What caused multiple people to keep quiet after a UFO encounter 50 years ago?

CASE DETAILS

As the youngest of seven boys, in a family that lived in Great Barrington for five generations, Tommy Warner, 10, had only known the stability and routine of small-town life. Then, at dusk on Labor Day weekend 1969, Tommy’s life changed forever.

Tommy Warner, 10, in Great Barrington

It’s the last day of summer before school is scheduled to start. Tommy is with the neighbor kids next door, and hears a voice in his head, urging him to “Leave! Go home!” He thinks God is talking to him, so he takes off running. But on his way home, Tommy’s friends and neighbors see him vanish into thin air–and he doesn’t re-appear for seven minutes. It’s during this period of time that Tommy believes he was transported to a UFO. The next thing he remembers, he’s is back in his yard, pinned to the ground by an unexplainable beam of light. When he’s released, he runs home, terrified.

Melanie Baumann, 14, saw a blinding light and a huge craft.

On this same summer evening, just a mile or two away, Melanie Baumann, 14, is enjoying an ice cream cone, parked by a lake with her family. Suddenly, they’re shocked to see a blinding light and a huge craft, rising out of the water in front of their car. Melanie and her siblings scream and try to hide, as their father attempts to follow the mystifying craft. The next thing Melanie remembers, she’s alone in the dark, on the sandy lakefront, left to find her own way home. Like Tommy, she believes she was abducted.

The Reed family was surrounded by terrifying, brightly colored lights.

In Sheffield, the next town over, the Reed family drives through a covered bridge, on their way home. As they exit the bridge, their car is surrounded by terrifying, brightly colored lights and the family has a sensation of dropping deep underwater. Then 10-year-old Thom Reed, his younger brother, mother, and grandmother, find themselves inside what seems like an enormous, bizarre warehouse. Thom is placed on a metal table and hears the voices of his mother and brother. They sounded frantic. The next thing they know, the entire family wakes up, back in their car.

Jane Green encountered the UFO while driving home with a friend.

That evening, Jane Green, 42, a respected citizen of the Great Barrington community, also encounters the UFO. As she’s driving home with a friend, she sees a huge bright light in front of her car. She stops, along with other amazed drivers, and witnesses what seems to be an alien aircraft, hovering at eye-level, completely silent. Jane says this was the most profound experience of her life.

All these witnesses to the UFO never spoke about the sighting, fearing ridicule. But now, 50 years later, they have decided to tell their stories. Though no one expects an explanation for what they encountered, they hope others who also saw the craft will come forward to validate their experience.


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27 Comments

  1. Ryan B.

    Why are there no photographs or videos of this? Cameras existed in 1969.

    Also, has anybody else noticed that sightings of UFOs, Bigfoot, lake “monsters”, etc. have all but dried up since almost everybody carries around an HD camera in his or her pocket now?

    Reply

  2. Lightning

    i believed in this from the moment i could remind my childhood

    i have also experienced something that is still a mystery to me but at some
    but i got marked by them and dont know what to do u dont know and it kills me piece by piece day by day
    time short and i see what times can do and what effects it you and your life
    but yeah it wasnt fun and cool why would you lie about it
    you dont lie about you are alive right

    to this point i cant hide it anymore
    beacause what happend that day until now it kills me every day a little more
    i never can talk about it and at this point its need to get out but where can i go when no one will believe you?

    i dont want this to happend to other people and what it was i hope nobody will get this expriend like me
    just believe what you want but for me
    i need help for my mysterty but im affraid i never get the answer but if some one is out there who believes i wish i could talk face to face because its kills me litterly

    im from the netherlands and yeah lifes a joke because no one will believe you and you can never find someone to talk to but if there is a chance i wish i could talk , wish i could take you back to that day
    the day i got marked for life!

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  3. Younes

    It was the jinn who lived in the area
    Showing his power to tell people beware I’m here
    I believe the jinn

    Reply

  4. ∴ΛLIΞΠ∴

    Just to give a hypothetical situation…
    IF a Marine Harrier Jet had an in flight emergency it would have the capability to land in that field and take off from it. That Jet would have been CLASSIFIED at that time… so lets just say you won’t have gotten to see them! One on the ground, one in the air, look at the one in the air, while the other one tries to take off… meanwhile, you take a nap….

    Reply

  5. Luisa Michael

    I believe, that there was something, but not that it was from another world. And I think it would be really remarkable, if Aliens were just like in all the stories. Out of hundreds and thousands of possibilities what the ships of Aliens could look like, why would they out of all these possibilities look exactly like in our stories?
    I think if our mind sees something what it cant process, then it uses such stories. 1000 years ago the people would have told that God visited that area, today we hear about Aliens. I believe it to be a nature phenomenon, that influences how our brains word.
    And: The military witnessing a UFO doesn’t mean they believe it’s from another world. It just means ‘unidentified flying object’, no more and no less.

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  6. Doug R.

    Pauline; I totally agree with you on mass hysteria. I also Agree the government does drug the public. But it is a Unidentifiable Flying Object, not saying lil green men. Also no one said they saw people or aliens. They told there experience of what they saw. Other people assumed it is out of this world.

    Tommy’s was the one I believed the most. the fact he could literally hear people talking to him. In his head got to me. That tells us other people who may see it get told to tell themselves it is noting or but no ones mind is the same.

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  7. Pauline

    I highly doubt these kinds of stories. Do I think there are other intelligent, or more intelligent than us, beings out there? Yes, but I really dont believe in most of the stories that invlove green creatures, abductions, and disk-shaped objects. A lot of this stuff coud be medically explained, like for instance, mass hysteria, which is where multiple people see the same, or similar, thing. They should label this as just a conspiracy theory, and not as an unsolved mystery. This could also be caused by substance abuse, or being drugged and kidnapped for a short period of time. I couldnt even watch the whole video, its so rediculous.

    Reply

    • Isobel

      I can’t imagine how people from different towns across a county could have experienced mass hysteria to that extent. If it happened now then news could potentially travel fast enough, but it was the 60s. How could whole families imagine that accounts for hours of a night, when they wouldn’t have heard it from anywhere external for a while?

      Reply

  8. Adriana valdelomar porras

    Yo he tenido la oportunidad de tener 3 veces avistamientos de ovni 3 veces en mi vida los he visto..

    Reply

  9. Fer Bellido

    This year, the NASA officially accepted that the UFOS existed, and even showed a couple of videos , like the one in this chapter. I was both , surprise and not surprise , that this wasn’t like a news bomb. Is like everyone already accept that the aliens exists. My family and I personally, have always though that is IMPOSSIBLE we are the only intelligent specie in the whole universe. How narcissistic can we be to pretend to be the most advanced thing in the universe? What is mysterious is to know their reasons to visit. Do they just wanna watch us? Do they want to conquer us? Are we their creation? Are they ‘us from the future’? I believe all of them and makes me sad that some of them had to move because of their neighbors reaction. Hope more people decide to tell their story and there is a chapter 2 🙂 Also curious to know if they have any medical research on them.

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  10. Mevhibe

    My mom and her friend saw something similar to a ufo too. They were in Ankara, Turkey in 1991 or 1992. She says they were two objects flying right above the houses. It was a big light that had another light rotating around the other. After a while the two objects forged together and disappeared really fast. I believe that a lot of people experienced things like that around the world.

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  11. Al stark

    Many of us have had experiences i call visitations. WHY didnt anyone talk about it? We had a party of 20 in our Stockbridge back yard and saw a highway of ships passing above us. All that was said “there is another one” ! No one said anything more!!!

    The one thing my dad said when i was trying to figure out what specialty i wanted in Mechanical Engineering, “They are bringing me consoles of vehicles to reverse engineer, and they are not from here “.

    Reply

  12. Michael M. Venne Sr.

    Only if you are OPEN MINDED.

    Reply

  13. Artt

    I wonder if the individuals changed after the experience. Did their bodies experience different things.

    South African medium if I may call him that Credo Mutwa had an encounter with UFO… dude started predicting a lot of things for example JF Kennedy‘s death. He even said a war is coming from the East…

    All of this is quiet interesting. We are not alone, the universe indeed is very big.

    Reply

    • Unknown

      What if they are some sort of drone type thing operated by A.I? In todays world it doesnt seem far fetched to think maybe they could travel back through time…. supercomputers and quantum physics have come a long way

      Reply

    • David

      I was born in South Africa and I was born colourblind. When I was 2 or 3 years old there was a piercing light shining on my bedroom window that woke me up. I don’t remember anything other than how bright and BLUE this light was but my Mum ran into the room and to this day can’t explain what caused the blue light or my reaction to it (I was completely unresponsive just staring at it). It’s my first memory of colour and ever since that night I have not been colour blind. I did a 23andme test recently and it confirmed that my genetics predict colour blindness but I can pass all colour blind tests.

      I haven’t shared this with anyone before but I can’t explain what happened to me and finding out about this case made me feel really weird about my experience.

      Reply

  14. zakariyya ayub

    I don’t want you to take this as a joke, this is serious. if those aliens see this, we are in danger. they’ll come for us now that we know they exist

    Reply

    • Master Baiter

      Why do you want to believe theyre evil? What if theyre just as curious as us? What if they’re curious about how we live, and how far we are along evolution? I don’t think its fair to assume that aliens are some evil being. If these aliens were evil and wanted to cause us harm, they would have already. I think maybe there is a possibility they could take us as a threat, but only if we threaten them. But, who knows? Maybe aliens are evil, and are wanting to invade us.

      Reply

  15. Roberto

    Mi è capitato una cosa simile nel 2009 ho visto delle luci fluttuare in aria e spostarsi a una velocità supersoniaca non lo dimenticherò mai

    Reply

  16. Dustin

    What did the rest of the Baumann family experience after Melanie was abducted from their fleeing car? Why wasn’t that included in the interview to support her claim?

    Reply

  17. Annaliza

    Something similar to this also happened to me and my then husband..hovering bright light over him when he was out walking and followwd him home. The rounded bright light hovered over our house for maybe more than an hour or so..( 12p.m.til about over 1a.m..The remarkable thing that i remembered was that the rounded bright thing was not blinding us..and the more i focus on the light , i noticed that it was rotating ..one sef of lights rotating clockwise and outer set of lights (in a ring / circle formation)rotating counter clockwise. When it was over hovering in our roof, it flew over into a small forest where i can still see them..i got tired of watching this light and went asleep (2a.m.)..not knowing exactly what we saw.Thd next morning, we expected to hear it on the news,..it was never printed nor announced on the radio! Made us wonder if it was only us who saw it..?!..We live in Norway..and this happened on dec.2000.

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  18. Jane Shaw Archambeau

    Sure is true. I witnessed Tom leaving our house yelling “I have to go home. No one ever talked about it til.my grandmother the nite before she passed said. “” Do you remember Sept 1.1969 and when I said yes. She said” They will talk about it now. It wasn’t talked about in 69. But they will now. “. SHE Passed the next night.

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  19. Thelma Wright Grobes

    Did anyone think to contact the air force? We had radar in 1969. Was anything picked up ? As large as that ufo seemed to be how could it enter our airspace with no detection??? Plus the UFO knew our language and entered our thoughts. That is mind blowing

    Reply