Among Other Things: UFO Sightings

Stories on the National Geographic TV Channel and ABC news during the past week about sightings of strange lights in the sky brings to mind the unidentified lights and objects reported by many Montanans in the summer of 1966.

There have been occasional sightings of what might be termed UFOs before and since, but few so widely noted as the period between June 27, 1966, and July 21, 1966.

Reports from persons who noticed the lights indicated that some objects seemed twice as bright as satellites; some had no particular shape or sound, and most seemed to have alternating blinking lights of red, green and white. The color combination naturally sounded like the appearance of a star as its light filtered through the atmosphere.

But some of the reported lights were not fixed objects. They would cross the horizon in 25 to 45 seconds, compared to much longer periods for satellites.

Most sightings were reported between 9:15 p.m. and 11 p.m. (our time), but the lights traveled in different directions. For instance, lights were reported traveling from east to west on June 27, 1966; south to north, July 3 and 14; north to south, July 18; and on June 27, July 18 and 19 one of the strange thingamajigs passed almost directly over the City of Polson.

In my column in the Flathead Courier on July 21, 1966, I complained that I hadn’t seen any such objects.

However, that night I experienced my first UFO sighting. It appeared to be too low and too fast for a satellite.

Others witnessing the fast traveling light were my wife as she looked out the kitchen window, a couple of our youngsters and some neighborhood kids playing in the back yard.

The pulsating white light came out of the northeast, traveled in a straight line to the southeast. It crossed the horizon in less than a minute and made no sound. It seemed to be spinning and had a circular shape.

I happened to have a camera in the yard. I snapped a picture but it was blurred because of slow shutter speed. The picture was taken at a setting of 1/25th of a second with a 5.6 lens opening, using Tri-X film, 120 size, in a Minolta Autocord camera.

What did we see? I don’t know. Haven’t seen anything like it since. I admit I’m much less skeptical when I hear reports of them now.

Have any of you readers seen such UFOs?