Earth (42 page)

“I reached for my binoculars while flying on autopilot,” he reports in Leslie Kean's book
UFOs
, “and, viewing it magnified ten times, found that this light-emitting object had a definite shape: that of a thin cigar … sharply defined, and pointed on both ends. The aspect ratio was approxi
mately 15:1 and I could clearly see a dark band two-thirds of the way along from left to right….

“As I drew nearer to the object, a second identical shape appeared beyond the first. Both objects were of a flattened disc shape with the same dark area to the right side. They were brilliant yellow with light emanating from them. I passed the information to Jersey air traffic control (ATC) and they initially said they had no contact. I pressed the point over the next few miles and the controller at Jersey, Paul Kelly, then said he had primary contacts south of Alderney….

“At this point, the passengers began to notice the unusual things and to ask about them. I decided not to make any announcement over the intercom so as not to alarm anyone, but it was obvious that some were getting concerned. By now the two identical objects were easily visible without binoculars….

“ATC then informed me that there were two reflections from primary radar, both to the southwest of Alderney. This was beyond my destination, for which I was glad as the objects were becoming uncomfortably close. Their brilliance is difficult to describe…. They both seemed to be stationary, but the radar traces proved otherwise: they were actually moving away from each other at about six knots….

“Approaching the point to begin descent, twenty miles north-northeast of Alderney, I maintained an altitude of four thousand feet to remain in good view of the objects. If they started to move off, I wanted to be able to take action to avoid them if at all possible.

“Due to my close proximity, the dark area on the right of the nearest one took on a different appearance at the boundary between the brilliant yellow and the dark vertical band. There appeared to be a pulsating boundary layer between the two differences in color, some sort of interface with sparkling blues, greens, and other hues strobing up and down about once every second or so….

“The safety of the passengers is paramount [and] so to land was the priority…. If the aircraft had been empty, I would have gone a lot closer, perhaps overflown the nearer object to gather further information and satisfy my curiosity….”

On landing, Captain Bowyer asked if any of the passengers had seen
anything unusual and, should they want to report it, to leave their name and number at the check-in desk. At least six passengers saw the objects, two of whom—Kate and John Russell—went public. Bowyer's official report, together with a sketch of one object, was sent to Jersey ATC and to the Ministry of Defence and the CAA. While in Alderney, he received confirmation for the radar traces, from which he deduced that he had been about fifty-five miles away from the first object. “It was at this point,” he said, “that its massive size became clear, and I estimated it to be up to a mile long.”

While inbound to Jersey from the Isle of Man, Captain Patrick Patterson, piloting a BAe Jetstream of Blue Islands airways, witnessed one of the objects, matching Captain Bowyer's description.
34

My several communications with Captain Bowyer reinforced a conviction in the validity of this remarkable encounter.

In an interview with an American reporter in 2011, Nick Pope, former head of the U.K. Ministry of Defence (MoD) UFO project, commented on the Channel Islands incident, which was included in the release of about nine thousand declassified pages of MoD documents dating from 1985 to 2007:

“The pilot and several of his passengers saw a UFO, which they said was essentially a mile long. And several other pilots saw it, but said, ‘We're not going to report this.' And here's the great little get-out-of-jail-free card for the MoD: Just by a matter of maybe a few hundred meters, it turned out that this was in French air space, so MoD was given this little get-out to say, ‘Well, it happened in French air space, so it's not an issue for us.' Clearly, that was an absolutely outrageous abrogation of responsibility.”
35

Stephenville, Texas

Steve Allen and two friends were in their home town of Stephenville on the evening of January 8, 2008, when they noticed flashing lights about 3,500 feet above ground level. “The ship wasn't really visible and was totally silent, but the lights spanned about a mile long and a half mile wide,” Allen told Angelia Joiner of the
Stephenville Empire-Tribune
(a first-rate journalist with whom I have discussed the case in person). “The lights went from corner to corner. It was directly above Highway 67 traveling toward
Stephenville at a high rate of speed—about three thousand miles per hour is what I would estimate.”

As they watched, the lights reconfigured themselves from a single horizontal line into two sets of vertical lights, about a quarter of a mile apart. Then they turned into what looked like white flames. Some kind of fireball, perhaps? This was discounted when about ten minutes later the object or objects returned and flew overhead. “Two military jets, possibly F-16s, were in pursuit,” said Allen, a private pilot,
36
who later appeared on CNN's
Larry King Live
show, together with others.

Major Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station, Fort Worth, denied that F-16s or any other aircraft were in the area on the night of January 8.
37
Later that month, however, he admitted that ten F-16s
had
been in the area at the time “on training missions,” and eventually the Mutual UFO Network was able successfully to requisition the relevant radar data.

One afternoon in early January—prior to any publicity about the sightings—Ricky Sorrells, a machinist, was hunting on his sixteen-acre property, three miles outside of Dublin, Texas, about ten miles from Stephenville, where he lives with his wife and children. While easing through a stand of trees some distance behind his home, he casually glanced upward, continued on, then froze in his tracks. “I took a step or two, and then I realized what my eyes had seen,” he told journalist Ronald Erdrich. “I look back up, and there it is. It's covered the sky, as far as you can see.”

Viewed through his rifle's telescopic sight, the object appeared as very large, without seams, nuts, or bolts. “The only distinct characteristics were cone-like protrusions on the bottom that he surmised had something to do with keeping it airborne, and a subtle wavering in the atmosphere beneath it, like heat rising off pavement in the summertime,” Erdrich reported. “The object lingered for a moment, and then quickly took off to the north, though it didn't seem to disturb the air when it did so.”
38

Following media publicity, Sorrells came to regret having spoken about it. “Sorrells believes military officials have been harassing him by flying military aircraft over his property at low altitudes, at all hours,” wrote Angelia Joiner. “Not just once, but four times, he claims to have seen the
massive flying object he estimates to be the length of ‘three or four football fields.' …”

The day after speaking with the Associated Press, Sorrells was contacted by a man who implied he was an Air Force lieutenant colonel, and whose behavior became threatening. The colonel also seemed responsible for an ensuing spate of harassment by low-flying military helicopters (often in the small hours) as well as by F-16s over Sorrell's property.
39

The Stephenville events generated worldwide media interest for many weeks, leading many researchers to believe that finally—perhaps—disclosure was just around the corner. It was not to be.

Monmouth, U.K.

In September 2008, the historic border town of Monmouth, South East Wales, was visited by flying triangles. One of the witnesses, Finian Handley, contacted me early in 2010 after hearing an interview on Radio Wyvern in which I discussed the incidents. Finian asked if I had known his late father, the conductor Vernon “Tod” Handley, who died on September 10, 2008. I was delighted to tell him that I had indeed worked with Tod in various orchestras and that, in company with my colleagues, held him in high regard for his fine musicianship and “stick” technique. Unlike many conductors, he was genuinely modest, devoid of superficial showmanship—and always cheerful.

Finian is a taxi driver. At around 21:30 on September 26, while driving with a passenger through Whitchurch, a few miles from Monmouth, two black triangles appeared “almost directly over the car, going slowly in the opposite direction,” he related to me. Four blue lights could be seen along the back of each craft. “The triangles were only a meter or two apart. This seemed very strange for two craft to be so close together.” The passenger also witnessed the craft, which then disappeared from view. But more was to follow, at around 22:00.

“As I came back into Monmouth, now alone, I saw two ‘orbs,' one above the other, hovering just above the trees in Chippenham Park, right next to the A40 dual carriageway. I continued through the traffic lights and directly past the orbs, which were only four lanes away from me and a few meters above the trees at most. I was so close to them as I passed
them—less than fifteen meters.

“I noticed that the bottom orb had what I can only describe as a chink or splinter of light coming out of the bottom right side, as if the orb was beginning to change shape. I pulled over (on the slip road over the River Wye that leads to Beech Road) as quickly as possible. In this short period—ten seconds at most—they must have completely changed into black triangles, because by the time I'd got out of the car and turned to look at the orbs, there were triangles in the same spot, one beside the other.”
40

“They were low enough to hit with a stone, about the height of two and a half lamp posts stacked on top of each other,” Finian told a local reporter.

“There were several lights on them, arranged symmetrically on the underside (represented by black dots in the drawing) and there were white lights on the three points of each triangle. I can't remember the exact layout of the lights on the underside except that there were at least three different colors, including white and red, and definitely a row of four blue lights along the back end.

“Each triangle was a bit larger than a small passenger jet. They hovered for a second over Chippenham Park [see photo section], then started to slowly move toward me but slightly to my right. Both objects were clearly identical in every way and were moving slower than five miles an hour, taking at least fifteen seconds just to pass over the dual carriageway. They were absolutely silent and there were no other cars on the road at the time….”
41

“As they slowly and silently crossed the dual carriageway, they elongated slightly,” Finian recounted for me. “They momentarily also shimmered, as if becoming partially transparent, but literally for only a second. Then they made a decisive turn away from me—about ninety degrees—and as they departed, all of the different colored lights on the underside, including the flat oval blue lights, faded to white.
42

“After passing over the dual carriageway, they both turned slightly left, keeping perfect formation, now traveling toward the Kymin [a wooded hill overlooking the Wye Valley and Monmouth]; then a few seconds later they split up, one continuing toward the Kymin and the other departing straight up the dual carriageway, maintaining the same speed and height….”
43

“I saw exactly the same thing over Wyesham (above Monmouth) on the
same evening,” wrote one anonymous witness, “the only difference being that what I saw, I believe, was earlier in the evening and the direction was slightly different. But his description of the two ‘craft,' the lights, etc., everything was eerily the same … these two objects came from a northerly direction, just below the Kymin. But the really bizarre thing that occurred to me as they drew closer and eventually passed over my house was that they were hardly moving—traveling really slowly.”
44

About a year earlier, Finian told me, he had seen similar craft in Monmouth, approximately a mile away from those observed in September 2008. “As I pulled up to my sister's house around seven or eight
p.m.
,” he recounted, “I saw two ‘orbs' descend out of the sky. I lost sight of them as I drove up to the house and parked. As I got out of the car and looked to where the orbs had been, I now saw two equilateral black triangles flying almost directly above my head, roughly the size of Big Ben, each with a central white flashing strobe….”
45

Dorset, U.K.

Similar flying triangles were encountered by a couple in Dorset on October 23 or 24, 2008. “My husband and I were overwhelmed by the sight of three ‘roundly' triangular, large objects, which moved through the sky at a low level toward us/our car and then hovered above us on a country lane between Corfe Castle and Langton House (a Holiday Property Bond site) on the Isle of Purbeck,” Judith Relf wrote to me. “This was one weekday evening as we drove home after dinner.

“We were 100% sober, we both saw the same gently moving objects, we stopped the car and agreed to get out of the car to see if we could decide what the objects were—perhaps the sound of them would give us a clue (helicopter/microlite?)—but there was no sound. The objects were too large to be Chinese lanterns and there were three distinct colors—red, green, and white lights—on what looked like the underside of the object. They hovered for a full two or three minutes: surely an aeroplane doesn't silently hover? We watched outside the car and then felt ‘spooked' and decided to get back inside. The objects didn't move away before we did. We started the engine and my husband ‘put his foot down' and focused ahead on getting back to our holiday apartment. The objects then just faded off/away and
we couldn't see them anywhere.