Chad Glapion: In January 2015 a retired police officer and U.S. air force veteran witnessed a flying object while traveling down a foggy nighttime road, as reported by UFO writer Roger Marsh. The witness stated he saw “Three white lights in a backward triangle, possibly a boomerang shape.” The object did not appear as any aircraft the witness was familiar with. The witness watched the slowly moving object until it sped up and vanished within the foggy night sky.
Later that year Stephanie Wilkerson sat outside of her Pennsylvania home when she caught sight of a large circle of flashing lights in the night sky. “I thought it was a plane until I realized it wasn’t moving. I watched it for about 20 minutes and I started noticing it changing colors,” Wilkerson stated according to ABC news. Wilkerson contacted 911 and a police officer was dispatched. This officer witnessed the lights as well.
And from 2014 to late March of 2015, Navy pilots and ground and ship radar support documented what the military calls unexplained aerial phenomena. F/A Super Hornet pilot Lt. Ryan Graves and four other Navy pilots part of his squadron performing maneuvers between aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia encountered multiple objects performing extraordinary physics-defying aerobatics at hypersonic speeds.
Encounters with unknown aerial phenomenon are not unique to the 21st century, in fact such accounts date all the way into antiquity. One purported event involved Alexander the Great during a campaign in Tyre, which is in modern-day Lebanon. As reported in the books Stranger Than Science by Frank Edwards, and UFOs in Wartime by Mack Maloney, Alexander’s forces saw and, depending on what account you believe, were either harassed or helped by fiery “flying shields” that came from the sky. Historical accounts of the event are dubious, but when comparing Alexander’s encounter to modern reports there is one obvious difference: technology. Have UFO encounters increased in the 21st Century, or do we simply have better means of recording such encounters? Furthermore, should we take sightings accompanied by footage and photos at face-value, or open the door to deeper scrutiny?
Since the term UFO first came into existence, researchers and investigators have been trying to obtain conclusive evidence for this elusive phenomenon. According to the Executive Director of MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), Jan Harzan, the objective remains clear, “The goal is to find hard evidence for the existence of UFOs whether that be metal fragments, landing pad marks, conclusive photographic evidence, or some other hard evidence.” With a background in nuclear engineering, Harzan worked for IBM for 37 years and was key in creating MUFON’s Case Management System used for reporting, tracking and investigating UFOs. MUFON is the largest civilian UFO investigation organization in the world. Optical physicist and UFO researcher Dr. Bruce Maccabee also emphasizes the need for hard evidence, “There must be testimony that can be investigated as well as any “hard evidence” that is part of the sighting (photo. video, landing traces, other effects); interviews of witnesses must produce a consistent history of the sighting.” Dr. Maccabee began his research into UFOs in the late 1960s, having conducted countless investigations into some of the most well-known UFO events for nearly fifty years and is without question one of the world’s leading authorities on UFOs.
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