"Saucer" Theories Swamping Sheriff's Office

'Saucer’ Theories Swamping Sheriff’s Office

By William B. Treml

Besides a lively topic of conversation, what has the recent rash of unidentified flying object reports brought to Washtenaw County?

Well, for one thing, it’s brought mail, telephone calls, personaI visits and screwball theories. They come from the vehemently “pro” (“These are outer space visitors!”) and the scoffing “con” (“Nothing but overactive imaginations!”).

Sheriff Douglas J. Harvey, whose department started the whole thing when two of his deputies made the first sighting early on the morning of March 14, receives sheaves of mail each day.

So does The News.

The mail brings hand-drawn pictures—-serious and otherwise—of UFOs, accounts of theories and offers of “proof” that the “saucers” are from another planet.

The same mail also brings angry blasts demanding that Harvey "put an immediate stop to these saucers” and sarcastic notes from hard-eyed scientists chiding the press for “promoting this farce by publicizing the reports.”

The sheriff has been forced to create a subsection in his “saucer" report file to hold the various complaints and “way out” suggestions on how to solve the mystery.

Into that file went a report some days ago about a man seen walking up and down a county road near a sighting of the UFO. The man was playing furiously on a violin, deputies reported.

When questioned, he told the officers that the strains from his violin were designed to attract the beings operating the flying saucers and bring them to earth. The nocturnal violinist was ordered

Deputies no longer go racing to the scene of a reported sighting. They respond now only after a report of an object landing has been received. But a few days ago they sped to Pittsfield Township where a man said an object of red and green was about to land.

When the officers arrived they took a good look at the red and green box kites high in the air, got back in their car and resumed patrol.

Some persons who claim to have made contact with outer space beings manning the UFO’s have promised Harvey they will have him in touch with the “little men” when the time is ripe. Others tell him the saucer operators won’t land until it gets warmer.

Perhaps the most bizarre report of communication links made from earth to space creatures appears in a recent leaflet called "Mark-Age Inform-Nations” published in Miami, Fla.

The pamphlet lists happenings through March including the sightings reported in Dexter Township and throughout Washtenaw County. The writer, lauded the “intensive, factual, fair” press coverage of the sightings and offered an
explanation of the local “saucers”:

“At the regular noon Project Power prayer session, Yolanda received the information that five mother ships were stationed above the Earth's atmosphere. They had not received instructions for further action, but were awaiting such possibility,”

After the sightings at Hillsdale College a week ago “Yolanda" received more messages from space, the pamphlet notes. She was able to “see clairvoyantly” the sender of the messages who she reports was “attired in an all-white space suit, the usual one-piece jump suit she has often seen them wear. This time the head was covered completely, except for an opening at the face for breathing apparatus.”

Pranksters continue to confuse the already confusing issue as they periodically pop up with their road flares attached to balloons, their “home-made saucers” and their blinking, colored flashlights.

Members of a University fraternity got into the swing of things recently by erecting a “spaceport” on the front lawn of their house. The “port” featured a “customs” office and comfortable chairs for the space creatures to use while awaiting earthly red tape.

While most of the mail concerning the “saucer” sightings finds its way to the County Jail and Harvey’s office, some of it is delivered to Ann Arbor Police Chief Rolland J. Gainsley. Recently he brought over to the sheriff a handful of letters addressed to: “Chief of Flying Saucer Detail,” “UFO Police” and “Investigators of Objects.”

Citizens’ theories on what the flying objects actually are cover a wide range.

One belief was recently expressed by a Manchester area man who saw and reported a UFO last fall. He said after
thinking about what he had seen he decided it was a vehicle owned and operated by the U. S. Air Force. But the dozens of sightings reported in the past two weeks have changed his mind.

“If these were Air Force objects which they were trying to keep secret it’d seem logical after all these sightings they’d decide to put them in the garage for a while — take them completely out of circulation,” the local resident says. "But as the number of reported sightings continues. I feel certain the Air Force is not grounding them simply because they can’t — these things are not ours.”

The series of sightings here apparently has captured the imagination of the nation. The area and the reports are the subject of detailed articles in national magazines and newspapers throughout the country have published editorials and comments on the situation.

Radio and television have taken advantage of the news
angle with tape - recordings, filmed segments and interviews of principals involved.

To date requests for copies of editions of The News containing accounts of the sightings have been received from 50 cities in 23 states.

Probably the request which came the greatest distance was a letter from a publication in Melbourne, Australia.

“Send us all you have on your UFOs,” the letter said.

And although it has been almost two weeks since the reported "landing” of a UFO in the Frank Mannor swamp in Dexter Township people are still anxious to “see where it happened.” Sheriff’s deputies say the narrow, dirt roads around the secluded Mannor farm on McGuiness Rd. are often clogged with cars loaded with sightseers who want a look at the landing spot of a “saucer.”

Mannor himself says the visitors “seem to think that they can force one out of the sky by the weight of numbers.”

Deputies agree many motorists park on roads leading to the Mannor home and remain there “for hours” as they anxiously scan the sky.

Vandals make occasional runs on to the Mannor property but recently a half-dozen teen-agers were routed from the area after a shotgun blast was fired into the night sky. The youths, later picked up by police, admitted they were prowling the Mannor farm without good reason.

Where will it all end?

No one can really say.

But Harvey probably speaks for police everywhere when he says:

“I just wish someone would resolve the thing one way or another. It’s become a nuisance and a bother now. It’s disrupted police protection and put a lot of responsible citizens on edge. The way it stands today it’s an unhealthy situation.”