| UFO ROUNDUP Volume 4, Number 34 | |
| December 16, 1999 Editor: Joseph Trainor | |
UFO CRASHES INTO DAM IN NEW SOUTH WALES On Wednesday, December 8, 1999, radio stations in Australia broadcasted the startling news that "a UFO had crashed into a water supply dam" in Guyra, New South Wales, Australia. The incident took place sometime after dark on Tuesday, December 7. "Witnesses reported the object skipped across the (reservoir's) surface and left a gouge of flattened reeds and mud measuring 15 metres (50 feet) by 8 metres (24 feet). Media people were being turned away from the site by the hazardous material officers." According to Australian press reports, "a township in northern New South Wales is having severe water restrictions after an unidentified object crashed into the local dam." "The projectile slammed into the Guyra water supply dam at the outskirts of the town, north of Armidale," or about 236 miles (377 kilometers) north of Sydney. "Police said it was first noticed by an employee carrying on routine maintenance tasks at the dam" on Wednesday. "Fire brigade spokesman John Hobar said an area of reed beds measuring four by ten metres had been flattened, fuelling suspicion that the object may have fallen from the sky.." "But he had said that he had checked with a number of space agencies, meteorological experts and officials in Canberra (Australia's capital--J.T.) and there had been no sighting of an unidentified object falling from the sky." "'There's a township of about 5,000 people and they're on severe water restrictions,' Mr. Hobar said. On Thursday, December 9, 1999, divers entered the lake behind the Guyra dam "to test for toxins or radioactive material." On Friday, December 10, 1999, "Authorities lifted the restrictions after tests showed the water is safe to drink. Police divers have found a 12-metre (39.6 feet) cavern in the floor of the dam. The object has not been found, and the divers are going to continue the search today. The object came from the south on a 45 degree" angle of approach. "Speculations seem to be fixed on either a meteorite or a piece of space junk. One scientist has suggested it was approximately one and a half inches (3.3 centimeters) in diameter." USA Today reported that some people were speculating that the object was one of the two mini-probes, Scott or Amundsen, which disappeared with the Mars Polar Lander last week. (See USA Today for December 11, 1999, "UFO," page 4A.) Over the weekend, authorities announced that the divers had indeed found the "meteorite" lodged in the cavern. (Many thanks to Peter Van Komen, UFO Roundup correspondent in Australia, and to Trevor Griffett, and to Diane Harrison of Australian UFO Research Network for the many Guyra reports.) (Editor's Comment: Totally forgotten are the original witness reports of a large object and the mysterious 120-square-foot "gouge" in the reed beds.) TWO STAR-LIKE UFOs SEEN IN JIMBOOMBA, QUEENSLAND On Saturday, December 4, 1999, at 7:25 p.m., Fred C. stepped outside his workplace in Jimboomba, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, for a smoke and saw an unusual object in the sky. "I stepped outside to have a smoke when I noticed these two star-like objects travelling together from the southeast," Fred reported. "What I thought was really strange, they stopped for a while., then they moved around a metre and stopped again. They did this twice." "I noticed a plane going past but it was a lot lower than the two objects. I could see that the plane had flashing lights. I see lots of planes because we are on the Brisbane-to-Sydney flight path, and I know a plane when I see it. I'm very sure this wasn't a plane. I have never seen a plane act like these things did." (Many thanks to Diane Harrison of AUFORN for this news story.) LUMINOUS UFO SIGHTED IN NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA On September 21, 1999, Gary S. and his family were at their home in Zinkwazi, a small port in northern Natal, about 275 kilometers (165 miles) north of Durban, South Africa. At 3:30 p.m., they saw a luminous object approaching from the northeast, Gary reported. "We saw a strange light that looked like an airplane at first, but it was much too fast to be one. It also turned way too sharp. It wasn't flashing. It just shone with a very white blinding light--a roundish object of a very bright white appearance." Gary estimated the UFO's speed at "about 600 kilometers per hour (360 miles per hour) at a height (altitude) of 10,000 meters (33,000 feet)." (Email Form Report) MORE UFOs REPORTED IN ITALY On Saturday, December 4, 1999, at 11 a.m., two people in Li Punti, a suburb of Sassari, a large city in the northwest corner of Sardinia, "watched for several seconds a silver flying object in the form of a tube coming with flattened ends. The flying object was headed in the direction of Osilo." "Another tube-shaped OVNI (Italian acronym for UFO--J.T.) was seen at the same hour by a motorist on highway SS-131 near Li Punti." Sardinia is a large island in the Mediterranean Sea belonging to Italy. The following day, Sunday, December 5, 1999, at 11:10 a.m., three people in Aosta in northern Italy "sighted in the sky a brilliant luminous form that moved extremely slowly." The witnesses were interviewed by Italian ufologist Danilo Tacchino of CUN Piemonte e Val d'Aosta. Aosta is a city in the Alps about 150 kilometers (90 miles) west of Milano (Milan) and located very close to the border with Switzerland. (Grazie a Alfredo Lissoni, Antonio Cuccu e Danilo Tacchino di Centro Ufologico Nazionale d'Italia, CUN, per questi rapporti.) WOMAN VIDEOTAPES UFO IN WEST LOTHIAN, SCOTLAND On Monday, November 29, 1999, at 8:13 p.m., Sandra Whelan was at her home in Craigshill, Livingston, West Lothian, Scotland, UK when she "saw two bright golden oval-shaped objects in the sky." Immediately Ms. Whelan rushed to grab her videocamera and began shooting footage of the two objects. "The lights were seen changing shape from ovals to rhomboids." The local newspaper ran a story on the sighting and "actually showed a still from the video on the front page," John D. reported, "It seems the MoD (UK Ministry of Defence--J.T.) is very interested in the video." (Many thanks to John D. for this report.) MYSTERIOUS SKY SOUNDS PUZZLE OHIO POLICEMEN On Sunday, December 5, 1999, from 10:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m." several residents of Defiance. Ohio (population 16,768) telephoned the city police to report weird sounds in the sky above their homes. "Several city residents along with two Defiance police officers reported hearing strange sounds coming from the skies above the city Sunday night." "According to police, the sounds were heard 'moving very fast' above Wildwood Drive residences and from as far away as Ayersville." "The noises, which one witness described as sounding like a motorcycle hum, were reported between 10:30 and 11:30 p.m." "Police have not determined a possible source for the noises." Defiance is on Route 24 approximately 53 miles (84 kilometers) southwest of Toledo. (See the Defiance, Ohio Crescent-News for December 6, 1999, "Defiance residents report strange sounds," page 1. Many thanks to Kenneth Young of Cincinnati UFO Research for forwarding the newspaper article.) TRIANGULAR UFOs SPOTTED IN PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y. On Sunday, December 12, 1999, at 10:09 p.m., Paul S. was at his home in Pleasantville, New York (population 6,592) when he spotted an unusual light through his living room window. Because the window has an excellent view of nearby Westchester County Airport, he thought at first it was a plane's landing lights. But then it did something very strange--it halted in mid-air! "Tonight, however, a light appeared out of the northwest and stopped. I kept expecting it to turn south, as all the planes do, but it just stayed there. After about 20 seconds, another light, or another object (for now they were both close enough for me to see two or three white lights on each object--P.S.) seemed to appear out of nowhere. My view was greatly blocked by bare tree branches." "A few seconds after it appeared, both objects began to move slowly towards the west. I quickly ran to fetch a pair of binoculars out of my closet, and the objects were still in view when I returned, slowly moving to the west." "For about 10 or 15 seconds, I watched with the binoculars until they passed out of sight, slowly but steadily gaining speed, then quickly ran to my bedroom, which has a northward-facing window. By the time I got the blinds up and the window opened, one of the objects had disappeared, but the second was closer than ever, traveling to the west, or perhaps the southwest." "I could see that the three white lights were actually three corners of an equilateral triangle, and there was one dimmer red light in the center of the bottom of the object. I have no idea how high it was, but it seemed that it was about the size of a dime held at arm's length when it was closest, just before it passed out of view." He had the UFO in view until 10:12 p.m. Pleasantville is on Route 1 approximately 27 miles (43 kilometers) north of New York City. (Email Form Report) (Editor's Note: Pleasantville is also the home of Reader's Digest magazine.) BLACK HELICOPTERS INVADE NEW ZEALAND Two black helicopters were seen flying over Godzone, near the large city of Auckland, on New Zealand's North Island, around November 15, 1999. This was the first reported sighting of black helicopters in New Zealand. According to eyewitness C.S.M., "two black Iroquois helicopters flew over my workplace. The helicopters were black, not olive drab. They were flying at 300 feet and were easy to identify. A pity I didn't have a camera." The Royal New Zealand Air Force operates a fleet of 12 UH-18/H Iroquois or Huey helicopters from two air bases, RZNAF Hobsonville and RZNAF Manurewa, near Auckland. However, these helicopters are olive drab and have clearly identifiable RZNAF blue-and-red roundels on the tail boom. Another witness reported seeing a black helicopter over the Waikato Valley south of Auckland. "After flying around for a while, it headed out to sea." (Email Interview) (Editor's Comment: Auckland, with its population of one million people, will be the first major municipality to experience Y2K when the midnight rollover to January 1, 2000 occurs two weeks from now. Could someone be positioning black helicopters in New Zealand in anticipation of this?) Y2K: MAGAW TAKES OVER SPECIAL FEMA TASK FORCE "The outgoing director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) said Monday (December 13, 1999) that he thinks Olympic bombing suspect Eric Robert Rudolph, a fugitive for almost two years, is dead." "'My gut instinct is that he is still there, in a cave, and he is dead,' ATF director John Magaw said. 'That's only my opinion." "The last reported sighting of Rudolph was more than a year ago near Andrews," North Carolina. "Rudolph is the only person on the 'most wanted' lists of both the ATF and the FBI." (Editor's Comment: By now, Rudolph could have hiked from Andrews, N.C. to Van Buren, Maine...by way of Cuddapali, India!) "Magaw, who steps down next Monday as the ATF director, said that despite his own opinions, authorities will continue working the case and 'trying to create a situation where he can never be a threat again,'" "Magaw has been director of the ATF since 1993. He is leaving to coordinate the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) domestic terrorism efforts. Before joining the ATF, he was the director of the Secret Service." (See USA Today for December 14, 1999, "Outgoing ATF chief expects fugitive is dead.") Some researchers have questioned FEMA's statements about the severity of the Y2K problem and are questioning the agency's policies concerning the evangelical Christian community. On Sunday, December 12, 1999, at 6:30 p.m. Central USA time, Michael Bunker, author of Mark of the Beast: The Final Connection, appeared on the radio show The Prophecy Club of Topeka, Kansas and talked about secret FEMA training sessions that were held in June 1999. According to Bunker, a police officer who attended the session said the all-day seminar included speakers from the FBI, ATF, FEMA, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Marshals Service, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), with emphasis upon the USA federal government's plans to respond to Y2K. Bunker claimed that the FBI Special Agent in Charge (SAC) was asked by a state official, "Just what plans does the federal government have? And from your comments, it doesn't look like state and local governments will be consulted or even included in the making of this plan?" The SAC reportedly replied, "American government is set up to continue under the most stressful conditions. However, it has always fought on foreign soil. (Editor's Comment: Dolley Madison and Jefferson Davis might give you an argument about that, friend.) No one can say for sure what a civil war would be like. To be frankly blunt, the (Clinton) administration has been cultivating friendships to help with this, but we will not go into that. I see no need for it, and I am not sure how much I can say." (Editor's Comment: Translation--NATO troops in the USA for training under the Partnership for Peace program will be used to combat rioters during any Y2K-related civil unrest.) Bunker said the FEMA representative "talked about disruption of the food supply, possible hijackings (of food trucks--J.T.), differences between hoarding and stockpiling,. And other subjects included price gouging, bank runs, store runs, gas runs, the power grid and the emergency distribution of electricity." The representative of the U.S. Marshals Service, Bunker added, said their role in a Y2K crisis would be "to transport prisoners to the right place of internment" and "to work together with the FBI to monitor people and their activities around the country." (Editor's Comment: Begins to sound more and more like Roosevelt's roundup of the Nisei--the Japanese- Americans--back in 1942, doesn't it?) Meanwhile, more strange military activities have been reported in the southern USA. On Wednesday, December 8, 1999, several motorists traveling on Interstate Highway I-24 just east of Pleasant View, Tennessee, 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of Nashville, reported seeing two C-130 Hercules turboprop transport planes "flying low and heading north towards Kentucky." The planes were painted white and had the black letters UN on the fuselage. On Tuesday, November 10, 1999, a man from Fort Smith, Arkansas was hunting in the woods near the decommissioned Army post of Fort Chaffee. He said he "saw brand-new chainlink fences surrounding the (existing) barracks. At the top of the fence was razor wire turned inward to keep people in." (Newswatch magazine radio broadcast for December 10, 1999, courtesy of Pastor David J. Smith.) (Editor's Note: From 1980 to 1982, Fort Chaffee was the camp where the Marielito Cubans were interned after Castro deported them from Cuba.) from the UFO Files... 1997: CHEAP DETECTIVE I don't have a trenchcoat. Or a gun. Or a 1949 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. I don't call women "dame" or "sister." Why, I don't even own a fedora! So why was I playing private eye in the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York in 1997? Well, it all started when I read H.P. Lovecraft's 1920 letter to the Gallomo literary club. If you recall last week's UFO Roundup, (See UFO Roundup, volume 4, number 33), Lovecraft had a strange dream in which he, as an army surgeon named Lieutenant Spencer, visited his hometown in update New York in July 1864. Prompted by a worried young man, Spencer paid a call on his old friend, Dr. Chester. Although resistant at first, Dr. Chester finally invited his visitors to a locked attic and showed them an astounding sight--two amputated arms of a clearly non- human creature. Lovecraft's "dream" seemed so startlingly lifelike that I began to wonder if there might be anything to it. HPL had certainly left enough verifiable details in the narrative, so I decided, come vacation time, I would drive to New York state from Rhode Island and do some on-site research. First I asked a librarian friend in Windham, Connecticut how to track down a Civil War soldier. She told me that in 1884 the Adjutant General had compiled a list of everyone who had served in the Union army during the USA's Civil War (also known as the War for Southern Independence in Mother Dixie--J.T.). Each state had its own book listing all of its Civil War veterans. Before my trip, I wondered if "Lt. Spencer" might have a Rhode Island connection. Perhaps he had earned his medical degree at Brown University in Providence. No such luck! The Alumni office at brown had no record of an "E. Spencer" from New York state studying there in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. At the end of May 1997, I set out for Saratoga, N.Y. I'd used their library previously and was pretty familiar with it. But again I struck out. Same story in Troy, N.Y. The librarian there warned me that I was in search of the proverbial needle. Nearly 500,000 men from New York state served in the Union army during the Civil War. Here I was, 132 years later, trying to find one soldier out of half a million. But he did point me in the right direction--to the State Capitol Library in Albany, N.Y. The microfilmed enlistment records listed four "E. Spencers." Two were from New York City. I dismissed them out of hand. Another was from Binghamton, in the southern part of the state. That didn't fit HPL's narrative. He was quite explicit about "northern New York state." That left Number Four--First Lieutenant E. Gary Spencer, surgeon, 94th New York Regiment, from Brockett's Bridge, N.Y. "Where's Brockett's Bridge?" I asked the librarian, as I returned the box of microfilms. She gave me a blank look. "Never heard of it." Returning to the car, I got out my trusty Rand-McNally 1997 Road Atlas. No listing for a Brockett's Bridge, N.Y. in the index. I purchased the most detailed New York state road map I could find at a gas station in East Schodack. No Brockett's Bridge! Crestfallen, I started back to Rhode Island. I was almost ready to give up. But then I started wondering if this Brockett's Bridge was a portion of an existing New York city or town. Back to the library--this time to a community college. The student librarian showed me their extensive collection of books on New York state. I began poring over the index of each one. She was very helpful. "Brockett's Bridge," she murmured, "I know I've heard that name somewhere. But I just can't remember where." And then...paydirt! The elusive name of Brockett's Bridge turned up in an 1855 book entitled The Gazeteer of New York State. "On the banks of West Canada Creek," it said. "Where's that?" I asked. "Up north, Near Herkimer." Herkimer! The Mohawk Valley! Northern New York! I thought excitedly, Yesssss! Don't ask me how, but I kept under the speed limit as I drove back to Albany, past Amsterdam, past Syracuse and on to Little Falls. I got there late in the day and checked in at Best Western. At first I thought Brockett's Bridge was the original name of Little Falls. But a trip to their public library put me straight. Brockett's Bridge, founded in 1794, was the oroginal name of the nearby town of Dolgeville. Here at the Little Falls library, I dug up more information about Lt. Spencer. including the family address on Fourth Street in what used to be Brockett's Bridge. But no mention of a Chester family. Next stop--Dolgeville. To show you how completely the name Brockett's Bridge had been forgotten, only one person at the Town Hall knew the original name. But they were all extremely helpful and friendly and said my best bet would be to check out the county historical museum in Herkimer, N.Y. Here I learned everything I needed to know about Gary Spencer, as I've come to think of him, from his birth in March 1839 to his enlistment in the U.S. Army in 1862. He was one of six children, his father Thomas was town schoolteacher, and his grandfather was one of the original settlers. Yes, there was quite a bit about Gary, nee Elbridge Gerry Spencer, a.k.a. Eben Spencer, age 16, in the original town census of 1855. I also learned the real name of the sinister "Dr. Chester." There were four doctors in town back then. Doc Chester is the oldest one, the herbalist, the one with the baby brother. Another strange fact--in 1871, a Swiss financier named Alfred M. Dolge stepped off the boat in New York City--and without stopping for lunch at Delmonico's--hopped the first train to Little Falls and confronted the town council of Brockett's Bridge with an amazing proposition. If you will rename your town after me, said Dolge, I will, at my own personal expense, build a shoe factory here in town AND a railroad spur line to connect with the main New York Central track in Little Falls. Mighty generous of him, eh? You have to wonder why this wealthy European was so eager to erase the name of Brockett's Bridge. And there's another strange fact. According to the 1870 Census and the first Dolgeville town directory of 1881, there are no listings for Gary Spencer, Doc Chester or the baby brother. Apparently, they all up and left town before the year 1870. So here's my theory of what happened. Sometime between April and July of 1862, during a period of intense UFO activity (Fate magazine in 1998 reported UFO sightings in Niagara Falls, N.Y. and Manassas, Virginia for that year. Also, Charles Fort recorded numerous instances of mysterious lights on the moon during the same period--J.T.), a saucer crashed in the remote rural area between Salisbury Center, N.Y. and West Canada Creek. Either the alien pilot was badly injured or the crew was killed and there was only one survivor--a bluish-green humanoid with four arms and two legs. Along comes Doc Chester, out in the woods gathering herbs. He either sees the crash or encounters the injured pilot. He gets the creature back to nearby Brockett's Bridge under cover of darkness. In this age beforee antibiotics, Doc Chester cannot save the alien's two left arms. But somehow he pulls the alien through and nurses him back to health. And his unusual houseguest learns English and tells him about new forms of life out there beyond Earth's atmosphere. But now it's July 1864 and Doc Chester is getting nervous. He knows that someday the alien's friends will be back. Worse, the ever- present strain of discovery is getting to him. Confederate guerrilla raids in Vermont have triggered a spy hunt that has reached even sleepy Brockett's Bridge. I mean, the good doctor can't exactly write to Abe Lincoln and say, "Guess who's staying at my house?" So finally he lets his baby brother and Gary Spencer in on the big secret. And then.... I don't know. I don't know what happened. All I know is that Gary and the brothers Chester were no longer in Dolgeville, N.Y. in 1870. An obituary of Gary's sister printed in the Herkimer newspaper in 1889 simply states that he "vanished twenty years ago.". And there the matter rests--for now. And why do I even bring it up? Two reasons, actually. My on-site research confirmed a number of the facts in Lovecraft's 1920 "dream" story. There are too many verifiable facts to be merely coincidence. Also, it's been two years, and I don't know when--if ever--I'll be able to get back to upstate New York and do some more digging. And since there's no Nobel Prize for ufology, I've decided to make my research public in the hope that an honest ufologist will someday continue this important research. The year 2000 rollover could be the biggest fizzle since the Comet Kohoutek in 1974. Or it could be a watershed event like the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. On the chance that Y2K is the latter, I am giving this vital information to the UFO community. Brockett's Bridge is too important a story to keep to myself. We could have a Nineteenth Century Roswell here. I hope someone will find out for certain. So, to whichever Roundup reader takes up the quest, here are the clues you need. Good hunting! We'll be back in seven days with more on the flap in China and plenty of UFO news from elsewhere in the world, brought to you by "the paper that goes home--UFO Roundup." Get that shopping done. It's nine days until Christmas...and 16 days till D-Day! Have a great week. _____________________ UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright 1999 by Masinaigan Productions, all rights reserved. Readers may post news items from UFO Roundup on their websites or in newsgroups provided that they credit the newsletter and its editor by name and list the date of issue in which the item first appeared. |