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MUFON UFO JOURNAL NUMBER 240 APRIL 1988 Founded 1967 ^^^" % $2.50 ^^______-OCT'ICIAL PUBLICATION Of AM/JFOJV/ MUTUAL UFO NETWORK, IMC- - CONTENTS - FROM THE EDITOR Dennis Stacy 2 FOO-FIGHTERS: THE STORY SO FAR Andy Roberts 3 GREAT BALLS OF FIRE Paul Davles 6 DO WE NOW HAVE TWO UFOLOGIES? Jennie Randies 10 GULF BREEZE SUPPLEMENT Ware, Flannigan & Andrus 13 MUNDRABILLA INCIDENT - PART II Walt Andrus 14 LOOKING BACK Bob Gribble 19 THE APRIL NIGHT SKY WalterN.Webb 22 DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE Walt Andrus 24 (Illustrations by Karen Pennison)

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MUFON UFO JOURNALNUMBER 240 APRIL 1988

Founded 1967 ^ " % $2.50^^______-OCT'ICIAL PUBLICATION Of AM/JFOJV/ MUTUAL UFO NETWORK, IMC-

- CONTENTS -

FROM THE EDITOR Dennis Stacy 2

FOO-FIGHTERS: THE STORY SO FAR Andy Roberts 3

GREAT BALLS OF FIRE Paul Davles 6

DO WE NOW HAVE TWO UFOLOGIES? Jennie Randies 10

GULF BREEZE SUPPLEMENT Ware, Flannigan & Andrus 13

MUNDRABILLA INCIDENT - PART II Walt Andrus 14

LOOKING BACK Bob Gribble 19

THE APRIL NIGHT SKY WalterN.Webb 22

DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE Walt Andrus 24

(Illustrations by Karen Pennison)

MUFON UFO JOURNAL(USPS 002-970)

(ISSN 0270-6822)103 Oldtowne Rd.

Seguin, Texas 78155-4099 U.S.A.

DENNIS W. STACYEditor

WALTER H. ANDRUS, JR.International Director and

Associate EditorTHOMAS P. DEULEY

Art DirectorMILDRED BIESELEContributing Editor

ANN DRUFFELContributing Editor

PAUL CERNYPromotion/Publicity

MARGE CHRISTENSENPublic Relations

REV. BARRY DOWNINGReligion and UFOsLUCIUS PARISH

Books/Periodicals/HistoryROSETTA HOLMESPromotion/PublicityT. SCOTT CRAIN

GREG LONGMICHAEL D. SWORDS

Staff WritersTED PHILLIPS

Landing Trace CasesJOHN F. SCHUESSLER

Medical CasesLEONARD STRINGFIELD

UFO Crash/RetrievalWALTER N. WEBB

AstronomyNORMA E. SHORT

DWIGHT CONNELLYDENNIS HAUCK

RICHARD H. HALLROBERT V. PRATT

Editor/Publishers Emeritus(Formerly SKYLOOK)

The MUFON UFO JOURNAL ispubl ished by the M u t u a l UFONetwork , Inc . , Seguin, Texas.Membership/Subscription rates:$25.00 per year in the U.S.A.; $30.00foreign in U.S. funds. Copyright 1987by the Mutual UFO Network. Secondclass postage paid at Seguin, Texas.POSTMASTER: Send form 3579 toadvise change of address to TheMUFON UFO JOURNAL, 103Oldtowne Rd., Seguin, Texas 78155-4099.

FROM THE EDITORMinor improvements continue to make their way into the

Journal this issue and we hope ultimately everyone will be satis-fied with its final format. We could have called this issue a spe-cial English edition because so many of its contributors hail fromEngland. Jenny Randies, of course, will be familiar to most ofyou. Not so, perhaps, Andy Roberts, who makes his firstappearance here with a recap of his research into the Foo-Fighter phenomenon of WW II. Roberts edits his own journal inthe UK, UFO Brigantia. Interested parties should write him atthe address found at the end of his article. We also welcomephysicist and author Paul Davies to our pages. Davies and theeditors of New Scientist, the English weekly where "Great Ballsof Fire" originally appeared, graciously granted permission for usto reprint it. We trust you will enjoy it and that the relevance toUFO phenomena as a whole is obvious. You'll also find updateson both the Gulf Breeze, Florida, and Mundrabilla, Australia,cases, as well as our regular departments. Our new artist isKaren Pennison of Cypress, Texas.

In this issueFOO-FIGHTERS: THE STORY SO FAR by Andy Roberts 3GREAT BALLS OF FIRE by Paul Davies 6DO WE NOW HAVE TWO UFOLOGIES? by Jenny Randies 10GULF BREEZE SUPPLEMENT by Ware, Flannigan & Andrus 13MUNDRABILLA INCIDENT - PART II by Walt Andrus 14LOOKING BACK by Bob Gribble 19THE APRIL NIGHT SKY by Walter N. Webb 22DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE by Walt Andrus 24

The Mutual UFO Network, Inc. is exempt from Federal Income Taxunder Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. MUFON is a pub-licly supported organization of the type described in Section 509(a)(2).Donors may deduct contributions from their Federal Income Tax. In addi-tion, bequests, legacies, devises, transfers, or gifts are deductible for Fed-eral estate and gift tax purposes if they meet the applicable provisions ofSections 2055, 2106, and 2522 of the code.

The contents of the MUFON UFO JOURNAL are determined by the editor, anddo not necessarily represent the official position of MUFON. Opinions of con-tributors are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the editor, thestaff, or MUFON. Articles may be forwarded directly to MUFON. Responses topublished articles may be in a Letter to the Editor (up to about 400 words) or ina short article (up to about 2,000 words). Thereafter, the "50% rule" is applied:the article author may reply but will be allowed half the wordage used in theresponse; the responder may answer the author but will be allowed half the wor-dage used in the author's reply, etc. All submissions are subject to editing forstyle, clarity, and conciseness. Permission is hereby granted to quote from thisissue provided not more than 200 words are quoted from any one article, theauthor of the article is given credit, and the statement "Copyright 1987 by theMutual UFO Network, 103 Oldtowne Rd., Seguin, Texas 78155" is included.

FOO-FIGHTERS: THE STORY SO FARBy Andy Roberts

Roberts is the editor of Eng-land's UFO Brigcrnria.

The subject of Foo-Fighters, themysterious aerial phenomenon seenby aircrew during WW II, is probablythe most neglected area of study inthe field of ufology. Once ufologistsrealized that their world did not infact begin on June 24th, 1947 withArnold's infamous sighting, it hasbecome fashionable to conduct re-search into "historical" UFOs whichhas led to some useful insights intothe nature of the UFO phenomenonas a whole.

The pre-war Airship and MysteryFlier Waves and the post-war Mys-tery Rocket Waves have all beenadmirably covered by researchers inthe UK, USA and Sweden, but foo-fighters have been virtually ignored.With this in mind, I began in 1987 toseek out all material extant relating tofoo-fighters to try and put the subjectinto much-needed perspective andwith the hopeful intention of publish-ing the end results in book form as areference tool for other ufologists.This is some way off yet and so Ithink it may be worthwhile detailingthe progress made and the problemsencountered so far.

Neglected as an area of study theymay be, but every ufologist has atleast heard of foo-fighters and almostevery writer on the subject has men-tioned them. Therefore, you wouldthink a mass of information wouldexist on the subject. Unfortunatelythis is just not the case. Look in anyUFO book and you will find that foo-fighters are just given a few lines, atmost in some rare cases a few pagesand in only one or two instances awhole chapter. This is pathetic reallyfor an area of UFO activity whichimmediately preceeded the modernera and one which, if we are tobelieve the more "enthusiastic" ufolo-gists, was the start of the so-called"Government Cover-Up."MUFON UFO JOURNAL, No. 240 April 1988

The history of foo-fighters, as repre-sented within the subject of ufology,is riddled with problems which haveput foo-fighters in the historical nichethey occupy today. These problemsneed stating and dealing with beforethe. foo-fighter phenomenon can beseen in anything approaching pers-pective. For a start, even the name"foo-fighter" is problematic; did itcome from the old Smokey Stovercartoon character saying "Wherethere's fpo there's fire"; or was itfrom the French word feu, meaningfire, or was it, according to one ex-B17 waist gunner I spoke to, from"phooey". Needless to say, he didn'tbelieve they existed!

Also, what exactly is the definitionof a "foo-fighter"? It usually dependson what obscure theory a particularwriter is trying to prove. For the pur-poses of my study I have used thecriteria of any unexplained light sourceseen in conjunction with an aircrafteither from the air or from theground. This is deliberately descrip-tive, as to include all wartime UFOs,which are as diverse as the ones wereport nowadays, would need manyyears research in itself.

STOLEN RESEARCH

Firstly, when considering the writ-ten sources in the literature, it shouldbe made known that almost everyauthor who has mentioned the sub-ject, in a book or a magazine article,has literally stolen his or her materialfrom someone else and invariably leftit unreferenced to create, no doubt,the illusion that the author in ques-tion discovered the facts themselves.Furthermore even the copied factsare often misquoted or conveniently"re-arranged" to suit the authors' par-ticular argument and all obviouslydone without checking the salientfacts at source.

For instance, if we constructed a

"family tree" of foo-fighter materialwe would find, almost without excep-tion, that the "grandpappy of themall" is the 1945 American LegionMagazine article, written by Jo Cham-berlin. This atticle forms the sub-stance of almost every piece writtenon the subject of foo-fighters. Fortu-nately this article is based on accountswhich can be (have been) checked ham-with squadron records and appearslargely correct, but its incessant copy-ing has precluded any original workbeing done on the subject and hassubsequently led to many writersextrapolating generalizations about thefoo subject as a whole, most of whichare demonstrably untrue.

Examples of this armchair theoriz-ing are legion but for instance; manyitems dealing with foo-fighters statealmost as an article of faith that foo-fighters only appeared in the laterstages of the war, specifically aroundthe winter of '44/'45. This is a directresult of Chamberlin's article and hasled to further speculation that per-haps they were Nazi secret weaponspulled out of the hat at the last min-ute, or even perhaps that the foowere extraterrestrials keeping an eyeon us before we used the atomicbomb.. This time scaling is false andthe first record I have of a foo-fighterbeing seen comes from 1940, andthey were seen often throughout allthe war years.

Another false fact of the foo-fancier's faith is that the phenomenawas mainly seen over the Europeantheatre of war and just occasionallyover the Pacific. This is again falseand the product of sloppy research.So far I have accounts of foo-fightersbeing seen over Norway, Germany,France, Italy, Sicily, the Pacific,Burma, Tunisia, and all the sea areasadjoining these countries. It wasclearly an international phenomenon.

Still another mistake is the state-ment made by many authors that the

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Axis pilots also were seeing thephenomena and that they thought,just as our pilots did, that it was anAllied secret weapon. This may yetbe proved true but I have so far tofind an original reference made by anAxis pilot, or authority, that this wasthe case. The statement seems to bea ufological canard employed on thebasis of "well if our boys saw themthey must have too", and again hasbeen used to support the ETH argu-ment. The facts behind the rumormust await further verification. Axisaircrew were in fact seeing unex-plained aerial phenomena but as yetmost of their accounts await transla-tion.

HOAX

We have at least one outrighthoax, too, in foo-fighter lore. Foryears rumors had been flying aroundthat the Germans had been fullyaware of the foo-fighter phenomenon(perhaps that's where the abovecanard originated) and that they hada special study group formed to lookinto the problem under the name ofProject Uranus, backed by a shad-owy group by the name of Sonder-buro 13 (reminds you of Majestic 12doesn't it?). This was first detailed inLe Liures Noir De Soucupes Volantes(The Black Book of Flying Saucers -1970) by French ufologist Henry Dur-rant. The rumor spread in Europeand eventually took physical form inthe English language in Tim Good'sacclaimed book, Above Top Secret,where it is used to help substantiatefurther vague rumors of an Anglo/A-merican foo-fighter study. Good hadnot checked his facts and had in factjust copied the information directfrom Durrant's book.

When I checked this out with Dur-rant he informed me that the wholeProject Uranus affair was a hoaxwhich he had inserted in his bookprecisely to see who would copy itwithout checking. The hoax appar-ently had been revealed in Francesome years before, but hadn't perco-lated its way through to English-speaking ufologists. Perhaps otherfoo hoaxes await discovery.

I could go on listing mistake aftermistake and misquote after misquote

In one case a Lancaster almost burnt its engineout in an effort to lose its incandescent follower,but to no avail.

from which we have drawn the cur-rent idea of foo-fighters. The qualityof research and writing on the subjectof fop-fighters has been truly appal-ling. Once these primary problemswere realized I found trying to researchthe subject from within the UFOliterature was pointless and incestu-ous, and so attempted to get back tothe source material — the pilots andcrew themselves and the off ic ialrecords.

OFFICIAL RECORDS

With this in mind I wrote to everyair-related magazine in the UK with arequest for information from ex-aircrew. To date I have had somethirty replies from pilots and crewdetailing their experiences with strangeballs of light (incidentally not one ofthem knew them by the name "foo-fighters", or any other name for thatmatter). None of these respondentsconnected their sighting in any waywith the modern idea of UFOs andtheir information is so much the bet-ter and clearer for that. In manycases I have copies of entries made inlog-books immediately after the flightwhich details what took place.

In the main the descriptions aresimilar to the many already portrayedin the literature. Balls of light of vary-ing color and number would appearfrom nowhere and play tag with air-craft for up to forty minutes. Theywere not hallucinations, being insome cases seen by the entire crewof a Lancaster bomber, and were notreflections as they were seen frommany different angles or from twoplanes at once.

Evasive action to shake them offwas no use. In one case a Lancasteralmost burnt its engine out, going"through the gate", a slang term usedby pilots to denote pushing theengine to its limits, in an effort to loseits incandescent follower, but to noavail. None of my respondents hadfired on the phenomena, in somecases fearing it to be a secret weapon

which would explode when fired uponand in others just attempting toevade it on the basis that as long as itwasn't firing at them they weren'tgoing to antagonize it.

Having said this I have heard anunsubstantiated tape of an interviewwith an American gunner which citesa case in which a foo was fired on ...and the shells went straight throughit! Although some books note the(unreferenced!) fact that some foosappeared inside the planes or affectedthe electrics, etc., I have found norecord of that taking place. Nor isthere any verified account of foo-fighters showing up on ground radar.The phenomena, whatever it was,clearly distinguished by the aircrewfrom common natural phenomenasuch as St. Elmo's Fire, was a separ-ate entity from the plane they werein. It appears to have been totallyindependent and able to change shape,speed and position at will.

Clearly something was being seen.A few pilots and crew chose not toreport their experience at the timefor fear of ridicule or for fear of beinggrounded for having hallucinations.Many did record and report whatthey saw, though the response of theintelligence de-briefing staff variedconsiderably from total disinterest orhilarity to, in one case only, greatinterest and a further interview byintelligence officers. This apparentlack of interest on the part of theintelligence services begs the questionof whether any official RAF or US 8thAF study was ever actually under-taken. It was certainly claimed tohave, instigated by the untraceableMassey in the UK and Eisenhower inthe US. Although my sample ofrespondents is small it seems oddthat only one crew out of thirty ormore were actually de-briefed atlength specifically on the subject.

My research so far with the RAF/-MOD/PRO* in the UK has drawn atotal blank regarding official docu-mentation and investigation of the

* Ministry of Defense/Public Records OfficeMUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

subject, as have preliminary investiga-tions in the USA. UFO sceptics willof course say that this is because itdoesn't exist, proponents, especiallycover-up buffs, will say it is because itis being kept secret.

DOCUMENT DELAY

The simple facts are that if docu-mentation does exist in the UK I amunlikely to be able to get at it easilybecause of our archaic proceduresfor obtaining any government docu-ments. We are not blessed by an FOIAct and obtaining any documentdepends on whether a departmentcan be bothered to answer your let-ters, or if so, can be bothered toundertake a meaningful search oftheir records. The situation is furthercomplicated by the fact that manyrecords in our Public Records Officeare hard to locate due to how it isorganized and furthermore are sub-MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

ject to "rules", such as the 30 yearrule whereby information is not avail-able for 30 years from date of classifi-cation. Worse still, many WW IIrecords are languishing under a 75year rule for reasons I have not yetfathomed!

In addition to this fact I havespoken to some ex-wartime RAFintelligence people in the UK andthey claim no knowledge of thephenomena. This area is clearly amatter for further study but, as withcontemporary, UFO research, it shouldbe borne in mind that while there aremany rumors of government interestand intervention regarding foo-fighters,the actual hard evidence cannot befound. I do not think this points to a"cover-up" in any way. The situationin the US may yet turn out to be dif-ferent as regards obtaining officialdocumentation and I would welcomehelp from any US readers who havean interest in the foo-phenomenon.

SECRET WEAPONS?

The German secret weapon hypoth-esis (GSWH) promoted by such wri-ters as Renato Vesco is unlikely to bevalid. The reports are too widelyspaced throughout the war and comefrom too many differing theatres forthem to be a secret weapon of anykind. Certainly the Germans wereexperimenting with saucer-shapedcraft, flying wings, etc., but they hadnot got beyond the drawing boardand model stage. In addition, if foo-fighters were a weapon they wereclearly ineffective as one. The GSWHcan be seen in the same light vis a visfoo-fighters as the way many peoplerelate modern UFO sightings to aliencraft. It is a cultural or, in the case offoo-fighters, an occupational artifactwhich when seen in retrospect (aswill be the ETH no doubt) can beidentified and discounted.

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Out of all this some clear facts areapparent. Hundreds of aircrew sawand recorded what we now call foofighters during WW II. There must bemany thousands of ex-aircrew whohave stories to tell. The problem isfinding them and the odd ad or articleis only going to draw a few out and Ihave yet to attempt to get to Ameri-can information from squadron survi-vors, units, etc. The situation regard-ing German information is furthercomplicated by a language barrier butit is only a matter of time.

I firmly believe that foo-fighterswere a real, although non-solid phen-omena and I reject the hallucination/-misperception hypothesis almost en-tirely. These people's lives dependedon being able to see and identifyaerial objects very quickly. One mis-take and it was their last. Some crewhave admitted misperceiving Venus,etc., but realizing it in seconds, andcertainly not a whole crew beingfooled for any length of time. Foo-fighter reports give us a "genuine"UFO report, uncluttered by contem-porary ideas about aliens, saucersand the like and which, as appear tobe many "genuine" UFO reportswhen they are stripped of culturalbias, consists basically of rudimentarylight sources performing odd maneuv-ers in the sky.

My research has a long way to goyet but I would offer the suggestion

that foo-fighters and their pre andantecedents which are still being seentoday by both pilots and groundobservers are a type possibly not.They are also the stimulus for manyof today's UFO reports which aresubsequently overlaid by the prevail-ing cultural perceptions, i.e., aliencraft. Mystery Airships, Ghost Fliers,Foo-Fighters, Flying Saucers — they

may well turn out to be differentfacets of the same phenomena.

Information about foo-fighters is ascan be seen in short supply and atbest fragmentary and I appeal to anyMUFON Journal readers with infor-mation on any aspect of the subject,however trivial, to contact me at 84,Elland Road, Brighouse, West York-shire, HD6, 2QR^ England.

Great Balls of FireBy Paul Davies

Paul Davies is professor of theo-retical physics at the University ofNewcastle upon Tyne, UK. Apartfrom many specialist contributionsin his own field he has publishedwidely for laymen, including TheCosmic Blueprint, about complex-ity in nature, and a science-fictionnovel, Fireball, based on real en-counters with ball lightning. Bothwere recently published by Heine-mann (UK). The following articleis reprinted with the kind permis-sion of Mr. Davies and NewScientist, where it originally appear-6

ed (24/31 Dec., 1987). The Journalalso wishes to thank Mr. RalphNoyes of London for his kindassistance in obtaining reprintrights.

It was a dark, moonless night.Thunderclouds brooded high over theeastern seaboard of the United States.A sleek airliner, bound for Washing-ton, climbed steadily skywards overNew York City. It was five minutespast midnight. Suddenly a bright elec-trical discharge enveloped the plane— Eastern Airlines, flight number EA

539. In the cabin, a startled passengerlooked up to see "a glowing sphere alittle more than 20 centimeters diame-ter which emerged from the pilot'scabin and passed down the aisle ofthe aircraft." Its color was blue-white,with an almost solid appearance. Itglided along at walking pace about 75centimeters from the floor.

This nightmarish description is noextract from a horror movie, but averbatim account of a close encoun-ter of the worst kind: a fiery ball thatappeared out of nowhere inside anaircraft and frightened the passengers.

MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

Eyewitnesses include no lesser scientists than Niels Bohr, Victor Weiss/cop/and Martin Ryle

It would be enough to put most peo-ple off flying for life. The cool-headedwitness was Roger Jennison who isprofessor of electronics at Kent Uni-versity. He is not the only one to haveencountered an airborne fireball. Anacquaintance of mine, a pilot, told meof a very similar incident.

The phenomenon responsible forthese manifestations — ball lightning— is one of the more bizarre scien-tific riddles of our age. The idea thatballs of fire can just pop out ofnowhere, meander around for a whileputting the fear of God into people,and then disappear again, seems pat-ently absurd. For many years, fewscientists would admit to their exist-ence. As recently as the 1970s, somephysicists maintained that lightningballs were nothing more than spotsbefore the eyes. But the fearsomethings have subbornly refused to goaway. Furthermore, we cannot attri-bute all reports to deluded laymen.Eyewitnesses include no lesser scient-ists than Niels Bohr, Victor Weiss-kopf and Martin Ryle. Now, peoplewrite textbooks on the subject.

TYPICAL BALL

A typical ball is about 25 centime-ters in diameter and glows a pale redor orange color. It may have a halo,or corona, around it. Sometimes, itemits sparks or rays. These ballsmaterialize — if that is the word —literally out of the blue, or perhapsout of the clouds. They can last foranything up to a minute or morebefore extinguishing. The mode oftheir demise varies. Some balls ex-plode violently. Others, like the pro-verbial old soldiers, don't die butsimply fade away.

For some weird reason, the fieryorbs have a predilection for interiorspaces. They seek out the insides ofaircraft, buildings and chimneys, oftengaining entry through narrow aper-tures. It is this aspect of ball lightningthat is most alarming. The experienceof watching a glowing fireball sprout-ing from a keyhole, cavorting aroundMUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

the living room and exploding up thechimney can all too readily beimagined.

To add to the sinister flavor of thisunpleasant phenomenon, the incan-descent globes seem to have a will oftheir own. They move with a creepybobbing or swaying action, usuallyclose to the ground and often glidingagainst the wind. They tend to sensenearby objects, especially if the objectsare made of metal. People have seenthem roll along telephone wires orhover over electric power lines. Some-times they emit a menacing hiss orcrackle, and exude a sulphuroussmell.

Given the truly striking characterof ball lightning, it is surprising howmany people have witnessed such aball in action. A quick survey amongone's friends usually elicits at leastone vivid recollection of a typical fire-ball. As with ghost stories, peoplelove to tell ball lightning stories. Ionce heard about a lightning ball thatwas audacious enough to manifestitself in the middle of a school footballpitch — during the game. Then therewas the occasion in 1975 when myfriend Mark Stenhoff, a dedicated col-lector of reports of ball lightning,presented me with a fragment of anincinerated frock. Its owner, a pluckyhousewife from Smithwick, had givenan impertinent fireball the brush-offwhen it assaulted her in the kitchenof her home one evening that August.

In spite of the name, there is noclear link between ball lightning andordinary lightning. True, most sight-ings of ball lightning occur duringthundery weather, but not always inconjunction with a conventional lightn-ing strike. And fair-weather balls areby no means unknown. This raisesthe obvious question of whether thefireballs are by-products of electricalactivity in the atmosphere or are theresult of something more peculiar.

Nikola Tesla, of the magnetic units,made early attempts to recreate balllightning in the laboratory. Tesla wasa bit of an oddball himself. A Yugos-lav emigre to the US, he pioneered

many electrical inventions in the late19th century, but he also entertainedfanciful dreams of transmitting elec-trical power without wires. He dabbled,somewhat secretively, with all sorts offiendish electrical contrivances suchas coils, high voltages, sparks, andallegedly conjured up glowing, floatingballs of fiery plasma.

More recent efforts to manufactureartificial ball lightning have met verylimited success. Long-lived balls thatare independently mobile seem stran-gely reluctant to form. If they doform, they disappear again almostimmediately. Evidently nature can dosomething that we cannot yet. Thesignificance of creating balls of plasmahas not been lost on those who workon controlled nuclear fusion. Theyspend their working lives struggling toconfine unruly plasmas for. mere frac-tions of a second. The UK AtomicEnergy Authority's fusion laboratoryat Culham in Oxfordshire has hostedsome of the more imaginative researchinto ball lightning.

In the 1950s, H. Nauer conducteda series of elaborate laboratory exper-iments. He tried to create fireballs byinducing an electrical discharge be-tween a pointed electrode and awater surface. Bright orange sphericalobjects appeared above the water,but their structure was altogether toocomplicated to resemble ball lightn-ing. Nauer also experimented withdischarges inside a closed chambercontaining hydrocarbons. He producedvague luminous shapes, but again,the resemblance to ball lightning wasslight.

James Dale Barry, at the Univer-sity of California, Los Angeles, andauthor of Ball Lightning and BeadLightning (Plenum, 1980), repeatedNauer's experiments in the late 1960sto test whether the combustion ofhydrocarbons might be the explana-tion for ball lightning. He used a bankof capacitors to produce sparks be-tween copper electrodes, placed abouthalf a centimeter apart, inside a Plex-iglass tank laced with propane gas. Ata concentration of propane of about

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1.4 per cent — less than that neces-sary for ordinary combustion a smallyellow-green fireball appeared whichwhizzed around the tank and fadedaway.

Sometimes people have producedfireballs inadvertently. Several well-documented cases have occurredinside American submarines. In 1974,the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard car-ried out circuit-breaking tests on theswitchgear of the USS Cutlass. Thevessel had two sets of batteries con-nected to two generators, whichcharged the batteries through a cir-cuit breaker made of copper andsilver. The electricians had installed areverse-current relay that would sepa-rate the contacts of the circuit breakerautomatically if current from a chargedbattery accidentally passed through agenerator that was not operating.When such short circuits did occur,an arc appeared between the silvercontacts of the circuit breaker. Onoccasions, the engineers saw a greenincandescent fireball floating off thecontacts into the surrounding area.

Physicists have also been moder-ately successful in making fireballs byfocusing electromagnetic fields oper-ating at radio frequencies. Julio Powelland David Finkelstein, at YeshivaUniversity in New York, experiment-ed with a generator producing 30kilowatts of electrical power at aradio frequency of 75 megahertz. Thegenerator had movable terminals locat-ed inside a glass tube containing avertical chimney. The researchersgradually drew the terminals apartuntil they obtained a discharge. Even-tually, a luminous column appearedwhich changed into a quasi-sphericalobject that slowly ascended the chim-ney. The ball persisted for a secondor so after they switched off thepower. Sometimes the ball disinte-grated explosively. The researchersfound that they could repeat thephenomenon, so they could carry outa detailed spectral analysis of thedischarge.

Fireballs have also appeared duringexperiments with thunderstorms. Inone famous affair in 1753, a certainDr. Richmann of St. Petersburg met anuntimely end when a lightning ballstruck him on the head. Richmannhad apparently connected a lightning8

conductor directly to an electrometerin his laboratory, with a view tomeasuring atmospheric charge, whenlightning struck the rod. The experi-ment produced a blue-white globe offire as large as a man's fist. The fire-ball flew up and struck the scientistdead.

More recently, scientists tried totrigger lightning deliberately by firingrockets with trailing wires into thun-derclouds. In one series of experi-ments in France, reported in 1975,researchers saw one or two luminousballs, near the base of a strike, slowlyrising into the air. They also observedstrings of luminous beads.

THEORIES

Attempts to explain — or explainaway — the mystery balls have been

as ingenious as the experimentalwork. The great Michael Faradayaccepted the accounts of balls of fire,but he was sceptical that electricitywas responsible. Many scientists haveclaimed that the reports are due tonothing more than optical illusions orafterimages on the retina. The wea-kness of this theory is that manyincidents are reported by several wit-nesses, or involve balls passing behindother objects.

Proposed physical mechanisms varyfrom the sublime to the ridiculous:burning balls of gas, plasma vortices,incandescent metallic vapor, atmos-pheric masers, nuclear reactions. Twotough problems confront the theorist.The first is to explain the prodigiousenergy incarcerated within a typicalfireball. One estimate of the energycontent of a ball of lightning comes

MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

from a celebrated case when a ballconveniently popped into a barrel ofwater and boiled it. For good mea-sure, the culprit also struck a house,cut a telephone wire and burned awindow frame. All this from an objectreportedly no larger than an orange.A simple calculation indicates a totalrelease of energy of several meg-ajoules — equivalent to the outputfrom an electrical heater with thepower of a kilowatt for more than anhour. Anything that can pack thiskind of punch is unlikely to be somesort of will-o'-the-wisp.

The second enigma concerns thelifetime of the balls. All laboratoryfireballs persist for less than a secondor so, whereas ball lightning mayendure for minutes at a time. It ishard to understand how such anenergetic object can remain stable forso long. Witnesses nearly alwaysreport that the balls remain perfectlyround. Changes of radius, color orluminosity are invariably slight. Sonot only do we need to find a mech-anism for confining the glowing sub-stance but it must also be remarkablyrobust.

The riddle of ball lightning attractedthe attention of one of the heavy-weights of 20th-century science —Pyotr Kapitza, a Soviet physicist whowon a Nobel prize for his work onsuperconductivity. Kapitza neatly ex-plained the energy problem. He arguedthat ordinary lightning can generateradio waves that could become chan-nelled or focused in the gap betweenthe cloud and the ground. If the elec-tromagnetic field becomes intenseenough in a localized region it couldionize the air, producing a fiery ball.As the pattern of the field shifts, sowould the ball.

Soviet scientists tied this work totheir program of controlled thermon-uclear fusion, in which confiningplasmas is the major challenge. Theyhave taken Kapitza's theory veryseriously. Teams of meteorologists,from the Institute of Physics Prob-lems in Moscow, apparently roamedthe Lenin Hills with radio receivers,tuning into lightning flashes. Theyreported detecting signals, lasting fora fraction of a second, in narrowbands of frequencies around 0.1 giga-hertz. But the levels of power wereMUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

The significance of creating balls of plasma hasnot been lost on those who work on controlled

nuclear fusion.

extremely low. Kapitza's hypothesishas a certain appeal, however. Itcould explain nicely how ball lightn-ing comes inside buildings, becausethese would tend to act like wave-guides.

In spite of the fact that fireballs areoften seen in isolation, it is temptingto attribute them to ordinary lightningstrikes, for which ample energy is avail-able. One theory suggests that alightning strike may throw up fineparticles of soot. The flow of electri-cal current would then heat the parti-cles until they glow. Another theoryproposes that droplets of water fromhumid air might sustain a separationof charges induced by a lightningstrike. The water would prevent thecharges recombining, this storing theelectrical energy.

In the early 1970s, some physicistssuggested a more extreme explana-tion for the high energy of fireballs.The researchers, M.D. Altschuler, L.House and E. Hildner, of the NationalCenter for Atmospheric Research inBoulder, Colorado, proposed thatthunderstorms could behave like gigan-tic natural particle accelerators, pro-ducing protons with an energy ashigh as 1 megaelectronvolt. Theseprotons could then induce nuclearreactions by colliding with atomicnuclei in the atmosphere, therebycreating isotopes of oxygen and fluo-rine, 1SO and "F. The isotopes wouldthen decay, emitting positrons andgamma rays which would provide theenergy for ball lightning.

If some sort of nuclear mechanismwere involved, a close encounter witha fireball might well result in a lethaldose of radiation to the haplessobserver. Researchers then checkedobjects in the vicinity of reportedlightning balls for signs of irradiation.They tested bricks, from an archwaythrough which a ball had passedsome years previously, for thermo-luminescence — a persistent relic ofexposure to radiation. They found no

anomalous effects.In a related series of experiments,

scientists at Culham Laboratory, DavidAshby and Colin Whitehead, decidedto set up a gamma-ray detector andleave it for several months to see ifthey could detect any surges of radia-tion. Remarkably, four such casesoccurred, one of them at the heightof a severe thunderstorm. The levelof radiation rose as high as 50 timesthat of the background level for a fewseconds. The equipment was operat-ing automatically, so nobody wasaround to spot any fireballs, butAshby and Whitehead were so struckby the results that they came up withthe most radical suggestion of all.The surges of gamma radiation didnot fit the characteristics of 15O or "F,so something else had to be respon-sible. The physicists were looking fora phenomenon that would release alot of energy at a fairly uniform rate,would not involve energetic protonsor radioactive isotopes, yet would stillproduce gamma radiation. The answerthat they hit upon was antimatter.

ANTI-MATTER?

Ever since Paul Dirac first pre-dicted antimatter in 1929 (Neu; Scien-r/sf, 10 September 1987, p 43), physi-cists have speculated about its role innature, but Ashby and Whitehead'ssuggestion that it might be the powerbehind ball lightning is the mostbizarre application of the concept sofar.

Theorists believe that every type offundamental particle has a corres-ponding antiparticle which has thesame mass but opposite charge. Forexample, the antielectron, more usu-ally known as the positron, has thesa^me mass as the negative electron,but has a positive electrical charge.

Antiparticles exist. Cosmic rays area prolific source of positrons andantiprotons. Physicists can also makeantiparticles in the laboratory. The

9

European Laboratory for Particle Phy-sics (CERN) boasts the largest anti-proton factory in the world. Physi-cists employ antiparticles to probethe fundamental physics of matter,although so far they have detectedor produced only individual antiparti-cles. There is no reason why anti-protons, antineutrons and positronscannot combine to make antiatomsand then antimatter.

Cosmologists have had a long-standing flirtation with the idea thatsome large fraction of the Universemight be in the form of antimatter.The key feature of such a theory isthat when antimatter meets matter,wholesale annihilation results in ahuge release of energy, in the form ofgamma rays.

If there really is antimatter outthere somewhere, some of it may hitthe Earth. The result could be prettydevastating. A particle of the stuff thesize of a pea would see off a majorcity. The late Willard Libby, the manwho won the Nobel prize for devisingthe technique of radiocarbon dating,

once speculated that the famousTunguska explosion which created ahuge crater, in 1908, devastatingmany square miles of the Siberiantundra, was caused by an antirockplunging to Earth from space. Thisevent, devastating many square milesof the Siberian tundra, has neverbeen satisfactorily explained.

Ball lightning, of course, is not thatdestructive. Ashby and Whiteheadhad in mind only minute grains ofantimatter. These micrometeorites,so the theory goes, slowly .filter downthrough the Earth's atmosphere. Ahypothetical potential barrier causedby certain quantum effects preventsinstantaneous annihilation. These tinyspecks would tend to become nega-tively charged as a result of positronsbeing emitted, and would thereby bedrawn inexorably towards the groundduring thunderstorms, whereuponsome instability would trigger theirannihilation. The result would appearas ball lightning to witnesses. A grainof only 5 micrometers in radius wouldliberate 100 kilojoules, more than

enough to power the average lightn-ing ball. As the outer layers of thegrain of antimatter began to annihi-late, the release of energy would pro-duce a shielding effect, slowing downthe process and extending ring life-time. On occasions the shieldingwould become unstable, leading to anexplosive release of energy.

As far as I know, no one haspursued the antimatter theory. Ashbyand Whitehead published their paperin 1971. Although people have sug-gested searching for composite anti-nuclei in cosmic rays, few scientistshave looked at what would happen ifantimatter in any quantity entered theatmosphere. In view of the profoundconsequences for fundamental phys-ics and cosmology that the discoveryof bulk antimatter would imply, thisseems a distinct omission. Could it bethat those eerie fireballs hold the keyto a mystery of literally cosmic pro-portions? Might they have lockedinside them a clue to the riddle of theorigin of the Universe?

Do We Now Have Two Ufologies?By Jenny Randies

Jenny Randies is director ofinvestigations for the British UFOResearch Association (BUFORA)and the author of numerous bookson the subject. Her most recenttitle is The UFO Conspiracy (Bland-ford Press).

1987 was a fundamental year in theUFO movement for numerous rea-sons. I know that a great many UFOresearchers from foreign climes, includ-ing myself, were extremely grateful toMUFON for inviting us to the festivalof ufology that was held in Washing-ton, DC. It was a delight and instruc-tive entertainment. But I highlighted adilemma that we must face in thecoming years.

I understand that the surprise (andmild skepticism) demonstrated bysome of us toward both the MJ-12affair and the rise in abduction10

research went down, as we say inBritain, like a lead balloon. I thinkthere are many reasons for that,which I do not intend to discuss here.Essentially it stems from the fact thatthere are major differences betweenufology as it is practiced in the USAand in other places. I can of courseonly speak for Britain, but I knowenough of European ufology andspent enough time with Bill Chalkerat Washington to assess Australianufology, to realize that both are moreakin to British than American modesof thinking.

To an extent this is our conserva-tism and caution showing through,plus an increased (I think over-obsessive) approach to sociologicaland psychological theorism. But Isuspent the problem goes deeperthan that. I am beginning to wonder ifour arguments which look to be at

cross purposes are not generated atheart by a failure to spot a significantclue. Perhaps we are trying to recon-cile differences between approachesand data that are irreconcilable, be-cause there is not /one UFO pheno-menon, but two.

Whenever I do media interviews inthe UK I am always faced with jour-nalists who make the presumptionthat UFO and Alien Spaceship areinterchangeable terms. To believe inthe reality of an unknown UFO phe-nomenon is to accept that the earthis being visited by little green men. Ofcourse, those of us involved in thesubject know that this is an over-simplification. It is taking one theoryto account for the unknowns andturning it into the only solution.

ALIEN ASSUMPTIONSMUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

There are many reasons why thisoccurs. Partly, it is due to the waythe phenomenon appears to supportthis hypothesis. It appears like alientravelers and behaves as we mightpredict (incidentally, always to mymind a negative factor, because surelyaliens should behave in an alien way— and not like the interstellar equi-valents of NASA).

Also there is a kind of reductionistlogic that is applied. We have got intospace. There are millions of stars outthere. Ergo, life from space can comehere. If it does, we should see it. Wesee UFOS, therefore it is alien life.That's a superficially plausible analy-sis. But it is riddled with assumptionsthat frankly we have little justificationin making at this stage.

However, above all of these is thefact that UFOs as Alien Spaceships isthe answer most human beings wantto be true. Be honest with yourself. Ifit could be proven to you beyond anyshadow of a doubt that UFOs werenot alien, but some product of scienceon the fringes of comprehension (eg.a new atmospheric phenomenon) —would you still pour in all that time,money and effort to investigate thesethings? Would you bang your headagainst the brick walls marked ignor-ance and sensationalism just to satisfycuriosity about these things? Espe-cially when deep down you know thatyou don't have the scientific creden-tials to handle the data and learn verymuch about these new phenomena.

Some people would answer yes.They are involved in the UFO fieldfor altruistic reasons. But I suspectthat the vast majority, even whenthey deny it thrice until the cockcrows, really have an inner longing tosee their belief vindicated that UFOsare advanced alien visitors who havecome here, will change the world andmaybe help us get out of the messwe are in.

When I am honest with myself Iknow that's true of me. It's a con-stant struggle to keep my feet on theground and this sometimes manifestsas ultra-skepticism. Of course, I knowtoo that the ET theory is a viableconcept. It may not be proven, but itisn't disproven, either. It deserves tolive on as a catalyst for meaningfulresearch.MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

Anyone involved in field investiga-tion to the sort of extent that I am,handling cases day in, day out, to andfrom BUFORA's team, can see anumber of realities about the UFOsubject that are commonly glossedover. I suspect that this even gives adifferent perspective on the wholesubject for those of who regularly fol-low through cases, as opposed tothose who read reports in journals onthe most glamorous cases and thenspeculate from there.

90% IFOs

For a start, most UFOs turn outnot to be UFOs at all. We may allsay we know that, but unless youface a situation where 90 percent ofyour time is spent recording IFOs,then the significance does not reallyhome in.

Take a sighting in Britain in earlyJanuary 1988. A young girl, ZenaSfeir, reported a bright shape in thesky through her telescope. The policewere called and eight officers eventu-ally arrived (including a senior detec-tive). All were baffled by this amor-phous blob of light in the sky thatstayed there for an hour or more.

Now any experienced UFO investi-gator would quickly be suspicious ofthis. Indeed, Mike Wootten, ourAccredited BUFORA Investigator ofKensington, London, where this eventtook place, was on the scene doinghis job as soon as we learned of thestory. It took him minutes to recon-struct the sighting with Zena andascertain that she had only just gotthe telescope, was a complete novice,did not realize that the cheap lensdistorted point sources into blurredshapes and was pointing it straight ata bright planet. A computer simula-tion showed us immediately the planetwas Jupiter (as suspected, becausethere had been other misperceptionsof it) and other key facts emerged.For instance, the "UFO" had beenseen the following night by Zena inthe same place ... a dead giveaway ininvestigation terms.

None of this prevented the Britishmedia going crazy with the story.Many national newspapers carried itas a serious sighting. It even becamejust about the only British case that

has made the national BBC TV news.Not even the Bentwaters case achiev-ed that! Doubtless, these reports fil-tered around the world, as did quotespicked up from "experts" like theYorkshire UFO Society, or "Dr"Richard Lawrence of the AetheriusSociety (he usually being presentedas plain Dr. Lawrence, the leadingUFO expert, to give outsiders nosense of his highly dubious status).

BUFORA's "solution" to this casebarely got a look in. Mike did oneradio interview in London and I didtwo in other parts of the country.None of this put a dent in the millionsof TV viewers and newspaper readersconvinced to this day that the case isa "real UFO".

Nor is this experience in any wayunique. It happens all the time. Ordi-narily we instruct BUFORA fieldinvestigators to focus on promisingcases and virtually junk simple IFOs,beyond basic checks and then loggingthem. But it is often necessary to tryto correct the false impressions putover about these innocuous stories.

Of course, there are a few caseseach year (never more than 20 or 30in a typical twelve months) which dopass the tests of genuine investiga-tion. It is these which represent whatmost would call "real ufology," althoughthe IFOs are important in variousways and cannot be ignored.

ONE OUT OF TEN

The fact that very critical investiga-tion goes on is in my view important.Any investigator who does not gointo a case fully aware that the oddsare stacked nine to one against itbeing a genuine UFO is not doingtheir job. This inevitably adds adegree of cynicism. How could it failto? But it produces better quality"unknowns" in the long run.

So, what of these "unknowns"?They, presumably, are the space-ships. At least, that is almost alwayswhat a journalist says to me by thetime we reach this point in the argu-ment. But this simply isn't so.

Let's look at a selection of typicalcases from recent BUFORA recordscovering this one out of ten residue.

On 19 May 1985 a very small oval(just a few feet in diameter) flew

11

Any investigator who does not go into a case fullyaware that the odds are stacked nine to oneagainst it being a genuine UFO is not doing theirjob.

within close proximity to a man atVentnor on the Isle of Wight. It madea quiet rush of air noise. The casewas investigated by Paul Fuller.

On 4 April 1986 a white ball of lightsped over the head of a man inDukinfield, Lancashire, making a throb-bing noise. This was investigated byGeorgina Mills, who found no simpleanswers.

In early June 1987, a case I fol-lowed up at Whitchurch, involved aseries of three white lights in a trian-gle that remained stationary for somemoments and then just switched out.

These do not misrepresent theremainder of the "unknowns," butwhat do we have when we reviewthem?

The Whitchurch UFO (the pawn-broker sign, as we call it because thisthree ball triangle used to hang oversuch establishments) is rare but veryconsistent. I found about 15 suchcases on BUFORA archives in thepast quarter century. It is evidentlysome sort of optical, atmosphericphenomenon which nobody is fullyaware of. There's no reason at all toassume these were three lights on anotherwise invisible and stationaryspaceship.

The Dukinfield "ball of light" is aclassic UFO (or as we would call it inBritain to avoid presumptions — aUAP Unidentified Atmospheric Phe-nomenon. It may have links with balllightning, earthlights or other suchevents. It may be a new sort ofanomaly. But again it would be sillyto ascribe it to a spaceship on thestrength of the report itself.

Only the Isle of Wight case seemsto offer much hope for those con-vinced that material craft do exist. Iwould say that around one in three ofthe residual cases are of this sort,ambiguous or more concrete obser-vations of actual aerial devices. Yet inthis instance Paul Fuller did notsimply write it off as a UFO. Heprobed deeper. Suspicions tumbled12

out as he did so. There is a secretradar base on the hills where thisoccurred. A Navy exercise involving"drones" was taking place off thenearby coast. The Navy and MoDclammed up when Paul mooted thepossibility of classified military tech-nology. All in all, this small discseems most suggestive of some sortof remote controlled spy craft.

Three cases, three different proba-ble phenomena behind them. Noneare solid evidence for the extraterres-trial hypothesis.

Which is not to say that no caseever is. I am, remember, not attempt-ing to disprove the existence ofaliens, merely to challenge the pre-sumption that this has to be theimplied answer.

However, any experienced investi-gator also knows how shapes andstructure are read into collections oflights. This occurred in another widelypublicized case, on 9 December 1987.Literally dozens of witnesses observedwhat they termed "A football field inthe sky." This glided slowly acrossseveral counties and out to sea. Themedia carried endless reports, but wesuspected an explanation immediately.Having the investigational experienceto suspect this led us to the rightchannels. Philip Mantle, David Clarkeand Clive Potter (the three relevantBUFORA investigators) combined forc-es and quickly established throughtwo independent routes that the"fairground of lights" (another widelyused description) was a US Air Forcetraining mission from RAF Mildenhallinvolving two KC-135 tankers and aseries of F-lll fighters hooked up tothe giant gas tanks.

Yet despite this proof I am sure theundigested reports will have filteredacross the Atlantic to be taken moreseriously than they deserve by unsus-pecting ufologists. This is becausealmost all the witnesses saw the lightson the various aircraft as part of onegiant UFO. From this they interpo-

slated a shape and drew it quite con-sistently (because the light formationwas accurately seen and the onlyerror was the false assumption thatthe lights were fixed on one object.),

Ironically, I recently did a BBCradio interview in Nottingham (thecity at the center of most sightings). Iexplained all of this and was met withincredulous looks from the presenter."But you are supposed to believe inthese things!" he told me. Then headded that he had interviewed someof the witnesses and was convincedthey were sincere. So am I. But hewas also convinced that, becausethey said they saw a mile-wide craftstrung up with lights, that o>as whatthey saw. But it probably was nor, inthis instance.

Cases like that soon teach thedangers of becoming over-attached topro-spaceship arguments based uponthis myth of independent witnesses toa clearly defined craft proving such acraft was really present.

Again, let me stress, I am not dis-puting its value as one of our workinghypotheses. But I am cautioningagainst forgetting the counter prob-lems that it generates.

I hinted that there might be twoufologies. Perhaps I should elaborateon what I meant.

Partly, I did mean that there is adifference between American andBritish ufology. The former is undoubt-edly far more committed to the ETH.I think too committed. But Britishufology falls into the same trap withits over-zealous endorsement of rathervague psychological theories.

UFO CHARACTERISTICS

But there is more to it than that. Ibelieve that these residual UFO casesthat I have just discussed cover manythings. But they do have importantcharacteristics.

You can get photographs of them.They are occasionally tracked onradar. There is some limited moviefilm evidence. If you plot the averagenumber of witnesses per case acrossa large sample it is very similar to thefigure for misidentifications (IFOs). Itcomes out at around 2.5 or 2.6 wit-nesses per case. Debunkers use thisas evidence that the residual cases

MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

are the same as IFOs, ie., uncon-firmed misidentifications. But it provesno such thing. All it says is that justas most sourcesi of IFOs are real (vizaircraft, planets, etc.) so most of theresiduals are real things too. Anyonein the right place at the right time cansee one, often several people in prox-imity to the event can see it simultane-ously.

These UFOs are undoubtedly objec-tive phenomenona of one sort oranother. Or, as I would contend, sev-eral different sorts of objective phen-omena. I believe it to be a mistake toinstill the idea that these must bealien, hence my use of that term,UAP, for these cases.

But, I can almost hear you shout-ing, what about the abductions? Quiteright. This is indisputably the growtharea of ufology and a genuine prob-lem does exist. I am not in the leastsatisfied with any existant attempts toexplain it all away, either in psycho-logical or space kidnap terms. Theevidence is supportive of both ideassome of the way and yet also dis-putes both ideas, too. This is a worry-ing factor.

I agree that we may not yet knowthe full extent of the abductioin phe-nomenon and there are bound to becomplications now the event hasbecome legitimized following the eventsof 1987.

For instance, less than six hoursafter transmission in the UK of theepisode of Dynasty where Fallen firstdescribes her on-board abduction a

"real" event occurred near Accring-ton, Lancashire. An hysterical womanclaimed to be kidnapped from herbed by figures with leathery skinsthat smelt of cinnamon. This wasobviously based on the TV show(which she admitted having seen)since these unusual Strieber-typeimages were featured on that. Yet thewoman believed otherwise and wasdeeply upset by her vivid encounter.Literally as I write, this case is only afew days old and I put BUFORAinvestigator Philip Mantle onto it. But,as he said when we compared preli-minary notes, "we may feel that it is asubjective experience, yet it was stillreal to her."

I have investigated a number ofBritish abduction reports (see mybook Abduction, Robert Hale). I donot believe from this first-hand expe-rience that they are "just hallucina-tions" or "products of the humanpsyche"; or some pseudo-Jungianclaptrap. But I am aware, as allabduction researchers should be, ofthe way these cases differ from theevents that I've just called UAP.

Abductions do not get filmed. Nordo they have radar support. Therearen't even any credible pictures ofaliens in non-abduction situations, letalone during the abductions them-selves. The average number of wit-nesses per case is much closer to 1.0,which is of course total subjectivity.Only the percipient perceives. Abduc-tions are far more isolated eventsthan UAP encounters.

Indeep, UAPs are seen, abductionsare experienced.

These do hint at abductions beingseparate from what we think of asUFOs. It may be that we have bothan objective UAP phenomenon andan essentially subjective abductionphenomenon.

But, of course, I repeat that I amnot suggesting that abductions arepurely psychological events. Only thatthey seem to occur in a psychologicalform. I think that there are groundsto postulate an alien trigger factor inthese experiences.

To close with an analogy. Thinkabout a mythical scientist studying"things in the sky". To simplify mat-ters he has just birds and radio wavesto contend with. The birds he canrecord, classify, go to the places wherethey congregate from time to time,track on radar and photograph.Doesn't that all sound rather familiar?

Radio waves are quite different.You can't go somewhere and expectto see one. You can't photographthem. Indeed you need a special de-coding instrument to be in the rightplace at the right time so as to tuneinto the signal and make it real. Ofcourse, it always was real. But real ina very different way from birds.

I strongly suspect this is what weface right now. The trouble is. theprogram being" broadcast through ourreceivers seems to be one about orni-thology. This tempts us to make whatmay be a serious miscalculation.

The Gulf Breeze, FloridaPhotographic Case - Supplement To Part 1

By Donald M. Ware, Florida State Director, Charles D. Flannigan, Lead Investigatorand Walter H. Andrus, Jr., International Director

Copyrighted by the MUTUAL UFO Network, Inc. (MUFON) March 1988

INTRODUCTIONWhen the original five color Pola-

roid photographs were delivered toDuane Cook, Editor and Publisher ofthe Gulf Breeze Sentinel, he was soimpressed that he published three ofthe best with the letter "To Whom ItMay Concern" from the photographerin the November 19, 1987 issue. Des-MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

pite the fact that the fear of publicridicule to report UFOs or flyingsaucers' is still very prevalent, thearticle in the Sentinel produced posi-tive results. Numerous witnesses cameforward to report their personal exper-iences during the November 11, 1987time period when the first five photo-graphs were made by "Mr. Ed". Joe

Turner and Allison Brown, reportersfor the Sentinel, interviewed many ofthese people. After Donald Ware andhis team of investigators had studiedthe five original photos and later aphotograph depicting the "blue beam",two of the visual sightings reportedseemed to offer corroborating testim-ony to the objects Mr. Ed had photo-

13

graphed. These two reports will bereviewed because they are significantunder the circumstances.

SOMERBY SIGHTING

At about 5:00 p.m. on November11, 1987, Mr. Charles I. Somerby andhis wife Doris were walking their dogon a rural part of Hickory ShoresBoulevard (Bay Drive) about 10 mileseast-northeast of the site where Mr.Ed made his first five photos. By wayof introduction, Mr. Somerby is aretired Navy officer and past editor ofthe "Sentinel" with a masters degreein journalism. Doris Somerby is DuaneCook's mother. While watching cloudformations and colors in the lateafternoon sky, Charles spotted a"bogey". Since it was not a plane,helicopter, or bird, he was mystified.They stopped and watched the objectmove from the northeast to south-west (toward Gulf Breeze) for abouttwo minutes. Mr. Somerby said it wasgrey with white "porthole" lights onthe bottom and one light on top.There were no colored or blinkinglights observed. Doris asked Charlesif that could be a UFO. She said ithad no blinking lights, just a circle ofbright white lights at the bottom anda dome light. They heard no noise.

Mrs. Somerby said the objectseemed to drift like a balloon. Cha-

rles said it appeared to be the size ofthe full moon and as bright as a star.He estimated that it was as big as ahouse. Since darkness was rapidlyapproaching and they did not have aflashlight, they walked back towardstheir cottage. They hoped others hadseen the object and would report it.

At about 11:00 a.m. on November18, 1987, the Somerbys went to theSentinel office where Duane Cookshowed them the photos and letter.Duane said he was quite surprisedwhen Charles and Doris Somerbysaid they had seen it too. The lettersaid, "Should these photos and storyspark any interest from your reader-ship, I may identify myself. I am aprominent citizen of the community;however, I need anonymity at thistime. I know what I saw and wouldfeel much better if I knew I was notalone."

Duane Cook gave the MUFONteam investigators Somerby's addresson November 23rd and the interviewswere completed that day. (The des-cription provided by Charles andDoris Somerby was certainly evi-dence that "Mr. Ed" was not alone.)

ZAMMIT SIGHTING

Between 2:00 and 2:30 a.m. CSTon November 11, 1987, Mrs. Zammit,age 72, was awakened by Sam her

11-year-old female Labrador Retriever.The dog woke her by placing hermuzzle against her cheek and growl-ing. Mrs. Zammit sensed the unusualbehavior and got out of bed to in-vestigate. She held the growling, rest-less dog by the back of the neck andwas led through the house to theback door. Upon exiting, the dogbecame even more agitated and start-ed barking. Mrs. Zammit and the dogwalked a few feet on the lawn, whenthe dog stopped and looked up at around object emitting a "pathway" ofbluish light to her dock on the canal.The light "pathway" contacted thedock between the first and secondsupport poles and was about 8 inchesin diameter.

The object appeared to be 2 to 3times the size of the full moon andwas as bright as the planet Venus ...that is, very bright. The color of theobject was pastel yellow to orange.Her first thought was "unbelievable,"which later turned to fright. The dogwas growling and barking while stand-ing in place looking up at the object.Its hair was "standing on end." Mrs.Zammit thought maybe the objectwas there to "get my dog," so shetook Sam back into the house. Thesighting lasted about five minutes.

Mrs. Zammit reported her sighting

Continued on page 21

The Mundrabilla Incident - Part IIBy Walt Andrus

DATE: January 20,1988TIME: Early morning hours, ap-

proximately 4:00 a.m. Western Aus-tralia time. (Exact time unknown)

LOCATION: Approximately 40 kil-ometers west of Mundrabilla on theEyre Highway in Western Australiaknown as the Basin or NullarborPlain.

DURATION OF INCIDENT: 90minutes

INTRODUCTION

Part I of "The Mundrabilla Inci-dent" was published in the March1988 issue, No. 239 of the MUFONUFO Journal. Due to the numerouswitnesses scattered over Westernand South Australia, and the vast dis-tances involved to locate and inter-view them personally, this sightingreport continues to evolve. Informa-tion in Part II is based upon thereport submitted to MUFON byKeith Basterfield and Ray Brooke,dated February 29, 1988. To avoid

14

duplication, this article will elaborateonly on new information obtained andinterviews conducted after the reportpublished in the MUFON UFO Jour-nal, issue No. 239.

Briefly, it concerns three majorpieces of information. (1) An inter-view with John De Jong (nicknamePorky), and his friend and co-driver,Anne; (2) Various slight discrepanciesbetween witnesses' reports and clari-fications and (3) Details of an inde-pendent laboratory test results of the

MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

ash deposit on the automobile. Inter-viewing the Knowles family has beencomplicated by the three monthsexclusive contract that they signedwith the Channel 7 Television Net-work in Adelaide immediately afterthe incident. As Keith and Ray pre-viously stated: It appeared that"checkbook journalism" had scoredover scientific evaluation. However, inspite of these obstacles, the team ofinvestigators composed of Keith Bas-terfield, Ray Brooke, Steve Bolton,Vladimir and Pony Godic in Adelaide;Gary Little in Melbourne, and JoanJohnston in Perth, continued to inter-view other witnesses and participants,seeking answers to this intriguingcase.

Due to the distance of the sitefrom Adelaide (1100 kms by air) andthe ephemeral nature of the physicalevidence at the spot, Mr. Basterfieldand Mr. Brooke have not visitedMundrabilla personally. However,truck driver John De Jong (Porky)has provided the team an excellentdescription of the location, and show-ed them pictures of the area. Togetherwith TV video shots of the area, thishas given the team of investigators anunderstanding of the isolated natureof this stretch of road, the terrain,road surface and vegetation present.

INTERVIEW WITH MR. DE JONG

Mr. John De Jong (nickname"Porky") and a woman friend namedAnne were traveling by truck fromPerth, W.A. to Adelaide, S.A. at aspeed of about 95-100 km/hr. Theyhad stopped at the top of the MaduraPass, W.A. in order to change driv-ers. Mr. De Jong went to sleep in therear cabin, while Anne took over thedriving.

A colleague of theirs, Graham Hen-ley was driving a truck along thesame road, in the same direction, buthe was ahead of them. They were farenough behind him that they werenot able to see his lights at all duringthe trip between Madura and Mun-drabilla. (See the March 1988 issue ofthe ML/FON UFO Journal for aninterview with Graham Henley by anewspaper reporter.)

At a point forty kilometers West ofMundrabilla (close to the 40 km. sign-MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

post), they passed an "S" bend in theroad when Anne saw two people wav-ing on the right hand (opposite) siteof the road. (In Australia, vehiclesdrive on the left hand side of theroad.) Within 150 meters furtherdown the road, there was a car, alsoon the right hand side of the road.The front of the car was facing in aSouth-Westerly direction, i.e. backtowards Perth.

Anne asked Porky whether or notshe should stop. After raising up fromthe bunk, he said "no". They con-tinued on.

Later a car overtook them at highspeed. After passing their truck,Anne noted that the vehicle's lightswere switched off. In her opinion thenight was still too dark for a vehiclenot to have its lights turned on. Thenthe lights of the vehicle came backon.

Arriving at Mundrabilla, they notedthat another truck driver, GrahamHenley, was present and talking to agroup of people around a car. Afterinspecting their truck, Porky andAnne went over to Henley. They thenestablished that it was these peoplewho had been waving at the side ofthe road and also the same peoplewho had passed their truck at highspeed.

The group in the car consisted of awoman and three young men. Porkysaid the woman appeared hystericaland the boys also looked disturbed.One of the boys had a very whitecolor to his face. They told a story ofa UFO. The behavior of the womanconvinced Porky, Anne, and Grahamthat something very unusual hadoccurred out there.

The woman, established later to beMrs. Knowles, had a red blotch onthe back of her left hand which shewas worrying about. She told themshe had touched something on thecar roof. She kept repeating: "Some-one's got to do something," and"Someone's going to get hurt".

KNOWLES' STORY AS TOLDTO DE JONG

The family were heading Eastwardstowards Melbourne for a holiday visitwith relatives. Sean was driving at thetime, Patrick was believed to be in

the front bucket seat, Mrs. Knowlesin the rear left' seat behind Patrick,and Wayne in the seat behind thedriver.

Initially, they saw a bright lightahead of them which they took to bea truck. Something was then overtheir car. They heard a whirring,high-pitched noise. Their minds andbodies seemed to be taken over byan unknown control. Their voicesappeared to sound slow and funny.Mrs. Knowles put her left hand ontop of the car roof and felt some-thing. This frightened her. The carwas lifted off the ground to anunknown height. They did not knowhow long it was airborne. The cardropped to the ground. They left thescene heading Westwards (towardsPerth). Then they stopped to changethe blown tire. After changing thetire, they made a "U" turn andheaded Eastwards again. Porky esti-mated that all of this happened in 15-20 minutes.

QUESTIONS BYGRAHAM AND PORKY

Graham and Porky questioned thefamily about this incident and soli-cited the following answers:

Graham asked them if the noisethey had heard could have been ahelicopter? The family said the noisewas definitely different from that of ahelicopter. One of the boys said itwas a "whirry" noise, not a helicopter"chuffy" sound. When asked howhigh they were off the road, they saidthey didn't know.

The two drivers then volunteeredto take the family back to the spot tohave a look at the area, to whichthey declined. The vehicle was inspect-ed by the two drivers with Grahampointing out features to Porky follow-ing behind.

INSPECTION OF THE VEHICLE

Porky later related his observationsto Keith and Ray.

1.) The burst or blown tire: Therewas nothing inside the casing of thedamaged tire.

2.) There was a smell about the carwhich he said was closest to "bake-lite".

15

3.) There was nothing underneaththe vehicle, i.e. no saltbush. He con-cluded the vehicle had not beendriven off the road into the scrub.

4.) Porky did not see any blackash/dust on the vehicle, neither insideor outside. The car was dusty anddirty, as per normal road travel.

5.) The boot (trunk) was in ashambles, everything scattered about.There were no suitcases in the boot

nor in or on the car. (As previouslyreported, the family had two suit-cases banded to the roof of the 1984Ford Telstar automobile.)

6.) There were four marks on theroof, one at each corner. These wereindentations not cuts. They lookedthe same as a mark one would makeby hitting the roof with a fist.

The Knowles family left Mundra-billa, heading towards Eucla, W.A.and then to South Australia afterspending no more than 30 minutes atMundrabilla. Graham and Porky wentinto the roadhouse and discussed theepisode with the manageress, Mrs.Shirley Lundon. Following this dis-cussion, Mrs. Lundon telephoned theSergeant at the Eucla Police Station.Porky spoke to him and told what heknew.

After this the two truck driversborrowed an automatic "ute" (auto-matic drive utility vehicle) from theroadhouse and went out to the sitetogether with Anne. They drove backalong the road to see what they couldfind, but especially to look for threethings.

1.) Clumps of rubber on the bitu-men which would indicate a blowout.

2.) Pieces of glass from the driver'sside mirror. The mirror was report-edly smashed after a kangaroo hit theKnowles' vehicle. This was said to beduring the time they had their vehiclelights out while in front of the truck.

3.) The car jack and car jack han-dle reportedly left at the scene.

The group could not find evidenceof any of these, despite knowing thearea/road well and knowing exactlywhere the car was parked, and thekangaroo hit. Both sides of the road,now daylight, were inspected at lowspeed.

THE SITEThey located the spot where they

had seen the car stationary on theside of the road. The road at thisspot is slightly undulating. By thistime it had been an estimated one to1 and l/2 hours since they passed thespot the first time, and was nowbetween 0545 and 0615.

The evidence at the location whichthey saw for themselves consisted ofthe following:

1.) FOOTPRINTS: There were foot-prints where persons had been walk-ing around. There were four sets ofprints heading from the car away intothe bush in a South-westerly direc-tion. These prints were not fullmarks, but more front foot and toemarks as if running.

From a point in the bush therewere prints leading back to the roadin a Northerly direction in a straightline. There were four sets of printsplus dog paw marks going back alongthe side of the road in the sand ... fullpatterns as if people were walking.One set of prints was that of some-one with bare feet, one with thongsand two with shoes or runners (ten-nis or running shoes).

2.) JACK: There was an impres-sion in the ground of a car jackwhere they had changed the tire.When questioned, Porky believed itwas a "squarish" mark and not oneof the old round jacks.

3.) TIRE PRINTS: On the bitumen(bituminous road surface), there wasa skid mark 15 - 20 meters long,apparently made by the rear left handtire when they pulled up. In the dirtthere was evidence of a flat tire onthe vehicle coming off the road, andno flat tire when they got back ontothe road. There were signs that thevehicle was driven backwards on tothe bitumen before doing a U-turnand proceeding Eastwards.

There was no sign of the car jackor car jack handle reportedly used tochange the tire. They performed agrid pattern search for these andwere perturbed when they couldn'tfind them. They failed to find anytrace of the clothes they believed tohave been loose in the boot (trunk),which the Knowles said they took outto get access to the spare tire, andwhich they left at the scene.

AFTERWARDS16

The group (truck drivers) thenreturned to Mundrabilla where Porkyhad another talk with the Euclapolice. He learned that the Knowlesvehicle had passed through Eucla bythis time. Porky suggested the policecall Penong police in South Australiaand have the car stopped, as therewas something definitely wrong.

After a whole morning had passed,the two truck drivers finally left Mun-drabilla and headed East. Porky andAnne drove to Penong where theystopped for a while and then pro-ceeded to Wudinna, S.A. for coffee.A helicopter was already there (prob-ably Channel 7 personnel).

Their own personal investigationdisclosed that the Knowles family wasin a motel and various media organi-zations were also present. After aperiod of time, Porky and Anne wereallowed to talk to the Knowles family.After talking to them Porky drove toAdelaide where he appeared on Chan-nel 9 TV for a short interview.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

• Porky knows the road (EyreHighway) well since he has been atruck contractor traveling betweenPerth and Adelaide for several years.

• They did not know the Knowlesvehicle was ahead of them during thesection Madura/Mundrabilla, i.e. theydidn't see the car lights ahead ofthem until the Knowles passed themlater.

• Porky said the Knowles carcouldn't have been on the side of theroad when Graham passed the spot.

• Anne saw no unusual lights atany stage, especially not when theypassed the Knowles car. No unusualeffects were noted on the engine,lights, UHF or CB radio, steering,etc. No unusual sounds were heard.

• TIMING: It was between 0400and 0430 local time when they passedthe stationary car on the side of theroad. Porky confirmed the time asabout 0445 when he got to Mundra-billa. They said it was definitely stilldark when they passed the stationarycar.

• Mrs. Knowles was sitting on theleft hand side passenger seat, notbehind the driver, according to Porky.

• Sean was driver at this time. HeMUFON UFO Journal No. 240 April 1988

appeared hysterical to Porky and wasunable to speak at all at Mundrabilla.

• WEATHER: At Madura Pass,Porky had checked out his vehiclewhile changing drivers. He noted thatthe sky was clear, stars were visible,there was no moon, and no sign ofany lightning in the area. Sunriseoccurred definitely after they saw thepeople waving at the side of the road.

• Graham told Porky that he hadseen an unusual light in his rearvision mirror and tried to call Porkyon his CB radio. Porky did notreceive such a call, but believes hewas out of range at the time. Grahamdid not know Porky had stopped atthe Madura Pass, thus increasing thedistance between the two trucks.When they passed the Knowles car,both the CB radio and a UHF radiowere adjusted for a low volume level.Anne was listening to a cassette.

• They were asked if the Knowleshad mentioned any other vehiclesbeing involved in the encounter.Porky said no they hadn't. Anne wasasked if she saw vehicles going Westduring the time between Madura andMundrabilla. She said "yes". Withoutbeing led, she was asked if she hadrecollections of a car and van (housetrailer) passing the other way? Shestated she did not remember suchgoing by, and added that it would berare for someone to pull a van duringthe night.

• Upon the return trip to investi-gate in the "ute", they found a manasleep in a car 20 kms West of Mun-drabilla. They apparently woke himup by looking in his car.

DISCREPANCIES NOTEDAND CORRECTED

It is clear that there was a discre-pancy between which of Mrs. Kno-wles' hands was affected.

On initial media advice, it wasthought that there was a fifth vehicleinvolved, but that now appears to bespurious.

Vehicle one was a car and caravanthat was reported by the Knowlesfamily to have almost collided withtheir car when driver Sean took eva-sive action by swerving to avoid aclose encounter with the object onthe highway. The team of investiga-MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

tors have placed an article in a Perth,W.A. Sunday newspaper in an at-tempt to locate the person/witness.

Vehicle two was a truck beingdriven by Mr. Graham, age 57, atransport operator of Forest Hill, Vic-toria. The investigators have con-tacted Henley's wife and asked for anappointment to interview him, but todate he has not responded. (He trav-els consistently.)

Vehicle three was a 1984 Ford Tel-star sedan (car) containing the Kno-wles family from Perth, W.A.

Vehicle four was a truck owned bya transport operator, John De Jong(Porky), and was being driven by awoman friend of De Jong's namedAnne.

The odometer reading of Knowles'1984 Ford Telstar was 002414.2 kms,but since the car is four years old,this would suggest a total of 102,414.2kms had been travelled.

The entire valve for pumping airinto the damaged tire was missing

upon inspection.The reported indentations on the

car roof were roughly at the cornersof the roof.

AMDEL VEHICLEEXAMINATION REPORT

The AMDEL Technology and Enter-prise vehicle examination report, asrequested by Channel Seven, is pub-lished with this article in ia reducedformat to conserve space. As otherwitnesses are personally interviewed,their reports will be published. Wehope that the crew of the tuna fishtrawlers in the Great Australian Bightwill be interviewed when the shipsdock, since the media have reportedthat an egg-shaped object "buzzed"one of the trawlers and the crewmembers were reported to have hadslow garbled speech as a result. (Ifthis is true, it would lend further cred-ibility to the Knowles family exper-ience.)

technology and enterprise

Amdel31 Flemington Street,Frewville.S.A. 5063

Telephone: (08)3722700

29 1988

Address all correspondence to:P.O. Box 114.Eastwood, S.A. 5063

Telex: AA82520Facsimile: (08) 79 6623

Channel SevenPO Bo:: 7WALKERVILLE SA 3O81

Attention Mr. Frank Pangallo

REPORT M4375/S9

YOUR REFERENCE

TITLE

LOCATION

DATE RECEIVED

WORK REQUESTED

Request — Mr. F. Pangallo.

Vehicle Examination.

Uudina, Adelaide.

22 January 1968.

Examine vehicle, analyse dust and report onall edged U.F.O. incident.

Investigation and Report by: Anthony H. Lul;e.

Manager, Materials Services! P h i l i p J. Parry.

far Or W i l l i a m G SpencerGeneral ManagerApplied Sciences Group 17

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Page 3

Sample - Amdel Control

Compound

9- AbundantGraph!taIron

BarvteMagnetite

Minor

The analyses are considered to be characteristic o-f dust -fromHearing brake pads and discs. No significant foreign compounds Merepresent in the dust samples.

4. SUMMARY

The investigation revealed that the damage to the tyre masconsistent with running on a deflated tyre for an extended period.It is considered that this Mould account for the odour, smoke andvibrations sensed during the incident.

The material taken from around the front wheels Mas typicalof residual dust from wearing brake pads and discs. No significantdust was observed oh the vehicle as presented for inspection.

dt:3

LOOKING BACKBy Bob Gribble

FORTY YEARS AGO - April1948: On the 5th three trained bal-loon observers from the GeophysicsLaboratory Section, Watson Labora-tories, New Jersey reported seeing adisc-shaped object in the vicinity ofHolloman Air Force Base, New Mex-ico. It was very high and fast andappeared to execute violent maneuv-ers at high speed. The disc was abouta fifth the size of a full moon. A yel-low or light colored sphere 25 to 40feet in diameter was reported by Lt.Commander Marcus L. Lowe, USN,just south of Anacostia Naval Air Sta-tion, D.C. while he was flying on the30th. It was moving at a speed ofapproximately 100 miles per hour atan al t i tude of about 4,500 feet .Although winds aloft were from thenorth-northwest the course of thesphere was to the south.

***

THIRTY FIVE YEARS AGO -April 1953: At 3:15 pm on the 12thMUFON UFO JOURNAL, No. 240 April 1988

10 disc-shaped metallic colored objectswere observed near Sweetwater, Neva-da changing formation while movingat a high rate of speed at an esti-mated altitude of 7,500 feet. Thediscs passed under the right nacelleof a C-47 aircraft and were observedby the pilot and co-pilot. The pilotturned the aircraft in a tight 300degree turn for a better view of thediscs which were then seen by twomore members of the crew. Observerswere unable to estimate the speed ofthe discs. On the 15th a mass ofmysterious white substance drifteddown from the sky over Ongaonga,New Zealand. It covered fields, build-ings, wires, trees and fences forhundreds of yards around. The sub-s t ance q u i c k l y d i s i n t e g r a t e dwhen handled.

***THIRTY YEARS AGO - April1958: At 6 am (date unknown), on abeach in northeastern Brazil, several

witnesses observed a strange UFOdescending from the sky from thedirection of the ocean. They couldhear a humming sound as the craftapproached. When the object was ata distance of about 40 meters andabout 15 meters above the water, itbegan to rock sideways and thenbecame stationary. Described as beingvery large, the craft was shaped liketwo bowls placed together rim-to-rim.The top half was aluminum color witha small dome. The bottom half wasdark in color. There was a bandaround the area where top and bot-tonr sections met. The band had anumber of square openings whichwere illuminated by a red light. Theopenings facing the witnesses weredarkened as though someone waslooking through them. Directly underthe object the water seemed to beboiling or being sucked up withouttouching the underside of the craft.The UFO was watched for about anhour.

***TWENTY YEARS AGO — April1968: A Beausejour, Manitoba, Can-ada man was badly shaken by hisexperience on the 3rd after a largeUFO followed him in his truck to hishome. John Kryschuk said the objectwas some 40 feet in diameter at thebottom and about 30 feet high. As hedrove south along P.T.H. 12 at 11:30pm, he noticed a light shining on thehighway from above his moving vehi-cle. "I stopped my truck," said Kry-schuk, "looked up and saw a big lightabout 400 feet above the highway andhovering above me." He said the lightwas on the bottom of the craft andhe could hear a loud humming sound.Some seven bands of different coloredlights were spinning around the objectas though they were on belts. Kry-schuk said he watched the object forsome 10 minutes as it hovered abovethe highway. Then, he said, he gotinto his truck and drove to Beause-jour. He was shocked to find that theobject followed him the remainingfour miles, shining such a bright lightonto the highway that he said heneed not have used his headlights.He said the object suddenly went upand into the southwest like a bolt of

19

lightning.On the 16th Henry Ford II was

aboard a Ford company plane, a Jet-Star, with several other companyexecutives. They were flying at 35,000feet en route from San Antonio,Texas to Detroit, Michigan. NearAustin, Texas the pilots sighted ahuge, round object overhead. Becauseof its size they first thought it mightbe an unusually large research bal-loon. Then they realized it was mov-ing with them. After checking for afew minutes they found the unknownobject was apparently pacing the jet,matching its ground speed of 535knots (616 MPH). "It looked twicethe size of a DC-8," the senior pilotreported. "Our guess was 500 to 600feet in diameter. There were no pro-trusions or windows. All the pas-sengers saw it, but no one couldidentify it." Mr. Ford confirmed thesighting to the Detroit News. TheUFO, he said, had paced the JetStarfor at least an hour.

During the week of the 28th therewere several UFO incidents in theSelah-Yakima, Washington area. Onone occasion a large UFO wasobserved launching five smaller objectswhich moved away from the area athigh speed. Later that evening a 16-year-old boy was driving in the samearea when he noticed a light off to hisleft. He stopped his car for a betterlook and was astonished to see three"beings" emerge from a wooded areaand approach his car. He said theyappeared to be wearing orange-coloredclothing of a shiny texture. Thebeings were human-like in appear-ance and four feet tall, or less. Therewas no hair or other covering on theheads. The boy began honking thecar horn in an attempt to frighten thebeings away. Then two similar beingsemerged from the right side of theroad and came toward the car.According to the witness the beingshad approached to within 25 feetwhen they suddenly turned aroundand walked back to the wooded area.The next morning investigators foundsix imprints in the soil which resem-bled foot prints. They were eightinches long, had a narrow heel, noinstep and a "paddle-shaped" foot.

***

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO - April1973: Mrs. Raymond Stucker wasdriving near her home in Ellsinore,Missouri about 11:30 am on the 6thwhen she saw a large, metallic-colored, disc-shaped object eitherlanding or taking off from a grove oftrees off the highway. The object wasdescribed as circular with a bandaround the center and a domed topwith porthole-like openings. Landingpods or stilts protruded from the bot-tom of the craft. It made no noise asit hovered in the air. Several investi-gators went to the area and locatedseveral trees that had been damaged.They also discovered three holes inthe ground set in a triangular pattern.Three trees were damaged next tothe area where the holes were found.The three holes were about sixinches deep and two to three feetacross. Of the three damaged treesnear the holes, one was split downthe center and splintered to pieces,another had the bark stripped downone side of it about 40 feet high. Athird in the triangle had only a smallamount of bark torn off at the trunknext to one of the holes in theground. Several other trees weredamaged within the triangle whichwas estimated to be about 50 feetbetween points.

A young Proston, Victoria, Austra-lia couple had a UFO terrorize themduring an eight-mile pursuit of theircar on a lonely roadway at 9:30 pmon the 8th. Mr. and Mrs. David Her-bohn were returning home when alarge, bright disc appeared besidetheir vehicle. Mr. Herbohn, 18, saidhe heard a noise like a jet passingoverhead and then saw the disc whichgave off a reddish-yellow light. "Afterit became obvious it was chasing us,there was no way we were going topull up," he said. "Just before it dis-appeared it seemed to come veryclose and bright and I felt I couldhave reached out and touched it.Then the car gave a shudder as if hitby a strong gust of wind and theobject disappeared."

***TEN YEARS AGO - April 1978:On the 2nd, just before dawn, a shrillnoise cut the air on Bell Island, New-

20

foundland, Canada and suddenly thelittle village was rocked by a tre-mendous explosion. "Sheets of fire"appeared in some homes. The skyglowed red and balls of fire up tothree feet across drifted through thevillage. An electrical surge racedthrough power lines blowing up tele-vision sets and turning wall outletsinto blow torches spurting blue flamealmost two feet long. The boom hadbeen enormous, rattling homes eightmiles away and making people up to40 miles away turn their heads.

Just before this happened, peopleliving in Portugal Cove, across thebay, reported seeing "a bright, glow-ing straight line" come out of the sky"slanted toward Bell Island at about a45-degree angle." Miraculously, noone had been killed and there was lit-tle damage. The copper wiring in onehouse was vaporized. A cabin behindthe house was left with a hole ineither end. A small barn nearby hadcollapsed outward while chickens laydead on the floor, bleeding from theeyes and mouth.

Two scientists from Los Alamos,New Mexico journeyed to Newfound-land to investigate the Bell Islandincident. One of the scientists, RobertFreyman, identified himself as aweapons-design engineer interested inball lightning. He said he'd beenexpecting the event as a result of atheory he entertained about weathersystems. He couldn't go into detailbut said there had been similarevents in New Jersey and SouthCarolina. When the Bell Island inci-dent occurred, he said, "someone inWashington" asked him to check itout.

"We were all terrified," admittedDennis Kiteveles, a police dispatcher,who with his family watched a UFOfrom his home in Van Buren, NewYork for 15 minutes. Shortly after 10pm the lights suddenly went out inVan Buren for several seconds. ThenKitevele's coonhound began to howl"very, very strangely. It was com-pletely different from his normal howl,like he was in pain. I looked out thewindow and saw this object hoveringabout 2,000 feet from the house, verylarge and roughly oval in shape. Ithad to be bigger than a 747 jumbo jetand looked like two pie tins, one on

MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

top of the other," Kiteveles said.The sheriff's department sent a

helicopter to the area but could notfind the UFO. Helicopter pilot Sgt.Paul Zemenz said "We contactedHancock Airport and they admittedhaving an unidentified object on theirradar." The next morning Kiteveles'wife discovered that despite the powerfailure the night before, the electricclocks in her home had actuallygained over three minutes.

At 5:15 am on the 10th Officer BenEldridge was on a stake-out at Gooch-land, Virginia waiting for whatever orwhomever it was that killed eightcows. He was standing in a corner ofa field near a hay barn looking at aherd of 30 to 40 black Angus andwhite-faced cattle which were to theeast. He looked over his right should-er. "Here the thing was," he recalled,"pointed directly at me. It was round,red and real bright, about 10 to 12feet long, probably longer. It reallyscared me when I first saw it" A redglow surrounded the cylinder, abouteight inches out from the silver metalit seemed to be made of. Eldridgedescribed the UFO as being "300 to400 yards away". At first he thoughthe was going to have to run to dodgethe object, "but then, in a fewseconds, it was going sideways. Therewas no noise at all. It was level, slow,smooth. The farther away it got, thesmaller it got. It was traveling about20 feet over the tree tops."

Six youngsters said they saw alarge, "really spooky" UFO hoveringlow over Enfield, Connecticut on the13th. A woman who says she wasdrawn from her house by the youngs-ters' screams, said the object appearedto be an airplane but a very large onelike a 707 or 747. She estimated itwas flying less than 100 feet off theground. Asked what kind of sound itmade, she hesitated, thinking for amoment and then said she didn'tremember a sound.

One of the youngsters said theobject, square on the top and roundon the bottom, was flashing its red,white and yellow lights and making abuzzing sound. At one point it ex-tended three or four metal legs fromits underside. The boy said he hit theobject with a rock which made a"ping" sound on impact.MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

The youngsters, who are between11 and 13-years-old, said their bodiesfelt "weird, like something was goingthrough us" while the object hoveredoverhead. They compared the feelingto someone's foot falling asleep. Afterthe UFO remained overhead forabout 10 minutes, they said it wentinto a high speed vertical climb andvanished into the night sky.

FLORIDA, Continued

by telephone on November 20th tothe Gulf Breeze Sentinel newspaperafter seeing the November 19th arti-cle. She was interviewed by CharlesFlannigan and Gary Watson in herlovely Oriole Beach home on Novem-ber 25th and again on December 3,1987. The Oriole Beach subdivision ishalf-way between the photo site andthe Somerby sighting. Mrs. Zammitsaid she has not read UFO booksand related material. She lives withher husband, Captain Joseph Zammit(U.S. Navy, retired), who formerly

'commanded the largest U.S. Navycommunications base in the U.S.A.He slept through the excitement onNovember llth. He stated that hiswife had assisted him many timeswith detailed research while he was inthe Navy and she pays particularattention to details. She has earned aB.S. degree in Education.

INVESTIGATIONAND EVALUATION

The weather at 2:30 a.m. onNovember llth was reported asclear, 7 miles visibility, 42 degrees F.,and wind at 340 degrees (NNW) withgusts from 12 to 20 mph. At 5:00p.m., the weather report showedscattered clouds at 15,000 feet, visibil-ity 10 miles, 51 degrees F. and windsat 350 degrees (NNW) at 11 mph.

The Public Affairs offices at Pen-sacola Naval Air Station and Eglin AirForce Base could not provide anyexplanation for the sightings. F.A.A.representative, Ron Wehunt (432-2323) said they often have 100 targetson their radar screen at one time, butno fantastic speeds or strange reportswere made in that area in November.

Character references for Mrs. Zam-

mit and the Somerbys were favora-ble. The Somerbys provided a gooddescription of the object photographedby "Mr. Ed" and Mrs. Zammit report-ed a "blue beam" independently andwithout any knowledge of the eventsthat Mr. Ed would experience.

The first five half-tone photos onpages 6, 7, and 8 in the March 1988issue of the MUFON UFO Journalwere provided through the courtesyof Duane Cook, Editor and Publisher,The Sentinel, 1200 Gulf Breeze Park-way, Gulf Breeze, FL 32561, whoholds the copyright.

MUFONAMATEUR RADIO NETS

Saturdays0800 EST/EDT - 7.237 MHz

Sundays1500 EST/EDT - 28.470 MHz

NATIONALEMERGENCY CALLINGEST/EDT MHz0000-0015 3.9900400-0415 3.9900800-0815 7.2371200-1215 7.2371600-1615 7.2372000-2015 3.990

LOCALEMERGENCY CALLING

Same times - 28.470

SUPPORTUFO

RESEARCH

MUFON103 Oldtowne Rd.

Seguin, Texas78155

21

MESSAGE, Continued

living in the area. Due to limitedspace in the Director's Message, onlythe dates, theme, locations and theperson to contact for more informa-tion will be provided.

• May 6 and 7. "The UFO Expe-rience"; Best Western TLC Hotelwest of Boston, MA. Contact: PSISymposium, 117 Stanley Road, Swamp-scott, MA 01907.

• April 16 and 17. "ExtraterrestrialVisitors: Fact or Fantasy", SheratonHotel — San Francisco Airport, Bur-lingame, Calif. Contact: Senzar, Inc.,999C Edgewater Blvd., Suite 308,Foster City, CA 94404, Telephone:(415) 578-9667.

• May 14 and 15. "ExtraterrestrialVisitors: Fact or Fantasy"; RamadaInn Airport North, Phoenix, Arizona.(Same contact as above).

• June 11 and 12. "ExtraterrestrialVisitors: Fact or Fantasy"; Conven-tion & Performing Arts Center, SanDiego, Calif. (Same contact as above).

• July 9 and 10. "ExtraterrestrialVisitors: Fact or Fantasy"; Reno,Nevada. (Same contact as above).

• September 3 to 6: InternationalUFO Congress, Rio de Janiero,Brazil. Contact: Irene Granchi, Cx.Postal 12.058 Copacabana, Rio deJaniero, 22022 Brazil. Telephone (021)246-6187.

• September 16 and 17: "NationalUFO Conference"; Cleveland, Ohio.Contact: United Aerial PhenomenaAgency (UAPA), P.O. Box 347032,Cleveland, OH 44134.

MUFONAMATEUR

RADIONET

EVERY SATURDAYMORNING

AT 0800 EST (OR DST)ON7237KHzS.s.B.

THE NIGHT SKYBy Walter N. Webb

MUFON Astronomy Consultant

April 1988

Bright Planets (Evening Sky):Venus reaches its greatest separation from the Sun on the 3rd, 46° east ofour sun, and can be seen about 35° above the western horizon (frommidnorthern latitudes) at midtwilight. Through a telescope the planetappears as a small half Moon. Look for the Pleiades star cluster close toVenus during the first few nights of April. The brilliant planet (magnitude-4.4) sets as late as 11:30 PM daylight time by the middle of the month.Venus is in close conjunction with the crescent Moon on the 19th. Thisevent offers a fine opportunity to see the planet during daylight. Sometimebefore sunset look for the Moon high in the west; Venus will be onlyabout two lunar diameters south of the Moon. Binoculars will provide abetter view.

Jupiter, at magnitude -2.0 in Aries, lies low in the west at dusk. Its separa-tion from Venus continues to grow. Early in the month the giant worldsets about 8 PM, but by midmonth it vanishes only an hour after sunset.Jupiter passes into the morning sky May 2.

Bright Planets (Morning Sky):Mars, moving from Sagittarius into Capricornus, rises in the ESE about 3AM daylight time in mid-April. Shining at 0.5 magnitude, the red planetstands in the SE at dawn. It continues to separate from yellower Saturn tothe west and is about the same brightness. The Moon lies below Mars onthe 10th.

Saturn, in Sagittarius, rises in the ESE about 12:30 AM daylight time inmidmonth and arrives in the south by dawn. The ringed giant begins ret-rograde or westward motion on the llth. The last quarter Moon is belowSaturn on the 8th.

Meteor Shower:The Lyrid meteors achieve maximum on the morning of the 22nd (theshower lasts from about April 19 to 24). Radiating from the little constella-tion of Lyra the Harp, these swift white streaks will dart across the skyfree of disturbing moonlight after about 1:30 AM (on the 22nd). Thoughamounting to only about 15 meteors per hour at maximum, the Lyridsnevertheless are bright and frequently leave luminous "trains" which per-sist a few seconds.

Moon Phases:Full moon — April 2Last quarter — April 9New moon — April 16First quarter — April 23

O

c

22

The Stars:Leo the Lion lies due south now in mid-April at 10 PM daylight time. Lookfor the lion's sickle-shaped head with the star Regulus below. Leo leadsthe procession of springtime constellations in the east.

Continued on page 23MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

\

MESSAGE, Continued

Gloria Colon, a teacher in San-turce, P.R., has been appointed StateDirector for Puerto Rico. Darin D.Hooper, vice president of Tri-TelCommunications in Tahlequah, Okla-homa is the new State Section Direc-tor for Cherokee and Adair Counties.Francis Ridge, State Director forIndiana, selected the team of Brianand Linda McCormick to becomethe Co-State Section Directors forDekalb, Allen and Adams Counties.Ray W. Boeche, State Director forNebraska, approved the appointmentof Paul F. Hicks of Omaha to be theState Section Director for Douglasand Sarpy Counties.

Other new State Section Directorsvolunteering this past month wereCharles D. Baer of Pollock Pines,Calif, for El Dorado County; RobertW. Ryan, residing in Raymond,Wash., for Pacific County; and JamesE. King, a retired banker in Albia,Iowa for Monroe, Appanoose, Lucusand Wayne Counties. Two medicaldoctors have volunteered their exper-tise in specialized fields as consul-tants to MUFON. Duane A. Diller,M.D. of Oregon City, OR in Opthal-mic Surgery and John G. Miller,M.D., living in San Pedro, Calif, forEmergency Medicine.

Four talented people have joinedMUFON as Research Specialists inapplicable areas of UFO research.They are James D. Buchanan, M.S.of Chicopee, Mass, for ComputerScience; Les P. Beard, M.S. of Aus-tin, Texas for Geophysics; NaomiRosborough, M.A. of Houston, Texasfor Psychotherapy; and Joe Panter-muehl, M.A. of Seguin, Texas forPhysics. Joe is a Principal Scientist atSouthwest Research Institute in San

Antonio.

***

The Annual MUFON Award forthe most outstanding contribution toUfology for 1987-88 will be presentedat the MUFON 1988 UFO Sympo-sium in Lincoln, Nebraska on June25, 1988. Only members of theMUFON Board of Directors mayplace candidates in nomination forthis prestigious award. However, amember may recommend a candidatefor nomination to any Board Memberwith a brief statement of his/heraccomplishments in Ufology. The dead-line for receiving nominations fromBoard Members is April 15, 1988.The following people have been nom-inated as of March 19, 1988, listed inalphabetical order: Barry Greenwood,Budd Hopkins, David M. Jacobs,Bruce Maccabee, Paul B. Normanand Dan Wright. A ballot will beenclosed with the May 1988 issue ofthe MUFON UFO Journal so allmembers and subscribers may votefor their choice to receive the plaqueand recognition by their colleagues inUfology.

Marge Christensen, Director ofPublic Relations, has announced thatthe Third Annual National UFO Infor-mation Week will be held August 14to 21, 1988. Now is the time for eachstate to start making their prepara-tions for this important UFO publiceducation event.

There are now four candidatesvying for the position of CentralRegional Director to fill the vacancycreated when Dan Wright becamethe Deputy Director of Investigationson the Executive Committee. In alpha-betical sequence they are: GeorgeCoyne, Co-State Director for Michi-

To find some of the prominent seasonal patterns, use the Big Dipper's built-inpointer system. (The Big Dipper rides high in the north.) A line through the twostars on the end of the bowl can be extended one way to Polaris, the NorthStar, and the other way to Leo. If the curve of the dipper's handle is followedbackwards, the arc will take you first to the orange star Arcturus in Bootes theHerdsman and then onward to blue-white Spica in Virgo the Maiden.

To the west the bright Winter Circle stars drop even lower this month. Lookout for two "IFO" stars near the horizon — Sirius, as it sets in the WSW about11 p.m. daylight time, and Vega, as it rises in the NW about 9 p.m.MUFON UFO Journal, No. 240 April 1988

gan; Richard P. DelPAquila, StateSection Director for Cuyahoga Countyin Ohio; Bill Pitts, State SectionDirector for Sebastian, Crawford,Scott and Logan Counties in Arkan-sas; and Mrs. Jennie Zeidman,State Section Director for Franklinand Delaware Counties in Ohio.Three of these outstanding peopleattended the Regional UFO Confer-ence held at Eureka Springs, Arkan-sas on March 25 and 26, hosted byBill Pitts and Arkansas MUFON. Allfour candidates have expressed asincere desire to serve as the CentralRegional Director, if elected to theMUFON Board of Directors by theirpeers. A ballot will be enclosed in theMay 1988 issue of the MUFON UFOJournal to all members in the CentralStates Region so they may vote fortheir choice. Each of the four hasrecognized that Dan Wright has donea superb job, therefore they haveaccepted the challenge to maintainhis track record of leadership andaccomplishments.

Robert D. Boyd, State Directorfor Alabama, has published an "Inter-national Who's Who in Ufoloqy Direc-tory," (1988 edition), 280 pages, soft-bound, that is now available for salethrough Mr. Boyd at P.O. Box 66404,Mobile, Alabama 36606, U.S.A. Theprice for a single copy is $6.95 plus$2.00 for postage, packaging andhandling. There is a reduced P. andH. for multiple copies. Please remit acheck or money order (internationalorders in U.S. dollars) made payableto Robert D. Boyd. (Please allow 4 to6 weeks delivery time.)

Francis Ridge, State Director forIndiana, has advised that Journalsubscribers can obtain an "update"on UFO activity by periodically pur-chasing a copy of the UFO INTEL-LIGENCE SUMMARY whenever theywish. The price for a current issue isonly $1.50 and includes foreign sight-ings. The annual subscription price isstill $10.00.

***Several UFO Conferences are being

scheduled in the near future whichmay be of particular interest to those

Continued on page 2223

DIRECTOR'S MESSAGEBy Walt Andrus

1988 has been greeted with excitinggusto for UFO sightings. Part II of"The Mundrabilla Incident" in Austra-lia is published in this issue of theJournal. Regretfully, the deadline forpublishing the April issue of theJournal arrived before the latestinformation for Part II of the GulfBreeze, Florida photographic casearrived. Starting Nov. 11, 1987, pho-tographs and unusual experiences arecontinuing as this message is beingcomposed. "Mr. Ed" took ten shotsof an object on February 26, 1988with a NIMSLO 3-D camera that wasprovided by Tom Deuley andMUFON of San Antonio under sealedand controlled conditions. Walt An-drus flew to Pensacola, Florida onMarch 3rd to supervise the controlledprocessing of the ASA 400 color printfilm at Coast Photo Service labora-tory in Pensacola. Mr. Ed had drawnsketches of the object which he pho-tographed, therefore the investigatorsfelt that there was a strong possibilitythat he may have obtained ten expo-sures of a long, cigar-shaped objectwith many lights.

At a press conference on March4th, with TV cameras from Channels3 and 5 electronically documentingeach step of the controlled process,Walt rewound the film into the canis-ter, cut away the wax seal on thecamera back, removed the 35mmcolor film and handed the canister toBetty L. Amick, the manager ofCoast Photo Service, Inc., for devel-oping and printing. TV cameras andpress representtives recorded andobserved every step of the controlledprocessing, an event that was tobecome the first in recorded UFOhistory using a 3-D camera.

The Pensacola News Journal andboth Channel 3 WEAR-TV and Chan-nel 5 in Pensacola/Mobile were givencolor enlargements of the object pho-tographed for publication on Satur-day, March 5 and the 10:00 p.m. TVnews on March 4th. Further photoanalysis and investigation will deter-mine the identity of the object photo-graphed. All ten exposures contained

multiple images of the object, sinceeach of the four lenses in the 3-DNIMSLO camera recorded an image.Walt turned the negatives over toTom Deuley for further processingand study, in conjunction with Dr.Bruce S. Maccabee, who had pre-viously spent four days in GulfBreeze, Florida analyzing the colorPolaroid photos made by Mr. Ed.

On March 26th, Mr. Andrus pres-ented a slide-illustrated lecture inEureka Springs, Arkansas at theArkansas MUFON UFO Conferenceof all photographs made throughFebruary 26th. This same presenta-tion will be made in Des Moines,Iowa on May 31st at Drake Univer-sity for an Iowa MUFON meeting.My only regret is that we cannotafford the cost of publishing thecopyrighted photos in glorious colorin the May Journal. (Readers willhave to be content with the blackand white reproductions similar tothose that were published in theMarch 1988 issue.)

The Gulf Breeze case has thecombined aspects of CE I, CE II, CEIII and potentially CE IV classifica-tions. MUFON consultants have re-sponded to the in-depth investigation.In addition to Dr. Maccabee's photoanalysis, Budd Hopkins flew to Flor-ida to personally interview Mr. Ed,probing the possibility of regressivehypnosis to disclose a suspected in-plant within his right forehead. Ifregressive hypnosis reveals that thereis a strong chance that an in-plantwas inserted, MUFON has autho-rized the expenditure for a CAT scanto be cdnducted at the hospital inPensacola. Mr. Ed has agreed to thismedical procedure. The investigativeteam is scientifically documenting allof the evidence, because this coulddevelop into one of the most signifi-cant cases in UFO history. Even theskeptics may be overwhelmed withincontrovertible evidence.

***

"Abductions and the ET Hypothe-

sis" is the theme for the MUFON1988 UFO Symposium to be heldJune 24, 25 and 26, 1988 at theNebraska Center Hotel, University ofNebraska in Lincoln. The speakerspresently scheduled and the titles oftheir papers are the following: Key-note speaker, Marge Christensen,"Hynek's Last Wish for Ufology";Jerome Clark, "The Fall and Rise ofthe Extraterrestrial Hypothesis"; Wal-ter N. Webb, "Encounter at BuffLedge: A UFO Case History"; Ray-mond W. Boeche, "Public Reactionto Extraterrestrial Contact" (A surveyof psychologists and psychiatrists);Budd Hopkins, "The Abduction Ex-perience"; David M. Jacobs, Ph.D.,(A preview of his new book onabductions); Bruce S. Maccabee,Ph.D., "Analysis of the Gulf Breeze,Florida Photographs"; Walt Andrus,"The Gulf Breeze, Florida Case."

Special hotel rates will be $35 forsingle occupancy and $38 for doubleoccupancy plus tax per night. Reser-vations should be sent to NebraskaCenter Hotel, 33rd and HoldregeStreets, Lincoln, NE 68583-0901 ortelephone (402) 472-3435. Registrationinformation will be provided in theMay 1988 issue of the Journal. Meet-ings will start on Friday, June 24th at6:00 p.m. and extend to 5:00 p.m. onSunday, June 26th. The packageprice will be $35 for all sessions. Ameeting for State and Assistant StateDirectors will be held on June 24thfrom 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. If you plan tofly to Lincoln, please make your air-line reservations now so that youmay take advantage of the specialreduced fares.

***

As MUFON membership continuesto increase in healthy strides, theneed for leadership in every statemust compensate accordingly for thisgrowth. It is a pleasure to confirmthat volunteers are stepping forwardto accept these responsibilities. Anna

Continued on page 23