| INVESTIGATOR'S REPORT Fran Ridge, Investigator CASE: STRANGE OBJECT OBSERVED AT EVANSVILLE; SEPTEMBER 6, 1986 The young man who filed this report later joined the Air Force and became an air traffic controller in 1991. This is definitely an incident which falls under the "high strangeness" heading. And recent searches of NUFORC and MUFON CMS files turned up no other incidents that were reported. On September 6, 1986 at 3:30 a.m. a very strange incident took place in Evansville, Indiana. This was not only close to home, about 20 miles east of my own home at Mt. Vernon, but one of the witnesses was a good friend of my two sons. Scott's reputation was excellent and he and my son, Brian, joined the Air Force together in 1991. The incident occurred 5 years prior and involved another young man slightly older. Jay was 25. Scott was 18 and they were sitting in his pickup truck, right in the residential part of the city. He and Jay had heard what they thought to be a semi-truck behind them and never paid any attention to it. He heard it again and turned to look in the street, but nothing was there so he continued to ignore it, thinking it was a jet overhead. Jay also heard the sound as it grew louder and as the sound turned into the equivalent of '20-helicopters hovering above us', he turned and screamed to Scott to turn around. And, as Scott turned around he saw what appeared to be a blimp, coming from behind a tree. As they looked on, it was obvious that it wasn't a blimp at all, but was much longer and skinnier than a blimp. Jay thought it was an Army helicopter at first because it was so long. Apparently they discovered it wasn't either one, because the object had no propellers, jets, balloons, strings, wings or any other means of staying in the air. It just floated at about 3 mph from behind a tree and then behind a house. They never saw the entire object because it was so long that it never fully emerged from behind the house and the tree at the same time. It had to be at least 55' in length and Scott estimated that it was about 6' in total diameter. They had been looking south to southwest at first as the object floated southeast, and they viewed it for at least 15-seconds. It then turned south, and as it turned directly south it totally disappeared. When the observers saw the object at first, they ran from their truck to get a better vantage point in the street. The sky was clear. The object, when closest to them, was about 500-1500' away at tree-top level.  The object's shape was somewhat cigar-shaped, with red, blue and green lights. The shape as drawn is very unusual and reminds me of the old X-15 rocket plane, with more of the stubby horizontal and vertical stabilizers and short dorsal fins on top and bottom. The object had fins in other locations, and the rear of the object was not visible, but behind a tree.  While looking for data I found another incident that was similar that also occurred in Evansville 18 years earlier in 1968. And it also was seen in the month of September. At 3:00 p.m. the reporting witness and her son were driving and talking. Her son didn't see the object and because she thought it was an advertising gimmick she never brought his attention to it. In fact, there was a loaded camera within reach. The object is best described as looking very detailed like a long burner in a gas furnace, horizontal to the observer. It didn't look to be very far away, about a quarter mile or more, and the witness said it didn't look big enough to hold an upright man. There is no telling what either of these objects were used for, but they were solid objects observed in the Evansville area. I investigated both cases and filed my reports with MUFON, the Deputy Director of Investigations, Dan Wright, with a file copy to the Center for UFO Studies. ENDREP |