US Navy jet cockpit video of a ‘tic tac’ UFO off of San Diego in 2004, and released by the New York Times in 2017, has become one of the most talked-about UFO sightings in history.
Article by MJ Banias October 23, 2019 (vice.com)
• A team of venture capitalists, university professors, and military veterans are launching a non-profit project to track UFOs (or the new term UAP – Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) off the coast of California. Based in Oregon, UAP eXpeditions will provide “the public service of field testing new UAP related technologies.”
• Along with some of the Silicon Valley UFO Hunters, UAP eXpeditions will pioneer the ability to predict, find, observe, and document UAP for study and analysis. Says Kevin Day, the group’s founder and CEO, the company will use “classical observation techniques, by trained observers and scientists, while using the latest experimental technologies—in the right places and the right times.”
• Day is a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer and radar operator who served on the USS Princeton during the 2004 “Nimitz Tic Tac UFO Incident”. He has also appeared on the History Channel’s Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation and Discovery Channel’s Contact.
• Day recalls tracking the infamous “Tic Tac” UFOs for several days around Catalina Island off the coast of California using the USS Princeton’s advanced radar system. Now, he believes that these objects continue to operate along the same trajectory and “migrate” from Catalina Island (off of LA) south along the California coast to Guadalupe Island (off of the Baja Peninsula of Mexico).
• Day believes that his experience tracking these unidentified objects has given him special abilities such as “advanced cognition”.
• UAP eXpeditions intends to put state-of-the-art cameras, experimental monitoring devices, and other high tech gear into the field and attempt to track unknown aerial objects off the coast of California. This way, the company can “offer technology developers a way to test their new tech at no direct cost to them.”
• Leading the UAP eXpeditions’ team of scientists is Dr. Kevin Knuth, a former scientist with NASA’s Ames Research Center, now an associate professor of physics at the University of Albany specializing in machine learning and the study of exoplanets. Knuth says, “[T]he goal of the expedition is to give us some ground truth. We aim to try to observe these objects directly, and record them using multiple imaging modalities.”
• First, the team “will obtain current satellite imagery of the area and determine whether these anomalous objects can be observed. We will monitor these satellite images both manually and using machine learning and build up a database of detections, classifications, and any observed patterns of activity,” says Knuth. Second, in about a year the team will anchor a large boat off the coast of California loaded with various cameras and sensors to detect and record anomalous aerial activity. If the satellite imagery identifies a cluster of unknown objects, the team will go hunting for UFOs.
• “We plan to have high-quality drones in the air with imaging capabilities. We are looking into IR imaging, as well as detectors for x-ray, gamma-ray and custom-built neutron detectors (which are designed to look for dark matter),” says Knuth. “The key to ensuring consistency is reproducibility and this requires additional study.”
• It is, admittedly, a bit of a wild goose chase and will cost a boatload of cash. While Day’s team is working on grant proposals and potential crowd funding, they know that the vast majority of funding will have to be private. Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur and MIT technologist Rizwan Virk and the Toronto-based CEO of the quantum computing company, ReactiveQ, Deep Prasad have both signed on to help with securing investment for the project.
• Other individuals on the team include Luis Elizondo, former Pentagon staffer who quit his job to hunt UFOs with Tom DeLonge; Sean Cahill, the former Chief Master-at-Arms who served aboard the USS Princeton during the 2004 Nimitz Incident; and optical physicist and UFO researcher Bruce Macabee.
• Knuth states, “The failure to study these (UFO) phenomena scientifically has resulted in a state of ignorance, which is unacceptable.”
With this summer’s revelation that the US Navy considers UFOs and “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAPs) to be real, a team of venture capitalists, university professors, and military veterans are launching a project to track UFOs off the coast of California.
UAP eXpeditions is a non-profit group based in Oregon that will “field a top-notch group of uber-experienced professionals providing the public service of field testing new UAP related technologies.” With some of the Silicon Valley UFO Hunters, UAP eXpeditions will pioneer the ability to predict, find, observe, and document UAP for study and analysis. They will use “classical observation techniques, by trained observers and scientists, while using the latest experimental technologies—in the right places and the right times,” Kevin Day, the group’s founder and CEO, wrote in a Facebook post viewed by Motherboard.
Day, who has appeared on the History Channel’s Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation and Discovery Channel’s Contact, is a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer and radar operator. Day served in the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group on the USS Princeton during the 2004 infamous “Nimitz UFO Incident” which was reported by The New York Times in December of 2017.
He recalls tracking the infamous “Tic Tac” UFOs for several days around Catalina Island off the coast of California using the USS Princeton’s advanced radar system. Now, he believes that these objects continue to operate along the same trajectory and “migrate” from Catalina Island south along the California coast.
The company’s white paper is pretty wild. It asks, “Do fleets of UAP ‘migrate’ from Catalina Island to Guadalupe Island with a certain frequency? And if so, how well do whale songs correlate, if at all, to UAP appearances?” It’s unclear how whale songs are relevant here, but let’s move along.
Day, who believes that his experience tracking these objects has led to some curious special abilities, such as “advanced cognition” told Motherboard that the organization is hoping to “offer technology developers a way to test their new tech at no direct cost to them.” Using state of the art cameras and other experimental monitoring devices, the idea is to put this high tech gear into the field and attempt to track unknown aerial objects off the coast of California.
Leading the team of scientists is Dr. Kevin Knuth, a former scientist with NASA’s Ames Research Center, now an associate professor of physics at the University of Albany. Knuth specializes in machine learning and the study of exoplanets.
While the organization and the project is still in its infancy, Knuth told Motherboard that “the goal of the expedition is to give us some ground truth. We aim to try to observe these objects directly, and record them using multiple imaging modalities.”
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Article by Simon Green October 23, 2019 (dailystar.co.uk)
• US Navy jet cockpit video of a ‘tic tac’ UFO off of San Diego in 2004, and released by the New York Times in 2017, has become one of the most talked-about UFO sightings in history. In an interview with The Nimitz Encounters podcast (see entire 36:09 minute video below), Lead Petty Officer Ryan Weigelt who was in charge of the helicopters on the USS Princeton (pictured above), part of the Nimitz carrier battle group, reveals that soon after the mysterious tic tac UFO was spotted by the fighter jets, a group of US Air Force personnel landed on his ship to retrieve secret information.
• The Air Force personnel “weren’t assigned” to the carrier. When they arrived, they went straight to the Admiral’s Quarter and stationed a guard outside. They then retrieved “something” from the Princeton’s helicopters which grounded the helicopters. Weigelt says he couldn’t say “whatever box it was” that the Air Force personnel took away. But they logged it out and were directed by a higher authority to take it. “[W]e couldn’t fly our aircraft until we got them back… (because) [t]here was no way we could safely fly our aircraft in a battle group.”
• Weigelt said that the Air Force personnel then left the ship by a rigid-hulled inflatable boat, and forced the USS Princeton to harbor at a marina, something that was unheard of. Said Weigelt, “I’ve done a lot of cruises in my time in the military and never once did we pull in during a work-up to a harbor for any reason whatsoever.” “I’ve never even seen a ship anchor in the mouth of the harbor.”
• When the podcast’s host, Dave Beattie, suggested that the Air Force personnel may have removed more video footage of the UFOs, Weigelt agreed. “There’s no doubt in my mind that these guys were looking for data on the UFOs.”
A US Navy veteran who was on board the USS Princeton when a UFO was spotted by fighter pilots has revealed a group of mysterious officials boarded the cruiser soon after to retrieve secret information.
Footage of the moment an F/A-18 Super Hornet spotted the unknown object hurtling through the skies in 2004 became one of the most talked-about UFO sightings of all time, after it was released by the New York Times in 2017.
It led to the Pentagon admitting to having a top-secret programme devoted to looking at the existence of extraterrestrial objects.
The incident – which showed a tic-tac shaped UFO performing manoeuvres never seen before – took place off the coast of San Diego.
While the pilots had taken off from the USS Nimitz, they were part of a larger battle group which featured the USS Princeton.
Lead Petty Officer Ryan Weigelt was in charge of looking after the helicopters on board the Princeton at the time of the incident.
In an interview with The Nimitz Encounters, he revealed that soon after the mysterious aircraft was spotted by the fighter jets, a group of United States Air Force personnel landed on his ship.
Ryan explained that this group “weren’t assigned” to the carrier and, as soon as they arrived, they went straight to the Admiral’s Quarter and stationed a guard outside.
They then retrieved “something” from the Princeton’s helicopters which meant they could not fly.
36:09 minute interview with Ryan Weigelt (‘The Nimitz Encounters’ YouTube)
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Helena College at the University of Montana in Helena, Montana offers a class titled “Are UFO’s a threat to national security?”
The Aztec UFO Incident occurred March 1948 near Aztec, New Mexico, in the northwest corner of New Mexico – the “Four Corners”area. Suzanne Ramsey grew up near Aztec, and she and her husband have spent 32 years researching, interviewing, finding new leads, and collecting documentation on the UFO landing. The story includes pre-incident sightings, physical evidence, the scientists who worked on the craft, and the cover-up.
Article by Tyler Manning October 21, 2019 (fairfieldsuntimes.com)
• Helena College at the University of Montana in Helena, Montana offers a class titled “Are UFO’s a threat to national security?” The course is taught by Dr. Richard O’Connor and Dr. Joan Bird who discuss the history of UFOs both in Montana and nationwide. After taking the class, students generally accept that ‘aliens exist’ as an absolute truth.
• The first class in the course focuses on breaking down the taboo around discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial activity. Says O’Connor, “The fact that we are in an academic setting discussing this show’s how far we’ve come.” O’Connor believes that the nationwide discussion is at a tipping point as it becomes less and less taboo to openly discuss UFOs and extraterrestrials. The more people talk about it, the more normalized it becomes.
• O’Connor said he’s spent the past few years charting the progress in the national conversation. The UFO phenomena has received coverage in major news publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and USA Today, and major networks like Fox News, CNN, and NBC. This culminated in September 2019 when the United States Navy confirmed videos of UAPs (or “Unidentified Ariel Phenomena”).
• In succeeding classes, Bird focuses on UFO and extraterrestrial activity in Montana. Bird said that while there are sightings all across the state, the ‘Hi-Line’ (the northern area along the US-Canadian border) is a hot bed of activity due to the number of nuclear missile silos in that region of the state. Bird discusses the history of missile silo shutdowns and their correlation with UFO sightings and the threat of nuclear war. These incidents have dramatically changed the perspectives of those involved.
• Bird’s fascination with extraterrestrials began in 1998 when she investigated crop circles around Flathead Lake in Northwestern Montana, and in England. She said it provided her glimpses of other realities. “Then I discovered highly credible military witnesses and the secrecy around missile shut downs,” Bird said. ” I’d have to be too cynical to not believe.”
• “Are UFO’s a threat to national security?” O’Conner asked. “Should we just ask them?”
“Alien’s exist” is something that is generally accepted as an absolute truth by the select few who take the class of Dr. Richard O’Connor and Dr. Joan Bird.
The Helena College continuing education course titled “Are UFO’s a threat to national security?” is a trip down the rabbit hole of nationwide and Montana specific extraterrestrial activity. The aim is not only to educate those who choose to take the class on the extensive history of this activity, but to also encourage engagement in a topic previously considered taboo.
As for the title of the class, O’Connor has an answer for that: “Are UFO’s a threat to national security?” he asked. “Should we just ask them?”
This question and response acts as a kind of thesis statement for the entire mission of the class. The course is taking place each Thursday night for the four weeks of October. O’Connor dedicated the first 2 1/2 hour class to breaking down the taboo around discussing possibly extraterrestrial activity.
“For a long time there was no way you could get a class like this in a college anywhere,” O’Connor said. “The fact that we are in an academic setting discussing this show’s how far we’ve come.”
O’Connor believes that the nationwide discussion is at a tipping point as it becomes less and less taboo to openly discuss UFOs and extraterrestrials. He said the more people talk about it, the more normalized it becomes. O’Connor backs this theory up with articles in major news publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and USA Today. The phenomena has also received major television news coverage from major networks like Fox News, CNN, NBC and more.
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Listen to “E148 A Look Into the UFO Incident at Aztec, New Mexico” on Spreaker.
Article by O. C. Stonestreet October 20, 2019 (statesville.com)
• Scott Ramsey, wife Suzanne Ramsey and Frank Thayer, Ph.D., a professor emeritus at New Mexico State University, are the authors of The Aztec UFO Incident (2015). (This book follows their 2011 book, The Aztec Incident: Recovery at Hart Canyon.) They have done so much research and uncovered so much information that they plan to publish a third book on Aztec as well.
• The Aztec UFO Incident occurred in March 1948 near Aztec, New Mexico, in the northwest corner of New Mexico in the “Four Corners”area. Suzanne Ramsey grew up near Aztec, and she and her husband have spent 32 years researching, interviewing, finding new leads, and collecting documentation on the UFO landing. The story includes pre-incident sightings, physical evidence, the scientists who worked on the craft, and the cover-up. Their conclusions are provocative. They write: “[P]eople in general are unwilling to consider the enormity of the implications the facts would force them to face.”
• The Aztec UFO Incident, involved the discovery of an intact, 100 feet in diameter saucer-shaped craft atop a mesa in New Mexico, just eight months and some 370 miles from the better-known crash of a saucer at Roswell, New Mexico, in early July 1947. A number of local people were at the scene before the U.S. military arrived. The military scoured the craft, even going inside of it, before they ran off the locals warning them to keep quiet about what they had seen.
• Thayer and the Ramseys write: “The witnesses were all 100 percent certain that what they saw that day was not a conventional aircraft, nor was it a prototype Air Force design that strayed off course and crashed on the high plains of New Mexico. Based on clear witness memories, there is no doubt that they saw a landed flying saucer from origins unknown.”
“A strange object drifting southwestward through the sky has scores of North and South Carolinians agog today. The object, on which descriptions varied, was first spotted at Fayetteville … at about 4:30 p.m. yesterday. … Except for its shape and the scores who witnessed it, the reports were reminiscent of the myriad tales of flying saucers current since the war …” — “Strange Object Floats Across the Carolinas,” The Landmark, Dec. 29, 1949, Page 1.
Scott and Suzanne Ramsey live a little east of Mooresville, just inside Rowan County. I have written about them before. You may recall that Scott is the “Uncle Scott” in “Uncle Scott’s Root Beer,” a non-alcoholic beverage he and Suzanne formulated and began marketing a few years ago. Their beverage can be purchased at local Food Lion grocery stores and other venues.
When I met them at their home back in 2017, it was to talk about their root beer. As interesting and delicious as that subject was, while talking to them I found out that they were also the authors of a book about a UFO (read “flying saucer”) incident that happened in March 1948 near the small town of Aztec, New Mexico. I did not mention the book in my column on the Ramseys that ran in the June 4, 2017, R&L, as I wanted to focus my readers’ attention on their drink.
As far back as I can remember, I have been interested in aircraft and science, including science fiction. When I was 12, I began reading everything I could find about UFOs or flying saucers and even did a science-fair project in junior high on that subject; I won the third-place award. I have continued to be interested in the topic and have done several columns about local sightings of these mysterious objects in our skies.
Now that I have gotten around to reading their 317-page paperback book, I wanted to share their work with my readers. “The Aztec UFO Incident,” as it is called, involved the (supposed?) discovery of a saucer-shaped craft, measuring approximately 100 feet in diameter, atop a mesa in New Mexico, just eight months and some 370 miles as the B-29 flies from the better-known (supposed?) crash of a saucer at Roswell, New Mexico, in early July 1947. The full title of the Ramseys’ book is “The Aztec UFO Incident: The Case, Evidence and Elaborate Cover-Up of One of the Most Perplexing Crashes in History,” which gives a straight, upfront summary of the book.
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On October 22nd the UFO documentary Witness of Another World, premiered on Vimeo and Amazon Prime. Directed by Alan Stivelman, the film is distributed by 1091 Media, formerly the Orchard, which has an established line-up of documentaries that focus on the paranormal and ufological.
Considering that our galaxy has existed for more than 13 billion years, it’s not hard to imagine that an alien civilization may be out there, possessing technology that allows them to build megastructures around stars.
Article by Steve October 15, 2015 (ufoholic.com)
• A paper submitted by Tabitha Boyajian, an astronomer at Yale, to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (in 2015) described a particular star named KIC 8462852 orbiting only 1,500 light years from Earth. “… KIC 8462852 (aka “Tabby’s Star”), was observed by the Kepler Space Telescope (image above) to undergo irregularly shaped, aperatic dips in flux down to below the twenty percent level.” “We’d never seen anything like this star. It was really weird. (But the data) checked out.”
• The study mostly focused on two interesting anomalies of the star. The first event was recorded between days 788 and 795 of the Kepler mission and showed a single transit causing a star brightness drop-off of 15 percent. The second event was recorded between days 1510 to 1570 and showed a burst of several transits with a brightness dip of up to 22 percent. The transiting objects have to be extremely big.
• Scientists are now trying to point a radio antenna at KIC 8462852 in order to pick up their television shows to solve the riddle. Meanwhile, a second paper is being drafted around the possibility of the light obstruction being caused a colossal artificial device engineered by advanced aliens.
• Considering that our galaxy has existed for more than 13 billion years, it’s not hard to imagine that an alien civilization may be out there, possessing technology that allows them to build megastructures around stars. Jason Wright, a fellow astronomer at Penn State said, “This looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.” Researchers are hypothesizing the possibility of a mega-engineered project created by a Type 2 alien civilization on the Kardashev scale. With a vast shell or series of rings surrounding a star, a Dyson sphere-like structure could use all the available energy radiating from a star.
Besides Kepler’s ability of finding small, rocky worlds orbiting distant stars, it can also detect different space phenomenon like stellar flares, star spots and dusty planetary rings.
This time however, Kepler detected the signal of a supposed vast artificial structure orbiting a star only 1,500 light years away from Earth.
After finishing all plausible explanations, scientists now believe that this complex structure might be an artificial construction made by an advanced alien civilization way up on the Kardashev scale of comparison.
This megastructure works like a supersized solar array orbiting around its host star, stocking the energy and sending it back to the source. The size of the structure is so grand that it’s blocking a considerable fraction of starlight as it spins around its host.
Normally all the exoplanets discovered by Kepler have a typical planet-shape, meaning they are round. This time however, the telescope detected something that isn’t round and behaves unnatural.
A paper has been submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in which a particular star named KIC 8462852 is described.
OVER THE DURATION OF THE KEPLER MISSION, KIC 8462852 WAS OBSERVED TO UNDERGO IRREGULARY SHAPED, APERIODIC DIPS IN FLUX DOWN TO BELOW THE TWENTY PERCENT LEVEL.
WE’D NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS STAR, IT WAS REALLY WEIRD. WE THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE BAD DATA OR MOVEMENT ON THE SPACECRAFT, BUT EVERYTHING CHECKED OUT. – TABETHA BOYAJIAN, RESEARCHER AT YALE UNIVERSITY
Studies mostly focused on two interesting anomalies at KIC 8462852, one that was recorded between days 788 and 795 of the Kepler mission and between days 1510 to 1570.
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Washtenaw County Sheriff’s report listed up to 60 witnesses that watched the UFO for a half hour, including 12 policemen, from a distance of only 1,500 feet. The consensus described it as a brown luminous car-sized object with a “scaly” or “waffled” surface, cone-shaped on top and flat or oval on the bottom.
In 1895, E.D. Parrott raised $500,000 to build a flying invention in Goldendale, located on the Oregon border. The craft was small and light, made of aluminum, and had propellers and a four-horsepower engine. In April 1895, Parrott successfully flew the machine 150 feet off the ground in a short circle and landed.
Nuclear physicist and ufologist Stanton Friedman devoted his life to researching and investigating UFOs since the late 1960s. He was credited with bringing the 1947 Roswell Incident back into the mainstream conversation. Friedman died in May at the age of 84.
When people think of UFOs, they typically think of craft flying over their heads. No one talks much about the possibility that intelligent extraterrestrials may already be here among us on Earth.
UFO “sightings” may have been relegated to tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists until the extraordinary and as-yet unexplained account of retired U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor and his colleagues of an incident that occurred off the coast of Southern California in 2004.
On NASA’s 1976 Viking mission to Mars, NASA dispatched the ‘Labeled Release’ (LR) experiment to detect life on the red planet. On July 30, 1976, the LR returned its initial results from Mars with four positive results, supported by five varied controls, streamed down from the twin Viking spacecraft that landed some 4,000 miles apart.
Britain’s former top spy and ex-head of MI6, Sir John Sawers told the Digital Transformation EXPO in London October 1st that given the universe’s infinite size it would be “extraordinary” if comparable life doesn’t exist elsewhere. “I think we should go forward on the assumption that nothing on this planet is unique.”
During a recent interview on the “Truth Be Told” podcast (see below for the full interview), Day says that radar detection of the UFO group (the Tic Tac UFO was a part of a group of UFOs flying in formation) was made possible by an upgrade to the warships’ spyware. Day told the Daily Star, “There had been a top-secret upgrade of our system. …
There is speculation that gene editing is being used in China as part of a state sponsored exercise to enhance cognitive abilities of animals. China is also gene-editing animals to grow human-like organs, possibly creating an organ harvesting industry.
Michael Sheen claims Port Talbot is a ‘hub’ for extraterrestrial life after spotting UFOs flying in the Welsh town.
In July 2019, TTSA announced that it had acquired metamaterials as part of its Acquisition and Data Analysis of Materials program, or ADAM. They claim that these metamaterials of unknown origin have been floating around the UFO community for years.
In 1963, during an anti-submarine warfare exercise off of Puerto Rico with the USS Wasp carrier group, a submarine broke off from the formation to pursue a USO. Sonar operators on one of the smaller vessels followed the chase. The operators wondered whether the USO may have been planted there by the Navy as part of the exercise, except that the object was traveling at over 150 knots
Listen to “E145 Dexter’s UFO Incident and Hysteria” on Spreaker.
Article by Doug Marrin October 15, 2019 (thesuntimesnews.com)
• In the late evening of March 20, 1966, Frank Mannor and his son Ronald watched a pyramid-shaped UFO craft hover over their farm in Dexter, Michigan. The body of the craft was a porous-looking yellowish rock. Frank described a blue-green light on the right side of it, and a white light on the left side. No antenna or porthole. “We got to about 500 yards of the thing,” Mannor told reporters. “You couldn’t see it too good because it was surrounded with heat waves, like you see on the desert.”
• The Washtenaw County Sheriff’s report listed up to 60 witnesses that watched the UFO for a half hour, including 12 policemen, from a distance of only 1,500 feet. The consensus described it as a brown luminous car-sized object with a “scaly” or “waffled” surface, cone-shaped on top and flat or oval on the bottom. It had two bluish-green lights on right and left edges that turned bright red to illuminate the object.
• At one point the whole object lit up with a yellowish glow while rising 500 ft, and then descended again. When the witnesses saw a couple of flashlights in the distance, the object seemed to respond by flying away at high speed directly over the witnesses with a whistling sound like a rifle bullet ricocheting.
• The press pounced on the story and suddenly there were sightings throughout the Midwestern states with UFO reports as far away as Kansas. Dismissed at first as a hoax or mass delusion, the government finally sent in Dr. J Allen Hynek, an astronomer from Northwestern University to investigate the matter. Hynek arrived in Dexter and found what he later described as “near hysteria.”
• The mid-1960s were the days of black and white television shows such as “Lost in Space” and “My Favorite Martian”, and movies like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. The public had been primed for this moment. UFO and alien mania were sweeping across the country. At nearby University of Michigan students laughed it off and played alien pranks.
• Doug Harvey, who was the Washtenaw County Sheriff at the time, recalls Hynek coming the sheriff’s office to introduce himself. Hynek told him, “’I’m from Washington and I’ve come down (here) to inspect that site about the UFO.’ So I drove him out there and he looked at it and talked to the Mannors. He got back in the car and I said, ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘You know, I really don’t know. I really don’t know. Something was there.’”
• Sheriff Harvey says that, “As soon as we got back to the jail, (Hynek) had a call from Washington.” Hynek then used Harvey’s office to address the press. Hynek announced, “We have definitely discovered that it was swamp gas.” “And that’s where it died,” says Harvey. Everybody went home.
• Of the 78 UFO sightings reported in Michigan to the National UFO Reporting Center so far in 2019, one was in Dexter. In the late evening of August 1, 2019, a Dexter resident reported seeing a bright and pulsing amber light hovering above his garage for a few minutes. It also had two smaller blinking red lights. “It was too big to be a plane,” said the witness. Then it suddenly took off over (his) house and into the distance, making a sound similar to a low-flying plane. “[B]ut it was very much not a plane.”
• There are more sightings reported now than ever before, but the public has been desensitized to it. We’ve been hearing stories of UFO encounters for seventy years. At some point you give up and move on. People aren’t frightened of UFOs. It is simply that nobody takes them seriously or gives them a second thought unless it is especially compelling. We’ve traded hysteria for ambivalence.
There was a UFO incident in Dexter in 1966 that sparked a national panic over an imminent alien invasion. The event was the climax of a hysteria that had been mounting for decades. Once over, fear of UFOs faded, making room for other national worries. However, UFO sightings continue to this day in Washtenaw County and around the state, but nobody gives them a second thought or even a first.
“We got a call that the Mannors out in Dexter seen a UFO,” says Doug Harvey who was the Washtenaw County Sheriff at the time. “So I went out there and the grass was down flat in a round circle…and they said they definitely seen an object come down and lift off.”
UFO hysteria first began in the late 1940s. It coincided and was quite probably fueled by the start of the Cold War and its paranoia as well as the emergence of the Golden Age of Television and its entertainment. By the mid-1960s, the collective American imagination was fertile for end-of-the-world scenarios, either manmade or alien.
But what has happened since then? Fifty years later, we’re not scared anymore. And except for a few over-cooked and half-baked UFOlogists storming Area 51 in the Nevada desert, we’re not taking the idea of visiting extraterrestrials seriously anymore. The whole idea is a thing of fiction, for entertainment purposes only.
Dexter’s UFO incident
It all started out of nowhere late one evening in 1966. Right at the moment when the earth was at its Spring Equinox as if in response to the University of Michigan’s advanced radio telescope probing space the final frontier on nearby Peach Mountain, strange but colorful lights suddenly appeared over a family farm in Dexter Township.
The owner, Frank Mannor, along with his son Ronald, ran after the strange, hovering craft over his wooded swamp. Oh to have been there with a smartphone.
“We got to about 500 yards of the thing,” Frank later told reporters. “It was sort of shaped like a pyramid, with a blue-green light on the right-hand side and on the left, a white light. I didn’t see no antenna or porthole. The body was like a yellowish coral rock and looked like it had holes in it—sort of like if you took a piece of cardboard box and split it open. You couldn’t see it too good because it was surrounded with heat waves, like you see on the desert. The white light turned to a blood red as we got close to it and Ron (his son) said, ‘Look at that horrible thing.’”
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Listen to “E144 10-27-19 Goldendale Washington Man Built Flying Machine in 1895” on Spreaker.
Article by Lou Marzeles October 16, 2019 (goldendalesentinel.com)
• The late 19th century was a time full of new inventions – diesel engines, electric lights, the telephone to name a few. Simple hot-air balloons had been around, but without steering or motorization. Knute Berger, a columnist for Seattle magazine claims in an October issue that a man in Goldendale, Washington built and tested an “airship” in 1895.
• In 1895, E.D. Parrott raised $500,000 to build a flying invention in Goldendale, located on the Oregon border. The craft was small and light, made of aluminum, and had propellers and a four-horsepower engine. In April 1895, Parrott successfully flew the machine 150 feet off the ground in a short circle and landed. When Parrott cancelled a second test flight in July of that year, the newspapers forgot about him. Berger found references to an E.D. Parrott who applied for patents for a propeller and carburetor in the early 1900s, but he was never credited with the first flight of an aircraft.
• Berger says that a year later were reports of cigar-shaped flying aircraft coming from the San Francisco Bay area. Then sightings began to occur all over the northwest, sweeping across the country in 1897, and creating what historians now call the ‘phantom’ or ‘mystery airship phenomenon’. People speculated that these sky objects were new inventions, alien craft from Mars, atmospheric anomalies, or outright hoaxes.
A columnist for Seattle magazine says a man in Goldendale built and tested an “airship” in 1895.
Knute Berger writes in the October issue of the publication that his fascination with the flying saucer phenomenon led him to dig into a much earlier history of UFOs. He says the whole thing started with a UFO sighting at Mt. Rainier in 1947, but he adds signs of it began during the Klondike Gold Rush.
“The late 19th century was a time of great technological change-diesel engines, electric lights, the telephone,” Berger writes. “The newspapers of the time were full of new inventions. In the 1890s, people were also looking to the skies. Hot-air balloons had been around since the late 18th century, but was it possible to build a new generation of airships that would stay aloft, transport people and goods, and be steered and motorized?”
Enter E. D. Parrott, brother of William S. Parrott, a resident of Klickitat County who garnered international fame as an artist, with one of his paintings of Mt. Hood selling in New York City for $10,000. The Parrotts were well established in the county.
Berger says in 1895 E. D. Parrott raised some $500,000 to assemble his flying invention in Goldendale. Regional media reported that a test flight of the machine in April 1895 was successful when it flew 150 feet off the ground in a short circle and landed. The vessel was small and light, made of aluminum, and had propellers and a four-horsepower engine.
A bigger test flight was scheduled for the 4th of July that year, but Parrott backed out of that one. “Like many other inventors and would-be innovators of the period, his name dropped from the news,” Berger writes, “though I have found references to an E.D. Parrott who applied for patents for a propeller and carburetor in the early 1900s. Despite the press story, no E.D. Parrott is credited with the first flight of an airplane or an airship. But Parrott’s claimed work is evidence that our state’s aviation roots go back a long time before Bill Boeing.”
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