The Norwood Searchlight Incident of 1949, as it has been called, is an outstanding series of 10 visual sightings of a strange aerial object that took place in or near the Norwood, Ohio area from August 19th of 1949 to March 10th of 1950.

The alleged observation of a massive object by searchlight operator Donald R. Berger, and meticulously detailed in his logs, remain one of the more curious events in UFO history.

This case is exceptional not only because of the dramatic event reported, but also because of the caliber of witnesses involved. The series of incidents were said to have been witnessed by civilians, by clergy, by scientists, by police officers and military officials.

Photos were taken on October 23, 1949 by Norwood Police Sgt.Leo Davidson, and 2 reels of 25-ft. motion picture film were kept in the possession of Reverend Gregory Miller, last seen at WCPO Channel 9 TV studios in 1952.

Still frames from the movie film were given to investigator Leonard Stringfield and published in his book "SAUCER POST 3-0 BLUE." That photo from his book was scanned and enhanced for this report. Using this same photo, an earlier analysis had been made by Dr. Richard Haines

An additional photo was found in the possession of RAY STANFORD, who states: "This is several generations down from the original16 mm movie film, but it seems to rather clearly show that while the beam was projecting several degrees away from the object, when it got within a certain event horizon of the object, it was simply bent or 'pulled' the beam directly into the object, seemingly bending it about26.5 degrees, as measured in the photo plane! This frame has always amazed me since I first saw it in the mid-'50s. Several persons, back then, who had seen the actual movie said that at one time the object seems, indeed, to 'suck' the beam squarely into it!

"I have included two versions with special filtration. The second (middle) image makes the dramatic bend of the light beam especially clear and easy to measure (on the top of the beam). The second (last) version seems to show what might be interpreted to be a focus effect of the light within the beam. Note the dark diamond shape (bright in the original) between the object and the place where the beam bends."

Norwood and Project Grudge

Could someone help explain if any reference to the 1949 Norwood Searchlight/UFO incident does or does not appear in Project Grudge files?

The Norwood case involves 10 visual sightings by multiple civilian, clergy, police, scientist and military witnesses over a 7-month duration, facilitated by the use of a powerful searchlight ran by Army Sgt. Donald R. Berger. The first sighting took place during "The Jitney Carnival" of 1949 and witnessed by hundreds The following morning, three local newspapers- The Cincinnati Post, The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Cincinnati Times Star- all had articles regarding 'strange lights' and 'comets seen over the city' from the previous evening.

There was an explanation for the occurrence, according to one local newspaper. The Albee Theater in nearby Cincinnati, accompanied by the Ss. Peter & Paul Church in Norwood, were operating searchlights. It was said that the hundreds of persons calling newspapers and weather bureau officials were simply observing these searchlight beams 'bouncing off of clouds.'

Despite this, the sightings began in earnest after 11:00 p.m. (Berger logs indicate that he observed the UFO from 8:15 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.) and continued to flummox Cincinnati residents until 6:30 a.m. the following morning. It seems unlikely searchlights would be operating all night long until daylight, and further still, one weather bureau official recounted his early-morning observation of two objects that looked like "two weather ceiling balloons" that weren't moving despite a wind speed of 25 to 32-miles per hour.

Even the Berger logs indicate the possible presence of a second searchlight from that evening, whether Berger knew there was another searchlight at work or not. "When I moved the searchlight away, the object continued to glow," Berger wrote in his 1949 logs that were later kept in the possession of Rev. Gregory Miller until 1954, when he imparted them to UFO investigator Leonard Stringfield.

Meanwhile, during the festival in Norwood, Robert Linn, the managing editor of the Cincinnati Post, along with church pastor Rev. Gregory Miller, were certain that Berger's searchlight had found and been bouncing off of "some definite object." They entered into agreement and reported the situation to intelligence officials at Wright Field in nearby Dayton, Ohio.

The August 19th episode is a mass-witness case, reported in all three local newspapers of Cincinnati, Ohio, a city not far south of Dayton, home of the airbase. A possible explanation is publicly toyed with: the deception caused by two searchlight beams strolling the dark skies. It seems as if Grudge folks would have likely been aware of the events at Norwood on August 19, 1949 - either from all the reportage or from the direct report to the airbase itself, by Robert Linn and Rev. Miller. Why does the Norwood Case not factor in to their investigation when, in fact, far 'lesser' cases may have been prominently addressed? If Project Grudge had sought to dismiss UFO sightings as psychological phenomena, they had a good case with the Norwood searchlight events at this stage of the situation.

Article de 1860 sur ces lumières appelées "the Wizard Lights" qui datent de plus de 150 ans!

Scientific American, New Series, Volume 3, Issue 8 (Aug 18, 1860)

 OPTICAL ILLUSION ON LAKE ERIE.--The Cleveland, Ohio, Herald says that a tremendous thunder shower passed over that city on the night of the 3d inst., and adds :-- "Between three and four o’clock next morning the appearance of a vessel on fire was seen far out on the lake. Some persons thought they could distinguish the sails. During a heavy gust of wind the light disappeared. Such appearances are not unfrequent on the lake, and the more experienced men along the dock think there has been no vessel burnt."

http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=scia&cc=scia&idno=scia1003-8&q1=lake+erie&node=scia1003-8%3A1&view=image&seq=127&size=200

A Curious Phenomenon on Lake Erie," Brooklyn Eagle, Thursday, December 12, 1867

A Mystery on the Lakes--The Wizard

Lights--A Curious Phenomenon on Lake Erie

I notice in the Dispatch, of the 11th inst.*, the following paragraph:--

"The statement that a vessel was seen burning off Erie on Tuesday night, is corroborated by several persons living on the highlands south of the city, who say they saw it."

On the Tuesday evening mentioned, Oct. 29th, at about 7 o'clock, my attention was called by one of my family to a bright light on the lake, having very much the appearance of a vessel on fire. Bringing several objects into range, I watched the light foursome time to ascertain whether there was any preceptible [sic] motion.

The wind was blowing hard at the time down the lake and a vessel would naturally drift rapidly to leeward, at all events as soon as the propelling power should be interfered with the fire. No motion, however, in any direction was to be discovered, and at once concluded that it was nothing more than the "mysterious light," which for many years past, at longer or shorter intervals, has been seen by the inhabitants at this point on the lake shore. The light has made its appearance generally, if not always, in the fall of the year, and usually in the month of November, and almost always during or immediately after a heavy blow from the southwest. The most brilliant exhibition of the light I have ever seen was during the night of the 24th or 25th, as nearly as I can recollect, of November, 1852. It had been my fortune to witness the burning of the steamer Erie, near Silver Creek, several years before, and the resemblance which this light bore to that of the burning steamer was so strong that I confidently expected the arrival of the boats from the wreck during the night. Others with myself watched the light for perhaps two hours, and with the aid of a good night-glass obtained what seemed to be a very distinct view of the burning vessel.

The object appeared to be some 200 or more feet in length upon the water, and about as high above the water as an upper cabin steamer, such as was in use upon the Lake twenty years ago. At times the flames would start up in spires or sheets of light, then away from side to side, and then die away, precisely as would be the case with a large fire exposed to a strong wind; and two or three times there was the appearance of a cloud of sparks, as if some portion of the upper works had fallen into the burning mass below. The sky and water were beautifullly irradiated by the light during its great brilliancy.The light gradually subsided, with occasional flashes until it disappeared altogether. The light of Tuesday evening, although very brilliant for a time, was not nearly so brilliant nor of so long duration as that of 1852.

I am told that this light was seen by mariners on the lakes as long as fifty years ago, but I am not aware that it has ever been made the subject of philosophical speculation or investigation, or, in fact, has ever obtained the notoriety of a newspaper paragraph before. The only theory approaching plausibility I have heard is that the shifting of the sands caused by the continued and heavy winds of autumn has opened some crevices or seams in the rock of the lake bottom through which gas escapes, and that this gas, owing to some peculiar condition of the atmosphere with which it comes in contact, becomes luminous, or perhaps ignited, and burning with a positive flame. That there are what are called "gas springs" in the water along this portion of the lake shore is a well-known fact, and that highly inflammable gas in large quantities exist at a comparatively shallow depth on the shore, has been sufficiently proved by the boring of wells at different points, as at Erie, Walnut Creek, and Lock Haven, and by natural springs at Westfield and Fredonia.

But whatever the cause, the light is a curious fact, and well worthy the attention of those interested in the investigation of the phenomenon of nature.

http://fultonhistory.com/my%20photo%20albums/All%20Newspapers/Brooklyn%20NY%20Daily%20Eagle/Brooklyn%20NY%20Daily%20Eagle%201867%20Grayscale/index5.html

New Info and Interview surfaces regarding the famous The 1988 U.S. Coast Guard Encounter with the Lake Erie UFO’s!

 This is actually a pretty famous UFO case. 

“The 1988 U.S. Coast Guard Encounter with a UFO is one of the top 12 Government Documents That Take UFOs Seriously” – Richard Dolan 

Coast Guard personnel responding to citizen reports of unusual aerial activity over Lake Erie on March 4, 1988, witnessed classic UFOs near Eastlake, OH. Sheila and Henry Baker were driving home with their three children about 8:35 P.M., after taking them out to dinner, and were almost home. As they neared the waterfront, Sheila noticed something hovering over the lake; they drove down to the beach to investigate and got out of the car. The moon was bright, and there was ice on the lake; Sheila could hear it cracking like claps of thunder. 

Plainly visible was a huge, gunmetal gray, football-shaped, silent object rocking back and forth, blinding white light emanating from both ends. Then the object began moving, swinging one end toward the shore and descending. The Bakers became frightened, ran back to their car, and fled. When they got home, the object was still visible from a window facing the lake. Sheila hid the children in a closet, fearing that the thing might come and get them. 

The object moved out over the ice and continued to descend, with red and blue lights now flashing in sequence along its lower edge. Sheila called the Eastlake police to report a UFO, and after several referrals, with no one expressing much interest, was told that unusual activity over the lake would be the responsibility of the Coast Guard. Suddenly five or six bright yellow triangular objects shot out of the center of the large object and began darting around independently (satellite objects). Once they stopped and hovered point up around the parent object, then sped away to the north, turned east, then inland toward the Perry nuclear power plant.

At this point Sheila called the Coast Guard, which sent a team to their house to investigate. Seaman James Power and Petty Officer John Knaub arrived towing a Boston Whaler (a seaworthy boat) just in case. They told the Bakers that they had seen some lights over the lake from Fairport Harbor and thought they were flares, maybe fishermen trapped out on the ice. However, when Sheila pointed to the main craft and some of the triangular objects still zipping around it, the men drove closer to the lake to investigate, accompanied by the Bakers. At the lakefront they could hear the ice rumbling and roaring. 

In their incident report sent later by teletype to Coast Guard headquarters in Detroit, MI, the men were quoted as saying that “the ice was cracking and moving abnormal amounts as the object came closer to it.” 

Power and Knaub gave a running report on what they were seeing to their base via the two-way radio in their Chevy Suburban. The window was down, and the Bakers overheard them saying words to the effect: “Be advised the object appears to be landing on the lake . . . 

There are other objects moving around it. Be advised these smaller objects are going at high rates of speed. There are no engine noises and they are very, very low.” 

Abruptly one of the triangles zoomed straight toward the Coast Guard vehicle, a blur of light, then veered east, straight up, and came down beside the parent object. Two witnesses in separate locations also reported seeing the triangles. Cindy Hale was walking her dog when she noticed a triangular object hovering overhead, and her dog began to whine and cower (animal reactions). She took the dog indoors and came back out to watch. The triangle flashed a series of multicolored lights, then accelerated and was gone without making a sound (hover-acceleration). 

Tim Keck was using his astronomical telescope when one of the triangles caught his eye. He had a cheap throwaway camera with him and snapped a picture of the object before it flew away over the horizon. The photograph was analyzed by optical physicist Bruce Maccabee, who considered it to be a legitimate.

Here is the actual Coast Guard UFO Report…

I want to bring the reader to the attention of a testimony from a witness of the ’1988 Coast Guard Lake Erie Sighting’, Sheila Baker. She is mentioned in the article above, but there is a longer, quite rare interview with her as well that I think we need to take a look at, because it’s so typical for those ‘Lake Erie Sightings’. The interview was done by Richard P. Dell’Aquila and Dale B. Wedge. Unfortunately, this interview is not very known in the mainstream media and in the UFO community, although it’s such a famous case, so I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to include it here. These two witnesses, I believe stick holes in all the official denials and unrealistic explanations to the 1988 incident.[4]

“On March 26, 1988, two civilian witnesses to the Eastlake UFOs (W1 and her husband W2) who were on the beach with the Coast Guard March 4, 1988 were interviewed. The following is a partial transcript of that interview, conducted by Dale Wedge (DW) and Rick Dell’Aquila (RD). Several other witnesses have also been interviewed and photographic evidence has been obtained. To date, however , the Coast Guard has refused further information or interviews of its personnel concerning the UFO sighting that night near the CEI electric power plant. The investigation continues.

RD …Please tell us what happened in your own words.

W1 We were coming home (on March 4, 1988) and I saw something over the lake…and it wasn’t moving and I had my husband go down the street and I said, “Go down to the beach because I’m telling you there is something out there.” He kept laughing at me. I said I was serious and we went down there. We got out of the car and walked to the beach. I had left the kids in the car and you could see it. It looked almost like the shape of a blimp and had lights on both sides. One end was brighter and the other end was a little bit dimmer, but one end flashed. It wasn’t a constant light that was on. It seemed to rock a little bit–you could just see it rocking back and forth. It hovered and didn’t make any noise. The ice was cracking really bad and the ice down here doesn’t crack like that. It was making like–it was rumbling and cracking it was real, real loud. There were no animals barking or nothing. Around here we have a lot of dogs and that was surprising because you always hear the dogs out. There were no animals–just the real loud noise out of the lake. We were standing on the beach and my husband and I were looking at this thing. It started to turn and I thought–you know how you get really eerie feelings? I said to myself there i s something up there. You could see it was a ship or something because you could see there was a gray line like a football kind of thing in the middle, but you couldn’t really see it. You could just see it was there. Do you understand what I’m saying?

RD We are going to ask you to draw a sketch in a while.

W1 You could see the whole thing, but not real well. You could see there was a middle to it. We stayed and we watched it for a while…(interview interrupted by phone call).

DW Okay, we are back on. We had a phone call interruption.

W1 …Okay, we sat down at the beach and while we were watching this I had the kids in the car and I was getting kind of “weirded-out” you know, because you hear about these things, but you never really believe it until you see them. It started to turn toward us. It was coming in closer to land and beacuse my kids were in the car, I didn’t want to stay down at the beach, because you never know what’s going to happen or if it was going to come down to get us or whatever.

RD In other words, you were concerned for your safety?

W1 Yeah, because it was coming closer to us. You could see…it seemed like it knew we were there. We were the only ones down there at the time and I was getting really nervous. I told my husband, “You know, we’ve got two kids in the car. Let’s get them home and safe so we don’t have to worry about anything.” He said okay, so we got the kids back to the house and I put them in their room and I locked the door because I had a real eerie feeling, you know after we left there. We were down there a while looking at it and we came home to watch it from our living room.

RD When you say “we”–who else was there with you?

W1 My husband and my kids. So I was looking at it from here and I said to my husband, “Well, maybe I’m nuts, I don’t know, but let’s call Sue,” who lives across the street, “and see if she sees the same thing that we do.” So I did, I called he r and her and her son went outside and they saw the same thing and we kept hearing this noise at the lake and that really scared us because, like I said, the lake doesn’t make noises like that. We watched it most of the evening and when it started to come down, we all got real curious and we all went back down. Sue drove down to the beach and she saw it with her son and her husband thinks she’s totally “cracked-up.” (Laughter.) But they all did. Everybody thinks, you know, we didn’t see what we did. So now we get down there and the thing’s starting to land. You co uld see like red and blue lights and they said they were planets and gasses and nonsense like that, but they were actual lights starting to flutter. But before this, while it was still in the sky, there were like little triangle “planes”, about, there were, we counted about five–we weren’t sure if there were five or six, but we counted five of them that were running back and forth. They were going up and down, like hovering. They didn’t make any noise, but they were going REALLY fast across the sky and by this time the Coast Guard was down there. I had called the Coast Guard, I would say at least twelve times and they kept telling me, “Well, your crazy and nothing’s wrong…(Phone call interruption).

DW Pause for phone call.

DW Okay, we’re back on.

W1 So now what had happened was these planes were like, looked like they had come out of it, because they came out of nowhere. We saw them come out…I don’t know if it was on the side or on the front of it, but you could tell they ca me out of it because they were real little. They looked like little yellow triangles. They were real bright and went super, super fast.

They went up and down like this, instead of, you know how a plane goes this way? Well, they were going up and down and like diagonally at it and they were hovering around it and then they started shooting out toward the lake and this time the Coast Guard saw all this because that’s when they sent their people out when these little planes started appearing. And w hen they g ot down here, they saw these things and they were coming real close to the coastline. That’s when these kids were getting scared.

RD When you say “kids,” do you mean Coast Guard personnel?

W1 Yeah, they were young boys. They were real scared and we got REALLY scared because we were right down on the beach there and we figured the coastline that would be it. We were afraid they would attack their truck, because their truck had lights on it. So w e told them, “Turn off your lights.” Because the more they kept coming closer and closer to the lights of the truck, because the truck was parked on the hill. There’s like a little hill over there. They could see the lights, because they seemed to be coming at the lights. And so we had them shut their lights off because we were scared. You never know what was going to go on. We didn’t know what was in these ships or planes or whatever they were because we couldn’t tell, but I’ve never seen a yellow triangle fly around the sky.

RD It was yellow?

W1 Yeah. Bright, REAL BRIGHT. It looked like a light. That’s what it looked like. It looked like a bright light. You know how a car light you’d have? It looked just like that, but it glowed. It was yellow.

RD Was there any portion of it that was brighter than any other portion of it?

W1 No. It was all real bright.

RD Just one solid, bright light?

W1 Yeah, little bright triangles. You know like the little glider models you get for your kids? There in triangles. You make paper airplanes…Like that shape? That’s exactly what they were, and they were solid. They weren’t…it didn’t have wings or anything else.

RD Was it even-sided? All three sides of equal length?

W1 No, no, it was more pointed like that (gesturing).

RD Okay.

W1 It was exactly like that (forming triangle with her fingers). The front was more pointy. How’s that? I flunked geometry by the way.

RD Okay.

W1 But it was more pointy, almost like the tip of an arrow.

RD Okay, so i n other words, the two sides were longer…

W1 Were longer than the base…I was wondering why you were laughing at me.

RD We’re not laughing at you.

DW No. We’re not.

(Wedge and Dell’Aquila had reacted to the fact that the triangular objects described by W1 were identical to those described by other independent witnesses that night and identical to the bright yellow triangular object one witness photographed.)

W1 Okay. They were all solid bright light. There was no part of it that was darker than others. We saw it real close down at the shoreline. But when they started coming at this thing and they went back into it, too, we thought maybe it disappeared over the lake. Well, here they had gone, shooting out over the lake and coming, then all of a sudden we saw them about an hour later, coming back REALLY fast, and they came right into that ship.

RD Did you see anything open up on the ship, a door or anything like that?

W1 No, but they went right into it because they went rig ht between the lights, so it had to be an opening on the side of it, because they went right into it. They came up and then they went right into it.

RD Were you able to observe which direction they left.

W1 They went out that way, toward Canada…they went east too, this way. But none of them went that way, toward Cleveland. They all went this way.

RD Did any of them go south or southeast?

W1 No. They stayed over the lake…they went east and north toward Canada, and that’s where basically they stayed. When you saw them shooting out, it was just almost right over land and we had seen them come out and said to my husband,” What in the world is that?” He was just laughing. He said, “You’re just…” and he got, you know, he goes, “Yeah, sure, I’m going to tell my mother we were sitting home watching UFOs tonight.” But, that’s what happened. They were there and then we saw them like I said, about an hour later, come back in the same direction they came in, and they all went right back into the thing, one at a time, too. It wasn’t like they all swooped down on it and went back into it. They went back in it one at a time, and then the ship seemed to land in the lake. It was about maybe an hour difference, an hour lapse. The ship started setting down on Lake Erie. That’s when all these colored lights started coming on when it sat down. You could see the lights as it sat down on the lake, because it was all ice. As soon as it landed, about five minutes later after it landed, you coul d still see it, the red and the yellow lights and the blue lights, running around the bottom on the lake, because it was a clear night, it was beautiful. Then as soon as all the lights went out on it, the lake stopped cracking. Everything got dead silent. There wasn’t animals–nothing. Everything got totally quiet. That was it.

DW Can you give us a time, approximate time?

RD When did you first see it?

W1 About six. I think it was about six. My husband said it was later but I don’t think so, because it was just getting dark.

DW It doesn’t get dark until about 6:30

W1 Okay, then maybe it was a little later, about 6:30 or 7:00 P.M. It wasn’t exactly dark, but it wasn’t light out. It was like dusk, almost, where it’s just starting to get dark.

RD When did you last observe it?

W1 I’d say about 11:30 P.M.

RD You were down there for 4-1/2 to 5 hours?

W1 No. We came back up to the house and watched it. When it started to set, we went back down.

RD I see. At the same time, were you able to observe any of the objects in the sky that you would recognize?

W1 Oh, yeah, absolutely because we were there, we kept looking at them and looking at them to see, you know, we were curious. Even from the house, when it started moving in-land, you could see, you know, what it was if you looked real close.

RD Where was the moon for example?

W1 The moon?

RD Yeah. Was it out?

W1 Yeah, the re were moon, the stars were beautiful. All the stars were out.

RD Was it a clear night?

W1 Yeah. it was real clear.

RD Did you notice where the planets were?

W1 The planets that they told me this was?

RD Well, the planets.

W1 I didn’t really…we weren’t looking for the planets, but they would have been behind it, and farther off.

RD Is there any question in your mind that what you were looking at was something that you should have recognized, like the planets or…?

W1 No. It was definitely a ship, because y ou could see that there was a center of it. You could also see planes coming out of it, or little vehicles or whatever they are that came out of it and we saw them go back in it. We were almost right directly underneath it…The more we stayed down at the beach, it was turning toward us to come toward us and I got scared, thinking well, maybe someone would come out or get us or something will happen…If we could see it, I knew it could see us, because we were right out in the open on flat land looking at it…

The interview continued for several more minutes and W1 drew some sketches.

W1 (Drawing) The (light) on the left hand side of the object blinked constantly.

RD Was there a regular pattern to the blinking?

W1 It was almost like if you looked out the lake, you know how they have those (lights) when you come in from the lake? Almost like that. (Phone interruption)

DW We are going to pause for another phone call.

RD What color was the object between the lights?

W1 …gunmetal gray .

RD Did it seem solid?

W1 Yes.

RD Did it seem to have a three-dimensional shape?

W1 You could tell it was almost rounded. It was like a football…It was all the same color and you could definitely see the outline of it. We were standing SO close, that you could see the outline. It was totally dark in the center of it and at the top, but you could tell the difference between the sky and the shape.

RD Did it seem to have hard edges or fuzzy edges?

W1 No, they were very clear edges…

The interview continued and W1′s husband (W2) arrived home.

W2 …Boy, I’ll tell you you ought to see this thing, I watched this thing down at the beach with the Coast Guard guys. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It had these guys running, they were so scared. It was strange. As it got lower to the water, all these little, what we thought were jets, came and hovered right above this thing. We assumed they were those Harrier jets that can just hover. When they got closer, these jets came about forty or fifty feet above the ice and they were going back and forth across the lake unbelievably fast. They were covering a fifty mile stretch, like that (Snapping his fingers).

RD What shape were they?

W2 We thought that they looked like little jets. That’s what we assumed. Then when they got closer, they were so little, they were smaller than a one-seated Cessna. They didn’t make any noise.

DW What about shape?

W2 We couldn’t tell. All I could see was lights. I could tell you that it looked like a triangle. That’s what it looked like. It just looked like a plain triangle. We couldn’t tell a tail fin or anything like that. It looked like a triangle because it was lights down the wings and on the tip of it.

RD You mean at the top of the triangle there was a light?

W2 Yeah. There was a light.

W1 Now see, I didn’t see that. I saw just a plain light.

DW Do you know what color it was?

W2 One was white and one was bright white…you could tell they were definitely connected, because if the nose dropped, the tail went up exactly. But anyhow, when the thing got closer to the water, the one bright light started twirling like all different colors: red, green, blue, yellow, and then it just sunk into the water and one end was white and one end was red. Then it just sat in the water for about a half hour and then it was gone. While it was sitting on the ice, those planes were hovering above it. You could see that they were flashing lights down on it. It was like five jets within maybe a quarter mile area of each other, and all of a sudden they were just gone. They just went up in the air and out, just out.

RD About what time did they leave like that?

W2 9:30 or a quarter to ten…

DW Did you talk with the Coast Guard guys?

W2 Yeah, we sat and talked to them for a half hour. We watched the thing for an hour.

DW What were they saying?

W2 They couldn’t believe it . They said they never saw nothing like it in the world. The guy said he’s been in the service for years and he said he knows that a Harrier jet can’t take off and fly that fast from a start. This thing got up so high in the air and was gone so fast, it was seconds and it was gone out of view. The night was so clear that we could see for miles and miles and miles…These two guys were so scared. They thought, first our assumption was it was a satellite, maybe from Canada, that went bad and it was coming down over the lake. They told me that they believed it was Canadian air maneuvers. But then when they saw these planes, they came about five miles off shore and they were going about fifty feet above the ice. You could just see the ice and stuff rippling behind them. They got nervous because they didn’t want their truck to be seen…they were afraid maybe a missile would be shot at them or something.

RD Is there any confusion in your mind that it was maybe the moon or the stars…?

W2 No. No, not the first night. The second night it was much, much much higher in the air. Miles and miles. But the second night, it appeared at the same time and dropped down in the lake at the same time…But the first night, no way. We went and saw that thing. That thing was no more than three miles in the air.

RD You’re aware that the newspaper accounts are that it was the planets?

W2 Planets, right. No that’s BULL****, because I went and stood out on the lake and looked up at them and I saw the thing moving. You could see it pivo ting like this (gesturing in a rocking motion like a teeter-totter). When it got way out over the lake, that thing just started spinning around, it was all different kinds of lights…The interview continued and more sketches were made by W1. In being asked to draw the small objects, she drew a triangle.

RD When it landed on the ice, did it seem like it went under the surface of the water, or did it rest on the ice for a period of time.

W1 I don’t know. Sue saw it too from her back yard. You could see it sit down though. It didn’t look like it sunk. We went down the next day to see if we could see anything. All you could see was ice broken everywhere. Huge, huge chunks of ice…

DW Which Coast Guard Station?

W2 & W1 Fairport Harbor.

DW Did they come up, did they drive up? That’s quite a way down isn’t it?

W2 They drove this way. They said they could see the lights from their Coast Guard station.

W1 Right. They were watching it and observing it from the Coast Guard station itself and didn’t know what to make out of the little lights.

DW Did they tell you why they decided to come up here?

W2 Yeah, because they got so many calls that they wanted to come and investigate it. They had even called us back a few times that night.

W1 They said it was totally out of their league. They didn’t know what it was or what it could be. They didn’t want to speculate. They also said to us, even on the next day, that the Army and I guess, NASA did not want them to investigate any further. They did not want them to go out on the ice, because they have a cutter. They could have gone out to see where it landed, because their men made a report too. Somewhere along the line…and they could not get an answer from NASA, they couldn’t get an answer from anybody. And they were told NOT to do anything about it, that it was out of their league, it was

RD They were told it was out of their league?

W1 Uh- huh.

RD That’s a quote?

W1 Yes. It was ou t of their league and out of their hands. That’s exactly what they told us. I talked to…a person in command there and he got on the phone with me and that’s exactly what he told me also. That they had to forward all their information to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and a place in Detroit, which I don’t know where in Detroit they were going to send something, but they said the were NOT ALLOWED to investigate it any further, that that’s what they we re told and to stay out of it…I wrote down their names because I was so upset that they called the police on me.

DW Did they ever tell you not to talk about it?

W1 They told me that it was just more or less, that it was out of their league and no one would, more or less, believe me and I think that’s what they were getting at when they talked to me…I mean, they sent the police to my house, and that was more a harassment than anything else. You could tell they didn’t want to talk about it either, because I called them back the next day and they were real snotty to me on the phone.

Investigation forms were then completed, and the photograph taken on the same night in a location several miles to the southeast was shown to the witnesses. They confirmed that the triangular object shown in the photograph was identical to the triangular objects they had observed on the same night. Clearly, these witnesses, the Coast Guard, other independent witnesses who have been interviewed, and the photographic evidence all confirm that the Venus/Jupiter hypothesis offered by the skeptical “experts” as the ultimate solution to this case has no merit or validity. The responses of these experts are invited.

Rick Dell’Aquila and Dale Wedge”[5]

Shortly after this interview was done, Rick Dell’Aquila posted an update to the 1988 incident:

“UPDATE TO N.E. OHIO UFO FLAP: On Saturday, April 2, 1988 at about 3:15 P.M., Eastern Time 

Flat black helicopter was reported to fly at tree-top level over the N.E. Ohio home of one of the witnesses whose prior sighting has been filed with MUFON by Dale B. Wedge an d Rick Dell’Aquila, and recounted on Paranet (see LAKERIEn.UFO). The helicopter was observed by at t 5 individuals from three separate residences in the neighborhood, and was in sight for 2-3 minutes. The unmarked and unlit helicr had a military appearance as it approached slowly from the west, making a loud sound peculiarly similar to that made by a small airplane rather than a helicopter. The apparently windowless craft was observed to fly eastward, before turning to the south and disappearing over the line of trees. It apparently caused “snow” on a television screen. The investigation of the continuing series of UFO events in this area continues and updates will be provided to MUFON and Paranet as they become available. –Rick Dell’Aquila”

The following is a transcript of the communications between 2 flights over Cleveland Ohio, Air Shuttle 5959 and Masaba 3179 regarding a UFO that was spotted by both planes on February 28, 1996.

Air Shuttle 5959: Air Cleveland, this is 5959. We see traffic out there. Ah...twelve to one o'clock. Ah...low altitude. Do you have him on the radar?

Cleveland Control: Air Shuttle 5959, that's a negative. Sir, I don't have anything out in front of ya at twelve to one o'clock.

Air Shuttle 5959: Ok...

Cleveland Control: He's down well below you or can you get an estimate on an altitude on him?

Air Shuttle 5959: Well, that could be really difficult. Ah...we're between layers here. I'm just gonna estimate two-three thousand feet below us. Maybe and ah...sort of ah...pulsating light about, I don't know, ten miles out.

Cleveland Control: Ok, Air Shuttle 5959. I'll keep my eyes open. But I don't see anything.

Masaba 3179: Was that northwest of Detroit did you see that light?

Air Shuttle 5959: Yeah.

Masaba 3179: Yeah, that's where I saw it. A really bright white light, sometimes flickering...ah...underneath the clouds is where I saw it.

Cleveland Control: Air Shuttle 5959, is that traffic, ah...that you saw earlier? Do you see him out there any longer?

Air Shuttle 5959: Air Shuttle 5959, that's affirmative and it's a light that kinda...it goes dim and it gets bright. I don't know if we're getting closer to it or what? But it looks like a rotating light around it like ah...like a Frisbee type thing that's going around it.

Unknown voice: UFO.

Cleveland Control: Masaba 3179, do you see the same thing?

Masaba 3179: Ah...sir, I saw it coming out of Detroit and I wondered...ah...all I saw was just a couple really bright flashes of light and it almost looked like lightning and it caught my eye. And then I kept watching it and then it looked a little bit less bright. But it looked like it was underneath the cloud deck to me. And this was just as we were coming out of Detroit.

Cleveland Control: Ok, and can you get an altitude on it at all?

Masaba 3179: The light that I saw was just like, maybe, I don't know...twenty-five miles northwest of Detroit. Is it what you're referring to or you're talking about the light at our twelve o'clock now about ten miles?

Cleveland Control: Any kind of target off to your twelve o'clock?

Masaba 3179: Ah...we have some kind of white light out there at twelve o'clock and the captain ah...says it's pulsating. It looks like oncoming traffic. But it's just sitting about the same place that it's been the whole...here about ten or fifteen minutes we've been watching it.

Air Shuttle 5959: Year, Air Shuttle 5959. It looks like it's almost over Saginaw from our position.

Cleveland Control: Ok, Air Shuttle 5959. Contact Saginaw Approach Control 126.45. I appreciate the information.

Masaba 3179: 3179, that target looks like it's ah...below us. I would guesstimate maybe ten thousand feet.

Cleveland Control: Around ten thousand feet, would you think it might be like a reflection? Ah...maybe perhaps off a beacon that for some reason, it's just one of those weird things. Ah...natural phenomena that you're getting a reflection, cause I got nothing out there.

Masaba 3179: I don't know. I mean we can see a clear, you know, relatively solid cloud deck...ah...below us and this is definitely ah...distinct whitish ah...well, now it's looking a little red and greenish white, sort of pulsating light and it's consonant. It's not a beacon.

Air Shuttle 5959: Air Cleveland, Air Shuttle 5959.

Cleveland Control: Go ahead, sir.

Air Shuttle 5959: Yeah. Hey, be advised we're descending to four thousand feet right now and as we descend through ten thousand feet, that object is above us right now. It is not on the ground. It's about ten thousand feet.

Cleveland Control: Ok, sir. We're checking on it right now. I don't have anything out in front of ya at all I'm showing. I appreciate you coming back to the frequency and letting me know.

Air Shuttle 5959: I'll keep you advised. I tell you what that is weird. It keeps sitting there pulsating.

Cleveland Control: Masaba 3179, where is it relative to you right now?

Masaba 3179: Twelve o'clock sir.

Cleveland Control: I'm trying to do a little investigating as to what this might be. If you would keep me advised on this.

Masaba 3179: Ok, sir. I'm gonna blink my lights at him and see if I can get a reaction. 3179, was the other guy that saw that light was he headed southeast bound or was he headed to (garbled)?

Cleveland Control: Well, he was inbound to Saginaw and actually when I sent him over to Saginaw, I expected that was gonna be the last I heard from him. He came back up on the frequency and advised me that his clearance was down to four thousand and that he said that what he saw, was still up above him and was like a red...he said it was red and green light that was pulsing and like rotating. He said he would keep me advised and give us a report once he got into Saginaw. You don't have a camera on board, do ya?

Masaba 3179: We could probably get one from one of the passengers. You want us to ask?

Cleveland Control: Yeah, that would be kinda interesting to have a couple of pictures. I think...ah...might make our case a little better.

Masaba 3179: Ok, 3179, we got a passenger taking a picture of it right now and ah...we have a flight attendant who says that ah...they might have saw the same thing the other night.

Cleveland Control: Masaba 3179, I copy that. Ah...Masaba 3179, when you flashed your lights, did you get any response?

Masaba 3179: Didn't appear to, sir.

Cleveland Control: Ok, Masaba 3179, I'm gonna send you over to Minneapolis now sir. Is it still on your twelve o'clock?

Masaba 3179: Ah...negative sir. It's at about our two o'clock now. We ah...made a turn.

Cleveland Control: Ok, so it's off your right side about two o'clock. I'd sure be interested to see those pictures. Can I ah...get you an address that you might be able to send a copy, if you get a copy of them?

Masaba 3179: Yeah, sure. We can do that and actually we made a right turn and he's off about ten to eleven o'clock.

Cleveland Control: Ok, so he's off your left side. Ok.

Masaba 3179: Ok, thirty-two-nine. We'll see ya. I wonder if those pictures will show anything?

Masaba 3179: Air Cleveland, Masaba 3179.

Cleveland Control: Masaba 3179, go ahead.

Masaba 3179: I Just want you to know that I took a picture, as captain on the left side. I also took (unrecognizable) of some of the stars above, so the lowest light on those pictures. The only single light at the bottom of the picture should be ah...what you're looking at. And you might be able to get a position with the sky if you want to go that far.

Cleveland Control: Ok, great. Tat's a good idea, I appreciate that.

Masaba 3179: it was an instamatic camera. Good night sir.

Cleveland Control: Good night.  

That's No Moon-Who - Or What - Is Buzzing Northeast Ohio?

[Free Times] Volume 15, Issue 21 Published September 26th, 2007

Many Uncrazy Clevelanders Have Seen Strange Lights In The Sky. Who - Or What - Is Buzzing Northeast Ohio?

By John Lasker

To suggest that Northeast Ohio could be witness to the next mass UFO sighting does not officially make you a member of the tin-foil hat crowd. If you believe even just a few of the witnesses, Cleveland and its surrounding communities might already be a hotspot.

During the previous two years, the Cleveland UFOlogy Project, considered the oldest of its kind on this side of the globe, has documented 20 credible sightings. The 2005 documentary Dan Akroyd: Unplugged on UFOs highlighted the peculiar lights over Lake Erie near Eastlake, where witnesses reported their latest sighting just this past June. Earlier this year, an "orb" was videotaped over the Key Bank Tower during a peace rally, and the incident made it on the CBS nightly news.

The hype continues: Literally hundreds of thousands have downloaded Internet videos of Northeast Ohio UFOs. The Cleveland Office of Homeland Security has investigated. And one of the Eastlake UFO witnesses says he's signed a contract with a History Channel for a documentary.

"If you take all of the people in Ohio who are interested in this subject, I bet half of them are from that part of the state," says Central Ohio-based William E. Jones, state director for Ohio MUFON, or Mutual UFO Network. "A lot of folks up there have seen things over the years. More people are interested up there. I don't know why."

Sam Phillips has long been a fixture of Cleveland's music scene. He's an accomplished drummer and "hand snapper," and appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show. When interviewed for this story, however, he was homeless and sleeping at the homes of friends and family. Phillips taped a strange light spinning and hovering over the Key Bank Tower on March 10, during a peace rally.

"This is not about me," says Phillips, who admits he has become obsessed with what he saw that night. "There's a pattern here. There's a riddle here. And I want answers. I want an explanation."

He believes it wasn't coincidence the sighting took place over a peace rally. During the sighting, he recalls saying that our "brothers and sisters are going to come down from the universe and humble our ass."

Phillips' story, however, is but a sidebar in the current wave of Northeast Ohio UFO mania. Taking center stage is Lake Erie, and Michael Lee Hill of Eastlake.

Hill, like Phillips, is a musician. In 2001, Grammy-award winner and guitar legend Steve Vai picked Hill as the winner of a national guitar contest. Hill is gregarious, upbeat and likeable. He's unconventional and complex. He's certain that the UFOs he has seen are targeting him.

"I've had contact my whole life," he says. "I remember asking my mother, "Why do Santa's elves keep visiting me?'"

The recent visitations started in earnest five years ago, not far from the coal-burning power plant, he says. While walking on the beach, not far from his home, Hill said he witnessed a top hat-shaped craft hovering and pulsating over the shoreline. This same area is also famous in UFO lore for a 1988 encounter documented by the Coast Guard.

Hill started taking a video camera to the lakefront. Since then he's captured scores of bright lights that appear to hover over Lake Erie. He's uploaded many of his videos to YouTube, and those caught the attention of David Sereda, who directed the Akroyd documentary. Hill created the music for Sereda's latest project, From Here To Andromeda. Hill also says he recently signed a contract for a History Channel project, but the channel did not return Free Times' calls.

"I really do consider myself a spiritual messenger; I know it sounds freaky," says Hill, adding that the UFO filmed over the Key Bank Tower is one of the same orbs he captured over Lake Erie. "There's a huge story unfolding here. I think they're absolutely sending us a message. I believe they are here to help us become a galactic society."

At the other end of the spectrum is Eastlake resident Gary Strauss, who says adamantly, "I'm not one of those UFO people." He's a chemist and a supervisor at a local laboratory. He's lived in his home on the lake since 1984, in the same neighborhood as Hill, though they've never met.

Early on the morning of June 21, Strauss and his son saw four bright lights, shaped like the tip of a Sharpie marker, high above the water. The lights were in a line parallel with the shoreline, positioned at 11 o'clock and 30 degrees above the horizon.

Then one vanished. Then another. Soon all four were gone. Suddenly, they reappeared in the shape of a diamond. Then they went flat again. This went on for more than an hour.

He called the Eastlake police and they dispatched an officer. Strauss remembers the officer saying, "What is that?"

The following day, his son checked the Internet for lights over Lake Erie and found one of Hill's videos. He recalls his son shouting, "That's it! That's what we saw!"

But unlike other Lake Erie witnesses, Strauss doesn't believe the lights are extraterrestrial. He guesses they're the result of government or aerospace industry experiments with new technology. "They're bouncing radar off some type of object," he speculates. "Some form of radar reflection technology. I'm just making an educated guess."

Nevertheless, he's intrigued.

"I look outside a lot more. I want to see it again," says Strauss. "This time, I'm going to have my camera." But he rejects the suggestion that it's anything more than curiosity: "No. I'm not obsessive. Absolutely not."

The Eastlake police actually had two witnesses that night. A detective, who asked not to be named, told the Free Times that he too saw the lights, but from a different vantage point.

The Eastlake police asked the Cleveland office of Homeland Security to look into the sighting, and the detective says he was told later that on the night of the sighting, the Canadian Coast Guard was near the opposite side of the lake searching for a man who had been reported missing. A Canadian Coast Guard helicopter dropped flares, connected to miniature parachutes, over the water. Later it was discovered the man had drowned.

Strauss finds this implausible, believes the lights appeared in a straight line, then vanished, then reappeared in a diamond formation.

The Bush administration reportedly has funneled billions to the aerospace industry to develop space-based weapons under the guise of missile defense. Secret military space-plane programs are believed to have been revived as well.

Another possibility are LAGEOS, or Laser Geodynamics Satellites. Publicly, the government says two are in orbit, and both are roughly the size of a basketball. They are made of brass and partially covered with a retro-reflection material that returns light in the direction it comes from, similar to a road sign.

There's also NASA's Glenn Research Center at the Plum Brook site in Sandusky. The site is home to the world's largest space environment simulation chamber. That chamber will test NASA's new spacecraft, Orion, which will take the US back to the moon. Recent upgrades to the Plum Brook site will also allow it to test "next- generation lunar landers, robotic systems, and military and commercial aircraft," according to NASA's Web site.

"So here I come walking out of the TV station one night in November maybe a decade ago after our early evening newscast," says Ted Henry of New Channel 5. "In perfect formation there were five large objects flying smoothly in my direction. It was stunning."

"What I saw was the undersides of five flat objects flying in exact formation. The front two were enormous, maybe the size of several football fields, and the three trailing were smaller, flying in a slightly irregular pattern."

"What do I think they were? All I can really tell you is what I saw."

Henry has talked about his sighting many times on the air. He puts the experience this way: "One thing is certain, for people who see something in the sky, as I did over Cleveland years ago, it can be a life changing experience."

There was also a YouTube video posted not too long ago with sightings more recent than this last one, but it has now been taken down, unfortunately. Nevertheless, I think the reader gets the picture.

In Part 2 of this Appendix, we are going to discuss Michael's experiences in much more detail, and they don't end with just a few lights over Lake Erie (nowadays commonly known as the 'Eastlake UFOs'). The lights he and other have seen over the lake is for Michael only the absolute beginning of a much bigger story that was unfolding before his very eyes as time went by, and it's far from ended yet.

In my first article about Michael, I spent a lot of time with Bill Birnes' 'UFO Hunters' documentary, which was more or less the highlight of that article. Now it's time to bring that further. However, it's interesting to hear what one of Bill Birnes' team members had to say about Michael and his experiences in the following video clip:

Now, let's move on to Michael himself and what he, and others (including media people) have to say about what he has experienced, in the second and last part of this series...

Source: http://wespenre.com/2/appendix-a-updates-on-remarkable-michael-lee-hill-case.htm

The following excerpt is from “TECHNOIR: 13 Investigations from the Darkside of Technology, the US Military and UFOs” a new book by independent journalist John Lasker.

Lake Erie Lights

Strange lights are appearing again over the lake with the creepy name... is it a hoax or UFOs?

On a brisk, fall night, the crescent moon over Lake Erie is a blood-red orange. In the background, dark waves lap rhythmically onto the beach. It is picturesque in many ways. But the serenity is about to be shattered. Out some unknown distance over the lake, several pulsating lights chillingly materialize from nowhere.

The scene was captured on video, put on Youtube, and downloaded hundreds-of-thousands of times. The lake front is not far from the hardscrabble city of Cleveland, Ohio, and the lights are described as “orbs”. Out of thin air they appear over the lake, and sometimes witnessed near a local nuclear power plant.

Apparently, the “Lake Erie Lights” have returned once again, and they have locals talking. Some loudly, some in hushed tones. But some are wondering whether these recent waves of UFO sightings over the lake with the creepy name is the real thing or a hoax.

If the new lights and their videos are indeed a hoax, it would be a shame for UFOlogy because Lake Erie has a long history of mind-boggling paranormal activity.

To start, the lake is named after a Native American tribe called the “Erielhonan”, meaning the people with “long tails”. They were also called the “Cat” or “Raccoon” people. What’s more, the region was a hot-bead of abolitionism leading up to the Civil War, a time when the locals on the highlands south of the city told outsiders beware of the lake’s “Wizard Lights”. Some thought they were distressed ships on fire, but daybreak revealed no wreckage, dead bodies or survivors.

One hundred and fifty years later, on a cold winter night in 1988, a UFO described as large as “the Goodyear Blimp” appeared on the lake. Stunned witnesses said at first the craft seemed to be struggling to get off a sheet of ice that was not far from the lake's shore. As a crowd of witnesses grows, the craft sets loose a squadron of smaller, triangular-shaped craft that buzz the witnesses.

A local Coast Guard team sees the entire episode unfold right in front of their eyes, but within hours the team is apparently strong-armed into silence by military officers from Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. What’s more, the civilians who do see the oblong craft will soon have their homes buzzed by an alleged unmarked black helicopter.

It’s one of the best-documented UFO cases in the history of the US. Twenty years later, in an interview for this book, one of the Coast Guard personnel there that night is still not sure what he saw – or is he?

Since 2004, CUP, the Cleveland Ufology Project, has documented 40 sightings from northeast Ohio and from the miles of Lake Erie beaches. CUP was founded in 1952 and, fittingly, is one of the oldest UFO-spotting groups in the country, if not the planet. The latest wave of Lake Erie Lights took place at the beginning of 2010.

A witness saw a triangular-shaped craft with amber lights vanish over the lake. Then for ten nights in a row, witnesses said a mysterious light began appearing over Lake Erie near Cleveland – showing up at around 7:30 pm and zipping around in the darkness for about two hours before disappearing. MSNBC covered the fresh wave, even going live to Cleveland for witness interviews.

A similar light was captured in May, and all videos were posted on YouTube, which has become the clearing house for fresh UFO footage, whether legitimate or bullshit.

“It’s a hot spot,” declares local Ufologist Aaron Clark about the beaches of Lake Erie near Cleveland. “Some believe there’s a UFO base on the bottom of the lake.” One thing is certain, the Lake Erie UFO hype is real: Literally millions have viewed Internet videos of Lake Erie UFOs. The Cleveland Office of Homeland Security has, to an unknown degree, investigated the sightings and perhaps and probably continues to do so. In 2007, an “orb” was videotaped over the Key Bank Tower during a peace rally, and the incident made it on the CBS nightly news.

In 2010, the Cleveland office of Homeland Security refused to comment to UFOcasebook.com on whether they were investigating the recent sightings, even though it has investigated lights over the lake before.

“If you take all of the people in Ohio who are interested in this subject, I bet half of them are from that part of the state,” says Ohio-based William E. Jones, state director for Ohio MUFON, or Mutual UFO Network. “A lot of folks up there have seen things over the years. More people are interested up there. I don’t know why.”

Historically, the total number of eyewitness accounts is unknown because there are so many of them. Stories of “strange ships” on the lake have been circulating since at least the 1800s. Ask anyone who lives near the lake, and either they’ve seen something odd, or know of someone who has. For some, what they saw will remain the mystery of a lifetime.

For a few others, it will take over their life. As it did to Michael Lee Hill, a musician who lives just feet away from the beaches of Lake Erie in the Cleveland suburb of Eastlake, which is where the “Goodyear Blimp” UFO was sighted.

Lake Erie Lights Roughly five years ago, Hill was walking down the beach and something caught his attention out the corner of his eye. Hill told this journalist that a top hat-shaped craft hovering and pulsating over the shoreline. The following is a written account of what he saw, posted on a web site devoted to the paranormal:

“It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen, I did not get that one on tape but it sparked my interest in trying to film them, but before I get into that, let me tell you what this craft looked like,” he wrote.

“It looked like a flat platform made of glowing plasma red, you could make out the edges very well, they were not blurry. On top of this platform sat what looked like a glowing sun, kind of like a ball of plasma that was around the size of a small plane, The ball was about 1/3 the length of the bottom part. Just picture a line with a ball on top and that is what it looked like, the line part about ten feet thick I would say.”

After that first encounter six years ago, the visitations began in earnest, he said. Soon after, he started taking a video camera to the lake front. Since then he’s captured dozens of “orbs” and bright lights that appear to be silently hovering over Lake Erie. He’s downloaded many of his videos to YouTube. Videos that caught the attention of David Sereda, a world-renown UFOlogist.

Sereda directed Dan Akroyd: Unplugged on UFOs, and in his latest documentary, From Here To Andromeda, he poses the question, "Where should humanity go if Earth were to perish?" Co-producing the documentary is Hill, who created the film’s music.

Hill has also appeared on the History Channel’s UFO Hunters, hosted by Bill Birnes, publisher of UFO Magazine. On the episode, the UFO Hunters decide to test Hill’s blood and the blood of another apparent contactee. Both had elevated levels of Creatine Kinase, which is a very rare occurrence in just one person, let alone two.

“There’s a huge story unfolding here,” said Hill from his home near the shores of Lake Erie. “I’ve had contact my whole life. I remember asking my mother, ‘Why do Santa’s elves keep visiting me?’”

Hill believes these UFOs aren’t just dropping in to catch the sites of the blue-dot that is two planets away from a middle- aged sun. “I really do consider myself a spiritual messenger. I know it sounds freaky,” says Hill, who claims he mysteriously had his jaw broken a couple years ago just days before he was to be interviewed by a local broadcast news station. “I think they’re absolutely sending us a message. I believe they are here to help us become a galactic society.”

Hill isn’t the only Eastlake resident who recently saw something strange over the lake. Gary Strauss is not a UFO enthusiast. “Not at all,” he says. “I’m not one of those UFO people.” He’s a chemist and a supervisor at a local laboratory. He’s also lived on the lake in his own home since 1984. He lives in the same neighborhood as Hill, but both claim to have never met.

Early on the morning of June 21st, 2007, Strauss and his son saw four bright lights high above the water. All shaped like the tip of a Sharpie marker. He says the lights were parallel with the shoreline, positioned at 11-o’clock and 30 degrees above the horizon. At first the lights were flat, he said. Then one vanished. Then another. Soon, all four were gone.

Suddenly, they reappeared in the shape of a diamond, says Strauss. Then they went flat again. This went on for more than an hour. He called Eastlake police and they dispatched an officer. Strauss says the officer also saw the lights. He remembers the officer saying, “‘What is that?’”

The following day, his son checked the Internet for lights over Lake Erie. He viewed one of Hill’s videos. And shouted: “‘That’s it!’” said Strauss. “‘That’s what we saw. That’s what it looks like!’”

But unlike other Lake Erie witnesses, Strauss doesn’t believe the lights are extraterrestrial. Strauss has contemplated other explanations. Planes. Boats. Canadians out to fool gullible Americans. But none of those seem plausible to him.

“I personally think it’s the government,” he said. “They’re experimenting with some type of technology. Maybe it’s the aerospace industry.”

Strauss believes the lights may be some type of exotic radar innovation. “They’re bouncing radar off some type of object. Some form of radar reflection technology. I’m just making an educated guess.”

An example of radar reflection technology has been applied to Laser Geodynamic Satellites or LAGEOS spacecrafts. Publicly, the US government says two are in orbit, and both are roughly the size of a basketball. They are made of brass, and partially covered with a retro-reflection material.

A material that returns light in the direction it comes from, similar to a road sign. It is believed that lasers have been used to illuminate them from space. Could US space interests have developed a satellite that can re-enter the atmosphere? Is the US government secretly testing these satellites over Lake Erie?

Nevertheless, the Lake Erie lights have struck a chord of intrigue within his mind. “I look outside a lot more. I want to see it again,” says Strauss, “and this time, I’m going to have my camera.” Asked if he’s becoming obsessive, like Richard Dreyfuss’ character Roy Neary of “Close Encounters,” he’s says no way. “No. I’m not obsessive. Absolutely not.”

The Eastlake police actually had two witnesses see those lights that night. A detective, who wished his name not be used for publication, says he too saw the lights, but from a different vantage point. The Eastlake police asked the Cleveland office of Homeland Security to look into the sighting.

The unnamed detective said the Homeland Security office discovered that on the night of the sighting the Canadian Coast Guard was near the opposite side of the lake searching for a man who had been reported missing. Using a helicopter, the Canadian Coast Guard was dropping flares, connected to miniature parachutes, over the water.

Later it was discovered the man had drowned. Strauss believes it couldn’t have been flares because the lights were in a straight line, then vanished, and reappeared in a diamond formation. When trying to explain the Phoenix Lights the military used the same explanation.

Nonetheless, are the aerospace industry or the military, or Cleveland’s NASA John Glenn Research Center, conducting secret tests over Lake Erie? Due to the amount of classified military research conducted during the Bush administration and now ongoing, it’s hard to dismiss the military explanation as to “What else?” the “Lake Erie lights” might be. During the last decade, the Bush administration funneled billions to the aerospace industry so to develop space-based weapons and super-powered radar sensors all in the name of missile defense.

Super-secret military space planes and space bomber programs are also believed to have been revived. Killer satellites loaded with lasers and missiles are on the drawing board. The Pentagon’s US Space Command is still desperate to build the ultimate space radar so to protect US space assets and tell the difference between a balloon decoy in space from a mushroom-cloud inducing ICBM. And while the Obama administration promised to gut the missile defense budget and never weaponize space, the current White House has so far cut just a sliver off of missile defense spending.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon or NASA will never say publicly if secret research is ongoing over Lake Erie. One reason why is, it would be a lot easier to retrieve plummeting and secret technology from the shallowest of Great Lakes instead of some residential area. The evidence for using the lake’s airspace as a testing ground leads to NASA's Plum Brook site in Sandusky, OH, a small town on Lake Erie, 50 or so miles west of Cleveland.

The site is home to the world’s largest space environment simulation chamber, called the Space Power Facility. The chamber is 100 feet wide and 122 feet long. “It was designed to test space hardware… in a simulated low-earth orbit environment,” states NASA’s web site.

The tests performed there in the past are impressive: Mars Landers, Solar Sails, International Space Station hardware, for example. The chamber is scheduled to test NASA’s new spacecraft, Orion, which is planned to take the US back to the moon by 2020. Recent upgrades to the Plum Brook site will also allow it to test “next generation lunar landers, robotic systems, and military and commercial aircraft.”

Moreover, just a three-hour drive away from here is Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, considered by many to be a top-secret research facility for the Air Force.

Since UFOs became an American and global obsession in the middle of last century, the US military has been a chief suspect as to what they are. And if the US military were testing over Lake Erie, then they've tricked many an Ohioan. But when it comes to playing UFO tricks over Lake Erie, or with a video camera to be more specific, skeptics say the trickster is Michael Lee Hill of Eastlake. Skeptics question whether Hill (along with his videos) has pulled an elaborate hoax, just like the notorious “Haitian UFO” video of 2008 on YouTube, which was viewed more than five million times, but then debunked by the Los Angeles Times.

Depiction: Coast Guard Sighting After Hill posted one of his Lake Erie UFO videos to AboveTopSecret.com a popular paranormal discussion board, the thread took an unconvinced slant. Hill claimed he is pointing his camera directly North, over the lake and towards Canada. But with the help of a flight tracking map, one skeptic shows that Hill’s camera is more likely pointing to the West and is probably filming the incoming flight path of two distant planes in an “S”- shaped landing pattern.

Two airports are in the vicinity of where Hill says he is shooting. Abovetopsecret.com has labeled Hill’s videos a hoax. In 2010, a similar story line would play out with the newest wave of sightings. One of the main witnesses this time was 20-year-old Eugene Erlikh. It was his camera that was capturing the new lights, the ones that re-appeared ten nights in a row in March of 2010. Besides MSNBC, MUFON also began taking notice.

They sent investigators. The lights, however, would sputter upon MUFON's arrival, and not much else was witnessed. Indeed, the investigator put an apparent end to the newest Lake Erie UFO cluster after two MUFON teams in separate areas concluded the recent lights were airplanes making incoming landing-patterns to a local airport.

Ben Radford, a paranormal investigator and managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, said YouTube and the ubiquitous Internet is fueling a UFO frenzy. “The problem is anyone can post anything and call it a UFO, a ghost, but there’s no filter,” he says. “You don’t know if that person has a history of hoaxes or mental illness. What happens is a real case is drowned out by a sea of hoaxes, mistakes, or misidentifications.”

Could Hill's videos marginalize over 150-years of Lake Erie sightings?

In the 1860s, and for sometime before that, those who lived on the highlands south of Cleveland were perplexed by a mystery on the lake – they called the phenomenon “The Wizard Lights”. One such account of these lights occurred on the night of Oct. 29th, 1867, when something strange – and bright – appeared out on the lake. Many thought it looked as if a steamer was in distress and on fire.

“The object appeared to be some 200 or more feet in length upon the water, and about as high above the water as an upper cabin steamer,” stated one witness. “The sky and water were beautifully irradiated by the light during its great brilliancy.”

The witness continued, “The resemblance which this light bore to that of the burning steamer was so strong that I confidently expected the arrival of the boats from the wreck during the night.” But none came, nor did any wreckage wash ashore. There was some speculation that heavy winds had opened crevices in the lake, sending underground gas, ignited by lightning, spewing into the air.

One hundred and twenty years later, however, many credible witnesses would swear the “mysterious lights” on the lake was a ship. But not from this planet.

On a cold, clear winter’s night in early March of 1988, Sheila and Henry Baker were driving their three children to their lake-front home, which is not far from where Hill has shot many of his videos. But as they neared the waterfront, Sheila’s attention was drawn to something odd over the lake.

It appeared to be… hovering? She went down to the beach. And there before her, was something much “larger than the Good-year Blimp”. It was a gun-metal colored, “football-shaped” object.

Bright ,white light poured out of each end. It was dead silent. Then it began to “teeter-totter."

The ice underneath it began to rumble and implode with thunderous cracks, she said. It appeared to be struggling. Perhaps trying to escape to the stars above. Far from this strange planet and into infinity. Maybe those aboard knew their presence, their destruction right there in these icy waters, could lead to some unfathomable consequences for the billions who lived on this small blue dot.

Several years later during an interview with Cleveland’s largest daily newspaper the Plain Dealer, Sheila Baker leaned over to a reporter and insisted: “I saw it.” So did several others. And as the crowd grew, the vessel became more active. Bursting out of the apparent mother ship were several triangular-shaped, Cessna-sized crafts.

One buzzed a woman and her dog which cowered and whimpered. Another approached two young Coast Guard personnel called to the scene. A picture was taken of a smaller craft and published in the Plain Dealer. Still in their Chevy Suburban, the Coast Guard team gave a running report back to their base, said the Bakers, who also told their story to MUFON investigators.

“Be advised the object appears to be landing on the lake…e advised there are other objects moving around it.”

For more than an hour this continued. Ice cracking. Pulsating bright lights flashing on and off. Small ships circling and diving around the larger. Then like most UFO encounters... it vanished.

Nothing but chunks of ice, dead silence, and a handful of witnesses left with the shock of a lifetime. The Bakers said the Coast Guard personnel at that moment were “ghost-faced.”

This UFO story, like many prolific UFO tales, has spread across the Internet. And in this particular case, the story is accompanied by a copy of a Coast Guard incident report.

Whether it is legitimate is a mystery. A search of Archives.gov and other records was not successful, and Ohio Coast Guard public affairs officers said the 1988 report was shredded.

Nevertheless, the incident report states “the Large Object was almost on the ice,” and “Smaller Objects began hovering in the area where the large object landed and, after a few minutes, they began flying around.” The incident made the local press the following days, which brought out the skeptics.

One local astronomer said witnesses were looking at the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, coupled with “spontaneous gas emissions.”

But skeptics weren’t the only apparent naysayers to get involved in this UFO case. Later on the night of the sighting, the Bakers decided to call the local Coast Guard outpost. “They told us, ‘It was out of their league and out of their hands’,” said Sheila Baker to MUFON.

“A person in command there, and he got on the phone with me, and that’s exactly what he told me. That they had to forward all their information to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. They said they were not allowed to investigate it any further, and that they we're told to stay out of it.” She also was told NASA was getting involved.

MUFON investigators tried to interview the two young Coast Guard personnel, but were rebuffed by their commanding officers. Twenty years later, however, one of the Coast Guardsmen there that night spoke to me. And if you believe what he says, you might think the Bakers and other witnesses were stretching the truth and that the Coast Guard’s own report is indeed a fake.

If you don’t believe hat he has to say, then you might think the US military grabbed the man’s forearm and twisted it until he cried for mercy, for his career and for his government pension.

John Knaub was on the beach that cold, clear night back in 1988. He’s retired from the Coast Guard and lives in Virginia. When told he is linked to one of America’s great UFO mysteries, he laughs out loud.

“I did not see any cigar-shaped ship. All I saw were lights. It was not a UFO,” he says.

Knaub says that night his station on Lake Eire began getting a high number of calls saying something odd was going on out on the lake. The station figured someone might be in distress. Knaub says when they arrived, they did see lights.

It should be noted that Knaub was the only eyewitness of this case to be reached by this reporter. Extensive efforts were used to reach the others, but none could be found.

For two years after that night, Knaub was harassed by UFO enthusiasts wanting to know what he saw. “It was ridiculous.” Up until now, he was “sick and tired of talking about it, and I refused to talk about it.”

When told he was “ghost faced”, he again laughs. What about the sounds of exploding ice? “I don’t remember it. We saw multi-colored lights, but they were not flares,” he said. “We went there to see if someone was in distress. But there was no boat.”

What was it then? “I have no clue.”

For the record, what follows is part of MUFON's report on the sighting:

Coast Guard personnel responding to citizen reports of unusual aerial activity over Lake Erie on March 4, 1988, witnessed classic UFOs near Eastlake, OH. Sheila and Henry Baker were driving home with their three children about 8:35 P.M., after taking them out to dinner, and were almost home.

As they neared the waterfront, Sheila noticed something hovering over the lake; they drove down to the beach to investigate and got out of the car. The moon was bright, and there was ice on the lake; Sheila could hear it cracking, like claps of thunder.

Plainly visible was a huge, gunmetal gray, football-shaped, silent object rocking back and forth, blinding white light emanating from both ends. Then the object began moving, swinging one end toward the shore and descending. The Bakers became frightened, ran back to their car, and fled.

When they got home, the object was still visible from a window facing the lake. Sheila hid the children in a closet, fearing that the thing might come and get them.

Depiction - Coast Guard Sighting The object moved out over the ice and continued to descend, with red and blue lights now flashing in sequence along its lower edge. Sheila called the Eastlake police to report a UFO, and after several referrals, with no one expressing much interest, was told that unusual activity over the lake would be the responsibility of the Coast Guard.

Suddenly five or six bright yellow triangular objects shot out of the center of the large object and began darting around independently (satellite objects). Once they stopped and hovered point up around the parent object, then sped away to the north, turned east, then inland toward the Perry nuclear power plant.

At this point Sheila called the Coast Guard, which sent a team to their house to investigate. Seaman James Power and Petty Officer John Knaub arrived towing a Boston Whaler (a seaworthy boat) just in case. They told the Bakers that they had seen some lights over the lake from Fairport Harbor and thought they were flares, maybe fishermen trapped out on the ice. However, when Sheila pointed to the main craft and some of the triangular objects still zipping around it, the men drove closer to the lake to investigate, accompanied by the Bakers. At the lakefront they could hear the ice rumbling and roaring.

In their incident report sent later by teletype to Coast Guard headquarters in Detroit, MI, the men were quoted as saying that... “the ice was cracking and moving abnormal amounts as the object came closer to it.”

Power and Knaub gave a running report on what they were seeing to their base via the two-way radio in their Chevy Suburban. The window was down, and the Bakers overheard them saying words to the effect: “Be advised the object appears to be landing on the lake . . .

Abruptly one of the triangles zoomed straight toward the Coast Guard vehicle, a blur of light, then veered east, straight up, and came down beside the parent object. Two witnesses in separate locations also reported seeing the triangles. Cindy Hale was walking her dog when she noticed a triangular object hovering overhead, and her dog began to whine and cower (animal reactions).

She took the dog indoors and came back out to watch. The triangle flashed a series of multicolored lights, then accelerated and was gone without making a sound.

Tim Keck was using his astronomical telescope when one of the triangles caught his eye. He had a cheap throwaway camera with him and snapped a picture of the object before it flew away over the horizon. The photograph was analyzed by optical physicist Bruce Maccabee, who considered it to be a legitimate image of an unexplained object. (see section VII, Photographs).

Back at the lake, the Coast Guard team and Henry Baker continued to watch for over an hour. Sheila went home and continued to observe from the window. Henry overheard the men saying such things to their base as, “You should be advised that the object is now shining lights all over the lake and it's turning different colors.” The noise of the rumbling ice was thunderous, and the men had to yell to be heard on the radio.

Suddenly the triangles returned and one by one entered the side of the parent object as it seemed to land on the ice. The object flashed a series of red, blue, and yellow lights, the light emanating from the end of the object turned from white to red, and the triangles reemerged and hovered above it. The noise from the ice abruptly ceased, and the lights and triangles disappeared.

When it was over the Coast Guard men drove away, “white-faced,” according to Henry Baker.

Here is the alleged Coast Guard report, copied from the Internet:

CPCD THE SAME ACTIVITY. THEY WATCHED THE OBJECTS FOR APPROX. 1 HOUR BEFORE RPTNG THAT THE LARGE OBJECT Was ALMOST ON THE ICE. THEY RPTD THAT THE ICE WAS CRACKING AND MOVING ABNORMAL AMOUNTS AS THE OBJECT CAME CLOSER TO IT. THE ICE WAS RUMBLING AND THE OBJECT LIT MULTI-COLOR LIGHTS AT EACH END AS IT APPARENTLY LANDED. THE LIGHTS ON IT WENT OUT MOMENTARILY AND THEN CAME ON AGAIN. THEY WENT OUT AGAIN AND THE RUMBLING STOPPED AND THE ICE STOPPED MOVING. THE SMALLER OBJECTS BEGAN HOVERING IN THE AREA WHERE THE LARGE OBJECT LANDED AND AFTER A FEW MINUTES THEY BEGAN FLYING AROUND AGAIN. MOBILE 02 RPTD THAT THEY APPEARED TO BE SCOUTING THE AREA. MOBILE 02 RPTD THAT 1 OBJECT WAS MOVING TOWARD THEM AT A HIGH SPEED AND LOW TO THE ICE. MOBILE 02 BACKED DOWN THE HILL THEY HAD BEEN ON AND WHEN THEY WENT BACK TO THE HILL, THE OBJECT WAS GONE. THEY RPTD THAT THE OBJECTS COULD NOT BE SEEN IF THEY TURNED OFF THERE LIGHTS. ONE OF THE SMALL OBJECTS TURNED ON A SPOTLIGHT WHERE THE LARGE OBJECT HAD BEEN BUT MOBILE 02 COULD NOT SEE ANYTHING, AND THEN THE OBJECT SEEMED TO DISAPPEAR. ANOTHER OBJECT APPROACHED MOBILE 02 APPROX. 500 YDS. OFFSHORE ABOUT 20 FT. ABOVE THE ICE, AND IT BEGANMOVING CLOSER AS MOBILE 02 BEGAN FLASHING ITS HEADLIGHTS, THEN IT MOVED OFF TO THE WEST. THE CREWMEMBERS WERE UNABLE TO IDENTIFY ANY OF THE OBJECTS.

For a month after the night the Coast Guard got buzzed, MUFON reported the sightings continued unabated. Then MUFON reported a black helicopter was seen flying tree-top level over a home of some witnesses. The helicopter was observed by five individuals from three separate residences. Here’s what the witnesses told MUFON:

“The unmarked and unlit helicopter had a military appearance as it approached slowly from the west, making a loud sound peculiarly similar to that made by a small airplane rather than a helicopter.” The apparently windowless craft was observed to fly eastward, before turning to the south and disappearing over a line of trees. It also caused “snow” on a television screen.

Michael Lee Hill, on the other hand, says he’s never been stalked by black helicopters or approached by federal agents for that matter. But unlike Hill, who has been tagged a fraud, and John Knaub, who sounds as if he’s still in the strong-armed grip of some secret US government office that wants him to remain silent or else (even after twenty years post-sighting), there are those who live near Lake Erie that are not only credible, but not afraid to be open and confident about what they saw.

Ted Henry is a retired broadcast news reporter from Cleveland. He is like family to many in the region. His credibility and trust-worthiness is iron cast. His vision is like the cameras used by his news station. So when Henry talks about his UFO experience, even the most hardcore doubters are left pondering our place in the universe.

“So here I come walking out of the TV station one night in November maybe a decade ago after our early evening newscast,” he says. “In perfect formation there were five large objects flying smoothly in my direction – It was stunning. What I saw was the undersides of five flat objects flying in exact formation. The front two were enormous, maybe the size of several football fields and the three trailing were smaller flying in a slightly irregular pattern.”

Similar sights were made locally and in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Henry says what he saw may have been space junk, what several so-called experts were telling local media.

“What do I think they were? All I can really tell you is what I saw.”

Henry has talked about his sighting many times on the air. He puts the experience this way: “One thing is certain, for people who see something in the sky, as I did over Cleveland years ago, it can be a life-changing experience.”

This is an excerpt from “TECHNOIR: 13 Investigations from the Darkside of Technology, the US Military and UFOs” by John Lasker, an independent investigative reporter from Columbus, Ohio.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Source: http://www.ufocasebook.com/2010/technoir1.html

Uploaded on Dec 2, 2011"A Curious Phenomenon on Lake Erie," Brooklyn Eagle, Thursday, December 12, 1867

A Mystery on the Lakes--The Wizard

Lights--A Curious Phenomenon on

Lake Erie

I notice in the Dispatch, of the 11th inst.*, the following paragraph:--

"The statement that a vessel was seen burning off Erie on Tuesday night, is corroborated by several persons living on the highlands south of the city, who say they saw it."

On the Tuesday evening mentioned, Oct. 29th, at about 7 o'clock, my attention was called by one of my family to a bright light on the lake, having very much the appearance of a vessel on fire. Bringing several objects into range, I watched the light forsome time to ascertain whether there was any preceptible [sic] motion.

The wind was blowing hard at the time down the lake and a vessel would naturally drift rapidly to leeward, at all events as soon as the propelling power should be interfered with the fire. No motion, however, in any direction was to be discovered, and at once concluded that it was nothing more than the "mysterious light," which for many years past, at longer or shorter intervals, has been seen by the inhabitants at this point on the lake shore. The light has made its appearance generally, if not always, in the fall of the year, and usually in the month of November, and almost always during or immediately after a heavy blow from the southwest. The most brilliant exhibition of the light I have ever seen was during the night of the 24th or 25th, as nearly as I can recollect, of November, 1852. It had been my fortune to witness the burning of the steamer Erie, near Silver Creek, several years before, and the resemblance which this light bore to that of the burning steamer was so strong that I confidently expected the arrival of the boats from the wreck during the night. Others with myself watched the light for perhaps two hours, and with the aid of a good night-glass obtained what seemed to be a very distinct view of the burning vessel.

The object appeared to be some 200 or more feet in length upon the water, and about as high above the water as an upper cabin steamer, such as was in use upon the Lake twenty years ago. At times the flames would start up in spires or sheets of light, then away from side to side, and then die away, precisely as would be the case with a large fire exposed to a strong wind; and two or three times there was the appearance of a cloud of sparks, as if some portion of the upper works had fallen into the burning mass below. The sky and water were beautifully irradiated by the light during its great brilliancy.The light gradually subsided, with occasional flashes until it disappeared altogether. The light of Tuesday evening, although very brilliant for a time, was not nearly so brilliant nor of so long duration as that of 1852.

I am told that this light was seen by mariners on the lakes as long as fifty years ago, but I am not aware that it has ever been made the subject of philosophical speculation or investigation, or, in fact, has ever obtained the notoriety of a newspaper paragraph before. The only theory approaching plausibility I have heard is that the shifting of the sands caused by the continued and heavy winds of autumn has opened some crevices or seams in the rock of the lake bottom through which gas escapes, and that this gas, owing to some peculiar condition of the atmosphere with which it comes in contact, becomes luminous, or perhaps ignited, and burning with a positive flame. That there are what are called "gas springs" in the water along this portion of the lake shore is a well-known fact, and that highly inflammable gas in large quantities exist at a comparatively shallow depth on the shore, has been sufficiently proved by the boring of wells at different points, as at Erie, Walnut Creek, and Lock Haven, and by natural springs at Westfield and Fredonia.

But whatever the cause, the light is a curious fact, and well worthy the attention of those interested in the investigation of the phenomenon of nature.

Published on May 21, 2016Repost of prior video slowed down 1/8. The orbs move in sync and show movements not seen in real time.

Mysterious orbs appear once again in Mentor, Ohio. They were flying west.

I have seen them maybe ten times in the last two years. I have witnessed four of them join into one. They move intelligently, and tend to make a triangle.

I have also seen just one at a time. At the most seven, first four, in a quadratic shape, followed a minute later by three in a triangle. During their flight, some disappeared and came back, would occasionally break their shape, moving unlike any known aircraft.

They have been seen in Northeast Ohio, as well as around the world dating back hundreds, if not thousands of years. They are spoken of in Iroquois legend, local to the area.

Lake Erie is apparently a hotbed of sightings. Perry Nuclear Power Plant is also near reported recent sightings.

In recent years there have been more sightings. At least, more sightings get reported.

They do not appear to be violent. There are reports of military aircraft scrambling the area after a sighting.

I have never witnessed that.

Interesting phenomenon.

Published on May 30, 2016These orbs appeared seemingly out of nowhere. And remained stationary before disappearing.

I have seen them around the same spot before. They headed North, Towards Lake Erie. Four of them. That night I witnessed them come together, form as one, stayed way for a few minutes, and then split back apart.

YouTube Video

Their distance apart was similar to this video, but about twice the distance, four of them, one blinks out and in, and they move together. One even with circular curvature.

As he watched, it suddenly became very bright at the base and then it took off at an angle, temporarily blinding him. Ronald would later say that the dog was noticeably "very quiet", but that the sheep were bleating nervously. 

Some minutes later, as Ronald's eyes once more adjusted to the light, he went into the house and told his parents, Durel and Erma Johnson, what he had seen. They got outside in time to see the object, which was now about half the full moon in size, before it vanished into the sky to the south. 

...her fingers went numb. 

Ronald and his parents then went to examine the place at which the object had been first seen. They were astonished to find a glowing ring on the ground, and some sort of glowing material on nearby trees. When Mrs. Johnson touched the glowing area, which had a crust-like texture, she found that her fingers went numb. She tried to wipe the substance off onto her leg, and her leg became numb where the material touched it. Her fingers reportedly remained slightly numb for about two weeks, although she never sought medical attention for the problem. Mr. Johnson fetched his camera and took a photo of the ring and then phoned the local newspaper, The Delphos Republican. 

The next day, Durel and Ronald drove into town and spoke to a Delphos Republican reporter, Thaddia Smith. Mrs. Smith, her husband, and her son-in-law then accompanied the Johnsons back to their farm, where she found: 

The circle was still very distinct and plain to see. the soil was dried and crusted. The circle or ring was approximately 8 feet across, the center of the ring and the outside area were still muddy from recent rains. The area of the ring that was dried was about a foot across and was very light in color. 

The object had crushed a dead tree to the ground either when it landed or took off, and from appearance had broken a limb of a live tree when it landed. the broken limb was most unusual, it would snap and break as though it had been dead for quite some time, yet it was green under the bark, and the upper area still had green leaves clinging to its branches. However the lower area looked as though it had been blistered and had a whitish cast. 

That afternoon, Sheriff Enlow, Undersheriff Harlan Enlow, and Kansas State Highway Patrolman Kenneth Yager investigated the ring after being called by Thaddia Smith. Harlan Enlow's report of the investigation stated: 

...we observed a ring shaped somewhat like a doughnut with a hole in the middle. The ring was completely dry with a hole in the middle and outside of the ring mud. There were limbs broken from a tree and a dead tree broken off, there. There was a slight discoloration on the trees. 

The soil sample taken was almost white in color and very dry. 

...he had observed a bright light descending in the sky... 

Enlow's report also stated that: 

On 11-03-71 Mr. Lester Ensbarger of 416 Argyle St. in Minneapolis advised Deputy Sheriff Leonard Simpson that at approx. 7:30 p.m. 11-02-71 he had observed a bright light descending in the sky in the Delphos area. 

The ring was still clearly visible thirty-two days later when examined by a UFO investigator named Ted Phillips, who specializes in physical-trace cases. The soil in the ring itself was still dry to a depth of at least twelve inches even though at this time it was covered by snow, whereas the soil outside the ring was wet and black. Phillips took several photos of the ring and collected soil samples from the ring and from the ground outside the ring. 

A number of analyses were done of soil samples taken from the ring and from the surrounding soil. The ring soil was found to be resistant to water, to contain more calcium and more soluble salts, and to be more acidic than soil from outside the ring. In addition, the soil from the ring was found to contain an unidentified hydrocarbon and an organic material composed of white, crystal-like fibers. 

According to Jacques Vallee, in his book Dimensions, a French biologist identified the white fibers as a fungus-like organism of the order Actinomycetales, whose growth can cause a circular pattern to form on the ground. In addition, this biologist, who asked not to be identified, stated that this fungus is often found growing with another fungus of the order Basidiomysetes, which may fluoresce under some conditions. 

So... does that wrap the Delphos Ring up in a neat little package labeled "solved?" 

Only if you're one of those debunkers who thinks that if you find an explanation for part of an incident, then you have "debunked" the entire incident. Remember, three witnesses saw a UFO, not just the ring, and their sighting was at least partly corroborated by a fourth witness eleven miles away in Minneapolis. The ring itself may not be directly related to the UFO sighting, and the presence of a fungus in the soil does not explain how the fluorescent material got onto the surrounding trees, nor how the branches got broken and the dead Chinese elm tree knocked down. 

Both Thaddia Smith and Sheriff Enlow told Ted Phillips in 1972 that the Johnsons were well respected in the area and that they did not believe that it was possible that the family could be perpetrating a hoax. 

The dog would furiously try to get into the house at nightfall. 

The day after the incident, Ronald's eyes became red and watered as though from irritation. For a week after the incident he had nightmares from which he awoke screaming. 

Even the animals were traumatized by the sighting. Vallee says: 

For about two weeks, every evening at sunset, the sheep would jump out of the pen and run wildly. The dog would furiously try to get into the house at nightfall. He practically destroyed the screen door, and the only way to keep him outside was to replace it with a stronger metal door. 

An adequate explanation for the Delphos incident has never been found. 

Missouri, 1973 – A look back at Piedmont’s UFO panic

​“On Feb. 21, 1973, a Piedmont basketball coach, along with five members of his team, were coming home after losing a game earlier that evening in another town,” Marler recalls. “As their vehicle was winding across the hilly roads, their attention was drawn to an unusual ‘rotation of lights’ in the sky. Despite being intrigued, they continued on their journey down Route 60 while periodically seeing the lights both above and through the densely wooded terrain.”

When they reached a portion of the highway outside of Piedmont where one side opened into a large open field, Marler said they saw what appeared to be the same series of lights. This time, however, they noticed the lights appeared to be attached to some type of object hovering in one spot above the field.

“This piqued their curiosity enough to pull over to the shoulder to get a better look,” Marler continued. “As they watched, they could make out rotating red, green, amber and white lights. The witnesses believed them to be less than 200 yards away and approximately 50 feet off the ground. After about 10 minutes, the lights rose at an angle and disappeared over a ridge. It was the incident that started the wave of UFO sightings in Piedmont that would follow in 1973.”

1973 was a time of change. The war in Vietnam was coming to an end and society was looking forward to a peaceful era. While the cold war was still ongoing, tensions were lower than they had been and the popular hippie movement that had swept across America and the world was winding down.

In 1966, Harley Rutledge completed his Ph.D. in solid state physics at the University of Missouri. He subsequently took the position of Professor and Chairman of the Physics Department at Southeast Missouri State University. He was Department Chairman from 1964 to 1982 and retired from teaching in 1992.

Challenged to explain sightings of unidentified lights and luminous phenomena in the sky around Piedmont, Missouri, Dr. Harley Rutledge decided to subject these reports to scientific analysis. He put together a team of observers with college training in the physical sciences, including a large array of equipment: RF spectrum analyzers, Questar telescopes, low-high frequency audio detectors, electromagnetic frequency analyzer, cameras, and a galvanometer to measure variations in the Earth’s gravitational field. 

The resulting Project Identification commenced in April 1973, logging several hundred hours of observation time. This was the first UFO scientific field study, able to monitor the phenomena in real-time, enabling Rutledge to calculate the objects’ actual velocity, course, position, distance, and size.

Observation of the unclouded night sky often revealed “pseudostars” – stationary lights camouflaged by familiar constellations. Some objects appeared to mimic the appearance of known aircraft; others violated the laws of physics. The most startling discovery was that on at least 32 recorded occasions, the movement of the lights synchronized with actions of the observers. They appeared to respond to a light being switched on and off, and to verbal or radio messages. The final results of this project were documented in the 1981 book, Project Identification: The first Scientific Study of UFO Phenomena.

Harley Rutledge, 80, former chairman of the physics department at Southeast Missouri State University, died on Monday, June 5, 2006 at the Missouri Veterans Home.

What did he see? What did he discover? To find out, one has to travel back in time to 1973 and those reports coming from a small rural Missouri town, Piedmont.

The Incident (as reported) Southeastern Missouri seems an unlikely place for something so out of the ordinary. In a heavily-forested section of Wayne County between two giant man-made lakes in the eastern Ozarks, Clearwater and Wappapello, the Brushy Creek area encompasses Piedmont (population 1500) to the north and Mill Spring (population 225) to the south. The region is rich in both natural beauty and lead deposits but is not known for much else. Certainly its friendly but skeptical inhabitants were unprepared for a UFO invasion or the international attention following in its wake.

High school basketball coach Bone was no believer in UFOs -- at least not before the night of February 21 when with two team managers and three of his players he was returning home along U.S. Highway 60 near Ellsinore, Mo., about 20 miles south of Piedmont. They were in poor spirits after losing a crucial tournament game by seven points and were rehashing their defeat. Suddenly Bone, who was driving, noticed a "bright shaft of light beaming down out of the sky."

A few miles later as the car passed through the Brushy Creek area, player Randal Holmes noticed something else. "Look!" he shouted. "There's that thing we saw back on Highway 60!" Bone pulled over to the side of the road and the six piled out.

It looked like it was about 200 yards off the road hovering over an open field," Bone said later. (Investigators from the International UFO Bureau (IUFOB) of Oklahoma City later estimated the object probably was about 400 feet above the ground.) "it was impossible to determine the size or shape because of the darkness. Anyway, we saw four lights that looked like portholes: red, green, amber and white. We figured they were about three or four feet apart, all in a row."

"We just stood there and watched it for about 10 minutes," Cary Barks, another witness, added. "Then all of a sudden the lights went directly up in the air with absolutely no noise and just disappeared over a hill.

Half an hour later Mrs. Edith Boatwright of nearby Mill Spring saw the same or a similar object flying low near her farmhouse. "It was about 10:00 P.M.," she told FATE. "I was lying on my bed -- I wasn't asleep -- when I saw a flashing light. We live close by the highway so I thought something had happened on the road. I got out of bed quickly and looked over the lower part of the curtain and I could see very plainly a craft just clearing the utility wires. It was in a horizontal position. I think there were people in it. I could see objects inside but could not make out any form of a person. It made a very quiet noise like a whoosh slowly and evenly. When it changed into a vertical position, it made a louder noise, like a quiet motor pulling.

"It didn't have any chopper blades on top like a helicopter, just some rotary-like blades in front where an umbrella-like part extended up. It was about 30 or more feet long -- very beautiful light-colored body with a darker tail. There were no lights on in our house at the time. I watched it for about one or two minutes. It was about 200 or 250 yards from my window, flying below the oak treetops."

At first Mrs. Boatwright thought the object was "some kind of new nuclear-powered helicopter" but changed her mind in the next few days when she heard about the flood of UFO sightings. It is worth noting, however, that the "whooshing" sound Mrs. Boatwright reported was not heard by other southeastern Missouri UFO witnesses. Conceivably helicopter blades could have made that sound and IUFOB's Daniel Garcia who interviewed the witness believes it is at least possible that the object was a military aircraft dispatched to the area to look for Bone's UFO. Arguing against this idea is the fact that the craft as described by Mrs. Boatwright did not look like a helicopter.

Whatever the case, in the next two months the Boatwrights' farm was to play host to other UFOs including one that apparently landed on a hill behind the house. "We didn't try to go near it as we had company coming at the time," Mrs. Boatwright explains.

On February 22, the night after the original Bone-Boatwright sightings. Roy and Beth Burch and Mrs. Kathy Keith, driving in the Brushy Creek area, spotted an object "blinking green, white, amber and red." Burch tried to chase the UFO along the highway.

"Roy started speeding up to get a close look at it," Mrs. Keith said. "He was doing about 70 miles an hour but we still lost it. We got to the Creek area and there were some other Piedmont people standing on the road looking at it."

One of them, Bob Smith, had binoculars focused on the UFO but he could not make out any shape. The lights were visible for 10 minutes longer and then sank over a hill.

Four nights later, on the 26th, Pat Toney and Will Freeman watched a luminous object moving over the trees near the Tip Top Mountains. The UFO about 500 yards away "was solid with prongs on it," Miss Toney informed the IUFOB. "A red light was on it."

By far the great majority of sightings in the Piedmont-Brushy Creek-Mill Spring area were the kind UFOlogists call "nocturnal lights" -- brilliant flashing lights far enough away that witnesses cannot discern their source.

From February 21 into late April sightings occurred almost nightly. The Piedmont police received over 500 reports and IUFOB director Hayden Hewes told FATE he and his associates, who conducted a detailed investigation, interviewed 200 witnesses. Most of the sightings were fairly routine as UFO reports go and not very revealing. We will concentrate on the more unusual sightings.

Most residents saw the UFOs more than once. Even so, Earl Turnbough's experience was unique for he had three unusually vivid sightings of more than just lights. His first encounter took place around 9:00 P.M. about the first of March. Turnbough had just passed over a hill on Highway 49 when he spotted something "lit up like a circus" hovering over the road in front of him. The lights went out within seconds and presumably the object escaped in the darkness.

Two weeks later on March 14 as Turnbough drove through the same area in a thunderstorm he saw an amber light hovering 30 feet above a field less than 200 yards from him.

"I slowed down and watched for five or 10 minutes," Turnbough said. "When the lightning flashed I could see a dome-shape with sort of an antenna at the top. This amber light was shining from the antenna. All the other lights were off. I would say the thing was between 15 and 20 feet in diameter. It wasn't making any noise at all."

He saw a UFO for the third time a week later. "I was feeding cattle at the farm just about dark and I saw this thing come down over Brushy Creek," he explained. "It was about a thousand feet in the air and shaped like a top. I couldn't tell if it was rotating or if the lights were just flashing. The lights were yellow, green and red. They could've been portholes for all I know. The object sailed over the farm and didn't make a sound."

March 14, the same night as Turnbough's second sighting, Mrs. Maude Jefferis, a photography teacher at Piedmont's Clearwater High School, took a series of pictures of "a small reddish ball" high in the air. She spotted the object around 11 o'clock and mounting a Crown Graphic 4x5 camera on a tripod, she took a 10-minute time exposure which unfortunately shows little more than a dot in the night sky.

"As a professional photographer," she said, "I cannot explain the object. It is not a lens flare or light reflection."

Mrs. Jefferis is referring to a theory proposed by Dr. J. Allen Hynek of Northwestern Univer- sity, former U. S. Air Force UFO consultant, who arrived in Piedmont on March 31, talked briefly with eight persons and left 24 hours later. Hynek's suggested explanation also has been disputed by photographic experts at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who say that a lens flare would be widespread over the entire negative rather than a small speck. They further point out that the lens in Mrs. Jefferis' camera is coated to prevent flares.

That same evening Carl Laxton saw an object shaped, he told IUFOB, "like a barrel with protrusions like arms sticking out of it . . .

"The only way I could see the shape of this thing was when the object seemed to tilt; a brilliant white light appeared to go behind it. The object was tilting from a vertical to a horizontal position and then back to a vertical position again. Then it moved straight up and disappeared into the night sky."

Seven days later, on March 21, Mrs. Jean Coleman and Mrs. Cathy Leach were crossing the Clearwater Dam about 9:00 P.M. when they saw an object rise out of the lake. Theirs is one of the most spectacular sightings reported.

They were first alerted by a "red flash" on the lake. Stopping their car, they got out to see blinking lights ascending. Each time a red light flashed, the object got brighter.

"We could see it climbing," Mrs. Coleman said. "It looked like the lights were red, white and yellow. There was no sound. We tried to make out the shape but each time the lights went out we could see nothing . . . We watched it for four or live minutes until it circled out of sight."

Ken Johnson, owner of the Piedmont Boat Dock, confirmed the women's story. Shortly be- fore they saw the UFO leaving the water, unnamed campers told Johnson they had seen a "bright light moving right under the surface of the lake." These latter "aimed a flashlight beam at the traveling light and it went out immediately."

Later in March two divers from the East Side Divers Supply Company of Granite City, Ill., made three attempts to explore the lake for evidence of the underwater UFO. Unfortunately, unusually heavy spring rainfall (seven inches in March) had raised the water level 30 feet above normal. The lake was extremely murky and the divers found nothing in its depths.

Grand Tower, Ill., on the Illinois-Missouri border, is almost 60 miles northeast of Piedmont but the UFO Oscar Wills sighted the evening of March 22 sounds very much like those from Brushy Creek.

Wills, an operating engineer at the Central Illinois Public Service Company's power generating station on the Mississippi one and a half miles from Grand Tower, first saw the object when fellow-employee, Willis Hughes called from his home to say something was hovering over the transformer yard.

"I went out by myself to take a look," Wills recounted in an interview with FATE, "and there it was, hovering about 1500 feet in the air and about 200 yards from me.

"It was a round saucer-shaped object about 25 to 30 feet in diameter. It looked like a high-intensity red light with a lot of lights coming out of what seemed to be portholes. The lights were flashing and causing a spinning effect. I couldn't see any image of its bottom, which may have been concave, I'm not sure. I kept walking and got to within 100 yards of it. I looked at it for two or three minutes until it darted behind the power plant almost like a blur. I went north of the power plant to see where it had gone and found it hovering over a water intake pump on the other side of the station. I stood there for a couple of minutes and watched it."

Wills' vigil was interrupted by a phone call from another employee (not Hughes) who wanted to know what was going on. By the time Wills got off the phone and enlisted two other men to go outside with him the UFO was gone.

Wills then called Hughes who informed him the object had flown across the river and disappeared into the Missouri hills. Within minutes, however, Wills and his crew saw four jet planes making passes over the plant area as if searching.

"The most amazing part," Wills says, " is the way this object moved rapidly with no effort and perfectly silently. I just can't get over that. I don't know what it was but I know this much: we don't have anything like this. "

Wills claimed that a nearly identical object appeared over Grand Tower nearly a month later, on the evening of April 16.

On the night of Wills' first encounter, March 22, back in Piedmont newsman Dennis Kenney of local radio station KPWB saw "a big orange light, glowing from white to orange. it appeared to just go out and then would come back on." Gary Sutton, who was with him, snapped eight pictures of it with a 35mm Petri camera loaded with black-and-white infrared film. These photographs show a ball-shaped object with a bright glowing band across its midsection. This sighting took place at 7:30 P.M.

Three hours earlier, at 4:30, a UFO had made a rare daytime appearance. Joe King of Mill Spring and Ron Miller of Piedmont, both students at Southeast Missouri State University (Cape Girardeau), were traveling along Highway 34 near Patterson (eight miles east of Piedmont) when they noticed an oval-shaped object above the nearby treetops. The UFO, "metallic" in appearance, flat on the bottom with a dome on the top, was moving rapidly and leaving no vapor trail.

The following evening, Friday, March 23, Leonard Adams and his 13-year-old daughter Alma of Piedmont encountered a "high-intensity, bright white light" at 7:10.

"It blinked on and off," Alma recounted, "and every time it blinked it shot up 10 feet. When it got about 300 to 500 feet in the air red and green lights came on and then the object flew horizontally.

"Actually the red and green lights were very dull in comparison with the white light, which was so intense that our eyes couldn't adjust to it. The light was almost blinding. The farther away the object got, the better you could see the other lights."

The UFO passed over radio station KPWB, which was not on the air at the time. The next morning the station was unable to sign on because one of its transformers had blown out. Hayden Hewes of IUFOB believes the Adamses' UFO may. have had something to do with the malfunction but the station's news director Dennis Hovis, who has conducted his own exhaustive probe into the Brushy Creek flap, disagrees. "It could have been from any number of causes," he says.

FATE could not confirm any reports of so-called electromagnetic effects but Hovis assured us that some local residents told him of radio and television interference when a UFO was close by. "These people say that when the TV starts rolling and reception gets bad, they can go outside and see a flying object," Hovis says, adding that some witnesses have heard sounds from the objects -- "a sort of high-speed drilling sound."

Among other reports Hovis has collected is one from a Patterson farm family who heard a high-pitched drilling sound which began around 10 o'clock in the evening all during April. Sometimes it was so loud it shook their house. Too frightened to go outside, they had not, at the time of this writing, discovered its cause. Hovis refuses to release their names to us, explaining that the family in question gave the story to him in confidence.

The single most important UFO sighting occurred on April 3 in the daylight. It involved a landing of sorts and provided some physical evidence.

Mrs. Raymond Stucker of Ellsinore traveling down Highway 60 at about noon "saw this thing in the air off to the side of the road," she told IUFOB investigators. ". . . It looked like something I never saw before. It was round, with the exception of a dome on top . . . three . . . one on top of the other. (*Hewes explains that this means the object had three Pyramiding domes on top, each one smaller than the one below It.) It appeared to have a dull band or something going around the center. The bottom had something like a tripod landing gear.

"The object was hovering just above treetop level off to the right of the road . . . There is a possibility that it came up from the ground and stopped right above the trees."

She said the UFO was silent and appeared to be made of aluminum.

Two days later Mrs. Stucker led IUFOB officials to the area where they found trees in a 35- foot circle turned counter-clockwise with some of their tips broken off. Geiger counters failed to pick up any unusual radiation but they found a mysterious "ash" near the tops of the trees although there was no evidence the trees had burned.

On Friday, April 13, newsman Hovis and a physicist from Southeast Missouri State University (who has asked not to be identified) made four sightings in the space of three and a half hours. The skeptical scientist had come from Cape Girardeau to see the UFOs for himself and he was not disappointed.

Hovis and the physicist had set up a telescope with a degree-finder on the side in an area near Black River seven miles south-east of Piedmont. At 7:18 P.M. the men saw what Hovis calls a "a light -- no visible body or object attached to it -- white in color with some yellow." It was moving from north to south at a 10-degree angle off the horizon. The unnamed physicist speculated it might be a satellite.

At 7:28 a similar iight appeared, moving in the same direction, five degrees off the horizon.

This time the scientist suggested that the booster had followed the satellite into orbit.

But by 9:30 when the third object cruised across the sky the man's faith in satellites was shaken. This object was traveling south to north, 10 degrees off the horizon and for a brief period it flew toward the witnesses before resuming its northbound course. A fourth UFO, heading from north to south at 10 degrees off the horizon, passed by at 10:45, leaving behind a deeply perplexed scientist.

While no one has reported seeing UFO occupants Reggie Bone does have a strange story to relate of something he, his wife and two other couples saw around Christmastime in 1971 when they were driving down a little-traveled road in a deserted section of the Brushy Creek area. The time was about 2:00 A.M.

"Suddenly," Bone says, "we saw this fellow walking up the road toward us in a frogman's outfit. He was wearing flippers or something resembling them on his feet and he was carrying something in his hands.

"We couldn't see very well -- visibility was poor -- so we couldn't see his face but his body was completely covered. The suit didn't look wet. Black River is about a quarter-mile away from the road but it's rather inaccessible from the point where we ran into this figure.

"The temperature was well below freezing and I don't know of anyone who lives in that area. We were so taken aback that nobody even said anything for several miles. Finally somebody asked, 'Did you see that?' "

Bone, with Hovis, has carefully studied the local UFO situation and does not necessarily connect the figure with the mysterious aerial phenomena but he does admit that the recent sightings recalled the earlier incident to his mind. He says he and Hovis found that UFOs have been seen regularly in the more remote sections of Brushy Creek since 1967.

To the UFOlogist, Bone's 1971 encounter is reminiscent of numerous landing reports that include beings dressed in what witnesses almost invariably describe as "diving suits." A more mundane explanation for this incident may exist but the story deserves being recorded here for whatever it may be worth.

Dennis Hovis offers the only possible commentary on Brushy Creek's flying saucer onslaught: "I don't know what we're seeing but I do know we're seeing something. It's not swamp gas and it's not satellites either. On the other hand, I can't say they're aliens -- I'm just a newsman, not a scientist.

"All I'll say is this, this is some kind of aerial phenomenon. It's simply unexplainable. From the reading I've done lately, I guess that these things always have been around and no one anywhere has ever been able to explain them. "