Post by Joanna on Oct 29, 2015 21:26:45 GMT -5
Big Bend UFO Sightings
Stacy Brown was coming back from a night of fishing on the Ochlockonee River when he first caught glimpse of it — an orange glow emanating from behind the top of the pine trees. It was a dark, winter night with no moon visible from the john boat he and his brother-in-law had just loaded with catfish. He figured the trees were on fire as the two headed down a straightaway toward the boat landing. But then something burst through the tree tops on the left bank and into full view. “The whole thing was like a huge fireball,” he said. “You could see the flames. When I first saw it, I thought it was a meteor – I thought it was coming down. But then it just went straight across the river and above the tree tops on the other side.” The object, about the size of a Volkswagen bug with a long tail behind it, passed above them as it slowly crossed the river, casting an eerie blue light inside the boat. It made no sound as it finally disappeared from sight. Flummoxed but not frightened, Brown turned to his brother-in-law to ask what they’d just seen. “I don’t know” was all he said. Over the next 30-plus years since it happened, they never spoke of it again.
But Brown could never quite shake the possible close encounter, which happened in the early 1980s near Sopchoppy, Florida. After all these years, he still has no idea what it was. “I don’t really believe in little green men,” said the retired business owner from Crawfordville. “But it was odd. It was weird. It’s perplexed me. Maybe somebody can tell me what it was – that’s what I’m hoping.”
Brown is far from the only person to have seen something exotic – and perhaps otherworldly – in the skies over the Big Bend area. In recent years, more than 50 people in Leon and surrounding counties have reported UFOs to the Mutual UFO Network, a not-for-profit organization that tracks and investigates them. The area sightings date from the 1970s to as recently as last month, according to the MUFON database, which includes witness accounts, photos, sketches and video of the mysterious but often explainable objects.
In September alone, MUFON received more than 58 reports of UFOs in Florida and 985 worldwide, said George Williams, a state section director who lives in Wakulla County. According to another organization tracking UFOs, the National UFO Reporting Center, some 5,385 sightings have been reported in Florida, which is second only to California.
The reports worldwide include everything from strange lights in the sky to alien abductions. Of the couple of dozen cases Williams has investigated around Florida, only five were found to be unknown objects. The others turned out to be airplanes, drones, sky lanterns, launches from Cape Canaveral and, in a couple were hoaxes. “We try to start eliminating," said Williams, a retired investigator for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. “Was it an airplane? Was it a satellite? There are a number of things it could possibly be, and if we eliminate all the possibilities, then we will characterize it as an actual unknown object.”
‘Something ... not of this earth.’ Some cases are easier to explain than others. After someone flying into Tallahassee in August took a photo of what he or she thought was a UFO off the wing of the plane, Williams found out which flight it was, got publicly available schematics of the aircraft and determined the bright light was nothing more than a strobe on the wing.
But MUFON couldn’t figure out what in the world happened to Charles Ellison, a retired Navy aviation storekeeper who claims to have almost crashed into a UFO in 2012 while driving late at night on Interstate 10 near Pensacola. Ellison was going about 75 miles-per-hour in his Ford pickup when he decided to pass two 18-wheelers he’d been following. As he moved into the left lane, a bright light behind some kind of object appeared in front of him. He slammed on his brakes, his truck started going sideways and he was sure he was going to crash and die. But before he knew it, he was 100 yards up the road, he and his truck unscathed. He got out and started walking toward the light and the two tractor-trailers, which had stopped. But caution got the better of him and he decided to get back into his truck and bolt. “If I was a betting man, I would say it was something that’s not of this earth,” said Ellison, who lives outside Jacksonville. “I’ve been driving for a long time – there's absolutely no way I could not have hit what was in the middle of the road. Something stopped me from hitting what it was and put me up about 100 yards in front of everything.” MUFON ruled the case an actual unknown. Williams called the story a possible case of “missing time,” something associated with UFOs.
And while Williams himself has never seen a UFO, he’s open to the possibility they’re out there. “I’m sure there’s life on other planets,” he said. “And I think it’s highly possible that they’re visiting us. I think that accounts for some of the sightings.”
But Joe Nickell, an investigator with Skeptical Inquirer magazine who has spent four decades investigating flying saucers, haunted houses and other paranormal phenomena, cited the fact that science has never found a single extraterrestrial craft, let alone an alien being. “Most of the paranormal taps into our hopes and our fears," he said. “We’re hopeful that we don’t die, so we believe in ghosts. We’re hopeful we’re not alone in the universe, so we’re looking for alien life. It’s all a developing belief system in which the idea is that extraterrestrials are coming to the planet Earth. And they aren’t.”
‘How weird is that?’ One of the more recent sightings (pictured above) in the area happened the night of June 2, 2015, at Alligator Point. A family was outside on their back deck watching strange lights over the Gulf of Mexico. They reported watching two lights followed by a single one that multiplied into five before disappearing “without a sound.” The family, who wished to remain anonymous, submitted video of the lights to MUFON, including their real-time reactions to what they were seeing.
Man: “How weird is that?”
Woman: “That is weird!”
Man: “I’ve been telling you for years that there’s aliens.”
Williams said another MUFON investigator looked into the sighting and determined the lights to be ordinary sky lanterns, though Williams himself said they may have been military flares or counter-measures.
Another case from November 2014 in Miramar Beach, just east of Destin and not far from Eglin Air Force Base, may seem outlandish to skeptics, but MUFON closed it as an actual UFO sighting. Richard Norman, a retired police officer from Miami, was sitting in a golf cart near the beach when he spotted a star-like object moving in a straight line in the clear night sky. Suddenly, an oval-shaped light the color of lime sherbet appeared with white light surrounding it. When the star-like object flew into it, the light imploded and the object was gone. Norman suspects the light may have been a portal of some kind, transporting the object to cosmic parts unknown. “It doesn’t scare me,” said Norman, who’s seen UFOs before. “I would love for one to land right in the front yard. I’d probably be the first one out in the neighborhood welcome wagon.”
Number of sightings in the Big Bend:
Leon County: 28
Franklin County: 11
Wakulla County: 7
Gadsden County: 5
Jefferson County: 2
Top 10 states for UFO sightings:
1. California: 11,542
2. Florida: 5,385
3. Washington: 5,163
4. Texas: 4,467
5. New York: 4,046
6. Arizona: 3,336
7. Pennsylvania: 3,296
8. Illinois: 3,174
9. Ohio: 3,049
10. Michigan: 2,570
Sources: Jeff Burlew, The Tallahassee Democrat, October 28, 2015; Mutual UFO Network, and National UFO Reporting Center.