Post by swamprat on Dec 26, 2020 0:57:59 GMT
Here are 4 Evansville-area UFO sightings that deserve more attention
A history of UFO Sightings in the Midwest
Jon Webb, published Dec. 25, 2020
Evansville Courier & Press
Now is not the time to talk about UFOs.
COVID-19 is still permeating every facet of society. Evansville hospitals are packed, families are struggling to pay bills and Congress is useless.
But amid all that, the thought of interplanetary war is almost comforting. At least it would be a change of pace.
And this year, the U.S. government came as close as it’s ever come to admitting extraterrestrials exist. Over the summer, the New York Times claimed the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force may start releasing information on the UFO sightings it’s apparently studied for years.
Former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said he hoped it would “seek evidence of vehicles from other worlds,” the paper reported.
That was just a blip on the apocalyptic news cycle of 2020. But who knows? If the pandemic recedes, we may have another big story on our hands.
There are slews of Evansville-area UFO sightings that deserve more attention. Some are already well-known – the Hopkinsville Goblins, etc. – but others briefly lit up headlines before being dismissed and forgotten.
The flying steamboat
In the late 1890s, a few years before the Wright Brothers, people really got the itch to fly.
A professor named Carl Myers built a wild contraption for Tennessee’s centennial celebration that looked like something Tim Burton would conjure in the throes of a mushroom binge. It actually took flight and landed – something that couldn’t be said for several other “airships.”
Sightings of winged vessels popped up all over the country, the Courier reported. But the biggest one of all appeared to be unexplained.
It started in Sacramento, California, on Nov. 17, 1896. People there saw a cigar-shaped light burn across the sky just after 8 p.m. Sightings continued for months as the object apparently lurched over the Great Plains. And in April 1897, it arrived in Vincennes.
Several “reputable citizens” saw the object, Indianapolis Monthly reported in a 2014 UFO roundup. Their descriptions varied from a ball of fire to a “flying steamboat.”
The mass sightings eventually inspired a book by J. Allan Danelek, who called the incident “the most mysterious aviation event in history.”
Norman Massie
Most UFO experiences amount to nothing more than shocked rubberneckers seeing some strange lights in the sky.
Norman Massie’s went well beyond that.
The longtime Southern Illinois teacher kept what he saw secret for decades. But he eventually shared it with family members, and in 1998, he spoke with the Courier & Press’ Len Wells.
He was only 10 years old in June 1923 when he got up to let the horses out to pasture at his family’s home in Mount Erie, Illinois. As he closed the gate behind him, he looked across the field and saw “an object with lights all around it.”
“The machine was metallic and stood on three legs,” he said. “The top was a dome with holes in it. The best way I could describe the top was it looked like melted glass.”
Undoubtedly dazed, he moved toward the object slowly. Inside, he saw people chattering to a seated man they repeatedly called “The Commander.”
“One of the crew members told the commander that the repairs had been made,” he said.
With that, the ship lifted off the grass and jetted into the atmosphere.
You could dismiss all that as the fevered imagination of a 10-year-old if you want. But according to Wells, he heard Massie tell the story several times. The details never changed.
The first saucers
The supposed crash landing of a UFO near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947 inspired sightings all over the U.S. It was one of the first times the term “flying saucer” was ever used.
And that summer, people in Evansville couldn’t look up without spotting something bizarre.
Perhaps the first two reports of flying saucers over the city occurred on July 8 of that year. Three people were sunbathing on the roof of the old Downtown YMCA around 1:30 when they saw what the Courier described as a “big red disk.”
“It was thought the disk might have been a weather balloon sent up by the weather bureau,” the Courier reported. But no balloon had been released that day.
The other sighting came a couple hours later. A man calling himself Bill Dorr called the Courier and told a reporter he’d been flying with a man named Frank Long when six saucers swarmed their plane.
They were ambling at 10,000 feet near the airport when the cluster appeared. The saucers were about 15-feet wide and four-feet tall.
“They were going so fast they just up and pulled away from us,” the caller said.
Despite the fact he gave his name, the Courier was never sure who the man really was. When they called Long, he denied seeing any kind of saucer, much less a whole fleet of them. And the only Bill Dorr they could find in the phone book just laughed.
“I’m quite sure if I did see any saucers today, there was a cup of coffee with them,” he said.
All the dismissed sightings
Between 1947 and 1969, the U.S. Air Force investigated more than 12,000 reports of UFOs.
Scores of them came from the Evansville area. And more often than not, some bureaucrat they sent traipsing into town would offer quick, ho-hum explanations.
Planes were always refueling in mid-air, or people who reported sightings were just amped up after watching something scary on TV. The most creative dismissal came in 1966, when a sighting was blamed on an “airplane pulling a banner advertising a teen dance for crippled children.”
But the reports often came from trustworthy sources, including police and people who professed to not believe in aliens at all.
Sightings are still happening today. The National UFO Reporting Center compiles a state-by-state database, and one recent Evansville incident came just this August. A person was messing around on their phone outside when they looked up and saw a “green glowing tail of light” shoot above their heads.
“The strangest thing I have encountered in a while,” they said.
Contact columnist Jon Webb at jon.webb@courierpress.com.
www.courierpress.com/story/opinion/columnists/jon-webb/2020/12/25/here-4-evansville-area-ufo-sightings-deserve-more-attention/4013305001/
A history of UFO Sightings in the Midwest
Jon Webb, published Dec. 25, 2020
Evansville Courier & Press
Now is not the time to talk about UFOs.
COVID-19 is still permeating every facet of society. Evansville hospitals are packed, families are struggling to pay bills and Congress is useless.
But amid all that, the thought of interplanetary war is almost comforting. At least it would be a change of pace.
And this year, the U.S. government came as close as it’s ever come to admitting extraterrestrials exist. Over the summer, the New York Times claimed the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force may start releasing information on the UFO sightings it’s apparently studied for years.
Former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said he hoped it would “seek evidence of vehicles from other worlds,” the paper reported.
That was just a blip on the apocalyptic news cycle of 2020. But who knows? If the pandemic recedes, we may have another big story on our hands.
There are slews of Evansville-area UFO sightings that deserve more attention. Some are already well-known – the Hopkinsville Goblins, etc. – but others briefly lit up headlines before being dismissed and forgotten.
The flying steamboat
In the late 1890s, a few years before the Wright Brothers, people really got the itch to fly.
A professor named Carl Myers built a wild contraption for Tennessee’s centennial celebration that looked like something Tim Burton would conjure in the throes of a mushroom binge. It actually took flight and landed – something that couldn’t be said for several other “airships.”
Sightings of winged vessels popped up all over the country, the Courier reported. But the biggest one of all appeared to be unexplained.
It started in Sacramento, California, on Nov. 17, 1896. People there saw a cigar-shaped light burn across the sky just after 8 p.m. Sightings continued for months as the object apparently lurched over the Great Plains. And in April 1897, it arrived in Vincennes.
Several “reputable citizens” saw the object, Indianapolis Monthly reported in a 2014 UFO roundup. Their descriptions varied from a ball of fire to a “flying steamboat.”
The mass sightings eventually inspired a book by J. Allan Danelek, who called the incident “the most mysterious aviation event in history.”
Norman Massie
Most UFO experiences amount to nothing more than shocked rubberneckers seeing some strange lights in the sky.
Norman Massie’s went well beyond that.
The longtime Southern Illinois teacher kept what he saw secret for decades. But he eventually shared it with family members, and in 1998, he spoke with the Courier & Press’ Len Wells.
He was only 10 years old in June 1923 when he got up to let the horses out to pasture at his family’s home in Mount Erie, Illinois. As he closed the gate behind him, he looked across the field and saw “an object with lights all around it.”
“The machine was metallic and stood on three legs,” he said. “The top was a dome with holes in it. The best way I could describe the top was it looked like melted glass.”
Undoubtedly dazed, he moved toward the object slowly. Inside, he saw people chattering to a seated man they repeatedly called “The Commander.”
“One of the crew members told the commander that the repairs had been made,” he said.
With that, the ship lifted off the grass and jetted into the atmosphere.
You could dismiss all that as the fevered imagination of a 10-year-old if you want. But according to Wells, he heard Massie tell the story several times. The details never changed.
The first saucers
The supposed crash landing of a UFO near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947 inspired sightings all over the U.S. It was one of the first times the term “flying saucer” was ever used.
And that summer, people in Evansville couldn’t look up without spotting something bizarre.
Perhaps the first two reports of flying saucers over the city occurred on July 8 of that year. Three people were sunbathing on the roof of the old Downtown YMCA around 1:30 when they saw what the Courier described as a “big red disk.”
“It was thought the disk might have been a weather balloon sent up by the weather bureau,” the Courier reported. But no balloon had been released that day.
The other sighting came a couple hours later. A man calling himself Bill Dorr called the Courier and told a reporter he’d been flying with a man named Frank Long when six saucers swarmed their plane.
They were ambling at 10,000 feet near the airport when the cluster appeared. The saucers were about 15-feet wide and four-feet tall.
“They were going so fast they just up and pulled away from us,” the caller said.
Despite the fact he gave his name, the Courier was never sure who the man really was. When they called Long, he denied seeing any kind of saucer, much less a whole fleet of them. And the only Bill Dorr they could find in the phone book just laughed.
“I’m quite sure if I did see any saucers today, there was a cup of coffee with them,” he said.
All the dismissed sightings
Between 1947 and 1969, the U.S. Air Force investigated more than 12,000 reports of UFOs.
Scores of them came from the Evansville area. And more often than not, some bureaucrat they sent traipsing into town would offer quick, ho-hum explanations.
Planes were always refueling in mid-air, or people who reported sightings were just amped up after watching something scary on TV. The most creative dismissal came in 1966, when a sighting was blamed on an “airplane pulling a banner advertising a teen dance for crippled children.”
But the reports often came from trustworthy sources, including police and people who professed to not believe in aliens at all.
Sightings are still happening today. The National UFO Reporting Center compiles a state-by-state database, and one recent Evansville incident came just this August. A person was messing around on their phone outside when they looked up and saw a “green glowing tail of light” shoot above their heads.
“The strangest thing I have encountered in a while,” they said.
Contact columnist Jon Webb at jon.webb@courierpress.com.
www.courierpress.com/story/opinion/columnists/jon-webb/2020/12/25/here-4-evansville-area-ufo-sightings-deserve-more-attention/4013305001/
