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Written by Keith Rowell
Last Updated: 07 November 2022

A message from Oregon MUFON State Director Tom Bowden:

Due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19, Oregon MUFON meetings are being held on-line using the Zoom application. You can get more information about our meetings by sending a message to Tom Bowden.

Tom Bowden, Oregon State Director, MUFON

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Written by Keith Rowell
Last Updated: 27 November 2018

Your OM website editor has been going lately to some Portland area CE-5 type meetings. These are Steven Greer-inspired meetings where we intentionally seek to contact saucer-related NHI (non-human intelligence). (For more than you ever wanted to know about NHI, UFOs, CE-5s, etc., try the FREE group's newly published Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness and Contact with Non Human Intelligence, Volume One.)  So far, I've managed to see one high flying, night time "something" streak across the sky and do a quickie gyration, and then fade.  With the gyration maneuver, this was likely not a satellite. Anyway, I met two very pleasant fellow CE-5ers, DH and his wife JH. Here is his story experienced with his wife back in 1989.

UFO Type: One large saucer-shaped, windowed UFO at close range.

Sighting Duration: About 3 to 4 minutes or more.

Date: On or about February 2, 1989.

Time: Between 9 and 11 PM.

Place: SE Portland, Oregon.

Witnesses: DH and his wife JH

Here is DH's story in his own words:

Around the date of February 2nd of 1989, I went outside to get something from my car when I looked up to my left in the sky and saw something that I had never seen before. I am a private pilot and yet this object defied everything I had ever learned about flying. It was [seemed?] as large as a whole city block and was floating only between 200 to 300 feet above the ground. It was between 9 and 11 pm and was extremely cold outside, between 15 to 18 degrees.

It was a huge saucer-shaped object with windows and occupants looking out of the windows and walking from window to window.

At first, I thought it might be a blimp, but upon closer observation, it became obvious that it was not. There was absolutely no noise coming from the object and it was totally seamless. I was thinking to myself. Who are you? Where are you from? And immediately I got a telepathic response, "Do not be afraid. We are just observing and surveying. There are tectonic plates that are unstable and they [we?] have an ability to stabilize the fault lines."

It was floating from north to south very slowly. After approximately one minute of standing still and taking it all in, I thought I should run and get my wife to see this before it was out of sight. She came out to see it, which made me feel a little better so I didn’t feel I was going crazy. I have not told many people about this because I think a lot of people would question my sanity. However, I started researching this episode and have become aware that other people have had similar experiences.

I have always thought that since we (humans) are here, why couldn’t there be other life elsewhere. Well, after this experience, I have no doubt that there is other life beyond our planet. As a young child, I was given a telescope and loved looking up at the moon and seeing the craters. There were many times that while observing the moon thru the telescope, I would see a tiny black speck moving across the surface of the moon from left to right. I always wondered what that was. I now know what that was. The astronauts that landed on the moon have reported that when they landed on the Sea of Tranquility, they were being watched by saucers that were parked around the rim of the crater they were in. When people ask me why they have not heard about this, my answer is, from what the astronauts have indicated, NASA’s management has told the astronauts if you say anything about this you will not get your pensions.

With the Freedom of Information Act, they were at liberty to disclose this information without penalty. Gordon Cooper wrote a book called Leap of Faith: An Astronaut's Journey into the Unknown. In his book, he described a time when he landed at Edwards Air Force Base and an extraterrestrial spacecraft landed right in front of him. He took pictures, but his superior officer demanded that he give the camera and film to him. In the book there is a lot more detail, but suffice it to say there is ample proof in the book to support the claims that we are being visited.

Since my original sighting, my wife and I have seen many crafts that are not from here. We have joined a CE-5 group in Portland and enjoy being with people that are openly trying to communicate with other intelligent life forms that are out there.

When I asked DH to make a drawing of the UFO he saw, he said he wasn't a very good artist but looked around on the Internet and found this illustration:

 

In discussing his sighting further at one of our CE-5 meetings, DH indicated how close his sighting was and how big the UFO seemed. He indicated a very large angular size of perhaps 35 to 40 degrees and more. So, his "city block" in size is perhaps not that much of an exaggeration if at all. Remember, he says he saw "people" walking around inside. This means it was pretty close and/or big just by itself. The "people" walking around reminds me of Barney Hill's famous sighting/experience with Betty Hill in which at one point Barney describes, looking through binoculars, a similar saucer shape with windows and "people" walking around.

Communications with saucer beings can sometimes be rather cryptic, and even seemingly non-sensical, as the communication above with DH's saucer beings shows. But a theme with saucer-related NHIs is the concern with environmental conditions, apparently. This is true of many abductees, too. The UFO occupants seem to want to talk to us about environmental degradation. More generally, DH says that his on-going, occasional telepathic communications with the saucer beings is many times hard for him to understand, but when things happen later that seem to be related to the saucer beings' communication, they can make sense to him.

DH didn't mentioned thinking he was abducted in his story, but we MUFON investigators automatically suspect that an abduction may have taken place when people talk about a UFO being a couple of hundred feet away or closer because that is what the research tends to show. But we also believe there are close encounters without abductions, too. So far, DH's experience seems to be one of those non-abduction close encounters.

My thanks to DH and his wife JH for agreeing to share their story. The more we share our stories, the more the societal taboo breaks down. Keep on sharing.

 

Details
Written by Keith Rowell
Last Updated: 20 March 2019

Oregon MUFON gets emails every week or so, of course, and some of these emails are descriptions of anomalous UFO events. Here is a recent one from CG, a Beaverton area resident. She was on her back deck at night when she had an unusual sighting of a slow moving, large triangular UFO with an interesting pattern of triangular lights.

UFO Type: Six triangular lights in a triangular pattern.

Sighting Duration: About 10 seconds.

Date: 8/13/2018

Time: About 3:40 AM.

Place: Beaverton area, Oregon.

Witness: C.G.

Here is CG's emailed story:

This is the first time I have had a UFO sighting. What I saw was not normal. This occurred in the early morning hours of 8/13/2018 at about 3:40 a.m. I had woken up about 3:00 a.m. and decided to go out on my deck in the backyard to see if I could observe the Perseid meteor showers, even though I was in the brighter city limits.

Constantly looking straight up to the sky, I had been outside about 40 minutes and had the pleasure of seeing two meteors. I was about to call it good and go inside when I sensed a bright light coming over the roof line to my south. My first thought was "oh this ought to be a great meteor," and then my mind instantly realized it was way too close to be a meteor. In the seconds I had this thought and was still looking up at the brightness moving over the roofline, I saw an equilateral triangle shape of 6 equilateral shaped whiteish lights. It appeared to be a set of 6 lights moving in perfect formation and unity; I could not see an outline of a structure that contained them. This is not to say it was not there but perhaps blended into the darkness. I just could not make that determination.

It moved slowly over the space above me at a steady pace, making no noise and moving from the south to the north above the tree line -- which I later estimated to be about 200 feet high. The entire event took about 10-12 seconds before I could no longer track it due to the trees in yard. My thought was "what the heck was that?"

I stayed outside for only about 5 more minutes as I started feeling very uneasy.

See attached drawing of what I saw. It led with the "nose" of the triangle with one light, followed by a row of two lights, followed by a row of 3 lights. From my perspective, the size of each light could have been about 8 to 10 inches on each lateral side. There was no pulsing or alternating of the lights, but they seemed like they had a "glow" or "halo' around them with a slight blueish tint.

 


CG's description is excellent. So, I decided I could work with her via email to explain the concept of angular size vs. real size, so we could help nail down the identification of this UFO as a possible genuine UFO. When something is truly unknown (unidentified) and moving along or stationary in a blue sky or in a dark sky at night, we can't know what the real size of the object or phenomenon is (except for astronomical objects). But we can make some assumptions and eliminate in a reasonable fashion some common, identified objects.

After working with her, CG gave me a ballpark angular size of a fist held at arm's length. This is more or less an angular size of 10 degrees from one side to the other. See https://oneminuteastronomer.com/860/measuring-sky/.

Using this estimate we can do some simple trig calculations and eliminate drones, light planes, and commercial planes pretty easily. A four foot across drone would have been only 22 feet above her and she would have heard the propellers' sounds. A light plane would have been 150 feet above her and she would have heard the plane and, additionally, the legal flying altitude over a city is 1000 feet. And finally a commercial airliner would have been about 850 feet altitude and would also have been illegal (except very near an airport which CG is not) and obvious from the engine noise. The Goodyear blimp was not in the area at the time. Prank kites, balloons, and sky lanterns are possibilities but don't fit the entire list of characteristics or her drawing.

Lastly, triangular UFOs are a known type of UFO and well documented from around the world. And they fit her list of main characteristics: slow going and smooth flight, silent, odd (not standard aviation lights) but regular display of lights, too low seeming altitude for a larger seeming object, etc. See David Marler's Triangular UFOs: An Estimate of the Situation and the older book J. Allen Hynek and Philip Imbrogno's Night Siege: The Hudson River Valley Sightings if you need more help believing that CG saw a "typical" triangular UFO. (Unfortunately, as is the norm, you cannot trust the Internet for reliable and accurate UFO information!)

 

Details
Written by Keith Rowell
Last Updated: 08 November 2018

Your Assistant State Director has been fooling around with learning more about statistics lately. That's right — the subject of that universally dreaded undergrad course in virtually all colleges and universities: Statistics 101. Don't worry. I'll do the work, so you don't have to. I'll just present my results, and I'll try to give you an honest assessment of what the results mean and don't mean.

Ufology over the years has generated a lot of sighting data and ufologists have studied the data statistically some, but the statistical data and conclusions tend to be buried in the UFO specialty literature in UFO journals like International UFO Reporter, MUFON Journal, MUFON Symposia Proceedings, and various books by a few ufologists like Richard Haines, Jacques Vallee, Richard Hall, et al. The few public governmental UFO studies (for example, Project Blue Book Special Report 14 and the Condon Committee report) have concentrated on statistics, of course, because natural world or human-related studies (like psychology, sociology, economics, etc.) generate tons and tons of data that must be reduced statistically for us to begin to understand data at a more general level.

Gathering stories is fine, and doing historical study is fine, but scientific study almost demands statistical study. And statistical study is tedious and must be done carefully to yield meaningful results. So, statistical study demands time, money, and expertise — something that is chronically lacking in the world of serious citizen-driven UFO study. But we do what we can and have, over the years, given the public some reliable and accurate ideas of what the UFO is all about.

So, what do these bunches of UFO numbers and categorial data gathered by the citizen-run UFO organizations mean in the aggregate? Statistics to the rescue! Statisticians and statistics scientists and mathematicians have developed an astonishing array of techniques to wring meaning out of all kinds of data. But, despite statistics being a science itself,  proper use of these techniques is practically an art, so even in the vast scientific journals literature, you will find at times statistical studies done wrong. Here at Oregon MUFON, I will do my best not to overstate the meaning of my little studies for you. Statistics is not quite rocket science, but it must be done with care.

There are two basic parts to statistics: descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics helps us understand what the data before us looks like all taken together. Various charts and plots help us with this. Inferential statistics helps us understand cause and effect relationships between (and among) different kinds of data. I'll be doing mostly descriptive statistics and, perhaps, studies that may be suggestive of cause and effect relationships between various UFO data ("variables"). But I won't be doing any proofs of cause and effect relationships because those require "classically" designed experimental setups.  However, as this series goes along, I will be showing associations and, perhaps, even correlations between "variables."  And these could be very interesting.

The obvious UFO data are data gathered from individual sighting reports. Today, MUFON gathers more sighting data on a daily basis from self-reports from the public than any other organization. Report your sighting here.

In my "UFO Stats" occasional series, I will concentrate on Oregon data but also feature other states' data, too, to see how we differ or not. I hope you enjoy these articles as they come along.

I occasionally get email about where Oregon UFO sighting hotspots might be. Good question. Are there any real UFO hotspots in Oregon? Yes and no. Read on. But be sure to read through to the end to learn about my "fool proof" way to see UFOs.

Hotspot Spots Across the Nation

The history of UFO reports shows that there just might be some hotspots here and there around the United States (and world). For example, in the 1990s, the Gulf Breeze, Florida, area seemed to be one. For a number of years, MUFON investigators showed up weekly and recorded some interesting lights in the sky UFOs. And here's another one — the Hudson River Valley in the 1980s and 1990s. The 1980s saw lots of low-level, huge UFOs and in the 1990s, the New York burg of Pine Bush saw lots of activity. See our Books link for documentation. Also, the town of Sedona, Arizona, is a noted UFO hotspot, at least according to many New Age folks, anyway. And we even have our own New Age hotspot practically in our own backyard.

A Nearby Hotspot?

Drive around 100 miles east and into Washington to just south of Mt. Adams and you will arrive at New Age guru James Gilliland's ECETI Ranch. For Portland area people, the ECETI Ranch offers a nice venue in which to possibly see UFOs, especially if you don't mind the New Age culture there. Try it sometime. It's fun. http://www.eceti.org/Eceti.IndexII.html

A Data-Driven Approach

At MUFON, our mission is studying the UFO phenomenon through rational means. So, let's find some UFO sighting data reported over the last 70 years and see what this data might reveal about UFO hotspots in Oregon. A nice source of UFO data for the U.S., especially, is Peter Davenport's National UFO Reporting Center. http://www.nuforc.org/

Now, mind you, this data is essentially unevaluated UFO report data and, thus, is not limited to genuine UFOs. In other words, expect much of the data to be identifiable objects/phenomena. Investigator Peter Davenport simply does not have the time to thoroughly go through all the reports that come in to his site and carefully separate the IFOs from the UFOs. But he certainly does a heroic job. Despite this, the number of UFO reports is related to genuine UFOs.

Some percentage of all reports will be of genuine UFOs in the experience of the vast majority of UFO investigators down through the years — nearly 65 years or so of citizen UFO investigations. As a result today, most ufologists and UFO investigators believe that a good estimate of genuine UFOs in the report data is about 10 to 20 percent. So, report data gives a reasonable idea of "real UFO" activity.  It is just less than the total number of UFO reports would indicate.

Hotspots Based on Over 2000 Sightings

So, I went to nuforc.org and pulled out all the Oregon UFO data going all the way back to the 1950s. The number of reports in the NUFORC database for Oregon is around 2200. Yes, that is over 2000 in the last almost 70 years. As you might expect, the ease of reporting UFOs since the advent of the Internet has greatly increased the number of sighting reports. A goodly portion of NUFORC's (and MUFON's) reports are from the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.

The data reveal that there are reports from virtually every city, town, hamlet, village, etc., in Oregon — some 270 of them. Wow! All over Oregon. But that's really what we UFO investigators expect. UFO sightings are all over the place. So, I decided to limit the cities/towns to (an arbitrary) ten sightings or more. This gave me a more manageable 43 cities/towns. You can see the result in the bar charts of UFO sightings on this page at the bottom.

Note that there are two bar charts. The first one shows the number of reports per 1000 people. This tells you the likelihood that you will see a UFO if you live in the corresponding city. This gets at the hotspot idea. The second bar chart simply gives the total number of reports for each city. These numbers more or less follow the population in a given city. The more population, the more reports.

How Likely Are You to See a UFO in Oregon's Hotspots?

So, I divided the sightings per city/town by the population in each city/town (and I decided to show the sightings per 1000 people). As you can see, the clear winner in the UFO hotspot competition is Lincoln City with Brookings and Tillamook as the runners up. Look at the cities a little closer and note the higher ones and the lower ones. You'll see Florence, Newport, and Seaside. Hmm, the big winners are on the Oregon Coast! And the next group of higher ones are Baker City, La Grande, and Prineville in Eastern Oregon. (But not Bend. Go figure.) Note that the Oregon Coast has that big expanse of ocean to look out over and Eastern Oregon has those wide open spaces. Are people just looking more often because of these great viewing opportunities and they just happen to see more UFOs per person?  We don't know.

But look at Scappoose and Clackamas. Maybe there's something in the water! Or they have a lot of smokers (who go outside to smoke)?! Then there are the low ones. They all seem to be the cities/towns with big populations. Are folks in the bigger cities too busy to look up?! We don't know the answers to these "why" questions. Only establishment academia has the resources to answer these "why" questions in any systematic way. And academia does not study UFOs, much to their shame. Thus, we the people are left in the lurch.

So, what do we learn about Oregon UFO hotspots from this little exercise? Move to Lincoln City or at least the Oregon Coast if you want to maximize your chances of seeing a UFO, or move to Portland and keep your eyes to the skies! But even if you do move to the coast, your chances of seeing a UFO are only four in 1000 in Lincoln City over 70 years or so.

But wait! It's not quite that bad. Ufologists estimate that only perhaps one in ten or twenty or thirty people report their UFO sightings to some "official" organization such as a citizen-organized and run UFO study group like MUFON, CUFOS, or NUFORC. These are the citizen organizations that systematically gather data these days. It is not your UFO discussion/news websites as valuable as a few of them are. In the meantime, no truly official organization in the United States cares about your UFO sighting at this time. If you attempt to report your sighting to the military, academic establishment, or local or national law enforcement, you will get a blank stare and a pat on the head these days. Or if they are nice, you might get a referral to NUFORC, MUFON, or CUFOS.

How to Maximize Your Chances of Seeing a UFO

Finally, this is what you've been waiting for. So, see what you think.  It's an entirely different approach.

Over the last thirty years, it has become increasingly clear to ufologists that UFOs are part of the world of paranormal phenomena. And, additionally, that the paranormal world is tied into psychic phenomena. For example, almost invariably, when people have had a very close UFO sighting/experience with some communication aspects, they talk about hearing from the UFO or from some "being" communication that is not through their ears, but rather somehow directly in their heads. This is recognized by parapsychologists as telepathy. It is a psychic experience. You can learn more by looking under the heading Paranormal World in the Books link. So, some ufologists are beginning to think that there sometimes just might be psychic links with UFOs even outside a close encounter UFO experience. I'm one of those ufologists.

Seek Out a Regular (Psychic) UFO Spotter

Therefore, if you’d like to maximize your likelihood of seeing a UFO, you should find a person who claims to see UFOs on an on-going basis and who says they seem to have an intuitive/psychic connection with UFOs. (Yes, they do exist. I’ve documented the efforts of two of these people on oregonmufon.com. Look in the UFO Cases link and find the cases with “Milwaukie" in the title for one of these people. I’ve known quite well three of these people in Oregon.) Once you’ve located one of these frequent experiencers, spend some time skywatching with them and you just may have your own daytime or nighttime UFO experience, just as I have. See more of this on oregonmufon.com.

I believe you can increase your chances of having a UFO experience by working on enhancing your native psychic abilities. As I have indicated above, UFO experiences are a kind of transpersonal ("psychic") psychological experience. So, in a way, you can create your own personal "hotspot" and you don't even need to travel farther than your own balcony, back deck, or backyard.  Good luck to you in your hunt for that elusive UFO sighting.

 
 
 

 

 

Details
Written by Keith Rowell
Last Updated: 12 September 2014

At Oregon MUFON, we investigate UFOs and related phenomena and do our best to help people understand what we have learned. Oregon MUFON is affiliated with the Mutual UFO Network, Inc., which is the largest UFO investigative organization in the United States. It was formed in 1969 by UFO-interested citizens because it was felt that our government and the scientific establishment were not doing enough to find answers to this on-going mystery in our skies.

Meetings

We have monthly meetings if you'd like to attend. We work to have interesting programs each meeting.  Sometimes we prepare them ourselves and sometimes we find speakers. If you'd like to speak at a MUFON meeting, contact us and we'll see what we can arrange.

At each of our meetings, we try to make time for people to speak their minds on UFOs in formal "five minutes per person" sessions. Join us and tell us about your experiences or opinions about UFOs. You don't have to be a member of MUFON to come, but we'd certainly like you to join eventually. By joining MUFON you can do your part to help solve the UFO puzzle by promoting investigation of UFOs and public education about them.

Investigations

We don't just talk about UFOs. We actually do investigation of UFO incidents at Oregon MUFON. Our team has over 60 years of experience.  Become part of our team. You'll receive education and training in how to do investigation in a professional way. We present the results of our investigations at our meetings, especially when events are more than "lights in the sky," of which we've had a few over the months and years we've been doing investigation. There is no better way to get into UFOs and understand them from the ground up than investigating them "on the ground."

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