May 13, 1978: Kerman, California

(Blogger's Note: I attributed an article in the International UFO Reporter to Dr. Swords. The article has no byline on it and my attribution was in error. Dr. Swords did make a reference to the case in the September 2011 IUR, but it is only the name of the case in a table about "skin burn" cases. I have updated this article so that the attribution is proper. It does appear in the IUR in 1978 but the article is unattributed.) 

Dr. Michael Swords has suggested in an article in the IUR, "Can UFOs Cause physiological Effects, Part 2 (September 2011) that there are cases that demonstrate there are side effects to UFO sightings that can be investigate (which I mention here only because it was in that article I found the reference to Kerman). While there is not a bit of metal to take into the laboratory in this case, there are the physical reactions of the witness, police officer Manuel Amparano, who was a veteran of five years on the force. Had the situation developed differently, there was research that could have been conducted, but wasn’t.

According to the information available, including that in the APRO Bulletin of August 1978, Amparano was on late night-early morning patrol when he spotted, what he thought was a fire in the distance. He thought it might be youngsters setting palm trees on fire, but as he neared an intersection, saw that it was something else.

According to an article in the September 1978 issue of the IUR, “…at 3:32 a.m. … he observed a reddish glow ahead of him… he drove to the site and pulled off the road by a cotton field near railroad tracks in time to see an unusual source of illumination… up in the southern sky.”

Coral Lorenzen reported that “The object was hovering, was a ‘silver aluminum, round’ craft which the witness approached fairly close.”

Amparano later said that the oval-shaped object was twice as wide as it was high and that it was a bright crimson, about half as large as the full moon. He said that it was about one hundred to one hundred fifty feet off the ground and that it was twenty-five to fifty feet in diameter. He was close enough to it and it was large enough that there was no question that it wasn’t some sort of conventional craft.

As it hovered overhead, it glowed with an intensity that did not hurt his eyes. He watched it out of the side window of the car for about four minutes until a bright blue beam shot out of the craft that Amparano described like that of a flash from a camera. The UFO then climbed out silently toward the southeast, and finally disappeared straight up in seconds.

Although he felt a slight tingling, he thought it was the results of the cold night. He drove back to the station. There he met several fellow officers and the police chaplain, who mentioned that he looked as if he had been sunburned. According to Swords, the sunburn lasted for about four hours before fading.

The IUR article noted that at 7:00 p.m. that night, Amparano went to the hospital for treatment of second and third degree burns to his face, neck and arms. The trip to the hospital was documented in various hospital records and because of the injury, he applied for, or his boss, the chief of police applied for, worker’s compensation. That too was documented.

It would seem that something that large, that bright and that close to the ground would have been seen by someone else. Although it was very early in the morning, there were others who said they had seen the same thing. Lorenzen reported:

… Lisa Harrison’s husband had driven his cement-mixer truck to Los Angeles for an overnight job and she wasn’t able to sleep, so she was watching the late show on television. She was sitting next to the living room window of her apartment in Kerman… Suddenly, at 3:30 A.M., she heard a strange loud whirring noise and the house began to vibrate. She took three quick steps to the front door to see what was happening. Looking toward the northwest, she saw two lights moving towards the South at tree-top level. The leading light was white and the rear light was reddish, but “not like the red lights on airplanes.” She described the lights as large, but couldn’t estimate how large. Mrs. Harrison ran back into the house after the object went out of sight behind some houses to the south.

Harrison isn’t the only other witness to be found. Amparano, on his way back to the station, had stopped at a parking lot near Highway 145 and Interstate 80 for a few minutes. There he found Phil Mahler, who was delivering newspapers for the Fresno Bee. Mahler said that he had seen what he called “a reddish ball in the sky.”

There were still other, somewhat ambiguous reports. According to something referred to as the “a Seattle-based phenomenon research center,” an astronomer in Fresno reported a “reddish ball” close to the ground.

At about the same time someone called the Fire Department to report a fire that was in a direct line from where Amparano saw the UFO. The Fire Department said that they found no evidence of a fire.

After Amparano’s sighting was reported Ken Westbrook, Jr. who had been raking hay at the Gilory Farm west of Kerman said that he had seen a glowing “orange ball,” at treetop level. He watched it for some thirty to forty seconds as it “just kind of drifted around a little bit.”

At the station, Amparano called the Air Guard, the Fresno Airport and the weather bureau, wondering if they had anything on their radar scopes, or if there had been any other reports. While he was making the telephone calls, police officers A. J. Byington and Bob Muller, saw the burn marks on his face. They then discovered that Amparano had been burned through his shirt as well. At that point, they all returned to the cotton field, but there was nothing there to be seen.

According to other sources, it was at 5:00 p.m. that evening that Amparano woke and was feeling sick. That was when he went to the Fresno Community Hospital emergency room. There his burns were noted and listed as coming from an unknown source. It was also noted his blood pressure was high and later, a private doctor said that he suffered from “high intensity fluorescent pipe light or a gamma ray.”

What is important here is that these injuries, regardless of source, were documented by the hospital authorities, and there was that worker’s compensation claim that was also filed which further corroborated the injuries.

At this point Police Chief James Van Cleaf decided that he wanted nothing about the sighting to be released to the press or to UFO researchers. He told Amparano not to talk to them. According to Lorenzen:

A reporter went to the Amparano home after learning the identity of the officer, but was told that Amparano wasn’t available for an interview. Mrs. Amparano said that Chief Van Cleaf had told her husband not to talk to anyone about the incident, least of all out-of-town reporters. She thought that her husband would be willing to talk – he had nothing to hide – but only if the Chief said it was all right. But Van Cleaf was adamant – no interviews.

This order also seemed to apply to members of other law enforcement agencies. On June 26, 1978, according to a sheriff’s department memorandum that was sent to Amparano, “Saw the article and was impressed with your [sighting] … one of our sgts. (mike soderberg) experienced much the same thing as you did… no burns however… no one really knows at this point what really exists out there in space!!!”

While interesting, it’s not clear if the sighting was at the same time and exactly what Soderberg saw, other than it was similar. This could be further corroboration of the sighting, but at this point no one has followed up on it.

In July 2014, Jason Marzek, writing for Fringe Republic, contacted Amparano, who responded to him. In that email, Amparano wrote:

The UFO… was behind the trees lining the west side of Del Norte Avenue and near the ground hovering midway below the tree tops which gave the impression the tree was on fire… The UFO was first sighted at Trinity and Shaw Avenues by a Fresno County resident who called the North Central Fire Department Kerman Station and reported a grass fire in a field…The fire men arrived on the scene and found no evidence of a fire… A short time later Thomas Addis was working in a vineyard… when he observed a fire ball moving at tree top level… Also five Kerman Police Personnel observed my physical appearance when I reported for duty and confirmed that I was not sunburned prior to going on patrol. Officers A. J. Byington, Bob Muller, Bill McKinney, Jon Crouch and Chaplin Tom Johnson were with me inside a well light police station. Fresno Community Doctors, Allen Mau and T. T. Shigyo reported that officer had a sun burnt condition when examined at community hospital. Dr. Shigyo said that microwaves can burn the flesh through clothing without damaging the cloth. Chief Van Cleaf requested workman compensation for on the job injury.

This case becomes important because it has multiple chains of evidence. There was the physical effect which was the burns suffered by Amparano and documented by the hospital records, and observed by his fellow police officers. There were additional witnesses to the red object in the sky at about the time that Amparano made his sighting which creates another chain of testimony.

Had the chief of police reacted with a more open response, some of that additional testimony might have been documented as well. Tests could have been conducted on the police car which might have yielded some interesting results. Unfortunately, as has happened all too often, the chief was probably afraid of adverse publicity and his response was to limit access to the witnesses.

Here the opportunity was lost to gather additional evidence. This might have yielded something of scientific importance. It might not have been related to alien visitation but some sort of rare natural phenomenon. Whatever the case, the opportunity for a proper investigation was missed.