HAWKINS: The truth is out there somewhere
Do you think we’ve got UFOs over Odessa?
I got a couple of calls Tuesday from folks who were hearing and seeing some strange things in the skies over Odessa. The first call came in around 11:30 a.m. from a woman in southern Odessa who said she heard a strange whistling noise, like a plane about the crash, but she never heard the impact.
“It sounded like the noise the Challenger made before it crashed,” she said.
Then she reported seeing large white “contrails” going from east to west.
So I decided to walk outside and look up, and sure enough, there were the contrails — albeit diminishing, they were there.
Contrails are vapor trails or artificial clouds of condensed water vapor made from the exhaust of aircraft engines. As the hot exhaust gases cool in the surrounding air, they may precipitate a cloud of microscopic water droplets or, if the air is cold enough, tiny ice crystals.
Around 3 p.m., I received a similar report from a woman who heard the whistling noise, but saw no contrails.
So I promptly placed a call to the Federal Aviation Administration in Midland to see if any UFOs were seen flying over the area by the air traffic controllers.
Alex Mata, manager of the System Service Center at the FAA, said he would check it out, but at the time had not had any reports of strange sightings over the Permian Basin.
Mata said Wednesday air traffic controllers reported nothing out of the ordinary, but he did say it could have been the military doing “touch-and-goes.”
The nearest military base is in Abilene, but “sometimes it is F-16s flying in formation,” Mata said, adding that often these craft leave vapor trails behind. He said the whistling sound could be the planes “breaking the sound barrier.”
(Mata also confirmed that debris from the Challenger crash did fall in the area.)
No matter where you sit on the UFO question, there have been mass UFO sightings all over the world in the past several years, reported by major news organizations like ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX News.
My daughter posted a YouTube link on Facebook, and I’ve got to admit, curiosity got the best of me. Apparently the recorded sightings are now more common, thanks in part to cell phones with camera, video and audio capability. Some of the images are definitely head-scratchers. One caught on video in July 2010 in China shows what looks sort of like a jellyfish moving through the sky.
Other sightings were logged in Taiwan in 2010 that look like a giant “Independence Day” kind of ship with its cloud-shape, defined by light. A sighting in California in January shows white illuminated “somethings,” dancing in the sky.
Back in 2008, I was reporting in the Big Country (Abilene and points north, east and south) when mass UFO sightings were reported in Stephenville and Brownwood. The folks from the UFO organizations like MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) descended on the area, set up shop in a community center and had witnesses line up to tell what they saw. The witnesses turned in any photographs or videos and gave the UFO researchers an earful. Most reported a large-size triangular craft, floating silently overhead. Some reported the object traveling at 3,000 miles per hour and making no sound.
Question: How do you see something traveling at 3,000 miles per hour? (I’m just saying.)
Others said the thing had pulsating lights and was traveling slow and silently across the sky. Others reported seeing F-16’s chasing the object. More sightings were reported all over the eastern Texas region near Eastland, Cisco and Cross Plains.
The only UFO stories I could find in our archives were those previewing an art exhibit at Odessa College for “unearthly, freaky objects.”
I Googled UFOs in Odessa and a couple of YouTube videos popped up, but I couldn’t see anything. Someone reported a star-like object that hovered over Odessa in February 2009, moving with swift starts and stops. So some folks out here have seen something as well as heard things.
No matter what, the truth is out there somewhere…
Stay tuned.
