John A. Keel WHY UFOS

throughout the summer of 1968. Hundreds of peoplereportedly saw strange formations of flying objects overMalaga, Madrid, and the Balearic Islands. On September8, 1968, a Spanish Air Force jet pursued a glowingpyramid-shaped thing over Madrid for sixty-five minutes,finally losing it at 50,000 feet. It was tracked on radar andphotographed.On the night of Sunday, September 15, another one ofour strange "meteors" appeared over the New EnglandStates, following the usual northwest to southeast coursedown from Canada. That week an enormous new flaperupted in the busy Ohio-West Virginia sector. Mrs. MaryHyre, the Associated Press stringer in Point Pleasant, wasinundated with hundreds of phone calls and sightingreports. She wrote only one newspaper article on the flap.In a telephone conversation that fall, she told me, "I'vediscovered that the less I write about these things now, themore people tell me what they've seen. Most of them don'twant any publicity at all, and if they think I'm going towrite up their story, they shy away from telling it."In Nova Scotia, four boys reported seeing a blackcircular object dive out of the sky and disappear into thewaters of the Cornwallis River dike on the afternoon ofSeptember 15. A professor from the National ResearchCouncil's meteorite committee interviewed them, and thestory appeared in the Halifax, Nova Scotia, Chronicle-Herald on September 18. The boys said the object firsthovered in the air, "oscillating like a spinning top," beforeit dipped down into the water. They estimated it was about15 feet across and 6 feet high. It made no noise, and thewater didn't even splash when it submerged.Elsewhere in Canada, a wave of low-level sightings,landings, and creature appearances took place in thevillages around Montreal, Quebec, that week. Canadianresearcher Gene Duplantier collected the many reports andprepared a comprehensive summary for his magazine,Saucers, Space and Science. Other close sightings occurredon September 13, 16, and 17 in assorted areas in theprovince of Ontario.On Wednesday, November 20, 1968, another train ofstrange lights traversed the British Isles, going from northnorthwestto south-southeast. These were formations ofmulticolored objects with short tails in their wakes. Theyappeared at approximately 7 P.M. and were seen that nightin northwestern Europe as well. One of the many witnesses,