Flatwoods And Braxton County UFO Sightings

Frank Feschino, Jr.

Flatwoods and Braxton County UFO Sightings
by Alfred Lehmberg

Well, friends and cyber-neighbors, just when you thought all was quiet on the "Flatwoods Monster" front, here's Frank Feschino popping up with yet another compelling data list—an evidentiary audit trail for the ufologically whacked out and impossible, howsoever be it unsettlingly supported! That's right. Take a deep breath. We begin.

To start, this is a list regarding details about the massive amount of UFO sightings occurring over the United States on September 12, 1952. A massive amount as highly true as it is highly strange. I'll explain.

As is the now running theme established by previous articles I've written, I reiterate to say there were numerous UFOs sighted on that particular September day. These UFOs flew, landed and/or were forced down—by jets ordered to shoot them down—at 116 locations in ten east coast States during that 21-hours of sustained activity displayed on Feschino's well referenced "Master Map." Such has been established as so.

THE MAP

Please take the proceeding at face value and for highly suspected fact. Again. We're served by it! We've extinction to lose and the universe to gain?

See, 60 plus years after the fact, people remain unaware—even after 20 plus years of his researching and sifting through the countless documents he's discovered—Feschino has meticulously pinpointed 116 separate locations when and where UFOs were sighted... that day! This all seems like it might be a little bigger than a quaint country tale regarding 'haints, hillbillies, and hoot-owls, eh? No, these seem to be naught, frankly, but the insulting and facile go-to lies of lying liars.

Remember that Feschino is able to segregate these numerous objects sighted, in fact, by their shapes, sizes, colors, manners, locations, flight paths and sighting times along a trace of their flight's route! A picture forms when one knows what was where, when. He discovers that a jaw-dropping twenty-five different unidentified objects—yes, 25 UFOs—had actually passed over the following ten eastern States: Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, DC, and West Virginia. CSI's Papa Joe Nickell doesn't mention any of this, does he. A statement, not a question. Nor does anyone at CSI Central. Not even brought up to be debunked, it's not party line over there. Not dismissible so it's scary too—it's a thin ice for the traversing skeptibunky. One false step and it's through the ice and drowning in data.

Back at the ranch, the overwhelming amount of UFO sightings revealed by Feschino on that day have come to be known as the "September 12, 1952 Flap." This flap is actualized by examining the flight characteristics of the UFOs many witnesses described as having been on fire, exploding with pieces falling away, making strange in-flight noises, flying erratically at treetop level, and making crash-landings. They sound busy.

In the end, after compiling his findings, Feschino establishes that four of the 25 UFOs sighted that day were apparently damaged and struggling to stay airborne as they traveled over the United States. They were making multiple landings as they flew; in other words, Feschino tracked the damaged (?!) UFOs as they puddle-jumped across the Nation like wounded birds. Combined, these four troubled objects made a documented thirteen crash-landings in three states, Tennessee, South Carolina and West Virginia. Not surprisingly, West Virginia accounted for ten of those crash-landings. Papa Joe? ...Hearing only crickets.

Feschino then plots the flight path trajectories of each object. He is able to recreate a scenario of events, the "revealed evidentiary trail," alluded to above describing what must have occurred that day back on September 12, 1952. Follow the evidence, which is to say... not beat it ahead of you with a stick the way the reflex and canted skeptibunky or klasskurtxian contents himself. See, it remains still, as pointed out above, that the general public is unaware of the magnitude of UFO sightings documented as having occurred across the United States on that all but infamous day... especially the sightings occurring in Braxton County around Flatwoods.

I'd alluded to damaged UFOs above; why were these UFOs damaged and why the abundance of UFO sightings on that day? To answer the first question: only six weeks before the September 12, 1952 Flap, the USAF revealed White House approved "shoot down orders"... essentially declaring war on flying saucers! ...WAR! War with an ET high levels of government had already admitted as fact. No stretch at all, reader. Given truth, how would the reader characterize it? War and shots fired!

On July 29, the Seattle Post Intelligencer reports the following Air Force revelation made the previous day: "Lt. Col. Moncel Monts, Air Force Information Officer, states, 'The jet pilots are and have been under orders to investigate unidentified objects and to shoot them down if they can't talk them down.' " Everyone knows how chatty UFOs are... you know, so willing to take orders and be accommodating to their Earth hosts.

The article also states, "In Air Force parlance, this means that if a 'flying saucer' refuses to land—jet pilots are authorized to shoot them to Earth if they can get close enough to do so." Was there ever a more nuanced declaration of war?

Also on July 29, via a press conference held at the Pentagon to discuss UFOs, it was reported that Major General Roger Ramey "...told the news conference [that] interceptor planes have raced aloft several hundred times as a result of unidentified objects." Yes reader, the Air Force wanted a UFO!

During 1952 the USAF received the most recorded UFO sightings made to Project Blue Book in its 17-year existence! 1,501 official reports with 303 of these bona fide "Unknowns" ...meaning visual conditions were such that they should have been able to tell what the flying object was... and couldn't! Yes reader, with these overwhelming numbers, the Air Defense Command never had a better opportunity for getting a UFO. On that hot Indian Summer day of September 12, 1952, they got their chance!

Back in 1952 well-known researchers and investigators were in the dark as to what had actually occurred on September 12. Some found important pieces of the puzzle but none were able put it all together into a meaningful whole. None could figure out the "big picture" of events. They didn't have Blue Book! They didn't have Feschino's single-minded drive and determination... his opportunity to make right the grievances of forgotten soldiers and airmen of needs lost in this seeming secret air war.

Moving on, what did all of the UFO sightings along the east coast that day have to do with the "Flatwoods Monster" incident in the small town of Flatwoods? Furthermore, why were there so many UFOs sighted over Braxton County that night, before and after the "monster" encounter on the Fisher Farm?

To answer, the whole of Braxton County, not just Flatwoods, actually had its own flap of UFO sightings during the night! In 1991, and standing on the shoulders of his intrepid if befuddled predecessors, Feschino picked up the investigation and began his research where the others had had to throw their hands in the air—ultimately giving up, thus the incident was never investigated further, back in the day, and in danger of becoming just another quaint tale of folklore. Such would not be so on Feschino's watch.

Painstakingly thorough in his on-site investigations, Feschino discovers that there were many more sightings than the original investigators were aware of—many, many more, reader, as pointed out above. One of the original investigators, Gray Barker, stated, "I can only begin to cope with the mass of data and correspondence, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle containing the answer to the mystery—if only it could be put together." Feschino would make that wish come true.

World-known researcher and author Ivan T. Sanderson also documented many of the objects seen that night, reporting, "As a result of plotting the incidents on a map, we are of the opinion that a flight of intelligently controlled objects flew over West Virginia on the evening of September 12 and further, that one of them landed or crashed, a second and third crashed and a fourth blew up in the air"! That's some assertion!

Writer Harold T. Wilkins discovered, "The local police, however, admit that on the day of the incident a fleet of pear-shaped objects—dull red, white and gleaming—had been seen over the region. They hovered in mid-air, ascended almost vertically, descended, then flew level, and three strange objects had crashed in the dense woods."

Additionally, Mr. Barker also added, "Within a 20-mile radius of Flatwoods, numerous persons saw what they variously described, as 'shooting stars,' flying 'saucers' and 'meteorites.' " With all of this information in hand now, Feschino moved forward, conducted his own interviews with Braxton County witnesses and scoured local and national newspaper archives. Most importantly, he obtained the Blue Book files for that day, sometimes even having to digitally enlarge, enhance and re-ink almost unreadable faded documents to poster size to suss them out! Feschino then compiled all of his valuable data into a true historical illumination, that evidentiary trail alluded to above.

Feschino spent decades piling up multiple guided tours through Braxton County with many of the old-timers from the area. They took him to many of the locations where these sightings occurred and showed him the lay of the land. After years of researching the UFO incidents occurring in Braxton County, Feschino then plotted the points of UFO activity in the area on a large aviation map and connected them with the surrounding UFO sightings in the other nine other states.

Ultimately, Frank was able to put the big picture together of what had actually occurred that day and chronicled the scenario of events. You see reader, the overwhelming amount of UFOs observed that day were not attributed to joyriding craft aimlessly flying around in circles because they had nothing else better to do on a Friday night! There was a definite reason for all of these UFO sightings on September 12, 1952. There was purpose!

Keeping in mind the long-forgotten July 29, 1952 Fall River Herald-News headline, "Jets Told to Shoot Down Flying Discs," Fall River informs us that "Jet pilots are operating under a 24-hour nationwide 'alert' to chase the mysterious objects and to 'shoot them down' if they ignore orders to land"! Let us now follow the data.

On September 12, 1952, three damaged UFOs flew over the eastern seaboard bearing westerly and headed in different directions upon reaching the Mid-Atlantic coast—one after another, just before 7:00 p.m. EST. The first UFO headed southwest toward Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home of the

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, worryingly spot-on, penetrated the no-fly zone for that sensitive area and landed in Arcadia, Tennessee.

This sparked a massive search and rescue by local authorities, thinking it was a small civilian aircraft. No aircraft was ever found or even reported to be missing. Yet local authorities gave this account: "Patrolmen reported sighting what they believed to be distress flares from the ground where the object was supposed to have fallen." Witness H.L. Newland said it was "shining bright and big as a car."

The second UFO flew northwest over Baltimore, MD, then flew directly toward Dayton, OH, home of Wright Patterson AFB. Just before reaching Dayton, this craft was to redirect itself northeast—where it nearly hit a passenger plane near the Wheeling-Ohio County Airport—then flew south, finally crash-landing in the Wheeling, WV area.

The UFO was reported in several newspapers, "Three commercial pilots told the CAA office in Washington that meteor-like objects flashed by their planes." It was stated, "One pilot said one nearly hit his ship." Does this sound like a meteor to the reader, this writer wonders?

Commercial airline pilots contacted CAA officials in Washington, DC to inform them about these, "meteor-like objects," not to report meteors! Does this sound like a meteor, reader? Besides, contacting high level and career destroying authorities about mere meteors makes no self-regarding sense. Why not report to authorities that the stars come out at night, or that there was a moon above? What would the CAA be expected to do about meteors? Criticism should have to achieve a level of competence to claim to have the support of science. I digress.

The third UFO, identified in print by The New York Times as the "FLAME OVER WASHINGTON," headed due west over Washington, DC, low level and towards Flatwoods. Simultaneously, over the Nation's Capital, several UFOs descended from the skies over Washington, Maryland, and Virginia, forming a suggested aerial perimeter around their damaged sister craft, apparently seeing it safely to the west.

At this point the majority of information concerning these UFOs descending over this three-state area was found only by Feschino in Project Blue Book—no one besides Feschino seems to have ever bothered, apparently, to closely read the entire September 12, 1952 case files! Now, for the record—Feschino discovered that there were actually twelve craft descending to follow the damaged craft west before ascending back into the sky to the north and northwest! Who says so? Reported What, Where, and When says so. Blue Book says so.

Shortly after, UFOs descended from the skies in great numbers over eastern Ohio, the WV panhandle, and western Pennsylvania for two hours—looking, mayhap, for their downed sister craft. These were identified as a "meteor shower"... also, "Flashing meteors" and "balls of fire" by the local press and authorities.

Contrarily, there is no official scientific documentation of reported meteor activity for that day anywhere in the world! In other words, neither the astronomy record books and sky watching clubs have any record of a meteor or meteor shower occurring anywhere around that day. Yes, the assertion here is that these additional craft were a full-blown search and rescue operation made by ET. Anyway, it seems at least one newspaper, The Boston Globe, reported it remotely right in their headline, "Four States 'Bombarded' by Meteor-Like Objects." In part, it was reported, "Authorities sought an explanation today for the flurry of meteor-like objects sighted over four states." Meteor "like," good reader, is the admission that they are not meteors or they would be meteors; they are like meteors so a listener can have any idea at all what's being related to them. Like a thing is not a thing. No, it's well and truly weirdness!

Simultaneously, to the south of Braxton County, three more objects flying in formation were enroute to Flatwoods from the south, stewarding yet another damaged object. A fourth craft, a flying saucer, previously sighted over Flat Rock, North Carolina, joined them, shortly after, as they reached Flatwoods. This larger saucer then redirected, headed northwest toward the Wheeling area where the other objects were descending in what could be called a search of their downed craft as suspected and was then sighted to the west of Wheeling over Lafferty, Ohio. Are you starting to get the picture yet, reader?

Flatwoods, WV, the geographical center of the state, void of any nearby USAF bases and isolated, was actually the designated area for two of the heavily damaged UFOs to meet and go down together consequent to their conjectured rescue. More specifically, the exact rendezvous point was actually the Fisher Farm plateau, located at the back of the farm known as the hilltop.

Before any of the sightings had occurred over Braxton County, specifically Flatwoods, the first UFO observation actually occurred over the Fisher Farm at about 6:50 p.m. EST. This UFO was a huge cigar-shaped object that flew from the east, passed over Harrisonburg, VA, then passed over West Virginia, flew toward Flatwoods and passed over the back plateau of the Fisher hilltop.

Signed eyewitness testimony Donald Morrison

Here, Feschino and his military colleagues (myself among them) have agreed that this was perhaps a reconnaissance rescue craft that could conceivably have dropped a homing beacon device of some type for the two damaged objects to follow into the farm landing zone. Remained, there was a real big problem during this time frame for the UFOs.

The heavily damaged craft flying west toward Flatwoods from the DC area was struggling to reach its rendezvous destination simultaneously with the other damaged craft heading North with its UFO escort. When the three northbound UFOs reached Flatwoods to rendezvous with the damaged, "Flatwoods Monster" craft... it wasn't there. The rendezvous had been missed! The damaged southern craft flew over the Fisher Farm while the other two combed the area for it!

Meanwhile, the incoming flying saucer made a brief pass over the Flatwoods area and then headed northwest. When the damaged craft, containing the "Flatwoods Monster," wasn't initially found, all four southern ships departed the area. Subsequently, the damaged southern craft crashed three times in Braxton County and the damaged "Flatwoods Monster" craft landed on the Fisher Farm shortly after.

Yes, the UFO events occurring in Flatwoods and surrounding regions are actually attributed to a search and rescue mission—a failed operation actually, ending with a close encounter on the Fisher Farm between Mrs. May, a group of boys 12 to 18 and a 12-foot-tall occupant called the "Flatwoods Monster. The following data list was compiled by Frank Feschino, Jr., identifies some witnesses, and shows us a fraction of the UFO activity over Braxton County that night.

Eyewitness Donald Morrison with Feschino...

1). Ben's Run, Har—near Newville. About 6:45 PM. A large cigar-shaped red object also described as being shaped "like a bottle gas tank" and about 40-feet long, flew slowly at a very low-level just above the treetops at Ben's Run. Several residents on both sides of Har saw it pass over the town; some saw it pass over the general store and others later watched it until it disappeared over the treetops in the direction of Flatwoods, about four miles away. Reconnaissance Rescue Craft #1 Witness: Multiple witnesses in Har including Donald Morrison and his family.

2).Flatwoods. Fisher Farm. 6:50 PM. A large cigar-shaped object that emitted fireballs from the rear fuselage flew at a very low over the plateau of the back hilltop of the Fisher Farm. It looked like a "jet plane" but had "no wings." The primary witness said, "It proceeded across the sky, then halted suddenly, seemed to fall rapidly toward the hilltop." Reconnaissance Rescue Craft #1 Witness: Flatwoods resident A.M. Jordan.

3). Flatwoods. Fisher Farm. 7:15 PM. A low-flying fiery object flew over the back hilltop area of the farm and directly over the water cistern. A large piece of fire broke off and fell toward the ground as it headed south toward the Sutton Airport then exploded. Damaged Southern Craft #1 Witness: Mr. Hoard.

4). Holly. An object flying near the horizon over the Sutton Airport exploded and crash-landed shortly after in the area of Holly. Witness: One Flatwoods witness sighted the object as it passed over the airport and exploded while multiple witnesses saw it go down shortly after near Holly. Damaged Southern Craft #1

5). Heaters. (5 miles north of Flatwoods) 7:15 PM. A large round-shaped and glowing object flew at a very low-level over the town of Heaters and headed towards Flatwoods. SOUTHERN RESCUE CRAFT #2 Witness: Jerry Marples.

6). Braxton County Airport. (3 miles south of Flatwoods). 7:15 PM. Simultaneously, another large round object flew just above the airport at a very low-level. SOUTHERN RESCUE CRAFT #3 Witness: Multiple sources as told to Ivan T. Sanderson.

7) Flatwoods area. A "saucer" was sighted just after the time that the other three southern ships were seen flying over and near Flatwoods. SOUTHERN RESCUE CRAFT #4. Witness: Multiple witnesses including a Braxton County resident who reported a "fireball" and "saucer" as well as other UFOs.

8). Flatwoods. 7:25 PM. A large fiery oval-shaped object flew south overFlatwoods, passed over the school playground, turned, redirected and then landed on the back hilltop of the Fisher Farm. Damaged #2 Craft - Flatwoods Monster Witnesses: Numerous boys on the school playground and adult witness Jack Davis.

9). Sugar Creek. A fiery UFO crashed onto a mountain top across the Elk River between 7:25 and 7:30 PM. Witnesses described it as "a flaming bucket with a tail." Damaged Southern Craft #1 Witness: Woodrow Eagle and other multiple Sugar Creek witnesses.

11). Frametown. About 7:45 PM. A fiery object crashed on a hilltop near the Elk River in the area of Frametown. Witness: Undisclosed hitchhiker. Damaged Southern Craft #1

12). Flatwoods. Fisher Farm. Just before 8:00 PM. Witness: Mrs. May and several boys saw a nearly 12-foot tall metallic probe-like craft that hovered near a tree, AKA the "Flatwoods Monster." Damaged #2 Craft - Flatwoods Monster Some witnesses also reported seeing a large oval-shaped craft in the pasture of the second field of the farm.

13). Frametown. Approximately 8:25. Another fiery object crashed in Frametown. This object crashed on the top of James Knoll on the other side of Frametown near Middle Ridge. Damaged #2 Craft - Flatwoods Monster Witnesses: 2 James boys that lived in the area as well as other local residents.

14). Flatwoods. Fisher Farm. Between 10:30 PM.-11:00 PM. A large round object with a flat side that emitted flames from each side, circled the Fisher Farm at a low-level for about fifteen minutes. Witness: Mr. Bailey Frame. RESCUE CRAFT #4

There you have it, people. ...Anyone still think all this activity was attributed to a single course changing "fireball meteor," as the USAF counsels via Blue Book or that the "Flatwoods Monster" was a Barn owl in a tree? Return to the clue queue if true.

Wrapping up, let's remember two missing airmen, fighter pilot John A. Jones, Jr. and radar operator John DelCurto. These two intrepid airmen, initially denied to Feschino by the Air Force as having ever even served (outrage!), vanished into thin air with their F-94 Starfire during the onset of the September 12, 1952, UFO Flap, men nor craft ever to be seen or heard from again.

http://flatwoodsmonster.com

Byronic Knights

Hell Frozen Over...

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We are intrepid Knights locked in struggle, my friend.  Involved (to our necks) in anomalous trends, we fight the good fight but we fight without end for the credence deserved for these UFOs, then. ...And what can that be but regard for our skies alive and a crawl with what "stranger" who "flies."

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Dismissed with the "fringer," our battle uphill, the mainstream's avoidance a sad—bitter—pill, we strain and we struggle for reason's fair share; we want some good answers. We question; we dare!
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Something's occurring! It's straining credulity! Something's emerging! A denial's futility! Conditions are global; it happens, remember, to folks too disparate to fake it—comprende?  I know some myself. Honest folk, most convincing... ...reporting they're TAKEN and TIME has gone *missing*.
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These possess clarity; their heads are still level. Were it me I should think, I'd be hammered and beveled. ...But for all of the strangeness infecting their lives, some live to make use of its mind blowing strife.  Songs are composed and then words are made woven; an art is compelled and a poetry chosen. The box is burst open and one is outside to live new experience as one comes alive!
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One turns it their way and attempts to be positive; that vision is clearer, so let's dare interrogatives! Be driven, industrious, and charming when able. You know what you want—be industrious, capable ... not strident, but ardent to some serious stitches. To the crass opposition—be those brash sons of bitches!
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How do these warrant their furious pace? How do they run, like they do, their mad race? How do they keep their composure refined in the face of digressions from purpose contrived?  Well, given experience of what has transgressed?  The burden is truth, and one knows the rest.
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I, too, can get angry at those whom I love; I can lash out and rage where a push comes to shove.  I can hurt feelings... to further the ends... perceived in a vision glad hope must portend! I can lose tolerance! I can lose sight of a good contribution to make the right fight!
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...But am I forgetting the folks on my team ... the ones standing by me through nightmare and dream?  Are they forsaken, forgotten, repressed, denied, and discounted, elapsed, and oppressed? Well, not on my watch, there is something occurring,  My take is we're served by the things we'd be learning.
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Too, they fight draining battles without a reward. You'd think that the gods would extend some accord. You'd think they'd get funding for proper approaches—eschew new-age "craziness," confusers, or hoaxers.
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A lot like John Ford (?), we go on like the bunny, but hopefully stay out of jail ... not funny. This gives me concern for our strength and intensity, and if we succumb to... a "burn-out" propensity! We are too valuable, our labor too dear to fail in this time where some truth may be near!
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I hope we're just resting, I hope we take stock—I hope we are open to another's strange thoughts. We know we're not perfect; we've got half a brain! I'm hoping we're here, then, to hear the refrain.
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I shudder to think of our liberty lost. I shudder to think of that terrible cost! I'm dreading the fracture I'm sure this would make in the work, the crusade, and to all that's at stake!
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Noble dark knights, the tormented Byronic ... accosted, assailed, by the bought-in moronic. This—knowing we suffer, at last, disrespect. We *know* status quos  as proposed are all wet.
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We know that our vision is clear if far out and close to some answer on what it's about... ...I offer support of the best moral kind; as one has their own quest, it is clear I have mine.
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We mirror a passion! We feel a creed. I know what _I_ need when I soar and I cleave!  "Soaring" is vital, an act that one needs, convincing a person they're off of their knees.  "Cleaving's succeeding the missions assigned, where goals are achieved and you have peace of mind.

• alienview@roadrunner.com
• www.AlienView.net

So, _I_ am enraged at the failing complacent; _I_ find it hard, friend, to suffer a fool. _I_ am incensed that we're treated like mushrooms and broken on purpose like mistreated tools!

You?

How does any ONE of us keep it together, remembering that some highly strange stuff likely happens to any one of us? ...And the point is, is that as it does...we do. It's what we do...

No, the justifications for our ignorance have some other design. Thank God for the courage of the efficacious talented—the under appreciated dwindling few, we listen for those who truly devote themselves to the big paradigm changing questions, are able to look infinity unflinchingly in the eye... and still have the courage to question that anomalous glare.

John Ford: First Encounter

My first encounter with the plight of John Ford occurred around July 12, 1996.

I was driving from Alabama to Florida to join my wife for a weekend vacation and a little celebration of our impending 23rd wedding anniversary (Hey!  I remind the reader I'm a normal guy even artistically interested with what's outside the box!  It defines the box after all, eh?

The drive is a pleasant one on good roads, and I was really enjoying the momentarily careless and carefree trip!  Ahead of me looms two days of good beer, fun in the sun, and a cessation of college for the summer.  I digress, but I'd returned to college after retiring from the military to get a teaching credential; this is a whole -other- sordid story we'll have to save for another digression...

In '96 I enjoyed a golden-age Pre 9/11, had more of my teeth, and was in my pre-stroke bliss.  Out of the military, the pressure was off... I was doing well at school... I was content.  ...Breathin' was easy as they say.

While I drove I listened distractedly to some car radio.  I wasn't really hearing the news or the announcer as I drove and was, in fact, just about to tune to a *hairier* spot on the radio dial... when, abruptly... the announcer used the expression "UFO."

That stopped my hand at the channel knob, eh?  I settled back into the car seat to listen.  I have an interest in UFOs as does any rational person... [g].

Anyway... the reporter shared (and I paraphrase) that some loopy UFO whack-job from Suffolk county, New York had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder... Murder in a new, new-age and completely inexplicable way! 

It seems this "crazy" person *purloined* a quantity of radium from some facility somewhere (Brookhaven is conjectured), and his *astonishing* plan was to break into the victim's house... put powdered radium into the victim's toothpaste... and murder him as a result of radiation poisoning!  WTF!?

...Let's pause for a moment to let all that sink in...

I remember thinking at the time that this incredibly hapless fellow must be one mondo-bionic dim-bulb of a ruminating snot-bubbler... (!) ...to try a stunt like that!  How could that, remotely, work?

Besides, wouldn't it take -years- to dispatch someone in that manner (if it worked at all!), and what about the logistics of the act itself? Radium is hot stuff, easily detectable!

I'd think when the victim turned his lights off to retire for the night and wife or family noted that Dad's mouth glowed in the dark?  Why... it might have meant something to someone!

Frankly, I found the whole episode too puzzling, too unlikely, and just plain dumb.

...Something about it just wasn't right, though,  and curiosity's fuse was lit.  I thought about it off and on all weekend, and I decided that when I returned to Enterprise after the vacation... I had to have more details in its regard.  It was just too bleedin' stupid to believe!

It's many years later, and I am saddened in the extreme regarding what I found out, almost from the beginning, that there is much, much more than meets the eye...  ...with regard to the John Ford Affair... like it is, I suppose, with pretty much anything else... well, like it is with pretty much everything else... but I digress again.

Right off the bat there were surprises...

Consider... someone *unsettled* enough to put radium in someone else's toothpaste... must have some kind of *history* of aberrant behavior, wouldn't you think?  I mean, a guy like this just doesn't spring fully formed from the head of Zeus!  There must be some kind of record or audit trail of deviancy... wouldn't that be fair?

But no—there is no such record!  In fact, the absolute and exact opposite is the case! John Ford was a model citizen, a court officer, and a holder of a college Master's degree.  He was good to his mother, and though he has yet to marry, he'd dated and gotten close a couple of times; he's a normal guy!

He was a registered Republican (which he can be forgiven for... I suppose), but he's active in local politics (the point?), and he's even known to weep at the suffering of small animals.  He'd regularly rescue stray dogs from the pound.  He volunteered selflessly during civic emergencies... 

The guy was a proverbial PILLAR!  Also proverbially, anyone who's known him has said that it is *impossible* that he could be involved in a conspiracy to murder anyone much less and especially someone as high profile as the intended victim, John Powell... the biggest wheel in the Suffolk County, New York political machine—the biggest such machine in the country!

...Think, for a moment, about the *influence* of a political machine such as the one just described... think what it could impose, ...and throughout a slew of conflicted government departments and hip-shooting private agencies!

...Let that sink in a moment!

John Ford was something else, too.  He was stubborn.  For cause?  He could get so far up your nose you could feel his boney knees on your septum, and he was prone to explore every inch of his constitutional *rights*—to every corner of the ethical envelope, too! 

He was a retired court officer and had observed how a litigious Suffolk county worked.  He wasn't a bone-head, he wasn't a dupe, and he wasn't a fool, but he—was—a *Boy Scout*, reader, and he thought the Constitution of the United States was a—living—document that actually—meant—something... silly John, eh?

John was an honorable man then, as now, I'm betting, but if you disrespected him or discounted him you'd quickly hear about it.  He knew how to make the system work... or so he thought!  That system would turn on him like Sigourney Weaver's *Alien*... and cocoon him in fact!

John Ford was something else, still.  He was EASY to discount.  He was EASY to marginalize.  He was easy to discredit!

Subsequent smirking writers of obvious and uninformed bias... would later portray him as a pathetic and ineffectual mook with failed political aspirations... a loser, a loser who lived with his Mom. 

Prone to be portly, he looked a little like Elmer Fudd and that distinctive appearance was unfortunately accessorized (it's been said) with the voice of Daffy Duck.  I've heard him speak... I don't hear that.  I hear focus, determination, and legitimate outrage at the whim of criminals.

The poor guy was roundly painted for the fringe is the point.  Hardwired for discredit wholly unearned.  Still, he had crust—he was tenacious, contentious, and certainly tendentious... he took no crap!

John Ford may have been one more thing.  He may have been crazy.  But if he was, good listener... he was benignly and efficaciously so!  Take craziness out of the equation!

Moreover... and note —this—!  He was interested in what the truth was; he was knowledgeable and talented with regard to *ferreting* that truth out, and he knew how to organize the troops to chase a bear through the freakin' buckwheat!  He was active in local government, remember; he understood about grassroots activism!

And... (and it's a big "and") it was not a preponderance of the persons around him, by any means, who thought he was remotely crazy... ...to begin with!  Moreover, those less than intrepid and shallowly discerning persons thinking him a... pork-chop short of a mixed grill...?...assumed he must be crazy because he "believed in UFOs".  Hey!  FLAG DOWN!!!  So does Stanton Friedman!  So does Edgar Mitchell, and, very likely... so do YOU, reader!

   

The question's begged when the listener's turn comes!  I digress...

What was John Ford doing, really, when a couple of platoons of SWAT team showed up at his residence to arrest him for conspiracy to commit murder? Well, he was doing what he did best!

He was organizing the locals for a lawful exercise of their of their natural right to be INFORMED about what they are paying for (!!!)... and he was doing some expert detective-work to facilitate that end!  He was also, and note this... feverishly investigating John Powell and Powell's complicity... ...regarding the strange behavior of the police, firemen, Parks & Sanitation and other government officials of Suffolk county, New York!  ...Behavior peculiar in the extreme!

Ford was hot on the trails of the duplicitous and the criminal!

What was John Ford's root concern in all of this?

Well—John Ford, no dummy remember, was sure that Suffolk County officials, and the titular head of those officials, John Powell, were all hip-deep in a *conspiracy*... to cover up the crash of an alien space craft near Moriches Bay on September 28 in 1989...

Now—for any of you listeners out there smotherin' a giggle... remember that dozens of credible witness saw something highly strange transpire in and around the bay on that night, so those foundationless giggles (the listener might be muffling?)... can be retired with some shame!

Verily, and since 1982, the New York counties of Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Duchess and Westchester... were swamp-gassed with some 5,000 reports of large, boomerang-shaped... unidentified flying objects in the skies overhead... giggle if you still can... We'll wait and look down in embarrassment for you.

Anyway...

In a completely lawful manner, with a minimum of "actionable eccentricity", and with some intelligent intensity and single-minded passion, John Ford investigated John Powell.  Well within the law, and with some vigor, the little guy tried to get the gotcha *goods* on the big guy.  One can certainly begin to predict the eventual outcome of this David and Goliath story...

...Time warp...

When I was a child living in west Connecticut I used to hear my Dad tell his friends these stories, myths, and legends about the cess-pool of corruption that was Suffolk County, NY in the forties and fifties... Dad made it sound like Mordor!  Does the reader have any idea what the "quotient of corruption" is NOW... or in the 1989 to 1996 time-frame, specifically?  ...Do you think it got any better, friends and fellow motes?

Let me just cut to the curly short-hair chase, ladies and gentlemen!

John Powell was dirty as hell!

In 1999, and out of political favors apparently, he would be charged with—and plead no contest to—Racketeering, Grand Theft, ... Extortion even!  And that's just what they charged him on, folks ...you can bet it was the tip of Powell's iceberg!  In the year 2000 he would be given the *minimum* sentence of twenty-three months in a *minimum* security country-club!  With good behavior, you know like not being caught raping a fellow inmate... he would be out in 18 months...

John Ford, on the other hand has not drawn a free breath or seen the light of day since 1996...

Is anyone else seeing the connected dots in this picture?  Let me help!

The truly intrepid John Ford was investigating a man, one John Powell, who could bear no investigation of any type!  John Ford likely scared the wild, blueberry HORSE-MUFFINS out of John Powell... and what kind of mamma' s-boy-loser can John Ford be... if he can make a BIG fish in a BIG pond like John Powell sweat the hook!

Is it a stretch to suppose that John Powell could have exercised a few tainted *muscles* of his vast political machine of graft and conspiracy... to... TORPEDO John Ford?  Given the senseless facts of the case, John Ford's history, education and references... does the listener think it *remotely* possible that this is so?

Oh, it's so... it's just another iteration of the same old story we become more and more accustomed to in increasingly terrorized and tyrannical world...  Goliath, friends and fellow motes, only loses in the Bible!

   

...And forget all about John Ford's assertions with regard to UFOs, which may or may not be dead on the money.  If wrong in FACT, he is most assuredly abundantly correct in SPIRIT!

Yes, John Ford's even justified ufological assertions may have been all wet!  They REMAIN; however, beside the point ...only significant in that Ford's "belief" in them proved the case of his... trumped UP... "instability"... So he could be more handily cocooned and effectively silenced later on!

What's IMPORTANT remains to be that Ford was busily investigating a man, a criminal man with long ties to organized crime... ...and so a man who could bear no such investigation!

John ford is innocent, and he rots in prison today for the convenience of an ongoing conspiracy and a criminal elite!  Plain and simple!

Truly, Suffolk County owes John Ford more than they could ever pay.  They owe him his pension, a home, his savings, his modest gun collection, all his memorabilia, all his lawyers fees, and year after year after year of hard, hard time... Time made all the more intolerable... in as much as he is very likely a complete innocent... for ALL of that time!

Ford's very suspect initial attorney, one John Rouse (deceased), had given every indication that the case against Ford is specious at best... and wholly contrived at worst!  The "witnesses" were as suspect ...perhaps planted, or sold Ford out for reduced sentences committed in other crimes—I mean nobody knows went on in the belly of the machine; the clinical evaluation determining that he was *insane* was almost certainly flawed, canted, or ignorantly uninformed, and the "B" movie circumstances surrounding Ford's ongoing torment... are too suspicious to be minimally credible... and are without DOUBT scurrilously fabricated!  Even guilty of the accused crime he would have been out a decade ago.

John Ford deserves a re-look, a change of venue, or a hearing of some type to try to get some real justice done.  The loss of Ford's freedom for the convenience of a craven convicted criminal is the symbolic loss of all our freedoms, a repudiation of everything that America is supposed to be, and a crime in its own right.

   

John Ford's civil rights and right to personal liberty have been violated in the most fundamental sense, folks, and we VALIDATE the arbitrary rule of *privileged* autocrats... to let John Ford's ongoing treatment continue...

This cannot be allowed to stand!  Restore John Ford to his previous life, Suffolk County, now and with all deliberate speed!

Lightning Bugs & Lightning Bolts

Lightning Bugs & Lightning Bolts

by Alfred Lehmberg
From UFO Magazine

Sparse sightings in a ufological milieu, tantalizingly meager, are made through partly cloudy skies when there is any visibility at all.  A few mornings are first-rate, cool and clear.  "Forever" presents itself with breathtaking aplomb... even as the "emptiness" remains decidedly un-empty. 

It matters not.  Empty is equally satisfying, anymore, oddly. "Empty" becomes as singular and auspicious as "filled."

See... including the alleged birds, spent boosters, idle bursts, and falling bolides... and forgetting UFOs? Where do even IFOs go?  I digress early.

To date, my sightings regard mere points of light, reader, identified as... unidentified.  They remain without regard sightings sworn to by this retired military officer and aviation professional.  The "ride" you're on, remember.

Also remaining?  These are humble reports.  They are but prosaic examples of the non-prosaic... lightning bugs where the girth and depth of a yawning universe insures lightning bolts abound, rest assured... but for a couple of odd wrinkles...

To wit:

Anderson, California, the twelfth of April, 2002, at 04:15 hours: soundless *Fastwalkers* clip by, one after the other, at a hot three degrees a second and arrow straight!  The sky is crystal clear and the first silent yellow-red light, only a little dimmer than Sirius, does not diminish in furious intensity as it flies from the point overhead to that point where it disappears behind some trees at about 20 degrees elevation!  It is immediately followed by an identical *Fastwalker* on the same track and heading, which also dives to disappear behind the same cut in the darker trees!  Fastwalking twins.

The wrinkle?  The brilliantly illuminated course for both objects was the duest of due Wests...

That was due west, ladies and gentle-bunkies... an artfully anomalous track your garden variety satellite does not ordinarily describe!  This is according to an albeit inconstant and less than reliable (?) Jim "ashamed-of-his-apostrophe" Oberg... intrepid space historian, reflex klasskurtxian spokes-mook, and arguably one of the noisier of our stunning panoply of noisily noisome noisy negativists… 

The other wrinkle concerns a good sighting on the 15th at 04:50 that I was able to call to the attention of a witness!  It was one of the more typical "ambling" stars (varying track and apparent speed) appearing as I watched the Northern sky at about 350 degrees azimuth and 50 degrees elevation.  It traveled about 20 degrees in a fuzzy arc west-southwest, before it dimmed, abruptly, and went out.

My brother Philip was outside with me prior to his start of a 10 hour shift of work... a type work to make my blood run cold. This particular exertion involves driving tunnel through blasted rock a quarter mile inside a small mountain northwest of Redding, California.  

He sat close by beneath a covered porch quietly consuming that first cup of what he called his "morning ambition."  I called him over excitedly to see my 'object'. He lumbered over annoyed and mumbling bothered protests... he was something less than thrilled to accommodate me.

Looking up to where I pointed with what I knew to be an under-whelmed expression on his sharply planed miner's face, he acknowledged shortly that it was weird... but after grudgingly watching for just a few seconds, he turned and went back to his coffee even before the damned thing blinked out! 

He was something less than impressed, like I said, but my own irritation was minimal.  I understood why.

No... It's not complacency, insentience, or having "bigger" fish to fry explaining his lack of interest.  Uh-uh.  Nor was it was due to any general non-acceptance of "things ufological" on his part. 

Astonishingly, it was the simple lack of a strong enough stimulus provided!  Much more is required to move him.  Experience is the culprit!  To him?  Said light's a meager object, merely; however weird, prosaic even IF non-prosaic!  Tiny quiet lights moving in the night sky... these do not begin to approach his 'interest' threshold, much less cross it. 

Why is that?

Three decades and change ago, my brother and his now deceased wife, Susan, saw an incontestable UFO... for a period of many minutes... on a deserted California Coast Highway!  They saw it so "up-close and personal" that for a few memorable moments it was the only thing they could perceive in the sky, at all! 

See, I wanted my brother to witness anomalous minnows flitting in a small pond... when he had already seen Moby freakin' Dick leap clear of the Pacific Ocean fish-tailing like a hooked trout!  That's small hyperbole, reader.

Here's the story. 

In 1977, and after the end of the Viet Nam incarnation of the arguably endless war we fight in the US, my brother and his bride of a few years had occasion to travel at night down the California Pacific Coast Highway from French Gulch to Oxnard.  They would spend time with our folks for Christmas. It's about a fourteen-hour trip. 

At the time I was ufologically oblivious in what was then West Germany, but I digress again.

Both were well rested, not intoxicated, and looked forward to a quiet drive on a beautiful night down an uncluttered and beautiful coast road... listening to R&B on the VW Window Van's cheesy little AM radio... kids at Christmas laughing at trifles... high on life and carefree as was childhood...

Respectfully, one can almost hear the ominous music swelling on the soundtrack...

As they drove, they would crest an occasional bluff and be able to see many miles out into the Pacific ocean.  Stars and offshore oil rigs glittered delightfully like diamonds in the velvet darkness of an untroubled sea. 

It was that beautiful night alluded to, and their spirits were high.  There were no children as yet, and their lives stretched out before them in a manner seemingly as optimistic and completely open-ended as the untrammeled and easy rolling ocean on their right.

...They would stay married ... forgive the digression... 'till death they did part.

Back on the road... every time that they would get a shot of ocean they would fully appreciate the quiet beauty of the endless sea and sky.  The burgeoning starry reaches looked like a glittering backdrop weighted at the bottom by the brighter lights of the aforementioned offshore rigs. 

Highway One is a curling, winding snake of a road taking the traveler in and away from periodic views of the ocean to points well inland.  They'd been watching with interest, upon their successive close passes to the ocean, that an "off-shore rig" seemed to be getting closer to shore every time they had an opportunity to see it.  They were alerted but still unsuspecting at this point.

Driving through a stretch away from the ocean and down a valley between hills, my brother's wife noticed what she took for a lighted triangular billboard further down the road. Oddly, they didn't seem to be gaining on it!  Odd Indeed...

Abruptly, they did gain on it as it flew down upon them... Suddenly, it was adjacent to the van and just outside her passenger door about a hundred feet away!  It became obvious to them both at last that this observed "sign" was moving, so they upgraded their estimation of the object to a plane in trouble... or a helicopter... something. 

The eerie silence confounded them. They pulled over to the side of the road to see... ...what the hell was what, frankly.

Philip got out of the van and jogged around its front to look.  Before his slack-jawed eyes suddenly loomed a silent upside down "Christmas tree" quite as large as an office building, it seemed!  One racing heartbeat later all he could observe from horizon to horizon were dozens of different sized bright lights hovering right down over the top of them in eerie silence, directly overhead, like a swarm of quiet multicolored bees!

My brother ran a few meters from the car in a heedless attempt to see more, immediately enchanted.  His wife screamed from the car, and he looked back.  She was begging him to return to her.  "They'll get us," she was screaming, "They'll get us"!

A cold fear took him then, and he scrambled back to the van and piled in beside her, slamming the door! He looked up at the UFO through the top of the windscreen.  His wife was beside herself with fear!

...Just as abruptly, the UFO was gone. 

Stunned, they sat for a moment in shocked amazement, holding their breath at its sudden departure!  Eventually, feeling the pressure was off and breathing at last they fired up the van in the now dark silence and left the area... leaving while the leaving was apparently good!  Both were highly freaked out!

Now, my brother's a merry trickster.  His totem animal would be the crow ... if he was into native religions.  But like the crow, he's not wired for enduring obfuscation, he's a dyed in the wool sociophile, and he won't be a party to the short-sheeting egregious or the maliciously mendacious.  Sincerely.  He'd tell the truth if it was important.  Still,  it's not him that convinces me. 

It's her.

His wife, Susan, was ever a solid confirmation that it is only the good who die young.

A serious student of a thoughtful Christianity, she was an honored grammar school teacher who inspired a permanent monument in her memory. This was a memorial festooned with roses to be raised at the school where she'd taught.  On that tribute is a metal plaque iterating her name and the observation, "Always gentle, always kind..." 

Interestingly, her maiden name was Pinkerton... those Pinkerton's of historical Detective Agency fame, and for the first 25 years of her life further delighted those who knew her with the nickname of "Spink."  She was the truest of joys and pleasures.

Susan was an intelligent women, undeniably so.  Still, she was under the inculcated mainstream opinion that only feebs and losers saw UFOs!  See, Susan was not remotely comfortable or at all eager providing testimony to this kind of event.  Indeed, she would never have brought it up on her own, but that my brother was eager to talk with me about it, and she was there with him... She was a most reluctant witness, forgetting she's never told a self-serving lie in her life.  Moreover, it was the truth. 

God is truth.  N'est ce-pas?  Susan would have agreed.

The preceding said, she recounts suspected demons from Hell descending upon them that night and taking the form of a boiling sky full of crazily colored and eerily silent lights!  She trembled as she related the story and looked haunted reliving it all again.  I knew her for almost 30 years; she was the real deal.

Later, I'd ask my brother about missing time, and whether he seemed to get down to Oxnard about when he thought he should.  He said he thought he did.  I don't suspect abduction complications... but who's to say, eh?

Does the reader begin to understand, perhaps, my lack of irritation for this particular under-whelmed witness a little better!  He was party to lightning bolts, after all, reader; I was getting excited about lightning-bugs!  His sighting might have stopped my heart.

I can dig the scale.  How about you, reader?

Solicitous, I suppose, he had to admit my "lightning bug" was weird.  Still, he was able to fake a yawn in a manner so huge it would break a normal man's jaw.  What a guy.

That's enough.  I remain watching our aggregate skies.

Restore John Ford and read on!