Remembering West Michigan’s most famous UFO sighting, 30 years later

WEST MICHIGAN — March 8, 1994: A night seared into the memory of hundreds across West Michigan.

Strange lights were reported in the sky near Holland and several other locations, mostly across portions of Ottawa, Muskegon and Allegan counties. In the days and weeks that followed, at least 300 witnesses came forward with varying accounts.

The event quickly got media attention in the days that followed, in part because of recorded 911 calls to Ottawa County Dispatch acquired by an investigative reporter.

Now, 30 years later, the event continues to spark interest worldwide. Netflix’s popular reboot of Unsolved Mysteries covered the sightings in its third season.

Whatever it was remains a mystery, but those who saw it say it’s something they’ll never forget.

Lee Lamberts spots lights over Holland High School

Lee Lamberts was a sports writer and editor for the Holland Sentinel in 1994. The last to leave a basketball game, Lamberts witnessed what he described as string of lights over Holland High School.

Lamberts’ encounter with the strange lights began as an audible humming.

“I equated it to, if you’re out by the airport and you’re in the path of the plane coming in, this low hum as the plane is descending and decelerating.” Lamberts said.

His attention directed to the sky, Lamberts looked up to see what he described as a long row of red and white lights.

“I saw almost like Christmas lights, and I go, ‘that’s not supposed to be up there,'” Lamberts said.

Lamberts estimated the lights were about 100 feet up, moving fairly slowly before disappearing over the gymnasium. He returned to the newsroom that night and shared what he had seen, but no one seemed to believe him.

As news coverage began to ramp up in the following days, Lamberts decided to reach out to Mike Walsh, an investigative reporter with the Muskegon Chronicle, who was one of the first to break the story.

When his accounts were eventually published in a competitor’s paper, Lamberts bosses weren’t too thrilled.

“I got called to my office, I almost got fired,” Lamberts said.

To this day, Lamberts said he still thinks about the 1994 event all the time when he goes out after dark.

Cindy Pravda witnesses bright lights behind her Grand Haven home

About 20 miles north, Cindy Pravda saw something she can’t explain out her kitchen window.

“I was on the phone, corded phone, and I’m a pacer,” Pravda recounted in a 2019 interview. “I looked out the window and the bright lights surprised me.”

Pravda, one of the witnesses to be interviewed for Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries, described the lights had a slightly different appearance compared to the accounts of Lamberts.

“The more I looked at it, I’m seeing four lights, and they are like the size of the full moon,” Pravda said. “It wasn’t helicopters, it was nothing else that I could explain.”

Pravda said the circular and bright white lights had well-defined edges, and aligned just above her tree line. She said one vanished after about 15 minutes, with the remaining three lingering for another 15 minutes before disappearing.

Reports similar to Pravda flooded local newsrooms and dispatch centers that night, like the one in Ottawa County.

The story breaks: Mike Walsh acquires 911 recordings

Mike Walsh was an investigative reporter for the Muskegon Chronicle in 1994. Most of his time was spent covering court cases in Muskegon County.

When Walsh’s manager told him they’d received calls of UFOs the night before and that he wanted him to look into it, at first he wasn’t too excited.

“I just kind of rolled my eyes and said, ‘Why don’t you go pick on someone else?'” Walsh said.

Walsh called around to some of the nearby dispatch centers to see if they’d received any reports. He eventually talked to the director at the Ottawa County Dispatch Center who said they’d received several calls which he believed to be sincere.

Walsh then drove to Ottawa County to see what he could uncover. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, he acquired the Ottawa County 911 recordings from the night before.

“I got in my car, popped it in the tape player, and it knocked my socks off,” Walsh said. “I knew this was major stuff because of the way that the people, the callers, you could tell it in their voice. They had seen something.”

“One of the first callers, Holly Graves was her name,” Walsh said. “You hear the kids in the background, saying, ‘look at this, look at that!'”

Several people from the Holland area were heard on the original recordings attempting to describe the strange phenomenon they’re seeing.

“It’s like 4 or 5 lights and they’re all flashing right in a row,” another caller states. “It was kind of like a V, and there were four lights and they were blinking back and forth.”

A Holland Police officer was dispatched to the Graves home along Country Club Rd., on the east side of Holland. Officer Jeff Velthouse also witnessed the strange lights alongside the Graves family.

As the dispatcher triangulated the various reports coming in, he decided to call the National Weather Service field office at the Muskegon County Airport to see if there was anything showing on radar.

Meteorologist tracks objects on radar: “Oh my god! What is this?”

On the night of March 8, 1994, Jack Bushong was a meteorologist at the now-shuttered National Weather Service field station at the Muskegon County Airport. Bushong was in charge of answering the phone, taking weather observations and operating the weather radar.

Bushong still remembers the calm and cold conditions on the night of the sightings. When the phone rang, he thought it would just be a quick confirmation of the clear skies and good visibility at the station.

The Ottawa County Dispatcher on the other line asked Bushong to check radar to see if there was anything strange showing up over southern Ottawa County.

Putting the WSR-74C weather radar into manual mode, Bushong began scanning the area of interest to his southeast. A few seconds later, Bushong started to see strange objects lighting up his screen and relays his observations to the dispatcher.

I knew I was looking at something highly unusual,” Bushong said. “Not just an airplane, either aircraft in formation or the biggest airplane I’ve ever seen on radar.

The objects would change altitude and position quite rapidly, making them difficult to track, Bushong said. Eventually they moved from southwest Michigan out over Lake Michigan in a somewhat geometric pattern before eventually disappearing from radar.

As an interesting note, the objects on radar appeared to make their way to the only area of Lake Michigan with mostly open water. That winter was remarkably cold across the Great Lakes, and a good portion of the lake had iced over.

As news coverage of the event began to really take off, Bushong was instructed to not speak about the incident to any members of the media. He watched as his superiors downplayed his experience in various interviews.

“When I tried to explain it to them, it was like they didn’t even want to listen,” Bushong said. “It really ate at me that they were getting the timeline wrong. I wrote them a message and it’s like they didn’t even want to read it.”

In an effort to professionally distance himself from the event, Bushong requested a transfer within the NWS and moves to Atlanta a couple years later. He still lives in the Atlanta area today, but hopes to one day move back to West Michigan.

Now retired, Bushong felt vindicated when the Pentagon declassified videos of “unidentified anomalous phenomenon” in 2020. He said some of the navy’s radar descriptions match what he observed.

“Radar operators were talking about how they acted, which matched me,” Bushong said. “When I saw mine there was no internet to go and research to see what other people had to say about it.”

In his retirement, Bushong is working on a scientific paper in which he plans to publish his radar observations and analysis. He hopes, like so many of the witnesses he’s met over the years, that one day we might understand what it was over West Michigan skies that night.

News Channel 3’s coverage

Phones were ringing off the hook at News Channel 3 during the night of March 8, 1994, as well.

“It had just gotten dark out and we started receiving a couple of calls into the newsroom from people who were saying they were seeing these bright lights in the sky,” said Missy Broderick, logistics manager at News Channel 3. “And that they were moving back and forth really quick.”

Broderick was working the assignment desk that night as the phone calls continued coming in.

“We probably had over 50 phone calls. And that’s not usual,” she said.

Looking for a way to confirm the sightings, Broderick phoned the control tower at the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport to see if they had anything on radar. She remembers the air traffic control confirmed they’d seen a couple abnormal returns on radar, but they told her they didn’t know what they were and they couldn’t comment any further.

In the following days, New Channel 3 crews traveled to places like Holland and Grand Haven and spoke with some of the eyewitnesses.

In a story that aired three days following the event, crews tagged along with a man investigating the sightings.

“In news, you know, we’re always doing things that are pretty cut and dry, black and white, but this is the one night you couldn’t explain what was going on,” Broderick said. “It’s one of the memories I’ll take from working at Channel 3 with me.”

A holy grail UFO event

Michigan is no stranger to UFO events, but the March 8, 1994 event ranks toward the top when it comes to some of our most famous.

“I would put this event toe-to-toe with some of the other big ones people talk about,” said Bill Konkolesky, president of the Michigan MUFON chapter. “There were over about 300 witnesses that MUFON is aware of that saw various colored discs doing erratic maneuvers in the sky.”

MUFON stands for Mutual UFO Network, the world’s largest civilian UFO research organization, with over 5,000 members in over 40 countries.

Konkolesky said in a typical year, MUFON will get just over 200 sightings from across Michigan. People report their UFO sightings to MUFON, with each lead investigated.

Konkolesky said about 90% of the reports can be reliably identified.

“The most interesting part about this is that 10% we can’t identify,” Konkolesky said. “We always stop at the water’s edge and say, ‘Well, this is unidentified. Don’t jump to conclusions, but boy is this a head scratcher.'”

Put the 1994 sightings toward to top of the head scratcher list.

“To have this giant sighting with over 300 witnesses in a particular night, including weather return, police and the whole shebang” Konkolesky said. “It just makes you wonder how often events of this magnitude happen, and no one is hearing about them.”

Konkolesky believes some of what people are seeing are black-budget military aircraft.

“There was no stealth helicopter until one crashed in Pakistan and we had to admit it,” Konkolesky said.

Only time will tell if we ever have any answers to the mystery of what people saw that fateful night.

Special thanks to Blake Naftel for assisting with the digitizing of archive News Channel 3 footage.

Follow meteorologist Will Haenni on Facebook, X & Instagram. Have something you’d like to share about the 1994 event? Email Will at wchaenni@sbgtv.com.