UFOs In Cumbria

Famous UFO sightings from the past

AThompson
Published at 01:00, Tuesday, 16 August 2005
http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/home/famous_ufo_sightings_from_the_past

CUMBRIA was once a hotbed of UFO activity, boasting everything from spacemen and flying saucers to strange flying triangles and visits by mysterious ‘men in black’.

Chris Parr, co-ordinator of the Whitehaven-based British Hunters, describes his top four UFO cases in the county – and some of the theories behind them.

The Cumberland Spaceman: May 23, 1964: Carlisle fireman Jim Templeton took three pictures with his SLR camera of his daughter on a day trip to Burgh Marsh.

The photographs came back from Kodak with one of them showing what appears to be a space-suited humanoid in the background.

Chris says: “This case is legendary around the world. Analysts at Kodak confirmed that the photograph was genuine, some UFO experts have linked it to the Blue Streak missile tests which were ongoing nearby when the photograph was taken.“

The Coniston UFO

February 15, 1954: A 13-year-old Ulverston schoolboy, Steven Darbishire, photographed a flying saucer on a hill near the Old Man footpath in Coniston, but it was a fake.

Chris says: “This was the ultimate schoolboy prank. The image of a classic flying saucer, resulted in a media frenzy and UFO fascination which Darbishire felt he had to support.”

The Windermere UFO August 28, 1977: Ten police officers and numerous witnesses observed a huge triangular UFO passing over Windermere over a 20-minute period. Witness John Platt said: “I was looking up into what appeared to be a giant catamaran with twin hulls and a large structure at the front.”

Chris’s theory is that it was an airship.

He says: “Throughout the 1970s, a large number of Airship UFOs were reported flying over the Cumbrian skies. Sometimes they were as big as a football field.”

The Mysterious Flying Triangles

Throughout the late 1980s, Cumbria was the host to many visitations of the Flying Triangles. Sometimes these craft were described as being black and sleek in design, with the ability to accelerate at great speed.

Chris’s theory: Secret Stealth Technology. “The Lockheed F117 Stealth fighter and its delta shape design may have been responsible for the many Black Triangle UFO sightings around the county.”

UFO FYI: Jan. 24, 1967; Yorba Linda, CA

1967 - A 14-year-old youth with the last name of Kirsch took a photograph of a disc-shaped structured object over Yorba Linda, California at 5:25 p.m. The photo was reported in the Santa Ana Register newspaper, and subsequently evaluated by NICAP as that of a genuine (not hoaxed) flying object. (Sources: Santa Ana Register, June 7, 1967; Ann Druffel, MUFON UFO Journal, June 1976, p. 10; Richard H. Hall, The UFO Evidence, Volume II: A Thirty-Year Report, p. 286).

Jan. 24, 1967; Yorba Linda, CA

5:25 p.m. PST. A 14-year-old boy saw and photographed a metallic-appearing object shaped like a top hat with four legs projecting from the bottom. (Hall, 2001, pp. 286-87, from "The Yorba Linda Photograph" in Flying Saucer Review, Special Issue, Nov. 1967, pp. 26-35.)
NOTE: The year 1967, encompassed a major part of the most intensive and long-lasting UFO sighting wave of all time. The wave was a U.S. and international UFO sighting wave that actually began in 1966. Not only was this a massive sighting wave involving nuclear equipped missile shutdowns, but also a number of humanoid incidents were reported along with the usual ground and air incidents. For an excellent chronology, visit: http://www.nicap.org/waves/1967fullrep.htm

YORBA LINDA CALIFORNIA
January 24, 1967

(UFO Phenomenon at Close Sight) On January 24, 1967 at twilight, Tom, aged 14, was startled by a dark hat-shaped object hovering outside the second storey window of his home in Yorba Linda, in a small, relatively isolated town on the edge of Orange County California. He quickly rushed to another room to get his inexpensive Mark XII fixed-focus camera and returned within seconds. The object had moved farther away from the windowpane in the meantime, but that he was still able to snap one black-and-white picture before running downstairs, shouting for his family to come and view the strange craft. Unfortunately, by the time they had climbed the stairs, the UFO had moved out of sight. Tom had the impression that the object was "gigantic", but there was no objective reason to accurately talk of its size, so that this could be a subjective impression only.

He regularly used a mail-order film company to process his photos, but they had lost a roll of film shortly before this incident, so instead of posting it by mail for developement, he asked a friend who was 14 to develop it for him.

His friend was not an experienced developper, and the negative and photo emerged scratched, dulled, and was probably light-struck, so it had to be restored professionally later. The cheap camera also had a faulty winding mechanism that caused several long scratches on the negative.

The sighting and the photograph came to the attention of Ann Druffel of NICAP's Los Angeles section in June 1967, and she subjected to analysis by six photographic experts during the next four years, including sophisticated aerospace photogrametric systems. All the experts estimated that the photograph was of a real, three dimensional object, either stationary or moving at slow speed. Double exposure, cutouts, hand-thrown, or string-suspended models possibilities were examined but ruled out.

Tom had reported four thin appendages hanging down from the bottom rim, but on the photograph, only three were showing. One of the expert speculated that it could have withdrawn or folded up.

Investigation revealed that when first seen, it subtended an angle of about sixteen degrees and about one degree when the photo was taken. Tom's visual impression was that the bottom rim was continuous and slanted like a top hat; however, the photo showed the rim was actually composed of egg-shaped bulges, from which the legs apparently protruded.

Tom's character and reliability were checked, and appeared flawless. He was an honest, intelligent youngster, appreciated by his friends and school authorities. His family did not see the UFO, but confirmed that he had called them, and that he was very excited after he saw and photographed the object. The family tended to believe Tom for another reason: Tom, his parents, and his sister had seen a large silvery object with lighted windows on January 4, 1967 just twenty days before the hat-shaped object was photographed. Before this event they had no interest in UFOs and considered the subject silly and uninteresting.

But following their January 24, 1967, sighting, they saw quite a number of other, more distant UFOs, and other residents of Yorba Linda and the area also saw some. Tom has never tried to make any profit with the photograph, and has made it available to researchers for use without restrictions. A photograph taken by a single witness could not shake NICAP's natural skepticism and caution, so they initially estimated that the photograph was a hoax. With further analyses, among other densitometer readings by a major California aerospace firm, who estimated that the object had photographed much darker than it should have, their cautiousness seemed justified. However, another study by a Southern California geodetic survey company revealed that the color of the object could be red, which would photograph darker than black.

This seemed at odds with the witness' description, since he said the object was dark. Very interestingly, what happened was that this allowed to discover that Tom was colorblind in the red, seeing dark reds and maroon colors as rather black. Numerous studies continued later, and nobody could find any sign of hoax. In 1999, a computer-enhancement expert said he could confirm the three-dimensionality of the object, and he also found a faint highlight on the body of the craft, indicating probable reflection of sunlight off the rounded surface, consistent with the position of the sun at the time of sighting.

ON THE OTHER HAND... Investigator Larry Robinson says: "January 24, 1967; Yorba Linda CA: This photo is of a satellite that was part of a Hasbro GI-Joe military space explorer set (with a space shuttle that was amazingly accurate for the 1966 release date). The focus of other objects indicates that the lens is focused on a small object very near to the camera. The fact that the object is darker than the window frame indicates that the object is inside the room. If it had been outside and larger, atmospheric scattering would have made the image much lighter."
http://www.geocities.com/midimagic@sbcglobal.net/ufoclass.htm

NOTE FROM CHUCK: I don't know what he means by "satellite" and "space shuttle." The only 1966 G.I. Joe space explorer set I could find came with nothing more than a tiny replica of a genuine NASA space capsule. This vehicle is neither a satellite nor a space shuttle, and is anything but amazingly accurate, for 1966 or any other year. In proportion to the G.I. Joe figure, the thing is considerably smaller than a phone booth. You would not get me up in one of those, even if my head was made of hollow plastic. The thin walls would not block out any harmful cosmic rays, and would certainly not survive the heat of reentry into the atmosphere. By the same token, it bears an amazing lack of resemblance to the object in the Yorba Linda photo.

From The Mufon UFO Journal, June 1980, No. 148
California Report
Magnetic Anomalies and UFO Flight Part II (excerpt)
By Ann Druffel

On January 4, 1967, Tom X rose about 6:00 a.m. and went downstairs to the kitchen of his family's new townhouse. Looking out toward the eastern foothills, he saw an immense, oval-shaped object flying low over nearby homes. It was seemingly metallic and flashed red lights similar to the "taillights of a Thunderbird."

Tom dashed upstairs to wake his family, and his parents and younger sister Alyce watched the huge object cruise leisurely out of sight over the isolated, hilly terrain on the eastern border of town. The family called a nearby air base, but were informed no vehicle resembling the giant craft was aloft.

The X family seemed stable and reliable. None of its members had prior interest in UFOs. However, in succeeding weeks, Tom and other family members viewed other strange objects in the sky near their home. Intrigued, Tom bought a $5.00 Mark XII camera, hoping to photograph one of the unusual objects.

On January 24, 1967, Tom was upstairs gathering material for his homework. Glancing out a bedroom window, according to his statement, he was horrified to see a dark, machine-like craft hovering near the house. It was shaped somewhat like a man's top hat, and four thin appendages dangled from the bottom. It had a curious dull, but nevertheless metallic, sheen, "like aluminum foil held at an angle." The surface of the legs had a similar appearance. (See Figure B)

Tom dashed to his bedroom and returned within seconds with his camera. The object had moved away to the east, but Tom was still frightened of it. Crouching on the bed, he hurriedly snapped one photo, then dashed downstairs, calling for his mother and sister. When they returned upstairs with him, the object was no longer in view. They were impressed by Tom's disquieted state.

Tom asked a 14-year old friend to develop the photo because he was afraid to trust mail-order processing. This young boy was inexpert, and the developed negative emerged lightstruck, scratched and fogged. However, it showed basically what Tom had described (4).

The picture came into my hands in June 1967, and during the next 4 years was sent to six different photographic experts. None was able to prove it as a hoax, and all explanations such as double exposure, cutouts, hand-held model, etc. were ruled out. Most of the experts felt the picture to be genuine.

In October 1971, the photo was taken for study by Al Cocking, then president of a Southland geodetic survey company. After using advanced photogrammetric equipment, Cocking stated his opinion that the photograph seemed to be that of an actual object, about 100 feet from the camera and three-dimensional. It was also considered free-flying and in a hovering or slowly moving mode.

The object, however, was not "gigantic," as the witness had stated. It was somewhat less than 2 feet in width, so it was assumed that it must have been right next to the window when Tom first saw it, perhaps one of the closest encounters on record! The picture was finally accepted by many sources as probably genuine, and has been so treated in UFO literature. Analysis of it continues to the present day.

The photo was taken in the midst of a flap which continued through December 1976. About ten good cases of puzzling objects were reported in the vicinity, most of which had more than one witness. In addition, numerous UFOs of lesser value were reported. The objects typically appeared in the southeast section of Yorba Linda and in most cases their flight paths were easterly toward the isolated Santa Ana Mountains and foothills on the town's rim.

For the rest of Ms. Druffel's very interesting article, visit:
http://www.anndruffel.com/articles/skynet/californiareport_magneticanomalies_part2.htm

UFO FYI: The Contactee Files- Howard and Connie Menger

THE CONTACTEE FILES: HOWARD AND CONNIE MENGER, a truly out of this world couple!R.I.P. Howard Menger (February 17, 1922 – February 25, 2009)

(FROM Wikipedia)
Howard Menger (February 17, 1922 – February 25, 2009) was an American Contactee who claimed to have met extraterrestrials throughout the course of his life, meetings which were the subject of books he wrote, such as From Outer Space To You and The High Bridge Incident. Menger, who rose to prominence as a charismatic contactee detailing his chats with friendly Adamski-style Venusian "space brothers" in the late 1950s, was widely dismissed as a charlatan who simply jumped on the bandwagon in the wake of publicity following publication of George Adamski's wild stories of chit-chatting with Nordic-looking spacemen, and during at least one live TV appearance he admitted as much. Nonetheless, his various stories, photographs and films have been accepted by some UFO believers.

While most contactees have religious revelations to impart after their "experiences," Menger came back from his saucer-rides with a far more practical message: a new outer-space-approved diet for losing excess weight. Later he issued a 33-1/3 rpm recording of "music composed by space aliens." When he was still young he moved with his parents to the rolling hills of Hunterdon County, New Jersey. His first alleged contact with a person from another planet was at the age of ten, in the woods near his hometown High Bridge. Shortly after leaving high school, he entered the Army and was attached to the 17th Tank Battalion. In later life he was often employed as a sign painter. He died on February 25, 2009 at the age of 87.

FROM ANSWERS DOT COM:
http://www.answers.com/topic/howard-menger-1

One of the original flying saucer contactees of the 1950s, Howard Menger emerged in 1956 when he told his story to late-night radio talk show host Long John Nebel. Three years later, his book From Outer Space to You appeared. Menger told of contacts that began when he was only ten years old. The original contact was with a beautiful blonde woman whom he met in person but who communicated via telepathy. Other contacts followed with other humanoid beings. Then in 1946, the woman disembarked from a spaceship and announced that a wave of contacts was in humanity's immediate future as many space people were coming to Earth to assist in solving its problems.

In 1956, in the wake of the publicity given contactee George Adamski, Menger took some photos of flying saucers, and claimed he took a ride in a Venusian ship. Following his appearance on Nebel's show, he was a guest on a national television shows hosted by Steve Allen and Jack Paar. The television exposure led to attacks by critics. An examination of his pictures led to denouncements that they were a hoax, and they caught Menger lying about his having read (and drawing material from) Adamski's books. Amid the controversy, a young blonde woman came to a gathering at the Menger home. He recognized her as the sister of the space person who had originally contacted him as a child. They began an affair and were eventually married. The woman, Connie Weber, wrote her story, which was published in a book under the pseudonym Karla Baxter. It actually appeared in 1958, a year prior to Menger's first book.

The title, My Saturnian Lover, continued Menger's claim that he was actually an extraterrestrial who had reincarnated on Earth. Through the 1960s, Menger seemed to back away from some of his claims, but added assertions of government agents involving him in an elaborate hoax. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the Mengers withdrew from the flying saucer scene, but in the 1990s they returned to reassert their contactee claims.

They authored a new book in 1991, and subsequently appeared on a 1992 Discovery Channel one-hour special, "Farewell, Good Brothers," that explored the experiences of several contactees. The Mengers were interviewed before the large saucer model that dominates one room of their Florida home.

FROM "HOW STUFF WORKS"

http://science.howstuffworks.com/howard-menger.htm

Reincarnated Saturnian and space communicant Howard Menger held forth from his farm in New Jersey, where followers would come to witness... well, something. Followers would see lights and even figures but always in the dark and never up close. Once, when Menger led a follower into a dark building to speak with a spacewoman, a sliver of light happened to fall on the face of the "extraterrestrial." It was, the follower could not help noticing, identical to the face of a young blond woman who happened to be one of Menger's closest associates.

After releasing a book, From Outer Space to You (1959), and a record album, Music from Another Planet, Menger would virtually recant his story, vaguely muttering about a CIA experiment. In the late 1980s he withrew his recantation and marketed a new book detailing his latest cosmic adventures.

Most contactees have managed to stay out of legal trouble, though law-enforcement and other official agencies look into their activities from time to time. Reinhold Schmidt was not so lucky. In the course of contacts with German-speaking Saturnians, Schmidt's space friends showed him secret stores of quartz crystals in the­ mountains of California. Armed with this information and a gift for (so the prosecutor charged) "loving talk," he persuaded several elderly women to invest their money in a crystal-mining venture. The money went, however, into his own pocket. He went on trial for grand theft and from there to jail.

Still, not all contactees are con artists, by any means. In 1962 Gloria-Lee, who chronicled her psychic contacts with "J.W." of Jupiter in Why We Are Here (1959), starved to death in a Washington motel room after a two-month fast for peace ordered by her space friends. In 1954, in the face of massive press ridicule, followers of Dorothy Martin, who communicated with extraterrestrials through automatic writing, quit jobs and cut all other ties as they awaited a prophesied landing of a flying saucer that would pick them up just before geological upheavals caused massive destruction.

The charlatan contactees typically claim physical encounters, nearly always have photographs and other artifacts (in one especially brazen instance, packets of hair from a Venusian dog) to "prove" it, and in general behave more like profiteers than prophets. The psychic contactees, on the other hand, tend to be quiet, unflamboyant, and almost painfully sincere. They can best be described as Space Age religious visionaries. In another century their messages would have been from gods or angels or spirits. These messages, generally inane and rarely profound, are manifestly not from true extraterrestrials. Psychologists who have studied contactees believe these individuals are not crazy, just unusually imaginative; their communicators come from inner, not outer, space, via a nonpathological form of multiple-personality disorder.

Though only a few professional contactees of the 1950s are still alive or active today, the contactee movement is as big and vibrant as ever. This is due in part to the efforts of a Laramie, Wyoming, psychologist, R. Leo Sprinkle, who sponsors an annual summer conference on the University of Wyoming campus. Those attending are mostly individuals convinced that the Galactic Federation -- a sort of extraterrestrial United Nations -- has placed them on Earth to spread the cosmic gospel. In a sense these conferences function as revival meetings in which the faith is renewed even as the larger world continues to scoff.

Visit the official Menger website: http://howardmenger.com/

"CALLING OCCUPANTS" A small ode to George Adamski by Chuck Miller

I have to admit I've always loved the contactees and their wild tales. They represent a state of being where objective reality is of little consequence, and that can be very appealing. I've never understood why some people spend so much time and so much money "debunking" these obvious phonies instead of just enjoying the show. If I wanted to, I could do a year-long study and provide you with reams of scientific proof that the events in "Alice in Wonderland" never really took place, that the White Rabbit was a weather balloon and the Mad Hatter was Venus. But at the end of the day, what would I really have accomplished?

I recently read George Adamski's opus, "Inside the Flying Saucers," and I found it charming in its goofy amiability. I find it difficult to begrudge him the success he enjoyed. As cults go, his was pretty harmless. He basically reworked the Sermon on the Mount for the dawn of the Space Age, presenting a gospel of love, caring and tolerance. There are worse things a person could do. Look at Heaven's Gate, for example. Wasting all those brand-new Nikes...

Adamski was no worse than, say, Billy Graham, and a damn sight better than Pat Robertson.
Eventually, of course, the fringe mainstream (strange notion, that) moved from the beautiful and benevolent space brothers and sisters into the realm of bizarre, inhuman kidnappers and cattle-mutilators, and their unfathomable genetic agenda. I suspect that this shift reflects our struggle, as a race, to come to grips with the strange realities and possibilities of the post-atomic age.

I am not an unbeliever, but I think the UFO phenomenon merits study on a number of different levels. In his book "Flying Saucers," C. G. Jung approaches it as a psychosocial phenomenon, and discusses its variety of implications. While he limits himself to this aspect of the thing, he does NOT suggest that UFO sightings are the product of individual pathology, nor does he cast any doubt on the objective reality of the phenomenon. But that kind of science wasn't his field, so he concentrated on the elements that were.

The objective reality of the UFO is a fascinating study. No less fascinating is the way that we, as individuals and as a culture, approach and interpret what we are seeing. We really don't know exactly what these things are, and our imaginations, expectations and hopes fill in the inevitable blank spots. Thus, the contactees and their followers are no less important sociologically than the rigid, scientific skeptics. Not only do we not understand the UFO phenomenon, we do not even fully understand ourselves. And uch understanding may be a necessary step on the road to true, meaningful, beneficial contact with the unfathomable intelligences behind the UFO.

At our current stage of development as a species, efforts to explain and duplicate exotic propulsion systems may be totally futile. No responsible alien race would give a civilization like ours such powerful and potentially lethal technologies. What human adult would attempt to exchange information and explain his or her intentions to a four-month-old infant? There would be no point until the child becomes much older. Likewise, no thinking adult would give a baby a vial of deadly poison or a taser. And the child cannot grow simply by duplicating the behavior of adults. First he must gain understanding, in his own way and at his own pace. Are there any human beings on this earth who were never impatient to participate in the adult world, and anxious and frustrated when they could not? The only answer is to be patient and grow. That is how one reaches adulthood, gradually, not in a single leap.

We could all benefit from less rigid thinking on both sides of the debate, less absolute insistence that this or that theory is the complete answer to the riddle. The more time people like Stanton Friedman and the late Phillip Klass spend sniping at one another and endlessly studying and debating issues like typewriters and Harry S. Truman's autograph, the less we truly learn. Whatever the objective reality behind it, the phenomenon can teach us a great deal about ourselves and our society, if we are willing to listen without prejudice to even the most outlandish points of view.

Writer Dave Cosnette says, "On 26th February 1965, while Adamski was staying at Silver Spring, Colorado, he and a friend, Madeleine Rodeffer, witnessed another scout ship. (ABOVE) Fortunately, Adamski's 'space brothers' had told him to have a cine camera ready and he caught the craft on film. William T. Sherwood, an optical physicist and former project development leader for Eastman-Kodak, spent a great deal of time analyzing this footage. His conclusions were that there were no signs of duplicity, and determined that the object was approximately 8 metres across. Analysts are still at a loss to explain how or why the craft distorts from frame to frame. Veteran aeronautics engineer Leonard Cramp suggests this was caused by a powerful gravitational field produced by the craft. Unfortunately every copy of the film has been stolen, so we may never know the answer."

(© Dave Cosnette 2001) SEE ORIGINAL ARTICLE

On the other hand, FORGETO MORI says:

"The movie is often attributed to Madeleine Rodeffer, but even sources related to Adamski admit that the well known contactee is the culprit. Mrs Rodeffer herself admitted that. This detail is important because, as we can see, the footage shows the classic scout ship photographed (and drawn) over ten years before. That’s not a surprise since the cameraman was the same.
"But the ship is slightly different, and watching the movie, we can realize that its shape does indeed change, contrary to the first impression that it may have been just a flat paper cut-out hanging in front of the camera. So, how did Adamski create this footage?
Japanese researcher Junichi Takanashi successfully reproduced the Adamski-Rodeffer footage. The model used by Adamski was three-dimensional, and didn’t hang like something suspended by a wire. And even though his scout ship had three outer spheres around a central one, in his footage we can only see two outer spheres around the central one.

All can be explained if we assume Adamski used half of a three-dimensional model glued to a sheet of glass. That explains the curious movements of the object as well as the “distortion” in its shape.

UFOs One Year at a Time: 1981

The Trans-en-Provence, France, Landing Case
January 1981

On the afternoon of January 8, 1981, a strange craft landed on a farm near the village of Trans-en-Provence in the Var region in southeastern France. Physical traces left on the ground were collected by the Gendarmerie within 24 hours and later analyzed in several French government laboratories. Extensive evidence of anomalous activity was detected.

The case was investigated by the Groupe d'Etudes des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés (GEPAN), or Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Study Group, established in 1977 within the National Center for Space Studies (CNES) in Toulouse, the French counterpart of NASA. (The functions of GEPAN were reorganized in 1988 into the Service d'Expertise des Phénomènes de Rentrées Atmosphériques or SEPRA). The primary investigator was Jean-Jacques Velasco, the current head of SEPRA.

The witness was the farmer Renato Nicolai, 55, on whose property the UFO landed and then took-off almost immediately. Thinking that it was a military experimental device, Nicolai notified the local gendarmes on the following day. The gendarmes interviewed Nicolai and collected soil and plant samples from the landing site within 24 hours of the occurrence, notifying GEPAN on January 12 as part of a cooperation agreement for UFO investigation between the two agencies. Further collection of samples and measurements of the site were undertaken by the GEPAN team, and the samples were thoroughly analyzed by several government laboratories.

The first detailed report on the case was published by GEPAN in 1983 in its "Technical Note No. 16, Inquiry 81/01, Analysis of a Trace." Nicolai's testimony to the police was simple and straightforward:

"My attention was drawn to a small noise, a kind of little whistling. I turned around and I saw, in the air, a ship which was just about the height of a pine tree at the edge of my property. This ship was not turning but was descending toward the ground. I only heard a slight whistling. I saw no flames, neither underneath or around the ship.

"While the ship was continuing to descend, I went closer to it, heading toward a little cabin. I was able to see very well above the roof. From there I saw the ship standing on the ground.

"At that moment, the ship began to emit another whistling, a constant, consistent whistling. Then it took off and once it was at the height of the trees, it took off rapidly... toward the northeast. As the ship began to lift off, I saw beneath it four openings from which neither smoke nor flames were emitting. The ship picked up a little dust when it left the ground.

"I was at that time about 30 meters [100 feet] from the landing site. I thereafter walked towards the spot and I noticed a circle about two meters [7 feet] in diameter. At certain spots on the curve of the circle, there were tracks (or traces).

"The ship was in the form of two saucers upside down, one against the other. It must have been about 1.5 meters [5 feet] high. It was the color of lead. The ship had a border or type of brace around its circumference. Underneath the brace, as it took off, I saw two kinds of round pieces which could have been landing gear or feet. There were also two circles which looked like trap doors. The two feet, or landing gear, extended about 20 centimeters [8 inches] beneath the body of the whole ship."







SOURCE: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ufo_briefingdocument/1981.htm

UFOs One Year at a Time: 1976

THE CANARY ISLANDS INCIDENT

1976-The Canary Island "Alien Sphere"
From UFO Casebook

The phenomenon began on the night of June 22, 1976, as residents of Tenerife, La Palma, and La Gomera began reporting the sighting of unusual lights in the sky. These lights and their maneuvers were different from anything residents of the area had seen before. Newspaper headlines the next morning proclaimed that "thousands of people" had witnessed a "spectacular phenomena" which lasted "twenty minutes." The most sensational aspect was the sighting of the aforementioned "sphere" occupied by strange alien beings.

Three days later, the Commanding General of the Canary Island Air Zone named an "Investigative Adjutant" to make sense of the events. His findings were forwarded by a Spanish Air Force General to journalist J. J. Benitez in 1976, and the details of the case quickly reached beyond the scope of the Islands to the outside world. Benitez's investigation would be the basis of his book, "UFOs: Official Documents of the Spanish Government." The case would regain momentum in 1994, when files of the investigation were released as part of the unveiling of Spanish records, a type of "Freedom of Information" act. The 1976 report was massive, containing over one hundred pages of testimony, evaluations, drawings, and more. The official Air Force report of the incident was headlined by depositions of fourteen witnesses. A type of standard was established with witness reliability based on social status. A doctor's report was considered a high priority, whereas a common laborer's report was given little, if any, weight. In this particular case, this unfair standard did not take away from the acceptance of the facts, since all involved were in full agreement as to what they saw. The report was very detailed, and presented chronologically.

The initial report of the Canary Island UFO came from the Navy's armed escort ship, the "Atrevida." The ship was located off the coast of Fuerteventura Island. The ship's captain gave a detailed report of what he and his crew observed at 9:27 P.M. on June 22. The entire crew saw an extremely bright yellow-blue light moving from the shore in the direction of the ship, located three and a half miles at sea. Several of the crewmen at first thought they were seeing a conventional aircraft with its landing lights on. The lights soon faded, and a type of beam began to rotate, similar to a lighthouse effect. Afterwards, an intense halo of yellow and blue could be seen from the fantastic craft. Amazingly, the crew watched the craft for a full forty minutes. The craft seemed to be playing tricks with its lights, as they constantly changed from one form to another. Even though the light show was observed for a long period of time, no signature was evident on the ship's radar of any flying craft.

Actual transcript-Captain of Atrevida:

"At 21:27 (Z) hrs. on 22 June, we saw an intense yellowish-bluish light moving out from the shore towards our position. At first we thought it was an aircraft with its landing lights on. Then, when the light had attained a certain elevation (15 - 18 degrees), it became stationary. The original light went out and a luminous beam from it began to rotate. It remained like this for approximately two minutes. Then an intense great halo of yellowish and bluish light developed, and remained in the same position for 40 minutes, even though the original phenomenon was no longer visible. "Two minutes after the great halo, the light split into two parts, the smaller part being beneath, in the center of the luminous halo, where a blue cloud appeared and the part from which the bluish nucleus had come, vanished. The upper part began to climb in a spiral, rapid and irregular, and finally vanished. None of these movements affected the initial circular halo in any way, which remained just the same the whole time, its glow lighting up parts of the land and the ocean, from which we could deduce that the phenomenon was not very far away from us, but was close."

Only a few minutes later, this same object was seen by residents of Canary Island proper. The bulk of the sightings were by citizens of three villages; Galdar, Las Rosas, and Agaete. A cross section of professions were involved; medical doctor, schoolteacher, farmer, taxi driver, and housewife, among others.

A thorough search of records by the Investigator Adjutant determined that there were no reports of "aerial traffic or military exercises at the time of the reports" that could possibly account for the sightings of the unknown object . The Adjutant, for the sake of clarity, divided the investigation into two different categories.

One was the larger craft observed by ship crewmen and others, and the second the smaller globe with the aliens aboard. By his own admission, and consistent with human nature, the Adjutant had no problem believing the reports of the larger craft, but had reservations accepting the orb since occupants were observed which were not consistent with human beings.

The Investigator General's last word on the subject was: "The fact that a very strange and peculiar aerial phenomena occurred on the night of 22 June is a true and proven fact, as incredible as its behavior and conditions may seem." The incredible account of the sphere was submitted by Doctor Francisco Padron Leon, who lived in the city of Guia. His report is the most voluminous of the entire investigation. His background was thoroughly investigated, and he was found to be an upstanding, sane professional, whose word was considered truthful. Padron had been summoned to make a house call, and commissioned a cab to take him to the location; the town of Las Rosas. As they rode along, the doctor and cab driver were engaged in light conversation. Suddenly, the car lights pointed out a slightly luminous object in the shape of a sphere.

The object was either landed, or hovering just above the ground. The object was made of a totally transparent and crystalline-like material. The doctor and driver both observed stars through the sphere. The object was bluish in color, with a radius of about 100 feet.

The lower part of the orb contained a platform of aluminum-like material with three consoles. At each side of the center there were two huge figures from eight to ten feet tall. They were dressed in red, and always faced each other. The beings were humanoid in shape, with large heads covered with a type of helmet. The doctor, hardly believing his own eyes, asked for confirmation from his cab driver.

"Are you seeing what I am?" he asked.

The driver exclaimed, "My God! What is that?"

The cab was only a short distance from the patient's house, and upon arriving, the doctor observed a type of bluish smoke coming from a tube rising through the center of the object.

The doctor stated:

"We were talking about hunting... as we entered the last part of the road, the car lights pointed at a slightly luminous sphere that was stationary and very close to the ground, although I can't say for sure if it was touching it. It was made of a totally transparent and crystalline-like material, since it was possible to see through it the stars in the sky; it had an electric blue color but tenuous, without dazzling; it had a radius of about 30 m. [100 ft.], and in the lower third of the sphere you could see a platform of aluminum-like color as if made of metal, and three large consoles.

"At each side of the center there were two huge figures of 2.50 to 3 m. [8.5 to 10 ft.] tall, but no taller than 3 m. [10 ft.], dressed entirely in red and facing each other in such a way that I always saw their profile.

"Then I observed that some kind of bluish smoke was coming out from a semi-transparent central tube in the sphere, covering the periphery of the sphere's interior without leaking outside at any moment.

Then the sphere began to grow and grow until it became huge like a 20-story house, but the platform and the crew remained the same size; it rose slowly and majestically and it seems I heard a very tenuous whistling."

The sphere grew to an enormous size as it began to ascend into the sky. The doctor ran into the house, and told the family about what he had seen. Running outside, they observed the orb, which was now extremely high in the sky. It reached an enormous speed, accelerating toward Tenerfie. Finally it dissolved into a smaller size, and disappeared. Another witness, a lady who was a relative of the patient, was watching television when suddenly the screen went blank, and her dogs began to bark outside. Running to a window, she saw the doctor's cab, and the blue sphere above it. She also noted that the sphere was transparent, with two beings inside. Shocked, she closed the windows and doors, and began to pray.

There were several other sightings of a similar nature throughout the year of 1976 on the Island. The final "official" report was ambiguous at best.

The observance of the craft by all who saw it was accepted as genuine, although no "earthly" explanation was offered for its unique look and behavior.

On the other hand, although the witnesses of the smaller orb with aliens were classified as totally reliable, the actual presence of the beings was questioned. In other words, the witnesses were telling the truth, but what they saw was too far fetched to believe.

No other explanation was forthcoming on an official level, and the Canary Island phenomenon remains today as an authentic, well documented sighting of an unidentified flying craft with occupants.

sources:

Benítez, J.J., OVNIS: Documentos Oficiales del Gobierno Español, Barcelona, Plaza & Janes, 1977.

Deposition No. B-07 of the Captain of Corvette in the Spanish Air Force file; English translation by Gordon Creighton, Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 23, No. 3, 1977.

Adjutant's Report, Las Palmas Aerial Sector, July 16, 1976.

Deposition No. A-01 by Dr. Francisco Padrón León in the Spanish Air Force file.

Deposition No. A-02 by taxi driver and No. B-05 by woman in Galdar, in the Spanish Air Force file.

The above footage was reportedly taken in June 1976 during one of Concorde's test flights over southern England. The video depicts an unknown object, which descends from above the Concorde to below it and then back up again in front of the jet. The object swings around the Concorde while it is traveling horizontally at supersonic speed.