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UFO help needed urgently!!!!

kittynh

Penultimate Amazing
K
Joined
Dec 18, 2002
Messages
22,634
Here is my latest question from the site where I help people with UFO questions. In his first email to me he refered to it as an "organic UFO".

Any help? I'm thinking along lines of the plasma UFOs the Phillip Klass talks about. Of course, in his imagination it became bigger and details were added. This has really bugged this guy. He talks about "repressing" it and being ashamed to even talk about seeing it for fear people will think he's nuts.

So, what are some options about what it might be I can give him?

Thanks!

here it is:

Thanks for getting back to me. This is going to sound a little nuts,
but
here's me taking the plunge.

My brother and I lived in Milwaukee, and had a summer place in the
Dells.
The date was in the late 70's. We were on route our summer place. Both
of
us had day jobs, and this was a Friday night. It was long after sunset.

We are both map freaks. Every time we made the trip we would take a
different route and see new things. I believe that we were somewhere
near
Baraboo. It was a 2 lane country highway. There were no houses around.
Very rural.

Here we go.

I was driving. Dan (my brother) had the map. Pretty boring stuff.
Miles
of farm land or forest. Ahead and to the left we spotted a glow among
the
trees. I figured, at first, that there was a house or something. When
we
got close, I got a better look and slammed on the brakes. We came to a
stop on the road and got out. The thing was crossing our path, and it
was
about 20 feet up. It's speed was no more than 5 MPH.

It had a greenish glow. It was not a machine. I could see it's insides
and there were darker and lighter structures like something organic.
The
length was perhaps 20 feet. It was not flying. It was swimming. It
undulated it's body to make progress. That would be really normal for
something under a microscope. This thing was really big and over our
heads. It was in thin air, but looked to be moving through a liquid.

We watched it swim over the field on our right. After about a half
mile,
it went into a stand of trees and was gone.

Standing there in the road, I said, "Ok. That was not a bird. It was
not
a kite. There is nobody here to pull a trick on us." Dan agreed. We
proceeded to our place and talked about it before we went to sleep. We
had
no explanation.

The next morning, we talked about it again. To my dismay, Dan said,
"It
had to be a bird, or a kite, or someone playing a trick on us." He
still
sticks to that story. I can't blame him. I wish that I could accept it
as
something normal and be off the hook. Anything is better than a
swimming
UFO, and it bothers the hell out of me.

I don't expect you or anyone to provide a reasonable explanation. It
would just be good to know that someone else has been there. At least I
finally told someone about it.
 
I would go for the possibility of "sexed up" memories regarding the sighting (note that there was plenty of time for it, since it is reported as happening in the late 70s). Also what was actually observed may have been interpreted and details were made up during and after the sighting. His conviction of organic shapes and the swimming motion seems to point in this way. Rather than a descrition, its an interpretation.

Assuming it is not a fraud or an hallucination, regarding the nature of what was described, I would think about swamp gas (UFObelivers hate when someone says that) and/or lights reflected/refracted by a fog. There are no mentions regarding the terrane (Was it the type of place where you would expect swamp gas (mashy areas, deep lakes, peat deposits, etc?), neither to meteorological conditions (Any fog around?).

Or they saw a luminescent rod...
 
Also, how long had they been out that night? Had he been driving all night long, and not had enough sleep? There's a chance that it could have been something like what Corea guessed, misinterpreted by tired, possibly hallucinating minds.
 
Could he have been viewing the Aurora Borealis?

If he had an exact date, you could try to correlate his sighting with the aurora borealis being visible in Wisconsin at the time.
 
A green, "swimming" " organic" glow in the sky is a fair description of the aurora as I have seen it. Very hard to judge height, as there is no scale to judge by. I have been totally fooled before now about the height of things in the sky.

He does not say if the sky was clear (which would support an aurora) or clouded. He describes a small, low, close object which went "into" rather than over a stand of trees. If that is correct, it rules out an aurora and suggests a cloud of vapour or smoke.

I wonder though, how accurate his memory is, thirty years on?
 
Does anyone have any decent pictures of what was confirmed to have been swamp gas that they could post up on the message board? I can't seem to find a single photo in the Google image-searching utility.
 
Batman- the whole corpse-candle thing is interesting. Having read about self-igniting swamp gas as a youngster, I ploughed through libraries looking for a photo and never found anything but lab experimental setups and a couple of very poor photos (black and white), which looked like the moon to me. That's twenty...nope, that's thirty years ago.

Marsh gas is organically produced methane. Not the most spontaneously ignitable substance in the world. When it burns in air, it does so with a dull yellow or bluish flame , depending on the air / methane proportions.

Once ignited (by lightning or a brushfire usually) small leaks may constantly reignite each other, as bubbles break above the surface of puddles, till rain or wind extinguishes them.

I only ever met one person who had actually witnessed the phenomenon. It was in India, in the 1940s. He described bluish flickering flames, never more than a few inches from the ground, similar to the effect of brandy, ignited on a Christmas pudding. Sometimes it ignited grass stems which would flare yellow for a few seconds.

There was no movement in the sense of a single moving body of flame. The flame merely flickered across the ground from spot to spot, as small gas seeps reignited each other. The location was a marshy area being used as a town dump. I believe it was in what would now be Bangladesh. (This was before Indian independence in 1947).

In short, a ground-based effect which would be unlikely to be confused with a flying object, unless it ignited something which then rose in the air.
 
Ah, it was obviously a rogue Mexican oil platform. :p

Soapy Sam said:
A green, "swimming" " organic" glow in the sky is a fair description of the aurora as I have seen it. Very hard to judge height, as there is no scale to judge by. I have been totally fooled before now about the height of things in the sky.

He does not say if the sky was clear (which would support an aurora) or clouded. He describes a small, low, close object which went "into" rather than over a stand of trees. If that is correct, it rules out an aurora and suggests a cloud of vapour or smoke.

I wonder though, how accurate his memory is, thirty years on?
Click to expand...

Yeah, there was one notorious case in the late 1970s in which a UFO was described as "skimming over rooftops" and it turned out to be a satellite or something re-entering the upper atmosphere at 100 km or similar. :D

An aurora does sound right for colour and movement. Maybe kittynh could send him a picture of a green aurora and see if it looks similar.

http://science.nasa.gov/spaceweather/aurora/images2003/20nov03i/Adams1.jpg
 
The thing was crossing our path, and it was about 20 feet up.
...
The length was perhaps 20 feet.
Click to expand...

6 meters up. 6 meters long. Extremely close to them.

Standing there in the road, I said, "Ok. That was not a bird. It was not a kite. There is nobody here to pull a trick on us." Dan agreed. We proceeded to our place and talked about it before we went to sleep. We had no explanation.
Click to expand...

This is where the Big Red Flag goes up for me. They see something like this, and they merely move on, hunker down around their camp fire and talk it over, nice and calmly?? Why aren't they running away, screaming their heads off? Or, at the very least, have an increased heart rate?

It's speed was no more than 5 MPH.
...
After about a half mile, it went into a stand of trees and was gone.
Click to expand...

Ask him for how long he saw it. If he says something else than 6 minutes (or approximately around that), he is not telling the truth. It would take about 6 minutes for an object to go about half a mile at around 5 MPH.
 
hmmm, I have actually seen swamp gas that would glow when my headlights hit it. This was at my grandmothers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. For people unaware of the area, they would be mistaken for ghosts. Very very spooky, yet really cool. Also so common no one really cared. I have been told that in Colonial times people buried would weeks later be seen as ghosts floating over their graves. Basically, they had become pretty darn ripe.

I'm totally going with the 30 year memory making it seem far more than it was. Plus, the brother immediately thought they were "fooled" (the old dry cleaner bag hot air balloon trick?)

I'm passing on your thoughts, the weird part is the guy has spent this long with it as his "dark secret". I'm thinking this will make him feel much better.
 
CFLarsen said:
This is where the Big Red Flag goes up for me. They see something like this, and they merely move on, hunker down around their camp fire and talk it over, nice and calmly?? Why aren't they running away, screaming their heads off? Or, at the very least, have an increased heart rate?
Click to expand...
Now you're being much too sceptical. When did he say they didn't "have an increased heart rate"? I'm betting they did.

Ask him for how long he saw it. If he says something else than 6 minutes (or approximately around that), he is not telling the truth. It would take about 6 minutes for an object to go about half a mile at around 5 MPH.
Click to expand...
Oh come on. Judging distance, time, speed.... over a distance of thirty years? And if you can't divide one by the other and get the third, that invalidates the whole story? I couldn't remember anything I'd seen with that degree of accuracy after a month. No, a week.
 
Dr Adequate said:
Now you're being much too sceptical. When did he say they didn't "have an increased heart rate"? I'm betting they did.
Click to expand...

Really? Was there anything at all that indicated an increased state of anxiety? An itsy-bitsy teensy-weensy bit? No.

Dr Adequate said:
Oh come on. Judging distance, time, speed.... over a distance of thirty years? And if you can't divide one by the other and get the third, that invalidates the whole story? I couldn't remember anything I'd seen with that degree of accuracy after a month. No, a week.
Click to expand...

Has he forgotten it for 30 years, and then start to remember it? It sounds more like it is a story that has grown with age.

If the three pieces doesn't fit together, then at least one of the factors must be wrong. All links in the chain has to stay intact.
 
Yesterday morning, I could have sworn I saw a huge (maybe 1-2 foot across) spider on a web just above my neighbors back deck.

I stopped.

Kept looking.

Didn't believe my eyes.

Right there! A giant spider. Man that sucker was big.

Decided to go outside to see if I could get a better look at something which clearly, logically shouldn't be there.







Hey, when did the neighbors put a potted plant out on their picnic table?

See how your eyes can play tricks on you?
 
CFLarsen said:
This is where the Big Red Flag goes up for me. They see something like this, and they merely move on, hunker down around their camp fire and talk it over, nice and calmly?? Why aren't they running away, screaming their heads off? Or, at the very least, have an increased heart rate?
Click to expand...
I'm going to agree with Dr. Adequate on this one. You never know what kind of behaviors anxiousness will instill in another person nor what anxiousness to such an extreme would make anybody do. Often, people will make a similar criticism of those convicted of serious crimes carrying hefty sentences. Instead of them having the expected emotional breakdown on the spot when their verdicts are read, they many times will react coolly, or to put it more accurately, we will perceive them to be acting so. This is often mischaracterized as a person evincing a sense of guilt rather than being incapacitated.
 
!

I think life is an illusion created by the inhalation of swamp gas.

We must drain those swamps without further delay and get back to reality, whatever that is!
 
Batman Jr. said:
I'm going to agree with Dr. Adequate on this one. You never know what kind of behaviors anxiousness will instill in another person nor what anxiousness to such an extreme would make anybody do. Often, people will make a similar criticism of those convicted of serious crimes carrying hefty sentences. Instead of them having the expected emotional breakdown on the spot when their verdicts are read, they many times will react coolly, or to put it more accurately, we will perceive them to be acting so. This is often mischaracterized as a person evincing a sense of guilt rather than being incapacitated.
Click to expand...

But someone who receives a sentence knows that it is coming, and can prepare for it. These guys were motorvatin', expecting nothing. And reacted as though they had seen a funny bug.
 
More information from my UFO questioner....

he's getting very pig headed....

here it is...


Thanks for your answers and for providing your email. I'm more comfortable now.

I'll admit that my initial reaction to the swamp gas answer was mild irritation. After a short reflection, I asked myself what answer you could have given that would satisfy. Answer; none possible. Had you said that I saw a class B bionic probe from Jupiter, I'd have written you off as just another UFO crazy.

The thing that I saw bugs me, but not for the usual reasons. I was never frightened of it. Heck, I stood right under it and walked with it as it crossed the road. My main concern was to be a good witness by observing and remembering with accuracy. Being a bird watcher I tick off details, and sometimes even say them out loud to make them stick until I can record them. I stood on that road, taking it in, and speaking my observations for lack of a recording device. I wrote everything down later, but that record is long gone.

What bugs me is that I firmly believe these two things.

1. People who report UFO's are ill informed, delusional, or seeking attention.
2. I saw a UFO.

Carry that to it's logical end and I'm in an unacceptable position. It puts me in with the tin foil hat crowd. Next up; a coat with really really long sleeves ;-)

I know that human memory is an imperfect storage medium that degrades with time and circumstances. All I can do is accept that, and believe that what I remember is something close to what really happened. I'll hold that position for a moment while I address your suggested conclusions.

Plasma.
Really tough to maintain in open air. Lightning is plasma, and you see how short lived it is. Your flourescent lights contain plasma when lit. That's a closed chamber with a controlled energy source. Even that is short lived. The arc goes completely on and off 60 times per second. A stable plasma sphere can be maintained in the open. It requires a steady source of an inert gas, such as helium, high voltage excitation, and very controlled magnetic fields for containment. Maintaining that on a huge scale for half a mile would be a very good trick.

Swamp gas.
Good answer if we are talking about something low and stationary. Swamp gas is mostly methane. That's flammable and must look pretty neat. I don't know how it manages to get ignited, but accept that it's possible. Again, what I saw held it's size and shape for a pretty good time and distance. I don't see how a spurt of burning gas could do that.

The object that I remember was not flapping in the breeze. It was working hard to propel itself, sort of like a jelly fish or an amoeba. I hesitate to type these words, but it was "cigar shaped" and stayed that way.

Here's the thing. Let's say that you and I had never seen a rabbit. One day I see one go by and report it to you. You might take your best shot and suggest that blowing leaves can sometimes look like that. I'd know that your answer was wrong, but still wouldn't know the truth. Let's add the complication that crazy people see rabbits all the time. That's pretty close to what we have here. Sorry to put you in this position. I join you in your wish that we had both seen the damned thing. At least then we could adjust each other's foil hats ;-)
 
He doesn't seem pig headed to me Kittynh- just a reasonable fellow who remains convinced he saw something he can't rationally explain. I felt much the same the night I saw ball lightning (if that's what it was) outside my folks' place. Looking back, the feeling of wierdness remains. I was not scared either, just puzzled.

I note he says nothing to discount the auroral explanation.

As for the 20 ft height and length, I would place no faith at all in those numbers. The fact that he is a bird watcher makes it worse. He has inbuilt mental standards for estimating size and speed in the sky- (probably accurate ones where birds are concerned).

This would mislead, rather than assist him in estimating the size of something a mile long and 20 miles up.

I agree with him that swamp gas is nonsense. I'd be interested to hear more about yours though.
 
swamp gas doesn't have to burn to be seen. It can "glow", as in the ghosts in the part of Maryland where I spent my summers. I don't know the science of it, I just know that even a few weeks ago when I was down visiting my aunt and uncle, I made sure to drive down this road so everyone could enjoy the ghosts.

Hmmmm, maybe they are ghosts!

He really isn't pig headed. BUt when I explained that Werner Van Braun said some of the worst people for estimating time and distance were rocket scientists (which is why he always discounted most UFO sightings) he still refused to believe that his estimates might be off. Still, I admire his ability to agree we aren't seeing little green men!

I have to admit it would drive me nuts too, wanted to know what it was! It's an interesting mystery that's for sure.

Anyone know how I can put this guy in contact with Phillip Klass? I think Mr.Klass would be very interested to hear his story.

thanks!
 
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