UFOs online For more information, and reading resources on UFOs and other paranormal research, visit the following Web sites: Mutual UFO Network National UFO Reporting Center Indiana Crop Circles Research Association |
April, 2005 Indiana MUFON State Meeting UFO tales unite the curious Rochester sightings recalled a year ago at state investigators' session. By ANITA MUNSON Tribune Staff Writer ROCHESTER -- It's been a year since Bev Carpenter saw her first UFO hovering over her rural Fulton County farm, and she says her life hasn't changed all that much despite the fact that she's appeared on several national radio programs. Still, she was among the couple dozen people who gathered in Rochester Saturday for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) to learn more about the phenomena, and to share encounters with the unexplained. MUFON, headquartered in Littleton, Colo., is an international scientific organization of people who are seriously studying UFOs. It was founded in 1969 and has chapters across the United States, including Indiana. Indiana MUFON leaders gathered in Rochester Saturday for their state meeting because of what they term a "flap" that occurred there a little more than a year ago. A "flap" means several sightings occurred within a minimal time range. For Carpenter, it was around 10 p.m. on a Thursday night. Several of her friends and neighbors saw the disc-shaped object in the sky, as well. So, too, did Gene Winters and his wife, who live mid-way between Mexico and Denver in Miami County. A couple of Plymouth people also reported seeing the object. "That one we never solved," said Roger Sugden, assistant director of MUFON and an investigator who drove down to check things out along with Stuart Hill, a MUFON state section director. "And it was the best case we've come across in 10 years." Sugden noted that just about everyone who admitted seeing the craft was willing to speak with MUFON investigators, and in all of the reports from the area that night, people saw the craft over or near a body of water. Through interviews and conversations with officials at Grissom Air Reserve Base near Peru, Ind., "normal" aircraft and helicopters were ruled out as the suspect UFO. "In fact, a guy at Grissom told me, 'If it doesn't look like a KC-135 (Stratotanker), it's not ours,' " Sugden said. Sugden passed around photos upon which drawings of the disc had been made by hand. They all looked alike. A middle-aged couple who live outside Columbia City, Ind., asked Sugden if MUFON had investigated crop circles discovered north of Indiana 109 some five years ago, too. He confirmed that he had, and then showed slides of crop circles that had been proven to be hoaxes, or man-made, and those for which no rational explanation could yet be found. The Columbia City crop circles fell into the latter category, he said. Only the day before, he said, he'd been in Paulding, Ohio, near the state line, where a crop circle some 500 feet in diameter had been discovered almost three years to the day after Indiana had experienced its "largest UFO flap in Indiana history" in the same Columbia City vicinity. That experience, and others, prompted Sugden and some colleagues to form the Indiana Crop Circles Research Association, now in its second year. The group recently met at Serpent Mound, Ohio, and has been featured in UFO Magazine. Hill's presentation reminded guests that Indiana -- and Michiana -- has long been the site of UFO activity, and showed a slide of an 1897 issue of the Niles (Mich.) Weekly Mirror in which a "Vagrant of the Sky" was featured. Hill also pointed out that the sighting was long before the Wright Brothers came along with their flying machine. He offered up some noted scientists' research for additional reading and, showing the training he'd received as a young student, the retired Bayer Corp. engineer even gave a possible explanation of why we folks living in a three-dimensional world don't necessarily "see" the entirety of objects that may be coming from a four- or more-dimensional reality. Hill's writings on the subject will appear on the state MUFON Web site. Jim Delahanty and Don Dailey, also MUFON leaders, gave a history of classic Indiana UFO sightings and update on UFO literature before the meeting adjourned. For Carpenter, it was a chance to re-affirm she and her neighbors are not alone in their experience with the unknown. "All I know," she said to Hill, "is that I didn't believe until I saw that UFO last year. Now I'm catching myself always looking up to the sky -- just in case." |
UFOs online For more information, and reading resources on UFOs and other paranormal research, visit the following Web sites: Mutual UFO Network National UFO Reporting Center Indiana Crop Circles Research Association |
