RED-EYES AND COLORED LIGHTS
By Lou Bernard
Throughout Clinton County’s history, strange things have been seen in the sky many times. No, I’m not talking about especially tall billboards advertising for a state representative’s campaign. I mean unexplainable things, mystery lights and shapes. What you’d call Unidentified Flying Objects.
In the early fifties, some men on the east end of Lock Haven saw a cigar shaped object flying around near the mountains. In the sixties, a couple of drivers saw weird green lights hovering over Farrandsville.
Now, for purposes of investigating, it’s important to note that “UFO” does not automatically mean “Little green men.” It’s best if you simply take the term literally: Unidentified Flying Object. I’m not talking necessarily here about an alien invasion, just something that’s not recognized in the sky.
The Lock Haven sighting, for instance, turned out to be identifiable eventually: It was most likely Piper Aviation testing a government prototype. Some other sightings, though, aren’t as easily figured out. For instance, there was a sighting in Flemington in March of 1974.
Witnesses reported seeing colored lights in the sky over Flemington. It was about three in the morning on March first. The lights were described as being “A large ball of different colored lights” and estimated to be about ten times brighter than the average stars in the sky, which people are used to.
At the time, Lock Haven University was Lock Haven State College, and some of the witnesses were guys from a local fraternity. Okay, you’d think, that explains some stuff—Frat guys at three AM, they were probably drunk and looking at a plane, right? A red-eye flight going over Red-Eye territory. Well, no, because an “undetermined number” of police officers also saw the lights, and verified what the college guys were reporting.
In fact, the police seem to have done most of the description on this when they spoke to the newspapers about it later. They verified the brightness of the lights and the multiple colors, and said that they observed the phenomenon for several minutes.
Okay, the public speculated, could this have been Venus? Sometimes it’s seen in the sky at this time of year.
It doesn’t show a lot of faith in the local police when the public thinks that they could mistake a UFO for a planet, but the police responded that it wasn’t Venus. Not unless Venus was moving around the sky at a somewhat rapid pace, which it tends not to do.
So, let’s speculate. What could this have been?
Of course, some people will always tell you that aliens are the most likely possibility. But except in the case of my next-door neighbors, aliens are not too likely an explanation. How about planes, or some sort of secret government craft that’s under testing? Also possible, but maybe not too likely in this case—Three AM over Flemington isn’t the best time and place for that sort of thing.
Consider some sort of atmospheric phenomenon, perhaps. The Northern Lights could easily be mistaken for some sort of bright colored light if they weren’t expected. And no, I’m not really proposing that the Northern Lights were spotted from Flemington. But there are similar conditions, such as a phenomenon called STEVE—Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. This is something close to the look of the Northern Lights, bright colored floating streaks in the sky.
If pressed, I’d say it was something like that, something atmospheric, or some astronomical event. But until I definitely learn different, we’re going to file this one under “unsolved,” and consider it one of those neat little mysteries that Clinton County is filled with.
