The latest Maine UFO sighting: Orrington

Periodically I check MUFON's database to see what's been popping up over the horizon in Maine UFO sightings. May was a busy month -- 4 reports! -- and there were 18 Maine reports filed altogether in the last 6 months (although 6 of the 18 were from prior time periods, retroactively reported, ranging from August 2014 all the way back to 1954).

But it's the sighting from June, coming out of Orrington, that really catches the eye. This report also includes an eyewitness drawing, shown below. Text and image from the report are reprinted by permission of MUFON. Please visit their site at http://www.mufon.com/, where you will find many more Maine reports and current UFO news.

Here is the long description of MUFON's sighting report #66464:

13 June, 2015 just after 9:00 PM driving NORTH on ROUTE 15 after leaving "Snow's Corner" gas station in Orrington, Maine.

100 to 200 yards from my turn off to the right, just before the Orrington-Brewer town-line, I saw a bright teal object slightly above the trees to the North-Northeast going slightly above the tree tops, then dipping below with some lateral motion back and forth as it did. It was "triangular" but had a round shape with smaller circles underneath.

It illuminated a teal color seemingly from within as the surface "glowed" teal, with black features on it. At one point it tipped slightly away and I could see the bottom of the object. Lastly, it went below the trees one last time and I did not see it again.

This sighting lasted less than one minute, but more probably less than 30 seconds.

I pulled over in my truck and tried to see it from the next road down from mine but could not.

I then parked my truck and went inside to grab my 10x50 magnification binoculars and ran back to route 15 and walked down to the train-tracks that go across route 15 in Brewer, paralleling the river - but the object was no longer visible.

I though I might find some people outside using a drone of some sort, but there was no one outside that I saw. There was also no differentiation in color scheme of the lights to indicate a bow/stern or port/starboard configuration for night flying.

At this time I called a family member to tell them what I'd seen and the call was made at 9:28 PM per the phone's history.

This object was clearly not a conventional aircraft and moved very quickly back-and-forth and up-and-down. The color was almost as bizarre as the behavior itself.

[PICTURE]:

It repeated the "1" > "2" steps several times, and the "3" > "4" was it disappearing out of view and below the tree line in that direction.

-----------end MUFON report text------------
Orrington is located near the Penobscot River corridor, and in recent years the surrounding area has had a history of UFO sightings. Another Orrington sighting from May 24, 2010, mentions something that "Looked like a very bright star. Made wobbling movements, then stood still. Stayed put for 30 minutes then slowly moved down below tree line."

Digging back into the newspapers, I found at least one Orrington sighting decades old. In the Bangor Daily News of June 15, 1978, the headline hollers: "Object in sky upsets Orrington woman."

Like this year's June sighting, this one took place on Route 15, and similarly late at night (11:00pm), also near the Orrington/Brewer town line. The woman, who preferred to remain anonymous in the article, reported the incident to the state police, the FAA's radar tower at Bangor, the Bangor Police Department, and an Orrington constable.

What she reported was this: a huge red ball of light, "radiating a lot of heat," passed over her car at Wheeler's Hill on the Orrington/Brewer line. She felt electrified as though being shocked by a high voltage, her car radio went crazy, and her headlights went out. She reassured readers that unlike in the movie "Close Encounters," no papers or loose articles flew around inside the car.

After running her car off the road in a panic, and finding herself unable to rouse anyone in the one nearby house, she flagged down a pickup truck whose owner kindly drove her home, though he arrived several minutes after the incident and had not seen anything himself. No one else in the area reported any commotion, and the FAA logged nothing on its radar. The last she saw of the UFO, it was headed off toward Hampden.

So if you live in Orrington, perhaps a look upwards now and then would serve the curious among you well!

EVENT: Orono UFO interest group

WHAT: Meeting of UFO Interest Group (held 3rd Sunday of each month)
WHEN: 4:00-5:00PM, March 20, 2011
WHERE: Fire Sign, 50 Main Street, Orono, ME 04473
FMI: call (207)866-3626 or email firesign@myfairpoint.net

Join other locals for a monthly UFO interest group. Open discussion about past, present and & future UFO activity in a safe and anonymous environment. To register, call (207)866-3626 or email firesign@myfairpoint.net

http://home.myfairpoint.net/~firesign/products.html

About Fire Sign:
Fire Sign is a shop which features items for metaphysical and New Age interests, including books, incense, crystals, jewelry, candles, magazines, cards, Tarot & more. Check their calendar of events for more classes and interest groups, and information about tarot, rune, and psychic reading availability.

EVENT: Salt Institute opening

The rumor is that one of the radio stories is about the Allagash alien abduction, and that there's a possibility one of the other stories is about a witch who lives on Peaks Island. Whoo! Sounds tasty! Also, word from someone who saw a preview of it this past week is that "it looks awesome"!

WHAT: Inside Out There: MAINE STORIES IN RADIO + WRITING + PHOTOGRAPHY BY SALT SPRING 2009 GRADUATES
WHEN: Opening: Thursday, May 21st, 2009 from 5:00 to 8:00pm. Exhibit continues to be available for viewing through June 2nd during gallery hours, Monday-Friday 9:00am-4:30pm.
WHERE: Salt Institute, 561 Congress Street, Portland, Maine
COST: Free and open to the public.
FMI: www.salt.edu or call (207)761-0660

Featuring the work of:
Alex Malmude :: Alix Blair :: Amanda Waldroupe :: Anna Schechter :: Autumn Caviness :: Briget Ganske :: Bryan Thomas :: Caitlin McDonnell :: Casey Atkins :: Catherine Spangler :: Caty Enders :: Cheryl Rau :: Claire Harbage :: Dan Gordon :: Denise Sears :: Erin Calabria :: Jess Sheldon :: Julia King :: Karin Brown :: Katie Fuller :: Keith Lane :: Mimi Schiffman :: Molly Graham :: Natalie Jablonski :: Rebeca Beeman :: Rob Korobkin :: Samuel Allison :: Sarah Danson :: Shane Perry :: Willa Kammerer

Millinocket Lake UFO report

Thanks to Amos Quito of New England Anomaly, I was alerted to a fresh Maine UFO account as recorded by MUFON and reported on the UFO Examiner site (see original posting for more MUFON database photos of the event):

Two brothers followed and 'surrounded' by UFOs as vehicle engine dies
February 15, 8:11 PM
by Roger Marsh, UFO Examiner

FEB. 9, 2009 - Two brothers hauling firewood across a frozen Maine lake encountered a low-flying yellow light - 50 feet above the tree line - shining a light to the ground. The light soon turned to three red lights forming a triangle. The brothers moved to their camp, returning a few minutes later - only to encounter a single red light which appeared to follow them - while two more lights joined the first in the sky and seemed, at one point, to be surrounding them. When the brothers decided it was time to get out of there, their vehicle's engine shut down.

To read full article: [Source]

1808 UFO report in Camden

Found online at Frank Warren's blog, Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est, this article about an 1808 UFO sighting was originally published in the Courier Freeman newspaper on March 28, 1978. I've transcribed it for the blog:

Diary Describes UFO Seen In 1808
by Hal Stokes

Back in 1808 in Camden, Maine, there certainly were no weather balloons or Air Force jets to be confused with flying saucers. George Washington's soldiers had barely gotten back home to their farms. But something odd happened one summer night that year which was recorded in the diary of a Potsdam man's great-grandmother.

Today the passage is interpreted by his wife, an historian who is studying the diary, as a first-hand account of a UFO sighting in the early 19th century.

"I thought she was describing a UFO when I first read it," said Dr. Judith Becker Ranlett, an historian who teaches at the State University College at Potsdam. "If she had seen something normal, she would have attempted to explain it as a natural phenomenon," according to Dr. Ranlett, who is using the diary as the basis for scholarly research on women's history.

The diary was written by Cynthia Everett, a Massachusetts-born school teacher who taught in Maine during the early 1800s. Born in Rutland, Mass., in 1785, she moved to Maine in 1804 with her family and kept the diary between 1804 and 1815, the year she married. The diary remained in the family.

The past year, Dr. Ranlett undertook the task of transcribing the manuscript into 600 typewritten pages. It was then that she first read the passage that she believes describes a UFO sighting. The account is written in a firm hand on yellowing rag paper that is in remarkably good condition. The entry begins as a new paragraph to her recollections of the events of July 22, 1808; it is quite unrelated to the passage that proceeds it.

"About 10 o'clock I saw a very strange appearance. It was a light which proceeded from the East. At the first sight, I thought it was a Metier, but from its motion I soon perceived it was not. I[t] seem to dart at first as quickly as light; and appeared to be in the Atmosphere, but lowered toward the ground and kept on at an equal distance sometimes ascending and sometimes descending. It moved round in the then visable Horison, (it was not very light) and then returned back again, nor did we view it till it was extinguished."

That is the only passage in the entire diary that mentions the sighting, according to Dr. Ranlett. She finds it significant that Cynthia Everett did not explain what she witnessed as a natural phenomenon, since she was well-educated and had first-hand knowledge about the night sky. "She was the kind of person who would have explained it as a natural phenomenon, if she could have," said Dr. Ranlett, "In fact she did, her first thought was that it was a meteor."

Cynthia Everett was a woman who was well aware of the occurrences of nature according to Dr. Ranlett. In her diary she recorded earthquakes and the appearance of a comet. Her son became the captain of a clipper ship and navigated by the stars on a ship out of Thomaston, Maine. Dr. Ranlett is quick to point out that she herself is personally not a fan of the extraterrestrial. "I have no feelings one way or the other on UFOs," she said.

The sighting must have been at night, Dr. Ranlett reasoned, because Cynthia would have been teaching school at 10 a.m. and besides she always made her entries in the diary just before she went to bed. Dr. Ranlett said she determined that the sighting was in Camden through the various people that are referred to on that day. Cynthia was 24 years old when she wrote about seeing the strange light. She was single but was living, as teachers did, with a family in the area of the school. She changed her lodgings about once a week, according to Dr. Ranlett.

The schoolteacher had a good education for the period, Dr. Ranlett said. She had attended Leicester Academy at Leicester, Mass., one of the few truly coeducational schools where women went to class with men. The diary was written until Cynthia was in her 30th year. Entries cease three days after her marriage to John Ranlett, a widower with six children. He later died, but she remarried and the diary went to her soon, who kept it in the family. Her grandson, who became a lawyer, did some work transcribing it about 1880. The manuscript was bound in a handmade cover made of cloth backed with newspaper.

The diary belongs to Dr. Ranlett's father-in-law, who loaned it to her. She said that she is not nearly as interested in the passage about the strange light as she is about the revelations of the woman earning her own living in the early 19th century.

[Source]

UFO in Vassalboro, Maine?

A letter to the Kennebec Journal raises the question! Is there anyone else out there who saw something interesting on the night of June 16th?

Regarding a possible U.F.O. in the sky on Saturday night (June 16) at 9:45 -- I saw a very bright light overhead moving slowly west to east over Vassalboro.

The light lit up the sky enough to catch our eyes and then, as we followed it moving slowly, it suddenly took off at an amazing rate of speed, faster then anything we've ever seen.

Did anyone else, curious or crazy, report this?

Robert Bryson
Vassalboro

maine02465[at]msn.com

Original article here.

Strange ball of light in western Maine

I found a new post online that relates a man's account with a strange light in the Maine woods back a couple of decades ago.

Western Maine Unusual Ball Of Fluorescent Light Travels Through The Forest
Posted: March 12, 2007

... I am a retired scientist and during my long camping trips in a remote area of western Maine, I like to read about natural science and try to put the pieces together. My son and I were on a trip about 25 years ago at that location during the winter. On a cold still night, we went for a walk after supper and as we walked down the road, a ball of fluorescent light, maybe 2 feet in diameter, crossed our path about 30 feet away. We were both quite surprised and watched it move off into the forest. We immediately looked for any signs in the fresh snow but found nothing. We proceeded down the road for a while, then turned to return.

When we approached the same area, the light appeared again, crossed our path and disappeared into the forest. At that point, my young son became scared since we were over 5 miles away from anyone else. I have never seen anything like it again and I often walk after dark. ... I don't think this experience qualifies as a UFO sighting but it was certainly unusual and unexplainable.
[Source]