UFO ROUNDUP Volume 4 Number 10
Volume 4
Number 10
March 8, 1999
Editor: Joseph Trainor
E-mail: Masinaigan@aol.com
UFO LANDS IN CHESHIRE Between 10 p.m. on Sunday, February 28, 1999 and 3 a.m. on Monday, March 1, residents of Knutsford, Cheshire, UK reported seeing "anomalous lights in the area and claim to have seen a red and white light descending very slowly...the object was said to have behaved 'as if under intelligent control.'" An investigative team from the British UFO Studies Centre (BUFOSC), led by Eric Morris, visited the scene on Tuesday, March 2, and Wednesday, March 3, 1999, and obtained physical evidence of a UFO landing. BUFOSC worked in tandem with the Lancashire UFO Society (LUFOS) in the investigation. The team found the following: (1) "Ground traces in the form of burn marks and scorching." (2) "An unusual patterning in the surrounding bracken suggesting that it had been pushed down or 'squashed' by something over an area of 60 meters (198 feet)." (3) "Evidence of tree burns and disturbance to local wildlife." "BUFOSC investigators have taken away soil samples and similar evidence" from the site. The material will be analyzed in a scientific laboratory. On Tuesday evening, March 2, while Eric Morris was describing the evidence to a well-attended BUFOSC meeting, the assembly received word that the mysterious lights were once more hovering over Knutsford. BUFOSC investigators Irene Dale and Sarah Cardwell rushed from the meeting and arrived in Knutsford "in time to see the lights. Eight other members joined them for a Skywatch" later that same evening. Knutsford is located about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Liverpool. (Many thanks to Tim Matthews of LUFOS for forwarding the BUFOSC report.) (Editor's Comment: Good job, Irene and Sarah! That's the kind of aggressive reporting we like to see around here at UFO Roundup.) ORANGE SPHERE UFO SEEN IN NORTH LINCOLNSHIRE On Wednesday, February 24, 1999, at 6:30 p.m., a UFO described as "an orange ball of light" was spotted moving slowly over the cities of Hull and Grimsby in Lincolnshire, UK. "Was it a plane? Was it a planet? No, it was definitely an unidentified flying object, say local UFO spotters. An 'orange ball of light' was reported over North Lincolnshire before reappearing towards the southwest and moving northeast between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. on Monday, February 22." "Local UFO group Hangar 18 received news of several sightings near Barton, said group researcher Amanda Gibson. Now it is appealing to witnesses to come forward" after a similar phenomenon "was reported Wednesday night (February 24, 1999) over Hull and Grimsby." "Two bright lights were seen towards the east--the opposite side of the sky from Venus and Jupiter." "Hangar 18's David Jackson of Raymond Road, Ashby, insisted the sighting" was not "a case of wrongly identifying two bright planets." Grimsby is a city located 125 miles (200 kilometers) north of London. (See the Scunthorpe Evening Telegram for February 26, 1999. Many thanks to Gerry Lovell of Far Shores for forwarding the newspaper article.) ORANGE SPHERE UFO SIGHTED IN PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA On Friday, February 12, 1999, at 9 p.m., Markus Hain was riding in a friend's police cruiser on General Louis Botha Road in Constantia Park, a suburb just east of Pretoria, the capital of South Africa when he noticed something strange in the sky. "My friend is a police force member, and I was driving with him this night, as I sometimes do when the force is understaffed," Markus reported. "This (General Botha) road slopes upward for a long way, ending on a hill. As we were driving along, I noticed a light on the eastern horizon, slightly orange in colour. Now this is nothing out of the ordinary, but what captured my attention is that it was travelling very fast." Markus estimated that the UFO was about 10 degrees above the eastern horizon. "As a commercial pilot until I moved over to IT, I know that no aircraft is allowed to fly at that speed at such a low altitude-- 280 knots below 14,000 feet in South Africa. That object was moving along at about I don't know what. No sound, no strobe or NAV (navigation--J.T.) lights." "I immediately screamed at my friend to look up at the sky, and he also had no idea what it was. As we drove up farther, we briefly drove through an area where the sky was obscured by trees, and, after passing through, we saw the object again, only this time it had already covered a vast distance." Later, Markus telephoned the South African Air Force at the SAAF Waterkloof air base, located about 25 kilometers (15 miles) from Pretoria. The SAAF reportedly told him that there had been no sign of the mysterious object on radar. (Email Interview) ECUFOR RELEASES REPORT ON GRAAF-REINET UFO CASE During the past week, South Africa's Evaluation Center for UFO Reports (ECUFOR) completed its preliminary investigation of the Graaf-Reinet sighting during which video footage of the UFOs was shot. On December 27, 1998, at about 3 p.m., "the Laubscher family observed between eight to ten objects moving rapidly in a northerly direction over Graaf-Reinet, a small town situated in the well-known Karroo (region) some 200 kilometers (120 miles) north-northwest of Port Elizabeth." "According to the witnesses' descriptions and supported to a certain extent by the video footage, the objects appeared somewhat roundish triangular and seemed to move in a group. Occasionally one or two would stop and the others would circle around them, and then they would go forward again. Their motion repeated itself a few times. While moving, the objects were shiny gold in colour but when stationary changed from white to red and then to blue. The size of these objects was judged to be roughly four to five times that of a Boeing (747 jetliner) at the same altitude." "The group had been in view for a few seconds when another, much larger object travelling at very high speed in the same flight path proceeded in a northerly direction through and past the group. The larger object appeared gold in colour and was basically spherical, travelled at constant speed and did not change colour. The group of smaller objects then followed the larger sphere as they disappeared behind some high cloud near the horizon. According to the video footage, those clouds appeared to be at an altitude of 25,000 to 30,000 feet." (Many thanks to Mike Farrell and Errol Bruce-Knapp for this report.) ANOTHER UFO SIGHTING IN SOUTHERN AUSTRALIA Chalk up another sighting for the one-night UFO flap that took place on Friday, February 19, 1999, in Australia. At 9:30 p.m. that night, Darren B. "was in Sunshine, Victoria (state), parked in the village cinema carpark having something to eat with a friend of mine" when "I saw what I first thought was the lights of an aeroplane coming towards us from a northerly direction. But the lights were much larger and brighter than those of an aeroplane. I then thought it might be a helicopter light, but the light blinked out very quickly, and there was no sign of any craft in the area. I got out of the car to see if I could hear or see anything. But I couldn't. My friend saw the same as I did, and the light was in view for approximately 20 to 25 seconds." (Email Interview) UFO DISABLES A CAR AND CELL PHONES IN SPAIN On Saturday, February 20, 1999, several young men were traveling by car on a mountain road near Alicante, Spain. "We were driving up to my house," the witness reported, "Then, all of a sudden, my car just went dead." "Me and my two friends were laughing at first. But then we noticed that both of our cellular phones were also shut down. Also, the digital clock in the car. Everything electrical was without live (power)." "Then we stepped out of the car because we heard a humming sound. We looked up and saw three lights shaped in a triangle. The moment we saw it, it took off. All of our electrical systems were operational again. We could use our own cell phones, the car worked, etc." "The weirdest thing of all is that this colossal, big triangular-shaped object was directly above us, and we didn't feel any (air) pressure or wind keeping the thing up there," at about 30 meters (100 feet) above the car. (See Filer's Files #9 for 1999. Many thanks to George A. Filer, Eastern director of MUFON, for this report.) UFOs DOMINATE THE SKIES ALL OVER PERU The UFO flap in Peru intensified last week with more sightings and more videos taken in Lima and elsewhere in this ancient South American land. On Wednesday, March 3, 1999, for forty minutes, five glowing silver discs flew over Lima, the capital city. Two OVNIs (Spanish acronym for UFOs) flew off by themselves and performed maneuvers while the remaining three darted away to the east. Home videos taken of the overflight were broadcasted on Canal (Channel) 2, Television Frequencia Latina following the incident. On Tuesday, March 2, 1999, at 6:30 p.m., two OVNIs flew over Pucallpa, a city on the Rio Ucayali in la selva (Peru's Amazon jungle--J.T.), located about 600 kilometers (360 miles) northeast of Lima. "Plenty of witnesses saw them cleave through the cloudy sky," Alfredo Mendiola reported. "They were bright enough to shine through the mists. In each sector of the city, they appeared as a bright white dot. Others reported seeing the light change color from white to yellow, red and blue." Home videos were aired on the local TV station in Pucallpa. "The video showed an object in the form of a spinning and humming top with a surrounding light (aura) and clear brown color tones. Another showed a cone with a point coming to a rise." "A helicopter of the Policia Aerea, which was given to Peru by the USA to struggle against the narcotics traffic, was flying in the zone (over Pucallpa) and tried to chase the OVNIs. But the pilots lost radio contact with the ground, which seems impossible because they have high frequency radios." Last week, in Andacolla, a town of Neuquen department south of Lima, residents watched glowing UFOs "that moved in zigzag. We watched them cross the sky with lights in the front." And there was "another OVNI like a great luminosity that pulsated as well." In Lindera, a small town 440 kilometers (264 miles) south of Arequipa, near Peru's border with Chile, local residents were astonished to find several crop circles in a wheat field. The crop circles were described as "tripods," i.e. three circles joined by straight lines. "There are sections of the circles where the grain was squashed flat but not broken." The strangest report came from Chilca, however, a small town 64 kilometers (40 miles) south of Lima. Residents of Chilca claim that aliens altered the mud flats in town, giving them miraculous healing powers. "Marco and Erudita Alva plunged into a pool called 'the Twin Maker' and began slapping on ink-black mud from head to toe. They're trying to solve their fertility problem." "Over at the 'Miracle Maker' pond, Zoila Bejar rubs slick mud reeking of sulfur all over her body in hopes it will ease chronic back pain." "A lot of ailing Peruvians are turning up in Chilca, a dusty desert town on the Pacific coast 40 miles southeast of Lima. They came to wallow in the mud of three small ponds thought to have healing powers." "Mayor Ruma Nueda says, ' Lots of people claim to have seen UFOs and strange lights in the night sky over Chilca. People here believe in UFOs." "Locals say that space ships come to harvest an unknown material from the (ocean) area off Chilca's beach. The UFOs supposedly leave behind substances that leach into the ponds and give them curative powers." "Townspeople cite an abundance of twins in Chilca-- more than 100 pairs in this town of 10,000, Nueda says, as proof of the power of the 'Twin Maker' pond." The Peruvian Ministry of Health, however, does not agree. "'Some communities have large numbers of twins for genetic reasons or coincidence,' said Dr. Augusto Ascenzo, head of a prominent Lima fertility clinic." But the people of Chilca still maintain the three ponds are being "powered" by UFOs. "Twins Veronica and Moncia Sanchez, whose mother regularly bathed in the 'Twin Maker,' say many of their friends have seen strange objects hovering over Chilca." "'They are bright lights which form a circle and hover over the ponds or the beach,' Veronica said." (Muchas gracias a Guillermo Alarcon, Nestor Echarte, Alfredo Mendiola y Ignatius Graffeo para esas historias. Tambien a Sr. Graffeo para la historia AP, "Peruvians say aliens enchanced baths" by David Koop.) (Editor's Note: Interestingly, Chilca is one of the oldest city sites in Peru. Archeologists found the remains of a huaca (pyramid) and textiles dating back to the Encanto culture of 3600 B.C. See Peru Before the Incas by Edward P. Lanning, Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood, New Jersey, 1967, pages 50 to 52.) SIX UFOs SEEN BY HUNDREDS NEAR MONTERREY, MEXICO On Sunday, February 28, 1999, Canal (Channel) 12 in the city of Monterrey, in Coahuila state, Mexico aired home video of six UFOs flying over the La Husteca section of the city, heading for Las Pampas mountain. Hundreds reportedly witnessed the overflight, which lasted several minutes. The video showed six luminous triangular objects flying westward in formation, with the camcorder focus set on zoom. Monterrey is on Camino (Highway) 40 approximately 924 kilometers (574 miles) north of Mexico City. (Muchas gracias a Marco Reinoso Ballesteros y Guillermo Alarcon para esa historia.) CIGAR-SHAPED UFO HOVERS OVER A MALL IN ITALY On Saturday, February 27, 1999, a dark, cigar- shaped object was seen hovering above a shopping mall, the Euromercado di Casalecchio di Reno, in Bologna, a large city 330 kilometers (198 miles) north of Rome. "The object revolved around its own axis and moved across the sky with a 'falling leaf' motion. It was an object in the shape of a cigar that rotated on its stem. It was first seen by a woman who looked up and realized it was not a conventional aircraft. Shortly, within five minutes, it was seen by many other witnesses in the shopping center parking lot. It had two lights, one on each end. One light was an eye-searing brilliant white, the other was less bright and considerably smaller. The object traversed three-quarters of the sky in about 10 seconds, at a considerable velocity." (Grazie a Gianfranco Degli Esposi di Centro Ufologici Nazionale per questo rapporto.) UFO FLAP ERUPTS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA On Monday, February 22, 1999, at 8:20 p.m., John B. Brons, 29, a machinist in Lake Forest, California (population 62,685) was outside looking at the near-conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. When he turned away, he "saw something moving, and it wasn't an aircraft. This was a triangular- shaped body, and actually there were two of them. They had white lights around them." "They were both the same. They had a red light in the middle of them. Also, when they flew over, they made no noise. And when they came back, they were heading from the south to the east, and then the east to the south. And they were moving really slow. We tried to film them with the camcorder but the tape jammed." (Email Interview) Lake Forest is a suburb of Los Angeles, located 40 miles (64 kilometers) southeast of City Hall. On Tuesday, February 23, 1999, at 9:05 p.m., S. Windsor, 32, spotted a UFO in Van Nuys, a Los Angeles suburb in the San Fernando Valley about 17 miles (27 kilometers) west of City Hall. "My friend and I were standing in my driveway, when I said, 'Look! It's a shooting star!'" Mr. Windsor reported. "But it didn't look like a shooting star. It did not have a tail or a streak following behind it. The object, yellowish to orange in color, seemed to pulsate--get bigger and smaller as it shot across the horizon. It went north to south and crossed to the horizon in about five seconds. I counted one thousand (five times) to estimate the time it took to streak across the sky." "My friend saw it and agrees with me that it was not a shooting star. His wife got a glimpse of it before it vanished. The object made no sound as it flew over... or afterward." (Email Interview) Also on Tuesday, February 23, 1999, but at 7:30 p.m., Louise C. and her husband were in their garage, which serves as "his workshop," at their home near Mira Mesa, north of San Diego, Cal. "My husband and I were in the garage, putting together his new table saw," she reported, "Our next-door neighbor knocked at the door and asked us to come outside to view Jupiter and Venus. We took turns looking through her binoculars, when my husband, getting a little anxious to get back to his new toy, just happened to look north and see a bright light behind the row of homes on the other side of the street." Louise estimated that the UFO was about one mile to the north over a canyon in the Rancho Penasquidas nature preserve, not far from the U.S. Marine Corps Miramar Air Station. "He alerted us in time to see an amber 'ball of light' leisurely move straight up from behind the houses across the street. When it got to about 150 feet up, it moved at a fairly slow but consistent pace south and slightly east, passing to the right of where we were standing. When it got over the house, it shot up at about a 75 degree angle, while heading south but more slightly to the west. It moved in this direction until we could no longer see it in under seven seconds!" "The strangest thing about it was that there was no sound. This is not possible. There should have been a sonic boom or at the very least a noise from the afterburners if it was a military jet." "It might be interesting to note that just after the light disappeared , a couple of jets (possibly USMC EA-6 Prowlers--J.T.) were dispatched from that base and flying north and slightly east at about 300 feet toward the Twentynine Palms area. Immediately following the two jets was a craft, moving quickly but without a lot of noise. It was flying in the same direction and at the same altitude as the jets, so we could see it clearly in the binoculars but did not recognize it. Its look was triangular, and it had three lights, one at each point of the triangle. One light was the round red flashing light, another light was amber and the third was pale green." (Sounds like an F117 Stealth fighter--J.T.) Louise said none of the witnesses recognized the first UFO, adding, "My husband had nine years in the Marine Corps and the last three in an air wing, so he is extremely familiar with the type of aircraft" flying out of Miramar. (Email Interview) EYEWITNESS CONFIRMS MISSISSAUGA SIGHTING A new witness has stepped forward to confirm the recent UFO sighting in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada (population 463,388) on Thursday, February 25, 1999. Graham S.D. owns an apartment on the top floor of a building "next to the lake in Mississauga. My sons' bedroom window overlooks the city of Toronto about 12 miles away." "Last Thursday, I was in my sons' room with them, just chatting and generally staring out the window, when I noticed an extremely bright 'sparkly' light about what I estimated to be two miles south of Toronto over the lake." (Lake Ontario--J.T.) Graham and his family are used to air traffic passing over their building at night, on final approach into Pearson International Airport. But this light was different. "My expectations led me to believe that the light would get closer and reveal its origins. However, this is not what happened. We observed the light as it grew in size to truly huge proportions, the reflection off the lake was unreal. It started at this point to move obliquely toward us and away from us. As it did this, I observed it to change to an orange but brighter than sodium bulb light.. It did not sparkle as a bulb or other light might do at a distance but rather it spat light in spurts around it. It moved slowly at first, grew brighter, then zipped to the right of our view, which is at least 30 miles unhindered, in one or two seconds. The lake reflected the lights if its passing." (Many thanks to John Hayes for this report.) (Editor's Note: Covering 30 miles in two seconds yields a flight speed of 5,400 miles per hour.) BLACK HELICOPTERS VISIT LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS Late Thursday evening, March 4, 1999, twenty-five UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters roared into the city of Lowell, Massachusetts (population 109,439) on a "night tactical insertion" exercise. The helicopters hovered over an abandoned textile mill on the Merrimack River and disgorged a U.S. Navy SEAL Team, which rappelled to the roof via nylon ropes. According to the Lowell Sun, the City Council was notified of the exercise by the USA Department of Defense, but, as in Kingsville and Port Aransas, Texas, residents of the target neighborhood were not alerted before the practice raid. "Lowell has the best type of urban landscape-- old mill buildings, overhead wires--to train Navy SEALs in urban assault," TV Channel 5 in Boston reported. "Terrified residents awoke to the sounds of battle." Indeed, the noise of the helicopters and mock explosions was heard as far away as Tyngsboro and Chelmsford, 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Lowell. Earlier in the week, a strange incident occurred in Wichita (population 304,011), the largest city in Kansas. Randy H. stopped for to buy some gasoline at a truck stop, the Matfield Green Service Area, just off Interstate Highway I-35, also known as the Kansas Turnpike. Randy claims he saw two men--male, Caucasian, aged 20 to 30--in strange uniforms. "I encountered two of their troops in transit southbound from the Kansas Turnpike," he reported, "I struck up a conversation with one of them, who told me they were on their way back to McConnell (Air Force Base, just southeast of Wichita--J.T.) from Topeka." "The uniforms were black jackets with white lettering and black military pants. The jackets had a large (globe-with-olive-wreath) insignia of the UN on the back with United Nations printed above the globe and Military Police printed below, and black armbands with MP printed in white." According to the witness, the two soldiers departed in a black 1996 Infiniti bearing Minnesota license plates BGS-106. "I noticed a parking permit in the right rear corner of the rear window, gold background with black lettering saying McConnell Air Base with numbers in white with a black background." (See the Lowell, Mass. Sun for March 4, 1999. Thanks also to UFOSSI for the Wichita sighting report.) (Editor's Comment: The Lowell Sun was the only newspaper to carry the story. The exercise was ignored by both Boston newspapers--the rah-rah, gung-ho conservative Boston Herald AND the liberal, warm-and-fuzzy, sip-your-herbal-tea Boston Globe. The same thing happened two weeks ago in Texas when the mainstream media ignored the goings-on in Operation Last Dance.) from the UFO Files... 1930: MAPINGUARY IS ON THE PROWL South America has its own version of Bigfoot-- the Mapinguary, a tall black-furred hominid usually seen in the jungles along the Rio Araguaia, in Brazil's state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Here is one of the more memorable sightings: In 1930, a trail guide named Inocencio was interviewed by Brazilian writer Paulo Saldanha Sobrino. Inonencio told of how he "went on an expedition up the (Rio) Uatuma towards the sources of the (Rio) Urubu." "When their boat came to an impassable waterfall, they cut across the jungle to reach the Urubu watershed. After two days, Inocencio became separated from the rest of his party. He shouted and fired his gun, but there was no reply except the chatter of monkeys and the squawks of angry birds." "So he began to walk almost blindly, feeling he must do something in such a critical situation, until night fell, when he climbed into a large tree and settled himself in a fork between the branches." "As it grew dark, the night was filled with jungle noises, and Inocencio rested happily enough until suddenly there was a cry which at first he thought there was a man calling, but he realized at once no one would look for him in the middle of the night. Then he heard the cry nearer at hand and more clearly. It was a wild and dismal sound. Inocencio, very frightened, settled himself more firmly into the tree and loaded his gun. Then the cry rang out a third time, and now that it was so close, it sounded horrible, deafening and inhuman." Inocencio reported, "'Some forty yards away was a small clearing where a samaumeira (tree) had fallen, and its branches had brought down other, smaller trees. This was where his last cry had come from. Immediately afterward there was a loud noise of footsteps, as if a large animal was coming at me at top speed. When it reached the fallen tree, it gave a grunt and stopped. Finally, a silhouette the size of a man of middle height appeared in the clearing.'" "The night was clear. There was no moon, but the starry sky gave a pale light which somehow filtered through the tangled vegetation. In this half-light, Inocencio saw a thickset black figure 'which stood upright like a man.' "'it remained where it stood, looking perhaps suspiciously at the place where I was. Then it roared again as before. I could wait no longer and fired without even troubling to take proper aim. There was a savage roar and then a noise of crashing bushes. I was alarmed to see the animal rush, growling, towards me. I fired a second bullet. The terrifying creature was hit and gave an incredibly swift leap and hid near the old samaumeira. From behind this barricade it gave threatening growls so fiercely that the tree to which I was clinging seemed to shake.'" "'I loaded my gun again and, fearing another attack, fired in the direction of the roaring. The black shape roared again more loudly, but retreated and disappeared into the depths of the forest. From time to time, I could still hear its growl of pain until at last it ceased. Dawn was just breaking.'" "Not until the sun was well up did Inocencio dare to come down from his perch. In the clearing, he found blood, broken boughs of bushes and smashed shrubs. Everywhere was a sour penetrating smell." Unwilling to deal with a wounded Mapinguary, Inocencio set off for the river and eventually rejoined his companions. As he told Paulo Saldanha Sobrino, "I maintain that I have seen the Mapinguary. It is not armored as some people will have you believe. They say that to wound it fatally you must hit the one vulnerable spot--the middle of the belly. I can't say where it was wounded by my bullet, for there was blood everywhere." (See On the Trail of Unknown Animals by Bernard Heuvelmans, Librairie Plon, Paris, 1955, pages 194 and 195.) FUN UFO WEBSITES: Explore the physics of UFOs with John H. Wiegman at his site, Flying Saucer Mechanic. Log in at http://www.delphi.com/flyingsaucermec Don't miss our parent site, UFOINFO, with its wide array of photos, features, news stories and links. Drop in any time at our website at http://ufoinfo.com Back issues of UFO Roundup can be accessed, read and downloaded at our webpage. Come and read all about the UFO scene in the 1990s at http://ufoinfo.com/roundup That's it for this week. We'll be back in seven days with more saucer news from around the planet, brought to you by "the paper that goes home--UFO Roundup." See you then. UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 1999 by Masinaigan Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post news 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 the item first appeared.
