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- The following interview took place on Wednesday, 4 November, in
- Wytheville, VA. Dan Gordon is the news director of radio station WYVE in
- Wyethville. Since October 1st, his station has been besieged with calls
- from residents who have witnessed something strange in the night skies.
- When the calls wouldn't stop, he decided to take a look for himself.
- Gordon was interviewed by ParaNet member Ronald Jennings of Newport News.
-
- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-
- Gordon: ...I call it an aircraft because that's the only term I can
- think of for it. But on October the 13th, on a Wednesday, I was
- with a friend of mine who's a former pilot. And we had spent
- about two and a half hours in the cold with our heads out the
- window looking for the UFO that people had seen. Because I had
- been reporting UFO sightings [as a newsman] up to my neck, and I
- decided that the only way I could actually solve the puzzle was
- go out and see the UFO for myself...
-
- My friend and I rode through all the areas where the sightings
- had occurred, especially multiple sightings. As we were coming
- home, we had about given up the search, I looked to the left on
- Route 21 South, which is about four and a half miles due south
- of Wytheville, between Wytheville and [Speedwell?], I noticed a
- very unusual aircraft coming to my left. So I stopped the car
- and got out. As it approached, it looked like it had...the front
- shape was kinda like a funny-looking, round front to a craft,
- with a long, split cockpit, and I say "split" because as it
- approached, one side of the cockpit went dark. It had a strobe
- that was putting out five different colors of lights on the
- right side of the craft. I told my friend to get out, because he
- was on the other side of the car, and he got out, and we both
- were pretty astounded just from what we saw as it was coming
- toward us.
-
- I had a 35 mm camera on the dash, he had an [?] in the trunk of
- the car. From there on in, we were so astounded and appalled we
- were froze to our spot. We did not use either camera. I've been
- in the news business nine years, I've never missed a shot, to my
- knowledge. In sports...I've covered murders, fires, guy hung
- himself from a tree...everything. So nothing appalls me. This
- appalled me. I probably was standing with my mouth agape.
-
- As it came by me, a side view...it seemed like it went on
- forever. We're talking a couple thousand feet [altitude]. The
- altitude was estimated by my partner, who's a former pilot and a
- former airplane mechanic in Florida...we estimated 2000 feet
- based on the treetop level. As it came past, like I say, it was
- a very large craft, some 8-900 feet in length, probably bigger
- than any 747 I've ever seen at an airport. As it came by, it
- continued very slowly, just like it would skim through the
- air...no sound, no jetstream [contrails], no smell, no nothing.
- Totally quiet, and now we're on a road where there's radio
- going, there's no noise whatsoever. No other cars coming. As the
- craft gets past me, the rear of it - and I say the rear, that's
- the area that we are looking at as it was going away from us -
- had three panels of what appeared to be windows. The top one was
- parallel with the ground, and appeared to be like in a circular,
- dome shape at the top...looked like a window pane you would see
- in a house. To each side of this window was two, they were going
- vertically, same size windows, looked like three windows on the
- end of a house. It was emitting no light, yet it shone a very
- soft white light from the inside like a 75-watt bulb would show
- in a house with very thin shades.
-
- We were both, like I say, appalled. We watched it continue...it
- went behind a cloud. At the same time it went behind a cloud, I
- noticed a spherical dull-red object come from the left, parallel
- with the ground, not from up or down, at a high rate of speed.
- It was not a hologram or a laser or anything because it blotted
- out the stars as it traversed across the sky. It went behind the
- cloud directly with the aircraft. The aircraft momentarily
- (maybe a minute elapsed) came out of the cloud, the spherical
- object didn't, at least not by itself. The craft continued on
- south and we lost sight of it. Because it was the first sighting
- I had ever had, being a skeptic I automatically asked my friend,
- "what did you see? Describe it back to me," to make sure I had
- seen the same thing he did. Because during this whole time we
- were almost quiet. He described virtually the same craft, and
- told me it was unlike any conventional aircraft he had ever
- seen, in magazines or in his dealings with aircraft. And
- naturally we couldn't explain the spherical object. So, because
- we didn't get a picture, we cursed ourselves all around.
-
- So the next night, with a photographer, John Stember, a fashion
- photographer, and his girlfriend and the pilot and myself went
- back in the general area, stopped in the same area, didn't see
- anything. About two miles up the road, the same route, on
- Thursday night of this week, the day after I'd seen the first
- sighting, we saw a craft hovering over a dirt road, to the left.
- I pulled over, slammed on the brakes, we jumped out. The craft,
- like it sensed us, turned and proceeded along the mountain top.
- We grabbed cameras and started shooting with videotape and two
- 35 mm, at a pretty good distance. I had a 135mm lens, 1000 speed
- film, shot [1/50th?]. He was shooting with, I believe, a Nikon,
- 500mm lens, and a multiplier, which made it 1500mm. My camera
- quit after three shots. Don't know why. Got back in the car, it
- worked fine. Next day the camera was checked by a local camera
- shop. Wasn't anything wrong with the battery. I put a new one
- in, just in case, but for some reason it stopped after three
- frames.
-
- What I got was a light shape of a spherical object, a dome
- shape, and another craft coming down, preparing to dock in
- behind. We witnessed this craft docking behind us, large domed
- craft, and proceed with it some 15 miles before it went out of
- sight. The videotape showed nothing but just some very dim
- lights. The 500mm lens with the multiplier came out blank. Mine
- just had a few dots, it was blank. Not enough light let in,
- undoubtedly.
-
- So we decided from there to go public with it that Friday in a
- press conference here at the radio station. And we had a
- gentleman who's a computer analyst, Andrew Convery, in from
- Virginia Beach. He had seen it at a motel, the same night, in
- [?], some 15 miles away. We went public, we did not have the
- film developed yet. We tried to see if we could get any response
- from the military, or if we could get any input from anybody
- else, before we actually told people, and showed them what we
- saw. We had no response. We got no response from anybody except
- the public, they had seen the same thing. We had fifty reports
- of the same object, same description, before they had ever heard
- our description. We had never gone public in the media in any
- form in this county, in this area, with this type of sighting,
- even though we had other sightings, we had not described this
- large, "mother craft", I'll call it. We had 50 sightings. We
- even had a lady come in and participate in the press conference,
- Emma Burchette, who had seen it the night before, had not told
- me what she had seen, we put her on the panel and she told the
- press. It was the first time I'd heard it. It was identical to
- my sighting.
-
- After the press conference, I was hit by a media blitz. So I was
- having a hard time finding [time] to go look for the object. I
- went with a lot of TV crews in the area, and we never saw
- anything. So, finally the media blitz died down a little bit
- last Friday. My wife, my child and I went back to 21 South, the
- same area, finally spotted the craft up on the mountain - Sand
- Mountain - and watched it hover for 20 minutes. Same craft. It
- would not come off the mountain, just hovered up there. And I
- drove all around trying to find a road to get up to that area,
- so I could photograph it. I wanted something close. I came to
- town to get gas, I was about to run out of gas, I came back and
- it was gone.
-
- I've seen it on three occasions, in a nocturnal sighting. On
- October 16th, after about two weeks of UFO sightings, I'm still
- not sure if my mind was playing tricks on me, but I seen, in a
- bright blue sky, 6:00, at Exit 19 off Interstate 81, looked up
- and saw what appeared to be a pie-pan turned upside down, just
- sitting there, and all of a sudden, zoom! it was gone. Silver,
- kinda gold-silver object. No wings, no sign of jetstream,
- nothing, it was a day where you could see jetstreams everywhere.
- I assumed at that time that maybe my eyes were playing tricks on
- me. To this day I'm still not sure but it appears, we have had
- three daytime sightings by people who will not come forward to
- the public but they've told me. And we've had over a thousand
- sightings total.
-
- Jennings: In what period of time?
-
- Gordon: Since October 1. Last Monday night, October 26th, I was in the
- Speedwell area with five people, including four members of a TV
- crew from channel 9 in Washington, DC, we saw 25 jets in one
- area chasing red and white spherical objects. Chasing, but
- couldn't catch. The objects would hover, they'd chase, and
- they'd hover and stop and chase again. Never caught 'em. Finally
- the objects went off over the horizon. When I called Langley
- about it, the lady said they were conducting some kind of
- starflight exercise, its something they scramble their crews
- without notice, and they were done by 6:00. I said, "Lady, they
- were here at 8:30." She said, "no we weren't." That's the end of
- the conversation.
-
- Jennings: Was this Langley, VA or Langley Air Force Base, Hampton?
-
- Gordon: Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
-
- Jennings: OK, could you tell me approximately the times that these
- sightings occurred at, that you've seen?
-
- Gordon: Between 8 and 10 o'clock. All the sightings that I have
- documented that people have called me, with the exception of
- three or four, have occurred between 8 and 10 o'clock, Monday
- through Friday.
-
- Jennings: What about the one in the daylight, do you know what time that
- was?
-
- Gordon: 6:00. One gentlemen saw them at 5 and one saw them at 4:45.
-
- Jennings: In the evening?
-
- Gordon: Yes. We had one sighting at 6AM in the morning, another at
- 12:45AM, but primarily everything from 8 to 10.
-
- Jennings: Did the object emit any sort of a noise?
-
- Gordon: People that have gotten closer than I have, say 6-700 feet, one
- gentleman had it 400 feet above his house, based on [the size
- of] his house and three more houses, he said that it had a real
- solid "hum," when you quit talking you could hear a real faint
- hum. Most anybody's told me, its either a drone or a hum. No
- roar, no hiss, no whoosh, or nothing. Course mine was at 2000
- feet, I couldn't hear it.
-
- Jennings: Could you describe the shape of the object, again, please?
-
- Gordon: Well, the front, is like a very, like a flat, round shape, its
- almost like somebody took a "U", I mean a circle, and cut off
- the side and made it flat on one side. You've got a long,
- elongated cockpit area, it appears to be a cockpit area, with a
- slope on the front. And the rest of the aircraft takes many
- forms. Even though the back has windows in it, it almost looks
- identical to the Star Wars vehicle, that was in the movie "Star
- Wars" that flew between the asteroids, and it had all the
- different shapes and sizes on it. It [the Star Wars ship] was
- real dirty charcoal-gray, whatever, if you remember the Star
- Wars vehicle. That's what people keep describing it as, is a
- Star Wars vehicle.
-
- Jennings: Well, which vehicle in "Star Wars," it wasn't an X-wing fighter,
- was it?
-
- Gordon: No, we're talking about the battleship, whatever,...
-
- Jennings: Well, are you talking about the ship that Han Solo used, by any
- chance? That big thing...
-
- Gordon: Whatever the big ship was that....
-
- Jennings: Not the Death Star, not the big round sphere, it wasn't
- something like that?
-
- Gordon: No, we're talking a ship that had a lot of different shapes on
- it, it was not smooth.
-
- Jennings: All right, that was the ship, I think, that Han Solo flew in the
- movie.
-
- Gordon: That's what people describe it as, and that's the only I know
- that closely fits it. Its not a smooth object that people are
- seeing, now, that's hovering over their houses.
-
- Jennings: OK, one more question, are the sightings still going on?
-
- Gordon: Oh, yeah, we had five today reported to me on the telephone,
- another five walked in the door and told me.
-
- Jennings: Also, there's some reference to the Sheriff having seen
- something?
-
- Gordon: We talked to three members of, deputies of the Sheriff's
- department, in the town of [?], the town of Wytheville, and the
- chief of police in [?] saw it, saw it in [?] on the first night.
- That's what initiated the sightings, but since then, primarily I
- think maybe because of the media blitz, they decided all the
- sightings were refueling of aircraft.
-
- Jennings: And as far as you know, no photographs of the object came out,
- as yet?
-
- Gordon: Well, mine has come out, its just not definitive enough to
- produce, it doesn't show the mountain range because its too
- dark. It can't show anything in comparison to the object,
- because of the distance and the light.