ParaNet BBS/louisufo
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ParaNet BBS/louisufo
| File Name: | louisufo.txt |
|---|---|
| Author: | Unknown |
| Date: | Unknown |
| Posting BBS: | Unknown |
| BBS Main Page: | ParaNet Main Page |
| Key Words: | ParaNet, UFO, Ufology |
(5335) Sun 7 Mar 93 7:33p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Louisville Ufo
St:
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* Forwarded from "MUFONET"
* Originally by Vernon Stilwell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 7 Mar 1993, 13:40
This article appeared in the Thursday, March 4, 1993, late edition of the
Louisville, KY Courier-Journal.
** Start of article **
Title - UFO puts on show - Jefferson police officers describe close encounter
Written by: Gardiner Harris - Staff Writer
Two Jefferson County air unit police officers - described by their lieu-
tenant as "solid guys" - swear they had a two-minute dogfight with a UFO dur-
ing a routine helicopter patrol Friday night.
Two officers on the ground said they, too, spotted the object.
The UFO - a glowing pear-shaped object about the size of a basketball -
literally flew circles around the helicopter, even though the fliers say they
were moving at speeds approaching 100 mph.
In one blinding moment when both craft were hurtling toward each other,
the UFO shot three baseball-size fireballs out of its middle, all three offi-
cers said. The fireballs fizzled into nothing.
Officers Kenny Graham and Kenny Downs haven't talked much about their
Friday night flight over General Electric Appliance Park because they fear
few will believe them. But they are convinced they weren't hallucinating.
"We both go to church every week," Downs said as a way of explaining
how normal the two normally are. "In fact, I might start going to church
twice a week."
Officer Mike Smith, in his squad car below, said he saw the object
for only about a minute. But he confirmed the UFO shot three fireballs
into the air and then disappeared.
Officer Joe Smolenski said he tried for more than a minute to catch up
to the object in his squad car. "I've been looking for 'em for 14 years,
and I quess this is the closest I've come to something I couldn't explain."
Lt. David Pope, who was roused out of bed at 12:30 Saturday morning by
a call from the startled officers, attested to their sanity and sincerity.
"These guys are totally solid guys," Pope said. "There's no doubt in
my mind there was something out there."
The night started out like every other night. Graham and Downs got to
work around 6 p.m. and were soon in the air flying a routine patrol. Gra-
ham, 39 and an 11-year veteran, was the pilot. Downs, 39 and a 5-year vet-
eran, was the spotter.
While in the air, they received a call about a possible break-in near
Sanford Avenue and Buechel Bank Road. They flew off and quickly reached the
area, which is near the northeast corner of Appliance Park, around 11:50 p.m.
As they circled, Graham saw something that looked like a small fire off
to his left. Dozens of bonfires had been lit around the county that night by
revelers delighting in the new snowfall.
But Graham soon decided it wasn't a fire. Downs shined his 1.5-million
candlepower spotlight on the object, which began to drift back and forth like
a ballon as the light washed over it. Then it gradually floated up to the
helicopter's elevation about 500 feet above the ground, where it hovered for
a few seconds.
"Then it took off at a speed I've never seen before," said Graham, an
experienced pilot.
The object made two huge counter-clockwise loops and finally approach-
ed the helicopter's rear.
Graham, afraid he object would ram his tail rotor, pushed his speed
above 100 mph. The UFO shot past them and instantly climbed hundreds of feet
in the air. It descended again and flew close to the helicopter. Graham
tried to close the gap with the object, and it again flew away. As the UFO
approached on a parallel course, the three fireballs burst out of its core.
Scared Graham banked away from the object.
"When we came back around, it was gone," Graham said.
When the two returned to their base, Graham called the control tower
at Standiford Field to ask if their radar had spotted anything unusual. It
had not.
Downs called the county's radio dispatchers to ask if anyone else had
reported sightings. No one had.
But the two did get confirmation from two officers on the ground, one
of whom was Smith.
"I have no idea what it was," Smith said, but his confirmation cheered
the two fliers.
"It makes me feel better," Downs said, :that there are ... grown men
out there who are sworn to protect this community and who saw the same thing."
** End of article **
... Catch the Blue Wave!
--- FMail 0.92
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <*> Fidonet UFO Moderator (1:123/26.1)
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(5336) Sun 7 Mar 93 7:34p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Louisville, Ky Ufo
St: 5913>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "MUFONET"
* Originally by Vernon Stilwell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 7 Mar 1993, 13:41
The following article appeared in the Friday, March 5,1993, late edition
of the Louisville, KY Courier-Journal:
** Start of article **
Title- "The only thing clear is what UFO wasn't"
Written by: Leslie Scanlon - Staff Writer
So, you ask, just what was that strange glowing object in the sky that
skirmished with Jefferson County police helicopter last Friday night?
The National Weather Service doesn't have a clue.
The air-traffic controllers at Standiford Field detected nothing un-
usual on their radar.
The security staff at General Electric's Appliance Park - over which
the apparent encounter took place - saw just the police helicopter.
But a UFO investigator, while remaining non-committal about the Louis-
ville case, said the description the police reported of a bright pear-shaped
object that shot three baseball-sized fireballs at them shortly before mid-
night does match reports of UFO sightings from the 1940s and 1950s.
Those reports which have been carefully studied by government invest-
igators, "sound an awful lot like the case you just reported to me," said
Bill Pitts of Fort Springs, Ark., director of a UFO investigative group
called Project Blue Book.
Usually, only 10 to 20 percent of the thousands of UFO sightings report-
ed each year are unexplainable, said Walter Andrus, international director of
the Mutual UFO Network, a Texas-based group that investigates sightings.
Most of the time, he said, investigators find that "something mundane" caused
the observance - anything from unusually bright planets to weather ballons to
falling fragments of rockets.
"I believe that the people saw something," said Bob Myers, a star enthus-
iast and former president of the defunct Stargazers of Louisville group. But
"I don't necessarily believe that they saw some kind of space vehicle driven
by some kind of alien being ... 99 percent of the time there's an explanation."
"Whatever did happen, a Couirier-Journal story yesterday in which four
police officers swore they had encountered a UFO provoked a spasm of interest.
The police got calls from reporters, the TV tabloid show "Hard Copy," and about
75 citizens some of whom said they had seen UFOs too.
Although no one can say for sure, people whith scientific backgrounds said
yesterday that the UFO probably was not:
* A plummeting meteorite. "It didn't seem to be moving consistently in one
direction," said Alan Johnson, a professor of material science at the Univers-
ity of Louisville's Speed Scientific School. "An incoming meteorite usually
streaks across the sky," he said, while this one "appeared to be dancing
around."
* A lightning ball or fireball. This phenomenon sometimes occurs during
intense electrical storms. But last Friday night, the snow stopped falling
at 7:48 p.m., the temperatures were in the 20s, the solid cloud cover was be-
ginning to scatter and Louisville experienced no thunder or lightning. "No
way," said Rick Lasher, a spokesman for the Louisville office of the National
Weather Service.
* A known aircraft. Alhough many can exceed the 100 mph at which the hel-
icopter pilot said he was traveling when the UFO zoomed past him and instant-
ly climbed hundreds of feet. John Dressman, a professor of mechanical engine-
ering at the Speed School, said he's not familiar with any military or other
aircraft that can climb that rapidly while moving forward.
Dressman has one suspicion about what the pilots might have seen -
reflections, created by a heavy blanket of snow and thick cloud cover.
"I certainly would not question the credibily of the officers -
they seem very reliable officers," he said. But "there's a certain
suspicion in my mind that the atmospheric conditions might have led to
misconstruing things."
From about 1947 to 1969, the Air Force investigated UFO sightings
in an effort known as Project Blue Book. They tracked "just hundreds
and hundreds of sightings," said Maj. Dave Thurston, an Air Force
spokesman in Washington. "None of them proved to have any basis in
fact or to be any threat to national security. So we stopped the
study."
But in 1988, about 150 of the people who had been involved in
researching UFOs for the military, intelligence or other federal agenc-
ies banded together to re-create Project Blue Book as a civilian
agency. According to Pitts, the director, the sightings during the
early decades - many of which were reported by astronomers, pilots, and
astronauts - were so intriguing that "we think there's a definite possi-
bility or probability that the better ones are extraterrestial."
** End of article **
--- FMail 0.92
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <*> Fidonet UFO Moderator (1:123/26.1)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(5337) Sun 7 Mar 93 7:35p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Louisville Sighting
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "MUFONET"
* Originally by Vernon Stilwell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 7 Mar 1993, 13:48
This article appeared along with the previous article in the Friday,
March 5,1993, late edition of the Louisville, KY Courier-Journal.
** Start of article **
Title - UFO sightings are often similar
Written by: Leslie Scanlon - Staff Writer
Believe them or not, people who regularly investigate sightings
of unidentified flying objects say they find remarkable similarities in
reports for which investigators can find no explanation.
Most UFO sightings - 80 or 90 percent or more, by some estimates -
actually turn out to be low-flying jets or some quirk of weather or other
phenomenon.
But in the cases where no answers are found, investigators say the
descriptions are sometimes amazingly consistent.
Told of what Jefferson County police officers saw Friday night, Bill
Pitts of the monitoring group Project Blue Book said: "Some of our astro-
nauts and Air Force pilots have had dogfights with some of the same things.
But we don't know what the light sources are and what they may be attach-
ed to."
In World War II, similar objects known as "foo fighters" flew beside
both American and German planes, said Walter Andrus, international director
of the Mutual UFO Network. "They thought we had a secret weapon and we
thought they had a secret weapon," he said. "It's never been explained."
Often, Andrus said the unexplained UFO sightings involve craft that
are disk-shaped or round, although in recent years people in both the
United States and Europe have reported triangular-shaped objects with
lights on the corners.
Last February, he said, dozens of people from the Williamsport, Pa.,
area said that hundreds of UFOs - some bowl-shaped, come triangular -
flew over their homes around 6:30 p.m. "People got up from their dinner
tables to go out and watch."
Hundreds of people have reported being abducted by aliens, which us-
uslly are described as small, frail creatures about three or four feet
tall with a "gray to white to chalky color, large heads, great big bulg-
ing eyes," Andrus said.
Many say the aliens carefully examined their bodies, and in some cases
implanted pellets the size of BBs in their noses or sinus cavities. "They
seem to be tracking devices," Andrus said so "these people can follow you."
** End of article **
... Catch the Blue Wave!
--- FMail 0.92
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <*> Fidonet UFO Moderator (1:123/26.1)
