2008: Dozens in Stephenville and Dublin, Texas report seeing large UFO

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THINK ABOUTIT SIGHTING REPORT

Date: January 8, 2008

Sighting Time:

Day/Night:

Location: Stephenville and Dublin, Texas

Urban or Rural: –

Entity Type:

Entity Description:

Hynek Classification: CE1

Duration:

No. of Object(s): 

Size of Object(s): “at least three football field lengths (1,000 feet).”

Distance to Object(s): 300 feet

Shape of Object(s):

Color of Object(s): tin barn grey

Number of Witnesses: Multiple

Source: Associated Press, January 15, 2008

Summary/Description: several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it. Locals swear that it was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object’s lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. People in several towns who reported seeing it over several weeks have offered similar descriptions of the object

Full Report

Standing near the area where he saw a large silent object in the sky, Ricky Sorrells talks about the sighting, Monday, Jan.14, 2008 in Dublin, Texas.

(AP Photo/Donna McWilliam)

Ricky Sorrells drew for Earthfiles his perspective looking up through the trees on his property at a “tin barn grey” metal emitting “mirage heat waves” and embedded with cone-shaped holes he thought were equally separated by forty feet over the entire surface of the aerial craft above him. Ricky judged that the aerial craft was 300 feet above him and the trees.

He also estimated the surface diameter of the cones was about six feet, tapering another six to eight feet down into a cone-shaped hole that ended in a three-foot-diameter circle. This is a drawing focused on one of the cone-shaped holes.

Drawings © 2008 by Ricky Sorrells for Earthfiles.com. (Credit and Copyright: Earthfiles.com and Linda Moulton Howe.)

Ricky Sorrells saw the sky replaced by a “barn tin grey” and flat metal embedded with cone-shaped holes as far as he could see – “at least three football field lengths (1,000 feet).” Each cone-shaped hole was separated from the others by an estimated 40 feet; each cone-shaped hole was about 6 feet in diameter and 6 to 8 feet deep. 

Computer illustration based on Ricky Sorrells’ sketches © 2008 by Gregory Watters (Credit and copyright: coasttocoastam.com and also earthfiles.com and Linda Moulton Howe)

“It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts,” Steve Allen, left, says during an interview with Mike Von Fremd of ABC News. Allen described the unidentified object as being an enormous aircraft with flashing strobe lights — and it was totally silent. He said the UFO sped away at more than 3,000 mph, followed by two fighter jets that were hopelessly outmaneuvered. Allen said it took the aircraft just a few seconds to cross a section of sky that it takes him 20 minutes to fly in his Cessna. The veteran pilot said the UFO, an estimated half-mile wide and a mile long, was “bigger than a Wal-Mart.”

(Photo: JESSICA HORTON/Stephenville Empire-Tribune via AP)

Associated Press picked up Angelia Joiner’s story from the Stephenville Empire-Tribune on January 15, 2008, featuring a photograph of Ricky Sorrells at his Dublin, Texas, residence. (Credit and Copyright: Earthfiles.com and Linda Moulton Howe.)

Dozens Report UFO Over Texas Town 

Constable Lee Roy Gaitan describes what he saw in the sky. (Credit: ABC News)

Many, Including Pilot, Constable Describe Similar Huge Craft Flying Low Over Stephenville

By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer
Jan. 15, 2008

(AP) In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO. Several dozen people – including a pilot, county constable and business owners – insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.

“People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it’s the end of times,” said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. “It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts.” While federal officials insist there’s a logical explanation, locals swear that it was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object’s lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. People in several towns who reported seeing it over several weeks have offered similar descriptions of the object.

Machinist Ricky Sorrells said friends made fun of him when he told them he saw a flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture behind his Dublin home. But he decided to come forward after reading similar accounts in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune. “You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal,” Sorrells said. “It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I’m not crazy.”

Sorrells said he’s seen the object several times. He said he watched it through his rifle’s telescopic lens and described it as very large and without seams, nuts or bolts. Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, said no F-16s or other aircraft from his base were in the area the night of Jan. 8, when many sightings were reported.

Lewis said the object may have been an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes. Lights from the aircraft would seem unusually bright and may appear orange due to the setting sun. “I’m 90 percent sure this was an airliner,” Lewis said. “With the sun’s angle, it can play tricks on you.”

Fourteen percent of Americans polled last year by The Associated Press and Ipsos say they have seen a UFO.Officials at the region’s two Air Force bases – Dyess in Abilene and Sheppard in Wichita Falls – also said none of their aircraft were in the area last week. The Air Force no longer investigates UFOs. About 200 UFO sightings are reported each month, mostly in California, Colorado and Texas, according to the Mutual UFO Network, which plans to go to the 17,000-resident town of Stephenville to investigate.

UFO sightings have been reported all over the world for centuries, including the infamous 1897 crash of a cigar-shaped object near the tiny Texas town of Aurora. While some thought it was a hoax, decades later investigators from UFO groups said evidence suggests the disfigured pilot’s body buried that day was an alien. In Chicago in late 2006, some United Airlines pilots and other employees reported seeing a saucer-shaped craft hovering over O’Hare Airport before shooting up through the clouds. But federal officials said nothing showed up on the radar and explained it as some type of weather phenomenon.

In 1997, dozens of people saw lights in a V-formation over Phoenix, a mystery that was captured on videotape and spurred calls for a government investigation. A few months later people reported a similar sight over Las Vegas. One of the most famous cases was the 1947 crash on a ranch near Roswell, N.M. Although the government said it was a top-secret weather balloon, an Army officer who helped recover the debris came forward 30 years later claiming a cover-up, asserting that an alien spacecraft had crashed. Reports later surfaced that a base nurse told someone that autopsies were performed on aliens from the wreckage.

A few months after the New Mexico incident the U.S. Air Force started Project Blue Book, which investigated more than 12,600 reported UFO sightings – including 700 that were never explained – before the program ended in 1969. Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan, who said he isn’t sure about the existence of UFOs, said one night last week he first saw red glowing lights and then white flashing lights moving rapidly across the sky.

“I didn’t see a flying saucer and I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t an airplane and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Gaitan said. “I think it must be some kind of military craft – at least I hope it was.” 

UPDATE:

The local newspaper reporter in Stephenville, Texas, who helped cover a UFO sighting case there is no longer working at the Stephenville Empire-Tribune newspaper, effective last Thursday, Feb. 7.

Journalist Angelia Joiner had been covering the UFO story which broke early in January and brought national and international news media representatives and researchers to Stephenville, other nearby small towns and the surrounding region.

Mainstream media such as the Associated Press, CNN and other major TV networks and newspapers covered the incident with great interest. The international press also paid special attention to the UFO sightings in Stephenville and towns in the area.

Media personalities such as CNN’s Larry King and NBC’s Today show host Matt Lauer explored the sightings on their shows.

In Stephenville, Joiner was a staff writer at the small-town newspaper there. She did an excellent job of researching and interviewing local residents who were surprised, curious and concerned about the very unusual objects they reportedly saw.

As national and international interest in the case grew in January, Joiner was contacted for information as the reporter on the scene with some of the best knowledge of the local community.

Her articles helped inform not only local residents who relied on professional reporting for their community, but also assisted other Americans and people internationally understand that Stephenville people and residents in the area were down-to-Earth, solid and of good character.

The factual and level-headed journalism Joiner provided helped the national news media understand and respect the citizens in these communities. This resulted in some of the most serious and credible reporting in the national media on such an incident in recent memory.

The AP article was carried in hundreds of papers and news outlets. People like Larry King and Matt Lauer talked about the subject with intelligence and open minds.

All these outcomes were related in part to the high level of credibility of local witnesses who were courageous enough to come forward and the professionalism of local reporter Joiner and her colleagues in the national and international news media.

However, some of these witnesses and Joiner seem to be paying a price for doing their civic duty and communicating about an incident that appeared to be very significant, and could even have affected the public safety of the communities in the area.

CENSORSHIP AND “NEED TO KNOW”

According to information obtained for this report, management at the Stephenville Empire-Tribune did not want further coverage in the paper of the sightings by local citizens of something that appeared to be highly unusual. Pressures may have been placed on newspaper management to discontinue articles on the subject.

According to the newspaper’s Web site, “The Stephenville Empire-Tribune is a mid-morning paper published six days a week by Erath Publishers, Inc., a Consolidated Southwest Media company which is owned by American Consolidated Media. The Empire-Tribune is a member of the Associated Press, Texas Press Association, West Texas Press Association and the Inland Press Association.”

Publisher Rochelle Stidham and Managing Editor Sara Vanden Berge were contacted for their comments for this report but did not immediately respond.

Did the paper’s management face pressures to end coverage of the UFO sighting by a local peace officer, respected businessman and pilot and reportedly dozens of other local citizens? Did they back away from accounts of local citizens who said they were apparently being threatened for talking about what they saw?

Is this a case of media censorship or self-censorship and political correctness? Is it about professional courage and moral integrity? And, can the newspaper now be trusted by the community to cover important aspects of public health and safety, local political activities and other sometimes sensitive topics?

These seem to be questions for the citizens who read and subscribe to the paper and advertisers who use that newspaper.

The corporate owners of the Empire-Tribune (Consolidated Southwest Media, American Consolidated Media) and the professional news and journalism organizations with which the paper is affiliated (Associated Press, Texas Press Association, West Texas Press Association, Inland Press Association) might also want to review developments there.

As for the former reporter Joiner who had covered the concerns and accounts of local citizens so professionally, life goes on.

She appears to be confident that she did the best job she could have for her community as a responsible local journalist who realized something important had happened to her fellow citizens, neighbors and friends.

Joiner said, “I appreciate the opportunity I have had at the newspaper. A story of this magnitude drained the limited resources a small newspaper has. I performed my other duties to the best of my ability.”

Even as the national and international media interest calmed down somewhat, other ominous developments were occurring in the Stephenville area.

A local resident stated he had received threatening phone calls and threats of implied bodily harm or death for talking publicly about what he saw.

An intruder had also appeared on his rural property at 1 a.m., causing the resident to be concerned about the safety of his family.