Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series about UFOs in West Virginia.
Tad Jones was driving to work one January morning in 1966 when he saw something blocking the two westbound lanes of Interstate 64 about a mile from the Institute exit. Jones told the Charleston Daily Mail that he drove his truck within 10 feet of a “dull aluminum sphere which hovered about four feet above the ground.”
He further described the unidentified object as being about 25 feet in diameter with two antennae protruding from the top and four legs and a propeller on the bottom of the sphere.
“He said it was rotating slowly when he stopped his truck. Jones said he did not leave his vehicle, watched the propeller start spinning, and that then the object rose swiftly, without noise, odor, exhaust or any sense of heat, and disappeared skyward like ‘it had been shot out of a gun,’” according to an article in the Daily Mail.
Two years later, a reporter tracked Jones down and asked him if he still believed he had seen an unidentified flying object.
Jones told the reporter, “I believe what I saw. It was there. I never saw anything like it before, and I haven’t seen anything like it since, but it was there that morning on I-64.”
Jones’ story is one of the many stories West Virginians can tell of objects, lights and spheres they have seen that defy explanation or identification. At one time, West Virginia had the reputation as the UFO capital of the world.
The reason?
“Seeing is believing, and more people in West Virginia have seen unidentified flying objects than people in any other state,” J. Ralph Jarrett, president of UFO Investigators, told a newspaper in 1969.
Reports of spaceships date back to Biblical times when Ezekiel wrote, “And when the living creatures went, then wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.” Ezekiel’s account is also believed by some to include a description of aliens.
The Beckley Register and Post-Herald also noted in 1972, “Granite drawings, estimated to be 47,000 years old now at the University of Peking, show people on ground level looking up at cylindrical objects in the sky. Carvings of sculptured rocks in the Sahara Dessert (sic) traced by the carbon method of the year 6000 B.C. show earth people staring at ‘human beings’ with strange round heads and other mystifying characteristics.”
UFOs and flying saucers became part of the American vocabulary on June 24, 1947 when the first report of a flying saucer was made. Kenneth Arnold was flying his private plane when he saw “a chain-like formation of disc-shaped objects” near Mt. Rainer, Washington.
Though West Virginia wasn’t the location of the first sighting, it soon became a popular destination for UFOs.
Charlie Connor of the Daily Mail wrote tongue-in-cheek, “We may be at the bottom of a lot of other activities, but we’re up among the top in UFO sightings. When the unknown beings from outer space decide to colonize Earth, there is no doubt they’ll settle among the hills and valleys of West Virginia where they’ve had such a receptive audience in the past.”
Some other West Virginia reports of UFO’s include:
- July 7, 1966 – Victor Camp, 18, John Parker, 18, and John McVay, 16, all from Clendenin, reported they saw a UFO that came so close that their car engine and radio quit, and they jumped out of the car and scattered.
- March 4, 1967 – Night supervisor Adam Rohrig of the FAA control tower at Kanawha Airport reported that controllers there saw a formation of three lights crossing from southwest that moved “slower than meteorites but faster than jets.”
- June 5, 1968 – Dr. John Herlihy observed a UFO from his porch in Charleston and Charles O’Dell and Shirley Shelton, both of Summersville, said a UFO flew parallel to them along U.S. 60 near Shrewsbury.
- Jan. 6, 1969 – Air-traffic controllers Paul Anderson and Ted Curtis of the Mercer County Airport said they witnessed a mysterious, pear-shaped object over Bluefield several nights.
- Oct. 26, 1978 – Many people see unidentified lights in the sky during the week, including 11 police officers who saw unidentified lights hovering over Parkersburg before they moved off.
- Sept. 15, 2002 – A group of people, including a guard at the Snowshoe Mountain Resort, saw an object that hovered over Cheat Mountain and “looked like a child’s top with green, red and clear flashing lights, but there was no sound coming from the object.”
There seems to be no reports or few reports of UFOs in West Virginia in the 1980s and 1990s. Since the dawning of the new century, though, reports have begun to pick up.
You might also enjoy these posts:
[…] « Unidentified in West Virginia (part 1) […]
LikeLike
[…] Unidentified in West Virginia (part 1) […]
LikeLike
[…] Unidentified in West Virginia (part 1) […]
LikeLike
[…] Unidentified in West Virginia (part 1) […]
LikeLike