presents

  The 1974 UFO Chronology

  March 23, 1974; Albiosco, France
 
Map of sightings for 1974, courtesy of Larry Hatch's "U" Database (Pending)

Jan. 6, 1974; Santa Ana, CA

Early morning. Martin W Barry, a Marine sergeant, was making his usual early morning 5 mile run in a park, in a driving rain, when he came up with a 7-foot tall, bulky figure standing in a slumped forward posture, long arms dangling nearly to the ground. Behind it, hovering only a few feet off the ground was an orange pulsating flying saucer. The creature's head, with large eyes, accounted for more than half of its height, and its legs were "squashed" and "stubby." It waddled up to Barry and struck him on the chest, felling him into a pool of water then waddled away and climbed aboard the UFO, which rose into the sky. Others reportedly saw UFOs over Santa Ana that day. (Humcat 1974-63; Andrew Gallagher, Ideal's UFO Magazine # 1, Type: B)

Jan. 7, 1974; Warneton, Belgium

8:40 p.m. Domed disc with flat bottom, 23-33 ft. diameter; 7- 10 ft. wide. Flange around base. 3 legs. White and orange alternating bands on glowing object. Three humanoids. Broad shoulders, heads shaped like inverted pears. Long arms, large eyes, no noses. Two were 5 ft. tall with 1-pc dull metallic gray suits. Cube-shaped helmets with face visible. One <5 ft. tall with rings on torso, round helmet. Occupants outside landed object approached witness in his car. One had a pointed metallic rod in hand. Witness felt paralysis and pain in the back of his head. (Ref. 5, Reference 1, Section XII) R,L car

Jan. 8, 1974; Springfield, OH
3:13 a.m. Leaving his job, witness's car lights dimmed and motor stalled. He saw multicolored lights descend just yards in front of car, followed by the appearance of a blinding white oval of light 6 ft in diameter, apparently the interior of the object. Five small (3-4 ft) occupants observed, sitting to one side on high-backed seats. They wore bright-colored robes and each had long brown hair reaching to the floor. Their faces could not be recalled by the witness. The surroundings and car interior were brightly illuminated. After 5 minutes, the interior light was extinguished and the object ascended rapidly with another display of colored lights. A maintenance man on the premises had noticed a failure on his "pager" radio four times between 7 and 10 p.m., although no lights or UFOs were then observed. 5 minutes, E-M effects (CHR 74-02. Investigator:  Leonard Stringfield, CUFOS)

A man on his way home from work spotted what he described as a flying saucer near a gravel pit in this New England town. He saw a light in the air and as he approached it, the light became brighter and larger. His description of the object was that of a red dome on top with another dome beneath it shaped similar to a child's swimming pool. The lower dome was edged with white lights which reflected onto the upper dome. A third dome was below the first two and appeared to have two ports at the rear which gave off orange and white smoke as it disappeared into the night. (Reference: UFO INVESTIGATOR, February 1974, page 2)


Jan. 24, 1974; Aische-en-Refail, Belgium
Disc-like object on ground near road; engine restarted by itself when object departed. (Ref. 1, Section VI) E,R car

Jan. 25, 1974; Evansville, IN
6:30 p.m. WTVW's David Goodnow (later CNN anchorman) saw three glittering red-colored objects like illuminated sign, blinking at random, very bright, with smaller white light on each side (like oOOOo) with no sound. They moved to the north and were observed for several minutes. Camera man also saw them. As lights moved away it appeared they were not on one object but were separate. (Ridge files, UFOFC)

Jan. 26, 1974; Lisbon, Portugal

V-formation of luminous 10-15 orange discs observed by airline crew, B-727 (Ref. 1, Section III).

Jan. 26, 1974; Santa Ana, CA
Pilots report 5 objects circling plane.

January 27, 1974; near Irwin, Pennsylvania
Around 2:00 am a woman driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike became concerned when she saw a UFO with two bright lights in the sky. The female driver said the lights shown down toward the highway. Then in a stunning move the UFO dropped down next to her car and kept pace. The woman speeded to 60 miles per hour and the UFO kept up. As she drove along her car lost power (electromagnetic effects). The driver feared that the car was going to stall. Eventually the UFO streaked away and the automobile began to operate normally. (John Chase, “Flurry of UFO Sightings Startle Pennsylvanians”, by David Branch and Robert B. Klinn; Santa Ana Register, Santa Ana, California, May 22, 1974, Wednesday, B-7; Skylook Magazine, MUFON, May 1974).

January 28, 1974; at Sewickley (near Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania
Around 10:30 pm two witnesses reported a large silver cigar shaped UFO drop to within 150 feet above trees before moving out of sight. The UFO had a bright light and red light on the front of the craft. A single bright light was on the rear of the object. One of the witness contacted the control tower of the greater Pittsburgh Airport only to discovered there were no planes in the area. (John Chase, “Flurry of UFO Sightings Startle Pennsylvanians”, by David Branch and Robert B. Klinn; Santa Ana Register, Santa Ana, California, May 22, 1974, Wednesday, B-7; Skylook Magazine, MUFON, May 1974).


Feb. 4, 1974; Shores Community, TN.    
6:00 p.m. UFO shaped like wooden shoe with transparent dome atop seen outside witness's house,  hovering 6 ft over garden.  Emitted buzzing sound and disrupted TV reception. Domed area glowed soft white, and heads and shoulders of 2 humanoid occupants were seen within; UFO had one large light in front, two at rear. Buzzing stopped, UFO made turn and slowly left area silently. (CHR- 74-04, W.A. Darbro, ANLEY Ingram)

February 7, 1974; between Woodale and Laurelville, Pennsylvania
Around 12:55 am, a Motorist was on Route 982, when he spotted a disc shaped UFO hovering over a field . The UFO was 30 feet in diameter, above the field at an altitude of 150 feet and about 100 feet from the witness. The UFO had a sold white top, while the bottom showed red, green and blue lights. A humming sound was heard and a strong “chemical” odor was noticed. (John Chase, “Flurry of UFO Sightings Startle Pennsylvanians”, by David Branch and Robert B. Klinn; Santa Ana Register, Santa Ana, California, May 22, 1974, Wednesday, B-7; Skylook Magazine, MUFON, May 1974).

Feb. 13, 1974; Barrington, NH
A student from the University of New Hampshire reported observing a cigar-shaped object that appeared to have brilliant white lights on both sides. The witness further described the UFO as having an elongated dome on the top with a red light toward the front. The craft moved slowly but with controlled maneuvers and then suddenly sped completely out of sight. (Reference: UFO INVESTIGATOR, April 1974, page 4)

Feb.14, 1974; Ely, NV

Round orange object paced, approached truck, E-M effects on lights and engine, truck lifted off road, steering control lost, feeling of vacuum (Ref. 1, Section VI).

March 9, 1974; Milan, Italy

Luminous saucer-shaped object with colored rings ahead of plane confirmed by Milan radar, chased by pilot (Reference 1, Sections III, VII).

March 13, 1974; En route San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Cordoba, Argentina

Argentine Airlines plane flanked by two glowing objects that paced it for several minutes, then sped away (Reference 1, Section III).

March 17, 1974; Taiwan

March-June, 1974; Spain

Concentration of UFO sightings, including vehicle encounters (Reference 1, Section VIII).

March 30, 1974; Hombreiro, Lugo, Spain

Blinding light from hovering object, car engine quit, lights went out. Object flew away with whistling sound, car then functioned normally (Reference 1, Section XII).

April 14, 1974; Vedrin & Courriere, Belgium

8:00 p.m. ...and continuing for close to two hours a flurry of UFO sightings was reported. The SOBEPS organization conducted a thorough investigation. Sightings included a luminous globe emitting bright silver-white light crossing the road ahead of a car; a spinning circular object with rows of body lights that changed directions, stopping and starting; elongated or cylindrical metallic-appearing objects with body lights; and a disc white on top and bright cherry red on bottom, joined by a dark central band. ("Easter UFO: A SOBEPS Inquiry" by Frank Boitte, Brussels, Belgium.)

2:42 a.m. This, yet unexplained incident was never correlated with any sightings of UFOs anywhere, local or regional. But it was rare and one of those incidents that occurred in the wee hours . 

1:15 AM. A gentleman was up late when a "Bumm..Bumm..Bumm.." sound occurred, as if something very heavy had fallen onto the ground. He looked out the living room window and saw a UFO hovering low over a near field. It was a disk with a red domed area, an orangish lower area punctuated by oval "windows" from which came white light. See detailed report at link. (Mike Swords. Sources: Marc Leduc, "Un Atterissage et des Humanoides a Drummondville", UFO-QUEBEC,vol.1 [1], 1975; and Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Canada, 1979; and "Robot occupants reported", MUFON Journal, November 1974; and "Robots in Quebec, Canada", APRO Bulletin vol 23 [3], November/December 1974; and "UFO Canada_April 1979", UFO Encounter, #82, August/September 1979).

July 9, 1974; Kingston, NY

Elliptical object with body lights hovered low, moved toward police car; officer turned spotlight on it, brilliant white beam from object illuminated patrol car (Reference 1, Section I).

July 17, 1974; Beloite, Yugoslavia
Photo. No details.

August 26, 1974; Feignes, France

9:00 PM. The daughter of the house had gone into town where there were holiday festivities. She was late returning and her father walked outside. He saw not her but something in the sky. The thing was like a perfectly round black hole, standing out starkly against the gray of the evening, and also outlined with a low-intensity white corona. He guessed the thing to be about 200 meters away. It seemed to be descending, but very slowly. He went in and got his wife. She watched with him, as the thing descended to 20 meters off the ground. Then, if things were not strange enough, a line of corona split the hole horizontally, like a "D" and its mirror image. The "D's" moved slowly apart, and the right-side one [the "proper" D] seemed to either move away into the distance, or shrink away until it was gone. So, we are left with a mirror-image "D" sitting in the sky. From the curved edge of the inverted D, a "line" or "veil" began to be drawn across the blackness, almost like a stage curtain. As it moved to the right, it revealed, contrasted to the blackness, the forms of what appeared to be two entities attired like astronauts, that is, in full spacesuits and helmets. Their gear, though white, was said to have a greyish tinge and be metallic in character. They moved about seeming more like puppets than living beings. They were in fact very two-dimensional. The two witnesses were stunned by this "show" and watched somewhat mindlessly for 40 minutes. Snapping out of it when their thoughts returned to their tardy daughter, the father got to his car and drove to town; the mother went inside. The hole was still in the sky, and the puppets still blundering around within it. During this whole affair, there were no cars in evidence on the road, no noise from the "object", and generally no sounds that they could remember at all. It is reported that the mother looked no further for the object, and even the father, upon his return with his daughter, did not look for it. The French investigators reported that the witnesses were very simple, practical folks, "completely devoid of any interest in the UFO phenomenon." Well, a high strangeness "display" indeed; and about as meaningless seeming as anything in the UFO literature. Did some ultra-technology kid put on an amateur stage production with his hyperspace puncturing wormhole kit? Cases like this make "universal theories" to explain the UFO phenomenon largely a Don Quixote Windmill Tilting exercise. (Mike Swords. Source: J.M.Bigorne, "Dividing UFO with Occupants", Lumieres Dans La Nuit, #151, January 1976 [translated by Gordon Creighton for Flying Saucer Review, vol.22 [1], 1976. Note in the title the model-dependent wording. The case as read might not describe either a "UFO" or "occupants". Forcing witness descriptions into "comfortable" identifiers might preclude the flexibility needed to see the phenomenon in its true complexity).

Sept. 3, 1974; MADAR Event # 7

September 16, 1974; Legana/ The Marches, Tasmania

c. 9:45 - 10:15 PM. A lady was driving home with her two young children. She had the radio on and was having good reception, when it developed a great deal of static. Ahead she saw the sky light up. Crossing a bridge, the car then lost power and rolled to a stop. The whole electric system was out, even the dashboard lights. An attempt to restart the car failed. Then, "a deafening vibrating noise enveloped the car." As she and the children covered their ears, "painful electrical shocks began penetrating their bodies." This went on for about a minute. The car filled with a "choking smell", and they evacuated. They ran down the road to a house some distance away, where the resident noted their alarmed condition, took them in, and after they had settled a bit took them back to their vehicle. The light was gone, and all that was unusual with the car was that its "bonnet" was hot. The car started normally, and they went home. Coincidentally, the lady's husband was out waiting for the rest of the family, and saw lights in the sky and heard a distant roar. He and the local garage checked the car and nothing was amiss. Although the children suffered no ill effects, the mother had swollen arms and fingers the next day, and a numbness in the right side of her face [with an undescribed "red mark" there as well]. Two nights later, the husband noticed a distant light which he felt was following his car. Upon arriving home, the family looked for the light. Above some trees, about 150 meters away, they saw an "inverted banana-shaped" yellow light hovering. They turned off their house lights and the object moved away. Its difficult to know what to make of this case since the auto experience contained no UFO. One must keep alive the option that some sort of scientifically-unsuspected natural phenomenon [perhaps of a plasma nature] could somehow stop auto systems and cause physiological effects. However, cases such as this do not stand alone, but rather are pieces of a large data pile of such auto stops, some of which have had readily seeable "objects" connected with them. The simplest hypothesis therefore is that the cause of the lit-up sky was an object of some sort, as seen in other cases. (Mike Swords. Sources: Tasmanian UFO Investigation Centre, Summary report on Tasmanian Close Encounters of the Second Kind, June 10, 1975 [CUFOS files]; and "UFOs: Family Buzzed", Saturday Evening Mercury Weekend Edition [Hobart?], September 21, 1974).

Sept. 24, 1974; nr. Brunswick, Maine
9:00 p.m. Police officers reported a brilliant elliptical object hovering above the Wiscasset Nuclear Power Station. After several minutes it rose straight up, leveled off and flew away in an arc across the sky. At one point it emitted two small satellite objects which operated independently, then rejoined the larger craft. (National Enquirer report July 8, 1975)

Robert Spencer Carr, a NICAP investigator and community college professor, announces that the US government has recovered a crashed saucer and dead alien bodies from a site in New Mexico. After worldwide publicity is kindled Carr releases more details over the next few days and weeks, that the saucer and the bodies are kept in "Building 18" or Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, that he first heard the story about 1961, etc.

Oct. 25, 1974; Rawlins, WY

Carl Higdon abduction (Reference 1, Section XIII).

Oct. 27, 1974; Aveley UK

Abduction case (Reference 1, Section XIII).

Oct. 29, 1974; Melrose Park, IL
CE-1. No details (CUFOS)

Oct. 31, 1974; Barrington, IL
Evening. Two 7th graders and one of their moms reported something quite large with lights all around it. Described as round and black, going around in a circle, bigger than an airplane. A beeping sound was heard. The mother reported the object as shaped like a cigar "and it had little square lights that went on and off." (News clipping from NCS)

Nov., 1974; Kampsville, IL (exact date unknown)
6:00 p.m. Lady and her son saw sharply-outlined hovering object through bedroom window, become brighter, made "whirring sound" As it came closer the light changed from white to red, size of plate at arm's length, passed over house. (MUFON, Skylook 89)

Nov. 11, 1974; Central Newfoundland Area
RCMP report of Cessna 150 encounter involving John Breen a Gander Newfoundland Air Traffic Controller who was also a  pilot/instructor accompanied by a student pilot. ATC Gander painted the object for two sweeps then it disappeared from their screns at which time Breen spotted the object down low at he guessed at tree-top level. This latter seems significant-almost as if the damn thing knew it was now being painted and dropped to tree-top level to avoid radar. This event was included in Maritime UFO Files.

Nov. 11, 1974; Between Pensacola, FL and Mobile Bay
9:10 p.m. local. Marine Reserve Squadron  pilot was flying a T-39D Sabreliner with five Naval officer pilots on board on a TACAN instrument penetration training flight. They were at 25,000 feet MSL, approximately 300 mph indicated airspeed, (440 kts true air speed), in straight and level flight, and on a heading of approximately 255 degrees true. The flight instructor sitting in the right-front seat was the first to sight a single, round, red small area of light maintaining position at their 1:00 o’clock position and their altitude. The reporting witness said that everyone “…felt it was a UFO and generally were glad to have finally seen one.” Its angular diameter was about the same as half a penny held at arm’s length (approx. 15 min arc diameter). After receiving permission to deviate from the flight plan the pilot banked right about thirty degrees to fly directly toward the red light. After about a minute or more, now on the new heading of 270 degree, the red light suddenly and unexpectedly flew left directly across the nose of his airplane stopping abruptly at his 11:00 o’clock position where it remained for several more minutes. While maintaining this new position it never changed size, shape, or intensity,  Its edge was sharply defined and without any haze or blur. After about four or five minutes total observation time the light accelerated toward the West and was gone in about ten seconds; it became progressively smaller until it was no longer visible. Upon landing the witnesses all completed an “incident form” but never heard anything more about the matter.  (Richard Haines)

10:00 p.m. Noticing a bright light shining in her bedroom, the 82-year-old witness looked outside and saw a "boat-shaped," or oblong, object hovering over a neighboring house. The UFO, 50-60 ft wide, had green and white lights around the lower part, and seemed to be rotating. It gently rose and fell over the  house for about 20 minutes and then moved to a new position above a nearby church. A white light shone from 3-4 square windows around the upper portion; atop was a kind of brightly lit area, in which 2 small dark humanoid figures could be seen moving back and forth in "cramped positions," continually gesticulating (or perhaps moving levers) with their arms. The beings, who ignored the witness, were visible only from the waist up. The object remained over the church nearly a half hour, rising and falling slightly, then moved horizontally a short distance and shot upward at high speed. (SYMPAP 1975,64)

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