UFOs IN MONTANA

(This is for you Bill!)

MONTANA SIGHTINGS

READER STORIES

Folks have been reporting UFO sightings from all around the Big Sky State since the early 1950s.

Here's a look at some of the more recent sightings, which were submitted by Tribune readers.

TRIBUNE, GREAT FALLS, MT

NOT AN AIRCRAFT

What I saw wasn't much, but it stuck with me in a big way. I didn't even share it with my father until 1995, and we have both been following sightings and cattle phenomena for years.

My parents' home is on Clark Avenue in Great Falls and their kitchen window used to have a wonderful view of the Anaconda Smokestack. I wish I had written down a date but at the time I was more concerned with burying what I saw deep in my mind.

I was up early one fall Sunday morning during the early '80s. At the time, I was in my early teens. Serving as an altar boy for the early mass at Saints Peter and Paul quite regularly, I often found myself making a quick breakfast -- Cream of Wheat that morning. It was cooking on the stove as I stood in front of the window and admired the stack.

What I saw didn't last more than three or four seconds. The objects appeared about the size of a slightly elongated pencil lead. One of them came in from the East and the other from the West. They passed each other almost due north of the stack, and traveled on until it appeared they circled back toward one another. They passed one another again, and once again it appeared they circled back toward each other. This last time, however, they didn't pass each other. They stopped right next to each other, as I could see a small space between them, and with speed that I can only call incredible, they shot straight north toward Canada.

Being around aircraft all of my life I know what they can do, and what I saw was no conventional aircraft.

Erik Schabel, Riverbank, CA

FLASHING LIGHTS

This summer, July or August, my boyfriend C. J. Aimsback and I took six of my little cousins swimming. We went to my uncle Joe Bear and Auntie Sarah's house, one mile north, past Twins Lake, and asked (Sarah) if she wanted to come down to the river.

After swimming for hours, Sarah said to come up and eat. It must have been 5:30 or 6 p.m. when we went inside to eat, and then we sat around visiting. By this time night had fallen. As we were getting ready to leave, I told C.J. to go start the truck and he yelled, "Lisa, come here." We all ran outside and saw big lights -- red, blue and white... or was it green? -- in the sky above my Uncle Sassy's house, and then it moved right next to Joe Bear's house. They just sat there for about five minutes turning and turning in circles, then took off really fast. There were three of them. We watched them play in the sky for a few more minutes, then watched them go into Badger Canyon.

The cops on the scanner when we got home said they were planes. But, what do they know? They weren't as close as we were.

Lisa Mae Little Dog, Browning, MT

TWICE IN ONE YEAR

I went grocery shopping with my mother-in-law and father-in-law in Cut Bank. We left Cut Bank around 7:30 p.m. and saw this blinking red light that looked like a Mercy Flight at the height a helicopter would be.

Because of its speed we started to think it was moving too fast for a plane or helicopter. In seconds it went all the way across the sky, out by Old Agency.

Twice in one year... yeah, I do think little green men are taking over our big blue sky.

Lisa Mae Little Dog

HOVERING CIGAR

It was a warm summer night in 1976. My husband and I had just left the local movie theater in Cut Bank. It was still light out at 9 p.m. as we drove up Railroad Street to the Point Drive-in for an ice cream cone.

As we neared our destination we could see something huge, long and cigar-shaped hovering over Tank Hill. In those days our craft just did not hover. There were colored lights on the bottom of this craft that sort of glowed off and on. It seemed like there were windows also, but I could not exactly tell what I was seeing.

We stopped right in the middle of the street and got out of our car to get a better look. I noticed the people in the car behind us did the same. All of a sudden, the strange craft zoomed toward the airport at a tremendous speed and hovered there.

We jumped back in our car and headed through town toward the airport to see what the ominous-looking UFO was doing. It had moved so fast that our eyes could barely make out that it went toward the airport. Before we could get there it suddenly zoomed up into the atmosphere and out of sight.

At that time, there were minutemen missiles being put into the ground 50 miles away near Conrad. We had heard stories of strange aircraft and cattle mutilations in the area.

I don't know what I saw. It could have been an experimental aircraft from government sources or a real UFO. For 1976, it was truly an amazing sight to see

Nadine Akkerman, Havre, MT