At 1:40 a.m. 36 years ago, Marshall County Sheriff's Deputy Val Johnson was on night patrol along a rural section of State Highway 220 near Warren, Minn., when he drove into a ball of white light.

"I noticed a very bright, brilliant light, 8 to 12 inches in diameter, 3 to 4 feet off the ground," Johnson said in a taped police interview. "The edges were very defined."

Johnson drove toward the light, and woke up in the ditch a half-hour later with burns around his eyes. The windshield and one headlight of his 1977 Ford LTD were smashed. Both radio antenna were bent sharply back. The watch on his wrist and the clock on the dash both ticked 14 minutes slow.

The incident turned Johnson into a local legend and national media sensation. And years later, people are still talking about it.

Johnson's squad car is preserved in the Marshall County Museum with a plaque that says: "U.F.O. Car." People still come from miles around to see it. It's an annual display at the Marshall County Fair.

Sometimes former Marshall County Sheriff Dennis Brekke gives talks at the museum about the car and the night his deputy drove it into a ball of light. Police investigated and never drew any conclusions.

The shattered windshield of Val Johnson's squad car that he was driving night of incident, Aug. 26, 1979. Photographed on Nov. 6, 1979. Regene Radniecki | Star Tribune 1979

But the incident's enduring fame has lingered far beyond Marshall County.

What's known as the "Val Johnson Incident" remains one of the top 10 most influential UFO encounters in history, according Jerome Clark, who wrote about it in his 1998 book, "The UFO Encyclopedia."

Paranormal TV shows like "UFO Files" and "Mysteries at the Museum" filmed reenactments. Even now, people debate the legitimacy of the encounter on online forums.

"It was an extraordinarily important case," Clark said.

Plenty of people have strange experiences on back roads late at night, Clark explained, but very few of them yield any tangible evidence. Fewer still are ever investigated.

But one thing is strikingly absent from the small town museum, the TV shows and online discussions: Val Johnson. When you try to track down Val Johnson, people tend to say he's hard to find, that he's still haunted by what happened to him 36 years ago. A 2013 Pioneer Press article said Johnson "quickly grew tired of interviews" after the incident and is "believed to now live somewhere in Wisconsin."

Sheriff Brekke's wife Louise said Johnson hasn't kept in touch with his old colleagues in Marshall County for three decades, aside from a letter he sent a few years back with no return address.

As it turns out, Johnson isn't that hard to find. He lives in Eau Claire, Wis., and he answers his phone.

At the first mention of UFOs, he laughed aloud.

“It's unexplainable, and will remain so. I'm happy with my mental stability,” said Johnson.

"People don't call about that anymore," he said.

It becomes readily apparent that the details of the Val Johnson incident still enthralling UFO enthusiasts, just don't fascinate Johnson.

"I looked up at the sky and said, 'Well shucks, what happened?'" Johnson recalled. "And then I shuffled on with my life."

He had small kids to raise back then. Hitting a ball of light and ending up in a ditch wasn't close to the most important thing going on in his life.

For almost a year after the incident his phone hardly stopped ringing. He's quoted at the time by Associated Press writer Barbara Dewey saying his wife was "run ragged" by the constant calls. He appeared on Good Morning America, and in dozens of newspapers across the country. For a while, he was a very big deal.

Val Johnson sat inside a Marshall County squad car on Nov. 6, 1979. Regene Radniecki | Star Tribune 1979

"And then other stories came along and pushed me off the front page," he said. "Thank goodness."

Johnson stayed on as deputy for a while after the incident. Then he took a job as chief of police in the nearby town of Oslo, Minn. Locals, he said, never questioned his ability to enforce the law.

In 1982 he was hired to set up the Roseau, Minn., Police Department, but lost the job less than a year later over a funding dispute.

"Once you're a chief of police, and then you get fired," he said, "you're un-hireable."

He was working as a security guard in a Twin Cities mall when a friend got him a job answering the customer service line at 3M.

"He asked me how I'd like to take 60 angry phone calls a day," he recalled, "I said, 'Dang, I can do that.'"

A few years later he retired to 20 acres in Wisconsin. Even then, he said, people sometimes showed up on his front porch with theories about his experience in Marshall County.

"We'd sit in the back yard with lemonade and talk," he said. "They'd tell me what they thought happened to me and I'd nod at the appropriate times. Eventually they'd go away."

Val Johnson's squad car, a 1977 Ford LTD known locally as the "U.F.O Car," is preserved in the Marshall County Museum. People still come to see it. Courtesy of the Marshall County Museum

Johnson is 71 now. He has a short white beard and thinning white hair. He's retired, living in Eau Claire with his wife, Rosanne. No one has stopped by in years. No one calls about UFOs even when his name airs on television.

He has great-grandchildren.

To this day Johnson won't speculate on what happened to him in 1979. He doesn't think the light he saw was an extraterrestrial — but also won't rule out the possibility. For years, he said, it just hasn't crossed his mind.

"I saw a ball of light," he said. "I drove toward it, and suddenly it was in the car with me. It's unexplainable, and will remain so. I'm happy with my mental stability."

If it seems Johnson's ambivalence could cast some doubt on the famous incident, those passionate about UFOs are unfazed. Clark said it's a textbook UFO encounter coping mechanism.

Clark talked to scores of people involved in UFO encounters for his books. Some became obsessed with what happened to them. Some plunged into denial. Others he said, found peace, refusing to allow an encounter to change their lives.

"If anything," Clark said, "It's a story to tell at the bar, and that's it."

{ http://www.mprnews.org/ }

Boomerang photo captured over Cass County, Indiana on August 6, 2015

Filer’s Files #35 – 2015 Orange Orbs and Triangles - PART I

In special reports, this week’s files cover: MUFON’S Project Orange, Astronomers Admit to Triangles Traversing the Moon, Neptune like Planets May Have Life, Actor Lee Marvin Wondering Star, The Black Knight Satellite, and Magicians of the Gods

Air Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming, and Washington..

Sightings of UFOs were also reported in Australia, Canada, Columbia, Portugal, Romania, Russia, England and Scotland in the United Kingdom, and Vietnam.

The Filer Research Institute feels the scientific study of UFOs is for the benefit of humankind and is an important endeavor. The weekly intelligence report provides you with information on the latest sightings and UFO news that you need to understand the world situation. The purpose of these files is to report the UFO eyewitness and photo/video evidence that occurs on a daily basis around the world and in space. These Files assume that extraterrestrial intelligent life not only exists, but my hypothesis is that the over a thousand UFOs reported each month represent technologically advanced spacecraft conducting surveillance of Earth. I personally became interested in UFOs when London Control ordered me to intercept one over England while flying for the US Air Force and Prince Phillip told me of his personal interest in UFOs. The US Air Force investigated UFOs for more than twenty years under Project Blue Book; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFO’s are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.

George A. Filer III New Jersey State Director

MUFON Eastern Region Director

Www.nationalUFOcenter.com. Now receiving 3 million hits a month

Special Reports

MUFON’S PROJECT ORANGE

The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) has undertaken a two-year study of the Orange Orb phenomenon called Project Orange. Under the direction of MUFON Utah State Director Erica Lukes, the endeavor seeks to pull the veil of mystery from the nocturnal lights by applying MUFON’S “Scientific Method” of analysis to the subject….Joining Erica are two MUFON Field Investigators and orb experts – Terry Ray of Pennsylvania and Bob Spearing of New Jersey. Terry is best known for his 2014 book on the subject entitled “The Complete Story of the Worldwide Invasion of the Orange Orbs.” Among Terry’s findings are possible underwater bases for these objects off our Atlantic Coast and in the depths of the Great Lakes.

The first part of the study will cover a one week period of July 4^th sightings from 2009 to 2015. July 4^th is the heaviest sighting day for Orange Orbs. Many parameters will be analyzed including wind direction vs. orb direction (Chinese lanterns are often mistaken for orbs but lanterns cannot fly into the wind.) Clusters of sightings in certain years and in specific geographic regions will be analyzed in a statistical survey. For example, orbs avoid Washington D.C. airspace but massive clusters of orbs are frequently sighted off the south shore of Long Island, NY.

The study will also investigate blue daytime orbs. These orbs have been photographed en masse this year. The photos clearly show semi-transparent blue orbs with several smaller white orbs attached either to the mother orb or in close orbit around the larger orb.

The Great Lakes region will be analyzed in depth to see if there are underwater bases there especially under Lake Erie.

Finally, a comprehensive photographic and video analysis of the best orb photos and videos from the MUFON Archives will be undertaken.

Join Bob Spearing and Terry Ray talking about the orb phenomenon this Friday night at 8:00 PM, Eastern Time with internet radio host and project manager Erica Lukes on WKGRA on Erica’s program UFO Audit.

Astronomers Admit to Triangles Traversing the Moon

When it comes to The Great Taboo, everyone has an angle. Few are as unique as David Marler’s specialization bonanza — “Triangular UFOs: An Estimate of the Situation” — which came out in 2013. Initially intrigued by the 1989-91 Belgian UFO wave, Mailer plunged headlong into the controversy following the Southern Illinois sightings of January 5, 2000, which became famous for among other things, igniting radio chatter among multiple police departments? His family also has a riveting personal back-story that no doubt greased the skids for his curiosity. Anyhow, recently at a Florida MUFON meeting in Valrico, Marler made his pitch for a centralized and accessible digital database. As he informed those, who suspect classified military technology is the culprit may be in for an ice bath.

Marler states the first documented discussion of observable triangles appears in an 1882 edition of Scientific American. More than a century ago, astronomers claimed to have detected “triangular luminous appearances” traversing the glow of the moon. Marler fleshes out additional 19th century references, as well as 20th-century triangle encounters observed generations before stealth designs were factored into the U.S. arsenal. Almost as amazing as the voluminous compendium of incidents is the mind’s-eye image of Marler’ sifting through reams of ancient newspaper, magazine, and journal articles to stitch these narrative threads together.

Some interesting reports follow:

An International News Service piece about 300 West Berliners reporting triangles above the divided city in 1953; Texas sheriff’s deputies reconstructing a highway game of cat-and-mouse for the Houston Chronicle in 1965; Early 1973, multiple sightings occurred around Piedmont, Missouri where my boss Bob Woods from Scott Air Force Base Military Airlift Command Intelligence would go to investigate, law enforcement agents relating tales of a “pyramidal UFO” to the Memphis Press-Scimitar in 1977; multiple witnesses, including a named FAA air traffic controller, detailing for California’s Auburn Journal how a delta-shaped object followed a major freeway in 1978; “hundreds of residents” from Kansas to Missouri witnessing a triangle event in 1980 and chronicled in Missouri’s Express and News daily; Fort Worth’s, Texas Cross Country News recording how “hundreds of sightings” of triangle- shaped objects erupted across Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Michigan during two days in 1975 — this stuff goes on and on and on. In short, said Marler, “We don’t see an evolution in the technology of triangular UFOs . . . We’re dealing with a tangible phenomenon that’s been around for a long time.” The licensed hypnotherapist offered some broad characteristics about triangle-class UFOs: The overwhelming majority are nocturnal and silent. Landing cases are virtually non-existent. More often than not, they’re seen cruising speeds at below-radar altitudes, but they can rapidly accelerate. They are large, averaging 200-300 feet in length. They can hover and make sideways right-angle turns without banking. They can move in non-aerodynamic fashion, broad edges forward, tapered edges aft.

Superstructures are sometimes observed, as well as shape-shifting properties. In fact, according to unfiltered National UFO Reporting Center surveys, categorically speaking, triangles trail only “lights” in eyewitness volume. In a 2012 listing of configurations, in fact, flying-saucer discs don’t even rate a bronze. “What we need,” Marler said in an appeal for more volunteer investigators, “are more bodies in the field” to gather data. After all, say MUFON officials, a revolution in optical technology with the potential to generate mountains of evidence is right around the corner. Thanks to Ken Pfeifer MUFON NJ world UFO photos

Neptune like Planets May Have Life

Researchers with the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory Lead Team at the University of Washington have described how mini-Neptune planets could become viable for life around M-Dwarf stars. These Planets orbiting close to low-mass stars — easily the most common stars in the universe — are prime targets in the search for extraterrestrial life.

M-dwarfs are cooler than the Sun, meaning any habitable planets around them would have to be much closer to their host star. However, planets in such systems face many hazardous conditions, particularly in the early stages of formation that could make it difficult for life to take hold.

The study, published in the journal Astrobiology, indicates that mini-Neptune’s could potentially migrate into the habitable zones of M-Dwarf stars and become habitable for life, as we know it. Source: [astrobio.net]Credit: NASA

Actor Lee Marvin saw a Wondering Star

Academy Award Winner Best Actor Lee Marvin claims he was born under a wondering star and sings the song in “Paint Your Wagon” that stared Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg. He was a dedicated angler who apparently saw a UFO while fishing off the coast of Mexico.

My wife knew him and he asked her to go to Spain with him. Fortunately, for me she declined. We always liked him and his song that was a best seller and on the top of the charts in UK and Ireland. He now can be heard on the Amazon ad frequently shown on TV. Stars do not wander but UFOs do.

I was born under a wandering star
I was born under a wandering star

Wheels are made for rolling, mules are made to pack
I’ve never seen a sight that didn’t look better looking back

I was born under a wandering star

Mud can make you prisoner, and the plains can bake you dry
Snow can burn your eyes, but only people make you cry
Home is made for coming from, for dreams of going to
Which with any luck will never come true

I was born under a wandering star
I was born under a wandering star

Do I know where hell is? Hell is in “hello”
Heaven is goodbye forever, it’s time for me to go
I was born under a wandering star
A wandering, wandering star

When I get to heaven tie me to a tree
Or I’ll begin to roam, and soon you’ll know where I will be

I was born under a wandering star
A wandering, wandering star

The Black Knight Satellite

20 Facts about the Black Knight Satellite

This “Artificial Satellite” has caused mayor media interest since the late 1950′s, and it has become one of the most talked about objects in space. First thought to be an Russian spy satellite, the Black Knight satellite has gripped the interest of millions worldwide. Here are some interesting facts about this mysterious object:

According to monitoring agencies around the world, The Black Knight Satellite has been transmitting radio signals for over 50 years now

The USA and Soviet Union have shown particular interest in this “unidentified space object”

Rumors are that it was Nikola Tesla the first man to “intercept” a signal from the Black Knight Satellite in 1899 after building a high-voltage radio device in Colorado Springs.

Since the 1930′s Astronomers worldwide have been reporting strange radio signals which allegedly come from the “Black Knight”.

In 1957, Dr. Luis Corralos of the Communications Ministry in Venezuela photographed it while taking pictures of Sputnik II as it passed over Caracas. The story of the Black Knight made its media debut in the 1940′s when the St. Louis Dispatch and The San Francisco Examiner wrote about the “Satellite” on May 14th 1954. The Time Magazine wrote about the Black Knight Satellite on the seventh of March, 1960.

In 1957, an unknown “object” was seen “shadowing” the Sputnik 1 Spacecraft. According to reports, the “unidentified object” was in Polar orbit in 1957. The United Stated nor the Russians possessed the technology to maintain a spacecraft in Polar Orbit.

The first Polar orbiting satellite was launched in 1960. It is likely the Black Knight is in the category of a observational Satellite from another planet. In the 1960′s the Black Knight satellite was located once again in Polar Orbit. Astronomers and Scientists calculated the objects weight to be over 10 tons which would be at that time the heaviest artificial satellite to orbit our Planet.

The Black Knight’s orbit was unlike any other object orbiting Earth. The Grumman Aircraft Corporation gave much importance to this mysterious “Satellite”, on September 3, 1960, seven months after the satellite was first detected by radar, a tracking camera at Grumman Aircraft Corporation’s Long Island factory took a photograph of the Black Knight satellite . Grumman formed a committee to study the data received from the observations made but nothing was made public.

In 1963, Gordon Cooper was launched into space. On his final orbit, he reported seeing a glowing green object in front of his capsule in the distance

moving towards his Spacecraft. The Muchea tracking station, in Australia, which Cooper reported the object to, picked up this Unidentified object on Radar travelling East to West.

It was the Ham Radio operator who apparently decoded a series of signals received from the Black Knight UFO Satellite and interpreted it as a star-chart centered on the Epsilon Bootes Star System. According to the decoded message, the Black Knight satellite originated from the Epsilon Bootes Star System 13.000 years ago.

On August 23, 1954 the technology magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology released a story about the Black Knight Satellite that angered the Pentagon who were trying to keep the information secret. NASA has released official images which apparently show the Black Knight Satellite. Thanks to http://www.ancient-code.com/20-facts-black-knight-satellite/

Magicians of the Gods

There is new high-level scientific support for a comet impact 12, 800 calibrated years before the present” that changed the world.

A gigantic cosmic impact occurred, when large fragments of a disintegrating comet hit the North American ice cap about 12,800 years ago, is identified in a forthcoming book “Magicians of the Gods” as the smoking gun that sparked off a global cataclysm of floods and fire in which an advanced civilization of the last Ice Age, hitherto only remembered in ‘myths’, was wiped out.

“Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (PNAS) the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences reports a cosmic impact event at ∼12,800 Cal B.P. formed the Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) layer, containing peak abundances in multiple, high-temperature, impact-related proxies, including spherules, melt glass, and nanodiamonds. A large asteroid may have hit Earth causing worldwide destruction. Bayesian statistical analyses of 354 dates from 23 sedimentary sequences over four continents established a modeled YDB age range of 12,835 Cal B.P. to 12,735 Cal B.P., supporting synchronicity of the YDB layer at high probability of 95%. This range overlaps that of a platinum peak recorded in the Greenland Ice Sheet and of the onset of the Younger Dryas climate episode in six key records, suggesting a causal connection between the impact event and the Younger Dryas. Details are in: phys.org

An 18-member international team of researchers that includes James Kennett, professor of earth science at University of California Santa Barbara, has discovered melt-glass material in a thin layer of sedimentary rock in

Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Syria. According to the researchers, the material –– which dates back nearly 13,000 years –– was formed at temperatures of 1,700 to 2,200 degrees Celsius (3,100 to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit), and is the result of a cosmic body impacting Earth, supporting the theory of an Credit:YDB Research Group extraterrestrial impact. Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) hypothesis. This episode occurred at or close to the time of major extinction of the North American megafauna, including mammoths and giant ground sloths; early humans, and the disappearance of the prehistoric and widely distributed Clovis culture. The researchers’ findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“These scientists have identified three contemporaneous levels more than 12,000 years ago, on two continents yielding siliceous scoria-like objects (SLO’s),” said H. Richard Lane, program director of National Science Foundation’s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research. “SLO’s are indicative of high-energy cosmic airbursts/impacts, bolstering the contention that these events induced the beginning of the Younger Dryas. That time was a major departure in biotic, human and climate history.”

Morphological and geochemical evidence of the melt-glass confirms that the material is not cosmic, volcanic, or of human-made origin. “The very high temperature melt-glass appears identical to that produced in known cosmic

impact events such as Meteor Crater in Arizona, (shown) and the Australasian tektite field,” said Kennett.

“The melt material also matches melt-glass produced by the Trinity nuclear airburst of 1945 in Socorro, New Mexico,” he continued. “The extreme temperatures required are equal to those of an atomic bomb blast, high enough to make sand melt and boil.” The material evidence supporting the YDB cosmic impact hypothesis spans three continents, and covers nearly one-third of the planet, from California to Western Europe, and into the Middle East. The discovery extends the range of evidence into Germany and Syria, the easternmost site yet identified in the northern hemisphere. The researchers have yet to identify a limit to the debris field of the impact.

“Because these three sites in North America and the Middle East are separated by 1,000 to 10,000 kilometers, there were most likely three or more major impact/airburst epicenters for the YDB impact event, likely caused by a swarm of cosmic objects that were fragments of either a meteorite or comet,” said Kennett.

The PNAS paper also presents examples of recent independent research that supports the YDB cosmic impact hypothesis, and supports two independent groups that found melt-glass in the YDB layers in Arizona and Venezuela. “The results strongly refute the assertion of some critics that ‘no one can replicate’ the YDB evidence, or that the materials simply fell from space non-catastrophically,” Kennett noted.

..Microscopic images of grains of melted quartz from YDB cosmic impact layer in SyriaWebsite

He added that the archaeological site in Syria where the melt-glass material was found –– Abu Hureyra, in the Euphrates Valley –– is one of the few sites of its kind that record the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to farmer-hunters who live in permanent villages. “Archeologists and anthropologists consider this area the ‘birthplace of agriculture,’ which occurred close to 12,900 years ago,” Kennett said.

“The presence of a thick charcoal layer in the ancient village in Syria indicates a major fire associated with the melt-glass and impact spherules 12,900 years ago,” he continued. “Evidence suggests that the effects on that settlement and its inhabitants would have been severe.”Caves and islands are full of animal and human remains indicating large destructive and flooding events.

The researchers have yet to identify a limit to the debris field of the impact.

Two independent groups that found melt-glass in the YDB layers in Arizona and Venezuela. He added that the archaeological site in Syria where the melt-glass material was found –– Abu Hureyra, in the Euphrates Valley –– is one of the few sites of its kind that record the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to farmer-hunters who live in permanent villages. “Archeologists and anthropologists consider this area the ‘birthplace of agriculture,’ which occurred close to 12,900 years ago,” Kennett said.