UFO-DNA is back on-line

To all who pursue the UFO field seriously: this is really good news. The terrific case resource UFO-DNA has returned to active duty after a hiatus. If you have access to a good research collection of books and journals, this accumulation of references to case commentary locations has been very helpful to me. When coming across a case new to me, I habitually go there if I have only a slim single piece of information. Many times the site lists several books, journals, collections where comment on the case resides. Piling my desk with five or six references, all of a sudden I begin to feel like I am getting clearer on the incident. Extremely valuable and kudos for all the hard work by the creator.

http://thecid.com/ufo/

A Small Moment In UFO History

I've been too rushed to post for about a week, so I thought it a good idea to put some little something up before I trek back to Michigan, as who knows if there will be time there or not.

The fractional government document above is a section of a Pentagon UFO report from the earliest days. I photocopied it from Dr. Hynek's personal papers, as he had an original. I then selected out the majority of it to use in a paper. Notice that it is "clean": no markings on it nor scribbled out witness names. Most of the on-line documents from the Blue Book microfilms are not like this, but clean microfilm copies do exist elsewhere. But the reason that I'm making a post is the image below.

This is the image you get from the typical on-line source. [It's the full page without me "selecting" just the gist of the report]. And it's messy. It happens, however, that it's the kind of messy that historians like.

This case was one of the early military reports from the 1947 "beginning" wave. Wright-Patterson was not yet receiving the reports. This case from Maxwell field, involving four witnesses, was sent through channels to TAC at Langley Field, and from there onto the Pentagon. It took one week to get from Maxwell HQ to Langley [officers at Maxwell were probably not yet sure of what they were supposed to do with something like this], and then four more days to get into the Pentagon. I.E. "Received AFBIR-CO 11-July 47". That means that the report went to Air Force Intelligence [AFBIR at the time] and was received at the desk of the Chief of the Collection Division [CO]. That chief was Colonel Robert Taylor III. He passed it on to his top assistant Lt. Colonel George Garrett. How do we know that, other than "logic"?

Look at that "wonderful" grease marker circled 5 at the bottom of the page. You might think it stupid, but that circled 5 makes me smile. That indicates that this paper was the exact copy that George Garrett spread out on his desk that fateful day in late July/early August [along with several others] to begin making the first ever estimate-of-the-situation. This case, Maxwell field, was his "fifth" case in that estimate. The Kenneth Arnold, EJ Smith cases etc were others.

That moment in UFO history created a snowballing effect leading to Brigadier General George Shulgen's asking all services and commands whether we had developed anything like this, and then separately asking AMC at Wright-Pat the same thing. Wright-Patterson's reply became the now-famous "Twining Memo". This exact sheet of paper led to the USAF admission that the flying disks were real.

Stare a bit at it folks. Sacred document. History right there before your eyes.

DATA-NET: A Clutch of Classics.

As I've penetrated a little further into the SITU DATA-NET collection, I've gotten into the early 1970s UFO desert, which is well known. This was a true diminishment of cases, as the post-Colorado era was, paradoxically, one of the most intense times for high quality people being active in the UFO research field. The point there is: if the good cases had been there, someone would have jumped on them. This desert lasted from latter 1969 to most of 1972. DATA-NET so far in this era reflects that, in that there are few impressive cases to report. The New Zealand mystery traces have been an exception. DATA-NET's editor was I believe sensing this too. The pages of the newsletter began including old cases. Whether these were being generated by the editor or by the correspondents, I can't say, but there they are. It is some of those old cases that I'm going to thumbnail here [rather than "current" [1970] events].

Since I have no illustrations for these old-timers, I'm going to post some non-connected old time alleged UFO photos, just to give you something to look at. The thing to the left is a photo taken in 1947 on the California coast. Don't ask me if it's a good one, I don't have a clue.

Olden case#1: July 3rd, 1947; St. Maries, ID. Ten witnesses watch as eight "tub-shaped" UFOs come slowly down and "land" on the ground. They are luminous and the size of small houses. As they approached the ground they stirred up leaves and flattened them beneath them. Later, the witnesses approached the vacated spot, but could find no trace that the UFOs had landed. Pretty wild stuff especially for so early.

Olden case #2: July 3rd, 1949; Longview, WA. While officiating at an air show, former Navy guided missile chief, Moulton Taylor, spotted three flying disks above the field at an estimated 30000 feet. He alerted the crowd to them and everyone watched, many through binoculars. Taylor maintained throughout his life that he and his aerotech buddies would speculate on whether these were extraterrestrial craft whenever they got together later.

Olden case #3: April 24th, 1950; Arrey, NM. This is the famous Charles Moore balloon scientists' observation. There were five witnesses in the research team. They saw a white elliptical object traveling very fast, visually and through theodolite. Sighting lasted 55 seconds. They estimated the thing at 300,000 feet and, therefore, 100' diameter. [these estimates would mean little if the observers weren't the best in the world, so we need to pay at least a little attention to them]. Moore reported the sighting to the USAF and never received a reply. As Moore's group worked as a Navy team, this probably began the interservice antagonism where the USN was very unhappy with USAF cooperation on UFO analyses. This ultimately led to a separate USN UFO desk for a while in 1951-1952. Many balloon researcher reports went to the Navy for a while.

The odd thing at the left is an alleged UFO from New York from 1950. Pretty weird looking but fun.

Olden case #4: July 6th, 1950; Louisville, KY. An employee of the Louisville Times, out trying to film birds, sees a UFO and shoots off 50' of movie film. Allegedly the film shows a "bright disk" which hovered, and then disappeared by either shrinking or moving directly away. I have no idea what this film looks like, nor did DATA-NETs editor who was pleading with the readership for facts. As far as the case goes: if the description is real, if the object moved directly away from the witness, that seems like awareness and deliberate display. If it "simply" shrunk out of sight, that's even stranger.

Olden case #5: September 26th, 1950; Philadelphia, PA. One of the crazier things in UFO files. People saw a large [six-foot diameter] "blob" float down and rest so lightly that it didn't even bend tall weed stalks upon which it rested. My memory of this case is that the thing was purplish. The police were right there to watch the whole thing. One policeman tried to grab a bit off it, and the stuff dissolved in his hand. It had "substance" but was incredibly light. By the time the FBI got there, it was all gone. ... who the heck knows what it was....

The picture on the left is from California in 1951. It's one of those things which reminds you of Adamski but is not one of his. Maybe it inspired his "creativity"?

Olden case #6: May 22nd, 1951; Over Chicago, IL area. An American Airlines pilot and two of his crew saw a very fast blue-white "star-like" object pacing their plane, as if "playing tag". It would approach and then get further away. This went on for 20 minutes until they neared Chicago. Most distinctive was the object's behavior of drawing an up-&-down vertical line, and then a forward-&-back horizontal line [as if making a cross in the sky] several times. The Captain said: "I hated to see it leave. It was a very interesting sight."

Olden case #7: May 28, 1951; Rainy Lake, MN. A large number of persons witnessed a "crystal ball" moving rapidly about in the air. It then darted off to join with another one in their antics. They continued to make fast non-inertial motions until they drifted away. This is near General Mills research balloon territory, but the flying off and joining up does not indicate a balloon. Rather it reminds me of the in-air balloon chase cases where Joseph Kaliszewski would report spherical white globes or disks rushing up [or down from height] upon their balloon and dancing all about it. According to him, this happened on more flights than not in this era. The General Mills cases are in fact among the strongest on record.

Olden case #8: January 25th, and earlier, 1952; San Jose, CA. Within about one week in the area, two independent witnesses, one on ground and one in-air pilot, reported unusual red lights in the air near the city. No particular motions of the lights are mentioned in the DATA-NET article, but one odd behavior was: when the pilot turned to them and shown his plane's lights on them, they "went away". One assumes he means flew away rather than disappeared, but either way it indicates a responsive behavior.

The picture on the left is a famous old one from the Bolivian-Peru "jungle border". Dates from 1952. Good ol' cigar-shaped flying fuselage. Don't know if anyone had enough info to take it seriously, but it's awfully early.

Olden case #9: February 22nd, 1952; Keysville, VA. Only one witness on this one. Observer says that the thing was an elongated silver cigar which moved slowly in a horizontal line across the sky ... well, not QUITE a horizontal line. The thing would move, then disappear. Then reappear a little way ahead, move, and disappear. And so on until out of sight. The Space-jumping Amateur from Whackland??

Olden case #10: April 16th, 1952; Hamilton Ontario. Many witnesses, independently, saw a "great whirling smoke-ring" moving rapidly across the sky. It was black and seemed to have little or no "depth". It was estimated as being 600' in diameter. Before disappearing, it changed color to blue. One witness said that he concentrated hard trying to see stars through the apparently open middle, but could not. One witness said that the thing finally just vanished. {In honor of this "smoke-ring" I include a picture montage below of UFOlogy's most famous Smoke-ring, which was argued about by the Colorado Project, ultimately making them look like fools.}.

Olden case #11: November 1st and 19th, 1953; over London, UK. These are two separate but essentially identical observations by the British military [and public, I believe] of white, circular objects hovering over London for 15 minutes before moving off. They were estimated at 60000' altitude, and larger than an airliner. The kicker is that both cases were tracked by radar. If these cases have good bona fides [I don't know], then one might say that the Brits got their own taste of our Washington DC merry-go-round a little over a year later.

Well, that's it for the moment, folks. Hope that there was something in all that which stretched your mind a bit. Till next time...God be with you.

DATA-NET: On The Road Again In Queensland.

This is an incident from the April 1970 edition of DATA-NET. It's one I'd read before at CUFOS. I've not seen it mentioned anywhere else, though surely it must be [I mean as a case report rather than just a listing in Mark Rodeghier's catalog of "electromagnetic" Vehicle Interference Reports. Mark cites this same entry from DATA-NET as his source]. The case, to me, is astonishing, and cries out for more coverage. At a minimum there must be an investigative interview somewhere, perhaps in an old Queensland Flying Saucer group newsletter [unfortunately pretty rare in my resource collection]. Thankfully, the DATA-NET article is long for that publication's typical entries.

Here's the case: On the evening of March 19th, 1969, a woman was well into a 1300 mile drive from Cairns to Brisbane, Australia. With her were her children, understandably asleep. She was nearing Gladstone [having just passed Marmor and Mt. Larcom] in Queensland with 500 miles still to go. There is nothing in the narrative, by the way, which says that she drove this whole thing in one go, nor that she was in any way unalert. In fact much of the experience takes place outside the car, as you will see. "Highway Hypnosis" is, thereby, an unlikely ingredient in this story.

The first thing that is astonishing is that she begins to hear a "distant" and intermittent "radio broadcast" despite her car having no radio. This excited her with a sense of wonder. Following the piecemeal "news", there was a musical tune of some kind. This now worried her a bit, as she wondered if the experience might be premonitionary, and she slowed the car, fearing a possible accident [though there had been no traffic for awhile.]

She kept on at a reduced speed of 40mph for a time and then noticed a light pacing her car off to the side past the trees. It turned and came towards her. She thought: "could this be a flying saucer??" That scared her and she slowed nearly to a stop. The light pulsated as it came on.

The lady, now thoroughly afraid, stopped her vehicle and decided to turn around to go back to the nearest passed town, Mt. Larcom, and stay the night. Just as she was to return, another vehicle came up from the lane that she had been on [i.e. from behind her original path going towards Gladstone]. Our lady flashed her lights and the oncoming car stopped.

It was another single woman. This new arrival seemed to know a lot about UFOs and had a very relaxed confident manner about the UFO presence. She convinced our first lady to turn back around and they'd drive in tandem onwards toward Gladstone. As they began to proceed, the UFO came closer until it was over the other woman's car. Now alarmed herself, she and our first lady braked to a stop and both got out and talked. The UFO-savvy lady said that if they turned off their lights it would go away. Our lady watched the thing closely. It was about automobile-sized and had several porthole-like lights. The second lady relaxed a bit when the UFO moved to the side, and wanted to watch what she said "was something wonderful that we probably would never see again". Our first lady was not so sure, as she wanted to get going on her trip home, and she was noticing a strange pulsing of her new companion's car lights when the object itself pulsed. They drove off finally, our first lady driving in the "wrong" lane as there was no traffic and she distrusted the way her companion's car was pulsating its headlights.

The second woman apparently never understood what our lady was talking about [re: her headlights] and seemed somewhat non-plussed from then on out. Our lady reported that the object continued to fly along beside them at about 100 yards distance as they drove towards Gladstone. Apparently, the thing would send out a "streak" of light horizontally [though not it seems directed at the cars], and simultaneously her companion's car lights would broaden. Then, even more astonishingly, the object would send out a streak of light upwards, and her companion's car headlights "would streak up".

Then she says this: "It appeared to be a pattern. A lengthening of the vertical shaft of light, followed by a horizontal lengthening, alternatively." Our witness is apparently describing the famous and highly strange UFO-associated phenomenon of "solid", cut-off, extendible light beams.

As they drew near Gladstone, the UFO rapidly soared off into the sky, looking like a star at height. The UFO-savvy lady took our witness' name and address and said she'd contact her. That never happened, sadly, or we'd have a lot solider case with two independent witnesses on record. Our lady stayed overnight in Gladstone and drove on to Brisbane. There she reported the experience, and was apparently visited by the Australian military. They wanted to inspect her vehicle, and later told her that she needed a new alternator for her electric system. She had no idea what that could have had to do with her UFO encounter as it was the other lady's lights which were pulsing. The DATA-NET correspondent seems to have visited the anonymous witness and made a recording of his interview, which was the basis for this report. He describes her as "an ordinary housewife who speaks with no frills, and is apparently telling the event exactly as she remembers it happening". He reports that she has talked to very few people and seeks no publicity.

So, what have we here? My intuition is: a very good high strangeness UFO encounter with critical "missing witness" testimony. Still, it seems a case worth keeping in the pile of "good" UFO incidents and it is a shame that it remains a hidden rough gemstone waiting for the rest of the testimony.

More Than Meets The Eye With Moreland??

Above is the brilliant [as usual] piece of art by Mark Cashman [of the Temporal Doorway] of the Blenheim, New Zealand 1959 CE3, often called the "Moreland" case after the witness. Pretty picture, but why is it here?? I've stumbled into something that I don't remember reading about this case, and, when I googled several references to it, STILL can't find mentioned, which really puzzles me. Really puzzles me....

The "new"? information is so out-of-norm for my readings of the "old" case reports, that I'm almost doubting it's legitimacy. But it is directly out of the released documents of the New Zealand Air Force, and I read it there myself. If there is no colossal joke/hoax involved, this seems significant.

While pursuing web sites for the trace cases that were talked about on the blog recently, a site referred to these NZAF documents. Out of curiosity [and hoping to find material on the 1969 traces], I went and looked. No luck. But there were references to other NZ "Classics", like the Kaikoura lights, and the Blenheim/Moreland CE3. What-the heck? I looked. The Blenheim material was surprising.

In a thumbnail: Mrs Moreland was caring for her cows when an object approached. It was a pretty disk with much glowing light of both green and orange variety, and it had a clear dome on its top, within which you could see two "men". The green light had a strange "attractive effect" on her, making her want to go towards the craft. That then scared her and she literally ran for the trees and watched. She gives a very precise and detailed description of everything about the craft and the persons inside. When it left, she went inside and told her husband [an NZAF soldier] who told her to call the police. It was the NZAF that then showed up to take testimony, finding her credible and consistent in her story, despite using clever interrogation techniques. Ultimately, the NZAF tried to debunk her story by criticizing her character, but no such allusion is present in the original interview. The case is also always listed as single witness, but read the illustration to the left/above. The officer has written in "AirForce person also reported the sighting". No reference to any document concerning the corroborating sighting was found by me... but maybe it's in the files somewhere else.

But what was FAR more interesting was the drawing to the left. This alleges to show one of the entities almost full height. All the renditions I've read say she saw two entities in the dome from the waist up. What's going on?

Mrs Moreland apparently had a VERY close encounter that she didn't want to talk about. Upon having the "attraction" of the green light shown on her, she saw a being "land" from the disk and approach. There was no loss of memory, as she remembered the details just fine [as you can see]. She was apparently very worried that people would call her nuts, and left this part of the story out continuously afterwards. But the NZAF got it out of her.

How did they respond to the story of this close an encounter?? Note the original security classification: "Top Secret".

Now you know why I'm a bit stunned by all this, and wonder if some strange hoax is being pulled. If so, it would involve messing with the NZAF files. But that doesn't seem very likely does it? So, until I'm told differently: The Moreland CE3 seems to be a face-to-face encounter with an unexplainable entity from an unexplainable craft, and maybe even the partial awareness of an early on-board experience still hidden.

The NZAF has apparently even now refused to release all documents associated with the case, citing a privacy agreement. How much, if any, more do they know?? And WHY the "Top Secret"?

You can read all the details of the case as normally reported in many places on the internet. It has always seemed to me, as it did to Allen Hynek and Jim McDonald, who interviewed Mrs Moreland separately, to be a good case. Maybe there's WAY more to it than we've known.

DATA-NET: Marks in New Zealand, 1969.

Something[s] odd went on in New Zealand in late 1969. DATA-NET was getting reports on the happenings and even an insider comment once in a while. Did these things have anything to do with UFOs?? You can read, explore further, and decide. Whatever resulted in this weirdness, here's the DATA-NET "data" ready or not.

The phenomenology is "traces". The groundmarkings were unquestionably real. The mystery is what caused them. This is a larger issue than in most UFO incidents since in these cases almost never was a UFO seen.

A preliminary bit of "history": New Zealand was not exactly a hot-bed of UFO activity. The extremely interesting Blenheim CE3 ["Mrs. Moreland"] case had occurred about a decade earlier [1959], and the famous lights photographed from the plane case [over Kaikoura] not until about a decade later [1978]. The ground markings hullaballoo was almost in the middle.

Northeast Australia had a groundmarkings miniflap in 1966 [the "Tully Nests"]. Western Australia had a miniflap of sightings in 1967. The Tully story "had legs" and continued to make news now and then through the 1969 period [with a conspiracy-like story, reported in DATA-NET]. A camera, mounted at the site, had photographed activity at the spot on two occasions in 1968. The film had been sent to the Melbourne Kodak lab for processing. The film can had been returned empty with a note that this is how they received it.

Since the film had been witnessed as being included originally by the Queensland Flying Saucer Research Bureau, no one believed this, and the matter was referred to the police. Upon investigation, the UFOlogists were ultimately informed that the film was actually in the possession of the Department of the Interior, and that they should forget the whole affair.

Also, possibly related to the Tully affair, a couple of decades later, two old reprobates [ "Doug and Dave" ], now having moved to England, said that they had done most of the early English crop-circles, just as they had done crude circles at Tully earlier. What level of reality lies in this, who knows? All we can clearly say is that they are jerks.

In late 1968, a driver made testimony that a UFO had swept down on his car near Napier, NZ and nearly caused him to have a serious crash. This case had a great deal of publicity as insurance claims were involved. But things were fairly quiet until the fall, when the "circles" began to make news. There are two distinct cases which can be casually confused: the Ngatea Circle of September 1969, and the Puketutu Nests, beginning in October 1969. The picture above is of Puketutu. We will begin however with Ngatea.

The Ngatea Circle was discovered on September 4th, the same day that an "in air" case was reported by two pilots and a radar detection. All the latter says is that there was some UFO activity possibly going on. Later it was stated that some UFO was seen in the actual area of the later-discovered circle in August of 1969. Whatever the UFO-relation, the trace was not discovered in relation to any UFO sighting directly, but rather on a routine inspection by the owner of a seldom-visited part of the property. [The remaining illustrations for the blog today are all of the Ngatea situation: they are from a well-done report by UFOCUS New Zealand website, and I recommend reading of several of the classic NZ sightings there].

DATA-NET's coverage of this began with a September 14th news story. It stated that the farmer "found a 60' circle of native manuka trees with their tips burned as if blasted when something took off". A field investigation had already taken place and a professional "horticulturalist" brought in to study the plants. The horticulturalist was stated as saying that the plants had been damaged by shortwave electromagnetic radiation. If true, this would mean X-rays or Gamma rays. Within the damaged circle were found "indentations" or holes spaced in a triangle 9' on a side. Something like "toes" protruded from these holes to about five feet. Naturally, the UFO group was speculating that a UFO had landed here, left pod-marks on the ground, and damaged the vegetation by its forces generated in take-off and/or landing.

The second DATA-NET article report came from October 7th. "Radiation Cooks Area of Scrub". Here we learn the name of the horticultural scientist, John Stuart-Menzies, and the statement that the manuka scrub has been "cooked instantaneously from the inside out". This has left a bleached 42' diameter circle wherein "every ounce of moisture in the plants had been instantaneously vaporized". Stuart-Menzies continues to believe that this was short-wave radiation, although I can't see why microwaves aren't plenty good enough for this. A side comment stated that the area had increased radioactivity. The pod-marks were better described as V-shaped grooves in a perfect triangle. It was said that members of the New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research were investigating samples of plants and turf at the moment.

In the meantime, Puketutu appeared on October 8th, adding yeast to the plot. But more about that later.

In November [n.d.] DATA-NET got another article/report. Here it was stated that John Stuart-Menzies himself had tested the manuka with a geiger counter and found increased radioactivity. The plants had been found to be "bone dry and brittle", which he said was very unusual as such a state takes a long time in natural conditions. More puzzling was the fact that "The cells in the medullary rays were burst by the sudden vaporisation of cell sap." It is at this point that Stuart-Menzies says that this is like microwave cooking of meals "but on an enormous scale". Even more puzzling than that [at least to me] was that "the energy received has reduced the pith to black carbon, without the outside showing any signs of burning". This whole business reminds me strongly of the enigma faced by Ed Ruppelt when he brought back the plant samples from the Desverges case and had cooking-of-roots-under-the-soil on his hands. Ruppelt was never able to shake that mystery.

Another DATA-NET article of November 5th again repeated Stuart-Menzies' claims, but said that government scientists were writing the marking off to "saprophytic fungus". The farmer said that he knew perfectly well what such fungus results looked like and that the government "solution" was baloney. Other people claimed that the marks were due to pig rooting, which the farmer poo-pooed. An actual government bulletin was released stating that the effect was caused by a virus.

One of the more interesting things to me about the DATA-NET coverage was that the ham operator in New Zealand turned out to know Stuart-Menzies through an agricultural organization to which both belonged, and gave him a good competency rating. This ham-operator stated that the general area of the marking has been a somewhat frequent area for UFO incidents in the past. He also cited two automobile cases, one which was a scary stalker type, and the other an engine stopper. He then made a sarcastic remark about "viruses" stopping truck engines. The case resulted in press coverage like the headline below.

The "other" case was Puketutu. As remarked above, the first finding of such a mark in that area was October 8th. DATA-NETs primary article on this was from October 16th. It stated that a mysterious circle of blackened water plants was found "near Te Kuiti". These NZ cases were often located by differing names [just to confuse us, I guess]. Once again, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was "on the case". They would test for cause of death and radioactivity.

The farmer involved was Charles Blackmore. He found a 15' diameter circle of the weed, dead, and "appears to have been burnt, pressed down, and spread outwards in a spiral pattern". Animals were shunning the area, both birds and cattle. Even the lake's frogs were no longer in evidence. Blackmore himself reported a continuous headache since discovering the circle.

Another DATA-NET article said that Blackmore's cattle "suddenly turned and rushed away" when he was herding them to the spot. His dog would also not drink there --- an unusual behavior for it. Although that's all the information [so far anyway] that I've seen in DATA-NET through this time period, other resources indicate that Blackmore had an unusual cattle behavior incident on January 14th, 1970 [a neighbor did too] followed by discovery of another circle, and discovered a third circle [rotated plants flattened clockwise] on September 13th, 1970. Sometime in the winter, Blackmore himself saw a 20' diameter UFO in the air on his property.

Regarding other NZ stuff: it was stated that sometime between Ngatea and Puketutu, a farmer saw two bright orbs of light following in line in the Kaharoa area. Shortly an enigmatic ground marking was found by another farmer of the area. Two circles were of burnt grass. A third circle actually straddled a fence leaving the fence itself unmarked. And, in non-circular news [not reported in DATA-NET but in FSR], on October 30th, 1969, three different residents of the Waipukurau area had UFO encounters independently. One was a close encounter with a 60' diameter disk, one was of a "circular" object which was placed so as to indicate that it was very likely the same UFO seen from a different perspective, and one was of a non-UFO observation, but a severe simultaneous animal disturbance which woke the sheep farmer and forced him to go out to investigate. All three of these things happened in the same area at about 3am.

So, what was going on down under in 1968-1970?? The UFOs, if such they were, were being unusually "private" about their business and making life tough for weeds on farms without even showing themselves off for the human audience. Pretty weird, says I.

DATA-NET: The World's Strangest lights.

This won't be much of a blog entry, but while reading a DATA-NET from late 1969, there was a lengthy coverage [for them] item on the VERY strange "Toledo OR Lights", or as the DATA-NET article listed them, Siletz, OR , October 9th, 1969. [this date is apparently meant to indicate the date of some "recent" appearances of the Lights, as the famous "wall-crawling donuts" allegedly took place in March of 1966].

I wrote about these things a long time ago on the blog [ back in May, I think, of 2010]. You can go back there and re-read, but this DATA-NET article gives a somewhat different coverage, though consistent and no less strange. The main appearance of the mysterious light phenomenon was associated with a family and their home. It could seem suspicious but several other persons witnessed the weirdness right with them. The pinnacle of strangeness was that donut-shaped lights crawled around walls inside the home despite no known light sources and a concerted effort to block all windows. I'm going to let you click on the DATA-NET article and read of the main incidents and other "UFO" encounters which might or might not be related. The article gives more context perhaps, but does nothing to solve the mystery.

DATA-NET: Uglies.

This entry looks very briefly at two controversial incidents. They are particularly controversial as they purport to involve serious damages caused by the unidentified "flying" agency. Neither of these cases may be part of the core UFO phenomenon, but let's put them out there and chew on it.

Case one came up in DATA-NET and is what inspired this posting. It is the Anolaima, Colombia July 4, 1969 incident, called by many UFOlogists simply the "Bermudez Incident". You can read DATA-NET's coverage of this above. It is as good as any, as it combines the newspaper story with the APRO follow-up.

As you see, Arcesi [Arcesio] Bermudez, along with many other witnesses, saw a yellow-orange, perhaps elliptical, object land near the house. It was encircled by a band of light, and seemed to rest on two "luminous legs", blue-colored with greenish tips. Bermudez alone walked up to the thing. [The drawing at the left and that below are part of a 2002 presentation of the case with new information given by Alan Murdie in Fortean Times].

Within a week, Bermudez grew deathly ill [vomiting] and later died. Apparently APRO received the medical report, and their MD consultant stated that he did not see anything to indicate that Bermudez did not die of natural causes. As APRO is hardly skeptical on most things, this opinion should be given at least some weight.

As time has gone on, this case grew in lore and acquired the addition of Bermudez firing a gun at the thing. No proper investigation of the case says that. Bermudez seems to have had a flashlight which he shown on the thing. It is also said that Bermudez said that there was "a Martian" inside the light. Murdie's later investigation indicated that Bermudez said he'd seen something like a "cartoon image of an astronaut" inside. Bermudez WAS apparently immediately ill, and his condition required hospitalization. His major odd symptom was extreme hypothermia.

Was this an unfortunate accident of getting too close to alien technology as it took off, emitting intense radiation?? Was it a large mysterious natural plasma phenomenon?? I'm not a great fan of such explanations usually, but the predominant "lightball"-like structure with surrounding light phenomena and spectral colored spikes below are somewhat leading in that direction. Or was this, as the locals thought, a case of a folkloric "spirit lightball" --- a premonitionary entity --- as Murdie offers in his article. Allegedly this lightball phenomenon frequented this area at other times.

The above are apparently original APRO drawings of the thing as reported by Bermudez.

The Bermudez case led me to another "ugly" UFO damage-maker, which was not in DATA-NET, but is often talked about in UFO articles alongside the Colombian case [although they are quite different]. This is the case marked Saladare, Ethiopia [village near Asmara], August 7th, 1970.

I believe that the entirety of information about this case comes from a letter received by Allen Hynek from a UN medical doctor who wrote the details to him. Hynek had the actual letter in his hand when he and Vallee were being "interviewed" for the text of their "fireside chat" book, The Edge of Reality, in 1974. I have never seen the original letter, but Hynek must have received this report soon after the event happened, or at least soon enough that the report information was fresh. All the pictures here and on the internet illustrating this case come from the book as well. For some reason there is chatter about the internet concerning the source of the case, when the answer is dead simple. And, because Hynek used this thing in the book, he obviously trusted the source. All we know is that this person was a medical doctor.

The event speaks of a daytime red glowing ball which swept through the village, destroying houses, uprooting trees, and burning grass. It melted asphalt, and broke stone in a bridge. It travelled 150 meters, paused, hovering, and reversed its course [not exactly precisely but close], returning to destroy more houses and leave as it came. The linear distance viewable for the thing's flight was three kilometers. The total flight time was ten minutes. Fifty buildings were damaged; eight people injured; a child died.

Astoundingly, even laughably, some persons have tried to write this off as warring forces in Ethiopia shooting missiles or mortars at each other. To be able to see a destructive "red ball" take 5 minutes to travel 3 kilometers, pause, and return for another five minute screaming path of destruction ... yeh, missiles. You wonder if anyone remembers that when missiles "destroy" things, they "stop" at the point of destroying them, not continue to happily cruise on another three kilometers?? And, the fact that the doctor and his colleagues found no metallic "leavings" by these destroyed war technologies --- well, that is a detail conveniently forgotten.

The issues here are as they always are: a). credibility --- did Hynek know the doctor, or have other means of knowing his bona fides?? All we can say is that he trusted the report. And b). strangeness --- if accurate, the thing is plenty strange. That leaves us with: but is it UFOlogy??

This is one of those "outlier" things which sound like either a random exotic natural accident to me --- something of the vast array of non-understood plasma-like outbursts, or even a "rent" in spacetime spitting something mindless but dangerous into our locale, or a bonehead blunder by some ET agency, maybe not even very close by. Think of ET-technofreaks trying something out regarding space-jumping, and blowing it briefly. ET#1: GAWD!! What just happened?? ET#2: Calm down. It's stabilized. Just don't put this in the log!

Why would "it" show up here?? Why not?? We're probably one of the places they're trying to get to.

Happy thoughts. Let's hope the ET garage inventors have limited power to play with. I don't want Wheeling or Kalamazoo to look like Saladare.