UNITED KINGDOM UFO NETWORK (issue 4 Nov) 3/3

Mon, 4 Nov 1996 20:24:55 -0500 (EST)
Source: United Kingdom UFO Network

(Continuing from 2/3)

[W2]******

From: BUXN19A@prodigy.com (Steven Fitzsimmons)
Date: 2nd October 1996

CNN interviews Buzz Aldrin

About a month ago, CNN did a short interview with Buzz Aldrin and asked him several questions regarding UFO's. They even asked him if he himself saw one. He said he did not, nor does he believe that there is a coverup. Many people have great respect for this man, the second human being to set foot on the moon. But he is only speaking from his experiences, not all of NASA's nor of all of ours. Keeping an open mind on this subject hurts no one. Who knows, in time, we'll all know the truth.

[W3]******

Source: Los Angeles Times (Ventura County Edition)
Date: Monday 12th August 1996

VENTURA COUNTY FOCUS; VENTURA; UFO Messages Prompt Yawns (and a Cleanup); Ventura County Edition

By JASON TERADA

In front of City Hall, the eyes of Father Serra bugged as an alien's. Freeway overpasses proclaimed in huge letters the existence of extraterrestrials. Across Ventura on Sunday morning, schools and public buildings were the canvas for a message about UFOs.

Was it the end of the world as we know it?

Police fielding calls from curious citizens said they didn't think so. And they weren't about to investigate. The only official response from city leaders to the flurry of scrawled messages on butcher paper was to tear them down.

And the public didn't seem much more receptive to perhaps a dozen banners hung from--among other places--City Hall, Buena High School, a newspaper office and a Main Street stationery store.

"Can you believe that? Talk about no respect," said Kern County visitor Judy Salvamoser, gaping at the papier-mache alien's mask taped to the face of Father Juniper Serra's landmark statue at City Hall.

Some locals played it as a lark.

"It's just a bunch of kids screwing around," said resident Greg Jones, who stopped to photograph the statue before city work crews restored the father's own stern visage Sunday afternoon. "I think it's hilarious, personally. They didn't knock his head off or anything."

Such responses may not have been exactly what the true believers were looking for when they went about spreading their message Saturday night.

"DEMAND UFO TRUTH" one banner insisted. "UFOs 'R' REAL" said another. "THE GOV=UFO LIES" said a third.

In one-page, single-spaced manifestoes taped to statues and buildings, they declared that government had taken it upon itself to conceal the truth about UFOs.

"Many citizens are led to believe unknown flying objects are nonsense. To hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel," said the document.

Whether all this was just an elaborate gag or a publicity stunt by those who really think the Earth is visited regularly by beings from outer space was not clear Sunday.

But Scott Sackmann of Ventura, pausing in front of the stationery store at Chestnut and Main streets said: "I just think its some drama queens or some hackers, just wanting to create a stir."

[W4]******

Source: Los Angeles Times (Home Edition)
Date: Sunday 28th July 1996

One-Stop Phenomena

By Mark Ehrman

At the dawn of the '90s, video distributor Tim Crawford stumbled upon some obscure but compelling documentaries about UFOs. Crawford knew--just knew--it was an encounter that would change his life.

"I saw this material and I thought, 'Wow, every video store in America should have this,' " says the 36-year-old self-styled "UFOlogist." So it was that, well before Hollywood's latest space-invader obsession, Crawford divined that "this was a genre about to explode" and set about exploiting it.

In those pre-"X-Files" and "ID4" days, Crawford began cornering the market in documentaries about UFOs, crop circles and the like. Today his company, UFO Central and Home Video, fields about 1,000 titles--some with wiggy home footage of purported flying saucers--many of them exclusively licensed to Crawford. He started a retail outlet, now docked in a paranormal bookstore in Burbank, and, from his warehouse in Venice, sells UFO "video packets" (a selection of the most popular UFO videos) to about 12,000 video stores nationwide.

"The subject has gone beyond a fad," Crawford says. "It's become canonized as part of our culture."

Still, a fad never hurts. Crawford claims business is up 30% since the TV broadcast of an "alien autopsy" video and the release of "Independence Day." With tales of the unexplained now prime movie and TV fodder, UFO Central has become a convenient source for producers who need to scan the "Close Encounters" Zeitgeist fast--past clients include "Hard Copy," the Discovery Channel and A&E. Crawford's selection is diverse enough so that whether the demand is for Pleiadians (nice guys, look a lot like us) or Grays (those big-eyed creatures you see on T-shirts and billboards), no one's particular alien fetish is slighted. He's also got tapes covering the Roswell incident (the supposed 1947 spaceship crash, and subsequent government coverup, in the New Mexico desert) and the secret spaceship depot, Area 51, both of which figure prominently in "Independence Day."

A qualified believer ("there is definitive evidence that there's more to the human species than our existence on our planet"), Crawford admits to seeing "strange lights" in the sky but is swayed more by the unhysterical factual speculation he found in the better-documented tapes. "The heavy-duty information is not so much visual as intellectual and cerebral," he says, eyes blazing above a wispy beard. Not that producers are pawing through Crawford's tapes to find anything like that; when it comes to UFOs and box-office upside, paranoia beats the pants off plausibility any day.

"Right now," Crawford complains, without a trace of irony, "all the public really wants to see are flying saucers."

[W5]******

Source: ITAR-TASS
Date: 24th July 1996

Kazakh Air Defence Spots Second UFO Over Capital In One Month

ALMA ATA July 24 (ACSNA-Tass) - The team of officers on duty at the air defence headquarters of Kazakhstan observed for 100 minutes an unidentified flying object /UFO/ over the capital of Alma Ata on Wednesday morning and their chief, Anatoly Dobrynin, told Tass it looked like a steel-coloured rhomb.

"The UFO was visually spotted at 04:55 hours local time /21:55 GMT Tuesday/ in the eastern sector of the sky over Alma Ata", Colonel Dobrynin said.

The UFO was periodically transmitting a thin green ray to the earth and dim red and yellow lights were occasionally going on and out onboard, according to him.

The object did not change its form, size and place in the air until it disappeared completely at 06:35 hours local time, Dobrynin said.

Radars have not registered the UFO and the officers on duty did not order interceptor jets into the sky. They said they saw no reasons for that and limited themselves only to a report to the superiors and the national committee for emergency situations.

Konstantin Katayev, a spokesman of the emergencies committee, confirmed to Tass that such information had been received from the military and said the "data will be submitted for the most thorough analysis".

He added that air defence services were likely to get strict recommendations on how to act in such a situation.

This was the second UFO spotted over Alma Ata this month. Early in July a group of residents said they had seen a red-blue ball-like object over the outskirts of the capital. The eye witnesses were returning to Alma Ata from the countryside and their car engines died when the UFO flew over the road. The witnesses said they had been seized with strong fear for several minutes.

[W6]******

Source: The Leicester Mail
Date: 17th October 1996
From: RUSHEYMEAD@aol.com

M-FILE - CLOSE ENCOUNTER

LOCATION: Some where in the Atlantic Ocean
DATELINE: early 1960s
SUBJECT: a close encounter
REPORT: Sileby joiner David Mitchell, 55, found himself 'frighteningly close' to a UFO when he was in the Merchant Navy 30 years ago. David was on lookout duty on board a ship bound for Casablanca when he had his first and only sighting of a UFO which he claims shot right up in to the sky in front of him.

"It was a very bright white light, like light from electric, and it had a vapour around it, like some sort of burn-off," he said. The UFO, which he said was about two-and-a-half feet long, disc-shaped, with a green tinge around it, then started coming towards him. It was too close for me and I hid behind a box, just waiting for an impact," he added

Afterwards he asked his shipmates if they'd seen the spaceship. They hadn't seen the craft - but they did notice that the horizon had suddenly lit up during the time of David's encounter....

He told the M-Files: In the Navy you're a trained observer. You know what you see, and that was certainly something inexplicable."

[W7]******

Source: Alberta Report / Western Report
Date: 13th June 1994

Black Triangles In The Sky.

By Toni Owen Center

A spate of UFO sightings leaves investigators baffled

The first recorded UFO sighting came from the Biblical prophet Ezekiel, who reported seeing a flaming chariot racing through the heavens. Since then, UFOs have included everything from brightly-lit globes and cigar-shaped airships to this century's classic flying saucers. Now, black triangles can be added to the list. In the last year, at least 14 Albertans have reported seeing such geometrically-shaped craft in the night sky. The most recent sighting came last month in Edmonton.

The phenomenon has stumped UFO researchers Gordon Kijck and David Thacker. Mr. Kijck, who founded the Alberta UFO Study Group in 1989, says he can quickly dispose of some 90% of UFO sightings. Aircraft, weather balloons, celestial objects such as stars, planets or meteors, and even flights of geese are commonly mistaken as UFOs. To rule out such explanations, Mr. Kijck and his group's dozen volunteer researchers interview witnesses, contact the military, check commercial aircraft activity and compare UFO accounts to weather conditions and "cosmic patterns".

The group protects the identity of those who report UFOs. Many of the most credible witnesses, including police and pilots, fear going public would invite ridicule or damage their careers, explains Mr. Kijck. He also refuses to ascribe UFO sightings to extra-terrestrials or other proposed catch- all phenomena such as hysteria or unexplained geological activity. Says Mr. Thacker: "We aren't advocates of aliens or extraterrestrial visitors. We just think these sightings deserve an explanation. In the absence of any public agency that will give answers, we try to do it."

With the black triangles, however, answers have proven elusive. The first sighting came last August in Lethbridge. It was seen about midnight and had orange-red lights. On April 15 in Red Deer a group of six people reported seeing a similarly shaped object with flashing lights dart silently about 100 feet over their heads. Another Red Deer couple saw an unlit black triangle flying at aircraft altitude a half hour later.

Then, on April 23, an Edmonton couple reported seeing an unlit triangle the size of a large house pass 100 feet over their heads at about 20 miles per hour. And on May 11, four other Edmontonians told city police they had seen a black triangle moving silently at high speed through the sky about midnight.

While Mr. Kijck's group has dealt with more than 50 Alberta UFO reports in the last year, the similarity between the triangle accounts has proven particularly intriguing. The two April 15 sightings in Red Deer are a good example. "These were credible, unrelated witnesses who agreed on time, duration, direction and other details," says Mr. Thacker, a Red Deer agricultural computing consultant. "And their drawings of the object were identical."

The triangles haven't just been seen in Alberta. In the Netherlands, a home-made film of a similar object was broadcast on television last year. And other sightings have been reported in the western U.S. That has led some to speculate that they are actually a secret U.S. aircraft like the Stealth bomber. The Stealth flew for eight years before its existence was made public. And the U.S. is working on a new, top-secret successor to the Stealth, called the Aurora.

Mr. Kijck, however, says reports that the craft were absolutely silent would seem to rule out any possible connection to an actual airplane. The Lethbridge witness also said the triangle he saw performed a bizarre flip just before it disappeared, a manoeuvre the UFO researcher believes would be impossible for a man-made craft. For now, he says, the sightings remain "true mysteries."

[W8]******

Source: Adelaide Advertiser
Date: October 30, 1996

MP Wants To Open 'Alien X-Files'

By Matthew Horan

A federal Liberal MP wants to see Australia's top secret 'X-files' on alien life-if they exist.Backbencher Ricky Johnston of Perth, claims there has been an increase in UFO sightings-most, she admits, following the releaseof the blockbuster movie independance day. "Who am I to say that we are not alone in this universe?" she said yesterday. Ms Johnston conceded she did not knowwhether the Federal Government kept secret files like those investigated by FBI agents Fox Mulder ans Dana Skully in the hit tv series- nut hoped she could "discover the truth"

She has placed on notice a question to the defence, science and transport ministers, asking how many UFO sightings there have been since 1994, how they are investigated and how many of the reports "have not been explained by natural or human activity".

UFO investigator Colin Norris of Adelaide, said the files should be opened. "UFO's have been coming to Earth for thousands of years; there's nothing to be afraid of," he said.

[W9]******

Source: The Associated Press
Date: October 15, 1996

Scientists Give Meteor Account

By JANE E. ALLEN
AP Science Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Scientists believe the mysterious flash of green light seen over Western skies early this month was a meteorite breaking apart -- twice.

The chunk of space rock burned through the atmosphere to create a glow seen over Texas and New Mexico, then orbited Earth for more than 1 1/2 hours before streaking to a blazing doom northeast of Los Angeles, say John Wasson, a University of California-Los Angeles meteorite specialist, and Mark Boslough, a physicist from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.

``It's two events, the same object,'' Wasson said.

Scientists have never seen a meteorite entering the atmosphere, going into orbit and then re-entering the atmosphere and would like to get their hands on it, the researchers said.

UCLA is offering a $5,000 reward for the first chunk weighing at least 4 ounces, with smaller rewards for smaller samples. The fragments would look like small black stones, Wasson said.

Based on messages from lay observers, Wasson and Boslough have come up with the following scenario for the meteorite's plunge:

The object first entered Earth's atmosphere at about 8 p.m. MDT on Oct. 3 east of Las Cruces, N.M. It was heading east-northeast and slowed down as it descended at a shallow angle toward the Texas Panhandle.

It came the closest to Earth's surface near Artesia, N.M., where it began breaking apart, spawning a shower of meteors that created a brilliant sky show extending at least as far as Lubbock, Texas.

The biggest fragment then hurtled back into space. Eventually it slowed to 18,450 mph -- too slow to escape Earth's gravitational field. The chunk briefly became a small ``moon,'' making a single, 100-minute orbit of the Earth.

It re-entered the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean and passed over the California coast near Point Conception. The mass, glowing with heat from the re-entry, continued its journey just north of Bakersfield.

The largest mass stopped glowing northeast of Kernville in the Sierra Nevada, where sonic booms were widely heard, Wasson said.

Wasson said the meteorite was similar to the so-called ``Peekskill fireball'' captured on videotape on Oct. 9, 1992, before it crashed into a parked car in Peekskill, N.Y. Another fireball observed on Aug. 10, 1972, above North America was filmed by a tourist in Grand Teton National Park. It was placed into a new orbit that scientists believe will bring it near to the Earth again next August, the scientists said.

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Wasson says recovered meteorite samples can be sent to him at the Institute of Geophysics at UCLA, Los Angeles, Calif. 90025.

[W10]******

Source: The Electronic Telegraph
Date: Wednesday, October 16, 1996

Bouncing Meteorite Shed New Light On America

International News

By Aisling Irwin

A GREENISH light that lit up western America two weeks ago was a meteorite that plunged into the Earth's atmosphere, bounced back out, orbited the Earth once and careered back into the atmosphere again, scientists said yesterday.

Astronomers say it is the first time they have witnessed the re-entry of a meteorite. "It is so unusual that it has never been observed before although it has been postulated," said Dr Mark Boslaugh, a physicist at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

By the time fragments hit the ground, they would have been very small. Scientists have offered a reward for the first four-ounce meteorite sample handed in.

The drama may reawaken arguments that a monitoring system should be arranged around the globe to scour the skies for meteorites that could hit Earth.

Dr Boslaugh and Dr John Wasson, of the University of California, have pieced together the meteorite's unusual journey from eye-witness accounts and one video recording. "It was a deep red fireball with multi-coloured sparks whirling off its back," said Dr Boslaugh. "Someone who was driving along a road told me that it then 'just kind of winked out'. Everybody says it was beautiful."

A passing pilot said that it lit up the whole ocean. To enter the atmosphere twice, like a stone skimming on a lake, the meteorite must have approached almost parallel to the Earth.

It entered the atmosphere over New Mexico and Texas at 8pm on Oct 3. It slowed while descending at a shallow angle. It came closest to Earth above Artesia in New Mexico, probably at 25 miles high, and began breaking apart, spraying a brilliant shower of smaller meteorites. "It kept going through the atmosphere and the Earth just curved away from under it," said Dr Boslaugh.

[W11]******

Source: Associated Press
Date: October 17, 1996

All Mars, All The Time, Red Planet To Go Online

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- Come next summer, it will be all Mars, all the time.

NASA plans to issue Mars news and weather updates on the Internet and take World Wide Web browsers along for rides in a Mars rover once the Pathfinder spacecraft arrives at the Red Planet.

The probe is to be launched December 2 and land July 4, 1997.

"Every day on the Internet, we're going to post the weather report on Mars -- a little different than Earth -- and there will be a virtual presence on Mars, so everybody in America and for that matter around the world can participate," NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin said Wednesday.

Web users will be able to see what the Mars rover sees as it ambles along the surface and scrutinizes rocks. Expect a 20- to 40-minute lag, though, for the time it takes the signals to reach Earth.

Mars Pathfinder will be the first spacecraft to land on Mars since NASA's twin Viking landers in 1976. Back then, there was no way to share such wonders with so many people. Even with the more recent planetary probes, there's never been anything like this.

"I would definitely term this the first planetary mission in the full-blown Internet era," said NASA spokesman Douglas Isbell. "It's vicarious exploration."

Cold and colder

If all goes well, the rover, named Sojourner, will study Martian rocks and soil for at least a week, possibly months, with scientists and Internet browsers following along.

As for the Martian weather forecast, make it cold and colder. At its equator, Mars is a brisk minus-70 degrees Fahrenheit and gets colder the closer one gets to the poles.

"I would hope that every newspaper would show the weather in Timbuktu -- and why not on Mars, too?" asked Matthew Golombek, project scientist for the Mars Pathfinder. "It's a little chilly, but a nice place to be."

In addition to Pathfinder, NASA plans to launch a Mars orbiter called the Mars Global Surveyor on November 6. It will take 10 months for the spacecraft to reach its destination. Once there, it will map the planet from a circular orbit for two years.

The color images will be posted on the Internet within a day or two.

Neither of the Mars probes will carry messages from Earthlings like Pioneers 10 and 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2, all launched in the 1970s.

NASA is gathering signatures, however, to put on one or two CD-ROMs that will be attached to the Cassini probe, to be launched next year to Saturn. So far, some 500,000 signatures have been collected, Isbell said.

Stay tuned for Saturn weather reports.

[W12]******

Source: Aerospace Daily
Date: October 21, 1996

Cydonia Face To Be Imaged

FACE TIME: While Sojourner is set to crawl around the floor of an ancient channel that scientists believe once carried liquid water, the Mars Global Surveyor will map the planet from a polar orbit that will take it over most points on the surface 26 times during a 687-day Martian year. That will include the so-called "face on Mars" touted in the tabloids as evidence of a past Martian civilization that NASA is trying to cover up. Arden Albee, Global Surveyor project scientist, says the project plans to alert the vocal face-on-Mars lobby whenever imagery from the region where the "face" was spotted is coming up, and to post the imagery on the Internet as soon as it's collected. "We think that we have done all the things that we can possibly do in the framework of this mission to try to address this question of the face on Mars," he says.

[W13]******

Source: Baltimore Sun
Date: September 22, 1996

UFOs Said To Invade Holy Land

TEL AVIV, Isreal -- It's not the invasion Isreal feared most. But aliens alighting in the Holy Land are grabbing the headlines thses days, with a flurry of media reports on UFO sightings and abductions by estraterrestrials in egg-shaped spaceships.

"The Great Invasion," read a headline in the Maariv daily above a list of 16 examples of UFO sightings in the past three months. This week, Maariv said, hundreds stopped on a major highway and stared at what looked like an alien spacecraft doing loops above Tel Aviv before dawn.

A 62 year old Isreali who said he was abducted by aliens on his way to the post office was intervied on television and radio. The story made front-page news for a second day this week when a lab analysis of yellow dust he says was showered on him by his captors was different from any soil found in the area.

Skeptics say Isrealis are simply being swept away by U.S. pop culture. The movie Indenpendence Day - about an alien invasion of Earth - is a blockbuster here. The "X-Files" series - about two FBI agents who investigate paranormal phenomena - is one of the most popular TV shows.

"I strongly believe that what we have now is hysterical behavior," said Ariel Cohen, an atmospheric physicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Cohen said analysis of video footage of alleged UFO sightings suggested cameramen had adjusted the focus to make subjects seem unnatural. Others note Isreal's airspace is known to host a secretive -- but eartly -- air force.

Still, Cohen said the authorities should investigate sightings and publish the scientific explanations that could be found in most cases.

Social scientist, however, are fascinated by the craze.

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, a psychology professor at Haifa University, says people in modern societies are susceptible to quassi-religious fantasies that send the message "you are not alone." Israelis, who live under a perceived military threat from their Arab neighbors, are particularly vulnerable.

"Israelis consider themselves to be very cynical and hardened," Beit-Hallahmi said. "The Israelis are actually the greatest suckers in the world."

A recent television survey suggested nearly one in two Israelis believe in extraterrestrials. True believers are convinced dramitic events are at hand.

One incident even made police look up and take notice. Before dawn Tuesday, Tel Aviv's police switchboard received dozens of calls from people who said they saw a glowing object doing loops over the suburb of Ramat Aviv.

Police spokesman Gadi Doron said officers reported that they also saw a strange light in the night sky, along with hundreds gathered at the scene.

Questions also linger ovet the case of Uri Sakhov, a retiree who said he was en route to the post office when he was grabbed by his hair and collar adn pulled into an egg-shaped spacecraft. His captors were green, reached up to his chest and made unintelligible sounds, Sakhov said.

Scientists who analyzed the yellow dust on Sakhov found it contained 55 percent aluminum and was different from area soil.

Michel Kobi, marketing manager of the lab that examined the dust, said samples were sent to NASA, the U.S. space agency. Kobi said its unusual composition suggested the UFO sightings could not be easily dismissed. "If you combine all the incidents together, there might be something there," he said.

[W14]******

Source: Reuter
Date: October 29, 1996

Business Blooms For Desert UFO Capital Of World

By Nicholas Doughty

RACHEL, Nevada (Reuter) - Out in the desert wastelands, a small group of people believe they are close to a secret so devastating that it would, if revealed, mean the end of government and the collapse of religions around the globe.

Until a few years ago, Rachel was just a small, windblown community of people living in trailers and shacks close to a top-secret U.S. air force base in the mountains of central Nevada.

Now it is the self-proclaimed UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) capital of the world and draws hundreds of visitors from many countries every year, hoping to glimpse strange lights and objects in the night sky.

Claims that the nearby U.S. base, known as Area 51, houses alien spacecraft recovered by the military have touched a chord with people who believe we are not alone in the universe and that there is a murky government conspiracy to hide the truth.

As the millennium approaches, popular television series such as "The X Files" and films like this year's blockbuster "Indpendence Day," about an alien invasion, reflect growing interest in the theme.

For Rachel, with a population of just 100 people, it means that business is suddenly booming -- as it has done for years in the gambling mecca of Las Vegas more than 100 miles (160 km) to the south.

Outside "The Little A-le-Inn," Rachel's only motel on its single street, signs welcome UFOs and their crews. Inside, the menu offers "Alienburgers" and the walls are covered with photographs from around the world of supposed sightings of spacecraft.

A group of men sit at the bar drinking beer, earnestly discussing evil alien plans to deprive our planet of its atmosphere.

Chuck Clark, an astronomer who has written a guide to the area, unfolds a map of the secret air force base which is also known as "Dreamland" and tells tales of aircraft moving at impossible speeds between the mountains at each end of the desert valley.

"If the authorities were completely open about it, the government would fall, the economy would collapse, religions would go crazy," he explains. "Think about the implications."

The stories started in earnest in 1989, when a former U.S. government physicist said he had been researching the properties of an alien spaceship at the base. Some believe it was the craft which was said to have crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

The Pentagon refuses all comment on the remote, closely guarded facility. Military specialists say it has been used to test new and secret aircraft, such as the Stealth bomber, and that these account for most or all of the supposed UFO sightings.

This does nothing to shake the faith of the believers, who spend their time comparing notes on the Internet and say the U.S. military has simply learned to incorporate captured alien technology into its most advanced planes.

Pat Travis, 53, runs "The Little A-le-Inn" with her husband and says the motel's seven rooms are full for most of the year. They do well from selling T-shirts, baseball caps, coffee mugs and other tourist paraphernalia.

"We get people from all over but it's not just business. There are strange things going on round here and some baffling questions," he says. "The government started off lying about it and now they have to keep on lying."

UFO sightings have been reported at a local rancher's mailbox up the road toward the base. A man from California, who says he is an alien ambassador in human form, visits Rachel several times a year. Others come with claims of alien abduction.

There are grainy photographs of the complex of hangars and buildings that make up Area 51 from several years ago, although guards now prevent tourists from making their way along rough tracks to the mountain ridge from where the base can be observed.

Harold Singer, 34, helps run the Area 51 research center in Rachel -- a trailer filled with maps, satellite photographs and information.

"It's growing more popular because of the end of the millennium," he says. "Every thousand years or so, people say the world is going to end, they look for answers elsewhere."

His friend, Marcus Pizzuti, is an earnest artist who makes model aliens for the tourists.

Dressed in army fatigues and wearing a pistol, Pizzuti lives in a tiny shack with his collection of pet desert lizards, boxes of the cigars he loves to smoke and a picture of his mother on a shelf.

Asked to explain why his model aliens resemble human form -- even though they have larger, bald heads -- he has a ready answer.

"I think that we humans were made in their image, that they made us," he says. "These beings travel through the cosmos, creating new races."

So far, the only craft to have landed in Rachel is an F-16 fighter that crashed near someone's trailer during NATO wargames a few years ago. The only hint of danger comes from cattle which occasionally wander on to the road and into the path of oncoming cars.

The people here have yet to find that elusive visitor from another planet, but at least now they can make a living.

The state government of Nevada wants to cash in on the UFO tourist boom as well; it has designated the road that runs past Rachel as "The Extra-Terrestrial Highway" and put up signs showing flying saucers.

Experts on UFOs meet here for regular conferences and the stars of "Independence Day" visited earlier this year as part of the huge publicity drive for the film, leaving a commemorative plaque behind.

"Man, you should have seen this place before the UFO thing," says Singer. "There wasn't nothing here. Nothing at all."

Reuters/Variety

[W15]******

Source: The Cincinnati Post
Date: October 29, 1996

TASK Tracks UFOs Across Ohio

David Wecker, THE CINCINNATI POST October 29, 1996

We interrupt our regular programming to bring you these updates on UFOs in and around the Greater Cincinnati megalopolis.

Kenny Young, a video production specialist and founding member of TASK, short for Tri-State Advocates for Scientific Knowledge, stated that his respect for the mainstream medias coverage of unexplained aerial phenomena reached a new low recently with the print and electronic reporting on what he calls `The Middletown Case.'

For a week in July - commencing immediately after the release of the movie `Independence Day' - Middletown police received nearly 100 calls from people who wondered what that red hovering light they were seeing in the night sky was. Two Middletown officers watched it hold stationary over the Middletown Hospital for 45 minutes on July 5.

After about a week of sightings, a pilot buzzed the object, got a good look at it and decided it was a bunch of helium-filled balloons with several red flares dangling from it, wired so that, when one flare went out, another would ignite. TASK member Dale Farmer, still in his pajamas, wielding a camcorder, caught up with the pilot late one night on the runway of the Hook Field Municipal Airport in Middletown and interviewed him extensively.

"The sightings were widely reported by the citizenry - but, until TASK got to the bottom of it, no one in the media cared," Kenny says.

"Once it was explained, there was a disproportionate amount of coverage. I got calls from USA Today, AP, even CBS News. The media is not eager to advise the public of all the sightings we get that we can't explain. That, to me, is the weird part."

"Anyway, we have some leads on who launched those helium filled balloons. Serious leads. And they may face criminal charges, you know, like inducing panic or felonious mayhem or something, because there were flares falling on households."

October is always a busy month for sightings. Kenny has no idea why that is. It just is. This October is no exception.

At 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 10, a police officer in Clermont County - whose identity Kenny prefers to withhold, as he does with all his sources, watched a `funky green light' disappear from view as he was driving along Ohio 727. Three hours later, a woman saw an oval-shaped light `half a telephone pole high' on nearby Woodville Pike.

A woman driving along Ohio 68 north of Bellefontaine reported three UFO sightings in a half-hour on Oct. 15 - all involving some form of slow-moving, low flying red light and a triangular object. Kenny says the object was last seen low in the sky near the Kenton (Ohio) Airport. This is a case TASK maybe close to solving. You can read more about it on the TASK's Web page (which you can reach via http://users1.ee.net/pmason/TASK.html).

A case Kenny doesn't expect to solve anytime soon revolves around a strange series of sightings in Brown and Ross counties in the early evening of Oct. 16. A reddish-orange light was first seen by a husband and wife near Aberdeen. The wife was reported as being `near hysteria.'

The husband and wife called friends in Ripley, who stepped outside and saw a reddish-orange light heading their way from Manchester, sort of zigzagging in no logical pattern.

About 65 miles away, in Chillico the, dozens of callers lit up the switchboard at WKKJ-FM reporting more of the same.

"This doesn't seem to be a flare from a balloon - it was seen in too wide of an area for that," he says.

"Plus, this performed `abnormal ballistic conduct,' as we would call it."

United Kingdom UFO Conferences
------------------------------------------

Extreme Events Present - ENCOUNTER 'the paranormal experience'
Sunday 15th December 1996 - New Trinity Centre, Bristol 12 midday to 9pm
Guests feature: Nick Pope, Colin Andrews & Jenny Randles
Advance tickets only from - 'TICKETS AT OUR PRICE', The Galleries, Bristol, BS1 2XX - Credit card hotline: 0117 929 9008
Price 15 pounds sterling - http://cybercity.bathl.westnet.uk/user.pages/encount

--

CONNECTIONS - The convention of UFOs, aliens, the unexplained & the paranormal - 28th to 31st March 1997
Confirmed guests: Charles Adlard "X-Files Comic Artist", John Carrigan "Action Actor", Philip Mantle "Director of investigations BUFORA" - other guests to be confirmed.
Location: The Hilton National, Coventry.
Further details from: Connexions, 14 Middleton Grange, Northfield, Birmingham, B31 2HP - Tel: 0976 382 368
e-mail: connexions@journey.demon.co.uk

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