MY UFO EXPERIENCE: Witness Recounts UFO Sighting During Family Outing in Texas
Reader Submitted Report [Unedited] 8-25-07
n around 1969, my parents, aunt and uncle, two cousins, grandparents, and my younger sister were returning from a restaurant in New Braunfels, Texas, when we all were mesmerized by a huge, (approximately the size of a full moon), light nestled within another crescent-shaped light.
The object remained motionless long after we reached our house in Wimberly. My father remarked that it was just the full moon, until I pointed out the moon in phase on the other horizon. When we turned on the news, the reporter said a high-ranking military official from Lackland Airforce Base in San Antonio said that they were testing a new high-power searchlight. I then also pointed out that it was a clear, cloudless night with no backdrop for the light to reflect off. After stepping back outside to look at the object again, it had disappeared. Very strange.
Then again about 6 months ago, I was standing outside in my rural backyard, when I noticed a small, completely silent pulsating, (and I stress pulsating, not strobing, as with conventional aircraft), red light. It took it only seconds to traverse 180 degrees from horizon to horizon.
One other thing, (doubt as you may). Once when I was a child, I had a dream about an object landing in the woods behind our house. I remember approaching it with fearless, childhood wonder, and then nothing. The next morning, I awoke believing that it was indeed just a dream, until I noticed my bare feet were abraded and had a sparse coating of grassburrs.
I told noone about this incident, avoiding the inevetable taunting that would have doubtlessly ensued. Perhaps the more open minds of your readership will consider it plausible.
A FLYING saucer, a practical joke or simply a trick of the light?
Call it what you will, an eagle-eyed walker has spotted yet another UFO hovering in Hampshire's skies.
This mysterious object was seen circling above trees in the New Forest in broad daylight on Sunday morning.
The photo was taken by an astonished onlooker, who has asked not to be named for fear of being ridiculed, who was with his family in Ipley at the time.
He told the Daily Echo how he snapped the picture moments before the strange contraption vanished into thin air.
'Flying Saucer' Captured in Family Photo Circa 1878?
Good friend and colleague, “Mr. Rick Stokes” forwarded the following photograph to us; Rick of course is the recently appointed news editor of the world-renowned web-site, The Anomalist.
He (Rick) states that a reader sent the pic in and wanted to remain anonymous; however, in part writes, “I got a stack of old photos from my grandmother, and among them was this one. I have brightened it a bit in Photoshop, and could provide a higher res version, but look in the upper left hand corner. What could that be? There is no exact information on the photo but it was taken in Florida in the late 1870's.”--FW
FREDERICTON — If alien visitors to Earth ever decide to formally introduce themselves to humankind, they should consider landing in Fredericton.
Not only is the New Brunswick capital friendly and accommodating, it’s also the home of Stanton T. Friedman, nuclear physicist, lecturer and world-renowned prophet of extraterrestrial existence.
The city of Fredericton is proclaiming today as Stanton Friedman Day, an homage to the 73-year-old UFOlogist who has talked and written his way to the top ring of the galaxy of believers who say Earth is being visited by aliens.
Friedman has built himself a reputation as the ultimate authority on flying saucers, alien abductions and the infamous Roswell incident, considered by many to be the definitive UFO event in world history.
This year marks the 60th anniversay of that day near Roswell, N.M., when the U.S. army claimed briefly it had recovered an unidentified flying disc — triggering a flying saucer frenzy that endures to this day.
Although the U.S. military later backtracked, insisting the object was just a fancy weather balloon, that only gave birth to Friedman’s other major area of study — the so-called "cosmic Watergate."
Friedman says his personal success owes much to the fact that people have an endless fascination with space and the unknown.
"Can you think of anything that touches more deeply on who we are, where we stand and the mystery and the coverup?" he says in an interview from his comfortable Fredericton home.
"People are excited because it opens up the universe to wonderful possibilities."
Fredericton Mayor Brad Woodside says Friedman is being honoured not only because of his tireless efforts in spreading the word about UFOs, but also because of his enthusiastic promotion of the city.
"Stanton has lived here for 27 years," Woodside says.
"He’s not only a nuclear physicist but also a world-renowned UFOlogist. In just the past few months, he has appeared on Larry King Live, Fox News Live and he appeared on CBS Sunday Morning. He could live anywhere in the world but he has chosen to live in Fredericton. . . . We believe it is worth celebrating his celebrity."
Friedman, who was born and raised in New Jersey and began his career in California, says he’s thrilled by the honour.
"I get friends in California saying to me, ‘Stan, don’t you miss being in California? What are you doing back there?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, I do miss the earthquakes and the horrible smog and the terrible traffic and the drive-by shootings and the drugs all over the place, but I’ve learned to do without those things.’ "
Although Friedman has been a UFOlogist for more than 40 years, he has yet to see an alien spacecraft.
He says his belief is founded in the data he has uncovered over the years about flying saucers and various UFO events, most of it buried in U.S. government documents.
"I have never seen a flying saucer and I have never seen an alien. But remember, I chased neutrons and gamma rays for a lot of years as a physicist and never saw one of them either," he says.
"In fact, I’ve never seen Tokyo, but I’m convinced it’s there."
Friedman, who refers to himself as "a wandering Jew," says he has so far lectured at more than 600 colleges, addressed more than 100 professional groups and toured all 50 American states, as well as nine Canadian provinces, the Yukon and 16 other countries.
He has no plans for retirement, but he admits he has been at it for a long time.
"One reason I’m beginning to feel old, I did Merv Griffin twice and he just died," he says ruefully.
’I have never seen a flying saucer and I have never seen an alien. I’ve never seen Tokyo, but I’m convinced it’s there.’ Stanton Friedman UFOlogist
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A popular convention that attracts hundreds of UFO enthusiasts from around the country has returned to San Jose.
The 9th Annual Bay Area UFO Expo started Friday evening at the Doubletree Hotel.
Some of the country's foremost experts on extraterrestrial encounters, time travel, big foot, alien implants and energy healing will be on hand to deliver lectures and workshops for attendees.
Well-known actor Gary Busey and radio talk show host George Noory are two of the guests.
Event organizers said the expo is the most popular of its kind on the West Coast.
DENVER, Colorado – With so much planet-hunting and -spotting going on, we are in a showdown to see whether the universe is perhaps chock-full of extraterrestrial life.
Distant starfolk is one thing. Having ET stopovers here on Earth, via UFOs, is another. And that was just the topic du jour here at the 38th Annual International UFO Symposium, subtitled An Estimate of the Situation: The ET Hypothesis, held August 10-12 and sponsored by the Denver-based Mutual UFO Network, Inc., or MUFON for short.
As a yearly affair, the symposium provides a platform for specialists and investigators that delve into UFOs, purported military cover-ups and denials, physical evidence surrounding UFOs, as well as those "high strangeness" encounters with alien visitors.
The MUFON summit brought together more than 500 people – a true gabfest for the flying saucer devotee.
Passion for the truth
James Carrion, MUFON's International Director, said the organization is fervent about resolving the scientific enigma known as unidentified flying objects.
"To me, it's all about the truth. I have a passion for the truth," Carrion told SPACE.com.
Still, after decades of pursuing "the truth" behind UFOs, Carrion admitted that the quest is befuddling. "Why is it always within out of reach...kind of there, but it's not there?"
A new MUFON initiative being implemented this year is outreach to engage mainstream scientists, Carrion said, to assist in taking a more detailed look at the data. An open letter to the professional scientific community is now being drafted, to be issued before year's end, he said.
"We have to gain respectability here ... so we're trying to kick-start intellectual curiosity out there," Carrion added. "We know that there are folks in academia who have an interest, but they don't know what to do with it."
The MUFON strategy initially centers on the hypothesis that UFOs are human-manufactured and then evaluate the data amassed to date against that premise, Carrion advised. "If this triggers your intellectual curiosity ... help us out," he said.
Carrion said that MUFON is also forming two research teams: One to dive into the history of "UFOlogy" and government archives, the other to probe into the abduction encounters.
"I'm a skeptical believer," Carrion pointed out. "I've never seen a UFO. But I've read enough of our own evidence. There's something real to this. To me, it's an issue of what is it?"
Tell it like it is
For nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, there is no doubt that some UFOs are alien spacecraft. Moreover, the subject of flying saucers, in his view, represents a "Cosmic Watergate" - a colossal government cover-up.
Friedman is a globe-trotting lecturer on UFOs and is the original civilian investigator of the celebrated UFO crash case in Roswell, New Mexico. That out-of-the-blue happening supposedly occurred some 60 years ago, in 1947, involving no less than two crashed saucers, strewn debris and recovered alien bodies, he reported at the MUFON meeting.
"I come on very, very strong. I'm not an apologist UFOlogist...I tell it like it is," Friedman told SPACE.com. He senses that a "big sea change" is taking place on several fronts.
"My overall impression is that people are more ready to accept [UFO visitation] because the world has changed...space travel being an important part of that," Friedman noted. "What I'm saying is that the notion that most people don't believe in UFOs isn't true."
Also, the media is giving UFO sightings a much fairer shake than in the past, Friedman suggested, citing not only Roswell coverage, but the reporting of UFO sightings made at O'Hare Airport late last year and more revelation concerning the Phoenix lights saga of March 1997.
"I don't look for advocacy...I want fairness," Friedman added. "I feel the world is ready. I'm outspoken, yes. But I try to make it a rule: Fact in hand before mouth in gear."
Mind-bending finding?
UFOs as visitors from afar would be a simple, easy-to-grasp explanation, suggested George Knapp, an investigative reporter for KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, Nevada. But he wonders if there isn't a mind-bending finding waiting at the bottom of the UFO barrel.
"It seems to stay one or two steps ahead of what we can do...from airships to the saucers, to giant flying triangles...almost teasing, taunting, or inspiring," Knapp told SPACE.com. Given cutting-edge physics, talk of the multi-verse and parallel universes, along with threshold biological and computer work, there are fundamental paradigm shifts ahead, he said.
"Although we can't figure out a way to get there...doesn't mean they can't figure out a way to get here," Knapp said. Involved in UFO reporting for some two decades, Knapp said he's committed to the journalistic credo that the public has a right to know.
"But you know what? Maybe not! It goes against everything in my professional life that I believe. What if it's not something we should know? That the truth is so unsettling that our social institutions would, in fact, crumble," Knapp confided.
Knapp underscored the prospect that perhaps we Earthlings live in the middle of some other kind of intelligence. Perhaps our planet is nothing more than a cosmic drive-in theater, he added, and UFOs skim in and out of our skies just to watch goofy movies.
"And if it's something else - like they live here among us and everything we do is like being in a glass shower - people are going to go crazy. So maybe there is a reason for keeping this secret...and a need for government cover-up which I believe there is," Knapp said.
Knapp's on-air investigative work focuses primarily on government corruption and organized crime. But asked about the angle that his next investigative piece on the UFO phenomenon will take, he quickly responded. "Nothing I'm going to tell you about."
" . . . There Have Been Skirmishes Between UFOs and American Fighter Jets"
‘It’s life folks but not as we know it’ claims ET author
By The Bromley Times 8-23-07
A SECRET war is raging between Earth and alien UFOs, according to an investigator specialising in extra terrestrial life, writes Martin Croucher.
After pouring through declassified and leaked government documents, author Timothy Good, of The Avenue, Beckenham, has come to the conclusion that there have been skirmishes between UFOs and American fighter jets.
Moreover he believes there is still some conflict between certain types of UFOs and the military.
His book, Need to Know: UFOs the Military and Intelligence, compiles several hundred reports by military and civilian pilots, astronauts, naval officers and refers to documents previously classed as Top Secret.
He said: "It is quite obvious just how serious the government takes this. In one report it addresses airforce pilots quite strongly not to approach these objects.
"In May 1947 in America, the military began firing at the unknown aircraft. This led to phenomenal repercussions. They caused a number of aircraft to disappear or crash.
"There were hundreds of unexplained air accidents that were in my opinion attributed to UFOs. President Truman ordered an investigation into them.
"This wasn't just in America, it was around the world. Many planes couldn't get off the ground.
"Many of those that did get off the ground dropped out of the air soon after. Some people said it was because they ran out of fuel but you don't get planes running out of fuel so soon after taking off.
"This was very disturbing for the military. There is still a conflict situation with some of them if not all."
A Ministry of Defence spokesman was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.
Mr Good said that from his research there appeared to be different types of UFO and not all of them were hostile.
The revelations in the book may be due in part to a steady relaxation on the classification of the British government's UFO files.
Mr Good said: "The main reason this subject is covered up is because there is no way they could come out with all this material all at once. I have been told by informed sources that the agenda is for gradual disclosure."
Signed copies of his book are available in Waterstones in the Glades, Bromley now.
According to a news item published on August 21 2007 by the El Mañana de Valles newspaper, two unidentified flying objects allegedly fell in Valles and Xilitla (San Luis Potosi).
The first of them was reported on the evening of Sunday, August 19 and the second during early morning hours of Monday the 20th.
Reporters Antonio Martínez and Maribor Villalobos state that the initial report was received by Jose Angel Avalos, an officer on duty at the Centro de Control y Comando (C4) through the 066 call line. This report was from Rubén Velázquez, who stated that a silver object measuring 20 cm long had fallen from the sky in a plot of land of the San Miguel collective farm.
Another witness, high school student Oscar Gonzalez Mar, a resident of the El Sidral collective farm, told the "El Mañana" newsromm that he had seen a shining object streaming across the skies toward the Gulf of Mexico between 8 and 9 p.m. on August 19 before he lost it from sight, not knowing whether the object crashed or not.
Nearly two and a half hours after the San Miguel incident, Mrs. Saturnina Castillo reported from Xilitla that an object resembling a fireball had impacted a tree in a property located near the "Montoya" metal shop, owned by her husband Juan Montoya, adding that the tree had caught fire.
Joaquín Hernández was a direct witness to the sighting. He and his family prepare zacahuil and live next to where the object hit the ground. In fact, Hernández was preparing the zacahuil batter and he saw the "fireball" as it came down over the tree. Afraid that no one would believe him, he screamed for Juan Montoya and his wife to witness the tree bough catching fire.
He added that it was a highly unusual thing to see, as there was no thunder or storm activity that could lead anyone to think it had been a stroke of lightning.
The incident was reported to the Municipal Civil Protection unit, but no investigation was conducted.
* (translation (c) 2007, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Prof. Ana Luisa Cid)
Images of UFOs, purportedly videotaped in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, have Internet viewers watching and debating.
THOUGH the island in the Caribbean shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic was spared a direct hit from Hurricane Dean this week, it may be that other, stranger entities made landfall there.
Evidence "UFO Haiti" and "UFO Dominican Republic" -- two authentic-looking home videos recently posted on the "News and Politics" section of YouTube. The films, which were uploaded from two different anonymous accounts, both appear to record close-up sightings of Area 51-type craft hovering above the island's beaches at sunset. As the ships pass eerily over, wind whips through the palm trees, dogs bark and a woman gasps in disbelief. All very real seeming. The jerky, amateur camera work could easily be that of a panicked Caribbean tourist.
The videos hummed to the top of YouTube's "Most Viewed" list, and from there invaded discussion forums and news aggregator sites across the Web, where debate raged about their origin and authenticity. Skeptics pronounced the videos a computer-generated fraud, probably part of some viral marketing ploy. Microsoft's Halo 3 was coming out soon, wasn't it? Or maybe it was for Nicole Kidman's movie "Invasion" -- or even the secretive new J.J. Abrams project about some kind of monster attack on New York.
Still, with all the cries of fraud and corporate opportunism, even the most steadfast doubters couldn't find anything in the footage that was obviously bogus. No matter where you stood, you had to agree that the quality of the movies was surpassing. More than a few observers in either camp called them "the best UFO videos ever."
"Frankly I'm worried about this," wrote one observer on the conspiracy site AboveTopSecret.com. "If people feel it necessary to flood the Internet or the UFO community with increasingly more 'realistic' hoaxes, what will happen in the event of a true landing?"
They're fake, right? Right?!
With so many people scrutinizing every frame in the videos, it was not long before the first imperfections were spotted in the story's hull. For one thing, no one could find any reports of flying objects in the Haitian or Dominican press -- or anywhere else. Surely an extraterrestrial visitation would've at least merited a brief. Or, failing that, a blog entry?
And yes, after a few viewings, "UFO Haiti" began to feel a little too real. In spite of the camerawoman's shaky hand and trouble keeping focus, she still manages a cinematically perfect tracking shot of the ship as it flies directly over her head. Moreover, her gasp is rather glaringly mistimed. It comes after she's already aimed the camera at the UFOs -- seconds after she's first seen them.
But it was the trees that aroused the most suspicion.
Freeze-frame the Haiti and Dominican Republic videos side-to-side, critics found, and you will see a palm tree in both videos that appears to be almost the exact same shape.
Aha!
Wait.
Two palm trees on the same tropical island? And they look really similar? Have you ever seen two palm trees that don't look really similar? That was the best the Internet crowd could do?
Someone needed to look deeper. And perhaps that someone was named Web Scout.
False starts, red herrings The key would be to find the source of the videos. But there was a complication. For one thing, the videos had been posted and re-posted across the Net, and it was not trivial to identify which ones were the originals.
By the time I got in the game, there were several videos entitled "UFO Haiti" that actually predated the version that was on the "Most-Viewed" list. The best idea, then, was to contact the posters of several of the earliest "UFO Haiti" videos, including barzolff814, whose 2.2 million-view video was listed as the fourth to be posted under that name.
Within an hour, I got a message back from a 17-year-old Irish girl named Heather. It read as follows:
"umm yeah. whatever. you people are stupid. find something better to do with your time. and get a life."
A closer look at Heather's "UFO Haiti" revealed that it was 10 seconds of a still photo of her kissing her boyfriend, followed by a video short clip of a scared-looking squirrel, with the word "Pervert!!" flashing repeatedly in white.
Heather was a hoaxster, all right. Just not the one I was looking for.
As I waited for other "Haiti" posters to respond, I decided to make another study of the clues. In the discussion of the controversial palm trees, the name Vue 6 kept coming up. Vue 6 was a program by E-on Software that animators use to generate sophisticated-looking natural environments. A promotional clip on E-on's website included several scenes of tropical islands -- covered in hundreds of identical windblown palm trees. Furthermore, one of the promos even showed a cartoonish flying saucer skimming over a field!
I immediately tried to reach E-on President Nicholas Phelps at his office in Paris. (Another video -- "UFO OVER PARIS" -- had been posted in April. It was nowhere near as convincing as "UFO Haiti," but still -- vaguely reminiscent.)
Phelps' receptionist said he was not available. Soon afterward, I received a message from Phelps asking if we could conduct the interview by e-mail. Despite my repeated attempts to get him on the phone, he was recalcitrant.
On the matter of the video, Phelps admitted that it appeared "very much like the movie was created with Vue 6" but denied E-on had anything to do with creating it. "Although I admit it would have been smart marketing, lol!"
With my main lead blown, I could find nothing to lol about.
Somebody up there . . . It has been said that the harder you work, the luckier you get. But this is not always true. Sometimes you get lucky even if you barely work hard at all.
The next morning, with all the good leads exhausted and most hope lost, the telephone rang.
(Actually, the computer rang. The Scout uses Skype.)
It was a woman named Sam. From Corsica. "Hello," she said. "I am calling on behalf of barzolff814."
Barzolff814? Why, he was the person who had posted the No. 1 Haiti video!
Barzolff, Sam said, wished to remain anonymous, but he was prepared to share the full story of the videos. I agreed not to reveal his real name. Then I was all ears as Sam began parroting into the phone the words I could hear Barzolff saying in the background.
The 35-year-old Barzolff is a professional animator who attended one of the most prestigious art schools in France and has a decade of experience with computer graphics and commercial animation.
It took Barzolff a total of 17 hours to make both the Haiti and Dominican Republic videos. He did it all by himself using a MacBook Pro and a suite of commercially available 3-D animation programs, including Vue 6. The videos are 100% computer-generated.
The videos, he said, were intended as research for a feature film project he's been working on with Partizan, the France-based production company responsible for, among others, Michel Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
When contacted to verify the story, "Eternal Sunshine" producer Georges Bermann said it was all true, and that Barzolff was "an absolute genius" who could "make anything look entirely real."
To prove that he was truly behind the videos, Barzolff agreed to provide the L.A. Times with a new spacecraft video. Called "Proof," the video depicts a small version of one of the spacecraft floating above a Paris street. As the camera pans over, the viewer sees two elderly women at a cafe. One of whom is holding a remote control device. Humorously, of course, this video makes use of computer graphics as well.
The movie Barzolff is working on for the big screen is about two guys who create a UFO hoax so realistic that it spirals out of their control. "For better or worse," said Barzolff, who cited being "overwhelmed" by the response to his video as one of the reasons he didn't want to go public with his name.
Barzolff stressed the videos were not intended as a viral marketing ploy. His movie is still in the idea phase, and he created the hoax strictly as a "sociological experiment" -- in other words, just to see what would happen.
What happened far exceeded his expectations.
After he finished producing the videos, he posted them and went to bed. "I thought they would reach perhaps 2,000 people," he said through Sam.
"When I woke up the next morning there were 70,000 views," on the Haiti video. "Twenty minutes later it was up to 130,000 views. It grew exponentially from there."
Barzolff called the results of his experiment "entertaining, thrilling, completely addictive, and a little scary."
The scary part, he said, was that in spite of the evidence, "many people refuse to believe it's a hoax."
MY UFO EXPERIENCE: Witness Recounts Seeing 'Flying Disc' in Louisiana
Reader Submitted Report [Unedited] 8-17-07
Yes, I have seen a flying disc, I have since reported it also on the NUFORC web site. This is how it occurred…
I live in southwest Louisiana, I was in my back yard around 10 PM local time in September 2003. I was setting up my 4 inch refractor telescope to look at the stars that have a good field of view to my south, I was also facing south at the time… I noticed in my peripheral vision to my left or east, there was movement of something rather large just above the trees about 500-1000 feet up from the ground and about 100-200 yards away from me.
My first thought was that it was a flock of big birds, but it was a flying disc…it had a definite shape and shades of white and grey color. I must also say I saw this craft on a clear moonless night, and I was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol…
I could describe the craft because of the ambient street lighting, just below it, was providing faint lighting of the craft…it was circular on the bottom with a “top hat” looking structure on the top, probably a canopy hatch of sorts. The circular craft was dull grey, the top hatch structure was black, the bottom of the craft had a white circular ring on its outer edge. It had no lights, no visible exhaust, no visible insignia, no wings…it was a flying disc…now, logic tells me it had to come from one of two places, either the military is experimenting with top secret aircraft flying at just above tree top level in a residential neighborhood without any FAA required running lights, or maybe the military is using UFO captured technology to build such craft or, we are being visited by alien civilizations.
Friday's launch of the third annual UFO Festival is a nod to the curious aerial masses that numerous residents of the DeKalb County town said they saw in March of 1989, according to Mayor Larry Lingerfelt. But this time around, he said, UFO is an acronym for a two-day "unforgettable family outing."
Mayor Lingerfelt said he didn't witness the red lights and banana-shaped ships that supposedly coursed across the night sky above the Sand Mountain community -- oddities that caused thousands of inquisitive gawkers to descend soon after on Fyffe, a town of about 1,000 population.
"But they were seen more than once," he said. "They were seen by a lot of people, including our police department and some other ones (area police departments), too."
"We had (media) broadcasts from here to all over the country. It kind of put us on the map."
Some 42 years before the Fyffe phenomena, the desert hamlet of Roswell, N.M., marked an incident that many credit with spawning the modern UFO-tracking era, according to news accounts.
Records show the event stemmed from the Roswell-based 509 Bomb Group's news item issued in July 1947, noting that crews had recovered a crashed saucer-shaped spacecraft on a remote ranch. Military brass swiftly issued a retraction, explaining that the disk was actually a burst weather balloon.
But in 1978, a former high-ranking officer at the base gave an interview, asserting an alien ship had indeed been found at Roswell. His claim gave the legend new legs, and last month, some 50,000 UFO buffs made the desert pilgrimage to observe the incident's 60th anniversary, news reports show.
The Chattanooga area has had many UFO sightings, said David Kammer of Brainerd. He said that in the 1960s, he interviewed UFO observers for the National Investigative Committee of Aerial Phenomena.
"We went out and investigated when people reported seeing aerial phenomena," said Mr. Kammer, a retired engineer. "We went throughout the Southeast to such cities as Johnson City, Tenn."
Mr. Kammer said no Chattanooga encounter he investigated featured photographed phenomena.
"I was interested in the subject at the time but haven't been into it for a long time now," he said. "But there were quite a few (reported sightings) back then. I suspect there are today, too."
During one week in October of 1973, at least three accounts of supposed UFO sightings appeared in Chattanooga newspapers, records show. One quoted two Ooltewah women as having seen red and yellow objects flying overhead. It left burned spots in a vacant lot near their homes, the story said.
Two days after that, reporters wrote about the "luminous oblong object" that several interviewees claimed to have ogled in Alton Park, around the Charles A. Bell school. Among the witnesses weighing in with personal testaments were two police officers, Capt. Oscar Eaves and Sgt. Lester Schell.
Three days later came a published account of a "long narrow light that changed shapes," by the description of Mrs. Paul Heiner, of Berkeley Circle.
Mayor Lingerfelt said he knows of no repeat sightings in Fyffe since the 1989 incidents.
"But it got to where people (who'd claimed to see a UFO) had been ridiculed," he said. "They might not have spoken up, if they'd seen anything else."
He said that instead of hiding that heritage, Fyffe now capitalizes on it as a visitor draw, seeded by a $10,000 tourism grant from the legislature that also proclaimed it the state's UFO hotbed.
"Ider, Ala., has its Mule Day," he said. "UFOs are what we're famous for."
The UFO festival features hot-air balloon rides, continuous live entertainment, and arts-and-crafts vendors, among other highlights of the daylight-to-dusk celebration.
And while Mayor Lingerfelt said it's possible the glowing airships may spark new reports of curious flying objects, "We hope they won't be flat balloons, like they said they were in Roswell."
NRC Suggests NASA Should Look for "Weird Alien Life"
Dust ‘comes alive’ in space
By Robert Booth The Sunday Times 8-12-07
SCIENTISTS have discovered that inorganic material can take on the characteristics of living organisms in space, a development that could transform views of alien life.
An international panel from the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Max Planck institute in Germany and the University of Sydney found that galactic dust could form spontaneously into helixes and double helixes and that the inorganic creations had memory and the power to reproduce themselves.
A similar rethinking of prospective alien life is being undertaken by the National Research Council, an advisory body to the US government. It says Nasa should start a search for what it describes as “weird life” - organisms that lack DNA or other molecules found in life on Earth.
The new research, to be published this week in the New Journal of Physics, found nonorganic dust, when held in the form of plasma in zero gravity, formed the helical structures found in DNA. The particles are held together by electromagnetic forces that the scientists say could contain a code comparable to the genetic information held in organic matter. It appeared that this code could be transferred to the next generation.
Professor Greg Morfill, of the Max Planck institute of extra-terrestrial physics, said: “Going by our current narrow definitions of what life is, it qualifies.
“The question now is to see if it can evolve to become intelligent. It’s a little bit like science fiction at the moment. The potential level of complexity we are looking at is of an amoeba or a plant.
“I do not believe that the systems we are talking about are life as we know it. We need to define the criteria for what we think of as life much more clearly.”
It may be that science is starting to study territory already explored by science fiction. The television series The X-Files, for example, has featured life in the form of a silicon-based parasitic spore.
The Max Planck experiments were conducted in zero gravity conditions in Germany and on the International Space Station 200 miles above earth.
The findings have provoked speculation that the helix could be a common structure that underpins all life, organic and nonorganic.
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