Earth (40 page)

“I knew that this was not a military or civilian aircraft, and I rushed into my house and woke up my parents to tell them what I had just witnessed. All of us then went outside to see if we could see the craft, but there was nothing.

“I never told the authorities because I didn't know what to do, and during my time in the military I never spoke of the incident as I didn't want to be ridiculed. However, it's only been in the last two years that I found out about the RAF Cosford [Staffordshire] and Shawbury [Shropshire] incidents, and that what I saw was linked to [other] sightings over the U.K. that night.

“Ever since the incident, I have had a feeling of knowing that the craft will come back. It makes me feel uneasy, but at the same time I want to know where it was from and why it was here. I can't explain it, but I have it in my head that in 2012 something is going to happen and that it's linked to what I witnessed. It's a feeling that never goes away, and when I go back
to the spot where I witnessed the incident I get an overwhelming sense of uneasiness to this day. I think the military in the U.K. and the United States know of these craft but are keeping it under wraps away from the public so as not to alarm people….”
18

Roger Wise and his partner were traveling along the Telford Road, Bridgnorth, on September 16, 1996, at about 23:00, when an extraordinary craft, similar in some respects to the one in Cyprus, appeared. “The object was an incredible size, flying slowly from the east,” Roger recounted for me. “It was low in the sky, rectangular in shape, rather like a skateboard moving sideways, with window lights/portholes all around it, with more than one tier. This, with several levels and the size, looked like the equivalent of a battleship.

“It then appeared to slow and from the mid-front released a fully lit spinning circle which spun off at top speed—like a flying saucer—toward the west and Clee Hill in a matter of seconds. The main UFO then turned around and went off back toward the east.”
19

Yukon Territory

In some previous books I have referenced the encounter with three UFOs reported by the crew of a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 cargo flight over Alaska, en route to Anchorage, on November 17, 1986. During the encounter—which was tracked on radar—Captain Kenju Terauchi caught a brief glimpse of the main object's walnut-shaped silhouette, judging it to be twice the size of an aircraft carrier.

On the evening of December 11, 1996, a huge craft, estimated by witnesses at the time to be “larger than a football stadium” (see photo section), was seen in three main areas along the 134-mile stretch of the Klondike Highway in Canada's Yukon Territory. The majority of the twenty-two witnesses elected to remain anonymous.

“There was no sound at all coming from the object,” reported the principal investigator, Martin Jasek of UFO*BC, and the craft had a “huge, and long, row of lights around it. When a witness happened to point his flashlight at the craft, it started speeding toward him.

“A beam of light emanating from the bottom of the UFO swept the ground once directly underneath the object. Was it a search beam? Looking for him? The UFO then drifted slowly to the right. There were other
beams emanating from the craft as well: a greenish phosphorescent color beam shone horizontally out the front (right); two beams at the back (left) rotated slowly to a horizontal position. All the beams could be seen clearly, as there were ice crystals in the air.”

The only witness to give his name was Don Trudeau, a trapper, who had a very close encounter with the craft near the village of Pelly Crossing. In company with many other witnesses, he was unable to determine its precise configuration, but based on the width of the rows of lights, he came up with a length of three quarters of a mile. Estimates of the craft's actual size were determined by triangulation. “This method was employed six times to obtain six estimates for the size of the UFO,” explained Martin. “All revealed staggering results: the UFO ranged anywhere from 0.55 miles to 1.3 miles in length!”
20

Arizona Air Display

One of the most widely observed incidents relating to enormous craft, of varying shapes, occurred on the evening of March 13, 1997, when thousands of eyewitnesses across Arizona—mostly in the Phoenix area—reported having seen a mile-long, V-shaped formation of lights, seemingly connected and flying relatively close to the ground. In addition to members of the public, witnesses included F-16 pilots from Luke Air Force Base and a retired pilot in Scottsdale who held ratings in Boeing 747 and DC-10 airliners. Together with others, the former airline pilot observed a huge formation of orange lights, attached to what looked like a structured object “at least a mile in area.”

A chevron-shaped craft, like “a carpenter's square set at 60 degrees” and estimated to be at least two city blocks in length, was observed by Tim Ley who, together with members of his family, watched as it passed over their home. As it did so, the family felt a sensation “almost like stage fright.”
21

Ten years later, Fife Symington III, former governor of Arizona, admitted to having seen an enormous triangular craft during the extraordinary air display that night. A cousin of the late Senator Stuart Symington, former Secretary of the Air Force, the governor had hitherto publicly ridiculed the incident at a press conference. “Unless the Defense Department proves us otherwise,” he stated during a CNN interview, “it was probably
some form of alien spacecraft.”
22
This is how he described what he saw to journalist Leslie Kean, author of a
New York Times
bestseller on UFOs:

“Between 8:00 and 8:30 on the evening of March 13, 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I witnessed something that defied logic and challenged my reality: a massive, delta-shaped craft silently navigating over the Squaw Peak in the Phoenix Mountain preserve. A solid structure rather than an apparition, it was dramatically large, with a distinctive leading edge embedded with lights as it traveled the Arizona skies. I still don't know what it was. As a pilot and a former Air Force officer, I can say with certainty that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I had ever seen.”
23

Utah

Michael Vladeck is an Outward Bound instructor who had an encounter on the night of July 5, 1999, a half hour west of Salt Lake City en route to an Outward Bound retreat. Researcher Thane Mathis put me in touch with the witness, who subsequently sent me his report.

“I pulled off westbound I-80 in Utah onto a ranch exit to put my sleeping bag down and get some sleep,” Vladeck wrote. “The view from where I stopped for the night, about three quarters of a mile north of the highway, had a 360-degree panorama of the juniper- and sage-covered plains. There was a consistently present breeze, about twelve to twenty miles an hour, and the sky was covered in a thick, low-lying blanket of stratus clouds. I could see the lights of Salt Lake City bouncing off them about forty miles to the east.”

As he put down his ground pad and bag and prepared to lie down, he noticed that the clouds to the west were oddly bright—and becoming brighter. At first he thought it might have been the moon, but when the lights continued to brighten even more, he assumed that the “brights” of an eighteen-wheeler truck parked on the off-ramp of the highway were responsible. “Then, as I was about to get into my bag, a bright light cast my shadow on the ground in front of me [and] as I turned around, I saw an enormous non-aerodynamically shaped craft finish coming through the clouds. My guess was that it was seven hundred feet away from me (although I could be off by an additional three hundred feet, at most).

“It was huge—a 747 airplane could fit inside of it. It seemed to be about
300 to 350 feet long, 110 to 150 feet wide, and 60-plus feet high. It had a rectangular base, and from the super-bright lights (I'll explain those in a moment) shining off the desert floor and reflecting back upward, it appeared as if the side was prowed-out in an arching angle—on the side that I saw, as well as the back. The front of the craft was just past me and I couldn't see its shape.

“All of the craft was dark except for one strip of rectangular lights—about thirty of them pressed together near the front of the underside, spanning about 100 to 130 feet or so [see sketch below]. The lights were very full-spectrum-looking, as the juniper and the desert floor were lit up intensely as if they were under very bright daylight.”

“The craft was moving about twenty to thirty miles an hour, heading north-northwest, and its elevation remained constant (around five to six hundred feet), and it seemed to stay with the contours of the desert floor—when the land dropped away in the distance, its elevation above the land directly below it stayed the same. It also made no sound that I could hear at all (while there was a breeze, it was still rather quiet out). There seemed to be no kind of propulsion system on it that I could discern.

“When it went out of view, I could still see the clouds above it glowing from the craft's lights off the land and bouncing upward. Then, all told about two minutes from my turning around to see it, the lights in the distance faded out of sight. That was it. I was so blown away by it all. It seemed like I imagined it or dreamed it—even five minutes later. I think this was because it was so out of context with anything else I've ever seen
that I had nothing to ground the experience to….”
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Birmingham, U.K.

Another witness profoundly shocked by his experience was Edward Bradley of Birmingham. At 20:30 on the evening of Thursday, March 28, 2002, he was returning on foot from a friend's former flat in Highfield Road, having collected mail to forward to him. “As I was walking down Sherwood Road,” Edward reported to me, “to the left I saw in the distance three points of light approaching. The only thing that appeared odd was that the lights were not flashing on and off, as you would normally expect to see on an aircraft [apart from the navigation lights, that is—Author], and they were very, very bright red. As I carried on walking, the shape of the craft appeared in full view—and what I saw wasn't a plane.

“The object was a long triangular craft and at each corner there was a red light—three lights in total. It looked red but it didn't look a natural red. It was the same color as blood. The object itself was jet black, the same color as a polished lump of coal, and I was standing not underneath it but diagonally opposite to it, on the left-hand side of it and less than a quarter of a mile away from it. [See photo section.]

“It made no sound and was moving very slowly and steadily. When I say ‘moving,' flying is not the word: I think the word is gliding, but it was just on a perfect straight course. The part that made my blood run cold was that it was as if the sky behind it had suddenly gone flat and was sort of shimmering. Imagine a flat black wall and it was affecting what was going on behind it. The sky behind it was like black mercury. That shimmering effect was very odd. There were no clouds that night. Stars were in the sky but not behind the craft—around it, but not behind it. It was having an effect on the sky the other side of it.

“It was a huge craft and very, very low indeed. Lengthwise I would say it would have fit comfortably into a reasonably-sized football ground. It was very close to the tops of the houses in the street and in fact flying in the same line as they were in. From the ground, I would say it was at a height of a twenty-story block of flats. I watched it go in the direction of the Stratford Road toward Solihull and then it just carried on. It didn't
shoot away; it carried on at a set speed and a straight course.

“I had a mobile phone with me, but I was so shocked that I never thought to film it—I was mentally taking it in. What surprised me was that I have often read stories about people who see lights in the distance. But this passed me in the street: it was a real object, as clear as seeing a car pass you in the street. And it was passing through a heavily built-up part of a Birmingham suburb. There wasn't a soul about in the street at all, and no one to speak to or say ‘Did you see that?' I have no proof whatsoever. My only hope is that someone else saw it that night in the U.K., in another location….”
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Edward Bradley—whom I have now met—strikes me as an exceptionally reliable witness. His background includes positions with the Civil Service, the Department of Trade and Industry, Lloyds TSB, and Virgin Trains. He currently holds a responsible position in another company.

Nova Scotia

Don Ledger is a Canadian author, pilot, and UFO researcher who lives in Labelle, Nova Scotia. I have long respected his integrity and previously cited his investigations—and those of Chris Styles—into the Shag Harbour incident of 1967, involving an unidentified submergible object (USO).
26
In a lecture on flying triangles presented at the Halifax UFO International Symposium in 1993, Don included the report of a giant craft seen by Helen M., an experienced amateur astronomer living in Cow Bay, about five miles northeast of the City of Halifax/Dartmouth, on the night of August 13, 2002.