Witnesses marvel at mystery objects
Taken from: The Pioneer, Bemidji, Minnesota, Friday,August 31, 1990
Witnesses marvel at mystery objects
by Pat Miller, Staff Writer
It seems that Bemidji wasn't the lone city on the path of last weeks unexpected visitor from the sky as craft of similar description were sighted in every corner of the area.
Reports of sightings have surfaced from Park Rapids, Clearbrook, Laporte, Zerkel and Turtle River and the common threads among the varying accounts are the lack of noise and the shape.
Between 9:30 and 10 p.m. last Thursday [August 23, 1990] Dick McLaurie of Bemidji and his son Tony were heading home from a fishing excursion east of Blackduck when they saw the craft near Castle Highlands Golf Course.
We saw them approaching us from the direction of Bemidji and we pulled over to watch the show, said McLaurie. They were about one- quarter of a mile away from us and one-quarter of a mile in the air and we watched them for about three or four minutes.
What McLaurie saw was at least five different objects shaped like the bullet with wings that Julie Knutson described last week. The objects sported a series of light and they all traveled together in a convoy formation.
There were five or six different vehicles flying in a group, McLaurie recalled. At first they were moving slowly but then they started sparking and sped up. All of a sudden all the lights went out and the things really took off in the direction of Blackduck. They certainly moved faster than any plane I've ever seen.
At 9:50 that same evening Tom Crissinger of Northward Ho Resort on Long Lake near Park Rapids was among a group of about 14 people who saw a similar display.
They looked like the space shuttle and were about the size of a big jet. But they didn't make any noise, Crissinger said. They trailed balls of something like fire about a mile long and over the lake they were easy to see. We also saw about 20 square windows on the side (of the craft) and we kept asking each other if anybody else saw the windows. And everyone did.
The objects continued over the lake in the direction of Bemidji and followed a slowly ascending course.
Greg Gasman of rural Laporte also witnessed the show from his back yard between 9:30 and 10 p.m. His immediate attention was on an airplane he could clearly hear and see high in the sky but when his gaze returned earthward it was interrupted by the sight of three unusual visitors low to the ground.
They were almost touching each other and each one had front lights and back lights, he said. The silhouette of each was of a long cylindrical object and they were traveling in a convoy.
Unlike the other reports which had the craft heading in a northeasterly direction, Gasman's objects traveled from the southeast to the northwest.
They were heading straight for Bemidji and going northwest, he said.
What surprised me the most was that there were no sparks, no sign of what propelled them, and they made no noise. It was a very quiet night but still they didn't make a sound.
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Additional articles appeared in The Pioneer on August 26, 28, and 30 with similar information.
Other persons sighting the craft were Wayne Bitz and Dave Mathisen of Bemidji, Diane Wagner from the east side of Big Bass Lake, and Jami Knutson, 11-year-old daughter of Julie Knutson of Bemidji, and NORAD tracked the object on radar.
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Here is an interesting quote from the August 28 story:
"The official word on the mysterious lights which were visible over the Bemidji area Thursday night is (probably) a returning rocket body that decayed in space and reentered the atmosphere."
That explanation was offered by Major David Griffard of the North American Air Defense Command based at Peterson Air Force Base near Colorado Springs, Colo.
He said he cannot disclose other information about the rocket but said NORAD received calls from Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Trinidad about the object.
A spokesman from the Grand Forks Air Base said that no planes from that base were in the air Thursday evening and the objects the Knutson's saw did not have their roots at the base.
