In 2008, Illinois MUFON Director Sam Maranto investigates several matching incidents in and around Illinois area.
Source: Level Beyond
Posts
The Snowden Bull
12 years ago
Showing posts with label ufo investigator. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ufo investigator. Show all posts
Friday, February 6, 2009
Sunday, October 5, 2008
White Box Shaped Ufo - Man Made or What?
By SHAWN JEFFORDS
The Observer
It may not be stuff of the X-Files, but a UFO-tracker is reviewing a report of a strange craft seen flying over Sarnia this summer.
The unidentified flying object was reported July 20 at 9:30 p.m. Three people say they saw a white, square-shaped craft flying over an East Street apartment building. It was 30 feet wide,10 feet high and made no sound as it moved east overhead.
“It’s a very, very, very unusual sighting,” said Brian Vike, who catalogues and investigates UFO sightings on his website, HBCC UFO Research.
The three witnesses said the object had a black stripe down the middle and was flying 300-to-400 feet off the ground, far too low for an aircraft, he said.
“I’m not saying it couldn’t be something from ‘out there;’ who knows,” he said. “But when you start to give a description with markings on it, maybe it’s something manmade.”
Vike, 57, has investigated hundreds of reports from his home in Houston, British Columbia. More than one hundred cases came from Ontario this year.
“The idea is to try to investigate and figure out what it is,” he said. “A lot of it is pretty darn easy. When it gets to the really weird stuff that’s when it becomes a problem.”
Police and military officials, who often have sightings reported to them, generally aren’t co-operative, he said.
The Observer
It may not be stuff of the X-Files, but a UFO-tracker is reviewing a report of a strange craft seen flying over Sarnia this summer.
The unidentified flying object was reported July 20 at 9:30 p.m. Three people say they saw a white, square-shaped craft flying over an East Street apartment building. It was 30 feet wide,10 feet high and made no sound as it moved east overhead.
“It’s a very, very, very unusual sighting,” said Brian Vike, who catalogues and investigates UFO sightings on his website, HBCC UFO Research.
The three witnesses said the object had a black stripe down the middle and was flying 300-to-400 feet off the ground, far too low for an aircraft, he said.
“I’m not saying it couldn’t be something from ‘out there;’ who knows,” he said. “But when you start to give a description with markings on it, maybe it’s something manmade.”
Vike, 57, has investigated hundreds of reports from his home in Houston, British Columbia. More than one hundred cases came from Ontario this year.
“The idea is to try to investigate and figure out what it is,” he said. “A lot of it is pretty darn easy. When it gets to the really weird stuff that’s when it becomes a problem.”
Police and military officials, who often have sightings reported to them, generally aren’t co-operative, he said.
“You don’t want to make it a conspiracy kind of deal, but come on, something isn’t jibing here.”
Beyond that, it can be tough separating hoaxes from serious reports. Vike recently discovered a faked but exceptionally well-written report sent by a boy in the U.S. Apparently, he wrote it under threat of receiving a “wedgy” from his friends, Vike said.
“I just about flipped. As soon as I found out I pulled the report off (the website). You can see where they’re going sometimes and it just doesn’t make sense.”
But the Sarnia sighting is a fascinating one, he said, although he hasn’t spoken with the witnesses who filed it.
Vike said he believes there is other life in the universe. Most people aren’t reporting seeing aliens, just something unusual, he said.
“The majority of people who actually report these sightings are credible. They’re not saying they saw an alien craft, although there are some. They just saw something that didn’t sort of compute in their head.”
“This one here from Sarnia, this white box-shaped UFO doesn’t fit anything celestial,” he said. “It’s not an astronomical body, so now we’ve got something either man-made or whatever. I don’t like to get too crazy with the whatever, but we may never know.”
Beyond that, it can be tough separating hoaxes from serious reports. Vike recently discovered a faked but exceptionally well-written report sent by a boy in the U.S. Apparently, he wrote it under threat of receiving a “wedgy” from his friends, Vike said.
“I just about flipped. As soon as I found out I pulled the report off (the website). You can see where they’re going sometimes and it just doesn’t make sense.”
But the Sarnia sighting is a fascinating one, he said, although he hasn’t spoken with the witnesses who filed it.
Vike said he believes there is other life in the universe. Most people aren’t reporting seeing aliens, just something unusual, he said.
“The majority of people who actually report these sightings are credible. They’re not saying they saw an alien craft, although there are some. They just saw something that didn’t sort of compute in their head.”
“This one here from Sarnia, this white box-shaped UFO doesn’t fit anything celestial,” he said. “It’s not an astronomical body, so now we’ve got something either man-made or whatever. I don’t like to get too crazy with the whatever, but we may never know.”
Source: Heidi-Lore’s Musings
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Monday, March 3, 2008
Massachusetts Mutual UFO Network - Investigating UFOs
Greg Berghorn (left) and Mark Petty, with Wellesley College's Whitin Observatory as a backdrop, say their Framingham-based group, the Massachusetts Mutual UFO Network, looks into 50 reports of UFO sightings from across the state each year. (ZARA TZANEV FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)
This Story Found At The Boston Globe
The Massachusetts group was established in 1984 and now boasts about 100 volunteer field investigators, and logs approximately 50 UFO reports annually. The vast majority can be explained as hoaxes, misidentified satellites, or even the planet Venus, said Berghorn, but three or four sightings every year are not so easy to discredit.
Strange lights appearing to one person, whose observation skills may be impaired or distorted, is one thing, said Berghorn. But when multiple witnesses report similar unusual sightings independently and from different locations, things get more interesting.
As an example, Berghorn cited an incident in 1997, when a retired machinist in northern Massachusetts filed a report describing a large, low-flying, disc-like object that was moving so slowly it took almost a minute to pass over his house. Another report was filed by a woman a short distance north in New Hampshire, who independently described the same object passing by her house 20 minutes later, he said.
Berghorn drew a trajectory line based on the machinist's account, and the two stories matched up.
"It occurred so that I could actually draw a timeline between their two houses," said Berghorn, an engineer from Tewksbury. "This was a very bizarre object, and it was very unique."
As is the case with most field investigations, Berghorn said, his inquiry into the matter ended there and yielded no more evidence than the two eyewitness accounts.
"What is frustrating about this process is that it's not as cleanly cut as a TV show," he said. "The evidence is very murky. A lot of the information becomes unresolved. People won't talk to you."
The fear of ridicule prevents some would-be witnesses from coming forward, said Berghorn. For this reason, the organization does not disclose the names of witnesses who file reports, unless the witnesses are willing to go public, he said. The national organization estimates that only one in 10 UFO sightings are reported, a number that Berghorn thinks is a little high.
Strange lights appearing to one person, whose observation skills may be impaired or distorted, is one thing, said Berghorn. But when multiple witnesses report similar unusual sightings independently and from different locations, things get more interesting.
As an example, Berghorn cited an incident in 1997, when a retired machinist in northern Massachusetts filed a report describing a large, low-flying, disc-like object that was moving so slowly it took almost a minute to pass over his house. Another report was filed by a woman a short distance north in New Hampshire, who independently described the same object passing by her house 20 minutes later, he said.
Berghorn drew a trajectory line based on the machinist's account, and the two stories matched up.
"It occurred so that I could actually draw a timeline between their two houses," said Berghorn, an engineer from Tewksbury. "This was a very bizarre object, and it was very unique."
As is the case with most field investigations, Berghorn said, his inquiry into the matter ended there and yielded no more evidence than the two eyewitness accounts.
"What is frustrating about this process is that it's not as cleanly cut as a TV show," he said. "The evidence is very murky. A lot of the information becomes unresolved. People won't talk to you."
The fear of ridicule prevents some would-be witnesses from coming forward, said Berghorn. For this reason, the organization does not disclose the names of witnesses who file reports, unless the witnesses are willing to go public, he said. The national organization estimates that only one in 10 UFO sightings are reported, a number that Berghorn thinks is a little high.
The reports coming into the local chapter vary in nature, he said, ranging from tiny objects streaking or zigzagging across the sky to people allegedly being taken up into UFOs. The abduction phenomenon is largely explained away by mainstream researchers, although a prominent Harvard University psychiatrist, John Mack, sparked controversy in the early '90s after becoming convinced that the abductions are real and not mere fantasies or delusions.
more stories like this
Mark Petty, assistant director for Mass. MUFON, described a reported near-abduction case in 2004 in Billerica that has fascinated UFO buffs worldwide.
He said a couple, who identified themselves publicly only as Robert and Anne, saw a large craft appear over their house one December evening as they were standing on their deck. They reported being engulfed in a bright white light. As they stared up into the light, a blue beam pierced down, settled on Anne and started pulling her off the deck. In terror, Robert grabbed his wife by the waist and "threw her into the kitchen" before following her quickly through the door.
When he looked back outside, the light had disappeared, according to their report. The man said he was so shaken that he couldn't even pick up the phone when it rang a minute later.
Petty and other field investigators from the chapter canvassed the neighborhood and even placed an ad in local newspapers in an attempt to corroborate the story, but the only supporting evidence came from a sister of Robert. She said she was driving in the area at the time, and saw a brilliant white light with a blue trail hovering near the ground in the vicinity of the couple's house.
While such accounts are compelling for some, Berghorn and Petty both said they are not "true believers" in the notion that extraterrestrials are visiting the planet.
Berghorn said his vantage point as an engineer and amateur astronomer restrains him from leaping to conclusions, though he did say that he views at least some of the reports as unexplained phenomena.
"Most of the really odd [sightings] are sufficiently credible enough that you can't just explain it away by saying the person's crazy," said Berghorn. "And that's what keeps us going."
Physical evidence in the field is scarce but does exist, said Berghorn. Corn stalks that had been flattened in a crop-circle formation in Western Massachusetts, for example, had been exposed to microwave radiation, which is hard to square with a hoax scenario, he said.
Often, witnesses of UFO events are distressed at what they have seen and have difficulty coming to terms with their experiences, added Berghorn. About the only thing investigators can offer such "experiencers," as they are called in UFO circles, is empathy and shared knowledge, he said.
"What I've learned is that oftentimes, people don't really want answers to their questions so much as they want to know that other people have experienced the same thing," said Berghorn. "They at least get some comfort out of that, because we can't offer them any answers."
The Massachusetts chapter maintains a 24-hour hotline for UFO sightings, 781-246-0523. Sightings can also be reported on their website, MassMUFON.com
more stories like this
Mark Petty, assistant director for Mass. MUFON, described a reported near-abduction case in 2004 in Billerica that has fascinated UFO buffs worldwide.
He said a couple, who identified themselves publicly only as Robert and Anne, saw a large craft appear over their house one December evening as they were standing on their deck. They reported being engulfed in a bright white light. As they stared up into the light, a blue beam pierced down, settled on Anne and started pulling her off the deck. In terror, Robert grabbed his wife by the waist and "threw her into the kitchen" before following her quickly through the door.
When he looked back outside, the light had disappeared, according to their report. The man said he was so shaken that he couldn't even pick up the phone when it rang a minute later.
Petty and other field investigators from the chapter canvassed the neighborhood and even placed an ad in local newspapers in an attempt to corroborate the story, but the only supporting evidence came from a sister of Robert. She said she was driving in the area at the time, and saw a brilliant white light with a blue trail hovering near the ground in the vicinity of the couple's house.
While such accounts are compelling for some, Berghorn and Petty both said they are not "true believers" in the notion that extraterrestrials are visiting the planet.
Berghorn said his vantage point as an engineer and amateur astronomer restrains him from leaping to conclusions, though he did say that he views at least some of the reports as unexplained phenomena.
"Most of the really odd [sightings] are sufficiently credible enough that you can't just explain it away by saying the person's crazy," said Berghorn. "And that's what keeps us going."
Physical evidence in the field is scarce but does exist, said Berghorn. Corn stalks that had been flattened in a crop-circle formation in Western Massachusetts, for example, had been exposed to microwave radiation, which is hard to square with a hoax scenario, he said.
Often, witnesses of UFO events are distressed at what they have seen and have difficulty coming to terms with their experiences, added Berghorn. About the only thing investigators can offer such "experiencers," as they are called in UFO circles, is empathy and shared knowledge, he said.
"What I've learned is that oftentimes, people don't really want answers to their questions so much as they want to know that other people have experienced the same thing," said Berghorn. "They at least get some comfort out of that, because we can't offer them any answers."
The Massachusetts chapter maintains a 24-hour hotline for UFO sightings, 781-246-0523. Sightings can also be reported on their website, MassMUFON.com
Read More at boston.com
Friday, February 15, 2008
The Friendly Spook Letter
Lt. Col. Don Ware, USAF retired
In February 1989 Wendelle Stevens, well-known UFO investigatorand publisher received a letter from someone he has chosen to calla "friendly spook," a government intelligence agent [2]. The letterconcerned the US government's investigation of the Billy Meier casein Switzerland that Stevens had investigated. It also had much tosay about the development of government policy on “UFOs". Following are a few paragraphs from that letter: "...In 1945, when it was first proven that UFOs were real, from space, operated by intelligent beings, most of whom were inhuman form, the American Government did a soft touch check to seewhat the great unwashed public would say, and how the public would respond to UFOs, and space people, if the President informed the public over national radio. "...The public's response was all bad. Ninty-seven percent ofthe public took one of two approaches. Shoot first and askquestions later. Or call the UFOs agents of the devil, the prince of the power of the air, the anti-Christ, and set up an even worsesituation, where UFOs would become a real negative religious issue. What was surprising was the response of the religious leadership, which was by far worse than the general public's response. It couldonly be called grim news. "The science community showed no leadership at all, just a super case of stupidity, and prejudice." As you might guess, the original investigations were by military men, under orders from General Marshall, under the direction of the President. And if you know your military men, finding one who wants to get into a fight with the preachers, over what is or is not the anti-Christ, when neither the military mannor the preacher knows a hell of a lot of factual information, about either the anti-Christ or the UFOs, would be like sending a blind person out to spot UFOs... "...To say that the military community successfully avoided afight with the religious community over UFOs would be an accurateobservation. To say that the military was real damned sneaky abouthow they informed the public about UFOs would also be an accurateobservation. "... The military mind drew one conclusion. The single mostimportant thing to do, in the situation it was in, namely sittingon some hot, highly controversial information, was to keep thegeneral public from getting a bad response by controlling the public’s response to UFOs. In other words, keep the damnedreligious mentality out of the issues involved, as long aspossible. "But, do not ever say that the military never did anythingabout informing the public about the existence of UFOs. That will mean you have not figured out the methods used by the governmentto spread the word about UFOs. You might say the military took theBible's advice about not to let the left hand know what the righthand is doing. "The military pulled the very same trick Moses pulled, whenhe did not like the attitude of his troops after crossing the RedSea. He took the time to grow a new batch of troops, whose responseand thinking was more to his liking. And that is what the militarydid about UFOs..." I think the concept of educating a new generation has merit,and is supported by history. Consider how alien vehicles and alienshave become a part of our society with minimal adverse impact. Cartoons have included them for decades, and now Ghostwriter is influencing the young, and some older folks too. Advertisements of all sorts show alien interaction with us. Even our most commonly reported aliens have beer parties with Miller Lite. I was told thatBob Oeschler knows an individual, apparently in some governmentservice, who visits CEOs around the country to encourage such advertisements. And Jamie Shandera said he was told that government agents influenced the making of "The Day the Earth Stood Still", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", and "ET" to help shape public perceptions.
National UFO Center ... Full Report
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
