Saturday, May 15, 2004
Sighting in Mexico rekindles UFO interest
DAYTONA BEACH -- It -- whatever it was -- hovered in the early evening sky, shaped like a pale-green disc.
John Erickson believes what he saw that night -- April 18, 2002 -- was a UFO.
"I thought to myself: I must be seeing things," Erickson, 58, said. "They're supposed to be gray and black."
Six months after that April night in 2002, Erickson said, he spotted another floating object in Daytona Beach. He could hardly believe it. So he told his wife to walk outside. She, too, saw a Christmas tree-shaped object floating above the treetops.
Like many other UFO enthusiasts, the retired Army staff sergeant believes two phenomena are at play. The government occasionally tests experimental aircraft, which common folks believe to be UFOs, he said. And occasionally, extraterrestrials from outer space visit Earth.
The latter seems to comfort Erickson.
"Who's to say they haven't traveled for millions of years and now they're arriving?" he asked. "Frankly, I hope it's true. The idea of them being up there makes me feel a little less lonely."
But one local astronomer doubts the federal government could keep a lid on evidence of aliens and flying saucers.
"I've not yet seen real hard scientific evidence indicating extraterrestrials," said Roger Hoefer, curator of astronomy for Volusia County Schools and the Museum of Arts and Sciences. "But there are a lot of things that haven't been explained."
The director of the nonprofit National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle receives between 3,000 and 4,000 reports of unidentified objects each year. Between 100 and 200 of those reports are forwarded to the Mutual UFO Network for further investigation. Mutual is an international organization dedicated to the scientific study of UFOs.
On March 25, the National UFO Reporting Center fielded a tip from an air traffic controller who said a pilot had reported two aircraft 15 miles in front of him at 35,000 feet, even though nothing showed up on radar. And on June 22, 2000, a pilot reported an egg-shaped object with no lights that darted at him and missed his starboard wing by 50 feet.
"Until we have a butterfly net that allows us to snag one of these things, we won't be able to identify what we're dealing with," said Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center. "But it appears we're dealing with objects that have an extraordinary technological ability."
In the skies over Mexico, the bright objects seemed intelligent after they changed direction and surrounded the military plane that was chasing them.
"And I believe they could feel we were pursuing them," said the plane's captain, Maj. Magdaleno Castanon.
When the pilots stopped following the objects, the balls of light vanished.
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