Form: 97 Report
SUBJECT: THE CORYDON, INDIANA SIGHTINGS (March 23 event)
SOURCE: THE COURIER JOURNAL, Louisville, KY
STAFF WRITER: Bill Weronka
DATED: Sunday, March 29th, 1987
His report as follows:
Although I've read rny share of science fiction, I never envisioned
myself standing in a field waiting for mysterious objects to appear in
the night sky. Nevertheless, that was rny plan last Monday (23 March).
Mickey Shawler had assured me the unidentified flying objects had
appeared near her house, which is just outside Corydon, for 14
consecutive nights. I decided that my wife, Carolynne, the most
credible person I know, should come along. If something appeared, a
friendly face nearby would be nice.
We arrived at Shawler's house about 9:15 PM. Shawler, a waitress with
two children, told us "they" had been there already. "Right," I
thought. "Just missed 'em."
"I'm sure they'll be back, though," she said.We sat at Shawler's dining
room table and talked about her experiences with whatever it was that
had been visiting her. She had first spotted them a couple of months
ago, but they had been appearing regularly for the past two weeks.
There had been several types of objects, she said. One had been a
glowing orange ball; others had been green, red, and white blinking
lights. Shawler said she wasn't afraid of the objects anymore. But
there had been the day she was carrying some wood into the house and
spotted one of the huge glowing objects over the trees within 100-yards
of her house.
"I screamed, dropped the wood and ran into the house," she said. "It
scared me so bad I wet rny pants. "But the objects, or whatever they
were, had not corne so close again, Shawler said. One has appeared over
a tree about 200-yards away, and they have chased cars, including a
police car, from 200 or 300 yards away, she said. "If they were going
to hurt someone, they have plenty of opportunity," Shawler said.
After an hour of such talk, Steve Harnm and Dale Pullen of the Harrison
County Police Department drove up to the house. Harnm's first words
were, "It's out there."
We moved outside. It was a moonless night and thick clouds hid the
stars. "Right over there," Harnm said, pointing. I strained and picked
out a small blinking light moving just above the trees. It moved higher
and crossed the night sky, blinking with a greenish glow and making
occasional zigzags. "Is that it?" I asked, breaking the silence.
"That's one of them," Shawler replied, "And there's another. "She
pointed to a stand of trees about 400 yards away, just to the right of
where the blinking object had disappeared. A larger light, glowing
bright orange, had appeared above the trees. It hovered momentarily,
appearing to be the size of a helicopter. No shape or object was
discernible.
I turned to my wife and calmly asked, "Do you see that?" "If you're
hallucinating, so am I," she replied. In the distance a cow screamed
for her calf and the hair on rny neck attacked rny collar. Only the
wind the rushing through the trees interrupted the silence. The orange
glow began moving slowly, first back and forth along a horizontal
plane, then up and down. It began dimming as it moved south, and
suddenly a companion orange glow appeared. The companion would glow
brighter for a moment and the original glow would dim. They alternated
this pattern four times. The small blinking light joined the dance
briefly and disappeared.
I searched for clues of a ruse but found none. No one could be shining
a light because the beam would show, and it was not a reflective light.
It was neither an airplane nor a helicopter. There were no signs of
people or objects that might rnave caused it.
Russell Hailey, a supervisor at the Stand!ford Field control tower in
Louisville reported nothing unusual on radar, and there had been no
night activity at Fort Knox, Ky. that would cause such phenomena. At
the request of the COURIER-JOURNAL, Hailey kept a special watch on the
radar Wednesday night (25 March) but saw nothing unusual. He added that
objects at treetop levels could be missed.
I returned the next night when James Delehanty, a field operative with
the Mutual UFO Network, was there. We stood in the rain and hail and
watched the lightning, but there were no strange lights. He returned
Thursdsy night (26 March) and stayed until 11:38 PM, along with several
other observers. They saw several airplanes but nothing resembling the
lights that had been reported.
Shawler said, however, that the lights reappeared around rnidnite,
after the observers left. "It's so frustrating," she said. "It's almost
like they don't want to corne with all the people around."
But the lights have been seen by enough credible observers to generate
an investigation by the Mutual UFO Net-work. Burt Monroe, a professor
of biology at the University of Louisville and an expert on UFOs and
similar phenomena, said the network is "about the best there is" for
documenting and debunking (when necessary) UFO sightings.
Delehanty initially classified the sightings as "nocturnal lights" but
said that classification could change to a "close encounter 1."
Neither Delehanty, a traffic manager with the Kentucky Air National
Guard, nor Monroe has ever seen anything that fits any of these
categories, but both believe that such events occur.
Delehanty agreed to return another night to see what he has yet to see
in nine years with the Mutual UFO Network.
(End of Article)