Physiological Effects; November 1957

As in the fall 1954 French sightings, the November 1957 "flap" in the United States brought with it reports of physical and physiological effects from UFOs. On a farm in Scotia, Nebraska, November 3, Roger Groetzinger (10) was milking the cows when he noticed an oblong object circling low over the barn. He thought it was a plane about to land, and went outside to the pasture fence to watch. The object was at low altitude emitting a humming noise. Suddenly Roger found that he could not move. As the UFO gained altitude and started moving away, the paralysis left. When Roger's mother returned home, she found a thoroughly frightened son. Where the UFO was seen low above the ground, heavy fumes lingered in the air.

A week later, Mrs. Leita Kuhn in Madison, Ohio, observed a brilliant glowing object at close range. The physiological after effects of her sighting were fairly serious. Between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. on the morning of November 10, Mrs. Kuhn had been having difficulty with an overheating stove in her kennel. It was a dark night, snowing and windy, and she had to make several trips between her house and the kennel.

Finally, after she was sure all was well in the kennel, she shut the door and stepped outside. Suddenly she realized the sky was very bright. It had stopped snowing.

"I stepped away from the kennel," she told NICAP, "and there in back about 60 feet above ground was a huge glowing object.

It was phosphorous in color. Base, forty feet wide and nine to ten feet thick, dome-like top. Top seemed brighter than bottom. I looked the bottom over well. . " Exhaust-like clouds were visible on the left side of the object.

"The top was brighter. I couldn't look at the top. My eyes burned so I closed them- -orange sparks seemed to glow every- time I closed my eyes. . . The brilliance is beyond description  ."

Becoming frightened, Mrs. Kuhn fled to the house. She looked out the window and it was dark again. "I went back outside and it was gone. There was no noise, no odor. It was 1:55 a.m."

Mrs. Kuhn couldn't sleep, and wondered what to do about the sighting. UFOs were not supposed to exist; who could she report it to?

"I decided not to," she said. "A few days later I had to see a doctor. My eyes were troubling me, a rash was driving me insane and I hadn't slept since November 10. Upon hearing my story, he advised me to report it. Which I did--thank goodness. The publicity was tough but through it I met others who have seen these too."

UFO witnesses sometimes need psychological reinforcement. In the face of repeated official denials that UFOs exist, a person would begin to doubt his own sanity unless he knew that others had made similar reports, Mrs. Kuhn was shocked by her experience, and a little bitter toward those in authority.

"I surely wish they [the Air Force] would call on me. I've been wanting to tell them I'm mad--clear through. I feel duped and deceived."

Later NICAP contacted Mrs. Kuhn again to inquire about her health. In a detailed letter which she requested be treated as confidential, she described in detail what the physiological effects had been. Although ultra-violet radiation had been suggested as the cause at one point, the doctors she consulted treated her for a variety of ailments which had not been present prior to the UFO sighting. Some were painful and emotionally disturbing, and she began to fear for her life. In time, the symptoms began to clear up until, as of her January 1959 letter; her health was returning and she felt "rather well."

Aside from the physical effects, Mrs. Kuhn experienced several psychological problems. Local civil defense officials treated her report seriously, but why did the government deny the existence of UFOs? Some friends rebuffed her, curiosity seekers plagued her. Getting no satisfactory explanation from government or scientific authorities, she sought an answer among UFO believers. In the process, she encountered the inevitable crackpots who took every light in the sky to he a space ship bearing noble beings. She was repelled by their attitude toward UFOs, and felt they only obscured the truth.

Mrs. Kuhn seemed to be an intelligent and level-headed woman who was shocked and disturbed by an experience so immediate that it caused her to lose confidence in officialdom. She now feels it" is urgent that the truth about UFOs be made public so that others may be prepared psychologically where she was not. At last report, she had given up her kennel to devote more time to establishing the truth about UFOs.

SOUND

The notion that UFOs are typically silent, unlike piston and jet aircraft, is true in general. In a surprising number of cases, however, UFOs have made noises of some kind. This aspect of the phenomena should be studied carefully in the future, since it could provide some important clues to the nature of UFOs. To date, the descriptions of the sounds have been sketchy. This line of questioning has not been pursued by investigators in as much detail as it might have been, probably because of the "silent UFO" stereotype

Useful information for a study of UFO sounds would include careful estimations (or measurements when possible) of the distance of the object from the observer when the sound was heard; and ideally tape recordings of the actual sound, as well as information about the appearance of the UFO and what maneuvers it was making at the time. Sound detection and amplification equipment would be required for any complete scientific investigation.

The following chart is intended only to be descriptive, and to organize seeming patterns tentatively.

These apparent patterns emerge:

* UFOs which make sharp explosive noise during rapid acceleration   or high-speed flight.

* UFOs which emit a humming (whining or whirring) noise while hovering or moving relatively slowly.

* UFOs which make a whistling or "swishing" noise like rushing air.

Assuming that the sample of cases is representative, we next have to take into account variations in terminology used by different   witnesses in describing what they have heard. We shall assume that "whirring," "whining," or "humming" constitute a single type of sound. This has sometimes been compared to the sound made by an electric motor or generator.

The French theorist, Lieutenant Plantier, has developed the concept of deriving propulsive force from primary cosmic rays by transforming the energy into "a local field of force that can be varied and directed at will." His theory has the merit of predicting some of the observed features of UFOs. However, it rules out sonic booms (postulating that an air cushion carried along with the UFO would buffer sound), when there is evidence that UFOs do make sonic booms.

Another similar approach, suggested by Prof. Dr. Hermann Oberth, is that whoever operates the UFOs has knowledge of the control of gravity. The UFOs' apparent circumvention of the laws of inertia, as we understand them, has been the single most difficult feature of UFO phenomena to account for. Could control of gravity explain how this is possible?

The above speculation may or may not be close to the truth. If we forget for the moment the problem of inertial effects and assume we are dealing with controlled devices which in some manner surmount that problem, we can hypothetically explain the UFO sounds as (a) actual sonic booms; (b) actual "engine" noises very similar to a "whirring" electric motor; and (c) whistling, rushing air effects of a solid body traveling through air.

There are indications that only the sonic booms are heard at any appreciable distance. At distances comparable to those attained by high-altitude aircraft, where we are able to hear jet or piston engines at least faintly, UFOs apparently are virtually silent. The July 13, 1959, New Zealand case (and similar data) suggests a direct relationship between the level of sound and acceleration, with increased intensity or shrillness when power is applied.

An interesting phenomenon which has been linked with UFOs is so-called "angel's hair." This gossamer-like substance has been observed falling from the sky, sometimes in great quantity. However, it (if indeed only one type of substance is involved) has only been observed in association with UFOs in about one-half of the cases. Also, it is obvious that in many cases the sub stance has been nothing but cobwebs spun by ballooning spiders. [Natural History, January 1951; "Those Things in the Sky." On at least one occasion, small spiders have actually been found in the material leaving little doubt about the identification.

Although we do not presently consider angel's hair to be significant evidence of UFOs, (or for that matter to be clearly differentiated from spider webs in most cases) there are some surprising reports on record which cause us to suspend final judgment.

A typical angel's hair report (though not designated as such) is reported in the Humboldt (Calif.) Times, November 11 and 12, 1958. Residents of Trinidad, Rio Dell, and other northern California   towns reported showers of cobweb-like material on November   9, some in strands 5 to 6 feet long. Two fishermen at sea, George Korkan and Jack Curry, said the substance settled on their boat in such quantity that it made the boat appear to be "a million years old."

A sample of the substance obtained at McKinleyville airport was examined by Dr. Erwin Bielfuss, assistant professor of biology at Humboldt State College. The newspaper quotes him as ruling out the possibility of it being a mold growth or animal product, and suggesting it is either plant life or a plastic material.

Although it was reported that strands up to 40 feet in length were draped over trees and wires, there were no reports of spiders being found.

A trained biologist witnessed a fall of angel's hair about 1957. He gave the following statement to NICAP:

"Several years ago, I would estimate close to the summer of 1957, two others and myself witnessed a phenomenon that could be best described as "a sky full of cobwebs" off the Florida coast a short distance south of Miami. At that time I held the position of curator of the Miami Seaquarium, and I was taking part in a specimen-collecting trip aboard the Seaquarium vessel Sea Horse, which was skippered by collections director Capt. W. B. Gray and his assistant, Emil Hanson.

"We were traveling northward after a successful day's collecting, somewhere between Soldiers Key and Key Biscayne and approximately three miles off the Florida mainland. The sky was clear on this particular day and little or no wind was blowing. For a period of two hours or more we observed occasional strands of what appeared to be very fine cobwebs up to two or more feet in length, drifting down from the sky and occasionally catching in the rigging of our craft. On being questioned by the others as to what might be the nature of these webs, I explained to the others that an oft-repeated statement in natural history books is that 

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very young spiders on hatching will frequently pay out long strands of silk from their spinnerets until the wind catches them and they eventually become airborne, sometimes being transported many miles and even, as I seemed to recall, far out to sea on occasion.

"At the time I assumed that some phenomenon of temperature or timing had resulted in the mass hatching and exodus of a certain type of spider somewhere on the mainland, and that furthermore, these webs must be fragments of the original strands which in themselves may have been of considerable length. Spiders can and do at times produce vast lengths (in proportion to their size) of web material at little expense to their own metabolism  , and I visualized the little spiderlets, wherever they might be, continuing to emit their silken trails during their airborne journey as the wind broke and blew the first ones away. Although we captured a number of these strands on our fingertips, no spiders were to be seen despite the likelihood that a certain percentage of them would still have spiders attached.

"With the intention of examining the strands under my laboratory microscope when we reached the Seaquarium, I care fully placed several of them inside a mason jar, allowing them to cling to the inside of the glass before I capped it. Under high power I had hoped to see the tiny adhesive droplets that adorn most but not all spider webs, and were these present, there would be little doubt of their true nature. However, when I uncapped the jar later in my office, no trace of the web material could be found.

"This phenomenon is to me still unexplained, and I have seen nothing comparable to it before or since. I will mention by way of information that I have always been interested in the biology of spiders and their webs, particularly the giant orb- weaver Nephilia, whose bright golden web is a fairly common sight through the Everglades. Strong enough to support small pebbles, this web has actually been woven into cloth by natives of the tropics.

"From the foregoing, I would say that it is possible that the strands we saw were something other than spider web, and I have no explanation for the apparent disappearance of the collected material in the mason jar."

/s/ Craig Phillips

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service,

Department of the Interior; 11-5-63
The reported dissipation of the angel's hair in this case is commonly reported. Some analysts who do not think all angel's hair is cobwebs use this feature to differentiate "true" angel's hair from spider webs. If this assumption is correct, angel's hair unfortunately becomes a will-of-the-wisp which disappears before it can be analyzed properly, and therefore it does not constitute good physical evidence.

Biologists who have examined angel's hair which has subsequently   dissipated have been unable to account for it in terms of spiders. The substances which have not dissipated so far show no particular pattern, and may be attributed to many different phenomena. The following chart includes all reported cases of falls of gossamer-like material which have been compiled by NICAP for specific dates.

Rapid dissipation of the substance was reported in 12 of 43 cases. In seven of these 12 cases, there were also visual sightings of UFOs.