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Monday, October 20, 2008

Fresno's own UFO encounter

With the recent news that Great Britain's National Archives is releasing over 1500 documents regarding UFO sightings over Britain, I thought I would see if I could find anything of interest in regards to Fresno. First I went to the National UFO reporting center, but there were just vague accounts of people seeing bright lights in the sky, etc. Then a bit more digging I found this story, originally found here. The account is as follows:

Location of Sighting: Near Fresno Airport, Fresno, CA.
Number of witnesses: 2
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Round or Diamond Shaped.

Full Description of event/sighting: Hi Brian, my husband and I sent you our sighting report of 12 white orbs that we saw and photographed over Los Banos, CA on August 28, 2005, which you posted. You have asked for older reports so I am attaching a sighting my girlfriend and I had in 1969 which involved two jets chasing after a UFO spotted near the Fresno, CA Airport.

Clovis CA, June, 1969 It was about 10:00 P.M. on a warm clear evening mid - June of 1969. I had just graduated from High School and my best friend and I were sitting outside my home enjoying the clear dark sky and brilliantly shining stars. On a whim, we decided that we wanted to go to a late-night market in Fresno, about five miles away and buy some magazines to read. We got into my car and began to drive south to a shopping center near the Fresno Airport.

Along the way we decided to take a short cut on a small road adjacent to the airport which was flanked by an open field. We turned right onto the small two-lane road and were now driving along side the field and which was several hundred feet away from the fenced area near the end of the airport runway, which we could see clearly, including buildings and planes of the local Air National Guard. There were no street lights and the road was dark with no traffic, except for us. As we drove by we could see that most of the airport activities had stopped for the evening, which was normal, as no aircraft landed or took off from there at that time of night. 'We continued down the road talking, when I noticed my friend leaning forward in the passenger seat staring up at something in the sky. She motioned to me to look out my driver's side window saying "what is that?"

I looked out the window and saw an intense white strobing light hovering above apparently keeping pace with my car. I slowed down and it continued to follow at the same pace. As our windows were down, we most certainly would have heard an engine, was it a plane, but it made no noise at all. Not knowing what we were seeing, I pulled over, stopped the car and we both got out to take a better look. We were mesmerized by the intense white light of the object which now appeared diamond shaped and strobing quickly as it hovered above us. It was hard to estimate its altitude and size, but we guessed at arms length it would have been the size of a basketball. By now two other cars had come up behind us and had pulled off the road to look as well. Within moments the object started to move away from us, and began to pick up speed. All of a sudden we heard the roar of jet engines and looked up to see two military jets lifting off the runway in hot pursuit of this object.

The jets passed directly over us - so close that we could see the landing gear retract. We watched as the jets tried to close on the object. We were in a flat area of land and we could clearly see the object and jets streaking away from us heading due west. As the jets began to close on the object the object slowed and appeared to hover over the jets as if teasing them, and then it made an incredible 90 degree turn with several jerking, zigzag movements and shot off at tremendous speed to the South directly over downtown Fresno. The jets were left in its wake. We immediately jumped back into the car and decided to head home to tell our families what we had just witnessed.

It was about 10:45 PM when we reached the main intersection of town where we were stopped waiting the signal light to change. Suddenly all of the signal lights, and street lights started flashing on and off, including the caution lights at the train tracks which were directly in front of us beyond the intersection. A large bolt of electricity shot down a power line near the road, arcing and snapping till it got to the end and dissipated. We sat there watching these lights flashing on and off around us for about 3 - 4 minutes and then they all stopped and the signal turned green. We looked at each other and I floored it through the intersection and didn't let off the gas till we got to my friends home only a few blocks away.

When we pulled up to her house, some of the neighbors were all outside talking excitedly about what had just happened with the lights in the neighborhood. Of course they asked us if we saw it and we told them that we had witnessed that - and more. Wanting to confirm what we had seen earlier, we ran inside the house to phone the airport. Incredibly, the call was answered by a man in the control tower. I told him we had observed something in the sky close to the airport less than an hour ago and asked him if two National Guard jets had taken off to check it out. I was told point-blank that no planes had taken off at all that night. I asked him again, if he was sure, and he told me once again that no planes had taken off.

We knew we weren't going to get any further with him and we also knew he had to be lying as we saw the jets with our own eyes and had close enough to read the numbers on the planes. We told our families about what we had seen and received polite, yet insincere statements like "wow that must have been something". But we knew they didn't believe us. There was nothing in the local news the next day about a strange object in the sky or equally strange power surge and nothing was ever said about it again - except between my friend and me. We've recounted that night many times over the years, even up to this day. We know what we saw; we know what happened.


Calling the airport was fruitless, this event happened almost forty years ago. And if the National Guard denied anything then, why would the admit to anything now? Still it's an interesting story and makes me wonder how many times the National Guard jets have been scrambled. I had a friend who lived in the flight path of FYI and would sometimes see F-16's taking off at night. It could have been a training mission most likely. But being the only Air Guard base between SF and LA, they could have been scrambled for something else. Hopefully one day our government will divulge what these mysterious lights truely are.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I saw a very large craft tonight coming from the foothills, flying relatively low. It was flatish with 4 amber/red lights that blinked in an off pattern. Suddenly, the craft turned completely vertical and continued gliding. It returned to horizontal and made a sharp turn toward my house and then another sharp turn out of my sight. There was no engine sound.

fresnobeliever said...

i filmed something around 04/03/2009 in the eastern sky around 1600 hrs i posted what i say on youtube ...key words ..fresno ufo 2009 look it up and tell me what you think..i have a 7 second vid (battery died) thats the clearest of them all...but the 1st video shows this "thing" manuevering in the sky..let me know what you think......prettyfeet101@yahoo.com(temp yahoo for now)lol

Anonymous said...

During the Spring of 2000 my husband and I were outside in our front yard enjoying a cool spring evening when we noticed this huge craft flying slowly above us over Fresno California. It was amazing! It was huge, black in color, and shaped like a triangle. We thought that it was weird because we could not hear any sounds coming off of it. My husband and I will never forget what we saw on that calm Sping evening back in 2000. To this day we find ourselves looking up in the sky often with hopes to see it once again. We have our video camara ready just incase we ever are lucky enough to see it or something like it again. People really should be paying attention to our skys. What ever this thing was was not anything we've ever seen before or since. It makes one stop and think and question the whole situation. Was it something from this earth, or some other plant, and what was it doing here etc........?