The Colusa UFO Sightings ~ September 10th, 1976.

Originally posted by JimOberg

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?

edit on 30-5-2012 by JimOberg because: fix quote

I agree it has some bizarre details, but really only the cables/hoses and the hooks are relatively unprecedented, although I can recall at least one other case involving a "hose" attached to a UFO. Domes, rotation of definite direction, multiple parts of the object rotating in different directions and beams of light being shined on the ground have been reported many times, as have the sudden acceleration and illumination of terrain mentioned in the quotes in my previous post.

We are not to conclude that such a "craft" actually existed, only to leave open the possibility - which you seem to have already ruled out somehow. Whether or not it was "visiting Earth" is something we really can't know, considering we don't know what it was or where it came from.

Knowing that most people who have had an experience like that of Bill Pecha never report it (we're not all masochists, after all), I don't find it surprising that there are a number of UFO reports bearing apparently rare, if not unique, details. There are enough familiar details in this particular case to say much of the report fits previously established patterns.

Originally posted by Orkojoker

We are not to conclude that such a "craft" actually existed, only to leave open the possibility - which you seem to have already ruled out somehow. Whether or not it was "visiting Earth" is something we really can't know, considering we don't know what it was or where it came from. .

Agreed, we can't rule it out.

Any such conclusion would have to be based on thorough examination of the report and its context.

Here's where we apparently don't agree:

I think such a thorough assessment requires more definitive descriptions of the object's location and motion in the sky, and the actual date/time of the event.

And you don't think we need that information? What's your excuse, again, for not wanting it -- or even wanting NOT to have it?

Originally posted by JimOberg

I think such a thorough assessment requires more definitive descriptions of the object's location and motion in the sky, and the actual date/time of the event.

And you don't think we need that information? What's your excuse, again, for not wanting it -- or even wanting NOT to have it?

What makes you think I want "NOT" to have that information? Is it this statement from my previous post?

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.

What I'm saying is that having this information pinpointed is unlikely to result in the launch becoming a plausible explanation for the report - even if there were a close correlation in time and direction - due to the content of the report. Exact time and direction would also be helpful in ruling out Venus as an explanation, but they are not really necessary in this case as Venus is all but ruled out by the appearance and maneuvers reported, not to mention the apparent diameter of the alleged object.

How large would that rocket display be likely to appear in the sky from Pecha's location? This must be something you could determine based on the location of the launch site and the trajectory of the rocket. I certainly don't have the mathematical ability to figure that out, but I assume you do.

Drucila,

For what it's worth in regards to why as UFO will limitless energy may need to steal energy off of a power line.

I was reading a book by some guy discussing UFO propulsion. the onion drive or something very similar. anyways. He recounts a abductee's account of watching some greys do emergency repair on one of their ships in the field.

Apparently some types of craft have a energy vortex type of power plant in their center. The power plant needs an outside charge to initial start it up. Sort of like a jump start. Once the power source is started up the craft never really fully shuts down. like a nuclear reactor in a submarine will always be on even when it's "Off" So every once and a while the UFO's power system goes on the fritz and needs to get this outside source of power to jump start the main energy system of the craft. Usually they have other UFO's come and bail them out and transfer the energy over to them in some sort of beam, like jumper cables. but sometimes they have to make do, and jack the power from our power lines.

I figure if given the option they would find some remote power line away from people to handle their business, but sometime especially if it's an emergency they probably just don't have that option.

It boggles the mind to suggest that a rocket launch could elicit such a detailed report.

No question about that.

If I hadn't come across a string of OTHER reports that WERE unambiguously linked
to rocket launchings, I would never have believed it myself.

Never, without documented cases that it HAD happened, here and there.

This explains my fascination with space/missile 'IFOs' -- or 'faux-FOs' -- because they provide
an opportunity, unavailable from any other known manmade activity, to compare what was appearing
in the sky to what SOME witnesses were interpreting it as.

To calibrate the boundaries of possible human misperception, in other words.

Otherwise, we're just stuck with the human ego-defense reaction that nobody is 'so stupid' or 'so crazy'
to EVER make that degree of misperception.


Except that intelligent, rational, sane, sober people HAVE done so, as cases of this type show.

I offer the Petrozavodsk 'jellyfish UFO' of 1978 as an example. Hundreds of witnesses saw it in the predawn skies in northwestern Russia. They described structure, they described close approach, they reported interference with computers and auto engines, they described smelling ozone.

It was a rocket launch 600 km away.

Search the 'net, you may find people STILL claiming the sighting could NOT have been a rocket because people just aren't that dumb, crazy, freaked-out. And they weren't dumb, crazy, or freaked-out -- just human.

Originally posted by BASSPLYR
Drucila,

For what it's worth in regards to why as UFO will limitless energy may need to steal energy off of a power line.

Except in the Colusa case, if you read the report, the 'power failure' that the witness reported when the UFO was over the power line was in an area of town fed by ANOTHER power grid, NOT the one he reported seeing the UFO over. Go check this out, please.

ADD:

Here are a few examples of eyewitness reports which just CAN'T be caused by 'a rocket launch', but WERE:

www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1242.htm
"The city was bathed in golden streams of light," reported Aleksander Kazantsev, a physicist who is also president of the Research Group in Physics in Moscow, and an unofficial UFO investigator. "The object hung over the city for 12 minutes before suddenly moving off again, traveling northeast and then disappearing into a bank of clouds."
After leaving Finland, the UFO flew south. "Leningrad and Moscow offices reported the phenomenon," the UPI news service reported. The official explanation was that "the fireball could have been a satellite reentering the earth's atmosphere."
The craft so alarmed a group of dock hands at the shipping town on Lake Onega that they began to say deathbed prayers. "We thought it was a nuclear attack from the United States," one of the men said.
Spotters in Helsinki, Finland - 500 miles west - had seen a bright ball of light passing overhead an hour and a half earlier. A plane or helicopter was suspected, but a quick check on radar screens at airports and military bases revealed that the sky was clear.
"The object came low over the harbor," Vladimir Azhazha, a Moscow physicist and oceanographer told an American reporter. "It hovered over a moored ship 465 feet in length. A comparison to the size of the ship would place the UFO at about 350 feet in diameter. After a while, a smaller object separated from the main body and fell straight down, disappearing under the water. At that moment, the main part suddenly accelerated and disappeared. "In my opinion," Azhazha continued, "what was seen over Petrozavodsk was either a UFO, a carrier of high intelligence with crew and passengers, or it was a field of energy created by one."


www.world-mysteries.com/pstonehill.htm
Russia's space programs were consistently dogged by UFO sightings, a situation which continues to this day. In 1977 the 'Petrozavodsk Phenomenon' was notable for the number of different kinds of aerial craft that were observed with the launch of Kosmos-955 - spheres and jellyfish-like craft (which are again being observed in other parts of the world) and a strange luminescent 'rain' that could melt glass.

Originally posted by JimOberg
It boggles the mind to suggest that a rocket launch could elicit such a detailed report.

No question about that.

If I hadn't come across a string of OTHER reports that WERE unambiguously linked
to rocket launchings, I would never have believed it myself.

There should be hundreds, perhaps thousands of witnesses to any rocket launch that might have caused these Colusa sightings then, shouldn't there Jim?

(Not being a smart-aleck here. This is a valid and important point, which you've seemed to ignore in prior instances.)

In fact, I think it would be fair to say that just about any UFO sightings that could *reasonably* be attributed to a launch or re-entry event would probably, by necessity, have many witnesses, spread out over a wide geographical area. It would depend upon the particulars, of course, but I'd expect to see that trend, in general. Especially over the continental United States.

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets

Originally posted by JimOberg
It boggles the mind to suggest that a rocket launch could elicit such a detailed report.

No question about that.

If I hadn't come across a string of OTHER reports that WERE unambiguously linked
to rocket launchings, I would never have believed it myself.

There should be hundreds, perhaps thousands of witnesses to any rocket launch that might have caused these Colusa sightings then, shouldn't there Jim?

(Not being a smart-aleck here. This is a valid and important point, which you've seemed to ignore in prior instances.)

In fact, I think it would be fair to say that just about any UFO sightings that could *reasonably* be attributed to a launch or re-entry event would probably, by necessity, have many witnesses, spread out over a wide geographical area. It would depend upon the particulars, of course, but I'd expect to see that trend, in general. Especially over the continental United States.

Excellent point.

Aside from localization effects such as cloud cover -- I have no clue how to check that for 1976 --
there is one other effect that seems to enter in: self-selection.

People who see an event and recognize it -- say, hypothetically, a rocket launch -- would rarely
have any reason to report it, no more than reporting an airplane or blimp flyover.

If they think it's a crashing airplane, they call an airport. If they think it's a bright meteor,
the call a planetarium or university.

And people who tend to misidentify something, DO sometimes report it to UFO groups.

Now, this still remains an open question that needs checking up -- are there any other reports of 'something strange' in the skies over California that night?

The exact date becomes more important here. How wide a search was made?

If you start by ASSUMING it was close to the witness, you only need look around the
locality, the county perhaps. You don't even NEED to ask people 100 miles away.

So did anybody search farther afield, and for September 10 as well as September 9?

I don't know.

But the point is very much germane, thanks.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Well, I came to the discussion to discuss it rationally..

Jim, if you're here at these discussion boards to 'rationally discuss' UFO cases then is it possible you could address the incidents mentioned in this post when you find the time?

Originally posted by Lowneck

Possible ET probes have apparently used such penetrating, energetic beams, perhaps akin to ionised plasma waves, to ‘see’ inside houses and cars.

Lowneck, great point mate and I don't know about ET probes but there were some pretty freaky reports of that kind of 'lightbeam' behaviour at Colares in Brazil, 1977 (as I'm sure you already know) - god knows what went on there but your 'ionised plasma wave' comments certainly gives a person pause for thought.

“On May 24, 1978, the unbelievable happened on the sloping waterfront at Baía do Sol township. The night was dark, with no stars visible in the sky. At 2.00am as they were sitting in their car sheltering from the heavy rain, the Estado do Pará’s reporters were awakened by a powerful beam of light which - however unbelievable it may seem – passed through the metallic structure of the roof of the vehicle. Alarmed, they rapidly got out of the car. Then, when already a small distance from the car, they saw that a tube-shaped light beam, about ten inches in diameter, was coming down from above onto the roof of the car and passing through the metal paneling. All of this went on for about two minutes. When they started taking photographs, the craft, which was emitting the light beams and hanging silent and stationary in the air, at once lit up all the tree-tops all around.”

link

He was referring to the fact that at the time many people believed the UFOs were somehow using rays of light to suck blood from victims. Villagers said UFOs sometimes hovered in the sky at night and beamed down rays of light that passed through the tile roofs of houses as if the tiles didn’t exist.

link

Cheers.

Originally posted by karl 12

Originally posted by JimOberg

Well, I came to the discussion to discuss it rationally..

Jim, if you're here at these discussion boards to 'rationally discuss' UFO cases then is it possible you could address the incidents mentioned in this post when you find the time?

Cheers.

The only thing useful i might have to add is to suggest lines of inquiry. I don't have explanations, and I don't shoot from the hip like... [insert favorite knee-jerk debunker here].

Also, it doesn't bother me at all that some stories appear to have no explanations -- because for a lot of the ones i worked on, finding the explanation required a unique combination of special experiences and plain luck.

Lastly, the 'but what about THIS one' gambit is a transparent time-wasting trick UNLESS it starts from the point of agreement that 'yes, THAT'S how to explain a hitherto unexplainable impressive case".

You DO agree that I really HAVE solved a lot of top cases over the years that everybody else had missed the answers to, don't you?

But why require me to explain ALL of them, before you accept ANY of my conclusions?

ADD: Isn't this just an excuse for you dodging the focus of the recent discussion here -- define the movement of the Colusa UFO across the sky in terms of direction? Or just admit that the investigators never bothered to record it. And then, how about the possible ambiguity of the date of the event? Another datum that was considered unimportant so it didn't need precision?

reply to post by JimOberg


Jim, see this post - it addresses some of your claims about sincerity.

This is an interesting case. I have been trying to keep up with this thread and follow the links to learn about this case. One observation I have is that the key witness is extremely scared. This is a person who is described by others a usually calm. In the Youtube link at about 6 minutes in, I think it was the key witness’s wife who said something like “I don’t know what it was that I saw….but he was so scared I just did what he said…”. He was also saying stuff like “They are going to see us!” and “They are going to get us!” He was so scared that he drove his pickup truck at high speeds in the middle of the night with no headlights on with his wife and kids in the car…

In this mental state, how accurate an observation can a person make?

Is this the only witness to describe the UFO in detail? From what I read, it seems like everyone else just saw a huge light except for one other person who described a dome shaped object.

From the link provided, the power failure was explained as being due to something unrelated to this event. Did I understand that right?

Originally posted by Orkojoker
I agree it has some bizarre details, but really only the cables/hoses and the hooks are relatively unprecedented, although I can recall at least one other case involving a "hose" attached to a UFO.

UFO Sucks Up Water Through Pipe - British Columbia, 1965

Originally posted by Blue Shift

Originally posted by Orkojoker
I agree it has some bizarre details, but really only the cables/hoses and the hooks are relatively unprecedented, although I can recall at least one other case involving a "hose" attached to a UFO.

UFO Sucks Up Water Through Pipe - British Columbia, 1965

BlueShift, good link, here are some other similar reports of 'UFOs with hoses' from Japan, Peru, Germany, America and the Dominican Republic.

Japan:

He said the light descended to an altitude of about 20 meters (75 feet) above the surface, of the water and stopped,and then from the underside of the light came what appeared to be a glass-like transparent tube and when the leading edge of the tube touched the surface of the water, that part of the tube began to glow and appeared to be sucking up the bay water.

Peru:

About one hour later the huge ship was still there hovering stationary, a little to the south as the whole rim rotated slowly when suddenly, from the base, near the center, three luminous "tubes" of "blue neon light" were projected, like cylinders extended straight down from the ship to the surface of the river.

Germany:

Then it halted, did a right-angle turn towards the little stream of water, and stopped there. The rotation stopped too. "What I now observed is beyond my power to comprehend. From the dark centre of the ball there emerged, downwards, something resembling a hose-pipe, which bent itself back and upwards like a 'U' and then writhed about sideways several times.

America:

As he reached the intersection of 27th Street and Manatee Avenue the object had disappeared below the horizon.
Thrush turned west on Manatee Avenue and drove the short distance to the river. At the river he pulled his car off the road onto an embankment, as he started to turn the car around,the high beams from his car picked up a silvery reflecting object hovering 20 feet above the river. A tube extended from the object to the surface of the water.

Dominican Republic:

While returning to Santo Domingo at about one in the morning, Senor A.S. Cruz saw a light over the sea, which descended to water level, and a tube came out of the bottom and took up water. The witness stopped to watch the unusual spectacle. The UFO stopped its auction action and headed toward him.

Unusual reports of UFOs 'taking on water'

Cheers.

Jim I wasn't saying that the UFO was causing the power outage of the local town. I wasn't even talking about this specific incident. I was just talking about UFO's sucking power from power lines. heck maybe it's not even the electricity they are after. maybe just the voltage potential or the electric wires magnetic fields are all it needs to "jump Start" it's self again and be on it's way.

Either way I enjoy your posts on this and other threads.

Originally posted by Blue Shift

Originally posted by Orkojoker
I agree it has some bizarre details, but really only the cables/hoses and the hooks are relatively unprecedented, although I can recall at least one other case involving a "hose" attached to a UFO.

UFO Sucks Up Water Through Pipe - British Columbia, 1965

I think that might be the one I had in mind. I'll have to refresh my memory.

These are inertesting and informative posts, much obliged!

I've got some inquiries to the Vandenberg AFB History Office to see if they ever collected 'missile launch stories', and filed them somewhere we can access.

reply to post by JimOberg


Not to harp, but is there any way (that wouldn't be a major ordeal) that you could come up with a loose estimation of the angular size of that launch from Vandenberg as seen from Colusa? Looks like the base is about 500 miles, give or take, rather straight north of Colusa, just northwest of Lompoc. I suppose you would need to know the trajectory of the rocket. Any input you could provide regarding this could be helpful.

Originally posted by Orkojoker
reply to post by JimOberg

 

Not to harp, but is there any way (that wouldn't be a major ordeal) that you could come up with a loose estimation of the angular size of that launch from Vandenberg as seen from Colusa? Looks like the base is about 500 miles, give or take, rather straight north of Colusa, just northwest of Lompoc. I suppose you would need to know the trajectory of the rocket. Any input you could provide regarding this could be helpful.

As a first guess I'd imagine it could be on the same angular size as the Petrozavodsk 'jellyfish UFO' in 1978 -- you can google images of that case, especially the drawings from witnesses. The key similarity I spotted was that in both cases, witnesses could have been looking up the ascent plume from almost directly BEHIND -- an unusual geometry.

But that would still require the Colusa case to have been on early Sep 11, not 'late' on Sep 10. And it would require the object to have been seen in the south -- when as it seems we have agreed on, the reports as written contain NO helpful information as to the compass direction of the sighted object. Which is more than regretable -- it characterizes the report as amateurish and incomplete.

So I do NOT 'offer' that as a suggested solution, merely as an intriguing and suggestive similar case.

reply to post by JimOberg


Thanks for explaining your position, Jim. Well-stated and reasonable.