Earth (38 page)

“I know it sounds far-fetched, and I can't explain why neither of us tried to radio for other units to join us. We also passed neither other cars nor pedestrians throughout the whole incident. Just as a footnote, about a week or so later a very distressed driver burst into Greenford Police Station in the early hours of one morning claiming that his vehicle had been buzzed by a bright orange light as he drove along the Ruislip Road. This time, the Station Officer did report it, and that incident made the front page of our local newspaper….”
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Further Events in the U.K.

An enormous craft, described as “looking like a flying fairground,” was reported high in the sky over Exmouth, Devon, on the night of August 4, 1987. Gordon Baker viewed the craft from his garden, and was joined by his wife Gloria and a neighbor, Heather Palmer, as they took turns at viewing the craft through binoculars. The object looked like two cross-shaped objects joined together (see sketch on the next page).

From the
Exmouth Herald
, August 7, 1987

“It was definitely not an aircraft,” insisted Mr. Baker. “There was no s
ound whatsoever. I believe the object was traveling at about thirty-five thousand feet. Then I heard the noise of a jet aircraft. I saw it pass under the lit objects, and I even checked with Exeter Airport to see if the pilot had reported seeing it. They said they had not received any reports. However, a man in air traffic control said he had a couple of objects on his radar, but did not know what they were. We watched it for about fifteen minutes until it disappeared on the horizon. I don't know what it was, but it certainly had hundreds of lights on it.”
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Further witnesses came forward following publication of the report in a local paper, including former RAF technician Tony Millington and his wife Claire. “It certainly wasn't an aircraft,” he said. “It is very difficult to say how high they were, but there was no noise at all. That is what seemed so odd to me. As we watched, the two objects seemed to get close together…. We watched [them] for about fifteen minutes before they disappeared over the horizon toward Haldon Hill. The lights were uniform in brilliance.”

A Ministry of Defence spokesman evinced little interest when contacted.
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Of the hundreds of British reports of large craft sighted that year, one of the most interesting came to me from Barbara Forrest, of Brierley Hill, West Midlands. At around 19:00–19:15 on November 19, 1987, Barbara's 27-year-old son Brett spotted two very bright lights in the sky, one small and one large, close together, from outside the three-story block of flats where she resided in Moor Street. “My son said that they seemed to join
together, and then it took on the shape of a diamond and became brilliant,” she wrote to journalist Peter Rhodes of the
Wolverhampton Express & Star
two days later, asking to be put in touch with me.

Brett and Barbara sent me colored sketches, depicting how the craft appeared in three stages, finally coalescing into a huge elongated triangle with a series of grooves underneath, colored black, silver, and bronze. As Barbara recounted for me:

“The craft came over the street light where he had been watching it for quite some time. Brett thought he had to tell someone or he would never be believed, so he ran down the grass embankment to my living room window, knocked very hard, and as I opened it he said, ‘Mom, look up!' And there it was, massive, wonderful—and frightening! Here was something that in the first instance had been two very bright lights, very still in the night sky, then the whole thing lights up in the shape of a diamond. Then it starts to move, and as it came nearer and lower it dimmed its lights. It passed right over the block of flats where I live.

“I was amazed at what I saw—a great floating airship all lit up underneath with many, many white lights. There was no noise. It was massive. That thing was so low, it was unbelievable. I watched it go right out of sight as it went in the direction of the High Street. There were two aircraft in the vicinity at the time, with their normal red and green lights.”

Her first sketch depicts what she saw as the craft was directly above her, with black serrated edges “which when a little distance away looked as though they were kind of grills. The inner part of the craft was a gray or silvery color. There were strips underneath. The lights were fluorescent, very white and bright.” The second sketch—varying from her son's depiction—shows the object “seen floating silently away. One could no longer see the individual lights or the shape of the craft….

“This thing must have wanted to be seen, otherwise it would just have zoomed away. It seemed to follow my son. I have never seen anything like it in all my fifty-seven years. In actual fact, this is starting to worry me now … perhaps whoever was in that floating city may not like us very much.”
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Brett's sketches of the craft appear on the next page:

I had a lengthy correspondence with Barbara, but it was years before we finally met, together with her son, at a conference in Stourbridge organized by UFO Research Midlands in July 2005. My conviction in their sincerity was reinforced.

Three weeks following the Brierley Hill sighting, another event occurred, one of numerous reports from Nottinghamshire at that time. “It was obvious to all the witnesses that it was not a normal aircraft and it
immediately drew their attention,” reported a journalist. “Most reports say there was a deep humming noise, faint but distinct. All agree that the object was huge [and] most say that a jet aircraft was seen shortly after the UFO.”

“I knew it was huge, twenty or thirty times the size of a normal aircraft, and it made a distinctive deep throbbing noise,” said Edward Fell, of Long Eaton.
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(See photo section.)

France and Canada

On the night of November 5, 1990, numerous sightings were reported over Europe, some involving enormous craft reported by air force pilots as well as civilians. In my previous book, I cited a report from Jean Gabriel Greslé, a former French air force fighter pilot (who also flew U.S. Air Force jets on an exchange in the 1950s), as well as an Air France captain. He is now one of Europe's leading UFO researchers. A précis of this important case is warranted here.

At 19:00, together with six of his martial-arts pupils, Jean was standing outside a gym in Gretz-Armainvilliers when an enormous crane-like object came into view at a height of around three hundred meters. “It projected two huge, divergent beams of light, not quite touching the ground,” he told me at the actual site in November 2004.

“It must have been at least a thousand feet long, with a thickness of about 200 or 250 feet, and it had triangular substructures and many, many lights [see photo section]. I ran around a tree to watch it as it turned its back on us, and the lights dimmed very quickly, which is surprising, because the beams must have been at least a kilometer in length—then it disappeared in the clouds…. It carried with it what I can only describe as a ‘zone of silence,' because as it flew over us—at never more than 100 mph—we suddenly didn't hear the nearby traffic. And I had the impression that my mind was blanked out…. It was absolutely incredible—like a city floating through the clouds!”
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The following report was sent to me by Dr. Richard Haines, the well-known researcher, whose past employment includes posts with the National Research Council, Boeing Airplane Co., and at NASA's Ames Research Center, where he served as Chief of the Space Human Factors Office and in other research positions. Co-author of the report
was Bernard Guénette, a professional computer graphics expert—and a witness to the event.

On November 7, 1990, between forty and seventy-five people, including Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Montreal Urban Community Police (MUCP), witnessed a huge aerial object, beaming shafts of light, which hovered at around six thousand feet above downtown Montreal between about 19:30 and 22:00 EST. Many of the witnesses were located on the 17th floor of the International Hilton Bonaventure Hotel. Three journalists from
La Presse
arrived at the scene. One, Marcel Laroche, took two photos of the craft, but owing to cloudy conditions only the light beams could be seen. One of these photos was published in
La Presse
the following day. “The lighted object had six lights on the perimeter of a large circle with a ray of light emitting from each one,” stated the paper. “Most witnesses described the rays as white, while some also claimed they saw blue, yellow, and red lights.”

An Air Canada pilot who witnessed the event from the rooftop of the Hilton Hotel estimated the altitude of the object at between eight and ten thousand feet. While driving home from work between 22:30 and 23:00, a M. Pierre Caumartin saw “very big and strong lights” in a boomerang shape low in the sky. On arriving at his home, not far from the Longue-Pointe military base [CFB Longue-Pointe], he watched the object hover near the Hydro-Quebec Longue-Pointe power station. When he got out of his car, he heard a “purring” sound and thought the object was a dirigible, with only its gondola visible below the cloud base.

As Dr. Haines points out, CFB Longue-Pointe contains “forty-eight regular forces, detachments and units, of about 1,900 persons, twenty-five reserve units, and ninety-seven cadet corps with 7,500 persons. It also supports three military schools. No one at the base could be found who saw the aerial object on November 7. A power failure (
hors tension
) was experienced between 23:08 and 23:50 at the Longue-Pointe military base. The base is fed by a 12,000-volt lead from the Hydro-Quebec-Longue-Pointe power station. It is the only one which broke down on November 7 [and] a check of the operating records of telecommunications networks [etc.] did not uncover any unusual malfunctions….

“Perhaps of equal importance with the overall scope of the aerial phenomenon
was the almost total lack of official response to it. No action of any kind was taken by personnel of the St. Hubert military base after they were notified of the aerial object hovering above the center of the city. As far as is known, they did not even report it to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) coordination center.”
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The Williamsport Wave

On February 6, 1992, the Pennsylvania Association for the Study of the Unexplained (PASU), headed by Stan Gordon, began to receive numerous reports of a series of low-level sightings in the vicinity of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which had occurred the previous day. To assist in his investigations, Gordon sought the collaboration of Dr. Samuel D. Greco, a retired Air Force major and aerospace engineer who served as the Pennsylvania state section director for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), which liaised closely with PASU.

The wave of sightings on February 5 occurred from about 18:00 to 19:00. “Two different kinds of object, boomerang- and triangular-shaped, had been seen in the evening sky, and there had been numerous persons who had witnessed the sightings,” Dr. Greco reported. “All the sightings followed a similar pattern. Apart from one, all originated in the houses of the witnesses.” Typical descriptions follow:

• A loud or heavy rumbling noise above the house which shook or vibrated the building and rattled its windows
  
• Witnesses would then leave the house, see the object, and alert others
  
• Object usually boomerang-shaped. One witness, who stood directly underneath, described it as triangular-shaped. A few other shapes were reported (see sketches). Lights or portholes on the craft could be seen
  
• The span of the boomerang-shaped object was variously estimated at 100 to 600 feet
  
• The object moved very slowly, at low altitude, often surrounded by moving red and green lights
  
• Animals displayed irrational behavior
  
• Object disappeared suddenly
  

“There were no aircraft in the sighting area reported either by commercial air sources, the Federal Aviation Administration, or the USAF,” concluded Dr. Greco. “The witnesses were ordinary people going about their daily lives [who] were considered reliable, honest, and sincere [and] did not want their names released to the public.”
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