- MYSTERY FIREBALL TAKES PLUNGE
SOUTH OF CHICAGO
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- On Sunday evening, November 30, 1997,
pilot Tim Janecyk of Tinley Park, Illinois was driving with his girlfriend
on Interstate Highway 80 south of Chicago when he saw an unusual light
in the sky. As he drove through New Lenox, Illinois (population 9,627),
Janecyk, a pilot with eight years' experience, "off to his left...saw
a 'brilliant fireball descend from the clouds straight down.'" "The
object, the size of a full moon, lit up the clouds, trailing a column of
smoke, Janecyk said. It appeared to be descending at 125 to 150 miles per
hour, he said, 'It was too slow for a meteor.' Within 20 seconds, it dropped
behind some trees." "Janecyk called New Lenox police, who notified
Will County sheriff's police. Officers investigated but found nothing,
said Lt. Mike Moran." "Will County sheriff's police found no
evidence of debris, and the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) reported
no planes missing or sightings on radar. 'We looked at it, and there is
no aviation connection we can determine,' FAA spokesman Don Zochert said."
The case is being investigated by John Timmerman of Lima, Ohio, a MUFON
investigator. New Lenox is at the intersection of the Lincoln Highway (Illinois
Highway 30) and Cedar Road, about six miles (10 kilometers) east of Joliet.
(See the Chicago Sun-Times for December 3, 1997, "'Fireball' Fires
Up the UFO Crowd.")
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- NEW SIGHTING IN NEW JERSEY
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- On Sunday, November 30, 1997, at 7:11
p.m., MUFON investigator Frank Moriarty and his wife were in the rear of
their home in Somerdale, New Jersey (population 5,440), getting ready to
cook supper on their outdoor grille. "I noticed a light or lights
in the sky over our neighbors' house," Moriarty reported. "The
light seemed to be either a collection of whitish lights or a single white
light of varying brightness across its width. Actually, this is what attracted
my attention to it--I could not clearly focus on it." "It was
at an angle of 35 to 40 degrees...and was moving from the north to the
southwest. As it moved, I heard the very faint sound of a propellor engine
aircraft, coming from behind me to the east. I actually tried to look
for the aircraft but was unable to see it because of the low clouds...Turning
back to the object, I realized that there was no sound emanating from the
lights." "Several times the light wavered slightly in its course
as it continued to move in a regularly straight line. The light/lights
occasionally blinked or pulsed on an irregular basis, accompanied by what
appeared to be a trail of light following from it and heading straight
down." Somerdale is on New Jersey Highway 30, about 17 miles (27 kilometers)
southeast of Camden, N.J. and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (See MUFON Skywatch
Investigations #48. Many thanks to George A. Filer of MUFON for this report.)
(Editor's Comment: Hmmm, two UFO sightings on November 30, and they both
took place in communities on a state highway 30. Interesting coincidence,
eh?)
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- CALF MUTILATION FOLLOWS COLORADO
UFO SIGHTING
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- On Saturday, November 29, 1997, at 11
p.m., four people in Crestone, Colorado (population 200), on the western
slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, spotted "unusual multi-colored
lights" in the sky about 15 to 20 miles northwest of town. Identical
lights were also seen by four people traveling on Colorado Highway 17,
located 15 miles (24 kilometers) west of Crestone. This sighting took
place at around 4:45 p.m. The following morning, Sunday, November 30, a
rancher found a dead mutilated calf on his property just northwest of Center,
Colorado (population 1,963). The "year-old, still-warm, female calf...was
missing all the flesh from its right-side mandible, its right eye and a
10-inch (25-centimeter) rectum coring that extended 18 inches (45 centimeters)
into the animal." "The crime scene was completely devoid of any
tracks--except for the dead calf's," reported Skywatch investigator
Christopher O'Brien, author of THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY (St. Martin's Press,
1996). There were no "footprints or blood or any additional clues
as to how the calf was killed and subsequently mutilated." The rancher,
who owns a herd of 38 cattle, told O'Brien that he found "a second
calf with a bloody nose and is missing a third." The case is being
investigated by the Saguache County Sheriff's Department. Center is on
Highway 112 approximately 165 miles (264 kilometers) southwest of Denver.
(Many thanks to Steve Wilson, Sr. for this report.) (Editor's Note: Chris
O'Brien's long-anticipated sequel, INSIDE THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY, dealing
with UFO sightings and other anomalies in southern Colorado, will be published
by St. Martin's Press in May 1998. Reserve your copy today.)
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- TWO MORE UFO SIGHTINGS REPORTED
IN BRITAIN
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- On Monday, December 1, 1997, at 8:30
p.m., Bruce B. was outdoors in Rotherham, South Yorkshire when he "looked
up through his north-facing arbor" and "saw a flame--a fiery,
green-orange thing moving from left to right and downward. He said it
had flames on it, and he thought it was going to crash three-quarters of
a mile (0.7 kilometers) away." (Many thanks to Colin Brownbill for
this report.) On November 12, 1997, at 5:14 p.m., Harry Price was walking
his dog in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southwest
of London "on a clear but chilly evening." As he approached
the Bognor Regis railroad station, "looking up in a northerly direction,
he saw a shining light that split into seven smaller lights and traveled
away" to the north. Harry's workmate, who was with him at the time,
"also saw the same thing." A third eyewitness, waiting at the
train station, saw the same UFO "from the platform a few minutes before
the arrival of the 5:30 train." (Many thanks to Roger of CompuServe
for this report.) (Editor's Note: In August 1986, Rotherham, S. Yorks was
the scene of two ghost incidents. A poltergeist raised havoc at the ground-floor
flat inhabited by an elderly couple, Albert and Ivy Cardwell. Shortly
thereafter, Stephen Dimbleby saw a ghost in a coal mine at the Silverwood
Colliery just outside of town. See UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
by Janet and Colin Bord, Contemporary Books, Inc., Chicago, 1989, pages
81 and 91.)
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- ROD-SHAPED UFOs STARTLE MOTORISTS
IN AUSTRALIA
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- On Sunday, November 23, 1997, at 7:50
p.m., Wayne Banks and his friends were "heading from Doonside near
Blacktown to Penrith," New South Wales (N.S.W.), 25 miles (40 kilometers)
west of Sydney when they spotted a UFO. "We stopped at the traffic
light at the corner of Phillip Parkway and Eastern Road," Banks reported.
"I was looking west at the terrific sunset and commented on this to
the people in the car. There was scattered cloud and the sun gave off
a reddish glow." "It was then that I noticed an extremely bright
line just to the right of where I was looking. I originally thought it
was an aircraft jetstream (condensation trail, or "contrail"
for short, here in the USA--J.T.), although it didn't seem high enough.
It would've been almost an inch long at arm's length. I then turned to
one of my friends, and I pointed it out to him." "He too thought
it was some sort of jetstream, but then it started to move slowly, until
it began to rotate from horizontal to almost vertical. By this stage,
all six of us in the car were watching. It was then that one of the girls
noticed the line to the northwest of us. It was moving towards the other
line but very slowly. I also noticed a small red light in the direction
of the second line, but this could have been an aircraft. I lost sight
of them as we got to the bottom of the hill. Almost a minute later, we
had an unobstructed view of the western sky again, but we could not see
anything at all." (Many thanks to John Hayes for this report.) (Editor's
Note: The Katoomba Valley, west of Penrith, has had numerous UFO sightings
since 1942.)
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- UFO SPOOKS COUPLE IN TAURANGA,
NEW ZEALAND
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- On Saturday, November 15, 1997, at 9:50
p.m., a couple living in Tauranga, New Zealand, a city of the North Island
located 130 miles (208 kilometers) southeast of Auckland, spotted a UFO
flying slowly over Welcome Bay. "It appeared approximately 100 metres
(330 feet) from where we were standing on a second-storey verandah, looking
out to the north," they reported. "It was approximately 15 to
20 metres (50 to 67 feet) wide and appeared almost mist-like. It was round
in shape. There was no noise or lights. One of us saw it and asked the
second person (if) they could see it. When both acknowledged seeing it,
it disappeared, and not in any particular direction. From the first (moment),
it was there for almost ten seconds." (Many thanks to Jane S. Derry
for this report.)
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- UFO FOLLOWS BUS IN CENTRAL
ARGENTINA
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- A glowing UFO paced a local transit bus
on the highway between Rio Cuarto and Las Higueras in Cordoba province,
Argentina, approximately 512 kilometers (320 miles) west of Buenos Aires,
the national capital. The incident took place Tuesday evening, November
25, 1997. Sra. Alicia Ana de Lourenco boarded a transit bus owned by Transportes
Rio Cuarto Ltda. for a trip to the nearby town of General Cabrera. At 8:55
p.m., Sra. de Lourenco looked out the bus window at "a storm front
in the south." Suddenly, "a luminous object, bigger than a star
and far more brilliant, caught her attention, and she began to observe
it with great care." The OVNI (Spanish acronym for UFO) "had
a half-moon shape," and she estimated that its flight path carried
it over Carnerillo, southeast of Rio Cuarto. "To corroborate what
she was seeing, she called to a policeman sitting a few rows in front of
her. Then, to get a better view of the object, they opened the side window
and observed how it zigzagged right and left." As the UFO came closer,
the bus passengers saw that it contained "four rows of lights, which
Sra. de Lourenco described as 'the lights of a theatre.'" The "luminous
OVNI" kept pace with the bus until it reached Las Higueras, about
five kilometers (3 miles) northeast of Rio Cuarto" and then it zipped
away. The UFO was seen and videotaped in Las Higueras by a teenager, Valeria
Angelini, who used a Panasonic M8000 camcorder "to capture the luminous
object on tape." On Monday, December 1, 1997, Srta. Angelini was interviewed
by three ufologists from the Argentine UFO study group COR--Mario Bracamonte,
Pablo Odello and Frederico Smaldone. (Muchas gracias a Carlos Iurchuk
y Fundacion Argentina de Ovniologia para eso caso.)
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- 1909: UFO DAZZLES CROWD OVER
MARLBORO
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- Last summer UFO ROUNDUP presented actual
newspaper accounts from the 1909 UFO flap in New Zealand. This month we're
going to run actual newspaper stories from "L'Affaire Tillinghast,"
better known as "the New England Airship Invasion of 1909." Although
UFOs were seen in Leominster, Massachusetts (Mass.) and White River Junction,
Vermont (Vt.) as early as July, the flap really got going in December 1909
with multiple UFO sightings in the small city of Marlboro, Mass., approximately
28 miles (45 kilometers) west of Boston. Here's the actual newspaper story:
"One of the most positive proofs of the existence of the airship comes
from ex-councilman B.W. Johnson, who says he saw the airship Thursday evening,
Dec. 16th, in the southwestern part of the city, and that it came down
so low that he could hear a man talking from the craft." The (newspaper)
Marlboro Enterprise also refers to ten other sightings in the city that
week, including this tantalizing item: "A young man named Beauregard
is an authority for the statement that that on the same night (December
16, 1909) the airship landed on the southern side of Lake Williams."
On December 21, crowds of Marlboro residents, excited by the Johnson and
Beauregard stories, gathered on Main Street to watch the skies. "They
saw an aerial craft shooting along the southwestern heavens at a good rate
of speed...At the city hall, crowds formed and at 7:45 (p.m.) what looked
like a comet showed up and rapidly steered to the southwest and disappeared...
Among those who saw it was Officer J.J. Buckley but he would not talk for
publication on the matter." (See the Marlboro, Mass. Enterprise for
December 22, 1909, page 1.)
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