The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters

by Story, Ronald

  The seventh witness to call the Levelland Police Department with a detailed report was James Long, a truck driver from Waco, Texas, who at 1:15 A.M. reportedly saw a 200-foot-long, eggshaped object glowing “like a neon sign.” (Hynek, 1972) This time, the thing was just northeast of Levelland, and the same electromagnetic effects were noted. The electrical system of Long’s vehicle failed when relatively close to the object but returned to normal as the UFO rose up and streaked away.

  At 1:30 A.M., Sheriff Clem and Deputy Pat McCulloch, while driving along “Oklahoma Flat Road” about five miles outside of town, witnessed the UFO themselves. They spotted an oval-shaped light, “looking like a brilliant red sunset across the highway.” (Hynek, 1972)

  Two days later, on November 5th, the U.S. Air Force dispatched an investigator who spent less than one day in the area and hastily dismissed the sightings as “ball lightning.”

  Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, a scientific consultant to the Air Force at the time, agreed, and debunker Donald Menzel (another astronomer and noted UFO debunker) echoed this explanation in his book, The World of Flying Saucers, published in 1963. However, some years later, Hynek had second thoughts on the matter, which he expressed in his 1972 book, The UFO Experience:

  Captain Gregory, then head of Blue Book, did call me by phone, but at that time, as the person directly responsible for the tracking of the new Russian satellite, I was on a virtual around-the-clock duty and was unable to give it any attention whatever. I am not proud today that I hastily concurred in Captain Gregory’s evaluation as “ball lightning” on the basis of information that an electrical storm had been in progress in the Levelland area at the time. That was shown not to be the case. Observers reported overcast and mist but no lightning. Besides, had I given it any thought whatever, I would soon have recognized the absence of any evidence that ball lightning can stop cars and put out headlights. (Hynek, 1972)

  Nor is ball lightning known to have a preference for landing on dirt roads and paved highways, as these “objects” reportedly did.

  We must also consider the enormous size (around 200 feet across) of most of the objects reported, a factor that again seems to rule out the phenomenon of ball lightning, which is not known to attain such gargantuan proportions.

  Whatever happened that night, at least six witnesses experienced something very similar and extraordinary, independent of each other: an incredible UFO display within a ten-mile radius of Levelland, which has never to this day been satisfactorily explained.

  —RONALD D. STORY

  References

  The A.P.R.O. Bulletin, November 1957. Hall, Richard H., ed. The UFO Evidence (NICAP, 1964).

  Hynek, J. Allen. The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry (Henry Regnery, 1972; Ballatine Books, 1974).

  Menzel, Donald H. and Boyd, Lyle G. The World of Flying Saucers (Doubleday, 1963).

  Story, Ronald D. UFOs and the Limits of Science (William Morrow, 1981).

  Webb, Walter N. “Levelland (Texas) sightings” in Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of UFOs (Doubleday/New English Library, 1980).

  Light Years (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987). Gary Kinder relates the story of a rural Swiss contactee, Eduard Meier, who claims to be in frequent contact with a group of alien beings from the Pleiades star system. Meier produced hundreds of photos of his visits from Pleiadian starships. These sharp, high quality photos of hovering disks attracted many believers, including the actress Shirley MacLaine who made a pilgrammage to Meier’s door. The book author could not figure out how or if the photos were faked. As for the Pleiadian visitors, Meier claimed they are led by a German-speaking female named Semjase, who looks just like a beautiful Earth woman with amber hair and blue eyes.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  Lorenzen, Coral E. (1925-1988). A prolific writer of UFO books and articles, Coral Lorenzen was perhaps best-known for her role as the founder of the pioneering and longstanding Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO).

  Born in Hillsdale, Wisconsin, Coral attended public schools in Barron, Wisconsin, graduating from high school in May 1941.

  Her interest in the UFO phenomenon began on a summer day in 1934, when, at the age of nine, she and two playmates saw a hemisphere-shaped white object cross the western sky from south to north in an undulating trajectory. Three years later, during a routine eye examination, she mentioned the object to the family doctor, Harry Schlomovitz, who loaned her the books of Charles Fort to show her that strange objects had been seen in the sky for many years. This sparked an interest in astronomy and she began reading books dealing with that subject, and combing periodicals and newspapers for information on the strange objects. She married L. J. (Jim) Lorenzen on September 29, 1943, and worked at various jobs during his tour with the Army Air Transport Command in India, including shipfitting for the Navy and assemblyline work for Douglas Aircraft.

  Her second sighting came on June 10, 1947, in Douglas, Arizona. She had put her daughter to bed and was outside watching for meteors, when she saw a tiny, round, lighted object leave the ground in the south and move quickly straight up into the sky until it disappeared from sight. On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold made his famous sighting over Mount Rainier in the state of Washington.

  During the next five years Mrs. Lorenzen made many contacts with people interested in the subject of UFOs, and in January 1952, she began contacting them to form a group (APRO), with the main idea being to preserve information which otherwise would have been lost to history. She was sure, in view of the publicity given the UFOs in bigcity papers, that hundreds of additional sightings had been made in rural areas but were never reported or were buried in the pages of small-town newspapers. Besides the reports being publicized, it was to the problem of past reports that APRO members addressed themselves.

  In the early years, most of the work was done by Mrs. Lorenzen and she served as director until 1964, when Mr. Lorenzen took over the post. From 1964 to 1988, she served as secretary-treasurer and a member of the APRO board of directors.

  Through the years, Mrs. Lorenzen has also held additional positions as a correspondent and feature writer for various newspapers, and was employed by the United States Air Force at Holloman Air Force Base from 1954 to 1956, where she became familiar with Air Force procedures and missile testing.

  She was the author, or coauthor, with her husband, Jim, of seven books: Flying Saucers—The Startling Evidence of the Invasion from Outer Space (originally entitled The Great Flying Saucer Hoax, 1962, 1966); The Shadow of the Unknown (1970); Flying Saucer Occupants (1967); UFOs Over the Americas (1968); UFOs—The Whole Story (1969); Encounters with UFO Occupants (1976); and Abducted! (1977).

  POSITION STATEMENT: Although I have, throughout my long involvement with APRO, seen many changes in the field of UFO research, I realize there is room, indeed a desperate need, for further change. Specifically, there is a tendency toward “do your own thing” and little or no cooperation in the field. There are too many organizations and too many lone researchers who investigate cases, then file them away where they are unavailable to others for study.

  APRO was founded in 1952 and became international in scope in 1954. However, our biggest step forward came in 1962 with the publication of my fast book, The Great Flying Saucer Hoax, which attracted the attention of a few scientists who ultimately recruited others.

  In the future, UFO researchers should concentrate on improving the quality of investigations and, therefore, reports and attempt to see that the results are made available to the entire scientific community.

  Coral and Jim Lorenzen

  As far as my opinion of the UFO enigma is concerned, I do not think there are any hard-and-fast answers at this time. It seems to be a multifaceted phenomenon and will require much more work than has been expended by the UFO-research community to date. The most popular theory as to their identity and origin is the extraterrestrial hypothesis, and in view of the evidence currently available, it seems to be the most sensible.

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sp; Those individuals (generally scientists) who dismiss the UFO problem without examining the data are very remiss. One has only to see the distress and wonderment of a UFO witness to realize that something is afoot on this globe we call Earth.

  There are probably several races of intelligent beings in our galaxy alone who have solved the problem of propulsion which would make visitation to this planet very possible. Man does not like to accept this possibility because his ego gets in the way of his reason.

  However, the thousands of reports of UFOs in the sky, on the ground, and accompanied by humanoid but alien-appearing occupants, indicate that a careful, methodical, and indepth study of Earth and its inhabitants is underway.

  —CORAL E. LORENZEN

  Lorenzen, L. J. (1922-1986). Jim Lorenzen was well known in UFO circles as the international director of APRO (the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization) and, with his wife, Coral, as the coauthor of many popular books on UFOs. Born in Grand Meadow, Minnesota, he attended schools in Grand Meadow and Elkton, graduating from Elkton High School in 1938.

  Jim worked as a professional musician until induction into the U. S. Army Air Corps in 1942, where he was trained as a radio-operator mechanic. He served with the Air Corps until his discharge in 1945. During that time he served with the Air Transport Command in the China-Burma-India theater of operations, receiving the Air Medal with cluster, the Presidential Unit Citation with cluster, and the Distinguished Flying Cross with cluster.

  After his discharge from the Air Corps, Mr. Lorenzen returned to his music profession until 1950, when he entered the Electronic Technical Institute in Los Angeles and Broadcasters’ Network Studios for training, acquiring a first-class Radio/Telephone License. Since then he held positions with various companies. He was chief engineer for Radio Station WDOR in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, and chief of communications installations for Christy Shipyards, Sturgeon Bay. In 1954, he joined Tele-computing Corporation at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. After serving as chief of electronic maintenance of the Data Reduction Facility, he transferred to engineering where he served three years as a junior engineer.

  In 1960, Lorenzen accepted a position of senior technical associate with the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, where he remained until 1967, at which time he left that job to go into the electronic organ business.

  Since 1964, Mr. Lorenzen also served as international director for APRO, an organization which he and Coral Lorenzen founded in January 1952. Also with Coral, he coauthored five books on UFOs: Flying Saucer Occupants (1967); UFOs Over the Americas (1968); UFOs—The Whole Story (1969); Encounters with UFO Occupants (1976); and Abducted! (1977).

  POSITION STATEMENT: Study of the UFO mystery is complicated by the fact that it is so poorly defined. There has been, it seems to me, a tendency to arbitrarily include under its umbrella many unrelated problems. This stems probably from an unconscious wish to simplify a sometimes ominously mysterious universe—to say, in effect, that there is only one all-embracing major mystery, rather than many potentially disturbing enigmas, and be somewhat comforted thereby. Such ideas are nurtured by sensationalistic “potboiler” writers who seem to feel that combining two or more sensational subjects will give their stories more “gee whiz” appeal. This gives us UFO accounts mixed with various portions of Sasquatch, teleportation, telepathy, faith healing, Satanism, new age scriptural interpretation, mediumistic channeling, cattle mutilations, theosophy, poltergeist phenomena, et cetera, ad infinitum.

  We find with consternation, however, that some of the foregoing elements appear in real, solidly based reports and are left to wonder if science fiction anticipates the phenomenon or the phenomenon imitates science fiction. We note in passing that much otherwise acceptable data becomes somehow contaminated when associated with unacceptable data.

  This leads many conventional scientists to give voice to their “unflinching skepticism” and give “stouthearted expression to the feeling that such preposterous rumors are an offence to human dignity” to quote C. G. Jung. (Flying Saucers—A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, 1959)

  I have stated on occasion that APRO exists to solve the many questions raised by the existence of UFO reports. In practice we soon learn that a major problem exists in defining the limits of the mystery (i.e., deciding which reports to include in our study); for there certainly is no obvious way to determine, for example, which reports are triggered by “nuts and bolts” activity and which are perhaps psychic projections whose superficial form is dictated by the idea or rumor of UFOs but which ultimately stem from the internal needs of the “observer.” Once we have defined the problem, I think we will be well on the way to its solution. We will not be able to do that until we have learned to come to grips with its realities which means, in part, to conquer our own biases and prejudices.

  At present, utilizing the principal of parsimony, my “investigative assumption” is still (as it has been since 1952) that we are dealing with extraterrestrial visitations as the central core of the problem. Most of the bizarre fringes I can rationalize as being (1) the actions of one or more advanced cultures whose technology, motives, and psychology we do not understand and (2) deliberate deception of the witness through influence of his perception for the purpose of counterintelligence.

  But perhaps we stand too close to the riddle and do not see the forest for the trees. Standing back a little we can see the outstanding characteristic of the UFO phenomenon: It is a mystery! What is the effect of a mystery? It causes us to think. To puzzle. To ponder. And our consciousness is raised. Maybe that’s what it’s all about. At any rate the journey is only begun and we have miles to go before we sleep….

  —L. J. LORENZEN

  Lost Tribes from Outer Space, The (Editions Alvin Michel, 1974). Frenchman Marc Dem argues that Jews are God’s chosen people because they were selectively bred by extraterrestrial visitors. The Jewish race has always been oppressed by others throughout history because oppression is “like the process of rejection that sometimes occurs in organ transplants.” Yahweh, the extraterrestrial visitor who was worshipped as God, found Stone Age humans to be an inadequate species, so he genetically altered them and the Jews were the fruit of his creation, destined by their special status to lead humanity out of ignorance.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  Lubbock (Texas) lights The story of the Lubbock lights began on a hot summer night in August, 1951, as several professors from Texas Tech (W.I. Robinson, A.G. Oberg, and W.L. Ducker) sat outside in a backyard. A group of lights flashed overhead. They moved silently, crossing the sky rapidly, and seemed to be in some kind of loose formation. They were only in sight for two or three seconds, and none of the professors got a very good look at them.

  An hour or so later, the lights reappeared, and this time the professors were ready. The lights were softly glowing, bluish-green objects in loose formation. It seemed to the professors that the first group had been in a more rigid and structured formation than later groups.

  Joe Bryant of Brownsfield, Texas, told investigators that he was sitting in his backyard when a group of lights flew overhead. He described them as having a “kind of a glow, a little bigger than a star.” Not long after that, a second group appeared. Neither of the groups was in a regular formation.

  There was a third flight, but instead of flying over the house, they dropped down and circled the building. As Bryant watched, one of the “objects” chirped and he recognized it immediately as a plover, a bird common in west Texas.

  The professors, unaware of what Bryant had seen and heard, set out to obtain additional information. Joined by other professors and professionals (including Grayson Meade, E.R. Hienaman, and J.P Brand), Robinson, Oberg, and Ducker equipped teams with two-way radios, measured a base from the location of the original sightings, and then staked out the area. Knowing the length of that line, the time of the sighting, and the location and direction of flight, they would be able to calculate some important and useful information
. The problem was that none of the teams ever made a sighting.

  Then, on August 31st, the case took an amazing turn. Carl Hart, Jr., a nineteen-year old college freshman and amateur photographer, managed to take five pictures as the lights flew over his house in the middle of Lubbock.

  Joe Harris of the Lubbock newspaper learned about the pictures when a photographer who worked for him periodically called to tell him that Hart had used his studio to develop the film. Naturally the newspaper feared a hoax. Harris, and the newspaper’s lead photographer, William Hans, talked to Hart on a number of occasions. Harris bluntly asked if the pictures were faked. Hart denied it. About forty years later, in the 1990s, when asked by researchers what he had photographed, Hart said that he still didn’t know.

  The Lubbock lights, as photographed by Carl Hart, Jr., on August 31, 1951

  Hans later decided to try to duplicate the pictures at night from the roof of the newspaper office. He would attempt to photograph anything that flew over. He waited, but all he saw was a flight of birds that were barely visible in the glow of the sodium vapor lamps on the streets below him. He took photographs of the birds, but when he developed the film, the images were too faint to show on prints. From his experiment, he was convinced that what Hart photographed couldn’t have been birds under any circumstances.

  Air Force investigations were conducted throughout the fall of 1951. Investigators were dispatched from Reese AFB on the west side of Lubbock. They spoke to Hart on a number of occasions. They forwarded copies of their reports to both Project Blue Book headquarters and to Air Force Office of Special Investigation headquarters in Washington, D.C. First Lieutenant Edward Ruppelt, chief of Project Blue Book, even made a trip to Lubbock to speak to the witnesses including Carl Hart.

  During those interviews, Hart was advised of his rights under the Constitution of the United States. The investigators were playing hardball with the teenager. Between November 6 and 9, 1951, Ruppelt and AFOSI Special Agent Howard N. Bossert again interviewed Hart. In their report, they wrote, “Hart’s story could not be ‘picked apart’ because it was entirely logical. He [Hart] was questioned on why he did certain things and his answers were all logical, concise, and without hesitation.”