UFO sightings here create a stir

UFO websites were buzzing this week over a report of two sightings of unusual objects over East Hempfield Township.

A woman said she saw a Hershey Kiss-shaped object, accompanied by two Chinook military helicopters, around noon Monday, and then another similar lighted object later that evening over Spring Valley Road.

She reported the sightings to the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, which is based in Colorado.

It's likely no surprise to scoffers or conspiracy theorists that neither Lancaster County emergency dispatchers nor air traffic controllers at the Lancaster Airport tower said they received any reports of helicopters or unusual sightings Monday.

According to her report, the Lancaster woman said of the second sighting, "I remember yelling, 'What the frig is that?' or a similar expletive and just being held in awe by the size and apparent low-flying flight path of the object."

Numerous websites focusing on UFOs, extraterrestrials and unusual phenomena picked up the report of the sightings, including Lights in the Texas Sky, the Unexplainable, Whales in Space, UFO World News and Area 51 Disclosure.

Such sites are a door into an unusual universe populated by aliens, the Jersey Devil and Bigfoot. They buzz with reports that entertainer Jackie Gleason claimed that President Nixon showed him alien bodies, and they feature lots of conjecture on the military's involvement with and cover-up of UFOs.

Indeed, callers to MUFON's toll-free number are instructed: "To report a UFO sighting … please press 1. To report an abduction experience, please press 2."

Bill Weber, the MUFON investigator assigned to the case, said he knows that people mock the idea of UFOs. He also thinks many of those people are scared by the prospect.

"The first reaction when somebody sees something is they're inquisitive, they're curious," he said, adding, "they're also afraid."

MUFON is not primed to see little green men behind every bush, said the 63-year-old Downingtown man, a sales manager for a computer-based test equipment company.

Many things that people think are UFOs turn out to be something else: meteors, regular aircraft, planets or easily explainable phenomenon, Weber said.

But there are other things, too, that cannot be explained, he said.

"I think people should keep an open mind," he said. "When the evening sky is clear and you see all those stars, our sun is one of them. How can you say this star, in the vastness of everything you're seeing, is the only star that has intelligent life circling around that? I can't do that."

Weber said he plans to contact the woman to interview her and her 13-year-old daughter, who saw the first object over Spring Valley, a road that runs north of and parallel to Route 30 from Centerville Road to Rohrerstown Road.

He also might knock on the doors of neighbors who, the woman said, saw — and possibly videotaped — the first object.

Weber said he could end up asking federal authorities, via a Freedom of Information request, if they were tracking anything on radar in the area at that time.

John Moeller, air traffic manager for Lancaster Airport, said it's not unusual to see military helicopters flying over Lancaster County. Some come from Fort Indiantown Gap and others from a Maryland airport that has a military unit.

Both he and Rick Harrison, the county's emergency management operations manager, said they occasionally get calls about unusual things in the sky. Sometimes they are low-flying aircraft such as crop dusters, or helicopters checking power lines.

Weber said MUFON gets about a dozen reports of UFOs or other phenomena every month in Pennsylvania.

"I have to believe there's something out there," he said. "It just makes sense."

cstauffer@lnpnews.com