Category: 1997: UFO Roundup

Editor: Joseph Trainor New year, new volume, new layout, new editor. It looks like some changes here at UFO ROUNDUP. Actually, it’s the same editor, using his birth name instead of a screen name. Readers, let us know how you like our new look. One thing hasn’t changed, though, and that’s the number of UFO sightings. We have a bumper crop to kick off the new year, so read on… UFO HOVERS OVER CINCINNATI MALL On Tuesday, December 24, 1996, at 8 p.m., four people were driving down Moneycreek Road in Cincinnati, Ohio. They were “out looking at the Christmas lights,” but the lights they saw hovering over the Western Hills Plaza shopping center had nothing to do with the holiday. The quartet observed […] Read More

GREEN FIREBALL SEEN IN CENTRAL ITALY At about 6:15 p.m. on Monday, January 6, 1997, a dazzling green fireball crossed Italy’s Adriatic coast north of Foggia, heading west. The glowing object crossed the Apennine Mountains, passing north of Campobasso and Isernia, and flew over Rome at approximately 6:22 p.m. The fireball lit up the sky. Thousands saw it, including the air traffic controllers at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport. Captain Giovanni Fior del Mondo, the pilot of the Alitalia flight from Madrid, Spain, was making his final approach into Da Vinci when he spotted the fireball. He described it as “a bright green light” which he kept in view for five seconds. Italian radio station RAI-1 reported, “Several hundred witnesses saw a large, […] Read More

AIRPLANE VANISHES OVER LONG ISLAND SOUND People in Westbrook, Connecticut were amazed Wednesday morning, January 15, 1997, when they heard that a single-engine plane dive toward the waters of Long Island Sound…and then vanish. According to the newspaper The Day, “the Coast Guard, state Department of Environmental Protection, two rescue helicopters, fire departments from Westbrook, Old Saybrook, Madison and Clinton, and some marine patrols and private boats searched 100 square miles after a man reported he had seen a plane dive into the water.” “Daniel Bowes of Meetinghouse Lane was having a cup of coffee at about 7:30 a.m. at West Beach on Salt Island Road when he saw a plane flying low over the water, according to Ralph Buck, a captain of the […] Read More

UFO FLAP SWEEPS MEDITERRANEAN The recent “green fireball” sighting over Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport was just the kickoff for a UFO flap that has swept Italy, Sardinia, and Corsica during the past two weeks. Eight major sightings are now being investigated by the Centro Italiano di Studi Ufologici (CISU), according to their newsletter, the CISU Flash for January 25, 1997. On December 11, 1996, at about 8 a.m., people in the village of Ascoli Piceno in the Sibillini mountain range saw “a flaming object with a (visible) trail” flying high in the sky. Following the sighting, a Fire Brigade helicopter spotted a mysterious pond of melted snow near the peak of Mount Vettore. (See the Italian newspaper Corriere Adriatico for December 12, 1996. […] Read More

TELSTAR 401 DISAPPEARS IN FLIGHT An AT&T television relay satellite has disappeared from its geostationary orbit, and nobody knows quite what happened to it. Telstar 401, a $200 million satellite built by Lockheed Martin, was launched in December 1993 and placed in orbit over the Earth at longitude 97 degrees West. The spacecraft functioned perfectly well for three years and then disaster struck. On January 6, 1997, the sun ejected a coronal discharge, a magnetically-charged cloud of hydrogen and helium 30 million miles wide. This “solar tsunami” rushed outward into the solar system at 1 million miles per hour, reaching the Earth on January 10. The cloud was tracked by 20 Earth satellites, including the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) launched in December 1995, […] Read More

FIVE UFOs OVER GULF COAST On Wednesday, February 5, 1997, at 11:30 p.m., motorists driving north on Texas Highway 36 from Brazoria (population 3,025) spotted a formation of five circular red lights in the sky. One of the motorists was the husband of Nancy Marcum, South Texas regional director of Skywatch, International. Mrs. Marcum has provided a detailed summary of her husband’s sighting. “He said from this distance they looked about tree (top) level as he was coming closer to West Columbia (population 4,109).” The UFOs passed directly over the Marcum vehicle, and he estimated “that they were about a thousand feet up. I told him I didn’t know how high a thousand would be, so he said about three radio towers high.” Mrs. […] Read More

UFOs SIGHTED ALL OVER THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST The states of Oregon and Washington were hit by a major UFO flap last weekend. In Inglewood, Washington (population 4,000), a suburb of Seattle, Jim Waylons was returning to his apartment house around 10:30 p.m. when he spotted “a bright yellow light” hovering over the neighborhood. The unknown object reportedly “hovered over the town for at least 45 minutes,” and its presence set off “alarms and security lights” in the building. “They apparently had trouble turning them off until the light in the sky had left.” The incident took place on Friday, February 7, 1997. Also on February 7, two Wallowa County Sheriff’s Department deputies encountered a UFO while on patrol in Joseph, Oregon (population 1,000). The […] Read More

UFOs HAUNT NIGHT SKIES ALL OVER AUSTRALIA For the past two weeks, Australia has been repeatedly visited by UFOs. Over 50 encounters have been reported since February 1, including two landings in the suburbs of Melbourne. The flap began Saturday, February 1, 1997, with an incident in Tasmania, the island off Australia’s southern coast. A Glengarry family reported finding traces of a weird “bright yellow jelly slime” in their yard. At 9:45 p.m., in Broken Hill, New South Wales (N.S.W.), a city 750 kilometers (450 miles) west of Sydney, people reported “sighting two bright lights traveling from the northwest to the southeast.” At 9:51 p.m., another man saw a glowing object fly from the southeast to the northwest, then reverse direction and “shoot off […] Read More

DAYLIGHT DISC SEEN IN NORTHERN MINNESOTA A silver-gray saucer was seen in broad daylight in Hermantown, Minnesota at 1:40 p.m. on Monday, February 24, 1997. The UFO appeared over Minnesota Highway 53 in Hermantown, just west of the Lakes 8 Cinema and Wal-Mart. Hermantown (population 6759) is a suburb of the port city of Duluth, located at the western end of Lake Superior. The UFO was witnessed by over 10 people, including Dave Briscoe, Minnesota state director of Skywatch International. Briscoe described the object as “the craft was ‘oval-saucer’ shaped and silver-grey in color.” “I was about seven miles away by vehicle,” Briscoe reported. “And I saw the object for approximately three minutes. Other witnesses said they saw it for about fifteen (minutes). Reports […] Read More

MAJOR UFO FLAP GOING ON IN NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND Since January 22, 1997, a major UFO flap has been going on in the three New England states of New Hampshire (N.H.), Vermont (Vt.) and Maine (Me.), with 17 sightings and one encounter reported. On January 23, Beverly Higgins was driving home from work. “It was ten to seven,” she recalled, “I was on Route 3 coming home from Littleton (N.H.), just before the Columbia trailer park when I saw this thing across my windshield, just above my steering wheel.” Ms. Higgins watched the object cross the sky from west to east, coming from Vermont and passing over the Connecticut River. “It was oval–I counted six windows and there was a green light in front […] Read More

MAJOR UFO FLAP GRIPS PHOENIX, ARIZONA On Tuesday, March 10, 1997, at 9:15 p.m., Steve Blandings and his wife were at their home in Ahwatukee, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix near Sky Harbor Airport, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) west of Interstate Highway 10 and just south of Chandler Boulevard. The southward-facing balcony offers a panoramic view of the South Mountains and the Gila River Indian Reservation. “I noticed a bright yellow light in the southwest sky over the Gila River reservation,” Steve told the ROUNDUP. “It stayed in the same place for about 20 minutes. I called my wife outside to the second story balcony, and the light moved down on the horizon from its position at about 20 degrees to the horizon, […] Read More

ARIZONA REPORTS KEEP POURING IN Researchers have been flooded with reports in the wake of last week’s big UFO flap in Arizona. People claiming to have seen glowing orange spheres and triangular UFOs over Phoenix, Tempe, Prescott, Glendale and Tucson the evening of March 13, 1997 number in the thousands. On Monday, March 17, 1997, Channel 10 in Phoenix aired a videotape of a large cylindrical UFO with 8 lights. In Tucson, eyewitnesses reported four bright lights coming from the northwest and heading southeast. (See the Prescott, Arizona Daily Courier for March 14, 1997 “UFO Sightings in PV, Other Areas.”) In Glendale (population 96,988), orange globes hovered over a suburban neighborhood for two hours, from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. People were “looking up […] Read More

39 UFO SECT MEMBERS FOUND DEAD IN SAN DIEGO Thirty-nine members of a UFO sect called Heaven’s Gate were found dead Wednesday at their rented mansion, Rancho Santa Fe, in San Diego County, California. The group had rented the home last October and were led by Marshall Herff Applewhite, 66, aka Father John, aka Do (pronounced Doe), formerly “Bo” of “Bo and Peep,” aka “the Two,” itinerant UFO apostles who first became prominent in the 1970s. (See Newsweek magazine for October 20, 1975.) Applewhite’s consort, Bonnie Lu Truesdale Nettles, aka “Peep,” died of liver cancer in 1985. The victims ranged in age from 26 to 72. All but four have been identified. Among the victims were Thomas Nichols, brother of actress Nichelle Nichols, who […] Read More