Chasing Footnotes: Kevin Randle Edition

 

Well, this is going to be a weird one…

For those who visit here regularly, you’ll remember, just a few weeks ago, we were talking about the DIRD reports, specifically, that one created by Kit Green. That one, which actually dealt with UFOs, referenced a number of sightings in which the witnesses were injured in some fashion. Dr. Michael Swords had connected some of those sighting reports to an article written by Walter Webb that appeared in Official UFO in 1976.

That launched a search for the article which I eventually published here. The problem was that the entries were not very detailed and while Webb did mention the sources at the end of the article, he didn’t provide any way to connect those sources to a specific report, which meant that we needed to search all the mentioned sources for the specific case we wanted to identify. A rather tedious task.

I was able to do it with a few exceptions and one of those was the case from Mannford, Oklahoma. Webb provided a little information about it. He wrote:

Mannford, Oklahoma. October 16, 1973. As the UFO hovered nearby, witnesses in a pickup truck heard or felt, or both, an intense and penetrating low-pitched hum. The air seemed charged and oppressive.

That was it. I went through my books and sources, looking for anything to provide additional information. Remember, I did have Webb’s list of sources, but since the list included The UFO Investigator published by NICAP and The APRO Bulletin, published by, well, APRO, it meant searching through many issues. The task was complicated because sometimes a case would be reported months or years after the fact. And, of course, there was the final note that some of the sightings were from his personal files, which I couldn’t search.

Anyway, there was only three or four that I couldn’t find anything beyond what Webb had published. The Mannford, Oklahoma, case was one of those. In the catalog that I was preparing of the sources Webb used, I was stymied by these cases.

George Eberhart, was doing the same thing, or rather, had cataloged a number of the cases in the past so that he was able to provide a long listing to those of us interested in it. His listing included additional sources, almost as if he was chasing the footnotes or sources back to their original appearance before the latest interest brought all this to our attention.

He did have a longer entry for the Munnford, Oklahoma, case, which was helpful. He wrote:

Night. William and Donna Hatchett are driving down a country road near Mannford, Oklahoma, when she sees a bright light coming from the south. They first think it is a security light on a pole, but then realize the object is pacing them and descending. When the Hatchetts stop the truck, the light also stops in front of them. As the object hovers, it gives off a blinding light and a penetrating low-pitched hum. They have a feeling that there are occupants who know everything they are thinking. Donna is so afraid that she twice leaves the truck cab and goes into the back. William manages to persuade her to return, and they set off, the object rising up in the opposite direction. 

That was something, and the names of the witnesses struck a chord with me. I mean I recognized the names but I didn’t know where I had heard or read them. That meant that his source was a real shock to me, when I reached that point. It said, “Kevin D. Randle, The UFO Casebook, Warner, 1989, pp. 143–144.

Unfortunately, The UFO Casebook was made up of magazine articles I had written back when I was starting out as a writer, and in keeping with the conventions of the time, sources were generally not included. There was a sort of “Reference” section in the back of the book, and for the entry on the October 1973, sightings, it didn’t provide much in the way of help for finding the original source. It said:

October 1973: The UFO Occupants

Charles Hickson [yes, I had actually interviewed him], Pat Roach, James Harder, Susan Ramstead, Leigh Proctor, Coral Lorenzen, the APRO Bulletin, various newspapers from October 1973, and a number of witnesses who asked their names be withheld.

In other words, I didn’t know now where that information had originated and wasn’t sure how to find it. There were hints, but suggesting the that I had found information in various newspapers and The APRO Bulletin, just didn’t tell me much. However, I had a very good working relation with Coral Lorenzen, and the entry in the book seemed to suggest more than just a newspaper report. I suspected it might have been something that Coral had provided. I do have a file labeled, “October 1973 Occupant Reports.” I was surprised to find that it contained several issues of The APRO Bulletin from 1973.

Yes, the information I sought came from the September-October 1973 issue. The Bulletin usually ran a month or two behind so that information gathered by APRO in October, would have appeared in the September-October issue. Credit is given to APRO Field Investigator L.G. Sikes for the investigation, whom I would guess lived in Oklahoma at the time.

This is about as far as I can take this. Rather than retype the entry for inclusion here, I’ve just scanned the relevant parts which you can read here:

The APRO Bulletin entry for the Mannford UFO sightings

 

Unless someone knows Sikes or how I might contact him, this is the end of the road. I did find an email address but it bounced as not existing now. I did, however, make it to the original published source that I had used and the only way to improve on it would be to talk with Sikes, or even better, the witnesses themselves. But, at least, I have found the source that I used to prepare the entry for The UFO Casebook.

The Latest NAVY UAP Video

One frame from the latest Navy video of a UAP.

As I have mentioned, John Greenewald and I had discussed the Navy release of videos that seemed to show a triangular-shaped object near their ships. In one case, it was said that the object was a mere 700 feet over the USS Russell. The Navy verified that the videos were authentic, meaning only that they were videos taken by Navy personnel and had come from Navy sources. It didn’t mean that the Navy was saying that the videos showed alien spacecraft, though, at the moment, there is no terrestrial solution for the sightings. You can see the video here:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/15/politics/unidentified-aerial-phenomena-defense-department/index.html

https://www.wxii12.com/article/pentagon-says-this-video-taken-by-navy-is-indeed-a-ufo/36143765#

During our off-line discussions, John suggested that this might be Condon 2.0. Here he was referring to the 1969 study of UFOs made at the University of Colorado and chaired by Dr. Edward Condon. Although it was wrapped in the trappings of science, it was clear, from both documents released years later and comments by Condon at the time, that this was not a serious scientific study. The conclusions were drawn before the research began, and those conclusions were the ones reached at the end. Illustrative of this point was a letter written by Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler to Dr. Robert Low, of the Condon committee. I have written about all that at this blog and you can read these postings here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/03/hippler-letter.html

What all this means is that the real purpose of the Condon Committee was to end the Air Force investigation into UFOs and convince the public, and science, that there was nothing to the sightings. All could be explained in the terrestrial.

Condon was actually the second attempt at this. The first took place in 1953 in a panel chaired by Dr. H. P. Robertson. Their conclusion was that there was nothing to UFOs other than a great deal of misinformation, misidentification and a misunderstanding of science. The panel suggested that sightings be debunked and when sightings that had once seemed mysterious were explained, the public fascination with UFOs would disappear.

They also saw a national security aspect. The military communication channels might be flooded with UFO reports at a time of national emergency. The panel wanted to alert the government to this possibility. You can read about the Robertson Panel in many sources including The UFO Encyclopedia by Jerome Clark, UFOs and Government by Dr. Michael Swords and Robert Powell (and many others) and several of my books, including The Conspiracy of Silence.

So, how does that get us to the latest Navy release?

John was suggesting that we have been presented with some intriguing information that seems inexplicable. He thought that there might be some classified drone project that was responsible for the sightings. He thought the plan might be to allow these seeming unidentified objects gain some national exposure and then they would be revealed as a drone project. People would hear these explanations and believe, as they had in the past, that once again, the UFOs, or in this case, the UAPs, had been identified. Nothing to see here.

And while that is an interesting theory, there might be another reason for this. A fellow calling himself JoeWhip provided another solution for the Navy sightings. He wrote, “This seems like the explanation for the triangle UAP. Color me totally unimpressed with these leaks. None show anything interesting, other than the tic tacs.” He then provided a link to a YouTube video:

https://youtu.be/g256IPFoqMg

Before you go look at that, let me add a little history here. Back in the 20^th century, when video tape and video cameras were all the rage, I was often shown or given copies of UFO sightings that had been taped. In one case the object hovered in the distance for a long time until it slowly faded away. It was described as the “Bat Signal,” meaning that it had a couple of semicircles as the top and one at the bottom that vaguely resembled the Bat Signal. But this was the result of attempting to video tape a point of light in the distance. The camera, unable to resolve the image compensated so that it looked like a circular object with those markings on it. The point is that this was a camera artifact created when someone attempted to tape Venus early in the morning. Venus, of course, faded away as the sun rose and overpowered Venus as a light source.

Take a look at the video JoeWhip linked, and then look at the Navy videos. It seems that here is a good explanation for the videos that we have. I find it hard to believe that someone in the Navy didn’t know exactly what the videos showed. The similarity is difficult to reject.

I will note that this doesn’t explain all the sightings by the Naval personnel, and it doesn’t explain why there are reports of the object following one of the ships for 90 minutes, or how they determined that the UAP was 700 feet over the ship. It does seem to suggest that the video released by the Navy is an artifact created by the night optics in use and the video equipment in play.

This is why the John suggested we are at Condon 2.0. We have a mystery. It has received play in the mainstream media, and then, suddenly, we be given an explanation. Once again, UFOs, or in his case, a UAP, is explained in the mundane. This doesn’t negate all the great UFO information that has been collected but it does seem to explain this latest video. People tend to remember the explanation rather than the mystery and then reject all the other relevant information.

No, I’m not 100 percent convinced that these latest videos are explained, but I have to say, it does look that way. What we need now is more information about the visual sightings by those who weren’t using night vision equipment, and if the objects were tracked by radar. We need more information before we can mark explained to the whole body of sightings, but all that is lost in the videos the Navy released.