By R.P. Webster | Photos Courtesy of John Ventre
UFO. The now-famous acronym dates back to the early 1950s, when a United States Air Force (USAF) captain, Edward Ruppelt, coined the phrase “Unidentified Flying Object” to describe unexplained sightings in the sky. Also dubbed flying saucers and foo fighters by the military during World War II, people all over the world, dating from antiquity to modern times, have and continue to report and chronicle seeing things in the sky they simply can’t explain.
Popular culture has helped further weave the phenomenon deeper into our collective conscious. From books like H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and Whitley Strieber’s Communion to movies such as E.T. and the ever-so- close-to-home Signs, from music like Radiohead’s Subterranean Homesick Alien – with lyrics inspired by Britain’s Martian Poetry movement, where writers took mundane subjects and described them from an alien perspective – and Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush to television shows such as The X-Files, the possibility of extraterrestrial life visiting and observing life on Earth is familiar to us all. But despite its cultural popularity, those on the front lines of UFO investigations remain a societal fringe element. And while it is easy to make fun of those who remain committed to proving the universe is not ours alone, there is enough information and people out there who believe to make you wonder: Are we?
Are You a Believer?
John Ventre is the Pennsylvania State Director for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). The grassroots volunteer group is part of an international organization, consisting of nearly 3,000 people worldwide. Headquartered in Colorado, it relies on volunteers from all walks of life: former military officers, business people, scientists and retirees who help chronicle and investigate sightings from around the globe. Ventre says MUFON “picked up where the feds left off” after the government shut down Project Blue Book, a series of studies on UFOs. The USAF project was launched in 1952, but, by 1970, the study had run its course and was terminated. MUFON formed in 1969 and continued the researching the phenomenon.
Ventre himself became involved after his research in preparation for two science-fiction novels – 12/12/2012: A Prophecy and The Day After 2012 – revealed countless references to UFOs in ancient civilizations, including the Mayans, native Tibetan cultures and the Hopi Indians. “They all talked about extraterrestrials, and I became intrigued,” says Ventre, who works as a security-and-public-affairs director for a large company he did not wish to identify. “In doing more research, I found that there’s more to this phenomenon.” Ventre says that while only about five percent of all sightings reported to the network go unexplained, that five percent is enough to keep him, and many others dedicated to “ufology,” wondering what could be out there.
But the believers are hardly limited to those dedicated to documenting their possible existence. The Chicago- based Nation of Islam has included UFO evidence as part of its tenets in its promotion of Black Nationalism. Their late leader, Elijah Muhammad, often referred to a flying object in his teachings called the “Mother Plane,” a message interpreted in different ways. “There’s enough evidence that has been put before the world and public,” Ishmael Muhammad, the religion’s national assistant minister, told The Associated Press earlier this year. “There have been enough accounts and sightings and enough [documentary] movies made. I don’t think you would find too many people that would call it crazy.”
From the Andromeda to Bucks County
According to Ventre, MUFON has recorded thousands of sightings in Pennsylvania alone. The organization received 97 reports of UFOs in 2007 compared with 225 in 2008, an as-yet unexplained spike in incidents. But despite the fluctuating numbers, the state now ranks third in the country for reported incidents. The most common sightings are considered close encounters of the first kind, where a person sees something unexplainable in the sky. Close encounters of the second kind typically produce some trace evidence, and close encounters of the third kind constitute an actual craft sighting. As for close encounters of the fourth kind, an alien abduction, Ventre says MUFON typically directs those people to a mental-health professional. “We have people that call up and tell us about memories of being abducted by aliens, but we don’t really investigate those,” he explains. “It is a bit out of our realm of expertise.”
A few recent incidents have received national television coverage, including two high-profile sightings from Bucks County. The first is a Doylestown case that was reported to MUFON in May of 2008. Ventre could not say from what part of Doylestown it came, but the incident led to a segment on the Discovery Channel’s UFOs Over Earth. According to Ventre, a retiree the show called “Cliff” reported seeing a large, six-sided object in the sky about 4:23 a.m. The object returned during a storm, and Ventre says the man reported seeing six triangular- shaped UFOs docked together when lightning lit up the sky. When MUFON investigators contacted the air control tower at the Philadelphia International Airport, they were told a large object did fly into that airspace without a transponder, a communication or control device used in virtually all manned aircraft. “We saw a print of the radar from the [Philadelphia International] airport, and the time and location matched,” Ventre says. “We found that extremely exciting.”
A Levittown sighting, featured on the History Channel’s UFO Hunters, produced even more compelling evidence. A woman Ventre calls “Denise” had an early morning encounter with triangular-shaped UFOs appearing over her backyard. “Eight witnesses were present, and the woman told investigators the object dropped metallic sprinkles or probes onto her tree, which then went back up into the craft,” Ventre explains. When a MUFON team sent samples of leaves from those trees to an independent lab, he says they discovered traces of boron and magnesium on them.
According to Ventre, boron is an element used to coat stealth aircraft, because it does not reflect radar. “To be honest, we were skeptical, but the samples came back with boron and the leaves also showed signs they were subjected to high heat and radiation,” he recalls. “We really had no explanation.” Ventre admits they did investigate claims the craft could have been a TR-3B, a rumored military project consisting of triangular-shaped aircraft, but those rumors have never confirmed.
As for Ventre’s personal experience, he says he once thought he saw a UFO that turned out to be something a little less exciting. “I thought I saw something in June of 2008,” Ventre reports. “Something caught my eye, moving really fast. It was bright like the moon and reflected light. When I looked it up on a tracking website with my zip code, a meteor passed over my location at the same time that night.” He says the majority of cases or reported sightings are resolved in a similar fashion. People thinking they saw a UFO are really seeing a meteor, a satellite or even a space station.
But that five percent still remains.
Writing What Others Won’t
This November, the U.S. government finally addressed thousands of people who petitioned for a federal action – or what others would call a response – on the existence of UFOs. Phil Larson, a research assistant from the White House Office of Science and Technology, released a statement effectively stating the government isn’t buying what the “ufologists” are selling: “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.”
Larson added that the possibility of extraterrestrial life is discussed and explored, including several NASA projects that have probed the universal prospects. “Many scientists and mathematicians have…come to the conclusion that the odds are pretty high that somewhere among the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe there is a planet other than ours that is home to life,” he wrote. “Many have also noted, however, that the odds of us making contact with any of them – especially any intelligent ones – are extremely small given the distances involved. But that’s all statistics and speculation. The fact is we have no credible evidence of extra- terrestrial presence here on Earth.”
Still, despite the official renouncement, many continue to report and research the phenomenon. Roger Marsh, a journalist who holds a master’s degree from Northern Illinois University, has worked as the director of communications for MUFON since 2009. Among his many duties, Marsh produces the monthly MUFON journal, which is circulated worldwide. “I really approach it [MUFON] as a reporter,” he says. “I don’t really know of any full-time, professional journalists covering UFOs and noticed what was out there wasn’t very good.” Marsh also edited the book, Silent Invasion: The Pennsylvania UFO- Bigfoot Casebook by Stan Gordon and now concentrates solely on incoming domestic UFO reports.
Like Ventre, he also has his own UFO story. But Marsh’s lacks a neat and logical explanation. Growing up in the Latrobe area of Pennsylvania, his father was a closet UFO enthusiast. In the fall of 1973, a then 16-year-old Marsh was standing with some friends on a street in Greensburg, Penn., when a UFO passed over their heads. He recalls the craft was oval-shaped, perhaps 20-feet wide and possibly 10-feet high. The kicker: the craft was completely silent. “When it was on top of you, you could feel the displacement of air. It just followed the lay of the land near Route 30,” Marsh remembers, also noting that southwestern Pennsylvania had a massive amount of sightings in 1973. “It came back two more times and military jets chased it. But it vanished. I don’t remember being scared. Just a bit shook up. Dozens of families saw it.”
The writer in Marsh found that, after interviewing scores of people recounting similar stories, there must be something to the unexplained sightings. “What comes back to my mind as a journalist is that there is definitely something going on out there. People are always talking about shapes in the sky that don’t seem to be anything on the list of man- made things or objects maneuvering strangely that are completely silent and disappear like a bullet,” Marsh says. “I don’t care about the ridicule factor. I am going to do it for a living.”
And Ventre concurs. He says he is 99.9 percent sure the human race is not alone. “Google before you giggle,” Ventre offers. “Google UFOs and presidents. Google UFOs and politicians. Google UFOs and astronauts. You will be amazed by what you read.”
Go online at mufonpa.com
