Fw: The Return Of The Monolith. (1996) // UAP, formerly UFO, report from east of Louisville, Kentucky on 28 Sep 1996. //

[Terry W. Colvin]

William R. Corliss in his Science Frontiers newsletter did publish UAP, formerly known as UFO, reports.


Terry W. Colvin
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-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Terry W. Colvin <fort...@mindspring.com>
Sent: Jul 18, 2026 7:37 PM
To: <Fort...@groups.io>
Subject: The Return Of The Monolith. (1996) // UAP, formerly UFO, report from east of Louisville, Kentucky on 28 Sep 1996. //
SUBJ: The Return Of The Monolith


Some readers have asked that UFOs receive more attention in SF. We now address these complaints with a case
of adequate strangeness.


T.M. Olsen has investigated a bizarre observation from Kentucky. The date was September 28, 1996.


"Vance C. Johns, a secondary-school horticulturist, lives a rural area east of Louisville. Sometime between midnight
and 1:30 AM, he got up to use the bathroom and saw a strange object outside his bedroom window. His wife, Florence,
keeps the drapes open on the center of three picture windows, and he immediately opened the other drapes for a better
look. The open view through the windows, which face south, is of a grass lawn sloping to a curved driveway. This
0.8-hectare cleared area is devoid of trees and other objects. Two large, automatic floodlights illuminate the ground
around the entire house, and under a full moon, it was bright enough to read a book. The night was clear and about
10°C with no noticeable wind. No aircraft were in the area.


"At a distance of 14 m (measured after the incident) from his vantage at the bedroom window, there appeared on the
lawn an object resembling a common railroad cross tie but oriented in a vertical position, with one end on the ground.
It was matte black, 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 m high and 30 - 35 cm wide. The sides were smooth with a well-defined corner joining
the west and north sides. The view of the top showed the west and north top edges were also well-defined. The object
appeared solid but did not cast a shadow.


"As Johns watched in astonishment, the object began moving toward the front porch. He could clearly see two sides of
it as it approached. As the top passed under the eaves, the bottom bent backwards over the bushes which border the
71-cm high porch, in the manner of a man's leg bending at the knee, forming an obtuse angle. At this point, he lost
sight of it, grabbed his .38 handgun, and quickly went to the windows on the other three sides of the house, hoping
to again see the object in the ample illumination, but without success. Although the object had moved very slowly
from its original position, total viewing time was less than ten seconds. There was no sound at any time during the sighting."


When Johns reported the above incident, he was advised to see the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which an eerie
monolith is a key player. Johns did so and commented that said monolith "blew his mind." It was just what he had seen,
except that it was wider and shorter.


(Olsen, Thomas M.; "Sighting Alert," report, 1996)


Comment. We can understand why the monolith of 2001 appeared:
(1) to protohumans;
(2) to lunar explorers; and
(3) in orbit around Jupiter; but WHY in Kentucky in 1996?


From Science Frontiers #109, JAN-FEB 1997. (C) 1997-2000 William R. Corliss
BT