Date:
October 1977
Location: Walcott, Iowa, United States
An
18-year-old woman saw a pair of bright "headlights"
flashing from an oval object moving silently through the
skies over Walcott, Iowa, where she worked as a security
guard. Her radio and walkie-talkie stopped working, and
cows and crickets in a nearby field stood silent. A television
in a nearby farm house went blank, she learned later.
Source:
Moline Daily Dispatch (Moline, IL), Jan. 7, 1978
"Area
'encounter' defies explanation"
By Stacey Burling
She's
been laughed at, harassed and ridiculed, but the 18-year-old
Davenport woman knows what she saw on that crisp, clear
night last October.
She
declines to be identified for fear of jeopardizing future
employment opportunities.
What
she saw, she says, was a pair of bright "headlights"
flashing from an oval object moving silently through the
skies over Walcott, Iowa, where she worked as a security
guard.
GLIDING
TOWARD HER as she manned a watchtower at the towns French
and Heeht plant, the disc obscured a flashing red beacon
light on a grain elevator.
Her
radio and walkie-talkie stopped working, and cows and
crickets in a nearby field stood silent.
A
light-sensitive mercury vapor lamp about 100 yards away
from the woman went dark.
A
television in a nearby farm house went blank, she learned
later.
"At
first, I wasn't sure what it was, and I just sort of stood
there and watched it," she said.
She
thought it was a helicopter until she realized it made
no noise.
Terrified,
she stood frozen outside the guardhouse and watched, Then
she went in search of other witnesses. When she returned,
the object was gone.
NOW,
THREE MONTHS later, her sighting remains a mystery, according
to Hazelton, Iowa UFO investigator Ralph DeGraw.
A
celestial object like a star or planet would
not have blocked out the flashing red light, he says.
The
silent movement through the skies is unexplainable, as
is the absence of any running lights, he says.
The
television, relatively new, was on the same circuit as
several lights in the home. The lights stayed on.
BUT
THE WOMAN says few people have believed her story.
"They
look at me like I'm nuts," she says. "It's
like somebody telling you that they'd seen a green elephant."
Her
boss told her to report the incident to police, but she
says the Davenport policeman in charge and three other
officers "laughed hysterically" when
she told her story.
They
did, however, call the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston,
which connected her with DeGraw.
Despite
the widespread disbelief, she's still convinced the sighting
was not a mistake.
"I
know what I saw," she says. "I'm not
blind."
THE
DAVENPORT WOMAN is one of hundreds of Illinois and Iowa
residents for whom "close encounters"
with UFOs, as popularized in a current film, are more
than fantasies.
Fifty-four
percent of Americans believe in UFOs, according to a Gallup
Poll, and 11 percent claim to have seen them.
During
a five-year period ending April 1977 there were 4,026
U.S. sightings reported to the Center for UFO Study. Illinois
residents reported 169 UFO sightings during that same
period, 54 of which were unexplainable, DeGraw said.
Four
of those Illinois reports contained descriptions of occupants
seen with the UFOs.
Iowans
reported 68 UFOs, only nine of which were unexplainable.
DeGRAW
SAYS THOSE figures, however, do not give an accurate picture
of how many UFOs actually are sighted in his state. "I
really would say that Iowa is second to none as far as
sightings made," he says "but
Iowans may be more reluctant to report sightings than
people in other states."
DeGraw
says that, for almost any state, one can estimate there
are 10 un-reported UFO sightings for every one reported.
According
to the Evanston Center, which has the largest file of
UFO sightings in the country, more people in Pennsylvania
and California see UFOs than in any other states in the
country. During the five-year period, Pennsylvanians reported
554 UFO sightings to the center. Eighty-eight of those
were unexplainable, low-altitude sightings, and 33 people
reported seeing occupants.
Californians
reported 384 citings, including 89 unexplained and 15
containing occupants.
THE
FACT THAT THESE two states consistently have more reports
than others baffles officials at another national reporting
center, Phenomena Research in Seattle. Southern California
does have many military establishments and offices connected
with the space program, but Pennsylvania remains a mystery.
"We just can't figure that out at all," a center
employee said.
UFO
sightings tend to be more common in the Eastern half of
the country than in the West, DeGraw says, attributing
the larger number of reports to the dense population.
There
also seems to be a concentration of UFO citings near large
bodies of water, including the Mississippi River, he says.
Hilly and desolate areas also seem to attract the UFOs.
THE
MODERN ERA OF UFO reporting began in 1947, when private
pilot Kenneth Arnold of Boise, Idaho saw nine disc-like
objects while flying over Mount Ranier in Washington,
DeGraw says.
Since
then hundreds of people have reported UFOs, many of the
descriptions providing the basis for those seen in the
movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind.''
A
Seattle UFO expert said he was "very impressed"
with the UFOs seen in that movie because they "duplicated"
the experience of many people who had seen real UFOs.
SCIENTISTS
AND UFO buffs are expecting a new wave of UFO reports
in the wake of the movie. The Center for UFO Studies already
is seeing an "enormous" increase in calls
and letters about UFO sightings from all over the country
and even Canada.
The
Center is receiving 10 to 15 reports of UFOs a day. compared
to three to five before the movie's release, center administrator
Estelle Postol says. Many people are reporting old sightings,
possibly because they didn't know where to report before
or were afraid of ridicule.
"What
the movie has done is put the subject in a more serious
vein," Postol says. The center's director, Dr.
J. Allen Hynek, head of the astronomy department at Northwestern
University, was a technical advisor to the movie.
Phenomena
Research, however, has not seen an increase in calls,
and officials there are surprised. "It's been
extremely quiet over the whole country," an official
there said. "We have been expecting this to happen
(a rash of new reports), but we have seen no activity
at all."
Source:
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case440.htm