- SPAIN DECLASSIFIES 83 MILITARY
UFO FILES
-
- Earlier this month Spain became the first
nation in Europe to open its classified UFO files to researchers. On September
7, 1998, the Fuerza Aerea d'Espana (Spanish Air Force--J.T.) made available
83 case files on UFO sightings in Spain, files which had previously been
classified Top Secret. According to the newspaper Voz de Galicia, "The
truth is out there, in Madrid's General Air Force Library. It was learned
yesterday that the Spanish Air Force has completed declassifying these
official documents, which began in 1990. The shelves of the Madrid library
hold the 83 'X-Files' previously classified as Top Secret. Twenty percent
of these cases lack any logical explanation." "One report, numbered
as 891205, was opened in December 1989," in which eyewitnesses described
"a lenticular UFO 'with a vast array of shining lights'" which
overflew the towns of Sada and Castro in Spain's Galicia province, about
350 kilometers (210 miles) northwest of Madrid. "At 6:40 p.m."
on December 5, 1989, "members of the Benemrita (provincial police--J.T.)
in Castro notified the Lavacolla Central Tower, which notified the army
at the Aerial Vigilance Station at Noia (EVA 10). Both radars, civilian
and military, obtained the object, which moved vertically." At 8:40
p.m., three UFOs appeared on the EVA 10 radar set. Two vanished from the
screen at 9:02 p.m. But the third signal persisted until 8 a.m. the following
day, December 6, 1989. The article also described a second case in Galicia
"from the five pages of File 660402." On April 2, 1966, "a
corporal, a watchman and two sailors at Carreira watched a luminous object...It
was to the left of Mount Campelo. The phenomenon lasted three-quarters
of an hour. One of the witnesses took a snapshot of the UFO, which shows
only a white spot against a black background." (See the newspaper
Voz de Galicia for September 8, 1998. Many thanks to Scott Corrales, author
of CHUPACABRAS AND OTHER MYSTERIES for forwarding the article.)
-
- UFOs HOVER OVER CITIES IN
NORTHWESTERN FRANCE
-
- The UFO flap in France continued last
week with more sightings along the Atlantic coast. On Wednesday, September
16, 1998, at 4:45 a.m., Ismael Belal "awoke abruptly from an agitated
sleep. Turning, I saw through the window of my apartment, located at 5
Allee Houdon in Boulogne-sur-Mer, in the sky at an angle of 45 degrees
above the horizon that which is called an OVNI (French acronym for UFO--J.T.).
It was of a dark rectangular form with white and red lights strung along
the periphery. The object measured 10 centimeters at arm's length. The
object was at the level of the cloud ceiling, about 400 to 600 meters.
The object moved very rapidly in the sky and was silent. It went north
to south, passing to the west of Boulogne-sur-Mer. The weather was cloudy
with intermittent clear spots." On Friday, September 18, 1998, at
10:40 p.m., a witness in the department of Eure, west of Paris, contacted
the French UFO group Banque OVNI and reported seeing "a stationary
light in the sky in the direction (west) of Le Havre." At 11:40 p.m.,
witnesses in Le Havre reported spotting "a discoid object with three
bright white lights...one millimeter at arm's length. The sky was clear
and cloudless. The luminous object flew towards the south-southeast, to
the end of its path, over Honfleur." Le Havre is a harbor city at
the mouth of the river Seine, in the department Seine-Maritime, located
200 kilometers (120 miles) west of Paris. Honfleur is on the south side
of the river, about 12 kilometers (9 miles) southeast of Le Havre. The
witnesses kept the luminous object in view for 50 minutes and said it "always
remained in the same place in the sky. The object seemed to be too slow
to be a star. The planets along the plane of the eclyptic were lower on
the horizon." Franck Marie of Banque OVNI is investigating this case
and has contacted Orly Airport and the Centre Operationenel Inter-Armees,
COIA (the French Pentagon--J.T.) to see if the objects showed on radar.
(Merci beaucoup au Franck Marie et Michel Granger pour ces nouvelles.)
-
- FRENCH UFOLOGISTS SPAR OVER
VOREPPE CASE
-
- Service d'Expertise des Phenomenes de
Rentrees Atmospheriques (SERPA), the French government's UFO study group,
reversed its position on the spherical metallic UFO seen and videotaped
in Voreppe on September 6, 1998. But not all ufologists are in agreement.
The UFO was seen at 8 p.m. in Voreppe, a town of the department of Isere,
near Grenoble in the French Alps. The witnesses, a family of four, watched
it hover over their garden and shot a videotape of its departure. On September
13, 1998, SEPRA, the Centre National d'Etudes Spaciales (CNES) and the
Gendarmerie (French police--J.T.) announced the results of the "joint
investigation that raised doubts about the object observed," and said
"the spherical object, probably metallic and incandescent" was
actually "a balloon filled with helium." A CNES spokesman said,
"The information has been confided to us, convincingly, by Jean-Jacques
Velasco, head of SEPRA" that "what happened is a family of Voreppe
informed the police that their son had dropped a balloon that was fairly
large (one meter in diameter) in the shape of a ladybug. There was very
little wind, and it drifted, finally losing altitude, downward into the
garden. Night was falling, and the witnesses were mistaken about its size.
When they shot the video, the object was already some distance away and
hard to identify." La coccinelle (French for ladybug--J.T.), the CNES
spokesman added, had a distinctive shape, and on the tape, "a woman's
voice could be heard, saying, 'It looks like a ladybug.'" Also, "a
string could be seen on the video, floating under the balloon." Banque
OVNI director Franck Marie disputed the findings however, asking, "How
could an incandescent sphere of 5 or 6 meters be mistaken for a balloon
one meter wide with the bright sun shining?" He added that, "despite
the 'very feeble wind,' the object remained in place for at least two minutes,
during the film, at minimum." (See the newspaper L'Union for September
13, 1998, "L'OVNI de Voreppe etait un ballon gonfle a l'helium."
Merci beaucoup au Franck Marie et Errol Bruce-Knapp pour ces nouvelles.)
(Editor's Comment: I know I shouldn't take sides in a UFO dispute, but
there are two questions that I just have to ask. (A) What happened to
the scorched and charred tree branches collected at the scene that evening
by the Gendarmerie? (B) If there was a "very feeble wind," then
how was the "balloon" able to depart the scene at an estimated
speed of 48 kilometers per hour?)
-
- TRIANGULAR UFO SEEN IN NORTHERN
ITALY
-
- On Saturday, September 5, 1998, at 8
a.m., two ufologists in Como, a city just south of Italy's border with
Switzerland, spotted "with binoculars, a brilliant light, like a flare
from the sun. Because of the brightness of the object, it was not possible
to observe it for very long." At 11:30 p.m. that night, witnesses
in Cusago and Settimo Milanese, near Milano (Milan) about 60 kilometers
(36 miles) southeast of Como, "saw a luminous triangular object...the
strange light was flying at a high altitude above the horizon and made
many turns. Observed with a pair of professional it revealed the shape
and the lights arranged in a triangular order, one attached to each corner."
At 11:30 p.m., "a similar arrangement of white lights" was seen
in the town of Cesano Boscone." (Grazie a Alfredo Lissoni, Giuliano
Bertelli e Marco Guarisco di Centro Ufologico Nazionale, CUN, per questo
rapporto.)
-
- FIVE UFOs SIGHTED IN YPENBURG,
NETHERLANDS
-
- On Saturday, September 19, 1998, at 2
p.m., eyewitnesses spotted a daylight disc over Ypenburg, a small town
near Delft in the Netherlands, about 60 kilometers (36 miles) southwest
of Amsterdam. Between 2 and 3 p.m., the witnesses sighted "five lights,"
of which "some were triangular and the others disk-shaped. They were
about two to six meters wide. They produced a faint blue and red light.
They were extremely fast and able to stop instantly, then 'float' about...They
disappeared at high speed, straight up, in a formation." (USENET
Report) (Editor's Note: Take this one with a grain of salt. The writer
did not respond to my three requests for an email interview.)
-
- AMBER OVOID UFO SEEN IN PORTSMOUTH,
RHODE ISLAND
-
- On Tuesday, September 22, 1998, at 4:18
p.m., Roscoe Sweeney (a pseudonym), a 22-year-old sailor in the U.S. Navy,
"was driving north on Burma Road" in Portsmouth, Rhode Island
(population 13,840) "one mile from the Melville shipyard" when
he spied a UFO. "It started above the tree line, about 10 degrees
above the horizon, and disappeared into the clouds... Ended up slightly
30 degrees up. The departure angle was close to 45 degrees. It departed
into the west and up." "I'm a reliable judge of speed. This
thing was smoking and accelerating! Speed 400 to 500 knots, with a behind-the-trees
dash at Mach 1 (600 knots), easy." "It was the brilliance that
brought my eye to it. If I had done a slow blink, I would have missed it
completely. This was truly an amazing sight." He described the UFO
as "oval, like if you put your thumb and index finger together to
make the OK sign. No blinking lights. Glowed like looking at a picture
of the filtered sun...amber/gold." Portsmouth is on Aquidneck Island
in Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast
of Providence, the state capital. (Email Interview)
-
- UFOs FLY OVER FRESNO AND LOS
ANGELES
-
- UFOs were spotted twice in southern California
last week. On Tuesday, September 22, 1998, at 9:40 p.m., Vikki and Joseph
R. were at their home near the Shields Avenue bypass in Fresno, California
(population 354,202) when they spotted a UFO. Vikki reported, "My
husband and I witnessed a triangular-shaped object with lights set at regular
intervals. The object appeared to be a pyramid shape. It had no sound.
Altitude at my estimation was 2,000 feet and it was last seen heading
east towards Nevada." "From our vantage point, the craft looked
triangular in shape, almost a delta form, and had five lights, three on
one side, two on the other. We had it in view about a minute, all total."
She added that the object "was about the size of a football at arm's
length. No noise whatsoever...extremely quiet." (Email Interview)
Fresno is on Highway 99 about 215 miles (344 kilometers) north of Los Angeles.
Two days earlier, on Sunday, September 20, 1998, "just before sunset,"
at 6:40 p.m., professional photographer Victor M. "spotted a stationary
object above the Palos Verdes (hills) on the San Pedro peninsula, on the
east side of the hill. I was facing west and spotted an object or objects
just below the clouds. I ran in my house to get the binoculars and an
SLR 35mm camera." "Through the binoculars, I noticed a greyish
and sometimes shiny C-shaped object. The C was with the open side up.
The object appeared to have split into two or three objects of the same
shape. Suddenly, the object turned into a V-shaped object with the point
of the V turned upward, inverted." "Setting the binoculars down,
I utilized the camera which had a 200mm lens attached, ASA 50 film, f5.6
at about 1/200 shutter speed, hand-held without tripod, and I took about
three to six shots." He added that the UFOs "did not move at
all," and "I watched them for about 20 minutes" before they
departed. (Email Interview) San Pedro is on Pacific Avenue about 16 miles
(25 kilometers) south of the Los Angeles Convention Center.
-
- MYSTERIOUS LIGHTS SEEN IN
FARMINGTON, NEW MEXICO
-
- On Monday, September 14, 1998, Michael
O. "walked out of my house at 10:30 p.m. to go to my next-door neighbor's"
in Farmington, New Mexico (population 33,937). "As I looked up into
the night sky, I noticed two flashing white strobe lights. They were at
approximately 75 degrees above the horizon." He estimated that, at
arm's length, the lights were "the distance between my thumb tip and
the little finger tip," if the fingers were splayed apart. "What
was unusual was that they were absolutely synchronous, as if they were
attached to the same aircraft, and yet they were too far apart to be.
Unless, of course, they were attached to an extremely large aircraft."
"As I watched, the strobe on the right began moving closer to the
one on my left, while the one on the left maintained its course. As the
right one nearly merged with the one on the left, it suddenly moved beneath
it, then moved up on the opposite side and continued moving to the left
until it was the same distance to the left that it had been on the right.
It then remained in that position until both were out of sight."
Farmington is on New Mexico Highway 64 approximately 208 miles (333 kilometers)
northwest of Santa Fe. (Many thanks to Errol Bruce-Knapp for forwarding
this news story.)
-
- SPHERICAL UFO SIGHTED IN NORTHERN
KENTUCKY
-
- On Wednesday, September 9, 1998, Bob
Riker (pseudonym) who "works in Florence (Kentucky) as a computer
technician and administrator," at 4 p.m. "stepped outside for
a cigarette. The sky was spotted with clouds, and the sun was shining
between them, enough to provide adequate lighting." Just then, Bob
spotted a small spherical object moving from the north to the south-southwest.
"It traversed the entire horizon from the north to the southwest
in less than ten seconds, going under the low dark clouds before disappearing
in a distant cloud bank (and under an approaching plane.) He added that
"there was no sound from the object, which seemed to glitter slightly
from the background sun, which was in the west. The object appeared to
briefly sparkle, as if it were reflecting a glow from the sun. It was
not necessarily glowing, more like a reflective sparkle." Florence,
Kentucky (population 18,624) is about 21 miles (33 kilometers) south of
Cincinnati, Ohio. (Many thanks to Kenneth Young, public relations director
of Tri-States Advocates for Scientific Knowledge, T.A.S.K., for this news
story.)
-
- MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR TIGHTENS
ITS ORBIT
-
- On Wednesday morning, September 23, 1998,
NASA flight controllers sent a transmission to the Mars Global Surveyor,
ordering the spacecraft to fire its rocket engine in an aerobraking maneuver.
"The 14.8-second engine burn Wednesday morning was successful in using
aerobraking to slow the spacecraft's speed. Engineers are trying to reduce
the spacecraft's large elliptical orbit into a tight circle." The
aerobraking maneuver was originally scheduled for March 1998. However,
shortly after the spacecraft arrived in orbit around Mars in September
1997, NASA discovered that a solar panel was bent out of shape. Controllers
feared that an aerobraking maneuver might snap off the panel completely.
The rocket burn changed Mars Global Surveyor's point of closest approach
from an altitude of 107 miles (171 kilometers) to 79 miles (122 kilometers),
and, as a result, "each orbit should be less than two hours."
(Many thanks to Steve Wilson Sr. for forwarding the NASA news release.)
(Editor's Comment: Lest we forget, the lander Pathfinder and its little
robot Sojourner are still marooned on Mars, 213 million miles from home.)
-
- From the UFO Files...
-
- 1824: STRANGE PHENOMENON AT
ORENBURG
-
- In late September 1824, people in Orenburg,
Russia were puzzled when they heard something clattering on the onion-shaped
roof of the Orthodox church. They soon discovered "little symmetrical
pieces of metal" falling from the clear blue sky. Months later, on
January 25, 1825, the same phenomenon occurred again. Samples of the material
were gathered and sent to St. Petersburg (then capital of Russia--J.T.)
In Oeuvres vol. 11, page 644, a scientist, M. Arago, noted that a chemical
analysis of the objects had showed them to be "70 percent red oxide
of iron, and sulphur, and loss (of mass) by ignition (combustion) 5 percent."
Amazingly the pieces of metal showed signs of having been manufactured.
The Orenburg "sky fall" attracted the attention of Prince Pavel
Vasilyevich Dolgorukii, the "librarian" of the mystic Brothers
of the Inner Order. This was an offshoot of the Lodge Harmonia, founded
by Nikolai Novikov in St. Petersburg in 1780. When Empress Catherine II
suppressed the Masonic lodges of Russia in 1792 and jailed Novikov, Dolgorukii
and two brothers, Yuri and Nikita Troubezkoi, formed the Brothers of the
Inner Order. They then set about collecting hundreds of books on alchemy,
mysticism and the paranormal, including works by the most notorious occultists
of the period. The collection had a first edition Originalschriften des
Illuminatenordensekte by Adam Weishaupt and pamphlets by Jean-Baptiste
Willermoz and the ayatollah Shaikh Ahmed Ahsai. After Dolgorukii's death
in 1838, the collection-- and perhaps a handful of those mysterious Orenburg
artifacts--passed into the possession of his daughter, Mme. Nadyezhda de
Fadeyev. In 1846, about the time of the war between the USA and Mexico,
Mme. de Fadeyev's 15-year-old niece, Elena Petrovna von Hahn, spent the
summer reading all the mystical books in her deceased grandfather's library.
Thirty years later, as the author/occultist Madame Blavatsky, Elena hinted
at the strange doings in Orenburg in her book, THE SECRET DOCTRINE, "...more
than one Russian mystic travelled to Tibet via the Ural Mountains in search
of knowledge and initiation in the unknown crypts of central Asia. And
more than one returned years later with a rich store of such information
as could never have been given him anywhere in Europe." This trail,
similar to the "Underground Railroad" for escaped black slaves
in the early Nineteenth Century USA, led from St. Petersburg and Moscow
straight through--you guessed it--Orenburg. Sad to say, the Dolgorukii
collection vanished sometime in the 1890s, after Mme. de Fadeyev's death.
Orenburg is located just south of the Ural Mountains 600 kilometers (360
miles) east of Moscow. (See THE COMPLETE BOOKS OF CHARLES FORT, Dover
Publications Inc., New York, NY, 1974, page 178. See also THE MASTERS
REVEALED by K. Paul Johnson, State University Press, Albany, NY, 1994,
pages 19 to 22.) (Editor's Note: Declassified files of the Third Section
secret police of the Tsarist Ministry of the Interior revealed last year
that a UFO, described as "an intense burst of white light," was
seen over Orenburg by dozens of people, including government officials,
in January 1846, about six months before young Elena developed an interest
in her grandfather's occult library.)
-
- _________________________
-
- UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 1998 by Masinaigan
Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post news items from UFO
Roundup on their websites or in newsgroups provided that they credit the
newsletter and its editor by name and list the date of issue in which the
item first appeared.
|
