Operation Trojan Horse: The Classic Breakthrough Study of UFOs
Page 18
In Nova Scotia, four boys reported seeing a black circular object dive out of the sky and disappear into the waters of the Cornwallis River dike on the afternoon of September 15. A professor from the National Research Council’s meteorite committee interviewed them, and the story appeared in the Halifax, Nova Scotia, Chronicle-Herald on September 18. The boys said the object first hovered in the air, “oscillating like a spinning top,” before it dipped down into the water. They estimated it was about 15 feet across and 6 feet high. It made no noise, and the water didn’t even splash when it submerged.
Elsewhere in Canada, a wave of low-level sightings, landings, and creature appearances took place in the villages around Montreal, Quebec, that week. Canadian researcher Gene Duplantier collected the many reports and prepared a comprehensive summary for his magazine, Saucers, Space and Science. Other close sightings occurred on September 13, 16, and 17 in assorted areas in the province of Ontario.
On Wednesday, November 20, 1968, another train of strange lights traversed the British Isles, going from north-northwest to south-southeast. These were formations of multicolored objects with short tails in their wakes. They appeared at approximately 7 P.M. and were seen that night in northwestern Europe as well. One of the many witnesses, Commander V. J. Chown of Woodford, Essex, said the lights appeared “to be assembled as if around an invisible tube, rather like the old Graf Zeppelin in shape.” He was impressed by the way the objects remained in rigid formation “just like warships.” The Royal Observatory at Hurstmonceux watched the lights and identified them as the Russian rocket Cosmos 253 re-entering the atmosphere. Dr. Bernard Finch checked with the Russian embassy in London, and they flatly denied this.
The January Flap
Early in the fall of 1968, I issued a cautious prediction to ufologists around the country, alerting them to the possibility of a new wave of sightings early in January 1969. I had run a thorough study of the flaps of January 1966 and 1967, and had found that January was a neglected flap month. Most researchers concentrated on the months of March-April and July-August. Few were aware of the many other cycles and time patterns involved in the phenomenon.
The January cycle can be traced as far back as 1934, when there was a major wave in Scandinavia. The neglected November-December cycle began in 1896 and was repeated in 1909.
Type 1 Sightings—January 1967
(by states)
Sunday, January 1: No data
Monday, January 2: Tennessee
Tuesday, January 3: California*
Wednesday, January 4: No data
Thursday, January 5: Colorado; Oklahoma; England
Friday, January 6: West Virginia; Vermont
Saturday, January 7: No data
Sunday, January 8: Connecticut; England
Monday, January 9: California; Colorado; Kentucky; Michigan*
Tuesday, January 10: North Carolina; Kentucky
Wednesday, January 11: Michigan; Mississippi; Missouri; Wisconsin
Thursday, January 12: Colorado; Kansas; Michigan; Minnesota; Missouri
Friday, January 13: Kansas*; Missouri
Saturday, January 14: Arkansas; Indiana; Pennsylvania; Australia
Sunday, January 15: Connecticut; Kentucky***; Mississippi
Monday, January 16: Florida; Kentucky**; Kansas*; Oklahoma; Michigan**; Mississippi**; Iowa; North Carolina**; West Virginia
Tuesday, January 17: California; Connecticut; Idaho*; Indiana*; Kansas; Missouri; Nebraska; Oklahoma
Wednesday, January 18: California; Indiana; Kansas; Kentucky; Michigan; Pennsylvania**; Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 19: Illinois; Mississippi; West Virginia; Washington; Canada**
Friday, January 20: Idaho**; Colorado; Illinois; Missouri; Pennsylvania; West Virginia
Saturday, January 21: California; Kansas*; Michigan; Texas
Sunday, January 22: California; Hawaii
Monday, January 23: North Carolina**; Pennsylvania
Tuesday, January 24: Indiana; Missouri; Oregon; Washington; West Virginia
Wednesday, January 25: Connecticut; Kentucky; New York
Thursday, January 26: California
Friday, January 27: Arizona; Iowa; Canada
Saturday, January 28: Kentucky; Missouri; Ohio
Sunday, January 29: Kentucky
Monday, January 30: Alabama; Connecticut**; Missouri; New Jersey; Oklahoma; Pennsylvania; Canada; England
Tuesday, January 31: New Hampshire
* Small flap with several sightings.
** Large flap with many reports throughout the state.
*** Power failure in area during sighting.
Sightings occurred simultaneously in several different widely separated states on the same dates, and no known natural phenomena (meteors and the like) could be applied as a possible explanation. A rocket test in Florida at 4:30 A.M. on January 16 accounted for a very small percentage of reports of sightings made at that time.
My prediction for 1969 was quite specific, for I expected the flap to begin in the Midwest along the perimeter of the great circle and radiate outward into the traditional flap areas of Ohio, Canada, etc. I also calculated that the flap would be preceded or followed by one or more “meteors” in the window areas.
On Tuesday, January 2, 1969, hovering globes of light were seen in three Missouri cities—Joplin, Webb City, and Carterville. These were the usual nonstars performing circular and falling-leaf maneuvers.
At 8:30 P.M. on Tuesday, January 9, a single bright light was observed following the Mississippi River along the border between Missouri and Iowa. The object reportedly paced an automobile from an estimated altitude of 400 feet. It sped ahead, stopped, hovered, and changed to an amber color before darting off.
A deputy sheriff in Green County, Missouri, reported seeing a bright, star-like object at 9:30 P.M. on Sunday, January 12. Other witnesses said the object hovered, moved in circles, and then hovered again.
The beginning of the January 1967 wave also occurred in this region along the Mississippi, although the major sightings of that period were concentrated farther south around Cairo, Illinois, where the Mississippi links up with the Ohio River.
During the first two weeks in January 1969, additional reports started to trickle in from Ohio. Unusual low-flying objects were sighted around Middletown, Ohio, and fireballs were seen by hundreds in the Cleveland area as they seemed to plunge into Lake Erie.
Back in Florida, residents of Jacksonville Beach were puzzled by “mystery clouds” which emitted sounds “like someone walking on pebbles.” Police Chief James Alford heard it and ordered Captain Harold Bryan to follow the “cloud.” He pursued it to the edge of the Atlantic, where it slowly dissolved into nothingness.
Strange nonstars were also bobbing around the skies of northern New Jersey again. On Wednesday, January 15, a professional man there was awakened by an odd mechanical beeping sound outside his bedroom window. No vehicles, police cars or UFOs were around. But simultaneously his wife, who was attending a civic meeting some miles away, thought she saw an unusual aerial light in the sky.
Random reports slowly built up in Ohio and Illinois. Then, on Sunday, January 26, a “brilliant flash of light” appeared in Wisconsin, following the predicted northwest to southeast course from Canada into Illinois and Iowa. A policeman in Appleton, Wisconsin, said he sighted an orange fireball trailing a plume of blue flame at 12:55 A.M. It seemed to pass directly overhead, he stated. A two-second power failure accompanied the sightings, and witnesses reported “balls of fire dripping from high tension wires.”
Seven minutes later pilots at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport observed “a smoking orange fireball.” One man said he saw two brilliant flashes in succession. Although it took this object seven minutes to travel the 200 miles or so from Appleton, Wisconsin, to Chicago, Illinois, authorities said it was either a meteor or space debris. Take your pick. Man-made satellites travel from west to east (to take advantage of the earth’s rotation), not from north
to south.
Sightings-January 1969
Here are a few of the other January 1969 sightings that have been received. I am listing only the geographical location, time(s) of sightings, and sources. All these newspaper accounts named witnesses. Some of these objects were viewed by whole communities.
Friday, January 3: Togo, Minnesota; 8P.M.; Togo, Minnesota, Cook News Herald (January 9, 1969).
Monday, January 6: Auburndale, Florida; 6:30 P.M.; Winter Haven, Florida, News-Chief (January 7, 1969).
Greenwood, South Carolina; 7 P.M.; Greenwood, South Carolina, Index-Journal (January 7, 1969).
Barnwell, South Carolina; no time listed; Barnwell, South Carolina, People-Sentinel (January 15, 1969).
Portage-la-Prairie, Manitoba, Canada; 8-10 P.M.; Portage, Manitoba, Leader (January 9, 1969).
Tuesday, January 7: Barnwell, South Carolina; 7 P.M.; repeat of previous night; Barnwell, South Carolina, People-Sentinel (January 15, 1969).
Thursday, January 9: Keokuk, Iowa; 8:30 P.M.; Keokuk, Iowa, Gate City (January 11, 1969).
Bowling Green, Ohio; 8:30-9:30 P.M.; Bowling Green, Ohio, Daily Sentinel-Tribune (January 11, 1969).
Barrington, Cary, Algonquin, and Fox River Grove, Illinois; many witnesses viewed reddish objects throughout the evening; Chicago, Illinois, Tribune (January 10, 1969).
Saturday, January 11: Phoenix, Arizona; 10P.M.; Phoenix, Arizona, Republic (January 13, 1969).
Monday, January 13: Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan; various witnesses saw object bearing red and green lights from 10:45 P.M. to 1:30 A.M.; Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, Evening News (January 14, 1969).
Thursday, January 16: Coos Bay, Oregon; 6:45 P.M.; Coos Bay, Oregon, World (January 18, 1969).
Portland, Oregon; 7 P.M.; green object traveling from northwest to southeast; Portland, Oregon, The Oregonian (January 18, 1969).
Friday, January 17: Jerseyville, Illinois; 12 noon; daylight sighting of circular object; Jersey County Democrat-News (January 23, 1969).
Saturday, January 18: Charleston, South Carolina; 7:15 P.M.; Charleston, South Carolina, Evening Post (January 20, 1969).
Monday, January 20: Columbia, Mississippi; 8-8:30 P.M.; Columbia, Mississippi, Columbian Progress (January 23, 1969).
On the evening of Thursday, February 6, a nauseating, unexplained fog crept over the south side of Houston, Texas. Forty-eight hours later a blinding blue-white fireball thundered across Arizona on a northwest-southeast course and traveled at least 1,000 miles before apparently descending “in the almost impassable terrain of the Sierra Madre.” A Chihuahua, Mexico, newspaper editor, Guillermo Asunsolo, said, “The light was so brilliant we could see an ant walking on the floor. It was so bright we had to hide our eyes.”
At 1:09 A.M. that morning the good citizens of the little town of Pueblito de Allende were awakened by a blinding flash and a tremendous explosion. A shower of fragments sprayed over a 10-square-mile area, one 40-pound piece just missing the local post office building.
Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution scurried to Mexico to recover the fragments, which they identified as “Type 3 carbonaceous chrondites.” Translation: metal fragments containing carbon, which is suggestive of organic (living) matter.
Charles Fort examined many of the meteor reports of the nineteenth century and noted that it seemed odd that these things had a habit of appearing repeatedly in the same areas. He also questioned the validity of the theory that these falling rocks and assorted debris were from outer space. Our astronauts have seen very few things in space that could be classified as rocks or meteors. Early fears that such debris might constitute a serious hazard in space have proven to be groundless. Yet there are quite literally thousands of meteor falls annually, and all kinds of junk have been falling from the sky since ancient times. Not just chunks of rock and metal, but also huge blocks of ice, stone pillars, vast quantities of animal and vegetable matter (including real blood and raw meat). Where is all this garbage really coming from?
There are many well-investigated cases in which rocks and pebbles have actually materialized in rooms and fallen to the floor in great quantities. We can’t explain these either, but we must seriously consider the possibility that all—or most—of the debris plummeting out of our skies “materializes” in somewhat the same way. Unidentified falling objects pose as many problems as unidentified flying objects. Perhaps the two phenomena are related in some unfathomable way.
There is something above us. This something has always been there, following the same prescribed courses year after year, adhering to the same timetable for at least a century. To claim that this something is from Mars, Ganymede, or Tau Ceti is as absurd as to claim that ornately carved stone pillars falling into fields in France are debris from the asteroid belt.
We have been so preoccupied with trying to understand and cope with our own immediate environment that we have never really made an effort to come to grips with the greater mysteries that lie on the doorstep of our conventional sciences. A thing appears in the sky glowing and dragging a fiery tail. It shows up at a predictable time in a predictable place, follows a predictable course, executes a deft turn, is picked up on radar, photographed, seen by thousands or even millions of people, then it descends, and automobiles stall and great power stations creak to a halt. But the explanation goes that it looked like a meteor, so it must have been one.
What is a meteor anyway?
For our answers we have turned to the same group of experts who were quarreling among themselves over the consistency of the moon’s surface until the moment our first successful probe landed.
9
The Physical Non-Evidence
The amusing little mystery of flying saucers slowly evolves into a complicated series of coincidences and paradoxes as we plunge deeper and deeper into the data, excluding nothing, and considering everything as objectively as possible.
Our skies have been filled with “Trojan horses” throughout history, and like the original Trojan horse, they seem to conceal hostile intent. Several hard facts are now apparent: The objects have always chosen to operate in a clandestine manner, furtively choosing the hours of darkness for their enigmatic activities over thinly populated areas, where the possibility of being detected is slight. Perhaps they choose to remain aloof, or perhaps they are involved in long-range preparations for an overt takeover of our planet at some point in the future. This hostility theory is further supported by the fact that the objects choose, most often, to appear in forms which we can readily accept and explain to our own satisfaction—ranging from dirigibles to meteors and conventional-appearing airplanes. We (the ufologists) have really only paid attention to the eccentrics: the objects of unusual configurations. They undoubtedly constitute a minority, and probably a deceptive minority, of all the paraphysical objects flitting about in our atmosphere. In other words, flying saucers are not at all what we have hoped they were. They are a part of something else.
I call that something else Operation Trojan Horse.
Those students of UFOs who have made only a superficial study of the historical data have concluded that when ancient peoples encountered flying saucers or “extraterrestrial visitants,” they assumed that the phenomena were of religious origin. However, when you really dig into the early literature, it becomes clear that the ultraterrestrials deliberately conveyed this impression in much the same way that the mystery inventor tried to create an acceptable frame of reference for the 1896-97 flap.
The phenomenon is constantly reaching down to us, creating frames of reference that we can understand and accept. Then, whenever we see something unusual in the sky, we accept it within that frame of reference and call it a meteor, an airplane, an angel, or a visitor from outer space. The first step to understanding UFOs is to discard all frames of reference and try to view the phenomenon as a whole.
Our earliest religious and occult records fully describe and define Operation Trojan Horse. We have been told throughout history that ultraterre
strials, or superior humanlike nonhumans, have been “assigned” to walk among us. In the Bible, for example, the prophet Zechariah states that he was visited by angels in 520 B.C. and that, “I saw by night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom; and behind him there were red horses, speckled and white.
“Then I said, 0 my Lord, what are these? And the angel that talked with me said unto me, I will shew thee what these be.
“And the man that stood among the myrtle trees answered and said, These are they whom the Lord hath sent to walk to and fro through the earth.” (Zechariah 1:7-11)
Further on, Zechariah describes how he saw a cylinder-shaped object in the sky, and the “angel” informed him, “This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth.” (Zechariah V:1-4) The “angel” continued by describing how the objects literally spy upon every human being.
Until 1848, the religious frame of reference was constantly used by the phenomenon. But as man’s technology improved and many of our old beliefs were discarded, the phenomenon was obliged to update its manifestations and establish new frames of reference. The phantom armies and angels so frequently reported in the past were replaced by transmogrifications that appeared to match man’s own technological achievements. If huge, multi-engined airplanes of the 1934 Scandinavian type had appeared over San Francisco in 1896, they would have created a far greater stir than the clumsy dirigibles which were used in that flap. By 1909, man had learned to build and fly crude machines, so the new transmogrifications of Operation Trojan Horse took the form of biplanes and carefully flew over the areas where the many “soft” objects were busily engaged in their mysterious enterprises.