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Stephenville Texas UFO and possible cover-up

maximus otter

Recovering policeman
Joined
Aug 9, 2001
Messages
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STEPHENVILLE, Texas (AP) - In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.

Several dozen people—including a pilot, county constable and business owners—insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.

"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts."

While federal officials insist there's a logical explanation, locals swear that it was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object's lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. People in several towns who reported seeing it over several weeks have offered similar descriptions of the object.

Machinist Ricky Sorrells said friends made fun of him when he told them he saw a flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture behind his Dublin home. But he decided to come forward after reading similar accounts in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune.

"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal," Sorrells said. "It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I'm not crazy."

Sorrells said he has seen the object several times. He said he watched it through his rifle's telescopic lens and described it as very large and without seams, nuts or bolts.

Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, said no F-16s or other aircraft from his base were in the area the night of Jan. 8, when most people reported the sighting.

Lewis said the object may have been an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes. Lights from the aircraft would seem unusually bright and may appear orange from the setting sun.

"I'm 90 percent sure this was an airliner," Lewis said. "With the sun's angle, it can play tricks on you."

Officials at the region's two Air Force bases—Dyess in Abilene and Sheppard in Wichita Falls—also said none of their aircraft were in the area last week. The Air Force no longer investigates UFOs.

One man has offered a reward for a photograph or videotape of the mysterious object.

About 200 UFO sightings are reported each month, mostly in California, Colorado and Texas, according to the Mutual UFO Network, which plans to go to the 17,000-resident town of Stephenville to investigate.

Fourteen percent of Americans polled last year by The Associated Press and Ipsos say they have seen a UFO.

Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan said that he first saw red glowing lights and then white flashing lights moving fast, but that even with binoculars could not see the object to which the lights were attached.

"I didn't see a flying saucer and I don't know what it was, but it wasn't an airplane, and I've never seen anything like it," Gaitan said. "I think it must be some kind of military craft—at least I hope it was."

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... _article=1

maximus otter
 
I have no opinion on what they saw, partly because the following information is missing:

Dates, times, and specific locations of sightings
Comparison of these with flight information, particularly from the Dublin Municipal Airport
Atmospheric conditions

Dublin is located in north central Texas, between Austin and Dallas/Forth Worth, in the area where prairie transforms to high plains. It is on a number of migration routes and wintering areas, though this would be more relevant had the witnesses seen bright white lights, as the birds that look most artificial in reflected light are the white ones. After a record wet summer, most of Texas has settled in for a long winter drought, and there should be little particulate matter in the air apart from dust.

The amount of sky you get in an area like this is breathtaking, and you can see a great deal farther in all directions than people who live in less flat and/or more humid areas can imagine. You also get surprising visual effects. Further west, well up on the Edwards Plateau, my entire family once saw the moon perched on the horizon as big as a house, rose pink with the craters picked out in blue. It was only by the craters making the familiar man-in-the-moon shape that we were able to identify it. I can easily see how a familiar object like an airliner or a flock of herring gulls (which come inland this time of year) could be mistaken for an extraterrestrial craft - but not if no airliners were in the area at the time, or the sighting was well after sunset when gulls are asleep.

Fort Hood is an Army post well south of Dublin and it would be surprising if top secret experimental aircraft were tested out of it - which might be reason enough to test things there, I suppose! But in the absence of specific evidence I think we can rule that one out.

The AP report seems to be the only one generally available. If I see the original report from the Stephenville paper, I'll let you know.
 
So many witness sightings, so few cameras! Dang! There could have been really oppertunity there, but that's "a whole n'uther", story.
 
The kinds of cameras most people carry around can't get a decent picture of a light in the sky, anyway.
 
PeniG said:
The kinds of cameras most people carry around can't get a decent picture of a light in the sky, anyway.
Absolutely true i have experimented with digital cameras to try and photograph the moon, planes etc but all i ever got was vague blurs so it is not surprising that there is so few pictures of lights in the night sky.
 
Now the DT has the story!

UFO seekers flock to mystery lights in Texas
By Tom Leonard in New York
Last Updated: 2:29am GMT 16/01/2008

Amateur UFO investigators are to descend on a farming community in Texas where dozens of people reported seeing mysterious lights in the sky.

A pilot, policeman and local business owners are among those who insist they have seen a large, silent object with bright lights flying low and fast over the town of Stephenville, 60 miles south west of Fort Worth.

Some said they saw fighter jets chasing the craft, which was mostly spotted on one evening - January 8.

The local airforce base said none of its planes were in the area last week.

A spokesman has suggested that the UFO might have been an illusion created by sunset falling on commercial airliners.

Unconvinced, local people insist the object was larger, quieter, faster and closer to the ground than an airplane.

Steve Allen, a pilot and freight company owner, said: "People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times."

Mr Allen, a freight company owner and pilot, described the object he saw as a mile long and half a mile wide.
"It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts," he said.

Looking through the telescopic sights of his rifle, Ricky Sorrells, a machinist, said he saw a flat and seamless metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a field.

Lee Roy Gaitan, an Erath County constable, said: "I didn't see a flying saucer and I don't know what it was, but it wasn't an airplane, and I've never seen anything like it."

He added: "I think it must be some kind of military craft - at least I hope it was."

The US airforce no longer investigates UFOs. Around 200 UFO sightings are reported each month, mostly in California, Colorado and Texas, according to the Mutual UFO Network, which plans to visit Stephenville next weekend.

Fourteen per cent of Americans polled last year said they have seen a UFO.

http://tinyurl.com/yvbwpv
 
Re: Dozens in Texas Town Report Seeing UFO

maximus_otter said:
"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot

Is that true? 'Everyone'? Just how bonkers is it over there in that part of America?
 
Mr. Allen is being carelessly hyperbolic, in the same way that people say: "Nobody reads/cooks/waltzes anymore" or "Everybody's got the flu/a computer/worships the Dallas Cowboys and forgives them for all the heinous crimes they'd crucify anybody else for."

Bible Belt Christianity, a Calvinist Protestantism whose worst excesses are well-known, is in daily life a constant background noise that leaves most people living their lives normally most of the time. Conventional morality is more of a force than theology in almost every situation, and is easily confused with it, which is true everywhere. Calvinism is eschatalogical, so people are aware that they're supposed to live in daily expectation of the bridegroom, and anytime something unusual happens you'll get a few people who seriously think it's a sign of the approaching Rapture and quite a few more with the uneasy feeling that, hey, it's possible. Mr. Allen is probably thinking of conversations like one I had with a Jehovah's Witness in my workplace during the Koresh standoff, in which he reported a rumor that Koresh was in the process of "opening the seals" inside the compound, and I looked at the pointless busywork we were dealing with at the time, and said: "If that's true, won't we feel stupid for spending our last days here?"

According to this site, linked from the Erath County data at epodunk.com,
http://www.thearda.com/mapsReports/repo ... 3_2000.asp ,
unchurched people outnumber Evangelical Protestants in the county. Catholics make a poor showing, probably due to the relatively low Hispanic population (15% in the county), and you can see the effect of the schismatic tendency of fundamentalist sects in the proliferation of churches with similar names. The largest single church block, the Southern Baptist Convention, constitutes a noisy bunch of neighbors, believe me! These are probably the "everybody" referred to. But Baptists prevent major schisms by emphasizing the right of every man to be his own priest (i.e. read the Bible and draw his own conclusions), so if you have 10,000 Baptists you have 10,000 similar but distinct theologies in people with lots of practice in forming effective units of action out of contentious elements.

I doubt that the nine practitioners of Baha'i, the 1,774 Catholics, any of the "mainline Protestant" congregations, or the over 14,000 "unclaimed" people are worried about the end times being signaled by UFOs. I expect they mostly regard it as an exciting topic of conversation.
 
A couple of comments, based on seeing / hearing / tracking down accounts of the sightings ...

(1) There seem to have been two distinct types of sightings. Some claimed to have seen the object at relatively close range (e.g., the deer hunter in the woods). These witnesses describe certain details of lights (or illuminated portions) in the rear of the object. Some of these went further to describe changes of state in these subsidiary elements (e.g., additional lights illuminating in the 'rear' before the object zoomed off). Others simply report bright lights, with little or no sub-details cited.

(2) The only witness account I've found that mentions fighter planes in pursuit came from a late-arriving witness (the wife of a man who'd initially seen the object with 1 or 2 friends outside and who was summoned from inside to 'come look'). She described aircraft pursuing the main object and insisted they were fighter jets. The most detailed account of her observation was her own words, in a National Public Radio segment on _All Things Considered_.
 
I live in Dallas, TX, but my best friend currently lives and works in Stephenville. He told me that he and a mutual friend of ours saw one of these objects about three weeks before they began to be reported in the news.

He said they were driving into Dublin in the evening when he saw what he thought was a passenger plane that he believed was going down in a field. He asked our friend to pull over, and they both got out to get a better look. He said he saw at least two other cars had stopped and their drivers had gotten out to look. He told me he didn't know what it was, but he knew it was not any plane he had ever seen. I'll try to get more details when I talk to him again.
 
So, you tell me that 'dozens of witnesses' witness an extraordinary object, but no picture is taken, not because everybody is not carrying these days some picture-taking device, but because those witnesses are too much concerned by the good quality of the pictures. Funny, I'd have thought that a bad picture is better than none (as most UFO pictures actually show).
I'd recommend any future UFO witness to think less about the Pulitzer and more about providing evidence of what they saw... or didn't.
 
psychopirate said:
I live in Dallas, TX, but my best friend currently lives and works in Stephenville. He told me that he and a mutual friend of ours saw one of these objects about three weeks before they began to be reported in the news.

He said they were driving into Dublin in the evening when he saw what he thought was a passenger plane that he believed was going down in a field. He asked our friend to pull over, and they both got out to get a better look. He said he saw at least two other cars had stopped and their drivers had gotten out to look. He told me he didn't know what it was, but he knew it was not any plane he had ever seen. I'll try to get more details when I talk to him again.
Thanks, that's really great. It would be interesting to hear a more or less direct account. :)
 
Be fair, Epicurean! Few people except dedicated hobbyists carry a camera routinely, apart from that crappy thing in some mobile phones. Not everybody carries a mobile phone (I don't), and if you happen to have one, and it happens to be a picture phone, and it happens not to be the ones that can take a semidecent picture - taking a picture of the sky, especially of a night sighting, is still likely to show up as a blank screen.

If you can get your friend to write us up a firsthand account, Mr. Pirate, that would be a boon to all!
 
I'll post the link on breaking news, but WOAI links don't last long, so here's the story.

Military Says UFOs Were Jets
Reported by: Delanie Mathieu
Email: [email protected]
Last Update: 6:05 am

By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer

So much for aliens in Texas dairy country.

At least that's what the military said Wednesday, reporting that 10 F-16 fighter jets were training in the Stephenville area the night dozens of residents reported seeing a UFO.

So what do you think? Click here to comment...
Although Air Force Reserve officials at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth initially said none of their planes were in the area Jan. 8, they said Wednesday that they had made a mistake and wanted to set the record straight "in the interest of public awareness."

Some residents aren't buying it, though, saying the military's revelation actually bolsters their claims because several reported seeing at least two fighter jets chasing an object.

"This supports our story that there was UFO activity in that area," said Kenneth Cherry, the Texas director of the Mutual UFO Network, which took more than 50 reports from locals at a meeting last weekend. "I find it curious that it took them two weeks to 'fess up. I think they're feeling the heat from the publicity."

From well-respected business owners to a county constable, several dozen people swear that what they saw was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object's lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane.

"I guarantee that what we saw was not a civilian aircraft," Steve Allen, a pilot and freight company owner, said Wednesday.

Allen said that the planes' training area in the Brownwood Military Operating Area that includes Stephenville's Erath County does not include the airspace where he saw the object. Also, Jan. 8 was not the only day sightings were reported.

Anne Frazor, who owns a fabric store in Stephenville, about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth, said many in town have seen military aircraft zoom overhead from time to time as part of training operations. But she said that is different than what she saw Jan. 8.

"I couldn't begin to say what it was, but to me it wasn't planes," Frazor said.

Since the reported sightings two weeks ago, the 17,000-resident town has had some fun with the international publicity. Some high-schoolers made T-shirts that read "Stephenville: the new Roswell" on the front and "They're here for the milk!" on the back. A picture features flying saucer beaming up a cow.

This week Tarleton State University is even hosting a lecture by a UFO researcher on the U.S. government's secret response to UFOs,
based on previously classified documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The U.S. Air Force says it has not investigated UFO sightings since 1969 when it ended Project Blue Book, which examined more
than 12,600 reported UFO sightings -- including 700 that were never explained. That program started a few months after the 1947 crash
near Roswell, N.M., which the government said it was a top-secret weather balloon but others involved later said was an alien spacecraft.

"What we want is the government to admit there are UFOs and what they know about them," Cherry said.

I don't know what's worse - if they're lying, or if they're so disorganized that their spokesmen don't know when they had jets out where...
 
This is all a bit odd.

I've heard nothing about any Stephenville UFOs, or the nationwide US interest in the incident (there's nothing on the FTMB), so this story exists in a vacuum.

No doubt I could google up some info, but I really feel that the opening poster should provide the background to this story. Only then can we get an idea of whether this is important stuff or not.
 
rynner said:
This is all a bit odd.

I've heard nothing about any Stephenville UFOs, or the nationwide US interest in the incident (there's nothing on the FTMB), so this story exists in a vacuum.
Ahem - Scroll down to: Dozens in Texas Town Report Seeing UFO


(stu edit - now merged together with this thread)
 
Zilch5 said:
Ahem - Scroll down to: Dozens in Texas Town Report Seeing UFO
No, MB etiquette requires that the opening poster should provide this sort of info, as well as the relevent text from any subsequent related online sources.

I've had a lot to do tonight (emails to my brother about important financial stuff, image processing for my photo collection, letter and images for the local press, etc, as well as some other stuff I haven't got round to yet), so if you want to interest me (or anyone else here) you must give us a story, and not expect us to spend hundreds of clicks piecing it together for ourselves.
 
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's just that I'm not the poster of this thread and just humbly wanted to point one in the right direction... No offence intended!
 
Well, I've merged the threads now to save any further such misunderstandings, and retitled it in the interests of unequivocality.
 
From the Stephenville paper, earlier this month:
UFO witness claims harassment

By ANGELIA JOINER Staff Writer
Sunday, February 3, 2008 3:11 PM CST

Ricky Sorrells is frustrated and a little angry.

Since his interview with the Associated Press, Sorrells has stayed quiet regarding the daytime UFO sightings on his property near Dublin.

And, there is more than one reason for his silence.

Sorrells believes military officials have been harassing him by flying military aircraft over his property at low altitudes, at all hours of the day and night. Sorrells runs livestock on his place and said the cattle don’t react well to the disturbances. It’s also been hard to get any sleep.

Sorrells made international news along with other witnesses on Jan. 14 after the Associated Press contacted him for his story and took video of the exact spot the UFO was seen along with Sorrells’ description of the object.

Not just once, but four times, he claims to have seen the massive flying object he estimates to be the length of “three or four football fields.” He said he’s not sure about the size because the first time he saw it was the best view. At that time, the craft hovered directly over him in the woods about 300 feet above his head and his view was blocked by tree branches.

“I don’t know why it keeps coming back here,” Sorrells said.

He’s convinced that someone representing himself as a Lt. Colonel knows what it is — and Sorrells wants an explanation.

He said the man contacted him by telephone on Jan. 15, one day after his interview with the Associated Press.

“I didn’t worry about writing his name down or taking notes,” Sorrells said. “I didn’t know what was about to happen. But, I think he said he was with the Air Force.”

Sorrells said the conversation started out nice enough.

“He was sort of nice to me right off,” Sorrells said. “He asked to come and talk to me.”

Sorrells said he told the man that he needed time to think about it and then, “He (the man) became really arrogant.”

The caller told Sorrells he wasn’t taking “no” for an answer and would be out to talk to him. Sorrells again tried to politely tell the man he did not wish to have company.

After that, Sorrells said the conversation became heated and he told the man not to cross his cattle guard.

Sorrells said the man responded with, “ Son, we have the same caliber weapons as you do but a lot more of them.”

Looking back, Sorrells said he believes the man was in his area but not able to pinpoint exactly where he lived because he recently built a new home.

“I actually got up and looked out my window to see if I could see someone at the cattle guard. So I said if he was who he said he was, why didn’t he stop flying over my air space with all those helicopters,” Sorrells said. “And he informed me that it was not my air space — it was his. He told me if I’d quit talking about what I saw he would stop the helicopters.”

Sorrells said since that conversation, the helicopters have quit flying over his property but the F-16s haven’t slowed.

Before the conversation took place with the suspected military officer Sorrells related a late night experience with a large transport helicopter and three smaller helicopters.

“I get up at 2:30 a.m. to go to work and these helicopters kept flying over and I couldn’t sleep,” Sorrells said. “Because it was about time to get up and go to work, I just got up and went outside to see what I could.”

Sorrells said he has a spotlight on his pickup that he uses to look for coyotes.

“I went to my truck and turned on the spotlight and shined it up at them,” Sorrells said. “It was so close, I could see the pilot’s reaction. He threw up his arm to block the light. He was in one of the smaller helicopters.

“Then he turned toward me and I still have the light on. I started to feel uncomfortable so I turned off the light and waved and went back inside. I was thinking I had pushed the envelope.”

To top that off, Sorrells said an acquaintance, whom he would not name, and formerly a member of the military, told him, “You need to shut your mouth about what you saw.”

Sorrells said he tried to pull the man aside and asked him to explain his statement.

“He just kept saying the same thing and wouldn’t explain,” Sorrells said. “ Now he won’t speak to me.”

Sorrells said because the helicopters disappeared, he now feels the gentlemen was actually a member of the military, and was high enough in rank that he was able to stop that type of air traffic.

“If it is a military craft the American people need to know,” Sorrells said. “A lot of people have seen things around here. I know what I saw and so do they.”

(For more of Sorrell’s story see Monday’s edition of the E-T.)

Monday's edition:
More twists in the Sorrells' saga


By ANGELIA JOINER Staff Writer
Monday, February 4, 2008 11:19 AM CST

Answers.

Ricky Sorrells just wants answers. And, in light of what he's been through, it doesn't seem to be a lot to ask.

Witnessing an unidentified flying object four times since the beginning of the new year, then having military aircraft whizzing over his land and disrupting his sleep and livestock, followed by a string of mysterious phone calls and in person encounters from individuals demanding he “shut up” about what he saw, and landing unexpectedly in the international spotlight, has taken a toll on the 37-year-old man accustomed to the simple life.

“If you told me a while back that I would be sitting here talking to you about UFOs I would have said, ‘No way, not in a million years,” Sorrells said. “ Now, I know for the rest of my life I'll keep looking to find out what it was.”

Sorrells said he is receiving a lot of support from family and friends helping him to keep an eye on things. He said that support has been a great help to him.

“I'm not going to freak out or anything,” Sorrells said. “I just think the government should come forward and help us to figure out this thing. I think people should write to their congressman or something.”

Sorrells said soon after his Associated Press interview went around the world in mid-January - not only was he allegedly contacted by a Lt. Colonel telling him to keep quiet about what he saw, he was also contacted by a woman named Linda Moulton Howe.

Howe's Web site touts: “Earthfiles is a crossroads where experts, eyewitnesses and viewers meet to share the latest updates in earth and astronomical mysteries, in-depth reports that go beyond the 6 o'clock news. Earthfiles reporter and editor, Linda Moulton Howe, is an Emmy Award-winning TV producer, investigative reporter and author who goes directly to the men and women at the forefront of science and environmental challenges and to firsthand eyewitnesses of high strangeness. Earthfiles.com received the 2006 W3 Silver Award for excellence in news category. Earthfiles.com also received the 2003 WebAward for Standard of Excellence and the 2000 Encyclopedia Britannica Award honoring Internet excellence.”

Sorrells said he vaguely remembered listening to her on a radio program years ago while on a road trip and her name clicked with him. It was the only familiar name he knew and she promised to do an investigation so he agreed not to talk to anyone else until she could make the trip from New Mexico. Howe arrived in Dublin last week and stayed with Sorrells and his family to conduct the investigation and left late last week.

“I told her everything I knew and showed her my property,” Sorrels said. “After she left, I felt I had honored my commitment with her. Things have settled down a little and I feel free to talk about the experiences I have had. I just didn't want to do anything that would interfere with her investigation because I want the truth.”

He said the last time he saw the object he was able to get a video on his camera phone and said he has seen some other “pretty good footage” taken by others.

One night Sorrells said he had four helicopters flying at such low altitude that when a spotlight was shined up at them from Sorrells' pickup he could see the pilot throw his arm up in front of his eyes to block the light. But there has been another strange occurrence recently on his property that leads him to believe the military is involved. It was an unexpected visitor about 1 a.m. who may have left something behind.

“I was in bed asleep,” Sorrells said. “I keep my bird dogs on the east side of my house and three others on the west side. The black lab doesn't bark until someone comes across the cattle guard and the Catahoula doesn't bark until she actually sees someone. They were all barking so I got up to see what was going on.”

Sorrells said he walked to his bedroom window and looked out to the top of his driveway - he saw someone.

“I went around the bed and grabbed my rifle,” Sorrells said.

His family was still sleeping, so with one hand on his gun and one hand on his backdoor knob, he peered through the window of the door to see if he could spot the intruder again.

“He had positioned himself in between the car and the pickup 40 to 50 feet from my back door,” Sorrells said. “He stood staring at me rocking back and forth. I didn't think his feet were moving but the next morning when looking at his tracks I could tell they were.”

Sorrels said it was cold and misting rain and it was obvious the guy was “dressed for the elements with a heavy parka-like coat.”

He said he strained to see if the man carried a gun but could not see one but could clearly see the face of someone he thought to be in his late 20s or early 30s judging from the way he “walked and acted.”

“I'm trying to decide whether or not to open the door,” Sorrells said. “We're just standing there face to face looking at each other. I'm thinking he's dressed for the elements and the dogs are raising such a ruckus he must know he's in danger of being caught. That's when I realized he wanted me to see him.”

Sorrells said the trespasser had positioned himself in such a way he decided he could be vulnerable if opened his door. He thought of his family and then the man slowly turned and walked into the woods.

“He walked through an area where I'd cleared the brush so apparently he'd been there before because he knew where to go,” Sorrells said.

Sorrells said shortly after the unwelcome caller disappeared the dogs calmed down and he stayed up the rest of the night to keep watch.

Later, when walking through the woods on his property with Howe, he decided to return to a bare spot where his property line ends at a fence.

“It is washed out there and I like to go there to look for deer and turkey tracks.” Sorrells said. He said he's an avid hunter and keeps abreast of the wildlife on his place. He said he had not been to this particular spot in about a month.

“The first thing I saw was a man's footprint,” Sorrells said. “Ms. Howe videotaped me putting my foot beside it. The sun was going down and I saw something shiny.”

Sorrells said he walked over and picked up a bullet - a shiny new 25-06 Remington - with some dotted tarnished smudges.

“I think the man that I saw that night dropped this bullet and the tarnished spots are from the misting rain that night,” Sorrells said. “ I just think it was the military showing me they could get to me if they wanted to.”

Sorrells said he just doesn't think a hunter poaching on his property would've dropped the bullet. He said he doesn't have trouble with poachers. While he knows there is no way to prove it could have been from the same man it's something he keeps mulling over. Sorrells returned home with the bullet in hand and took it apart to look at the powder to see if he could glean any information at all. A local gun and ammunition authority said there was no way to identify if such a bullet was from a military source.

“Talking about military powder is like talking about military gasoline,” he said. “There is no difference.”

Meanwhile, Sorrells said he and other witnesses are considering setting up a Web site to encourage people to do what they can to influence government participation in finding out about the curious, sometimes frightening, sightings.

“I've heard that other countries are releasing information on what they know,” Sorrells said. “We're thinking of calling it (the site) ‘Stephenville Lights.' Too many people have seen something not to try and continue finding out about it. We want to know what it was.”


And sooner or later the controversial link will die, so here's the story:

Local reporter on Texas UFO case leaves newspaper; integrity of local, national news media explored
Steve Hammons

By Steve Hammons
February 09, 2008
The local newspaper reporter in Stephenville, Texas, who helped cover a UFO sighting case there is no longer working at the Stephenville Empire-Tribune newspaper, effective last Thursday, Feb. 7.

Journalist Angelia Joiner had been covering the UFO story which broke early in January and brought national and international news media representatives and researchers to Stephenville, other nearby small towns and the surrounding region.

Mainstream media such as the Associated Press, CNN and other major TV networks and newspapers covered the incident with great interest. The international press also paid special attention to the UFO sightings in Stephenville and towns in the area.

Media personalities such as CNN's Larry King and NBC's Today show host Matt Lauer explored the sightings on their shows.

In Stephenville, Joiner was a staff writer at the small-town newspaper there. She did an excellent job of researching and interviewing local residents who were surprised, curious and concerned about the very unusual objects they reportedly saw.

As national and international interest in the case grew in January, Joiner was contacted for information as the reporter on the scene with some of the best knowledge of the local community.

Her articles helped inform not only local residents who relied on professional reporting for their community, but also assisted other Americans and people internationally understand that Stephenville people and residents in the area were down-to-Earth, solid and of good character.

The factual and level-headed journalism Joiner provided helped the national news media understand and respect the citizens in these communities. This resulted in some of the most serious and credible reporting in the national media on such an incident in recent memory.

The AP article was carried in hundreds of papers and news outlets. People like Larry King and Matt Lauer talked about the subject with intelligence and open minds.

All these outcomes were related in part to the high level of credibility of local witnesses who were courageous enough to come forward and the professionalism of local reporter Joiner and her colleagues in the national and international news media.

However, some of these witnesses and Joiner seem to be paying a price for doing their civic duty and communicating about an incident that appeared to be very significant, and could even have affected the public safety of the communities in the area.

CENSORSHIP AND "NEED TO KNOW"

According to information obtained for this report, management at the Stephenville Empire-Tribune did not want further coverage in the paper of the sightings by local citizens of something that appeared to be highly unusual. Pressures may have been placed on newspaper management to discontinue articles on the subject.

According to the newspaper's Web site, "The Stephenville Empire-Tribune is a mid-morning paper published six days a week by Erath Publishers, Inc., a Consolidated Southwest Media company which is owned by American Consolidated Media. The Empire-Tribune is a member of the Associated Press, Texas Press Association, West Texas Press Association and the Inland Press Association."

Publisher Rochelle Stidham and Managing Editor Sara Vanden Berge were contacted for their comments for this report but did not immediately respond.

Did the paper's management face pressures to end coverage of the UFO sighting by a local peace officer, respected businessman and pilot and reportedly dozens of other local citizens? Did they back away from accounts of local citizens who said they were apparently being threatened for talking about what they saw?

Is this a case of media censorship or self-censorship and political correctness? Is it about professional courage and moral integrity? And, can the newspaper now be trusted by the community to cover important aspects of public health and safety, local political activities and other sometimes sensitive topics?

These seem to be questions for the citizens who read and subscribe to the paper and advertisers who use that newspaper.

The corporate owners of the Empire-Tribune (Consolidated Southwest Media, American Consolidated Media) and the professional news and journalism organizations with which the paper is affiliated (Associated Press, Texas Press Association, West Texas Press Association, Inland Press Association) might also want to review developments there.

As for the former reporter Joiner who had covered the concerns and accounts of local citizens so professionally, life goes on.

She appears to be confident that she did the best job she could have for her community as a responsible local journalist who realized something important had happened to her fellow citizens, neighbors and friends.

"I appreciate the opportunity I have had at the newspaper," Joiner said. "A story of this magnitude drained the limited resources a small newspaper has. I performed my other duties to the best of my ability."

Even as the national and international media interest calmed down somewhat, other ominous developments were occurring in the Stephenville area.

A local resident stated he had received threatening phone calls and threats of implied bodily harm or death for talking publicly about what he saw.

An intruder had also appeared on his rural property at 1 a.m., causing the resident to be concerned about the safety of his family.

See my Feb. 7 article: "Texas UFO witnesses threatened for talking to media?"

As Joiner was covering this more serious aspect of the UFO sighting case (in articles published Feb. 3 and Feb. 4) which appeared to be a law enforcement and criminal matter affecting public safety, she was reportedly told by newspaper management to back off.


"My directions were to move on to something else," Joiner said.

The reason given to Joiner for this was, "because our readership had grown tired of the UFO stories."

However, Joiner was still a contact person and resource for community residents, researchers, news media representatives and others.

While trying to obey management's directives to cover topics other than the UFO sightings and related developments, Joiner said, "It was a difficult task to achieve. I was still receiving a surprising number of e-mails and phone calls on the subject."

"I tried to direct those calls and interviews to after hours or during lunch hours. And I forwarded e-mails to my home so that I would not be giving newspaper time to the subject. I honestly tried to do as they had asked."

The apparent irregularities and journalistic priorities of what was starting to emerge at the Empire-Tribune probably also started to dawn on Joiner as she realized things were not going in a good direction at the paper.

She gave her two-week notice, then was told to leave immediately.

"I had given notice when I realized my boss was unhappy with my performance, but was unexpectedly asked to pack my things and leave Thursday," she said.

Joiner apparently felt that people in her community had "a need to know" about what was going on when respectable citizens came forward with their accounts and subsequent serious incidents reportedly involved the safety of and threats to a local family.
The story continues, but the news stops here; the remainder is editorializing. I have also deleted author information. This notice appears at the bottom of the page:
The American Chronicle and its affiliates have no responsibility for the views, opinions and information communicated here.
The contributor(s) and news providers are fully responsible for their content.
In addition, the views and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of the American Chronicle or its affiliates.

Psychopirate, will your friend talk, or did the MIBs get to him?[/quote]
 
rynner said:
This is all a bit odd.

I've heard nothing about any Stephenville UFOs, or the nationwide US interest in the incident (there's nothing on the FTMB), so this story exists in a vacuum.
It's still odd!

Why did my search on 'Stephenville' not turn up the earlier thread (to which I'd even replied! :roll: )?


Oh, It's a Dennis website - nuff said!
 
Found this in my headline e-mail this morning:

UFO Group Says Most Texas Sightings Were Planets & Clouds

Last Update: 7:00 am

A group that investigates UFO's says most of the 300 reported sightings in Texas dairy country this year -- were probably planets, cloud formations or stars.

But Kenneth Cherry with the Mutual UFO Network says some cases still remain a mystery.

His group examined the January and February phenomenon in Stephenville and Dublin.

Many Erath County residents are unfazed by the group's logical explanations for many sightings.

Pilot and freight company owner Steve Allen says, quote: "We all know what we saw."

Although some details differed, many folks reported seeing a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast.

Air Force Reserve officials in Fort Worth initially said none of their planes were in the area. Military authorities later said they were mistaken and that ten F-16 fighter jets were training in the Stephenville area.


©2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The report is presumably fully published somewhere, but I went to the MUFON website and there was no obvious link to it, so I figured I'd leave tracking it down to those more dedicated than I. You can get a nice overview of a flap using their case study database, though - date, location, brief description in a tabular form.
 
Another Stephenville sighting, with footage:

Latest UFO Sighting - Stephenville Texas Area

Another important bit of UFO evidence was made just recently.. A UFO was filmed and spotted by many on the 30 of January this year over the Stephenville area(2009).. Matt Collins who filmed the craft noticed the interesting object in the sky and decided to film the object floating in the sky.

Many reports of the sighting other than Matt were claimed that day, however Matt was the one that got some good footage of the craft.. ( the image to the left is a screenshot from the video of the craft)

While Matt Is skeptical himself, as to what it is he still claims whatever it is it is unusual, many newsgroups displayed a report similar to the one in this video below..

Stephenville seems to be getting a lot of activity lately from UFOs.. Is what Matt and his family saw (shown in video) near Stephenville more evidence to prove we are not alone..? Is it all government testing or are UFOs / Aliens choosing places in the earth for specific reasons..?

What do you think of this UFO / object sighting..?

http://www.occultblogger.com/latest-ufo-sighting-stephenville-texas-area/
 
Downloaded a Canadian series called Alien Mysteries. This Stephenville event was an interesting episode, and I'd never heard of it before. Wiki linked to this site, and the video posted at the top of the list is quite interesting, mainly from about minute 7. At first it looked like camera shake, but the swirling effects would have to have been pretty uniform tight camera movements, which seems unlikely. If this was the movement of the object in the sky, I've never seen anything like it. I wouldn't describe it as a glyph, but it could be taken symbolically. At times it puts me in mind of certain microscopic bacteria; at others DNA strands. I'm intrigued.

Be warned, the camera operator has his inbuilt microphone set to earblast level. The opening sounds are cars passing on a nearby road, not F16s. :)

http://stephenvillelights.com/slnews_video002.html
 
The light is jumping about and leaving a trail, and it puts me in mind of the behaviour of ball lightning - i.e. it could well be a particularly impressive example of ball lightning.
 
eburacum said:
Quite an extensive analysis by Tim Printy here that struggles to find anything extraordinary going on
http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/svilletx.htm

looks like a miltary exercise and a lot of 'joining up the dots' in the sky...

These people are surely quite accustomed to seeing military jets in the sky, living as they do near a military airport. So why have they not interpreted night flying jets as UFOs before? Clearly, there was something different about these sightings that were not the run of the mill lights in the sky they would have witnessed on many, many occasions before
 
Printy's analysis suggests that the jets were flying in groups of two and four; probably not an everyday occurence. He also notes a strange, slow moving trace on the radar, which may have been a civilian plane, but might have been something more unusual - a drone, perhaps?

I'd expect an uptick in unusual sightings in the next few years, as drones become more commonplace technology -
- perhaps we should stop worrying about non-existent aliens, and start being concerned about the surveillance state and X-Box killers in the sky.
 
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