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The Monon RR UFO Incident (1958)

feinman

Account Retired
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http://www.nicap.org/reports/581003wasco_edwards.htm

Fate107_02-1959.jpg
 
"When they first lit up they were bright white but when they slowed down the colour changed to a kind of yellow, then to orange when they went real slow -- a kind of dirty orange." The conductor, Ed Robinson, agreed with this description.

--This is just what I suspected about my objects -they had just moved int the atmosphere or from a great distance and were giving off energy in a particular direction accumulated during the move --then they glowed very bright (as I first saw them). Then the bright silvery glow went down a bit --and as they jumped over closer to I-5, they were glowing orange, as it wasn't much of a distance in comparison.
Amazing intelligent control in the Monon case.
 
Perhaps as AATIP and TTSA papers and the contract with the Army suggest, the "active camouflage" UFOs can use causes them to be invisible to all but the direction / person they are discharging energy or open to --light and other energies are bent around the object --like our primitive invisibility cloaks in development and invisibility of large simple objects we are working on.
 
Interesting read for me for family reasons....my father grew up in the Monon area and a just a little north in Wheatfield.
In fact my grandparents on his side are buried in a small graveyard in Monon right next to railroad tracks...could even be the same original train route...who knows? It's been over 50 years since we visited that cemetery.
 
Interesting read for me for family reasons....my father grew up in the Monon area and a just a little north in Wheatfield.
In fact my grandparents on his side are buried in a small graveyard in Monon right next to railroad tracks...could even be the same original train route...who knows? It's been over 50 years since we visited that cemetery.
Ever have the opportunity to talk with him or Granddad about UFOs ever? I LOVE to ask elderly people about them, and I've learned some amazing things that way. I met my Grandfather for a brief time before he died (living in Vegas), and now that I have a consuming interest in UFOs (not my fault), I regret not asking him about them (he was B-17 navigator flying over Germany in WWII). I told my aunt about my experience and she mentioned my deceased grandmother talking about an experience she had perhaps in '40s, but she didn't remember what she had said..
Monon RR an amazing encounter for a number of reasons, and I'm convinced I and others have seen those or same class of objects over time. Compare performance, formations, flight characteristics, color changes, light characteristics:
https://tinyurl.com/y5hsoblv
 
Ever have the opportunity to talk with him or Granddad about UFOs ever? I LOVE to ask elderly people about them, and I've learned some amazing things that way. I met my Grandfather for a brief time before he died (living in Vegas), and now that I have a consuming interest in UFOs (not my fault), I regret not asking him about them (he was B-17 navigator flying over Germany in WWII). I told my aunt about my experience and she mentioned my deceased grandmother talking about an experience she had perhaps in '40s, but she didn't remember what she had said..
Monon RR an amazing encounter for a number of reasons, and I'm convinced I and others have seen those or same class of objects over time. Compare performance, formations, flight characteristics, color changes, light characteristics:
https://tinyurl.com/y5hsoblv
No....my father is long dead and I only knew my grandfather until age 3. My dad wasn't interested in ufos nor was anyone else in my family.
In 1958 only some older relatives lived in Monon....we had moved to Gary, IN in 1951...when I was born.
I probably was at the graveyard multiple times between 56 and 60...we would go visit their graves on Sunday and then eat at a local place on the way home in Hebron, IN...north of Monon .

In the late 1960's supposedly a ufo landed in Cedar lake ,IN,,,,but at the time I was just a teenager and couldn't go to ck it out...we lived in Gary but my other grandparents lived in Crown Point which is right by Cedar Lake,....but we never got to see the area where it landed.
 
My dad wasn't interested in ufos nor was anyone else in my family.
I know what that's like; my parents don't want to talk about them, and not a lot of people do, even when they suspect they are real; some folks who see them don't want to talk about them either. I am starting not to talk with people about them; it's inhospitable mental territory for a lot of people for a variety of reasons. Just too far out or not immediately concerning for further thought, and then there is the fear of ridicule. I think we react (like other animals' reactions to these things during encounters), with a deep-seated sense of awe and dread and experience of otherness --which is why it can cause a conceptual or paradigmatic injury or trauma to witnesses, also. They aren't cute and warm and fuzzy.
 
I know what that's like; my parents don't want to talk about them, and not a lot of people do, even when they suspect they are real; some folks who see them don't want to talk about them either. I am starting not to talk with people about them; it's inhospitable mental territory for a lot of people for a variety of reasons. Just too far out or not immediately concerning for further thought, and then there is the fear of ridicule. I think we react (like other animals' reactions to these things during encounters), with a deep-seated sense of awe and dread and experience of otherness --which is why it can cause a conceptual or paradigmatic injury or trauma to witnesses, also. They aren't cute and warm and fuzzy.
I have several friends who have seen a ufo...no contact with any entity. And the ufos they saw were more in the manner of strange bright lights than seeing a metallic craft.....except for one who saw a large ufo in daylight(late afternoon summer) hovering over his uncles corn field in Iowa.
Apparently 3 children from age 10-17 and two adults over 40 saw the object. He said it was about 200 feet up golden color with some silver areas
and the middle seemed to be rotating around though the sun was glistening on it so it was hard to tell for sure. It left after a few minutes and just went up quickly until it was gone. He thinks to this day it was a 'genuine ufo'.....whatever that means.
 
The Monon sighting story was apparently submitted to the wire services, but it was picked up only by newspapers around Indiana. Here are two clippings which may or may not represent all there ever were.

The second clipping is from Danville, Illinois. Danville lies roughly due west of Kirklin, Indiana, at a distance of circa 60 miles. The Danville sighting matches the timeframe and some of the maneuvers reported for the Monon crew's sightings.

Monon-IN-Paper-1.jpg
Monon-IN-Paper-2.jpg


SOURCE: http://www.cufos.org/UFO_History_Gross/1958_10_History.pdf

NOTE: This PDF UFO history file contains additional details on how the story came to the attention of Frank Edwards and why the train crew didn't report their experience to the Air Force.
 
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Some miscellaneous comments ...

One reason this sighting may have remained obscure relates to an error in labeling.

There's no such place as "Wasco" in Indiana.

I'm highly confident the approximate location of the initial sighting was Owasco, Indiana. This is an unincorporated community on the Monon line that never thrived by being situated on the rail route. It's approximately 20 - 25 miles NNW of Kirklin, and it's approximately 7 miles NNW of Rossville (the location cited in the Lebanon Daily Reporter clipping above).

http://www.alicemariebeard.com/history/owasco.htm

I cannot reconcile what I see on maps with the Daily Reporter's claim the last sighting was circa 40 miles "farther south" than the initial sighting. I'm hard pressed to believe it was as much as 30 miles.

The railroad tracks (if they still exist at all) cannot be definitively discerned on satellite maps. It would appear the train's orientation during the sighting period was not due south (as sometimes mentioned) but rather more like SSE or SE.

If any of the lights reported from Danville were the same lights observed at the same time (as the Monon crew) they must have been at a fairly high altitude to be visible from circa 60 miles away.
 
If any of the lights reported from Danville were the same lights observed at the same time (as the Monon crew) they must have been at a fairly high altitude to be visible from circa 60 miles away.

Which suggests a celestial origin.

My own experience with locomotive crews and UAPs has been posted here before, but I'll post it again. One night I received a call from a traincrew working an engineering train deep in the Yorkshire countryside. Engineering trains remain stationary for long periods, so they had plenty of time to observe an apparent object hovering above the train in the dark.
I went outside and I could see it too.

I did, however have the advantage of already knowing what it was.
Jupiter and Mars were in close conjunction, separated by a minute gap. The two bright planets appeared to form a single craft, with an illusory fuselage connecting the two. This is the only time (that I recall) I've been able to explain a sighting over the phone while it was still in progress.
 
The Monon sighting story was apparently submitted to the wire services, but it was picked up only by newspapers around Indiana. Here are two clippings which may or may not represent all there ever were.

The second clipping is from Danville, Illinois. Danville lies roughly due west of Kirklin, Indiana, at a distance of circa 60 miles. The Danville sighting matches the timeframe and some of the maneuvers reported for the Monon crew's sightings.

View attachment 26598 View attachment 26599

SOURCE: http://www.cufos.org/UFO_History_Gross/1958_10_History.pdf

NOTE: This PDF UFO history file contains additional details on how the story came to the attention of Frank Edwards and why the train crew didn't report their experience to the Air Force.
Thanks, and superb detective work as usual, EnolaGaia!! :hapdan:
You too, Eburacum; given the honestly mistaken claims of UFO sightings or even downright hoaxes (the majority of "sightings"), your knowledge is so very useful for stripping those cases away, which is just as important as analyzing what remains.
 
I have several friends who have seen a ufo...no contact with any entity. And the ufos they saw were more in the manner of strange bright lights than seeing a metallic craft.....except for one who saw a large ufo in daylight(late afternoon summer) hovering over his uncles corn field in Iowa.
Apparently 3 children from age 10-17 and two adults over 40 saw the object. He said it was about 200 feet up golden color with some silver areas
and the middle seemed to be rotating around though the sun was glistening on it so it was hard to tell for sure. It left after a few minutes and just went up quickly until it was gone. He thinks to this day it was a 'genuine ufo'.....whatever that means.
I have spoken to a number of people who have seen classic metallic disc UFOs --one hovering over mountains in Napa CA was watched for half an hour through binoculars.. Also the "silver balls" which are very common.
 
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