Post by Graveyardbride on Sept 27, 2013 13:04:58 GMT -5
Countless sightings go unreported, Powell said, because people don’t want to be labeled “crazy,” he said.
Still, the public remains fascinated, and UFO authorities are steadfast in their effort to determine if otherworldly creatures actually exist.
“When TV shows [about UFOs] come on like National Geographic, reporting goes up. People will send in reports from years and years ago,” Powell said.
Although there have been scattered reports of mysterious flying or floating objects for centuries, the UFO phenomenon really took off after World War II.
“If you go back when this started, no one thought you were crazy for reporting something,” Powell said. “That didn’t start until about the ’70s.”
Powell said the federal government, apparently weary of being accused of hiding extraterrestrials in secret locations and of refusing to divulge information to the public, “actually had a program to debunk UFOs through the public and media.”
And many a crackpot played right into their hands. “You have enough people who come up with this crazy, stupid stuff,” Powell said.
Bogus reports, which still crop up periodically and, these days, go viral on the Internet, “make it that much more difficult” for the general public to accept authentic sightings of the unusual.
“The level of hoax is probably down to about 1 percent,” Powell said.
Most UFO sightings turn out to be readily identifiable aircraft, meteors or other celestial objects, sometimes seen at weird angles that rouse suspicion, experts say.
For example, Powell said, a security camera in Florida captured a mysterious light beaming down on a swimming pool.
“That turned out to be a drop of water on a camera lens,” Powell said. “They didn’t fake it. They thought they had something there and it was just moisture on the lens.”
Steve Hudgeons, MUFON’s national director of investigations, said most sightings are explainable. “But there’s a percentage that remain unknown,” he said.
Hudgeons, who lives in Fort Worth, said he believes “most of this stuff that’s flying around here that we call unknown is our own government’s” aircraft.
Snell, the Johnson County jailer, said what he saw in Cleburne last year was unlike any commercial or military aircraft he’s ever seen. And he still has no clue what it was.
“It’s a little frustrating,” he said.
At a Glance: Three major Texas UFO cases. The Mutual UFO Network included three reported sightings in North and Central Texas in its list of the strongest 10 cases that “cannot be identified as any known object.”
Case 36765: On March 25, 2012, near the Johnson County Correctional Facility in Cleburne, two officers reported seeing a dark triangular object about 3 a.m. flying 4,000 to 6,000 feet above ground. It had a series of dim circular lights, they said.
Case 41918: On July 14, 2012, two men traveling along State Highway 36 near the Milam County of town of Milano, reported seeing a pentagon-shaped black object with lights about 5:20 a.m. hovering over the highway about 30 feet above their vehicle. Two more witnesses reported seeing a similar object December 20 along the same stretch of road. The main witness said the object was about 100 feet across with five sides and flashing lights on each corner.
Cases 37562, 37585, 37604: From April 17 to 19, 2012, three different witnesses reported seeing a triangular object with white lights hovering in the vicinity of Van Alstyine near the Texas-Oklahoma border. All said there was a ruby-colored light at the center of the craft.
Source: James Ragland, The Dallas Morning News, September 23, 2013.