Kentucky a hotbed for UFO sightings
By John Lasker in Leo Weekly (This appeared in Filer's Files, a weekly UFO newsletter I get from George Filer.)
Back in May, after nine witness reports were fielded during the previous month, a "UFO ALERT 5 rating was issued in Kentucky, and the state was placed on a watch list. The organization issuing the alert was the national office of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), which employs scores of trained and paid investigators. And while such an alert doesn't mean an extraterrestrial invasion is imminent, it is a reflection of Louisville and Kentucky's intriguing — though often explainable — UFO history that goes back some 60 years. "It's been very, very busy here, says Dave MacDonald, director of Kentucky MUFON, and third in line for national leadership. "Most of the activity has been centered in two parts of the state: Bowling Green, which is really close to Fort Campbell, and in the Big Sandy region, where there are a lot of coal mines, rivers, lakes and railroads — all of these things, for some reason, seem to attract UFOs.
But the Louisville region has had its share of sightings as well. Take, for example, "The Shootout: In 1993, a glowing pear-shaped object the size of a basketball played cat-and-mouse with a Louisville police helicopter. Mike Pickard, the current investigator for Kentucky MUFON's Louisville sector, says the chase started over General Electric's Appliance Park, and he calls it the "The Shootout because the UFO fired what appeared to be small and apparently harmless balls of fire at the pursuing helicopter. But skeptics believe the UFO was nothing more than a miniature, homemade hot air balloon and that the fireballs were simply birthday candles, ejected when the balloon came too close to the helicopter.
The incident has remained legendary among enthusiastic believers, but it just recently garnered more widespread national attention. Both pilots from that night — Kenny Graham and Kenny Downs — tell LEO they spent several days in Boston over the summer filming a segment about "The Shootout for a production company that's created shows for the Discovery Channel. The Sci-Fi Channel also aired an overtly "pro-UFO piece on the chase last month.
Another local case spiked with mystery occurred on June 24, 2009, when what some have described as a spinning Coors Light can was spotted hovering over Louisville International Airport in the early afternoon. It's a case MUFON continues to investigate, and MacDonald believes video footage exists as he says a cameraman for a local television news outlet — he's not sure which station — was at the scene.
"It is MUFON's hope that our investigations will deliver the truth, one way or the other, about UFOs, says MacDonald, who's been dubbed "The Captain by his peers. A pilot since 1987, MacDonald owns Flamingo Air, a charter company that shuttles passengers to beach destinations, and also runs a flight school.
"Although we have found that 92 percent of the reported sightings are explainable, it is that remaining 8 percent which constitutes the most amazing enigma of our time, he says. "At this time, the evidence in favor of that 8 percent being extraterrestrial is absolutely overwhelming.
