The Yakima Lights and flap of th 1970's

December of 1995 marks twenty-three years since the Toppenish Field Study was undertaken.  Bill Vogel and Allen Hynek have died. Many of the other people who contributed to it have moved on to new jobs, retired or died.  This publication is dedicated to Bill Vogel and others who helped to bring the Yakima manifestation to our attention.

Description of the Study of the Area

The area involved in this study consists of a rectangular section, about forty miles wide and seventy miles long (2,800 sq. miles), located in south central Washington state.  Almost all of the area is a part of the reservation of the Yakima Indian Nation. Approximately two-thirds of the reservation is closed to the public and special authorization is required to enter the area. 

Eastern borders of the study area are marked by the towns of Parker, Wapato, Toppenish, Granger and Mabton.  The western border is formed by the eastern slopes of the Cascade mountain Range, with Mount Adams (elevation 12,307 ft.) the dominating feature of the skyline.  The northern border of the area is marked by Ahtanum Ridge (4,5OO ft.).  Bickleton Ridge and the Simcoe Mountains (max. elevation 5,500 ft.) from the southern border.  Figure I is a map of the study area.

The eastern quarter (144,325 acres) of the region is used for agricultural purposes; the principal crops being sugar beets, hops, mint, asparagus, corn, peas, grain, alfalfa, cherries, peaches, apples and grapes.  This quarter is flat valley farmland.  The remaining portion of the eastern half or the valley is used for rangeland and consists mainly of dry, rolling hills. 

The western half of the study area is made up of heavily forested terrain, much of it primitive and inaccessible to normal ground transportation.  Timber from this region is a major source of income for the area.  Railroad tracks of the Burlington NorthernLine run along the eastern border of the reservation.  U.S. Highway 97 is the only major freeway in the area and, along with primary power transmission lines of the Bonneville Power Administration, cuts through the southeastern corner of the reservation. 

Secondary roads, many of them dirt or gravel, crisscross the reservation.  The town of White Swan, twenty miles due west of Toppenish, is the most western population center in the area and has about 300 inhabitants.  The closest areas of industrial significance are the nuclear research facilities at Hanford, 28 statute miles to the northeast, and the Yakima Firing Range, 14 statute miles to the north of Toppenish. Geology of the study area is interesting:  Marine fossils found in the area indicate that the entire valley might once have been a huge lake or inland sea.  Volcanic activity is still very much in evidence, especially in the vicinities of Mt. Adams and neighboring Mt. Rainier. 

History of UFO Phenomena in the Study Area

Activity recognizable as classical UFO phenomena has been present in the Toppenish area for more than eight years.  There is even some evidence to suggest that UFO reports are a part of Yakima Indian legends.  A detectable increase in activity has taken place in the last three years.  Reports have recently been made by law enforcement personnel from the Washington Stare Patrol, County Sheriff and reservation Law and Order department.  Formerly, fire lookouts had been the primary source of reports.  A majority of observations are made at night and consist mostly of the typical "nocturnal light" (NL) phenomenon described by Hynek(1). Primary characteristics of this particular phenomenon include:

1.  Generally bright light, larger than a point source. 

2.  Colors reported cover the entire spectrum, but most usually are yellow-orange. 

3.  Kinematics are not attributable to balloons, aircraft or other natural objects and often give the appearance of intelligent action.

The NL in the Toppenish study area have generally conformed to the above description.  The Toppenish manifestation does seem to differ slightly in that it is frequently observed on or near the ground.  Predominant colors range from brownish-orange to pure white.  Investigation of prior NL activity in the study area revealed that a few daytime observations have been made.  These daylight sightings are very rare and have ranged from "fuzzy" appearing "blobs" to well-defined, metallic colored, disk shaped objects of the classical "flying saucer" variety. There was also one ten year old report of a physical impression made in the ground by an UFO.

Description of Study Objectives and Methods

Preparations for the Toppenish project began in April of 1972, following a survey of the extent of activity in the area by Dr. J.A. Hynek.  It was determined at this time that the activity was of sufficient quality and regularity to justify placement of an observer equipped with instruments in the area during a period of expected peak activity.  The Yakima Tribal council and the Yakima Agency, Bureau of Indian Affairs, along with the Agency Forestry Division gave their full cooperation to the project and plans were made to conduct a field study during the month of August (a period of prior high sighting probability). A primary objective of the study was to determine the feasibility of "staking-out" a scientific observer in an area of high sighting probability, with the purpose in mind of obtaining hard data concerning UFO phenomena.

First priority was assigned to obtaining photographs, including spectrographs and position data.  It was felt that this information would be of greatest use as scientific information and the easiest to acquire, given the transient nature of the phenomenon under study.  Another priority was the acquisition of data relating to any magnetic effects which might arise from UFO activity. 

The investigative approach used involved setting-up portable observation points at selected locations in the study area for several days at a time.  This technique allowed the observer to become acquainted with normal activity in a given location and prepare him to detect any abnormal activity which might occur.  No concerted effort was made to "chase" the phenomenon around the reservation.  Instead, it was allowed to come to the observer.  The temporary observation points and instruments were manned during the times of greatest sighting probability, i.e., between sunset and sunrise.

Additional time, during the day, was spent gathering background data, such as previous sighting reports, geographical and other supportive information.  Accent was placed on flexibility of method, because of the large area to be covered and the elusiveness of the phenomenon under investigation.  The investigator's presence was purposely made as unobtrusive as possible to avoid interference with routine business on the reservation. 

Observation points were established at six points in the study area.  Three of these locations were adjacent to Satus, Signal Peak and Sopelia fire lookouts (Slide Nos. l, 2 and 3, respectively). The remaining observation points were positioned in the valley near White Swan.  All of the observation points are numbered on the map of Figure I.  (Satus, Signal Peak and Sopelia lookouts are numbered 5, 4 and 6, respectively.) 

The Tribal Forestry Division radio system was available for communication between the investigator and fire lookouts.  It was intended that such a communication link might provide a means of triangulating the position of a NL, should a sighting occur.  All transmissions were coded because of previous reports of apparent NL responses to radio messages concerning them.  When Possible, radio transmissions were avoided to keep from disturbing personnel who monitor the 110 unit radio network on a twenty-four hour basis during the fire season.

All observation points were accessible by means of roads. However, a sturdy car was required to traverse them.  The fire lookout locations afforded  excellent visibility to the investigator and were free from  interfering lights.  Valley observation points were often subject to interfering lights and haze, but afforded the best views of ridges where much of the NL activity had been previously reported.

The instruments used included two single lens reflex (SLR) cameras, a 16mm motion picture camera, a 35mm range finder camera, a compass spin detector, recording magnetometer, standard time receiver and tape recorder.  Other instruments for measuring nuclear radiation, infrared radiation, ultrasonic sound and frequency references were available, but not normally deployed.

One of the SLR cameras was fitted with a 500mm, f8 catadioptric design lens.  This camera/lens combination had a 5 degree field of view and served as the primary instrument for recording visible light data (Slide No. 4).

The motion picture camera was normally fitted with an 18-86mm, f2.7 zoom lens, but could be operated with the same 500mm lens used on the still camera. The second SLR camera was equipped with a 55mm lens and replica grating to permit recording of spectral data. (Slide No. 5, right).  These three cameras used Kodak High speed Ektachrome, Type B (EFB) film. EFB film was selected because of its high exposure index, good resolution characteristics and reasonable exposure latitude. It was also found that the "B" emulsion gave the best color balance under night exposure conditions.

The range finder camera (Slide No. 5, left) was loaded with black and white Kodak High Speed infrared film and equipped with a Wrattan 89B filter.  This camera could record radiation in the near-infrared spectrum (wavelengths 750 to 900 nanometers). 

The standard time receiver picked-up National Bureau of standards time signals and served as a time reference for measurements.  An electronic compass spin detector was also deployed during the observation periods.  Signals from both devices were fed into the tape recorder, along with the observer's commentary.  The latter instruments are shown in a typical field set-up in Slide No. 6.

An automatic recording magnetometer, designed and built by the San Diego section of the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization (APRO), was also used during the field study period.  This device required some initial setup, but afterwards was capable of unattended operation. Its primary features were high sensitivity to changes in magnetic flux, wide frequency response (to 1000 Hz) and the ability to detect rotational force vectors of possible paramagnetic nature.

Observations of NL Activity Made During the Study Period

A number of observations of apparent NL activity were made by this investigator during the field study period.  Many of them were recorded on film.  This section catalogs the sightings chronologically.  Slides which are applicable to the particular observation are referenced by number.  All time is recorded in Greenwich Mean Time, 24 hour format.  All dates are given at location.  Headings from observation points are magnetic (add 20 degrees for true headings).

_______________________________________________

Observation 1 

Date: 8-20-72

Observer Location:  Point 1 (Figure I)                   

Activity Location:  Point A (Figure I)

One luminous, round light was observed at 0415 on a bearing of 240 degrees  from the observer.  It was joined by another similar light at 0437.  They were at an elevation of 10-20  and well below the ridge of the hills.  Their apparent location was north of Hunt Creek and west of the Job corps camp, at an estimated distance of 19 statute miles.  Topography of the area is rugged, dry hills.

Sky at the time of the first observation was Partially overcast in cumulus, with openings to the south and overhead.  The moon was high in the sky and intermittently visible through the overcast.  Temperature was about 65 degrees F and surface wind was from the NW at between 0 and 5 mph during the observation period.

The two objects were apparently round, with a reddish-orange glow and no clearly defined outline.  The diffuse glow was evenly distributed over the surface of each object and no discontinuities were visible.  The light flickered noticeably, in much the same way as a flare might look when subjected to a strong wind.  The object would appear and disappear as if being switched "on" and "off". Color hue and saturation appeared to remain constant as the light flickered, but perceived size appeared to change.          

Movement of the objects was erratic and discontinuous.  They appeared to move independently, circling and changing places in relation to one another. The lights operated below the ridge of the hill at all times during the observation.  They were last seen at approximately 0510. Intensities gradually diminished and time between "on" cycles became longer until they were no longer visible.                

Four slides were obtained during the observation period.  The camera was stationary during the whole sequence.  Slide Nos. 7-10 were taken at 0437:48, 0438:16, 0439:35 and 0432:46, respectively. Exposure was ¬ second through the 500mm, f8 lens.  The film (EFB) was processed for its normal, ASA 125 rating.  Slide No. 11 is an enlargement of Slide No. 8.  Note the presence of two objects on this slide. The unusual kinematics and physical appearance of these objects strongly indicates that they did not arise from mundane causes, such as car or motorcycle lights. 

_______________________________________________

Observation II

Date: 8-21-72

Observer Location:  Point 2 (Figure I)                   

Activity Location:  Points B and C (Figure I) 

Equipment was set up in a field west of the intersection of Wesley and Branch Roads, northwest of White Swan.  This location was chosen in an attempt to get closer to the activity observed on the previous night.  At 0405, what appeared to be automobile taillights were seen moving on a heading of 20 degrees from the observation point (Point 8 of Figure I).  No headlights were visible.

The red lights appeared to be near the base of the hill, at an estimated distance of 5« miles.   (Note: There is a road in this area.) The tail lights stopped moving and, shortly thereafter, two luminous, amber "balls" came rapidly down from near the top of Ahthanum Ridge, circled around each other and approached the red lights.  All of the lights next went out, suddenly and simultaneously.  The whole observation lasted less than two minutes and no sounds were heard.

At 0512, two "vehicles" with red lights were observed moving rapidly up and down the hill side, approximately 10 degrees to the left of the first observation. Their distance was again about 5 miles from the observer. Each "vehicle" had what appeared to be an amber headlight which swept rapidly back and forth over the ground ahead of its path. The actual source of the "headlight" was never seen, regardless of whether the object was going up or down the hill.  Only the beam cast on the ground by this "headlight" and the red light were visible.  The objects appeared to move independently of each other and traversed the distance from near the base of the hill to the top of the ridge (approximately 900 ft. of elevation), at an angle of 60 degrees to horizontal in less than ten seconds.

Again, no sound was heard.  The objects disappeared from view about ten minutes later.  Weather was almost completely overcast with cumulus clouds,  Openings in the overcast could be seen to the northwest and southwest.  A thunderstorm was building to the southeast. Another object appeared on a bearing of 270 degrees at 0619 (Point C on Figure I).  It was a large brownish-orange ball, apparently positioned above Rattlesnake Ridge.  It might have been taken for a planet except for the fact that it was under the overcast. It appeared to flicker slightly and remained stationary. The object disappeared in the observer's field of vision, as if it were a light being turned-off.  Estimated time for this observation was five minutes.

_______________________________________________

Observation III 

Date:  8-22-72

Observation Location:  Point 3 (Figure I)                   

Activity Location:  Point D (Figure I) 

A luminous orange ball, similar to the one observed on 8-20-72 was seen at 0352 on a bearing of 250 degrees from the observation Point, This object appeared to be stationary and was near the base of the hill.  It blinked on and off several times.  Slide No. 12 was taken with a ¬ second exposure through the 500mm, f8 lens.  Again, EFB film was used and processed for normal ASA.  The top of the ridge is shown and a mercury vapor street lamp appears at the lower left of the frame. The unknown object is to the right.  Slide No. 13 is an enlargement of the mercury vapor light and object. (Note:  Chromatic aberration in this slide is a result of the copy process.) The light was closer in color to white than orange.  It was difficult to determine whether the object in this case was a motorcycle headlamp or "genuine" NL.  The source appears to be too bright and large for a motorcycle headlamp. 

_______________________________________________

Observation IV

Date:  8-24-72

Observer Location:  Point 5 (Figure I)  Satus Fire Lookout

Activity Location:  Point E (Figure I) Piscoe Meadow 

At 0510, the investigator and fire lookout spotted one (?) bright white light moving very rapidly through a wooded area southeast of Piscoe Meadow (bearing approximately 358 degrees true). Distance to the sighting area was about 18 miles. The light moved so fast that it gave the impression of a streak.  It would appear stationary for a moment, then, almost instantaneously, appear some distance away (typically 10 degrees of arc through 7x50 binoculars).  After another brief pause, it would dart back in the opposite direction.  When stationary, the object appeared through the binoculars as an intense pinpoint of white light. The sky was clear and the moon was rising, but there was considerable haze in the valley.  All car lights observed this evening had an orange cast.  The observation lasted about one minute and no photographs were obtained. A radio message from an observer in the valley was received at 0730.  He asked the fire lookout if the investigator was "up and around."  The lookout's reply was affirmative and the transmission was terminated.

The following day it was learned that the observer in the valley had spotted a tan or light orange, slow moving light from the freeway near the town of Parker (18 miles NE of the lookout). It moved slowly down the valley to the town of White Swan, turned and appeared to move directly over the Satus lookout.  It next turned and headed east, where it disappeared behind Toppenish Mountain. The person in the valley assumed that the observer at the fire lookout could not have missed the object and he did not want to make any direct mention of the object over the radio.

Nothing was seen from the observation point at Satus lookout before or after the radio message.  There was no reasonable way the light could have been missed by the investigator and the fire lookout.  Yet, nothing was seen.  The observer in the valley is known to be extremely reliable and there is no reason to doubt his word.  This "non-observation" rates very high on the strangeness scale. 

_______________________________________________

Observation V

Date:  8-26-72

Observer Location:  Point 5 (Figure I) Satus Fire Lookout

Activity Location:  Point F (Figure I) near Dry creek 

Intermittent lights were observed along the ridge southeast of Satus Lookout for much of the night.  They seemed to appear and disappear at random and were thought to have been lights from cars or campers.  sky was clear with bright moonlight.  Haze was moderate in the lower elevations. A 2.5 minute time exposure was taken of the area between 0845 and 0847 with the 500mm, f8 lens and EFB film.  Slide No. 14 is the result.  The two(?) lights appearing on the slide were not seen during exposure.  Note that the microwave antenna on the relay station also appears dimly in the left hand foreground of the picture.  Slide No. 15 is an enlargement of No. 14. 

The closest ridge from the point where the slide was taken is about 5« miles away.  Knowing the distance to the ridge and angle of view of the lens (5 degree), it should be possible to determine whether or not the light source was a car.  Further analysis of this slide is needed. 

_______________________________________________

Observation VI 

Date:  8-31-72

Observer Location:  Point 1 (Figure I)                   

Activity Location:  Point C (Figure I) At first observation 

A luminous ball, identical in color and kinematics to that observed on 8-20-72 was seen at 0518 on a bearing of 240 degrees from the observation point.  The object moved through an arc of about 10 to 15  in three minutes.  It appeared to follow the hills, about ll miles away, and was situated vertically about half of the way between the base and top of Ahtanum Ridge. 

Slide No. 16 is a 60 second time exposure made through the 500mm, f8 lens.  Slide No. 17 is an enlargement of No. 16.  Note how the object appears to move in "spurts" or flicker (there were no known obstructions between the object and camera during the exposure).

The object was seen briefly again by this investigator at 0739.  It was apparently on or near the side of the hill, directly below and in line with a microwave tower 8« miles due north of the observation point (Point G).  The object was clearly visible through binoculars and appeared as a sharply defined, brownish-orange disc.  It gave the impression of being flat and the ground near it could be seen illuminated by the glow.  The object disappeared by "turning-off" before the camera could be trained on it. The foregoing observations could not be accounted for in normal terms.  One additional observer verified the sighting. 

_______________________________________________

Summary 

The primary objective of demonstrating the feasibility of the "stake-out" technique of UFO field investigation appears to have been met during the study period.  Nocturnal light activity was observed and recorded on film.  Unfortunately, the closest activity was at a distance of about eight miles. The long working distance did not permit the acquisition of any physical data other than a few slides.  However, given the technical and position data available, it should be possible to arrive at a reasonable estimate of the size, light output and form of the objects observed.  It is in this area that primary effort is needed.

This investigator is satisfied that genuine NL activity has been and is still taking place on a more or less regular basis in the Toppenish area.  However, there was nothing in the nocturnal light observations made during the study which would suggest conclusively that the source of the activity is extra terrestrial. On the other hand, something very unusual is taking place. The problem warrants continued very careful and objective examination.

A few words should be said concerning the measurements -- or lack of measurements -- made during the study period:  One camera was responsible for all of the "hard" data obtained,  The only other camera capable of working at the distances involved was the 16mm camera/500mm lens combination.  It was discovered early, however, that the motion picture camera could not be aimed with the very dim light available.  The reason is that the reflex viewing system in the camera, utilizing a half-silvered prism, did not transmit enough light to the viewfinder.  (The camera has since been fitted with an auxiliary viewfinder.)               

All of the NL activity was too far away to permit spectrograms, because of the relatively short focal length lenses required by the replica grating.  Additional work is being done on spectrograph instrumentation which will allow working longer distances.

The use of the tape recorder for commentary and time logging was invaluable in determining the times at which photographs were made and recalling details of observations.  A great deal of information would have been lost without the time and recording equipment.

There were no abnormal magnetic disturbances sensed by instruments at any time during the study period.  The compass spin detector was deployed most of the time during observation periods and no anomalous compass deflections were sensed.  The recording magnetometer was used less than the compass spin detector, because of its extreme sensitivity to normal magnetic disturbances. The instrument appears to have potential, however, and a separate report dealing with the instrument will be forthcoming. 

In conclusion, a great deal in the line of hard, practical experience has been gained from this study.  It was learned what things would work - what would not.  Hopefully, the mistakes made during this initial study period can be avoided in the next. At any rate, study of the activity in the Toppenish area will continue indefinitely until some explanation for the phenomena there is obtained. All material collected during the study period, including the original slides, is available for inspection by any qualified investigator.  Questions, suggestions and comments will be welcomed. 

Footnotes

1.  Hynek, J. Allen, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, Henry Regnery Co., Chicago, l972 

Acknowledgements 

Many thanks to the following people for their help in making this study possible: Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Mr. Bill Vogel, Yakima Nation Tribal Council and Bureau of Indian Affairs,  Mr. Bill Nick and the National Enquirer, Yakima Agency Forestry Division personnel, especially the fire lookouts, Coral and Jim Lorenzen and APRO, Mr. Neil Davis and the San Diego chapter of APRO,  Dr. James Harder, Mr. John Lust, Jr., The people who wish to remain anonymous, but who supplied sighting reports as background for this study.

Appendix A

Summary of Reports for the portion of 1972 prior to the Field Study

_______________________________________________

1. Date: June 7, 1972 -- Between 9:30 and 12:30 am local time,

Activity location: South fork of Toppenish Canyon (7 miles from the observer)

Summary: Spherical shaped object going up and down, bouncing.  Had a bluish "metal-flake blue") sheen and was at least 30 to 40 feet across.  Disappeared with big flash of light arcing into air.  Weather was towering cumulus with 7% cloud cover.  Wind from SW at  5 mph (2:00 pm reading).  Visibility was 12 miles.  Cloud-to-cloud lightning observed after 2 pm.  Note: Pet dog reacted strangely, as if its ears were hurting, for approximately one hour on the evening following the observation.  Nothing was visible on the latter occasion.

_______________________________________________

2. Date: June 29, 1972 -- 10:20 pm local time

Activity location: Red Butte

Summary: Object sat for about 10 minutes.  "Kind of pear-shaped" with fairly  sharp outline.  About four minutes before it moved, yellow, red and green lights were observed.  The object was sitting motionless and then shot straight up to a high altitude.  Object next shot straight east.  Sharp angular motion and very high speed.  Weather was clear, with variable westerly wind.  Visibility was 17 miles.

_______________________________________________

3. Date: July 31, 1972 -- 9:05 pm local time

Activity location: South slope of Shinando Canyon

Summary: Baseball sized, very white light floating along just below tree top level.  No noise as object moved slowly from west to east.  Observer was above the tree tops in the canyon and above the object.  Distance to the object was less than one-half mile.

_______________________________________________

4. Date: August 2, 1972 -- 9:10 pm local time

Activity location: Yego Pasture

Summary: Big "blob" with no definite shape.  Observed for ten minutes before it shot straight up, made an  instantaneous turn and shot north,  Weather clear, NE wind.  Humidity 35 and lower, with 15 mile visibility, 

_______________________________________________

5. Date: August 3, 1972 -- between 10:00 and 11:15 pm  

Activity location:  NE of fire lookout (Satus)

Summary: Big, white, bright "thing", something like a cloud came and went.  It would appear dim, then become brighter and brighter, and then. "like something melting fast", disappear.  Angle of elevation was 300 and object was fairly close to lookout.  Bright streaks or rays came from the object and lighted up the interior of the lookout, making things inside visible,  The sky was dark above and below the object. Size of the object was estimated to be as large as the lookout (about 12x12x8 feet).  No moon was visible. 

_______________________________________________

6. Date:  August 11, 1972 -- 12:30 pm local time              

Activity location:  1000 to 2000 feet above observer

Summary: Hemispherical object with multicolored, stippled streamers observed below cloud cover.  Observed less than a minute and disappeared almost instantaneously into clouds.

_______________________________________________

7. Date:  August 15, 1972 -- 11:00 pm                  

Activity location:  T9, R19, Sec 22  26' (approximately)

Summary: Three bright lights on top of butte.  Described as pure white and very intense balls.  Observed for two hours.

Source: https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=9jueJQAAAEAJ

You can see the main area here. West of highway 12 the green area around Toppenish is a forested stretch overlooked literally by a handful of forestry fire lookout stations, from which come most of the reports of strange goings-on. The two big mountains to the left are Mt. Rainier in the top left, and Mt. Adams to the bottom left quadrant. It is an area where a gentleman named Arnold made a little flight in 1947.

The outer world began to become aware of Yakima strangeness in the 1950s, but this didn't focus until the arrival of a fellow named Willard {Bill} Vogel in the 70s. I don't have a picture of Bill Vogel to show you and wish that I had; he certainly deserves that much at least. Vogel became chief of the fire lookouts of the area, and got to know everyone quite well, including most of the local people. It was inevitable, given his job, that when an anomalous light was reported which might have been a fire, but when searched for produced no evidence of such, he began hearing the stories of the mystery lights. To begin with, he viewed these as tall tales, but then he began witnessing the lights himself.

It didn't take long to be convinced that something unexplained was present there. The witnessings were too frequent. {There is one veteran fire lookout who has seen over a hundred incidents.}

Vogel thought that these encounters might well have something to do with UFOs, and so he contacted J. Allen Hynek about them. The Colorado Project had just been used by the Air Force as their excuse to cancel the Blue Book Project, and Allen was out of a UFO job... but still plenty interested. Vogel quickly became an associate of the very earliest rendition of the Center for UFO Studies.

Hynek was getting along well with Coral and Jim Lorenzen of APRO post-Colorado, and through them was located an APRO investigator-consultant, David Akers, who came to Toppenish and, with permissions, began filming and measuring magnetic field shifts in the early seventies. {I also have no picture of David Akers, and he deserves the honors, too.}

Vogel collected a huge number of reports. Akers got some pictures and a lot of measurements. Vogel stated to Hynek that in the 1972-1974 period, he logged just a little short of a hundred anomalous lights and objects reports. It certainly was a place to go if you wanted to have a personal "UFO experience." Allen Hynek then DID go there and interviewed many of the witnesses and the fire lookouts in particular.

Dorothea Sturm, the lookout lady who has seen the over-hundred lights has, perhaps better credentials to characterize them than anyone else. The nocturnal lights tend to fall into two main types: bright red-orange balls, sometimes with yellow centers, and white balls of light, sometimes with other colored lights "on" them. They tend to be seasonal, so come in August, September, October.

Well, so far so good... nice well-behaved anomaly, and apparently so relatively regular and located that we might just be able to do some "science" on this. 

This somewhat optimistic-bordering-on-arrogant thought is precisely that expressed by two physicists at the famous Rockefeller-Sturrock Conference held at the Rockefeller estate so long ago that I don't remember when it was. The happy fellows in the picture are, right to left, Jean-Jacques Velasco, Richard Haines, Mark Rodeghier, Erling Strand, and a certain blog writer. I don't remember who took the picture, could have been either John Schuessler or Francois Louange.

The point of the photo is that Erling Strand was there to tell of his work in the Hessdalen Norway lightfield. After a bit of stage fright { there were two physicists there who were assholes and tried to intimidate people --- most of the folks were nice }, Erling caught his second wind and described very professional research work filming and measuring light incidents, sounding nearly exactly like the project of David Akers. Even the two assholes were impressed, and stated [loudly] that, Well! At least THIS was something that they could go up there for a week and solve!! I have not noticed them doing it ... nor anyone else, when it comes to "solving" it. 

However, John Derr gave it a try.  John's a good guy. And he has been generally sympathetic to UFO research. But the Yakima situation gave him an opportunity to crack into the scientific literature with a piece of work close enough to establishment thinking that it didn't violate their comfort zone too much {just like the Rockefeller physicists.} 

John tried to correlate the anomalous light sightings with Earthquake stresses. He was pursuing, to a point, the idea that underground shifts of igneous rocks composed of things like quartz/granite would produce piezoelectric ["pressure-electric"] currents and fields in enough strengths to manifest light effects at the surface. This, by, admittedly, no known mechanism, would somehow create not-yet-understood plasma-like masses of excited gases or something-or-others, and would "explain" Earthquake Lights and animal reactions pre-quakes, and anomalous BOLs in general. There is nothing at all wrong with studies like this and we should applaud John and creative explorers like him. There is only wrong in buying it if it doesn't deal with all the facts. 

John was humble about the work, and surely he was onto SOMETHING, but how far one could take it, who knows? Much wilder and yet close-minded theorizers like Michael Persinger have taken the work far beyond the data, and by ignoring many things have concluded that the work solves essentially everything in the anomalies world. The famous Persinger Earthstress theory says in simple: the earth's interior grindings create electric fields which produce light phenomena of many sorts accompanied by mental deranging brain environments leading to hallucinations which explain everything else. It is an absurdity of a "Universal" theory of reductionism that I will not honor with further comment here. 

It is a real pleasure to have such a nice simple anomaly on our hands, is it not? Just some pretty lights which suddenly appear and sit motionless in the air, or dance around a bit, and then just go out. Maybe Mother Earth is having some gastric distress, but because she's such a perfect lady, she turns little burps into Xmas Tree like ornaments to decorate the Sky. Yep, a nice well-behaved little mystery ......

September 29, 1978. Satus Peak Lookout Station, Toppenish Reservation, WA.

Veteran fire lookout Louise Kutz turned her television off to get ready for bed. Looking to the west she saw a bright orange light, seeming like a headlight, in the direction of Goat Rocks, where many such manifestations are seen. Habitually, she got out her binoculars, braced her elbows, and inspected the thing. It was an oblong {elliptical?} shape, and it wasn't moving. In the middle of the shape there were clustered an abundance of smaller lights of every shade of the rainbow. These bits of light "swelled and surged" pulsating like a colored "fountain spilling out".  45 seconds later the "fireworks show" faded away.

Her curiosity, however, refused to die with the lights. Wondering if they would come back on, she continued to survey the general area. The only slightly odd things were a few thin elongated clouds resting over the Goat Rocks. Then those clouds became illuminated by some light source beneath them. Maybe the show wasn't over afterall. Beneath the clouds was a black space. Focussing on it, she saw a row of windows in the air. These windows were not themselves emitting light, but were illuminated by small lights near their casing structures, allowing their square forms to be visible. These lights were dim, much like those of a phosphorescent watch dial at night.

Shortly the windows faded out, but the original "oblong" orange object appeared in their place. This thing still had its internal surging rainbow lights active. This second show lasted 5 minutes. Then the rainbow quit. In its place a small red light came on ... then another ... several in a horizontal row, right to left. Then the whole lighted array just switched off.

The final aspect of this is that something like a small plane [it at least had the proper lighting for that] came flying straight out of that line of sight and eventually passed north of her, making a small engine sound. She wondered if this last bit was also part of the rest, as the lights of the "plane" did not blink.

The whole of the event though had a punch to it regardless. "I came in [she had walked out to follow the "plane"], and I couldn't go to sleep. I went over it step by step in my mind, and since then I've sat there and said Louise, you didn't see what you saw, you just think you saw what you saw."

Well, "young lady", I believe that you DID "see what you saw." But it begins turning Yakima into something not so simple.

David Akers {Standing applause and Thanks to my buddy Bill Chalker for coming up with a picture of this fine gentleman, and standing applause for Mr. Akers for doing such good field research --- which I am delighted to state he is still actively involved with} did a yeoman's job at the Toppenish Reservation in the 1970s, logging quite a list of incident reports, as well as his main interest which was photographing the lights and taking magnetometry readings for correlations.

Akers along with Bill Vogel and Greg Long have lain a great foundation of data for any attempt to further probe this mystery. Much of his past and current work is on a website attributed to Willard J. Vogel and if I wasn't several geological ages fixed in the technological past, I'd make it easy to get to for you. I'll say more about the good Mr. Akers' work later, but first the simple listing of the reports he obtained back then:

These are the cases. Of the 55 reports that he had encoded at the time of the review report, 78% of them were "nocturnal lights." Just as the well-behaved Yakima mystery is supposed to be. But that leaves 22% or 12 other kinds of things. Looking closely at the table you find "D" disks and "CEs". Some of these are "CE3s" --- uh oh. Once in a while there is an "UNCL" unclassified --- and that could be even worse. I wonder what Louise Kutz' observation would be?

Above are some of my strange cartoons for four cases in Greg Long's articles { the orange-red BOLs are just winged from the description, but that was pretty basic, while the other three are colored up versions of drawings right in the texts --- so probably not horribly misleading except for the vivid colors.} The top two are daytime cases and the bottom two at night. In order to not write a book on this entry, a thumbnail rendition of these cases:

{Bottom right} September 9, 1982   Medicine Valley, Yakima Reservation, WA

A fire lookout sees an odd light and radios a family who seem nearer the object. They go to look. The father, mother, and son watch the thing through binoculars and a telescope. It's a yellow-orange motionless light. Through the telescope it's two pale-orange/amber lights horizontally side by side. They begin traveling in a jerky stop/go stop/go series of motions. A plane flew over. The lights dimmed down till it passed. Through binoculars though the lights were still there, now accompanied by a string of smaller lights which were however quite bright. Both the mother and son had the impression that the smaller lights were "windows." The array then flew off.

{Top right} Mid-July, 1971   Timberwolf Mountain Lookout Station (northeast of Mt. Adams), WA

The lookout was taking his lunch outside to relax. Sitting on his steps listening to the news on radio, he saw what first appeared to be a big helicopter. No noise, however, was forthcoming. It seemed to be silently parked about 7,500-8,000 feet in the air. The observer had seen helicopters rarely in the area, but much lower and always easy to hear even at much greater distance. He ran in the cabin and got his binoculars. The thing was a bright silvery disk/cigar with black rounded "domes" on each upper end. It just sat there for a minute and a half's observation, swinging very slightly so as to catch the Sun's rays a glint brightly. He dropped his binoculars for a second, raised them back up, and it had disappeared. One additional unusual detail: the thing seemed made of riveted together plates.

{Top left} Fall of 1961   Satus Peak Fire Lookout Station, Toppenish, WA 

A husband and wife lookout team were startled by a light like a camera flash going off. He grabbed the binoculars and saw several "dull stainless steel" objects doing formation flying at treetop level. These things seemed to effortlessly hug the contours of the Earth [probably like a cruise missile today.] The things looked like teardrops with a black spot on them. They never wavered in their tight formation. He guessed their speed at about 300mph. Once again, these things made no sound. He later saw on a much different occasion a jet racing across the area "on the deck" but there was no mistaking it nor its sound.

{Bottom left} July 31, 1974   Wishram Heights, Klickitat County, WA

A mom and her daughter and her foster daughter were sitting in their backyard coming up on midnight. They were habitually star-gazing when they noticed "a number of lights directly north of them which seemed to be alternately arranged in alphabet letter shaped patterns." {OK. Cue the Close Encounters of the Third Kind movie music.} They brought out their sets of binoculars and observed these lights for two hours. The things moved in jerky "stair-step" motions, seemingly at random. Of course there was no sound. The things appeared like "vanilla wafers" with a shallow bump on top, when seen on edge, and two lights [blue and red] were on their sides. But when they turned their "bottoms" up towards the witnesses, they displayed a dark round object with a whirling rainbow all-mushed-together pinwheel of light flowing out from the edges. The six objects seemed to arrange themselves into a triangular array and moved off. The ladies called the sheriff at Goldendale [just south of the Yakima Reservation] and two officers saw them.

Well, not exactly simple lightballs. The idea of anything flying in formation meant only one thing to Major Dewey Fournet when he made his USAF Pentagon study of UFO motions in 1952 --- these things are CONTROLLED. Animals and loose balloons and naturally-produced physical energy balls do not fly in rigid formation nor maneuver geometrically. He couldn't convince the Robertson Panel about this, but then no one could.

Well, THAT one was surely just a normal evening at the reservation --- yep, no trouble explaining THAT experience!

Two guys who probably would like to give a try at explaining it are Greg Long on the left, and Ron Westrum on the right. Both of them visited and worked with Bill Vogel during these years.

Both Greg and Ron found many new cases that Bill had not heard of, which made him happy. And David Akers was piling up data too. Yakima was starting to look like it could become UFO Central.

These are David Akers charts for those early to mid-seventies years. I'm not going to pay much attention to the monthly pattern, because I don't know when he was there surveying nor the social dynamics of that, but the time-of-day should not suffer from that. And there we see something very interesting to me .... because that graph looks suspiciously similar to the famous UFO Close Encounters graph/pattern found by Claude Poher called "The Law of the Times." This pattern, with a peak at 10-11pm and a surprising secondary bump at about 3am, has been seen in other data sets by Vallee, Ballester-Olmos, Ted Phillips, and Australian data. I've seen it in one or two other places myself. {Look this up or search it here on this blog, if you're interested].

Source: https://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2015/07/yakima-second-curtain.html

Excerpts from a letter sent by Dr. Bruce Cornet to the Harvard faculty committee investigating the abduction work of Dr. John Mack. Copyright 1995 by Dr. Bruce Cornet. Reproduced with permission.

[Editor's Note: In an effort to defend Dr. John Mack against charges of professional misconduct, Dr. Bruce Cornet told a Harvard faculty committee a great deal about his own personal experiences of contact with apparent alien technology and beings. A portion of that personal testimony is reproduced here. Cornet's letter was dated March 11, 1995, and was addressed to Arnold S. Relman, M.D., Chairman, Special Harvard University Faculty Committee, Harvard University.]

Dr. Cornet's text follows:

I wish my present STATEMENT to be included as a formal part of the Official Record of your inquiry into the research being conducted by Dr. Mack.

My education and professional backgrounds are as follows:

I earned my B.A. in biology (1970) and M.S. in paleobotany (1973) at the University of Connecticut, and my Ph.D. in geology and palynology (1977) at the Pennsylvania State University. I did post-doctorate research in geology and paleobotany at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University (1989-1990)...I am the author or coauthor of 21 refereed scientific papers and two books, all on paleontological and/or geological subjects. I have 14 years experience in the oil industry, and was president of Geminoil, Inc., which successfully explored for and found oil on the East Coast in the early 1980's in Triassic age rocks thought to be barren of hydrocarbons...

With regard to the issue of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, it is my professional and academic judgement that there are ample physical, geophysical, and photographic data collected by me during my two and a half years of research into the UFO phenomenon to support the hypothesis that this planet is currently inhabited by more than one sentient intelligent humanoid species, and that this non-human species has in its possession technologies thousands of years beyond our own. Through my own personal experiences I have observed and witnessed this phenomenon, and interacted with this intelligence...

I can state from personal contact with this species that their behavior, culture, and appearance are so different from ours that no simple and direct contact is currently possible without overloading man's capability to recover from the intellectual and cultural shock....

Because of my scientific training and critical inquiry, I first attempted to model what I had learned in order to build a credible theory for their activities and purpose. I have attempted to falsify my interpretations wherever and whenever possible, and I required the non-humans to give me adequate redundancy of evidence before I would draw any substantial conclusions. It has been made clear to me by them that they will push our envelope of acceptance of new realities only as far as we can tolerate the rate of change (i.e. without causing rupture of the envelope).

I can demonstrate from the sequence of my many personal experiences, contacts, and discoveries that they have carefully laid out many clues, symbolic and actual, for me to contemplate and/or follow as my awareness of their reality and the reasons for their methods has increased. They want us to know them without fearing them. They will no longer tolerate cover-ups.

After watching the miniseries on television called "Intruders" in May of 1992 (based on the work of Hopkins and Mack), I was moved to want more information on the subject of alien abductions. Prior to seeing that miniseries I had no interest and almost no conscious knowledge of UFOs or aliens. I went to the bookstore and found one book that in hindsight changed my life, research interests, and career goals. It was "Silent Invasion" (1991) by Ellen Crystall. From reading that book I discovered that I lived next to a major UFO hotspot in Orange County, New York. I contacted Ellen, and she took me out into the field with her. It only took two visits to the Pine Bush area before I realized that what I was seeing was too weird to be explained as either natural phenomena or conventional aircraft.

I began a 20 square mile magnetic and geologic survey of the area, which was completed in 1993. From that survey I discovered magnetic anomalies that could not be produced by any natural or known phenomena. I discovered and documented locations for apparent underground transmitters of polarized magnetic photon beams out into space. One physicist told me that my data proved a theory that such a form of "invisible" light actually existed! I found areas where the magnetic background sometimes became so unstable and changed so radically that I could feel it change moment by moment. I recorded transient magnetic anomalies that were measured in tens of thousands of gammas, which is far beyond anything normal or cultural. And I witnessed and recorded my compass pointing towards the south during the photographing of a UFO performance, indicating a synchronous aerial magnetic anomaly.

I have photographically recorded with time exposures (sometimes with accompanying dynamic camcorder records) over 100 night sightings and close encounters, including low fly-overs and spectacular maneuvers of plasma lights in the sky. The shapes of these craft were anything but conventional, and they certainly were not figments of my imagination (there were sometimes multiple witnesses). Their stealth technology is awesome, and beyond anything our military has admitted to having. For example, I was in a helicopter over the hot spot in daylight when a craft buzzed us at Mach 8 less than 500 feet away. We saw a flash of light and felt a very muffled shock wave that bounced the helicopter. We captured three such passes on film and videotape, which allowed me to determine speed and plasma light characteristics. But why then did these craft put on so many spectacular performances for my cameras? The military would not display top secret technology for any civilian camera...

I have dozens of photographs that prove that the pilots of these craft are capable of either reading my mind or controlling my mind during a photographic event. Sequences of time exposures for several encounters show purposeful movements or signatures of light just after the camera shutter opened and just before it closed. One sequence shows a craft making right angle elevator moves timed exactly across the gaps between pictures, indicating a synchronicity that is undeniable and impossible to explain without employing some kind of telepathy! My being able to capture a craft travelling at Mach 8 past my helicopter with single photographs taken at 1/1000th of a second is extraordinary proof that there was a mind link during the fly-by. There is no other way to account for such timing or synchronicity. The distance the lights moved at that exposure time was how I established their approximate speed. Try photographing a bullet leaving the muzzle of a rifle without knowing when that rifle is going to be fired; muzzle velocities are typically less than a third the calculated speed of the craft. I captured on film three such craft buzzing the helicopter like that, and each picture shows the plasma lights on the craft just entering the frame! I also have corroboration from a video record of one of those events....

My gradual education by the extraterrestrials progressed to the point that I would sometimes be escorted by a UFO as I drove along a highway at night. A single bright white light would move close to my vehicle, and position itself just off to the right side of the highway. The craft itself was usually as black as the night sky, and only occasionally would a silhouette of its shape be glimpsed. It would pace my vehicle about 1/8th to 1/4 mile ahead of me about two or three tree heights above the ground. This light matched the speed of my vehicle, stopped with me for tolls, and made the same exit and turns I made. On several occasions such a light would precede me home (so that I would always have it in sight while driving), and then park itself in the sky for awhile before leaving or blinking out.

One time a UFO light paced my van with my family in it from Red Bank, New Jersey, to Newark airport. I got photographs. Another time when a friend (who works as an editor for the New York Times) and I entered the UFO hotspot area in New York, a craft (with one large white light and a small red light) moved in front of

us and escorted us silently into the area, stopping with us (just above and ahead of the traffic light), then turning with us several times. I had a clear telepathic link with one of the occupants, because I got a mental greeting and felt an expression of joy or excitement that I was there. When I told my friend, who was driving (he was impressed beyond words), that we were going to make a turn up ahead, the craft sped ahead and waited for us at the turn!

Another time two UFOs paced me along the Garden State Parkway, one on either side of me, all the way from the Atlantic City exit to Red Bank, a distance of about 72 miles. I had clear telepathic contact with occupants of both craft, who complimented me on the cable TV show I had just done on UFOs in Atlantic City, and who even made some funny statements, such as, "You must have a problem refueling." I was telepathically told not to slow down or stop. One craft moved silently back and forth across the highway in plain view of other drivers, and shot ahead several times. For me it was entertaining to see this activity, and realize how unperceptive and blind to this reality most humans are. That craft stopped and hovered over some buildings, and began glowing a powder blue color. The size of the elliptical craft was enormous. The other smaller craft paced me all the way to Red Bank, and allowed me to photograph it at an intersection. As I slowed to a stop for a red light, the craft slowed to a stop just ahead of me. I thought of taking a picture, and grabbed my camera, which was on the seat beside me. The craft turned around and came back towards my truck. I braced and steadied my camera against the side window for one second exposures. The pilot stopped the craft over the intersection in front of the camera, and turned on many lights so that I could get two spectacular photographs. This really happened, and I've got photographs to prove it!

There are now many reports being made by individual human beings that they have had direct personal contact with Extraterrestrial Beings who pilot these so-called Unidentified Flying Objects. But to me they are no less identifiable than any conventional aircraft I see in the skies. I have had many sightings and encounters with such craft, and now can identify several different types, their sizes and shapes, their flight characteristics, and their lighting characteristics. It is my professional and academic judgement that these craft have been designed and built by non-humans.

Based on my own abduction experiences, of which I have had three since I became involved in this research, and based on fragmentary spontaneous recall of abductions that go back at least to my senior year in high school, memories of which did not begin to surface until after I saw "Intruders" on television, I can say without equivocation that these beings do exist. I have met them. I know what they look like, feel like, smell like, and telepath like. I have had telepathic conversations with them in their presence and while they were in their craft. They are not a figment of my imagination, an hallucination, or characters in a lucid dream. I know because of the surgical procedures some of these beings have performed on me, marks and scars of which still can be detected.

I have also sustained serious injuries: e.g. just before being paralyzed and then knocked unconscious (from an energy blow to the back of my head, which left a large brown bruise) I looked into the intense plasma lights of a shuttle craft as it landed next to my parked vehicle. A sharp pain shot through my left eye. As I turned away a clear telepathic voice said, "Do not look at the lights; look straight ahead." But it was too late. The vitreous humor in that eye was permanently damaged. My wife was there also, and remembers the craft and missing time. Every day I am reminded of that experience by what I see! I can never forget it. I am not bitter. But there are many people who have experienced these traumas, and they don't want their intelligence insulted by some professional with a belief problem who says, "It's all just in your head!"

Original file name: CNI - Cornet Summary

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. "