Tales from LaGrange

Subject:      [01-18-97] Tales from LaGrange
From:         ashta@urgrund.net (x is PI)
Date:         1997/05/18
Message-Id:   <337e6cd0.35380452@news.sirius.com>
Newsgroups:   alt.ufo.reports,alt.alien.research,alt.alien.visitors
[More Headers]

     LaGrange - The photograph would be a pointless snapshot of a
turkey- wire fence, a pasture and a line of trees in late summer
if not for the bell-shaped thing hovering in the sky.

     Because of that, it's the latest addition to a pile of
oddities that suggest the countryside around LaGrange is a hotbed
of Unidentified Flying Objects.

     On the other hand, 50 or more sightings a year may have come
to light merely because the area is a hotbed of UFO
investigators, according to John Thompson, state director of the
Mutual UFO Network (MUFON).

     Thompson runs an insurance agency on the square in LaGrange.
Above his desk is a sign asking, "HAVE YOU SEEN A UFO? Please
tell me."

     "Most people who see one tell their family and their
friends," Thompson said, "but they're embarrassed to talk about
it otherwise. They're afraid of the ridicule."

     That fear of being laughed at is presumably what has stymied
the investigation of the "Valley UFO," as Thompson calls the
bell-shaped object. The photographs were sent anonymously to news
outlets by a man who called himself "Mr. Z" and said he snapped
the pictures Sept. 16 on his farm near Valley, Ala., just across
the Chattahoochee from Georgia.

     The Valley UFO and other events will be the focus of a
statewide meeting of MUFON at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Smyrna
library. The public is welcome, Thompson said.

     There are six different pictures of the Valley UFO and an
accompanying letter, but that's all. "We've been unable to locate
the place where they were taken or the person who took them,"
Thompson said.

     Investigation showed that the weather seen in the pictures
was consistent with the weather in the area that day.

     Thompson said he was able to rig a coffee mug using five
strands of fishing line to produce similar photographs. "The
trick is not the distance the picture is taken from, but not to
catch any sunlight reflecting off the support lines."

     His conclusion: The photographs "are not in themselves
enough to prove that a genuine UFO was caught in broad daylight
loitering over a farm pasture."

     While investigating almost 100 reported sightings that have
come to light in west Georgia over two years, Thompson says, he
has talked to people who, he is convinced, have not only seen
UFOs but have been abducted and examined, sometimes repeatedly,
by their short, almond-eyed, gray crews.

     A peculiarity of west Georgia sightings seems to be
selectivity: One person or group of people see something that
should have been seen by many others but apparently was not. A
man and his daughter who had been fishing from a boat told
Thompson about a Volkswagen-sized, egg-shaped craft that
reportedly was in plain view of a landscaping crew that
apparently never saw it.

     Another witness, a retired dentist and former Air Force
veteran who -

 for fear of ridicule - asked that his name not be used, said he
had a similar experience.

     It was almost three years ago, he said, and he was driving
down Hamilton Road in midmorning.

     "I saw something shiny above the trees," he said, still
uncomfortable telling his story to a stranger. "I looked up and
saw a short, fat, hot-dog shape flying from left to right. It was
more rounded at the ends than a blimp, and it was flying faster.
It looked to be moving at about the same speed a small aircraft
would."

     He said he was convinced it wasn't a blimp, but nonetheless
made calls to airports in the area to see if there were any
blimps in the area. There were not.

     "There were no markings at all on it. No gondola. No windows
that I could see," he said. "This thing was flying over part of
LaGrange. A lot of other people should have seen it." There were,
however, no other reports.

     "I don't rule out something from outer space," he said. "But
it seems more likely the military is involved. How can it exist
without the government not knowing about it?"

     That, of course, is central to any UFO theory. But federal
and military authorities continue to insist they have no reason
to believe UFOs are anything but natural phenomena misinterpreted
by observers.

     Thompson, who also is a board member of the fledgling
International Society for UFO Research (ISUR), says UFO hunters
are becoming convinced that just collecting verbal reports is a
waste of time.

     "The next step is to get instrumentation packages out into
areas like this to record radioactivity and electromagnetic
disturbances," he said. Money, of course, is a stumbling block in
the path of these efforts.

     Skeptics wonder why technologically superior aliens would
insist on pussyfooting around like this for decades, if not
centuries. Why not reveal themselves?

     "Good question," Thompson admits. "But something's going on.
Trust me."

     For more information, call John Thompson at 706-845-1145.
Those with Internet connections can read about UFO matters at
ISUR's and MUFON's home pages, http://www.isur.com and
http://www.mufon.org



Copyright 1997, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution,
 All rights reserved.

Jack Warner STAFF WRITER,
A favorite spot for UFO visits?: Tales from LaGrange: The area,
known for close encounters of the alien: kind, is sure to be a
hot topic at a meeting Sunday in , The Atlanta Journal and
Constitution, 18 Jan 1997.