 | | | | | | | | | | |  |  | | | | Paranormal: UFOs in Duluth">2. Paranormal News | | | | | | | 
2. Paranormal News | News submitted by: MoonSeeker
BY CHUCK FREDERICK -
On the silver screen this summer, eye-popping aliens soar to Earth and battle "Men in Black" stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.
Far-fetched, sure. All in good fun. You betcha.
But the Hollywood humor and hijinks don't actually strike too from home. Believe it. Duluth's own history sizzles with tales of close encounters, unexplained shooting lights, accusations of government coverups and even a Central Hillside observatory curator who believed passionately that intelligent life existed beyond Earth.
"We have had visitors from space," former Darling Observatory curator Frank Halstead said in 1961. "In the universe we are not alone."
What's more, Duluth's tales of UFOs, especially when viewed through the filter of time, share a chilling similarity. Nearly every one has a nuance, a curiosity or something that just can't be explained. The freaky. Read through these bizarre tales and see if you don't come up with a similar word.
Then see if you don't take a glance heavenward.
'Definitely something... I don't know what'
The Date: Early 1950s
The Incident: Retired Maj. Gen. Wayne Gatlin of Duluth's Air National Guard base was flying a routine training mission when he and another fighter pilot saw something that furrowed their brows.
"A light. A super bright light," Gatlin recalled this month. "We were on this side of (Lake Superior). It was on the other side. We took off after it."
Gatlin knows many UFO sightings are actually meteors, the planet Venus, weather balloons, satellites and other things. But he flew fighter jets long enough to know the difference, he said.
"That thing wasn't a star or a meteor or anything," Gatlin said. "It was just this big bright light. It started to move away from us when we gave chase. It was definitely something. I don't know what."
The Freaky: "We never could catch it," said Gatlin, who was flying an F-51D Mustang, one of the fastest aircraft of its era. "We didn't tell anyone what happened for the longest time afterward, either. We figured they'd think we were crazy. I probably shouldn't even be talking about it now."
'Weird Calls Plague Area'
The Date: July 13, 1961
The Incident: Telephones rang across Duluth and at the offices of the News-Tribune and Herald.
Beeps and high-pitched sounds were heard on the other end of the line. There also was a lone voice with an eerie message.
"On July 14 at 9:30 p.m.," the voice droned, "we will land our spaceship on (U.S.) Highway 2 about seven miles west of Proctor. If you understand this message, repeat it."
Folks repeated the message. Baffled telephone company officials launched an investigation. And the morning News-Tribune carried a story under the headline, "Weird Calls Plague Area Residents."
The Freaky: Precisely seven miles west of Proctor on U.S. Highway 2 sits Munger Tavern. There's no evidence there that any spaceship ever landed. And 41 years later, to the day, patrons remain baffled.
"Some of the people in here are probably from that spaceship," current tavern owner Cyndy Liupakka joked this month.
'Bright Flash... Proves Puzzler'
The Date: Sept. 17, 1961
The Incident: A blinding bluish flash filled the skies over Duluth, touching off speculation an aircraft exploded in flight.
Duluth Air Guard officials quickly discounted the speculation, leaving witnesses to wonder just what they had seen.
Picnickers near Lake Superior and others reported an object in the sky in the wake of the flash. It soared to the northwest, then made two right-angle turns, first to the southwest and then to the southeast.
David Claypool of Duluth told a newspaper reporter the resulting vapor trail formed a "kind of square C in the sky."
Roy Peterson of the Morris Thomas Road said the initial flash was so bright he was forced to slow down his car.
Halstead, the former Darling Observatory curator, quickly discounted notions the flash was caused by a meteor. A meteor wouldn't move in a C-shape, he said. And the flash's blue-white color indicated a high rate of speed.
"The descriptions of the object by persons to whom I talked has convinced me, without a doubt, that the object was either controlled by intelligent beings within the craft or by remote control," Halstead said in a News-Tribune story headlined, "Bright Flash in Sky Proves Puzzler." Halstead was a member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.
The Freaky: Similar blinding bluish flashes were reported at the exact same moment in Chicago and in Fort Wayne, Ind., but in no other cities in between. Skies over all three locations were clear that day.
UFO about 100 feet across
The Date: Feb. 13, 1965
The Incident: University of Minnesota Duluth instructors Donald Jackson and Bill McEwen, as well as McEwen's wife, were on their way to the state curling matches in Hibbing when they saw an unidentified flying object in the night sky.
About 100 feet across and descending, the object was about five miles east of the Hibbing-Chisholm municipal airport, off Minnesota Highway 37.
The Duluthians reported what they saw to the airport's flight service station, which notified the air base in Duluth.
The Freaky: A highway patrol officer from Walker reported a similar object within half a minute of the instructors' report.
Boy spots buzzing red ball
The Date: Aug. 4, 1965
The Incident: Already in bed, 8-year-old Dennis Johnson of Duluth suddenly bolted upright at the sound of a loud buzzing.
"I went to the window and saw a red-ball-like thing over the neighbor's house," the boy told a News-Tribune reporter. The object made a whirring sound and headed toward Superior Street.
"On the back of the red ball was a flap-like tail that was silver and glowed," the boy said.
He called for his father to look out the family's front window, at 1722 Jefferson St. James Johnson told reporters he didn't see anything but said he heard a car "with a different kind of muffler."
The Freaky: More than 50 Minneapolis police and Hennepin County sheriff's officers reported UFOs over the Twin Cities the same night, according to Associated Press reports. The next day, an Air Force spokesman in Washington, D.C., said a variety of meteoric showers were probably to blame for the rash of sightings.
An official denial
The Date: Aug. 5, 1965
The Incident: Duluth Air Base officials publicly denied their planes had taken off to look for flying saucers.
The Freaky: Although sightings had been reported in the Midwest and in the Southwest, reports of UFOs in the Duluth area hadn't been recorded until after the air base's official public statement.
Retired Brig. Gen. Raymond T. Klosowski, the former commander of Duluth's 148th Fighter Wing, said this month that such denials were common for the air base back then.
"There was no standard policy, but it happened often enough," he said.
Aircraft from the base were scrambled, or sent into the air, on UFO calls one or two times every three or four years, Klosowski said.
"Most of the time the calls could be explained," he said. "One time we chased a weather balloon. The sun was reflecting off it. But it was moving so slow, it was easy to catch.
"I only had one scramble like that myself," Klosowski said. "That turned out to be a goofy reflection off a lighthouse in Ashland.
"A lot of pilots, when they went on calls like that, they were real reluctant to get into the newspaper," he said. "No one wants to be in the paper for something like that."
'There it is!'
The Date: Aug. 6, 1965
The Incident: Breathless, a Superior man called Coast Guard officials just after midnight.
He had seen a UFO splash into the water near the former Interstate Bridge. The craft was underwater, the man said. He could see it. He offered to take authorities to the exact spot.
They went, according to reports in the morning News-Tribune.
"There it is!" The unidentified Superiorite shouted, pointing at the water.
The Freaky: "He was the only one who could see anything," a Coast Guardsman said.
Later in the day, Duluth air base officials termed recent reports of UFOs "unqualified." They denied Air Force planes were scrambled to look for saucers. Temperature inversions reflect radar beams and produce radar returns similar to an actual object, one air base official said, explaining blips that had been spotted on radar screens and reported.
News pages now missing
The Date: Aug. 7, 1965
The Incident: Thousands of Duluthians stood in the streets and gawked as air base planes vainly chased unidentified flying objects across Lake Superior, according to newsman Frank Edwards's 1966 book "Flying Saucers -- Serious Business."
The UFOs, as many as 10 of them, flew in a V-formation at about 9,000 mph, according to United Press International, which cited the Air Force Radar Base in the Keewenaw Peninsula of Michigan as its source.
The Air Force planes couldn't keep up and were easily outdistanced, the reports said.
The next morning, news of the UFOs and of the Air Force's unsuccessful chase dominated the front page of the Duluth News-Tribune. A headline screamed, 'Thousands See Flying Objects -- Jets Chase UFOs Over Duluth Area.'
The Freaky: That front page of the News-Tribune is now missing from the microfilm archives not only in the newspaper's library, but in the main Duluth Public Library and at the library at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
But that happens from time to time, right?
"That's the first time I've ever seen it," UMD business reference librarian Jim Vileta said. "The men in black are probably involved here. They must have taken the page."
There's probably a more logical explanation. The microfilm reels at all three libraries were produced by the same ProQuest Co. of Ann Arbor, Mich. A ProQuest spokesman said it's rare for a page to be missed, but does happen. In this instance, the mistake was likely reproduced for all three customers.
The coincidence that the missing page just happens to be the one containing the story of the UFO sighting fuels suspicions of conspiracy. Duluth video producer Don Hansen searched for the front page back in 1987.
"From what I can gather, this was a major sighting. But it appears to have been expunged from the record," Hansen said. "That page is gone from every single source I could think of. They were thorough, whoever 'they' are."
'UFO Terrifies Duluthians'
The Date: Aug. 17, 1966
The Incident: The light in the sky looked like a small moon at first, or perhaps like the spotlights on the front of an airplane.
It dimmed, but remained visible, as Jimmy Luhm and three passengers turned off Minnesota Highway 61 and onto Lakewood Road toward home.
"I think 'the blob' is going to get us," Luhm joked, referring to a classic horror film of the time.
But the light turned out to be no joke.
"I'm driving along and I'm looking at that thing and all of a sudden it jumps like a basketball and then it comes down toward the Earth like it was shooting down a ski hill," Luhm recalled this month. "It was about the size of a football field. It hovered right over our car and caused so much wind and it lit up the sky like daytime."
His windows steaming up inexplicably, Luhm slammed the car in reverse and fled.
"I must have set speed records for driving backwards," he said. "The thing started to spin and then it took off over the lake toward Two Harbors. All it left was a vapor trail. That thing looked just like a moon on fire. You never forget something like that."
Luhm said he saw blue, green and faint red whirling lights on the object. When it drew closer, it gave off a blue-green hue.
The Freaky: Luhm immediately called authorities. But while his report was the only one in the Duluth area that night, it wasn't the only one in Minnesota. Not by a long shot.
Similar glowing objects were reported in the Minnesota cities of Plymouth, Crystal, Coon Rapids, Waconia and Ponsford. Twin Cities radio stations and the Twin Cities weather bureau took more than 75 overnight calls about sightings, according to the Associated Press.
At the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, control tower employees reported a glowing object. At the Flying Cloud Airport southwest of Minneapolis, pilots said a glowing object settled down on an east-west runway that night before it zoomed up and away.
Luhm said officials tried to talk him out of filing his report. His name and sometimes-controversial opinions were common on editorial pages.
"No one will believe you," he said he was told. But he stuck to his story.
A UFO expert read about the sighting -- "UFO Terrifies Duluthians," the headline read the next morning -- and called Luhm for an interview. After an hour of questioning, the expert determined Luhm had seen static from power lines.
"Boy, that teed me off," said Luhm, who lives near Twig. "There were no power lines around there back then."
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthtribune/living/community/3765981.htm
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