Quote:From the Archives: UFO witnesses recount their experiences with 'Strangers In the Sky' (Aug. 1979)

In our May 2021 issue, writer Erik Ofgang looks at three of the most spectacular UFO incidents from Connecticut's history. However, these are far from the only unexplained aerial sightings to take place with our borders. In this August 1979 article titled "Strangers in the Sky," Elise Vider spoke to several residents of Northern Connecticut who claimed to have had their own close encounters and were profoundly impacted by their experiences. This article is being posted to the web in April 2021.

Strangers in the Sky

For some perfectly reasonable people in northern Connecticut it’s not a question of whether UFOs exist. It’s a question of what they want.

By Elise Vider

It happened on one of those crisp, moonlit January nights when the clear air crackles and the senses are finely tuned. Helen Godard of North Granby was driving along a familiar stretch of road—Route 189, a lonely two-lane country highway that meanders through her hometown and across the border into Massachusetts. She'd traveled that road hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times before.
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Quote:The biggest surprise, however, came later when Mrs Rowe went inside to start dinner. The contents of two refrigerators—one in the pantry and one in the kitchen—had frozen solid. Meat, vegetables, and milk were all solid chunks of ice. A color television had transmitted only black and white while the object was overhead but color came back as soon as it was gone. NICAP’s evaluation was that there was no proof the UFO had caused the appliances' quirks but that the occurrence of an electromagnetic field could cause interference in TV reception.

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“I wasn’t frightened,” recalls Missy Nolan of Enfield who was with her aunt Helen Godard that night in 1967. “I wasn't afraid of it. It just didn't appear to me that it would hurt you. It was more just fascination. You couldn’t believe you were actually seeing what you were seeing. It was amazing. The whole thing was amazing. To this day it is.

Quote:A former Marine claims he and five comrades saw a flying saucer being loaded with weapons while serving in Indonesia in 2009 – and was threatened at gunpoint by unmarked US forces at the scene.

The wild story comes after an Air Force whistleblower from the government's UFO office joined growing numbers of intelligence officials claiming the US has recovered and is even reverse-engineering crashed or landed 'non-human' spacecraft.

Michael Herrera was a 20-year-old rifleman sent on a Navy humanitarian mission during the 2009 Sumatra earthquake and tsunami that devastated the region.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, he claims that while guarding an airdrop of aid supplies outside the city of Padang in October that year, his six-man unit stumbled across a hovering octagonal craft in apparent use by clandestine US forces.

'The craft was rotating in a clockwise motion while changing colors. It had an audible hum to it, like the sound of a transformer or a guitar amp. It was an octagonal shape with a pyramid at the top of it that was black,' Herrera said

After 14 years of silence, Herrera was emboldened by new UFO whistleblower protections and in April testified under oath to the government's UFO investigation team, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), as well as a Senate committee.

He provided his unblemished four-year service record, and texts about the incident with an alleged fellow witness – who refused to talk, saying it was 'not worth my life or jeopardizing my family'.

Peripheral aspects of his account were verified by DailyMail.com using military sources. But Herrera, 33, does not have documentation or photos of the incident itself.

The Denver native joined the Marines fresh out of high school. He had been serving for less than two years when he was deployed to the Philippines as a member of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit to help distribute aid in the wake of a typhoon.

When a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Sumatra on September 30, 2009, his 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, Echo Co. 2nd Platoon was rerouted to help guard helicopter aid drops around Padang City, beset by violence from local insurgents.

Around October 8 he and five marines were dropped off at a clearing in the north eastern part of the city by a CH-53 chopper, and hiked 900ft up a ridge to take their positions for the incoming supply drop, Herrera said.

It was then he spotted a strange object in the jungle on the other side of the hill.

'I could see something moving and rotating. It was changing colors between a very light matte gray to a very dark matte black,' he said. 'It stuck out like a sore thumb.'

Oddly, he said, they had not been given radios, so instead of calling it in they edged down the hill in formation to investigate, while Herrera snapped photos and video on his Panasonic camera.

'The thing was massive, the size of a football field,' Herrera told DailyMail.com.

Quote:'The craft was rotating in a clockwise motion while changing colors. It had an audible hum to it, like the sound of a transformer or a guitar amp. It was an octagonal shape with a pyramid at the top of it that was black.

'It had 'scales' that were on the outside of the craft that covered the whole craft. It had seams and sharp edges which I suspect to be man-made. Nothing on it was smooth. It had some panels on the vertical edges that were like Vantablack.'





According to AARO's statistics of UFO reports between 1996 and 2023, only 1% are polygons (like an octagon), 2% disk-shaped, while 52% are orbs or spherical.

However, an object shot down in February over Lake Huron, Michigan by F-16 fighter jets – after their first missile missed – was described as 'octagonal' by congress members briefed on the incident.

Herrera claimed that when he and his five comrades got within 150 feet of the craft, they were ambushed by eight men wearing all-black camouflage, bullet-proof vests, wielding M4 rifles with high-end night vision attachments given to elite US troops.

'They had their weapons drawn on us,' he said. 'We could audibly hear their weapon safety levers flipping off safe.'

'Who the f*** are you guys? What are you doing here?' two of them yelled with American accents, he said.

'They said we weren't supposed to be there, and that they could kill us.'

As the men continued to threaten them, took the marines' weapons, dumped their ammunition and scanned their military IDs, Herrera said he saw others loading 'large weapon cases' and other containers from modified Ford F350 trucks onto a platform beneath the craft.

'When the last two trucks finished unloading and drove off, the lower part of the platform rose off the ground to about 10 feet and the craft lowered to meet it and it came together into one piece,' he said.

'On the corners of the craft, it had lights that were changing between blue, red, yellow and green.

'It rose off the ground and a little past the trees, then shot off to our left towards the ocean at around 4,000mph.

'We can't believe this is f***ing happening. From a dead stop, it didn't make any sound like a sonic boom, it didn't disturb the trees like rotor wash would. We could see coconuts on the trees and none of them were disturbed.'

Herrera said the eight unmarked soldiers gave them back their unloaded guns and marched them back over the hill, 'still telling us how they could kill us.'

'Once we got over the hill they told us to get the f*** away from here and don't look back.'

The six marines ran back to the aid drop site and were scolded by their gunnery sergeant for returning early, Herrera said, adding that they all kept quiet about the disturbing encounter.

'I was f***ing scared,' the veteran said. 'I was thinking: I could have been killed, how the hell am I going to explain this?'

Back on the USS Denver, Herrera's unit were debriefed by a rear admiral he didn't recognize. He said it was odd to have such a high-ranking officer there, and again none of them mentioned the saucer and unmarked troops.

A few days later they were docked in Subic Bay in the Philippines, the marine said. After an evening of drinking with his colleagues, he returned to find his camera's card and battery removed from his locked locker, along with his five comrades' phones missing.

In early December 2009 he was back at Camp Hansen in Okinawa, Japan. He was told to report to the office, where he found an Air Force lieutenant colonel in full uniform but no name tag.

'He starts telling me, 'You're not allowed to talk about what happened, not to your chain of command, not even a general,' Herrera said. 'You will go to prison, or you will die.'

'He told me to keep my mouth shut and slid a paper to me which was an NDA. The only thing I can recall is that it said 'TS/SCI', Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information. And it had Indonesia on it.'

The rifleman said he signed and was told to 'get the f*** out of there'.

'I ran back to the barracks and haven't talked about it ever since. It's something I've kept secret for almost 14 years. But I've thought about it every single day.'

He left the Navy in October 2011, his certificate of release showing four years of active duty and medals for 'national defense service', 'global war on terrorism service', 'humanitarian service', 'sea service deployment' and a 'sharpshooter rifle badge'.

Herrera made several million dollars as an entrepreneur and now runs a private security company called Valkyrie Eye.

New UFO whistleblower protections enacted in December prompted the ex-marine to finally tell his story.

Last year's annual military funding bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), included a new clause allowing whistleblowers to report previously undisclosed UFO 'material retrieval, material analysis, [and] reverse engineering' programs to the Pentagon's AARO team without fear of prosecution for violating their security oaths and non-disclosure agreements.

Herrera said in 2017 he met UFO activist Dr. Steven Greer at a conference, and Greer helped persuade him to talk and connected him with congressional and AARO staffers earlier this year.

Herrera is also planning to tell his story at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC on Monday organized by Greer, alongside four other UFO witnesses.

The ex-marine claims his five former comrades are too scared to come forward.

In a May 3 text message, one wrote: 'this is asking to[o] much of me and it's not worth the risk.'

'It's not worth my life or jeopardizing my family. I know we go way back, but this is asking to[o] much. You need to get out of whatever you are in and don't get me involved with this mess. My career isn't worth helping you. Don't ask me to do this s**t ever again.'

DailyMail.com verified the sender was a marine serving in the same unit in 2009.

'It sounds a bit like science fiction, but it actually is science fact,' Greer told DailyMail.com. 'These breakthroughs have been kept very, very secret, much to the detriment of the American people and the planet.

'We feel it's very important that the public understand this is not just a silly story about Little Green Men. This has very significant implications for the environment, for energy independence, for global poverty.'

Greer and his organization, the Disclosure Project, gained international attention as well as derision in 2001 when he gathered 20 retired Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration and intelligence officers at the National Press Club to tell their stories of extraordinary UFO and alien encounters.

The 2001 conference did not spark congressional hearings as Greer hoped.

Leslie Kean, an investigative journalist who was the first to bring Air Force whistleblower David Grusch forward to make his bombshell claims in her story in engineering news site The Debrief this week, said she was skeptical of Greer's approach in an interview with the New Yorker in 2021.

'There were some good people at that conference, but some of them were making outrageous, grandiose claims,' Kean said. 'I knew then that I had to walk away.'

Grusch has also reportedly released a statement distancing himself from Greer, after Greer claimed that he met with the senior military intelligence official in March 2022 in Culpeper, Virginia.

'I took my job very seriously, and early on, I allowed various individuals that alleged they had information to speak their truth as part of my evaluation process,' Grush reportedly said in a statement published on Twitter by UFO researcher Vinnie Adams this week. 

'I emphatically request that Steven Greer cease using my name to promote his personal agenda.'
The former ER doctor spent the two decades following his 2001 press conference collecting UFO witnesses, and has now assembled a database of 746 people in or related to the US government.

Some have detailed and compelling stories and have even testified to AARO. Others are merely senior officials who made public statements acknowledging the possibility of UFOs having non-human origins. According to the database, 76 have passed away.

He will also be unveiling a 'Disclosure Project Intelligence Archive' with 'over 5 terabytes of government documents, whistleblower testimony and specific locations of illegally operated UFO projects,' according to a press release.
Greer has become a controversial figure even among UFO enthusiasts, making disputed claims and charging up to $3,500 for group sessions where he purports to teach and perform summonings of extraterrestrials using psychic powers.

A video of one of his 'contact' events in Vero Beach, Florida on January 27 2015 shows a light appearing over the Atlantic ocean which Greer attributed to aliens.
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(06-12-2023, 10:48 PM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote: So, Grusch was being groomed/coached by Elizondo and this Marine by Dr. Greer. I dunno if true but seems there is an internal battle going on to win over UFO belief dominance.

(06-13-2023, 01:36 AM)Ninurta Wrote:

(06-12-2023, 10:48 PM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote: So, Grusch was being groomed/coached by Elizondo and this Marine by Dr. Greer. I dunno if true but seems there is an internal battle going on to win over UFO belief dominance.

I have a friend who met with Elizondo in DC. There were a couple of officers at the meeting as well, and they were all trying to get him to admit to things, some that were just plain untrue, and others that were covered by National Security and NDA's. The meeting went all to hell when he discovered they were filming him for a TV show. There was a behind the scenes ruckus about that meeting at the Pentagon, and I've not much trusted anything Elizondo has to say since. He seems to not be an honorable man to me.

Dr Greer I don't know much about. He seems to have some smattering of information on some government secret programs, but not the whole truth of them, insofar as the ones I know anything about. He appears to be trying to parlay that half-knowledge into snake oil sales to me, although I don't think he has enough knowledge of them to get himself into any real trouble. He seems to have only the knowledge that has already leaked it's way into open-source sources, and not any of the real meat of the matters.

I don't like to question folks' accounts of personal experiences, since I wasn't there, but this one sounds kinda fishy to me. The "unmarked soldiers" sound like CIA DA/SAD personnel to me, rather than actual soldiers. that's a "paramilitary" wing of CIA used for Direct Action operations. So that could be so, but why on Earth would they be loading run of the mill weapons onto an alien technology platform? Aliens ought to have better weapons tech, so why would they need them? And if it was a US-operated saucer, surely there are lower profile ways to smuggle mundane weapons about, so why take that risk?

But, like I said, I wasn't there, so I really can't say yay or nay about it.

.

Quote:Keep watching the skies.

According to an organization known as the National UFO Reporting Center, two military jets engaged an object referred to as an “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon” over Bad Axe early this month.

Witnesses reported watching a pair of F-16s engaged in a “dogfight” with an object they were unable to see as they moved a camper at the storage units across from the Bad Axe Meijer store on June 3.

One of the witnesses, Christopher Bilbrey of Ubly, said as the military jets circled the sky overhead, he spotted a white/metallic disc that was difficult to see because of sunlight reflecting off the object. Bilbrey said the object seemed to be hiding from the jets by flying in front of the sun.

“The UAP was extremely fast,” Bilbrey said. “It was capable of overtaking and outmaneuvering the fighter jets with extreme ease. It would overtake a jet, stop suddenly and seemed to turn toward the incoming jet (sic) like spin in their direction without moving.”

The jet fired anti-missile flares like it was under direct attack, Bilbrey stated in his witness account. According to the report, the second fighter jet also fired its flares as the object continued to spin.
The jets repeated their attack about three times before flying away from the area, Bilbrey said. The UAP sat in front of the sun for a brief period before taking “a victory lap” and flying north toward Lake Huron.

Bilbrey, who said he was a military veteran who had been stationed with the 304th Expeditionary Signal Battalion in South Korea,  added he attempted to take cell phone video of the incident but glare and the altitude of the planes made it difficult.

Huron Daily Tribune

Quote:Fighter jets circle UAP in Michigan on June 3 (updated June 14)

NUFORC receives 10 to 20 UFO reports each day. Our standard procedure is to review and post these reports in batches, however we felt the following incident was significant enough to release earlier. On June 3, four witnesses observed what was described as an aerial “dogfight” between 2 jets and a UAP over a Meijer’s grocery store in Bad Axe Michigan. Here is the report:

Quiet afternoon no signs of planes it’s, 10 am, in the parking lot of the storage unit across from Miejers. Myself, my wife and 2 Co workers were helping move my camper! Suddenly ear shattering afterburner on 2 what I think were F-16 or F-22 were flying together whilst dogfighting something I couldn’t see at first. They would circle fast as they could looking intently for something. Circling the sun around about 2 or 3 times and suddenly there was this white/metallic disc hard to see because it was shining with the sun, it seemed to hide in the sun from the fighters, whom obviously couldn’t see it. The UAP was extremely fast it was capable of overtaking and outmaneuvering the fighter jets with extreme ease. It would overtake a jet, stop suddenly and seemed to turn toward the incoming jet like spin in there direction without moving. The jet would shoot out anti missile flares like it was under direct attack. The UAP was also comfortable to just spin again and make the next jet flanking shoot its anti missile flares! There was clear distress. The fighters took off together repeating this attack approximately 3 times before taking off in an ear shattering retreat. The UAP sat in the sun a moment longer and seemed to circle the area almost as in a victory lap, it then departed with absolutely no sound in the complete opposite direction as the fighter jets had flown. To be clear when the UAP was stationary and the jets had flown away every time the 3 attempts and the retreat the only clear sound of a airplane was the fighters who seemed to be intercepting this sudden threat. I did not see if the UAP had shot anything I could define as a weapon. And the fact that the dogfight happened almost entirely in the rays of the sun my galaxy s22 ultra was not able to get anything other than a blinding glare and noise

If anyone else was witness to this event we encourage you to file a report.

UPDATE – June 14.

We just spoke with the witness who filed the report, as well as his wife who also viewed the incident. After reviewing photos of types of military aircraft he able to narrow down the identification of the jets to F-16’s, not F-22’s. When the F-16s departed, they flew to the south, while the UAP disappeared over the lake. The witness has military experience and was familiar with aircraft from his time stationed at the 304th Expeditionary Signal Battalion in Korea, where he was trained. He also added that for 4 days after the sighting the jets returned to the same spot at 10AM, firing flare again on the 4th day.
We have asked the witness to send us a drawing of the UAP, as well as to encourage his friends to submit corroborating reports, which we will post as soon as we receive them.

Quote:Dan Sherman - E.T. Communication - Richard D. Hall interview.

Dan Sherman signed up for the U.S. Air force in 1982. During his commission he worked at the N.S.A (National Security Agency) who run some of Americas most top secret projects. Their activities are believed by many to extend to the UFO and E.T. issue. After being given a high level security clearance Sherman was introduced to an "above black" project which involved communicating with extra terrestrials. The N.S.A. has been running this project since at least 1961, with initial contact being established in 1947. Incredibly the N.S.A. have been co-operating with E.T.s whilst the E.T.s abduct women to genetically manage their unborn children in order to heighten a specific ability in their offspring. Dan Sherman is one of the offspring. He is a key whistleblower and his revelations provide a huge piece of the E.T./UFO puzzle.

Quote:Moderator: What is Project Preserve Destiny?

Dan Sherman: Well, that is a long explanation..short version, as was told to me . . . it is a program designed to cultivate humans who have the ability to "intuitively" communicate with an alien race to provide a worldwide communication link in the future where there will presumably be no electromagnetic means of communication.

Moderator: At the NSA you were told that your mom had been visited by aliens in 1960 and that you were given an "interesting ability," which is called Intuitive Communication. What is IC exactly?

Dan Sherman: Intuitively communicating is the term utilized by my superiors that was ascribed to my abilities. It is an ability through the mental manipulation of one's mind to communicate. The actual communication I liken to looking at a tapestry (and feeling/seeing all the colors and textures . . .) It is a VERY rich means of communicating.

Moderator: IC sounds a cross between "remote viewing" and channeling. Is it?

Dan Sherman: My take on channeling is that one actually takes on the traits of the one being channeled. That had nothing to do with IC'ing. Remote viewing seems to be much more vague. My communications were very much based in reality. There was nothing left to doubt.

Guest: Sgt Sherman, did Rosswell actually occur?

Dan Sherman: During my initial meeting when I was told about PPD, the Capt made reference to 1947 and PPD was a result of our contact with an alien race during that year. It didn't mean anything to me at the time, because Roswell was not as well known as it is today.

Moderator: You were told to take some pills before most of your IC sessions. What do you think these pills were? How do you know your experiences were real? Could the pills have been designed to make you THINK you were communicating with aliens?

Dan Sherman: One of my conversations with my second alien contact made me think the pills were some kind of oxygen enhancer, like anti-oxidents perhaps. He referred to us (humans) as "water-humans" (my interpretation) which led me to believe that perhaps my bodily oxygen level was crucial to the IC ability. The communications were real, I just know. It was an extremely lucid event each and every time.

Guest: These aliens that you communicated with, in what star system are they located?

Dan Sherman: I am unaware of where they have come from. Everytime I tried to talk about such things my alien contacts were vague and even when we discussed principles of time, I was completely lost as to what they were saying. They do use "time" for there propulsion. One thing that was interesting and when he said they can't go through time, but they can go "around" time. All those types of conversations were quite interesting for me, even though I didn't understand half of what was being said.

Moderator: As you say so yourself in your book, you initially found what your NSA boss told you rather unbelievable. Don't you think they might have been pulling something on you?

Dan Sherman: I thought they were pulling something over on me initially. But you don't experience what I experienced (interacting with a computer screen without being attached to it in any way, for one) without becoming a believer in my Intuitive Communications (IC) abilities.

Moderator: What did most of your alien communications consist of?

Dan Sherman: Initially, my comms were strings of numbers then gradually became more image based . . . military launches (foreign and domestic) military movements . . . etc. Towards the end they started comming to me abduction scenarios, which directly led to my seeking a discharge.

Moderator: What made you think that some numbers had to do with alien abductions?

Dan Sherman: Numbers were intially. Abduction info came later. I started to receive info such as Potentiality for Recall with a number assigned to it. Other categories were Residual Pain Levels . . . with a number assigned to it. What would you decipher these types of comms as?

Guest: Did you catalogue these numbers and their meanings?

Dan Sherman: I could probably have gotten away with writing this stuff down, but mind you I never figured I'd ever speak of this so it never entered my mind to document anything. It was a part of my life and was nothing special after a while.