11226 PM-CT--Brite-NoUFOs AP-RG LOCAL NEWS RUSH 170 04/29 10:19 AM
PM-CT--Brite-No UFOs,170 (0953m0ct--nr010NY)
UFO Sightings Turn Out to Be Light From McDonald's
STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) - Residents reported seeing something
strange in the sky last weekend, but instead of turning out to be a
UFO, the unusual white lights were only a restaurant promotion.
Police said several residents of the Southfield Village housing
complex reported seeing a UFO Friday evening. When officers
responded, a woman pointed out an unusual light pattern over Long
Island Sound and ``stated she believed UFOs were approaching
Southfield Village,'' according to the police report.
Police called officials at the National UFO Reporting Center in
Seattle, who in turn called the Mutual UFO Network in Seguin,
Texas, an organization dedicated to studying the UFO phenomenon.
Walter Andrus, president of the organization, said the Stamford
sighting turned out to be nothing more than four spotlights from
Westchester County, N.Y.
Police in Port Chester, N.Y., said the McDonald's restaurant
used the white lights to mark the opening of their newly renovated
restaurant.
AP-NY-04-29-92 1018EST
WIRE: TIME PRINTED: 01:53 SATURDAY OCT 13 1990
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6999 AM-CT--UFO Conventio UA-RG LOCAL NEWS-AP RUSH 1207 10/12/90 17:33:25
AM-CT--UFO Convention, Conn Bjt,600 (APTVnnr )
MH
At This Convention, No Scoffing Over Stories Of Alien Beings
NORTH HAVEN, Conn. (AP) - The stories will be flying this weekend
about alien creatures with three-digit hands and windowless,
disc-shaped spacecraft.
And no one will be laughing.
More than a dozen UFO researchers and people who claim to have
been abducted by aliens are meeting in North Haven for the fourth
annual international conference on "The UFO Experience."
Robert Luca and Betty Andreasson Luca of Connecticut will be
there. Betty, 53, who does not want her address known, says she was a
7-year-o1d Massachusetts resident when aliens first visited her in
1944.
Luca, whose encounters have been described in several books, says
she was abducted three times by gray-skinned, hairless creatures, 3
feet to 4 feet tall with three-digit hands and holes for ears and
nostrils.
"It's not only me," she said. "There are hundreds of thousands
of cases already documented worldwide. There are many who haven't
reported it because they can't deal with the bizarreness of it."
Ed Walters of Gulf Breeze, Fla., will also be there. He said he
would tell the conference about the day he came home from a
construction job in 1987 and saw a round, glowing object hovering
near his driveway. It was the first of his reported experiences with
UFOs.
UFO researchers attending the conference issued an appeal Friday
to president Bush to "take the wraps off the governmental cover-up
of the UFO situation."
"We want Bush to put an end to the secrecy over research by the
intelligence and military community into UFOs and to tell the
American public and the rest of the world the truth about what they
have found," said John White, whose business, Omega Communications,
is putting on the conference.
White said a copy of the appeal was mailed Friday to the White
house.
White, who describes himself as a researcher of paranormal
phenomena, said the conference at the Holiday Inn is a chance for
people at a full weekend cost of $150, unless they pre-registered
for $120) to meet the leading figures in the field of UFO research.
White said he saw a UFO in 1987 in Pine Bush, N.Y. He described
his encounter as a nighttime sighting of an unusual light.
"I didn't see a metallic craft without windows," he said.
"As a seasoned investigator in these phenomena, I was unable to
explain it by any natural cause," he said.
Ninety percent of UFO reports come from well-intentioned people
whose sightings can be explained as natural phenomena or known
technology, according to Robert Bletchman, a Manchester attorney and
public relations director for MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network.
The network estimates 2.5 million Americans have had valid UFO sightings,
including 25,000 Connecticut residents.
White said it's possible some sightings may be explained by secrect
military projects, such as development of the Stealth bomber, long
kept under warps.
But, he added: "I'm convinced some UFO sightings represent human
contact with an extraterrestrial presence."
"For someone to tell me (there is no such thing as a UFO) after
never having looked at all the evidence, then that is just an
ignorant opinion," he said.
Kenneth Feder, an anthropology professor at Central Connecticut
State University who has studied UFO literature, said many believers
are people who take comfort from the idea there are more intelligent
beings somewhere in the universe.
"I'm not saying these folks are replacing their religions with
UFOs, but there's an undercurrent in most UFO literature that we've
screwed up the planet badly and these guys are out there watching and
will come down and take charge when we're about to destroy
ourselves," Feder said.
AP-NY-10-12-90 1731EDT+