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Mutual UFO Network

UFO JournalFebruary 2004 Number 430

BRAZIL

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unilaodfa V >) *Sao Vicen

BELOORIZONTEc ,

Brazil's Valley of the Old Women is the scene of numerousUFO encounters. Bob Pratt's article begins on page 3.

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February 2004 Number 430

In this issueBrazil's Valley of Old Women by Bob Pratt 3The Indigo Hypothesis by Craig Lang 9Georgia witness report by Tom Sheets 11UFO observed entering water by Carl Feindt 12Filer's Files by George A. Filer. 14UFO Press: The Other Sky ...17Perceptions by Stanton T. Friedman 18View from Britain by Jenny Randies 20The Night Sky by Walter N. Webb 21Calendar 21MUFON Forum by Sugden, Parks, Hovdestad 22UFO Marketplace 23Director's Message by John Schuessler 24

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UFOs still haunting Brazil'sValley of the Old Women

By Bob PrattA nyone wanting to study the/\ UFO phenomenon up close

A. Vshould head for the Valley ofthe Old Women in central Brazil.

For at least half a century now, the val-ley has been one of the most active UFOregions in the world. Countless sightingshave been reported over the years, andUFOs are still being seen there.

Its proper name is Vale do Rio dasVelhas, or the Valley of the River of theOld Women.

The valley encompasses 10,750square miles ofcattle ranches and •"farmland in lowmountains and ?rolling hills in the ; 11 ^ j_/vVcenter of the stateof Minas Gerais.The river hasmany small smaller i _ --^, ,streams feeding it. H^A. •'/,'

The systemoriginates nearthe city of OuroPreto, southeastof the state capi-tal, Belo Hori-zonte, and meanders north-northwestabout five hundred kilometers beforeemptying into the Rio Sao Francisco, oneof Brazil's largest rivers.

Just how much of the valley has beenvisited by UFOs is not known. To ourknowledge, UFO investigators havesearched only a small portion of the val-ley, but that research has yielded rich re-sults.

Members of the Belo Horizonte UFOgroup CICOANI have gone to the valleyhundreds of times since the late 1960s,documenting about 1,500 sightings andencounters. The valley has proved to beirresistible to us too.

Some encounters took place as longago as the 1950s, and some just two tothree months before our visit. We learnedlater that there were sightings after weleft.

Sao Vicente is a small town about fiftykilometers in a straight line north of BeloHorizonte but about one hundred kilo-meters by car.

Three veteran investigators who live

Bob Pratt

in Sao Vicente, Ivan Leoncio Scares, JoseCimalia, and Maria Mercia Rodrigues,worked with us. Ivan is a former profes-sional soccer player and a retired policeofficer, Jose is a businessman, and Merciais a mathematics teacher.

Altogether, we looked into 26 cases,many of them with two or more witnesses.Most of the people reported seeing a bigball of light in the sky that lit up every-thing around it.

Frightened motherMost of the people we talked to were

frightened during their encounters. In1991, Celsa de Fatima Scares, now 44, hadone of the most terrifying incidents. Sheis a cook at Fazenda dos Poc5es and livesabout ten kilometers from the farm.

"It was around 11 or 11:30 at nightand I was going home in a pickup truckwith my eight-year-old son and my baby,"Celsa said. "The baby was eight monthsold."

She had to park the truck some dis-tance from her house because the houseis in the woods and there was no drive-way.

"I was getting down from the truck,had a sack over my shoulder, held theboy "with one hand and my baby in myother arm," she said. "As we started downthe path toward the house, a light ap-peared in the sky ahead and lit up theground all around us. I panicked andstarted running, pulling my boy with meand juggling my baby and the sack. Icouldn't go very fast.

"We had to run through a lot of densebushes and then over a log bridge over astream. The light was going up and down,up and down, and it was right behind us.I thought it was chasing us. I really wantedto get away from it.

"I ran past a big tree and finally got tothe veranda of my house and was scream-ing at my husband. I looked back and thelight was right above that big tree, onlyfifteen meters away.

"It was red like fire. It was 50 to 60centimeters in diameter in the beginning,but was getting smaller, maybe 35 to 40centimeters. By the time my husband cameout, it had gone away. It just went outand disappeared."

Celsa said she is afraid to go out atnight anymore. "I always look to see if

About the investigatorsThis article was written by Bob Pratt

in collaboration with Cynthia Luce,Tom Tulien, and Vera Filizzola. It isbased on interviews the four of themhad with UFO witnesses in May, 2003.

Bob, a veteran journalist and UFOresearcher, is the author of UFO Dan-ger Zone-Terror and Death in Brazil,as well as Night Siege, The HudsonValley UFO Sightings, which he co-authored with Dr. J. Allen Hynek andPhilip Imbrogno. He is a former editorof the MUFON UFO Journal.•arrpT-^a Cynthia is an Ameri-r .. "^ can researcher of anoma-^ -'.-a '..tf,<ul lous phenomena who

has lived in Brazil sincethe 1970s.

Tom lives in Minne-apolis, MN, and is afounder of the Sign OralHistory Project, the pur-pose of which is to pre-serve important historical

information and to make it available forscholarly study.

Vera is a native Brazilian, living mostof her life in BeloHorizonte. She has longbeen interested in UFOsand other paranormalphenomena and has awebsite, http://www.-

jornalinfinito.com.br/.The interviews were conducted

while Cynthia, Tom, and Bob wereguests at Vera's farm.

there's a light around and I'm alwaysready to run if I see one. My brother Wil-son saw a light one night shortly afterthat and he had to stay hidden in thebushes all night long because he couldn'tget away from the light."

Couple terrifiedThe fear that these objects induced

seems to be common in such encounters.For Silvandina Martins, such an encoun-ter was the most terrifying event in herlife.

One evening in 1993, she and her hus-band Raimundo, both then in their mid-sixties, had walked from their home in Sao

February 2004 MUFON UFO Journal Page3

Vicente to a friend's farm three kilometersto the north. The friend had butchered ahog and the Martins bought a piece of it.

As they were walking back home withthe pork in a basket about 10:30, a brightlight appeared in the sky and came to-ward them. "We were afraid and we startedrunning," Silvandina said.

As they ran, Raimundo abruptly felldown, and the light flew directly overthem. Si lvandina was terrif ied andthought he had died.

"Oh, my God, I lost my husband," shetold herself, but Raimundo quickly gotback up, and they continued running.

"We found a tree with vines around itand hid under the vines. It was the colorof fire, very strong. Everything was sobright. Everything was lit up and the lightkept going around and around above us.We heard a noise, like a low buzzingsound."

Sometimes the light hovered directlyabove their hiding place. The tree wasabout ten meters tall, and the light wasjust above the tree.

"I was so afraid I wet my pants,"Silvandina said. "I am not ashamed. Allmy clothes were wet. I kept thinking, 'Iam going to die. I am going to die.' "

A few minutes later the light disap-peared, and the couple went on home.But Silvandina was depressed for twoweeks and finally went to a doctor forhelp. "I have never gone outside at nightsince then," she said.

Asked if he goes outside at night,Raimundo said, "Yes, but I stay close tohome. When friends ask me to go fishingwith them, I say no."

Object on the roadOne of the more curious encounters

occurred when a 57-year-old dairy farmernamed Mozart Jose de Alencar was driv-ing home one night. Just as he was goingover a hill he saw 12 to 15 cars, trucks andmotorcycles parked in the highway justahead of him.

Most of the drivers and passengerswere standing looking at a brightly glow-ing object on the ground a hundred metersor so beyond them. It was shaped like anupside down washbasin, and was the sizeof a car or truck.

It appeared to be sitting on the pave-ment, and it glowed so brightly that ev-erything around was bathed in red light.

"It was all red," said Mozart when weinterviewed him at his farm near SaoVicente. "The whole area was lit up." Theobject made no sound. No one seemed tobe afraid, but no one knew what to ex-pect.

About five minutes later, the objectbegan to rise slowly into the air, still not

making any sound. As it went up, it stillglowed red, but now seemed to give offgreenish rays. A few seconds later, theobject circled around as it rose still higher,and a minute later it blinked off and dis-appeared.

Mozart and the other people stood fora few minutes talking about what theyhad seen. "We all thought it was a flyingsaucer."

His sighting took place in 1997, but hedoesn't remember what month. It hap-pened on the highway going from Baldimto Sao Vicente, five kilometers to thesouth.

These accounts gave us a glimpse ofthe long-term presence of UFOs in thevalley. What these people saw was moreor less typical of what has been happen-ing in and around Baldim and Sao Vicentefrom the beginning, and may be typicalof the entire valley.

Swift light startles manMany of the lights that we heard about

were described as being so bright thatthe shape of the objects behind themcould not be determined. Such was thecase in one of the most recent sightings.

That sighting occurred about 10o'clock one dark night last February asCosme Rodrigues de Araujo was sittingin the doorway of his house on a farmnear Sao Vicente. There was no moon.

Cosme's sons, 10-year-old Henriqueand 9-year-old Danilo, were sitting besidehim. They were simply watching the skyin the west.

"I could see lots of stars, and then Isaw a light coming in the sky," saidCosme, a 38-year-old farm worker. "It waslike the headlight on a car. It was brightand was all colors of the rainbow."

The object flew swiftly toward them,

but suddenly stopped just above somebanana trees about 300 meters away.Cosme and the boys were so frightenedthat all three rushed inside the house. "Iwanted to get a knife," Cosme admitted."I felt I had to protect myself."

He and his boys watched the light froma window. It made no sound. To Cosme, itappeared to be five to six meters in diam-eter as it hovered above the trees. About15 seconds later, the light suddenly shotback in the direction from which it hadcome and vanished. "It disappeared inseconds," said Cosme.

Farm sightings commonA number of sightings have occurred

on or near Vera's farm. One of the earliesttook place in the spring of 1986. The wit-nesses were Luciene Donata Gonfalves,then eight, and her brother LeonardoMalaquias Gonpalves, twelve. Their fa-ther is one of the managers of the farm.

"My brother and I were very young,"said Luciene. "About 9 or 10 o'clock onenight, we saw a light had been left on inthe corral, so we decided to go turn itoff."

The corral is 100 to 200 meters fromthe house where they lived. About half-way to the corral.is a gate.

"The minute we got to the gate, a brightlight turned on above the corral," she said."It was about 30 meters above the siloand corncrib in the corral. It was about 50centimeters in diameter, kind of bluish, andit was lighting up everything."

When the light turned on, it frightenedthem so much that they ran back to theirhouse as fast as they could.

Her brother Leonardo, now one ofVera's sons-in-law, said, "When we gotto the house I turned around and couldsee the light was getting smaller. It looked

Page 4 MUFON UFO Journal February 2004

like it pulled back and, was going awayfrom us. It kept getting smaller and smaller,and then it went out completely."

A sizzling soundTwo or three months later that same

year, 1986, Erlania Maria Elias, now 34,had a sighting within 400 meters of thatsame corral -as she was going home forthe night. Now a cook for Vera's family,she was then a 17-year-old maid.

"It was about 8:00 at night and wehad just finished fixing dinner for DonaVera and her family," said Erlania. Withher that night was Maria Pinto, then 15 or16, who also worked in the house.

"We left and went out the gate nearthe veranda, and as we were passing astand of eucalyptus trees, Maria said,'Look, there's a light!' " They continuedwalking through the trees, but secondslater they realized the light was gettingbigger.

"We thought it must be a car stoppedat the entrance to the farm, but Maria wasscared and thought it might be a robber.The light was near the ground and then itstarted to go up into the air. We couldhear a low sizzling sound.

"It was shaped like a washbasin, andeverything around us was lit up. It wasso bright we had trouble seeing. It startedto go up. I turned to Maria and said, "Thisis a flying saucer!' We started screamingand ran back to the house."

Vera was still on the veranda and heardthem screaming, but she didn't see thelight. By then, the light had shrunk in sizeand soon disappeared.

In almost half of the cases that we in-vestigated, witnesses heard a noise. Alldescribed the sound as like a low or softsizzling, buzzing, or frying noise, and onesaid a whirring noise like a fan.

Object chases two womenIn February, 1985, Vildevina Marques

Moura, now 66 and living in Sao Vicente,heard such a sound. She had gone to anearby village to sell wood to a relative.Her eight-year-old daughter Maristelawas with her. It was about 4 o'clock in theafternoon, but the man who would payfor the wood wasn't there at the time.

When he returned about 6 o'clock andVildevina got her money, she and herdaughter started walking home. Shestopped for a few minutes at a friend'shouse near Sao Vicente. It was gettingdark and her friend urged her to stay forthe night, but Vildevina had to go becauseanother child was waiting for them athome.

Not long after they continued on theirway home, a bright light suddenly ap-peared in the sky behind them. "Wethought it was a car and maybe would

give us a ride," said Vildevina. "But thelight came up and passed right over ourheads. We were very frightened. Itseemed to-be going around and aroundabove our heads."

They started running, but Vildevinalost her sandals and fell down an embank-ment beside the road. Both of themscrambled up the bank and ran into thewoods.

"We hid inthe underbrush,and it was goingaround over ourheads and it litup the wholearea. It was mak-ing all thisnoise, a lowbuzzing sound."

The lightwas the size of atire, and hadcome within 15meters of them, she said. "It was a blackcolor with the light coming from themiddle. It kept making that noise. It wentoff (northeast) toward Gentil. I will nevergo on that road again."

Children hide beneath cowA more spectacular case occurred

many years later in the village of Bau, 22kilometers north of Sao Vicente. The wit-nesses were three other children, and theirstory came to us from Mercia Rodrigues,the math teacher and ufologist who livesin Sao Vicente.

"This happened on a moonlit night inJanuary 1988," Mercia said. "The childreninvolved were Adriana Goulart, eight, andher bothers, Djalma, twelve, and Claudio,ten. I heard the story some months laterwhen Adriana came to live with me andworked as a babysitter.

"The night this happened, these chil-dren had to walk across the countrysideto a place about six. kilometers away. Whenthey were walking through a pasture, alight appeared in the sky. Everything litup. It was a very intense light of manycolors. They were frightened.

"There was no place to hide, no treesor anything, but a .cow was standingnearby, and the three of them ran under-neath the cow. It was frightened too andthe light came very close.

The children clung to each other andstayed hidden under the cow as the lightkept going around and around in a circleabove them. The. cow was in a state ofshock, and she just stood there the wholetime, not moving.

"The children felt a lot of heat fromthe UFO, and Adriana said .the wind wasso strong as the light circled around that

the grass was blown sideways."Mercia said this went on for several

hours before the light disappeared. "Theywere there the whole time until it got light.There wasn't anybody around, nobodythere, just them and the cow."

Farmer burnedWhile some witnesses believe UFOs

chased them, Domingos Elias Lopes hasno doubt about it, and it happened to himtwice. He is a 68-year-old farmer whosefarm is next to Vera's.

"I was coming home at midnight," hesaid, telling about the first incident, whichtook place in 1984. "I saw a star crossingthe sky from right to left. When I got closeto (a neighbor's) gate I saw a light up ona hill like a car headlight. Then it cametoward me and grew larger. Then every-thing around me got as bright as day.

"When it got closer, I could see it wasshaped like an upside down washbasin. Ijumped over a fence and hid in tall grass.The thing passed over me and everythingwent dark again.

"I jumped back over the fence andstarted walking in the road, but then I sawa tiny reddish light ahead of me. It wouldget bigger and smaller, and I thought itwas a man coming toward me smoking acigar.

"Then it became a big light again andstarted toward me, making a sizzlingsound. I jumped over the fence again andhid under a tree."

The light went out again, butDomingos stayed hidden until he heard acar coming. When it drew near, he jumpedout into the road and stopped it.

That frightened the driver, Jose Gazire,who had not seen the light and thoughtsomeone was going to rob him. But whenhe saw it was Domingos, he let him in andthey drove off. Neither man saw the ob-ject after that.

In the other encounter the object cameeven closer to him. "That was ten oreleven years ago," Domingos said. "It wasabout 8 o'clock at night, and I saw.a lightin a soccer field not far from my home."

Suddenly the light started rising intothe air, making a low buzzing or sizzlingsound. "It was sort of a wheel of light,but like fire. It was shaped like a washtubturned over. It was coming toward me andI began running to get away from it.

"It was so close I could feel heat onmy back. When I reached my home I wasin such a hurry that I kicked the door openand broke it."

His wife Dorvalina thought a thief wastrying to break in. She armed herself witha club and started outside before realiz-ing it was her husband. She saw the lightas it flew out of sight, making a sizzling

February 2004 MUFON UFO Journal PageS

sound. The next day Domingoshad blisters on his back, and laterhe came down with what ap-peared to be jaundice.Man dies after encounter

To our knowledge, a jaundice-like illness is not common afterbeing exposed to a UFO, but dur-ing our week in Sao Vicente weheard about two other such inci-dents.

For Jose Edigio Vieira, then 70,a close encounter one night inJuly 1975 may have contributedto his death. He had worked that day de-livering bread for a bakery in Sao Vicente,assisted by a nephew, Jose AntonioVieira, 13.

Jose Antonio, now 41, said that about11 o'clock that night as they were takingtheir horses to a pasture, "A big lightsuddenly appeared in the sky. I askedEdigio what it was. He said, 'It must be aflying saucer!' It scared us, and we ranand hid in some bushes.

"It lit up the whole area. It looked liketwo plates, one upside down on the other.It kept going around and around in smallcircles just 12 to 15 meters above us.

"It made a whirring sound like a fan,and it was shining a greenish light downfrom the center. It stayed for half an houror more and then it went away."

When he and Edigio thought it wassafe, they went back home, arriving about12:30 in the morning. The next day Edigiowoke up sick with symptoms of jaundice,and shortly after went to a hospital.

"He died in the hospital 15 days later,"Jose Antonio said. "The diagnosis washepatitis." (Jaundice is often associatedwith hepatitis.)

Sheriff a victimThe victim in the other "jaundice case"

was a sheriff in Funilandia, a town 18 ki-lometers west of Sao Vicente. The man isnow dead, and the story came to us fromAnterino Goulart da Silva, whose sight-ing in 1955 when he was seven and wasplaying with a brother and sister outsidetheir house was described earlier.

The sheriff's name was Jose Leiro, andAnterino, 17 at the time of the 1965 inci-dent, worked for him. "Jose Leiro had in-vestigated the deaths of two men and wasriding back home on his horse when a biglight lit up above him," Anterino said. "Hewas very much afraid. He jumped off hishorse and hid in the bushes.

"The light was right above him and hestayed hidden until everything got darkagain and he sensed the light had goneaway. He got back on his horse and wenthome. But he got sick with jaundice andit was a long time before he got well."

UFOs target familiesIt was not unusual for several mem-

bers of some families to have been wit-nesses in the same encounters. We alsotalked with several members of one fam-ily who all had encounters but none ofthem at the same time.

Earlier Erlania Maria Elias told abouther encounter when walking home onenight with a friend, Maria Pinto. Then weheard about the two encounters thatErlania's father, Domingos, had-one ofwhich left him with blisters on his back.And now we come to another incidentinvolving Dorvalina Lopes, the wife ofDomingos and the mother of Erlania.

One night in 1985, Dorvalina and an-other daughter, Edna, then 15, were walk-ing across a field filled with dense bushesand trees. "We saw a light way up high,"said Dorvalina, now 67. "It was small.People had been seeing a light circulat-ing in the region, and we were afraid. Theysaid it comes right down on you. We ranto a big tree and the light was comingslowly down toward us. Edna said,'Mama, there's a flying saucer coming!Let's run!'

"So we started running, and the lightcame after us, and Edna sprained her ankleon rocks in the ground. She was having alot of pain. She was limping along and wegot under a tree. We stayed there for tenor fifteen minutes, quiet. The light hadgone out, so we started hobbling alongfrom one tree to the next, but the lightcame on again and was jumping alongwith us. It was making a soft buzzingsound."

After dashing from tree to tree for sev-eral minutes, they came to streetlights atthe edge of a village, at which time thething went away.

Truck paced by UFOOne man had a close encounter with a

UFO even though he was speeding toget away from it. One morning hi early2000, Joao Batista Pinto and his teenageson Juninho were driving in a pickuptruck to a rented pasture four kilometers

south of Sao Vicente. They kept some milkcows there.

"It was about 4:30-in the morning,"said Joao, who also owns a small shop inSao Vicente where he sells sandwichesand drinks. "As we got near the farm Isaw a light in the sky. It was quite faraway, but 1 could see it was coming closer.

"I had to slow down to turn onto aside road, and at that moment the lightpassed right over us, and it looked like itlanded on the road. I said, 'Let's keepgoing,' but Juninho didn't want to be-cause the light was there in the road aheadof us."

Joao quickly turned around and startedback toward Sao Vicente. The light hadbeen on his left side before, and the nextthing he knew, it had lifted off the ground,passed over the truck, and taken up a po-sition on his left side again.

"It was only three meters away fromthe truck. It was really close. It was roundand there were rays of different lightsgoing out of it. It was many different col-ors-green, red, blue-green. There was arose color, and they varied in intensity. Itwould get bigger and smaller. I wentfaster, but it seemed like the faster I wentthe closer it would come."

When they finally reached a gas sta-tion on the outskirts of Sao Vicente, thelight went away. Joao and his son waiteduntil daylight arrived and then went backto the farm to milk the cows.

Hiding in an outhouseSome debunkers say anyone who

sees a UFO is crazy or drunk. DaltonCastro isn't crazy, but he had been drink-ing the night of April 25, 1998, when hehad a run-in with what apparently weretwo UFOs, one just above the other.

"A friend had died, and I was at awake at his house," said Dalton, a 46-year-old factory worker. "Sometime aftermidnight I left to go home. When I cameout of the house I saw this big thing inthe sky and it was coming closer.

"The center was bluish, and it was dullyellow around the edge-a flashing yel-low light. It was about 60 centimeters indiameter, and there was a smaller objectjust above it. It was blue. I was scaredand I ran. I looked back and stopped, andit stopped too. I hid under a mango treefor a while and thought it had gone away.

. "But when I came out from under thetree, it came back again. So I ran downthe street to an uncle's home, ran into thebackyard, and hid in an outdoor toilet.After about a half hour, I peeked out, sawnothing, and went on home.

"But it came back again, and I couldstill see it from my porch. I stood watch-ing for a while and then they started go-

Page 6 MUFON UFO Journal February 2004

ing up, up, up and then the two objectsmerged into one and disappeared."

Dalton saw another blue UFO in 2001when he and a friend were fishing in astream five kilometers east of Sao Vicente."It was about 1 o'clock in the morning,and suddenly a big round blue light roseup out of the forest. It was about 50 cen-timeters in diameter. We got scared andbegan running. It chased us for a while,but when we got close to home it went upand disappeared."

The smell of sulphurIn only one case did anyone smell

anything out of the ordinary. The wit-nesses, two women who are related bymarriage, saw the same light, but from dif-ferent locations.

Ivete Clemencia Felipe, 23 at the time,was alone in the home of a sister-in-law,Ana Lucia Felipe Silva, three kilometersfrom Sao Vicente. It was around 7 o'clockone evening in 1978 and the sky wasdark.

"I looked out the window and saw alittle blue light in the sky quite far away,"Ivete said. "Then it got bigger and turnedreddish. It was moving faster and fasterand coming closer. It was giving offflashes of light like fireworks. There werelots of different colors.

"I could hear a buzzing sound. It wasgoing around and around. All the doorsand windows were shut, but it lit up theinside of the house. I was so scared thatI ran and hid under a bed."

About the same time that Ivete firstsaw the light, her sister-in-law Ana Lucia,then 25, was walking home from a sewingclass in Sao Vicente. She was within 40meters of the gate in front of the housewhen the light appeared in the sky. Acousin, Eurico Aprigio, then 50, was withher at the time.

"We had taken a shortcut throughwoods, and when we came out of thewoods we saw the light," Ana Lucia said."We thought it was a car with one light.We didn't see any shape, just a brightheadlight coming toward us. It lit up ev-erything on the the road. It was comingtoward us, and we started running. Euricolost one of his sandals."

Instead of trying to reach the house,they turned back and ran into a grove oftrees. Afraid to leave the woods, theystayed hidden until about 10 PM beforedeciding it was safe to go on to AnaLucia's home.

We interviewed both women in Ivete'shome, and both said they smelled an odorduring the encounter. "There was a smellof gas, like sulphur," Ana Lucia said. "Yes,I forgot to say there was a smell of sul-phur," said Ivete.

It is in-teresting tonote that infive casesthat oc-curred overan 18-yearperiod, theU F O sc i r c l e daround anda r o u n dabove the

heads of the witnesses: Jose Edigio andhis nephew Jose Antonio in 1975, Iveteand Ana Lucia in 1978, Vildevina and herdaughter in 1985, 8-year-old AdrianaGoulart and her two brothers in 1988, andSilvandina and Raimundo in 1993.

Cattle ranch UFOsMany of the reports we received came

from people living or working at Vera'sfarm, Fazenda dos Pofoes. Nearly all in-volved a very bright light in the sky.

A typical sighting occurred about 11o'clock one night in 1996. Tarci'sioMalaquias Goncalves, now 53, was in themain corral at the farm, artificially insemi-nating a cow.

The farm has more than 600 cattle, andTarcisio is in charge of them. He is alsothe father of Luciene and LeonardoGon9alves, mentioned earlier in anothersighting.

"I saw a light in the sky, and suddenlyeverything around me was lit up," Tarcisiosaid. "I looked up and it was like a greatheadlight, very, very bright." A few min-utes later, the light disappeared. Tarcisiosaid none of the cattle in the corral re-acted to the light. The farm has two cor-rals. The main one is located next to amilk barn and several other buildings.Cattle are also milked at the other corralabout two kilometers away.

One night in early 2002, a bright lightsuddenly appeared in the sky above thesecond corral. The lone witness wasWanderley dos Santos Costa, a 25-year-old cowboy who was riding a horse onhis way back to the corral.

"A cow had just given birth, and a mangot hurt when the cow smashed him upagainst a fence," Wanderley said. "I hadtaken him to be treated and was returningto the corral about 9:20 when I saw a brightlight in the sky. It was a big ball of lightthat lit up everything below it."

The cattle in the corral paid no atten-tion to the light, but Wanderley's horsewas spooked. It bolted and took off run-ning. Wanderley simply loosened thereins and let the horse run until it calmeddown. "After about 20 minutes, the lightwent away."

A special UFO valleyAlthough there have been several

sightings on or near Fazenda dos Popoes,the farm is not the center, of UFO activityin the Valley of the Old Women.

For more than 30 years, Hulvio BrantAleixo and members of the UFO groupCICOANI investigated more than 1,000cases all around Belo Horizonte, but pri-marily in the valley to the north. A list oftheir field trips includes the names of morethan 150 towns, villages and hamlets-many so small they do not appear on mapsof the state-and dozens of cattle ranchesand farms.

A humanoid encounterOne of the strangest incidents in Bra-

zilian ufology did occur in Vargem Grande,a village adjacent to Vera's farm. On thenight of Sept. 9,1976, HermeUndo da Silva,the owner of a small roadside bar, tangledwith a humanoid creature that slid downa cable dangling from a UFO. The crea-ture was stronger, and was able to slip ahook around Hermelindo's right ankle.

Hermelindo was yanked off the groundand was being reeled up toward the UFOwhen his left foot hit the bottom of theUFO and knocked him loose as the UFOwent away.

An abductionAnother incident, perhaps even bet-

ter known, occurred near the village ofBebedouro, 20 kilometers south of SaoVicente.

On the afternoon of May 4,1969, a 24-year-old military policeman named JoseAntonio da Silva was fishing in a lagoonwhen he was overpowered by two smallbeings and forcibly taken aboard a UFO.He was released four and a half days laterin a city far to the east.

Another deathMore tragically, near the small town of

Jabuticatubas, 27 kilometers southeast ofSao Vicente, a close encounter led to thedeath of Cecilio Higino Pereira, a farmworker.

On the night of Aug. 9,1976,30-year-old Cecilio left Jabuticatubas with twoneighbor women to walk to their homesnear the hamlet of Barreira da Pacienca.On the way they saw a bright light in thesky coming rapidly toward them. Theyran, but a strap broke on one of Cecilio'ssandals. He had to stop, and the womenran on without him.

As he tried to fix the sandal, the objectcame down and hovered just above hishead, lighting up everything around him.He was momentarily levitated off theground before the UFO went away. Ceciliobecame violently ill and never recovered,dying several weeks later. It is interest-

February 2004 MUFON UFO Journal Page 7

ing to note that the attacks on Cecilio andHermelindo were one month apart andwithin 35(kilometers of each other.

An upward pullMany encounters in the valley were

nowhere near as dramatic, but were stillof high interest. In Mocamb'o, eight kilo-meters northeast of Sao Vicente, a teen-age boy felt an intermittent upward pullfrom a UFO as it passed over him onenight.

In 1983 near the village of Patrimonio,eight kilometers northwest of SaoVicente, a UFO levitated a young farmerabout half a meter off the ground and car-ried him about ten meters before his wifecould pull him back down.

Sightings at the farmAt the farm, Vera has had three

sightings over the years. The first was in1990, when the family's new house wasbeing built. It is located four to five hun-dred meters north of the old house whereVera and her husband Arthur, known bythe nickname of Souto, raised their sevenchildren.

The new house was almost completed,but Vera and Souto still spent much oftheir time at the old house. It was a Sun-day night, and she and Souto had fallenasleep at the old house while watchingTV. They woke up when they heard dogsbarking, and decided to go to the newhouse to sleep there, Vera said.

"We were walking, and all of a suddenSouto said, 'Look at the light!' There wasa light above the silo next to the barns.Souto said he had seen it from the begin-ning, but it was going on and off. It was ayellow light, very beautiful. It didn't hurtyour eyes."

At that time they were standing be-side a gate about 100 meters from thebarns. "Then Souto said there was an-other light above the corn crib that didn'tgo off. It was a red one and looked like aglowing coal. We were watching andSouto said, 'Notice how silent everythingis.' We couldn't hear any birds or ani-mals or anything making noise.

"The two dogs seemed paralyzed,looking at the light. I could hear a faintsizzling or frying sound, a very lowsound, but Souto said he couldn't hearanything. The light kept pulsing, fromvery small like a star and then zoomingvery large."

Souto wanted to get closer, but Verawas afraid, and a few minutes later theyarrived at the new house. "I opened awindow in the kitchen and watched thelight for half an hour," she said. "It wasstill pulsing all that time."

She went to bed without knowingwhen the light disappeared. "The next

PageS

morning I went to the silo and looked allaround, but everything was OK, no burnsor anything else."

That evening, however, she, Souto,and a maid left the house in a car to driveto Belo Horizonte. "When we got to theplace where we had watched the light thenight before, something very strangehappened. All of a sudden from the di-rection of the silo came an astonishinglyfluorescent green light that flew rapidlyin a diagonal direction right over the carand disappeared in front of us. It turnedoff quickly.

"My husband was astonished. Hestopped the car, got out and searched forthe light, but he didn't find anything. Thattime he became nervous!"

Barking dogs"I have eight dogs at my farm," Vera

said. "Six sleep in the kennel all night,and two of them, a boxer and a bassethound, run free. On the night of Sept. 13,2002, about 9:30, all the dogs started bark-ing very much.

"All of a sudden the boxer wentthrough the bushes and started to sniffeverything,, and then ran into the dark-ness of our big garden. The basset houndfollowed, and soon both of them startedto sniff, then immediately stopped to barkand snarl.

"I had been watching TV, and at 11o'clock I went to my room to sleep. Thetwo windows were open, and I started toclose one. It was almost closed when Isaw a light next to our orchard. I openedthe window quickly to watch it.

"It was hovering over a tree just be-yond the fence. It was like a fireball twink-ling all colors, red, yellow and white. Allof a sudden the ball opened like a yellowflower, very beautiful. It was similar to ayellow poppy with a black center, and thenthe thing disappeared. It was there oneminute and then it wasn't! The dogs keptbarking all the time."

UFO returns to FazendaCynthia, Tom, and I spent a week at

Vera's farm in mid-May, going with Verato Sao Vicente and nearby farms almostevery day. Shortly after we went back to

MUFON UFO Journal

our own homes, the former mayortold local investigators Jose Cimaliaand Ivan Soares that had he knownwe were there, he could have takenus to meet a man who had a sight-ing just three days before we firstarrived.

That would have been aroundMay 10. Further proof that the phe-nomenon is still around came amonth later, on the evening of June9, and again at Fazenda dos Po96es.

"My husband Souto was driv-ing back to the farm with my son-in-lawLeonardo," Vera said later. "About 8o'clock in the evening, just as they weredriving through the gate at the entranceto the farm, they saw a bright light in thedistance ahead of them. It was on the otherside of the (Das Velhas) river, beyond thehouse.

"Souto rushed into the house shout-ing, 'Vera, the light is there on the otherside of the river!' We ran to the veranda,and it was there, beautiful with goldenyellow sparkling rays like I saw from mywindow the night of Sept. 13 last year.But this time it was bigger than the one Isaw before. It changed shape inside itsaura. Sometimes it was shaped like a pyra-mid with two balls of light below and oneball on top.

"Then it seemed like that 'flower'shape (in the 2002 sighting), but verymuch bigger. My husband is an engineeraccustomed to calculations, and I askedhim how big he thought it was from thatdistance. He said 15 centimeters."

About 8:30 they went in to eat dinner,and about 9 Vera looked for the lightagain. It was gone. "I felt sad. I sat downto watch TV, but I was so excited thatfrom time to time I jumped up to look again.And at 9:30 it was there again."

It was still there when she went to bed.She slept fitfully, waking up from time totime to look, and each time it was still there.But when she looked again at 4:30 in themorning, it was gone.

Much of the Valley of the Old Womenremains unexplored by ufologists. Whoknows what other sightings and encoun-ters have occurred in this region?

New UFO Awareness T-shirtMUFON has just received a ship-

ment of a new UFO Awareness T-shirt. It is whitewith black letters. TheMUFON logo is on the left front anda slogan saying "you only thoughtyou knew..." is on the back. It comesin S, M, L, and XL. $12 +$3 S&H.Please add $4 additional for shippingoutside the U.S

February 2004

The Indigo Hypothesis

Is this a goal of the visitors' agenda(s)By Craig Lang

© 2004 by Craig R. Lang MS, CHt

Editor's Note: Readers, authors, re-searchers, and experience™ range fromstrictly "nuts and bolts" ufologists tothose who are willing to "push the enve-lope." Not so many years ago abductionswere too "far out" for mainstreamufology, but today we are confronted withthe question of what to make of those ab-ductions. Mr. Lang discusses one possi-bility.

Introduction and observations

In the past few years, as I haveworked with greater numbers ofclose encounter experiencers, I

have informally noticed a pattern in theirfamily lines.

David Jacobs in The Threat,1 andBudd Hopkins in Intruders2 both clearlystate that the UFO abduction phenom-enon is multi-generational in nature.Jacobs further says that in each family ofUFO encounter experiencers, the entirenext generation of offspring may also beexperiencers.

However, in my work with close en-counter experiencers, what seems to haveemerged is that the multigenerationalcharacteristics of the phenomenon seemto propagate down the maternal familyline. I have informally noticed the propa-gation of the phenomenon from grand-mother to mother to daughter and so on.

Another thing that I have noticed isthat many experiencers-and, especiallyin this generation, the children ofexperiencers-seem to have a very gifted,and highly metaphysical nature-what Idescribe as "Awakened."

Are these children some of those whoare so often called "The Indigo Children?"Is the Indigo phenomenon at least partlyassociated (deliberately or otherwise) withthe close encounter phenomenon?

Let's look at some of the characteris-tics of indigo children, compare them withthe characteristics of experiencers, andnote whether there are resemblances..

If there is a pattern, is this perhaps asign of "The Awakening"3, which hasbeen suggested might be a goal of theVisitor phenomenon?

Alternatively, are these children sim-ply reflecting the ideas and mind-sets oftheir parents/families?

About the authorCraig R. Lang is a Field Investiga-

tor for MUFON, and is a certifiedclinical hypnotherapist with the Na-tional Guild of Hypnotists.

He lives in Brooklyn Center, MN,and conducts UFO and close en-counter research in the Twin Citiesmetro area of Minneapolis and SaintPaul and in surrounding areas inMinnesota and Wisconsin.

He can be reached at his website:www.craigrlang.com, by e-mail atcraig@craigrlang.com, or by phoneat 763-560-1532. The MinnesotaMUFON website is located at http://www.mnmufon.org.

The "Awakening" literatureIn the section on the Indigo children

on her website, www.metagifted.org,4 au-thor Wendy Chapman describes the char-acteristics of the Indigo child as deeplyempathic, visionary, intuitive, having adeep sense of mission/purpose, and avery thin veil between the physical andspiritual worlds.

In addition, she describes them as be-ing intellectually gifted, resistant to au-thority, and having difficulties with themundane, non-creative aspects of life-such as much of the education system.

Many of these same characteristicscan also be ascribed to those adults whoare undergoing, or have undergone, anAwakening-cither as a result of the CE4phenomenon or some other source.

In their book Healing Shattered Re-ality5 Alice Bryant and Linda Seebachdiscuss the spiritual/mental/physical ef-fects of the Encounter Phenomenon onthe experiencer.

In "The Awakening," a previous ar-ticle for the Journal, I discussed many ofthe signs of spiritual awakening, and re-lated them to the UFO/CE4 phenomenon.I asked whether the relationship is one ofcause/effect, or are they parallel phenom-ena, perhaps with a synchronistic rela-tionship between them?

Barbara Harris Whitfield in her bookSpiritual Awakenings6 describes themany signs and characteristics associatedwith such awakenings. She describesmany possible triggers for such an expe-rience: near-death-experiences, deep

meditation and religious experiences,UFO/CE4 encounters, and personalhealth crises, as well many possible oth-ers. All of these seem to suggest that theAwakening phenomenon is triggered bypowerful changes in a person's life.

Yet all of these changes seem to bespiritually-related. In some way, a personseems to "bring something back" fromthe experience that appears to be an ex-traordinary gift from "out there."

For the newly Awakened, the signs ofthe phenomenon seem to include;

(1) a sudden shift in perspective to amore spiritual/metaphysical viewpoint;

(2) shifts in spiritual/religious views,beyond any one religion, to encompassall religions and all people; and

(3) less patience with the more pettyaspects of human society in the face ofthe environmental and spiritual issuesthat our society faces.

But foremost for our purposes is theonset of psychic abilities and increasedintuition. This seems to be the key, as itaffords the newly Awakened an avenuefor increased awareness and shift in per-spective.

As more than one experiencer has said,"It was as if my eyes were suddenlyopened." As they have described to me,the Awakened seem to have more UFOsightings and experiences, either as acause, effect, or synchronistic relation-ship with their other Awakening experi-ences.Experiencers & Indigo children

What we also seem to notice as welook at the families of experiencers is thatthe characteristics emerging in newlyAwakened adults seem to be alreadypresent in their children.

As indicated earlier, many close en-counter experiencers describe their chil-dren as Indigos. As an informal observa-tion, I have noted a disproportionatelylarge number of such children amongthese families. It is as if these childrenwere born Awakened.

A friend of mine, who is an educatorand frequently teaches classes for giftedchildren, has observed that in her giftedclasses there is a very large populationof children who match the psychic,deeply-empathic, and deeply-intuitivedescription of the Indigo child.

In other classes she teaches, whichare not at the gifted-children level, she

February 2004 MUFON UFO Journal Page 9

notes that there are far fewer children whomatch this description. She also notes thatmany of the gifted children seem to bearphysical characteristics of experiencers,specifically scoop marks (she has observedthis on their faces and foreheads, thoughit has been noted that for experiencers suchmarks are more typically on ankles, etc.).

This suggests that, as the children ofexperiencer families, they continue the fam-ily-line relationship with the Visitor phe-nomenon.

So might there be a correlation betweenthe Visitor experience and the Indigo childphenomenon? Could there be a "geneticagenda" to the Visitor phenomenon whichmight result in an increased number ofAwakened children?

We can understand more about the pre-sumed genetic agenda behind the phenom-enon in several recent books by close en-counter researchers. In his Watchers1 bookseries, Raymond Fowler describes how theUFO abduction phenomenon seems to beguiding humanity throughout history, per-haps signifying such an agenda.

In Sight Unseen by Budd Hopkins andCarol Rainey,8 the authors discuss the po-tential feasibility of transgenics, or genetransplantation from one species to an-other. They describe possible instances ofapparently-human beings who exhibitstrange alien-like characteristics.

Similarly, in my article "Close Encoun-ters of the Third Kind in Our EverydayWorld"91 describe similar cases of appar-ently human beings with extraordinarycharacteristics. Among them are traits suchas deep empathy, powerful intuition, andpsychic ability. These are also characteris-tics described in the Indigo children.

In addition, the abduction accounts ofmany experiencers contain proceduresdone to them which seem to have funda-mentally altered their very makeup-as onedescribed it, "right down to the cellularlevel."

Could this be seen as a tampering withthe very genetic makeup of theexperiencer? Could this perhaps be a back-insertion of the results of the hybridiza-tion process into the genetic makeup orother fundamental characteristics of theexperiencer? Does such technology yetexist to accomplish this?

The motivationWhat would be the motivation for such

tampering with the human genetic makeup?What would an Extraterrestrial strategy10'1'be towards humanity? And why wouldexternal Visitors want to change humanityin such a fundamental way? A quick lookat the modem history of humanity providessome immediate clues:

1. Humanity is now on the verge of de-

veloping interstellar flight.12 Advancesin zero point theory,13 the understand-ing of gravity, and other areas of phys-ics14 suggest that within 100 to 200 years, •humans might well be out among thestars.

2. Humanity has developed the ca-pability for destruction on a planetaryscale. We have developed multi-mega-ton nuclear weapons, which we couldpotentially15 unleash in a global barrage,resulting in multi-gigatons of explosivepower unleashed into the planetary en-vironment. Thus, we have the capabil-ity of destroying the entire ecosystemand civilization of our world-or possi-bly some other world.

3. In many ways, humanity is a fun-damentally warlike being. Our largestsingle industry is war.16 During moderntimes, our history has been dominatedby such cataclysms as World War I,World War II, and uncountable geno-cidal massacres.17

Thus, from the perspective of thosepresumed to be already existing "outthere" in the cosmic neighborhood, wecan ask, "Are these the types of folkswe would want coming out into theneighborhood?"

In humanity's current state of con-sciousness and behavior, I suggest thatthe answer is "No," even though we mayindeed be on the verge of star-flight. Ifwe are going "there," then it becomesvital to the neighbors that we somehowbe changed (tamed) in order to avoiduniversal catastrophe.

Requisite Visitor technologyWhat remains to be established in

our formulation of this hypothesis is thetechnology via which genetic back-in-jection might take place. Yet even here,known technology may be just over thehorizon.

While humanity has not yet per-fected the means to inject a new genepattern into the overall cellular makeupof a higher-living being, gene therapy18

is an active area of research, and couldsoon become a viable technology. Fur-thermore, not every cell of the bodywould need to be modified-only theeggs or sperm of the parents.

Since it has been established thatthese can be extracted via human tech-nology, we can easily imagine technol-ogy for re-insertion. Thus, for the Visi-tors, back-insertion of modified genesmight be quite feasible.

CE4 researchers may wish to exam-ine UFO abduction accounts to see ifindeed, such procedures and technol-ogy are described.

This then, is what I call the "Indigo

Hypothesis": that the genetic changesfostered by the Visitors may actually be-gin to be found in the general populace,in the new generation of humanity. Wetheorize a back-injection of hybridizationchanges by the Visitors into experiencersfor the purpose of integrating them intohumanity as a whole.

A result is the emerging Indigo gen-eration we see today. The Indigo genera-tion would thus be a manifestation of aneffort by "them" to breed into our spe-cies an awakened being.

We can suggest that as these childrentake their functional place in society, wemight see a more "awakened," less-envi-ronmentally-impacting, and more-peace-ful conduct of human affairs.

In addition, we may begin to see a newhumanity, more ready for contact, and aresulting more-open manifestation of"them" to the general population of "us."

The Null HypothesesAs suggested earlier, perhaps there are

other ways of viewing the relationship ofIndigo children and experiencer families.

1. Nurture instead of Nature: PerhapsIndigo children are simply learning andadopting the views and mannerisms oftheir parents, who may have adopted"new-age" ideas, and/or have undergonea deep psychic/spiritual change. Perhapsthe propagation of "Awakening" downthe family line is the passing of memes,'9

rather than genes.2. No Correlation: Perhaps the In-

digo Children reflect a more global socialphenomenon, which has no correlationwith the UFO/CE4 phenomenon. The In-digo Children might reflect either a fun-damental metaphysical phenomenonwhich we do not yet understand, or apropagation of ideas as described in nullhypothesis 1.Testing the Indigo Hypotheses

The purpose of a hypothesis is toserve as a tentative model from which wecan derive testable predictions. So whatwould be a good test of "The Indigo Hy-pothesis"? Here are some preliminarysuggestions:

Genetics: Might the genome of Indigochildren show common markers, notpresent in non-Indigos? If so, what char-acteristics would these genes code for?If we didn't detect common but uniquegenetic markers among Indigo children,would this support one of the null hy-potheses?

Genealogy: Does comparison of the

Page 10 MUFON UFO Journal February 2004

family lines of Indigo children with thoseof experiencers show a correlation? AreIndigo children more often found in thefamily lines of close' encounterexperiencers? If so, what does this im-ply? If no strong correlation is found, thenwould null hypothesis 2 be supported?

Psychic Abilities: Do Indigo childrenhave greater psychic abilities? Perhapsthis can be tested via experiments suchas those at the PEAR lab at PrincetonUniversity,20 which has been developingscientific tests of ESP and non-local con-sciousness.

Effects on World Affairs: Observingcultural, scientific and political eventsover the next ten-plus years, as the cur-rent generation of Indigo children be-comes active in society.

As this generation reaches a political-social critical mass, what effect does thishave on the politics of our civilization? Isthere a trend away from war and environ-mental destruction? Is there an incorpo-ration of intuition and spirituality intomainstream society and politics?

Open Contact: As the above changestake place, is there an increase in open,multi-witness UFO and CE3 events overthe next few years?

All of these tests, and others which Ihave not yet thought of, might better es-tablish the validity or non-validityof thishypothesis.

ConclusionIf this hypothesis is true, then it im-

plies that the Visitors want us to growand eventually join the cosmic commu-nity. To me this offers hope: that human-ity can become an awakened cosmic/star-faring civilization-and that there is acheering section out there for us. Atleast in part, this is the core of the ideawhich I call "The Indigo Hypothesis."

References:'David Jacobs, The Threat, discusses the

"dark side" aspects of a possible alien agenda.2Budd Hopkins, Intruders, discusses

multi-generational trends and a possible ge-netic agenda.

3"The Awakening," by Craig R. Lang MSCHt, published 2002 in MUFON UFO Jour-nal; also found at www.craigrlang.com/awakening.htm.

4The Indigo children section ofMetagifted.org: www.metagifted.org/topics/metagifted/indigo.

'Bryant and Seebach, "Healing ShatteredReality, Understanding Contactee Trauma."

'Barbara Harris Whitfield, Spiritual Awak-enings

'Raymond Fowler, The Andreassoh Af-fair; The Andreasson Affair, Phase 2; TheWatchers; The Watchers II; and The

Andreasson Legacy. , -8Budd Hopkins and Carol Ratney: Sight

Unseen.•.'"Human-Aliens: Close Encounters of the

Third Kind In Our Everyday World," by CraigR. Lang, MS CHt. Published 2003 in Minne-sota MUFON Journal.

10An excellent piece of speculation on "APossible Extraterrestrial Strategy for Earth"found in the book Alien Update by TimothyGood.

"Making Contact edited by Bill Fawcett,many aspects of potential human-E.T. con-tact.

'2An excellent book on current conceptson possible star-flight is The Starflight Hand-book by Eugene F. Mallove and Gregory L.Matloff. This book shows how Starflight mightbe accomplished with physics as we knowthem today. An excellent site which coversmany advanced space propulsion systems isthe Advanced Propulsion Concepts website.

l3One excellent paper on Zero-point phys-ics is by Bernard Haisch of the Society ofScientific Exploration: These articles can befound at: http://www.calphysics.org/research.html.

14Another location on the internet withexcellent articles on physics, potentially lead-ing to Starflight, is Jack Sarfatti's website:www.stardrive.org

15An assessment of future nuclear threatsfrom the U.S. Department of Defense can befound at: http://www.dtra.-mil/about/organi-zation/future.pdf.

''Several reports can be found online show-ing the growing level of resources devoted tomilitary power: http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp http:// w w w . c y b e r d y a r y o . c o m / f e a t u r e s /f2002_1009_05.htm.

"A powerful summary of genocidal ram-pages in modem times can be found, at thewebsite: http://www.genocide.org/

''American society for Gene Therapywebsite can be found at: http://www.asgt.org.Gene Therapy information on the HumanGenome Project website can be found at: http://www. o r n l . g o v / s c i / t e c h r e s o u r c e s /H u m a n _ G e n o m e / m e d i c i n e /genetherapy.shtml.

"An excellent discussion of memetics canbe found in Richard Brodie's book Virus of theMind."

20The Princeton Engineering AnomaliesResearch (PEAR) Laboratory: http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/.

Photos neededThe MUFON UFO Journal wel-

comes photos from MUFON meetingsand other events. Please clearly list,left to right, who is in the photo andwhat is taking place. These may besent snail mail or electronically.

Georgia womanreports objectat treetop level

By Tom SheetsMUFON Georgia Director

The witness is a 57-year-old femaleresident of Duluth, GA, employed by aninternationally famous Atlanta area uni-versity. She is from a "scientific" family,her father being involved in atomic re-search during the WWII era.

On 7 Jan 04 at about 7:30 PM, the wit-ness was driving through her neighbor-hood, and as she prepared to turn ontoher street she noticed overhead a set ofbright lights beginning to glide past.

Upon looking closer she noticed thatthe lights were attached to the bottom ofa large dark triangular object (WUFOD"actual size" data field entry indicating100-300 feet).

She continued watching, then turnedonto her street, keeping the object in sight.The witness stated that her first impres-sion was that the object was a "stealthtype" craft. She described it as being verylow in altitude (treetop), with no soundnoticed (vehicle windows rolled up).

She indicated that it was low enoughthat she had no trouble observing a suc-tion cup-like configuration around thesteady white lights, one in the middle andalso one on each ot the three corners,totaling four. At that point, it was travel-ing parallel to her and a little bit ahead.

She sped up, but it appeared to begoing a bit faster than her vehicle. Thecraft then began to ascend, bankingslightly to the left, and departed the scene.

Simultaneous to the above, the wit-ness was attempting to get out her cellphone in order to summon her friend torun outside and look skyward, but thephone was dropped onto the floorboard.She noticed two neighbors outside at theend of the street and intends to speakwith them as soon as possible.

Within a few minutes, the witness ar-rived home and called the local police,Atlanta's Channel 11 (NBC), andAtlanta's Fernbank Science Center, butno object had been reported.

As with all such preliminary reports,this case requires additional scrutiny, in-cluding an in-depth interview with thewitness', as well as other detailed investi-gation. Thid witness has agreed to an in-terview with our investigators, and thecase is being assigned to SSD/FI DavidBrown of Norcross.

February 2004 MUFON UFO Journal Page 11

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

UFO observed entering waterBy Carl Feindt

In late August of 1981, between fiveand six PM, three men and two womenwere driving west from a mountain areaslightly east of Hamilton, Ontario,Canada, and south of Lake Ontario.

Following is the account from one ofthe women, a commercial artist:

"It was late August, around 5-6 PM.The weather was clear, sunny; I do notrecall many clouds. A group of five, in-cluding myself, sighted a red saucer typecraft with a dome while driving down whatis referred to as the mountain in the area.

"One of the occupants of the vehicleinitially sighted the craft to the right of usenroute to the bay/harbour area ofHamilton and proceeded to alert us to thephenomenon by commenting in an excitedmanner along the lines of 'Oh my god,look at that... look at that... over there!!!'(I remember a lot of Oh my gods, etc.

"Clear as day, the five us saw a brightred saucer craft with a dome and yellowlights radiating from the base/bottom partof the craft.

"The radio in the vehicle became static,and I recall the driver turning the radiooff due to the excitement of the sightingand not wanting to have any further dis-tractions while driving.

"There were many comments regard-ing where it was going, and then some-one had mentioned, 'Follow that UFO!'All were in agreement. From the positionwe were at, at the onset of the sightingwhile driving down the mountain, ourview of the downtown area and the bay/harbour was not obstructed in any way.

"A rough estimate as to the size of thecraft length wise would compare to ap-proximately 3-4 medium car sizes, perhapseven larger.

"As far as how fast it was going, I can'tproperly gauge-slow enough to keeptrack of it while driving down the moun-tain. How high up I also cannot properlygauge the distance. The craft's move-ments and location in the sky could becompared to a plane coming in for a land-ing.

"The craft was sighted to the right ofus, moving in and towards our direction,and then crossed our path moving left,just ahead of us, and then proceeded to-or it appeared to-slow down just abovethe bay/harbour, and then appeared tojust level itself down into the water everso gently and totally submerge.

"The yellow lights of the craft ap-peared to settle into more of a pale yellowto white lights, and then seem to dull out.At this point we were still on the moun-tain drive, and the distance of the craftwas further away. I do not recall seeingany major disturbance of the water.

"There were more excited commentsalong the lines of'Oh my god-it just wentinto the water...' etc. All of us werewide-eyed and I think in a form of shock.Other comments were about driving downto the waterfront, and while doing sowhether we would miss anything goingon down there.

"The driver of the car sped up in orderto get down to the area quicker, just incase. We arrived at the waterfront-I be-lieve it may have been a park area. Theroad leading into where we decided topark was a gravel/dirt road, and I remem-ber a lot of grass/wildflower overgrowthgrowing in and around the road. We hadforested areas on either side of the roadarea.

"We had managed to find the rightspot, and if the UFO was still parked inthat water then we would have had a di-rect view right in front of us-although uson land and the UFO in the water.

"When we had arrived at the water-front and exited the vehicle we noticedslight wave motion in the water. Somecomments as to whether this may havebeen related. We stayed in this area forhours. Many a conversation ensued re-garding what we had witnessed-fromgovernment experimental craft to aliens.

"Conversations and questions, suchas how deep is the bay?, radar, andwhether anyone else had spotted it andwould call it in. Wondering when the in-flux of planes/helicopters would appear.

Wondering whether the craft wouldemerge. Wondering if we were taking arisk by being there, and later on wonder-ing why no police or anything else alongthose lines were not at the waterfrontquestioning us, etc, etc, etc.

"All was quiet. No planes, no helicop-ters, nothing. Nothing until about12:30-1:00 in the morning. At this time iswhen what appeared to be submarinesemerged, or part of what could have been,and what looked like suspicious subma-rines.

"One was on one end of the waterbody, and another across from it. If thecraft (UFO) was still parked where it wentdown, then it would have been sand-wiched between the subs.

"Of course more conversation and ex-citement regarding this element. Was thisa part of the craft, or were these objectsin actual fact subs? One of the objectslooked like a periscope type thing, andthe other object looked like a box on topof a bigger box. We had one set of bin-oculars and took turns looking out forwhatever during the whole time we werethere.

"We did not need the use of the bin-oculars to spot and have a view of theperiscope looking thing and the other boxthat emerged from the water. These ob-jects stayed there unmoving all the whilewe were there, and who knows how longthey were parked there after we left.

"We left about an hour or so later atabout 2 AM or so, and the objects werestill there at that time. We finally left tiredand hungry, feeling somewhat disap-pointed that nothing else exciting hap-pened, but also rather relieved."

The witness said the object was "nota small craft," and indeed it wasn't. I mea-

Page 12 MUFON UFO Journal February 2004

Aprox. spoth*»--- /- where craft

) / yj; entered'I:J-~ U

sured two cars belonging to family mem-bers that are of ""medium size." They av-erage out to 15' 7" in length and 4' 6" inheight.

This would put the UFO in the area of46' 9" to 62' 4" in diameter and 13' 6" inheight. Slightly smaller than the B-25Mitchell bomber of WWII.

At the point of the object's entry intothe water (rough approximation) it can beseen on a nautical chart that the waterdepth is 7 or more meters (23 feet), andgets deeper in the direction of LakeOntario, so the UFO had at least 10 feetto spare. Therefore a craft of 13 feet inheight could be covered by water. Thereare many cases of UFOs submerging inshallow waters.

The question of these two objects be-ing submarines came up, and the Cana-dian Navy states that it does not use thefew subs they have in the Great Lakes.

Another possibility regarding theemerging objects might be the tide goingout and revealing some fixed underwater

object. This portion of the sighting is themost speculative and should not detractfrom the sighting of the craft.

It has been almost 22 years since thesighting. It would have been advanta-geous if we had the testimony of at leastone other witness, but as this witnessstates, "I haven't been in contact withthe four other witnesses for over 20 years.They were work related acquaintances,and I cannot even remember their names."

Since the exact date cannot be deter-mined, it is impossible to get weather datafor the sighting. This of course wouldhave clarified whether the object wassomething being blown by the wind.

However, even if the wind had a vec-tor in the direction the UFO took, the pos-sibility of it being a balloon or light ob-ject is still ruled out by the fact that itimmediately entered the water, whereas aballoon or light object would have floatedfor a period. And a balloon with lights??

ConclusionThis report was entirely done through

e-mails and snail mail between the wit-ness and myself. This format is not verydesirable, as there is no immediate inter-change of ideas, emotions, and measure-ments such as angles and distances.

However, the witness now resides farfrom Hamilton, making an on-site investi-gation economically impractical. Thecase, as old as it is, is still interesting and,I think, illustrates how an event of thiskind can etch itself into the memory banksof our minds, as she remembers the sight-ing fairly well, but could not rememberthe events prior or after the sighting.

The witness was very cooperative andquick to answer all the messages sent tothe best of her ability. Where the factswere fuzzy, she stated that, and yet theitem of focus, the UFO, was clearly re-membered. Based on my experience withwater-related cases, her surprise at theease of entry into the water could be ex-pected, but there are many cases of justsuch an entry. I believe that she had wit-nessed a UFO event.

c'iLL. H*' jiy;" "~~

View ofdowntownHamilton

-ReosGope jSub typething'>*v - • I#1 Emerged IFirst ;

#2 Emerged \within 1/2 hrs.time !

February 2004 MUFON UFO Journal Page 13

FILER'S FILESBy George A. Filer

Director, MUFON Eastern Region

George Filer

Unless noted, these reports have notbeen verified by official investigations.

Connecticut triangleGUILFORD - On Jan. 6,2004, at about

8:40 PM, the witness was told to lookoutside by her little sister who was ob-serving something in the air. She went tothe door and saw something risingstraight up in the shape of a flying tri-angle with an estimated 400 lights.

The witnessstates, "After a fewminutes, it stopped,and the blinkinglights were not vis-ible, and it flew rightout of sight.

"My dogs werefreaking out thewhole time the UFOwas near. The UFOrose straight up inthe air, nose up, thenstopped, straightened so the nose waspointing at us, and then flew away."

Peter Davenport, director of the Na-tional UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC),spoke with this witness, and she soundedquite sincere and credible.

Vermont light formationsWATERFORD - This event was wit-

nessed by three people who agree on thedetails. They were walking up the hill totheir house from their barn at 7:10 PM onDec. 10,2003, when they noticed a flashof light fill the sky behind them.

One witness stated, "When I whirledaround, I was startled by the appearanceof six bright, white lights in two appar-ently separate triangular groups. Eachtriangular group of three lights appearedto be the size of a folded postcard held atarm's length.

"The lights were maybe 250 yardsaway, moving toward me at high speed,descending from an initial altitude of acouple of hundred feet. There were onlythe six bright lights, quite small in size,with no structure discernible around themor between them."

The lights were not flashing, and werea constant white color, although one wit-ness felt they had some pink tinges. Thetwo triangular groups moved together for

10 to 15 seconds with no change in thespacing between them other than an ap-parent increase in size as the object(s) ap-proached.

The witness continues, "There was nosound. At the same moment, I noticed twomilitary aircraft flying one in front of theother well behind the lights and at a higheraltitude with navigation lights andstrobes.

"We border military area Y-2 in NewHampshire. The triangular lights were nearthe ground and moving northeast in anentirely different direction than the planes.After 10-15 seconds all six lights disap-peared at exactly the same moment. Theysimply vanished at once while in motiontowards me, as though someone turnedoff a light switch.

"The two chase aircraft made a wide,sweeping turn around our property, andin a minute another two aircraft joined thepattern, circling our property. The planesremained circling overhead in a fairly tightturning pattern for one hour and twentyminutes." Thanks to Peter Davenport,UFOcenter.

Northern Ireland triangleCLOGHER, COUNTY TYRONE - On

Thursday, Dec. 11,. 2003, Milton Clarkewas outdoors in his hometown when aUFO approached from the north. "Itseemed like a glowing triangle, a reallybright glow," Milton reported. "I couldn'tsee any markings. It was very close to theground at one point, only 20 meters (66feet) off the ground.

"It came in very fast, slowed down toa stop, then flew away very fast towardsthe west. I took some pictures,.but it'shard to know if they will come out. It wasvery dark, and I didn't have the right typeof film for this kind of thing."

Thanks to UFO ROUNDUP Volume 8,Number 48 Dec. 17,2003 Editor: JosephTrainor E-mail: Masinaigan@aol.comWebsite: http://www.ufoinfo.com/roundup/up/

Illinois triangle hoversLOVES PARK - The experience oc-

curred on Dec. 12,2003, at 5:35 PM, whenthe observer noticed an object travelingsouth which had three lights in a triangu-lar shape. It was moving slowly across

the sky, and hovered above the field. Thewitness says, "It was maybe 100-300 feetoff of the ground, and I could see it clearly.It was dark in color. The lights were yel-low, and there was no noise.

"It looked to be about the size of asmall airplane and was moving south,then it turned northeast at a fast rate ofspeed. It then turned back south, thentraveled really fast and disappeared. Thelights were in a triangular shape, one lighton each comer of the object.

"The sighting lasted about 20 minutes,and I never encountered anything weirdand scary like this before," he said.Thanks to Peter Davenport, UFOcenter.

Silver disc in FloridaFT. MYERS - An object appeared al-

most the size of the full moon as it flewover on Jan. 4,2004, at 2:30 PM, accord-ing to the witnesses, who had a very clearand "razor sharp view" of a very thin disc.

The "bottom" surface appearedshaded, and the upper surface was highlyreflective and showed a wide low bulgenearly filling the diameter.

It was definitely a disc, said the wit-nesses, and definitely nearly flat on its"upper" and "lower" surfaces. It behavedlike a balloon-drifting and turning, climb-ing and dipping, bobbing weightlessly,in a more or less easterly direction.

It did not appear to be under "con-trol" or "doing" anything. It was big anddefinitely "hardware," and not a cloud.Nearby airfields are Paige Field and SWFlorida International Airport.

This occurred in or near the landingpath for some of the air traffic. The diskhad a bulge on one face, was 30 feetacross, reflected sunlight, and bobbedaround at 3-5000 feet. Thanks to PeterDavenport, UFOcenter.

Missouri - Alien Or MonsterCHAFFEE - The witness was driving

about 55 mph when he saw a dull alumi-num bent up "clothes hanger like" crea-ture on Dec. 9,2003, at 12:50 and slowedto.40rhph.

He states, "The creature looked like abig aluminum colored cockroach man withvery long legs, and he looked like he wasrunning on his knees. It was seven feettall, but we saw no face or eyes, and it

Page 14 MUFON UFO Journal February 2004

was hunched over as it ran. At first, itlooked like a deer, until it ran by the truckso fast that you really couldn't see itslegs moving...it .was more like scurrying.

"It looked like it had some sort of arms,and I didn't really see wings...but it wasmoving as if it had wings. It moved fasterand ran further than anything living that Ihave ever seen.

"It was similar to a pumpkin head, orlike an imp, but only taller. I said to myfriend, 'Did you see that we almost hit adeer?' He said, 'Yes.' Then somethingzoomed ten feet by the passenger sidedoor up to thirty feet in front of the truck.

"I sped up to about 65 mph and passedthe creature, and looked over my shoul-der to the back of my truck. It was behindus and was running fast, then caught upand was running along side of us for agood four seconds, then it zoomed pastthe truck again, to about 20 feet in frontof us and jumped straight into the air anddisappeared.

"We will never know what it was, but Ireally don't see myself going back to thisspot at night." Thanks to Peter Daven-port, UFOcenter.'

Indiana police chase objectHUNTINGTON - Three police officers

who say a strange object drifted throughthe skies over this northeastern Indianacity are trying to find someone else whosaw it. Officer Chip Olinger was warmingup his car about 2:30 PM on Dec. 26,2003,when he reported seeing a circular objectin the sky and radioed officers GregHedrick and Randy Hoover, who also sawit.

All three say they watched as the ob-ject moved out of the northwest, driftedtoward a church steeple, then shotstraight north without a sound in an en-counter that lasted less than a minute.The trio describes the object as about thesize of a hot air balloon or a backyardtrampoline.

They said it was low enough in thesky that Olinger thought it might crashinto the steeple. It stopped a few timesand spun slowly, changing shapes and atone point turned orange, possibly fromreflected sunlight. "It wasn't any kind offlying machine that I can think of," Olingertold The Herald-Press. "And it's not likea 1950s flying saucer. It was that big, butit didn't have a hump in the middle."

No one called city, county, or IndianaState Police to report it, and for a few daysthe three officers didn't say anythingabout it. Thanks to Huntington News.

White oval object in CanadaHOUSTON - A man had just trans-

ported his wife from a friend's house whenthey arrived back home at 8:45 PM onDec. 8,2003. They pulled into their longdriveway only to see the two kids stand-ing outside yelling and pointed towardsthe mountain behind their home.

The husband stopped the car quicklyand both parents jumped out in fear, asthey had no idea what was wrong, think-ing the worst. They noticed a white oval-shaped object sitting stationary over theirproperty with a solid ring of blue lightsmoving around the white colored object.

A slight and annoying hum could beheard. The mother went over and grabbedthe two children and went into the house.The father followed, but they watchedfrom inside.

The object lit up the frees in a whitelight for a good distance and after fourminutes it slowly started to move, drop-ping white sparks off the bottom.

It rose up rather slowly, and as itreached the top of the mountain they lostsight of it. Thanks to Brian Vike, director,CANADA HBCC Research.

Cigar shapes in ArizonaSELIGMAN - Three friends were driv-

ing back from Las Vegas, on Jan. 5,2004,when the driver commented on "the re-ally bright stars" that had appeared about45 minutes before sunset. The objectsseemed to be moving.

Within minutes, they saw a bright lightchange to a cigar shape that turned redvery suddenly. It appeared to explode,and the witnesses watched intently asthe first object began to fall, while thesecond white object turned a bright redand hovered over the mountain range ad-jacent to Interstate 40 southbound.

The object started to do several otherbizarre things, such as breaking out intoa lateral acceleration that seemed to havecovered 50 miles within seconds, stop,turn colors, lift into the sky and return toits low altitude, go in reverse immediatelywith rapid speed, and then rocket off again.

After reaching the near-end of themountain range, the view improved andthe object joined five or six more just likeit, but each one was a varying intensityof red light. All of these objects demon-strated their agility and handling, just asthe first.

One by one, the objects were eitherdisappearing behind trees or hills or van-ishing into thin air. The witnesses sawseveral other objects that were clearly air-planes and helicopters during the rest oftheir drive that evening, but nothing likethe red lights on the mountains.

Peter Davenport spoke with this wit-ness, and he sounded sincere, and quite

credible. UFOcenter.

Delta shape in IrelandDUBLIN - The witness was on his way

to college in a bus at 7:45 AM on Dec. 15,2003, and looked out the window and sawa bright blue rectangle light high up inthe sky. He is certain it was not a star nora conventional aircraft.

The light faded, and this object startedflying from where the light had been andflew quite fast to 20 degrees east. The ob-server states, "I was in disbelief and lostsight of it as the bus moved. The UFO wasdark and delta shaped, and had a light onthree corners, and one was blinking.

"Ten minutes later a rectangle of lightwas seen where I had seen it the first time.I noticed it was moving, but as the busmoved we were not gaining any groundon it, then the light faded in a flash. Thiswas undeniably not a plane since it wasflying at about 2000 feet, way too low fora commercial aircraft in an urban area."Thanks to Peter Davenport, UFOcenter.

Arrowhead objects in EnglandBURNHAM-ON-CROUCH - On Dec.

13, 2003, at 8:30 PM the witness was inhis garden when he looked up to see twoobjects heading north, shaped like curvededge arrowheads, flying straight.

The witness reports, "They were per-forming maneuvers and crossing eachother's path in an almost DNA-like spiral.They were illuminated by a dull light un-derneath, with a soft-fuzzy and pale yel-low light, and were about the size ofplanes, but I'm convinced they were notplanes.

"There was no noise from them, andthey were flying low at about 250 feet. Iwatched them until they flew out of sightover my house." Thanks to Peter Daven-port, UFOcenter.

Triangle in NorwayOSLO - On Dec. 15,2003, at 7:45 PM

the observer was looking out of his win-dow when he saw three white lights whichformed a triangular shape hovering justover a hill about one mile away. It stoodstill for about 15 seconds, then "ducked"behind the hill without sound. Thanks toPeter Davenport, UFOcenter.

Cigar shape in TasmaniaLAUNCESTON - On Saturday, Dec. 13,

2003, at 10:05 PM witness A.B. reports,"George and I were at my country prop-erty just north of Launceston inAustralia's island state of Tasmania, sit-ting outside, having a smoke.

"George noticed a long, cigar-shaped

February 2004 MUFON UFO Journal Page 15

glowing object approaching from thenortheast, high in the sky. As it ap-proached the property, it slid lower intothe sky and appeared as if it would land.

"As fast as it appeared, it flew away,with only a slight tingling in the air toconfirm it had ever been there at all. Itwas about 80 meters (264 feet) aboveground, lowering to about 20 meters (66feet). At its minimum speed, I would sayit approached 200 kilometers per hour (120

• miles per hour)." Thanks to Peter Daven-port, UFOcenter.

California egg-shaped objectsHAYWARD - The witnesses were

driving southbound on Mission Boule-vard on Jan. 4,2004, at 10:40 PM, and sawan object in the sky about 100 feet abovethe street. The object was white and egg-shaped, and light reflected off it, but itwas not a flashy or metallic reflection.

The witness reports, "It was about fivefeet in diameter at its thinnest point andmoved north just over us as we drovesouthbound. Then, I saw two more ob-jects, about 3/4 that size. I decided to pullover to look and grab my camera.

"They were also egg-shaped, but gray,non-metallic. The white egg shape thenchanged shape slightly into a smooth-ened diamond-like shape about 200 feetabove me. The two gray craft stopped inmid-air, and the white craft joined thembriefly in a delta formation over our heads.

"The white craft then again sped offtowards the north, and the two gray craftquickly went straight up and disappeared.The white craft followed us south as wedrove off and then sped off. I took sev-eral pictures." Thanks to Peter Davenport,UFOcenter.

Canada shuttle-shaped triangleWEST DUBLIN, N.S. - The object was

heading northwest, up the LaHave Rivertoward Bridgewater, on Dec. 17,2003, at11:30 AM. As witnessed by two 40-year-old males, it was described as shuttleshaped, but flying upside down withsomething, perhaps a rudder, pointingdownward.

The object was triangular shaped andreflecting sunlight. It was observed forten minutes, moving quite slowly andacross the easterly wind at an estimatedheight of 7,500 feet as it crossed over thewitnesses. It was the size of a "dime atarm's length. No sound. Thanks toSheldon MacLeod, CKBW, Bridgewater.

Netherlands flying triangleALMELO, Overijssel - A 47-year-old

witness was walking a dog outside onSunday, Jan. 11, 2004, around 8:15 PM,

Page 16

when he saw a huge massive triangle-shaped object. At the moment of thesighting the sky was very clear and thestars were very clearly visible.

The huge triangle had red lights oneach of the three corners. The witnessstates, "In the middle of the object therewere five lights in a small triangle, therewere three indigo blue-colored lights inthe middle, and two red lights on eachside. The wind blew suddenly very hardfrom another direction, possibly causedby the craft. There were no enginesounds.

The craft moved slowly from the eastto the west with two bright white spherelights on top: The object was very big,much bigger than a jet, and was 250meters distant and at a height of also 250meters. It was moving slowly at a con-stant speed of 30 km/h as it passed over-head."

When the object had passed the wit-ness, he noticed that above the object ithad a hilly shape, and on top of that twosphere-shaped bright lights. The sight-ing caused some psychological side ef-fects: "I came home nervously and stayedin that condition for a couple of hours. Ihad a strange, restless feeling. During thesighting I was for a moment frightened, akind of panic almost."

He also reported the sighting to theAir Force Base Twente, but they saidthey don't do anything with the report.However, even though it was Sunday, ahalf hour later he could hear fighter jetsfly over!

Thanks to: Toine Trust Site AdminUFOPlaza, UFOPortal Editor UFOPlazaNieuwsbrief site: www.UFOPlaza.rd mail:ganzEgal-@UFOPlaza.nl :UFOPlaza@hotmail.com

Australia glowing orange lightsADELAIDE - Two witnesses observed

on Jan. 4,2004, at 12:30 AM, on the MainNorth Road near Parafield Airport, fourdull glowing orange lights hovering overthe area. Mark, 23, and his wife Elizabethstopped the-car and got out for a betterlook.

At first the objects were hovering inthe shape of the Southern Cross. Aftermaneuvering backwards and forwards fora while they formed a line, one after theother. During this time they flashed a littleand moved off into the distance. Onefaded out and then they all faded.

This is interesting because Adelaidedoes have a curfew on take-offs and land-ings (11 PM). Conclusion: Garbage bagsor balloons cannot go back and forth!Thanks to Debbie Payne, AURA-AUFORN, and Diane Harrison, Austra-lian Skywatch Director.

MUFON UFO Journal

Florida triangle over highwayMARATHON (FIESTA KEY) - The

witnesses were driving toward Key Westfrom Miami on US 1 at about 12:30 AMJan. 4, 2003, and as they drove over abridge they saw something with a greenand red light. The witness reports, "I no-ticed it and told my friend I thought itwas the balloon that transmits RadioMarti to Cuba. (Many people may notknow that the US government has a largeballoon located at Cudjoe Key, FL, thattransmits Radio Marti to Cuba, but theywere too far away to see this balloon.)

"When we got closer to the lights, thedriver lost them, but the passenger saw ared and white light 100 to 250 feet hover-ing directly over the highway.

"He also saw a black mass betweenthe lights in what looked like a triangle,but didn't totally point at the top. Fromhis account the white light was on thetop, and he saw a red light on the cornerof one of the bottom of the points!

"There was never any sound made.We opened the windows of the truckwhen we were close to it, and it was justquiet. I had to go about 1000 feet to turnaround. When we went back, there wasnothing there." Thanks to UFOcenter.

A correctionAn article in Filers Files in the Jan 2004

MUFON UFO Journal is labeled "Loui-siana object blocks sky." However, thereferences to Arlington, Cedar Hill, andHighway 287 appear to match an area inthe Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex betterthan any place in Louisiana.

The previous article, "Scary sight inLouisiana," refers to Abbeville, a town ofabout 11,000 inhabitants in south centralLouisiana. The sighting dates are thesame, Nov 19,2003, but no time is listedfor the Arlington event.

The Abbeville sighting happened at2:30 pm. Since the descriptions of theobjects are similar, by knowing the timeof the Arlington sighting, we might esti-mate the speed of the objects (if they areindeed the same). Also, we might findother observers along a line connectingthe two observations.

It is interesting that a line connectingArlington, TX, to Abbeville, LA, passesvery near Nacodoches, TX, a city thatmade national news when the spaceshuttle Columbia disintegrated anddropped hundreds of pieces .in andaround Nacodoches.

-Les P. Beard(Editor's Note: The error in labeling

was by the Journal editor, not Filer.Thanks for the correction.)

February 2004

The Other Sky—Reclaiming WhoWe Are and Why We Came Here byLandi B. Mellas and David E. Caywood,2003, Blue Star Productions, BookWorld, Inc., 9666 E. Riggs Road #194,Sun Lakes, AZ, 85248,5 '/i X 8 Vi softcover, 333,pages, $16.95.Reviewed by Dwight Connelly

It is quite difficult toproperly review a bookof this type if the re-viewer "hasn't beenthere"-and I haven't.

Mellas and Caywooddescribe "The OtherSky" as "our all-encom-passing term for realmsbeyond our own thirddimension; the place ofETs and fantastic hap-penings; the realm of the'Others.'"

Like several recentbooks, this is a story ofinteraction with extrater-restrial entities. Foreach of the authors, thisinteraction reportedly began in child-hood, and was initially frightening, butgradually developed into what they havecome to feel is a greater understandingof themselves, mankind, religion, and theuniverse.

They touch in a surprisingly breezy

MUFON field investigatort-shirt & cap

The field investigator t-shirt hasthe MUFON logo over the left chestpocket and "MUFON Field Investi-gator" on the back.

It comes in S, M, L and XL in whitewith a blue logo ($12 + $3 S&H) orblack with a white logo ($15 + $3 S&H).

MUFON has a black cap with whiteMUFON logo to match the field in-vestigator black t-shirts (The capsalso look great with the white t-shirts).Screen printed is $12 + $3 S&H. Em-broidered is $ 15 + $3 S&H.

MUFON, P.O. Box 369, Morrison,CO 80465-0369. (Check, MO, or cash,U.S. dollars.)

manner on such topics as reincarnation,telepathy, implants, and out-of-body ex-periences. Mellas even describes an in-teraction with Mary, the mother of Christ.

The authors explain that "Earth is buta fairly new child in comparison to othersystems spinning out their lives ,in thisvast universe. But our spirit is even mucholder than the eldest planet. Therefore,

we can only concludethat this child-planetEarth is not the onlyplace our spir i t hastaken on a physical form.Any planet of residence,for the experiences it canprovide, is our choice....

"We have to con-clude that what at firstwe thought to be an ab-normality-the instantrecognition of many ofthe beings that we en-counter w i t h i n therealms of The OtherSky-in fact turns out tobe the remembrance of

- souls whom we haveknown in our never-ending existence.

"The differences that we note in thephysical appearances of the non-terres-trials then becomes a moot discrepancy,and the saying 'Beauty is only skin deep'becomes self-evident. As the beings havetold us often, We know you by your light."

In what has become almost a routinewarning by extraterrestrials, the authorsare told, ".. .within the last few decadesthe situation on your planet has almostreached a point of no return. It is desper-ate."

This situation "might affect the wholeneighborhood. God, the Source, loves allcreation unconditionally. But...after achild is reprimanded so many times andstill does not listen, the child may need agood spanking."

What "a good spanking" of the Earthmight entail is not explained.

As with much in the field of ufology,this is a book describing extraordinaryexperiences by ordinary individuals. Thisbrief review only skims the surface, per-haps distorting as much as informing.

As noted at the beginning of this re-view, I do not have the background to sayyea or nay on whether real experiencesare described. If the topics are of interest,buy the book and decide.

Hubble telescopemission to end

NASA has decided to stop servicingthe Hubble space telescope due to bud-get problems and safety concerns, effec-tively bringing its mission to an early end,US space officials said.

Hubble will remain in orbit as long asit can fulfill its duties, then be broughtcrashing back into Earth's atmosphere,with re-entry expected in 2011, officialssaid.

John Grunsfeld, chief scientist for theNational Aeronautics and Space Admin-istration (NASA), said, "We will get asmuch life as we can out of the Hubbletelescope."

A previously-planned mission, sched-uled for mid-2005, was to install a newwide field planetary camera and a super-sensitive ultraviolet spectograph de-signed to observe new hot stars, quasi-stellar objects, and the insterstellar me-dium.

But it would have required expensiveshuttle safety updates that are not nec-essary for the shuttle's only other job,working on the International Space Sta-tion, Grunsfeld said.

"It was a question of looking at therisk elements involved to support the mis-sion," Grunsfeld said. Hubble dependson periodic service calls by spacewalk-ing astronauts who upgrade its equip-ment. - • --

It was unclear how long the telescopewould continue to function without the2005 supply mission. "It could die tomor-row, or it could last to 2011," Dr StevenBeckwith, director of the Space TelescopeInstitute at Johns Hopkins University inBaltimore, MD, said. NASA has no fur-ther trips to the Hubble planned until afinal "close-out mission" in 2010.

The announcement marked the firstchange to an existing NASA missionsince President George W. Bush two daysearlier announced new directions for thespace program, saying he wants to sendmanned missions to the moon from 2015,and eventually to Mars and beyond.

But the space agency was allocatedonly an additional billion dollars over fiveyears, in addition to its annual budget of$ 15.4 billion, to work toward that goal.

The decision to stop servicing theHubble devastated scientists, since thetelescope has provided a wealth of infor-mation and stunning images of the uni-verse since being dropped off in space inApril 1990. NASA plans to put a new-generation orbital observatory, the JamesWebb Space Telescope, into orbit in 2009.

February 2004 MUFON UFO Journal Page 17

PERCEPTIONSBy Stanton T. Friedman

Less than meets the eyePopular Mechanics has done it again.

The February 2004 issue has a coverstory about UFOs. The title on the coveris "WHEN UFOs, ARRIVE"; the coversubtitle is "What Will You do? The USGovernment already has a multimillionDollar TOP-SECRET Plan Ready to Go."

A further prom-ise of exciting newrevelations isgiven by the sub-title in the articleitself: "The US andother world gov-ernments alreadyhave detailed se-cret plans for firstcontact."

These aresplendid exam-pies of falsity in Friedmanadvertising. The story is as silly as theirJune, 2003, cover story "OFFICIAL USGOVERNMENT ROSWELL FILES. TheStartling Facts Declassified."

Both articles are by Jim Wilson, whohas done others about UFOs.

The 2003 piece tried to get rid ofRoswell with three basic claims:

1. That Frank Kaufmann, who hadbeen shown to be telling false tales, hadbeen involved from the start in theRoswell claims made by believers (imply-ing that therefore the story had col-lapsed);

2. That the base morning reports forthe July 4, 1947, weekend, said nothingabout the Roswell incident (implying thatthat meant it had not happened), and

3. That the USAF had declassified alltheir Roswell Files.

All of these are false or misleading.1. Kaufmann doesn't show up on the

scene until 13 years after I began the in-tense civilian investigation of Roswellwith my first conversation with MajorJesse Marcel in 1978, and at least 18 yearsafter my conversation with Lydia Sleppy.

2. The morning reports were not clas-sified, and covered personnel changes,not highly classified events like recoveryof a crashed saucer.

3. The Air Force declassified nothingabout the Roswell incident.

In the new article Wilson provides noevidence whatsoever for a multimilliondollar Top-Secret Plan by the US, and no

Page 18

evidence at all for such a plan by anyother government.

He does mention a totally unofficialgentlemen's agreement by SETI special-ists as to how they (as if they were offi-cial spokesmen for us and governments,which they are not) would respond to thefirst claims that a signal from ETI had beenreceived.

Unspoken, but nevertheless true, isthat they assume it would come from acivilization dozens if not hundreds orthousands of light years away. No gov-ernment has signed on to the protocol,quite frankly, because it is totally unre-lated to implications of a visit to Earth byan alien spacecraft, the only scenario thatWilson discusses.

He talks about Air Force optical tele-scopes and radars picking up a space-craft between the Earth and the moon.Apparently he is unaware that the SETIcommunity seems totally convinced thatinterstellar travel is impossible, so, ac-cording to them, such a scenario cannever occur!

One reason for this foolish attitude isthat, not surprisingly, astronomers haveessentially no knowledge of advancedflight technology. They also assume therewill be only very slow, very long distanceradio communication using techniquessuch as we use-despite our enormousyouth compared to the history of the gal-axy.

SETI has no statusThe SETI Community has no status at

all with governments of the world. It hasnothing to do with national or interna-tional security, nor with the developmentof technology useful by the military-which is a very large fraction of the bud-gets of governments around the world.

The development of systems able toreach Earth from some other solar systemclearly indicates a very much higher levelof technological sophistication than sofar manifested on Earth.

The same thing applies with regard tosmall Earth Excursion Modules able to flitaround the earth at very high speed andwith great maneuverability. Surely thesewould make wonderful weapons deliveryand defense systems.

Wilson, incredibly, seems to believethat the radar and optical tracking sys-tems of the US and other governmentshave never previously noted such high

MUFON UFO Journal

performance systems. The data theyrecord is born classified. He might wishto examine (though I doubt it) several ex-cellent radar visual sightings describedby Dr. James McDonald in his 71-pageCongressional Testimony of July 29,1968

(Available for $10. Postpaid fromUFORI, FOB 958 Houlton, ME 04730-0958).

Many other casesRichard Hall included many radar-vi-

sual sightings in both the 1965 and morerecent versions of his The UFO Evidence.Wilson is apparently unaware of the 5,000physical trace cases collected by TedPhillips from 90 countries (16% involvingreports of humanoids), and the more than1,200 sightings by pilots in DominiqueWeinstein's outstanding collection-andthe many more on file with NARCAP (Na-tional Aviation Reporting Center onAnomalous Phenomena).

Wilson even has the gall to say,"Unique as the appearance of an alienpiloted spacecraft may be " The coverand the article use graphics that mighthave come straight out of "The Day theEarth Stood Still," complete with theWhite House in the background and mili-tary vehicles ready to pounce on an in-truding alien saucer sitting on the WhiteHouse lawn.

He goes on to suggest that the threegroups who would be involved, in HazMat suits no less, would be the FBI, aDepartment of Energy Nuclear Emer-gency Search Team (NEST), and a De-partment of Agriculture's Animal DiseaseCenter on Plum Island off Long Island.

The alien would be poked and probedby NIH doctors rather than, allowed tosleep in the Lincoln Bedroom at the WhiteHouse!

Wilson claims that "Scientists are oftwo minds regarding the existence of ex-traterrestrial Intelligence": skeptics whothink Earth is so unique with regard to itsmagnetic field and the moon, etc, that in-telligence hasn't developed anywhereelse, and "The opposing camp sees theprospect for discovering alien life in moremathematical terms. Its touchstone is theDrake Equation which links the probabil-ity of discovering extraterrestrial intelli-gence to factors such as the size of theuniverse and the number of stars withearthlike planets. With the discovery ofeach new planet beyond Earth's Solar

February 2004

system-there are now more than 100-theodds of encountering intelligent life in-crease."

These comments obviously ignorethose scientists such as myself who. havebecome convinced by extraordinary evi-dence that aliens have been, and are, vis-iting Earth.

Plain and simple nonsenseThe comment about the Drake Equa-

tion is nonsense plain and simple. TheDrake Equation purports to tell us howmany civilizations there are in the galaxyand has nothing to do with the probabil-ity of discovering ETI. Furthermore dis-covering that there are other planets inthe neighborhood tells us nothing aboutthe odds of encountering ETI.

We have absolutely zero knowledgeof how many planets are inhabited byETI. We have zero knowledge of whetherwe will or won't encounter them out there.We have a great deal of evidence indicat-ing that aliens have been coming here fora very long time.

Wilson sets up a Proposed Welcom-ing Committee that Popular Mechanicswould prefer to see on the job as opposedto one (consisting mainly of astronomers)outlined by the International Academyof Astronautics. They have no bindingcontract with anybody.

PM's American teamPopular Mechanic s American team

(they have a composite picture of all ofthem as though they were together)would be chaired by John Glenn (formerastronaut and senator), Dr. Frank Drake(science officer), Dr. Hal Puthoff(powerplant engineering), Dr. SheilaWidnall (from MIT and formerly secre-tary of the USAF, and who approved theRoswell Report), Dr. Ning Li (propulsionsystems-worked with rapidly rotating su-perconducting magnets seeking a reduc-tion in gravity), Dr. K. Eric Drexler (struc-tural systems-expert on nano-technol-ogy), and Jane Goodall (communicationsofficer-"primatologist who has provedher ability to communicate with intelligentnonhumans."

These are all respectable people. Idon't see any diplomats or UN Represen-tatives.

Apparently Wilson envisions a sau-cer landing on the White House lawn be-ing grabbed by NASA, the vehicle hauledoff to labs in New Mexico, and the alienpilot(s) to be poked and prodded. Thisisn't even good science fiction.

Does he really think an alien space-craft would just be wandering by the firsttime and land in public without havingcollected a great deal of information aboutus, our military and detection capabilities,

our general approach to each other (hos-tility)?

It is almost as if he is assuming thatwe are more advanced than our visitorsinstead of the other way around.... eventhough our technological history is onlya few thousand years long and there arestars a billion years older than the sunjust down the street.

Wilson mentions the unclassifiedBrookings Institute Study, done forNASA 40+ years ago, and its suggestionthat contact between two societies at dif-ferent levels of development is usually tothe detriment of the less advanced.

But then he says we ignored theBrookings Institute advice by putting aplaque on the Pioneer Spacecraft practi-cally inviting aliens to come.

It won't be there soonHe mentions it is 7 billion miles (about

10 light hours) from Earth and headingtoward Alderberan, as though it wouldbe there soon. That star is 80 light-yearsaway. It seems to me very likely that theUSAF and Operation Majestic 12 wouldhave had very highly classified studiesdone as to the impact of contact.

Note that mention is made in theEisenhower Briefing Document that "aContingency plan (MJ-1949-04P/78)should be held in continued readinessshould the need to make a public an-nouncement present itself."

Wilson says, "Skeptics often ask whyUFO sightings seem to take place only inremote locations instead of on busy citystreets [a typical stupid skeptical ques-tion based on ignorance of the facts].Perhaps ET knows what Earthlings havein mind when it lands."

One would think that an ET spacecraftwas just wandering around in the neigh-borhood and would have set down fortea or a beer in the middle of a large city.How long would it take to figure out thatthe rule here is shoot first and ask ques-tions later?

How many times would a UFO have tobe chased by an Earthling jet to get thepicture? How many nuclear weapons testswould have to be observed to gain un-derstanding of Earth's "civilizations"?

Popular Mechanics obviously recog-nizes that putting "UFOs" on the coverhelps sell magazines. Pity they couldn'tuse non-fiction articles.

www.stantonfriedman.comfsphys@rogers.com

Newsletters appreciatedThe MUFON UFO Journal staff ap-

preciates receiving newsletters from lo-cal MUFON groups.

Bright light, circlereported in Kansas

Henry C., who lives on a farm near thesmall town of Louisburg, KS (population2,576), not far from Kansas City, reports:

"On the night of (Monday) Dec. 15,2003, as my wife and I were pulling intoour driveway after a dinner out, wewatched a bright light back in our fields.

"We live on a farm, you see, and ourfields extend for a mile behind our house.It was raining, and the air was thick asfog, but we could see the bright light outin the field.

"We thought it was someone's.head-lights, since a row of houses runsalong the back of our property. All of asudden, though, the light shot straightup into the sky, disappearing intothe darkness. I didn't see anything, but abig ball of light.

"I wanted to get out there right away,but the rain made it very hard to get backinto the fields. The groundgets so muddy that even a tractor can getstuck in certain places. So we waited un-til the next day when the rain stopped."

On the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 16,2003, Henry and his wife walked abouthalf a mile, just over a hill, "when we sawit. The ring of mud on the ground. I swearto God on the Bible, the ring had notbeen there before. .

"The ring seemed to be around 10 feetin diameter, and the mud in the ring isalmost like quicksand.

"I never believed in UFOs before," headded, "And had never seen anythinglike this. Maybe we can find out. ifsomeone else has seen anything like this,too."

-Thanks to UFO Roundup, Vol. 9, No.2; Editor: Joseph Trainer.

Two Special ProductsThe new MUFON logo has been

reproduced in light blue on white T-shirts, now available to MUFONmembers for a limited time at the spe-cial price of $1"0 + $2.50 shipping forsizes small through extra large. 2XLshirts are also available for $12 +$2.50 shipping.

MUFON has a limited supply ofcrop circle T-shirts designed byConnie Isele of Divide, CO. Sizesare limited to large and extra large.These are available while supplieslast for $ 10 + $2.50 shipping.

February 2004 MUFON UFO Journal Page 19

By Jenny Randies

Faking UFOsRecently I came under some fire on a

British internet site because I had sug-gested, in passing, that, in certain circun>stances, it can beacceptable to delib-erately fake a UFOsighting.

I think it is im-portant to try to de-fend this contro-versial idea, and toexplain my reasonsfor believing it.

Firstly, I shouldexplain the contextin which I made this Jenny Randiescomment. A.UFOlogist in the UK claims to have in-vestigated a sighting during which anRAF aircraft might have been downedafter a close encounter with a UFO. An-other UFOlogist who had investigatedthe same case reached very different con-clusions-namely that there was no jetcrash and that the UFO was prosaicallyexplained as an astronomical phenom-enon.

Such disputes happen all of the time,and those who have not investigated thecase can form their own judgement bybalancing the evidence from bothUFOlogists and deciding what we thinkmost probably occurred.

However, in this case a colleague ofthe skeptical UFOlogist chose to go onestep further and organise a hoax storythat tied in with the jet crash, hoping tosucker in the investigator with opposingviews on the incident and, presumably,exposing his shortcomings if he fell forthe deception.

As things transpired he did not getentirely caught by the ruse, which, whenit was admitted some time later by theskeptical UFOlogist, stirred up a heateddiscussion on the rights and wrongs ofthis attempted hoax.

I am not endorsing the methods usedin this particular case-although I under-stand why they were considered neces-sary by the skeptic. Personally, I woulddraw the line at deliberately trying to de-ceive specific individuals unless doingso was the only way to reveal importantinformation that the UFO community

needed to see. Here, I believe, the casecould best have been argued overthrough the relative strength of the evi-dence for each interpretation of the facts.

The setup detracted from that pure de-bate and put the issue into a personal-ized framework that distracts most peoplefrom what really matters. Which is why Ipersonally would not have considereddoing it.

So when I argued that hoax experi-ments can benefit UFOlogy 1 was notdefending any one example. Rather I wascountering the view that this sightinghad generated: that if one UFOlogistsought to hoax any UFO incident thatmight potentially deceive a colleague,then this was not only utterly unaccept-able, it was a heinous offense.

On the contrary I believe that it some-times can be of great value. How can Ijustify such a suggestion? There are threereasons.

Witness perceptionFirstly, it is important to gain specific

information on witness perception. InUFOlogy that is often impossible, be-cause we rarely know for certain what wasseen, and so almost always cannot judgehow accurate are the accounts of eventhe most basic parameters, such as size,speed, time of observation etc.

Yet knowing how well witnesses re-port such information is invaluable. Ithelps us to grasp how to evaluate themass of eyewitness testimony regardinggenuine UFO sightings.

So, it makes sense that from time totime we run observational experimentswhere we create an IFO that we know willfool witnesses. This should be done un-der carefully controlled conditions as aproperly organized experiment, and all thenecessary permissions granted and pre-cautions taken so as to ensure that nodangerous situations follow.

If run correctly this research can pro-vide the raw data that tells us how un-usual stimuli in the sky are being wit-nessed and reported. I consider this goodresearch, not a deception. Many otherprofessions use similar techniques togather data.Reporting/investigating process

A second reason that it can be valu-able to conduct hoax experiments is to

test the reporting and investigation pro-cess. This is a little more tricky to justify,but it can be beneficial to use a well setup IFO as a method of tracing the varioussources that will seek to investigate, re-port on, or otherwise use the sighting.

By this route we can gain informationon how to use media sources, based onthe way they tackled a case that has beencarefully controlled, and give dry runs tovarious investigation methods that mightcome in very handy in future real UFOcases.

I should make very clear that I do notsupport this kind of experiment exceptunder very strictly controlled circum-stances and at very exceptional times. Forexample, as a way of defining the chan-nels of communication in a UFO windowarea where we suspect that witness hoax-ing might be rife.

Also I would not support it unless itwas designed in such a way as to avoidbringing deliberate ridicule upon col-leagues.

Moreover, it should be carefully docu-mented and the results published (againavoiding naming names and exposingcolleagues just to score political points).

This should also be done as soon asthe experiment is over. Sitting on data forany length of time turns what might be abona fide experiment into a cruel hoaxcarried out without due concern for ourcompatriots. That I could not condone.

Improving standardsThe third way in which hoaxing a

sighting can be useful is to improve stan-dards. There was a very good example ofthis in the UK some years ago when ahoax photo of a UFO from a hot spot inWiltshire was seeded into the UFO com-munity.

The experimenters deliberately in-cluded within the case sufficient clues toat least allow for serious doubts to beentered into, or even for the hoax to beexposed if. the investigation was con-ducted with enough depth.

It became more of an examination ofthe skills of those UFOlogists who pittedthemselves against the case. As such,when the truth emerged, those who suc-ceeded in sensing the dubious nature ofthe photo could judge that their approachto. cases was working, whereas those who

Page 20 MUFON UFO Journal February 2004

had not spotted the clues could re-evalu-ate their way of investigating all poten-tially real UFO photographs.

It was noticeable to me that not manyUFOlogists who failed this test saw it in aremotely favorable light.They railedagainst the perpetrators as if they wereintending to make all UFOlogists lookfoolish. There were even charges of du-plicity or that they were agents ofdisinformation. But viewed as I think itwas intended, as a controlled test of in-vestigator capabilities, it had the powerto benefit the whole UFO community andto raise standards if it had been taken inthe right spirit.

I would add, before anyone gets thewrong idea, that I have never set up orbeen involved in any hoaxes of the kindoutlined here. Or indeed of any kind. Ionly ever would do so in very special cir-cumstances and if I can see positive ben-efits for UFOlogy that outweigh the criti-cism that such experimentation will alwaysinevitably draw.

These conditions would not occurvery often - indeed if we started hoaxingleft, right and center then this would rap-idly become very much the wrong thingto do. So I would have to think long andhard before agreeing to participate in anysuch operation.

My point is only that I think there aretimes when it is genuinely in the interestsof our subject to consider the possibility.However contentitious anything thatbrings useful data and can improve thequality of our work is at least open toargument.

Author Charles Berlitzdies at age 90

Charles Berlitz, 90, of Fort Lauderdale,FL, a well-known linguist and author ofThe Bermuda Triangle, as well as With-out a Trace, and The Roswell Incident(with William Moore), and The Philadel-phia Experiment—Project Invisibility(also with Moore) died Dec. 18 at Uni-versity Hospital in Tamarac, FL.

He was the grandson of MaximilianBerlitz, founder of the international chainof language schools.

Berlitz spent 13 years on active dutyin the U.S. Army, mostly in intelligence.

Walter N: Webb

A reminderState and local MUFON organiza-

tions which have address changes,email changes, or web site changesneed to immediately contact MUFONHeadquarters so that this informationis included in our files and website.

MarchBright Planets (Evening Sky):

Parade of Planets: All five naked-eyeplanets (plus the Moon) are visible in theearly evening sky for around two weeksstarting about March 22.

Mercury achieves its best eveningappearance for the year in the last half ofMarch, reaching its farthest eastern point(elongation) from the Sun on the 29th.Look for this tiny glowing ember low inthe W at twilight below brilliant Venus.

Feb. 8-14-13th Annual International UFOCongress, Convention, & Film Festival,Laughlin, NV, featuring Jim Marrs, Ed & KrisSherwood, Matthew Hurley, JoeMcMoneagle, Wynn Free & David Wilcock,James McCanney, Dr. Claude Swanson,Adrian Dvir, Russell Callaghan, MaryRodwell, George Filer, Rich Dolan, HaktanAkdogan, Stan Gordon, Budd Hopkins &Carol Rainey, Leah Haley, Riley Martin,Lisette Lrkins, A.J. Gevaerd, WendelleStevens. Michael Horn. Dr. Norman Bergrun,Santiago Yturria Garza, and Daniel Sheehan.www.ufocongress.com, 303-543-9443,ufocongress@msn.com.

March 19-21-Aztec UFO Symposium,Aztec,-NM, featuring Freddie Silva, ArtCampbell, Dr. Roy Craig, Mark Kimmel, ScottRamsey, and George Green. 505-334-7658,azteccuf@sisna.com, www.aztecl948.com.

March 27-28-UFO-ET Congress, DaysInn, Bordentown, NJ, Pat Marcattilio at 609-631-8955 or Tom Benson at 609-883-6921.

April 9-11-16th Annual Ozark UFO Con-ference, Eureka Springs, AR, with TimothyGood, Linda Howe, Wendelle Stevens, GrantCameron, Nancy Talbott, David Rudiak, plusothers to be named, ozarkufo@webtv.net.

April 16-18-1 st Annual Exopolitics Expo,Hilton, Washington, DC, featuring StephenBassett, Dr. William Birnes, Philip Corso Jr.,Paul Davids, Richard Dolan, Stanton Fried-man, Timothy Good, Dr. Steven Greer, TerryHansen, Paola Harris, Richard Hoagland, Dr.C.B. Scott Jones, Jim Marrs, Dr. BruceMaccabee, Nick Pope, and Dr. Michael Salla.Paradigm Research Group, www.x-conference.com.

July 16-18-MUFON International UFOSymposium, Marriott SE, Denver, CO: "Un-conventional Flying Objects-The Body ofTechnological Evidence."

Venus also reaches its farthest pointE of the Sun on March 29. Glowing thenat magnitude -4.4, it stands above Mer-cury in the W at dusk, not setting untilabout 10 PM. A thin lunar crescent liesonly 2 degrees N of the gleaming planeton the 24th.

Mars (1.2), in Taurus, is next in linehigher up in the WSW and sets in theWNW about 11 PM. The ruddy worldcan be seen very near the crescent Moonon March 25.

Saturn (0.0), in Gemini, hangs high upin the S at dusk, shifting westward afterdark. Previously retrograding (illusorywestward orbital motion), the ringedplanet resumes its normal eastward or-bital direction on the 7th.

Jupiter (-2.5), in Leo, reaches a pointopposite the Sun (opposition) on thenight of March 3-4. At that time the giantplanet will be visible all night. As the Earthrotates, Jupiter moves from the ESE skywestward.

Bright Planets (Morning Sky):Jupiter sets in the WNW about sun-

rise.Saturn sets in the NW between 1 and

3 AM during the month.

Moon Phases:Full moon—March 6Last quarter—March 13New moon—March 20First quarter—March 28

The Stars:This month we begin to see in the E

the constellations which will be promi-nent in the skies of spring-Leo (Lion),Coma Berenices (Queen Berenice's Hair),Virgo (Maiden), and Bootes (Herdsman).

. And yet the winter patterns still are tobe seen in the W-Orion (Hunter), CanisMajor and Minor (Big and Little Dogs),Gemini (Twins), Auriga (Chariot Driver),and Taurus (Bull).

The orange-hued star Arcturus inBootes is one of those celestial objectscausing false UFO reports when it is lowin the sky. It rises in the ENE about 7:30PM in mid-March.

The Big Dipper climbs high in the NE,turning its bowl almost upside down. ThePointer Stars on the end of the bowl pointnearly to Polaris the North Star.

February 2004 MUFON UFO Journal Page 21

Significant WakingThis commentary is about something

that I have called Significant Waking. Ihave been researching this for the pasteight years, and I believe that it is rel-evant to the UFO mystery. It should con-cern anyone who is looking at all aspectsof the UFO mystery.

The event occurs when a person, usu-ally someone connected with ufology oran abductee, awakens from a sleepingstate to a waking state and notices thedigital clock displaying a time, such as2:22 AM or more often 3:33 AM, 4:44 AMetc.

These times occur over a period ofmonths and years at irregular intervals.They may occur to one family member, orall members of the family. In one case Ihave been documenting since 1994, thehusband and wife will sometimes awakenat the same times, although this is rare.

The phenomenon usually involvesother significant events associated withabductions or alien entities, but there arealso times when no events are present.These wakings sometimes occur on aus-picious dates, such as Christmas Eve.

Sometimes the person remembersdreams of events that seem very real.Other times they simply wake up startledand note that the time on the clock is 3:33or another such time.

Since these times are repeated, thereis somewhat of a pattern. In some casesthere are physical anomalies present onthe body.

Those of you who have read RaymondFowler's book, The Andreasson Legacy,will notice that in the back of the bookthere is a chart with these significant wak-ing times of 3:33,2:22, etc.

It would seem to me that this is signifi-cant by the very fact that it does occurrepeatedly to those who have had experi-ences in ufology, and that it occurs whenone is waking_from a sleeping state.

Also worth noting is the fact that someof these people, while driving in their car,will feel the urge to look at the digitalclock, and when they do they notice thatthe times are 2:22,3:33,4:44, etc.

I have documented the times of onefamily over the past seven years, and itseems that for this family at least the 3:33AM time is very prominent.

There you have it folks. I don't claimto have the answer to this event-and I'mnot sure that it has to do with time as we

think of it. However, I do think that it isworth taking a serious look at. 1 wouldlike to thank Jerry L. Sievers, IndianaState Director, for his help in researchingthis, and his encouragement to me todocument it. If anyone has any input intothis Significant Waking, please send mean e-mail at zulu_28@hotmail.com.

-Roger Sugden

The Aztec "crash"I am concerned over what appears to

be a positive spin on the long discreditedAztec Saucer Crash of 1948 (or whateveryear you choose).

The best explanation has always beenthat a couple of con artists formed a con-fidence scheme out of flying saucers andearly crash rumors. The idea was to helpthem sell phony oil property with the ideathat they had a special "doodle-bug" de-vice from the crash of a flying saucer whichcould detect oil.

The lucky marks would be let in onthis "hush, hush" secret discovery. Peoplelike to be in on such secrets, especially ifthey will make you money. And UFOswere making enough appearances in theSouthwest to create a plausible con!

So I ask readers to beware of such mi-raculous "doodle-bug" schemes. Eventhose which may be peddled today?

-Brian Parks

A puzzling sightingOn Dec. 31,2000, at approximately 7:15

AM, I observed a craft in the desert nearmy home, which is Pearce, AZ. This sight-ing was very unsettling to me, and Iwanted to ensure my recollections wereclear. Immediately upon arriving home Idrew to the best of my ability the craft Ihad observed.

I'm writing now to see If anybody elsehas reported a design of this kind and, ifit may be military or a true UFO.

I had driven off the side of the high-way and got out of my vehicle to standoutside in order to observe it. Much re-garding the craft was only coming backto me many months after the sighting.

This craft was definitely metallic. Priorto the craft gaining altitude it rotatedsomewhat and came very close to me. Isaw two visible windows that were, tome, completely black, but were verydeeply inset.

At that point, I became afraid and

The object reported by Hovdestad

found myself standing" behind my vehicleobserving it. As this craft was travelingfrom the S W to the NE in front of me, Ifound myself looking away to the left atthe ground, and would look back again atthe craft to make sure I was seeing whatwas traveling across my view. The crafttilted in the opposite direction from me togain altitude.

I saw a huge glowing circular spot onthe underside of the craft. What Ithought were legs proved to be a powersource that was perfectly formed, but asthe craft gained altitude it made a hissingnoise. The upper stack was so pro-nounced that it looked out of proportionto the rest of the craft. (See drawingabove.)

I saw no visible markings, no ingressor egress on the craft, but it was defi-nitely metal, as the sun was just comingup and the top portion of the craft wasreflecting the sun. I was able to hold myhand up in comparison to the craft as itwas closest to me. The craft was visibleon both sides of my hand while it wasfully extended from my body.

This vehicle traveled to the NE until itfaded from my view. As a former para-trooper of the 101st Airborne, I am wellaware of what a human's definition of acraft being able to fly and not fly. Thiscraft had such a profound effect on myemotions that for at least the following 18months I would think of it on a daily ba-sis.

The first year I would feel like cryingfor some unknown reason when thoughtsof this craft would enter my mind. This isthe first time that I have gone public withthis information, although I have toldclose friends and my family of this inci-dent.

-Stanley M. Hovdestad, Pearce, AZ

Page 22 MUFON UFO Journal February 2004

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Delphos, A CloseEncounter

of the Second KindMUFON has this recent book avail-

able for immediate deli very. It was writ-ten by Ted Phillips and pub-lished by the UFO Research Coalition.8 1/2 x 11 format, soft cover, 177 pages.$20 + $2.50S&H. Please add $4 addi-

tional for shipping outside the U.S. Order from MUFON,P.O. Box 369, Morrison, CO 80465-0369

The Black PlanetBy Romeo Valentino

UFOs: A bold new view of "them" and their ships.Don't pass on this one!$25 covers all costs.

Xlibris-Book Orders436 Walnut St. l l t h F l .Philadelphia, PA 19106

2/04

THE ALLIES OF HUMANITY: An Urgent Message\bout the Extraterrestrial Presence in the World Today.

"I was greatly impressed with The Al-lies of Humanity... Because the messagerings true. Radar contacts, ground effects,videotape and film all prove UFOs are real.Now we must consider the real question:the agenda of their occupants. The Alliesof Humanity forcefully confronts this is-sue, one which may prove critical to thefuture of humankind." -Jim Marrs

Soft cover, 6 x 9, 166 pages, $14.95,www.alliesofhumanity.org, ALLIES II iscoming . . . 7/04

MUFON 2003International UFO

Symposium ProceedingsIncludes all of the papers pub-

lished for the MUFON Symposium inDearborn, MI, July 4-6,2003. 8 1/2 x11 format, soft cover, 245 pages. $25+ $2.50 S&H. Please add $4 additional

for shipping outside U.S. Order from MUFON, P.O. Box369, Morrison, CO 80465-0369

Advertising ratesIx 3x 6x

Back cover $450 $425 $400Inside back cover $425 $400 $375Full page $350 $325 $3001/2 page $250 $225 $2001/4 page $150 $125 $100

"Calling card" $55 $50 $45

Advertising deadlinesIssueApril 2004May 2004June 2004July 2004August 2004September 2004

Ads due3-1-044-1-045-1-046-1-047-1-048-1-04

The AfUFON UFO Journal reserves the right to refuse advertising for any reason.

February 2004 MUFON UFO Journal Page 23

John Schuessler

By John F. SchuesslerMUFON International Director

MUFON 2004 InternationalUFO Symposium

We are pleased to announce that the2004 annual symposium is scheduled forJuly 16-18, 2004, at the Marriott South-east Hotel in Denver, CO. The theme ofthe symposium is"UnconventionalFlying Objects:The Body of Tech-nological Evi-dence."

The speakerswill be providingdocumented evi-dence of UFOevents and thetechnology in-volved in thosereports.

The symposium will begin on Fridaywith a social hour, a sit-down dinner, andthen a special program to set the stagefor a weekend of hard-hitting presenta-tions and workshops.

Symposium Chairperson Lin Simpsonnegotiated the best hotel room rates pos-sible for this event. Rooms with one kingbed or two double beds are just $62/night.Room availability will be limited and mustbe reserved by July 1,2004.

The special rates are available fromJuly 13-19. Please contact the Marriottdirectly to reserve your rooms. You maybook your rooms online at http://www.staymarriott.com by clicking on theWhere to Stay column or by calling 303-779-1100 or 800-228-9290 and asking forGroup Code "MUF."

Lin has also arranged a MUFON Dayat Six Flags at a special rate on Thurs-

Estate PlanningSome members and friends of

MUFON have already includedMUFON in their estate plans. We hopeyou will consider this opportunity tomake a major gift.

Planned giving can be beneficialboth to MUFON and to your own taxand estate situation. If you wish tohave more information on various op-tions and benefits, please contactMUFON headquarters.

day, July 1 5, for anyone wanting to arriveearly and enjoy the theme park in Denver.

These special tickets will be includedin the price of one of the symposium ticketpackages for anyone wanting to partici-pate in the event.

The low hotel room rates will be avail-able for attendees who want to arrive early.

A symposium registration form will beincluded in the March issue of theMUFON UFO Journal. Registration mayalso be done online at www.comufon.orgusing PayPal.

MUFON experts to be featuredat April conference

The X-Conference, 1st A n n u a lExopolitics Expo, is scheduled for April17-18, 2004, in the Washington, D.C., area.Conference organizer Stephen Bassertinvited MUFON experts Ann Druffel,Stanton Friedman, William Hamilton,Dr. Bruce Maccabee, Ryan Wood ,and Dr.Robert Wood to participate in the event.Information about the X-Conference maybe found online at the www.paradigm-clock.com/X-Conference/ website.

New MUFON Websiteready for debut

The new MUFON website atwww.mufon.com is ready for its debut.MUFON board member James Carrionhas been working with Pamela andChristopher Cisneros of Prologix, Inc.to bring the new website on line. Ourthanks go to these folks for making it hap-pen.

New Lifetime MemberIt is a pleasure to announce that

Maynard Augst of Montgomery, MN, isour newest lifetime MUFON member. Weare extremely grateful for this vote of con-fidence and outstanding level of supportto MUFON.

Position AnnouncementsMUFON Canadian National Director

Eugene Prison has announced the fol-lowing appointments: Linda Chernabrow,Montreal, Eastern Regional Director (Que-bec, Newfoundland, New Brunswick,Nova Scotia); Mike Bird, Toronto, Cen-tral Regional Director (Ontario, Manitoba,Saskatchewan, Northwest Territory);Gavin McLeod, New Westminster, West-ern Regional Director (Yukon, Alberta,British Columbia); and Ed Barker,

Winnipeg, and Michael Strainic, NorthVancouver, Co-Directors of CanadianCold Case Archives and Research.

Richard McVannel, Michigan StateDirector and 2003 Symposium Chairper-son has announced his intention to stepdown as leader of the Michigan team inMarch 2004. He will be replaced by BillKonkolesky as the new State Director.

Bill has served MUFON as a State Sec-tion Director and as the MUFON'Webmaster for several years. We appre-ciate all they have done for MUFON.

New Field InvestigatorsKathleen Marden, Director for Field

Investigator Training, has announcedthat the following Field Investigator Train-ees have successfully completed theField Investigator's Exam and are nowMUFON Field Investigators: Jon P. Fry,Circleville, OH; Mark Kravitz, Marietta,GA; and David A. Woods, Ph.D., Gaffney,SC.

Final Report onthe America West

Airline Case, 1995MUFON has a limited supply of

this classic 1996 publication byWalter N. Webb, published by theUFO Research Coalition. 81/2x11format, 27 pages. $5 + $2 S&H. Pleaseadd $4 additional for shipping out-side the U.S.

Ryan and Bob WoodMajestic DocumentsNow Available from

MUFON:Majestic Documents Book

(190pgs)$18 + $2p&hSOM1-01 Manual (Repro-

duction) $8+$2 p&hCD-ROM - The Secret $ 16

+ $2 p&hFor orders outside the U.S.

please add $4 p&h per docu-ment.

Order from MUFON, P.O.Box 369, Morrison, CO 80465-0369

Page 24 MUFON UFO Journal February 2004"