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Area UFO Followed By Trouble

Area UFO Followed By Trouble image
Parent Issue
Day
21
Month
April
Year
1966
Copyright
Copyright Protected
Rights Held By
Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
OCR Text

Area UFO Followed By Trouble

DEXTER — Whatever it was Frank Mannor, 47, and his family saw near their rented farmhouse here last month, they are not too happy about the whole thing.

A month ago, Wednesday, Mannor reported seeing a strange pyramid-shaped object with red, blue and white lights in swampland behind the house. His 19-year-old son, Ronald, and his wife, Leona, also saw something.

Their report, among the first of hundreds of such reports in Michigan, touched off an Air Force investigation, with the finding that what most people probably saw was the rare phenomenon of swamp gas.

But the Mannors still aren’t buying that explanation. They still believe it was something else they saw—just what, they don’t know.

Mannor said Wednesday he hasn’t spotted any more lights since that night.

“There have been sightings by other people around here, though,” he said. “They’re just not reporting them, in view of what happened to us.”

What happened to the Mannors—and is still plaguing them—is a flood of curiosity-seekers roaming the area in hopes of seeing something, too.

“We still have them around here a couple of times a week, sometimes at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning,” he said. “Mostly, they’re carloads of kids driving around or parking near house."

One night, Mannor said, some of the prowlers climbed onto the second story roof of the house, using a ladder that was left leaning against a wall.

“My daughter screamed, and I thought she was having a nightmare. But her mother went into the bedroom and heard them crawling across the roof, too,” he recalled.

As a result, Mannor is prepared for trespassers.

“You’d better believe it, he said, "I’ve got a shotgun in every room.”

Ever since the Mannors and others told of seeing strange objects there have been reports of mysterious lights and flying saucers elsewhere around the state and nation.

Only this week a deputy sheriff said he chased an unidentified flying object from Ohio into Pennsylvania. Hundreds of people in both states reported seeing the object which most agreed looked like two saucers, one atop the other.

On the same day, three municipal workers and a policeman in western Michigan saw what they said was a “hot dog” shaped object.

These sightings were in hours of darkness. Since the furor started a month ago there have been no reported daytime sightings.

Because of recurring and persistent reports, the Air Force has told Congress it will name a panel of scientists to investigate them in depth.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a Northwestern University astrophysicist and scientific consultant for the Air Force, urged just such a study after his probe of the sightings by Mannor and others in Michigan.

“I have recommended...that competent scientists quietly study such cases when evidence from responsible people appears to warrant such study. There may be much of potential value to science in such events.

“We know a very great deal more about the physical world in 1966 than we did in 1866—but, by the same token, the people in the year 2066 may regard us as very incomplete in our scientific knowledge," Hynek said.

“I don’t like a mystery,” Hynek told the Associated Press this week. “A mystery is an itch that should be scratched.”