◆ SpookStack

ln ca i et nc ee! aaa i at sini = ae nas TT } ARMED FORCES Focus on UFO Winking, blinking and nod- ding — red lights over Pasa- dena, blue lights over Greensboro, silver cigars over Detroit — people kept seeing strange flying objects, ; and-officials kept saying nothing was out there. But in recent years, and particularly since last sum- mer, the pressure had been mounting for either a full- scale Congressional investi- gation or for the establish- ment of an independent, ci- vilian-controlled investigato- ry agency. It had been a big year for Unidentified Flying Objects. he sightings had come in bunches, the bulk of them last spring and summer. And the reports had come from all over. “Like Neon Lamps” Among the most intriguing items in this year’s crop: e At Milan, Michigan, 15 miles south of Ann Arbor, bluish- yellow bars of light were spotted, looking “like neon lamps dangling in the sky.” e@ In East Delhi, Mich., a 15-year-old boy called in to report seeing lights in the sky alternately standing still and moving, sometimes flashing on and off. e In Altadena and San Marino, Calif., police switch- boards logged dozens of calls after a pair of red lights in the sky were reported by residents. e In Toledo, Ohio, officials at the local airport received seven calls from persons who said they saw a glowing ob- ject that was red, green and white. e In suburban -Detroit,. a man saw a noiseless, wing- less, cigar-shaped flying ob- ject. : =e In Bryan, Texas, resi- dents said they heard a star-like object purr. o Over Valdese, N.C., a “slowing blue thing” explod- ed, then lit up the town like a giant flashbulb. Sometimes the alleged sightings spilled over into the bizarre. A space ship full of little men allegedly landed in a farm yard near Hopkins- ville, Kentucky. The little men glowed, and they were described as ‘‘three feet tall, with eyes like saucers and hands like claws.”” A grain buyer in Nebraska said he was invited into a space ship where he chatted with four men and two wom- en. They spoke only broken -English—but fluent High German which, as it hap- pened, was the grain buyer’s native tongue. Silvery Cigar Nor did America have any corner on the UFO market. In Northern Ireland, Tom Hutchinson saw a saucer drop into a peat bog near his home in Moneymore. It was eggshaped, three feet in di- i 4 UPI Telenhoto DR. CONDON Saucer-watcher ncaa nanan ‘ameter, 18 inches high. It be- gan to spin and Hutchinson ‘ grabbed it. He was carrying it to the police, who de- scribed him as “‘level-headed and God-fearing,’’ when the thing twisted out of his hands and got away. And in Warminster, Eng- land, a city council worker said he saw a silvery cigar shape drifting over the vil- lage downs. After a time, he said, it seemed to stretch. Then it seemed to divide amidships with a flash of or- ange light, although there was no noise. Flaming Object Not all the sightings could be easily written off as the phantasmagoria of kooks, eranks and drunks. And, un- less one subscribed to a theo- ry of mass hallucination, it was difficult to explain away simultaneous sightings con- firmed by many rational wit- nesses — such as the flaming object that was seen last April by thousands of East Coast residents from Wash- ington to Boston and even temporarily disrupted a ball game between the Chicago White Sox and the Wash- ington Senators in Wash- ington, D.C. Or the incident in Hills- dale, Michigan last March, in which a Civil Defense Direc- tor, an assistant dean, and 87 coeds reported that they had seen a glowing object zip past their college dormitory and hover in a swamp for hours. Witnesses said they watched from the second floor of the Hillsdale College girls dormitory as the object — wobbled, wavered, glowed eerily and once zipped right at a dormitory window be- fore stopping suddenly. A Meteor? The Air Force, charged with investigating every one This World, Sunday, October 16, 1966 rd oe Me “2 C~C ENCLOSUR S. F. Sunday Examiner & Chronicle ©