William Cole ran up the ramp into a saucer that had landed twenty yards from his house — the next thing he remembered was standing back inside wearing different clothes.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT
1977 Eliot Maine UFO Landing: Saucer and Missing Time
In July 1977, William Cole was awakened at midnight in his second-floor bedroom by brilliant multi-colored lights hovering behind the trees twenty yards behind his home in Eliot, Maine. What followed was not a distant observation but a reported physical boarding: Cole received what he described as telepathic instructions, ran downstairs and across his backyard to a landed thirty-foot saucer with an open ramp, and entered the craft — then found himself standing back inside his house minutes or hours later wearing only underpants, despite clearly remembering putting on jeans and a t-shirt. His partner independently perceived the same telepathic messages and described the same craft. Upon departure, the saucer transformed its visual appearance and acoustic signature into a convincing imitation of a U.S. Army cargo plane.
Date: July 1977 (exact date not recorded)
Sighting Time: Approximately 12:00 AM (midnight)
Day/Night: Night
Location: Eliot, Maine, York County
Urban or Rural: Rural
No. of Entity(‘s): Not observed directly (telepathic communication only — no entities visually described)
Entity Type: Unknown — inferred from telepathic communication
Entity Description: No visual description provided. The witness reported receiving telepathic messages from the craft before and during landing, but did not describe seeing any occupants. Interior details (tiled wall, tube filled with liquid) were observed but no beings were seen before the memory gap.
Hynek Classification: CE-IV (Close Encounter IV) — witness physically boarded craft via ramp, experienced missing time, and was returned to the house involuntarily with no memory of what occurred aboard. Corrected from CE-II.
Duration: Unknown — missing time period undetermined. Conscious portion approximately 20 minutes.
No. of Object(s): 1
Description of the Object(s): Saucer-type craft with multi-colored lights around the rim. No visible landing gear or legs. Open door with a ramp extending to the ground. Interior yellowish light visible through doorway, tiled walls, and a central tube filled with liquid.
Shape of Object(s): Disc / Saucer
Size of Object(s): Approximately 30 feet across
Color of Object(s): Dark gray with multi-colored lights on the rim
Distance to Object(s): Initially 20 yards (behind trees); then landed in backyard adjacent to house
Height & Speed: Rose above treeline from initial position; hovered briefly; landed. Departed vertically to approximately 150 feet before transforming appearance and departing horizontally.
Number of Witnesses: 3 (William Cole, unnamed partner, unnamed roommate)
Special Features/Characteristics: Telepathic communication — witness and partner independently perceived identical messages (“proof of extraterrestrials has arrived,” instructions not to tell anyone, invitation to board). Craft mimicry — upon departure, the saucer visually transformed into a U.S. Army cargo plane complete with rumbling engine sound. Missing time — witness entered craft wearing jeans and t-shirt, found himself back in house wearing only underpants with no memory of what occurred aboard. Partner experienced post-event doubt the following day, which the witness attributed to mental interference.
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Source: UFOEvidence.org (witness self-report)
Summary/Description: William Cole reported a CE-IV encounter in Eliot, Maine in July 1977 involving a thirty-foot saucer that landed in his backyard, telepathic communication received by both Cole and his partner, physical boarding of the craft via an extended ramp, missing time, and a departure sequence in which the craft visually and acoustically disguised itself as a military cargo plane. No investigation was conducted.
Related Cases: 1982: Encounter in Maine (Eliot) | 1975: David Stephens Oxford Maine Abduction | 1976: The Allagash Abductions
Detailed Report
William Cole was asleep with his partner in a second-floor bedroom of a house in rural Eliot, Maine — a small town in York County near the New Hampshire border — when he was awakened around midnight in July 1977 by unusual lights visible through his bedroom window. Behind the trees approximately twenty yards from the back of the house, brilliant multi-colored lights were clearly visible. Cole watched the lights rise above the treeline and hover momentarily in the air.
At this point, Cole reported receiving what he described as telepathic communication — a “message in my thoughts” — stating that his desire for proof of extraterrestrial life had arrived and that he was not to tell anyone. He silently asked whether he could tell his partner. The response was permissive. He woke her and asked her to look out the window and describe what she saw. She described exactly what Cole was observing. Both then perceived the telepathic invitation: they could board the craft, which by this time was descending toward a landing in the backyard, very close to the house.
Cole jumped out of bed and put on jeans and a t-shirt. His partner put on a robe. Cole was already out in the upstairs hallway heading for the stairs when he heard his partner say she had to wake their roommate. Cole objected but did not wait — he rushed downstairs and out the back door. In the backyard, he saw the saucer on the ground. An open doorway was visible with a ramp extending to the ground. Yellowish light spilled from the interior, illuminating what appeared to be tiled walls and a tube filled with liquid at the center of the visible room.
Cole ran up the ramp and entered the craft. The next thing he remembers is standing back inside the house near the back door — now wearing only underpants, despite clearly remembering dressing in jeans and a t-shirt moments earlier. He rushed back outside and saw the craft lifting off above the yard. His partner and roommate came downstairs and joined him in the backyard. The three watched as the object ascended to approximately 150 feet, at which point it visually transformed into what appeared to be a U.S. Army cargo plane, complete with a convincing rumbling engine sound, and flew away above the trees.
The roommate, who had not witnessed the craft on the ground, commented that it was “just a plane.” Cole reported feeling “waves of mental energy attempting to block and confuse my mind into a doubtful state” and resolved not to let his memory be erased. Despite this resolve, he could not recall anything that happened between running up the ramp and finding himself back inside the house. The following day, his partner dismissed the event as something that was “probably in our minds somehow.” Cole remained adamant that it was a physical, material experience — primarily because of the clothing change, which he regarded as irrefutable physical evidence of something having occurred aboard the craft.
Cole filed his report with UFOEvidence.org years later, at age fifty-four, from Barrington, New Hampshire. He described his background as advertising/marketing executive with a B.A. in communications and philosophy, and a lifelong interest in science and space travel. He had not reported the incident to any investigator or organization at the time it occurred.
Researcher’s Notes
The Cargo Plane Camouflage — Eliot 1977 and the Problem of Uncorroborated Boarding
- Classification Correction — CE-II to CE-IV: The existing page classifies this encounter as CE-II based on the craft’s physical landing. However, the witness account describes a sequence that unambiguously meets CE-IV criteria: Cole physically entered the craft through an open doorway and ramp, experienced a memory discontinuity covering an unknown duration, and was found (by himself) back inside the house wearing different clothing than what he put on to go outside. The clothing change is the witness’s own primary evidence that something happened aboard the craft. Whether one accepts the witness’s interpretation or not, the reported event structure — physical entry, memory gap, involuntary return — is an abduction claim by definition. CE-II captures only the landing component and misrepresents the full scope of what was reported.
- Mimicry Technology — A Rare but Documented Claim: The craft’s reported transformation into a cargo plane upon departure is one of the most unusual features of this account. The witness describes not merely a visual change in shape but an accompanying acoustic signature — a “rumbling engine sound” — designed to provide a plausible conventional explanation. The roommate’s immediate acceptance of the departing object as “just a plane” suggests the mimicry was effective on a naive observer. While shape-shifting or camouflage claims appear occasionally in the UAP literature, the specificity here — a particular type of military aircraft, complete with sound — is relatively rare. If the account is accurate, the implications for UAP detection methodology are significant: objects might routinely disguise themselves as conventional aircraft. If the account is inaccurate, the detail demonstrates how elaborately a false or confabulated narrative can develop over decades of retrospective memory.
- Telepathy Claims and Shared Perception: The telepathic component is both the most striking and most problematic element. Cole reports that his partner independently perceived identical messages — an assertion that, if verified, would constitute one of the strongest forms of witness corroboration available. However, neither the partner nor the roommate is named, and neither provided an independent statement to any investigator. Cole’s account of shared telepathy rests entirely on his own retrospective claim. The partner’s dismissal of the event the following day — “probably in our minds” — is not necessarily evidence against the experience, but it creates an unresolved contradiction: either she genuinely perceived the same telepathic messages and subsequently rationalized them away, or Cole’s recollection of her confirmation is inaccurate. Without her independent testimony, this cannot be resolved.
- Source-Chain and Investigative Vacuum: This case represents a pure data vacuum from an investigative standpoint. No researcher examined the landing site, no physical traces were documented, no hypnotic regression was attempted to recover the missing time, and no independent witnesses were interviewed. The report was filed decades after the event by a witness living in a different state, to a website that collected self-reported accounts without verification. The named witness (William Cole) and stated credentials (advertising executive, B.A. in communications/philosophy) cannot be independently verified from the report alone. The account reads as sincere and internally consistent, but sincerity is not evidence. Without any form of contemporaneous documentation, investigative follow-up, or independent corroboration, the case cannot be elevated above Insufficient Data status regardless of how compelling the narrative may appear.
- Eliot, Maine — Pattern or Coincidence: This case is the second Eliot, Maine encounter in the thinkaboutitdocs archive, following the 1982 trapezoidal craft sighting five years later. Both occurred in a rural area of York County near the New Hampshire border and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The 1982 case involved a multi-witness observation (radio station phone lines flooded with calls) of a structurally anomalous craft, while this 1977 case is an uncorroborated single-witness claim with far more extraordinary elements. The geographic overlap is worth noting but does not constitute mutual corroboration — the cases differ radically in type, evidence quality, and witness count.
The Cole account is a detailed, internally coherent self-report describing a CE-IV event with genuinely unusual features — particularly the mimicry transformation. Its fundamental weakness is the complete absence of any investigative infrastructure: no contemporaneous report, no site examination, no witness interviews, no hypnotic recovery. It describes an extraordinary experience but provides no evidence trail beyond one man’s memory recorded decades later.
