UFOs - Leslie Kean [98]
Two nights later, the family Christmas party held on the 27th was interrupted by the on-duty police commander. He told of strange events and claimed that “it” was back. Since my boss had to present awards, I was tasked to go out and investigate. I fully expected to find an explanation.
I grabbed my pocket tape recorder and a cassette tape, and took four others with me into the forest: Bruce Englund (flight commander), Bobby Ball (flight superintendent), Monroe Nevilles (disaster preparedness NCO), and another young security policeman, Adrian Bustzina. John Burroughs, who had witnessed the event of two nights ago with Jim Penniston and was off duty, hitched a ride out and kept calling me on a borrowed radio. Neither he nor any of the other security policemen (at least fifteen or twenty) were allowed to come forward past the forest service road where the trucks and light-alls—motor-generated portable lighting systems—were parked. I was really upset that so many cops were out in the forest. It was a public relations nightmare just waiting to happen.
We went to the site where something had landed, and found the three indentations 1.5 inches deep and approximately 12 inches across on the ground in a triangular pattern. We took readings and discovered mild radiation and physical evidence, including a hole in the tree canopy above and broken branches. There were abrasions on the sides of trees facing the landing site. While documenting this examination by speaking into my tape recorder, I noticed some very strange sounds, which I thought were the nearby farmer’s barnyard animals. “They’re very, very active, making an awful lot of noise,” I recorded on the tape.
Only seconds later, one of my men first observed a bright red-orange oval object with a black center in the forest. It reminded me of an eye and appeared as though blinking. It maneuvered horizontally through the trees with occasional vertical movement, zigzagging around the trunks as if under intelligent control. Here’s an excerpt from my tape recorder as I watched, with some agitation:
Lt. Colonel Halt: We just bumped into the first light that we’ve seen. We’re about 150 to 200 yards from the site. Everything else is just deathly calm. There’s no doubt about it, there’s some kind of strange flashing red light ahead.
Sgt. Nevilles: Yeah, it’s yellow.
H: I saw a yellow tinge in it, too. Weird. It appears to be making a little bit this way?
Nevilles: Yes, sir.
H: It’s brighter than it has been … It’s coming this way. It’s definitely coming this way.
Sgt. Ball: Pieces are shooting off!
H: Pieces of it are shooting off.
Sgt. Ball: At about eleven o’clock.
H: There’s no doubt about it—this is weird!
When approached, it receded silently into the open field to the east. We watched in amazement for a minute or two. I recorded more on the tape:
H: Strange. One again left. Let’s approach the edge of the woods at that point. Can we do without lights? Let’s do it carefully, come on … Okay, we’re looking at the thing, we’re probably about two to three hundred yards away. It looks like an eye winking at you, it’s still moving from side to side and when we put the star scope on it, it’s sort of a hollow center right, a dark center, it’s …
Lt. Englund: It’s like a pupil …
H: It’s like the pupil of an eye looking at you, winking … and the flash is so bright to the star scope, err … it almost burns your eye.
The reflection from the object flickered brightly on the west windows of a farmhouse across the pasture, on the side facing us, and I was concerned for the residents’ safety. We could see the Orford Ness lighthouse farther to the right and a mile or so away, on the far side of the farm house, throughout the event.
Suddenly, the object exploded into five white lights that quickly disappeared. We went into the field and looked for residue, but found nothing. We then observed several objects with multiple red, green, and blue lights in the northern sky, which changed in shape from elliptical to round and moved rapidly