Operation Trojan Horse, by John Keel

Flexible Phantoms of the Sky / 95 projecting several beams of concentrated light in all directions. The peculiar thing about these beams was. that they seemed to go out from the object and extend to different lengths, not fading into the darkness but terminating suddenly like poles or rods of light. Some of these beams were said to have darted into the forests on the edge of the beach as if they were \"looking for something . \" In April 1 966, Robert Howard was visiting some friends on a farm outside Sinclairville, New York, when a UFO showed up at 8 : 30 P . M . on a Sunday evening. Howard and several others stepped outside to watch what they described as \"a saucer-shaped object about 12 feet in diameter, with flashing red lights set in its edge. \" It settled in a nearby swamp. Howard headed across the fields toward the object while more people gathered. The thing appeared to be beaming a very narrow stream of brilliant white light into a nearby woods. As Howard neared it, he says it bobbed to the right and took off over the treetops. For days after the incident his right eye was puffy, bloodshot and watery. Cherry Creek, New York, only a few miles from Sinclairville, was the site of an alleged landing on Thursday, August 19, 1965 . Presque Isle in Erie, Pennsylvania, is just south of this area. The UFO wave in Australia and New Zealand has been most intense, and another interesting \"light beam\" story was investigated there by researcher Dr. Paul Zeck, a psychiatrist, in 1 967. The witness, a promi­ nent businessman named A . R. Spargo (\"an employer of a large labor force\"), was driving alone near Boyup Brook in Western Australia when the incident reportedly occurred. It was about 9 P.M. on the night of Monday, October 30, 1967. Suddenly his car stopped, and his lights and radio went dead. A brilliant beam of light seemed to be focused upon him. It came from \"a mushroom-shaped craft, 30 feet or more in diameter, hovering above the treetops at an estimated 100 feet above the ground. \" The object itself was glowing with an iridescent bluish light. The beam seemed to be coming from the underside at an angle of 40 degrees. \"I seemed to be surrounded by the beam , \" Spargo said. \"It was two to three feet in diameter, and brilliant on the outside. Yet I could see up it, and there was no glare or anything inside the tube. . . I had the most extraordinary feeling that I was being observed through the tube. I couldn't see anyone-I could just make out the shape of the glowing craft. I felt compelled to look up the tube. But I didn't feel any fear, and I don't remember thinking of anything in particular. \"After about five minutes it was switched off-just like someone switching off an ordinary electric light. The color of the craft seemed to

96 / Operation Trojan Horse darken, then it accelerated very swiftly and disappeared toward the west at terrific speed. \" The next thing he knew, he was speeding along the road. He had absolutely no recollection of starting up the car and driving off again. Later he discovered that his watch-an expensive Omega chronometer..­., was unaccountably five minutes slow. He decided to report the incident to the authorities and voluntarily submitted to a psychiatric testing. His story was published in the West Australian, November 1 , 1967, but his name was not used. Unearthly beams of light, sudden automobile failures, disturbing lapses of time and memory:S all of these are commonplace minor elements in our UFO mystery . But let's go back to the puzzling historical sightings so that we may gain a better view of the overall picture. The Flap of 1 909 There were, of course, many observations of unusual aerial objects between 1 897 and 1909. Thanks to the efforts of Lucius Farish and his colleagues we have an impressive sampling of these early reports to work with. The reliability of some of the newspaper accounts can certainly be questioned, but the tongue-in-cheek journalistic jokes are quite transpar­ ent, at least to someone who grew up in the newspaper business. A minor airship flap broke out in California in 1 905 . On Wednesday, August 2, 1 905, J. A . Jackson, \"a well-known resident of Silshee, \" was out at 1 :30 in the morning when a bright light appeared in the sky and headed for him. According to the account published in the Brawley, California, News (August 4, 1 905): He watched it closely until behind the light there appeared the form of an airship, apparently about 70 feet in length, with a searchlight in front and several other lights aboard, The mysterious machine appeared to be propelled by wings alone and rose and fell as the wings flapped like a gigantic bird. Apparently there was no balloon attachment as is usually the case with airships . Mr. Jackson, being close to the home of W. E. Wilsie, woke him up in time to see the lights of the machine before it disappeared. . . . The same night, H . E. Allatt, postmaster at Imperial, was awakened from sleep by a bright light shining into his room. There was no moon, the light was thought to be a fire, and Mr. Allatt rose to investigate, but no fire was found. Looking at his watch, the time was discovered to be

Flexible Phantoms of the Sky / 9 7 1 :30 o'clock, and i t i s believed that the brilliant light w as caused by the searchlight from this mysterious air$hip. other witnesses in the same area reported seeing strange lights maneuvering over some nearby mountains, And one group said they had seen \"a titanic white bird\" at a distance of about five miles. \"As it was clearly impossible, even in the desert air, to see a bird at that distance, they, too, have been pondering the case and come to the conclusion that what they saw was the airship making its way over the desert, \" the newspaper remarked. Winged objects, things with tail fins and propellers, had been reported during the 1896-97 wave, too. The \"flapping wings\" is a rather unique feature, however, and perhaps the bobbing-faIling-leaf motion created some kind of illusion. There is no way of reaching a final assessment on most of these early cases. Based upon my study of modern sightings versus published reports, it is very possible that many people on the West Coast were seeing UFOs throughout the early 1900s but that very few of these ever made their way into print. The spotty clippings that have been uncovered to date do suggest a continuing flap of unsuspected proportions. The year 1908 brought a minor flap to Tacoma, Washington, and the same area of the Puget Sound that would play an important part in the Maury Island \"hoax\" (a sighting which preceded Kenneth Arnold' s by three days) thirty-nine years later. On Saturday, February 1 , 1 908, and again on the next night between the hours of 7 and 9, a brilliant reddish object \"two or three times as bright as Jupiter\" passed over Kent, Washington, and was seen by many. Some described it as being cigar­ shaped. A story in the Tacoma, Washington, Daily Ledger (February 4, 1 908) added, \"During the same week, on clear nights, colored lights were displayed at high altitudes, and on one occasion a rocket was discharged high in the air, it is asserted. \" The light was viewed by the populaces of many of the towns along its route. Some newspapers suggested that it was a Japanese spy craft of some sort. (The Russo-Japanese war h�d taken place three years earlier, and the \"Yellow Peril\" was a popular topic of racial bigots on the West Coast.) On June 30, 1908, the now-famous \"meteor\" exploded over Siberia. The next sumem r, in mid-July 1909, residents in the thinly populated Blue Mountains of New Zealand began to see a \"cigar-shaped or boat­ shaped\" object cruising their skies. One account from the Otago, New Zealand, Daily Times described it this way: \"It did not appear to be very

98 / Operation Trojan Horse long but was very broad. . . . It flew over and past the school grounds, turned around, and went back the way it came. It was flying along very easily and had no trouble in turning. \" Unusual flying lights were report­ edly observed in the same areas at night. On Friday, August 6, 1909, \"ten hitherto skeptical workmen\" saw a \"cigar-shaped balloon with a carriage suspended below. It had a powerful white headlight and changed altitude steadily several times. \" The mystery airship of 1 896-97 had returned! This time it was halfway around the world from Europe and the United States. We have found no mention oj the New Zealand sightings in the American press of the period and assume that the news did not travel far. The airship itself did travel very far, however. Late in August 1 909, the Russian correspondent of the London Daily Mail filed a dispatch about \"an unknown controllable airship\" that had appeared over the city of Reval, making two wide circles before disap­ pearing in the direction of Finland. The event was said to have caused great excitement. A month later a machine \"of great size, elliptical-shaped, and equipped with wings of some kind\" passed over the Castle Forest near Gothenburg, Sweden, at an altitude of 300 feet. The time of the sighting was 6 P . M . That morning another object-or possibly the same one­ flew over the Swedish city of Osthammar at an altitude of 300 feet, coming from the northeast and disappearing in a westerly direction. The date was Friday, September 24, 1 909. Gothenburg was revisited at 8:30 P . M . , Thursday, December 2, 1 909, when an \"illuminated balloon\" appeared high in the sky and moved swiftly toward the sea. The Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter noted: \"Suddenly a rocket of some kind was thrown from the gondola into a garden named Redbergs Park. This took place a few minutes before the balloon went out of sight. \" The events of 1 909, 1 9 1 3 and 1934 are crucial to our overall understanding of the phenomenon. They provide vital links in the long and tangled chain that we are trying to unravel . These early reports are especially meaningful because they were written as human interest items and routine news stories long before the appearance of the UFO contro­ versy or before any government had issued a denial . The people of Sweden were completely unaware of the sightings in New Zealand. And Americans had not heard of either group of events. Skeptical explanations of mass hysteria simply cannot be applied to these early reports. Some mechanical-like object - or group of objects - was circling the globe at