USA - An unidentified light spotted in 1917 in Colorado

It is a little past eleven o'clock at night on Sunday, August 12, 1917, when two night watchmen employed at the Durango coal tipple, Messrs. Crawford and Ellis, notice an unusual light hanging above the western horizon. The object, which they would later describe as resembling an "illuminated airship," appears to hold position in the direction of Mancos, a small farming settlement located roughly twenty-five miles west of Durango, in the heart of Montezuma County. The light remains visible for about half an hour before fading out or slipping behind the hills.

The phenomenon does not end there. Around three o'clock in the morning, the same light — or at least a light of identical character — reappears at the same point on the horizon. This second appearance is briefer, lasting only about ten minutes. While several Durango residents claim to have observed the first manifestation around eleven o'clock, few remain awake at the hour of the second, considerably limiting the number of corroborating witnesses for this phase of the event.

The affair is reported the following day by theDurango Semi-Weekly Herald, under the laconic headline "Seeing Things After Night" — a title whose wording already betrays, in the editor's choice of words, a blend of curiosity and cautious skepticism typical of regional newspapers of the period.

A Coal Tipple as Observation Post

The location from which the sighting was made is not incidental. In 1917, the Durango coal tipple was a nerve center of local mining activity, the town then serving as an important railway and industrial hub of southwestern Colorado, fed by coal mines and by the traffic of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. The night watchmen who worked there spent long hours outdoors in the dark, offering a privileged — and above all continuous — vantage point over the night sky, unlike the majority of residents asleep at that late hour.

Mancos, the settlement toward which the light pointed, sits within a region of arid plateaus and mesas, not far from the future boundaries of Mesa Verde National Park, established just a few years earlier, in 1906. The rugged terrain and the near-total absence of artificial lighting in 1917 would have made any isolated light particularly conspicuous — and ripe for every kind of interpretation.

Colorado Under Tension: A Summer of War

To understand how this light was perceived, it must be placed within its immediate historical context. The United States had entered the war against Germany on April 6, 1917, barely four months before the Durango sighting. The entire country was then gripped by a fever of espionage: rumors of German saboteurs, fear of coastal aerial attacks, widespread suspicion toward any unidentified flying object. This atmosphere was not unique to the United States: as early as 1912-1913, Britain had already experienced its own "phantom airship panic," with thousands of witnesses claiming to see German Zeppelins that, according to historians, simply did not yet exist at that operational scale.

The phenomenon of "phantom airships" was, in fact, nothing new by 1917. The United States had already experienced a spectacular wave of similar reports in 1896 and 1897, stretching from California to Texas, without any definitive explanation ever being reached. The war merely reactivated and intensified this climate, giving it a new coloring: the enemy was no longer a mysterious inventor, but a foreign spy. The Mancos light, in this context, is not an isolated occurrence but fits within a long American tradition of aerial sightings open to the widest range of interpretations, from spy balloon to secret military aircraft.

"The object appeared to be in the direction of Mancos and was visible for about half an hour." —Durango Semi-Weekly Herald, August 13, 1917

Rational Hypotheses and Possible Explanations

Several natural or technical explanations have been advanced, retrospectively, for this type of sighting typical of the early twentieth century:

A planet or bright star.In August 1917, Venus was visible in the evening sky under certain configurations, and a bright planet near the horizon, distorted by atmospheric refraction, can easily take on a misleading hue and brilliance for an untrained observer — a well-documented phenomenon in ufological annals, later studied notably by astronomer J. Allen Hynek in his work for the US Air Force.

An observation or advertising balloon.Tethered balloons, weather balloons, and sky lanterns (Chinese lanterns) enjoyed a certain popularity at the time and could drift over long distances, producing an oscillating light easily mistaken for a piloted craft.

A distant brush fire.The Mancos region, arid in summer, could experience wildfires whose glow, carried by the night atmosphere, might have created the illusion of a suspended light.

A rare atmospheric phenomenon.Some researchers in meteorology raise the possibility of electro-atmospheric phenomena, akin to St. Elmo's fire or forms of ball lightning, though these hypotheses remain marginal and unverifiable for an event this old.

None of these explanations, however, has been either confirmed or definitively ruled out: the original article provides neither a precise bearing in degrees, nor an exact duration beyond the witnesses' estimates, nor any description of the light's color or movement, which considerably limits any rigorous retrospective analysis.

Reconstructed Document — Watch Report from the Coal Tipple Post

What follows is an archival reconstruction, built from the elements reported by the Durango Semi-Weekly Herald, intended to illustrate the form a night watch report might have taken at the time. It is not an authentic document that was recovered, but an editorial restitution.

Watch Post — Coal Tipple, Durango, Colorado
Night of August 12–13, 1917
Observers: J. Crawford, A. Ellis

11:05 PM — Light sighted on the western horizon, approximate direction of Mancos. Constant intensity, no twinkling characteristic of a star. No sound perceived.
11:10 PM — Light remains stationary or moves very slowly. Altitude impossible to determine.
11:35 PM — Light disappears, either by extinction or by occultation behind the terrain.
3:00 AM — Reappearance at the same point on the horizon.
3:10 AM — Final disappearance. End of observation.

A Critical Look

As with the vast majority of early twentieth-century aerial sightings, the Durango observation suffers from a glaring lack of objective data: no photograph, no angular measurement, no direct written testimony from the observers themselves beyond the newspaper's summary. The wording chosen by the Herald's writer — that the object "looked not unlike an illuminated airship" — betrays a telling rhetorical caution: the journalist offers a comparison without ever asserting it as fact.

The context of a newly begun war, the temporal proximity to the United States' entry into that war, and this sighting's place within a long lineage of "phantom airships" documented since 1896 all call for methodological caution rather than hasty conclusions. Whether the Mancos light was a celestial body, a distant fire, a stray balloon, or — as some anxious contemporaries suggested — a craft of unknown origin flying over American territory in wartime, the event remains above all a valuable testimony to the collective state of mind of a small Colorado mining town in the summer of 1917.

Légende - Photo
Gemini, CC0,

Sources

• SEEING THINGS AFTER NIGHT, Durango Semi-Weekly Herald, August 30, 1917

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U.F.O.

In the winter of 1907, a huge UFO was observed on Long Island, in the United States

It was a short, dry dispatch carried by the United Press wire out of New York that threw the small town of Jamaica, on Long Island, into a state of excitement in the closing days of December 1907. According to the account later published by thePueblo Sunof Colorado, a large balloon had appeared over the town, low and visible enough that the entire population was, in the words of the original dispatch, "all worked up."

What struck witnesses was not so much the presence of a balloon — ascensions were a fairly common sight along the East Coast at the time — but the way it was rigged: a lantern was said to be suspended from a rope dangling some twenty feet below the basket. This unusual proximity between a naked flame and the enormous gas-filled envelope reportedly caused even more astonishment than the unexpected appearance of the airship itself. No aeronautical club and no local gas company had claimed or reported a launch matching this description.

An America Already Accustomed to "Mystery Airships"

To understand the resonance of this episode, it helps to place it within a broader timeline. From the autumn of 1896 through the spring of 1897, the United States had already lived through what historians now call the "mystery airship" wave: thousands of witnesses, from California to Texas to Nebraska and Missouri, reported sighting aerial craft equipped with powerful searchlights, sometimes described with a level of technical detail that far outstripped the known aeronautical capabilities of the era. On November 17, 1896, theSacramento Beeopened this series with an account of a light crossing the city's sky; a few months later, tens of thousands of people claimed to have watched an enormous craft pass over Kansas City on a single day in April 1897.

The phenomenon was nothing new even in 1896: as early as November 1876, the Sacramento press had already reported the appearance of a comparable light, likened to an "electric arc lamp propelled by some mysterious force." Professor George Davidson, quoted by theSan Francisco Chronicle, attributed it to a "freemasonry of liars" who had sent up a balloon fitted with a lighting device — an explanation that would become a classic of the genre: the collective hoax, carefully maintained by a handful of pranksters and amplified by the popular imagination.

This lineage sheds a particular light on the Jamaica sighting: a full decade after the great Midwestern wave, the mere sight of a balloon carrying a lantern was still enough to stir an entire town, proof that ballooning remained, for the East Coast public, territory charged with a mixture of technical fascination and near-supernatural unease.

What the 1907 Aeronautical Context Tells Us

The year 1907 is no coincidence. It was precisely during this period that the Aero Club of America, founded in New York in June 1905, was staging its most spectacular ascensions yet, launching from its bases in Pittsfield and North Adams, Massachusetts, in preparation for the Gordon Bennett international balloon cup, which it was set to host on American soil after its surprise victory in Paris the previous year. Recognized aeronauts such as Leo Stevens — a New York-based balloon maker — and Alan R. Hawley were multiplying test flights, some covering several hundred miles.

Yet these same records show that Aero Club aeronauts carefully avoided flying over Long Island Sound, considered too risky for an emergency landing in the event of trouble. A balloon drifting over Jamaica, at the western tip of Long Island, would therefore hardly fit the deliberate route of a serious club expedition — which lends weight to the hypothesis, still favored today, of an amateur balloon, poorly controlled, drifting on the December winds, rather than an organized and officially declared flight.

Quote

"The fact that a light was in such close proximity to the huge gas bag caused even more surprise than the unexpected appearance of the big airship."
— United Press dispatch, reprinted in thePueblo Sun, December 28, 1907

Reconstructed Document: Wire Desk Note

WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH -- PRESS SERVICE
FROM: New York Bureau, United Press
TO:   Subscribing Newsrooms
DATE: December 28, 1907

RE -- BALLOON REPORTED OVER JAMAICA LONG ISLAND STOP
TOWNSPEOPLE ALL WORKED UP STOP WITNESSES DESCRIBE
LARGE GAS BALLOON WITH LANTERN SUSPENDED ON ROPE
ABOUT TWENTY FEET BELOW BASKET STOP NO ASCENSION
RECORDED THIS DATE IN KNOWN REGISTERS STOP ORIGIN
OF CRAFT NOT ESTABLISHED STOP END MESSAGE

Critical Perspective

Absent any photographic record or official ascension report matching the date and location, the Jamaica episode remains, on the documentary level, a simple wire brief — a format known for prizing sensational effect over cross-checking. Historians of American aeronautics note that no flight organized by the Aero Club of America, then the only New York-based body capable of mounting official and tracked ascensions, is recorded for the Long Island area on that date.

The most probable explanation, already advanced for dozens of comparable sightings between 1876 and 1897, remains that of a pilot balloon or a recreational balloon released by a private individual or a group of amateurs, drifting without a declared operator and fitted with a lantern to signal its presence at night — a common enough practice at the time, carrying no intent to deceive. The reported proximity between the flame and the gas envelope, if accurate, likely reflects the technical carelessness of the period rather than an unexplained phenomenon: gas balloons in 1907 were not designed to carry an open flame, and such testimony may well have been amplified by general alarm rather than by precise observation in the winter darkness.

Even so, this near-anecdotal episode illustrates how the American press of the turn of the century could turn a simple unidentified flying object — a stray balloon, a lantern swaying in the wind — into a small local mystery, within a climate already shaped by a decade of ghostly "airship" tales.

Légende - Photo
Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60483791

Sources

• SAW A LIGHT IN THE SKY., The Pueblo Sun, December 28, 1907

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U.F.O.

Spanish footballer Marcos Llorente believes in the chemtrail theory

He was supposed to talk about football. He ended up talking about the sky. Called up by head coach Luis de la Fuente for the resumption of 2026 World Cup qualifying, Atlético Madrid midfielder Marcos Llorente was returning to the Roja after more than a year's absence. But it was neither his physical form nor his place in Spain's midfield that dominated discussion around his call-up. It was another outing on one of the most controversial subjects in the contemporary conspiracy world: chemtrails, those white trails left behind by aircraft, which some still insist are the vector for a deliberate chemical spraying operation concealed by the authorities.

Questioned by the Spanish sports outlet El Desmarque, Llorente did not dodge the subject. "I say it very naturally," he stated, before adding: "When I used to look at the sky, I didn't see these things." A calm, almost matter-of-fact tone, for a conviction that has accompanied him for several years now and that, far from fading, seems to strengthen with every new public statement.

"It's not normal": the case built by a player turned figure of doubt

According to remarks reported by several Spanish outlets, Llorente claims that the trails now observed in Iberian skies did not exist, or at least not in this form, when he was a child. "It's not normal," he reportedly insisted, adding that he was not "the only one saying it." He goes so far as to claim that "thousands of people" thank him, in his telling, for having brought the subject into public discussion. "A lot of people say it, and more and more people are saying it," he insists, building his case not on scientific evidence but on the notion of a growing popular consensus.

This type of argument, grounded in the supposed multiplication of testimonies rather than in any verifiable demonstration, is a constant feature of conspiracy theories linked to aviation and geoengineering. It rests on a cognitive bias well documented by social scientists: the conviction that the perceived frequency of a shared opinion guarantees its validity, regardless of the objective data available.

The origins of a myth: where do chemtrails come from?

The chemtrail theory, a contraction of "chemical trails," has its roots in the 1990s United States. It crystallized in particular around a US Air Force document titled "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025," published in 1996 as part of a university-level forward-looking exercise on the future military uses of meteorology. That text, routinely stripped of its academic context by proponents of the theory, has become one of the favorite pieces of evidence for a movement claiming that the long condensation trails left by airliners at high altitude are not a simple physical phenomenon, but the result of intentional spraying of chemical or biological substances, for purposes ranging from climate control to population manipulation.

The scientific community has been unanimous on this theory for more than two decades. The trails observed, scientifically known as "contrails" (condensation trails), result from a thoroughly documented physical process: the condensation, then crystallization, of water vapor contained in jet engine exhaust upon contact with the cold air of high altitudes. An international study coordinated in 2016, bringing together 77 atmospheric specialists from nineteen countries and published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, had already concluded that 76 atmospheric dust samples analyzed showed no evidence of a clandestine spraying program, while also finding that the persistence of certain trails in humid high-altitude air fully explains the grid-like patterns often cited as proof by theory proponents.

An athlete, a sounding board

What sets the Llorente case apart from a simple opinion shared on social media is the sounding board that elite sport represents. At 31, the Spanish international, who came through Real Madrid's academy before joining Atlético in 2019, enjoys considerable public standing in a country where football occupies a central place in public life. His words, whether spoken on the pitch or off it, reach a broad and varied audience, well beyond the circles usually receptive to conspiracy theories.

This is, moreover, not the first time the player has ventured into a lifestyle marked by distrust of conventional scientific and medical institutions. Llorente has also spoken publicly about his daily habit of adding butter to his coffee, which he presents as beneficial for the body, as well as his dedicated practice of red-light therapy, to the point of launching his own business selling infrared lamps. The player says he structures his days around sun exposure and, once night falls, the exclusive use of red and infrared lighting throughout his home, in order to reproduce, in his words, lighting conditions as close as possible to natural twilight.

Quote

"A lot of people say it, and more and more people are saying it. It's not normal."

— Marcos Llorente, interview with El Desmarque, July 2026

Sport and disinformation: shifting ground

Llorente's case is not isolated in the international sporting landscape. Figures from disciplines as varied as tennis, American basketball, and rugby have, in recent years, lent their fame to claims rooted in scientific disinformation, whether concerning the shape of the Earth, vaccines, or, precisely, chemtrails. Sports federations, including Spain's Royal Football Federation, regularly find themselves at a loss in the face of this kind of individual stance, which falls outside any standard disciplinary framework but repeatedly raises the question of elite athletes' public responsibility.

Head coach Luis de la Fuente, focused on preparing the squad for the upcoming World Cup qualifying fixtures, has so far made no public comment on his player's remarks. The Roja, meanwhile, continues its preparations, while the Spanish media landscape once again grapples with the growing porousness between sporting fame and the spread of unverified theories.

A belief that persists despite the denials

Several opinion surveys conducted in Europe and the United States over the past decade have highlighted the persistence of a significant minority of the population convinced, to varying degrees, of the reality of a clandestine atmospheric spraying program. This persistence puzzles researchers in the sociology of belief, who see it less as an information gap than as a broader distrust of scientific, governmental, and media institutions. In this context, the voice of a well-liked and respected public figure — such as a Spanish international playing for one of the country's biggest clubs — acts as a powerful vector of legitimization, regardless of the theory's complete lack of empirical grounding.

Marcos Llorente, for his part, shows no sign of backing down. Fully standing by his views, including within the official setting of a national team gathering, he illustrates in his own way a broader trend: athletes who, buoyed by their popularity, choose to use their media platform to voice personal convictions far removed from scientific consensus, blurring the line between sporting performance and activist speech.

Légende - Photo
Gemini, CC0,

Sources

• www.sofoot.com

Tags

Chemtrails, Conspiracy

An Apocalyptic Prophecy for 2026–2027 Goes Viral on X: What Does It Claim?

A post circulating on X has attracted significant attention after claiming to reveal a series of dramatic events that will allegedly unfold in 2026 and 2027. Shared by the account @Gdams70T, the thread presents what it describes as an "urgent prophecy" from a young boy named Jesús López, warning of the arrival of the biblical end times.

The post urges users to translate and share its contents worldwide before it is supposedly censored. However, there is no evidence that the claims are based on verified information. They reflect religious and apocalyptic beliefs rather than established facts.

The "Triad of Perversion"

The first claim centers on what the post calls the "Triad of Perversion."

According to the thread, three well-known public figures play key roles in the approaching end times:

• Elon Musk is identified as Satan.
• Jared Kushner is described as the Antichrist.
• MrBeast is portrayed as the Beast from the Book of Revelation.

The post provides no evidence to support these allegations, which are presented as prophetic interpretations rather than factual claims.

A Global Pandemic in 2027

The prophecy goes on to predict the outbreak of a devastating worldwide pandemic between January and April 2027.

It identifies the threat as a norovirus, a real virus that commonly causes outbreaks of gastroenteritis. According to the post, this virus would spread globally during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, leading to destruction on a scale comparable to the Black Death.

At present, no public health authority has issued any warning supporting such a scenario.

The Destruction of Major Cities

The thread also predicts a series of catastrophic natural disasters.

It claims that New York, described as the biblical "Babylon," along with São Paulo and Hawaii, will be destroyed. The post attributes these events to the Leviathan, a mythical sea creature mentioned in several religious texts.

It further predicts that San Francisco will be struck by a historic mega-tsunami, with waves reaching heights of up to 32 meters (105 feet).

There is currently no scientific evidence supporting these predictions.

The Giants of the Euphrates

Among the most extraordinary claims is the prediction that the fallen angels imprisoned beneath the Euphrates River will soon be released.

According to the post, these beings will emerge on Earth in the form of giants, fulfilling a prophecy linked to the Book of Revelation and other biblical passages.

This claim is based on religious interpretations and is not supported by factual evidence.

A Call to Spread the Warning

The final part of the thread urges readers to translate the message into as many languages as possible in order to warn people around the world.

It also encourages users to bookmark the post so they can compare its predictions with future events in 2026 and 2027. Finally, it suggests that the information could be censored—a common theme in conspiracy-related content designed to encourage wider sharing.

Between Prophecy and Viral Content

Predictions of the end of the world have circulated for decades, often blending biblical symbolism, conspiracy theories, political figures, and natural disasters into a single narrative.

The viral thread attributed to Jesús López follows this pattern. While it has generated discussion across social media, there is currently no evidence supporting its extraordinary claims. As with any sensational online content, readers should distinguish between personal beliefs, religious interpretations, and information that can be independently verified.

Légende - Photo
Gemini, CC0,

Sources

• x.com

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Prophecy and 2012

A Mysterious Object Photographed from Space Shuttle Columbia in 1996

In November 1996, during the STS-80 mission of Space Shuttle Columbia, astronauts photographed an unidentified object in low-Earth orbit. The object appears near the center of the image, to the right of Earth's limb, standing out clearly against the dark background of space.

Its unusual shape and the lack of a detailed official explanation have raised many questions over the years. Some believe it could simply be a piece of space debris or the result of a photographic artifact, while others suggest it may represent an unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP). In the absence of conclusive evidence regarding its origin, the image remains one of the most intriguing photographs captured by NASA during the STS-80 mission.

Légende - Photo
U.S.G., Public Domain, https://www.war.gov/ufo/#NASA-UAP-D030-STS-80-Unidentified-Object-Image-1-1996

→ More information

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NASA, U.F.O.

Washington State - A Ouija board helps solve a theft case

Some objects, it is said, bring misfortune to whoever handles them carelessly. The Ouija board, that old companion of séances popularized in the late 19th century, has just offered fresh proof of this — not in a haunted parlor or a lonely cemetery, but in the decidedly prosaic offices of the Moses Lake Police Department in Washington State. Last Friday afternoon, a resident in the 1100 block of East Nelson Road reported that their vehicle had been broken into while they were away. The stereo had been torn from the dashboard, house keys and several prescription medications were missing — and along with them, a Ouija board.

It was this last, seemingly trivial detail that would ultimately seal the suspect's fate.

Chance, an officer's memory, and a traveling board

Earlier that same day, Officer Isaac Taylor of the Moses Lake Police Department had had a routine encounter with a woman carrying a Ouija board in a bag — an object unusual enough to stick in a patrolling officer's memory. When the burglary report came in a few hours later, mentioning a Ouija board among the stolen items, Officer Taylor recalled the earlier encounter. He located the woman, later identified as 36-year-old Tasha Marie Wehrli, near Pioneer Way and Riviera Avenue.

A search confirmed the suspicion: not only was the Ouija board still in her possession, but so were the other items reported stolen from the vehicle. According to the police department's statement, Wehrli then allegedly attempted to flee before being subdued and arrested without further incident.

A heavy charge sheet

Tasha Marie Wehrli was booked into Grant County Jail on multiple counts: second-degree vehicle prowling, third-degree theft, possession of a legend drug (a prescription medication held without a valid prescription), third-degree malicious mischief, and resisting arrest. Under Washington State law, second-degree vehicle prowling is classified as a gross misdemeanor, carrying a maximum penalty of up to a year in jail; the statute does not even require that anything actually be taken from the vehicle for the offense to be established — mere intent to commit a crime inside is sufficient.

The Ouija board, an object steeped in history — and superstition

Far from being a mere flea-market curiosity, the Ouija board belongs to a long American tradition of supposed communication with the beyond. First marketed in 1890 under the name "Ouija," then popularized in the following decades by manufacturer William Fuld, it became the very symbol of the domestic séance, at a time when the Spiritualist movement — born from the Fox sisters' phenomenon at Hydesville in 1848 — was enjoying considerable popularity across the United States. Used both as a family parlor game and as a serious divination tool, the board has carried a troubled reputation through the 20th and 21st centuries: some see it as a simple parlor game driven by the ideomotor effect — the unconscious muscular movement that, according to many psychologists, accounts for the planchette's motion without any supernatural intervention — while others continue to view it as a doorway, sometimes a dangerous one, onto the unseen.

Whether one leans toward the rational explanation or the paranormal thesis, the Moses Lake episode feeds a particular strand of folklore: that of stolen objects which, one way or another, end up turning against their thief.

Superstitions of the criminal underworld

There is a persistent idea in American popular culture that criminals form a particularly superstitious lot — an observation owed, among other things, to the mythology of Gotham City's masked vigilante, but one that also finds a more serious echo among criminologists studying the rituals and beliefs peculiar to criminal circles. In publishing the details of the arrest on social media, the Moses Lake Police Department did not fail to note the irony of the situation: an object traditionally meant to reveal hidden truths ended up, in this case, playing a very concrete role in revealing a suspect's identity.

"Many say that criminals are a superstitious lot. In this case, it would seem that the old adage held true in the most literal way possible."

What the official statement says

The passage below faithfully reproduces, in translation, the account released by the Moses Lake Police Department regarding the circumstances of the arrest:

"On Friday afternoon, officers responded to a report of a vehicle prowl in the 1100 block of East Nelson Road. The stereo had been ripped from the dashboard; house keys and several prescription medications had been taken, along with a Ouija board. Earlier that day, Officer Isaac Taylor had contacted a woman, later identified as Tasha Marie Wehrli, who was carrying a Ouija board in a bag. Remembering the encounter, he relocated Wehrli near Pioneer Way and Riviera Avenue. A search recovered the board along with the other items reported stolen. Wehrli was booked into Grant County Jail on charges of second-degree vehicle prowling, third-degree theft, possession of a legend drug, third-degree malicious mischief, and resisting arrest."

Légende - Photo
Gemini, CC0,

Sources

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Spiritism

In 1953, many military personnel saw a UFO near Ellsworth Air Force Base

On August 5, 1953, shortly after nightfall, Ellsworth Air Force Base, at the time one of the Strategic Air Command's most sensitive installations in South Dakota, became the stage for what Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the first director of Project Blue Book, would later call "the best UFO report in the Air Force files." Within a few hours, military radar operators, fighter pilots, and some forty-five civilians would all converge on the same unsettling conclusion: something was flying over the skies of South Dakota, and it obeyed no known law of aeronautics.

The alert from Blackhawk

It all begins in Blackhawk, a small town about ten miles west of the base. Mrs. Phyllis Kellian (sometimes spelled "Killian" in secondary sources), a volunteer observer with the Ground Observer Corps — the civilian network tasked with watching for enemy bombers at the height of the Cold War — spots a bright red light low on the northeastern horizon around eight o'clock in the evening. Motionless at first, the light suddenly shifts thirty degrees, shoots straight up, then returns to its original position before streaking off toward Rapid City at high speed. Trained in the proper procedure, Mrs. Kellian immediately reports the sighting, and is put through directly to the on-duty radar controller at Ellsworth.

Radar confirmation and the first scramble

The duty officer immediately picks up a solid, well-defined return on his scope, stationary at 16,000 feet, exactly where Mrs. Kellian places the light. Three airmen are sent outside and visually confirm a light moving north to south at high speed. At 8:24 PM, Lieutenant John W. Stockham, on combat air patrol aboard an F-84D Thunderjet, is vectored toward the area. He acquires a silvery light "brighter than any star" and begins his approach. But as he closes to within about three miles, the object suddenly accelerates to the northwest, stubbornly maintaining the gap.

A 120-mile pursuit

The chase continues for nearly 120 miles, with the object and the F-84 crossing into North Dakota under the unbroken watch of ground radar, which tracks both blips without interruption. Low on fuel, the pilot is forced to turn back. He would later tell Ruppelt he was "damn glad" he was running low on gas, given how unsettling it was to be alone, at night, over such desolate country, chasing something he simply could not outrun.

The radar controller, for his part, would remember the extraordinary composure the night demanded of him. According to the account he later gave Ruppelt, the object seemed to carry some kind of automatic warning system tied to its propulsion: every time the fighter closed to within three miles, the target would "automatically pick up speed and pull away" — a distance-maintaining behavior that would become one of the most closely studied aspects of the case.

The second interceptor and the locked-on gunsight

Back at the base, Stockham's F-84 crosses paths with a second aircraft already on alert: the squadron's pilots, having followed the radio traffic, refused to believe it. One of them, a World War II and Korea veteran, insists on taking off himself. Lieutenant David K. Needham takes the controls. Climbing to 15,000 feet, he spots the object below and to his right: a light shifting from white to green, moving erratically. Needham climbs to 26,000 feet in pursuit. According to his official report, filed in writing in the days that followed, he switches on his radar-ranging gunsight — not to open fire, but to confirm the object's solidity. The lock-on light comes on and stays lit throughout the pursuit, a detail the Air Force would later attribute to a malfunction, though no maintenance record for the equipment turns up in the weeks that follow.

Blue Book's verdict, and the doubt that remains

Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, then scientific advisor to Project Blue Book, was initially convinced of the phenomenon's material reality, writing in November 1953 to Captain Charles A. Hardin that "solid objects are certainly indicated by the evidence." The case would later be reexamined by the Condon Report in 1968, whose investigators proposed an explanation involving anomalous radar wave propagation caused by a temperature inversion — the object's echo, under this theory, being nothing more than an artifact of the F-84's own radar signature. But this hypothesis struggles to account for why the echo remained distinct and unwavering from the jet's own return across the full 120 miles of pursuit, all the way until it passed out of radar range over North Dakota. For Ruppelt, in the end, the Ellsworth case would remain, for lack of a better explanation, officially unidentified.

"The controller saw it begin to move, the spotter saw it begin to move, and the pilot saw it begin to move — all at the same time."
— Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, former director of Project Blue Book

Archival document: report by Lieutenant David K. Needham (translated excerpt)

Excerpt from the official AF Form 112-Part I report, dated August 5, 1953, from the declassified files of the U.S. Air Force:

"At 2115 hours, Mountain Standard Time, on 5 August 1953, I took off in an F-84 to conduct a Combat Air Patrol. Approximately three minutes later, I contacted Grady Control by radio. Grady informed me that the Ground Observer Corps had spotted a flying object (a light) in the air northeast of Black Hawk, South Dakota. Grady requested that I investigate the object, but was unable to give information concerning the object's speed, heading, or altitude. After making three requests to Grady for a vector to the vicinity of Black Hawk, I finally saw what was apparently the object. At the time of detection, I was on a course of 330 from Ellsworth AFB at 15,000 feet. The object was approximately thirty degrees to the right of my course, and appeared to be paralleling my course at a lower altitude. The object was a light of varying intensity and alternated from white... [document partially illegible]. As for the exact size of this craft, it would be a little hard to say, but considering the altitude it seemed to be at, and judging from its apparent relation to the contours of the surrounding terrain, I would estimate it was between twenty and thirty feet in diameter. I say this because of the few seconds during which I was able to observe this craft; I also saw its wake, or path."

Légende - Photo
Dual Freq, Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1866883

Sources

Tags

U.F.O.