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| The Springfield News-Leader 24 October 1978 |
Last month, I posted a blog about an incident in 1966 when no less than seven members of the Charleston Police Department spotted a UFO. That wouldn't be the last time that officers in West Virginia's capital city would be plagued with their own personal sightings of unidentified flying objects.
On Friday, October 20, 1978 and lasting throughout the weekend, state police officers received around thirty calls about strange lights in the sky. The reports were all similar; a light that shot quickly across the sky, then would abruptly stop or slow down. The hovering, or super-slow objects were often sighted in groups of three, and shone with a range of lights, including blue, white, green, yellow or red. These lights would dim if an airplane flew above them, then return to their usual brightness once it had passed.
Cpl. Don Sharpe of the West Virginia State Police, who watched at least seven of the lights for over a half an hour said this about the objects: "I couldn't tell you what they were. I've never seen anything move like that, I'll tell you." Sharpe wasn't the only officer to see the lights. At least three state troopers and a number of other law enforcement officers from other agencies saw the lights. One officer even snapped a color photograph, but the images apparently didn't come out well.
Not only were these objects sighted with the naked eye, but they also showed up on radar at the nearby Kanawha Airport. However, Bill Givens, supervisor for air traffic control, believes that the anomalies, especially those that showed up on Sunday, were merely weather-related phenomena.
What's interesting is that apparently people around West Virginia were reporting UFOs around this same time, including 20 year old Fairmont State student, Joyce Dehner. On October 24, she saw a UFO on Interstate-79 near Fairmont. You can read about her experience (HERE)!
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| The Herald-News 24 October 1978 |
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| The Indianapolis-Star 24 October 1978 |
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