I had barely cradled the phone when my partner pointed up at the dark sky in the direction of the mainland. “Jets,” he said simply.
There were two of them, and they were streaking our way.
In my 23-year-old mind, I thought, “This is going to be so cool,” though I was shaking in my Army boots. The aircraft passed overhead, their deafening, earth-trembling roar close behind, no doubt spooking all the critters in the swamp and jungle.
A heartbeat after they had passed, the lights were no longer there, or anywhere. Did they ascend straight up and disappear or simply vanish in thin air like a celestial magic act? It was a clear night and we could have easily seen them if they had headed off in any of the four directions.
But they didn’t—at least not observable by the naked eye.
Radar Visual
There were four missile batteries in the Everglades and one was “hot” every fourth week while the other three were “cold.” When we were cold, only the dog handlers were in the missile area at night; when we were hot, the place was populated with about 50 men working in the barns and manning the radar trailers.
On one of our hot nights, word went out that the radar trailer had picked up a UFO. This isn’t uncommon because sometimes the identity of an aircraft on the screen isn’t immediately known, hence, unidentified. Although the trailer was small and crowded with missile technicians, I pushed my way to the front of the gathering. The other MPs and I had been watching the strange lights for a few weeks and my gut was telling me that what they were seeing on the screen was related. I didn’t know anything about radar, but I had seen enough movies to know that the dot on the screen was the thing of interest. But was it normal that it moved so far across the screen on each blip?
“How fast you figure it’s going?” someone asked.
The technician twisted in his seat, his face pale and his eyes large, “‘About fifteen hundred miles per hour.”
I don’t remember if what happened next occurred the same night the radar picked up the UFO or if it was a different night that same week we were hot. Either way, the event is forever burned into my memory.
Close Encounters of the Second Kind
We usually kept the dogs in their kennels when the battery was hot and men were busy hurrying back and forth between the missile barns, radar trailers, and to what we called “the duty shack,” a ranch-style house in which there were bunks, kitchen, TV, and pool tables. The eight kennels were about 100 yards away from the activity, but the clamor agitated the dogs into barking nonstop in their solo 15-foot long runs. Around midnight, the missile guys would sleep in their bunks in the barns and in the duty shack, and we would get the dogs out to patrol the quiet perimeter.
It was early evening on the night it happened, and the other MPs and I were in the duty shack eating and chatting with some of the missile guys. A wide-eyed young man burst in and shouted that one of the lights was heading toward us. We all scrambled out the doors to join a dozen others standing about and looking up at the sky over the missile barns to the west.
The lone light looked similar to the earlier sightings but it was clearly getting larger as it crept ever so slowly in its descent toward us. As first, everyone was talking excitedly back and forth and calling out to new arrivals to look up. But as the object continued to come closer, everyone quieted.
I was frightened—but trying not to let on—wondering if the duty officer, a warrant officer I had never seen before, had contacted Homestead Air Force Base.
The object was about 300 hundred yards away now and on a direct course toward the far end of the barns, descending lower and lower at a crawl-like speed.
I couldn’t hear it. In fact, I didn’t hear anything—not the men, dogs, jungle, or the object. All was strangely quiet, until someone shouted something and another voice did the same. My eyes were glued on the object but I was aware of men running this way and that way, and more shouting.
I only remember the words of one man, one hysterical man. “Raise the missiles! Get to the barns and raise the missiles!”
In his excitement he had forgotten we only had ground-to-ground missiles.
Then all was silent again, as the object—triangular shaped with two or three multicolored lights on each of the three sides—slowly passed over our heads, close enough that we could hear a low hum.
(I knew of at least one report written later that said the object was believed to be 50 feet above the ground; my estimate was 200 feet. Quite a discrepancy, but as I would learn later in civilian police work, witnesses are rarely consistent.)
Could it be a plane, I wondered? But it was triangular and moving so slowly, and I had never seen lighting like that on a plane. At such a low altitude, somewhere between 50 and 200 feet, the engine roar should have been deafening. But its sound was only a hum: mmmmmmmmm. The object moved on toward the jungle between the ocean and us. Then it was gone.
Someone was shouting: hysterical, incoherent. It was the warrant officer over by the duty shack. He had drawn his sidearm and people were trying to calm him. Then they were wrestling with him, struggling to control his gun arm. It was as if he had completely flipped out. They eventually prevailed and forced him into the duty shack.
We all looked at each other, unsure of what we were supposed to do. It was then that I noticed how totally and completely quiet it was.
Even the jungle.
For the 10 months I had been stationed in the Everglades, the jungle was always—always—alive with a cacophony of racket, big critters and a massive riot of every creepy crawly insect known and unknown to entomologists. But right then, every last one of them was mute.
Even the dogs.
They should have been madly barking and howling, but they too were eerily silent. The other MPs and I hurried over to the kennels to check on them. What we found we had never before seen.
The dogs had defecated all over each of their individual cement runs; it wasn’t a poop pile in a corner, as was their usual. They had erupted diarrhea-like all about, as if panicked and trying to escape the confines of their pens. My dog was in his house, cowering against the back walls. I had never seen Fritz in his house because he had always sensed me coming and would greet me with great excitement; likewise with the other handlers and their dogs. I had to coach mine out, and when he finally came he scrunched down as if to make himself small and pressed against me.
The jungle noises returned in a few minutes and after a lot of tender loving care, the dogs were again normal, but lethargic for a while longer. I don’t remember the rest of the night but the next morning when we were driven up to the living quarters, we were met with a surprise.
“Don’t Shoot at Them.”
Morning formations were rare at the battery and when they were held, MPs didn’t attend because we were still working. But as we climbed out of the van that carried us back to the company area in the morning, we were told to change into clean, pressed fatigues and be in formation at 0900 hours.
It had to be about what had taken place the night before.
Everyone except for a handful of missile men still down in the barns formed up at 0900 sharp. A moment later, our captain came out through the doors followed by Air Force brass, a lieutenant, captain, colonel, and a high-ranking sergeant, all wearing dress blues. After the colonel somberly told us to stand at ease, he began talking about the events of the night before. I won’t pretend to remember what all he discussed but I do recall two specific orders. We were not to shoot at the objects since no one knew what they were and what capabilities they possessed. Also, we were not to call or write home to tell friends and family what we had been seeing, especially about what had happened the night before. He told us to go about our duties and report sightings as they occur.
There was no mention of the warrant officer that was last seen being whisked away in a van, never to return. He might have been transferred elsewhere but I always had a suspicion he was wearing a straightjacket in a mental institution.
>
Defying orders, I waited until no one was around the pay phone in the hallway and called my parents. These events had been a momentous occasion up to that point in my life and I felt a need to touch home. My mother was frightened for me.
There were only two or three sighting after that—lights darting about over the ocean—the same kind we saw weeks earlier from atop the gravel berm. About six weeks after that infamous night, I was transferred to Arlington, Virginia to study Vietnamese at the Defense Language Institute. After that, I was sent over to Vietnam.
Two or three months after I left Florida I read a story in the newspaper about sunbathers in Miami Beach being startled by strange noises in the sky on a clear blue day. I never saw a follow-up article.
There have been a lot of sightings in Florida over the years and they continue to the present. I’ve found only one notation online regarding a sighting in the Everglades in 1969, the same year I was there. Some “experts” say the swamp conditions offer a perfect hiding place for UFOs to submerge and lay low, or whatever they do.
I only know what we experienced.
UFOS AND COW MUTILATIONS IN THE NEWS
By Loren W. Christensen
“What is it with cows and UFOs?” ~ my daughter
Stories of cow and other farm animal mutilation have been around for many years. UFO investigators most often point toward aliens. In some cases, evidence indicates the animals were dropped from a great height. In others, investigators found burnt grass around the carcass and residual chemicals in the soil. In one story noted here, tests of the soil around an animal showed altered nutrients.
I would think it would be difficult for pranksters to do all that.
Fingers are often pointed at Satanists as the culprits but followers of the religion are quick to point out that it isn’t their M.O. Besides, footprints and tire marks are never found near the mutilations, and how would a Satanist do all that cutting and removing of things without spilling a drop of blood? And what about the impressions in the ground indicating the animals were dropped from the sky?
Then there are the believers in silent black government helicopters hovering over farmlands, stealing animals, and returning them mutilated. The question has to be asked: Why would they do that? Doesn’t the government have enough money to buy a cow to study its udder and anus? Why would they return them to the pasture at great risk of being seen, when they could toss them into an incinerator on the base? And why hasn’t one person from the government come forth and cry out in relief to finally get it off his chest, “I did that to those bovines! Okay? I did it!”
Having worked in the government—three years in the Army and twenty-five on a police department—I can say with confidence that two people can’t keep a secret, let alone a dozen, or several dozen, as so many government conspiracy theorists claim. Case in point, in the above piece “Close Encounters of the Second Kind,” I said military brass told us not to write or call home about the frightening incident we experienced. But as soon as the colonel and captain drove off, we were all doing exactly that.
Here are a few news stories about UFO sightings and cattle mutilation.
*
Montana
A married couple was driving out onto their ranch at oh-dark-30 when they came across what had been a healthy young cow lying dead in a field. When the Petersons got out to examine it closer, they discovered the animal’s udder, genitals, rectum, and part of its face had been removed with stunning precision. Additionally, the missing face exposed bones as clean and white as if they had been boiled.
The Pondera County Sheriff’s Office was left virtually without clues.
The rancher had found a similarly mutilated cow five years earlier on a neighbor’s ranch. These weren’t the first mutilations of this type, in fact, the state has experienced many of them dating back to the mid 1970s. A federal investigation was made at that time with the conclusion that natural predators killed the animals.
Peterson, who has worked a ranch all his life doesn’t agree because he knows what a predator kill looks like. He told the local newspaper there was no way a bear, coyote, or wolf did it.
Even stranger is that typical predators that spend their day hunting for food leave the mutilated carcasses alone. In Peterson’s recent find, birds stayed away for nearly a month before moving in to eat what was left of the cow. There is no explanation as to why they waited.
Another commonality is the lack of blood, i.e., blood pools or even splatters, the absence of footprints around the body, and cuts made with surgical precision in a circular fashion.
In the 2006 case, Sheriff Kuka discovered something even more perplexing. A few feet away from the cleanly parted out cow was an impression—the same size and shape as the animal lying a few feet away. But there were no drag marks, hoof, or human footprints in the soft dirt.
It was as if the cow had fallen from the sky … and bounced.
The sheriff checked with neighbors and no one heard low flying aircraft.
Sources: Great Falls Tribune
*
Missouri
A Northland farmer near Kansas City Missouri called the police to report a cow mutilation. Officers found the animal and reported that its sex organs and udder had been removed.
The cow had been ill for a while and had been relocated to a pasture away from the rest of the herd. The farmer told police it had been on the mend when he checked on it the night prior.
The farmer initially thought the suspect had to have been a veterinarian, given the precision of the organ removal. But that proved not to be the case. One vet did say that the removal of parts was amazing because there should have been mass bleeding. But there wasn’t.
Officers said the gate was still locked and there were no footprints or tire marks in the area.
A friend of the victim rancher said the same thing happened to one of his cows 30 years earlier.
When the vet was asked for an explanation, he leaned back a little and looked up at the sly.
Source: Fox4 TV
*
Missouri
Someone or something cut out the tongues and reproductive organs of numerous cows in Henry County, Missouri. Sheriff Deputy Robert Hills says they first discovered a mutilated cow in the winter of 2011 and the next two in July of 2013. All three were female and owned by the same rancher.
“We couldn’t see any signs of trauma,” the deputy said. “It doesn’t appear there were any types of wild animal involved, such as coyotes.”
There was, however, a charred outline in the grass around the latest cow mutilation.
The two mutilated in 2013, died 10 days apart. Both had their tongues, udders, anus, ears, and reproductive organs removed. For whatever reason, a veterinarian wasn’t called to investigate the first two incidences, but one was asked to examine the third mutilated cow.
“The cuts were precise and surgical,” the vet told the deputy. He said the cows had not been shot.
As is often the case in farm animal mutilation, there was no blood found or other bodily fluids in the immediate vicinity or in the animal. This is in spite of the fact some of the wounds were gaping.
The rancher later contacted Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and told them the third cow’s heart had been removed but not taken.
With no other reasonable explanation available, and given the remoteness of her ranch in the countryside, the rancher wonders if that leaves the possibility of alien involvement. “Something happened to these cows,” she said. As with other farmers and ranchers, animal death was not unusual to her, whether it’s natural causes or the result of attacks by wild animals.
But this situation was not in her norm.
Other cases of animal mutilation have been reported in the state over the past few years. [See the above news story]
Sources: CBS St. Louis, KMOX , 41 Action News
*
Pennsylvania
A woman in Paxton Township, Pennsylvania was relaxing on her front porch
when she noticed a large circle of flashing lights over her home in the dark summer skies. She had never seen anything like it before, let alone above her home. She grabbed a cell phone and shot a video of it before calling her neighbor over who also witnessed the anomaly.
She told ABC News that she thought it was an airplane before she realized it wasn’t moving. “I watched it for about 20 minutes,” she said, “and then it started changing colors.” Her neighbor thought it was a planet until it abruptly turned yellow. That’s when she called the police.
A Paxton Township officer arrived and he too didn’t know what the lights were. After he called two other officers to verify what he was seeing, they notified a nearby airport as well as the National Guard.
Neither had flights in the area.
This occurred on a Monday night. Tuesday they didn’t see anything unusual but Wednesday the lights returned.
Lt. Gary Seefeldt told the media that his “officers saw something that was out of the ordinary for the night sky.”
I emailed Lt. Seefeldt and asked about the story. He concurred that his officers did respond and did see the lights. When I asked to talk to the responding officers, he said he would get a hold of them. He didn’t get back to me.
Before he stopped emailing, he told me that a couple of days after the sightings, a local farmer reported that some of his cows were missing from his pasture.
Were the incidences related? He didn’t know.
Sources:
New York Daily News, ABC News, Good Morning America
*
Kansas
Harvey County Sheriff’s office responded to a call regarding a mutilated cow worth $5000 found in a pasture about a quarter mile off a nearby road. Its sex organs had been removed.
Initially, the farmer and the sheriff’s office thought the cow had been shot before the genitals were taken. A veterinarian conducted an autopsy and said the animal had not been shot.
Cops' True Stories of the Paranormal: Ghost, UFOs, and Other Shivers Page 13