UFO ODDments
Was it Maine’s Roswell? Well, not really. No crash was reported. However, I like to call it that, since in the same year and month (and close to the same day) of the now infamous Roswell crash in New Mexico, a fleet of UFOs was reported in Maine’s skies.
Maine’s Roswell
From July 3, 1947, comes a report from the small coastal town of Harborside. The witness was John Cole, an astronomer from South Brooksville, Maine. He said that at 2:30 p.m. one afternoon, he observed no less than ten UFOs moving northwest across the sky above him. In the book Our Brothers in the Skies: The Hidden Truth Revealed by M. R. Fluet, Mr. Cole speaks of what he observed: “Ten very light objects, with two dark forms to their left, moved like a swarm of bees to the northwest. A loud roar was heard.”
The Seavey Brothers’ Encounter
Wendell Seavey, a fisherman from the small coastal town of Bernard, is the seventy-five-year-old author of the book Working the Sea: Misadventures, Ghost Stories, and Life Lessons from a Maine Lobsterman. In it, Wendell Seavey describes an encounter with an unknown oddity in the sky while fishing with his brother in August of 1966.
“It was a dark clear night,” he writes. “We were the only boat traveling out from Bass Harbor at that time, all alone out there.” He was steering the boat and saw the object before his brother did. “I can’t say just how high, but maybe 1,000 feet up, maybe 1,500 into the sky, I saw—knowing not what else to call it—a spaceship.” Frank, Wendell’s brother, finally saw the object and said it was gigantic, and, having seen the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that it was similar in size and shape. Wendell then explained the UFO’s peculiar behavior: “Right out of the center of the bottom of it, there came a big shaft of light—a spotlight—and they were shining that light down on the island of Placentia.”
This was not the first time Wendell had seen odd lights in the sky, but it was the first time he had seen an object associated with them. While it was odd, he was not frightened and decided to show off. “Like a damn fool, rather than stay there and watch and study and observe it, I had to get smart. Thinking about what I had done on previous occasions and unable to resist showing off, I said to Frank, you want to see your little brother make them shut down that light?” Frank, in disbelief, agreed to his brother’s antics, and Wendell flashed the boat’s running lights on and off about three or four times. Sure enough, the UFO responded by shutting off the beam of light, as well as the lights on its underside, and then it vanished! Both Wendell and Frank were astonished by this, but duty called and they continued to their fishing grounds. After a few minutes, they turned to look at where the UFO had been … It was back, with all its lights on including the spotlight.
A big thanks to Michelle Souliere for bringing this story to my attention.
Shirley Fickett: UFO Hunter
Shirley Fickett and her husband were the owners of the Driftwood Art Gallery & Gift Shop in Portland, Maine. Shirley was also active in ufology and involved with local sighting research and investigations. She held gatherings at her gallery where one was encouraged to discuss UFOs, ghosts, psychic abilities, and other paranormal phenomena. Sadly, she passed away in 2005. Loren Coleman, owner and curator of the International Cryptozoology Museum, said in memoriam that “Shirley was the Dean of Ufology in the Pine Tree State, Maine’s answer to Betty Hill.”
Shirley Fickett was instrumental in bringing the Herbert Hopkins-David Stephens case to light in the 1970s and wrote an extraordinary report for the Flying Saucer Review journal called “The Maine UFO Encounter: Investigating Under Hypnosis.” Her report, along with connected articles by Brent Raynes and Dr. Berthold E. Schwarz, can be read in full in Dr. Schwarz’s book UFO Dynamics: Psychiatric and Psychic Dimensions of the UFO Syndrome. If you have trouble finding a copy of Schwarz’s book, you can do a search for Shirley Fickett’s article title on Google, where you will find a PDF version of Flying Saucer Review. That said, a retelling of the Herbert Hopkins-David Stephens case appears in my first book, UFOs Over Maine: Close Encounters from the Pine Tree State.
The Curious Case of Earl Whitney
Brent Raynes, UFO investigator and researcher, reported that on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 3, 1970, fifty-two-year-old Earl Whitney was killed by a lightning strike on the golf course at the Augusta Country Club. Before this tragedy, Whitney was known for reporting UFOs on numerous occasions. One of Whitney’s last reported cases was an interesting event that involved a landed UFO. Brent Raynes explains that “in the fall of 1945, outside an airport in Waterville, Maine, [he] had observed the landing of a craft that resembled two aluminium pie plates attached lip to lip, with a dark band around the center. He said that this was around 11:00-11:30 p.m., that the UFO had two bright spot lights on the underside, that it landed on four landing legs, remained on the ground for 5-10 minutes, and that afterwards he found impressions on the ground left by the four legs.”
Star-Crossed Lovers
In September of 2016, Audrey Hewins (founder of Starborn Support, an alien abduction support group foundation located in southern Maine) announced on her Facebook page that she and Travis Walton of Fire in the Sky: The Walton Experience fame are now in a relationship. (Travis’s story is one of the most compelling alien abduction cases, rivaling Whitley Strieber and the Betty and Barney Hill case.) Audrey wrote on her page, “Brought together by forces well beyond our understanding. It has not been easy as the dark ones do not want us together, but I assure you, after their best attempts to fracture us, we only grew stronger.” I, for one, wish them all the joy in the world.
Audrey’s story can be seen on a television episode of Alien Encounters from the BIO channel. A quick search on YouTube will allow you to view the episode in full.
Travis Walton and team released a great documentary called Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton. Also, an amazing retelling of Travis’s story was made by Syfy’s Paranormal Witness television program, also available on YouTube in full.
Palermo Ball Lightning
A gentleman by the name of Merton Haskell told some peculiar stories from the 1930s about odd encounters that he and his parents had experienced in Palermo, Maine. Brent Raynes reported on the encounters and interviewed Haskell. The man claimed that he and his folks were in a neighbor’s field when they suddenly noticed odd, bright, pulsating balls of light just over the field. Raynes recorded Haskell as stating that “in a field of crops on our neighbor’s field,” he “was cultivating the rows with a team of horses and a two-row cultivator when the horses approached it.” Haskell went on to explain that at first his father didn’t see the lights until they moved closer to the cultivator. “Apparently neither he nor the animals saw it. As they passed over it, it grew smaller until about the size of a baseball and from where we were standing, two hundred yards plus, it rolled with the dirt around the cultivator teeth and (then) immediately resumed its former pulsing size.”
Raynes reported another story that Haskell told of odd lights on the night his grandfather passed away. Haskell said, “The last time anyone ever saw it was the night my grandfather died and it was sighted by my father on a stone wall, a line between our farm and the next, this was the closest it ever got to our property. It was never seen by anyone after that.”
Ball lightning is a natural phenomenon created during thunder and lightning storms, typically from cumulonimbus clouds. This phenomenon has also been reported during crop circle formations, before and after the death of a loved one, or as ghostly lights seen in a field, bog, or swamp and often called will-o’-the-wisp.
The Teacher Who Didn’t Believe
In his book New England’s Visitors from Outer Space, author Robert Ellis Cahill shares an anecdotal story from 1984.
Arthur Hansen was teaching school at the North Yarmouth Academy in Yarmouth, Maine. During a discussion with his class one day, the topic of extraterrestrials and UFOs was brought up by a student. Mr. Hansen exclaimed to the entire class, “I will believe only if one drops in front of my house on Princess Point Road!” The proclamation started an eruption of laughter and the incident was soon forgotten.
About a week later, the teacher was at home finishing dinner with his family when a knock sounded at the door. Mr. Hansen went to greet his unknown visitor and was shocked to see two of his students quite afraid and ranting about “lights in the sky.” Arthur’s two sons overheard the reference to a UFO, and all five excitedly hurried down the driveway and onto Princess Point Road to catch a glimpse. Mr. Hansen recounts, “We looked up and were startled and convinced that what we were looking at was very unique.” As they approached an area just off the side of the road, strange red lights were visible. As they continued walking, a craft appeared about thirty feet in the sky and the Hansen boys were, as Arthur put it, “frightened and overwhelmed.”
Soon after arriving on-site, snickering could be heard coming from the youngsters. Arthur thought this peculiar and looked around the area. He spotted poles by nearby trees that shot straight up into the craft, and upon closer inspection of the craft itself, he could now see that flashlights were wrapped in red nylon that produced the eerie illumination. Once he realized what was really going on, everyone ended up having a good laugh together. The student pranksters, after having heard Mr. Hansen’s disbelief in UFOs the previous week, couldn’t help but try to make a believer out of him. It backfired, but it was all in good fun.
Maine Signs (Crop Circle Reports)
Crop circles were observed in a field in the Rockland area from 2006 to 2008. The circles in 2007 and 2008 were not investigated, but I did reach out and correspond with a crop circle investigator, who told me that these circles were “almost certainly what we call a ‘randomly downed’ area, very likely weather-related.” Apparently, in similar areas that have been tested, some cases do indicate that the cause was “the same plasma energy system involved in the creation of genuine geometric events,” but most areas “do not show the physical abnormalities in the plants associated with crop circle creation. Instead [they’re] almost certainly related to either over-fertilzation (when it’s a crop field) or weather conditions.”
The circle in 2006 was reported by the BLT Research Team as “partially-circular, partially randomly-downed grasses.” Witnesses recalled that a thunder-and-lightning storm had occurred the night before. One resident of Rockland who lives near the field reported observing balls of light (BOLs) in the area. The witness did attempt to use a camera in the area of the circle but reported that it would not work. BOLs have been reported all over the world, some having been recorded on video showing the creation of a crop circle. The most famous, or infamous, rather, would be the Oliver’s Castle crop circle footage. Conduct a quick search on YouTube to watch the video.
Other reports from around Maine include Turner in 1959, Palermo in 1965 and 1967, Masardis in 1993, Cape Elizabeth in 1997, and the Pittston/Gardiner story from 2002 that I wrote about in my first book.
The 1959 Turner crop circle report also included a witness observing balls of light. The report states, “A small circle of flattened, ‘scorched’ grass was discovered in a field after a woman standing in her driveway heard a humming sound—then watched several BOLs flying low over a field about 1,000 feet away. The woman reported that BOLs stopped flying and began to hover in midair, and then descend into the field. The circle was found where the BOLs had landed.”
The Beasts of Palmyra
Linda Godfrey wrote in her book Real Wolfmen: True Encounters in Modern America of a terrifying night in 2007 that befell the Palmyra home of Eric and Shelly Martin. After having just moved into their new house, they were home one evening unpacking and talking about their day when a light outside caught Eric’s eye as he walked past a window. He stopped and peered out into the woods and observed BOLs that floated in and out of the trees. By the time Shelly got to the window, the BOLs had disappeared. They thought hunters with flashlights were to blame and continued unpacking. Suddenly, footsteps and scratching sounds were heard coming from their front porch. Eric went to the window, and at first glance thought there was a pack of dogs outside. But they looked much too large to be ordinary dogs and he feared that they might be wolves. He looked at his wife with unsettled eyes and peered out the window again. An onslaught of goose bumps covered his skin as he called his wife to the window. Five extremely large wolf-like creatures stood bipedally and stared back at them. The couple reported that some of them were as tall as seven feet! Throughout the rest of the night, the wolves skulked around their property and tried to break in; Eric described them as having “frightening intelligence.” The couple had guns, but they were stored in a shed … outside. All they could do was stay locked inside their home until the creatures retreated, which happened once daylight broke.
Their story was also featured in an episode of Paranormal Witness on the Syfy channel and can be viewed in full by searching for “The Wolf Pack Paranormal Witness” on YouTube.