CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE SIGHTING KIND: IN NEW YORK CITY & BEYOND

SIGHTINGS IN & AROUND NEW YORK CITY

UFO sightings in New York City have a long history, with thousands reported over the last half century. Beatle John Lennon reported a sighting over Central Park in 1974.

SPACE has received several UFO sighting reports and SPACE encounter explorers have made many of the reports. Here we present a sampling of those accounts, many which seem to have synchronistic and meaningful connections withe the observers, making a stronger impact and, again, hinting at the workings and play of a profound intelligence and consciousness.

In doing so, we pimarily focus on apparent Staged Sightings, performed for specific, but often enigmatic, reasons designed with the witness in mind, the witness having other types of encounters and visitations, which the staged sighting may make connections to, almost like an intelligence test, at least as suggested in some cases, but indicative of the interactive aspects n these sightings.

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CENTRAL PARK: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1994---By Harold Egeln

A breezy afternoon, sunny, white cloud, deep blue sky, Upper West Side, Manhhattan, New York City. Walking with a friend up Columbus Avenue, filled with people crowding the streets in a sprawlingg 30-block long street fair. Passed by and noted an apartment building where an experiencer once lived. Down below, street-level, the Arista Deli.

A week before I had a dream image of a white cloud with the block letters RISTA sticking out from below. In the dream I shouted out, "ARISTA?" Above the buildings, on Columbus Avenue, in the eastern sky, I noticed a white light moving southward. Balloon? Aircraft? I went around the corner with my friend. I checked my watch. "2:43:17."

The bright white light disapperaed and another appeared below a cloud moving southward, with a falling leaf motion. It looked like a saucer with a small hub on top.

Moving upward, two smaller white lights travelled to the larger light's northside and positioned themselves above it, forming an equilateral triangular formation, pointed downward.

This was very much like the late night formation of lights 14 of us witnessed on a S.P.A.C.E. away team skywatch mission in upstate Brewster on May 31, 1993! (see full accout on Close Encounters of the Contact Kind page)

But, I thought, before they flew in formation, the Brewster objects came out of the south in an elongated triangle, one light trailing far behind and two out in front, at a slight triangular angle.

At that thought, the objects over Manhattan realigned themselves to the formation I just thought about!

The lights then stretched out in a line, one travelling a bit more ahead and above the other two, just exactly like they did at our Brewster sighting of May 31, 1993.

Then the white lights again realigning themselves into the downward pointed equalateral triangle, the brightest, first light pointed down. The apparent width of the formation was about two full Moon diameters.

The objects maintained that formation for a few minutes, until a couple of balloons, clearly of this Earth, flew into sight. Across the street from where I was watching this was a children's store, "Elliott's Gap." (Remember "Elliott" in the movie "E.T.")

The incident was full of meaning, for me and others: The Brewster formation. the time noted and the specific numbers in the time, all connected synchronistically. That very Sunday "The New York Times" ran a front page article o the 1947 Roswell object, giving the Pentagon report that t was the Cold War secret Project Mogul.

Later I was to learn that experiencer Alan White was then in Central Park by the Bethaseda Fountain, when suddenly everything and everybody "froze in time, like a living picture postcard," for several moments, in silence. Another experiencer at a booth on Columbus Avenue, not far from that area, experienced a strange time distoration, as he tells next.

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HOLOGRAPHIC POSTCARD by Alan White

Standing on the balcony overlooking the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, I was delightfully stunned by the sight of a chorophyll and dark green group of trees attached to the lake with a few people canoeing with the clear blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds drifting above.

Suddenly time stood still for me! It was like a postcard. I don't know how much time went by, but during the interim something happened to my consciousness.

It was a very sunny kind of day...people were sparse but those present all seemed to stop in their tracks, according to whatever was going on with my mind...

Later I thought...maybe the ETs were visiting the park, or perhaps I was suffering from "Neurasthenia" (an exaggerated appreciation of beauty). In any event, the experience transcended the reality I know! A satisfying calm came overme when reality as we know it returned.

The more I try to comprehend it all, the more I believe the beings OUT THERE communicated something to me which for now must be suppressed for later release at their command.

For some cosmic reason I connected this to, and thought about the awareness of my neighborhood postman who surprised me the day before telling me about his belief in all the advanced life out among the countless stars and galaxies, silently thanking him for...a Holographic Postcard.

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Alan White wrote about this before hearing, at a SPACE exploration meeting soon afterwards, about the sighting that very same day over Central Park, roughly above the area where the Bethesda Fountain is!

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VISITATION CONVENT AND THE COLUMBUS CIRCLE UFO SIGHTINGS-- By Harold Egeln

Since 1982 I have lived near a beautiful convent which houses a school and cloistered nuns, the Sisters of the Visitation (how ironic!!).

Visitation Academy and Monastary in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, has life-sized white stautes on its front lawn, one of "Our Lady of Fatima" and the three children from the famous 1917 "vision" whch some say involved one of history's largest mass UFO sighting, when "the sun" plunged out of the sky on Ocober 13, 1917; some observers described "the sun" as an oval disc that broke through the clouds. Inside the monastary, behind its closed walls there are statues of the "Lady of St. Bernadette" (the 1858 vision) and of "St. Michael the Archangel" in the lake.

On Friday afternoon, December 8, 1995 while on assignment for my newspaper to do a story about Visitation's first front lawn public Christmas display donated by local business, civic and law enforcement officials, I snapped photos of the officials and nuns in front of a large Bethlehem manger with lifesized figures of the lawn.

When I had the photos developed, one displayed a large blue oval blob, against the clear blue sky, above the angel figure atop the manger. When I asked the professional photo developer what that was, he said that whatever it was, it was photographed and on the negative, telling me that its was not a processing artifact. He called it "mysterious."

That very evening I and a SPACE friend, Wally, felt compleled to return to the site of a UFO sighting we had on June 29 on West 57th Street and Eighth Avenue, near Columbus Circle in Manhattan.

THE JUNE 29, 1995 SIGHTING

Back in June, at 11:17 p.m., we had witnessed three pastel colored oval lights stationary in the sky, first seemingly through clouds and then on their own when the clouds vanished.

Te the north of them there were four rectangular pastel lights. We saw no source for the lights, no spotlights that could cause the lights. In size, if you held an aspirin at arm's length, they would be that apparent size. Most were pastel white in color, one was pastel blue and another pastel turquise. Some would dim then brighten, but none moved.

Unkown to Wally and myself, six SPACE members meditating on an East Village roof (a few miles south) at that time to make contact observed sky activity, such as an orange light which streaked through the sky, three brillant white disc lights in an isosceles triangular array through a cloud directly above them.

At times a light would turn into three lights. At one time there were nine lights in the sky, maintaining the triangular array. They were blue, red and turquoise in color.

A few days after the June 29 sighting I learned of a man in New Jersey who witnessed a UFO in the western skies. The man, who had no knowledge of the 57th Street sighting, saw it at 7:57 p.m. on June 29. The "57" comes into play, and in military time it is "19:57"--a year highly significant personally to Egeln, a year, also, that the Space Age began with the first satellite orbited in space.

DECEMBER 8, 1995

On the evening of December 8 at 9:15 p.m., after dinner in Manhattan, Wally and I experienced "Deja Vu" as we were drawn to the same spot and looked skyward. There were three round, circlular pastel colored lights, about half the apparent size of the Moon, forming an elongated triangular pattern against the clear starry sky.

As another light, the fourth, emerged from one of the lights, a man descending the nearby subway stairs noticed us looking upward (Nobody in the city looks to the sky!). "Flying Saucers!" he said on his own. He approached us, thinking it may have been the Hayden Planetarium projecting spotlights down on the area, which is 24 blocks south of the planetarium.

Wally and I moved a block away to Columbus Circle, where we witnessed nine or ten of these pastel colored blobs of light (soft oranges, pinks and blues) moving in the southeastern sky.

After the event, I felt that this and the July sightings were staged. The LOCATION is a major clue, conveying apparent INFORMATION. (That has been noted, too, by a British UFO researcher, Gary H., especially in a spiritual context.) The number 57 has great personal signficance to me, connecting with the school incident when I was 13, suspended by the authorities for reporting "flying saucers," thus ending my hopes of becoming an astronomer. Eighth Avenue, as in the "Infinity" sign of the swirling figure eight has symbolic meaning.

VISITATION

Later, on a hunch, I looked at the photo of the blue blob over the manger of Baby Jesus and his family. The blue blob had the very same look as the blobs seen over 57th Street. Following my hunch, I measured the tips of the angels two wings to the bottom part of the blob above them.

It formed a perfect equalateral triangle, whose three sides were each exactly 57th of an inch in length! I was floored by the measurement figure "57" and its connection with the the sighting that evening on 57th Street! A bizarre coincidence? Perhaps... Or a planned, staged synchronicity by "IT," the intelligence behind the visitation phenomenon, working in its ambigious ways??

Then, later I learned from a Roman Catholic, that the experience occurred on a major religious feast day honoring "the Lady," the Virgin Mary, making the spiritual connection once again. And, on another deeper level, the feminine force of nature, seen as creative and in charge before the agressive male force dominated early historical civilization, which is another story of "the chalice and the blade."

At a SPACE Exploration Group meeting later I would learn that the same kind of lghts Wally and I witnessed in the Columbus Circle neighborhood were observed in January 1995 by two people living in a high rise building. It was clear to them that they were not spotlights nor laser lights projected on the sky.

In early 1996 the same people videotaped a mysterious Noctural Lighted object from their Columbus Circle building windows, hovering around a Trump building at Third Avenue. Their camera (they are professioal video and film producers) acted "funny" during the taping, they reported.

In 1998 I and a friend observed about half-a-dozen Daytime White Lights blink on from over West 57th Street and Eighth Avenue (we stood a few blocks north of Columbus Circle on Broadway). The white lights all moved eastward before just vanishing.

The neighborhood of Columbus Circle, dedicated to an explorer, has produced some important discoveries for SPACE's Encounter Explorers.

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MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE!

The Encounter Enigma comes to us in various forms, such as sightings, contacts, abductions, symbols, dreams, synchronicities, paranormal events, locations, etc.) It is like a message in a bottle sailing across the sea of Space and Time from somewhere outside of Space and Time. British researcher Gary H., whose connection with S.P.A.C.E. across the Atlantic Ocean led to the Breakthrough of June 2000, as reported on Page 8, made the following observation in the context of one of the many insightful studies he has made which are contributing to a clearer understanding of the UFO situation. We offer it here as it relates to the above Sightings account as reported by Egeln and other accounts throughout the SPACE website.

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LOCATION AND INFORMATION by Gary H. It has been my teaching that any UFO contact that happens is more than just a contact. There is also information within the area or location, if you know where and how to look. Many thousands of years ago, any father wanting to leave a message for an unborn child would have left his necklace, spear or axe made from flint or the like. This would have been passed on by others with a verbal message to the child. The artifact would allow the child to preceive the skill and craftsmanship of his father, but little else. Not so long ago, a letter plus a photograph, albeit black and white, could have been passed onto the child by a father that woud not be around when the child had grown. The letter would allow the child to see the way their father thught, also it would have been able, possibly, to pick up on some emotion embodied within the text. The photograph would also enable the child to see what the parent looked like, thus enabling them to see he similarity to each other. Today, in the same situation, we could leave artifacts, letters, photographs but also a video. In this case, the child could both see and hear their parent, as well as getting some understanding of the personality, skill and technlogical abiltes they possesed. So long as the video was made to give a history of the person, etc. Okay, the more technology we have, the more information we can pass on to others. This is plain to see. If then an alien intelligence is making contact with humanity, what else could be incorporated in any contact situation? Answerr...The Location. But, it means that we must look at the situation from Their Point Of View. At the moment we do not really know what that is. If it ties in with what humanity understands as religion, what would we get? *************************** EDITOR's NOTE: Gary H. wrote this in connection with a map relating to a UFO contact in Scorriton, England in 1966. His observations relate to information here in the "Visitation Academy and Columbus Circle" account, and to the "Clare Communicator" as presented on our Contact Page, as well as to the Scorriton Contact, as reported in "The Scorriton Mystery" book. It also connects with an old British structure in ancient Egyptian style and the mysterious small "Green Stone," as well as to prophecies relating to Fatima. Fatima connects to the sighting of December 8, 1995 in the United States, taking place on a feast day for the Virign Mary. Gary H.'s research is a whole other story, which we will soon go into on the SPACE site, as Gary H. makes significant studies on the encounter mystery, around which things happen when he is involved. But we think that Gary H.'s observation applies right here! We leave it for you to decide. *********************************************

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"UFO" SIGHTING OVER HUDSON RIVER?

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Late in June 2001 SPACE Encounter Explorer Alan White of Manhattan took pictures of "The Stonehenge" apartment building in New Jersey across the Hudson River. The apartment building, seen in the center of these two photos, is where UFO researcher Budd Hopkins investigated a sighting of a landed "craft" in 1976, which was wriiten up as a feature story in "The Village Voice" at that time, 25 years ago.

When White developed his photos he was startled by the triangular array of white objects, seen in the upper sky, in the right hand-side of these photos. He had not seen them when he took the photos. The photos have yet to be analyzed.

But what is intriguing (whatever the nature of the "objects" on the photos) to us is that they resemble triangular arrays seen over Coney Island in September 1995, which helped set the stage for "The WOW! Beakthrough," and over Central Park in September 1994 during the daytime, while White was in Central Park experiencing a "frozen time episode," and an array seen over Brewster in upstate at night in May 1993.

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MYSTERY LIGHTS OVER NEW JERSEY MAKE NEWS ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ By Harold Egeln, Jr. New York City, July 20, 2001 --- Reports of mysterious moving lights flying in formation seen by hundreds of people in a New Jersey locality just outside of New York City were reported extensively on all local TV news programs on the evening of Monday, July, 16, an unusual event in itself, as well as in some New Jersey newspapers. The sighting of anywhere from 15 to 30 flickering yellow and orange starlike lights, changing formation and forming patterns as they moved slowly and silently in the night sky, were witnessed around 12:40 a.m. on Sunday, July 15 over Carteret, New Jersey. A very clear videotape was made of the lights by someone alerted at a late night outdoor party. The time indicator on the tape, as shown on TV, ran from 12:38 to 12:42 a.m. Witnesses reporting the "UFOs" in TV interviews described the lights as "fading in and out" - forming patterns such as "the Big Dipper, a perfect circle, and a V" -- also flying in "triangualr formations" -- travelling "three in a straight line" -- "changing form, then dropping out of sight" -- "flickering golden lights" -- forming "diamond shapes." Of the 11 witnesses interviewed on the TV news reports, their reactions to the lights included comments such as: "beautiful, didn't feel threatened" -- "amazing" -- they were "peaceful, serene." Two Carteret police officers and a detective lieutenant expressed awe of what they witnessed, and could not explain them. They got 15 calls at the police headquarters. The interviewed witnesses conveyed a general sense of awe and wonder about something that appeared from out of this world. On the New Jersey Turnpike, reports told of 70 to 100 drivers pulling their cars off the highway to watch the strange lights. The lights were traveling south from Newark International Airpoint, a few miles away, then turning east and vanishing over the Arthur Kill waterway that separates New Jersey from Staten Island. The TV news media reported contacting the airport, the FAA, the National Weather Service, McGuire Air Force Base, and the U.S. Space Command, and they had nothing unusal to report, like no space debris, meteors, unidentified flights, etc. An off-duty police officer, flying in his private airplane, reported seeing similar lights three hours earlier, at about 9:45 p.m., near the Delaware River, across the state, and shooting off to the north. A report in the "Courier News" in New Jersey raised the possibility that the event was a hoax. One man, who staged a UFO hoax in the 1970s, was interviewed. He thought they might by mini-hot air balloons that were garment bags inflated by burning pure alcohol in cups attached to the bottom of the garment bags, settng them in flight a thousand or more feet above Cartert. He admitted to doing something like that back three decades ago. Another man reported the lights rising from the backyard of a house near a diner. The Newark "Star-Ledger" ran a story under the headline on Monday, July 16 reading: "Mass UFO Sighting Over New Jersey Remains A Mystery" y Dore Carroll, a balanced report. The length of the TV news reports, which SPACE taped, were as follows: Channel 9 WWOR News -- two minutes, five seconds... Channel 11 WPIX News -- two minutes, 49 seconds... Channel 5 Fox-News -- two minutes, 48 seconds... Channel 4 WNBC News -- 32 seconds... Channel 2 CBS News -- 20 seconds... and Channel 7 WABC Eyewitness News -- one minute, 36 seconds. The first four TV reports were balanced and done as straight reporting, while the last three brought in the silly factor, showing a man with a large green space alien balloon. The reporters on the scene were Chris O'Donoghue on Channel 9, Pamela Chan on Channel 11, Harry Martin on Channel 5, and the other three stations had no reporters talking on scene but showed interviews or made comments. None on the major New York City newspapers, The New York Times, Daily News and New York Post, had any reports, ignoring the story, as they usually do with UFO reports. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"BREWSTER MCCLOUD" SIGHTING - MAY 19, 2002

By Harold Egeln, May 20, 2002

Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, NYC -- After grocery shopping at the local supermarket last evening (Sunday, May 19), I was walking west to my apartment building gazing into the western sky about half-an-hour after sunset.. I was admiring the grey rainclouds (it wasn' t raining, though), and the orange and higher white clouds moving slowly southward on winds from the north or northwest. I could see bright Venus, although the other planets and Moon were obscured. Almost half-a-block from home, I briefly thought, "It's been awhile since I've seen UFOs."

At that very moment I spotted a group of small dark grey clouds moving very fast to the north, apparently over Staten Island. I was startled by the swiftness of the clouds, and their sudden appearance, traveling opposite the prevailing wind currents!

I got quickly intriqued as I noticed the smallest of the clouds, less than a quarter to an eighth the size of the apparent full moon, traveling in an elongated triangular formation: two out front and one a wee bit back behind them. No, these can't be clouds. Are they a convoy of jet aircraft trailing smoke? Not likely. Then I thought, "UFO clouds!" Given the way the city skies are monitored after the 9/11 jet attacks, the UFOs would keep a low profile. Clouds!

As I quickly thought of this, the fast-moving group of small clouds disappeared behind a building, traveling directly north up the Hudson River, and I regretably lost sight of them. The entire sighting lasted only a few seconds, at 8:37 p.m.

I could not be sure what I saw. But I sensed purposeful intent, as if this was being staged, perhaps for me to see, and leaving me puzzled and guessing, unsure about this. But why?

Later, today (May 20) it dawned on me! On Friday evening (May 17) I got an e-mail from a visitor to our website who looked at this Sightings Page, noticing an account about mysterious "clouds" we sighted in Brewster.

That made the messenger mention the 1970 Robert Altman movie, "Brewster McCloud," about a young man (played by Bud Cort of "HAROLD & MAUDE" fame) who wanted to fly from the top of the Houston Astro-Dome on homemade wings. The writer e-mailed a blurb about the movie, which the writer saw long ago (as I did too).

So, it occured to me that a subtle message, creating an association of information in my mind with a tinge of humor, was communicated to me by this evening's "cloud sighting." "BREWSTER MCCLOUD!" These clouds, if they traveled straight, were going north in a direction to the Hudson Valley and the general area of Brewster in upstate Putnam County.

Of course I cannot be sure of this. But coming coincidentially just two days after the "Brewster McCloud" reference in the e-mail, it was strange. It implies and hints that this "sighting" riding in the sky (ambigious as it was) came with an awareness by "those" who "staged" it of the e-mail message I got two days before!

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