The Wisconsin Magazine; Waiting for the UFOs; 1325

Belleville: a small, stunningly peaceful sort of town, just southwest of the state capital. To the casual observer it seems to be a quiet, uneventful place. Yet the sharp eyes soon pick up tell-tale signs that something is a little unusual here. A little different. The password these days in Belleville is, "look up." Little this town may still be, but peaceful, it is no longer. The skies above Belleville may never be the same. [Graham Parker – Waiting For The Ufos plays] Said it was huge, it was huge. It was a cigar-shaped thing, it glowed white. And it was motionless. It looked like a big rocket. It was dart-shaped I- to my it looked khaki colored. [Man] Okay now this is a rocket. Hold that out...

[Womann] It was about like that. [Man] Yeah, I'd say it looked something like that, right? [Yeah] And it had a little light right out on the front. that flashed. [Waiting for the UFOs] [Graham Parker – Waiting For The Ufos plays] [Graham Parker – Waiting For The Ufos plays] Was officially been classified as an official flap. A flap meaning that it's a high concentration of UFO activity within a concentrated area surface. What appearance did it give? [Uh] The man investigating this official flap is Don Schmidt a co-director and investigator in Wisconsin for the Center for UFO Studies, a national organization headquartered in Evanston, Illinois in the last six months the Center has tabulated odd events in the skies above

Waukesha, Elmwood, White Lake, Gleason, Briston, Union Grove, West Bend, Grafton, Milwaukee, and Fremont. If this weren't enough in the last three months, Bellville and surrounding environs have been besieged with well over a dozen sightings of something both Paoli, Monticello, Argyle, Hollandale, New Glarus, and of course, Belleville. Today Schmidt and his investigating crew have come to Bellevile, trailed by the local media to in turn trail a series of sightings that took place on Friday March 5th at about 6:00 in the evening. [inaudible name] and Fred Guttenhour [sp?] were driving together in Funseth's car, when something in the sky caught their eye. It started [sound on tape] [sound on tape] It was a large cylindrical shaped object with four separate smaller rectangular shaped objects that seemed to be attached in a line

underneath. It moved across the sky. Then the large part shot away and the smaller ones seemed to disintegrate in the air. The center is able to explain away 90 percent of the sightings but that tantalizing 10 percent remains. [sound on tape]

investigating team arrives at the home of [inaudible name] just standing here looking out because it was so pretty. Such a nice night sky was red. Saw that thing hanging down and I looked and looked [people talking over each other]. Well the thing that Friday was remarkably similar to what Harvey Fund said and Fred Gutenaur saw. [Lady] And when it left it just hung there like this, see? Then the top part just went just like that turned just like that. [Narrator] Again the team takes testimony and tracks the course. [Lady] Like a fairy tale. Would. There you go. Keep going. Oh yes. [Narrator] The Belleville UFO plan is important to the center not only because of the number of reports but because of their content. [Man] There are shapes described. Whether they be cylindrical, cigar shaped or even shaped as a blimp. It gives us much more to work with than just a light. And unfortunately lights come a dime a dozen. They don't tell you much. [music]

Waiting for the UFOs. Waiting for the UFOs. UFOs. This whole flap started back in January when Belleville police officer Glen Kasmar, who is no longer interested in talking to the press, reported seeing an unusual series of red, blue and white lights. [Kasmar] There is no way to my knowledge that that could have been an airplane. That is a route of airplanes. But I've been working over ten years and I've never seen anything like that. Ever. [Man] So often the generalization that people that see UFOs are a number of fisher or fishermen down South sitting in the dock late at night and they happen to see something and they get picked up. That is not the case at all. We are talking about scientists, about police officers, about teachers, about politicians. [Narrator] In fact, former President Jimmy Carter claims to have seen a UFO while on his way to a Lions Club meeting in Georgia. In fact, one out of every 10 Americans claims to have seen a UFO.

Ordinary Americans. Fred Guttenhour is a construction worker for a communications firm. Harvey Funseth works for the state as a surveyor and Mrs. Freitag is a constituent representative for state senator. Ordinary Americans who are willing to stand up and be counted. [Man] There have been cases where people have literally been driven from their jobs and their marriages or relationships have broken up as a result. That, ah, they have had to, ah leave even their home towns

occasionally. I know the case were it was almost like.. is a lynch mob where they burned a particular man out of his trailer home for nothing, for no other reason that he claimed to have seen a UFO. [Narrator] Reactions in Belleville have been considerably calmer. [man] We took a little ribbing...did ya?....yeah. The best part of it is one guy that was teasing us sighted one last Sunday night and he watched it through his son's telescope and the next time he saw us why he just said, there definitely is something up there. [Narrator] But what is that something? [Slovak] This is the Belleville UFO sighting. [Narrator] Dr. Mark Slovak is an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He believes that those somethings in the sky can be explained as something ordinary that we ordinarily don't see. For example, Officer Kasmar's sighting of a series of red, white, and blue lights.

[Slovak] You're to imagine yourself standing a little figure here looking out towards the night time sky. [Narrator] Slovak utilizes a computer to paint a picture of the appropriate chunk of sky that Kasmar would have seen on January 13th 3:00 in the morning the night of a full moon. [Slovak] Fainter stars were lost in the glare of the moon. So somebody standing there at 3:00 a.m. in the morning would have seen one, two, three maybe four bright stars very near the horizon. In particular, they would have... I probably would have been attracted by this star, it's called Bettlejuice. It's the brightest star in the constellation of Orion, the Hunter. As it sets, it goes through a thicker and thicker layer of air between you and the star. And that causes it to twinkle, to scintillate, we formally say. It will flash reddish, bluish, whitish colors, back and forth. back and forth. It would've stood out by itself as a very red solitary jewel-like looking object That we think would be a good candidate for explaining what he saw. [Narrator] We do not often look up . which is a shame for our heavens are home to some spectacular sights, nightly miracles,

comets that singe the sky, clouds that break light into circles and rain color back to Earth. The list is endless and includes not only explained items but items unexplained that later are explained. Dr. Mark Slovak. [Slovak] Back in the late sixties, we thought gee we had discovered one. This, this was the discovery turned out later to be pulsars. These spinning neutron stars that emit very rapid periodic radial signals that were accidentally discovered by a radio telescope in England, and when they were first discovered they were labeled LGMs. Standing for little green men. Because here was a regular pattern sounding like Morse Code coming up from space. And we knew of no phenomena at that time that could produce this. [Narrator] There can be no doubt, there are surprises in the sky. But what kind of surprises? [Slovak] When they were ribbing us, we'd say ah, they're were looking for intelligent life and they found it around Belleville.

Oh OK. [laughing] [Narrator] Intelligent Life. Certainly it exists in Belleville and many scientists are certain, convinced that it exists somewhere out there. The question is of all the billions and billions of planets out there, what are the chances that intelligent life would come to Belleville. Not likely, according to Slovak. [Slovak] The chances that they would be selecting the earth, third planet from a rather dinky star. I would go to Jupiter myself if I came to the solar system with a much more impressive looking planet. [Narrator] According to [Narrator] According to Slovak we are to mundane to merit a visit. Of course, many people visit Cleveland every year but Slovak chooses to ignore that parallel. Schmidt is much more reassuring about Earth's appeal. He believes that visitors have been raining down but their visits have been kept under wraps. This is an idea that is immensely appealing even to Slovak. Oh, I'd be fascinated by it. Any person scientific or otherwise in their right mind would just be

I think overwhelmed to learn that you indeed you were not, humans were not alone in this galaxy. What a concept. It makes the galaxy suddenly seem like a warm friendly homey place, that you have neighbors out there. Neighbors. Slovak believes that they're out there. And without realizing it we have been waving hello to them for a long time. How? By the waves of our old TV and radio shows that have been spilling out into space for the last 40 to 50 years. That is what we're going to be known for by any extraterrestrial intelligence that happens to have a receiver that can listen to stuff. They're going to say hey the earth just turned. I can see Jackie Gleason. And what they'll probably do is to record that message like Carl Sagan talks about his latest book novel Contact. And they'll send it back to us in a slightly changed form to let us know that some intelligence picked it up. And while they may not approve of it at least use it as a returned envelope. Since apparently we've already started a correspondence. Allow me to use the ways of this

program to relay a message. If you're out there come on down. Belleville is a great place to stop. Quiet town, nice people. And I hear they have a great fish fry.