Walter Sheets, a former College Park police chief, saw his first UFO
in the mid-'60s and has seen a slew of them since. He welcomes a new
call by a distinguished group of scientists for more research on whether
space aliens have ever visited Earth.
    So does Michael Hitt, a Roswell police officer who has also seen
some UFOs. He says the scientists' conclusion --- that many UFO
sightings have never been adequately explained --- is not only obvious,
but long overdue.
    If Sheets and Hitt are kooks, they have a lot of company. Most of
the American public would probably agree with them, according to the
latest Southern Focus poll by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
   The poll found 59 percent of Southerners and 66 percent of people
outside the South think UFOs are real, or at least could be. The poll
also found that 53 percent of Southerners and 62 percent of people
outside the region think it's at least possible that aliens have visited
Earth.
    Perhaps lending validity to those views, the scientific panel, which
conducted the first independent scholarly review of UFOs in nearly three
decades, published its 50-page report Monday. It argued more research is
needed because many strange phenomena have been pooh-poohed too quickly.
It cited mysterious objects on radar, strange lights flitting in the
skies, aberrations in the workings of automobiles, skin burns of
witnesses and radiation found in vegetation.
   The panel, headed by Stanford University  physicist Peter Sturrock
and made up of scientists from other major universities, chided scholars
worldwide for shying away from UFO research because of the potential for
ridicule. It noted that meteorites and ball lightning were "originally
dismissed as folk tales."
   Sheets and Hitt said this new recommendation will spark increased
enthusiasm for a
scheduled "sky watch" after dusk on July 11, at which dozens of
Georgians are expected to converge on a "UFO hot spot" in Troup County.
The event is sponsored by the Georgia chapter of the Mutual UFO Network,
of which both men are members.
    Hitt, 42, MUFON's state historian, said thousands of UFOs have been
sighted in Georgia. He said "hot spots" change every few years and that
Atlanta and military facilities in Georgia have all been areas of alien
scrutiny over the years.
     Faded Journal-Constitution archives show "flying saucers" have been
the subject of dozens of serious news reports since World War II. In
1952, for example, the Constitution published a United Press
International story reporting that the U.S. military had ordered jet
pilots to take off instantly in pursuit of "flying saucers" reported
anywhere in the country.
    In 1973, a story in the Journal, quoting officials of the North
American Defense Command, reported that it was "very unlikely" that a
flock of UFOs sighted over Georgia could be explained away as space junk
falling to Earth.
     The Air Force last year made public what it said would be its last
report on UFOs. It explained that the famous "Roswell incident" of 1947,
thought by many to be a UFO crash near the New Mexico town, was a
military experiment with high-altitude parachuting, involving dummies.
 The Pentagon launched Project Blue Book in 1952 to investigate
thousands of UFO sightings and ended the research in 1969, concluding it
had found no useful evidence any unexplained phenomena constituted a
security risk.
     Sheets, 49, a Vietnam combat veteran who spent 25 years as a
homicide detective before becoming police chief in College Park, argues
that Washington wants to sweep UFOs under the rug because it fears "if
mankind were to learn about another intelligence from elsewhere, there
would be chaos in our society."
    He said he personally has investigated hundreds of sightings. He
said he saw his first UFO as a student in the 1960s, peering through a
telescope. He saw a "V-shaped formation of disc-like craft, traveling
east to west, high in the sky, performing unusual and bizarre aerial
maneuvers."
    He said many sightings are made by police officers, who often are
reluctant to tell their superiors for fear of being labeled kooks.
    Hitt said he saw his first UFO in 1969 when he took his family to
Florida to watch an Apollo moon launch. The night before blastoff, he
said, "we saw something that looked like a shooting star, streaking
across. But then it stopped, and reversed its course, and did this
zigzag pattern for 15 seconds. I knew no one would believe me, so I got
my sister, mother and grandmother to look, and they all saw it. It was
very rapid."
    Hitt said he feels UFOs have been visiting Earth for eons but
started coming more often after atomic bomb detonations started in 1945.
He said it is "well documented" that Dobbins Air Reserve Base in
Marietta was "buzzed" by UFOs in 1952, the same year strange objects
were reported streaking over the White House by Washington newspapers.
    John Thompson, a 45-year-old LaGrange insurance executive and a past
state director of MUFON, said he and his family --- his wife and three
sons --- saw a UFO on Feb. 20, 1994, that had to be from out of this
world.
   "It looked like a string of bright, non-blinking Christmas tree
lights, just sitting in the sky, low on the horizon. It had a large
white light in the center, and it was revolving."
    By arguing that UFOs definitely do exist, the MUFON members go far
beyond the new scientific report, which only suggests more study. Many
other academics ridicule the very idea of UFOs, and say that the only
research needed is psychological: to determine why people believe.
     Glenn Sparks, an expert on belief systems at Purdue University,
said his research shows that angst over the coming of a new millennium,
fed by Hollywood movies and TV shows, is fueling belief in UFOs and
other kinds of unproven phenomena, like ghosts.
     "People seem to want to believe," he said. "It's a general way of
coping with upheaval in society."
    Michael Murphy, an anthropologist at the University of Alabama,
said: "There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for UFOs, though
it would be irrational to think that in an infinite universe, there is
not other life. But it's just as irrational to think that any of that
alien life could have found Earth and would be interested in us if they
did, unless they were entomologists and wanted to study us like bugs."
    Dr. Terry Sandbek, a clinical psychologist in California who also
specializes in behavior, said the reason people believe in UFOs is
simple: "It's the same reason we enjoy fiction. It's fun."
Graphic :
SOUTHERN POLL FOCUS
POLL
THE UFO QUESTION
Are UFOs real or just imagination?
..............................SOUTH..........NON-SOUTH
Real or might be?..............59%..............66%
Just imagination.............. 41%..............34%
Have extraterrestrial beings visited Earth?
..............................SOUTH..........NON-SOUTH
Yes or maybe.................. 53%..............62%
No............................ 47%..............38%
Source: AJC Southern Focus poll of 814 adults in the South and 413
adults outside the South, conducted in February and March by the
Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill.
 / Dale E. Dodson / staff


Today's News 



Copyright 1998, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, All rights reserved.

Bill Hendrick, Poll: Most say UFOs are real: Believers praise call for study., 06-30-1998, pp d01.

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