Originally posted by JimOberg

As far as I can tell, this is the ONLY report -- out of hundreds of thousands of UFO reports on file -- with these precise details. Are we to conclude that such a craft actually existed, was seen by these witnesses, visited Earth only once and never came before or since?

edit on 30-5-2012 by JimOberg because: fix quote

I agree it has some bizarre details, but really only the cables/hoses and the hooks are relatively unprecedented, although I can recall at least one other case involving a "hose" attached to a UFO. Domes, rotation of definite direction, multiple parts of the object rotating in different directions and beams of light being shined on the ground have been reported many times, as have the sudden acceleration and illumination of terrain mentioned in the quotes in my previous post.

We are not to conclude that such a "craft" actually existed, only to leave open the possibility - which you seem to have already ruled out somehow. Whether or not it was "visiting Earth" is something we really can't know, considering we don't know what it was or where it came from.

Knowing that most people who have had an experience like that of Bill Pecha never report it (we're not all masochists, after all), I don't find it surprising that there are a number of UFO reports bearing apparently rare, if not unique, details. There are enough familiar details in this particular case to say much of the report fits previously established patterns.

Originally posted by Orkojoker

We are not to conclude that such a "craft" actually existed, only to leave open the possibility - which you seem to have already ruled out somehow. Whether or not it was "visiting Earth" is something we really can't know, considering we don't know what it was or where it came from. .

Agreed, we can't rule it out.

Any such conclusion would have to be based on thorough examination of the report and its context.

Here's where we apparently don't agree:

I think such a thorough assessment requires more definitive descriptions of the object's location and motion in the sky, and the actual date/time of the event.

And you don't think we need that information? What's your excuse, again, for not wanting it -- or even wanting NOT to have it?

Originally posted by JimOberg

I think such a thorough assessment requires more definitive descriptions of the object's location and motion in the sky, and the actual date/time of the event.

And you don't think we need that information? What's your excuse, again, for not wanting it -- or even wanting NOT to have it?

What makes you think I want "NOT" to have that information? Is it this statement from my previous post?

I don't mean to say that details such as exact time and date and direction of a reported sighting are anything but crucial to a decent investigation. In fact, they should be among the first facts established.

What I'm saying is that having this information pinpointed is unlikely to result in the launch becoming a plausible explanation for the report - even if there were a close correlation in time and direction - due to the content of the report. Exact time and direction would also be helpful in ruling out Venus as an explanation, but they are not really necessary in this case as Venus is all but ruled out by the appearance and maneuvers reported, not to mention the apparent diameter of the alleged object.

How large would that rocket display be likely to appear in the sky from Pecha's location? This must be something you could determine based on the location of the launch site and the trajectory of the rocket. I certainly don't have the mathematical ability to figure that out, but I assume you do.

Drucila,

For what it's worth in regards to why as UFO will limitless energy may need to steal energy off of a power line.

I was reading a book by some guy discussing UFO propulsion. the onion drive or something very similar. anyways. He recounts a abductee's account of watching some greys do emergency repair on one of their ships in the field.

Apparently some types of craft have a energy vortex type of power plant in their center. The power plant needs an outside charge to initial start it up. Sort of like a jump start. Once the power source is started up the craft never really fully shuts down. like a nuclear reactor in a submarine will always be on even when it's "Off" So every once and a while the UFO's power system goes on the fritz and needs to get this outside source of power to jump start the main energy system of the craft. Usually they have other UFO's come and bail them out and transfer the energy over to them in some sort of beam, like jumper cables. but sometimes they have to make do, and jack the power from our power lines.

I figure if given the option they would find some remote power line away from people to handle their business, but sometime especially if it's an emergency they probably just don't have that option.

It boggles the mind to suggest that a rocket launch could elicit such a detailed report.

No question about that.

If I hadn't come across a string of OTHER reports that WERE unambiguously linked
to rocket launchings, I would never have believed it myself.

Never, without documented cases that it HAD happened, here and there.

This explains my fascination with space/missile 'IFOs' -- or 'faux-FOs' -- because they provide
an opportunity, unavailable from any other known manmade activity, to compare what was appearing
in the sky to what SOME witnesses were interpreting it as.

To calibrate the boundaries of possible human misperception, in other words.

Otherwise, we're just stuck with the human ego-defense reaction that nobody is 'so stupid' or 'so crazy'
to EVER make that degree of misperception.


Except that intelligent, rational, sane, sober people HAVE done so, as cases of this type show.

I offer the Petrozavodsk 'jellyfish UFO' of 1978 as an example. Hundreds of witnesses saw it in the predawn skies in northwestern Russia. They described structure, they described close approach, they reported interference with computers and auto engines, they described smelling ozone.

It was a rocket launch 600 km away.

Search the 'net, you may find people STILL claiming the sighting could NOT have been a rocket because people just aren't that dumb, crazy, freaked-out. And they weren't dumb, crazy, or freaked-out -- just human.

Originally posted by BASSPLYR
Drucila,

For what it's worth in regards to why as UFO will limitless energy may need to steal energy off of a power line.

Except in the Colusa case, if you read the report, the 'power failure' that the witness reported when the UFO was over the power line was in an area of town fed by ANOTHER power grid, NOT the one he reported seeing the UFO over. Go check this out, please.

ADD:

Here are a few examples of eyewitness reports which just CAN'T be caused by 'a rocket launch', but WERE:

www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1242.htm
"The city was bathed in golden streams of light," reported Aleksander Kazantsev, a physicist who is also president of the Research Group in Physics in Moscow, and an unofficial UFO investigator. "The object hung over the city for 12 minutes before suddenly moving off again, traveling northeast and then disappearing into a bank of clouds."
After leaving Finland, the UFO flew south. "Leningrad and Moscow offices reported the phenomenon," the UPI news service reported. The official explanation was that "the fireball could have been a satellite reentering the earth's atmosphere."
The craft so alarmed a group of dock hands at the shipping town on Lake Onega that they began to say deathbed prayers. "We thought it was a nuclear attack from the United States," one of the men said.
Spotters in Helsinki, Finland - 500 miles west - had seen a bright ball of light passing overhead an hour and a half earlier. A plane or helicopter was suspected, but a quick check on radar screens at airports and military bases revealed that the sky was clear.
"The object came low over the harbor," Vladimir Azhazha, a Moscow physicist and oceanographer told an American reporter. "It hovered over a moored ship 465 feet in length. A comparison to the size of the ship would place the UFO at about 350 feet in diameter. After a while, a smaller object separated from the main body and fell straight down, disappearing under the water. At that moment, the main part suddenly accelerated and disappeared. "In my opinion," Azhazha continued, "what was seen over Petrozavodsk was either a UFO, a carrier of high intelligence with crew and passengers, or it was a field of energy created by one."


www.world-mysteries.com/pstonehill.htm
Russia's space programs were consistently dogged by UFO sightings, a situation which continues to this day. In 1977 the 'Petrozavodsk Phenomenon' was notable for the number of different kinds of aerial craft that were observed with the launch of Kosmos-955 - spheres and jellyfish-like craft (which are again being observed in other parts of the world) and a strange luminescent 'rain' that could melt glass.

Originally posted by JimOberg
It boggles the mind to suggest that a rocket launch could elicit such a detailed report.

No question about that.

If I hadn't come across a string of OTHER reports that WERE unambiguously linked
to rocket launchings, I would never have believed it myself.

There should be hundreds, perhaps thousands of witnesses to any rocket launch that might have caused these Colusa sightings then, shouldn't there Jim?

(Not being a smart-aleck here. This is a valid and important point, which you've seemed to ignore in prior instances.)

In fact, I think it would be fair to say that just about any UFO sightings that could *reasonably* be attributed to a launch or re-entry event would probably, by necessity, have many witnesses, spread out over a wide geographical area. It would depend upon the particulars, of course, but I'd expect to see that trend, in general. Especially over the continental United States.

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets

Originally posted by JimOberg
It boggles the mind to suggest that a rocket launch could elicit such a detailed report.

No question about that.

If I hadn't come across a string of OTHER reports that WERE unambiguously linked
to rocket launchings, I would never have believed it myself.

There should be hundreds, perhaps thousands of witnesses to any rocket launch that might have caused these Colusa sightings then, shouldn't there Jim?

(Not being a smart-aleck here. This is a valid and important point, which you've seemed to ignore in prior instances.)

In fact, I think it would be fair to say that just about any UFO sightings that could *reasonably* be attributed to a launch or re-entry event would probably, by necessity, have many witnesses, spread out over a wide geographical area. It would depend upon the particulars, of course, but I'd expect to see that trend, in general. Especially over the continental United States.

Excellent point.

Aside from localization effects such as cloud cover -- I have no clue how to check that for 1976 --
there is one other effect that seems to enter in: self-selection.

People who see an event and recognize it -- say, hypothetically, a rocket launch -- would rarely
have any reason to report it, no more than reporting an airplane or blimp flyover.

If they think it's a crashing airplane, they call an airport. If they think it's a bright meteor,
the call a planetarium or university.

And people who tend to misidentify something, DO sometimes report it to UFO groups.

Now, this still remains an open question that needs checking up -- are there any other reports of 'something strange' in the skies over California that night?

The exact date becomes more important here. How wide a search was made?

If you start by ASSUMING it was close to the witness, you only need look around the
locality, the county perhaps. You don't even NEED to ask people 100 miles away.

So did anybody search farther afield, and for September 10 as well as September 9?

I don't know.

But the point is very much germane, thanks.

This is an interesting case. I have been trying to keep up with this thread and follow the links to learn about this case. One observation I have is that the key witness is extremely scared. This is a person who is described by others a usually calm. In the Youtube link at about 6 minutes in, I think it was the key witness’s wife who said something like “I don’t know what it was that I saw….but he was so scared I just did what he said…”. He was also saying stuff like “They are going to see us!” and “They are going to get us!” He was so scared that he drove his pickup truck at high speeds in the middle of the night with no headlights on with his wife and kids in the car…

In this mental state, how accurate an observation can a person make?

Is this the only witness to describe the UFO in detail? From what I read, it seems like everyone else just saw a huge light except for one other person who described a dome shaped object.

From the link provided, the power failure was explained as being due to something unrelated to this event. Did I understand that right?

Jim I wasn't saying that the UFO was causing the power outage of the local town. I wasn't even talking about this specific incident. I was just talking about UFO's sucking power from power lines. heck maybe it's not even the electricity they are after. maybe just the voltage potential or the electric wires magnetic fields are all it needs to "jump Start" it's self again and be on it's way.

Either way I enjoy your posts on this and other threads.

These are inertesting and informative posts, much obliged!

I've got some inquiries to the Vandenberg AFB History Office to see if they ever collected 'missile launch stories', and filed them somewhere we can access.