UFO ROUNDUP Volume 2 Number 10
Volume 2 Number 10
March 9, 1997
Editor: Joseph Trainor
E-mail: Masinaigan@aol.com
MAJOR UFO FLAP GOING ON IN NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND
Since January 22, 1997, a major UFO flap has been going on in the three New England states of New Hampshire (N.H.), Vermont (Vt.) and Maine (Me.), with 17 sightings and one encounter reported.
On January 23, Beverly Higgins was driving home from work. "It was ten to seven," she recalled, "I was on Route 3 coming home from Littleton (N.H.), just before the Columbia trailer park when I saw this thing across my windshield, just above my steering wheel."
Ms. Higgins watched the object cross the sky from west to east, coming from Vermont and passing over the Connecticut River. "It was oval--I counted six windows and there was a green light in front of it," she said. "It hovered slowly, but there was no noise."
After a few minutes, the UFO "took off over the mountains" and Ms. Higgins continued on her journey. (See the Manchester, N.H. Union-Leader for March 3, 1997, page 1)
According to the Union-Leader story, MUFON investigator Sandra Black of Stewartstown, N.H. has documented 17 sightings since January.
"The best one was reported on January 23 on Route 26 in daylight," Ms. Black told the newspaper. "Two people were coming home from work at the Balsams when they saw a large saucer-shaped object standing vertical on end."
In North Stratford, N.H., she added, a witness "reported seeing an object the size of a house. There were pink and blue lights glowing around it."
In February, a woman and her family in Stratford, N.H. "saw a saucer-shaped object in the Stratford Hollow part of town. A few days later, the woman spotted the object again."
New Hampshire sightings have also been reported in Clarksville, Jefferson, Columbia, Stratford, Stewartstown and Berlin.
In Vermont, UFO sightings were reported in the "Northeast Kingdom" in and around the city of St. Johnsbury, in Hardwick, in Danville and in Lyndonville. In every case, the witnesses have described domed saucers about 33 to 67 feet (10 to 20 meters) in diameter, gunmetal gray to silver in color, with or without square windows.
In February, a witness reported a domed saucer hovering in a forest north of Andover, Me.
A startling encounter took place in Colebrook, N.H. (population 1070), on the east bank of the Connecticut River 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Stewartstown.
According to Peter Geremia, director of MUFON New Hampshire, a Colebrook woman, age 73, "claims she was visited by 12 aliens who sat at her table, took notes and whispered among themselves, and wouldn't leave until 3:30 a.m., despite her polite requests."
"I just want to forget about it. It was very disturbing,' said the 73-year-old woman, who told her story to co-workers at a local nursing home and to a MUFON investigator."
"Co-worker Tracy Perry said the woman is stable and not one to make up stories. But since the day last month (February) when she told her tale, Perry said, 'She hasn't been herself.'" (See the Boston, Mass. Herald for March 6, 1997, page 7)
Leading the current investigative effort is Raymond E. Fowler of Wenham, Mass., MUFON's national director of investigations and the author of THE WATCHERS and THE ANDREASSON AFFAIR.
Fowler told the Herald, "I don't think we've had anything like this since 1973. We've had sightings but not sighting after sighting after sighting."
(Many thanks to Jeffrey Wilcox for this story.)
UFO FLAP IS STILL GOING STRONG IN AUSTRALIA
On Thursday, February 20, 1997, at 5:45 a.m., people living in Wangandary, south of Albury, Victoria (Vic.) spotted "four bright disc-shaped illuminations" flying east over the Barry Mountains toward Mount Buffalo. The UFOs were at an estimated altitude of 30,000 feet and flying in "a square formation."
The same morning, at 5:15 a.m., early risers in downtown Adelaide, South Australia (S.A.) saw "three bright lights following each other in a line, moving from west to east in the pre-dawn darkness." Each UFO appeared to have a red light attached.
At 10:45 p.m. on February 20, witnesses at Walcha, New South Wales (N.S.W.), a small town east of Tamworth and about 320 kilometers (200 miles) northwest of Sydney, sighted "three yellow-white lights traveling slowly across the sky," heading in an east-northeast direction. The UFOs were about 45 degrees above the horizon.
On Friday, February 21, 1997, the scene of UFO action shifted to the states of Victoria and Queensland. At 10 p.m. Friday night, people in Hopper Crossing, Vic. saw "a bright orange fireball" in the southern sky "as big as the full moon."
At 9:50 p.m., people in Werribee, Vic., where a "scorch earth mark" or crop circle had been found a week earlier, reported "a bright red fireball," again "as big as a full moon," in the southern sky.
Also at 10 p.m., people in Ballarat, 150 kilometers (95 miles) northwest of Melbourne, spotted "a bright orange fireball."
(Editor's Note: Ross Dowe, director of Australia's National 24-Hour UFO Hotline, says these "fireball" sightings may have been flares or explosions from Melbourne's RAAF air show that night.)
However, three towns in Queensland reported an unusual UFO the night of February 21, 1997. People in Belle Park, Eumundi and Springsure, northwest of Brisbane, saw "a strange lime-green cigar illumination withstreaks of light emitting out of it." The UFO first appeared in the northeast sky and moved to the northwest.
On Saturday, February 22, 1997, witnesses in Cronulla, N.S.W., a suburb of Sydney looked upward at 6 a.m. and saw "an illumination" moving from the south to the southwest, "doing odd things."
That night, at 11 p.m., in Liverpool, another Sydney suburb, people saw "a diamond-shaped object with bright orange-yellow plumes of light around it." The UFO was "as big as a thumb at arm's length" and it "jigged around for ten or so minutes."
The flap also reached Tasmania, the island-state off Australia's southern coast. On Sunday, February 23, 1997, at 8:30 p.m., a ship cruising the Bass Strait north of Burnie, Tasmania spotted a UFO. A ship's officer reported, "Upon sighting the vertical cloud... some 30 nautical miles out to the northeast from my position, I observed the object through 12X binoculars." The "vertical cloud" seemed luminous and surrounded by "vaporous streamers." After a few minutes, he said, "a bright ellipitical or saucer-shaped illumination" burned off or caused the vapor/steam to disappear. "It held its position for a few minutes and then it disappeared."
Three days later, on Wednesday, February 26, 1997, witnesses in Kingston, Tasmania reported sighting "a horizontal flaring green light in the sky."
Thursday, February 27, 1997 saw the flap focus shift back to Queensland. At 10:05 p.m. that night, people in Port Macquarie, 320 kilometers (200 miles) north of Brisbane, saw "a white-yellow /\ shaped object with flashing lights underneath. The object appeared to be hovering over the ocean about 10 kilometers (6 miles) out to the northeast." At 11 p.m., the same object was seen further inland over Warhope.
The same night, at 9 p.m., a UFO was seen over Padbury, Western Australia (W.A.), not far from Perth. Witnesses described it as "a bright oval green illumination coming straight down west of the city. It appeared to have sparks or streaks coming out of it. There was no sound."
On Friday, February 28, 1997, at 1:30 a.m., "a large white illumination" was seen over Peak Hill, N.S.W. 360 kilometers (225 miles) west of Sydney. The UFO was moving from south to north at 45 degrees above the horizon and was described as "one-tenth the size of the full moon." Witnesses described themselves as "somewhat amazed."
Also that Friday night, at 10:10 p.m., people in Yarra Junction, Vic., east of Melbourne, saw "two white light illuminations following each other." The UFOs gave off three flashes of orange light at random sequences, a commonly reported characteristic of Australian UFOs during the past year and a half. (Many thanks to Ross Dowe of the National 24-Hour UFO Hotline for this story.)
UFOs LEAVE TWO CROP CIRCLES IN BRAZIL
On Thursday, February 27, 1997, a UFO landed on a farm near Sepe Tiaraju regional airport outside Santo Angelo, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Santo Angelo is a city about 320 kilometers (200 miles) northwest of Porto Alegre and 128 kilometers (80 miles) east of the Rio Uruguaia, which forms the boundary with Argentina's Misiones province.
At 9 p.m., Claudete Parazzi, a farmer's wife, was sitting on the balcony of her farmhouse when she heard "a strange noise" coming from the pasture. Looking toward the coach house, Sra. Parazzi, 55, spotted "a vivid red light."
The following morning, Friday, February 28, she told her husband, Juvenal, and her daughter, Liziane, about the incident. All three went to investigate and found a crop circle 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter in a cornfield.
"Nobody knows what this is," Liziane Parazzi told the Brazilian newspaper Correio do Povo.
That Friday night, Arno Polanski, a security guard at the nearby Frangomil Corp. farm, "saw an orange fireball in the sky that disappeared in seconds."
The UFO, Polanski said, "was emitting an orange light and was the size of a truck."
Within the cornfield, Polanski found a large crop circle that looked like this:
l l l
(__l __)Polanski and other Frangomil employees also found "a strange white dust" covering the corn leaves. The material was collected and sent to a laboratory for testing. The Frangomil corporate farm is about 1,000 meters down the road from the Parazzi farm. The case is being investigated by the Associao Brasileira das Pesquisas Ufologicas (ABPU), a ufology group based in Rio Grande do Sul.
(See the newspaper Correio do Povo for March 1 and March 3, 1997)
THREE FIREBALLS LIGHT UP SKIES OVER CROATIA
On Saturday, February 22, 1997, a party of young men and women traveled by motorboat from Dubrovnik, Croatia to Lokrum, an uninhabitied offshore island in the Adriatic Sea. The island is about 8 kilometers (5 miles) southeast of Dubrovnik.
At 10:05 p.m., eyewitness Damir Nozica spotted three fireballs rising from the south side of the island. Flying in formation, the fireballs made a "six to ten degree turn toward the west and really lit up the sky."
"It all happened really quickly," Nozica reported. "I was looking at the stars, trying to locate Hale-Bopp which could be seen in the eastern sky. That's when I saw them. They were 'floating' at about 30 degrees above the horizon, southeast over Lokrum." The "fireballs" had no comet-like tails and "There was no reflection on the surface of the sea, therefore I concluded they had to be behind the clouds and far away. How far away--I cannot tell for sure. Their color was orange to yellow...They rocketed straight up. I could not tell their direction because I lost them. No track, nothing. Gone. Speed of flight, you ask? Ha! It wasn't at the speed of light, but it was close to it."
Damir thinks they've seen the last of UFOs because "nothing much ever happens around here." Don't bet the rent money on that, my friend. (Email Interview)
DAYLIGHT DISC SPOTTED IN TAKAPUNA, NEW ZEALAND
On Saturday, February 15, 1997, several people living in Takapuna, a city on New Zealand's North Island, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) north of Auckland, saw a gray saucer passing overhead. The sky was clear except for a few broken clouds, and the object was perfectly visible. The sighting took place at 10 a.m. and was reported on the shortwave station Radio Pacific.
Described as "a large disc-shaped object, mostly gray in color," the UFO appeared to be rotating or spinning. Witnesses said the outer rim of the saucer did the spinning, while "the core or centre remained stable."
The saucer arrived from the direction of Auckland and flew away to the northwest, heading out over the East Coast Bays toward Kawau Island. (Many thanks to Ross Dowe of Australia's National 24-Hour UFO Hotline for this story.)
TWO SAUCERS SPAR OVER CENTRAL DENMARK
On December 26, 1996, a student teacher looked out the window of a college building in Ebeltoft, Denmark and spied a UFO. He then phoned three other students in the building.
"What they saw were two flying objects having a dogfight in the sky. The UFOs were orange-yellow. They watched this for 15 minutes until a jetliner landed at the airport about 10 kilometers (6 miles) away. They were surrounded by a strange light and took off towards the south-southeast."
(Many thanks to Danish ufologist Jorgen Glud for this story.)
FUN UFO WEBSITES
Watch for more UFO news from north of the USA/Canada border at Jacques Poulet's site, SOS OVNI QUEBEC. You'll find them at http://www.cam.org/~martinc/index.html
For a good selection of articles in UFOs, crop circles, ESP and the paranormal, it's hard to beat Paul Vigay's site, devoted to the UK's Independent Research Centre for Unexplained Phenomena (IRCUP). It's at http://rainbow.medbury.com/enigma/index.html
Donald R. Schmitt and Kevin D. Randle put out a slick quarterly magazine called the Roswell Reporter, which covers the latest news in the ongoing Roswell investigations. Check out their new website at this address: http://www.OrionWorks.com/roswell/
It had to happen. Those pesky black helicopters have finally gotten their own page. Mary Heffernan has five color photos of them doing nothing more sinister than flying around Pennsylvania. Drop in at Mary's new site at http://www.interactive.net/~bridget
Don't miss our parent site, UFO INFO. John Hayes keeps it up-to-the-minute with the latest in UFO-related features. Check it out at http://ufoinfo.com/index.html
And for back issues of this newsletter, try http://ufoinfo.com/roundup/index.shtml
That's it for this week. To our readers in Melbourne--I hope you had a fun-filled Koomba celebration last week. Remember, if you have a UFO story to report, email the details to us at Masinaigan@aol.com.
If you come across a UFO story in your local newspaper, clip it out and send it to our snail-mail address:
Joseph Trainor
UFO ROUNDUP
2501 Leonard Street, Apt. 104
Duluth, Minnesota
USA 55811-2964
Here's wishing all our readers a pleasant week from "the paper that covers the saucers, UFO ROUNDUP."
UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 1997 by Masinaigan Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post any stories from UFO ROUNDUP on their websites or in news groups provided that they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list the newsletter date on which the item originally appeared.
