UFO ROUNDUP Volume 2 Number 34
Volume 2
Number 34
August 21, 1997
Editor: Joseph Trainor
E-mail: Masinaigan@aol.com
UFO SPOTTED OVER KIRKCALDY, SCOTLAND
On Saturday, August 16, 1997, at approximately 12:45 a.m., a Scotsman and his girlfriend were letting their dogs into the garden at the rear of their home in Kirkcaldy, a city on the north shore of the Firth of Forth, north of Scotland's capital, Edinburgh.
"Just as my partner looked up at the sky to our left over our shoulders," he reported, "we spotted what appeared to be just another star in the sky, until it began to move. We live in a three-storey block of flats, and we could see this starlike object move away from rooftops of the flats towards the south and probably over the River Forth somewhere."
"It seemed to cut through the sky with great ease, almost like it was gliding, but was actually going exceptionally fast. It must have been to cover the ground it covered in such a short time. It travelled three quarters of the sky in approximately 30 seconds, when it came to a sudden halt and just remained there--stationary."
"At this point, I decided to go for more people to witness what we were experiencing. On my return with three other witnesses, I discovered that my partner had gone to our next-door neighbour. He and his teenage son came to investigate."
Soon a group of seven people were witnessing the spectacle. "What appeared to be at first a shooting star, projecting rapidly towards the stationary object in a vertical/diagonal fashion from left to right, at great speed. Then the stationary object took off from a standstill, in an opposite direction from the incoming threat, and just seemed to disappear."
"We saw the same phenomenon at least five times more. Only they were not all heading south. Some were heading northeast, and another passed over our heads towards the west. All looked identical."
Only the "shooting star" objects moved in a straight line, he added. "This whole experience lasted 45 minutes (until 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, August 17), and was witnessed by nine people in total, although some members came in a little later. But none of can even begin to comprehend what we saw, but we know we did see it." (Many thanks to John Hayes for forwarding this news story.)
SAUCER RAISES A BIG STIR IN THE SOLOMON ISLANDS
A domed saucer, described as "a classic UFO," has been sighted "every two or three nights" since August 7, 1997 in the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific.
The saucer has made repeated appearances over Visale, a town on the northern tip of Guadalcanal Island, and over Ironbottom Sound, just north of town. Both sites, oddly enough, figured prominently in the World War II battles on Guadalcanal 55 years ago.
According to Ross Dowe of Australia's National 24-Hour Hotline, who first received the report, two men, one of them a doctor, said several islanders had been reported missing. Also, islanders who aimed flashlights or spotlights at the saucer as it passed overhead were struck by a sudden burst of heat. Several people "have received third-degree-burns" as a result.
Witnesses describe the saucer as four meters (13 feet) in diameter "and moves very fast. It has also been seen to enter a waterfall and disappear, and to travel underwater." (Many thanks to Mike Lindemann for this report. See CNI News, volume 3, number 12, part 3 for August 16, 1997.)
UFO SIGHTED OVER THE LOWER EAST SIDE
On Tuesday, August 12, 1997, Linda Cortile and her neighbor were at their apartment house on Manhattan's Lower East Side when they heard "the sounds of helicopters."
Linda explained, "I was locked in my apartment and couldn't get out. I called management, and they opened the door for me. I had to wait 24 hours before a locksmith came. So I stayed in my unlocked apartment alone. I telephoned a neighbor, and she kept me company until my family came home."
"We looked out of the living room window because we heard the sounds of helicopters. They were flying low. We thought that perhaps someone was going to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge again."
(Editor's Note: Linda's neighborhood is on the southeast side of New York City's Manhattan Island borough, south of Houston Street.)
"That's when we saw those reddish-colored objects flying over the East River. After watching them for 20 seconds, they disappeared, but the helicopters continued on. I don't know what the heck they were, but they scared the living poop out of us...I hope they weren't the UFOs we in the UFO community always talk about." (Many thanks to Errol Bruce-Knapp for forwarding this story.)
JPL LOSES CONTACT WITH PATHFINDER--CAUSE UNKNOWN
On Saturday night, August 16, 1997, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California began its customary four-hour data download to the Pathfinder explorer craft on Mars. Signals are beamed to the Pathfinder and its mobile robot explorer vehicle, Sojourner, via the large-dish antennae of the Deep Space Network.
Suddenly, "for no known cause," communication between JPL and Pathfinder was "cut off for three minutes."
At the time, JPL was broadcasting instructions to Sojourner to examine two large rocks, the "Shark" and "Flattop," in an area near the landing site known as "the Rock Garden." (See the Los Angeles Times for August 17, 1997. Many thanks to Rev. Billy Dee for forwarding this story.)
(Editor's Comment: First the controversial Pathfinder photo #81977, then the missing 28 photos, and now this. Something strange is going on up there at Ares Vallis, that's for sure!)
PORTUGUESE UFO IDENTIFIED
On May 23, 1997, a strange blue marigold-shaped UFO was seen in the skies over Mirandela, a town in the Tras-Os-Montes of northern Portugal. Some thought it was a genuine UFO; others called it a religious miracle.
Now it appears that the Mirandela object was merely a laser-light show. According to Portuguese ufologist Joao Cardoso, "The lights people observed were generated by a laser-effects machine that was used to attract visitors to the 'RegiaoNorde' exposition which occurs in Mirandela every year."
The "explanation" was reported recently on Portugal's SIC-TV network. "I became a little skeptical about that explanation until I saw the laser machine," Cardoso added, "The lenses were marigold-shaped. The people in Quintas (the village where the UFO was seen--J.T.) saw laser beams projected on the clouds."
Cardoso's home in Lamego "is about 70 miles from Mirandela, and I noticed that the skies were overcast by low-altitude clouds that day." (Muito obrigado a Joao Cardoso por eso caso.)
CROP CIRCLES APPEAR IN SASKATCHEWAN
On August 7, 1997, three crop circles appeared in a wheat field on the Kawacatoose Indian Reserve in Panashi, near the town of Raymore, Saskatchewan (population 562). This was the first Canadian crop circle incident of 1997.
Raymore is 53 kilometers (33 miles) north of Regina, the provincial capital.
The formation at Panashi consisted of one large circle measuring 13 meters (40 feet) in diameter and two smaller satellite circles 1.3 meters (4 feet) in diameter. According to researcher Paul Anderson of Circles Phenomenon Research-Canada, they "looked like half of a Celtic cross design, with two circles missing."
The discovery was reported on Thursday, August 14, by reporter Sarah McGrath of BBS-TV in Regina.
Another crop circle at Panashi was reported on Monday, August 18. Both cases are being investigated by the local detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
Also investigating the Panashi circles is Daniel Clairmont, who last year worked on the crop-circle case in Rocanville, Saskatchewan.
(See the newspapers the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix for August 16, 1997 and the Regina Leader-Post for August 18, 1997.)
from the UFO Files...
1957: UFO STALKS BRAZILIAN AIRLINER
Forty years ago, one of the strangest UFO incidents in Brazil's history took place, involving a DC-3 airliner belonging to Viacao Aerea Rio-Grandense (VARIG) airlines.
On August 14, 1957, at 9 p.m., a VARIG C-47 (cargo version of the DC-3) took off from the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state, heading north towards the then-national capital, Rio de Janeiro. Flying the aircraft were Captain Jorge Araujo and First Officer Edgar Soares.
Soon they were flying through a perfectly clear sky over the South Atlantic. Below, at 5,700 feet, was a thick overcast. Above them was an array of myriad stars, highlighted by the Southern Cross. The C-47's airspeed was 160 miles per hour.
Suddenly, "they spotted some sort of brilliant object to the left and slightly behind and below them. Seconds later, it had streaked out ahead of them and off to their right--a maneuver that required fantastic speed..."
"The object then swept in toward the plane."
"In their witness report, both pilots and the other three crew members described it as a disc-shaped thing with a low shiny dome on top."
"As the UFO drew close to the plane, the lights on the aircraft dimmed almost to extinction, the engines sputtered and missed badly, and the radio reception became nil. A few seconds later--anxious seconds for that crew, as they later admitted--the UFO plunged downward into the clouds, and the electrical systems on the plane returned to normal." (See FLYING SAUCERS--SERIOUS BUSINESS by Frank Edwards, Bantam Books, N.Y., October 1966, page 31.)
FUN UFO WEBSITES
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NOTE TO ROUNDUP READERS:
With this issue, the newsletter goes on hiatus for three weeks. Publication of UFO ROUNDUP will resume with Volume 2, Number 35 on Sunday, September 13, 1997. All reader subscriptions will be carried over automatically. In the meantime, your editor is off to his favorite vacation spot, also known as Ginonwabiko-zibi. With a side trip planned to a location famous in UFO history. Watch for the feature story in December.
Until next time, keep watching the skies! Best of luck to all our readers who are starting a new school year. It's okay to read UFO ROUNDUP on the computer. Just don't do it in class, and make sure your homework is done before you hop online. Here's wishing you all straight A's on your report card from "the paper that goes home-- UFO ROUNDUP."
UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 1997 by Masinaigan Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post items from UFO ROUNDUP on their websites or in newsgroups provided that they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list the date of issue in which the item first appeared.
