Date:
February 8, 1977
Location: Louisiana, United States
The
first two months of 1977 brought heavy UFO activity to
the state of Louisiana and eastward. On Tuesday, February
8, Mrs. Gayle Rodriguez and her son, Brian, were driving
east on St. Bernard highway they saw a brightly lit silvery
colored craft which flew across the highway in front of
them and began a course parallel to the road.
Source:
Ted Peters, APRO Bulletin, Vol. 25, No. 9, March, 1977
Low
Lights in Louisiana
By
Ted Peters
The
first two months of 1977 have brought heavy UFO activity
to the state of Louisiana and eastward. On the night of
January 15, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Digangi of Chalmette watched
a bright light hovering near a water tower just off Judge
Perez Highway. They were driving west and through the
windshield viewed what appeared to be three lights chained
together. Mrs. Digangi told me that it seemed "very
close" and remained steady at an altitude of
approximately 500 feet for a ten to fifteen-minute period.
The following Tuesday, January 18, their teenaged daughter
and girlfriend saw the same object near their home on
Jackson Blvd.
On
Friday night, January 21, two nutria hunters, Irwin Menesses
and Robert Melerine, were given a dramatic fright when
an intensely bright object which emitted heat closed in
on them. While motoring along a bayou near the Yscloskey
Shell refinery, the giant light dropped down on them to
an altitude of 65 to 75 feet. Melerine's hair stood on
end and the boat stopped. Although the outboard engine
continued to churn water, the boat remained stationary.
The men ceased to move although they could speak
as if their bodies were being held in suspended
animation. When the light suddenly left, the boat lurched
forward with such force that the men were thrown down
in the boat. The UFO could be seen for another half hour,
making a sort of inspection tour of the Shell refinery
and the Yscloskey water tower.
Two
different sightings have been reported for the following
night, Saturday, January 22. Two brothers, Mark and Damian
Boudreaux, stood on the porch of Mark's house on Milan
Street and watched the maneuvers of a reddish-orange light
over the western part of the city. It was first seen hovering.
Then it moved southward, stopped, reversed direction,
and headed north. Damian had worked at the airport and
knows how conventional aircraft appear at night. This
object, he told me, "was much bigger and brighter
and did things airplanes cannot do."
On
the same night and to the east of New Orleans, a near
landing was witnessed in Chalmette. A car full of six,
three adults and three children, turned north off Judge
Perez on to Jean Lafitte Parkway. Through the left windows,
they watched a dome-shaped craft with red and yellow lights
and what were thought to be propellers which danced about
in the sky. The witnesses parked in the middle of the
boulevard to watch the show through the windshield. The
machine bounced and dipped behind the trees only 2,000
feet in front. After 10 minutes, it angled sharply and
dipped down into the forest for the last time. The frightened
group drove home in awe, deciding to tell no one. It was
not until February 12, that another UFO field investigator,
James La Chute, and I were called in. An examination of
the area revealed no landing traces.
On
Tuesday night, January 25, Mrs. Claire Wetta spotted a
mysterious glowing light just north of the 1-10 expressway
near City Park. It was a cigar-shaped object, longer and
narrower than the Goodyear Blimp and it emitted two distinctly
different shades of bright green. She described it to
me as "phosphorus looking . . . and long and bubbly
. . . and glowing." After 15 seconds, it suddenly
blinked out. It did not fly away but simply turned off.
It was too high to have slipped behind a tree or building.
On
Tuesday, February 8, Mrs. Gayle Rodriguez and her son,
Brian, watched a similar UFO show by a rather differently
shaped object. Driving east on St. Bernard highway, they
saw a brightly lit silvery colored craft which flew across
the highway in front of them and began a course parallel
to the road.
Its
movement was in uneven spurts, shooting forward and then
stopping. On one stop, it tilted toward the car. It was
shaped like an upside down saucer with a flat bottom and
a dome on top in the middle. Near the bottom edge could
be seen a row of individual lights which merged into a
single blur when rotating. The lights changed color, alternating
between blue, green and bright white. Atop the dome were
three lights on the ends of which appeared to be antenna:
two small white lights, and one larger red light.
The
following night, February 9, an unusual object was sighted
east of the Louisiana border in Madison County, Mississippi.
Deputy Sheriff Ken Creel, along with Deputy James Luke,
responded to a call that a UFO was seen in the area five
miles west of the town of Flora. They were driving along
Coxferry Road toward the house of Fred Grant when suddenly,
an unidentified aircraft flew to a position directly above
the car. It hovered at an altitude of 20 to 50 feet. It
shone a bright light and caused radio communication interference.
It
was watched from further away by five independent witnesses,
one of whom was Hubert Roberts of the Flora Police Department.
Roberts' police car was standing on a gravel road off
the main highway near Bogue Chitto Creek. The officer
blinked his headlights as a signal, and the UFO reportedly
blinked two of its lights in apparent response. Mr. Roberts
told investigator La Chute that it was "sort of
round" with portholes and "very bright".
When it departed, it shot off with great speed.
And
there is one more. Two Navy Patrol Gunboats, the USS Tacoma
and the USS Welch, were sailing to New Orleans for Mardi
Gras on February 17 when they encountered a strange light
about 4:00 a.m. Their position was 85° 50' x 25°
45', 140 miles west of Ft. Meyers, Florida, when the light
approached them from the west. I talked to the officers
on the bridge of both ships and was told the light appeared
white at first. It then grew in intensity and turned amber.
Then all of a sudden, it blinked out.
A
few observations are in order. Although UFO activity seems
to have been quite heavy, the individual sightings together
do not reveal any pattern. Independent confirmation of
some of the cases have come in, but there seems to be
no relation between cases other than geographical proximity.
Witnesses in no two cases seem to report the same object;
each object's description is quite different from the
others'. However, all of these are night sightings
some are close encounters type I and it is more
difficult to see shapes in the dark. It would be premature
to rule out the possibility that the same craft was seen
more than once.
We
have here such a large number of sightings in such a short
period of time that it appears we have a flap on our hands.
Skeptics argue that flaps are caused by the media, that
is, reports of UFO's on TV and in the newspapers cause
others to begin to see things in the sky. It is important
to note that the media has played no role in this flap.
There has been only modest reporting of UFO's in the news.
The people who claim to have witnessed mysterious flying
objects have been, for the most part, unaware that others
have too. Is there really somebody or something out there
that has come to visit us?
Source:
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case137.htm