Sunday 9 February 2020

UFO News Article:
“ ‘Close Encounters’ Film Stirs Rash Of Sightings”


13 January 1978
(The Register, Santa Ana, California)

Source: NewspaperArchive.com

Quote from the article:
“Sgt. Preston McBride, now an instructor in the Detroit police academy, was driving a scout car in Detroit early in the morning one day in October 1973 when he and his partner saw a UFO hovering over Marygrove College.

‘My memory of it is still very vivid,’ he said. ‘It was like two plates against each other with a small hump in the middle about 500 feet above the campus. There were three white lights below it and red lights around it.

‘Just kiddingly, I said it’s probably a flying saucer. When we headed toward it and got closer, it took off in a southwesterly direction.’

At about the same time, railroad workers in Owosso, Mich., saw what they described as an object hovering in the sky that changed from a bright white light to a pulsing band of light.

The worker who talked to reporters then would discuss it now only on the condition that his name not be included in this story.

‘A person gets a lot of ridicule on it,’ he said. ‘We never claimed that we saw a flying saucer, anyway. The reporters wanted me to say that. I never even used the word flying saucer. That was the way the reporters put it.’

He said the object he saw emitted a light so bright that it briefly changed the darkness to daylight.

‘It could have been some kind of plane,’ he said. ‘But if it was, it was something we’ve never seen before.’

He bristled and threatened to end the conversation when asked if what he saw could have been a vehicle from another planet. He talked about the ribbing he has taken since his name appeared in stories in 1973 and pleaded again that his name not be published.

‘I can’t believe personally that there are any people visiting us,’ he said. ‘I have no idea what it was. Our government has secret planes.’

A Manistee County, Mich., sheriff’s deputy who reported seeing UFOs over the Manistee County Airport in 1973 reacted with similar dread when a reporter called him recently. ‘All I know is that there was something there and it moved awful fast, with no noise at all,’ he said. ‘They were cigar-shaped objects. There’s still doubt in my mind that there was something there.

‘I can’t explain it. It might be government planes. All I know is that whatever they were, they sure could move.’

He too refused to talk unless his name was kept out of the paper.

‘It don’t really pay to see ‘em,’ he said. ‘I hope I never see one again. It just gets you involved, and then there’s no end to it.’ ”


Wikipedia article: “Manistee County Blacker Airport”:


Wikipedia article: “Marygrove College”:


Related posts:


realtvufos.blogspot.com/search?q=1973







Marygrove College Liberal Arts Building (wikimedia.org)
(wikimedia.org photo)













Satellite photo of Detroit, Michigan (tageo.com)
(tageo.com photo)