16 February 1994
(Kingman Daily Miner, Arizona)
The article reports on the UFO/animal mutilation research
work of Crestone resident Christopher O’Brien.
Quote from the article:
“And at night, some say, the UFOs come out.
‘I’ve seen all kinds of odd lights in the sky at
night,’ says Brian Norton, Rio Grande County undersheriff. ‘Just about everyone
has, but they don’t call us about them anymore, not more than once or twice a
week anyway.
This matter-of-fact attitude confounds O’Brien.
‘Look, I’m a skeptic,’ he said. ‘I assume that
everything has a mundane explanation, and 99 percent of the time that’s the
case.
‘But in my database, I’ve collected over 600
unexplained UFO sightings in the valley (San Luis Valley), some witnessed by 30
or more people. And it’s not just a modern phenomenon. This place was
considered sacred by the Indians, and the first European explorers reported
seeing lights in the sky. This place is what I call high strange.’
O’Brien is in one of his favourite UFO watching spots
near the huge Baca Range, a few miles from Crestone. It’s a clear and windy
night, and he can see 100
miles in any direction.
O’Brien works with a pair of Army surplus Starlight
binoculars that enhance night vision. They date to the Vietnam War, but it is
the best equipment he can afford.
‘It allows you to see commercial craft 60 miles away that would
be invisible otherwise,’ he says.
Tonight, he is looking for the anomalous lights that
dance over the valley in ways no commercial aircraft could.
And around 8 p.m. they appear.
Hovering over the Great Sand Dunes National Monument a
few miles to the southeast are orange and white globes of light. They do
zig-zag maneuvers in formation, break apart and then reassemble. Sometimes,
they come to a full stop and just sit in the sky.
And although the occasional commercial plane fills the
valley with the rumbling sound of its engines, these craft are silent. The only
sound is the wind over the desert.
‘My guess is what we’re seeing is some kind of
helicopter technology being tested,’ O’Brien says. ‘Maybe some top secret black
budget project. But we’ll never know.’
David Jaramillo has been the UPS delivery driver in
the San Luis Valley for 21 years. He’s also a small rancher. Like most
residents of the valley, he says he’s seen incredible lights in the sky and,
once or twice, has seen them land and take off.
Last fall, he took his family up to the cabin he keeps
in the Sangres at 10,000
feet. They found a cow nearby that had been killed and
mutilated with surgical precision.
Nearby, Jaramillo says he found circles pressed into
the ground, each 4 feet
in diameter, about 15 feet
apart, forming a triangle. He guesses it’s where some sort of craft landed.
‘It’s impossible to get here by road without cutting
through my gates,’ he says. ‘And besides, this place is in the middle of
nowhere. It’s impossible to find.’
(tageo.com photo)
Mike Duran,
