July 18, 2011
It would seem that the Mutual UFO Network will stop at nothing when it comes to protecting their image, even if it means destroying that very same image in the process. A recent incident involving the Jerry Pippin Show is a perfect example.
Jerry was scheduled to interview Elaine Douglass, the founder of The Committee to Reform MUFON, on Wednesday, July 13, but something happened right as the interview was supposed to be broadcast. Suddenly and without warning the broadcast was taken off the air due to a "denial of service." What that means is that somebody launched a cyber attack against the Pippin Show's Internet Service Provider and tried to shut it down or make its content unavailable, which they succeeded in doing for the duration of the show.
Elaine was supposedly going to reveal some potentially "bombshell" information that would expose all of the corrupt practices that MUFON had been engaged in and blow the lid off of the UFO organization's mild-mannered cover once and for all. It would therefor be understandable why Clifford Clift, MUFON's International Director, and the rest of the Board of Directors would want to stop it. However, by doing so they may have exposed themselves for who and what they really are.
Not just any John Doe off the street can hack into a computer system and deny service to a radio broadcast. It would take somebody with some serious computer hacking skills to pull it off. Perhaps even somebody with high-level government connections. We all know there are several members of the Board of Directors who would fit that description.
John Schuessler has a national security clearance that he obtained via help from Bigelow Aerospace, Tom Deuley used to work for the NSA, Clift and several other board members have backgrounds in Military Intel, and let's not forget Deputy Director of Investigations Chuck Modlin, who according to former MUFON STAR Team manager Chase Kloetzke once boasted that he had shaken hands with every US president except Bill Clinton. When it comes to connections, there aren't many higher levels of government than that.
Of course just because several of MUFON's board members have federal ties that does not necessarily mean that they used their influence to interrupt a radio broadcast. It could have just been a random occurrence...couldn't it?
If it had happened only once that would be a distinct possibility, but a few days later the underhanded trickery continued. On Sunday, July 17, Jerry Pippin planned to pod-cast a prerecorded interview that he had done with Elaine Douglass the day before. The pod cast was set to be unveiled at 10:00 PM Eastern time. Almost immediately after it was announced somebody once again tried to hack into the system and put a stop to it.
This time Jerry was ready for the cyber assault but even so the pod-cast was once again delayed, first for 30 minutes, then another 15. Finally the interview was divided in two and worked on i two different places. Part one eventually was released at 10:45 the night of the 17th, while part two was released the next day.
I just got finished listening to both parts and I must say that I was not at all shocked by what I heard. The accusations that Ms. Douglass made about MUFON were basically the same things that many people have been suspecting all along; that they have been taken over by the government, that they are working behind the scenes with billionaire businessman Robert Bigelow to further his own personal agenda, that they have been tampering with their own Case Management System in order to hide the best cases from the public while releasing nothing but worthless disinformation...even that they themselves have become part of the shadow government that is covering up the truth about UFOs. The accusation has even been made that MUFON is nothing more than a disinformation agency for Big Brother.
None of this has been conclusively proven of course, but MUFON's latest actions have gone a long way towards convincing people that it is true. Why else would they tamper with a radio broadcast and try to censor information? Of course, this isn't exactly the first time they have tried to control the flow of information either.
In July of 2010 MUFON actually canceled their own Internet forum because they did not like some of the discussions that were taking place. A handful of people were critical of MUFON and the BoD so hundreds of people had their forum taken away, without even as much as an explanation for why it happened. It just suddenly vanished without a trace. This forum was easy for MUFON to cancel because they actually owned the rights to it. All they had to do was push the "delete" button. There were other forums that were not so easy to deal with.
After the MUFON forum was shut down some of the former members decided to create their own forums. Three of them eventually came into being, all made up of very disgruntled MUFON forum refugees. One forum in particular was very critical of MUFON's International Director Clifford Clift and the rest of the board members and it wasn't long before that forum paid the price for their outspoken attitude.
Just a short time after the forum was created somebody hacked into the forum provider's main server and deleted the entire UFO section of the forum. Once again, this is not something that any computer-user on the web could have perpetrated. It took somebody with some serious cyber-hacking skills, possibly even government connections, to pull it off...and it was almost certainly MUFON that did it. They were not even trying to be subtle about it. Just like the latest incident with the Jerry Pippin Show...it is obvious to everybody who the culprit is.
The only question left is, if MUFON is responsible for perpetrating these dirty tricks why are they being so obvious about doing it? Are they so desperate to protect their image that they are willing to tarnish it in the process? By doing so they are only convincing people that the suspicions they have about the once highly-regarded UFO organization are correct, and that MUFON really has been corrupted by outside influences.
Of course it is possible that they just don't care about their image anymore. Maybe their unholy alliance with Bigelow and the Intelligence community has made them so big and so powerful that they no longer have to care what anybody thinks about them. Maybe they are finally revealing the truth about who they really are...and that might just be the dirtiest trick of them all.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Swamp Gas, Weather Ballons and...Tire Tracks?
It seems the debunkers have a new weapon in their arsenal. In addition to the usual sure-fire tactics they normally employ to beat UFO believers into submission...like swamp gas, weather balloons, sleep paralysis, etc...they now have another skeptical bomb at their disposal...tire tracks. That's right, tire tracks. This was the "brilliant" explanation used to discredit a recent crop circle sighting in Goldthwaite, Texas.
Of course, the term crop circle is a little misleading in this case since in order to have a crop circle you first have to have a crop...you know, stuff that grows up out of the ground and gets harvested by farmers? These circles happened to appear in the middle of a cow pasture and the only vegetables growing out there are the kind that have horns and say "Moo." Nevertheless, people still referred to them as crop circles simply because there were circles...two of them...embedded in the dirt.
The circles were first discovered on March 4, 2011. It is unknown when they were actually created since the land they appeared on is not frequently used, but when the property-owner finally went to check on her ranch, there they were...two strange circles imprinted on the ground.
Each circle consisted of a strip of churned up earth approximately 15 inches wide and perfectly round. The inner circle was approximately twenty feet in diameter, the outer close to twenty-seven feet. There were no tracks leading too or away from them, nor were their any identifying markings of any kind. No tread marks, foot prints, shovel indentations...nothing. It was like they just appeared there out of thin air.
Several photos were taken by the initial witness and a report was filed with NUFORC. MUFON's elite STAR team investigators were called in to investigate while the photos were quickly disseminated throughout various internet sites and forums. Nobody who saw the photos was able to come up with a convincing explanation for how the circles were formed.
I, personally, do not have a clue how they were formed. I have seen circles similar to these in the past and I never could figure out how the darned things were created. I have several theories about them but nothing convincing. There simply is not any readily available explanation for them. The new ones are just as mysterious, with no obvious identifying marks of any kind. Faced with an absence of conclusive evidence I was ready to chalk this recent case up as another unexplained mystery, so you can imagine my surprise when I happened to read a NUFORC update which claimed that the case had been solved!
It said: "The marks on the ground at a farm site in Goldthwaite, Texas, have been investigated by Teresa Turner, MUFON “Star Team” Investigator, and Deputy Director for Documentation. Following her investigation of the incident, she has concluded that the marks in the ground, first reported by the property owner, were caused by men driving trucks on the farm. Ms. Turner’s follow-up report to NUFORC can be read here."
Driving trucks on the farm? How on God's brown Texas Earth could perfect circles have been formed by "men driving trucks on the farm?" Incredulous with disbelief I then proceeded to read the follow-up report which gave a few more scant details.
"Concerning NUFORC case number S80116- After further investigation by an area investigator, it was determined (through photos and further witness statements) that the crop circles were in all probability the tracks left from the prior weekend when several young men went "muddin" in their big mud trucks. While there was considerable concern that the circles were perfect in shape, witness did not wish to have the case investigated further."
Did I read that right? Did that say that the tracks were in all probability left over from the previous weekend when several young men went "muddin" in their big trucks? Just in case anybody does not know what "muddin" is, allow me to explain.
Muddin, or mudding, is where a bunch of drunken rednecks drink a lot of beer and then get in their vehicles, (usually big pickup trucks) and drive out to some muddy cow pasture or field somewhere. They then stomp on the gas pedal and spin around in circles and slide all over the place through the mud. The faster they go the better they like it. In some cases of extreme drunkenness they might even attach an old car hood to the back of the truck with a rope and then one of the drunken rednecks can ride on the hood as the truck goes churning around at ever-increasing speeds. The revelry usually lasts until the truck flips over or the guy on the car hood goes sailing off into a ditch and ends up with multiple broken bones and lacerations. This is what good ol' boys call fun.
Someone once theorized that if you were to put a bunch of monkeys in a room and had them typing nonstop on type-writers for a certain period of time sooner or later through sheer chance they would accidentally create the entire works of Shakespeare. Whether or not that is true I don't know, but I do know that if you put a hundred drunken rednecks behind the wheel of a bunch of pickups and have them go sliding around in the mud there is no way they are going to create a perfect circle...I don't care how long they try. It ain't gonna happen.
What all of that means is that there is no way in Hades that those circles were created by "tire tracks." A closer look at the evidence also argues against the "official" explanation.
First of all there are no tread marks of any kind...none, nada, zero. Secondly, there are no ruts of any kind which there surely would be if a tire were spinning through the mud with the weight of a vehicle pressing down on it. These tracks were not depressed into the ground at all. It looked like the Earth was just broken up somehow by something scraping along the top of it. Third, there are no tracks leading to or away from the circles. So what happened? Did some modern-day cowboy drop down out of the sky, make a perfect circle with his "iron horse" then sail off into the sunset? Not unless a Ford Thunderbird really can sprout wings and fly.
Another problem with the "tire-track" theory is the dimensions of the circles. The measurements of the two circles are approximately 20 feet and 27 feet in diameter. That would mean that if they were made by a vehicle then it would have to have a track width from wheel to wheel of close to seven feet wide. A quick check of the dimensions of most modern full-sized pickups shows a track width of about 65 to 68 inches, which means that a "big" truck would be almost a foot and a half too narrow to create the tracks.
There also is the problem of the turning radius. This is the diameter of the smallest circle that a vehicle would be able to turn in if the steering wheel were cranked all the way. The Goldthwaite circles are only twenty feet in diameter for the inside circle yet a full-size pickup would take almost twice that distance to make a complete turn...there is no way a pickup could turn a complete circle in twenty feet. If the rear wheels were sliding and the truck were spinning around with the front bumper chained to a stake it might be possible to turn that sharply but then the rear tire tracks would be almost overlapping one another...they definitely would not maintain a seven foot wide track.
What all of this means is that there is no way those circles were made by tire tracks from a vehicle. So what did make them?
I don't know. Obviously the circles must have been made by something, terrestrial or otherwise, but at this time I do not know what it was and I will be the first to admit it. I just wish the MUFON investigator would have done the same, instead of saying that "in all probability" they were tire tracks. Mrs. Turner herself practically admitted that she had doubts about that explanation when she stated that "there was considerable concern that the circles were perfect in shape..."
So why did she bring the case to a premature conclusion with a faulty explanation that she had suspicions about? The answer lies in the next words that she wrote saying that "the witness did not wish to have the case investigated further." Apparently, since Mrs. turner realized she would not be able to do a more detailed analysis of the evidence she decided to close the investigation by assigning to it the most probable explanation she could come up with--tire tracks--even if she and everybody else who looked at the photos instinctively knows it is not correct.
I wonder how many times this has happened in the past? Do Ufologists routinely assign false explanations to difficult cases simply so they can bring the case to a close? Is the reason why so many UFO sightings end up being classified as swamp gas, Venus or weather balloons, simply because those are the most convenient explanations an investigator can come up with? If so, it is no wonder we still don't know the truth about UFOs after more than six decades of studying them. If investigators are going to assign convenient BS excuses to every difficult case than we never will find out the truth.
I have to say that I am extremely disappointed in the outcome of this case. I would expect this type of haphazard explanation from a rabid skeptic or debunker, but not from MUFON which is supposed to be the largest and most credible UFO investigative organization in the world. And their STAR team is supposed to be the most elite of the investigators. This type of lackadaisical attitude is inexcusable.
I am also disappointed in the fact that NUFORC would blindly accept such a lame explanation without question simply because a MUFON investigator gave it to them. They should have known better than that. A case should not be declared to be "solved" unless there really is an accurate solution. If they are unsure about the explanation or if they just don't know, then they should classify it as "unexplained" or "unsolved" or "Who the heck knows?" They shouldn't just blindly accept the first thing that comes along.
There is no harm in admitting that something is unexplainable. Unidentified Flying Objects by their very nature are hard to identify. Ignorance of what they are may not be the truth that we seek but at least it is the truth. I would rather have that than a pile of BS any day...even if it is a convenient pile of BS.
Of course, the term crop circle is a little misleading in this case since in order to have a crop circle you first have to have a crop...you know, stuff that grows up out of the ground and gets harvested by farmers? These circles happened to appear in the middle of a cow pasture and the only vegetables growing out there are the kind that have horns and say "Moo." Nevertheless, people still referred to them as crop circles simply because there were circles...two of them...embedded in the dirt.
The circles were first discovered on March 4, 2011. It is unknown when they were actually created since the land they appeared on is not frequently used, but when the property-owner finally went to check on her ranch, there they were...two strange circles imprinted on the ground.
Each circle consisted of a strip of churned up earth approximately 15 inches wide and perfectly round. The inner circle was approximately twenty feet in diameter, the outer close to twenty-seven feet. There were no tracks leading too or away from them, nor were their any identifying markings of any kind. No tread marks, foot prints, shovel indentations...nothing. It was like they just appeared there out of thin air.
Several photos were taken by the initial witness and a report was filed with NUFORC. MUFON's elite STAR team investigators were called in to investigate while the photos were quickly disseminated throughout various internet sites and forums. Nobody who saw the photos was able to come up with a convincing explanation for how the circles were formed.
I, personally, do not have a clue how they were formed. I have seen circles similar to these in the past and I never could figure out how the darned things were created. I have several theories about them but nothing convincing. There simply is not any readily available explanation for them. The new ones are just as mysterious, with no obvious identifying marks of any kind. Faced with an absence of conclusive evidence I was ready to chalk this recent case up as another unexplained mystery, so you can imagine my surprise when I happened to read a NUFORC update which claimed that the case had been solved!
It said: "The marks on the ground at a farm site in Goldthwaite, Texas, have been investigated by Teresa Turner, MUFON “Star Team” Investigator, and Deputy Director for Documentation. Following her investigation of the incident, she has concluded that the marks in the ground, first reported by the property owner, were caused by men driving trucks on the farm. Ms. Turner’s follow-up report to NUFORC can be read here."
Driving trucks on the farm? How on God's brown Texas Earth could perfect circles have been formed by "men driving trucks on the farm?" Incredulous with disbelief I then proceeded to read the follow-up report which gave a few more scant details.
"Concerning NUFORC case number S80116- After further investigation by an area investigator, it was determined (through photos and further witness statements) that the crop circles were in all probability the tracks left from the prior weekend when several young men went "muddin" in their big mud trucks. While there was considerable concern that the circles were perfect in shape, witness did not wish to have the case investigated further."
Did I read that right? Did that say that the tracks were in all probability left over from the previous weekend when several young men went "muddin" in their big trucks? Just in case anybody does not know what "muddin" is, allow me to explain.
Muddin, or mudding, is where a bunch of drunken rednecks drink a lot of beer and then get in their vehicles, (usually big pickup trucks) and drive out to some muddy cow pasture or field somewhere. They then stomp on the gas pedal and spin around in circles and slide all over the place through the mud. The faster they go the better they like it. In some cases of extreme drunkenness they might even attach an old car hood to the back of the truck with a rope and then one of the drunken rednecks can ride on the hood as the truck goes churning around at ever-increasing speeds. The revelry usually lasts until the truck flips over or the guy on the car hood goes sailing off into a ditch and ends up with multiple broken bones and lacerations. This is what good ol' boys call fun.
Someone once theorized that if you were to put a bunch of monkeys in a room and had them typing nonstop on type-writers for a certain period of time sooner or later through sheer chance they would accidentally create the entire works of Shakespeare. Whether or not that is true I don't know, but I do know that if you put a hundred drunken rednecks behind the wheel of a bunch of pickups and have them go sliding around in the mud there is no way they are going to create a perfect circle...I don't care how long they try. It ain't gonna happen.
What all of that means is that there is no way in Hades that those circles were created by "tire tracks." A closer look at the evidence also argues against the "official" explanation.
First of all there are no tread marks of any kind...none, nada, zero. Secondly, there are no ruts of any kind which there surely would be if a tire were spinning through the mud with the weight of a vehicle pressing down on it. These tracks were not depressed into the ground at all. It looked like the Earth was just broken up somehow by something scraping along the top of it. Third, there are no tracks leading to or away from the circles. So what happened? Did some modern-day cowboy drop down out of the sky, make a perfect circle with his "iron horse" then sail off into the sunset? Not unless a Ford Thunderbird really can sprout wings and fly.
Another problem with the "tire-track" theory is the dimensions of the circles. The measurements of the two circles are approximately 20 feet and 27 feet in diameter. That would mean that if they were made by a vehicle then it would have to have a track width from wheel to wheel of close to seven feet wide. A quick check of the dimensions of most modern full-sized pickups shows a track width of about 65 to 68 inches, which means that a "big" truck would be almost a foot and a half too narrow to create the tracks.
There also is the problem of the turning radius. This is the diameter of the smallest circle that a vehicle would be able to turn in if the steering wheel were cranked all the way. The Goldthwaite circles are only twenty feet in diameter for the inside circle yet a full-size pickup would take almost twice that distance to make a complete turn...there is no way a pickup could turn a complete circle in twenty feet. If the rear wheels were sliding and the truck were spinning around with the front bumper chained to a stake it might be possible to turn that sharply but then the rear tire tracks would be almost overlapping one another...they definitely would not maintain a seven foot wide track.
What all of this means is that there is no way those circles were made by tire tracks from a vehicle. So what did make them?
I don't know. Obviously the circles must have been made by something, terrestrial or otherwise, but at this time I do not know what it was and I will be the first to admit it. I just wish the MUFON investigator would have done the same, instead of saying that "in all probability" they were tire tracks. Mrs. Turner herself practically admitted that she had doubts about that explanation when she stated that "there was considerable concern that the circles were perfect in shape..."
So why did she bring the case to a premature conclusion with a faulty explanation that she had suspicions about? The answer lies in the next words that she wrote saying that "the witness did not wish to have the case investigated further." Apparently, since Mrs. turner realized she would not be able to do a more detailed analysis of the evidence she decided to close the investigation by assigning to it the most probable explanation she could come up with--tire tracks--even if she and everybody else who looked at the photos instinctively knows it is not correct.
I wonder how many times this has happened in the past? Do Ufologists routinely assign false explanations to difficult cases simply so they can bring the case to a close? Is the reason why so many UFO sightings end up being classified as swamp gas, Venus or weather balloons, simply because those are the most convenient explanations an investigator can come up with? If so, it is no wonder we still don't know the truth about UFOs after more than six decades of studying them. If investigators are going to assign convenient BS excuses to every difficult case than we never will find out the truth.
I have to say that I am extremely disappointed in the outcome of this case. I would expect this type of haphazard explanation from a rabid skeptic or debunker, but not from MUFON which is supposed to be the largest and most credible UFO investigative organization in the world. And their STAR team is supposed to be the most elite of the investigators. This type of lackadaisical attitude is inexcusable.
I am also disappointed in the fact that NUFORC would blindly accept such a lame explanation without question simply because a MUFON investigator gave it to them. They should have known better than that. A case should not be declared to be "solved" unless there really is an accurate solution. If they are unsure about the explanation or if they just don't know, then they should classify it as "unexplained" or "unsolved" or "Who the heck knows?" They shouldn't just blindly accept the first thing that comes along.
There is no harm in admitting that something is unexplainable. Unidentified Flying Objects by their very nature are hard to identify. Ignorance of what they are may not be the truth that we seek but at least it is the truth. I would rather have that than a pile of BS any day...even if it is a convenient pile of BS.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
An Out of This World Celebration
July 5, 2011
Yesterday was the Fourth of July and I celebrated it by sitting in a parking lot in northern Indiana. I would rather have been someplace else but I was stuck there so I decided to make the most of it by checking out the local firework displays.
Apparently folks in the Hoosier state take their Independence Day celebrations seriously. No sooner had the sun scarcely cast its rays above the early morning horizon than the fireworks began detonating. I suppose that's about how long it took for the alcohol to start taking effect since the locals had probably started drinking early in anticipation of the holiday. Having worked late the night before I was rudely awakened to the sounds of crackles and booms.
The fireworks continued being launched at intermittent intervals throughout the day. Usually there would be a flash of light and a puff of smoke, followed several seconds later by a loud boom! That was if they were some distance away from me. The ones that were closer I usually heard before I saw. Some were really close since there was a fireworks stand just a couple hundred feet away from me. Those were the ones that made me sit up and take notice. The sound was practically deafening.
When darkness finally came the sky really lit up with a spectacular display of colored flashes and sparkling lights. They seemed to be shooting off from several different places at the same time. Rainbow colored lights were filling the horizon. As I was sitting there peacefully watching the festivities something interesting happened...I saw an IFO! I know, it would have been much more exciting if it had been a UFO, but thanks to Steve's IFO series I was able to identify it pretty easily so it was just an IFO. Actually there were several of them.
The first was a bright flash of white light that zipped past a streetlight. It was only there for a second and then it was gone. A few seconds later it flashed by again in the opposite direction and I quickly recognized what it was--a big moth flying past the street light. That one wasn't too hard to figure out.
The second one was also a flash of light, this time neon yellow and very close to me. It continued to flash off and on as it zig-zagged back and forth around me. This one was also very obvious--a firefly. I used to see them all the time back when I was a little dude in Texas so they are pretty familiar to me. Nothing worth getting overly excited over.
Then something happened that was worth getting excited about...or at least so thought a crowd of people that started enthusiastically gesturing towards something off in the distance. A bright orange orb of light was rising up at an angle from the ground...followed by another...and another. Soon there was a long string of bright orange lights making their way up into the heavens, one after the other. There must have been twenty of them in all, floating through the sky and forming tiny little little geometric shapes. Triangles were very common.
The people in the little crowd obviously had no idea what they were looking at and a flurry of guesses soon filled the air. Airplanes, military aircraft...UFOs...
Soon people started pulling out cameras and snapping pictures and that was when I decided to intervene. The things they were looking at were obviously Sky Lanterns, or Chinese lanterns. I deduced that from the color they were and the way they looked with their flickering orange glow. The fact that they were drifting with the wind also helped me form a conclusion. Plus I had seen photos of them in Steve's IFO thread. I had never seen any in real life until that moment but they are pretty easy to recognize...at least for a UFO investigator. The people in the crowd probably would not have had a clue if I had not told them.
After I had dazzled the crowd with my brilliant explanation I wandered off chuckling to myself and wondering how many reports MUFON and NUFORC were going to get about orange-colored UFOs over norther Indiana. Checking the lists this morning I was not disappointed. There were several of them, not just from the Midwest but all over the country, and all describing basically the same thing.
Yesterday was the Fourth of July and I celebrated it by sitting in a parking lot in northern Indiana. I would rather have been someplace else but I was stuck there so I decided to make the most of it by checking out the local firework displays.
Apparently folks in the Hoosier state take their Independence Day celebrations seriously. No sooner had the sun scarcely cast its rays above the early morning horizon than the fireworks began detonating. I suppose that's about how long it took for the alcohol to start taking effect since the locals had probably started drinking early in anticipation of the holiday. Having worked late the night before I was rudely awakened to the sounds of crackles and booms.
The fireworks continued being launched at intermittent intervals throughout the day. Usually there would be a flash of light and a puff of smoke, followed several seconds later by a loud boom! That was if they were some distance away from me. The ones that were closer I usually heard before I saw. Some were really close since there was a fireworks stand just a couple hundred feet away from me. Those were the ones that made me sit up and take notice. The sound was practically deafening.
When darkness finally came the sky really lit up with a spectacular display of colored flashes and sparkling lights. They seemed to be shooting off from several different places at the same time. Rainbow colored lights were filling the horizon. As I was sitting there peacefully watching the festivities something interesting happened...I saw an IFO! I know, it would have been much more exciting if it had been a UFO, but thanks to Steve's IFO series I was able to identify it pretty easily so it was just an IFO. Actually there were several of them.
The first was a bright flash of white light that zipped past a streetlight. It was only there for a second and then it was gone. A few seconds later it flashed by again in the opposite direction and I quickly recognized what it was--a big moth flying past the street light. That one wasn't too hard to figure out.
The second one was also a flash of light, this time neon yellow and very close to me. It continued to flash off and on as it zig-zagged back and forth around me. This one was also very obvious--a firefly. I used to see them all the time back when I was a little dude in Texas so they are pretty familiar to me. Nothing worth getting overly excited over.
Then something happened that was worth getting excited about...or at least so thought a crowd of people that started enthusiastically gesturing towards something off in the distance. A bright orange orb of light was rising up at an angle from the ground...followed by another...and another. Soon there was a long string of bright orange lights making their way up into the heavens, one after the other. There must have been twenty of them in all, floating through the sky and forming tiny little little geometric shapes. Triangles were very common.
The people in the little crowd obviously had no idea what they were looking at and a flurry of guesses soon filled the air. Airplanes, military aircraft...UFOs...
Soon people started pulling out cameras and snapping pictures and that was when I decided to intervene. The things they were looking at were obviously Sky Lanterns, or Chinese lanterns. I deduced that from the color they were and the way they looked with their flickering orange glow. The fact that they were drifting with the wind also helped me form a conclusion. Plus I had seen photos of them in Steve's IFO thread. I had never seen any in real life until that moment but they are pretty easy to recognize...at least for a UFO investigator. The people in the crowd probably would not have had a clue if I had not told them.
After I had dazzled the crowd with my brilliant explanation I wandered off chuckling to myself and wondering how many reports MUFON and NUFORC were going to get about orange-colored UFOs over norther Indiana. Checking the lists this morning I was not disappointed. There were several of them, not just from the Midwest but all over the country, and all describing basically the same thing.
For the past two years the Fourth of July holidays have been marked by an increase in UFO reports of colored fireballs. It seems that this year was no exception. I think we can at least be fairly certain that a number of those reported holiday UFOs are actually IFOs. Maybe not all of them, but a large percentage. I'm sure they will be back next year too. So will the people who point excitedly into the sky and snap blurry photos with trembling hands as they think they are witnessing something extraordinary. I won't be arguing with them either...the firework displays were out of this world!
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