UFO frenzy ignited by Air Force officer
Pastor Dale Morgan
UFO frenzy ignited by Air Force officer*
Others report strange phenomenon, digital expert views possible 'pilot'
Posted: January 19, 2007
Drudge Report
A retired Air Force colonel who photographed mysterious, colorful lights
hovering over western Arkansas last week has ignited a frenzy of
interest in unexplained airborne phenomena, as we have received numerous
reports of similar sightings across the U.S., while a digital expert has
filtered the pictures to reveal startling images of what he says could
be the "pilot" of the unidentified craft.
"I believe these lights were not of this world, and I feel a duty and
responsibility to come forward," said Col. Brian Fields, who spent
nearly 32 years in the military piloting F-16 fighter jets. "I have no
idea what they were."
Fields, 61, was at his Van Buren, Ark., home Jan. 9 when just before 7
p.m., he observed two intensely bright lights as he looked to the
southeast close to the horizon.
"At first I thought they were landing lights from an aircraft," he said.
"As I continued to observe them they began to slowly disappear, then
suddenly one reappeared, followed by two, then three. On at least one
occasion four or five appeared. Each time they would slowly fade and
eventually disappear. This occurred several times and when they would
reappear they might do so in differing numbers and in different
positions, sometimes in a triangular shape, sometimes stacked on top of
each other, sometimes line abreast, etc. When the objects appeared they
might stay illuminated 10 or more minutes."
Fields' wife thought the lights may have been ground-based, but Fields
says he's certain they were airborne.
"I'm certain it wasn't an aircraft [from Earth]," said Fields, who also
ruled out the possibility of flares, saying they didn't descend like
flares typically do. "It's not anything I ever had any experience with .
... They were some kind of energy or something."
Fields snapped numerous images of the white, yellow and orange lights
using a Canon digital camera with 6 megapixel resolution.
The story received heightened exposure after being posted on the Drudge
Report yesterday, and became one of the most-viewed news reports.
"When I read this story, I literally got chill bumps all over my body,
because it was exactly as I remember it also," said Will Childers of
Camden, Ark., who says he saw the same lights Jan. 10 at approximately
7:15 p.m. in southern Arkansas.
A pilot from Lancaster, Pa., says he witnessed the mystery lights two
years ago over northwestern Arkansas.
"I contacted Air Traffic Control and asked if they were handling or
painting any aircraft off my left, and they informed me there no
aircraft visible on radar in that direction for a couple of hundred
miles," Rick Armellino said. "About 15 or 20 minutes after first
noticing these two lights, both began changing position relative to one
another, and then multiplied into about five or six smaller lights which
began orbiting each another fairly briskly, and then simply just
disappeared, leaving me very perplexed."
Richard Mobley, a software developer who commutes from Scottsdale,
Ariz., to his home in Tucson, says he witnessed "the same exact thing"
Fields described, noting his incident took place Nov. 15, 2006.
Mobley registered the following characteristics about the behavior of
the objetcs:
* They appeared over the Gila Indian Reservation and moved southeast;
* I saw one, then two, then three, then four and five of these
objects light up;
* Each lit up at a different time and went out at different times;
* Sometimes they would be in a row, and at other times they would
appear stacked close to each other (bunched up or on top of each other);
* They were about 6,000 to 10,000 feet off the ground moving, high
enough to flying over the mountain range;
* The light (when lit) was a round, super intense amber light which
seemed to illuminate the ground below them;
* They would light up for about five to seven minutes and then dim
down and go out;
* After about three minutes of being out, they would light back up,
going from dim to intense amber light (not clear color like airplane
landing lights);
* There was an aircraft in the area which had landing lights on as
well a beacon light (red and green on the wings and tail) so to
distinguish between these object and a plane was easy;
* At the height they were flying at and the amount of light given
off, it showed that these objects were quite large.
In Belton, Texas, Jim Martin, a national sales manager for Clear Channel
Radio says he, too, "observed a bright, white round light looking
exactly like Col. Fields' pictures," but his sighting was Dec. 22, 2006.
Martin speculated it might have been a meteor headed directly toward him
since "it did not vary in location in the sky" and that "it slowly
dissipated without losing altitude."
And Jeff Pement of Pensacola, Fla., says he saw the same phenomenon as well.
"Except for the duration of time the lights stay visible, the
description of the lights is exactly as I have seen it. Some of my
friends think I am crazy. A few have witnessed them as I have taken them
to the spot where I would typically see them. When I read Col. Fields'
words describing what he saw, it was as if I was relating the event to
someone."
A spokesman for the Air Force Space Command headquarters at Peterson Air
Force Base in Colorado said that he had not heard anything like what was
reported, but he would check into it.
In Fields' hometown of Van Buren, comet-watcher Mike Holloway was
photographing Comet McNaught in the sky the same night of the colonel's
sighting, and he said what Fields had witnessed was apparently something
quite different from the comet.
"I do not think this has anything to do with the comet that was visible
in the west sky just after sunset," Holloway said. "I imaged the comet
on the 8th and 9th of January, and these lights look nothing like the
comet."
Meanwhile, a digital-production expert in Columbia, S.C., analyzed the
photographs taken by Fields, processing both the yellow-light image and
the orange-light image through various filters using computer software.
"I was kind of surprised," said Mark Kirby, president and CEO of EIC
Research, Inc.
When Kirby did a black-and-white analysis of the yellow light image, he
noted "it looks like a clean silhouette of someone sitting behind a
console or flight control."
When he examined the orange light, he said the result was "a bit scary,"
as he perceived what seemed like a face looking directly ahead.
"You could literally see two eyes and a mouth," Kirby said. "It looked
like someone looking at you."
Kirby, who says he doesn't really believe in extraterrestrial life from
elsewhere in the universe, wondered, "Could this be the first actual
photo of visitors from another planet?"
He also proffered a more earthly explanation, saying, "It's not
far-fetched to believe it's something our military has developed."
Nearly a decade ago, in March 1997, hundreds of Arizona residents
witnessed strange illuminations in the sky, which have come to be known
as "the Phoenix Lights," a mystery which has yet to be resolved.
Some readers have suggested the possibility of "earthquake lights,"
which are believed to be flashes or glows of light associated with
strong seismic activity.
Still others maintain the "not of this world" lights were definitely
nothing supernatural.
"I get a little annoyed by 'prior military people' talking about
'strange lights in the sky,'" said James Whitesell of Greenwood, Ind.
"Tell the former Air Force officer to step back and take a deep breath
... . It was likely an illumination round of some type."
Stephen Richard Armour, an American missionary working as a video
producer in Brazil since 1977, thinks the event could likely be a hoax
similar to one he witnessed.
"Some clever kids had taken a clear [2 liter] Coke bottle, inverted it
and cut little breathing holes in the top and one in the exact center of
the inverted bottom," he said. "They had then put a lit candle in the
cap, stuck a toothpick tied to a string in the center hole and had then
hung the string down about 50 feet or so from [a] black kite, hanging
from the dark string they used. When they flew the kite up high, it was
big enough to pull the candlelit Coke bottle up, which then very
convincingly, bobbed up and down (like a yo-yo) with the kite."
Armour suggests Fields, who is honestly reporting what he saw, was
simply "suckered."
"No aliens, no demons," he said, "only kids or malicious adults with
some multiple kite variation of this trick."