THIS REENTRY HAD COMPANY

By Bob Gribble (Ret.)Director,
UFO Reporting Center

On December 12, 1987, fiery objects streaked over the central US and were observed by thousands of people in a 14 state area. According to North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the display was caused by an orbiting Soviet rocket casing which had reentered Earth's atmosphere. In a corridor extending northwest to southeast from Montana to Florida, the glowing objects were seen by airliner crews at altitudes exceeding 30,000 feet.

Most observers reporting to the National UFO Reporting Center estimated the altitude of the objects to be quite high. During the same time frame of the reported high altitude sightings, however, several witnesses reported close encounter experiences and very low altitude flights of wingless vehicles. If the descriptions given by these witnesses is accurate, then, I think it would be safe to assume that several large UFOs accompanied the burning space debris as it entered our atmosphere.

As the fiery objects passed overheat at approximately 8:50 pm (CST) objects moving at very low altitude were first reported by witnesses located five miles west of Eudora, Kansas. Two "huge" oblong objects -- each surrounded by a haze of light -- passed directly overhead heading southeast into the state of Missouri. Lights or lighted openings extended the full length of the objects and they were visible for about three minutes, moving very slowly. Shortly thereafter a 34-year-old male witness living on the shore of the Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, (near the city of Climax Springs), had just loaded his fireplace with wood and walked out the first floor of his house to get more firewood. Ten other members of his family were on the second floor. He was standing in the driveway looking out across the lake when something told him to turn around. As he turned he looked up into the sky just as a cloud of mist came over the tops of the trees. The mist was so thick it engulfed the top limbs of the trees, and when the "cloud" reached a point almost overhead he could see three oblong objects as big as jet airliners about 300 feet off the ground. Suddenly the objects stopped. The man could hear no sound but, as the cloud of mist thinned he could see a row of lighted openings extending along the length of the three objects.

Describing his experience, the witness, who I shall refer to as J.E., said: "They were shrouded inside a mist, and my body wasn't able to move. I was not able to move. My body could not move. I wanted to scream for my girl friend, my sister-in-law, my mother, my brother, and the seven children who were in the house, to come look, too. I tried to scream. The object stood there and hovered about 300 feet from me. I'm talking about three craft the size of a large jet airliner at a minimum. No wings or tails. Cigar-shaped, in formation side by side. When the craft ceased to move the cloud began to thin. As the cloud thinned I could see lights; I could see the shape of the craft.

They appeared to be dark green. They each had a least 30 windows at a minimum. Identical to the rows of windows on an airliner. I saw faces looking out the windows at me, pointing at me with their fingers. They stood there and looked at me and cocked their heads and pointed like I was an exhibition in a zoo.

"The light from inside the craft was so bright, shining out the windows, that I could tell... their heads were human-shaped. I could tell there were eyes in the heads; I could tell that the eyes were large. There were no visual appearances of hair or ears from what I cold see. They definitely had a human-shaped body. When the objects stopped over me, the closest one to me raised up so that the next one could lower down, in stairstep fashion, then the third lowered down, so that the people; creatures; or whatever; could see me plainly. They stared at me like I was a zebra in a zoo, like a lion in a cage, an insect in a jar. They were undoubtedly carrying on a conversation because of the way the heads were pointing and looking at each other. I could tell these "things" were talking about the fact that I was standing down there on the ground.

"The minute, and I mean the very instant those craft started to move away my body started to move and that's when I started screaming. 'God, everybody, come out here right now,' and I'm screaming like a mad man, 'come out and see this right now.' I was so hysterical. Everybody ran out immediately and they all saw them, too. I had no idea how long I was out in the driveway. I estimate 10 or 15 minutes.

As the three objects moved out over the lake and disappeared from view, J.E. and his brother drove to the top of a nearby hill hoping to see the craft again. The brother became frightened and returned to the house. J.E. explains what happened after his brother left: "I'm standing on top of my truck with my binoculars looking for them to come back. People were passing and saying, 'You saw it, too.' I said, 'Yes, I saw it, too.' An elderly couple, who live on the lake with me, saw the craft across Highway 7 near Climax Springs. They pulled their truck off the road and got out, each holding a camera. They told me they were unable to remove the lens cap off of their cameras.

According to J.E. all three of the craft were cigar-shaped. On the back they had pods that resembled jet engine pods on the back of a 727 airliner, except that they had a green glob of light that was mounted to the top of these pods. Out of the back of the pods were lights that were identical to the headlights of a car in a fog. "They were shrouded in a cloud of mist," J.E. said. "They stopped so close to me that I could see no seams, no rivets, no plates. The skin of these vehicles was totally smooth, with a flat texture. The third one was virtually touching the tops of the trees (when it lowered itself). I was so scared... I have never in my life experienced anything like this. My whole attitude just got a whole rearrangement, because I know I'm not nuts. I was stone sober and I don't do drugs. I know what I saw." J.E. is a corporate salesman and is highly respected in his community.

At about 9:03 pm and 70 miles northeast of Climax Springs, two adults, in separate vehicles, were driving west on Highway 50, 10 miles east of Lynn, Missouri. In the distance they observed a pair of "big" white lights moving about 50 to 100 mph at very low altitude. As the lights got closer, the two witnesses could see that they were part of an oblong vehicle of some kind.

Mr. T.H., 34, gave the following description of what he saw: "It was moving slow and was never more than 100 feet off the ground. It crossed Highway 50 and was about 200 feet from the roadway on the South side. Suddenly it stopped, and we watched the thing hover about 100 feet off the ground. Then it lowered itself real easy into the woods. We stopped and watched it for a little while but decided not to walk over and look at it. There was no sound. We decided it was time to get back into the car and go on about our business. A man in a white pickup truck had also stopped and he was still there as we were leaving." T.H. estimated the object to be as long as two large military helicopters put together lengthwise.

Other less spectacular reports of low level flights were received from Missouri that night. Two adult witnesses in St. Louis reported seeing three "missile-shaped" objects with a surface like stainless steel move across the sky. In Chesterfield, a suburb of St. Louis, Mr. T.B. reported that he and several friends watched three oblong objects in the sky for five to six minutes. They looked like "slender Goodyear blimps."

Shortly after the reported landing near Lynn, another close encounter occurred about 200 miles to the North in Iowa. Mr. M.L., 24, who has a farm at Oskaloosa, was out in a field just west of his house riding a three-wheeler at 9:15 pm, when an object with lights came over the top of the trees and stopped right over him. At that point the lights on the object went out. "I was at a dead stop," M.L. said. I shined my wheat light up into the air, about 50 to 60 feet, and the beam from the light hit the surface of the object. It was shiny and reflected off the bottom of it. It was like stainless steel of some kind. It was just a big shiny object, at least 80 to 100 feet long and 40 to 60 feet wide. I didn't hear any motor noise at all. It sat there for a minute then it took off to the southeast of my place. When it took off it didn't have any lights on. Then when it got off quite a ways the lights came on. There were three lights down one side of it and it had bright streaks shooting out the back of it."

M.L. raced back to his house hoping that his wife would be able to see it. When he arrived his young son and his wife were standing outside. They had seen the lights as they went by the house. "The next day some friends were telling me that they had seen in the papers that the object was a Soviet satellite that was supposed to be on fire," M.T. explained. "Whatever this was, it was not on fire. I've never seen anything like it. It scared me."