0310 - Reservoirs & UFOs
Embedded Files
0310C-1966 - Lakes - USA - New Jersey - Wanaque Reservoir
0310C-1966 - Lakes - USA - New Jersey - Wanaque Reservoir
January 11, 1966 started like any other mid-winter day in the small suburban town of Wanaque, NJ. The air was clear and cold, kids were enjoying the holiday vacation from school, and residents of the Passaic County borough went about their usual daily routines. Little did they know that before the day was over something would happen, something fantastic and unexplainable, that would change the lives of many of the townsfolk forever. It all started in the early evening of that Tuesday night. It was about 6:30pm, and the winter sun was already long gone over the western horizon, past the great Wanaque reservoir, and behind the darkened Ramapo mountain range. Wanaque Patrolman Joseph Cisco was in his cruiser when a call from the Pompton Lakes dispatcher came over his police radio. It was a report of a “glowing light, possibly a fire.” Then as if right out of a sci-fi movie Cisco heard the words: “People in Oakland, Ringwood, Paterson, Totowa, and Butler claim there’s a flying saucer over the Wanaque.”
“I pulled into the sandpit, an open area to get my bearings,” Cisco recalls. “There was a light that looked bigger than any of the stars, about the size of a softball or volleyball. It was a pulsating, white, stationary light changing to red. It stayed in the air; there was no noise. I was trying to figure out what it was.”
Wanaque Mayor Harry T. Wolfe, Councilmen Warren Hagstrom and Arthur Barton, and the Mayor’s 14-year-old son Billy were on their way to oversee the burning of the borough’s Christmas trees, when they heard the reports that something “very white, very bright, and much bigger than a star” was hovering over the Wanaque Reservoir. They decided to pull into a sandpit near the Raymond Dam at the headworks to meet Officer Cisco and get a better look at the ‘thing.’ The Mayor’s son Billy spotted the object at once, flying low and gliding “oddly” over the vast frozen lake “like a huge star.” “But it didn’t flicker,” Billy told reporters the next day. “It was just a continuous light that changed from white to red to green and back to white.”
“The phenomenon was terribly strange.” Mayor Wolfe would later recall. He described the shape of the unidentified object as oval, and estimated it to be between two and nine feet in diameter.
The next thing that officer Cisco remembers is his patrol car’s radio “going bananas,” as calls from all over a 20-mile radius flooded into the police headquarters. Cisco radioed Officer George Dykman, who was on patrol nearby. Just as Dykman received Cisco’s message, two teenagers came running up to his patrol car frantically pointing at the sky and shouting “Look, look!”
At that moment Wanaque Civil Defense Director Bentley Spencer drove up with CD member Richard Vrooman. “The Police radios are all jammed up!” Spencer said excitedly. Dykman and Spencer gaped at the sky along with Michael Sloat, 16, and Peter Melegrae, 15. “What the heck is it?” Dykman wondered out loud. “Never seen anything like it in my life.”
Back at the sandpit Joseph Cisco’s radio crackled as another unbelievable message came across the airwaves: “Something’s burning a hole in the ice! Something with a bright light on it, going up and down!” Then another transmission fought its way through the din: “Oh boy! Something just landed in front of the dam!”
Spencer and reservoir employee Fred Steines raced to the top of the 1,500-foot long Raymond Dam where they described seeing “a bolt of light shoot down, as if attracted to the water…like a beam emitted from a porthole.”
Patrolman Cisco, Mayor Wolfe and Town Councilmen Hagstrom and Barton climbed to the top of the dam to get a better look.
“There was something up there that was awful bright.” Hagstrom recalls. “We don’t know what it was. We thought it was a helicopter, but we didn’t hear a motor. It looked like a helicopter with big landing lights on. We got goose bumps all over when we saw where the hole was.”
According to John Shuttle, another Councilman who witnessed the UFO, there was no doubt about it: “It was there.” He said. “I saw it, a brilliant white object, two to three feet across, and its color – no, not color, shade – it kept changing.”
Curious residents who had been listening to their police scanners began to congregate around the entrance to the reservoir hoping to catch a glimpse of the mysterious flying object. Traffic slowed to a crawl and then stopped altogether as motorists watched agape from their vehicles’ windows. Reservoir Police Lt. George Destito was forced to close the main gate of the reservoir to keep out swarms of onlookers who converged from the north and south on Ringwood Avenue. “People were coming out of the woodwork.” Cisco recalls. He and the other town officials stood on top of the dam in the freezing January night air for a half an hour watching the strange light. Then, without warning, it sped off to the southeast. It hovered briefly over Lakeland Regional High School in the Midvale section of town, then reappeared over the Houdaille sandpit in Haskell, where volunteer firemen were burning Christmas trees. From there the UFO continued southeast in the direction of Pines Lakes in Wayne.
Before the sun came up the next day Joseph Cisco would see the bright light once more. At about 4am on the morning of January 12, he saw the object moving from north to south along the horizon over the town of Wyckoff. He and Wanaque Police Sgt. David Sisco would take turns looking at it through a pair of binoculars. The next day Cisco’s wife told him that she too had witnessed what see described as a “silver, cigar-shaped object moving south from their home, about 1,000 feet from the reservoir.”
January 12, 1966
One day after the initial sightings of the UFO, Patrolman Jack Wardlaw reported seeing a “bright white disk” floating in the vicinity of his home in the Stonetown section of Wanaque, just west of the reservoir. “It seemed like only a block away, above Lilly Mountain, maybe 1,000 feet up,” Wardlaw said. “Don’t ask me what it was. But I do know it wasn’t any helicopter, plane, or comet. It shot laterally right and left. It stopped. It moved up straight. And then it moved down and disappeared in the direction of Ringwood to the north.” Wardlaw described the object as “definitely disc-shaped and at certain angles, egg-shaped.”
Sgt. David Sisco said that he was on patrol at about 6:30 that evening when the UFO noiselessly hovered into view. “It glided, then streaked faster than a jet, “ he told reporters, “and when it rose, it went straight up.” Reservoir guard and former Wanaque policeman Charles Theodora and Sisco went to the top of the dam to take a look at the bright light. “We looked across the water and saw a cylinder shaped object,” Theodora remembers. “It was moving back and forth like a rocking chair motion. We were astonished.” A few minutes later the object shot straight up into the night sky, until it was indistinguishable from the other stars. Theodora said that he didn’t hear a sound while the light show was going on. “I didn’t believe in UFO’s, I thought they were a lot of bull. And then I saw it. It was a breathtaking sight; something I’ll never forget.” After the January 1966 sightings, radar was installed atop the reservoir dam.
October 10, 1966
Whatever it was that visited the skies over the Wanaque reservoir in January, reappeared for its most fantastic showing to date in October of that same year. The first reported sighting of it came shortly after 9pm on the evening of Monday the tenth, when Robert J. Gordon, of Pompton Lakes, and his wife Betty saw what they described as a single saucer-shaped object about the size of an automobile glowing with a white brilliance. “At first I thought it was a star,” Betty Gordon recalled, “but it seemed to be moving. It had a definite pattern. It would move to the left of the tower, and then move back directly over the tower. I’m quite sure it was not a star or planet.” Bob Gordon, an officer on the Pompton Lakes police force, called police headquarters and requested that a patrolman be dispatched to their home. Officer Lynn Wetback responded, but was told that the “saucer” was already gone. The Gordons, and their neighbor Lorraine Varga, who had also witnessed the UFO, told Wetback that the object was headed in the direction of Wanaque Reservoir. The officer radioed Wanaque police and notified Sgt. Ben Thompson, a six year veteran of night duty with the Wanaque Reservoir police department, who was driving his patrol car south along the reservoir at the time.
Thompson looked out of his car and to his astonishment saw the UFO heading right toward him. He pulled his cruiser over at Cooper’s Swamp, near the ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ stretch of Westbrook Road. “I saw the object coming at me.” He said. “There was an extremely bright light. It was a bright white light, bright like when a light bulb is about to blow. It was very low. It appeared to be about 75 feet over the mountain. That would be Windbeam Mountain. It was traveling very quickly and in a definite pattern; first right, then up and down, then repeating the pattern. Distances are deceiving, but it might have covered an area of a half a mile. It went straight over my head, stopped in mid-air and backed right up. It then started zig-zagging from left to right. It was doing tricks. Making acute angular turns instead of gradual curved ones. It looked as big as a parachute. I got out of my car and continued to watch it for almost five minutes. It was about 200 to 250 yards away. It was the shape of a basketball with the center scooped out and a football thrust through it. Sometimes the football appeared to be perpendicular to the basketball and sometimes standing up on end. There were two different gadgets. It didn’t make much noise, but as it was moving, it raised the water beneath it. I watched it maneuver, stirring up brush and water in the reservoir, it was about 150 feet up…I had difficulty seeing because the light was so bright it blinded me.”
At this point other motorists along Westbrook Road also began to notice the strange light hovering in the sky and slowed their cars to get a better look at it. Fearing a collision, Thompson went back to his patrol car to turn on the red dome light as a warning. “The instant it started to flash,” he remembers, “the object sped away over the reservoir and, without passing over the horizon, disappeared. After three or four minutes it went out, as if a light bulb had been turned out. It seemed as if it had gone right into the mountain. I was dumfounded. It was more than a little frightening.”
Back at the Wanaque Police station telephones were deluged with calls from nervous residents who called in sightings and asked for answers. “The switchboards were completely jammed.” Recalled an officer at the Wanaque Reservoir station. “So was Pompton Lakes. There must have been 150 calls.” Some witnesses may have their doubts about just what they say that night, but Ben Thompson is convinced he saw a UFO.
Denial and Cover-Up
Of course no report of a UFO sighting would be complete without the element of an official cover-up, either actual or perceived, by the U.S. government, and this case is no different. Shortly after midnight on the first night of sightings over Wanaque, word came from Stewart Air Force Base in Newburg, NY, that an Air Force helicopter with a powerful beacon had been on a mission over the area at about the same time the UFO was spotted. At 6:15am the following morning however, an official spokesman for Stewart AFB, Major Donald Sherman, denied any such aircraft had been on any such mission that night, and that the helicopter ‘explanation’ had been without foundation. The next day the Pentagon said that the mystery object was indeed a helicopter with a powerful beacon.
McGuire Air Force Base in Wrightstown said that the object was a weather balloon, which had been launched from Kennedy International Airport. Shortly afterward the base called local police to tell them that their balloon explanation was a just lot of hot air.
Officials at Stewart Air Force Base and at McGuire denied any interest in the UFO. However, Wanaque Police reported seeing a pair of jets fly over the reservoir shortly after the UFO was first reported, and Patrolman Joe Cisco said that he distinctly recalled seeing helicopters in the Wanaque skies that night.
Improbable Explanations
Thirteen years after the 1966 UFO sightings at he Wanaque Reservoir, the non-profit organization Vestigia, which was based in Byram, prepared a detailed study of the strange lights that were witnessed. Vestigia, an organization that seeks to provide plausible scientific explanations for unexplained phenomena, came to the conclusion that the glowing lights that were seen over the Wanaque by hundreds of people were the result of seismic pressure from the nearby Ramapo fault. According to Vestigia founder Robert Jones, the fault in the Earth’s crust creates an electrical energy field within the quartz bearing rocks underground. At times of extreme pressure this highly charged field will supposedly escape into the atmosphere. Jones asserts that under just the right climactic conditions air particles that are exposed to this energy field will ionize and the result is a glowing sphere of light. (It’s worth noting here that this is exactly the same rational that was offered by Vestigia to explain the Hookerman Lights, after their extensive research on the Chester/Flanders rail road tracks.)
Vestigia’s theories however, did little to dissuade eyewitnesses from their belief that what they had seen was indeed a UFO. Wanaque officers Jack Wardlaw and Chuck Theorora rejected the Army’s initial explanations of the mysterious lights as merely swamp gas, or a helicopter, and did likewise with Vestigia’s contention that the glowing orbs were caused by a seismic anomaly.
“I’ve ridden these streets at midnight for years,” Wardlaw said, “and I know a strange light when I see one. The Army tried to tell me it was marsh gas – that’s ridiculous! Then they said it was a helicopter. Well, if you can’t discern a helicopter or hear one you have to be pretty bad off.”
One week after Stewart AFB sent down its inexplicable explanation for the Wanaque sightings, the Pentagon offered its own scenario. What hundreds of people had witnessed in the skies over the reservoir that January, and described as a brilliant white light which floated, hovered, shot up, down and side to side, was in actuality, according to the great military minds of Washington, nothing more then the planets Venus and Jupiter in a rare celestial alignment.
Quotations in the preceding article were taken from reports of the Wanaque UFO sightings published in the Newark News, the Herald-News, the NY Times, the Star-Ledger, and the Record. Some quotes have been edited for the sake of continuity.
Vouching For Joe Cisco
I lived in Wanaque, right next to the reservoir, in the 1960s during the UFO sightings period. No one ever did find out what created the lights. I personally knew Joe Cisco the police chief at that time. He lived a block away from me at the time. He was always an honest, truthful, and a straightforward guy who told it like it is. I never got to see the lights, but many of my friends did. There WAS something out there. –DLC
A Skeptic Sees The Light in 1974
I grew up in North Jersey and am very familiar with the Wanaque area. I graduated from a local high school in 1969, spent 4 years in the US Navy, and then returned to live with my parents until my marriage in 1976. We remained in New Jersey until 1980 when a job transfer took us to the Midwest.
I served on an aircraft carrier and heavy cruiser during my time in the navy and consider myself to be familiar with most types of aircraft. I have seen various helicopters and high performance aircraft during day and night hours. I’ve kept up my interest in military and civil aircraft over the years and while I would not pass myself off as an expert, I do feel that I’ve seen more things in the sky than most folks.
I consider myself to be a skeptic on the question of UFO’s. I do not subscribe to any particular theory, but I do believe that many incidents are deserving of further study. In the case of the Wanaque sightings, which apparently have been going on for a long time, there may be some phenomena in the area which is of interest – although I’m not sure that it involves space aliens.
I personally saw one set of lights that you might find interesting. This incident occurred in 1974 during the winter months – I’d guess at January or February. It was about 10pm on a clear night. I was on a weekend pass from the military and was returning to my parent’s house from visiting my sister who lived directly west of the reservoir. My usual route to return to my parents’ house was to follow Westbrook Road east across the reservoir and then turn south on Ringwood Avenue. I was just east of Townsend Road when I observed a set of lights in the sky. The lights were very bright and appeared to be one large light in the center with a smaller light on either side.
The lights did not appear to be a “point source” – they definitely had a circular shape and a “hard” edge. The relationship of the lights to each other remained constant throughout the incident, which might indicate that there was a solid object behind the illumination. The color was an intense blue-white. Probably the best way I can describe it would be similar to looking directly into the tail cone of a high performance jet like an F-4 Phantom with the afterburners lit off.
I observed the “object” (for want of a better term) above the hills, which border the west side of the reservoir through the windshield of my car. The evening was very quiet and I could not hear any engine or helicopter blade noise, which would have been significant at what appeared to be the low altitude of the object.
In the mid-1960s a UFO terrified a small New Jersey town. On a clear and cold mid-winter night, the community was infiltrated and "beamed upon" by rays that shot downward from a brilliant and eerie object. Over the decades the event seems to have faded from view for reasons that remain very murky. There are those who are no doubt very happy about this. But a closer examination of the event today reveals it to be the most credible and exceptional "mass sighting" of a UFO anywhere in all of human history. The sheer number of highly credible individuals who reported the sighting astounds.
More significantly, the event was apparently photographed by the frightened. These extremely rare, little-seen images are controversial, and they are shown here.
Digging deeper, this author has found records indicating that the US Government was concerned about "imposter military men" that had infiltrated the community to suppress or dissuade them from reporting anything further on the incident. This may be another reason why this great mass UFO sighting is not so well known by the masses (or even many in the UFO research community).
Finally, this author has also located and contacted an original witness to the event. In retirement he reluctantly confirms that the object that he saw (and remembers well, even 45 years later) was not of Earth.
THE UFO THAT TERRIFIED A TOWN
On January 11, 1966 in Wanaque, New Jersey (located in Passaic County), a bizarre and disturbing event began to unfold over this town of less than ten thousand. Most of the activity centered around the Wanaque Dam and the community's key water resources. The event lasted about two and a half hours (6:20-8:58 PM) and it was seen by dozens of individuals. The police were flooded with incoming reports on the aerial object from around a 20 mile radius.
The UFO was reported as:
Very white but occasionally changing colors, including red, blue and green
Exceedingly bright and shining, but not flickering or twinkling
Much larger than any star, at times appearing to assume an irregular egg-shaped, fuzzy structure (and described by one witness as perhaps the size of about "10 bright stars clumped together")
Gliding "low and oddly" across the vast frozen and semi-frozen waters, seemingly in a deliberate "pattern" (described by some as a circular pattern and sometimes maneuvering side to side and up and down)
Flying as low as 250 feet above to as high as 1000 feet above witnesses
Moving at moderate to fast speeds in complete silence (with no sound of motor or engine) and occasionally hovering or floating for periods of time
Finally, zooming out of view at extreme speed after its "survey" of the area
But by far and away the most amazing and important feature reported about the UFO is this:
During the duration of the sighting, the object would periodically shoot large beams of light from a porthole, down towards the ice near the Wanaque Dam and the town's reservoir and water resource facilities. The beams would then create holes in the ice as if they were burning through the freeze of winter with precision and ease! How mere "light" could do this (unless it was a laser or unknown energetic technology) is not understood. Sgt. Ben Thompson (see list of witnesses below) reported the UFO's strange ability to suck together tree tops and to cause a rise in the reservoir's water level.
WHO SAW ALL OF THIS?
Scores and scores of people from the town said that they saw parts of the event or the entire episode. These people included the Mayor, several councilmen, numerous law enforcement personnel, the reservoir police and even a high-ranking Catholic nun.
This author has reviewed what little historical literature is available on the sighting. This includes a review of papers and other periodicals from 1966-1967 including: The New York Journal-American; the APRO Bulletin; NICAP Notes by Otto Binder, 1966; UFO Investigator Vol. III No. 6 (Jan-Feb 1966); and area NJ and Tri-State newspapers (i.e. Newark News and the Star Ledger). The list of key witnesses (included in brief interviews in newspapers at the time) are:
Mayor Harry T. Wolfe and his son Billy
Councilmen Warren Hagstrom, Arthur Barton and John Shuttle
Civil Defense Administrators Bentley Spencer and Richard Vrooman
Chief of Police Floyd Elson
Officer George Dyckman
Patrolman Joe Cisco
Sgt. Bobby Gordon (Pompton Lakes Police)
Sgts. Ben Thompson and David Sisco
Patrolmen Edward Nestor and Jack Wardlaw
Reservoir Police & Personnel George Destito, Charles Theodora, Fred Steines
The Mother Superior of a local convent
Other witnesses named in the press at the time include two teenagers (Sloat and Melegrae) and Newark College of Engineering student John DiGiamoco, as well as some of the wives and children of those listed above. It was reported that by night's end, the Police Department had received "dozens" of phone call reports of the object from different locations and vantage points from surrounding areas. The early reports had apparently instigated town officials to convene at the Dam to see the sight for themselves. Of course not everyone saw all of the more spectacular aspects of the incident, with some only reporting less impressive "anomalies" depending on when they arrived, from where they viewed.
WHAT THEY SAID
Key quotes about the event that I have found by combing through and culling reports from newspapers in the days following the event include:
Mayor Wolfe, who would characterize the whole thing by saying that "the phenomena was terribly strange."
Officer George Dyckman: "I've never seen anything like it in my life."
Reservoir employee Fred Steines stated: "A bolt of light shot down from it as if attracted to the water, like a beam emitted from a portal."
Councilman Warren Hagstrom: "We got goose bumps all over when we saw where the hole was."
Patrolman Joe Cisco (recorded on police radio): "Something landed in front of the dam. Something's burning a hole in the ice! Something with a bright light on it, going up and down!"
THE UFO THAT TERRIFIED THE TOWN - PHOTOGRAPHED?
The extraordinary and rare photograph featured at the top of this article is said to be an actual image taken of the Wanaque UFO. It appears to be emitting a downward beam of "structured" light.
The beam is large, dense and "engineered" (as shown in its extreme angularity). You can view an enlargement of the unenhanced UFO/beam photo here.
The light beam was said to have been "energetic" and could pierce or burn through the ice. Others saw the beam's reflection on the ice and only that it was somehow impacting its surface. None of those who photographed the Wanaque UFO and beams wished to have their names publicly identified. Some of the photographs found their way to the late UFO researcher August C. Roberts.
Over 45 years after the original event, this author has located an original witness to Wanaque found mentioned in early published reports. The witness (who prefers not to be publicly identified) replied it that though he is not 100% certain, the photos do appear "very similar" to what he saw as a young man those many years ago.
Given the sheer number of highly reputable people who saw this event, it is inconceivable that more photographs were not taken. It is perhaps as great a mystery as the UFO itself: How could an event witnessed by scores of people for over two hours not have resulted in far more captured images of the craft? This is particularly odd given that many of the witnesses were law enforcement officials on patrol. This author has reason to believe that many Wanaque UFO photos (and perhaps film) were suppressed or remain in private, nervous hands to this very day.
THE FEW OTHER PHOTOS THAT MADE IT OUT
Dell Publishing in New York City (now Bantam/Random House) received a series of five black and white photos after the Wanaque event from someone claiming that they were photos of the craft and beam seen there. The submitter wished no acknowledgement and did not seek any compensation. Dell published the photos and, accompanying them, a very brief article in its October 1967 publication, Flying Saucers UFO Reports No. 3 (mistakenly identified by many sources as issue No. 2, which contained a longer article and other photos about the January 1966 Wanaque sightings, but not the light beam UFO photos above).
The photograph of the UFO and beam featured at the beginning of this article appears to be possibly yet another photo of this Dell series, but not included in the Dell article. However, it appears very similar to the fifth photo appearing in the Dell article, but it also reveals more view and detail (including an "interaction" between the water and the bottom of the beam).
Series of five photos claimed to be taken at Wanaque,
published in Dell's Flying Saucers UFO Reports No. 3, Oct 1967
I am not aware of the location of the negatives (if they still exist), nor the identity of the photographer(s) who took these intriguing images. Though I cannot vouch for their authenticity, at least one of the witnesses contacted thought that there was a good similarity to what was seen at Wanaque (see interview below).
They could, however, be "fakes" made after the event to simulate what had happened at Wanaque. Or perhaps they are of a similar event.
Or perhaps even still, they are genuine. They were sent to private researcher August Roberts and to Dell anonymously. The photographer wanted to get them out, but perhaps feared potential retribution or unwanted attention. I intend on locating other known witnesses to see if they will corroborate the photos as possible images of what was really seen at Wanaque.
THE "MIB" INTIMIDATE WANAQUE WITNESSES
This author has learned that unknown men posing as military officials descended upon Wanaque in the period after the sighting to intimidate and dissuade talk about the UFO. And the source for this is the U.S. Pentagon itself! Found buried in the defunct civilian UFO research organization's publication APRO Bulletin (Jan-Feb 1967) is a detailing of these "MIB" visits:
'Men dressed in Air Force uniforms or bearing credentials from government agencies have been silencing witnesses, according to Colonel George P. Freeman, Pentagon spokesman for Project Bluebook. "We have checked a number of these cases", Colonel Freeman said, "and these men are not connected with the Air Force in any way." He cited a recent case in which the police officers and other witnesses at sightings in Wanaque, N. J., were allegedly collected together by a man wearing an Air Force uniform and told that they "hadn't seen anything" and shouldn't discuss the incident. "Whoever he was, he wasn't from the Air Force," Freeman stated.'
This helps to account for the lack of subsequent details or real investigation and the apparent absence of photographs of the event taken by those who would let their names be used.
THE SAME THING HAPPENS TWO HUNDRED MILES AWAY ON SAME DAY
According to a 1966 civilian UFO research organization, NICAP Report by John Pagano (found by this author), on January 11, 1966 at 7:45PM - on the very same day and at the very same time as the Wanaque, NJ sighting - another, similar sighting was taking place in Myerstown, PA, about two hundred miles from Wanaque. A nurse and others together in a car saw a luminous disc, resembling one saucer inverted on top of another, at relatively close range as it hovered above the car. After about five minutes, the object suddenly accelerated and sped away. The precise timing of the two sightings at the same time, the "luminosity" of the object, its being seen at close range and hovering - as well as its abrupt acceleration away - are all uncannily reminiscent of Wanaque.
THE SIGHTINGS CONTINUED
According to the November 1966 issue of UFO Investigator from civilian research organization NICAP, later in the year in Wanaque (on October 10, 1966 at 9:15 PM), police officers observed a spherical object with a protrusion on one side emitting an extremely bright blinding light that lit up the terrain (environmental illumination). The UFO hovered and moved around erratically at high speeds, making sharp turns and leaving a misty trail in its wake when it moved. Even in the intervening decades, Wanaque has had other similar aerial anomalies involving very brightly lit objects, including one that was reportedly filmed in 1992.
On October 15 1966, less than a week after the second Wanaque sighting, Police Chief John Casazza with the Reservoir Force said that he and his friend Bob Dexter witnessed a strange sight in the air at about 10:40 at night behind some hills on the dam. According to an interview he conducted with early researcher Lloyd Mallan, he said, "it was shaped like an ellipse, but was flatter on the bottom and more roundish at the top. In length, it appeared three times larger than the Moon. It gave off kind of a light. White light. It was not flashing or blinking." Casazza send the craft was noiseless and moved slowly and then very fast out of view.
A WITNESS SPEAKS TODAY
This author located and spoke with a first-hand witness to the event who was a young Wanaque man in 1966 who was mentioned in the news at the time. This witness, not wishing disruption or re-involvement four and a half decades hence, agreed to talk on the condition of anonymity. Excerpts of what he recently said to me are telling:
"I remember the thing very well. I still do not know what it was. I think about it from time to time, but it's no use because it doesn't bring me any closer to knowing what it was."
"Maybe things that aren't from here aren't meant to be understood by us here." He added, "Ask anyone who will tell you, it was not a helicopter or something astronomical. It was...not...from our military or something we misidentified. It was a UFO, from somewhere else."
"The beams or ray thing that came out from the bottom of the glob (globe?) was the thing that got to me. It made the light cut the ice out. It frightened us kids. And I'm sure the adults. Because we don't have anything like that even today."
"The adults didn't really speak much about it after the initial thing that I could tell. I'd talk about it with my friends some time later and one of them told me that people came around to not say anything."
(On the alleged photo of the Wanaque UFO and beam, which I emailed to the witness):
"I am not 100% ... I saw it from a different perspective. And not that close up or with a camera lens. But it is very similar to certain times when I saw it. The beam or huge ray, it kind of changed shape and the main body had a haze. Now that you are mentioning it, I have always wondered why none of the adults there, like the police, released any photos. They had to have had them taken. And the Reservoir police had cameras too. It went on for so long, people could have gone and come back to get one."
Perhaps additional witnesses will be found to help clarify the mysterious night all those years ago. Maybe they can recall if these images remind them of what they saw.
MILITARY DENIALS AND EXPLANATIONS OFFERED
Though the US military denied having knowledge of the Wanaque affair, this is directly contradicted by Sgt. Bobby Gordon of the Pompton Lakes Police Force, who was an eyewitness. About 15 minutes after the "main event" and the craft had left, Gordon said, he saw the abrupt and mysterious appearance of seven helicopters and 10 or so high-performance jets over the Wanaque Reservoir. Gordon believes that these overflights were not coincidental to the sightings of the strange UFO. Gordon said that he did not report this to the Air Force as he said "I had enough aggravation on my job, so that I don't have to go outside to get it."
1960s UFO researcher Lloyd Mallan conducted a private investigation of the incident. He called a number of officials to see if they would lay claim to the overflight of US aircraft in the wake of the Wanaque sighting. The US Navy, FAA, US Coast Guard, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and other Air Bases all denied knowledge of any such flights. Mallan believed that the military scrambled to investigate and to learn more about a craft that was not their own.
And some people of skeptical inclination have offered up several ill-conceived and far-reaching "answers" or solutions to the true nature of the Wanaque sightings. Though few if any proffer a hoax explanation, some have said it was:
A Balloon: McGuire AFB in Wrightstown speculated it was a weather balloon that traveled from Kennedy International Airport, which the Pentagon initially agreed with. Later McGuire said it was not and the Pentagon offered a new explanation:
Venus and Jupiter: The Pentagon later offered that these planets were in alignment creating a strange effect.
Helicopters or other Aircraft: Stewart AFB in Newburgh, NY said it was a helicopter with a powerful beacon on a night mission. They later "soft-pedaled" on this explanation, likely realizing all of the other conflicting "real reasons" given for the sighting by other officials.
Ball Lightning: "Ball lightning" was offered as an explanation to Wanaque when the question was posed to arch-skeptic Phil Klass by a researcher. But ball lightning is a very rare form of lightning. It can appear white, spherical and luminous and even pierce window pane. However, the duration of the phenomenon is typically no longer that two minutes - not two hours like the sighting at Wanaque. And ball lighting forms are typically no more than eight inches. At the extreme outset they have been seen briefly at a meter or so in diameter - but not several feet in diameter, as at Wanaque. And the craft at Wanaque remained "formed" with fuzzy "structure", whereas ball lighting rather quickly "peters out" into nothingness. And ball lightning cannot float, dart, travel in circles and up and down in a pattern. Lastly, ball lightning cannot shoot sharp beams out of itself, emitting beam-like structures. As a 10 year old boy, this author experienced ball lightning. My mother was on one side of the living room and I on the other. A terrific summer storm was raging. Then, out of nowhere, an "energy ball" of light about the size of a small fist pierced through our picture window and streaked in an instant to a light socket, which sparked and burned. No way was this like Wanaque.
Every single witness ever contacted disagrees with all of these "explanations". All say that none in any way account for what was viewed at relatively close range for a long time. They insist that it was not a man-made craft (it was silent and blinding, making impossible maneuvers) or a celestial body (though it was the size of "10 stars"), nor was it ball lightning (it shot from its underside strange, large and powerful light beams).
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MASS SIGHTING AT WANAQUE
We have learned many things about Wanaque:
One truth is that there was very little meaningful investigation done at the time about this astounding aerial encounter. Project Blue Book and the Air Force did nothing substantial, if at all. Military or intelligence did not make contact with witnesses to conduct in-depth interviews and to perform on-site investigations (at least that we know of). No one was officially dispatched to technically evaluate the UFO beam's impact on the ice. No water samples were taken, no deep-freeze divers were ordered down, and no radiation testing was conducted. Indeed the only people who seemed interested were media, and then only briefly. And it was largely local coverage with limited follow-up and no real independent investigative reporting. It even had limited mention in the UFO press. It gets no mention at all in most all of the major UFO encyclopedias today for instance.
Wanaque River and Raymond Dam today
The other truth learned is that very large numbers of very credible people reported very identical things at the very same time. None of them have ever gained or sought any fame or reward for telling their piece of what they know.
And what else is known is that pictures that must have been taken were never made openly public. Those that may have, as show here, unfortunately have no provenance. Others may have been suppressed or confiscated. The reason that this is so (and why even today many are reticent to discuss the event in detail) is that some in the community were intimidated by real or imposter military authorities who warned them not to say much.
Finally we learn that the craft that visited and brought rays down upon Wanaque was not military, nor any type of craft made by people, and not a stellar or atmospheric aberration. It hovered and maneuvered silently at will in a deliberate pattern. It was intelligently controlled. It blinded with its intense white and colored lights. It was amorphous, changing fuzzily from structure to energetic glob. It shot forth with precision some form of unusual light energy capable of piercing and carving winter ice. It entranced those who saw it. And then it left in a near instant. It was out of everyone's vision. But it would forever emblazon everyone's mind with the sight of the unearthly.
Indeed this "weirdness at Wanaque" was so alien that one can only conclude that it was just that...Alien.
Source: https://www.ufoexplorations.com/witness-to-wanaque-great-mass-ufo
50 Years Later, Wanaque Reservoir UFO Photographer Identified
A once-anonymous photographer who 50 years ago snapped a shot of what observers called a UFO over the Wanaque Reservoir has been identified. “Claude Coutant was the name of the individual who took at least five photos of the Wanaque Reservoir craft in late December 1966, including the ‘beam’ shot,” Anthony Bragalia reports on UFOExplorations.com.
Bragalia said he got previously-unreleased images taken by Coutant, along with his identity, from a woman who once worked for the Star-Ledger – who said she got it from a woman who’d been engaged to the 46-year-old factory worker. Coutant, who worked for a rubber mill in Butler, died in 1986, Bragalia wrote. Other sightings had been reported in the months leading up to the photo, the story says.
Claude Coutant
“The strangest part is that there was no noise attached to this object. None whatsoever. It was absolutely silent,” then-Wanaque Reservoir Police Chief John Casazza was quoted as saying at the time. “It was a bright white light. It was funnel-shaped. It seemed to come out of some object, like a funnel,” Casazza reportedly said. “In other words, it spread out as if it were focused through a telescope. It was narrow at one end in the sky and spread out into a very wide beam at it approached our upper gate house at the Dam.” The photo shows a beam stopping before hitting the water and a cube-like area beneath the surface.
References:
Witness to Wanaque: The Greatest Mass UFO Sighting Never Told
Returning to Wanaque: The Greatest Mass UFO Sighting in History
0310C-1974 - Lakes - France - Barrage de Rouze
0310C-1974 - Lakes - France - Barrage de Rouze
Ville: Barrage de Rouze
Département: 09
Région ou Pays: Midi pyrénée
Date: 10/08/1974
Heure du début de l'observation: 2h00
Durée de l'observation: 30minutes environ
Conditions météo: ciel clair
Nombre de témoins: 2
Type de phénomène: Un phénomène insolite
Signalement officiel: Non
Récit complet de l'observation:
Bonjour,
Tout d'abord je dois vous informer que je sais ce que nous avons vue cette nuit la et les détails à fournir pour compléter le formulaire ont bien du mal à répondre à notre expérience de cette nuit la.
j'en viens au fait. Il devais être vers deux heures du matin en ce mois d'aout 1975, nous étions mon amie et moi stationnés dans la voiture sur la petite route qui contourne le baragge de rouze (09) la nuit était chaude le ciel clair pas de pollution électrique. tout en parlant à mon amie je lui dis :" tiens la lune se couche" et effectivement derrière la petite colline qui ce trouve de l'autre coté du barrage à environ 4à 500 métres à vol d'oiseau nous voyons descendre à la verticale ce qui nous à semblé être la lune. Mais au bout de quelques secondes de part et d'autre de notre "lune" deux autres sphéres descendent lentement se posent (?) en éclairant d'une lumière orange le sommet de la colline.
Nous nous mettons donc à regarder cette étrange lueur pendant un bon moment et nous pensons avoir les yeux fatigués car nous voyons des escarbilles de lumières qui montent et descendent dans cette lueur comme si l'on faisait de la soudure à l'arc. En prenant des points de repères nous nous endons compte que nous voyons tous les deux la même chose au même endroit et même moment.
je décide donc de quitter la voiture pour aller voir de plus près l'étrange phénomène (sachant que des années avant j'avais fais une rencontre proche avec un objet volant mais je ne retrouve plus le témoignage sur ce site !). mon amie qui commence à avoir peur me dit de resté dans la voiture et de ne pas aller la-bas.
La peur de ma vie.
quelques minutes ce passent encore quand une "escabille" plus grosse que les autres quitte le sommet de la colline et commence à descendre vers le barrage en zigzagant lentement au travers des champs un peu comme un chien de chasse. La boule de la taille environ d'un ballon de football commence à survoler le lac toujours en zigzagant mais sans émettre de rayon comme une lampe électrique par exemple.
D'un seul coup la boule accélère et vient ce coller contre la fenètre de ma passagère un peu plus groose qu'un ballon de foot orange vif et durant un instant nous avons l'impression que des yeux nous regardent.
Nom amie hurle et plante ses ongles dans mon bras en voyant cette chose à quelques centimètres de son visage une peur indescriptible nous envahie . Je démarre en trombe (pas de problème de voiture) en espérant que la chose ne me suive pas et je racompagne mon amie chez elle à quelques kilomètre de la.
Après avoir rassuré mon amie qui ne veut pas faire seule les quelques mètres pour rentrer chez elle. Je reprends la voiture et j'hésite dois-je retourner pour voir? Mais la peur est trop forte et je rentre chez moi .
Toute ma vie j'ai regretté de ne pas être retourné au barrage ce soir la, je ne suis jamais monté sur la colline pour trouver des traces ou preuves des événements de la nuit.
Je ne sais pas ce qu'il c'est passé cette nuit la près de ce petit barrage mais aux bout de 40 ans bientôt je ressent encore le même stress en écrivant ces lignes que j'écris pour la première fois.
Excusez-moi pour la longueur du témoignage mais j'ai essyé dêtre le plus précis possible
Description précise:
Taille du phénomène:
Comportement:
Tranjectoire: non - précisé
Bruit spécifique: non précisé
Direction de l'objet en fonction du vent: non précisé
Présence d’installations: non précisé
Photo semblable: non précisé
Tableau: non précisé
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