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THE ST. CLAIR TRIANGLE UFO INCIDENT OF 2000: A FRESH LOOK


THE ST. CLAIR TRIANGLE UFO INCIDENT OF 2000: A FRESH LOOK
Another of what are considered the “classic” mass UFO sightings in the United States that have made their way into the lore and legends of UAP studies is the event that has come to be known as the St. Clair Triangle sighting of 2000 in southwestern Illinois. It’s also referred to as “the UFO Over Illinois,” the name of a television documentary released later the same year. Other shows and books have featured it prominently. Today The Debrief will look at the lore surrounding this event and compare it to the significant amount of original source data available.
We’ll begin with a brief summary of the details frequently seen in the ufology literature. The tale begins early in the morning on a frigid January 5th, 2000, in Highland, Illinois. 66-year-old miniature golf course owner Melvern Noll was stopping by his business to ensure the pipes hadn’t frozen. Upon exiting his building he saw a brightly lit object in the skies that he would go on to describe as looking like “a flying house with windows on the top and bottom.”
The stunned Noll quickly called the police to report what he had seen. The dispatcher he spoke to forwarded the information to Police Officer Ed Barton in Lebanon, Illinois. Barton initially responded skeptically, asking if the caller had been drunk, but went to investigate as instructed. Observing a bright light in the sky as he drove his cruiser, he closed in on the object before pulling over and exiting his vehicle. He would go on to report seeing a “huge” object in the sky that was triangular, longer than it was wide, with three white lights and one red light. It accelerated away at high speed to the southwest toward Shiloh, Illinois.
Shiloh Police Officer David Martin was on the lookout for the object and reported seeing something very similar before he too claimed that the slow-moving object sped off in the same direction at amazing speed. A third officer in Millstadt, Illinois, Craig Stevens, picked it up and reported it next. He even managed to snap a picture of it with a Polaroid camera. A fourth officer in Dupo, Illinois would later report seeing ‘something’ that might be related. Other civilian witnesses would chime in with their own accounts at later dates, but the object eventually disappeared after more than an hour of confirmed sightings.
Interestingly, musician Sufjan Stevens would go on to write a song about the event:
EXAMINING THE SOURCE DATA FOR MORE DETAILS
THE TESTIMONY OF THE POLICE OFFICERS
Officer Ed Barton in Lebanon, Illinois, at 4:21 am, described a triangular object, “longer than it was wide.” Barton estimated the altitude of the object as being between 1,000 and 1,500 feet. He described seeing three white lights and one red light. The object suddenly sped away, going eight miles in three seconds in the direction of Shiloh, Illinois. It is worth noting that in the original radio traffic recording, Barton describes how he was reaching into the squad car to grab his microphone. When he emerged, the object was far away. He did not actually see it accelerate at exotic speeds.

One of Officer Stevens’ original polaroid images depicting illuninations purportedly associated with the massive traingular craft he observed
(Credit: Craig Stevens).
At that point, Jany reports that dispatch told him that Lambert Airport is on the phone saying there is nothing in the area on their radar. This was a reference to Lambert International Airport in St. Louis.
Debunkers have made spirited attempts to shoot down this story, raising some interesting possibilities. The most common of these is that all of the witnesses actually misidentified a blimp. It’s true that the location of the sightings was not far from the base of the American Blimp Company, later bought out by the Van Wagner Airship Group. Blimps are large and very quiet, often equipped with a variety of different types and colors of lights for advertising purposes. Also, the top speed of these blimps is roughly 45 mph depending on the wind, so a blimp could have made it from Lebanon to Dupo in the one-hour and three-minute period when the live reports were recorded.
CONCLUSIONS
As we have discovered, there are complicated aspects to the St. Clair Triangle sighting, and the legends that have grown around it in books and television programs do not always match the record. For one thing, such shows frequently depicted the “classic” triangle, with one bright white light on each corner of the craft fixed to the bottom and a red light in the center. None of the witnesses described the lights in that fashion. And the original witness, Melvern Noll, described something that sounded entirely different, so some level of skepticism may be warranted.
With that said, the descriptions provided by all but one of the law enforcement witnesses (who likely saw a conventional aircraft) are similar enough in terms of its physical appearance and curious flight characteristics that they are difficult to ignore. Their stories remained unchanged over the years.
The baffling responses from Scott Air Force base do little to discredit the witnesses. While it seems unlikely that such a base would be home to highly classified, exotic aircraft programs, they should have been able to provide corroborating radar data or at least a confirmation that they recorded no targets in the subject area. It is not inconceivable that they had standing orders to never comment on anything UFO-related. This is a pattern the Air Force has adhered to ever since the days of Project Blue Book.
The poor quality of the photograph taken by Officer Stevens is disappointing to researchers, but the fact that it was taken at night on a dated Polaroid Instamatic pointing up at the night sky makes it understandable. Additional electronic data would make the case much stronger, but the inexplicable responses from Scott Air Force Base at least suggest that such may have existed at one point.
In conclusion, the viability of this case rests heavily on the credibility of multiple professional witnesses from different locations who would seem unlikely in the extreme to have cooked up a tale of this sort as a hoax. The lack of electronic signature data is disappointing but perhaps understandable as we already discussed. And the alternative options offered by skeptics do little to explain away the recorded, original observations as misidentified mundane phenomena. As with most of these famous, multiple-witness sightings, the final determination remains in the eye of the beholder. But the available source evidence is compelling and none of the alternate explanations are very satisfying.
- Follow and connect with author Jazz Shaw on Twitter: @JazzShaw
- Analysis, conclusions, and some alternate explanations included in this article are the opinions of the author and not the official position of The Debrief.







































!['None of these UAP reports have been positively attributed to foreign activities,' according to AARO's unclassified report for fiscal year 2023. In addition to statistics on the typical elevations and locations at which UAP have been reported, the FY2023 AARO reported took pains to note the issue of 'collection bias' and its future plans to better collect space-based and undersea data on UAP. 'The space and maritime domains need to be fully integrated into AARO's processes,' the report stated. Kirkpatrick's UFO office plans to work with the US Navy and the National Intelligence Manager for Military Integration (NIM-MIL) to improve the speed and quality of reporting on undersea UAP or sea-to-air transmedium UAP. 'Collaboration with Space Force, US Space Command, NRO [the National Reconnaissance Office, which oversees US spy satellites] and NASA is well underway,' AARO said in the report. In a nod to NASA's own UAP advisory panel, the report made numerous references to the need to better calibrate, or prepare and standardize, military sensors in an effort to obtain the kind of reliable and comparable data needed to investigate UAP. Despite the ostensible openness and promises detailed in AARO's report, many longtime civilian UFO researchers, expressed concern that the office has overseen a retrenchment in transparency on the topic.](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/10/19/20/76766601-12650929-_None_of_these_UAP_reports_have_been_positively_attributed_to_fo-a-168_1697743150886.jpg)







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