One of the reasons I became fascinated with UFOs so early in life was because of a sighting that happened in 1966 in my home town of
However there was something particularly special about the 1966 sighting at Beach 6 of Presque Isle, besides its being classified as unsolved. It was a Close Encounter of the Third Kind.
It was around when something strange happened. Mrs Klem recounts the events as recorded in the
“We were sitting in the car waiting for help. We saw a star move. It got brighter. It would move fast, then dim. It came straight down. The car vibrated. I know we saw it, we had taken a walk in that area earlier. There was nothing between those trees then. All of a sudden it was just there.”
According to the witnesses the object was mushroom shaped with a narrow base rising to an oval structure. There were also lights on the back of the object. The UFO approached from the north and briefly hovered over the area before landing. Ms. Klem said a beam of light came from the craft and moved along the sand in a straight line as the craft dissapeared behind the tree line.
“It lit up the whole woods in the path. It wasn’t like a search light. There was light along the ground, along the whole path.”
She saidthe light did not waiver but continued to extend into the woods.
About this time the patrol car with officers Clark and Loeb returned as promised to offer assistance. Immediately the light from the object extinguished. The officers approached the car and were told of the craft that landed in the woods, and Mr. Tibbets offered to show them the general area where he thought it touched down. With Douglas Tibbets leading the way, the officers followed along-leaving the two young women and the children alone in the car.
Moments later as Betty Klem sat behind the steering wheel of the car she saw something emerge from the woods that the three had just entered. She thought at first that it was an animal, but then she saw the shape and size of it. What she saw was a dark featureless gorilla shaped humanoid about six feet tall walking toward them. Although not in the initial report in an interview with Mr. LaBelle on June 12th of 2008 he recounted that the girls told him that it circled the car from a distance and then came close and clawed at the car. Screaming in utter terror Ms. Klem immediately sounded the cars horn frantically. The creature then sluggishly moved back into the brush and the UFO rose and took off with incredible speed to the north just minutes before Mr. Tibbets and officers Clark and Loeb came running to their aid. To highlight the urgency at which they arrived Mr. LaBelle was told that one of the officers actually lost his service pistol in the sand and decided to forgo the seconds it would take to recover it in order to reach the distressed women as soon as possible.
Both girls were in a state of panic, and it took them a while to calm down. Mrs. Haifley was in such shock that she refused to talk about the incident. Ms. Klem initially refused to talk about it also but after removed from the location she began to relax and told the tale. The officers noticed scratches on the car where the being had made contact, and all four insisted that they were not there before the visit to Presque Isle. The four adults and two children were taken by patrol car to the Park Ranger station where they detailed the story. According to Mr. LaBelle more heavily armed patrolmen came in to assist with the situation and they refused to let the young people go back to their car to retrieve their belongings until morning.
By the following morning the State Police and United States Air Force were involved. Officers Paul Wilson and Robert Canfield investigated the area and found unusual impressions in the sand. About 350 to 400 yards away from the car two diamond shaped imprints about 18 inches wide and 6 to 8 inches deep were found 10 to 12 feet apart were discovered. In another place three impressions were found in a triangular pattern about 11 feet apart from each other. Finally officer Wilson found tracks that led in a straight line to the car. They were conical shaped, about 8 inches wide 5 to 7 inches deep and five to eight feet apart. Officer Wilson reported that he did not believe that they were footprints but seemed to have been made by some kind of heavy object or objects. Sometime during the morning Air Force investigators took a statement from Ms. Klem. Soon after the incident she was also interviewed by a Psychiatrist who affirmed that the testimony she gave about the incident seemed to be true and not due to illness or delusion.
In the days following the sighting beach 6 was filled with UFO enthusiasts waiting to catch a glimpse of what those young people saw that Sunday night, but no one else had such an experience.
I’m sure many of you have heard some version of this encounter. Various versions add or subtract various details. The memory of this incident lingers on in the small port town of
The reporter covering the Presque Isle story is Brian Sheridan, a well respected and long time television journalist in the
After seeing these videos I contacted Brian Sheridan and asked if he thought Kim Faulkner’s story was just a way for him to get his 15 minutes of fame. He wrote me back saying,
“…His brother confirmed the story Faulkner told. We also found the Boy's Life ad he mentioned. He was also the only one who contacted us after the first story ran who did not claim they did it as a hoax or prank. It made the most sense of anyone we talked with at the time. Other people just wanted to brag. Faulkner didn't even want to go on camera. He just called to fill me in on the story after his brother told him about the first piece we aired.”
The balloon that Mr. Faulkner launched as a child on that July night can still be purchased here:
So it seems the case is closed. We have a cause and a park policeman from the original report that seems to doubts the veracity of the sighting. Or is it? Something just didn’t sit right with me about the report. According to the report the wind carried the balloon northwest from Mr. Faulkner’s boyhood home on
I spent many hours in the outdoors of
Now I am by no means calling into question neither the reporting of Mr. Sheridan nor the veracity of Mr. Faulkner’s statement. But it just doesn’t seem possible that the Faulkner balloon was the source of the encounter on
Also it is a little reported fact that the UFO was observed by more than these 5 individuals at beach 6. In the
Steve Lupe was on Beach 2 with a group of friends that evening and he along with 3 others spotted an object hovering near the
French exchange students Helena Roche and Alain Orcel living at
Stephanie Mango of
Sue Karie, Linda Henderson, and Janice Dickey were sleeping out in the yard of the Karie household at
Here is a map compiling all the locations of these additional sightings that night located by the red dots. The light blue dot is where Mr. Faulkner released his balloon and the dark blue is beach 6 for reference.
So we do not have to rely upon the testimony of those who encountered the UFO close up at beach 6 that July evening in1966. I think the evidence is irrefutable that something landed on Presque Isle that night. And it seems to have had an occupant that looked very much like a Bigfoot type hominid. What it was is as much a mystery today as it was back in the summer of 1966.Is it evidence of the hairy bipedal hominids seen throughout the world are Extra-Terrestrial? Extra-Dinemsional? Or as some in my religious affiliation beleive they both are spiritual entities that impose themselves upon our plane of existence?
The original witnesses like many of those from the various 1960’s sightings are aging and some are no longer with us. Mr. LaBelle informed me that Douglas Tibbits passed on a few years ago and Mrs.Haifley moved out west a long time ago and had not been heard from since. Betty Jean Klem is still in the
There is another strange incident associated with this event. During my interview with Mr. LaBelle he lamented the fact that in every newspaper archive he has searched the initial reports of the incident turn up missing. If it is microfilm, that section omitted. If it is an actual paper the page has been ripped off. I found this curious, for when I initially searched our local library for the newspaper microfilm of
Interesting.
Until next time,
Pastor Swope
Comments
I'll bet my next paycheck that this incident is not a hoax. I am a psychologist, and it is very difficult to lie and fake convincingly when it comes to an incident eliciting extreme fright or panic.
I believe that during the summer of 1966 there were numerous UFO sightings in the region. I was fifteen at the time. My mother was pregnant with my brother. He was born Saturday July 30, 1966. My mother has always been a night owl and at that time we lived in Millcreek Township in Glenwood Estates. Our house was on a hill that overlooked the then under construction James S Wilson middle school. My mother still swears that one night earlier in July as she was checking the sliding door that led to a wooden deck before getting ready to go to bed, she saw a UFO houvering over the JS Wilson building site. The distance from our house was probably 300 to 500 yards. She says she watched it for several minutes and then it suddenly shot straight up into the sky and then disappeared. She said it was silent. She never saw anything like it again.
Well they came up with a few folks that were making balloons from dry cleaner bags, straws, and little candles. In the mean there were some folks running around the park with large fake movie monster feet. Presque Isle was a famous lovers lane until they started closing the park at night. A great place place to spook your date - or someone elses. More than a couple of guys lost hero status those nights fighting off "aliens". No folks this is up there with Loch Ness Bigfoot and other I want to believe in them stories. On real dark nights the ships out on the lake can look like lights in the sky, most folks see what they want especially when such irreftuable evidence is provided. Yeah I lived there too.
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