UFOs - Close Range Sightings.

Originally posted by simone50m
reply to post by karl 12

 

Does anyone in Ufology know what became of Charles Hickson? I hung out with him for a time, at the Eureka Springs Ozarks annual Ufo Conference back in (I can't remember what year exactly) late 1980's-to-abouts-1991 maybe it was 1990. I have some pics of him from there. Nice little old guy. Very meek and nice...

Hi Simone50m, just seen your thread about Mr Hickson (RIP) -I could never put my finger on it but something about his testimony always gave me the feeling he wasn't making it up.


Famed Ufo Abductee Charles Hickson passes


Cheers.

Originally posted by karl 12
Pretty infamous unexplained UFO incident from Puerto Rico in 1980 - the pilots report witnessing a 'weird' object which made them change course three times and were never heard from again.

You do mean the pilots ere never heard from again?

I find Puerto Rico a fascinating place regarding the UFO phenomenon. If I had the resources I'd fly us both out there to do some on site investigations.

I've posted this before but some might not have seen it. It's the only thing that keeps me from being a complete debunker. This is a first hand account of mine:

This sighting happened in mid September 1974. I was 22 at the time. I lived with my mother on Wilmington Island outside Savannah, GA. My brother, a friend and I were driving into Savannah in his small Chevrolet truck to see a friend. It was dusk and just starting to get dark. My brother turned on his headlights and they came on but immediately started to dim. We were on a bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway leading into Thunderbolt. When we were over the bridge he pulled off onto a road by the river leading to a marina and we stopped to try and find out what was wrong. Three friends of ours in a van saw the truck from the bridge and came over to see what we were doing. One of them worked at a gas station and had a little mechanical training. I got out from under the hood as it was now getting crowded and leaned against the side of the truck looking out over the marsh. I saw bright lights in the sky and was trying to determine what it was when one of our friends from the van looked out over the marsh and said, "That's a f*cking flying saucer!". I was coming to the same conclusion but wanted to be sure before I told anyone else.

It was a metallic disk fairly large or much closer than I thought, I guessed it was 60-80 feet in diameter. It had a round bottom and top with a small dome in the middle of the top. There was a short mast on top of the dome. There were bright white lights rotating around the rim of the disk and a steady blue light on top of the mast. Though it was getting dark when we first saw it it appeared to have a dull metallic finish. It looked just like a cartoon flying saucer. I thought it was about 1/2 a mile away and about 1500-2000 feet in the air. It was north of us moving slowly west. There was no sound from it. We watched it for a couple of minutes until we lost sight of it behind trees on the bluff at the edge of the marsh. The friend with mechanical training had traced the problem to a known bad voltage regulator and managed to unstick it so we could use the headlights. We closed the hood and were standing near the truck talking when the UFO came back into view from behind the trees.

It was lower now and closer. We watched it and soon realized it was headed straight for us and still getting lower. When it was probably 200-300 yards away and now down to about 500 feet I started worrying that maybe we were in danger. I didn't know it at the time the but several of the others were also starting to get worried. The UFO stopped moving and hovered for about 10-15 seconds (at least it seemed) then it slowly started moving towards the northeast and began gaining altitude. I have often wondered whether it sensed our fear or perhaps caused it but the timing of it's actions and the onset of fear seemed more than coincidental. After it reached approximately the altitude we had first seen it at it picked up a little more speed and continued on a northeast course more or less following the path of the Wilmington River. Even at the fastest we saw it move it was probably going only 25-50 mph.

A few minutes after it left a car with six excited teenagers in it pulled up along side. They said they had been following a flying saucer they saw at Isle of Hope (nearby bedroom community for Savannah) and wanted to know if we had seen it. We were getting in our respective vehicles and had been there for 20-30 minutes so we told them we hadn't seen it. You could actually still see it's lights to the northeast if you knew where to look. There was no mention of anyone else seeing it in the newspaper or on the television news. It had to have been visible to other people crossing
the bridge over the river. We didn't report it either.

This sighting happened about four miles from Hunter Army Airfield which was not active at the time. I don't know whether they even used the radar during the time it was in caretaker status. The illustration is crude but the shape and the lights are as accurate as I could make them. The drawing was done in about 1993 using MS Paint. I took a picture of the monitor since all I had was a dot matrix printer. I lost the file to a hard
drive failure so this is a scan of the monitor photo done a couple of years later.

i16.photobucket.com...

reply to post by wasco2
Check your U2U out. I don't wish to derail this thread but am interested in the case.

Originally posted by Pimander
You do mean the pilots ere never heard from again?

Pimander, apparently so mate -there's a thread link at the bottom of the post but I couldn't find any more information on the case.

Originally posted by Pimander

I find Puerto Rico a fascinating place regarding the UFO phenomenon. If I had the resources I'd fly us both out there to do some on site investigations.

You and me both mate and, I'm sure if I had the time and money, we'd both be there now.

El Yunque rainforest, Lake Cartagena and the Mona Channel all seem to be UFO/USO hotspots involving some rather freaky eye-witness testimony:


UFOs,USOs and the Island of Puerto Rico


Cheers.

Pilots witness rather sizable flying triangular object off the coast of Florida:

Thread

Originally posted by karl 12
The Colares Incident - witness drawings from classified files of Brazilian Air Force's official investigation:

Hostile UFO Encounters: Colares, 1977

More close range UFO reports from Brazil, 1977 - photographs at link:

On November 1st, 1977, the military set up an UFO observation post on the Colares water-tower, when a strange event caught their attention: at midnight, a blue light, already saw in previous sightings, was moving from south to north and stopped above the sand bank called Coroa Vermelha. Another bright object, yellow to red, came closer and became dark when it touched the light. Half an hour later, another object did the same, disappearing after “landing” on the blue light. Captain Hollanda said that a huge bright object, which seemed to be the 'mothership', has been a 100 meters from them. “I was terrified. At that moment I didn't know what could happen. They could have taken us. They could have done anything they want to us. Another time, they were at Baía do Sol and it was around 7:00 in the morning, Hollanda says, soon after the sun rising. “We didn't see anything when, suddenly, a huge disc-shaped object, with more or less 30 meters of diameter and 50 meters in height, hovered above us”.

Colares, Brazil UFO Invasion 1977 "Operation Prato - Saucer"

Interesting close range UFO/OVNI report from over Honolulu on July 11, 1959 taken from the free E-book 'The Challenge of Unidentified Flying Objects' by Professor Charles Maney:

THE SIGHTING NORTHEAST OF HONOLULU

One of the best authenticated cases and one which received nationwide publicity in the newspapers of the United States is the sighting witnessed and confirmed by six different airline crews some nine hundred miles northeast of Honolulu in the early hours of July 11, 1959...

The objects were observed in a clear sky. "A large and very bright object"--"flanked by three or four smaller lower magnitude lights in a line below" were observed to be travelling at terrific speed, estimated by Captain George Wilson at "thousands of miles per hour." Captain Wilson stated that the formation hurtled across the sky toward the airliner he was piloting, when suddenly it "made an abrupt right turn and disappeared to the south." Captain George Wilson with co-pilot Richard Lorenzen and crew member Bob Scott were flying a Boeing strato-cruiser of the Pan American Airways. In his report to NICAP Captain Wilson said that the object was so bright it was "like looking at a piece of the sun." He told Honolulu newsmen: "It was faster than anything I've ever seen. It may have been one very large object with brilliant center lights and surrounding lights of lesser magnitude, or separate objects. The smaller lights were either part of the mysterious object or this was an example of darn good formation flying.

link

Close range police UFO reports taken from the PRUFOS thread - many, many other reports here.



Declassified MOD file:

Police Officer witnesses UFO

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6d2b17bf133b.jpg[/atsimg]

A drawing of a dome-shaped UFO with flashing coloured lights that was drawn by a police officer called to a house in Stanmore, North London, one night in August 1984. The sketch was attached to a report by the Metropolitan Police to the Ministry of Defence.

link

---

Police encounter UFO -England 1978.

Interview:







---

British policemen witness cross shaped UFO:

ITN news broadcast:

Two local policemen in the West Country of England describe the unidentified flying object they witnessed.

reply to post by karl 12


karl12,

Interesting reports.


But I think Dave Clarke is right about this police image that you've embedded for us:

files.abovetopsecret.com...

Clarke says:

Another file contains a comic-book sketch of a dome-shaped flying saucer sighted in Stanmore, north London, in April 1984. Seven Police Officers and a number of residents watched for more than an hour as the UFO appeared to hover, flashing red, pink and white lights. Their report, filed with Scotland Yard, provides a classic description of the illusion known as auto-kinesis, caused by staring at a celestial object for an extended period of time

Though I haven't read the MOD file, Clarke probably checked the UFO's reported position with that of a bright planet or star and found a correlation.

The long observation time, over one hour, the comic-book image and the lack of detail, compared with many of the good close-up sightings you've listed, give the game away, I think.

A useful lesson for us all. Even multiple witnesses, including police, can misinterpret Venus, Jupiter etc as UFOs.

Cheers.

I saw something close up and in the daylight. I don't know what it was but it does make it harder to discount UFO witness accounts when you have seen something yourself. Something is out there, something is here, of that I have little doubt.

reply to post by Lowneck


Lowneck, thanks for the heads up on the Stanmore sighting mate, I've got quite a healthy respect for David Clarke's research and he appears to be quite a thorough chap when it comes to collating (and debunking) specific reports - He also pops up in this interview about 'the West Malling incident' but I did wonder why he failed to counter the pilot's claim about unprecedented flight characteristics and his position that the object was just a meteorological balloon.
Cheers.

reply to post by karl 12

I have a lot of time for Clarke's work too. However, I don't always agree with the way he takes the word of certain witnesses over others without justifying why. An example would be how he appears to take the word of Col. Conrad over that of Lt Col Charles Halt despite the fact that Halt's claims tally with those of other witnesses.

New Light on Rendlesham

Like many "skeptics" he makes the mistake of taking the word of certain military personnel when it agrees with their position. Don't forget it looks pretty certain that there has been a cover up of information regarding UFOs by the military in the UK and USA.

reply to post by Pimander


Pimander, some fair points made there and I certainly agree about the possibility of a cover up when it comes to the UFO/OVNI subject - as for Dr David Clarke, he also conducted a lot of great research into this incident but it appears all of the work has been removed from his website, don't know why that is but it's a good job some of it remains on the link.
Cheers.

reply to post by karl 12

Karl12,

That video is a good example of how much evidence there is of a cover up.

We both know that the military - without a shadow of a doubt - are hiding facts from the public. That is one of the reasons I am frequently at odds with many so called researchers. Anybody who has studied this topic in any depth with an open mind would surely realise that. Those who do deny that fact only make me suspicious of their motives or their ability to use reason and/or logic.

They must know if they have looked at the evidence - unless they think that all of these witnesses are delusional idiots - especially pilot multiple witness sightings. Pilots have 20/20 vision a start....

reply to post by Pimander


Hey mate, that incident realy is an intriguing one and there´s also an interesting paragraph below taken from Major Donald UFO Keyhoe archives where Captain Ruppelt talks to the Major about CIA debunking tactics and the possible manipulation of the truth when it comes to UFO reports -he also mentions the practise of ridiculing witnesses and discrediting pilots.

Shortly thereafter every effort of the government went into debunking UFOs even if it would mean embarrassing its own people. It soon became known the best way to destroy your military career was to report a UFO.
Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Chief of the Aerial Phenomena Branch at the Air Technical Intelligence Center, said that the CIA ordered the Air Force to debunk sightings and debunk witnesses. "We're ordered to hide sightings when possible," he told Major Keyhole, but if a strong report does get out we have to publish a fast explanation--make up something to kill the report in a hurry, and also ridicule the witness, especially if we can't figure out a plausible answer. even have to discredit our own pilots."

National Policy Of Debunking UFOs Began With The Robertson Panel

Cheers.

Originally posted by karl 12
Close range police UFO reports taken from the PRUFOS thread - many, many other reports here.


Police encounter UFO -England 1978.

Interview:

More info on Sgt. Anthony Dodd and Constable Alan Dale who both witnessed a close range UFO encounter in the early hours of December, 1978:

Thread

The "Michigan Swamp Gas Case of 1966" where UFOs were observed by witnesses and confirmed by radar flying at high rates of speed over a period of one week by policemen and town residents - one object even was said to buzz a policman´s patrol car:

Close range sketch:

Washtenaw County sheriffs and police in neighboring jurisdictions reported disc-shaped objects moving at fantastic speeds and making sharp turns, diving and climbing, and hovering. At one point, four UFOs in straight-line formation were observed. Selfridge AFB confirmed tracking UFOs over Lake Erie at 4:56 a.m. Their stories were backed up by more than 100 witnesses

The Michigan 1966 UFO Flap - Was it Swamp gas?

Close range pilot UFO sighting reports collated by Easynow - object descriptions:

Blakeslee UFO Incident - Nr. Misawa, Japan 1952

40 degrees 57' 15" North Lat. - 141 degrees 23' 15" East Long. Near Misawa Air Base, Japan

Colonel Donald J. M. Blakeslee, 27th Fighter Escort Wing, while flying in an F-84G at 27,000 feet in altitude observed an object described as a rotating cluster of lights colored white, green and red. Colonel Blakeslee climbed to 35,000 feet - at which point he was level with the unknown object.

Interception Undertaken. An interception of the object was undertaken with negative results. The object appeared to increase its speed and vanished in 30 seconds. The object was observed for approximately seven minutes.

link

---

Lawson Air Force Base, Georgia - Pilot UFO encounter 1951

1951 USAF Intelligence Report

This report describes a rather up-close and personal UFO encounter on July 9, 1951, by the pilot of an F-51 fighter plane from Lawson Air Force Base in Georgia. The pilot, a combat veteran from World War Two, provided quite a bit of detail, which was recorded in the report.

“Object described as flat on top and bottom and appearing from a front view to have rounded edges and slightly beveled. From view as object dived from top of plane was completely round and spinning in clockwise direction.... Object did not appear to be aluminum. Only 1 object observed. Solar white. No vapor trails or exhaust or visible system of propulsion. Described as traveling [at] tremendous speed....Pilot states object was 300 to 400 feet from plane and appeared to be 10 to 15 feet in diameter....Pilot states he felt disturbance in the air described as ‘bump’ when object passed under plane....Pilot is considered by associates to be highly reliable, of mature judgement and a creditable observer.”

link

---

USAF C-54, Pilot & Crew observe UFO - Sea of Japan 1952

March 4, 1952, Sea of Japan, (BBU)

Douglas C-54 Skymaster

The pilot and crew of a USAF C-54 aircraft of the 53rd Troop Carrier Squadron observed an bright orange oval-shaped object approximately 50 to 100 feet in length and 50 foot thick flying at a terrific speed at an estimated altitude of 10,000 feet. The object was observed for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes.

link

---

RAAF pilot UFO Incident - Tasman Peninsula, Brass Strait, Australia 1942

UFO-USO with "Fins" paces Aircraft then Dives into Ocean - google map location - Bass Strait, Australia

The air patrol was flying a few miles east of the Tasman Peninsula about 5:50 P.M. on a sunny evening when a strange aircraft of a glistening bronze color suddenly emerged from a cloud bank near them. The object was about 150 feet long and approximately 50 feet in diameter. Lt. Brennan saw that the peculiar craft had a dome or cupola on its upper surface and he thought that he might have seen someone inside wearing a helmet.

The unidentified aerial craft flew parallel to the RAAF patrol for several minutes, then it abruptly turned away and dived straight down into the Pacific. Lt. Brennan emphasized that the USO made a dive, not a crash, into the ocean; and he added that before the craft left them, he noticed what appeared to be four finlike appendages on its underside.

link

Continued..

Disc-shaped UFO evades pursuit by Pilot - Salt Lake City, Utah 1961

.."I turned out of the pattern and proceeded toward the spot to get a better look. As I drew nearer I could see that the object had no wings nor tail nor any other exterior control surfaces protruding from what appeared to be the fuselage. It seemed to be hovering with a little rocking motion. As it rocked up away from me, I could see that it was a disc shaped object. I would guess the diameter at about 50 to 55 feet, the thickness in the middle at about 8 to 10 feet. It had the appearance of sand- blasted aluminum. I could see no windows or doors or any other openings, nor could I see any landing gear doors, etc., protruding, nor showing.

link

---

Pilot and Passenger sight disc-shaped UFO with dome on top - Willow Grove, Pennsylvania 1966

During a panel discussion on UFOs before an annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C. (April 22, 1967), Powell described the experience..

At about 3:15 p.m., after seeing a flight of Navy jets climbing up from Willow Grove Naval Air Station, Powell spotted an object closing in behind the jets. Noting that the object had no protrusions like an aircraft, he watched more closely and saw it make an abrupt 150-160 degree turn and head for his aircraft. As the UFO passed under his starboard wing, Powell saw that it was a structured object. It seemed to be about 100 yards distant, and 30-40 feet in diameter. The overall configuration was discoidal; the base was bright red, and the dome was glistening white.

link

---

America West Flight 564 - UFO Incident over Texas-New Mexico 1995

Captan Tollefson's drawing of the UFO:

Captain Tollefson left his seat to look, and he saw the left to right sequencing lights also. As the lightning flashed behind the lights, it silhouetted something that to the observers appeared to be a large, dark, cigar shaped object between 300 and 500 feet in length, depending on how far away it was.

link

---

RB-36H Military Aircraft - Pilot UFO Encounter over South Dakota 1956

The length-to-height ratio of the UFO was about 8:1, and a low dome, about one-third the length of the object, was located at the center of the top surface, which was only slightly curved. The dome had three round openings or light sources approximately as shown in Figure 4. Its surface was perfectly smooth and was without seams, markings, any visible means of propulsion or other aerodynamic details..

link