The Government Now Admits There's an 'Area 51' .... BUT WE THE PEOPLE ARE STUPID!

National Security Archive / AP

Newly declassified documents, obtained by George Washington University's National Security Archive, appear to for the first time acknowledge the existence of Area 51. Hundreds of pages describe the genesis of the Nevada site that was home to the government's spy plane program for decades. The documents do not, however, mention aliens.
The project started humbly. In the pre-drone era about a decade after the end of World War II, President Eisenhower signed off on a project aimed at building a high-altitude, long-range, manned aircraft that could photograph remote targets. Working together, the Air Force and Lockheed developed a craft that could hold the high-resolution cameras required for the images, a craft that became the U-2. Why "U-2"?

They decided that they could not call the project aircraft a bomber, fighter, or transport plane, and they did not want anyone to know that the new plane was for reconnaissance, so [Air Force officers] Geary and Culbertson decided that it should come under the utility aircraft category. At the time, there were only two utility aircraft on the books, a U-1 and a U-3. told Culbertson that the Lockheed CL-282 was going to be known officially as the U-2.

The next step was to find a place from which the top-secret aircraft could be flown.

On 12 April 1955 [CIA officer] Richard Bissell and Col. Osmund Ritland (the senior Air Force officer on the project staff) flew over Nevada with [Lockheed's] Kelly Johnson in a small Beechcraft plane piloted by Lockheed's chief test pilot, Tony LeVier. They spotted what appeared to be an airstrip by a salt flat known as Groom Lake, near the northeast corner of the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) Nevada Proving Ground. After debating about landing on the old airstrip, LeVier set the plane down on the lakebed, and all four walked over to examine the strip. The facility had been used during World War II as an aerial gunnery range for Army Air Corps pilots. From the air the strip appeared to be paved, but on closer inspection it turned out to have originally been fashioned from compacted earth that had turned into ankle-deep dust after more than a decade of disuse. If LeVier had atrempted to land on the airstrip, the plane would probably have nosed over when the wheels sank into the loose soil, killing or injuring all of the key figures in the U-2 project.

That's the first acknowledged mention of the Groom Lake site, according to Chris Pocock, a British author who's written extensively about the program and provided his thoughts to the GWU archive. Nor, it seems, has the low-contrast image that accompanies that section (below) been seen.

The name "Area 51," so evocative, was an accident of circumstance.

After consulting with [the CIA's] Dulles, Bissell and Miller asked the Atomic Energy Commission to add the Groom Lake area to its real estate holdings in Nevada. AEC Chairman Adm. Lewis Strauss readily agreed, and President Eisenhower also approved the addition of this strip of wasteland, known by its map designation as Area 51, to the Nevada Test Site. The outlines of Area 51 are shown on current unclassified maps as a small rectangular area adjoining the northeast corner of the much larger Nevada Test Site.

Recognizing that people might not be excited about moving to a place called "Area 51" in the middle of the desert, a new name was offered: "Paradise Ranch, which was soon shortened to the Ranch." It was less appealing, however, in popular culture.
The National Security Archive outlines other new revelations in the documents (all 407 pages of which can be downloaded from the site). Three new details:

• More than three pages (pp. 153-157, previously deleted in their entirety) on British participation in the U-2 program. The authors note that President Dwight Eisenhower viewed British participation "as a way to confuse the Soviets as to sponsorship of particular overflights" as well to spread the risk of failure.
• An account (pp. 231-233, previously redacted in its entirety) of U-2 operations from India, between 1962 and 1967, triggered by the 1962 Sino-Indian war.
• An account (pp. 222-230 ff., almost entirely deleted in the previous release) of U.S.-sponsored Chinese Nationalist U-2 operations, including tables of the number of overflight and peripheral missions each year.

It also includes a notation regarding the most famous U-2 flight: The May 1, 1960, flight of Francis Gary Powers which ended when Powers' craft was downed by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. In another bit of overlap with modern surveillance, Powers' flight left from an airfield in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.

The CIA has acknowledged the existence of Area 51!

The CIA has acknowledged the existence of Area 51 in newly declassified documents detailing the previously unacknowledged area in the Nevada desert.
George Washington University's National Security Archive obtained a CIA history of the U-2 spy plane program through a public records request and released it Thursday.
National Security Archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson reviewed the history in 2002, but all mentions of Area 51 had been redacted.
Richelson said he requested the history again in 2005 and received a version a few weeks ago with mentions of the aircraft testing site restored.

The Las Vegas Sun reports that the first military planes arrived at Area 51 on July 25, 1955, and the first taxi trials began two days later. The first test flight occurred on Aug. 4, 1955, according to the history.
“It marks an end of official secrecy about the facts of Area 51,” Richelson told the Las Vegas Sun. “It opens up the possibility that future accounts of this and other aerial projects will be less redacted, more fully explained in terms of their presence in Area 51.”
Officials have already acknowledged in passing the existence of the facility in central Nevada where the government is believed to test intelligence tools and weapons.
Richelson believes the new document shows the CIA is becoming less secretive about Area 51's existence, if not about what goes on there.

UFOs Exit Electric Blue Light Over Miami, FL

  UFOs Exit Electric Blue Light Over Miami, FL

Is it possible that these bright electric blue lights or 'gas clouds' are created by a craft or whatever exiting a wormhole? On Wednesday night, a witness captured on camera a spectacular electric blue light. Another witness apparently observed a craft(s) exit from the same light. Hopefully, this phenomena will be investigated.

2013-08-07 - saw this very glowing blue cloud like, wasnt a cloud cause it didnt move as the rest of the clouds around, didnt make any sound, it just fade in 5 min .... I manage to take a few pics and use my telescope to get a better view but only a blue gas was observed.
BTW the pictures do not make justice to how big , glow and even beautiful was this. - MUFON CMS

Miami, FL - 2013-08-07 - I was outside my house when i saw this star-like object that caught my attention because it was emitting a bow wave in front of it, there was another ship behind it following the main bigger one, and then the bigger one did this HUGE "spray" like bow wave in mid air (looked just like the china sighting in 2010) as soon as this happened the other ship behind it divided into two smaller ships and continued to follow the bigger one....after a while they were out of our sight...but there was an electric bright blue cloud in the sky much more different than the rest that disappeared a little bit after the ships were gone. - MUFON CMS

This may be similar a mysterious blue light that appeared in the sky over Philadelphia on May 8, 2013.

Witness report: "I decided to record a bright cloud in the sky when suddenly a strange blue light appears through the clouds."

This phenomena has been reported worldwide, but in different forms. It'll be interesting to see if other reports come in from Miami and the surrounding area within the next few days...Lon

-----

UPDATE: I received the following information this evening:

Last night around 8:30 pm in Miami, Florida I saw this in the sky, an electric blue cloud that dissipated within minutes. It was pretty low. This photo is from my one story house front porch. Please contact me if anything.

This Book is From the Future: A Journey Through Portals, Relativity, Worm Holes, and Other Adventures in Time Travel

Cosmic Time Travel: A Scientific Odyssey

Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos

UFOs & Secret Bases

Military fiction writer Mack Maloney, in the course of researching his novels, discovered numerous places all over the world similar to the top secret Area 51 in Nevada. He shared what he's uncovered about UFOs, and their relationship to these secret bases. Aided in the writing of his book, Beyond Area 51, by an employee of a U.S. intelligence agency he referred to as "Spook," Maloney learned that there may be as many as two dozen bases all around the world. Historically, one of the first secret bases was in the ancient Israeli city of Meggido, where a fortress was constructed on a mountain to hide their military force, he detailed. Nowadays, secret bases are generally built underground in order to remain out of view of satellites, he noted.
There's a vast underground base in Russia in the Yamantau Mountain built in the 1990s, probably as a place where top government officials would go in the case of a nuclear event, he said. In the United States, Area 51 functions mostly as a place for the Air Force to secretly test new reconnaissance aircraft like the U2, Maloney asserted, adding that he believes Bob Lazar may have been a government disinformation agent, creating an ET story to distract or divert attention away from the real technology at the Nevada base. In another case of disinformation, he concluded that Paul Bennewitz's tale about aliens and UFOs inside an underground base in Dulce, NM had been fed to him by government agents to throw him off track, after he'd stumbled onto some of their secret experiments.
Maloney recounted some of the strange aerial sightings seen in Colorado's San Luis Valley, as well as the alleged 1974 incident in which President Nixon took Jackie Gleason to view the remains of an alien crew and flying saucer under military guard at a hangar in the Homestead AFB in Florida. He also reviewed WWII era UFO sightings like the foo fighters, and the 'Battle of Los Angeles.' One of the intriguing things that Maloney's friend "Spook" told him was that for really secret technology like a recovered UFO, it would probably be "hidden in plain sight" rather than placed in an underground base. For more, check out this short video clip in which Maloney talks about his series of novels in which 'Mad Max' meets WWIII.

 BASED ON A TRUE STORY

I'm not exactly sure what year this abduction took place although I think it was in 1995 during the late fall or early winter.  This was at a period in my life when I was beginning to have full, conscious recall of my encounters with alien beings.  About midnight or a little later I took my new puppy dog out to the back yard to pee and poop.  It was raining and not fun to stand around waiting for Pushka to find the perfect spot, as dogs are inclined to do.  The next thing I remember was ending up in a room full of people -- I'd guess about three to four dozen -- some wearing pajamas, others in night gowns, underwear and some unclothed.  At least I had pulled on some pants to go outside.  For some reason my first impression was that maybe this was a bus station, but there was a lot of moaning and crying coming from the people milling around in a disoriented state.  Many were asking what was going on but nobody, including me, seemed to know.

The lighting in this room was from a limited number of spot lights.  I also recall that there was an area over to one side where people who were too traumatized to even stand upright were placed in a holding pen.  [Actually, now that I think of it, maybe they became violent and were drugged into an unconscious state?]  This area had a lower ceiling and I could see by the ambient light that the roof and walls looked like they were roughly carved out of dark rock.  There were roped off corridors set up in one area of this room to guide the traffic of people in a certain direction, not too different from herding cattle to the slaughter house.  This reticulated flow was toward a doorway that led into another part of the building and one by one the people in this group were taken to this room.  Eventually it was my turn and I stood in front of a human man and a woman who wore white lab coats over black clothing.  Holding a clip board with some kind of attached list, the woman asked me some questions to verify my identity.  She spoke in English and had a stern tone of voice. 

I recall demanding to know what was going on and refused to answer any questions until some of my questions were answered.  This didn't go down too well, and a rather nasty back-and-forth ensued until a tall guy came over and jammed the needle of a hypodermic syringe into my arm.  The next thing I recall was lying flat on my back on an exam table, with my skeletal muscles paralyzed.  I was still somewhat conscious but sedated.  A small screen had been placed just above my waist, effectively making it impossible for me to see what was taking place at the 'business' end of things.  There were bright spot lights illuminating an otherwise dark room and judging by what I saw when I first walked into this room there were several other tables set up with people lying on them.  It was a very strange and frightening situation.

At some point the sedation wore off enough (I inherited a robust liver) that I could begin to vocalize, even though I still didn't have enough muscle control to move my arms or legs.  I let out a trial shriek then let go with one of my customary profanity-laced ululations demanding to know what the f*** was going on.  Apparently this demand surprised the 'doctor' who was doing something to my nether parts and I saw a human head stick out from behind the small partition for a brief moment.  This was quickly replaced by a cardboard cutout of an alien head for me to stare at.   By this time in my life I had been able to recall the appearance of enough Gray aliens and other types to know that this crudely made fake alien was a ruse intended to make me think I had been abducted by aliens, rather than by humans messing around with innocent people.

The next morning I woke up thinking I had a very strange dream about being in a bus or train station with a lot of confused people walking around.  My right arm hurt and I was surprised to see a dark purple colored bruise on my right arm just behind the wrist.  This bruise was the shape and size of a thumb print and my vague recollection was that someone had grabbed my arm in a vice-like grip in order to get me under control and pull me along.

As an aside, I think that somehow in the abduction process my puppy dog, Pushka, was along for the ride, so to speak.  My recall is that I was tired of standing out in the pouring down rain and picked up the dog to take her back inside.  What is interesting, in my estimation, is that since that event she looked up to the sky when airplanes or helicopters flew overhead.  She barked ferociously even at commercial aircraft flying at high altitude.  One of my neighbors noticed this and thought it was unusual for a dog to look up to the sky and bark at aircraft.  For a second or two I thought about saying that my dog and I had been abducted by 'aliens' but decided to change the subject to more prosaic topics.

1947 - THE ROSWELL BASE PHOTOGRAPHERS:

1947 - THE ROSWELL BASE PHOTOGRAPHERS: 

THEIR CRASH SECRETS REVEALED

Roswell Army Air Field base photographers who were stationed there at the time of the UFO crash over six decades ago have recently been located and contacted. In their 20s at the time, today they are in their mid and late 80s. And today they offer intriguing details about what they maintain was indeed a very strange day in early July of 1947. They vividly remember it- and the stories that they tell are internally consistent and they are corroborated by others.

It has now been learned that:

Oddly, the base Photo Unit was completely “cut out” of photographing or filming the fallen “balloon“ that was “mistaken” as a flying disc. They state that that though they had photographed all types of balloons and experimental craft (including their retrievals) many times before, they never received orders to photograph or process images of the Roswell crash debris at any point.

It now appears evident that Base Commander Butch Blanchard and his superiors agreed that it was best to have outsiders who were located off-base take on the task of photographing and filming the wreckage and corpses. This vital task needed to be compartmentalized. It was a security risk to have too many involved, examining the material and corpses close-up, all stationed together at the same base at the same time. It was deemed wiser to use those from other bases or nearby retired military with Top Secret clearance.

Incredibly, the Commander of the Photo Unit was relieved of his duties by Special Order and transferred out of Roswell to a base in California almost immediately after the military had discovered the crash. This was at the very same time that the Roswell Base Chaplain was also relieved of his duties and shipped to a far west location, as reported in a previous article.

                       

“Men from DC” were flown into the base following the discovery of the crash. It is believed that they were brought in to photograph the dead corpses and debris. One of these DC photographers has confessed his involvement in photographing the crash aftermath. And he too was transferred out from where he was stationed after his crash site involvement.

The base photographers interviewed never believed that the crash was resultant from any kind of balloon crash but rather that there was a hush-up.

A civilian is identified who held Top Secret military clearance and photographed the bodies nearly immediately after they were discovered. Within three hours the DC photo crew had arrived to take over the task.

THE 3^RD PHOTO UNIT SPEAKS

The 3^RD Photo Unit at Roswell had personnel that held Top Secret clearances. This is because, they explain, they often had to photograph and process images of experimental craft and weapons (and their crashes) and many other types of highly classified projects and technologies. If the crash was in fact the downing of a Mogul balloon (as the Air Force now maintains) photo unit personnel possessing Top Secret clearance would have been deployed.

Two of the base photographers and the wife of a third (still living and lucid but unable to speak due to a recent stroke) have recently offered up insight on the crash incident for the very time:

James Remiyac

PFC 3^rd Photo Unit

Jim Remiyac was a 20 year old PFC in the 3^rd Photo Unit at Roswell in July of 1947. Now 85, he has recently suffered a stroke but I had the opportunity to talk with his wife about his time there.

She and her husband discussed the crash incident over the decades, including well before all of the books, magazine and shows on Roswell.

She explained that her husband said that he and his unit were “shut out from everything” and that “even though they should have been there as they were many times before for similar things, they were not called out. And they wondered about this after the newspaper accounts too. Why? What was so special?”

Remiyac noticed increased flight activity in and out of the base and he had heard rumors that people from Washington, DC were there for a serious matter. He called them “brass.”

He never believed it was a balloon- and he does believe that there was a cover-up. He also does not discount that the crash could have been extraterrestrial in nature- but he had no first-hand knowledge of that. He explained that everyone got quite about it until they got out. “Beginning in the early 1950s we would again mention it to one another.” 

Gene Niederschmidt

PFC 3^rd Photo Unit

Gene Niedershmidt, pictured above, was also a Unit member and who possessed Top Secret clearance. Gene echoes Remiyac’s recollections. Remiyac and Niederschmidt had discussed the incident for decades and kept in touch. Mrs. Remiyac provided me with Gene’s contact information.

Though they were brought in to photograph and document “any and all kinds or crashes” Gene remembers that no one was called from his unit to do so when it came to that specific crash that particular time in July. Gene remains uncomfortable to this day about why this is so:

If it were a highly classified project of any type that had fallen, quick response and visual documentation would be required by base operations policy.

If it were a weather balloon, they photographed many of those as well. Any airborne device that comes to grief near or over the base was to be filmed.

Asked if this was a rather mundane thing to do, Gene explained that they even took pictures of servicemen after they had been in Friday fights, or of the crashed jeep of a drunken soldier, and similar “events.”

Gene and I agreed that someone from somewhere photographed and filmed the fallen debris no matter what its origin. The DC folks that were discussed may well have played that part.

Gene recommended that I contact Calvin Cox, his PFC companion who he said could confirm all of this and that he had another story to tell about that day.

Calvin Cox

PFC 3^rd Photo Unit

For Calvin Cox, that early July in 1947 was especially eventful. Readers will remember a prior piece in which it was related that it was Calvin Cox who was enlisted by Major Edwin Easley to help guard the Hangar at Roswell containing the debris  and who had orders to “shoot to kill” anyone who was unauthorized.

Calvin confirms Gene and Jim’s accounts that there was a “blackout” of information and a “shut out” of participation.

And like Gene and Jim, he also recalls unfamiliar faces around the base and his activity areas in the time immediately following the crash. He noted that some of these base visitors were thought to be from the FBI in DC.

Earlier corroboration of these three accounts comes from a brief interview that was conducted with the Unit’s Operations Manager, Vernon Zorn. In 1991’s UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin Randle and Don Schmidt, Zorn confirmed that “no photos of the crash site were taken by his men.”

COMMANDER OF PHOTO UNIT ORDERED OUT OF ROSWELL

1^st Lt. Lewis Cain Bohanon commanded the 3^rd Photo Unit at Roswell which took picture in the field and processed highly classified photos in the Lab.  

Very interestingly, by an issued Special Order (#139) Bohanon was relieved of his duties at Roswell on July 18^th, 1947, less than two weeks after the military discovered the crash. The decision by his superiors to relieve him was likely made several days earlier. Bohanon was transferred out to Hamilton Field in California, and was replaced by an outsider, Lt. Harold W. Arner.

It is worthy to note that Reverend Elijah H. Hankerson, the Roswell Base Chaplain (whose strange story is reported in my article online and in Witness to Roswell 2^nd Edition) was also relieved of his duties days after the crash.  Like Bohanon, he too was suddenly replaced by an outsider.
Bohanon was reached by author William Moore when researching his 1980 book The Roswell Incident. Though he did not speak of his sudden base transfer, on page 196 of the book, Moore briefly states: “Lt. Lewis Bohanon insisted that no photographic record remained documenting the incident.”
Perhaps Bohanon became aware of the use of the ‘outsiders’ to image the crash incident. Roswell Base Commander Blanchard may have had to have told Bohanon not to go out to the site, just as Roswell’s Fire Department was told by the military not to do so.  Or perhaps Bohanon had actively coordinated and collaborated with these outsiders.
Whatever the reason for his post-crash transfer, Bohanon knew too much and it was deemed necessary to ship him out.
He was obviously compliant, and was afterwards rewarded with a promotion to the rank of Major.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: THE PHOTOGRAPHERS NAMED

With decay of the creatures a concern, photographing and filming creatures had to be of immediate importance. There would have been field photographs taken. But stirring up the base’s photo unit was not wanted; the task had to be done on the down-low. A nearby photo studio owner was tapped to this task.
A civilian who ran a successful Roswell photo studio also functioned as an occasional contract photographer to the base. As a veteran who still retained his Top Secret clearance, he photographed many sensitive military things. This man’s name was Jack Rodden Sr.

Jack Rodden

According to Tom Carey and Don Schmidt (as reported in their book Witness to Roswell) Mary Rodden, (Jack Rodden Sr.’s daughter-in-law, a Nursing Manager at New Mexico Rehabilitation Center in Roswell) said that he had told her that he had taken pictures of the crash debris and the bodies and that he had been sworn to secrecy. 

He also cryptically and sparingly indicated to his namesake son, Jack Rodden Jr., that “they killed it” when speaking of one of the photographed creatures. Though they have yet to be found, Rodden Sr. told his son that had “hidden records about it.”

Jack Rodden Sr. also told family a ‘side story’ on the incident: A rancher had said that his three children had come home at the time of the crash frightened by the military because they got too close to the site.  

Confirming the testimony of the three photo unit vets that told me that “men from DC” were flown in to Roswell after the crash is the testimony of one of the DC photographers himself:

FREDERICK BENTHAL

Frederick Benthal was a Sergeant and Army Air Force Photographer in Washington, DC in the summer of 1947.  Benthal was interviewed for inclusion in Stanton Friedman’s 1994 Crash at Corona. Referred to only as “FB” in Friedman’s book, Carey and Schmidt some time later had examined the case and determined that “FB” was “Fred Benthal.”

Benthal explained that he and Col. Al Kirkpatrick were under sudden orders to fly to the Roswell base, a three hour flight. There they were taken north of Roswell where they had observed covered trucks carrying some type of wreckage. Further on they were taken to a desert site with a tent. This is where he and others took photographs of small humanoid bodies temporarily stored in the tent on tarps. They had large heads, darkish complexion and very thinly constructed bodies. He also detected a strange odor within the tent.

Benthal said that his picture-taking was sharply supervised by an officer who did not want Benthal to make sustained observation of the creatures. He stated that all of his photographs and equipment were then confiscated and he and his Colonel companion were debriefed that they were to say nothing of this as a matter of national security and then were flown back to DC. 

And just like Col. Lewis Bohanon (who commanded the 3^rd Photo Unit at Roswell) was transferred out of the base after the crash, Frederick Benthal reported that after the crash incident, he too was “transferred out.” 

Someone really didn’t want Fred talking. He was reassigned to Antarctica “to study the effects of cold on pieces of equipment.”

Strange Things in the Sky to This Day!

Strange Things in the Sky to This Day!

 

Human beings have always seen unidentified objects in the sky. From the prophet Ezekiel’s sighting of a flying wheel in 593 B.C., to the 1561 A.D. Battle over Nuremberg, Germany, to Kenneth Arnold’s “pie plate” UFOs spotted near Mt. Rainer, Washington, in June 1947, there are things above our heads that baffle us.

Many of these unidentified flying objects appear to be intelligently controlled aircraft. Others, like the following sightings in California and Illinois, defy explanation.

San Marcos, California

Wade stopped at the beach in Del Mar, California, on his way home from San Diego to San Marcos, on a lazy summer afternoon. He spent the rest of that June day surf fishing and arrived home after dark, around 9 p.m. “I relaxed, had a beer or two and went to my covered drive to clean my catch,” Wade said. “I completed that task and looked to the north at the rocky mountainside in the near distance.”
He didn’t expect to see what was there. “Above my neighbor’s homes across the street something was shimmering and moving rapidly side to side in a space of maybe 60 feet at 20 feet altitude,” Wade said. “I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me from the time earlier in the day when I spent time on the beach in the bright afternoon sun. I was wrong.”
Two shimmering, nearly transparent parallel lines about three-feet wide in the air moved silently and quickly side to side in the faint glow of a streetlight. “It was just wings and eyes,” he said. “The wings didn’t flap like a birds, it was more like a dragonfly, but dragonflies don’t grow three-foot wingspans, fly at night, or display what seemed to be some kind of intelligence like this thing did.”

The entity’s side-to-side movements encompassed about 60 feet in what Wade estimated was only a few seconds. Wade said the entity seemed to know he had seen it and it stopped in the air. “Whatever it was, it halted its side-to-side movement and seemed to focus on me,” he said.
Fear gripped Wade and he felt his hair rise from his scalp to his ankles. “I was sure it was a real thing, then I noticed the thing had big black eyes,” he said. “They weren’t friendly eyes at all.”
The entity quickly shot across the street toward Wade. He dropped to the pavement and it swooped over his head. “The thing was interested in me,” Wade said. “It was staring me down when it was across the street and either attacked or was trying to intimidate me, or who knows what, when it came at me.”

Robotic Dragonfly – Original artwork by Skeletox

Wade moved from under the covered part of his drive to get a better look at the swooping thing. It was directly above his head. “I felt great fear,” Wade said. “I said to the thing out loud,’ I see you.’”
It moved again.
“It zipped back into view from the direction it had gone, and was looking directly down at me with the weird unblinking eyes,” he said. “It realized I was looking right at it, and it took off in a flash. It’s gone. For good, I hope.”

Oak Brook, Illinois

Cool air poured through the open windows of the car as Lisa Becker and her husband pulled through their suburban Chicago neighborhood of Oak Brook one night in 1996. Nature painted the dusk pink, orange and red, but something dark suddenly smeared the canvas. “As we approached our subdivision, we saw a large blackness in the air,” Becker said. “It was about eight feet in diameter, about 100 feet away from us, and about 30 feet in the air. It was moving in a straight line.”

Her husband also saw this black shadow. “It had no specific shape and its edges undulated,” she said. “As it flew closer we pulled over to watch it. It was so low that you could have hit it with a rock.”
When they noticed the object, the Beckers later named the “pterodactyl,” it slowly and noiselessly crept through the sky from east to west about 50 yards from the back of their house. “It moved in a perfectly straight line as if it were on a tightrope,” she said.
The couple watched the object as it sailed about 10 feet past them, 30 feet in the air, and folded in upon itself, and disappeared. “It was not a vehicle,” Becker said. “The best way to describe it would be to say it looked like a very large flat stingray (with) no tail. It moved in a perfectly straight line, and never varied from its path.”

This left the college-educated Beckers wondering what they saw. “My husband thought it was strange, but didn’t have any particular emotional response to the thing,” Becker said. “It didn’t seem to have any sort of depth to it. It was like looking into a very dark spot that could have blotted out anything behind it. It didn’t have any wind or exhaust in its trail. Our best thought, though entirely illogical, was that it was a rip in the space-time continuum.”
Whatever the black, undulating “pterodactyl” was flying over their house, the memory has stayed with the Beckers for years. “I asked myself at the time, ‘how did the object make me feel?’” she said. “It wasn’t pleasant, maybe even slightly menacing. Not that it was menacing me. It creeped me out a little that it clearly came from the direction of my back yard. So it easily could have crossed over my house.”
The couple hasn’t seen anything like the object since. “My husband and I were amazed. We’re just regular people who saw something strange one day and still can’t reconcile that thing with our logical minds,” Becker said. “This stuff is sort of like UFOs in that there is no one you can talk to or no one to report it to. At least with UFOs there is MUFON. Ever since then I’ve been wondering if anyone else has ever seen something like it.”