UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Among the many witnesses of UFO phenomena, some of them really stand out, and some of the most remarkable of these are when the men or women of law enforcement report their encounters with these otherworldly forces. These are people out doing their job to serve and protect, yet sometimes it seems that they come across things that nothing in their experience or training has prepared them for. Here we will look at a few of some of the most terrifying UFO encounters that police officers have reported, in which the outcome was truly bizarre and frightening.

For our first case we go back to the 1960s. On September 3, 1965 a Deputy Sheriff Bob Goode was out on patrol along Highway 35, just outside of Damon, Texas, joined by another officer, Chief McCoy. At around 11PM they allegedly noticed a purple light off in the distance. As they stared at it wondering just what they were looking at, another smaller light reportedly detached from the main body, after which both seemed to hover. The curious officers began taking a series of dark backroads that would take them closer to the strange phenomena, which they estimated was around 5 or 6 miles away. They got about as close as the roads would take them and stopped the patrol car to marvel once again at those eerie hovering lights, and as they did they were startled when the two objects came rushing right towards them with breathtaking speed, covering several miles within seconds. The objects then seemed to position themselves directly overhead, bathing the entire landscape in bright purple light, like day time on some alien world, and they could feel heat emanating from them. McCoy would say the larger object was “as big as a football field,” and later say of the frightening experience:

The bulk of the object was plainly visible at this time and appeared to be triangular shaped with a bright purple light on the left end and the smaller, less bright, blue light on the right end. The bulk of the object appeared to be dark gray in color with no other distinguishing features. It appeared to be about 200 feet wide and 40-50 feet thick in the middle, tapering off toward both ends. There was no noise or any trail. The bright purple light illuminated the ground directly underneath it and the area in front of it, including the highway and the interior of our patrol car. The tall grass under the object did not appear to be disturbed. There was a bright moon out and it cast a shadow of the object on the ground immediately below it in the grass.

Image by Steve Baxter

The two men tore out of there, and after a few moments of hovering the lights shot off back to their original position. The two officers stopped once more to observe them, but the chances of a repeat of what had happened scared them into leaving. They would later be interviewed by a Major Laurence Leach, Jr., of Ellington Air Force Base, who deemed them to be very sincere and of sound judgement, stating, “There is no doubt in my mind that they definitely saw some unusual object or phenomenon.”

A couple of years later, in 1967 we have the account of patrolman Herb Schirmer, who was a police officer in Ashland, Nebraska. On the evening of December 3 of that year he was on his usual patrol and things were pretty routine until he noticed two red lights over Highway 63, which he at first took to be the lights of a big rig truck at first. Still, something felt off about it, and so he drove off towards the lights to investigate, soon realizing that this was no truck. According to Schirmer, the red lights were in fact emanating from what looked to be the portholes of a metallic, semi-spherical object hovering just over the highway in front of him. As he got closer he could see that it had a sort of walkway around it and some kind of landing gear dangling from the bottom. The object would then float upwards and speed off into the distance, and this is where things would get bizarre.

Although nothing else seemed to have happened at the time, a look at the clock showed that it was nearly 3 AM, which was odd because he had only just started approaching the object around 10 minutes before. As he drove back to the station that bewildering sense of lost time intruded upon his thoughts, and he also began to feel physically ill. Something was itchy on his neck, and he reached around to feel a large welt there that he could not explain. Schirmer would report the whole crazy encounter, and this caught the attention of a UFO research organization called the Condon Commission, who believed that he had possibly been abducted.

Image by Steve Baxter

A hypnosis session was organized, during which Schirmer described being rendered paralyzed and unable to remove his sidearm shortly after stopping his vehicle. He was then apparently beamed aboard the craft and telepathically communicated with by humanoid beings in uniforms bearing winged serpent insignias, who claimed to draw power from electrical lines and to be from the planet Venus. Schirmer would go on to quit the force several months later due to post traumatic stress from his experience and recurring physical problems. In the meantime, he was apparently the object of ridicule within the community and his wife eventually left him because he could not stop talking about the UFO he had seen.

From the 1970s we have the frightening encounter relayed by an officer Manuel Amparano, of Kerman, California. It was a little after 3:30 AM on May 13, 1978 when Amparano was on a routine patrol and noticed a “a circular-type thing, similar to a round fireball or a setting sun, about 100 to 150 feet off the ground.” Thinking that this was maybe a fire, he got closer to investigate and what he took to be a tree on fire suddenly lifted off of the ground. The amazed officer quickly trained his searchlight on the object, and was met with a bright blue flash, after which whatever it was sped off. That flash soon turned out to have been perhaps some sort of weapon, as officer Amparano claims he was left with burns on his face and chest, of which he would say:

It was like a sunburn when you fall asleep at the pool. There were white blisters on the parts of my body facing that light. I also had trouble with sunlight. It was like right after you have your eyes checked and they are sensitive to light. That lasted about a week.

Image by Steve Baxter

When doctors examined him, they came to the conclusion that these particular burns seemed to have been caused by microwaves, although no one could figure out how it had happened. An investigation of the area of the purported encounter would turn up a circle of dead vegetation, where it is claimed nothing would grow for years after, although now it is apparently an almond orchard. What happened here? Who knows?

The following year we have a somewhat similar type of encounter, reported by a Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson, of Marshall County, Minnesota. On August 27, 1979, Johnson was on patrol near the North Dakota border when he saw a strange light apparently off in the wilderness. As he took a side road to get closer, the light apparently began to approach his car at an amazing rate of speed. It seemed to almost be on a collision course, and Johnson lost consciousness after being blinded by a bright flash to the sound of breaking glass. When he came to he was still sitting in his stalled car, happy to be alive but alarmed that he could not see anything. Oddly, his car had travelled some distance from where the object had engaged him, and he would say of his bizarre experience:

I noticed a very bright, brilliant light, 8 to 12 inches in diameter, 3 to 4 feet off the ground. The edges were very defined. I thought perhaps at first that it could be an aircraft in trouble, as it appeared to be a landing light from an aircraft. I proceeded south on #220. I proceeded about a mile and three tenths or a mile and four tenths when the light intercepted my vehicle causing damage to a headlight, putting a dent in the hood, breaking the windshield and bending antennas on top of the vehicle.

At this point, at the interception of the light, I was rendered either unconscious, neutralized or unknowing for a period of approximately 39 minutes. From the point of intersection, my Police vehicle proceeded south in a straight line 854 feet, at which point the brakes were engaged by forces unknown to myself, as I do not remember doing this, and I left about approximately 99 feet of black marks on the highway before coming to rest sideways in the road with the grille of my hood facing in an easterly direction. At 2:19 a.m., I radioed a 10-88 (Officer Needs Assistance) to my dispatcher in Warren.

Image by Steve Baxter

The officer called on his radio for help, and he was rushed to the hospital with what looked like burns on his face and irritation of the eyes. Meanwhile, the patrol car he had been in was found to have a smashed in right side headlight, a crack in the windshield on the driver’s side, an unusual circular dent on the hood, also on the driver’s side, and a roof antenna that was bent over at a 60-degree angle. The windshield was particularly weird, as it seemed to have sustained “inward and outward forces acting almost simultaneously.” All of the damage was on the driver’s side of the vehicle. The interior clock was also found to be 14 minutes slow, and oddly Johnson’s wristwatch had the same anomaly. Experts who examined the vehicle would be unable to explain the peculiar damage it had incurred, and it did not seem to be any normal collision, with the official explanation being “mechanical forces of unknown origin.” Luckily his eyes would heal and he would regain his eyesight.

These have just been a few of the more remarkable and harrowing encounters that officers of the law have faced, although there are more where this came from. It is interesting to note that these are seasoned professionals out on patrol not looking for the mysterious and certainly more or less considered to be more reliable witnesses than most. We are left to wonder just what would cause them to risk their reputations and standing to come forward to report these things, and if they were simply tall tales why they would do such a thing. Considering the police pedigree of these cases, it certainly lends them a bit of added weight, and truly plunges them into the bizarre.

A special thanks to Steve Baxter for all of the amazing artwork he provided for this article.

In November of 2004, the U.S. Navy USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group was on combat training maneuvers in the Pacific Ocean, just about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego, California, in order to prepare for upcoming deployment to the Persian Gulf. This was not unusual in and of itself, and it was a perfectly normal series of operations they were engaged in, but things would soon get very weird indeed, and would launch one of the strangest and most talked about military UFO encounters on record.

It was all supposed to be a routine combat training exercise, but things would soon get strange when over a period of several days the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton began picking up frequent radar signatures of unidentified aircraft of some sort on their cutting edge AN/SPY-1B passive scanning phased array radar. These objects were very odd in that they were numerous and seemed to be travelling at an altitude of up to 80,000 feet, far beyond what any normal aircraft would be operating at. The radar hits were very persistent and happened often, with well over 100 of the objects supposedly tracked over the course of the week, usually in formations of up to 8 to 10 at a time, and it was so odd that the radar operators at first thought it had to be some sort of equipment glitch, yet they recalibrated everything and it was all found to be in working order. At times the crew would try and get some sort of visual confirmation of what they were picking up but it was difficult to make out clearly even with binoculars. Whatever it was, it was certainly strange, and one of the radar operators, Petty Officer 3rd Class Gary Voorhis, would later say of the objects:

Once we finished all the recalibration and brought it back up, the tracks were actually sharper and clearer. Sometimes they’d be at an altitude of 80,000 or 60,000 feet. Other times they’d be around 30,000 feet, going like 100 knots. Their radar cross sections didn’t match any known aircraft; they were 100 percent red. No squawk, no IFF (Identification Friend or Foe). When they’d show up on radar. I’d get the relative bearing and then run up to the bridge and look through a pair of heavily magnified binoculars in the direction the returns were coming from. I couldn’t make out details, but they’d just be hovering there, then all of a sudden, in an instant, they’d dart off to another direction and stop again. At night, they’d give off a kind of a phosphorus glow and were a little easier to see than in the day.

The crew continued to keep their eye on the phenomena until they were alarmed to see that some of the objects seemed to at times carry out rapid descents in altitude that took them well into commercial airspace, and this was where things would get weird. On November 14, 2004, it was decided that some sort of action should be taken, and two F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jets from the USS Nimitz piloted by Commander David Fravor and Lt. Commander Jim Slaight were told to break off from their training maneuvers in order to go investigate an object that had appeared to drop towards the ocean surface on radar. Although they were not carrying live weaponry, the fighters were told to fly by and see if they could make visual confirmation of anything out there and report back. It was clear, calm weather, and the pilots were certain that if there was anything to this then they would soon figure out what the mysterious object was, and they were not wrong. The problem is, it was far from what any of them had imagined.

As they scanned the area the pilots allegedly saw something causing a disturbance in the water, where it seemed as if the waves were breaking over an oval shape under the surface. At precisely the time they noticed this odd sight, a bright, white object shaped like a “Tic-Tac” reportedly suddenly appeared nearby, hovering around 50 feet over the water. This startling object was estimated as being around 30 to 46 feet long, and oddest of all was that it had no noticeable ports, windows, rotors, wings, or any visible method of propulsion. The pilots attempted to approach the craft, after which it launched into a breathtaking display of maneuvers and erratic movements which seemed to defy physics, of which Fravor would say, “This thing would go from one way to another, similar to if you threw a ping-pong ball against the wall.” It then sped away with a rate of acceleration that left the experienced pilots in awe.

The pilots tried to pursue the “Tic-Tac,” but it accelerated at an astronomical rate, and according to Fravor “was just gone.” Oddly, the object soon after appeared around 60 miles away near the combat air patrol (CAP) rendezvous point “within seconds,” suggesting that it was travelling at speeds twice as fast as the F-18s and an estimated three times the speed of sound, the whole time demonstrating what was called “an advanced acceleration, aerodynamic, and propulsion capability.” Other fighters were launched in response, but the object soon sped away again to disappear. Fravor was so impressed by the object that he would later say, “I have no idea what I saw. It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s. But I want to fly one.” Another wingman who was with them at the time would comment, “It was so unpredictable—high G, rapid velocity, rapid acceleration. So you’re wondering: How can I possibly fight this?” Other witnesses to the event were equally as baffled as the pilots, with one Petty Officer 3rd Class Jason Turner later saying of the object and its physics defying display:

This thing was going berserk, like making turns. It’s incredible the amount of g forces that it would put on a human. It made a maneuver, like they were chasing it straight on, it was going with them, then this thing stopped turning, just gone. In an instant.

The whole incident was causing a big stir at the time, and making it all even more impressive was that one of the fighters in the second wave of pilots had managed to capture footage of the object with an infrared camera system, called a FLIR pod, but this would be kept under wraps for years. In fact, the USS Nimitz UFO encounter would largely be buried and kept from the public until 2017, when a clip of the footage was acquired and leaked by a UFO organization called the To the Stars Academy, which co-founded by Blink-182 frontman and kajor UFO buff Tom DeLonge, followed by an article the New York Times ran on the incident, and it all immediately caused a firestorm of debate and discussion. Was it real, was this a hoax? No one knew, but everybody seemed to be talking about it.

The footage made major waves at the time, and this was all ramped up when the U.S. Navy finally admitted that the footage was indeed real, that it had indeed been taken by infrared cameras aboard their aircraft, and even released further clips of the incident, complete with audio of the pilots marveling over what they are looking at. The Navy also said that they were putting new protocols into effect for dealing with unidentified craft encountered by pilots in incidents such as this and others like it, as well as that they were funding a program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

Even with this official release of information the conspiracy theories swirled that this was only the tip of the iceberg, and that they were in possession of longer video footage and other data on the incident. This would only be fanned by an investigation into the incident carried out by Popular Mechanics, which interviewed numerous people who had been involved in the event and uncovered evidence that there were some shady things going on in the wake of the incident. One anonymous witness they managed to track down identified as an Operations Specialist aboard the USS Princeton at the time would give a comment on the incident and explain that much of the data was suddenly seized and whisked away, saying:

I do remember the events of 2004 very well. The decision was made to scramble two fighter jets to investigate. From what the pilots described, the movement of the UFO was defying the laws of physics. What really made this incident alarming was when a Blackhawk helicopter landed on our ship and took all our information from the top secret rooms. We were all pretty shocked and it was an unspoken rule not to talk about it because we had secret clearances and didn’t want to jeopardize our careers.

A still from the USS Nimitz footage

This was corroborated by others who were present, such as the radar operator Voorhis, who also said that a helicopter landed and he was told to hand over all the data recordings for the AEGIS system. Others have also insisted that a substantial amount of the 8mm footage of the incident was confiscated by this unknown party, and insist that what was released is only snippets. This has only furthered conspiracy theories and discussion surrounding the event, and the USS Nimitz UFO encounter is just as mysterious as it has ever been, the Navy very tight-lipped about offering any official statement on what is seen in the videos and wary of any speculation on the matter, merely saying that what is seen in the videos is unidentified.

This of course has not stopped widespread speculation on the incident, and various theories have been proposed for the mysterious object and what the pilots experienced. One idea is that this is indicative of perhaps some sort of top-secret aircraft or advanced reconnaissance drone test, utilizing never-before-seen technology. This seems plausible on the surface, but if that were the case why would it be tested so close to where a carrier fleet was in the middle of performing military combat exercises? There is also the fact the most researchers, journalists, and military personnel willing to talk about it are adamant that no one has technology anywhere near what was reported and what is seen in the videos. Other ideas are that this was all due to equipment malfunction, pilot error, or even weather balloons or some misidentified natural atmospheric phenomena, but this is all still unsatisfactory as the incident was witnessed by numerous highly qualified personnel and pilots and was observed both visually and with corroborating radar. It is this perfect blend of photographic evidence and highly reliable witnesses that has made the case so persistent. What happened out there during that training mission? Was this drones, experimental aircraft, pilot error, or something not of this world? No matter what the real answer may be, the USS Nimitz UFO encounter remains one of the most spectacular, well-documented military accounts there is, and has remained very much discussed.