Famous People (13)
On March 13, 1997, one of the most massively witnessed UFO sightings occurred in the skies over and around Phoenix, Arizona. Witnessed by thousands of people and photographed by hundreds, there is no doubt that something was seen over the skies of Phoenix that night. The question remains - what did they see?
The strange lights were sighted during a three hour period between 7:30pm and 10:30pm on March 13. They covered a 300 mile corridor from the Nevada line through Phoenix to the Northern edge of Tucson. Since thousands of witnesses called local Air Force bases, news stations, and UFO organizations with their reports, we are able to glean the exact route that the mysterious object took.
Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has seen a UFO, writes Shirley MacLaine in her new book, "Sage-Ing While Age-Ing."
Kucinich, she writes on page143-144 of the book, "had a close sighting over my home in Graham, Washington, when I lived there. Dennis found his encounter extremely moving. The smell of roses drew him out to my balcony where, when he looked up, he saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent, and observing him. It hovered, soundless, for ten minutes or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He said he felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind."
During a Democratic Presidential debate in October, 2007 in Philadelphia, Tim Russert of NBC News asked Kucinich if he saw a UFO. "This is a serious question," Russert said before asking the question. The Chicago Tribune quotes the candidate's reply:
"I did," Kucinich said.
"And the rest of the account -- I didn't -- I -- it was unidentified flying object, okay. It's like -- it's unidentified. I saw something.
"Now, to answer your question," Kucinich said, "I'm moving my -- and I'm also going to move my campaign office to Roswell, New Mexico and another one, an extra, to New Hampshire, okay... And also, you have to keep in mind that more -- that Jimmy Carter saw a UFO, and also that more people in this country have seen UFOs than, I think, approve of George Bush's presidency."
On his return to Katmandu after an unsuccessful attempt on 24,248-foot Mount Chamlang, he said he spotted the UFO as it drifted south into Nepal from Tibet over the mighty snowcapped mountains.
"It was moving very slowly," he said. "It moved eastward and then went again southwest and drifted finally north into Tibet." His climbing partner Doug Scott, a British schoolteacher, also sighted the object, he said, as did a nearby joint Polish-British expedition, but at a different time.
"It could not be a satellite because they move in an eliptical manner." he said. "The movements of this object were irregular."
"We had just ordered up some pizzas and since it was such a warm evening, we decided to step out on the terrace," recalled Pang. "There were no windows directly facing us from across the street, so John just stepped outside with nothing on, in order to catch a cool breeze that was coming in right off the East River. I remember I was just inside the bedroom getting dressed when John started shouting for me to come out on the terrace.
I yelled back that I would be right there but he kept screaming for me to join him in that instant. As I walked out onto the terrace, my eye caught this large, circular object coming towards us. It was shaped like a flattened cone and on top was a large, brilliant red light, not pulsating as on any of the aircraft we'd see heading for a landing at Newark Airport. When it came a little closer, we could make out a row or circle of white lights that ran around the entire rim of the craft - these were also flashing on and off. There were so many of these lights that it was dazzling to the mind. It was, I estimate, about the size of a Lear jet and it was so close that if we had something to throw at it, we probably would have hit it quite easily."
Eerily the object passed by.
"We often had helicopters flying above us but this was as silent as the night and about seventeen storeys above street level." The object flew off but returned later, by which time she and Lennon had set up a telescope through which they could view it in more detail. "The light was so brilliant coming from the craft that no additional details could be seen. We did take a couple of pictures but they turned out overexposed." They also rang a local newspaper to report the sighting and were told at least seven other people had seen the UFO too.
"We even called the police, that's how excited we were, and they told us to keep calm, that others had seen it too." During what was left of the evening, John kept saying, "I can't believe it... I can't believe it... I've seen a flying saucer!"
Many cosmonauts have seen phenomena which are far beyond the experiences of earthmen. For ten years I never spoke on such things. The encounter you asked me about happened on May 5, 1981, at about 6 PM, during the Saljut Mission. At that time we were over the area of South Africa, moving towards the area of the Indian ocean. I just made some gymnastic exercises, when I saw in front of me, through a porthole, an object which I could not explain. It is impossible to determine distances in Space. A small object can appear large and far away and the other way around. Sometimes a cloud of dust appears like a large object. Anyway, I saw this object and then something happened I could not explain, something impossible according to the laws of Physics. The object had this shape, elliptical, and flew with us. From a frontal view it looked like it would rotate in flight direction.
It only flew straight, but then a kind of explosion happened, very beautiful to watch, of golden light. This was the first part. Then, one or two seconds later, a second explosion followed somewhere else and two spheres appeared, golden and very beautiful.
"It followed us during half of our orbit. We observed it on the light side, and when we entered the shadow side, it disappeared completely. It was an engineering structure, made from some type of metal, approximately 40 meters long with inner hulls. The object was narrow here and wider here, and inside there were openings. Some places had projections like small wings. The object stayed very close to us. We photographed it, and our photos showed it to be 23 to 28 meters away."
In addition to photographing the UFO, Afanasyev continually reported back to Mission Control about the craft's size, its shape and position. When the cosmonaut returned to earth he was debriefed and told never to reveal what he knew, and had his cameras and film confiscated.
Those photos and his voice transmissions from space have never been released.
It is only now, with the collapse of the Soviet Union that Afanasyev feels that he can safely tell his story.
"It is still classified as a UFO because we have yet to identify the object."
In June 1965, Major James McDivitt saw, filmed, and photographed an object, which approached the Gemini IV (3rd June – 7th June 1965) capsule in which they were orbiting the Earth, passing over Hawaii. The UFO had a long arm sticking out of it.
Here is what Major James McDivitt repeated many times:
Narrator: Traveling along side of Apollo 11 was a mysterious object like this one (a ringed object at close range is shown), filmed on a later mission. If it wasn't part of their own rocket, it could only be one thing, a UFO.
Aldrin: Mike (Collins) decided he thought he could see it in the telescope and he was able to do that and when it was in one position, that had a series of ellipses, but when you made it real sharp it was sort of L shaped. That didn't tell us very much.
Dr. David Baker (Apollo 11 Senior Scientist): NASA knew very little about, um, the object reported by the Apollo 11 crew. It was obviously an unidentified flying object, but such objects were not uncommon and the history of even earth orbit space flights going back over the previous years indicated that several crews saw objects.
Narrator: Despite having a clear view of the UFO, the crew were wary of reporting it to Mission Control.
Aldrin: Now, obviously, the three of us were not going to blurt out, 'Hey Houston we got something moving along side of us and we don't know what it is, you know, can you tell us what it is?'. We weren't about to do that, cause we know that those transmissions would be heard by all sorts of people and who knows what somebody would have demanded that we turn back because of Aliens or whatever the reason is, so we didn't do that but we did decide we'd just cautiously ask Houston where, how far away was the S-IVB?
Narrator: Unaware of the drama unfolding in space, Mission Control radioed the position back to Apollo 11.
Mission Control: 'Apollo 11, Houston. The S-IVB is about 6,000 nautical miles from you now, over.'
Aldrin: And a few moments later, why they came back and said something like it was 6,000 miles away because of the maneuver, so we really didn't think we were looking at something that far away, so we decided that after a while of watching it, it was time to go to sleep and not to talk about it anymore until we came back and (went through) debriefing.
In 1957, Cooper was one of an elite band of test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base in California, in charge of several advanced projects, including the installation of a precision landing system.
"I had a camera crew filming the installation when they spotted a saucer. They filmed it as it flew overhead, then hovered, extended three legs as landing gear, and slowly came down to land on a dry lake bed!
"These guys were all pro cameramen, so the picture quality was very good.
"The camera crew managed to get within 20 or 30 yards of it, filming all the time. It was a classic saucer, shiny silver and smooth, about 30 feet across. It was pretty clear it was an alien craft.
"As they approached closer it took off."
When his camera crew handed over the film, Cooper followed standard procedure and contacted Washington to report the UFO and "all heck broke loose," he said.
"After a while a high-ranking officer said when the film was developed I was to put it in a pouch and send it to Washington.
"He didn't say anything about me not looking at the film. That's what I did when it came back from the lab and it was all there just like the camera crew reported."
When the Air Force later started Operation Blue Book to collate UFO evidence and reports, Cooper says he mentioned the film evidence.
"But the film was never found supposedly. Blue Book was strictly a cover-up anyway."
Cooper revealed he's convinced an alien craft crashed at Roswell, N. Mex., in 1947 and aliens were discovered in the wreckage.
"I had a good friend at Roswell, a fellow officer. He had to be careful about what he said. But it sure wasn't a weather balloon, like the Air Force cover story. He made it clear to me what crashed was a craft of alien origin, and members of the crew were recovered."
Why has the government kept its UFO secrets for so many years?
"It started in World War 2, when the government didn't want people to know about UFO reports in case they panicked," said Cooper. "They would have been fearful it was superior enemy technology that we had no defense against.
"Then it got worse in the Cold War for the same reason.
"So they told one untruth, they had to tell another to cover that one, then another, then another . . . it just snowballed.
"And right now I'm convinced a lot of very embarrassed government officials are sitting there in Washington trying to figure a way to bring the truth out. They know it's got to come out one day, and I'm sure it will.
The Air Force Intelligence report says Russell and his two traveling companions spotted the UFOs on October 4, 1955, while traveling by rail across Russia’s Transcaucasus region. "One disc ascended almost vertically, at a relatively slow speed, with its outer surface revolving slowly to the right, to an altitude of about 6000 feet, where its speed then increased sharply as it headed north," the report states. "The second flying disc was seen performing the same actions about one minute later. The take-off area was about 1-2 miles south of the rail line."
Cronkite mentioned that he and the other reporters had been warned that photography of the missile test and any audio transmissions or recordings by the press were forbidden. They would have to give a written account of the event. Just as the test was ready to proceed, everyone was writing as fast as they could. As Air Force Security personnel walked around the perimeter of the test area with guard dogs and the news reporters watched, the missile was fired-up and about to be released. Just then, a large disc-type UFO appeared on the scene.
Cronkite guessed that the object was about 50-60 feet in diameter, a dull grey color and had no visible means of propulsion. Because the noise of activity around him and the missile engine was so loud, he couldn't tell whether the disc made any noise. He did not notice any coming directly from the object.
As Air Force guards ran toward the UFO with their dogs, the disc hovered about 30 feet off of the ground. It suddenly sent out a blue beam of light which struck the missile, a guard and a dog all at the same time. The missile was frozen in mid-air about 70 feet from the launcher as it had taken off. A guard was frozen in mid-step and a dog frozen in mid-air as it had jumped at the disc. Cronkite reminded me that this all happened within the space of about five minutes or less.
Suddenly, the missile exploded! After that, the disc vanished. The guard and dog looked alright, but were quickly taken away by medical personnel always present at tests in case anyone became injured. At the same time, guards rapidly ushered the reporters into a concrete observation bunker. After about thirty minutes of sitting in that hot box, they were brought out into the air again and addressed by an Air Force Colonel.
The officer told them, "It was all part of the test." Obviously making it up as he went along, the Colonel said that the event was "staged" to test media reaction to UFOs. He reinforced the usual line to the reporters that Flying Saucers were probably not extra-terrestrial, but what people were actually seeing was secret planes being tested by the Air Force. This test was designed to show the media how "shocking" it could be to suddenly view a new technology. Well, Cronkite was certain that what he viewed was a new technology, but he was also sure it was not an Earthly one! He didn't believe the Air Force explanation then, and he still didn't believe it at the time when he told me the story.
After the event, reporters were told that since it was a test of media reaction to new technology, they could not report on it! But, they would be compensated later with exclusive stories on new Air Force projects (a promise that was never kept). Being as private as he was, Cronkite never did share with me his own beliefs about UFOs beyond the story he told me. I was so happy to have heard the story that I was afraid to ask anything further!
Tombaugh was also later to report having seen three of the mysterious Green Fireballs, which suddenly appeared over New Mexico in late 1948 and continued at least through the early 1950s. In 1956 Tombaugh had the following to say about his various sightings:
"I have seen three objects in the last seven years which defied any explanation of known phenomenon, such as Venus, atmospheric optic, meteors or planes. I am a professional, highly skilled, professional astronomer. In addition I have seen three green fireballs which were unusual in behavior from normal green fireballs...I think that several reputable scientists are being unscientific in refusing to entertain the possibility of extraterrestrial origin and nature."
Alexander the Great records two great "flying shields."
Date of sighting: 329 BC
Location of sighting: Central Asia
Alexander the Great records two great silver shields, spitting fire around the rims in the sky that dived repeatedly at his army as they were attempting a river crossing. The action so panicked his elephants, horses, and men they had to abandon the river crossing until the following day.
Alexander the Great was not the first to see them nor was he the
first to find them troublesome. He tells of two strange craft
that dived repeatedly at his army until the war elephants, the
men, and the horses all panicked and refused to cross the river
where the incident occurred. What did the things look like? His
historian describes them as "great shining silvery shields,
spitting fire around the rims... things that came from the skies and returned to the skies."
