Encounters: The UFO Phenomenon, Exposed!/Encounters - The UFO Phenomenon, Exposed (1995).iso/misc3/misc116.txt

Text File | 1995-10-20 | 33KB | 553 lines

Rick Dell'Aquilla (Co-Sysop) of this system wrote an arti-
cle on our involvement with the Eastlake case.  The follow-
ing is the text concerning our investigation:

Richard P. Dell'Aquila and Dale Wedge, Ohio State Section
Directors for Cuyahoga, Lake, Geauga and Ashtabula Counties
investigated a series of sightings beginning around March
4, 1988 and seemingly centered around the Perry Nuclear
Power Plant and the CEI coal burning plant in Eastlake.

March 4, 1988 was a clear, crisp night.  The stars were
clearly visible, especially to the north over the lake
where there are no city lights.  Venus and Jupiter were
bright and in close proximity to each other in the western
sky.  At about 6:30 P.M., S.B. (name withheld) and her
children were driving home to Eastlake along the lake shore
when they observed a large blimp-like object with lights at
each end, hovering over the lake and rocking up and down
like a "teeter totter."  One light was brighter than the
other and was strobing.  On arriving home, she asked her
husband to accompany her to the beach about 200 yards north
for a closer view of the object which she described as
"larger than a football held at arm's length."

She and her husband walked onto the beach.  The noiseless
object was gun metal gray and seemed to cause the ice on
the lake to rumble and crack loudly in an unusual way which
frightened her.  The witnesses had to shout to be heard
by each other, and were surprised that no dogs were out
barking as would have been expected.

After observing the object for a while, the couple became
concerned for the safety of their children in the car when
the object revolved slowly about 90 degrees, coming almost
overhead (about 1/4 mile high) and pointing it's "front"
end down toward them.  They drove the children home and
continued watching the object from their living room window
which faces the lake.  A neighbor was phoned and she and
her son went to the beach, reporting the same thing.  They
took photographs which did not turn out.

The object began to descend and the witnesses returned to
the beach, where it was now observed to have red and blue
blinking lights.  It emitted 5 or 6 noiseless, intensly
bright yellow triangular lights from its side.  Mr. B.
noticed a brighter light at the apex of the triangles.
They intermittently hovered around the larger object,
darted and zig-zagged into the night sky at velocities far
in excess of known aircraft.  Mr. B stated the noiseless
triangular objects were smaller than a one-seat Cessna and
travelled 50 mile stretches low over the ice in the "snap





of a finger."  They were said to be able to approach the
shore, turn abrupt right angles due east toward the Perry
Nuclear Power Plant about 12 miles away, climbing rapidly
and returning again, all within several seconds.  By this
time, a Coast Guard patrol vehicle had arrived on the beach
in response to S.B.'s several phone calles.

The triangular objects came closer to the shore, causing
the witnesses to become concerned that the lights on
the Coast Guard vehicle would attract the objects and the
lights were turned off.  The triangles continued to fly
off at high speed northward over the lake and eastward
toward the Perry Nuclear Power Plant.  About an hour later,
they returned one at a time into the large ship, which then
landed on the ice.  Several multi-colored lights now came
on for about 5 minutes on the bottom of the object "in a
wave like a movie theater sign."  When these went off, the
ice stopped making noise and everthing became "dead
silent."  The object could no longer be seen within about a
half hour and it was assumed to have gone below the sur-
face.  The next day, huge pieces of broken ice were ob-
served in the area of the landing.

The Coast Guard informed Mr. and Mrs. B the following day
that the Army and NASA had instructed them not to investi-
gate the matter further or go out on the lake in their
cutter to observe the ice in the area of the landing, since
the matter was "out of their league and out of their
hands."  They informed the couple that all information was
being forwarded to Wright Patterson Air Force Base and a
facility in Detroit, Michigan.  In response to a Coast
Guard inquiry, Wright-Patterson refused to confirm or deny
any interest in these activities.

On March 7, 1988, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Lake
County News-Herald carried articles which attributed a
series of reports of large brightly lit objects over Lake
Erie on the prior weekend to several witnesses' misidenti-
fication of the planets Venus and Jupiter.  The newspaper
accounts indicated that the Fairport Harbor Coast Guard
went to the area and saw a large bright object that seemed
to dispurse smaller, bright multi-colored objects.  But
when they called the local air traffic controllers, they
were "informed" that Jupiter and Venus were in alignment
and that the colors were the result of "spontaneous gas
emissions from the two planets."  One article even
attributed this amazing explanation to a professor of
astronomy at a local university.






On reading the articles, Dell'Aquila felt it was unlikely
that U.S. Coast Guard personnel, trained in navigation and
identification of basic celestial objects such as the
planets, could have made such a gross misidentification.
Likewise, the statement attributed to the professor of
astronomy was equally unacceptable, in that no other simi-
lar "spontaneous gas emission" from the planets cited, of
the necessary magnitude, had ever been noted, particularly
on this weekend.

In the course of the follow-up investigation by Dell'Aquila
and Wedge, a Coast Guard incident report was found which
states that Coast Guard personnel responded to several
calls reporting UFOs over Lake Erie on the night of March
4, 1988.  When the Coast Guard arrived, the report confirms
that a large object "dispersed 3-5 smaller flying objects
that were zipping around on them rather quickly.  These
objects had red, green white, and yellow lights on them and
strobed intermittently.  They also had the ability to stop
and hover in mid-flight."  The incident report confirms Mr.
and Mrs. B's reports, including the abnormal cracking of
the ice as the object came closer to it and apparently
landed.  "The smaller objects began hovering in the area
where the object landed (about 1/4 mile east of the CEI
power plant) and after a few minutes they began flying
around again."  The report states that, "One of the small
objects turned on a spotlight where the large object had
been, but the Coast Guard personnel could not see anything,
and then the object seemed to disappear.  Another object
approached these personnel approximately 500 yards offshore
about 20 feet above the ice, and it began moving closer as
the Coast Guard began flashing its headlights, then it
moved off to the west."

By the next night, a subsequent report states that the
sightings are misidentifications of the planets Venus and
Jupiter and that "the flashing lights are gases in the
atmosphere....  Request incident closed this unit."

In response to a classified advertisement placed by the
investigators, other witnesses contacted Dell'Aquila and
Wedge, and were interviewed as the investigation continued.

At about 10:30 P.M. that night T.K. (name withheld) took a
photograph in his back yard, within a few miles of the
Perry Nuclear Power Plant, showing a portion of a brightly
lit triangular object travelling across the sky.  This
object was later confirmed by Mr. and Mrs. B and another
witness to be identical to the triangular objects they were
also observing about the same time a few miles away.




T.K. and his friend were outdoors on the night of March
4, observing the stars through his telescope.  Venus and
Jupiter were reported to be in the western sky behind a
stand of trees.  While looking southward through the
telescope, out of the corner of his left eye, T.K. noticed
a bright, moving object in the sky.  He and his friend were
awe-struck by the triangular object, but he did have the
presence of mind to take 3 photographs with a small
"snapshot" type camera loaded with Kodak 110 film, with
which they had intended to photograph stars through the
telescope.  Only one photograph turned out.  It is the last
in the series, taken while panning ahead of the object, and
shows the front portion of the triangle.  The object was
described as about 3 - 4 inches tall at arm's length
and glowing an intense yellow/orange to white, with a
bright orange/red glow behind it.  It seemed to pulse
brighter and dimmer, moving in a roughly southwesterly
direction until it was obscured by trees.  As it moved, it
accelerated, slowed and accelerated again.  No sound or
smell was noted, although his dog had a strong reaction,
running in circles and tugging on T.K.'s sleeve, apparently
in an attempt to urge him away from the object.  More
investigation continues on this case.

Uploaded with permission of Christopher Evans of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer on an article entitle "Space Case -
The Night The Coast Guard Got Buzzed," dated July 12,
1988.

They keep it in the "Classics File" at the Coast Guard's
9th District Headquarters downtown:  a single-page incident
report issued by the Fairport Harbor station on the night
of March 4, 1988.  The subject:  Unidentified Flying
Objects.

"None of those guys are around anymore and I wasn't there,"
says Chief Quartermaster Leo Deon of the Search and Rescue
Data Section.  "They saw something, but who knows what."

Sgt. Greg Reid was the executive officer at the Fairport
station before he retired and joined the Lake County
Sheriff's Department.

"I believe my guys," he says.  "They were definitely sure
of what they saw."

S.B.sits in her kitchen, sunlight streaming through the
windows, a black, prune-faced Shar-Pei snoring on the
floor.





"I'm a typical Jewish mother with three kids," she says.
"I go to temple.  I believe in God."

She fingers her ponytail.  Then leans forward.

"I know," she says.  "I saw it."

Friday, March 4, 1988, started cold and got colder.  There
were light snow flurries throughout the day, but by the
time the sun set at 6:21 the clouds had broken up and the
night sky was clear and star-studded.

S.B. and her husband, H., drove north along Ohio 91 into
Eastlake and then turned east on Lake Shore Boulevard.
They had taken the kids to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner and
were almost home.  As they neared the lake, they saw the
blink of red warning lights on the two smokestacks that
towered over the CEI plant.

S. liked the lights, the way they rose 500, 600 feet
straight up those cement chimneys like the fins on a rocket
ship.  But tonight they looked different.  The kids noticed
it, too.  At first S. thought some of the lights had burned
out.  But as they drove closer she could make out a shape.
Something in the air.  Out over the lake.  Motionless.

"There's something out there," she said to H.  "See, over
by the stacks."

H. couldn't see anything.  "You're pregnant," he said.
"You're probably hallucinating."

S. was thinking it could be the Goodyear blimp.  It kind of
looked like a football,  but what would the Goodyear blimp
be doing out on a night like this?

"Go down to the beach," she told H.  "I wanna take a look."

Instead of arguing, H. passed their house on Hiawatha and
drove down the hill to the beach.  He parked at the base of
a wide ridge that climbed some 30 feet in front of them,
dirt and chunks of concrete that acted as a breakwall.

A well-torn path led around it to a small, sandy beach that
curled into a corner at the feet of the two smokestacks.

S. got out of the car.

The moon was bright and full, and the ice on the lake
looked eerie.  S. could hear it cracking.  Loud.  Like




claps of thunder.  In between the claps, nothing.  A dead
calm.  Not even a dog barking.  Everybody around here had a
dog and one of them was always barking.

"That's weird," S. thought, reaching the beach, the night
sky bursting above her, limitless, going up and up and up,
and there it was.  The Goodyear blimp times 10.  But with-
out the cabin underneath it.  This thing was slick.  A
football the size of a football field.  Gunmetal gray.
Blinding white light poured out of both ends, but the thing
itslef made no noise, the ice beneath it grinding and
exploding like a string of M-80s.

S. figured it was about a quarter-mile above her, just off
shore.  It rocked back and forth like a teeter-totter.  She
knew what it was.  She read the Weekly World News.  She saw
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind."  but she didn't
believe it.  It couldn't be real, and yet there it was,
moving now, one end swinging ponderously toward shore,
dipping down, closer and closer toward her.

S. started running and she ran right into H., who swore and
started running, too.  They beat it back to the car like a
couple of hicks in a Martian move.  H. hit the gas.  S.
locked the doors and told the kids to get down.

"You don't think they're going to come and get us?" S.
asked.

H. was oblivious.  "Wow," he said.  "This is great.  I'm
gonna get the binoculars."

Three minutes later, S. had hustled the kids out of the car
and into the back bedroom.  She opened the closet door.

"Get in there," she said and shut the door before they
could argue.  She pulled down all the window blinds, turned
off the lights and locked the bedroom door.  Then she
walked into the living room.

H. was standing by the window that faced the lake.  The
object had moved out over the ice.  It seemed to be
descending.  Red and blue lights were now flashing
sequentially along its lower edge.  S. picked up the phone
and called the Eastlake police.

"I want to report a UFO," she told the cop who answered.

He seemed insulted.

"There's something out there," she said.  I'm watching it
now."

He told her to call Lost Nation Airport in Willoughby.
Probably an advertising plane, a helicopter.  S. called the
airport.  The guy in the tower told her they had nothing
taking off or landing.  She asked if there were any weird
blips on his radar screen.  He said no.  He figured maybe
it was the planets, Venus and Jupiter.  She should call
NASA.

All the time S. was watching it.  It was about five miles
out now, still descending, red and blue lights flashing as
if it was going to crash.  She called the cops back.  They
told her unusual activity over the lake was the
responsibility of the Coast Guard.  S. called Fairport
Harbor.  They suggested Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

"Everybody thinks I'm nuts," she told H.

Suddenly a series of bright triangular yellow lights shot
out of the center of the object.  These triangles, there
were five or six of them, it was hard to count they moved
so quickly, looked about the size of a single-seat
Cessna.  They hovered point-up around the object.  Then
darted north, then east, heading inland toward the Perry
Nuclear Power Plant.  S. had never seen anything move that
fast.  Zero to warp-speed in less than a nanosecond.
Without making a sound.  She called the Coast Guard again.
This time they said they were sending a crew by the house.
S. let her kids out of the closet, but made them stay in
the bedroom with the door locked.

Mobile Unit 2 was a 1984 blue Chevy Suburban and the two
guys in it were gung-ho.  Seaman James Powers and Petty
Officer John Knaub said they could see the lights from
Fairport Harbor.  They figured they were flares.  Fishermen
trapped out on the ice, that kind of thing.  They were
towing a 22-foot Boston Whaler just in case.

S. and H. pointed to the object they now thought of as the
mother ship.  A couple of the triangles were zipping around
it.  Powers and Knaub didn't say a word.  Instead of driv-
ing onto the beach, they four-wheeled the Chevy up the
ridge.  The ice was going nuts, rippling and rumbling and
roaring.  S. and H. got out.  The windows were down and
they could hear Knaub and Powers talking to the base.

"Be advised the object appears to be landing on the lake,"
they said.  "Be advised there are other objects moving in
around it.  Be advised these smaller objects are going at
high rates of speed.  There are no engine noises and they






are very, very low.  Be advised these are not planets."

All of a sudden one of the triangles zoomed toward the
Chevy, low, just above the ice, a blur of light blistering
straight at them.  Knaub quickly rolled the van back down
the ridge.  The triangle veered east, then went straight up
and came down beside the mother ship.  S. told Knaub to
turn his lights off.

"Why attract attention" she asked.

Fifteen miles to the southeast, not too far from the Perry
plant, Cindy Hale stepped outside to walk her dog.  She
noticed a triangular light hovering above her.  The dog
began to whine and cower.  Cindy took it back inside.
But she came out again.  The triangle flashed a sequence of
multicolored lights and Cindy responded by flicking her
Bic.  This went on for about 30 minutes, then the triangle
accelerated and was gone.  It didn't make a sound.

T.K. was observing the stars through his telescope when a
bright triangular object caught his eye.  Luckily, T. had
his camera with him.  It wasn't a great camera.  In fact,
it was a little plastic number he had gotten free from
Burger King.  But it worked, and he took a picture of the
triangle before it disappeared silently over the horizon.

Back at the lake, the mother ship was almost on the ice.
For an hour, H. had stood on the ridge and listened as
Powers and Knaub communicated with their base.  They said
things like, "You should be advised that the object
is now shining lights all over the lake and it's turning
different colors."

The ice thundered.  Powers and Knaub had to yell to be
heard.  H. thought the big ship was in trouble.  So did
S.  She had gone back to the house.  The kids were still
locked in the bedroom and she watched from the window.
Suddenly the triangles were back.  They shot one by one
into the side of the mother ship as it seemed to set down
on the howling ice.

It flashed a sequence of red, blue and yellow lights.
S. thought they looked beautiful.  Then the white light
that poured from the front of the object turned red and the
triangles reappeared, hovering over it.  The ice boomed,
louder and louder, and then suddenly it stopped.  The
lights disappeared.  So did the triangles.  Now there was
nothing.  Darkness and silence.





Powers and Knaub drove off white-faced.  S. and H. stood
watch through the night.  In the morning all that remained
were scattered chunks of broken ice.  But that evening, the
triangles returned.

Sheila called the Coast Guard.  This time they sent three
people.  But they arrived too late and the triangles were
gone.  To reassure the B's, they called Lost Nation Airport
and talked to Elizabeth Mele in the control tower who told
them the two bright lights in the sky were Venus and
Jupiter, and the flashing lights were gases in the
atmosphere.

That was Saturday.  On Monday, The Plain Dealer ran a short
item headlined "Cozying of Jupiter, Venus light up sky."
The Lake County News-Herald ran a similar version with the
caption "Sky-gazers mistake planets for UFOs."

S. called Fairport Harbor.  Powers and Knaub weren't there.
She left a message.  They didn't call back.  She called
again and again and again.  Nothing.

Four years later, she's still confused.

"The government flat-out denies it happened and I was
standing there with two government employees watching it
and they saw it and then they disappear."

Chief Leo Deon said the Coast Guard had no official policy
in regard to UFOs, and since there were no more sightings
that was the end of it.  All personnel assigned to Fairport
Harbor in 1988 have been rotated out.  Deon said he
couldn't locate Powers, who had left the service, or Knaub
through personnel records, because those records have been
archived in Washington.

"It was big around the station for a while," says retired
executive officer Greg Reid.  "Then it just fizzled out."

S.B. frowns and points a finger.

"You start to worry," she says.

This case was originally investigated by Rick Dell'Aquila
and Dale Wedge who were members of MUFON in 1988.  The case
has been getting some attention after all this time and we
shall report on any new developments.

The next portion of the upload will be the "official" Coast
Guard document as it appeared when we received it from the
Coast Guard.



#209=file Number
COG:          INFO
OPC          DCS DGP DPA B M O OLE OSR
FP D9AW
D9 AW DE FP
ISN-FP021
P 051405Z MAR 88
FM COGARD STA FAIRPORT OH//CO//
TO AW/COMCOGARDGRU DETROIT MI//OPS//
INFO D9/CCGDNINE CLEVELAND OH//OSR//
BT
UNCLAS //N16144//
SUBJ:  INCIDENT REPORT:  UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS
1. UNIDENTIFIABLE FLYING OBJECTS 1/4 MILE EAST OF CEI POWER
PLANT.
2. AT 2035 LCL THIS STATION RCVD A CALL FROM S.B. [BLANKED
OUT THE NAME AND ADDRESS] RPTNG A LARGE OBJECT HOVERING
OVER THE LAKE AND APPARENTLY ON A SLOW DECENT.  THE OBJECT
HAD A WHITE LIGHT AND WAS APPROX. 1/4 MILE UP AND SHE WAS
UNABLE TO DETERMINE HOW FAR OUT IT WAS.  THIS UNIT SENT 2
CREWMEMBERS TO INVESTIGATE.  BEFORE THEY ARRIVED O/S, WE
RCVD 2 MORE CALLS RPTNG THAT THE OBJECT HAD APPARENTLY
DISPERSED 3-5 SMALLER FLYING OBJECTS THAT WERE ZIPPING
AROUND RATHER QUICKLY.  THESE OBJECTS HAD RED, GREEN, WHITE
AND YELLOW LIGHTS ON THEM THAT STROBED INTERMITTENTLY.
THEY ALSO HAD THE ABILITY TO STOP AND HOVER IN MID FLIGHT.
WHEN MOBILE 02 GOT O/S, THEY RPTD THE SAME ACTIVITY.  THEY
WATCHED THE OBJECTS FOR APPROX. 1 HOUR BEFORE RPTNG THAT
THE LARGE OBJECT WAS ALMOST ON THE ICE.  THEY RPTD THAT
THE ICE WAS CRACKING AND MOVING ABNORMAL AMOUNTS AS THE
OBJECT CAME CLOSER TO IT.  THE ICE WAS RUMBLING AND THE
OBJECT LIT MULTI-COLOR LIGHTS AT EACH END AS IT APPARENTLY
LANDED.  THE LIGHTS ON IT WENT OUT MOMENTARILY AND THEN
CAME ON AGAIN.  THEY WENT OUT AGAIN AND THE RUMBLING
STOPPED AND THE ICE STOPPED MOVING.  THE SMALLER OBJECTS
BEGAN HOVERING IN THE AREA WHERE THE LARGE OBJECT LANDED
AND AFTER A FEW MINUTES THEY BEGAN FLYING AROUND AGAIN.
MOBILE 02 RPTD THAT THEY APPEARED TO BE SCOUTING THE AREA.
MOBILE 02 RPTD THAT 1 OBJECT WAS MOVING TOWARD THEM AT A
HIGH SPEED AND LOW TO THE ICE.  MOBILE 02 BACKED DOWN THE
HILL THEY HAD BEEN ON AND WHEN THEY WENT BACK TO THE
HILL, THE OBJECT WAS GONE.  THEY RPTD THAT THE OBJECTS
COULD NOT BE SEEN IF THEY TURNED OFF THERE LIGHTS.  ONE OF
THE SMALL OBJECTS TURNED ON A SPOTLIGHT WHERE THE LARGE
OBJECT HAD BEEN BUT MOBILE 02 COULD NOT SEE ANYTHING, AND
THEN THE OBJECT SEEMED TO DISAPPEAR.  ANOTHER OBJECT
APPROACHED MOBILE 02 APPROX. 500 YDS. OFFSHORE ABOUT 20
FT.  ABOVE THE ICE, AND IT BEGAN MOVING CLOSER AS MOBILE 02
BEGAN FLASHING ITS HEADLIGHTS, THEN IT MOVED OFF TO THE
WEST.




3. THE CREWMEMBERS WERE UNABLE TO IDENTIFY ANY OF THE
OBJECTS USING BINOCULARS AND AFTER CONTACTING LOCAL POLICE
AND AIRPORTS, THIS UNIT WAS UNABLE TO IDENTIFY THE OBJECTS,
AND RECALLED MOBILE 02.
BT
TOR-03:05:14:44
COGARD STA FAIRPORT OH//CO//            P 051405Z MAR 88
/LB