UFOs over Michigan's thumb area?

",There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy" Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

You can’t seem to escape them. Resistance is futile. Unidentified flying objects (or if you prefer...’UFOs’, ‘flying saucers’, ‘spook lights’, ‘foo fighters’, ‘ghost rockets’ or ‘swamp gas’) are being sighted in increasing numbers throughout the world.

They’re in our movie theaters and on our television sets. In our serious mainstream news media and on the covers of supermarket tabloids. They’re on your child’s pajama tops and in the think tanks of prestigious scientific institutions.

UFO imagery seems to be trying to conquer the planet every five or so seconds from our VCRs, television sets and computers. Business-savvy advertising execs are increasing the visibility of their products by slapping UFO pictures on just about everything, thus creating a ‘UFO demographic’ of consumers to conquer and rule. You can’t help but to have a UFO sighting or two anytime you set foot into a K-Mart, Meijer or mall.

It seems safe to say that UFOs have invaded almost every facet of our lives. From doing just an hour’s worth of historical research, I’ve found that these objects have been sighted in our skies and tales told of them from the beginning of recorded history.

Prehistoric cave paintings the world over consistently show odd flying entities or objects in addition to representations of the sun, moon and stars.

The Drona Parva, an ancient Sanskrit text from India, describes aerial dogfights among gods piloting flying machines called vimanas.

Alexander the Great ‘s army was harassed by a pair of flying objects in 329 BC.

In the 8th Century AD, King Charlemagne was very concerned about "tyrants of the air", strange aerial ships that would appear over the Rhine River region (present day western Germany and the Netherlands) that would occasionally kidnap people.

Between 1561 and 1566 residents of Nuremberg, Germany and Basel, Switzerland witnessed spectacular displays of spheres, disks and tubes zooming about the sky and engaging in "an aerial ballet".

From California to New York, in 1896-97, a massive wave of "phantom airships" were witnessed by thousands. Michigan had close to fifty such sightings which were extensively covered in various area newspapers of the time.

RECENT THUMB-AREA REPORTS

Several recent UFO reports from our own Thumb area have been made to Seattle, Washington’s National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), Michigan’s Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), local police departments and to local newspapers.

"I’ve been swamped with Michigan reports" NUFORC’s Peter Davenport said during a recent phone call. "I can’t keep up with them".

Bob Snow, a former MUFON investigator from Marlette, said that UFO sightings in the Thumb area come and go in waves ("flaps"), during periods of a week or more, "but there’s no pattern to it".

Bill Murphy, a project engineer for one of the Big Three automakers and a former Michigan MUFON State Director, notes that "about 90 percent of (UFO) reports are honest mistakes or misperceptions of fairly conventional, natural or man-made phenomena" such as satellites, aircraft, the Planet Venus, lenticular clouds, meteorites, advertising balloons and ball lightning.

And what about the remaining ten percent of UFO reports?

"Some really strange things are in fact happening in our skies" Murphy answered with an upwardly searching gaze.

Flint (November 27, 1997) - On Thanksgiving Day morning at 6:30 AM, a Genesee County Deputy Sheriff with 19 years experience, spied something strange low in the sky above US-23 five miles south of Flint. "I thought it was a plane and kept driving towards it" he told Michigan MUFON investigator Frank Bertrand "but it never moved. I am familiar with air traffic near Bishop (Airport) and if this were a plane, it was in trouble and going the wrong way!".

The object, as he approached it, was only a few hundred feet above the road and consisted of three bright lights, two white and one red, 40 feet apart.

The Deputy Sheriff continued to close in on these lights that were still not moving until he drove directly beneath them. "There was no sound and as I looked in my rearview mirror it was still sitting there but this time I saw a row of seven rectangular lights or windows...very bright. It never moved as long as I watched it in my mirrors." (sources-MUFON, witness phone interview and author’s file)

Birch Run (December 2, 1997) - Two separate reports concerning disc-shaped craft with many green and red lights, virtually silent and gliding at treetop level, came to Davenport’s attention from Birch Run (between Flint and Saginaw on I-75). The two reports listed similar objects being sighted at approximately the same time of night and on the same date.

Chief Cramer of the Birch Run Police, through a department spokesman, stated that no UFO reports were made that evening. (sources-NUFORC, Birch Run Police correspondence and author’s file).

Peck and Marlette (December 2, 1997) - While Birch Run was having their own close encounters the skies above southern Sanilac County were also filled with strange lights.

A 53 year old Marlette man witnessed a massive bank of several bright white lights "like giant stadium lights" sitting motionless above, or just beyond Peck to the northwest, before they simply "vanished". They were similar in appearance to the object that the Genesee County Deputy sighted only a few days before.

Meanwhile, a 31 year old Marlette man was driving north on M-53 near Peck Road when he spotted a bright golden fireball with long flaming tail plummet straight down out of the sky. "It disappeared just before it reached the ground...it had to have been a meteor or piece of Mir or something".

All four of the Birch Run and Sanilac County sightings occurred between 8 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. (sources-MUFON & author’s file

Brown City (December 13, 1997) - A helicopter explanation was given to a Sanilac County Sheriff’s dispatcher by Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Mt. Clemens, MI concerning unusual lights sighted by at least five people, two of them police officers, above Brown City.

At 10:04 p.m. the Sanilac Sheriff’s Department received a phone call from a Brown City area resident who claimed that her family had been observing a formation of red, blue and white lights over a long period of time and through binoculars.

The Sheriff’s dispatcher sent a police unit to the caller’s residence, arriving at 10:12 PM. The unit advised the dispatcher that "there is definitely something in the sky...it moved across the sky and was hovering."

The dispatcher then made contact with an unidentified dispatcher at Selfridge Air Base and was advised "that it was probably a helicopter...and there was nothing much that could be done from this end".

One of the two police officers, who requested not to be identified, confirmed that he did witness the strange lights in the sky but was hesitant in identifying them as a helicopter or as twinkling stars or planets. Knowing that the Brown City area sits underneath Selfridge’s low altitude area of operations, he thought that this object may have been military in origin, i.e. exotic aircraft being tested over southern Sanilac County.

Selfridge’s Public Affairs Chief, Alice Errington, stated that all of their aircraft were on the ground by 7:30 PM that night and that the Control Tower or Base Operations Dispatchers had not recorded any UFO calls from the Sanilac Sheriff’s dispatcher into their logs that evening. (sources-Sanilac County Sheriff’s Department, police officer phone interview, Alice Errington-phone interview, & author’s file)

"It looked like a landing light on an airplane...with two blinking stars, one on each side of it. I knew, though, that it wasn’t an airplane".

As the strange light approached her home she decided to open her sliding glass doors to get a better look at it.

"I was afraid...so I just stood in the open door thinking I could shut it if I needed to" she reported to Michigan MUFON investigator Frank Bertrand. "The light was quite large...too large to be an airplane".

She stepped a few feet onto her patio, looked up to see that the object was comprised of "two large lights, one lemon yellow and the other a brilliant red, each larger than the full moon, perfectly round and seemingly lit from within.

"There were also two small lights on the craft’s sides. Green on the craft’s, left and white on it’s right. They were much smaller and brighter than an airplane’s wingtip lights and blinked in unison".

As the lights were directly overhead the woman performed a very clear and sober observation. She measured the lights between the fingers of her outstretched arm. "Three inches from front of the yellow circle to the back of the red" she told MUFON investigators. "Huge...and completely silent! I listened for a sound but couldn’t hear any."

The lights then disappeared over the roof of her home.

As in other cases, Selfridge was sent a Freedom Of Information Act request concerning military traffic above Marlette that evening, radar data and aircraft transponder replies (the aircraft’s electronic ID that is automatically returned to the detecting radar facility). Selfridge stated that they routinely dispose of "all flying activity records...every six months" therefore the alleged 12/15/97 event over Marlette couldn’t be researched through them.

(sources-MUFON, Selfridge ANGB/Bonnie Murray and author’s file)

Marlette (May 19, 1998) - "Matt", a 32 year old Marlette man driving south on Butler Rd near Lynd Rd, spotted a "large reddish-orange light" sitting a few degrees above the southwestern horizon around 10:15 PM that evening. Being somewhat familiar with astronomy, Matt mentioned that he first thought that it was a star or planet as they "tend to look orangish near the horizon due to our atmosphere". A few minutes later, to ‘Matt’s’ surprise, the light "suddenly shot straight up and out of sight". (source-witness interview by author)

PAST THUMB-AREA UFO SIGHTINGS

Lapeer (December 9, 1965) - A fireball was witnessed traveling south from Canada, over eastern Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. According to researcher Stan Gordon and several dozen citizens of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, a ten-foot tall "acorn-shaped" object with "strange hieroglyphic-like symbols" crashed into a wooded ravine outside of Kecksburg late in the afternoon of December 9th, 1965. Others contend that it was a Soviet satellite.

If this object were a Soviet satellite, as researchers Gordon and author Kevin Randle ("History Of UFO Crashes") believes, we were required by signed international treaty to immediately return it to its country of origin. The Soviets have never requested, at least publicly, that this object be returned to them.

Before the mystery object landed in Pennsylvania, it allegedly set several fires in the Lapeer area as well as Ohio when it passed overhead. A sonic boom was registered from the object near Detroit.

The Lapeer County Sheriff’s Department received several calls that a fireball had crashed into a swampy area south of Lapeer. These calls came in during the deluge of reports of a bright object hurtling south across the sky at about 4:45 PM.

Lapeer County Deputy Lenny Tolly found "about a peck" of foil in two piles ten feet apart. The strips were 1/16 inch wide and 3/4 of an inch long. Tolly said that there was foil scattered all over the swamp. He said that "it looked like it may have come from the deal (the fireball)".

Another Lapeer Deputy, flying in a plane at the time of the fireball sighting, said he could see several fires breaking out in the swamp as he passed over.

The Lapeer Sheriff’s Department sent foil samples to the Air Force and Project Blue Book (their much maligned UFO study) who later determined that it was aircraft chaff, foil strips sent out of airplanes to confuse radar.

Nothing was ever found to have crashed in the swampy area south of Lapeer.

(sources-Stan Gordon email-interview, Kevin Randle email-interview, UPI article-December 10, 1965 and author’s file).

Bad Axe (March 27, 1966) - Peter Torres of the Bad Axe Police Department, Larry Rigvelski of the Huron County Sheriff’s Department and Frank Best of the Michigan State Police all observed a bright blue UFO at 5:24 am EST on Sunday March 27, 1966 southeast of Bad Axe. Several calls about the UFO were received before the three officers made their sighting.

The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) in Seattle, Washington by phone at 206-722-3000 or by email at ufocenter@nwlink.com

The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) in Boulder, Colorado by phone at 1-800-UFO-2166.

The author, Jeffrey S. Westover, is a published artist and volunteer with Michigan’s Mutual UFO Network and frequent contributor to AAER.