The Colusa UFO Sightings ~ September 10th, 1976.

Bill Pecha describes a pretty freaky UFO experience in the video below (taken from Orkojoker's thread here) where he describes a very strange object hovering about fifty feet over his barn in Colusa, California on September 10th, 1976 - he also states two smaller objects were over the nearby high-voltage power lines which looked like they were 'drawing energy'.

After witnessing the main object which he described as a 150 foot wide, saucer shaped object with a high, concaved dome and porcelain finish, it's stated that he woke up his wife and children and drove them to a nearby neighbour's house who also witnessed the object - the UFO then moved across the town of Colusa before departing at high speed.

Testimony begins at 2:40

As an interesting footnote it's also said the local town and two other nearby areas experienced power blackouts during the time of the sighting and the main witness experienced a severe electrical tingle which 'made the hair on his head and body stand on end and crackle' - I've heard James Oberg attribute this sighting to a ‘light show’ from a Vandenberg AFB missile launch but the close range testimony does sound quite compelling (and detailed).

Witness Sketch and Statement:

"The more I looked, the more details I was picking up on. These flexible type cables hung down and this light like an upside down ice cream cone came out of the bottom – but only so far down and the beam of light never touched the ground. It was almost as if this thing knew I was there because the minute I stepped out beyond the house it began to move silently away from me, toward the west."

“That’s when I began to see the upper part, the dome. The bottom was spinning rapidly clockwise but a smaller part on the bottom was spinning counterclockwise. And as it began to move away, these six hose-like appendages began moving up and suddenly were gone. At the same time two claw-like hooks just curled up on the bottom. As these appendages retracted, two little covers opened on the top of the hull and out comes a pair of lights that shined a beam of blue light on the ground."

"I was horrified by what I was seeing."

Power Line UFOs:

Map:

"The little ones were the same shape as the big UFO and they also had these two small lights on either side with blue light coming out of them. Each of the little ones was shining a light blue light on the metal towers near them and the entire towers were glowing blue,” Pecha said. "But inside those shafts of blue light was a darker, jerky stream of blue light that seemed to be flowing toward the UFOs, as if they were drawing electricity from the wires."

UFO Made His Hair Stand On End And Crackle

Other Witnesses:

Pecha was not the first person to report a UFO that night. Fred Harris, seventeen, had gone to the Sheriff’s Department a few minutes earlier to report that he and his mother had seen a strange object in the sky west of their home. The Pecha home was almost due west of their house..


Witness Sketch:

"I'm really bad on how large things are but it was really a very large object,” she said. “The whole bottom was a massive, brilliant white light. And the top of it was dark in the middle. You couldn't see any windows or anything but you could definitely see the whole outline of the object.

“I don't know if this was from the light being so bright and throwing a glare so I could see the outline of the top or because of the type of metal it was made of. But it was very clear that the outline of the dome was there."

Links:

MUFON Journal -October 1976 (pdf)

UFO Sound - Hum / UFO Reconnaissance - Power Plant/ Lines

ABC News Report:

ABC News (U.S.) UFO TV News Report: Dr. J. Allen Hynek Interview & Colusa, California UFO Sighting

Another interesting report, thanks

I am especially intrigued by the idea that the UFOs were drawing power from the electric lines—I believe aliens allegedly explained to abductee Herbert Schirmer that that was a source of power for them.

ETA:

After the hypnotic session had ended, Schirmer was able to recall even more details about the encounter. The beings were friendly, they drew energy from electrical power lines, and they had a base on Venus.

link
another

Thanks for bringing this one up, karl. I wanted to post this on your "high strangeness" thread the other day, but I couldn't recall the when and where of it. The cables and hooks hanging down from the object are details I've not encountered in other cases. Super odd.

I'm also impressed by the candor of the witnesses in their descriptions of their feelings at the time (ie. "I thought it was doomsday" and "It was frightful"). In my opinion, these people saw pretty much exactly what they said they saw.

So Jim Oberg tried to dismiss this testimony as being prompted by a light show at a nearby military base? I'd like to take him seriously sometimes, but if he's going to say things like that he can just take his former-NASA faux debunkery and go home.

reply to post by Orkojoker

So Jim Oberg tried to dismiss this testimony as being prompted by a light show at a nearby military base? I'd like to take him seriously sometimes, but if he's going to say things like that he can just take his former-NASA faux debunkery and go home.

I would definitely agree with that.

Star

This isn't a direct criticism of this specific report, but more of a observation in relation to other claims in the general UFOlogy forum.

From time to time, names and faces will show up in the UFO arena claiming knowledge of how UFOs work.
This usually involves claims regarding free energy, and anti-gravity, all rolled into one.
some examples of this can be seen in this thread: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Accounts and testimony making statements that such craft siphon electricity from power lines (conspicuously so in an area of human habitation as opposed to some far off area with power lines well away from people) are then a bit inconsistent with the free limitless energy claims.

How many other accounts are there claiming this electricity siphoning?

These were great UFO and Alien reports. Thanks for sharing.

This case reminds me of the 1965 encounters in and around Exeter, New Hampshire (Incident at Exeter-John G. Fuller) The incident starts with Norman Muscarello's original sighting which was followed up that night by police officers. The next two months saw repeated sightings of similar craft hovering above and around power lines, reported many times to have "appendages" or "lines" hanging down from them...

Originally posted by Druscilla

How many other accounts are there claiming this electricity siphoning?

Druscilla, that's an interesting question and maybe it might be worth collating reports as I've seen it referred to a few times over the years - there's mention of it in the video interview below where a UFO was witnessed by engineers over Padiham Power station in Lancashire but I'll look for more reports.


The Cayton UFO Files

Originally posted by Orkojoker

So Jim Oberg tried to dismiss this testimony as being prompted by a light show at a nearby military base?

He did mention it yes mate - perhaps he could expand on the theory in your new thread when he finds the time.


Jim v. Jim: Two Opposing Views of UFOs


Cheers.

Originally posted by Orkojoker
So Jim Oberg tried to dismiss this testimony as being prompted by a light show at a nearby military base? I'd like to take him seriously sometimes, but if he's going to say things like that he can just take his former-NASA faux debunkery and go home.

Nope. Not so. Once again you're using your own wild imagination as a source of phony 'facts' to make you feel smarter than the average ATSer.

One of the difficulties in comparing the eyewitness reports to possible prosaic sky events is that the accounts do not provide unambiguous descriptions of the DIRECTION -- azimuth and elevation -- and angular motion of the apparition. I'd appreciate it if a more diligent analyst could read over all these reports and reduce them to that usable format. If we come to a consensus on that raw data, perhaps new analysis can be conducted.

There is no known prosaic sky event for that date that I could find.

One question that struck me was whether there had been an early reportage oversight in assigning the day-of-week to the date-of-month because it occurred so soon after midnight. Although it became documented that it was an early Friday morning ["late Thursday night"], I recall, a work day, the witnesses's behavior and described attitudes seemed more consistent with an early weekend morning [late Friday early Saturday]. I'd appreciate any views on that possibility.

The case is indeed most interesting because it apparently is so rare in its physical description of the apparition. But since the description IS evocative of some other eyewitness descriptions, in shape, that ARE associated with a specific type of prosaic cause, I thought it worth following up.

Very significant that Jim Oberg acknowledges that there’s no prosaic explanation for the Colusa report if the date is right.

But the September 10 1976 date is correct.

Multiple witnesses and the fact that two Colusa City policemen rushed to the scene minutes after the sighting rule out any other date.

And even if someone proposes a prosaic explanation for the stimulus, such as helicopters, I can’t see how Bill Pecha could have transformed this into a detailed, highly plausible, scientific description of ET probes engaged in surveillance of human technology.

The Fermi paradox tells us to expect such probes.

These three probes may have taken advantage of the bright moonlight night to survey the area. In a few minutes, they apparently deployed an array of sensors to investigate the surface chemistry of Bill Pecha’s barn roof, did some neat trigonometric surveying based on a mountain peak twenty miles away, surveyed the Pecha and Davis properties and used exotic ‘light’ beams to investigate the power lines and their metal supporting poles.

Similar beams have been reported by several other UFO witnesses:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Possible ET probes have apparently used such penetrating, energetic beams, perhaps akin to ionised plasma waves, to ‘see’ inside houses and cars. At Colusa, according to Bill Pecha, the heat from the beams made the power lines glow red. And you don’t have to be a genius to see that the plasma waves might have created a short circuit, causing the power outage.

The four UAPs at the Manzano storage area, Kirtland AFB New Mexico, that Paul Bennewitz filmed in 1979 may have used similar grpund-penetrating beams to study the nuclear weapons stored beneath the mountain.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

So while there’s no ‘prosaic’ explanation for the Colusa 1976 multiple witness report, there’s an excellent and challenging scientific one. And not an alien in sight.

Originally posted by Lowneck
Very significant that Jim Oberg acknowledges that there’s no prosaic explanation for the Colusa report if the date is right.

Very significant that Lowneck exhibits difficulty in reading English for comprehension.

What I wrote was;

There is no known prosaic sky event for that date that I could find.

Now, can anybody reduce the published reports of this fascinating case to the motion of the apparition across the sky -- bearing and elevation from the beginning to the end of the sighting?

It would be very helpful to do this.

If it can't be done, doesn't that raise questions about the thoroughness of the investigations so far?

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by Orkojoker
So Jim Oberg tried to dismiss this testimony as being prompted by a light show at a nearby military base? I'd like to take him seriously sometimes, but if he's going to say things like that he can just take his former-NASA faux debunkery and go home.

Nope. Not so. Once again you're using your own wild imagination as a source of phony 'facts' to make you feel smarter than the average ATSer.

Sorry, Jim. Didn't mean to invent facts like that. I just want so badly to feel smarter than the average ATSer. Apparently my wild imagination somehow misinterpreted this, posted by you:

There have even been suggestions that Bill Pecha’s UFO in 1976 was a ‘light show’ from a missile launch from Vandenberg AFB.

...in this thread, approximately half way down page one.

Wildly off, I admit.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Now, can anybody reduce the published reports of this fascinating case to the motion of the apparition across the sky -- bearing and elevation from the beginning to the end of the sighting?

It would be very helpful to do this.

Helpful yes, but totally unnecessary. Why can't we just assume that all of the witnesses were looking in the direction of the brightest astronomical body and call this case closed? If they claim they were looking in any other direction, we can chalk that up to their "wild imaginations", eh Jim?

Well, I came to the discussion to discuss it rationally, and find that you just want to mock.

You must find my approach very disturbing, and dangerous to your preferred beliefs.... ;-)

Originally posted by Orkojoker

Originally posted by JimOberg

Now, can anybody reduce the published reports of this fascinating case to the motion of the apparition across the sky -- bearing and elevation from the beginning to the end of the sighting?

It would be very helpful to do this.

Helpful yes, but totally unnecessary. Why can't we just assume that all of the witnesses were looking in the direction of the brightest astronomical body and call this case closed? If they claim they were looking in any other direction, we can chalk that up to their "wild imaginations", eh Jim?

Yes, I must. Frankly I can't resist being a smart ass with you sometimes, but if you want to discuss it rationally I'm up for that too. Have you taken good look at Pecha's account? He gets rather specific regarding the object he claims to have seen, and there are quite a few elaborate details that seem to require the assumption of an extremely wild imagination on the part of the primary witness. Do you or do you not find several details in Pecha's description of what he saw that do not reasonably square with the hypothesis that what he was seeing was a launch? If so, why is it your primary concern to determine whether or not the date of the sighting was the same as that of the launch, which would be unlikely to account for the report anyway?

"The more I looked, the more details I was picking up on. These flexible type cables hung down and this light like an upside down ice cream cone came out of the bottom – but only so far down and the beam of light never touched the ground. It was almost as if this thing knew I was there because the minute I stepped out beyond the house it began to move silently away from me, toward the west."

“That’s when I began to see the upper part, the dome. The bottom was spinning rapidly clockwise but a smaller part on the bottom was spinning counterclockwise. And as it began to move away, these six hose-like appendages began moving up and suddenly were gone. At the same time two claw-like hooks just curled up on the bottom. As these appendages retracted, two little covers opened on the top of the hull and out comes a pair of lights that shined a beam of blue light on the ground."

edit on 30-5-2012 by Orkojoker because: editing purposes

Originally posted by Orkojoker
Yes, I must. Frankly I can't resist being a smart ass with you sometimes, ..

I know -- and sympathize -- with that temptation. I succumb to it too often myself.

But does a 'rational' approach to the case mean pre-judging the conclusion in advance so that certain avenues of fact-checking can be skipped over, in advance?

Direction of the sighting, in the sky?

Exact date of the event?

I don't think it's rational to declare that we don't need to know any of these basics, to properly assess candidate prosaic solutions.

As to how far from an original stimulus a person can 'fill in' details, that is the central puzzle of the whole phenomenon. You have put your finger on it.

So far we've had decades of idle speculation about what CAN and CANNOT be perceived based on raw visual stimuli.

My hope is that by collecting a few dozen stories that CAN be traced to definable stimuli such as rocket/space events we can FINALLY qualitatively characterize the range of possible perceptions, and from that still-unripe insight, attempt to track back the range of stimuli for other perceptions.

Hence my interest in the Canary Island stories, the 1996 Yukon giant mothership story, the range of Soviet/Russian stories now undeniably associated with space/missile events, and other cases. I gave a list of ten such cases, cited as unsolvable in Kean's book, that I argue had clearly prosaic causes -- yet involved pilots, EM effects, radar, multiple witnesses, all the trappings of 'top UFO reports', but were misperceptions of space/missile events.

None of this is PROOF of what the other unsolved stories really were. or were not. But it's more important if they can establish what they plausibly COULD have been [misperceived prosaic stimuli], which is all that is required to deny the 'ET hypothesis' its 'proof', even while the possibility of it actually being 'true', remains to tantalize and frustrate us.

Originally posted by Orkojoker
....Do you or do you not find several details in Pecha's description of what he saw that do not reasonably square with the hypothesis that what he was seeing was a launch? ....

"The more I looked, the more details I was picking up on. These flexible type cables hung down and this light like an upside down ice cream cone came out of the bottom – but only so far down and the beam of light never touched the ground. It was almost as if this thing knew I was there because the minute I stepped out beyond the house it began to move silently away from me, toward the west."

“That’s when I began to see the upper part, the dome. The bottom was spinning rapidly clockwise but a smaller part on the bottom was spinning counterclockwise. And as it began to move away, these six hose-like appendages began moving up and suddenly were gone. At the same time two claw-like hooks just curled up on the bottom. As these appendages retracted, two little covers opened on the top of the hull and out comes a pair of lights that shined a beam of blue light on the ground."

As far as I can tell, this is the ONLY report -- out of hundreds of thousands of UFO reports on file -- with these precise details. Are we to conclude that such a craft actually existed, was seen by these witnesses, visited Earth only once and never came before or since?

Originally posted by JimOberg

My hope is that by collecting a few dozen stories that CAN be traced to definable stimuli such as rocket/space events we can FINALLY qualitatively characterize the range of possible perceptions, and from that still-unripe insight, attempt to track back the range of stimuli for other perceptions.

I think that is a great idea, and I'm all for it. I don't mean to say that details such as exact time and date and direction of a reported sighting are anything but crucial to a decent investigation. In fact, they should be among the first facts established.

There are other considerations to take into account, such as angular size - or apparent diameter, whichever is the appropriate term. Pecha reported that the object "seemed to be about 50 to 60 feet up (judging by the height of the barn which it cleared) and spanned the 150-foot gap between the barn rooftop and his TV antenna" (The UFO Handbook, Allan Hendry, p.117). Is this likely to match the apparent diameter of the rocket display?

Some other details will also have to be addressed before the rocket hypothesis becomes plausible.

"The UFO maneuvered over a neighbor's property, illuminating it for a minute." (Hendry 118)

"The main UFO then 'shot off' westbound right between the other two and beyond into the foothills which the UFO illuminated...Just as quickly, it rushed back again toward the neighbor's property." (Hendry 118)

"The two smaller UFOs shot out of sight at opposite 45-degree angles above the cloud line" (Hendry 118)