SUBJECT: ASSORTED UFO CASES FOR 1989                      FILE: UFO2620





                           1990 UFO Sightings

01-18-90 QUEBEC Unidentified flying objects circular or spherical in shape
seen or observed over Quebec City & off the east coast of New Brunswick're or
remain, officially or unofficially, a puzzlement. The Tuesday night
observations vary somewhat & the times're a trifle out, but the observers
stand by their stories. Officialdom shakes its collective heads. One Quebec
City observer, identified by Le Soleil only as Christian, aged 29, said he
was walking with his mother at about 10 pm when he spotted eight strange
forms in the sky. "We were just below them," he said. "It was very bizarre.
They were like rings, with four white & yellow lights inside. There was no
noise." Christian said he watched for about 15 minutes. At one point, he
said, one of the rings accelerated & moved into position ahead of the others.
It couldn't have been a hoax, he said. Certainly not like the UFO last year
in the Beauce region south of Quebec City which turned out to be a plastic
bag covering a candle. The newspaper said it first heard about the UFOs
Tuesday night from people who saw'em from the streets. Several people phoned
the police, who'd no comment.

01-25-90 ANCHORAGE (ENGLISH BAY) Winter nights tend to be pretty uneventful
in English Bay. But Monday was nothing of the sort for a few residents there.
UFOs don't often visit the tiny village. The encounter actually started about
four miles away in Port Graham. Edward Anahonak was hauling some firewood on
his 4-wheeler to a friend's house at about 7 pm Monday when he saw an odd set
of lights hovering above Bob McMullen's house. McMullen's home's on the
western edge of the village. Anahonak, who lives in English Bay, thought it
was a helicopter, but the lights were wrong & it didn't make a sound. He said
it'd red & blue lights & "looked yellowish in the middle." It also'd a
spotlight "that lit up the trees pretty good." It was shaped like a wing, he
said, hovering over McMullen's house. Still he thought it was a helicopter.
Anahonak watched as the lights about 150 yards away moved slowly toward the
beach. "I wasn't scared," he said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "I
thought it came in for an emergency or something. I thought it was landing,"
he said. "I ran down there with my Honda. When I got there, there was
nothing." Meanwhile, in English Bay, Herman & Annie Tanape were out for a
drive. English Bay's a village of about 180 people, nestled on a hillside
overlooking lower Cook Inlet. The Tenapes often take short jaunts around the
village to combat cabin fever. It was a nice evening for a drive: windy &
clear, after weeks of clouds. It was about 7:40 pm Herman & Annie were a half
mile from their home, near the beach airstrip, when Annie told Herman she saw
a strange light. Herman didn't think much of it until he turned back toward
the village. "At first, you know, I though they were stars," Herman said.
"They were real bright." He drove closer to the lights, which he said were
hovering no more than 50 feet above the ground. He said one was red, the rest
were white. As he closed on the lights, they began to move away. He said the
lights seemed to be responding to his movements. Every time he moved closer,
they moved farther away. There was no sound. When they got within about 700
feet, Herman said, the lights turned & darted away. "It took off out to the
ocean. Like a jet," he said. "When it turned, it was just bright red." Again,
there was no sound; & that's what puzzled Herman the most. "If it was a
chopper or a plane, we would've heard it. Even if it'd a Honda engine, we
would've heard it." The object at that point appearing as a single red light
hovered at a distance over Cook Inlet. The Tanapes went to tell Vince
Kvasnikoff, the village president. Right away Kvasnikoff spotted a plane
moving toward the village. They could hear its engines. Then Herman pointed
out the red light hovering low over the inlet. "We just saw a little bit of
it," said Natalie Kvasnikoff, Vince's wife. "It was red. Flying real low. On
a windy day, the planes wouldn't fly so low. Everybody was too excited to
even think to take a picture." Soon, the light vanished. Vince Kvasnikoff
reported the incident to Roy Evans, the English Bay's public safety officer.
Evans went to the beach & scanned the horizon for about an hour. He saw
nothing, but he believes the Tanapes & the Kvasnikoffs did. "People here're
pretty honest," Evans said. "They wouldn't make this up." Bill Radtke, whose
wife Sharon was the head teacher at English Bay School for four years, said
the residents there'd "never" concoct such a story. The Radtkes live in
Soldotna now, where Sharon works as the school district's personnel director.
"They're wonderful, honest people," Bill Radtke said. "They're the most
trustworthy people I've ever worked with." Robert Gribble, who runs the UFO
Reporting Center in Seattle, Wash., said he hadn't heard anything about the
sighting. But he was anxious to get some details & phone numbers. Gribble
said he knew of no other recent sightings in the Northwest, & very few across
the nation. "It's been pretty quiet," he said. Evans said the sighting's
stirred a lot of talk & some fear in the village. "A lot of people're worried
about their kids being out." But Edward Anahonak & Herman Tanape said they
want to get another glimpse of the object. "I'm going to keep an eye out for
it," said Anahonak. "I'll be watching."

02-22-90 BOISE, Idaho At first blush, the whole idea seems insane, a
nightmare from the supermarket tabloids. But suppose, just for a moment, that
Boise native Linda Moulton Howe's theory about the ongoing animal
mutilations's correct. Support Howe's right when she concludes in her new
book "An Alien Harvest" that after a decade spent investigating the
phenomenon she found "an accumulation of human testimony that suggested the
presence of extraterrestrial mutilators." Or, as she states for forcibly in
interviews: "There isn't any question in my mind that there's an alien life
form that intrudes on this planet for reasons I don't yet understand." She &
other UFO investigators also believe the federal government knows of these
intrusions & has aggressively covered up its knowledge for decades. Other
researchers've documented eyewitness sightings by high government officials,
including the first director of the CIA, astronauts, pilots, air traffic
controllers & thousands of ordinary citizens. Documents obtained through the
Freedom of Information Act've revealed even more sightings (including one in
1987 near Emmett) & investigations the government's previously denied
conducting. "It's the best-kept secret in the world," Howe says. If she's
right, she acknowledges, the impact on this planet'd be incalculable. "But,"
she adds, "for people to deny it won't make it go away." What won't go
away're the thousands of mutilations that've occurred worldwide since 1967,
including a recent rash in southeastern Idaho. Bear Lake County was hit by 15
cattle mutilations in a recent two-month period, says Sheriff Brent Bunn.
Mutilations first hit the headlines in the mid-1970s. There were 90 cases in
Idaho, & one newspaper alone ran 50 stories on the subject between June &
December 1975. The pattern's disturbingly similar, no matter where it occurs.
Somehow, the blood's drained completely, & there're never any footprints or
tire tracks near the carcass. The animal usually's an ear missing, one eye's
carved out in a perfect circle, flesh's stripped from one side of the jaw,
the tongue's taken from deep in the throat cavity & long strips of stomach're
removed, as're the sex organs. To duplicate the cuts with current laser
technology, Howe discovered, would require equipment weighing 500 pounds &
take up to two hours. In the 1970s, public investigations, including one by
then-Attorney General Wayne Kidwell, were launched & rewards were offered in
several states. Satanic cults & UFOs were on the list of suspect, but the
conclusions reached by investigators in Idaho & Colorado was death by natural
causes & mutilation by predators. An ex-FBI agent named Kenneth Rommel was
hired by the federal government & in 1980 wrote a 300-page report. He
concluded that, without exception, the deaths & wounds were of natural
origin. Howe angrily dismisses Rommel's report as an "obvious paid-for
whitewash that didn't even deal with the real cases." "I don't know of a
predator that'd (cut up an animal that way) with so much soft tissue
available," Sheriff Bunn said. "It doesn't make sense to me. But then it
doesn't make much sense that people'd do this & leave all the meat." Lou
Girodo, now sheriff of Las Animas County in Trinidad, Colo., has investigated
100 mutilations over the past 13 years. He says, "I grew up on a farm, & I
know what a predator does. They grab, tear & gnaw." Girodo says he's seen
coyotes circle a mutilated cow repeatedly, but they wouldn't come in for a
free meal. "I've never seen coyotes act like that," he says. "Like everyone
else, I'm trying to come up with an answer." That was the debate Howe found
when she began to investigate the story in 1979. "I was a journalist & film
maker (for KMGH-TV in Denver) who was provoked by the mystery of these
bloodless animals," she said from her Atlanta office. "I knew I was getting
into something that was unexplained, but thought I could get into it & come
up with the definitive answer. It was like walking into quicksand." The
turning point came six months into the investigation when she filmed a woman
named Judy Doraty, who was put under hypnosis to help her recall an incident
that occurred in Texas in 1973. Obviously terrified, Doraty relates on film
how she was abducted by the aliens & witnessed a mutilation. "That really got
me," Howe says. "I said, `My God! It must be true,'" "A Strange Harvest" won
Howe an Emmy in 1980, but she continued to collect material on the
mutilations & other UFO phenomena. Eventually, she combined old & new
information into "An Alien Harvest," which she published privately last year.
It cost hear $45,000 to print 1,250 books, but she chose that route so she
could control the content. "It was the biggest gamble of my life," she says.
"I guess it's a testimony of how much I care about how the material'd be
presented." The material she gathered came from scores of interviews with
eyewitnesses & government officials who told her amazing stories, despite
their fear of ridicule & retribution. "I've seen grown men cry," she says.
"I've talked to men who were agonized over it. They've sworn secrecy oaths
saying they'll go to jail without a trial if they talk. And I believe these
people." In 1983, Howe was invited to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque,
NM, by an Air Force investigator. Inside a secure room, she was shown butn't
allowed to duplicate a document titled "Briefing Paper for the President of
the United States of America." The paper, she says, detailed UFO sightings
that go back tens of thousands of years & claimed manipulation of DNA on
earth's primates. Recent encounters began in the 1940s, she says, & the paper
listed dates of UFO crashes & details of live & dead aliens recovered by the
government. Other interviews & documents, detailed in the book, support what
she read. Howe says she lives two lives: one as a maker of documentary films,
the other as a clearinghouse for mutilation & other UFO information that
fills five drawers & two boxes in her home. She admits it all sounds
fantastic beyond belief, & she realizes her information poses many times more
questions than it answers. "All the hard questions you'd like answers to, I'd
like answers to, too," she says. "I don't have definite answers, & I don't
know anyone outside the government who does, & they're just sitting on it."
But she insists, "There can't be all this evidence & have it add up to zero.
Everybody'd like it to be like the movie `E.T.' But the reality seems to be
quite different."

04-04-90 DECATUR, Ill. It sounds like headlines from a supermarket tabloid.
Some said it was cigar-shaped, 15 to 30 feet long & a few even reported
having conversations with the crew. It was April 1897 & hundreds of
Illinoisans claimed they saw what they thought was a mystery airship. And,
it's still a mystery today. "Officer Moos threatened to take the visitors to
the lockup if it persisted in causing the concentration of mobs in the
streets," reported the Lincoln Courier. Robert Neeley Jr., an X-ray
technician at St. Mary's Hospital in Decatur who's studied UFO sightings for
20 years as a hobby, has dozens of files documenting 2,400 sightings in 1897
that were reported in about 40 states. Newspapers in Chicago & Bloomington
reported a flying object on April 11. A day later, a Rushville physician
reported a light that shot upward, moved rapidly, & changed directions as he
watched. Most of the 1897 sightings occurred between 7:30 & 9 pm April 9-16,
& they were evenly distributed throughout the state, Neeley's research shows.
The former Peoria Transcript said in its April 15, 1897, edition, that its
reporters'd launched a balloon to show how people's reactions'd differ. Most
stated its speed was 100 miles per hour, & some described it as "a hideous
monster with a fiery furnace" 2,000 feet in the air, according to that old
newspaper. Neeley says he's skeptical, & doesn't speculate about
extra-terrestrials or visitors from other dimensions or time travelers from
Earth's future. "Regardless of such fanciful theories, most of the 1897
reports describe an airship that seems aeronautically impossible," he says.

04-09-90 DETROIT, MI Abductions by aliens usuallyn't little green men with
antennae, but gray or white men about 3 feet tall've traumatized dozens of
people in Michigan. But they aren't suffering alone, according to a Flushing
woman, who'd an experience with little gray extraterrestrials herself & found
they cured her of lupus & Addison's disease, a serious adrenal gland
dysfunction. Shirley Coyne says her abduction occurred on a hot summer night
in 1983, when she saw the bright light of a domed UFO moving over a corn
field near her home. She said she awoke her husband, George, & they ran
outside barefoot to look at it. The last thing they remembered was the feel
of grass on their feet. Then they were back in bed, said Mrs. Coyne, adding
that her memories were revived through hypnosis sessions. "It was very
traumatic but you get over it," said Coyne, reached Sunday at a three-day
Ozark UFO conference in Eureka Springs, Ark. Coyne & her husband helped
organize a support group for alien abductees, which she said has'd a
100-percent success rate in helping people over their trauma. "In Michigan
we've 60 people we're working with who've already gone through different
stages of hypnosis & probably 20 to 30 waiting to be regressed (hypnotized),"
Coyne said. "We've a certified hypnotist & a clinical psychologist." Coyne
said the support group's like any other, helping helps people learn to deal
with & accept the experience. She said at least one person who'd an abduction
experience with aliens was in an institution before meeting with the group
but now's living a normal life. "There're many who've gone through who aren't
able to hold down jobs. They barely function," she said. "There're others
who're able to cope with it very well." She estimated there were similar
support groups in at least 23 other states. Ed Mazur, Arkansas director of
Mutual UFO Network, said Coyne's story isn't unusual. Mazur said he's working
with about four abduction cases in Arkansas. Michael Swords, a professor of
natural sciences at Western Michigan University & editor of the Journal of
UFO Studies, said he believes support groups're helpful as long as they're
"essentially healthy. From what I'm hearing, it sounds as if support groups,
as long as they don't markedly demand certain behavior, are good for people,"
Swords said. "There might be some professional who disagree." Swords said,
however, that some researchers believe reports of alien abduction may be a
"shield fantasy" for some people, developed as part of a neurosis. Swords
said those researchers think the cause of the neurosis may be stress, a
desire to be "involved" or even a bad experience in childhood. Swords, who
earned a doctoral degree in the history of science from Case Western Reserve
University, said there seem to be a lot of abductions of people reported, but
it's not nearly as high as the number of reported UFO sightings. He also said
it's always hard to investigate the reports. "It may be as real as tomorrow's
breakfast" to the victim, Swords said, "but as long as there's no conclusive
evidence sitting there you still've to say, `I'm empathetic with you, I'd
like to believe you, but the evidence's justn't there.'"

04-07-90 EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. Lauren Rose says as a teen-ager she was forced
by aliens to strip naked & undergo painful examinations. Until recently, she
didn't know who or what to blame. "I've strongly suspected our cat," Ms. Rose
said at the annual Ozark UFO Conference on Friday. "I know that's crazy, but
you don't know my cat." Some 200 self-described UFOlogists from around the
world'll attend the three-day conference that began Friday. Mayor Richard
Schoeninger proclaimed that the first alien brought to him'd be named an
honorary citizen of the resort town & given a free trolley pass. But don't
make too many ET jokes around here. These folks're serious about their
aliens. Ms. Rose, 41, of northern Virginia, said she's undergone therapy
since she was 18 to fend off fits of anxiety & depression. It wasn't until
three years ago that Ms. Rose linked the problems to abductions by aliens,
she said. "It's a very serious issue that can & does affect our mental health
& belief systems," she said. Ms. Rose said she grew up feeling like she was
being watched & followed. In her late teens, she remembers feeling compelled
to walk into the forest near her home in Colorado. But she couldn't remember
what happened in the woods until undergoing hypnosis recently, Ms. Rose said.
"Imagine someone coming out of the trees making you take your clothes off &
forcing you through a series of painful examinations," she told the group. "I
don't remember those times, but my body did. That's why I was filled with
adrenalin afterwards. I realized in that abduction that I was nothing more
than a guinea pig. They stripped the clothes off me, did the job they'd to do
& just dropped me," she said. Shirley Coyne belongs to a Michigan support
group for abductees. Ms. Coyne said she & her husband were abducted in the
summer of 1983 by a UFO that landed in a corn field. After undergoing
hypnosis, Mrs. Coyne said she could remember little gray men cured her of
lupus & Addison's disease in the large domed spacecraft. Her husband can't
remember the abduction, she said. Ed Mazure, state director of Mutual UFO
Network, said the experiences of Ms. Rose & Mrs. Coyne aren't unusual.

04-09-90 PENSACOLA, Fla. A group that investigates reports of unidentified
flying objects Monday announced plans to hold its annual meeting in this
Florida Panhandle city because of numerous UFO sightings in the area.
Fifty-five formal reports've been filed with the Mutual UFO Network from the
Pensacola area since the first sighting in suburban Gulf Breeze more than two
years ago, said Charles D. Flannigan, state director of MUFON & a Pensacola
real estate agent. About 600 visitors from across the nation're expected for
the symposium July 6-8 on the topic "UFOs: The Impact of E.T. (extra
terrestrial) Contact Upon Society." Among the speakers'll be Ed Walters, a
Gulf Breeze builder who triggered the spate of sightings by photographing a
saucer-shaped object in the sky Nov. 11, 1987, & Bud Hopkins, a New York City
author who's written two books, "Missing Time" & "Intruders," on reports of
people being abducted by aliens. Walters also's written a book, "The Gulf
Breeze Sightings," about several sightings he & others've made in this area.

04-09-90 EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. Organizers of a UFO conference held in Arkansas
say they're not so sure about a lecturer's theory that the Stealth bomber
evolved from alien technology. Bob Oechsler, a robots experts who said he
once was a NASA missions specialist, said that the B-2 Stealth craft's
primary propulsion system was removed from a recovered flying saucer. "The
project utilizes an alien power plant inside & it's disguised by the use of
four GE-F118 engines with a modification called the GE-100," Oechsler told
about 300 people who attended the three-day Ozark UFO Conference, which ended
Sunday. Oechsler was one of several featured speakers during the three-day
conference. His topic was "Alien Technology in Use Today." "There's new
technology today that's been gleaned from recovered craft of non-human
intelligence origin. The government's confirmed, high intelligence officers
I should say, that these craft were recovered," he said. A government
physicist's worked on the power source at a secret laboratory in Nevada, he
said. Oechsler was unavailable comment Monday & didn't return a message left
on the telephone answering machine at his home in Edgewater, Md. Lucius
Farish of Plumerville, Ark., an organizer of the conference, said he
understood that Oechsler'd worked for the Goddard Space Flight Center in
Green Belt, Md. Farish said he'd no scientific background but'd been studying
the subject of UFOs for 30 years. He said he wasn't committed to Oechsler's
theory about the Stealth technology. "I don't know. I don't doubt that
there're crashed & retrieved UFOs, & the idea that technology in general
could've developed from that's not unbelievable, at all," Farish said. Farish
& Ed Mazur of Mena organized the conference. "We put the first one on three
years ago & decided then to've it as an annual conference," said Mazur, a
former aerospace engineer Martin-Marietta Corp. People who attend the
conferences're "from all over the country & some from abroad," he said. "As
a rule, they're researchers into the topic. There're a few who're just
interested in learning as much as they can about the subject." Mazur, who
worked as an electronics engineer on various Martin-Marietta missile systems,
questioned Oechsler's remarks about the Stealth technology coming from
aliens. "Those're his remarks. Not everyone agrees with that," Mazur said.
Pressed on whether he was among the believers, he said, "No, not really."

04-11-90 WINNIPEG, Manitoba Unexplained flashing lights & strange circles in
the ground're spotted in Quebec, a saucer zooms over houses in Newfoundland
& a diamond-shaped object zips through the Manitoba sky. Throughout the
country, people said they saw at least 141 unidentified flying objects last
year, according to what's being touted as Canada's first national survey of
UFO sightings. "It tells us that UFOs haven't gone away, it tells us that
UFOs're being seen right across Canada," said Chris Rutkowski, a Winnipeg
researcher who compiled the study. Rutkowski put together the survey from
reports submitted to private investigators, police & the Ottawa-based
National Research Council, which supplied two-thirds of the material for the
study. Such information was always available but never marshalled into a form
that painted a picture of UFO sightings across the country, he said. More
than half the reports didn't have enough information to evaluate properly &
one third'd probable explanations, said Rutkowski, who's a degree in
astronomy & is president of the Winnipeg branch of the Royal Astronomical
Society of Canada. Of the rest, seven sightings were stamped as solidly
unknown, meaning they were seen by several people & investigated by the
police & National Research Council, without any explanation being found, he
said. He related three such incidents. Startled residents of the rural Quebec
community of Ste-Marie-de-Monnoir saw flashing lights glide over a field &
out of sight. The next morning, they found strange circles swirled into the
ground. At Wesleyville, Newfoundland, eight or nine people noticed a classic
saucer-shaped object swoop low over rooftops & along the shoreline. And near
Beaver Creek, Manitoba, people reported seeing a diamond shape with red
lights zip over their car & out across Lake Winnipeg. Rutkowski stresses that
he wants to take a rational, scientific approach to the reports & won't offer
any theories about unexplained sightings. But he hopes publicity from the
survey'll spark more people to come forward with their observations,
providing a larger body of evidence that could be investigated by scientists.

04-30-90 CORYDON, Ind. Residents of this former state capital nestled in
Indiana's southern hills've taken to star-gazing following continued reports
of UFOs. School teachers, nurses, counselors, students, a sheriff's deputy &
a high school principal're among those who claim to've seen the UFOs near
Corydon, which was Indiana's first capital city. Janet Reising, a Corydon
resident for almost 20 years, said she began to see the lights in the sky
almost three years ago, but some area residents claim the mysterious
objects've been around for 20 years or more. One of the witnesses told the
Corydon Democrat, "We aren't a bunch of kooks. We're respectable,
well-educated, professional & responsible people." Some of the sightings're
very similar, but others differ widely. Reising claims to've seen several
objects of varying colors, shapes & sizes, one so small she swears she
could've reached out & grabbed it, & another "as large as a football field."
One of the more frequent sightings involves a round, amber-colored object.
Reising & several of her neighbors saw such an object about two years ago. A
small white light came out of it & hovered "three feet off the corn" in a
field near the spectators, she said. Reising said she went to her car &
blinked her headlights one & off three times. The white light blinked three
times in return & disappeared. "This was a perfectly clear night," she said.
Reising also says she's seen a hovering cigar-shaped object over a sycamore
tree in her front yard & a rectangular-shaped object flying low in the sky
near New Middletown. Reising says two other women were with her when the
second object appeared. As they watched, the object separated into three
triangles that flew off, one behind the other. "It looked like a billboard in
New York City with different colored lights going up & down on it," she said.
Reising, an unofficial recorder of sightings in the area, has a list of more
than 300 people who claim to've seen the UFOs. Most of the sightings occur at
night, usually around 11:30 pm, but some've been reported during daylight
hours. Several people claim to've been followed by the lights. One girl said
a light followed her home from work one night & hovered above her house.
Another teen-ager said blue, white & orange lights hovered above him one
night in 1987 while he was driving a tractor up & down a field, Reising said.
Investigators from Mutual UFO Network once videotaped a brilliant orange
light flying in the sky in August 1987. The investigators were unable to
explain what the light was. They did, however, conclude that it wasn't an
airplane or a helicopter. Reising expects interest to grow in UFO-watching
this summer. As tales of the sightings travel throughout the state, they draw
curious visitors to the Harrison County town, she said. Reising said people
from as far as Bloomington & Indianapolis've made the trip in the hopes of
being the next person to sight a UFO. "Everybody brings their lawn chair &
sits down on the side of the road," she said.

04-29-90 GULF BREEZE, Fla. An ex-convict who gained some fame with photos of
what he claimed were UFOs is being haunted by earlier pictures he took of
"ghosts" to entertain his children & their friends. National attention
focused on this Pensacola suburb & the skies overhead after a weekly
newspaper, The Gulf Breeze Sentinel, in November 1987 published pictures of
purported unidentified flying objects taken by a then-anonymous resident. Ed
Walters's since acknowledged he's the photographer. Walters's a Gulf Breeze
building contractor who served 18 months in prison for forgery in Duval
County & auto theft in Alachua County during the late 1960s, but he was
pardoned less than two months ago. Walters's written a book, "The Gulf Breeze
Sightings," & reportedly's been offered $450,000 for rights to do a
television mini-series. Several UFO investigators've challenged the
authenticity of the photos, showing a saucer-shaped object with rows of
square windows in the sky. Critics now contend they're double exposures.
Their conclusions're based in part on Walter's spooky party games described
by three Gulf Breeze women who'd been friends of his two children as
teen-agers. The women spoke to the Pensacola News Journal on condition that
the newspapern't reveal their names in a story published Sunday. "This's very
incriminating evidence," said Willy Smith of Altamonte Springs, Calif. "Ed
predicted what was going to happen & he made a ghost-demon appear." A
20-year-old woman said she posed for a ghost photo taken by Walters after a
mock seance in 1986. It showes a ghost-like image with two eyes & a large
mouth that appears to be reaching out for a 16-year-old Pensacola girl. "I
thought it was a big joke," the woman said. "He intended for the picture to
show up. Then I heard someone'd taken (UFO) pictures. I immediately just knew
it was him & I didn't believe it." Walters took the ghost photo, obtained &
copyrighted by Smith, with the same Polaroid camera used for the UFO
pictures. "I think this finishes him," Smith said. "I admire Ed. If I were to
fake pictures I'd use a Polaroid. There's no negative." In March, Walter
Klass, a former senior editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology Magazine,
criticized Walters' UFO photos at a meeting of the Committee for the
Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in Washington. He argued
it's easy to make double exposures with the type of camera Walters used &
that many of his UFO photos appear to be fakes. Zan Overall of Redondo,
Calif., a member of the Center For UFO Studies, said he's publishing a paper
that also will challenge the authenticity of the photos. It will be titled
"The Ghost-Demon Photo: Ed Walters' Nemesis?" & presented at the annual
meeting of the Mutual UFO Network. The July meeting will be held in Pensacola
because of interest generated by the Gulf Breeze sightings. Walters contends
that he didn't know how to take double exposures when he photographed the
purported UFOs & that the ghost photo's the result of reflections from a
glass door behind the teen-ager. He said he's taken several similar photos at
the same spot in his home. Smith, however, said the ghost photo, recently
published in the Orlando Sentinel's Florida Magazine, is different from
recreated pictures. The ghost photo's blurry on its edges & shows up on one
plane while the images in the reflected photos're clear & on two planes
because they reflect on each side of the thick glass door. Walters, however,
still's his defenders, including photographic expert Bruce Maccabee of Silver
Springs, Md., who said he could find no evidence of double exposure in his
UFO pictures. Walters also cites a 98-second videotape of the alleged UFO,
photos taken with other cameras & hundreds of other Gulf Breeze area
residents who've said they too've seen UFOs since the pictures were
published. Such criticism's nothing new, Walters said. In his book, he wrote,
"They've tried to label me a con man, liar, occult master, etc. But my
community knows me & rejected these charges." Critics say claims of contact
with UFOs traditionally accompany hoaxes & point out that literature
advertising a May 11-13 UFO conference in Miami Beach states Walters will
attempt to draw a UFO to him during a "skywatch." However, conference
organizer Jim Moseley said Walters's never claimed to be able to draw an
object to him & that the skywatch's a promotional opportunity to coincide
with a book-signing session with Walters. Walters said he won't take part in
the skywatch. Walters also's drawn suspicion to himself by reporting four
more sightings this year, perfect timing, critics say, for stimulating sales
of his book at the UFO convention in July. Walters said it hurts him that
critics're trying to turn his ghost photos & involvement with community teens
into something bizarre. "It was something beautiful," he said. "They don't
want people to think of Ed Walters as a responsible person, but as a
ghost-deamon, Satan-worshiper holding seances."

05-07-90 PEORIA, Ill. A local woman's composing music that's out of this
world from simple little melodies to grand keyboard compositions inspired by
what she described Monday as her contacts with aliens. Connie Cook, 42, said
she's been visited by "small, yellow-skinned" aliens in her bathroom, bedroom
& seen formations of alien spaceships in the skies over Peoria many times
since 1981. "I hesitated to ever speak out about this because I feared
criticism & ridicule," Ms. Cook said. "But after so many experiences, I
decided to speak out." Ms. Cook said her life changed in November 1981 when
she watched an unidentified flying object hover over Interstate 74 in Peoria.
Two city police officers reported seeing the strange white light, which
lasted 90 minutes before disappearing. Immediately after the experience, Ms.
Cook said she began hearing music inside her head & started writing it down,
despite no prior experience composing songs. In April 1987, the sightings
became more personal as a "small, yellow-skinned" alien appeared in her
bathroom. "It identified itself as the one who's been communicating with me,"
Ms. Cook said. "It'd silver eyes & had radiant beauty. I've no prior frame of
reference to describe it." Those experiences, along with numerous sightings
of silver globes hovering & flying in formation in the sky, inspired Ms. Cook
to compose. A local music critic, Jerry Klein of the Peoria Journal Star,
described her compositions as "sometimes ethereal, haunting & eclectic."
Overall, he said of her work: "most of it's very pleasant & listenable."
Probably the people most surprised by Ms. Cook's sudden musical ability're
her parents, LaVern & Genevieve Cook of Canton. "We're just a normal,
middle-class, middle-income family," said Genevieve Cook, 69. "We were
skeptical about this at first. "But we've seen such a dramatic change in her
personality & ability. Something's happened to the girl to give her the
ability to play & compose music all of a sudden. And she isn't the type to
make this up." Experts support the sightings of UFOs. They insist people like
Ms. Cook aren't insane. Philip J. Klass, an author of four books on UFOs,
defends the sightings. "Ninety-eight% of the people're telling the truth,
they aren't nuts or crackpots," Klass said. "The other 2% are mentally
disturbed." Robert Baker, a psychology professor at the University of
Kentucky, said many people with no sign of pschological problems often report
UFO contacts. "They aren't really crazy or psychotic," Baker said. "They lead
normal lives. They just've certain fixed ideas." Baker said about 45% of the
American population's "fantasy prone" & may be more receptive to delusions of
UFOs. He said some people're able to create an identity for themselves by
sighting an alien spaceship. Ms. Cook said she's not hallucinating. She
admits, however, that some of her inter-dimensional experiences may've been
dreams. With no photographic proof to support her sightings, Ms. Cook can
only point to her music as evidence of an extra-terrestrial influence in her
life. "They work through me because I'm a writer & I'm not afraid to talk
about it," she said. "If this's a delusion, then everyone should've one. It's
had such a wonderful impact on my life."

05-11-90 INDIANAPOLIS Bruce & Becky Merida can't explain what left a 25-foot
circle of mashed grass in their field northeast of Bloomington. The only
witnesses were their 12 pigs, & they aren't talking. On Wednesday, Merida &
his uncle, Junior Merida, came across the dead & yellowish grass about 200
feet from the pig pen. "I don't know if I believe in UFOs or not, but I'd
like to know what it is. It was just like on TV, a bunch of perfect circles,"
Bruce Merida said. The grass wasn't burned, Merida's wife Becky Merida said.
There were three depressions in the middle as if something landed on a
tripod, she said. The mysterious shape, made of smaller & smaller rings, is
off Miller Road about two miles east of Dolan Road. The Meridas, who live in
Bloomington, rent about 110 acres there, growing hay in the summer & keeping
pigs all year round. A power line 50 feet from the rings led Becky Merida to
speculate that if there were such things as visitors from outer space, they
might've used the electricity to recharge a ship. "We just'd our electrical
transformer stolen two weeks ago," she said. The Meridas said they've not
called police or health officials to examine the site.

05-11-90 HAILEY, Idaho The Blaine County sheriff's office's received a rash
of reports of strange objects & lights in the sky west of Hailey in recent
weeks, but an amateur UFO tracker thinks he can explain'em away. Most of the
sightings May 2 & May 4 were reported in the same part of the sky where
strange lights were first seen by residents on the night of April 19. Mike
Fidler of Burley's a member of the Mutual UFO Network, a private organization
of volunteers who track unidentified flying object reports. He said looking
into the April report led him to believe the sightings since then may've been
due to news reports drawing attention to the night sky. Fidler said many of
the descriptions sound as if people were looking at Sirius, the brightest
start in the sky. The sheriff's office received five calls May 2 about a
bright red & blue light in the sky southwest of Hailey. Fidler said Sirius's
been visible to the southwest recently, & it sometimes twinkles different
colors when it appears near the horizon. On the night in May 4, the sheriff's
office received two more reports of lights over the mountains west of Hailey.
One caller reported seeing three lights simultaneously, & the other said he
saw two lights at the same time. Barry Parker, an astronomy professor at
Idaho State University, said he'd received a couple of reports from people in
the Pocatello area about similar lights. But he said he'd been able to see
nothing himself, & could offer no explanations for the Hailey phenomenon.
Sgt. Steve Child at Mountain Home Air Force Base said the Air Force's not
investigated any of the reports. The Idaho Air National Guard controls the
flight path west of Hailey, Child said, & had no flights scheduled in that
area April 19.

05-12-90 MIAMI BEACH, Fla. Whether orn't UFOs exist, their fans do, & they'd
a close encounter with each other at a convention here Saturday. The annual
National UFO Conference which began with a beach-side saucer watch Friday
night under an almost full moon's drawn about 200 believers & ufologists,
organizers said. The conference features speakers ranging from reporters who
document other people's sightings to contactees who claim contact with
intergalactic travelers, including one Spanish-speaking alien. "Our purpose's
to inform, enlighten & hopefully entertain people with the different aspects
of UFOs...It's up to the audience to choose who to believe," said conference
sponsor James Moseley, looking like a professor in his horn-rimmed glasses &
gray suit, a "UFO research" button pinned to his lapel. One of the workshops
teaches "how to identify & locate your counterparts, soulmates & friends from
other worlds...find out what constellation you might've arrived on Earth
from, & what your special mission might be." West Palm Beach radio host
Carole Lynn Grant was to speak about psychic healing, an art she says aliens
taught her through mental contact. "My link-up with space beings's on a mind
level. I've not been on a spaceship physically, but I've been mentally," said
Ms. Grant, who says the aliens give her information about world events before
they occur. Once, Ms. Grant says, she was "hooked up to a spaceship solidly
for three years. It was like a garden hose running from my head to the
spaceship." The star of the weekend's Ed Walters, who first reported a flurry
of sightings in the small Gulf Coast town of Gulf Breeze. Walters, a
convention new release boasts, "has apparently been able to draw UFOs to him
almost on command." On Friday morning, however, Walters wasn't magnetic, he
was miffed. He was unhappy about a newspaper report quoting a non-believer.
This "debunker," Walters said, claimed Walters'd boasted he was levitated,
asked to disrobe & examined by aliens. Not true, Walters retorted. This's
what really happened: He saw a spacecraft, moved closer & "was struck by a
blue beam." Later, he also lost one hour & 15 minutes of time & sighted
4-foot-tall beings in silver space suits. "If someone wants to conclude I was
on a spacecraft, that's their prerogative," Walters said. The five conference
workshops'll be held through Sunday.

05-18-90 ANNAPOLIS, MD Lewin Maddox didn't know what to expect when a
neighbor led him into an old barn in Pasadena during the winter of 1944. What
he saw looked like a helicopter with a wheel instead of a blade to keep it
aloft. He was intrigued but didn't think much of it. Three years later,
however, in the midst of national hysteria over an invasion of unidentified
flying objects, Maddox learned that the curious object'd been seized by the
Air Force. "The Air Force apparently thought that it might be a prototype to
a flying saucer," the Glen Burnie resident recalled. "It was seized & taken
to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. But a week later, they decided it couldn't
possibly've flown." Government officials located the man who'd apparently
constructed the odd machine, effectively ending the debate & the county's day
in the UFO glow. Now, four decades later, local UFO enthusiasts say they've
sighted hundreds of unidentified flying objects in the Chesapeake Bay region.
At a recent Maryland State Conference on UFOs held at the Maryland Hall for
the Creative Arts, more than 60 believers gathered to share their views &
experiences on the curious phenomena. "We're very serious people studying
UFOs as a scientific element," said Bob Oechsler, of Edgewater, president of
the local chapter of the international Mutual UFO Network. "We've had
numerous sightings in the last two years. It's not a question of believing,
it's a matter of looking at the factual evidence." The evidence for Oechsler
& his followers's concrete hundreds of photographs showing strange glowing
objects of all shapes & sizes, videotapes of flying machines, & dozens of
accounts from residents who allegedly've been "abducted" by aliens. "We've
had medical examinations performed on people who've been abducted," Oechsler
said. "Many people claim that UFOs are just a bunch of lights at night. But
the credible evidence's there." Two years ago, a rash of UFO sightings over
the Chesapeake Bay led to the establishment of the local chapter of MUFON,
headed by Oechsler & Debbie Regimenti of Annapolis. Both say they've seen
numerous UFOs. The group now claims a dozen members & meets every month to
discuss the latest sightings in the region. "The Chesapeake Bay's a hot area
for sightings," Regimenti said. "We try to document the sightings & look for
reasons that (aliens) are here." The first to admit that many sightings of
unidentified lights can be explained by ordinary means, Regimenti also said
that the evidence pointing to the existence of UFOs can no longer be denied.
"The government's completely stopped claiming that UFOs aren't real,"
Regimenti said. "Once they remove the stigma & allow'em to be acceptable,
then we're on the right road." Several months ago, Regimenti & Oechsler
completed a report documenting their sightings & accounts from dozens of
other county residents. Entitled the "Chesapeake Connection," the report'll
be presented at the annual MUFON symposium to be held in Florida this summer.
"It's such a complex issue," Regimenti said. "We don't know who they are, but
we're looking for clues. All I can say is, don't laugh at your next door
neighbor when he says he saw something strange. Keep an open mind."

07-02-90 GULF BREEZE, Fla. A UFO-investigating group's been split by
controversy over whether photographs of unidentified flying objects
supposedly swooping over this Florida Panhandle city're for real. The Mutual
UFO Network, scheduled to begin its annual three-day symposium Friday in
neighboring Pensacola, officially remains "100 percent" in support of the
belief the photos're authentic, says Walt Adrus, international director of
the 2,600-member group. However, many members've expressed doubts about the
photos taken by Ed Walters, a Gulf Breeze builder & ex-convict, & some've
quit the organization because of its support of Walters. "Too bad they aren't
having the symposium two days earlier (July 4), because there're going to be
fireworks," said Ray Stanford, director of Project Starlight International,
an organization based in College Park, Md., that makes advanced photography
equipment available for UFO sightings. About 600 people're expected to attend
the MUFON symposium at the Pensacola Hilton. The organization decided to hold
the conference near here because of widespread attention the Gulf Breeze
sightings've received. Several other Gulf Breeze area residents reported
spying objects similar to those in Walters' photos since the pictures were
printed in The Gulf Breeze Sentinel, a weekly newspaper, about three years
ago. National television & newspaper reports followed. The recent discovery,
in the attic of a house formerly occupied by Walters, of a model flying
saucer similar to those in his photos's given new ammunition to those who
claim it's all a hoax. Walters, who's written a book, "The Gulf Breeze
Sightings," about his encounters with UFOs, insists the pictures're authentic
&'s speculated the model was planted by debunkers. The model, fasioned from
foam plastic dinner plates & blueprint paper, will generate talk, but
Stanford said he doubted it'd change MUFON's endorsement of Walters. "Some
people believe it, not as the result of science, but almost as a religion,"
he said. "They'd still believe in the Gulf Breeze photos if Ed confessed
(they were a hoax). They'd believe he was forced to confess." Walters'
credibility also's been attacked by Tommy Smith, 22, a former Gulf Breeze
resident, who said he & Walters took double exposures of a UFO model. Walters
also's denied Smith's story. Physicist Willy Smith, a co-founder of UNICAT,
an international UFO information-gathering group, claims he's
digitally-enhanced Walters' photos to show a support under the alleged flying
saucer. Another scientist, however, remains convinced the photos're
authentic. Bruce Maccabee, an optical physicist & MUFON's Maryland state
director, said what Smith sees as as a support's merely a defect caused by
the roller on Walters' Polaroid camera. Maccabee agreed that questions about
the authenticity of Walters' photos'll be a hot topic at the symposium.
"There're a lot of reputations on the line, a lot of money on the line," he
said. "A number of MUFON members're skeptical." A one-time MUFON
investigator, Bob Boyd of Mobile, Ala., was so skeptical that he quit the
organization in 1988 because of its support of Walters. The model & other new
evidence've prompted MUFON to reopen its investigation, but Boyd said he
doesn't think the organization'll seriously study the matter. "They just want
to save face," Boyd said. "I've absolutely no confidence in a MUFON
investigation. All of these people've lost their credibility."

07-07-90 PENSACOLA, Fla. "Glasnost" is having a cosmic as well as terrestrial
impact in the Soviet Union where UFO sightings no longer're passed off as
capitalist propaganda, says an international science writer. Along with the
new openness's come a rash of reports of landings, close encounters &
sightings of unidentified flying objects, says Antonio Huneeus, a
Chilean-American journalist who's written extensively about UFOs. Huneeus's
scheduled Sunday to address the 21st annual symposium of the Mutual UFO
Network on UFOs in the "Red skies" of the USSR. Some of the Soviet UFO
encounters've been reported in the US media, but Huneeus said at a news
conference Friday that little attention's been paid in this country to what
he considers to be a particularly significant sighting by the Soviet
military. "That case was admitted by none other than the chief of Soviet air
defense forces, Gen. Igor Maltsev," Huneeus said. "He published a
statement...in a Soviet newspaper to the effect that UFOs had been detected
by several radar units." Maltsev also reported that jet fighters were
scrambled & the pilots described a disc from 100 to 200 meters in diameter
flying at speeds two to three times faster than their aircraft, Huneeus said.
The general concluded the UFO'd somehow "come to terms with gravity" & that
it "didn't seem to appear to be a terrestrial machine," Huneeus said. Most of
the attention at the symposium's focused on Ed Walters, a resident of nearby
Gulf Breeze, who's made numerous photographs of purported UFOs. Some UFO
investigators contend the pictures're a hoax but MUFON officials, who
scheduled the symposium here because of interest in UFO sightings by Walters
& others in the Gulf Breeze-Pensacola area, contend the photos're authentic.
Their authenticity, however, has been called into question by the recent
discovery of a model flying saucer found in the attic of his former home &
statements by a former Gulf Breeze resident who claimed he saw Walters take
fake UFO photos. Walters, holding up one of his pictures, pointed out that
the UFO shown flying just above a road wasn't identical, although similar in
shape, to the model. He also distributed a nine-page response, including the
results of a psychological stress evaluator test that concluded he was
telling the truth when he said he didn't make the UFO model. About 600 of
MUFON's 2,600 members're attending the conference at the Pensacola Hilton &
Pensacola Civic Center. One of the more controversial presentations was to be
made today by John L. Spencer, a UFO investigator from England, on
differences between the perceptions of UFOs in the United States & Europe.
Americans tend to attribute UFOs to visitors from outer space while that
explanation isn't necessarily accepted elsewhere, causing rifts among US UFO
enthusiasts & their counterparts overseas, Spencer said. He said there's more
emphasis in other countries on what UFOs mean rather than what they are,
citing the experience of a Swedish woman who considered her sighting a signal
to be more concerned about the environment.

07-12-90 BRUSSELS, Belgium This country's air force's joined scores of
Belgians befuddled by hundreds of UFO sightings across night skies in recent
months. In the latest report, two air force F-16 jet fighters used their
radar screens to track an object that, according to a military official,
"exceeded the limits of conventional aviation." Speaking at a news conference
Wednesday, Belgian Air Force Col. Wilfried de Brouwer said the UFO dived from
about 10,000 to 4,000 feet in two seconds. At the same time, it increased its
speed from 600 to 1,100 miles an hour. De Brouwer said the air force decided
to wait before announcing the sighting in the early hours of March 31
"because we wanted to compare the radar sightings by our pilots with
observations from radar stations. UFOs are a sensitive issue. That's why we
don't want to approach this sighting emotionally." Since last fall, hundreds
of nighttime sightings of UFO've been reported over southern Belgium. Many've
been explained. In one case, the UFO turned out to be a vertical laser beam
used by a discotheque to attract clients. However, de Brouwer'd no
explanation for the sighting by the F-16s, which approached within about 12
miles of the UFO. He said police & civilians reported four UFO sightings at
the same time. The official said those reports "speak of a triangular object
with a bright red center light."

07-30-90 ELMWOOD, Wis. Rather than the fear & alarm flying saucers might
instill in most people, residents of this community decided UFOs were cause
for a festival. The village of 1,009 residents in west-central Wisconsin
marked the beginning of the 12th annual UFO Days festival this weekend. The
reason for the celebration's the town's reputation for dozens of UFO
sightings. "Every town around here seems to've its strawberry festival or its
cucumber festival or its potato festival, so we decided to've a UFO festival
because we've had a lot of sightings," said Caroline Schoeder, a festival
organizer. Elmwood first gained national attention 15 years ago when
respected policeman George Wheeler said he was attacked by a blue light from
a large flaming ball hovering over his squad car. More recently, Chippewa
Falls businessman Tom Weber attempted raising $50 million to construct what
he called the UFO Site Center, a landing pad in Elmwood that was to beam
welcoming lights into outer space. The plan was abandoned for lack of funds.
The sightings & the festival's reputation attracted 2,000 visitors who came
to see the parades, street dances & carnival rides. Events included a chase
of 500 paper plates dropped out of an airplane. Children who captured one
could trade it in for cash prizes. The community also crowned a UFO Day's
Queen. Elmwood's economy gets a boost from the festival thanks to the sale of
souvenir inflatable rocket ships, T-shirts, caps, mugs, ashtrays, badges,
bumper stickers & cosmic headdresses. But some visitors expected a more sober
atmosphere. Rusty Paar, 23, a spectator from La Crosse, came carrying a photo
copied document that he said outlined the federal government's cover-up of
UFO landings. "This whole event just looks like a bunch of people looking for
an excuse to party," Paar said.

08-07-90 FARGO, N.D. "Mystery circles" raising questions about an alien
presence in southern England've appeared in North Dakota. John Salter,
director for MUFON, a national UFO research group, has investigated three
sites in the state in the past 16 months one 50 miles west of Grand Forks,
another near Turtle Lake & a third at an undisclosed site in southwestern
North Dakota. Based on photographs & tests, two of the sites're "bonafide,
tangible, UFO landing sites." Farmer Allen Wagner found circles in a hay
field in May, 1989, near Turtle Lake. The largest's about 100 feet wide. "We
don't want people to think that we just believe this was a UFO phenomenon,"
said Sharon Wagner. "We'd like'em just to keep an open mind." Scientists
around the world've debated how the circles formed, & have come up with a
variety of answers ranging from wind & magnetic forces to alien landings &
hoaxes.

08-17-90 The serene, rolling pastures of the McCarthy farm in northeastern
Mississippi look like the last place in the world to hide a secret. Within
four months, a calf & a heifer were found savagely butchered on the 150-acre
dairy complex. No one knows who or what slaughtered them, & the McCarthys're
afraid the culprit might come back. "He goes out there with a light & a gun
now," said Bare McCarthy, referring to her husband, Taylor. "If he catches
whoever's doing it, he just might kill'em." Although Taylor McCarthy refused
to let veterinarian William McMillan perform necropsies on the carcasses,
McMillan said he got a good enough look to sense that something wasn't right.
"They were strange kinds of deaths. There're things in both cases that really
don't add up." On April 8, a 200-pound calf was killed within yards of
McCarthy's house. The cornea of one eyeball'd been cut out with surgical
precision, as well as half the tongue, McMillan said. But what was more
unusual was that there was no blood anywhere near the body. A 500-pound
heifer was later found in early July, with the left ear & 18 inches of skin
from its left rib cage cleanly severed. Where the hide'd been, a hole was
bored through to the beast's heart, which hadn't been removed. The
veterinarian doesn't think predators were responsible for the mutilations.
Teeth'd have left jagged, not fine, cuts. McMillan does concede it could've
been the work of cults, however. Authorities in Lee County, where the
McCarthy farm's located, as well as in other parts of Mississippi, are
familiar with occult groups. Sheriff's Dept. investigator Dan Crum said Lee
County'd a problem with satanic followers roaming the countryside in 1988.
James Crocker'd prefer officials to just come right out & admit they've no
idea what happened. "There're different types of animal mutilations. One's
the cult variety. But there's another, where the incisions're entirely
different. There's never any tracks, no vehicles, no symbols, no identifiable
characteristics that could link it to any particular person or organization."
In the 1970s, a wave of unexplained livestock mutilations swept Colorado &
the Midwest. Most were marked by skillful removal of parts & organs. In 1975,
after 130 mutilation cases were reported in Colorado alone, then-US Sen.
Floyd K. Haskell, D-Colo., asked the FBI to investigate. The two incidents on
the McCarthy farm reminded Crocker of what'd plagued Colorado. He's begun
buttonholing sheriff's deputies, farmers & veterinarians throughout the
state, hoping to collect information on any other mutilations that haven't
been reported. Crocker's found out that two other similar, unexplained
mutilations've taken place in the McComb-Brookhaven area within the last six
to eight months. "This thing's a senseless slaughter of animals. I believe
it's coming to a point where a comprehensive effort's needed to compile data
on a national basis & get something done." State veterinarian Frank Rogers
said the McCarthy mutilations aren't the only cases he knows about in
Mississippi. "Previous to now, I guess six to eight years ago, we'd something
similar reported in southwestern Mississippi, around Simpson & Copiah
counties. The farmers got together & began cruising the roads & the problems
stopped." In "An Alien Harvest," a book based on interviews & alleged
classified government documents, Linda Moulton Howe advanced a novel theory
to explain the bizarre mutilations. She suggested that UFOs might be beaming
up cattle, dissecting'em & then placing the remains back on earth. "The
pattern suggests that at least one non-human intelligence's manipulating &
harvesting earth life, that the alien life forms're controlling & using human
ignorance to accomplish the harvest." Other theories that saw print during
the heyday of the mutilations in the 1970s ranged from top-secret military
units experimenting with lasers to oil prospectors hoping to use animal
viscera to determine if valuable minerals lay beneath the grass the cattle
ate. Crocker's the first to admit he doesn't have any answers. "I mean, you
pick your theory. I don't have an explanation anymore than the hundreds of
thousands of law enforcement officials who've looked into this. There's a
million theories."

08-21-90 LAS VEGAS A Las Vegas man, Robert Lazar, who says he's witnessed UFO
research by the government in the Nevada desert, has been given probation on
a pandering charge. Lazar was a key figure in an award-winning television
documentary series "UFO's: The Best Evidence." The series by reporter George
Knapp aired on KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. Lazar claimed the US government was
researching alien spacecraft at secret sites in the desert north of Las
Vegas.

09-04-90 TURTLE LAKE, N.D. Mysterious circles in a farmer's hay field've led
to record enrollment in a University of North Dakota class on UFOs.
Registration for the class called "UFOs, ETs & Close Encounters" was closed
with 148 students, the most ever to register for a coursen't required at UND,
Professor John Salter said. "Obviously, it shows a broad recognition that
UFOs're real." The Turtle Lake circles in Allen & Sharon Wagner's hay
field're among a dozen or more in four sites that've appeared in North Dakota
over the past two years. No one's come up with a logical explanation for the
dead grass, loosened sod & straight-sided depressions that range from 3
inches to 24 inches deep at the perimeter. Some've suggested the dead grass's
the result of insects, hay stacks, badgers or chemical spill, but none of
those theories accounts for the size & type of depressions at the site.
Salter, the chairman of the UND department of Indian studies, became
interested in UFOs after he saw one in Wisconsin in 1988. Though he hasn't
visited the Wagner field he's convinced the circles're a "clean & clear
example of a UFO landing site." Similar mysterious circles've been found in
grain fields in England & Manitoba. Salter's UFO class'll meet once a week
for two hours, & students'll receive three credit hours for passing the
course. Salter plans to talk about his own experiences, as well as use films
& encourage discussions. But that isn't much consolation for the Wagners, who
still're looking for an explanation for the circles even after hundreds of
people've looked at the site. "We're back where we started from. We really
don't know anything."

09-13-90 A huge Hindu meditation symbol's been mysteriously plowed into a
remote dry lake bed in the southeastern Oregon desert. The symbol, known as
a sriyantra, measures about a quarter-mile across & is oriented to true
north. It's precisely laid out in the Alvord Desert along a training run
often used by Air Guard pilots, said Capt. Michael Gollaher. "Nobody's really
saying this's a UFO type thing. The word out at this time's that this's some
type of manmade object. "Most of the speculation's this's probably some sort
of cult thing. Nobody can figure out why somebody'd go to such effort to do
this out in god-awful nowhere." The pictograph was first reported Aug. 10 by
Lt. Col. Bill Miller, who returned Aug. 24 & photographed it from his RF-4C
Phantom jet. It's unlikely the design was built before the middle of July
because pilots would've spotted it. "The people in the photo interpretation
facility process the film & they say, `What's this, a hoax?' And we say, `No,
it isn't.'" No one recognized it immediately, but one of the photo
interpreters took a copy of the photograph home, where his wife, Alicia
Gloeckle, identified it in her series of Time-Life books on the occult. The
design's a square with T-shaped appendages on all four sides. Inside're three
concentric circles. Inside those're two concentric circles of lotus leaves.
Inside those're nine graduated triangles, four pointing one way & five
pointing the opposite, all overlapping. At the very center's another circle.
"It's a focusing device in meditation. This particular one symbolizes the
continuing of generations. It's a fertility type of thing, the continuation
of the species & the Earth." Sgt. Charlie Swindell drove out to the site on
US Bureau of Land Management range land. "It's beautifully done. I'd love to
meet the person that did this." Swindell measured the sriyantra to be 1,563
feet square. "The circle in the center's 9' 3", with a one-inch deviation,
which I consider to be a pretty doggone good circle." The design's made of
plowed furrows measuring six inches across & four inches deep. Swindell found
a number of surveying stakes at corners driven deep in the ground, with nails
& pink plastic ribbons on them. "Some of the architects around here said it'd
take $75,000 to $100,000 to survey it & lay it out." Swindell theorized that
someone used a garden tractor or rototiller to plow the furrows. Such a
machine could've folded over the earth to cover the tire tracks. There was
one motorcycle track through the design, apparently left by someone who never
noticed what he was riding through. "Unless you knew what you were looking
for, you wouldn't necessarily pay attention. But from the air it's very
visible." None of the ranchers he talked to in the area knew anything about
the design. "Somebody'd to be out there in 120 degrees for a couple of weeks
doing this. Because of the sparse population, you certainly could get away
with it."

09-14-90 LEOLA, S.D. Those odd marks that swirl through John Reis' wheat
field'll be gone soon before they can be checked out by UFO experts. Reis
said that two months ago, he noticed the pattern, which looks like a
backwards question mark. He went public with the news last month, looking for
answers, but all he got were a few phone calls from the curious. Reis's to
disk the field soon, & the marks'll be gone. "I've got other fields to do
first, but if it rains, I'll go in there & take it out. I don't want to, but
some of those weeds could get mighty tall by next spring." The marks
attracted the attention of a group known as the Mutual UFO Network. One of
the two active members of the group in South Dakota, Davina Ryszka of Custer,
said she wished she'd known about the incident sooner. "This's the first
we've heard of in South Dakota." The description of the patterns sounds
similar to some in England & that unusual circles've been found in North
Dakota fields.

09-18-90 ODESSA, Mo. When Lynda Lowe saw the circle of flattened grain in her
sorghum field, she was flabbergasted. But she eventually decided it was
probably just a trick of the wind. Others who've seen the circle in the field
near this west-central Missouri town think it could be something more
mysterious. UFO enthusiasts've been gathering near the field the last few
days, tromping the grain & getting in Mrs. Lowe's hair. "It doesn't look the
same. People've really messed it up & it's twice as big now. One of those
guys down there...thought maybe the spaceship'd landed again. There's been
some weird people out here." Mrs. Lowe & her husband, Roger, who own 140
acres about three miles from Odessa, first saw the strange configuration four
days ago. It was 20 to 30 feet wide. "We live on a hill & the field's down by
the road. I could see it from the house Friday, & I jumped in the car & drove
down there." The couple, although confused by the ring, didn't tell many
people about it. "I don't believe in UFOs for one thing. But it was strange.
It looked like a perfect circle somebody cut in the field. It was all just
lying flat & smooth." Then over the weekend, a woman photographer driving
through the area saw the field, took some pictures & began telling people
about it. The woman apparently'd seen pictures of mysterious circles in
fields in England. "She begged Rogern't to cut it. He should've cut it right
then." Tim Meyers, an investigator for the Lafayette County Sheriff's Dept.,
went to see the circle after his department heard reports of it. But it
appears to just be vandalism. "It looked more like kids trying to knock down
grain with a four-wheeler than a spaceship to me." "I've farmed here all my
life & I've never seen anything like it," said Terry Henning, who lives two
miles from the Lowes. "In England, they've seen a lot of lights in
association with the circles," said Thomas Nicholl, a Leawood resident &
member of the Mutual UFO Network. "In the absence of other information
(here), it's hard to tell what happened. It makes no sense." Erich Aggen Jr.
of the Mutual UFO Network & Monty Skelton of the Inter-Continental
Association of Research Enterprises took samples of the crops to send to
laboratories. "It's perplexing," Skelton said. "Had a heavy craft landed
there, some stalks'd have been broken & the grain crushed. It doesn't hold
water, as far as some type of craft landing, but it wasn't wind, either."

09-21-90 BATES CITY, Mo. Roger & Lynda Lowe, whose farm attracted national
attention this week after two mysterious circles appeared in their sorghum
field, aren't alone. Area residents're reporting similar circles in three
other fields two in Kansas & one in Missouri. They gave the oddities little
thought until they heard about the Lowes' field. "It's us wondering, `What on
earth?'" said Ruth McCahon of Raytown. She & her husband, John, were at their
farm south of Osceola last Friday when they saw a circle 30 to 40 feet wide
in their sorghum field. Three circles also've appeared in a pasture southwest
of Oskaloosa, Kan., & one in a field west of Topeka. But don't assume the
circles're proof of UFOs. The Lowes believe the wind's to blame, & scientists
& others agree there're more earthly explanations than UFOs. "Crop circles're
a phenomenon that've been going on in England since the early 1980s," said
Barry Karr, spokesman for Skeptical Inquirer, the official journal of the
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. The
organization's dedicated to debunking UFO & ghost sightings. "After 24 years
of investigating famous UFO cases, I've never found one that can't be
explained in earthly terms," said Philip Klass, a founding member of the
committee, who lives in Washington. "I'm quite certain that we've no alien
visitors in our skies. Whatever's generating these circles, it isn't an alien
spaceship." Some circles found elsewhere've proven to be the doings of
mischievous farmers or neighbors who'd rather propagate stories than irrigate
crops, Karr said. The Missouri circles're the first Karr's heard about in the
Midwest. Other circles've been found in Florida & Canada, he said. Barring a
hoax, there may a scientific explanation: the air itself. Meteorologists
speculate the crop circles may be caused by any of several atmospheric
disturbances. The two most likely candidates're microbursts, or spinning
winds that sometimes're called dust devils. Both're caused by temperature
differences in the upper & lower atmospheres that cause swirling winds or
powerful downdrafts. The swirling winds're "a common way for the atmosphere
to transfer momentum within a short space," said Glen Marotz, a meteorologist
& professor of civil engineering at the University of Kansas. "When the
atmosphere's faced with an energy imbalance, it acts like you'd expect it
would. It tries to get rid of them. One way's to create a spinning vortex.
There's nothing uncommon about that." Microbursts're sudden & powerful
downdrafts that easily could compress crops. "Microbursts've been implicated
in aircraft crashes when hard downdrafts're created." All the circles're near
roads & trees. Witnesses say none of the trees lost limbs, as they probably'd
have in a wind storm. Farmers say no crop disease could've caused the damage.
No tire tracks or footprints've been found in the circles. And in each case,
people who live near the circles say they neither heard nor saw anything
unusual. At the Lowes' place, the circles ruined about $1,000 worth of
sorghum. But the puzzling phenomenon turned the farm field into a tourist
attraction. Wednesday night, up to 43 cars were parked at one time along the
road. Lowe harvested the crop & obliterated the circles Thursday. The New
York Times's called twice & relatives of his from California, Boston & New
York phoned after seeing the circles on television. "I didn't ask for the
notoriety, & I'd rather've had (the sorghum) in the silo & forgot about it.
But it happened, & there's nothing I can do about it."

09-27-90 TOLEDO, Ohio When Harold Bricker left the marina at East Harbor
State Park, he thought he was taking a routine fishing trip with his family.
It became bizarre when Bricker encountered what he says was a sea serpent on
Lake Erie. The Bricker family saw a large creature moving in the water about
1,000 feet away from their boat. They described it as black, about 35 feet
long, with a snakelike head. It moved as fast as their boat. "I told my son
that I wanted to get a look at it," Bricker said. "My son said, `No way, that
thing's bigger than we are.' So we stayed where we were." They watched the
serpent disappear beneath the surface about two miles north of the Cedar
Point Amusement Park near Sandusky. When Bricker returned, he told park
rangers about the sighting. His story was backed up by his family, including
his wife Cora, 68, & son, Robert 35. Since the Bricker family saw the
creature Sept. 4, sea serpent mania's spread among lake front communities in
Ohio. The monster's been reported by five people on three separate occasions,
including a Huron firefighter & a 50-year-old grandmother from Pennsylvania
who was vacationing at her Lake Erie cottage. John Schaffner, editor of the
Beacon, a weekly newspaper in Port Clinton, has a toll-free phone for people
to call if they see the serpent. And in Huron, Thomas Solberg, owner of Huron
Lagoon Marina, has offered a $5,000 reward to anyone who captures the
creature alive. He's posted a sign at his marina calling it the future home
of the Lake Erie sea serpent. While the public's fun with Ohio's version of
the Loch Ness monster a creature that's haunted the Scottish lake for
centuries the sightings baffle local researchers. Charles Herdendof, a marine
biologist investigating the creature, said it's possible that there's
something unexplainable in Lake Erie. He frequently encounters inexplicable
things in his research. During an expedition in the Atlantic Ocean, a robot
camera videotaped a 20-foot long green shark that he said was 1,000 miles
south of where any like it'd ever been seen. Fred Snyder, a researcher with
the Ohio Sea Grant, an organization that examines Great Lakes issues, said
it's highly unlikely that a monster's living in Lake Erie. "I'm not trying to
be the sour old guy who throws a bucket of water on things. I love UFOs & the
Loch Ness monster I'm still just hoping that all of those're going to be
real. But something about the one in Lake Erie, I don't see where it could
come from." The reports're similar to about six made in 1985 & 1987, all of
huge snakelike creatures being seen in Lake Erie. The US Coast Guard'd no
other reports of a mysterious creature this year before the Bricker family
sighting. After the reports began this year, Schaffner's newspaper ran a
contest to name it. The name South Bay Besse was chosen in part because of
the location of the Davis Besse Nuclear Power plant near Port Clinton. "If we
look at things like the stories about the Loch Ness monster, which I don't
necessarily discount, Loch Ness'd connections to the ocean, it's
prehistoric," Snyder said. "When you look at Lake Erie, a lot of people kind
of assume, like most places in the world, it must be millions & millions of
years old. It's not the case. The glaciers receded & the area stabilized
about 12,000 years ago which, geologically, is just yesterday...So the
monster really can't be anything left over from the dinosaur days because
it's just too young." Snyder doubts a creature could've gotten in from the
Atlantic Ocean because of the difficulties of navigating the St. Lawrence
Seaway. "A big question's why hasn't the monster been noticed before, why's
this just now popping up. Let's go back to Loch Ness monster. That seemed to
be reported for hundreds of years periodically. There've been legends, like
Bigfoot. Even the Indians were talking about Bigfoot being there. Well, Lake
Erie Larry or South Bay Besse seems to've popped up around 1985, & if it'd
been in here for hundreds & thousands of years, there sure seems like there'd
be local legends among the Indians, among the settlers," Snyder said. "I
truthfully don't know what people've been seeing, but it's hard for me to
believe that there could be a monster out there." The sturgeon's Lake Erie's
largest fish reaching up to 300 pounds & 10 feet in length. But the
sturgeon's on the endangered species list &'re bottom dwellers. He speculated
that monster sighters may've seen a school of fish & mistakenly thought it
was a creature.

09-27-90 WICHITA, Kan. State troopers & motorists sighted a shimmering light
in the Kansas sky this morning. The National Weather Service said it was a
research balloon, not a UFO. Shortly before dawn, people from Marion to South
Haven in central Kansas began telephoning news departments at radio stations
with sighting reports. The object appeared to be stationary. Marissa Gray, a
Wichita woman who works the overnight shift at Winfield State Hospital, said
the object was clearly visible when she left Winfield for Wichita about 6:45
am. "It was so bright then I thought it was a chopper." A National Weather
Service spokesman said the light was the rising sun reflecting off a huge
National Scientific Balloon Facility research balloon launched from Fort
Sumner, NM earlier this week. The balloon's 450 feet in diameter & was filled
with 29 million cubic feet of gas. It originally rose to an altitude of
110,000 to 130,000 feet, the spokesman said. Its altitude & size made it
appear closer than it was as it began descending.

09-26-90 MIAMI, FL A former air traffic controller's positive he's unraveled
the secret of Flight 19, five Navy torpedo bombers that vanished in 1945 &
fed the Bermuda Triangle legend, but getting proof's going to be expensive.
Jon Myhre's solution was videotaped for a segment on NBC-TV's "Unsolved
Mysteries." But doubters include the Navy, Smithsonian Institution, six
publishers who rejected his book manuscript & People magazine, which held
Myhre's story after buying exclusive rights to his account. "I've given it my
best shot. I've done everything I can do," said Myhre, of Lantana, who's
spent his life savings of more than $100,000 to plot & pursue Flight 19's
five Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers. "I know I'm right. I'm justn't in
a position to prove it." Myhre's videotape, shot from a mini-submarine in
July, of an upside-down Avenger sitting in 390 feet of water about 35 miles
off Cape Canaveral, but doesn't have its serial number. The plane, just 2
miles from where Myhre predicted Flight 19 went down, was originally spotted
during the search for debris from the explosion of the space shuttle
Challenger, but ignored then. Flight 19's disappearance became part of the
legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area where ships & planes supposedly
disappear under mysterious circumstances involving UFOs, magnetic fields &
other such phenomena. Flight 19 even figured in "Close Encounters of the
Third Kind," in which first the planes & then the men were returned by
aliens. Myhre's answer to the puzzle came with a flash eight years ago when
he read the final radio transmissions from the warplanes, which took off from
Fort Lauderdale for a training flight over parts of the Bahamas on Dec. 5,
1945. The squadron leader's reported that both of his compasses were out of
order. At one point, the squadron leader plotted a northeasterly course based
on the assumption he'd somehow reached the Florida Keys, on the opposite side
of Florida. Myhre thinks that was part of the Bahamas' Abacos chain. At
another point he reported he was over an island & no other land was visible.
Myhre, who's flown the region for years, believes that was isolated Walker's
Cay. By re-plotting the flight from Walker's Cay, using the Navy
transcriptions of the flight's radio reports, Myhre came up with a location
where he thought Flight 19, its planes out of fuel, may've ended. The spot
was east of Cape Canaveral. The Avenger he filmed was found 2 miles away.
Myhre learned of the plane spotted during the Challenger search from news
reports. This summer, with $25,000 raised by two partners, he hired a small
research submarine & located the wreckage. He was unable to locate a complete
aircraft serial number on the upside down wreck. Footage of the Avenger shows
the last three digits 209 of a five-digit Navy service number on the left
wingtip. Flight 19's lead airplane number was 73209, & Navy records show only
two other Grumman TBM Avengers with service numbers ending in 209, & neither
was lost at sea. "The only thing we didn't get was a positive ID on the
plane's serial number," Myhre said, but raising the Avenger could cost
$250,000. The plane's landing gear's extended, leading some to suggest that
plane was lost while trying to land on an aircraft carrier instead of the
squadron's suspected ditch. But Myhre insists he's the right plane & knows
where the others are. "The other planes're further north in much deeper
water, I'm certain. This was just the first to ditch. And the tragic thing
about it's he was only about seven minutes from land. If they'd just kept
going west..."

10-08-90 ELMWOOD, Wis. A recently published book billed as an expose of the
government's clandestine search for extraterrestrial life in Elmwood's
renewed interest in this west central Wisconsin town. Mayor Lary Feiler, 48,
has gone from a small town administrator to a sought-after guest on talk
shows dealing with UFO sightings. He attributes the recent fame to "Out
There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extra-Terrestrials," written by
former New York Times reporter Howard Blum. The book mentions the town of
1,009 about 45 miles west of Eau Claire throughout the text, commenting on
residents' reports of numerous UFO sightings in the surrounding hills over
the past 15 years. The stories've become the focus of an annual community
festival called "UFO Days." In the last two weeks, Feiler's been interviewed
by telephone on two radio stations in New Zealand & one in Australia &
featured on the TV programs Hard Copy & The Oprah Winfrey Show. Although the
book's accurate, it exaggerates some details. The harrowing description of
Carol Forster's encounter with a UFO was "played up as much more dramatic
than she ever reported it." The efforts of Tom Weber to build a
multimillion-dollar landing site for UFOs near Elmwood're described in the
book. Weber spent two years trying to build an extraterrestrial welcome
center on a high plain above the village. Now, living near Mauston, where
he's recovering from a heart attack, he doubts the book'll result in
significant donations to his "UFO Site Center." "It might generate funds for
Howard Blum, but it's not going to result in anything meaningful." Blum
disagreed. "When I wrote `Wanted,' the government said nothing could be done
about Nazi war criminals. But since its publication, many've been deported."
For Blum, who was in Milwaukee last week as part of a 12-city promotion tour,
"Out There" is an effort to force the federal government to reveal the extent
of its spending on UFO research & its "malicious & illegal attempt to
discredit UFO believers. I hope that the government'll tell all & that we'll
find out how much money's being spent on the search for extraterrestrial
life. After all, it's our tax money." Blum already's sold the television
rights to his book.

10-13-90 NORTH HAVEN, Conn. The stories'll be flying this weekend about alien
creatures with three-digit hands & windowless, disc-shaped spacecraft. And no
one'll be laughing. More than a dozen UFO researchers & people who claim
to've been abducted by aliens're meeting in North Haven for the fourth annual
international conference on "The UFO Experience." Robert Luca & Betty
Andreasson Luca of Connecticut'll be there. Betty, 53, who doesn't want her
address known, says she was a 7-year-old Massachusetts resident when aliens
first visited her in 1944. Luca, whose encounters've been described in
several books, says she was abducted three times by gray-skinned, hairless
creatures, 3 feet to 4 feet tall with three-digit hands & holes for ears &
nostrils. "It's not only me. There're hundreds of thousands of cases already
documented worldwide. There're many who haven't reported it because they
can't deal with the bizarreness of it." Ed Walters of Gulf Breeze, Fla., will
also be there. He'd tell the conference about the day he came home from a
construction job in 1987 & saw a round, glowing object hovering near his
driveway. It was the first of his reported experiences with UFOs. UFO
researchers attending the conference issued an appeal to President Bush to
"take the wraps off the governmental cover-up of the UFO situation." "We want
Bush to put an end to the secrecy over research by the intelligence &
military community into UFOs & to tell the American public & the rest of the
world the truth about what they've found," said John White, whose business,
Omega Communications, is putting on the conference. A copy of the appeal was
mailed to the White House. White, who describes himself as a researcher of
paranormal phenomena, said the conference at the Holiday Inn's a chance for
people (at a full weekend cost of $150, unless they pre-registered for $120)
to meet the leading figures in the field of UFO research. White saw a UFO in
1987 in Pine Bush, NY. He described his encounter as a nighttime sighting of
an unusual light. "I didn't see a metallic craft without windows. As a
seasoned investigator in these phenomena, I was unable to explain it by any
natural cause." Ninety% of UFO reports come from well-intentioned people
whose sightings can be explained as natural phenomena or known technology,
according to Robert Bletchman, a Manchester attorney & public relations
director the Mutual UFO Network. The network estimates 2.5 million Americans
have'd valid UFO sightings, including 25,000 Connecticut residents. It's
possible some sightings may be explained by secret military projects, such as
development of the Stealth bomber, long kept under wraps. But: "I'm convinced
some UFO sightings represent human contact with an extraterrestrial
presence." "For someone to tell me (there's no such thing as a UFO) after
never having looked at all the evidence, then that's just an ignorant
opinion." Kenneth Feder, an anthropology professor at Central Connecticut
State University who's studied UFO literature, said many believers're people
who take comfort from the idea there're more intelligent beings somewhere in
the universe. "I'm not saying these folks're replacing their religions with
UFOs, but there's an undercurrent in most UFO literature that we've screwed
up the planet badly & these guys're out there watching & will come down &
take charge when we're about to destroy ourselves."

10-19-90 MILAN, Ill. Droves of camera-toting tourists're flocking to Kathy
Bost's corn field to take a look at a giant circle that's causing some to
wonder if flying saucers've been visiting western Illinois. Bost isn't sure
a flying saucer landed on her farm. But she says no one's offered a better
explanation for the perfect circle, 46 feet in diameter, sitting smack-dab in
the middle of acres of corn. Her brother-in-law, James Lawson, was harvesting
corn from Bost's rural Rock Island County farm when he saw a site that nearly
knocked him off his combine. The stalks'd been bent over & flattened in a
sweeping, clockwise pattern. A small circle of brown dirt peeked through the
center. "That's the strangest thing, I tell you. It's like something landed
there, in a sense." Lawson told police that he spotted no footprints, vehicle
tracks or cut marks that'd indicate a hoax. "We checked it out, & we don't
have any explanation at this time," said Rock Island County Sheriff Mike
Grchan. "If it's kids or pranksters, it'd be awfully hard to swish the corn
down that flat & even." With police stumped, geologists from nearby Augustana
College were brought in to determine the source of the smashed circle. "The
best they could come up with's a wind phenomenon." Though Bost isn't
convinced she now owns a UFO landing pad, she doesn't discount the
possibility. And the doubts haven't discouraged the carloads of
curiosity-seekers, who stream toward the mysterious clearing & turn Bost's
desolate corn field into a scene out of "Field of Dreams." "I've got a small
farm, but I've never'd anything like this," said a perplexed Virgil
McCormick, 59, of nearby Reynolds. "I hope it's (caused by) the wind." "I'd
like to've been here when it happened," said Gene Nielsen, who drove 60 miles
from his Annawan farm. "There's lots of other things people don't know about,
& I thought, `By golly, it beats going to England.'" Nielsen was referring to
300 crop circles similar to the one in Milan that've appeared in England &
continental Europe during the past year. Scientists've spent millions of
dollars trying to determine the origin of the circles, but so far've failed.
Similar circles also've been discovered in Canada, Japan & the United States,
including six in North Dakota in less than two years. "Most of us're quite
convinced that many of these circles're bona fide UFO landings or're related
to UFOs," said John Salter, sociologist at the University of North Dakota &
director of that state's chapter of the Mutual UFO Network. Because the Milan
circle lacks scorch marks, it's doubtful a UFO landed there. But it could be
a "calling card" left by aliens using some sort of energy beam. "There isn't
any reason to be afraid," Salter said. "These're formed by visitations
designed to sensitize us that is, us humans to the existence of
extraterrestrial life."

11-05-90 CHARLOTTE, NC More than 150 people attended the annual meeting of
the Mutual UFO Network where they heard a hypothesis that the government's
agreements with creatures from outer space. "One must consider these
possibilities, all possibilities when studying UFOs, but still maintain a
healthy dose of skepticism," said ufologist Ginger Richardson at the meeting
at Charlotte's Pfeiffer College. "As ufologists, we must wade through the
garbage to get to the kernel of truth...We know something's definitely going
on." Ms. Richarodson said according to the hypothesis, the government gets
advanced technological knowledge in exchange for harmless medical experiments
on humans. But according to the hypothesis, the aliens've violated the pact
by implanting trackers in human brains, murdering humans for food &
impregnating women to create hybrid offspring. MUFON's an international
organization founded in 1969 to investigate the UFO phenomenon. Topics at the
meeting ranged from evil aliens abducting humans to creating an atmosphere
for bilateral exchange. Steven Greer of Asheville says all aliens aren't
evil. A real chance exists for bilateral communication. It's called the CE5
Initiative, "CE" meaning close encounter. But humans must extinguish
destructive behaviors, like war, before alien contact can begin. "The
extraterrestrial civilizations're out there & are indeed wanting us to get to
the place where they feel more comfortable having an exchange," said Greer,
director of the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence in
Asheville. "But they're cautious of their own security as well."

11-11-90 BILOXI, Miss. Space aliens're just make-believe, Eddie Hickson's
father told him. Years later, the elder Hickson said those same space
aliens'd snatched him from the banks of the Pascagoula River in Jackson
County & took him on board their dome-shaped craft. Charles Hickson Sr., a
modest Gautier man & a retired shipfitter foreman at Ingalls Shipyard, told
a crowd of about 200 conventioneers at the Great Gulf Coast UFO Gathering in
Biloxi about the day that changed his life. Hickson, now 59, & fellow
shipfitter Calvin Parker were fishing at an abandoned shipyard Oct. 11, 1973.
"All of the sudden I heard some kind of hissing sound like steam leaking out
of a pipe," Hickson said. "I saw some kind of craft hovering about 18 inches
about the ground. I didn't know what to do. It appeared round with a dome on
top & there were two blue pulsing lights on what appeared to be its front. A
door opened & a very brilliant light came out, then three things came out &
two of'em took ahold of me & one took Calvin. When the one took hold of my
left arm, it hurt, & then I didn't feel anything but my eyes. They were about
5-foot, 6-inches tall & they'd elephantlike skin, grey & very wrinkled. The
skin ran horizontal. Their arms were very long in proportion to the rest of
their bodies." His book, UFO Contact in Pascagoula, may soon be made into a
movie. Once the beings released him inside the craft, Hickson became
suspended in midair & watched an electronic eye come out of the craft's wall,
scan his body, then retract into the wall. After hypnosis unlocked his
subconscious, Hickson recalled the faces of three male human-looking beings,
who observed the examination from behind a window. "I kept wondering what
they were going to do to me. They glanced at my eyes; then they carried me
back & out through the brilliant light & put me down on the ground. Calvin
was lying there on the river bank, his arms outstretched, & he seemed to be
going into shock. I'd to slap him & scream at him to get his attention," said
Hickson, a Jones County native & Army veteran of the Korean War. Parker now
lives in south Louisiana & has suffered two nervous breakdowns since the
incident. Fearing they'd be labeled insane, Hickson & Parker considered
keeping their experience a secret, but reported it to the Jackson County
Sheriff's Dept. that night. Since that eerie evening, the aliens've
communicated with Hickson telepathically. Rubbing a flat, gray, quarter-sized
object, Hickson explained that the disc heats up before he receives
telepathic messages. Hickson's undergone numerous psychological evaluations.
"I know these things sound very strange & I don't expect you to believe them,
but I hope one day you will." Eddie Hickson, 36, has never thought his father
was insane. He's watched him turn down handsome cash offers for his story
over the years, fearing people'd think it a hoax. "I know in my heart & my
mind that daddy didn't make this up."

11-15-90 BEND, Ore. The elaborate Hindu meditation symbol carved in a
southeastern Oregon desert last summer probably was made by UFOs & not a band
of Iowa artists, a science professor claims. James Deardorff, a research
professor emeritus at Oregon State University, alleged the government
concocted a "cover story" with Iowa artist Bill Witherspoon & five others to
explain the quarter-mile-wide symbol. "Their story doesn't make any sense. I
wonder if the government took'em out & told'em what to say, where they camped
& how they did it." Deardorff retired four years ago from teaching in the
university's Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences. He now looks into the "UFO
phenomenon" full time. Witherspoon said in a telephone interview there's
nothing mysterious about the huge shri yantra symbol he & others dug in a dry
lake bed north of the Alvord Desert. "No, it wasn't aliens. It was just some
guys." Mark Armstrong, spokesman for the US BLM, also denied that the
government tried to hide the truth about the Hindu symbol. "There's no
connection between any so-called UFO activities & this drawing that
Witherspoon & those with him did. We're fully satisfied that we got to the
truth of the matter." Witherspoon & five companions laid out the intricate
design using an old garden cultivator, 12 miles of twine, survey stakes, a
tape measure, a pair of binoculars & a blueprint. The design was discovered
by an Idaho Air National Guard pilot during a training flight Aug. 10. The
discovery wasn't revealed publicly until mid-September, however. Witherspoon
later came forward to claim the work. The BLM fined him & his group $100 for
defacing public land. Deardorff said he wasn't convinced after studying a
videotape of the symbol & studying Witherspoon's account. "My concern in
this's that some group in some branch of our government's behind this in
doing their best to keep the citizenry from connecting the ground pattern to
the patterns in the wheat in southeast England, for example, because of the
reported UFO association with the latter." He was referring to unexplained
large circles & other geometric shapes that appeared in England last spring
& summer. Deardorff was suspicious about a number of elements in
Witherspoon's story, including the fact that the drawing supposedly was
discovered just a day after it was completed but wasn't reported until about
40 days later. "Why that big delay? The time was there for'em to build up a
cover story." He also didn't believe that the artists could've drawn such a
perfect symbol, with its neat, uniform furrows, with an old cultivator. And
he questioned whether the artists could've worked in the 90-degree desert
heat for 10 days without running short of water. Deardorff also wondered
about the lack of footprints around the symbol. Witherspoon said a rainstorm
washed'em away. Deardorff asked why the artists didn't explain why they chose
the ancient meditation symbol. "It's as if they want to stay away from any
discussion of the symbol. I can't see anything in the confession letter that
rings true." Deardorff's filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the
BLM to get Witherspoon's address, & said one of his associates plans to
closely question the artist.

11-19-90 CULVER, Ind. Reported sightings of unidentified bright lights in the
sky've dozens of residents in this small farming town thinking about close
encounters, possibly of the third kind. Since early October, talk's centered
on strange light patterns hovering above the town's landscape in northern
Indiana. Melanie Wagner's seen lights about three or four times a week,
usually around 8:15 pm while driving along Indiana 10, a desolate country
road. She first saw the lights Oct. 4 & has been seeing'em every clear night
since then. "I've seen lights suspended in the sky, then go up & down, & go
in all directions. I've seen'em turn off all their lights & appear to've
disappeared. And then turn'em back on several hundred feet across the sky"
Wagner's seen four to five different light patterns but that the most
common's triangle-shaped. Other people've reported bow ties & circular
patterns. Fred Karst, editor of The Culver Citizen, said his newspaper's
received "quite a number of calls" about possible unidentified flying objects
in recent weeks. He even saw some strange lights in the sky the evening of
Oct. 4, the same night of Wagner's sighting. "I don't know whether it was a
UFO or not, but at the time, I thought it was a meteor. It descended in the
sky above me down toward the horizon. I didn't attach any greater
significance to it until I started hearing other people'd been seeing
different things that same night." While some people speculate the lights're
military aircraft, officials at Grissom Air Force Base, two counties south of
Culver, say that's not possible. "Nothing that they (citizens) describe meets
the description of what we'd be flying out here," said Lt. Bill Harrison, a
public information officer with Grissom. The base flies KC-135 strato tankers
(similar to a Boeing 707) & A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft. Capt. Cathi
Kiger of the Indiana National Guard said flares're often used for training
exercises & on ranges when firing artillery. "But I can't find anything that
we might've done that'd have contributed to these lights." A dispatcher for
the Marshall County Sheriff's Dept. said the department's received "a couple
phone calls but we never found anything." And Argos Police Chief Jim Buroughs
said there're lots of "rumors on the streets but I haven't seen anything
yet." However, Gary Flagg, a security guard from Argos, has seen something,
& often. He's been keeping a log since he first spotted the lights on March
7. He was driving to work at 9:45 pm when he says he saw a white,
triangular-shaped light pattern. "I just stopped on 17th Road (in Marshall
County) & got out of the car & watched. That one was about 500 feet over the
top of the car," he said, reading from his log. "It moved real slow,
extremely slow. I don't even know how it stayed in the air." Flagg didn't
report the sighting to police, but did confide in his wife. Then on Oct. 3 &
5, he was driving with his family when again the triangle-shaped lights
appeared. His sister, Cindy Flagg, a preschool teacher who describes herself
as "a skeptic," also saw them. "There was a triangular thing going over. It'd
three or four lights...It was going really slowly & there was no sound." A
common place to watch's been the Poplar Grove United Methodist Church &
cemetery, located along Indiana 10. Jan Johnson, a Culver Citizen
photographer who went to the cemetery with Wagner one night, shot a picture
of the object, which resembles "a string of pearls. That's what the light
pattern looks like. I saw little flashing twinkling lights...I don't know
(what it was); I'm dying for someone to tell me what I've shot."

11-26-90 MOLINE, Ill. There mayn't be a grain of truth to it, but some
Illinois farmers think they might've experienced a close encounter of the
corn kind. "People might think it's crazy," said Mike Thompson, "but it was
there." The "it" is a 64-foot, perfectly round section of flattened
cornstalks found on farmland Thompson's leasing near Moline. The patch of
crushed crop's like a 46-foot imprint found by farmer James Lawson Oct. 16 in
his field in rural Milan. Except for their differences in size, the two
patches of trampled earth're almost identical. Both're in Rock Island County
only several miles from each other, & both're a few hundred feet from major
highways. The one on Thompson's property near John Deere Expressway was found
by Port Byron farmer Mike Searle as he was helping harvest corn for Thompson.
"I about ran into it, so I backed out & went around it," Searle said. "I was
surprised. All the corn around it was standing. It was fine. There's got to
be a reason for it, but when you figure it out, tell me." Lawson's already
figured out that the circle on his property was made by an unidentified
flying object. "Whatever it was, it came down from the elements & took off,"
reasoned Lawson. "I think it's a UFO landing. I think they landed there."
Lawson never believed in UFOs before. "But I definitely do now." Word of the
first strange circle brought hundreds of onlookers to Lawson's farm, & he's
been interviewed by dozens of reporters. Lawson was scheduled to appear on
NBC's "Unsolved Mysteries" with people from North Dakota & Missouri who also
discovered circles in their corn fields. But when the other two men decided
against being interviewed, the show was canceled. Rock Island County Sheriff
Mike Grchan plans to consult experts at the universities of Illinois & Iowa
& to ask the Illinois State Police to've their patrol airplane keep an eye
out for anything similar. In the meantime, Grchan's a few ideas about how the
circles got there. One's that the phenomenon was caused by the wind. Another
is that "It's reallyn't explainable."

12-01-90 CASPER, Wyo. Unidentified flying objects're actually messengers from
a higher intelligence trying to help people understand reincarnation. Leo
Sprinkle, a former University of Wyoming professor, said that 75% of the
people who have'd some contact with UFOs believe in reincarnation, showing
the two issues're linked with each other. Encounters with UFOs can be
experienced at four scientific levels, ranging from the physical level to the
spiritual level. At the physical level, researchers hope to prove or disprove
the existence of UFOs with physical evidence, while at the spiritual level,
UFOs're seen as "a program for cosmic consciousness conditioning," improving
awareness of reincarnation.

12-31-90 ASHEBORO, NC It fell from the sky over Randolph County, butn't
everyone can say what it was. Steve Harrell's 7-year-old son saw it & cried
"Jet crash! Jet crash!" Harrell turned his video camera toward it & began
shooting. "It was a bright light falling from the sky," said Harrell. "I
didn't know what to think. It looked like a big ball of fire. It started
floating down & then it was gone." He heard no crash & found no jet, & was
left with the suspicion he'd witnessed something strange about 5:30 pm that
Christmas Day as he videotaped son Nathan on his new go-kart. "I don't think
it came from outer space. There's an explanation. Got to be." The Asheboro
Municipal Airport didn't have one, neither did the Randolph County Sheriff's
Dept., neither did the local television crew who took Harrell out in a
helicopter to search the area. George Fawcett, director of the NC Mutual UFO
Network, thinks he knows. "Off the top of my head, with out having really
investigated, it looks good. It fits the pattern of a large number of UFO
sightings in North Carolina large objects seen at low altitude...multiple
lights."


                        End of 1990 UFO Sightings File
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