4 of Michigan’s most well-known UFO sightings

Friday is World UFO Day, celebrating those unidentified flying objects that have boggled the minds of everyday people and government officials worldwide for decades.  

While the U.S. government has been hesitant to suggest the existence of extraterrestrial beings, it hasn’t exactly ruled it out, either.  

UFO trackers used to be known as “fringe” groups and journalists or government officials thought it would be career-ending to speak about aliens seriously.  

But now, after a Pentagon investigation, it’s a respected topic of national security.  

The unclassified report, released on June 25, examined 144 reported “unidentified aerial phenomena” by the U.S. government from 2004-21. The Pentagon task force found that one of the reports was a large, deflating balloon. 

The other 143 remain unexplained. 

The report blames the limited data for the inexplicable, but cites five possible explanations for the unidentified aerial phenomena: airborne clutter, like the balloon; natural atmospheric phenomena, which would include thermal fluctuations that register on radar systems; government developmental programs that the task force was unable to confirm; advanced technology by foreign adversaries like Russia or China; and “other,” which does not technically exclude alien life.  

Bill Konkolesky, Michigan director of the Mutual UFO Network, said he thinks the federal government started more publicly looking into the possibility of UFOs because of more frequent leaks.  

“They used that as an opportunity to sort of get ahead of the issue to get in front of it because the government has clearly known about the phenomenons for at least going back to the 1940s,” he said. “And so, this is sort of their sort of public relations effort to sort of say that they don’t think it’s impossible that this sort of phenomena is happening. …They’re going to have more reports coming forward. I think that they’re going to read the room about just how much they can release, and then slowly acclimate people to the possibility that we’re being visited over the course of several years.” 

UFO sightings surged nationwide during the pandemic, according to the National UFO Reporting Center. 

MUFON receives about 200 UFO sightings each year, Konkolesky said. 

He attributed the increase to two main reasons: people being home more due to COVID-19 and mistaking SpaceX Starlink satellites for UFOs 

“About a third of our sightings in 2020 were Starlink satellites,” Konkolesky said.  

Here’s a look at four of the most well-known UFO sightings here in Michigan:  

Kinross, 1953 

When a blip on the radar appeared in restricted air space near Soo Locks, an important commercial gateway, the U.S. Air Force at the Kinross base sent two experienced pilots in an F-89 Scorpion jet to investigate.  

The jet chased the object for about 30 minutes and then the two radars, the jet, and the unidentified object, seemingly intersected over Lake Superior. They lost radio contact and the Air Force pilots were never heard from again.  

“They both disappeared, vanished forever,” Konkolesky said. “They never found the jet. So it looks if you’re just going by the radar data, which is all they had, it looks like the plane collided with the UFO and then they both disappear.” 

Swamp gas, 1966 

Hundreds of reports of UFOs hit southeast Michigan in March 1966 after a sheriff’s office received reports of a UFO landing in a swamp in Dexter.  

Truck driver Frank Mannor had gone into the swamp with his son, Ronald, and told police at the time, “It was sort of shaped like a pyramid, with a blue-green light on the right-hand side and on the left, a white light. I didn’t see no antenna or porthole. The body was like a yellowish coral rock and looked like it had holes in it — sort of like if you took a piece of cardboard box and split it open,” Click On Detroit reported.  

The sightings across the county went on all week, with those at the University of Michigan and Hillsdale College reporting seeing strange lights.  

Dr. J. Allen Hynek from Project Blue Book, a part of the Air Force that investigated UFOs, turned up and said it was just swamp gas.  

This drew criticism and accusations of a government cover-up.

Wurtsmith Air Force Base, 1975 

In October 975, both radar and men on the ground spotted a bright white disc hovering over Wurtsmith Air Force Base, according to Konkolesky.  

They had a plane pursue it, but the UFO reportedly shot into space before they could reach it.  

“There were nuclear weapons at that base,” Konkolesky said. “It was seen on the ground by the soldiers on the ground. It was seen from the air traffic tower, it was caught on radar, so multiple ways that this was being observed. And then the other thing, too, is that within a two-week period, at least four other bases altogether in the United States that have nuclear weapons were visited by a very similar UFO.” 

Lake Michigan, 1994 

One of the largest UFO sightings in U.S. history, there were roughly 300 witnesses on March 8, 1994, as part of a large sighting wave that week.  

Even police and the National Weather Service got involved.  

“And they observed several objects, or very large objects flying around on their radar,” Konkolesky said. “And their radar isn’t meant to pick up aircraft, it’s meant to pick up weather patterns. So when they’re seeing these thumbnail-sized things on their radar, they know that they’re massive.” 

More:Michigan COVID-19 vaccine sweepstakes is shot at $5M in cash prizes, scholarships

More:How to receive flooding aid and claim forms without internet access

A 1995 Detroit Free Press article published a conversation between the NWS and a Holland police officer.  

“There were three and sometimes four blips, and they weren’t planes,” the NWS radar operator said. “Planes show as pinpoints on the scope, these were the size of half a thumbnail. They were from 5 to 12,000 feet at times, moving all over the place. Three were moving toward Chicago. I never saw anything like it before, not even when I’m doing severe weather.” 

What happened in 1994 remains a mystery, much like everything else related to the possibility of extraterrestrial life.  

Contact Emma Stein: estein@freepress.com and follow her on Twitter @_emmastein.

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Detroit Free Press can be found here ***