2003 UFO Investigation Reports
Minnesota MUFON Field Investigators: Margaret and Dean DeHarpporte Type of Report: CE 4 (?) – Sighting with possible abduction and missing time Date of Sighting: approx. October 10th, 2003 Place of Sighting: Minneapolis, MN Local Evaluation: Unexplained with possible abduction Date of report: 21 October, 2004 Witness Description: Simone (pseudonym) is a 51 year old woman who is the vocalist of a 5 member group of musicians, doing jazz/ funk, which has preformed internationally and with some well known musicians and groups. She also had a career as a top model. The second witness was Simone’s friend, who did not show up for the initial interview, and is apparently unwilling to be interviewed. We gave Simone a blank Sighting Questionnaire in case the friend would agree to at least fill that in, but nothing has come of that. Simone is interested in outer space and “all that” , and her friend shares that interest with her. Would like to be on ‘Star Trek’ she states. Sighting Background: The sighting was brought to the attention of MN MUFON when Simone contacted Webmaster Joel Henry through the local MUFON Web Site. She was looking for someone to tell her experience to. The info was then relayed to Field Investigator and hypnotherapist Craig Lang, who got in touch with Simone, as she was interested in possibly exploring her experience through hypnosis. Craig said he would accept her as a client when her case had been duly investigated. Dean and myself then interviewed her in regards to her latest experience, and touched on one previous experience that she recalls, as well as a memory from her childhood which she felt is connected to all her experiences since. Sighting Account Simone and her friend had finished a spaghetti dinner to celebrate her friends birthday, at the Apartment of the friend, located at 34th and Emerson in the Uptown area of Minneapolis. The date was approximately Oct. 10th, 2003, as there was a full moon and it was found that the full moon in Oct. of 2003 would have been on Oct. 10th. After dinner, at approximately 12:00 Midnight, they decided to and go outside on the steps to drink their wine and look at the stars. She said the weather was crisp and cool, and the night was clear with a bright full moon. As the two women were setting and talking and focused on the bright , full moon, she said “ I knew it was coming” (the moon) and told my friend “if you’re going, I’m going, too! “ Simone also noted that they both were “telling” the moon, “come to us , come to us, we’re your friends”. As they were focused on the moon and talking to it, it “responded”, and began getting closer, or coming down. Simone said she grabbed her friend and said “do you see that?!!!” “That’s the moon and it’s coming down here!”. Simone reports that all the background blacked out, the stars were gone, and there were no noises; “like a vacuum”, is how she described it. That’s when she grabbed her friend and said “ OK , if you’re going , I’m going too!”. Simone said “it”, (meaning the Moon/object) “kind of responded”, by coming closer, and getting larger, then starting to “morph” into a different type of light than the moon, not perfectly round , and more longish, with “fingers”, or “hands” of light hanging down, like a strange kind of aurora, which she stated “seemed to be reaching for us.” Simone said at about this point “ I was , like, oh, I don’t know if I’m ready for this”. The next thing the witnesses remember is coming to, leaning against the wall on the OPPOSITE side of the apartment. Still holding their glasses of wine (she recalls there didn’t appear to be any less wine in the glasses than they remembered from before the incident.) Simone states “we got up like zombies and walked upstairs”, where one of them looked at the clock and said “we’ve been gone for two hours!”. She stated they felt dazed, “totally dazed, like we were in a coma”. They talked about it for a while, then went to sleep. The feeling of being “displaced, disoriented” lasted about a week. . She also says they weren’t cold, and thinks they should have been “frozen”, as it was quite chilly outside, and they hadn’t put coats on. Following this incident, Simone had a sore inside the front of her nose, and gastro-intestinal difficulties which persist at this time to some degree. The friend has a high pitched ringing in her ears. Simone stated she started to look for someone to tell her experience to, as it was “too awesome”, and since it happened to both she and her friend. When asked whether she felt if it was herself, her friend, or both of them that may have been the “target” of this experience, Simone said she felt it was definitely herself. Simone said she researched the subject of implants on the web, and also began looking on the web to see if she could find another experience similar to hers, or a photo or description . Go to the following URL to see what she came up with: ufocasebook.com/minnesotaufo.html, also shown at the end of this report. Simone also said that when she saw the moon/light and was going into this last experience, “ I was like, oh, they’re back!” She also stated she feels it’s going to happen again. Simone has had two other incidents she can recall. One took place in Italy approximately one year earlier than the 2003 incident. She was in Italy to perform with her music group, and she and several others (mostly Italian) were on a beach for nightcaps, when they sighted what Simone described as a huge dirigible. Once again she “came to” approximately 2 hours later, and said that due to her limited Italian, she was unable to discuss the incident with the others. She was bothered by a sore in her nose afterwards. The first incident she can recall was when she was a child, approximately 7 years old, in Rosemount, and at that time she didn’t know how to express it, and never related it to anybody. Simone states “ there were gaps – loss of time – usually at night” She remembers seeing lights and in some way communicating. She calls this child hood memory more like a “6th sense”, a kind of knowing, rather than an actual memory. Simone said she does not consider the episode frightening or traumatizing. What bothers her most it the “not knowing what was going on – knowing that you weren’t there”. She expressed an interest in working with Craig Lang to find out more about what happened to her, but at this time has not contacted him. Simone’s father is an engineer, and a sister is a scientist, whom Simone has discussed her experiences with. She says the sister “understands it, as she is a scientist, and has seen things too”. Sighting Evaluation: Type: CE4 ? Significance: Extraordinary Evaluation: Unexplained Evaluation: Unexplained, Possible Missing Time and Possible Abduction UFO or light photographed in SW Minnesota Similar to witness’ sighting, as reported in: http://www.ufocasebook.com/minnesotaufo.html
Glenwood, MN 11-8-03 Observation and Digital Picture Summary At approx. 5:30pm a witness in west central Minnesota saw an unusual object and took one digital picture of it. The witness writes: “The light was oval in shape. It came from the east in a horizontal position. It was turning to its side or vertical as I was proceeding to take the picture. It emitted a reddish glow or reflection around it but was clearly BRILLIANT white itself. It stopped and remained “sideways” for a few seconds, then before I snapped again it simply blinked off -- just disappeared. The moon was rising to the southeast of vantage point, air was surreal and it was quiet.” ufo glenwood 11-8-03r50.jpg The witness added that when it was coming in the horizontal position from the east it was more of a blue color. Later that evening there was an eclipse of the moon, so the moon was full. The object was so bright that it saturated the digital camera. Field Investigators Analysis: I asked the witness to take a couple of reference photos in the daytime from the same position she photographed the UFO so that I could estimate angular image size and distance. One of the pictures was taken in the regular (unzoomed) mode and showed the hill over which the UFO was photographed in the background and a car in the foreground (see right hand side of print). The other was intended to show the same area in daylight in which she had photographed the object at night with the 4x digital zoom. The witness estimated that the object or light was 30 feet long in the vertical position. The camera is an HP320 Photosmart, which has 2.1MP with 4x digital zoom. The photos were processed through the Polaroid Photo Max SE program. By measurements of the photos with a ruler it was verified that objects in the 4x zoom mode were twice the height or width of the same objects in the regular mode. It was estimated that the trees on top of the hill were about 30 feet tall. Trigonometry gives a distance to the top of the hill of about 900 feet. The estimate that the UFO was 30 feet long in the vertical position, approximately the same dimension as the estimated height of the trees, makes it reasonable that it was also about 900 feet away, and therefore was hovering over the hill. Examination of the picture indicates that the ground beneath the trees was being illuminated by the UFO or was reflecting light from the UFO. It also appears that a beam of light from the UFO slanting down toward the viewer’s left was illuminating part of the trees. Overall, the impression is that the UFO was perhaps slightly further away than the trees, and the distance may have been 1000 to 1500 feet. The UFO and reference photos were sent to a photoanalyst who has done photo analysis for NASA and has access to some very good photo analysis software. He writes: “There is no detail within the object. The absence of detail indicates the CCD was saturated as shown by blooming patterns around the light. [This means that it was a very bright light as the witness stated.] It is possible to overlay the daylight shots with the night shots. [The photographer’s] position was off perhaps 5 degrees between the night shot and day shot, but the distance matches. With that, it's clear that the night shot shows no indication of horizontal motion effects. If there was any vertical motion it would have shown as a blurring of the horizon which is not apparent in the variable layers... This is consistent with a continuous light source moving towards the photographer or moving in a upward direction.” The witness noted that the “air was surreal and it was quiet”. This condition has been noted by witnesses in other cases and is part of the complex known as the “Oz” factor. The sudden vanishing is also unusual but typical of many UFO sightings. These items are further indications of a genuine anomaly. The reference photos allow calculation of angular diameters. The angular diameter of the UFO at the narrowest part is 0.32 degrees. Since the full moon is approx. 0.5 degrees, the object could not be the moon. The witness stated that the moon was rising to the southeast of the object, and that it went into eclipse later, which is true. The witness’ statements appear to be accurate. The witness’ estimate that the object was 30 feet in the vertical dimension is reasonable based on the measurements and calculations. The witness states the picture was taken on a digital camera. Since an ordinary digital camera cannot take multiple exposures, the statement by another UFO researcher that this was probably a multiple exposure is incorrect. My conclusion is that the object is unusual and unidentified. William I. McNeff Field Investigator