “The Mystery of the Morro do Vintem,” Flying Saucer Review 13, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1967): 11–14; Clark III 774–775; Jacques Vallée, Confrontations: A Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact, Ballantine, 1990, pp. 3–15)
August 22 — Phil Klass asserts in Aviation Week that the Exeter UFO was a plasma discharge from high-voltage power lines. (Philip J. Klass, “Plasma Theory May Explain Many UFOs,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 85 (August 22, 1966): 48–61)
August 24 — 10:00 p.m. Airman 3d Class Michael D. Mueller reports by base radio seeing a multicolored light high in the sky above the Minot AFB M-6 Minuteman launch site southeast of Norma, North Dakota. A team goes to his location and confirms the object and sees a second white object passing in front of clouds. The base radar detects the object, which is tracked at about 100,000 feet (20 miles). The object rises and descends a number of times, and each time Maj. Chester A. Shaw Jr., in charge of the M-6 missile crew, finds his radio transmission interrupted by static, even though he is 60 feet underground. The UFO gradually descends to ground level 10–15 miles south of the base. The Air Force sends a strike team to check on it. When they are within 10 miles of the site, static disrupts their radio contact. Five to eight minutes later, the glow diminishes and the UFO takes off.
Another UFO is sighted and tracked on radar; the first object flies underneath this second one. The two objects disappear separately. The entire episode lasts about 4 hours and is confirmed by two other missile launch sites, M- 4 and N-7 (near Mohall). Another report from the same time period mentions that some missiles went off alert for 24 hours after a UFO sighting at the N-1 missile alert facility. (NICAP, “Minuteman Site Jammed by UFO”; Condon, pp. 274–277; Sparks, p. 317; Robert L. Salas and James Klotz, Faded Giant, BookSurge, 2005, p. 5–6; Nukes 238–240, 248–251)
August 27 — Hynek releases to the press a letter rejected by Science magazine in which he reports a pattern to UFO sightings that “suggests that something is going on” and disputing seven misconceptions about UFOs. (“Expert Criticizes Scientists for Dismissing UFOs,” Miami (Fla.) Herald, August 28, 1966, p. 5-C)
August 31 — Col. Ivan C. Atkinson, deputy executive director of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, formally approaches the University of Colorado with a request to conduct a comprehensive and independent examination of the UFO problem. ()
August or September — Mid-afternoon. Two men are returning home from bowling in Norwood, Massachusetts. The Moon is visible in about three-quarter phase in the sky. Both glance up and see a group of 6–7 disc-shaped objects moving horizontally toward the Moon. When they reach a position just below the Moon, they loop around it in an upward, back, and onward motion, then continue on their way. (Michael D. Swords, “We Know Where You Live,” IUR 30, no. 2 (January 2006): 9–10)
Early September — Night. Bank official Gerardo Bagnulo is on a pleasure outing with members of his family when he sees two objects moving across the sky on the coast of the Gargano promontory in southern Italy. He manages to take one color photo before the objects disappear near the northwest horizon. The photo shows both a round object and a cylindrical object. (Roberto Pinotti, “The Gargano Peninsula Cigar,” IUR 9, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1984): 6; “As is often the case,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 6 (Dec. 1984/Jan. 1985): 8; Roberto Pinotti, “Evidence for UFOs in the Italian Past,” The Spectrum of UFO Research, CUFOS, 1988, pp. 115–116; 1Pinotti 154–156)
September — Early morning. A UFO is seen hovering at low altitude by all personnel at Heathrow Airport Air Traffic Control in London, England, at a time when no aircraft are in motion. The UFO is tracked on radar and its speed at departure is clocked at 3,000 mph. The Ministry of Defence is notified, and investigators arrive on the scene and tell the witnesses that they have seen nothing, threatening to charge them under the Official Secrets Act if they reveal the sighting publicly. (Good Above, pp. 71–72)
September — 1:30 a.m. Airman 1C Patrick McDonough is working on an astro-azimuth observation at one of the Malmstrom AFB missile launch facilities near Conrad, Montana, when a UFO comes in from the north and stops directly overhead at 300 feet. It is about 30–50 feet in diameter and disc-shaped, with dim lights outlining it and a white light emanating from the center. It remains about 20–30 seconds, then shoots away noiselessly to the east at tremendous speed. Montana Highway Patrol dispatchers in Pondera County receive more than 20 UFO reports that morning. (Nukes 247–248)
September — 4:00 a.m. Deputy Sheriff Ed Korenek is driving north of El Campo, Texas, on State Highway 71 when he sees something like a car on fire ahead of him. Suddenly he notices that another object is pacing him, He hits his brakes and reaches for the radio, but it is dead. He sees another flaming object above Wharton Regional Airport to the east. He accelerates toward the object ahead of him, which slides off the highway to the right, sucking its flame up behind it as it moves away. The object above the airfield disappears, and when Korenek turns his car around, his radio begins working again. (“The Texas Flap,” APRO Bulletin, Jan./Feb. 1967, p. 3)
September 3 — Science columnist John Lear receives a declassified (sanitized) copy of the Robertson Panel report and publishes a version of it in the Saturday Review. He calls for the release of the full document. (John Lear, “The Disputed CIA Document on UFOs,” Saturday Review, September 3, 1966, pp. 45–50; Clark III 1017)
September 5 — 2:00 p.m. Franz Trautsamwieser takes a photo of the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Italy, from the other side of the canal. He does not see anything, but the developed photo shows a UFO-shaped whitish object next to the tower. (“UFO over Venice?” Flying Saucer Review 13, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1967, cover, 17)
September 12 — The Air Force turns down a proposal Hynek has made for them to create a computer program to put Blue Book’s UFO reports into a machine-readable format, ostensibly because it is too preoccupied with the Vietnam War. (Center for UFO Studies, [Hynek correspondence], p. 2)
September 13 — 7:30 a.m. 11-year-old Randy Rotenberger, near Stirum, North Dakota, sees a silvery domed disc hover about one mile away, approach, then land within 900 feet, making a low-pitched whine. It takes off so fast it just vanishes.” An Air Force investigator finds landing indentations 7 inches deep and [possibly] radiation level of 100 microroentgens/hour. Electrical power is off in the area for about 4 hours. (NICAP, “Domed Object Leaves Traces”; Sparks, p. 319; Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969,
pp. 58–59; Clark III 950)
September 17 — 4:45 a.m. Mr. and Mrs. Ronald MacGilvary see a glowing cigar-shaped object oriented vertically, tilted at times, for about an hour near the edge of the water at Crane Beach, Ipswich, Massachusetts. Two smaller glowing objects approach the larger object, moving around erratically, with an up-and-down skipping motion. The two rendezvous with the larger object, then a third smaller object is seen. The smaller objects periodically leave the larger object and flies around the area. One flies low over Ipswich Bay toward the witnesses’ home. At closer range it shows an elliptical shape illuminated by a faint glow. (“‘Satellite’ UFO Landing Case in Massachusetts,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 10 (Oct./Nov. 1966): 4)
September 19 — Air Force Regulation 200-2 is replaced by AFR 80-17, which orders members of the military who investigate UFO reports to release information if there is an explanation, but if there is none to withhold the information, even from the Colorado project (explicitly modified November 9). Radarscope photos are automatically classified. However, it does require that every Air Force base have an official with scientific background responsible for investigating UFOs. (US Department of the Air Force, “Research and Development: Unidentified Flying Objects,” Air Force Regulation 80-17, September 19, 1966)
September 21 — 6:30 a.m. Eight RCAF airmen are refueling an aircraft in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada, when they see an object in the east moving at great speed. It comes to a complete stop, descends, and hovers for 20 minutes. It then shoots up and disappears quickly. At about the same time, fishermen Ivan Collicut and Patrick O’Halloran are out for an early morning catch at Burton, Prince Edward Island, when they see a rapidly moving light. (“Near-Landing Observed by RCAF,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 10 (Oct./Nov. 1966): 4)
September 21 — At a meeting of the University of Colorado psychology department, Stuart W. Cook announces that the university is considering taking on the UFO project, with Condon directing. Cook says it will need the help of psychologists. William A. Scott and David R. Saunders are interested. Around this time, Condon agrees to an informal question-and-answer session about the project. George Gamow and Richard Sigismond are in attendance. Gamow is surprised that Condon has never heard of the Trindade Island UFO photos. Sigismond applies for an opening on the committee and is accepted, but he declines the offer after a 20-minute interview with Condon, whose negative bias on the subject is unyielding. (Richard Sigismond, “A Confrontation with Dr.
Condon: Prelude and Aftermath,” IUR 8, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1983): 3–5, 16; “Condon Confrontation Continues,”
IUR 9, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1984): 9; Clark III 1192)
September 22 — 3:00 a.m. Police from several vantage points in Deadwood, South Dakota, see a large white hovering object, changing color to green to red then back to white. It hangs motionless for 15 minutes. When a spotlight is shone on it, the object blacks out. Two smaller white objects operating independently approach and hover nearby. The large object bobs around and emits blue light beams toward the ground, and finally speeds away in 3 seconds. (NICAP, “Satellite Objects, Sept. 22, 1966, Deadwood, SD”; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 49–50)
September 22 — Psychologist Michael Wertheimer tells Cook he will participate in the Colorado project. (Clark III 1193) September 22 — Hynek appeals to Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown to create a program to put UFO reports into a machine-readable database. He also recommends a more scientific approach to data acquisition that will make the
Air Force look better to the public and the scientific community. (Center for UFO Studies, [Hynek correspondence], pp. 3–5)
September 24 — 3:30 a.m. A man named Gaines is driving his girlfriend home in Peoria, Illinois, when they see a large, luminous, blue sphere hovering low in the sky. It shoots off, so he drops the girlfriend off. On the way home the blue ball returns; his car begins to pick up speed, the brakes won’t work, and the doors won’t open. He races on
this way for a few blocks, then the UFO takes off. (Michael D. Swords, “Messing Around with the Force,” IUR
31, no. 4 (Mar. 2008): 17)
Autumn — Night. A young couple parking in a rural area near Rockford, Illinois, see a bright light that appears over some nearby trees. It is so intense that it hurts their eyes, so they start the car up and drive down a gravel road. The light is gone, but near where it had been they can now see two gray figures with large slanted eyes and wearing clothing with a square insignia on the torso. As they leave the area, they smell a pungent, metallic odor. (“Letter,” IUR 9, no. 2 (March/April 1984): 6, 9; “Out of the Past,” IUR 9, no. 2 (March/April 1984): 8–9)
October — Hynek’s lengthy letter about UFOs and Project Blue Book is published in Science magazine. It addresses seven misconceptions about UFOs. “I cannot dismiss the UFO phenomenon with a shrug,” he concludes. (O’Connell 201–204)
October — The Canadian Directorate of Operations issues Canadian Forces Administrative Order 71-6, “Reporting of Unidentified Flying Objects,” to make it easier to obtain UFO reports from military bases and police forces. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Canada, Signet, 1981, p. 173)
October 1 — James E. McDonald writes to Thomas Ratchford of the USAF Office of Scientific Research to tell him that he will soon speak out for radical changes in the handling of UFO reports. (Clark III 697)
October 2 — 8:20 p.m. Mrs. Everett Steward is talking on the telephone at her home in Cincinnati, Ohio, when she smells a foul odor in the room. She goes to her bedroom, but she has a feeling of being watched. Looking out the window, she sees an oval-shaped object with portholes and red, green, and white lights revolving around it. It is 75 feet in diameter and hovering at 100 feet. She wakes up her husband, who also sees it, and calls her married daughter, Mrs. Janet Emery, a mile away; the Emerys also see it, and a neighbor with binoculars can see that it has square windows glowing yellow. Janet goes outdoors and sees the UFO eject a red ball, which maneuvers while the first UFO takes off southward. The red ball flies 75–100 feet over Janet’s head; its underside is shiny like aluminum foil. Mrs. Steward goes to bed, but the odor is still in the house. After some time, the room is filled for an instant with brilliant white light; then this vanishes and a globe of light about 21 inches in diameter appears at the foot of her bed. Inside are 5 “non-human, hairless heads” with oval, sunken eyes. Instead of noses, there are slits, and they have no mouths. Telepathically, they repeat several times: “We have made contact.” Mrs. Steward screams and the globe disappears. She is so disquieted by the experience that she goes under psychiatric care for the next 2 years. (Stringfield, Situation Red, Doubleday, 1977, pp. 33–36)
October 3 — Phil Klass has another article in Aviation Week on plasmas as an explanation for UFOs. (Philip J. Klass, “Many UFOs Are Identified as Plasmas,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 85 (October 3, 1966): 54–73)
October 4, 18 — Excerpts of John G. Fuller’s book about the Betty and Barney Hill abduction case, Interrupted Journey, appear in a two-part article of Look magazine. (Wikipedia, “Barney and Betty Hill”; John G. Fuller, “Aboard a Flying Saucer, Part I,” Look 30, no. 20 (October 4, 1966): 44–48, 53–56; John G. Fuller, “Aboard a Flying
Saucer, Part II,” Look 30, no. 21 (October 18, 1966): 111–121; Clark III 585)
October 4–5 — 5:00 a.m. Jack Jones is delivering newspapers on John Street in Connersville, Indiana. He notices a group of lights in a field to the west past the dead end. He thinks it might be a new light installation and moves on. The next day, Jones is with another paper carrier, Don Doe, and he suggests they go see the new lights. Jack sees the lights, but they are in a different position somewhat to the north. Both boys sit on their bicycles and watch a dark disc-shaped object with flashing red, green, and white lights on it that is apparently on the ground some 840 feet into the field. They estimate it is 27 feet in diameter and 10 feet high. They hear a high-pitched whirring sound and smell a faint odor of sulfur and tannic acid. After watching it a few minutes, they hear a new sound as if someone is walking slowly toward them through some thick weeds. They take off on their bicycles and don’t look back. Some days later, investigators find three holes, 8 feet apart in an equilateral triangle, where the object was seen. The holes measure 7 inches at the top and 1 inch at the bottom. (“UAO Landing in Indiana,” APRO Bulletin, Nov./Dec. 1966, pp. 1, 3)
October 5 — At a University of Arizona Department of Meteorology colloquium, James E. McDonald gives his views on the reality of UFOs and the Air Force’s concealment of information. His colleagues respond negatively, and McDonald acknowledges to Gerard Kuiper that what he is doing is professionally risky. Nevertheless, the university’s Space Sciences Committee gives him a $1,300 grant toward his research expenses. (“UFOs Are ‘Real,’ Physicist Asserts,” Arizona Daily Star, October 6, 1966, p. B-1; Clark III 697)
October 6 — Thurston Manning signs the University of Colorado contract with the Air Force. The project is to run from November 15, 1966, to January 1968. (Clark III 1193)
October 7 — The Air Force publicly announces the creation of the University of Colorado UFO project. Low is made project coordinator. The primary team will be Saunders, ESSA astronomer Franklin Roach, Wertheimer, chemist Roy Craig, University of Arizona electrical engineer Norman Levine, administrative assistant Mary Lou
Armstrong, University of Arizona astronomer William K. Hartmann, physicist Frederick Ayer, and psychologists Dan Culberson and James Wadsworth. (Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), “Air Force Selects University of Colorado to Investigate Unidentified Flying Object Reports,” October 7, 1966, release no. 847-66, in Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 222–224; “UFO Probe Given to Colorado U.,” San Francisco Examiner, October 7, 1966, p. 42; Clark III 697, 1193)
October 7 — McDonald speaks to the media about the secret Robertson Panel report. The CIA has ordered the Air Force to debunk UFOs, he says. (“UFO Hush Blamed on CIA Men,” Phoenix Arizona Republic, October 7, 1966, pp. 21–22)
October 8 — Condon is widely quoted in the media as saying it is “highly improbable” that UFOs exist. “The view that UFOs are hallucinatory will be a subject of our investigation, to discover what it is that makes people imagine they see things.” (Chesly Manly, “UFOs Prober Keeps Open Mind and Door,” Chicago Tribune, October 16, 1966, pp. 1, 4)
October 8 — 7:00 p.m. Loch Ness monster researcher Frederick William “Ted” Holiday is fishing on the lifeboat slipway at Tenby harbor, Pembrokeshire, Wales, when he and other fishermen notice a small, bluish, luminous cloud moving in a circle about three times its own diameter above them. After a short time, he resumes his fishing, but 10 minutes later a dark object emerges from the cloud and beams down a brilliant ruby light on them. The cloud moves west and the object moves southwest. By the time he retrieves binoculars from his car, both objects are gone. (F. W. Holiday, “Was God at Aberfan?” Flying Saucer Review 18, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1972): 3–4)
October 10 — Hynek discusses UFOs in Newsweek. (“UFO’s for Real?” Newsweek, October 10, 1966, p. 70)
October 10 — 9:15 p.m. Police Sgt. Benjamin Thompson of the Wanaque (New Jersey) Reservoir Police watches a bright light performing fantastic maneuvers over the reservoir. He notices a slight mist in the wake of its movements. It descends to 150 feet above the water, then shoots up. Thompson has also seen UFOs at the reservoir in January and March. Some teenagers see a UFO in the area 2 nights later. (“UFOs Return to Wanaque Reservoir,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 10 (Oct./Nov. 1966): 6; Sanderson, InvRes, pp. 58–62; Center for UFO Studies, [case files])
October 11 — 9:45 p.m. Two boys in Elizabeth, New Jersey—Martin Munov and James Yanchitis—are walking home on 4th Street near East Jersey Street, adjacent to the elevated New Jersey Turnpike. Yanchitis tells his friend that there is someone following them. They turn and see a man standing behind a high wire fence separating them from the turnpike 30 feet above them. The fence is 8 feet high and the embankment running up to it is steep. John Keel interviews the two boys three days after the incident. They tell him that the man is 7 feet tall, has a dark complexion, and is wearing a green work suit. He has a bald head, large eyes, and a huge grinning mouth full of white teeth. (John Keel, Strange Creatures from Time and Space, Fawcett, 1970, p. 176)
October 15 —4:45 a.m. Forester Jerry H. Simons is driving home from a camping expedition, notices a reddish glow behind him, and stops his car near Split Rock Pond, south of Newfoundland, New Jersey, to investigate. A flat- bottom, red-orange disc with a dome on top is hovering above and behind his car. Near panic, he flees the area with the object following him. When the light from the object illuminates the ground around him, his car engine, dashlights, and headlights all fail. When the object recedes, his lights and engine function normally. This sequence is repeated three times, strongly demonstrating a direct correlation between the light from the UFO and the failure of his car’s electrical system. Shortly after the sighting, Simons begins experiencing a recurring illness (the reason for his story appearing in a medical journal); it is characterized by fatigue, anorexia, soreness, muscle weakness, chills, and significant weight loss. After about 6 months he has fully recovered. (Berthold Eric Schwarz, “UFOs: Delusion or Dilemma,” Medical Times 96 (October 1968): 967–981; UFOEv II 37; Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part 2,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 14)
Mid-October — Keyhoe is stressed by Condon’s statements, so he calls both Condon and Low. Both assure him they were misquoted and ask for NICAP’s support. He expresses his doubts to Saunders, who with Richard Hall convinces him to lend his support to the project, for now. (UFOs Yes, 117)
October 19 — James E. McDonald speaks to the Washington, D.C., Chapter of the American Meteorological Society on the inadequacy of military UFO investigations and the need to take seriously the “possibility that these aerial objects may be some type of extraterrestrial probes.” (James E. McDonald, “The Problem of the Unidentified Flying Objects,” October 19, 1966; Clark III 697)
October 20 — Hynek visits Franklin Roach in Boulder, Colorado, to meet Condon and other Colorado project members.
He notes that Condon has a “basically negative attitude.” (Clark III 1193)
October 20 — 11:50 p.m. A telecommunications technician in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, sees a strangely behaving nocturnal light. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, p. 45)
October 21 — Hynek’s letter on misconceptions about UFOs is belatedly published in Science. (J. Allen Hynek, “UFO’s Merit Scientific Study,” Science 154 (1966): 329)
October 21 — Night. Three junior high school students are standing at one end of their street in Amsterdam, New York, when they notice a star-like light to the right of the Moon. The star proceeds to draw aright-angle step around the Moon and continues northward, where it joins two other objects. The three objects then form 90° angles, equilateral triangles, and other geometrical figures. Two of the students go home for binoculars, and while they are away the sky show stops. They remain in the sky, but stationary. The objects look spherical through binoculars with some sort of lighted, colored areas that rotate. (Michael D. Swords, “We Know Where You Live,” IUR 30, no. 2 (January 2006): 10)
October 26 — 11:50 p.m. A man is driving in a rural, wooded area near Takoma Park, Maryland, when he sees a disc that seems about to land in a clearing. It puts on a red-and-green light show as it hovers. A large central beam of light shines onto the field below. The car radio bursts with static, and he hears a whirring sound coming from the object. He tries to accelerate the car, but it won’t move. Radio and drive functions resume when the UFO moves away. (Michael D. Swords, “Messing Around with the Force,” IUR 31, no, 4 (March 2008): 17, 29)
October 28 — The Space Defense Center’s satellite-tracking Delta I computer system at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, becomes operational. (Wikipedia, “Space Defense Center”)
October 31 — Night. An observer in Gloucester, Massachusetts, notices a particularly bright star in the southwestern sky that is moving in a wide arc. When it reaches Ursa Major, it paces along the Big Dipper, then turns and takes an approximately parallel course to the front of the constellation. (Michael D. Swords, “We Know Where You Live,” IUR 30, no. 2 (January 2006): 10)
November 1 — The University of Colorado UFO project officially launches. Michael D. Swords writes: “It was one of the most peculiar scientific grants of all time. Normally a governmental grant goes to a scientist who has initiated it or is at least vitally interested and experienced in the field, and essentially knows exactly what he is going to do.
This grant was to a scientist who was pushed into it, had little interest and apparently no experience, and, despite his brilliance, ‘didn’t have a clue.’ Because the reports of the UFO phenomenon are so complex and multidimensional, this short-term ‘backwards grant’ was doomed to fail before it was even signed.” (Swords 309– 312)
November 1 — 8:00 p.m. Mrs. Ray Tibbetts is talking on the phone in her home at Newfields, New Hampshire, when her son, Dale, yells that there is a strange light outside. Her foster daughter, Anita Purrington, joins Dale and they both get excited. Mrs. Tibbetts runs to a window when the house lights begin blinking on and off. She goes to her son’s room and sees a huge object with two tiers of four windows from which a strange, yellow-green light is shining. The size of one of the windows is as big as her living room wall. An apparent ceiling line is visible in the bottom tier. Suddenly an intense white light shoots out from the object at Mrs. Tibbetts, who is knocked backward and gets spots before her eyes. When her vision clears, the UFO is gone. She has pains in her eyes the next two days and they are extremely sensitive to light. She drives to a clinic in Exeter, New Hampshire, which finds a spasm in the eyelid and tearing, but it attributes this to the cobalt therapy she has been getting. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 10–11)
Early November — Low and Hynek make the Colorado project’s first field trip, to Minot and Donnybrook, North Dakota. November 2 — 7:25 p.m. Woodrow Derenberger is driving his panel truck home to Parkersburg, West Virginia, on
Interstate 77 when a low-flying dark object about 35 feet wide cuts in front of him and forces him to stop. It hovers a foot above the ground, only 20 feet ahead. The object has a profile similar to a kerosene lamp chimney flattened on the bottom side. A door opens and a smiling man of dark complexion descends, wearing a topcoat (“blue and quite shiny, having a glistening effect”) over shiny blue trousers. Without opening his mouth, which bears a fixed grin, he addresses Derenberger telepathically, asking him to open his window. For the next 10 minutes he conducts a telepathic conversation, first asking Derenberger’s name and saying that his own is “Indrid Cold” from a planet called Lanulos in the “Ganymede galaxy.” He tells Derenberger not to think of him as an alien and concludes by saying, “We will see you again.” After admitting Mr. Cold, the UFO rises vertically and disappears. A truck driver named Walter Vanscoy is going north on I-77 and sees, in apparent confirmation of the encounter, a truck parked on the berm of the southbound I-77 lanes with a man wearing a knee-length coat standing by the passenger side. Derenberger’s space adventures are only beginning. (“The Woodrow Derenberger Interview, November 3, 1966,” The MothMan Wikia; “Parkersburg Salesman Speaks with Spaceman,” Beckley (W.Va.) Raleigh Register, November 4, 1966, pp. 1–2; John A. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies, Tor ed., 1991,
pp. 50–52; Woodrow W. Derenberger and Harold W. Hubbard, Visitors from Lanulos, Vantage, 1971; Clark III 402–403; Jerome Clark, “The Adventures of Woody Derenberger,” IUR 20, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1995): 7–8; Taunia Derenberger-Bowman, Beyond Lanulos: Our Fifty Years with Indrid Cold, The Author, 2016; Theo Paijmans, “The Terrible Grinning Men,” Fortean Times 397 (October 2020): 32–34)
November 4 — Derenberger has another encounter when he lapses into a trance while driving a truck with a colleague along US Highway 50 near Parkersburg, West Virginia. He starts speaking, sometimes mumbling, other times conveying messages about “ships.” Derenberger later says that Cold was sending him a telepathic message that his ship was directly above the truck. A sighting of a UFO “like two glass chimneys from a kerosene lamp welded together at their widest or bulging ends” at 6:45 p.m. by Irma Hudgins and her daughter Pamela Sue near the intersection of I-77 and State Highway 47 seems to confirm some UFO activity. Derenberger has further meetings with Indrid Cold and his companion Carl Ardo, who often pass undetected among earthlings, through the early 1970s and in 1984. (John A. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies, Tor ed., 1991, pp. 54–55; Clark III 404–410; Jerome Clark, “The Adventures of Woody Derenberger,” IUR 20, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1995): 8–11, 20–23)
November 5 — Condon tells the press that he knows “some people [McDonald] who believe the air force is misleading us, but I don’t think so. Maybe they are. I don’t care much.” (Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, p. 113)
November 6 — 6:30 p.m. A driver on State Highway 47 near Parkersburg, West Virginia, sees a UFO and gets out to watch it. At first it looks like two lights near the American Viscose plant across the Little Kanawha River. The object crosses the river and the highway then turns off its lights at about 100–150 feet altitude. The lights come back on and it starts moving toward the witness, stopping right over his car and focusing a bright beam of light on him for 10 seconds. It shuts off and the object moves leisurely away to the south. (Clark III 405)
November 11 — Hynek and Vallée give an extended briefing to Condon and his staff. Hynek urges the project to adopt a rating system, by which if a sighting emerges as both strange and credible, it will be deemed worthy of further investigation. Vallée recommends standardized report forms that ask all the right questions. They both sense that Low, not Condon, is “clearly the decision-maker.” Hynek tells Craig that the project must recommend that scientific investigation of UFOs be continued. (Clark III 1193; UFOs Yes, 50–61; Sparks, p. 5)
November 13 — Barber and amateur astronomer Ralph Ditter Jr. of Roseville, Ohio, takes several “spectacular” photos of a daylight disc. Later, Raytheon deals with the photographic analysis of the photos. The report states that the object in the photos is 3–4 inches in diameter, not 30 feet as claimed by Ditter; the object is not at a considerable distance, but a mere 3–4 feet from the camera lens; and the photos are not taken in rapid succession, but approximately 70 minutes has elapsed between photos. Also, the numbers on the backs of the photographs are out of sequence with Ditter’s story. (NICAP, “The Ditter Photo Hoax”; Center for UFO Studies, [Ditter photos]; Center for UFO Studies, [case documents, part one, part two]; E. L. Merritt, “Photogrammetric Analysis of a
Non-Synchronous Pair of U.F.O. Exposures,” June 1967)
November 14 — Quintanilla, Lt. William Marley, and Col. Robert Hippler of AFOSR brief the Colorado project staff.
Quintanilla contradicts Hynek’s account of the swamp gas explanation. (UFOs Yes, 61)
November 15 — 11:30 p.m. Two young couples from Point Pleasant, West Virginia—Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette—are joyriding in an area outside of town known as the “TNT area” [the site of a former World War II munitions plant and now part of the McClintic Wildlife Management Area] when they
encounter a large gray creature whose eyes glow red when the car’s headlights pick it up. Scarberry describes it as shaped like a man but nearly 7 feet tall. They describe it as a “large flying man with 10-foot wings” that are folded against its back. Terrified, they drive away but pass a similar creature on a hill by the road. As they pass it, it spreads its wings, rises into the air, and pursues their car, keeping pace at even 100 mph. The entity does not pursue them into town, but they drive directly to the Mason County Courthouse, where they tell their story to Deputy Millard Halstead, who accompanies the witnesses back to the site. He hears strange static disturbances coming from his radio, but they find no evidence of the encounter. On November 16, Sheriff George E. Johnson holds a press conference to discuss the sighting, the press begins calling the creature “Mothman” based on a comic book character. The Scarberrys and Mallettes go back to the site in the daylight and find odd-looking tracks like “two horseshoes put together.” After this sighting, more people begin reporting encounters, and hundreds of cars swarm out to the TNT area at night in search of a Mothman sighting. In May 1976, representatives of the Ohio UFO Investigators League reinterview several witnesses, all of whom stick to their stories and sometimes add interesting details. (John A. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies, Tor ed., 1991, pp. 59–61; Clark III 779–781; “Scarberry and Mallette’s Mothman Sighting,” The MothMan Wikia)
November 17 — 4:00 a.m. Two police officers see a round, glowing object with a wide, flat rim around the center resting on the ground near Gaffney, South Carolina. They estimate the diameter to be about 20 feet. As they watch from less than 50 feet away, a door opens and a small humanoid being descends. The observation lasts several minutes. Footprints are found at the site. (John A. Keel, “The Little Man of Gaffney,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 2 (March/April 1968): 17–19)
November 22 — McDonald informally visits several Colorado project members. He explains radar complexities and mirage effects and tells them that they will soon be “confronting astonishing evidence of mishandling of the UFO problems by your sponsoring agency.” (UFOs Yes, 64)
November 22 — 9:00–10:00 a.m. A biochemist and consultant to a logging company and his wife are traveling on State Highway 58 through the Willamette Pass, Oregon, when he decides to stop and take photos of some scenery. He stops at the Diamond Peak overlook, takes 2 photos, then pauses to take a third. Suddenly, he claims, a disc- shaped object with a domed top ascends into his field of view. After stopping for 3 seconds, it shoots off toward the right and disappears into a cloud bank. When he develops the roll of film, the photos show a blurred disc- shaped object with two black bands beneath and sitting atop a seeming column of vapor. NICAP is given the photo but is not impressed. In 1989, physicist Irwin Wieder performs a detailed analysis of the photo and determines that it is a blurred photo of the “Diamond Peak” sign taken from a passing car. (Clark III 1281–1283; Irwin Wieder, “The Willamette Pass Oregon UFO Photo Revisited: An Explanation,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 7, no. 2 (1993): 173–198; Irwin Wieder, “The Willamette Pass Photo Explained,” IUR 18, no. 6
(Nov./Dec. 1993): 18–19)
November 22 — 10:00 a.m. A deer hunter searching for game near Roaring River State Park, Missouri, returns to his group’s camp and becomes alarmed when he sees smoke rising from it. He finds their tent and other camping equipment destroyed. The tent is still smoldering, one of the aluminum tent poles is singed, and the aluminum cots are melted. The tent is set up under two trees, but their leaves show no traces of damage at all. About 15 feet away is a dead tree with its top still burning. The witness then heasr a low humming sound and sees an object rising from the valley about 300 feet away. He is able to take a photograph of it as it ascends and manages a second photo a few seconds later. It is an aluminum-colored disc, about 25 feet in diameter and 8 feet thick, with a band around its center and some kind of projection at its rear. The humming sound intensifies as the object picks up speed and disappears in 20 seconds. (CUFOS case file; Ted Phillips, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings, Center for UFO Studies, 1978, p. 44; B. J. Booth, “UFO Encountered, Photographed, Roaring River, Missouri, 1966,” UFO Casebook)
November 22 — 4:20 p.m. At least eight employees of the American Newspaper Publishers Association in New York City watch a UFO from their offices on the 17th floor at 750 Third Avenue. The UFO is a rectangular, “cushion- shaped” object whose bright, reflective surface first catches the eye of Assistant General Manager Donald R. McVay. They go outside onto the terrace and watch the object move southward over the East River, then hover above the United Nations building. It flutters and bobs “like a ship on agitated water.” It rises slowly and moves south then west. One of the other witnesses is the manager of the Publications Department, William H. Leick. (“Major Sighting Wave,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 11 (Jan,/Feb. 1967): 4; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, p. 54)
November 28 — At Saunders’s invitation, Hall and Keyhoe brief the Colorado project members. They meet with Low and show him some strong NICAP reports like the 1959 Redmond, Oregon, case. Low dismisses it as too old because the witnesses “wouldn’t remember the details.” Keyhoe focuses on the cover-up, while Hall argues that the best way to assess UFO evidence is to look at the aggregated evidence. (Clark III 1193; UFO Yes, 62–63; Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, pp. 108–110)
November 28 — 12:10 a.m. Spanish contactee Enrique Villagrasa receives by telephone his first message from inhabitants of the planet Ummo. The caller speaks in a slow monotone and with a foreign accent, answering questions about history and science. Villagrasa has the impression he is talking to an “electronic brain.” Other messages follow, and Villagrasa passes them on to Fernando Sesma, an employee of the Spanish telegraph service and head of Amigos de los Visitantes del Espacio. (Clark III 1184)
November 28 — Night. Janis Bodungen, 17, is on her way home on Farm Road 1300 northwest of El Campo, Texas, when she sees teo bright lights coming toward her. As they approach, the two lights turn into one large golden light as tall as the trees. She turns the car around and speeds away. (“The Texas Flap,” APRO Bulletin, Jan./Feb. 1967, pp. 3, 5)
November 30 — 4:35 p.m. J. G. Hockenberry is flying a Cessna 150 near New Kingstown, Pennsylvania, when he sees a saucer-shaped object, about 30 feet in diameter, approach and hover beside the aircraft. It has a dull, gray-white finish and one blinking red light. When the pilot flies into a cloud layer, the object rises straight up and out of sight. (NICAP case file)
December — Low visits NICAP headquarters in Washington, D.C. He admits that Condon thinks the early reports are worthless. Keyhoe tells Low that before he wastes any time supplying them with reports, he wants to know what
Condon thinks of the 1965 cases they already provided. Otherwise, NICAP might pull out. (Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, p. 112)
December — Colorado project member and psychologist William A. Scott devises a witness questionnaire. One page is devoted to the UFO, the other 20 are about the psychological profile of the witness. When he discovers that the witness is not the project’s main focus, he goes home. (UFOs Yes, 67–69)
December 2 — Wertheimer goes to Washington, D.C., to interview witnesses of the National Airport radar-visual sightings of 1952. Virtually every witness disputes Gen. John A. Samford’s explanation of temperature inversions. (UFOs Yes, 72–74)
December 7 — A TAP Air Portugal airliner piloted by Capt. Henrique Maia is paced by two luminous objects near Luanda, Angola. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 24)
December 15 — 5:30 p.m. Four witnesses driving northwest toward Woodstown, New Jersey, see a triangular object with rounded corners and three blinking lights. It is moving slowly in the opposite direction. When they leave Woodstown to the southeast at 6:15 p.m., it reappears and passes over the car. (Marler 134)
December 17 — Hynek’s article, in which he states that hundreds of puzzling UFO cases exit and urges a serious inquiry, appears in the Saturday Evening Post. (J. Allen Hynek, “Are Flying Saucers Real?” Saturday Evening Post, December 17, 1966, pp. 17–21, transcribed by NICAP)
December 21 — Lockheed test pilot William C. Park flies an A-12 for 10,198 statute miles in only 6 hours, at an average speed of 1,660 mph. (“William C. Park Jr.,” Roadrunners Internationale)
December 28 — The Defense Department makes a recommendation to President Johnson to terminate the A-12 program due to budget concerns and because of the development of the SR-71 Blackbird. It is to be phased out by June 1968. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed A-12”)
December 30 — 8:15 p.m. A physics professor named Galloway [possibly Louie A. Galloway III] is driving through a wooded area near Haynesville, Louisiana, and sees a bright, pulsating glow, changing from orange to white, in the woods about one mile away. He estimates its visible light power output at about one megawatt. Coming back the next day, he locates traces of burns and calls the USAF and University of Colorado UFO project. (Condon, pp.
61, 277–280; Sparks, p. 320; Jacques Vallée, “Estimates of Power Optical Output in Six Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Defined Luminosity Characteristics,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 12, no. 3 (1998): 350– 352)
1967
1967 — The US nuclear stockpile reaches its peak at 31,255 bombs. (Ryan Crierie, “U.S. Nuclear Stockpile, 1945–2009”) 1967 — Night. Miss E. R. East, of Gibsons, British Columbia, is awakened by a banging noise and sees a brilliant orange-
red light soaring above hills behind the town. As she watches, its color changes to glowing white and the object moves toward the Strait of Georgia. Suddenly, a 10-foot-wide beam of light shoots down to the water. As it strikes the surface, it bends and lies flat on the surface, lighting up the wharf on Keats Island. As she stares at it, her eyes begin to sting. (John Magor, Our UFO Visitors, Hancock House, 1977, pp. 37–38)
1967 — A French government UFO project, to be led by former inspector general at the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique Jean-Luc Bruneau, is approved. Bruneau recommends that the study first become a project of the Centre Nationale d’Études Spatiales, and later a European initiative. But the project is postponed because of the political crisis in France in May 1968. (Gildas Bourdais, “From GEPAN to SEPRA: Official UFO Studies in France,” IUR 25, no. 4 (Winter 2000–2001): 11)
1967 — Robert M. Wood, physicist and aerospace manager for McDonnell Douglas Corporation, is assigned the task of exploring breakthroughs in gravity propulsion. The project includes laboratory evaluation of hypotheses, field observations, and examination of UFO literature. At one point there are 4 full-time and 3 part-time employees involved in the effort, code-named BITBR (“Boys in the Back Room”). Wood networks with James E. McDonald, J. Allen Hynek, Carl Sagan, and the Colorado project. The initiative is terminated in 1969 at Wood’s recommendation due to its inability to project a technological payoff. (Robert M. Wood, “A Little Physics…A Little Friction: A Close Encounter with the Condon Committee,” IUR 18, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1993): 6–10)
January — Night. French rocket scientist Jean-Pierre Morin is driving three members of a launch team to the tower at Interarmy Special Vehicles Test Center at Hammaguir, Algeria. When they arrive at a row of buildings, they notice a light in the sky silently coming toward them. Their car engine sputters and fails. It stops and hovers at an elevation of 45° about 1,600 feet away. Morin thinks it is attached to a black, cylindrical object 980–1,300 feet in length and 100 feet in diameter with “flames” of different colors along its side. The light begins moving slowly
again, and a car with astrophysicists stops and watches it for another 20–30 minutes before it ascends and disappears. (Good Need, pp. 296–297)
Early January — 7:30 p.m. Robert Blaine is driving with five other witnesses on State Highway 55 two miles southeast of Farwell, Minnesota, when his headlights and engine suddenly go out. He sees an orange flash to his left at the level of his hood and tiny beads of light cross in front of the windshield. A passenger sees an orange-and-red flash go by on the driver’s side at window level. The car coasts to a stop, then the engine and headlights go back on again by themselves. (“Car Buzzing Incidents on Increase,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1967, p. 5)
January 3 — 2:00 a.m. A dome-shaped object hovers for several miles and 10–15 minutes above a car in New Richmond, Michigan. It illuminates the road, and the car draws to a stop with loss of steering control and the radio failing.
Examination of the car by Fred Hooven and David Moyer, engineers at the Ford Motor Company, two months later shows no faults unexplainable by ordinary causes. (Condon, pp. 102–106, 282–285; Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp. 65–66)
January 5 — Hynek writes to Condon, telling him that he, Jacques Vallée, and William T. Powers are devoting more personal time to the UFO problem and are setting up a file area in the Lindheimer Observatory at Northwestern University in Evansto, Illinois. He mentions that there is enough underground interest in UFOs among his scientific colleagues that he is thinking of creating an informal “invisible college” to discuss the subject quietly. He mentions that he sat in on a hypnosis session a few weeks previously with Benjamin Simon and was allowed to question Betty and Barney Hill. He also suggests that the Colorado project recommend that police squad cars carry cameras that can document ongoing UFO reports. (Center for UFO Studies, [Hynek correspondence], pp. 6– 7)
January 5 — An A-12 flown by pilot Walter Ray is lost during a training flight near Leith Canyon, Nevada. Due to a faulty fuel gauge, the aircraft runs out of fuel 70 miles from Groom Dry Lake. Ray glides to a lower altitude to perform a controlled bailout but cannot separate his parachute from his ejection seat. He is the first pilot to be killed in an A-12 accident. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed A-12”)
January 6 — Hynek speaks to an overflow crowd at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He says he has had to revise his thinking on UFOs, urges scientists to take an active role in investigations, and confirms reports that NORAD and SAC radar has tracked UFOs, citing a case in which SAC radar tracked a UFO at 4,000 mph on an erratic flight path. (Story, p. 413)
January 9 — Two teenage brothers of Mount Clemens, Michigan, Daniel A. and Grant P. Jaroslaw, take some Polaroid photos from the backyard of their home of a domed object moving slowly above Lake St. Clair. After they release the images to a wire service, the Air Force requests the originals for analysis. They refuse to relinquish them but give an officer at Selfridge AFB [now Selfridge Air National Guard Base] some copies. Maj. Raymond Nyls attempts to recreate the photos at the original site using a block of wood hanging from a string on a children’s swing set. USAF turns the copies and Nyls’s recreations over to the National Photographic Interpretation Center, which takes a serious look and suspects a hoax but cannot prove it conclusively. (“Two Brothers Photograph Circular Object in Michigan,” Northern Ontario UFO Research and Study; Joey Del Ponte, “Formerly Secret Memo Shows How the Air Force Investigated UFO Sightings,” Muckrock, February 14, 2018; Curt Collins, “Dr. Hynek and the UFO Photo Investigation of 1967,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, October 21, 2021)
January 12 — The USAF advisory committee holds a special briefing in Boulder, Colorado. Condon discusses project plans and asks the Air Force where the project should place its emphasis. Lt. Col. Hippler, along with Col.
Raymond Sleeper, Blue Book’s boss as Foreign Technology Division Commander, says the project is not required to prove or disprove anything, but that “we don’t want any recommendation from you unless you feel strongly about it.” He rejects Wertheimer’s suggestion that the project should concentrate on witnesses, not sightings.
Hippler and Ratchford do not adequately respond to Low’s question about what USAF wants from the project. (“Air Force Advisory Panel Briefing,” January 12, 1967; Roy Craig, UFOs: An Insiders’ View of the Official Quest for Evidence, University of North Texas, 1995, p. 235; Michael D. Swords, “The USAF-Sponsored Colorado Project for the Scientific Study of UFOs,” 1995 MUFON Symposium Proceedings, MUFON, 1995; Clark III 1194; Swords 314–315)
January 12 — 7:30 p.m. A luminous object crosses the sky off Agadir, Morocco. It leaves a white trail that turns into a rainbow and falls into the sea with a deafening sound. The US Defense attaché in Rabat, Naval Capt. C. G. Strum, says the sighting “could be valuable in pursuit of Project Moon Dust.” (US Department of Defense, “UFO Sighting over Agadir, Morocco,” January 18, 1967)
January 13 — Condon and Low visit Cheyenne Mountain, NORAD’s underground Space Defense Center complex in Colorado, for a “classified briefing” by orbital analysts 1Lt. Henry B. Eckert Jr. and Capt. Dick A. Cable of the 9th Aerospace Defense Division’s 1st Aerospace Control Squadron about NORAD’s radar network, hours after another classified briefing for Condon and staff at Boulder concludes. The Cheyenne Mountain briefing is the first
in a series of tactical moves designed to discourage Condon’s project staff, Hynek, and McDonald from using NORAD as a source of UFO data or resource for future investigations or instrumentation. (Clark III 804–805; UFOs Yes, 66)
January 13 — Early morning. Sgt. Norman Finley of the Joplin, Missouri, police alerts fellow officers about an unexplained object overhead. Pittsburg, Kansas, police dispatcher James Cunningham notifies the Joplin police that a UFO has been seen over Pittsburg. He describes it as an object with bright colors of “vivid blue-green with flashing lights.” Cunningham alerts the Joplin station because the object seems to be leaving Kansas and heading for Missouri. After receiving that call, Joplin’s Lt. Charles Hickman drives to Stone’s Corner near the Joplin airport. He waits for nearly an hour before spotting a UFO in the sky, which he watches for more than an hour. It is about 1,000 feet high and seems about as big as two houses. It makes turns and maneuvers “as if it were being controlled.” For the next three days, there are more sightings in the early morning hours at Coffeyville, Kansas; Joplin, Springfield, and Newton County, Missouri; and northeast Oklahoma. (UFOs Yes, 109–110; Condon, pp. 286–290)
January 13 — 10:00 p.m. The crew of a Lear Jet flying at 41,000 feet over southwestern New Mexico sees a flashing red luminous object in their 10 o’clock position. The object splits into four smaller red objects vertically several times, each separated by about 2,000 feet and each emitting a “red ray.” It then retracts the lowest objects into the top object. Albuquerque radar tracks a target 39 miles ahead of the Lear Jet moving on the same heading, with no transponder signal. At that moment the object blinks off visually for 30 seconds then blinks back on. The UFO floods the jet with an intense red light so bright that the pilot has difficulty seeing his instrument panel. It maintains its position in front for a few minutes then blinks out, comes on again, and falls back behind the left wing. It then pulls forward again. Albuquerque radar reports that it looks like the target had merged with the jet. Both the UFO and the jet make left turns over Winslow, Arizona, after which Los Angeles Center radar picks up both targets. Past Flagstaff, the object climbs at a 30° angle and disappears to the west in less than 10 seconds. (NICAP, “R/V”; Sparks, p. 321; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 82–83)
January 15 — 5:45 p.m. Helen Godard and her two nieces see a domed disc with white light emanating from portholes in its base in Granville, Massachusetts. They hear a humming sound, and the sky and ground are illuminated by white light. Red flame jets appear at one end when the object moves. Speed is variable. At one point, all the lights go out, and when they come back on the portholes are showing red light. The object is seen three times within 20 minutes before it disappears over a mountain to the east. (“Major Sighting Wave,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 11 (Jan./Feb. 1967): 4; Condon, pp. 285–286)
January 16 — Hippler writes to Condon, saying that “No one knows of a visitation. It should therefore follow there has been no [extraterrestrial] visitation to date.” Moreover, Condon should “consider the cost of the Air Force program on UFOs, and determine if the taxpayer should support this for the next decade.” (Lt. Col. Robert H. Hippler, Letter to Edward U. Condon, January 16, 1967; Kevin D. Randle, “The Hippler Letter,” A Different Perspective, March 21, 2007)
January 17 — Night. Francis Bedel Jr. is driving on State Highway 135 five miles north of Freetown, Indiana, when a glowing white light darts into his field of vision. It hovers above the road for a few seconds, then slowly reverses its course. Bedel is so busy staring at the spectacle that he loses control of his car, which goes off the road and is badly damaged. Phil Patton and his wife apparently see the same object, about 30 feet in diameter, that comes within 100 feet of their car on the same road. It has a brilliant red light and flashing ywllow and white lights on its perimeter. (NICAP, “The 1967 UFO Chronology”; “UFO Caused Car Wreck?” APRO Bulletin, Jan./Feb. 1967, p. 1)
January 18 — 6:00 p.m. A family in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, watches through binoculars a disc with a red light on a projection at the rear approach them at about 400–500 feet altitude. As it nears, the object emits two pinkish-white light beams downward at about a 45° angle from its forward edge. It then turns, rises suddenly, joins a second object, and both speed away. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., UFOs: A New Look, NICAP, 1969, Appendix D)
January 19 — 9:05 a.m. Tad Jones is driving a truck in Dunbar, West Virginia, when he sees a dull, aluminum sphere about 20–25 feet in diameter hovering about 4 feet above the road some 500 feet ahead of him. It has two antennae protruding from the top and two legs beneath it, with a propellor between them that rotates slowly when hovering (but faster when flying). There is a window at the top and a flange in the middle. When he gets to about 10 feet of it, the object ascends swiftly. (“Major Sighting Wave,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 11 (Jan./Feb. 1967): 4)
January 20 — 6:30 p.m. Three girls (Kimberly Lodge, Ellen Kenney, and Janice Shafer), 16–17 years old, are driving near Methuen, Massachusetts, when they see a string of 9–10 bright red lights on a dark object that is moving over a field. The object hovers and swings around, revealing lights of a different color and configuration. When the girls stop to watch, their car stalls and the radio and lights go off. It has four glowing lights in the shape of a trapezoid,
with red lights on top and white lights forming the base. The lights appear to be reflecting off a metal surface. The object starts moving slowly and then shoots away at high speed. A second car about 3 miles away also sees 7–8 bright lights flying low. (NICAP, “Car Stalls after Girls See UFO over Field”; “Major Sighting Wave,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 11 (Jan./Feb. 1967): 3–4; Raymond Fowler, UFOs: Interplanetary Visitors, Prentice-Hall,
1974, pp. 138–143)
Late January — McDonald is lobbying Frederick Seitz, president of the National Academy of Sciences, with some mild criticisms of the Colorado project and the establishment of a UFO research panel. Seitz is not convinced. (Clark III 698)
January 24 — 5:25 p.m. A 14-year-old boy in Yorba Linda, California, sees an object shaped like a top hat apparently hovering above houses across the street. It seems large and cylindrical, dull metallic, and has four legs. He grabs a camera and snaps a photo of the object, which has started moving away. (Ann Druffel, “The Yorba Linda Photograph,” in Charles Bowen, ed., UFO Encounters, special issue no. 5 of FSR, November 1973, pp. 26–35; UFOEv II 286–287; Patrick Gross, “Yorba Linda, California, January 24, 1967”)
January 25 — Condon gives a talk in Corning, New York, and says: “It is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business. My attitude right now is that there’s nothing to it … but I’m not supposed to reach a conclusion for another year.” Keyhoe is astonished by Condon’s remarks. (“Most UFOs Explainable, Says Scientist,” Elmira (N.Y.) Star-Gazette, January 26, 1967, p. 19; UFOs Yes, 117–119)
January 25 — 6:35 p.m. Betty Andreasson has her first abduction experience in South Ashburnham, Massachusetts. Placed under hypnosis on several occasions in 1977, Andreasson relates that following the appearance of the creatures every member of the family except her enters a state of paralysis “as if time had stopped for them.” A Christian evangelical, Andreasson thinks they must be angels. The culminating event is when Andreasson witnesses a giant phoenix-like bird burn up and reappear from the ashes as a giant worm. Further hypnotic probing brings forth apparent memories of lifelong interactions with extraterrestrials. Raymond E. Fowler’s 1979 book about the case contains the first reference to an implant in abduction literature, a motif that later becomes much more common. (Clark III 114–122; Raymond E. Fowler, The Andreasson Affair, Prentice-Hall, 1979; Raymond E. Fowler, The Andreasson Affair: Phase Two, Prentice-Hall, 1982; Raymond E. Fowler, The Watchers, Bantam, 1990; Raymond E. Fowler, The Watchers II, Wild Flower, 1995; Raymond E. Fowler, The Andreasson Legacy, Marlowe, 1997; Betty Andreasson Luca and Bob Luca, A Lifting of the Veil, The Authors, 2017; Mark Cashman, “Behavioral Classification System for UFO Occupants,” IUR 24, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 19; Marcus Lowth, “The Extraordinary Claims of Betty Andreasson,” UFO Insight, March 24, 2018)
January 26 — 8:30 p.m. The teenage daughter of a lieutenant colonel residing on a US Army base in Heidelberg, Germany, hears a strange pulsating sound. She tells her father, and they look out the window to see a dirigible- shaped object about 50–60 feet long hovering about 150 feet off the ground above a motor vehicle shed. Before long, a crowd of 50–60 people gather around their apartment building to watch the object, which is only 100 feet away. Some observers with binoculars say it is metallic and has lights that alternate in red, blue, and green colors. After about 20 minutes, US Air Force jets approach in response to a call from the base, and the UFO’s lights increase in intensity and it speeds away. (“Around the Globe,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1967, p. 4)
January 28 — 1:45 p.m. Alex Butler, 10, and five young friends are playing on Studham Common as they are making their way to Studham Lower School, Bedfordshire, England. Suddenly a flash of lightning strikes nearby, and Alex sees a little blue man about 3 feet tall with a high bowler hat and beard standing motionless on the opposite bank. It is clothed in a one-piece garment with a broad black belt and black box in front. A dim glow envelops him, giving him a blue color. The other boys see it too. They begin to run toward the creature, but it disappears in a puff of smoke. The little man appears in a different spot, and the boys start running there, but again he disappears. As the vanishing act repeats again, the boys hear a deep-toned sound emanating from two spots nearby. At that point the school bell sounds, and the boys rush off to class. Miss Newcomb, the school headmistress, interviews the boys and collects their written reports in a scrapbook (now lost). (R. H. B. Winder, “The Little Blue Man on Studham Common,” Flying Saucer Review 13, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1967): 3–4; Theo Paijmans, “In Search of the Little Blue Man,” Fortean Times 339 (May 2016): 56–57)
January 30 — 8:04 a.m. Commercial pilot Delton Schwanz is with his wife Della and three children 5 miles southwest of Crosby, North Dakota, when they see a bright-white, sharply outlined, lozenge-shaped object to the west. It momentarily hovers, then moves in level flight to the left, with a smooth climb in the southwest. It drops white “strips” of light that descend vertically and disappears to the south by ascending to about 30°–45° elevation. At around the same time, George Larsen (Larson?) and Larry Pateof (Pace?) are driving by car 20 miles west of Crosby near the intersection of Highways 5 and 85 and see a large white light moving rapidly from west to south dropping something and disappearing suddenly. (Sparks, p. 321; Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 73–74)
January 30 — 6:45 p.m. Reinhardt N. Ausmus and his wife Ruth are driving north on State Highway 99 in Sandusky, Ohio, when they spot a bright light in the sky. Stopping their car, they watch it hover for several minutes before it is suddenly extinguished. (“UFO over NASA Station,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 12 (March/April 1967): 6)
January 31 — Saunders stops in at NICAP in Washington, D.C., to pick up some case material. Keyhoe and Hall show him a clipping about Condon’s statements in Corning, New York. Saunders suggests that Condon is misquoted. But several NICAP members had been in the audience and one has already resigned to protest NICAP’s support of a sham investigation. (Clark III 1194)
February — Although a UFO wave is in progress, practically no one at the Colorado project has the knowledge or resources to perform a serious investigation. Other than Low and the junior staff, nearly everyone lacks basic equipment, questionnaires, cameras, or tape measures. (UFOs Yes, 110)
February — John A. Keel speaks with USAF Col. George P. Freeman, who tells him that “Mysterious men dressed in Air Force uniforms or bearing impressive credentials from government agencies have been silencing UFO witnesses.” The Air Force is unable to find out anything about them because this is a federal offense. (John A. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies, Tor ed., 1991, p. 25; Nick Redfern, “MIB Are Not from the Government,” Mysterious Universe, June 23, 2015)
February — Soviet cosmologist Felix Ziegel writes an article revealing that “UFOs have been seen all over the USSR; the craft of every possible shape, small, large, flattened, spherical. They are able to remain stationary in the atmosphere or shoot along at 100,000 kilometers per hour. They move without producing the slightest sound, by creating around themselves a pneumatic vacuum that protects them from burning up in our stratosphere. Their craft have the mysterious capacity to vanish and reappear at will. Besides, they are able to affect our power resources, putting to a halt our electricity-generating plants, our radio stations, and our engines, without, however, leaving any permanent damage. So refined a technology can only be the fruit of an intelligence that is indeed far superior to ours.” The article is regarded in the West as the first-ever evidence that the Soviets are aware of UFO phenomena too. (CIA translation of Felix Ziegel, “UFOs: What Are They?” Smena, no. 7 (February 1967): 27– 29)
February 1 — In Boulder, Colorado, Saunders confronts Condon, who confirms the Corning quote and wonders why Saunders is making a fuss. After 30 minutes, Saunders persuades him that he is having a negative effect. Finally, Condon writes Keyhoe saying that his words were taken out of context and that he will look at the NICAP case files. (Clark III 1194)
February 2 — 6:30 p.m. Capt. Oswaldo Sanvitti is flying a Faucett Perú DC-4 airliner from Chiclayo to Lima, Peru, when the crew and passengers notice a bright light coming toward them from the west. Sanvitti estimates it is about 9 miles away, but it soon reaches the aircraft and hovers above it. The cabin lights dim, the plane’s compass fluctuates, and the radio gives off static. The UFO speeds away to the east, increasing its luminosity by 50%, but reappears 5 minutes later with another object. Both UFOs trail the aircraft until 5 minutes before it lands at Jorge Chávez International Airport in Callao. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 24–25; Good Above, p. 533; Patrick Gross, “Aircraft Encounters with UFOs”)
February 5 — Evening. A young man in Hilliard, Ohio, hears a strange noise and a barking dog. He looks up and sees an object approaching at a low altitude over a road shoulder. It lands on three legs in a field. The object is egg- shaped and about 75 feet long and 45 feet high. An “elevator-like” shaft opens and beings emerge carrying small, circular balls that they place on the ground around the UFO. The human-like creatures appear to be waiting for something. Then a man approaches from across the field and talks to them, apparently by telepathy. The witness accidentally steps on a twig, and the beings hear it. One runs toward him and catches him by the back of the neck, leaving a burned wound. Another being comes and both drag him toward the object. As they get close, the beings look at each other, seemingly panic-stricken. They drop the witness, collect the balls, and run inside the UFO, which takes off. (“Startling Cases Investigated,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 1 (May/June 1967): 6)
February 6 — The mission of the Space Defense Center’s satellite-tracking radar (useless for UFOs) moves from Ent AFB [now the US Olympic Training Center] in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to “adjacent to the NORAD command center” (air defense UFO trackers) in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. However, they are separated from each other by partitions and use separate computers. (Wikipedia, “Space Defense Center”; Clark III 808)
February 8 — 6:43 p.m. Mary McCarthy and five of her young nieces and nephews see a glowing object as they are eating dinner at their farm 3 miles south of Deep River, Ontario. The television immediately stops working properly. About a quarter of a mile away on a hill is a circular “craft” with a large core of dazzling, pulsating yellow lights in its center. From this core, red lights pulsate outward toward the rim, somewhat like neon lights. They have it in view for 40 minutes. After the object leaves, the TV starts working again. A Canadian Forces
spokesperson says the lights were airplanes shooting flares in the area. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 124–126)
February 9 — Condon recommends NICAP’s UFO Evidence to geophysicist Merle Tuve. (Swords 319)
February 9 — 6:30 p.m. George Kawalski, a section foreman for the Great Northern railroad, sees an object hovering above the depot in Chester, Montana, from his home two blocks away. The object disappears straight up after bathing the depot in light. (“Third Report of UFOs Heard from Chester Area,” Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune, February 11, 1967, p. 5)
February 10 — 3:42 a.m. Erie County Constable Gary Butler is patrolling in the area of NASA’s Plum Brook Station [now the Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility] in Sandusky, Ohio, when he sees a bright, bluish disc moving toward the southwest some 2 miles away. As it was disappearing behind some trees, he tries to radio in a report, but experiences some interference. (“UFO over NASA Station,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 12 (March/April 1967): 6)
February 10 — 5:30 p.m. Two separate groups of four and three people in Woodstock, Connecticut, see a triangular object with a white light at each apex. It is moving with its blunt end forward from northeast to southwest at 1,000 feet altitude. The object is silent when hovering but makes a rumbling or roaring sound when it moves. The family TV set reception is disrupted when it passes by. (Marler 135–136)
February 10 — 7:30 p.m. A couple in Alton, Illinois, sees a round, rotating, 25-foot diameter luminous object that changes color from red to white with occasional flashes of green. The object also has white lights in a triangle on the bottom. It flies, hovers, and passes over the witnesses. While hovering, a humming or droning sound is heard. (St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 11, 1967)
February 13 — 5:58 p.m. Sachio Sakuma is taking photographs of the Moon with a Petri V6 camera in Tokyo, Japan. On developing one image, he finds a luminous, oval-shaped object with a slight trail a short distance above the lunar crescent. (“Report from Japan,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1967, p. 1)
February 13 — 10:00 p.m. Mrs. James Thompson is driving through Bigfork, Montana, with her two children when her pickup’s engine fails and the lights go out. Getting out, she sees overhead an intense greenish-blue light. She feels heat coming from the object. It changes direction abruptly, veering to the right as it changes to reddish-orange. As it moves away, the truck starts up on its own. (Brad Steiger and Joan Whritenour, New UFO Breakthrough, Universal, 1968, p. 40)
February 14 — 7:00 a.m. A farmer in Miller County, Missouri, notices that his cows are all staring in one direction. He goes to investigate and sees a landed object about 360 feet away. He sees several entities moving around it, so he picks up some stones and approaches it. From about 30 feet away, the object looks like a hovering parachute or a grayish-green shell. The creatures, apparently wearing overalls, scurry behind the craft and go inside. The farmer throws one stone, but it stops in midair about 15 feet away and drops to the ground. He throws the other stone to try to strike the top of the object, but it bounces off something. When he gets to 15 feet away, he walks into an invisible wall and can’t see the object at all. (CUFOS case file)
February 15 — Night. A Guatemalan Aviateca airliner piloted by Col. Alfredo Castaneda and Col. Carlos Samyoa encounters an object like a flying top as they are flying over Mexico at 10,000 feet. They put the aircraft into a sharp turn in order to avoid a collision, just before the object zooms out of sight. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 25)
February 16 — 11:43 p.m. S/Sgt Max Recod and his wife are driving along Route 66 south of Kingman, Arizona, when they see a formation of four lights, three red and one green, approaching their car at low altitude. The lights are attached to an object that emits a light beam from its bottom center that moves around and illuminates the desert. The lights disappear, but a few minutes later the UFO reappears from behind a hill a mile away, followed by two white lights flying in step formation, one of which lands or nearly lands. The remaining light merges with the large object. (“Sighting Evidence Grows,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 3 (Nov./Dec. 1967): 3)
February 17 or 18 — Around 10:00 p.m. Contactee Stella V. Lansing takes motion picture footage on a borrowed Keystone 8mm Capri camera of some yellow-orange lights on Ware Road near the junctions of Old Warren Road and Flynt Street in Palmer, Massachusetts. Suddenly a white light shoots upward in a zigzag motion and she is able to film some of its maneuvers. Subsequent frames seem to show low-contrast images of four human-like beings apparently conversing. Lansing is later studied by New Jersey psychiatrist Berthold E. Schwarz, who finds her repeat UFO sightings, further UFO films, and photographs showing superimposed clock-like patterns a subject of some interest. (Story, pp. 202–204; Berthold Eric Schwarz, “Stella Lansing’s UFO Motion Pictures,” Flying Saucer Review 18, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1972): 3–12, 20; Berthold Eric Schwarz, “Stella Lansing’s Movies: Four Entities and a Possible UFO,” in Charles Bowen, ed., UFO Encounters, special issue no. 5 of FSR, November 1973, pp. 3–9; Berthold Eric Schwarz, “Stella Lansing’s Clocklike UFO Patterns,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 4 (January 1975): 3–9; Berthold Eric Schwarz, “Stella Lansing’s Clocklike UFO Patterns—Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 5 (March 1975): 20–27; Berthold Eric Schwarz, “Stella Lansing’s Clocklike
UFO Patterns—Part 3,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 6 (April 1975): 18–22; Berthold Eric Schwarz, “Stella Lansing’s Clocklike UFO Patterns—Part 4,” Flying Saucer Review 21, no. 1 (June 1975): 14–17; Berthold Eric Schwarz, “UFO Contactee Stella Lansing: Possible Medical Implications of Her Motion Picture Experiments,” Journal of the American Society of Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine 23, no. 2 (1976): 60–68)
February 20 — Condon, Saunders, Low, William Price of AFRSTA(?), and Thomas Ratchford, USAF senior scientist, visit the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center in Fort Belvoir, Fairfax County, Virginia, to meet with its founder Arthur C. Lundahl and acquaint themselves with the CIA’s analysis capabilities. NPIC personnel will be available to perform work of a “photogrammatic nature, such as attempting to measure objects imaged on photographs,” but it will be strictly technical and no written comments or documentation is to be made public.
After lunch, the group meets in the Pentagon with Brig. Gen. Edward B. Giller, director of the AF Special Weapons Center at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico. (Wikipedia, “Arthur C. Lundahl”; ClearIntent, pp. 141–142)
February 21 — 8:30 p.m. Sherry Kohler is driving east on Western Avenue in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, when she sees a greenish spherical object with a wispy white trail flying at airplane speed on her right side for about 10 seconds. A second witness, Richard R. Dern Sr., sees a similar object about 10 minutes later. (Center for UFO Studies, [case documents])
February 22 — 6:30 a.m. As Mrs. James A. Clevenger stands by her kitchen sink in Milton, Indiana, her collie dog jumps against the window and races around, barking and jumping. She notices an oval object with a row of bright lights. She lets the frightened dog inside and it promptly hides. She goes out to the end of her front walk and sees the UFO moving slowly at 100–200 feet altitude, following the course of a creek. She runs inside and calls her neighbor Mrs. Judd Alford, who can see a ring of white lights at 200 feet. Her fox terrier runs inside at full speed and hides under a chair. The object disappears behind trees a few minutes later. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, p. 34)
February 23 — Lt. Col. Robert Hippler says that Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown has established the policy that all USAF information on UFOs classified up to and including Secret is to be provided to the University of Colorado project. (NICAP, “Declassification of UFO Reports”)
February 24 — Paul Santorinis, civil engineer of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, gives a lecture to the Greek Astronautical Society, stating that a “world blanket of secrecy” surrounds UFO reports and describes his experience with ghost rockets over Greece in 1946. (Good Above, p. 23; Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, p. 117)
February 24 — A well-known engineer in Osorno, Chile, sees a disc-shaped object land near him. Seconds after touching down, a strange being, about 4.5 feet tall and wearing a transparent outfit, emerges. It has a white face and hands, a pronounced jawbone, and no neck. When it sees the man looking, it gets back into the object and takes off. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 59)
February 25 — 7:50 p.m. Two teenage boys in Fargo, North Dakota, see a round or disc-shaped brightly illuminated object only a few feet in diameter. It moves higher, accelerates, and flies away to the northeast. (Fargo (N.Dak.) Forum, February 25, 1967; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, p. 56; Center for UFO Studies, [Hynek correspondence], pp. 27–29)
Early March — Low writes a position paper that expects the Colorado project will fail to support the ETH. Before sharing his paper with project members, he shares his views in talks with the Rand Corporation, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Boeing. Despite his attempts to “build the record,” the project’s failure to move quickly has forced it to prepare a proposal to extend its contract. (UFOs Yes, 130–133)
March — Low calls Keyhoe and reveals that none of the Blue Book cases have been spot-checked for inaccuracies because “Condon hasn’t found any AF explanations he considers untrue.” Low later visits NICAP in Washington and Keyhoe asks him how many NICAP cases he has examined. Low says, “Probably four or five.” Low says he ultimately hopes to review 85–90 cases. (Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, p. 120)
March — Members of the Colorado project visit APRO headquarters; the Lorenzens give them some case leads that are never followed up because they are old. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 196)
March — Michel M. Jaffe, a ham radio operator in Mountain View, California, begins publishing Data-Net Report, a UFO newsletter for radio enthusiasts that continues to 1973. (Data-Net Report, no. 1 (March 1967))
March — Day. Augusto Arranda is taking photographs of the scenery in the Huascarán mountains near Yungay, Peru. He takes three photos of a disc-shaped object and one photo showing two objects. A Kodak employee sends one to ufologist Richard Greenwell, and APRO obtains the other three in 1969 from Eastman Kodak’s International Division. The circumstances of the sighting remain unknown. (Patrick Gross, “The Yungay Photographs, Peru, 1967”)
March — Cuban air defense radar controllers report a UFO approaching Cuba from the northwest, moving at 660 mph at an altitude of 33,000 feet. Two MiG-21s are scrambled and are guided to within 3 miles of the object. The flight leader radios in that the UFO is a bright metallic sphere with no visible markings. He is unable to establish radio contact with it and Cuban air defense orders him to shoot it down. The flight leader reports that his radar is locked and missiles ready. Seconds later, a wingman screams into the radio that the flight leader’s MiG has disintegrated. The UFO then accelerates and climbs above 90,000 feet, heading towards South America. The US 6947th Security Squadron headquartered at Homestead AFB [now Homestead Air Reserve Base] in Miami–Dade County, Florida, is monitoring the incident and sends a report to the NSA at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. NSA orders the squadron to ship all tapes and data to them and list the airplane loss as “equipment malfunction.” The details sound like it might be the CIA’s Oxcart A-12, the Air Force version of which is the SR-71, which are known to overfly Cuba. (NICAP, “The 1967 Cuban Jet Incident”; ClearIntent, pp. 195–201; “1967: Two Cuban Jets Pursue a UFO, the UFO Destroys One Jet,” IUR 3, no. 9 (September 1978): 11–13; Good Above, pp. 421– 422)
March — 11:00 a.m. A group of students at the Ramón Martín Middle School in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, watch a triangle-shaped object above a nearby mountain. It has a cupola on top and flies around silently before vanishing. (Jorge Martín, “Triangular UFOs over Puerto Rico,” Flying Saucer Review 44, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 22)
March — 11:00 p.m. A luminous hemispherical object is seen over Dry Creek Basin, San Miguel County, Colorado, moving slowly, then accelerating. The witness’s car engine, radio, and lights experience interference. (Condon, pp. 295–297)
March 1 — Lt. Gen. Hewitt T. Wheless, USAF assistant vice chief of staff, circulates a memo on “Impersonations of Air Force Officers,” which outlines Rex Heflin’s accounts of the NORAD impostor and another case in which it reports that “a person in an Air Force uniform approached local police and other citizens who had sighted a UFO, assembled them in a school room and told them that they did not see what they thought they saw and that they should not talk to anyone about the sighting.” All USAF personnel hearing about such incidents should report them to AFOSI. (ClearIntent, p. 237)
March 1 — Many residents of Valparaiso, Chile, watch four bright domed objects, flashing blue and red lights, move south to north above the city. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 59)
March 2 — 10:25 a.m.–1:30 p.m. Two radars at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, plot 20 silver objects, radar blips at an altitude of 7 miles. A news blackout is invoked by the military. Twenty-nine people report seeing one or more objects in groups, ranging in appearance from silvery objects flying overhead to a saucer-shaped object. Intermittent unexplained radar targets are seen during this time. (NICAP, “Two Radars Plot 20 Objects”; Condon, pp. 150–151, 291–295; Sparks, p. 322)
March 5 — 1:25 a.m. Lenny and Tommy Söderström are returning home to their farm in Lövåsen, Vilhelmina, Sweden, when they notice a “spaceship” behind a barn. They rush inside and wake their parents and a sibling. Looking through the kitchen window, they see a dark, cigar-shaped object, 82–130 feet wide, silhouetted against the sky. Wobbling slightly on its axis, it hovers 24 feet in the air. After someone turns on the kitchen light, the UFO shoots off toward the north, emitting a whistling sound, as a smaller object appears from behind it. This UFO is a silvery globe about 20–40 feet in diameter; it turns and approaches the farmhouse. When it passes above a power line, it stops and hovers for 4 minutes. It takes off toward the northeast. (“Two from Sweden,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1967, p. 9; Clas Svahn, “Skräcknatten i Vilhelmina,” Riksorganisationen UFO-Sverige; Clark III 246–247)
March 5 — 5:30 p.m. John and Miriam Coyle take a series of six photos of a silvery UFO at Hallam, Victoria, Australia.
The object circles them slowly. (“U.F.O. Photographed over Hallam,” Australian Flying Saucer Review, no. 7 (September 1967): 15; Keith Basterfield, Vladimir Godic, and Pony Godic, “Australian Ufology: A Review,” JUFOS 2 (1990): 25–26)
March 5 — ADC radar at Minot AFB, North Dakota, tracks an unidentified target descending over the Minuteman ICBM missile silos of the 91st Strategic Missile Wing. Base security teams see a metallic, disc-shaped object ringed with bright flashing lights moving slowly, maneuvering, then stopping and hovering about 500 feet above the ground. The object circles directly over the launch control facility. F-106 fighters are scrambled, but at that moment the object climbs straight up and disappears at high speed. (NICAP, “Disc Hovers 500ʹ over Missile Silos / ADC Radar Confirms”; Sparks, p. 322; Donald E. Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet, 1974, pp. 8–9)
March 5 — Night. The Russell Carter Jr. family is traveling about 10 miles east of Hayes, South Dakota, on US Highway 14 when a bright light follows their car. The V-shaped object approaches from far away and is lower than the telephone wires, bathing the road and an area around the car in a brilliant light. They hear a humming sound and experience a feeling of numbness at its closest approach. (“Pierre Family Sees UFO in Hayes Area,” Rapid City (S.Dak.) Journal, March 7, 1967, p. 1; “Car Followed by Flying Object,” APRG Reporter, no. 56 (May 1967): 5)
March 7 — 12:30 a.m. Lucille Drzonek and her daughters, ages 24 and 17, are driving northwest on US Highway 20 just past Keeneyville, Illinois. Their beagle is with them. They see a solid object, estimated at 15 feet in diameter, outlined in bright white lights and with two big beams in front. As it nears the ground it takes on a disc shape and begins flashing red and green lights. The beagle is so frightened that its hair stands up straight on its back. As they turn off the highway toward Bartlett, Illinois, the object descends into a woods, lighting the trees with a red glare. It projects two white light beams into the rear window of their car. As they pull into their home, the UFO is hovering about 10 feet above a tree in their yard. A strange, localized gray mist appears and when it dissipates the UFO is gone. The beagle is visibly upset for the next two days. A veterinarian suggests he might have heard a noise inaudible to humans. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 34–35)
March 8 — 1:05 a.m. Mr. and Mrs. William L. Wallace are returning home to Leominster, Massachusetts, when they pass through a dense fog near St. Leo’s Cemetery and notice a bright light on the left. Wallace turns the car around and heads back for a closer look. The glow is from a light that is hovering 400–500 feet above the cemetery. Intrigued, Wallace places the car in neutral, pulls the emergency brake, and steps outside. As he points toward the light, something pulls his arm back and drops it on the roof of the car, which then stalls and the electrical system goes out. He remains immobile for more than 30 seconds even as his wife is trying to pull him back. As the lights and radio come back on, the UFO rocks back and forth, rises with a humming sound, and disappears. Wallace goes back into the car, which now starts normally. Wallace still feels “slow and sluggish” on the drive back, and he collides with the garage door as he pulls into his driveway. They return to the cemetery 10 minutes later, but the fog is gone. (“Driver Shocked, Paralyzed,” UFO Investigator 3, no. 12 (March/April 1967): 7; Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 7–8; Michael D. Swords, “Can UFOs Cause Physiological Effects? Part 1,” IUR 33, no. 4 (May 2011): 10; Clark III 251; Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp.
139–142)
March 8 — Many people in Comas, Peru, watch 15 discs circle noiselessly low above town for 15 minutes. (Lorenzen,
UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 59)
March 9 — 9:05 p.m. Jack Lindley sees a bright white saucer-shaped light, as big as an airliner, fly straight and fast to the east over Onawa, Iowa. (Sparks, p. 323)
March 11–13 — Night. Red, green, and white lights are observed in the air by several witnesses at Tillamook, Oregon, including police and sheriff’s deputies. Radar contact is made in the same area as the visual sightings by the radar station at Mount Hebo Air Force Station [now closed]. On March 11, objects are observed for one hour. On March 12, they are again observed for one hour. On March 13, the objects are seen for four hours and 35 minutes. The radar returns show hovering and rapid movement of the targets. The visual sightings also show rapid movement of the objects at times. One radar sighting shows a rapid distance change from 39–48 miles within one minute. (NICAP, “Colored Lights and Radar Returns”; Condon, pp. 122–123)
March 12 — 7:15 p.m. Larry Burke sees an object with red, green, and white flashing lights southwest of McIntosh, South Dakota. He picks up three friends—Dick Makens, Junior Edinger, and Charles Warren—to go investigate. On a country road one mile west of town they see four blinding, fluorescent-green lights low above the road ahead. As they are driving up a hill, the car engine stops. Frightened, they let the car coast back down the hill, and the engine starts again. The witnesses disagree on the size, shape, and altitude of the lights. (“Car Buzzing Incidents on Increase,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1967, p. 5)
Mid-March — Night. Future UFO researcher Robert Hastings has a part-time job as a janitor in Malmstrom AFB near Great Falls, Montana. One night as he is cleaning out the Radar Approach Control center, one of the FAA controllers calls him over to look at 5 unidentified targets that two jet fighters have gone up to intercept. Soon he is asked to leave and clean the room later. Later on, he hears that the targets ascended vertically, leaving the jets far behind, and that the incident takes place in the Judith Basin area many miles to the south. (Nukes 6–7, 279, 282–286)
March 16 — 8:30 a.m. At the Malmstrom AFB Echo-Flight missile launch facility between Winfred and Hilger, Montana, 1Lt Walter Figel, deputy crew commander of the Missile Combat Crew, sees one of his Minuteman missiles go into “no-go” status. He calls the missile site to see if there is scheduled maintenance and is told no. The guard tells him of a large, round object over the site. Within seconds, the nine other missiles shut down. Strike teams are dispatched to the two Launch Control Centers, where maintenance and security personnel tell them about the UFOs. The missiles are offline for the greater part of the day. (Robert Salas and James Klotz, Faded Giant, BookSurge, 2005; Robert L. Hastings, “The Echo and Oscar Flight Incidents,” UFOs & Nukes, November 12, 2012; Nukes 254–258, 265–268)
March 16 — 7:00 p.m. Beryl Dux sees two white cloud-like objects over Belvedere, New Jersey. She calls her sister Olive to watch, and suddenly a dull orange object comes out of the cloud on the right. It is spinning rapidly and
descending quickly, but it goes into the white cloud on the right. The two clouds merge and vanish gradually. (Herbert S. Taylor, “Mystery Clouds and the UFO Connection,” IUR 29, no. 4 (July 2005): 19)
March 20 — 11:00 p.m. A man and his daughter living in Butler, Pennsylvania, take the car out to go looking for lights his wife had seen in the sky earlier. After stopping with the car lights off for a while, he sees two yellowish-white globes of light at 200 feet altitude, which start moving toward the car in a parallel course. The objects descend a quarter mile away, then shoot toward the witnesses at 70–80 mph. The daughter hears a “chorus of voices” in her head saying “don’t move” repeatedly. The man switches on the headlights, the lights disappear, and the voices stop. Moments later, 10 feet from the car, they see five figures standing in an irregular semicircle. The man gets into the car but the daughter continues staring at the figures, which have slits for eyes and mouths. All have long blond hair and are wearing something like baseball caps. They wear loose-fitting clothing. The witnesses drive away quickly and go to their minister’s home. (Robert A. Schmidt, “Humanoids Seen at Butler,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1968): 5–6; Clark III 277–278)
March 21 — A Brazilian military aircraft with 14 passengers encounters a glowing-red, oblong object over the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, while on its way to Salgado Filho Airport near Gravataí. The control tower operator there alerts pilots of a Cruzeiro do Sul aircraft coming in from the southwest. Minutes later these pilots see apparently the same object, which follows them for 25 minutes before zipping up into the sky. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 58–59)
March 21 — Night. Mary Beth Neufeld and three other teenagers are driving on US Highway 56 one mile west of Hillsboro, Kansas, when they see a bright object “like an upside-down cup on a saucer.” They start driving toward it, but it approaches them and hovers above the car for a few seconds. The car starts rocking and the engine quits. When the UFO leaves, they are able to start it up again. (“Car Buzzing Incidents on Increase,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1967, p. 5)
March 22 — 11:00 p.m. Ann-Lis Danielsson is driving home to Tjuvkil, Västra Götaland, Sweden, when she notices a greenish illumination outside her car. Slowing down, she sees a disc about 15 feet in diameter hovering 500 feet away at an altitude of 1,500 feet. It begins to circle the area slowly, rising and sinking and giving off a whining noise. After pacing her for 15 minutes, it climbs vertically with an oscillating motion. (“Girl Reconnoitred by Disc,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1967, p. 9)
March 24 — 5:30 a.m. USAF S/Sgt Johnny Ferguson is traveling with his wife and three children near Loco, Texas, where they are terrified by a mysterious bright blue-neon light that chases them at high speed along the road. It finally splits into two, changes to a reddish color, and disappears behind a hill. Ferguson reports the incident to Deputy Sheriff George Hooten, then drives into nearby Wellington. (Curt Collins, “Contact in Texas: The Lost UFO Photos,” Blue Blurry Lines, November 18, 2021)
March 24 — 8:45 a.m. An airline pilot watches a small silvery-white disc hovering for 10 minutes above Los Alamos, New Mexico. Then it moves across the sky and disappears into clouds. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, p. 64)
March 24 — 10:45 a.m. An astronomer at the Catalina Station observatory on Mount Bigelow 18 miles northeast of Tucson, Arizona, sees a white oval disc the apparent size of the moon moving silently in a straight line from northwest to northeast. It slowly changes from an elongated shape to a more circular one. He estimates its speed as 600 mph, size as 230 feet, and distance as 6–12 miles. It disappears after 50 seconds. (“Astronomers and UFO’s: A Survey, Part 2, Sightings,” IUR 2, no. 4 (April 1977): 4)
March 24 — Late evening. An airman with the Malmstrom AFB Oscar-Flight Launch Control Center for the SAC USAF 341st Strategic Missile Wing south of Roy, Montana, sees a star-like object zigzagging high above him. Soon, a larger and closer light appears and behaves similarly. He calls his NCO and the two men watch as the lights streak through the sky, maneuvering in impossible ways. The NCO phones his commander, 1Lt. Robert Salas, who is below ground in the LCC. Salas is dubious and tells them to let him know if they get any closer. A few minutes later the NCO calls him again and shouts that a red, glowing UFO is hovering outside the front gate. Salas tells him to make sure the site is secure while he phones the command post. Meanwhile, one of the guards is injured when he approaches the UFO and has to be evacuated by helicopter. As Salas briefs Lt. Fred Meiwald, an alarm rings through the small LCC and both men see a “no-go” light turn on for one of the missiles. Within seconds, 4– 7 more Minutemen nuclear ICBMs go offline in succession. The USAF investigation includes full-scale tests on- site, as well as lab tests at Boeing’s Seattle plant. No cause for the shutdown can be found. (“‘Echo Flight’ Missile Incident”; Sparks, pp. 4, 323; Jim Klotz and Robert Salas, “The Malmstrom AFB UFO/Missile Incident,” November 27, 1996; Robert L. Hastings, “Remarkable Reports from the Missile Field,” IUR 32, no. 1 (August 2008): 9–10; Robert Salas and James Klotz, Faded Giant, BookSurge, 2005; Nukes 259–263, 268–277; Kevin D. Randle, “Robert Salas and Me,” A Different Perspective, May 19, 2013)
March 24 — 9:00 p.m. Truck driver Ken Williams driving northwest on US Highway 87/89 sees a dome-shaped object emitting a bright light land in a ravine near Belt, Montana. As he approaches, it takes off and settles back, hidden from the highway. Numerous other reports come in from this area. At dawn, police and a helicopter from Malmstrom AFB conduct a search without success. (NICAP, “Dome-Shaped Object Lands in Ravine”; Sparks, p. 323; Robert L. Hastings, “Remarkable Reports from the Missile Field,” IUR 32, no. 1 (August 2008): 9–10)
March 26 — 4:00 p.m. Five witnesses in New Winchester, Ohio, see an oval object, like copper or brass with the sun shining on it, fly from southeast to northwest with a tumbling motion. (Sparks, p. 323; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, p. 74)
March 27 — Day. The crew of a Brazilian Air Force C-47 and the crew of a Serviços Aéreos Cruzeiro do Sul photo- mapping aircraft see a UFO in the vicinity of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The BAF crew describes it as a “reddish-colored full moon” that is flying in circles. They report the sighting to the tower at Salgado Filho International Airport, which asks the mapping aircraft to identify the object. The Cruzeiro plane follows the UFO for 15 minutes before it disappears. (Good Above, p. 311)
March 28 — 2:25 a.m. Electrical worker David Morris, 20, is driving home to Munroe Falls, Ohio, from nearby Kent when he sees a glowing red-orange object shaped like an inverted cone hovering just above the ground. The object is about 12 feet wide at the base and 25 feet high, with a ball-shaped object at its top. Looking at the road ahead, Morris sees four or five large-headed humanoids moving rapidly back and forth about 50 feet ahead. He slams on his brakes, but it is too late. He feels a thump against the right front corner of his car and sees an arm with a thumbless mitten fly up, then down. The car stops 10 feet later; Morris thinks about providing assistance, but the otherworldliness of the situation causes him to get away quickly. In his rearview mirror he sees a group of the entities position themselves around something lying on the ground. In the morning, Morris finds three dents in the front bumper and right headlight ring of his car. (“Youth’s Car Strikes UAO Occupant,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1967, pp. 1–4; Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 28–29; Clark III 782–783)
March 28 — A second briefing for Robert Low by NORAD analysts effectively diverts researcher attention away from NORAD’s 500 defense radars and onto its useless handful of space defense satellite-tracking radars and cameras (referred to as “spacetrack” and are the least likely to detect UFOs). Low tries to find out if NORAD can help with identifying satellites that might be misreported as UFOs and whether NORAD can’t track a UFO entering the atmosphere from outer space (or just aren’t), but the analysts are evasive. NORAD says its satellite-tracking radars (with non-ballistic maneuvering and erratic flight paths) actually can “see” UFOs, but no one will ever know because the data that does not fit satellite or ballistic trajectories are thrown out automatically by system computers. No mention is made of NORAD’s high priority for not ignoring unpredictable, UFO-like maneuverable cruise missiles or hypersonic space planes. This discussion is distributed as a briefing paper to all Colorado project members on June 6, including Condon. (Clark III 804–810)
March 31 — 10:30 p.m. Farmer Carroll Wayne Watts reportedly sees a cylindrical object about 100 feet long that is hovering just off the ground near Loco, Texas, and emitting a motor-like sound. A voice addresses him from within the object requesting that he undergo a physical examination so that he can go on a flight. When Watts refuses to do so, the craft takes off. Watts has another encounter, an apparent abduction, on April 11. In a series of other experiences and sightings, on June 7, 11, and 13, he manages to take Polaroid photographs. In all, he haw 10 photographs of the cylindrical UFO in flight, and another shot of a little man from the ship. Most of Watts’s pictures are black and white, but at least three of them are shot in color. He later admits the observation is a hoax. (“Another UFO Visit Reported from Loco,” Wellington (Tex.) Leader, April 6, 1967, p. 1; Curt Collins, “UFO Contact: April 1, 1967, from Loco, TX,” Blue Blurry Lines, March 31, 2017; Kevin D. Randle, “Carroll Wayne Watts Contact/Abduction,” A Different Perspective, April 25, 2020; Curt Collins, “Contact in Texas: The Lost UFO Photos,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, November 18, 2021)
Spring — Psychologist David R. Saunders, a principal investigator for the Colorado project, launches UFOCAT, a computerized database of UFO cases, after researcher Jacques Vallée gives the project 3,000 cases from his own collection. Saunders codes the cases with such parameters as source, date, time, location, state and county, country, witness names, age, gender, special features, duration, and other elements. (Center for UFO Studies, “UFOCAT-2009”)
Spring — The United Aerial Phenomena Agency begins publishing Flying Saucer Digest, edited by Allan J. Manak in Cleveland, Ohio. Rick Hilberg takes over as chief editor in 2003. It continues until at least fall 2017. (Flying Saucer Digest 1, no. 1 (Spring 1967))
Spring — Night. Centenary College Instructor John O. Williams has taken his astronomy class to an open field on the Shreveport, Louisiana, campus to observe the sky. The see a bright orange light precisely due west of them at an
elevation of about 30° approaching at a modest angular rate of 1° per second. It remains silent even as it passes above them. A second light, much fainter and blue in color, is following it. The second light turns away and moves south into the distance. The orange light continues eastward, then performs a tight 180° turn and returns to their zenith. It accelerates west and disappears from view. After about 20 minutes it disappears, followed by a thread of rippling blue light. The thread breaks into 7–8 individual blue lights, which exit in several directions. (John O. Williams, “Louisiana Lights in 1967,” IUR 22, no. 4 (Winter 1997–1998): 10–11)
April — Brinsley Le Poer Trench founds Contact (UK) in London, England, to promote contact between ufologists internationally. It launches a newsletter first called International Sky Scouts Newsletter, then retitled Awareness, which continues through 2012. (International Sky Scouts Newsletter, no. 1 (April 1967); Story, p. 89)
April 4 — The Federal Aviation Agency issues N 7230.29, requiring air traffic controllers to forward UFO reports to the Colorado project. (US Federal Aviation Agency, “Reporting of Unidentified Flying Objects,” FAA Notice N 7230.29, April 4, 1967)
April 4 — Carlo Cammarata watches a metallic object about 100 feet in diameter hovering some 20 feet above the terrace of his house in San Cataldo, Caltanissetta, Sicily, Italy. He also sees three humanoids wearing silvery suits and green belts with lights on them. They seem interested in the birds Cammarata is keeping caged on the terrace, touching them occasionally. They ascend into the object on a luminous beam and speed away. (1Pinotti 157)
April 5 — 7:45 p.m. Justice of the Peace John H. Demler is driving north on State Highway 72 just south of Lickdale, Pennsylvania, when his car’s engine sputters and stops and the lights go out. He sees an object approaching about 20 feet above the road. It is about 30 feet across and looks like “it had lights in back of a painted black glass.” It flies over the car as Demler lowers his window and he notices a smell of sulfur and oil. It emit a sound like an electric motor, which grows louder as it leaves the area. The UFO shoots off sparks similar to that of “grinding on an emory wheel.” The UFO comes to a stop alongside the car, tilts, starts off slowly, then puts on such a terrific burst of speed that Demler and his automobile seem to be pulled to it. The car settles down so fast that he is moved all the way across the front seat. When he looks up again, the object has “turned to a bluish tinge” and is far in the distance. The next day, the skin on his hands and feet begin to peel and Demler is a nervous wreck. His coworkers confirm he is in a state of physical or psychological shock for many hours. (“Startling Cases Investigated,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 1 (May/June 1967): 6)
April 6 — The Arizona Daily Wildcat publishes an interview with James E. McDonald, who says he has found “almost no correlation between so-called ‘evaluations or explanations’ that are made by Blue Book and the facts of the case.” He adds that the good cases have been “swept under the rug in a most disturbing way by Project Blue Book investigators and their consultants” and that “nobody there with any strong scientific competence is looking into the problem.” (“The UFO Phenomenon: A New Frontier Awaiting Serious Scientific Exploration,” Arizona Daily Wildcat 58, no. 110 (April 6, 1967): 4–8)
April 6 — 12:45 p.m. Robert Apfal, a teacher at Crestview Elementary School in Opa-locka, Florida, is in the schoolyard with six students, facing northeast. They spot a metallic, slightly reflective, disc-shaped object hovering about 60 feet above the ground over a telephone pole about one mile away. The object disappears as they watch. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 112)
April 6 — 9:45 p.m. A Pacific Western Airlines pilot and crew see a dull orange-red object that flies erratically as it paces the aircraft, then speeds away. Confirmed by radar at Edmonton, Alberta, International Airport. (Condon, pp.
April 7 — 10:00 a.m. Some 200 children at morning recess at Crestview Elementary School in Opa-locka, Florida, see an oval-shaped object hovering above some trees to the north of the school. It seems to move toward the school and then drop below a pine tree. Some of the kids notice an antenna-like structure, while others think there are two objects. The UFO is also seen by teachers Virginia Martin, Marian Waters, and Robert Apfal, who has his students sketch what they had seen. The drawings depict a turreted structure in the treetops. The Air Force claims a helicopter is in the area practicing takeoffs and landings. (“10 Chaotic Minutes, and the Kids Screamed,” Miami Herald, April 8, 1967, p. 1-B; “AF Says ‘It’ Was Copter; People Who Saw It Say No,” Miami Herald, April 11, 1967, p. 1-B; NICAP, “Teachers, 200 Children See UFO in Broad Daylight”; “The North Dade Affair,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1967, p. 10; Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 112)
April 8 — Four college students on a double date in Banner Elk, North Carolina, notice a greenish fluorescent glow on the ground 180 feet away. Their car engine fails and the radio is flooded with static. An object passes near the car and disappears into the distance. The witnesses panic then push the car to a main road where they are able to restart it. They find three round imprints, about 6 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep, in the shape of an equilateral triangle. (Fred Merritt, “A Preliminary Classification of Some Reports of UFOs,” IUR 28, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 10)
April 10–11 — A bright white object circles one Minuteman launch site near Malmstrom AFB, Great Falls, Montana, for prolonged periods. It eventually ascends to an altitude higher than the capabilities of Air Force interceptors. The
local radio station is told to keep quiet about it. (Raymond Fowler, Casebook of a UFO Investigator, Prentice- Hall, 1981, p. 187)
April 12 — 8:59 p.m. In Phoenix, Arizona, a bell-shaped object approaches a car from the left side, glowing red-orange with yellow-orange pulsations. It hovers over a streetlight, then makes a pass at the car. At that point, the car engine stops. The UFO banks eastward, then westward, and flies away. The three witnesses continue their trip and see the same object eight more times, plus another whitish object. The car engine continues to operate normally throughout the remaining sightings. (Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 34; Randle, Levelland, 2021, p. 142)
Mid-April — Dusk. Gary Statenberg is working with a tractor on Jamie Ediger’s farm in Dayton, Oregon, when he sees an object moving toward him down the river basin at about 500 feet altitude. It stops, descends to 100 feet, and hovers about 600–700 feet away. He shuts off the tractor but can hear no sound coming from the object, which has red flashing lights around its base. There is a small dome with portholes on the top. Suddenly it takes off to the north, the lights changing to green as it does so. Statenberg returns home badly shaken. (Robert Low papers, American Philosophical Society, June 14, 1967)
April 16 — Businessman Guillermo Roldan and his daughter Chichita see a glowing, egg-shaped object fly across the sky above Boraure, Venezuela, at great speed. It stops abruptly then descends and lands. Roldan rushes toward the spot, but the object takes off at high speed. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 60)
April 17 — 2:20 a.m. SP4 Robert M. Harkinson of the US Army’s 524th Military Intelligence Detachment is stationed in Saigon [now Ho Chi Minh City], Vietnam, when he sees five bright-white, oval-shaped objects traveling in close formation at high speed across the sky. They flash by in about 5 seconds and disappear behind a cloud. He estimates their speed to be about five times that of any jet aircraft. About 5 minutes later, he sees several jets flying on the same course as the objects. (John J. Stahl Jr., “Unidentified Flying Objects,” case report, April 17, 1967)
April 17 — 9:00 p.m. School principal John L. Metz and three teachers in separate cars are driving home in Jefferson City, Missouri, and see a 350–400 foot, bluish-white, WWI-helmet–shaped object come over the Missouri River bluff and move directly above their cars, bathing them in intense light. Metz observes it through 8x binoculars. The object hovers above power lines for about 10 minutes then heads toward the airport. Two smaller objects emerge from its base; they are disc- or helmet-shaped and the size of a DC-3. Metz drives to the airport on Highway 94 and finds two more witnesses. Jefferson City Memorial Airport employees watch a flat, circular, star- like orange light flashing an intermittent red-blue through a 30x 40mm telescope around 9:40–10:08 p.m. The Ozark Airliner Flight 319 crew sees two large round objects moving in various directions below their airplane during its final landing approach. (Sparks, p. 324; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 110–111)
April 21 — 1:30 a.m. Two couples see an unexplained light near Ephrata, Washington, and chase it in their car. They came upon a UFO sitting on the road and have to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting it. The object takes off, moves behind the car, and follows it for 5 minutes, then disappears as traffic became heavier. The witnesses are badly shaken by the experience. (NICAP, “The 1967 UFO Chronology”)
April 21 — Robert J. Low issues a position paper that outlines, after months of discussions and briefings, a framework for the Colorado project’s goals and procedures. It includes acquiring data on new cases, contracted reviews on such special topics as radar and mirages, a special section on photo cases, and a statistical treatment of bulk data. He divides the research question into three tiers: “Are there really sightings that are unexplained?” “Are any of these external stimuli solid objects?” and “Are any of these objects extraterrestrial spaceships?” He asks the group to discuss criteria for answering those questions. (Swords 317–318)
April 21 — Coup d’état in Greece. Although there are persistent rumors about an active support of the coup by the US government, there is no evidence to support such claims. The timing of the coup apparently catches the CIA by surprise. (Wikipedia, “Greek military junta of 1967”)
April 21 — 8:55 p.m. Clifton N. Crowder, manager of the Mobil Chemical Company warehouse in South Hill, Virginia, leaves the warehouse and starts home. About 50–75 yards down a narrow asphalt highway his headlights fall on an object 400 feet away on the road ahead. It is pewter-colored, shaped like a storage tank, about 12 feet in diameter, and 15–16 feet high. It is standing on legs about 3–3.5 feet long. He switches to his bright lights and the object belches a white burst of flame from the bottom and ascends rapidly. Meanwhile, the road is on fire. After it dies out, Crowder drives to South Hill and contacts police. They return and find a kidney-shaped black spot on the road, about 3 feet wide at the widest point. William T. Powers, assistant to J. Allen Hynek of Northwestern University, arrives on the scene to examine the spot. Using kerosene, gasoline, and a blowtorch, he attempts to simulate the black spot, but has no luck. Where each leg of the machine rested he finds two spike holes, similar to those made by football cleats. They are about 6 inches apart, 7/8 inch in diameter, and about one inch deep. The
four feet are about 11.5–12 feet apart and the diagonals are 16 feet 1 inch and 16 feet 6 inches, respectively. Powers concludes that the center of gravity is above the firepoint and notes that the intersections of the diagonals deviate 2 degrees from 90°. (“South Hill, Va. Landing,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1967, p. 11; Sparks, p. 324; Fred Merritt, “A Preliminary Classification of Some Reports of UFOs,” IUR 28, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 10; Gordon Lore, Flying Saucers from beyond the Earth: A UFO Researcher’s Odyssey, BearManor, 2018, pp. 60–64)
April 22 — At the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C., James E. McDonald says of Donald Menzel, “when he comes to analyzing UFO reports, he seems to calmly cast aside well-known scientific principles almost with abandon, in an all-out effort to be sure that no UFO report survives
his attack.” He also says, “I have learned from a number of unquotable sources that the Air Force has long wished to get rid of the burden of the troublesome UFO problem and has twice tried to ‘peddle’ it to NASA—without success.” (James E. McDonald, “UFOs: Greatest Scientific Problem of Our Times?” April 22, 1967; Clark III 699; “Our Speaker(s) Tonight: James E. McDonald, Donald H. Menzel, Hector Quintanilla,” Saturday Night Uforia)
April 24 — After reading a March 7 column by Drew Pearson that alleges the US attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro, President Johnson directs CIA Director Richard Helms to conduct an investigation. The result is a 133-page report by CIA Inspector General John S. Earman, transmitted on April 24 to Helms, that clearly shows the CIA was in contact with and cooperated with Maj. Rolando Cubela Secades of the Cuban military in plans to assassinate Castro. The operation is known as Project AMLASH. After receiving the report, Helms orally briefs the President about its contents. According to his testimony before the Select Committee, when asked if he has told the President “that efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro had continued into Johnsonʼs presidency, Helms replied, ‘I just can’t answer that, I just don’t know. I can’t recall having done so.’” (US Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Document 315,” in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Volume XXXII, Dominican Republic; Cuba; Haiti; Guyana)
April 28 — Condon recommends J. Allen Hynek and Richard H. Hall to Encyclopedia Britannica as excellent persons to write UFO entries. (Swords 319)
April 28 — 11:30 a.m. Brian F. Jenkins and seven other coast guards at Brixham, Devon, England, watch a huge, cone- shaped object through 25x binoculars mounted on a tripod. The object is hovering at 15,000 feet and seems to be revolving. Jenkins says the cone is pointing down, and the object seems made of glass or highly polished metal: “Near the bottom there was a triangular-shaped opening or door with a white rim on the top that reflected a lot of sunlight. The bottom was crinkled, very white, and seemed to consist of strips of metal hanging down.” It drifts to the northwest, rising to 22,000 feet and 8 miles away. At 12:40 p.m., a jet aircraft approaches it, flies above it, passes it, turns, and approaches it from below before it disappears from sight. Possible balloon. (“British Radar/Visual Case,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 1 (May/June 1967): 8; Good Above, pp. 60–62)
April 29 — 7:40 p.m. Ian McGregor and two other oil drillers drive out to an airstrip near Mount Whaleback, Western Australia, to look for a UFO that has been appearing in the area for several nights. Toward the southeast a bright haze appears that turns into an inverted cone of light that is followed by an orange disc that rises vertically, turns on its edge, and approaches them. They flash their headlights and the object stops moving. It then returns in the direction it came from and lands in the same spot. Their compasses are not working accurately. They wait iuntil 11:30 p.m., but do not see it again. (L. J. Locke, “UFOs in Western Australia: From Mayanup to Mt, Newman,” Australian Flying Saucer Review, no. 8 (1968): 16)
May — The CIA launches the Phoenix Program in Vietnam to gather information on the Viet Cong, whose members would then be neutralized (captured, converted, or killed). Emphasis for the enforcement of the operation is placed on local government militia and police forces, rather than the military. Heavy-handed operations—such as random cordons and searches, large-scale and lengthy detentions of innocent civilians, excessive use of firepower, torture, and targeted killings—have a negative effect on the civilian population. Between 1968 and 1972, Phoenix “neutralizes” 81,740 people (26,369 are killed) suspected of belonging to the National Liberation Front. The reported torture is carried out by South Vietnamese forces with the CIA and special forces playing a supervisory role. (Wikipedia, “Richard Helms”)
May — A man identifying himself as Maj. Richard French visits a woman in Owatonna, Minnesota, who has had a UFO encounter the previous November. He is 5 feet 9 inches with an olive complexion and hair too long for an Air Force officer. He is wearing a fashionable gray suit, white shirt, and black tie. At one point, French complains of stomach problems, and the woman recommends Jell-O. He says he will return if the symptoms persist, so he shows up the following morning. The woman sits him down with a bowl of Jell-O, which he tries to drink. “I had to show him how to eat it with a spoon,” the woman tells John A. Keel. (John A. Keel, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, Manor Books ed., 1976, pp. 171–173; Clark III 734)
May — 12:30–3:15 p.m. During a reconnaissance exercise in Madagascar, a detachment of 23 officers and men serving with the French Foreign Legion watch a bright object landing in a “falling leaf” motion. When it touches down on tripod legs, the glow dissipates. The egg-shaped craft is 23–26 feet high and has no visible markings except for openings at the base through which flames are visible. The witnesses seem paralyzed or at least extremely distracted while the UFO is on the ground. When they recover their senses, they find that 2.75 hours have elapsed. For 2 days afterward, they all have violent headaches, a buzzing in their ears, and a throbbing in their temples. (H. Julien, “A 1967 Landing in Madagascar,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 1 (June 1977): pp. 29–30; Good Need,
May — Evening. A woman in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, sees a light shining through her basement window. Across the street she notices a large object beaming with three colored lights and rotating. She goes outside with another woman and watch the slight slowly spin for 20 minutes above a neighbor’s house. When she tries to call the neighbors, all she gets is a busy signal, and when she looks outside again, the object is gone. The next day, the neighbor tells her that there was nothing wrong with the phone and that all evening she had been playing cards with friends and talking about UFOs. (Michael D. Swords, “Timmermania: A Step Too Far into the Timmerman Files?” IUR 27, no. 4 (Winter 2002–2003): 8)
May — Evening. A farmer near Holbæk, Denmark, is working outside when he sees a strange lilac-colored light.
Approaching, he sees a domed object with windows. Something is moving behind it. He goes home but returns to the spot the next day and finds an odd substance. It looks like “cotton wool,” but is finer than cotton. He leaves it in the same spot, but it dissipates over the next three days. There is also a depressed area where the object had been, and some wire is pulled away from some pylons. (“Denmark: Flying Saucer Landed in a Field outside ‘Holbak’?????” Saucer Scoop 2, no. 4 (July 1967): 4; Michael D. Swords, “Angel Hair: Spindrift between Worlds,” IUR 32, no. 1 (August 2008): 7)
May or June — A couple captures on an 8mm film camera 10 frames (2.5 seconds) of footage of an unusual object at Alberton, South Australia. The UFO is enveloped in a striking blue light that gives the appearance of a searchlight moving around its circumference. The developed film appears to show a craft with portholes and a sweeping searchlight. (David Reneke, “The Australian UFO Photo File,” UFO Research Australia Newsletter 2, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1981): 10–15; Keith Basterfield, Vladimir Godic, and Pony Godic, “Australian Ufology: A Review,” JUFOS 2 (1990): 26; Patrick Gross, “The Alberton UFO Footage, Australia, 1967”)
May 1 — The Colorado project issues a press release calling for photos of UFOs taken by private citizens and provides recommendations to the photographers and the information it should include. The release is basically a rewrite of a document prepared by NPIC staff and approved by Lundahl on March 24. (Peter A. Sturrock, The UFO Enigma, Warner, 1999, p. 48)
May 1 — Night. A man’s car engine fails while he is driving near Peeltree, West Virginia. He sees a 40-foot-long elliptical object emerge from behind a shed and hover 15 feet from his car. It tilts toward the car at a 30° angle. He hears static on the radio, and the dashboard temperature gauge goes off the dial. He feels an intense wave of heat when he puts his head out the window, and his hands burn when he touches the horn rim and dashboard. He also reports headaches and a partial loss of vision. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 19)
May 5 — Condon, Low, Hartmann, Ratchford, and Charles Reed of the National Research Council are briefed by an unnamed specialist [probably Everitt L. Merritt of the Autometrics Division of the Raytheon Company of Alexandria, Virginia] at the NPIC on a photogrammetric analysis he had carried out on the November 1966 UFO photo case from Roseville, Ohio. The analysis debunks the photo. The committee is again impressed with the technical work performed, and Condon remarks that for the first time a scientific analysis of a UFO will stand up to investigation. (Wikipedia, “Arthur Lundahl”; E. L. Merritt, “Photogrammatric Analysis of a Non-Synchronous Pair of U.F.O. Exposures,” June 1967; Peter A. Sturrock, The UFO Enigma, Warner, 1999, pp. 48–49)
May 5 — Indonesian Air Marshal Roesmin Noerjadin admits that sometimes UFOs pose a problem for the country’s air defense, and sometimes the military is forced to fire on them. (Good Need, p. 254)
May 6 — 11:00 a.m. A mechanical engineer and his daughter are driving on the Durango–Mazatlán Highway in Mexico. They spot a disc-shaped object landed on the ground off the highway. They stop the car and he takes three photos as the object takes off. The first photo shows the object at treetop level, partially hidden by a tree, with a portion of its landing gear visible. The second object shows the object in flight against a clear sky. The third photo shows nothing. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 65)
May 7 — 2:00 a.m. Ricky Banyard, 17, and four others watch and follow a spherical object with a spinning top and bottom and with red and green lights for 4 hours in Edmonton, Alberta, in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. As it hovers at about 200 feet, a light beam comes from the bottom of the object, illuminating the ground. They hear a muffled whistling noise as the object hovers, then a screaming noise like a jet engine starting up. All its lights go
out, and the object takes off in a flurry of explosive sounds. Black streaks are later found on the charred road surface. (“A UFO in Detail,” Edmonton (Alberta) Journal, May 8, 1967, p. 33; “Eerie Object in Graveyard,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1967, p. 7)
May 7? — A couple are driving through the state of Tabasco, Mexico, when they see a bright point of light in the sky. It descends to a spot about 500 feet away and gives off an intense white-orange light from its cone-shaped body. The couple stops and shuts off their headlights. When the object approaches closer, the man turns the headlights on again. The UFO stops in midair and blinks its light off and on twice. The couple become frightened and drive to the nearest town. Several people return with them to the spot and the object is still there. When they turn their headlights off and on, it approaches them. Some of the men run to the object with weapons raised, and it takes off into the sky within seconds. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 60)
May 10 — Richard Helms goes to the White House to give President Lyndon Johnson the answers to the questions he’d been asked seven weeks earlier. The only account of that meeting is Helms’s own. He says he described the [inspector general’s] conclusions and that Johnson said: “Then you were not responsible for Trujillo, ‘No.’ Correct answer. ‘Diem?’ ‘No.’ Correct answer. ‘Castro, he’s still alive, okay.’” At the same meeting Helms also tells Johnson about the mail interception program “and some other things that were going on.” Johnson’s response to that was equally laconic; he just nodded and said something along the line of, ‘But be careful, don’t get caught.’” (Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA, Random House, 1979, pp. 156–157)
May 13 — 1:43 a.m. Michael Campeadore is driving in Arizona about 17 miles southwest of St. George, Utah, when he hears a loud humming sound. After stopping the car and getting out, he notices a huge object, 45–50 feet in diameter, hovering 25–30 feet above him. He reaches into the car and gets a .25 caliber pistol, loads it, and fires point blank at the object. He hears the bullets hit and ricochet as they strike. Before he has finished the clip, the object begins moving off and disappears in seconds. (“Car Buzzing Incidents on Increase,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1967, p. 6)
May 13 — 4:40 p.m. An object is picked up on radar at the Colorado Springs, Colorado, airport. A Braniff flight is coming in for a landing on runway 35. The track of the object behaves like a ghost echo, perhaps a ground return being reflected from the Braniff aircraft. The blip appears at about twice the range of the Braniff blip. When the Braniff airliner touches down, however, the situation changes radically. The UFO blip pulls to the right (east) and passes over the airport at an estimated height of about 200 feet. The object track passes within 1.5 miles of the control tower. The object is not visible even through binoculars by personnel in the control tower. The Colorado project finds this to be one of the most puzzling radar cases on record. (NICAP, “Invisible UFO Tracked on Radar”; Condon, pp. 170–171, 310–316)
Mid-May — 11:00 p.m. Patricio Hanessian and Alfredo Padilla are driving in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, and see a flat-bottomed, domed object in the sky. The central part is bright white and the edge is bright pink or red. It holds its position for 2–3 minutes then moves away, reappearing about 500 feet in front of their car, where it hovers for 2 minutes before speeding off. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 60–61)
May 16 — CIA Director Richard Helms makes one last pitch for the A-12 Oxcart program to President Johnson, saying the aircraft are essential for finding the SAM missile launch sites responsible for shooting down pilots in North Vietnam. They can’t want for the Air Force’s SR-71 to become operational. Johnson authorizes A-12’s to deploy to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, before the monsoons start. (Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 265–266)
May 16 — 10:10 p.m. Ship Master Donald W. Dee and 3rd Mate Homer Hawthorne, seamen Earle Bradley and Eric Koster, all crew of the Pacific Coast Transport ship SS Point Sur, see six red point-source lights that seem to be pacing the ship over the Gulf of Mexico. One object is confirmed by sporadic radar returns as at 12,000 feet, 11 miles away. Through 7 x 50 binoculars, the objects appear brilliant yellow with red lights across upper two-thirds, but to the naked eye, the colors blend to reddish-orange point sources. They pulsate with a 4.5-second period and an approximate 1:3 brightness ratio. The lower objects rise and fall near the horizon. (NICAP, “SS Point Sur Case”; Sparks, p. 325)
May 17 — The first official Soviet UFO Study Group is launched in a preliminary meeting at the Moscow Aviation and Cosmonautics Center with Maj. Gen. Porfiri Stolyarov at the helm and cosmologist Felix Ziegel as his deputy. Also in attendance are Heinrich Ludwig, Nikolai Zhirov, Igor Bestuzhev-Lada, Valentin Akkuratov, Leonid Reino, Georgi Uger, Georgi Zevalkin, Grigory Sivkov, Yekaterina Ryabova, and Natalia Kravtsova. (Wikipedia, “Felix Ziegel”; Good Above, p. 570; Felix Ziegel, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” Soviet Life, no. 137 (February 1968): 29)
May 20 — 12:15 p.m. Stefan Michalak is quartz prospecting near Falcon Lake, Manitoba, when he sees two red, glowing, cigar-shaped objects in the sky. One object begins to hover then move away, while the other lands on a large, flat rock 160 feet away. The landed object is more than 35 feet wide and 10 feet thick with a 3-foot high cupola. It
goes through several color changes then appears like hot stainless steel with blinding purple-colored lights coming through slits in the cupola. It is making a whirring sound and warm air seems to be coming from it. Michalak sits and sketches the object for 30 minutes, then a small door opens on the side, revealing a lighted interior. Michalak walks to 60 feet away and hears voices inside. Thinking it is a US aircraft, he steps forward and shouts. “Okay, Yankee boys, having trouble? Come on out and we’ll see what we can do about it.” He says the same thing in five other languages. There is no response, so he puts green lenses over his glasses and looks inside, where he sees a series of flashing lights. He pulls his head back, noting that the wall is 18 inches thick. Almost immediately the opening closes. When his glove accidentally touches the surface, it burns and melts. The UFO angles upwards and he sees a 9-by-6 inch gridlike vent with a uniform pattern of small holes. A blast of hot gas erupts from the grid, searing his chest, sending him reeling backwards, and burning his shirt and undershirt. He rips the flaming clothing off just as the UFO ascends in a rush of air. It heads off to the west, the same direction the other UFO has gone. Michalak now has a headache and severe nausea, so he starts driving back to his motel. He eventually gets to Misericordia Hospital in Winnipeg and receives a sedative. His chest burn heals, but the gridlike burn lesions on his abdomen persist. The symptoms continue well into 1968, when Michalak visits the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, staying there 2 weeks and undergoing outpatient treatment. He relocates the landing site on June 30, 1967, and the RCAF visits it in July, noting a 15-foot circle of cleared vegetation on the flat rock.
Michalak obtains metal samples of unknown provenance from the site in 1968. (Wikipedia, “Falcon Lake Incident”; NICAP, “Falcon Lake / Michalak Encounter”; Stephen Michalak, My Encounter with the UFO, Osnova, 1967; Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, pp. 195–198; Condon, pp. 316–324; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 37–45; Chris Rutkowski, “The Falcon Lake Incident, Part 1: Prologue 1967,” Flying Saucer Review 27, no. 1 (June 1981): 14–16; Chris Rutkowski, “The Falcon Lake Incident, Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 27, no. 2 (August 1981): 15–18; Chris Rutkowski, “The Falcon Lake Incident, Part 3,” Flying Saucer Review 27, no. 3 (November 1981): 21–25; Chris Rutkowski, “Burned by a UFO? The Story of a Bungled Investigation,” IUR 12, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1987): 21–24; Edward M. Barker, “Letter,” IUR 13, no. 2 (March/April 1988): 21–22; Good Above, pp. 195–200; Chris Rutkowski, “The Falcon Lake Case: Too Close an Encounter,” JUFOS 5 (1994): 1–34; Don Berliner, with Marie Galbreath and Antonio Huneeus, UFO Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence, Dell, 2000, pp. 81–86; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 72–93; Chris Rutkowski, “The Cold, Hard Facts about UFOs in Canada,” IUR 34, no. 1 (September 2011): 10, 22; Clark III 475–481; Chris Rutkowski and Stan Michalak, When They Appeared: Falcon Lake 1967, August Night, 2019; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 107–118, 154–157)
May 20 — A bizarre announcement is published in the Spanish newspaper Informaciones declaring that soon a spacecraft will land in Madrid, Spain, and fly earthbound terrestrials back to their home planet Ummo. (Clark III 1184)
May 26 — 10:15 p.m. Three teenagers (Bobby Grant, Joseph Romero, and Johnny Sanchez) are driving along Atrisco Drive NW, north of Central Avenue in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A white light seems to follow them, weaving back and forth over the road. Finally it catches up with the car and hovers silently above it. The engine quits and the headlights fail. The teens leap from the car and the object suddenly flies off to the southwest. They can start the car again. (“Car Buzzing Incidents on Increase,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1967, p. 6)
May 30 — A-12 spy planes begin Operation Black Shield in North Vietnam out of Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan, locating and photographing surface-to-air missile sites that are shooting down US pilots. The A-12s fly at
80,000 feet and at about Mach 3.1, carrying out 22 sorties in 1967. However, the Russians monitor the flights and the Vietnamese move their SAM sites immediately after flyovers. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed A-12”)
May 31 — Fernando Sesma, president of the Amigos de los Visitantes del Espacio, speaks to an audience of 40 persons gathered at a café in Madrid, Spain. He says that the Ummites (who have been supplying him with messages since 1965 describing in excruciating detail life on the planet Ummo, which revolves around a star 14.6 light years away) have given him a startling printed message predicting that a spacecraft will appear on the evening of June
1. The space people have supplied the exact geographical coordinates: the area of San José de Valderas, Madrid. All the Ummite messages, passed on to Sesma by his associates Enrique Villagrasa and Alicia Araujo, are usually postmarked in Madrid, but as time goes by, other postmarks indicate mailings from London, Germany, Austria, New Zealand, Yugoslavia, and Canada. (Clark III 1184–1185; Fernando Sesma, UMMO, otro planeta habitado, Gráficas Espejo, 1967)
May 31 — 11:30 p.m. A woman at a farmhouse near Beausejour, Manitoba, sees an intensely bright red light with a smaller blue light on the bottom that approaches from the south and hovers about 375 feet away. A white light on the bottom becomes brighter as the object hovers, its glow illuminating the ground. The object lands and leaves a burning area 90 feet by 150 feet in size with radioactive soil. The area is still smoldering on June 15, despite several rains. (“Second Landing in Canada,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1967, p. 2)
June — Low says he wants the Colorado project to compile a case book of its best UFO reports. Richard Hall is invited for 2 days of consulting and narrows the case list to 100. A small team agrees to go over the list and decide which ones deserve more intensive analysis. By August, Saunders becomes the lone staffer selecting cases and he only has 12. (UFOs Yes, 81–83)
June — The newly formed Surrey Investigation Group on Aerial Phenomena publishes the SIGAP Newsletter in Camberley, Surrey, England, until June 1969. It revitalizes the newsletter as the New SIGAP Bulletin from 1977 to 1979. (SIGAP Newsletter, no. 1 (June 1, 1967); SIGAP Bulletin, no. 15 (August 1, 1968); The New SIGAP
June — Night. Giuseppe Aldini, 17, is with his family in Montalcino, Siena, Italy, when he sees a round, luminous object from his window. Later he notices a glowing red light on a nearby hill. The next day he goes to the spot and finds a circular burned area 100 feet in diameter with four imprints in its center. Inside are many black minerals that are analyzed by the University of Florence’s Mineralogical Institute and found to be quartz crystals. (1Pinotti 157)
June 1 — The UFO seen by José Luis Jordán Peña in Aluche, Madrid, Spain, allegedly reappears in the neighborhood of San José de Valderas. This time, Jordán Peña plays UFO investigator, taking statements from witnesses who describe a low-flying disc-shaped object with the same strange symbol on the underside. An anonymous man takes several photographs that he drops off at a photo lab on June 2. He then calls newspaper photographer Antonio San Antonio, telling him where to pick them up. All but one show an edge-on view of what appears to be a large, squat disc with a rim through its midsection. One photo shows the bottom of the UFO with the Aluche symbol, this time with a horizontal bar crossing the verticals and linking the two arms. In August, another photographer calling himself Antonio Pardo produces two more photos of the edge-on disc taken the same day, as well as some hard green-colored plastic strips bearing the distinctive Aluche symbol supposedly found in a capsule that leaflets by a “Henri Dagousset” predicted in June would be found. Jordán Peña later confesses to hoaxing the plastic strips, which are made of Tedlar (polyvinyl fluoride) produced by DuPont for the US space program. Independent analyses by French space scientist Claude Poher and the US group Ground Saucer Watch determine that the San José de Valderas photo with the Ummo symbol is a small model—an 8-inch plate suspended by a string or fishing line— held close to the camera. The symbol apparently is drawn in ink. (Wikipedia, “Ummo”; Antonio Ribera, “The San José de Valderas Photographs,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1969): 3–10; Oscar Rey Brea, “Algo sobre las fotografias del sepuesto OVNI de San José de Valderas,” Stendek 3, no. 9 (August 1972): 5–11; Antonio Ribera and Rafael Farriols, Un caso perfecto, Plaza y Janés, 1976; Fred Adrian, “Ground Saucer Watch Computer Photographic Analysis (Critique), San José de Valderas, Spain, 1967,” CUFOS Bulletin, Spring 1977, pp. 11–13; Claude Poher, “Remarks on Aluche, San José de Valderas, and the ‘Ummo’ Affair: A Monstrous Hoax!” CUFOS Bulletin, Spring 1977, pp. 3–10; Scott Corrales, “The UMMO Experience: Are You Experienced?” Strange Magazine, January 31, 2001; Clark III 1183)
June 3 — The town of St. Paul, Alberta, officially dedicates a UFO landing pad as a public park and as a safe place for aliens to land. Minister of National Defence Paul Hellyer flies in by helicopter to launch the pad. It consists of a raised platform with a map of Canada embossed on the back stop, consisting of stones provided by each province of Canada. (Wikipedia, “St. Paul, Alberta”; “World’s First UFO Landing Pad,” Atlas Obscura, April 19, 2010; George M. Eberhart, “Postcards with a UFO Theme,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 20; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 240–243)
June 7 — James E. McDonald speaks before the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs meeting in New York City on the “International scientific aspects of the problem of the unidentified flying objects.” UN Secretary-General U Thant has arranged for the lecture, based on conversations he has had with John G. Fuller and J. Allen Hynek in early 1966. McDonald urges the UN to undertake a systematic global study of the UFO problem, but it does not act on the recommendation. (James E. McDonald, Letter to UN Secretary-General U Thant, June 5, 1967, p. 1; James E. McDonald, “Statement on International Scientific Aspects of the Problem of the Unidentified Flying Objects,” presented to the UN Outer Space Affairs group, June 7, 1967, pp. 2–3; Clark III 698, 1189; Patrick Gross, “Scientists Taking Position”)
June 9 — Day. Two Spanish Air Force pilots flying Lockheed T-33s at 4,000 feet encounter a UFO over the Extremadura region, Spain. Attempts at radio contact fail, and when they fly above or below the object, their radios cease to function and emit interference noises. The UFO soon moves off, easily outstripping the jets, stopping and waiting for them to approach, then moving on again, The two pilots notify the Talavera la Real Air Base in Badajoz and Torrejón Air Base in Madrid, from which two faster fighters are scrambled. The new fighters experience the same radio interference and maneuvers until the object shoots straight up at high speed. (Antonio Ribera, “Spanish Jets Chase UFO,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 3 (May/June 1968): 26–27)
June 12–13 — The Colorado project plays host to 34 Air Force officers having UFO responsibility at various bases. Low and Saunders try to get them excited about reporting UFOs to the project, but aren’t very successful. (NICAP, “UFO Investigators Meeting 12 and 13 June 1967”; UFOs Yes, 125–126)
June 13 — 2:30 a.m. Carmen Cuneo, a mine worker in Caledonia, Ontario, steps out of the mine headquarters building and sees two strange objects near a pond in the vicinity of the mine dump. One is cigar-shaped and about 36 feet long with four windows along the side; a boom-like aerial protrudes from one side. The other is disc-shaped and about 15 feet across. Both are hovering 12 feet above the ground. Three small men wearing what look like miners’ hats with four amber lights are underneath the boom. After watching for 10 minutes, Cuneo goes back to find another witness, but when he returns the men are gone. The two objects, however, remain until 3:05 a.m. when they take off to the southwest, flashing multicolored lights. (“June Sighting of Occupants in Canada,” APRO Bulletin, Nov./Dec. 1967, p. 4)
June 18 — Several people in Mulluri, [perhaps near Viña del Mar], Chile, see three discs flying in a V formation above the town. They flash orange and blue lights alternately and make no sound. They maneuver for 10 minutes before disappearing at high speed. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 61)
June 18 — Late evening. A family is returning home by boat near Clearwater Bay on Shoal Lake, Ontario, when they notice a bright oval object hovering 50 feet above the treetops about a half-mile away. As they approach, the object turns an orange tinge and suddenly sweeps toward their boat at great speed. They beat a hasty retreat to the other shore, while the UFO returns to its original position. The same thing happens when they approach the object again. After about 15 minutes, the object takes off at an incredible speed to the northwest. One resident, who is not aware of the UFO, reports later that the static on his radio was so bad that he had to turn it off. Wilted leaves on the top of birch, hazel, and chokecherry trees are discovered in the sighting area. Leaf samples are analyzed by the Canadian Department of Forestry, which cannot find an explanation for their condition other than heat. The University of Manitoba finds evidence of fungus on one sample but not on others. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 150–152; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 31–34; Christ Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 55–56)
June 22–25 — Condon attends, at the invitation of James W. Moseley and against the better judgment of the rest of the Colorado project staff, the Congress of Scientific Ufologists at the Hotel Commodore in New York City for the 20th anniversary of the Kenneth Arnold sighting. Speakers include Gray Barker, John A. Keel, Moseley, Art Ford, Gordon Evans, actor Roy Thinnes, and Ivan T Sanderson. Kenneth Arnold and Raymond A. Palmer are originally scheduled but cancel. (Swords 316, 320; James W. Moseley and Karl T. Pflock, Shockingly Close to the Truth! Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist, Prometheus, 2002, pp. 209–218; Karl Machtanz, “Saucer News NYC Convention Memories,” In Honor of Jim Moseley, February 3, 2014; Rick Hilberg, “Jim Moseley’s Giant UFO Show,” In Honor of Jim Moseley; Curt Collins, “The National UFO Conference,” In Honor of Jim Moseley, March 11, 2014; Curt Collins, “The UFO Anniversary and the Giant New York Convention of 1967,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, June 22, 2018)
June 23 — Broadcaster Frank Edwards dies of a heart attack. (“Death of Frank Edwards,” UFO Investigator 4, no 2 (October 1967): 8)
June 24 — 10:00 p.m. At Paso de los Libres, Corrientes, Argentina, policemen see 8–10 bright lights that fly in formation over a military post at an estimated 15,000 feet altitude. Other groups of UFOs are seen the same night at Yapeyú and Santo Tomé in Corrientes; Oberá in Misiones; and Resistencia and Barranqueras in Chaco, Argentina. All are observed for at least 1–2 minutes. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 61–62)
June 24 — In Asunción, Paraguay, many residents see six objects in formation maneuvering over the city.
Communications interference is reported by the airport control tower director. (NICAP, “The 1967 UFO Chronology”)
June 24–25 — The Centro Ufologico Nazionale holds the first UFO conference in Italy at Riccione, Rimini. (1Pinotti 143–146)
June 27 — McDonald is in Australia, financed by a small grant from the Office of Naval Research, to do cloud-physics research. Earlier in June, in a memo to Low, he said he planned to do some UFO investigating and lecturing. Low forwards the letter to Philip Klass in December. (Clark III 700)
June 28 — A NASA management instruction issued by Kurt H. Debus, director of Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, on “Processing Reports of Sightings of Space Vehicle Fragments” notes that “Under no circumstances will the origin of the object be discussed with the observer or person making the call,” including “reports of sightings of objects not related to space vehicles.” (John F. Kennedy Space Center, “Processing Reports of Sightings of Space Vehicle Fragments,” NASA Management Instruction KMI 8610.4, June 28, 1967)
June 30 — Condon, David Saunders, Norm Levine, Franklin Roach, Mary Lou Armstrong, and visiting journalism grad student Herbert Strentz hold a meeting about a “case book” of significant cases. Condon tries to dissuade Saunders and Levine from pursuing this, but they prevail. (Swords 320)
July — Even though the Colorado project is requesting UFO reports from NICAP, Keyhoe is withholding them. Roy Craig discovers the Low memorandum while searching for unrelated information in the files. He shares it with Norm Levine and David Saunders, who realize that it clearly implies that the project is a “whitewash noninvestigation.” The memo makes the rounds of project personnel, then gets refiled. (Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, p. 121; UFOs Yes, 135)
July — 10:00 p.m. A witness sees an intense orange light through the window of her home in the Mount Lofty Ranges, South Australia. She calls her mother and they go outside to watch a cigar-shaped light hovering, moving up and down slightly, and turning over on its side. It has portholes around its lower edge. After 20 minutes, it moves off to the western horizon at a high rate of speed. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 3, no. 6 (June 1978): 2)
July 1 — The Denver Post reveals that the Colorado project has requested an additional $280,000 to extend it into September. Condon is upset. USAF ultimately approves an additional $183,155, plus $29,750 for expenses, bringing the total to $525,905. (UFOs Yes, 182)
July 3 — 5:30 p.m. Warren Smith and two friends hiking in the mountains near Highwood Ranger Station, 50 miles southwest of Calgary, Alberta, take two color photos of a daylight disc that appears to be about 25 feet in diameter. The disc appears from less than 2 miles away and at an altitude of approximately 2,000 feet. It travels toward the hikers, gradually losing altitude, then at a distance of about one-half mile it hovers for a moment and an object appears to fall from it. It disappears from sight at treetop level at great speed. The photos are examined by both Canadian and American authorities; Hynek describes them as some of the best photos on record at the time. An analysis by Canadian National Defence finds the object is an oblate ellipsoid with a diameter of 40–50 feet and a thickness of 11–14 feet. The witnesses sign statutory declarations to the effect that the photos are not a hoax; if proven false, they would be subject to prosecution under the Canada Evidence Act. Nevertheless, the Colorado Committee thinks the object could be a hoaxed hand-thrown model. Ground Saucer Watch declares it genuine. (Canada, National Research Council, [case documents], 1967, pp. 13–33; Condon, pp. 469–475; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 67–68; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 9–13; Wendelle C. Stevens, “Hikers near Calgary Photograph a UFO in 1967,” OpenMinds, November 24, 2010; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 119– 125, 158–159)
July 3 — 7:15 p.m. Joe Ferriere sees a large, cigar-shaped object about 75–100 feet long hanging low in the sky above Woonsocket, Rhode Island. A peculiar piston-like apparatus appears to be pumping in and out of its left end. It is moving right to left in the manner of a pendulum. Before it moves off to the east, it releases a glowing disc- shaped object, about 12–15 feet in diameter. He takes a total of 6 photos of the objects. (“Long Rectangular UFOs: Five Different Cases of Similarly Shaped Objects,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 2, no. 9 (September 1981): 1)
July 3 — 9:15 p.m. Thomas H. Nicholl, his family, and another couple, Mr. and Mrs. John Dowd, are sitting on the Nicholls’s porch in Leawood, Kansas, when they see an unusual orange-red light approach from the north- northeast. It is bright metallic in color, about 50 feet in diameter, and traveling 100 mph at an altitude of 2,000– 3,000 feet. The red-orange color emanates from three lights on the rear side. After 5 minutes, the object blows up, leaving in its wake a “nearly pure white” cloud that dissipates. The witnesses see fragments falling to earth. (“Exploding Disc,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 11 (May 1969): 7–8; Clark III 340–341)
July 4 — 5:15 a.m. At least five witnesses from two independent locations about 5 miles west of Corning, California, see an oblong, metallic-appearing object with a brilliant light on top and a smaller light on the bottom near the front. Jay Munger, proprietor of an all-night bowling alley, and two police officers, Frank Rakes and James Overton, describe it as a dark-gray flattened sphere with a brilliant light beam on top directed upward, and a smaller and dimmer light on the bottom directed downward. A dark band circles the midsection. Two men north of Corning independently see the object. The witnesses estimate a diameter of 50–100 feet. At first the object appears to be hovering, then it moves slowly a few hundred feet above the ground, finally picking up speed and disappearing from view to the south after being visible for about 10 minutes. (James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, p. 74)
July 5 — 4:20 a.m. A motorist on State Highway 31, near the Depot Road area of Coventry, Connecticut, sees an orange ball of light that appears to be hanging from a tree. He drives into Coventry and reports the matter to the police but the object is gone when they arrive on the scene. Investigators from the University of Colorado and APRO
find an area of grass some yards from the location that appears to have been swirled flat as if subject to a rotating force. A photograph taken of the scene turns out black. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 63; Condon, pp. 329–331)
July 5 — Night. A witness is driving five miles north-northeast of Murray Bridge, South Australia, on the Karoonda Highway when he notices interference on the car radio, which becomes a high-pitched whine. He turns the radio off. Within 300–450 feet, his car engine stops by itself. The ignition is on but the warning lights on the dash come on. Looking up, he sees a distinct break in the fog with stars visible and a “large dark shadow” at a height of 20 feet. The shadow seems 120 feet thick. Above it is a grayish-blue glow. The top of the shadow appears
convex. He stops the vehicle and gets out to look, but the shadow and light are gone. There is no sound, and the object has vanished. The witness returns to the vehicle, tries the ignition, and the motor works. There is no longer radio interference. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (September 2011): 19)
July 6 — The Colorado project staff meet again to nominate the first set of UFO reports for its “case book.” Condon refuses to nominate a case, but Low proposes the Red Bluff police report of August 1960, which is far outside Condon’s concept of limiting cases to no more than a year old. (Swords 120)
July 6 — 6:00 p.m. An Air Canada DC-9 Vanguard has just taken off from its stop in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and is heading east. Air traffic controllers notice an unexpected radar return, also heading east, near the aircraft. In the space of 70 seconds, they watch the target accelerate from 800 to more than 4,000 mph before it zips off the scope near the town of Vivian. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 126)
July 6 — 9:24 p.m. A radar operator in the airport at Kenora, Ontario, notes an unidentified target heading northeast. It approaches to about 40 miles, then turns and retreats to 50 miles away. At 9:35 p.m. another target appears, following an Air Canada flight; it turns northeast and disappears from the scope. At 9:53 p.m., an additional blip follows another Air Canada airliner before veering away to the northeast. None of the pilots see anything unusual. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 127–128)
July 7 — 7:00 p.m. Air traffic controllers at Winnipeg International Airport in Manitoba, while monitoring an eastbound Air Canada flight on radar, notice a target moving at high speed toward Kenora, Ontario. At 9:24 p.m., the same or a similar object is detected on the Kenora Airport radar headed northeast. For three hours the object executes various maneuvers, including 180° turns and twice follows Air Canada flights before resuming its northeast course and disappearing off the scope. (Gregory M. Kanon, “UFOs and the Canadian Government,” Canadian UFO Report 3, no. 6 (1975): 21; Good Above, p. 200; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 57)
July 7 — 11:30 p.m. Antonio Brambilla and another man watch a UFO land on some grass in a deserted part of the Rondò-Torretta quarter in Milan, Italy. A glow comes from the object, which is about 21 feet in diameter and 8 feet high. It has a dome on top and four telescopic legs with spheres on their tips. They feel a strange vibration that makes them weak, but the feeling dissipates as the legs of the UFO retract and it takes off. (1Pinotti 157)
July 13 — 11:26 p.m. Robert Richardson and Jerry Quay are driving near Whitehouse, Ohio. When rounding a bend, they encounter a brilliant blue-white light blocking the road. It appears to be a triangle 8 feet tall and 21 feet wide.
Richardson brakes and close their eyes. They feel a bump but can see nothing. The local police do not take the incident seriously. However, the accident is investigated by the state police and highway patrol, who find only skid marks at the scene. The next day Richardson returns to the site and finds a piece of metal in the road. Marks on his car hood and bumper suggest a collision with an object taking off. On July 18 and 23, Richardson is visited by mysterious men, those on the second occasion being foreign-looking, who make a threat against his wife. Roy Craig of the Colorado project conducts a test on the metal and finds it consists of iron and chromium, with traces of nickel and manganese. Fibrous material from the front bumper is 92% magnesium, 5% aluminum, 2% zinc, and 1% manganese. (“UAO Struck by Automobile in Ohio,” APRO Bulletin, July/Aug. 1967, pp. 1, 3; Condon, p. 93; Mark Rodeghier, “UFO/Vehicle Very Close Encounters,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 25–26)
July 17 — 11:25 p.m. Emma Funk is driving on State Highway 22 north of Millerton, New York, when a black, shiny object the size of a baseball flies into her headlight beams. It heads toward the windshield, brushes against it, then veers off to the left. As it brushes, her car lights up “like a great electric light bulb,” her engine quits, and the headlights go out. Funk is stunned, and when she regains her senses, the car is facing the opposite direction, toward the south. The engine starts up normally, but there is a cracked area in the windshield the size of a fist. She can’t account for about 15 minutes. (“Object Hit Car in Millerton; Engine Stalled, Lights Went Out,” Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal, July 19, 1967, p. 6; Mark Rodeghier, “UFO/Vehicle Very Close Encounters,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 24–25)
July 20–21 — 11:30 p.m. Barbara Fawcett is driving alone on North Key Largo, Florida, near Jewfish Creek. She sees a large light in her rear-view mirror apparently following the car. The burning yellow light seems to be floating 6–8
feet off the ground, and it stays over the road. She accelerates to 100 mph as the light overtakes her car and seems to be about to land on top of it. As a car approaches in the opposite direction, the object emits a bright yellow glow that lights up the road and then disappears. She decides to return home to Pompano Beach with her sister the same morning, and at 2:30 a.m. they are on US Highway 1 near the same spot when she sees the light again, rising from a swamp and moving toward them 15 feet above the ground. Her sister’s toy poodle is terrified. The light veers away from the road and appears to land on a sand dune. (“Landing in Florida,” APRO Bulletin, July/Aug. 1967, p. 7)
July 21 — Ronnie Hill, 14, of Pamlico County, North Carolina, sends a color photo of what looks like a little man in a spacesuit standing in front of a spherical UFO to a New York magazine editor. It winds up in the hands of John A. Keel. Hill tells him the UFO landed in his backyard. Keel gathers affidavits from Ronnie’s teachers, parents, and the local 4-H club, and submits the photo to “several professional photographers” in New York, who cannot find evidence of a hoax. Soon, however, Keel has doubts and the photo is revealed to be that of a small model positioned in front of an egg. (John A. Keel, “The ‘Little Man’ of North Carolina,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1969): 15–16; Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 230; Clark III 603; Aaron Sakulich, “The Strange Tale of Ronnie Hill,” The Iron Skeptic, January 13, 2007)
July 26 — 8:38 p.m. Capt. Shindler is piloting Pacific Western Airlines Flight 748 westbound near the Westfall River in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia. He notices a small pink light moving erratically at about 16,000 feet. It zips away after 18 minutes. Radar operators in Kamloops also observe the object. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 128)
July 30 — 6:15 p.m. The Naviero, a ship of the Argentine Shipping Lines Company, is 120 miles off the coast of Garopaba, Santa Catarina, Brazil, when Office Jorge Montoya notices a strange object in the ocean about 50 feet away on the starboard side. Capt. Julián Lucas Ardanza comes to the deck and sees a cigar-shaped UFO about 110 feet long, glowing blue and white. It paces the ship for 15 minutes, then suddenly dives and passes underneath the ship, vanishing in the depths. Chief Officer Carlos Lasca describes the object as a “submergible UFO with its own illumination.” (Oscar A. Galíndez, “Crew of Argentine Ship See Submarine UFO,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 2 (March/April 1968): 22)
July 30 — 10:17 p.m. George and Brownie Petyak see a bright yellow star-like light at about 65° elevation to the east of Kernville, California. It is later joined by a second similar object appearing to try to “steer” the first onto a “definite course.” Through binoculars the first object appears bright blue. A second independent observation from Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in the Mojave Desert locates an object visually and/or on radar to the west over Walker Pass (about 20 miles) and is reported to Edwards AFB. Thus the visual sighting lines intersect from opposite directions. A controller at Edwards uses RAPCON (Radar Approach Control) radar (or Boron AFS FPS-35 search radar) and confirms the visual report at China Lake but tries to dismiss the 115 mph target as merely civil aircraft that “frequently” fly over the area. The Kernville witnesses report by phone during their sighting to the Boron AFS ADC radar site. Blue Book claims the date of the sighting is in question because the questionnaire sent to the Petyaks uses the military time (Greenwich Meridian Time or Zulu time) instead of local time. (NICAP, “Radar/Visual and Sighting Lines Intersect”; Sparks, p. 326; Condon, p. 122; Clark III 392)
July 31 — 10:15 p.m. Sidney Zipkin is driving a truck on Main Street in Churchville, New York, when he sees a cigar- shaped object about 50 feet long in a parking lot. It has greenish blinking lights underneath it, on or near the ground. He shines the truck headlights on the object and sees two small men in shiny black uniforms board the object, which takes off straight up. (“UFOs in Churchville?” Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle, August 3, 1967, pp. 1B–2B)
August — At the request of President Johnson, the CIA sets up Operation CHAOS to gather intelligence about foreign influence on American dissent. Its mission is to gather and evaluate all information about foreign links to racial, antiwar, and other protest activity. The operation is launched under DCI Richard Helms and counter-intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. The program runs through 1973, amassing 10,000 files on more than 300,000 individuals and 100 domestic groups. The operation also infiltrates foreign intelligence targets and domestic radical organizations. The NSA assists in the surveillance with its own Project MINARET. Operating between 1967 and 1973, over 5,925 foreigners and 1,690 organizations and US citizens are included on the Project MINARET watch lists. NSA Director Lew Allen testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975 that the NSA has issued over 3,900 reports on the watch-listed Americans. At some point, the NSA is tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.). The FBI begins COINTELPRO–BLACK HATE, which focuses on Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as well as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Deacons for Defense and Justice,
Congress of Racial Equality, and the Nation of Islam. BLACK HATE establishes the Ghetto Informant Program and instructs 23 FBI offices to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate type organizations.” (Wikipedia, “Operation CHAOS”; Wikipedia, “Project MINARET”; Wikipedia, “COINTELPRO”; Matthew M. Ald and William Burr, “Secret Cold War Documents Reveal NSA Spied on Senators,” Foreign Policy, September 25, 2013)
August — 2:00 a.m. A man is returning to his mother’s home in Wapakoneta, Ohio, when he sees a strangely bright star to the left of Polaris. As he watches, it grows a bit brighter and begins to move directly beneath Polaris and then continues to the right. It repeats this in reverse and then goes under Polaris and stops. The star then migrates north and south, tracing out the elements of a large cross. It does this several times rapidly. Then it comes back below Polaris and just sits there. After nearly 3 hours, the witness decides to stop watching. At that, the star goes up to Polaris and shoots away to the left. (Michael D. Swords, “We Know Where You Live,” IUR 30, no. 2 (January 2006): 11)
August 3 — 8:00 p.m. Amauri Barbosa da Silva and Jonil Faydit Vieira are driving on the road to Japeri from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when they see several yellowish lights that eventually extinguish themselves, one at a time. Later, they see similar lights positioned directly in front of them. Da Silva blinks his headlights, and the lights respond similarly. The lights maintain their position in front of them, moving from one side of the road to the other. When they are approaching Miguel Pereira on a mud road between Arcádia and La Chaumiere, they see two bright beams of light, one yellow and one blue, about 1,000 feet away from them on the right, apparently attached to the dome of a disc. The object follows them for at least 40 minutes and is seen by Nelson Gonçalves Ferreira at their destination in Miguel Pereira. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 16–21)
August 3 — 11:30 p.m. A married couple and their teenage son are sleeping in their car outside their home in Caracas, Venezuela. They wake up and see a white, disc-shaped object hovering 100 feet above a nearby palm tree. Within a few minutes, an opening appears in the UFO, and a smaller lightbulb-shaped object emerges and drifts downward, stopping just inches from the ground near their front porch. A door slides open and a small, glowing figure steps out, who bends over, picks up some stones, examines them, and looks up at the larger object, apparently communicating with someone. He looks toward their car frequently. After a few minutes, the figure reenters the small object, which returns to the large disc and enters it. The disc speeds away and disappears in seconds. (“Occupants Seen at Caracas,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, p. 12)
August 4 — Early morning. An engineer, Hugo Sierra Yepez [or Yepes], is fishing from his boat in the sea about 15 miles north of Arrecife [or La Guaira], Vargas, Venezuela, when he feels a vibration and the water begins to boil “in big bubbles, in a circle about six meters in diameter.” A gray-blue, flat globe emerges. As it hovers close to the surface, dripping water, he notices a revolving rim with triangular windows of blue and red. It ascends in a curve then shoots upward. (“The Question of Submerging UFO’s,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 5 (March 1968): 5; Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 54)
August 4 — Night. A bright object appears in the sky in the area of Morro do Policia in Porto Alegre, Brazil, for 30 minutes and is photographed by Brazilian Air Force technician Otacilio Freitas Dias. It flies in an erratic zigzag path, sometimes slowly, at other times at high speed, and sometimes hovering. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 67–68)
August 5 — Morning. After a night of heavy rain, Edgar Schielke finds a circular mark more than 30 feet in diameter in his cow pasture near Duhamel, Alberta. A UFO group from Edmonton visits the field and finds three additional rings. An RCAF team from CFB Namao [now CFB Edmonton], along with Gareth H. S. Jones of the Defense Research Establishment Suffield [now DRDC Suffield], visits the farm on August 11 after much of the evidence has been trampled. Jones finds two more rings. The marks vary from 5 to 7 inches wide and from 31 feet 9 inches to 36 feet 3 inches, and each is incomplete on its western side. He is puzzled as to what made the marks, can find no evidence of a hoax, and seriously considers whether an aerial object could have made them. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 162–165, 197–205)
August 6 — Office worker Antonio Neri Perez and several others watch three glowing red discs take off in V formation from a field near their house in Tetepango, Hidalgo, Mexico. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 65)
August 6 — 7:55–8:20 p.m. Formations of lights in groups of 3–5 are seen in many states of Mexico, including Tamaulipas, Tlaxcala, Hidalgo, Veracruz, and Lake Pátzcuaro in Michoacán. Most are generally moving west to east. Many people at the Mexico City International Airport watch a group between 8:10 and 8:20 p.m.
Technicians in the control tower can make out 9–10 objects through binoculars. Capt. Angel Fojo Ceballos and Capt. José Luis Espejo are flying an Aeronaves de México [now Aeroméxico] DC-9 at 23,000 feet over Salamanca, Guanajuato, Mexico. They see three bright points flying in formation from northwest to southeast an estimated 30–40 miles away. They cross the horizon at 55,000–60,000 feet in 40–45 seconds. One of the objects
appears to break formation and approach the aircraft, showing a round shape and metallic composition, but then it veers away and out of sight. The events are thought to be the reentry of the Pioneer 7 rocket body that had launched from Cape Canaveral on August 15, 1966. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 65– 67)
August 6 — 8:00 p.m. A Peruvian airliner piloted by Capt. Samuel Sanguaza, copilot César Jordan, and subofficers Oscar Guevara and Jorge Sarguaza encounters a globe of light while flying between Lima, and Pisco, Peru. The light changes color from red to orange and blue as it paces the aircraft for 15 minutes, bobbing up and down, moving closer and receding, before it zooms away as the airplane nears Pisco. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 21–22)
August 8 — Evangelical pastor Estanislao Lugo Contreras is on the shore at Catia La Mar, Vargas, Venezuela, when he sees the water stirring up in a vast round area. The water begins to turn light blue, then whitish, yellowish, then brilliant orange. An orange disc rises out of the sea about 1,650 feet from shore, hovers, then rises obliquely and disappears. It makes an intense buzzing sound. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 54–55)
August 8 — 8:40 p.m. An object shaped like a sharply outlined asymmetrical crescent flies over the Kislovodsk Mountain Astronomical Station near Kislovodsk, North Caucasus, Russia. The object is slightly smaller than the moon with a color described as reddish by some observers, yellow by others. It flies from west to east about 20° above the horizon, moving from the Big Dipper to Cassiopeia in about 30 seconds at a uniform speed. The witnesses are Anatoli Sazanov, a specialist in the ionosphere; V. A. Tsion of the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute; and seven members of a biological expedition. (Felix Ziegel, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” Soviet Life, no. 137 (February 1968): 28; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, p. 61; Hobana and Weverbergh 288–289; Jacques Vallée, UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union: A Cosmic Samizdat, Ballantine, 1992, p. 192)
August 10 — 9:30 p.m. Harry E. King and Michael Swartz see a bright round ball, about 50–60 feet in diameter, in the air about 1,300 feet away near Winter Haven, Florida. It hovers for 3–4 minutes, then moves slowly for a quarter mile, rises, shoots away, and disappears in one second. At 10:00 p.m., they watch a bright light descend for 5 minutes, move back and forth for one minute, then suddenly disappear. (NICAP case file)
August 12 — 2:30 a.m. Robert P. Miedtke and his wife are sleeping in a camper on property belonging to some relatives on County Highway I some 11 miles west of Ogema, Wisconsin. They are awakened by their dog barking outside. They look out the window and see a large, fluorescent, half-moon-shaped object in a neighboring pasture about 450 feet away. It is shining a beam of light at a milk house only 25 feet from their camper. The dog has stopped barking and they can hear none of the usual night sounds. After about one hour, they hear the sound of someone walking in the gravel and sand outside. Three times the footsteps are heard going from north to south. The Miedtkes remain in bed, hoping no one would know they are in the camper. After another hour, just before dawn, they hear the dog whimpering and barking, followed by the muffled noise like a huge generator that fades away after 6–8 seconds. (“Possible Landing in Wisconsin,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, p. 11)
August 13 — 8:00 p.m. Between Pilar de Goiás and Crixás, Goiás, Brazil, a plantation worker at the Estancia de Santa Maria, Ignácio da Souza, is returning home from work when he and his wife see an object in the form of an upside-down basin 115 feet in diameter sitting on the landing strip of the ranch. They initially think it is some flying machine tested by the ranch owner, Ibiracy de Moraes, a wealthy man and former president of the Bank of Brazil. Between the object and the couple, there are three humanoid, child-size beings that they initially think are naked children before realizing that they are hairless creatures wearing a tight suit of yellow. The beings seem to be playing around silently, but then move quickly towards them. Da Souza tells his wife to lock herself up in their house. He is armed with a rifle and frightened, so da Souza shoots the closest of the beings. At the same time, the UFO emits a ray of green light that hits him, throwing him to the ground unconscious. Seeing her husband fall from the kitchen window, his wife runs onto the scene shouting, interposes herself between the beings and the body of her husband, and picks up his rifle. But during this time the beings have retrieved the one that had fallen to ground and quickly flee to enter the craft. After a short time, it slowly rises vertically while emitting a buzz similar to that of a swarm of bees. Taken to the hospital of Goiânia, the state capital, de Souza suffers from nausea and a general numbness. Burns are noted, initially attributed to a toxic plant, but when de Souza and de Moraes hear the erroneous diagnosis and are told what had happened, doctors perform a blood analysis that returns with a diagnosis of advanced leukemia with life expectancy of two months. Da Souza quickly deteriorates, suffers, develops yellowish spots, and dies on October 11. In accordance with his instructions, his wife burns the bed, the mattress, and the clothing that he has used. (Clark III 353–354; Brazil 85–88; Patrick Gross, URECAT, August 15, 2006)
Mid-August — About 12:00 noon. Electrical engineer Albert Fulton and superintendent Sherman Anderson are making rounds at the Nova Scotia Light and Power substation in Caledonia, Nova Scotia. They notice steam rising from one of three large transformers, then Fulton spots two silvery disc-shaped objects maneuvering around the sky some distance away. The pair watches them a they zip back and forth in different directions from horizon to horizon in 3–4 seconds. Each time they leave a silvery line about 10 times their length behind them, which disappears when the objects stop. They watch this spectacle for about one minute, then both discs come to a common point in front of a suddenly visible gray, cigar-shaped object. After stopping briefly the two smaller objects merge into the cigar, taking 12–15 seconds. The large object disappears. (Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects: A Further Look,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 4–5)
August 18 — A CIA report summarizes interviews with unnamed Russian astronomers that may possibly have been conducted by members of the Condon commission. (Central Intelligence Agency, “Report on Conversations with Soviet Scientists on Subject of Unidentified Flying Objects in the USSR,” August 18, 1967; Good Above, pp.
August 22–31 — Low, Roach, and Hynek attend the XIIIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. Low wastes an opportunity to meet with Charles Bowen in London, England, and instead goes to Loch Ness, Scotland, “because neither the Loch Ness monster nor UFOs exist.” (Michael D. Swords, “The USAF-Sponsored Colorado Project for the Scientific Study of UFOs,” 1995 MUFON Symposium Proceedings, MUFON, 1995; Swords 321; Good Above, p. 230)
August 23 — 4:00 a.m. Stanley Moxon is driving on Ontario Highway 15 between Joyceville, Ontario, and Pine Grove Road when he sees a green light in a field to the south. He turns off his lights and drives down a side road to get closer. Minutes later, he turns on his lights again and they shine on a huge metallic disc hovering just above the ground. Two entities, 4 feet tall and dressed in white suits and helmets, appear to be startled and hurry back into the craft, which takes off at tremendous speed. (“Occupant in Ontario,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, p. 14)
August 23 — 8:00 p.m. Two 15-year-olds are strolling around the Kolmården ridge area in Östergötland, Sweden, when they see a reddish glow moving back and forth in the nearby woods. Continuing home, they run across a locked, deserted shack that seems to have some yellowish lights moving around in one room and noises like muted thuds. The red glow reappears moving close to the ground from the west. Suddenly it turns brilliant white and appears to land on the other side of a brook. They run home and see a huge light like a flashlight hovering 13 feet above the ground near the house. They hear a whistling sound coming from the brook and what seem to be footsteps coming toward them. They run to a ravine where they see, about 35 feet away, a small being with a disproportionately large head and wearing dark clothing. It lifts its arms and seems to be holding a box-like apparatus with a tube.
Two thin, wire-like bands appear around the creature’s ankles and give off an intense white light. They run home again. The next day they return to where the being was and find some odd three-toed footprints about 6 inches long. (“‘Monster’ Report from Sweden,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, pp. 1, 5)
August 24 — 5:00 p.m. Ron Hydes is riding his motorcycle near Wodonga, Victoria, Australia, when he is surrounded by a blinding blue-white light that illuminates the road. As he stops, a bright lens-shaped domed disc, estimated to be 25–30 feet in diameter, descends within a few feet of the ground about 100 feet away. Two humanoids about 5–
5.5 feet tall with round helmets and silver coveralls emerge. One steps nearer to the witness, who flees. The object, surrounded by a pinkish glow, follows the motorcycle at about 100 feet off the ground. Hydes can hear a humming sound above the motorcycle’s engine. He stops again and the object hovers, the hum subsiding. After 30 seconds, the color around the object changes from pink to brilliant red, and it tilts up at a 45° angle, then shoots away. (“Occupants Attempt to Lure Motorcyclist,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, pp. 13–14)
August 25 — 5:00 p.m. Ruben Norato sees a “precipitous movement of the water” from the beach at Catia La Mar, Vargas, Venezuela, from which arise “three huge plate-shaped discs” that streak out of sight. (“The Question of Submerging UFO’s,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 5 (March 1968): 5)
August 27 — David Saunders proposes to the Colorado project team that they issue technical reports on whatever phase or case they have concentrated on. These will be circulated among the staff for review but not for veto. They would stand as the author’s own work without censure. Appropriate disclaimers would be attached before they are issued to the public. A final report might be cobbled together from these technical reports. Condon and Low apparently disapprove of this immediately. (Swords 323)
August 27 — 11:20 p.m. Kenneth Flack is passing a car near Texas Creek, Colorado, when his engine and car lights fail. He pulls to the side of the road, along with the car he is passing and a camper-trailer. He sees a large object in a field some 900–1,200 feet away. It is football-shaped and silvery. He approaches it on foot and is hit by a bright light coming from the object that knocks him out. Bystanders from other cars carry him back to the roadside and tell him that he had been frozen in a standing position for 5 minutes. Flack is intensely cold and sleepy, so another unidentified driver gives him a ride back to Pueblo in a camper (“1967 Landing in Colorado,” APRO Bulletin,
March/April 1969, pp. 3–4; Lorenzen, The Shadow of the Unknown, New American Library, 1970, pp. 138–139; Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (September 2011): 21; Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp. 143–144; CUFOS case file)
August 28–29 — 11:30 p.m.–1:10 a.m. Leslie and Jacqueline Dowdell see a 3–4 dancing lights zigzagging to the northeast over Rivers, Manitoba. The lights resolve into one object the color of a mandarin orange that hovers for 2–3 minutes, changing colors, before zooming away to the north. At 12:30 a.m., Cpl. A. Fedun of CFB Rivers [now closed] sees a round ball of orange light moving northwest. At 12:45 a.m., Commissionaire G. Stefanson hears a loud noise, and LAC J. Hebert and Judy Ross, driving one mile east of Rivers, watch a white flashing light that remains stationary for 30–50 seconds. They later find some odd dust on their car and some bubbling of the paint on the top. At 1:00 a.m., Cpl. K. McArthur hears another loud blast that rattles windows on the base. At 1:10 a.m., LAC K. Taylor, 8 miles east of Rivers, sees a red ball of flame trailed by a blue light at 3,000–4,000 feet. An investigating team from RCAF Trainiong Command Headquarters in Winnipeg immediately comes out to investigate. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 251–260)
August 29 — 10:30 a.m. François Delpeuch, 13, and his sister Anne-Marie, 9, are herding cows at Cussac, Cantal, France. They see four small black beings about 47 inches tall with large heads and pointed chins around a landed sphere 15 feet in diameter. As the UFO begins to take off, the beings are sucked into it head-first, and it leaves very quickly in a blinding light. The police note “sulfur odor and the dried grass” at the landing spot. The case is reopened and studied in depth by Claude Poher. (Wikipedia, “Close encounter of Cussac”; Jöel Mesnard and Claude Pavy, “Encounter with Devils,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1968): 7–9; Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story. Signet, 1969, pp. 280–282; [Claude Poher], “Enquête sur l’Observation du 29.08.67 de Cussac (Cantal),” Groupe d’Étude des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés, Centre Nationale d’Étude Spatiales, 1978; Gildas Bourdais, “The Death and Rebirth of Official French UFO Studies,” IUR 31, no. 2 (June 2007): 16)
September? — Saunders and Levine visit Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio to look at the Project Blue Book files. They find cases stored adjacent to the official files, and some in a classified safe. Saunders also finds problems when he examines the statistics in Blue Book Special Report no. 14. Plus all of Battelle’s original IBM cards have been thrown away. (UFOs Yes, 115–116)
September or October — 4:45 p.m. Some 40 soldiers and officers at an antiaircraft artillery unit stationed at Floreşti, Romania, watch an aluminum-colored object hovering about 2,400 feet in the sky. The unit commander reports it to the General Command in Bucharest, who order him to shoot it down if it makes any hostile maneuvers. The object stays in position for more than two hours, but disappears after a white cloud passes in front of it. (Romania 16–17)
September — 1:30 a.m. Capt. Grigory Demyanovich Oleynikov of the Russian fishing boat Kama is in Vyborg Bay in western Russia when he notices a luminescent, milky-white disc descending through the cloud layer. It stops and hovers at an altitude of 1,300 feet and seems to have a diameter of about 50 feet. The bottom portion contains nozzles that emit flames. Athen in complete silence it takes off straight up. (Stonehill and Mantle, Russia’s USO Secrets, Flying Disk, 2020, p. 153)
September — The Midwest UFO Network publishes its first issue of Skylook. ()
September — The CIA staff’s frank opinions on Vietnam are sometimes modified before reaching President Johnson. At one point the CIA analysts estimate enemy strength at 500,000, while the military insists it is only 270,000. No amount of discussion resolves the difference. In September 1967, the CIA under DCI Richard Helms goes along with the military’s lower number for the combat strength of the Vietnamese Communist forces. This leads a CIA analyst directly involved in this work to file a formal complaint against Helms, which is accorded due process within the agency. (Wikipedia, “Richard Helms”)
September — Afternoon. Paul Stehlin, military aviator and vice-president of Bugatti, is flying his own plane near Vélizy- Villacoublay, Yvelines, France, when he sees a silver, cigar-shaped object beside him. The object accompanies the aircraft for a few minutes, then it accelerates and leaves the plane behind at terrific speed. (NICAP case file)
Early September — Evan Evanson, 18, is returning home in a pickup truck on Highway 36 south of Taber, Alberta, when his engine heats up and he pulls to the side of the road to let it cool off. Through the driver’s window he sees a soundless, green, glowing object like two plates put together. It seems near enough to touch. The music on the truck radio is replaced with a beeping sound. Suddenly the object disappears, and Evanson notices that the truck engine has stopped. (“First Sighting of UFO Reported at Taber,” Calgary (Alberta) Herald, September 5, 1967, p. 49)
September 1? — The Colorado project obtains a third-hand report of a UFO sighting at Edwards AFB, California, on or around this date. A civilian employee at the base has seen the report, mentions it to a relative, who then discusses it with a scientist cooperating with the project. According to the story, 6 UFOs follow an X-15 as it lands. When
project members call Edwards, they get a runaround. After 2 weeks of phone calls, they find that no X-15 flew on September 1. (There are flights on August 21, 25, and October 3 and 4, however.) But no one denies that a UFO sighting took place. (UFOs Yes, 124–125; Condon, pp. 341–342)
September 4 — 5:10 a.m. Police officer P. A. Andrade is on duty at city hall in Valencia, Venezuela, when he hears a humming noise and footsteps in a nearby garage. He meets a dwarf, 3 feet tall, with a big head and bulging, reddish, glowing eyes, wearing a silver-colored, metallic-looking coverall. Andrade points his automatic weapon at the creature, but a voice from a hovering disc says in Spanish that he should not harm the creature. The dwarf then tries to convince Andrade to “come to their world,” adding it is “very distant and much larger than the Earth, and with many advantages for Earthlings.” When Andrade declines, the creature flies back into the object, which takes off. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 82; Vallée, Magonia, pp. 351–352; Mark Cashman, “Behavioral Classification System for UFO Occupants,” IUR 24, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 18)
September 4 — Dawn. A paperboy in Clevedon, England, discovers a 5-foot-wide, saucer-shaped, metallic object in a field. He calls the police, who send it to the guided weapons division of British Aerospace, whose chief design engineer declares it an expensive hoax. Soon five identical objects are found in fields and golf courses in the southern part of England. The sites lie on a straight path 220 miles long that spans 1° of latitude, running west to east from Clevedon to the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames Estuary. A USAF intelligence officer takes photos of one in Welford, Berkshire, and chemists with Britain’s Home Office analyze samples of a foul liquid that is seeping from one of the objects. But the objects are a prank involving 15 engineering apprentices, primarily Christopher Southall and Roger Palmer, at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough. The objects are made of fiberglass, and the smelly liquid is a fermented mixture of flour and water. (Wikipedia, “1967 British flying saucer hoax”; Clark III 604–605; Jenny Randles, UFO Retrievals, Blandford, 1995, pp. 108–111; John Keeling, “Invasion 1967,” Fortean Times 228 (November 2007): 32–41; “The Great Saucer Invasion: The Day Six ‘Spaceships’ Landed in England,” BBC News, September 3, 2017; Curt Collins, “The UK Saucer Invasion of 1967,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, August 30, 2019)
September 4 — The Industrial Psychologists’ section of the American Psychological Association sponsors a program on “Problems and Methods of Gathering Data on UFOs.” Participants include Harold Greenwald, Richard H. Hall, Gustave J. Rath, R. Leo Sprinkle, and David Saunders. (Story, p. 413)
September 5 — Saunders suggests to Low that his academic commitments might require a reorganization of project duties, namely that Low, Roach, and himself report directly to Condon, with others reporting to them. Low blows up. Low ultimately agrees but replaces Roach with Norm Levine. (UFOs Yes, 139–140)
September 6 — 9:50 p.m. Several witnesses at Meir, Stoke-in-Trent, England, see a vertically oriented “sausage-shaped cloud” in the eastern sky, behind which a light flashes for about 20 seconds at irregular intervals. A bright, glowing orange oval then emerges from the cloud and heads southeast at “fantastic speed.” A light again flashes in the cloud for about 10 seconds, then stops. The mode of disappearance of the cloud is not reported. (Roger Stanway and Anthony R. Pace, Flying Saucer Report, UFOs: Unidentified, Undeniable, Newchapel Observatory, 1968, pp. 14–15; Herbert S. Taylor, “Cloud Cigars: A Further Look,” IUR 30, no. 3 (May 2006): 12)
September 9 — A 3-year-old saddle horse named Lady [not Snippy] belonging to Nellie Lewis of the Harry King Ranch in the San Luis Valley, Colorado, just south of Great Sand Dunes National Monument, is found dead a couple days after it has gone missing. The animal appears to have been skinned from the neck to the shoulders, which are nothing but bleached bones. The cut in the neck looks smooth and surgical. The soil beneath the horse is damp, and there is a medicine-like smell. A nearby bush is flattened oddly. Alamosa County Sheriff Ben Phillips blames Lady’s death on lightning. A few days later, rangers at Great Sand Dunes arrest John Henry Altshuler, a pathologist at Ross Medical Center in Denver, for trespassing after dark; he has actually gone to the area to look for UFOs. When they find out he is a specialist in blood coagulation, they say they will drop the arrest record if he takes a look at the dead horse. He finds that Lady’s lungs, heart, and thyroid are completely missing and finds the complete absence of blood distressing. Altshuler begins to think the dead horse has something to do with the UFOs he had seen when he was in the Great Sand Dunes. Nellie Lewis also admits she has been watching something in the sky every night. Duane Martin, a US Forest Service ranger, records a pulse of unusually high radioactivity near Lady’s carcass, although others think it is only background radiation. The Pueblo Chieftain reports on the case in its October 5 edition and it gets picked up by the AP. Pathologist Robert O. Adams, chief of surgery at Colorado State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, investigates Lady for the Colorado project and concludes that bacteria, birds, and coyotes are responsible for the lack of blood and organs. He finds an infection in the horse’s right flank that could have killed it; the cut at the neck might have been someone’s mercy killing. “Exhaust marks” found are probably fungal infestations, and indentations are probably weathered hoofprints. Alamosa veterinarian Wallace Leary later finds evidence of two bullet holes in Lady’s rump. (“The Snippy Case,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, pp. 1, 6; “Colorado Horse Death Ruled No UFO Case,” UFO
Investigator 4, no. 2 (October 1967): 4; Donald Merker, “The Appaloosa from Alamosa,” Fate 21, no. 3 (March
1968): 35, 45–52; Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 148–158; Condon, pp. 344–347; UFOs Yes, 155–169; “Town Gets Snippy about Skeleton of Mutilated Horse,” Denver Post, December 8, 2006; Greg Newkirk, “Death on the Great Sand Dunes: The Strange Case of Snippy the Horse, the First Cattle Mutilation,” Week in Weird, January 8, 2013; Sylvia Lobato, “After 50 Years, Snippy Still a Mystery,” Alamosa (Colo.) Valley Courier, September 29, 2017; Clark III 130–132)
September 10 — Several residents of Bruzual, Apure, Venezuela, watch a white, luminous disc following the course of the Apure River from west to east at low altitude. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 69)
September 11 — Richard H. Hall resigns as assistant director of NICAP for personal reasons and is replaced by Gordon I.
R. Lore. (“Assistant Director Hall Resigns, Is Replaced by Gordon Lore,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 2 (October 1967): 2)
September 11 — 3:30 p.m. About a dozen employees of the Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station near Kincardine, Ontario, watch a UFO pass over the plant in an easterly direction. At one point it hovers above Lake Huron about a mile and a half offshore and drops something into the water. Other plant workers see similar objects over the lake or above the plant on five succeeding nights. The plant isn’t operational for another year. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 122–123)
September 11 — 9:30 p.m. During a raging storm near Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina, a family watches a huge, glowing orange object hovering in a field about 1,000 feet away from the farmhouse. The object emits brilliant beams of light. After 4 hours it ascends and is lost to sight in seconds. The next day, the witnesses find a sootlike material on the ground and tracks about 2 inches wide in the flattened grass. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 69)
September 11 — 10:42 p.m. According to radar operators at Kincheloe AFB [now Chippewa County International Airport] south of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, more than 20 radar targets appear and disappear over the middle of Lake Superior over an 80-minute period, tracked at speeds of up to 2,000 mph, sometimes turning at sharp right angles and involving separation and merging of distinct targets. Radar at Duluth, Minnesota, has also picked up the targets. The Colorado project sends John Ahrens and Norm Levine to investigate. They check out rumors of visual sightings at Sault Ste. Marie, but these do not conform to the radar trackings. At Duluth, they draw a complete blank with denials all around. (NICAP, “17 Unknowns in 80 Minute Period”; UFOs Yes, 123–124; Condon, pp. 164–165; Sparks, p. 326)
September 13 — Condon gives a dinner speech at a spectroscopy symposium at the National Bureau of Standards in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and talks primarily about contactees and crackpots. (UFOs Yes, 247–248)
September 14 or 17 — 10:50 a.m. “Fábio Jose Diniz,” 16, is walking along an asphalt path near the deserted grounds of an isolation unit at Hospital da Baleia on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He notices an object in an adjacent football field. It is shaped like a mushroom with a domed top and surrounded by a row of portholes and a thick central “stalk” in contact with the soil. A hazy screen like a force field drops around the object, and a door appears out of nowhere and slides upward along the column. Two humanlike figures, 6 feet tall, emerge, dressed in one-piece diving suits of greenish material and helmets. One of them carries a tube-like implement, and the other has a probe sticking up from his helmet and talks to Diniz in Portuguese, telling him not to run away. He starts running anyway, but the figure tells him to come back the next day or they will take his family. The figure reenters the UFO, which takes off vertically. He sees psychologist and UFO researcher Hulvio Aleixo, who says he is in severe shock. At the landing site, police find some foul-smelling black material that crumbles easily. This is examined by geophysicist Roberto Murto, who finds it is made of iron, magnesium, and silica. An impression like a large footprint is also found. Aleixo subjects the boy to psychological testing and he finds no disorder. The UFO fails to return the next day. (“Flying Saucer Is Reported,” Baltimore (Md.) Sun, September 25, 1967, p. 3; Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 85; Jenny Randles, UFO Conspiracy, Cassell, 1987, pp. 97– 99; Clark III 177–178; Brazil 88–91; Mark Cashman, “Behavioral Classification System for UFO Occupants,” IUR 24, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 18–19)
September 15 — Astronomer William Markowitz publishes an article in Science magazine that declares extraterrestrial UFOs to be a priori impossible because they do not follow the laws of physics. (William Markowitz, “The Physics and Metaphysics of Unidentified Flying Objects,” Science 157 (1967): 1274–1279)
September 15 — 8:50 p.m. Separate witnesses in Winsted, Connecticut, see a large glowing, pulsating object hovering nearby and several small beings with large heads moving around it. The object’s light dims when cars approach. (“Flap Continues in the States,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, p. 9; Condon, pp. 347–351)
September 17 — Roach resigns from the Colorado project in order to pursue academic interests. (UFOs Yes, 140)
September 18 — Saunders, Low, and Condon meet for 3 hours to discuss Saunders’s suggestions for improving the public image. Saunders argues that the public can tell the project is headed toward a negative conclusion. Condon says
that if they find extraterrestrial evidence, he would not disclose it to the public. (UFOs Yes, 140–141; Swords 324)
September 18 — 1:00 a.m. Russell Hill is stationed as a forestry lookout at the Raspberry Ridge station near Mount Burke, Alberta. He hears a strange pulsating sound as a green light sweeps the walls of the lookout cabin. He sees an object hovering to the southwest and giving off a greenish glow. He attempts to radio the nearby Highwood Ranger Station, but the radio ane lights do not work. The object turns white and shoots up straight into the sky. (“Object Photographed in Canada,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, p. 11)
September 20 — NICAP provisionally withdraws its support from the Colorado project. Saunders tells Low about it. (UFOs Yes, 141–142)
September 20 — 8:30–9:30 p.m. Seven people in Stoke-on-Trent, England, see a large, bright, silver-colored, oval-shaped object almost overhead and moving slowly to the northeast. It stops and hovers, then 2–3 smaller silvery objects emerge from the larger one and move rapidly away in different directions. The large UFO moves off to the northeast and slowly disappears. (Roger H. Stanway and Anthony R. Pace, Flying Saucer Report, UFOs: Unidentified, Undeniable, Newchapel Observatory, 1968, p. 16; Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects: A Further Look,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 26)
September 20 — 10:30 p.m. Mrs. Charles Pasko notices a peach-pink glow in the woods outside her home near Winsted, Connecticut. Thinking it is a fire, she wakes up her son Jack and they watch it for a while. Three days later her husband and a forest ranger try to find the burned spot. They locate a burned and depressed teardrop-shaped area about 35 feet in diameter. They also find three triangular imprints forming an equilateral triangle with sides 10 feet long, and a fourth depression in the center. Other witnesses had seen a UFO coming in at a slant, breaking and burning tree leaves. Several tall trees in the area are broken off at the top. (“September Landing in Conn.,” APRO Bulletin, Nov./Dec. 1967, p. 4)
September 22 — 8:00 p.m. Simon Williams and his son Eugene, 14, are starting a pickup truck with jumper cables in Allen [or Fittstown], Oklahoma, when they see a disc with a brilliant silvery light and smaller flashing lights around the rim heading west. It seems to come closer and hover above a highway. Eugene thinks he can see the headlights of passing cars reflected on its bottom surface. It then proceeds slowly west. (“Flap Continues in the States,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, p. 9; Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 168)
September 25 — Saunders, Low, and Condon have another meeting at Condon’s home. Saunders tells Condon that the problems with NICAP would not have arisen if Condon had been more circumspect with his negative remarks. Condon says he understands but offers no change. (UFOs Yes, 142)
September 27 — BUFORA researchers Anthony R. Pace and Roger H. Stanway visit the S4 UFO desk at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, London, England. They talk to a Mr. Cassells, who assures them that all UFO reports are treated seriously but the Ministry’s interest is solely in national defense. He adds that no person from the Ministry ever makes on-the-spot inquiries or field investigations. (Roger H. Stanway and Antony R. Pace, Flying Saucer Report: UFOs Unidentified, Unidentifiable, 1972; Good Above, pp. 67–68)
September 27–29 — The Rocky Mountain News publishes a commentary by Condon wherein he debunks UFOs and disparages NICAP’s contributions. It quotes Low in a similar vein. Condon talks to the project staff and retracts nothing, only saying that he was misquoted about being disenchanted about the project. Project members hold a meeting without Low and Condon to decide what to do. Levine pushes for mass resignation. Craig is the sole dissenter. Saunders sides with Levine but wants to explore other strategies. Ultimately, they decide to prepare their own report, one “so compelling that Condon would be forced to accept it on its merits.” (UFOs Yes, 142– 146; Swords 325)
September 28 — 1:30 a.m. Omar Amaya T., chief dispatcher at the Maiquetia International Airport [now the Simón Bolívar International Airport], Venezuela, watches three luminous disc pass across the sky from north to south. Suddenly one lags behind and dives toward the sea but veers up just before contact. Resuming its position in the formation, it joins the other objects as they disappear to the east. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 70)
September 28 — 4:00 p.m. Many people in Caracas, Venezuela, watch a luminous metallic disc cross the sky with an oscillating motion and appear to land on Cerro El Ávila. A Similar object is seen taking off from the same spot about 2 hours later. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, p. 70)
September 29 — 8:30 p.m. Four workers in a restaurant at Wernersville, Pennsylvania, are alerted by a neighbor to go outside and watch nine red, pulsating, cigar-shaped objects flying northeastward. A large triangle-shaped object, also pulsating red, flies into view. The triangle stops and changes colors to white, green, then back to red. It takes off in a zigzag motion to the northeast. (R. G. Shunk, “Letter,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 6, no. 1 (Feb./March 1985): 4)
October — The DOSAAF Cosmonautics Committee invites the Soviet UFO Study Group to function under its auspices. (Wikipedia, “Felix Ziegel”)
October — 8:30 p.m. David R. Smith watches a diffuse object with a series of 5–6 lighted square and oval windows about 450–600 feet away at treetop level near Homer, Louisiana. It rises and heads south. After 50 seconds, the lights blink out. (NICAP case file)
October 3 — Pilot William “Pete” Knight reaches a speed of 4,519 mph (Mach 6.72) in a North American X-15 rocket plane, a record that stands today. (Wikipedia, “William J. Knight”)
October 4 — From early evening until 11:30 p.m., numerous independent witnesses observe unexplained aerial activity in Nova Scotia. Near Sambro at 9:00 pm, Capt. Leo Howard Mersey and 20 crewmembers of the MV Nickerson see four brilliant red lights in a rectangular formation that appear to be on or just above the water. Occasionally one flares up so brightly that it causes an afterimage in their eves. The objects are also tracked on ship’s radar. They file a report with the Lunenburg CMP office. Between 11:00 and 11:30 pm, northwest of Brier Island, the captain and crew of a fishing vessel see a brilliant white light the size of the moon. As they watch, three brilliant yellow lights emerge and form a triangle around the larger light. The satellite objects then move across the sky and back at high speed. Observations are also made by other vessels. Five miles southwest of Weymouth, a policeman and three game wardens see an orange-colored light just above the tree line moving silently and slowly with spark-like objects emanating. At about 11:20 p.m., just west of Shag Harbour, Laurie Wickens and four other teenagers driving in a car along Highway 3 see an object flying low, flashing four lights one after the other, in a straight line. It appears to be slowly descending at a 45° angle. Multiple witnesses hear a whistling sound “like a bomb,” then a “whoosh,” and finally a loud bang. When next seen by the teens, the object has hit the water’s surface 820– 980 feet offshore. It drifts on the surface, showing a pale-yellow light. Wickens contacts the RCMP detachment in Barrington Passage and reports he has seen a large airplane or small airliner crash into the waters off Shag Harbour. Within about 15 minutes, 10 RCMP officers arrive at the scene. Concerned for survivors, the RCMP detachment contacts the Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax to advise them of the situation and ask if any aircraft were missing. Before any attempt at rescue can be made, the object starts to sink and disappears from view. A rescue mission is quickly assembled. Within half an hour of the crash, local fishing boats go out to the crash site in the waters of the Gulf of Maine off Shag Harbour to look for survivors. No survivors, bodies, or debris are found, either by the fishermen or by a Canadian Coast Guard search and rescue cutter, which arrives about an hour later from nearby Clark’s Harbour. By the next morning, RCC Halifax has determined that no aircraft are missing. The same morning, RCC Halifax also sends a priority telex to the Air Desk at Royal Canadian Air Force headquarters in Ottawa, which handles all civilian and military UFO sightings, informing them of the crash and that all conventional explanations such as aircraft or flares have been dismissed. The head of the Air Desk, Squadron Leader William Bain sends another priority telex to the Royal Canadian Navy headquarters concerning the “UFO report” and recommends an underwater search be mounted. The RCN in turn sends another priority telex tasking Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic with carrying out the search. A detachment of RCN divers from Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic is assembled on the HMCS Granby on October 6 and for the next three days they comb the seafloor looking for an object. The final report says no trace of an object is found. In the 1990s, researcher Chris Styles finds evidence that there is a second crash the same night. Witnesses see American naval exercises in Shelburne Harbour 30 miles to the northeast. Speculation is that the original object may have traveled underwater from Shag Harbour to Shelburne. (Wikipedia, “Shag Harbour UFO incident”; Sanderson, InvRes, pp. 38–39; Condon, pp. 351–353; Good Need, pp. 279–282; Don Ledger, “UFO Crash at Shag Harbour,” IUR 22, no. 4 (Winter 1997–1998): 8–9, 20; Don Ledger and Chris Styles, Dark Object, Dell, 2001; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 94–98; Chris Rutkowski, “The Cold, Hard Facts about UFOs in Canada,” IUR 34, no. 1 (September 2011): 9–10; “The 1967 Shag Harbour UFO Crash: Documents Related to Crash,” Roswell Proof; “Shag Harbour News Articles,” Roswell Proof; Clark 284–285; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 129–137)
October 5 — 9:30 p.m. Colorado Superior Court Judge Charles E. Bennett and his wife Christina spot three circular, red- orange objects traveling from the east to the southeast in a triangular formation over Denver, Colorado. They can hear a distinct humming or whirring sound. They move out of sight in 6 seconds. (“Flap Continues in the States,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, p. 10)
October 6 — 7:00 p.m. Radar at Vandenberg AFB, near Lompoc, California, detects a very large stationary object some miles over the Pacific Ocean off the Northern California coast. Later, radar detects numerous small but strong targets traveling eastward in irregular flight. (NICAP, “Condon Case 35”; Condon, pp. 171–172, 353–365)
October 7 — 8:00 p.m. Russell Hill is sitting down to dinner at the Raspberry Ridge Lookout Station in Alberta when the cabin lights begin to flicker. He goes out to check the generator and sees an odd green light moving slowly up the valley from south to north. It approaches to within 500 feet of the cabin. The object is about 75 feet in diameter
and looks like two bowls clamped together. Around the rim is a pulsating green light that seems to come from a neon tube. Another green light is rotating slowly inside the top portion, and there are porthole-shaped indentations in the side. Suddenly the light on the rim is extinguished, the upper gfreen light turns white, and the object ascends at a terrific speed, trailing jets of flame. (“Object Photographed in Canada,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct.
1967, p. 11)
October 7–9 — Capture and death of Che Guevara in Bolivia. Félix Rodríguez, a Cuban exile turned CIA Special Activities Division operative, advised Bolivian troops during the hunt for Guevara in Bolivia. In addition, the 2007 documentary My Enemy’s Enemy alleges that Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie advised and possibly helped the CIA orchestrate Guevara’s capture. (Wikipedia, “Che Guevara”)
October 9 — 5:40 p.m. The 13-year-old son of a prominent businessman is riding a bicycle along a wash in the back of his home in the area of the Tucson Speedway in Arizona. He comes across a cylindrical metallic object standing on end and sitting on two legs about 44 feet away from him. The legs end in circular pads and are joined by a curved bar. The object, which is making a low-pitched hum, is about 8 feet tall and more than 2 feet wide. The boy approaches it for a better view, but it takes off vertically and disappears in 12 seconds. He finds two impressions in the hard surface of the wash, 13.4 inches across and about 42 inches apart (measuring from the outer edges). (“Landing at Tucson,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, pp. 1, 4)
October 10 — The Lorenzens visit the Colorado project and find its investigatory procedures “sadly lacking,” with no standard report form or methodology. They also meet with Boulder Daily Camera journalist R. Roger Harkins, who has been covering the Colorado project. They give him a 7-point rationale on why the CIA might be interested in UFOs, just to see if it gets published. Harkins dictates the story to the Associated Press, but it is never published. The Lorenzens suspect the project has a CIA mole. (Low did work for the CIA in 1949 when it was aiding Albanian resistance fighters.) (UFOs Yes, 129, 175–176; Lorenzen, Encounters with UFO Occupants, Berkley Medallion, 1976, p. 5; Robin W. Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961, Morrow, pp. 396–397)
October 11 — Rex Heflin is visited by a strange group of men in air force uniforms. He obtains their names. They ask him about his 1965 photos and topics like the Bermuda Triangle. He notices a figure in the back seat of their car and a violet glow. Heflin thinks he is being photographed or recorded. The FM radio acts strangely. ()
October 11 — 8:00 p.m. Nora Tibbs is driving on Highway 2 near Aldersyde, Alberta, when the headlights, radio, and car engine stop. She notices an oval-shaped object with a turret on top that begins to circle her car. It has two white lights and a lighted-up underside. It circles the car four or five times at a height of 1,000 feet, then flies away. The witness feels cold during the sighting. The car engine starts by itself as the object leaves. (“Object Photographed in Canada,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, p. 11; Ted Phillips, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings, Center for UFO Studies, 1978, p. 37)
October 12 — Night. Comedian Dick Gregory is at a party with friends at Big Sur, California, when three lights appear in the sky. One is fiery red, while the other two are bright green. The objects dart about sideways, backwards, in circles, in jagged lines, and in formation. When Gregory’s writer, Jim Saunders, signals with a flashlight, the objects seem to respond by moving in the same direction as the beam. The partygoers watch the lights for about 40 minutes. Gregory takes two Polaroid photographs that show a red object at the top and two green ones at the bottom. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 131)
October 13 — McDonnell Douglas aerospace engineer Robert M. Wood briefs the Colorado project on UFOs. Subsequently, Wood writes Condon a critical but polite letter listing his concerns about the project’s shortcomings. He later learns that Condon has contacted CEO James Smith McDonnell and tried to get him fired. (Robert M. Wood, “A Little Physics…A Little Friction: A Close Encounter with the Condon Committee,” IUR 18, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1993): 6–10)
October 14 — 2:30 a.m. Physicist Lewis E. Hollander Jr. and his wife and son are driving near Mendota, California, when they see a reddish-orange light source hovering close to the road. They then notice a triangular shape beneath the light. Thirty seconds later it moves upward to the west, increasing its speed. The triangular shape fades, and Hollander notices a white glow (“definitely an ionization color”) behind it. It disappears at an extreme altitude after 3 minutes. (NICAP case file)
October 14 — 7:45 p.m. A father and son are returning from a fishing trip when they notice an odd orange object like a “haystack on fire” landed in the desert near Ouray, Utah. They stop, get out of the car, and watch. The object lifts off immediately, looking like a half-moon in shape and size. It then goes over to the Moon and flies a loop around it, keeping its flat side down. Then it flies across the Moon’s face and leaves to the northwest. (Frank B. Salisbury, The Utah UFO Display, Devin-Adair, 1974, pp. 53–55; Michael D. Swords, “We Know Where You Live,” IUR 30, no. 2 (January 2006): 10)
October 17 — Rep. Louis C. Wyman (R-N.H.) submits House Resolution 946 for a full UFO investigation by the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. (“Investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects,” Congressional Record, House, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., October 17, 1967, vol. 113, part 21, p. 28949)
October 18 — 400 individuals attend the first meeting of the UFO Study Group of the All-Union Committee on Cosmonautics of the Russian DOSAAF. Retired Soviet Air Force Maj. Gen. Porfiri Stolyarov is elected chairman and Felix Ziegel agrees to be deputy chairman. Members include author Alexander Kazantsev, engineer Arkady Tikhonov, a cosmonaut, 18 scientists, and 200 qualified observers stationed throughout the country. (“Late News: Official Russian Move on UFOs,” Flying Saucer Review 13, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1967): 2; Hobana and Weverbergh 35; Good Above, p. 232)
October 21 — 6:16 a.m. Two control tower operators and an observer at the south end of the runway at Blytheville Air Force Base [now Arkansas International Airport] in Blytheville, Arkansas, see two dark oblong objects flying east to west at about 1,200–1,500 feet. They are tracked by RAPCON radar for 2 miles. They make a turn to the southwest and disappear. (NICAP, “RAPCON Tracks Object, Two Objects Observed from the Ground”; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 60, 75)
October 21 — 10:00 p.m. Ivan Ritter, Jerry Bennet, and two other teens are driving east out of Duncan, Oklahoma, on the new State Highway 7. They see something in the road ahead, far out of the range of their headlights. When the driver turns on his high-beam lights, they see three men who seem to fly off the road and disappear. They are about 4 feet tall and wearing tight-fitting blue-green clothing. Their faces appear human, but with large ears. The next morning, Ritter and Bennet look around for evidence at the landing site, but all they find is a small, four-toes footprint in the muddy bottom of a creek bed about 300 feet from the road. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 84–85)
October 22 — Night. Edward Fortney and another real-estate agent are locking up for the night in Charleswood, a suburb of Winnipeg, Manitoba, when they notice a formation of brilliant red, pulsating lights above an adjacent field.
They are joined by six other people who have stopped their car to look at the lights. Two similar lights appear and take up a position near the formation. The objects then rise and move away noiselessly in formation. Floating above Canada Highway 100, they appear to change positions, forming a perfect triangle. Fortney looks at them through binoculars and sees dark rectangular objects that the lights are attached to. The formation dips and bobs toward a line of high-voltage towers half a mile away. The three lights in triangular formation break up and form a single file, the wires and towers lighting up with a red glow as they speed over them. They are last seen traveling northwest. On his way home, Fortney experiences a “skullbuster” headache that lasts until midnight.
The next day, he visits the site in the field and finds child-like footprints in the moist soil, 7 inches long and under 3 inches wide, leading to and from a peculiar circular pile of fist-sized stones. The heel marks seem deeply impressed in the soil. Fortney also experiences leg and back pain, sunburn on his face and hands, and a yellow- green coating on his tongue. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 47–50)
October 24 — 4:00 a.m. Two police constables, Roger Willey and Clifford Waycott, chase a bright cross-shaped light in their patrol car at 90 mph between Holsworthy and Hatherleigh on the A307 road, Devon, England. The object appears to land behind some trees, but takes off before they can reach the site, though they approach to within 120 feet of the object. The UFO is later observed to rendezvous in the sky with a similar object. Other policemen report a UFO on this day and the following day. (Bernard Wignall, “The Okehampton Incident,” Flying Saucer Review 13, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1967): 5; UFOFiles2, pp. 75–76; Geoff Falla, “The Flying Cross Episode,” BUFORA, 2012; Ian Ridpath, “Devon ‘Flying Cross’ of 1967 Revisited,” Ian Ridpath’s UFO Skeptic, March 2021)
October 24 — 9:30 p.m. Donald Chiszar, 13, and Pat Crosier, 10, are sitting on the Crosier front porch in Newfield, New York, when they see a bright disc-like object approach them with its leading edge tilted toward them. On top is a knob-like protuberance with an antenna and hanging beneath the object is a “square box” full of red, green, and white lights. Two humanoid figures and control panels are visible through windows. The object then tilts back and shoots out of sight. Their hand-held radios produce loud static during the sighting. (“Flap Continues in the States,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1967, p. 10; Richard H. Hall, “Dyad ‘Scout Craft,’” IUR 25, no. 4 (Winter 2000–2001): 23–24; Condon, pp. 375–379)
October 25 — 3:15 p.m. R. G. Putnam, a brakeman on a train running from Truro, Nova Scotia, to Moncton, New Brunswick, when he sees a disc with green vapor billowing from it pacing the train at treetop level near Wentworth Station, Nova Scotia. Putnam feels an intense blast of radiation, forcing him to cover his face with his hands to look at it. The object soon drifts away from the train, tips to a 45° angle, then turns to a vertical poistion. A jet arrives, seemingly in pursuit, and the object levels out, taking on the appearance of a cigar-shaped cloud.
Both fly out of sight to the west after 35 minutes of observation. One week later, the hair on the back of Putnam’s
hands disappears, his hands shrivel up, and his eyes are sore and swollen. Two weeks later, his chest and throat get sore. He reports the sighting to the RCMP and the Canadian Forces, but apparently gets no response. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 104–105)
October 26 — 11:25 a.m. J. B. W. “Angus” Brooks, a former BOAC pilot and photo interpreter, is walking his Dalmatian and German shepherd at Moigne Downs near Ringstead Bay, Dorset, England. An odd-looking craft descends and hovers at an altitude of 200–300 feet at a distance of about a quarter mile from them for 22 minutes. The German shepherd has been foraging for game; when she returns she seems “distraught” as she stands beside Brooks. Her ears are pricked, indicating she is worried about the sounds she is hearing, although Brooks can detect no sound from the object. The odd-shaped craft has a central round chamber estimated to be 25 feet in diameter and 12 feet thick. Four long slender fuselages (estimated 75 feet long and 8 feet wide) extend from the central chamber. In flight, one of the 4 fuselages leads, while the other three are together in the rear. As the object slows to hover, the fuselages move to form a cross. The object rotates 90°, then remains motionless for 22 minutes despite strong winds. Upon departure, the leading fuselage is not the one that led on approach. The remaining 3 fuselages come together in the rear as on the approach, and the object climbs away with increasing speed. The craft appears translucent, taking on the color of the sky above it. There are dark shadows along the bases of the fuselages and the center chamber. On future visits to this area, the German shepherd appears nervous. (Angus Brooks, “Remarkable Sighting near Dorset,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1968): 3–4; R. H. B. Winder, “Comment on the Angus Brooks Sighting,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1968): 4–5; “‘Flying Cross’ UFOs over Britain,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 3 (Nov./Dec. 1967): 3; “Important New Details on Flying Cross,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 4 (Jan./Feb. 1968): 4–5; Good Above, pp. 63–64, 455; UFOFiles2, pp. 77–79)
October 27 — 3:00 a.m. Charlie Little, the pilot of a Piper-Twin Comanche, with two other pilots and a passenger on board, is flying over the Atlantic northeast of Jacksonville, Florida. They see a bright light, which becomes visible as six huge, round, bright-white lights in a horizontal row on a darker object. It approaches on a collision course and is seen to be a gray equilateral triangle with a triangular opening at its center. The object makes an unbanked 180° turn, then takes off and disappears in a flash. (Willy Smith, “A Huge ‘Open’ Triangular UFO,” IUR 9, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1984): 4–6; Philip J. Klass, “Letter,” IUR 10, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1985): 13; “Charles Little Responds,”
IUR 10, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1095): 13)
October 27 — 3:00 a.m. A waitress driving home in Parshall, North Dakota, sees a large, round, revolving object with alternating triangular areas of coloration. The object is low and moving horizontally an estimated two blocks away. As it paces her car, she sees 2–3 white light beams coming down vertically from the object. Her car drives like it has flat tires or rocks that are hitting the bottom of the chassis. A second witness, police Lt. Glen G. Brunsell, sees a low-altitude, bright round light like a welding-torch that illuminates the ground. The object moves slowly with vertical oscillations and changes color from blue to green-white. It departs vertically, disappearing in 5 seconds. (“AF Log Reveals Wave,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 7 (July/Aug. 1968): 6–7; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 101–102)
October 27 — 3:30 a.m. Truck driver Chris R. Helgesen observes a spinning, reddish, round object, about 100 feet in diameter, pace his truck for about half a mile on US Highway 83 north of Max, North Dakota. The object then hovers above a field, paces the truck again, hovers, paces the truck again (stopping when it stops), turns blue, picks up speed, turns green, then shoots away to the southeast, turns yellow, and vanishes. Helgesen has it in view for about one hour. (“New Close-Ups, Pacings,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 5 (March 1968): 3)
October 27 — 2:20 p.m. Timothy Robinson, 13, and his family are startled by the roar of a jet aircraft overhead at Winchester, Hampshire, England. He dashes out into the garden and sees two English Electric Lightning fighters fly low overhead. Ahead of the aircraft is a black, mushroom-shaped object streaking away to the west. It changes direction abruptly to the northwest and disappears into a cloud, climbing steeply and outmaneuvering the Lightnings. (Good Above, p. 62)
October 30 — 9:30 p.m. Alexander Spargo is traveling alone in his car on the Mayanup–Kojonup road about 10 miles east of Mayanup in Western Australia at a speed of about 60–65 miles per hour. He is approached by a lighted object from the sky. A beam of light comes from a “tube” on the object and immerses the car. Almost immediately, the car stops dead. However, there is no feeling of deceleration. The vehicle’s motor, lights, and radio go off. Spargo hears no noise. The tube seems 2–3 feet in diameter. It is not uncomfortable to the eyes. After about 5 minutes, the tube closes off and the object disappears. His vehicle is suddenly going at 60–65 miles per hour again, with no feeling of acceleration. The object is only seen from underneath, but he estimates its diameter as 30 feet and about 100 feet up in the air. It glows an iridescent blue. (Keith Basterfield, Vladimir Godic, and Pony Godic, “Australian Ufology: A Review,” JUFOS 2 (1990): 27–28; Keith Basterfield, “Cold Case Investigation: Boyup Brook WA, 30 Oct 1967,” Unidentified Aerial Phenomena—Scientific Investigation, September 23, 2012; Keith
Basterfield, “Police Report on the Boyup Brook Encounter, Uncovered,” Unidentified Aerial Phenomena— Scientific Investigation, August 29, 2017)
November — Ufologist Ted Bloecher privately publishes a massive Report on the UFO Wave of 1947, detailing 853 reports gleaned from his years of research into newspaper archives in June–July 1947. The preface is written by James E. Mcdonald. (Ted Bloecher, Report on the UFO Wave of 1947, The Author, 1967)
November 2 — 9:30 p.m. Navajo ranch hands Willie Begay and Guy Tossie, both 23, are driving south of Ririe, Idaho, on US Highway 26 when they are blinded by a flash of light. Their car comes to a stop, and immediately in front of them they see an object 6–8 feet in diameter and 3 feet thick, hovering 5 feet off the ground and shaped like two saucers joined together. Around the rim is a row of alternately flashing orange and green lights. On top is a transparent dome, where two small entities are visible. The dome flips open, and one occupant floats out and approaches the car. It is 3 feet tall, bald, with ears set high on its head, round eyes, and a mouth like a slit. It is wearing tight-fitting coveralls and carries a pack on its back. It opens the car door and sits behind the wheel as Begay and Tossie move in horror to the right. The car begins to move as if fastened to the craft into a field of wheat stubble where Tossie gets out and runs toward the farmhouse of Willard Hammon for help, followed by another entity apparently holding a light. Begay stays in the front seat of the car with the first entity, who tries to communicate with him, twice saying something in a high, chirruping voice. The second entity returns, and the two float back to the craft, which rises and departs, a yellow flame-like light coming from the bottom. Hammon lets Tossie inside his farmhouse, where he eventually calms down and tells his story. They go back to the site, where they find Begay in a state of shock in the car. At 11:30 p.m., an anonymous witness driving between Ririe and Rigby, Idaho, sees a landed UFO with a small occupant who stops the car and taps on the side window. (“NICAP Panel Studies Occupant Reports,” UFO Investigator 5, no. 1 (Sept./Oct. 1969): 5–6; Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 23–27; Clark III 1009–1010; Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp. 145–147)
November 6 — 1:30 a.m. On a section of the A338 road [now B3347] south of Sopley, Hampshire, England, truck driver Karl Farlow (or Barlow) finds that the lights on his diesel truck have failed. As he pulls over, he sees a glowing, 15-foot-wide, egg-shaped UFO that moves slowly across the road from the right, passes slowly to the left, then speeds up and disappears. The object makes a sound like a refrigerator and gives off a smell like a drill boring through wood. Before it goes away, a Jaguar sports car comes from the opposite direction, and its engine stalls and lights fail. The UFO glows a vivid green color. The diesel engine is not affected. The driver of the Jaguar is a veterinary surgeon, and he and Farlow call the police from a nearby call box. The witnesses note that there are marks on the ground and the road surface seems to have melted. The veterinarian’s girl passenger is taken to a hospital suffering from shock. A week later, Farlow notices that a 200-foot stretch of the road at the encounter site has been completely resurfaced and the call box has been repainted. (NICAP, “Disabled Engine Continues to Run”; Roy Winstanley, “Now the UFOs Are Stopping the Traffic,” Spacelink 5, no. 1 (December 1967): wrap; “Landings on Increase,” APRO Bulletin, Nov./Dec. 1967, pp. 1, 3; Good Above, pp. 64–65)
November 8 — 3:30–4:00 a.m. A business executive is driving near Lake Elsinore, California, when his lights go out, the car stops, and the radio goes out. He feels a strong pressure on his head and shoulders. He then notices a red- orange object 30 feet in diameter hovering in the road ahead at about 160 feet in altitude. The object hovers about 90 seconds before it takes off into the fog. (Condon, pp. 380–385; Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp. 66–67)
November 8 — MP Peter Mills asks about UFO sightings in Devon, England, in the UK House of Commons and receives assurances from Under-Secretary of State for Defence Merlyn Rees, who says that the October 24 police chase involved either aircraft or the planet Venus. Mills asks if the ministry consulted scientists about the sightings, and Rees replies that both scientists and psychologists have been consulted. (Good Above, pp. 65–66)
November 8 — Through unrelenting pressure by British ufologist Julian J. A. Hennessey, the Ministry of Defence and RAF UFO files are no longer discarded every five years as of transitory interest. The MoD confirms that it will retain its remaining UFO documents. Further pressure to retain files comes in 1970 from MP John Langford-Holt. (UFOFiles2, pp. 114–115; David Clarke, “Briefing Document: Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs),” August 2011)
November 10 — Stolyarov and Ziegel, speaking on Russian Central TV, encourage viewers to send their first-hand accounts in to the newly formed Soviet UFO Study Group. The response is overwhelming and embarrassing to the DOSAAF All-Union Committee of Cosmonautics. Army Gen. A. L. Getman dissolves the UFO Study Group by the end of November. (Wikipedia, “Felix Ziegel”; Good Above, p. 233; Joe Brill, “UFOs behind the Iron Curtain,” Skylook, no. 86, January 1975, p. 14)
November 13 — Condon, Low, and editor Harriet Hunter meet to discuss the final University of Colorado report. Condon deliberately excludes the other senior staff because he is now insisting on no old cases and no “case book.” He
insists on including everything in which the Colorado project participated in, even phone calls. He wants to write a section on the harm done by irresponsible UFO authors. The meeting ends with a roughed-out list of subject sections and authors. Condon reserves writing the summary and methodology sections himself. He assigns to Hunter the job of selecting which cases are included and how they are written up (perhaps he no longer trusts Low to do this). (Swords 326–328)
November 14 — Keyhoe writes separate letters to Condon and Low, asking if they will agree to examine NICAP’s cases. November 15 — Canadian Forces Wing Commander Douglas F. Robertson prepares a 28-page briefing document, CDS
Briefing on Unidentified Flying Objects, on the status of UFO sightings in Canada to Gen. Jean Victor Allard, Chief of the Defence Staff. It reviews facts and procedures and describes cases that have been handled within the ministry, including the Falcon Lake and Shag Harbour cases, as well as the Warren Smith photo. Robertson advises that UFO sightings are taking up too much of the military’s time, but that the scientific community, specifically the University of Toronto Institute of Aerospace Studies, might find them interesting. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 24–59)
November 15 — The crew of Quebecair Flight 650 sees a bright object at the end of the runway at Sept-Îles Airport, Quebec. It is as large as a star and stationary. (Good Above, p. 200)
November 17 — 6:00 p.m. David Seewaldt, 13, is crossing a vacant lot in Calgary, Alberta. He hears a high-pitched sound and sees a slivery gray UFO the size of a house about to land. A beam of light shoots from it, putting him in a “trance” and pulling him into the craft, where he meets two hideous-looking entities with brown crocodile skin, slits for mouths, and holes for noses and ears. They wear no clothes and have hands with only four fingers. They take Seewaldt’s clothes off and lead him into another room where one studies his hair, eyes, and nose. An orange ceiling light is directed on him and he is given a shot with a small needle. The entities dress him again and beam him back to the field. He runs home in a state of terror and hides under the bed. All conscious memory of the event vanishes until 5 months later, when it returns in a dream. In 1968 he is hypnotically regressed by a Dr. Masson of the University of Alberta. (W. K. Allan, “Crocodile-Skinned Entities at Calgary,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 6 (April 1975): 25–26; Clark III 280; “David Seewaldt,” etcetrasetcetras, June 13, 2008)
Late November — Night. A large, illuminated hemispherical object appears low over the shore of the Baltic Sea near Liepāja, Latvia. Its light is difficult to look at with the naked eye. Later it begins to move and quickly vanishes over the horizon. (Stonehill and Mantle, Russia’s USO Secrets, Flying Disk, 2020, p. 171)
November 21 — 4:30 p.m. David V. Marin sees an object that looks like an upside-down candle from his backyard at the edge of Poienarii Burchii, Romania. He watches it for 10 minutes as it hovers at about 90 feet. It starts moving slowly northwest and its tail elongates. (Romania 15–16)
November 22 — Saunders pays Keyhoe a surprise visit in Washington, D.C., and allows him to photocopy the Low memorandum, saying it should be shared with the NICAP board. Roger Harkins hears about the memo about the same time. (UFOs Yes, 179, 193–194)
November 22 — MP Patrick Wall asks the UK Secretary of State for Defence Merlyn Rees what exchange of UFO information between the UK, US, and Russian governments is taking place. Rees replies that the ministry is in touch with the Americans but not the Russians. (Good Above, p. 66)
November 22 — 12:30 p.m. Ladislau Schmidt is sitting in his kitchen in Petrila, Romania, with the outside door open. Suddenly his chickens run inside the house, terrified. Looking up, he sees a silvery disc-shaped object with a dome and antennas hovering at 15,000 feet. It rotates and moves away at high speed to the northwest until it is out of sight. (Hobana and Weverbergh 166–167)
November 22 — 4:25 p.m. US Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. John Rich Butler and copilot Lt. John H. Gould are flying 10 miles off the New Hampshire coastline when they see an object like a white rocket flying with a lateral motion. It first moves upward for 2 seconds at the rear of the aircraft. It reappears and disappears twice, then another object that looks like a light aircraft with an unusual white, flashing light passes above them at a distance of 100–200 feet.
Gould has the impression it has swept wings. (NICAP case file; Jan L. Aldrich, “Updated Draft Catalogue of UFOs/USOs Reported by Seagoing Services, NavCat 2,0, 1964–2007,” 2015)
November 24 — Canadian Wing Commander D. F. Robertson, after advocating that the RCAF transfer its UFO files to the National Research Council, writes a memo urging the NRC to work with the University of Toronto and the Department of National Defence in investigating Canadian UFO reports. (Good Above, p. 192)
November 30 — Allen R. Utke, Wisconsin State University–Oshkosh assistant professor of chemistry, writes Gerald Ford in support of House Resolution 946 sponsored by Rep. Louis C. Wyman, remarking that the UFO “phenomenon could be of great importance and concern to this country.” (Bill Murphy, “The Swamp Gas Aftermath: Some Notes from the Gerald Ford Files,” IUR 33, no. 2 (July 2010): 14)
Late 1967 — The Institute for Aerospace Studies at the University of Toronto, Ontario, begins a UFO study. By October 1968, it is on the verge of collapse for “lack of something to investigate.” The study terminates in 1970, but no report on its findings is ever released. (Arthur Bray, “Government Cover-Up Exposed,” Canadian UFO Report 3, no. 2 (1975): 20)
December — The Soviet Academy of Sciences’ Physics Department, led by Lev Artsimovich, passes a resolution denouncing studying of UFOs as such. The Soviet UFO Study Group is effectively neutered. (Wikipedia, “Felix Ziegel”; Hobana and Weverbergh 36–37)
December 1 — Condon and Low write Keyhoe back separately and do not commit to looking at his reports, although they praise NICAP’s assistance. (“The Colorado Project Report,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 4 (Jan./Feb. 1968): 5)
December 2 — 9:30 p.m. A lieutenant-major in the Romanian army is on duty in the radar station at Băneasa Airfield [now Aurel Vlaicu International Airport] near Bucharest, Romania, when he goes outside to observe an airplane. But the supposed aircraft is a strong, stationary light 30–40° in the north that descends rapidly, ascends again, moves left to right, then descends again. Through binoculars it looks conical or bullet shaped. Dozens of other personnel watch it until it disappears around 11:30 p.m. (Hobana and Weverbergh 176–177)
December 3 — Early a.m. Police Sgt. Herbert Schirmer checks on restless cattle twice at a barn near Ashland, Nebraska. At 2:30 a.m. he is driving on US Highway 6 when he notices some red lights along State Route 63 that might be a stalled truck. He drives a short distance up that road and stops with his headlights shining on the object. The red lights are blinking through the windows of a disc hovering at a tilt 150 feet away and 6–8 feet above the road. It looks made of shiny, polished aluminum. It ascends slowly with a sort of siren sound and emits a flamelike substance from the bottom. His head sticking out the window, Schirmer watches it pass overhead then shoot up out of sight. He drives back to the police station and writes in the log book, “Saw a flying saucer at the junction of highways 6 and 63. Believe it or not!” He is puzzled to see it is 3:00 a.m. He gets a headache and a buzzing noise in his head. He also has a red welt below one of his ears. In the morning, Chief Bill Wlaskin goes to the site and finds a piece of metal that he shows to Colorado project investigators. It turns out to be composed of iron and silicon. On February 13, 1968, Schirmer is hypnotized in Boulder, Colorado, by R. Leo Sprinkle. During the session he remembers that his car engine and radio failed, and a blurry white object came out of the UFO and communicated with him telepathically. He is taken on board by aliens (who first ask him, “Are you the watchman over this place?”). They are humanoids, 4–5 feet tall with long heads, gray-white skin, and cat-like eyes. They wear silver-gray helmets with small antennas on the left side of the ear area. Their uniforms and gloves are the same color. An unusual feature of this case is the emblem of a winged serpent on the left breast of each entity’s uniform. The Colorado project comes to a predictable conclusion: “Evaluation of psychological assessment tests, the lack of any evidence, and interviews with the patrolmen left project staff with no confidence that the trooper’s reported UFO experience was physically real.” Schirmer undergoes hypnosis again on June 8, 1968, and more details emerge. (Clark III 1034–1038; Condon, pp. 389–391; Michael D. Swords, “Too Close for Condon: Close Encounters of the 4th Kind,” IUR 28, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 3–4; Story, pp. 318–319; Kevin D. Randle, “The Schirmer Abduction,” A Different Perspective, October 13, 2008; Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp. 147–149)
December 5 — 10:30 p.m. Six teenagers returning from a basketball game in Concordia, Kansas, detour to drive by a cemetery. They see a light blinking in the sky ahead, moving in an up-and-down motion to the north. It appears to be flashing different colors or rotating. They follow it for about two miles, hoping for a better look. (Condon, pp. 391–394)
December 8 — 7:40 p.m. Marilyn Wilding, 15, goes out on her front step in Idaho Falls, Idaho, to look for a friend. A light reflecting on the snow on the ground causes her to look up, and she sees a brightly lit circular object “about as big as a car” hovering above the house. The object then tips and rotates so she can see it has a transparent dome on top. Inside the dome are two indistinct figures. The object rotates clockwise, maintaining its inclination. It begins moving away; as it recedes into the distance, its light dims and turns orange. (UFOEv II 459; Northern Ontario UFO Research and Study, “Circular Object with Dome and Two ‘Figures’ Inside”; Patrick Gross, “Falls, Idaho, December 8, 1967”)
December 10 — 7:30 a.m. Psychologist Adina Păun is walking past the Republic Factories in Bucharest, Romania, when she sees a bluish-green object above the plant at about 45°. It has projecting, tapered spines that are as long as half its diameter. It is higher than rain clouds that sometimes obscure it, but lower than high-altitude, fast-moving white clouds. She continues watching it for 15 minutes as she walks along, but it drifts out of sight when she gets home on Magnet Strada. (Hobana and Weverbergh 180)
December 12 — Levine, Saunders, and Mary Lou Armstrong bring Hynek together with James McDonald to discuss forming a new group after the project ends, no matter what its conclusion is. The meeting goes fairly well. After Hynek leaves, McDonald brings up the Low memorandum. He has apparently heard about it from Keyhoe.
Saunders gives him an official copy. Levine approaches Craig about a separate report, but Craig considers it mutiny. (UFOs Yes, 179–180)
December 12 — The British Embassy in Moscow, Russia, is directed by London to look into British-Russian cooperation in the investigation of UFO reports with Stolyarov’s Soviet UFO Study Group. The embassy does not hear back and does not pursue the subject. (Good Above, pp. 234–235)
December 12 — 7:00 p.m. Rita Malley is driving home from work on Route 34 in Newfield, New York, with her young son. She notices a red light behind her. As it draws closer, she sees it is a disc-shaped object as large as a boxcar moving at about 90 feet above the road. Then it passes overhead and causes the car to go off the road into a ditch, and Malley became terrified. Her son in the back seat looks immobilized with his eyes “bugged out.” A white beam emanates from the humming object above her and she hears voices in her head saying that her son would not remember this and that a friend of hers has been killed in a car accident. (This turns out to be true.) The car then moves out of the ditch and back onto the road facing the wrong way. She finds that she can control the car again and speeds home. (Lloyd Mallan, “Ithaca’s Terrifying Flying Saucer Epidemic,” Science and Mechanics 39 (July 1968): 30–33, 96–97; T. M. Wright, “UFO’s over Ithaca,” Fate 22, no. 2 (February 1969): 44–52)
December 13 — 2:00 a.m. As a man is driving near Edmonton, Alberta, his car lights dim and engine sputters. He pulls to the side of the road and opens the hood, when he notices a dome-shaped object hovering 450 feet away. It is metallic, has lights around the edge, and is about 50 feet high. The object rocks back and forth within a range of 10–15 feet but remains above the road. Over the next hour, the car body heats up and the witness’s hair gets hot. His flashlight fails to work. Finally, the object shoots straight up and vanishes in 2–3 seconds. His headlights come back on, but he starts the motor only with difficulty. (Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 39)
December 15 — The Silver Bridge over the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Gallipolis, Ohio, collapses under the weight of rush-hour traffic, resulting in the deaths of 46 people. (Wikipedia, “Silver Bridge”)
December 16 — Philip Klass, who has heard of McDonald’s UFO activity in Australia from Low, starts a letter-writing campaign directed at the Office of Naval Research, wanting to know who approved his funding and whether they are funding his forthcoming trip to Europe and Russia. His campaign continues for the next 18 months, bluntly attacking McDonald’s integrity and calling him a habitual liar. (Clark III 700)
December 19 — 10:30 p.m. A witness is driving westbound on the east edge of Belleville, Illinois, when he sees a triangular object with a row of square lights on one side. He tries following it and manages to stay roughly beneath it until he loses track of it near Southwestern Illinois College. Because it appears to be heading toward nearby Scott AFB and the witness is familiar with the base, he goes to the control tower there to see if they have tracked anything unusual but they have not. (Marler 204–208, 270)
December 24 — Evening. A couple driving near Tucson, Arizona, see a star-like object fall to earth. Two minutes later, they spot a blob of red light. Their engine and headlights fail. The object approaches the car, passes overhead, then moves away to the south. The engine and lights come back on as it departs. (Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 39)
December 24 — 8:30 p.m. A faculty member of the Harvard Medical School and several members of his family in Belmont, Massachusetts, see a silently moving, bright orange light. It is joined by a second light one minute later, and a third about 30 seconds after that. He retrieves some binoculars and watches all three. The first two stop about 15°–25° above the horizon and remain still; the third is still moving. Three or four more lights arrive, some hovering, others moving. Two or three of the hovering lights appear to drop smaller lights that flash as they fall. All are orange in color. After about 20 minutes, they have all disappeared. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 45–48)
December 27 — 9:00 p.m. Two people are traveling along a back road in Wells Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, when they see three lights on the horizon. They stop the car as the lights approach. They are attached to a domed disc that is following the road at a height of 300–400 feet. As it approaches to within about 3,000 feet, it makes a banking movement that reveals square, fluorescent panels on the bottom. The dome light in their car turns on spontaneously as the whole bottom of the UFO flashes. The two witnesses get back in their truck and drive on, but the object follows them for a while, then moves off toward Elmira, New York. About 20 minutes later, the parents of one witness experience a power failure in their home on Elmira’s south side. (Michael D. Swords, “Unusual Experiences from the Timmerman Files,” IUR 27, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 23)
December 29 — 10:35 p.m. C. J. McCready, his wife, and daughter see a round, glowing, sparkling, red object above their home on Briarcliff Road, Atlanta, Georgia. It hovers and drops several trails of a white substance that appear to fall like a liquid as the object moves slowly northwest. It is visible for 5 minutes. (NICAP case file)
1968
1968 — NORAD has control of continental-scale Over the Horizon radars that cover virtually the entire Eurasian continent looking for Russian and Chinese missile launches. (Clark III 807)
1968 — Presbyterian religious scholar Barry Downing publishes The Bible and Flying Saucers, in which he equates Jesus and angels with space visitors and burning bushes, clouds, and Ezekiel’s chariot with spacecraft. Downing also believes that Jesus left earth in a flying saucer to another planet, or perhaps another spatial dimension, and that a flying vehicle operated by intelligent alien beings was responsible for the parting of the Red Sea. (Barry Downing. The Bible and Flying Saucers, Lippincott, 1968; Clark III 109; Jerome Clark, “Vimanas Have Landed: Ancient Astronautics in Ufology,” IUR 22, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 29)
1968 — Science-fiction author Otto Binder publishes Flying Saucers Are Watching Us, which borrows liberally from the theories of engineer Max W. Flindt (cofounder of the Ancient Astronaut Society), who contends that extraterrestrials had conducted genetic engineering on our apelike ancestors to create modern mankind. Binder writes that space people return every few centuries to interbreed with humans to improve the stock. He follows this up with Mankind—Child of the Stars in 1974, coauthored with Flindt. (Otto O. Binder, Flying Saucers Are Watching Us, 1968; Clark III 109; Jerome Clark, “Vimanas Have Landed: Ancient Astronautics in Ufology,” IUR 22, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 29)
1968 — Italian author Renato Vesco writes Intercettatelli Senza Sparare, making a case that the Germans had developed anti-gravity devices at the end of World War II, testing disc-shaped and tubular craft that were responsible for foo fighters. After the war, these concepts were acquired by the US and Russia, leading directly to functional flying saucers. (Renato Vesco, Intercept—But Don’t Shoot, Zebra/Grove, 1971; Marcello Pupilli and Giuseppe Stilo, “Solitudine di un uomo: Le teorie ufologiche e la vita di Renato Vesco (1924–1999),” UFO Forum, no. 18 (August 2001): 33–39)
1968 — UFO skeptic and electrical engineer Philip J. Klass publishes his first UFO book, UFOs—Identified, in which he theorizes that sightings are caused by ball lightning and anomalous free-floating plasmas. Klass’s plasma hypothesis is not well received by anyone on either side of the UFO debate, who note that Klass is using one unverified phenomenon (his hypothetical plasmas) to explain another unverified phenomenon (UFOs). Klass and physicist James E. McDonald engage in a bitter, 18-month-long debate, leveling a variety of charges and accusations at one another. In September 1968, Klass writes to McDonald’s superiors at the US Navy (McDonald is formally retired from the Navy, but often works with the Office of Naval Research), questioning how McDonald could spend so much time on UFO research and still fulfill the requirements for his atmospheric research grant. This does not result in McDonald losing ONR funding, but it does draw some criticism of Klass from members of the UFO community. (Philip J. Klass, UFOs—Identified, Random House, 1968; Clark III 659)
1968 — Vladimir Godic and Crystal Walsh found UFO Research South Australia, a group committed to use scientific methodology in investigation and research. (Keith Basterfield, Vladimir Godic, and Pony Godic, “Australian Ufology: A Review,” JUFOS 2 (1990): 25)
1968 — An Australian nuclear physicist attached to the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (part of the Joint Intelligence Bureau) cooperates with other defense intelligence scientists to form a “rapid intervention team” to investigate UFO incidents involving physical evidence. The effort lasts until a wave of UFO reports takes place in Western Australia and he is denied further access to RAAF files. (Bill Chalker, “The UFO Connection: Addendum,” Flying Saucer Review 31, no. 5 (July 1986): 20; Good Above, p. 166)
1968 — The Canadian National Research Council, from its base at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Ottawa, Ontario, takes over the collection of UFO reports from the Department of National Defence. It partners with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to do the actual investigations. The NRC’s primary interest is in tracking meteors and meteorite falls. Non-meteoric sightings are kept in a separate file but transferred to the Public Archives of Canada [now Library and Archives of Canada] at the end of every year. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Canada, Signet, 1981, p. 175; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 9–10)
1968 — Fabio Zerpa founds the Organizacion Nacional Investigadora de Fénomenos Espaciales in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It publishes a monthly magazine, Cuarta Dimension. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 233)
1968 (or 1969) — 9:00 p.m. A Polish Air Force pilot takes off from Warsaw Modlin Airport, Poland, in a MiG-21 for a short, routine mission. Soon he sees two identical white discs, about 6–10 feet in diameter, moving at the same altitude and speed as his MiG. His wingman also sees them. He approaches to within 50 feet of them. During the 5-minute encounter, radio contact with the controller is lost and contact between the two pilots deteriorates. Four UFOs follow the two MiGs for another 3–6 miles, then they accelerate and overtake them, disappearing ahead. (Poland 65)
Early 1968 — Four artillerymen stationed at the naval garrison at Lüda [now Dalian], Liaoning, China, see a luminous, gold, oval-shaped object that leaves a thin trail in the air. It climbs steeply at high speed and disappears. When it begins to climb, all communications and radar systems fail, nearly causing an accident in the fleet. The naval patrol goes on alert, and the fleet commander orders his men to prepare for combat. After 30 minutes, comms and radar return to normal. A two-man coast guard patrol allegedly sees the UFO land on the south coast and fires at it with automatic weapons. (Wendelle Stevens and Paul Dong, UFOs over Modern China, UFO Photo Archive, 1983, pp. 48–49)
January — John Harney and Alan W. Sharp launch a new publication, Merseyside UFO Bulletin (MUFOB), in Liverpool, England, as an independent publication from the openly skeptical newsletter begun by the Merseyside UFO Research Group. John Rimmer assumes the post of associate editor with the third issue. (Merseyside UFO Bulletin 1, No. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1968); Clark III 706; “History of Magonia,” Magonia Archive)
January 15 — The USAF Air Defense Command is renamed the Aerospace Defense Command. (Wikipedia, “Aerospace Defense Command”)
January 15 — 7:25 a.m. Two farmers driving a truck near Three Hills, Alberta, see an object that looks “like a stunted dill pickle,” greenish-blue in color and silent. Another truck stops and they point out the object to the others, who say it looks like a flying saucer. They contact the Calgary Airport, but officials there have had no reports. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 60–62, 63–64)
January 15 — 9:00 p.m. Janice, Denise, and Lori Achzehner are playing records in Villa Park, Illinois, when their father’s “Saucer Seeker” UFO detector goes off. They run outside and see a large orange light hovering near the house.
For 45 minutes they watch as a series of 6 objects fly in and out of the area. Through binoculars they can see that the objects are triangular or cone-shaped, no more than a mile away, and 500–1,500 feet high. As they watch, one of the objects approaches a commercial airliner, makes a 180° turn without slowing, then follows the aircraft until they are out of sight. (“Use of Detectors in Spotting UFO,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1968, p. 7)
January 19 — McDonald calls Low on the phone and expresses his concerns about the project. The two reach an impasse. (UFOs Yes, 185; Swords 328)
January 20 — 6:00 p.m. Police deputies Bias Fortes and Pinheiro Chagas are driving 9 miles outside of Brasília, Brazil, when they see a triangular UFO. They stop and get out to observe it better and watch it hover for 5 minutes. It accelerates suddenly and speeds to the southwest, (“First Sightings of 1968 in Brazil,” APRO Bulletin, Jan./Feb. 1968, p. 3)
January 20 — 11:00 p.m. Robert Ballard and his wife Lynn are visiting his parents near Vermillion, South Dakota. Robert goes outside to warm up his car for the trip home. He sees a large object and calls to his father to come outside.
They watch a big ball of red and orange fire to the east. At first they think it is the moon and go inside, but as Robert and Lynn are leaving, the object gives off a flash, and one of the dogs begins barking vigorously. They drive toward the object, which seems to be flickering in a field. It seems to be spinning and is 20 feet above the ground, sometimes less. When Ballard turns onto State Highway 50, the UFO, about 30 feet in diameter, starts following them. He accelerates to 60 mph and the object jumps to just behind their car. At one point it is hovering only 3 feet above an intersection. It keeps following them at telephone height, even though Ballard speeds up to 110 mph. After another car goes by them, the object speeds up and heads straight toward them from behind. Soon it rises and disappears to the east. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 37–38)
January 21 — A fire breaks out in the navigator’s compartment of a USAF B-52 near Thule Air Base, Greenland. The bomber crashes 7 miles from the air base, causing the non-nuclear explosives aboard to detonate and rupturing and dispersing its nuclear payload of four hydrogen bombs carried on an ongoing (since 1960) Operation Chrome Dome alert mission to deter a Soviet nuclear first strike. The recovery and decontamination effort is complicated by Greenland’s harsh weather. Contaminated ice and debris are buried at the Savannah River plant in South Carolina. Bomb fragments are recycled by Pantex, in Amarillo, Texas. The incident causes outrage and protests in Denmark. USAF Strategic Air Command Chrome Dome operations are discontinued immediately after the accident, which highlights the safety and political risks of the missions. Safety procedures are reviewed and more stable explosives are developed for use in nuclear weapons. A BBC News report in 2008 seems to confirm through declassified documents and interviews with those involved that one nuclear bomb was lost. However,
the Danish Institute for International Studies concludes in August 2009 that there is no missing bomb and that the US underwater operation was a search for the uranium-235 of the fissile core of a secondary, a small object one half meter long. For the first time, the report is able to present an estimate of the amount of plutonium contained in the pits of the primaries. (Wikipedia, “1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash”; Wikipedia, “Operation Chrome Dome”)
January 22 — In response to a question by MP Teddy Taylor, UKSecretary of State for Defence Merlyn Rees writes that the total number of reports for 1967 “reflects a wave of public interest in UFOs, reaching a peak toward the end of the year,” and that unexplained sightings (only 46 out of 362) are due to lack of sufficient information. (Good Above, p. 66)
January 26 — A-12 pilot Jack Weeks is dispatched from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, on a sortie to locate the USS Pueblo, which has been captured by North Korean forces on January 23. His photographs pinpoint the Pueblo’s exact location in the harbor of Changjahwan Bay near Wonsan, North Korea. Instead of war plans, the US proceeds with negotiations for the return of the crew. (Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 271–274)
January 31 — McDonald sends Low a 7-page, single-spaced letter, citing Condon’s negative statements, his preoccupation with crackpot elements, Condon’s failure to conduct any investigations himself, the lack of communication between Low and Condon and the active investigators, and the failure of the project to take seriously any assertions of cover-up. He mentions Low’s memorandum, saying “I am rather puzzled by the viewpoints expressed there.” He concludes: “I am not opposed to negative findings—on UFOs or other scientific questions; what bothers me is that it appears that these negative findings were being adumbrated as early as January 1966, and perhaps even earlier.” He sends a copy to the project’s open files. (UFOs Yes, 185–187)
January 31 — Morning. At Lajes Air Base on Terceira in the Azores, a Portuguese military watchman, Serafim Vieira Sebastião, notices a strange interference on his transistor radio. Looking around, he sees an oval metallic object surmounted by a transparent tower on top of which is a small balustrade on which two beings are leaning. The silhouettes of two more beings are visible in the tower. The object is hovering above a munitions dump. Serafim phones one of the other sentries then shines his flashlight on the machine. As he does so, the men on the tower see him. The object emits a cloud of gaseous dust that overpowers him. When his colleague finds him a few minutes later, the object has vanished. (“OVNI com quatro seres ataca guarda açoriano,” Insólito, no. 13 (June 1976); Nuno Alves, “O Caso Ilha Terceira (31 de Janeiro de 1968) Serafim Vieira Sebastião,” UFO Portugal, October 28, 2017)
February — Canada’s National Research Council agrees to become the official government archive for existing and future UFO reports. The files are kept in an office of the Council’s Upper Atmosphere Section (Astrophysics Branch) in Ottawa, Ontario. But the NRC does not investigate reports. (Good Above, p. 192; Gregory M. Kanon, “UFOs and the Canadian Government,” Canadian UFO Report 3, no. 7 (Spring 1976): 18)
February — Felix Ziegel, Soviet cosmologist and assistant professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute, Russia, writes an article on UFOs for Soviet Life with reports supplied by Novosti. He mentions four UFO reports and concludes that they could be extraterrestrial in origin. He thinks the 1908 Tunguska event is a remarkable UFO case and reveals that the USSR established a “UFO Section of the All-Union Cosmonautics Committee” in October 1967. Ziegel soon afterwards receives a letter from Edward Condon, the director of the University of Colorado UFO Project, suggesting that the Soviet and the American groups should cooperate, starting with an information exchange. Ziegel and 12 other members of his group sign a letter requesting the Soviet government to create a state-sponsored organization that would coordinate all the UFO research in the country. Next month he receives an official negative response. (Wikipedia, “Felix Ziegel”; Felix Ziegel, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” Soviet Life, no. 137 (February 1968): 27–29; Central Intelligence Agency, “Nothing But the Facts on UFOs, or Which Novosti Writer Do You Read?” April 9, 1968)
February 4 — 7:20 p.m. About 200 residents of Redlands, California, see or hear a huge, low-flying, disc-shaped object as it passes overhead. The UFO is about 50 feet in diameter, with seven lights on its base emitting bright orange flame. Some 8–10 other lights on its rim alternate red and green, giving the impression that the object is rotating. A minister recording his sermon captures a high-pitched, modulated, whining sound from the UFO on tape. The UFO apparently descends just west of Columbia Street and north of Colton Avenue, then proceeds to the northwest for about a mile at an altitude of 300 feet. Coming to a stop, it hovers briefly, jerks forward, hovers again, then shoots straight up in a burst of speed. The object is not detected on radar at Norton AFB [now closed] near San Bernardino or March AFB [now March Air Reserve Base] in Riverside County. An investigation is conducted for APRO by four University of Redlands faculty: Philip Seff (geology), Judson Sanderson (math), Reinhold Krantz (math), and John Brownfield (art). They conclude that the object is not attributable to any known phenomenon or aircraft, but that the recorded sound comes from an emergency vehicle. (Sparks, p. 327; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 52–53; Story, pp.
299–300; William F. Krupke, “Sonic Analysis of the Redlands UFO Tape Recording,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 30, no. 2 (2016): 175–198)
February 5 — McDonald’s letter arrives in Boulder, Colorado. Low is out of town and the staff read it first. Low does not see it until 4:00 p.m. the following day when Mary Lou Armstrong shows it to him. He explodes, saying whoever gave the memo to McDonald should be fired. Condon is also furious. (UFOs Yes, 188)
February 7 — Low summons Saunders to Condon’s office, asking him if he knew McDonald had a copy of the memo. Saunders said yes, and didn’t think he needed to alert anyone, since McDonald is a friend of the project. Condon says, “For an act like that, you deserve to be ruined professionally!” Saunders avoids admitting he was responsible (indirectly) for McDonald’s having the memo. When Norm Levine arrives, Saunders is ordered to leave. Levine tells him the memo’s release is a group effort. Condon tells Levine not to discuss this meeting or communicate further with McDonald. Levine says he can’t do that, Condon tells him he is no longer useful, and Levine walks out. Condon and Low meet with other staff members the rest of the day. (UFOs Yes, 188–192)
February 8 — Condon and Low meet with Thurston Manning and Stuart W. Cook from the University of Colorado’s Psychology Department. Condon tells Mary Lou Armstrong that Saunders and Norm Levine will be fired. Low types the letters himself and Condon signs them. Condon also writes a letter to Hynek asking him to provide 10– 15 of the best cases from his files. (UFOs Yes, 192–193; Center for UFO Studies, [Hynek correspondence], p. 10)
February 9 — Condon and Low meet with Craig, who admits knowing about the memo and says he was concerned about it. He leaves the meeting “deeply concerned” about the project’s viability. Roger Harkins writes up the events at the project for the Boulder Daily Camera; when he interviews Condon, he realizes that Condon “honestly didn’t know anything about that memo until a couple of days ago.” Condon admits, in contrast to his statements earlier, that Saunders and Levine were fired for insubordination, not incompetence. (UFOs Yes, 194–195)
February 14 — Hynek replies to Condon, saying that he will send him some of his best cases over the next few weeks, but requests that in return they be given a “thorough investigation.” He even offers to go to Wright-Patterson AFB and send him copies of good Blue Book cases, since Quintanilla has scrupulously been sending him copies of only those he asks for. (Center for UFO Studies, [Hynek correspondence], pp. 11–12)
February 14 — F. Robert Naka, USAF chief reconnaissance scientist at MITRE Corporation, tells Robert Low that, contrary to what NORAD had briefed him on in 1967, NORAD radars can and do track UFOs “coming in from outer space.” He does not deny that NORAD has already tracked such objects on occasion. (Clark III 804)
February 16 — Novosti Science Commentator Villen Lyustiberg writes “Flying Saucers? They’re a Myth” in the newspaper Moskovskij Komsomolets. Novosti releases an English translation on March 12. It explains US reports as either misobservations or misreporting by the media. (Central Intelligence Agency, “Nothing But the Facts on UFOs, or Which Novosti Writer Do You Read?” April 9, 1968)
February 18 — 12:00 midnight. Teenagers Richard Frombach, Boone Powers, and Chris Beachner are parked next to a pond in a gravel pit near Vashon, Washington, when they notice a glowing oval object resting on a hill to the east. They drive into town to pick up an additional witness, Joseph Frabush, and return to the area, park on the main road, and walk into the pond area. The object has moved to the east. Frabush thinks it is metallic and about 30 feet long. They drive back into town for more witnesses, but when they return the light is gone and the 100-foot pond is completely frozen over. Temperatures in the area have been above freezing for several days. Small puddles and mud patches surrounding the pond are not frozen at all. The pond ice is dry, even though it has been raining all night. Investigators find that the ice is 3 inches thick in some spots, composed of 2–5 layers, and riddled with bubbles filled with air and dirt. (“The Strange Case of the Frozen Pond,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1968, pp.
1–3)
February 19 — 11:55 a.m. Martha Heggs is in her farmhouse kitchen about 10 miles west of Bengough, Saskatchewan.
She hears a high-pitched whine that has such a penetrating intensity it is similar to a mild electric shock, causing a tingling sensation throughout her body. Looking out, she sees an object 300 feet away circling around a pole with an electric transformer on it. The object is shaped like two saucers edge-to-edge, surmounted by a dome with 6–7 ports, rounded at the top and extending straight down to the base of the dome. These ports are indented and white in color, resembling frosted glass. The saucers are about 8 feet wide and the dome about 4 feet wide. The body of the object looks like dull aluminum. There is a smaller, vented structure on top of the dome and an antenna on top of that. When the object first appears, a dog is seen cowering and lying in the snow, trying to cover its ears with its paws. Sixteen head of cattle, loose in the farmyard, bolt when the object moves into the area. They enter the cattle sheds and do not emerge until at least 30 minutes after the object disappears. The object moves about the farmyard, sometimes hovering, its altitude ranging from 3 feet to 20 feet. After 20 minutes, still 9–12 feet above the ground, the object leaves the farm through a windbreak and moves north until lost to view. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., UFOs: A New Look, NICAP, 1969, Section IV, pp. 11–12)
February 20 — The US Embassy in Moscow sends an unclassified airgram to the US Department of State drawing attention to Felix Ziegel’s article in the February 1968 issue of Soviet Life, which refers to the Soviet UFO Study
Group and concludes that international cooperation in studying UFOs is vital. (Felix Ziegel, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” Soviet Life, no. 137 (February 1968): 27–29; Good Above, pp. 235, 473–474)
February 22 — Mary Lou Armstrong tells Condon that the staff has no confidence in Low as project coordinator, that Low has no interest in UFO sightings or reports, and that the staff has come to a radically different conclusion. (UFOs Yes, 199)
February 23 — Hynek writes another letter to Condon, saying that he has reconsidered his decision to send him his best cases, as he thinks the Colorado project will be unable to investigate them adequately before its contractual period is up. He does send him a catalog of recent Blue Book cases and offers to help him obtain from Wright-Patterson any of the unidentified or insufficient evidence cases that he wants to see. (Center for UFO Studies, [Hynek correspondence], pp. 14–17)
February 24 — Armstrong resigns from the Colorado project, citing an “almost unanimous lack of confidence” among senior staffers in Low’s competence. She also complains that Low has been less than honest about the radical difference between staff views of UFOs and the views Low and Condon are expressing. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 239–241, 274–282; Clark III 698, 1197).
February 27 — 4:30 a.m. A brilliant flood of light from her window abruptly awakens a woman named Bernor in Templeton, Massachusetts. She becomes paralyzed, her face is immobile, and her hands and feet ache. The light goes on and off about 7–8 times, ending around 5:00 a.m. She slowly recovers over the next few days. (Michael
D. Swords, “A Trick of the Light,” IUR 31, no. 2 (June 2007): 11)
February 27 — 6:55 p.m. Truck driver Andrew Perry is driving from Bideford to Cullompton, Devon, England, when he sees a bright light appear at the crest of a hill. As he gets closer, he sees the light is coming from a mushroom- shaped object. As he reaches about 900 feet away from the object, he stops the truck and climbs to the top of the cab to get a better view. He sees about 4–5 figures about 4 feet tall spread out around the object. Suddenly they scramble toward the UFO and disappear inside. The object emits a high-pitched whirring sound that causes his truck to vibrate. Perry gets upset and climbs back into the truck, driving it fast down the road. Meanwhile, the UFO has risen about 200 feet into the air and is passing above his truck, making a noise so loud he can’t hear the engine running. Suddenly the truck engine cuts out. A few seconds later, the noise stops and Perry sees the UFO moving away in the distance. He drives to the nearest police station to report the incident. (UFOFiles2, pp. 126– 127)
February 28 — Condon has a slight heart attack. (Center for UFO Studies, [Hynek correspondence], p. 19)
February 29 — Chairman of the Soviet Astronomical Services Evald Rudolfovich Mustel, president of the All-Union Astronomical and Geodetic Society D. Marynov, and Secretary of the National Committee of Soviet Physicists V.
A. Leshkovtsev write an article in Pravda claiming that there have been no unexplainable sightings of UFOs on Russian soil. UFOs are “anti-Soviet products of decadent capitalistic warmongering.” (Good Above, pp. 235–236)
March — EG&G technician Thornton D. Barnes arrives in Area 51 in Nevada to reverse-engineer the Soviet MiG-21 acquired through defecting Iraqi fighter pilot Munir Redfa. Soviet-built radar systems acquired in the Middle East are installed around Groom Lake (to aid stealth testing of the SR-71), and Barnes is also assigned to evaluate them as well as the ECM capabilities of the MiG. (Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 290–293)
March — Swiss author Erich von Däniken writes Erinnerungen an die Zukunft, translated into English as Chariots of the Gods?, the first of several books setting out the “ancient astronaut” hypothesis in which ancient gods are space visitors, Homo sapiens was created by cross-breeding or genetic engineering, nuclear wars were fought in the ancient world, and monuments were built by levitation. (Erich von Däniken, Chariots of the Gods? Bantam, 1973; Wikipedia, “Chariots of the Gods?”; Clark III 110; Jerome Clark, “Vimanas Have Landed: Ancient Astronautics in Ufology,” IUR 22, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 29–30)
March 1 — Boulder, Colorado, police arrest Colorado project officer Jim Wadsworth for possession of marijuana. He pleads no contest and resigns. (UFOs Yes, 200)
March 1 — An Over the Horizon Forward Scatter Radar System 440L/Program 673A is turned over to NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain facility in Colorado by Air Force Intelligence. It has been previously used to collect intelligence on Soviet missile launches since it was built in 1960–1962. It soon picks up unidentified radar returns. (Clark III 811)
March 2 — A magnetic monitoring device with a film camera set up by the Queensland Flying Saucer Research Bureau at Horseshoe Lagoon, Tully, Queensland, is triggered around the time that an airliner flying at 6,000 feet from Cairns to Iron Range is paced by a UFO. About 50 feet of film is exposed. On March 4, another 16 feet is exposed during a local UFO sighting. The film is apparently intercepted by the RAAF after Victor Mele, the owner of the film, sends it to a Kodak processing facility in Melbourne, Victoria. (Good Above, pp. 170–172)
March 3 — 8:30 p.m. Several witnesses are traveling east on Knud Drive in Columbia, Tennessee, when they notice a large rectangular object approaching them silently from behind. When they stop the car, the object is directly overhead and moving east. It has hundreds of small, dimly lit points of light in 5–6 rows on its base. Witness Norman E. Bryant thinks it is 1,000 feet long, 250 feet wide, and flying at an altitude of 2,000 feet. It passes them in a matter of seconds. (“Out of the Past,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 4, no. 5 (Oct./Nov. 1983): 4–6)
March 4 — 6:15 p.m. A cigar-shaped object approaches a car in West Seneca, New York, and passes in front of it. The object is 50–60 feet long with blinking yellow lights. The witness tries to speed up, but the accelerator does not respond. The object disappears instantly. (Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 40)
March 4 — 9:00 p.m. A man is driving his new Triumph Spitfire up a country lane near Glossop, Derbyshire, England, when two golden objects shoot over the top of his car, killing his headlights, radio, and engine. Moments after the objects pass to the north, the headlights come back on, but the radio still fails. He is able to restart his car engine after the lights come on. A BUFORA investigator takes the radio to his workplace at British Aerospace and finds that two key transistors have burned out, seemingly due to a power surge. Once the transistors are replaced, the radio works again. (Jenny Randles, “Flappy Valley, Part 4,” Fortean Times 328 (July 2015): 30)
March 8 — The first SR-71s arrive at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, to replace the Oxcart A-12s. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird”)
March 10 — 6:00 p.m. Valentina Flores is bringing in her llamas on her farm between Opoco and Uyuni, Bolivia, when she discovers that her sheep pen is covered with a net made of some plastic-like material, and that inside the pen is a helmeted being, 3.5 ft tall, who is engaged in killing her sheep using a tubular instrument with a hook on the end. Flores throws stones at the being, whereupon he walks over to an instrument resembling a radio and, moving a wheel on it, quickly absorbs all the netting. The woman approaches the pen with a cudgel, upon which the being throws its instrument at her several times; it returns to him like a boomerang, after it inflicts superficial cuts on her arms. The entity picks up the machine, which has absorbed the net as well as a bag containing sheep entrails, and puts them into a rucksack on his back. Two legs emerge from the rucksack and extend down to the ground, at which time the entity rises straight up into the air with an extraordinary sound and vanishes. 34 sheep are found dead; from every one, “certain small portions of the digestive organs were missing.” (Oscar A. Galíndez, “Violent Humanoid Encountered in Bolivia,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1970): 15–16; Clark III 138–139;
Patrick Gross, URECAT, November 9, 2007)
March 12 — James E. McDonald presents a paper, “UFOs: An International Scientific Problem,” at an astronautics symposium of the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute, analyzing in depth Philip Klass’s plasma theory of UFOs and rejecting it as “superficial.” (James E. McDonald, “UFOs: An International Scientific Problem,” March 12, 1968; Story, p. 414)
March 19 — 8:30 p.m. 12-year-old Gregory L. Wells is walking toward the trailer home of his parents in Beallsville, Ohio, when he sees an oval-shaped, bright red object hovering above some nearby trees and illuminating the road. It has a band of dimmer red lights around its midsection. Suddenly a big tube emerges from the object and moves around until it is pointed at him. A light beam shoots out and hits the upper part of his arm, knocking him down. His jacket catches fire and he rolls around, screaming with fright. His mother and grandmother come out to help, and they both see the red UFO, which just fades away after 10 minutes. The boy is taken to a hospital and treated for second-degree burns. His scars are still visible three months later. (“Boy Burned by UAO in Ohio,” APRO Bulletin, March/April 1968, pp. 1, 3; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, p. 79)
March 26 — McDonald addresses the question, “Are UFOs Extraterrestrial Surveillance Craft?” in a talk at the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. (James E. McDonald, “Are UFOs Extraterrestrial Surveillance Craft?” March 26, 1968; Story, p. 414)
March 29 — 4:00 p.m. Meteorologist Ştefan Bălaşa and a group of skiers watch a shiny object 75°–80° in the sky near the weather station on Semenic Mountain, Romania. Through binoculars it appears cone-shaped. Bălaşa continues to watch it until 6:40 p.m. when it begins to dim and move slowly to the east-northeast. The same or similar object appears in the same area on the evening of March 30. (Romania 17–18)
March 29 — 6:50 p.m. Spectators at a football match in Tismana, Romania, see a stationary, bright-blue-green conical object that changes its color to red and disappears by 7:30 p.m. (Hobana and Weverbergh 237–238; Romania 18)
March 29 — 7:30 p.m. Two students and two teachers in Târgu-Jiu, Romania, see a whitish-blue isosceles triangle in the southeast sky. It changes color to orange then red and departs to the southwest. (Hobana and Weverbergh 134– 135; Romania 18)
March 30 — 2:30 a.m. Teofil Iorga and 120 other construction workers at the Banat Mine in Oraviţa, Romania, see a luminous globe in the sky. At 6:10 a.m., a stationary yellowish-white object appears in the northeast. Iorga takes a photo of it at 8:00 a.m. and looks at it through a theodolite at 8:15 a.m. It is shaped like a truncated cone with one side exposed to the sun. At 9:00 a.m., the object ascends and moves to the south. (Hobana and Weverbergh 129– 130; Romania 18)
March 30 — 8:00 a.m. Meteorologist Vasile Coţoi and Ingeborg Vityi observe a white conical object maneuvering slowly against the wind at the weather station on Ţarcu Peak, Romania. They watch it for 2.5 hours before it disappears. At 1:00 p.m. it is logged by the weather station near Berzasca about 1 mile inland from the Danube River. At 4:00
p.m. it reappears at the Semenic Mountain weather station and is also seen at Caransebeş, Romania, and other places. (Hobana and Weverbergh 131–138; Romania 19–20)
Spring — Two prospectors, Ed Sampson and Bill Johnson, are sleeping in the Anza Borrego Desert, California, when they wake up at the sound of an explosion. The sky above is filled with a fading red light, and they see flashes on the western horizon. The two climb to the crest of a hill and look down. Sampson sees a “red, circular flying saucer” hovering over the valley, while entities with glowing red eyes march in single file close to the ridge of an adjacent canyon. Something like a church bell rings out at intervals, and mechanical clanking is also audible.
After noticing two glowing-eyed creatures standing behind them, they take off running. (Clark III 557)
Mid-April — Evening. Engineer Gu Ying is sent to a military construction regiment in the north Gobi Desert, China, when the entire battalion notices a huge, luminous, red-orange disc with a flashing light landing in the sand. It is about 9 feet in diameter. The commander dispatches a team of motorcycle troops to approach it. As they get closer, the object shoots up into the sky and disappears. The UFO leaves ground traces like a “seared cross.” The soldiers assume it is a Russian device. (Wendelle Stevens and Paul Dong, UFOs over Modern China, UFO Photo Archive, 1983, pp. 49–50)
April 4 — 8:15 p.m. Two young men in Cochrane, Wisconsin, see a UFO hover above a car ahead of them; its headlights suddenly go out. The object appears metallic and glows orange when standing still, but gets redder and brighter when moving. The object then comes toward their car and the engine conks out. It hovers overhead for a moment, during which time the witnesses feel increased heat and weightlessness. The object departs over a nearby field, emitting a cloudy haze all around its periphery. (Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 40)
April 27 — The May 14 issue of Look magazine contains an article by John G. Fuller on the Low memorandum and the near-mutiny at the Colorado project. (John G. Fuller, “Flying Saucer Fiasco,” Look 32, no. 10 (May 14, 1968): 58–63)
April 29 — Low tells the press Fuller has quoted him out of context. Condon and Low spend the morning talking to legal counsel. ()
April 30 — Rep. J. Edward Roush (D-Ind.) denounces the Colorado project in Congress based on the Look article and raises doubts about its scientific integrity. He writes to Air Force Secretary Robert Seamans to ask for his comments on “this deplorable situation” and he writes to the Comptroller General Elmer B. Staats to investigate the use of public funds for the project. (UFOs Yes, 201–202; “Congressional UFOing,” Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1968)
April 30 — Keyhoe and the NICAP Board of Directors write to President Lyndon Johnson, enclosing the Low memo and other evidence and urging that he create an entirely new commission. Col. Bernhard M. Ettenson, from the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, writes back to say that “we expect that Dr. Condon will fulfill the terms of the agreement.” (“The Inside Story of the Colorado Project,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 6 (May/June 1968): 5)
Early May — Five UFOs are seen diving into the ocean off Arrecife, Vargas, Venezuela. (“Current South American Flap,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1968, p. 8)
Early May — Night. Gerardo Vidal and his wife are driving home from Chascomús to Maipú, Buenos Aires, Argentina. They are just outside Chascomús when their car is enveloped in a thick green fog. The next thing they know they are driving on a road near Mexico City in broad daylight, 4,400 miles to the northwest. Their watches have stopped, and they discover that two days have passed. They visit the Argentine embassy in Mexico City, where Vidal calls a relative in Maipú to report that they are well. However, a June 4, 1968, Reuters dispatch from Mexico City contains a denial of the incident by the Argentine embassy, and subsequent inquiries can find no one in Maipú that could be the Vidals. Finally, in October 1998 Argentine film director Aníbal Uset admits to researcher Roberto E. Banchs that he had invented the Chascomús teleportation as a publicity stunt to spread a fantastic story based on the plot of his upcoming film Ché OVNI. The movie’s poster even shows a UFO carrying off an automobile. (La Razon (Buenos Aires), June 3, 1968; Oscar A. Galíndez, “Teleportation from Chascomús
to Mexico,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1968): 3–4; “Further News on South America,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1968, pp. 7–8; Internet Movie Database, “Ché OVNI”; Jacques Vallée, Confrontations: A Scientist’s Search for Alien Intelligence, Ballantine, 1990, p. 96; Roberto E. Banchs, “The Chascomús Teleportation Hoax,” Fortean Times 351 (April 2017): 56–57)
May 10 — 10:00 p.m. Grant Callison of Galesburg, Illinois, looks out his kitchen window and sees a giant bird illuminated by a streetlight. He and his wife Wilma rush outside for a better look and see three of them flying in a V-formation at an altitude of 500 feet. They look like they have metallic feathers or scales. They are flying with a graceful, fluttering motion. They then see two objects to the south with pulsating red lights moving in the same direction at the same speed (about 25–35 mph). On May 20, around 9:00 p.m., the Callisons have another odd sighting of a single bird-like creature. (Grant Callison, “Winged Creatures over Illinois,” UFOexperiences, February 6, 2006; Clark III 655)
May 11 — A farmer in Brinkley, South Australia, notices strands of material about 65 feet long falling on his property.
He says it is like asbestos rope and as wide as a pencil. On the same day, web-like “fine woven cotton” is seen on a lawn and draped over wires and a fence in Cheltenham, Adelaide, South Australia. (Keith Basterfield, “Angel Hair: An Australian Perspective,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 7)
May 13 — George H. Estabrooks, a Canadian-American psychologist and former consultant for the FBI and CIA, tells the Providence Evening Bulletin that the key to developing an effective spy or assassin is by creating a multiple personality with the aid of hypnosis, a procedure he describes as “child’s play.” Estabrooks suggests that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby could have been controlled in this manner. “This has and is being done. I have done it. It is child’s play now to develop a multiple personality through hypnotism.” (Providence (R.I.) Evening Bulletin, May 13, 1968; Colin A. Ross, Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists, Manitou, 2000, p. 162; Phil Kirby, “Event / TV Times: The Prisoner: Free for All,” The Culture Vulture, May 10, 2018)
May 15 — Low is relieved of 90% of his duties with the Colorado project, effective May 24 and will go back to his job as assistant to Thurston Manning. (UFOs Yes, 204)
May 17 — 5:00 a.m. Caetano Sergio dos Santos is returning home from his job as a night watchman at Caconde, São Paulo, Brazil. In the courtyard of his house he sees a cylinder-shaped object, about the size of a powdered-milk can, stuck in the ground. At each end are dials, one with a black band, the other with a red one. They are encased under a glass or plastic lens with embossed figures arranged in a semicircle. Above each figure is something like an Arabic numeral. Dos Santos takes the object into the house and studies it for 90 minutes, then puts it on a windowsill in the bathroom before going to bed. He goes back to work, then at about 1:00 a.m., he returns home and notices that the object is lighting up the house, with his wife and son, very agitated, standing outside with neighbors. She tells him that a loud buzzing and intense heat had wakened her, both emanating from the object. Dos Santos goes inside and finds a hole in the roof, tile scattered over the floor, and the object gone. (“Brazilian Object Real Puzzler,” APRO Bulletin, July/Aug. 1968, pp. 1, 3; Walter Buehler, “The Mysterious Caconde Case,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1969): 18–19; Clark III 339)
May 21 — Philip J. Klass attempts to refute James E. McDonald’s criticisms of his plasma theory of UFOs in a privately circulated paper. (Phillip J. Klass, “Dr. James E. McDonald’s ‘Mathematical Proof,’” The Author, May 21, 1968, pp. 4–5)
Late May — Condon hires science writer Daniel S. Gillmor to edit the final project report. Gillmor receives editorial help from Joseph H. Rush, a physicist from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Also assisting is associate editor Harriet Hunter and several specialists from the local lab of the Environmental Science Services Administration (including Gordon David Thayer). Franklin Roach returns to work on astronaut sightings. By June 1, the date on which the investigative phase ends, there is a substantially new crew. ()
May 27 — 9:45 p.m. A man is driving near Punta Gorda, Florida, when his headlights and engine fail. As he gets out to check, he sees a light slowly descending at treetop level. The object is shaped like a Pilgrim’s hat with a green glow and bluish color surrounding it. A few minutes after landing, it takes off at high speed, disappearing in the northwest. The car starts once it is gone. The witness notices that his watch has stopped. (Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 41)
May 31 — McDonald speaks to the Chicago Chapter of the American Meteorological Society on UFOs. (James E. McDonald, “UFOs: Atmospheric or Extraterrestrial?” May 31, 1968; Story, p. 414)
Summer — Three teenagers notice an irregular triangular object flying to the west over housing in Stazic street in Rzeszów, Poland. It is dark with some brighter bulges on the bottom and emits a buzzing sound. (Poland 32)
June 3 — McDonald addresses the Burro Club (Democratic Congressional Administrative Assistants and Aides) in the Rayburn Building in Washington, D.C., on the question “Does Congress Have a Responsibility to Investigate the UFO Problem?” (Story, p. 414)
June 4 — A-12 pilot Jack W. Weeks is lost over the South China Sea near the Philippines during a functional checkout flight after the replacement of one of its engines. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed A-12”)
June 6 — Capt. U. Tiviroli, commander of an Argentine Airlines Avro, sees a UFO, along with his copilot and 18 passengers, for 5 minutes during a night landing at Punta Arenas airport, Chile. An unusually bright object, long and spindle-shaped, appears above the plane. It moves in a course parallel to the plane and stops suddenly in midair. Then it swerves in a right angle back to the plane. It is also seen by airport observers. (“Argentinian Pilot Reports UAO,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1968, p. 3)
June 11 — Philip J. Klass attempts to refute James E. McDonald’s criticisms of his plasma theory of UFOs in another unpublished paper. (Philip J. Klass, “Does Dr. James E. McDonald Really Speak with Authority?” The Author, June 11, 1968, pp. 8–9)
June 11 — MP John Langford-Holt asks UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson whether he is aware that some UFO reports are made to the Ministry of Defence, while police reports are made to the Board of Trade. Wilson replies that reports going to the Board of Trade are passed on to the Ministry of Defence. (Good Above, p. 67)
June 14 — Shortly after 12:00 midnight. Isidro Puentes Ventura is on guard duty in Cabañas, Artemisa, Cuba, when he sees on the ground a brilliant domed UFO with several antennas on top. He approaches to within 165 feet and fires about 40 machine gun rounds into it, convinced it is American. The object turns orange and emits a whistling sound as Puentes loses consciousness. At dawn, an Army patrol finds him still unconscious and takes him to a hospital in Pinar del Rio, where he remains in shock for 6 days, unable to speak. He is then taken to a Naval hospital in Havana, where he remains in shock another week. At the site, Cuban and Soviet intelligence specialists find 48 spent cartridges and 14 bullets flattened by impact with something solid, as well as equally spaced indentations on the ground. Tests reveal that the soil has been exposed to a high temperature. (Jacques Vallée, UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union: A Cosmic Samizdat, Ballantine, 1992, pp. 82–85)
June 15 — 1:05 a.m. María Elodia Pretzel, daughter of the owner of the Motel La Cuesta on National Highway 20 east of Villa Carlos Paz, Córdoba, Argentina, is locking up for the night when she encounters a strange-looking man in the dining area. He is 6 feet tall and dressed in a blue helmet and a suit that glows with an eerie light and seems made up of scales. In his left hand he is holding a glassy sphere that is radiating a coherent light that lights up the room. She feels somewhat paralyzed and is getting a mental message not to be afraid. The entity raises its other arm, which is emitting beams of light, and she feels helpless, falling backward. The entity walks slowly toward the outside door, putting one foot directly in front of the other, arm extended and holding the now extinguished sphere, and passes outside. Still shaken, María goes to the laundry room and drops on the floor, head and arms on a divan. A few minutes later, her father, Pedro Jacobo Pretzel, arrives and discovers her. Minutes earlier, he had seen two odd, stationary red lights about 5–6 feet from the ground off Highway 20. Maria is conscious but very disturbed, a condition that lasts for several days. (Oscar A. Galíndez, “The Anthropomorphic Entity at Villa Carlos Paz—Part 1,” Flying Saucer Review 26, no. 5 (January 1981): 8–17, 29–31; Oscar A. Galíndez, “The Anthropomorphic Entity at Villa Carlos Paz—Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 26, no. 6 (March 1981): 15–18)
June 15–17 — Night. Allied forward spotters along the eastern part of the Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam see about 30 strange slow-moving lights. At the time they are interpreted as North Vietnamese Russian-built M-14 Hound helicopters ferrying men and materiel over the border. The lights appear the following evening, and several US 7th Air Force Phantom fighter-bombers soon arrive on the scene and fire on the intruders, supported by anti- aircraft ground fire. During the Allied attack the presumed helicopters move down the east coast and out to sea. The destroyers HMAS Hobart, USS Edson, and USS Theodore E. Chandler are ordered to undertake surveillance missions around Cồn Cỏ (Tiger Island) along the north central coast. Around 3:14 a.m. on June 17, the ships are involved in a friendly fire incident in which the Hobart is hit by 3 missiles from one of the Phantoms, causing major damage and killing two of the crew. (Jon Wyatt, “HMAS Hobart Hit during Vietnam UFO Enciunter?” AUFORN Special Report, no. 34 (April 2003), reprinted in UFO Evidence)
June 16 and 19 — Night. Chief of Provincial Police German Rocha and Police Maj. Niceforo Léon observe a round object with a vivid blue light near El Choro, Poopó, Bolivia. It lands, leaves a strange, powerful odor, and burns grass and shrubs. (Gordon Creighton, “A New South American ‘Wave,’” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 5 (Sept./Oct.
1968): 23–24; Oscar A. Galíndez, “South America Revisited,” Australian UFO Review, no. 10 (December 1969): 41)
June 18 — Jorge Raul Scassa Sutter and Ruben Andrawos are flying a Cessna 182 from Villa Dolores, Córdoba, Argentina, to La Guardia, Catamarca, Argentina. They see an object looking like an overturned soup plate with a cupola on top. The object is grayish-blue with no windows, and its diameter is about 90 feet. The object is at the
same altitude as the aircraft, 7,500 feet, and at a distance of 330 feet. It disappears by flying to the north at a fantastic speed. There is a possible VHF interference (“frequency fading”) when the object approaches the aircraft in front. (La Gaceta de Tucumán, June 19, 1968; NICAP, “Cessna 182 Encounters UFO / VHF I/FF”)
June 20 — The US Seventh Air Force holds a “joint service conference on the UFO problem” in Hawaii after a series of tragic incidents on June 15–17, including a missile attack on “unidentified helicopters” that hit the Australian Navy destroyer HMAS Hobart, killing two sailors. An investigation reveals that the Air Force is in the midst of a wave of sightings of things that are not enemy helicopters in central Vietnam, just south of and within the DMZ. (Clark III 1051; Sparks, pp. 327–328)
June 20 — Following the publication of their book Flying Saucer Report: UFOs Unidentified, Unidentifiable, British researchers Anthony R. Pace and Roger H. Stanway visit the UK S4 (Air) UFO desk in Whitehall, London, again and meet with Leslie Akhurst, John Dickison, and Alec Cassie. Their request to record the interview is denied, but they are impressed with Cassie’s ability to recall UFO cases mentioned in their book. (Good Above, p. 68)
June 20 — A husband and wife encounter an array of lights that hover above their car near Roswell, New Mexico. Both have a feeling of great peace. When the UFO vanishes, the wife finds that the arthritis in her neck has been healed. (Michael D. Swords, “Can UFOs Cause Physiological Effects? Part 1,” IUR 33, no. 4 (May 2011): 23)
June 26 — An Argentine Trotskyist using the pseudonym J. Posadas, who formed a movement in 1962 based on the inevitability of nuclear war, has proclaimed an interest in UFOs as entities with the ability to master sophisticated technologies that are compatible with socialism. If UFOs exist, they might be helpful in addressing some of the major problems in the earth. In his pamphlet, Les Soucoupes Volantes: Le processus de la matière et de l’energie, la science et le socialisme, Posadas pleads that “We must call upon beings from other planets when they come to intervene, to collaborate with the inhabitants of the Earth to overcome misery. We must launch a call on them to use their resources to help us.” (J. Posadas, Flying Saucers: The Process of Matter and Energy, Science, the Revolutionary and Working-Class Struggle, and Socialism, June 26, 1968; A. M. Gittlitz, I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs, and Apocalyptic Communism, Pluto, 2020; Ian Parker, “Believe It or Not!” Socialist Resistance, May 1, 2020)
July — British physicist Reginald Victor Jones publishes a skeptical view of UFOs in Physics Bulletin, but supports genuine scientific inquiry. (R. V. Jones, “The Natural Philosophy of Flying Saucers,” Physics Bulletin, July 1968, pp. 225–230)
July — A CIA team flies into Saigon [now Ho Chi Minh City] to experiment on three Viet Cong prisoners at Biên Hòa Hospital. Working in an enclosed compound, the team’s neurosurgeon and neurologist insert tiny electrodes into their brains. Behaviorists then experiment on the men, arming them with knives and trying to induce violent behavior in them using direct electrical stimulation. After a week of experimentation that fails to incite the men to attack each other, they are shot dead and their bodies burned. (Sid Taylor, “A History of Secret CIA Mind Control Research,” Nexus, April/May 1992)
July — A man is driving on Blacketts Lake Road southwest of Sydney, Nova Scotia, when he sees a saucer-shaped object descending below the tree line near the lake. He parks his car and runs along a trail to get closer. He is about 75 feet from the object, which is only 6 feet above the ground in a clearing. The UFO suddenly rises and flies away. The RCMP blocks access to the site during its investigation. (“Former RCMP Officer Photographs UFO near Sydney, N.S.,” Journal UFO 2, no. 4 (March 1981): 15)
July — 1:00 a.m. Walter Rizzi is taking a nap in his car by the road just south of the Gardena Pass, South Tyrol, Italy, when he wakes to the smell of something burning. He sees a light about 1,600 feet further downhill shining through the mist. The mist parts, and he sees an enormous object that suddenly reminds him of an encounter he had with a strange hermit on the island of Rhodes in Greece when he was in the Italian army in World War II. The hermit had predicted he would someday meet with advanced beings from the cosmos who would provide him with the assurance of life throughout the universe. Rizzi makes his way downhill toward the object, which is silvery, some 260 feet in diameter, standing on three legs, bathed in fleecy white light, and emitting a burning odor. He gets within 10 feet and cannot go further. He sees two beings inside a transparent cupola on the top who are looking down at him. To the right of the object is a robot about 8 feet tall with three legs and four arms. A beam of light comes from the center of the object, and Rizzi sees another being dressed in a tight-fitting suit and glass helmet descending. They communicate telepathically about other planets and the universe. Eventually the entities reenter the object and take off. Rizzi claims there are landing marks, effects on the grass, and his watch starts losing time. (Gordon Creighton, “Introductory Comments on the Rizzi Case,” Flying Saucer Review 26, no. 3 (September 1980): 21–22; Walter Rizzi, “Close Encounter in the Dolomites,” Flying Saucer Review 26, no. 3 (September 1980): 22–27; 1Pinotti 158–169)
July 1 — NASA publishes a Chronological Catalog of Reported Lunar Events, by Barbara M. Middlehurst, Jaylee M. Burley, Patrick Moore, and Barbara L. Welther. Moore invents the term “transient lunar phenomena” to describe short-lived changes in brightness, color, or appearance on the surface of the moon. (Wikipedia, “Transient lunar phenomenon”; Barbara M. Middlehurst, Jaylee M. Burley, Patrick Moore, and Barbara L. Welther, Chronological Catalog of Reported Lunar Events, NASA Technical Report R-277, July 1, 1968)
July 1 — 12:30 a.m. Three boys are sitting on the main gate of the UNESP Hospital das Clinicas of the Faculdade de Medicina de Botucatu, São Paulo, Brazil. Suddenly they see a large object “as big as a house” sitting about 1,150 feet to the west of them. It has a large tripod undercarriage and a ladder reaching down to the ground. The boys can hear a weird “tinging sound on a high note.” They start to yell as the UFO retracts its tripod and ladder and rise into the air and speed off to the east, reaching a great altitude. Alerted by their shouts, other witnesses see the object moving away. A student named Antônio Alegre examines the landing site shortly afterward and finds marks forming an isosceles triangle, two sides measuring 20 feet and one side 23 feet. (Nigel Rimes, “Landing at Botucatu,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1968): 21–24)
July 2 — 11:25 a.m. Oscar Heriberto Iriart, 15, sees two men of normal height motioning to him at Sierra Chica, Buenos Aires, Argentina. They have short, white hair and red clothes. They also have semi-transparent legs because he can see through them to the grass behind. Near the men is an elliptical, silvery machine, 6.5 feet long, 2 feet high, with three legs 19 inches high. The men give him an envelope they telepathically say contains an important message, telling him to dip it in water before reading, then they fly off. Iriart dips the envelope in a puddle and finds that both the envelope and his hands are dry. The message is written in Spanish in a crude handwriting: “You are going to know the world. F. Saucer.” The witness’s horse and dog are paralyzed for several minutes.
The boy arrives home terrified. The family goes to the landing site and finds three holes, each about 5 inches deep and forming an isosceles triangle, the base side measuring 6.5 feet and the other 2 sides 5.2 feet wide. At 11:15 p.m., five skeptical men (including Police Sgt. Raúl Coronel) from the Sierra Chica Social Club visit the landing site and declare the holes to be fake. However, they see a zigzagging light a few feet from the ground and heading their way. They drop to the ground, it passes over them, and then shoots away straight up. (Gordon Creighton, “A New South American ‘Wave,’” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1968): 26–27)
July 2 — 10:00–10:30 p.m. Fred Coulthard Jr. and his brother Wayne are at a family get-together in the backyard of their father’s home in Wooler, Ontario, when they see an object with rotating red lights that agitates the family’s horses and cats. Around 11:30 p.m., poltergeist-like disturbances (a shattered window, objects thrown around, a strong odor of roses) begin in the house and continue for several days. “Fairy rings” are discovered on the ground in a wooded valley north of town. (Mrs. W. Greystone, “Canada’s UFO Poltergeist,” in Charles Bowen, ed., Beyond Condon, special issue no. 2 of FSR, June 1969, pp. 66–68, 70)
July 9 — 9:35 p.m. Witnesses at Long Beach, California, see a huge, glowing, cloud-like mass over the Santa Catalina Channel for 90 minutes. Five smaller objects are seen maneuvering around it. (Ann Druffel, “Santa Catalina Island Recurring ‘Cloud Cigars,’” in Proceedings of the 1976 CUFOS Conference, Chicago, 1976, pp. 62–74; Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects and Cloud Cigars,” IUR 29, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 9–10; Ann Druffel, “Santa Catalina Channel Cloud Cigars,” IUR 31, no. 1 (January 2007): 13–14; Wim van Utrecht, “‘Mother Ship’ over California,” Caelestia, August 5, 2009)
July 13 — 10:00 p.m. Irena Scott and her sister Sue Postle are traveling west of Boston, Massachusetts, on State Highway 9 when they see an unusual object to the south. They watch it intermittently after turning south on State Highway 128 and I-95. It is moving in an erratic pattern and blinking. Then they see a basketball-sized object 20–50 feet away, near the ground, and constantly changing colors. Scott pulls over to the side of the road, loads her camera, and takes five photos, only one of which shows the light. (Irena Scott, “Fear and Ambiguity in Massachusetts,” IUR 13, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1988): 14–17; Irena Scott, “UFO Studies in the Scientific Literature,” IUR 15, no. 4
(July/Aug. 1990): 18; Irena Scott, “A Photograph and Its Aftermath,” IUR 15, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1990): 12–14, 23)
July 17 — Late evening. A civil servant is allegedly snatched off the São Paulo Highway in Brazil and taken into a UFO by four green entities wearing devices that look like headphones. While he is in a state of paralysis, they question him via telepathy about human customs, physiology, and reproduction. The creatures depart abruptly as if in response to instructions. (Gordon Creighton, “Physical Examination by ‘Miniature Martians,’” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1969): 32, 34; Clark III 279)
July 18 — 1:05 a.m. RCMP Constable W. J. Whyte and his wife spot a yellow circular object at high altitude moving west to east near Truro, Nova Scotia. It looks like a satellite, but turns reddish before disappearing in the distance. At 1:10 p.m., a couple near Onslow Mountain a few miles to the north see a rosy red light in the southwest hovering just above the trees. They watch it for 15 minutes before it moves and accelerates out of sight. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 70–71)
July 20 — After 12:00 midnight. Three 14-year-old girls at a summer camp at Kaarnajärv, near Otepää, Valga County, Estonia, see a swiftly moving star and a cigar-shaped object in the distance that quickly disappears. Somewhat disturbed, they decide to retire to bed. Through a window they see a bright object about 165 feet away. It is surrounded by reddish-orange and yellow beams of light. Soon it goes out, leaving only a dark greenish nebula with a blue-green ring around it that illuminates the surrounding woods. They watch it for about 5 minutes until it blinks out. One of the girls goes outside and sees a female figure, less than 5 feet tall and wearing a silver ribbon, standing where the object had been. It vanishes. The next morning, they find a circular burnt area about 6 feet in diameter and four wedge-shaped prints in the soil. (Juri Lina, “UFO Landings in Estonia,” Flying Saucer Review 24, no. 1 (June 1978): 3–4)
July 22 — Around 12:00 midnight. Off-duty police constable Martyn Johnson is walking with his girlfriend in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, when they see two lights approaching them from above a nearby park. They are giving off many colored lights. As they hover above a nearby house, the couple’s poodle becomes agitated and runs off. The two lights then become four and arrange themselves in an oblong formation. All at once they vanish at terrific speed, following a railway to the northeast. A few hours later, Johnson is awakened and told to report to police headquarters, where there are two “government men” waiting to quiz him about the sighting. They desperately try to convince him that he has seen an aircraft or helicopter. They tell him he is sworn to secrecy for the next 25 years. When he asks what he has seen, they tell him, “What you have seen is an unidentified flying object or UFO. Some people call them spaceships, and if the people of the world knew how many genuine sightings there were like yours, there would be total panic.” (UFOFiles2, pp. 82–83)
July 22 — 1:20 a.m. Adela Casalvieri de Panassiti, 45, night nurse at the Dr. Carlos Pereyra Neuropsychiatric Hospital at Ituzaingó 2837, Mendoza, Argentina, hears a loud, penetrating, humming noise outside in the hospital courtyard. Going out to see what it is, she observes a mushroom-shaped landed object only 65 feet away. It is luminous and sitting in the middle of the courtyard. A bright red beam comes from the object and strikes her, and she finds that her legs are paralyzed. Putting her hands up to her face for protection, she discovers she is completely unable to move. She remains immobilized for a number of minutes until the red beam is extinguished. At this time, the object ascends vertically then flies off rapidly to the south, barely clearing the wall that surrounds the courtyard. Before it disappears, she is able to observe several human-looking figures through square portholes that encircle the craft. These beings move back and forth, passing each other, and are visible from the waist up only. A lead- gray stain, 31 x 12 inches, that smells of sulfur is found at the landing site. It persists for two days. Several small potted trees are burned. Casalvieri de Panassiti has first-degree burns on her face and hands (an allergic reaction?), and parts of her nurse’s cap and clothing are singed. In addition, her watch, which has stopped at 1:30 a.m., is found to be radioactive, as is her ring. The daughters of a garrison commander witness a luminous, egg- shaped object at the same time from the garrison casino. (“Argentina: Hospital Landing at El Sauce,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1968): 32; Roberto Banchs, “Mendoza: Agitacion por Apariciones de OVNIs (22 Julio y 09 Ago 1968),” Visión OVNI, November 11, 2008; Scott Corrales, “1968: A Nurse Burned by an Alleged UFO (CE-2),” Inexplicata, July 25, 2011)
July 23 — 1:00 a.m. Daíldo de Oliveira, a night watchman for the CESP electrical substation near Bauru, São Paulo, Brazil, confronts three intruders who overpower him outside a control center building. A large UFO 50 feet tall is resting nearby on the ground; it takes off in a zigzag pattern towards the city of Lins. (Clark III 183–185; Brazil 93–98)
July 25 — 2:00 a.m. Juan Sivori, his wife, and a daughter see a silver object shaped like a spinning top a they are driving along Highway 226 near La Pastora, Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is only 115 feet from them and the size of a truck. The engine of their car stops running as the UFO hovers for about 5 minutes at a height of 33 feet. When it rises into the air and vanishes, the car engine starts up again. (Oscar A. Uriondo, “Preliminary Catalogue of Type I Cases in Argentina, Part 4,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 16 (August 1973): 11)
July 28 — 12:00 midnight. A farmer, his wife, and two children near Upton, Quebec, are awakened by the barking of their dog. When he gets up to investigate, he sees a sparkling, rotating “cloud” in the yard. It flies just over him and goes into a nearby field. About 12 feet in diameter, it is dark on the bottom but luminous on top. The cows in the field are being chased by 4 or 5 small entities, perhaps 3 feet tall with heads shaped like bottles. As the UFO flies above them, they disappear. The cattle seem ill for weeks afterwards. (John Brent Musgrave, UFO Occupants and Critters, Global Communications, 1979; Clark III 280)
July 29 — The hearings that Rep. J. Edward Roush and NICAP have been calling for are held as a “Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects” before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. Rep. George P. Miller (D-Calif.) is chairman of the committee, but Roush directs most of the proceedings. Hynek, McDonald, Sagan, Robert L. Hall (University of Illinois at Chicago), James A. Harder (UC-Berkeley), and Robert M. L. Baker Jr. (UCLA) give testimony. Hynek is introduced by Rep. Donald Rumsfeld (R-Ill.). Menzel, R. Leo Sprinkle, Garry
C. Henderson, Stanton T. Friedman, Roger N. Shepard, and Frank B. Salisbury offer prepared papers. NICAP representatives are not permitted to testify. Many witnesses parrot the NORAD party line that its radars only look in certain directions (when indeed it looks for many types of potential attacks in all directions). Harder states: “On the basis of the data and ordinary rules of evidence, as would be applied in civil or criminal courts, the physical reality of UFOs has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” McDonald makes the biggest impression, presenting 30 pages of UFO reports. He states: “my own present opinion, based on two years of careful study, is that UFOs are probably extraterrestrial devices engaged in something that might very tentatively be termed ‘surveillance.’” Menzel concludes that UFOs merit no more scientific study than “the concept of ghosts, spirits, witches, fairies, elves, hobgoblins, or the devil.” The symposium has no lasting impact, as Congress does nothing about the problem. (Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968; “Congressional Hearings on UFO Problems: Scientists Urge Unbiased National Investigations,” UFO Investigator 4, no. 7 (July/Aug. 1968): 1–5; Clark III 811)
July 30 — 2:00 a.m. A land surveyor and his wife in Claremont, New Hampshire, are preparing to retire when they see a dome-shaped object in a field about 230 feet behind their house. It is about 20 feet wide and moving slowly 10 feet above the ground, creating shadows on the freshly cut hay. The UFO shines a 20-foot wide gray-colored beam of light onto the ground. Their children moan and cry out in while they are sleeping and their dogs are whining loudly. They hear a high-pitched humming sound like a utility pole transformer. A few minutes later the object moves 25 feet to the east, the humming growing louder. At one point, a projection from the object descends to the ground. Around 4:30 a.m., the object goes brighter and slowly moves off toward the west. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 38–40)
July 31 — 9:00 a.m. Farmer Luce Fontaine is collecting grass for his rabbits at La Plaine des Cafres on the island of Réunion (in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar), when he sees an oval-shaped object about 75 feet away. It is sitting about 15 feet from the ground on a flange of metal; a similar structure protrudes from its top. The cylinder has two blue ends and a transparent center through which he can see two humanoids less than 3 feet tall in metallic helmets and dressed in puffy suits like the Michelin Man (the tire company mascot). Seemingly sensing Fontaine looking at them, they turn their backs and the object disappears in a sudden flash of light and a burst of hot air. The incident is investigated by Capt. Maljean of the local Gendarmerie and Capt. Léopold Legros of the Civil Protection Service, who detect an abnormal amount of radioactivity at the site and on Fontaine’s clothing 10 days afterward, as well as six apparent landing marks in the ground. A country club called “La Soucoupe Volante” (Flying Saucer) is later built on the site. (“Contact Casualty on Réunion,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1969): 8, 11; Jean-Claude Bourret, Le Nouveau Défi des O.V.N.I., France-Empire, 1976; Antonio Huneeus, “The ‘Michelin Man’ Encounters on Réunion Island,” Open Minds, July 30, 2010; Patrick Gross, “Plaine des Caffres, La Réunion, July 31, 1968”; La Soucoupe Volante Country Club, Facebook page)
August — The US Air Force Weapons Laboratory begins to set up a field instrumentation lab at Con Thien combat base near the Demilitarized Zone, Quang Tri Province, Vietnam, specifically for the purpose of investigating and tracking unidentified aircraft. The first project name is HAVE FEAR. At least 500 UFO sensor trackings via radar-visual, laser range-finder, video camera, infrared, nightscope, and telescope are investigated through April 1969. The UFOs, often seen as red lights, usually travel at speeds of 30–80 mph at altitudes of 1,200–1,600 feet. After several days of tracking, the red blinking lights extinguish when under radar surveillance. They are only seen at night and only in certain places. In mid-August, Project LETHAL CHASER is added, using portable manpack radars. The findings involve 99% UFOs and only 1% IFOs, primarily because the system does not include human anecdotal accounts. Pacific Air Forces’ unit history clearly states the investigation is about UFOs, not enemy helicopters. (Clark III 1050–1054; Sparks, p. 328)
August 4 — 4:15 a.m. Three witnesses in Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, watch a luminous object, about 25 feet in diameter, as it hovers for several minutes. Later it circles above the house 300 feet away. A 4-foot circle of barren grass is found, although an 18-inch circle in the center is undamaged. (Ted Phillips, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings, Center for UFO Studies, 1978, p. 57)
August 7 — McDonald addresses the Boeing Management Association in Renton, Washington, on “UFO Investigations: Past, Present, and Future.” (Story, p. 414)
August 7 — 8:10 p.m. As a young man and woman watch from the end of a dock at Buff Ledge Camp [now closed] along the shore of Lake Champlain north of Burlington, Vermont, a bright light appears in the southwest sky and swoops down in a long arc until it stops and assumes a horizontal position. It now resembles a white, glowing, cigar-shaped object, possibly as far away as the Adirondack Mountains more than 10 miles from the witnesses.
According to the young man, three tiny white lights emerge one at a time from the right-end bottom of the UFO. As soon as the third is expelled, the object retreats along its original path and vanishes seconds later. The three
smaller objects perform a series of spectacular maneuvers, all the while moving closer. After 5 minutes the objects assume a horizontal triangle formation, and two head off in opposite directions, one to the north, the other to the south, making a sound like “thousands of different tuning forks.” The remaining object (40–50 feet across) moves toward the witnesses. It ascends and vanishes in three seconds, only to reappear moments later as it descends along the same trajectory and plunges broadside into the water. A sudden wind blows waves across the heretofore placid surface. Animals up and down the shore howl and shriek. A few minutes later the UFO surfaces and moves toward the witnesses. It stops 60 feet from them, hovering about 15 feet above the water. The young man can see two figures with large heads, oversized oval eyes, and small mouths. Visible to the waist, they are short and clothed in skintight gray or silver uniforms. Thus begins an abduction experience that was only uncovered through separate hypnotic sessions with each of the witnesses by Walter N. Webb years later. Webb’s background checks, buttressed by psychological analyses, convinces him that there is no question of a hoax. (Walter N. Webb, Encounter at Buff Ledge: A UFO Case History CUFOS, 1994; Richard F. Haines, [Review], JUFOS 6 (1995/96): 248–251; Clark III 220–222; B. J. Booth, “The Buff Ledge Abduction,” UFO Casebook)
August 15 — 12:00 midnight. Dick Skewes is driving west with his wife Anne and babysitter Gail Yemm about 20 minutes east of Springhill, Nova Scotia, on the Trans-Canada Highway. After driving up a hill, he sees a group of 5–6 lights hovering 50 feet above some trees on his left. Another light is approaching at high speed to join the others. One of the objects breaks away and descends silently over the highway in front of them, its yellow lights flashing brilliantly, on an apparent collision course. When it is 40–50 feet away it veers upward and disappears to the east. Skewes continues down the highway and loses sight of the objects when he rounds a bend. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 79–81)
August 16 — 2:51 a.m. The crew of a Canadian Forces Hercules C-150E are flying above Regina, Saskatchewan, when they see a cigar-shaped object cross their flight path. It has 6 rectangular patches on its side. It is visible with the naked eye for about 90 seconds, then it rapidly shrinks and disappears to the southwest very rapidly. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, p. 112)
August 16 — 6:00 a.m. A farmer doing barnyard chores at La Serra d’Almos, Catalonia, Spain, glimpses a light more than half a mile away. He thinks someone’s car has stalled, so he walks over with his dog intending to help. But he finds a globe-shaped, glowing object hovering 3 feet above the ground. On the other side of it, he sees two creatures of an octopus-like appearance. Light-colored, 3 feet tall, they are running on “four or five legs” toward the UFO, which abruptly takes off. Reporters and UFO investigators find a considerable area of burned grass at the site. Those who visit the site shortly afterwards find their watches stop mysteriously. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, A Catalogue of 200 Type I UFO Events in Spain and Portugal, CUFOS, 1976, pp. 14–15; Clark III 280– 281)
August 17 — 8:21 p.m. Capt. Benjamin Gabrian is flying an Ilyushin Il-18 airliner at 22,800 feet in the vicinity of Oradea, Romania, when he sees an oval object on his right about a half-mile away and 900 feet higher. It is moving at high speed and emitting a bright green light. They watch it for 10–15 seconds before it accelerates and disappears to the west. (Hobana and Weverbergh 180–182; Romania 21)
August 18 — 1:20 p.m. Technician Emil Barnea, his girlfriend Zamfira Matea, and two other friends are picnicking in the Hoia Baciu forest near Baciu, not far from Cluj-Napoca, Romania, when they see a round, metallic, luminous object moving slowly through the sky. Its brilliance increases and decreases as it maneuvers around for 2 minutes. Barnea succeeds in taking four photos of the object before it suddenly accelerates and shoots upwards. (Hobana and Weverbergh 99–107; UFOEv II 287; Adrian Pătruţ, “Phenomena in the Hoia Baciu Wood near Cluj-Napoca,” Flying Saucer Review 53, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 10; Chris Hill, “Hoia Baciu: Romania’s Haunted Forest,” Fortean Times 382, August 2019, pp. 32–36; Patrick Gross, “Emil Barnea’s Photographs, Cluj, Romania, 1968”; Romania 21–27)
August 21 — 6:58 a.m. The Canadian destroyer HMCS Mackenzie is on a mission in the Pacific Ocean about 930 miles off the coast of California. Four of the ship’s crew, including Maj. W. J. Draper, see a group of starlike lights approaching from the northeast, initially only 10° above the horizon. They are flying in a row, and one in the middle of the line seems larger and has a white glow around it. Within 5 minutes, the procession of 20 objects passes nearly overhead, heading west. They maintain a steady course until they are lost to view 13 minutes later. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 73–74)
August 22 — 5:40 p.m. Capt. Walter Gardin and Capt. Gordon W. Smith are flying over Zanthus, Western Australia, at 8,000 feet in a Piper Navajo single-engine airplane when they see a large cigar-shaped object surrounded by five smaller ones. The formation maintains a constant angle from their own flight path for more than 10 minutes, while they are flying at 224 mph. The large object then opens up its center and the smaller objects fly to and from the larger object. Ground air control reports no known air traffic in the area. At this point the radio fails at all frequencies until the objects fly away. (“Pilots See Formation over Australia,” APRO Bulletin, Jan./Feb. 1969, pp.
1, 4; Paul B. Norman, “‘Motherships’ over Australia,” Flying Saucer Review 24, no. 5 (March 1979): 9–10; Paul
B. Norman, “Countdown to Reality,” Flying Saucer Review 31, no. 2 (January 1986): 19–20; Good Above, pp. 172–173; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, “The BOAC Labrador Sighting of June 29, 1954: Similar Reports,” Caelestia, October 31, 2018)
August 25 — 5:00 a.m. Hospital assistant Maria José Cintra of the Serafim Ferrreira sanitarium in Lins, São Paulo, Brazil, hears a noise like the braking of a car. Cintra readies herself to meet people needing medical assistance. She opens a glass door and asks the visitor if she is a patient. The visitor, just over 6 feet tall, answers in an unknown language. The visitor is wearing a blue satiny cape, matching shoes, and a dress with a high collar and long sleeves. She shows Cintra a vessel with engraved ornaments, and Cintra fills it with water from a fountain and offers her a doughnut. The visitor walks to the door of the sanitorium and through some flowerbeds. At this point Cintra notices a semicircular “pebble-like” light on the ground and a UFO floating 1–2 feet above the grass. She feels the force of an invisible rotating movement and notices that the visitor is no longer there. The UFO rises into the air, making soft sounds like those she heard when the visitor arrived. Later, she and the sanitorium manager and his wife find high-heeled footprints on the freshly waxed floor near the door. On the lawn they discover a spot of scorched grass that persists for 4 months. Subsequent investigation reveals a depression in the ground 5–7 inches deep, apparently made by a vehicle with a diameter of about 6.5 feet. From his bed, another patient has seen the UFO land some 260 feet from the fence of the sanitorium and remain there for 15 minutes. (“Mulher Extraterrestre Pede Água, em Lins, Est. de São Saulo,” SBEDV Boletim, no. 66/68 (Jan./June 1969): 72–74; Nigel Rimes, “Another Hospital Visited,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1969): 4–6; Gordon Creighton, “Confrontation at Lins,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1969): 22–23; Clark III 684–685; “O Fantástico Caso Lins,” Portal Fenomenum, June 15, 2016; “O Fantástico Caso Lins,” Oarquiva; Brazil 99–104)
August 26 — 7:50 p.m. Pearl Christiansen is unchaining the driveway to her ranch near Gleeson, Colorado, when she notices a round, silver disc. She watches it for 5 minutes, then a second object appears, “very shiny and gold.” Both are hovering above 7,200-foot high Brown’s Peak. They remain for several hours, then just after midnight they back away behind the mountain. Mr. and Mrs. Willard Mayfield also see the objects. Daily Citizen reporter Cecil James and photographer Dan Tortorell visit the apparent site and find erratic burned patches of Dasylirion plants (charred at the base but not at the top) and grass. Rocks show evidence of high heat and are still hot to the touch two days later. (Cecil James, “Gleeson UFO Leaves Traces,” Tucson (Ariz.) Daily Citizen, October 19, 1968, Olé magazine, pp. 10, 22)
September 1 — 3:42 a.m. Juan Carlos Peccinetti and Fernando José Villegas are driving home after getting off work at a casino in Mendoza, Argentina. On the Calle Neuquén, their car stops and the lights go out. They find themselves unable to move and several humanoid beings standing near an enormous landed UFO. They receive telepathic messages from the aliens who make marks on the windshield and one side of their car and see a screen full of dystopian images. The beings prick their fingers and take blood samples before gong back to the UFO. However, the two later admit to making up the story. (Charles Bowen, “One Day in Mendoza,” Flying Saucer Review 14, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1968): 2–5; Clark III 601)
September 4 — Hynek receives a letter from Col. Raymond S. Sleeper, commander of the Air Force Foreign Technology Division. Sleeper notes that Hynek has publicly accused Project Blue Book of shoddy science, and further asks Hynek to offer advice on how Blue Book could improve its scientific methods. Hynek later declares that Sleeper’s letter is “the first time in my 20 year association with the air force as scientific consultant that I had been officially asked for criticism and advice [regarding] ... the UFO problem.” (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., pp. 189–190)
September 4 — Two US Air Force pilots flying in the vicinity of Goose Bay AFB [now CFB Goose Bay], Labrador, spot a spherical metallic object flying in a southerly direction at 33,000–41,000 feet. It crosses behind them, stops, performs two 360° turns and disappears after 5 minutes at 30° above the horizon. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, p. 115)
September 4 — 10:30 p.m. A scoutmaster and 12 River Scouts are having a camp-out by bonfire in the mountains near Caracas, Venezuela, when they see two intensely glowing red discs, each about the size of the full moon, as they rise one at a time from some low hills, hover momentarily, and descend again. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, p. 299)
September 5 — Night. Thousands of people in Madrid, Spain, see a bright object in the sky, causing a monumental traffic jam. The Spanish Air Force scrambles an F-104 jet to intercept it. The pilot climbs to 50,000 feet but the object is still above him, and he has to return for fuel. Air Force radar tracks the UFO moving slowly at 90,000 feet. A photo taken through a telescope at the Royal Observatory of Madrid shows a triangular object, apparently solid on one side and translucent in some sections. The object disappears at great speed. The Madrid Weather Bureau says
it has no meteorological balloons aloft. (“Triangle-Shaped Object over Madrid,” APRO Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1968, p. 4; Good Above, pp. 149–151)
September 6 — 9:30 p.m. John Dow and Paul Franklin are driving on Springfield Road in Taradale, New Zealand, when they notice 20–30 red and green lights flying aimlessly above the city dump. They pull off the road to watch, and a “thunderous explosion” rips through the air, shaking the car. Immediately, the lights begin to group, take off vertically, and disappear. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, p. 48)
September 10 — Evening. John Dow and Paul Franklin are on the Omarunui Road southwest of Taradale, New Zealand.
They see a circular object with a red and green light that is only a few feet in diameter and glowing white. Heading toward the source, they watch as the UFO disappears behind a cloud. After crossing a bridge, they see the object again, hovering on the opposite side of the river. The object glows intensely and speeds toward the automobile from the rear. Panicking, they try to jump out of the car, which is traveling at 35 mph, but get tangled up and the car veers out of control. Both of them fall out the left door as the bright UFO hovers 2 feet above the car roof. The car crashes into the store of a fruit dealer on Gloucester Street. A crowd gathers around the two young men, still dazed and shocked. Nearly 24 hours later the witnesses are treated for “bruises and abrasions” at the Napier Hospital outpatient clinic because “their clothes were sticking to them.” Dow is charged with reckless driving, but the circumstances convince the court to drop the charge and the insurance company pays for the damages. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 48–50)
September 13 — Condon calls together Craig, Gillmor, Roach, and Rush to discuss what the project’s recommendations should be. He writes the recommendation section shortly afterwards. (Roy Craig, UFOs: An Insiders’ View of the Official Quest for Evidence, University of North Texas, 1995, p. 213)
September 15 — 10:00 p.m. Farmers in the area around Carora, Lara, Venezuela, have a difficult time controlling their cattle and horses when a saucer-shaped object with flickering yellow lights flies over the area at high speed and low altitude. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, p. 299)
September 15 — 10:00 p.m. Mathematician Miron Oprea is driving with his wife and two nephews northwest of Ploieşti, Romania, when they see a cylindrical object emitting a bluish light and descending slowly to the west near the Vega oil refinery. (Hobana and Wverbergh 183–184)
September 16 — A car-racing contest at Barquisimeto, Lara, Venezuela, is disrupted when a low-flying disc flies above the grandstands. A photographer gets a snapshot that shows a sausage-shaped object about 12–15 feet above the heads of the crowd on the uppermost tier of bleachers. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, p. 299)
September 17 — 1:00 a.m. Two air control tower operators at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, watch a bright light moving in a way they cannot explain. (J. Allen Hynek. The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, p. 44; Sparks, p. 329)
September 18 — Farmer Marius Magnan sees three dull metallic, gray, football-shaped UFOs at an altitude of 2,500 feet and 2 miles away at Ste. Anne, Manitoba. They are traveling northwest to southeast in a vertical orientation at tremendous speed. The UFOs are discharging white substance from the upper surface just like popcorn. The white substance streams upward from two of the objects and downward from the third. After they disappear, a white, fibrous substance falls and settles on foliage, buildings, and power lines. The University of Manitoba analyzes a sample and finds it to be “cellulose-like and unstable,” with a uniform fiber diameter of 5 microns, and probably rayon coated with a gummy substance. (Brian Boldman, “Angel Hair Physical Analyses: A Review,” JUFOS 9 (2006): 104–105)
September 18 — 4:15 a.m. Patrolman Arthur H. Byrd sees an object flashing red, blue, and yellow lights on Hunter Road in San Marcos, Texas, approaching at great speed. He follows it along Interstate 35 toward Luling and San Antonio, and at Redwood Road it comes to a stop. It slowly fades away by 7:15 a.m. (“UFO Said Followed for Hours,” Austin (Tex.) American, September 19, 1968, p. 68)
September 19 — 3:15 p.m.–7:15 p.m. A lighted white object is seen by many witnesses over Cluj-Napoca and other towns in northwestern Romania. Some of the sightings are attributable to a balloon, but others seem to be moving against the wind and internally lit. (Hobana and Weverbergh 139–149; Romania 27–29)
Late September (or late September 1969) — Night. A teenager is putting hay in a rabbit pen at his home in the East Linden neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. He hears a clapping noise and sees an entity dressed in a black uniform with a silver belt walking in the woods nearby. Its head has an eerie yellow glow. Scared, he runs into the house to get his parents, but the entity is gone when they go out to look for it. The next morning a neighbor stops by to ask if they had seen any lights in a field the night before. The families go to the field and find a large oval place where the grass, weeds, and bushes have been pressed down. (Irena Scott, “Observation of an Alien Figure,” IUR 12, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1987): 20, 25)
September 26–27 — 6:00 a.m. Industrial chemist Henrique Schneider Jr. gets up and checks the fire in the kiln next to his house in Vila Baumer in the northern part of Joinville, Santa Catarina, Brazil. He comes across a strange object in
the pottery yard about 16 feet away. It is a cone-shaped device about 13 feet high sitting on a tripod under which a bluish light illuminates the ground, and it has a rectangular opening through which comes a treadmill. On the treadmill are two squared cylinders standing on end, both motionless. Schneider feels paralyzed and begins to converse telepathically with the nearest cylinder, which answers his questions clearly and briefly about where they come from, which is another star system, and they are investigating global warming on earth. Soon the treadmill goes back up into the object, the entrance closes, and it takes off with a hissing sound. The next day, Schneider finds a burned circle of grass just over 2 feet in diameter at the landing site. Inside this is a smaller circle of compressed grass and three holes where the tripod stood. (Carlos Varassin, “O Estranho Caso da Vila Baumer,” SBEDV Boletim, no. 94/98 (September 1973/June 1974): 41–44; “Contato Imediato em Joinville,” Portal Fenomenum, June 15, 2016; Brazil 141–145)
September 29 — Night. Amateur astronomer Hermanus Voorsluys and ex-police officer Reginald Neal take several photographs of a UFO that they have seen for several nights above Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. One photo shows a large object surrounded by four smaller luminous objects that have emerged from it, as well as a fifth object that has just appeared. After a zig-zagging descent, the smaller objects return to the level of the parent object and disappear. (“Mystery over Naval Base,” Canadian UFO Report 1, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1969): 4–7)
September 30 — Philip J. Klass writes a letter to Robert A. Frosch, wanting to know who has financed James E. McDonald’s visits to Australia to investigate UFOs and who would fund his upcoming trip to Europe and the USSR. In late 1967, McDonald had secured a modest grant from the Office of Naval Research in order to
study cloud formations in Australia. While there, McDonald conducts some UFO research on his own time. Klass mounts an extended, concerted campaign against McDonald, arguing that he has squandered government funds. The ONR responds by announcing that they had known of McDonald’s UFO interests and have no objections to his personal hobbies. The University of Arizona comes to McDonald’s defense, announcing that his UFO research was done on his own time, and has no adverse impact on his regular teaching and research duties at the university. (Clark III 700)
October? — A 7-page National Security Agency thought piece on UFOs is written by an unnamed NSA analyst around this time. It is declassified in 1984 with a disclaimer saying that it does not represent NSA policy. It discusses various hypotheses for UFOs (hoaxes, hallucinations, natural phenomena, secret earth projects, and extraterrestrial intelligence) and speculates what each answer would mean for the human species, placing credence in the ETH. ([US National Security Agency], “U.F.O. Hypothesis and Survival Questions,” [October 1968]; Good Above, pp. 423–424)
October — Brazil’s System of Investigation of Unidentified Aircraft, created by the Fourth Air Zone Command of the Brazilian Air Force and sponsored by Brig. Gen. José Vaz da Silva and coordinated by Maj. Gilberto Zani de Mello, goes into operation to investigate UFO sightings, especially physical trace cases. The operation lasts until the end of 1972. (Wikipedia, “SIOANI”; Clark III 1072–1073)
October 2 — 6:20 a.m. While oiling his tractor’s engine at the end of Avenida da Saudade in Lins, São Paulo, Brazil, Turíbio Pereira sees only a few feet away a golden cigar-shaped object hovering one foot above the ground. It is about 16 feet long and 10 feet wide. There is a platform around it and on the top a transparent dome is open.
Inside there are four stools and an instrument panel. Pereira sees four beings around it wearing blue tunics and red skirts. One is on the platform with a weapon in its hand, another is picking up earth samples, the third is looking at his tractor’s engine, and the fourth is inside the object at the instrument panel. The being with the weapon fires it and a luminous ball hits Pereira in the stomach, paralyzing him. The entities go inside, and a transparent dome encloses them. The object ascends and shoots off at high speed. With difficulty, Pereira climbs off the tractor and stumbles to the road where a friend takes him home. Later he is given a medical examination by Antônio Geris and summoned to a Brazilian Air Force facility where he is questioned and held for three days. (Gordon Creighton, “Confrontation at Lins,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1969): 22–23; Patrick Gross, URECAT, December 22, 2006; Brazil 105–107)
October 5 — 7:52 p.m. John D. Hickey and his family are driving near West Morehead Street in Charlotte, North Carolina. While stopped at a traffic light, he sees a black object like a short cigar moving on his left, but it stops and hovers above a low building about 500 feet away. Suddenly three large gray-white lights shaped like television picture tubes turn on, each about 22 inches in diameter. A small black arm-like device moves slowly out of one end, extends a few feet, then stops. A blue light is at one end. The three large lights begin to blink slowly, then rapidly for 25 seconds. The blue light goes out, the arm retracts, the large lights blink more slowly until they stop. The lights go out and the object moves to the east. (“Nocturnal Light Becomes CE-I in Charlotte, NC,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 4 (Aug./Sept. 1984): 1, 8)
October 7 — Hynek responds to Col. Sleeper’s request with an extended commentary prefaced by a succinct, eight-point critique of everything Project Blue Book has done wrong: the project suffers from (1) inadequate execution, (2) inadequate staff, (3) lack of open consultation with scientists outside the Air Force, (4) laughable statistical methods, (5) too much time spent on routine cases and not exceptional cases, (6) inadequate data provided by local Air Force base investigators, (7) biased evaluations, and (8) inadequate use of the project’s own scientific consultant. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 202–206, 283–305; Clark III 925)
October 18 — 5:00 p.m. Hundreds of witnesses view a conical object that appears above Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, traveling from northwest to southeast. The UFO at first appears bright blue then changes first to a whitish-blue then to red. When it reaches a point just south of Sarajevo and northeast of the city of Mostar, the object turns to the east. It remains in view from 90 minutes to two hours. Members of the Akademski Astronomsko-Astronautiki Klub take photos of the object and, six months later, issue a report on their investigation of the incident. It estimates that the UFO was flying at an altitude of 16 miles and a speed of 20 mph, probably guided by air currents and not self-propelled, and most likely was a military reconnaissance balloon. (Hobana and Weverbergh 84–90)
October 24 — 2:15–5:18 a.m. Sixteen military personnel stationed throughout the Minuteman ICBM missile complex at Minot AFB, North Dakota, report a very large, brightly illuminated aerial object, alternating colors from brilliant white to orange-red and green, with the ability to hover, accelerate rapidly, and abruptly change direction. Ground radar tracks an unidentified target correlated with a visual orange glow and radios it (saying, “Someone is seeing flying saucers again”) to the attention of the USAF crew of a B-52H Stratofortress bomber at 2,000 feet as a UFO target 24 miles to the northwest. It shifts to 15 miles at 3:35 a.m. RAPCON alerts the pilots (instructor pilot Maj. Bradford Runyon and copilot Maj. James Partin) to the location of the UFO near Bowbells, North Dakota, which the B-52 navigator Capt. Patrick D. McCaslin observes on the radarscope maintaining a three-mile distance throughout a standard 180° turnaround. Radar navigator Maj. Charles Richey captures the tracking on film. As the B-52 starts its descent back to Minot AFB, the UFO appears to close distance to one mile at a high rate of speed, pacing the aircraft for nearly 20 miles before disappearing off the radarscope. Both B-52 UHF radios cannot transmit during the close radar encounter with the UFO and when the radarscope film is recorded. Shortly afterwards, RAPCON provides vectors for the B-52 to overfly a stationary UFO on or near the ground. After turning onto the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, the pilots observe a large, illuminated UFO ahead of the aircraft for several minutes, before turning onto the base leg over the UFO while observing it at close range. After the B-52 lands, both outer and inner-zone intrusion alarms are activated at the remote missile Launch Facility Oscar-7. The duration of the reported observations is over three hours. Other witnesses include Capt. Thomas Goduto, S/Sgt James F. Bond, S/Sgt William E. Smith, A1C Robert O’Connor, A1C Joseph P. Jablonski, and A1C Gregory Adams. The chief of the 862nd Combat Support Group, Lt. Col. Arthur J. Werlich, is designated as Blue Book liaison and he calls the report in at 4:30 p.m. after SAC investigations, an analysis of the radarscope film, and the B-52 crew debriefing. Werlich provides Blue Book with selected data through October 31. On November 13, Blue Book chief Lt. Col. Hector Quintanilla completes his evaluation and forwards the final report to SAC headquarters. It is a single-page letter providing several possible explanations for the various reports, along with 11 pages of attachments cobbled together in support. He attributes the B-52 radar contact and loss of UHF transmission to “a plasma similar to ball lightning.” (NICAP, “Minot Tracks Object, B-52 Sees and Tracks UFO”; Sparks, p. 330; Clark III 748–763; Thomas Tulien, “A Narrative of Events at Minot Air Force Base,” Sign Oral History Project; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 137–139; Martin Shough, “Minot Air Force Base, Oct 24 1968,” 2006; Nukes 319–323; Thomas E. Bullard, “Defending UFOs,” IUR 34, no. 2 (Mar. 2012): 32–33; “The Minot AFB B-52 UFO Incident,” Above Top Secret forum, February 24, 2010; “New Witness to UFO Incursion at Nuke Missile Complex,” The UFO Chronicles, October 17, 2017)
October 24 — 6:47 p.m. The Romanian oil tanker Argeş is steaming through the Mozambique Channel when Third Officer Ştefan Anton and Commander Nicolae Ştefanescu see a bright orange-yellow disc half the diameter of the Moon moving swiftly and emitting blue-green rays from its center. At one point it stops abruptly for a moment andchanges course to the east. By sextant they estimate it is 15.5 miles away and 56 feet in diameter. (Hobana and Weverbergh 250–251)
October 31 — The Colorado project delivers its report, Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, to the Air Force.
The first two sections, conclusions and recommendations, are written by Condon himself. He concludes that “further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.” It is a clear signal to shut down Project Blue Book. Yet 30% of its cases are unexplained. Condon says a UFO cover-up is unthinkable because no one could keep such a secret for so long. He refutes the claim that the CIA has installed an agent within the project. He disapproves of UFO “amateurists,” especially NICAP. The project ignored old cases because they only offered witness testimony, are probably misidentifications, and it
makes little sense to reinterview witnesses. But this means ignoring the most compelling cases of the past 20+ years. Condon rejects the ETH because it is so unlikely that aliens can get here from there. This attitude suggests that Condon’s approach is fundamentally antiempirical. The report also includes summaries of field studies, photographic evidence, direct and indirect physical evidence, optical and radar cases, and astronaut sightings. In the field studies section, Roy Craig concedes that some of the older cases suggest something extraordinary (Great Falls, RB-47). William K. Hartmann divides photo cases into fabrications, misidentifications, poor image quality, and clear images that lack sufficient data. Great Falls and McMinnville are the only two that he considers unusual. Gordon Thayer discusses the predominance of anomalous propagation in radar cases. In finding natural explanations, Thayer often disregards witness testimony. The rest of the report is mostly padding. (Wikipedia, “Condon Committee”; Michael D. Swords, “The University of Colorado UFO Project: The ‘Scientific Study of UFOs,’” JUFOS 6 (1995/96): 149–184; Swords 329–332)
November — Two children are playing in the garden of their father’s hotel in Southampton, England, when they notice a “speck” come out of the clouds. It grows in size and comes closer, moving above the hotel roof. The shape is a large flattened disc with black square windows on the side. It moves to a point about 10 feet directly above them and hovers for 30 seconds, then it speeds up and disappears behind some trees. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 3, no. 6 (June 1978): 2)
November 2 — 3:55 a.m. A partially paralyzed Algerian veteran, Dr. X, has suffered an injury to his leg while chopping at a stump on his property in a village in the south of France on October 29. He is lying in bed when he is awakened by his crying 14-month-old son. He sees two luminous objects outside his house. They are coming close together and merging about 590 feet away. A vertical beam of light is aimed at him for a second as the object tilts, and then the display vanishes with a sort of explosion, leaving behind a slowly dissolving cloud.
Shortly afterwards, the man’s leg heals and his war wound is better. He also experiences nightmares, stomach pains, and a red pigmentation appears around his navel, forming a triangle. He goes to a dermatologist but does not mention the UFO; the doctor is stumped. The man’s son also develops a red triangle. In November 1984, a French radio reporter records the gradual reappearance of the triangle on X’s abdomen. (Aimé Michel, “The Strange Case of Dr. X,” in Charles Bowen, ed., UFO Percipients, special issue no. 3 of FSR, September 1969, pp. 3–16; Aimé Michel, “The Strange Case of Dr. ‘X,’ Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1971): 3– 9; Clark III 410–413)
November 6 — Two teenage boys see a disc-shaped UFO about 200 feet in diameter discharging angel hair over the Spring Branch West area of Houston, Texas. C. E. “Gene” Senter investigates and recovers a twig with angel hair that he puts in a plastic bag and freezes. A chemist analyzes the substance in a petroleum-industry lab but finds out little other than it is sticky and fibrous. (Brian Boldman, “Angel Hair Physical Analyses: A Review,” JUFOS 9 (2006): 105)
November 15 — The Air Force sends the Colorado report to the National Academy of Sciences for review by an 11- member panel, chaired by Yale University astronomer Gerald Maurice Clemence and charged with an independent assessment of its scope, methodology, and findings. (Clark III 1197–1198)
November 20 — 5:45 p.m. Milan and Doris Milakovic and their son are driving southwest out of Hanbury, Staffordshire, England, when several rabbits run across the road from their left. Suddenly they see a brilliant object. They stop the car and watch as it rises from a field on their left, silently pass over the car, and move toward a solitary house about 300 feet away on the right where it stops and hovers, “quivering like jelly.” The air temperature seems to drop. For approximately 5 minutes, they see what appear to be several humanoid figures walking across the bright top of the UFO, which is as wide as the house. Intermittently, some of the figures bend down as though looking at something in the part of the object below the rim. Then the UFO begins moving up in a pulsating or jerky movement. The intensity of its light increases and Milakovic feels like his eyes are burning. Thoroughly frightened, Milakovic pushes his wife and son back into the car and speeds away from the scene. (W. Daniels and
N. M. H. Turner, “The Milakovic Report,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1969): 2–3, 24; Patrick Gross, “UFO with Humanoid Occupants, Hanbury, England, November 20, 1968”)
November 23 — 8:05 p.m. An accountant named Jones is driving his 1967 Ford Custom along the road between Newton and Albany, Georgia. When he rounds a bend he sees a brilliant yellowish-white light about 200 feet ahead of him and 50–75 feet above the road. As he approaches, the car radio fades into static. Then the object emits a beam of well-defined light about 5–6 feet across that illuminates the trees and causes his engine and radio to cut out as it passes over his car. The object changes color to orange-red and ascends at a high rate of speed, disappearing in less than 15 seconds. The car engine starts spontaneously afterward. (Hynek UFO Report, pp. 189–191)
November 25 — 6:00 p.m. Elaine Pelchy is driving with her 2-year-old son and dog on Highway 174 south of Marcellus, New York, when they see an object with five red, blinking lights about 100 feet in front of her car and heading
southeast. The radio gets a lot of static and the English setter begins to get nervous, clawing at the window and putting its head over its eyes and ears. The boy starts crying, then the car engine begins to sputter. The object executes a U-turn and moves to the northwest as the lights change to blinking blue and white. Suddenly, the UFO stops and changes to a white, dome-shaped object with a “fluorescent star” next to it. The larger object merges into the star and disappears. Pelchy drops her son off at her mother-in-law’s, then returns on the same route. The dog starts to whine again as a light the size of a basketball fluctuates in intensity and zigzags across the sky. She goes home but returns to the scene with a neighbor and the light is still visible and maneuvering. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, pp. 40–41)
November 26 — 5:40 p.m. Three control tower operators (Jack Wilhelm, Jack Reeves, and John Fischer) at Bismarck (North Dakota) Airport observe two swiftly moving round objects traveling in opposite directions. They reverse course and approach each other, hover together, then instantly zoom off to the northeast. Air Force radar at Great Falls, Montana, picks up “foreign objects” at the same time 85 miles northeast of Bismarck. The objects are also seen by Robert Watts, who is flying a Cessna 150. (NICAP, “Air Force Radar Tracks Objects”; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 43–44, 51–52)
November 27 — A 41-page paper by George Kocher of the RAND Corporation, “UFOs: What to Do?” is produced as an internal document. It notes the likelihood of intelligent life in the universe, speculates UFOs may well have been around for a long time, looks at some compelling reports, and assesses the difficulty of estimating the number of sightings worldwide “because of the lack of suitable data collection means.” (George Kocher, “UFOs: What to Do?” RAND Corporation, November 27, 1968)
December — David R. Saunders (along with journalist R. Roger Harkins) explains his version of the Colorado project in UFOs? Yes! (David R. Saunders and R. Roger Harkins, UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong, Signet, 1968)
December — The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics announces that it has formed a UFO Subcommittee to study the UFO phenomenon objectively. Joachim P. Kuettner of ESSA Research Laboratories is the chairman; other members include Jerald M. Bidwell of Martin Marietta, Glenn A. Cato of TRW Systems Group, Bernard N. Charles of Aerospace Corporation, Murray Dryer of ESSA Research Laboratories, Howard D. Edwards of Georgia Institute of Technology, Paul MacCready of Meteorology Research, Andrew J. Masley of Douglas Missile and Space Systems Division, Robert Rados of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Donald M. Swingle of the US Army Electronic Command. It announces in Astronautics and Aeronautics that the UFO issue “cannot be resolved without further study in a quantitative scientific manner and that it deserves the attention of the engineering and scientific community.” (“AIAA Committee Looks at UFO Problem,” Astronautics and Aeronautics, December 1968, p. 12)
December 26 — The Spanish Air Ministry’s press office issues a release inviting citizens to report UFO cases to the air force. A few days later, Second Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mariano Cuadra Medina issues the first regulations in Spain on how to handle UFO reports. The information is rated confidential. (Swords 423)
Late December — 11:30 a.m. Traumatologist Sebastian José Tarda is on vacation in Patagonia and leading a group of secondary school students on a motorboat field trip on Nahuel Huapi Lake, Argentina. Tarda is taking photos of the lake shore near Puerto Blest, but does not notice anything unusual. When one slide is developed, it shows a blurry white object against a mountainous background. An analysis by the Argentine UFO group Circulo de Investigación Cientifico Espacial states that the image is not caused by a lens flare, damaged emulsion, or a known object. Another analysis suggests that the object moved while the shutter was depressed. Ground Saucer Watch considers it a lens flare. (“UFO Appears in Photo over Nahuel Huapi Lake, Argentina,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 3, no. 1 (February 1982): 1–2; “Dr. Tarda 1968 Photograph Judged Lens Flare by GSW,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 3, no. 2 (April 1982): 3)
1969
1969 — The CIA’s Operation Often is initiated by the chief of the CIA’s Technical Services Branch, Sidney Gottlieb, to “explore the world of black magic” and “harness the forces of darkness and challenge the concept that the inner reaches of the mind are beyond reach.” As part of the operation, Gottlieb and other CIA employees visit with and recruit fortune-tellers, palm-readers, clairvoyants, astrologers, mediums, psychics, specialists in demonology, witches and warlocks, Satanists, and other occult practitioners. (Wikipedia, “Project MKOFTEN”)
1969 — Gérard Lebat founds Groupe d’Études des Objets Spatiaux, which publishes GEOS International from July 1969 to July 1970, then Les Extraterrestres from November 1970 to October 1979, then Hypothèses Extraterrestres
from January 1980 to July 1981, in Rebais, Seine-et-Marne, France. (GEOS International, no. 1 (July 1969); Les Extraterrestres, no. 9 (Nov./Dec. 1970); Hypothèses Extraterrestres, no. 13 (January 1980))
1969 — In Passport to Magonia, Jacques Vallée proposes a radically revisionist argument that UFOs are better understood when related to folk traditions about supernatural creatures (elementals, fairies, angels, demons) than to astronomers’ speculations about life in outer space. He says science cannot adequately deal with such matters, although he does not specifically disavow the scientific method. It is the first book to question the ETH and the first to lay the groundwork for the psychosocial hypothesis, which sees UFOs as largely the product of unusual mental states and perpetuated by social acceptance. He argues that ostensible otherworldly manifestations are fantastic images propelled via psychic technology from humanity’s future to generate myths and religions that will change fate. In time the book leads to a new school of ufology whose advocates hold that UFOs and other anomalous experiences are internally generated and shaped entirely by cultural processes as opposed to nonhuman intelligences. Jerry Clark writes that the “genius of Passport, a genuinely brilliant work, is its success in placing UFOs into not only cultural but experiential context.” (Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia, Regnery, 1969; Clark III 939–940, 1214)
1969 — Contactee Ted Owens writes How to Contact Space People. Owens, who calls himself the “PK Man,” attributes his psychic and precognitive abilities to UFO occupants who operated on his brain when he was a child, a modification that made him half-human, half-alien. He claims to be in two-way contact with saucer intelligences. (Ted Owens, How to Contact the Space People, Saucerian, 1969; Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, pp. 235–236)
1969 — Spanish ufologist Antonio Ribera receives his first Ummo communication, a letter postmarked from Paris, Franca. An Ummo cult has begun to form, and books—both journalistic accounts and anthologies of Ummo writings—find an avid readership. (Clark III 1185)
1969 — Night. During its extended deployment to Vietnam with the 7th Fleet, the destroyer USS Leary is navigating fishing waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. Ensign Will Miller is alerted by the lookout about a possible light from a fishing boat in the water ahead. But the light suddenly moves from above the water to below the surface and heads rapidly toward the ship at 45° to the bow, passing below the vessel. The sailors run to the starboard side to see whether it will emerge, but it does not. Nothing is tracked on radar or sonar or by the ECM system. (Good Need, pp. 284–285)
January — John Magor begins publishing the quarterly Canadian UFO Report in Duncan, British Columbia. It persists through the summer issue of 1979. (Canadian UFO Report 1, no. 1 (January 1969))
January 6 — 7:15 p.m. Future president Jimmy Carter is preparing to give a speech at a Lions Club meeting at Leary, Georgia. One of the guests calls his attention to a strange object visible about 30° above the horizon to the west of where he is standing. Carter describes the object as being bright white and about as bright as the moon. It appears to have closed in on where he is standing but stops beyond a stand of pine trees some distance from him. The object changes color, first to blue, then to red, then back to white, before appearing to recede into the distance.
Carter feels that the object is self-illuminated and not solid in nature. Carter’s report indicates that it is witnessed by about 10–12 other people and is in view for 10–12 minutes before it passes out of sight. Skeptic Robert Sheaffer concludes that the object is a misidentification of Venus. Ufologist Allan Hendry does calculations and agrees with the assessment of the object as Venus. A member of the Carter family thinks it might have been a barium cloud produced by rockets launched from Eglin AFB near Valparaiso, Florida. (Wikipedia, “Jimmy Carter UFO incident”; Clark III 225; Good Above, pp. 368, 516–517; Robert Sheaffer, “President Jimmy Carter’s Sighting of a UFO”)
January 8 — The National Academy of Sciences releases its review of the Colorado project report, giving its enthusiastic approval. In a letter to Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Alexander H. Flax, Frederick Seitz expresses the hope that the review would “be helpful to you and other responsible officials in determining the nature and scope of any research effort in this area.” (National Academy of Sciences, “Review of the University of Colorado Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by a Panel of the National Academy of Sciences,” January 8, 1969; Story, pp.
January 8 — Science reporter Walter Sullivan writes that the soon-to-be-released Colorado project report will debunk the extraterrestrial hypothesis and dismiss “demands of some scientists and laymen for a large-scale effort to determine the nature of such ‘flying saucers.’ Such a project, the report says in effect, would be a waste of time and money.” Sullivan dismisses the project’s critics as “UFO enthusiasts.” (Walter Sullivan, “U.F.O. Finding: No Visits from Afar,” New York Times, January 8, 1969, pp. 1–2)
January 9 — The Colorado project report is released to the public in a 965-page Bantam Books edition. (Edward U. Condon, scientific director, Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, Bantam, 1969; [HTML version])
January 11 — Keyhoe, Saunders, and McDonald hold a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to criticize the Condon report. (Jacobs, UFO Controversy in America, Signet ed., 1976, pp. 216–217)
January 21 — The Lucens reactor in Vaud, Switzerland, suffers a loss-of-control accident that leads to a partial core meltdown and massive radioactive contamination of its cavern, which is sealed. (Wikipedia, “Lucens reactor”)
January 22 — Elements of the Ninth Marine Division go more than a mile into Laos to protect the flanks of a major combat operation. The New York Times reveals the operation on February 12. Though American combat involvement in Laos is not officially acknowledged until 1969, the US is known to have organized, trained, and equipped a clandestine army of Laotian irregulars since the early 1950s, under the direction of the CIA. (Seymour M. Hersh, “Secret 1969 Foray into Laos Reported,” New York Times, August 12, 1973, p. 1, 5)
January 25 — 12:30 a.m. A young couple is driving near Plattville, Illinois. The woman sees a bright object like an ice- cream cone low in the sky ahead, traveling big end first. They get within a quarter mile and the object turns point up and only 30 feet off the ground. Security lights on a nearby farmhouse go off. The object spins and flashes, and the car engine and lights go off. The front end of the car lifts 3 feet off the ground. The UFO moves away and the car drops and regains its power. (Michael D. Swords, “Messing Around with the Force,” IUR 31, no. 4 (March 2008): 16)
January 31 — After a series of UFO sightings and radar trackings beginning in October 1968, the US Air Force and Army set up another UFO observation network in the West Central Highlands near Pleiku, Vietnam, using pulse acquisition radar, continual wave acquisition radar, and illumination radar. The system picks up 365 unidentified tracks through April. (Clark III 1052–1054)
February — 2d Lt. Carmon L. Morano replaces Lt. Col. Hector Quintanilla as head of the moribund Project Blue Book. (Sparks, p. 14)
February 7 — 7:30 a.m. Tiago Machado, 19, wakes up at his home in Pirassununga, São Paulo, Brazil, and hears a neighbor shouting about a silvery-blue object landed on a hill on the grounds of the Zootecníca. He watches it for a time, then goes in to get binoculars. He goes off to the hill and approaches the object until he is about 33 feet away. It is a disc made of silvery metal with a dome on top. It is about 13 feet in diameter and stands on three legs. A door opens and two men come floating down to the ground. Machado can see two other beings inside. The men walk toward him, making signs. They are wearing silver diver’s suits, have black teeth and thin-lipped mouths, and one eye is lower than the other. Each has a kind of burn or cicatrice on each cheek. Machado is nervous, so he lights a cigarette. The beings apparently think this is funny, so he tosses the cigarette pack toward them. One of them leans sideways and stretches out his hand. The pack floats 8 inches up to his hand and disappears. Suddenly one of Machado’s friends calls out to him, and the beings walk back to the UFO, still facing him, and jump up to the door. The last one in pauses and pulls out a kind of weapon, points it at Machado, and a flame like a welding arc comes out of the barrel and floats toward him, hitting him in the thigh. He feels faint and paralyzed as the UFO takes off. His friends carry him to a neighbor’s house and find a red swelling on his leg.
Later, investigators find three imprints in an equilateral triangle at the site, each about 5 inches in diameter. Soil samples taken show no radioactivity. (Nigel Rimes, “The Pirassununga Landing,” in Charles Bowen, ed., UFO Percipients, special issue no. 3 of FSR, September 1969, pp. 39–45; Brazil 109–114; “Caso Tiago Machado,” Portal Fenomenum, June 15, 2016)
February 12 — McDonald presents “A Dissenting View of the Condon Report” to the DuPont Chapter of the Scientific Research Society of America in Wilmington, Delaware. (James E. McDonald, “A Dissenting View of the Condon Report,” February 12, 1969; Patrick Gross, “Scientists Take Position”; Story, p. 415)
February 13 — McDonald speaks on “UFOs: A Challenge to Observation” at the American Meteorological Society in Washington, D.C. (James E. McDonald, “UFOs: A Challenge to Observation,” February 13, 1969; Story, p. 415)
February 18 — Morning. Barbara Smyth, a teacher in a small town in Alberta, is driving to school when she sees on her right a “gigantic, bright pinky-red coloured” object “about seven times the size of a steel granary of 14ft. diameter.” It looks like two rounded layers divided by a thin blue line. There are two flashing white lights on the top and a tent-like structure that pulsates and changes color from silver to fiery yellow. The UFO starts spinning counterclockwise and jumps over to the next hill. Suddenly, her car is no longer under her control as it floats down a very bumpy road. After three minutes the UFO disappears, and the car returns to normal. (W. K. Allan, “A UFO and the Car Which ‘Floated Along,’” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 6 (August 1971): 8, iii; Clark III 250)
February 19 — 12:30 p.m. Two telephone linemen are working atop a pole near Lebel-sur-Quévillon, Quebec, when the see a gray, metallic cylinder with four fins at its end moving slowly west to east over the trees and about 150 feet above the ground. The object is 100 feet long and only 15 feet in diameter. The men watch it for a few minutes as it glides slowly out of sight. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 72)
March — Secretary of the Air Force Office of Information representative Maj. David J. Shea attends a meeting in the Pentagon in which “there was no doubt that Project Blue Book was finished.” (Clark III 926)
March 3 — The US Navy establishes its Fighter Weapons School (Top Gun) to teach fighter and strike tactics to selected aviators and officers at Naval Air Station Miramar [now Marine Corps Air Station Miramar] in San Diego, California. Its focus is on combat training against MiG fighters, now that MiG testing at Groom Lake, Nevada, has been successful. (Wikipedia, “United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program”)
March 3 — Hynek submits a UFO research proposal to Col. George R. Weinbrenner, FTD Commander, in which he reveals that out of the approximately 10,000 reports in the Project Blue Book files, he estimates that 1,000–3,000 (10%–30%) are “interesting” unexplained cases (“unknowns”). (J. Allen Hynek, “Preliminary Proposal for Subject Investigation,” March 3 and 19, 1969)
March 4 — 6:40 a.m. William Overstreet, 50, is driving his truck on Missouri J between Elmer and Atlanta, Missouri, when he sees a bright reddish-orange light about 100 feet in diameter and floating along at 40 mph. It begins to follow the road and beams a strong, cone-shaped white light on to the road from a height of 50 feet. Overstreet can feel the heat. The object changes from red to a blue sphere surrounded by a red ring. He attempts to drive through the beam, but his motor and radio die when he gets to within 6 feet. The beam moves away a bit, he tries again, and the same thing happens. The UFO moves about a mile away, turns back to red, switches off the beam, and cruises away. (NICAP, “100ʹ Object Affects Radio and Truck Engine”; “E-M Effect on Truck in Missouri,” APRO Bulletin, May/June 1969, p.4; Michael D. Swords, “Messing Around with the Force,” IUR 31, no. 4 (March 2008): 15)
March 4 — 10:00 p.m. RCMP Constable R. J. Shannahan is on foot patrol near 24 Sussex Drive, the Prime Minister’s residence in Ottawa, Ontario. He looks up and sees two bright flashing red lights above and slightly inside the gates to Rideau Hall. One light moves east and is lost to view in one minute, while the other moves west and is visible for 5–6 minutes. No jets are scrambled, and there is no indication that radar installations are asked about unidentified targets. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 75–77)
March 6 — 10:30 a.m. A woman is driving with her St. Bernard dog between Glenwood and Lancaster, Missouri. The dog becomes agitated and she sees a bright blue-white beam of light illuminating the road and a domed disc 1,000 feet in the air. The dog jumps into the front seat and become quite panicked. She tries to drive through the beam, but the car slows from 50 mph to 8 mph but manages to get to the other side when the car picks up speed. (Donald
E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, p. 32; Ted Phillips, “UFO Events in Missouri, 1857–1971,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 8 (December 1971): 11; Michael D. Swords, “Messing Around with the Force,” IUR 31, no. 4 (March 2008): 15–16)
March 17 — Two pilots are flying a Cessna 150 between Phoenix and Lake Havasu, Arizona, when the pilot in the right seat rises up and sees maybe 2 dozen oval, white discs on the left side of the plane, flying very low and in a rough formation. Each has the hint of a blister near the front. The speed is 200–300 mph, and the only maneuver they make is pitch and roll, all done simultaneously, in unison. For 20 seconds, both pilots watch the objects pass below their aircraft and beyond. (Michael D. Swords, “We Know Where You Live,” IUR 30, no. 2 (January 2006): 11–12)
March 18 — The US begins a covert SAC bombing campaign, Operation Menu, in eastern Cambodia that lasts until May 26, 1970. An official USAF record of US bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 is declassified by President Bill Clinton in 2000. The report gives details of the extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as of Laos and Vietnam. The Menu bombings are an escalation of what has previously been tactical air attacks.
Operation Freedom Deal immediately follows Operation Menu. Under Freedom Deal, B-52 bombing is expanded to a much larger area of Cambodia and continued until August 1973. (Wikipedia, “Operation Menu”)
April — Hynek writes a review of the Condon report for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, calling it a “strange sort of scientific paper [that] does not fulfill the promise of its title…. [It] leaves the same strange, inexplicable residue of unknowns which has plagued the U.S. Air Force investigation for 20 years.” (J. Allen Hynek, “The Condon Report and UFOs,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 25 (April 1969): 39–42)
April 12 — During a Fouga Magister aircraft training mission at Pori Airport, Finland, a Finnish Defence Forces flight controller tells pilot-in-training Tarmo Tukeva to investigate seven air balloons that are floating at approximately 5,000–9,800 feet above the airport. Tukeva reports that the objects are ball or disc-shaped but cannot determine how far away they are. Tukeva sees the objects accelerate away from him “at great speed.” Indeterminate radar images are also later reported 125 miles away in Vaasa. A second pilot-in-training, Jouko Kuronen, overhears the radio communications between the flight controller and Tukeva and sees the UFOs as well. According to the Finnish Armed Forces magazine Ruotuväki, the reports are similar to other cases occurring over bodies of water
during ongoing military exercises and may have been due to “transnational spy planes or aircraft.” (Wikipedia, “Finnish Air Force UFO sighting”; “1969: Pilots Report 7 Yellow Spheres at Pori Airport, Finland,” UFO Casebook, August 13, 2013; “Ruotuväki: Ilmavoimien lentäjät tekivät merkittävän ufo-havainnon 60-luvulla,” Ilta-Sanomat, May 8, 2012)
April 17 — Morning. T. J. Hefferman of Bungawalban, New South Wales, wakes up and notices that his dogs are “strangely subdued.” Outside, he finds a flattened area in a sacaline (Reynoutria sachalinensis) forage crop on his property. A roughly circular area is flattened in four distinct patches, the largest 60 by 15 feet. All the stalks lie in one direction, north to south. The previous night, two men working night shift on a flood mitigation dredge a quarter mile north of the farm had seen a glow in the sky, and a neighboring farmer had seen two “toplike objects” moving about for a number of nights. G. Testa, an independent investigator from Lismore, visits the site on April 20 and takes 25 feet of 8mm color film to document the damage. (Bill Chalker, “1969: The Great UFO Daze of Oz,” The Oz Files, September 19, 2020; Clark III 1138–1139)
April 19 — Evening. Two witnesses 5 miles east of Hill City, Kansas, watch a multi-colored object approach to within 100 feet of their car. The car engine fails. The object hovers at 75 feet above the ground for 3 minutes, then slowly moves away. The car then restarts without trouble. (Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1982, p. 46)
April 20 — 7:30 p.m. A woman out walking at Harwood Island, New South Wales, sees and hears a large patch of 2-year- old cane rustling and waving on a still night. A powerful beam of light switches on across the top of the cane path, and it slowly turns in a half circle before going out and being replaced by a “low beam” and “cabin lights.” A UFO is above the cane and she feels a powerful force lifting her up and pulling her toward the object when the “high beam” is on. The helmet-shaped object is 20–28 feet long and 22 feet wide. At its closest the UFO is 40–50 feet away. It disappears suddenly. (Bill Chalker, “1969: The Great UFO Daze of Oz,” The Oz Files, September 19, 2020; Clark III 1139)
April 22 — 8:00 p.m. Three witnesses are driving in heavy rain near Hammond, Ontario, when they see an object like a huge “drinking cup turned upside down.” It has two bright lights directed horizontally and appears to have a row of portholes with pink light coming from within. They estimate it is 5 feet off the ground, 20 feet long, and 200 feet away. They can hear a whining noise like a generator. After 15 minutes, the object turns and zooms over some nearby power lines, over the trees, and out of sight. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 77)
April 23 — 2:00 a.m. Virginia A. Guinn and a boarder are awakened by loud howlings and yowlings from the dogs and cats at her farm in Silver Spring, Maryland. Going outside, the witnesses see a round UFO “as large as two rooms” that is a bluish-white color like the glow around a welder’s arc. The object is moving beyond the barn to the north-northeast. They heard a humming noise and the object blinks out and the animals quiet down. Guinn discovers later that morning that the horses in the barn had broken free of their stalls and knocked harnesses off the walls. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, p. 32)
April 25 — 7:30 p.m. A woman and her 11-year-old daughter are travelling by taxi past Roberts Park in Greenacre, New South Wales, when they spot a “Japanese lantern” above some trees. One minute later, as the taxi turns a corner, they see it again, 100–130 feet away, apparently in the same spot. The driver stops the taxi, and they can see what looks like a metallic craft, approximately 33 feet in diameter, with the appearance of “two soup bowls joined rim- to-rim.” There is a steady red light on top. The object seems to be noiselessly rocking backwards and forwards, at a frequency of 1–2 rocks per second. A “depressing blue glow” can be seen through a window that takes up most of the upper part. A humanoid figure is apparently operating controls near the window. Another figure is pointing at the witnesses. A third seems to be walking toward a back door. All three are apparently human-sized and are either wearing tight black clothing, are black skinned, or seen in silhouette. After 15 seconds or less, the driver speeds off down the road, drops the couple off, and drives off quickly without taking their fare. At 8:00 p.m., the woman and her daughter return to the park. The UFO is not to be seen. (Bill Chalker, “1969: The Great UFO Daze of Oz,” The Oz Files, September 19, 2020)
April 26 — Condon speaks publicly for the first time after the end of the Colorado project in an address to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on “UFOs I Have Loved and Lost.” He concludes by saying, “Let me say that where corruption of children’s minds is at stake, I do not believe in freedom of the press or freedom of speech. In my view, publishers who publish or teachers who teach any of the pseudosciences as established truth should, on being found guilty, be publicly horsewhipped, and forever banned from further activity in these usually honorable professions.” (Henry W. Pierce, “Professors Threaten Own Free Speech,” Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette, May 10, 1969, p. 21; Jacobs, UFO Controversy in America, Signet eds., 1976, p. 224)
May — Rod B. Dyke launches the monthly UFO Newsclipping Service in Seattle, Washington, which soon becomes a primary source for media reports on UFOs and related phenomena. The service is largely run by Lucius Farish as co-editor in Plumerville, Arkansas, beginning in July 1977. Farish publishes it on his own from January 1991 until November 2007, when Dyke reacquires it and keeps it going again with co-editor Chuck Flood until December 2008. The final editor is David Marler, who runs the service from January 2009 to August 2011, when it ceases publication. (UFO Newsclipping Service, no. 1 (May 1969))
May — John A. Keel begins publishing an unscheduled, free newsletter titled Anomaly in New York City. It continues until April 1974. (Anomaly, no. 1 (May 1969))
May 1 — 5:30 p.m. An illuminated triangular object moves soundlessly from south to north over Negru Vodă, Romania.
After 20 minutes of hanging motionless it disappears swiftly to the east. (Hobana and Weverbergh 161–162)
May 4–9 — 3:00 p.m. A 24-year-old Brazilian soldier named José Antônio da Silva is fishing by himself at Bebedouro (apparently a small lagoon in the Área de Proteção Ambiental do Carste de Lagoa Santa) near Matozinhos, Minas Gerais, Brazil, when he begins dozing off. He perceives figures moving around him, and he feels himself shot with something that paralyzes his legs. Two small humanoid beings, joined by a third, drag him off into a strange machine shaped like two saucers joined together by a thick, vertical cylinder. The machine lifts off, and after a long interval it lands. Da Silva is carried by his armpits into a large quadrangular room, where he finds himself with his original three captors and a fourth being—also humanoid, with red hair and a beard that comes down to his waist—who seems to be their leader. He remembers afterward that all four have mouths that look like fishes’ mouths. The room is made of stone. Inside, on a low shelf seemingly fashioned out of stone, da Silva sees the bodies of four human men lying stretched out side by side. Naked, rigid, and positioned on their backs, the bodies bear no visible wounds, but it is obvious that they are dead. One is a well-built black man and another has light brown skin. Two others, more slightly built, are Caucasian, one of them very blond “like a foreigner.” The beings do not speak any Portuguese but, using pictures, the leader manages to convey to da Silva that they want him to be their guide and weapons provider for what he supposes is a subsequent invasion of Earth. He refuses, fingering his crucifix, which the angry leader rips from his hand. Out of nowhere, da Silva sees appear in front of him a human figure who stands motionless, gazing at him in a friendly fashion. The figure, about five and a half feet tall, is Caucasian, slender, bearded with long fair hair, and dressed in a friar’s cassock. Amazingly, the little men seem oblivious to his presence. Speaking in Portuguese, the figure gives da Silva certain “revelations” that he afterward insists on keeping secret. He apparently knows who the figure is but he does not reveal that either, saying only that he wasn’t Jesus. The figure vanishes, and the beings who have abducted him start quarreling among themselves. They carry da Silva back to their machine; there follows another flight, another landing. Da Silva awakens in the dawn of what turns out to be May 9, four and a half days after his abduction, some 300 miles to the east of the place where he had been abducted. He supposedly bears the physical marks of his ordeal— wounds on his neck, lameness in one leg—for days afterward. (Húlvio Brant Aleixo, “O Caso ‘Bebedouro,’” SBEDV Boletim, no. 94/98 (Sept. 1973/June 1974): 7–22; Húlvio Brant Aleixo, “Abduction at Bebedouro,” Flying Saucer Review 19, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1973): 6–14; Húlvio Brant Aleixo, “Bebedouro II: The Little Men Return for the Soldier,” Flying Saucer Review 21, no. 3/4 (November 1975): 32–35; Walter Buhler, “Thoughts on the Bebedouro Case,” Flying Saucer Review 21, no. 3/4 (November 1975): 36–38; “O Caso de Bebedouro,” Portal Fenomenum, June 15, 2016; David Halperin, “Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman: ‘Descent into Hell’ and the Bebedouro Abduction,” davidhalperin.net, July 27, 2018; Clark III 185–189; Brazil 116–121)
May 11 — 2:00 a.m. Near the village of Chapeau, Quebec, on L’Isle-aux-Allumettes in the Ottawa River, farmer Leo Paul Chaput is awakened by his dog barking. He looks out the window and sees a brilliant light close to the ground. The light source seems to be a domed craft with a flat bottom (like a World War I helmet) about 500 feet away. He looks away briefly, and the object is gone, although he can hear the diminishing sound of a motor.
When Chaput gets up in the morning, he finds a large circular indentation in the ground, 600 feet from his house. The impression is 32 feet in diameter and is surrounded by a ring of scorched grass 2.5 feet wide. Inside, the vegetation is not damaged, but there are three holes that form a perfect equilateral triangle, 15 feet on a side. The holes are 8 inches in diameter and 3 inches deep. He finds a second, slightly smaller circle to the southwest, again with scorched grass and 3 indentations. A third ground marking, a semicircle, is near the second. (Donald E. Keyhoe and Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., Strange Effects from UFOs, NICAP, 1969, p. 45; Brian C. Cannon, “UFO Alert in Ontario,” Canadian UFO Report 1, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1969): 19–21; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 153–154; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 103–104)
May 12 — The DARPA Pandora Project committee discusses plans to move forward with eight human subjects who will be exposed to microwaves similar to the Moscow Signal and then given a full battery of medical and psychological tests. The committee recommends “gonadal protection be provided” to the male test subjects;
however, human testing is not pursued. The program is shut down later in 1969, with an effect of the signal on behavior and/or biological functions deemed “too subtle or insignificant to be evident.” (Wikipedia, “Moscow Signal”)
May 18–20 — Evening. A localized power blackout cuts off electricity at the Lester Kaiser farm near Rising Sun, Indiana, for 2 hours. The next night, George Kaiser watches a hairy, muscular, bipedal creature that flees upon being seen. It leaves tracks showing three toes and a big toe. On May 20, a neighbor sees a glowing, greenish-white UFO as it hovers for several minutes. (John Keel, Strange Creatures from Time and Space, 1970, pp. 94–95; Clark III 556; Patrick Gross, URECAT, May 29, 2007)
May 22 — 11:00 p.m. Graham Longey sees a large, brilliant, circular white object hovering a few feet off the ground at Glenorchy, Tasmania. Windows encircle its midsection. It begins to move rapidly upward, and by the time he dashes out of his house it is gone. On the site, Longey finds an elliptical area of burned grass 18 feet by 12 feet. A small tree nearby is scorched and has limbs broken. He notices an oily smell. (Clark III 1139)
May 23 — 6:35 p.m. A 13-year-old boy in Cloverdale, Western Australia, notices a moving light to the south and about 10° above the horizon. He calls his mother, who sees a steady red light on top of a more diffuse blue-white light darting haphazardly in a zigzag pattern but in general moving to the north until it disappears behind their house. The witnesses shift their position and can still see the light hovering in the northwest. The light is now seen as circular with hazy edges and about half the diameter of the full moon. At about 7:00 p.m. it moves at high speed to the north. The mother calls the radar station at Kalamunda, which simultaneously gets a request from Perth Airport to check out an unidentified echo on their meteorological radar. The Kalamunda operator sees a large echo some 9 miles away, which reappears for short durations on 5 further occasions and is last seen at 7:42 p.m. (Swords 397–398; Bill Chalker, “1969: The Great UFO Daze of Oz,” The Oz Files, September 19, 2020)
May 28 — McDonald presents a talk that is critical of the Colorado project at the Sacramento, California, section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. (James E. McDonald, “A Very Creditable Effort?” May 28, 1969; Story, p. 415)
May 31 — The Midwest UFO Network (later Mutual UFO Network) is founded in Quincy, Illinois, by Walter H. Andrus Jr., who leaves APRO and takes many of its members with him. It is conceived as a grassroots organization with state and local leaders overseeing activities and investigations. Allen R. Utke, associate professor of chemistry at Wisconsin State University, is selected as the first MUFON Director (Clark III 784)
June — Although President Richard Nixon does not trust J. Edgar Hoover, he accepts the FBI’s help through an “intelligence letter” program, codenamed INLET. This program is not only intended to provide the president with domestic and international security issues, but also, “items with an unusual twist or concerning prominent personalities which may be of special interest to the President.” Nixon orders seven wiretaps on his staffers. (John Greenewald, “INLET (Intelligence Letters) Reports, 1960s and 1970s,” The Black Vault, May 7, 2020)
June 10 — McDonald gives a public talk sponsored by NICAP in Washington, D.C., on “UFOs Unsolved: A Scientific Challenge.” (James E. McDonald, “UFOs: Unsolved: A Scientific Challenge,” June 10, 1969; Story, p. 415)
June 11 — McDonald meets privately with representatives on the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in Arlington, Virginia, urging a new look at the UFO problem. (Story, p. 415)
June 17 — 2:00 a.m. Kaneto and Kioko Nobutoshi witness a “brilliantly illuminated window” hovering in the air in Ibiúna, São Paulo, Brazil. It appears to be 30 feet in diameter, 10 feet high, and illuminates a small part of the ground. The sighting lasts 45 minutes, with the object stationary all the time. It then vanishes. Later examination of the ground underneath reveals a circle of flattened grass, 25 feet in diameter, swirled counterclockwise, with some small secondary swirls. (Hans Bemelmans, “Reports from Ibiuna,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1970): 15–19; Terry Wilson, “1969: Ibiuna,” Old Crop Circles)
June 17 — Turkish Air Force pilot Süleyman Tekyildirim is ordered to intercept a UFO above his base in Turkey in a US- built F-5A Freedom Fighter. He flies above it, thinking it is a meteorological balloon because it looks gray and like an upside-down light bulb. However, it moves to his left and takes off at fantastic speed. He tries to reach it, but it eludes him and speeds away. (Good Need, p. 299)
June 19 — 12:25 a.m. Radio/TV engineer Robin Peck is driving a van just north of Bircham Newton, Norfolk, England, when his headlights and motor fail. He looks under the hood, feels some “static electricity,” and his hair stands on end. He looks up and sees a bluish, upside-down-mushroom-shaped object hovering 100–150 feet over the trees on a nearby farm. It has an orange glow around it. Peck feels that the air is electrified. His luminous wristwatch glows intensely and unnaturally. After about one minute the object takes off and disappears rapidly. The van’s electrical system returns to normal. (Peter Johnson, “Auto-Stop near Docking,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 5 (June 1971): 1–2; UFOFiles2, p. 81)
June 19 — 11:50 p.m. Arthur Hendry, 17, is getting ready to cycle home near Docking, Norfolk, England, when he hears a strange whistling noise above him that intensifies and becomes a powerful throbbing. His muscles feel frozen or paralyzed as if he is receiving a severe electric shock. After a few seconds the noise stops, and he feels normal again. (UFOFiles2, p. 81)
June 26 — 2:30 p.m. Sr. Benedito, a justice of the peace, is walking along a trail about 4 miles northwest of Ibiúna, São Paulo, Brazil, when he hears a humming noise like a swarm of bees. He sees an odd object rocking from side to side that suddenly drops into the brush out of sight. Thinking it is an accident, he approaches to within 20 feet and sees the landed object, which then ascends, hovers a moment, and takes off in a gentle climb. He hears the humming sound again and feels a blast of air as it moves away. The Brazilian Air Force investigates the landing, and UFO investigator Hans Bemelmans finds some scorched grass in the thickly tangled brush. (Hans Bemelmans, “Reports from Ibiuna,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1970): 15–19)
July — After a series of UFO sightings and landing traces are reported in the area around Ibiúna, São Paulo, Brazil, the Brazilian Air Force informs local officials who are investigating the reports that they must not “under any circumstances give any information on UFO activity to any press, radio, or television reporter or representative. This is a matter of national security, and all press releases will be made by the Brazilian Air Force Public Relations Department.” (Hans Bemelmans, “Reports from Ibiuna,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 1 (Jan./Feb.
1970): 15; “Brazil: Censorship of UFO Reports,” Flying Saucer Review 19, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1973): 29)
July or August — 1:00 a.m. A US Marine private named Earl Morrison is on guard duty with other soldiers in a bunker near Da Nang, Vietnam, when they see a black, naked woman with bat-like, glowing wings moving through the air toward them. It flies about 6–7 above their heads. She soon starts flapping her wings and flies away. (“Don Worley, “The Winged Lady in Black,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 10 (June 1972): 14–16; Clark III 779)
July 4 — 8:00 p.m. Two children, Mauricio Gnecco and Enrique Osorio, in Anolaima, Colombia, see a glowing object about 900 feet away. It approaches to within 180 feet and the children run over the hill to tell other children and adults. Thirteen people, including their father, return to see the object. Arcesio Bermúdez takes a flashlight with him and returns in terror after seeing a small person and a craft that lights up and flies away. Within 2 days, Bermúdez loses all appetite, his skin temperature drops, blue spots appear on his skin, and his stools become bloody. Within a week, two Bogotá physicians, unaware of his UFO experience, concludes he has gastroenteritis. Within hours of his exam, Bermúdez dies. His doctor claims he has previously been in good health. His injuries suggest a fatal whole-body ionizing radiation dose of 300–500 rems. Likely only X-rays, gamma rays, or neutrons could travel a distance of 45 feet through the air. (“UFO Observed at Farmhouse in Colombia,” APRO Bulletin, July/Aug. 1969, pp. 1, 4–5; Story, pp. 23–25; Clark III 253, 950; “Colombia: Arcesio Bermúdez, the Man Killed by a UFO,” Inexplicata, December 14, 2015; Cristian Ávila Jimenez, “La misteriosa muerte de columbiano 3 días después de ver supuesto OVNI,” El Tiempo (Bogotá), August 20, 2021)
July 11 or 18 — 8:30 p.m. Economics student Tim Oliver is near a golf course on the outskirts of Beaufort, Victoria, Australia, when he sees a red “star” over a hill about a mile away. On closer inspection, it proves to be a hovering UFO. He quickly goes home, and by the time he returns with his mother in the family car, the UFO has been joined by another identical object. They are moving about 20 mph to the southeast, 50 feet in the air, 200 feet apart, and nearly parallel to some high-powered electrical lines. As they drive to right outside the golf course, both UFOs apparently respond to their presence by turning toward them but soon resumed their parallel course when Oliver turns the car engine off. Oliver walks to within 50 feet of the leading object. Each is about 30 feet in diameter, saucer-shaped, with an upper flat-topped cupola and about 24 square windows through which comes the bright red light. They are completely silent. Both he and his mother (who has watched from the golf course fence) see the UFOs disappear to the southeast, still flying parallel to the power lines. (Bill Chalker, “1969: The Great UFO Daze of Oz,” The Oz Files, September 19, 2020)
July 12 — Contactee Paul Solem, who has been speaking to Shoshone-Bannock Indians at Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho about a migration of Indian peoples and the coming of a True White Brother, publicly calls for the appearance of the flying saucer beings. Many people, including Idaho State Reporter Barbara Boren, see two “star-like moving lights” high in the air. (Barbara Boren, “Blast Rocking North America to Start Indian Migration, Says Self-Styled Seer,” Pocatello Idaho State Journal, July 16, 1969, pp. 1, 8; Clark III 1094)
July 12 — 11:00 p.m. Patti Barr and Kathy Mahr, two teenage cousins, hear a loud roaring noise at Van Horne, Iowa, while upstairs in their house. They look out the window to see a reddish-orange ball of light rotating and spinning counterclockwise above the adjacent soybean field. The next morning, they tell Pat’s father, farmer Warren Barr, who then discovers a 24-foot-diameter, nearly bare oval in the soybean field. The plants’ leaves are severely dehydrated, dry, and brittle. This case was investigated by several groups at the time; localized intense heat or
radiation is listed as most likely cause. (“Sight UFO over Benton County Farm,” Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette, August 6, 1969, p. 4C; NICAP, “The 1969 UFO Chronology” and [photos]; “UFO over Iowa Bean Field,” APRO Bulletin, July/Aug. 1969, pp. 1, 4; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 149–150; Kevin D. Randle, “The Iowa UFO Landings,” Official UFO, July 1976)
July 13 — Early morning. Edgar Paquette and Mrs. Leo Edwards are driving near Petawawa, Ontario, when they see a bright star that lights up the Ottawa River next to them. Convinced the light is following them, Paquette turns off the headlights, which makes the object appear to hesitate. But he gets out of the car, causing the interior light to go on, and the object descends to within 60 feet of the ground. When he starts signaling it with a flashlight, it comes even closer, and Paquette sees that it is 8 feet in diameter with two legs beneath it. Both of them panic and drive home, dragging their teenage children out of bed to look at the light. Ontario police officers Jack McKay and Grant Chaplin follow the light for 38 minutes as it travels at a high altitude. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 83–84)
Mid-July — Bernard O’Brien is cutting grass in a field with his tractor near Manotick, Ontario, when a small cloud of smoke rises from the ground as he passes over a particular spot. He notifies the field’s owner, John Fox, who comes out for a look. Fox finds three near-perfect circles in the field, two together and the third nearly 150 feet away. Each of them are rings of affected grass 15–20 feet in diameter and about a foot wide. Grass is flattened inside the circle, but the rings themselves are dark and contain a crystalline substance. Peter Millman of the National Research Council claims that the circles are caused by the fairy ring mushroom (Marasmius oreades) because an analysis of the crystalline substance shows no evidence of mineral content or radioactivity. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 187–190)
July 16 — 3:30 p.m. Sylvia Annola, 10, sees a large gray object with blinding lights descending above a well on her family’s farm near Abee, Alberta. She looks directly at the object, which is only about 10 feet away, and experiences a temporary loss of vision. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 50–53)
July 21 — The Apollo 11 Lunar Module lands the first astronauts on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. (Wikipedia, “Apollo 11”)
August — 1:45 p.m. James D. Appleman is driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike when he notices a dome-shaped, metallic object hovering in the clouds ahead. He stops the car and gets his camera out of the trunk, but by that time the object is gone. (“Did a Twin Photograph a Twin UFO?” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 3, no. 1 (January 1981): 1)
August 22 — The National Amateur Astronomers Association hosts an open forum in Denver, Colorado, “Science and the UFO,” with presentations by James A. Harder, R. Leo Sprinkle, J. Allen Hynek, David Saunders, James McDonald, and Frank Salisbury. When asked how many of the 500 people assembled have had a UFO sighting, about 75 hands go up. (“Scientists Urge New UFO Studies,” Fate 23, no. 4 (April 1970): 38–48; George W. Earley, “Astronomers Raise Their Hands,” IUR 24, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 29–30)
August 29 — 6:20 a.m. Norman Vedaa and a passenger are driving along Interstate 80S [now Interstate 76] about 70 miles east of Denver [putting them roughly near Fort Morgan, Colorado]. They notice a brilliant, yellow-gold object hovering high in the air. They manage to take two photographs before it speeds away. Ground Saucer Watch concludes from its density profile in the photos that it is a solid object. (William H. Spaulding, “Observational Data of an Anomalistic Aerial Phenomenon,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 1 (May 1976): 12–17)
August 30 — Afternoon. Future ufologist Bill Chalker, 17, is relaxing on a surfboard in the middle of the Clarence River in Grafton, New South Wales. He notices streams of fine filament coming down out of the sky over the river. He collects some samples, seeing no spiders, but the material dissipates into nothing. He later learns that other people, including his parents, watched an elongated white UFO moving at right angles to the filament fall. (Keith Basterfield, “Angel Hair: An Australian Perspective,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 7; Clark III 124–126; Bill Chalker, “1969: The Great UFO Daze of Oz,” The Oz Files, September 19, 2020)
August 30 — 7:30 p.m. Ion Hobana is at the North Railway Station in Bucharest, Romania, when he sees a triangular object rise from behind the station building. It is a dull orange color and moves with one of its sides facing forward. Three smaller globes trail it in a straight line. The object travels to the right and disappears after a few seconds. (Hobana and Weverbergh 179–180)
August 31 — Day. An RAAF Canberra bomber chases but fails to catch a UFO over northern New South Wales. The plane is dispatched from RAAF Base Amberley near Ipswich, Queensland, after hundreds of people in Kygole and along the Darling Downs report the object, which is shaped like an aluminum Zeppelin. Some witnesses observe the object for 3 hours as it hovers above towns and farms. The UFO speeds away when the Canberra tries to close in on it. (“RAAF Chase UFO over Darling Downs,” UFOIC Newsletter, no. 26 (December 1969): 4)
September 4 — A farmer, Bert O’Neil, discovers a circular patch of dead and silvery-white manuka plants (Leptospermum scoparium, tea tree) in the midst of otherwise green and lush growth on a remote section of his farm near Ngatea, New Zealand. Near the center of the circle, he finds three ground indentations, positioned so as to form the inside points of a triangle. Off to one side is the taller stand of tea tree, also bleached and dead. He remembers seeing this from afar three weeks earlier, arousing his curiosity. The dead scrubweed within the circle is still standing and undisturbed. It looks as if some large object has come down from the sky and landed on three long stilts. At first, O’Neil only discusses his find within the family, but the news quickly leaks to the local radio and press. (Harold H. Fulton, “The Ngatea Mystery Circle, 1,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1970): 27–28; Harold H. Fulton, “The Ngatea Mystery Circle, 2,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 3 (May/June 1970): 32– 33; Harold H. Fulton, “The Ngatea Mystery Circle: Terrestrial or Extraterrestrial?” UFOcus NZ, 2010)
October — NICAP obtains a copy of a chapter of a textbook in use at the US Air Force Academy, Introductory Space Science, for the academy’s Physics 370 course. The last chapter is on “Unidentified Flying Objects” and concludes that the “UFO phenomenon appears to have been global in nature for almost 50,000 years” and considers the “unpleasant possibility of alien visitors to our planet, or at least of alien controlled UFO’s.” It recommends keeping an “open and skeptical mind.” (“AF Academy Teaches Students UFOs Real,” UFO Research Newsletter 1, no. 1 (April 1971): 1; ClearIntent, pp. 13–14; Good Need, p. 230)
October 3 — After 8:00 p.m. RCMP Constable S. B. Barrie and his wife Vivian are driving 5 miles west of Rennie, Manitoba, on a poor highway in bad weather. He stops to clean mud off the headlights and noticees a light to the east hanging just off Highway 44 and over the trees. He continues driving and he sees the light as a light-pink inverted saucer moving with a jerky motion. Now only 500 feet away, it seems to be 20 feet in diameter with an odd white tail that snakes toward the ground. Suddenly the car’s windshield wipers stop working, the headlights go out, and the engine stalls. Barrie gets out of the car and the object zooms silently to the southwest and is lost to sight. He senses the air has a strange, heavy odor, but he is able to get the car started again. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 81–82)
October 8 — A large area of St. Louis, Missouri, is blanketed by a pure-white, sticky substance ranging from dime-size to 10-foot-long streamers. The majority of it sublimates on ground contact. The Smithsonian concludes it is caused by ballooning spiders, even though only one spider specimen is found. When a sample is tested by Wayne E. Black of the St. Louis County Health Department, he finds the samples test negative for protein, the basic composition of spider web. (Washington Post, March 28, 1970; “A Classic Case of ‘Angel-Hair,’” Pursuit 3, no. 4 (October 1970): 72–73)
October 20 —Brig. Gen. Carroll H. Bolender, USAF Deputy Director of Development, writes a draft document saying that the “continuation of Project Blue Book cannot be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.” Bolender adds that “reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 or Air Force Manual 55-1 and are not part of the Blue Book system.” This is a clear indication that Blue Book is only a front for a classified UFO project. (Brig. Gen. C. H. Bolender, “Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO),” October 20, 1969; Swords 336)
October 24 — 12:43 a.m. A Chilean Navy destroyer is moving north at 20 knots in the South Pacific Ocean about 350 miles south of Valparaiso, Chile. The radar officer reports a target rapidly approaching the ship, apparently moving 213 miles in one minute, which would indicate a speed of 12,780 mph. At 12:47 a.m., the target is only 12 miles away, and it suddenly breaks into six targets. The officer in charge and five other personnel can now see one massive and five smaller lighted objects approaching the ship. The large UFO looks like a big box with semicircles on the side, and it is bigger than the ship, which is 360 feet long. The five smaller objects are egg- shaped, bluish, and no more than 8 feet long and 5–6 feet wide. At about 6,000 feet from the ship, the smaller objects move away from the larger one, three to portside and two to starboard, and begin flying in ellipses between the ship and the large object. At 900 feet away, the officers can hear the object make a humming noise. The ship’s power and instruments go dead as the large object passes overhead. Bright red lights under the UFO seem to be moving back and forth inside the craft, visible through a half-circle on the bottom. “Corn cobs” with green or turquoise pulsating lights are on the side. When the UFO is 600 feet away, the power comes back on.
The smaller objects, never coming closer than 1,500–3,000 feet, fly around the ship and join up with the large object on the other side. All 6 objects vanish about 2 miles away. At least 8 minutes have passed, with three radar technicians tracking the UFOs. The ship’s commander orders everyone to keep silent about what they have seen. The sighting is deleted from the ship’s log. The six witnesses are debriefed for two days in Valparaiso by two Chilean Navy officers and four Americans who are allegedly naval attachés with the US Embassy. (NICAP, “Six Objects Observed and Tracked by Destroyer”; Bill Chalker, “EM UFO Incident off Chile in 1969,” APRO
Bulletin 33, no. 3 (January 1986): 7–8; Bill Chalker, “An Extraordinary Incident off Chile,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 4–6; Bill Chalker, “EM UFO Incident off Chile in 1969 (Conclusion),” APRO Bulletin 33, no. 5 (April 1987): 5–6)
October 24–27 — The Turkish Air Force is inundated with reports of UFOs over Ankara, Turkey. Jet fighters are scrambled from Mürted Air Base [now closed] northwest of the city and close to within 7.5 miles, but the objects always pull away and climb higher. Even the base commander, Ercüment Gökaydin, flies with the interceptors to 35,000 feet, but the UFO is at a height of 50,000 feet. It is a silvery, oval disc. The jets take gun-camera film, which has never been released. One pilot says the object has three round portholes. (Good Need, p. 299)
October 27 — NICAP Assistant Director Gordon I. R. Lore Jr. writes board member Joseph B. Hartranft Jr. an 11-page letter outlining the organization’s difficulties. He alerts the board of directors to the growing financial crisis brought on by Donald E. Keyhoe’s failure to keep adequate books and records. He urges the hiring of a business director. In the summer he had gotten permission from Keyhoe to fire five of NICAP’s eight employees as a cost- saving measure. (Clark III 794)
October 30 — 10:00 a.m. Mr. and Mrs. Chapin are driving at their mine site near Redding, California, when they see a rattlesnake in the road. As they get out to go to the mine and kill the snake, they find the area oddly hot. They notice a disturbance in the brush some 60 feet away in a flattened area of mine tailings. An egg-shaped object rises noiselessly a few feet off the ground and takes off down the canyon, swaying but not striking small trees. Soon it zooms upward at a sharp angle and is out of sight in seconds. They find a shallow, oval, depressed spot less than 2 inches deep and 10 feet across in the mine tailings. A conical pile of unusual-looking sand is also discovered, and two days later they find a metallic glob about the size of a fist nearby. They have the material analyzed in 1977. Scattered about in the unusual sand pile are irregular bits of pale-green glass-like material made of nearly pure silicon. The metal glob is completely black on the outside and 77% copper in the interior, combined with tin and traces of silver, chromium, and other metals. Both are considered foreign to the geology of the mine site. (“The Redding, California CE II Case,” IUR 3, no. 3 (March 1978): insert)
November 8 — Australian physicist O. H. “Harry” Turner has been working with other scientists to set up a “rapid intervention team” for the RAAF to investigate UFO physical evidence. In a memo to the director of the Joint Intelligence Bureau, he indicates he is working with John Morton of Australian National University, John Symonds from the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, and Michael Duggin of the National Standards Laboratory. The plan is soon dropped by the JIB. (Bill Chalker, “The Australian Government and UFOs,” IUR 22, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 21; Swords 396–397)
November 9 — The D-21 drone makes its first reconnaissance mission over China, launched from a B-52. It flies over the Lop Nur Nuclear Test Base in Xinjiang but strays off course into Siberia and crashes. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed D- 21”; Jacobsen, Area 51, p. 223)
December 3 — The NICAP board of governors demands Keyhoe’s resignation. He retires, under protest, at age 72.
Leading the effort is board chairman Col. Joseph Bryan III, who takes over as acting president. (“Major Keyhoe Retires,” UFO Investigator, May 1970, pp. 1, 3; “NICAP Redeploys,” UFO Investigator, May 1970, p. 1)
December 5 — Bryan dismisses NICAP Assistant Director Gordon I. R. Lore Jr., replacing him with G. Stuart Nixon as secretary-treasurer. (“Major Keyhoe Retires,” UFO Investigator, May 1970, pp. 1, 3; Clark III 794)
December 17 — Air Force Secretary Robert Seamans announces the termination of Project Blue Book, based on the Condon report, the NAS endorsement, and “past UFO studies.” He repeats the Bolender wording that Blue Book “cannot be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.” Technically, Blue Book does not terminate until January 30, 1970. Blue Book records are moved to Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama, in a building that requires security clearance to enter. Eventually, the files, minus the witness names, are consigned to the Modern Military Branch, Military Archives Division, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense, “Air Force to Terminate Project ‘Blue Book,’” December 17, 1969; “Air Forces Closes Study of U.F.O.s,” New York Times, December 18, 1969, pp. 1, 41; “The Book Is Closed,” UFO Investigator, May 1970, p. 3; Sparks, p. 3)
December 18 — Condon is quoted in the New York Times that his investigation “was a bunch of damn nonsense,” and he is sorry he “got involved in such foolishness.” (“Air Forces Closes Study of U.F.O.s,” New York Times, December 18, 1969, pp. 1, 41)
December 26–27 — The American Academy for the Advancement of Science holds a special two-day segment on “Unidentified Flying Objects” at its annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, at the Sheraton Hotel. The program is arranged by Thornton Page (NASA Manned Spacecraft Center), Philip Morrison (MIT), Walter Orr Roberts (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research), and Carl Sagan (Cornell). Rising to the occasion, James E.
McDonald presents an excellent critique of the Air Force and Colorado project investigations as well as an in- depth examination of the RB-47 and Lakenheath-Bentwaters cases. Donald Menzel attempts to show that all UFO sightings can be explained, even though some of his “explanations” are complex. Morrison discusses the nature of hard evidence and concludes that reliable UFO reports would stand up both in a court of law and in the rigors of science. Cornell University Press publishes the proceedings, UFOs—A Scientific Debate, in 1972. (James E. McDonald, “Science in Default: Twenty-Two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations,” December 27, 1969; Walter N. Webb, “Allen Hynek As I Knew Him,” IUR 18, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1993): 9–10; Clark III 100–101)
December 28 — A man named Patric is driving from Midland to Windsor, Ontario, on heavily snowed roads after an accident has blocked the main highway. Suddenly, his car engine, headlights, and radio fails, and he crawls to a halt in front of a star-like glow with a prismatic, multi-colored aura 100 feet ahead. Inside the glow is a domed object. A loud humming noise commences and the object shoots into the sky. The car comes back to life, but Patric inexplicably reaches Windsor one hour late. (Jenny Randles, “The Twelve UFOs of Christmas,” Fortean Times 374 (Christmas 2018): 29)
1970
1970 — Ivan T. Sanderson publishes his last UFO book, Invisible Residents, which compiles reports of unusual objects seen in or around bodies of water. He speculates that such cases need not involve the presence of extraterrestrials, but possibly an indigenous intelligence that evolved independently in the oceans. (Ivan T. Sanderson, Invisible Residents, World, 1970; Clark III 1028)
1970 — John A. Keel publishes UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, in which he presents a theory that UFOs are produced by ultraterrestrials—beings who are able to manipulate matter and our senses and who in the past manifested themselves as fairies or demons. (John A. Keel, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, Manor Books ed., 1976; Wikipedia, “Operation Trojan Horse (book)”)
1970 — The CIA is testing a small drone aircraft in the shape of a bird at Groom Lake, Nevada. Called Project Aquiline, the agency wants to fly a reconnaissance UAV over key intelligence targets, such as ICBM sites and nuclear test grounds in the Soviet Union and China, without detection. At least one of the prototypes is flown from Area 51 more than 20 times. The project is cancelled in 1971 before deployment and has never been declassified. (Wikipedia, “Project AQUILINE”; David Hambling, “Area 51’s Robotic Spy Bird,” Wired, November 6, 2007)
1970 — UFO-Sverige is formed as the first nationwide UFO organization in Sweden; it is essentially an association of 20 UFO groups in different parts of the country. The secretary’s office is located in Skånninge. It publishes the magazine UFO-Information from 1969 to 1980, then UFO-Aktuellt beginning in 1980. (Wikipedia, “UFO- Sverige”; UFO-Information, no. 1 (October 26, 1969); C. Göran Norlén and Johan Gustavsson, “Tidskriften UFO-Aktuellt,” Riksorganisationen UFO-Sverige)
1970 — The crew of a US Air Force C-5A Galaxy transport, flying at 500 mph at 37,000 feet, encounters a UFO over Moula Idris, Saudi Arabia [=Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, Morocco?]. An RAF officer on detachment is flying the aircraft, and he describes the object as like two saucers joined together, surrounded by red, green, and yellow and flying at 75,000 feet. (Good Need, pp. 298–299)
Early 1970 — 10:00 p.m. A peasant in the Taijiang(?) District of Fujian province, China, sees a metallic, pan-shaped object land behind a hill. It radiates a brilliant green light, and a strange musical tone emanates from it. After he reports it, the local army commander mobilizes hundreds of soldiers who attempt to surround the object. After about one hour, the object emits a bright white light and takes off vertically. (Wendelle Stevens and Paul Dong, UFOs over Modern China, UFO Photo Archive, 1983, p. 56)
Early 1970s — 2:30–3:00 a.m. Two young men in Furnace Creek, California, are followed by a red ball of light the size of a beach ball. They get scared and run ahead to their house, slamming and locking the door behind them. The ball stops at the edge of their yard, hovering and oscillating in size. After 4–5 minutes, the ball moves away and creates a vortex, causing stones to rise and circle in the air. They can hear the sound of the stones hitting together. Then the light blinks out, and the rocks crash down onto the road. (Michael D. Swords, “Timmermania: A Step Too Far into the Timmerman Files?” IUR 27, no. 4 (Winter 2002–2003): 9)
January 1 — 5:00 a.m. Registered nurse Doreen Kendall is looking out a window at the Cowichan District Hospital in Duncan, British Columbia, and sees a bright, Saturn-shaped object about 50 feet in diameter hovering one story above her, about 60 feet off the ground and 40 feet away. It has a row of lights around its middle. She can see two humanoid figures in dark, tight-fitting clothing and wearing headgear in the upper portion. One stands at an instrument panel, with the other behind it. The second being looks directly at Kendall, then touches the first being,
who moves a lever, apparently causing the craft to tilt down and provide a view of its interior. Kendall calls for other witnesses, who arrive in time to see the UFO leave. (“Human-Like Pair in Saucer,” Victoria (B.C.) Daily Times, January 5, 1970, pp. 1–2; “UFO Occupants Seen near Hospital,” Canadian UFO Report 1, no. 7 (Summer 1970): 3–12; UFOEv II 459–460; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 139–
January 7 — 4:45 p.m. Two skiers, lumberjack Aarno Heinonen and farmer Esko Viljo, at Imjärvi, Finland, watch a disc- shaped, buzzing UFO approach them and hover. It is so close to Heinonen that he could touch it with his ski pole. From an opening in the center of the object’s bottom, a bright light beam is emitted, creating an illuminated area of 3 feet in diameter on the snow beneath it, edged with black. A red gray mist descends again; when it clears, both men can see, only 10 feet away, a 3-foot tall humanoid creature standing in the illuminated area, carrying in its hands a black box with a pulsating yellow light. Its arms and legs are very thin, its face pale like wax, and its nose hooked; it wears a light green coverall with darker green knee boots, white gauntlets, and a conical metallic helmet. Then the mist again descends, and long red, green, and purple sparks float out from the lighted area. A sort of flame rises from this spot and enters the UFO; then the mist and the UFO vanish. After this experience, Heinonen finds his right leg numb, and he vomits and passes black urine; Viljo also suffers severe physiological effects. Heinonen claims, two years later, a series of contacts with a female spacewoman. (Sven-Olof Fredrickson, “Finnish Encounter in the Snow,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1970): 31–32; “Finns Observe UFO Occupant,” APRO Bulletin, July/Aug. 1970, pp. 6–7; Sven-Olof Fredrickson, “A Humanoid Was Seen at Imjärvi,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1970): 14–18; Sven-Olof Fredrickson, “More on the Imjärvi Case,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1970): 22; Anders Liljegren, “The Continuing Story of the Imjärvi Skiers, Part 1,” Flying Saucer Review 26, no. 3 (September 1980): 15–17; Anders Liljegren, “The Continuing Story of the Imjärvi Skiers, Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 26, no. 5 (January 1981): 18–20; Kim Hansen, “UFO Casebook,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 75–79)
January 21 — The UFO Subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics sponsors a panel that meets in New York City to discuss differing viewpoints on UFOs. Among the panel members are Hynek, McDonald, Thornton Page, Gordon D. Thayer, and Philip Klass. The subcommittee, led by Joachim P. Kuettner, consists of scientists with no previous position on UFOs and reaches several middle-of-the-road conclusions. It criticizes the NAS position that the ETH is the least likely explanation and rejects McDonald’s position that it is the “least unsatisfactory.” It criticizes the Condon report, in which the conclusions do not match the data, and recommends a moderate-level, ongoing study of UFOs. (“UFOs, an Appraisal of the Problem: A Statement by the UFO Subcommittee of the AIAA,” Aeronautics and Astronautics 8, no. 11 (November 1970): 49–51; Clark III 101–102)
January 29 — A Uruguayan professor of socioeconomics takes a photo of a cigar-shaped object in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Analysis shows that it was probably a streetlamp. (“A Street Lamp, or Sign, Or,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 4, no. 3 (June/July 1983): 1; “Rio de Janeiro 1970 Photograph Termed Streetlamp,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 4, no. 6 (Dec. 1983/Jan. 1984): 3, 7)
January 30 — 3:30 p.m. Project Blue Book’s doors close as its office is staffed for the last time. The files have been packed in boxes and are on their way to the Air Force Archives at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama. (“The Book Is Closed,” UFO Investigator, May 1970, p. 3)
March 28 — 11:00 p.m. About 30 UFO spotters gathered on Cradle Hill, just outside Warminster, Wiltshire, England, see a flashing purple light. One of their sensors buzzes, indicating a strong magnetic field, and one observer (Norman Foxwell) takes photos that appear in the July/August 1970 Flying Saucer Review. But the UFO is actually a light beam from a high-intensity purple spot-lamp operated by a group of UFO debunkers, among them physicist David
I. Simpson. Foxwell himself is part of the skeptical group (having pre-exposed a spurious UFO image), as is the individual who operated the bogus magnetic-field sensor. The hoax is revealed six years later. (John C. Ben, “Photographs from Cradle Hill,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1970): 4–5; Percy Hennell, “The Warminster Photographs Examined,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1970): 6–7; Charles Bowen, “What the Eye Sees,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1970): 7; Pierre Guérin, “Warminster Photographs: A Tentative Interpretation,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1970): 7–8; Charles Bowen, “Progress at Cradle Hill,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 2 (March/April 1971): 11–12; S. E. Scammell, “A Surveyor’s Criticism,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 2 (March/April 1971): 13; John E. Ben, “Continued Investigations at Warminster,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 2 (March/April 1971): 14–16; Terence Collins, “A Further Examination of the Warminster Photographs,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 2 (March/April 1971): 16– 18; Michael Samuels, “Unexpected Photographic Effects at Warminster,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 2 (March/April 1971): 18–21; David I. Simpson, “Experimental UFO Hoaxing,” MUFOB, new series 2 (March
1976): 3–6, 11–12; David I. Simpson, “Controlled UFO Hoax: Some Lessons,” Skeptical Inquirer 4, no 3 (Spring 1980): 32–39; David Clarke, “The Warminster Syndrome,” Fortean Times 331 (October 2015): 40–47; David Clarke, How UFOs Conquered the World, Aurum, 2015; Steve Dewey and Kevin Goodman, History of a Mystery: Fifty Years of the Warminster Thing, Swallowtail, 2015; Clark III 602–603)
April 29–30 — Around midnight. Several independent groups of witnesses to the west of Lake Anten, Västra Götaland, Sweden, watch a red, glowing sphere fly around the lake and neighboring areas. It occasionally sends out a beam of light to the ground. Some of the observers get the impression that the beams originate on the ground rather than from the object. The next morning a few of the observers get into boats and sail to the spot where the sphere was seen hovering. In one corner of the garden of an isolated farmhouse named Enebacken, they find three round marks, one foot in diameter and 1.5 inches deep, burned into the ground in the shape of an equilateral triangle. A UFO group in Gothenburg, Sweden, takes soil samples to a laboratory for gamma-ray testing and finds significant non-background radiation at a peak that seems to derive from cesium-137, a radioactive isotope. (Sven-Olof Fredrickson, “A Landing near Lake Anten?” Flying Saucer Review 17, no 1 (Jan./Feb. 1971): 13–17)
May 5 — Although the Air Force is no longer involved with UFOs, the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio continues to contract Hynek’s services as a “special consultant” on atmospheric phenomena. He reports to Col. George R. Weinbrenner, whom he visits every once in a while in Dayton. He continues with the contract through 1974. (Jennie Zeidman, “I Remember Blue Book,” IUR 16, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1991): 12, 23; Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt, Inside the Real Area 51, Tantor Media, 2013, pp. 203–213)
May 14 — 9:45 p.m. A graduate engineering student in Bangor, Maine, notices two nocturnal lights in the Ursa Major constellation moving in a counterclockwise circle around a common center at a constant velocity. They abruptly stop moving, leaving them in a north-south position. After a short time, they move away from each other, then the light moving south suddenly halts. The other light is moving slower than a meteor but faster than a jet aircraft. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 48–49)
May 29 — John L. Acuff, an experienced manager but not a UFO researcher, becomes the new president of NICAP. He is the former executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers [now the Society for Imaging Science and Technology], which has cooperated with NICAP on photoanalysis but also has military and CIA connections. Acuff and G. Stuart Nixon dismantle the NICAP system of affiliates and state subcommittee system that have promoted the organization for years. Regional members are told to operate independently from one another; cooperation is discouraged. Criticism of the government’s UFO policy is no longer permitted and NICAP turns into a mere “sighting collection center.” Nixon is appointed executive director. (“NI-CIA-AP or NICAP?” Just CAUSE 1, no. 7 (January 1979): 5–13; Richard H. Hall, “The Quest for the Truth about UFOs: A Personal Perspective on the Role of NICAP,” in 1994 MUFON UFO Symposium Proceedings, MUFON, 1994, pp. 185–201; Clark III 794)
June — Contact (UK) begins publishing The UFO Register, a journal edited by J. B. Delair that focuses on sightings and data. It continues sporadically until 1995. (The UFO Register 1, part 1 (June 1970))
June — 12:45 a.m. A truck driver is approaching Emerald Beach, New South Wales, when he sees a bright light on he ocean side of the highway. A circular object rises from behind some woods 1,600 feet from the road. It hovers for 30 seconds at an altitude of 66 feet. Relative to the trees, the object appears to be about 33 feet in diameter, and flames seem to shoot from its base. It slowly returns to the ground, where it is partially obscured by trees, but it continues to emit beams of light from its top and sides. Fearful, the driver leaves the area. Ufologist Bill Chalker accompanies the witness to the landing site, where they discover six circles of dead grass of varying sizes and burned trees. (Bill Chalker, “Physical Traces,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 190)
June 13 — MUFON holds its first annual conference in Peoria, Illinois. Shortly afterwards, Walt Andrus succeeds Utke as MUFON director. (John F. Schuessler, “A Brief History of MUFON,” November 28, 2018)
June 27 — 11:40 a.m. Aristeu Machado, his wife and children, and João Aguiar of the Brazilian Federal police, see a metallic, domed disc resting on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean about a half-mile off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Two humanoid figures are standing on the rim. After a while the object skims the surface of the water and takes off, lights flashing from the underside. Once airborne, the wife can clearly see the two occupants sitting inside. (UFOEv II 460; Brazil 128–130)
July — Afternoon. John and Mary Pilichis see a huge cigar-shaped object over their home at Rome, Ohio. At the same time, their daughter Bonnie and a friend are at a swimming pool about one-half mile away when they see 3 silvery discs flying end-to-end in the direction of their home. The parents then see the discs as well. The cigar and the
discs form a line and move into a large, peculiar cloud. After 3–4 minutes, the cloud begins to break apart, with no UFOs showing. (Ohio UFO Reporter, Sept./Nov. 1971; Herbert S. Taylor, “Cloud Cigars: A Further Look,” IUR 30, no. 3 (May 2006): 12)
July 4 — 3:00 a.m. A 33-year-old Port Monmouth, New Jersey, housewife wakes up and sees a “big round ball” with an “eerie white glow” hovering over the meadows across the street. She watches it bouncing back and forth for 15 minutes as a series of red lights flash in sequence across it. The size is about 25–30 feet wide. The streetlight has gone out and comes back on when the object leaves. Her son and brother-in-law later find three imprints 30–40 feet apart in the shape of a triangle in the meadow. They also find circles impressed in the grass, the largest 15–20 feet in diameter. Then they find tracks “going to the creek like they had dragged some small round thing into the ditch” as well as “two sets of a dozen imprints which were about two feet apart. They were curved like raindrops. It was very visible, the grass was all crushed down, there was mud on the banks of the creek, and there were signs of the tracks in the mud.” One week later, the light returns and crosses the field across the street. The family television, the car ignition, and the telephone behave strangely for days afterward. (Berthold E. Schwarz, “The Port Monmouth Landing,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 3 (May/June 1971): 21–27; Clark III 251–252)
July 23 — President Nixon makes it clear that he wants a major effort against domestic dissidents. At an Oval Office meeting in June with the Inter Agency Committee on Intelligence (H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Tom Charles Huston, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Helms, Adm. Noel Gaynor, and Lt. Gen. Donald W. Bennett), Nixon hears suggestions for expanded mail openings, resumption of illegal break-ins, electronic surveillance, and expanded counterintelligence. He approves the plan in July but will not sign it; neither will Haldeman or Ehrlichman. The plan was originally put together by Huston. Hoover torpedoes it when he announces that he will go along with it as soon as he gets written authorization from Nixon for all those break-ins and wiretaps. (Wikipedia, “Huston Plan”)
July 25 — 5:30 p.m. A witness comes across a landed domed disc, about 20 feet in diameter and 10 feet high with windows in the dome and portholes in its side, sitting on 4 legs near Jabreilles-les-Bordes, Haute-Vienne, France. He is blinded by a yellow-orange light beam and paralyzed by fright. As the object ascends with a whistling sound, he feels a wave of heat. At 330 feet altitude, the object jumps vertically and disappears behind a mountain. Four imprints are found forming an irregular figure on the hillside. (MM. Gaille, J. Gorce, and J. F. Gorce, “Atterrissage près de Jabreilles-les-Bordes (Haute Vienne), part 1,” Lumières dans la Nuit, no. 113 (August 1971): 11–14; MM. Gaille, J. Gorce, and J. F. Gorce, “Atterrissage près de Jabreilles-les-Bordes (Haute Vienne), part 2,” Lumières dans la Nuit, no. 114 (October 1971): 9–14; Ted Phillips, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings, CUFOS, 1976, p. 71)
August — Day. A group of Russian hydrologists are conducting research on a motorboat on Kronotsky Lake, Kamchatka Krai, Russia. Suddenly, about a half-mile away a dome of water rises up and a gray-colored oval object rises up. It is roughly 165 feet in diameter, rises to about 500 feet, and hovers nearly overhead. The engine of the motorboat stalls. The team watches for another 90 seconds before they row away, but the object moves away at reat speed and disappears. The boat’s motor starts working again. (Stonehill and Mantle, Russia’s USO Secrets, Flying Disk, 2020, pp .82–83)
August 7–12 — Evening. Contactee Paul Solem, who has managed to convince a number of Hopi Indian elders, among them Chief Dan Katchongva, that he is a true prophet heralding the coming of a True White Brother, publicly summons his space brother friends telepathically for 15 minutes in Prescott, Arizona, where UFOs have been reported over the previous few days. After Solem announces that “they’re here,” a “star” appears that had not been there before and Solem receives a message from space brother Paul 2, who tells him that the saucers are appearing because of a Hopi prophecy. Others see zigzagging lights in the sky over the next few nights, and Prescott Courier photographer Chuck Roberts takes a time-lapse photo of one. (Jerome Clark, “Indian Prophecy and the Prescott UFOs,” Fate 24, no. 4 (April 1971): 54–61; John A. Keel, “America’s First UFO Experts: The Hopi,” UFO Report, Summer 1974; Armin W. Geertz, The Invention of Prophecy, University of California, 1994; Clark III 1094–1095)
August 13 — 10:50 p.m. Police officer Evald Hansen Maarup is driving 5 miles south of Haderslev, Denmark, when he is surrounded by a bluish-white light. His engine stops and the car lights and radio go out. Heat inside the car increases. He sees a conical light coming from the bottom of a large, silent, gray object. After a few seconds, the light is drawn into the UFO, a process that takes about 5 minutes. It speeds away vertically. (“UFO’et ved Haderslev,” UFO-Nyt, 1970 no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1970): 211–213; “Et mærkeligt ‘Tysk Militærfly,’” UFO-Nyt, 1974
no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1974): 205–206; “The Haderslev UFO,” BUFORA Journal 8, no. 4 (September 1979): 26–27; Kim Hansen, “UFO Casebook,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 72–75; “Dansk Politibetjent stoppet af UFO,” UFO-Sandheden, February 1, 2007; Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports,
Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (September 2011): 15–16; Lon Strickler, “The Maarup Encounters,” Phantoms and Monsters, September 5, 2012; Patrick Gross, “Close Encounter in Denmark, August 13, 1970”)
August 14 — 8:45 p.m. Residents of Little Heart’s Ease and St. Jones Within on the Southwest Arm in Newfoundland watch a blood-red fireball 8–10 feet long with a trail of lighter color for about 5 minutes as it passes overhead to the northeast. It makes a rushing noise before it crashes into the water near the mouth of the harbor at Little Heart’s Ease. When the RCMP arrive to investigate, they go out in a boat but can find no submerged object. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August North, 2022, p. 102)
August 29 — 11:15 p.m. Several witnesses in Enebacken, Sweden, see a bright, round, red light maneuvering around the ground, emitting beams of yellow-white light. Three round landing marks in a triangular formation are found in the garden of Richard Johansson’s small farm near Lake Anten. Soil samples are taken and analyzed, with the results showing an increased level of gamma radiation in the test samples from one of the landing marks. (Sven- Olof Fredrickson, “A Landing near Lake Anten?” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1971): 13–17)
August 30 — 11:30 a.m. A 7-year-old girl in Vincennes, Indiana, sees a metallic disc in the east-northeast hovering over Wheatland Road. She tells her parents, and her father goes outside and sees it too. He re-enters the house to get his 7x50 binoculars. The object is about a quarter of a mile away and looks like a squared-off conning tower about 30 feet in diameter. They watch it for 90 seconds, after which it leaves in a swooping dive to the north-northeast. (NICAP, “Domed Disc Observed in Broad Daylight / MADAR Connection”)
September — 9:00 p.m. While walking home from a high school football game in Jessup, Pennsylvania, Frank Scassellati, 16, observes a glowing white, apparently metallic, silvery disc in the southeast sky moving from left to right.
Around the dome on top is a row of rectangular windows; three spheres and a flat circle are visible on the underside. The object moves out of sight behind local terrain. Though he does not report the sighting to any authorities, Scassellati says that a few nights later he notices a limousine parked outside of his house with four men in black suits and hats sitting in it. They reappear for several nights but he has no interaction with them. (Center for UFO Studies, [case documents])
September 8 — Dusk. A farmer near Zillah, Washington, is dismounting from his tractor when he sees a triangular object hovering in the air. Steel gray in color, it has a red light at each of its bottom corners and white lights in its center. It eventually moves upward and out of sight. (“Sighting Advisory,” UFO Investigator, January 1971, p. 1)
October 24 — 1:00 a.m. Gerald Adams and Donna Martin are parked on a dirt road 3–4 miles north and a half-mile west of MacGregor, Manitoba. They notice a bright light approaching from about a half-mile away. When it lands 150 feet from them, they notice it is an oblong object 8 feet in diameter with 9 “rods” and a red light on top. Adams takes Martin home but returns to the site. The object has moved farther away and is hovering above the ground. As he drives closer, he sees a humanoid entity about 4 feet tall dressed in a helmet and a silver metallic uniform crossing the road about 50 feet in front of him. He brakes, but the entity has gone. The UFO slowly lifts vertically from the ground and speeds away to the northwest. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 146–150, 160)
October 29 — 5:40 p.m. Reidar Salvesen is driving about 2 miles east of Helleland, Rogaland, Norway, when a dazzling light forces him to stop the car. He looks up and sees a globe about 60 feet in diameter approaching noiselessly. It stops about 18 feet in front of the car and hovers for 50 seconds about 30 feet up. Suddenly the object shoots straight up into the air, causing Salvesen to fall on the pavement. He hears a sharp crack caused by his front windshield shattering. About 3,200 feet in the air the globe changes to a fireball, which quickly disappears. After sweeping up the shards of windowpane glass, he drives on, but feels a numbness in his tongue a few minutes later. He also has an abrasion on his hand from falling down, but the skin sloughs off as if burned, and he has a redness around his eyes when he returns home. His travel clock starts keeping time badly. (“I Met a ‘Flying Saucer,’” Scandinavian Newsletter, no. 1/2 (April 1971): 4–7)
November — The UFO Subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics publishes a formal statement in its journal Aeronautics and Astronautics. It recommends “a continuing, moderate-level effort with emphasis on improved data collection by objective means and on high-quality scientific analysis” as the “only promising approach” to solving the UFO problem, and sharply criticizes the Colorado project’s conclusion that studying the subject will not add to scientific knowledge. (“UFOs, an Appraisal of the Problem: A Statement by the UFO Subcommittee of the AIAA,” Aeronautics and Astronautics 8, no. 11 (November 1970): 49–51; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 249–251)
November 5 — 9:00 p.m. Albert Formiller is fishing for bass in Cholla Bay, Sonora, Mexico, when he sees a light in the sky coming from a saucer-shaped object, which stops and hovers about 200–300 feet above the surface. A light
from a tube on the bottom illuminates a broad stretch of water about one half-mile wide. It changes from a broad floodlight to a sharp spot on the surface, apparently as it is raised or lowered. After a few minutes, a cloud forms around the object. After 5 minutes, the searchlight is turned off and a similar light appears on top of the UFO, illuminating the upper part of the cloud. The object then moves west and is visible for 20 minutes in all. (Carl W. Feindt, “Beam of Light into a Body of Water,” IUR 33, no. 3 (December 2010): 23)
November 1 — 10:30 p.m. Stewart Wilkinson and his wife are driving on the Trans-Canada Highway just west of Pense, Saskatchewan, when they see an disc-shaped object with a beam of light extending down to the road. It follows his car about 20 feet to the right at an altitude of 10–15 feet. At one point it moves ahead and hovers above a truck parked a half-mile away. When he comes alongside the truck, the object moves to the left side of his car about 30 feet away and almost on the ground. Wilkinson slows down and comes to a stop, and the object follows suit, hovering for another 10–15 seconds before disappearing into the lights of Moose Jaw to the west. It has followed his car for 12 minutes and 10 miles. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp.
85–86)
November 16 — Evening. One adult and four teenagers are leaving a basketball game at Beckemeyer (Illinois) Elementary School when they notice a triangular object with orange and white lights moving in an erratic manner to the south. They watch it for 10 minutes, and a smaller object emerges from the triangle. (“UFO Sighted,” Breese (Ill.) Journal, November 19, 1970, via UFO Newsclipping Service, no. 20 (December 1970): 2)
November 17–20 — At a Radar Meteorology Conference in Tucson, Arizona, McDonald presents a paper on “Meteorological Factors in Unidentified Radar Returns.” (James E. McDonald, “Meteorological Factors in Unidentified Radar Returns,” November 1970; Story, p. 416)
November 29 — 6:30 p.m. A 17-year-old student at Oizumi High School is riding his bicycle home at Tatebayasi, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, when he sees 5–6 objects flying in formation on a straight path from northeast to southwest.
Seconds later, a solitary object appears to the north and approaches swiftly. The student parks his bicycle and runs up some steps to a raised enclosure for a better view. The single UFO changes course and circles several times, descending slowly. It then hovers, climbs, and disappears. The student gets back on his bike and sees a bright flash of white light to the southeast, which startles him and he pedals home quickly. The student returns the next day to the enclosure, which is actually a raised tombstone. He finds four circular patches of flattened grass. (Takao Ikeda, “A Close Encounter in Tatebayasi,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 10 (June 1972): 10– 11, 13)
December 14 — 1:30 a.m. Belgian writer Julian Weverbergh and his wife are awakened in Bucharest, Romania, by a bright red glow, which changes to white. A spherical light is hovering above a bus before disappearing. (Hobana and Weverbergh 271)
1971
1971 — Unhappy with NICAP leadership, Raymond E. Fowler (and most of his Massachusetts Subcommittee) transfers his allegiance to MUFON. (Clark III 517)
1971 — A secret computer database of the NORAD Unknown Track Reporting System (NUTR) that logs air defense unknowns is launched and maintained for assessment of “airspace sovereignty.” (Clark III 801)
January 3 — 6:15 a.m. Maun and Matta Talana are drinking coffee when they see a brilliant light approaching from the lake outside their home at Saapunki, Kuusano, Finland. It is about 33 feet in diameter and moving against the wind. Their electricity goes off briefly. Looking out the window, the Talalas see their whole yard bathed in light caused by a huge fireball about 60 feet away, which rises up and disappears after a few seconds. Around 8:30 a.m., their son Timo asks them what the marks are in the snow outside. He has noticed a spot of hard green ice that is not covered with snow. Mauno takes some green ice and melts it into dark green water. The melted area is about 20 feet long by 10 feet wide, in the middle of which are ice needles as big as fingers with a ball of ice on top and some soot. The following day, he tells the newspaper, which sends a photographer to the site. UFO researchers from Oulu arrive on January 6 and take samples from the melted area and measure radiation. (Elis W. Grahn, “Saapunki UFO and Green Ice,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 2 (March/April 1971): 2–3, 27; “Green Water from Saapunki: Result of Water Sample Analysis,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1971): 26– 27; Ahti Karavieri, “The Saapunki UFO: Results of Investigations,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 5 (Sept./Oct.
1971): 23–26)
January 7 — Two boys independently observe a metallic object with an orange glow flying over Dennis, Massachusetts. It descends and disappears over some trees and looks as if it is about to fall into Scargo Lake. One boy sees a hole in the ice on the lake; steam is rising from it, and the water in the hole looks agitated. NICAP investigator Walter N. Webb visits the lake on January 10 and reports that the hole “was formed by a rather sudden melting process.” (“NICAP Probes Crashed Object Report,” UFO Investigator, February 1971, p. 1; “NICAP Probes Crashed Object Report: Search Still Hampered by Bad Weather,” UFO Investigator, March 1971, p. 3; Clark III 339)
January 23 — The Porto Alegre, Brazil, newspaper Correiro do Povo notes UFO sightings are recurring in a rural location close to the federal capital of Brasília. An unnamed local peasant is quoted as saying that the “state governor” shows up regularly and looks for “little stones” in the nearby woods. Always dressed in black, he arrives via an airplane “made of two dishes, like, one atop the other, and when it goes up in the air it changes color and then disappears quicker than a flash.” (Gordon Creighton, “South American Roundup, 1971, Part 1,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 10 (June 1972); 8)
January 25 — 9:30 a.m. Gunar Gruenzner is taking photos of the scenery near Praia da Armação beach in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil, when he claims to see an intense light beginning to descend. He snaps a photo but can no longer see the light. The photo shows a circular light with a dark aura. Probably a film defect. (“Observations diverses à l’étranger: Photographie au Brésil,” Lumières dans la Nuit, no. 120 (October 1972): 13–14; Wim van Utrecht, “Shiny Cigar Photographed over Brazilian Beach,” Caelestia)
February — The Borderline Science Investigation Group is founded in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, by Ivan A. W. Bunn. It publishes Lantern, a newsletter that continues for 40 issues through late 1982. (Lantern, no. 3 (Autumn 1973))
February 5 — 3:00 p.m. Petter Aliranta and Esko Juhani Sneck are working in the woods around Kangaskylä, near Kinnula, Finland, when they see a 15-foot object descend to a clearing 50 feet away. As it lands, a small entity just under 3 feet tall glides to the ground from an opening on the underside. Through 3 windows on the UFO, three more entities can be seen. The entity approaches Aliranta, who turns on his chain saw. Suddenly, the being turns around and heads back to the UFO. As the humanoid is rising back up into the air, Aliranta grabs it by the heel of its boot with his bare hand. It burns him like a hot iron, and he has to let go. The burns are clearly visible 2 months later. The humanoid gets back inside, and the UFO takes off with a hum. Before the two men go back, they look at markings in the snow. At the end of each landing foot there had ben a round plate. These plates have penetrated the full depth of the snow (1.3 feet), leaving four round prints forming an even square 6.5 feet on each side. Circular footprints left by the entity are clearly visible, about 6 inches wide. Possible hoax. (Tapani Kuningas, “The Humanoid at Kinnula,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1971): 18–19; Patrick Gross, URECAT, April 5, 2007)
February 23 — 7:00 p.m. Thousands of people in Turin and other places in Piedmont, Italy, observe a conspicuous red cloud in the western sky, just above the crest of the Alps, moving majestically and changing shape slowly.
Someone takes a photograph of it from Caluso. The following day, the French Office National d’Études et de Recherches Aérospatiales announces that the cloud was caused by a Tibere, an experimental three-stage rocket for atmospheric reentry tests. (Sofia Lincos and Giuseppe Stilo, “La lunga notte della nube rossa,” CICAP, November 5, 2020)
March 2 — James E. McDonald testifies as an expert in atmospheric physics at the House Committee on Appropriations hearings on the Concorde supersonic transport and its potentially harmful effects. His opponents question his credentials and ridicule him as someone who believes in “little men flying around in the sky.” (Clark III 701)
March 8 — The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI burgles an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, takes several dossiers, and exposes the FBI COINTELPRO program by passing this material to news agencies. (Wikipedia, “Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI”)
March 14 — 4:00 p.m. Five silver objects, four of them in a box formation with a fifth leading, are seen over Christies Beach, Adelaide, South Australia. Filaments fall. (Keith Basterfield, “Angel Hair: An Australian Perspective,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 7)
March 15 — 3:10 p.m. Several silvery-white balls are seen in the air over Maslin Beach, Adelaide, South Australia. White “fairy floss” is found on the ground that tends to melt and disappear when picked up. It is extremely light and tenuous. (Keith Basterfield, “Angel Hair: An Australian Perspective,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 7)
April — Industrial Research magazine publishes the results of a survey in which 80% of its members reject the Condon report, 76% believe that the government is concealing UFO facts, and 32% accept the ETH. (Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, pp. 234–235)
April — UFO Research Associates in Washington, D.C., begins publication of the UFO Research Newsletter, edited by Gordon I. R. Lore Jr. It runs until September 1980. (UFO Research Newsletter 1, no. 1 (April 1971))
April — Hoover terminates the COINTELPRO program, but the FBI continues to use similar tactics from time to time. (Wikipedia, “COINTELPRO”)
April — James McDonald shoots himself in the head, leaving him blind, and is committed to the psychiatric ward of the
V.A. Medical Center in Tucson, Arizona. He has been depressed about his disintegrating marriage. He signs himself out in June. (Clark III 701)
April 2 — After 10:00 p.m. Following several sightings of a bright light in the sky at West Kempsey, New South Wales, an aboriginal man at Greenhill sees a hairless face pressed up against his kitchen window. Immediately he is “sucked out” through the window and falls 7 feet to the steps below. Frightened but largely unhurt, he runs away and his wife pursues him. She takes him to the hospital where a cut on his hand is treated. (Eileen Buckle, “Defenestration at Kempsey,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1971): 20–21)
April 14 — CIA Director Richard Helms gives a rare public address in which he insists that the CIA does not surveil domestic mail. However, the HTLINGUAL program, which is still in effect until 1973, does so. The New York City component of the program alone examines more than 2 million mailed items every year, photographs 30,000 envelopes, and opens 8,000–9,000 letters. (Wikipedia, “HTLINGUAL”)
May — Oswald G. Villard Jr., Antony C. Fraser-Smith, and R. P. Cassam write an article at the request of the Office of Naval Research and the Advanced Research Projects Agency that explores whether long-delayed radio echoes could be attributable to an extraterrestrial probe. They consider it possible but inefficient. (Oswald G. Villard, et al., “Long-Delayed Echoes: Radio’s ‘Flying Saucer’ Effect,” QST 53 (May 1969): 38; Oswald G. Villard, Antony
C. Fraser-Smith, and R. P. Cassam, “LDEs, Hoaxes, and the Cosmic Repeater Hypothesis,” QST 55 (May 1971): 54–58; Michael D. Swords, “Radio Signals from Space, Alien Probes, and Betty Hill,” IUR 29, no. 4 (July 2005): 12–13)
May — The Société Belge d’Étude des Phénomènes Spatiaux is established in Brussels, Belgium, by Lucien Clarebaut. It publishes the journal Inforespace from 1972 to 2007. (Comité Belge d’Étude des Phénomènes Spatiaux, “Qui sommes-nous?”; Inforespace, no. 1 (1972))
May — 6:00 a.m. A 16-mm film is allegedly taken of retrieved UFOs at Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo, New Mexico. It supposedly shows “three disc-shaped craft,” one of which lands and the other two fly away. A door opens on the landed vehicle and three human-sized beings emerge with an odd, gray complexion and pronounced noses. They wear tight-fitting jump suits and thin headdresses that appear to be communication devices. In their hands they hold a “translator.” A Holloman base commander and other Air Force officials go out to meet them. (Linda Moulton Howe, An Alien Harvest: Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms, Howe Productions, 1989; Clark III 357)
May — 7:30 p.m. Alojz Krz comes across a UFO sitting on three legs in a shallow hollow in a field near Stara Cerkev, Slovenia. He approaches within 65 feet of it, and it frightens him considerably. Around 8:00 p.m., 17-year-old Angela Rajhs is bicycling in the same area and watches the landed object for 4–5 minutes. As she is cycling away, the object takes off, turning in a wide spiral. Rajhs returns to the scene with her parents the next day and finds several pointed holes in the ground about 6–8 inches in diameter. The nearby grass seems burned. (Milos Kremelj, “Close View of Landed Craft,” Canadian UFO Report 4, no. 4 (Summer 1977): 9–10)
May 23 — 12:30 p.m. Rudi Nagora and his wife are driving near Sankt Lorenzen ob Eibiswald, Styria, Austria, for a Sunday outing. Nagora gets out of the car and hears a whizzing sound and sees a silver, metallic object overhead moving in a zigzag pattern. He takes 11 consecutive color photographs of it over a 10-minute period. (Richard F. Haines, “An Analysis of Multiple UAP Photographic Images (May 23, 1971, Austrian Alps),” JUFOS 9 (2006): 31–70)
May 24 — 12:10 p.m. Retired artist Julio Suárez Marzal is in the first-floor dental office of Walter Griehl on the Avenida Pedro Molina in Mendoza, Argentina, when they see a flattened, Saturn-shaped object about a half-mile away to the south. Griehl goes to retrieve some binoculars and misses most of the sighting. It is an incandescent dark orange in color and moving from east to west. It begins floating down with a rocking movement and approaches to within 230 feet. Suárez Marzal sees that it is revolving because of a small circular mark on its rim. A dense cloud issues from the object and surrounds it, turning it pearly gray with a faintly bluish sheen. As it gets closer, the circular mark seems to extend like a bronze-colored cylinder and has a handle-like protuberance on top. At one point it moves away to the northeast and disappears for 4 seconds but reappears even closer, only 130 feet away. It remains stationary for 10 seconds, and the cylinder seems deliberately pointed toward the short-wave antenna on the nearby central post office. He estimates it is 18–20 feet in diameter. It continues rocking and changes shape from a globe to a hat to an oval. Then after being visible for 90 seconds it takes off suddenly to the
south, leaving a trail of vapor. (Antonio Baragiola, “A Remarkable Case from Mendoza, Argentina,” Flying Saucer Review 18, no. 2 (March/April 1972): 7–11; François Lagarde, “Note on the Mendoza Report,” Flying Saucer Review 18, no. 2 (March/April 1972): 11–12)
May 25 — 2:00 a.m. Mr. C. Archer is woken up in his home at Lynchford, Tasmania, by his dogs barking and a strange humming noise like a generator. He can’t see anything outside and after 30 minutes the humming stops. The next day, a flattened area of grass and blackberries is found about 600 feet from the house. It is about 30 by 15 feet with a spiral pattern in the middle and 6 regularly placed indentations. Later, another set of similar indentations is found, roughly in the shape of a triangle. (W. K. Roberts, “Burst of UFO Activity in Tasmania,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 9 (October 1971): 13)
June or July — 8:30 p.m. The aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is completing an Operational Readiness Exercise in the Caribbean Sea when an incident occurs following an 18-hour period simulating General Quarters. Yeoman Third Class James M. Kopf is in the Communications Center monitoring messages on various teletypes. Suddenly all the messages begin coming in garbled and he hears that all ship communications are out, including the radar, compasses, and electrical systems. A signalman from the deck tells them over the intercom that something is hovering above the ship. Kopf and others rush topside and see a huge, pulsating, orangish sphere stationed silently above the ship at a 60°–70° angle. The object remains about 20 minutes, but Kopf sees it only one minute before General Quarters sounds and he needs to return to his battle stations. The two F-4 Phantom jets on high readiness alert cannot take off. Soon the messaging returns to normal and the crew stands down after 2 hours. Kopf thinks only about 18 men witnessed the object out of the 5,000 on the carrier, because everyone is exhausted from the exercise. He hears that commanding officer Capt. Ferdinand B. Koch is frustrated by the event, but two days later Koch reminds the crew that certain events are to be considered classified. (Good Need, pp. 285–288)
June 9 — Evening. Esther Clappison sees a light through her windows in Rosedale, Alberta, and goes out onto her porch and sees a rectangular object on the ground. One end of it is open, revealing a diffused, white light. Two human- like forms are moving about inside. A third figure is outside in a crouched position, picking up rocks. They all appear to be wearing drab-green coveralls. She goes inside briefly, but the object is gone when she returns. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 67–69)
June 13 — 11:40 a.m. James E. McDonald is found dead along a shallow creek in Tucson, Arizona, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A suicide note nearby notes his domestic problems. (Ann Druffel, “Remembering James McDonald,” IUR 18, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1993): 4–6, 23–24; Clark III 701)
June 13 — The New York Times begins publishing excerpts of the Pentagon papers, leaked by former military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, which detail the secret history of the US political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. (Wikipedia, “Pentagon Papers”)
June 29 — 3:00 a.m. A man is hiking in Delamere Forest east of Chester, England, when an “electric blue light” appears ahead and moves toward him, dancing erratically in and out of the trees. He walks toward it but before taking 20 steps he finds himself walking calmly back. The object then moves along a mud track and disappears into a small “garage” in the bushes. After wandering around in a disoriented state for some time, he searches for the “garage” but cannot find it. (Jenny Randles, “Much More Than Marsh Gas,” Fortean Times 311 (March 2014): 27)
July 7 — 6:00 p.m. Spanish physician Guillermo Arguello de la Motta is a guest of his friend Antonio Arocha at San Juan de los Morros, Guárico, Venezuela. They suddenly see two men dressed in black, both wearing red ties and black berets. They emerge from a brand-new red Ford Mustang, at a distance of 1,600 feet from the house. They stand there waiting for 5 minutes, then begin to put on orange belts, talking together animatedly. Suddenly a shining object appears in the sky, descends, and stops at a height of 2 feet from the ground. It is circular, bell-shaped underneath, and has a “turret” on the top. The object changes rapidly in color from orange to blue and to white.
Suddenly a small staircase is dropped from the object, enabling the two men from the Mustang to enter the UFO. The staircase is drawn in, then the object takes off at an impressive speed. (Gordon Creighton, “South American Round-Up, Part 1,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 10 (June 1972): 9)
July 8 — 1:15 p.m. Miner Claude Girard is parked on the road near the bridge over the Hurricana River in Joutel, Quebec, when he sees a circle 15–20 feet in diameter on the surface of the water with a jet of water in the center reaching a height of 20 feet. When the water jet settles down, Girard can see a cylindrical object, 6–8 feet in length and rusty black in color, beneath the surface. It slowly begins to lean to one side and sinks in less than a minute. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 103)
July 17 — 10:45 p.m. Tea planter Parl Abeywickrema, his two assistants Oswin de Alwis and Nimal Dunuwille, and the driver Sirisena Wijesinghe are driving between the Hope Estate in Rikillagaskada, Sri Lanka, and the Rockwood Estate in Hewaheta when they see a bright object larger than the full moon above the hilly horizon. Soon it
approaches the, and Abeywickrema orders the driver to stop. They watch the object, now hovering about one- quarter mile away at an altitude of 1,000 feet. After 10 minutes it silently swoops toward them at high speed and stops 300 feet away at a height of 100 feet. The object is about 25 feet in diameter with two “tapering wings” on either side and casts a fluorescent yellow glow. After a few more minutes, the UFO moves toward the southwest at a 45° angle after drawing its two wings inside the main body. Some 50 witnesses report the same or similar objects in the same area that night, and both Abeywickrema and Wijesinghe report seeing UFOs around 2:00– 3:00 a.m. after returning home. (Story, pp. 169–170)
July 29 — A CIA internal memo reports that a citizen named Vartorella has expressed the opinion that the CIA used the Colorado project as “whitewash to cover a CIA-initiated program begun prior to January 1953.” The writer runs through a brief history of the Robertson Panel and suggests the following response: “We’re sorry, but we have had no interest in the UFO matter for many years, have no files or persons knowledgeable on the subject, and hence are unable to respond to his charges and questions.” (ClearIntent, p. 142)
July 29 — Night. A woman living on a farm outside Saint Hyacinthe, Quebec, watches as two dark circular objects with red rotating lights hovering above her potato field. It quickly disappears. The next morning, her husband finds two 11-foot-wide circular patches of crushed and burned potatos where the UFO had hovered. Investigators estimated the object had burnes or irradiated the field from a height of 15 feet. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, p. 143)
August 16 — Jan-Ove Sundberg sees a landed UFO in a cleared area above Foyers, Inverness, Scotland, on Loch Ness.
Three human-shaped figures in gray coveralls emerge from some bushes and enter the craft, which then takes off. Sundberg snaps a photo, then contacts writer and monster researcher Frederick William “Ted” Holiday, who is looking for a UFO connection with the loch. However, Sundberg eventually confesses that he made up the story. (F. W. Holiday, “Exorcism and UFO Landing at Loch Ness,” Flying Saucer Review 19, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1973): 3–7, 13; Roland Watson, “Ted Holiday’s Final Days,” Loch Ness Monster, May 31, 2008; Clark III 600–601)
September 3 — G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt break into the office of Lewis J. Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. (Wikipedia, “Daniel Ellsberg”)
September 4 —8:25 a.m. Pilot Omar Arias is flying a twin-engine Canadian Aero-Commander F680 at a height of 10,000 feet above Lago de Cote, Costa Rica, taking aerial photos as part of a preliminary study for future hydroelectric projects. On board are photographer Sergio Loaiza, a specialist in aerial photography, plus geographer Juan Bravo and topographer Francisco Reyes. Loaiza was using a R-M-K 15/23 camera, specially made for cartography and using high-resolution black-and-white film, strapped on the bottom of the aircraft and taking automatic photos with an intervalometer. No one sees a thing while they are up in the air, but when Loiaza reviews his images, he discovers in frame 300 what seems to be a huge metallic disc against the dark background of the lake. The object does not appear in the previous or following frames. Jacques Vallée obtains a copy of the negative and examines it with Richard Haines and concludes that the photo shows “an unidentified, opaque, aerial object was captured on film at a maximum distance of 10,000 feet. There are no visible means of lift or propulsion and no surface markings other than darker regions that appear to be nonrandom.” (Richard F. Haines and Jacques Vallée, “Photo Analysis of an Aerial Disc over Costa Rica,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 3, no. 2 (1989): 113–131; Richard F. Haines and Jacques Vallée, “Photo Analysis of an Aerial Disc over Costa Rica: New Evidence,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 4, no. 1 (1990): 71–74; Mick West, “1971 Lake Cote / Lago de Cote UFO Aerial Photo,” Metabunk,org, May 10, 2021; Bryce Zabel, “The Best UFO Photo Ever Taken?” Medium: The Trail of the Saucers, May 10, 2021)
September 12? —7:00 p.m. Juan Rodríguez Domínguez, 82, who goes by the nickname of Juan el de la Palmareña, is in his hut on the Los Lunarejos farm just over a mile from Aznalcóllar, Seville, Spain, when he sees a bus-sized object landing near an abandoned well 1,000 feet away. More than 50 “soldiers” in blue “uniforms” emerge. They march in formation into a hollow in the field and are lost to view. Juan can now see only five or six “chiefs” standing on a slope and staring in his direction. When they shine a light at him, he ducks behind the hut. A bit later he looks out again and they shine the light once more. Frightened, he flees to Aznalcóllar to inform his employers, who do not take him seriously. He later insists that the object and the “soldiers” have left marks in the ground, but police do not bother to follow up. (Ignacio Darnaude, “An ‘Army of Humanoids’ Stated to Have Landed in Spain,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 3 (December 1974): 19–21; Ignacio Darnaude, [case clippings]; Clark III 282)
September 19 — 3:30 a.m. Arthur Honke, Alec Honke, and Gordon Campbell are driving north just outside Winnipeg, Manitoba, to do some hunting. They see a bright flash as something passes overhead and in front of the car. It now appears ahead of them on the right side of the road. Honke pulls alongside it and steps out of the car. They
can hear a low-pitched humming from the object only about 150–225 feet away. It is shaped like two saucers, one on top of the aother, and has flashing green and red lights and one white statonary light. The object hovers for 30 seconds, then starts moving slowly to the southeast. But as the men drive north again, the object begins following them at a distance for about 45 minutes. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 86–87, 152)
Late September — 7:30 p.m. Chen Chu, a member of a People’s Liberation Army unit stationed in Dingzhou, Hebei, China, is on assignment in a small valley north of the city when he and other soldiers notice a ball-like object rising slowly to the north of their quarters. It is emitting mist, and after a few seconds it spurts out a large jet of smoke and rises in the air. It hovers a few more seconds then rises to a higher level. Soon it drops down toward the ground and disappears. The unit dispatches a motor vehicle to find the object, but due to the ruggedness of the mountain roads, it turns back after more than 3 miles. (Wendelle Stevens and Paul Dong, UFOs over Modern China, UFO Photo Archives, 1983, p. 72)
Autumn — Gene and Geneva Steinberg begin publishing Caveat Emptor, a newsletter on UFOs and other anomalies, in Charleston, South Carolina. It runs until October 1974, then goes on hiatus until late 1988 when it is again edited by the Steenberg’s, this time in New Jersey. It persists until fall 1990. (Caveat Emptor 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971))
October 2 — 6:30 a.m. An ex-Air Force man is driving from Caro to Watrousville, Michigan, and spots a triangular UFO with a large white light at the bottom and many smaller red lights around it. It makes sharp turns at fantastic speed and moves quickly out of sight. (“Sighting Advisory,” UFO Investigator, December 1971, p. 3)
October 2 — 7:50 p.m. Two students, Vània, 9, and Vera, 21, are sitting down outside their residence on a busy street in the populous neighborhood of São Cristóvão in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when they see a luminous, yellow, silent object above a building across the street some 260–300 feet away. They run out into the street to alert others, and the object follows them above the roofs of houses. Another student, Nelson Calmon Schubsky, 23, and his fiancée rush into the street along with many others to see the object. Chbosky has a Leica camera and takes two photos without having time to adjust the settings. The UFO has three luminous appendages (white, yellow, and red) and is rose-colored in the center with a red outline. It pulsates rapidly, changes color, and disappears behind a nearby tower. Chbosky’s photos are blurry. (“UFO é Fotografado no Rio de Janeiro (RJ),” Portal Fenomenum, June 15, 2016; Clark III 1007–1009; Brazil 146–149)
October 5 — Early morning. While on the downwind leg of the pattern to runway 20L at the Santos Dumont Airport in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, four pilots on board a single-engine Cessna airplane watch as a “huge star” approaches them on their starboard side. The object descends to their altitude and slows rapidly to their air speed, smoothly changing its direction to fly parallel with them at an estimated distance of 98 feet. It looks like an “inverted dish” with a small rounded protrusion centered on its upper surface that seems to contain oval windows. What appears to be the head of a person is seen in one window looking at them. The UFO is seen for about 85 seconds. The object descends at high velocity toward the water’s surface, turns sharply left without any hesitation and disappears from sight in several seconds. The reporting witness is Chief Flight Instructor José Américo C. Medeiros, 23, pilot of the Cessna. (Richard F. Haines, “Airplane Pacing in Rio,” IUR 34, no. 2 (Mar. 2012): 3–6, 26–29)
November 2 — 7:00 p.m. Ronald Johnson, 16, is tending sheep on his family’s farm at Delphos, Kansas, when he hears a rumbling sound and sees (75 feet away in a small grove of trees) an object become suddenly illuminated with a mass of blue, red, and orange colors. Nine feet in diameter and 10 feet high, the UFO is slightly domed at the top and is hovering 2 feet above the ground. He and his dog stare at the object while the sheep are bellowing. After several minutes, the glow at the base becomes more intense and the object takes off at an angle, clearing by no more than 4 feet a shed attached to the sheep pen. The rumbling is replaced by a high-pitched wail. Johnson is temporarily blinded but recovers his sight a few minutes later and sees the object still there. He runs into the house to tell his parents, and they also see the light in the southern sky moving off into the distance. At the site where the UFO has been is a glowing, gray-white circle where the soil seems to be crystallized. After the parents touch the soil, it turns their fingers numb, persisting for several weeks. Johnson takes a photo of the circle. Seven separate soil analyses are conducted. Soil samples taken from the ring so not absorb water, have a higher acid content, and contain more soluble salts and calcium. They also produce less seed growth than control samples and are coated with a hydrocarbon of low molecular weight that is difficult to remove. A second substance is also found that is composed of white, crystalline fibers. (NICAP, “Delphos, Kansas, November 2, 1971”; “Landing Case in Kansas,” APRO Bulletin, Nov./Dec. 1971, pp. 1, 3; Ted Phillips, “Landing Report from Delphos,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 9 (February 1972): 4–10; Vallée, The Invisible College, Dutton, 1975, p. 35; Clark III 400–402; Kim Hansen, “UFO Casebook,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 79–82; Erol A.
Faruk, “The Delphos Landing: New Evidence from the Laboratory,” IUR 12, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1987): 21–25; Erol
A. Faruk, “The Delphos Landing: New Evidence from the Laboratory, Part Two,” IUR 12, no. 3 (May/June 1987): 19–21; Erol A. Faruk, “The Delphos Case: Soil Analysis and Appraisal of a CE-2 Report,” JUFOS 1 (1989): 41–65; Michael D. Swords, “Research Note: Delphos, Kansas, Soil Analysis,” JUFOS 3 (1991): 115; Michael D. Swords, comp., “Soil Analysis Results,” JUFOS 3 (1991): 116–133; Erol A. Faruk, “Further Comment on the Delphos Data,” JUFOS 3 (1991): 134–137; 8 (2003): 1–25; Ted Phillips and Jennie Zeidman, Delphos: A Close Encounter of the Second Kind, UFO Research Coalition, 2002; Phyllis A. Budinger, “New Analysis of Soil Samples from the Delphos UFO Case,” JUFOS 8 (2003): 1–25; Erol Faruk, “The Delphos CE2 Case: A New Appraisal of the Data,” Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, November 2021)
November 3 — The Ugandan representative to the United Nations, Grace Ibingira, asks the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to encourage astronauts who encounter UFOs to treat them respectfully. He wants to insert a clause to that effect into a UN statement on space exploration, but his colleagues are unmoved. (Clark III 1189)
December — At Tooligie Hill, South Australia, farmer Robert Habner finds a single-ring crop circle 10 feet in diameter in a wheat paddock. Another family had seen a red ball of light in the area the previous night. (Allen Tiller, “Tooligie Hill UFO Crop Circle,” Eidolon Paranormal, 2010)
December 20 — Prior to the launch of a Black Arrow rocket, an unidentified aircraft is seen by a trained meteorological observer over prohibited airspace at the RAAF Woomera Range Complex in South Australia. The RAAF explains it as reentering space debris, although it is impossible to confirm. (Swords 401)
Last week of December — After sunset. Norman W. Kasting is flying on a commercial airliner between Dallas, Texas, and Denver, Colorado. He notices something approaching the plane from behind on the west side. It passes within a few hundred yards of the aircraft and 10–20 feet below its level, flying faster than the plane. The object is metallic and shaped like an upside-down bowl about 30–40 feet in diameter and 15 feet tall. It has orange or amber lights around the edge. (“Out of the Past,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 5 (Oct./Nov. 1984): 5)
1972
1972 — Betty Hill begins making numerous trips to a rural area near Kingston, New Hampshire, where she claims to see 6–7 UFOs every night, often at close range. Saucer-seeking pilgrims join her on these vigils. CUFOS field investigator John Paul Oswald joins her occasionally and is convinced she is only seeing airplanes and, on one occasion, a streetlight. She claims no further abductions or CE3s, but many ufologists think her celebrity has clouded her judgment. (Clark III 586)
1972 — Oscar A. Uriondo and Roberto E. Banchs found the Centro de Estudios de Fénomenos Aéreos Inusuales in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 55)
1972 — The Centro de Estudos Astronomicos e de Fenómenos Insolitos is founded in Porto, Portugal. It begins publishing a monthly journal, Insolito, in 1975. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 56)
1972 — Alberto Romero founds Grupo de Pesquisas Aérospaciais Zenith in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. It begins publishing
Boletim G-PAZ annually. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, pp. 136–137)
1972 — Luis do Rosário Real founds the Sociedade Pelotense de Investigacão e Pesquiso de Discos Voadores in Pelotas, Rio Grande de Sul, Brazil. It publishes a Boletim SPIPDV. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 296)
1972 — Kilbjørn Stenødegård founds the Norsk UFO Center in Trondheim, Norway. It publishes UFO Forum from 1973 to 1978. The Norsk UFO Center in Bergen publishes Rapportnytt from 1974 to 1981. (UFO Forum, no. 1 (1973); Rapportnytt, no. 1 (1974))
January — Air Commodore Anthony Norman Davis becomes the first head of the British UFO desk to appear on TV to explain how the ministry investigates sightings. The program is part of the BBC’s Man Alive series and includes the “man from the ministry” engaging in debate with a panel of experts and taking questions from the audience. The program is filmed in Banbury, England, town hall following a wave of UFO sightings in Oxfordshire. Davis says all reports received by the Ministry of Defence are “examined with an open mind and without prejudice” but denies that the MoD possesses any evidence that can prove the existence of extraterrestrial visitors. (UFOFiles2, pp. 84–85)
January — Night. High school senior Donna Wilkins is driving in a rural area near Bartelso, Illinois, with a boyfriend when they see lights traveling back and forth in an odd pattern in the distance. Suddenly a luminous triangular object appears right next to them and they speed up. It maintains the same position above their car even though
they accelerate to 85 mph. The underside seems to be composed of metal beams. It disappears beyond a tree line as they enter town, (“They Still Keep Seeing UFOs in Carlyle,” East St. Louis (Ill.) Metro-East Journal, May 31, 1972, via UFO Newsclipping Service, no. 38 (June 1972): 5)
Early February — 7:00 p.m. Sarajevo International Airport in Bosnia picks up an unidentified radar target traveling at about 37 mph. It appears visually as a triangular object. When a Jat Airways Convair approaches the target, it accelerates and vanishes. (Milos Krmelj, “Report from Ljubljana, Slovenia,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 13 (February 1973): 14)
March — Victor Marchetti, who has worked as an analyst for the CIA from 1955 to 1969, announces his plans to write a nonfiction book about the agency and completes a draft of an article for Esquire which, according to a later CIA account, includes “names of agents, relations with named governments, and identifying details of ongoing operations.” The CIA receives a copy of the article and decides to seek an injunction against its publication. The basis for seeking an injunction against Marchetti is the secrecy agreement which he signed when beginning employment at CIA. The agency presents the agreement and the parts of the draft article it considers in violation of the agreement, to Judge Albert Vickers Bryan Jr. of the US District Court for Eastern Virginia, who grants a temporary restraining order in April. The case proceeds to trial, at which Bryan finds for the CIA and issues a permanent injunction requiring Marchetti to submit his writings to CIA for review prior to publication. Marchetti appeals the injunction to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upholds Bryan’s restraint but limits it
to classified material. The appeals court also finds that Marchetti is entitled to timely review of materials he submits to the CIA. Marchetti appeals again to the US Supreme Court, but SCOTUS rejects Marchetti’s appeal in December. Marchetti continues work on his book with a coauthor, John D. Marks, and signs a book contract with publisher Alfred A. Knopf. In August 1973, they submit their manuscript to the CIA. After reviewing the manuscript, the agency responds with a list of 339 passages that it claims are classified information and demands their deletion. Marchetti and Marks reject the demand and indicate they will go to court to print the manuscript as written. The CIA then withdraws its objections to 171 of the items but stands firm on the remaining 168. The trial is held again before Judge Bryan. This time, however, he rejects all but 26 of the deletions requested by the CIA on the grounds that the information in them is not properly or provably classified. The CIA appeals Bryan’s ruling, and ultimately the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds all 168 of the deletions. The book is published by Knopf in 1974 as The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. It is printed with blanks for deleted passages and boldface type for the 171 deletions that CIA originally requested and later withdrew. It is the first book the federal government of the United States ever goes to court to censor before its publication. (Wikipedia, “Victor Marchetti”)
March 8 — President Nixon legitimizes the use of special access controls and the “special access program” is finally made official. These are security protocols that provide highly classified information with safeguards and access restrictions that exceed those for regular (collateral) classified information. SAPs can range from black projects to routine but especially sensitive operations, such as COMSEC maintenance or Presidential transportation support. In addition to collateral controls, an SAP may impose more stringent investigative or adjudicative requirements, specialized nondisclosure agreements, special terminology or markings, exclusion from standard contract investigations (carve-outs), and centralized billet systems. (Wikipedia, “Special access program”)
March 12 — The tabloid newspaper The National Enquirer announces a $50,000 reward to “the first person who can prove that an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) came from outer space and is not a natural phenomenon.” It has appointed five experts to a blue-ribbon panel that will evaluate all the entries: J. Allen Hynek, R. Leo Sprinkle, Frank B. Salisbury, James A. Harder, and Robert F. Creegan. The deadline for evidence is January 1, 1973. On May 23, 1973, the panel announces that none of the entries examined warranted the full prize, but it has decided to award $5,000 to the Johnson family of Delphos, Kansas, for submitting the 1971 landing trace evidence. The panel awards seven other UFO cases with a portion of the reward, the last going to Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson in 1980. (Isaac Koi, “Concensus Lists: National Enquirer Panel,” UFOs and Rationality, April 1, 2008; Curt Collins, “The Blue Ribbon UFO Panel of the National Enquirer,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, September 13, 2019)
March 19 — 10:00 p.m. A boy named Mario goes out onto his patio at Santa Maria Acuexcomac, Puebla, Mexico, to look for a broom when he sees a bluish light, which gets larger as if it is approaching the ground. He sees that the thing is descending into a vacant lot and, thinking it is a hot air balloon, runs towards it. When he reaches the lot, he sees the thing is a kind of luminous sphere giving off a blue light like that of a welding torch. Mario now becomes frightened and runs to call his mother. As he goes in the house, two neighbors, Zacarian Mendoza and Manuela Carlotta de Mendoza, also see the object. When Mario comes out again accompanied by his mother Josefina, the object, which has been on the ground for 7 minutes, begins to rise up, producing a hum and casting off more blue
sparks. Gradually the light and sound are lost in the sky. The next day, Mario goes to the site and finds four deep tracks, about 8 inches deep, separated exactly from each other in the form of a square of 8.2 feet. At an equidistant point in the center of the tracks there is a black burnt mark on the ground. (Ted Phillips, “Landing Traces: Physical Evidence for the UFO,” in MUFON Symposium 1973, Midwest UFO Network, 1973, p. 26)
April 1 — 11:00 p.m. Two students are driving between Cacuso and Lucala, Angola, when suddenly their vehicle’s engine and lights fail. They check the batteries and fuses, which are all normal. Then they see two bright lights. Shortly afterward, they hear a whistling noise coming from an object about 130 feet away. It is about 130 feet across, partly lit up, and has three legs hanging from it. It rise to a height of 40 feet, where it hovers briefly, retracts its legs, whistles again, and turns on edge as it moves away. As soon as it leaves, the vehicle’s lights come back on and the engine returns to normal. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 19)
April 14 — Evening. At least four adults in various parts of Waterbury, Connecticut, spot a triangular-shaped UFO moving silently. The witnesses estimated its width at about 130–195 feet. (“Sighting Advisory,” UFO Investigator, December 1972, p. 4)
April 24 — Day. A man in Willow Point, British Columbia, on the Inside Passage takes a photo of a disc-shaped object spinning “like a top” and hovering in the sky above Quadra Island. The object has a dull sheen like dirty chrome and lights flashing around its rim. The UFO wobbles, tilts, and shudders, then shoots straight upward about 1,000 feet. It then takes off to the north on a zigzag course. The photo is blurry, but shows a disc. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 72–73, 152)
May 26 — President Richard Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty at the 1972 Moscow Summit. Under the terms of the treaty, each party is limited to two ABM complexes, each of which is to be limited to 100 anti-ballistic missiles. Ratified by the US Senate on August 3, the treaty remains in force until June 2002 when the US withdraws. (Wikipedia, “Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty”)
Summer — Early morning. The Musson, a Russian scientific ship, is in the North Atlantic roughly 300 miles from Bermuda. The electrician, radio operator, and one of the navigators see an elliptical object moving slowly through the cloudless sky at high altitude from north to south. It changes shape to a wheel and then to an elongated, silvery-white ellipse, then it disappears from view. (Stonehill and Mantle, Russia’s USO Secrets, Flying Disk, 2020, p. 60)
June — Edward Harris begins publishing Cosmology Newslink, a monthly newsletter on UFO and contactee topics, in Dunmow, Essex, England. It persists until the Summer 1994 issue. (Cosmology Newslink, no. 1 (June 1972))
June 6 — New York City artist and psychic Ingo Swann visits the Stanford Research Institute [now SRI International] in Menlo Park, California, to begin remote viewing experiments. He is brought by Harold E. Puthoff and other scientists to a building where, several floors below, is a heavily shielded magnetometer whose sole function is to measure quarks. One scientist asks him to “perturb” the device. As Swann sits there trying to visualize the magnetometer, a scientist monitoring it tells the group that the needle is moving wildly and malfunctioning. The scene is repeated several more times, each time when Swann is imagining the device. Puthoff is intrigued. He writes up his findings and a few weeks later he is visited by two CIA intelligence analysts who want Puthoff and SRI to investigate remote viewing for espionage purposes. (Wikipedia, “Ingo Swann”; Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies, Dell, 1997; Annie Jacobsen, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis, Little, Brown, 2017, pp. 130–136; Edwin C. May and Sonali Bhatt Marwaha, eds., The Star Gate Archives, Volumes 1–4, Reports of the United States Government Sponsored Psi Program, 1972–1995, McFarland, 4 vols., 2018–2019)
June 17 — 2:30 a.m. The White House Plumbers are arrested in the process of burglarizing and planting surveillance bugs in the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate Building Complex in Washington, D.C. (Wikipedia, “Watergate scandal”)
June 22 — 2:00 a.m. Javier Bosque, a seminarist of the order of St. Joseph Calasanz, is reading in bed at his room at the Colegio Escolapios in Logroño, La Rioja, Spain, when he notices a bright light outside through the half-closed shutters of his window. To his surprise, the window begins opening by itself and a 2-foot-long, football-shaped, metallic, luminous object enters his room and approaches the foot of his bed. His radio begins to emit a loud, continuous sound. He reaches over and turns on a cassette tape recorder. The object descends from about 6 feet above the floor to 15 inches above it. A beam of solid light extends from the object, touching the radio twice, retracts, then touches the cassette recorder. Bosque grabs the recorder and holds the microphone in his lap. The object ascends to about 6 feet above the floor and moves out the window and up. The radio sound weakens. The
8-minute sound recording is analyzed by laboratories in Spain, Brazil, France, and the US. It contains some pure tones at first, followed by modulations in amplitude. Robert H. Coddington finds, after an analysis of the tape, that it most likely is a recording of the chance reception of an ordinary test transmission from a terrestrial broadcast station and does not match Bosque’s narrative. (Albert Adell and Pere Redón, “UFO Enters and Inspects a Room,” Flying Saucer Review 19, no. 2 (March/April 1973): 10–13, iii; “Bosque Spanish UFO Tapes Deemed Non-Startling,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 1, no. 8 (December 1980): 4; Willy Smith, “A Bizarre Event at Logroño: A Taped UFO Sound,” IUR 7, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1982): 8–10; “Logroño (Spain) Tape Recording Explained,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 4, no. 2 (April/May 1983): 5–7; Robert H. Coddington, “Further Analysis of the Logroño Tape,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 4, no. 2 (April/May 1983): 7–10; Michael D. Swords, “A Trick of the Light,” IUR 31, no. 2 (June 2007): 10)
June 26 — 8:00 a.m. Bennie Smit, the new owner of Braeside Farm 9 miles from Fort Beaufort, Eastern Cape, South Africa, is alerted to a “fiery red ball hovering at tree-top level” by his hired hand Boer de Klerk. Its color changes to bright green and then to whitish yellow, with flames shooting out. Smit dashes home, grabs a rifle, and calls the police. He shoots at the object, but the bullets have little effect. At 10:30 a.m., police sergeant Piet C. Kitching and warrant officer P. R. van Rensburg arrive at the spot where the UFO is still hovering. As the object moves away, Smit fires at it an eighth time; this time he hears a thud, and the object moves up and down and stops changing colors. Smit and Kitchin fire at it some more, after which it disappears and reappears about 60 feet away looking gunmetal gray in color and somewhat oval-shaped. After they fire two final shots, the object moves away through the trees around noon. The next day, van Rensburg leads a team of police officers to the site, looking for evidence. They find nine circular imprints of its supposed landing gear found in damp clay soil. On June 28, Brig.
A. Vosloo, divisional commander of police for the Eastern Cape, takes soil samples and plaster casts of the imprints. (Wikipedia, “UFO Sightings in South Africa”; Charles Bowen, “A Hot Reception at Fort Beaufort,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 11 (August 1972): 1–7; Philipp Human, “Fort Beaufort Tailpiece,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 11 (August 1972): 7; Clark III 510–511)
June 29 — 10:00 p.m. A dark, wedge-shaped UFO passes directly over several witnesses at 200–500 feet altitude in Buffalo, South Dakota, at a slow speed. About 100 feet long, it has two brilliant white lights at the front and two orange-white lights in the rear. It moves with the blunt edge forward and hovers intermittently for 40 minutes. It emits a sound like rushing air. (Glenn McWane and David Graham, The New UFO Sightings, Warner, 1974; Marler 85)
July — J. Allen Hynek publishes The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, in which he charges the Air Force with indifference and incompetence in its UFO investigations. He also critiques the Condon report and details well- documented reports of six types of UFOs: nocturnal lights, daylight discs, radar/visual observations, and close encounters of the first, second, and third kind. It is an “articulate challenge to his colleagues to tolerate the study of something they cannot understand,” according to a reviewer in Science. (J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974; Clark III 620)
July 3 — 9:15 p.m. Maureen Puddy, 27, sees a disc-shaped object on the Mooraduc Road near Frankston, Victoria, Australia. The object is a huge blue disc that hovers above her car. (Keith Basterfield, “Present at the Abduction,” IUR 17, no. 3 (May/June 1992): 13–14, 23)
July 4 — 10:10 p.m. Girl guide leader Claudine Dieupart alerts 43 other girl guides and Belgian missionary Rev. Fr.
Quertemont, who are sitting around a campfire at Lamonriville, Malmédy, Belgium, to a triangle of white lights moving overhead. They watch the lights for 5 minutes. At 10:30 p.m., several witnesses at a bus stop in Liège view a triangle of bright globes of light moving slowly from west to east. They pass through a cloud bank, illuminating it. About the same time, other witnesses in the western suburbs see a similar display. At 10:31 p.m., a factory worker in Flawinne watches a triangle of three bright lights ascending vertically. At 10:40 p.m., a couple in Spy observe a triangular display of lights surrounded by bluish sparks. At 10:45 p.m. a farmer in Ellezelles notices three bluish beams of light shining down from a luminous cloud. (Marler 85–86)
July 4 (or July 4, 1973) — 11:15 p.m. Capt. Erling Bakke and his wife see a peculiar vessel on the water east of Sundsøya, Trøndelag, Norway. It is black, about 25 feet long, 6 feet high, and traveling about 60 mph. It rises up at a 45° angle, then disappears. (J. O. Sundberg, “Stor Expedition till Nansenfjorden,” UFO Information, 1975, no. 3, pp. 9–10; Ole Jonny Brænne, “Observations of Unidentified Submarine Objects in Norway,” IUR 20, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1995): 13)
July 5 — 12:10 p.m. A witness in Belgium is parking his car when he notices a dozen whitish objects flying about randomly at a low altitude. A neighbor describes them as vaguely shaped, fleecy, and rotating slowly. They seem to be moving around a dark triangular object. (Marler 87)
July 19 — 10:35 p.m. Herbert and Mady Mathar and their two children are walking in Faymonville, Belgium, when they see a red-orange point of light slowly moving toward them. Closer, they see that it is hat-shaped. Mathar runs inside to get a camera and takes two photos before the object disappears. Ballester Olmos and van Utrecht conclude that the photos show the Moon setting in the southwest. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Wim van Utrecht, Belgium in UFO Photographs, Volume 1 (1950–1988), FOTOCAT Report no. 7, 2017, pp. 99–113)
July 25 — 9:15 p.m. Maureen Puddy sees the same object she had seen on July 3 at almost the same spot. This time it seems to drain power from the car, causing it to stop, the car steering itself off the road. A voice in her head tells her, “All your tests will be negative. Tell media, do not panic. We mean no harm.” Several months later, she is “mentally” abducted into a room where she sees an entity. This event occurs while two other people are present with her, but they only report that Puddy lapses into unconsciousness. On a later occasion, the entity appears as she is driving the car. (Judith M. Magee, “The Close Encounter of Maureen Puddy,” Australian Annual Flying Saucer Review, 1983, pp. 4–9; Judith M. Magee, “The Close Encounter of Maureen Puddy,” Victorian UFO Research Society, 1996; Keith Basterfield, “Present at the Abduction,” IUR 17, no. 3 (May/June 1992): 13–14,
23; Mark Cashman, “Behavioral Classification System for UFO Occupants,” IUR 24, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 20) July 27 — The Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment holds hearings on
Senate Resolution 281, proposing an international treaty to ban weather modification as a weapon of war. Dartmouth environmental scientist Gordon J. F. MacDonald opposes the bill, saying that research needs to be unfettered, but he mentions weapons that might use electrical waves, created by the differential between the ionosphere and the surface of the earth, “that would be tuned to the brain waves…. About ten cycles per second…. You can produce changes in behavioral patterns or in responses.” (Prohibiting Military Weather Modification, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 92nd Cong., 2nd Sess., on S. Res. 281, pp. 72–76)
August — Ingo Swann returns to the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California, as do the two CIA intelligence analysts. With Swann in a Faraday cage, the SRI team conducts a series of what’s-in-the-box tests in which office supplies hidden inside a box are presented to Swann, who is asked to identify the objects inside. During a lunch break one of the CIA agents walks outside and collects a small brown moth, capturing it alive, and sealing it inside a box. When Swann looks at the box, he sees “something small, brown, and irregular, sort of like a leaf…. Except that it seems very much alive, like it’s even moving.” (Annie Jacobsen, Phenomena, Little, Brown, 2017, p. 136)
August — The Archives for UFO Research (Arbetsgruppen för Ufologi) is founded in Södertälje, Sweden, by Håkan Blomqvist, Kjell Jonsson, and Anders Liljegren. Its specialized research library for UFO literature is established in 1974, and in 1979 AFU moves to Norrköping. It publishes Ufologen from 1972 to 1974 and the AFU Newsletter from March 1975 to October 2008. In April 2013 it changes its name to the Archives for the Unexplained. Its holdings in 2020 include a reference library of more than 20,000 titles, more than 50,000 magazine issues, some 500,000 clippings, and more than 50,000 European UFO cases. (Wikipedia, “Archives for UFO Research”; Archives for the Unexplained, “About AFU”; Ufologen, no 1 (July 1972); AFU Newsletter, no. 1 (March/April 1975); AFU Annual Report, 2014)
August 9 — 2:30 a.m. A married couple, both college professors, are camping out in a garden in the backyard of some friends’ home just off the road to Nîmes at Saint-Jean-du-Gard, Gard, France. The woman is walking outside and sees a shiny white ball the size of a small car sitting in a nearby parking lot. She hears footsteps behind her and sees a dark shape about 4 feet tall in the shape of a parallelepiped topped by an oval where a head would be. It has 2 white circles for eyes, but no visible arms or legs. It turns toward her and she feels an extraordinary fear. After a few seconds, she runs back inside the tent. (Patrick Gross, “Saint-Jean-du-Gard, France, August 9, 1972”)
August 10 — 2:29 p.m. An earth-grazing meteor passes 35 miles above the Earth’s surface, entering the atmosphere above Utah at 9.3 miles/second and passing northward, leaving the atmosphere over Alberta. It is seen by many people and recorded on film and by space-borne sensors. An eyewitness to the event, located in Missoula, Montana, sees the object pass directly overhead and hears a double sonic boom. The smoke trail lingers in the atmosphere for several minutes. (Wikipedia, “1972 Great Daylight Fireball”; “A Meteor That Missed Mountain States May Have Had Hiroshima Bomb Force,” New York Times, July 4, 1974, p. 8)
August 12 — 2:00 a.m.–5:00 a.m. About 30 young members of the Taizé Community in Taizé, Saône-et-Loire, France, are having a discussion in a rustic theatre circle to the northwest of the community buildings. Renata Faa is the first to see a star-like object come out of the sky in the west. It lands on the ground on a ridge facing them.
Eventually, after more yellow lights appear on the object, they see it as cigar-shaped and about 100 feet long. Five other white lights emit luminous beams that extend progressively across the ground. Two cupolas are visible on its left side. Three small white discs appear on the right side, apparently emerging from the main object, and
perform complex maneuvers. Some of the witnesses feel a tingling in their fingertips and knees. Faa and three of the other witnesses decide to walk through the fields and approach the object. Around 3:00 a.m., a multitude of red particles appear in the air around the approaching witnesses and in the ground around them. The lights on the object constantly change their patterns of display and movement. The four witnesses see a dark mass like a haystack on their left about 30 feet away. A small red light is moving haphazardly around it. When one of them shines a flashlight on the haystack, the beam travels horizontally for a bit then is directed perpendicularly upward. Finally, toward 5:00 a.m., the large object rises up and moves off to the south, following the terrain. (J. Tyrode, “Taizé: A Case Right out of the Ordinary,” Flying Saucer Review 19, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1973): 16–21; F. Lagarde, “A Few Words about Taizé,” Flying Saucer Review 19, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1973): 22)
August–October — Numerous UFO sightings are reported throughout rural areas of Puerto Rico, as well as in San Juan and Ponce. People travel to the small town of Adjuntas, where the objects are seen frequently. One Friday night, the mayor of Adjuntas is traveling with a group of people in three cars along a lonely stretch of road in Barrio Garzas when he sees three bright discs moving through the sky. Their light changes in color and intensity.
Sightings also center on the town of Utuado, where the Air National Guard has scrambled F-104s to chase the objects. A teacher at Utuado High School is driving back from town with his brother when they see a bright light off in the bush 300 feet from the road. They get out of the car and approach the light, which is sitting in a clearing. It is a flattened disc about the size of a small house and has a set of small, dark rectangles evenly spaced around its edge. It is brilliantly lit and its colors are constantly changing. They watch the object for a few minutes until it vanishes like “someone turning off a light.” (Salvador Freixedo, “UFOs over the Caribbean,” Flying Saucer Review Case Histories, no. 14 (April 1973): 9–10; Henry Cordova, “Encounter in Puerto Rico,” IUR 25, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 20–21)
Early September — Just after midnight. Vasile Cărăbuş, a night watchman at an agricultural cooperative in Valea Plopului, Romania, sees a yellow star with a trail crossing the sky. It then hovers and appears to land in an orchard on the Odaia hill about 1 mile away. A couple days later, Cărăbuş and other locals visit the orchard and find a circular area 15 feet in diameter where all the stems are broken off about 3 feet from the ground. In the center of the circle is a mound of earth about 2 feet in diameter and 15 inches high. In the middle of this is a round hole at least 6 feet deep, around which are three identical impresions 4.5 feet apart. Hundreds of curious onlookers visit the site, among them engineer Justin Capră, who detects a substantial increase in gamma radiation in the center of the circle. Ufologist Călin Turcu notes that the vegetation on the mound of earth is completely absent for the next 4 years and frail after that. (Hobana and Weverbergh 276–279; Romania 34–35)
September — 8:00 p.m. While commuting home by train from nearby Debrecen, Hungary, workers see about 7 luminous, orange-colored ellipses floating high above Nyírábrány. The phenomena are still there as they are walking home from the train station. The lights are as bright as the full moon and remain in position in a formation of three rows. The spectacle lasts for 30 minutes. The display is seen for the next four evenings in a row in the same part of the sky west of the village. On the last night, one of the lights disappears but returns to the same position in the formation. (Karoli Hargitai, “The UFO Phenomenon in Hungary,” IUR 14, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1989): 13)
September 10 — 12:45 p.m. Greengrocer Allan James is checking a load on his truck prior to descending from the top of a hill west of Georges Creek, New South Wales. He notices a huge, cigar-shaped object with smaller objects emerging from each end. They group into an arrowhead formation before moving southeast. The large object then climbs at a high rate of speed and disappears. The duration is about 10 minutes. (Eileen Buckle, “Is Kempsey a UFO ‘Window’?” Flying Saucer Review 21, no. 6 (April 1975): 3–4; Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects: A Further Look,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 26)
September 14 — 4:20 a.m. An unidentified target is detected on radar at the Palm Beach (Florida) International Airport by FAA air traffic controller C. J. Fox. Fox describes the contact as a “good clear target.” The object is tracked for over an hour when at approximately 6:00 a.m., NORAD is alerted. Two F-106 jet fighters are dispatched from Homestead AFB [now Homestead Air Reserve Base] in Miami–Dade County to locate and identify the object.
The UFO disappears from radar scopes shortly before the jets arrive. At the airport, FAA watch supervisor George Morales views the object through binoculars and describes it as silver-white in color and cigar-shaped. Officials at Miami International Airport, which also tracks the strange object, report no aircraft are known to be in the area where the UFO was spotted. (NICAP, “Ground/Visual; Two 106’s Scrambled”)
September 14 — 4:00 p.m. David Owen is sitting on his patio in Bateau Bay, New South Wales, when he notices a distinct “red arrowhead” moving from southwest to northwest in a slow climb. After watching it for several minutes, he takes a color photo with his Instamatic, which shows a disc reflecting light. (“Australian Arrowhead Photograph Reveals Unseen Possible UFO,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 2, no. 2 (February 1981): 1–2)
September 14 — 8:00 p.m. A married couple in Houston, Missouri, watches an unusual bright object after their portable TV is disturbed by interference. It is larger than a star and persists for several minutes before it disappears in a burst of speed. At 3:00 a.m. they are awakened by their dogs barking at something in a nearby woods. They see a bright flash of light at ground level. The next morning, they find an evergreen tree about 300 feet from the house that is yellow on one side and normal-looking on the other. Next to it is a 20 feet x 14 feet oval area of depressed grass. In the center are three small imprints, each sowing an extension or “toe.” The imprints are about 2.5 inches long; one is 1.5 inches deep. A blackened area in the shape of a triangle is in the center of the imprints. (Ted Phillips, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings, CUFOS, 1976, p. 86)
September 20 — 12:45 a.m. A man is driving near Rougemont, Quebec, when he sees a Saturn-shaped object about 100 feet in diameter moving with a pendulum motion toward Mont Rougemont. It climbs to the top of the hill and settles in for 4 minutes. He watches it increasingly brighten from a row of windows at the upper dome and glow pink on the bottom side. He flashes his lights at it, and it rises and dives at his car, passing just 30 feet above it. The engine stalls, the radio goes off, and the headlights dim. A wave of heat passes over him, then the UFO races away. ((Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 144–146; Michael D. Swords, “Messing Around with the Force,” IUR 31, no. 4 (Mar. 2008): 29)
September 25 — 1:00–1:30 a.m. Near Anderstorp, Sweden, a witness is driving his Opel at 25 mph when the car radio stops working. A couple minutes later, a very bright blue-white light appears behind the car, enveloping the entire vehicle in light at the same time as all electrical equipment in the car ceases to work. The headlights go out and the engine and wipers stop. The light persists for 5 minutes, and the temperature inside the car rises. Suddenly the light is gone, and the electrical system works again. The car starts at the same time as the witness smells a strong odor of ammonia or ether. The witness drives home quickly, terrified. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 19)
September 27 — 5:40 a.m. Teodoro Merlo, maintenance man for the Ika-Renault factory in Santa Isabel, Córdoba, Argentina, is making early rounds at the plant. He enters a previously locked washroom and sees a man sitting on one of the basins who is nearly 8 feet tall and wearing a close-fitting, dark-blue, one-piece garment tight at the wrists. It has a bald head with high, pointed ears, and very white skin. As Merlo approaches, the light by the janitor goes out and a light near the entity goes on spontaneously. Merlo hears a noise like “a metal object striking glass,” and the entity disappears. (Oscar A. Galíndez, “The Anthropomorphic Phenomena at Santa Isabel, Part 3,” Flying Saucer Review 21, no. 5 (February 1976): 14–16; Oscar A. Galíndez, “Argentina: The Anthropomorphic Phenomena of Santa Isabel,” Inexplicata, September 22, 2011; Patrick Gross, URECAT, February 23, 2007)
October — Harry Belil begins publishing Beyond Reality, a newsstand magazine devoted to parapsychology and (sometimes) UFOs, in New York City. It continues through November 1980 and publishes several special UFO issues. (Beyond Reality, no. 1 (October 1972))
October 1 — The CIA awards the Stanford Research Institute [now SRI International] in Menlo Park, California, a contract for $49,909 for an eight-month research project on remote viewing. It is given the name Biofield Measurements Program. (Annie Jacobsen, Phenomena, Little, Brown, 2017, pp. 136–137)
October 2 — A letter from the Canadian Department of National Defence states that UFO reports received by the Canadian military are passed on to the National Research Council to determine whether a scientific investigation is warranted. It notes that “certain reports suggest that they exhibit a unique scientific or advance technology that could possibly contribute to scientific or technical research.” (Good Above, pp. 193, 467)
October 8 — 12:00 midnight. Security guard John Byrne is patrolling Cairo Mill, an old factory at Waterhead, Lancashire, England, that has been converted to an electronics system testing facility for jet aircraft. Near the bicycle shed he hears a deep humming noise like a generator inside a closed room. The sound bores into his head. He looks up and sees a huge object parked at a height of 300 feet adjacent to the tower end of the mill. It resembles a glowing bell shape turned on end with the flat base vertical to the sheer wall of the tower. The object is giving off a blue, fluorescent glow that falls like a curtain of solid light. Byrne watches for several minutes until the object turns sharply on edge and moves straight up into the sky until it is only a blob of light. (Jenny Randles, “Beam Me Up,” Fortean Times 381 (July 2019): 30)
October 9 — 7:30 p.m. Ralph and Grace Clapp are driving along Middle Country Road near Selden, New York, when they see a bright white light. It is joined by a red and a green light. They continue driving, and around 7:55 p.m. at the top of a hill west of Coram, the white light hovers into view above the treetops to heir left. Grace sees rectangular windows and no wings on a triangular object that is at least 100 feet across and moving slowly and continuously through the sky. (Ted Bloecher and Sylvia Meagher, “The Seldon UFO,” IUR 32, no. 2 (December 2008): 11–14)
October 23 — 6:30 p.m. Capt. Daryle Brown and two copilots are flying a Wardair airliner at 22,000 feet some 180 miles northwest of Churchill, Manitoba, when they see a bright streak of light approaching from the west. As it comes closer, it appears to be a bullet-shaped object larger than a Boeing 727 and adorned with a cluster of multicolored pulsating lights. Brown notifies the 15 passengers aboard and turns out the interior lights so they can see the object better. Almost a dozen portholes are visible, while red and yellow lights are flashing on the top. At the rear of the object is a fog-like cloud and orange sparks. It takes up a position about 2,500 feet in front of the jet and on the same flight path. The object shines a beam of light at the airplane, bathing it in light that is bright enough to read to, and stops in mid-air directly in front of the jet. Before Brown can take evasive action, it moves off to the right. A dense fog engulfs the object as it disappears in the distance. (Jeff Holt, “Rencontre avec un UFO dans le Grand Nord Canadien,” UFO-Quebec, no. 9 (1977): 13–14; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 167–169)
October 28 — 10:15 p.m. Cpl. Juan Fuentes Figueroa and four other Uruguayan Navy seamen are stationed at the lighthouse on Isla de Lobos, off Punta del Este, Uruguay. Fuentes goes to inspect the electrical generators and discovers some odd lights, which prompts him to retrieve a handgun from his room. When he returns, he notices an object in the shape of an inverted bowl with several white, yellow, and violet lights on top of a 20-foot terrace. An entity is next to the object and two others (one much taller) are descending from the UFO. They all notice Fuentes and face him from about 89 feet away. He raises his gun to shoot but feels strangely paralyzed and confused. The beings reenter the UFO, which moves straight up emitting a humming noise. When it reaches a height of 150 feet, it tilts, belches a bright fireball, and silently disappears at tremendous speed to the southeast. (Willy Smith, “Alien Encounter at Isla de Lobos, Uruguay, 10-28-1972,” UFO Casebook; Willy Smith, “UFOs in Latin America,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 106–109)
November 7 — Contactee Gabriel Green runs for US President as a candidate of the Universal Party, with Daniel Fry as his running mate, on the ballot in Iowa. The party offers solutions recommended by extraterrestrials for national and international problems. He gets less than 200 votes and subsequently retires from public life. (S. D. Tucker, False Economies: The Strangest, Least Successful, and Most Audacious Financial Follies, Plans, and Crazes of All Times, Amberly, 2018, chapter 3, excerpted in “Taxing Credulity,” Fortean Times 367 (June 2018): 52–55)
November 10 — 11:00 p.m. A 19-year-old is riding his Yamaha 250cc Twin motorcycle near Heathfield, East Sussex, England, when suddenly the headlights dim and go out and the engine fails, emitting an “electrical arcing” odor. He looks up and sees a white blob about 100 feet away hovering above some trees. It is about 60 feet high, 30–40 feet in diameter, and glowing white but fuzzy in appearance. After a few seconds it zooms away at about 100 mph in a straight line and is lost to sight. The motorcycle starts by itself. (Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 55)
November 12 — 8:00 p.m. Three soldiers (Petrus Nel, Fanie Rosseau, and Gerrie Buitendag) are guarding a petrol dump at Rosmead, East Cape, South Africa, when they see a red light moving in circles above the tennis court adjacent to the primary school. At nearby Middelburg police station, Sgt. John Goosen and Constable Koos Brazelle are looking towards Rosmead with binoculars and see an odd light above the town. School Principal Harold Truter sees the light moving vertically up from his home near the tennis court. The court is churned up with huge chunks of surface tar dug up, so he calls the Middelburg police about it. Goosen and Brazelle respond. There are 5 holes in the court, the largest 10 feet in diameter. Two spike holes are also found. The only entrances to the court are still locked up and there are no vehicle tracks inside or outside. A eucalyptus tree at the end of the court has suddenly begun to die and appears scorched. District Police Commandant Col. B. J. van Heerden unsuccessfully tries to duplicate the damage with shovels. (Jenny Randles, UFO Conspiracy, Cassell, 1987, pp. 100–101)
November 13 — Two witnesses watch an unknown aircraft maneuver along Sognefjord, Vestland, Norway. Thirty Norwegian Navy vessels, plus NATO forces, are already investigating a mystery submarine reported in the fjord. The same night, four other witnesses observe a “bright object” on the water. (Ole Jonny Brænne, “Observations of Unidentified Submarine Objects in Norway,” IUR 20, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1995): 13)
November 17 — 8:50 p.m. Two RCMP officers see an object 12 feet in length heading northwest near McIvers on the Bay of Islands, Newfoundland. It disappears in the water with a loud splash. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 102)
November 20 — 1:00 p.m. An unidentified submerged object is seen near Kyrkjebø, on Sognefjord, Norway, as it heads away from Mårenlandet toward the fjord’s southern end. Around 1:15 p.m., it is seen by five police officers on Kvamsøy. Norwegian Navy frigates drop mines on the object. (Ole Jonny Brænne, “Observations of Unidentified Submarine Objects in Norway,” IUR 20, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1995): 13)
November 20 — CIA chief Richard Helms comes to Camp David to an interview with Nixon about what he thinks is a “budgetary matter.” Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, also attends. Helms is informed by Nixon that his
services in the new administration will not be required. On Helms’s dismissal William Colby later comments that “Dick Helms paid the price for that ‘No’ [to the White House over Watergate],” distancing the CIA from the scandal. Helms begins a CIA clean-up, closing down Operation Often and other sensitive programs. (Wikipedia, “Richard Helms”)
November 21 — Night. Four witnesses see four rockets shooting up from the water at Hermansverk, Vestland, Norway. They are silent and resemble small red balls of light. They are also seen the following day, and the Norwegian Navy fires an antisubmarine missile at the intruders. (Ole Jonny Brænne, “Observations of Unidentified Submarine Objects in Norway,” IUR 20, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1995): 13)
November 28 — 2:00 p.m. A witness at Glenelg, Adelaide, South Australia, sees lengths of glistening material wrapped around a signpost and on looking up sees that more is falling from the sky. He collects a small sample of the thickest section, but the strands dissolve in his fingers. (Keith Basterfield, “Angel Hair: An Australian Perspective,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 7)
November 30 — 11:15 p.m. A motor mechanic named Maxwell is out testing his vehicle in Murray Bridge, South Australia, when the engine dies and lights go out as he is coming over a rise in the road. The lights come back on but vary in intensity several times. He decides to stop the car. To his left he sees a “diamond shape with the top cut off” noiselessly sitting on the ground 148 feet away in a paddock. His car radio starts making a noise like a “computer on TV,” a constant rhythm. He tries the ignition key but nothing happens, not even the oil light comes on. He tries the wipers and the electric air horn but they do not work either. He locks all the doors and winds up the windows and just sits there for the next 45 minutes. After this time the object leaves, and he finds he can restart the car. An inspection of the vehicle the next day reveals no cause for the electrical problems. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 19–20)
December — Night. Romanian Air Force pilot and writer Lt. Col. Doru Davidovici is at an unnamed military base in Romania when he sees an oval UFO flying parallel to the ridge of a roof. It traverses 50°–60° of horizon in 45–50 seconds and disappears among some trees. It is egg-shaped, a white-violet color as if wrapped in a cloud of bright light, and leaves a long trail behind, but it changes to red-orange before disappearing. Radar at the base tracks the object flying north to south at 3,700 mph at a height of 43 miles. (Romania 103)
December 2 — 11:30 p.m. Four witnesses in Hinojos, Huelva, Spain, see a fiery, square-shaped object flying close to the ground, lighting up the terrain. The headlights in two cars die. The car with a gasoline-powered engine also stalls, but the car with the diesel engine keeps running. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 11 (Sept. 2011): 20)
December 13 — 7:04 p.m. Fritz Abbehusen is watching TV in Dias d’Ávila, Bahia, Brazil, when his set experiences some interference. He goes out on the porch and sees a huge, round luminous object descending to a hill approximately 3 miles from his home. After a while, he goes to get binoculars, and with these he can see that the luminous shape is hovering a several feet above the ground. Its lower part is glowing like a neon light, while the upper part has a row of orange-red portholes. His wife Margarida and servant join him to look at the display. Suddenly, three blinking lights emerge from the object. One of these lights slowly moves in the direction of his house. After 15 minutes, the moving light has arrived within 165 feet in back of the house. Three small beings emerge from it, wearing what appears to be a one-piece suit of whitish or light-gray color. The beings keep their elbows close to the body when walking, as if on tiptoe, raising their knees exaggeratedly at each step. They go away, but the big object remains on the hill until around midnight. At one time it emits a beam that sets the brush on fire. (Patrick Gross, “Dias d’Ávila, Brazil, December 13, 1972”)
December 24 — 3:00 a.m. The Romanian ship Moldoveanu is in the Labrador Sea off Labrador, Canada, when the crew notices a shiny object headed at high speed straight toward their vessel and flying low over the waves. It stops above the ship, changing its shape and color. After an hour, it shoots into the sky and disappears. (Hobana and Weverbergh 279)
December 24 — 9:40 a.m. L. J. Reeves is stationed at the PIN-1 Distant Early Warning site at Clinton Point, Northwest Territories, on the Amundsen Gulf. He sees an object like a bright star that moves west to east, stops, then continues on and fades into the distance after 5 minutes. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p.73)
December 30 — A man driving on the A4155 from Henley to High Wycombe, England, rounds a bend and sees an object resembling a vertical cone. What seem to be fluorescent strip lights run down the side, and it emits an intense, high-pitched whistle. The next thing he knows, he is driving through Marlowe in total silence with no memory of how he got there. Some 90 minutes have vanished from his memory. (Jenny Randles, “The Twelve UFOs of Christmas,” Fortean Times 374 (Christmas 2018): 29)
1973
1973 — NORAD now has infrared sensor satellites covering 100% of the earth’s surface from geostationary orbits on a 24-hour basis. (Clark III 807)
1973 — Most Project MKUltra records are deliberately destroyed by order of CIA Director Richard Helms. A cache of some 20,000 documents survives Helms’s purge, as they are incorrectly stored in a financial-records building and discovered following a FOIA request in 1977. These documents are fully investigated during the Senate Hearings of 1977. HTLINGUAL and the NSA’s Minaret programs are shut down to avoid exposure during the Weathermen trial. (Wikipedia, “Project MKUltra”)
1973 — Dr. Joseph C. Sharp of Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, while in a soundproof room, allegedly hears spoken words broadcast by “pulsed microwave audiogram.” Broadcast in a range between 300 MHz to 3GHz, Sharp is able to identify words that are broadcast without any form of electronic translation device—by direct transmission to the brain. (Jim Keith, Mind Control, World Control: The Encyclopedia of Mind Control, 2014, p. 220)
1973 — The Midwest UFO Network changes its name to the Mutual UFO Network and focuses on building a national grassroots UFO investigation network. ()
1973 — David Duquesnoy founds the Association des Amis de Marc Thirouin in Valence, France, named in honor of the founder of the first UFO organization, Commission Internationale d’Enquêtes sur les Soucoupes Volantes, in France in 1951. It begins publishing UFO Informations, edited by Michel Dorier, in March 1974 and continues it through 1983. (UFO Informations, no. 1 (March 1974))
1973 — Suomen Ufotutkijat ry, the Finnish UFO Research Association, is founded in Tampere, Finland. Over the years it has published a Quarterly Report, an Annual Report, and a member newsletter Ufotutkija beginning in 1997 (now called Yhteydeksi). (Wikipedia, “Suomen Ufotutkijat”; The UFO Research of Finland Annual Report, 1981)
January 1? — After 12:00 midnight. A married couple is driving in Osorno, Chile, when their car stalls just as a disc- shaped object with flashing red and green lights flies overhead. The engine comes to life again after the object disappears. (“Shape-Changing UFO Stops Car,” Flying Saucer Review 19, no. 3 (May/June 1973): 29)
January 3 — NASA announces that Project NERVA has been terminated, even though the project to build a nuclear rocket has been proceeding well. Annie Jacobsen claims that some failed nuclear tests that have never been declassified could have been responsible. (Wikipedia, “NERVA”; Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 311–313)
January 11 — 9:00 a.m. Building surveyor Peter Day is driving near Cuddington, Bucks, England, when he sees an orange light in the north, moving eastwards. He finds a convenient place to stop, wind down the window, and point his movie camera at the object. He captures 20 seconds of the orange blob on color film as it pulsates and passes behind distant trees before disappearing suddenly (in a single frame). (Jenny Randles, UFO Conspiracy, Cassell, 1987, pp. 160–161; Jenny Randles, Fire in the Sky: Case History Number 2, The Buckinghamshire UFO Movie Film, BUFORA, 1989)
February 2 — Richard Helms is abruptly dismissed and James R. Schlesinger is named director of central intelligence. ()
February 19 — President Richard Nixon meets on the 18th green of the Inverness (Florida) Golf and Country Club with entertainer Jackie Gleason. Gleason has long been a fan of UFOs. He later becomes a subscriber to the newsletter Just Cause (Citizens Against UFO Secrecy). Gleason has a collection of 1,700 books on parapsychology, UFOs, and the unknown. Gleason’s second wife, Beverly McKittrick, says that Nixon took Gleason to a heavily secured area at Homestead AFB [now Homestead Air Reserve Base] in Miami-Dade County where he views the remains of small aliens in a top secret repository. McKittrick relates this story in an unpublished manuscript of Gleason called “The Great One.” Larry Bryant, editor of Just Cause, the newsletter Gleason had a subscription to, files a Freedom of Information Act request with Homestead AFB. Bryant requests documentation on the repository and Gleason’s visit there to see the alien bodies. Homestead replies that “no such records existed.” Bryant also sends an advertisement to the Homestead AFB newspaper soliciting information. The public affairs officer at Homestead denounces the Bryant advertisement and “forbade its publication.” At the same time Bryant writes Gleason providing him with a draft affidavit. He asks Gleason to execute the affidavit so it can be used as part of a growing accumulation of evidence Bryant is collecting in preparation for taking the government to court to release all information on alien crash retrievals. Gleason does not reply. Shortly before his death in 1987, one story says Gleason confirms the story about seeing the bodies at Homestead. The person who Jackie Gleason tells the story to is Larry Warren, who is a member of the Air Force Security Police at RAF Bentwaters [now closed] near Woodbridge, Suffolk, one of two bases in England where in late December 1980, three days of bizarre UFO incidents take place. Warren says that Gleason and Nixon enter a room with 6–8 glass-topped freezers. Inside
“were the mangled remains of what I took to be children.” On closer inspection, he sees that some of the figures look old and injured. Gleason cannot sleep or eat for three weeks after the visit. The director of the Secret Service under President Clinton, Lewis C. Merletti, claims that the idea of a president escaping his secret service agents only happens in the movies. In response to a question by reporter Joan London about the possibility of the president escaping his protection to go out and secretly do something, Merletti claims, “all Hollywood. There’s no sneaking out. It has never happened.” Marty Venker, a Secret Service agent who worked with Merletti under Presidents Ford and Carter, however, tells a different story. In his book Confessions of an Ex-Secret Service Agent he explains that not only can the president disappear, but it has happened. Venker states that in the exact year of the Homestead incident with Gleason, 1973, Nixon tries to cut his secret service protection. Venker also states that it was not uncommon for Nixon to try to elude his Secret Service detail. The agents working on the Nixon presidential detail were warned about it. Nixon is familiar with Homestead AFB, which is only minutes from his Biscayne Bay compound. There is no proof that Nixon escorted Jackie Gleason to view alien bodies at Homestead, but everything checked out indicates it could very well have happened. It would have been very easy in terms of distance for the Gleason/Nixon alien event to have occurred. (presidentialufo.com, “President Nixon, 37th President, January 20, 1969–August 9, 1974”; Brian J. Robb, “The Entertainer, the President, and the Aliens,” Fortean Times 366 (May 2018): 30–36)
February 21 — Night. Clearwater High School basketball coach Reggie Bone and five players on his team are driving back to Clearwater after a game. On US Highway 60 near Ellsinore, Missouri, Bone notices a “bright shaft of light beaming down out of the sky.” A few miles later, near Brushy Creek, student Randal Holmes notices another light, and Bone pulls over for a closer look. They see lights about 600 feet away from the road hovering over an open field at about 400 feet altitude. The lights seem to be portholes, each a different color: red, green, amber, and white. According to student Cary Barks, they watch it for 10 minutes before the lights rise up noiselessly and disappear over a hill. Around 10:00 p.m., Edith Boatwright of nearby Mill Spring sees a similar object flying low near her farmhouse. (“Mysterious Lights Keep Piedmont in the Dark,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 23, 1973,
p. 1; MUFON, “Piedmont Missouri Case, 1973”; Harley D. Rutledge, Project Identification: The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena, Prentice-Hall, 1981, pp. 6–7; Marler 15–16)
March 2 — Schlesinger appoints William Colby head of the CIA’s clandestine branch. ()
March 20 — 7:15 p.m. Lucie Vandervoort is looking out a window of her house in Tarcienne, Belgium, when she sees a bright light approaching. It passes over the roof of a nearby house, then banks, makes a 90° turn, and begins to blink as it disappears to the east. Similar objects appear every 10 minutes, continuing until 9:15 p.m. The objects’ slow speed allows her to take photos. At one point she looks through her late husband’s World War I trench periscope and sees a humanoid figure dressed in shiny, tight-fitting clothes and standing in the front of one of the objects. Only one photo turns out and shows a squarish light against a dark sky. Analysis suggests that the objects were probably aircraft taking off from the military base at Florennes a few miles away, the humanoid figure was imaginary, and the photo was a blurry streetlight. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Wim van Utrecht, Belgium in UFO Photographs, Volume 1 (1950–1988), FOTOCAT Report no. 7, 2017, pp.172–183)
March 24 — 7:30 a.m. Arthur de Weerdt is watching a distant airliner in Borgerhout, Belgium, when he notices another sunlit object pacing the aircraft at a higher altitude. Suddenly the object stops and remains motionless for about one minute, then moves at a greater speed, making an angle of 70° before coming to another wobbling halt for about 8 minutes. De Weerdt manages to take a color photograph of the object, which shows a whitish spot.
Ballester Olmos and van Utrecht suspect the witness saw a weather balloon and that the photo is the result of a development flaw. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Wim van Utrecht, Belgium in UFO Photographs, Volume 1 (1950–1988), FOTOCAT Report no. 7, 2017, pp. 183–196)
March 28 — 7:00 p.m. Two witnesses see an object with a rough triangular shape hovering at about 200 feet above trees on Stony Lane in Exeter, Rhode Island. It glows with brilliant white lights and has smaller green and red lights at the points of the triangle. The object makes a slight buzzing sound as it moves away. (“Flap over Rhode Island,” APRO Bulletin 21, no. 6 (May/June 1973): 9)
April — Scottish author Duncan Lunan claims he has identified and deciphered a hidden radio message sent as long delayed echoes by an alien space probe that had been detected in 1927. Published along with an accompanying editorial disclaimer, Lunan maintains that the putative message comes from an object at the L5 point in the same orbit as the Moon, sent by the inhabitants of a planet orbiting Epsilon Boötis. He says the message reads,
“Start here. Our home is Epsilon Boötis, which is a double star. We live on the sixth planet of seven, coming from the sun, which is the larger of the two. Our sixth planet has one moon. Our fourth planet has three. Our first and third planets each have one. Our probe is in the position of Arcturus, known in our maps.” (“Spaceprobe from
Epsilon Boötis,” Spaceflight 15, no. 4 (April 1973); Duncan Lunan, Man and the Stars: Contact and Communication with Other Intelligence, Souvenir, 1974)
April — Southeast Missouri State University physics professor Harley Rutledge hears of numerous reports of unidentified lights in the sky around Piedmont, Missouri, and decides to subject these reports to scientific analysis. He puts together a team of 620 observers with college training in the physical sciences, including a large array of equipment at 158 different viewing stations: binoculars, RF spectrum analyzers, Questar telescopes, low-high frequency audio detectors, an electromagnetic frequency analyzer, cameras, sound recorders, Geiger counters, and a galvanometer to measure variations in the Earth’s gravitational field. The resulting Project Identification commences in April, logging several hundred hours of observation time and 157 documented sightings over the next 7 years. This is the first UFO scientific field study, able to monitor the phenomena in real-time, enabling Rutledge to calculate the objects’ actual velocity, course, position, distance, and size. Observation of the unclouded night sky often reveals “pseudostars”—stationary lights camouflaged by familiar constellations. Some objects appear to mimic the appearance of known aircraft; others violate the laws of physics. The most startling discovery is that on at least 32 recorded occasions, the movement of the lights synchronize with actions of the observers. They appear to respond to a light being switched on and off, and to verbal or radio messages. Rutledge publishes a final report, Project Identification, on his field research in 1981. (Harley D. Rutledge, Project Identification: The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena, Prentice-Hall, 1981; Mark Rodeghier, “Book Review: Project Identification,” IUR 7, no. 1 (January 1982): 14–16; Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 249; Greg Little, “Why Do Ufologists Largely Ignore the Most Scientific Field Study of UFOs Ever Conducted?” Alternate Perceptions, no. 146 (March 2010))
April 9 — Physicist Peter A. Sturrock mails questionnaires to all 1,175 members of the San Francisco, California, Chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics asking their opinions on the UFO phenomenon. He receives 423 responses from scientists who have seen things they thought could be UFOs. (Peter A. Sturrock, “UFO Reports from AIAA Members,” Astronautics and Aeronautics 12 (May 1974): 60–64)
April 27 — Ingo Swann, in a remote-viewing experiment at Stanford Research Institute, concentrates on the Pioneer 10 space probe on its way to Jupiter. Monitored by Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ, Swann yields 13 specific factors about Jupiter, none of which are scientifically anticipated—including the existence of a planetary ring. (Wikipedia, “Ingo Swann”; Ingo Swann, Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy, Ingo Swann Books, 1998, pp. 18–23)
May — A series of meetings takes place between USAF representatives (Col. William T. Coleman and Col. George Weinbrenner) and two well-connected Hollywood figures: documentarist Robert Emenegger and producer Allan Sandler. The colonels encourage the pair to make a documentary on the UFO phenomenon and the question of extraterrestrial life. Not only will they have the military’s full cooperation, they will also have access to their files, including those of the Department of Defense. Upon arriving at Norton Air Force Base [now San Bernardino, California, International Airport] the two men are immediately taken to a “clean room used by the CIA,” designed so that “there was no way anyone could eavesdrop” on events taking place inside. Here the proposal takes place, including the promise of using 3,200 feet of a 1971 UFO landing footage at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, that shows several of the “alien visitors” and their meeting with the representatives from the US government. Paul Shartle, chief of requirements for the Norton AFB audiovisual program, promises to get the Holloman footage.
Emenegger is told that the military is monitoring signals from an alien group that their extraterrestrial visitors know nothing about. At the last minute, permission to use the film is withdrawn, though Emenegger and Sandler are encouraged to describe the Holloman landing as something that might happen in the future or could have happened. Emenegger goes to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio to talk to Weinbrenner, who while haranguing about the need to find out about Soviet Mig-25s, hands Emenegger a signed copy of Hynek’s The UFO Experience. (presidentialufo.com, “Disclosure Pattern 1972–75”; Clark III 357)
May 9 — Schlesinger orders all CIA officials to report on any activities that “might be construed to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency.” The CIA Office of the Inspector General compiles these into a 693-page report on “potential flap activities,” including surveillance of journalists, Operation Chaos, MKUltra, and mail interception. These come to be known as the Family Jewels. (Wikipedia, “Family Jewels (Central Intelligence Agency”)
May 18 — Two men at Miliscola Beach, Bacoli, Naples, Italy, see a bright disc with a dome 165 feet away over the sea. It hovers at a height of 10 feet and then moves closer. Their car engine and lights fail. The dome is bright like a white neon light, and a red light is rotating around it. After 3–4 minutes, the object lifts off and the car can be restarted. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 20)
May 19 — Strange, nylon-like patterns are seen in the sky above Gawler, South Australia. After falling, they vaporize when touched. (Keith Basterfield, “Angel Hair: An Australian Perspective,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 7)
May 22 — 3:00 a.m. Onilson Pátero, an organizer of public libraries for the State of São Paulo, Brazil, is just outside Catanduva, after giving a ride to a stranger. First his car radio gets static and the engine begins to fail. Suddenly he notices a blue circle of light about 8 inches in diameter moving around inside his car. It passes in front of the dashboard and he sees it is transparent. Then a beam of blue light shines on him from the top of the hill he is driving up. He pulls over to avoid a collision, but the light keeps coming toward him. Overcome by a sensation of heat and stuffiness, he steps out of the car and hears a buzzing noise. The UFO is a gray structure about 25 feet thick and 36 feet wide, resembling two soup plates attached rim to rim. A tube stretches out from its base toward the ground. Pátero panics and runs about 100 feet when something holds him back. Turning, he sees that a rod of blue light from the UFO is moving above his car. The light seems to make the car transparent, allowing him to see the contents of the trunk, the wheel gears, the engine, and the interior of the body. Pátero faints. An hour later, two young men drive by and see him lying on the ground in gushing rainwater. They speed on into Catanduva and return with a policeman, Clóvis Queiros. Turning Pátero over, he regains consciousness and they take him to the hospital, where he is soon released. However, the next day he feels an itchiness on his back and stomach. Irritated patches of his skin turn purplish blue. Later, these spots turn yellow and eventually disappear. Subsequent medical examinations show no cause for the discoloration, and Pátero seems in good mental health. He experiences another encounter on April 26, which some investigators think might be a fantasy. (“Close Encounter in Brazil,” APRO Bulletin 21, no. 6 (May/June 1973): 1, 3; “Caso do Automovel que Ficou Transparente,” SBEDV Boletim, no. 94/98 (September 1973/June 1974): 30–40; “Caso de Onilson Pátero,” SBEDV Boletim, no. 99/103 (July 1974/April 1975): 2–18; Gordon Creighton, “The Car That Turned Transparent,” Flying Saucer Review 21, no.
3/4 (November 1975): 14–15; Brazil 154–163)
May 24 — 9:20 p.m. Harley Rutledge and three other members of his Project Identification team at the municipal airport in Farmington, Missouri, see a configuration of four lights (white, red, red, white) flying silently overhead at an altitude of about 2,500 feet. Through binoculars, Rutledge can see the white lights reflecting off a metallic structure that could be anywhere from 368 to 2,600 feet across. The array moved quickly out of sight. (Harley D. Rutledge, Project Identification: The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena, Prentice-Hall, 1981, pp.
May 27 — 2:00 a.m. A Mrs. Geni, 57, is preparing some wedding cake at her home in São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, Brazil. Through her balcony window she sees a reflection of some kind in her walled-in backyard. When she goes to her porch door, she sees a flying object hovering above the roof of one of the rented buildings on the ground floor in the back some 50 feet away. The object is white-metallic and luminous on the bottom, about 6.5–13 feet wide and 3–6 feet high, with a kind of credenza behind which three entities can be seen. They are small with large round heads, big eyes, protruding lips, dark brown skin, small ears, long flat noses, small arms, and wearing a cap with a ball in the center. Each holds a device like a flashlight that emits a beam of different colors: green on the left, red in the middle, and orange on the right. The object emits a noise like a motor as it sways above the building, then after a few minutes it moves away beyond the horizon. Mrs. Geni goes back to work, but she now has pains in her knees, legs, and head. She screams in pain, and the young woman who rents the building in the back arrives to help. She also has heard the motor noise and confirms that Mrs. Geni’s face is swollen with bloodshot eyes that last for 3 days. At about 5:00 a.m., Mrs. Geni suffers a prolapsed uterus, for which she has to undergo surgery on June 8. She gradually loses hearing in her right ear, her vision deteriorates, and spots appear on her skin. A clock in the kitchen begins to behave erratically. In the backyard, a dwarf coconut tree and a jabuticaba tree both lose their leaves prematurely. (“Caso dos Anões de São José do Rio Preto,” SBEDV Boletim, no. 121/125 (March/Dec. 1978): 15–19; Brazil 163–166)
June 4 — 2:00 a.m. Jill Cotmore wakes up in her home near Tyringham, New South Wales, with an uneasy feeling. She lights a cigarette and the room is immediately engulfed in a bright light, even though the windows have heavy curtains. It is so bright that she can’t even see a cupboard 3 feet away from her. Outside, her horse is going berserk. Suddenly, the light is gone. The next day, she finds the horse frothing, and it had apparently been running around the house during the night. This takes place in the middle of a concentration of UFO reports in the area. (Bill Chalker, “An Australian Chronicle, Part Two,” APRO Bulletin, June 1976, p. 4)
June 28 — 12:30 a.m. University of Missouri animal care technician James G. Richards, 41, and his daughter Vanea, 16, hear a loud, persistent, thrashing sound outside their house trailer in Columbia, Missouri. Richards moves to the window and sees two bright, silver-white light beams about 5 feet apart from each other and 50 feet away from his window. The beams disappear, and a glowing bright oval form appears, about 12–15 feet in diameter, lighting up the area. The thrashing sound is apparently made by trees moving as if blown by wind, and after the oval form
appears, this sound suddenly ceases. As Richards moves from window to window, he notices his dogs lying very still near the corner of the trailer that is nearest to the oval object. The dogs are large security animals that are not easily frightened. Richards thinks it strange they are not barking at all the noise and the bright lights. The object moves away to 200 feet from the window and hovers, and now, less bright to the eye, the witnesses can see a blue band of light and an orange glow extending around the outer edge of the oval. The oval moves back near its original position and disappears by growing smaller before police arrive at 1:45 a.m. Later searches uncover broken tree limbs, damaged foliage, scorched leaves up to a height of 35 feet, and impressions on the ground as deep as 2 feet. (NICAP, “Columbia, Missouri: June 28, 1973”; Ted Phillips, “Landing at Columbia, Missouri,” Flying Saucer Review 19, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1973): 18–25; Richard H. Hall, Uninvited Guests, Aurora, 1988, pp. 268–270; UFOEv II 61–62)
July — David Rockefeller founds the Trilateral Commission in Tokyo, Japan, to foster closer cooperation between Japan, Western Europe, and North America. It initiates its biannual meetings in October in Tokyo. (Wikipedia, “Trilateral Commission”)
July 7 — 10:00 p.m. A Mrs. Good is closing the curtains of her house at Porthcothan Bay, Cornwall, England, when she sees two dark semi-cigar-shaped objects hovering over the bay. They are positioned on either side of a glowing, symmetrical ring. After a few seconds, the ring enters the left object and the two shoot off at terrific speed upward. The remaining object follows the same path a short time afterward. She reports the sighting to the nearby RAF St. Mawgan, which explains the sighting as “sun dogs.” (UFOFiles2, pp. 86–87)
July 12–16 — A fire destroys some 16–18 million official military personnel records at the Military Personnel Records Center in Overland, Missouri. The losses to federal military records collection include 80% loss to records of US Army personnel discharged November 1, 1912, to January 1, 1960; 75% loss to records of US Air Force personnel discharged September 25, 1947, to January 1, 1964, with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James E.; and some US Army Reserve personnel who performed their initial active duty for training in the late 1950s but who received final discharge as late as 1964. None of the records have duplicate copies, nor are there microfilm copies. No index of these records was made prior to the fire. (Wikipedia, “National Personnel Records Center fire”; Kevin D. Randle, “Military Records,” IUR 33, no. 4 (May 2011): 5)
July 25 — 1:35 p.m. A Canadian Pacific Air Lines DC-8 is flying west at 31,000 feet above the eastern coast of Baffin Island, Nunavut, when the pilot sees a “large balloon in close proximity” and radios air traffic control to report it. He says it is 200 feet in diameter and 3 miles away and has been paralleling their course for 5–6 minutes at a speed of 575 mph. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 89)
July 26 — A secret US State Department airgram on “Guidance for Dealing with Space Objects Which Have Returned to Earth” refers to Project Moon Dust: “the designator MOONDUST is used in cases of non-US space objects or objects of unknown origin.” (Christopher D. Allen, “Dubious Truth about the Roswell Crash,” IUR 19, no. 3 (May/June 1994): 14)
July 27 — A 16-year-old UFO buff finds and photographs some strange marks on the ground near Lago d’Idro, Brescia, Italy. In 1977 he undergoes hypnotic regression and realizes he has been touched by a human shape that makes him lose consciousness. When he wakes up he is being sucked into an aerial object through an opening at its base. He finds himself in a round room with four beings. Then a woman comes in and the entities begin moving around and touching him. He is paralyzed and can only move his eyes. He is then taken to another room and directed to sit on a chair as the UFO lands in the spot where he had been before. He then leaves the object and watches it take off. He picks up his camera and photographs the ground traces. (Paolo Fiorino, Gian Paolo Grassino, and Antonio Chiumiento, “Abductions in Italy,” IUR 14, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1989): 15)
August — 10:30 p.m. Three people are sitting in their front yard in West Seneca, New York, when they hear a low hum coming from an object above their garage. It is a silvery half-egg with glowing orange-and-blue overtones. It begins a slow descent toward the roof, and when it is only 5 feet away, one of the witnesses yells for it to stop. The object stops, hovers briefly, and shoots away straight upward. One of the witnesses hears the same hum at about the same time two days later, and the same object appears, moving down the street. The object is only 3–4 feet above the pavement and covers the width of the road. The witness approaches it, and it stops at the end of his driveway. He walks toward it and gets only 4–5 feet from it without feeling any heat. When his dog barks, he backs away. The object waits a moment, then slowly moves 20 feet down the street, quickly rises, and vanishes rapidly at a 45° angle. (Michael D. Swords, “Unusual Experiences from the Timmerman Files,” IUR 27, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 23–24)
Between August 3–6 — Night. A woman and her children are watching the stars in their backyard in San Antonio, Texas. Two “very perfect” cumulus clouds move into view low above them. A perfectly round sphere with a green glow
slowly emerges from the top of the cloud on the left. Soon they see lightning going back and forth from the two clouds but never toward the ground. One lightning bolt hits the sphere and red sparks fly out, whereupon the sphere slowly reenters the cloud. The clouds remain stationary for 35–40 minutes until the sphere disappears, then they float on. (Herbert S. Taylor, “Mystery Clouds and the UFO Connection,” IUR 29, no. 4 (July 2005): 18)
August 28 — 10:00 p.m. Journalists Titus Zăgrean and Ion Moise are driving near Budacu de Jos, Romania, when they see a big milky-white light in the sky approaching the road they are on. As it crosses the road, they see it is rotating and about 3 feet in diameter. Moving to the west, it veers sharply to the north, accelerates, changes color to yellow-orange then red, and departs at fantastic speed. (Romania 40)
September — Jenny Randles and David Rees found the Manchester Aerial Phenomena Investigation Team in the Greater Manchester area, England. It publishes the Skywatch newsletter through early 1982. (Skywatch, no. 1 (September 1973))
September 4 — William Colby is named director of central intelligence to succeed James R. Schlesinger, who leaves on July 2 to become Secretary of Defense. ()
September 11 — Chilean President Salvador Allende is overthrown by the armed forces and national police in a coup d’état with the covert support of the CIA. (Wikipedia, “United States intervention in Chile”)
September 17 — 9:00 p.m. Anne Taylor is walking to her farm in Romford, Essex, England, after walking her three dogs when she sees a green light near the cowshed. She continues watching the light, which starts moving toward her slowly. Her two terriers are whining and cringing. The light approaches to within a few feet of her, about 12 feet above the ground. It is completely silent. Her watch has stopped, and her spine begins to tingle. She hears a jet plane in the distance, and the light goes out. She hears an “electric whirring” and the green ball shoots straight up. Her dogs return to normal behavior, and her watch starts up again when she returns to the house. (UFOFiles2, p. 86)
September 23 — 5:00 a.m. A truck driver is driving to work near Tyler, Texas, when a small “cub airplane” seems to fly directly in front of another car on the highway, nearly causing a wreck. The plane flies up over the side of the road and hovers above some trees. Then it changes into a cigar shape with lights. The driver gets out of his truck to watch. The cigar moves off then returns with a new, round shape. It lights up with many multicolored lights and moves above a nearby house. It makes a low, “loop-loop-loop” thumping sound. Then a large, bright, square light descends and swings from the other object. It approaches the truck, then swings back and forth. He tries to jump back in the truck but apparently passes out. He later notices he has some marks on his hip and shoulder. He does remember seeing the UFO change from a round shape into a triangle, and then move out of sight. (Michael D. Swords, “Unusual Experiences from the Timmerman Files,” IUR 27, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 24; Michael D. Swords, “Timmerman’s Triangles,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 17)
Autumn — Late night. 1st Lt. Walter F. Billings is a deputy crew commander at the Francis E. Warren AFB Golf launch control capsule missile site northwest of Sidney, Nebraska. Over UHF radio, he hears the crew at LCC India, southwest of Sunol, Nebraska, order its security guards to investigate an alarm at one of India’s 10 launch sites. The guards find that the inner security alarm has also been triggered, meaning that something has penetrated the security fence surrounding the site. They find a large, bright UFO hovering above the site. One minute later, the UFO moves off slowly for several thousand feet then zooms off at a high rate of speed. All crews on duty that night are told not to say anything to the public or media about anything they heard on UHF radio that night. (Nukes 338–339)
October — J. Allen Hynek and Sherman J. Larsen establish what will become the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Illinois, with Larsen’s existing Public Education Group as a base. (Clark III 627; Sherman J. Larsen, “The Founding of CUFOS,” IUR 11, no. 3 (May/June 1986): 13–14)
October — Night. Sgt. Michael D. Jenkins of the 96th Security Police Squadron is stationed at Dyess AFB southwest of Abilene, Texas, when a major alert goes off at the base after a large ball of light is reported hovering 100–150 feet above igloo bunkers housing nuclear weapons. Twelve police with M-16s are sent to the Weapons Storage Area, and an incoming C-130 is asked to do a fly-by of the area to get a look at the object. Three K-9 teams that normally patrol the perimeter report that their dogs are afraid and acting up. An order to fire on the object comes from Strategic Air Command Headquarters Offutt AFB near Bellevue, Nebraska. Jenkins hears gunfire and sees a bluish-white streak as the object speeds off. As it leaves, it drops a trail of “angel hair” all the way from the weapons area to the southwest perimeter of the base. The angel hair hangs around on the area ropes and buildings for three days. On the third day it rains and the material dissolves, completely disappearing. (Robert L. Hastings, “UFO Fired Upon As It Hovered over Nuclear Bomb Storage Facility, Says Former USAF Security Policeman,” UFOs & Nukes, December 1, 2017)
October 6 — 12:45 a.m. A couple strolling along a country road near St.-Mathias-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, see a bright light like a projector emanating from a nearby field. Later, at 11:30 a.m., the woman is hanging clothes on a line in her backyard when she notices a column of smoke rising from fields in the north. She calls over two workmen doing repairs at her home, and they see a yellowish object like a tent near the smoke. Soon a square, yellow object resembling a bulldozer emerges from the tent and travels about 180 feet to a small spring. Between the two objects, moving around in the field, are five “little people” about 4 feet tall performing various actions. Assuming them to be boy scouts, the witnesses notice they are wearing some kind of helmets and clothing that is the same color as the tent. The witnesses return to their work and 20 minutes later someone notices that the objects and figures have disappeared. The couple’s daughter returns in half an hour and goes to check the location. She finds a large, circular patch of burned and crushed grass about 45 feet in diameter, as well as two tracklike marks, each about 6 inches wide. Returning, the daughter feels ill with headache and nausea. A month later, UFO investigators arrive and find additional marks in the shape of a triangle. (Wido Hoville, “Un atterrissage á Saint-Mathias de Chambly,” UFO-Quebec, no. 1 (1975): 6–9; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 106–107; Patrick Gross, URECAT, November 7, 2007)
October 8 — Evening. A police officer near Laurel, Mississippi, chases a yellow object shaped like a top and making “exhaust-like” noises for several miles. As he approaches within 200 feet, his car stalls and the radio and headlights die. When the object moves away, the lights and radio come back, but the engine will not start for several minutes. (Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 58)
October 10 — 7:00 p.m. A family in Niantic, Connecticut, watches two greenish discs and a white sphere maneuvering over a nearby lake. Odd clouds seem to be accompanying the two discs. One disc and its cloud disappear, while the other disc flies in and out of its cloud as if playing “peekaboo.” (Herbert S. Taylor, “Mystery Clouds and the UFO Connection,” IUR 29, no. 4 (July 2005): 18)
October 11 — Around 7:00 p.m. Two men, 19-year-old Calvin Parker and 42-year old Charles E. Hickson Sr., both of Gautier, Mississippi, are fishing in the Pascagoula River when they hear a buzzing noise behind them. Both turn and are terrified to see a 10-foot-wide, 8-foot-high, glowing egg-shaped object with blue lights at its front hovering just above the ground about 40 feet from the riverbank. As the men, frozen with fright, watch, a door appears in the object and three strange beings float just above the river towards them. The two become numb and paralyzed as the entities carry them into the UFO. Some kind of “eye” device scans them before they are released 20 minutes later. They first contact Keesler AFB in Biloxi, but no one is interested; then they drive to the offices of the Mississippi Press Register a few blocks away, but it is closed. So they call the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office to report their encounter, and they arrive there at 10:30 p.m. At one point during 2 hours of intense grilling by Sheriff Fred R. Diamond, they are left alone in an interrogation room where they are unknowingly tape recorded while they continue to speak to each other about the abduction, emotionally distressed. (Wikipedia, “Pascagoula Abduction”; NICAO, “The Hickson/Parker Incident”; “The Pascagoula Affair,” APRO Bulletin 22, no. 2 (Sept./Oct. 1973): 1, 3–4; Clark III 893–898; Charles Hickson and William Mendez, UFO Contact at Pascagoula, Wendelle C. Stevens, 1983; Calvin Parker, Pascagoula: The Closest Encounter: My Story, Flying Disk, 2018; Calvin Parker, Pascagoula: The Story Continues: New Evidence and New Witnesses, Flying Disk, 2019)
October 11 — 7:40 p.m. Parole Officer Raymond Broadus, Pascagoula City Councilor Emmanuel P. Sigalas, and an unidentified woman are driving on US Highway 90 west of Gautier, Mississippi, when they see a large, swiftly moving object that descends and hovers a few hundred yards above the ground and meanders toward the Pascagoula River. (Clark III 895)
October 11 — 9:00 p.m. Larry Booth of Pascagoula, Mississippi, finishes watching TV and checks the front door. He sees a huge round object hovering 5–8 feet above a nearby streetlight. It has red lights that are moving in a clockwise motion around it. It slowly moves away. (Clark III 895)
October 12 — 4:00 a.m. A commercial pilot is flying a Piper PA-32 Cherokee Six near Mount Baldy, Arizona, at an altitude of 2,500 feet. He notices a red flashing light on the ground in a remote area, and circles around for a closer look. As he does so, the light begins moving too and reaches a speed about the same as his plane, 170 mph. It is flashing regularly at 2-second intervals. The object is skimming over the ground, apparently following undulations in the landscape. He changes course again to intercept the light, which accelerates instantaneously to 800 mph, moving up and over Mount Baldy, following its contours. The pilot follows it for a few minutes, about 50–60 miles. After about 5 minutes the light makes a right-angle turn and accelerates vertically. After 8–10 flashes, it disappears into the upper atmosphere. (Mark Rodeghier, “Out of the Past: An Incredible Light,” IUR 9, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1984): 7–8)
October 16 — At a press conference in Illinois, USAF Chief of Staff Gen. George Scratchley Brown states that sightings of what were presumed to be enemy helicopters during the Vietnam War took place, always at night, and
prompted shooting by US ground forces. A Combat Air Activities file of 16 such incidents between 1967 and 1969, especially around Pleiku in February 1969, documents some of this activity. (Barry Greenwood, “Air Force Vietnam Era UFO Reports Surface,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 14 (May 2015): 3–10)
October 16 — 7:30 p.m. Upon arriving home at Albany, Ohio, Mary Geddis sees a “ghost-like” figure floating about 50 feet above the ground at 1,000 feet distance; it is about 4 feet tall and thin, “like a person draped in a close-fitting sheet.” It is seen only briefly when she notices a bright white object moving about, and approaches to within 200 feet before going away. The object is about 20 feet in diameter and about 25–30 feet off the ground. Later, as she is making supper, she sees a “little blue-green thing” about 2.5 feet tall and with a face with “spiky things at the tops and the sides of the head” looking in an open door; it has stumpy arms (she sees no legs) and quickly disappears from sight. UFO sightings occur around the same time in nearby Athens, Ohio. (George M. Eberhart, “The Little ‘Electric’ Man,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 5 (March 1975): 10–12)
October 16 — 7:45 p.m. A 50-foot-wide bluish object hovers 2–3 feet above US Highway 82, seemingly suspended on a beam of light, near Eupora, Mississippi, 300 feet from a car. The engine and headlights fail as the object lands. Another object hovers about 60 feet above the first, illuminating it. A “catfish-like” creature emerges with flippers for hands, a wide mouth, and feathers on its back. It holds onto a handrail on the craft and never goes down to the ground. It gets back in and the object rises into the air. The driver restarts the car. (Columbus (Miss.) Triangle Advertiser, October 24, 1973; David Webb, 1973: Year of the Humanoids, CUFOS, 1976, p. 14)
October 16 — Night. William and Donna Hatchett are driving down a country road near Mannford, Oklahoma, when she sees a bright light coming from the south. They first think it is a security light on a pole, but then realize the object is pacing them and descending. When the Hatchetts stop the truck, the light also stops in front of them. As the object hovers, it gives off a blinding light and a penetrating low-pitched hum. They have a feeling that there are occupants who know everything they are thinking. Donna is so afraid that she twice leaves the truck cab and goes into the back. William manages to persuade her to return, and they set off, the object rising up in the opposite direction. (Kevin D. Randle, The UFO Casebook, Warner, 1989, pp. 143–144)
October 16 — Midnight. Single mother Pat Roach is dozing on the couch with her 5-year-old son Kent in an isolated house on the outskirts of Lehi, Utah. Suddenly, Kent wakes up screaming that he has seen a “skeleton.” Roach has a vague memory an intruder and a bright light. Suspecting a prowler, she phones a neighbor, who calls the police at 12:10 a.m. A few minutes later, officers arrive, talk to Roach, find nothing amiss, and leave. Roach then checks on her other children. Two of them, Bonnie and Debbie, tell her they had seen a spaceman who had come into the house and taken them on a spaceship. Debbie remembers being told not to tell anyone, as well as seeing a line of people waiting to go on board. Disturbed, Roach takes her children and spends the rest of the night at a friend’s house. In 1975, Roach sees an article by Kevin Randle on UFO abductions and contacts him. Randle arranges for an interview and hypnosis sessions with APRO’s research director James A. Harder. An abduction tale slowly emerges that involves some elements that are little known in 1975, among them the aliens’ clinical coldness, their curiosity about human emotion, their interest in gynecology, and human participants in the physical examination. However, Randle now believes that Roach underwent sleep paralysis, was influenced by some abduction accounts over the years, and was led into the narrative by Harder’s leading questions during hypnosis. (Clark III 1011– 1012; Story, pp. 309–310; Lorenzen, Abducted! Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space, Berkley, 1977, pp. 9–24; Kevin D. Randle, “Alien Abduction and Leading the Witness,” A Different Perspective, March 28, 2005)
October 17 — Ohio Gov. John J. Gilligan and his wife Mary are driving near Ann Arbor, Michigan, when they see an amber-colored vertical beam of light. When asked to confirm the sighting, he tells reporters: “I saw this. It wasn’t a bird or a plane.” (“Gilligan Spots Strange Object,” Hamilton (Ohio) Journal News, October 17, 1973, p. 1)
October 17 — Paul Brown is driving on US Highway 29 near Danielsville, Georgia, when his car radio suddenly goes wild with strange sounds. He sees a silver, oval-shaped object about 300 feet ahead on the road. He stops and sees two beings with red faces and white hair. Brown grabs a pistol and steps halfway out of his car, but the beings return to the object, which takes off with a whooshing sound. (Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald, October 18, 1973; “First Flap in Six Years Resurrects UFOs As National Controversy,” UFO Investigator, November 1973, p. 4)
October 17 — After 10:00 p.m. Falkville, Alabama, Police Chief Jeffrey Greenhaw responds to a phone call about a UFO on the outskirts of town. On a gravel road, he sees a 5-and-a-half-foot-tall, silver-suited figure in his headlights. He stops, gets out, and talks to the figure, all the while taking Polaroid photos of it. It steps towards him and Greenhaw turns on the red rotating police car light. The figure runs away and although Greenhaw pursues it in his car, it eludes him. The photos quickly become a national news story. NICAP investigator Marion Webb and others strongly suspect this is a hoax. (NICAP, “Falkville, Alabama, Entity / Jeff Greenhaw Case, Oct. 17, 1973”; “Police Chief’s Nightmare: Real or Contrived?” UFO Investigator, October 1974, pp. 1–2; “Police Chief Hoaxes UFO,” UFO Investigator, January 1977, p. 4; Clark III 482; Good Above, pp. 301–302;)
October 18 — 3:30 p.m. A witness in Hamilton, Illinois, sees a huge gray oval or oblong UFO. A second object appears that resembles the first but seems to be covered in “cobwebs” on its upper surface. About 15 minutes later, “cotton-like” material is found that when handled becomes a “small ball which melted as it was touched.” The next morning, a collected sample has totally sublimated. (Brian Boldman, “An Analysis of Angel Hair, 1947– 2000,” IUR 26, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 19)
October 18 — 11:00 p.m. Army Reserve Capt. Lawrence J. Coyne (with his crew 1st Lt. Arrigo Jezzi, Sgt. John Healey, and Spec5 Robert Yanacsek) is flying an Army Reserve UH-1 Huey helicopter at 1,200 feet from Columbus to Cleveland, Ohio. Healey notices a steady, southbound red light. It looks like the port-wing light of an aircraft but seems brighter and carries none of the other FAA-required lights. He watches it disappear behind the helicopter and doesn’t tell the others. A couple minutes later, Yanacsek sees a bright red light on the eastern horizon and watches it for 90 seconds, realizing it is pacing the helicopter. He mentions it to Coyne, who tells Healey to watch it. Soon the light turns and comes towards the helicopter. Coyne takes the controls from Jezzi and puts the helicopter into a descent. He calls Mansfield (Ohio) Approach Control but fails to get a response. The red light is now closing on them at a dangerous rate of speed, possibly 684 mph. Coyne pushes the stick down, forcing the helicopter to descend quickly. When he gets to an altitude of 650 feet above the treetops, Coyne looks up and sees the object covering the entire front windshield. The red light is on its nose and a white light is on the tail of this cigar-shaped, metallic structure. Under the tail, a green beam sweeps a 90° arc and shines through the windshield. It hovers above them for 10–12 seconds before accelerating and heading northwest. The bright white light just snaps out. Coyne looks at the altimeter and realizes they have been ascending and are now at 3,500 feet, but the stick is still down. He pulls the stick up and the helicopter levels out at 3,800 feet. Reviewing his instruments, Coyne notices that the magnetic compass is rotating slowly, while the Radio Magnetic Indicator is functioning normally. They make radio contact with Akron and fly on to Cleveland without further incident. Other witnesses on the ground have seen the incident. (NICAP, “Coyne Helicopter, E-M / Magnetic Compass Encounter”; Jennie Zeidman, “UFO–Helicopter Close Encounter over Ohio,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no, 4 (November 1976): 15– 19; Jennie Zeidman, “More on the Coyne Helicopter Case,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 4 (January 1978): 16– 18; Jennie Zeidman, A Helicopter-UFO Encounter over Ohio, CUFOS, 1979; Kim Hansen, “UFO Casebook,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 82–85; Jennie Zeidman, “Green Light over Mansfield,” IUR 13, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1988): 13–14; Jennie Zeidman, “The Coyne Case: Correction and Update,” IUR 14, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1989): 17–18; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, p. 145; Patrick Gross, “The Coyne Incident, Mansfield, Ohio, USA, 1973”; Kevin D. Randle, “The Coyne Helicopter UFO Case,” A Different Perspective, August 5, 2014; Kevin D. Randle, “The Coyne Helicopter Encounter–Explained?” A Different Perspective, May 1, 2018; Good Above, pp. 302–303; Clark III 309–312; Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp. 159–161)
October 18 — 11:30 p.m. A group of people in Wooster, Ohio, notices a bright, pulsing, triangular object with three colored lights at each apex, pulsating at different rates. When the object moves, the red light becomes brighter. It moves right, left, up, and down for 25 minutes. The UFO then dips down and shoots straight up into the sky. (Michael D. Swords, “Timmerman’s Triangles,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 15)
October 20 — 1:00 a.m. Two women driving in a Volkswagen near Fort Smith, Arkansas, see a glowing object approach them from the south. It descends within 6 feet of their car, at which point the headlights, radio, and engine all fail. The object is about 8 feet in diameter, shaped like a disc, and emits a “computer-like” sound. After about 5 minutes, it moves away quickly. (Fort Smith (Ark.) Southwest Times Record, October 21, 1973; Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 59)
October 20 — 2:00 a.m. Sam Richerson and his wife awaken in their home in Campbellsville, Kentucky, when a barking dog disturbs his young son from a deep sleep. When his wife attends to him, she notices a glowing object across the street. They stand and watch the object for 15 minutes. It is a triangular-shaped object the size of two cars hovering at treetop height 300 feet away. (Campbellsville (Ky.) News-Journal, October 25, 1973; Marler 89–90)
October 20 — 6:50 a.m. A conductor on a Louisville & Nashville Railroad train moving northeast out of Mount Vernon, Indiana, sees a bright white light coming out of the north and heading east. When they reach Caborn, Indiana, he notifies the rear conductors, who can now see a bright light (possibly another train) behind them. The train’s automatic blocking system is showing a red light, indicating there is a train to the rear. When the train reaches Belknap, the engine stops because a rear diesel unit has apparently overheated. The yardmaster in Evansville informs them that there never was any train behind them. The conductor hits a reset button and the train starts with no trouble. The light in the rear seems to be moving away, and the blocking system turns to an amber signal. (NICAP, “UFO Disables Train”; Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp. 161–162)
October 20 — A UFO passes over Round Valley Reservoir, Clinton Township, New Jersey. Three people who are driving by and watching the object experience car failure. (Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 59)
October 20 — 8:00 p.m. A witness sees a triangular-shaped object with bright white lights hovering above Milton Road in Alton, Illinois. A second triangle is above the first. (“Latest UFO over Milton (Road),” Alton (Ill.) Telegraph, October 22, 1973; Marler 90, 209)
October 21 — 2:30 a.m. Reafa Heitfeld wakes up in her trailer on the west side of Cincinnati, Ohio, and notices a bright light shining outside. The source is a row of six lights forming an arc outside her window, as well as another bright light over the parking lot. Outside the second light she can see a gray “apelike creature” that seems to be fixing something. In the process of calling the police, she hears a loud, deep, booming sound, and the object and creature are gone. Investigator Leonard Stringfield finds that a fire alarm had gone off at the same time in a nearby warehouse only 150 feet away, although firemen can locate nothing that set it off. (Clark III 554)
October 22 — June Margolin sees a shiny globe dropping web-like substance in large amounts over Sudbury, Massachusetts. It drapes over trees and telephone lines. She collects a sample and puts it in the refrigerator, but the substance still dissipates into strong white threads. The University of Massachusetts field station examines a sample. It is not spider web, but there is not enough of it for a chemical analysis. X-ray fluorescence and diffraction analysis indicates sodium, aluminum, silicon, sulfur, chorine, potassium, calcium, iron, nickel. The substance is 95% organic. Two other analyses indicate slightly different composition. (“UFO ‘Angel’s Hair’ Still Remains a Mystery,” UFO Investigator, March 1974, pp. 1, 3; Brian Boldman, “Angel Hair Physical Analyses: A Review,” JUFOS 9 (2006): 105–106; Brian Boldman, “An Analysis of Angel Hair, 1947–2000,” IUR 26, no. 3
(Fall 2001): cover)
October 22 — 6:50 p.m. A man is farming in Upton, Indiana, when he notices an object that looks like it is going to land. He and his daughter walk toward the other side of the field to investigate. They can see an object with red, white, and green lights near the railroad tracks. As a train passes through, the object dims and hovers near it for one minute, then takes off to the southeast. An object is seen flying above a train at Maunie, Illinois, the same evening. (NICAP, “The 1973 UFO Chronology”)
October 22 — 9:45 p.m.–after midnight. Dewayne and Debbie Donathan are driving toward their home 9 miles east of Hartford City, Indiana, when they see two strange-looking figures 30 feet ahead of them on the road. Four feet tall, they are dressed in tight-fitting silver suits and wear boxlike shoes. They move in a clumsy fashion, their arms flopping oddly along their sides. Debbie accelerates and drives past the figures. The witnesses alert the sheriff’s office, and two officers and a civilian friend, Gary Flatter, investigate. They see no figures but hear an odd, high-frequency sound. Around midnight, Flatter hears the sound again south of the original encounter and notes wild animals leaving the area. His headlights pick up two 4-foot figures 20 feet off the side of the road. He can see a hose going from their egg-shaped helmets down to their chests. Three times they rise 3 feet into the air then float down. The fourth time, they fly away, still standing erectly. (“Occupants in Indiana,” APRO Bulletin 22, no. 2 (Sept./Oct. 1973): 1, 3; Clark III 278)
October 23 — Bonnie Collier observes two metallic cigar-shaped objects over Midway, Texas. She photographs one of them. About 20 minutes later, she notices monarch butterflies are getting entangled in “sheets of a web-like substance” falling to earth. She retrieves a grapefruit-sized sample from a mesquite tree and stores it in a box. Some 20 years later, the sample is analyzed by two engineering students at the University of Texas at Austin. A neutron activation survey indicates high concentrations of sodium, potassium, zinc, and lanthanum. Other tests indicate the sample is spider silk produced by a cribellate orb weaver spider. (Brian Boldman, “An Analysis of Angel Hair, 1947–2000,” IUR 26, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 14; Brian Boldman, “Angel Hair Physical Analyses: A Review,” JUFOS 9 (2006): 106)
October 24 — 9:00 p.m. David Simpson’s car engine stops and the headlights go out when an oval object, 12 feet wide by 8 feet high, lands close by near Dobson, North Carolina. He sees a humanoid with balls of fire for eyes looking into the car. After the creature leaves, the car engine and lights come back on without his having to start the ignition. (David Webb, 1973: Year of the Humanoids, CUFOS, 1976, p. 17)
October 25 — FBI Director Clarencc M. Kelley explains in a letter to a resident of La Habra, California, that the investigation of UFOs “is not and never has been a matter that is within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI.” (Good Above, pp. 253, 475)
October 25 — 7:15 p.m. Lt. Commander Moyer is traveling south from Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt, a restricted US National Security Agency station along Murat Road on North West Cape, north of Exmouth, Western Australia, when he sees a large, black object in the sky 5 miles to his west at an altitude of 2,000 feet. After about 20–25 seconds, the object accelerates at speed to the north. It is first seen at about 20° elevation, to the west. Moore estimates its angular size as half a degree. It is initially stationary and there is no associated noise
at any point, no trail or exhaust. It is last seen at 45°–50° elevation. At about 7:20 p.m., William Gordon Lynn, an Australian civilian and US Navy employee fire captain, notices a large, stationary, black object in the clear sky. It has a halo around the center, which appears to be either revolving or pulsating. He watches it for an estimated four minutes, after which it takes off speedily in a northerly direction and disappears after a few seconds. He thinks it is about 30 feet in diameter and hovering at 1,000 feet over the hills west of the base. On this same date, the base is communicating a DEFCON III alert to conventional and nuclear forces in the region during the Yom Kippur War (an NSA misreading of a Syrian message to the USSR had indicated a Soviet build-up). (NICAP, “Black Sphere Observed / DEFCON-3 Reached”; Bill Chalker, “The North West Cape Incident: UFOs and Nuclear Alert in Australia,” IUR 11, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1986): 10–11; Bill Chalker, “The UFO Connection: Startling Implications for Australia’s North West Cape, and for Australia’s Security,” Flying Saucer Review 31, no. 5 (July 1986): 16– 18; Good Above, pp. 174–175; Bill Chalker, “UFOs Sub Rosa Down Under, Part 4,” 1996; Swords 403–405)
October 25 — 9:00 p.m. A 22-year-old man and two 10-year-old boys allegedly see a bright-white, dome-shaped UFO about 100 feet in diameter land in a field near Uniontown, Pennsylvania. “Screaming sounds” emanate from somewhere nearby. The UFO makes a lawnmower-like sound. Suddenly they see two large apelike creatures with glowing green eyes walking along a fence, one in front of the other. The older witness fires a tracer slug with his rifle over the creatures’ heads, but they continue moving forward, seemingly communicating by making whining sounds. The tall and closer of the two, about 8 feet tall, is running its left hand along the fence, while the smaller one is struggling to keep up. The older witness fires three bullets into the larger creature’s chest. It whines and reaches toward the smaller creature. The UFO vanishes and the lawnmower sound ceases. The area where the UFO had been is now glowing brilliant white. The hairy creatures head toward the woods. A policeman arrives at 9:45 p.m. and finds the landing spot still glowing slightly. They hear something moving in the woods nearby and smell a sulfur-like odor. The officer and the witness panic and jump into the police car and drive about 150 feet. Stan Gordon shows up at 1:30 a.m. with four members of his Westmoreland County UFO Study Group. In the company of the witness and his father, they walk around the field until the witness undergoes a violent emotional attack, during which he growls like an animal and throws his father and an investigator to the ground. During his attack, he has an apocalyptic vision in which he receives a dire warning from a man in a black hat and cloak. The older witness undergoes hypnosis with psychologist Berthold Eric Schwarz, who says he has visions about the impending end of the world and after the event he “felt like an animal.” (Berthold Eric Schwarz, “Berserk: A UFO-Creature Encounter,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 1 (July 1974): 3–11; Clark III 556)
October 28 — 1:15 a.m. Truck driver Dionisio Llanca is changing a tire along Highway 3 some 11 miles from Bahía Blanca, Argentina, when a UFO lands and three humanlike beings, two men and a woman, approach him. Nearly paralyzed by the light from the UFO, Llanca lets one of the beings take a blood sample and later remembers going on board the craft, whose occupants warn him that humans are headed towards disaster. He loses consciousness and wakes up in a railyard 5.5 miles away, then finds himself in a hospital. However, Argentine UFO investigators find major discrepancies and consider Llanca’s story an invention devised to make some money. (“Occupant Encounter in Argentina,” APRO Bulletin 22, no. 3 (Nov./Dec. 1973): 7–8; “Possible Hoax,” APRO Bulletin 22, no. 4 (Jan./Feb. 1974): 11; Gordon Creighton and Charles Bowen, “The Extraordinary Case of Dionisio Llanca and the Ufonauts,” Flying Saucer Review 26, no. 4 (November 1980): 2–10; Guillermo Roncoroni, “Dionisio Llanca: El Informe Solari,” UFO Press, no. 19 (Jan./March 1984): 32–35; “The Case of Dionisio Llanca in Argentina,” Flying Saucer Review 30, no. 2 (December 1984): 25–26; “The Abduction of Dionisio Llanca,” Above Top Secret forum, February 4, 2016; Clark III 601–602)
October 28 — 11:30 p.m. Karl Fichtinger watches an odd orange-yellow light to the south of Bad Traunstein, Austria, that projects two beams of light that creep slowly upward like a pair of snail feelers. After moving up a short distance, they begin curving outward. After 7–10 seconds when they reach a certain height they stop moving, the two tips turn green for 2–3 seconds, a green mist falls down sideways, and the beams disappear. After 2–5 seconds the process repeats again and again. Around 12:30 a.m. he wakes his friend Johann Pritz in another house and they continue to watch the display for several hours. At 2:00 a.m. the light emits a red “missile” that moves east, stops, turns yellow-orange, and produces a similar pattern of signals. Then they notice a third object in the west that looks more like a dark domed disc, and it is also sending thin feelers up light upward. Three more smaller lights join the one in the east. At 3:30 a.m., the missile in the east stops and takes off to the south but the others remain. The witnesses go home at 4:30, and all the objects are gone by 6:00 a.m. They estimate that the first object has given off 1,200 signals, the domed disc some 550, and the missile a minimum of 360. (Ernst Berger, “Luminous ‘Snails’ near Traunstein, Austria,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 2 (October 1974): 12–18)
November — 1:00 a.m. A witness in Sauk Village, Illinois, is sitting in her dark living room when a light outside causes it to get brighter. She sees a lighted domed disc hovering in the front yard. A central section is filled with alternating
blue and gold rectangular lights. It appears to be revolving, except for the dome, which is stationary. Her husband joins her and they continue watching it for 10 minutes. It quickly takes off straight up in 10 seconds. (“Illinois,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 6, no. 2 (April/May 1985): 5, 7)
November 2 — 2:45 a.m. Lyndia Morel, a masseuse in Manchester, New Hampshire, leaves work and begins driving on State Highway 114 to her home in nearby Goffstown. On the outskirts of Manchester, she sees an odd light in the sky that is flashing different colors. The light vanishes when she reaches Goffstown, but it reappears twice more, seemingly brighter and closer. She sees that it is an orange-and-gold globe covered with hexagons like a honeycomb, with an oval window on the upper left. The red, green, and blue flashes come from somewhere near the center of the object, and she hears a high-pitched sound. Suddenly she is unable to remove her hands from the steering wheel. She feels that the object is taking control of her and the car and pulling them in. Her car speeds up against her will as she passes Westlawn Cemetery. The object is now only a few hundred feet away, and through a window she sees a smallish humanoid figure standing behind a console. The figure has a round, grayish head, a wrinkled face, a downturned slit of a mouth, and two large eyes with dark pupils. She feels that he is sending her a telepathic message to be unafraid. Somehow, she slows the car and turns into the driveway of a house just past the cemetery. She jumps out and runs to the kitchen door of the house, ignoring a German shepherd dog that growls and barks at her. She pounds on the door and rings the bell and yells for help as the UFO moves to a position across the street, hovering and watching her, still emitting a high-pitched sound. The residents, Mr. and Mrs.
Beaudoin, come to the door and find a terrified woman who is covering her ears and claiming that a UFO is after her. The Beaudoins cannot see or hear anything, but Mrs. Beaudoin calls the police. Investigator Walter N. Webb finds that the position of the UFO corresponds too closely to the planet Mars, at least in the later stage of the sighting, to rule that explanation out entirely. (“Occupant Encounter in New Hampshire,” APRO Bulletin 22, no. 4 (Jan./Feb. 1974): 5–7; “The 1973 UFO Encounter of Lyndia Morel,” UFO Casebook)
November 2 — Night. Police officers looking into reports of a “strange animal” seen in the area of Midland, Pennsylvania, spot a large, disc-shaped object in the sky overhead. At least 100 other people also see the object. (Clark III 556)
November 3 — Day. At the bottom of a gully in an isolated section of the woods near Midland, Pennsylvania, two hunters find a 42-foot ring impressed in the grass. Investigator Stan Gordon finds a trail of three-toed footprints—11 inches long and 5 inches wide—some 250 yards from the ring. (Clark III 556)
November 6 — 9:00 p.m. Off-duty patrolmen Gary Steinberg and Thomas Brown are sitting in an unmarked patrol car in Freeport, New York, facing east. They see a bright light in the sky that is not the helicopter they think it is at first. They watch it for 5–10 minutes before it moves away to the southeast. Steinberg tries to get closer in the patrol car, while Brown stays behind and directs him by radio. He gets to within 300–400 feet of it, as it is 700–800 feet in altitude. It now appears football-shaped and 100 feet long. He watches it for 10–15 minutes as it glows silvery blue with an occasional yellow-red pulsating tint. The object then moves off to the southwest, stopping occasionally. A smaller object comes up on his right and drifts up to the larger object and merges with it. The larger object dims in sections (about 16), one after the other, and it takes off to the southwest and disappears in a couple seconds. (Dick Ruhl, “Merging UFOs over Long Island,” APRO Bulletin 22, no. 4 (Jan./Feb. 1974): 1, 3– 4; Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects: A Further Look,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 5–6)
November 6 — 9:45 p.m. A USAF security policeman at the eastern portion of Kirtland AFB near Albuquerque, New Mexico, sees a large, glowing object hovering 100 feet above the Manzano Nuclear Weapons Storage Facility. It is an oblate spheroid, 150 feet in diameter, gold in color, and absolutely silent. Nine other air policemen are alerted, and four F-101 Voodoo Air National Guard interceptors are scrambled from Kirtland. The UFO begins moving east and passes out of sight at treetop level in the Manzano Mountains. (R. C. Hecker, “New Mexico Reports,” APRO Bulletin 23, no. 2 (Sept./Oct. 1974): 5; Good Need, p. 321)
Mid-November — Evening. Two sentries at a lookout post on the perimeter of Istrana Air Base, Veneto province, Italy, see two beings, about 4 feet 11 inches tall, dressed in white. Further away they see an unconventional craft. The beings run to the UFO and speed away. Marks are found at the landing site. (“Italy: Top Secret,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 5 (March 1975): iii; Good Above, pp. 143–144)
November 16 — 7:00 p.m. Two 11-year old boys are outside in Lemon Grove, California, intending to play in a vacant lot or field in the neighborhood. When they arrive, there is a dark object hovering about 18 inches above the field. It seems inactive. One of the boys cautiously approaches and raps it with his flashlight, making a sound like metal on metal. Instantly, the object’s dome lights up in a brilliant red light that illuminates the entire area. It rises three or four more feet off the ground, and a row of green lights light up around its perimeter, flashing in sequence. The thing begins rotating and making a “woooo woooo woooo” sound. The object is easily visible now and appears as a domed disc. The dome is large and tall (about equal to half or more of the disc height) and glowing bright red, then flashing intermittent red. The boys are now frightened and start to run away as the object takes off toward the
southwest. At the site are found three marks forming an equilateral triangle within an area of grass swirled in a counterclockwise pattern. A magnetometer at La Posta Astro-Geophysical Observatory in Campo, California, allegedly registers a perturbation at 7:20 p.m. (NICAP, “Object Hovers 18ʺ off Ground / Magnetometer Perturbation”; “Boys Encounter Landed Object,” APRO Bulletin 22, no. 4 (Jan./Feb. 1974): 7–8)
November 17 — 6:00 p.m. Johann Pritz notices an oblong object emitting lights upward (similar to those he had seen on October 29) as he is driving near Ulltichschlag, Austria. He drives home to Bad Traunstein and continues watching the display to the south. He gathers several other witnesses in town, and they continue watching until the object fades out after 7:00 p.m. (Ernst Berger, “Luminous ‘Snails’ near Traunstein, Austria,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 2 (October 1974): 16–18)
November 18 — About 6:00 p.m. Four women are driving south from Tracy, Quebec, to Contrecoeur when they see a “watermelon-sized” ball of yellowish light suddenly appear above a pylon a quarter of a mile ahead of them. As they pass, it starts moving westward over the St. Lawrence River. The object seems to change shape as it flies, becoming alternately larger and smaller, dimming and growing in intensity. The light follows them as they weave in and out through wooded areas. Eventually the object is lost to sight as the women drive into Montreal. At one point they encounter a large volume of traffic that seems to be slowed by an odd pink cloud lying across the highway. They also see a small human figure standing in the middle of the road. (Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 107–108)
November 22 — 2:00 a.m. A woman living in an isolated area near Joliette, Quebec, notices a white object outside her kitchen window. She moves closer to the window and sees a 4-foot-tall being with huge glowing eyes. Around its head or helmet there is a halo; its shoulders slope at a 45° angle from the head. After 15 seconds, the figure withdraws. She alerts her husband, who goes outside to investigate but only finds the dog “scared to death.” The following night the cat is spooked. (Claude Macduff, “The November 1973 UFO-Invasion of Quebec,” The UFO Register 7, no. 1/2 (1976): 12–15; Clark III 496; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 108–109)
November 28 — A Gallup poll shows that 51% of Americans believe UFOs are “real,” as opposed to 27% who think they are “imaginary.” And 11% claim to have seen a UFO, extrapolating into 15 million Americans. (“51% in Gallup Poll Believe in U.F.O.’s: 11% Note Sightings,” New York Times, November 29, 1973, p. 45; Robert J. Durant, “Evolution of Public Opinion on UFOs,” IUR 18, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1993): 12)
November 30 — 7:00 p.m. Pilot Riccardo Marano is about to land at Caselle Airport, Turin, Italy, in a Piper Navajo, when the controller notifies him that there is a UFO about 1,320 feet above the runway. He sees a luminous, multicolored ball of light changing from violet to blue to dark red. “When I got closer and had a better view, the object at once made off, flying in a most irregular fashion, maneuvering in a way I have seen no plane do, making fantastic lateral deviations, and sudden vast jumps to and fro, as if it enjoyed playing hide-and-seek. Its speed was as high as” 540 mph, Marano says. Col. Rustichelli, commandant of the Caselle military airfield, sees the UFO on his own radar screen. “It was something solid, lit up, like a plane on my radar.” Commander Tranquillo, pilot of an Alitalia Air Line DC-9 en route from Turin to Rome, calls to the control tower: “I see a shining thing giving out intermittent flashes of light, four miles from me. I dare not approach. I give way.” Commander Mezzalami in another Alitalia DC-9 reports: “I was able to observe the object … notified by the control tower just as I was about to touch down. I had a good view of it I can offer no theories as to its significance and can only say that it
was something very strange indeed.” (NICAP, “UFO Darts To and Fro, Observed from 3 Aircraft and Gnd Radar”; Story, p. 373; F. Lagarde, “Italie: Turin 30 Novembre et Suza 24 Novembre 1973,” Lumières dans la Nuit, no. 133 (March 1974): 5–6; Gordon Creighton, “The Italian Scene Once More,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 2 (October 1974): 27; 1Pinotti 185–186)
December — Kansas is quietly undergoing an epidemic of strange cattle deaths. The incidents first receive wide publicity in the December 22 Kansas City Times, which takes note of the fact that most of the deaths are Black Angus.
They have died within a few miles of US 81 in a dozen counties in north-central Kansas. Many show knife marks on the carcasses, including the apparent butchering of sex organs. The lack of blood and footprints is also puzzling. Sheriffs from the affected counties meet and decide that cultists are responsible. But according to the Kansas State University Veterinarian Laboratory in Manhattan, the animals have died of bloat and coyotes have eaten the soft parts. Many ranchers reject the explanation. Mystery helicopters are also linked to the mutilations. (Clark III 133; “Cattle Mutilations Baffle Kansas Farmers, Officials,” Kansas City (Mo.) Times, December 22, 1973, pp. 1–2, 16; Jerome Clark, “Strange Case of the Cattle Killings,” Fate 27, no. 8 (August 1974): 79–90; Roberta Donovan and Keith Wolverton, Mystery Stalks the Prairie, THAR Institute, 1976)
December — Donald E. Keyhoe publishes Aliens from Space, in which he continues to ignore occupant cases but finally admits that the CIA, not the Air Force, is the primary perpetrator of the UFO cover-up. (Donald E. Keyhoe, Aliens from Space: The Real Story of Unidentified Flying Objects, Doubleday, 1973; Clark III 649–650)
December — The Société Varoise d’Étude des Phénomènes Spatiaux in Toulon, France, begins publishing the journal Approche in conjunction with the Société Vauclusienne d’Étude des Phénomènes Spatiaux in Vedene, France. (Approche, no. 1 (December 1973))
December 3 — James Yorke and his family watch a triangular UFO with colored lights on the bottom for 15 minutes two miles north of Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. It is over Minas Basin and crossing the water very slowly. (Don Ledger, “The Flying Triangle Phenomenon,” IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 7)
December 6 — 6:45 p.m. Witnesses at Fabrègues, Hérault, France, see a landed domed disc on legs with a brightly lit “blister” on top, flashing red and white lights around the rim and making a humming sound. A door opens and a ladder unfolds, causing the witnesses to flee. The craft changes to an orange glow and chases them. Later, four imprints in a 51-inch square are found, along with ladder marks. The area appears “swept” as if by a blast. (Yves Herbo, “Décembre 1973: Atterrissages avec traces à Fabrègues,” Sciences Faits et Histoires, November 21, 2014)
December 8 — While harvesting, farmer Kevin O’Connell finds seven sections of his oat crop flattened into circles 3 miles west of Bordertown, South Australia. They are spread over 20 acres and the largest is 14 feet in diameter. The oats are flattened counterclockwise. (Terry Wilson, “1973: Bordertown,” Old Crop Circles)
December 15 — A single crop circle is found in a wheat field at Wokuma, South Australia. The wheat has been flattened counterclockwise and there are two bare patches. (Terry Wilson, “1973: Wokuma,” Old Crop Circles)
December 20 — 2:15 a.m. Michael Wagner and Robert B. Klinn of Pacific Palisades, California, see a yellow, glowing blob hovering in the south-southeast. Through a telescope, the blob is seen to be a precise arrangement of round, yellow-gold lights. It fades away after 75 minutes. (Ann Druffel, “Santa Catalina Island Recurring ‘Cloud- Cigars,’” Proceedings of the 1976 CUFOS Conference, Center for UFO Studies, 1976, pp. 67–68; Ann Druffel, “Santa Catalina Channel Cloud Cigars,” IUR 31, no. 1 (January 2007): 15)
1974
1974 — The French government decides to systematically gather UFO reports from the gendarmerie and transmit them to the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES). At the time, the gendarmerie has about 300 reports and is getting 100 new ones each year. A committee of the Institut des Hautes Études de Defense Nationale recommends the creation of a special UFO investigation agency. (Gildas Bourdais, “From GEPAN to SEPRA: Official UFO Studies in France,” IUR 25, no. 4 (Winter 2000–2001): 11; Gildas Bourdais, “The Death and Rebirth of Official French UFO Studies,” IUR 31, no. 2 (June 2007): 12)
1974 — Perry Petrakis founds the Association d’Étude sur les Soucoupes Volantes in Aix-en-Provence, France, and soon establishes branches in Vevey, Switzerland, and Kalmthout, Belgium. It begins publishing the AESV bulletin through June 1981. AESV continues under the name SOS-OVNI in 1990. (AESV, no. 6 (April 1978))
1974 — Contact (UK) expands to Contact International, after establishing many overseas branches in Turkey, Colombia, and elsewhere. It has an international membership of 2,000. (Story, p. 89)
1974 — John Hind establishes the Irish UFO Research Centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It publishes the Irish UFO News from 1976 to 1980. (Irish UFO News 1 no. 2 (July 1976))
1974 — UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass publishes UFOs Explained, taking on some difficult UFO cases but finding none worthy of attention. Ufologists take vigorous issue with his representation of cases and publish numerous refutations that are little noticed outside the UFO community. (Philip J. Klass, UFOs Explained, Random House, 1974; Clark III 659)
1974 — The UFO Subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics is disbanded. (Story, p. 8) 1974 — Bob Gribble, a Seattle, Washington, fireman, establishes the National UFO Reporting Center, with a hotline
phone number that is shared with Federal Aviation Administration offices. (“Profile,” IUR 7, no. 2 (March 1982): 15–16)
1974 — John Rimmer has moved from Liverpool to London, England, in 1973, but John Harney moves there this year to work for the Kew Observatory. MUFOB continues in London, with Rimmer taking over the bulk of the editorial work. (“History of Magonia,” Magonia Archive)
1974 — 12:30 a.m. Two women are driving along Hamilton Road, Quakers Hill, New South Wales, when the car suddenly shakes violently and stops. The radio will not turn on. The driver gets out of the car to get her children out of the back seat when she looks up and sees a massive disc-shaped object at an altitude no greater than the nearby power pole. It is surrounded completely by lights and has a dome in the middle on the top. The object is
gun-metal gray and the size of half a football field. It silently moves over the dairy farm next to the road. Then it stops and shoots up into the air. The car starts up with no problems afterward. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 20)
January — Don Berliner of the Fund for UFO Research does an exhaustive review of the then unreleased Project Blue Book files at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, which include many witness names that are later redacted for public release. (Sparks, p. 6)
January — Since 1968, Marjorie E. Fish, a schoolteacher in Oak Harbor, Ohio, has been fascinated with the star map drawn by Betty Hill after her abduction. If she could figure out what stars are on the map, she might be able to determine where the UFO came from. With much difficulty and many failed attempts, Fish creates a 3D map that indicates the relevant stars are the two in the Zeta Reticuli binary system, 39.3 light years from earth. She first publishes her results in Pursuit. Later observations reveal some interpretations in Fish’s map to be inaccurate, and she rejects her hypothesis in 2011. (Wikipedia, “Betty and Barney Hill”; Marjorie E. Fish, “Validation of the Betty Hill Map,” Pursuit 7, no. 1 (January 1974): 4–8; Terence Dickinson, “The Zeta Reticuli Incident,” Astronomy 2, no. 12 (December 1974): 5–18; “Update on the Betty Hill Star Map,” IUR/Frontiers of Science 3, no. 2 (Jan./Feb. 1981): 16, 29; Allan Hendry, “UFO Road Map: or, Lost in the Stars,” Fate 35, no. 2 (February 1982): 56–63; David J. Eicher, “The Zeta Reticuli (or Ridiculi) Incident,” January 31, 2001; Brett Holman, “Goodbye, Zeta Reticuli,” Fortean Times 242 (December 2008): 50–52; Colin Johnston, “The Truth about Betty Hill’s UFO Star Map,” Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, August 19, 2011; Clark III 586–487)
Winter — 10:30 a.m. Harry Charlton and his wife have just driven east through Melrose, New Mexico, when they see two objects moving on their left at about 1,500 feet altitude. They have no wings, tail sections, or engine nodules.
Both are dull gray, like galvanized sheet iron. The larger one is in front, with a slightly smaller one about 600 feet behind. Charlton thinks they are about a half-mile away, but he can hear no noise or see any smoke. When the objects are about abreast of the car, a sliding door opens on the larger one near the front end. A large, shiny sphere (like polished aluminum) about 15–20 feet in diameter emerges, moves toward the smaller object, and enters it after a door opens near the rear end. After they move out of sight in a few minutes, Charlton sees two F-111s take off in their direction from Cannon Air Force Base near Clovis. (Harry Charlton, [Letter], CUFOS Associate Newsletter 2, no. 5 (May 1981): 3.)
January 3 — 9:30 p.m. Two young student teachers are driving home near Leek, Staffordshire, England, when a green mass appears to follow them. The couple feels a presence. Despite being on a lonely road, they get out of the car to watch a dark mass low above their heads, with arcs of blue and green light encircling them. In terror, they head off over the moors, but moments later they run over a cattle grid, inexplicably finding themselves in Ilam 12 miles away. Seconds later there is another bump and they reach a developed area that turns out to be a town 20 miles to the north. They find a police station to report the incident and find that it is now 3:30 a.m. (Jenny Randles, “The Twelve UFOs of Christmas,” Fortean Times 374 (Christmas 2018): 29)
January 7 — 8:40 p.m. A man’s car suddenly dies as he is driving near Warneton, Belgium. He sees a landed domed disc with a flat bottom like a WWI helmet, 23–33 feet in diameter and 7–10 feet wide. It has a flange around its base and three legs. White and orange alternating bands are on the glowing object. Two humanoid beings approach him. They have broad shoulders, heads shaped like inverted pears, long arms, large eyes, and no noses. One is about 4 feet tall, the other somewhat taller; a third being remains near the craft. They wear internally lit cube- shaped helmets with the face visible, gray jumpsuits, and gloves. The taller being comes within 12–15 feet of the vehicle, then opens and closes its mouth. The witness feels a shock to the back of his head and hears a low- pitched sound. The two humanoids quickly return to the craft, which now pulses with an electric blue color, and departs. (MM. Bazin, Bigorne, and Bodin, “Atterrissage à Warneton (Belgique): Contact avec les Ufonautes,” Lumières dans la Nuit, no. 139 (November 1974): 3–6; “The Robots at Warneton,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 5 (March 1975): 6–9; UFOEv II 493)
January 8 — 3:00 a.m. John E. Justice leaves the Ohio Masonic Home in Springfield, Ohio, when his headlights dim and the engine dies. He sees a display of aerial lights descending a short distance in front of him. The blinking lights are multicolored “like a rainbow.” Suddenly they blink out and are replaced by a blinding steady white light about 6 feet ahead of and 3 feet above the car. The light is coming from the inside of the object, where he can see a lighted room with a golden aisle and five occupants seated on the left-hand side in a straight row. Each seat is a different color, and the garments of the occupants match the color of the seat. Each has long brown hair that reaches the floor. The object departs suddenly, the interior blinking out and the colored lights reappearing. The car engine starts without difficulty. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 16)
January 18 — 4:30 p.m. Giuseppe Cardelli is driving between Milan and Bologna, Italy, when he sees a “strange shining ball” in the sky. He stops his car, gets out, and photographs it. He submits the photo to NASA, which replies on June 18 that it has no explanation. A consultant wonders whether the photo shows a reflection in the car window and finds the “wiggly clouds to the right” interesting. (“Italian Photo Unexplained,” APRO Bulletin 24, no. 3 (September 1975): 1, 4)
January 23 — 8:30 p.m. Witnesses at Llandrillo, northern Wales, see a bright object followed by a luminous tail and (according to one witness) a blinking blue light. The object is motionless for several minutes, during which time it dims then becomes very bright. It appears to crash around Cadair Bronwen mountain, east of the village. Many people hear a terrific explosion and a violent shaking of the ground recorded up to 60 miles away. Astronomers at Leicester University, England, record at least three fireball meteors this evening. The British Geological Survey identifies the source of the explosion as an earthquake. Police and a mountain rescue team from RAF Valley in Anglesey, Wales, are in the area almost immediately and cordon off access to the supposed crash site on a barren hilltop. They find no trace of a crash the next day, but a nurse on the way to the crash site after being telephoned by police headquarters is on her way up the mountain with her daughters when she sees something sitting on the ground ahead of her. It seems to be intact and is large, circular, and glowing orange. The nurse and her daughters are within a few hundred feet when police and military forces show up and clearly tell her to leave the area.
Researcher Tony Dodd is reportedly approached by a retired military man using the name of “Robert Prescott” who tells him that he and some others were assigned to transport two oblong crates from the crash site to a place called Porton Down where the UK Ministry of Defence’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory is located. They are instructed not to stop for anyone. Military personnel open the crates and Prescott sees two humanoid figures, apparently dead, about 5–6 ft tall, very thin, almost skeletal in nature with a covering skin. These are placed in decontamination suits. Other units supposedly transport live aliens from the crash site. At 10:00 p.m., a man watches a luminous sphere descend into the sea near the Dee Estuary about 25 miles north. Nick Redfern speculates that a UK version of Project Moon Dust might be in activation, which could explain reports of mystery helicopters in the area in prior weeks. Jenny Randles hears later from a former UK government official that a crashed UFO is being kept in a military base in South Wales. In May, Welsh MP Dafydd Elis-Thomas asks Defence Minister Brynmor John if any official investigation was made; John says the only official investigation was made by the RAF Valley team. National Archives files released in 2005 show that the MoD consulted the Meteorological Office and DI55, which says the meteor explanation is the likeliest. (Wikipedia, “Berwyn Mountain UFO incident”; Jenny Randles, “The Night the Mountain Exploded,” IUR 21, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 9– 11, 32; Nick Redfern, A Covert Agenda: UFO Secrecy Exposed, Simon & Schuster, 1997, pp. 116–124; Andy Roberts, “Fire on the Mountain: The Berwyn Mountain Incident,” IUR 24, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 16–23, 30; UFOFiles2, pp. 90–91; “Files Released on 1974 ‘Welsh Roswell,’” BBC News, August 5, 2010; Andy Roberts, UFO Down? The Berwyn Mountain UFO Crash, CFZ Press, 2010; Clark III 287–288)
January 24 — While the RAF rescue team is still operating around Cadair Bronwen, three family members see a bright object in the sky near the mountain. Through field glasses, they see a disc-shaped object divided into red, green, yellow, and purple sections. After 10 minutes they call the police and the object disappears behind a cloud. ()
January 26 — 2:59 a.m. Capt. Lars Berglund and the crew of a Boeing 727 airliner flying near Lisbon, Portugal, see a V- formation of 10–15 luminous orange discs. Berglund rules out a satellite reentry because of its precision. After the formation passes, another Portuguese aircraft reports the same objects to ground control. A Norwegian and a British aircraft also report the same phenomenon. (“Formation Seen by Air Crews,” APRO Bulletin 22, no. 5 (March/April 1974): 7–8; “Airliner Met 15 UFOs over Lisbon,” UFO-Sweden Special Report, 1974 no. 4, pp. 3– 4)
February — Hynek visits the APRO headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, asking for a contact list of APRO investigators for the Center for UFO Studies to make use of in a cooperative fashion. Coral Lorenzen is suspicious of Hynek’s background and does not provide him the list. (“Hynek: UFO Movement Basically Amateurs,” APRO Bulletin 33, no. 2 (January 1986): 6–7)
February 6 — Late evening. A woman watching TV in rural Fayette County near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, hears a “rattling of tin cans” on her porch. She grabs and loads a shotgun, turns on the porch light, and steps into the doorway of the porch, where she encounters a 7-foot-tall apelike creature with its hands raised in the air. She fires into his midsection and it “just disappeared in a flash of light.” Her son-in-law, who lives in a trailer 100 feet away, hears the shot, grabs a revolver, and heads for her house. Along the way, he sees “shadows of four or five hairy people” who approach him. They have “fire red eyes that glowed in total darkness.” About 1,500 feet away, a red, flashing light hovers above the trees. Investigating police arrive and find no tracks but notice that the animals seem terrified. The son-in-law tells investigator Stan Gordon that he had encountered a similar apelike
creature in November 1973. (Clark III 556–557; Stan Gordon, “UFO’s, in Relation to Creature Sightings in Pennsylvania,” MUFON 1974 UFO Symposium Proceedings, MUFON, 1974, pp. 132–154)
February 8 — 7:25 a.m. Ten girls from the orphanage school in Vălenii de Munte, Romania, watch two yellow-orange spheres above a hill to the southwest of town. After 10 seconds, they merge into one object and take the form of an elongated oval with an orange dome. It begins moving slowly toward the west-southwest, then accelerates and disappears behind the treeline after 40 seconds. Fresh marks are found in a plowed field at the site where the object was seen. (Romania 36–37)
February 8 — Sunset. Mullah Umar Siddiq, merchant Ibrahim Khaleb, and physician Muhammad Watif are standing on the roof of the Al-Hud Mosque in Al Mukalla, Yemen, when they see three large white discs gliding slowly downward. They gather some provisions, hire three camels, and head for the Wadi Jawlan 32 miles to the east, where they estimate the objects have landed. At dawn, they dismount to say prayers, and a vivid glow lights up the eastern sky above the Wadi Jawlan for a few seconds. The light is yellowish-white and comes from three beams that are stabbing upwards and fanning out into the sky. Although the light dies down, the beams are still visible, eventually growing paler. They find deep, clear-cut tracks of caterpillar-track vehicles all over the rugged area. At three places, about 325 feet apart, they find numerous scoop marks, about 33 inches wide, in an area in the form of a triangle with sides 17 feet wide. The rock has been fused and melted and the grass and thorn-scrub is burnt. (Gordon Creighton, “An Arabian Landing?” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 3 (December 1974): 12–13)
February 14 — 4:25 a.m. Two brothers are transporting their parents’ furniture in a U-Haul truck near Ely, Nevada, when they notice a round, orange object that paces them, then approaches. They feel as though they are “hit by a blast of wind or force field.” The engine and lights give out, the steering goes, and the truck seems to momentarily float, come back down, and coast to a stop. Ahead of them, just over a hill, they see a large, round object with a domed top and wings. The other object approaches again. One brother points a flashlight at it, whereupon they both get an intense feeling of isolation that lasts about 20 minutes. Since the truck appears to be damaged, they flag down a passing car and call for a tow truck. When the tow truck hauls it away, the rear wheels fall off. It needs new tires, a rear axle, outside housing, and gears. (“Car Disabled by UFO?” APRO Bulletin 22, no. 6 (May/June 1974): 4–5; UFOEv II 218–219)
February 21 — French radio journalist Jean-Claude Bourret interviews French Defense Minister Robert Galley for his France Inter radio program, OVNIs: Pas de panique! Galley says his department has been interested in UFO reports since the French wave of 1954. Ministry records contain many baffling radar/visual cases. He speaks of the strong quality of the evidence and that people must regard UFOs with a “completely open mind.” The mass of UFO reports “from the airborne gendarmerie, from the mobile gendarmerie, and from the gendarmerie charged with conducting investigations,” all of which are forwarded to CNES, would make people see that it is “pretty disturbing.” (“French Minister Speaks on UFOs,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 2 (October 1974): 3–4; Good Above, p. 129; Gildas Bourdais, “From GEPAN to SEPRA: Official UFO Studies in France,” IUR 25, no. 4 (Winter 2000–2001): 11; Yves Herbo, “OVNIs et divulgation: Le Ministre des Armées françaises l’a fait en 1974,” Sciences Faits et Histoire, February 2, 2015)
March — About 9:00 p.m. A missile launch officer with the 564th Strategic Missile Squadron is on watch at the Malmstrom AFB Romeo Flight missile alert facility near Brady, Montana, when both the outer and inner alarms go off. A security alert team arrives and sees a large, brilliantly self-illuminated object hovering above the Romeo-29 launch facility. Suddenly, the missile starts a countdown. The officer quickly flips the inhibit switch, which puts the system offline. Then the system spontaneously restarts and the missile goes into launch mode again, followed by an inhibit order that does not work. But the launch code is false and the missile remains in its pad. Meanwhile, the UFO moves away straight up at high speed. An F-106 interceptor attempts unsuccessfully to reach it, and Malmstrom AFB radar tracks the UFO. Later he learns that the ground electronics in Romeo-29 are fried as if from a surge. (Nukes 353–355; Robert L. Hastings, “Former U.S. Air Force Missile Launch Officer Says a UFO Activated One of His ICBMs—Twice!” December 7, 2014)
March 9 —9:58 p.m. Fiat Corporation pilot Alfonso Isaia chases a luminous, saucer-shaped object with colored rings near Milan, Italy. The UFO is confirmed by Milan radar. (MUFON UFO Journal, March 1989, p. 19; Massimiliano Aiello, “L’avvistamento del Pilota del Agnelli,” Massimiliano Aiello, January 17, 2013; 1Pinotti 188–189)
March 13 — An Argentine Airlines plane en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Córdoba, Argentina, is flanked by two glowing objects that pace it for several minutes, then speed away. (UFOEv II 121)
March 17 — The crew of a TWA airliner over Taiwan sees a shiny oval or cigar-shaped object and four smaller, spherical, satellite objects. (UFOEv II 415; Richard F. Haines, “A Review of Selected Sightings from Aircraft from 1973 to 1978,” in 1979 MUFON UFO Symposium Proceedings, MUFON, 1979, p. 127)
March 20 — 11:00 p.m. Adrian Sánchez Sánchez, a salesman, is driving near El Castillo de las Guardas, Seville, Spain, when he sees a large metallic UFO, 450–600 feet long, with three smaller ships shaped like yo-yos. It flies silently and has no windows but towers above and below. One of the objects silently pursues Sánchez and disappears as he enters a village. (Eileen Buckle, “Spanish UFO Fiesta,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 3 (December 1974): 3; UFOEv II 345)
March 23 — 3:00 a.m. The chauffeur of the president of the Cádiz Provincial Commission is driving on the highway in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain, when he sees a “luminous, metal-like” object moving upward with great brilliancy. As he approaches it, he feels a strange sensation. His car comes to a near stop, wavering back and forth like a feather. (UFOEv II 346)
March 23 — Night. A young man (pseudonym Harald Andersson) comes out of the parish house in Markim, Stockholm County, Sweden, when he hears a voice in his head telling him to follow a dark forest road. Just after passing a small cottage, he sees two runestones by the side of the path. Suddenly a blinding light knocks him to the ground where he lies unconscious for a while, then wakes up on the doorstep of his villa in Lindholmen, Vallentuna. His wife, disturbed by his condition (bleeding from his forehead and a burn on his cheek), takes him to Danderyds Hospital where hypnotherapist Ture Arvidsson regresses him to the time of the incident (twice, on April 1 and May 20). He discovers that a beam of light has floated him up into the air while tall, hooded figures touch his head with an unknown device, saying they will meet again in the future. Extraordinary abilities follow, including his ability to disrupt a compass needle, see vibrant auras, and premonitions. The incident is apparently witnessed by another man a short distance away. The Swedish Home Guard assigns 50 of its personnel to work with 15 ufologists to examine the region. The group reports a few odd lights in the sky. (Håkan Blomqvist, “An Abduction in Sweden?” Flying Saucer Review 32, no. 5 (August 1987): 14–16)
March 23 — 11:30 p.m. A French doctor allegedly photographs an odd object near Albiosc, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France. The color image shows a red object like a domed disc and four bright, beamlike extensions. UFO investigator Jean Bedet receives the slide anonymously on April 14, with a note pinned to his car windshield when he is visiting the town of Tavernes, Var. Bedet says his wife and others had seen a similar object at 11:00
p.m. the same night. The consensus among researchers in France is that the photo is a hoax perpetrated by Bedet to confirm the visual sighting. (Michel Monnerie, “La Veillée Nationale d’Observation à Barjols (Var),” Lumières dans la Nuit, no. 138 (October 1974): 22–26; Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, “An Approach to UFO Pictures in France,” FOTOCAT Report no. 6, [2009], p. 33)
March 26 — 2:00 a.m. Truck driver Maximiliano Iglesias sees a strange object like a plate placed above another large, round object hovering above the highway in Valdehijaderos, Salamanca, Spain, 650 feet away. Another object is 60 feet away. Two beings come out of the first UFO, point to the truck, then go in again. Both objects fly away. At 11:30 p.m., the same witness watches three silver ships parked on the highway with a floodlight. He stops his engine as some figures approach. He runs and they follow. They are about 6.5 feet tall, with arms and legs, but he cannot see their faces. On March 27, the Guardia Civil investigate and find a hole in the ground. (Pere Rédon, “Valdehijaderos, de Nuevo,” Stendek 5, no. 18 (December 1974): 12–16; Eileen Buckle, “Spanish UFO Fiesta,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 3 (December 1974): 4–6; UFOEv II 346)
March 27 — Antoine, Jerri, and Terry Betz investigate a small brush fire near their residence on Fort George Island, Florida, and come across a metal sphere the size of a bowling ball and weighing 22 pounds. They think the sphere could be a 16th-century cannonball and decide to take it home. Several days later, while Terry is playing the guitar, the sphere seems to react to the music and makes a throbbing noise. Later, the sphere rolls and stops on its own and changes direction. The sphere makes a noise when hit with a hammer, and Terry finds that it moves after being shaken and placed on the ground. In 2012, an analysis by Skeptoid indicates that the sphere is a ball check valve produced by the Bell & Howell company. Its size, weight, and metallurgical composition match those of the company’s check valves. The ball is almost perfectly balanced, and it takes only a small stimulus to make it move or change direction. New Mexico artist James Durling-Jones, who collects scrap metal for his sculptures, remembers loading ball check valves into the rooftop luggage rack of his Volkswagen van and driving through the Jacksonville, Florida, area around Easter of 1971. A few of the balls rolled off the luggage rack and were not retrieved. Skeptoid concludes that this is the sphere’s origin. (Wikipedia, “Betz mystery sphere”; Brian Dunning, “The Betz Mystery Sphere,” Skeptoid podcast, no. 334, October 30, 2012)
March 27 — Night. A large, brightly shining, spindle-shaped object that remains stationary in the air is seen by numerous witnesses in Málaga, Spain, and photographed by Sr. Salas, picture editor of the Sur newspaper. (Eileen Buckle, “Spanish UFO Fiesta,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 3 (December 1974): 4–5)
March 29 — 1:45 a.m. A French vacationer and a local female friend are lying on a sloping beach near Lomé, Togo, when they hear a high-pitched whine and see an unlighted cylindrical object above the ocean. It heads toward them on a level flight path until it gets to 500 feet away. It stops, and within moments a tidal wave washes over the two
witnesses. Wave after wave crash over them as they hold onto a nearby tree. The UFO emits powerful beams of light, and the Frenchman can see the waters parting in a deep trough. They remain paralyzed for 20 minutes until the UFO turns off its lights and flies out to sea. The water surface returns to normal. Over the next few days, the man feels strangely exhausted and has a ringing in his ears. (Joël Mesnard, “UFO over Sea Causes Surge of Tidal Waves,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 6 (April 1977): 4–5, iv; Clark III 250–251)
March 30 — 9:30 p.m. Motorists are blinded by a bright yellow-green object on or near the ground along a road near Ombreiro, Lugo, Spain. Car engines fail, headlights go out. After 3–4 minutes, the UFO rises silently and moves away horizontally. It makes a soft buzzing or whistling sound. (UFOEv II 454)
April — A woman military staffer at the GEC-Marconi contracting company in Frimley, Surrey, England, learns that a break-in has occurred the previous night. A guard suffers a nervous breakdown, is taken to an unnamed hospital, and is not seen again. Later, she hears a discussion in her supervisor’s office and describes it to Nick Redfern: “We have no way of keeping these beings out. We just don’t know what to do next. If they can get in here, they can get in anywhere.” She learns that the guard had seen an alien sifting through files and papers. A blue light emanated from its helmet, and the being dematerialized before the guard’s eyes. (Nick Redfern, A Covert Agenda: UFO Secrecy Exposed, Simon & Schuster, 1997, p. 126; Nick Redfern, “An Extraterrestrial 007?” Mysterious Universe, December 9, 2013)
April — 3:00 a.m. A staff sergeant assigned to the 355th Security Police Squadron stationed at Incirlik Air Base, Adana, Turkey, witnesses a white, glowing UFO hovering silently over the nuclear storage area about 500 feet above the ground for one hour. It appears to be the size of a Volkswagen. At 4:00 a.m., the UFO suddenly and silently accelerates toward the city. The witness sees the object from the Security Police dormitory about 2 miles away. The next day, other security personnel tell him that the only measures taken are “to set up their M-60 machine guns, and that they were not to fire on the object unless it initiated a hostile act.” (Brian Vike, “Sgt. Reports Bizarre Events at WY Missile Base,” Rense.com, July 7, 2004)
Early April — A couple driving on a country road in east Hancock County, Ohio, spot a low light in the northeastern sky.
They drive toward it, but it shoots up into the air so they can see its underside. As the man alerts people to the object on his CB radio, he sees the object lower a box, seemingly to take samples. Then the object approaches the couple and they drive away quickly, but it follows them for 47 miles. At 2:15 a.m., they pull into a Wigwam restaurant, where a man rushes up to them and asks them, “What did you see in the sky?” He denies having a CB radio, and talks in a strangely slow and choppy manner. The man continues to bother them, so they drive away from the Wigwam. Soon they are followed by some strange lights and an orange ball. They stop the car where the road ends and see a “little man on a little black object.” The lights follow them all the way home to Findlay, Ohio. (Clark III 731–733)
April 4 — Two 12-year-old girls in A Estrada, Galicia, Spain, see a noiseless metallic object that stops for a few seconds 30–40 feet from the ground, then moves off. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, A Catalogue of 200 Type I UFO Events in Spain and Portugal, CUFOS, 1976, pp. 47–48)
April 13 — 2:00 a.m. Julio Acosta Bertol (a teacher), his wife, and a student at Herrera de Alcántara, Cáceres, Spain, observe a luminous rhomboid object with a pink-yellowish semicircle on its upper left. The student hears a prolonged, alarm-like noise. They watch the UFO for 5–6 minutes from a distance of 900 feet before it moves off. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, A Catalogue of 200 Type I UFO Events in Spain and Portugal, CUFOS, 1976, p. 49; Nick Redfern, “Spain’s UFO Wave: 1973–1974,” Mysterious Universe, August 28, 2018)
April 15 — Passengers on a ferry on the Strait of Gibraltar between Ceuta and Algeciras, Spain, see a round, intense torch-like light rise out of the water near a huge rock, travel at low altitude, then fall into the water again. This happens once again. (UFOEv II 346)
April 15 — A photojournalist takes four photos of a round object over A Coruña, Galicia, Spain. (Dolan II, 24)
April 15 — 4:30 p.m. Mr. and Mrs. George Torres observe a flat, round object moving to the north over the low hills in back of their home in Tijeras Canyon, New Mexico. It is in the apparent area of the Manzano Nuclear Weapons Storage facility attached to Kirtland AFB. The object changes course to the east at an altitude of 2,000 feet and appears to be 50–75 feet in diameter. It is rotating silently on a central axis. The object turns abruptly to the south, passes behind a small mountain peak, turns east again, and vanishes over the Manzano Mountains. (R. C. Hecker, “New Mexico Reports,” APRO Bulletin 23, no. 2 (Sept./Oct. 1974): 5–6)
April 16 — 12:50 a.m. Mauro Bellingeri, 26, and his wife Carla Farè, 23, are returning to their villa in Santa Maria del Tempio, Alessandrino, Italy, when they notice a bright object that dives abruptly toward them, stopping at a height of 40 feet above the villa. The Bellingeris get out of the car to look at the motionless object. It has a transparent dome and a central ring of revolving red, green, and yellow lights. Inside the dome are three human- like beings with large, round, opaque, grayish helmets. At the base of the headgear is a hoselike apparatus. One
being turns in their direction, then moves back. All three beings then rotate in unison. At this point, 3–4 jets of flame appear beneath the craft, the central portion begins to revolve rapidly, and they hear a whistling sound and feel a blast of air. The UFO speeds away, continuing to whistle. (UFOEv II 460–461; 1Pinotti 189–191; Carlo Pirola, UFOs: Reinvestigation in Italy, Lulu.com, 2019, pp. 68–76)
April 19 — About 9:30 p.m. Ruth Currie and her daughter Laurie see a bright light that seems to be only several hundred feet from their house in Altamont, New York. Curious, they walk toward it until they are within about 200 feet. An oval object is resting on the roadway. It appears to have large windows in the top half, from which comes a brilliant golden glow. Changes of contrast in this light give them the impression that something is moving around within. Currie sends her daughter to get a neighbor, Rose Curtis, and they return shortly. Currie then retreats to her home and phones her husband, who drops what he is doing and hurries over. He can see an object rising up. It shifts speeds and accelerates out of sight. During the bulk of this encounter, the neighborhood dogs are putting up a continuous volley of barking. The next morning, the witnesses get together and go to the site, where they find an area of burned grass 50–75 feet in diameter. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1974, p. 40; NICAP, “The 1974 UFO Chronology”)
April 29 — Roy Hiltner discovers an odd imprint in his soybean field near North Creek in northwestern Putnam County, Ohio. It is a depression 8 feet in diameter and 12 inches deep, with seven 4-foot-long grooves radiating from it. In the center are two holes, each 12 inches in diameter and 12 inches apart. Local and state officials examine the site and cannot determine a cause. (“Two Physical Trace Cases in Northwest Ohio Unexplained,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 6, no. 3 (June/July 1985): 4)
May — 2:00 a.m. Iuliu Marian and his wife wake up abruptly in their home in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Outside they see a bell-shaped object or silhouette with a light tube in the center that seems to be waiting for them. Marian grabs a sports sword he keeps under the bed and goes outside, but the object is already moving away. He follows it around a corner of the house and the object is nowhere to be seen. Marian senses the object is still there somehow because he feels some kind of force field. Against his will he returns to his bedroom, the forcefield disappears, and he goes right back to sleep. (Romania 128–129)
May — 3:30 a.m. US Army Pfc R. Jack Phillips is assigned to the 193rd Military Police Battalion guarding Area 3 of an Army Ordnance Depot [now returned to Germany] where surface-to-surface Pershing missiles are stored near Fischbach bei Dahn, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Suddenly waking up, he watches an extremely bright star above him for about 15 seconds. Suddenly it approaches very quickly and hovers just beyond the depot fence line about 300 feet away. The light now looks like a domed disc about 60 feet in diameter with a concave indentation on its underside. It is covered in a greenish glow and completely silent. After 5 seconds the object gets much brighter for a second then dims again. The security lights in the complex go out. Phillips tries to report this, but his field phone is out. The backup generators fail to turn on. Some 30 seconds later, the object takes off so swiftly that he can’t tell in which direction it leaves. The lights come back on and all the bunker alarms go off. A roving unit needs to come by to reset all the alarms manually. Phillips admits that most of the guards sleep on duty, and that is probably why no one else has seen the object. (Nukes 343–346)
May 5 — 5:30 p.m. David Dorn and Troy Warton, both 11, leave home in Lincolnshire, Illinois, to play basketball. As they walk down the street, they notice a dark object in the western sky. It comes closer, drops to a height just above the treetops, hovers slightly, then rises up and disappears. David has a new camera and he snaps six photos with his Kodak X-15 camera. The color pictures reveal a distinct dark object in the clouds and over the trees.
Unfortunately, he discards the negatives. (“Boy’s New Camera Records UFO,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 1, no. 5 (September 1980): 1)
May 7 (possibly 1973) — 9:00 p.m. Margaret K. Roffe, nurse’s aide at the Coatesville (Pennsylvania) Veterans Administration Hospital, hears tree branches swishing and swaying nearby and sees a UFO descend and land on the roof of Building no. 1 about 150 feet away. Four silver-colored legs emerge from the object, followed by a ramp with steps. Three small figures climb down backwards. They are speaking to each other in high, squeaky voices that sound like “so many birds.” She says “The being nearest the edge of the roof had a very elongated head, grayish=looking skin, arms that extended well below his knees, and what looked like long claws instead of fingers. His legs appeared rather short.” He is bald and looks old. The scene is well lit by an illuminated dome on the roof of the building. When one of the entities notices the witness, they reenter the object, which takes off slowly over the trees, which are again violently agitated. The legs withdraw as it takes off. (Clark III 277)
May 7 (or 9) — 7:00 a.m. Businessman Amadeo Villar is driving with his wife and daughter near Altos de Cabrejas, Cuenca, Spain, when they see a bright orange object for 40–50 seconds. It darts behind the clouds, where it is still dimly visible. (José Vicente Avila, “Spain: A UFO over Cabrejas, Witnessed by Three (1974),” Inexplicata, October 28, 2015)
May 9 — The documentary film UFOs: Past, Present, and Future is released along with a paperback book of the same title by Robert Emenegger. The film shows stock footage of Holloman AFB, Alamogordo, New Mexico, and a recreation of a landing at a hypothetical military base. (Wikipedia, “UFOs: Past, Present, and Future”; Robert Emenegger, UFOs: Past, Present, and Future, Ballantine, 1974; Internet Movie Database, “UFOs: It Has Begun”; “UFOs (It Has Begun) Past, Present, and Future documentary,” Jaded Truth YouTube channel, September 29, 2017; Clark III 357)
May 15 — A businessman and a teacher in Pedroche, Córdoba, Spain, see a round object the “size of a table” that chases their car and obstructs their path on the road. They turn the car around rapidly and flee. (UFOEv II 346)
May 17 — 10:10 p.m. Electronic scanning equipment at the Manzano Nuclear Weapons Storage Facility attached to Kirtland AFB near Albuquerque, New Mexico, registers a burst of energy in the upper atmosphere in the 250–275 MHz range. The burst throws all the facility’s instruments off. A trajectory of an apparent falling object is plotted, and a recovery team is dispatched to an area southwest of Chilili, New Mexico, that is cordoned off. A few hours later, a circular, metallic object about 60 feet in diameter is dismantled and transported into a hangar at Kirtland AFB. (R. C. Hecker, “New Mexico Reports,” APRO Bulletin 23, no. 2 (Sept./Oct. 1974): 6)
May 20 — 7:00 p.m. A baker named Le Meur, with his wife and two children, is traveling on a small road toward Landévennec, Finistère, France, when they notice a powerful light ahead at ground level. It consists of a string of 7–8 spheres, each about one foot in diameter and arranged horizontally, about 3 feet above the road. Le Meur turns around and heads to the local Gendarmerie station in Telgruc-sur-Mer to report it. The police examine the site the next day and find a patch of ferns that appear abnormally wilted. They collect some plant and soil samples and send them to a lab in Paris for analysis. The wilted, brown ferns are found to be without chlorophyll and an unknown element (indicating pheophytins associated with the degradation of chlorophyll) shows up in the chromatography in ultraviolet light. (Joël Mesnard, “Landévennec, May 20, 1974,” IUR 32, no. 4 (October 2009): 20–21; Jérôme Frasson, “An Attempt to Learn about the Trauma Undergone by the Ferns,” IUR 32, no. 4 (October 2009): 21)
May 22 — The wife of a journalist on Ibiza, Balearic Islands, Spain, photographs an object described in a US Defense Department report as “somewhat like a top.” It remains stationary for a while, then rises and disappears. (Dolan II 24)
May 28 — Day. A resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico, sees a large glowing object moving across the western face of the Sandia Mountains. It is so bright that no structure is visible. The witness opens his window to listen for noise coming from the object, but there is none. As he watches, the object appears to land on a nearby hill where it remains for an hour before it shoots into the air and vanishes. Three young men are camping in the Sandia Mountains that day around noon. They notice a silver-white UFO on the ground on the east side of Tramway Boulevard NE, between Menaul Boulevard and Copper Avenue. Next to it is a silver, triangular-shaped object with odd rune-like symbols on one of the pointed ends. After reporting the sighting, they wind up being taken to Kirtland AFB for interrogation by civilian intelligence agents. They are told they have witnessed a “Soviet incident” and are to keep their mouths shut, which they do for 34 years before talking to Linda Moulton Howe in 2007. Around 9:00 p.m., a family sees a large, glowing, football-shaped disc moving across Albuquerque toward the Sandia foothills. They jump in their car and try to follow the object, using dirt roads on the east side of Tramway. They are stopped by a state police officer, beyond whom they can see the UFO hovering low next to a rocky hill. It is surrounded by armed military personnel. (“Recent Sightings Reported in New Mexico,” UFO Investigator, July 1974, p. 3; Linda Moulton Howe, “Glowing Disc Encounter with Military in Albuquerque, NM,” Earthfiles, November 29, 2007)
May 31 — 2:30 a.m. A prolonged Peugeot-pacing case from Mvuma to Beitbridge, Zimbabwe, takes place along the A4 highway, during which motorists experience electromagnetic effects, loss of steering control for their vehicle, abnormal cold and silence, translocation from one place to another, altered appearance of the terrain, humanoid encounter, and amnesia. (Carl Van Vlieden, “Escorted by UFOs from Umvuma to Beit Bridge,” Flying Saucer Review 21, no. 2 (August 1975): 3–8)
Summer — Late evening. A witness living southwest of Lodi, Wisconsin, sees an intensely bright light that is illuminating a hill on an adjacent golf course. It covers an area the size of a football field, but he cannot see a beam or light source. A few hours later, a couple driving on State Highway 113 south of Lodi observe a triangular object with red and blue circular lights suspended beneath it. The object passes silently less than 20 feet above their car, hovers momentarily, and resumes its slow pass overhead. It is twice the size of their car. They watch as the lights shut off and the object is gone. At 1:00 a.m., a man in Lodi sees what he thinks are headlights pulling into his driveway. He sees three bright points of light fixed horizontally in the black sky. He goes in to get his brother who has a telescope, and they attempt to spot the lights (only two now) with the scope. It takes a while, and when they
look straight up they see a large, triangular object right above them. No lights are visible, but its undersurface is clearly defined and metallic. It moves over the house, tips upward at a 45° angle, and shoots away. (Don Schmitt, “The Belleville Sightings, Part Two,” IUR 13, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1988): 17)
Summer — Between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. California Gov. Ronald Reagan and his pilot Bill Paynter in his Cessna Citation see a bright white light zigzagging through the sky near Bakersfield, California. They follow the light for several minutes. Paynter says it “was a fairly steady light until it began to accelerate, then it appeared to elongate.” Then, “to our utter amazement, it went straight up into the heavens. When I got off the plane I told Nancy all about it…. And we read up on the long history of UFOs.” (presidentialufo.com, “Ronald Reagan, 40th President, January 20, 1981–January 20, 1989”)
June — MUFON pledges its cooperation with CUFOS, offering its network of investigators to secure raw data for analysis. (Skylook, June 1974)
June — The Circulo de Argentino de Investigaciones Ufológicas in Córdoba, Argentina, publishes the first issue of OVNIs: Un Desafio a la Ciencia, edited by Oscar A. Galíndez. It runs for 10 issues through February 1976. (OVNIs: Un Desafio a la Ciencia, No. 1 (July 1974))
June — Astrophysicist Michael H. Hart formulates the basic points of Enrico Fermi’s “Fermi Paradox” for an article in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. The paradox is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy and various high estimates for their probability (such as those that result from optimistic parameters for the Drake equation). (Wikipedia, “Fermi paradox”; Michael H. Hart, “Explanation for the Absence of Extraterrestrials on Earth,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 16 (June 1975): 128–135)
June 9 — Night. Maj. Shiro Kubota and Lt. Col. Toshio Nakamura are flying an F-4EJ Phantom II interceptor over the northern perimeter of Japan, apparently to intercept a Soviet aircraft. Ground control explains that they are to investigate a bright orange-red light reported by ground witnesses and tracked on radar. Leveling off at 30,000 feet, they see the light a few miles ahead. It appears to be about 33 feet in diameter, with square-shaped marks around its side. The object dips in a shallow turn as they approach. Suddenly the object reverses direction and shoots straight toward them. Nakamura forces the aircraft into a sudden dive to avoid it, missing the UFO by “inches.” The object then makes high-speed passes at the plane, drawing closer. Then, allegedly, the UFO strikes the F-4, forcing the two pilots to eject. Nakamura’s parachute catches fire and he falls to his death. (Good Above, pp. 430–431)
June 12 — Alfred A. Knopf publishes The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, which discusses how the CIA works and how its original purpose (collecting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers) has, according to the authors, been subverted by its obsession with clandestine operations. Marchetti uses the expression “cult of intelligence” to denounce what he views as a counterproductive mindset and culture of secrecy, elitism, amorality, and lawlessness within and surrounding the CIA in the service of American imperialism. (Wikipedia, “The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence”; Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Knopf, 1974)
June 14 — 5:30 a.m. Santiago Pulido Romero is driving in Medellín, Badajoz, Spain, near the Castillo when he sees a pot- shaped object rapidly approaching him 300 feet above the ground. He turns off his car lights, but the object follows his car parallel to the road about 210 feet away to the right. When he switches his headlights back on, the object begins approaching again, so he switches them off and the object retreats. When he arrives at his father’s property, the object hovers over the barn, moving up and down, so he runs into the house. Later Pulido goes outside to check, and the object is still hovering, lighting up the entire area like daytime. Three humanoid beings are visible inside the object. Early the next morning at sunrise, the object abruptly speeds away. Other witnesses in separate locations also see a UFO. (Eileen Buckle, “Spanish UFO Fiesta,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 3 (December 1974): 6–7; “Un OVNI repond à des signaux lumineux en Espagne,” Inforespace, no. 22, August 1975, pp. 14–15; “1974: UFO with Occupants Hover over Farm,” ThinkAboutIt, April 6, 2021)
June 15 — Mountain guide Keo Wha Unan is inspecting the outer perimeter of a rock formation near Mount Dhajar (apparently in the Bayan Har Mountains, Tibet) to make certain it is safe for the next day’s climb. He emerges from a cave and sees a silvery disc hovering about 4 feet above the ground behind a crest of high rocks. It is windowless and shiny with no protrusions. He sees three humanoid figures gathering snow and rocks and putting them inside the UFO. After 5 minutes, they climb a ladder into the craft. The object rises a few feet and shoots straight up like a flash. (Harry Hill, “The Bizarre Ancient Astronauts of Tibet,” UFO Update!, no. 5 (Winter 1980): 49, 64)
June 16 — 5:00 a.m. A farmhand is driving near Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain, when a bright object illuminates the highway. He sees three tall, helmeted figures standing inside the craft. When the witness turns off his headlights,
the UFO moves away; when he turns them back on, the UFO approaches and follows him home about 230 feet above his car. He turns off his lights again, and the UFO slowly flies away. (UFOEv II 346)
June 25 — 1:15 a.m. A witness is up late in his trailer home at St.-Cyrille-de-Wendover, Quebec, when he hears a “bumm, bumm, bumm” sound, as if something very heavy has fallen onto the ground. He looks out the living room window and sees a UFO hovering low above a near field. It is a disc with a red domed area and an orangish lower area punctuated by oval windows from which comes white light. He sees a 6-foot-tall robot that has apparently emerged from the object and is now only 15 feet from his window. He and his wife see three more robots near the trailer next door. The observation lasts 3 hours as the couple peek out of the window periodically. At one point, they see 15 robots standing in line together close to a creek for 5 minutes. As if on command, they suddenly move together; when they look out again at 4:20 a.m., the craft and the robots are gone. (Marc Leduc, “Un atterrissage et des humanoïdes á Drummondville,” UFO-Quebec 1, no. 1 (1975): 10–12)
July 2 — 3:30 p.m. Some fishermen at Praia dos Navegantes beach, Santa Catarina, Brazil, see a disc with small thrusters on its sides descend and fall into the ocean about 328 feet away. Thinking it is an aircraft, the men head to the splashdown site to help survivors. As Ubelino Severino gets closer, the object sinks, leaving only foam at the surface. (Brazil 517–520)
July 9 — Early morning. An elliptical object with rows of alternating red and green lights hovers about 200 feet above a park in Kingston, New York. A hazy white glow emanates from the underside. The object moves to within 500 feet of a police car. When officers James Wallace and Richard Ramsdell turn their spotlight on, a brilliant beam lights up the cruiser. The beam switches off and the object races away at high speed. (“Hovering Object Shines Spotlight on Police Car,” UFO Investigator, October 1974, p. 3; UFOEv II 45)
July 9 — Psychic Pat Price accurately remote views the Soviet URDF-3 facility adjacent to the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan for the Stanford Research Institute [now SRI International] in Menlo Park, California. In another experiment, Puthoff and a skeptical scientist named Earl Jones drive to 9 separate metropolitan areas, all chosen by Jones. Back in the SRI lab, Targ monitors Price, who describes 7 of the places accurately —in some cases before Jones and Puthoff even reach the target or before Jones has decided on a target. Price also claims to sense four underground alien bases, volunteering the data outside the SRI experimental parameters. The bases are located under Monte Perdido, Huesca, Spain; Mount Nyangani, Zimbabwe; Mount Hayes, Alaska; and Mount Ziel in Australia’s Northern Territory. (Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies, Dell, 1997, pp. 113, 118, 148–151; Annie Jacobsen, Phenomena, Little, Brown, 2017, pp. 166–171)
July 14 — 3:36 p.m. A Scandinavian Airlines flight en route to Burlington, Vermont, is flying at 35,000 feet 35–40 miles southeast of Quebec City, Quebec. Capt. Korsvold and the crew notice a triangular object moving southwest and has it in sight for 7 minutes. Radio interference is reported. At the same time, C. W. Bacon is flying a private jet about 35 miles southeast of Quebec City and sees the same triangular object, but it seems to be stationary. Air traffic control at CFB Bagotville in Saguenay, Quebec, reports strong interference on a frequency of 121.5 MHz, a frequency reserved for aircraft in distress. The signal is also disrupting transmissions for 10 minutes at RCAF Station Mont Apica [now the Lac Castor Canadian weather radar station]. All is quiet after both the UFO and interference are gone. (Good Above, p. 200; Arthur R. Bray, The UFO Connection, Jupiter, 1979, pp. 45–46; Patrick Gross, “Files Obtained from the National Archives of Canada”; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 89–90)
July 15 — Two unregistered helicopters, a white helicopter, and a black twin-engine aircraft open fire on Robert Smith Jr. while he is driving his tractor on his farm in Honey Creek, Iowa. This attack follows a rash of cattle mutilations in the area and across the nearby border in Nebraska. (Wikipedia, “Cattle mutilation”)
August 8 — President Richard Nixon resigns in the wake of the Watergate scandal. ()
August 11 — 3:23 a.m. Police officers Mark E. Paine and Michael Alden watch three luminous UFOs in a triangle formation between Tilton and Concord, New Hampshire. A fourth object, a domed ellipse, rises from the trees and approaches their car. As the officers signal the object, it signals back, then veers away. (UFOEv II 175)
August 12 — 11:30 a.m. A 15-year-old boy sees a disc maneuvering near a hedgerow at La Brousse, Charente-Maritime, France. It is about the size of a medium car, dull-lead in color, with a green reflective dome. One of three windows open “exactly like the shutter of a vanishing headlight on a sports car.” The lower part of the object rotates, but the dome does not. Later, three sharply defined circles of burnt straw form an isosceles triangle within an oval area of crushed straw. Within each imprint are two small pieces of lead. (M. Chasseigne, “Atterrissage à La Brousse, près de Matha,” Lumières dans la Nuit, no. 140 (December 1974): 5–6)
August 16 — 8:00 p.m. David Bates, 8, Steven Stillie, 10, and Henry Stillie, 7, are taking a shortcut past an abandoned sandpit close to their homes in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. Suddenly they hear a high-pitched whine and
the cat Bates is carrying panics and escapes his hold; it runs several yards and then stops abruptly. They then see an object with a red light on top and flashing green and white lights on either end. Moving slowly, the UFO reverses course and with an undulating motion heads for the clearing where the sandpit lies and lands there, about 150 feet away. The whine becomes intense. As the object settles down, it releases a blast of hot air that blows dust on he boys. It extends three short legs and blue sparks leap up from the ground. The boys run home. Investigator Graham Conway finds residual material present in three indentations at the site. Analysis shows that it contains an abnormally high amount of zinc. (Graham Conway, “Close Encounter,” Canadian UFO Report 3, no. 4 (1975): 8–11; Graham Conway, “Close Encounter,” UFO*BC; Graham Conway, “CE2 Secrets,” IUR 17, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1992): 24)
August 23 — 9:00 p.m. John Lennon and May Pang watch a rotating, oval-shaped disc with a red light on top from the roof of his penthouse apartment on East 52nd Street in New York City. It is flying less than 100 feet away and moves off soundlessly as they watch it. Lennon mentions it in a liner note to his 1974 Walls and Bridges album. (David Halperin, “John Lennon, May Pang, and the UFO (1) Their Story,” davidhalperin.net, February 11, 2016)
August 25 — After 10:00 p.m. A document is leaked to UFO researchers in the US and UK in 1992 and is apparently composed by someone within the US intelligence community who either personally knows about the case or who has run across top-secret documents. Now known as the “Deneb Report,” the document alleges that the following incident took place. Military radar at Corpus Christi, Texas, detects an unknown target moving toward the Texas Gulf coast. Traveling at a speed of 2,500 mph at an altitude of 75,000 feet, the UFO is first spotted over the Gulf of Mexico about 200 miles east of Corpus Christi. After going through maneuvers suggesting intelligent control, the object quickly turns south along the Texas coast, avoiding entry over land, and seems headed toward Brownsville. As the disc continues to hug the Texas coastline, it exhibits controlled descent, calculated turns, speed reductions, and other clear indications of control. The object descends from 75,000 feet to about 45,000 feet by the time it crosses over land into northern Mexico, about 40 miles south of Brownsville. Its speed is down to 2,000 mph and it is slowing very gradually. Zigzagging around mountain peaks that tower above 5,000 feet, the UFO continues to descend, although its speed is still near 2,000 mph at the time that it encounters another aircraft headed toward it on a collision course. Somewhere over a vast desert plain known as El Llano near Coyame, Chihuahua, Mexico, a mid-air collision occurs with a small aircraft flying from El Paso to Mexico City. Debris from the crash rains down on the desert plain below, and efforts are soon underway by both Mexico and the US to recover the remains. Mexican spotter planes first locate the wreckage of the aircraft, even as US electronic surveillance personnel listen in on the rescue activities from across the Texas border. The Americans hear the Mexican spotter planes say that the small craft is almost totally destroyed and that they have found a second crash site nearby with the remains of a nearly intact, shiny, silvery disc. The object is 16 feet, 5 inches in diameter, and equally convex on both upper and lower surfaces. There is an outer rim around the central circumference. The height is slightly less than 5 feet. They see no visible portholes, doors, or markings. In addition, no lights of any kind are apparent. There is also no obvious mechanism for propulsion. The external surface of the disc is like silvery polished steel. Mexican troops recover the crashed disc, winching it up onto the bed of a large military truck. They also retrieve fragments of the crashed civilian aircraft, although there is not much left of it. (“Presidio 1974,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library; Noe Torres and Ruben Uriarte, The Coyame Incident, Roswell Books, 2013)
September — Author Charles Berlitz writes The Bermuda Triangle, in which he popularizes the concept of the Bermuda Triangle as an area of ocean prone to disappearing ships and airplanes. He quotes his friend J. Manson Valentine, who has reported several UFO sightings in the area. He also perpetuates a fake radio transmission from Lt.
Charles Taylor of the missing TBM Avenger bombers in December 1945 containing the warning, “Don’t come after me… They look like they are from outer space.” Berlitz’s claims of unusual EM effects occurring in the Triangle are also fabrications. (Charles Berlitz, The Bermuda Triangle, Avon, 1974; Story, p. 51)
September 1 — 11:00 a.m. While he is driving a swather to harvest his rapeseed crop near Langenburg, Saskatchewan, farmer Edwin Fuhr, 36, notices a metallic-appearing dome-shaped object about 50 feet away and stops to investigate. Walking to within 15 feet of it, Fuhr sees that it is spinning and swirling the grass beneath it. This frightens him and he backs away. Climbing back on the swather, he looks around and sees four more identical domes “like brushed stainless steel” arranged in a rough semicircle, all hovering and spinning about a foot above the ground. Whether from fear or an EM effect, Fuhr cannot get the throttle and steering wheel of the swather to respond. One object suddenly takes off, quickly followed by the other four, ascending in a step formation. At about 200 feet they stop, each emitting a puff of gray vapor from exhaust-like extensions at the base. The vapor extends about 6 feet, followed by a downward gust of wind which flattens the rapeseed in the immediate area. The objects then form a straight line, hover for a minute or two, then suddenly ascend into the low cloud cover and
disappear. Fuhr goes to the landing area and finds five rings of depressed grass swirled in a clockwise fashion. There is no evidence of heat or burning. Some additional circles are found in the area later that month. Fuhr later learns that cattle in a nearby field bellowed and broke through a fence about the time of the sighting. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Ron Morier, quoted by Canadian Press, says: “Something was there and I doubt it was a hoax. There’s no indication anything had been wheeled in or out and Mr. Fuhr seemed genuinely scared.” Later Morier tells an investigator, “There is no way that this is a hoax. Whatever was in there, it came out of the air and departed the same way, as far as I could tell.” (Ted Phillips, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings, CUFOS, 1975, p. 104; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979,
pp. 22–24; Chris Rutkowski and John P. Timmerman, “Langenburg, 1974: A Classic Historical CE2 and a Crop Circle Progenitor?” IUR 17, no. 2 (March/April 1992): 4–11; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, pp. 148–159; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 110–113; “Interview with Edwin Fuhr 37 Years Later: The Langenburg UFO Case,” AboveTopSecret forum, January 20, 2017; Mark Melnychuk, “The Farmer Who Saw and the Mountie Who Believed: Sask.’s Most Famous UFO Sighting,” Regina (Sask.) Leader-Post, September 29, 2017; Clark III 673–675; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, pp. 192– 196)
September 9 — 8:30 p.m. Professor Andrei Antalffy and his wife are in their summer cottage near Târgu Mureş, Romania, when she notices a silvery-white light behind the house. They go outside and see a rectangular “wall of opaque light” about 82 feet long and 550 away from them. In front of the wall on the ground are four orange spheres about 18 inhes in diameter and grouped two-by-two. They continue to watch the display from inside the cottage until midnight when they retire for the night. (Romania 41)
September 16 — Around 9:30 p.m. Mrs. A. Richards is driving a 1968 Toyota a few miles northwest of St. Helens, Tasmania, with her two children. The car radio suddenly turns to static as she is passing over a bridge and the sky ahead lights up. The car then loses power as it travels up an incline, and everything goes dead—car lights, radio, heater, and engine. The landscape is lit up by a bright area of light ahead. The mother tries to start the car without success. A deafening vibrating noise then seems to envelop the car. About the same time all three of them feel electric shocks like vibrations for one minute, and a choking smell fills the car so that they leap from the car and flee the scene, leaving the car and the glow in the sky behind. After nearly 2 miles, they reach a house whose resident gives them a ride back to the car to see what is wrong. The hood is warm, but the car starts up and there is no sign of a light. A check at the local garage finds water in the radiator low, otherwise both radio and electrical systems are in working order. The mother suffers from swollen arms and fingers the following day. The right side of her face is numb and she has red marks above her right eyebrow. (“Auto-Stop,” TUFOIC Newsletter, no. 14 (1975): 10–11; “UFOs and Auto-Stops,” TUFOIC Newsletter, no. 91 (February 2002): 6)
September 21 — 10:00 p.m. A Swedish army officer is driving with his family near Knutby, Uppsala County, Sweden, when a blinding light approaches the car from the right at an altitude of about 30 feet. The car stops and the radio and headlights go out. The UFO passes the road ahead and then lands on the left side about 250 feet from the road. A large area is lit up by the blinding, green-shimmering light from the object. The witnesses hear a sound like a swarm of bees. Through binoculars, the officer sees an egg-shaped structure some 33 feet long and around 10 feet high. The car engine still does not work. He gets out of the car, then hears a deafening roar. The UFO is taking off vertically with a rocking motion. It flies off slowly at about 100 feet altitude for a few hundred yards, then takes off and disappears in a fraction of a second. He gets back in the car and the radio is playing music and the car starts easily. (Boris Jungkvist, “Swedish Army Officer Experiences Landing and EM Effects,” AFU Newsletter, no. 17 (Oct./Dec. 1979): 11–13; Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (September 2011): 16–17)
September 26 — 9:30–10:00 p.m. More than 100 people in north Zealand, Denmark, watch unusual objects and lights in the sky. One driver is suddenly surrounded by a dazzling red light that illuminates the area. The engine, lights, and radio fail. After several attempts, he restarts the car and turns on the lights. A cone of white neon light descends toward the car. A bumping noise and a sound like broken glass is heard on the roof, and then a foot-long spurt of flame erupts from the car radio. The engine and lights fail again. After about 6 seconds a distinct “click” is heard, and everything works normally again. The car engine and radio are undamaged. (Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 20)
September 27 — An 11-year-old boy and an older friend are on a farm near Jindabyne, New South Wales, when they notice a bright white light about one-half mile away for about 30 minutes. In 1983, the younger man begins to have “vivid memories” of that evening and realizes that both experienced about two hours of missing time. Soon the memory of an abduction emerges in which both witnesses undergo an examination of some kind. (Mark
Moravec, “The Jindabyne UFO Abduction Case,” UFO Research Australia Newsletter 5, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1984): 6–10; MUFON UFO Journal, February 1988, pp. 13–16)
September 30 — Newsweek brings the issue of cattle mutilations to a national audience. Noting that “more than 100 cattle have been found dead and gruesomely mutilated in Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa,” it lists possible culprits: witchcraft cultists, UFOs, helicopter-borne rustlers, marijuana smugglers, and predators. In months and years to come, the scare spreads from the Midwest to the West to the South. (Clark III 133)
Autumn — 10:00 a.m. A metallic disc some 300 feet across approaches a South Korean antiaircraft shore battery. The commander launches an MIM-23 Hawk guided missile which is immediately shot down by a “white ray” from the UFO. The second ray is directed at the battery, melting the remaining two Hawk missiles into an unrecognizable mass. (Soviet Military Review, June 1989; Stringfield, Situation Red, Fawcett Crest, 1977, pp. 135–136)
October 10 — 10:10 p.m. John Breen, a Canadian armed forces pilot, is paced by a UFO over Grand Falls, Newfoundland, in his Cessna 172, en route from Deer Lake to Gander. A passenger first notices a strange light following the plane when they are 50 miles away from Gander. Every time Breen looks at the light it seems to turn off, but finally he gets a better view: “It seems to be sort of a triangle—or delta-shaped, luminescent greenish light following us.” It stays on for 3–4 seconds, then goes off for a bit, then on again. Gradually it remains steady. About 25–30 miles from Gander, Breen radios the airport, which has no traffic in the area. The object’s reflection is clearly visible in the water of Gander Lake. Breen says: “I started a right turn and then cut hard left. Gander then picked up the object for two or three sweeps, which would have been about 10–12 seconds. When we turned around, I just saw it going off the other way and then I lost it because of the back of the airplane.” (Gregory M. Kanon, “‘Something’s Up Here with Us!” Canadian UFO Report 4, no. 6 (Winter/Spring 1978): 3–4; Good Above, pp. 200–201; Patrick Gross, “Files Obtained from the National Archives of Canada”; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 90–91)
October 11 — 4:15 a.m. The captain and crew of a Capital Airlines DC-8 descending into Gander, Newfoundland, watches as a UFO flashing red and white lights draws alongside the plane as it flies at 290 mph at 7,500 feet. It maintains a parallel course until it finally disappears in cloud cover about 5 miles from Gander. Air traffic control at Gander confirms there is no other aircraft in the vicinity. (Good Above, p. 201; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 91)
October 11 — 4:10 p.m. An astronomer in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, is driving a pickup truck when he sees a silver-gray domed disc behind him to the west. It moves from southeast to northwest on a level, straight course, but in the last 2–3 seconds it turns upward, accelerating rapidly. The witness’s truck stalls out when he tries to accelerate, but the tape deck keeps operating. (“Astronomers and UFO’s: A Survey, Part 2, Sightings,” IUR 2, no. 4 (April 1977): 4)
October 11 — Robert Spencer Carr is the guest on a local radio show to promote the upcoming Flying Saucer Symposium by PSI Conferences in Tampa, Florida. During the interview, Carr makes the shocking disclosure of the US government’s cover-up of the UFO crash in Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948 with 12 dead aliens aboard. The Air Force allegedly is storing the bodies at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, in Hangar 18. The announcement creates a media sensation that lasts for months in print and broadcast news. (Dave Casey, “UFOs and 12 Little Men,” Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) News, October 12, 1974, p. 1; Curt Collins, “Robert Spencer Carr and Hangar 18,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, May 29, 2018; Curt Collins, “Inside Hangar 18 with Dr. Robert Carr,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, June 1, 2018)
October 11 — The Energy Reorganization Act dissolves the Atomic Energy Commission and splits responsibility for its functions, assigning to the Energy Research and Development Administration [now the US Department of Energy] the responsibility for the development and production of nuclear weapons, promotion of nuclear power, and other energy-related work, and assigning to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission the regulatory work, which does not include regulation of defense nuclear facilities. (Wikipedia, “Energy Reorganization Act of 1974”)
October 14 — 9:09 p.m. Air Force security personnel assigned to the Bomber Alert Area of Grand Forks AFB near Emerado, North Dakota, see two large, solid black, oval shapes hovering at 1,500 feet altitude in the northwestern sky. Although each of the unlit objects has five small lights arrayed across its surface, the UFOs approach to within one-quarter mile of the alert area before they are noticed. Within a 3-minute period, 14 security police sentries, two military pilots, and a B-52 maintenance supervisor independently report the objects to their respective control locations. Static on radio and other communications networks are noted. After hovering for 2 minutes, the UFOs slowly move in tandem toward the south, making a faint humming sound as they fade from view. (Nukes 347–348)
October 15 — Night. Five witnesses in Ramona, California, watch a mysterious round object as it maneuvers over the Santa Maria Valley. It lands on a hillside and turns ruby red before becoming a brilliant white light. As it passes
over, horses act up and a dog tries to grab one witness by her sleeve back into the house. Another dog, chained, runs in and out of the doghouse repeatedly, and the chickens and goats are agitated as well. Radio and TV reception is disrupted, and a compass points to the object as it is moving. The object hovers briefly, then shoots away, emitting a noise like something between a hum and a foghorn. (NICAP, “Object Lands / Animal Reactions
/ Compass Deviates”; Bob Gribble, “Looking Back,” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 258 (October 1989): 24) October 25 — 4:15 p.m. Oil-well digger E. Carl Higdon Jr. is hunting elk on the northern edge of Medicine Bow National
Forest southeast of Rawlins, Wyoming, when he sees five elk standing motionless. He attempts to shoot one, but the bullet falls about 50 feet from him as if hitting an invisible obstruction. He goes to pick it up, then hears a twig snap and sees a humanoid being (more than 6 feet tall) under a tree about 50 feet away. Its hair is sticking up “like wheat straw,” it is bow-legged, and it is wearing a black coverall suit and black shoes. Two belts cross its chest, and another is wrapped around its waist. The being asks Higdon how he is doing and whether he is hungry, after which it tosses him a package of pills. It tells him to take one, saying it will last for four days. Higdon looks up the hill and sees a transparent, lighted cubicle. Suddenly he finds himself inside it, strapped to a seat with a helmet on his head. Two humanoids are also inside, as well as four seats, a control panel, a mirror, a map, and several elk, frozen in a cage. The craft takes him to what seems to be another planet with a mushroom-shaped tower, 100 feet tall. He and one of the humanoids float to the tower, go down an elevator, pass down a corridor, and go into a room with a platform. After being screened by a “glassy shield,” Higdon is told he is “not any good for what we need” and is taken back to the original location, where he rolls down a hill, hurting his head, neck, and shoulder. Around 6:30 p.m., Higdon radios his boss, Roy Fleming of the AM Well Service in Rawlins, with his location and asks for assistance. At 11:40 p.m., Higdon is found by a rescue party, which includes Fleming, the Carbon County sheriff, a deputy, and three other men in several four-wheel-drive pickup trucks. He seems confused, so he is taken to Carbon County Memorial Hospital, unable to remember his own name. He does not recover his memory until the evening of October 27. Many details emerge after Higdon is hypnotized by R. Leo Sprinkle on November 2 and 17. (Clark III 573–576; Lorenzen, Abducted! Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space, Berkley, 1977, pp. 25–37)
November — The Centre for UFO Studies–Australian Co-Ordination Section is founded by Harry Griesberg and David Seargent in Gosford, New South Wales, as a clearinghouse for UFO reports throughout Australia. It publishes the ACOS Bulletin through December 1979. (ACOS Bulletin, no. 1 (March 1975))
November — 8:00 p.m. Claire Haser, on an isolated ranch northeast of Goldendale, Washington, sees a yellowish-white glow in the sky on the ground to the north. At 11:00 p.m., as visitors are leaving, she steps outside and sees it again, closer and more intense. Suspended in the air only 10 feet away from the porch and 15 feet above the ground is a “cylinder” about 3 feet long and 14 inches in diameter, standing with its end pointed toward the ground. Projecting from the object is a long, narrow, beam of light about 2 inches in diameter and 3 feet long. The end of the beam is diffuse, and it is slowly rotating clockwise. She watches it for 10 minutes. Not wanting to approach the object, everyone goes back inside. The object is gone 30 minutes later. (Greg Long, “Strangeness at Yakima,” IUR 19, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1994): 17)
November — Night. A witness is traveling in his 1971 Mitshubishi Colt near the Sideling hill in northeastern Tasmania when he notices a huge flame-colored glow lighting up the bush to the north. It looka larger than a house. The headlights, radio, and motor of his car all cut out and he is left watching the glow for several minutes. He notices his luminous watch dial has become brighter and that the car’s clock is running 2 minutes slower after the sighting. The mass of light moves back and forth, rises up and away from the witness, and disappears. The witness then able to start his car and continue on his journey. Afterward, the front left mudguard changes color from red to more of an orange. (“UFOs and Auto-Stops,” TUFOIC Newsletter, no. 91 (February 2002): 6)
November 2 — Robert Spencer Carr gives a lecture at the Flying Saucer Symposium at the International Inn in Tampa, Florida, on the 1948 Aztec, New Mexico, crash/retrieval and the aliens allegedly stored in Hangar 18, calling it the “worst-kept secret in the world.” Carr’s hour-long lecture is short on specifics, but in the question-and-answer session afterward, he is asked about his sources for the information. Carr says there are three witnesses, but they must remain unnamed. He says that the US government will end the coverup, admit that UFOs are really spacecraft from other worlds, and it will happen soon—before the end of the year. Curt Collins writes, “Part of the reason Carr’s story took hold was that it was so familiar, people wanted something like it to be true, and that it seemed to come from an authority figure, a university professor with official governments contacts and sources It also struck a chord with the public, capitalizing on their distrust of the government following the Vietnam war and Watergate scandal.” (“UFOs and 12 Little Men,” Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) News, October 12, 1974, p. 1; “Symposium Hums with UFO Talk,” Tampa Bay Times, November 4, 1974, p. 1-D; Curt Collins, “Ufology 1974: The Flying Saucer Symposium in Tampa,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, May 25, 2018; Curt Collins, “Robert
Spencer Carr and Hangar 18,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, May 29, 2018; Curt Collins, “Inside Hangar 18 with Dr. Robert Carr,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, June 1, 2018; Curt Collins, “The Day after Saucergate,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, June 4, 2018)
November 4 — 11:00 p.m. A witness is driving near Scottsdale, Tasmania, when he sees a large, silent UFO. His car engine and radio cut out and his watch dial lights up brightly. The object moves away and abruptly ascends vertically. The left-hand mudguard changes color permanently from red to orange. (Ted Phillips, “Vehicle Effects,” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 446 (June 2005): 15)
November 5 — 7:30 p.m. Jesse and Johanna Chilton are driving south on Provincial Highway 2 near Olds, Alberta, when they see a disc about 9 feet in diameter and 50 feet away on their right at a height of 25 feet. It turns and passes them in the opposite direction and they note several exhaust ports emitting yellow flame. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 226–227)
November 5 — 8:30 p.m. Harold Verge is driving between Mahone Bay and Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, in the pouring rain when he sees three bright amber lights appear in his rear-view mirror. Suddenly they move to the rigt side of his car and pace it for 30 seconds before disappearing abruptly. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 83)
November 7 — 3:00 p.m. Two schoolgirls are biking home from school in Waterford, Connecticut, when they see a ball of fire in the sky. They ride to one of their homes and go out in a car, hoping to take a photo. When they get to the shore of Niantic Bay, they see it again with several other people who have stopped. The object is now shaped like a triangular space capsule with rounded corners. Flames shoot from the back as it performs elaborate rolls and maneuvers. Then it takes off. (Michael D. Swords, “Timmerman’s Triangles,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 15)
November 11 — Night. Police officers Zachary Space and Lester Nagle watch an object hovering level with high-tension wires east of Madison, Ohio. It comes down above the wires for 15–20 seconds, rises up slowly out of sight, then appears again. Along with a deputy sheriff, they watch the object for 20 minutes. It leaves like a flash. (Fort Worth (Tex.) Cross Country News, January 8, 1975; Marler 90–91)
Mid-November — 5;30 p.m. Giovanna Sensoli is attending to her animals by her farmhouse near Castelleale, Romagna, Italy, when she notices her chickens and rabbits seem terrified. She notices a man seated on a box that is suspended in the air above her house, rocking to and fro, and only about 12 feet from her. He seems to be about 6 feet 6 inches tall and dressed in a shiny, one-piece garment with green, red, and white markings, and a pair of ski boots with square toes and heels. A helmet covers his face, but he seems to be looking for something. The box has a control rod with colored stripes. The man moves a bit further away to the east on his box. Sensoli sees a bright light to the north and she is overcome by heat. The house is lit up for a few seconds. Sensoli follows the man, trying to understand his gesticulations, but he departs to the east, followed by the light. The incident has lasted 15 minutes. (Gianfranco Lollino, “The ‘Flying Man’ at Castelleale (Italy),” Flying Saucer Review 32, no. 4 (June 1987): 25–27; 1Pinotti 193–197)
November 17 — 9:00 a.m. A businessman is taking a walk along the shore of Nørresø in Viborg, Denmark, when he notices an object above the eastern bank of the lake. He snaps a photo of it as it hovers in the air about 1,600– 3,300 feet away. He looks around to see if there are other witnesses, but when he looks back the object is gone. The photo shows a circular object with an estimated diameter of about 65 feet with some cloudy filaments hanging from its base. Investigators suspect it may be a rare instance of a small cumulus cloud that has developed from a black smoke ring. (Wim van Utrecht, “Jellyfish UFO Photographed over Denmark,” Caelestia, May 17, 2008)
November 22 — 7:30 p.m. At two-minute intervals, three bright red lights are seen climbing very quickly from the horizon at Madeira, Canary Islands, after which they create brilliant concentric circles. A reporter in Funchal takes a few photos. The lights are probably Poseidon missiles launched by the submarine USS Mariano G. Vallejo several hundred kilometers to the west. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Ricardo Campo Pérez, “Navy Missile Tests and the Canary Islands UFOs,” IUR 29, no. 4 (July 2005): 3)
November 28 — 11:43 a.m. Hugo W. Feugen is flying his own Aeronca Champion aircraft on a bright day over Shabbona, Illinois, and he is checking his position on the aeronautical map to determine if he was still on course. When he looks up, he notices that the magnetic compass is rotating counterclockwise at a rate of four revolutions per minute. He looks to his right side and sees nothing but the town below him. When he turns to his left, he sees a disc or ellipse flying parallel to his aircraft at the same speed (75–80 mph) and altitude, pacing him at 120° at an estimated one-quarter of a mile distance. He estimates its size as 120 feet long and 30 feet thick. After pacing him for 8–10 seconds, the object tips slightly and he sees that it is not an ellipse but round in shape. As it tips up at an angle, it accelerates to a fantastic speed toward the east and is out of sight in less than one second. (NICAP, “Pilot Says Compass Affected”)
Late 1974 — President Gerald R. Ford creates the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, a group of scientists, technicians, and engineers operating under the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Its task is to be “prepared to respond immediately to any type of radiological accident or incident anywhere in the world.” Since 1975, NEST has been warned of 125 nuclear terror threats and has responded to 30. All have been false alarms. (Wikipedia, “Nuclear Emergency Support Team”; Jeffrey T. Richelson, Defusing Armageddon, Norton, 2009)
December — Astronomy magazine editor Terence Dickinson writes an open-minded article about Marjorie E. Fish’s analysis of Betty Hill’s star map and solicits comments from scientists about it. Virtually every issue of the magazine in 1975 carries letters debating the pros and cons of the map, including one by Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan. (Terence Dickinson, “The Zeta Reticuli Incident,” Astronomy 2, no. 12 (December 1974): 5–18; David J. Eicher, “The Zeta Reticuli (or Ridiculi) Incident,” January 31, 2001; Clark 587)
December — 7:30 a.m. A witness sees a vertical object floating above Wemeth Low, a hill near Higher Chisworth, Derbyshire, England. It has a flattened upper end and a tapered base. It changes shape from round to oval and cigar and back to oval before it disappears and discharges several small spheres from its blunt end “like soap bubbles.” (Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects and Cloud Cigars,” IUR 29, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 10)
December 2 — 10:30 p.m. Dairy farmer William L. Bosak is driving back to his house southeast of Frederic, Wisconsin, on County Road W when he sees an object reflected in his headlights on the westbound side of the road in front of him. It is a disc-shaped UFO, the bottom half obscured by the fog. But what holds his attention is something inside the object’s “curved front of glass.” Inside stands a figure with its arms raised above its head. He thinks the figure is as scared as he is because its eyes are protruding. It is generally human in shape, but its body is covered in dark tan fur except on the face and chin. Its head hair seems to be swept back, and the calf-like ears stretch out about 3 inches. The mouth and nose seem flat. Bosak speeds past the object and his car lights suddenly go dim.
He hears a whooshing sound and the UFO is lost to view. (“Occupant Case in Wisconsin,” APRO Bulletin 23, no. 4 (Jan./Feb. 1975): 1, 4; Jerome Clark, “The Frightened Creature on County Road W,” Flying Saucer Review 21, no. 1 (June 1975): 20–21; Clark III 557–558; Patrick Gross, URECAT, October 20, 2006)
December 9 — 10:30 p.m. A married couple in Bad Traunstein, Austria, watch for more than 30 minutes a triangular object that hovers above a nearby pylon and sends out beams of green, blue, and red light. (Ernst Berger, “The ‘Snails’ Are Still Around,” Flying Saucer Review 21, no. 5 (February 1976): 29)
December 11 — 1:22 a.m. Teacher Călin Turcu hears his dog barking insistently in the backyard of his home in Vălenii de Munte, Romania. Beyond a river about a half-mile away he sees a pulsating, dazzling white light like that coming from a welding machine that illuminates the trees for miles around. In the next 3–4 minutes he takes 7–10 photos. The light persists for 12 minutes until it ascends and fades slowly out. (MUFON UFO Journal, no. 114 (May 1977); Augustin Moraru, “Phénomène Lumineux Photographie au-dessus de Valenii de Munte,” UFO- Quebec, no. 13 (March 1978): 18–19; Romania 38)
December 17 — 2:30 a.m. John Wagner is in his farmhouse near MacNutt, Saskatchewan, when he notices a large, bright glow to the west that lasts for 25 minutes. The next morning, he finds a circular ring in the snow about 20 feet in diameter. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 190–191)
December 18 — 7:00 p.m. Executive Engineer Mohammad Riaz and others see a circular light appear above the V-shaped mountain overlooking the approach to Pattan, Pakistan, for about 25 minutes. It is also seen in Chitral, Pakistan.
An earthquake (Hunza Earthquake) centers on the area on December 28, so this could be a type of earthquake light. (Col. William S. Gilliland, “Balls of Fire Memo,” US Department of Defense Intelligence Information Report, December 18, 1974)
December 22 — Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reveals some of the contents of the CIA “Family Jewels” in a front-page New York Times article. Covert action programs involving assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments are reported for the first time. In addition, the article discusses efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of US citizens. (Wikipedia, “Family Jewels (Central Intelligence Agency)”)
December 31 — The CIA Family Jewels reports describe numerous activities conducted by the CIA during the 1950s to 1970s that violate its charter. According to a briefing provided by CIA Director William Colby to the Justice Department, these include 18 issues that are of legal concern. The documents are released on the CIA website on June 25, 2007. (Wikipedia, “Family Jewels (Central Intelligence Agency)”)
December 31 — The Privacy Act, signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford, establishes a Code of Fair Information Practice that governs the collection, maintenance, use, and dissemination of personally identifiable information about individuals maintained in systems of records by federal agencies. The act also provides individuals with a means by which to seek access to and amend their records, and it sets forth various agency record-keeping requirements. Each agency must file an annual report on its FOIA requests to Congress. Citizens can also petition
courts to render decisions on whether or not to release documents from agencies. FOIA soon disproves the longstanding denial of interest in UFOs by the CIA, FBI, and military agencies. (Wikipedia, “Privacy Act of 1974”; ClearIntent, p. 5)
December 31 — Night. Dave Percy and two other security guards at the Pickering, Ontario, Nuclear Generating Station are preparing to greet the new year when they see a cluster of bright red spheres over Lake Ontario to the south. One of them moves closer and hovers over the Number 3 and 4 reactor buildings. It is about 30 feet across. The object hovers for 6–7 minutes, then after a bright flash it takes off. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, p. 120)
1975
1975 — MUFON moves its headquarters from Quincy, Illinois, to Seguin, Texas. ()
1975 — John A. Keel publishes The Mothman Prophecies, an investigation into sightings of a winged creature called Mothman in the area around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1966–1967. It combines these accounts with his theories about UFOs and various paranormal phenomena, ultimately connecting them to the collapse of the Silver Bridge across the Ohio River on December 15, 1967. (Official investigations in 1971 determine it was caused
by stress corrosion cracking in an eye bar in a suspension chain.) Other entities that Keel chronicles are not-quite- human individuals (men in black) who intimidate witnesses and seem linked with UFOs. Sometimes, he writes, they threaten witnesses who have not told anyone else about their sightings. Usually they wear dark suits, sometimes with turtle-neck sweaters, and have dark complexions and Oriental features. Others are pale and bug- eyed. Their behavior is frequently odd, as if they are operating in an environment alien to them. In many cases they drive black Cadillacs or other limousine-like vehicles. (John A. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies, Saturday Review, 1975; Wikipedia, “The Mothman Prophecies”; Clark III 640, 729–730)
1975 — Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman publish The Unidentified, one of the first books to reject the notion of alien involvement in UFO experiences and maintain that UFO visions and other paranormal experiences are the psyche’s attempt to escape the stranglehold that rationalism has on human consciousness. Clark later comes to believe his own conclusions are unverifiable, ill-conceived, grandiose, and dismissive of physical evidence. (Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman, The Unidentified: Notes toward Solving the UFO Mystery, Warner, 1975; Clark III 942)
1975 — Jacques Vallée publishes The Invisible College, in which he speculates that the UFO phenomenon is a “control system” in which UFOs have been conditioning the human species throughout history using a thermostat-like precision. He believes that it is producing a silent change in human consciousness. (Jacques Vallée, The Invisible College, Dutton, 1975; Story, p. 90; Clark III 1214)
1975 — Wido Hoville founds the UFO-Quebec organization in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Quebec, and begins publishing the journal UFO-Quebec, edited by Norbert Spehner. It continues until December 1981. (UFO-Quebec, no. 1 (Jan./April 1975))
1975 — Pierre Monnet founds the Groupement de Recherche et d’Étude du Phénomène OVNI in Sorgues, Vaucluse, France. It publishes Vaucluse Ufologie from 1977 to 1981. (Vaucluse Ufologie: Bulletin d’Information du GREPO, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1977))
1975 — Gilbert Peyret founds Groupement Langeadois de Recherches Ufologiques in Le Puy, France. It publishes OVNI 43 from 1978 to 1980. (OVNI 43, no. 1 (January 1978))
1975 — Martial Robé founds Groupe Privé Ufologique Nancéien in Nancy, France. It publishes Réalité ou Fiction from 1975 to 1987. (Réalité ou Fiction, no. 0 (1975))
1975 — The Centro Investigador de Objetos Volantes Extraterrestres begins publishing Vimana, edited by Julio Arcas Gilardi, in Santander, Cantabria, Spain. It continues through 1980. (Vimana, no. 1 (1975))
1975 — The German-speaking MUFON Central European Section begins publishing a monographic series of reports on specific ufological topics. Edited by Illobrand von Ludwiger in Feldkirchen-Westerham, Bavaria, Germany, the first is titled Die Erforschung unbekannter Flugobjekte. The 12th title is published in 2009. Von Ludwiger publishes two further monographs under the imprint of the Interdisziplinäre Gesellschaft zur Analyse anomaler Phänomene in 2017 and 2019. (“Die Erforschung unbekannter Flugobjekte,” Bericht, Mutual UFO Network– Central European Section, no. 1 (1975); “Rätselhafte Lichter und Objekte am Himmel,” IGAAP-Bericht, no. 1 (2017))
1975 — ATF agent Donald E. Flickinger, acting on information supplied to him by a writer who has been investigating animal mutilations, launches an investigation into a supposed Satanist network said to be behind the cattle
mutilations. He determines the story is a scheme hatched by a federal prisoner to get leverage to be transferred to a county jail. (Daniel Kagan and Ian Summers, Mute Evidence, Bantam, 1984, p. 40; Clark III 133)
1975 — Night. Sgt. Eric Slater is flight security controller at the Francis E. Warren AFB Tango-1 missile launch facility southeast of Wheatland, Wyoming. He sees a bright white light coming over the mountains from the Romeo-1 launch facility northwest of Meriden, hugging the contour of the landscape. It stops about 3 miles away and hovers for 1–2 hours. At one point a light beam shoots down from the UFO into the valley below. Then it comes straight for Tango-1. Slater sees it has a dome on top and small, alternating red-and-blue lights on each side. It only leaves when two F-4 Phantoms from Denver enter base airspace to pursue it. (Nukes 336–337)
January? — Kevin D. Randle and Robert C. Cornett prepare a catalog of “Unknown” cases from the Project Blue Book files before they are withdrawn from public access in April. About 40 of these cases are not in the Don Berliner version. (Sparks, p. 6)
January 1 — 6:25 a.m. Four Spanish Army soldiers (Manolo Aguera, Felipe Sánchez, Ricardo Iglesias, and José Laso) are driving near Quintanaortuño, Burgos, Spain, when Aguera sees a light fall from the sky at great speed. He stops the car and all four get out and watch a bright yellow object just above the ground some 1,300 feet away where the light has fallen. It has the form of a truncated cone and emits white jets of light toward the ground. The light goes out suddenly and four others appear in a straight line, lighting up in succession. Driving on toward Burgos, the soldiers stop two more times to watch the lights. Investigator Malo Martínez later finds two parallel scorched areas where there are numerous randomly spaced holes where the grass has been burned all the way to the ground. (“Aqui Vimos el OVNI,” Stendek, no. 18 (December 1974): cover; Pere Redon, “Burgos: Primer Caso de 1975,” Stendek, no. 19 (March 1975): 3–9; Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, A Catalogue of 200 Type I UFO Events in Spain and Portugal, CUFOS, 1976, p. 53; Pere Redon, “The Landing near Burgos,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 2 (August 1977): 22–24, 27; Swords 433)
January 1 — Just before sunrise. Actor Warren Oates is with four friends (Lee Clayton, Trina Mitchum, Judy A. Jones, and Ted Markland) in the desert about 20 miles northeast of Palm Springs, California, when they see an object moving in a semicircle through the night sky. They describe it as an oval, metallic object flashing yellow, green, and white lights, with one large orange light in the center. Clayton, watching it through binoculars, sees a bell shape on the top, and estimates it is about 3–5 miles away at an altitude of 2,000 feet. It stops and hovers momentarily before moving off behind the mountains. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 226)
January 2 — 2:45 p.m. Michael Lindstrom and his wife are relaxing on the beach near the Kauai Sands Hotel on the east side of the island of Maui, Hawaii. His wife notices a strange object moving southward over the beach toward her, and she runs to tell her husband, who is walking nearby. It is soundless, has a square shape, its center is white or silver, and it has a black stripe along its perimeter. A row of lights is visible along the lower edge. He estimates that it is flying at 5,000 feet altitude traveling diagonally to the direction of the wind, and is about one mile away. Before it disappears to the southwest after two minutes, Lindstrom takes three photographs (slides), which show a spherical object bisected by a black square and topped by five bright dots. (Bruce Maccabee, “A Rare Photo Coincidence,” IUR 15, no. 3 (May/June 1990): 4–9, 22)
January 2 — 11:00 p.m. An officer and several soldiers on a military patrol at the Las Bardenas Reales firing range near Arguedas, Navarre, Spain, see a group of intense lights moving slowly then remaining stationary on the ground for 25 minutes. Through binoculars, they see an object shaped like “half an orange” that rises and slowly disappears on the horizon. Some 30 observers view the lights for 3–4 minutes. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, A Catalogue of 200 Type I UFO Events in Spain and Portugal, CUFOS, 1976, p. 53; Gordon Creighton, “UFO Lands on Spanish Air Force Target Range,” Flying Saucer Review 24, no. 5 (March 1979): 17–18; UFOEv II 87; Swords 433–434, 526; Good Above, pp. 151–152, 459)
January 4 — 3:30 a.m. Carlos Alberto Diaz is walking home from a bus stop along Daniel de Solier street, Ingeniero White, near Bahía Blanca, Argentina, when he is blinded and paralyzed by a beam of light. He revives inside a UFO where three greenish, 6-foot-tall creatures, are plucking hair from his head and body. Diaz faints and wakes up in the afternoon in Buenos Aires some 400 miles away, where someone takes him to the Hospital Ferroviario. However, an extensive investigation by ufologist Roberto Enrique Banchs uncovers numerous discrepancies that strongly indicate a hoax. (Roberto Enrique Banchs and Richard W. Heiden, “Carlos Alberto Diaz Is a Hoaxer,” APRO Bulletin 26, no. 2 (August 1977): 8; Lon Strickler, “The Carlos Alberto Diaz Abduction,” Phantoms and Monsters, March 2, 2012; Clark III 602)
January 12 — 2:45 a.m. George O’Barski is driving home through North Hudson Park, New Jersey, when he hears static on his CB radio. Through the window he sees a dark, round object with brightly lit windows hovering over the ground about 100 feet away. Ten small (3.5-feet tall), helmeted figures dressed in coveralls emerge from the
UFO, dig up soil, and collect it in bags for about 3 minutes before returning to the craft, which takes off with a humming sound. O’Barski returns to the site the next day and finds holes that had been left. Hudson County Police Officers Thomas Feldhan and John Mackanics investigate and file reports. Months later, O’Barski relays the story to an acquaintance, Budd Hopkins, who is interested in UFOs. Hopkins and two others associated with the Center for UFO Studies find independent witnesses, including a doorman at the high-rise Stonehenge
apartment building, Bill Pawlowski, who sees a UFO with multiple lights in the park the same time. Hopkins, Ted Bloecher (then the director of New York MUFON), and Jerry Stoehrer, also of MUFON, investigate the incident and take soil samples. (Wikipedia, “Stonehenge (building)”; Ted Bloecher, “The Stonehenge Incidents, January 1975,” Proceedings of the 1976 CUFOS Conference, Center for UFO Studies, 1976, pp. 25–38; Ted Bloecher, “The ‘Stonehenge’ Incidents of January 1975,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 3 (October 1976): 3–7; Ted Bloecher, “The ‘Stonehenge’ Incidents of January 1975, Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 4 (November 1976): 5–11; Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 64; Budd Hopkins, Missing Time, R. Marek, 1981, pp. 34–50; Clark III 1109–1112)
January 20–22 — At the 13th Aerospace Sciences Meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Pasadena, California, physicist Peter A. Sturrock organizes a UFO symposium that features talks by astronomer J. Allen Hynek, ufologist Jacques Vallée, psychologist David R. Saunders, Hynek associate Fred Beckman, and ufologist Ted Phillips. (Clark III 102)
January 27 — A US Senate committee to investigate abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS is created by a vote of 82–4.
Chaired by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho), the committee is part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses in 1975, dubbed the “Year of Intelligence,” including its House counterpart, the Pike Committee, and the presidential Rockefeller Commission. It conducts 800 interviews and 250 executive and 21 public hearings. The committee’s efforts lead to the establishment of the permanent US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1976. (Wikipedia, “Church Committee”)
January 28 — Afternoon. Eccentric and contactee Billy Meier sees a disc-shaped spacecraft in Switzerland and takes several photographs of it. The ship lands in a nearby meadow, and a beautiful, pale-skinned, amber-haired spacewoman steps out and approaches him and talks to him for an hour and a half. Her name is Semjase from the planet Erra in the constellation Lyra (although they have since emigrated to the Pleiades), and she is the granddaughter of a being named Sfath, who had contacted Meier in 1944. Many other contacts continue, and Meier produces more photos so that he becomes a regional occult celebrity. (Wendelle C. Stevens, UFO Contact from the Pleiades, The Author, 1982; Gary Kinder, Light Years: An Investigation into the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Billy Meier, Atlantic Monthly, 1987; George M. Eberhart, “Photographs and Red Faces,” IUR 12, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1987): 19; Bruce Maccabee, “Pendulum from the Pleiades,” IUR 14, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1989): 11– 12, 22; Derek Bartholomaus, Billy Meier UFO Case website)
January 31 — Night. Mike McKenna, security guard at the Pickering, Ontario, Nuclear Generating Station, sees 6 balls of light from his position at the east gate. They vary in color from bright red to almost white and remain in the area for nearly 2 hours. Two move in from Lake Ontario and hover above the plant’s service center. After remaining motionless for 30 minutes, they take off straight up at a rocket-like speed. (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 120–121)
January 31 —10:20 p.m. Alan Lott is walking his dog in Caversham, Berkshire, England, when he sees a group of bright lights to the east. He calls his wife, Clarice, and they both view the lights through binoculars. They are moving slowly and silently in a straight line from east to west and are now directly above the Lotts’ house. The three brightest lights are orange-yellow and arranged in an equilateral triangle formation. There are two smaller lights, one red and another white. After 5 minutes, the formation vanishes behind houses and trees. (UFOFiles2, pp. 88– 90)
February —Domestic birds, ducks, goats, rabbits, geese, cattle, pigs, and sheep are found dead throughout Puerto Rico with what one veterinarian characterizes as “strange wounds.” The deaths typically occur in the early morning hours and are caused by a sharp instrument that can punch through flesh and bone, usually in the neck region. Around this time and through July, some Puerto Ricans see large, unidentified birds, as well as UFOs. (Sebastian Robiou Lamarche, “UFOs and Mysterious Deaths of Animals, Part 1,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 5 (February 1977): 15–18; Sebastian Robiou Lamarche, “UFOs and Mysterious Deaths of Animals, Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 6 (April 1977): 6–10; Clark III 139)
February — New York City psychic Ingo Swann receives a phone call from a friend in a government agency who tells him that he will be contacted by a “Mr. Axelrod.” One morning in March at 3:00 a.m., Axelrod calls Swann and asks him to be in Washington, D.C., at 12:00 noon. This leads to an unlikely adventure involving Swann’s remote viewing of a secret extraterrestrial base on the hidden side of the Moon and his “shocking” experience with a
sexy, scantily dressed female alien in a Los Angeles, California, supermarket. He concludes that extraterrestrials are living on Earth in humanoid bodies. Swann deduces that there are many extraterrestrials, that many are “bio- androids,” and that they are aware their only foes on Earth are psychics. Later, Swann and Mr. Axelrod take a flight to an unknown northerly destination, deduced by Swann as possibly Alaska. Along with two twin bodyguards, Swann and Axelrod attempt to secretly watch a recurrent UFO appear and suck up the water of a lake. Axelrod discloses that the silent, growing, oscillating triangle is simultaneously scanning the area and eliminating any animals, and that the silent beams emanating from the object are “blasting deer or porcupines from the woods or something.” The bodyguards realize they are discovered and the group is attacked by the UFO. Swann is thrown to safety by his colleagues and sustains a minor injury. (Wikipedia, “Ingo Swann”; Ingo Swann, Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy, Ingo Swann Books, 1998, pp. 23–61, 85– 100)
Early February — Night. A farmer is walking to his barn north of Lundar, Manitoba, when a red ball of light, 14–16 inches in diameter, swoops low over his head. As he gazes up at it, he feels as if hot plastic is being poured on his head. He suffocates and cannot think clearly while it is above him. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 172)
February 4 — Night. Three Pickering, Ontario, ambulance drivers, a Durham regional police constable, and Andy Parks, music director of radio station CHOO in Agincourt, watch pulsing, multicolored objects maneuvering above the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. Parks says they are “floating around, zipping this way and that.” (Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 121–122)
February 10 — 7:00 p.m. Two 15-year-old boys in Annadale, Staten Island, New York, see a glowing ball, 20 feet in diameter, hovering about 400 feet away above some trees near a frozen pond. The brilliant orange mass compresses itself from football-shaped to basketball-shaped over a period of 10 minutes then suddenly disappears. Another witness who is walking a German shepherd dog around the same time reports that the dog reacted very nervously to something in the woods. The boys return early the next morning and find that some trees, ranging 5– 20 feet in height, have been sheared off and some are coated with a carbon-like substance. NICAP investigators have dirt and wood samples analyzed at a scientific laboratory and find that the trees are only superficially burned on their bark but that the fire is oil-based. They suspect the glowing object is a low-temperature fuel fire. (“Converging Ball of Light Mystifies Witnesses,” UFO Investigator, April 1975, p. 1)
February 14 — 12:05 p.m. Antoine Séverin, 21, is on the slope of Piton du Calvaire, a hill outside Petite Île on the southern coast of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, when he hears a deafening beeping sound, feels a blast of heat, and sees a bright metallic object hovering about 5 feet above the ground. A ladder with three steps appears on the underside, and a small being like the “Michelin man” emerges. He is holding a shining object. Two other beings emerge, all with antennae on their heads. A fourth is visible through a porthole. Then Séverin is hurled onto his back by a powerful flash of light. The beings run up the ladder and withdraw it, then the UFO takes off, emitting a loud whistle. For several days he has blurred vision, impaired speech, and a medical diagnosis of shock. The Gendarmerie investigate the case and judge him to be mentally sound. (Lt.-Col. Lobet, “Atterrissage à Petit Île (Réunion) le 14 Février 1975,” Lumières dans la Nuit, no. 147 (Aug./Sept. 1975): 4–10; Lt.-Col. Lobet, “Another Close Contact on Réunion, Part 1,” Flying Saucer Review 25, no. 2 (July 1979): 6–10; Lt.-Col. Lobet, “Another Close Contact on Réunion, Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 25, no. 2 (September 1979): 7–10; Patrick Gross,
“Petit-Île, La Réunion, February 14, 1975”)
February 17 — 9:00 p.m. Wheatland County Sheriff Richard Egebakken sees a bright, round object hovering about 500 feet near the Malmstrom AFB K-01 Minuteman missile alert facility 1.7 miles east-northeast of Harlowton, Montana. When Deputy Larry Clifford drives to a point about one mile from the site, the object suddenly shoots up to 2,000 feet, stops, and hovers again. State Game Warden Gene Tierney says it is not an aircraft.
Commissioner Edgar Langston, also a pilot, sees the object through binoculars from his ranch 15 miles south of Harlowton and sees an antenna-like protrusion on the top. Deputy Herb Lynn stops his pickup truck a few miles out of town to watch and sees it flitting around the sky in all sorts of crazy directions. Deputy Russ Mill, within a mile of K-01, describes a blue object bobbing up and down. Radar at Malmstrom AFB does not track anything. (UFOEv II 45–46)
February 23 — Night. Glenn E. Bradley sees two large cylindrical objects like grain silos floating above Matachewan, Ontario. Both are shining white floodlights downward to the ground and have bright lights at the top. They are traveling to the west at about 30 mph. Bradley begins following them in his pickup truck. Outside the lights of the town he notices that the two silos are accompanied by smaller UFOs about 50 feet in diameter, all darting about at high speed. They appear to be entering and exit the larger silos. (“Silos over Ontario,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 6, no. 1 (Feb./March 1985): 5–6)
February 26 — 8:45 p.m. A former RAAF crewman and a companion are on a fishing trip to Lake Sorell, Tasmania, when they see three glowing objects in the northeast sky, one smaller than the other two. Two of the UFOs move closer and hover, then recede, intermittently obscured by clouds. Each has a pulsing red light on its base. The main larger object is an elongated disc with a row of twinkling red lights around the rim. After a bank of clouds go through with a passing storm, the object reappears, glows brightly, and suddenly zooms toward the witnesses at “phenomenal speed.” It stops abruptly about 2,900 feet away at a height of 490 feet, its lights dimming. It projects a brilliant, cone-shaped light beam toward the lake and sweeps it toward the terrain, illuminating the side of a mountain. Then it sweeps back across the lake beneath the object and fades out. The lake’s surface glows a fluorescent blue-white. The object then shoots away to the northeast. A second object, which has been hovering to the north toward Mount Penny, speeds off in the same direction. (“UFO and Light in Tasmania,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 6 (April 1977): 30–31; Story, pp. 344–345; UFOEv II 219–221; CUFOS case files)
March 2 — A police officer in Phillips, Wisconsin, hears odd noises on his patrol car radio, then he sees a disc-shaped object with a rounded hump on its top and bottom, along with red and orange lights on the bottom edge. He estimates the object is 30 feet in diameter. When he directs his spotlight on it, the object rapidly ascends. (Richard F. Haines, CE-5: Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, Sourcebooks, 1998, p. 109)
March 2 — 10:30 p.m. A couple and their daughter see a large, yellowish, egg-shaped light moving erratically in short spurts outside their home in the Great Swamp Management Area near West Kingston, Rhode Island. It then stops and hovers for 5 minutes. They then see two orange-white, ball-shaped objects drop from the large UFO and move northward at the approximate speed of an aircraft, disappearing over the horizon. The large object again moves erratically toward the southeast, gradually picking up speed. (“Object Ejects Small Spheres,” APRO Bulletin 24, no. 2 (August 1975): 4)
March 7 — The US Embassy in Algiers, Algeria, sends a report to US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, stating that strange “machines” have been maneuvering over Algerian airspace since January, some near military installations and usually around 7:00–7:30 p.m., often by multiple witnesses. An object with a bright light has been seen near Oran, Bechar, and off the coast on March 6 (when it is also confirmed on radar). (ClearIntent, pp. 79–80)
March 18 — 1:30 p.m. Pat McCarthy, 19, is in a quarry off Ontario Highway 5 near Waterdown, Ontario, trying to take photos of hawks. He is about to leave when he sees a dark object resembling a Frisbee. It is moving swiftly, and he takes four photos of it, capturing the object 3 times. He estimates the object is twice as long as a DC-8. He takes the camera to the Hamilton Spectator, which processes the film in its darkroom. (Hamilton (Ont.) Spectator, March 18–19, 27, 1975; “Canadian Photo Case,” APRO Bulletin 24, no. 4 (October 1975): 1, 3, 6; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 15–18)
March 22 — 10:30 p.m. Two young men and three girls are driving along the Mount Flora to Dingo Beach Road about 50 miles from Nebo, Queensland, when they see a strange light in a gravel storage area to the left of the road. The object is a box-like mass, 8 feet high and 9 feet wide, with a row of flashing white-to-yellow lights about 3 feet above the ground and a circular mass above it. As they stop the car, the object emits a tremendous bang like a shotgun. They are startled and drive on, feeling that the circular mass is watching them, then they return to the original location, but the girls in the back seat are terrified. They drive 9 miles further and find a road construction crew and tell them about the UFO. The two men convince one of the workers to return to the spot, but the object is gone and they find unusual ground marks. On March 25, two investigating officers from RAAF Base Townsville examine three oval-shaped areas, one roughly circular area, and one rectangular area, all apparently recent and produced by a heavy weight or pressure. (Swords 405–406; Bill Chalker, “Physical Traces,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 190–192)
March 28 — Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) writes, in response to an inquiry from UFO researcher Shlomo Arnon: “The subject of UFOs is one that has interested me for some long time. About ten or twelve years ago I made an effort to find out what was in the building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the information is stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above Top Secret. I have, however, heard that there is a plan underway to release some, if not all, of this material in the near future.” (Good Above, p. 2; Nick Redfern, “UFOs and Senator Barry Goldwater,” Mysterious Universe, May 1, 2014)
April — Blue Book files are withdrawn from public access by Air Force Archives at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama, as the security classification and privacy review panel begins reviewing them, sanitizing witness names, and destroying or removing certain documents thought embarrassing. The redactions are made on the original paper files. (Sparks, pp. 6–7)
April 1 — The Federal Aviation Administration approves cooperation with the Center for UFO Studies, authorizing air traffic controllers and other personnel to report UFO sightings as their workload permits. (Story, p. 417)
April 3–9 — Some 57 separate UFO sightings involving triangular or delta-shaped UFOs occur in the area around Lumberton, North Carolina. Many cases involve an object hovering silently at low altitude, accelerating instantly, and turning without banking. They are often seen at treetop level and with a bright and maneuverable spotlight.
Among the witnesses are 48 police officers. (“Witnesses Discount Theory That UFO Was Airplane,” Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer, April 5, 1975, p. 19; “UFO ‘Mystery’ Returns with New N.C. Sightings,” Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer, April 6, 1975, p. 1; Jennie Zeidman, The Lumberton UFO Report: UFO Activity in S. North Carolina, April 3–9, 1975, CUFOS, 1976; “Landing Reported in N. Carolina,” Skylook, May 1975, pp. 3–5; UFOEv II 347–348; Marler 91–94)
April 14 — Tage Eriksson, head of UFO investigations at the Swedish National Defence Research Institute, finds the work a waste of time and tries to get it transferred back to the Defense Staff. His request is denied. (Swords 368)
April 20 — Night. Stationary beams of light are seen at San José de Jáchal, San Juan, Argentina. In a remote area, three imprints are found forming a 12-foot equilateral triangle surrounding a large smoke blot. Nearby plants are burned and stones are blackened. Some footprints are noted. Seven mushrooms nearly 8 inches tall are found growing there the following day. (Fred Merritt, “A Preliminary Classification of Some Reports of UFOs,” IUR 28, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 9)
April 26 —2:00 a.m. Two young witnesses see a light descend briefly behind a school in Chomedey, Laval, Quebec, for a few seconds. They find a piece of metal and a hole in the ground. (Ted Phillips, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings, CUFOS, 1975, p. 106)
May 3 — 8:00 a.m. A professional photographer is taking pictures of the Irma kød company south of Copenhagen, Denmark, when he sees a bright flash off to his right. When he develops one photo, the image shows an odd object tilted at an angle and slightly out of focus. (Kim Møller Hansen, “Danish UFO-Photo?” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 6 (Dec. 1984/Jan. 1985): 1–2)
May 3 — 1:34 p.m. Carlos Antonio de los Santos Montiel is flying a Piper PA-24 Comanche from Zihuatenejo, Guerrero, Mexico, to Mexico City at about 15,000 feet. While passing over Laguna de Tequesquitengo in Jojutla, Morelos, he feels a strange vibration in his airplane. Then he sees to the right, pacing alongside, a 10-to 12-foot-diameter disc with a dome on top. Another appears to the left of the plane, and a third disc approaches head-on, dropping beneath the plane. Carlos feels a jolt as if the object has impacted. He pulls the landing gear lever, but it fails to operate. The plane feels as if it is pulled or lifted, and the controls refuse to respond. Although badly shaken, Carlos notifies Mexico City by radio, describing what is happening. At the same time, air control radar is showing unexplained objects near his plane that are capable of sharp turns, unlike normal aircraft. Finally, their blips merge on the radar screen and speed away toward Popocatépetl volcano. After the objects leave, Montiel is able to lower his landing gear manually and land safely. Aviation personnel who know him testify to his sobriety and trustworthiness. A week later, de los Santos is invited to discuss the sighting on a TV talk show. As he drives to the interview, a large black Cadillac limousine pulls in front of him on the freeway. An identical car appears behind, forcing him to the side of the road. Four tall, broad-shouldered, pale-skinned men in dark suits jump out and approach him, still in his car. Speaking Spanish in a mechanical tone, one warns him to keep quiet about the sighting “if you value your life and your family’s too.” He breaks his appointment, and does so a month later after another visit by the men in black before an interview with J. Allen Hynek. (NICAP, “UFOs ‘Escort’ Mexican Aircraft / Radar Confirmed”; “UFOs ‘Escort’ Mexican Aircraft,” APRO Bulletin 24, no. 2 (August 1975): 1, 3–4; Jerome Clark, “Carlos de los Santos and the Men in Black,” Flying Saucer Review 24, no. 4 (January 1979): 8–9; Clark III 730; UFOEv II 133–134; Patrick Gross, “Piper P24 Paced by Three Flying Discs, 1975”)
May 3 — 9:15 p.m. Alois Olenick, 48, is driving west on Mogford Road south of San Antonio, Texas, when an amber- colored object rises up from a grove of trees. The object approaches him quickly, the light on its front changing from amber to red. When it hovers over his pickup for 10–20 seconds, the lights go out and the engine goes dead. He can see two occupants through a clear dome on the top of the UFO. They are bald with long prominent ears and long noses. The bottom of the object is “highly polished metal” that casts a reddish glow. Olenick hears no engine noise, only a shriek of wind. The object takes off straight up and vanishes instantly. (Gary Graber, “Two Occupants in Craft,” Skylook, no. 99 (February 1976): 3–4; Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (September 2011): 17; UFOEv II 461–462)
May 4 — Before midnight. Paul Dedieu, his brother, and a friend are driving near Haywood, Manitoba, when they see an odd star. Red lightning seems to light it up and it zooms away, dripping molten metal and crashes in the vicinty of Lake Manitoba to the north. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 103)
May 6 — Day. A pilot testing some new equipment in his airplane southeast of Wright-Patterson AFB near Dayton, Ohio, sees three silvery UFOs with portholes flying in formation ahead and closing in on his aircraft. The pilot descends to 1,000 feet, but they keep pace, one on each wingtip, the third above the plane. The pilot levels off and climbs quickly to 3,000 feet, but the objects match his maneuvers for another 60 minutes. All the control panel instruments go haywire, and the pilot loses all sense of time. The UFOs are confirmed by base radar. (Stringfield, Situation Red, Fawcett Crest, 1977, pp. 145–146)
May 12 — 11:30 p.m. Lyle Carson is in his farmhouse 2.5 miles east of Peesane, Saskatchewan, when he and his wife observe a green light for 10–15 minutes. On May 14, Carson is checking some fences and he comes across a perfectly round circle of burned grass, 5 feet in diameter and 6 inches thick on the outside edge. The RCMP take photos and samples. (Ted Phillips, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings, CUFOS, 1975, p. 107; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 190)
May 13–14 — 11:30 p.m. Multiple witnesses see a bright light a few miles north of Carman, Manitoba, where it has been appearing so frequently since April 10 that it has been nicknamed “Charlie Redstar.” CKY-TV station employees Bill Kendricks and Allen Kerr see a light on the western horizon that rises up, moves slowly south, flashes brilliantly, then shoots straight up. Newspaper editor Howard Bennett and others see a smoky red light above some tall trees. Bennett leads investigators to a potential landing site. Using a radiation survey meter, they find a few radioactive hot spots about 255 feet apart, each with a radius of 25 feet. (Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 124–126; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 161, 171–181)
May 16 — Three men wander away from a party on the shore of Stephenfield Lake, Manitoba, when they see a “moon- shaped” object hovering over a dam on the far shore. As they watch, a beam of light shoots from the object to the surface of the lake. A glowing object appears underneath the surface and begins moving toward the witnesses.
When it is about 20 feet away, one of them throws a rock at it. It appears to break into pieces and return to its original location, and the beam goes out. (Chris Rutkowski, Visitations? Manitoba UFO Experiences, Winter Press, 1989, p. 18; Carl W. Feindt, “Beam of Light into a Body of Water,” IUR 33, no. 3 (December 2010): 23)
May 26 — 7:45 p.m. Didier Burr, 17, photographs a dark, disc-shaped object outside his second-story window in Nancy, France. The sighting only lasts 10–15 seconds. The photo shows a slightly blurry disc above a nearby building. (Patrick Gross, “Nancy, France, May 26, 1975”)
May 30 — Russell Worobetz is cultivating some stubble near Hazel Dell, Saskatchewan, when he finds two burned areas in the center of his field. They are 5 feet in diameter and 4 feet apart. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 190)
Summer — Around 12:00 midnight. An orange object appears several times above two fishing trawlers one mile off the coast of Topsail Beach, North Carolina. (Cordy Hieronymus, “Out of the Past,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 1 (Feb./March 1984): 6)
June — Historian David M. Jacobs publishes The UFO Controversy in America, based on his Ph.D. dissertation in history. It becomes a classic history of UFOs and the investigations of the Air Force and other government agencies. (David M. Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America, Indiana University, 1975; Clark III 629)
June 20 — 11:10 p.m. A Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable patrolling on Grand Valley Road northwest of Brandon, Manitoba, notices a bright white light to the northwest, apparently in the area of Kirkham’s Bridge. Another RCMP in the bridge area sees the light 10 minutes later, apparently 220–300 feet above the ground. One officer attempts to close with the light unsuccessfully until he is 3 miles southeast of Hamiota. It flashes red and disappears at 12:15 a.m. (Patrick Gross, “Files Obtained from the National Archives of Canada”)
June 23 — 12:37 p.m. A British naval vessel is stationed off the west coast of Ireland in a thick fog when the radar operator picks up an echo, presumably a surface vessel closing in on the ship. However, the blip accelerates to an “impossible” speed in one minute. The operator notifies the captain, who files a report. The case is investigated by the Ministry of Defence. (Peter Bottomley and Gordon Clegg, “MoD Tracks UFO on Radar,” BUFORA Journal 4, no. 12 (March/April 1976): 8–10; Nick Redfern, A Covert Agenda: UFO Secrecy Exposed, Simon & Schuster, 1997, pp. 128–129)
June 30 — The USAF Aerospace Defense Command becomes the US executive agent in NORAD. Its Continental Air Defense Command, which it had taken over in 1957, is disestablished and transferred to the Aerospace Defense Command. (Wikipedia, “Aerospace Defense Command”)
Early July — 3:00 a.m. Four young people camping out on the shore of the Charvak Reservoir in Uzbekistan wake up in terror for no apparent reason. They see a glowing sphere rise silently from under the water about one-half mile
from shore. Concentric circles of varying thickness and brightness form around it. They watch it for 7 minutes, completely terrified. (Stonehill and Mantle, Russia’s USO Secrets, Flying Disk, 2020, pp. 121–122)
July — François Breuil begins publishing L’Insolite in Mâcon, Saône-et-Loire, France. It continues until January 1982. (L’Insolite, no. 1 (July 1975))
July — 2:00 a.m. Margareta Ivanciov is walking from the train station in Teremia Mare, Romania, when she sees a bright yellow-orange globe nearly 2 feet in diameter floating about 90 feet in front of her and 7 feet above the pavement. It speeds up when she approaches it, keeping the same distance. She notices that it is composed of thousands of bright dots emanating the same color light. It disappears around a corner, anticipating her route, and follows her home, where it hovers briefly before moving into a neighbor’s yard. (Romania 41–42)
July — 9:30 p.m. A family of four is driving home along the Tasman Highway near Hobart Airport, Cambridge, Tasmania. The interior of the car becomes hot, the engine stalls, and they roll to a stop. Although there is no smell in the air, the family feels that they can taste something like gasoline. Then they see an object hovering above the road ahead of them. It seems 650–980 feet distant and 65 feet in the air. It looks round, is colored a metallic grayish-white, and has its own irridescence or glow. The diameter is close to the width of the road, perhaps 16 feet. They stare at the object for 2 minutes. Suddenly, in a spiraling take-off, the object speeds away to the south. The husband is a car mechanic, and he finds nothing wrong with the car. He gets back in, starts the car, and they go home without further incident, although the object still is visible several more minutes as a diminishing light. (“UFO Reports from Around Australia,” ACOS Bulletin, no. 12 (December 1977): 11)
July 1 — Day. A Dutch couple on vacation snap a photo of the panoramic landscape of the Pyrenees mountains just after leaving El Pas de la Casa, Andorra. They have the roll developed in Calafell, Catalonia, Spain, and are surprised to see a strange, yellow-and-orange object in motion in the foreground and casting a distinct shadow.
Investigators from the Netherlands UFO group NOBOVO determine that the object is really a road sign photographed directly from their slow-moving vehicle (the speed of the car was estimated to be no more than 22 mph). (Wim van Utrecht, “Spinning UFO Photographed during Take-Off,” Caelestia)
July 6 — 5:00 p.m. Joe Borda is doing farm chores at Mount Pleasant, Ontario, when he sees a domed metallic cylinder landed in a tobacco field. Thinking it is probably a tank truck, he continues and goes home. On July 8, he comes across a circular crushed patch of tobacco plants about 30–40 feet in diameter. Inside the circle are two spots of some substance, reddish purple in color, that feels slippery and oily. The provincial police remove some soil samples; they are not radioactive and do not contain oil. (Graham Conway, “Strange Voice Heard after UFO Landing,” Canadian UFO Report 3, no. 8 (Summer 1976): 1–2)
July 14 — Ground Saucer Watch of Phoenix, Arizona, headed by William Spaulding, files a FOIA request with the CIA for copies of all of its UFO documents or investigations. (ClearIntent, p. 113)
July 15–16 — 8:15 p.m. David Burgess, an official at Khami Prison in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and a friend see from their car an orange object, almost circular with a flat bottom and a rounded top, hovering above the prison about 1–2 miles away. At 8:45 p.m., another official sees an object in the same place. The following night at 7:30 p.m., a bright silvery object is seen hovering motionless 2–3 miles northeast of the prison by a Mr. and Mrs. Rossiter and their three children. It then moves rapidly to the east. (“Southern Africa Reports Several UFO Sightings,” Skylook, October 1975, pp. 14–15)
July 22 — 5:00 p.m. A young boy on holiday with his family in Wales wanders by himself to the top of Wylfa Hill, south of Machynlleth, Powys, Wales. At the top he sees an apparently landed object. About 40 feet wide, it is comprised of a 7-foot round base and surmounted by a clear plastic–like, hemispherical dome. Large round lights about 5 feet in diameter are spaced evenly around the base, about 7 of which are visible, shining in strange colors. Each seems to be recessed into the silvery, metallic base. Clearly seen within the dome is a 7-foot-tall, 15-foot-wide, metallic unit, Two “jelly-like” entities are seen next to it, one on each side. They are approximately 7 feet tall, a whitish-translucent color, amorphous, and constantly changing shape. Inside each entity are hundreds of 6-inch, white, disc-like forms, similar to doughnuts. When another of these entities floats toward the object, the boy flees the scene and unsuccessfully tries to persuade his father to take a look. Returning alone, the boy sees the object carrying the entities disappear by pulsing in and out and changing color rapidly to match those of the surrounding sky and grass. It then “merges” into them. Immediately afterward, the boy suffers acute shock and what a doctor diagnoses as hysterical blindness in one eye that persists for months. (Andrew Collins, “Jelly-like Entities at Machynlleth,” Flying Saucer Review 24, no. 4 (January 1979): 14–16)
July 26 — 3:00 p.m. Three Dutch hikers are about to take on the last kilometers of a two-day mountain trip in the Swiss Alps when they allegedly encounter a circular object hovering in the air in front of them. It seems to be made of “some sort of metal, not unlike aluminum,” is dull gray in color, and resembles an inverted soup plate. The strange contraption is approximately 50 feet in diameter and appears to be suspended over the small village of Zwischbergen, Valais, Switzerland, some 328–1,640 feet away. One of them succeeds in taking a color slide of
the phenomenon. Immediately after the photo is taken, the object starts to move and glides behind the trees, where it disappears from view. Possible hoax. (“The Saas Fee Photo,” IUR 20, no. 3 (May/June 1995): 19; Wim van Utrecht, “The Zwischbergen ‘Saas Fee’ Photo,” Caelestia, July 15, 2000)
July 31 — 7:30 a.m. Farmer Danie van Graan goes to inspect his sheep enclosure at Loxton, Northern Cape, South Africa, and sees a silvery disc with prong-like legs. He approaches to within 15 feet of it. Through a large window he can see 4 people, one standing near a panel of flashing colored lights, the other three apparently looking at some device. The entities are about 5 feet tall, thin and pale, and are wearing whitish coveralls with hoods hanging down around their necks. They have fair-colored hair, slanted eyes, and sharp, pointed chins. They all suddenly look up at him, and van Graan hears a “tick” noise as a light beam hits him in the face. Ill and confused, he tries to avoid the beam. His nose bleeds and he starts vomiting. The humming increases to a sharp whine, and the object takes off at a sharp angle. Later investigation reveals 4 marks on the outside perimeter of a circle 30 feet in diameter impressed in the ground, with crisscrossed central markings. A deposit of small, green granules is found near the center; analysis shows this to be carbon dust, grit, shale with feldspar inclusions, and thaumasite. Nothing grows in the affected area later. (UFO EvII 493–494)
Late July or early August — 9:00 p.m. A married couple and their small son are driving in the country near Pittsburg, Kansas, when the wife notices an object moving quickly toward them. It comes across the highway at about telephone pole height. The object is round and glowing intensely, with even more intense, small panels inset all around it. It is as wide as the highway and remains hovering. The man pulls the car over and the UFO begins to pull away. They continue following it, but the object changes its motion frequently. Finally it picks up speed and blinks out. (Michael D. Swords, “Unusual Experiences from the Timmerman Files,” IUR 27, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 21–22)
August — The Aviation and Air Defense division of the Swiss Army draws up a seven-page report on UFOs. (“Forscher findet verschollene UFO-Akten der Schweiz,” Grenzwissenschaft-Aktuell, July 8, 2013; “The Swiss X-Files,” Fortean Times 312 (April 2014): 24)
August 13 — 1:15 a.m. Sgt. Charles L. Moody, stationed at Holloman AFB, is out in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, awaiting a meteor shower. He sees a metallic disc drop from the sky some 300 feet in front of him. It is about 50 feet long, 20 feet wide, and faintly luminous. It stops descending at 20 feet altitude and begins approaching Moody. Uneasy, he gets in his car and turns the ignition on, but the engine is dead. Moody can see an oblong window in the UFO and shadow figures moving within. He hears a high-pitched sound like a dental drill for a short time, then he feels numb. The next thing he knows, the UFO is ascending and disappears from sight within seconds. The car starts and he drives home, where he notices the time is 3:00 a.m., representing about 90 minutes he can’t account for. Moody gets a pain in his lower back in the afternoon. Soon he is put in touch with APRO’s Jim Lorenzen, who calls him on August 21. Moody now has a heat rash on his lower body. His memories about the incident eventually return, and the Lorenzens visit him in 1976 at an overseas post where he narrates an abduction scenario with shortish, human-like aliens with big heads and wearing coveralls. (L. J. Lorenzen, “The Moody Case,” APRO Bulletin 24, no. 12 (June 1976): 6; L. J. Lorenzen, “The Moody Case,” APRO Bulletin 25, no. 1 (July 1976): 2, 5–6; Lorenzen, Abducted! Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space, Berkley, 1977, pp. 38–51; Good Need, pp. 323–325; Story, pp. 233–234; Clark III 770–771)
August 14 — 9:35 p.m. Maj. Claude Riddle is flying a helicopter at 900 feet while approaching Stockton (California) Metropolitan Airport. Suddenly, air traffic controller Joe Savage sees flashing lights closing in on him in a collision course. When he advises Riddle to take evasive action, the object turns orange and shoots up to 5,000 feet, where it hovers. Riddle looks behind him and sees another light trailing him a mile or so away. When he swings around, he sees it shimmering like a diamond and as big as a jetliner. Two blue beams come out from the sides. Dan Long, another controller sees the object through field glasses at an altitude of about 2,000 feet, then it moves upward while emitting a glow of green-tinted smoke and flashing red lights. Gary Duran and two friends also see the object while walking near the airport. After 5 minutes of hovering near the airport, the object turns bright red and shoots off. (“California Pilot Encounters UFO,” Skylook, no. 99, February 1976, p. 16)
August 20 — Evening. Police stations in the area of Albany, New York, receive numerous calls about UFO sightings. State Trooper Michael Morgan is dispatched to the scene of one of the sightings, where a police detective is observing a blimp-sized object hovering at 500 feet over Lake Saratoga. As the reddish, glowing UFO flashes on and off, two smaller objects approach and merge with it. Air traffic controllers at Albany Airport locate the object on a radar scanner. After a few minutes, the two smaller objects break away and leave in the direction from which they had come. The first object moves toward the two policemen who see a brilliant white light shining from the center of its base as it passes over them. Silently, the craft turns and moves away slowly. Suddenly, the UFO disappears. After tracking the target for 45 minutes, the radar operators lose contact with it. However, within a
short time, they receive a call from the pilot of a military airplane who warns them that he has just seen a red fireball 1,000 feet above him headed toward the airport. The controllers locate the object just as it enters the 50- mile range of one of their radarscopes. The anti-clutter device is thrown to ascertain whether or not the blip is a radar angel, but the image still comes through clearly. The controllers estimate its speed to be 3,000 mph. About five miles outside Albany, the target vanishes. The controllers speculate that it has either accelerated to a speed of 5,000 mph or has executed a seemingly impossible vertical maneuver at high speed. During the same time as the Albany sightings, large discs and bright lights are seen at low altitude less than 50 miles north over the South Glens Falls area and as far north as Lake George. The case is investigated by Ernest Jahn, who contacts the Smithsonian Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They are unable to give any explanation for the sightings. (Margaret Sachs, UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, pp. 10–11)
August 26 — 3:15 a.m. Terry O’Leary, his girlfriend Jackie Larson, and Jackie’s mother Sandy Larson leave Fargo, North Dakota for Bismarck, which they plan to reach around 7:00 a.m. Forty-five miles into their trip on Interstate 94, they see a brilliant flash of light and sounds like thunder. About 50 yards away on their left, they watch 8–10 orange, glowing objects heading south to east. One is distinctly larger than the others. The lights descend in a straight line at a 30° angle until they stop over a grove of trees. Suddenly one of the objects splits in half and others shoot away. At this point, the witnesses feel peculiar sensations of being unable to move. Jackie finds herself sitting in the back seat (she had been in the front seat with the others) and the lights are gone. The witnesses drive on to Tower City, North Dakota, where Sandy notes the time is 5:23 a.m., an hour later than it should have been. Through a mutual friend, Sandy eventually contacts ufologist Jerome Clark, who puts her in touch with psychologist R. Leo Sprinkle, who has used hypnotic regression in abduction cases. Sprinkle conducts three hypnotic sessions with Sandy and Jackie Larson on December 4–6. Sandy remembers a 6-foot-tall entity that looks like a mummy, various medical procedures, and a journey to a place with sand. She has further regressions with Sprinkle in January and February 1976, and she describes an otherworldly journey with three beings on a UFO. Clark writes: “What makes the Larson story interesting, in retrospect, however, is its anticipation of many abduction motifs which, though barely noted or entirely unknown in 1975, had become repeatedly demonstrated aspects of the experience by the late 1980s. (Clark III 675–678; Lorenzen, Abducted!
Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space, Berkley, 1977, pp. 52–69)
September? — 10:30 p.m. Lt. Rafael Muñoz Pastor is returning to Jerez air base [now Jerez Airport], Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz, Spain, piloting a Grumman AN-1 antisubmarine aircraft with four other crew members. He is flying at 3,500 feet and is already on the landing approach to Jerez, when he receives a call from the Seville air traffic center asking him if he can see any aircraft over Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, where they have a radar target.
The crew is seeing a “round light, brilliant red in color and with yellowish edges” in the area, so they are ordered to get closer. When they are 4–5 miles from Sanlúcar, the red ball ascends vertically from 1,000 feet to some 10,000–20,000 feet. Numerous residents of Sanlúcar also see the object from cafes. An F-5A fighter is scrambled from Morón Air Base in Seville province, which also spotted the object, and the Grumman returns to Jerez after viewing the light for an estimated 45 minutes. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, “Spanish Military UFO Encounter,” IUR 28, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 7–9)
September 3 — 8:00 p.m. Three witnesses in Tujunga, California, see two helicopters following a UFO. The top of the object is a vibrant blue green, the middle portion white, and the bottom part red. It appears to change to a saucer shape and zigzags around the sky. Shortly before 11:00 p.m., the witnesses see the lights go on at a nearby Nike missile base in the mountains. Afterward, the witnesses’ eyes turn red and painful. (Ann Druffel, “California Report: The Mystery Helicopters,” Skylook, no. 99, February 1976, pp. 8–9)
September 11 — Sen. Floyd K. Haskell (D-Colo.) contacts the FBI and relates his concern about dead and mutilated cattle found in Colorado and other western states. The mutilations involve loss of ears, eyes, and genitalia, with most of the blood drained from the carcasses. Haskell estimates there have been 130 mutilations in 9 states during the past two years. He has also heard that US Army helicopters have been seen near the sites of some of the mutilations. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Animal Mutilation Part 1 of 5,” FBI Records: The Vault, pp. 12–18)
September 14 — Calling themselves The Two (or Bo and Peep), Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles hold a meeting in a hotel in Waldport, Oregon. When 20 of the 300 audience members disappear after the meeting, the Oregon State Police launch an investigation. Other audience members think the topic is vague but involves something about leaving in a UFO from a camp somewhere in Colorado. (Clark III 565)
September 27 — The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics hosts a symposium, “Hypotheses Concerning the Origin of UFOs,” sponsored by the Los Angeles, California, section. The proceedings are published under the title Thesis and Antithesis. (Story, p. 417)
Fall — A married couple and the husband’s business partner purchase an abandoned ranch property in a remote rural area of western Colorado, hoping to turn it into a working cattle ranch. Not long after moving in, numerous weird events start taking place that last for a two-year period: whirring noises, UFOs, strange footprints in the snow, hairy bigfoot-like creatures, and UFO occupants. The witnesses eventually move back to Denver, where they are interviewed by geologist John S. Derr and psychologist R. Leo Sprinkle, as well as R. Martin Wolf, Steven Mayne, and Jerome Clark. (John S. Derr and R. Leo Sprinkle, “Multiple Phenomena on Colorado Ranch,” APRO Bulletin 27, no. 1 (July 1978): 5–8; John S. Derr and R. Leo Sprinkle, “Multiple Phenomena on Colorado Ranch, Part 2,” APRO Bulletin 27, no. 2 (August 1978): 7–8; John S. Derr and R. Leo Sprinkle, “Multiple Phenomena on Colorado Ranch, Part 3,” APRO Bulletin 27, no. 3 (September 1978): 6–8; John S. Derr and R. Leo Sprinkle, “Multiple Phenomena on Colorado Ranch, Part 4,” APRO Bulletin 27, no. 4 (October 1978): 5–8; John S. Derr and R. Leo Sprinkle, “Multiple Phenomena on a Rocky Mountain Ranch, Part 5,” APRO Bulletin 27, no. 5 (November 1978): 5–8; John S. Derr and R. Leo Sprinkle, “Multiple Phenomena on a Rocky Mountain Ranch, Part 6,” APRO Bulletin 27, no. 6 (December 1978): 7–8; John S. Derr and R. Leo Sprinkle, “Multiple Phenomena on a Rocky Mountain Ranch, Conclusion,” APRO Bulletin 27, no. 7 (January 1979): 5–8; Clark III 558–559)
Fall — Evening. Two soldiers of a Chinese People’s Liberation Army unit stationed in Jianshui County, Yunnan, China, encounter a huge saucer-shaped object circling above their heads and emitting beams of soft orange-colored light. One of the men runs into the camp to sound an alarm, while the other stays to watch it. A few minutes later, the camp commandant and about a dozen armed men run up to the barracks entrance and find no trace of the soldier who had stayed behind. The commandant orders all officers and enlisted men to search, but they do not find him. A few hours later, four soldiers taking over sentry duty suddenly hear the sound of someone moaning behind them. They see the missing man, who has reappeared. His eyebrows, beard, and hair have grown extremely long. When he fully regains consciousness, his memory is completely gone. His wristwatch shows that it had stopped long ago. His weapons and watch are found to be slightly magnetized. (Paul Dong, “Extracts from Paul Dong’s Feidie Bai Wen Bai Da (Questions and Answers on UFOs),” Flying Saucer Review 29, no. 6 (August 1984): 17; Clark III 653)
Fall — 4:00 a.m. A couple driving east toward Toppenish, Washington, see a bright white light that appears overhead and slightly ahead of them. At first they think it might be a helicopter with a searchlight, but then an area about one mile in diameter lights up around their car, their radio becomes noisy, and their headlights dim. The flood-lit area suddenly goes out and the light speeds up in the sky and disappears. When they reach Ahtanum, Washington, about 25 miles from the first incident, the bright light again appears overhead briefly, then streaks away and disappears. (W. J. Vogel, “The Yakimas and ‘Earthlights,’” IUR 9, no. 3 (May/June 1984): 3)
October — University of Montana sociologists Robert Balch and David Taylor locate the followers of Applewhite and Nettles in Arizona and join the group clandestinely. The Two make themselves scarce, fearing an infiltration and possible assassination. Balch and Taylor describe the cult in a Psychology Today article in October 1976 and articles in sociological journals. (Robert W. Balch and David Taylor, “Salvation in a UFO,” Psychology Today 10, no. 5 (October 1976): 58–62, 66, 106; Robert W. Balch and David Taylor, “Seekers and Saucers: The Role of the Cultic Milieu in Joining a UFO Cult,” American Behavioral Scientist 20, no. 6 (July/Aug. 1977): 839–860; Robert W. Balch, “Waiting for the Ships: Disillusionment and the Revitalization of Faith in Bo and Beep’s UFO Cult,” in James R. Lewis, ed., The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds, State University of New York, 1995, pp. 137–166; Clark III 565–566)
October 7 — 8:00 p.m. After his sister calls and alerts him to a “fiery glow” near his barn on Three Mile Lake Road north of Bracebridge, Ontario, Robert Suffern, 27, drives to the spot and finds no fire. However, when he starts going back to his sister’s house he finds a large disc-shaped object resting in his path. The UFO quickly ascends and is lost to sight. When he turns around and starts heading to his own home, a small figure wearing a helmet and silver-gray walks in an “ape-like fashion” in front of his car, causing him to hit the brakes. It runs into a field.
Suffern gets out and puts his hands on a post and he seemingly becomes weightless, making it easy to jump over the fence. Later that night he sees an “orange fluorescent light” in the pasture of his property. Moments later, he receives two phone calls telling him not to interfere. On October 12 at 3:00 a.m. Suffern receives a phone call from a “Lt. Colin Hunter” from the White House and leaves a number to call him back. He calls the number later and talks to a military officer claiming to be Lt. Col. Waters. A month later, he and his wife are given a thorough examination by Canadian military doctors. (Patrick Gross, URECAT, September 13, 2006; “The Robert Suffern UFO Encounter,” Above Top Secret forum, September 26, 2009; John Greenewald, “Suffern Three Mile Lake Incident: UFO Lands on Road, White House Reportedly Calls,” The Black Vault, July 6, 2017; Clark III 358)
October 17 — Morning. Masaki Machida, a TV reporter for the Akita Broadcasting Company, is at Akita Airport in Akita Prefecture, Japan, when he sees a disc-shaped object descending in the east. Air traffic controllers and passengers watch the golden disc with white lights hover 5,000 feet above the ground some 5 miles from the airport.
Telecommunications officer Kenichi Waga warns all pilots to watch out for the UFO. Toa Domestic Airlines pilot Capt. Masarus Saito says the object looks like two plates put together. After 5 minutes, it flies off to the west. (Margaret Sachs, UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 10)
October 18 — 12:30 a.m. John Struble is driving his truck 25 miles northwest of Helena, Montana, when he notices a large object, 50 feet in diameter and 25–30 feet in the air. The object passes over his truck from the rear and then stops and hovers about 300 feet ahead of him. It directs a very bright light at him, causing the truck’s lights and engine to go out. The UFO remains for about 5 minutes before it moves away. The object makes a noise like a big jet and then rockets straight up into the sky and moves away to the east at an incredible speed. When the UFO disappears the truck’s lights and engine come back on. Struble notices that his nonelectric watch has stopped for 5 minutes, the duration of the sighting. (ClearIntent, p. 33)
October 20 — An NBC-TV movie, The UFO Incident, on the Betty and Barney Hill abduction case airs, starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons. It is based on the book The Interrupted Journey by John G. Fuller. (Wikipedia, “The UFO Incident”)
Late October — 2:45 a.m. James D. Appleman of Bensalem, Pennsylvania, sees two large condensation trails making a giant X just above the moon. For several nights he has been noticing two unusual stars forming different shapes, and he thinks this might be related. He grabs his camera and takes three black-and-white photos. Two of the photos show two irregular light blobs, which he does not remember seeing when he exposed the film. In 1980, he sends a copy of the photos to the Center for UFO Studies because they resemble the lights in two undated photos taken from an airplane by J. Allen Hynek that appeared in his book The UFO Experience. (“Did a Twin Photograph a Twin UFO?” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 2, no. 1 (January 1981): 1; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine, 1974, opp. p. 151)
Late October — Near 12:00 midnight. An incident occurs near Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, the home of the National Combat Operations Center, that triggers a Security Option 5 Alert. According to an informant at the center interviewed by Francis Ridge, nobody is allowed to enter the base, except cleared, high-ranking officers or cleared security patrols. No one is to leave. Those personnel on base who have just completed duty are rolled out of bed. Jet interceptors are scrambled. Unidentified targets are tracked on radar for at least 20 minutes. In fact, everything they put in the air for an attack on the US is airborne. The base stays on alert through 6:00 a.m. (NICAP, “Security Option 5 Alert at NORAD”)
October 27 — 3:00 a.m. Factory workers David Stephens and Glen Gray are sitting in a trailer they share in Norway, Maine, when they hear something explode outside. Briefly puzzled, they decide to go for a drive to nearby Thompson Lake. A short distance down the road, their vehicle abruptly turns onto a back road leading into Oxford, Maine. Gray no longer has control of the steering. Two minutes later, they pass through Oxford, a trip that normally takes 10 minutes, and down the eastern side of Thompson Lake. A mile south of Oxford, they see a herd of cows resting on the ground and shaking their heads from side to side. A few seconds later, they see two white lights on their left in a cornfield. The lights suddenly rise into the air. Gray stops the car, rolls down the windows and listen for the sounds of an engine, but the lights are soundless. Now they have a good view of a huge, cylinder-shaped object 20–30 feet away. Around its body are green, blue, and yellow lights that suddenly go out when the object ascends above a row of trees. Gray starts the car and roars down the road, followed by the UFO. The next thing they know, they are a mile farther down the road, the car stopped. Their eyes feel like they are on fire and appear orange. The UFO is visible in the eastern sky. They drive into West Poland, Maine, turn around, and go back the way they came. After a few minutes the UFO disappears, and they decide to go south again. For no reason, Gray turns onto a gravel road leading to Tripp Pond, where the engine stalls and the radio goes out. They can see the cylinder-shaped UFO in the sky about 500 feet away, which moves farther away as soon as they notice it. Some 45 minutes later, two disc-shaped objects with colored lights appear, and a thick fog rises out of Tripp Pond, engulfing the car. The radio abruptly turns on, and as they drive further, they receive a mental impression indicating that “We’re not done with you yet. We are coming back for you.” It is now 6:30
a.m. At 7:00 a.m., they arrive at Stephens’s parents’ house in Oxford, suffering from burning eyes, sore throats, and aching teeth. They are not speaking coherently. Gray has some hallucinations later in the day while watching TV. Maine ufologists Shirley Fickett and Brent Raynes soon hear about the case and meet with the two on the evening of October 28. Many unusual events take place that night and the next day, so Fickett contacts hypnotist Herbert Hopkins, 58, in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. He conducts eight hypnosis sessions between December 1975 and March 1976. Gray becomes upset early in the investigation, so only Stephens’s testimony is complete. It indicates an abduction scenario similar to other cases. (Brent M. Raynes, “The Twilight Side of a UFO Encounter,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 2 (July 1976): 11–14; Shirley M. Fickett, “The Maine UFO Encounter: Investigation under Hypnosis,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 2 (July 1976): 14–17; Berthold Eric Schwarz, “Comments on the Psychiatric-Paranormal Aspects of the Maine Case,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 2 (July
1976): 18–22; Lorenzen, Abducted! Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space, Berkley, 1977, pp. 70–79; Marcus Lowth, “The Disturbing Alien Encounter of David Stephens,” UFO Insight, August 29, 2018; Clark III 861–865)
October 27 — 7:45 p.m. S/Sgt. Danny K. Lewis is patrolling the weapons dump at Loring AFB [now Loring International Airport] near Limestone, Maine, when he sees an unidentified aircraft approaching the north perimeter at an altitude of about 300 feet. It has a red navigation light and a white strobe light. The craft enters the perimeter
of the base. In the control tower, S/Sgt. James P. Sampley of the 2192nd Communications Squadron is on radar duty and gets a return from an unknown target 10–13 miles east-northeast of Loring. Sampley makes numerous attempts by radio on all available communications bands, civilian and military, to contact the craft, but he gets no response. The unidentified craft circles and comes within 300 yards of the restricted nuclear storage area at a low altitude of 150 feet. Back at the weapons dump, Lewis notifies his Command Post at the 42 Bomb Wing that an unknown aircraft has penetrated the base perimeter. The base is immediately put on major alert status, a Security Option 3, and Security contacts the tower. (ClearIntent, pp. 16–26; Nukes 361–363, 369–371)
October 27 — 8:45 p.m. Sgt. Grover K. Eggleston of the 2192nd Communications Squadron is on duty at the Loring AFB [now Loring International Airport] tower near Limestone, Maine, when the call from the Command Post comes in. He observes the unknown target. Six minutes later, Eggleston notes that the target appears to be circling approximately 10 miles east-northeast of the base. This action lasts for 40 minutes when, suddenly, it disappears from the screen. Either the object has landed or it has dropped below the radar coverage. The Wing Commander arrives at the weapons storage area 7 minutes after the initial sighting. Immediately other units of the 42nd Police begin pouring into the area. Security vehicles with blue flashing lights are converging from all over the base.
Through the Loring Command Post, the Wing Commander requests fighter coverage from the 21st NORAD Region at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, Syracuse, New York, and the 22nd NORAD Region at North Bay, Ontario. However, fighter support is denied by both regions. The Wing Commander then increases local security posture and requests assistance from the Maine State Police in trying to identify the unknown craft, which they presume is a helicopter. They make a call to local flight services for possible identification, without results. The 42nd Security Police conduct a sweep of the weapons storage perimeter inside and out. An additional sweep is made of the areas that the craft has flown over. All actions produce no results. The craft breaks the circling pattern and begins flying toward Grand Falls, New Brunswick. Radar contact is lost in the vicinity of Grand Falls, 12 miles from Loring. Canadian authorities are not notified. (NICAP, “UFO Circles Weapons Storage Area”; ClearIntent, pp. 16–26; Nukes 361–363, 369–371)
October 28 — 7:45 p.m. While patrolling the weapons storage area, S/Sgt. Danny K. Lewis, along with Sgt. Clifton W. Blakeslee and Sgt. William J. Long, again spots the lights of an unidentified aircraft approaching Loring AFB near Limestone, Maine, from the north at an altitude of about 3,000 feet. It approaches to within about 3 miles of the base perimeter and is seen to have a flashing white light and an amber or orange light. Lewis reports the sighting to his Command Post, and the Wing Commander comes out to the weapons storage area to see for himself. He reports seeing an object whose speed and motion are similar to that of a helicopter. The craft is also observed on radar and observed over the flight line by Sgt. Steven Eichner, Sgt. R. Jones, and others. They see an orange and red object shaped like a stretched-out football hovering in mid-air. It turns out its lights and then reappears making jerky motions, then hovers about 150 feet over the end of the runway. It is about four car- lengths long, solid, reddish-orange, with no doors or windows, and with no visible propellers or engines. It is completely silent. The base goes on full alert and a sweep is made by security, but the object turns off its lights and is not seen again. Radar picks up a target moving in the direction of Grand Falls, New Brunswick. SAC Headquarters is again notified. ()
October 29 — 1:00 a.m. Another unidentified helicopter is seen near the weapons storage area at Loring AFB, Maine. October 29 or 30 — 4:00 p.m. A radar-visual UFO sighting takes place at Wurtsmith AFB [now Oscoda-Wurtsmith
Airport] near Oscoda, Michigan. (NICAP, “Shiny Disc Hovers over Restricted Area”)
October 30 — 10:10–11:00 p.m. A series of unidentified helicopter sightings take place in a secure area in Wurtsmith AFB [now Oscoda-Wurtsmith Airport], Michigan, by security police on the ground and by the crew of a KC-135 tanker returning from a refueling mission piloted by Maj. Frederick Pappas and 5 crew members. The tanker at 2,700 feet has visual and skin paint over Lake Huron for about 20 miles heading southeast. The light hovers and moves up and down in an erratic manner. The tanker follows the object for 1–2 hours, but never get close enough to see anything other than a single, steady orange light. (NICAP, “UFO Chased by KC-135 Tanker”; Nukes 371– 372; Skinwalkers 124)
October 31 — 11:17 p.m. A visual sighting of an unidentified object is reported 4 miles northwest of Loring AFB, Maine. The alert helicopter is launched to identify the object but is unable to make contact and is launched again at 1:46
a.m., in response to a slow-moving target picked up by RAPCON radar. (NICAP, “RAPCON Tracks Slow- Moving Target during Loring Intrusions”)
Early November — 8:00–9:00 p.m. Bill Jackson, a reporter for the Sterling (Colo.) Advocate, his wife Cheryl, and their young child are driving on State Highway 61 halfway between Otis and Sterling, Colorado, when they see a red light in the sky ahead of them. As it approaches, they see it is a huge object (as big as a 747) with a dozen rows of multicolored lights, perhaps hundreds of them. It passes slowly over their car, so close that Jackson thinks he can hit it with a stone. They drive at high speed the rest of the way to Sterling. (Richard Sigismond, “A CE-I, a Lonely Road, a Black Night,” IUR 9, no. 3 (May/June 1984): 5, 9)
November 2 — Night. Witnesses in Medford, Minnesota, including Helen Kay, see a brilliant orange-red light go behind a building, where they suspect it has landed. At the location, they find a bare spot, 12 feet square, of burned grass and ashy residue. At some distance away they see a red ball of light above the trees and try to catch up with it by car but it eludes them. Soil samples from the alleged landing site are submitted to geologist Edward J. Zeller at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, who subjects them to an examination using thermoluminescence and finds the readouts normal for the center of the trace but severely elevated at the edges. He suspects that the edges have been subjected to hard ionizing radiation, but this is not conclusive. (“UFO Sighting Noted,” Fergus Falls (Minn.) Daily Journal, November 5, 1975, p. 22; Edward J. Zeller, “The Use of Thermoluminescence for the Evaluation of UFO Landing Site Effects,” Proceedings of the 1976 CUFOS Conference, Center for UFO Studies, 1976, pp. 301–308, reprinted in IUR 28, no. 4 (Winter 2003–2004): 19–22, 28)
November 3 — 5:45 a.m. Ontario Police constables in Haileybury, Ontario, see a round object with fingers of white light emanating from it hovering northeast of town. Another object to the north of it has red, green, and white lights. After about 1 hour both objects begin moving slowly south and gaining altitude. They are still visible at 7:00 a.m. (Patrick Gross, “Files Obtained from the National Archives of Canada”)
November 3 — Late night. Unknown individuals penetrate the flight line at Grand Forks AFB north of Emerado, North Dakota. At least two KC-135 aircraft are hit by small arms fire. Security forces pursue the intruders but apparently do not apprehend them. (ClearIntent, pp. 48–49)
November 5 — 12:30 a.m. Jim Divall is driving north of Redwater, Alberta, when he comes upon a large, black, revolving object in the road ahead. He has to drive his vehicle into a ditch to avoid hitting it. The object is 40 feet in diameter. He gets out to watch it for a few minutes as it makes a rushing sound, then it disappears. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 185)
November 5 — Just after 6:00 p.m. Travis Walton and six fellow log cutters finish a long day of thinning undergrowth in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest near Snowflake, Arizona. Heading up Mogollon Rim Road, Walton soon notices something shining among the branches off to the right. The others see it too. They turn up Old Verde Road toward Turkey Springs. The spaces between the trees flash by too quickly to make out what the object is, but a clearing reveals a yellowish glow that washes across the road in front of them. The driver speeds up to get a closer look. They reach the clearing, and about 110 feet away a glowing disc hangs in the air, making a high- pitched buzz and floating motionless between the trees, only 15 feet off the ground. The truck slams to a halt and Walton opens his door to get a better look. There is no sound. One of the cutters shouts: “My God! It’s a flying saucer!” Walton then steps out of the cab and walks toward the object. The others beg him to get back in the truck, but he feels compelled to get a close-up look. He approaches the craft cautiously, glancing back to the truck now and then as his friends continue to plead with him. Coming within 6 feet, Walton stops and stares up at its glowing underside. Suddenly, the silence gives way to what Walton later describes as the thunderous swell of a turbine engine. A narrow beam of light fires from the bottom of the disc and strikes Walton in the chest. It lifts him up, then knocks him unconscious to the ground like a thunderbolt. In a panic, the rest of the crew speeds away toward the main road, terrified. When the men regain their senses, they return to the clearing to rescue Walton, but the craft is gone and so is Walton. Despite a thorough search of the area, they find no trace of him and drive home. When they report what happened, the authorities discount the men’s tale as a ridiculous attempt to cover up a murder and launch an extensive search for Walton’s body. They search for several days and find nothing. Walton reappears outside Heber, Arizona, on November 10 and corroborates their story, with the addition of what happened aboard the spacecraft. Walton awakes in a hospital-like room, observed by three short, bald creatures. He fights with them until a human wearing a helmet leads him to another room, where he blacks out as three other humans put a clear plastic mask over his face. He remembers nothing else until he finds himself walking along a highway, with the UFO departing above him. In the days following, The National Enquirer awards Walton and his coworkers a $5,000 prize for “best UFO case of the year” after they pass polygraph
tests administered by Cy Gilson of the Arizona state police (repeated in 1993), the Enquirer, and APRO. A private investigator named John McCarthy tests Walton using an outdated procedure with a polygraph in 1975
and finds him deceptive. (Wikipedia, “Travis Walton UFO Incident”; Lorenzen, Abducted! Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space, Berkley, 1977, pp. 80–113, 161–190; Travis Walton, Fire in the Sky, Marlowe, 1996; Geoff Price, “Lie Detection in UFO Controversies,” IUR 22, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 15–16, 31; Kevin D. Randle, “The Truth about Polygraphs,” IUR 22, no. 4 (Winter 1997–1998): 28; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, p. 145; Clark III 1234–1249)
November 6 — US Attorney General Edward H. Levi issues a set of guidelines to limit the activities of the FBI. These guidelines require the FBI to show evidence of a crime before using secret police techniques like wiretaps or entering someone’s home without warning. ()
November 7 — 3:00 p.m.–November 8, 9:53 p.m. Remote electronic sensors trigger an alarm at Malmstrom AFB, Great Falls, Montana, indicating that something is violating security at several missile launch sites. Underground, in the launch control facility, two officers note the signal, but there is no TV surveillance topside. A missile security helicopter checks the area and Sabotage Alert Teams consisting of 4–6 men are ordered to proceed to the areas. One SAT team drives down the highway and onto a dirt road that leads to the K-7 area near Judith Gap, Montana. About a mile away, the team sees an orange, glowing object. As they close to within half a mile, they can see that the object is tremendous in size. They radio to the launch control facility that, from their location, they are viewing a brightly glowing, orange, football field-sized disc that illuminates the missile site. The SAT team is ordered to proceed into the K-7 site. However, they refuse to go any farther, clearly fearful of the intimidating appearance of the object. It begins to rise, and at about 1,000 feet, NORAD picks up the UFO on radar. Two F- 106 jet interceptors are launched from Great Falls and head toward the K-7 site. The UFO continues to rise. At about 200,000 feet, it disappears from NORAD’s radar. The F-106s are never able to get a clear sighting of the several UFOs, which play cat-and-mouse with the aircraft, extinguishing their illumination when they approach, and re-illuminating after the fighters return to base. All members of the SAT team are directed to the base hospital, where they are psychologically tested. No one can identify the object, but the members of the SAT team obviously have been through a traumatic experience. Targeting teams, along with computer specialists, are brought to the launch site to examine the missile and the computer in the warhead. When the computer is checked, they find that the tape has mysteriously changed target numbers. The reentry vehicle is then taken from the silo and brought back to the base. Eventually the entire missile is changed out. Radar and visual sightings continue for the next 31 hours. (NICAP, “Malmstrom AFB Incident (1975)”; ClearIntent, pp. 27–29; Richard Sigismond, “Four Huge Orange Discs and the Case for the UFO,” IUR 8, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1983): 7–8; Thomas E. Bullard, “Defending UFOs,” IUR 34, no. 2 (Mar. 2012): 11–12; Nukes 358–361)
November 10 — 10:15–11:20 p.m. A bright light passes over Minot AFB, North Dakota, moving west to east at 1,000– 2,000 feet. (ClearIntent, p. 48)
November 11 — 6:15 a.m. A spherical object is observed from Canadian Forces Station Falconbridge [now closed] in Valley East, Ontario. The object appears to be rotating and has a surface similar to the moon. The object ascends and descends. The object is observed on height-finder radar at altitudes from 42,000–72,000 feet intermittently for 6 hours. Two F-106 jets are sent from Selfridge AFB [now Selfridge Air National Guard Base] near Mount Clemens, Michigan, but report no visual or radar contact. Other lights are seen periodically over the next few days, including at least seven members of the Ontario Police in Sudbury. (NICAP, “Spherical Object Tracked on Height Finder Radar”; ClearIntent, pp. 50–51; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 152–156; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 114–121; Good Above, pp. 202–203; Patrick Gross, “Files Obtained from the National Archives of Canada”; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 207–219)
November 11 — A Montana Fish and Game Department employee at Freezeout Lake, Montana, sees a light flying directly behind a B-52 bomber. Using his rifle scope to get a better look, he notes that the strange object seems to be pacing the aircraft. The object then briefly attaches itself to the B-52, detaches, and climbs out of sight. The sighting is reported to Sheriff Pete Howard of Choteau County. Howard conducts follow-up interviews with military personnel and learns that as the object attaches itself to the B-52, the plane’s radar equipment goes out. (ClearIntent, p. 35)
November 11 — A confidential NORAD communication reveals that Air Guard helicopters, Strategic Air Command helicopters, and NORAD F-106s are scrambled during the recent UFO sightings over Northern Tier military bases. They fail to produce positive identifications. In a priority message sent from SAC headquarters in Offutt AFB near Bellevue, Nebraska, to numerous Air Force bases during the same month, the Air Force reveals its continuation of a policy to deny USAF interest in the subject: “News media queries concerning such unidentified overflights are properly the concern of the Air Defense Command, and queries should be referred to CINC- NORAD/OI… Remarks should be confined to personal experiences and care should be taken to avoid speculation or to imply Air Force interest beyond security of the installation.” (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia,
Putnam, 1980, p. 347; Don Berliner, with Marie Galbreath and Antonio Huneeus, UFO Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence, Dell, 2000, pp. 87–90)
November 11 — Evening. Capt. Keith Wolverton of the Cascade County Sheriff’s Department and a deputy are returning to Great Falls from Missoula, Montana. Suddenly a large orange light descends out of the northern sky, lighting up both sides of the road. It passes directly over the cruiser at about 200 feet. It goes from horizon to horizon in 4 seconds. (ClearIntent, pp. 34–35)
November 17 — 7:00 p.m. Suzanne Erenberger and Dave Vardeman are driving on US Highway 30 about one-quarter mile west of Mount Vernon, Iowa, when they see white lights in the southwestern sky. They stop the car and get out to watch for a while. Frightened, they drive into town to notify the police. The police chief describes Erenberger as “terrified, nearly hysterical.” An officer accompanies the two students back to the location but sees nothing unusual. Erenberger tells a reporter from the Cedar Rapids Gazette that they were only 30 feet away from one of the lights, which was only 25 feet off the ground. She makes a drawing of a domed object for a high-school newspaper. UFO investigator Kevin D. Randle interviews Erenberger on November 27, and she tells him there is a bright light coming from a 30-foot-wide disc-shaped object with a huge glass dome. She thinks she can see two humanoid shapes behind it. But Vardeman separately tells Randle that he only sees lights in the distance and nothing else. Randle also talks to an additional witness, Richard Manson, who has seen a red light about the same time. Randle concludes that the lights come from aircraft landing at the Cedar Rapids Municipal Airport and that Erenberger’s details are confabulations. (“Coed: ‘No Doubt about What I Saw,’” Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette, November 19, 1975, p. 3C; Kevin D. Randle, “UFOs on Memory Lane,” IUR 26, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 9–11, 30)
November 20 — Michel, Robert, and Claude Souris found the Centre d’Études et de Recherches des Phénomènes Inexpliqués in Saintes, France. It publishes a CERPI Circulaire newsletter from February 1976 to 1981. (CERPI, no. 1 (February 1976))
November 30 — Unit One of the Leningrad [now St. Petersburg], Russia, nuclear power plant is being brought back online after scheduled maintenance when it begins to run out of control. A partial meltdown occurs, destroying or damaging 32 fuel assemblies and releasing radiation into the atmosphere over the Gulf of Finland. The official line is that a manufacturing defect caused the destruction of only one fuel channel, but the accident is really caused by an uncontrollable increase in the steam void coefficient. (Adam Higginbotham, Midnight at Chernobyl, Simon & Schuster, 2019, pp. 66–67)
December — The Air Force panel finishes reviewing the Blue Book files and turns over the sanitized version to the National Archives, apparently without yet physically moving the files to NARA facilities. These files now include an added set of AFOSI files of UFO investigations from 1948 to 1968 released by AFOSI in December 1975. (Sparks, p. 6)
December 12 — Robert Suffern and his wife meet with two military officers, one Canadian, the other American, at his home near Bracebridge, Ontario. They tell him the October 7 incident was a “mistake” caused by the malfunctioning of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. The officers show him close-up photos of UFOs and say that their governments have been cooperating with aliens since 1943. (Clark III 358)
December 14 — Late evening. A man is driving his truck on a gravel road along Toppenish Ridge in the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington State when he sees a cow and two calves running toward him as if fleeing from something. Moments later he sees three figures in the ditch. One jumps up on the road, covering 15 feet in a single slow-motion leap, its arms above its head. The witness describes it as a skinny, 7-foot-tall man with a narrow, pale face and long, pointed nose. It is dressed in close-fitting black clothing and boots. On its chest there is a white trapezoid insignia. The entity is carrying something purple it its left hand that has a wire on it that runs down its arm. The other two creatures remain on the side of the road. The witness speeds up, swerving around the figure. A few moments later, a bright, elongated UFO appears behind him. The interior of the truck is flooded with light. Suddenly he becomes aware of a “shadow” in the passenger seat. From the shape of the head and coat, the man “knows” it is a friend of his. The friend looks at him, leans forward and looks up at the light, falls back, wipes his eyes, and vanishes. At that moment, the light disappears. The next morning, he learns that his friend has been killed in a shooting. (Greg Long, Examining the Earthlight Theory: The Yakima UFO Microcosm, CUFOS, 1990, pp. 56–60; Clark III 281)
December 15 — Jacques Vallée and J. Allen Hynek publish The Edge of Reality, which discusses how the extraterrestrial hypothesis does not seem to explain UFOs fully. Although they acknowledge the UFO phenomenon is real, its reality skirts the edges of accepted science, and they both lean toward an interdimensional hypothesis. (J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée, The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Regnery, 1975)
1976
1976 — David Saunders gives his UFOCAT computer file to the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Illinois, where it is updated by Fred Merritt. The database is kept on an IBM mainframe computer at a nearby computer facility with a magnetic tape backup. In 1982 it proves too expensive for CUFOS to maintain on a mainframe, so it is removed from active use and stored on tape. (Fred Merritt, “UFOCAT: A Unique Tool for Research,” IUR 1, no. 2 (December 1976): 14–15; Center for UFO Studies, “UFOCAT-2009”)
1976 — US writer Bill Kaysing publishes a book claiming that NASA lacks the technical expertise to land astronauts on the moon and that numerous optical anomalies in the Apollo photos show that the moon landings are faked in a studio or at Area 51. The book launches a host of similar moon landing conspiracy theories. (Wikipedia, “Moon landing conspiracy theories”; Bill Kaysing, We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, Health Research, 1976)
1976 — Ancient astronaut author Zecharia Sitchin writes his first book of many, The 12th Planet, proposing an explanation for human origins involving extraterrestrials. Sitchin attributes the creation of the ancient Sumerian culture to the Anunnaki, which he claims was a race of beings from a planet beyond Neptune called Nibiru. He asserts that Sumerian mythology suggests that this hypothetical planet of Nibiru is in an elongated, 3,600-year- long elliptical orbit around the Sun. (Zecharia Sitchin, The 12th Planet, Avon, 1976)
1976 — In his book Gods of Aquarius, author Brad Steiger introduces the concept of “Star People,” human beings tied by physiology, past lives, or both, to extraterrestrials who came to earth long ago and are preparing them for a societal transformation. (Brad Steiger, Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the Transformation of Man, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976; Clark III 90–91)
1976 — Author Roberta Donovan publishes Mystery Stalks the Prairie with Cascade County Deputy Sheriff Keith Wolverton of Great Falls, Montana, documenting his investigations of cattle mutilations with a suspected cult involvement. They are not sure whether mystery helicopters and UFO s are related to the mutilations, but either way federal government officials seem to know what is going on. (Roberta Donovan and Keith Wolverton, Mystery Stalks the Prairie, THAR Institute, 1976; Wikipedia, “Cattle mutilation”; Nukes 365–369)
1976 — Historian Nicolas Greslou launches the Comité Savoyard d’Études et de Recherches Ufologiques in Chambery, France. It publishes a quarterly newsletter, Le Phénomène OVNI, from 1977 to 1985. (Le Phénomène OVNI, no. 1 (Oct./Dec. 1977))
1976 — Meteorologist Sture Wickerts replaces Tage Eriksson as head of UFO investigations at the Swedish National Defence Research Institute. (Swords 368)
1976 — In Worlds Beyond, Ian Ridpath discusses ETI, life and human development, life in the Solar System, the feasibility of interstellar travel, and the possibility that alien probes have already visited Earth. (Ian Ridpath, Worlds Beyond, Harper and Row, 1976; Michael D. Swords, “SETI/ETI and UFOs,” JUFOS 5 (1994): 146–147)
1976 — 9:30 p.m. A man who lives on a hill overlooking the Boeing factory in Renton, Washington, notices lights hovering above the building at the south end of the plant. Suddenly the lights shoot straight up in the air and move to the north end of the plant, dropping down and hovering again. It then makes a quick arc and hovers about 900 feet above the witness’s house. The object is circular with a curved low top, sides that slope inward, silent, and a continuous row of windows separated every 10–15 feet by thin vertical supports. A yellow or amber light is at the top. It is about 50 feet in diameter and 12–15 feet high. He can see 3–4 images moving back and forth inside the craft. After about 3 minutes, the object moves toward Lake Washington and disappears in 4 seconds. (“UFO Seen Inspecting Seattle Boeing Plant,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 6 (Dec. 1984/Jan. 1985): 3)
January 4 — A technician driving home is stuck in rush hour traffic at Sale, heading toward Altrincham, Cheshire, England. Suddenly his radio begins to hiss and crackle, and flashes of light spark out, dancing across the windshield. As he looks out through the steady rain, two angular, ice-blue lights pass slowly across his field of view. Moments later they are gone, the sparking stops, and the radio works again. (Jenny Randles, “The Twelve UFOs of Christmas,” Fortean Times 374 (Christmas 2018): 29)
January 6 — 11:15 p.m. Mona Stafford and two friends, Louise Smith and Elaine Thomas, are driving southwest on Highway 78 between Stanford and Hustonville, Kentucky, when they see an intense red glow in the east. It grows larger, then descends rapidly to the right of the car at tree-top level. As it hovers, they can see a disc shape with round windows with rotating, blinking red lights around each of them; yellow lights stretch below these, and a luminous blue dome is on top of the object. The UFO moves closer, flips on its side, and shines three beams of bluish-white light on the road, and another into their vehicle. Smith, apparently dazed, gets out of the car, but Stafford pulls her back in. There is a “dead silence,” their skin tingles, and they start getting severe headaches.
They find the car has started back up on its own and is moving at 85 mph with no help from Smith. Stafford feels
as if it is being pulled. Moments later, they find themselves 8 miles away, just outside Hustonville. When they get home to Smith’s trailer in Liberty, Kentucky, around 1:25 a.m., they find they are missing about an hour and a half of time. All three of them experience odd physical and psychological symptoms. The women are hypnotized by ufologist R. Leo Sprinkle, who finds that they have generally compatible memories of an abduction event.
Over time, their memories of the missing time period grow more elaborate, but their story contains elements and images echoed in other accounts before and since. (“The Kentucky Abduction,” APRO Bulletin 25, no. 4 (October 1976): 1, 3–6; Lorenzen, Abducted! Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space, Berkley, 1977, pp. 114–131; “The Kentucky Abduction,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 6–7; Story, pp. 192–195; John Greenewald, “The 1976 Stanford, Kentucky, Abductions,” The Black Vault, April 26, 2016; Clark III 643–648)
January 21 — Before 3:55 a.m. Security police see two UFOs near the flight line at Cannon AFB, southwest of Clovis, New Mexico. The objects are 75 feet in diameter, gold or silver in color, with a blue light on top, a hole in the middle, and a red light on the bottom. An Air Force officer calls the UFO Education Center in Wisconsin to report he “had a very close sighting and was able to witness a type of vehicle that did maneuver and that was unlike any type aircraft he has ever seen.” One observer claims to see a dozen UFOs through a Starlight Scope from the flight tower. A Clovis policeman sees a cigar-shaped object with pulsating red, white, and blue lights. (“UFOs Continue Clovis Visits,” Las Cruces (N.Mex.) Sun-News, January 25, 1976, p. 1; Rear Adm. J. G. Morin, “Report of UFO, Cannon AFB, NM,” January 21, 1976; “Cannon AFB: UFOs, Burned Circles, and Cows Found Mutilated,” UFO Info; Good Above, p. 524; Good Need, p. 349)
January 23 — 6:00–10:30 p.m. “Scores” of UFO sightings take place around Clovis, New Mexico. Town Marshal Willie Ronquillo of Texico follows a silent object with green, yellow, and blue lights 900 feet above his car before it speeds away to the north. A police dispatcher in Artesia sees 6–7 flashing lights in the sky at 750–1,000 feet altitude. They hover for a while, then move away at high speed toward Carlsbad. Members of the UFO Study Group, composed of employees of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories, arrive in Clovis at 11:30 p.m. to investigate. (“UFOs Continue Clovis Visits,” Las Cruces (N.Mex.) Sun-News, January 25, 1976, p. 1)
January 31 — 3:30–5:00 a.m. UFOs are spotted by security police over the radar site at the Armament Development and Test Center at Eglin AFB, southwest of Valparaiso, Florida. Photos are taken. (Brig. Gen. Fred A. Treyz, “Unidentified Flying Object Sighting,” January 31, 1976)
February — Ufologist James W. Moseley launches an eight-page newsletter of UFO information and rumor. Its title varies, but by July 1981 Moseley has settled on Saucer Smear. It is sent out for free every month or so to several hundred UFO buffs whom Moseley calls “nonsubscribers.” (Clark III 776)
February — 7:20 p.m. Ruby Breslin is driving along Central Expressway in Dallas, Texas, when her daughter sees an object just as she takes the exit ramp to the Northwest Highway. It has windows and a flashing red light on top, and hovers for 4–5 minutes before shooting straight up. (“Out of the Past,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 5 (Oct./Nov. 1984): 6)
February — Night. A married couple living near the Tasman Highway in Tasmania have retired for the evening. The woman is already asleep and the man has just turned off the light when he sees three 7–8 feet tall entities passing through the closed door of the bedroom. One touches the man’s leg and he goes numb to the waist. He lets them attach some kind of glowing sack to his body, but when they start to approach his wife, he lashes out with one arm that hasn’t gone numb. His wife wakes up and starts struggling too. The entities exit through some kind of orange portal outside the closed window and disappear. (Michael D. Swords, “A Trick of the Light,” IUR 31, no. 2 (June 2007): 11)
February 19 — The National Archives starts microfilming the redacted Project Blue Book files through the commercial firm Fuller & Dees Marketing Group in Montgomery, Alabama. (Sparks, p. 7)
February 20 — In answer to a request by UFO researcher Robert Todd, the National Security Agency states that the NSA “does not have any interest in UFOs in any manner.” (ClearIntent, p. 181)
Late February — 1:00 a.m. A man in Kettering, Tasmania, is awake tending to a child when he looks outside to his east and sees what he thinks is an aircraft descending at 45°. After watching for a couple of minutes, he goes outside. The object comes down behind a small bank on the far side of a sports field opposite his house. He crosses the field, climbs the bank, and sees from about 82 feet away, a dome-shaped object emitting a bright-white to yellow light from three or four windows. When he looks through the object’s windows he can see a tall cylinder (that he likens to a ship’s compass mounting), motionless gray shapes (like car seats with headrests seen from the rear), and perhaps entities. He hears a humming noise. The object takes off to the east with the noise increasing in volume. It climbs away at 60° and recedes to a point source and disappears. The total duration is 6–7 minutes. The next day he returns to the spot and notes the rough grass beyond the sports field has been scorched in a circular patch. This grass later dies. On October 24, 1977, the Tasmanian UFO Information Centre takes soil samples of
this area that are examined by Geoff Stevens using a thermoluminescence test. His investigation reveals no significant, systematic differences in the thermoluminescence content of soil and mineral particles taken from within the affected area, and control samples taken from outside this area. (Geoff Stevens, “Thermoluminescence Measurements of Soil Samples Affected by a UFO,” CUFOS Bulletin, Spring 1978, pp. 1, 3–6; Keith Roberts and Geoff Stevens, “The Kettering, Tasmania, Landing: A Study,” Flying Saucer Review 24, no. 3 (November 1978): 18–21; “Tasmanian Landing in 1976,” IUR 31, no. 2 (June 2007): 21)
March — Werner Walter and Hansjürgen Köhler found Centrale Erforschungsnetz Auβergewöhnlicher Phänomene [later Himmelsphänomene] in Mannheim, Germany. The first issue of its somewhat skeptical, anti-ETH, monthly CENAP-Report is published, continuing until May 2007. (Wikipedia, “Centrales Erforschungsnetz Auβergewöhnlicher Himmelsphänomene”; CENAP Report, no. 1 (May 1976))
March 3 — Night. Claude Bosc, a student pilot flying a French Air Force T-33 on a training mission at 19,500 feet, sees a rapidly approaching bright light in the distance near Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France. In 1–2 seconds, the object speeds toward him and his plane is surrounded by a green phosphorescent light that illuminates the aircraft for several seconds. The green sphere, only 3–6 feet in diameter, avoids a collision at the last minute and passes over his right wing. The radar shows nothing, but two other pilots see the encounter from a distance. (Comité d’Études Approfondies, Les OVNI et la Defense: A Quoi doit-on se Préparer? (UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare for?), July 16, 1999, pp. 10–11)
March 11 — An Iberian Airlines pilot flying above Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain, watches an elongated object, shaped like a dirigible gondola and lighted from within through several window-like openings, pace his aircraft with occasional bursts of speed. (UFOEv II 122, 146)
March 15 —10:14 p.m. Two objects are tracked on radar flying over the landing strips at Simón Bolívar Airport near Caracas, Venezuela, at 3,000 mph. Tower operators ask the unidentified craft to identify themselves. Instead they take off and disappear over the Caribbean Sea. (Richard H. Hall, “UFOs Tracked on Radar at Venezuelan Airport,” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 110 (January 1977): 3)
March 22 — 5:42 a.m. A couple are stopped in their car outside a hotel in Nemingha, New South Wales, deciding on directions. Suddenly a bright, greenish-yellow light descends and completely envelops a nearby white car, which drifts to the wrong side of the road, wrapped in a thick ball of white haze. Its headlights go out. After 2 minutes the haze dissipates, and a woman gets out of the car and wipes a white substance off the windshield with a yellow cloth. She is about to get back in when its lights come back on by themselves. She throws the cloth on the roadside, drives a short way, and the yellow cloth bursts into flame. When the white car passes the couple, they notice it is covered in a thick white substance, except for the windshield. (Bill Chalker, “Road Hazard Down Under?” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 5 (February 1977): 28–32; Bill Chalker, “Postscript to the Nemingha Case,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 3 (October 1977): 22, 27)
March 26 — The CIA responds to the Ground Saucer Watch FOIA request, claiming that its only involvement with UFOs was with the 1953 Robertson Panel. (ClearIntent, p. 113)
March 31 — During a campaign stop in Appleton, Wisconsin, Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter is asked by Thomas Heiman, associate director of the UFO Education Center, whether he would make public all the UFO files if he became president. Carter answers, “Yes, I would make these kinds of data available to the public, as President, to help resolve the mystery about it.” (Grant Cameron, “Jimmy Carter, the Nobel Prize, and Extraterrestrials”)
April — DARPA names Lockheed the winner of a competition to build a stealth bomber. Immediately it begins manufacturing two flying Have Blue prototypes in Skunk Works Building 82 in Burbank, California. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed Have Blue”)
April — Michel Monnerie and Raymond Bonnaventure begin publishing Ufologie Contact, a newsletter intending to reach all the UFO groups iaround Paris, France. It soon falls under the auspices of the Société Parisienne d’Étude des Phénomène Spatiaux et Étranges in Marly-le-Roi, Yvelines, France, and continues through at least 1981. (Ufologie Contact, ser. 1, no. 2 (May 1976))
April 2 — 1:50 a.m. Detective Sgt. Norman Collinson is driving home along the M62 and M66 motorways near Bury, Greater Manchester, England. As he turns north onto the M66 he observes a white disc of light moving very fast, crossing the path he is traveling. The object is heading toward Knoll Hill, east of Bury. The UFO makes a right- angle turn onto a south-southeast heading. Puzzled, the officer stops his vehicle and gets out to look at the light. As he does so, the light stops and hovers nearby. It then begins to perform a series of spectacular right-angle box turns, after which it moves off in the direction of Heywood, with Collinson following it in his car. The object stops a second time and again repeats the angular movements before streaking away at a tremendous speed. The
incident is reported to the MOD and Manchester Airport. (Jenny Randles and Peter Warrington, “Police Encounter at Bury,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 2 (August 1977): 13, 15)
April 3 — 4:30 a.m. Several residents of Quixadá, Ceará, Brazil, during an outdoor physical education session, see a large disc-shaped object that glides silently a few feet from the ground emitting an intense light. At about the same time in another part of the city, Luis Barroso Fernandes is preparing to travel to a site a few kilometers away on his donkey cart. He soon hears a buzzing sound, and a flying object 10 feet in diameter positions itself above him. It slowly descends in front of his cart about 100 feet away. The device emits a beam of light that strikes the donkey and Barroso, who immediately become paralyzed. A door opens on the UFO and two small beings emerge. One holds something like a flashlight and aims a beam that strikes Barroso in the face, causing him to lose consciousness. He wakes up in a different spot, dizzy and suffering from a burning sensation on his face, and a headache. The left side of his body is reddish, and he has difficulty getting into his cart and getting it moving. He asks his wife to take him to Dr. Antônio Moreira Magalhães, who prescribes a tranquilizer. He continues to feel sick, his eyes burn continuously, and the left side of his body is red. A few days later, his hair turns gray and he suffers memory lapses. After his symptoms worsen and other doctors fail to help, his family checks him into a psychiatric hospital in Fortaleza. His condition deteriorates, and he dies in April 1993. (Elias Bruno, “Brazil: The Barroso Case,” Inexplicata, April 29, 2012; Clark III 180–182; Brazil 179–184)
April 14 — A heavily redacted CIA memo shows a reference to someone’s having sought “guidance from CIA UFO experts as to material in his report that should remain classified.” (ClearIntent, p. 143)
April 17 — June and Vicky Melling, on vacation in Mawnan, Cornwall, England, see a large winged creature hovering above the tower of St. Mawnan and St. Stephen’s Church. They are so frightened by the sight of a large “feathered bird-man” that their father Dan Melling cuts short the vacation. Magician and showman Tony “Doc” Shiels investigates the case, and one of the girls provides him with a drawing of the creature, which he dubs “Owlman.” Other sightings emerge over the next few years. Occult historian Gareth J. Medway suggests that the whole thing is a hoax by Shiels, who has a reputation for hoaxing. Medway notes that witnesses claiming encounters with the legendary monster “were either Doc Shiels, or friends of Doc Shiels, or relatives of Doc Shiels, or reported their sightings to Doc Shiels (and to no one else), or else wrote letters describing what they had seen to newspapers and were never interviewed by anyone.” (Wikipedia, “Owlman”; Robert J. M. Rickard, “Birdmen of the Apocalypse!” Fortean Times 17 (August 1976): 14–20; Doc Shiels, “To Wit! To Woo? Some Thoughts about Owlman,” Fortean Times 27 (Autumn 1978): 44–46; Jonathan Downes, The Owlman and Others, Domra, 1997; Clark III 602)
April 22 — 1:45 a.m. RCMP Constable Bill Toffan sees an apparent vehicle with its lights flashing ahead of him as he is driving on Canada Highway 16 west of Terrace, British Columbia. As he rounds a curve, he sees it is actually in the air 300 feet above the trees. Suddenly there is a blinding flash and he nearly loses control of his car. After a brief report appears in the press, the RCMP orders Toffan not to discuss the incident. (“Mountie ‘Ordered’ into Silence,” Vancouver (B.C.) Sun, April 26, 1976, p. 8; Good Above, pp. 194–195; Patrick Gross, “Files Obtained from the National Archives of Canada”)
April 22 — 11:00 p.m. Police officer George Wheeler, on duty at Elmwood, Wisconsin, notices a glow at the top of Tuttle Hill. He drives closer and sees an object as high as a two-story house and 250 feet across with an orange-white light at the top and six bluish-white lights on the side. It is 500 feet away and about 100 feet off the ground. He thinks he can see, though an open side panel, something moving inside it. The object has several partially extended legs and a long, black, hose-like appendage. Suddenly the object rises straight up. He sees some kind of flash and his car lights go out, the motor stops, the radio goes dead, and he becomes dazed. A second police car arrives, noticing that the car door is open, and takes the witness to a hospital, from which he is released four days later. Some people in the area have difficulty with TV reception at the same time as the encounter. (“Sighting Reports,” CUFOS News Bulletin, June 1976, pp. 5–6; Patrick Gross, “George Wheeler’s Close Encounter, 1976”)
April 23 — 2:40 a.m. A 1st Lt. is on communications duty aboard a US Navy destroyer in the Atlantic southwest of Bermuda. The lookout calls his attention to a green light dead ahead through light fog three miles away at 10° above the horizon. Radar reports no target and the sonar room hears no engines. The crew watches the green light dip to 30–40 feet above the surface and approach the ship. The lieutenant orders a course change to starboard, and the green light becomes much larger, making a comparable turn to port in order to pace the ship. The ship and the object both make subsequent turns, with the light now only 50-60 feet away. Suddenly a large blip appears on the radar scope. The destroyer returns to its original heading and the light stations itself on the port beam. When the captain comes on deck, the light circles the ship twice. Then once again off to port, it becomes a brighter green, tilts at an angle, and submerges. The next day the captain tells the crew not to discuss the incident. (Donald R. Todd, “Ship’s Crew Sees UFO,” APRO Bulletin 26, no. 11 (May 1978): 1–2)
April 30–May 1 — The Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal is launched at a specially convened conference of the American Humanist Association. Paul Kurtz, James Randi, Martin Gardner, and Ray Hyman take seats on the executive board. The committee will be funded with donations and sales of their magazine, Skeptical Inquirer. (Wikipedia, “Committee for Skeptical Inquiry”)
April 30–May 2 — The Center for UFO Studies holds its first conference on UFO research at the Hyatt House in Lincolnwood, Illinois. The proceedings are published later in the year, featuring papers on sighting waves, exosociology, and humanoid reports. Presenters include Ted Bloecher, Ann Druffel, Loren Gross, Richard H. Hall, David M. Jacobs, James McCampbell, David Saunders, R. Leo Sprinkle, David Webb, and Ray Stanford. (Charles Bowen, “The Editor Goes West,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 2 (July 1976): 26–28; Richard F. Haines, “CUFOS Holds Its First Technical Conference,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 3 (October 1976): 13–17; Proceedings of the 1976 CUFOS Conference, Center for UFO Studies, 1976)
Mid-May — The US National Archives publicly releases the redacted Project Blue Book paper files at its College Park, Maryland, branch. (Sparks, p. 7)
June — Ground Saucer Watch issues its first newsletter, which is published through December 1982. (Ground Saucer Watch Bulletin, no. 1 (June 1976))
June 11 — 1:15 a.m. Hélène Guiliana is driving through Chatuzange-le-Goubet, Drôme, France, when her car engine misfires and stalls and the headlights go out. Some 80 feet away near the Pont du Martinet bridge she sees an orange light in the form of a “dome.” She experiences fear and covers her face with her hands. After what seems a few seconds, the light disappears. Driving home upset and afraid, she misses a familiar sign and drives a mile out of her way. When she arrives home, it is 4:00 a.m. Under hypnosis on July 22 (repeated on August 18), she tells of meeting two waist-high dwarves with large eyes, dressed in black overalls. They carry her toward the light, which she enters through an iron door. Inside a high, round room, they place her on a table, putting handcuffs on er hands and feet. After an examination, she is returned outside and the craft departs straight up noiselessly. (“L’Etrange Rencontre d’Hélène Guiliana,” Ouranos, new ser. 18 (Jan./Mar. 1977): 5–7; “Foreign Forum,” IUR 1, no. 2 (December 1976): 10)
June 20 — After 1:00 a.m. A young married couple and their 4-month-old child are detained and examined by entities as they are traveling near Goodland, Kansas, en route to Colorado. UFO investigator Richard Sigismond meets repeatedly with them in July–October 1976 using hypnotic regression techniques to enhance their memories. The experience is traumatic for them, and they require counseling. (“Abduction in Western Kansas,” IUR 1, no. 2 (December 1976): 12; “Abduction in Western Kansas,” IUR 2, no. 10 (Oct. 1977): 4–7)
June 21 — 12:40 a.m. Police officer Th. Brandt-Jensen sees a bright, blue-white light cross the road behind him in Ringsted, Zealand, Denmark. He thinks it might be an airplane in trouble. He speeds up to 90 mph toward a crossroad where he can pull off the highway. The object catches up to within 165–250 feet and its light strikes his car, the engine and lights going out immediately. He guides the coasting vehicle to the road shoulder, gets out, and catches a glimpse of the object as it disappears behind the horizon. It resembles a glider with a ray of light coming from it that swings back and forth as it passes his car. It makes a slight whistling sound and appears to be about 50 feet long. (“UFO Rapporter Danmark,” UFO-Nyt, 1976 no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1976): 186–187; Herbert S. Taylor, “An Update on Vehicle Interference Reports, Part Two,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 20)
June 22 — 9:27 p.m. Dr. Don Francisco-Julio Padrón León and Santiago del Pino are traveling in a taxi when they see a gigantic ball of light 200 feet ahead of them between Gáldar and Agaete, Gran Canaria, Canary Islands. The taxi radio cuts out. Inside the light, which is actually like a transparent soap bubble, they see some panels and two enormous beings on a platform. The humanoids are some 9–10 feet tall, wear black diving helmets and red tight- fitting coveralls, and are moving levers about. Their hands are enclosed in black cones. The backs of their heads are disproportionately large, and their legs are short. The taxi driver switches the headlights on, and the UFO rises as a bluish gas is emitted from a tube and expands the size of the sphere to a 20-story building. The driver turns the car around and goes to a nearby house. The inhabitants say their TV set just blacked out. They continue watching through a window. When the sphere stops expanding, they hear a high-pitched whistle and the object speeds off to the northwest. (J. M. Sanchez, “Canary Islands Landing: Occupants Reported,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 3 (October 1977): 4–7; Good Above, pp. 153–154)
June 22 — 10:30 p.m. A bright red light like a rocket emerging from the sea at a distance climbs diagonally and turns into a brilliant semicircular dome over the Canary Islands. It is transparent with a bluish-white hue. The crew of the corvette Atrevida watches the object for 40 minutes, during which time a foreign tourist takes a photo. 400 miles to the south, the crew of the ship Osaka Bay also sees the luminous phenomena in the shape of a sphere. Maj.
Antonio Munáiz Ferro-Sastre investigates the sightings for the Spanish Air Force and rejects the hypothesis that
the light is from a naval missile launch. However, two Poseidon missiles are launched in the area around the same time by the submarine USS Von Steuben. (J. M. Sanchez, “Canary Islands Landing: Occupants Reported,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 3 (October 1977): 4–7; Don Berliner, with Marie Galbreath and Antonio Huneeus, UFO Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence, Dell, 2000, pp. 91–97; Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Ricardo Campo Pérez, “Navy Missile Tests and the Canary Islands UFOs,” IUR 29, no. 4 (July 2005): 3–4)
June 23 — 11:30 p.m. Paulo Coutinho, 18, is returning home from a night class in Aricanduva, São Paulo, Brazil, when he sees a light in the sky moving westward. Suddenly he feels paralyzed as the light approaches and descends about 25 feet away. A short being emerges with a big head, large eyes, pointed ears, small mouth, and an upturned nose like a pig. It is bald, has no eyebrows, and wears a tight one-piece bluish-gray suit with an emblem on its chest. Coutinho rises into the air toward a huge cigar-shaped object, in which he undergoes an abduction experience. Coutinho is still missing the next morning. A friend finds his books and notebooks scattered on the street and brings them to his parents. A police search fails to find him. In the evening of June 24, Coutinho is discovered lying on the steps of the garden door in a semiconscious state. He is cold as if he has been there some time. He is later revived at a nearby hospital. The police officer who carries him to the ambulance later feels a strong irritation in his arms. Ballpoint pens in Coutinho’s pockets are radioactive. (“O Caso dos Añoes Extraterrenos de Vila Aricanduva São Paulo, Capital,” SBEDV Boletim, no. 116/120 (July 1977/Feb. 1978): 6–18; “Caso Paulo Coutinho,” Portal Fenomenum, June 15, 2016; Brazil 185–194)
June 26 — Spanish journalist Juan J. Benitez interviews Gen. Carlos Castro Cavero, commander of the Canary Islands division, who tells him: “The nations of the world are currently working together in the investigation of the UFO phenomenon. There is an international exchange of data. Maybe when this group of nations acquires more precise and definite information, it will be possible to release the news to the world.” He says the Spanish Air Ministry investigates UFO cases, including those involving pilots. He admits that he has watched a UFO for more than an hour at his ranch. It remains stationery for that length of time, then shoots off towards Ejea de los Caballeros, Zaragoza, covering 12.5 miles in less than 2 seconds. Cavero believes UFOs are “spaceships or extraterrestrial craft.” (Gordon Creighton, “Important Statement by Spanish Air Force Chief,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 3 (October 1976): 2; Patrick Gross, “Documents: 50 Years of UFO Disclosure”)
July — The New England UFO Study Group publishes its first newsletter, which lasts through September 1982. (New England UFO Newsletter, no. 1 (July 1976))
July 11 — Two Indian Air Force MiG 21 jets are scrambled near the Pakistani border to intercept what appears initially on radar to be a Pakistani jet. But the object is moving at 2,600 mph, and the two pilots see the target is an amber- colored disc that pulls away before they can catch up to it. (Good Need, p. 303)
July 12 — The National Archives makes available the 94 reels of 35mm microfilm with redacted Project Blue Book files. (Sparks, p. 7)
July 14 — Before dawn. For a period of two hours, two brightly shining UFOs perform fantastic maneuvers at the Gobernador Edgardo Castello Airport in Viedma, Rio Negro, Argentina. At dawn, the sunlight neutralizes the bright lights of the UFOs, but the observers see them leave the area at high speed. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 1, no. 1 (November 1976): 2)
July 23 — J. Allen Hynek arrives on the set of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind in Mobile, Alabama, and gives a lecture on UFOs to some of the actors who are interested (Bob Balaban, Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, and 30+ others. At some point his cameo is filmed. (Bob Balaban, Spielberg, Truffaut and Me: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, an Actor’s Diary, Titan, 2002)
July 28 — Capt. Eldon W. Joersz and Maj. George T. Morgan Jr. attain a world airspeed record of 2,193 mph in a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird over Beale AFB near Marysville, California. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird”)
July 28 — 3:45 p.m. Adult counselor Ira Leifer and 13 teenage boys are resting from a hike in the woods at Camp Delaware [now Greenwood Trails] west of Winsted, Connecticut, when they hear a high-pitched whine. They see a silvery, flat-bottomed UFO 15–25 feet in diameter through a clearing in the trees. A purple haze surrounds it and on top they see a red glow. The object is hovering at a steep angle. After 15–25 seconds the whine returns, and the object takes off and is lost to sight in a second or two. (“Daylight CE I Seen by 14 Witnesses in Connecticut,” IUR 1, no. 1 (November 1976): 6–7; Clark III 247)
July 30 — 1:30–3:45 a.m. Patrols at different locations in the US Army’s Fort Ritchie [now closed], in Cascade, Maryland, see objects over the base. One crew sees three oblong objects with a reddish tint. Another watches a UFO over the ammunition storage area at an altitude of 300–600 feet. In another spot, an Army police sergeant sees an aerial object the size of a two-and-a-half-ton truck. (Brig. Gen. L. J. LeBlanc Jr., “Reports of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs),” National Military Command Center, July 30, 1976)
July 30 — 9:00 p.m. A British Airways Trident 2E piloted by Capt. Dennis Wood is flying at 29,000 feet over the North Atlantic about 40 miles south of Lisbon, Portugal, when air traffic control radios a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar that is flying near them and asks for a confirmation of a radar target. Wood and his crew look up and see a stationary bright light. They announce the sighting to their passengers. After several minutes watching the light, two cigar- shaped objects appear below and to the right of the light. A Portuguese airliner in the vicinity also observes the objects. Wood confirms the sighting, saying, “There is no way this is a star or planet.” Fighters are immediately scrambled from Lisbon. (NICAP, “Battleship-Sized Object Tracked by 3 Airlines”; Jenny Randles, “Casebook: The Portugal Sighting,” Fortean Times 199 (September 2005): 27)
July 31 — 11:45 p.m. Debbie Focken and other witnesses see an oblong object with illuminated windows hovering about 100 feet above Eldon’s Standard Service Station in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Apparently the UFO causes extensive electrical damage to a CB radio, a burglar alarm, an adding machine, a cash register, and a vending machine. The owner and employees claim that lightning has caused the damage, and that is what they report to the insurance agency, but there is no thunderstorm that evening. (“Gas Station Damaged by UFO?” IUR 1, no. 2 (December 1977): 13; “Council Bluffs CE II,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 7)
August — American SF novelist George H. Leonard publishes Somebody Else Is on the Moon, which records his observations, drawings, and NASA photos of lunar pipes, conduits, gears, gas nozzles, flares, huge rigs for sifting through dust, hovering vehicles, odd lights, and electromagnetic towers on the lunar surface—all of it indicating alien mining operations. Leonard argues that NASA secretly knows of alien activity on the Moon. It is possible that Leonard has written the book as a spoof. (George H. Leonard, Somebody Else Is on the Moon, McKay, 1976)
August — 10:17 a.m. A Swedish J-5 jet pursues six delta-shaped silver objects in formation until they accelerate out of sight over Lake Bolmen, Sweden. (“Swedish Air Force Colonel Reports Six Delta-UFOs,” AFU Newsletter, no. 18 (Jan./Mar. 1980): 9–10)
August — Day. A man is working on his mobile home in the forested hills near Medford, Oregon, when he sees two intensely bright lights “like burning magnesium” silently move across the sky, side by side. They appear to be discs, curved on the top and flat on the bottom, and in between them is a third object, which seems to be a World War II–era bomber. The tips of each wing appear to be resting on the discs, and its propellors are not turning. The three objects pass overhead and move beyond the hill behind him. (Michael D. Swords, “Timmermania: A Step Too Far into the Timmerman Files?” IUR 27, no. 4 (Winter 2002–2003): 8)
August — A. Troitsky and six others observe a silvery disc over the Pirogovskoye Reservoir north of Moscow, Russia. It is about 8 times the apparent size of the full moon and is moving slowly at an altitude of perhaps 120 feet. The object has two revolving stripes along its side and a black hatch on its underside from which a small cylinder protrudes, its lower portion rotating. (Stonehill and Mantle, Russia’s USO Secrets, Flying Disk, 2020, pp. 10–11)
August 2 — 3:30 a.m. A domed UFO is seen at an altitude of 15–18 feet at St.-Pierre-sur-Mer, Hérault, France. It has orange lights that go on and off slowly. (M. Grazioli, “Enquête dans l’Hérault,” Lumières dans la Nuit, no. 166 (June/July 1977): 26–27)
August 3–4 — 11:25 p.m. The pilot of Tunisair Flight Tu8953, en route from Monastir to Tunis, Tunisia, sees a flying object at 3,200–3,900 feet moving north to south. At 11:27 p.m., five objects showing red and green lights are seen over Monastir and confirmed on radar. From 12:24 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., five separate radar returns are tracked and visually confirmed. (ClearIntent, p. 80)
August 4–5 — 10:43–10:52 p.m. An Air France pilot en route to Monastir, Tunisia, is followed by an unidentified object. (ClearIntent, pp. 80–81)
August 6 — 12:20 a.m. Police at La Soukra, Tunisia, see four lighted objects that disappear one by one until 1:45 a.m. (ClearIntent, p. 81)
August 6 — 10:00 a.m. A family is driving in Gaspésie National Park, Quebec, when a beam of red light penetrates the fog and creates a six-inch circle on the road ahead. The beam paces ahead of them for several miles, then collapses and withdraws upwards. A dazzling white light then approaches and stops ahead. Strong heat builds up in the car, so the father stops the vehicle. The headlights and radio fail, and the engine dies. All four get out and walk toward the object, which now appears as a scallop-shaped craft on landing legs, stretching across the road. The wife notices a massive “face” looking at them. Two 7-foot tall beings are apparently floating near the UFO, dressed in close-fitting, khaki-brown suits. The witnesses flee back into the car. The object moves away in a flash of light and burst of heat. The car starts again. All four suffer from itching for the next 10 hours. (Jean Ferguson, Les Humanoides: Les Cerveaux qui Dirigent les Soucoupes Volantes, Leméac, 1977; NICAP, “Gaspesian Park, Quebec: Humanoids/E-M Case”; Michael D. Swords, “Messing Around with the Force,” IUR 31, no. 4 (March 2008): 29–30)
August 7 — 10:00 p.m. Mark Ziegelbauer, 15, of Malone, Wisconsin, and his father Orville see multicolored lights fly past their new silo and land in a distant hayfield. Mark drives over to the spot and shines his headlights into the field. He sees an object the size of a “camper-trailer” and two green men, one about 5 feet 7 inches, the other shorter. They put their hands up and “disappeared somehow.” (“Youth Claims Seeing 2 Green Men from UFO,” Fond du Lac (Wis.) Reporter, August 10, 1976, p. 26; Clark III 279)
August 7 — 11:48 p.m. The control tower at the Djerba-Zarzis International Airport, Tunisia, tracks a UFO on radar to the northwest. The sighting is confirmed by a Tunisair pilot, who says it is a lighted object that seems to touch down near the airport then turn south after climbing up. (ClearIntent, p. 81)
August 8 — 7:50 p.m. Radar at Sidi Ahmed Air Base at Bizerte Airport, Tunisia, tracks a target going east to west. It turns south and disappears. Tunisian authorities contact the US State Department asking whether the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean can shed any light on the incidents. (ClearIntent, p. 81)
August 10 — 5:00 a.m. Teresa de Tejero wakes up suddenly in her room at the Hotel Da Balaia in Albufeira, Portugal, and sees a vivid luminous rectangle on the window curtains. She wakes up her husband Francisco, who goes to the window and sees an object with six reddish lights that appears to be on another wing of the hotel. One of its lights seems to be directed straight into their bedroom. They go back to sleep. In the morning, Francisco looks out the window and finds there is no hotel wing where he thought the UFO was. He realizes that the object must have been huge to masquerade as two floors of the hotel. (Ignacio Darnaude, “Spies in the Supernumerary Attic?” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 3 (October 1977): 20–21)
August 11 — 11:00 p.m. Two boys aged 13 and 14 are standing on the beach in La Linea de Concepción, Spain, facing the Strait of Gibraltar when they see a yellowish-white UFO approaching from over the Mediterranean. It seems to have an axis that bisects it. The object climbs rapidly, changing color to whitish and then a vivid yellow. It approaches another, larger object and enters it. While they watch it, the light of a nearby lighthouse goes out temporarily. The larger object remains in place. (“UFO Blacks Out Lighthouse,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 1 (June 1977): iii)
August 13 — 8:30 a.m. The pilot of a Piper Arrow PA-28 is flying at 3,500 feet between Diepholz and Petershagen, Germany, when he notices a strange light approaching from the northeast. After 3–5 minutes, the object comes closer and takes a fixed position off the left wing. The object is oval-shaped and very bright yellow in its center with an indistinct flame-orange boundary. Suddenly the Piper goes into two rapid 360° clockwise rolls from which the pilot must recover manually. He discovers that he has dropped about 500 feet during the roll-and- recovery maneuver. When he next checks his instrument panel, he discovers that his magnetic compass is spinning in a clockwise direction so fast that he can’t read the number in its square window. Looking outside again, he sees that the UFO is still behind him, suggesting that he has lost the same amount of altitude. The pilot climbs back to his cruise altitude and calls on the radio to flight control at Hannover airport. The air traffic controller tells him that the radar shows both his airplane and another object nearby. The controller says that an aircraft will be sent to investigate. Little more than 4 minutes later, two USAF F-4 Phantom jets arrive on either side of him travelling 400–500 mph. The jet on the right side is slightly lower, closer, and ahead of the jet on the left. The pilot is certain they are American planes. Just as the jets arrive, the UFO accelerates forward and then upward at about a 30° angle above the horizontal and turns right, passing in front of his aircraft. It quickly outdistances its pursuers and is out of sight in a matter of seconds. The compass eventually returns to normal operation after the UFO departs. The pilot is interrogated after his landing by “military men.” (Richard F. Haines, “An Aircraft/UFO Encounter over Germany in 1976,” IUR 24, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 3–6)
August 14 — 6:30 p.m. A couple out walking along a road on Cartmel Fell in Lake District National Park, Cumbria, England, see a bright light in the sky. Through binoculars, it looks like a silver disc reflecting light from its top surface. After 30 seconds, it becomes smaller as if it is moving away. Two other witnesses see a similar object at the same time. (“Report 7670,” Northern UFO News, no. 28 (September 1976): 7)
August 15 — 3:00 a.m. A distant bright light appears above El Real de la Jara, Seville, Spain, as 20 automobiles stop on the highway to watch it. Taxi driver Pablo Garcia García blinks his lights at it, and the object appears to approach much closer. García stops signaling, but the other drivers panic and drive away rapidly. (Gordon Creighton, “Some Recent Spanish Reports,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 6 (April 1977): 28–29)
August 20 — Brothers Jim and Jack Weiner, with friends Charles Foltz and Charles Rak, claim they are abducted by aliens during a camping trip near Allagash, Maine. According to the four men, hypnotic regression allows them to recall being taken aboard a circular UFO and being “probed and tested by four-fingered beings with almond- shaped eyes and languid limbs.” In a later interview by the St. John Valley Times, Charles Rak changes his story, saying he did see strange lights during the camping trip, but the abduction part of the story is a total fabrication, and he went along with the narrative for financial gain. The other three members of the group stand by the abduction story. According to Jim Weiner, “Jack, Charlie, and I, after all these years, are still in agreement with
the Eagle Lake event as we (three) remember it. We also accept the results of the hypnotic regression sessions and subsequent polygraph tests as supportive of an abduction scenario.” (Raymond E. Fowler, The Allagash Abductions, Wild Flower, 1993; Jessica Potila, “Subject of 1976 UFO Incident Casts Doubt on ‘Allagash Abductions,’” Fort Kent (Maine) Fiddlehead Focus, September 10, 2016)
August 21 — 10:30 p.m. A 90-foot-long cigar-shaped object descends from 4,000 feet over the Forêt de Molière to the east of Poitiers, France. Witnesses hear a humming sound and smell an odor. It ascends and disappears. (Michel Figuet and Jean-Louis Ruchon, OVNI: Le premier dossier complet des rencontres rapprochées en France, Alain Lefeuvre, 1979, p. 627)
August 22 — Midnight–4:00 a.m. Eleven witnesses see a luminous orb, 9–21 feet in diameter, with antennae, flying over Dossenheim-sur-Zinsel, Bas-Rhin, France. (Ph. Wiedenhoff, “Dans le Bas-Rhin,” Lumières de la Nuit, no. 166 (June/July 1977): 17–20)
August 25 — 12:30 p.m. Three children see beings in polished-silver suits and a UFO rising upward from a schoolyard in North Reddish, Stockport, Manchester, England. (David Rees, “‘Floating’ Entity at Reddish,” Flying Saucer Review 25, no. 2 (July 1979): 29–31)
Early September — Three men watch a dense white cloud hover low above Rua Cajati in São Paulo, Brazil. It dissipates, revealing a disc-shaped object that emits light beams of various colors. When policemen arrive and draw their weapons, they become paralyzed like statues. The smoke cloud reappears and envelops the disc, which takes off. (O Dia (Rio de Janeiro), September 8, 1976; “Foreign Forum,” IUR 1, no. 2 (December 1976): 10)
September — The Cambridge UFO Research Group is founded by Bonnie Wheeler in Cambridge, Ontario. She produces a bimonthly newsletter through September 1994. (Cambridge UFO Research Group Newsletter 2, no. 3 (September 1980))
September 1 — 10:35 a.m. A witness is walking with her dog in a field off Larimer County Road 76H northwest of Larimer, Colorado. She looks up and sees a large (100 feet long), silver-colored, silent cylinder flying at about 50 mph to the south. It is only 200–250 feet in altitude and has two rings around it towards each end. She watches it for several minutes. (“More Letters,” IUR 8, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1983): 16; “More Similarities Begin to Appear,” CUFOS Associate Bulletin 4, no. 6 (Dec. 1983/Jan. 1984): 1)
September 1 — Day. A retired science teacher watches a circular glowing object while walking on a beach near Aguada, Puerto Rico. The object moves slowly, hovers, then falls abruptly, tumbling over and over, until it nearly enters the ocean. It then rights itself and moves slowly westward. It has a dull gray finish and appears to be quite distant. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 1, no. 1 (November 1976): 2)
September 3 — Early morning. A witness in Bethel, Alaska, hears a high-pitched whine and looks out at the tundra where a small (2.5–3-inch diameter) white beach ball seems to be moving just above the ground. After a while it tilts so that she can see it is a disc with a rotating “platinum-shiny” area in the middle. The object arcs upward, then back down, and seems to disappear into the ground, whereupon the whine stops. She can find no ground markings. (Michael D. Swords, “Unusual Experiences from the Timmerman Files,” IUR 27, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 24)
September 3 — 7:00 p.m. Farm laborer João Romeu Klein, 19, returns home to Brusque, Santa Catarina, Brazil, after visiting a friend. As he approaches the house, he spots a flying object in the shape of a deep dish that rotates slowly counterclockwise. The upper part of the object is flattened, and a luminous light on top varies according to the speed of the craft’s movement and vacillates from red (high speed) to orange, from yellow to light green, and finally to white. When the craft is still, the intensity of the light diminishes. The object itself is gray in color and nearly 10 feet in diameter. The UFO moves toward Klein, passes 33 feet above his head, and then hovers in front of him about 16 feet from the ground. A bright, red light shines from the center of its base, through which three small beings about 3 feet tall slowly descend. The humanoids form a line across the entire width of the road and prevent him from passing as the UFO moves behind him some 33 feet away and 26 feet above the ground, close to some trees. The beings open their arms in an apparent blocking gesture, communicating with each other in an unfamiliar language. Klein draws his knife and tosses it toward the beings; it whizzes through the air, but at one point appears to float before falling to another spot. Each being wears a staff at its waist. The crew member in the center reacts by waving his staff toward Klein. The staff fires a beam of bluish-white light that hits Klein in the left thigh. He faints on being struck and is later found by his neighbors. His leg is paralyzed, so he goes to Azambuja hospital in Brusque, where doctors find no sign of injury. He recovers after a few days. (“Os Tripulantes da Serra do Moura, Novo Trento, Brusque, Estado de Santa Catarina,” SBEDV Boletim, no. 136/145 (Sept. 1981/April 1982): 10–12; Clark III 218–220; Luis Lopez, “Quase 40 Anos Depois, Homem Relata Experiência com Extraterrestres em Brusque, SC,” Novos Insólitos, May 12, 2016; Brazil 194–198)
September 3 — 9:00 p.m. Two women, one 63 and the other an 18-year-old relative, are returning from a family visit in Fence Houses, Durham, England, when they see a peculiar object resting on a mound of earth in a section of
mining wasteland. They walk toward it, feeling a sort of attraction, and see that it is an oval object about 3 feet high and 5 feet long and standing on chrome or steel runners. The main compartment is glasslike with an orange section on top. When they reach the object, they sense the wind and traffic noise have stopped. The older woman touches the glassy side, which feels warm. At this point two strange entities are seen within the craft with long white hair parted down the middle, large eyes, and claw-like hands. They are both the size of a large doll, perhaps 1–1.5 feet tall. Frightened, the two women hurry away, noting that the street noise has returned. The object then takes off at great speed, making a humming noise. (William D. Muir, “UFO Landing at Fencehouses, County Durham,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 6 (April 1977): 2–3)
September 8 — Leoncio Torres and Elena Bedjara are driving a truck on the road between Ollachea and Ayaviri, Peru, when a UFO lands 90 feet in front of them. Two strange creatures about 6 feet tall approach the blocked truck with flashlights. The creatures touch the couple’s backs and they feel a burning sensation. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 1 (January 1977): 2)
September 9 — About 2:00 a.m. Farmer Hermelindo da Silva is making his way home from the bar he owns in Vargem Grande, Minas Gerais, Brazil, when his dog grows agitated. A flash of light illuminates the area, followed by a strange buzzing sound. He sees a bright object about 4 feet in diameter above him. The dog begins barking nonstop until it receives some type of shock, apparently from the craft, and flees in terror. The light goes out, and da Silva runs back to the bar and flattens himself against the outside wall. The object lights up again, scaring him, so he picks up a piece of wood and throws it at the object. The light goes out again and the buzzing ceases, only to be replaced by a hiss. He feels a blow to his shoulder and falls to the ground, then he runs toward his house with the object 10 feet above him. Cables and hooks descend from the UFO, accompanied by a small creature about 3 feet tall. Da Silva hits its shoulder, causing it to jump and fall, then gets into a fight with it for 15 minutes. Finally, the creature loops a cable around da Silva’s ankle and hoists him screaming into an opening on the craft. His brother-in-law hears him and sees him ascending. Da Silva manages to get loose from the cable and falls 20 feet into a plant. He runs to the house, bruised. (Clark III 1220–1221; Brazil 198–200)
September 9–10 — Around 3:00 p.m. A worker at the Liangshan Cotton Mill south of Longwangmiao, Shandong, China, sees a spherical object at 45° elevation about 9,800–13,000 feet away. The upper part is bright silver, and the lower part is dark gray. It moves in the direction of the sun. It reappears on September 10, although it seems larger. It shrinks in size toward 12:00 noon and finally appears like a twinkling star in the daytime. It reverts to its former size in the afternoon, and then in front of more than 1,000 witnesses it flies away and disappears around 5:00 p.m. (Wendelle Stevens and Paul Dong, UFOs over Modern China, UFO Photo Archives, 1983, p. 88)
September 10 — 12:54 a.m. Bill Pecha Jr. is watching TV in his home 3 miles southwest of Colusa, California, when suddenly the picture crackles, fades, and blacks out, and the air conditioner dies. He goes outside to check on the circuit breaker and feels an electrical sensation. He looks up and sees an object 85 feet in diameter hovering above a TV antenna near the barn about 50 feet away. The main body of the craft is a disc shape, which appears to be rotating in a clockwise direction, with a large dome that remains stationary on top. The object makes little or no sound, and is silver or gray in color, except for the very bottom, which has a “porcelain” look about it. Two hook- like cables are hanging down. Pecha approaches until he is just under one edge. The UFO moves slowly away and retracts its cables. Two hatches open on either end, revealing a “spotlight.” He goes inside and wakes up his wife Lenda, who also sees the object. Pecha can now see two other objects over high-tension power lines a mile to the west, emitting light beams at the tops of the transmission towers. The first UFO is moving closer and passes over a neighbor’s house, shining a light on it. Frightened, Pecha grabs his two children and he and his wife speed away in their pickup. They stop at a friends’ house and draw their attention to the distant light. The encounter ends at 1:03 a.m. (Paul Cerny, “UFO Hovers over California Farm,” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 197 (October 1976): 3– 8; Center for UFO Studies, [case files]; “The UFO Finalist,” IUR 2, no. 1 (January 1977): 6–8; Clark III 294–296; Micah Hanks, “Tentacles and Telephone Lines: The Colusa, California, UFO Incident of 1976,” Mysterious Universe, February 22, 2019)
September 10 — 6:00–7:00 p.m. British European Airways Flight 831 from Moscow to London is cruising at 33,000 feet over Lithuania when a blinding, stationary light is seen on the starboard side of the airliner, apparently 10–15 miles away and 5,000–6,000 feet below. The light resembles a yellowish sodium vapor lamp and is too intense to view directly. It lights up the top of the cloud layer below. The pilot asks the Soviet authorities to identify the source, but they come back with a negative response, saying he should not ask questions. The light is visible for 10–15 minutes. (“Aerial Observation of Intense Source of Light,” CIA Foreign Intelligence Information Report, November 18, 1976)
September 11 — 8:00 p.m. Herbert Hopkins, the hypnotist investigating the 1975 Oxford abduction case, is alone in his home in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. The telephone rings, and the caller identifies himself as vice president of the nonexistent New Jersey UFO Research Association. He wants to come and discuss the Oxford case. Hopkins
consents, telling him to come right over. As soon as he switches on the back light, he sees a man in dark clothing walking up the porch stairs. Hopkins unthinkingly opens the door right away. The stranger is wearing a black derby, black jacket, black tie, white shirt, gray gloves, black trousers, and black shoes. The crease in his pants is razor sharp. The man never introduces himself but sits down and removes his hat. He is completely hairless, devoid of eyebrows and eyelashes, but his lips are a vivid red. The stranger speaks in a monotone. After Hopkins discusses what he knows about the David Stephens case, the man remarks, “That’s just what I thought,” and abruptly changes the subject. “You have two coins in your left pocket,” he says. Hopkins acknowledges he has a dime and a penny. The stranger tells him to take one out and hold it in his palm. He does and is shocked to find that its color has changed to bright silver, then light blue. It grows blurry and fuzzy and finally fades away in a vapor. The stranger says that no one else “on this plane will ever see that coin again.” The stranger then asks if he knew why Barney Hill died, saying “He died because he knew too much. He died because he had no heart, just as you have no coin.” He orders Hopkins to destroy all the audiotapes of Stephens’s hypnosis sessions, as well as any other UFO literature he has sitting around, or he will suffer the same fate as Barney Hill. The stranger gets up, speaking slowly, and says his energy is running low. He gets up slowly and walks down the porch steps one foot at a time. Hopkins sees a bright light outside, rushes to the kitchen window, and sees the light and the man are gone. About 90 minutes later, Mrs. Hopkins and two of their sons arrive home from a movie. He tells them what happened, and one of the sons finds a series of marks in the narrow driveway that look like a small tractor tread.
They are gone the next day. Hopkins burns all his tapes, correspondence, and literature at the urging of his family. (Berthold Eric Schwartz, “The Man-in-Black Syndrome, Part 1,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 4 (January 1978): 9–15; Berthold Eric Schwartz, “The Man-in-Black Syndrome, Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 5 (February 1978): 22–25; Berthold Eric Schwartz, “The Man-in-Black Syndrome, Part 3,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 6 (April 1978): 26–29; Clark III 863–864)
September 11 — Night. Three members of the Hood family are driving back along a country road to their home in Little Britain, Ontario. Paul Hood notices a flashing light in the treetops. When their car approaches, it darts off. Days later, Paul and Don Hood find a 30-foot-diameter circle of burned ground and grass swirled in a counterclockwise direction near a split-rail fence in a swamp less than a quarter-mile from their home. Six holes the size of grapefruits are also present. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 1 (January 1977): 2)
September 13 — Ranch worker George Aguerre sees an object like an upturned funnel with windows landing for 3–4 minutes near Tacuarembo, Uruguay. It emits two brilliant beams of light from the top and is about 45 feet in diameter. Police find landing marks and a burned area. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 1 (January 1977): 2)
Mid-September — 4:00 p.m. A copilot of a Boeing 727 for the Brazilian Varig airline sees a disc-shaped object about 120 feet in diameter over the Amazon forest between Manaus and Belém, Brazil. The aircraft’s radar confirms the sighting. The pilot is carrying a camera and snaps a photo of the UFO, which starts jumping from one side to the other in front of the plane, causing the crew to panic. The sighting lasts about 5 minutes. (Clark III 198; Brazil 535–536)
September 16 — 9:15 p.m. Six witnesses in Modesto, California, see a rolling orange ball of light heading slowly south.
Possible balloon. (“Case 1-1-6,” IUR 1, no. 1 (November 1976): 5)
September 16 — 9:45 p.m. A witness in Eureka, California, sees a large orange light at treetop level that rushes overhead, then stops and hovers for 5 minutes. (“Case 1-1-7,” IUR 1, no. 1 (November 1976): 5)
September 18–19 — 10:30 p.m. Residents of the northeast portion of the city of Tehran, Iran, watch a multicolored aircraft hovering a few thousand feet in the air. Some of them call the nearby Mehrabad Airport, reaching night supervisor Houssain Pirouzi, who goes outside at 11:15 p.m. to look. With his binoculars, he sees a bright object flashing colored lights and changing positions at an altitude of 6,000 feet. Around 12:30 a.m., Pirouzi alerts the Iranian Air Force command post. Deputy Gen. Nader Yousefi also sees the object and scrambles an Air Force F-4 Phantom II interceptor piloted by Capt. Aziz Khani and 1stLt. Hossein Shokri from Shahrokhi Airbase [now Hamadan Airbase] to the west at 1:30 a.m. They close in on the object, but the jet’s radio and instruments give out. Only when Khani pulls away does functionality return. Squadron Cmdr. Parviz Jafari takes off in a second jet with 1stLt. Jalal Damirian in pursuit at 1:40 a.m. Some 27 miles from the UFO, Jafari picks the object up on radar, the return indicating something the size of a Boeing 707. Visually, it is flashing like a strobe with intense red, green, orange, and blue lights (in a diamond shape) so bright that Jafari cannot see its body. He approaches within 70 miles, then the object jumps 10° to the right, then twice again the same amount. Suddenly a smaller round object comes out of the large object and heads straight toward the interceptor at a high rate of speed. Jafari tries to fire an AIM-9 heat-seeking missile at it, but his weapons control panel malfunctions, as well as his radio and instruments. Jafari turns to the left to avoid an impact with the small object, which approaches to 4 miles distance, then stops. It returns to the large object, which emits another smaller object. Jafari is ordered back to the base, but the light follows him. During final approach, another object (a thin rectangle with three lights) appears at
low altitude in front of his plane. Gen. Yousefi then orders Jafari to approach the light and get a look. When he is within 4 miles, the radio and instrument panel go out again. The light disappears from view after Jafari lands.
Base Commander Gen. Abdulah Azerbarzin claims the complete investigation records are turned over to the US Air Force, which insists it only has one memo from USAF Lt. Col. Olin R. Mooy, who sat in on one of the pilot interviews. A US Defense Intelligence Agency evaluation rates the case High (of major significance). The sighting is apparently tracked by a US Defense Support Program satellite. (Wikipedia, “1976 Tehran UFO incident”; NICAP, “Iranian F-4 Phantom Jet Chase, Radar/Visual/E-M/IAD Signal”; “Foreign Forum,” IUR 1, no. 1 (November 1976): 2; “The U.S. Government and the Iran Case,” IUR 3, no. 1 (January 1978): 6–7; “Review of Iranian UFO Reports,” IUR/Frontiers of Science 3, no. 2 (Jan./Feb. 1981): 14–15; “Now You See It, Now You Don’t!” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 3, no. 1 (February 1982): 3; Center for UFO Studies, [case documents]; Kim Hansen, “UFO Casebook,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 85–88; Don Berliner, with Marie Galbreath and Antonio Huneeus, UFO Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence, Dell, 2000, pp. 98–104; Clark III 624–626; Kean, pp. 86–92, 149–150; Swords 340–341; Good Above, pp. 318–321, 497–500; Good Need, pp. 302–303, 315–317; A. Meessen, “Deux jets F-4 rencontrent un ovni à Téhéran,” April 30, 2007)
September 19 — 1:00–2:00 a.m. A silvery, luminous circular object is seen flying southwest to northwest (parallel to the coast) at an altitude of 3,200 feet in multiple locations in Morocco, including Agadir, El Kelaa des Sraghna, Essaouira, Marrakesh, Casablanca, Rabat, Kenitra, Meknes, and Fez. It gives off an intermittent trail and is completely silent. The US Embassy in Rabat forwards a summary to the US State Department, asking for more information. A reply comes in October from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who cites the Condon study and natural causes, although he rules out meteors and reflections from a polar-orbiting satellite. (ClearIntent, pp. 86– 88)
September 19 — A TAP Air Portugal Boeing 707 nearly collides with a UFO shortly after takeoff at Lisbon, Portugal.
The oval object is glowing blue with a horizontal row of red and white lights. It is also seen by an air traffic controller who says that the object does not show up on radar. (“[Aerial Emergency in Lisbon Due to a ‘Flying Disc’]” La Crónica (Buenos Aires), September 23, 1976; Good Above, p. 154)
September 22 — 10:30 p.m. A 10-year-old-boy in Regal, Minnesota, sees a 3.5-foot-tall creature with a large bald head, large red eyes, and green skin floating outside his bedroom window. A couple minutes later, the creature floats down to a cube-shaped craft, which he enters. (“Case 1-1-27,” IUR 1, no. 1 (November 1976): 5)
September 24 — 2:30 a.m. A conservation officer and his wife watch a dark object fly over Lake Red Rock near Otley, Iowa. It moves noiselessly at 40 mph and about 600 feet altitude. Binoculars reveal a blinking red light flanked by pairs of amber lights. (“Case 1-1-35,” IUR 1, no. 1 (November 1976): 5)
September 24 — 7:30 p.m. John Hopkins, the son of hypnotist Herbert Hopkins, and his wife Maureen, meet two odd individuals, “Bill” and “Jane,” who have arranged a meeting at a fast-food restaurant near their home in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. The conversation is uncomfortable and strange but does not involve UFOs. (Clark III 864–865)
September 25 — Night. Vera White and three others traveling by car between farms in the Karawinna area to the west of Mildura, Victoria, Australia, notice a strange object on the ground in a paddock. It takes off vertically and hovers silently for about 5 minutes. They return to the site in the daytime and find a circle of flattened, discolored grass about 30 feet in diameter. (Melbourne Sun, September 29, 1976; “Foreign Forum,” IUR 1, no. 2 (December 1976): 10)
Autumn —2:00 a.m. Missile Combat Crew Commander Bruce Fenstermacher is on alert duty at one of the underground launch capsules at Francis E. Warren AFB near Cheyenne, Wyoming, with another crewman, when the officer-in- charge at the launch facility asks two security guards to report anything that seems unusual. A few seconds later, one of them reports seeing a pulsating white object in the sky. He can see flashing red and blue lights between the pulsations. It is about 10 miles north of their position and close to the launch control facility itself. The UFO is hovering about 100 feet above the building and looks like a “fat cigar” about 50–60 feet long. It begins to move away but stops close to one of the missile silos. Over the next 2 hours or so, the UFO hovers near several more missile silos. The security guards are terrified and refuse to approach any missile site that has the UFO over it.
Sometime around 4:30 a.m., the object zooms away and disappears in seconds. (Nukes 340–343)
October — The head of the UFO desk at the Swedish National Defence Research Institute, Sture Wickerts, travels to Målilla, Kalmar County, Sweden, to conduct a search for an unknown object thought to have crashed in the woods. He supervises diving operations into a water-filled hole possibly connected to the incident. Nothing is found but old logs. (Swords 369)
October — Guillermo Carlos Roncoroni begins publishing UFO Press in Buenos Aires, Argentina, until November 1986. (UFO Press, no. 1 (October 1976); Willy Smith, “UFOs in Latin America,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 99–100)
October — George J. Myers and his wife are traveling 3 miles southeast of Winnebago, Nebraska, on US Highway 73 [now US 75] when they notice a large patch of cornfield with no corn growing. It is on sloping ground and in the shape of a perfect circle 100 feet in diameter. They learn from local farmers that it had appeared earlier in the year while the corn was still quite short, killing off growth later in the summer. A light “like lightning” was seen shortly before the damaged area was noticed. Myers takes photographs of the circle and soil samples, which are later taken to the University of Nebraska and show evidence of a chemical spill. (“Large Circular Physical Trace: Is It Common?” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 3, no. 5 (Oct./Nov. 1982): 1; “Large Physical Trace Identified,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 4, no. 1 (Feb./March 1983): 3–4)
October 12 — 7:30 p.m. Multiple independent witnesses in Sonora, California, are drawn outside by a loud noise like “six jets.” They see a large red oblong UFO hovering with a wobbling motion. After 5 minutes, the UFO shoots upward and disappears. The next day, angel hair strands are found and sent to David Miletich at the University of Chicago. They are found to be “whitish, fibrous material of uniform composition being quite fine with frequent branching.” The primary constituents are carbon and nitrogen, but it is not spider web. A sample tested at the Michael Reese Hospital Microbiology Lab shows it to be contaminated with a low level of radioactive tritium. (“Angel Hair: Under Analysis,” IUR 2, no. 8 (August 1977): 4, 8; “Angel-Hair Analysis Complete,” IUR 3, no. 3 (March 1978): insert; Brian Boldman, “Angel Hair Physical Analyses: A Review,” JUFOS 9 (2006): 106–107)
October 17 — 10:40 a.m. A brilliant golden disc hovers south of Akita Airport, Japan, for 5 minutes. Kenichi Waga, telecommunications officer in the control tower, says “It was disc-shaped, larger than a car, but smaller than an airplane.” Capt. Masara Saito, 34, Toa Airlines [now Japan Air System] pilot, is preparing to take off when he notices “a strange looking disc-shaped object 5,000 feet from the ground.” Tazawa Takumi, air traffic controller on duty, who observes the object through binoculars, says it looks like “two plates placed together, with the top one inverted.” The unidentified object finally flies away toward the sea. (NICAP, “Disc Hovers near Japanese Airport”; UFOEv II 134)
October 19 — An object like a silver, luminous mercury lamp is seen over Paso de Los Toros, Durazno, Uruguay. The UFO allegedly causes the deformation of a metal refrigerator, the discharge of three car batteries, and the bursting of a refreshment bottle. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 2)
October 19 — 9:35 p.m. A group of people at the southwest end of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, Minnesota, watch a yellow cone of light with a row of windows at the bottom hover below the cloud cover for 2 minutes, disappear, and reappear in a new location. This repeats 4–5 times before the object shoots up into the clouds. (“Case 1-2-20,” IUR 1, no. 2 (December 1976): 11)
October 22 — 1:20 a.m. Paul Thompson is driving home from his job on Interstate 494 where the highway turns to the northeast in Woodbury, Minnesota. He sees yellow and red lights about 2 miles ahead on the north side of the road. As he moves closer, he finds that the lights are actually two objects suspended in the air above a marshy area behind some woods about 300–400 feet north of the interstate. They are soft rounded triangles with red glows at the tip of the triangle and yellow pulsating lights protruding from the blunter ends. The objects are apparently metallic, about 20–25 feet in their longer dimension, and hover without making a sound. Thompson gets out of his car to watch. A truck approaches and one object rises vertically and zooms away. As the truck is abreast of his position, the second object ascends and flies directly over them. A CUFOS investigator examines the marshy area two days later and finds an oblong area, 40 feet by 20 feet, devoid of cattails and heavy grass. Inside the oblong is a smaller, irregular area where he finds exposed soil is and a few round holes the size of a quarter. He takes soil samples, which are sent to University of Kansas geologist Edward J. Zeller for thermoluminesce testing. The soil from the site center shows essentially no thermoluminescence, indicating t had been subjected to strong heat. (CUFOS case file)
Late October — 7:30 p.m. Four physicians and a diplomat in an undeveloped region of Algeria south of Algiers watch a bright oval light on the horizon heading toward them. The object casts a faint beam downward, sweeping the ground, as it darts around the sky silently. It is bright when in motion, but faint when it stops. After an hour it fades, leaving a glowing space in the dark sky. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 4 (April 1977): 2)
October 23 — 4:00 p.m. Three men—Nicholas Flaskas, Frank Zonaras, and Bill Zonaras—waiting to film a solar eclipse at Taola Point in Ben Boyd National Park, New South Wales, notice two unusual objects on the horizon close to the ocean. The UFOs alternately move toward and away from them. The men take both motion picture and still photos, showing one bell-shaped object and another discoid in shape. They turn their attention to the eclipse and when it is over, the objects are gone. (David Reneke, “The Benboyd UFO Movie: History and Evaluation,” UFO
Research Australia 1, no. 2 (March/April 1980): 19–23; Keith Basterfield, Vladimir Godic, and Pony Godic, “Australian Ufology: A Review,” JUFOS 2 (1990): 31)
October 30 — Spanish journalist Juan J. Benítez receives the first batch of some 300 pages of UFO reports from the Spanish Air Ministry in Madrid, Spain. The documents include photos and clips of gun-camera film taken by air force pilots. (Gordon Creighton, “The Spanish Government Opens Its Files,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 3 (October 1977): 3; J. J. Benítez, OVNIs: Documentos oficiales del gobierno español, Plaza y Janés, 1977; Good Above, p. 152)
November — The first issue of the International UFO Reporter (IUR) is published by the Center for UFO Studies, with J. Allen Hynek as editor-in-chief and Allan Hendry as managing editor. (IUR 1, no. 1 (November 1976); Clark III 567–568, 627)
November — Dominique Delille founds Groupe d’Études du Phénomène OVNI in Saint-Symphorien-de-Lay, Loire, France. It publishes a quarterly newsletter, Siècle Inconnu, which continues under the names GEPO Informations and OVNI et Cie through 1983. (INFO OVNI, no. 1 (November 1976))
November 4 — 8:30 p.m. A married couple in Martinsburg, Ohio, see two irregularly shaped objects, rounded on the bottom, hovering low near their car. One descends, flying over some woods, while the other is seen above the telephone wires by the road. Both have a red light on top, a whiter flashing light on the bottom, and a revolving red light. Around 9:30 p.m., three similar objects are seen by a woman 4 miles away, slowly changing formation for 5 minutes in the east. (“Case 1-2-62,” IUR 1, no. 2 (December 1976): 11)
November 5 — 8:08 p.m. A young woman is watching television at her home in Rives, Isère, France. She sees a bright light outside and calls her father. From their balcony they watch an intense white light speed across the sky from northwest to southeast and disappear in the mountains. The father thinks the light is spinning. At the same time a French physicist is driving 7 miles away near Voreppe. He sees a luminous disc brighter than the full moon and stops his car to watch it. The object is white in the center, bluish-white at the periphery, and is surrounded by an intense green halo. It is moving silently southeast but stops for a few seconds before moving off 30° from its previous course at a much greater speed. It passes in front of the Massif du Taillefer before it disappears behind Mont Néron. The sighting lasts 20–25 seconds. (Jacques Vallée, “Estimates of Power Optical Output in Six Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Defined Luminosity Characteristics,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 12, no. 3 (1998): 352–354)
November 8 — 8:45 p.m. Two 14-year-old girls in the northern part of Belmont, North Carolina, see a round gray object about 20–30 feet in diameter “on edge.” It hovers several hundred feet in the air for 5 minutes, then moves east over the trees. It emits a beeping noise and is covered in flashing white lights and red steady lights. More than 100 people report seeing UFOs in nearby Gastonia on November 10. (“Case 1-2-75,” IUR 1, no. 2 (December 1977): 11; “106 People ‘Saw UFOs,’” Gastonia (N.C.) Gazette, November 11, 1976, p. 11)
November 10 — 8:20 p.m. A teenage girl driving alone near Putnam, Connecticut, passes underneath two dark metallic objects about 50 feet in diameter, one flying at an angle behind the other. Both objects have a red light in front, two on the sides, and a blue light in the back, all blinking. One banks slightly before it goes out of view, revealing a row of illuminated windows around the circular edge and a smaller circle like a “hatch” underneath. (“Case 1-2- 79,” IUR 1, no. 2 (December 1977): 11)
November 14 — 9:00 p.m. Joyce Bowles and Ted Pratt are driving down the A272 near Winchester, England, when their car starts to jolt and shake and then veers off the road into a grass verge by the roadside. The car is subject to electrical interference as the engine roars, and the lights seem to shine brighter than usual. They spot what appears to be an orange, cigar-shaped craft, 15 feet in length, with three entities behind a window. As they watch, a bearded humanoid wearing a silver suit comes out of the object, walks to the car, and looks in on the witnesses.
He then disappears and the couple are able to drive off. (Leslie Harris, “UFO and Silver-Suited Entity Seen near Winchester,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 5 (February 1977): 3–6; Richard Nash, “UFO and Occupants Reported near Winchester,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 5 (February 1977): 7–8; Jenny Randles, “Questions and Comments on the Nash Interview,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 5 (February 1977): 8; Frank J. Wood, “Alleged CE-III at Winchester: Vehicle Examination,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 5 (February 1977): 9–14; Good Above, pp. 70–71)
November 15 — 1:15 a.m. Six distant objects with brilliant white lights are seen performing unusual patterns in the sky at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They seem to have a metallic texture and make an intermittent sound like a “belt sander on metal.” (“Case 2-1-1,” IUR 2, no. 1 (January 1977): 5)
November 16 — Lockheed’s first Have Blue demonstrator stealth aircraft, HB1001, after going through numerous tests and getting a visual camouflage makeover, is flown from Burbank, California, to Area 51 in Nevada. After four taxi tests, HB1001 is ready for test flights. (Wikipedia, “Lockheed Have Blue”)
November 19 — President-Elect Jimmy Carter meets with CIA Director George H. W. Bush to discuss certain “exotic and very closely held items relating to sources and methods.” At one point, Bush and his aide Jennifer Fitzgerald take Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale aside to describe particularly sensitive CIA programs.
Congressional Research Service Policy Analyst Marcia S. Smith claims that part of the debriefing is about UFOs, which Carter has asked about. But Bush explains that this “information was information that existed on a need to know basis only. Simple curiosity on the part of the President wasn’t adequate.” Carter determines to replace Bush with his Naval Academy classmate Stansfield Turner after the inauguration. (presidentialufo.com, “President Carter, Daniel Sheehan, and Donald Menzel: The Congressional Research Service UFO Studies for President Carter”)
November 19 — Commandante Angel Parreno, the pilot of an Iberian Airlines Boeing 727 on a flight from Santiago de Compostela to Madrid, Spain, watches an unknown object accompany his aircraft for 20 minutes. Possible barium cloud released by a rocket. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 4 (April 1977): 2; Good Above, p. 154)
November 19 — 7:15 p.m. Witnesses from aircraft and ships around the Canary Islands watch a point of light climbing into the sky in a spiral motion, expanding to a diameter 3–4 times that of the moon. It has a semicircular shape and gives the impression that it is resting on the horizon. Among the witnesses are Gen. Carlos Dolz de Espejo, chief of staff of the Canary Islands Air Zone, and the crew of the Spanish Navy school ship Juan Sebastian Elcano. Maj. Antonio Munáiz Ferro-Sastre again investigates, concluding that it was a “craft of unknown origin endowed with an unknown propulsion energy.” The time correlates with four Poseidon missile launches by the submarine USS Alexander Hamilton. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Ricardo Campo Pérez, “Navy Missile Tests and the Canary Islands UFOs,” IUR 29, no. 4 (July 2005): 4–5)
November 19 — 8:00 p.m. Three women watch a large yellow-orange light slowly and silently meander 150 feet above a church in St. Peter, Minnesota. They drive to a police station, where officers also see the now distant light head from west to east. (“Case 2-1-16,” IUR 2, no. 1 (January 1977): 5)
November 23 — 3:30 a.m. A lounge owner and an employee are frightened when an object 3 times the size of a helicopter flies over their car from the south in Kenner, Louisiana. It has flashing red, green, and white lights. The object hovers above some trees in the distance for 2 minutes, then heads slowly east toward Moisant Airport [now Louis Armstring New Orleans International Airport]. (“Case 2-1-25,” IUR 2, no. 1 (January 1977): 5)
November 24 — 10:30 p.m. An Indiana Gas serviceman sees a 12-foot white cone of light with sparklers at its base diminish to a blinding point source alongside his pickup truck outside New Albany, Indiana. It follows him from the Kentucky border and moves silently ahead into the eastern sky when he reaches town. Other witnesses see it as a distant point of light; when they leave, the object rushes back over the serviceman’s house and disappears into the northwest. (“Case 2-1-27,” IUR 2, no. 1 (January 1977): 5)
November 25 — 9:00 p.m. A couple in Beecher, Illinois, watch an oblong, glowing, orange object 45° in the western sky for 5–6 minutes. Holding stationary, the object diminishes to a point source and returns to its original shape, larger than the moon. (“Case 2-1-29,” IUR 2, no. 1 (January 1977): 5)
Early December — Afternoon. Eero Lammi is on his way home from school in Oulu, Finland, when he sees a 15-foot ball of light move across toward him from across the Gulf of Bothnia and land in a nearby field. When he approaches it, the object shoots out a beam of light that hits him in the chest. He feels a searing pain and blacks out. His parents think it is a prank until a doctor finds slight burns on his chest and back. The case is investigated by the Swedish Military High Command. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 2 (February 1977): 2)
December 5 — 2:30 p.m. Several witnesses at Sollefteå, Västernorrland, Sweden, observe an elongated object (an estimated 148 feet long) with round openings along the fuselage. A blue-green light is shining from the openings, a red light at the front, and a diffuse orange glow from the underside. The object hovers above a military base built into the mountainside at an elevation of about 165 feet. After a while, the object moves on and hovers above a nearby power station. Then it moves jerkily sideways, jumping rapidly between different positions. After hovering for 15 minutes, it tilts up and rapidly speeds upwards and out of sight, disappearing at 3:30 p.m. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 4 (April 1977): 2)
December 14 — 2:00 a.m. Panoramic radar at an air force base at Contrexéville, Vosges, France, picks up unknown targets at 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., and 3:30 a.m. Seven air traffic controllers are the witnesses. The radar paints the targets as 10–15 miles apart every 10 seconds, meaning their speed is estimated at 4,200–6,200 mph, a supersonic speed of Mach 5 to 8, at an altitude of 6.5 miles. (Claude Poher, “A Case of Radar Detection of UFOs in France,” IUR 29, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 13–14, 27)
December 15 — 7:00 a.m. Arnold Barker is driving south on Alberta Highway 46 [now Highway 63] nearly 3 miles south of Boyle, Alberta, when he sees two bright flashing lights flying west to east. As the object passes overhead, he realizes it is not an airplane. He jumps out of his truck to get a better look and sees that the lights are now red,
zigzaging, and attached to each other by a faint connection. The object appears to be landing silently in a field to the east of the road, but it stops about 6–10 feet from the ground and 100–150 feet away. Barker takes a few steps toward it, but it takes off and moves north. He gets in his truck again to turn around and the object follows him, again as a white light. He speeds up to 75 mph and outdistances it. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August North, pp. 185–187)
December 15 — 9:20 p.m. A driver in Holland, Massachusetts, sees a cigar-shaped object twice the width of the moon hovering low in the east about 500 feet away. Human-like forms are visible through a row of windows on the side. It disappears in a bright red flash. (“Case 2-2-1,” IUR 2, no. 2 (February 1977): 5)
December 16 — 12:15 p.m. Michael Winterborne, meteorological officer for the Kalgoorlie Airport in Western Australia, sees a white, football-shaped object, glowing and pulsating with fuzzy edges, rush from the northeast horizon to the northwest horizon at great speed. At 2:45 p.m., he sees it again, arching overhead toward the west. Both incidents are timed by stopwatch at 12 seconds. Dave Bower, at the Scotia nickel mine about 50 miles to the north, sees a UFO drifting slowly westward at about 1,000 feet altitude. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 2)
December 18 — 12:55 a.m. On Wood Canyon Road east of Soda Springs, Idaho, police officer Dennis Abrams has a close encounter with a 30-foot diameter, oval-shaped UFO. It lacks any seams or windows and has the bulk of three to four cars. It emits a light green light and hovers only 60 feet away. It makes no sound when hovering but makes a whistling “wind” sound when in motion. (“CE-I Seen by Independent Policemen in Idaho,” IUR 2, no. 2 (February 1977): 6–7)
December 18 — A Flugfélag Íslands [now Air Iceland Connect] airliner in flight from Akureyi to Reykjavik, Iceland, picks up a clear radar target at 18,000 feet over the Mælifell volcano. It tracks the object for one minute as it rushes 2 miles below the aircraft at 3,600 mph. The object is not seen visually. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 2)
December 18 — 5:20 p.m. Several children in Newfolden, Minnesota, see an object speeding across the sky then stopping. It has 6–9 orange and white lights flashing on and off around the perimeter. (“Case 2-2-9,” IUR 2, no. 2 (February 1977): 5)
December 18 — 8:30 p.m. A group of witnesses see a red-orange oval light pass overhead in Miami, Florida, about 250 feet up. It turns west in a smooth, even motion. (“Case 2-2-12,” IUR 2, no. 2 (February 1977): 5)
December 19 — The first KH-11 Kennen reconnaissance satellite (codenamed Key Hole) is launched by the US National Reconnaissance Office. It is the first American spy satellite to use electro-optical digital imaging that offers real- time optical observations. The capabilities of the KH-11 are highly classified, as are images they produce. The satellites are believed to have been the source of some imagery of the Soviet Union and China made public in 1997; images of Sudan and Afghanistan made public in 1998 related to the response to the 1998 US embassy bombings; and a 2019 photo, revealed by President Donald Trump, of a failed Iranian rocket launch. (Wikipedia, “KH-11 KENNEN”)
December 19 — 6:20 p.m. A witness in Concord, California, sees a silent, star-like light moving northward in an erratic fashion: zigzagging, up and down, in circles, backing up, speeding up for 1 minute. Then it speeds up and moves downward in a curve, zooming out of sight in 1 second. (“Case 2-2-13,” IUR 2, no. 2 (February 1977): 5)
December 19 — Night. Neil Brennan and Dean Gibbs step outside when they hear a whirring noise near Aquinas College, Salter Point, Western Australia. Brennan sees a bright disc, 2 feet in diameter, hovering 30 feet in the air behind his house. It then disappears toward the west. (Perth News (W.A.) News, December 20, 1976; “Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 2 (February 1977): 2)
December 29 — Mr. and Mrs. Chapin, who had the previous experience in October 1969, again notice that their mine site near Redding, California, is unseasonably warm. Chapin walks carefully down toward the creek as his wife remains in the car. When he shouts and tells her to bring the gun, she observes a similar object to the one they had seen seven years earlier, except more pock-mocked on the surface, some 175–200 feet away from Mr. Chapin. It moves rapidly in the air and zaps both of them, knocking them to the ground. Chapin hits his head against the canyon wall and his wife falls to the road. They remain unconscious for about 15 minutes. (“The Redding, California CE II Case,” IUR 3, no. 3 (March 1978): insert)
1977
1977 — J. Allen Hynek publishes The Hynek UFO Report as a review of and commentary on Project Blue Book records.
It is largely ghostwritten by Elaine M. Hendry, Allan Hendry’s wife and a graduate student in astronomy at Northwestern University. (J. Allen Hynek, The Hynek UFO Report, Dell, 1977; Clark III 620)
1977 — Constitutional attorney Daniel P. Sheehan, at the request of Congressional Research Service researcher Marcia S. Smith, visits the brand-new Madison Building at the Library of Congress to look at the “classified sections of Project Blue Book.” He claims to have seen photos of a flying saucer embedded in snow and surrounded by USAF personnel wearing parkas. There are symbols on the side of the crashed craft. (presidentialufo.com, “President Carter, Daniel Sheehan, and Donald Menzel: The Congressional Research Service UFO Studies for President Carter”)
1977 — Lawrence J. Fenwick, Joseph Muskat, and Harry Tokarz found the Canadian UFO Research Network in Willowdale, Ontario, to investigate reports and inform the public. It begins publishing the CUFORN Bulletin in late 1979, lasting until the summer of 1999. (CUFORN Bulletin 1, no. 2 (January 1980))
1977 — José Jean Pereira de Alencar founds the Centro de Estudos Ufologicos in Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, and publishes the journal UFOnotas. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 56)
1977 — Fernando António Milhano Patinha founds OVNIGrupo 7 in Lisbon, Portugal. It publishes a quarterly magazine,
OVNI. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 235)
1977 — Roger Thome founds Groupe d’Étude et de Recherche sur les OVNI Haute-Marne/Meuse in Chaumont, Haute- Merne, France, which publishes five issues of Groupe 5255 in 1980–1982. (Groupe 5255, no. 1 (February 1980))
1977 — California State University, Long Beach, English professor Alvin H. Lawson, along with technical writer John DeHerrera and physician William C. McCall, carries out a study in Anaheim (California) Memorial Hospital to determine if the abduction stories told by “real” abductees under hypnotic regression resemble the stories told by others who are asked to imagine an abduction under hypnosis. After the experiment, carried out by student volunteers, Lawson declares that the imaginary accounts are all but identical to the real accounts. He then formulates a Birth Memories Hypothesis, which argues that abductions are nonphysical, archetypal fantasies in which the witness’s birth memories play a central role. However, Lawson’s methodology and results are later critiqued severely. (Alvin H. Lawson, “What Can We Learn from Hypnosis of Imaginary ‘Abductees’?” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 120 (November 1977): 7–9; Alvin H. Lawson, “What Can We Learn from Hypnosis of Imaginary ‘Abductees’? Part 2,” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 121 (December 1977); Alvin H. Lawson, “What Can We Learn from Hypnosis of Imaginary ‘Abductees’? Part 3,” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 122 (January 1978); Alvin H. Lawson, “Hypnosis of Imaginary ‘Abductees,” in Curtis G. Fuller, ed., Proceedings of the First International UFO Congress, Warner, 1980, pp. 195–213; D. Scott Rogo, “Imaginary Facts: The Case of the Imaginary Abductions,” IUR 10, no. 2 (March/April 1985): 3–5; D. Scott Rogo, “Birth Traumas from Outer Space,” IUR 10, no. 3 (May/June 1985): 4–5, 16; Clark III 944–945)
1977 — An Australian soldier is traveling on the Nullabor Plain in South Australia when he and a companion, an American soldier, watch the descent of a purple-green fireball. They drive to the impact site and see a crashed UFO. The Australian goes inside and sees two aliens, one dead and the other making a squealing sound. They are about 5 feet tall and pot-bellied, with long, thin arms and large, black eyes. When he comes out again, he finds that military personnel have arrived. They arrest him and his friend and keep him in custody for two weeks. (Bill Chalker, “UFO Crash/Retrieval Stories: The Australian Experience,” 1998; Clark III 345)
1977 — Maj. Gen. Hideki Komura, an adviser to Japan’s Cabinet Research Office, admits that UFO investigations are carried out at a top level. He says that in the 1950s, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force encouraged reports from the public, but they had too many reports to analyze. Now he admits they cooperate closely with the US government’s Foreign Technology Division. (Good Above, p. 431)
January — The Roper Organization asks two questions about UFOs in a survey: 44% “believe in” life elsewhere in the universe and 29% in UFOs as extraterrestrial. (Robert J. Durant, “Evolution of Public Opinion on UFOs,” IUR 18, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1993): 12)
January — Peter A. Sturrock of Stanford University releases the results of his survey on UFO sightings and beliefs of professional American astronomers. He has mailed out 2,611 questionnaires, with half (1,356) completed and returned. Sixty-two respondents (nearly 5%) say they have witnessed or obtained an instrumented record of an event they could not identify and that might be related to UFOs. Some 53% prefer additional scientific study of UFOs. (“Sturrock Reports His UFO-Survey Results,” Physics Today 30 (May 1977): 112; “Astronomers and UFO’s: A Survey,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 3–4)
January — Alfred Webre joins the Center for the Study of Social Policy at the Stanford Research Institute [now SRI International] in Menlo Park, California, as a senior policy analyst. He intends to develop an “extraterrestrial communication” project with White House backing. He plans to establish a comprehensive UFO database, hire scientific advisers to evaluate the data, and issue policy recommendations, including one to end military and intelligence secrecy. He is referred to an unnamed female staff member of the White House Domestic Policy Staff, who is supportive of his proposal. He is promised approval of his proposal, but never hears back from the
White House again. The request is terminated in September. (Steven M. Greer, Disclosure: Military and Government Witnesses Reveal the Greatest Secrets in Modern History, Crossing Point, 2001, pp. 441–446; Dolan II 142)
January 1 — 8:00 p.m. François Perez and his wife are chased in their car by a 33-foot long oval object in Valence, Drôme, France. They retrace their route one hour later after telling police. They see the oval object again, about 1,200 feet from them in a field. It appears to be 90–120 feet in diameter and surrounded by a halo of white light. After 10 minutes, the object begins flashing and rises up into the air at a 45° angle. They complain of eye pain and conjunctivitis for 48 hours afterward, and Perez’s watch stops working. (“French Couple Report Being Chased by ‘Big Glowing Star,’” Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1977, p. 28; “Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 2 (February 1977):
January 6 — 1:15 a.m. Florida Malboeuf is sitting at her window at 6420 Casgrain Avenue in Montreal, Quebec, when she sees an oyster-shaped, flat-bottomed metallic object with a row of white lights around its base. It flies in from the north and lands on the rooftop of a three-story apartment building across the street from her only 60 feet away. Immediately two figures appear on the roof; they are over six feet tall and thin, with long arms. They are wearing white one-piece uniforms with their heads covered with tight “bath helmets.” They stand looking at the street, then at the sky, then they apparently return to the object. A moment later they disappear, and the UFO rises from the roof about 20 feet and flies off to the east. Her son André goes over to the rooftop in question and finds a large, elliptical-shaped crust of ice, about 18 feet in diameter, on top of the snow. He also finds four small footprints only 6.5 inches long. (Marc Leduc and Wido Hoville, “Un UFO sur une maison,” UFO-Quebec, no. 9 (1977): 6–10; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 62–66)
January 10 — 12:00 noon. Horse farmer William McCarthy is looking out his window at the falling snow when he is surprised to see a hole in his pond in the town of Wakefield, New Hampshire. The pond, 105 by 75 feet, was frozen solid just the day before. He goes outside for a closer look. The hole is perfectly round and cuts smoothly through 14 inches of ice. Eight inches of slush surrounds the hole. Peering into the hole, McCarthy sees something that looks like a one-foot-square box. He races back to the house and brings family members over for a look. Then he goes to the barn to pick up a rake, hoe, and pole. Back at the pond, McCarthy sees that the box has sunk three feet into the muck at the bottom. Frustrated in his attempt to retrieve the object, he calls a friend, Bob Palmer, who arrives around 2:30 p.m. Concerned that they might be dealing with radioactive satellite or aircraft debris, Palmer notifies the police, who soon arrive in the company of a local Civil Defense representative. The Geiger counter indicates a reading alarmingly above normal (3 roentgens per hour versus normal background radiation of .001 roentgen). The McCarthys are warned to stay away from the water, and the CD man and the police leave to inform their superiors. By 4:00 p.m. the circle of slush has expanded to 10 feet. When McCarthy observes the pond in the morning, he discovers a second hole, this one about 50 feet from the original. Not long afterwards, someone from the attorney general’s office warns McCarthy not to let his animals drink from the pond; he reappears later in the day to express concern about possible water seepage. He also directs McCarthy and his family not to discuss the affair with anyone else until the official investigation is completed. The next day the pond is frozen over again. Disregarding warnings, McCarthy walks out on it and looks down through the clear ice where the hole has been and to the pool bottom. A fresh 6-inch-wide trench stretches from beneath the first hole all the way to the second. To all appearances, the object that entered via the former has left via the latter. State police escort all but the officially connected off the farm. Investigators try unsuccessfully to drain the pond, then see a 6-by-3-foot opening where the original hole had been. Distant observers think they see the searchers retrieve a black object and place it inside a van, which quickly leaves the area. By the end of the day, a statement from the governor’s office declares that more sophisticated equipment has found no abnormal radioactivity in the pond and the surrounding area. The black object, the authorities contend, is a container filled with soil and stone samples collected for analysis. (“What’s Going On? N.H. Pond Mystery Called False Report,” Boston Globe, January 14, 1977, p. 3; Allan Hendry, “The Wakefield Incident: Telling a UFO from a Hole in the Ground,” IUR 2, no. 2 (February 1977): 8; “Wakefield Wrap-Up,” IUR 2, no. 2 (February 1977): insert; Clark III 1233–1234)
January 10 — 4:00 p.m. A driver stopped at an intersection in Biloxi, Mississippi, watches a disc on edge descend at an 80° angle, growing larger. When it reaches treetop level, it banks in a curve into the trees. As it leaves, it presents a round face as large as the full moon. (“Case 2-2-48,” IUR 2, no, 2 (February 1977): 5)
January 11 —The crew of an Indian Air Force jet transport is flying 42 miles west of Varanasi, India, when it encounters three luminescent discs that fly past, circle once, then continue east. Apparently, thousands see the objects from the ground over a period of 45 minutes. (Good Need, p. 303)
January 13 — 12:30 a.m. A driver is paced by a UFO shaped like a flattened football with a dark equator in Plantation, Florida. The noiseless object is glowing with a steady white light underneath. It moves erratically in front of the
car, and turns a corner as she pulls into her home. As she jumps out, she sees a second object join it in the northeast, and both speed toward the east in 5–6 seconds. (“Case 2-2-52,” IUR 2, no. 2 (February 1977): insert.)
January 15 — 8:15 p.m. An unusually bright light is seen bobbing up and down low in the southern sky of Charleston, Oregon, for 30 minutes. It gradually drops below the horizon. (“Case 2-3-2,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 5)
Mid-January — 3:00 a.m. Eino Maki is out grooming the ski slopes at the Briar Mountain Lodge near Norway, Michigan. He notices that a nocturnal light UFO (seen frequently in the area since November 1976) is keeping pace with him as he moves up and down the slopes, edging closer. At first it is about 2 miles away at treetop level; now he can see red lights on the object. A bit unnerved, Maki goes back to the lodge and positions himself behind it. The light moves out of sight, and Maki goes back to work about 15 minutes later. Soon the light returns and it is below him on the same ski run, shining brightly. He decides to go home in his pickup truck. One week later, around 11:00 p.m., the same thing starts happening again, but Maki decides to run home right away. (Kenneth Schellhase, “UFOs on the Ski Slopes of Northern Michigan,” IUR 7, no. 2 (March 1982): 10)
January 21 — 3:15 p.m. An observer in Aspen, Colorado, watches a stationary object for more than an hour. Through binoculars it looks like a 3:1 rectangle with rounded corners of blue-green light. It fades from view in the same position. (“Case 2-3-12,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 5)
January 21 — 4:45 p.m. Three female factory workers in Bridlington, Yorkshire, England, are walking to work on Bessingby Way when they see a hazy oval object hovering above the Britax PMG factory roof just before it begins moving to the right and stopping again. Almost immediately they spot another hazy object hovering above the adjacent K. B. Dixon woodyard. It begins moving forward at a slow pace then stops above a ventilation pipe in the Dixon factory wall. As it hovers the haze disappears, and the object’s features become more distinct. It is larger than a double-decker bus and shaped like a rugby ball. All three are able to see through a row of windows on the side that reveal a corridor inside. On one end is a tube-like structure or pole. Soon it moves over some community gardens and hovers briefly at about 6 feet altitude, lowers its “pole,” and appears to suck up a polythene bag. Both objects now move off to the west. The sighting duration is 5–10 minutes. The witnesses are terrified during the event, experiencing a cold sensation sweeping over them and a prickly irritation in their eyes. They develop sore throats and colds. (Robert Morrell, “UFOs over Bridlington Factories,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 3 (October 1977): 8–10, 21)
January 21 — 8:45 p.m. Robert Melerine and Irwin Menesses are doing some hunting along a dike canal about one mile northeast of Yscloskey, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, one in a boat and the other walking along the shore.
Melerine sees a bright red light in the sky. Suddenly the light seems right around him as the boat is engulfed in the glow, which extends to the surrounding landscape. There is no noise, and the light flies away into the woods.
Menesses is already back at camp and has not seen the light. They both get into the boat and move down the dike canal, using the outboard motor. The light reappears and moves closer to them. Although the motor is running the boat is not moving, seemingly held in place. Then the light quickly leaves and the boat lurches forward with great force, causing both men to fall. The light again flies at low level into the trees and continues on until they lose it. They estimate that the light is about 15–25 feet in diameter, roughly circular, faceted, and strikingly fast when it moves toward them. Both men report nausea, stomach aches, and fever for 2 days after the incident (it is flu season). (“Mysterious Hovering Light Observed by Yscloskey Men,” St. Bernard (La.) News, January 26, 1977; “Mysterious Hovering Light Still a Mystery,” St. Bernard (La.) News, February 9, 1977; Ted Peters, “Warm Light Stops Everything!” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 111 (February 1977): 3–6)
January 21 — Night. Capt. Gustavo Ferreira and the crew of Avianca flight HK-1273 see an extremely bright white light in front of his plane. They are 7 minutes out of the El Dorado Airport in Bogotá, Colombia, westbound at 20,000 feet. At the same time, airport radar operator Jorge Jimenez watches a target moving at 27,340 mph in a zigzag motion. Ferreira watches the light change color in response to his turning on his landing lights and head south after 3 minutes. Jimenez sees the target cut 90° to the south at the same time. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 7 (July 1977): 2; UFOEv II 135)
January 27 — 1:05 a.m. A 19-year-old trucker is driving on State Highway 329 southeast of Prospect, Kentucky, when he spots a rectangular, orange-red object coming down near his jeep. His radio fails 15 seconds into the sighting. He feels compelled to watch the object, which stays in the vicinity only a short time. When he arrives home, he discovers that it has taken 45 minutes to complete a 7-minute trip. Later under hypnosis, he relates being taken inside the object and examined by three strange creatures who are shaped like machines (looking like a giant one- armed tombstone, a 7-foot teletype machine, and a man-sized Coke machine). The electrical system on his jeep goes haywire the day after the abduction. (“Single Witness Abduction in Kentucky,” IUR 2, no. 4 (April 1977): 6–7; Carla L. Rueckert, “Kentucky Close Encounter,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 3 (October 1977): 15–16, 19)
January 28 — 10:05 p.m. Students in Platteville, Wisconsin, watch an orange “fuzzy oval” object larger than a full moon descend from a low angle above the southern horizon into distant trees. (“Case 2-3-22,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 5)
January 29 — 9:30 p.m. A patrolman and an unnamed couple in East Haven, Connecticut, see a horizontal row of 5–6 white lights, rotating left to right. The object hovers for 6 minutes, rises from 45° in the east to 80°, drops lower, executes left and right 90° turns, and fades low in the southern sky. (“Case 2-3-23,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 5)
February — 10:30 p.m. A Danish serviceman is walking to his quarters at Naval Station Grønnedal [now Kangilinnguit] in Greenland pauses to look at the Northern Lights. He retrieves a camera to take photos and notices an elliptical dark object below the aurora. The object appears on only one of his time-exposure photos. Possible altocumulus cloud. (Kim Møller Hansen, “Elliptical Object over Greenland Naval Station,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 3 (June/July 1984): 1)
February — An Italian Air Force F-104 is followed for 23 minutes by a UFO that is brighter than the moon. It remains about 2,400–2,700 feet behind the plane. The base authorizes him to intercept it, but when he climbs to 12,000 feet, the UFO paces him then disappears. ()
February 1 — 8:30 p.m. Two helicopter pilots flying south at 60 mph near Carthage, Missouri, watch a northbound light pass beneath them and climb to their altitude at 2,000 feet and 300–500 feet away. It appears to be a dark, vertical cylinder 10–15 feet high, 5–8 feet wide, and with struts and a light on the bottom. As the helicopter circles, the object rises higher and heads southeast, disappearing in a second or two. (“Case 2-3-33,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 8)
February 1 — 9:05 p.m. A police sergeant in Glendale, California, sees a bright red light 45° in the west. He drives “within a block” of the light and sees it as bigger than the full moon, perhaps 100–150 feet in diameter, and hovering silently for 3–4 minutes. It moves at incredible speed away to the west. (“Case 2-3-35,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 8)
February 2 — Farmer Zbigniew Tuszewski finds a strange disc 1.6 feet in diameter and weighing 66 pounds in his field in Dalabuszki village, north of Gostyń, Poland. Concave on one side, flat on the other, the find does not appear to be from a satellite. A spectroscopic analysis shows the presence of nickel, cobalt, niobium, molybdenum, vanadium, and tellurium; however, another analysis shows no evidence of nickel. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 9 (September 1977): 2)
February 4 — 6:30 a.m. A woman and her daughter step outside their house in Senožeti, Slovenia, and see a glowing orange ellipse about four times the size of the moon hovering about 10° above the forest. It is silent and has 4–7 brighter spots on it. Walking along, they watch the object disappear and see a glow arising from the woods as if there is a fire in a nearby village. They run to the spot but find nothing there. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 9 (September 1977): 2)
February 4 — Around 12:00 noon. Fifteen children, mostly 10-year-old boys, at Broad Haven Primary School in Pembroke, Wales, are playing football when they see a silvery cigar-shaped UFO in a field behind the building, partially hidden by trees and shrubs. Two in the group say it has a silver dome with a flashing light at the top. Six of them claim to see a silver man with pointed ears next to the craft. The school’s headteacher Ralph Llewellyn asks them to draw the UFO and is amazed at how similar the drawings are. Local UFO enthusiast Randall Jones Pugh brings the story to the attention of the national media and soon sightings of UFOs and alien occupants spring up within a 20-mile radius of Broad Haven, especially near RAF Brawdy [now Cawdor Barracks], east of St.
Davids. (Peter Paget, The Welsh Triangle, Granada, 1979; “Broad Haven UFO Sightings Marked 40 Years On,” BBC News, February 4, 2017; Peter Paget, The Welsh Triangle Revisited, The author, 2018; David Clarke, “Close Encounters of the Playground Kind,” Fortean Times 357 (September 2017): 16–18; UFOFiles2, pp. 94–95)
February 6 — UFO researcher Larry W. Bryant writes a letter to President Jimmy Carter, suggesting that he look into the roles played by military and civilian intelligence agencies in the UFO cover-up. He receives the standard USAF brush-off letter, saying that UFOs are no longer being investigated. (Larry W. Bryant, UFO Politics at the White House, Invisible College, 2001)
February 9 — 5:20 a.m. A high-altitude light is seen hovering for several minutes above Bondi, New South Wales, Australia, before shooting off to the east. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 5 (May 1977): 2)
February 9 — 8:45 p.m. A deputy sheriff and constable in Flora, Mississippi, watch a UFO six times the size of their car hover 20–50 feet above them for 30 minutes. (“Case 2-3-48,” IUR 2, no. 3 (March 1977): 8; “Close Encounter in
Mississippi,” IUR 2, no 4 (April 1977): 7)
February 10 — 12:45 a.m. Tom Thibault is alone on the road to Southville, Nova Scotia, when his car is pushed back 250 feet by a 30-by-60 foot object hovering silently 10–12 feet above the road. A blue light emerges from the object that creates an electric shock and an unbearable noise. Thibault suffers a memory loss and gets headaches when
he drives by the scene afterward. (Digby (N.S.) Courier, February 24, 1977; “Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 5 (May 1977): 2)
February 11 — 8:40 p.m. Health service cook Slavka Gorsek and her two children see an intense beam of light come through a bedroom window in their home in Gaberke, Slovenia. It illuminates the room briefly then goes out. The light is coming from an egg-shaped object about 8–11 feet wide that has landed only about 50 feet away behind a chicken coop. It is bright white with a green or blue center. For 2–3 minutes they can see and hear nothing, until the object flashes again and takes off. Three days later Gorsek notices a “glimmering dust” at the landing site and the marks of five landing gear. An analysis is performed but with ambiguous results. (Milos Krmelj, “UFO Landing in Yugoslavia,” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 118 (September 1977): 6–8)
Mid-February — 10:30 p.m. Another nocturnal light mimics Eino Maki’s movements as he grooms the ski slopes at Brian Mountain Lodge near Norway, Michigan. After going away once, it reappears right over him, illuminating him and a large area around him. He races his tractor at top speed (15 mph), maneuvering under struts and wires so it can’t get at him. Assistant Manager Jake Malone hears the tractor gearing up outside and sees a huge brilliantly lit object the “size of a boxcar” following Maki up the slope. When he reaches the top, the UFO hovers, silently bouncing up and down, about 500 feet from the lodge. Maki estimates the object is about 60–80 feet long. Some 10–15 people exiting the lodge begin to see the display as well. (Kenneth Schellhase, “UFOs on the Ski Slopes of Northern Michigan,” IUR 7, no. 2 (March 1982): 10–11)
February 16 — Morning. Four boys and one adult at Penlee Secondary School in Plymouth, Devon, England, independently see a cigar-shaped object flying horizontally above the school playground before it climbs into a cloud and disappears. (David Clarke, “Close Encounters of the Playground Kind,” Fortean Times 357 (September 2017): 16)
February 16 — Afternoon. Nine children, age 8–11, are playing netball with their teacher, Mair Williams, at Rhosybol School in Anglesey, North Wales, when they see an object flying north. It has a black dome on top and a silver, cigar-shaped base. It remains in sight for 3 minutes, goes behind the only cloud in the sky, reappears for one minute, then disappears. The teacher takes them back inside, separates them, and tells them to draw what they have seen. The sighting is reported to RAF Valley in Anglesey, which can offer no positive identification. (David Clarke, “Close Encounters of the Playground Kind,” Fortean Times 357 (September 2017): 16)
February 16 — 9:00 p.m. A commercial pilot standing outside his truck in Canton, Mississippi, watches a cylindrical object about 40 feet long pass alongside him a few hundred feet away at 30 mph. It has one steady white light in front and makes a noise like a wheezing turbine. It recedes into the west after 5 minutes. (“Case 2-4-6,” IUR 2, no. 4 (April 1977): 5)
February 16 — 9:15 p.m. A woman in Utica, Michigan, watches for 2 minutes a vertical cylinder of white light that is pointed at the top. It is stationary, silent, shrouded in white haze, and about 10 times as long as the full moon. (“Case 2-4-7,” IUR 2, no. 4 (April 1977): 5)
February 20 — 10:15 p.m. A domed disc is seen for 1–2 minutes by a man and his son in Victorville, California. It is silver in color with three windows, three legs or wheels, and two hooks at both ends. It hovers above houses 3–4 blocks away, then recedes toward the northwest after attaching itself to the top of a second object to form a sphere. (“Case 2-4-15,” IUR 2, no. 4 (April 1977): 5)
February 22 — Severe corrosion of the KS 150 reactor in Jaslovské Bohunice, Czech Republic, causes a release of radioactive material into the plant area, requiring a complete decommission. (Wikipedia, “KS 150”)
February 22 — 9:30 p.m. Antonio Serena, his wife Francesca Castellanos, and their three children are followed by a bright light for one hour and a distance of about 25 miles. The light is first spotted as they are driving northwest of Llíria in Valencia province, Spain, and follows them through the town of Vilamarxant. The car experiences some engine and light problems and des not seem to be able to accelerate. When they approach the village of Cheste, the light seems to move ahead of them, get much closer, and extend some legs in preparation for landing. One of the daughters gets sick from anxiety. The object moves away when a second auto approaches from the opposite direction. Despite the seeming drama of the incident, the light seems to have been Venus and the engine problems are due to a drained battery, as Ian Ridpath points out. (Story, pp. 327–330; Ian Ridpath, “A Spanish Close Encounter Re-examined,” Ian Ridpath’s UFO Skeptic Pages, January 2021)
February 25 — 7:45 p.m. A 16-year-old bicycling near Cyprus College in California is followed by a star-like object that appears in the west, 45° up. The light enlarges to a thin cigar-shape, 4–5 times the width of the moon, after rushing toward him in 5 seconds. He cycles away, frightened, and has to be driven home in tears by friends. His friends and family see the object as a “star” that sets in the west in 25 minutes. Possibly Jupiter. (“Case 2-4-19,” IUR 2, no. 4 (April 1977): 5)
February 26 — 9:00 p.m. An accident investigator in Ontario, California, sees a white triangle with rounded sides as big as the full moon. It moves silently and slowly from overhead toward the east, 45° up. It changes course twice in the next 4–5 minutes before it disappears in the distance. (“Case 2-4-21,” IUR 2, no. 4 (April 1977): 6)
March 4 — 6:00 a.m. Ludwig Siegal is driving on Provincial Road 201 about 4 miles west of Sundown, Manitoba. He sees a shimmering oval object ahead of him and silently hovering about 15 feet above the highway. It is yellowish cream around the outer edge, darkening to more yellowish in the middle. He passes directly underneath the object, which does not appear to be solid. Two miles further, Siegal sees three entities, 5 feet tall and shaped like bowling pins, in the glare of his headlights. They are arranged in a row along the left side of the road and have bulbous heads, narrow necks, and flared bodies. Unable to stop in time, he crashes into the group but feels no impact.
They simply disappear as they touch the car’s bumper. Looking in his rear-view mirror, he sees all three of them reappear behind his car, shrink to a small size, and vanish. Siegal calls the RCMP from a nearby friend’s house. They find skid marks, but no traces of blood or any impact marks on Siegal’s car. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 166, 221–223)
March 7 — 8:34 p.m. French Air Force pilot Maj. René Giraud and navigator Capt. Jean-Paul Abraham, flying a Dassault Mirage IV supersonic bomber over Chaumont, Haute-Marne, France, see a huge UFO. The light appears bigger and bigger as it approaches their aircraft from the rear right. The pilot is flying at Mach 0.98 and makes a turn to the right and then to the left to make sure the light is not a reflection of some sort in the cockpit. As he does these maneuvers, both crew members can distinguish that the light is on the front of a dark, solid object. Despite the evasive maneuver, the unidentified object manages to stay exactly behind them for a few seconds, a very dangerous situation if the unknown object is hostile. Then the object makes a turn to the northwest at an estimated speed of Mach 2, and flies away to the left of the Mirage IV. (Kean, pp. 123–124; Good Need, pp. 304–305; Patrick Gross, “Mirage IV Jet Bomber Encounters UFO, France, March 7, 1977”; “L’Observation d’OVNI du Colonel René Giraud (1977),” OVNI et Extraterrestre, November 10, 2014)
March 8 — 7:30 p.m. Eleven witnesses in six groups (including Thelma Lowe, Harold Wilson, Sara Green, Mrs. Everett Miller, Mrs. W. E. Runge II, and Robert Smyth) watch a red ball of fire the size of the full moon drift over their houses and alight on the ground south of Gatchellville, Pennsylvania. It leaves a large patch of burning grass (100 feet long by 30 feet wide), with a mysteriously unscathed area delineated by three holes at the vertices. (“Case Number 2-4-44,” IUR 2, no. 5 (May 1977): 6–7; “Close-Out on the Gatchellville, PA CE II,” IUR 3, no. 3 (March
1978): insert)
March 9 — 12:34 a.m. Captain Assapa, Flight Officer Berehan, and Flight Engineer Negassa of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET-701 are flying near Qarun Lake, Egypt, when they see a formation of eight lights, with two larger ones in the lead, flying southeast. They are the color of “arc welding.” (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 5 (May 1977): 2)
March 9 — 3:10 a.m. Brian Grimshaw and his friend Jeff are driving to a textile factory in Nelson, Lancashire, England, when they see a cigar-shaped, metallic object in the sky. They stop the car for a better look. The UFO has lights at either end that are changing color, and the entire object is surrounded by a gray mist. The witnesses hear a sound they describe as like the tide coming in and going out. As the object comes closer, the car engine stops and the headlights dim. After five minutes, the object flies off and the car restarts. Both witnesses come down with headaches shortly afterward. (Tony Grimshaw and Jenny Randles, “Frightening Car-Stop near Nelson,” Flying Saucer Review 23, no. 2 (August 1977): 3–5, 12; UFOEv II 223–224; Jenny Randles, “Flappy Valley, Part 4,”
Fortean Times 328 (July 2015): 28–29)
March 9 — 7:20 p.m. Susanna and Maria Stratford watch a shiny saucer with a red light on top and a rounded bottom descend to 30 feet above the ground and hover for 20 minutes, veering left and right above the trees in Saanich, British Columbia. It disappears toward the east. (“Night UFO: It Came Back to See Us,” Victoria (B.C.) Times, March 11, 1977, p. 17)
March 9 — 10:40 p.m. Four adult witnesses in Long Grove, Illinois, are attracted outside by a loud crackling noise.
Searching around with a powerful spotlight, they see an object 60° up in the northern sky about 1,000 feet up. It is a white, tapered rectangle with a black silhouette behind it about the size of the full moon. They watch it maneuver within the spotlight beam and watch it sporadically for 30 minutes until it vanishes within the beam; the noise stops immediately. (“Case 2-4-46,” IUR 2, no. 5 (May 1975): wrap)
March 10 — 7:40 p.m. Ten crew members of two oil tankers anchored one mile apart at the Arjuna Oil Field in the Java Sea, Indonesia, see an object the apparent size of the full moon. It is primarily dark with a red light in the middle and emits beams of yellowish-white light in two directions. It is only about 1,000 feet above the surface of the water. Coming from the west, it circles the offshore oil field twice and then speeds off to the east after 5 minutes. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 3, no. 2 (February 1978): 2)
March 11 — Rancher B. T. Bray discovers a 14-foot diameter, circular ring in a paddock at Brayfield Station, southwest of Port Neill, South Australia. No UFO is seen. The topsoil, soft everywhere else, is surprisingly hard in the ring, with the grass in the center undisturbed. (Adelaide (S.A.) Advertiser, March 12, 1977; “Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 8 (August 1977): 2)
March 12 — 9:05 p.m. United Airlines Flight 94 is flying south of Syracuse, New York, on a course toward Boston’s Logan Airport in Massachusetts. Suddenly the airplane starts a gradual, smooth (15° bank angle) turn to the left by itself. Within 5–10 seconds both captain Neil Daniels, 57, and the flight officer turn and look to their left side and see an “extremely bright white light at about their own altitude.” It is perfectly round and almost 3° arc in apparent diameter. Daniels estimates its distance to be about 3,000 feet and probably as big or bigger than a DC- 10 in size. Its intensity is like that of a flashbulb. Boston Center calls them and asks, “United 94, where are you going?” Daniels replies, “Well, let me figure this out. I’ll let you know.” Then they notice that “the three compasses were all displaying different readings. The FO’s compass was within 20° arc of the compass in front of the captain and was not rotating. It was then that the FO uncoupled the autopilot and flew the airplane manually.” Meanwhile, the UAP “followed right along with us” for about 4–5 more minutes then “it took off and picked up speed very rapidly and just disappeared, over about 15 seconds, back towards our 8:00 o’clock position and slightly upward.” Daniels asked ATC if they have any radar traffic in the area and they reply, “no.” Later, ATC tells Daniels, “So whatever it was, we don’t know. But it did cause a disruption in the magnetic field around the aircraft to the point where it did pull the aircraft off course.” (Richard F. Haines, “Aviation Safety in America: A Previously Neglected Factor,” NARCAP, October 15, 2000, p. 80; “Air Force Pilot Neil Daniels Sighting,” Riddlept YouTube channel, October 8, 2013)
Mid-March — Observers at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, Iran, see 20–25 UFOs flying from the desert toward the city. The pilots and passengers of an Iranian airliner flying at more than 6 miles altitude about 87 miles from the city describe them as yellow in color. A Japanese pilot the same distance south of Tehran switches on all his lights when he sees a huge object in front of his plane. He claims 15–20 smaller objects fly out of the large one directly toward the pilot, who changes course and heads for Mehrabad. (“Review of Iranian UFO Reports,” IUR/Frontiers of Science 3, no. 2 (Jan./Feb. 1981): 15)
Mid-March — Around 11:00 p.m. James Ferguson and Tom Patton are in the desert about 2 miles west of Tucson, Arizona, preparing to take night photographs of saguaro cacti using flash-lighting effects. As they are getting ready to take a photo, the floor of the desert around them suddenly brightens. They see a large mass of light rise from behind a distant range of hills and hover for many minutes just above the horizon. Quickly, they turn the camera on its tripod toward the light and take a time exposure. Several minutes pass and suddenly the light moves rapidly to the north and disappears in the distance. The trail of light on the photo shows the light’s departure. (“1977 Nocturnal Light Photograph Reported,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 1, no. 1 (May 1980): 1; “Tucson
1977 Nocturnal Light Remains Unidentified,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 1, no. 4 (August 1980): 2)
March 19 — 8:00 p.m. Sylvia Laidler and her daughter Darlene are driving eastbound on Highway 401 near Belleville, Ontario, when a red streak appears in the north. The object stops abruptly over the highway in front of her car, maintaining a red, pulsating glow, then approaches them, flying on the south side of the road at tree-top level. It is triangular with turquoise lights, red flashing lights, and a golden light flashing at the bottom. It hovers silently above them briefly then moves off to the south. (“UFO Hovered over Car,” Belleville (Ont.) Intelligencer, May 6, 1977; Marler 96–97)
March 22 — 10:20 a.m. Tom Evison and his wife watch for 15 minutes a bright stationary light an estimated 10 miles north of their location in Seatoun, a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand. Seen through a telescope, it appears as elongated with black vertical lines. It slowly fades away in place. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 5 (May 1977): 2)
March 24 — 8:50 p.m. Witnesses on La Palma and Tenerife, Canary Islands, see a reddish light emerge from the sea, climb very fast, move in a zigzag fashion, and leave behind a huge, bright halo that lasts 10 minutes. Several minutes later, a Scandinavian DC-8 passing over Ad Dakhla on the coast of Western Sahara observes a luminous cloud to the west. A South African Airways jumbo jet describes the same phenomenon. 310 miles to the south, Capt. M. Brackenridge and the crew of the merchant ship Kinpurnie Castle witness a luminous semicircle on the horizon, with a small bright arc inside. In only 3 minutes it has reached colossal dimensions. Seven minutes later, it has completely dispersed, after a second luminous spot appears above it. The sighting correlates with the launch of two Poseidon missiles from the USS Woodrow Wilson. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Ricardo Campo Pérez, “Navy Missile Tests and the Canary Islands UFOs,” IUR 29, no. 4 (July 2005): 4)
March 29 — 12:30 a.m. A witness in a rural area near West Decatur, Pennsylvania, sees an “upside-down teardrop” object 100–200 feet long and 60 feet wide drift in from the east at treetop level. With the point of the teardrop pointing upward, the gray-brown object features a large panel of fluorescent green light on the bottom. Drifting west into a
field, the object makes a sound like a “rope spinning in the air.” Climbing at a 45° angle to a half-mile up in 15 seconds, it levels off and accelerates to the southwest in 8 seconds. (“Case 2-5-43,” IUR 2, no. 5 (May 1977): 5)
April 1 — 10:40 p.m. A woman is driving her three young children south on the west side of DeRuyter, New York, when she finds herself overtaking and driving underneath a 35–40-foot object hovering 30 feet above the maple trees. The UFO has three outer red and blue lights and a sequential series of red lights in two rows on the center bottom. One mile away, two other witnesses go in search of a red glow without being able to overtake it. (“Case 2-5-46,” IUR 2, no. 5 (May 1977): 5)
April 5 — 2:17 p.m. A pilot driving on I-94 northbound near Deerfield, Illinois, sees an object coming toward him (southbound) first in the distance then directly above him later on. It is a silver mushroom three times the apparent size of the moon, and it moves silently toward Chicago against the wind. (“Case 2-5-51,” IUR 2, no. 5 (May 1977): 5)
April 5 — 9:00 p.m. A young couple and others in Lincolnton, North Carolina, see 5–6 red-orange lights hovering 200 feet away. (“Case 2-5-52,” IUR 2, no. 6 (June 1977): wrap)
April 8 — 2:00 a.m. A domed disc-shaped object flies around two witnesses in Cedar Springs, Michigan, hovering and flashing over some nearby trees. Ring ground marks are later found. (“Case 2-5-57,” IUR 2, no. 5 (May 1977): wrap)
April 8 — 8:08 p.m. A teenager and his mother in St. Louis, Missouri, watch a flat disc four times the width of the moon silhouetted against the clouds. It has three steady white lights around its edges and moves silently from a high angle in the east to a low angle in the west. (“Case 2-5-58,” IUR 2, no. 6 (June 1977): wrap)
April 8 — 10:35 p.m. A cigar-shaped object glowing red at each end darts north to south across Interstate 64 in Lexington, Kentucky, several times. (“Case 2-5-80,” IUR 2, no. 6 (June 1977): wrap)
April 10 — 2:30 a.m. Martha and Olof Eriksson watch a yellow light with a red “textile-like” appendage hanging below it at Flykälen, Jämtland, Sweden. It is 100 feet in diameter and moving from south to north. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 8 (August 1977): 2)
April 14 — 2:00 a.m. Captain Scherrer, Senior First Officer Schmid, and hostess Rothenhofer are on board Swissair Flight SR-798 near Maastricht, Netherlands. Schmid notices the first of four “lightning-like lights” in an otherwise clear sky. Ground radar calls the plane’s attention to a target 15 miles away at their 1 o’clock position. The crew sees two targets briefly at that position but only on radar. Then all three of them see another flash.
Maastricht radar watches the target fall back east of the plane and rush at high speed back to a 1 or 2 o’clock position only 3 miles away. There is still no visual contact. A few minutes later, a third silent lightning-like flash is seen just in front of the airliner. Maastricht radar watches the target playing with the plane behind its tail and right wing, where the fourth flash is seen. A military radar places the speed of the target when moving fast at Mach 4 or 5. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 6 (June 1977): 2)
April 17 — 4:00 p.m. A woman in La Louvière, Hainaut, Belgium, watches a flat cylinder with faceted sides move from the southwest to northeast. The object is dark, seems solid, and emits no smoke or trail. It moves in a straight line with an oscillation in the same direction as the wind. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 8 (August 1977): 2)
April 17–23 — An International Congress on the UFO Phenomenon is held in Acapulco, Mexico, organized by Mexico City businessman Guillermo Bravo. Speakers include J. Allen Hynek, Jacques Vallée, John A. Keel, William Spaulding, Walt Andrus, and Dennis Hauck. Prime Minister Eric Gairy makes a strong plea for a United Nations program to investigate UFOs. (J. Allen Hynek, “‘First’ International Congress on the UFO Phenomenon,” IUR 2, no. 5 (May 1977): wrap)
April 18 — About 12:05 a.m. George Thrupp and Margaret Mancour of the weather office at Vancouver International Airport in British Columbia have just gotten off their shift when they see a “blue flash” over the airport. It appears in the south sky above Richmond. The light is coming from a cigar-shaped object larger than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet that is orange on the top half and blue on the bottom half with dark portholes along the side. (“Pair Sight UFO at City Airport,” Vancouver (B.C.) Sun, April 19, 1977, p. 35)
April 18 — White House Press Secretary Jody Powell states in the “Washington Whispers” column of US News and World Report that “before the year is out” there will be “unsettling disclosures” about UFOs, “based on information from the CIA.” Later, the White House claims the story is a “misunderstanding” by Powell. (Robert Scheaffer, “‘UFO Disclosure’ Happening Again This Year,” Skeptical Inquirer 40, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 2016): 16– 17)
April 19 — Santiago Laco Ozano, 32, is milking cows in Rocha, Uruguay, when he hears a strange noise as the area around him is illuminated. Looking up, he sees a small object giving off a powerful beam of light. He faints, and on recovering about 5 minutes later, notices his hair is slightly burned. He is admitted to a nearby hospital, whose personnel verify the singeing and that his scalp has no lesions. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 3, no. 1 (January 1978): 2)
April 19 — Early morning. Rosa Granville, proprietor of the Haven Fort Hotel in Little Haven, Pembroke, Wales, is disturbed by a strange humming noise. She looks out a window and sees an oval-shaped object “like the moon falling down” land behind her home. Two tall humanoids appear in front of the UFO, which is about the size of a minibus. They have blank faces and pointed heads and are wearing white outfits like boiler suits. They appear to “take measurements or gather things” and climb a grassy bank in a field. When she returns to the window after calling other family members, the object and the figures have vanished. (UFOFiles2, p. 96)
April 21 — 7:15 p.m. A couple in Towson, Maryland, sees a gray capsule with short, stubby wings, two yellow headlights, and no windows. Several times the full moon, the object flies silently from low in the east to above their car in 4 minutes. (“Case 2-6-5,” IUR 2, no. 6 (June 1977): 3)
April 22 — 3:10 a.m. Three witnesses in Washburn, Wisconsin, see a flat, round object with five white lights on its rim and two red lights on its bottom. It pursues their car for three-quarters of a mile, even around curves and driving at 90 mph. The object overshoots them, slows down, and moves only 30 feet in front of them. After 4 minutes it accelerates in a steep climb toward the southwest. (“Case 4-22-77,” IUR 2, no. 6 (June 1977): 3)
April 23 — 9:30 p.m. Pilot William Sorum and copilot Richard Drzal are flying a DC-10, Northwest Orient Flight 27, from Seattle, Washington, to Anchorage, Alaska. About 50 miles east of Middleton Island, Alaska, they see a bright white star moving smoothly from the southern horizon across their field of view to the northern horizon for about 40 seconds. It passes in front of them at a 45° above them at their altitude of 39,000 feet. Radar Approach Controller Terry Siegrist and others at Anchorage International Airport see a linear flight of four separate unidentifiable blips suddenly appear on radar screens at 30 miles distance from the city, covering 10 miles in 6–12 seconds (3,600 mph). Correlation between the two observations is not established. (“Radar/Visual in Alaska,” IUR 2, no. 7 (July 1977): 4)
April 25 — 3:45 a.m. Eight soldiers camped on a military patrol 3 miles from Putre, Arica y Parinacota, Chile, suddenly see two bright violet lights nearby. The soldiers’ dog and horses remain still while the lights hover nearby. The leader of the group, Corporal Armando Valdés Garrido, orders the other soldiers to put out their campfire. The two large lights are about a half-mile away and hovering close to the ground. Valdés approaches the lights, ordering them to identify themselves. At this point a bright light envelops Valdés and he apparently vanishes in a mist in plain view of the others. The soldiers frantically begin searching for him but are unable to find him. At around 4:15 a.m., Valdés suddenly reappears. He has a strange look on his face and he gives out a sinister laugh, asking several times where his mother is. Then he says, again in a very sinister sounding voice, “You will never know who we are and where we come from.” The others notice that he appears to have a week’s growth of beard, whereas he had been clean-shaven just an hour ago, and his digital watch indicates the impossible date of April
30. He is almost in hysterics and one of the soldiers has to slap him, at which point Valdés faints. One of the other soldiers, Raúl Salinas, who has been standing a few feet in back of the others, notices a strange humanoid creature behind some nearby rocks. He describes it as half animal and half human; no facial features are visible, but it seems to be wearing a helmet and is carrying a red light. Salinas is stunned to see the creature appear at several places simultaneously. He thinks that there might be several humanoids. He does not mention this to the others at the time, since they are already scared, but the others do not see the humanoid or humanoids. When Valdés wakes up he cannot remember where he has been. In 2013, Valdés, now an evangelical pastor, admits that no one on the patrol saw aliens—only that they saw something that frightened them. He claims he only left the group to go urinate. Many ufologists now feel that the Chilean government encouraged the abduction scenario to mask the presence of troops and horses in northern Chile in the event of a war with Argentina or a regional conflict. (Wikipedia, “Caso Cabo Valdés”; “Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 7 (July 1977): 2; “The Chilean Abduction,” APRO Bulletin 26, no. 1 (July 1977): 1, 3; “Cabo Valdés se confiesa: ‘Nunca me abdujeron,’” La Cuarta, February 18, 2018)
April 26 — Pauline Coombes reports seeing a luminous silver figure 7–8 feet tall looking into her window at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales, for an hour. She doesn’t say anything until her son notices it too. Humanoid in form, the figure’s face is black and featureless; it vanishes when a neighbor drives up. Two weeks earlier, a yellow sphere had chased her car; she accelerated to 80 mph to escape it. (“Foreign Forum,” IUR 2, no. 8 (August 1977): 2)
April 29 — Manuel Lopez, the pilot of a single-engine plane, is allegedly blinded in flight by a UFO near Bogotá, Colombia. Circling in the air for 2 hours, Lopez’s calls for help are recorded and played on a local radio station: “I’ve lost my sight; I don’t know what to do!” Four aircraft surround him and talk him down to a safe landing at El Dorado International Airport by radio. He is rushed to a military hospital suffering from shock. (“Colombian Pilot Says UFO Blinded Him,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 7, 1977, p. 2)