PIEDMONT UFO ENCOUNTER In 1973, Reggie Bone was considered to be "the best-known and most popular person in the area." He was the highly successful basketball coach of Clearwater High School and was idolized in the entire region. On February 21, 1973 Bone and his team were returning to Clearwater after playing in a tournament in Dexter. It was a dark night, with the moon well below the horizon. As they drove through agricultural areas, several of the players spotted a light hovering above a tree line across a field and called Bone's attention to it. The light was rotating rapidly and turning colors from red, to green, to amber, and white after which it repeated the same cycle. They also saw an intense light shining down on the ground from the hovering and rotating form. Bone recalled that they first suspected the object was some sort of aircraft, but as it hovered they simply concluded that they didn't know what it was. The group kept driving and soon turned their conversation back to their earlier game. About 30 miles further (a half-hour later) the group encountered another object, which they immediately recognized as the same odd form that they had seen earlier. The object was now hovering over an open field next to the road. Bone stopped their vehicle and everyone got out of the car. The object was now less than 200 yards away, hovering silently about 50-feet above the field. It was rotating and showing the same varying light pattern as the object they had previously observed. After watching the object hover for a full 10 minutes, the group saw it rise, and in complete silence, it quickly flew over a nearby ridge out of sight. Bone asked the players to keep the event secret, but several players immediately told others about it and the media was soon informed. After he was contacted by several reporters, Bone reluctantly verified the details. All of the players and Bone gave the same descriptions and details about the event. (As a footnote, Bone tragically died from a rare disease in 1977 at the age of 48, but his story never wavered.) In 1976, True Magazine's Flying Saucers & UFO's Quarterly ran two articles describing many of the cases that occurred in Missouri during the early 1970s. Piedmont Police Chief Gene Bearden stated that in early 1973 his office had received "over 500 reports during the first month of sightings." In April, after Hynek's visit, Coach Bone witnessed two more objects. With him during the event were 5 other adults. One of the other witnesses was Radio station KPWB's manager, Dennis Hovis. Two silent glowing lights, orange in color, were watched as they floated silently over a nearby tree line. Another curious report came from a housewife three days earlier within 20 miles of Bone's April sighting. She was driving home in the daytime and was slowed by another car. Looking off to the side she was stunned to see an object hovering over trees. "It was round, with the exception of three domes on the top, one on top of the other. It appeared to have a dull band or something going around the center. ... The craft emitted no sound, and looked like aluminum... and was at least 40 feet across." Around the same time that Bone's interview of his first encounter was reported in newspapers and on broadcast media, two physics students at Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO) went to Dr. Harley Rutledge, Chairman of the Department of Physics, and told him they had observed a large silvery disk in the sky during the daytime. Rutledge, then in his 10th year at Cape Girardeau's SEMO was well-aware of all of the UFO reports being made in the region, but he knew Coach Bone and the students, and found their reports credible. Rutledge did not believe in UFOs, nor did he disbelieve. He simply decided to see if he could observe, measure, and hopefully identify what the many people were reporting. Rutledge started by convincing SEMO astronomer Milton Ueleke to accompany him to the Piedmont area to take a cursory look at the events and talk to a few local officials who had been involved in the events. Rutledge informed the University President (curiously named Dr. Scully) of his plans and added another physicist, Dr. Sidney Hodges, and two senior students to his initial team. On April 6, 1973, the project began. Eventually the scientific team was greatly enlarged. The full details of the 7-year study were published in Rutledge's 1981 book, Project Identification: The First Scientific Field Study of the UFO Phenomena (sic). http://mysterious-america.com/piedmont,missour.html EASTLAKE ENCOUNTER On March 4, 1988, Sheila and Henry Baker were driving home with their three children about 8:35 p.m., after going out to dinner. As they neared the waterfront, Sheila noticed something hovering over the lake and they drove down to the beach to investigate and got out of the car. The moon was bright and there was ice on the lake; Sheila could hear it cracking like claps of thunder. Plainly visible was a huge, gunmetal gray football-shaped object that was rocking back and forth, blinding white light emanating from both ends, but it was silent. Then the object began moving, swinging one end toward the shore and descending. The Bakers became frightened, ran back to their car and fled. When they got home, the object was still visible from a window that faced the lake. The object moved out over the ice and continued to descend, with red and blue lights now flashing in sequence along its lower edge. Sheila then called the Eastlake police to report a UFO, and was finally referred to the Coast Guard. Suddenly 5 or 6 bright yellow triangular objects shot out of the center of the large object and began darting around independently. Once they stopped and hovered, point up, around the parent object, then sped away to the north, turned east, then inland toward the Perry nuclear power plant. At this point Sheila called the Coast Guard, which sent a team to their house to investigate. Seaman James Power and Petty Officer John Knaub arrived towing a Boston Whaler, a seaworthy boat. When Sheila pointed to the main craft and some of the triangular objects still zipping around it, the men drove closer to the lake to investigate, accompanied by the Bakers. At the lake front they could hear the ice rumbling and roaring. In their incident report later sent by teletype to the Coast Guard headquarters in Detroit, Michigan, the men were quoted as saying that "the ice was cracking and moving abnormal amounts as the object came closer to it." Power and Knaub gave a running report to their base via the two-way radio in their Chevy Suburban on what they were seeing. The window was down, and the Bakers overheard them saying words to the effect, "Be advised the object appears to be landing on the lake...There are other objects moving around it. Be advised these smaller objects are going at high rates of speed. There are no engine noises and they are very, very low." One of the triangles zoomed straight toward the Coast Guard vehicle, a blur of light, then veered east, straight up, and came down beside the parent object. Two witnesses in separate locations also reported seeing the triangles. Suddenly the triangles returned and one by one entered the side of the parent object as it seemed to land on the ice. The ellipse flashed a series of red, blue, and yellow lights, the light emanating from the end of the object turned from white to red, and the triangles re-emerged and hovered above it. The noise from the ice abruptly ceased, and the lights and triangles disappeared. THE TRANCAS INCIDENT As the evening began to give way to the night on October 21, 1963, two sisters, Argentina and Jolie, were settling down after recently arriving at the Moreno family home from the town of Rosario. Each had with them their small children, and each was married to a man in the Argentine army. With both men away from home on military service, the sisters had opted to travel to Trancas to see their parents and their other sister, Yolanda. Following an evening meal – eaten a little earlier than usual due to the sudden failure of their electric generator – the entire household would retire to their bedrooms for an early night’s sleep. It was around 9 pm when the live-in domestic worker of the family, fifteen-year- old, Dora Guzman, appeared in the main part of the house looking to alert one of the family. She claimed to be able to see “strange lights” moving along the railroad. With their parents asleep and Jolie feeding her young child, Argentina and Yolanda would speak to Dora to see what the matter was. Both could see how concerned the young girl was, something that was completely out of character for her. She would even go as far as to say there was “machines” outside near the tracks. Fearing the strange lights could be the result of guerrilla activity, which occurred relatively frequently, they decided to investigate for themselves. Quietly, they opened the door to their family home and ventured outside into the night. One sister would grab a torch while the other would pick up a small handgun. Along with Dora, they set off in the direction of the railway tracks, using their farm crops for cover as they did. They could see the strange lights in the distance. Several “beams” would occasionally shoot into the air. Perhaps, they wondered, there had been a train crash? Or maybe a train had been a target of the guerrilla groups? They remained at a distance for several moments, believing they had seen several “human silhouettes” moving about in the distance. Then, as curiosity won out over fear, the three women decided to get nearer. As they got closer, all three could see the lights more clearly. They were broken into two sets of three. As they focused on them more closely, they could see that each set of lights was the underside of a disc-shaped craft. Running in between the two discs was a green, beam of light creating a “tunnel” effect. They decided to get closer still. Suddenly, they were in front of a pair of “dim greenish” lights. And they appeared to be heading in their direction. One of them wondered out loud if this was Rodriguez’s (one of the farm workers) pick-up truck. Then, the green light completely enveloped the trio and they realized the lights were not those of a truck. They didn’t appear to be anything of this world at all. As the two sisters and Dora stood looking ahead and upwards, a huge disc hovered over them. Each of their faces and clothes shone in the green glow of the craft’s lights. Whatever this craft was, it was not the same as the two small discs they had seen produce the “tunnel of green light”. It turned slowly in the air as it hovered. Several rectangular windows, themselves emitting a green glow, were clearly visible to the witnesses. As were several such portholes on the underside. As the trio continued to watch this cosmic craft in fascination and amazement a beam of “solid light” slowly emerged from a center-point on the underside of the object, eventually reaching the ground. Descriptions of the light later given by the women suggest some type of laser, although all were specific in mentioning the “solid” appearance of it. Yolanda would step forward and slowly place her hand in the mysterious beam. They would notice how  the light didn’t stop on her hand as a normal light would. It appeared to simply go straight through it. Although the young woman would later report that she could feel a hot sensation around the hand when under the light, it wasn’t uncomfortable or painful. Then, the beam of light would slowly retract, and a mist began to gather out of nowhere under the craft. The mist particles shined a fantastic green color under the glow of the craft’s lights. It was then that the two sisters noticed that Dora seemed in a hypnotic state, staring blankly at the strange fog, which was growing thicker with every second. As Dora continued to watch, still spellbound by the strange mist, along with the two sisters attempting to free of her trance, the green light suddenly changed to a hot shade of orange. Inside the middle of the craft’s underside, a set of yellow lights began to spin. The witnesses would later describe them as orbs in a ring or a circle, spinning. The craft itself began to rock noticeably. Suddenly, a burst of flames surged out of the underside of the craft causing the three women to fall backward. They quickly staggered to their feet. Fearing they were under attack they turned and ran back to the house as fast as they could. They would glance back on occasion. Although the object was still there it didn’t appear to be pursuing them. They did notice how it seemed to move over the farmland as if surveying it, however. Then, just as they neared the house, the light and the object vanished. The three women looked out over the farmland, which only seconds earlier was aglow under the bright other-worldly lights of the strange craft. Now, it sat peacefully and silently under the darkness of the night as if nothing had happened. By the time the women returned inside, Dora was far from calm. Likely suffering from delayed shock, she began to scream that she had been burned. She hadn’t, but by this time, everyone inside was awake and rushing down the stairs of the property. Looking at the clock, the sisters worked out the incident had lasted just short of an hour. Although some in the press would highlight slight differences in the descriptions of the craft by the three women, there was no real indication of falsehood on their part. Furthermore, there were several corroborating witnesses. A neighbor, Francisco Tropiano, would claim to have seen strange lights over their home. He would state this was just before 10 pm that evening. He would describe them as extremely bright before suddenly disappearing. The following day, as the local press began to get wind of the incident, a doctor who was driving his car near to the small village claimed to have seen “almost fifty strange lights” passing across the sky. https://www.ufoinsight.com/the-trancas-incident-ufo-encounter-in-the-argentine-countryside/ WILLOW GROVE ENCOUNTER At 7 a.m. on 15 February 1963 Charles Brew bore witness to a classic close encounter. With his 20 year-old son, Trevor, Brew was at work in the milking shed on their farm, ‘Willow Grove’, near Moe, Victoria. It was light, but rain clouds lay overhead. Charles Brew was standing in an open area, with a full view of the eastern sky. It was from that direction that he saw a strange object appear and descend very slowly towards the milk shed. The object’s approach was coincident with the cattle and a pony reacting violently. The two farm dogs fled. A local newspaper even reported that the cows turned somersaults, a suggestion the Brews later denied. The UFO descended to a height of about 90 feet, hovering over a stringy-bark tree. It was about 25 feet in diameter and 10 feet high. The top section appeared to be a transparent dome of a glass-like material, from which protruded a 6 foot high mast or aerial. The ‘aerial’ appeared to be as thick as a broom and resembled bright chrome. The top portion of the disc itself was battleship gray in color and appeared to be of metallic luster. The base or underside section glowed with a pale blue color and had ‘scoop-like protuberances around the outside edge’. This section rotated slowly at about one revolution per second. This spinning motion apparently caused the protuberances to generate a swishing noise, somewhat like a turbine noise, that was clearly audible not only to Brew but also to his son Trevor, who was located inside the shed near the operating diesel-powered milking machine units. Charles Brew felt his eyes were drawn towards the object ‘as though beams of magnetic current’ were between it and him. He also experienced a peculiar headache which came on with the approach of the object. After hovering for a few seconds the object began to climb, continuing on its westward course and passing up into the cloud deck again. Trevor did not see the UFO, but confirmed the unusual sound, like a didgeridoo or bull-roarer—aboriginal artifacts which can produce pulsating, wind-rushing noise. Flight Lieutenant N. Hudson and Squadron Leader A.F. Javes of the RAAF interviewed Brew. While impressed with his credibility, the weather at the time of the sighting—heavy continuous rain with very low cloud and poor visibility, and with a fresh wind in an easterly direction—seems to have led them to focus on weather-related explanations. Their report describes the basis of their somewhat extraordinary ‘explanation’ for the incident: ‘On 6 March Dr Berson and Mr Clark, Commonwealth meteorologists, were interviewed to see if clouds give this type of phenomenon. They agreed that a tornado condition could give this effect. The direction of rotation of Brew’s report of the object was consistent with known facts for the Southern Hemisphere. The blue-ish coloring has been reported previously and is probably due to electric discharge and there would be a smell of ozone. The only difference in Brew’s report was that the object moved from east to west, because all their previous reports of this nature have been from west to east. Mr Brew stated that the wind was fresh from an easterly direction. However, a meteorological report states that wind was westerly at eight knots.’ The report notes that the meteorological report was from a Yallourn observer, about 12 miles away, therefore local variations in the weather would not have been unusual. Despite this lack of rigor in determining how relevant their hypothesis was, the RAAF officers’ report concluded, ‘There is little doubt that Brew did witness something, and it is most likely that it was a natural phenomenon. The phenomenon was probably a tornado. There was no reported damage along its path, therefore one could assume that it was weak in nature.’ The Department of Air responded to a civilian UFO group inquiry about the incident with the following statement, ‘Our investigation and inquiries reveal that there are scientific records of certain tornado-like meteorological manifestations which have a similar appearance in many ways to whatever was seen by Mr Brew. The information available is such, however, that while we accept this is a possibility, we are unable to come to any firm conclusion as to the nature of the object or manifestation reported.’ The official sighting summaries removed any such doubt. By then the ‘possible cause’ was listed as a ‘tornado-like meteorological manifestation.’ Dr. Berson and an associate visited Brew at the Willow Grove property. According to Brew, Dr Berson was interested in the headache that he had, and indicated that Berson had said that it tied in with his theory of a possible electromagnetic nature of the incident. What the Department of Air referred to as a ‘tornado-like meteorological manifestation’ elicited the following comment from Charles Brew. He said, ‘I  wished it would come again. It was beautiful. I could feel the life pulsating from it.’ Dr. James McDonald visited Charles Brew during his 1967 Australian trip interviewing him at the site of the 1963 incident. McDonald concluded, “like that of many other UFO witnesses, it is extremely difficult to explain in present-day scientific or technological terms.” Despite the extraordinary nature of the Willow Grove incident and the high level of official interest in it, the sighting was listed in a subsequently released “Summary of Unidentified Aerial Sightings reported to Department of Air, Canberra, ACT, from 1960” as having a possible cause of “tornado like meteorological manifestation.” http://www.thinkaboutitdocs.com/1963-the-willow-grove-close-encounter/ BARRA VELHA ENCOUNTER When we arrived at João Franco's house, we were faced with a simple, melancholy and very sad man, but willing to report in detail what had happened. Franco did not know how to accurately specify the day on which his experiment took place, but he assured that it was in October 1985. At the time, he, his brother Galvão Franco, a friend named Ozório Rosa de Carvalho and another colleague went fishing in Açude da Barra , in the Barra Velha region, in the Guaxupé countryside. The place is inside a farm and they were not allowed to fish in the weir, which constituted illegal activity and invasion of property. Although the brothers were military police at the time, they had been in the habit of fishing for more than three years, and for obvious reasons, between 8:00 pm and 10:30 pm, with a way of hiding in the dark of night. They always left the car - an Opal that belonged to Galvão - on the road and invaded the property on foot, fishing with an inflatable boat. The process was fast: one night they went to the place and installed the nets, and the next they returned to collect them with the fish. The boat was kept in the weir, hidden under the cattails [Aquatic plants typical of swamps, mangroves, weirs and other water mirrors, which can reach up to two meters in height]. The night of the UFO event was precisely the night when they went to remove the nets, which took no more than 30 minutes. When the group was collecting the last net, they spotted a luminous sphere of blue color, the size of the full moon, over the top of the trees that surround the weir. From that moment on, everyone was in a panic, because they thought it could be the searchlight or flashlight of a ranger, triggered by the owner of the farm. Soon after, Franco saw four smaller spheres come out from under the first. They were very small, shiny and made a vertical movement very fast, going up and down without stopping. As they paddled quickly, the smaller spheres seemed to follow the boat from a distance. When the group arrived at the cattails, they tried to hide in them, as the vegetation is high and closed. But a small, bluish light came floating, with wavy movements, and ended up entering the middle of the plants. When it got very close to the boat, it launched an extremely strong and bluish flash and then disappeared, without leaving any trace. After about 10 minutes, the lights did not appear again so they concluded that there was no more danger and decided to paddle towards the edge of the weir. When they got there, they got off the boat, caught the fish and went to the car. Arriving at Opal, Galvão Franco tried to start it, but they discovered that there was not a single drop of gasoline in the tank. The four started walking along the dirt road, arriving at the Fazenda Barra administrator's house. Fortunately, at the time, the employee was Ulisses Gonçalves da Silva, known to the boys and Galvão Franco's “church brother”. Before leaving with the gasoline, they were informed that it was already 4:30 am. This was a big surprise. The four quickly returned to the car, filled the tank and left. On the way back, they wondered how much time could have passed. At worst, they would spend a little more than half an hour to collect the nets and it was about 10:30 pm when they started the task. They decided to do the math. When the lights came on, they were hidden in the boards for about 10 minutes. The walk on the road to the administrator's house would take another 40 minutes at most. However, when they were met by Silva, it was already 4:30 am! Whatever the calculation, no matter how late they were here and there, everything should be closed by midnight. What could have happened over the last four hours? The four men never knew what happened to them during this period of “lost time” in their lives. With all the data collected in the depositions, the reconstitution on the spot, the location of the press records and even regressive hypnosis performed on João Franco, something unusual happened to those men during the fishing that night in October 1985. The few conflicting details in the testimonies can be the result of small flaws in the memory of those involved, in addition to the individual characteristics of each one when observing, interpreting and describing the events. Analyzing the picture as a whole, there is a unique and clear scenario, despite isolated differences.