by Dan Wright
While you were away from your desk . . .
February 26, 1983
About 8:00 p.m., three women and four men converged at White Pond, near Kent, New York, where a boomerang-shaped object was hovering silently. The black surface had red, blue, and amber lights. One woman noted crisscrossed tubing on the bottom. The airship soon moved away and minutes later stopped 1,000 feet above an I-84 exit. A teacher and two air traffic controllers present agreed that no known aircraft was this large.7
March 17, 1983
From 8:40 to 8:55 p.m., a huge, dark structure, generally described as either triangular or boomerang-shaped, hovered and moved slowly over a 10-mile area including Brewster and Carmel, New York, as well as Danbury and New Fairfield, Connecticut. The vehicle glided just over Brewster rooftops at jogging speed, then stopped above nearby I-84 as drivers gawked. All noted rows of multicolored lights and a centered strong amber light. Some detected a faint hum. One man, a private pilot, noticed a complex of piping on the underside. When another wished mentally for a better look at it, the ship pivoted and came directly to him. Police were flooded with calls all night.8
March 24, 1983
A week later, from 7:30 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. across New York's Westchester and Putnam counties, a huge dark boomerang or triangle was seen by thousands—300 phoning a local UFO hotline. Most said the ship was quiet and noted multiple light configurations and colors. A family in Carmel reported that a small reddish object shot out of its brilliant white beam. Near Millwood it paced an auto and hovered over a stoplight. Taconic Parkway traffic snarled as the anomaly zigzagged, made tight circles, hovered, and illuminated cars. Witnesses included several policemen, a meteorologist, and an aircraft designer.9
September 1, 1983
Outside the village of Weaverham in Cheshire, England, a man was riding his motorcycle at 11:45 p.m., when he noticed some kind of aerial light approaching. Cautious, he stopped on the road and turned out his headlamp. A dark wedge-shaped object loomed overhead. At his next realization, the lights of a car were coming down the road toward him. But it was a different road, and his watch indicated two hours had passed.10
February 3, 1984
Near Tingsryd, Sweden, at 1:00 a.m., a driver was beset by a huge object hovering low over the road just ahead. He slid on the icy road surface and nearly collided with it. His engine died in the process and would not restart. Eight small beings came out of the machine and took him from his car. The abduction was foiled and the man escaped when a lumber truck approached. When police arrived, they found him collapsed and in a state of shock.11
March 25, 1984
One year and a day after the flood of Hudson Valley sightings, once again a huge, dark, delta-shaped vehicle with multicolored lights was seen by hundreds of onlookers. From 8:20 p.m. on, police in Peekskill, Bedford, Carmel, and Kent, New York, plus Danbury, Connecticut, took continuous calls about a quiet structure moving parallel to the Taconic Parkway, gliding low and slowly. Attempts to reassure callers with the FAA's explanation that stunt pilots were responsible only angered many. A Carmel PD patrolman chased the UFO several miles to the Connecticut border.12
July 14, 1984
At 10:15 p.m., three security guards at New York's Indian Point nuclear power plant watched a massive dark boomerang shape approach. With an array of ten brilliant lights, it moved slowly over the facility. After hovering in gusty wind for 15 minutes, the structure pivoted 90 degrees and left. Ten nights later the same or identical intruder made another appearance. This time the guards, their supervisors, other personnel, and a security camera followed its path at walking speed directly over one of the reactors. When the facility's alarm system failed, a call was placed to Camp Smith, a New York National Guard base, to send a helicopter gunship. Moments later the intruder slowly moved away.13
The CIA did not record any UFO-related activity for 1985.
Chapter 35
1986-88: Claims and Counterclaims
No internal or external UFO-related communications were recorded for 1986 by the Central Intelligence Agency.
At the outset of 1987, three reputable publishing firms were poised to release nonfiction works of alleged human interaction with presumed extraterrestrials. Following the Japan Airlines 747 encounter with a UFO in November 1986 (see pages 277–78), the FAA was selling a package of the crew's audiotapes, air controller statements, pilot drawings, and radar images. MUFON membership was up 10 percent in two months. Author Budd Hopkins remarked: “I can understand the rationale of a cover-up. The whole economy—stocks, bonds, mortgages, capital investment—is based on the idea that 20 years from now, things are gonna be pretty much the same.”1
Contemporaneously, an entrenched debunking organization, CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), declared that the alleged Truman-era documents concerning the 1947 UFO crash and recovery of four alien bodies were “clumsy counterfeits.” The report was released by Phillip J. Klass, an editor for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine. The committee's chairman Paul Kurtz, a University of Buffalo philosopher, called the UFO claims “one of the most deliberate acts of deception ever perpetrated against the news media and the public.” Those efforts countered documents released by William L. Moore, which implied that Truman created a secret group, Majestic 12 (a.k.a. MJ-12) to study the downed saucer and its contents. A National Archives spokesman said the documents had an improper designation. Another alleging Truman ordered the MJ-12 creation was a fraud, Klass insisted.2
Apart from those wranglings, on the island of Barbados, on September 2, 1987, scores of residents observed several glowing spheres moving north to south in a moonlit sky for over ten minutes. They were also reportedly seen elsewhere in the eastern Caribbean—up to eighteen balls of light, each with a long, illuminated tail. Weather officials had no explanation.3
While you were away from your desk . . .
May 15, 1986
An elderly farmworker in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, watched as an unconventional vehicle hovered near his house for 30 minutes. A brilliant beam of light flashed across surrounding hills. More than once it swept over him. He tried to shield his eyes but one remained exposed. After the anomaly left the area, the man was diagnosed with 80-percent loss of sight in that eye. The arm shielding his gaze had a sunburn effect.4
August 1, 1986
Two men were fishing on Banksons Lake in southwestern Michigan at 10:30 p.m., when a gigantic anomalous airborne machine arrived and moved slowly over the lake. The air behind it had a wavy appearance. Abruptly there was a great flash and the intruder was gone. Though not seriously harmed, both men's eyes watered for several days thereafter.5
November 17, 1986
At 5:10 p.m., a Japan Airlines 747 cargo jet was crossing Alaska en route to Tokyo. The captain noticed lights pacing the plane from 2,000 feet below. He banked away, but the intruder—a rectangle of amber and whitish lights, with pulsating jets of fire and a dark vertical center—rose and positioned itself directly before the plane. He radioed the Anchorage tower, but the transmission was garbled. A huge object dwarfing the jumbo jet now appeared in the distance. The Anchorage controller notified Elmendorf Air Force Base, and both radars detected the unknowns. Rather than continue the intrigue, the captain decided to land at Anchorage and did so uneventfully.6 Note: This incident has been the focus of numerous televised UFO documentaries.
August 6, 1987
At 11:00 p.m., between Barcis and Cimolaid, Italy, an auto and its three occupants were suddenly enveloped in a beam of red light from above. The car lost power and came to a stop. Within the beam it was as bright as day. When the light was extinguished, the car operated fine, but now they were at San Daniele, 40 km from the location they were last aware of. Ten minutes had passed. They drove to a hospital, all suffering from conjunctivitis (pink eye) and nausea.7
September 22, 1988
At 7:30 p.m., three people in an auto near Walcha, New South Wales, Australia, notice
d a red undefined object in the sky. Suddenly the auto lost power while the interior's temperature dropped significantly. Though nothing specific was recalled as happening next, afterward all three related that they were fatigued for a week.8
October 24, 1988
Likewise in Australia, late at night, an Adelaide resident awoke, aware that someone was in his bedroom. Suddenly he felt an overwhelming fatigue and fell back asleep. At his next awareness he was undergoing a medical examination in what seemed to be a sterile environment, but the lighting was so brilliant that he could not see his surroundings. After another skip in consciousness, he woke up back in his bed two hours later. In the morning one of his arms was fundamentally though temporarily paralyzed.9
Chapter 36
1989 Lots of Activity . . . Elsewhere
An April 1989 Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) Report emanating from Estonia related a national survey of its youth concerning their views on religion and other esoteric subjects. One comment related to the UFO subject: “While traditional, canonical religious culture attracts the attention of about half of the respondents, a majority (80 percent) are interested in questions linked to mysterious phenomena of nature and the human mind (UFOs, telepathy, telekinesis, the biofield, and the like).”1
An April 25 article in Pravda centered on an interview with Valentinas Artsishauskas, a noted parapsychologist at a laboratory in Vilnius, Lithuania. He defined “psychocerebronics” as the art of knowing the psyche. As a separate study, a device had allegedly been developed there to communicate with UFOs.2
A May 1 JPRS Report (no source shown) covered the activities and perspectives of a Soviet scientist, a winner of the prestigious Lenin Prize. He offered that persons with a religious aspiration may also gravitate to topics such as mysticism and “flying saucers.”3
The June 1989 edition of the Journal of Scientific Exploration offered two articles by MUFON principals. In “Analysis of a UFO photograph,” Dr. Richard F. Haines reviewed the investigation of a 35 mm photo taken on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, at 11:00 a.m., October 8, 1981. When shooting, the photographer was not aware of a disc-like object in the frame. Later microdensitometry, computer enhancement, and other techniques failed to reveal a hoax or a misidentified known object. The photo remained unexplained.
Dr. Bruce Maccabee authored “Analysis and discussion of the images of a cluster of periodically flashing lights filmed off the coast of New Zealand.” The strengths of the December 31, 1978, event were the presence of seven witnesses, a radar track, two tape recordings, and 16 mm film shot with a professional camera. No known phenomenon could adequately explain the lights.4
The August 11, 1989, issue of a Bulgarian journal carried an article titled “Farmers Burning Straw to Make Up for Delays.” One topic concerned a recent reported UFO landing near Moscow. “Unprejudiced investigations produced a perfectly prosaic explanation, namely the combustion of a large amount of dry grass.”5
Another JPRS Report was devoted to “English Summaries of Major Articles” in China over July and August 1989. Paragraph 39 was titled “Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) in Ancient China.” In the 1980s Chinese culture developed “societies of UFO fanciers.” Scientists were making efforts to find evidence of a UFO presence in ancient China.6
As reported on September 13, 1989, by Beijing Xinhua, at 11:13 p.m., September 6, an unknown was witnessed over the capital of Xinjiang Uygur. A dark cloud suddenly lit up. Then, after a golden flash, a saucer “with a black gap on its edge” appeared with a sound louder than an auto's engine. Bathed in red and yellow light, it hovered and rotated quickly before moving swiftly beyond the horizon.7
An unclassified Argentina Notice in late September 1989 was titled “Rocket Found in Desolate Area.” In response to a crashed rocket found in a salt pan of Cordoba Province, Argentina, residents remarked that several unusual events had occurred of late, including UFO sightings.8
Moscow's TASS carried forward a brief note initiated by Komsomolskaya Pravda. On September 27, 1989, in Voronezh, some local residents were eyewitnesses to a nondescript UFO. TASS added, “The newspaper prints a feature on its back page on UFO riddles and enthusiasts studying the problem.”9
The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS, successor to JPRS), in its Foreign Press Note for November 22, 1989, announced, “USSR: Media Report Multitude of UFO Sightings.” Leading Soviet news sources and journals were publishing numerous reports of UFOs sighted throughout the Soviet Union. Moscow, meanwhile, was establishing a “permanent center” for UFO studies.10
FBIS went on to recount that, in July 1989, the Russian newspaper Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya reported on several astounding cases:
An anomalous sphere had recently crashed on “Hill 611” near Dalnegorsk in the Primorskiy Kray (Maritime Province) of eastern Russia. Numerous scientists studied the remnants: “a fine mesh,” “small spherical objects,” and “pieces of glass.” The case remained open. One scientist reported finding gold, silver, nickel, alpha-titanium, molybdenum, and compounds of beryllium at the site. Some of the scientists concluded the sphere was extraterrestrial. A chemist claimed the mesh had threads measuring 17 microns, in turn made of braided threads still thinner. “Extremely thin gold wires were discovered intertwined in the finest threads, evidence of an intricate technology beyond the present capabilities of terrestrial science . . .”
On July 25, 1989, an engineer and workers at a collective farm witnessed the landing of a disc with two beams of light. After 20 minutes it flew away silently. An astronomical society spokesman said that, at that and other landing sites, an oscillator and electronic watches were affected.
On September 30, media all over the Soviet Union were receiving reports of UFO sightings on the ground and in the air. Editors were reviewing hundreds of reports related to UFO incidents. A member of the All Union Astronomical and Geodesic Society, then responsible for investigating anomalous phenomena, said that at locations of claimed UFO landings “electronic timepieces run at rates that are either too fast or too slow.”11
Sometime in 1988, over the city of Borisov, the crews of two Soviet aircraft spotted a disc with five light beams. One pilot was instructed to approach it. As he did, a beam was directed at the cockpit; the crew called it an unbearably bright 20-cm light and felt heat from it. Afterward the pilot and copilot were overcome and rendered “invalids.” Deteriorating health forced the copilot to quit his job after episodes of prolonged loss of consciousness. The pilot contracted cancer and died a few months later. Radiation affecting internal organs was listed as a contributing factor.12
Another newspaper, Stroitelnaya Gazeta, reported on September 16, 1989, that in August a group including one physical scientist began investigating a circular depression in a forest near Surgut where a worker reported a UFO had visited.13
On October 9, 1989, TASS reported that a UFO had landed in a park in the city of Voronezh, and was observed by many people before it left. Komsomolskaya Pravda reported on October 12 that a group of scientists had visited a field in Perm Oblast where locals said an object landed and left behind a circular depression 62 meters in diameter.14
Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya weighed in again on October 21, carrying forward the observations of hundreds in Omsk, eyewitnesses to the aerial maneuvers of a metallic sphere above the city for over five minutes. Pilots reported seeing it as well but said that, as with the airport control tower radar, their onboard radars did not detect it. When it left, a nearby military post alerted another post 600 km away, which reported sighting it five minutes later.15
The October 19–25 issue of Poisk included the observations of a physicist at the Terrestrial Magnetism Institute. He said he doubted scientists' claims of finding remnants from a UFO crash at Dalnegorsk, that the materials found were instead from an unsuccessful rocket launch in that region. He added that many other reports were actually misidentified ball lightning. As for the Roswell, New Mexico, incident of 1947, the same physicist s
aid the crash was of a USAF rocket with four rhesus monkeys aboard.16
In the wake of that flurry, SRI International announced in December 1989 that it had screened 256 persons for remote-viewing ability. Among those, just eight were chosen for second-stage screening.17
While you were away from your desk . . .
At 3:30 p.m., December 24, 1989, the pilot of a Czechoslovakian L-29 jet trainer was near Chelyabinsk, Siberia, when he encountered a dark-gray, cigar-shaped, airborne object some 500 meters below him. He decided to maneuver his L-29 to see it better through his transparent canopy. He stared at it for four minutes, realizing his face felt hot to the touch. After landing, he discovered a red coating of soft skin on the exposed (non-helmeted) parts of his face; they were sensitive when pressed. Within a day the affected skin was thicker and crust-like.18
Chapter 37
1990: Back in the USSR
One brief entry in a JPRS Report from January 18, 1990: Chinese scientists were making efforts to find “historical evidences” of UFOs, which were of particular interest to Sinologists.1
In a February 21 program summary for the Moscow International Service, item 15 of 20 stated that “policy holders of insurance company in China can file claims if attacked by ufo.”2
Moscow's TASS reported on April 15 that, since March 12, as per the Rabochaya Tribuna, several hundred people had seen distinct types of objects along the Yarovslavl Highway:
