SUBJECT: COLLECTION OF REPORTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

FILE: UFO2573

08-11-89 MOSCOW Headless aliens from space invade Russia! "Huge hairy creature" terrifies villagers in the Volga valley! Possible UFO lands in Moscow! Although President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's reforms haven't spawned U.S.-style supermarket tabloids let alone U.S.-style supermarkets glasnost's changed the Soviet media, as evidenced by these recent stories, and a lot of people seem to love it. The change's evident on state-run television, once a showcase for morally uplifting and dull "Boy-Loves-Tractor" movies about building communism, and news reports lauding factories overfulfilling the Five-Year Plan. Now, six days a week, as part of the breakfast TV program "120 Minutes," gray-haired mystic Alan Chumak waves his hands on camera to cure viewers from Minsk to Vladivostok of what ails them. Soviets with heart disease are requested to watch the self-described journalist on Tuesdays. On Fridays, Chumak will help viewers get rid of allergies. People with stomach bugs or bone and muscle aches should tune in on other days. The inability to watch the program's not a problem. Leave the set on, and a jar of water, juice or massage cream placed by the TV screen supposedly will be "charged" by Chumak's gestures and can be used later for treatment. Earlier this summer, after about a month on the air, Chumak was pulled off "120 Minutes" by broadcast executives, who said they wanted to make sure his treatment brought positive results. They must have been convinced the man in his mid-50s was back on TV waving his hands within a week. Since the days of the wild-eyed monk Rasputin, hypnotist and confidant at the court of the last czar, Russians have been intrigued by the occult and fantastic, and stories about UFOs, vanished planets and ESP have always had an eager audience. With glasnost, or greater openness, such topics are getting more exposure than ever in the once stuffy official Soviet media, and despite the firmly materialistic and rationalist ideology of the ruling Communist Party. In fact, the unlikely organ in the forefront of the weirdness campaign belongs to the party itself. The 1 million-circulation daily newspaper Socialist Industry, an organ of the party's Central Committee, has a mandate to report on the Soviet economy, but often makes space for news items that have nothing to do with either socialism or industry. On Tuesday, there was this intriguing account of invaders from space landing in Central Russia's Perm region: milkmaid Lyubov Medvedev told the newspaper, "At about 4:30 in the morning, I was going to the farm when I saw a dark figure seemingly riding a motorcycle...but when I looked closely at the figure, I noticed there was no motorcycle, but just something resembling a man, but taller than average with short legs." The creature had "only a small knob instead of a head," Ms. Medvedev said. "I was frightened to death...then it became fluorescent and disappeared." Beekeeper G. Sharoglazov saw two egg-shaped "fluorescent objects" as big as aircraft hovering at a height of 600-1,000 feet. Others in mid-July also saw aliens with no heads, the paper said. It quoted V. Kopylov, Communist Party boss in the Chernushinsky region, as acknowledging that "something unusual's going on the territory of our two collective farms." It was Socialist Industry as well that informed Soviets on Thursday of the huge, fleet-footed hairy creature that terrified residents of the Kirovo settlement in the Volga basin. "I saw the creature pretty well," said resident R. Saitov. "It was about 2 meters (6 feet) tall, its body covered with dark brown hair and it had shoulder-length hair...being a veterinary surgeon, I can say the creature was neither a man nor an ape." Saitov and a friend tried to approach the creature after spotting it on the other bank of a pond, but it bounded away at astonishing speed when they pursued it in a car. The newspaper noted disapprovingly that Saratov University biologists weren't taking reports of the sighting seriously or even deigning to talk to witnesses. The very official Soviet news agency Tass later picked up the

newspaper's story for national and worldwide distribution, headlining it "Huge Creature Sighted in Volga Region; Men Give Chase." Earlier this week, however, Tass deflated another Socialist Industry report about a UFO landing. Last month, the paper reported in great detail on a 26-foot-wide patch of burned ground found near a southern Moscow highway. It quoted UFO specialist A. Kuzovkin as saying the grass had likely been blasted by powerful radiation, which he called probable evidence of the landing of an Unidentified Flying Object. Not so, Tass reported. Firefighters think a haystack simply caught fire and scorched the ground. 08-10-89 OSHKOSH, Wis. Karen Sazama saw something strange during a fishing trip Thursday, and it wasn't on the end of her fishing hook. At 3:30 a.m. on waters near Omro, the Milwaukee woman saw what she belives was an unidentified flying object. Sazama said she told her fishing companion, Gary Michael Frye, that something funny was going on after the pair saw a light in the sky. "It was a glowing light, an orangish-reddish light," said Sazama, who was fishing with Frye in a boat. "I really got scared out there. I was looking for a place to hide in the boat." Sazama said the light stayed in the sky from 20 to 25 minutes before it disappeared. The pair were fishing on the Fox River and Lake Butte des Morts. "The fish weren't even biting," Sazama said. "We got nothing for fish, not even a bite. I told Mike `I think the lights had something to do with it."' Frye said the couple rented a boat from George's Bait Shop near Omro at 7 p.m. Wednesday for a night of fishing. Frye said he's sure the light was a UFO. "Yes, I would say it was a UFO. It was something I had never saw before. I do believe in UFOs," Frye said. "(The light) was bigger than a star. It was falling, but not very fast." The couple reported their sighting to the Winnebago County Sheriff's Department at about 8 a.m. Thursday. George Wilz, owner of George's Bait Shop, said this's the first time anyone ever reported an unusual sighting to him. "I know (Sazama) was all shook up," Wilz said. "To me it's kind of serious." But did the lights scare off the pair for good? "I don't think this will prevent us from coming back again," Sazama said. "I just hope we don't see anymore lights like that again." 08-22-89 TRUSSVILLE, Ala. Police in Trussville and Dadeville, 60 miles apart, reported seeing unusual lights in the sky within minutes of each other, but no one's rolling out the red carpet for UFOs just yet. "I'm not trying to start anything. I just answered a call with another officer and we saw what we saw," Trussville police Sgt. Nelson Byess said. "I'm not going to run out and print up T-shirts and bumper stickers." Byess was referring to the hoopla generated earlier this year in Fyffe, where people reported seeing silent, triangular UFOs with lights in the night sky. The numerous sightings never were explained. Byess said he could not see any shape connected to the lights, which he spotted after several residents called police about 5 a.m. Monday. "It hovered for a while, we watched it about 20 or 30 minutes, and then moved off or faded out as the sun came up," he said. "I never heard any sound." A little earlier, before 5 a.m., Dadeville Police Chief Terry Wright had just given a speeding ticket when he saw something in the sky. "I looked to my left and saw what I thought was the moon behind a cloud, then I realized the moon was on my right," Wright said. "It was round and bright to start with, kind of hazy, then it looked like a bright gas and moved out of sight after about 15 or 20 minutes. There were no colored lights, just white." Wright thought the bright shape was so odd he told everyone at City Hall and his wife about it. "I didn't want everyone thinking I was on drugs, but I never saw anything like it before," Wright said. "Later in the day, someone said they saw on the TV that Trussville reported seeing something, too." Information on both sitings will be recorded by Mutual UFO Network Inc., as the Fyffe sightings were, said section director Jeff Ballard. 10-05-89 ROCKVILLE, Md. There's a lot of strange stuff happening out there

tales of poltergeists, swamp monsters, maybe even dinosaurs still crashing through African jungles and Mark Chorvinsky's opened a "strange hotline" to hear all about it. "The world's a pretty strange place," says Chorvinsky, 35, a black-clad archivist of the bizarre and investigator of the weird who lives on a quiet, tree-shaded street in this Washington suburb. "Everybody knows of something strange that's happened to them, but they never talk about it," he says. "The only time it's safe to talk, it seems, is around a campfire or during Halloween." Now they can dial the "strange hotline" at 1-900-820-8361 to share a scary encounter with the unknown, or hear a tape of Chorvinsky describing some of his favorites. Among them are the Lizard Man of South Carolina, the horrific winged Jersey Devil, the Manila vampire and a haunted stretch of rural Maryland highway where "the dreaded Snarly Yow" hass been spotted by motorists. Chorvinsky, in fact, recently listened to "one of the most amazing stories I've ever heard" from a taped message left by an anonymous hotline caller. It was the tale of an Arizona woman who bought a giant cactus as a house plant. A few days later, she was alarmed to see the cactus moving its prickly arms. She fled the house with her children just before the cactus exploded, releasing swarms of scorpions in her living room. That's the sort of thing that sends agreeable tingles down Chorvinsky's spine and fills the pages of Strange Magazine, a twice-a-year compendium of weird happenings that Chorvinsky founded and edits for an estimated 4,000 avid readers. He's also a professional magician who performed at the White House last year, an author who's planning a biography of Merlin the magician and a filmmaker whose movie short, "Strange Tangents," was screened at the American Film Institute, the Library of Congress and film festivals at Cannes, Berlin and Los Angeles. "It's about a young sorceress who tries to save her dying master with the help of her friend, a 3-foot-tall talking salamander," Chorvinsky says. To help pay the bills, he operates a science fiction and magic shop in a Rockville shopping mall where customers can satisfy their appetites for strange schlock. The shelves are stuffed with dragons and wizards, crystal balls, Ninja swords, Tarot cards, horror movie classics and fantasy games titled "Skulls and Scrapfaggot Green" and for laughs "Batwinged Bimbos from Hell." Although his bushy hair, beard, mustache and suit all in black give him a slightly fiendish look, Chorvinsky's nobody's wacko. He's a good-natured skeptic who directs a global network of tipsters and investigators who track down reports of strange phenomena for scholarly discussion in his magazine. "I neither believe nor disbelieve this stuff," he said in an interview. "We have many skeptics who read the magazine, including myself. I am skeptical but open-minded. I doubt everything but I accept the possibility of anything." He's never seen a UFO landing in a corn field, but knows that "the damnedest things fall from the sky," including frogs, fish, sugar crystals, ice chunks and vast cobwebs spun by airborne spiders. Mysterious sea serpents like the Loch Ness monster may be the stuff of ancient folklore, he said, or they may have existed all along as monstrous species of marine life that somehow eluded discovery by scientists. But what about the strange booms and bangs in the night? The bizarre mirages of entire cities in the sky? The spinning wheels of light beneath the oceans? Toads encased in rock but still alive? "The stories that really intrigue me are those that give me the greatest feeling of disquieting strangeness," Chorvinsky said. "The tales so strange they couldn't possibly be explained, the kind that give you a chill down your spine or make your hair stand on end. The sort of thing that makes you say, `Ooooh, that's weird'!" < EDITOR'S NOTE: Reports of strange phenomena may be addressed to Mark Chorvinsky, Box 2246, Rockville, Md. 20852 10-09-89 SECAUCUS, N.J. A consultant on the subject of unidentified flying objects said Monday that reports of a UFO in the Soviet Union with 10-foot high humanoids aboard would be treated seriously by scientists in that country. Stanton Friedman, who was in New Jersey to lecture Monday night, said in an interview that the USSR Academy of Sciences created a Commission

on Anomalistic Atmospheric Phenomena in 1984. The commission was prompted by a UFO siting near the city of Gorky, said Friedman, a consultant who lectures on the topic "Flying Saucers Are Real" and who's examined Soviet studies of UFOs. He said that in April 1988, 300 scientists gathered in the Siberian city of Tomsk for a conference on "sporadic instant phenomena" and recommended that the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences draft a proposal on the study of UFO's. Last June, the Soviet publication "Soviet Military Review" included an article on "UFO's and Security." Friedman said the authors of the article argued that the computers required to run the United States' space-based antimissile defense would not be able to distinguish between missiles and UFO's and would increase the likelihood of World War III starting by accident. The article calls for international cooperation on the study of UFO's, Friedman said. "True, there's some political hype in there," he said. 10-09-89 MOSCOW It was a close encounter of the communist kind. Towering, tiny-headed humanoids from outer space landed their UFO in the Russian city of Voronezh and emerged for a promenade around the park, spreading fear among residents. At least that's what the official Tass news agency said Monday. Tass, contributing to a string of weird tales that have crept into the formerly stuffy state-controlled media in recent months, said in a straight-faced report that Soviet scientists vouched for the UFO's landing. "Scientists have confirmed that an unidentified flying object recently landed in a park in the Russian city of Voronezh," Tass said. "They have also identified the landing site and found traces of aliens who made a short promenade about the park." A Tass duty officer, contacted Monday evening by telephone, refused to identify the reporter who sent the dispatch from Voronezh, but stood by the story. "It's not April Fool's today," he said. The Soviet media, unleashed by the Kremlin's policy of glasnost greater openness feel free now to hype incredible stories that seem more at home in the supermarket tabloids of the West. Recent examples include other accounts of UFOs, sightings of abominable snowman-type creatures and a tale about a young mystic who goes into a trance and flies about the cosmos. A rash of mystics and ESP-artists also have invaded state TV. In Buffalo, N.Y., Paul Kurtz, chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, commented: "We're extremely skeptical of this claim. It's not the first one (in the Soviet media). There's many. There seems to be a rash of reports, largely uncorroborated." According to Monday's Tass report, a large shining ball or disk was seen hovering over the park by Voronezh residents. They saw the UFO land and up to three creatures similar to humans emerge, accompanied by a small robot, Tass said. "The aliens were three or even four meters tall (almost 10 feet to 13 feet), but with very small heads," the news agency quoted witnesses as saying. "They walked near the ball or disc and then disappeared inside." The report resembled a story last summer in the daily newspaper Socialist Industry, which carried an alleged "close encounter" between a milkmaid and an alien in Central Russia's Perm region. In that report, milkmaid Lyubov Medvedev was quoted as saying she encountered an alien creature "resembling a man, but taller than average with short legs." The creature, she said, had "only a small knob instead of a head." Stanton Friedman, a consultant who lectures on the topic "Flying Saucers Are Real" and's examined Soviet studies of UFOs, said in Secaucus, N.J., on Monday that Soviet scientists tended to treat the subject more seriously than American scientists. Last June, the Soviet publication Soviet Military Review included an article on "UFO's and Security." The Tass report, which did not give the date of the purported "landing" in Voronezh, said onlookers were "overwhelmed with a fear that lasted for several days." Genrikh Silanov, head of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, told Tass that scientists investigating the UFO report found a 20-yard depression with four deep dents, as well as two pieces of unidentified rocks. "At first glance, they looked like sandstone of a deep-red color. However, mineralogical analysis's shown

that the substance cannot be found on Earth," Tass quoted Silanov as saying. "However, additional tests are needed to reach a more definite conclusion," he said. Silanov said the landing site and path taken by the aliens was confirmed using the "biolocation" method of tracking. The agency did not explain what that was. Further confirmation came from witnesses in Voronezh, 300 miles southeast of Moscow, who were not told of the experiments and whose accounts coincided precisely with the scientific findings, Tass said. In July, Tass deflated a report in Socialist Industry quoting a UFO specialist, A. Kuzovkin, as saying a 26-foot-wide patch of burned ground near southern Moscow was probably caused by the landing of a UFO. Not so, Tass reported. Firefighters think a haystack simply caught fire and scorched the ground. Russians have long been fascinated by the weird and the occult, but formerly they could glean their information only from rumors and underground copies of everything from palmistry guides to books on Eastern mysticism. The Kremlin's economic reforms, with their emphasis on each enterprise paying its own way, have also given the official press more incentive to cater to readers' tastes in order to increase circulation. Kurtz's committee's a UFO subcommittee and's been investigating the claim made by Tass. Kurtz, a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said Monday: "Since the press freedoms in the last year, increasingly it seems to be open season. Paranormal pandemonium's broken out in the Soviet Union, not only with UFOs, but faith healers, astrologers and so on. In a closed society such as the Soviet Union, you don't get the development of critical reason." He said the account "has all the characteristics of science fiction." Kurtz noted that scientist Silanov says the landing was confirmed by biolocation "As far as we can tell it's a kind of dowsing. We're very questioning of that. It's hardly a scientific method of testing whether anything's landed or not." "If this were true," Kurtz remarked, "I think chairman (Mikhail) Gorbachev would call a press conference and proudly announce that, with everybody attempting to get out of the Soviet Union, at long last here are some extraterrestrials in that Union." 10-11-89 Police and residents in northeast Oklahoma say they have no clue to the origin of five strange, colored lights that were spotted hovering over Commerce and Miami late Tuesday. "I couldn't see any kind of a shape to them at all," Commerce resident Fran Willmert said Tuesday. "But I was looking at them with my eye. I noticed they were changing color and went from red to white to blue." Ms. Willmert said she saw the lights from her yard and "had never seen anything like that before." Commerce Police Chief Bob Baine, who looked at the lights through binoculars and a high-powered telescope, said "they were nothing that looked like an aircraft. We don't know what they are. We'd received a call about 8:30 p.m. of a UFO around the Brunswick plant and we thought it was a joke," Baine said. "But when officers arrived on the scene they saw what looked what lights that seemed to move in different directions." Baine said the five lights were in a group of four, with the fifth a short distance from the others. "Just a few minutes ago I went out and took a scope and could see them sitting in kind of a pattern," Baine said. "There was nothing that I could specify as any shape. They were like spots or something." Larry Ruthi, a National Weather Service forecaster at Norman, said a check of area reporting stations indicated no unusual atmospheric conditions that might explain the sightings. Ruthi said he contacted a weather office in Tulsa and the Central Weather Service Unit in Fort Worth, Texas, and both reported nothing unusual happening in that part of Oklahoma. "An auroral display should have been visible over a larger area than just Miami," Ruthi said. "Frankly, I'm at a loss as to what they're seeing." A disptacher with the Ottawa County sheriff's office in Miami, also said county officers in the field reported seeing "strange lights." "We thought it was just a hoax but apparently it's real because I've got at least three, maybe four city units and one of my county units that have seen the lights." The dispatcher, who asked not to be identified, said the lights were

first reported in Miami and then moved north in the county to between Commerce and Cardin, near the Kansas border. The dispatcher said country officers also described the lights as turning different colors. 10-10-89 MOSCOW A three-eyed alien with a robot sidekick landed by UFO and made a boy vanish by zapping him with a pistol, a Soviet newspaper reported Tuesday, in a second day of strange tales in the state-run media. But as the bizarre saga of the space invasion of the city of Voronezh unfolded for a second day, a scientist whose words were used to buttress the first published report voiced doubts, and said he was in part misquoted. "Don't believe all you hear from Tass," Genrikh Silanov, head of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, cautioned in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Voronezh. "We never gave them part of what they published." On Monday, the usually staid, official Soviet news agency told the world that scientists'd confirmed an alien spaceship carrying giant people with tiny heads'd touched down in Voronezh, a city of more than 800,000 people about 300 miles southeast of Moscow. As many as three aliens 13 feet tall left the spacecraft, described as a large shining ball, and walked in the park with a small robot, Tass reported. A Tass duty officer stood by the story. "It's not April Fool's today," he said. The purported close encounter in Voronezh was only the latest weird tale to appear in the Soviet media, which under the policy of "glasnost" or openness have recently told of other sightings of UFOs and the Yeti, or abominable snowman. Monday's report spawned rumors in Moscow, including one that the aliens told Voronezh residents the Earth would be destroyed by the year 2000 if people didn't stop polluting it. Nonetheless, a Communist Party paper whose avowed mission's to write about culture was the only major national daily to print anything Tuesday about the UFO, indicating more authoritative newspapers like Pravda thought the topic too hot to handle. Sovietskaya Kultura said its coverage was motivated by "the golden rule of journalism: the reader must know everything." "Of course, it's hard to believe in what happened in the town," it reported from Voronezh. "It's even more difficult to explain." The daily quoted witnesses as saying the UFO flew into Voronezh on Sept 27. At 6:30 p.m., it said, boys playing soccer saw a pink glow in the sky, then saw a deep red ball about 10 yards in diameter. The ball circled, vanished, then reappeared minutes later and hovered, it said. A crowd rushed to the site, Sovietskaya Kultura said, and through an open hatch saw a "three-eyed alien" about 10 feet tall, clad in silvery overalls and bronze-colored boots, and wearing a disk on his chest. The newspaper, quoting witnesses, gave this account: The UFO landed. Two creatures, one apparently a robot, exited. A boy screamed with fear, but when the alien gazed at him, with eyes shining, he fell silent, unable to move. Onlookers screamed, and the UFO and the creatures disappeared. About five minutes later, they reappeared. The alien'd a "pistol" a tube about 20 inches long, which it pointed at an unidentified 16-year-old boy, making him disappear. The alien went inside the sphere, which took off. At the same time, the boy reappeared. "Children and eyewitnesses of the abnormal phenomenon have been questioned by police workers and journalists," wrote Sovietskaya Kultura's Voronezh correspondent, E. Efremov. "There are no discrepencies in the description of the sphere itself, or the actions of the `aliens.' Moreover, all the children who became witnesses to this event are still afraid, even now." It gave the names of only three witnesses, all youngsters. Scientists from a nationwide group that investigates "abnormal phenomena" were looking into the landing, the newspaper said. Silanov, who said he belongs to the group, cast doubt on the Tass report that quoted him as saying the aliens left behind two rocks resembling sandstone of a deep red color that cannot be found anywhere. "The rock they described as extraterrestrial's in fact a piece of iron oxide which could easily have originated on Earth," according to Silanov, 50. He said there indeed was "a landing site" or something resembling one in Voronezh. But he acknowledged that could happen as well if there were an underground pipe or cable, or an

underground reservoir. Silanov also said the testimony of children between the ages of 11 and 14 who claimed they witnessed the landing did not always correspond on how the aliens looked, and that they "certainly didn't mention the tremendous height" cited by Tass. The phone connection was abruptly cut off before Silanov could answer more questions. Meanwhile, a Tass editor said two Moscow-based reporters'd been dispatched to Voronezh to check on the report on the UFO filed by local Tass correspondent Vladimir Lebedev, a man he termed a "very serious" journalist. The editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tass, through bitter experience, has learned to be wary of hoaxes. In January, the news agency reported six people'd been rescued after spending 35 days buried alive in rubble following the Armenian earthquake. It later retracted the story. 10-12-89 NEW YORK That extraterrestrial story from the Soviet Union may have been cleared up those 12-foot, tiny-headed guys who landed in the U.S.S.R. were just trying to get back to New York City. "Anything's possible," says Bill Knell, a local UFO researcher who firmly believes there was an alien presence in a park in the borough of Queens seven months ago. "Absolutely, there was some type of UFO in Kissena Park." Knell's assertions he also said there may have been a return visit two weeks ago came two days after the Soviet news agency Tass reported the presence of ETs in the town of Voronezh. Since then, scientists have disparaged the report, attributing it to rising sensationalism in the Soviet press under "glasnost," or greater openness. Neither story seemed to impress local residents, who were more concerned with Knell's presence in the park than any report of visiting ETs. "This is my haunt. I've been coming to this park for years, and there's nothing going on here," said Julie Ford, shaking her head and laughing. "They say that tree there was burned by a UFO: it was broken by kids swinging on the branches." Sure enough, Knell did offer the damaged willow as evidence that something had beamed down there. But he also offered a mineralogist's report that a burned oval on the ground contained particles of a type of feldspar quartz found on the island of Aruba, not in Queens. "We find this amazing," said Knell, who was joined by several other believers in UFOs. According to Knell, five people riding a bus on March 9 saw "very bright lights" hovering near a lake in the park. Since the park is located between Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, they initially thought it was a downed aircraft, said Knell. Based on their accounts and other evidence, Knell said, UFO investigators determined this was a legitimate sighting. Knell thinks he knows why the people who spotted something in Queens never saw aliens or spoke with them. "I believe they have their own agenda, and at this time it doesn't include communication," said Knell, who on Wednesday addressed several skeptical reporters at the site where the UFO allegedly burned the ground. Unfortunately, that's also the site where the remnants of a downed tree were piled, killing off all the grass underneath, said park maintenance man Joe Mackey, 60. "If there was a spot around here burned out, I woulda known about it," said Mackey, who spends three days a week in the park. "It's a figment of somebody's imagination." Perhaps, but Knell's not alone. Some residents of Mississippi's Delta region say the Soviet description of a UFO is similar to a fast-moving metallic ball they spotted earlier this month. Lee Abide Jr. said he first saw the object about three or four months ago. He saw it again early Wednesday while on his way to work at Abide Aero Flying Service about five miles south of Greenville. "And it didn't come out of a bottle of vodka," he said, referring to some speculation about the Soviet witnesses. Bill Kimmel, a pilot, said he saw the object two days ago while flying to Memphis, Tenn. He said it was round, metallic, kept changing colors and was moving 800 to 900 mph at 3,000 feet some distance off his left wingtip. "There was no way it was a weather balloon because no balloon can travel that fast," he said. 10-12-89 EXLINE, Iowa Carol Drake says she was skeptical about Unidentified

Flying objects until she spotted bright reddish lights in the early evening sky. "I wish somebody would give me a logical explanation so people would stop teasing me," Mrs. Drake, 48, a farmer near Exline, said Thursday. The Iowa sighting coincided with two other reports of unidentified lights to the UFO Reporting Center in Seattle. "We'd reports from Lexington, Ky., and Topeka, Kan., about a group of lights at very high altitude," said Robert Gribble, director of the center. "We don't have any explanation. Everybody's looking at the sky after the Soviet report." The Soviet news agency Tass reported this week that citizens there saw aliens with tiny heads and large bodies. "Usually I just get a chuckle when I hear reports about UFO," Mrs. Drake said by telephone. "I've been getting a chuckle out of the Russian story. The little kid in me wants to believe there are such things, but I think it's not sensible. "I did not see any people nine to 12 feet tall, or whatever the Russians saw." Mrs. Drake was one of many people who saw the lights early Wednesday evening near Exline, 60 miles southeast of Des Moines and only a few miles north of the Missouri border. She said a visitor to her house saw the same thing as did her daughter, who lives several miles away. "I got her on the phone and said, `Would you run outside and see if you can see any flying saucers, or whatever it is.' She was gone for quite a while and then came back and said, `That's bizarre.'" Mrs. Drake said the two lights changed colors, first reddish and then changing to mostly yellow, and were like bright headlights in the distance. It wasn't bright enough to create light on the ground, however, and it wasn't too bright to look at, she said. She said the lights neither blinked nor made any sound and they were far above the horizon, thus ruling out lights on farm machinery. She said she could see transconti7ental jets in the night sky but that their blinking lights were minuscule compared to the unidentified lights. The lights moved independently of each other, she said, and frightened her when they moved directly over her house. "I'm sure there's a logical explanation for it," she said. Although the lights appeared to be high in the sky, the source was apparently close to her farm, she said, since she reported the lights to be east of her house at the same time her daughter several miles away saw them to the north. Mrs. Drake said she was alone at the time but that a visitor, John Heubner of Fairfield, stopped by and saw the same thing. Heubner's wife, Pat Heubner, said her husband called her Wednesday night and was breathless. "He was so excited. Now I believe in UFOs, but I don't think he did until now," Mrs. Heubner said. Heubner could not be reached for comment. Another person who saw the lights was David Foster of rural Exline. "There were two lights in the sky, then they separated and one went off," he told radio station KBIZ in Ottumwa. He said the lights were too high in the sky to be mistaken for farm machinery. The Appanoose County sheriff's office in Centerville said nobody but the media called about the mysterious lights. 10-14-89 MIAMI, Okla. The mysterious lights that northeastern Oklahoma residents have seen in the night sky for the last four days are real, but they aren't anything to get excited about, a Coffeyville, Kan., astronomy instructor said Saturday. "It's real, but it's caused by a very natural phenomenon," said Don Lind, an astronomy instructor at Coffeyville Community College. "We do have some rather large bright objects up in the night sky." Miami officials asked Lind to use his computer to see if the lights that have caused a stir in northeastern Oklahoma could be explained astronomically. Ken Murphy, a civil defense radio operator, said Friday that numerous reports refer to three different objects in the sky. The brightest's in the west-northwest sky, another was in the southwestern sky and the dimest was in the northeast. Some callers said the lights were flashing blue, red and white and moving slowly across the sky. Lind found that two planets, two stars and a turbulent, dusty atmosphere could explain all the sightings. The northeast sighting's Jupiter the largest planet in the solar system, Lind said. He said Jupiter's coming up at about 10 p.m. It's about 40 times brighter than the average star and could appear to flicker through a thick atmosphere. "Being

that low on the horizon, it's in a very thick area of the atmosphere," he said. "People are seeing this, particularly if they are using binoculars or a very cheap telescope." In the southwest, Venus's very bright right after sundown, and Antares appears about the time Venus sets, Lind said. "There's something in the sky continuously for them to see," he said. And, he says, in the west-northwest, Arkturus, a Class K orange star, is the only thing that could be drawing that much attention. "It's been there for a long time, and people just haven't noticed it. A lot of people now are just wanting to see things," Lind said. The lights appear to move for the same reason the sun appears to move the earth's rotation and they appear to flash because of dust and pollen moving in the warm air on the horizon, Lind said. "The air's very turbulent. It's moving almost constantly. As these stars are low to the horizon, you are going to get a substantial amount of distortion," he said. "Basically, there's nothing up there now that hasn't been up there for months," he said. "The weather's nice and people are getting out on their last fling before the winter sets in." Lind said the sightings are predominant in northeastern Oklahoma and along the Oklahoma borders with Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas because it's hill country. "They have a history of seeing spook lights and this sort of thing in that area," Lind said. "They have been proven to be nothing more than light refractions. The people are really seeing these things." Isothermal layers or layers of different temperatures form in the atmosphere above the hills, Lind said. Because light bends differently in different temperatures, the layers act like a mirror refracting starlight up and down. The reports of lights conjured images of unidentified flying objects. Coupled with the pre-Halloween season, the superstition linked to Friday the 13th and reports this week from the Soviet Union of close encounters with alien spacecraft, the reports have received national attention. "These sightings are not at all typical of UFO sightings," Lind said. "Typical UFO sightings are only by a handful of people for a very short period of time. These sightings are by many people over about a week's period." 10-15-89 COLUMBUS, Ohio While scientists are skeptical about tales that a 9-foot-tall, three-eyed extraterrestrial made a 16-year-old Soviet boy disappear and reappear, a Columbus researcher says it may be true. The Soviet news agency Tass reported last week that an alien landed recently in the city of Voronezh, adding fuel to the debate over whether aliens from outer space are fact or fantasy. The account of the three-eyed alien's confrontation with a terrified teen-ager was "confirmed" by a newspaper in the area, Tass reported. Columbus UFO researcher Don Jernigan, however, says there's a good chance the Soviet story's true, and that it's one of the thousands of times aliens have visited Earth. "Nobody's been listening" to UFO researchers' claims, but that will change now, said Jernigan, who's also president and founder of the Phenomenon Investigation Committee. "I think this Soviet report will give credibility to this phenomenon," Jernigan said. "People will have to give this a lot more serious attention because Tass's the Soviet Union's official news agency, and they don't have a reputation for playing jokes. So I would assume this incident's a pretty good basis." But Paul Kurtz, chairman of the Buffalo-based Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, discounts the report. "What's happening in the Soviet Union since glasnost lifted press censorship's a National Enquirer-type mentality setting in there," said Kurtz, who visited the Soviet Union in July. 10-18-89 KANSAS CITY, Mo. A large fireball of unknown origin streaked across the sky about sunset Tuesday, according to reports from Missouri, Nebraska and Illinois. Officials at the UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, the Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Neb., and the Whiteman Air Force Base at Knob Noster, Mo., all received telephone calls from people who'd seen the fireball. Officials'd no explaination for the fireball. Capt.

Lance Jay at Whiteman said the command center first received a call from the Howell County sheriff's department about 8 p.m. Witnesses in Howell County told authorities they'd seen a round object moving in circles about 8,000 to 10,000 feet in the air. Witnesses who called Offutt described the object as a ball of light that exploded into a streak of yellow before disintegrating. "Whenever no one's any answers to phenomena like this, people always become more curious about it," Lance said. "Right now we're not sure what we had." Kathleen Freuer was driving near Kansas City International Airport when she saw the object about 7:45 p.m. "I saw this big fireball and my first thought was that a plane exploded," Ms. Freuer said. "That was how bright it was." She said the event lasted only a few seconds. Ron Cop of the Federal Aviation Administration said people reported the fireball from Springfield, Mo., to Omaha. In addition, pilots in eastern Missouri and western Illinios called to say they'd seen it. "It was definitely not an aircraft because we didn't have any missing. It's probably a meteor or some space junk entering the atmosphere," Cop said. "When you find it breaking up over a wide area like this, that's usually what it is." 10-21-89 TUPELO, Miss. The old cliche, "A picture's worth a thousand words,"'s been taken a step further by Joanne Pankey Cusack, a psychic researcher who specializes in photographing and interpreting human auras. Cusack studies the imprints left by fingertips on film to determine a person's mental, emotional and physical state a process called Kirlian photography. Then, by reading the patterns and colors on the film, she can explain why that person acts the way he does, she says. Cusack, a Tupelo native who recently moved back home, says the theory of Kirlian photography's based on the medically accepted fact that the body does contain electrical energy. "The theory's similar to tests such as the CAT scan, which measures brain waves," Cusack said as she sat at the dining table in her neatly furnished apartment. "The human body's like a computer. We send out thought waves, energy follows thought and that, in turn, directs our life." Scattered across the table in front of her were slides and photos she uses in her lectures across the United States and Canada. Studying one of the pictures in her hand she said, "I have always seen energy patterns around people, from the time I was a small child. I assumed everyone could see what I saw. As I got older I realized they couldn't and I became interested in finding out more about the energy our bodies give off." Cusack first heard of Kirlian photography while living in Houston, Texas. A professor at an Arizona college was doing research on using the technique as a diagnostic tool. The process'd actually been discovered decades earlier, in 1939, by a Russian electrician, Semyon Davidovich Kirlian, who was trying to prove extra-sensory perception existed. Kirlian photography's done by having a person place his hand inside a heavy, black bag which blocks out light. The bag's two sleeves with elastic cuffs and resembles a jacket. Inside's a modified instant camera the camera's no lens attached to an electric meter. The person puts his hand through one sleeve and places his fingers directly on the film. The photographer presses a switch on the meter, causing a tiny electrical charge to run through a metal plate on the camera. This charge reacts with the electricity given off by the body and transfers an image to the film. After the person withdraws his hand, the photographer reaches through the other sleeve and removes the film. When the film develops, four finger imprints can be seen, surrounded by halos of color. Cusack said she was fascinated with the process which recorded on film the energy fields she'd seen around people all her life. She immediately began her own research in Houston and later opened the Cusack Kirlian Institute and Gallery in Tucson, Arizona. A friend took an "old Polaroid camera" and modified it to suit her purposes. She recruited 80 volunteers who agreed to be photographed repeatedly. Cusack tracked the changes in their auras in an attempt to find consistent patterns. She was excited when she was able to document at least 36 distinctly different patterns and began to make predictions from photographs. In her findings,

Cusack found the predominant colors in the pictures were royal blue, white, turquoise, and sometimes red. Royal blue seemed to reflect a person's magnetic field, Cusack said. She explained the term by saying, "It shows the way they draw similar people to them." White shows creativity, she said, and turquoise shows the amount of emotional balance a person may have. If red, or other dark colors, shows up in the photo, the person's experiencing anger, anxiety or stress, she said. The shape of the halos also explains much about the person, Cusack said. Breaks in the halo may signal an illness. If no halo shows up on the photograph, a person may be close to death. Cusack said experiments done with corpses didn't show halos. She pointed to a series of three dated photographs taken of the same man's hand. In the first photo, the halo of color around the fingertips was barely visible, in the second the band of color was wider and brighter, and in the third the halo'd shrunken almost to its original size. Cusack noted the first photo was taken after the man'd been severely depressed after being diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. In the second photo, his disease was in remission and his attitude was more positive. The third photo was taken shortly after a visit with friends who told him he should just accept his fate and prepare to die. Cusack said the negative attitude of the friends affected her client's own attitude, which in turn depleted his positive energy. "The patterns in the energy field change as attitudes change," she said, adding that she believes that all people who come in contact have an effect on each other's energy field. "A person can pick up the magnetic energy, whether it's positive or negative, from other people's bodies," she said. "That's why I try never to hang around negative people for very long." When Cusack's work with Kirlian photography became well-known, she spent much of her time traveling and lecturing. She hosted her own radio show in Houston, Texas, and a television talk show in San Antonio. She was also a guest on several talk shows, including "PM Magazine." On one live television talk show, Cusack's theories were put to a dramatic test. Cusack remembers the hostess of the show as smiling, poised, beautiful and famous. She asked Cusack to photograph her fingertips with the Kirlian camera and interpret the results on the air. Cusack did so and was appalled when she peeled back the instant picture to find a photograph that reflected anger, stress and extreme illness. Cusack stammered something about the camera malfunctioning and asked to take the photo again. Again, the halos in the picture were broken with dark lines and shot through with dark red. Cusack took a third picture with the same result. Luckily, she said, at that moment the show paused for a commercial break. Cusack took the moment to tell the hostess privately what she saw in the photograph. "It showed me that she was very ill and under extreme emotional stress, that she'd had a nervous breakdown recently and that she'd probably even tried to take her own life," Cusack recalled. "The lady just looked at me for a minute and then said, `When we go back on the air, tell the audience exactly what you just told me.' So I did." The women then admitted that everything Cusack said was true. She'd had a nervous breakdown and'd tried to commit suicide after being diagnosed with cancer. She'd also been divorced and her husband was trying to take her children. Months later, after the woman'd resolved some of her problems, she asked Cusack to take another picture in a private session. This time, the photo showed a positive reading with no red visible in the picture. Through the years, Cusack's photographed the fingertips of a woman two hours before death and the hands of psychics and healers from around the world. She's done a special study of people who claim to have'd close encounters with extraterrestrials. Several months ago, she returned to her parent's home in Sherman to care for them during an illness. After their recovery, she decided to stay in Tupelo as a "home base" between her lecture tours. She plans to apply for a grant to continue her research with Kirlian photography as a diagnostic tool for mental, emotional and physical illness. Though some critics view Kirlian photography as more of a religious tool than a scientific one, Cusack said one of her main goals's to help erase that "fine line between science and religion." She pointed out

that hundreds of years ago, today's medical science would have seemed like fantasy. "When we can prove even one aspect of the unseen becoming seen, the blending of spiritual and scientific search will produce a new age of knowing," she said. 10-23-89 ASPEN, Colo. Author Bud Hopkins says thousands of people have close encounters with aliens each year, but are either unwilling or unable to discuss them. Hopkins was one of 150 participants in a "Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind" weekend conference which included leading researchers, a former NASA Astronaut and seven people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. "Skepticism's fine. Ridicule isn't, said Hopkins, author of the book "Intruders." "We have to raid the public's level of consciousness," he said. "If these stories were just fantasies, you would expect a lot of variation," sid Ed Bullard, another author and UFO reseracher. "But there's a profound coherency, an order in what they say." Aspen already may have'd its consciousnes raised. Reports coming in over the weekend included one from a police officer, of strange lights flickering over the mountain tops. Travis Walton, who says he was abducted from a lumber camp in Arizona and transported to an alien spacecraft "for five days, six hours" in 1975, decided to make a rare public appearance at the meeting. "I want people to understand, to accept, said Walton, 36, who talked of a rare "multiple witness" case now famous in UFO reserach. Walton said he'd stopped his truck to investigate a strange light that he and his six co-workers saw. Walter approached the light and was "hit by a nasty beam" and whisked up to the craft, he said. "When I came to, I was aboard, I was lying on my back and they'd some sort of object across my chest. My coat and shirt were pushed up," he said. Medical tampering with human victims's a common thread in close-encounter tales. "I believe genetic experiementing's at the heart of the whole thing," Hopkins said of the abduction phenomenon. Hopkins said he sees the alien presence as manipulative, not helpful, a point which touches on a current hot topic in the UFO research community. 10-24-89 PINE BLUFF, Ark. A Jefferson County woman says she saw a bright white globe with a red core hovering about 100 feet over the treetops near her home Monday night and sheriff's deputies say they saw the object. Cora Walker of near Pine Bluff said she watched the globe hover for about an hour before calling the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. "It came out from the northeast at a rapid speed, and it went to the southwest," Ms. Walker said. "Then it stood still." She started calling her neighbors. "It was a bright light and then from it, it looked like a red flare," she said. "I've never seen anything like it." After about an hour, the light started slowly moving out of sight, she said. "It went straight down like a moon," she said. "I don't know what it was, but it was a strange object." Sgt. Bernard Adams of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and Deputy Mark Bradley said they watched the object until it disappeared somewhere over Watson Chapel about 9:30 p.m. Sheriff's dispatcher Glen Hopkins said several deputies reported seeing the bright light moving from the west to the east and then back again. He said it was also seen in Grant County. The sheriff's office notified the Federal Aviation Administration, but FAA officials'd no radar contact with the object, Hopkins said. Hopkins said he'd no idea what the object was. "All I can tell you's I'd three officers who saw it," he said. Adams couldn't identify what he was looking at, either. "I don't know really what it was," he said. "Whether it was a weather balloon or a satellite or what, I don't know. To me, it was just bright lights in the air. "It did move, and it completely disappeared afterward," he said. "It was real bright. Adams said Pine Bluff Arsenal employees also reported seeing the object. Bradley was on patrol just south of Pine Bluff on Highway 81 when he saw the bright white light hovering about 150 yards above the treetops. "Someone asked me if I'd seen a UFO, and I told them I saw an object and it was unidentified and it was flying," Bradley said Tuesday. "When I put the binoculars on it, it was

just a white light and every once in a while you could see some red mixed in it. The light was so bright you couldn't determine any shape to it." Bradley said the light started to move west toward Watson Chapel, which ruled out the possibility of the object being a weather balloon, because the winds were from the south at the time, he was told. Larry Simpson, a disc jockey for KCLA radio station, said he was flooded with phone calls from people in the area who saw the strange light. 10-30-89 INDIANAPOLIS Reports of ghosts and haunted houses are the stuff of Holloween legend and paranormal experiments, but to a group of 51 Hoosiers they're, well, sheer poppycock. In fact, spirits and superstitions don't stand a ghost of a chance against the Indiana Skeptics, a group of teachers and scientists who endeavor to find rational explanations for paranormal reports. "If someone believes he's seen a ghost or UFO visitor, it's simply a mistake, a hallucination...or a hoax. They exist only in the mind," said Robert Craig, the founder and chairman of the group. Craig says the Skeptics are willing to go to the scene of UFO sightings, haunted houses, seances and other paranormal events and literally chase the ghosts away through the power of reason. So far, the year-old group's had no takers, but Craig's examined Indianapolis' Hannah House, which's a reputation for being haunted. Some visitors have reported experiences ranging from loud, unexplained noises in the night and inanimate objects that move to shadowy figures in passageways and an overpowering stench of burning flesh that wafts up from the basement, where runaway slaves supposedly were killed in a fire. "All I found was a fascinating, well-maintained older home," said Craig, an associate instructor in multicultural studies at Indiana University. He says the sounds are caused by unseen animals or pranksters; the objects are moved by absent-minded visitors; the figures are imaginary. Even the scent of burning flesh can be explained rationally. "Studies have shown that when the olfactory sensory cells in the brain become stimulated or disturbed, as they might if you think you're in a haunted house, the most common perception's the scent of burning flesh," Said Craig. The same may be said for out-of-body experiences, which many people report following life-threatening traumas such as surgery or an auto accident. "The feeling of lightness, of numbness, of floating above your body and sensing a warm light are part of the body's normal response to trauma," says Craig. Paranormal experiences can also be triggered by religious beliefs and by perpsychological stimuli, such as repressed sexuality, he said. Craig said about 4 percent of the population's "fantasy-prone," given to believing that paranormal experiences happen to them regularily. He said the group tends to share many of the same characteristics: Excessive reliance on fantasy during childhood. Emotions that run high and often unchecked. Unusual literary tastes, especially at an early age. A personal world-view in which the individual's either universally persecuted or unanimously beloved. A physiological brain disorder called Temporal Lobe Syndrome, which's symptoms similar to those of epilepsy and can induce a trance-like state in which chemical changes take place in the body, resulting in altered perceptions. 10-30-89 DALLAS Purveyors of parapsychology are complaining that they are innocent victims of fundamentalist Christians, who have mounted an offensive against Satanic religions that's persuaded many school officials to drop or tone down Halloween celebrations. A number of psychic fairs have been canceled nationwide recently under pressure from Christian groups, including one in Garland this past weekend and an earlier one in San Antonio. "It bellied up because we got calls from some Bible beaters who thought it was cult-related and Satanic," said John Lehman, owner of the North Dallas County Farmers Market, where the Garland fair was to have been held. "I hated to buckle under to pressure, but every customer you lose's one that's lost for good. It's probably not worth offending people." Psychic fairs feature demonstrations by practitioners of parapsychological arts such as fortune

telling, tarot card reading, and "aura audits." In addition, a number of vendors show up to hawk materials relating to new age beliefs, such as quartz crystals, music and books. "There's been quite a few psychic fairs canceled lately," said Len Ponath of Southwestern Parasychology, Inc., who'd planned to attend the show. "Christians are saying psychics are Satanists, too, and we're all getting lumped in together," he said. "But it's not the same thing." Al Burt, who sells books and jewelry oriented to new age beliefs that promote peace and worldwide harmony, said he thinks the oppression being suffered by many parapsychological practitioners will not diminish soon. He said the Christians were galvanized by events such as the murders in Matamoros, Mexico, and are lashing out at anything they don't understand. "They remain ignorant of what they attacking," Burt said. "There are a lot of psychics out there and some of them probably do practice black magic. But the majority them try to steer as far away from that practice as possible." Ponath said he believes the same paranoia that hit the psychic fairs's responsible for mistaken anxieties about Halloween. He said true Satanists don't have rituals on Halloween, but instead scheduled ceremonies on the day before and day afterward. "So many people were leaving the church, they'd to do something to stop them, so they started attacking Satanists," he said. "But take a lot at them Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart." Lehman said he wishes the psychic fair could have gone on as scheduled, but he feared he would take much criticism if it did. "I'd somebody get up in my church and say children shouldn't wear witches and skeleton outfits on Halloween," Lehman said. "But my feeling was that Halloween was only a lot of fun. My personal feeling's that people who believe Halloweeen's bad are people who are not really sure what they believe." 10-31-89 Hell's Half Acre, Devils Courthouse and other spooky spots abound in North Carolina for trick-or-treaters bored with their old haunts and looking for a little extra horror this Halloween. For starters, how about trick-or-treating in Transylvania County? Local historian Betty Sherrill's not sure why this western county was named for the eastern European home of the notorious bloodsucking County Dracula. She said it probably'd more to do with the translation of Transylvania, which means "through the woods," than any propensity on the part of local folks to rise from the dead and go out seeking donations for the Red Cross. For would-be ghouls looking for vampires, Mrs. Sherrill suggests they try Bat Cave, a town located along the Broad River in northeast Henderson County. The caves for which the town's named are part of a 93-acre nature preserve and at one time were home to a large population of the winged mammals, including at least one endangered species. Hell's Half Acre, a town that sounds like a B-grade horror flick, in fact's a peace-loving community of about 125 people in northwest Caswell County, better known now as Providence. But in the early 1900s, it housed a saloon, and a good deal of drinking and carousing went on, earning the town its rough-sounding name, says J. Louis Oakley, 59, who was the town's first postmaster. The Outer Banks community of Kill Devil Hills got its name from a kind of rum that once was favored by the locals. Indians believed that his Satanic majesty sat at Devils Courthouse in judgment of "all who were lacking in courage or'd strayed from a strict code of virtue," according to a sign at posted at the base. The mountain of jagged rock looms over the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from a vantage point near the Haywood County line in the Blue Ridge parkway. 11-02-89 CHESHIRE, Conn. When the official Soviet news agency Tass reported a UFO sighting earlier this month, John W. White was among the earliest to doubt the story, even though he's a firm believer in the extraterrestial. White, a 50-year-old author and educator, said claims that 10-foot aliens debarked the UFO and briefly abducted a 16-year-old boy in the city of Voronezh, 300 miles south of Moscow, just didn't make sense. Most significantly, a majority of people reporting contact with aliens have

described the creatures as being only about 4-feet tall, White explained. Despite doubts about the sighting, White said UFO enthusiasts are investigating the matter. "I would have liked for it to be true," White said. "But the report was so bizarre, I'd to be very skeptical and doubted the authenticity of it. We have to make sure it was not some hoax, or some fantastic embroidery." Since he was a child, White's been fascinated the unknown and the unexplained. As a teen-ager growing up in Cheshire, this interest was satisfied by reading science fiction. But as he progressed through undergraduate and graduate school, White came to believe UFO's are real and not just fiction. He began to studying the subject and in the process built an international reputation. He's written 14 books and numerous magazine or newspaper articles about UFOs and contacts with aliens. The primary focus of his research's been of the religious or pyschic aspects of the UFO phenomenon. "I'm trying to bring education and credibility to the subject," White said. As part of that continuing effort, White's organized his third annual UFO conference, which will be held on Nov. 11 and 12 at the Ramada Inn in North Haven. White and 11 other leaders in the field of UFO research will speak to about 150 people who have paid $150 apiece to attend the gathering. People will be coming from as far away as Seattle, Wash., and western Canada. A total of 20 states and Canada will be represented at the conference, White said. Among the speakers will be Walter Andrus, the international director of the Mutual UFO Network, the largest UFO organization in the world; and Whitley Streiber, a best-selling author of non-fiction books. A University of Connecticut psychology professor also will report on the result of his extensive interviews with people who claim to have seen UFOs. "It's a chance for people who attend to have direct access to researchers and contactees (those who've met aliens). Essentially, it's a forum for public education," said White. Despite his long-time belief in UFOs, White's only seen an unidentified flying object once in his life, and that sighting occurred just two years ago in April in New York state. White said the sighting also was witnessed by his oldest son, a neighbor and some of their friends. "It was a brilliant red rectangular light that rose from behind a tree line," White recalled. "It hovered motionless, and as it did so...it changed its dimensions to about three times its previous size for about 10 seconds. Then it returned to its previous size and sank behind the tree line." White said he attempted to locate the exact area where he'd seen the light, but he was unable to get to it because it was a swampy area. But he said he's convinced it was a UFO. "What it was I can't say. It didn't have a valid structure that I could see," he said. 11-06-89 CHESHIRE, Conn. When the official Soviet news agency Tass reported a UFO sighting last month, John W. White was among the earliest to doubt the story, even though he's a firm believer in the extraterrestrial. White, a 50-year-old author and educator, said claims that 10-foot aliens debarked the UFO and briefly abducted a 16-year-old boy in the city of Voronezh, 300 miles south of Moscow, just didn't make sense. Most significantly, a majority of people reporting contact with aliens have described the creatures as being only about 4-feet tall, White explained. Despite doubts about the sighting, White said Unidentified Flying Object enthusiasts are investigating the matter. "I would have liked for it to be true," White said. "But the report was so bizarre, I'd to be very skeptical and doubted the authenticity of it. We have to make sure it was not some hoax, or some fantastic embroidery." Since he was a child, White's been fascinated the unknown and the unexplained. As a teen-ager growing up in Cheshire, this interest was satisfied by reading science fiction. But as he progressed through undergraduate and graduate school, White came to believe UFO's are real and not just fiction. He began studying the subject and in the process built an international reputation. He's written 14 books and numerous magazine or newspaper articles about UFOs and contacts with aliens. The primary focus of his research's been of the religious or pyschic aspects of the UFO

phenomenon. "I'm trying to bring education and credibility to the subject," White said. As part of that continuing effort, White's organized his third annual UFO conference, which will be held on Nov. 11 and 12 at the Ramada Inn in North Haven. White and 11 other leaders in the field of UFO research will speak to about 150 people who have paid $150 apiece to attend the gathering. People will be coming from as far away as Seattle, Wash., and western Canada. A total of 20 states and Canada will be represented at the conference, White said. Among the speakers will be Walter Andrus, the international director of the Mutual UFO Network, the largest UFO organization in the world; and Whitley Streiber, a best-selling author of non-fiction books. A University of Connecticut psychology professor also will report on the result of his extensive interviews with people who claim to have seen UFOs. "It's a chance for people who attend to have direct access to researchers and contactees. Essentially, it's a forum for public education," White said. Despite his long-time belief in UFOs, White's only seen an unidentified flying object once in his life, and that sighting occurred just two years ago in April in New York state. White said the sighting also was witnessed by his oldest son, a neighbor and some of their friends. "It was a brilliant red rectangular light that rose from behind a tree line," White recalled. "It hovered motionless, and as it did so...it changed its dimensions to about three times its previous size for about 10 seconds. Then it returned to its previous size and sank behind the tree line." White said he attempted to locate the exact area where he'd seen the light, but he was unable to get to it because it was a swampy area. But he said he's convinced it was a UFO. "What it was I can't say. It didn't have a valid structure that I could see," he said. 11-09-89 GRAND FORKS, N.D. More than a year after he first reported UFO encounters, University of North Dakota professor John Salter still's convinced they happened even though others may have doubts. Salter, who chairs the Indian Studies Department at UND, recently mailed letters to friends and fellow faculty members listing 18 physical changes he attributes to encounters with extraterrestrials on March 20 and March 21, 1988. Among the changes are improved skin tone, circulation, eyesight and hair growth, he said. "After all these years, I have a 5 o'clock shadow," Salter said, smiling and rubbing his chin. He also said he stopped smoking in May after 35 years of heavy tobacco use. Salter, 55, hasn't been checked by a doctor partly because he didn't think it was necessary. Salter, president of the UND chapter of the North Dakota Higher Education Association, was the 1989 winner of a Martin Luther King Jr. Award from Gov. George Sinner for his contributions to civil rights causes. For the past year, he also's been coordinator of the North Dakota chapter of the Mutual UFO Network. He says it's about two dozen members and helpers in the state. Salter remembers seeing an alien about 6 feet tall while visiting a field near Richland Center, Wis., on March 20, 1988. He also reported seeing three or four smaller aliens in the Wisconsin woods. He and his son John Salter III, 24, now of Quincey, Calif., reported more than an hour of "lost" time a period blanked out in their memory as they drove a pickup truck near Richland Center. The next day, they said, they saw what appeared to them to be a silvery, round spacecaft five miles east of Peoria, Ill. Bernard O'Kelly, dean of the UND College of Arts and Sciences, said he considers Salter a credible source, and he's keeping an open mind about the professor's report. "I certainly believe he's a fine academic citizen," O'Kelly said. "He's not the first person I've heard of to have'd experiences related to UFOs." Salter said he's received positive support from family, friends and students. "I don't think I've encountered any open skepticism," he said. "It should be reasonably clear I haven't fallen out of my treehouse." Salter thinks the visitors to Earth may have inserted "a transplant" that caused the changes in his body. He said he's pieced together details of the visit on March 20 through "recalls," or memory flashbacks, of the time he and his son couldn't account for in Wisconsin. The younger Salter, who's the director of an Indian

education center in northern California, hasn't'd similar recalls and physical changes, but his father said his psychic powers have increased. John Sr. said he's discussed the UFO experience in detail with fellow UFO network member Kevin Henke, a chemist at the UND Energy and Environmental Research Center, and occasionally with student groups and other faculty members. "Although it's a very unusual case, I do have a tendency to believe he's telling the truth and that what he's seeing's real," Henke said. "Unfortunately, he doesn't have anything really tangible to prove it," Henke added. "He's had some physical changes. From a scientific point of view, you'd like to have a medical examination before and after." 11-14-89 MILLERSBURG, Ohio Holmes County residents reported strange lights in the sky, and a resident called the sheriff's department to investigate a circular depression on their front lawn, authorities said Tuesday. According to a sheriff's department news release, a family in Monroe Township discovered the ring, about 7 inches wide and 45 feet in diameter, Saturday afternoon. The family's no explanation for the phenomenon, the news release said. In areas where the grass'd been matted down, the ring was about a half-inch deep, the sheriff's department said. Judy Neville told authorities that other than the family dogs' unusual barking early Saturday morning, no one heard or saw anything out of the ordinary. Sheriff's Deputy Dale Renker's investigating the incidents, the department news release said. Renker could not be reached for comment Tuesday. 11-16-89 POCATELLO, Idaho Stanton Friedman says three decades of investigation have given him "overwhelming evidence" that Earth's had interplanetary visitors and governments have hidden the evidence of those visits. "Please don't reach a conclusion until you've examined the relevant evidence," he told about 700 people at an Idaho State University speech Tuesday night. One of the hardest pieces of evidence Friedman cited's a 1952 memo from the National Security Council to president-elect Dwight Eisenhower, which stated that the government recovered four alien bodies from a UFO crash near Roswell, N.M. The memo, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, says the bodies were recovered about two miles from wreckage spotted by a rancher after a severe lightning storm. Friedman said 75 percent of it was deleted before's was released. Attempts to get more information on that incident have been stymied because much of the NSC material from Eisenhower's presidency remains classified and's exempt from automatic declassification based on its age, he said. Although an initial press release told of the incident, the next day the Army Air Corps claimed it was actually a weather balloon radar disk. Pieces of a radar disk were shown to reporters the next day, but Friedman said some of the participants have admitted those were faked. An FBI memo confirms that the material in federal custody's not a weather radar disk, he said. A group called Citizens Against UFO Secrecy's unsuccessfully sued the Central Intelligence Agency to get documents related to the Roswell incident, he said. The documents refer to Operation Majestic 12, the title given to the incident by federal authorities. Friedman said he and a colleague have talked to more than 100 people connected to the Roswell incident. He said governments use secrecy to keep information about more advanced technologies away from other countries and because "Nationalism's the only game in town. No government wants its citizens to owe their primary allegiance to the planet." He said residents of this planet "must stop believing we're the most advanced life form. Twenty-five thousand children die each day on our planet, most from preventable causes. How do you think we look to those from other planets?" Friedman said he commuted to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory periodically from 1956 to 1959 while working for General Electric in Cincinnati. He said he was involved in planning the flight test facility for the nuclear powered aircraft that was built at INEL. That project, he said, had the potential to become an interstellar propulsion system. His lecture was built around refuting the people he calls "noisy

negativists." He cited four reasons that most scientists and journalists haven't pursued UFO phenomena: Ignorance of relevant evidence; "The laughter curtain," a fear of ridicule which limits reports of sightings and investigation of them; Egotism among science and government experts, who say aliens certainly would have sought them out; An unwillingness to apply the latest technology to studying UFOs. He said that although scientists will admit there are billions of stars in billions of galaxies, "They assume you can't get there from here. Future technology's not an extrapolation of the past. Progress comes from doing things differently in an unpredictable way." 11-24-89 FYFFE, Ala. Unidentified, banana-shaped flying objects over Fyffe were no match for Soviet space creatures in a magazines's annual ranking of planet's strangest phenomenon. The sightings in February and March of brightly lighted objects over the northeast Alabama town finished ninth on the 1989 list compiled by Strange magazine. Fyffe Police Chief Junior Garmany, who along with his assistant saw a UFO, said he understood how the editors could rank the Soviet UFO first. "The Soviet Union one may have been more unusual an occurrence than ours," Garmany said. "I imagine the magazine'd a hard time ranking these things, though. All I can say's what we seen was real, and it's unexplainable to this date." The September landing of space creatures in the Soviet Union as reported by the official government news agency Tass took the top spot in the magazine's Top 10, which will be published in the March issue. "The Alabama UFOs were very odd because police officers witnessed them, but we'd to rank the Russian Tass alien case number one because it was covered worldwide and because Tass's such a serious news agency," said Mark Chorvinsky, editor of the magazine, which's based in Rockville, Md., and's a circulation of 5,000. On Feb. 10 at 8:30 p.m., while responding to a call from a Sand Mountain homeowner who reported seeing a peculiar flying object, Garmany and Assistant Police Chief Fred Works said they spotted a brightly lighted object hovering above a dark county road. Chorvinsky said Strange's the only magazine that takes "an objective look" at such occurrences. "The position of the magazine's we do not believe what we print, but we also do not disbelieve it." The editorial staff compiled the list from more than 3,000 unusual occurrences featured in the bi-monthly magazine during 1989. Other phenomena that made the top 10 included: sightings in Greece of a "25-foot entity that resembled a frog," more than 600 symmetrical circles of flattened crops in southern England, and a 30-mile swarm of cobwebs that fell from the sky in Dorset, England. 11-27-89 POCATELLO, Idaho The losses are mounting again in southeastern Idaho amid another rash of cattle mutilations that have left ranchers and lawmen grasping for explanations. "It's really frustrating us and frustrating for ranchers, too," said Bear Lake County Sheriff Brent Bunn because no person or thing's ever been caught in the act. This year, more than two dozen case have been reported with the economic losses estimated in excess of $10,000. The theories differ on how they occurred, but circumstances surrounding the cases often are bizarre and similar. Officials said there apparently's no struggle from the animal, no blood, no footprints and no tire tracks in the area. Organs and genitals are removed with a sharp object. The animals obviously were not killed for food. In the autumn of 1975, 90 mutilations were reported throughout southeastern Idaho, along with more than 100 in other states. Then only one was reported in Idaho the next year. Colorado investigators attributed nearly all their cases to predators. But ranchers who lost the animals scoffed at that conclusion, blaming humans instead perhaps satanic worshippers. Bear Lake County rancher Kent Alleman, who's lost six animals to mutilation in the last few months, is convinced occult or satanic worshippers are responsible, using the organs in ceremonies. "People are very concerned," said Alleman, who lives in a valley with about 20 other families. "There's no doubt it's people...satanic worshippers or a cult." The sheriff agrees people are to blame for the mutilations but not necessarily satanic worshippers.

He's seen no sign of occult activity during his investigations. "I don't see any cult symbolism near the animals when we find them," Bunn said. "I've heard of no cult meetings in the area and haven't seen altars or graffiti. I don't subscribe to the UFO theory, either. I think it's to be animals or people." 12-08-89 BRUSSELS, Belgium The air force and police are investigating numerous UFO sightings near the border with the Netherlands and West Germany, officials said Friday. Since Nov. 29, dozens of people and police officials in the northeastern Liege province said they've seen luminous objects in the sky, with some of them describing a flying platform scanning the surface with three huge searchlights, while others talk of dancing lights. During the same period, air traffic controllers "found radar blips on the screens that could not be immediately explained," said Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Michel Mandel. At the time of the sightings there were no authorized low-level flights in the region. "We are looking for a rational explanation," he said. Although Mandel cast doubts on several witness accounts, the Belgian Society for the Study of Space Phenomena said Friday it would send members to the German-speaking region in Liege and across the border in the Netherlands and West Germany this weekend. The society said it'd 150 witness accounts, in addition to photo and videotaped material. 12-25-89 KALAMAZOO, Mich. Scholarly UFO studies deserve a haven of their own, says a Michigan professor who oversees a professional journal for research on extraterrestrials. The Journal of UFO Studies, resurrected this year from a defunct publication of the same name, aims to give researchers something "they wouldn't be embarrassed by writing for," said its editor, Michael Swords. "It looks exactly like a professional journal, like any other academic field's," said the Western Michigan University professor of natural sciences. "The target audience's academics and researchers. "It's meant to allow the serious people to have an outlet, which doesn't really exist right now. This was a hole in UFO publishing that'd to be filled," Swords said in a recent interview from his campus office. Swords, who's working on the second annual issue, believes the $15 journal's too technical for the general public. For example, one of the first issue's three articles of about 35 pages each discussed chemical analyses of a substance gleaned from the Delphos Case, a supposed 1971 UFO landing site in Kansas. Another looked at the effect of hypnosis in obtaining information from people who claim they've been abducted by aliens. The analyses couldn't pinpoint the chemical, and the hypnosis study by Thomas Bullard of Indiana University, a folklore specialist, found hypnosis wasn't influencing accounts of abductions. Swords wrote the third article, about whether other life exists in the universe. He believes it isn't a matter of if, but of how many. "All the laws of nature are the same everywhere and what happens once's bound to happen twice. Chances of other high-tech extraterrestrial civilizations are equal to how long it could exist after reaching the danger zone of technology. "Since we're made it 45 years past nuclear weapons, I think people think there are at least dozens if not thousands of high-tech civilizations out there," said Swords, 49, who moved to Kalamazoo 18 years ago after earning his doctoral degree in the history of science from Case Western University. The 174-page journal features a book review section and a forum on different topics each issue. All views, including those of skeptics, will be welcome, Swords said. The second issue will take up theories about electrical fields that some researchers blames for creating balls of light mistaken for UFOs and for affecting psyches, may be prompting people to think they've made contact with aliens, he said. "A lot of old-timers don't like the idea because it steals the E.T.'s away from them," Swords said. Mark Rodeghier, scientific director of the Chicago-based Center for UFO Studies that published about 700 copies of the first journal issue in March, plans to run off about that many for next year's edition. Swords said his interest in the field, which began when

he was a teen, isn't a secret, but he hasn't been teased too much by his peers in recent years. "Sooner or later, I silence that behavior," he said. 12-23-89 LINCOLNTON, N.C. Some people believe that President Harry Truman made a pact with an alien nation in the early 1950s that allowed creatures from outer space to set up shop beneath the Arizona desert. Not George Fawcett. Fawcett, an advertising sales representative for Park Newspapers and executive director of the N.C. Mutual UFO Network Inc., says he's seen no evidence to convince him that such a pact or community for that matter exists. "Now, some people believe there's a whole nation of humanoids living underneath the Arizona desert, but I don't believe it. Never have," said the 60-year-old Lincolnton man, who's been monitoring UFO activity in North Carolina and elsewhere for nearly 45 years. For Fawcett, such reports only degrade what for him's been a serious pursuit that began on Dec. 18, 1944. On that day, the young Fawcett read a news item about shiny silver balls in the sky. It changed his life. Since then, in his spare time, the former journalist and restauranteur's filled 35 filing cabinets with 30,000 to 40,000 reports of confirmed sightings. He's set up Mutual UFO Network chapters in several states, most recently in North Carolina, where approximately 200 members joined him in incorporating the group as an official non-profit organization last month. "We want to pool our time, talent, money and other resources to continue what we've been doing informally for about 20 years," Fawcett said. Among their first actions was to elect eight officers with Fawcett at the helm and to establish an investigative arm, called the Greater Charlotte MUFON Investigative Team. The investigative unit, with Charlotte's George Lund in charge, trains members how to check and verify or discredit sitings. Using films, manuals and lectures, leaders of the unit teach members what to look for in the reports, such as descriptions of land markings, severe animal reactions, sounds similar to a swarm of bees and odors like ammonia, sulphur or burnt electrical wire. Fawcett said the team will likely be asked to look into more than 100 sitings this year, although he said only 20 to 30 percent of those will be deemed real. The rest can be written off as electrical towers, shooting stars, meteors and so on, he said. Fawcett said the proliferation of books and movies about aliens have opened the minds of many people to the possibility that UFO's exist. But he's as disturbed by people who believe without investigating as he's by people who don't believe. "There's foolish faith as opposed to blind doubt. They're both wrong," he said. Fawcett said that while there's enough UFOs for everybody, he doesn't believe it's necessary to see one to have faith in their existence. He said most investigators have not actually seen a UFO. "In that respect, my experience's unusual, he said. I saw one years ago above Lynchburg College it was 10:15 a.m., July 10 It looked like an orange," he said, describing the 4-minute encounter. While Fawcett's convinced the objects and their inhabitants may pose a threat to the nation's security and human survival, his next project, proposed construction of a UFO museum in North Carolina, capitalizes on them. "I think it would be a great tourist attraction. North Carolina's first in flight, why not first in UFOs?" 01-18-90 QUEBEC Unidentified flying objects circular or spherical in shape seen or observed over Quebec City & off the east coast of New Brunswick're or remain, officially or unofficially, a puzzlement. The Tuesday night observations vary somewhat & the times're a trifle out, but the observers stand by their stories. Officialdom shakes its collective heads. One Quebec City observer, identified by Le Soleil only as Christian, aged 29, said he was walking with his mother at about 10 pm when he spotted eight strange forms in the sky. "We were just below them," he said. "It was very bizarre. They were like rings, with four white & yellow lights inside. There was no noise." Christian said he watched for about 15 minutes. At one point, he said, one of the rings accelerated & moved into position ahead of the others.

It couldn't have been a hoax, he said. Certainly not like the UFO last year in the Beauce region south of Quebec City which turned out to be a plastic bag covering a candle. The newspaper said it first heard about the UFOs Tuesday night from people who saw'em from the streets. Several people phoned the police, who'd no comment. 01-25-90 ANCHORAGE (ENGLISH BAY) Winter nights tend to be pretty uneventful in English Bay. But Monday was nothing of the sort for a few residents there. UFOs don't often visit the tiny village. The encounter actually started about four miles away in Port Graham. Edward Anahonak was hauling some firewood on his 4-wheeler to a friend's house at about 7 pm Monday when he saw an odd set of lights hovering above Bob McMullen's house. McMullen's home's on the western edge of the village. Anahonak, who lives in English Bay, thought it was a helicopter, but the lights were wrong & it didn't make a sound. He said it'd red & blue lights & "looked yellowish in the middle." It also'd a spotlight "that lit up the trees pretty good." It was shaped like a wing, he said, hovering over McMullen's house. Still he thought it was a helicopter. Anahonak watched as the lights about 150 yards away moved slowly toward the beach. "I wasn't scared," he said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "I thought it came in for an emergency or something. I thought it was landing," he said. "I ran down there with my Honda. When I got there, there was nothing." Meanwhile, in English Bay, Herman & Annie Tanape were out for a drive. English Bay's a village of about 180 people, nestled on a hillside overlooking lower Cook Inlet. The Tenapes often take short jaunts around the village to combat cabin fever. It was a nice evening for a drive: windy & clear, after weeks of clouds. It was about 7:40 pm Herman & Annie were a half mile from their home, near the beach airstrip, when Annie told Herman she saw a strange light. Herman didn't think much of it until he turned back toward the village. "At first, you know, I though they were stars," Herman said. "They were real bright." He drove closer to the lights, which he said were hovering no more than 50 feet above the ground. He said one was red, the rest were white. As he closed on the lights, they began to move away. He said the lights seemed to be responding to his movements. Every time he moved closer, they moved farther away. There was no sound. When they got within about 700 feet, Herman said, the lights turned & darted away. "It took off out to the ocean. Like a jet," he said. "When it turned, it was just bright red." Again, there was no sound; & that's what puzzled Herman the most. "If it was a chopper or a plane, we would've heard it. Even if it'd a Honda engine, we would've heard it." The object at that point appearing as a single red light hovered at a distance over Cook Inlet. The Tanapes went to tell Vince Kvasnikoff, the village president. Right away Kvasnikoff spotted a plane moving toward the village. They could hear its engines. Then Herman pointed out the red light hovering low over the inlet. "We just saw a little bit of it," said Natalie Kvasnikoff, Vince's wife. "It was red. Flying real low. On a windy day, the planes wouldn't fly so low. Everybody was too excited to even think to take a picture." Soon, the light vanished. Vince Kvasnikoff reported the incident to Roy Evans, the English Bay's public safety officer. Evans went to the beach & scanned the horizon for about an hour. He saw nothing, but he believes the Tanapes & the Kvasnikoffs did. "People here're pretty honest," Evans said. "They wouldn't make this up." Bill Radtke, whose wife Sharon was the head teacher at English Bay School for four years, said the residents there'd "never" concoct such a story. The Radtkes live in Soldotna now, where Sharon works as the school district's personnel director. "They're wonderful, honest people," Bill Radtke said. "They're the most trustworthy people I've ever worked with." Robert Gribble, who runs the UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, Wash., said he hadn't heard anything about the sighting. But he was anxious to get some details & phone numbers. Gribble said he knew of no other recent sightings in the Northwest, & very few across the nation. "It's been pretty quiet," he said. Evans said the sighting's stirred a lot of talk & some fear in the village. "A lot of people're worried

about their kids being out." But Edward Anahonak & Herman Tanape said they want to get another glimpse of the object. "I'm going to keep an eye out for it," said Anahonak. "I'll be watching." 02-22-90 BOISE, Idaho At first blush, the whole idea seems insane, a nightmare from the supermarket tabloids. But suppose, just for a moment, that Boise native Linda Moulton Howe's theory about the ongoing animal mutilations's correct. Support Howe's right when she concludes in her new book "An Alien Harvest" that after a decade spent investigating the phenomenon she found "an accumulation of human testimony that suggested the presence of extraterrestrial mutilators." Or, as she states for forcibly in interviews: "There isn't any question in my mind that there's an alien life form that intrudes on this planet for reasons I don't yet understand." She & other UFO investigators also believe the federal government knows of these intrusions & has aggressively covered up its knowledge for decades. Other researchers've documented eyewitness sightings by high government officials, including the first director of the CIA, astronauts, pilots, air traffic controllers & thousands of ordinary citizens. Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act've revealed even more sightings (including one in 1987 near Emmett) & investigations the government's previously denied conducting. "It's the best-kept secret in the world," Howe says. If she's right, she acknowledges, the impact on this planet'd be incalculable. "But," she adds, "for people to deny it won't make it go away." What won't go away're the thousands of mutilations that've occurred worldwide since 1967, including a recent rash in southeastern Idaho. Bear Lake County was hit by 15 cattle mutilations in a recent two-month period, says Sheriff Brent Bunn. Mutilations first hit the headlines in the mid-1970s. There were 90 cases in Idaho, & one newspaper alone ran 50 stories on the subject between June & December 1975. The pattern's disturbingly similar, no matter where it occurs. Somehow, the blood's drained completely, & there're never any footprints or tire tracks near the carcass. The animal usually's an ear missing, one eye's carved out in a perfect circle, flesh's stripped from one side of the jaw, the tongue's taken from deep in the throat cavity & long strips of stomach're removed, as're the sex organs. To duplicate the cuts with current laser technology, Howe discovered, would require equipment weighing 500 pounds & take up to two hours. In the 1970s, public investigations, including one by then-Attorney General Wayne Kidwell, were launched & rewards were offered in several states. Satanic cults & UFOs were on the list of suspect, but the conclusions reached by investigators in Idaho & Colorado was death by natural causes & mutilation by predators. An ex-FBI agent named Kenneth Rommel was hired by the federal government & in 1980 wrote a 300-page report. He concluded that, without exception, the deaths & wounds were of natural origin. Howe angrily dismisses Rommel's report as an "obvious paid-for whitewash that didn't even deal with the real cases." "I don't know of a predator that'd (cut up an animal that way) with so much soft tissue available," Sheriff Bunn said. "It doesn't make sense to me. But then it doesn't make much sense that people'd do this & leave all the meat." Lou Girodo, now sheriff of Las Animas County in Trinidad, Colo., has investigated 100 mutilations over the past 13 years. He says, "I grew up on a farm, & I know what a predator does. They grab, tear & gnaw." Girodo says he's seen coyotes circle a mutilated cow repeatedly, but they wouldn't come in for a free meal. "I've never seen coyotes act like that," he says. "Like everyone else, I'm trying to come up with an answer." That was the debate Howe found when she began to investigate the story in 1979. "I was a journalist & film maker (for KMGH-TV in Denver) who was provoked by the mystery of these bloodless animals," she said from her Atlanta office. "I knew I was getting into something that was unexplained, but thought I could get into it & come up with the definitive answer. It was like walking into quicksand." The turning point came six months into the investigation when she filmed a woman named Judy Doraty, who was put under hypnosis to help her recall an incident

that occurred in Texas in 1973. Obviously terrified, Doraty relates on film how she was abducted by the aliens & witnessed a mutilation. "That really got me," Howe says. "I said, `My God! It must be true,'" "A Strange Harvest" won Howe an Emmy in 1980, but she continued to collect material on the mutilations & other UFO phenomena. Eventually, she combined old & new information into "An Alien Harvest," which she published privately last year. It cost hear $45,000 to print 1,250 books, but she chose that route so she could control the content. "It was the biggest gamble of my life," she says. "I guess it's a testimony of how much I care about how the material'd be presented." The material she gathered came from scores of interviews with eyewitnesses & government officials who told her amazing stories, despite their fear of ridicule & retribution. "I've seen grown men cry," she says. "I've talked to men who were agonized over it. They've sworn secrecy oaths saying they'll go to jail without a trial if they talk. And I believe these people." In 1983, Howe was invited to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, NM, by an Air Force investigator. Inside a secure room, she was shown butn't allowed to duplicate a document titled "Briefing Paper for the President of the United States of America." The paper, she says, detailed UFO sightings that go back tens of thousands of years & claimed manipulation of DNA on earth's primates. Recent encounters began in the 1940s, she says, & the paper listed dates of UFO crashes & details of live & dead aliens recovered by the government. Other interviews & documents, detailed in the book, support what she read. Howe says she lives two lives: one as a maker of documentary films, the other as a clearinghouse for mutilation & other UFO information that fills five drawers & two boxes in her home. She admits it all sounds fantastic beyond belief, & she realizes her information poses many times more questions than it answers. "All the hard questions you'd like answers to, I'd like answers to, too," she says. "I don't have definite answers, & I don't know anyone outside the government who does, & they're just sitting on it." But she insists, "There can't be all this evidence & have it add up to zero. Everybody'd like it to be like the movie `E.T.' But the reality seems to be quite different." 04-04-90 DECATUR, Ill. It sounds like headlines from a supermarket tabloid. Some said it was cigar-shaped, 15 to 30 feet long & a few even reported having conversations with the crew. It was April 1897 & hundreds of Illinoisans claimed they saw what they thought was a mystery airship. And, it's still a mystery today. "Officer Moos threatened to take the visitors to the lockup if it persisted in causing the concentration of mobs in the streets," reported the Lincoln Courier. Robert Neeley Jr., an X-ray technician at St. Mary's Hospital in Decatur who's studied UFO sightings for 20 years as a hobby, has dozens of files documenting 2,400 sightings in 1897 that were reported in about 40 states. Newspapers in Chicago & Bloomington reported a flying object on April 11. A day later, a Rushville physician reported a light that shot upward, moved rapidly, & changed directions as he watched. Most of the 1897 sightings occurred between 7:30 & 9 pm April 9-16, & they were evenly distributed throughout the state, Neeley's research shows. The former Peoria Transcript said in its April 15, 1897, edition, that its reporters'd launched a balloon to show how people's reactions'd differ. Most stated its speed was 100 miles per hour, & some described it as "a hideous monster with a fiery furnace" 2,000 feet in the air, according to that old newspaper. Neeley says he's skeptical, & doesn't speculate about extra-terrestrials or visitors from other dimensions or time travelers from Earth's future. "Regardless of such fanciful theories, most of the 1897 reports describe an airship that seems aeronautically impossible," he says. 04-09-90 DETROIT, MI Abductions by aliens usuallyn't little green men with antennae, but gray or white men about 3 feet tall've traumatized dozens of people in Michigan. But they aren't suffering alone, according to a Flushing woman, who'd an experience with little gray extraterrestrials herself & found

they cured her of lupus & Addison's disease, a serious adrenal gland dysfunction. Shirley Coyne says her abduction occurred on a hot summer night in 1983, when she saw the bright light of a domed UFO moving over a corn field near her home. She said she awoke her husband, George, & they ran outside barefoot to look at it. The last thing they remembered was the feel of grass on their feet. Then they were back in bed, said Mrs. Coyne, adding that her memories were revived through hypnosis sessions. "It was very traumatic but you get over it," said Coyne, reached Sunday at a three-day Ozark UFO conference in Eureka Springs, Ark. Coyne & her husband helped organize a support group for alien abductees, which she said has'd a 100-percent success rate in helping people over their trauma. "In Michigan we've 60 people we're working with who've already gone through different stages of hypnosis & probably 20 to 30 waiting to be regressed (hypnotized)," Coyne said. "We've a certified hypnotist & a clinical psychologist." Coyne said the support group's like any other, helping helps people learn to deal with & accept the experience. She said at least one person who'd an abduction experience with aliens was in an institution before meeting with the group but now's living a normal life. "There're many who've gone through who aren't able to hold down jobs. They barely function," she said. "There're others who're able to cope with it very well." She estimated there were similar support groups in at least 23 other states. Ed Mazur, Arkansas director of Mutual UFO Network, said Coyne's story isn't unusual. Mazur said he's working with about four abduction cases in Arkansas. Michael Swords, a professor of natural sciences at Western Michigan University & editor of the Journal of UFO Studies, said he believes support groups're helpful as long as they're "essentially healthy. From what I'm hearing, it sounds as if support groups, as long as they don't markedly demand certain behavior, are good for people," Swords said. "There might be some professional who disagree." Swords said, however, that some researchers believe reports of alien abduction may be a "shield fantasy" for some people, developed as part of a neurosis. Swords said those researchers think the cause of the neurosis may be stress, a desire to be "involved" or even a bad experience in childhood. Swords, who earned a doctoral degree in the history of science from Case Western Reserve University, said there seem to be a lot of abductions of people reported, but it's not nearly as high as the number of reported UFO sightings. He also said it's always hard to investigate the reports. "It may be as real as tomorrow's breakfast" to the victim, Swords said, "but as long as there's no conclusive evidence sitting there you still've to say, `I'm empathetic with you, I'd like to believe you, but the evidence's justn't there.'" 04-07-90 EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. Lauren Rose says as a teen-ager she was forced by aliens to strip naked & undergo painful examinations. Until recently, she didn't know who or what to blame. "I've strongly suspected our cat," Ms. Rose said at the annual Ozark UFO Conference on Friday. "I know that's crazy, but you don't know my cat." Some 200 self-described UFOlogists from around the world'll attend the three-day conference that began Friday. Mayor Richard Schoeninger proclaimed that the first alien brought to him'd be named an honorary citizen of the resort town & given a free trolley pass. But don't make too many ET jokes around here. These folks're serious about their aliens. Ms. Rose, 41, of northern Virginia, said she's undergone therapy since she was 18 to fend off fits of anxiety & depression. It wasn't until three years ago that Ms. Rose linked the problems to abductions by aliens, she said. "It's a very serious issue that can & does affect our mental health & belief systems," she said. Ms. Rose said she grew up feeling like she was being watched & followed. In her late teens, she remembers feeling compelled to walk into the forest near her home in Colorado. But she couldn't remember what happened in the woods until undergoing hypnosis recently, Ms. Rose said. "Imagine someone coming out of the trees making you take your clothes off & forcing you through a series of painful examinations," she told the group. "I don't remember those times, but my body did. That's why I was filled with

adrenalin afterwards. I realized in that abduction that I was nothing more than a guinea pig. They stripped the clothes off me, did the job they'd to do & just dropped me," she said. Shirley Coyne belongs to a Michigan support group for abductees. Ms. Coyne said she & her husband were abducted in the summer of 1983 by a UFO that landed in a corn field. After undergoing hypnosis, Mrs. Coyne said she could remember little gray men cured her of lupus & Addison's disease in the large domed spacecraft. Her husband can't remember the abduction, she said. Ed Mazure, state director of Mutual UFO Network, said the experiences of Ms. Rose & Mrs. Coyne aren't unusual. 04-09-90 PENSACOLA, Fla. A group that investigates reports of unidentified flying objects Monday announced plans to hold its annual meeting in this Florida Panhandle city because of numerous UFO sightings in the area. Fifty-five formal reports've been filed with the Mutual UFO Network from the Pensacola area since the first sighting in suburban Gulf Breeze more than two years ago, said Charles D. Flannigan, state director of MUFON & a Pensacola real estate agent. About 600 visitors from across the nation're expected for the symposium July 6-8 on the topic "UFOs: The Impact of E.T. (extra terrestrial) Contact Upon Society." Among the speakers'll be Ed Walters, a Gulf Breeze builder who triggered the spate of sightings by photographing a saucer-shaped object in the sky Nov. 11, 1987, & Bud Hopkins, a New York City author who's written two books, "Missing Time" & "Intruders," on reports of people being abducted by aliens. Walters also's written a book, "The Gulf Breeze Sightings," about several sightings he & others've made in this area. 04-09-90 EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. Organizers of a UFO conference held in Arkansas say they're not so sure about a lecturer's theory that the Stealth bomber evolved from alien technology. Bob Oechsler, a robots experts who said he once was a NASA missions specialist, said that the B-2 Stealth craft's primary propulsion system was removed from a recovered flying saucer. "The project utilizes an alien power plant inside & it's disguised by the use of four GE-F118 engines with a modification called the GE-100," Oechsler told about 300 people who attended the three-day Ozark UFO Conference, which ended Sunday. Oechsler was one of several featured speakers during the three-day conference. His topic was "Alien Technology in Use Today." "There's new technology today that's been gleaned from recovered craft of non-human intelligence origin. The government's confirmed, high intelligence officers I should say, that these craft were recovered," he said. A government physicist's worked on the power source at a secret laboratory in Nevada, he said. Oechsler was unavailable comment Monday & didn't return a message left on the telephone answering machine at his home in Edgewater, Md. Lucius Farish of Plumerville, Ark., an organizer of the conference, said he understood that Oechsler'd worked for the Goddard Space Flight Center in Green Belt, Md. Farish said he'd no scientific background but'd been studying the subject of UFOs for 30 years. He said he wasn't committed to Oechsler's theory about the Stealth technology. "I don't know. I don't doubt that there're crashed & retrieved UFOs, & the idea that technology in general could've developed from that's not unbelievable, at all," Farish said. Farish & Ed Mazur of Mena organized the conference. "We put the first one on three years ago & decided then to've it as an annual conference," said Mazur, a former aerospace engineer Martin-Marietta Corp. People who attend the conferences're "from all over the country & some from abroad," he said. "As a rule, they're researchers into the topic. There're a few who're just interested in learning as much as they can about the subject." Mazur, who worked as an electronics engineer on various Martin-Marietta missile systems, questioned Oechsler's remarks about the Stealth technology coming from aliens. "Those're his remarks. Not everyone agrees with that," Mazur said. Pressed on whether he was among the believers, he said, "No, not really." 04-11-90 WINNIPEG, Manitoba Unexplained flashing lights & strange circles in

the ground're spotted in Quebec, a saucer zooms over houses in Newfoundland & a diamond-shaped object zips through the Manitoba sky. Throughout the country, people said they saw at least 141 unidentified flying objects last year, according to what's being touted as Canada's first national survey of UFO sightings. "It tells us that UFOs haven't gone away, it tells us that UFOs're being seen right across Canada," said Chris Rutkowski, a Winnipeg researcher who compiled the study. Rutkowski put together the survey from reports submitted to private investigators, police & the Ottawa-based National Research Council, which supplied two-thirds of the material for the study. Such information was always available but never marshalled into a form that painted a picture of UFO sightings across the country, he said. More than half the reports didn't have enough information to evaluate properly & one third'd probable explanations, said Rutkowski, who's a degree in astronomy & is president of the Winnipeg branch of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Of the rest, seven sightings were stamped as solidly unknown, meaning they were seen by several people & investigated by the police & National Research Council, without any explanation being found, he said. He related three such incidents. Startled residents of the rural Quebec community of Ste-Marie-de-Monnoir saw flashing lights glide over a field & out of sight. The next morning, they found strange circles swirled into the ground. At Wesleyville, Newfoundland, eight or nine people noticed a classic saucer-shaped object swoop low over rooftops & along the shoreline. And near Beaver Creek, Manitoba, people reported seeing a diamond shape with red lights zip over their car & out across Lake Winnipeg. Rutkowski stresses that he wants to take a rational, scientific approach to the reports & won't offer any theories about unexplained sightings. But he hopes publicity from the survey'll spark more people to come forward with their observations, providing a larger body of evidence that could be investigated by scientists. 04-30-90 CORYDON, Ind. Residents of this former state capital nestled in Indiana's southern hills've taken to star-gazing following continued reports of UFOs. School teachers, nurses, counselors, students, a sheriff's deputy & a high school principal're among those who claim to've seen the UFOs near Corydon, which was Indiana's first capital city. Janet Reising, a Corydon resident for almost 20 years, said she began to see the lights in the sky almost three years ago, but some area residents claim the mysterious objects've been around for 20 years or more. One of the witnesses told the Corydon Democrat, "We aren't a bunch of kooks. We're respectable, well-educated, professional & responsible people." Some of the sightings're very similar, but others differ widely. Reising claims to've seen several objects of varying colors, shapes & sizes, one so small she swears she could've reached out & grabbed it, & another "as large as a football field." One of the more frequent sightings involves a round, amber-colored object. Reising & several of her neighbors saw such an object about two years ago. A small white light came out of it & hovered "three feet off the corn" in a field near the spectators, she said. Reising said she went to her car & blinked her headlights one & off three times. The white light blinked three times in return & disappeared. "This was a perfectly clear night," she said. Reising also says she's seen a hovering cigar-shaped object over a sycamore tree in her front yard & a rectangular-shaped object flying low in the sky near New Middletown. Reising says two other women were with her when the second object appeared. As they watched, the object separated into three triangles that flew off, one behind the other. "It looked like a billboard in New York City with different colored lights going up & down on it," she said. Reising, an unofficial recorder of sightings in the area, has a list of more than 300 people who claim to've seen the UFOs. Most of the sightings occur at night, usually around 11:30 pm, but some've been reported during daylight hours. Several people claim to've been followed by the lights. One girl said a light followed her home from work one night & hovered above her house. Another teen-ager said blue, white & orange lights hovered above him one

night in 1987 while he was driving a tractor up & down a field, Reising said. Investigators from Mutual UFO Network once videotaped a brilliant orange light flying in the sky in August 1987. The investigators were unable to explain what the light was. They did, however, conclude that it wasn't an airplane or a helicopter. Reising expects interest to grow in UFO-watching this summer. As tales of the sightings travel throughout the state, they draw curious visitors to the Harrison County town, she said. Reising said people from as far as Bloomington & Indianapolis've made the trip in the hopes of being the next person to sight a UFO. "Everybody brings their lawn chair & sits down on the side of the road," she said. 04-29-90 GULF BREEZE, Fla. An ex-convict who gained some fame with photos of what he claimed were UFOs is being haunted by earlier pictures he took of "ghosts" to entertain his children & their friends. National attention focused on this Pensacola suburb & the skies overhead after a weekly newspaper, The Gulf Breeze Sentinel, in November 1987 published pictures of purported unidentified flying objects taken by a then-anonymous resident. Ed Walters's since acknowledged he's the photographer. Walters's a Gulf Breeze building contractor who served 18 months in prison for forgery in Duval County & auto theft in Alachua County during the late 1960s, but he was pardoned less than two months ago. Walters's written a book, "The Gulf Breeze Sightings," & reportedly's been offered $450,000 for rights to do a television mini-series. Several UFO investigators've challenged the authenticity of the photos, showing a saucer-shaped object with rows of square windows in the sky. Critics now contend they're double exposures. Their conclusions're based in part on Walter's spooky party games described by three Gulf Breeze women who'd been friends of his two children as teen-agers. The women spoke to the Pensacola News Journal on condition that the newspapern't reveal their names in a story published Sunday. "This's very incriminating evidence," said Willy Smith of Altamonte Springs, Calif. "Ed predicted what was going to happen & he made a ghost-demon appear." A 20-year-old woman said she posed for a ghost photo taken by Walters after a mock seance in 1986. It showes a ghost-like image with two eyes & a large mouth that appears to be reaching out for a 16-year-old Pensacola girl. "I thought it was a big joke," the woman said. "He intended for the picture to show up. Then I heard someone'd taken (UFO) pictures. I immediately just knew it was him & I didn't believe it." Walters took the ghost photo, obtained & copyrighted by Smith, with the same Polaroid camera used for the UFO pictures. "I think this finishes him," Smith said. "I admire Ed. If I were to fake pictures I'd use a Polaroid. There's no negative." In March, Walter Klass, a former senior editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology Magazine, criticized Walters' UFO photos at a meeting of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in Washington. He argued it's easy to make double exposures with the type of camera Walters used & that many of his UFO photos appear to be fakes. Zan Overall of Redondo, Calif., a member of the Center For UFO Studies, said he's publishing a paper that also will challenge the authenticity of the photos. It will be titled "The Ghost-Demon Photo: Ed Walters' Nemesis?" & presented at the annual meeting of the Mutual UFO Network. The July meeting will be held in Pensacola because of interest generated by the Gulf Breeze sightings. Walters contends that he didn't know how to take double exposures when he photographed the purported UFOs & that the ghost photo's the result of reflections from a glass door behind the teen-ager. He said he's taken several similar photos at the same spot in his home. Smith, however, said the ghost photo, recently published in the Orlando Sentinel's Florida Magazine, is different from recreated pictures. The ghost photo's blurry on its edges & shows up on one plane while the images in the reflected photos're clear & on two planes because they reflect on each side of the thick glass door. Walters, however, still's his defenders, including photographic expert Bruce Maccabee of Silver Springs, Md., who said he could find no evidence of double exposure in his

UFO pictures. Walters also cites a 98-second videotape of the alleged UFO, photos taken with other cameras & hundreds of other Gulf Breeze area residents who've said they too've seen UFOs since the pictures were published. Such criticism's nothing new, Walters said. In his book, he wrote, "They've tried to label me a con man, liar, occult master, etc. But my community knows me & rejected these charges." Critics say claims of contact with UFOs traditionally accompany hoaxes & point out that literature advertising a May 11-13 UFO conference in Miami Beach states Walters will attempt to draw a UFO to him during a "skywatch." However, conference organizer Jim Moseley said Walters's never claimed to be able to draw an object to him & that the skywatch's a promotional opportunity to coincide with a book-signing session with Walters. Walters said he won't take part in the skywatch. Walters also's drawn suspicion to himself by reporting four more sightings this year, perfect timing, critics say, for stimulating sales of his book at the UFO convention in July. Walters said it hurts him that critics're trying to turn his ghost photos & involvement with community teens into something bizarre. "It was something beautiful," he said. "They don't want people to think of Ed Walters as a responsible person, but as a ghost-deamon, Satan-worshiper holding seances." 05-07-90 PEORIA, Ill. A local woman's composing music that's out of this world from simple little melodies to grand keyboard compositions inspired by what she described Monday as her contacts with aliens. Connie Cook, 42, said she's been visited by "small, yellow-skinned" aliens in her bathroom, bedroom & seen formations of alien spaceships in the skies over Peoria many times since 1981. "I hesitated to ever speak out about this because I feared criticism & ridicule," Ms. Cook said. "But after so many experiences, I decided to speak out." Ms. Cook said her life changed in November 1981 when she watched an unidentified flying object hover over Interstate 74 in Peoria. Two city police officers reported seeing the strange white light, which lasted 90 minutes before disappearing. Immediately after the experience, Ms. Cook said she began hearing music inside her head & started writing it down, despite no prior experience composing songs. In April 1987, the sightings became more personal as a "small, yellow-skinned" alien appeared in her bathroom. "It identified itself as the one who's been communicating with me," Ms. Cook said. "It'd silver eyes & had radiant beauty. I've no prior frame of reference to describe it." Those experiences, along with numerous sightings of silver globes hovering & flying in formation in the sky, inspired Ms. Cook to compose. A local music critic, Jerry Klein of the Peoria Journal Star, described her compositions as "sometimes ethereal, haunting & eclectic." Overall, he said of her work: "most of it's very pleasant & listenable." Probably the people most surprised by Ms. Cook's sudden musical ability're her parents, LaVern & Genevieve Cook of Canton. "We're just a normal, middle-class, middle-income family," said Genevieve Cook, 69. "We were skeptical about this at first. "But we've seen such a dramatic change in her personality & ability. Something's happened to the girl to give her the ability to play & compose music all of a sudden. And she isn't the type to make this up." Experts support the sightings of UFOs. They insist people like Ms. Cook aren't insane. Philip J. Klass, an author of four books on UFOs, defends the sightings. "Ninety-eight% of the people're telling the truth, they aren't nuts or crackpots," Klass said. "The other 2% are mentally disturbed." Robert Baker, a psychology professor at the University of Kentucky, said many people with no sign of pschological problems often report UFO contacts. "They aren't really crazy or psychotic," Baker said. "They lead normal lives. They just've certain fixed ideas." Baker said about 45% of the American population's "fantasy prone" & may be more receptive to delusions of UFOs. He said some people're able to create an identity for themselves by sighting an alien spaceship. Ms. Cook said she's not hallucinating. She admits, however, that some of her inter-dimensional experiences may've been dreams. With no photographic proof to support her sightings, Ms. Cook can

only point to her music as evidence of an extra-terrestrial influence in her life. "They work through me because I'm a writer & I'm not afraid to talk about it," she said. "If this's a delusion, then everyone should've one. It's had such a wonderful impact on my life." 05-11-90 INDIANAPOLIS Bruce & Becky Merida can't explain what left a 25-foot circle of mashed grass in their field northeast of Bloomington. The only witnesses were their 12 pigs, & they aren't talking. On Wednesday, Merida & his uncle, Junior Merida, came across the dead & yellowish grass about 200 feet from the pig pen. "I don't know if I believe in UFOs or not, but I'd like to know what it is. It was just like on TV, a bunch of perfect circles," Bruce Merida said. The grass wasn't burned, Merida's wife Becky Merida said. There were three depressions in the middle as if something landed on a tripod, she said. The mysterious shape, made of smaller & smaller rings, is off Miller Road about two miles east of Dolan Road. The Meridas, who live in Bloomington, rent about 110 acres there, growing hay in the summer & keeping pigs all year round. A power line 50 feet from the rings led Becky Merida to speculate that if there were such things as visitors from outer space, they might've used the electricity to recharge a ship. "We just'd our electrical transformer stolen two weeks ago," she said. The Meridas said they've not called police or health officials to examine the site. 05-11-90 HAILEY, Idaho The Blaine County sheriff's office's received a rash of reports of strange objects & lights in the sky west of Hailey in recent weeks, but an amateur UFO tracker thinks he can explain'em away. Most of the sightings May 2 & May 4 were reported in the same part of the sky where strange lights were first seen by residents on the night of April 19. Mike Fidler of Burley's a member of the Mutual UFO Network, a private organization of volunteers who track unidentified flying object reports. He said looking into the April report led him to believe the sightings since then may've been due to news reports drawing attention to the night sky. Fidler said many of the descriptions sound as if people were looking at Sirius, the brightest start in the sky. The sheriff's office received five calls May 2 about a bright red & blue light in the sky southwest of Hailey. Fidler said Sirius's been visible to the southwest recently, & it sometimes twinkles different colors when it appears near the horizon. On the night in May 4, the sheriff's office received two more reports of lights over the mountains west of Hailey. One caller reported seeing three lights simultaneously, & the other said he saw two lights at the same time. Barry Parker, an astronomy professor at Idaho State University, said he'd received a couple of reports from people in the Pocatello area about similar lights. But he said he'd been able to see nothing himself, & could offer no explanations for the Hailey phenomenon. Sgt. Steve Child at Mountain Home Air Force Base said the Air Force's not investigated any of the reports. The Idaho Air National Guard controls the flight path west of Hailey, Child said, & had no flights scheduled in that area April 19. 05-12-90 MIAMI BEACH, Fla. Whether orn't UFOs exist, their fans do, & they'd a close encounter with each other at a convention here Saturday. The annual National UFO Conference which began with a beach-side saucer watch Friday night under an almost full moon's drawn about 200 believers & ufologists, organizers said. The conference features speakers ranging from reporters who document other people's sightings to contactees who claim contact with intergalactic travelers, including one Spanish-speaking alien. "Our purpose's to inform, enlighten & hopefully entertain people with the different aspects of UFOs...It's up to the audience to choose who to believe," said conference sponsor James Moseley, looking like a professor in his horn-rimmed glasses & gray suit, a "UFO research" button pinned to his lapel. One of the workshops teaches "how to identify & locate your counterparts, soulmates & friends from other worlds...find out what constellation you might've arrived on Earth

from, & what your special mission might be." West Palm Beach radio host Carole Lynn Grant was to speak about psychic healing, an art she says aliens taught her through mental contact. "My link-up with space beings's on a mind level. I've not been on a spaceship physically, but I've been mentally," said Ms. Grant, who says the aliens give her information about world events before they occur. Once, Ms. Grant says, she was "hooked up to a spaceship solidly for three years. It was like a garden hose running from my head to the spaceship." The star of the weekend's Ed Walters, who first reported a flurry of sightings in the small Gulf Coast town of Gulf Breeze. Walters, a convention new release boasts, "has apparently been able to draw UFOs to him almost on command." On Friday morning, however, Walters wasn't magnetic, he was miffed. He was unhappy about a newspaper report quoting a non-believer. This "debunker," Walters said, claimed Walters'd boasted he was levitated, asked to disrobe & examined by aliens. Not true, Walters retorted. This's what really happened: He saw a spacecraft, moved closer & "was struck by a blue beam." Later, he also lost one hour & 15 minutes of time & sighted 4-foot-tall beings in silver space suits. "If someone wants to conclude I was on a spacecraft, that's their prerogative," Walters said. The five conference workshops'll be held through Sunday. 05-18-90 ANNAPOLIS, MD Lewin Maddox didn't know what to expect when a neighbor led him into an old barn in Pasadena during the winter of 1944. What he saw looked like a helicopter with a wheel instead of a blade to keep it aloft. He was intrigued but didn't think much of it. Three years later, however, in the midst of national hysteria over an invasion of unidentified flying objects, Maddox learned that the curious object'd been seized by the Air Force. "The Air Force apparently thought that it might be a prototype to a flying saucer," the Glen Burnie resident recalled. "It was seized & taken to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. But a week later, they decided it couldn't possibly've flown." Government officials located the man who'd apparently constructed the odd machine, effectively ending the debate & the county's day in the UFO glow. Now, four decades later, local UFO enthusiasts say they've sighted hundreds of unidentified flying objects in the Chesapeake Bay region. At a recent Maryland State Conference on UFOs held at the Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, more than 60 believers gathered to share their views & experiences on the curious phenomena. "We're very serious people studying UFOs as a scientific element," said Bob Oechsler, of Edgewater, president of the local chapter of the international Mutual UFO Network. "We've had numerous sightings in the last two years. It's not a question of believing, it's a matter of looking at the factual evidence." The evidence for Oechsler & his followers's concrete hundreds of photographs showing strange glowing objects of all shapes & sizes, videotapes of flying machines, & dozens of accounts from residents who allegedly've been "abducted" by aliens. "We've had medical examinations performed on people who've been abducted," Oechsler said. "Many people claim that UFOs are just a bunch of lights at night. But the credible evidence's there." Two years ago, a rash of UFO sightings over the Chesapeake Bay led to the establishment of the local chapter of MUFON, headed by Oechsler & Debbie Regimenti of Annapolis. Both say they've seen numerous UFOs. The group now claims a dozen members & meets every month to discuss the latest sightings in the region. "The Chesapeake Bay's a hot area for sightings," Regimenti said. "We try to document the sightings & look for reasons that (aliens) are here." The first to admit that many sightings of unidentified lights can be explained by ordinary means, Regimenti also said that the evidence pointing to the existence of UFOs can no longer be denied. "The government's completely stopped claiming that UFOs aren't real," Regimenti said. "Once they remove the stigma & allow'em to be acceptable, then we're on the right road." Several months ago, Regimenti & Oechsler completed a report documenting their sightings & accounts from dozens of other county residents. Entitled the "Chesapeake Connection," the report'll be presented at the annual MUFON symposium to be held in Florida this summer.

"It's such a complex issue," Regimenti said. "We don't know who they are, but we're looking for clues. All I can say is, don't laugh at your next door neighbor when he says he saw something strange. Keep an open mind." 07-02-90 GULF BREEZE, Fla. A UFO-investigating group's been split by controversy over whether photographs of unidentified flying objects supposedly swooping over this Florida Panhandle city're for real. The Mutual UFO Network, scheduled to begin its annual three-day symposium Friday in neighboring Pensacola, officially remains "100 percent" in support of the belief the photos're authentic, says Walt Adrus, international director of the 2,600-member group. However, many members've expressed doubts about the photos taken by Ed Walters, a Gulf Breeze builder & ex-convict, & some've quit the organization because of its support of Walters. "Too bad they aren't having the symposium two days earlier (July 4), because there're going to be fireworks," said Ray Stanford, director of Project Starlight International, an organization based in College Park, Md., that makes advanced photography equipment available for UFO sightings. About 600 people're expected to attend the MUFON symposium at the Pensacola Hilton. The organization decided to hold the conference near here because of widespread attention the Gulf Breeze sightings've received. Several other Gulf Breeze area residents reported spying objects similar to those in Walters' photos since the pictures were printed in The Gulf Breeze Sentinel, a weekly newspaper, about three years ago. National television & newspaper reports followed. The recent discovery, in the attic of a house formerly occupied by Walters, of a model flying saucer similar to those in his photos's given new ammunition to those who claim it's all a hoax. Walters, who's written a book, "The Gulf Breeze Sightings," about his encounters with UFOs, insists the pictures're authentic &'s speculated the model was planted by debunkers. The model, fasioned from foam plastic dinner plates & blueprint paper, will generate talk, but Stanford said he doubted it'd change MUFON's endorsement of Walters. "Some people believe it, not as the result of science, but almost as a religion," he said. "They'd still believe in the Gulf Breeze photos if Ed confessed (they were a hoax). They'd believe he was forced to confess." Walters' credibility also's been attacked by Tommy Smith, 22, a former Gulf Breeze resident, who said he & Walters took double exposures of a UFO model. Walters also's denied Smith's story. Physicist Willy Smith, a co-founder of UNICAT, an international UFO information-gathering group, claims he's digitally-enhanced Walters' photos to show a support under the alleged flying saucer. Another scientist, however, remains convinced the photos're authentic. Bruce Maccabee, an optical physicist & MUFON's Maryland state director, said what Smith sees as as a support's merely a defect caused by the roller on Walters' Polaroid camera. Maccabee agreed that questions about the authenticity of Walters' photos'll be a hot topic at the symposium. "There're a lot of reputations on the line, a lot of money on the line," he said. "A number of MUFON members're skeptical." A one-time MUFON investigator, Bob Boyd of Mobile, Ala., was so skeptical that he quit the organization in 1988 because of its support of Walters. The model & other new evidence've prompted MUFON to reopen its investigation, but Boyd said he doesn't think the organization'll seriously study the matter. "They just want to save face," Boyd said. "I've absolutely no confidence in a MUFON investigation. All of these people've lost their credibility." 07-07-90 PENSACOLA, Fla. "Glasnost" is having a cosmic as well as terrestrial impact in the Soviet Union where UFO sightings no longer're passed off as capitalist propaganda, says an international science writer. Along with the new openness's come a rash of reports of landings, close encounters & sightings of unidentified flying objects, says Antonio Huneeus, a Chilean-American journalist who's written extensively about UFOs. Huneeus's scheduled Sunday to address the 21st annual symposium of the Mutual UFO Network on UFOs in the "Red skies" of the USSR. Some of the Soviet UFO

encounters've been reported in the US media, but Huneeus said at a news conference Friday that little attention's been paid in this country to what he considers to be a particularly significant sighting by the Soviet military. "That case was admitted by none other than the chief of Soviet air defense forces, Gen. Igor Maltsev," Huneeus said. "He published a statement...in a Soviet newspaper to the effect that UFOs had been detected by several radar units." Maltsev also reported that jet fighters were scrambled & the pilots described a disc from 100 to 200 meters in diameter flying at speeds two to three times faster than their aircraft, Huneeus said. The general concluded the UFO'd somehow "come to terms with gravity" & that it "didn't seem to appear to be a terrestrial machine," Huneeus said. Most of the attention at the symposium's focused on Ed Walters, a resident of nearby Gulf Breeze, who's made numerous photographs of purported UFOs. Some UFO investigators contend the pictures're a hoax but MUFON officials, who scheduled the symposium here because of interest in UFO sightings by Walters & others in the Gulf Breeze-Pensacola area, contend the photos're authentic. Their authenticity, however, has been called into question by the recent discovery of a model flying saucer found in the attic of his former home & statements by a former Gulf Breeze resident who claimed he saw Walters take fake UFO photos. Walters, holding up one of his pictures, pointed out that the UFO shown flying just above a road wasn't identical, although similar in shape, to the model. He also distributed a nine-page response, including the results of a psychological stress evaluator test that concluded he was telling the truth when he said he didn't make the UFO model. About 600 of MUFON's 2,600 members're attending the conference at the Pensacola Hilton & Pensacola Civic Center. One of the more controversial presentations was to be made today by John L. Spencer, a UFO investigator from England, on differences between the perceptions of UFOs in the United States & Europe. Americans tend to attribute UFOs to visitors from outer space while that explanation isn't necessarily accepted elsewhere, causing rifts among US UFO enthusiasts & their counterparts overseas, Spencer said. He said there's more emphasis in other countries on what UFOs mean rather than what they are, citing the experience of a Swedish woman who considered her sighting a signal to be more concerned about the environment. 07-12-90 BRUSSELS, Belgium This country's air force's joined scores of Belgians befuddled by hundreds of UFO sightings across night skies in recent months. In the latest report, two air force F-16 jet fighters used their radar screens to track an object that, according to a military official, "exceeded the limits of conventional aviation." Speaking at a news conference Wednesday, Belgian Air Force Col. Wilfried de Brouwer said the UFO dived from about 10,000 to 4,000 feet in two seconds. At the same time, it increased its speed from 600 to 1,100 miles an hour. De Brouwer said the air force decided to wait before announcing the sighting in the early hours of March 31 "because we wanted to compare the radar sightings by our pilots with observations from radar stations. UFOs are a sensitive issue. That's why we don't want to approach this sighting emotionally." Since last fall, hundreds of nighttime sightings of UFO've been reported over southern Belgium. Many've been explained. In one case, the UFO turned out to be a vertical laser beam used by a discotheque to attract clients. However, de Brouwer'd no explanation for the sighting by the F-16s, which approached within about 12 miles of the UFO. He said police & civilians reported four UFO sightings at the same time. The official said those reports "speak of a triangular object with a bright red center light." 07-30-90 ELMWOOD, Wis. Rather than the fear & alarm flying saucers might instill in most people, residents of this community decided UFOs were cause for a festival. The village of 1,009 residents in west-central Wisconsin marked the beginning of the 12th annual UFO Days festival this weekend. The reason for the celebration's the town's reputation for dozens of UFO

sightings. "Every town around here seems to've its strawberry festival or its cucumber festival or its potato festival, so we decided to've a UFO festival because we've had a lot of sightings," said Caroline Schoeder, a festival organizer. Elmwood first gained national attention 15 years ago when respected policeman George Wheeler said he was attacked by a blue light from a large flaming ball hovering over his squad car. More recently, Chippewa Falls businessman Tom Weber attempted raising $50 million to construct what he called the UFO Site Center, a landing pad in Elmwood that was to beam welcoming lights into outer space. The plan was abandoned for lack of funds. The sightings & the festival's reputation attracted 2,000 visitors who came to see the parades, street dances & carnival rides. Events included a chase of 500 paper plates dropped out of an airplane. Children who captured one could trade it in for cash prizes. The community also crowned a UFO Day's Queen. Elmwood's economy gets a boost from the festival thanks to the sale of souvenir inflatable rocket ships, T-shirts, caps, mugs, ashtrays, badges, bumper stickers & cosmic headdresses. But some visitors expected a more sober atmosphere. Rusty Paar, 23, a spectator from La Crosse, came carrying a photo copied document that he said outlined the federal government's cover-up of UFO landings. "This whole event just looks like a bunch of people looking for an excuse to party," Paar said. 08-07-90 FARGO, N.D. "Mystery circles" raising questions about an alien presence in southern England've appeared in North Dakota. John Salter, director for MUFON, a national UFO research group, has investigated three sites in the state in the past 16 months one 50 miles west of Grand Forks, another near Turtle Lake & a third at an undisclosed site in southwestern North Dakota. Based on photographs & tests, two of the sites're "bonafide, tangible, UFO landing sites." Farmer Allen Wagner found circles in a hay field in May, 1989, near Turtle Lake. The largest's about 100 feet wide. "We don't want people to think that we just believe this was a UFO phenomenon," said Sharon Wagner. "We'd like'em just to keep an open mind." Scientists around the world've debated how the circles formed, & have come up with a variety of answers ranging from wind & magnetic forces to alien landings & hoaxes. 08-17-90 The serene, rolling pastures of the McCarthy farm in northeastern Mississippi look like the last place in the world to hide a secret. Within four months, a calf & a heifer were found savagely butchered on the 150-acre dairy complex. No one knows who or what slaughtered them, & the McCarthys're afraid the culprit might come back. "He goes out there with a light & a gun now," said Bare McCarthy, referring to her husband, Taylor. "If he catches whoever's doing it, he just might kill'em." Although Taylor McCarthy refused to let veterinarian William McMillan perform necropsies on the carcasses, McMillan said he got a good enough look to sense that something wasn't right. "They were strange kinds of deaths. There're things in both cases that really don't add up." On April 8, a 200-pound calf was killed within yards of McCarthy's house. The cornea of one eyeball'd been cut out with surgical precision, as well as half the tongue, McMillan said. But what was more unusual was that there was no blood anywhere near the body. A 500-pound heifer was later found in early July, with the left ear & 18 inches of skin from its left rib cage cleanly severed. Where the hide'd been, a hole was bored through to the beast's heart, which hadn't been removed. The veterinarian doesn't think predators were responsible for the mutilations. Teeth'd have left jagged, not fine, cuts. McMillan does concede it could've been the work of cults, however. Authorities in Lee County, where the McCarthy farm's located, as well as in other parts of Mississippi, are familiar with occult groups. Sheriff's Dept. investigator Dan Crum said Lee County'd a problem with satanic followers roaming the countryside in 1988. James Crocker'd prefer officials to just come right out & admit they've no idea what happened. "There're different types of animal mutilations. One's

the cult variety. But there's another, where the incisions're entirely different. There's never any tracks, no vehicles, no symbols, no identifiable characteristics that could link it to any particular person or organization." In the 1970s, a wave of unexplained livestock mutilations swept Colorado & the Midwest. Most were marked by skillful removal of parts & organs. In 1975, after 130 mutilation cases were reported in Colorado alone, then-US Sen. Floyd K. Haskell, D-Colo., asked the FBI to investigate. The two incidents on the McCarthy farm reminded Crocker of what'd plagued Colorado. He's begun buttonholing sheriff's deputies, farmers & veterinarians throughout the state, hoping to collect information on any other mutilations that haven't been reported. Crocker's found out that two other similar, unexplained mutilations've taken place in the McComb-Brookhaven area within the last six to eight months. "This thing's a senseless slaughter of animals. I believe it's coming to a point where a comprehensive effort's needed to compile data on a national basis & get something done." State veterinarian Frank Rogers said the McCarthy mutilations aren't the only cases he knows about in Mississippi. "Previous to now, I guess six to eight years ago, we'd something similar reported in southwestern Mississippi, around Simpson & Copiah counties. The farmers got together & began cruising the roads & the problems stopped." In "An Alien Harvest," a book based on interviews & alleged classified government documents, Linda Moulton Howe advanced a novel theory to explain the bizarre mutilations. She suggested that UFOs might be beaming up cattle, dissecting'em & then placing the remains back on earth. "The pattern suggests that at least one non-human intelligence's manipulating & harvesting earth life, that the alien life forms're controlling & using human ignorance to accomplish the harvest." Other theories that saw print during the heyday of the mutilations in the 1970s ranged from top-secret military units experimenting with lasers to oil prospectors hoping to use animal viscera to determine if valuable minerals lay beneath the grass the cattle ate. Crocker's the first to admit he doesn't have any answers. "I mean, you pick your theory. I don't have an explanation anymore than the hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officials who've looked into this. There's a million theories." 08-21-90 LAS VEGAS A Las Vegas man, Robert Lazar, who says he's witnessed UFO research by the government in the Nevada desert, has been given probation on a pandering charge. Lazar was a key figure in an award-winning television documentary series "UFO's: The Best Evidence." The series by reporter George Knapp aired on KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. Lazar claimed the US government was researching alien spacecraft at secret sites in the desert north of Las Vegas. 09-04-90 TURTLE LAKE, N.D. Mysterious circles in a farmer's hay field've led to record enrollment in a University of North Dakota class on UFOs. Registration for the class called "UFOs, ETs & Close Encounters" was closed with 148 students, the most ever to register for a coursen't required at UND, Professor John Salter said. "Obviously, it shows a broad recognition that UFOs're real." The Turtle Lake circles in Allen & Sharon Wagner's hay field're among a dozen or more in four sites that've appeared in North Dakota over the past two years. No one's come up with a logical explanation for the dead grass, loosened sod & straight-sided depressions that range from 3 inches to 24 inches deep at the perimeter. Some've suggested the dead grass's the result of insects, hay stacks, badgers or chemical spill, but none of those theories accounts for the size & type of depressions at the site. Salter, the chairman of the UND department of Indian studies, became interested in UFOs after he saw one in Wisconsin in 1988. Though he hasn't visited the Wagner field he's convinced the circles're a "clean & clear example of a UFO landing site." Similar mysterious circles've been found in grain fields in England & Manitoba. Salter's UFO class'll meet once a week for two hours, & students'll receive three credit hours for passing the

course. Salter plans to talk about his own experiences, as well as use films & encourage discussions. But that isn't much consolation for the Wagners, who still're looking for an explanation for the circles even after hundreds of people've looked at the site. "We're back where we started from. We really don't know anything." 09-13-90 A huge Hindu meditation symbol's been mysteriously plowed into a remote dry lake bed in the southeastern Oregon desert. The symbol, known as a sriyantra, measures about a quarter-mile across & is oriented to true north. It's precisely laid out in the Alvord Desert along a training run often used by Air Guard pilots, said Capt. Michael Gollaher. "Nobody's really saying this's a UFO type thing. The word out at this time's that this's some type of manmade object. "Most of the speculation's this's probably some sort of cult thing. Nobody can figure out why somebody'd go to such effort to do this out in god-awful nowhere." The pictograph was first reported Aug. 10 by Lt. Col. Bill Miller, who returned Aug. 24 & photographed it from his RF-4C Phantom jet. It's unlikely the design was built before the middle of July because pilots would've spotted it. "The people in the photo interpretation facility process the film & they say, `What's this, a hoax?' And we say, `No, it isn't.'" No one recognized it immediately, but one of the photo interpreters took a copy of the photograph home, where his wife, Alicia Gloeckle, identified it in her series of Time-Life books on the occult. The design's a square with T-shaped appendages on all four sides. Inside're three concentric circles. Inside those're two concentric circles of lotus leaves. Inside those're nine graduated triangles, four pointing one way & five pointing the opposite, all overlapping. At the very center's another circle. "It's a focusing device in meditation. This particular one symbolizes the continuing of generations. It's a fertility type of thing, the continuation of the species & the Earth." Sgt. Charlie Swindell drove out to the site on US Bureau of Land Management range land. "It's beautifully done. I'd love to meet the person that did this." Swindell measured the sriyantra to be 1,563 feet square. "The circle in the center's 9' 3", with a one-inch deviation, which I consider to be a pretty doggone good circle." The design's made of plowed furrows measuring six inches across & four inches deep. Swindell found a number of surveying stakes at corners driven deep in the ground, with nails & pink plastic ribbons on them. "Some of the architects around here said it'd take $75,000 to $100,000 to survey it & lay it out." Swindell theorized that someone used a garden tractor or rototiller to plow the furrows. Such a machine could've folded over the earth to cover the tire tracks. There was one motorcycle track through the design, apparently left by someone who never noticed what he was riding through. "Unless you knew what you were looking for, you wouldn't necessarily pay attention. But from the air it's very visible." None of the ranchers he talked to in the area knew anything about the design. "Somebody'd to be out there in 120 degrees for a couple of weeks doing this. Because of the sparse population, you certainly could get away with it." 09-14-90 LEOLA, S.D. Those odd marks that swirl through John Reis' wheat field'll be gone soon before they can be checked out by UFO experts. Reis said that two months ago, he noticed the pattern, which looks like a backwards question mark. He went public with the news last month, looking for answers, but all he got were a few phone calls from the curious. Reis's to disk the field soon, & the marks'll be gone. "I've got other fields to do first, but if it rains, I'll go in there & take it out. I don't want to, but some of those weeds could get mighty tall by next spring." The marks attracted the attention of a group known as the Mutual UFO Network. One of the two active members of the group in South Dakota, Davina Ryszka of Custer, said she wished she'd known about the incident sooner. "This's the first we've heard of in South Dakota." The description of the patterns sounds similar to some in England & that unusual circles've been found in North

Dakota fields. 09-18-90 ODESSA, Mo. When Lynda Lowe saw the circle of flattened grain in her sorghum field, she was flabbergasted. But she eventually decided it was probably just a trick of the wind. Others who've seen the circle in the field near this west-central Missouri town think it could be something more mysterious. UFO enthusiasts've been gathering near the field the last few days, tromping the grain & getting in Mrs. Lowe's hair. "It doesn't look the same. People've really messed it up & it's twice as big now. One of those guys down there...thought maybe the spaceship'd landed again. There's been some weird people out here." Mrs. Lowe & her husband, Roger, who own 140 acres about three miles from Odessa, first saw the strange configuration four days ago. It was 20 to 30 feet wide. "We live on a hill & the field's down by the road. I could see it from the house Friday, & I jumped in the car & drove down there." The couple, although confused by the ring, didn't tell many people about it. "I don't believe in UFOs for one thing. But it was strange. It looked like a perfect circle somebody cut in the field. It was all just lying flat & smooth." Then over the weekend, a woman photographer driving through the area saw the field, took some pictures & began telling people about it. The woman apparently'd seen pictures of mysterious circles in fields in England. "She begged Rogern't to cut it. He should've cut it right then." Tim Meyers, an investigator for the Lafayette County Sheriff's Dept., went to see the circle after his department heard reports of it. But it appears to just be vandalism. "It looked more like kids trying to knock down grain with a four-wheeler than a spaceship to me." "I've farmed here all my life & I've never seen anything like it," said Terry Henning, who lives two miles from the Lowes. "In England, they've seen a lot of lights in association with the circles," said Thomas Nicholl, a Leawood resident & member of the Mutual UFO Network. "In the absence of other information (here), it's hard to tell what happened. It makes no sense." Erich Aggen Jr. of the Mutual UFO Network & Monty Skelton of the Inter-Continental Association of Research Enterprises took samples of the crops to send to laboratories. "It's perplexing," Skelton said. "Had a heavy craft landed there, some stalks'd have been broken & the grain crushed. It doesn't hold water, as far as some type of craft landing, but it wasn't wind, either." 09-21-90 BATES CITY, Mo. Roger & Lynda Lowe, whose farm attracted national attention this week after two mysterious circles appeared in their sorghum field, aren't alone. Area residents're reporting similar circles in three other fields two in Kansas & one in Missouri. They gave the oddities little thought until they heard about the Lowes' field. "It's us wondering, `What on earth?'" said Ruth McCahon of Raytown. She & her husband, John, were at their farm south of Osceola last Friday when they saw a circle 30 to 40 feet wide in their sorghum field. Three circles also've appeared in a pasture southwest of Oskaloosa, Kan., & one in a field west of Topeka. But don't assume the circles're proof of UFOs. The Lowes believe the wind's to blame, & scientists & others agree there're more earthly explanations than UFOs. "Crop circles're a phenomenon that've been going on in England since the early 1980s," said Barry Karr, spokesman for Skeptical Inquirer, the official journal of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. The organization's dedicated to debunking UFO & ghost sightings. "After 24 years of investigating famous UFO cases, I've never found one that can't be explained in earthly terms," said Philip Klass, a founding member of the committee, who lives in Washington. "I'm quite certain that we've no alien visitors in our skies. Whatever's generating these circles, it isn't an alien spaceship." Some circles found elsewhere've proven to be the doings of mischievous farmers or neighbors who'd rather propagate stories than irrigate crops, Karr said. The Missouri circles're the first Karr's heard about in the Midwest. Other circles've been found in Florida & Canada, he said. Barring a hoax, there may a scientific explanation: the air itself. Meteorologists

speculate the crop circles may be caused by any of several atmospheric disturbances. The two most likely candidates're microbursts, or spinning winds that sometimes're called dust devils. Both're caused by temperature differences in the upper & lower atmospheres that cause swirling winds or powerful downdrafts. The swirling winds're "a common way for the atmosphere to transfer momentum within a short space," said Glen Marotz, a meteorologist & professor of civil engineering at the University of Kansas. "When the atmosphere's faced with an energy imbalance, it acts like you'd expect it would. It tries to get rid of them. One way's to create a spinning vortex. There's nothing uncommon about that." Microbursts're sudden & powerful downdrafts that easily could compress crops. "Microbursts've been implicated in aircraft crashes when hard downdrafts're created." All the circles're near roads & trees. Witnesses say none of the trees lost limbs, as they probably'd have in a wind storm. Farmers say no crop disease could've caused the damage. No tire tracks or footprints've been found in the circles. And in each case, people who live near the circles say they neither heard nor saw anything unusual. At the Lowes' place, the circles ruined about $1,000 worth of sorghum. But the puzzling phenomenon turned the farm field into a tourist attraction. Wednesday night, up to 43 cars were parked at one time along the road. Lowe harvested the crop & obliterated the circles Thursday. The New York Times's called twice & relatives of his from California, Boston & New York phoned after seeing the circles on television. "I didn't ask for the notoriety, & I'd rather've had (the sorghum) in the silo & forgot about it. But it happened, & there's nothing I can do about it." 09-27-90 TOLEDO, Ohio When Harold Bricker left the marina at East Harbor State Park, he thought he was taking a routine fishing trip with his family. It became bizarre when Bricker encountered what he says was a sea serpent on Lake Erie. The Bricker family saw a large creature moving in the water about 1,000 feet away from their boat. They described it as black, about 35 feet long, with a snakelike head. It moved as fast as their boat. "I told my son that I wanted to get a look at it," Bricker said. "My son said, `No way, that thing's bigger than we are.' So we stayed where we were." They watched the serpent disappear beneath the surface about two miles north of the Cedar Point Amusement Park near Sandusky. When Bricker returned, he told park rangers about the sighting. His story was backed up by his family, including his wife Cora, 68, & son, Robert 35. Since the Bricker family saw the creature Sept. 4, sea serpent mania's spread among lake front communities in Ohio. The monster's been reported by five people on three separate occasions, including a Huron firefighter & a 50-year-old grandmother from Pennsylvania who was vacationing at her Lake Erie cottage. John Schaffner, editor of the Beacon, a weekly newspaper in Port Clinton, has a toll-free phone for people to call if they see the serpent. And in Huron, Thomas Solberg, owner of Huron Lagoon Marina, has offered a $5,000 reward to anyone who captures the creature alive. He's posted a sign at his marina calling it the future home of the Lake Erie sea serpent. While the public's fun with Ohio's version of the Loch Ness monster a creature that's haunted the Scottish lake for centuries the sightings baffle local researchers. Charles Herdendof, a marine biologist investigating the creature, said it's possible that there's something unexplainable in Lake Erie. He frequently encounters inexplicable things in his research. During an expedition in the Atlantic Ocean, a robot camera videotaped a 20-foot long green shark that he said was 1,000 miles south of where any like it'd ever been seen. Fred Snyder, a researcher with the Ohio Sea Grant, an organization that examines Great Lakes issues, said it's highly unlikely that a monster's living in Lake Erie. "I'm not trying to be the sour old guy who throws a bucket of water on things. I love UFOs & the Loch Ness monster I'm still just hoping that all of those're going to be real. But something about the one in Lake Erie, I don't see where it could come from." The reports're similar to about six made in 1985 & 1987, all of huge snakelike creatures being seen in Lake Erie. The US Coast Guard'd no

other reports of a mysterious creature this year before the Bricker family sighting. After the reports began this year, Schaffner's newspaper ran a contest to name it. The name South Bay Besse was chosen in part because of the location of the Davis Besse Nuclear Power plant near Port Clinton. "If we look at things like the stories about the Loch Ness monster, which I don't necessarily discount, Loch Ness'd connections to the ocean, it's prehistoric," Snyder said. "When you look at Lake Erie, a lot of people kind of assume, like most places in the world, it must be millions & millions of years old. It's not the case. The glaciers receded & the area stabilized about 12,000 years ago which, geologically, is just yesterday...So the monster really can't be anything left over from the dinosaur days because it's just too young." Snyder doubts a creature could've gotten in from the Atlantic Ocean because of the difficulties of navigating the St. Lawrence Seaway. "A big question's why hasn't the monster been noticed before, why's this just now popping up. Let's go back to Loch Ness monster. That seemed to be reported for hundreds of years periodically. There've been legends, like Bigfoot. Even the Indians were talking about Bigfoot being there. Well, Lake Erie Larry or South Bay Besse seems to've popped up around 1985, & if it'd been in here for hundreds & thousands of years, there sure seems like there'd be local legends among the Indians, among the settlers," Snyder said. "I truthfully don't know what people've been seeing, but it's hard for me to believe that there could be a monster out there." The sturgeon's Lake Erie's largest fish reaching up to 300 pounds & 10 feet in length. But the sturgeon's on the endangered species list &'re bottom dwellers. He speculated that monster sighters may've seen a school of fish & mistakenly thought it was a creature. 09-27-90 WICHITA, Kan. State troopers & motorists sighted a shimmering light in the Kansas sky this morning. The National Weather Service said it was a research balloon, not a UFO. Shortly before dawn, people from Marion to South Haven in central Kansas began telephoning news departments at radio stations with sighting reports. The object appeared to be stationary. Marissa Gray, a Wichita woman who works the overnight shift at Winfield State Hospital, said the object was clearly visible when she left Winfield for Wichita about 6:45 am. "It was so bright then I thought it was a chopper." A National Weather Service spokesman said the light was the rising sun reflecting off a huge National Scientific Balloon Facility research balloon launched from Fort Sumner, NM earlier this week. The balloon's 450 feet in diameter & was filled with 29 million cubic feet of gas. It originally rose to an altitude of 110,000 to 130,000 feet, the spokesman said. Its altitude & size made it appear closer than it was as it began descending. 09-26-90 MIAMI, FL A former air traffic controller's positive he's unraveled the secret of Flight 19, five Navy torpedo bombers that vanished in 1945 & fed the Bermuda Triangle legend, but getting proof's going to be expensive. Jon Myhre's solution was videotaped for a segment on NBC-TV's "Unsolved Mysteries." But doubters include the Navy, Smithsonian Institution, six publishers who rejected his book manuscript & People magazine, which held Myhre's story after buying exclusive rights to his account. "I've given it my best shot. I've done everything I can do," said Myhre, of Lantana, who's spent his life savings of more than $100,000 to plot & pursue Flight 19's five Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers. "I know I'm right. I'm justn't in a position to prove it." Myhre's videotape, shot from a mini-submarine in July, of an upside-down Avenger sitting in 390 feet of water about 35 miles off Cape Canaveral, but doesn't have its serial number. The plane, just 2 miles from where Myhre predicted Flight 19 went down, was originally spotted during the search for debris from the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, but ignored then. Flight 19's disappearance became part of the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area where ships & planes supposedly disappear under mysterious circumstances involving UFOs, magnetic fields &

other such phenomena. Flight 19 even figured in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," in which first the planes & then the men were returned by aliens. Myhre's answer to the puzzle came with a flash eight years ago when he read the final radio transmissions from the warplanes, which took off from Fort Lauderdale for a training flight over parts of the Bahamas on Dec. 5, 1945. The squadron leader's reported that both of his compasses were out of order. At one point, the squadron leader plotted a northeasterly course based on the assumption he'd somehow reached the Florida Keys, on the opposite side of Florida. Myhre thinks that was part of the Bahamas' Abacos chain. At another point he reported he was over an island & no other land was visible. Myhre, who's flown the region for years, believes that was isolated Walker's Cay. By re-plotting the flight from Walker's Cay, using the Navy transcriptions of the flight's radio reports, Myhre came up with a location where he thought Flight 19, its planes out of fuel, may've ended. The spot was east of Cape Canaveral. The Avenger he filmed was found 2 miles away. Myhre learned of the plane spotted during the Challenger search from news reports. This summer, with $25,000 raised by two partners, he hired a small research submarine & located the wreckage. He was unable to locate a complete aircraft serial number on the upside down wreck. Footage of the Avenger shows the last three digits 209 of a five-digit Navy service number on the left wingtip. Flight 19's lead airplane number was 73209, & Navy records show only two other Grumman TBM Avengers with service numbers ending in 209, & neither was lost at sea. "The only thing we didn't get was a positive ID on the plane's serial number," Myhre said, but raising the Avenger could cost $250,000. The plane's landing gear's extended, leading some to suggest that plane was lost while trying to land on an aircraft carrier instead of the squadron's suspected ditch. But Myhre insists he's the right plane & knows where the others are. "The other planes're further north in much deeper water, I'm certain. This was just the first to ditch. And the tragic thing about it's he was only about seven minutes from land. If they'd just kept going west..." 10-08-90 ELMWOOD, Wis. A recently published book billed as an expose of the government's clandestine search for extraterrestrial life in Elmwood's renewed interest in this west central Wisconsin town. Mayor Lary Feiler, 48, has gone from a small town administrator to a sought-after guest on talk shows dealing with UFO sightings. He attributes the recent fame to "Out There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extra-Terrestrials," written by former New York Times reporter Howard Blum. The book mentions the town of 1,009 about 45 miles west of Eau Claire throughout the text, commenting on residents' reports of numerous UFO sightings in the surrounding hills over the past 15 years. The stories've become the focus of an annual community festival called "UFO Days." In the last two weeks, Feiler's been interviewed by telephone on two radio stations in New Zealand & one in Australia & featured on the TV programs Hard Copy & The Oprah Winfrey Show. Although the book's accurate, it exaggerates some details. The harrowing description of Carol Forster's encounter with a UFO was "played up as much more dramatic than she ever reported it." The efforts of Tom Weber to build a multimillion-dollar landing site for UFOs near Elmwood're described in the book. Weber spent two years trying to build an extraterrestrial welcome center on a high plain above the village. Now, living near Mauston, where he's recovering from a heart attack, he doubts the book'll result in significant donations to his "UFO Site Center." "It might generate funds for Howard Blum, but it's not going to result in anything meaningful." Blum disagreed. "When I wrote `Wanted,' the government said nothing could be done about Nazi war criminals. But since its publication, many've been deported." For Blum, who was in Milwaukee last week as part of a 12-city promotion tour, "Out There" is an effort to force the federal government to reveal the extent of its spending on UFO research & its "malicious & illegal attempt to discredit UFO believers. I hope that the government'll tell all & that we'll

find out how much money's being spent on the search for extraterrestrial life. After all, it's our tax money." Blum already's sold the television rights to his book. 10-13-90 NORTH HAVEN, Conn. The stories'll be flying this weekend about alien creatures with three-digit hands & windowless, disc-shaped spacecraft. And no one'll be laughing. More than a dozen UFO researchers & people who claim to've been abducted by aliens're meeting in North Haven for the fourth annual international conference on "The UFO Experience." Robert Luca & Betty Andreasson Luca of Connecticut'll be there. Betty, 53, who doesn't want her address known, says she was a 7-year-old Massachusetts resident when aliens first visited her in 1944. Luca, whose encounters've been described in several books, says she was abducted three times by gray-skinned, hairless creatures, 3 feet to 4 feet tall with three-digit hands & holes for ears & nostrils. "It's not only me. There're hundreds of thousands of cases already documented worldwide. There're many who haven't reported it because they can't deal with the bizarreness of it." Ed Walters of Gulf Breeze, Fla., will also be there. He'd tell the conference about the day he came home from a construction job in 1987 & saw a round, glowing object hovering near his driveway. It was the first of his reported experiences with UFOs. UFO researchers attending the conference issued an appeal to President Bush to "take the wraps off the governmental cover-up of the UFO situation." "We want Bush to put an end to the secrecy over research by the intelligence & military community into UFOs & to tell the American public & the rest of the world the truth about what they've found," said John White, whose business, Omega Communications, is putting on the conference. A copy of the appeal was mailed to the White House. White, who describes himself as a researcher of paranormal phenomena, said the conference at the Holiday Inn's a chance for people (at a full weekend cost of $150, unless they pre-registered for $120) to meet the leading figures in the field of UFO research. White saw a UFO in 1987 in Pine Bush, NY. He described his encounter as a nighttime sighting of an unusual light. "I didn't see a metallic craft without windows. As a seasoned investigator in these phenomena, I was unable to explain it by any natural cause." Ninety% of UFO reports come from well-intentioned people whose sightings can be explained as natural phenomena or known technology, according to Robert Bletchman, a Manchester attorney & public relations director the Mutual UFO Network. The network estimates 2.5 million Americans have'd valid UFO sightings, including 25,000 Connecticut residents. It's possible some sightings may be explained by secret military projects, such as development of the Stealth bomber, long kept under wraps. But: "I'm convinced some UFO sightings represent human contact with an extraterrestrial presence." "For someone to tell me (there's no such thing as a UFO) after never having looked at all the evidence, then that's just an ignorant opinion." Kenneth Feder, an anthropology professor at Central Connecticut State University who's studied UFO literature, said many believers're people who take comfort from the idea there're more intelligent beings somewhere in the universe. "I'm not saying these folks're replacing their religions with UFOs, but there's an undercurrent in most UFO literature that we've screwed up the planet badly & these guys're out there watching & will come down & take charge when we're about to destroy ourselves." 10-19-90 MILAN, Ill. Droves of camera-toting tourists're flocking to Kathy Bost's corn field to take a look at a giant circle that's causing some to wonder if flying saucers've been visiting western Illinois. Bost isn't sure a flying saucer landed on her farm. But she says no one's offered a better explanation for the perfect circle, 46 feet in diameter, sitting smack-dab in the middle of acres of corn. Her brother-in-law, James Lawson, was harvesting corn from Bost's rural Rock Island County farm when he saw a site that nearly knocked him off his combine. The stalks'd been bent over & flattened in a sweeping, clockwise pattern. A small circle of brown dirt peeked through the

center. "That's the strangest thing, I tell you. It's like something landed there, in a sense." Lawson told police that he spotted no footprints, vehicle tracks or cut marks that'd indicate a hoax. "We checked it out, & we don't have any explanation at this time," said Rock Island County Sheriff Mike Grchan. "If it's kids or pranksters, it'd be awfully hard to swish the corn down that flat & even." With police stumped, geologists from nearby Augustana College were brought in to determine the source of the smashed circle. "The best they could come up with's a wind phenomenon." Though Bost isn't convinced she now owns a UFO landing pad, she doesn't discount the possibility. And the doubts haven't discouraged the carloads of curiosity-seekers, who stream toward the mysterious clearing & turn Bost's desolate corn field into a scene out of "Field of Dreams." "I've got a small farm, but I've never'd anything like this," said a perplexed Virgil McCormick, 59, of nearby Reynolds. "I hope it's (caused by) the wind." "I'd like to've been here when it happened," said Gene Nielsen, who drove 60 miles from his Annawan farm. "There's lots of other things people don't know about, & I thought, `By golly, it beats going to England.'" Nielsen was referring to 300 crop circles similar to the one in Milan that've appeared in England & continental Europe during the past year. Scientists've spent millions of dollars trying to determine the origin of the circles, but so far've failed. Similar circles also've been discovered in Canada, Japan & the United States, including six in North Dakota in less than two years. "Most of us're quite convinced that many of these circles're bona fide UFO landings or're related to UFOs," said John Salter, sociologist at the University of North Dakota & director of that state's chapter of the Mutual UFO Network. Because the Milan circle lacks scorch marks, it's doubtful a UFO landed there. But it could be a "calling card" left by aliens using some sort of energy beam. "There isn't any reason to be afraid," Salter said. "These're formed by visitations designed to sensitize us that is, us humans to the existence of extraterrestrial life." 11-05-90 CHARLOTTE, NC More than 150 people attended the annual meeting of the Mutual UFO Network where they heard a hypothesis that the government's agreements with creatures from outer space. "One must consider these possibilities, all possibilities when studying UFOs, but still maintain a healthy dose of skepticism," said ufologist Ginger Richardson at the meeting at Charlotte's Pfeiffer College. "As ufologists, we must wade through the garbage to get to the kernel of truth...We know something's definitely going on." Ms. Richarodson said according to the hypothesis, the government gets advanced technological knowledge in exchange for harmless medical experiments on humans. But according to the hypothesis, the aliens've violated the pact by implanting trackers in human brains, murdering humans for food & impregnating women to create hybrid offspring. MUFON's an international organization founded in 1969 to investigate the UFO phenomenon. Topics at the meeting ranged from evil aliens abducting humans to creating an atmosphere for bilateral exchange. Steven Greer of Asheville says all aliens aren't evil. A real chance exists for bilateral communication. It's called the CE5 Initiative, "CE" meaning close encounter. But humans must extinguish destructive behaviors, like war, before alien contact can begin. "The extraterrestrial civilizations're out there & are indeed wanting us to get to the place where they feel more comfortable having an exchange," said Greer, director of the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence in Asheville. "But they're cautious of their own security as well." 11-11-90 BILOXI, Miss. Space aliens're just make-believe, Eddie Hickson's father told him. Years later, the elder Hickson said those same space aliens'd snatched him from the banks of the Pascagoula River in Jackson County & took him on board their dome-shaped craft. Charles Hickson Sr., a modest Gautier man & a retired shipfitter foreman at Ingalls Shipyard, told a crowd of about 200 conventioneers at the Great Gulf Coast UFO Gathering in

Biloxi about the day that changed his life. Hickson, now 59, & fellow shipfitter Calvin Parker were fishing at an abandoned shipyard Oct. 11, 1973. "All of the sudden I heard some kind of hissing sound like steam leaking out of a pipe," Hickson said. "I saw some kind of craft hovering about 18 inches about the ground. I didn't know what to do. It appeared round with a dome on top & there were two blue pulsing lights on what appeared to be its front. A door opened & a very brilliant light came out, then three things came out & two of'em took ahold of me & one took Calvin. When the one took hold of my left arm, it hurt, & then I didn't feel anything but my eyes. They were about 5-foot, 6-inches tall & they'd elephantlike skin, grey & very wrinkled. The skin ran horizontal. Their arms were very long in proportion to the rest of their bodies." His book, UFO Contact in Pascagoula, may soon be made into a movie. Once the beings released him inside the craft, Hickson became suspended in midair & watched an electronic eye come out of the craft's wall, scan his body, then retract into the wall. After hypnosis unlocked his subconscious, Hickson recalled the faces of three male human-looking beings, who observed the examination from behind a window. "I kept wondering what they were going to do to me. They glanced at my eyes; then they carried me back & out through the brilliant light & put me down on the ground. Calvin was lying there on the river bank, his arms outstretched, & he seemed to be going into shock. I'd to slap him & scream at him to get his attention," said Hickson, a Jones County native & Army veteran of the Korean War. Parker now lives in south Louisiana & has suffered two nervous breakdowns since the incident. Fearing they'd be labeled insane, Hickson & Parker considered keeping their experience a secret, but reported it to the Jackson County Sheriff's Dept. that night. Since that eerie evening, the aliens've communicated with Hickson telepathically. Rubbing a flat, gray, quarter-sized object, Hickson explained that the disc heats up before he receives telepathic messages. Hickson's undergone numerous psychological evaluations. "I know these things sound very strange & I don't expect you to believe them, but I hope one day you will." Eddie Hickson, 36, has never thought his father was insane. He's watched him turn down handsome cash offers for his story over the years, fearing people'd think it a hoax. "I know in my heart & my mind that daddy didn't make this up." 11-15-90 BEND, Ore. The elaborate Hindu meditation symbol carved in a southeastern Oregon desert last summer probably was made by UFOs & not a band of Iowa artists, a science professor claims. James Deardorff, a research professor emeritus at Oregon State University, alleged the government concocted a "cover story" with Iowa artist Bill Witherspoon & five others to explain the quarter-mile-wide symbol. "Their story doesn't make any sense. I wonder if the government took'em out & told'em what to say, where they camped & how they did it." Deardorff retired four years ago from teaching in the university's Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences. He now looks into the "UFO phenomenon" full time. Witherspoon said in a telephone interview there's nothing mysterious about the huge shri yantra symbol he & others dug in a dry lake bed north of the Alvord Desert. "No, it wasn't aliens. It was just some guys." Mark Armstrong, spokesman for the US BLM, also denied that the government tried to hide the truth about the Hindu symbol. "There's no connection between any so-called UFO activities & this drawing that Witherspoon & those with him did. We're fully satisfied that we got to the truth of the matter." Witherspoon & five companions laid out the intricate design using an old garden cultivator, 12 miles of twine, survey stakes, a tape measure, a pair of binoculars & a blueprint. The design was discovered by an Idaho Air National Guard pilot during a training flight Aug. 10. The discovery wasn't revealed publicly until mid-September, however. Witherspoon later came forward to claim the work. The BLM fined him & his group $100 for defacing public land. Deardorff said he wasn't convinced after studying a videotape of the symbol & studying Witherspoon's account. "My concern in this's that some group in some branch of our government's behind this in

doing their best to keep the citizenry from connecting the ground pattern to the patterns in the wheat in southeast England, for example, because of the reported UFO association with the latter." He was referring to unexplained large circles & other geometric shapes that appeared in England last spring & summer. Deardorff was suspicious about a number of elements in Witherspoon's story, including the fact that the drawing supposedly was discovered just a day after it was completed but wasn't reported until about 40 days later. "Why that big delay? The time was there for'em to build up a cover story." He also didn't believe that the artists could've drawn such a perfect symbol, with its neat, uniform furrows, with an old cultivator. And he questioned whether the artists could've worked in the 90-degree desert heat for 10 days without running short of water. Deardorff also wondered about the lack of footprints around the symbol. Witherspoon said a rainstorm washed'em away. Deardorff asked why the artists didn't explain why they chose the ancient meditation symbol. "It's as if they want to stay away from any discussion of the symbol. I can't see anything in the confession letter that rings true." Deardorff's filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the BLM to get Witherspoon's address, & said one of his associates plans to closely question the artist. 11-19-90 CULVER, Ind. Reported sightings of unidentified bright lights in the sky've dozens of residents in this small farming town thinking about close encounters, possibly of the third kind. Since early October, talk's centered on strange light patterns hovering above the town's landscape in northern Indiana. Melanie Wagner's seen lights about three or four times a week, usually around 8:15 pm while driving along Indiana 10, a desolate country road. She first saw the lights Oct. 4 & has been seeing'em every clear night since then. "I've seen lights suspended in the sky, then go up & down, & go in all directions. I've seen'em turn off all their lights & appear to've disappeared. And then turn'em back on several hundred feet across the sky" Wagner's seen four to five different light patterns but that the most common's triangle-shaped. Other people've reported bow ties & circular patterns. Fred Karst, editor of The Culver Citizen, said his newspaper's received "quite a number of calls" about possible unidentified flying objects in recent weeks. He even saw some strange lights in the sky the evening of Oct. 4, the same night of Wagner's sighting. "I don't know whether it was a UFO or not, but at the time, I thought it was a meteor. It descended in the sky above me down toward the horizon. I didn't attach any greater significance to it until I started hearing other people'd been seeing different things that same night." While some people speculate the lights're military aircraft, officials at Grissom Air Force Base, two counties south of Culver, say that's not possible. "Nothing that they (citizens) describe meets the description of what we'd be flying out here," said Lt. Bill Harrison, a public information officer with Grissom. The base flies KC-135 strato tankers (similar to a Boeing 707) & A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft. Capt. Cathi Kiger of the Indiana National Guard said flares're often used for training exercises & on ranges when firing artillery. "But I can't find anything that we might've done that'd have contributed to these lights." A dispatcher for the Marshall County Sheriff's Dept. said the department's received "a couple phone calls but we never found anything." And Argos Police Chief Jim Buroughs said there're lots of "rumors on the streets but I haven't seen anything yet." However, Gary Flagg, a security guard from Argos, has seen something, & often. He's been keeping a log since he first spotted the lights on March 7. He was driving to work at 9:45 pm when he says he saw a white, triangular-shaped light pattern. "I just stopped on 17th Road (in Marshall County) & got out of the car & watched. That one was about 500 feet over the top of the car," he said, reading from his log. "It moved real slow, extremely slow. I don't even know how it stayed in the air." Flagg didn't report the sighting to police, but did confide in his wife. Then on Oct. 3 & 5, he was driving with his family when again the triangle-shaped lights

appeared. His sister, Cindy Flagg, a preschool teacher who describes herself as "a skeptic," also saw them. "There was a triangular thing going over. It'd three or four lights...It was going really slowly & there was no sound." A common place to watch's been the Poplar Grove United Methodist Church & cemetery, located along Indiana 10. Jan Johnson, a Culver Citizen photographer who went to the cemetery with Wagner one night, shot a picture of the object, which resembles "a string of pearls. That's what the light pattern looks like. I saw little flashing twinkling lights...I don't know (what it was); I'm dying for someone to tell me what I've shot." 11-26-90 MOLINE, Ill. There mayn't be a grain of truth to it, but some Illinois farmers think they might've experienced a close encounter of the corn kind. "People might think it's crazy," said Mike Thompson, "but it was there." The "it" is a 64-foot, perfectly round section of flattened cornstalks found on farmland Thompson's leasing near Moline. The patch of crushed crop's like a 46-foot imprint found by farmer James Lawson Oct. 16 in his field in rural Milan. Except for their differences in size, the two patches of trampled earth're almost identical. Both're in Rock Island County only several miles from each other, & both're a few hundred feet from major highways. The one on Thompson's property near John Deere Expressway was found by Port Byron farmer Mike Searle as he was helping harvest corn for Thompson. "I about ran into it, so I backed out & went around it," Searle said. "I was surprised. All the corn around it was standing. It was fine. There's got to be a reason for it, but when you figure it out, tell me." Lawson's already figured out that the circle on his property was made by an unidentified flying object. "Whatever it was, it came down from the elements & took off," reasoned Lawson. "I think it's a UFO landing. I think they landed there." Lawson never believed in UFOs before. "But I definitely do now." Word of the first strange circle brought hundreds of onlookers to Lawson's farm, & he's been interviewed by dozens of reporters. Lawson was scheduled to appear on NBC's "Unsolved Mysteries" with people from North Dakota & Missouri who also discovered circles in their corn fields. But when the other two men decided against being interviewed, the show was canceled. Rock Island County Sheriff Mike Grchan plans to consult experts at the universities of Illinois & Iowa & to ask the Illinois State Police to've their patrol airplane keep an eye out for anything similar. In the meantime, Grchan's a few ideas about how the circles got there. One's that the phenomenon was caused by the wind. Another is that "It's reallyn't explainable." 12-01-90 CASPER, Wyo. Unidentified flying objects're actually messengers from a higher intelligence trying to help people understand reincarnation. Leo Sprinkle, a former University of Wyoming professor, said that 75% of the people who have'd some contact with UFOs believe in reincarnation, showing the two issues're linked with each other. Encounters with UFOs can be experienced at four scientific levels, ranging from the physical level to the spiritual level. At the physical level, researchers hope to prove or disprove the existence of UFOs with physical evidence, while at the spiritual level, UFOs're seen as "a program for cosmic consciousness conditioning," improving awareness of reincarnation. 12-31-90 ASHEBORO, NC It fell from the sky over Randolph County, butn't everyone can say what it was. Steve Harrell's 7-year-old son saw it & cried "Jet crash! Jet crash!" Harrell turned his video camera toward it & began shooting. "It was a bright light falling from the sky," said Harrell. "I didn't know what to think. It looked like a big ball of fire. It started floating down & then it was gone." He heard no crash & found no jet, & was left with the suspicion he'd witnessed something strange about 5:30 pm that Christmas Day as he videotaped son Nathan on his new go-kart. "I don't think it came from outer space. There's an explanation. Got to be." The Asheboro Municipal Airport didn't have one, neither did the Randolph County Sheriff's

Dept., neither did the local television crew who took Harrell out in a helicopter to search the area. George Fawcett, director of the NC Mutual UFO Network, thinks he knows. "Off the top of my head, with out having really investigated, it looks good. It fits the pattern of a large number of UFO sightings in North Carolina large objects seen at low altitude...multiple lights." 01-14-91 VANCOUVER, BC A UFO organization says tiny worms could hold a clue to the mysterious rings that've appeared in fields from England to northern British Columbia. The rings've been blamed on everything from whirlwinds to UFO's. Scientific analyses of soil from 2 Canadian crop circles show astronomically high numbers of microscopic nematodes threadlike, often parasitic worms that live in the soil, said Mike Strainic of MUFON. Soil samples from rings in Saskatchewan & Dawson Creek were sent to agricultural scientists in eastern Canada & the United States. Soil from both rings'd identical counts of nematodes 8 times that of inside & outside the rings. "Scientists are looking into the significance of the high count," adding that more analysis is being done on the samples. 03-12-91 LOS ALAMOS, NM Oft-maligned UFO-debunker Phillip J. Klass chided people who cling to flying-saucer lore, telling a Los Alamos National Laboratory colloquium such believers've failed to produce any evidence. Klass spends 20 to 40 hours a week investigating reported sightings of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. All're explainable as meteor firefalls, abandoned space junk burning up as it re-enters Earth's atmosphere, ball lightning or retail UFO kits such as balloons with flares attached. "There's not a single piece of physical evidence, a single piece of metal that could not've been made in this world...not a single photograph that'll hold up under rigorous scrutiny," Klass told about 300 people. Most of'em were Los Alamos scientists. He drew laughter as he told of 1 sighting reported by a woman who's dog shrank to the ground in terror. The dog was whimpering because it was cold out that night. Her sighting on March 3, 1968, was among several from people hundreds of miles apart. All reported seeing a cigar-shaped craft in the sky over the Midwest. Klass said it was a jettisoned Soviet rocket burning up as it fell to Earth. He said 98% of all such sightings come from people who sincerely believe they saw a UFO. Kendrick Frazier, editor of Skeptical Enquirer magazine, said Klass "is hated & detested by UFO believers. He comes up with powerful evidence to puncture holes in their claims." Klass, former senior avionics editor with Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, has written 4 books on UFO's, including "UFOs: The Public Deceived." Klass criticized former New York Times reporter Howard Blum, who's written a book called "Out There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extraterrestrials." "Blum's written a book that's essentially fiction & labeled it non-fiction." 03-11-91 CUSTER, S.D. Davina Ryszka says her hobby sometimes makes people look at her a little funny. She likes to check into sightings of unidentified flying objects. Ryszka's the state director of the Mutual UFO Network, a Texas-based non-profit corporation that tries to document UFOs. Ryszka'd like South Dakotans to keep their eyes to the skies for unusual objects butn't to forget the ground, too. Her group's checking out some puzzling rings found in crop fields. Circle-shaped patterns of flattened crops're most common in England, but they've also appeared in Japan, New Zealand, the Soviet Union & South Dakota. Last year, a circle appeared under a power line in a pasture south of Eagle Butte. And last summer, a question mark-shaped depression showed up in a Leola-area wheat field. Nobody's been able to explain the patterns. Ryszka's been interested in UFOs since she was a teen-ager on her parents' ranch in western Montana. There were plenty of UFO sightings there, although she's never seen 1. "I've always hoped to." She's sure that reports of unexplained events & objects like UFOs point to an exciting conclusion,

but she's not sure just what it is. "I've read so many accounts from so many good, upstanding citizens. They'd have nothing to gain by going public." But she'll risk having people "look at you a little funny" in order to be a clearinghouse for observations & sightings of things that can't be readily explained. Ryszka gets help from a Winner woman, Yvonne Hermsen, who said some people might think she's as strange as the crop rings she's investigated. "I may get branded as a real nut case." Recently, strange lights in eastern South Dakota, possibly from a meteor, were all the rage. "They caused a lot of talk & commotion around here." 03-25-91 BILOXI, Miss. It's been 17 years, but Charles E. Hickson still remembers every detail of his intriguing abduction by aliens onto an unidentified flying object in Pascagoula in 1973. Hickson, 1 of 4 speakers at the first UFO International Conference held in Biloxi, told of his unique UFO experience that occurred on a fishing trip with his friend, Calvin Parker. Sitting on a bank near a bridge on the Pascagoula River, Hickson & Parker unexpectedly saw an unusual round or oblong aircraft about 30 feet long land near them. Immediately they were approached by 3 robot-like creatures who picked Hickson up & carried him aboard the aircraft. "Calvin fainted so he didn't know what'd happened, but I was carried aboard by these robots. Once inside an object came out of the wall which seemed to scan my entire body from top to bottom. I saw living beings through a window but they never touched me or said anything to me." The beings in the window looked similar to humans, with light colored skin & normal facial features. "I didn't know what was going on. But I felt suspended for about an hour or hour & a half while they inspected me." Eventually, the robots took Hickson back outside to the river bank & the aircraft left, leaving him in a state of shock & disbelief. However, knowing that his experience wasn't his imagination playing tricks on him, Hickson's come very strongly to believe that what happened to him was a visit by real alien beings who arrived on earth from another planet or sphere in what're known as unidentified flying objects. He's continued to've contact with the aliens in the years since that time & that there'll be further UFO activity in the near future. "There's no doubt in my mind that UFOs exist." Also speaking at the conference, which drew several hundred UFO enthusiasts from across the Gulf Coast & other parts of the United States, were UFO experts Antonio Huneeus, a UFO investigator & researcher; Budd Hopkins, an author of UFO books who himself experienced a sighting in 1964; & Stanton Friedman, a UFO investigator, scientist, author & maker of documentary UFO movies. Huneeus said UFOs're a global phenomenon & has recently, since the period of Glasnost in the USSR, been able to study many sightings in Russia which were formerly kept secret. Sightings've occurred in almost every country around the world. Showing slides of photographs said to be taken of actual UFOs, 1 of the problems all legitimate UFO investigators must deal with're the people who deliberately take photos or make claims which later're proven to be hoaxes. "We do study UFOs seriously, & we may not've the final answers, but we do believe we've some evidence that some UFO sightings're real." Friedman, who's studied the phenomenon for 32 years, is convinced that some UFOs're indeed alien aircraft & that the US government's known this to be true since 1947. "None of the arguments made by the skeptics can stand up under careful scrutiny. Alien visits're the biggest story of the past millenium." 03-26-91 GRAND FORKS, N.D. A University of North Dakota professor & his son've been interviewed about their alleged run-in with extraterrestrials for a television show about unidentified flying objects. John Salter & his son were interviewed for the television show "UFO Abductions" which its producer, Sharron Gayle, said's likely to air on CBS television later this year. The interviews'll be combined with actors' portrayals of their alleged 1988 encounters. Salter says his health's improved in 21 ways since the incident. The professor, who chairs the Indian studies department at UND, now teaches

a class about UFOs. 04-01-91 Nebraskans who think they've seen ghosts, unidentified flying objects or other weird things now've a telephone help line they can call for assistance & information. E.A. Kral of Grand Island, an English teacher with an interest in paranormal phenomena, started the Nebraska Scientific Claims Investigation phone line 3 years ago with a $10,000 donation to the University of Nebraska Foundation. "It seems to me it answers the question `who do you call?' & it answers it in a responsible, professional manner. This' not a matter of reinforcing beliefs. It's a matter of trying to seek the truth." A caller to the line got a recorded message saying reports of paranormal phenomena could be left on a recording device, & the call'd be returned later. The answering machine's located in Omaha, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center Dept. of Psychiatry. During regular business hours, staff members take messages & either return calls or refer'em to local people with expertise in the particular topic of the call. The phone number's 402-559-5035. Despite limited publicity, about 50 serious callers've contacted the phone line, said facilitator Katherine Karrer. More than half of the calls've come from students or others doing research on topics in the paranormal. The line offers confidential help & information to people with questions about the paranormal. Kral saw the need for the phone line after his own experience delving into reports of UFOs during the 1970s. Originally a believer, Kral became a skeptic after years of research. In the process, he realized that people who were curious or concerned about paranormal topics'd nowhere to turn for independent, scientific information. People seeking information're referred to a collection of materials housed at the McGoogan Library of Medicine at the medical center. The collection, which was set up with an additional donation from Kral, includes materials by both believers & skeptics on each topic. Other calls come from people who've had unexplained experiences or've questions about paranormal claims. "It's mostly for people who were very uncomfortable with the phenomena. Usually they just really want to talk to someone who knows about it." The calls've covered a variety of topics, including several ghostly experiences & 1 from a person reporting time travel. The phone gets a workout whenever there's publicity about a strange phenomenon or when a movie about the occult's released. If that pattern holds, the line might get a rash of calls in May following the third annual conference on Exploring Unexplained Phenomena in Lincoln. Topics to be covered at the May 17-19 conference, sponsored by the Fortean Research Center of Lincoln, will include ghosts, crop circles, UFOs & spontaneous human combustion. It'll be at the Nebraska Center for Continuing Education. Among conference speakers: John Keel, author of several books & articles on the unexplained; Larry Arnold, a researcher on spontaneous human combustion; Harry Jordan, who says he's evidence of architectural artifacts on Mars; William Roll, a parapsychologist; & Budd Hopkins, a UFO abduction researcher. There's a fee for the conference. 04-08-91 EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. Lou Farish's heard the snickers of those who discount talk of cow mutilations, crop circles & extraterrestrial kidnappings. But he isn't laughing. He helped organize the third annual Ozarks UFO Convention. "I'm assuming the skeptics don't know anything about the subject or they don't want to face the implications of the subject. They don't want their world disturbed." About 400 people attended. "The implication of the subject...is we're definitelyn't alone. I don't know if we're in danger. There's that possibility," said the part-time postal clerk who publishes a UFO news-clipping service with worldwide circulation. "There're beings out there who don't seem to've any hostile intent toward us. There're other beings out there who simply don't care they've an agenda to carry out & they don't care if we know about it. They're going to do their job. Period. I don't know if there're any out there who're hostile or not. But the universe's a big place." The conference featured UFO researchers from

the United States & other countries. Linda Howe, an author & film producer from Pennsylvania, spoke about animal mutilations. Farish said a cow was mangled in Berryville 2 months ago by an incision produced by high heat, along the lines of a laser. Sergei Bulantsev, a UFO researcher from the Soviet Union, told conference-goers that aliens in his country're better looking than those in the United States. "They're just like Europeans, like foreign tourists," he said of the aliens that visit the Soviet Union. "It seems to be different teams of aliens're operating in our 2 countries." George Wingfield of Glastonbury, England, said circles're being cut out of crop fields all over the world. He wasn't sure why the numbers of incidents're increasing. "I can't explain, but it does seem that there's been a sort of response to the fact that people're & taking interest in these sightings." 04-15-91 EUGENE, Ore. The UFO Contact Center International provides a haven from the hostility & ridicule that follows the terror of being abducted by aliens, members say. "I tried to talk to a close friend, & now we haven't talked since. I get that from a lot of people," center board member Clay Kruger said. "But (at the center) I wasn't laughed at, I wasn't ridiculed. I could talk to people who'd real good track records, real pillars of society." Several members shared their unearthly stories with a small audience at the University of Oregon. Kruger's first contact with UFOs occurred in July 1989 at his home in Kent, Wash. He awakened 1 night to see a cylindrical object outside, about 6 by 8 feet. It radiated a purple glow around the back yard & later went to the front of the house. Suddenly, he found himself against a wall with nothing beneath him. He looked down to see a grass field in his neighborhood. Kruger recounted 2 more nocturnal episodes alien contact 1 featuring a monkey-like being in his living room. Aileen Bringle, director of the UFO Contact Center International, said the trauma of her first encounter 38 years ago led her to organize the center in 1978. Today, there're 60 regional groups in North America. Bringle, of Federal Way, Wash., described her first encounter in 1953. It was midnight. She was asleep in the car next to her husband, who was driving west near Pendleton. She awakened to his screams & looked out the window to see the entire landscape fully illuminated in green. "When something unknown's happening, there's no way to rationalize it. We thought it was Hanford blowing up." Eventually the sky darkened & the couple went on their way. Since then, Bringle's seen a UFO over Wyoming; been told by her ex-husband that 5 aliens entered his bedroom & stomped on a pair of shoes; & earlier this year awakened to find fingerprints on the insides of her thighs. "That really disturbed me. I live alone." Bringle said the debate about UFO contact intensified in 1987 when author Whitley Strieber published "Communion," an account of being abducted from his secluded New York cabin. "Scoffing at (abductees) is as ugly as laughing at rape victims," he wrote. In 1988's "UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game," Philip J. Klass included a "Post Script for Potential Abductees." "If you worry that your teenage daughter may be abducted & impregnated with UFOnaut sperm," he wrote, "shift your worries to more prosaic causes of pregnancy." Bringle calls Klass a "paid debunker." Francesco Pagliaro set up the meeting after reading a letter Bringle'd written in Omni magazine. "I know these people're sincere. You can see it in their faces." 04-30-91 COHOES, N.Y. ALIENS GIVE ABDUCTEE GOOD HEALTH, BAD WORK RECORD! Cruel-To-Be-Kind Space Magi Implant Disease-Killing Licorice Stick! Jobless Victim Laments: `They Ruined My Life, But Cured My Cold!' Were life a supermarket tabloid, those headlines'd sum up Richard Price's story. When he was 8, aliens did take him aboard their ship. They did implant a substance soft, like stale licorice in his stomach, an implant that seemed to keep him healthy. They did spoil his employment prospects, messing up his mind so he couldn't hold a job. Really. A Florida insurance company took his story so seriously it agreed to pay off on a prank UFO abduction insurance policy.

Price's getting $10 million-a dollar a year for 10 million years. UFO devotees & skeptics agree that Price probably believes his own story. UFO believers say they can't absolutely prove it, but they're willing to accept his tale. Skeptics say they don't have to prove anything that Price proves he's a kook every time he opens his mouth. Family, friends, psychiatrists these were the first to disbelieve Price's tale. His parents warned himn't to talk about it; he kept talking, so they stuck him in a mental hospital when he was 17. "I finally denied it all just to get out. After that, I kind of kept it quiet." Lately, Price's begun talking again about his alleged abduction Sept. 23, 1955 & people're starting to, well, almost believe him. "We've no reason to disbelieve him," says Budd Hopkins, author of the 1987 bestseller "Intruders" about alien visitations. "I've seen nothing that'd make me doubt that he's simply telling the truth." Retired University of Kentucky psychologist Robert Baker, who's written scholarly articles debunking UFO abduction claims, says Price's a harmless crank. People who make such claims're what psychologists once called "simple schizophrenics. They're not very bright, & they've to've some explanation for their inadequacies." Like other UFO abduction claimants, Price's involvement with aliens' an ongoing thing. Price says that while driving a cab, he saw 2 glowing beings in a house. After seeing them, he suffered a 3-hour memory lapse during which aliens may've abducted him again, or at least stiffed him on cab fare. Price also thinks he's being trailed by 1 of the MIBs-Men In Black: human automatons with black clothes & glasses who try to intimidate UFO abductees into silence. "I've never heard of a UFO case that can't be explained in prosaic or earthly terms," says Philip J. Klass, whose book "UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game" has become something of a bible for UFO skeptics. If anyone can prove otherwise, he'll refund the full purchase price of all his books. He's also offered $10,000 for proof of an alien abduction. Confirmation by the FBI'll satisfy him. Instead of aliens doing the kidnapping, "I could sooner believe that they're ghosts or poltergeists or some of Santa Claus' mischievous elves." Skeptics & believers admit Price's a troubled man. Price says "UFO stress" has kept him from holding a job for more than a decade. The incident's hurt his marriage, & his UFO claim embarrasses his wife & 3 sons. Price says he wants to see the aliens again & ask "'What did you do this for, why did you screw up my life?' If they're that advanced, it seems like they'd try to do something to help the person they're abducting." The villains're not aliens but people such as Hopkins, who perpetuate "this type of stupidity & nonsense," Baker says. "Through their naivete & lack of understanding of human psychology, they've ballooned this thing into a national headache." Abduction stories appear throughout history, tailored to the whimsies of the times. In the Middle Ages, people claimed flying dragons swooped down & abducted them. Later, fairies & trolls did the kidnapping. In the late 1800s, stories appeared of aliens in spaceships like the early dirigibles. In the 1940s, spaceships were transformed into the flying saucers popularized by science fiction pulp magazines. That's the kind of craft Price describes. While playing in a cemetery by his home in nearby Troy, N.Y., Price claims, 2 helmeted aliens in red & blue uniforms took him aboard their ship. He couldn't resist, as if his will'd been sapped. The aliens, with pinkish-gray skin & about 4 to 5 feet tall, showed him a movie then'd him undress so they could examine him. They inserted the implant a 4-millimeter-long chunk of dark material & told him to leave it alone or he'd die. It lay visible just below the skin until 1989, when it broke through & popped out, he says. Until then, Price says, he'd been healthy & thinks the implant may've had something to do with it. Since the implant came out, he's suffered persistent colds. The implant's intrigued UFO investigators. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist's run tests on the substance but says he hasn't yet identified it. "I don't know if it's animal, vegetable or mineral," says the physicist, who asked that his name be withheld. While Price "is a little bit of a crackpot," the physicist says he hopes the implant'll prove to be genuine. "Finding other intelligent

life in the universe'd be completing the Copernican revolution." Implants're common in abductees' stories, though Price's among the first UFO investigators've been able to study. UFO researchers theorize implants may be like radio tags humans use to track wildlife. Price's story's 1 of at least 1,000 reported cases of people who claim aliens took'em aboard their spaceships. 1 of Price's fellow travelers' Ed Walters of Gulf Breeze, Fla., a building contractor who thinks aliens took him on a joyride in 1988. Walters says he was photographing UFOs when he suffered a 90-minute memory lapse. Under hypnosis, he recalled being taken aboard a spaceship. "It's kind of good I didn't have any conscious recall. If I could remember all that stuff, I'm sure it'd be very disturbing." David Jacobs, a history professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, says he & Hopkins've been awarded a grant to find out how many people've been abducted by aliens. Jacobs won't say how much the grant was & identifies the source of the money as a "Las Vegas financier" who wants to remain anonymous. The details of abductees' stories're generally hazy, a sign that they're not fabricating the tales. If they were imagining it, dreaming or just plain faking, "every story'd be rich & filled with idiosyncratic situations from their own lives. We know this from hallucination & fantasy studies." In abductee accounts, the aliens seem bored, like medical technicians tired of taking X-rays. "These creatures don't seem to've the sensitivity of humans. They've a job to do & they do it," says Walter Andrus, director of the Mutual UFO Network in Seguin, Texas. "We're not talking about the standard science fiction contact, where 2 equals meet in a dramatic situation & exchange presents. We're talking about exploitation. Humans're just specimens." Abductees're not publicity seekers, investigators say. Of 300 abductees Hopkins' studied, only 9 have allowed their names to be used. Price does seek publicity, hoping it'll vindicate him. Surprise, he's writing a book. He doesn't feel as if he's cashing in; he figures the aliens owe him. Lately, he's gotten some dubious national attention. He appeared on the TV tabloid show "Hard Copy" & Joan Rivers' talk show & was written up in UFO Universe, the supermarket tabloid of UFO magazines. Among the magazine's cover stories: "Elvis Presley's Mysterious UFO Connection" & "Strange Pregnancies! What Do Aliens Want With Our Women?" The purveyors of such headlines "used to be people looking for God. Now it's aliens," says UFO skeptic Baker. "They're looking for aliens instead of God, or Jesus, or Moses, or Napoleon. They're to be pitied. They're unfortunate people." 05-13-91 LINCOLNTON, NC Danny Barger of Lincolnton's never seen a UFO, but that doesn't keep him from looking for them. Barger's a field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network. He looks into people's reports of strange sightings & events for evidence of UFOs & for evidence of alien life. Since 1950, investigators've documented 11 fourth-kind close encounters in North Carolina. The fourth kind're those in which a person claims to've actually seen an alien being or been abducted. None occurred in Lincoln or Gaston County. Right now, Barger's investigating a case in Charlotte. The reports get strange & stranger, such as 3-finger marks without fingerprints on the inside of house windows. Barger keeps more than 300 books on UFOs & magazines dating back to 1953, when he was 12. Barger himself's never seen a UFO. "I don't go out at night looking up at the sky expecting to see one. People say, `If I haven't seen it, it's not so.' I've got the interest without seeing it. I've met enough people. All these people're not lying. I believe some of the sightings're actually UFOs." 05-18-91 GRAND FORKS, N.D. A UND professor whose story of an encounter with aliens was featured on a network television special saysn't only Hollywood filmmakers believe in UFOs. John Salter, chairman of Indian studies at UND, claims to've come across a group of aliens in 1988 while driving with his son on a highway near Richland Center, Wis. Studies show that a majority of Americans recognize the reality of unidentified flying objects & attribute it

to extraterrestrials. The US government's more serious about UFO encounters than it acknowledges, & even the pope's gotten in on the action. "The Vatican, under urging by the Jesuits, has set up a special office to make contact with visiting extraterrestrials & offer'em the Mother Church. While that certainly says we're making progress, my feeling's the extraterrestrials've a very satisfactory theology in their own right." Salter watched CBS' special, "Visitors from the Unknown," on a wide screen television with a group of 20 people in a lounge in Grand Forks. Salter's story climaxed the hour-long show. The 15-minute segment on Salter contained footage of an interview with him done in February in Grand Forks, as well as narration by Salter & son John. Actors were used to recreate certain scenes. Salter & his son both claim to've had amnesia right after the alleged encounter. They later recalled through flashbacks their visit with a group of aliens. The aliens were short & big-eyed. Their ships were spinning saucer-types similar to those in popular movies such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" & "E.T." Salter claims a larger alien used a "telekinetic force" to prevent Salter from hitting the ground after he tripped. The aliens also did medical examinations of Salter & his son. Salter also claims that the aliens gave him a nose implant & injections in the throat & upper chest that've resulted in a long list of beneficial physiological changes. None of the changes've been verified by doctors. Salter's colleagues at UND seem to believe his story, or at least're too polite to say otherwise. "I've encountered virtually no open skepticism. I assume there's some. It just hasn't been openly manifested. My UFO courses've been brimful. No sweat with the students." The aliens were nice & he wouldn't mind seeing'em again. 05-28-91 HUNT, Texas Unlike its counterpart in England, there's no question about who built the Kerr County arches. But why Stonehenge II was built's just as elusive as the mystery surrounding the prehistoric megaliths rising up from the English countryside. "We didn't set out to build Stonehenge," said Al Shepperd, who designed it along with neighbor Doug Hill. "We were just messing around with rock & it kind of grew. We certainly'd no idea the way it'd turn out." Far from the Salisbury Plain, this modern-day monument rises in a pasture along a rural lane in the Hill Country, 2 miles west of Hunt on Farm Road 1340 about 115 miles west of Austin. The massive structure's generally 60% as tall as the original & 90% as large in circumference. "When you turn the corner, you know what a great curiosity it's & the mindset why's it here? Why's the original 1 built where it is?" said Phil Neighbors, executive vice president of the Kerrville Area Chamber of Commerce. Many theories exist about the origins of the English Stonehenge, but no 1 knows for sure who built it or what prompted its conception. But Stonehenge II was born at the Kerrville dump in the summer of 1989. Hill, a tile contractor, was gathering limestone for his patio but decided 1 stone was too large for his use. So he crossed the road & stood it upright in Shepperd's field. "Doug pulled up at 7:30 am & said `I've got a rock out here for you,'" said Shepperd. "I said, `It looks kind of funny by itself, let's put an arch somewhere.'" Hill constructed an arch 13 feet tall, with a 3-foot wide opening. Together, the haphazardly placed limestone & the man-made frame reminded Shepperd of Stonehenge, which he'd visited earlier in 1989. The 2 then set out to create a replica of the famous landmark. From August 1989 to May 1990, Hill built hollow plaster arches that were reinforced with steel rods & metal lath. Each pillar of the arches' set in concrete for stability. The plaster was tinted a dark gray & allowed to weather to resemble the stone of the original. The 4 inner arches're 11-12 feet tall. The ones that ring the outside vary from 9 to 11 feet tall to compensate for the slope of the land. 5,000 square-feet of plaster & 800 bags of cement were used in the construction. Hill was more interested in making the Stonehenge replica look right than trying to match the scale of the original. He didn't attempt to align the sculpture with astronomical bodies as the original Stonehenge appears to be since the hills in the area block the sun at various times

anyway. "It's probablyn't perfect, but it gets the point across. It's a play thing. I like to think of it as a work of art, but I haven't found anyone else who needs 1." Since the early days of construction, cars've screeched to a halt when the project comes into view. Already, there's been a wedding, youth campouts & numerous photo sessions including 1 for a ballet troupe & rock album cover at the site. The story's appeared on national television & in a children's magazine. "People thought we were crazy. They thought we were getting into satanism." Butn't everyone likes Stonehenge II. An employee of a nearby youth camp told him she looks the other way when she drives by because she believes the design's evil. "She's thoroughly against it, like it was an idol." But most people see the sculpture as a quirky tourist attraction. "It's another thing that draws attention to Kerrville & Kerr County." The Kerrville Area Chamber of Commerce includes the sculpture on its list of attractions. "We encourage people to come & look." Shepperd & Hill're planning to add a log book for visitors to sign. T-shirts depicting the project're also a possibility. The 2 designers now're discussing a second project in the 22-acre field that'd depict the crash of an unidentified flying object. It'll be up to the visitor to decide if the UFO's any symbolic connection to Stonehenge. Shepperd generally visits the site during the day & doesn't get hooked into its mysticism. Hill, though, says the replica's a special place. "I come out every solstice. Full moons're really nice to see the shadows on the ground's something you can't experience anywhere else." At leastn't in Kerr County. There's a slightly scaled down, but mathematically correct Stonehenge at the University of Missouri-Rolla that was built by some years back by some engineering students. 06-24-91 COLLEGE PARK, Md. If you think you've seen Elvis recently, call Chip Denman immediately for a reality check. Denman's Mr. Bah Humbug himself. He's president of the National Capital Area Skeptics, a 350-member society of debunkers & naysayers who claim to serve "at the front lines in the battle against gullibility & fraud." They erupt in rib-poking laughter at rumors that Elvis Presley's still alive. Their eyebrows arch at mention of ghosts, UFO abductions or the wonders of astrology. Bigfoot sightings're dismissed as hokum, New Age mysticism as balderdash. But Denman, a pony-tailed statistician at the Univ. of Maryland, hastens to squelch any suggestion that his colleagues're mere spoilsports. "We're not a bunch of old fogies who sit around harrumphing & scoffing. We try to maintain a high level of good humor & a sense of fun about what we're doing." The group publishes a quarterly newsletter titled "Skeptical Eye" & a monthly calendar of events called "Shadow of a Doubt." Members attend a "Seeing's Believing" film series & hear lectures on such topics as "Magic of the Gurus of India" & "Animal Quackers: Pseudoscience for Pets." Denman & a magician friend staged a Halloween show titled "Seance! or Things That Go Bump in the Night," a theatrical spoof of the clairvoyant's tricks of the trade. For more than a year, the skeptics've offered a $1,000 award to anyone who can demonstrate psychic powers mind reading, dousing or levitation, for example under scientific test conditions. So far, nobody's stepped forward. Led by Denman, the skeptics banded together 4 years ago to promote scientific inquiry based on hard evidence, & to combat "irrationality, superstition & just plain nonsense." They include scientists, educators, lawyers, doctors & other white-collar professionals. "We all share the idea that the scientific process' a good strategy for working in the world & making decisions, no matter whether you're getting medical treatment or buying a used car. We say, go kick the tires. Don't take the salesman's word for it." Denman's not only a scientist but's been an amateur magician since childhood, when he was fascinated by his father's card tricks. "As a scientist, I'm concerned with how things really work. And as a magician, I've come to appreciate how bright, well-educated, intelligent people can be fooled so easily." Denman doesn't believe in ghosts. "To believe in apparitions'd require a radical change in what we know about modern physics." Most people've had some "remarkable, compelling, personally spooky

experiences' that defy explanation, but mistakenly try to explain'em as paranormal events. "As a scientist, I'd much rather say I don't know what it was." Denman doesn't rule out the possibility of future contact with intelligent beings from an alien planet. He finds that prospect much more plausible than speaking with the voice of a long-dead warrior from Atlantis, or willing your body to float in air, or bumping into an older, wiser Elvis somewhere. "I can say with some degree of certainty that I've never seen Elvis walking around my neighborhood. I'm so skeptical that I can hardly believe it." The telephone number for the National Capital Area Skeptics' 301-587-3827. ********************************************** * THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo * **********************************************