Great Barrington Historical Society

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The Berkshires UFO Sightings

July 13, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Rebecca Patton July 1, 2020 bustle.com

• As young boys, Thomas Reed and his brother, Matthew, of the town of Sheffield in the southwestern corner of Massachusetts, encountered UFOs at least three separate times between 1966 and 1969. The September 1, 1969 encounter left a big impression. The brothers along with their mother and grandmother were driving over Sheffield Bridge when they all saw a bright light. Their station wagon came to a stop on the side of the road. Says Reed, “Everything got really calm. It was like being in the middle of a hurricane. There was like a barometric change in pressure…. Then we remember bits and pieces of being in like a hangar. Other people there. It was quite confusing.”

• Dozens of eyewitnesses reported seeing a disk-shaped flying object over Sheffield that night. Some people said that they were also taken and returned by the UFO. Episode 5 of Netflix’s “Unsolved Mysteries”, which explores the Berkshires UFO sighting, features other accounts of townspeople Tom Warner, Nancy Reed, Jane Green, and Melanie Kirchdorfer who corroborate the incident.

• In 2015, the Great Barrington Historical Society officially recognized the Reeds’ account as the first off-world UFO case in U.S. history. Later that year, the townspeople erected a 5,000-pound monument by the Sheffield Bridge to commemorate the Reed family’s story. But in 2019, local officials said that the monument had been erected on town property and removed it.

• While Reed has shared his story on a number of shows, including “Paranormal Paparazzi”, “Alien Mysteries”, and “Ancient Aliens”, he hasn’t always been happy with the coverage. He considers the term ‘abduction’ to be ‘cornball terminology’. “The papers and the stories have gotten so ridiculous that the truth has been lost,” says Reed. “Our family is very credible. We’re not a bunch of lunatics.”

Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries, a reboot of the beloved ’80s and ’90s series of the same name, mostly focuses on murder and missing persons cases. But toward the end of the first season, things take a, uh, brief detour. Episode 5 explores the Berkshires UFO sighting that happened in Sheffield, Massachusetts on Sept. 1, 1969. And boy, is it a ride.

According to the Boston Globe, Thomas Reed claimed that he and his brother, Matthew, encountered UFOs at least three separate times between 1966 and 1969, but the last incident left the biggest impression on him. He told the radio station WAMC that he and his brother, mother, and grandmother were driving across Sheffield Bridge on that fateful evening when they all saw a bright light.

“Then that was the last thing we really remembered from the station wagon,” he said. “It came to a stop off the right side of the road. Everything got really calm. It was like being in the middle of a hurricane. There was like a barometric change in pressure…. Then we remember bits and pieces of being in like a hangar. Other people there. It was quite confusing.”

In 2015, the Great Barrington Historical Society officially recognized the Reeds’ account as the “first off-world/UFO case in U.S. history,” per WAMC. The program director at the time, Debbie Oppermann, told the Boston Globe that she knew they would get a lot of backlash, but that they’d “given it an awful lot of thought” and based on the evidence, “believe this is a significant and true event.”

The society was particularly convinced by the dozens of eyewitnesses from the same night, who reported seeing a disk-shaped flying object or else said they were also taken and returned by the UFO. Some of these accounts, including those of Tom Warner, Nancy Reed, Jane Green, and Melanie Kirchdorfer, are featured in Unsolved Mysteries.

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Western Mass. Debates A UFO Monument — And How To Commemorate The Inexplicable

June 14, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Adam Reilly May 31, 2018 (wgbh.org)

• In 2015, the Great Barrington Historical Society erected a “Governor’s Citation” monument, the plaque reading in part, “… in recognition of the off-world incident on September 1, 1969… which has been established… factually upheld, founded, and deemed historically significant and true by means of Massachusetts Historians.” It is signed by Massachusetts Governor Charles D. Baker.

• Great Barrington, Mass resident Tom Warner says emphatically, “I saw that UFO.” Warner recalls seeing a saucer -shaped UFO “twenty feet or more in height, probably about 30 to 40 feet around.” “The lights were colors I’d never seen in my life.”

• General Manager of Great Barrington-based WSBS radio, David Isy, says that “Back in 1969, we had listeners call the radio station that evening [to say] ‘Something bizarre is happening’.”

• Thomas E. Reed, whose name appears on the monument’s plaque, has said that he saw an [extraterrestrial] creature resembling “an ant, with some human features. It had a head that looked almost like a football shape.” Reed says that he and his family saw a light that “ rose up maybe two, three stories —and it went, actually, further away from our vehicle.” Reed has since reported additional encounters with UFOs.

• Recently, the Great Barrington Historical Society’s Executive Director, Robert Krol stated that, in retrospect, it was a mistake to focus so much attention on witness Thom Reed, instead of everyone else who witnessed something inexplicable that night. “Children coming into school, talking about the event… An old student of mine. One [witness] is a local shop owner whose father was the… police chief in town. So these are reliable people. These are not self-promoters.” said Krol.

• But the backlash of institutional ridicule has begun. A spokesperson for Governor Charlie Baker told the Boston Globe that the citation was issued in error. The town of Sheffield now claims that the monument might be on public property, which could lead to its removal.

Some of us have trouble remembering what we were doing a week ago, or even last night. But Tom Warner, of Great Barrington, Mass., can say exactly where he was on the evening of September 1, 1969.
“I was laying right where we’re standing right here,” Warner said recently, standing in a yard with a stunning view of the Berkshires. “I was laying on the ground, like this, and there was a beam on me.”
As Warner tells it, that beam was emanating from an object that resembled nothing he’d ever seen.

“Twenty feet or more in height, probably about 30 to 40 feet around, and it had — as I’m looking now, I can see it — it had lights,” Warner recalled. “The lights were colors I’d never seen in my life.”

To skeptics, this tale of a close encounter half a century ago might sound implausible. But Warner isn’t the only one convinced he witnessed something remarkable that night.

“Back in 1969, we had listeners call the radio station that evening,” says David Isy, the general manager of Great Barrington-based WSBS. “They didn’t know it was a UFO at the time. They just called the station and said, ‘Something bizarre is happening.’

“We talked about it on the air just last week, and one of our listeners, Jane Brown, who’s now 84, she called in to the radio station and told us she was one of the first people to report it.”

These distant memories are back in the news thanks to a monument near a covered bridge in the neighboring town of Sheffield, where a man named Thom Reed says he and his family had their own close encounter that evening.

“This light, it rose up maybe two, three stories —and it went, actually, further away from our vehicle, over what’s now a large cornfield,” Reed told WGBH.

The monument in question didn’t arrive until much later, in 2015, after the Great Barrington Historical Society took the unusual step of calling Reed’s account “historically significant and true.” But now, its future is in jeopardy.

WGBH Greater Boston Television 4:48 minute news story

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