Brian Vike's Favorite Cases.
Date: 1976
Brian Vike’s Note: I have removed a person's
name from this report I was sent due to not having permission to make the
person's name public as I just have not spoken to the person. Also I want to
make it very clear, the person who wrote this report up wants to stay
anomalous. Here at HBCC UFO Research I respect everyone's wishes. I will not be
giving out this person's name.
Hello again, Brian, To answer your question,
(name removed) name appeared in the Sunday article in the Clovis News Journal.
I don't know if he gave permission to use it, as he is now located in Las
Vegas, Nevada. His father was quoted, just joking about the whole thing, but
that's the kind of man he is.
I took some time to sit down and write what I
remember about that time, thirty years ago. I remembered quite a bit, maybe
more than my friends. Here is the text:
I was a senior in high school, and was
approached by a local young man named (name removed). He had heard that I owned
a large telescope, and wondered if we might use it together to try to get a
view of some objects he’d seen in the sky and taken pictures of the previous
night. I had a 6" reflector telescope, and back then, it was uncommon.
I accompanied him and a young reporter from
the Clovis News Journal for the next 36 hours or so. We had the telescope with
us in the trunk of the car. We went out to several remote areas at the edge of
town, and my friend described what he had seen the night before. We set up the
scope, and binoculars, and looked at the sky. There were several moments when
we thought we saw movement in the star field, but couldn’t be sure. Sometime
after midnight, we decided to doze at the News Journal office, on a couple beat
up old couches they had there, and listen to the police scanner.
After a short while, we heard a call go out
for a “public service” to the “burn spot” behind the Colonial Park church, at
the northwest edge of town. “Public service” meant fire, police, and emergency
medical services were all to respond. We scurried out to the car, piled in and
beat everyone but the state police to the site. When we arrived, a State
Policeman told us that a couple had been “parking” (we knew the young couple
from high school) behind the church when they saw a craft with green lights
land in the field beside the church. It stayed a few moments, then blasted off
into the sky. When it took off, it started the field on fire. When we got
there, the fire was not burning. We could smell the burnt grass, so we crossed
a barbed wire fence to get to the burned spot with flashlights in our hands.
The burned area was very strange. The
prevalent winds here are from the west, and I remember that the burn spot ran
north and south, about 100 yards long and 30 yards wide, contrary to the wind.
There was a strange pattern at the edge of the burn also. The grass inside the
burned area was burnt to the ground, then at the edge, the short grass wasn’t
touched, and the taller grass farther out was singed only at the tops. Some of
the grass fifteen feet from the edge of the burn was singed on the top, with
untouched grass in between. So it seemed that a giant flame had played over the
field, completely unlike a natural grass fire, which has a clear line
delineating the edge. This peculiar pattern was all around the edge of the burned
spot.
In the middle of the burn, we found a weird
clue. There was a square of grass, about 18 inches, perfectly square, and the
grass had been pressed down hard into the dirt. Around the square the grass was
completely burned away, but the grass flattened in the square was untouched,
but for being pressed down. It seemed as if something very, very heavy was
sitting there, and left a footprint in the grass. We spread out, looking for
other similar “footprints,” but there were none, only the one, singular square.
As we were in the field, walking around the
burned spot, a four-door sedan pulled up to the edge of the field where the
firefighters and local police were waiting. The sedan had four men inside, all
of them wore suits. The state police waved us over. The men were pretty much
nondescript, clean shaven, average looking, short haircuts, but not quite
military. They started asking us questions. One of them opened the trunk of the
car and it was filled with electronic equipment. He took a device out of the
trunk and closed the trunk. We told them about the square footprint, and they
wanted to see it. We all walked to the field, and showed them the spot. With
the flashlights playing on the spot, one of the men took his shoe and rubbed
the spot out, obliterating it. I remember his words to this day. “That’s
nothing."
We were instantly angry. I marched off away
from the group and more towards the edge of the burn, where we hadn’t looked
around. I was fuming, shining the light around hoping to get another clue. I
found one.
It was a piece of constructed metal, about
two feet long. When I picked it up, I noticed that it was very light, yet
strong, like titanium. On one end was a tube, about two inches in diameter, and
attached to the side of the tube and running along its length was a small flat
bar. The bar was about twice as long as the tube, and on the end of the bar was
attached a fin. The fin was about 8" wide, and very flat and thin.
I yelled to my friends, but before they could
get there, one of the suits ran up and snatched it from me. He hauled it away
so fast that my friends only got a glimpse of it. The suits then told us to
leave the area. We stomped off, and hung around by our car. What the suits
didn’t know is that the young reporter, who had his camera around his neck the
whole time, had taken a photograph of the square footprint. That photo is still
somewhere out there.
The police, firefighters, and ambulance were
all leaving, as there were no casualties and no fire. The police announced they
were all going to Denny’s, a local restaurant, for coffee. The suits asked if
one of us young people would ride with them, and since I was the youngest, I
was “elected."
I sat between two of the suits in the back
seat. They interrogated me while we were driving, asking all kinds of personal
questions, about me, what I did with my time, what movies I liked, my hobbies.
Even at a young age, I knew they were fishing. I was polite, and was very happy
to get out of their car. We all sat at different tables at the restaurant, and
didn’t talk much, as the suits were listening.
When we left, everyone (including the suits)
went to the old empty Hotel Clovis, and I hauled my big telescope up to the
roof. The suits had binoculars and several small, box-like instruments they
were peering through. I remember how strange it was, them letting us youngsters
even go up there. We watched the sky, waited, and watched some more.
I was getting dreary eyed when one of my
friends noticed some strange movement in the star field. It was as if a star
would just zip across the sky to another location where it would just stay.
We’d watch it a while, and it would zip again, with excited shouts going up,
“Did you see that?” “Did you see?” The suits would always deny seeing anything.
This watching went on for several hours, but
no stunning play of lights or colors appeared. We all went to our homes and
slept until the next night.
The next day, we read in the paper that the
burn had been made by fireworks. In January. I knew it was a cover-up, as the
burn pattern couldn’t have possibly been made by fireworks. They also said that
what was seen in the sky was Saturn. There was no mention of the footprint, or
the strange piece of metal.
Brian, there is more to the story, but I’ll
have to get to that later, if you’re interested. Just let me know.
I would like to extend my many thanks to the
person for this wonderful report which adds a lot more information to what took
place in 1976. Also there will be more to come.
File your UFO sighting to Brian at: brian_vike@telus.net or please use the
online Sighting Report Form.
Brian Vike, Director
Kamloops British Columbia Canada UFO Research. Email: brian_vike@telus.net
The Vike Factor Blog.
Kamloops British Columbia Canada UFO Research.
